RICERCA ITALIANA     

The birth of the European individual: the subject of infividuality as a philosophical problem

Università degli Studi di Napoli "Federico II"

Abstract

The quest for the mediterranean roots of western philosophic culture is part of the research aimed at a reflection on our identity of moderns. Such a reflection aims to detect some thought categories founded in ancient and classical times from the peoples in the metiterranean area and study them in their historical development, in the texstual contexts of ancient and high medieval philosophy. One of of the se categories of thought is that of the "individual" and our research will focus on this very category. One of its first development entails a study on the linguistica nature of this category that would possibly point out the history of those key terms of philosophical reasoning that, on various grounds, show the individual in its specific characteristic. First of all "atomos" and "stoicheion". Than "eidos", and "Hypokeimenon". We will then proceed to the identification of the conditions that allow the ancent culture to think of the analogy between individual elements of language and individual elements of the real world, with a particular reference to Democritus and Plato. The "eidos" will be analized in the following dialogues of Plato: Cratylus, Theaethetus, Parmenides, Sophist, Timaeus. The appearences of the term "Hypokeimenon" in the contexts of Aristotle's Organon, of the Physics and Metaphisics works of Aristotle will be considered. The question of the definition of the ontological statute of Plato's "ideas" or "forms" and that of the determination of the substantial nature of beings (sensible and/or intelligible) with respect to the category of individuality. Our research will also follow the track of Aristotle's testimony and critics to the theory of ideas, with special reference to the De ideis and to Metaphysics, where Aristotle argues esactly with the double nature of ideas, metaphysical, individual and linguistic predicates, physio-cosmological causes of reality and proprieties inside it. Another development of the research is the one trying to define the relationship between the individual, the soul and the city in Plato's Republic; the analogy between the physic triple division and the sociopolitical one and the meaning of this correspondence. The research program will also take into account the Aristotle’s theory of the individual. To this aim, Aristotle’s psychological, ethical and political treatises will be analysed.
One more side of the research deals with platonic and aristotelic theorisations newly elaborated in subsequent tradition, that goes back on the issue of the building of the individual and its place in the community. The reflection will particulary focus on the outcomings, really new and stimulating ones, of the last Symposium Hellenisticum, held in Rome last year at the Facoltà di Filosofia of the Università di Roma "La Sapienza".
The research will also focus on the texts of Philon of Alexandria and the pseudopitagorical ones that discuss the relationship between the city in its whole and the parts that make it up, between the individual and the parts of the soul.
One more reference textual context are the Memories of Marcus Aurelius. Although they were not widely circulated in the late ancient times, they misteriously survived, coming back from hundreds of years of oblivion in the IX-X centuries. Today they are still extremely interesting.
The last textual reference is about Plotinus, expecially the theorization of the ontological statute of human soul, seen on one hand in its subjective individual perspective and on the other in its universal origin and its extratemporal projection. The rethinking of individuality, such as it was thought of in the philosophy of classical times, and the problematization of its relationship with the whole, created from Neoplatonism will also be considered in medieval times starting from the neoplatonica outcomes of the "translatio studii". <<<

Principal Investigator

Giovanni Casertano Università degli Studi di NAPOLI "Federico II"

