Jason Rheins
My two main areas of research are:
* Ancient Greek Philosophy
(with lots of spill-over into classics and the history of science)
[Currently writing about Plato's late metaphysics/cosmology/theology; other significant past or ongoing projects have been on Aristotle's view of science/knowledge and its relationship to 'first philosophy' (especially Metaphysics IV and the Posterior Analytics); the Stoic Archai; Greek Philosophical Theology; Cradle Arguments]
*Issues at at the intersection of the history and philosophy of science, metaphysics, and epistemology.
Under that heading, I'm particularly keen on:
- how and why things should be grouped together (issues of concepts/universals/natural kinds/species/natures)
[I've published on the issue of species concepts, similarity, and natural kinds]
- What influence philosophy (especially metaphysics and epistemology) has had and can or should have on other intellectual and social domains
For example:
* Overlap between ontology and scientific cosmology. I'm very much persuaded by the arguments of Parmenides, Aristotle, and those who followed them that the universe is eternal (because nothing can come from nothing, because "nothing" is not a real thing). If that's right, what should come of it in regard to modern cosmology?
- the internal logic of philosophical systems (i.e. typologies of world-views; how commitments to certain methods and theses in one area of philosophy often lead to or even constitute positions in other areas)
- What motivates the development of 'transcendental' philosophies, both Platonist and Kantian/Idealist? I work on Plato and dabble in Kant, but I'm an Aristotelian through and through. I want to know how it is that historical geniuses, e.g. Plato and Kant, end up saying that the world we see isn't fully real - a view which is, prima facie, loony.
- Describing a neo-Aristotelian meta-philosophical alternative to both epistemic naturalism [e.g. Quinean-type empiricism] and apriorism. Call it "empirical first philosophy" or "Philosophical inductivism"
I am also have interests in and have published about Objectivism.
Missed Callings:
I dabble in early modern philosophy, primarily on Locke and Kant.
I follow work in historical biblical criticism as an amateur enthusiast.
And maybe one day I'll write about theories of myth....
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[My main hobby is writing (formal) poetry, and so I pursue a personal/non-professional interest in historical poetry, especially ancient Greek, 18th-19th c. German and English (Romantics and Victorians), and epics.]
* Ancient Greek Philosophy
(with lots of spill-over into classics and the history of science)
[Currently writing about Plato's late metaphysics/cosmology/theology; other significant past or ongoing projects have been on Aristotle's view of science/knowledge and its relationship to 'first philosophy' (especially Metaphysics IV and the Posterior Analytics); the Stoic Archai; Greek Philosophical Theology; Cradle Arguments]
*Issues at at the intersection of the history and philosophy of science, metaphysics, and epistemology.
Under that heading, I'm particularly keen on:
- how and why things should be grouped together (issues of concepts/universals/natural kinds/species/natures)
[I've published on the issue of species concepts, similarity, and natural kinds]
- What influence philosophy (especially metaphysics and epistemology) has had and can or should have on other intellectual and social domains
For example:
* Overlap between ontology and scientific cosmology. I'm very much persuaded by the arguments of Parmenides, Aristotle, and those who followed them that the universe is eternal (because nothing can come from nothing, because "nothing" is not a real thing). If that's right, what should come of it in regard to modern cosmology?
- the internal logic of philosophical systems (i.e. typologies of world-views; how commitments to certain methods and theses in one area of philosophy often lead to or even constitute positions in other areas)
- What motivates the development of 'transcendental' philosophies, both Platonist and Kantian/Idealist? I work on Plato and dabble in Kant, but I'm an Aristotelian through and through. I want to know how it is that historical geniuses, e.g. Plato and Kant, end up saying that the world we see isn't fully real - a view which is, prima facie, loony.
- Describing a neo-Aristotelian meta-philosophical alternative to both epistemic naturalism [e.g. Quinean-type empiricism] and apriorism. Call it "empirical first philosophy" or "Philosophical inductivism"
I am also have interests in and have published about Objectivism.
Missed Callings:
I dabble in early modern philosophy, primarily on Locke and Kant.
I follow work in historical biblical criticism as an amateur enthusiast.
And maybe one day I'll write about theories of myth....
-------
[My main hobby is writing (formal) poetry, and so I pursue a personal/non-professional interest in historical poetry, especially ancient Greek, 18th-19th c. German and English (Romantics and Victorians), and epics.]
