The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy

by A. A. Long

  On breaths begins with the style of a judicial inquiry: “All diseases have one and the same form and cause (idea/aitia). What this cause is I shall try to declare in the discourse that follows” (sect. 2). In this passage the author uses the word aitia as completely equivalent to the neuter form to aition. As if concluding his address to the jury, he writes:

  It is clear, then, that breaths are the most active factor in all diseases; all other things are concomitant and secondary causes (synaitia/metaitia), but I have shown that this is the cause (aition) of diseases. I promised to declare the cause of diseases, and I have shown that pneuma (inhaled air) has the greatest power both in other things and in the body of living creatures. I have let my discourse dwell on familiar ailments in which the hypothesis has shown itself correct, (sect. 15)

  This passage provides an extraordinary example of conceptual development formulated with the help of largely traditional language. The style is really what a contemporary would associate with the logos of a sophist or attorney. An inquiry is initiated and an accusatory hypothesis is formulated; at the end, the public and the court have been shown that the hypothesis is true, that the suspect is indeed culpable, and that the others charged are at most accomplices. (Synaition and metaition are often found in this sense in tragedy.)17 On the other side, we have here the lineaments of a causal inquiry that is quite precise and strong, capable of exactly specifying the principal causal factor (to aition) and distinguishing it from causes that are merely concomitant and accessory. In this respect and also in its recourse to a hypothesis that awaits confirmation, this text of On breaths anticipates the celebrated passage of Plato’s Phaedo (99a ff.), which is rightly regarded as the earliest philosophical reflection on causality. There too we find the distinction between the true aition and concomitant conditions (99b2-4) and the recourse to a hypothesis (100a3-4).

  It is fairly probable (but uncertain owing to chronology) that the extreme causal reductionism of On breaths was one of the targets of Ancient medicine (1.1), where those “who introduce one or two hypotheses” and who “have a reduced conception of the causal principle” are criticized.18 We shall have more to say about this. In the De arte, the usage of aitia/aitios still preserves a strict judicial or sophistical sense. Criticizing those who unjustly charge doctors with the death of their patients, the author, as the perfect advocate for the defence, exclaims (sect. 7), “They assign blame (aitia) to the one who is in no way culpable (aitios), while they allow the guilty to go free.” But in the sphere of epistemology, this treatise does make an important conceptual development. The author writes (sect. 6) that there are no spontaneous “cures,” because in the context of that which is explicable causally (dia ti), spontaneity (automaton) disappears, and that is precisely the context of medicine, a context in which causality (dia ti) governs phenomena and makes them therefore predictable.

  It is clear that at the end of the fifth century in medical thought of a sophistic tenor, the causal structure of explanations in medicine had arrived, for the first time, at a level of appreciable conceptual generalization. It is in the medical context that this process achieves its final refinement.

  ON ANCIENT MEDICINE

  Ancient medicine, begins with a polemic against those who, “on the basis of one or two hypotheses,” simplify the archên tês aitiês in a way that is too reductionist.18 This expression could certainly be interpreted in the traditional way as the “culpable starting-point” for the onset of diseases (compare, for instance, the ancient charge (palaia aitia) that Oedipus mentions in reference to the murder of King Laius, Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannos 109). But the context suggests a different interpretation, that is, “the starting-point of the causal process”: in the hypotheses in question, elements or qualities of a physical kind, such as hot and cold, are viewed as the initiating cause of all diseases, like the “breaths” (pneumata/physai) in the similar context of De flatibus.

  The conceptual divide between culpability or responsibility and causality appears definitely to have been crossed (in the sense indicated by Frede in our citation on p. 274) in another crucial passage of this treatise: “We must surely consider the cause (aitia) of each complaint to be those things (tauta) the presence of which of necessity produces a complaint of a specific kind, which ceases when they change into another combination” (19.3, tr. Jones).19 This passage has generated some discussion, but there is no doubt that we encounter here the clearest, the most general, and the most conceptually precise idea of causality to be found in fifth-century thought (assuming, of course, that this is the chronology of Ancient medicine).

