From: "Tobin Nellhaus" <nellhaus-AT-biddeford.com>
Subject: Re: Greek concepts of agency
Date: Wed, 25 Sep 1996 19:00:59 -0400


Shane Mage wrote:

> This view (of the nonexistence of the "concept" of human agency, let
alone
> of human agency itself, in ancient Greece) is surprisingly widespread
> despite its complete unfoundedness.  It seems to have been cobbled
together
> from some metaphors in Homer,  some dramatic conventions of the
tragedians,
> and a 
> completely literal-minded reading of some few myths.  To get this silly
> idea out of your heads, consider a few instances: 
> -In Homer, what agency, except his own, is a motivating force for any of
> the actions of Odysseus? 
> -What did Herakleitos mean by "a man's character is his daimon"? 
> -What god or other-than-human agency inspired Klytemnaestra to avenge the
 
>       
>  murder of her daughter and Aegisthos that of his brothers?   
> -Where in the whole history of humanity do we find a better example of a 
 
>  
>  man fully responsible for his life, thoughts, and deeds than Sokrates? 
> -Where in Thucydides, Plato, or Aristotle is there any mention, even
> mention 
>  of the possibility, of any agency other than other than human  for human

>  actions? 
>  
> Since our philosophical dialogue is meaningless except as part of an
> organic intellectual process not only born but largely shaped in the
Greek
> world of 2500 and more years ago, it ill behooves us to treat our first
> teachers as madmen. 

First, to argue that the ancient Greeks did not maintain the same notion of
human agency is not to assert that they were madmen: it is to recognize
that that "Western culture" is not the monolithic and unchanging construct
that most conservative writers (and quite a few others, e.g. Derrida) claim
it is.  The continuity between classical Greek and modern Euroamerican
thought has been vastly overstated--for one thing, most of the Greek texts
were unknown in Europe from roughly 450 to 1450 CE--and many of the
original reasons for asserting that continuity were based on the political
need to obtain classical authority, not on an actual understanding of the
texts (whose translations were often riddled with error, or with
distortions imposed by language differences, as will become clear).  
Second, my argument was not that the Greeks had *no* concept of human 
will--though the problem is severe enough that that *has* been argued, 
specifically of Aristotle, you might be interested to know--but that
it is not the same as ours.  This claim is far from being cobbled together
or unfounded.  Your assertions must confront a simple fact: classical Greek
had no words or phrases corresponding to our ideas of free choice or
individual, rational, strictly human will.  They did have a concept of
will, but it was not strictly human, not necessarily derived from human
rationality, and certainly not individual.  Animals and inanimate objects
could be tried for crimes.  If you're actually interested in this issue,
you might look for instance at the work of Jean-Pierre Vernant, who
examines the arguments of Aristotle etc in detail.

As for your rhetorical questions about various pieces of classical Greek
literature, you must read these closely and with a knowledge of their 
larger cultural context (such as the myths)--and if you don't know 
Greek, with an grasp of the translation issues.  Aeschylus indicates that
Clytaemnestra's actions have been encouraged by Artemis (his allusions
would have been clear enough to the Greeks, who anyway knew of Artemis'
grudge against the House of Atreus as part of the mythology; I'll accept
that it's not so obvious to modern casual readers) as well as by the
Erinnyes (the Furies) in wrath over Agamemnon's sacrifice of Iphigenia. 
Odysseus's actions are motivated partly in response to Poseidon's anger, he
is aided by Zeus and Hermes, and so forth.  If my memory serves, in *Ion*
Socrates is quite clear that poets are possessed by gods, though he's not
terribly happy about it.  (My phrasing in this paragraph is not altogether
satisfactory, to the degree that it implies discrete personages
interacting;
for instance, it might be better to say that Clytaemnestra's action is, or
is 
also, the working-out of Artemis's will, or something along those lines.)

The point, again, is not that the classical Greeks lacked any concept of
human agency; nor did they (at that point, at least) assign *total* agency
to the gods.  Theirs was a concept of co-agency, which is precisely what
Heraclitus's statement means: when a man (sic) acts most in character,
most himself, he is acting in accordance with the fate or lot *given* him
(not his own creation); and that the fate or lot given him is his own 
character.

As for the "literal-mindedness" that you say this interpretation of myths
and theatrical conventions involves, it is true that by Plato's and to some
extent Euripides' time, the Greek understanding of the gods was taking a
more rationalistic and even agnostic cast, but don't assume that was always
so.  Greek society, like every other, altered over the course of its
history.  Moreover, dominant artistic conventions do not arise arbitrarily:

they are deeply connected to the way in which a particular society actually
thinks (here, their mode of understanding action), for the obvious reason
that otherwise the art would be largely incomprehensible to that culture. 
Consider the experiments in testing the universality of *Hamlet*: African
tribesmen couldn't believe the murky Dane's stupidity, because they have a
very different conception of the relations between ghosts and humans, and
of psychology.  So the story as a whole made no sense to them.  As 
indeed it fails to do for many people in the U.S. today.  In any case,
starting off with a "literal-minded" view that the Greeks actually meant 
what they said, while certainly carrying risks (as I've observed in a
previous post), is on the whole I think preferable to misrecognizing their
thought so that it matches one's preconceptions of what they *should* 
be saying, particularly when the former is upheld by observing other 
aspects of Greek society, such as the legal cases I mentioned, or the 
contents of the Greek vocabulary.

We seem to have strayed rather far from discussing critical realism; my
intent in introducing the example of the ancient Greek concept of agency
was merely to help clarify the critical realist argument that the presence
or absence of a concept does not entail a corresponding presence or absence
of the reality.  I think a critical realist position would be that human
agency exists, and did exist in classical Greece, whether or not the Greeks
thought so (just as capitalist and working classes exist now, whatever the
newspapers say); but that to understand classical Greece, one must try to
recognize what they actually thought, and if possible why they thought
that (a "why" that must arise in terms of underlying social structures).  
At the same time, I think the critical realist analysis of agency
differs rather markedly from the one dominating modern Euroamerican
thought, which views only individuals as agents and ignores the roles of
social structures and nature itself as preconditions and in certain senses
co-causes of human agency.  As I said previously, this notion of co-cause
is one reason I find the Greek view intriguing.  But I'm afraid all this
has gotten us deep into terrains covered in some of Bhaskar's other books. 
I'm also beginning to suspect that our digressions into this area have
muddied the waters, not clarified them.

In any event, I'd like to apologize for the length of my recent posts.  And
I'd been doing so well in becoming a taciturn Mainer!

---
Tobin Nellhaus
nellhaus-AT-biddeford.com
"Faith requires us to be materialists without flinching": C.S. Peirce