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Papers by Jason Rheins
In this paper I argue that several passages containing arguments from design that have been collected as fragments of Aristotle's lost dialogue *De Philosophia* are spurious. In the process, I highlight many of the common features and non-Aristotelian influences present in these passages.
Book Reviews by Jason Rheins
Detailed Review of the 9 volume edition of Early Greek Philosophy edited and translated by André Laks and Glenn W. Most.
4784 words + table
In this paper I argue that several passages containing arguments from design that have been collected as fragments of Aristotle's lost dialogue *De Philosophia* are spurious. In the process, I highlight many of the common features and non-Aristotelian influences present in these passages.
Detailed Review of the 9 volume edition of Early Greek Philosophy edited and translated by André Laks and Glenn W. Most.
4784 words + table
Rheins, J.G. 'Review of Early Greek Philosophy, 9 vol., edd André Laks and Glenn W. Most, 2016 and Les débuts de la philosophie, ibid.', Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, October 2018.
Theology constitutes both the core content of Plato’s cosmology and a key metaphysical foundation for Platonic cosmology as such. To put it another way, when Plato seeks to describe the most essential structures and functions of the sensible world he gives an account of gods; when Plato seeks to explain how it is possible for there to be perpetually beautiful, rational, and living divinities in a sensible world of otherwise constant and unstable generation and destruction, there too his answer looks to god. This book attempts to develop and detail an accurate and coherent account of Plato’s theology and to identify the several philosophical problems Plato devised it to address. It carefully reconstructs his views about the various kinds of entities identified by him as gods, their relationships to one another and the universe as a whole, and the roles they serve in his overall worldview. Such a study is very much needed, for while interest in Plato’s theology has been steadily growing, no full-length, systematic treatment of the subject has been written in English. This is the first book of its kind to give a thorough treatment of all the relevant texts from across Plato’s corpus; to examine all the relevant features or “parts” of his theology: the World-soul and other cosmic souls, “Nous” (i.e. reason or intellect), the Demiurge (Craftsman), the Form of the GOOD; and to attempts to organize the interpretation of all of these into a new, coherent narrative situating Plato’s theology centrally within his late thought.
Moreover, while several good books and articles have been written on the subject, nearly all the work that has been done on Plato’s theology for the last 80 years has recapitulated or offered only minor variations on one of the same three or four inadequate interpretative schemes, all of which were developed before the Second World War. Thus progress on the topic has been at a standstill for more than three quarters of a century. This book offers to break this deadlock and to offer a novel interpretation by resolving the central dilemma over Plato’s theology that has made fully coherent and well-motivated interpretations impossible. To do so, it rejects the identification of the Craftsman god (Demiurge) of his Timaeus and other dialogues with “Nous” (reason or intellect)—an identification that is the common, shared assumption of all of the unsuccessful contemporary interpretations as well as of nearly every historical interpretation of Plato’s theology in the long history of its reception. While I am proposing to do away with an interpretive orthodoxy, the result is a clearer view of the Demiurge, Nous, and their respective key roles in Plato’s late metaphysics and cosmology.
Table of Contents
PART I – FOREGROUND AND BACKGROUND
Chapter 1. Introduction to Plato’s Theology: Themes, Questions, and Methods
Chapter 2. The Ancient Quarrel: Traditional Greek religion and its philosophical critics
PART II – IMMANENT THEOLOGY
Chapter 3. The Goals of Plato’s Public Theology
Chapter 4. The Implementation Problem and the Panpsychic Solution
Chapter 5. The World, the World-soul, and other cosmic gods
PART III – TRANSCENDENT THEOLOGY
Chapter 6. The Demiurge is the GOOD
Chapter 7. The Demiurge is not Nous
Chapter 8. Pre-panpsychic Intellect?: Cosmic Intellect and the World-soul in the Philebus
PART IV – INTERSTITIALS AND INTERCESSORIES
Chapter 9. Culture-Heroes, Daemons, and the Gods of Tradition
Conclusion
I analyze Plato’s various accounts of those divine things that are immanent in the world of change (e.g. the World-soul) and those that are said to be transcendent intelligibles (e.g. the Forms and the Demiurge) in order to determine what Plato’s gods are and what roles they play in his system. While I examine the entire Platonic corpus, I focus on Plato’s late dialogues, in which theology and cosmology receive considerably more extensive and significant treatment than they do in his earlier works. My central texts are the Philebus, Timaeus, and book X of the Laws, supplemented secondarily by the Phaedo, Phaedrus, Republic, Sophist, Statesman, and Epistle VII. I also make cautious use of the testimony from Aristotle regarding Plato’s so-called “unwritten doctrines”.
