The Plot
Socrates opens the dialogue by asking whether Menexenus is coming from the agora, and Menexenus replies that he was coming from the Council Chamber. Socrates remarks that Menexenus must be giving up his philosophy so that he can rule old men like Socrates. Menexenus responds that he will only seek office if Socrates gives him permission -- the real reason why he was there is that the Council was looking for someone to give the epitaphios or funeral oration for the war-dead. Socrates remarks that dying in battle seems to have some advantages, since you get a nice funeral, even if you are poor, and you get to be eulogized by experts with praise whether you merit it or not. These experts enchant people, praising not only the war-dead but the living as well, so that those who listen think of themselves as even better than they did before. Socrates drily remarks that it often takes him three days after such speeches to remember that he doesn't live in the Isles of the Blessed.
Menexenus recognizes this as mockery of rhetors and orators, but he remarks that in this case it might be quite difficult, since it is so last-minute. Socrates dismisses this, saying that these speeches are always made long before, and even if they weren't, they are not difficult to make up off the top of your head: it's easy to praise the Athenians if your audience is the Athenians. Menexenus asks him if he thinks he could deliver such a speech. Socrates remarks that there's nothing surprising as his ability, since he happens to have a very good teacher of oratory, Aspasia. Just yesterday Aspasia declaimed a funeral oration herself, and went through it with Socrates, making up some of it off the top of her head, and pasting in things she had come up when writing Pericles' funeral oration. Menexenus wants to hear it, and Socrates gives it.
After the speech, Menexenus is clearly convinced that Socrates just made the speech up himself, and says he is grateful to Socrates for the speech. Socrates responds that if Menexenus doesn't give him away, he'll pass on many others of Aspasia's speeches. Menexenus says he won't, and Socrates ends with a promise to pass the speeches on.
The Thought
Understanding the Aspasian speech requires, I think, recognition of two principles:
(1) The Fragments Principle: Socrates suggests that Aspasia made her funeral oration out of "bits and pieces", some of which were extemporized and some culled from parts left out of Pericles' Funeral Oration (236b). So we should not see the Oration as a unified entity, but something stitched together.
(2) The Greatest City Principle: Consistently throughout the speech, things that were done by the Greeks as a whole are attributed to Athens alone; or things that were done well by other cities are attributed to Athens even if Athens really opposed them. Everything Athens does is said to be for a purely altruistic motive, and this is treated as obvious. Athens is never really defeated; disasters and failures are mostly another city's fault; and so forth. Athens is the center of the world.
These principles are not always applied in the same way, so should not be regarded as mechanical rules. Sometimes they are applied very subtly -- a slight spinning of the facts, an introduction of an inconvenient truth Pericles left out, or the quiet dropping of something he said. Sometimes they take the form of egregious falsehoods (for instance, the Oration falsely claims that Athens could not reinforce the Syracusan expedition because of the distance, when it actually did reinforce it early on, and only toward the end could not because it was at war with Sparta again). Sometimes they take the form of obvious contradictions (for instance, it is claimed in separate places that Athens won the Peloponnesian War and that she lost it, because that's the only way to make Athens the hero in all the major events in that period; and the Oration insists that the Athenians would never betray Greeks to barbarians but just a few lines later talks about how the Athenians helped the Persians beat the Spartans). Sometimes they take the form of truths that are treated with the wrong valence (for instance, when it is said enthusiastically that Athenians were to fight for the freedom of all Greeks by fighting Greeks, or more broadly when the fairly reasonable moral drawn at the end is treated as if it were the obvious conclusion of the history that went before, whereas they don't fit together at all). This means the Oration really requires a very close analysis that I probably don't really have the expertise to do and couldn't easily put here if I did. But here are some things that become quite notable just by brief comparison of the Oration with other speeches and with historical accounts.
(1) Contrary to Pericles' emphasis on deeds rather than words, Aspasia says that "it is by means of speech finely spoken that deeds nobly done gain for their doers from the hearers the meed of memory and renown" (236e)
(2) Contrary to Pericles, but like Lysias and Isocrates, Aspasia emphasizes the autochthony of the Athenians, and discusses it at far greater length than they do. She attributes to Attica the origin of grains (which has the problem that Attica is not a particularly great place to grow them!), which Athens freely shared, and gave them gods to be tutors and mentors.
(3) Aspasia denies what everyone else claims, that Athens is a democracy; instead she is an aristocracy supported by popular approval. Like Pericles she claims that Athens makes the wise rulers.
(4) She mentions in passing the same mythological exploits as Lysias. She does so in order to talk about deeds that have fallen in oblivion and that nobody talks about -- which turns out to be the always-mentioned topic of the Persian War!
(5) She skips the great Spartan feat of the Persian War, Thermopylae, in order to talk about Marathon; an egregious lapse given that she suggests that at Marathon Athens showed all the other Greeks that the Persians were not invincible.
(6) She falsely claims that the Battle of Tanagra in the First Peloponnesian War was indecisive -- while Athens fought well, it was a Spartan victory -- and claims that Athens was fighting for the freedom of Boeotians, whereas the Spartans were actually the ones fighting to preserve the freedom of the Boeotians from Athens.
(7) Athens held the Spartans at Sphacteria hostage and threatened to execute them if Sparta invaded, while also backing raids into Spartan territory; Aspasia claims instead that Athens gave them back and made peace.
(8) Aspasia claims that the Athenians "deemed that against their fellow Greeks it was right to wage war only up to the point of victory, and not to wreck the whole Greek community for the sake of a city's private grudge, but to wage war to the death against the barbarians" (242d), which is similar to claims made by Isocrates; she will show Athens doing the exact opposite by the end of the speech, forgiving the barbarians and trying to destroy Greek cities.
(9) The Oration underplays the disaster of the Syracusan expedition, as noted above, and claims, utterly implausibly, that not only the Athenians comported themselves with prudence (phronesis) and virtue (arete), but that they were praised even more by their enemies than their friends. But the claim (dubious, and certainly not Plato's own view, given his other allusions to the event) that Athens went to Sicily only to protect the freedom of Leontini is extant elsewhere, and probably was a common claim.
(10) The way the description of the end of the Peloponnesian War is structured, it makes it sound like Athens won the war, instead of lost, and then only had a civil war after peace. What's more it's described as nearly peaceful, due to "a firm friendship founded on community of race", happening almost entirely by misfortune, when it was in fact notoriously bloody.
(11) The Corinthian War (which, of course, occurred after Socrates' death) is misleadingly treated as if Athens's allies, including the Persians (who, contrary to the claims of the Oration, were not in any fear of Sparta and were simply practicing their usual policy of dividing the Greek cities), begged her for help, whereas it was instigated by Thebes with the support of Athens and expanded from there. But some of the other features of the war are technically correct, although described tendentiously, which makes me wonder if part of the point of the dialogue is to attack common Athenian views of the Corinthian War.
(12) Despite all this mendacity -- and I am sure I have not caught all of even the worst instances -- the moral drawn at the end when the audience is addressed with the lessons to learn from the history seems in itself to be more straight. It just doesn't seem to fit with any of what went before.
Additional Remarks
* It has to be deliberate that Plato has Socrates attributing Pericles' Funeral Oration, which sums up the self-understanding of the Athenian Empire, to Aspasia, who was a foreigner from Miletus, particularly given that Socrates emphasizes that she was from Miletus at the end of this Oration. Perhaps the idea is that the Funeral Oration of Pericles is not a summary of the golden age of Athens; it is the summary of the un-Athenian aberrations, the deviations from Athenian tradition (notice how swiftly Pericles passes over Athenian history), by which she came within a hair's breadth of collapsing completely.
* Despite my emphasizing some of the falsehoods, it is worth keeping in mind that every single thing done in the Oration is the kind of thing regularly done in funeral orations of this kind: truncated histories, exaggerated claims, convenient omissions, passing off blame on others. Notice how often Socrates repeats the standard commonplace of epitaphioi that Athens always fights for the freedom of others, for instance: 239b, 242a, 242b, 244e, 245a.
* The Menexenus ends up being something like a black comedy on political manipulation, like the movie, Wag the Dog:
*****
Quotations are from W. R. M. Lamb's translation at the Perseus Project.
Tuesday, July 08, 2014
Menexenus (Part I)
I've mentioned before that every single one of Plato's dialogues does something you would not expect if you only had the other dialogues; but some dialogues come with many more surprises than others. Menexenus is one of the weirdest and most puzzling dialogues in the Platonic canon -- perhaps the weirdest, although Clitophon gives it a run for the prize. It is subtitled "The Funeral Oration" and it is indeed the case that the bulk of the dialogue is taken up by an epitaphios or funeral oration. That's one oddity in the dialogue. Another is that the funeral oration is simply recited by Socrates and ascribed to Aspasia, for reasons that are somewhat unclear. Another oddity is that Socrates talks about things that happened after he died. Yet another oddity is that the history presented is sometimes truly fantastically wrong, in ways that cannot possibly be accidental. Scholars have been itching for a very long time to find a reason to regard it as inauthentic so as to make their lives simpler, but they have been stymied by Aristotle, who very clearly refers to the dialogue (under its subtitle), and while he doesn't say outright that it's Plato's, he treats it exactly as if it were. This is one of the strongest possible external evidences to authenticity; Aristotle, having spent twenty years in Plato's Academy, is not going to be wrong about the bare fact of whether Plato wrote a dialogue -- and if he is, it's not going to be in a way that someone thousands of years later could ever be in a position to establish. It has generally been treated as a minor dialogue, because scholars treat as minor works all the ones they find perplexing, but it was apparently fairly popular in antiquity. More recent explorations have suggested that Menexenus can be seen as a criticism of Pericles' famous Funeral Oration -- Aspasia, after all, was Pericles' companion, and the speech attributed to her seems to parody the kind of expansive rhetoric Athenians liked to hear about themselves. Moreover, Pericles' Funeral Oration is also mentioned in the dialogue; Socrates claims that it was also really composed by Aspasia.
Menexenus, then, may one day take its place as a significant source for understanding Plato's political philosophy -- if we get a grip on how it fits into that context. In the meantime, there's no consensus on how to interpret the dialogue, ,given its subtleties, serious interpretation of this work, even a preliminary interpretation, would certainly require a month of reading and comparing at least! We'll just have to approach the matter as tourists and see if we can catch a few of the interesting points.
You can read Menexenus online in English at the Perseus Project and in French at Wikisource.
The Background
The dialogue directly refers to Pericles' Funeral Oration. There are two other works that sometimes are thought to be in view: Lysias's Funeral Oration and Isocrates' Panegyricus (which is not technically a funeral oration but obviously is rhetorically related).
(1) Pericles' Funeral Oration. Pericles, as Thucydides presents him, begins by saying he would prefer that the law not require a eulogy for the war-dead, but simply recognize their deeds by the deed of the funeral itself; but as it is required by law, he will comply. He begins with the first ancestors, but passes briefly over them by saying there never was a time when they did not dwell on the land, in order to get to "our fathers", who added to their legacy, and to those who were assembled to hear the speech, who carried the improvements even further, "and have richly endowed our city with all things, so that she is sufficient for herself both in peace and war." He then passes over the deeds of martial glory of which funeral orations were usually composed, and talks of the glory of Athens:
Athens' military training is in many ways superior to those of her adversaries; she is open to the world; Athens seldom has difficulty overcoming its opponents; when those opponents defeat Athens, they do so only because Athens's attention is divided; Athens, unlike the rest of the world, thinks before acting; Athens is the school of Greece.
He then moves on briefly to praise of the dead: they were worthy of Athens. Then he speaks to those present:
(2) Lysias' Funeral Oration. Lysias begins with the usual remark that words are insufficient to praise the deads of the dead, then moves on to discuss "the ancient ordeals of our ancestors". He gives a number of mythological episodes in which Athens rose to the occasion, then mentions that it was natural to them to do justice because they were born of the earth:
He then moves on to the Persian War, (briefly) the Peloponnesian War, and then finally the Corinthian War, and ends by calling them blessed.
(3) Isocrates' Panegyricus. Isocrates says, " I have come before you to give my counsels on the war against the barbarians and on concord among ourselves" and after some further discussion of what he is doing, goes on to argue that the Spartans and Athenians should unite against the barbarians. But while Athens can understand this policy, the Spartans have the false belief that they by right should lead. Thus Isocrates sets out to prove that Athens has claim to lead the Greeks as a whole. He notes the autochthony of Athens, its people sprung from the earth, and the fact that they were taught by Demeter herself how to use the fruits of the earth and received from her the Eleusinian Mysteries. He then discusses all the benefits that the Athenians have shared with the rest of the Greeks, including philosophy, and the ancient tradition of appealing to Athens for help. He discusses the Persian War. Thus "all men would acknowledge that our city has been the author of the greatest number of blessings, and that she should in fairness be entitled to the hegemony." He meets a number of possible objections, including the treatment of the Melians and the people of Scione, and dismisses them by pointing out that cities that stayed loyal did not have this problem, and, besides, Sparta is worse. He talks about Athenian enmity to the barbarians and argues for a united front against them.
The Characters
(in order of appearance)
Socrates
Menexenus
Menexenus is also a character in Lysis and is present at the discussion in Phaedo. Not much seems to be known about him.
Aspasia
Aspasia is not technically in the dialogue, but as the epitaphios or funeral oration is attributed to her, she is a quasi-character in the discussion. Aspasia is the women in the Periclean Age of whom we know the most, but far from making her more understandable, it makes her much more of an enigma. She was almost certainly born in Miletus, and was (apparently) the daughter of Axiochus. She was the mistress of Pericles for about twenty years, and had a son, also named Pericles. She apparently was a common character in philosophical dialogues by Socrates' students -- Aeschines and Antisthenes both had dialogues named after her. We have a few fragments of Aeschines's dialogue; in one of the fragments Socrates argues that many women have been great history. In the most extended passage, preserved in Cicero's De inventione (1.51-53), Aspasia gives Xenophon and his wife marital advice. (This is certainly fictional; all evidence suggests that Xenophon married relatively late and well after he had left Athens, and probably after Aspasia had died. But you can read it in English here at section XXXI.) We don't know what Antisthenes' dialogue was like, but there's good evidence elsewhere to think that Antisthenes did not approve of Aspasia at all. She was often mocked in comedies, often with hints that she was the real cause of the Peloponnesian War (this is a joke in Aristophanes' Acharnians, for instance). The things that most fascinated her contemporaries -- her deviation from normal expectations for women, her access to power, her intelligence -- often do not lead into the things we most want to know about her. It is all indirect; she is one of the most talked-about people of the time, and yet we hardly know her.
to be continued
Menexenus, then, may one day take its place as a significant source for understanding Plato's political philosophy -- if we get a grip on how it fits into that context. In the meantime, there's no consensus on how to interpret the dialogue, ,given its subtleties, serious interpretation of this work, even a preliminary interpretation, would certainly require a month of reading and comparing at least! We'll just have to approach the matter as tourists and see if we can catch a few of the interesting points.
