Review_Barnes, Jonathan_The Presocratic Philosophers_[Charles Kahn]

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The Presocratic Philosophers. Volume 1: Thales to Zeno. Volume 2: Empedocles to Democritusby Jonathan BarnesReview by: Charles H. KahnThe Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 78, No. 5 (May, 1981), pp. 279-287Published by: Journal of Philosophy, Inc.

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BOOK REVIEWS 279

strengths and weaknesses to Santas's.4) Perhaps the results reflect

Santas's estimate of what "contemporary techniques of analysis

and scholarship" (xii) can contribute to the understanding of Soc-

rates. Many nonphilosophers still believe that contemporary philo-sophers are interested only in the piecemeal dissection of concepts

and arguments, and not at all in the synthetic understanding and

appreciation of other philosophers. Santas's book may strengthen

their belief. That would be unfortunate, since the belief is false.

T. H. IRWIN

Cornell University

The Presocratic Philosophers. JONATHAN BARNES. Boston: Routledge

& Kegan Paul, 1979. Volume 1: Thales to Zeno, 378 p. Volume 2:

Empedocles to Democritus, 353 p. $45 for 2 vols.

It takes some courage to contribute a work on the Presocratics to

the series "The Arguments of the Philosophers," since at first sight

the fragments of Xenophanes, Heraclitus, Empedocles, and Demo-

critus do not offer very promising material for the reconstruction

and analysis of arguments. And it also takes courage to embark

upon a work on this scale so soon after Guthrie's two (with the

Sophists, three) mighty volumes on the same topic. But Jonathan

Barnes is not one to be found lacking in audacity, and he has car-

ried out his large enterprise with scholarly skill, philosophical

acuteness, and a degree of brilliant, disciplined imagination that

will amaze and delight those of us who were inclined to be skepti-

cal. The existence of Guthrie's thorough, more cautious survey of

the same terrain has left Barnes free to write a book of an entirelydifferent kind. Whereas the Presocratics are usually presented as

monuments of early wisdom, landmarks on the pioneering journey

from myth to science, our old friends appear here as "masters of ra-

tional thought", full members of the realm where philosophy

"lives a supracelestial life, beyond the confines of space and time"

(I, x), a life of the cut and thrust of argumentation, where the only

question is whether one's opinions are true and one's arguments

sound. Barnes's thesis is that Presocratic opinions, though rarely

true, are "characteristically supported by argument, buttressed byreasons, established upon evidence" (I, 5). The thesis is illustrated

in advance by a dazzling hors d'oeuvre, to whet (as he says) our ap-

petite for the feast of ratiocination to come. Thus from Aristotle's

4Plato (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973).








280 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

passing remark that Thales said the magnet has a soul (psyche) be-cause it moves iron, Barnes constructs the following argument:

(1) If anythinghas a motor, it has a psyche.(2) Magnetshave motors.

Therefore, 3) Magnetshavepsyches.(I, 6, slightly simplified)

In glossing the term psyche here, Barnes prefers "the comic over-tones of 'animator' to the theological undertones of 'soul'", andcorrectly interprets the conclusion as a claim that magnets are an-imate beings. He goes on to suggest that Thales has begun the de-bate about mechanism and thinking machines in the philosophy of

mind: "Thales' magnet is the ancient equivalent of the clockworkanimals of the seventeenth century and of our modern chess-play-ing computers" (I, 8). Without exaggerating the parallels, Barnesinsists on seeing Thales' doctrine neither as a primitive blundernor as a distinctly archaic view (of interest precisely because it is sounfamiliar), but rather as a first thoughtful attempt to deal withcurrently debated problems concerning the boundaries between theliving and the lifeless, between what is percipient and what is not.From the outset Barnes thus enrols himself among the "lovers ofanachronism" (II, 231) whose frame of comparison for the Preso-cratics is not limited to the myths of Hesiod and Babylon or to thephilosophy of the ancients, but who will skip happily across cen-turies and millennia to insert these old doctrines into a disputewith Descartes or A. J. Ayer.

