Ancient Philosophy of the Self (eBook)

Pauliina Remes is a lecturer in theoretical philosophy, Uppsala University, Sweden (2007-), and a docent in theoretical philosophy, University of Helsinki. She is the author of Plotinus on Self: The Philosophy of the¨'We' (Cambridge University Press, 2007) as well as the co-editor of Heinämaa & Lähteenmäki & Remes: Consciousness: From Perception to Reflection in the History of Philosophy (Springer 2007). Remes had her PhD in King’s College, London, and was a visiting scholar in Wolfson College, Oxford (2003). She has worked as a post-doctoral researcher in Helsinki and been a member of several high-profile research groups and centers of excellence in Scandinavia. Currently, she is a member of the project Understanding Agency (Uppsala University, Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, Sweden), and invited to a status of a visiting scholar by the Center of Advanced Study in Oslo, Norway (2009-2010).  Juha Sihvola is the director of the Helsinki Collegium of Advanced Studies since August 2004 and Professor of History at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, since 2000. He has pursued postdoctoral studies at Brown University (1991-92) and was a Junior Fellow at the Center for Hellenic Studies, Washington D.C. (1994-95). He is adjunct professor of the history of philosophy at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Helsinki. Sihvola has worked on various topics in ancient philosophy and the later classical tradition, especially Aristotle and Hellenistic Philosophy. He has also written books and articles on ethical and political issues. Sihvola is a member of the Research Council for Culture and Society at the Academy of Finland, and a member of the committee for Finnish translation of Aristotle's works.

Acknowledgements 6
Contents 7
Contributors 9
Introduction 10
Part I Approaches to Self and Person in Antiquity 20
Graeco-Roman Varieties of Self 21
The Ancient Self: Issues and Approaches 43
Assumptions of Normativity: Two Ancient Approaches to Agency 65
Part II From Plato to Plotinus 83
Socratic Authority 84
Protean Socrates: Mythical Figures in the Euthydemus 115
Aristotle on the Individuality of Self 130
What Kind of Self Can a Greek Sceptic Have? 143
Inwardness and Infinity of Selfhood: From Plotinus to Augustine 159
Part IIIChristian and Islamic Themes 181
Philosophy of the Self in the Apostle Paul 182
Two Kinds of Subjectivity in Augustine’s Confessions: Memory and Identity, and the Integrated Self 198
The Self as Enemy, the Self as Divine: A Crossroads in the Development of Islamic Anthropology 207
Locating the Self Within the Soul – Thirteenth- Century Discussions 227
Bibliography 244
Name Index 256
Subject Index 259
Index Locorum 262

Socratic Authority (p. 77-78)

Raphael Woolf

We are more able to observe our neighbours than ourselves Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics 1169b33-4 Four Theses about Socrates If anything is clear in the interpretation of Plato’s Socrates, it is that he lays claim to a certain epistemic superiority over others, despite his famous disavowal of knowledge (or wisdom). His superiority turns out to consist precisely in the fact that he is aware that he lacks knowledge, whereas others mistakenly think they are wise.

What is more, Socrates can show that others are not wise, notwithstanding their own view of themselves. So it is natural to suppose that Socrates’ epistemic superiority can be explicated (at least in part) in terms of third-person authority. Socrates, as the inventor of the elenchus, and in virtue of his capacity to wield that formidable weapon for the critical testing of beliefs, is better able to judge the mind of another than the subject is himself, revealing intellectual confusion in place of an imagined wisdom.

If this captures something of Socrates’ distinctiveness (albeit in a rough and ready way), then the succession of elenctic defeats that Plato portrays him inflicting on a variety of interlocutors seems merely to confirm the point. But I want to argue that the appearance is deceptive, and to demonstrate that Socrates’ epistemic edge is confined at most to a certain first-person authority. The position may be set out as follows:

1. Socrates is able correctly to identify his own state of mind: he is ignorant, at least to the extent of lacking knowledge, and is (veridically) aware that he is.2
2. No one else is able correctly to identify their own state of mind. So Socrates is unique in this regard. To the extent that others have a view about their own state it is false, since they take themselves to have knowledge of matters on which they are ignorant (particularly in the moral sphere).
3. Socrates is able correctly to identify the state of mind of others: that is, in particular, to show (using elenchus) that they are ignorant in matters of which they take themselves to have knowledge.
4. Socrates is not the only one able correctly to identify the state of mind of others.

So he is not unique in this regard. He has plenty of imitators who can do this too. If this account is right (I shall proceed to elaborate and justify it below) there is a certain asymmetry at work. With the exception of Socrates, there is a dearth of firstperson authority, insofar as the claims of others to have knowledge are defeasible when subject to examination. By the same token, third-person authority is relatively commonplace. Anyone who can competently wield the elenchus has the authority in principle to over-ride the claims of others that they have knowledge. But one wielder of elenchus – Socrates himself – makes first-person claims that, as we shall see, are resistant to challenge even by the highest of outside authorities, namely god.