You can read Menexenus online in English at the Perseus Project and in French at Wikisource.
The Background
The dialogue directly refers to Pericles' Funeral Oration. There are two other works that sometimes are thought to be in view: Lysias's Funeral Oration and Isocrates' Panegyricus (which is not technically a funeral oration but obviously is rhetorically related).
(1) Pericles' Funeral Oration. Pericles, as Thucydides presents him, begins by saying he would prefer that the law not require a eulogy for the war-dead, but simply recognize their deeds by the deed of the funeral itself; but as it is required by law, he will comply. He begins with the first ancestors, but passes briefly over them by saying there never was a time when they did not dwell on the land, in order to get to "our fathers", who added to their legacy, and to those who were assembled to hear the speech, who carried the improvements even further, "and have richly endowed our city with all things, so that she is sufficient for herself both in peace and war." He then passes over the deeds of martial glory of which funeral orations were usually composed, and talks of the glory of Athens:
Our form of government does not enter into rivalry with the institutions of others. Our government does not copy our neighbors', but is an example to them. It is true that we are called a democracy, for the administration is in the hands of the many and not of the few. But while there exists equal justice to all and alike in their private disputes, the claim of excellence is also recognized; and when a citizen is in any way distinguished, he is preferred to the public service, not as a matter of privilege, but as the reward of merit. Neither is poverty an obstacle, but a man may benefit his country whatever the obscurity of his condition. There is no exclusiveness in our public life, and in our private business we are not suspicious of one another, nor angry with our neighbor if he does what he likes; we do not put on sour looks at him which, though harmless, are not pleasant. While we are thus unconstrained in our private business, a spirit of reverence pervades our public acts; we are prevented from doing wrong by respect for the authorities and for the laws, having a particular regard to those which are ordained for the protection of the injured as well as those unwritten laws which bring upon the transgressor of them the reprobation of the general sentiment.
Athens' military training is in many ways superior to those of her adversaries; she is open to the world; Athens seldom has difficulty overcoming its opponents; when those opponents defeat Athens, they do so only because Athens's attention is divided; Athens, unlike the rest of the world, thinks before acting; Athens is the school of Greece.
He then moves on briefly to praise of the dead: they were worthy of Athens. Then he speaks to those present:
Any one can discourse to you for ever about the advantages of a brave defense, which you know already. But instead of listening to him I would have you day by day fix your eyes upon the greatness of Athens, until you become filled with the love of her; and when you are impressed by the spectacle of her glory, reflect that this empire has been acquired by men who knew their duty and had the courage to do it, who in the hour of conflict had the fear of dishonor always present to them, and who, if ever they failed in an enterprise, would not allow their virtues to be lost to their country, but freely gave their lives to her as the fairest offering which they could present at her feast.
(2) Lysias' Funeral Oration. Lysias begins with the usual remark that words are insufficient to praise the deads of the dead, then moves on to discuss "the ancient ordeals of our ancestors". He gives a number of mythological episodes in which Athens rose to the occasion, then mentions that it was natural to them to do justice because they were born of the earth:
They were the first and the only people in that time to drive out the ruling classes of their state and to establish a democracy, believing the liberty of all to be the strongest bond of agreement; by sharing with each other the hopes born of their perils they had freedom of soul in, their civic life, and used law for honoring the good and punishing the evil. For they deemed that it was the way of wild beasts to be held subject to one another by force, but the duty of men to delimit justice by law, to convince by reason, and to serve these two in act by submitting to the sovereignty of law and the instruction of reason.
He then moves on to the Persian War, (briefly) the Peloponnesian War, and then finally the Corinthian War, and ends by calling them blessed.
(3) Isocrates' Panegyricus. Isocrates says, " I have come before you to give my counsels on the war against the barbarians and on concord among ourselves" and after some further discussion of what he is doing, goes on to argue that the Spartans and Athenians should unite against the barbarians. But while Athens can understand this policy, the Spartans have the false belief that they by right should lead. Thus Isocrates sets out to prove that Athens has claim to lead the Greeks as a whole. He notes the autochthony of Athens, its people sprung from the earth, and the fact that they were taught by Demeter herself how to use the fruits of the earth and received from her the Eleusinian Mysteries. He then discusses all the benefits that the Athenians have shared with the rest of the Greeks, including philosophy, and the ancient tradition of appealing to Athens for help. He discusses the Persian War. Thus "all men would acknowledge that our city has been the author of the greatest number of blessings, and that she should in fairness be entitled to the hegemony." He meets a number of possible objections, including the treatment of the Melians and the people of Scione, and dismisses them by pointing out that cities that stayed loyal did not have this problem, and, besides, Sparta is worse. He talks about Athenian enmity to the barbarians and argues for a united front against them.
The Characters
(in order of appearance)
Socrates
Menexenus
Menexenus is also a character in Lysis and is present at the discussion in Phaedo. Not much seems to be known about him.
Aspasia
Aspasia is not technically in the dialogue, but as the epitaphios or funeral oration is attributed to her, she is a quasi-character in the discussion. Aspasia is the women in the Periclean Age of whom we know the most, but far from making her more understandable, it makes her much more of an enigma. She was almost certainly born in Miletus, and was (apparently) the daughter of Axiochus. She was the mistress of Pericles for about twenty years, and had a son, also named Pericles. She apparently was a common character in philosophical dialogues by Socrates' students -- Aeschines and Antisthenes both had dialogues named after her. We have a few fragments of Aeschines's dialogue; in one of the fragments Socrates argues that many women have been great history. In the most extended passage, preserved in Cicero's De inventione (1.51-53), Aspasia gives Xenophon and his wife marital advice. (This is certainly fictional; all evidence suggests that Xenophon married relatively late and well after he had left Athens, and probably after Aspasia had died. But you can read it in English here at section XXXI.) We don't know what Antisthenes' dialogue was like, but there's good evidence elsewhere to think that Antisthenes did not approve of Aspasia at all. She was often mocked in comedies, often with hints that she was the real cause of the Peloponnesian War (this is a joke in Aristophanes' Acharnians, for instance). The things that most fascinated her contemporaries -- her deviation from normal expectations for women, her access to power, her intelligence -- often do not lead into the things we most want to know about her. It is all indirect; she is one of the most talked-about people of the time, and yet we hardly know her.
to be continued
Malebranche, Practical Knowledge, and Efficacy of Ideas (Part II)
Part I
Malebranche's Efficacious Ideas
I began this paper with two passages from Jolley pointing to puzzles that arise if we try to combine Malebranche's claim that ideas are efficacious with a position that views Malebranchean ideas as abstract entities or 'third realm' entities. Jolley is admirably clear about the matter, but he is certainly not alone in taking this view of Malebranche's ideas. Pyle, for instance, who tends to talk about Malebranche's ideas in terms of logical concepts, appears to see them as analogous to Fregean senses.[18] It cannot be denied that this view is an advance over any view that fails to recognize Malebranche's anti-psychologism about ideas, which is one reason for its attraction. When we combine it with the claim that ideas are efficacious, however, the puzzles noted by Jolley become quite severe. This is particular true given that Malebranche seems to think it obvious that ideas are efficacious:
Perhaps he fails to give us any developed analysis of his efficacy thesis precisely because he regards it as obvious. There is reason to suspect, however, that the puzzling character of the thesis has more to do with the assumption that ideas are abstract entities. Logical concepts, abstract entities, and the like are all philosophical notions that are primarily introduced in order to clarify speculative knowledge. The understanding of 'idea' presupposed by Malebranche (one deriving from the theory of ideas) treats ideas chiefly as units of practical knowledge.[19] It is not surprising that an account of Malebranche's theory of ideas will have difficulty making sense of the efficacy of ideas if it treats knowledge in a way that abstracts it from action.
This position has a number of features that impede attempts to identify Malebranche's ideas with what we might call abstract entities. For instance, the arguments for the vision-in-God thesis are also intended to be arguments that universal Reason is divine; because of his conclusion that universal Reason is divine, Malebranche has no hesitation in identifying Reason with the divine Word.[20] There is no sharp distinction between the efficacy of ideas, the efficacy of the divine substance, and the efficacy of the divine Word or universal Reason. Consider the full context of the above passage:
Here we find an interesting set of identifications. The efficacy attributed to ideas is exactly the same as the efficacy attributed to the "efficacious substance of the divinity," which is exactly the same as that attributed to God as creator or "Author of our being."
Malebranche says elsewhere that we should not let our minds "be ignorant of Him from whom their enlightenment comes, the Reason to which they are essentially related" (LO 623; OC 3:146). This occurs in the context of his clarification of the claim that God alone can act on the soul; immediately before this he says that "He alone can illuminate it, affect it, modify it through the efficacy of His ideas." The same efficacy (in enlightening minds) that is attributed to God, divine ideas, and the divine substance is attributed to universal Reason. The efficacy attributed to the divine substance in passages like these is the same as that attributed to ideas; or, to put it another way, the efficacy ideas have is entirely due to their being, in their base reality, nothing other than the efficacious divine substance. Malebranche attributes efficacy to ideas because (1) they act on us by enlightening us and (2) they act on us by making us happy or unhappy. The only thing that can, properly speaking, do this, however, is the divine substance, because changing a thing's modifications (manières d'être) requires the ability to change its very being, an ability only God can have. The conclusion to the argument, then, is that the capacity of ideas to affect us is nothing other than God's capacity to affect us; for ideas to do what they do, they must be located in the efficacious substance of the Divinity. Talking about efficacy of ideas is just another way of saying, "It is God we see by a direct and immediate sight; only He can enlighten our mind with His own substance" (OC 1:449; cp. LO 236-237).
That efficacy in the divine is primarily a matter of the divine substance is something that has been recognized by Peppers-Bates; however, she goes on to argue:
A bit later she also claims that an aspect of God, which does not possess a will or an intellect, cannot act.[22] Immediately afterward, however, she says that the human perception of limitations in, or aspects of, God does not establish any real, ontological divisions in God to which we might assign independent causal powers in the first place. I think this is quite right; an aspect of God (e.g., the divine ideas) cannot have independent causal power. However, that we are able to distinguish divine 'aspects' does not imply that there is a real division in God between entities, each of which has independent causal powers, because there is no reason to think these 'aspects' could not share the efficacy of the divine substance itself. Ideas are, to be sure, not substances simply speaking, but this is only because they are, as Cook has shown in discussing the ontological status of ideas, the divine substance itself considered in different ways.[23] Since Malebranche is clear that every idea is the divine substance (albeit as considered in a certain very limited light), and he is also clear that the divine substance is efficacious, there appears to be no good reason to deny that ideas are efficacious. Given Peppers-Bates's emphasis on the efficacy of the divine substance (an emphasis which she is quite right to have), it seems less implausible to think of ideas initiating causal sequences.
Jolley has a very clever argument suggesting that Malebranche's occasionalism commits him to a position that contradicts his claim that ideas are efficacious:
On first glance this seems correct. After arguing that we cannot find any necessary connection between created things and effects, Malebranche goes on to note that we do find such a connection between the divine will and effects:
At one point in the argument Malebranche does provide a description of a true cause that might be taken for a definition:
I think, however, that reading this as a definition of 'true cause' is a mistake. And it seems that the conclusion suggested by Jolley, that God is the only genuine cause only by virtue of having an omnipotent will, would only follow from Malebranche's claims if the contrastive case were other divine attributes. That is, to draw this conclusion from the argument, we must assume that Malebranche intends to attribute efficacy to the divine will rather than to some other divine attribute. However, the contrastive case in this context is not other divine attributes but created wills. He has just finished denying that any created will has the relevant necessary connection to its effects; in the above passage, he is merely pointing out that the divine will (as opposed to any created will) does have this connection. Further, both before and after this passage Malebranche lists God's enlightenment of minds as one of the reasons He alone is true cause. Such enlightenment is usually associated with ideas, not the will specifically, in the Oratorian's thought. Thus there is at least some suggestion in this very argument that other divine attributes beside the will may be said to be efficacious, and nothing about the argument requires that we attribute efficacy exclusively to the divine will.
One of the reasons I think we tend to find plausible objections like those we have just seen in Peppers-Bates and Jolley, is that we tend to associate will and efficacy. However, it is clear that Malebranche does not. There is an entire class of wills that are not efficacious at all, namely, those of creatures. The divine will is efficacious not because it is a will but because it is divine, and what makes the divine will efficacious is that it is identifiable with the divine substance.[25] The divine will, in other words, is efficacious because this follows from its being the will of infinite perfect being. Ideas, however, are also identifiable with the divine substance. An idea is the divine substance insofar as it is represented in the divine self-image (i.e., divine Reason) as participable by creatures of a certain sort. Divine ideas could be called efficacious for the same reason the divine will is: they are divine. Therefore the fact that divine ideas are distinguished from the divine will does not provide an adequate reason for rejecting the efficacy of divine ideas.