This opening treatment of Thales gives a good taste of what is tofollow in two thick volumes, with copious notes, an up-to-datecritical bibliography, and useful appendices on sources and chron-

ology. The outstanding features of Barnes's work are his carefulsetting out (and criticism) of the arguments and his large and sup-ple erudition, which confronts the views of Parmenides or Anaxa-goras with those of Aquinas or Berkeley and relates all this to philo-sophical controversies in our own time. The discussion of thesearchaic theories is thus consistently maintained at an unusuallyhigh level of philosophical argument. As we proceed, the formalarguments become more intricate in ways that are often fascinating(cf. the Lockean argument for Pythagorean metempsychosis in I,

109-111), enlightening (as on the paradoxes of Zeno), but also irri-tating, at least for those of us who take no delight in formalizationper se. And I imagine that any reader will be annoyed by the con-tinuous reference to Melissus' denial of change as "(T7)," e.g., onpages 195 ff, 215 ff; since, in order to distinguish (T7) from (T6),the claim of homogeneity, or (T8), the denial of destruction, one








BOOK REVIEWS 281

must flip back to page 181 where the argument is laid out and the

propositions numbered. (One is reminded of the story of profes-sional comedians who tell one another jokes by simply calling out"number 5" or "number 12" and waiting for the laughs.) On theother hand, Barnes's scholarship is broad and thorough: it is re-freshing to find references to Marx and Nietzsche on the Presocrat-ics as well as to Vlastos, Owen, and our more familiar colleagues.The writing is polished and witty, sometimes a point strained, but

always lively and lucid. On the hundreds of questions where evi-dence is incomplete or inconclusive, Barnes's judgment is usuallysound, often original, and generally fair both in taking notice of

other views and in warning the reader where his own interpreta-tion is conjectural or controversial.

The organization of material is traditional in outline, innovativein grouping and formulation of topics. The three principal divi-

sions of the work, with their Miltonian titles "Eden," "The Ser-pent," and "Paradise Regained", represent (I) the early natural

philosophy of Ionia, (II) the Eleatic challenge to cosmology and alltheories of change, and (III) the neo-Ionian revival of natural philo-

sophy as an answer to Parmenides and his school. In this perspec-

tive both Empedocles and Philolaus count as "neo-Ionians." ThusBarnes plays down (rightly, in my opinion) the old dichotomy be-tween Ionian and Italian schools in order to emphasize the conti-nuity of the cosmological tradition beginning with Anaximander,

and the radical nature of the crisis situation created by Parmenides'attack on the foundations of this tradition. One novelty is the at-

tention devoted to Melissus, who has generally had a bad press, be-ginning with Aristotle (who describes his argumentation as partic-

ularly crude). Barnes, however, finds Melissus' fragments "asinteresting as those of Parmenides, and equally deserving of sym-

pathetic study" (I, 180), and he frequently depicts the attempt byAnaxagoras and the others "to defend Ionia against Elea" (II, 15)as a struggle against Melissus rather than against Parmenides or

Zeno (e.g., II, 130f, 134, 139f).Barnes's second volume includes an excellent chapter on the So-

phists, with an interesting discussion of the origins of atheism (II,145ff) and a thoughtful account of early theories of language and

art (II, 160-169). There is a chapter on theories of the soul (II,170ff), with a logical analysis of the doctrine of Eternal Recurrence

(II, 200-250); also a good chapter on nonconformist ethics ("Con-duct Unbecoming", starring Antiphon) with theories of moral re-sponsibility and relativism; and another chapter on Protagoras andskepticism (II, 234ff), completing an earlier discussion of Xeno-









phanes' skepticism (I, 136-143) and reactions to it, including Alc-

maeon's "first rough draft of an empiricist epistemology" (I, 151).

These sections are full of stimulating material, and they form a

welcome supplement to the usual account of Presocratic thought asfocused almost exclusively on natural philosophy. Barnes's festal

table is richly supplied, and it would be churlish to complain of

the few omissions (some of which he acknowledges, I, x) or the

misleading title. Since many of the thinkers in Volume 2 are con-temporaries of Socrates, "the pre-Platonics" would be a more accu-

rate label-except that we would then expect to find Socrates him-

self included!

For a work of this length there are few misstatements of fact orclear misreading of texts. Barnes is right to emphasize the lack of

empirical support for ancient atomism, probably wrong to say that"Leucippus and Democritus had not observed Brownian motion"

(II, 42), since they seem to have described its macroscopic conse-

quences in the movement of motes in a sunbeam, and correctly ac-

counted for this by the blows of smaller, unseen bodies. (See Lucre-

tius II. 114-141, cited in part by Barnes, II, 64, who traces the

image back to Leucippus but fails to note its evidential value.)

