When Empedocles uses a divine name for one of the items in his ontology, does this serve merely as a poetic metaphor or does it mean that the item in question is a god, with personal agency and intentions? In Empedocles' poem, most things are described as if they were intentional agents and seem to function as such. Is there anything in the universe that does not have a mind or does not engage in intentional action? In this paper I argue that Empedocles was talking of a universe in which all the components, without exception, are living beings with mental capacities and that their power is the power of agents, acting voluntarily, not of inanimate forces acting mechanically. There is nothing in Empedocles' ontology that could be described as inert matter, and there are no inanimate things.My aim in this paper is to investigate (i) which of the terms in Empedocles' poem are meant to be the names of gods, and (ii) whether his use of a divine name to refer to some item in the cosmos carries any significance.
Do you need to know the name of the god you’re praying to? If you get the name wrong what happens to the prayer? What if the god has more than one name? Who gets to decide whether the name works (you or the god or neither)? What are names anyway? Are the names of the gods any different in how they work from any other names? Is there a way of fixing the reference without using the name so as to avoid the problems of optional names? There is a type of formula used in prayer in ancient Greece which I call (in this paper) a “precautionary formula”. The person praying uses expressions like “whether you want to be called [x] or [y]”, and “if this is the name by which you would like to be called”. I also include here the practice of adding definite descriptions that identify the god by means other than the name (e.g. their place of birth or residence, their deeds etc). In this paper I ask what these formulae were for, why so many occur in philosophical work, particularly Plato, and whether the puzzles about the names of the gods go back to the Presocratics.
At the end of Republic Book 3, when he has just finished describing the education that would produce fine young citizens suited to be Guardians of his ideal state, Socrates famously proposes that all the citizens should be taught a myth or story. They are to identify the earth as their mother, and to believe that, during their gestation within the womb of the earth, different kinds of metals accumulated in their souls, and that these metals are definitive of their future career and place in society. 1 We call this story "the Noble Lie". "Noble" translates γενναῖον, meaning "well-born"perhaps because it is about nobility of birth, since all the citizens are nobly born, of the same mother, according to this story, but we shall also find reasons for seeing it is as noble in another sense. "Lie" is translating ψεῦδος, meaning 'false'. Perhaps "lie" is an over-translation, since, as many have noted, not all falsehoods are lies. We could substitute "fiction" or "pretence" in place of "lie". But regardless of which terms we use, the fact remains that Socrates suggests using falsehood and asks how we might get the citizens to believe a myth which, in some sense at least, is acknowledged to be untrue. Two puzzles arise from the claim that the story is false. First, if it is obviously untrue, and everyone knows that, how can anyone come to believe it? And second, why should Socrates want his citizens to believe a falsehood, and run the state on that basis, instead of teaching them the truth? The provision of a founding lie, and the requirement that the people be deceived about their own birth, has generated hostility among a wide spectrum of readers. Many readers have jumped to the conclusion that Plato's aim was to conceal the natural equality of the people, so that they could be allotted roles of unequal worth in the community. This makes the story a rather ignoble lie, designed to oppress rather than liberate the people of the ideal state. Noble Lie de-anonymised 5th version (September).docx 2 August 2015 My task in this paper is to show that Plato meant exactly the opposite. I shall argue that the Noble Lie is designed to ensure that the city and its citizens are lucidly aware of something that is important and true, and that it is designed to deliver greater fairness and equality of opportunity, to prevent prejudice or privilege due to noble birth or wealth or any other unfair advantages, and to facilitate social mobility. By juxtaposing the myth of the metals (Noble Lie) with another myth (the "Cave") from later in the same work, I hope to make the point of the Noble Lie more evident. We shall also find that the puzzles about whether it is false, whether it is compatible with justice, and why the rulers would believe it, fall away. By taking a tour through the underground caverns of the Republic we shall emerge at the end with our eyes opened to the truth. I Birth and rebirth The Noble Lie comes in two parts. The first is about autochthony (414d-e): it claims that people are gestated under the earth, and that the ear...
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