The invention of the World-soul is revealed to be Plato’s way of instantiating intellect in the cosmos in order to suit the demands of his natural and moral philosophy, while his esoteric account of the Demiurge resolves any tensions between his immanent theology and his metaphysics, and suggests, semi-literally, the role that timeless, intelligible goodness plays in organizing the sensible world of change.
Supervisors: Charles Kahn and Susan Sauvé Meyer
The two Principles (archai) of the Stoics, God and Matter, were considered by them to be bodies. The textual evidence for this can no longer be doubted, and the field is now in virtually universal agreement on this point.
However, earlier commentators had doubted that the Stoic principles could be bodies on philosophical as well as (limited) philological grounds. For one thing, the two principles thoroughly co-mingle and occupy the exact same places; the co-occupation of identical spaces by distinct bodies is a general problem with Stoic ontology/mereology, but one which the Stoics (like some modern mereologists) were prepared to accept.
However, there are additional problems distinct to the corporeality of the principles. For instance, neither principle on its own seems to constitute a body in the full sense, since both God/Cause (determinant) and Matter/Patient (determinable) seem necessary in order to have a body (in some region of space) with determinate characteristics and the capacity to be both a causal agent and a patient. For the Stoics, only bodies are causal agents and patients, but the principle of God is always and only a cause, and the principle of Matter is always and only the patient of the cause.
Against this objection, the corporeality of the principles is frequently defended on the grounds that the Stoics claim that only a body can be *either* a cause *or* the patient of an effect. It need not be both. God is everywhere and always a cause to matter, so God must be a body. Matter is everywhere and always the patient, so it too must be a body.
Although it is a core feature of the Stoic concept, being capable of causing or being affected is not their definition of "body". Rather, it is having extension in three dimensions and repulsion or resistance to penetration by another body (antitupia). Unfortunately, if matter is a body *everywhere* penetrated by another body, God, then any meaningful sense of impenetrability is nullified. That only leaves extension in three dimensions, but place, space, and void all have extension even though they are incorporeals.. Thus the Stoics' distinction between unoccupied void and occupied place dissolves (void will be full of "body" since it is extended). Worse still, the distinction between body and space is dissolved, and that means that their central ontological distinction - corporeal existence (body) v. incorporeal "subsistence" (time/place/void/"sayables") - also collapses.
One strategy to resolve this problem would be to claim that occupied space can be co-occupied, but It differs from void because, unlike void, there are determined characteristics within it. That solution would preserve the body/incorporeal distinction, but it would eliminate the corporeality of the principle of matter - for matter is defined by the Stoics as unqualified (and passive) body. Once again we would have to deny the corporeality of (at least one, if not both of) their principles. Perhaps this dilemma can be resolved in some way that I have not foreseen, but if there is a defense of their theory that will fare better, I do not know of it.
Unless a "new Chrysippus" can once again save the Stoa, we must conclude on philosophical grounds that there is a critical problem in their theory of principles that threatens the very core of their ontology and physics. At this point the sympathetic interpreter may be moved to attempt to revive the 'incorporeal principles' interpretation. But invoking the principle of charity at this point in order to deny the corporeality of the principles would be both bad history with respect to the Stoics and uncharitable interpretation with respect to their critics on this score (e.g. Plutarch and Alexander of Aphrodisias). We must, on philological grounds, admit that the Stoics extended their corporealism down to their most basic principles.
Barring some novel solution to the problem I have outlined, we find ourselves in the following position: we cannot save the Stoics from the corporeality of their principles, and we cannot save the doctrine of corporeal principles from incoherence. But while we cannot force their theory into making coherent sense, we can make coherent sense of how they arrived at their theory. The tensions within it will remain unresolved, but they can at least be understood, provided that we locate the sources of their conflicting theses.
The Stoic theory, I contend, was the result of blending Xenocrates' (*Timaeus*-inspired) ontology of God-infused matter (minus Xenocrates' Forms) with a separate tradition of corporealism. While corporealism and Xenocrates' proto-"field theory" each may have held some independent appeal, their combination - which Zeno formulated and Chrysippus defended - ultimately was incapable of having a coherent body/space distinction. Like many a cross-species hybrid, the offspring was sterile.
