![]() In the following I shall first make a few comments on White’s historiography and then raise some points about the Greek philosophers. Finally, White argues that Hellenistic philosophers, in particular Epicureans and Stoics, are harmonizing eudaimonists, but, he claims, this marks the ultimate irony, since those moderns who favor harmonizing eudaimonism are not at all partial to Hellenistic philosophy. White argues that, while it is unclear whether Socrates is a harmonizing eudaimonist, neither Plato nor Aristotle is, but for different reasons. There then follows a chapter apiece on Plato, Aristotle and Hellenistic philosophers. In order to pave the way for his thesis that the Greeks could and did recognize conflicts between different rational considerations, and to show that this occurred more in the classical period than later, White discusses imperatival language in ancient Greek poetry, drama, history and philosophy. According to White, none of these philosophers have a correct view of what the ancient Greeks thought, and they all, like Winckelmann, mistakenly treat classical Greek thought as homogeneous and paradigmatic. Finally, there are other modern philosophers, for example, Anscombe, Williams and MacIntyre, who think that ancient philosophical thought is significantly different from our own. White argues that Hegel’s views on harmony in the Greek polis spawned both these views. There are two modern Hegelian strategies developed in response to the Kantian view, according to White, the fusionist strategy according to which one’s own good just is identical with the good of others, and the inclusivist strategy according to which one’s own good includes the good of others. In White’s view, discussion of Greek ethics has now come to be dominated by Kantians and Hegelians, with Hegelians gaining the upper hand. In the nineteenth and twentieth century the debate continued: According to White, Kantians, for example, Sidgwick and Prichard, argued that Greek eudaimonism is mistaken, and hegelians, for example, Green and other British idealists, thought that Greek harmonizing eudaimonism is correct. On White’s account, when Kant suggested that happiness may indeed conflict with something beyond itself, reason, and that inclination and duty may provide conflicting considerations, those who opposed him, notably Schiller and Hegel, relied on a harmonizing eudaimonist interpretation of ancient Greek philosophy to make their case. According to this view, which White calls “harmonizing eudaimonism”, (a) each human being has a single ultimate rational aim, happiness ( eudaimonia) and (b) all worthwhile aims are harmoniously subsumed under this one aim in such a way that (c) happiness cannot conflict with any other (rational) aim beyond itself. Modern philosophers are unwittingly heir to this tradition when they attribute to all the ancient Greek philosophers a matching philosophical view aimed at minimizing conflicts in practical reasoning. The book addresses a broader readership than specialists in ancient Greek philosophy.Īccording to White, the historical story goes as follows: Europeans of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, disillusioned with what they saw as the modern condition of disharmony and fragmentation, had uncritical admiration for what they considered to be the harmony of ancient Greece, its culture, art, sculpture, architecture and political institutions. ![]() By tracing views about ancient Greek philosophy from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century, White also aims to convince his readers of the importance of historiography. xiii) to show how the idea gained currency and why it is mistaken. White’s aim is to debunk the idea that there is a homogeneous group, “the Greeks”, who held such a contrasting view, and to present “something like a prolegomenon to a history of Greek ethics-a piece of ground-clearing” (p. 2 According to White, modern philosophers are equally ridiculous when they look to the past and suppose that the main aim of ancient Greek philosophers was to show that all worthwhile human aims are in harmony with each other, in contrast with moderns who are far more aware of conflict. 1 White describes how the influential eighteenth century German scholar Johann Joachim Winckelmann saw in this statue (which Winckelmann mistakenly thought to stem from the time of Alexander the Great) the harmony and serenity which he associated with the ancient Greeks, in contrast with the disharmony of his own age. ![]() On the front cover of Nicholas White’s new book, Individual and Conflict in Greek Ethics, is a picture of William Blake’s rendition of the famous statue of Laocoon and his sons in violent conflict with two gigantic snakes. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |