Ariskant and Plathegel

By JLS
for the GC

No way we can understand how Grice plays with Aristotle and Kant ("Ariskant") without grasping how Hegel played with Plato ("Plathegel")

Plato B. C. E. 428-348, Philosopher. Frede has argued that the notion of freewill is Epictetus's. But Dodds, in a similar series of lectures, argues that while even the old Homeric man may lack a notion of 'freewill' he can still distinguish things. Ditto for Aristotle and Plato. If Leucippus (or Mochus) and Democritus were founding Atomism in pre-socratic times, it is worth considering what the Platonic doctrine of something like 'free will' could be. Even if Frede is correct, and a freewill doctrine is dated in Epictetus's time, Epictetus is bringing in a long tradition started with Plato and Aristotle which emphasises the rational part of the soul. The idea of 'freedom' pertains to the freedom on the part of the will, as Epictetus will have it, to 'choose' other than by doing the rational thing.

The Will and Epithumia -- and Free Will proper

In the Republic (Book IV) soul becomes divided into nous (“intellect”), thumos (“passion”), and epithumia (“appetite”). To its appetitive part are ascribed bodily desires. Thumos is the emotional element in virtue of which we feel anger, fear, etc.; nous is (or should be) the controlling part which subjugates the appetites with the help of thumos.

Plato invokes the empirical fact of conflict within the individual (Republic IV, 436ff.). At one and the same time we may both desire to drink and be unwilling to drink. But the same thing cannot act in opposite ways with the same part of itself towards the same object at the same time. If such conflict is to be referred to the soul as a whole, then the soul must possess different parts to account for the clash. It is also the case that passion and appetite may conflict, for a man may be angry with that in himself which prompts him to do something shameful. Hence a part of the soul different from reason and appetite is required. Like the soldiers of the ideal state, passion should be the ally of the governing component.

The basic conflict for Plato is still between bodily desires and intellect, between sense and reason, but an earlier dualism has been modified by locating the division which follows from incarnation within the soul itself. At the same time Plato saw the possibility of reconciliation within the divided self, for he asserts that the two lower parts have “following reason” as their function (Republic IX, 586e). In rational choice (prohairesis) all parts of the soul conspire together for a united good.

Nor is the rule of reason an exercise of cold intellection. The rational part of the soul is a lover of wisdom, and distinguished from the appetitive part not by the absence of all desire but by having a different object of desire: the absolute, intelligible good.

"Logos" is ambiguous. Even Mocchus, and Leucippus, and Democritus -- the first Physical determinists -- allowed for "logos". This is "ratio". The idea is that even in a chaotic circumstance where there is no control of anything, a logos can be grasped. The Platonic tradition captures this cosmic 'logos' and places it within a tripartite theory of the mind.

Seeing that Homer was pretty confused in terms of philosophical psychological views (he was a blind poet) at least Plato knew how to spell 'epithumia' correctly! Concuspiscentia.

We say,

"I will an icecream"

This is confusing. Grecians would not use 'will' here. It would be epithumia. Yet, we do think that 'willing' and 'desiring' are connecting. By the time of the rationalist Greeks (lip service to rationalism; they knew irrationalism loomed large) they had managed to narrow down the 'will' and get epithumia ('pathos') out of the picture altogether, or almost.

It could still enslave people. Vide Frede on self-enslaving.