Against an Orthodoxy of Platonic Theology: Why the Demiurge is not Nous
Jason G. Rheins
In this paper I argue against the thesis that in Plato’s dialogues the Divine Craftsman or Demiurge (dēmiourgos - δημιουργός) represents or is equivalent to Intellect (nous - νοῦς). This claim (abbreviated as ΔΝ throughout) has been central to interpretations of Plato’s theology since antiquity, and it has been nearly universally conceded among Platonists. It has continued to be taken for granted in modern scholarship. Despite their many disagreements about Plato’s theology and cosmology, all the major interpretive camps have accepted the ΔΝ. By explicitly rejecting the ΔΝ, I argue that we can resolve several persistent and long-standing dilemmas that have undermined attempts to reconstruct a coherent Platonic view about the gods or to give an adequate reading of Plato’s late dialogues, especially the Timaeus.
In §I, I briefly introduce the central debates concerning Plato’s views about the nature of the gods and explain how the concepts of immanent and transcendent hypostases can be used to clearly frame these issues. In §II I lay out three key theses endorsed by Plato that any adequate position must be able to embrace. They are: 1. Immanence of Intellect; 2. Distinctness of Demiurge from Soul; 3. Venerability of the World-soul. These Platonic theses are all textually well supported, so rejecting any one of them from a reconstruction of Plato’s theology is not a viable option. I outline and categorize the major views that modern scholars have taken in terms of their commitments with respect to these theses. I show that each camp fails to account for one of the three theses and that they seem jointly incompatible. However, it is only in conjunction with the ΔΝ that the theses become incompatible; without the ΔΝ all three can be endorsed in tandem coherently. Thus I show that it is their further commitment to the ΔΝ that undermines all the major positions.
One of the three theses in particular, what I call the “Immanence of Intellect” principle, has been especially controversial. In §III I present the evidence for the principle and address the most prominent text that has been used as a reason to reject it, Philebus 30a8-b7. This text has been widely misread; I correct the misreading and show that when properly construed the passage provides no evidence for rejecting or attenuating the Immanence of Intellect principle.
In §IV I present several other reasons why the ΔΝ has been embraced, and I reexamine the textual evidence that has been adduced in its support. For instance, interpreters have mistakenly made this assumption on the grounds that the Demiurge is called the best of causes in the Timaeus, while intellect seems to be the cause of all good and generated things in the Philebus. The latter part of that argument is doubly mistaken; intellect is neither presented as the maker of soul (which Plato came to regard as a generated thing in his late dialogues), nor as the cause of all things that come to be. It is only identified as belonging to and being an exemplar of the class of things that are causes/makers of generated things. In all but one instance, these texts fail to provide evidence for the ΔΝ thesis, and in some cases it will be shown that they do not refer to the Demiurge at all. One passage, however, Timaeus 47e5-48a5, does seem to refer to the Demiurge with the term ‘nous’. I will argue that while it refers to the Demiurge by means of the word “nous” and makes an association between the two, it is not a completely clear case of Plato actually identifying the Demiurge with nous. For the sake of argument, I will grant the passage as evidence for ΔΝ, but I will show that in spite of it, the full range of texts that must be considered do not support the ΔΝ thesis.
In §§V several arguments are presented that show that the Demiurge can be equated neither with intellect nor soul. Thus the body of evidence weighing against the ΔΝ, both within the Timaeus and in other works, dwarfs the one solid piece of evidence that stands in its favor.
Why the Concept of ‘Human Nature’ has nothing to
fear from Evolutionary Biology (and vice-versa)
§I. The Evolutionary Challenge to Concepts of Human Nature Deployable in Essentialist Ethics
Several prominent philosophers of science including John Dupré, David Hull, and Philip Kitcher have made the case that the conceptions of “human nature” (hereafter ‘HN’) used by perfectionist or essentialist ethical theories including (Neo-)Aristotelianism and contemporary Virtue Ethics are incompatible with any modern, biologically informed understanding of species. Identifying the fact that heritable variations within a population is a necessary ingredient for selection, evolutionary biology is adduced to refute the traditional conception of species as natural kinds carved out by their members’ common possession of a unique and identical distinguishing characteristic, i.e. a real essence or universal such as rationality for Homo sapiens.
