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13.08.2009

Intellectual pregnancy is possible. Interview with David Sedley, in Cambridge, 16.04.2008, by Ieva Bērziņa-Andersone.

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Ieva Bērziņa-Andersone. In your response to my invitation to the interview you indicated that you would not call yourself a philosopher but rather a historian of the philosophy. How and why do you distinguish between these two?

David Sedley. There is an old debate whether the history of philosophy is a part of philosophy, and I believe that it is. And I do believe that I am contributing to philosophy as a subject as I think all the historians of philosophy are. But I suppose the reason is that I work a lot on the history of particular issues in philosophy, e.g., free will and determinism. And, if somebody else would like to know what is my own position on those issues, I would say that I haven’t arrived to a position, partly, because I don’t have time to keep up with all the most recent literature on it. But I don’t feel my role as a historian of philosophy commits me to have my own philosophical positions. In fact, I find it’s a subject, which it is easier to do if you don’t make your own decisions; if you regard all questions as still open. So, to that extent I don’t feel like a real philosopher, but, as I said, I do think that my work contributes to philosophy as such.

I.B.A. Your work mainly focuses on the ancient philosophy. How did you become interested in this field?

D.S. Autobiographically I started out as a classicist, and this was simply the area of classics to which I found myself increasingly attracted. That was the sequence of events. But I suppose that now that I regard myself as a contributor to philosophy, the question really is: why have I stayed with the ancient philosophy, rather than moved on to medieval, renaissance or modern philosophy. For this I might give quite different reasons; though how honest I’m being about this I’m not sure: it may be my laziness, as there was quite much work to do with ancient philosophy, and I didn’t consider appropriate to increase this workload. I think in terms of taste what I find is that my interest, or, I might even say, my passion in the ancient philosophy, is tied to the fact that it predates the Judeo-Christian tradition that we all, whether we like it or not, are a part of. The ability to put the clock back to the pagan era and therefore to start out without a huge number of prejudices and presuppositions that are so much a part of our culture that we are not even aware of. This is a very liberating way to come to study philosophy.

I.B.A. Is this like looking at the roots of our culture?

D.S. Yes, it’s looking at the roots of our current culture, minus one very large component, which is, I suppose, the Christian tradition. Although not specifically Christianity, because even if one is working at the Jewish or Islamic culture, one would still get the same value out of putting the clock back to the roots of our own philosophical form, which predates the arrival of that particular religious movement.

I.B.A. Do you think it’s still relevant to study the ancient philosophy today? Apart from looking at the roots, can it contribute also to the contemporary thinking?

D.S. I think so, yes. I think it is. I won’t say it’s the primary reason for doing it, because the studying of particularly interesting cultures such as Greek and Roman has its own intrinsic attraction anyway. However, I think when trying to understand great thinkers who don’t share some of our own presuppositions, is a very good way of discovering what your own presuppositions are. And once you have discovered what they are, you can also experiment and try to live without them; see whether they’re really necessary.

I.B.A. What have been your main interests within the ancient philosophy?

D.S. Well, they have moved quite a lot. Originally, I was a specialist in the Hellenist philosophy, I studied the Epicureans and sceptics. But, I suppose, now I have worked more on Plato than on anybody else. I try to cover everything, although, of course, I can’t live entirely up to that. Ancient philosophy spans from a period, roughly, from 600 B.C. to 600 A.D., and that’s 1200 years, a huge amount, although, of course, only a small fraction of this survives. I have tried to cover as much of that period as I can, although I have spent much less time on the later end of it, the Neo-Platonist era. Eventually, I’d like to put into it as much of my efforts as into the other parts.

I.B.A. As you mentioned the Plato, I should note that one of the reasons for this interview was that this year the Latvian translation of Theatetus came out. You have published a work on Theatetus (David Sedley. The Midwife of Platonism. Text and Subtext in Plato's Theaetetus. Clarendon Press, 2004). What do you think, why it was important to Plato to write this dialogue?