There are a few mechanical slips: the date of the Hippocratic devictu "about 500 B.C." (I, 65 with n.21 on p. 319) should read

"about 400 B.C."; and the birthdate "477 B.C." for Socrates (I, 190)must presumably be "470 B.C.". More substantial, but even more

forgivable, is the ascription of the cynical Sisvphus fragment onthe invention of the gods to the tyrant Critias (II, 149ff). Albrecht

Dihle has shown (Hermes 105, 1977, 28-42) that the play in ques-

tion must be the work of Euripides; but most of us did not know

this when Barnes was writing. And this is not the place to questionan occasional rendering of the Greek. Philosophers may be assuredthat the scholarly basis for Barnes's work is sound; it should serve

students very well as a thought-provoking supplement to some

standard work like Guthrie, Kirk and Raven, or Burnet.No reader will doubt that Barnes's interpretation is often hereti-

cal, since he has generally taken pains to make that clear. He is

never solemn or boring (except when carried away by his passion

for formalization), and he makes his own taste felt in matters great

and small: Barnes dislikes meteorology and anthropology, andclaims to see "nothing very reprehensible in eating people" (I,124f). Some will be put off by a certain donnish dogmatism in his

pronouncement on philosophical matters ("We can hardly take

Democritus seriously," II, 231, in reference to the ethical ideal) andin his judgments of good and bad arguments ("the first round goes








BOOK REVIEWS 283

to the neo-Ionians" II, 130; "the neo-Ionians were careless and cava-lier in their account of alteration," II, 134; "the neo-Ionian revivalis fundamentally a flop: it does not answer Elea" II, 140). Under-

neath such flippancy, however, we recognize a resolute determina-tion to take the early thinkers seriously as philosophers dealingwith live issues. And for this we must be grateful.

It remains to be seen whether the reigning conception of philo-

sophy as a timeless, recurrent confrontation between kindred ar-guments for and against theses that belong to the twentieth century

A.D. as much as to the fifth century B.C.-can be adequate to thematerial under discussion here. This view of philosophy leads

Barnes systematically to ignore the role that poetry plays in thework of Parmenides and Empedocles, as he ignores the contribu-tion of rich linguistic texture to the content of Heraclitus' thought.Word play and imagery count only as "stylistic embellishments" (I,64). Where there are no arguments to be set out and weighed,Barnes recognizes no philosophy. Hence the interpretation of Par-

menides' apocalyptic prologue is "of little philosophical impor-tance" (I, 156); and Melissus' pedestrian dialectic seems as interest-ing as Parmenides' ontological epic. Now since the time of

Nietzsche, most students of the Presocratics have been drawn tothem precisely because of their position on the frontiers between

myth and logic, between rational science and that older, perplex-ing, inconsistent but profoundly insightful view which we recog-nize in mythopoetry. What makes Parmenides' work so enormouslyimpressive is that he has set his astonishing argument within the

framework of a personal revelation vouchsafed to him by a goddessand articulated in the transmuted vocabulary of Homeric hexame-ters. But for Barnes there are only the arguments. And since Melis-

sus has most of the same ones, with a few extras of his own, hiswork is deemed equally worthy of study (despite the appalling fal-lacies recognized in some parts of the reasoning: I, 194-196, 201).

I must confess that the argument Barnes admires most, and

whose strength he thinks the neo-Ionians never appreciated (II,140), seems to me merely verbal. The argument of Melissus B. 7.3,as Barnes construes it, is that the denial of generation (which theneo-Ionians accepted in principle) entails the denial of rearrange-

ment (e.g., of atoms or elemental principles) and hence of anyqualitative change, since "if 0 is rearranged at t, then at t O's laterrearrangement comes into being" (I, 216). But coming-into-being isruled out. Ergo, nothing changes.

We must rejoice that Empedocles and the Atomists did not re-

gard this argument as conclusive. For if they had, they would pre-









sumably not have produced those theories of elemental composi-tion which dominated Western natural philosophy for twomillennia (in the four-element version of Empedocles) and pre-

pared the way for modern chemistry and physics (in the atomistversion). It was the neo-Ionian decision to limit the Parmenideanban, on generation and destruction to fundamental entities, whilerejecting it for combinations, arrangements, and compounds, that

made possible the creation of element theories with explanatory

force, in which (by their permutations and combinations) a limited

variety of particles with a limited range of properties account for a

vastly wider field of phenomena. It is not clear why any argument

is required to show that a ban on generation for fundamental enti-ties need not entail a ban on generation for more complex states of

affairs, including elemental compounds. This is just the funda-mental assumption of traditional element theory: that somethinglike conservation laws apply to the basic entities, not to their posi-tions or juxtapositions. The burden of argument must surely fallon Melissus: why should a change of position count as coming-to-be, since the position of an entity is not itself an entity? Any spe-cious force the argument may possess derives from Melissus' taking

the arrangement (kosmos) of a being as if it were itself anotherbeing of the same type. In Barnes's generalization of this principle(II, 216), "if 0 becomes F at t, then O's Fness comes into being att", O's Fness plays the role of a spurious entity. This principle willseem less dangerous if the underlying grammar is fully spelled out:"if 0 becomes F at t, then O's being F comes into being at t." Tocount this as a case of coming-to-be in the forbidden sense is not torefute change but to rule it out by definition.

