Traditions of Controversy (Controversies, Volume 4)

Traditions of Controversy

Controversies (CVS) Controversies includes studies in the theory of controversy or any of its salient aspects, studies of the history of controversy forms and their evolution, case-studies of particular historical or current controversies in any field or period, edited collections of documents of a given controversy or a family of related controversies, and other controversy-focused books. The series will also act as a forum for ‘agenda-setting’ debates, where prominent discussants of current controversial issues will take part. Since controversy involves necessarily dialogue, manuscripts focusing exclusively on one position will not be considered.

Editor Marcelo Dascal

Tel Aviv University

Advisory Board Harry Collins

University of Cardiff

Frans H. van Eemeren

University of Amsterdam

Gerd Fritz

University of Giessen

Fernando Gil †

Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris

Thomas Gloning

University of Marburg

Alan G. Gross

University of Minnesota

Kuno Lorenz

University of Saarbrücken

Everett Mendelssohn Harvard University

Quintín Racionero UNED, Madrid

Yaron Senderowicz Tel Aviv University

Stephen Toulmin

University of Southern California

Ruth Wodak

University of Vienna

Geoffrey Lloyd

Cambridge University

Volume 4 Traditions of Controversy Edited by Marcelo Dascal and Han-liang Chang

Traditions of Controversy

Edited by

Marcelo Dascal Tel Aviv University

Han-liang Chang National Taiwan University

John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam / Philadelphia

8

TM

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Traditions of controversy / edited by Marcelo Dascal, Han-liang Chang. p. cm. (Controversies, issn 1574-1583 ; v. 4) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Polemics. 2. Debates and debating. I. Dascal, Marcelo. II. Chang, Han-liang. PN4181.T7

2007

808.5'3--dc22

2007025142

isbn 978 90 272 1884 1 (Hb; alk. paper)

© 2007 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa

Table of contents

Introduction Crossing borderlines: Traditions, disciplines, and controversies Marcelo Dascal and Han-liang Chang

ix

part 1 Ancient traditions: East and West 1 Towards a taxonomy of controversies and controversiality: Ancient Greece and China Geoffrey Lloyd

3

2 Controversy in Jewish law: The Talmud’s attitude to controversy Hanina Ben-Menahem

17

3 Debates and rhetoric in Sumer Simonetta Ponchia

63

4 Persuasion in the Pre-Qin China: The Great Debate revisited Han-liang Chang

85

5 ‘In proper form’: Xunzi’s theory of xinger Peng Yi

101

6 The right, duty and pleasure of debating in Western culture Adelino Cattani

125

part 2 Medieval and Early Modern traditions: Logic, dialectic, and rhetoric in controversy 7 The medieval disputatio Olga Weijers

141



Traditions of Controversy

8 Disputing about disputing: The medieval procedure of positio and its role in a dispute over the nature of logic and the foundations of metaphysics Christopher J. Martin 9 Antibarbarous contra pseudophilosophers: Metaphors in an early modern controversy Cristina Marras 10 Dialectics, topology, and practical philosophy in early modern times Merio Scattola

151

165

181

part 3 Modern traditions: The rise of scientific disciplines 11 Legal controversy vs. scientific and philosophical controversies João Lopes Alves 12 The controversy over the foundation of sociology and its object: Simmel’s form vs. Durkheim’s collectivity Amos Morris-Reich 13 Controversies about politeness Chaoqun Xie 14 Controversies over controversies: An ontological perspective on the place of controversy in current historiography Ofer Gal

209

223

249

267

15 Traditions of controversy and conflict resolution: Can past approaches 281 help to solve present conflicts? Marcelo Dascal About the contributors

297

Index

301

Introduction

Crossing borderlines Traditions, disciplines, and controversies Marcelo Dascal and Han-liang Chang

This volume has grown out of a conference held in Taipei on 21st – 23rd July 2005 under the aegis of the International Association for the Study of Controversy. It was the first time that a IASC gathering took place outside its entrenched geographical context of Europe, so the conference was appropriately called ‘Controversy East and West’. Among other implications, one might assume that this conference and its subsequent publication ought to be related to the trendy theme of inter-cultural dialogue – a much-abused appropriation of linguistic pragmatics and qualitative leap away from the very concept and mechanism of ‘controversy’. However, what seems to be may turn out not to be the case. In a strong sense, the conference did succeed in providing a forum for scholars from various cultural backgrounds and scientific disciplines to address the kinds of controversy with which they are currently involved; yet, given the system-specificity of each participant’s tradition, discipline, and historical period of interest, little border-crossing or even trespassing was explicitly ventured, although, as we shall see, some interesting across-borderlines dialogue did take place. In the pages that follow, we explore a number of issues a volume like this raises, especially regarding the alleged obstacles to dialogue and controversy across cultural, disciplinary and historical borderlines and the conflict between tradition and innovation apparently inherent in the phrase ‘tradition of controversy’. First of all, however, we ought to explain why the original conference title, ‘Controversy East and West’, has given way to ‘Traditions of Controversy’. We have found the present title more comprehensive and capable of accommodating specific controversies which either do not fall into the binary pair East and West, or cannot be accommodated by the Procrustean bed East versus West. The volume comprises, among other things, period-specific controversies as well as ancient culture- and traditionspecific controversies which defy the relatively modern notion of East and/versus



Marcelo Dascal and Han-liang Chang

West. One may find it difficult to label the Talmudic dialectic tradition of the five first centuries AD (Chapter 2) as well as the much older Sumerian literary genre of dispute dialogues (Chapter 3) and the ancient Chinese tradition of controversy (Chapters 4, 5) either ‘East’ or ‘West’. Not only because these traditions had long existed before the east and west opposition acquired its geopolitical sense, but mainly because traditions – especially intellectual ones – are the kind of thing that are both older and more resilient than the comparatively ephemeral historical vicissitudes that rule the contexts wherein they arise and operate. Having said so, we are aware that this may be a weak argument because one always projects one’s knowledge onto the historical past and therefore christens it accordingly. Furthermore, we have found that all the contributions fall squarely into one of the two broad categories of tradition and discipline. A glance at the Table of Contents will reveal how these two concepts crisscross and overlap, with increasing velocity after the Renaissance, and how the majority of the chapters are oriented towards one category or the other, or both. An interesting example is provided by Geoffrey Lloyd, whose essay opens the volume. Whilst empirically the author’s broad cultural data cover the polemical traditions of ancient China and Greece – with brief references to other traditions, the essay serves, theoretically, as a critique of the novel discipline of controversy studies, especially of the taxonomy developed by Marcelo Dascal. As Lloyd sees it, the claimed universality of typology is constantly questioned by local modalities. In terms of chronology, the primacy of Lloyd’s raw material may be antedated by Simonetta Ponchia’s Sumerian tradition, but with its polemical thrust, the essay sets the dialogic and critical tone underlying the volume. The Lloyd-Dascal discussion calls to mind Ferdinand de Saussure’s dichotomy between the synchronic versus the diachronic dimensions in the study of language, but both authors are aware of the limitations of this binary opposition, for they lay stress on the complementary interrelations between an historical-evolutionary and a systematic-typological approach to the analysis of controversies. In fact, none of the chapters in this volume opts for one extremity in this as well as in other dichotomies that are usually invoked in research on controversies; nor does any of them embrace a naïve version of eclecticism. All the chapters display an awareness of controversy as a universal pragmatic phenomenon, present in all cultures, but it is precisely what this implies that divides the authors. For instance, regarding cultural relativism, Ben-Menahem sees differently from Lloyd. To be sure, both address the specifics of one or more traditions and practices of controversy. But they proceed in opposed directions – the latter, say, ‘top down’ and the former, ‘bottom up’. Lloyd sets up a grid, comprising a series of research interrogations in terms of which one should be able to discern the culture-specificity of a tradition or practice of controversy. Ben-Menahem, on



Crossing borderlines 

the other hand, after assuming that the practice of controversy as exercised in the Talmud is a Jewish counterpart of a “cross-cultural concept”, proceeds to investigate the details of this practice and its underlying assumptions employing only its inherent, so to speak home made concepts; the universal perspective remains in the offing, as a mere possibility, which allows him to invite the reader “to relate the concepts that appear in the halakhic sources to more general philosophical categories”. Neither Lloyd nor Ben Menahem is, of course, guilty of failing to be ‘empirical’ enough in approaching their object of inquiry. Quite on the contrary, their descriptions and analyses of the traditions of controversy they investigate are as ‘thick’ as they should be, according to Clifford Geertz’s advice (1983). The question, rather, is the perennial problem of finding the proper balance between the uniqueness of ‘data’ and the universal or ‘cross-cultural’ categories that in one way or another shape them in the analyst’s mind. This is a conflict of perspectives that highlights the controversial nature of the ‘cross-cultural’ drive, of which our dreams are made of – a conflict present in all the chapters of this volume. To the extent that East and West never really meet – with due respect to the yet-unborn North and South polarity in our globalized system – one may feel more at home with his/her own tradition and therefore adhere to it inadvertently. Thus, Adelino Cattani (Chapter 6) chooses to venture a historiography of controversy in the West, and sets as his task “to sketch an overall analysis of some of the most relevant historical ideas of controversy, to see (1) when and why controversy was considered a source of pleasure, joy and entertainment; (2) when and why controversy became a dialectical path to the truth, a maieutic tool, a disputation exercise and an educational practice; (3) when and why controversy was labeled as conflict, contest or combat”. But, one might ask, do all traditions of controversy face similar questions? Doesn’t the coziness of the womb of one’s own tradition raise virtually insurmountable barriers to cross-traditions controversy, comparison and even to the apparently simpler achievement of cross-culture dialogue? Not necessarily, as demonstrated by Chaoqun Xie’s discussion of Western controversies about politeness (Chapter 13), where he plays the role of a vigorous participant in these debates, rather than that of an outsider who merely observes and reports. The late Russo-Estonian semiotician Juri Lotman identifies dialogue as one of the mechanisms of cultural evolution (Lotman 2001; see also Dascal 2003). Through a facile linguistic turn, one could substitute the Latinate controversy for the Greek dialogue without changing much of Lotman’s tenet. At first glance, it may look strange that in this introduction to a volume devoted to traditions of controversy one should evoke Lotman and, through the verbal shift, Cicero. But the reference is no accident. The basic discursive situation involves two interlocutors who take turns in making meaningful utterances in order to communicate for certain pragmatic purposes.

 Marcelo Dascal and Han-liang Chang

This discursive situation is proper to serve as a model for other forms of more complicated and sophisticated communication. It is often expanded to cover all kinds of exchange, not only of information, and the interlocutors are not restricted to the basic two individuals. In fact, one should perhaps say that the interlocutors are always already embedded in and saturated with ‘others’, insofar as they embrace or belong to traditions and cultures, as well as to schools of thought and ideologies which, when in a relation of opposition, are at the source of controversies. According to Lotman, dialogue is characterized by the discreteness of language and the asymmetry of communication. Since the interlocutors alternate in giveand-take, each is capable of articulating only his or her discrete share of discourse, perhaps only one tiny fraction at a time. The discreteness is constituted not only by moments of articulation, but also by moments of silence because when one locutor speaks, the other has to remain silent and becomes temporarily an allocutor whose job it is to decode the message s/he receives. Since natural language is by nature unstable and subject to the caprice of temporality, the information flow is often asymmetrical and perfect communication is thus impossible. Since natural language is the primary modeling system, on top of which lies the secondary modeling system of culture, the phenomenon of interpreting culture becomes all the more difficult. This is especially the case in cross-cultural communication because each of the two parties involved has its own definition of culture, its own boundaries of the legitimate texts that constitute culture as well as exclude the so-called non-culture. As ‘other’ cultures are inevitably present in a culture’s historical evolution, they are in fact part and parcel of a culture’s dialogue with itself or, in Lotman’s words, of its auto-communication. Lotman projects the dialogic discreteness onto the history of a culture, where the interlocutors cease to be the indigenous versus the exogenous, because both have already been fused as historical products. Instead, they are viewed as historical moments which engage each other in dialogue, performing the semiotic task of the infinite process of encoding and decoding. An example is the dialogue between a turbulent, productive moment and its relatively calm and inert-looking but fully saturated following moment. Thus, the auto-communication of a culture, no longer a self-sufficient entity in itself, becomes the Gadamerian self-dialogue, the fusion of horizons, which characterizes cultural hermeneutics. This is perhaps another fruitful way to conceive the ‘cross-cultural’ dialogue that pervades this volume. As if driven by a dynamics of its own, the volume acquired a historical – sometimes meta-historical (e.g., Chapters 14, 15) – dimension that extends significantly the notions of tradition, cross-cultural dialogue, and controversy. While some of the chapters deal with current, discipline-related traditions of controversy (e.g., Chapters 11–13), others discuss past traditions belonging to different periods and domains (e.g., Chapters 2–5, 7–10), and still others undertake to link past and



Crossing borderlines 

present in a variety of ways (e.g., Chapters 1, 6, 14, 15). On reflection, it turns out that, regardless of their particular focus, all these chapters are engaged in some way in a cross-borderline dialogue – be these borders disciplinary, historical, geographical, or cultural. Furthermore, they reveal an implicit, sometimes controversy-generating dialectical relationship between the old and the new, the ancient and the modern – a phenomenon that is worth further consideration. Francis Bacon was among the first to point it out: [W]hile antiquity envieth there should be new additions, and novelty cannot be content to add but it must deface. Antiquitas saeculi juventus mundi, ‘what we call antiquity is the youth of the world’. These times are the ancient times, when the world is ancient, and not those which we account ancient ordine retrograde, by a computation backward from ourselves (Bacon 1974: 32, 33).

Arthur Johnston glosses this as follows: The idea that ‘the present time is the real antiquity’ is to be found also in Vives, Bruno, Gilbert, and Galileo. The effectiveness of this paradox, in Bacon’s argument, depends upon the inference that the authority accorded to ‘antiquity’ (i.e., the classical ages) should be transferred to the new ‘antiquity’ (i.e., the present). In II Esdras 14:10 we read ‘the world has lost its youth, and the time is growing old’ (Bacon 1974: 257).