D.S. (laughs) Yes, my conclusion indeed was that it was important for him, but there are a great many opinions about why it’s important. The purpose of my book really was to propose and defend a particular reason of its importance to Plato. Do you want me to say more about that?

I.B.A. Yes, please.

D.S. Well, some people try to read the Theatetus as just a different way in which Plato tries to defend his standard views, particularly his metaphysics. Some people have thought that the Theatetus, quite on the contrary, represents a completely new start when Plato tore up with all his achievements in epistemology and metaphysics, and started all again in Theatetus. Now, I want to defend the third view, which is that the Theatetus represents Plato’s concerns on establishing a unity with his own though. It’s generally agreed that Plato started out writing dialogues, which were about Socrates and which tried to capture what was special about the interrogative agenda that Socrates pursued. And later Plato put into the mouth of Socrates ideaa that were basically his, Plato’s, own. I accept this view that Plato developed in that way. And I see Theatetus as being written after Plato developed his own metaphysics and put it into the mouth of Socrates. And, it’s written to show why it was justified, in other words, why that transition was justified. He tries to show how Plato’s own work or what we call “Platonism” – although it wasn’t already anticipated by Socrates, it was the natural outcome of Socrates’s work, and thus it ties together the two main halves of Plato’s work. So, that’s my own particular story of why it’s important. But I don’t think anybody who has worked on it would disagree that it’s important. It must be important because it’s such a brilliant dialogue. Nobody could have written that without a strong motivation.

I.B.A. Why did you choose yourself to write a book on the Theatetus? According to your bibliography, you have written two books on Plato’s work: on Cratylus and on Theatetus. What was the importance of this dialogue to you?

D.S. The reasons would not be very profound. One is that if you teach ancient philosophy, you necessarily teach also on the Theatetus, so I had thought about it for many years because of teaching it. Secondly, writing books is not really what I like to do. I like writing articles and I need certain circumstances in order to write a book. In this case, I was invited to give lecture series in Italy. It’s a series called Lectura Platonis in the Macerata University in Southeast Italy. They asked me to come for a week and give a lecture series to students on a Platonic dialogue. I chose Theatetus, because I was beginning to develop that particular interpretation of it. One of the conditions for giving lectures was that they should afterwards be allowed to publish a book on the lectures. I didn’t have a text; I simply improvised the lectures and they made a tape-recording of it. Afterwards they read the transcripts and corrected my Italian. They sent it to me and asked whether they can publish this in a book. When I read it, it was terrible, and I couldn’t possibly publish such an awful book (laughs). But, I said, all right, I will write another book, in which I will try to say what I really want to say. So, I wrote it simply to keep my contract with them. I wrote the book from the very beginning, in English. Eventually they were translating it into Italian, but it’s taking a long time. And so, against my will, I wrote a book.

I.B.A. It’s good that you did.

D.S. Yes, I’m glad actually that I did it. (laughs)

I.B.A. Now, more on the substance of the dialogue. Do you think that this debate on the nature of knowledge taking place in Theatetus can contribute to the contemporary epistemology?

D.S. It can to an extent. Personally, I think we would be misleading ourselves if we thought that was the reason for studying it. Partly, because Plato is beginning with... he’s raising some very important questions of how you can define knowledge. Problems which came to be recognized. But there have been further moves made, particularly the arrival to a particular position called externalism, which is trying to get round the difficulties Plato is raising in Theatetus. Plato played a historical part in the development of the problems of the definition of knowledge, but he’s not a contributor to the debate as it is now. So, in a way my view is that although we always learn a lot from thinking the problems through... where you try to understand somebody else’s view: that itself is enlightening, but not because it’s a direct contributor to the current debate. In fact, I think it’s much more important to read Plato’s views on the way to your own philosophy.

I.B.A. At the end of Theatetus, there is no real conclusion. There is only an understanding that the knowledge is not this and not that, but not what it really is. What are your feelings about such an ending?