  A cause can be considered such (1) when its presence produces a certain effect, (2) when this effect is necessarily determined and in a univocal manner, and (3) when its absence or alteration determines the failure of the effect. All this precisely anticipates not only the discussion already mentioned from Plato’s Phaedo but also the definitions of cause more rigorously stated in Aristotle (Metaph. V.2 1013a31-32) – a cause is “the maker of what is made and the changer of what is changed,” and even in Sextus Empiricus (PH III.14) – “A cause is that by whose activity an effect is produced.”20

  Ancient medicine, then, seems to inaugurate a new history of causal thinking, incorporating and completing the slow and uncertain process found throughout the fifth century in philosophy, history, and medicine itself. There is an element of continuity but what stand out more prominently are innovation and rupture at the level of rigour and capacity for conceptual generalization. The radical novelty of this treatise has not been adequately appreciated up to now because, as I began by saying, we have been accustomed to giving too optimistic an interpretation of causality to various aspects of fifth-century culture, overlooking conceptions that are actually tightly linked to the ethical and juridical sphere of culpability, responsibility, and imputation.

  One can understand why, in view of Ancient medicine’s radical innovations, some scholars have proposed to make the work completely post-Platonic, dating it towards the later years of the fourth century.21 This theory is based on an erroneous historical assumption, which can be rapidly undermined, and on some plausible but quite inconclusive reasons. The assumption is that a doctor could not be the leading figure in such a conceptual development, and therefore it must depend on a philosophical thinker. Yet, on the contrary, it is perfectly legitimate to suppose that many philosophical texts are inspired by theories that originated in medicine, as Plato himself says explicitly in the Phaedrus.22 So we are quite entitled to think that this is the case in the connections between the Phaedo and Ancient medicine in regard to reflection on causality. It is true, of course, that the traditional dating of the treatise (no later than the end of the fifth century) does require us to assign to it absolute originality, making it unique for its time. Such originality, however, pertains not only to the work’s theory on causality and criticism of the medical use of “hypotheses”; it also contains (20.1) the earliest instance, to our knowledge, of the word philosophia.23 The author’s context is a criticism of Empedocles, whom he takes as the typical representative of the inquiry into nature with its theory of origins in terms of material elements. This is a very early doxographical allusion, which would anticipate the criticisms both of Plato and of Aristotle. Furthermore (though this cannot be discussed here), Ancient medicine gives a full idea of the historical development of medical knowledge, as achieved over time by proceeding from its own principles and following a particular method.24 This outlook too is quite exceptional in the context of fifth-century thought (and not only there).

  I do not intend, in making those observations, to reopen the debate on Diller’s proposals about the dating of Ancient medicine, proposals he himself has now partially retracted. My purpose is simply to point out that this work constitutes a radical turn between the thinking of the fifth century and the philosophical elaboration of the fourth, both in the area of causality and on various epistemological issues.

  In conclusion, my study
has shown that it is not the case, as has been proposed, that the transition from the words aitia/aitios to the adjectival substantive to aition signifies a growth in conceptual generalization. This idea was probably suggested because of Stoic terminology, but in fact Thucydides, Ancient medicine, and Aristotle himself all use the substantive and the adjective without any difference of meaning.

  There is a more important philosophical point. Aristotle did not completely follow Ancient medicine’s rigorous definitions of causality.25 His own definition of the “types of causality” in Physics II, in Metaphysics V, and elsewhere, looks back to the entire elaborations of the fifth century and makes from their uncertainties an element that is rich and conceptually complex. The answer to the question “why,” in his view, should not be limited to giving the productive or efficient cause along the lines adopted by the theory of Ancient medicine and as the Stoics later thought.26 His use of the idea of “end” or “goal” in causal explanation (as already in Plato’s Phaedo) restores the moral and political context of “motives” and “reasons” that had been the property of fifth-century thought and that Ancient medicine, in its drastically rigorous way, seems to have dismissed as a piece of foolishness.27

  NOTES

  1 Lloyd [110] 49. He does, however (53–55), clearly state that the development of an “idea of causality” as such must be sought in the historians and doctors, and he also emphasizes the primary moral significance (tied to culpability) of words like aitia/aitios. See also Lloyd [108] 230ff., and on the juridical origins of discussions of responsibility, G. E. R. Lloyd, Adversaries and Authorities: Investigations into Ancient Greek and Chinese Science (Cambridge/New York, 1996), 100ff.