But the issue is not merely terminological, as it might prima facie seem to be in the light to the topos Bacon employs. It has to do with a major controversy in Bacon’s time – the so-called Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes which marked, in Europe, the rift with the Renaissance that ultimately led to the birth of ‘Modernity’ and ‘science’ as we practice it today, and did not subside until the late Enlightenment. Bacon, along with Descartes, was one of the leaders of the Modernity Party in this quarrel, and his argument addresses the issue of wherefrom does ‘novelty’ spring and how can one avoid its crushing by unduly privileging the authority of the ‘knowledge’ presumably accumulated through centuries. He and his fellow ‘moderns’ also questioned, as is well known, the value of such accumulated ‘traditional knowledge’ and sought to develop methods that would ensure the production of reliable new and true knowledge. Among other things, for Bacon and his followers, this required particular attention to logic (the creation of a new, non-Aristotelian logical toolbox, a new organon) and language (including the development of a specially designed scientific language, with carefully defined terms, free of the imprecision and equivocations underlying the intuitive, traditional names natural langua­ ges gave to things, which yield the numerous mistakes he dubs ‘idols of the market’). No doubt the ‘semantic-etymological exercise’ Bacon performs in his attempt to redress or redefine the meanings of the terms ‘young’ and ‘ancient’ or ‘new’ and

 Marcelo Dascal and Han-liang Chang

‘old’, which bears traces of his logic-linguistic concerns, should be seen as a move in his campaign in the attack of the ‘moderns’ against the ‘ancients’. Other such moves in the same war, including the manipulation of tendentious metaphors, name-calling, and undisguised insults – which show to what extent this quarrel was indeed perceived by the disputants as a war – can be observed in the late 16th century controversy between Nizoli and Maioraggio (Chapter 9). Just as Bacon, Descartes, and their opponents, the participants in this earlier battle in this war ultimately focused on whether the source of knowledge should primarily be considered to be a frozen tradition, or, instead, the creative power of the mind at any moment in history. What was at stake was, in fact, the very possibility of ‘revolt’ against an entrenched tradition whose ‘style’ of thinking, which privileged commentary over invention and preferred keeping to what had proven through generations to be sure ground over what might turn out to be nothing but ungrounded, adventurous risk. A major intellectual revolt like that of the Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes, in which the very tradition upon which is based a culture or a discipline is called into question, seems however to be paradoxical. For in fact it calls into question the basis upon which rests the very possibility of controversy in a culture or discipline – those discursive ‘traditions of controversy’ this book undertakes to identify, describe and analyze.1 Indeed, the paradox in such cases as the Querelle seems unsolvable except through the unexplained emergence of a new tradition, including new standards of criticism, of rationality and of controversy – the kind of process the early Kuhn (1962) would presumably agree to call a ‘revolution’. Fortunately, not all controversies are clashes of such a magnitude that the victory of one contender requires the suppression of the framework that grants meaning to the activity of debating itself. It is perhaps safe to affirm that most controversies, instead, take place within identifiable traditions of controversy, whose rules and permissible moves they follow. Otherwise, it would make no sense to speak of traditions of controversy, the historiography of such traditions would have to appeal to quite problematic types of explanation, the very notion of controversy would be questionable, and controversies’ presumable role in the evolution of cultures and of knowledge would be highly doubtful. It is generally assumed, for instance, that most scientific controversies are resolved by decision procedures agreed by the members of the ‘scientific community’ (and therefore by the contenders), which allow to determine methodically and friendly which position is the correct one. Therefore, the points of discord can be resolved without breach of tradition or clash between the contenders involved, and a relatively smooth ‘growth of knowledge’ is thus assured.2 In domains other than science, such as theology and philosophy, although strictly speaking no decision procedure is in general available, argumentation and negotiation can



Crossing borderlines 

nevertheless sometimes yield a conciliation of the opposite positions in a controversy, thus – again – avoiding breach of tradition and abrupt shifts. Leibniz’s ‘Art of Controversies’ represented a sustained effort on his part to developing the tools needed for dealing with controversies in this ‘softer’ way. He even tried to apply it to major and lengthy conflicts such as the Protestant-Catholic schism, mentioned in Chapter 15, and the Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes.3 These examples suggest that traditions in general, and traditions of controversy in particular, are sturdier than one might think: They either have a solid structure that doesn’t break down easily under rebellion or their egoist ‘memes’ are able to find and exploit well intentioned agents who end up keeping them alive and kicking within the victorious, allegedly new tradition. In our times, this version of the paradox has been voiced by Erwin Panofsky (1944) and Paul de Man (1981). While ‘modern style’ (maniera moderna) is none other than ‘good old style’ (buona maniera antica) (Panofsky 1944: 203), the rhetoric of modernity ironically reveals an unconscious obsession with the unbearable burden of the past, to which the modernist turns a blind eye. The only way to overcome paradox, it would seem, is denying altogether the possibility of escaping from the grip of past traditions and giving up dreams of creating radically new traditions or a tradition-free (i.e., ‘grand narrative’-free, in post-modern jargon) condition of radical freedom. The careful examination of particular controversies and of the traditions of controversy wherein they take place, however, does not necessarily lead to this pessimistic conclusion. The fact that a controversy is, essentially, a confrontation between opposed positions on a given issue presupposes that there is in the underlying tradition some degree of freedom allowing for the formulation and defense of these opposed views – a freedom so well exploited by the Talmud sages. The higher this degree, the broader and deeper is the possible range of opposition, i.e., the more radical is the possible difference between the positions. On the other hand, what we have been calling ‘positions’ are usually rather complex conglomerates of components, which can eventually be rearranged or recombined innovatively, especially when the components are borrowed from both sides in the controversy. This includes the ‘rediscovery’ of ideas and models developed in the past that somehow never made it to become ‘mainstream’ in the tradition and may be recovered and used, under later pressing circumstances, as capable of helping not only to solve intellectual controversies but also political conflicts (Chapter 15). All of these processes can lead to innovation precisely by virtue of the fact that the pressure of controversy demands the full exploitation of their potential in order to overcome the underlying tensions that controversies reveal and highlight. In this respect controversies should be viewed as both the trigger and the engine of a process of using innovatively, sometimes in a quite radical way, the totality of

 Marcelo Dascal and Han-liang Chang

intellectual and other resources, past and present, that we can mobilize, regardless of the tradition these resources come from. References Bacon, F. 1974 [1605]. The Advancement of Learning and New Atlantis. Ed. A. Johnston. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Dascal, M. 1998. “Controverses et polémiques”. In M. Blay and R. Halleux (eds), La science classique XVème-XVIIIème siècles: Dictionnaire Critique. Paris: Flammarion, 26–35. Dascal, M. 2003. “Identities in flux: Arabs and Jews in Israel”. In G. Weiss and R. Wodak (eds), Critical Discourse Analysis: Theory and Interdisciplinarity. Houndmills, Basignstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 150–166. de Man, P. 1982 [1971]. “Literary history and literary modernity.” In his Blindness and Insight, 2nd ed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 142–165. Geertz, C. 1983. Local Knowledge. Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology. New York: Basic Books. Kuhn, T.S. 1962. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Leibniz, G.W. 2006. The Art of Controversies. Ed. M. Dascal. Dordrecht: Springer. Lotman, J. 2001[1990]. Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture. Trans. A. Shukman. London: I.B. Tauris. Panofsky, E. 1944. “Renaissance and Renascence”. Kenyon Review 6: 201–236.

Notes 1. The so-called ‘Great Debate’ in China is quite similar in this respect to the Querelle. The many contenders in that debate employ the strategy of disqualifying their opponents’ language, manners, arguments, and contribution to knowledge – in short, their tradition. The disqualification is usually presented comparatively, the standards of the opponent being argued to be valueless if compared to the superior standards either of an earlier tradition (which one should restore and preserve) or else of the newly proposed one (which should replace the older tradition). For an analysis of one key component of the Grand Debate, see Chang’s Chapter 4. 2. For an analysis of examples of this and other kinds of European scientific controversies in the 17th and 18th centuries, see Dascal (1998). 3.

See Leibniz (2006); for an example of Leibniz’s conciliatory strategy, see Marras’ Chapter 9.

part 1

Ancient traditions East and West

chapter 1

Towards a taxonomy of controversies and controversiality Ancient Greece and China Geoffrey Lloyd

Following up Marcelo Dascal’s emphasis on the importance of controversy as the locus of critical activity and innovation, and building on his triadic classification of polemics into “discussion”, “dispute” and “controversy” (Dascal 1998b), I shall raise a number of questions concerning the specificities of the controversies for which we have evidence in ancient Greece and China. What typically were the controversies and disputes about? Between whom were they held? Who were the participants, who constituted the audiences, and what are the relations between those two groups? How do the contenders come to agree, if and when they do, to their resolution? What, in the final analysis, is at stake, and for whom? There are important similarities, as well as differences, between the controversies and disputes of ancient Greece and China, and (as I argued already in Lloyd 1996) these already tell against any simple thesis of a global psychological contrast between adversarial Greeks and irenic Chinese. Rather, an exploration of the patterns of controversies in these two cultures can throw important light on the implicit and explicit values characteristic of the societies in question and so also on the different ways in which science developed in each. *** In a series of articles (1998a, 1998b, 2001) Marcelo Dascal has suggested a classification of different types of polemic, which he called “discussions”, “disputes” and “controversies”. “Discussions” concern well-circumscribed topics, where the contenders come to acknowledge that the root of the problem is a mistake, which, when corrected, allows the point at issue to be solved. “Disputes” also relate to well-defined divergences, but are rooted in differences in attitudes, feelings or preferences. But the contenders do not accept that a mistake is involved, and so



Geoffrey Lloyd

while the dispute may be terminated by some arbitrary procedure (Dascal illustrated that with “calling the police” or “throwing dice” – 1998b: 150), they are not solved, but only temporarily dissolved. “Controversies”, thirdly, involve profound divergences often over a wide range of problems, reflecting deep disagreements not just on preferences but about the procedures to be used for deciding them. Controversies are neither solved nor dissolved, but they may be resolved when the contenders or their community of reference acknowledge, for instance, that the balance of reason tilts in favour of one of the positions. Dascal was concerned especially with the role of controversies in science where he pointed to their positive contribution as a locus of critical activity and of innovation, and his examples were taken overwhelmingly from European history. My aim in this paper is to broaden the range of material under consideration and to attempt a cross-cultural comparison of the modes of controversies and of controversiality (by which I mean the tendency to be disposed to controversy). I shall be chiefly concerned with the evidence on these issues from ancient Greece and China where I too, like Dascal, will examine the role of controversies in the development of science. But before turning to that evidence, it will be useful to survey some of the data that have emerged from ethnographic research. The first problem we must mention concerns indeed the nature and quality of the available data. The evidence for controversies in different ancient and modern societies is uneven and we should recognise at the outset that this may be a function of the reports or sources on which we rely. Some modern societies that have been the subject of detailed ethnographic fieldwork certainly seem to show more signs of polemics of all kinds than others. How far that is a product of the ethnographers’ own particular interests is generally very difficult to say. Gluckman (1967) reported that the Lozi prided themselves on their abilities in argument as did Bohannan (1957) for the Tiv. In both cases we have good positive evidence for the “actors”’ own interests in matters to do with argumentation and debate. Whether in other instances similar interests went unreported thanks to the ethnographers’ (“observers”) concerns with other issues is a matter of mere speculation. But it is important to bear in mind that possibility, as also the equivalent possibility, or rather probability, that our sources for ancient societies give us a biased view on these questions: they are certainly incomplete. In the final analysis we have to use the evidence we have. But the moral of these preliminary warnings is that whatever generalisations we can arrive at in our analyses of controversies, are of limited applicability and must be subject to more or less severe reservations. Yet the evidence we do have for a cross-cultural analysis is extraordinarily rich and suggests a number of questions that are well worth detailed investigation – questions whose importance, indeed, may well be underestimated by those who stick just to one society, whether ancient or modern. Those questions include the



Towards a taxonomy of controversies and controversiality

following. What typically are the polemics about? Between whom are they held and what are the chief contexts of their occurrence? How are they solved, dissolved or resolved? What rules, formal or informal, apply to the conduct of argument and to its outcome? Who is present at meetings if the issues concern living people, and how does disagreement among the living differ from dissent from what the dead are represented as having believed? To whom are the records of debates or polemics addressed, that is who is the target of such reports? Audiences may, of course, be present or not, real or imagined, and to the audience for the original participants we may sometimes add a second audience, the recipients of those records. What, in the last analysis, is at stake, and for whom – participants, audiences, and those who had to judge the outcome? Where the evidence suggests, as it sometimes does, unevennesses in the amount and intensity or importance of polemics, what should we conclude from this? On occasions when the phenomena cannot easily be put down due to the bias in the sources, we may ask whether controversiality varies with the culture, with the field of polemic, with both or with neither. I shall not, you will not be surprised to hear, be in a position to answer all those questions, or even the majority of them, even where just my two chief target societies, ancient Greece and China, are concerned. But it does seem worthwhile to state the agenda as broadly as possible. Before I launch into the Greeks and Chinese themselves, I should first sketch in some of the general, including ethnographic, background. There has recently been a useful collaborative volume edited by Marcel Detienne entitled Qui veut prendre la parole? (2003), a cross-cultural examination of assemblies with a number of specialists studying that phenomenon in various ancient and more particularly modern societies, ranging from the Ivory Coast to the Ukraine. This already draws attention to the immense variety of different types of assemblies operating in different ways in different societies. Some discuss political or strategic problems, whether to go to war or not, whether to move the whole group to find new pastures or new hunting grounds and so on. In that context we can distinguish broadly between two main functions. The assembly may act as a break on, or a counterweight to, Big Men, sometimes lending their support to what their leaders plan, but sometimes opposing it. But in acephalous societies, where there are no chiefs, certainly not paramount ones, the assembly may operate as the decision-taking body, not merely a body to ratify or modify decisions taken by a group of leaders. The assembled fighting force decides the next move of the tribe: I refer here to Lebedynsky’s (2003) study of Cossack groups in the early modern period, though there are, to be sure, problems posed by the already processed nature of the evidence available to us.