Of all neo-Ionian theories of matter, Anaxagoras' is the hardestto understand, and here Barnes's exposition is particularly clearand helpful. He distinguishes between pieces of a stuff (which areidentical in kind with the whole of which they are part) and por-tions of a stuff, which are the same in number everywhere (since"everything is in everything") but not present in equal ratios. And

he insists that Anaxagoras' view is radically nonparticulate, so

that, no matter how small you cut the pieces, you will still find allthe portions represented, mingled like yellow and blue in a green

patch, not like a pointilliste juxtaposition of yellow and blue dots.This gives Anaxagoras a rigorous and coherent account, but it

leaves me wondering whether such a theory could possibly have

any explanatory value. Barnes admits the view is strange (II, 24)and probably inadequate as a scientific explanation (II, 38); it

seems to me ultimately vacuous. If different stuffs are distinguished








BOOK REVIEWS 285

by their manifest properties or powers (II, 27), and these depend onwhich constituent stuffs predominate in the mixture (the numberof constituents being everywhere the same, since "everything is in

everything"), what accounts for the powers of the dominant con-stituents? Suppose, per impossibile, that we could separate out apure sample of a single stuff, say a portion of gold containing por-tions of nothing else. What structure could it have to account for

its phenomenal properties? I do not see that Anaxagoras has anyanswer to this question at all: the structure of a pure stuff wouldsimply be its phenomenal properties. (The vacuity of this positionis camouflaged by the insistence that in fact pure portions can

never be separated off.) But in that case Anaxagoras has no realtheory of matter, no intelligible attempt to explain some propertiesin terms of others, as Aristotle seems to have realized.' His "theory"is only a very subtle way of describing the facts of change andgrowth without violating the Parmenidean law against new enti-ties coming into being, by a cunning use of Zeno's principle of in-finite divisibility. If this is so, we can easily understand the histori-

cal sterility of Anaxagoras' view, in contrast to the enduringinfluence of Empedoclean and Atomist theories of matter.

I conclude with a few remarks on Barnes's interpretation ofParmenides, which is a careful elaboration of the view proposedtwenty years ago by G.E.L. Owen.2 I briefly contrast it with myown view,3 since the issues raised seem to be of some general inter-est. The controversy focuses on two questions: (1) the sense and ref-erence of esti in Parmenides' basic disjunction: estin e ouk estin, "itis or it is not"; (2) the reason given for a categorical rejection of thesecond disjunct. Barnes suggests (and I agree) that the implicit sub-ject of esti is the object of investigation and research, the goal ofthose "roads of inquiry" which have just been mentioned: the onlypath of inquiry that can be rationally undertaken is the one lead-ing to, or guided by, the affirmative esti. Hence the logical subjectof the verb is something like "what we are investigating." So far sogood. But what does the verb affirm of this subject? Barnes defends

' In a recent account that is similar to Barnes's, William E. Mann has noted that"no interesting compositional analysis of a stuff is forthcoming" (p. 242); there is

only the ontological distinction between ephemeral "things" or individuals andeverlastings stuffs. See "Anaxagoras and the Homoiomere," Phronesis, xxv (1980):228-249.

2"Eleatic Questions", Classical Quarterly (1960): 84-102, reprinted in D. J. Furleyand R. E. Allen, eds., Studies in Presocratic Philosophy vol. 2 (London: Routledge& Kegan Paul, 1975).

3"The Thesis of Parmenides" and "More on Parmenides", Review of Metaphys-ics, xxii.4, 88 (June 1969): 700-724, and xxiii.2, 90 (December 1969): 333-340.









a traditional reading of esti as existential, and supports it by amodified version of Owen's answer to the second question (why is

the negative alternative so firmly rejected?): (1) whatever is studied

or investigated must exist, because (2) if it did not exist, one couldnot think of it (noein) or refer to it (legein, phrazein). (See I, 163ff.)