D.S. According to my interpretation, it was inevitable that the question was answered negatively. Plato is trying to evaluate the contribution that Socrates made to Plato’s own positive views. Plato himself has very strong views on what knowledge is, even if we never get his final definition of it. He clearly has very strong views about it. But what he’s trying to show in Theatetus, according to me, is not that Socrates anticipated that understanding of knowledge, but that Socrates got rid of lots of mistaken conceptions of what it is. Socrates’s basic role in philosophy was a negative role: to clear away the misconceptions so that the Platonism could come in its place. So, we shouldn’t be disappointed; we should say that it’s exactly the right way, or, at least, a legitimate way to view the role of Socrates in the overall philosophy. This is because Plato, no doubt, thinks that his own position is the one, which effectively solved this problem. After two and a half thousand years we, however, do not think that Plato has brought the history of philosophy to the end, although it was easy enough for him to think he had.

I.B.A. So, could we say in your interpretation that the baby, which Socrates should finally deliver as a midwife, is Plato’s own philosophy?

D.S. Yes, that’s exactly my line: Socrates as the midwife of Platonism. Although no baby has been born in the Theatetus, we nevertheless have been brought to the position where a future intellectual pregnancy is possible, and a one, in which we should arrive at a healthy baby.

I.B.A. How could you briefly summarize Plato’s own interpretation of knowledge?

D.S. It’s interesting that Plato never himself gives his final definition of knowledge. But, what I take to be really important for Plato, is that you can’t understand a cognitive state unless you correlate it correctly to its proper objects. The two have to be understood together. Just as you can’t understand what sight is if you don’t correlate it to colours. So, you couldn’t begin to understand knowledge as a state of mind if you didn’t also determine what the correct objects of the knowledge are. Plato sees his great contribution as being to have discovered what the proper objects of the knowledge are. And that actually is the intelligible world; the world of all the forms. That is the Plato’s key contribution to the history of philosophy, although he thinks it’s a natural outcome of Socrates’s own work. That doesn’t tell what knowledge is, but it tells a very important part: it tells us why the previous concepts of the origin of knowledge have failed prior to Plato; precisely because they haven’t seen that knowledge has to be of things, which could not be otherwise. Of thinks that could not be otherwise, which do not include any objects available to senses, they’re limited to things accessed by the intellect.

I.B.A. To end on Theatetus, I’d like to ask you perhaps a funny question, but one which I found particularly touching when I read the dialogue. It is about lawyers. Plato in Theatetus compared lawyers to slaves and distinguished them from philosophers described as free and peaceful men. Could we apply such a comparison to contemporary lawyers and philosophers?

D.S. Well, I’m not sure we should choose lawyers for this comparison, we might as well choose politicians. Speaking in a country where there is indeed very little contact between politicians and philosophers, that contrast is rather helpful. There are other cultures, France, for example, where there has been a very healthy interaction between politicians and philosophers over a very long period where they actually learn a lot from each other. The particular point about time... I’m not sure about that. Probably it was true in Plato’s own society where there was a very strict timing for speeches in a law court, which imposed an enormous restriction on the power of the argument. Whereas, although you could tell me whether this is right or not, but I think that in most contemporary legal systems the length of time available for an argument in court is related to the complexity of the case. Probably therefore that specific angle is one which represents Plato’s own culture. I don’t want to say anything negative about lawyers, as I come from a family of lawyers myself (laughs). My father was a solicitor and my brother is a judge, so I’m very sympathetic to lawyers. But lawyers themselves are well aware of some of the negative characteristics associated with their profession, or, at least, with some members of their profession.

I.B.A. Another branch of your work has focussed on Epicurus. Why Epicurus? He’s quite different from Plato, isn’t he?