We have seen, then, that there is no difference between the efficacy of the divine substance and the efficacy of the divine ideas; that there is no difference between the efficacy of ideas and the efficacy of universal Reason (the divine Word); and that there appears to be nothing about the argument for the efficacy of God's will that eliminates the possibility of divine ideas being efficacious. Ideas are efficacious for us because they are universal Reason, which is God's complete self-representation in divine self-knowledge. Malebranche's theory of ideas requires that they be God's substance insofar as God is able to create the world and knows this in His self-representation. What we see when we see the idea of X is just divine Reason itself in its representing of X. Since Malebranche identifies divine Reason with the divine Word, Reason is not so much a third realm as an agent. It is not surprising, then, that Malebranche opens the Tenth Elucidation, on the nature of ideas, with a discussion of Reason. The world of ideas is simply Reason in its activity of representing things God could make; this does not cause problems for Reason's being efficacious, but presupposes it.
Likewise, the two claims, that Reason is a divine person and that ideas are seen in God, cannot really conflict with each other in the way suggested by the second puzzle noted at the beginning of this paper. The latter claim is a way of specifying the former claim. When Malebranche insists that God is the Intelligible World or public space of minds, he is not being inconsistent in also saying that the Intelligible World is causally active; the agency of God qua Reason is the basis for the belief that God is the Intelligible World.
There is, as noted before, a major difference between an account of divine ideas like that found in Aquinas and the account found in Malebranche. Whereas Aquinas insists that the theory of ideas and the theory of the divine Word, although closely related, are distinct, Malebranche makes the theory of ideas little more than a subsidiary part of his theory of the divine Word (i.e., universal Reason), and takes discussion of divine ideas simply to be a way of discussing the divine Word. This difference can be clarified by drawing an analogy to another conclusion (correct, I think) drawn by Jolley. In The Light of the Soul, he attempts to construct one possible train of thought Malebranche might have followed to arrive at the claim that ideas are efficacious. He notes that Malebranche is (borrowing a term from Bennett) a "causal rationalist" in that he seems to assimilate causal relations to logical relations. If this is true, we can go part of the way toward the claim that ideas are efficacious by starting with Malebranche's insistence that ideas are prior to perceptions:
Without getting into the question of casual rationalism, we seem to find ourselves in a similar situation if we proceed only on our recognition that Malebranche's ideas are divine ideas. We saw above when discussing why the intellect, as well as the will, can be a cause of existence by noting that, despite the fact that we do not have a problem with the will being a cause, it is actually in much the same situation as the intellect. The conclusion of that discussion was that intellect and will alike, when alone, are causally necessary, not causally sufficient, conditions for the effect. Effects presuppose both. Malebranche's occasionalism, however, seems to demand that we only regard as efficacious what is causally sufficient. It would appear, then, that even when we recognize ideas as elements of practical knowledge that we do not get the efficacy thesis, but a much weaker thesis: Divine ideas are a contributing factor (but not necessarily the sole contributing factor) for certain effects.[27]
One way one might try to reach the stronger efficacy thesis is suggested by Aquinas's somewhat brief reference to divine simplicity in the passage from ST 1.14.8 that was previously quoted ("His being is His understanding"). We drew our conclusions about the roles of intellect and will in practical knowledge from the example of an artisan making an artifact. However, this can only be an analogy, for at least one very good reason: God is simple, and the distinctions we make among God's various attributes are purely conceptual. Distinctions between them have more to do with the way we think than with God's nature. If 'divine intellect' and 'divine will' are just two different ways of conceptualizing one thing, then that to which each refers has to be efficacious.
This would fit very nicely with Malebranche's claims that divine substance is efficacious. It is unclear, however, that he ever appeals to simplicity in this way. Indeed, he rarely appeals to divine simplicity at all. Instead, he moves directly from talking about divine ideas to talking about universal Reason. This suggests a more truly Malebranchean way of supporting the stronger thesis. Divine ideas just are universal Reason insofar as He represents creatures; and universal Reason, being the divine Word, is a divine agent. This somewhat eccentric move eliminates any need to clarify how ideas can be causally sufficient; ideas themselves just are a person that, being consubstantial with God, is able to exercise divine efficacy. Malebranche's modification of the divine ideas tradition strengthens the tendency to treat ideas as efficacious.
We began with puzzles about the proper way to interpret Malebranche's claim that ideas are efficacious. Malebranche appears to consider this an obvious truth. Commentators, however, have had some difficulty with it. To find a way of interpreting Malebranche's theory of ideas that would make the claim less puzzling,w e began looking at the fact that an idea in an account of divine ideas (to which Malebranche explicitly appeals) would be an element of practical knowledge rather than speculative knowledge. Understood this way, they can be regarded as causative (to use Aquinas's term) or efficacious. However, in Malebranche's theory of ideas, the reasons for attributing this efficacy to ideas is strengthened by the fact that he lacks the careful distinction between Word and idea that is found in Aquinas. The efficacy of the idea is the efficacy of Reason, and Reason is understood to be a divine agent, the divine Word. It is a peculiar view, but interpreting Malebranche in this way clarifies why he himself did not find the efficacy thesis puzzling. Given his willingness to identify Reason with the Word, there would be little reason for him to hesitate at the thought of taking ideas to be efficacious.
*****
[18] See, for example, Malebranche, 88-89.
[19] Malebranche does sometimes appeal to Descartes's account of ideas, and we might consider this an exception. However, this is a case of the exception proving the rule, for Descartes himself claims that he chose the word 'idea' because of its role in accounts of divine practical knowledge (AT VII, 181; CSM 2:127-128). This etymology does not (at least on the surface) appear to play any central role in Descartes's discussion of ideas. In a sense, Malebranche just takes this connection between the original meaning of 'idea' and Descartes's adaptation of it more seriously than Descartes does.
[20] Nor can we assume that this is just a throw-away identification. As Jasper Reid has argued with regard to intelligible extension ("Malebranche on Intelligible Extension," British Journal for the History of Philosophy 11 (2003) 581-608), the identification does real work in Malebranche's discussion of Reason.
[21] Peppers-Bates, "Does Malebranche Need Efficacious Ideas?" Journal of the History of Philosophy (2005) 91.
[22] Peppers-Bates, "Does Malebranche Need Efficacious Ideas?" 95.
[23] Cook, "The Ontological Status of Malebranchean Ideas," Journal of the History of Philosophy (1998) 525-544.
[24] Jolley, "Berkeley, Malebranche, and Vision in God," 542.
[25] We hae already seen a passage in which Malebranche explicitly attributes efficacy to the substance as such -- namely, the argument previously noted that is based on the claim that ideas are efficacious!
[26] Jolley, The Light of the Soul, 77.
[27] While I will suggest that one can find general reasons for attributing the stronger claim to Malebranche, there is a possibility, not often recognized in the literature, that when Malebranche is talking specifically about the efficacy of ideas, that Malebranche should be taken in the weaker sense. There is another theological tradition in which Malebranche clearly has an interest that may have a role to play, namely, the theology of grace. 'Efficacious grace' is a pre-existing technical term, one that Malebranche regularly uses in his own discussions of grace. For instance, he states explicitly that the laws of grace are efficacious in the second discourse of the Traité de la nature et de la grâce. Malebranche is not committed to a strong sense of efficacy here; he is simply using the common vocabulary for talking about grace. Malebranche holds that there are two forms of grace: light and sentiment. We have seen these two before, since Malebranche's argument for the vision in God based on the efficacy of ideas appeals to the ability off ideas to enlighten us and instill pleasant and unpleasant perceptions. Does it not seem very plausible that Malebranche is framing his argument in the terms with which he talks about grace, so that the latter should be taken as determinative for his meaning? Determining the precise implications of this, however, is difficult; the possible connection between efficacious ideas and efficacious grace is surprisingly unexplored in Malebranche scholarship.
Malebranche's Efficacious Ideas
I began this paper with two passages from Jolley pointing to puzzles that arise if we try to combine Malebranche's claim that ideas are efficacious with a position that views Malebranchean ideas as abstract entities or 'third realm' entities. Jolley is admirably clear about the matter, but he is certainly not alone in taking this view of Malebranche's ideas. Pyle, for instance, who tends to talk about Malebranche's ideas in terms of logical concepts, appears to see them as analogous to Fregean senses.[18] It cannot be denied that this view is an advance over any view that fails to recognize Malebranche's anti-psychologism about ideas, which is one reason for its attraction. When we combine it with the claim that ideas are efficacious, however, the puzzles noted by Jolley become quite severe. This is particular true given that Malebranche seems to think it obvious that ideas are efficacious:
It is certain that ideas are efficacious, since they act up on the mind and enlighten it, and since they make it happy or unhappy through the pleasant or unpleasant perceptions by which they affect it. (LO 232; OC 1:442)
Perhaps he fails to give us any developed analysis of his efficacy thesis precisely because he regards it as obvious. There is reason to suspect, however, that the puzzling character of the thesis has more to do with the assumption that ideas are abstract entities. Logical concepts, abstract entities, and the like are all philosophical notions that are primarily introduced in order to clarify speculative knowledge. The understanding of 'idea' presupposed by Malebranche (one deriving from the theory of ideas) treats ideas chiefly as units of practical knowledge.[19] It is not surprising that an account of Malebranche's theory of ideas will have difficulty making sense of the efficacy of ideas if it treats knowledge in a way that abstracts it from action.
This position has a number of features that impede attempts to identify Malebranche's ideas with what we might call abstract entities. For instance, the arguments for the vision-in-God thesis are also intended to be arguments that universal Reason is divine; because of his conclusion that universal Reason is divine, Malebranche has no hesitation in identifying Reason with the divine Word.[20] There is no sharp distinction between the efficacy of ideas, the efficacy of the divine substance, and the efficacy of the divine Word or universal Reason. Consider the full context of the above passage:
It is certain that ideas are efficacious, since they act upon the mind and enlighten it, and since they make it happy or unhappy through the pleasant or unpleasant perceptions by which they affect it. Now nothing can act immediately upon the mind unless it is superior to it--nothing but God alone; for only the Author of our being can change its modifications. All our ideas, therefore, must be located in the efficacious substance of the Divinity, which alone is intelligible or capable of enlightening us, because it alone can affect intelligences. (LO 232; OC 1:442)
Here we find an interesting set of identifications. The efficacy attributed to ideas is exactly the same as the efficacy attributed to the "efficacious substance of the divinity," which is exactly the same as that attributed to God as creator or "Author of our being."
Malebranche says elsewhere that we should not let our minds "be ignorant of Him from whom their enlightenment comes, the Reason to which they are essentially related" (LO 623; OC 3:146). This occurs in the context of his clarification of the claim that God alone can act on the soul; immediately before this he says that "He alone can illuminate it, affect it, modify it through the efficacy of His ideas." The same efficacy (in enlightening minds) that is attributed to God, divine ideas, and the divine substance is attributed to universal Reason. The efficacy attributed to the divine substance in passages like these is the same as that attributed to ideas; or, to put it another way, the efficacy ideas have is entirely due to their being, in their base reality, nothing other than the efficacious divine substance. Malebranche attributes efficacy to ideas because (1) they act on us by enlightening us and (2) they act on us by making us happy or unhappy. The only thing that can, properly speaking, do this, however, is the divine substance, because changing a thing's modifications (manières d'être) requires the ability to change its very being, an ability only God can have. The conclusion to the argument, then, is that the capacity of ideas to affect us is nothing other than God's capacity to affect us; for ideas to do what they do, they must be located in the efficacious substance of the Divinity. Talking about efficacy of ideas is just another way of saying, "It is God we see by a direct and immediate sight; only He can enlighten our mind with His own substance" (OC 1:449; cp. LO 236-237).
That efficacy in the divine is primarily a matter of the divine substance is something that has been recognized by Peppers-Bates; however, she goes on to argue:
[I]deas are not the kinds of thing that could initiate causal sequences: they do not possess a will, they do not individually possess an intellect, although in their totality they are identified with the divine Reason. Ideas are not substances in their own right.[21]
A bit later she also claims that an aspect of God, which does not possess a will or an intellect, cannot act.[22] Immediately afterward, however, she says that the human perception of limitations in, or aspects of, God does not establish any real, ontological divisions in God to which we might assign independent causal powers in the first place. I think this is quite right; an aspect of God (e.g., the divine ideas) cannot have independent causal power. However, that we are able to distinguish divine 'aspects' does not imply that there is a real division in God between entities, each of which has independent causal powers, because there is no reason to think these 'aspects' could not share the efficacy of the divine substance itself. Ideas are, to be sure, not substances simply speaking, but this is only because they are, as Cook has shown in discussing the ontological status of ideas, the divine substance itself considered in different ways.[23] Since Malebranche is clear that every idea is the divine substance (albeit as considered in a certain very limited light), and he is also clear that the divine substance is efficacious, there appears to be no good reason to deny that ideas are efficacious. Given Peppers-Bates's emphasis on the efficacy of the divine substance (an emphasis which she is quite right to have), it seems less implausible to think of ideas initiating causal sequences.
Jolley has a very clever argument suggesting that Malebranche's occasionalism commits him to a position that contradicts his claim that ideas are efficacious:
According to Malebranche's central argument for occasionalism, true causality implies a necessary connection between a cause and its efect, and it is Malebranche's contention that there is such a necessary connection only between the will of God and its upshot. For Malebranche the occasionalist, then, God is the only genuine cause by virtue of having an omnipotent will, not by virtue of being the region of ideas. Thus the theory of efficacious ideas could be convicted of something like a category mistake.[24]
On first glance this seems correct. After arguing that we cannot find any necessary connection between created things and effects, Malebranche goes on to note that we do find such a connection between the divine will and effects:
But when one thinks about the idea of God, i.e., of an infinitely perfect and consequently all-powerful being, one knows there is such a connection between His will and the motion of all bodies, that it is impossible to conceive that He wills a body to be moved and that this body not be moved. We must therefore say that only His will can move bodies if we wish to state things as we conceive them and not as we sense them. (LO 448; OC 2:313)
At one point in the argument Malebranche does provide a description of a true cause that might be taken for a definition:
A true cause as I understand it is one such that the mind perceives a necessary connection between it and its effect. Now the mind perceives a necessary connection only between the will of an infinitely perfect being and its effects. (LO 450)
I think, however, that reading this as a definition of 'true cause' is a mistake. And it seems that the conclusion suggested by Jolley, that God is the only genuine cause only by virtue of having an omnipotent will, would only follow from Malebranche's claims if the contrastive case were other divine attributes. That is, to draw this conclusion from the argument, we must assume that Malebranche intends to attribute efficacy to the divine will rather than to some other divine attribute. However, the contrastive case in this context is not other divine attributes but created wills. He has just finished denying that any created will has the relevant necessary connection to its effects; in the above passage, he is merely pointing out that the divine will (as opposed to any created will) does have this connection. Further, both before and after this passage Malebranche lists God's enlightenment of minds as one of the reasons He alone is true cause. Such enlightenment is usually associated with ideas, not the will specifically, in the Oratorian's thought. Thus there is at least some suggestion in this very argument that other divine attributes beside the will may be said to be efficacious, and nothing about the argument requires that we attribute efficacy exclusively to the divine will.