Geoffrey Lloyd

But some assemblies operate on the margins of, or outside, political life, some literally in the forest as Zempléni (2003) illustrates with his account of the Nafara of the Ivory Coast. There the Poro assemblies take place away from the village, in the bush. The government of the society is largely in the hands of village councils and supra-village chiefs. But assemblies take place for the purposes of initiation and ritual in the forest. This might look like a clear instance of a Weberian contrast between the religious and political spheres, where leadership in the former is a matter of charisma and in the latter, of authority. But to apply that in this case would certainly be an oversimplification. The assemblies can and sometimes do mobilise opinion when their egalitarian values are threatened – and have in that way what we may call a political function. An obvious first lesson this teaches us is that within a single culture the nature and style of discussions and disputes may vary. The fact that over a certain range of issues there are considerable opportunities to voice dissent does not entitle us to conclude that the same openness will apply elsewhere. This is not just a matter of certain individuals being given free rein to express dissident opinions, or to satirise, as fools in the courts of kings. Rather the very same individuals may in different contexts have very different degrees of room for manoeuvre in opportunities to criticise. This is where two of my preliminary questions, having to do with the subjects disputed and the contexts in which that occurs, are so important. The special case of India, studied by Ruben (1929), Bronkhorst (2002) and others, brings to light two other important points. The Upanishads refer to the arguments held by competing sages, where it is the sages themselves who decide who has won. The losers concede defeat when they are faced with a question to which they have no answer and are effectively reduced to silence. The winner is the sage who literally has the last word. Of course sages may claim to know the answer to some puzzle, but when challenged to produce it are unable to do so. According to the rules of the game a sage should not ask a question to which he does not himself know the answer. Again there is obvious scope for cheating, or at least bluff. Moreover, in the actual discussions reported, the issues in question are highly abstract, not to say positively obscure, the nature of “atman” or of “brahman”, for instance. These are not topics on which ordinary lay people would be expected to pronounce. Even though the discussion may be held in front of an audience, they do not participate: they just spectate. I turn now to my two chief targets, ancient Greece and ancient China. As much of the material concerning ancient Greece is familiar, I can afford to be brief. Already in Homer we are given accounts of assemblies deliberating what to do. The first book of the Iliad starts with a discussion among the leaders, “kings”, about what to do about the plague. Already certain rules are in play: the person with the sceptre is the one who “has the floor” as we say, the right to speak. Rank counts for



Towards a taxonomy of controversies and controversiality

a good deal – as the description of the treatment of the commoner Thersites on a later occasion shows: he gets a thwack from Odysseus for speaking out of turn and against the views of the “kings”. In Iliad I, the outcome is decided by Agamemnon, an outcome that Achilles cannot overrule, even though his view had more support from other kings. But if he cannot win the argument, he can, when he loses, withdraw his support. No one can compel him to go on fighting. The ambiguous account of the city at peace on the Shield of Achilles is particularly striking in view of later developments. A man has been killed and the elders are drawn up in a circle to try the case. On one reading of the text, one side claims that it has paid recompense, which the other says it has not received: on another, payment has been offered, and the other side will not accept it. Either way, the issue turns on whether the matter can be resolved by recompense – to avoid a continuing vendetta. A prize has been set down in the middle to be awarded to whichever of the elders gives the straightest judgment. Who gave the prize, and how the winner is to be decided, are questions on which the text gives no answer. This is, however, the first literary account of what was to be one of the dominant contexts of Greek polemic, namely the law. In the classical period large numbers of dicasts, as they were called, served in the “dicasteries” or courts, where they acted as both judge and jury. They had no professional judge to guide them, but had to decide points of law, as well as guilt or innocence, which they did in their capacity as jurors by majority vote. In Athens, different courts were responsible for different kinds of civil and criminal cases: the dicasts were paid for their services (which meant that even the poorest citizens, and perhaps especially they, were happy to serve) and they were chosen by lot – to minimise the risk of bribery (you could not know in advance which jurors would be trying which case on the day). The jurors received no training but they certainly acquired considerable experience. Here and in the political domain we are dealing generally with disputes, in Dascal’s terminology. They reflected deep-seated differences of view. The contenders do not admit that mistakes have been made, leading to a solution of the problem. Rather the matter at issue is dissolved by a procedure that had far-reaching repercussions on Greek institutions, namely taking a vote and abiding by the majority decision. In courts of law that was the end of the matter, since there was generally no appeals procedure. In politics, however, when issues of policy or of management were discussed in the Councils and Assemblies, those who lost one vote would often set about doing their best to have it overturned at the next meeting of the Assembly. One famous example of this comes in Thucydides’ account of the Mytilenean debate in Book III. The Mytileneans had rebelled against Athenian hegemony and the rebellion had been put down. The assembly had to decide how to punish the insurgents. In the first meeting, egged on by Cleon, they voted to kill





Geoffrey Lloyd

all the adult males and enslave the women and children, and a trireme was despatched with orders to carry that out. However, the very next day a second assembly was called and the vote was reversed on the instigation of Diodotus, and a second trireme was sent off to countermand the orders of the first. This type of dissolution is not as arbitrary as Dascal’s example of throwing dice, but it clearly meets the criterion that the decision is only a temporary one. We accept majority voting as reasonable, but we should note one important feature of the procedure, namely the contrast between decision by majority vote and the search for a consensus. Voting was an abstract principle, and it seemed to the democrats especially a just and equitable way of settling disputes. Yet it could leave embittered minorities smouldering in resentment. The search for a consensus, where the outcome represents some compromise between opposing points of view, may not remove all resentment, to be sure, but when a compromise is found, it has a greater chance of commanding everyone’s consent, not just that of the majority group. The first distinctive feature of many Greek polemics then, is that the outcome is decided by majority vote, and everyone’s vote counts as equal to everyone else’s. The second important feature is just the very extent to which polemics were part of everyday life for the citizens of Greek city-states. In the law-courts large numbers of dicasts acquired considerable experience, as I said, in judging the very large numbers of criminal and civil cases that came to trial, especially in Athens with its well-earned reputation for litigiousness. In the political domain, the Assemblies debated matters of state, from technical considerations about building up the navy, to whether to go to war or not, to the very nature of the constitution itself. All of that is mirrored in Greek drama, in the tragedies and comedies enacted at the Dionysia and the other festivals. Our extant plays are full of representations of debates, sometimes even quite formal ones, where each speaker has the same number of lines to express his or her point of view, just as in the law-courts each side had the same time allotted to it. These various features can all be said to reflect the agonal/agonistic spirit to which Burckhardt drew attention with such emphasis – a competitiveness not just in athletics and in war, but in wars of words. The point can be confirmed by considering what passed as higher education in Greece, the type of instruction purveyed by the so-called sophists. They gave lectures on every type of subject from grammar to physiology, sometimes in solo performances (called “epideixeis”) but sometimes as public debates between rival sophists. True, there is sometimes an element of mere entertainment here (and Gorgias was notorious for having suggested that you destroy your opponents’ seriousness by play, and their playfulness by your seriousness). But such debates also covered questions having to do with element theory, the ultimate constituents of physical objects. In the Hippocratic Corpus we have a treatise, On the Nature of Man, which refers to debates between rival speakers on the question of the



Towards a taxonomy of controversies and controversiality

constitution of the human body, where the outcome is decided not by the speakers themselves, but by the approval of the crowd – presumably by their applause. That was one of the features of sophistic exchanges that Plato criticised so strongly. What he opposed to contests in persuasion, was a contest for the truth. Socrates was made to say he is not concerned with others’ opinions, only with the truth. What people may be persuaded of may or may not be true: the truth itself, on the other hand, is never refuted. Yet that evidently remains broadly within the paradigm of a contest: argument is still about winning, though not against human adversaries, but judged by the objective criterion of the truth. Meanwhile Plato’s pupil, Aristotle, was to propose an even more elaborate taxonomy of modes of reasoning in a strict hierarchy. Philosophical arguments aim at the truth, at what is necessarily the case, indeed. Dialectical ones may start from probable or plausible premisses, or those your partner accepts, but are still a cooperative endeavour. Rhetorical ones aim at persuasion, while sophistic and eristic ones have as their goals reputation (and money, since the sophists’ income from their pupils depended on their reputation) and victory respectively (where it was recognised that victory could be obtained by fair argumentative means but also by foul). Let me now sum up briefly on Greece. Polemical arguments were both frequent and bitter. Just about every subject might be debated (that included what we might call physics and physiology, but also religion – the nature of the gods – and both ethics and politics). Again just about anyone, any citizen at least, could join in – though of course in practice the views of some carried more authority than those of others, whether in politics or philosophy. But many such debates were held in public (where reputations, and face were very much at stake) and many were decided by that public, whether by voting or by acclaim. The situation in classical China, down to the end of the Han, may at first glance seem totally different, but we shall see that there are points of similarity as well as of contrast. Under the latter head, first, there were certainly no parallels to the Greek jury courts or political assemblies where decisions were taken by majority vote. Chinese legal provisions, for which we have extensive evidence (e.g., Hulsewé 1955), deal overwhelmingly with criminal rather than civil cases. Private disputes should, in principle, be resolved between the parties concerned, with the help of an arbitrator or adjudicator if necessary. If they came before a magistrate, that was a bad mark for both sides. In criminal cases arrest was normally expected to lead to a confession and then to punishment. We have many records of individual cases in Han legal documents, and they include instances where the deposition of witnesses is checked. But there is no room for elaborate opposing statements by prosecution and defence. The job of the magistrates was to see that the provisions of the law were correctly carried out. The defendants had only a minimal, if any, opportunity to clear their name.





Geoffrey Lloyd

So the law is one field in which Chinese procedures differ in important respects from Greek ones. Politics is another. The Chinese records contain many discussions of policy, but none on such a question as the best political constitution. That was universally assumed to be a matter of the wise rule of a benevolent emperor. Even in the Warring States period, when there were plenty of rival seats of power, they were all ruled by “kings”. Of course, as Mark Lewis (2000) has recently insisted, the kings, and indeed later the emperor, had to pay attention to what their entourages, their chief advisers and ministers felt. From the side of the advisers, the topic of how to guide the ruler is the subject of self-conscious analysis (in the “shuo nan” chapter of Hanfeizi especially). Remonstrating with rulers is indeed a more highly developed topos or sub-genre in classical China than in Greece (Durrant 1995; Schaberg 1997). In imperial Rome, advising the emperor carried the same risks as in China – yet though there are plenty of discussions of the techniques of persuasion in Latin rhetoric, there is nothing to equal the subtlety of the psychological analysis in Hanfeizi. If the question of the best constitution was never contemplated in China, just about every issue of policy and tactics could be and was the subject of heated argument. One recurrent issue was what to do about relations with the barbarian peoples by whom the Han Chinese were surrounded, especially the Xiong Nu (Huns) to the north. Other topics that were repeatedly discussed included (1) the conduct of sacrifices and ritual more generally, (2) state economics, the raising of taxes and the control of state monopolies such as those of salt and iron production, (3) the severity of punishments and the control of rebellion. While there is near unanimity that order (zhi) is desirable and disorder (luan) to be abhorred, quite what either the first or the second consisted in, and how the one was to be achieved and the other avoided, were the subjects of sophisticated persuasions. Often an adviser “sent up” his proposals in the form of a “memorial” to the throne, sometimes in direct response to an imperial edict asking for an expression of opinion. Sometimes those memorials envisage a debate between contending positions, though that more often took the form of criticism of past authorities, that is dead ones, than of the ideas of living rivals, let alone ones present to express their own views. Sometimes, however, we have a description of a live debate. One series of such discussions is recorded in the Hou Han Shu where the matter at issue is the regulation of the calendar and the determination of the solar year. That might look like a purely scientific problem; yet it was one with deep political implications, since the emperor’s mandate from heaven depended directly on, among other things, the correct regulation of the calendar. The account in our sources describes how various dignitaries and specialists were summoned to court, and arrayed round four sides of a square, with the emperor’s representatives facing south, other groups east and west, while those who had proposed a new policy faced north (Sivin in



Towards a taxonomy of controversies and controversiality

Lloyd and Sivin 2002: 78). In such a situation it was not just the strength of the evidence or arguments that counted, but also the rank of the speakers. In one case those who lost the argument were adjudged to have made treasonable proposals and were punished, even though that punishment was eventually commuted by the emperor. But the key point to bear in mind is that in such debates the ultimate decision was taken not by the contenders, let alone by the assembled audience, but by the emperor or his representatives. I said that calendar regulation spanned two domains we might distinguish sharply, but the Chinese did not, namely the political and the scientific. Divergent views were, indeed, particularly frequently expressed both in ethics and in cosmology. The disagreements between contending schools start soon after (if not with) Confucius and are a feature of the whole of the Warring States period. Even after the unification they continue, though sometimes now in a more muted fashion, with more of an eye for what the Qin or Han emperors would tolerate by way of dissent. The difficulties for modern interpreters include getting clear what the labels for the various groups or schools of “philosophers” imply. The term “ru” especially, which is often translated “Confucian”, may be a trap. Those so labelled are certainly members of the learned elite but they may or may not owe allegiance to the views they associated with Kong Fuzi. We have good evidence for the criticisms that some “ru” offered of other “ru”. Indeed we have whole sections in the Xunzi devoted to that topic, where he even criticises his own renowned predecessor Mencius as well as several other groups of “ru”. Yet both Mencius and Xunzi are generally labelled “Confucian”. The Lüshi chunqiu, Hanfeizi and Huainanzi are all full of criticisms of Kong Fuzi, Mozi and other prominent teachers. Certain features of these polemics stand out. (1) The chief point in dispute is most often good government and how to advise the ruler about that. (2) Disagreements with past dead masters are more explicit than with living contemporaries. (3) In some cases the tactic is not to say that your rivals have got it completely wrong so much as to claim that they have not got it completely right (Zhuangzi 33; Shiji 130). (4) These debates are generally conducted in writing, not by public confrontation with opponents, let alone before an audience that adjudicates the outcome. (5) The dissolution or resolution of the problem often depends on status or authority. In astronomical matters, discussed in the Astronomical Bureau, rank counts for a good deal (though not everything). Much more could be said about the modalities of disputes in China, but I hope I have said enough to be able now to turn back in conclusion to two of my principal initial problems, the question of taxonomy, and the relation between disputes of various kinds and criticism or innovation. A classification of polemics is possible along several different dimensions and given that that is the case it is more important to look at the specificities of their