Ergo, the idea that human beings constitute a species in virtue of mutual possession of rationality or any other essential attributes is to be rejected. Thus we should also reject any theory of the human good that depends on the attribution of such essential characteristics to our species in order to enumerate a set of excellences, ends, virtues, needs, etc. that will be universally necessary for any human being to cultivate or pursue in order to develop a moral character, to act responsibly, or to flourish.
§II. The First Version of the Evolutionary Challenge
There are two ways in which evolutionary biology is taken to challenge human essentialism. The first method, which has been developed by Philip Kitcher, argues that those relying on a concept of HN to develop a putatively objective notion of the human good or human virtue face a reductivist challenge that they cannot answer. The HN-Essentialist cannot reduce his or her putative objective human goods to a descriptive, non-normative statement of HN that is not challenged by the myriad counter-examples of ‘abnormal specimens’. Such variation is to be expected according to the Neo-Darwinian synthesis of evolutionary biology and genetics; mutation is integral, and copying errors are indelible.
We should be suspicious of the claim that this problem actually derives from modern biology, as it was one advanced by Gassendi and Locke, and it was familiar even to Aristotle. “Monstrosities” were often adduced to challenge the alleged real essence of the Rational Animal or the concept of HN. Such arguments at most prove that traditional, metaphysically essentialist conceptions of kinds cannot cope with the differences we find even in the essential attributes of their members. If an alternative, conceptual (rather than metaphysical) notion of so-called essences lacking this problem can be offered, then the first challenge will be answered.
§III. The Second Version of the Evolutionary Challenge
According to the ‘Evolutionary Concept’ of species developed by Hull and Ghiselin, species are not kinds at all, but individuals. A species is a monophyletic branch of the tree of life; a species is a population that shares common ancestors. When the branches “split”, speciation events occur and two or more new species diverge. The relationship been the members of a species is historical and descent-based rather than essential and trait-based. Consequently, it is a category mistake to even look for common traits among species members, much less an essence. Furthermore, evolutionary biology teaches us that continuous variation is the norm throughout the living world, including among the members of a population, so commonalities will be a rarity. Finally, Hull suggests that even if there were, by rare chance, some common feature spread across a population, it will be unstable and subject to rapid changes.
However, it has been noted that the evolutionary conception is parasitic upon independent criteria of species membership in order to define speciation events. I raise an even more thoroughgoing version of this objection: in order to even determine which organisms belong to a given branch on the tree of life some sorting criteria are needed to select between members and non-members. Hence even between speciation events, the phylogenetic, evolutionary concept that identifies species as individuals is parasitic on a kind-based approach to species populations.
Therefore, what is left of this objection is: 1. The same challenge that first approach collapsed into, to find a notion of essence or HN that is compatible with differences and “abnormal specimens” within biological kinds, especially mankind, and 2. The need to explain how such kinds are stable enough across time to be suitable for grounding normative claims.
§IV. The Solution of Epistemic Essentialism: An alternative concept of species and their natures
In answer to both the first and second challenges, I present an alternative approach to species that regards them as concepts united by rich similarity relationships rather than as natural kinds. I argue that this alternative accommodates claims about essential features or the basic, shared natures of kind members (e.g. HN) without positing or relying on “real essences”. I call this position epistemic essentialism.
Given the epistemic essentialist view, a basic concept of HN with possible normative implications is in no way incompatible with modern biology, especially evolutionary biology. Disabled offspring still count as species members, but do not challenge essences that are epistemological rather than metaphysical. However, the approach to species and their essences on offer from the epistemic approach may constrain what such a conception of HN can offer to normative, essentialist programs.
§V. Conclusion
I conclude with a brief observation. On a more reasonable understanding of species, Hull’s worry that HN is too fragile, biologically speaking, to ground a normative conception of the human being collapses into absurdity. Homo sapiens emerged in the Middle Paleolithic period roughly 200,000 years ago, but, for example, women first gained the right the vote in 1893, a mere 118 years ago, which is somewhere between 1/1500th and 1/2000th of the age of our species. If we are “essentially” the same as our Paleolithic ancestors, then it is not HN but our norms and institutions that are fragile and prone to rapid evolution.
This is an appendix (undergoing revision) where I provide:
- A general outline of the three major theological arguments in book X of Plato's Laws and their surrounding and supporting material.
- Detailed reconstructions of the arguments themselves
This contains the first argument, viz. the argument against atheism proper, to show that gods exist.
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