One of the reasons I think we tend to find plausible objections like those we have just seen in Peppers-Bates and Jolley, is that we tend to associate will and efficacy. However, it is clear that Malebranche does not. There is an entire class of wills that are not efficacious at all, namely, those of creatures. The divine will is efficacious not because it is a will but because it is divine, and what makes the divine will efficacious is that it is identifiable with the divine substance.[25] The divine will, in other words, is efficacious because this follows from its being the will of infinite perfect being. Ideas, however, are also identifiable with the divine substance. An idea is the divine substance insofar as it is represented in the divine self-image (i.e., divine Reason) as participable by creatures of a certain sort. Divine ideas could be called efficacious for the same reason the divine will is: they are divine. Therefore the fact that divine ideas are distinguished from the divine will does not provide an adequate reason for rejecting the efficacy of divine ideas.
We have seen, then, that there is no difference between the efficacy of the divine substance and the efficacy of the divine ideas; that there is no difference between the efficacy of ideas and the efficacy of universal Reason (the divine Word); and that there appears to be nothing about the argument for the efficacy of God's will that eliminates the possibility of divine ideas being efficacious. Ideas are efficacious for us because they are universal Reason, which is God's complete self-representation in divine self-knowledge. Malebranche's theory of ideas requires that they be God's substance insofar as God is able to create the world and knows this in His self-representation. What we see when we see the idea of X is just divine Reason itself in its representing of X. Since Malebranche identifies divine Reason with the divine Word, Reason is not so much a third realm as an agent. It is not surprising, then, that Malebranche opens the Tenth Elucidation, on the nature of ideas, with a discussion of Reason. The world of ideas is simply Reason in its activity of representing things God could make; this does not cause problems for Reason's being efficacious, but presupposes it.
Likewise, the two claims, that Reason is a divine person and that ideas are seen in God, cannot really conflict with each other in the way suggested by the second puzzle noted at the beginning of this paper. The latter claim is a way of specifying the former claim. When Malebranche insists that God is the Intelligible World or public space of minds, he is not being inconsistent in also saying that the Intelligible World is causally active; the agency of God qua Reason is the basis for the belief that God is the Intelligible World.
There is, as noted before, a major difference between an account of divine ideas like that found in Aquinas and the account found in Malebranche. Whereas Aquinas insists that the theory of ideas and the theory of the divine Word, although closely related, are distinct, Malebranche makes the theory of ideas little more than a subsidiary part of his theory of the divine Word (i.e., universal Reason), and takes discussion of divine ideas simply to be a way of discussing the divine Word. This difference can be clarified by drawing an analogy to another conclusion (correct, I think) drawn by Jolley. In The Light of the Soul, he attempts to construct one possible train of thought Malebranche might have followed to arrive at the claim that ideas are efficacious. He notes that Malebranche is (borrowing a term from Bennett) a "causal rationalist" in that he seems to assimilate causal relations to logical relations. If this is true, we can go part of the way toward the claim that ideas are efficacious by starting with Malebranche's insistence that ideas are prior to perceptions:
Suppose that this means that ideas are logically prior to perceptions; the existence of a perception is logically dependent on the existence of an idea....[G]iven Malebranche's causal rationalism, the thesis that perceptions are logically dependent on ideas becomes the thesis that perceptions are causally dependent on ideas. It is true that this result may not be as strong as the thesis Malebranche intends to assert; for our argument establishes only that ideas are causally necessary conditions of perceptions; it does not establish that they are causally sufficient.[26]
Without getting into the question of casual rationalism, we seem to find ourselves in a similar situation if we proceed only on our recognition that Malebranche's ideas are divine ideas. We saw above when discussing why the intellect, as well as the will, can be a cause of existence by noting that, despite the fact that we do not have a problem with the will being a cause, it is actually in much the same situation as the intellect. The conclusion of that discussion was that intellect and will alike, when alone, are causally necessary, not causally sufficient, conditions for the effect. Effects presuppose both. Malebranche's occasionalism, however, seems to demand that we only regard as efficacious what is causally sufficient. It would appear, then, that even when we recognize ideas as elements of practical knowledge that we do not get the efficacy thesis, but a much weaker thesis: Divine ideas are a contributing factor (but not necessarily the sole contributing factor) for certain effects.[27]
One way one might try to reach the stronger efficacy thesis is suggested by Aquinas's somewhat brief reference to divine simplicity in the passage from ST 1.14.8 that was previously quoted ("His being is His understanding"). We drew our conclusions about the roles of intellect and will in practical knowledge from the example of an artisan making an artifact. However, this can only be an analogy, for at least one very good reason: God is simple, and the distinctions we make among God's various attributes are purely conceptual. Distinctions between them have more to do with the way we think than with God's nature. If 'divine intellect' and 'divine will' are just two different ways of conceptualizing one thing, then that to which each refers has to be efficacious.
This would fit very nicely with Malebranche's claims that divine substance is efficacious. It is unclear, however, that he ever appeals to simplicity in this way. Indeed, he rarely appeals to divine simplicity at all. Instead, he moves directly from talking about divine ideas to talking about universal Reason. This suggests a more truly Malebranchean way of supporting the stronger thesis. Divine ideas just are universal Reason insofar as He represents creatures; and universal Reason, being the divine Word, is a divine agent. This somewhat eccentric move eliminates any need to clarify how ideas can be causally sufficient; ideas themselves just are a person that, being consubstantial with God, is able to exercise divine efficacy. Malebranche's modification of the divine ideas tradition strengthens the tendency to treat ideas as efficacious.
We began with puzzles about the proper way to interpret Malebranche's claim that ideas are efficacious. Malebranche appears to consider this an obvious truth. Commentators, however, have had some difficulty with it. To find a way of interpreting Malebranche's theory of ideas that would make the claim less puzzling,w e began looking at the fact that an idea in an account of divine ideas (to which Malebranche explicitly appeals) would be an element of practical knowledge rather than speculative knowledge. Understood this way, they can be regarded as causative (to use Aquinas's term) or efficacious. However, in Malebranche's theory of ideas, the reasons for attributing this efficacy to ideas is strengthened by the fact that he lacks the careful distinction between Word and idea that is found in Aquinas. The efficacy of the idea is the efficacy of Reason, and Reason is understood to be a divine agent, the divine Word. It is a peculiar view, but interpreting Malebranche in this way clarifies why he himself did not find the efficacy thesis puzzling. Given his willingness to identify Reason with the Word, there would be little reason for him to hesitate at the thought of taking ideas to be efficacious.
*****
[18] See, for example, Malebranche, 88-89.
[19] Malebranche does sometimes appeal to Descartes's account of ideas, and we might consider this an exception. However, this is a case of the exception proving the rule, for Descartes himself claims that he chose the word 'idea' because of its role in accounts of divine practical knowledge (AT VII, 181; CSM 2:127-128). This etymology does not (at least on the surface) appear to play any central role in Descartes's discussion of ideas. In a sense, Malebranche just takes this connection between the original meaning of 'idea' and Descartes's adaptation of it more seriously than Descartes does.
[20] Nor can we assume that this is just a throw-away identification. As Jasper Reid has argued with regard to intelligible extension ("Malebranche on Intelligible Extension," British Journal for the History of Philosophy 11 (2003) 581-608), the identification does real work in Malebranche's discussion of Reason.
[21] Peppers-Bates, "Does Malebranche Need Efficacious Ideas?" Journal of the History of Philosophy (2005) 91.
[22] Peppers-Bates, "Does Malebranche Need Efficacious Ideas?" 95.
[23] Cook, "The Ontological Status of Malebranchean Ideas," Journal of the History of Philosophy (1998) 525-544.
[24] Jolley, "Berkeley, Malebranche, and Vision in God," 542.
[25] We hae already seen a passage in which Malebranche explicitly attributes efficacy to the substance as such -- namely, the argument previously noted that is based on the claim that ideas are efficacious!
[26] Jolley, The Light of the Soul, 77.
[27] While I will suggest that one can find general reasons for attributing the stronger claim to Malebranche, there is a possibility, not often recognized in the literature, that when Malebranche is talking specifically about the efficacy of ideas, that Malebranche should be taken in the weaker sense. There is another theological tradition in which Malebranche clearly has an interest that may have a role to play, namely, the theology of grace. 'Efficacious grace' is a pre-existing technical term, one that Malebranche regularly uses in his own discussions of grace. For instance, he states explicitly that the laws of grace are efficacious in the second discourse of the Traité de la nature et de la grâce. Malebranche is not committed to a strong sense of efficacy here; he is simply using the common vocabulary for talking about grace. Malebranche holds that there are two forms of grace: light and sentiment. We have seen these two before, since Malebranche's argument for the vision in God based on the efficacy of ideas appeals to the ability off ideas to enlighten us and instill pleasant and unpleasant perceptions. Does it not seem very plausible that Malebranche is framing his argument in the terms with which he talks about grace, so that the latter should be taken as determinative for his meaning? Determining the precise implications of this, however, is difficult; the possible connection between efficacious ideas and efficacious grace is surprisingly unexplored in Malebranche scholarship.
Monday, July 07, 2014
Malebranche, Practical Knowledge, and Efficacy of Ideas (Part I)
The following is a paper I started a few years back and never could quite get into a properly publishable form -- and, I think, it will likely never get there. But it does collect together some key ideas about how to interpret the philosophical positions of Malebranche, so I put it here.
One of the many puzzles currently of interest to scholars studying Malebranche is the problem of the efficacy of ideas.[1] Jolley summarizes this in a tidy way:
He highlights a related problem when discussing the problem of the ontological status of ideas:
We have, then, two problems that derive from thinking of Malebranche's ideas as 'third realm' or abstract entities. They both gain their plausibility from the fact that ideas as Malebranche understands them certainly do some of the things that 'third realm' or abstract entities are supposed to do. In what follows, however, I will suggest that a different view of the problem arises when we take seriously Malebranche's insistence that ideas are divine ideas in the natural-theological sense.[4] In this context ideas are an artisan's knowledge of things that can be produced, and they are intimately involved in the production of those things. His account of ideas should be taken to have more in common with this than with what we ordinarily think of as 'third realm' or abstract entities.
Divine Ideas as Practical Knowledge
It is immediately clear that the key feature of Malebranche's theory of ideas is the identification of our ideas with divine ideas; this identification is just the thesis that we see all things in God. It is also clear, however, that Malebranche already has a notion of what a divine idea is. This notion is laid out most clearly in some of Malebranche's later works. In the 1696 Preface to the Dialogues on Metaphysics and on Religion, he appeals to a number of texts by Augustine and Aquinas in order to support his account of ideas. For instance, Malebranche links his own accoutn of ideas to principles he finds in Augustine's LXXXIII Questions (q. xlvi): ideas are importat because "without them one cannot be wise"; they are eternal and immutable; they are the exemplars or archetypes of creatures; they are not separate from the divine essence (as a Platonic world of ideas) but are in God; the multiplicity of ideas does not contradict the doctrine of divine simplicity (OC 12:11). He appeals to similar principles occurring in Aquinas's discussions.[5] By 1696, at least, Malebranche saw himself to be defending an account of ideas that merges with a traditional theology of divine ideas, such as we find in Aquinas's development of Augustine. In light of htis, I suggest that it might be useful to examine Aquinas's theology of divine ideas, as a reasonably accessible account of the traditional understanding of divine ideas, and one with which Malebranche himself was familiar, if we want to shed light on Malebranche's claims that ideas are efficacious.
Aquinas has a number of passages in which he appears to attribute causal efficacy to God' knowledge. For instance, in De Veritate (q. 2, art. 14), discussing whether God's knowledge is the cause of created things, he insists that it is. In a later discussion, he explicitly says that ideas in the divine mind create or produce things (DV q. 3, art. 1 ad 5). We find similar claims in the Summa Theologiae:
There is some uncertainty about how these claims should be interpreted. Elders has argued that we should take them at face value. On this interpretation, God's knowledge is "creative knowledge."[6] As Elders summarizes the position, God's knowledge is causal knowledge so that God knows things because he makes them.[7] Sump has argued for a different interpretation. As she characterizes Elders's interpretation, it involves one of two claims:
(1) God knows everything that he knows in virtue of his knowledge's being the efficient cause of what he knows;
(2) God knows everything both temporal and actual that he knows in virtue of his konwledge's being the efficient cause of this part of what he knows. [8]
(1) is much stronger than (2). However, as Stump points out, even (2) is too strong; it cannot explain what Aquinas says about God's knowledge of evil, for instance. She suggests that the plausibility for these stronger claims rests on two further assumptions:
(A) The causation which God's knowledge has is efficient causation;
(B) What is effected by the causation of the divine cognition includs all actions, events, and states of affairs in the world.[9]
(B) is irrelevant to our purposes; we simply want to know whether any of God's knowledge is (in any reasonably straightforward sense) efficacious.
Stump's claim is that when Aquinas speaks of God's knowledge as causative, he means that God's knowledge is a formal cause, not an efficient cause. To this end she emphasizes passages in which Aquinas identifies ideas as forms and exemplars (we have already noted some of the passages in which Aquinas does so). From this she concludes that ideas must be formal causes: the pattern a builder has in mind as he begins to build a house is the formal cause of the house, not an efficient cause.[10]
It is clearly true that ideas are exemplars and forms. What is less clear is whether Stump's argument shows that God's knowledge is not effectively causative. An exemplar cause is not an intrinsic cause but an extrinsic cause, since the divine idea of a body is not the constitutive form of that body, but the pattern on which it is made. As Aquinas says, they are formae aliarum, praeter ipsas res existentes: the forms of all things, existing apart from the things themselves. This last qualification, separate existence, should not be ignored. When we identify divine ideas as forms and exemplars, we need to ask a further question: How are they related to the (separate) things of which they are exemplars? When we consider this question, we find reason to say that Thomas's view makes God's knowledge in some sense efficacious. One place where I think this becomes very clear is the discussion of divine ideas in De Veritate.