Geoffrey Lloyd

manifestation in any given society than merely to comment on their commonness or extent. It is not so much a matter of labelling societies as a whole as more or less contentious, or prone to controversiality, as of examining the modalities of the controversies they engage in. Marcelo Dascal helpfully distinguished the modes of disagreement implied and the nature of the outcome, whether solution, dissolution or resolution. The historical record allows us to add further dimensions. Following Aristotle we can distinguish the aims of disputants – truth, persuasion, victory, reputation, to which we can add, from his remarks about Gorgias, entertainment. Some arguments in India were for the delectation of princes, some in Greece for the amusement of an audience. “Stumping” in China has been documented by Sivin (Lloyd and Sivin 2002: 68f). Then there are important differences that relate to the different subject-matter at issue. The admissibility or otherwise of disputes over affairs of state is one thing; where the subjects discussed relate to abstract or more theoretical issues, say in cosmology, we are sometimes dealing with something rather different. A third dimension of differentiation relates to the institutions of communicative exchange and their degree of formality – where a rigidly formalised courtroom (whether a court of law or a royal or imperial court) presents a very different framework from an informal encounter (as when you meet Socrates in the agora). Finally and from a cross-cultural perspective perhaps most importantly, are the twin questions of who has a say in the outcome and who stands to gain or to lose in the process. We find occasions when it is the disputants themselves who decide – where their views on the matters discussed may be more or less transparent, and more or less intelligible to lay individuals. Or it may be that authority delivers the verdict – the opinion of the king or his representative is the one that counts. Or it may be the audience itself – where they may be more or less implicated in the outcome. Some Greek audiences decided sophistic discussions by acclaim; other Greeks, having decided on whether to go to war, went and fought it in person. In every kind of context we may expect those engaged in debate to have an eye on what is at stake. What is won or lost by winning or losing an argument may be of little consequence, though usually the reputations of the debaters are implicated. At the other end of the spectrum, matters of government policy – in Greece the political constitution itself – may be being decided. In that context, getting a ruler to agree with your point of view will depend on different skills from those you need to persuade a mass assembly. In the former situation it is not just the speakers who stand to lose face, but also the ruler himself. That could be dangerous in the extreme for the adviser. The Chinese have a well-developed tactic of offering criticism of past rulers as a means of getting at present ones, without being too overtly committed to doing so. Arguing with those who are safely dead is usually less risky



Towards a taxonomy of controversies and controversiality

than with those who could answer back – although that is not the case if the dead are sacred authorities with contemporary representatives and institutions to see they remain unchallenged. The possibilities of challenge, criticism and innovation vary especially with those last two modes of differentiation – with who decides and with what is at stake. So far as China and Greece go, we have seen that in both there is plenty of discussion of what are broadly political issues and (we may add) in both ancient societies there is a certain overlap between political and cosmological or scientific matters, an overlap in the subject-matter and certain similarities also in the ways in which the discussions were carried on. On any important political or cosmological question in China you tended to have a ruler, or the state authorities, to persuade, and even in more “abstract”, “philosophical” discussions, reference to what serves order, good government and the welfare of all under heaven is common. But if you then succeeded, you saw your ideas implemented at the highest level. In Greece the people to persuade were usually your peer group. The dominant model for debate, from politics across the board to cosmology and science, was the presentation of opposing cases before a general audience. Yet success there, outside the realm of politics itself, might be no more than a merely academic triumph, as we use that term to suggest a matter of interest for intellectuals alone. Certainly the range of issues that could be debated in Greece was very extensive. But not only were some of the more ingenious ideas, such as heliocentricity, rejected by most of the relevant reference group: on many other topics in philosophy and science, the issues never exactly got to be resolved. The Greeks proposed an atomic physical theory, but the debate between it and continuum theory was a stalemate. The same basic empirical evidence was interpreted differently on either side – and provided no means of deciding between them. That had to be done (if at all) on the basis of abstract philosophical arguments, starting usually from very different assumptions. The Greeks who engaged in those discussions were very well aware of alternatives. It was apparent to the participants that a choice had to be made – between atomism and continuum theory, between one world and an infinite number, between a created world and an eternal one. The Chinese disagreed on many questions concerning government and morality. But physical phenomena were described and explained generally within the framework provided by the interplay of yin and yang and the cycles of the five phases. That was common ground to different theorists in fields as wide apart as harmonics and medicine. We do not find Chinese debating radical alternatives to five phase theory. Rather, their efforts were devoted to exploring the potentialities of the given framework in order to establish connections and correlations between resonant phenomena.





Geoffrey Lloyd

We are reminded that scientific innovation, like innovation in other fields, may take different forms. The introduction of new paradigms contrasts with the modification of a paradigm from within. But it is always a precarious phenomenon, depending not just on the room for manoeuvre to express new ideas, but also on an audience receptive enough not to reject them out of hand. Going the route of proposing radically alternative frameworks may force an examination of the rivals’ epistemological – or even their ideological – foundations, but that route may have to pay a high price in terms of the difficulties of winning acceptability. The history of Greek science suggests that many of those foundational disputes were dead ends, even if some were to be the occasion of revivals that were fraught with significance for later European thought. But the history of Chinese astronomy, for instance, illustrates how investigations may develop even in the absence of a concern with foundations. We are used to accepting the fact that the nature of the inquiries undertaken in any given society will reflect the values and institutions of that society. But one way those values are exhibited is, precisely, in the modalities of the controversies that were cultivated or permitted. It follows that one way we can hope to gain a more nuanced understanding of how science developed in the distinctive ways it did, in ancient Greece and China, for instance, is by paying detailed attention to those modalities, to the styles and contexts of communicative exchange that manifest themselves in different fields of inquiry. That corresponds, of course, to one of the strategic aims of this volume, and I hope that my brief remarks make some slight contribution to that goal. References Bohannan, P. 1957. Justice and Judgement among the Tiv. London: Oxford University Press. Bronkhorst, J. 2002. “Discipliné par le débat”. In L. Bansat-Boudon and J. Scheid (eds), Le disciple et ses maîtres: pour Charles Malamoud. Paris: Seuil, 207–225. Dascal, M. 1998a. “Types of polemics and types of polemical moves”. In S. Cmejrková, J. Hoffmannová, O. Müllerová and J. Svetlá (eds), Dialoganalyse VI-1. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 15–33. Dascal, M. 1998b. “The study of controversies and the theory and history of science”. Science in Context 11: 147–154. Dascal, M. 2001. “How rational can a polemic across the analytic-continental ‘divide’ be?”. International Journal of Philosophical Studies 9: 313–339. Detienne, M. (ed). 2003. Qui veut prendre la parole? Paris: Seuil. Durrant, S.W. 1995. The Cloudy Mirror: Tension and Conflict in the Writings of Sima Qian.  Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press. Gluckman, M. 1967. The Judicial Process among the Barotse of Northern Rhodesia (1955). Manchester: Manchester University Press.



Towards a taxonomy of controversies and controversiality

Hulsewé, A.F.P. 1955. Remnants of Han Law, Vol 1: Introductory Studies. Leiden: Brill. Lebedynsky, I. 2003. “Les Cosaques, rites et métamorphoses d’une démocratie guerrière”. In Detienne (ed), 147–170. Lewis, M.E. 2000. “The City-State in Spring-and-Autumn China”. In M.H. Hansen (ed), A Comparative Study of Thirty City-State Cultures: An Investigation Conducted by the Copenhagen Polis Centre. Copenhagen: C.A. Reitzals, 359–373. Lloyd, G.E.R. 1996. Adversaries and Authorities: Investigations into Ancient Greek and Chinese Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lloyd, G.E.R. and Sivin, N. 2002. The Way and the Word: Science and Medicine in Early China and Greece. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Ruben, W. 1929. “Über die debatten in den alten Upanisad’s”. Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft NF 8: 238–255. Schaberg, D. 1997. “Remonstrance in Early Zhou historiography”. Early China 22: 133–179. Zempléni, A. 2003. “Les assemblées secrètes du Poro sénoufo”. In Detienne (ed), 107–144.



chapter 2

Controversy in Jewish law The Talmud’s attitude to controversy Hanina Ben- Menahem

1

Introduction

Controversy pervades Jewish law. Not only is it the case that, with regard to almost every legal issue, opposed opinions have been voiced, but the halakhic literature is also replete with discussions about controversy and its ramifications.1 The selfawareness of the rabbinical authorities with regard to the pervasiveness of legal controversies is reflected in the idiom “controversy is an inherent characteristic of the Torah” (Trumat Hadeshen, Pesakim Ukhtavim #238). “Controversy” is sometimes used to denote real-time debate and dialogue over a contentious question among those engaged in Torah study, during which the disputants attempt to persuade each other of the correctness of their respective views. This real-time debate is sometimes referred to as “the war of the Torah”.2 However, another sense of “controversy”, which will be our primary interest, refers to holding contradictory opinions after all such attempts to persuade the opponent of the correctness of one’s view have failed. This article will focus on rabbinical attitudes to controversy. It seeks to open a window onto the nature and centrality of controversy in the talmudic literature by presenting the sources and inviting the reader to be actively engaged in interpreting them and perhaps formulating his own readings, however novel. The material will be presented according to the logic of the sources themselves, and not in a linearly thematic fashion; there will be several digressions, which, though seemingly tangential, are integral to an understanding of the material. These digressions will be indicated by distinct typographical means. The connections will become clear in due course, when all the pieces are in place. As our discussion of controversy unfolds, we will move between two different planes of halakhic discourse. The first is that of the conceptual issues that arise



Hanina Ben-Menahem

from the phenomenon of controversy; the second that of the practical questions that arise in the wake of controversy. How is a ruling to be reached in case of a dispute? How should the individual conduct himself? How is the obligation to study the law to be fulfilled? How is legal uniformity to be achieved? Although discussion about controversy occupies the halakhic mind, it is a cross-cultural concept, and thus, it is possible – and perhaps, recommended – to analyze controversy in universal rather than exclusively Jewish terms. Readers should bear this in mind, and are invited to relate the concepts that appear in the halakhic sources to more general philosophical categories. 2 Sources evincing a positive attitude to controversy The talmudic sources manifest two distinct attitudes to controversy, one of which is clearly favored over the other. The preferred attitude views controversy in a positive light. Below, we will explore what this positive evaluation entails. For now, however, we will simply characterize it as a non-critical attitude. The other attitude is hostile to controversy, seeking to minimize it. On this approach, controversy is at best tolerated as a necessary evil, and not seen as a phenomenon to be encouraged and fostered. We will begin our examination with a discussion of sources that reflect the former attitude. The first text we will consider is one of the seminal passages on controversy in the talmudic corpus. Though not presented as an introduction to the Talmud, it nonetheless serves, philosophically, to fulfill that role, by providing the background against which the phenomenon of controversy should be understood. Referred to endlessly in the post-talmudic literature, almost every aspect of the text has generated numerous interpretations. Our analysis will present a deconstruction of the text, revealing the internal tensions and oppositions it harbors. 2.1

bEruvin 13b R. Abba stated in the name of Samuel: For three years there was a dispute between the house of Shammai and the house of Hillel, the former asserting, The law is in accordance with our views, and the latter contending, The law is in accordance with our views. A heavenly voice (bat kol) went forth, announcing, Both [lit., these and those] are the words of the living God, but the law is in accordance with the view of the house of Hillel. Since, however, both are the words of the living God, what was it that entitled the house of Hillel to have the law fixed in accordance with its view? Because they were kind and modest, they studied their own views



Controversy in Jewish law 

and those of the house of Shammai, and were even so humble as to mention the words of the house of Shammai before their own. As may be seen from what we have learned: If a man had his head and the greater part of his body within the booth (suka) but his table in the house, the house of Shammai ruled it invalid but the house of Hillel ruled that it was valid. Said the house of Hillel to the house of Shammai, Did it not happen that the elders of the house of Shammai and the house of Hillel went on a visit to R. Johanan b. Hahoranit and found him sitting with his head and greater part of his body within the booth while his table was in the house? The house of Shammai replied, That constitutes proof [lit., from there proof?]?! They indeed told him, If you have always acted in this manner you have never fulfilled the commandment of suka.3 This teaches you that he who humbles himself, the Holy One, blessed be He, raises up, and he who exalts himself, the Holy One, blessed be He, humbles; from him who seeks greatness, greatness flees, but he who flees from greatness, greatness follows; he who forces time is forced back by time, but he who yields to time finds time standing at his side.

The style of the Hebrew in this passage suggests to the trained eye that its origin is Tannaitic,4 despite the fact that the discussion is attributed to the Amoraim R. Abba and Samuel, and indeed, the kernel of the passage appears in the Jerusalem Talmud as a baraita: It was taught: A heavenly voice went forth and announced: Both are the words of the living God, but the law is in accordance with the view of the house of Hillel. jBerakhot 1:4 (3b, Venice edition)

Thus, the passage before us is, at the very least, an Amoraic elaboration of this baraita. The passage describes a controversy between the house of Hillel and the house of Shammai, the only two distinct schools of thought in the long formative period of the Talmud. The life-span of these schools of thought was relatively short, just 80–90 years, but while they existed, the schools were a vital creative force, and had a tremendous impact on the subsequent development of the Talmud. The relations between the schools are sometimes described as violent to the point of bloodshed, but elsewhere are said to constitute a model of peaceful coexistence between sides to a dispute. More than 300 different controversies between the two schools, over questions pertaining to all aspects of daily life, are set out in the Talmud. The controversy described in our passage is exceptional in that it does not identify the contested issue: no substantive dispute is mentioned, as would normally be the case. It seems, however, that the controversy had to do with the method by which controversies are to be resolved. (Philosophers would thus describe it as a 2ndorder controversy.) There was, indeed, an accepted procedure for resolving controversies – the majoritarian principle (“follow the majority”), but the question



Hanina Ben-Menahem

was how to define “majority”: was the majority the camp that was greater in wisdom, or that which was greater in number? (The school of Hillel is said, in the Talmud, to have been greater in number, while the school of Shammai is said to have been greater in wisdom; each school apparently adopted the position beneficial to itself.) In the absence of an agreed-upon mechanism for deciding controversies, the question remained open, and constituted a kind of vicious circle. The significance of the duration of the controversy, which is not particularly exceptional, is not made clear. What is to be assumed, however, is that during this period there was not simply a stalemate, but new arguments were put forward by the sides, though to no avail – the question could not be resolved rationally. The resort to the heavenly voice in this passage suggests a certain resignation, a rejection of the possibility of arriving at an ultimate resolution of the impasse by means of human reason. On the surface, it appears that the intervention of the heavenly voice is accepted without opposition. On this point, the passage conflicts with the picture painted in another classic talmudic passage, “the oven of akhnai”,5 where a similar halakhic pronouncement by a heavenly voice is rejected out of hand: It has been taught: On that day R. Eliezer brought forward every imaginable argument, but they did not accept them. Said he to them: If the law is in accordance with my view, let this carob-tree prove it! Thereupon the carob-tree was torn a hundred cubits from its place – others affirm, four hundred cubits. No proof can be brought from a carob-tree, they retorted. Again he said to them: If the law is in accordance with my view, let the stream of water prove it! Whereupon the stream of water flowed backwards. No proof can be brought from a stream of water, they rejoined. Again he urged: If the law is in accordance with my view, let the walls of the house of study prove it, whereupon the walls started to tilt. But R. Joshua rebuked them, saying: When scholars are engaged in a halakhic dispute, what have ye to interfere? Hence they did not fall, in honor of R. Joshua, nor did they resume the upright, in honor of R. Eliezer; and they are still standing thus inclined. Again he said to them: If the law is in accordance with my view, let it be proved from heaven! Whereupon a heavenly voice called out, saying: Why do you debate with R. Eliezer, seeing that on all matters the law is in accordance with his view?! But R. Joshua rose to his feet and exclaimed: “It is not in heaven” (Deut. 30:12). What did he mean by this? Said R. Jeremiah: [it means that] the Torah had already been given at Mount Sinai; we pay no attention to a heavenly voice, because Thou hast long ago written in the Torah at Mount Sinai, “Follow the majority” (Exod. 23:2). R. Nathan met Elijah and asked him: What did the Holy One, blessed be He, do in that hour? He replied: He smiled, saying, My sons have triumphed over Me, My sons have triumphed over Me. bBaba Metzia 59b



Controversy in Jewish law 

The original Tannaitic tradition ends without taking a position on the question of who was right, R. Joshua, who rejects the heavenly voice, or R. Eliezer, who relies on it. It is only the later Amoraic insertion, “What did he mean by this?... over Me”, that makes it clear, by arguing that the Almighty Himself supports it, that the rejectionist view of R. Joshua takes precedence. A hint of irony is perceptible in R. Jeremiah’s remark here to the effect that there is heavenly support for a position that rejects divine intervention. 2.1.1 Implicit critique of reliance on the heavenly voice Returning to the passage from bEruvin, we note that after the heavenly voice has issued its decree, to which we will return shortly, a question is raised: Since, however, both are the words of the living God, what was it that entitled the house of Hillel to have the law fixed in accordance with its view?