D.S. Yes. Again, the answer is partly biographical. I started as a classicist. My great passion as an undergraduate was the Roman poet Lucretius. The way I got into studying the ancient philosophy, at least, why I came back to it as a graduate student is that I wanted to know about Epicureanism in order to be able to understand Lucretius better. I have to admit that my passion to Lucretius is only partly literary; it’s also that I think that, probably by instinct, I am an Epicurean. At least I find some of the basic insights of Epicureanism very valuable. The main claim of the Epicureanism is that if you can only understand basic physics, you realise that you don’t have to lead a life dominated by the fear of God. He also claims that people’s lives are led, whether they are actually aware of it or not, largely by the fear of death, the fear of your own mortality. And you can learn that mortality is actually not a bad thing, that it’s also very liberating. So, I think the reason why I started out with the Epicureanism was my philosophical sympathy. But I also have to confess that in a longer term that’s a disadvantage. I know find much more interest in philosophy which I completely disagree with. I prefer that critical distance. I’m not at all a Platonist, but I’m the greatest admirer of Plato.

I.B.A. Is it relevant to read Epicurus today?

D.S. Oh, yes. I think that Epicurus... of course, the physics is completely outdated. But I think Epicurus... I have known people who have read Epicurus and at the end they had almost like a religious conversion. It is curious that in antiquity Epicureanism continued to have an appeal in the public; a broad appeal down may be to the 2nd century A.D. But that it eventually disappeared, as in the late antiquity people had very little taste for such a basically religious philosophy as Epicureanism. But the fact is that there is a correspondence in its failure to appeal in the world of the late antiquity and the new appealed it has gained in a much more secular age.

I.B.A. It seems that in some general views Epicureanism is reduced to the notion of pleasure.

D.S. Certainly, Epicurean ethics is a hedonist ethics, that is true. And the hedonism remains a perfectly viable philosophical position.

I.B.A. Your last book is on the creationism and its critique in the antiquity (David Sedley. Creationism and Its Critics in Antiquity. Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2007). How did you come to this topic, were there again autobiographical reasons?

D.S. Not really (laughs). Only the reason that I wrote a book is similar to the Italian case: I was invited to give a set of lectures called Sather Classical  Lectures. And one of the conditions was that you publish a book on the lectures with the University of California Press. That’s why there is a book. Why did I choose that topic? It was really because of my teaching interests. I had been teaching a course on that topic, I had long study interests in some of the pre-Socratic philosophers, who gave me some of ideas, which went into this book. This topic brings together interests I have had right across the history of the ancient philosophy for many years, so it was a natural outcome of those. On the other hand, it is true that the creationism is a very important issue today, it’s spreading. In my book I don’t say very much on what I think of it, that’s the same policy that I don’t do it. But, of course, I do think that the creationism is an unbelievably stupid doctrine to hold onto today. And I find it just scaring and shocking that a large part of American population believe in one or another form of the creationism.

I.B.A. You already touched the next topic I wanted to discuss in this context: the contemporary creationist/ evolutionist debate. For example, Richard Dawkins’s works are amazingly popular here in UK. Is there some similarity between the ancient and contemporary debates?

D.S. There is some similarity, but it’s not a very strong one. Creationism of antiquity is led by and put on the table by the leading intellectuals; the great majority of philosophers who argued on the available evidence had arrived to the position of creationism. And it was indeed the most rational position to adopt given the evidence that there was.  So, in a way the most powerful argument for the creationism was the one adopted by Galen. His argument is based on intimate knowledge of human anatomy. It seems to him completely refusable that when you examine some part of an organism, for example, the exact number and position of bones in a human hand: it’s just incredible that every one has a function, you cannot take anyone of them out. Given the absence of the Darwinian account, it was a completely rational position to take and it in no way relied on Biblical or other authority. Whereas I think that there are very few modern creationists who have arrived at the creationism simply by examining the evidence without starting out from the basis of the reliance on a religious text. It’s very hard to believe that anybody, at least that not many people, simply from starting from an absolutely neutral position would find the creationism the best explanation of organisms. There is a completely different context. Nevertheless, some of the arguments are exactly the same. Because once you are a creationist today you look for the arguments to back you up. The argument of the design, which says that the world has all the features of an intentional planning, is just as powerful today as when it was invented by Socrates.

I.B.A. You mentioned that you don’t want to take positions yourself, but it seems that you’re more inclined to the evolutionary explanation.