Research Objectives

The research aims can be divided in: middle term (I year) and long term (II year) aims. A middle term aim will be orginizing an international meeting in Naples. The meeting will not only engage the members of the research group, but also English, French and German experts whose scientific texts constitute, together with those of the italian scholars, the state of the art on the research's specific subject. The idea is to foresee 3 days in which the first partial outcomings of the single local unities will
be compared. This checking means is expected to produce results in terms of harmonisation: each of the local units will have contributed to the building of a specific feature (linguistic-semantic, historical-philosofic, antropological and ethic-politic) of the research: the mediterranean roots of our philosophical culture will then be literally "reconstructed"
by fixing the partial results, that will at the same time be a check of the very procedures folowed by scholars. The dialectic comparison of the partial results and from the project design of the compared outcomings will give birth to a new "status quaestionis" that will allow to select only those paths, issues and further developments that will have proved to be able to get results aimed to the widening of the knowledge on the analized issues. The long term aim is the publication of a bilingual volume that will show the scientific community the research's poutcomings that will have proved to effectively contribute to a widening of the knowledge on the mediterranean roots of our philosophical culture. The issue of the individual and of the statute of individual identity brings about the broader question of a reflection on the very philosophical, and even before that the very psychological and epistemological categories, through which one can think such concepts. One can actually talk about "one-self" and "the other", thus about identity and diversity, with all the ethical (referring to the delimitatin of interpersonale relationships) and sociological (referring to the delimitation of different social models) implications that light the political and cultural debate even today, only if one understands what the conceptual categories at the theoric background of this debate mean, where they are born and how they have developed. In an historical and theoretical perspective the actual research aims thus to proceed in the reconstruction of this archeology of concepts, questioning some of the most ancient philosophical texts of western tradition where the question of the individual and identity and, in contrast, of diversity come out on foreground. With this specific aim we will isolate the following issues that can be published in a various authors volume, possibly in two parts, edited by the national research coordinator. 1) The question of correspondence between the elements of a linguistic alphabet and the elements of an alphabet of reality. 2) The question of Plato's idea meant as the "ultimate" ontological individual on one side, not further divisible in parts and identical to itself, unchangable and self-sufficient, and on the other side as immanent paradigm referring to which is determined the constitution of the sensible world, so in this sense an ideal being so to say "in other participated" from empirical things and in some way in them present or assimilated. 3) The question of aristotelic substance: the various occurrences of the term "hypokeimenon" and its derivings in Aristotle's - that, at a first reading made through the electronic device Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, turn out to be about 134 - reveal the significance of the concept of "hypokeimenon" in Aristotle's logics, where it gets a particular meaning of subject of predication or attribution, thus, primaryand fundamental element of linguistic communication. Though a separate handling of the two most important meanings of "hypokeimenon" is impossible if not from a mere theorical point of view - for one cannot deny that in Aristotle the logical-linguistic sphere and the ontological one are strongly linked and interrelated- it is anyway undoubtful that in the logic treaties, especially in the Categories the notion of "hypokeimenon" gets avery particular meaning. 3) The question of the soul and that of the city in Plato's Republic. The relationship between city and soul in Plato’s Republic, that is between the triple psychic division and the political and social one. In this program, going on with the work of translation and commentary of this Plato’s dialogue (six volumes, on books I-IX, have been already published), the purpose is to analyse the Book 10. This book develops an important series of issues, first of all the eschatological myth of the soul and the problem of the choice among the different ways of life. 4) Aristotle's
theory of the moral responsability related to the individuation of a figure of "acting subject", able to determin his conduct on the basis of a conscious choice. Aristotle's notion of man as "political animal", in his relationship with the dimension of the city as community. Reception of this notion in the subsequent culture. 5) The issue of individuality, meant as a "person", that comes out as a reflection issue in the Stoa of the II and I century, grows up and develops in imperial times thanks to the mixing up with features deriving from middle-platonism and eastern religions, in Filone of Alessandria, in Plotino. <<<