This question seeks a rational explanation for the fact that the law follows the house of Hillel, pointing to dissatisfaction with the concept of heavenly intervention in halakhic decision-making. The answer given in the text, “because they were kind and modest, they studied their own views and those of the house of Shammai, and were even so humble as to mention the words of the house of Shammai before their own”, appears to be straightforward: the members of the house of Hillel were morally superior. But as R. Joseph Caro6 asked, “I am perplexed. Suppose the law was not [really] in accordance with their view. Would it have been the case that the law was nonetheless decided in accordance with their view due to the preponderance of their moral virtues?”.7 While it seems that the moral dimension is indeed being highlighted here, and in the continuation of the passage, a more penetrating insight is also expressed. Epistemic advantages resulted from the house of Hillel’s elevated moral standing: because they were humble, they were willing to listen to and reflect on the arguments put forward by their opponents; having withstood the encounter with these contrary views, their own arguments are stronger. This interpretation is supported by the Jerusalem Talmud, which brings an unequivocally epistemic answer to the question: Why did the house of Hillel merit having the law decided in accordance with their view? Said R. Judah b. Pazi: They quoted the opinions of the house of Shammai before their own. Furthermore, when they saw merit in the opinions of the house of Shammai, they retracted their own. jSuka 2:8 (53b)

Thus, a rational explanation is put forward for the fact that the view of the house of Hillel is preferred. We see, then, that there appears to be a certain gap between



Hanina Ben-Menahem

the surface message of bEruvin 13b, which accepts the intervention of the heavenly voice without protest, and the subtle criticism implied by its undertaking to provide a rationalization of the “but the law is in accordance with the view of the house of Hillel” ruling. 2.1.2 The precedent To illustrate the moral and epistemic qualities attributed to the house of Hillel, the text in bEruvin cites a Mishnaic passage: As may be seen from what we have learned: If a man had his head and the greater part of his body within the booth (suka) but his table in the house, the house of Shammai ruled it invalid but the house of Hillel ruled that it was valid. Said the house of Hillel to the house of Shammai, Did it not happen that the elders of the house of Shammai and the house of Hillel went on a visit to R. Johanan b. Hahoranit and found him sitting with his head and greater part of his body within the booth while his table was in the house? The house of Shammai replied, That constitutes proof [lit., from there proof?]?! They indeed told him, If you have always acted in this manner you have never fulfilled the commandment of suka.

The illustration is relevant to the third virtue mentioned in explaining the fact that the house of Hillel is favored, namely, that they mentioned the words of the house of Shammai before their own. But what precisely is the connection? It might be thought that the Mishnaic passage is adduced here because of the conversation between the house of Hillel and the house of Shammai: in the question posed by the former, the phrase “house of Shammai” is used before the house of Hillel mentions itself: “Did it not happen that the elders of the house of Shammai...?” But with all due respect, this explanation, put forward by Rashi8 and other commentators, is not fully satisfactory, since the commended quality is that the house of Hillel mentioned the opinions [lit., the words] of the house of Shammai prior to their own. The sentence in question, however, merely constitutes an instance where the phrase “house of Shammai” appears first. A better explanation, then, might be that, on the assumption that the Mishnaic passage originates in the house of Hillel, the connection seems related to the fact that the view of the house of Shammai is reported before that of the house of Hillel: “the house of Shammai ruled it invalid but the house of Hillel ruled that it was valid”. But the question arises, why is this particular Mishnaic passage, out of hundreds of possibilities, used to illustrate the point? After all, the norm in the Mishna is that the view of the house of Shammai is mentioned first. One possible answer is that the choice of this passage as an illustration is quite deliberate. R. Abba,9 who presents the passage declaring that the law is decided in accordance with the house of Hillel, remarks elsewhere in the Talmud (bSuka 28a)



Controversy in Jewish law 

that in the case of the Suka dispute adduced in discussing the virtues of the house of Hillel, the law is decided in accordance with the view of the house of Shammai. Thus, it would appear that in choosing this example, a veiled qualification to what is presented as a universal principle – the principle that the law is in accordance with the view of the house of Hillel – is in fact being articulated, namely, that it is subject to exceptions. 2.1.3 “Both are the words of the living God” Having given the reader a taste of the subtle differences of opinion that are hidden beneath the apparently calm waters of the text, we now turn to the primary focus of the passage, the ruling issued by the heavenly voice. A heavenly voice (bat kol) went forth, announcing, Both [lit., these and those] are the words of the living God, but the law is in accordance with the view of the house of Hillel.

The dictum “both are the words of the living God” is derived from a verse in Jeremiah. There, the verse appears in the context of a polemic against false prophets. Jeremiah emphasizes that the true God has but one voice, and that false prophets “pervert the words of the living God” (Jer. 23:26). The author of the passage thus takes the biblical phrase out of its context and clothes it with a new – and incompatible – meaning. In bEruvin, the Sages present God pluralistically, as speaking with a variety of voices, despite the fact that in the Bible, the position of the prophet is the very opposite. Note the determination on the part of the Sages to reframe the biblical attitude pluralistically: the Sage seeks to establish his authority by repudiating the view that God’s voice is monolithic – a view welcomed by the prophet – attesting to an ongoing polemic against the prophet’s attempt to monopolize the role of conduit of God’s word. This impression is reinforced if we consider another passage from the Talmud pertaining to controversy, where the same stratagem is employed. The school of R. Ishmael taught: “And like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces” (Jer. 23:29): just as a hammer breaks forth many sparks, so every single word that went forth from the Holy One, blessed be He, split into seventy languages.10 bShabat 88b

Here, the allusion is to the same chapter of Jeremiah, where false prophecy is assailed, and here too, it is taken out of context and given an entirely new meaning, a meaning quite different from the biblical meaning. In Jeremiah 23:29, after the false prophet is contrasted with the prophet who reports God’s word faithfully, God declares: “Behold, My word is like fire, and like a hammer that shatters rock!”;



Hanina Ben-Menahem

Jeremiah is again asserting that God’s word is monolithic and unfragmented. The exegete, however, uses this passage to support a contrary vision, one that endorses controversy and pluralism. Even without regard to the innovative use of the biblical passage in this particular context, and its ramifications, the dictum of R. Ishmael is another classic expression of the pluralistic principle in early Rabbinic thought, and is much referred to in the post-talmudic literature. It also closely resembles a phrase not found in the Talmud: “the Torah has seventy facets”,11 a phrase that became a maxim of the pluralistic approach. Digression The idea we spoke of above, that the choice of the verses from Jeremiah in both instances reflects a hidden polemic between the sage and the prophet, merits further discussion. The distinction between the two is quite straightforward: the prophet, but not the sage, has direct access to the word of God. It would seem, on the surface, that as a result of this disparity, the position of the sage is inferior. The contrast between the univocal voice of the prophet, and the incessant controversies of the Sages, could be taken to demonstrate such an inferiority. The alleged prophetic advantage is so pronounced that the Meiri12 sees the emergence of controversy as caused by the cessation of prophecy (Beit Habehira on mAvot, introduction). The resolve of the Sages to discredit their alleged inferiority vis-à-vis prophets is thus understandable. The most succinct formulation of this program is the dictum, “A sage is superior to a prophet” (bBaba Batra 12a). The same idea is also found in the Jerusalem Talmud, in the very discussion which quotes the baraita that has been identified as the source of the “both are the words of the living God” dictum. The prophet and the sage – whom do they resemble? A king sends supervisors (mefakhim) to one of his domains. Of one he wrote to the subjects in that domain: if he does not show you my seal, and my insignia, do not trust him; of the other he wrote: even if he does not show you my seal and my insignia, trust him. So with regard to prophets, He wrote, “and he give thee a sign or a wonder” (Deut. 13:2); but with regard to sages, “According to the law which they shall teach thee” (Deut. 17:11). jBerakhot 1:4 (3b)

2.1.4

The meaning of the principle, “Both are the words of the living God”

The reader may be wondering how the principle is to be understood, if taken literally – how can contradictory statements both be true? Addressing this concern, at least four meanings have been proposed for the principle, which we will call the pluralism principle:



Controversy in Jewish law 

2.1.4.1 The law of contradiction does not apply to God On this approach, the criterion of truth, that is, the concept of what truth is, is not uniform, but differs for God and for mankind. God is not subject to the law of contradiction. From the point of view of God, both a statement and its negation can be true. Thus each side to a halakhic dispute is indeed expressing the word of God. This interpretation is reflected in the following commentary by the Ritba:13 Both are the words of the living God. The scholars of France, of blessed memory,14 asked, how is it possible that both are the words of the living God, when one forbids and another permits? They answered: When Moses ascended to heaven to receive the Torah, on every issue he was shown forty-nine aspects to forbid and forty-nine aspects to permit. He asked the Holy One, blessed be He, about this, and He said that the decision is delegated to the scholars of each generation, and the ruling will be made according to their view. This is so in terms of exegesis, but with respect to truth, there is an esoteric reason for all this. Hidushei Haritba on bEruvin 13b

Although, by virtue of this divine freedom from the law of contradiction, whatever decision a court renders is true, nonetheless, for the halakhic ruling of a court to be valid, it must be based on the assent of all the authorities of a given generation. The validity of human decision-making does not rest on the premise that “both are the words of the living God”, as does the truth of the decision. Validity calls for consensual determination of the law by scholars. In this sense, the fact that the law of contradiction does not apply to God allows for a conception of “validity by convention” in the human sphere, a recurrent theme in the halakhic sources. There are a number of variants of this basic interpretation. Later on, we will explore a few of them, and the reader is advised to be alert to the subtle differences of nuance they manifest. 2.1.4.2 Human rulings constitute partial perspectives on the divine truth On the second approach, the dictum “both are the words of the living God”, does not, as the first view suggests, allow contradiction from God’s perspective. On the contrary, from God’s perspective there are no contradictions, only imperatives and truths that apply universally. The perspective of the human attempting to determine the law, however, will necessarily be partial, as circumstances vary in space and time. Reality is so rich and complicated that more than one view is required if all the human perspectives are to be covered. From a given perspective, one view will be correct, while from a different vantage point, its negation may be correct. The correctness of a halakhic ruling will thus be relative to its author’s perspective. This interpretation of “both are the words” can be found in Rashi’s comment on bKetubot 57a, where he distinguishes between controversies over historical



Hanina Ben-Menahem

facts about the tradition (Rabbi A said p vs. Rabbi A said not-p) and controversies regarding halakhic positions (p is correct vs. p is incorrect). When two Sages disagree concerning the view of a third, one saying, he said thus, and the other saying, he said so, one of the two must be uttering a falsehood; but when two Amoraim have a legal disagreement concerning monetary or ritual law, each adducing his own reasoning, there is no falsehood involved. Each of the two is putting forward his own argument, one providing reasons for permitting, and one reasons for prohibiting; one makes such an analogy, and the other makes a different analogy, and the principle of “both are the words of the living God” applies. Sometimes one argument is pertinent, and sometimes the other argument is pertinent, since the law’s rationale changes according to variations in the circumstances, however minute. Rashi on bKetubot 57a

2.1.4.3 The motivational account Weak version The third interpretation refers to the motivation of the halakhic authority in question. There are two versions of this account: a weak version, and a strong version. On the weak version, only one of the opinions is correct; the formula “both are the words of the living God” signifies only that both views are sincere attempts to ascertain the truth. Accordingly, this view, like the second, rejects the possibility that both views are true, and makes a claim regarding the motivations and methods of the proponents of the opposed views, namely, that they are legitimate. The correctness of the views themselves, however, is a separate question. To illustrate this version of the third interpretation, we will examine the only other talmudic source for the expression “both are the words of the living God”. Said R. Joseph: Can it be maintained that R. Eviatar is an authority who can be relied upon? Have we not, moreover, evidence to the contrary? [An instance where R. Eviatar is alleged to have conducted himself not in accordance with a certain legal ruling is cited.].... Said Abbaye to him: Because a man does not know this rule of R. Isaac, is he therefore not to be counted a great scholar? If it were a rule established by logical deduction, we might think so. But it is purely a tradition, and it is a tradition that R. Eviatar had not heard about. Moreover, R. Eviatar is the authority whose view was recognized by his Master [in the following way]: Commenting on the text, “And his concubine played the harlot against him”, R. Eviatar said that the Levite found a fly [in food she prepared], and R. Jonathan said that he found a hair on her. Soon afterward R. Eviatar encountered Elijah and said to him: What is the Holy One, blessed be He, doing? and he answered, He is discussing the question of the concubine in Gibeah. What does He say? He said to him, My son Eviatar says this, and my son Jonathan says that.