At various times in De Veritate, Aquinas appears to attribute to divine ideas the characteristics of formal, final, and efficient causes. As we have noted, he is very clear that divine ideas are formal causes (DV q. 3, art. 1). In the same place, he says that a divine idea "has in a certain way the nature of an end," giving this as a reason for rejecting the Platonic claim that ideas are separate from God. It is also in this same article that he makes the claim, noted above, that ideas in the divine mind create and produce things (DV q. 3, art. 1 ad 5). While there is no doubt that ideas are exemplar causes, it seems plausible to suggest that Aquinas thinks divine ideas are 'in a certain way' efficient causes, just as we have seen that he thinks they are 'in a certain way' final causes.[11] This argument presupposes a particular conception of practical knowledge, which it will be worthwhile to examine.
Practical Knowledge
After noting that practical knowledge is called practical because it is directed to a work (of some kind), Aquinas distinguishes this form of knowledge into two kinds. In actually practical knowledge, the form that the artisan has in mind is actually directed to the work; in habitually and virtually practical knowledge, the form, while able to be directed to the work, is not actually so directed.[12] God has both kinds of practical knowledge:
In light of this distinction between types of practical knowledge, it can be seen that one possible argument against the view that God's knowledge is efficacious fails. One of Stump's arguments that the common interpretation fails is that it cannot account for God's knowledge of 'things that are not'. This is true if we understand the common interpretation to be claiming that God knows only what he actually causes. Stump is entirely correct that this cannot be right; Aquinas himself denies that God's knowledge of evil is causative (DV q. 3, art. 3), and her argument is certainly a salutary warning about the dangers of incautious claims. On a less restrictive account like the one suggested here, God knows the exercise of His causal power as part of a more general knowledge of His causal power itself. As Aquinas notes, we have to allow for practical knowledge of things that might exist even though they do not, e.g., a builder's practical knowledge of a house he could make but never does. God's knowledge of creatures that do not exist but could is necessarily a form of causal knowledge; the only way God can know anything about such creatures is to know what He could make. When He actually makes creatures, this adds an additional kind of causal knowledge beyond the more general background knowledge.[14]
At this point it may be useful to consider a possible objection. Aquinas is very clear that knowledge as such is not efficacious. Two passages in particular are worth noting:
Upon reading passages like this, someone might say that, whatever Aquinas's actual view, he cannot consistently regard God's knowledge as efficacious in itself. If an effect never arises from knowledge save through the mediation of the will, the really effective cause must be the divine will.
An answer to this objection is suggested by Aquinas's example of the artisan and the artifact. Imagine yourself to be a painter (artisan) painting a canvas (the painted canvas being the artifact). This activity is intentional; it is an expression of will. However, it is not an expression of will alone. Even the mere intent to paint involves not merely will but an intellect that knows and believes things relevant to painting, e.g., what painting is and what sort of things might be painted. Without this the will could not be efficacious. An effect must be linked to its cause in some way in order to be identifiable as the effect of this cause. Something about the painter must make it possible to say that the painter is efficacious, not merely simpliciter, but also qua painter. In other words, in an intentional and deliberate act of painting, linking the painting (effect) to the painter's will (cause) requires that we be able to postulate some content to the will that makes it a will to paint. It is difficult to see what else could give the will this content except the intellect. If it is the intellect that gives the content, the will is not efficacious on its own; rather, it is only efficacious insofar as the intellect has given it an object.[16]
That Aquinas has something like this account in mind when discussing causative knowledge is suggested by what Aquinas immediately goes on to say after the second passage quoted above:
In other words, the fact that knowledge is not efficacious on its own is not an impediment to its being considered a cause insofar as it is conjoined with the will. This is not surprising. For any particular effect, the will is not efficacious on its own either, since it does not operate blindly; it is a cause insofar as it is conjoined with the intellect. The will is not sufficient for producing a given effect unless the intellect presents it with that effect as an object; it is only a necessary condition for the actual production of an effect. Therefore, an effect is traced back not to one or the other but to the two together, and each can be considered a causal principle. Each is, in fact, a causally necessary condition. This is particularly true in God's case, since, as Aquinas notes in the above passage, divine simplicity make sit even harder to say that only the divine will is efficacious. God makes everything He makes by means of the divine will; but it is also true that He makes all things by means of His intellect.
In the next section I will suggest that Malebranche has an account of ideas in which ideas are a kind of practical knowledge in something like the sense I have suggested in Aquinas's case. Malebranche's account, however, is complicated by his tendency to run together discussion of divine Reason (understood hypostatically as the divine Word, the second person of the Trinity) and discussion of divine ideas. It is worth a moment of our time, then, to pause and look very briefly at what the relation between idea and Word is in Aquinas's account.
Aquinas accepts the statement from the prologue of the Gospel of John that all things God made were made through the Word (Logos) of God, and understands "the Word" in the standard way to refer to the second person of the Trinity. The claim that all things made were made through the Word allows for a connection between the theory of divine ideas and the theory of the Divine Word, since, as Thomas describes it, "in 'Word' is implied the operative idea of what God makes" (ST 1.34.3). These operative ideas of what God makes are instances of what he elsewhere calls the likenesses of things in the Word:
These likenesses int he Word, in other words, cause any given created thing both to exist and to be known. Aquinas denies, of course, that in our present life the divine ideas are direct objects of knowledge; but he insists that we know all things through them in a way analogous to the way we see things by the sun (ST 1.84.5).[17] Going further into detail with this would require delving into his theory of participation, which I will forego here. However, this does seem clear enough: divine ideas in the divine Word are both "principles of existing" and "principles of knowing".
Despite the connections between the theory of ideas and the theory of the Word, Aquinas thinks we need to draw a sharp distinction between the two. In De Veritate Aquinas considers two arguments that conflate divine ideas with the Word. To the first he replies:
Aquinas's chief concern here is to prevent a conflation of natural theology and revealed theology. Ideas, a matter of natural theology, simply identify the forms in God's mind that He contemplates in His creation of the world. Since God is simple, these forms are just the divine essence considered in different lights. However, a Christian, reflecting on the first few verses of the Gospel of John, will discover that God makes things through the Logos, which is to say, the Word or Reason. Thomas wants to shut down the temptation to conflate ideas and the Word; he recognizes that the terms 'idea' and 'Word' both suggest exemplary causality, but notes that they are used in radically different ways. The ideas are the divine essence; but the Word is a divine person possessing that essence.
In the response that follows, Thomas identifies another difference between an idea and the Word: ideas express creatures directly, and are therefore many; the Word, expressing creatures only as a consequence of expressing God, is one. The same point is found in the Summa Theologiae:
We shall see that this distinction between idea and Word is much stronger than the one found in Malebranche's account. On that account, while ideas are many and the Word is one, this is because each idea is the Word itself considered insofar as it is able to be imitated in one particular way. This shift in emphasis has the result of strengthening Malebranche's claim that ideas are efficacious.
Part II
******
[1] Discussion of this problem in modern scholarship begins with Robinet, Système et existence dans l'oeuvre de Malebranche, 259-284. See Alquié (Le Cartésianisme de Malebranche, 208-212) and Gueroult (Malebranche, vol. 1, 110-111) for other influential discussions.
[2] Jolley, The Light of the Soul, 76 (cp. 111). See also Jolley, "Berkeley, Malebranche, and Vision in God," Journal of the History of Philosophy (1996), 542, and Pyle, Malebranche, 88.
[3] Jolley, The Light of the Soul, 79.
[4] One important issue involved in Malebranche's identification of ideas with divine ideas that this paper will not discuss at all is the thorny issue of whether he is (contrary to his intention) committed to saying that we see the divine essence. Connell, The Vision in God, 243-253 (see also 308-314) has a good discussion of this and related issues arising from Malebranche's melding of Cartesianism, Augustinianism, and Scholasticism.
[5] See also LO 229, 319, 625.
[6] Elders, The Philosophical Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, 234.
[7] Elders, The Philosophical Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, 238.
[8] Stump, Aquinas, 179. I am not convinced that Elders is committed to anything as strong as (1). Stump's description of Elders's position makes it sound as if Elders were giving a general account of divine knowledge in saying that God's knowledge is causal. Elders, however, argues that God's knowledge is causative in a section where he is explicitly discussing God's knowledge of things other than Himself.
[9] Stump, Aquinas, 179.
[10] Stump, Aquinas, 180.
[11] This is further suggested, at least as a possibility for interpretation, both by the use of the passage from Aristotle's Physics found in the sed contra for this article ("the three causes coincide in one, namely, the efficient, final, and formal causes") and the account of what a divine idea is in the main body: "It must be a form which something imitates due to the intention of an agent who predetermines the end himself."
[12] Aaron Martin has a good discussion of this in "Reckoning with Ross: Possibles, Divine Ideas, and Virtual Practical Knowledge," Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 78 (2004) 193-208.
[13] For a discussion of this, see Boland, Ideas in God According to Saint Thomas Aquinas, 252.
[14] This line of reasoning is similar to that given in one of the sed contra arguments raised when Aquinas considers whether God knows things that are not:
Thus, the causative character of the idea does not depend on its actually making the effect exist. As Aquinas says in the responses to the objections, "even though God may never will to produce into being in any way those things whose ideas He possesses, He wills to be able to produce them and to have the knowledge for producing them" (DV q. 3, art. 6 ad 3) and "those ideas re not ordered by divine knowledge to the production of something made according to them, but rather to this, that something can be produced according to them" (DV q. 3, art. 6 ad 4).
[16] Cf. Elders, The Philosophical Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, 234.
[17] See also Aquinas's discussion, in ST 1.88.3, of whether God is the first object we know.
One of the many puzzles currently of interest to scholars studying Malebranche is the problem of the efficacy of ideas.[1] Jolley summarizes this in a tidy way:
Perhaps the most puzzling of Malebranche's claims bout ideas is that they have causal properties; ideas have the power to cause perceptions in finite minds. But if ideas are third realm entities, it is hard to see how they can have causal properties of any sort. It is true that ideas are located in God, and God is traditionally thought of as causally active; but if God is causally active, it is surely not qua region of ideas.[2]
He highlights a related problem when discussing the problem of the ontological status of ideas:
For if ideas are identified with the substance of God, then the infinite, uncreated res cogitans of Descartes' metaphysics is converted into an abstract entity or perhaps the realm of abstract ideas....[A]nd apart from the problem of philosophical inconsistency, it also generates theological difficulties; it is fundamentally at odds with the orthodox Christian conception of God as a personal being who watches over us and cares for us.[3]
We have, then, two problems that derive from thinking of Malebranche's ideas as 'third realm' or abstract entities. They both gain their plausibility from the fact that ideas as Malebranche understands them certainly do some of the things that 'third realm' or abstract entities are supposed to do. In what follows, however, I will suggest that a different view of the problem arises when we take seriously Malebranche's insistence that ideas are divine ideas in the natural-theological sense.[4] In this context ideas are an artisan's knowledge of things that can be produced, and they are intimately involved in the production of those things. His account of ideas should be taken to have more in common with this than with what we ordinarily think of as 'third realm' or abstract entities.
Divine Ideas as Practical Knowledge
It is immediately clear that the key feature of Malebranche's theory of ideas is the identification of our ideas with divine ideas; this identification is just the thesis that we see all things in God. It is also clear, however, that Malebranche already has a notion of what a divine idea is. This notion is laid out most clearly in some of Malebranche's later works. In the 1696 Preface to the Dialogues on Metaphysics and on Religion, he appeals to a number of texts by Augustine and Aquinas in order to support his account of ideas. For instance, Malebranche links his own accoutn of ideas to principles he finds in Augustine's LXXXIII Questions (q. xlvi): ideas are importat because "without them one cannot be wise"; they are eternal and immutable; they are the exemplars or archetypes of creatures; they are not separate from the divine essence (as a Platonic world of ideas) but are in God; the multiplicity of ideas does not contradict the doctrine of divine simplicity (OC 12:11). He appeals to similar principles occurring in Aquinas's discussions.[5] By 1696, at least, Malebranche saw himself to be defending an account of ideas that merges with a traditional theology of divine ideas, such as we find in Aquinas's development of Augustine. In light of htis, I suggest that it might be useful to examine Aquinas's theology of divine ideas, as a reasonably accessible account of the traditional understanding of divine ideas, and one with which Malebranche himself was familiar, if we want to shed light on Malebranche's claims that ideas are efficacious.
Aquinas has a number of passages in which he appears to attribute causal efficacy to God' knowledge. For instance, in De Veritate (q. 2, art. 14), discussing whether God's knowledge is the cause of created things, he insists that it is. In a later discussion, he explicitly says that ideas in the divine mind create or produce things (DV q. 3, art. 1 ad 5). We find similar claims in the Summa Theologiae:
It must be said that God's knowledge is the cause of things. For the knowledge of God is related to all created things as the knowledge of the artificer is to the artifact. (ST 1.14.8)
There is some uncertainty about how these claims should be interpreted. Elders has argued that we should take them at face value. On this interpretation, God's knowledge is "creative knowledge."[6] As Elders summarizes the position, God's knowledge is causal knowledge so that God knows things because he makes them.[7] Sump has argued for a different interpretation. As she characterizes Elders's interpretation, it involves one of two claims:
(1) God knows everything that he knows in virtue of his knowledge's being the efficient cause of what he knows;
(2) God knows everything both temporal and actual that he knows in virtue of his konwledge's being the efficient cause of this part of what he knows. [8]
(1) is much stronger than (2). However, as Stump points out, even (2) is too strong; it cannot explain what Aquinas says about God's knowledge of evil, for instance. She suggests that the plausibility for these stronger claims rests on two further assumptions:
(A) The causation which God's knowledge has is efficient causation;
(B) What is effected by the causation of the divine cognition includs all actions, events, and states of affairs in the world.[9]
(B) is irrelevant to our purposes; we simply want to know whether any of God's knowledge is (in any reasonably straightforward sense) efficacious.
Stump's claim is that when Aquinas speaks of God's knowledge as causative, he means that God's knowledge is a formal cause, not an efficient cause. To this end she emphasizes passages in which Aquinas identifies ideas as forms and exemplars (we have already noted some of the passages in which Aquinas does so). From this she concludes that ideas must be formal causes: the pattern a builder has in mind as he begins to build a house is the formal cause of the house, not an efficient cause.[10]
It is clearly true that ideas are exemplars and forms. What is less clear is whether Stump's argument shows that God's knowledge is not effectively causative. An exemplar cause is not an intrinsic cause but an extrinsic cause, since the divine idea of a body is not the constitutive form of that body, but the pattern on which it is made. As Aquinas says, they are formae aliarum, praeter ipsas res existentes: the forms of all things, existing apart from the things themselves. This last qualification, separate existence, should not be ignored. When we identify divine ideas as forms and exemplars, we need to ask a further question: How are they related to the (separate) things of which they are exemplars? When we consider this question, we find reason to say that Thomas's view makes God's knowledge in some sense efficacious. One place where I think this becomes very clear is the discussion of divine ideas in De Veritate.
At various times in De Veritate, Aquinas appears to attribute to divine ideas the characteristics of formal, final, and efficient causes. As we have noted, he is very clear that divine ideas are formal causes (DV q. 3, art. 1). In the same place, he says that a divine idea "has in a certain way the nature of an end," giving this as a reason for rejecting the Platonic claim that ideas are separate from God. It is also in this same article that he makes the claim, noted above, that ideas in the divine mind create and produce things (DV q. 3, art. 1 ad 5). While there is no doubt that ideas are exemplar causes, it seems plausible to suggest that Aquinas thinks divine ideas are 'in a certain way' efficient causes, just as we have seen that he thinks they are 'in a certain way' final causes.[11] This argument presupposes a particular conception of practical knowledge, which it will be worthwhile to examine.
Practical Knowledge
After noting that practical knowledge is called practical because it is directed to a work (of some kind), Aquinas distinguishes this form of knowledge into two kinds. In actually practical knowledge, the form that the artisan has in mind is actually directed to the work; in habitually and virtually practical knowledge, the form, while able to be directed to the work, is not actually so directed.[12] God has both kinds of practical knowledge:
Since his knowledge causes things, He knows some things by ordaining by a decree of His will that they be at a certain time, and of these he has actual practical knowledge. Moreover, He knows other things He does not at any time intend to make, for He knows those things which are not, have not been, and never will be. Of these things He has actual knowledge; not actually practical, however, but merely virtually practical. (DV q. 3, art. 3)[13]
In light of this distinction between types of practical knowledge, it can be seen that one possible argument against the view that God's knowledge is efficacious fails. One of Stump's arguments that the common interpretation fails is that it cannot account for God's knowledge of 'things that are not'. This is true if we understand the common interpretation to be claiming that God knows only what he actually causes. Stump is entirely correct that this cannot be right; Aquinas himself denies that God's knowledge of evil is causative (DV q. 3, art. 3), and her argument is certainly a salutary warning about the dangers of incautious claims. On a less restrictive account like the one suggested here, God knows the exercise of His causal power as part of a more general knowledge of His causal power itself. As Aquinas notes, we have to allow for practical knowledge of things that might exist even though they do not, e.g., a builder's practical knowledge of a house he could make but never does. God's knowledge of creatures that do not exist but could is necessarily a form of causal knowledge; the only way God can know anything about such creatures is to know what He could make. When He actually makes creatures, this adds an additional kind of causal knowledge beyond the more general background knowledge.[14]
At this point it may be useful to consider a possible objection. Aquinas is very clear that knowledge as such is not efficacious. Two passages in particular are worth noting:
Knowledge, inasmuch as it is knowledge, is not called an active cause...form is not a principle of acting save by mediation of a power...from knowledge never proceeds an effect save by mediation of a will...the things known by God proceed from His knowledge by way of His will and by way of secondary causes. (DV q. 2, art. 14)
A natural form, inasmuch as it is the form dwelling in that to which it gives being, is not called a principle of action, but only with regard to its having an inclination to the effect. And similarly the intelligible form is not called a principle of action with regard to its being in the intellect, unless there is adjoined to it an inclination to the effect, which is by the will. (ST 1.14.8)
Upon reading passages like this, someone might say that, whatever Aquinas's actual view, he cannot consistently regard God's knowledge as efficacious in itself. If an effect never arises from knowledge save through the mediation of the will, the really effective cause must be the divine will.
An answer to this objection is suggested by Aquinas's example of the artisan and the artifact. Imagine yourself to be a painter (artisan) painting a canvas (the painted canvas being the artifact). This activity is intentional; it is an expression of will. However, it is not an expression of will alone. Even the mere intent to paint involves not merely will but an intellect that knows and believes things relevant to painting, e.g., what painting is and what sort of things might be painted. Without this the will could not be efficacious. An effect must be linked to its cause in some way in order to be identifiable as the effect of this cause. Something about the painter must make it possible to say that the painter is efficacious, not merely simpliciter, but also qua painter. In other words, in an intentional and deliberate act of painting, linking the painting (effect) to the painter's will (cause) requires that we be able to postulate some content to the will that makes it a will to paint. It is difficult to see what else could give the will this content except the intellect. If it is the intellect that gives the content, the will is not efficacious on its own; rather, it is only efficacious insofar as the intellect has given it an object.[16]
That Aquinas has something like this account in mind when discussing causative knowledge is suggested by what Aquinas immediately goes on to say after the second passage quoted above:
For since the intelligible form is related to opposites (since the same knowledge is of opposites) it would not produce a determinate effect unless it were determined to one by appetite, as is said in Metaph. IX. And it is manifest that God causes things by His intellect, since His being is His understanding. Hence it is necessary that His knowledge be the cause of things insofar as it has the will conjoined to it. Hence God's knowledge, insofar as it is cause of things, is customarily called the knowledge of approbation. (ST 1.14.8)
In other words, the fact that knowledge is not efficacious on its own is not an impediment to its being considered a cause insofar as it is conjoined with the will. This is not surprising. For any particular effect, the will is not efficacious on its own either, since it does not operate blindly; it is a cause insofar as it is conjoined with the intellect. The will is not sufficient for producing a given effect unless the intellect presents it with that effect as an object; it is only a necessary condition for the actual production of an effect. Therefore, an effect is traced back not to one or the other but to the two together, and each can be considered a causal principle. Each is, in fact, a causally necessary condition. This is particularly true in God's case, since, as Aquinas notes in the above passage, divine simplicity make sit even harder to say that only the divine will is efficacious. God makes everything He makes by means of the divine will; but it is also true that He makes all things by means of His intellect.
In the next section I will suggest that Malebranche has an account of ideas in which ideas are a kind of practical knowledge in something like the sense I have suggested in Aquinas's case. Malebranche's account, however, is complicated by his tendency to run together discussion of divine Reason (understood hypostatically as the divine Word, the second person of the Trinity) and discussion of divine ideas. It is worth a moment of our time, then, to pause and look very briefly at what the relation between idea and Word is in Aquinas's account.
Aquinas accepts the statement from the prologue of the Gospel of John that all things God made were made through the Word (Logos) of God, and understands "the Word" in the standard way to refer to the second person of the Trinity. The claim that all things made were made through the Word allows for a connection between the theory of divine ideas and the theory of the Divine Word, since, as Thomas describes it, "in 'Word' is implied the operative idea of what God makes" (ST 1.34.3). These operative ideas of what God makes are instances of what he elsewhere calls the likenesses of things in the Word:
Just as the likenesses of things in the Word are the causes of the existing of things, so also they are the causes of knowing what is, insofar as they are impressed into intellectual minds, thus causing them to be able to know things. Hence, just as these likenesses are called life because they are principles of existing, so are they also called light because they are principles of knowing. (DV q. 4, art.8 ad 4)
These likenesses int he Word, in other words, cause any given created thing both to exist and to be known. Aquinas denies, of course, that in our present life the divine ideas are direct objects of knowledge; but he insists that we know all things through them in a way analogous to the way we see things by the sun (ST 1.84.5).[17] Going further into detail with this would require delving into his theory of participation, which I will forego here. However, this does seem clear enough: divine ideas in the divine Word are both "principles of existing" and "principles of knowing".
Despite the connections between the theory of ideas and the theory of the Word, Aquinas thinks we need to draw a sharp distinction between the two. In De Veritate Aquinas considers two arguments that conflate divine ideas with the Word. To the first he replies:
A word differs from an idea, of 'idea' names an exemplary cause absolutely, but the 'Word' of a creature in God names an exemplary form drawn from something else, and thus 'idea' in God pertains to the essence, but 'Word', to a person. (DV q. 4, art. 4 ad 4)
Aquinas's chief concern here is to prevent a conflation of natural theology and revealed theology. Ideas, a matter of natural theology, simply identify the forms in God's mind that He contemplates in His creation of the world. Since God is simple, these forms are just the divine essence considered in different lights. However, a Christian, reflecting on the first few verses of the Gospel of John, will discover that God makes things through the Logos, which is to say, the Word or Reason. Thomas wants to shut down the temptation to conflate ideas and the Word; he recognizes that the terms 'idea' and 'Word' both suggest exemplary causality, but notes that they are used in radically different ways. The ideas are the divine essence; but the Word is a divine person possessing that essence.
In the response that follows, Thomas identifies another difference between an idea and the Word: ideas express creatures directly, and are therefore many; the Word, expressing creatures only as a consequence of expressing God, is one. The same point is found in the Summa Theologiae:
The noun 'idea' is principally imposed to signify relation to creatures; and therefore it is applied plurally to God and is not said personally. But the noun 'word' is principally imposed to signify relation to the speaker, and thereafter to creatures inasmuch as God by understanding Himself understands all creatures. For this reason there is only one Word in God, and it is personal. (ST 1.34.3 ad 4)
We shall see that this distinction between idea and Word is much stronger than the one found in Malebranche's account. On that account, while ideas are many and the Word is one, this is because each idea is the Word itself considered insofar as it is able to be imitated in one particular way. This shift in emphasis has the result of strengthening Malebranche's claim that ideas are efficacious.
Part II
******
[1] Discussion of this problem in modern scholarship begins with Robinet, Système et existence dans l'oeuvre de Malebranche, 259-284. See Alquié (Le Cartésianisme de Malebranche, 208-212) and Gueroult (Malebranche, vol. 1, 110-111) for other influential discussions.
[2] Jolley, The Light of the Soul, 76 (cp. 111). See also Jolley, "Berkeley, Malebranche, and Vision in God," Journal of the History of Philosophy (1996), 542, and Pyle, Malebranche, 88.
[3] Jolley, The Light of the Soul, 79.
[4] One important issue involved in Malebranche's identification of ideas with divine ideas that this paper will not discuss at all is the thorny issue of whether he is (contrary to his intention) committed to saying that we see the divine essence. Connell, The Vision in God, 243-253 (see also 308-314) has a good discussion of this and related issues arising from Malebranche's melding of Cartesianism, Augustinianism, and Scholasticism.
[5] See also LO 229, 319, 625.
[6] Elders, The Philosophical Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, 234.
[7] Elders, The Philosophical Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, 238.
[8] Stump, Aquinas, 179. I am not convinced that Elders is committed to anything as strong as (1). Stump's description of Elders's position makes it sound as if Elders were giving a general account of divine knowledge in saying that God's knowledge is causal. Elders, however, argues that God's knowledge is causative in a section where he is explicitly discussing God's knowledge of things other than Himself.
[9] Stump, Aquinas, 179.
[10] Stump, Aquinas, 180.
[11] This is further suggested, at least as a possibility for interpretation, both by the use of the passage from Aristotle's Physics found in the sed contra for this article ("the three causes coincide in one, namely, the efficient, final, and formal causes") and the account of what a divine idea is in the main body: "It must be a form which something imitates due to the intention of an agent who predetermines the end himself."
[12] Aaron Martin has a good discussion of this in "Reckoning with Ross: Possibles, Divine Ideas, and Virtual Practical Knowledge," Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 78 (2004) 193-208.
[13] For a discussion of this, see Boland, Ideas in God According to Saint Thomas Aquinas, 252.
[14] This line of reasoning is similar to that given in one of the sed contra arguments raised when Aquinas considers whether God knows things that are not:
A cause does not depend on its effect. But the idea is the cause of the being of the thing. Therefore, it does not depend on the being of the thing in any way. Therefore, there can be ideas of those things that are not, have not been, and never will be. (DV q. 3, art. 6 s.c. 2)
Thus, the causative character of the idea does not depend on its actually making the effect exist. As Aquinas says in the responses to the objections, "even though God may never will to produce into being in any way those things whose ideas He possesses, He wills to be able to produce them and to have the knowledge for producing them" (DV q. 3, art. 6 ad 3) and "those ideas re not ordered by divine knowledge to the production of something made according to them, but rather to this, that something can be produced according to them" (DV q. 3, art. 6 ad 4).
[16] Cf. Elders, The Philosophical Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, 234.
[17] See also Aquinas's discussion, in ST 1.88.3, of whether God is the first object we know.
Two Poem Drafts
Holy Dormition
A man in dream may fall asleep
and dream dissolve away,
for sleep may fade to waking light
as glory fills the day;
the dream within the dream will flow
into some wakeful joy
as sleep itself will fall asleep
and, sleeping, be destroyed.
From Sea
On the waves of the sea, where the small whales ride,
the glimmer and glory of the sun alights;
crisp, cold, and fresh, the tumbles of foam
in whiteness are spraying, enjoying a game,
and wind, like the Spirit of God in His might,
pours over creation and harries us home.
A man in dream may fall asleep
and dream dissolve away,
for sleep may fade to waking light
as glory fills the day;
the dream within the dream will flow
into some wakeful joy
as sleep itself will fall asleep
and, sleeping, be destroyed.
