[lit-ideas] Re: : Hartiana
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 17 Mar 2015 09:40:48 +0100
Unfortunately it seems that no works by Carneades are extant and his
lectures are known only indirectly from later sources, so that we will
probably never know if he engaged in "conceptual analysis."
O.K.
On Tue, Mar 17, 2015 at 9:21 AM, Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
> >Cato was rapid in recognizing the potential danger of Carneades's
> 'conceptual-analysis' of 'justice':>
>
> I suspect 'conceptual-analysis' is not Cato's own expression, or even a
> fair synonym for something of his own, but purely an ideologically driven
> interpolation from someone from a much later school of thought that
> believes in the value and essential role of 'conceptual analysis'.
>
> This doctrinaire interpolating would be akin to a Vulgar Marxist approach
> that alleged that Cato recognised, in Carneades' lecture, the "false
> consciousness" of the idea of Roman 'justice' and its incompatibility with
> 'true' justice such we would have only after, dialectically, we had
> overthrown the Romans by proletarian revolution and progressed through the
> stage of the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' to true stateless freedom.
> While such a Vulgar Marxist approach would no doubt seem laughable to those
> not of that school, the widespread yet mistaken belief in the value and
> role of 'conceptual analysis' means that currently many university educated
> people will read the interpolation 'conceptual-analysis' without batting an
> eyelid, and without recognising it as a gross interpolation that begs a
> whole series of important questions as to the value and role of 'conceptual
> analysis'.
>
> 'O how blind we are to that which we fail to see' - Cato.*
>
> Dnl
> *Actually, just like the attribution of 'conceptual analysis', this
> attribution is entirely made up. But you were taken in for a second weren't
> you?
>
>
> On Tuesday, 17 March 2015, 6:48, Adriano Palma <Palma@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>
> Consider he blew grice and blew his nose at the same time. Is that a
> pragmatic contradiction? Breach of maxim? Hiding the truth?
>
> -----Original Message-----
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> Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Hartiana
>
> He cooked a meal carefully.
>
> He made the calculation carefully.
>
> In a message dated 3/16/2015 6:15:58 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
> omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx quotes:
>
> "In the "Retrospective Epilogue" to WoW (Way of Words), Grice speaks of
> Athenian dialectics, which he compares to Oxonian dialectics. He does not
> mention H. L. Hart, but he should!
>
> Mmm. Let me check. Hart is quoted only ONCE in WoW (Way of Words), on p.
> 7:
>
> "It seems a plausible suggestion," Grice says, "that part of what is
> required in order that A may be correctly said to have performed some
> operation (a calculation, the cooking of a meal) carefully is that A should
> have been receptive to (on alert for) circumstances in which the the
> venture might go astray (fail to reach the desired outcome), and that he
> should manifest, in such circumstances, a dispositon to take steps to
> maintain the course towards such an outcome. l have heard it maintained by
> H. L. A. Hart that such a condition as I have stated it is insufficient;
> that there is a further requirement, namely namely that the steps taken by
> the performer should be reasonable, individually and collectively."
>
> So, Grice is slightly having the cheek, as we might say, to quote an
> 'unpublication' by Hart. Strictly, Grice says that he as "heard it
> maintained by Hart". This is in 1967, at Harvard, where Hart had lectured a
> decade earlier.
>
> But if you think of it ("or even if you don't," as Geary writes), back in
> 1952 (in the review to J. Holloway's "Language and Intelligence"), Hart
> was citing an unpublication by Grice, and we have Hart having heard it
> maintained by Grice that smoke means fire. So perhaps that is what Brits
> call 'tit for that'.
>
> Grice does NOT list Hart when he lists the members of the Play Group in
> "Prejudices and Predilections". The most senior philosopher he mentions is
> Austin, and we know that Hart was Austin's senior; so perhaps Grice as
> following Austin's unwritten rule that nobody who was a senior to Austin
> could be officially part of the Play Group)
>
> In any case, my reference was having two other keywords in mind: Oxonian
> dialectics, that some thought sound presumptuous on Grice, as a development
> straight from Athenian dialectics. Grice's meaning is that both in Athens
> and in Oxford, they were ALWAYS submitting EACH ITEM of the vocabulary to
> 'conceptual analysis', whereas in Rome, things were DIFFERENT. Granted,
> Cato, who had Carneades back in Athens, later became more of a
> hellenophile, if that's the word -- and actually would eventually enjoy
> reading stuff in Greek. He famously criticised Albinus, and rightly so,
> for Albinus's apologising in his "Preface" to his "History" "for any
> mistakes I might make in Greek, not my native tongue". Cato took the
> implicature of this being that Albinus was rather apologising for being
> Roman!
>
> That famous Wednesday of 155 B. C. Carneades gave a lecture that Cato
> heard, commending the virtues of Roman 'justice'. On Thursday, however,
> Carneades delivered the second lecture (part of a series of two). The
> topic was
> again: "Roman justice". ALL the arguments Carneades had made on the
> previous day were refuted, in a very Grecian manner, as he persuasively
> attempted to prove that the very idea of Roman "justice" -- remember that
> the Greeks were subject to the Romans then -- was "inevitably problematic"
> (where the problems were perhaps without a solutioj), and hardly "a given"
> when it came to virtue, but "merely a compact device deemed necessary for
> the maintenance of a well-ordered society".
>
> Cato was rapid in recognizing the potential danger of Carneades's
> 'conceptual-analysis' of 'justice': the had provided a positive valuation
> on Wednesday and a negative valuation on Thursday (and no new law had been
> introduced in the interim -- but, laws, as you know, always change for the
> better).
> Cato was shocked.
>
> He immediately moved the Roman Senate to send Carneades home to Athens --
> where what Grice calls "Athenian dialectic" thrived), to prevent the Roman
> citizenry from the threat of re-examining all Roman doctrines, and notably
> the dangers that a 'conceptual analysis' on the law could bring. This was
> all changed by Cicero, who took good care in translating all useful Greek
> philosophical terminolgy, until he was assassinated by the guards sent by
> Marcantonio. But that's the commings and goings of Roman philosophy of law,
> for you!
>
> Hart was a conceptual analyst. He was delighted to deal with tautologies,
> or alleged tautologies, like
>
> i. Law is just.
>
> Hart had learned for his Classics degree at Oxford: "Lex iniusta non est
> lex" (An unjust law is no law at all"), as uttered, perhaps with a
> disimpicature in mind, by Augustine (Hart didn't call him a saint).
>
> Hart's brilliant conceptual analyses were very influential.
>
> Thus, F. Schauer tested his students:
>
> I. Is the Common Law Law?
>
> He gave his students a multiple choice:
>
> i. The Common law is law.
> ii. The Common law is not law.
>
> Those students who chose for (ii) were asked to provide a justification in
> terms of disimplicatures alla Hart. And some did it brilliantly!
>
> Cheers,
>
> Speranza
>
>
>
>
>
>
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