[lit-ideas] Re: The Institution of Slavery and the Concept of Free Will
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2011 10:31:02 +0100 (BST)
--- On Mon, 25/4/11, Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx <Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> 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?'"
I do not agree that this passage on its own seems incompatible with my
speculation that the master's 'leg twisting' may have been non-literal. If the
master were 'pulling his leg' we might wonder in what context this would occur
literally, and so it is with twisting his leg.
What is also left unclear is the causal connection between the master's
twisting, even if a literal 'twisting', and the subsequent breaking: was the
joke simply that at some point an independent cause resulted in the leg
breaking, but this subsequent event was joked as proving the initial claim?
If so, then the joke is not akin to Brecht's story but more akin to Spike
Milligan's epitaph "I told you I was ill" (where some putative previous claim
of illness, perhaps rightly disbelieved, now is joked as having been proved
true by some subsequent event, death, that does not verify the putative claim).
In fact, even if not so, I do not see the analogy with Brecht's story as
correct: the point there is that the assertion is ambiguous between "I shall
resign in protest if you dare examine the documents" (which is how it may have
been taken) and "I shall be forced to resign or be sacked if you dare examine
the documents, which expose my corruption". How is Epic making any analogously
ambiguous statement - ambiguous between "Continuing that action, master, shall
cause my leg to break" and...what?
> 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."
Donal
Side-stepping Grice
London
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