Controversy in Jewish law 

He [R. Eviatar] said to him: Can there possibly be uncertainty in the mind of the Heavenly One? He replied, Both are the words of the living God. He [the Levite] found a fly and excused it, he found a hair and did not excuse it. bGitin 6b

R. Eviatar, a certain not particularly prominent Sage, issued a legal ruling. This passage addresses the question of his authority. To establish R. Eviatar’s authority, one of the Sages discussing the matter introduces an episode in which R. Eviatar figures. The episode relates a controversy between R. Eviatar and one of his colleagues, R. Jonathan, concerning the historical facts pertaining to the biblical story of the concubine at Gibeah (Judges 19). Her master’s wrath having been incited, the concubine, described as having “played the harlot”, fled, whereupon he went after her to bring her home. Since it is not permissible for a man to remain with his adulterous wife or concubine (a Rabbinic proscription, which the Sages, projecting backwards, apply to the concubine), the Sages attempt to interpret the story in a non-literal manner. R. Eviatar argues that he must have found a fly in food prepared for him15, while his colleague postulates that the husband must have objected to a hair, that is, found her sexually unattractive.16 At this point in the narrative, R. Eviatar encounters Elijah the Prophet, the traditional divine messenger, and seizes upon this opportunity to ask for a report on God’s doings. To his astonishment, Elijah tells him that God is engaged in studying the biblical story of the concubine at Gibeah. The Midrash dramatically conveys R. Eviatar’s great suspense over whether God takes his view or that of his colleague. At last Elijah states, “both are the words of the living God”: while R. Eviatar was right about the fly, he was wrong about the causal question of what had incited the master’s wrath.17 Yet what is significant is that although his view is rejected, it is nonetheless considered to be “the words of the living God”, attesting to the intentions and reliability of R. Eviatar. This thus constitutes evidence that he is recognized as an authority on halakhic questions. Strong version The strong version of the motivational account rejects the idea that there is a fact of the matter, i.e, that God made explicit pronouncements regarding halakhic issues. On this view, in addition to the Torah, what was given at Sinai were the thirteen exegetical principles for expounding the law: Therefore, it appears that God, blessed be He, gave the Torah and the thirteen exegetical principles for its interpretation, [for the use of] every single sage, according to his intellectual capacity, provided that he occupies himself with it and studies it with all his might, without dereliction. And if it appears to the Sanhedrin, on the basis of the Torah and the exegetical principles, that a thing is pure, it is pure. And should a future Sanhedrin arise, to whom it appears that according to the Torah and the exegetical principles that very thing is impure, it will be impure.



Hanina Ben-Menahem

Because God, blessed be He, who gave us the Torah, made it dependent on the sages’ views, based on their perceptions. And concerning this it is said, “And from Zion shall go forth the Law” (Isa. 2:3), meaning, an understanding of the Torah will go forth today that did not go forth yesterday. R. Yomtov Lipmann Muhlhausen,18 Sefer Hanitzahon, sec. 321

This strong motivational account of “both are the words of the living God” claims that if one works diligently within the correct methodological framework, whatever decision is reached is valid. Digression: The scope of the principle As we noted, the dictum “both are the words of the living God” appears only twice in the entire Talmud – once regarding the most central controversies in the Talmud, those between the schools of Hillel and Shammai, and once with regard to this minor controversy between peripheral Sages. From the overall perspective of the talmudic literature, all kinds of inferences can be drawn from the stark contrast between these two contexts. They can be seen as designating the poles of a continuum, implying that the dictum applies to all controversies in between, that is, to the entire spectrum of halakhic controversy. On the other hand, the second occurrence of the dictum can be construed as a comic parody, intended to criticize the engagement of scholars in speculative fantasies about the minutiae of past events. On this reading, the passage from Gitin is not to be regarded as legitimizing the application of the “both are the words” dictum to every halakhic controversy. Indeed, on the question of the scope of the “both are the words” dictum, post-Rabbinic scholars express a wide range of opinions, one of which we will now consider. And you should know that it is only within the sphere of controversy between the houses of Hillel and Shammai that the dictum “both are the words of the living God” applies. Because they were the first to engage in halakhic controversy, since prior to them there were no disputes about the Torah at all. And when the houses of Hillel and Shammai arose, their controversies were such that both views were “the words of the living God”.... And it is inappropriate that Israel should descend [directly] from the lofty level of absence of controversy to a level where controversy occurs and one view is invalidated. And therefore the controversy between the house of Hillel and the house of Shammai was such that “both are the words of the living God”. And after this, common controversy began to occur. Maharal,19 Beer Hagola, 1, p. 19 Note the singular status accorded controversy between the house of Hillel and the house of Shammai, and its role as a transitional stage in the historical evolution of the halakha, according to the Maharal. On this view, controversy between the house of Hillel and the house of Shammai reflects an element of the original idyllic situation in which there was no controversy, and all views put forward were correct, yet also reflects the unpleasant later reality of dissent. This view construes history as the unfolding of a divine plan, on which all events



Controversy in Jewish law 

have a purpose. The controversy between the house of Hillel and the house of Shammai, with its unique logical status, serves to prepare future generations for the coming decline. From this passage, it would seem that the Maharal’s assessment of controversy is unfavorable. However, elsewhere he expresses views more sympathetic to controversy, arguing that it enriches the halakha.

2.1.4.4 The instrumental view A fourth interpretation, like the second and third, rejects the notion that two opposed views can both be true. On this view, both can, however, be described as “the words of the living God”, because even the incorrect view makes an essential contribution to determining the truth. Analysis of the incorrect view, and its ultimate elimination, is a necessary stage in the process of arriving at the truth. This view is expressed in several post-talmudic sources. They were all spoken by one shepherd, meaning that most times we gain a good understanding of something by considering its negation, and we cannot understand the matter on its own so well as by considering its negation. Therefore the Holy One, blessed be He, sought to endow us with dissenting opinions, in order that when we arrive at the true opinion, we will understand it thoroughly. R. Abraham Akra, Meharerei Nemeirim 17a, commenting on bHagiga 3b

The idea of arriving at the truth by means of a process of working through a number of conflicting opinions is dramatically illustrated by a passage, perhaps the most tragic in the Talmud, relating the end of the relationship between R. Johanan and Resh Lakish. One day there was a dispute in the study hall [between Resh Lakish and R. Johanan] regarding a sword, knife, dagger, spear, hand-saw and scythe – at what stage of their manufacture do they become susceptible to impurity? When their manufacture is finished. And when is their manufacture finished? R. Johanan ruled, when they are tempered in a furnace. Resh Lakish maintained, when they have been polished in water. Said he to him, A robber understands his trade. [R. Johanan is alluding to Resh Lakish’s impious past.] Said he to him, And in what have you benefited me? There [as a robber] I was called Master, and here I am called Master. By bringing you under the wings of the Divine Presence, he retorted. R. Johanan therefore felt himself deeply hurt, [as a result of which] Resh Lakish fell ill. His sister [R. Johanan’s sister, married to Resh Lakish] came and wept before him: Forgive him for the sake of my son, she pleaded. He replied, “Leave thy fatherless children and I will preserve them alive” (Jer. 49:11). For the sake of my widowhood then. “And let thy widows trust in Me” (ibid.), he assured her. Resh Lakish died and R. Johanan was plunged into deep grief. Said the Sages, Who will go to ease his mind? Let R. Eleazar b. Pedat, whose legal teachings are very subtle, go. So he went and sat before him; and on every dictum uttered by R. Johanan, he remarked: There is a baraita that supports you. [R. Johanan said: Do



Hanina Ben-Menahem

you think] you are, then, like the son of Lakisha? When I stated the law, the son of Lakisha would raise twenty-four separate objections, to which I gave twenty-four answers, which led to a fuller understanding of the law. All you say is, There is a baraita that supports you. Do I not know myself that my opinions are wellgrounded? He went on rending his garments and weeping, saying, Where are you, O son of Lakisha, where are you, O son of Lakisha? And he cried thus until his mind broke down. Thereupon the Sages prayed for him and he died. bBaba Metzia 84a

Although other personal issues and emotions contributed to R. Johanan’s tremendous sorrow, this moving passage clearly conveys the deep distress caused by his loss of the study partner who had enabled him to gain a deeper understanding of the law. Critical feedback is presented as an essential element in arriving at the truth. More generally, forthright confrontation of contentious issues is not seen as a negative practice, but viewed favorably as having great epistemic benefit. This interpretation of “both are the words” – the idea that controversy is instrumental to arriving at the truth – is also expressed in numerous other halakhic sources. 2.1.5 Theory and practice We have seen that the function of the heavenly voice is to resolve the dispute, thereby serving as arbiter of how the individual is to conduct himself in practice. Yet if “both are the words of the living God”, why is it necessary to decide between the two opinions? Whichever is chosen, the individual will be acting in accordance with the divine command. And in fact, there are a number of traditions that allow individuals freedom of choice regarding which opinion they prefer to follow, provided they remain consistent. Most of the following passage reflects this approach, thus disputing bEruvin 13b: The law is always in accordance with the view of the house of Hillel, but he who wishes to act in accordance with the view of the house of Shammai may do so, and he who wishes to act in accordance with the view of the house of Hillel may do so. He who adopts the more lenient rulings of the house of Shammai and the more lenient rulings of the house of Hillel is a wicked man, while of one who adopts the restrictions of the house of Shammai and the restrictions of the house of Hillel, Scripture said: “But the fool walketh in darkness” (Eccles. 2:14). One should, rather, act either in accordance with the house of Shammai with respect to both their lenient and their restrictive rulings, or in accordance with the house of Hillel with respect to both their lenient and their restrictive rulings. bEruvin 6b

Reading this passage, we can easily detect a contradiction between the first statement, viz., that the law is always in accordance with the house of Hillel, and the statement that follows it, viz., that he who wishes to act in accordance with the



Controversy in Jewish law

view of the house of Shammai may do so, while he who wishes to act in accordance with the view of the house of Hillel may do so as well. The contradiction here is between two practical directives. In bEruvin 13b, by contrast, there is a tension between theory and practice: the heavenly voice preserves the conflicting views at the level of theoretical law, while providing a uniform norm governing practice. The Talmud itself is conscious of this inconsistency in the directives of bEruvin 6b, and one of the solutions it proposes as a means of resolving it is to argue that the first directive reflects the situation after the intervention of the heavenly voice, while the second describes the situation prior to this intervention. Shortly, we will consider another solution to this difficulty. Digression The discerning reader may have been wondering how is it that controversies between the houses of Hillel and Shammai cannot be resolved using the standard halakhic decisionmaking rules, such as: the law follows the majority; regarding biblical controversies, the stricter view is followed, whereas regarding Rabbinic controversies, the lenient view is followed; and so on. One possible answer is suggested by Nahmanides:20 And it can be said that... the controversy between the students of the house of Shammai and the house of Hillel is broad, and all the scholars of Israel are encompassed by it, and for them the Torah becomes like two sets of laws [lit., like two Torahs].21 Hidushei Haramban on bHulin 43b Nahmanides’ answer is that the standard decision-making rules apply to isolated controversies, whereas the controversies between the houses of Hillel and Shammai generated two autonomous orientations. However, this answer, as Nahmanides himself notes, is problematic, in that the Gemara in bEruvin 7a suggests that the either-or solution is applied to all controversies, not only to those between the house of Hillel and the house of Shammai.

If we take the idea of halakhic pluralism as reflecting an ontological state (interpretation 1 above), the law can be decided in more than one way because there is no one uniquely-correct answer to the legal question at hand. In this case, we have a tension between a theological consideration, namely, that the divine will, the halakha, can be carried out in a variety of ways equally acceptable to God, and the social desideratum of maintaining uniformity of practice. In contrast, if we adopt one of the other three interpretations, on which halakhic pluralism does not reflect a multiplicity of truths, but only a multiplicity of well-intentioned views, the dilemma does not arise, and the heavenly voice serves as a decision-making device, a device for identifying the opinion that reflects the one unique truth regarding the issue at hand, thereby both identifying the divine will and ensuring uniformity of practice.





Hanina Ben-Menahem

In the next section, we will further examine sources that deal with the tension between theory and practice. 2.2

Four sources on the practical ramifications of controversy

2.2.1 mEduyot 1:5 We now turn to the examination of a statement in which the Mishna discusses its own methodology, one of the very few self-reflective statements found in the Mishna. It is also one of the few Mishnaic passages that discuss the issue of controversy directly. And why do they record the opinion of the individual against that of the majority, since the law may only be decided in accordance with the opinion of the majority? So that if a court approves of the opinion of the individual it may rely on him. mEduyot 1:5

Above, we concluded our discussion of bEruvin 13b by juxtaposing it to bEruvin 6b, and noting that two different strategies are proposed for addressing controversy in the practical realm: the disjunctive, either-or, solution, found in the latter part of 6b, and the heavenly voice solution, which sanctions one particular course of behavior, eliminating all others, found in 13b. The Mishna we have just quoted puts forward an intermediate strategy. On the one hand, as in the case of bEruvin 13b, there is indeed a single acceptable opinion, that of the majority. However, the repudiated opinion, that of the minority, is not completely effaced, but rather preserved for future reference, allowing for its eventual adoption. Thus this intermediate strategy sanctions possible implementation of dissenting views, but unlike bEruvin 6b, does not legitimate them unequivocally. Digression Tosefta Eduyot, which parallels Mishna Eduyot, contains an important qualification to the Mishnaic ruling that minority views can be relied upon. It stresses that this is to be resorted to only when “the needs of the times” so demand. However, since the definition of “the needs of the times” is left to the judge who will be citing it as a justification, it is hard to characterize the precise scope of the qualification, and hence, of the Mishnaic rule itself. And in fact, we find in the Talmud several instances where judges rely on minority views on the basis of this Mishna. The common formula introducing such cases is, “So-and-so deserves to be relied upon”.

