[lit-ideas] Re: The Institution of Slavery and the Concept of Free Will
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2011 09:40:09 EDT
In a message dated 4/25/2011 7:45:50 A.M. , donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx
writes:
it is a kind of joke and not a case where Epic (as his friends called him)
was making a prophecy, the fulfillment of which demonstrated determinism?
-----
Part of the problem with McEvoy's interpretation is in the Greek Language.
One reads from Celsum at
_http://www.san.beck.org/Epictetus.html_
--- but haven't been able to find the Greek text:
Celsus wrote, "Take Epictetus, who, when his master was twisting his
leg,
said, smiling and unmoved, 'You will break my leg;' and when it was
broken,
he added, 'Did I not tell you that you would break it?'"
However:
In Origen, Contra Celsum 7.23, the variant is:
Οὐκοῦν Ἐπίκτητον;
Ὃς τοῦ δεσπότου στρεβλοῦντος αὐτοῦ τὸ σκέλος
ὑπομειδιῶν ἀνεκπλήκτως ἔλεγε·
«Κατάσσεις»,
καὶ κατάξαντος
«Οὐκ ἔλεγον», εἶπεν, «ὅτι κατάσσεις»;
What about Epictetus, then?
When his master was twisting his leg, he smiled gently and calmly said,
'You are breaking it'.
And when he had broken it he said,
'Did I not tell you that you were breaking it?'
Note:
"katasseis", i.e. You break my leg.
Not: "You will break my leg", or "You shall break my leg."
Epicurus _is_ joking, as the Danish Finance ministry was joking in Bertold
Brecht's story:
"Denmark was at one time plagued by a succession of corrupt finance
ministers [...] To deal with this situation, a law was passed requiring
periodic
inspection of the books of the Finance Minister. A certain Finance
Minister, when visited by the inspectors, said to them
'If you inspect my books, I shall not continue to be your finance
minister.'"
"They retired in confusion, and only eighteen months later it was
discovered that the Finance Minister had spoken nothing other than the literal
truth."
Grice comments: "This anecdote [...] exploits a modal ambiguity in the
future tense, between (a) the future indicated or factual, and (b) the
future intentional. This ambiguity extends beyond the first person form of
the
tense; there is a difference between
(a) 'There will-F be light' (future factual) and
(b) 'There will-I be light' (future intentional).
"God might have uttered the second sentence while engaged in the Creation."
---
In
You shall break the leg.
You will break the leg.
etc.
"In all of these, action within a future range of time is
contemplated. However, in all cases, the sentences
are actually voiced in the present tense, since there
is no proper future tense in English."
Unlike English, Greek does have a 'proper future tense'.
Grice goes on to stick with English:
"It is the *implication* of FUTURITY," Grice notes, "that makes these
present tense _auxiliary_ constructions amount to a compound future
quasi-tense."
"An additional form of expressing the future is "I am going to..."."
-- as in my favourite, "I am going not to go."
"This reality, that expression of futurity in English is a function of
the present tense, is born out by the ability to negate the implication
of
futurity without making any change to the auxiliary construction."
Thus, "[w]hen a verbal construction that suggests futurity (such as "I
shall go") is subsequently followed by information that establishes a
condition or presupposition, or the active verb stem itself contradicts a
future
indicative application of the construction, any sense of future tense is
negated -- especially when the auxiliary will is used within its literal
meaning, which is to (voluntarily) 'will' an action."
For example: Person A says:
"You will go now. You will not stay."
Person B answers:
"I shall go nowhere. I will stay."
The second 'will', in B's response, is not only expressing _volition_ here
but is being used in contradistinction to the usual first person 'shall'
in
order to achieve emphasis."
"Similarly, in the case of the second and third persons, 'will' operates
with 'shall' in reverse."
For example:
A: Will he be at the café at six o'clock?
B: He will be there. [Normal affirmation]
HOWEVER,
B: He shall be there.
-- stresses that this is not the usual pattern that was previously
established or to be expected ("Last time he was late or did not show
up")]."
"Sensitive English speakers (which most of us are not) may be able to
mark
this distinction by discriminating between 'shall' and 'will'"
--- And we are assuming that Epictetus _WAS_ a sensitive Greek speaker,
even if he tried not to show it.
Grice:
"'I shall-I
go to London' stands to 'I intend to go to London' analogously to the way
in
which 'Oh for rain tomorrow!' stands to 'I wish for rain tomorrow'."
"Just as NO ONE *ELSE* can say JUST what *I* say when I say "I shall-I
go
to London". "If someone else says, "Grice will go to London", he will be
expressing his, not my, intention that I shall go." (p. 11).
Epictetus's leg-pulling joke _WAS_ possibly lost on his master, but the
last laugh was, sadly, on his master.
If Epictetus's master had understood the casual remark,
to read:
"If you keep twisting my leg like that, it will be the case that my leg
will be broken, and what's the use of a lame slave, idiot?"
the master may have decided otherwise, and by tollendo tollens, he may have
stopped twisting Epictetus's leg.
My hunch is that the master was not a 'sensitive' _hearer_ of Greek?
Hare notes that one would hardly say:
"Shall I misunderstand you?"
"Shall I wreck on the shore?"
To misundestand and to wreck are not things one can decide, and it is the
oddness of using 'shall' with them that explains 'freedom of the will',
grammatically:
A pointer to whether I am free to do X is thus grammatical, and provided
by asking oneself "whether it makes *sense* to ask
'Shall I do x?'"
Hare correctly says that one CAN ask
'*Will* I make a mistake?' or
'Will I be wrecked on the sea-shore?'
but
NEVER
'Shall I make a mistake?' or
'Shall I to be wrecked?;
For to be wrecked or make a mistake cannot be part of a conscious choice
or purpose
- cannot, in the logical or conceptual sense of the word.
From this Hare rightly concludes that we distinguish a "free" from an
unfree
doing by the
presence or absence of whatever it is that makes it intelligible to ask
"Shall I climb the mountain?' but not 'Shall I misunderstand you?'".
Again, note that Epictetus was _not_ free in the plain usage of the
adjective, so perhaps what we have here is a case of 'disimplicature'.
Manumission means 'get your hand off me', and under different
circumstances, Epictetus's utterance would have been more otiose than it was.
Arguments like those enhance Hegel's and Nietzsche's idea that the idea of
'free will' belongs to 'slave mentality'.
Cheers,
J. L. Speranza
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