  2 Jaeger [102] vol.1, 393. Jaeger insists on the causal significance of prophasis, because he is naturally familiar with the moral/juridical sense of aitia, ibid. 161.

  3 Williams [138] 58.

  4 Frede [504] 132. His article is primarily concerned with the Stoic conception of causality.

  5 Cf. DK 68 B222. DK 68 B118 (a late testimony of Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria, by Eusebius) contains the word aitiologia, but it is clear from the context that the passage is not a textual citation of Democritus: “Democritus himself, so people say, was in the habit of saying that he would rather discover a single causal explanation (aitiologia) than be come king of the Persians.” For a much more sanguine assessment of Democritus’ interest in causality, see Taylor in this volume p. 187.

  6 On this passage, cf. Said [519] 186 ff. For uses of aitia/aitios in Antiphon, cf. III.2.9; II.2.3, 6; II.4.10.

  7 Adkins [82] 126. However, this work is fundamental for the matters discussed in this chapter.

  8 Athenian law, starting from Draco’s code, had introduced a radical distinction between voluntary and involuntary homicide, but morality on its religious basis of culpability and pollution continued to resist this. The definitive statement on this question was probably Aristotle’s treatment of responsibility in NE III. 1-7. For legal aspects of this in the fifth century, cf. Jones [103] and E. Cantarella, Studi sull’omicidio in diritto greco e romano (Milan, 1976).

  9 See Irigoin [505] 173–80.

  10 I follow the interpretation of K. Weidauer, Thucydides und die Hippokratischen Schriften: der Einfluss der Medizin auf Zielsetzung und Darstellungsweise des Geschichtwerks (Heidelberg, 1954) 8–20. See also Deichgraeber [500] 209–24, and Rawlings [518].

  11 For other uses of prophasis meaning “grounds for accusation,” “adduced reason,” “pretext,” cf. III.13, VI.105.2. That the word cannot mean “cause” is confirmed by Thucydides’ analysis of the plague at Athens in II.49.2: “Those who did have any disease previously all caught the plague in the end. Others, however, were affected for no prophasis,” that is, without any previous condition or clear reason to explain it. For an interesting parallel, cf. Epidemics III.3 where the author, just like Thucydides, writes that some were affected by the disease “in an explicable way (meta prophasios), but others not.” On causality in the Epidemics, cf. Diller [502] and di Benedetto [499], esp. 317.

  12 Cf. for example I.11.1, II.65.8, III.82.8.

  13 It is probably close to the Anaxagorean group; see Vegetti [522].

  14 Starting with Littré 1839 – vol.1, 453, the causal interpretation of the “sign” has become widespread; cf. especially Lonie [512] 79ff.; Perrilli [517]; Marzullo [514], a fundamental work. On the other side, cf. Vegetti [523] 76 ff.

  15 The text of Jones (1923), physin men echei kai prophasin, justifies the translation “has a natural cause.”

  16 On the connection between Airs, waters and places and the Phaedrus, cf. Mansfeld [513]; and for the influence of the same Hippocratic work on the Republic, Vegetti [524].

  17 For metaitios, with the sense of “complicitious,” or “co-responsible,” cf. Aeschylus, Agamemnon 811, Libation Bearers 100, Eumenides 199, 465, Euripides, Suppliants 26. For synaitios, in reference to double responsibility, human and divine, cf. Agamemnon 1116, and see Said [519] 177ff.

  18 On the question of chronology, cf. Lloyd [154] 49–69.

  19 The word tauta is interpreted abstractly and generally by the majority of translators (Jones, Festugière, Eggers Lan, Lara Nava, Vegetti.) But, Jouanna [506] 201 n. 144, following Muri [515], takes it to refer to the preceding words, “these humours.” That interpretation is invalidated by what follows where not only the humours but also hot and cold are the causes of other diseases. Tauta, then, includes both humours, temperature states, and eventually every cause of disease. The importance of the passage, with its anticipation of Bacon and Mill, is signalled by Lloyd [110] 54 n. 232.