However, if we consider the passages in question from another perspective, their relationship appears to be different. The three passages, bEruvin 13b, bEruvin 6b, and mEduyot 1:5, are seen, not as two polar positions and a synthesis between them, but rather, simply as variants of the same position. bEruvin 6b can be read,



Controversy in Jewish law 

not as an alternative strategy for addressing intractable controversies, but rather, as an interpretation of bEruvin 13b. Like bEruvin 13b, it determines that the law is decided in accordance with the view of the house of Hillel (the first part of 6b), and interprets the “both are the words” dictum of 13b as sanctioning the disjunctive, either-or solution. On this reading, mEduyot 1:5 presents a means of implementing this paradoxical affirmation of the two approaches, the heavenly voice approach, on the one hand, and the either-or approach, on the other. But rather than presenting the solution as leaving the choice to the individual, as proposed in bEruvin 6b, it mandates that the rejected opinion be preserved for future judicial reference. Thus interpreted, mEduyot, too, sanctions the “both are the words” dictum. The following Mishna, which is, perhaps, the most renowned Mishnaic discussion of controversy, and has generated a huge sea of commentary, can also be interpreted as in line with the view that the various passages should be regarded as complementary. Every controversy that is for the sake of heaven, its end is to be sustained. And every controversy that is not for the sake of heaven, its end is not to be sustained. What controversy is for the sake of heaven? – the controversy between Hillel and Shammai. And that which is not for the sake of heaven? – the controversy of Korah and all his congregation. mAvot 5:17

Presumably, although rather than referring only to the dissenting side, this Mishna uses the more inclusive term “controversy”, it nonetheless has in mind the losing party and not both sides to the dispute. This point was already taken note of by the Meiri, in his commentary on the Mishna. He writes: It is puzzling: in what way is it apt to say of a controversy that it will be sustained? After all, only one of the two opposing views will ultimately be sustained. And the term “controversy” covers two sides, and how can both be sustained? It seems to me that the term “controversy” [here] refers only to the side challenging an existing view.... Therefore, “controversy” does not encompass both sides, but only one, namely, that which challenges an existing view. Beit Habehira on mAvot 5:1922

What does it mean to say that “its end is to be sustained”? Here we depart from the Meiri’s explanation, and suggest that the Mishna envisages a point in the future when dissenting views will be relied upon. This calls to mind the words of mEduyot 1:5, which stated that dissenting views might be relied upon by a court, under specified conditions, at some future time. The claim that the Mishna refers only to the losing party, assuring him that if he disagrees for the sake of heaven, his opinion will eventually be relied upon, is supported by the fact that the latter part of the Mishna refers explicitly only to one side,



Hanina Ben-Menahem

the dissenting side, namely, to Korah and all his congregation. It might be asked why, if this is so, the penultimate sentence mentions both the house of Hillel and the house of Shammai. The answer is that with respect to certain issues, however few, the former are on the dissenting side, and with respect to the others, the latter. Digression The Mishna we have just examined points to a problem also found elsewhere, the ambiguity of the very term “controversy”. It is sometimes used to denote a halakhic controversy, that is, a dispute over how to decide the law. This is the sense in which we have been using it. In other contexts, however, it can refer to social strife. Since, in this latter sense, controversy is unquestionably a deplored phenomenon, the fact that the same term is used for both is not without consequences, as the pejorative connotations of this sense of the term are sometimes carried over into contexts where the former, neutral sense is intended. At times, it is unclear which of the two senses is intended: mAvot 5:17 is an example of such a context.

2.2.2 jSanhedrin 4:2 (22a) Said R. Yanai, Were the Torah to have been handed down in a clear-cut form, one would have had no solid ground to stand on. What is the basis for this statement? Scripture says, “And the Lord spoke to Moses...”. Moses said to Him, Master of the Universe, tell me how the law is decided. He said to him, “follow the majority” (Exod. 23:2). If those who declare [the accused] innocent are in the majority, declare him innocent. If those who declare [the accused] guilty are in the majority, declare him guilty. This is so that the Torah may be expounded in forty-nine ways for a decision that something is impure and in forty-nine ways for a decision that it is pure. And forty-nine is the numerical equivalent of “and his banner” (vediglo) (Song of Songs 2:4).23

2.2.3

Masekhtot ketanot, Soferim 16, 5–6 R. Tanhum b. Hanilai said: Were the Torah to have been handed down in a clearcut form, no judge would have had solid grounds for his ruling. But now, if he renders a thing impure, there are others who rendered it impure under similar circumstances. And if he renders it pure, there are others who rendered it pure under similar circumstances.

2.2.4 Hidushei Haritba on bEruvin 13b Both are the words of the living God. The scholars of France, of blessed memory, asked, how is it possible that both are the words of the living God, when one forbids and another permits? They answered: When Moses ascended to heaven to receive the Torah, on every issue he was shown forty-nine aspects to forbid and forty-nine aspects to permit. He asked the Holy One, blessed be He, about this,



Controversy in Jewish law 

and He said that the decision is delegated to the scholars of each generation, and the ruling will be made according to their view. This is so in terms of exegesis, but with respect to truth, there is an esoteric reason for all this.

We have considered four sources that address the practical implications of controversy for halakhic decision-making: mEduyot, jSanhedrin, Soferim, and the Ritba. Despite some similarities of theme, there are also important differences. According to the pluralism principle, both sides of every dispute were given to Moses at Sinai. The sources in question all draw different conclusions from the pluralism principle. mEduyot deals with the conscious employment of a minority view by a judge. The Jerusalem Talmud, in jSanhedrin, sanctions any decision of an assembly of sages. The passage from Soferim justifies any decision made by a judge, and the Ritba goes one step further than the Jerusalem Talmud, saying that each generation can make decisions anew. 2.3

bHagiga 3b And he too began to expound: “The words of the wise are as goads, and as nails well planted are those of masters of assemblies; they were given from one shepherd” (Eccles. 12:11). Why are the words of the Torah likened to a goad? To teach that just as a goad directs the cow along the furrow in order to bring life to the world, so the words of the Torah direct those who study them from the paths of death to the paths of life. But [should you think] that just as a goad is movable, so the words of the Torah are movable, therefore Scripture says: “nails”. But [should you think] that just as a nail diminishes by being driven in, and does not increase, so too the words of the Torah diminish, and do not increase, therefore Scripture says: “well planted”; just as a plant grows and increases, so the words of the Torah grow and increase. “Masters of assemblies” refers to the scholars (talmidei hakhamim) who sit in various assemblies and apply themselves to the Torah; some deem a matter impure, others deem it pure, some prohibit, others permit, some disqualify, others declare fit. Lest someone say, Under these circumstances, how can I learn the Torah?, therefore Scripture says: All were given from one shepherd. One God gave them, one leader uttered them from the mouth of the Master of all deeds, blessed be He, as it is written, “And God spake all these words” (Exod. 20:1). So let your ears be as funnels [lit., hoppers], and cultivate an understanding heart, to hear the words of those who deem a matter impure and those who deem it pure, those who prohibit and those who permit, those who disqualify and those who declare fit.

Based on a verse from Ecclesiastes, this exegesis, also referred to in the passage we considered above from Meharerei Nemeirim, which has many parallels and variants in the Rabbinic literature, is attributed to R. Eleazar b. Azariah, to whom the



Hanina Ben-Menahem

pronoun “he” at the beginning of the passage refers. We know that R. Eleazar b. Azariah was involved in the decision to declare the book of Ecclesiastes part of the biblical canon (mYadayim 3:5). Given that it justifies dissenting opinions, it is possible that the exegesis before us was delivered in connection with the deliberations on this matter, despite the fact that the talmudic context in which the passage is found is different. The exegesis has two sections, the first dealing with the tension between the static and dynamic dimensions of the Torah, and the second dealing with controversy. We will be most concerned with understanding the latter section. Let us begin our consideration of the treatment of controversy in this passage by noting a variant in the Jerusalem Talmud that distinctly changes its meaning: The term “assemblies” (asufot) refers only to the Sanhedrin, as it is stated in Numbers 11:16 – “Gather (esfa)24 unto Me seventy men of the elders of Israel”. Another interpretation: “masters of assemblies” – that which is spoken at assemblies. jSanhedrin 10a

This change allows the Jerusalem Talmud to avoid interpreting the verse in a manner that underlines the connection with controversy, and instead, to reframe the matter as pertaining to the overall activity of the Sanhedrin, and not necessarily to controversy.25 Despite the Jerusalem Talmud’s preference for recasting the passage as referring to a specific forum, namely, the Sanhedrin, if we return to the passage from bHagiga 3b, it is quite clear that the subject addressed is indeed controversy per se, as is evident, for one thing, from the term “assemblies”, emphasizing that many different forums for deciding the law are being referred to. An observer of the activity taking place at these different gatherings would readily have discerned that “some deem a matter impure, others pure, some prohibit, others permit, some disqualify, others declare fit”. From the continuation of the passage, it is evident that the opposed pronouncements relate to the same legal question, and not to different issues. It is not surprising, therefore, that the observer’s response to this bewildering profusion of controversy and discussion is to inquire, “Under these circumstances, how can I learn the Torah?”. In variants of this passage, the query is sometimes posed differently: Under these circumstances, whom shall we listen to? Why should we bother to learn the Torah? The answer provided in the various parallels, “All were given from one shepherd. One God gave them, one leader uttered them from the mouth of the Master of all deeds, blessed be He”, is based on the verse from Ecclesiastes. Note that these parallels, when quoting the verse, add the word “all”, which does not appear in the biblical text. The verse in the Torah that serves as the proof-text for the entire passage reads: “for it is written, And God spoke all these words” (Exod. 20:1), and it



Controversy in Jewish law 

would appear that this is the basis for the emphasis on “all”. The exegete does not directly address the observer’s perplexity, but instead reassures the observer by announcing that all the different views were spoken to Moses at Sinai. In so doing, this source invokes an idea very similar to the pluralism principle put forward in the first passage we studied, bEruvin 13b, “both are the words of the living God”. And indeed, many of the later commentators who quote the passage from bHagiga interpolate this dictum into it, as if it were an integral part of the passage. The passage also calls to mind the “forty-nine aspects” idea expressed in jSanhedrin 4:2, which we discussed above. 2.3.1 Interpretations of the passage A noted commentator, R. Nissim Gerondi, known as the Ran,26 interprets this fascinating passage as follows: It is also said, “masters of assemblies”(bHagiga 3b). This refers to the scholars (talmidei hakhamim) who sit in various assemblies and apply themselves to the Torah. Some deem a matter impure, others deem it pure, some prohibit, others permit, some disqualify and others declare fit. Lest one say, under these circumstances, since some deem it impure and others pure, and so on, how can I learn the Torah?, Scripture teaches, “given from one shepherd” (Eccles. 12:11). One leader uttered them from the mouth of the Master of all, and so on. For it is said, “And God spoke all these words” (Exod. 20:1). And they interpreted the word “all” as including even the opinions of those who did not arrive at the truth – all opinions were given at Sinai. Now this matter needs some study. How can we say that both sides of a controversy were spoken to Moses by the Almighty? For example, Shammai and Hillel had a disagreement. Shammai says that the priestly portion must be donated from one kab of dough and Hillel says from two kab (mEduyot 1:2). Verily, one of these two opinions is true and the opposed view is not, yet how can it be maintained that an untruth was spoken by God? But the matter is as follows: It is known that the entire written and oral law was transmitted to Moses, as it is stated in tractate Megila: R. Hiya bar Abba said in the name of R. Johanan: What is the meaning of the verse “and on them was written according to all the words” (Deut. 9:10)? It teaches us that the Holy One, blessed be He, showed Moses the “finer points of the Torah and the finer points of the Sages” and all the new points that scholars would formulate in the future. And what are they? Reading the Book of Esther. “Finer points of the Sages” denotes the controversies and dissenting opinions among the scholars of Israel. And Moses learned all of them from the Almighty, though without a decision on every particular point of contention. But He gave him a rule for recognizing the truth, and it is “aharei rabim lehatot” – follow the majority (Exod. 23:2), and “do not deviate from the words which they shall declare unto thee” (Deut. 17:11).27



Hanina Ben-Menahem

When dissent proliferated among the Sages, if it was one against many, the law was determined according to the majority. If many against many, or one person against another, the law was decided according to what seemed proper to the scholars of that generation, since the power to decide had been delegated to them. As it is said: “And thou shalt come unto the priests the Levites, and unto the judge that shall be in those days” (Deut. 17:9). Furthermore, there is the injunction, “do not deviate”. For authorization was given to the scholars of every generation to decide between dissenting opinions as they saw fit, even if their predecessors were greater and more numerous than they. For we were commanded to follow their wisdom, whether what they agree on is the truth or its converse. And this is so in the controversy involving R. Eliezer the Great. As it is said in the discussion in tractate bBaba Metzia: R. Joshua rose to his feet and said, “It is not in heaven” (Deut. 30:12).28 What does “it is not in heaven” mean? It means that the Torah had already been given to Moses on Mount Sinai, and in it is written “follow the majority” (aharei rabim lehatot) (Exod. 23:2). To be sure, they were all aware that R. Eliezer’s view agreed with the truth more closely than did their own, that its signs were all genuine and correct, and that the heavenly decision had been as he said. Nevertheless, they decided the law in line with their own consensus. Since their reasoning inclined them to deem the matter impure, even though they knew that this consensus was the opposite of the truth, they did not want to render it pure, and would have transgressed the words of the Torah had they done so, since their reasoning inclined them to render it impure. For the power to decide has been delegated to the scholars of the given generation, and whatever they agree upon is what God commanded. Derashot Haran, #7

It is important to attend to the fact that the Ran uses the concept “truth” in two distinct senses. The first is that of objective truth, which reflects the divine determination of the law; the second is that of validity, reflecting human decisions about the law, which do not necessarily coincide with the objective truth. The validity of a human decision rests on human understanding of the law taken in conjunction with the divine desire that human conduct be in accordance with human understanding. But he emphasizes that every human understanding of the law was actually revealed to Moses at Sinai: It teaches us that the Holy One, blessed be He, showed Moses the finer points of the Torah and the finer points of the Sages and all the new points that scholars would formulate in the future. And what are they? Reading the Book of Esther. “Finer points of the Sages” denotes the controversies and dissenting opinions among the scholars of Israel.