From Sea
On the waves of the sea, where the small whales ride,
the glimmer and glory of the sun alights;
crisp, cold, and fresh, the tumbles of foam
in whiteness are spraying, enjoying a game,
and wind, like the Spirit of God in His might,
pours over creation and harries us home.
Sunday, July 06, 2014
Fortnightly Book, July 6
We know Beowulf from a manuscript written in the tenth or eleventh cenutry. It contains a poem that was first put together by an anonymous poet at some point between the early eighth century and the eleventh century; it in turn combines legends the roots of which go back at least to sixth-century Scandinavia. The manuscript, the Nowell Codex, is a very tenuous connection; it is the only manuscript to contain the poem and it narrowly missed burning in a fire in the eighteenth century. It is damaged and is in a state of deterioration. GrÃmur Jónsson ThorkelÃn, an early nineteenth-century Danish scholar, is the only reason the wider world knows of it; he was studying early English-Danish contacts, recognized the significance of the tale, and transcribed it in two transcriptions. He intended to publish it, and prepared the manuscript for publication, but his house burned down in the Battle of Copenhagen, and that manuscript was lost entirely. But he still had the transcriptions and he started over, and in 1815 presented the world with the first significant edition and translation (into Latin) of the text. Other translations began to be made, stirring up interest in the text. It's a good thing we have both transcriptions; with the original manuscript degenerating, we need the redundancy -- an illustration of the utter importance of transcription and translation to scholarly work, since without them great works cannot possibly be sustained as part of our heritage.
I'll be reading Beowulf in two translations, one primary and one merely as a comparison. The comparison-translation will be David Wright's translation for Penguin Classics. But the primary translation will be J. R. R. Tolkien's, which was recently put out under the editorship of Christopher Tolkien, with commentary drawn out of excerpts from his many lectures and notes on the epic. The basic translation itself was done early in his career, in the 1920s, although he did revise it later; one can consider it as an early offering of the research that would eventually lead Tolkien to the lecture that became perhaps the single best essay on the epic ever written (and often recognized as such by people who disagree with important elements of it) -- "The Monsters and the Critics" -- and which at least turned the field of Beowulf scholarship in new directions; Tolkien insisted that the poem be treated as a poem, not merely as a mine for evidence of antiquity.
The translation, along with Tolkien's comments, is also published with "Sellic Spell," which is Tolkien's attempt to distill the basic folkloric root of the story, and with two Beowulf poems by Tolkien.
I'll be reading Beowulf in two translations, one primary and one merely as a comparison. The comparison-translation will be David Wright's translation for Penguin Classics. But the primary translation will be J. R. R. Tolkien's, which was recently put out under the editorship of Christopher Tolkien, with commentary drawn out of excerpts from his many lectures and notes on the epic. The basic translation itself was done early in his career, in the 1920s, although he did revise it later; one can consider it as an early offering of the research that would eventually lead Tolkien to the lecture that became perhaps the single best essay on the epic ever written (and often recognized as such by people who disagree with important elements of it) -- "The Monsters and the Critics" -- and which at least turned the field of Beowulf scholarship in new directions; Tolkien insisted that the poem be treated as a poem, not merely as a mine for evidence of antiquity.
The translation, along with Tolkien's comments, is also published with "Sellic Spell," which is Tolkien's attempt to distill the basic folkloric root of the story, and with two Beowulf poems by Tolkien.
Laches
The topic of the undisputed dialogue Laches is fortitude/courage (andreia), but it also addresses the question, indirectly, of education in virtue. As Altman notes, there is good reason to think of this dialogue as forming a pair with Charmides, on temperance/self-control (sophrosyne).
You can read Laches online in English at the Perseus Project and in French at Wikisource.
The Characters
(in order of appearance)
Lysimachus son of Aristides
This is the same Lysimachus mentioned in Meno and De Virtute as being an ordinary son of a great man; Lysimachus's father, Aristides, was known as 'the Just'. He is the oldest character in this dialogue, and knew Socrates' father, Sophroniscus.
Nicias son of Niceratus
Nicias was a fantastically wealthy Athenian whose father had made a fortune in using slaves in the silver mines; he was supposedly very generous with his wealth, and this gave him considerable influence. After the death of Pericles he became the main leader of what might be called the 'dove' faction in the Athenian Assembly, and thus the main opponent of Cleon, who was in the opposing 'hawk' faction that wanted to pursue the war further. He was a general several times, and tended to choose those options that would reduce conflict. After the death of Cleon in the Battle of Amphipolis, he (with the help of Laches) was able to negotiate the Peace of Nicias between Athens and Sparta, but at that time Alcibiades and others also began advocating the Syracusan Expedition. He was politically forced into becoming one of the generals of the Syracusan Expedition that he opposed, and indeed, despite his opposition he was soon the only general left to lead it, since Alcibiades was recalled and the third general, Lamachus, was soon killed in battle. He spent a significant portion of the final part of the expedition sick, and then was captured and killed by the Syracusans, despite the attempt of their Spartan allies, who respected him, to prevent it.
Laches son of Melanopus
Laches was also a notable Athenian general and a political ally of Nicias. Both this dialogue and Plato's Symposium indicate that Laches and Socrates fought together at the Battle of Delium, with the latter doing so with exemplary courage and self-possession. Laches died in the Battle of Mantinea.
Aristides son of Lysimachus and Thucydides son of Melesias
Aristides and Thucidydes are present and have (together) one line in the dialogue. Aristides would become a student of Socrates, but Theaetetus says that he left Socrates too soon and fell in with bad company. Thucydides, who is not to be confused with the historian (although he may possibly have been a cousin of some kind), is mentioned in Theages as still a student of Socrates.
Socrates
Interestingly, Socrates doesn't speak in this dialogue until a fair way into the beginning. Once there he takes the discussion over quickly enough, though.
Melesias son of Thucydides
Melesias's father was one of the major politicians of the early Peloponnesian War. He himself was active in politics, and occasionally shows up in historical records, but as little more than a name. His most significant role was as a member of the oligarchical Four Hundred immediately after the overthrown of the Athenian democratic government.
Background Dates
(all BC)
424 - Battle of Delium
422 - Battle of Amphipolis
421 - Peace of Nicias
418 - Battle of Mantinea
415 - Syracusan Expedition
The Plot and The Thought
Lysimachus opens the discussion by remarking on Stesilaus's demonstration of fighting with armor, which they have just seen. He is particularly interested in the question of whether it is important for boys to learn this, since he and his friend Melesias are considering whether to include it as a major part of their boys' education. To this end, he asks Nicias and Laches, two experienced soldiers and important generals, what their view of the matter is. Nicias agrees to give his opinion, as does Laches, but Laches notes that if Lysimachus is asking for advice, he should also ask Socrates, who is also present, because he comes from the same deme as Lysimachus and has experience with how boys are educated. Nicias also vouches for Laches, noting that Socrates recently recommend a music teacher, Damon, for his son, and it is working out well.
Lysimachus agrees that this sounds good, but suddenly remembers that his boys are always talking about a Socrates. (Lysimachus already knows Socrates as the son of Sophroniscus. But Socrates was a common name in ancient Athens -- indeed, even in Plato's dialogues there is another character named 'Socrates'; Lysimachus just hasn't connected the two.) The boys confirm that it's the same one, and Laches adds that Socrates' career as a soldier has been exemplary, giving his personal testimony of it at the Battle of Delium. Thus it is settled; but Socrates responds that Nicias and Laches are both older and more experienced, so they should go first, and he'll just supplement their advice if anything needs to be added.
Nicias goes first. He thinks it's a good idea for boys to study armor-fighting. It improves their bodies and gives them experience in weapons of war, which could be useful in battle. It can serve as a gateway study to other, more important studies, like tactics. And, in addition, it can make someone braver (andreioteron) and more fierce-looking, which are important on the battlefield.
Laches remarks that the problem with this argument is that it always seems a good idea to learn anything. But if we look at actual experience, we find reason to question the value of this supposed skill. For instance, everyone knows that the Spartans are the best fighters, so if this were a skill of real value to fighting, one would think that the teachers of it would especially attempt to interest them; but, suspiciously, they avoid Sparta completely. Further, Laches claims, he has seen this skill in action, and it is unimpressive. (He has a very funny story about Stesilaus himself and his invention of a 'scythe-spear'.) So either it is not skill at all, or it is a skill of very little value.
Lysimachus remarks that the vote is split one to one, so Socrates is the tie-breaking vote. Socrates, however, expresses surprise that Lysimachus would make this a matter of majority vote, and through a discussion with Melesias argues that decisions need to be made on the basis of knowledge, which means we should find experts rather than decide important things on majority vote. In this case, instead of focusing on the alleged skill of armor-fighting, we should ask what skill we want in the teachers of the boys, and clearly it will have to have something to do with caring for the soul or life. So who is skilled in caring for the soul and has had good teachers.
Laches at this juncture points out that some people become skilled even without teachers; but Socrates replies that you would not accept their word for it unless they could show you a sample of the product of their skill. So this sets up the investigation: if Nicias, Laches, and Socrates are to give good advice, they should either show who the teachers are who are good, have tended the souls of young men, and have taught one of the three, or they should show what people have become good through someone's influence. Socrates remarks that he has not himself had any such teacher; he had no money to pay the sophists who claim to be able to teach in this way, and he was unable to discover it himself. But perhaps Nicias or Laches will fare better, and either be able to identify their own teachers or show that they have learned the skill themselves.
Lysimachus is impressed by this idea, at which Nicias drily remarks that he obviously doesn't know Socrates very well:
But Nicias is willing to go along, and while Laches doesn't like discussions themselves, but he likes it when people harmonize words and deeds, and he knows that he respects Socrates' deeds, having seen them tested in battle.
Socrates then raises the key subject of the dialogue (note that we are already twelve Stephanus pages into the dialogue before we reach its main question): what is manliness/fortitude/courage (andreia)? This is what you're really looking for when it comes to a skill like armor-fighting, so we need to know what it is. Socrates begins by asking Laches, and Laches gives the definition that it is for a man to be "willing to remain at his post and to defend himself against the enemy without running away" (190e).
Socrates, however, raises the point that military strategy sometimes requires defending yourself against the enemy with running away, and that doesn't seem to count against courage. Further, and more importantly, Socrates wants an account of courage that is not confined to the battlefield. Pressed to generalize, Laches suggests that it is a kind of endurance of the soul. Socrates argues that it would have to be a kind of endurance accompanied by prudence (phronesis). But this raises the problem that we in practice sometimes seem to take people to have less fortitude if they have more prudence: someone who endures without knowing that reinforcements are coming might be treated as more courageous or enduring than someone who endures knowing that they are. So Socrates and Laches seem to have come to a puzzle: their deeds don't harmonize with their words. Laches continues to think he knows what fortitude is, but he has at least come to know that he can't put it into words; and he agrees with Socrates that they should endure in the inquiry.
This turns the discussion to Nicias. Nicias, being clever, says he is surprised that Socrates is not using an idea he knows Socrates has used before: that fortitude is a kind of wisdom (sophia). Socrates draws Laches into the discussion, and Laches, true to his promise to endure in the inquiry, asks what sort of wisdom he is talking about. (Note that he is following Socrates' example, perhaps without fully realized it.) Nicias says it is "knowledge [episteme] of the fearful and hopeful in war and in every other situation" (195a). Laches is utterly unimpressed, and after some back and forth on the kind of knowledge, remarks that Nicias thinks that seers are the ones who have courage. Nicias responds by saying that seers do have the appropriate knowledge. He defends himself well against Laches, which Socrates attributes to Damon and Prodicus. Socrates takes over the examination of Nicias, and argues that if fortitude is a kind of knowledge, it could not just be of future things to fear and hope for, but would have to be of goods and evils of any time. But if this is the case, then, fortitude just starts looking like virtue itself.
Laches and Nicias, although not agreeing about fortitude, agree that Lysimachus and Melesias should hand their boys over to Socrates to educate. Lysimachus asks Socrates if he will do it, and Socrates noncommittally replies that they seem to have all three of them shown that they were not appropriate choices, and that what he advises is that they should all try to find the best possible teacher so that they won't remain in ignorance. Lysimachus says that, being the oldest, he is also the most willing to go to school with the boys, and asks Socrates to come to his house early tomorrow to make plans. And Socrates ends by promising.
Remarks
* Damon was one of the teachers of Pericles; although officially a music teacher, he is said to have advised Pericles on a number of other things, most controversially being the source of the very controversial idea of paying jurors for their service. He is mentioned several times in the Republic, as well as briefly in Alcibiades and Axiochus. Aristophanes mentions him in The Clouds. The man here said to be his teacher, Agathocles, is mentioned in Protagoras as a sophist, and seems to have put himself forward as a music teacher to avoid some of the controversy that had begun to gather around the movement; it is strongly suggested in this dialogue that Damon is doing the same thing, particularly since the sophist Prodicus is also said to be his teacher.
* Each general gives the kind of advice about armor-fighting that one would expect from his reputation -- Nicias gives an answer based on calculation of possible future effects, and Laches gives an answer based on past experience about what a soldier should be like. This is also reflected in their respective definitions of what courage is. As Catherine Zuckert notes in Plato's Philosophers, they also fit the kinds of death each would later die [p. 255]:
Note that this also links directly to Socrates' insistence that matters pertaining to courage should not be decided by vote but by knowledge -- both Laches and Nicias fail to maintain fortitude or courage at the necessary moment because in each case they are more interested in what other people think than they are in what is right.
* Almost all sources that talk about Nicias mention his heavy reliance on signs and omens, so Laches in bringing it up is making a sarcastic reference to his reputation.
* Nicias explicitly notes that he regards Laches and Lamachus as courageous (197c). The three generals on the Syracusan Expedition, which Nicias opposed but went on anyway, were Nicias, Alcibiades -- and Lamachus. This reference to the disastrous Syracusan expedition is certainly not accidental.