  20 With regard to Plato, cf. Phaedo 96a9-10, “I thought it wonderful to know the causes of each thing, why it comes to be and why it passes away and why it exists,” with Ancient medicine 20.2, where medicine is assigned the task of discovering “what man is and by what causes he comes to be.” Compare also Phaedo 96C7-8 (“Why does a man grow … through eating and drinking”) with Ancient medicine 20.3 (“what man is in relation to what he eats and drinks”). The context of these passages in Plato is analysis of the true forms of causality in polemic with Anaxagoras.

  21 The hypothesis has been formulated by Diller [501], though he does not make any mention of the work’s conception of cause, and rather insists on its attack on the method of hypothesis that is treated in the Phaedo. Diller’s suggestion has not found favour, and he has partly retracted it, cf. Diller [503], where he regards Ancient medicine as a work composed in the transition from sophistic thought to Athenian philosophy, and says: “In Ancient medicine … medicine appears to be grounded on the understanding of causal connection” (92-93). Neither Longrigg [510] nor Nickel [516] offers anything significantly novel on the issue, though they both study Ancient medicine in connection with pre-Platonic thought.

  22 Cf. Phaedrus 270c: “Consider, then, what Hippocrates and true discourse say about nature,” and for discussion of this passage, see Vegetti [522] 97 ff., and Mansfeld [513].

  23 This has not traditionally been accepted as the first occurrence of philosophia because of the belief that the word was of Pythagorean origin, but that idea is contested on good grounds by Burkert [205].

  24 Cf. sect. 2: “Medicine has long had all its means to hand, and has discovered both a principle and a method, through which the discoveries made during a long period are many and excellent, while full discovery will be made, if the inquirer be competent, conduct his researches with knowledge of the discoveries already made, and make them his starting point.” (tr. Jones)

  25 On causality in Aristotle, see Sorabji [520].

  26 For the Stoic tendency to reduce causality to a single “efficient” form, see Frede [504] and also J. J. Duhot, La conception stoicienne de la causalité (Paris, 1988) and A. Ioppolo, “Il concetto di causa nella filosofia ellenistica e romana,” ANRW (1994) 4493–4545.

  27 This chapter has been translated by the editor from the author’s original Italian text.

  PAUL WOODR
UFF

  14 Rhetoric and relativism: Protagoras and Gorgias

  Protagoras and Gorgias are the most significant of the early sophists. Although philosophy as we understand it was not their chief business, they taught views and methods of argument that have fascinated subsequent philosophers. In their own context they exhibit the spirit of the new learning, the cultural and intellectual revolution of the fifth century B.C. in Greece. This revolution – or, rather, the reaction against it – is illustrated in Aristophanes’ comic play, The Clouds, by a character enrolling in a sophistic school in order to learn the “unjust argument.” This, he has heard, can win a jury’s favour for the worst of offenders. The syllabus, he finds, involves science as well as rhetoric, both laughable in this satire. What is not laughable is the popular animosity against the school that leads to its incineration (at least one student included), a grim sign of the strong feelings that would later contribute to the death of the man whose name Aristophanes uses for the leader of his imaginary school – Socrates.

  Sophists

  Socrates, as Plato takes pains to show us, would have had no place in such a school, for he did not pursue forensic rhetoric or natural science, did not teach anything for a fee, and did not travel. The sophists, by contrast, travelled among Greek cities, taught adult or young adult students, and received substantial fees, especially for dispensing the power of words. The word sophistês in its earliest uses referred to wise men such as poets, and it still occurred in the fourth century B.C. as a general term for philosophers and orators. Under Plato’s influence, however, the word came to have its narrower scope and its special association with rhetoric and relativism. This is misleading, for among the subjects taught by sophists were oratory, ethics, political theory, law, history, mnemonics, literature, mathematics, and astronomy. Some sophists dealt also with metaphysics and epistemology. Others pursued an anthropological interest in the origins of human culture, which (in contrast to earlier mythologies) they attributed to human invention. The sophists’ message that progress came through technological and political developments advanced their frankly self-serving claim that education was among the greatest public goods.