Timescale

24 months

National and international background

The national scientific starting point is made up first of all from the set of volumes published from all the research group memebers that have been engaging themselves for years in the thorough examination of issues strongly linked to the research subject. A new reading of Plato’s dialogues has been arranged, which could on one hand give the right value to the influences that presocratic thought, tragical theatre and sofistic philosophy had on Plato, on the other the heritage of platonism that can be
detected in Aristotle, the ellenism, neoplatonism and high medieval thougth.
The international scientific starting point will be explained through a differentiation of the reference issues.
As for the question of the relationship between individual features of language and individual features of the real world, starting from the Seventies of last century it was detected in Plato (Burkert, Derbolav, Genette, Joly, Mugler, Gallop, Druart, Ryle,Trevaskis, Fine) the specificity of a reflection that develops the changes of meaning that the term "stoicheion" implies when it’s meant as a phisical element on one side, and underlines the magnitude of possible comparisons between the alphabetic system that produces the linguistic sense and the physiscal system that produces the perceptible phenomena on the other side. The birth of "stoicheiology" as a new hermeneutical category to be applied to platonism can be placed in the II half of the 1970s (Druart) and gave birth to all those studies aimed at the determination of the number of elements (in the middle between one and infinite) that a passage of the Phyloebus (16d-17a) considers the starting point for dialectic research applied to the various fields of knowledge. Most recent studies (Gaudin, Fonagy, Lasserre, Canto, Ferrari, Aubenque, Meschonnic, Brisson) warn against the mechanical transposition of the alphabetical model of letters to the explanation on the nature of things and underline the determination of the exact relationships that one can set in any dialectic study between "constituents" and "constituted".
The relationship between the individual, the soul and the city has been the object of a dramatic number of studies. The discussion deals with the way in which in book IV Plato makes the analogy between the psychic triple division and the socio-political one its issue, and with the sense of this correspondence.
On this issue we first of all refer to the exaustive study by T.J. Andersson, who analizes the explanations with which the triple division is presented and applied to the two registries, the one of the soul and the one of the city. Many contributions catch the problematic dimension of the analogy between the psychic and political level (B. Williams, C.D.C. Reeve, J. Neu, O. Höffe), and the result of this aknowledgment is sometimes constituted from the deying, or a strong reassessment of the link between the soul and the city, by interpeting the correspondence in a metaphorical key.
One more significant discussion theme is represented by the relationship between the individual and the community. Studies in this field confronted more or less explicitely with Popper’s thesis, going different ways.
Worth mentionign is first of all Vlastos, who shows how impossible it is to determine in the Republic a contrast between the individual and the city, and how one has to detect a reciprocity criterion that expresses itself in the principal of "doing one’s things". Another kind of approach is the one by J. Annas, preferring the personal moral aspects to the questions of the integration of the individual in the community. Griswold’s approach, influenced by the liberal political categories of the anglosaxon background (Rawls), underlines Plato’s "perfectionism", aimed at regarding the individuals from the point of view of their potentials, rather than their interests, needs or characteristics. In the studies on the Republic, the issues developed by Plato in books VIII and IX - the period of time in which the degenerating process of the kallipolis takes place on one side and the ways in which the relationship between between the individual and the city in the dinamics of constitutional changing develops on the other side - are surely poorly researched. Contributions regarding the "philosophy of history" touched upon the Politicus (Gaiser, Migliori) and the Timeus-Critia (Pradeau).
Some recent researchs on the historical times (Thein) and the space-temporal decadence of constitutional forms (D. Frede) seem to have opened new research perspectives. On the relationship between the psichic and political registers in the scope of the analisis of degenerated constitutions, we mention the contributions by Hellwig and Porcheddu. On Book 10 of the “Republic”, and particularly on the myth of the soul, some studies analyse its role within the dialogue, that is its consistence with the topic of the choice of a just life, while in other essays the myth of Er is connected with other Plato’s eschatological myths, i. e. with those in the Gorgias and in the Phaedo.
