In Dialogue with the Greeks

Volume I: The Presocratics and Reality

Rush Rhees, D.Z. Phillips, D.Z. Phillips

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351964579
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

This first of two volumes on the Greeks by Rush Rhees addresses the central philosophical question: In what sense does philosophy investigate reality? In answering this question, Rhees brings the work of the Presocratics into close relation with contemporary philosophy. D.Z. Phillips's editorial commentary is particularly helpful in assisting the reader with their bearings as they approach the text and in elucidating the developments in Rhees's thinking. How is the philosophical investigation of reality different from that of science and can it be said that science investigates aspects of reality, whereas philosophy investigates reality as such? In this first volume Rhees affirms that most of the Presocratics seemed to be seeking a science of being qua being, looking for an essence of reality that simply is. Rhees asks, if the existence of reality cannot be denied, then how can it be asserted either? Does it make sense to say that reality exists? If we speak of something existing, we speak of the conditions of its existence that are independent of the 'something' in question, so how can this be said about reality? What conditions can be other than reality itself? Rhees argues that whatever unity reality has, it cannot be the unity of a thing. Rhees brings out how individual Presocratics are aware of their predecessors' difficulties, only to fall prey to new difficulties of their own. Rhees suggests that what is philosophically deep in their questionings can be found in discussing the relation of discourse and reality. Does what we say to each other depend on an underlying logic that determines what can and cannot be said, or on a system of unchanging meanings; or is the distinction between sense and nonsense rooted in our actual ways of thinking and acting? In discussing these Wittgensteinian themes, Rhees is not simply elucidating the Presocratics but is in dialogue with them.

Chapter 1

‘All Things’

Some philosophers have objected to the claim that a concern with language is central in philosophy.¹ Bertrand Russell thought that a preoccupation with language gets away from the really important questions. It is true that a concern with language can be trivial, having no relation to deep human interests and their relation to the world. But we shall find that a concern with language in philosophy has been there from the beginning.

In the first book of his Metaphysics Aristotle discusses what first philosophy really is. He gives a number of definitions including ‘the science of being qua being’. Biology, physics and so on study specific things, but Aristotle’s definition refers to ‘things’ not of any particular class, but merely to the study of ‘being’. To explain this he discusses the views of his predecessors. In the third chapter of the first book he says that the early thinkers did not distinguish between efficient cause and material cause. What a thing is accounts for changes in things, but this makes no allowance for efficient causality:

that of which all things that are consist, and from which they first come to be, and into which they are finally resolved (the substance remaining, but changing in its modifications), this they say is the element and the principle of things, and therefore they think nothing is either generated or destroyed, since this sort of entity is always conserved, as we say Socrates neither comes to be absolutely when he comes to be beautiful or musical, nor ceases to be when he loses these characteristics, because the substratum, Socrates himself, remains. So they say nothing else comes to be or ceases to be; for there must be some entity – either one or more than one – from which all other things come to be, it being conserved.²

In the works of the Presocratics, as elsewhere in philosophy, we find a deep desire to say that reality is unchanging. If you express this reality in terms of some constant process, this naturally suggests that that process is all-embracing. But, then, how can we say anything about it? On the other hand, if you say ‘all things are in process’ without specifying an all-embracing process, have you said what all things are, in the sense of specifying what all things have in common? Your claim, although not without difficulty, is a claim about the form of question that can be asked; a question about a form of discourse. What would be meant by a change in reality, or in ‘what is’? A change in the ultimate furniture of the world? This would be almost something like a change in the logical structure of reality.

There are difficulties here with the notion of ‘the world’, comparable to difficulties with the notion of ‘the visual field’. ‘All that is visible’ does not mean ‘everything that anyone can see’; that is, it does not refer to the contents of actual visual fields. I can, of course, speak of ‘everything I can see’ and mean a particular field of objects. ‘The world is infinite’ simply means that there are no limits, in the sense that it makes no sense to talk of limits beyond which no addition is possible. Similarly, it is confused to think of ‘all that is visible’ as a particular mass of material. Again, if it takes all sorts to make a world, in what sense, if any, can we say, ‘The world is one’? And in what sense, if any, can one give an account of its ‘coming to be’ or speak of it as ‘existing’? Is the unity of ‘the world’ the unity of a ‘thing’?

One feature of the early Greek philosophers is the generality of their accounts. The account they advance has a universal character.