D.S. Yes, but that’s not a philosophical question, it’s just a matter of common sense. I’m not involved and I’m not competent to be involved in the debates that go on between the evolutionists and creationists, but there is a great deal that most of us take on trust from the scientists, for example, the internal combustion engines, etc, that I’m completely happy to accept when I’m told by engineers on that and not willing to investigate it myself. And that’s exactly the same about the evolution.

I.B.A. If I may ask, are you a Christian?

D.S. No. I come from... I never had a Christian upbringing either: my parents were lapsed Jews, so I wasn’t connected to any religious group. I was taught Christianity in school, but not at home.

I.B.A. Do you think studies of the ancient philosophy have influenced your personal way of life, your understanding of it, your values?

D.S. In some ways. Not so broadly that I would say that it’s what gives my live the meaning. But I do feel that there are some values, which I really do get from the studying of ancient philosophy, although they’re probably not unique to it. One example would be the old question why should we not act unjustly. And I think that the insight, which goes back to the Socrates and Plato that the reason why you shouldn’t do wrong is that you damage yourself: it’s a powerful argument by Plato and it remains one of the most important things. Also, as I mentioned I come from a Jewish origin, and as an ethnic Jew I get very upset about the modern state of Israel. One thing that I feel is that many tragedies have befallen the Jews, but not the least of these tragedies is that they have become the bad guys. I don’t think this is worse than being exterminated, although I think it can be compared with it. The damage you do to yourself when becoming an aggressor or a bully is something that I have learned from Plato.

I.B.A. I’m not sure if I recall it correctly but I think it was Wittgenstein who also studied here in Cambridge who said that he doesn’t read ancient philosophers. How would you answer to a claim that it’s not relevant for a contemporary philosopher to read the ancient ones?

D.S. Well, Wittgenstein did actually study some ancient philosophy. In fact he did discuss a famous passage of Theatetus in a way, which in my opinion disastrously misled lots of interpreters on what the passage is about. But that’s of course the question on how far the modern philosophy can help us to understand ancient philosophy, whereas you asked me whether ancient philosophy can help to understand modern philosophy. I don’t want to deny that you can be a good philosopher without studying ancient philosophy, just as you can be a good philosopher without studying medieval philosophy or renaissance philosophy, or Chinese philosophy. It’s certainly not my claim that the knowledge of ancient philosophy is essential to be a good philosopher. Nevertheless, I think it is an important part of the whole tapestry: it provides one set of insights, which may be helpful for studying the 20th century analytical philosophy or the history of utilitarianism or Kantianism. Whatever it may be the ancient philosophy has a value, which competes with those for anybody who wants to be able to come to philosophical problems with a wealth of alternative perspectives.

I.B.A. To conclude, what are your current research interests?

D.S. At the moment I’m running a project, which is on the philosophy of the 1st century B.C. This is a rather neglected century. Of course, there are individual philosophers in that century on whom people have worked a lot, like Cicero or Lucretius, whom I mentioned earlier: my original philosophical passion; he was also writing in the 1st century B.C. But, what has not been studied, except incidentally, is how the whole philosophical enterprise changed in the 1st century B.C. in such a radical way that the history of ancient philosophy falls in two completely separate halves in the 1st century B.C. and afterwards. The entire enterprise had changed due to, I think, that what happened in the 1st century B.C.  Philosophy until that time was carried on in Athens, in Greek schools of Platonism. In the 1st century B.C. with the growth of the power of Rome Athens marginalised; philosophy migrated away from Athens into the Roman Empire. From that time on it was studied in a largely different way. Mainly, the way of studying philosophy was by studying the texts of the old masters, Plato and Aristotle in particular. So, philosophy became a kind of commentary, a little bit like the Biblical scholarship. All of this is because of these demographic, educational, social and political changes that went on the 1st century B.C. So, what we’re doing in our project is trying to get a global picture on the changes, which went on at that time.

I.B.A. This is the end of my questions. Thank you very much for your time.

D.S. It was my pleasure. If you can extract something printable from this, then good luck to you. (laughs)

 

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