As for the development of the issue of individuality in Aristotle, one first, important aspect is represented by the critics to Plato’s project of the Repubblic (Stalley, Nussbaum, Vegetti). The development of this category of individuality is strongly linked with the reflections in the ethical sphere. In the Nicomachean Ethichs, Aristotle elaborates a theory of moral responsability that is related to the determination of a figure of acting subject, able to able to determin his conduct on the basis of a conscious choice. This aspect of Aristotle’s ethic analisis, that keeps its distance from any form of external causing, is the object of a relelvant series of studies (Kenny, Charles, Broadie, Meyer). In the scope of the Politics, the issue of individuality has been developed from its interpreters from different points of view. A series of studies has addressed Aristotle’s notion of man as a "political animal", in his relationship with the dimension of the city as community. Now thewre are two interpretative lines, the first aims to attach a simple biological feature to that notion (Keyt), the second one to underline that Aristotle’s discourse does not involve the pure dimension of sociality but a specifically politic characterization, and determines the space of the realization of the rational being of man in the polis (Ritter, Bien,Kamp,Berti).
As for the issues of ellenistic philosophy, the starting point are the outcomings of the last Symposium Hellenisticum, held in Rome last July at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Rome "La Sapienza" (Between Greece and Rome: Hellenistic Philosophy and Roman Culture from 150 to 88 B.C., 27-31 July 2004). The proceedings of the meeting, in which the best experts on the international in the field of ellenistic philosophy took part, are to be published in one volume. The scientific work realized during the meeting has newly pointed out the central role of some thinkers and movements of thought in the ellenistic-roman age, and allowed the emerging of the unloosable links between the philosophical schools in the ellenistic age, that created an intense debate where the technical and theoretically relevant use of philospophical language plays a central role. The research is also based on the earlier studies on the debate between academical stoicism and skepticism, that underlined (Ioppolo) the relevance of the decodification of the different philosophical meaning of technical terms apparently identical on one hand, and of their transformation in the translation process from Greek to Latin, particularly evident in the philosophical language of Cicero. Starting point are also more recent works on pirronian skepticism (Spinelli); as for the dogmatic schools we mention the collection of fragments and testimonies of Panezio from Rodi (Alesse): these studies make up the basis for a more detailed examination of linguistic and conceptual interactions determined after the more strongly polemic phase of the debate between Stoicism and academical Skepticism . A systematic research on Sestus’ language and style is missing: the studies of Karel Janacek have already opened the way in this direction, also wanted from the studies of Fernanda Decleva Caizzi, but it still needs to be examined more closely and completed.
One more starting point of the research is the work of electronic editing of ancient texts by Emidio Spinelli, initiated by the Institute for European Intellectual Lexicon and the history of Ideas of the C.N.R. (ILIESI/CNR), a good example of which is the electronic edition of the collection of testimonies "Socratis et Socraticorum Reliquiae", edited by Gabriele Giannantoni.
The scientific basis for the notion of hypokeimenon in the writings of the Organon is made up from the Italian and foreign studies devoted to those treaties where there are the term hypokeimenon occurs more: the Categories and the Analitical. On this matter the contributions by Guido Calogero (I fondamenti della logica aristotelica, 1927) and Leo Lugarini (Il problema delle categorie in Aristotele, 1955), that underlined for the first time the need of differentiating the hypokeimenon meant as the subject of predication and the hypokeimenon denoting the ontological substrate - in Aristotle’s writings on logical issues- have been fundamental. As for this issue all the studies that dealt rather with the expecially logical, linguistic and grammatical aspect of the term are also very important: starting from those that studied it basing on the two key expressions of the