* It's interesting that Lysimachus, the oldest person there, is the one who is most willing to entertain the idea that he might need to learn -- neither Nicias nor Laches do. And we know that in other dialogues Socrates will try to encourage others on to the philosophical path by arguing with somebody else entirely -- perhaps Lysimachus was Socrates' target the entire time? And note as well that while Nicias can't get Socrates to take on Niceratus his son as a pupil, Lysimachus is much more successful, precisely because his willingness to 'go to school' gets Socrates to come back.
* William Altman in "Laches before Charmides. Fictive Chronology and Platonic Pedagogy" discusses some of the connections between this dialogue and both Alcibiades Major and Charmides:
He also notes that there are linguistic and thematic links between this dialogue and Euthydemus, which is also concerned with the topic of education.
****
Quotations are from Rosamond Kent Sprague's translation in Plato, Complete Works, Cooper & Hutchinson, eds., pp. 664-686.
You can read Laches online in English at the Perseus Project and in French at Wikisource.
The Characters
(in order of appearance)
Lysimachus son of Aristides
This is the same Lysimachus mentioned in Meno and De Virtute as being an ordinary son of a great man; Lysimachus's father, Aristides, was known as 'the Just'. He is the oldest character in this dialogue, and knew Socrates' father, Sophroniscus.
Nicias son of Niceratus
Nicias was a fantastically wealthy Athenian whose father had made a fortune in using slaves in the silver mines; he was supposedly very generous with his wealth, and this gave him considerable influence. After the death of Pericles he became the main leader of what might be called the 'dove' faction in the Athenian Assembly, and thus the main opponent of Cleon, who was in the opposing 'hawk' faction that wanted to pursue the war further. He was a general several times, and tended to choose those options that would reduce conflict. After the death of Cleon in the Battle of Amphipolis, he (with the help of Laches) was able to negotiate the Peace of Nicias between Athens and Sparta, but at that time Alcibiades and others also began advocating the Syracusan Expedition. He was politically forced into becoming one of the generals of the Syracusan Expedition that he opposed, and indeed, despite his opposition he was soon the only general left to lead it, since Alcibiades was recalled and the third general, Lamachus, was soon killed in battle. He spent a significant portion of the final part of the expedition sick, and then was captured and killed by the Syracusans, despite the attempt of their Spartan allies, who respected him, to prevent it.
Laches son of Melanopus
Laches was also a notable Athenian general and a political ally of Nicias. Both this dialogue and Plato's Symposium indicate that Laches and Socrates fought together at the Battle of Delium, with the latter doing so with exemplary courage and self-possession. Laches died in the Battle of Mantinea.
Aristides son of Lysimachus and Thucydides son of Melesias
Aristides and Thucidydes are present and have (together) one line in the dialogue. Aristides would become a student of Socrates, but Theaetetus says that he left Socrates too soon and fell in with bad company. Thucydides, who is not to be confused with the historian (although he may possibly have been a cousin of some kind), is mentioned in Theages as still a student of Socrates.
Socrates
Interestingly, Socrates doesn't speak in this dialogue until a fair way into the beginning. Once there he takes the discussion over quickly enough, though.
Melesias son of Thucydides
Melesias's father was one of the major politicians of the early Peloponnesian War. He himself was active in politics, and occasionally shows up in historical records, but as little more than a name. His most significant role was as a member of the oligarchical Four Hundred immediately after the overthrown of the Athenian democratic government.
Background Dates
(all BC)
424 - Battle of Delium
422 - Battle of Amphipolis
421 - Peace of Nicias
418 - Battle of Mantinea
415 - Syracusan Expedition
The Plot and The Thought
Lysimachus opens the discussion by remarking on Stesilaus's demonstration of fighting with armor, which they have just seen. He is particularly interested in the question of whether it is important for boys to learn this, since he and his friend Melesias are considering whether to include it as a major part of their boys' education. To this end, he asks Nicias and Laches, two experienced soldiers and important generals, what their view of the matter is. Nicias agrees to give his opinion, as does Laches, but Laches notes that if Lysimachus is asking for advice, he should also ask Socrates, who is also present, because he comes from the same deme as Lysimachus and has experience with how boys are educated. Nicias also vouches for Laches, noting that Socrates recently recommend a music teacher, Damon, for his son, and it is working out well.
Lysimachus agrees that this sounds good, but suddenly remembers that his boys are always talking about a Socrates. (Lysimachus already knows Socrates as the son of Sophroniscus. But Socrates was a common name in ancient Athens -- indeed, even in Plato's dialogues there is another character named 'Socrates'; Lysimachus just hasn't connected the two.) The boys confirm that it's the same one, and Laches adds that Socrates' career as a soldier has been exemplary, giving his personal testimony of it at the Battle of Delium. Thus it is settled; but Socrates responds that Nicias and Laches are both older and more experienced, so they should go first, and he'll just supplement their advice if anything needs to be added.
Nicias goes first. He thinks it's a good idea for boys to study armor-fighting. It improves their bodies and gives them experience in weapons of war, which could be useful in battle. It can serve as a gateway study to other, more important studies, like tactics. And, in addition, it can make someone braver (andreioteron) and more fierce-looking, which are important on the battlefield.
Laches remarks that the problem with this argument is that it always seems a good idea to learn anything. But if we look at actual experience, we find reason to question the value of this supposed skill. For instance, everyone knows that the Spartans are the best fighters, so if this were a skill of real value to fighting, one would think that the teachers of it would especially attempt to interest them; but, suspiciously, they avoid Sparta completely. Further, Laches claims, he has seen this skill in action, and it is unimpressive. (He has a very funny story about Stesilaus himself and his invention of a 'scythe-spear'.) So either it is not skill at all, or it is a skill of very little value.
Lysimachus remarks that the vote is split one to one, so Socrates is the tie-breaking vote. Socrates, however, expresses surprise that Lysimachus would make this a matter of majority vote, and through a discussion with Melesias argues that decisions need to be made on the basis of knowledge, which means we should find experts rather than decide important things on majority vote. In this case, instead of focusing on the alleged skill of armor-fighting, we should ask what skill we want in the teachers of the boys, and clearly it will have to have something to do with caring for the soul or life. So who is skilled in caring for the soul and has had good teachers.
Laches at this juncture points out that some people become skilled even without teachers; but Socrates replies that you would not accept their word for it unless they could show you a sample of the product of their skill. So this sets up the investigation: if Nicias, Laches, and Socrates are to give good advice, they should either show who the teachers are who are good, have tended the souls of young men, and have taught one of the three, or they should show what people have become good through someone's influence. Socrates remarks that he has not himself had any such teacher; he had no money to pay the sophists who claim to be able to teach in this way, and he was unable to discover it himself. But perhaps Nicias or Laches will fare better, and either be able to identify their own teachers or show that they have learned the skill themselves.
Lysimachus is impressed by this idea, at which Nicias drily remarks that he obviously doesn't know Socrates very well:
You don't appear to me to know that whoever comes into close contact with Socrates and associates with him in conversation must necessarily, even if he began by conversing about something quite different in the first place, keep on being led about by the man's arguments until he submits to answering questions about himself concerning both his present manner of life and the life he has lived hitherto. And when he does submit to his questioning, you don't realize that Socrates will not let him go before he has well and truly tested every last detail. (187e-188a)
But Nicias is willing to go along, and while Laches doesn't like discussions themselves, but he likes it when people harmonize words and deeds, and he knows that he respects Socrates' deeds, having seen them tested in battle.
Socrates then raises the key subject of the dialogue (note that we are already twelve Stephanus pages into the dialogue before we reach its main question): what is manliness/fortitude/courage (andreia)? This is what you're really looking for when it comes to a skill like armor-fighting, so we need to know what it is. Socrates begins by asking Laches, and Laches gives the definition that it is for a man to be "willing to remain at his post and to defend himself against the enemy without running away" (190e).
Socrates, however, raises the point that military strategy sometimes requires defending yourself against the enemy with running away, and that doesn't seem to count against courage. Further, and more importantly, Socrates wants an account of courage that is not confined to the battlefield. Pressed to generalize, Laches suggests that it is a kind of endurance of the soul. Socrates argues that it would have to be a kind of endurance accompanied by prudence (phronesis). But this raises the problem that we in practice sometimes seem to take people to have less fortitude if they have more prudence: someone who endures without knowing that reinforcements are coming might be treated as more courageous or enduring than someone who endures knowing that they are. So Socrates and Laches seem to have come to a puzzle: their deeds don't harmonize with their words. Laches continues to think he knows what fortitude is, but he has at least come to know that he can't put it into words; and he agrees with Socrates that they should endure in the inquiry.
This turns the discussion to Nicias. Nicias, being clever, says he is surprised that Socrates is not using an idea he knows Socrates has used before: that fortitude is a kind of wisdom (sophia). Socrates draws Laches into the discussion, and Laches, true to his promise to endure in the inquiry, asks what sort of wisdom he is talking about. (Note that he is following Socrates' example, perhaps without fully realized it.) Nicias says it is "knowledge [episteme] of the fearful and hopeful in war and in every other situation" (195a). Laches is utterly unimpressed, and after some back and forth on the kind of knowledge, remarks that Nicias thinks that seers are the ones who have courage. Nicias responds by saying that seers do have the appropriate knowledge. He defends himself well against Laches, which Socrates attributes to Damon and Prodicus. Socrates takes over the examination of Nicias, and argues that if fortitude is a kind of knowledge, it could not just be of future things to fear and hope for, but would have to be of goods and evils of any time. But if this is the case, then, fortitude just starts looking like virtue itself.
Laches and Nicias, although not agreeing about fortitude, agree that Lysimachus and Melesias should hand their boys over to Socrates to educate. Lysimachus asks Socrates if he will do it, and Socrates noncommittally replies that they seem to have all three of them shown that they were not appropriate choices, and that what he advises is that they should all try to find the best possible teacher so that they won't remain in ignorance. Lysimachus says that, being the oldest, he is also the most willing to go to school with the boys, and asks Socrates to come to his house early tomorrow to make plans. And Socrates ends by promising.
Remarks
* Damon was one of the teachers of Pericles; although officially a music teacher, he is said to have advised Pericles on a number of other things, most controversially being the source of the very controversial idea of paying jurors for their service. He is mentioned several times in the Republic, as well as briefly in Alcibiades and Axiochus. Aristophanes mentions him in The Clouds. The man here said to be his teacher, Agathocles, is mentioned in Protagoras as a sophist, and seems to have put himself forward as a music teacher to avoid some of the controversy that had begun to gather around the movement; it is strongly suggested in this dialogue that Damon is doing the same thing, particularly since the sophist Prodicus is also said to be his teacher.
* Each general gives the kind of advice about armor-fighting that one would expect from his reputation -- Nicias gives an answer based on calculation of possible future effects, and Laches gives an answer based on past experience about what a soldier should be like. This is also reflected in their respective definitions of what courage is. As Catherine Zuckert notes in Plato's Philosophers, they also fit the kinds of death each would later die [p. 255]:
As Plato's readers would know, the subsequent fates of the two generals resulted, in part, from the defective understandings of courage they express in this dialogue. Laches lost his life in the battle of Mantinea in 418 because he imprudently gave in to the pleas of his troops to attack rather than wait for reinforcements that would have given him overwhelming superiority. He was ashamed of appearing unwilling to take a risk before his men. Five years later in Sicily, Nicias lost an entire army after he delayed their retreat on account of bad portents. His men were frightened by the portents; he was afraid of returning in defeat to Athens.
Note that this also links directly to Socrates' insistence that matters pertaining to courage should not be decided by vote but by knowledge -- both Laches and Nicias fail to maintain fortitude or courage at the necessary moment because in each case they are more interested in what other people think than they are in what is right.
* Almost all sources that talk about Nicias mention his heavy reliance on signs and omens, so Laches in bringing it up is making a sarcastic reference to his reputation.
* Nicias explicitly notes that he regards Laches and Lamachus as courageous (197c). The three generals on the Syracusan Expedition, which Nicias opposed but went on anyway, were Nicias, Alcibiades -- and Lamachus. This reference to the disastrous Syracusan expedition is certainly not accidental.
* It's interesting that Lysimachus, the oldest person there, is the one who is most willing to entertain the idea that he might need to learn -- neither Nicias nor Laches do. And we know that in other dialogues Socrates will try to encourage others on to the philosophical path by arguing with somebody else entirely -- perhaps Lysimachus was Socrates' target the entire time? And note as well that while Nicias can't get Socrates to take on Niceratus his son as a pupil, Lysimachus is much more successful, precisely because his willingness to 'go to school' gets Socrates to come back.
* William Altman in "Laches before Charmides. Fictive Chronology and Platonic Pedagogy" discusses some of the connections between this dialogue and both Alcibiades Major and Charmides:
In Alcibiades Major, Socrates uses the parallel between the eye and the soul to explain the acquisition of self-knowledge through interaction with another. [26] In Laches, Socrates explicates an admittedly confusing general statement of methodology (Lach. 189e3-8) with the same analogy between the eye and sight (Lach. 190a1-b2) that he had applied in Alcibiades Major to the soul and the virtue of the soul, i.e. wisdom (Alcibiades Major 133b2-11), and that he now intends to apply first to the soul and virtue generally (Lach. 190b3-c7) and next to the soul and courage specifically (Lach. 190c8-e3). The fact that the identification of human beings with their souls in Laches actually begins with a reference to the eyes (Lach. 185c6; cf. Charm. 156b6) is but one further indication that the entire passage between 185c5 and 190e3 presupposes and is intended to remind the reader of Alcibiades Major. Naturally this kind of claim applies no less to Charmides: in addition to the fact that it revisits the theme of self-knowledge generally, the view of Socrates quoted by Critias (Charm. 161b6) leads eventually to a verbal identity with Alcibiades Major (Charm. 164d4 and Alcibiades Major 131b4; cf. Denyer 2001, 222). But it is not because Charmides is set at approximately the same time period as Alcibiades Major that it echoes the earlier and simpler dialogue: both Charmides and Laches echo Alcibiades Major because they, despite the time-interval between Potidaea and Delium, are best understood as twins.
He also notes that there are linguistic and thematic links between this dialogue and Euthydemus, which is also concerned with the topic of education.
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Quotations are from Rosamond Kent Sprague's translation in Plato, Complete Works, Cooper & Hutchinson, eds., pp. 664-686.
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