[lit-ideas] Re: Shall we consider another philosopher?
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 25 Jan 2014 13:14:57 -0800 (PST)
I have actually checked it now, Aristotle speaks in that passage about ethics -
well, the subject of the treatise at hand - which he characterizes as 'a kind
of political science.' Hence, it is hopefully not incompatible with my
suggestion that he means political arguments which, as suggested in the
Rhetoric, he does not hold to possess demonstrative certainty. But presumably
ethical arguments would be held to be similar to political. Also, hopefully it
should not be taken that I necessarily hold the same opinion with Aristotle, he
was cited as an authority so I tried to see what he might he might have meant.
O.K.
On Saturday, January 25, 2014 9:55 PM, Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
While discussing a passage from Whitehead John McCreery wrote
I am particularly struck by that line, The kind of necessity proper to
mathematical demonstrations cannot be transferred to philosophy, which
instantly reminds me of that favourite passage of mine in the
Nichomachean Ethics, the knowledge of which I
owe to Robert Paul, in
which the Sage observes that not all arguments are equally susceptible
to mathematical rigour and that it is the mark of an education person to
know which is which.
*Omar is troubled by this. He writes
I am pretty sure that Aristotle would not have agreed with the
above. He would have thought that many philosophical arguments are
capable of demonstration that carries just as much necessity as
mathematical demonstration. When he speaks of arguments which are not
capable of demonstration he is most likely thinking of political and
legal arguments, which he transfers to the subordinate realm of
rhetoric.
Our discussion will be adequate if it has as much clearness as the
subject-matter admits of, for precision is not to be sought for alike in all
discussions, any more than in all the products of the crafts. Now fine and just
actions, which political science investigates, admit of much variety and
fluctuation of opinion, so that they may be thought to exist only by
convention, and not by nature. And goods also give rise to a similar
fluctuation because they bring harm to many people; for before now men have
been undone by reason of their wealth, and others by reason of their courage.
We must be content, then, in speaking of such subjects and with such premisses
to indicate the truth roughly and in outline, and in speaking about things
which are only for the most part true and with premisses of the same kind to
reach conclusions that are no better. In the same spirit, therefore, should
each type of statement be received; for it is the mark of
an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as
the nature of the subject admits; it is [clearly/surely/plainly] equally
foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a
rhetorician scientific proofs.[Nicomachean Ethics, I.1]
<http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.1.i.html>
*Here, Aristotle doesn't appear to talk so much about philosophical arguments,
as about our discussions of different subject matter: they shouldn't all be
considered in the same way. (I'm not sure just what a philosophical argument
is, unless it's the sort of thing people engaged in at Plato's Academy, and now
engage in in the pages of Mind, The Philosophical Review, and elsewhere.) The
most important line in this passage from the NE is the last. I'm glad John
remembers it.
RP
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