Categories, kath’hypokeimenou legesthai and en hypokeimeno einai (Chung-Hwan Chen, K. v. Fritz), to those that considered it a fundamental element in Aristotle’s theory of predication (Hamlyn, Moravcsik, Allen, Engelbtretsen, Scaltsas), until those underlying the theoric divide between the theory of the prime substance explained in the Categories and the ousiology of the Metaphyisics, that shows the ontological foundation in the form (eidos), not in the concrete individual, made up from matter and form, anymore (S. Mansion, Lacey, Gill, Berti).
Modern studies on the physical and metaphysical notion of hypokeimenon are not as many. One can refer to the article by Sh. Cohen, the one by Th. Scaltsas and to the study by W. Sellars. Among these studies the most recent date back to the 80s, as one can see in the Bibliografy, and they show various statements that deserve further discussion. The main problem of the question is that Aristotle’s Physics is a relatively poorly
studied text after the strong critics that it underwent through modern science. The difficulty of the issue and the paucity of earlier studies make the examination a hard thing. Moreover one has to keep in mind that the interpretation of some key points has to be newly examined in detail, and this is true for example of book I and II, where the question of the hypokeimenon is treated, and that resent of the undoubtful but old authority of the studies by di A. Mansion.
The scientific basis of the research on Marco Aurelio is made up, as for the text, from the new critical edition Ad se ipsum libri XII by J. Dalfen, Leipzig 1987. This edition, the result of an accurate reconstruction of the manuscripted tradition, is a precious help for the interpreter of Marco Aurelio, who deals with a text strongly damaged by tradition, subject to contoinuous restorations from the XVI century to today. The main monograph on the subject, from which no one interested in the study of the works transmitted from Marco Aurelio can do without, is the volume by P. Hadot, La citadelle intérieure. Introduction aux Pensées de Marc Aurèle, Paris 1992, the result of many years of work devoted to the emperor philosopher and the ancient stoicism.
The scientific foundation of the research on the issue of human soul in Plotinus is made up - apart from the critical edition of the Enneadi (editio minor) by P. Henry- H.R. Schwyzer (Oxford 1964-1982) - from the many studies in the second half of last century on the cultural and philosophical issues of the late ancient times and from individual and group researchs of the last decades on plotinian aspects or antropological, metaphysical and ethic kind. Especially the problem of the relationship between the individul soul and the universal soul has been dealt with by many scholars, among which C. Steel, F. Ferrari, PH. Merlan, F. Romano, and has been interpreted either in the sense or the distinction of the two souls linked with the aristotelic doctrine of active intellect (Steel), or in the sense of continuity or rather unity that exists inside dialectics, that is inside the "manence" and "procession" of the very soul (Romano).
Also relevant as scientific foundation is the publication of translations with comment of some of the most important treaties of the Enneadi by various national and international research groups, like the very late French translations directed by L. Brisson et J.F. Pradeau for the Flammarion (1-6 e 7-21) those by P. Hadot (38; VI,7; 50; III, 5; 9; VI,9); D. O'Meara (51; I, 8) by J.M. Narbonne (II, 4[12]) always published in Paris, or those published in Italy by M. Isnardi Parente (VI, 1-3); A. Linguiti (I, 4-5); F. Ferrari e M. Vegetti ( III,7) and M. Vinci on the fifth "Enneade". The scientific foundation of the national and international research on the issue of the statute of the individual in Aristotle raised the interest of important sectors of contemporary philosophic research, especially in the logic, analitic and linguistic sphere (Strawson, Kripke, Wiggins).
From the point of view of platonic studies, the main reference points of our research are the works of McCabe, Curd and Harte published in the last ten years, to which some contributions by the unities of Naples and Salerno must be added.
The scientific foundation of the research on the category of individuality in medeval times are first of all the Glosae super Platonem, by É. Jeauneau, Vrin, Paris, 1965, and the Quaestiones in tertium de anima of the De anima intellectiva and the De aeternitate mundi by Sigieri di Brabante, edited by B. Bazàn, Peeters, Leuven, 1972. As for Chartre’s psychology and the reflection on the soul by William from Conches in the commentary to the Timeus, the study by T. Gregory called "Anima Mundi" remains fundamental, though old. As for the psychology of aristotelism, both the orthodox and the
radical, of the XII century, the recent volume by A. de Libera called "L'unité de l'intellect de Thomas d'Aquin", Vrin, Paris, 2004 has to be considered a summary of the studies, where the author underlines the classic origin, mediated by medieval interpretations, of the breakthrough of the issue of subjectivity in modern psychology and metaphysycs. <<<