My proposal, on the other hand, is to read esti as veridical ("it is

so," "it is the case") and understand this as equivalent to the con-

junction of an existential reading ("it exists") and an arbitrary

predication ("it is F"). I take the verb noein in the stronger sense of

"know" or "understand", which is much better attested than "to

think of" both in early Greek and in Plato and Aristotle. On my

view, then, we have (1A) whatever is studied or investigated mustbe the case, i.e., must exist and be something definite (be F, for

some value of F), because (2A) you cannot know or understand

what is not the case (what does not exist, what is not something

definite).It would be inappropriate to rehearse here the arguments for and

against each view, but I want to summarize the implications of

these two readings for our understanding of Parmenides, and for

our general approach to the Presocratics. My exegesis claims the

merit of a more idiomatic, less anachronistic use of esti and noein,a more natural fit into the context, where the reason actually given

for rejecting the negative is: "for you cannot know (gnoies) what is

not." Parmenides' argument thus begins with an obvious truth, if

"what is not" means "what is not so" (since knowing that p entails

p). And my reading establishes a natural connection between Par-menides and his echoes in the Man-the-measure formula of Prota-

goras and in the similar Platonic argument for Being as object of

knowledge in Republic V (cf. 477A1: "how can something which-is-not be known (gnostheie)?"). But my view has the disadvantage

of saddling Parmenides with a type-confusion or ambiguity be-

tween the kind of entity that can be the case (a state of affairs, with

propositional structure) and the kind of entity that can exist (a

"thing" or substance); and it involves a corresponding shift in the

force of esti in the course of the argument. Barnes sees "no reason

for making that derogatory ascription" of confusion to Parmenides

(I, 161 .4 Instead, he offers Parmenides an elegant, univocal thesis,

4 See the parallel (and independent) arguments in David Gallop, "'Is' or 'Is Not"'in Monist, LXII, 1 (January 1979): Parmenides Studies Today, 61-80, esp. pp. 66f.,which gives a forceful restatement of Owen's interpretation. Note, however, that if

the veridical is understood as a conjunction, the existential reading is trivially en-tailed and no formal fallacy results.








BOOK REVIEWS 287

which is however "based upon a falsehood [sc. that one cannotthink or speak of what does not exist] and defended by a specious

argument [against generation and change]" (I, 172). I am not surewhy that is less derogatory than a type-confusion between thingand state of affairs, a confusion that seems fairly characteristic of

Greek ontology, including Plato's theory of Forms. The real attrac-tion of the Owen-Barnes interpretation is not only (a) that it per-mits a univocal reading of esti as "exists" throughout, but (b) thatit fits in so well with Cartesian and post-Cartesian concern with

questions of existence and the connections between existence andthought, as well as (c) its affinity to more recent debates about the

links between existence and reference. The Owens-Barnes readingis, I suggest, resolutely anachronistic: it aims to give Parmenidesthe most interesting philosophical position from a modern point

of view, ignoring the relation to Protagoras and to the PlatonicBeing of Republic V. (Barnes would be inclined, I think, to givethe same existential reading to "being" in Rep. V; but he takes theProtagorean esti as predicative: II, 242f., thus cutting the historical

ties between the Truth of Protagoras and that of Parmenides.)When Barnes claims to offer Parmenides "a metaphysical outlook

which is intelligible, coherent, and peculiarly plausible" (I, 161),the relevant standards of plausibility come from post-Cartesian andcontemporary metaphysics. In fact, as he admits, the view is onewhich, "of modern philosophers, only Berkeley would dare to defend. . .that whatever is thought of exists" (I, 170). Questions of exist-ence are central to philosophy from Descartes on, but not for theGreeks. The choice between our two readings is thus partly a ques-tion of philosophical taste, partly one of philological tact, but

primarily a question of one's sense of the function and value of thehistory of philosophy. I prefer to see Parmenides as the founder ofGreek metaphysics and epistemology, rather than a genial precur-sor of Descartes, Berkeley, or Kant.

I forbear detailed comment on Barnes's interpretation of thatother Presocratic giant, Heraclitus, which seems to me one of theweaker sections of the book. But I am surely a prejudiced reader onthis score.

Prejudice and disagreement aside, all lovers of the Presocratics

will welcome this highly personal, vigorous, and stimulating sur-vey of the field from a distinctly philosophical point of view.

CHARLES H. KAHN

University of Pennsylvania

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Review_Barnes, Jonathan_The Presocratic Philosophers_[Charles Kahn]