Others say that the earth rests on water. For this is the most ancient account we have received, which they say was given by Thales the Milesian, that it stays in place through floating like a log or some other such thing (for none of these rests by nature on air, but on water) – as though the same argument did not apply to the water supporting the earth as to the earth itself. (Aristotle, De Caelo, B13, 294a28; KRS 84)

This is general, but in what sense? It is supposed to have a bearing on the development of animals, plants and so on, and yet it is not a scientific theory like ‘Hydrogen is a basic universal substance’. Boyle may have said the latter in explaining, in terms of physical laws, how other substances came out of it. True, Thales’ view was one which could be criticised, but not in the way a hypothesis in physics or chemistry may be criticised by saying, for example, ‘Here is something shown empirically not to have come out of water’. Neither is it a theory which could be corroborated.

Aristotle mentions empirical observations in support of Thales:

perhaps taking this supposition from seeing the nurture of all things to be moist, and the warm itself coming-to-be from this and living by this (that from which they come-to-be being the principle of all things) – taking the supposition both from this and from the seeds of all things having a moist nature, water being the natural principle of moist things. (Aristotle, Metaphysics, A3, 983b6; fr. 85, p. 88)

But Thales’ view is more akin to a kind of geometry than it is to physics. It is saying: here is a phraseology in terms of which you can talk about things, compare them and, in an important sense, understand them. The ideas of physics can be tested and challenged empirically, whereas, in geometry, you cannot do this. Geometry provides a grammar for discussing physics; something in terms of which things can be compared. It is as if one were saying, ‘Water is the perfect substance, in that there is clearly seen the three stages of all materials – solid, volatile and liquid. Thus we can understand other things by comparing them with water.’ Here you are offered a kind of grammar. This is the character of Thales’ statement.

It is no criticism to say that in putting forward a geometry or grammar Thales tells us nothing actually about things. The distinction between referring to something actual, or not doing so, cannot be made at this level. In saying ‘all things are water’, Thales is not saying that he fails to see any difference between water and land, for example. He would argue that land is a form of water, similar to ice being a form of water. The geometry allows for variety and differences as effects of the same general principle. To bring this out, he makes use of the transformation of water into ice and steam, and further into rocks, land and so on.

This general idea of transformation went right through Thales’ works and those of other Greek philosophers. Kinêsis refers, not merely to the motion of a body from one place to another, but to the idea of transformation. For example, chemical change would be kinêsis. In this way, reference is made to universal, eternal motion of which the transformation from water into ice is one illustration. Thales, in giving us the general form of all things, was giving us the idea of the general motion of all things – a grammar and a geometry. A question arises: Can you get varieties of motion from a motion containing no variety? How can this be explained or made intelligible? This problem was recognised early on. One is trying to determine (a) what is common between two forms – for example, ice and stone, and (b) what causes the difference between them. This (a) is extremely difficult, even in what is common to all inorganic things, all living things and so on.

What is common to all crystals may be water. But it is far more difficult to determine what is then common between the crystals and the water. Then we ask – what is common to all things?! This is supremely difficult; since you are floored in any attempt to say how you know what is common. We have to determine first what are things. What does this say? This is the kind of difficulty involved here – what does it mean to be a ‘thing’? How can you recognise or describe a ‘thing’?

Anaximander recognised something of these difficulties,³ because he wanted to give an account of that ‘out of which all things come’, in which ‘all things consist and into which they pass away’. He is looking for something that has not got the properties of anything at all. Thus he spoke of the boundless, or the unlimited, or maybe the indeterminate – there are difficulties of translation here (to apeiron). It is so called because it does not have any of the characteristics of the particular forms of material issuing from it.

The notion of possibility is formed more definitely in relation to this notion. The particular forms are in ‘it’, ‘potentially’ (Aristotle’s word, not Anaximander’s). Anaximander speaks of ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ being separated ‘out of the boundless’, so suggesting that they were there before. This sounds like the decomposition of one compound into parts, but this was not Anaximander’s idea. What he called ‘the boundless’ plays the same role as ‘water’ did for Thales, in that not only do all things come out of it, but in that all things consist of it. It is not destroyed, as in decomposition. It always remains imperishable – always the same. It cannot be discovered or tested empirically – it can’t be destroyed. But this ‘can’t’ is not empirical as in ‘the Siegfried line cannot be destroyed’. The ‘can’t’ here is a logical ‘can’t’.

These matters are connected to the relation of things to language. Language must refer to something which can’t be destroyed, otherwise you could never say anything is destroyed. It is involved in the idea that if language has reality, your words must refer to something. For this to be possible, when you talk about the destruction of things, for example, you must assume that some things are indestructible – the meaning of your words. Russell’s ‘theory of descriptions’ speaks of this. Wittgenstein, in his Philosophical Investigations, uses as an example the sentence: ‘Excalibur has a sharp blade’.⁴ He says that the proposition would mean something even if ‘Excalibur’ had been destroyed. How is this possible when there isn’t anything to which ‘Excalibur’ refers? The same applies to: ‘Excalibur has been broken to bits’. Here ‘Excalibur’ refers to something non-existent. How can it have meaning then? It seems that the proposition must refer to some indestructible element which has not been destroyed – language. Otherwise we would never be sure of using words with any significance at all. These considerations are behind the notion of the nature of the world, the nature of things.

Thales and Anaximander, in trying to give an account of coming into being and passing away, had to take the notion of ‘water’ and ‘the boundless’, respectively, as that which cannot pass away. Therefore ‘the boundless’ is not decomposed. It separates out into a change of form.

The notion of the substance of the world, for example, water, as in Thales, is meant as a ‘first principle’ or as ‘primary’. If we think of this in physical terms, there is a great difficulty. For example, if water is in a fluid state, why should it ever be changed? Or if one appeals to the fixed stars, why should there be any other kind of motion? Does ‘everything being destroyed’ make sense, as Anaximander claimed? This must mean that there is something not included in ‘everything destructible’.

If we think of all these matters in geometrical terms things are very different. They show how all different forms of motion can be thought of as circular motion. Compare Newton describing all bodily motions as variations of a straight line. Again, he was not making an empirical observation, but putting forward a geometry for talking of such motions. Similarly, to speak of transformations of water – all other motions are variants of this – would mean, according to Thales, that other transformations are seen as variants of what we mean by ‘water’.

It is in trying to present a geometry, in terms of which we can attempt to understand things, that there will be a need for something to always remain the same. This is necessary for intelligibility. There must be a distinction between truth and error in terms of which a mistake can be recognised. There may be occasions when one accepts that one can (possibly) be mistaken, but in other cases ‘mistaken’ would not make sense. If, in these latter cases, it turned out to be different from what one supposed, one would say ‘I must be going crazy’, rather than ‘I must be mistaken’. Wittgenstein gives many examples of this in On Certainty.⁵

So when we need a distinction between truth and error, we also need a distinction between the possible and the impossible. The Greeks were aware of this. The whole of philosophy can be discussed in terms of ‘can’ and ‘must’. There are limits to possibility. This is connected with the idea of ‘what has always been, and must always be’.

The tendency to explain or find the origin of things in what is simpler, or to derive everything from ‘the one’, go together. It is connected with the search for generality, and the conviction that one must give a single account of ‘being’ if one is to give an account of being at all, which is a strange conception in all conscience.

If we see the connection between ‘what there is’ and ‘saying something’, we can see how affirmation and denial depend on a commensurability of what is said, if anything is to be said at all.

If we say philosophy is concerned with the first principles of things,⁶ it is still not clear what we learn from it because an understanding of first principles is so different from most of what we learn through investigation. Perhaps philosophers have not seen that always. They have spoken of philosophy as something like a science, but one that studies things at the highest point of generality. Yet this is really a difference which changes the whole character of the enquiry, and I would add that people would not have sought wisdom in philosophy were that not so.

To ask about the first principles of things is one way of asking about the nature of things or the nature of reality. That is what the early Greek philosophers were asking when they enquired what it is from which all things come to be and of which they all consist. Because they asked about ‘all things’, this was different from any question in astronomy or any other science; and not just because it was more general. When Anaximenes says that all things are air, and that they are brought to be and formed by it by condensation and rarefaction, and that this condension and rarefaction is the general type of all change, it looks as though he were trying to give a general theory of matter and a general theory of motion. He may have thought of it that way himself. He may have thought it was the same sort of discussion as his discussion of the nature and movements of the sun and moon, and stars, and earth. It would be natural for him to do so if he spoke of ‘the heavens’ and ‘the cosmos’ in a way almost synonymous with ‘all things’. It would be natural then to think of an account of ‘all things’ as a cosmology. Apparently the Greek philosophers often thought of cosmology as an extension of astronomy. So that a search for the nature of reality would seem to be a search for the fundamental mechanism of things which operates in the world and explains why things operate as they do. And yet it is not that. If Anaximenes had wanted to give an account of a mechanism, however pervasive, he would not have needed to give an account of ‘all things’, nor would doing so help him.

Anaximenes said that all things are air. The original word can be translated as ‘atmosphere’. It is made up of particles which, at marked stages, condense to give mist, further water, further ice, further stone, and so on. When further rarefied one has a deeper atmos...