Controversy in Jewish law 

That is, conceptually speaking, the function of human decisions as to the law, decisions made on the basis of the principle of majority rule, is to determine which of the existing views will be adopted in practice. It is interesting to compare this interpretation to that expressed in the following passage, taken from a very recent halakhic work by a distinguished pre-war Polish authority.29 And it is in this spirit that we are to understand the passage in tractate bEruvin about the house of Shammai / house of Hillel controversy: “a heavenly voice (bat kol) went forth, announcing, Both are the words of the living God, but the law is in accordance with the view of the house of Hillel”. It is important to understand how two contrary opinions, one forbidding and the other permitting, can, with respect to the same matter, both be the words of the living God. And on this point see the comments in R. Yomtov of Seville’s novellae (Hidushei Haritba) ad loc. In the said passage, the Talmud raises a problem. “Since, however, both are the words of the living God, why was the house of Hillel entitled to have the law fixed in accordance with its view?”. Note that the Talmud does not question the possibility of two contrary opinions both being the words of the living God.... But you must know and understand that halakhic truth is unlike the truth of arithmetic and geometry, wherein there is but a single correct solution. Rather, it is based on intelligence and reasoning, that is, it is as people understand it through their own cognition. And the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded in His Torah that when a matter in the laws of the Torah is too perplexing, we obey the decision of the court of that generation, which will inform us of the solution to which its understanding points. And, as no two individuals have identical intellects, and opinions of necessity will differ, even within the court itself, God, may He be blessed, commanded that we accept the opinion of the majority. If the majority view asserts that something is forbidden, it is the will of God, may He be blessed, that it be forbidden. However, should the majority of a court in a future generation be inclined to accept the previous minority opinion, and permit the matter, this would also be the will of God, may He be blessed, for Scripture says, “unto the judge that shall be in those days” (Deut. 17:9). And as Maimonides, of blessed memory, wrote, “If the high court arrived at a conclusion on the basis of the accepted exegetical principles as it saw fit, determining that the law was thus and rendering its legal decision accordingly, and then a later court contradicts it, the second court may contradict it and rule as it sees fit, for Scripture says, ‘and unto the judge that shall be in those days’ (Deut. 17:9). The sole authority is the judge of the present generation”.30 And it is all for the same reason: the Torah chose a solution that is dependent on intelligible truth and variable opinion. For every point of view has some hold on human opinion, and even within an individual, opinions may vary. The Talmud relates, for example, that R. Meir was able to argue that an impure matter was



Hanina Ben-Menahem

pure, and could support his claim logically (bEruvin 13b). That is, he explained it so as to show that it was plausible. Hence, the arguments for purity and for impurity can both be grounded in reason. And everything that can be so grounded is the word of the living God, since He commanded us to listen to the arguments and reasoning of the court, to its understanding of the solutions to doubtful points concerning the precepts of the Torah. Kuntres Pri Haaretz, p. 506

The conception expressed in this passage is similar to that of the Ran, but with one crucial difference. On both views, the halakhic decision made by the Sages on the basis of majority rule does not necessarily mirror the divine truth regarding the matter. And on both views, the divine will is that the Sages be the arbiters of the law. Thus the decision-making methods these thinkers champion are what we would today describe as process-oriented. The crucial distinction, however, is that according to Kuntres Pri Haaretz, there is no presumption that the different views were given to Moses at Sinai, and hence human intellectual creativity has, theoretically speaking, far greater importance. Logic and human reasoning alone suffice to establish the plausibility of a halakhic opinion, and once it has been adopted by the majority, it becomes the law. 2.3.2 Other commentators on bHagiga 3b This problem was also taken up in a responsum by an eminent Iraqi halakhic authority, R. Abdallah Abraham Joseph Somekh:31 Question: You asked about controversy between Sages, one forbidding, the other permitting – how could both views have been given to Moses at Sinai? Answer: This is a very profound question, and we cannot get to the bottom of it, for even the early scholars, of blessed memory, could not master it. This question was asked by the scholars of France, of blessed memory, about the passage in tractate Eruvin 13b:

R. Abba stated in the name of Samuel: For three years there was a dispute between the house of Shammai and the house of Hillel, the former asserting, The law is in accordance with our views, and the latter contending, The law is in accordance with our views. A heavenly voice (bat kol) went forth, announcing, Both are the words of the living God, but the law is in accordance with the view of the house of Hillel. Since, however, both are the words of the living God, what was it that entitled the house of Hillel to have the law fixed in accordance with its view? Because they were kind and modest.

R. Yomtov of Seville, in his commentary on Eruvin, wrote as follows:

The scholars of France, of blessed memory, asked, how is it possible that both are the words of the living God, when one forbids and another permits? They



Controversy in Jewish law 

answered: When Moses ascended to heaven to receive the Torah, on every issue he was shown forty-nine aspects to forbid and forty-nine aspects to permit. He asked the Holy One, blessed be He, about this, and He said that the decision is delegated to the scholars of each generation, and the ruling will be made according to their view. This is so in terms of exegesis, but with respect to truth, there is an esoteric reason for all this. That is what the Ritba, of blessed memory, wrote. A similar approach is taken by R. Nissim Solomon Algazi32 in Yavin Shmua (p. 81b), quoting Mishpetei Shmuel,33 which brings an interpretation in the name of Rabbenu Hananel,34 of blessed memory:

Concerning “both are the words of the living God” – the interpretation is that the Holy One, blessed be He, related to Moses at Sinai forty-nine ways to render a thing pure and forty-nine ways to render the same thing impure, and did not decide, but left the decision to the majority, as it is written, “follow the majority” (Exod. 23:2).

And so it appears from the Gemara in tractate Hagiga 3b:

“Masters of assemblies” refers to the scholars (talmidei hakhamim) who sit in various assemblies and apply themselves to the Torah; some deem a matter impure, others pure, some prohibit, and others permit, some disqualify and others declare fit. Should one say: Under these circumstances, how can I learn the Torah? Therefore Scripture says: All “were given from one shepherd”. One God gave them, one leader uttered them from the mouth of the Master of all deeds, blessed be He.

There is thus clear proof in the Talmud supporting the assertion of the scholars of France and Rabbenu Hananel, of blessed memory, that the two opposed opinions were given to Moses at Sinai. As was also explained by the Shela,35 of blessed memory, who begins by quoting R. Yomtov of Seville, then quotes the scholars of France, cites the said talmudic passage, and then states: “These authorities, of blessed memory, attested that all the disputes and contradictory opinions were given by one God, uttered by one leader” (Shnei Luhot Habrit, 25b). And consult the text. And the Hida,36 of blessed memory, offers three explanations:

About the saying, “both are the words of the living God”, the early scholars pondered the question, how is it possible that both are the words of the living God, since the one whose opinion is not affirmed as law did not speak correctly? The early scholars said that just as light cannot be discerned without darkness, and truth cannot be discerned without falsehood, so too in this matter the one cannot be understood unless it is juxtaposed to its opposite. Therefore God told Moses the opinions of those who acquit and those who find liable, and so on, for from the rejected opinion, the true opinion can be formulated and upheld. That is one answer.



Hanina Ben-Menahem



And another one we learn from Rashi: sometimes one thesis is right and sometimes another, and it turns out that in any event a rejected opinion might be correct under slightly different circumstances.37



The third explanation is according to the scholars of France, namely, that the Holy One, blessed be He, gave Moses forty-nine aspects from which to pronounce it pure, and forty-nine to pronounce it impure, and so forth, and told him that the law would be according to the agreement of the scholars of the given generation. Thus, all opinions are indeed the words of the living God.38

And consult the text. And what the Hida, of blessed memory, wrote in his second explanation, is based on what Rashi, of blessed memory, wrote in Ketubot, at the end of his comments:

But when two Amoraim have a legal disagreement concerning monetary or ritual law, each adducing his own reasoning, there is no falsehood involved. Each of the two is putting forward his own argument, one providing reasons for permitting, and one reasons for prohibiting; one makes such and such an analogy, and the other makes a different analogy, and the principle of “both are the words of the living God” applies. Sometimes one argument is pertinent, and sometimes the other argument is pertinent, since the law’s rationale changes according to variations in the circumstances, however minute.

That is what Rashi, of blessed memory, wrote. From this we learn that the Sages, of blessed memory, were right in saying, “Both are the words of the living God”, for even if one scholar rules to forbid or permit a matter, and the law is not so, nevertheless, the ruling is true and exists in the world, and was received by Moses at Sinai regarding a different situation. And it is correct to say that this opinion too is the word of the living God. There are more explanations by later scholars, of blessed memory, but nevertheless this inquiry has not proven very satisfactory, and we do not possess the understanding to pursue it to its ultimate conclusion, because even regarding the explanation of the scholars of France, of blessed memory, the great scholar, the Shela [R. Isaiah Horowitz] remarks: “This is remote from human cognition, and cannot be grasped by man unless accompanied by divine guidance and His true light”. He also says: “The words of the scholars of France, of blessed memory, do not give peace of mind, because they are not adequate. The mind will have rest only through the reasoning and secrets alluded to by the master [the Ritba]”. Therefore we cannot delve any deeper into this question, or elaborate on it further. On a literal level, to bring some peace of mind, and in particular, in order to answer the queries of ordinary people, we have brought the three explanations, and they more than suffice for the purpose of this investigation. Let the wise man answer the queries of the curious, and in particular, cite the explanation of the scholars of France, which is the most satisfying of the three. But the essential explanation is arrived at by way of secrets, and none of us have any business delving into it. Responsa Zivhei Tzedek, Yore Deia #26



Controversy in Jewish law 

This responsum displays a virtuosic grasp of the halakhic literature as well as a sophisticated sense of the complexity of the philosophical problems raised by the multiplicity principle. At the same time, it evidences unquestionable ambivalence, disquiet and even confusion regarding the best way of dealing with these issues. The responsum reflects a tension between the desire to find a satisfactory resolution for the dilemma, and awareness of the problematics attendant on such an endeavor. Particularly noteworthy is the responsum’s concluding sentence, which explicitly associates the principle that “both are the words of the living God” with the mystical realm, and advises ordinary people to keep their distance. 2.4

Aggadic materials: Celestial controversy

We will conclude our analysis of the sources that manifest a positive attitude to controversy by considering a number of Aggadic passages that allude to controversy on high – that is, controversy between God and the “heavenly academy”. However we interpret this celestial metaphor, attribution of controversy to the heavenly sphere is indicative of the fact that controversy is not regarded as the result of human weaknesses and limitations, but rather, as an integral dimension of Torah study. First of all, let us consider a fascinating Aggada about the death of the renowned Sage Rabbah, after which we will look at some remarks on the story made by R. Nissim Gerondi. R. Kahana said: R. Hama, the son of the daughter of Hassa, related to me that Rabbah bar Nahmani died of persecution, information against him having been leaked to the state. Said they [the informers]: There is an Israelite who keeps twelve thousand Israelites from paying the royal poll‑tax one month in summer and one in winter. A royal officer was sent for him, but did not find him... and he fled to Agama; there he sat upon the trunk of a [fallen] palm and studied. Now they were debating in the heavenly academy thus: If the spot preceded the white hair, he is impure; if the reverse, he is pure.39 If [the order is] in doubt, the Holy One, blessed be He, ruled, he is pure, whereas the entire heavenly academy maintained, he is impure. Who shall decide it?, they asked. Rabbah bar Nahmani will decide, for he has declared, I am pre‑eminent in the laws of leprosy and tents. A messenger was sent for him, but the Angel of Death could not approach him, because he did not interrupt his study. In the meantime, a wind blew and caused a rustling in the bushes, which he imagined to be a troop of soldiers. Let this person [referring to himself] die, he said, rather than be delivered into the hands of the state. As he was dying, he said, Pure, pure! A heavenly voice cried out, Happy art thou, O Rabbah bar Nahmani, whose body is pure and whose soul hath departed in purity. bBaba Metzia 86a



Hanina Ben-Menahem

R. Nissim Gerondi writes: This narrative requires explanation. To be sure, no one doubted what had been imparted by God himself: He had declared it pure. They knew with certainty that this was the sole truth. If so, how could they argue that it was impure until they had no recourse but to seek the decision of Rabbah bar Nahmani? This narrative should be interpreted in accordance with what we have written. Although they knew that “a doubtful spot is pure”, they declared it impure, since the determination of the law, having been granted them when they were alive, was within their jurisdiction. And since their reasoning impelled them to declare it impure, it was fitting that it be declared impure, even though this contradicted the truth, because this position is dictated by human cognition. Even if the other position constitutes the objective truth, it is unseemly to act in accordance with it. Similarly, the opponents of R. Eliezer did not declare the oven pure (bBaba Metzia 59b), despite the fact that a heavenly voice had been sent to them proclaiming the law to be in accordance with the view of R. Eliezer. And as in this case, they did not doubt the veracity of the heavenly voice, yet they nonetheless declared: the law is not from heaven. Derashot Haran #5, version 2

R. Nissim Gerondi alerts us to the connection between this Aggadic passage and the story we discussed above regarding the “oven of akhnai” controversy between R. Eliezer and the Sages (bBaba Metzia 59b). There, the controversy was decided against God, and in favor of the view of the Sages. Here too, ultimately, God’s view is rejected40 and that of his opponents affirmed, although in this case He is opposed by a heavenly assembly, rather than by the Sages. Digression: The interpretation of documents The story also serves to ground the claim that one who writes a document has no preferred status vis-à-vis its interpretation, and must defend his views along with all other opinions put forward. The Maharam Mintz41 was asked whether the interpretation of those who had issued a writ of mediation was privileged (Responsum #100). Distinguishing between a document and the intentions of its authors, he answered that their interpretation of the writ is not necessarily to be preferred. Were authors to have such a special status, this would certainly apply in the case of the Torah, yet we see from the story of Rabbah bar Nahmani that God Himself has no privileged status in interpreting the Torah, which he authored. We have cited this responsum because it constitutes a good example of how the nonlegal Aggadic material is used to draw conclusions regarding specific points of law. However, it should be also noted that not all the commentators accept the Maharam Mintz’s analogy between the Torah and human documents.



Controversy in Jewish law 

Let us look at another Aggadic passage describing a heavenly controversy. “And I will make thy spires of kadkhod” (Isa. 54:12) – R. Samuel b. Nahmani said: There is a controversy [over the meaning of kadkhod] between two angels in heaven, Gabriel and Michael. Others say, The dispute is between two Amoraim in the West [the land of Israel]. And who are they? Judah and Hezekiah, the sons of R. Hiya. One says it means onyx, and the other says, jasper. The Holy One, blessed be He, said unto them, Let it be as this one says, and as that one says. bBaba Batra 75a

The Gemara reads the prophecy as referring to the rebuilding of Jerusalem: Isaiah is describing the precious stones out of which its walls will be constructed. The controversy is over precisely what kind of stone it is that will be used. This passage is relevant to our discussion because it relates the story of a heavenly controversy, at least according to the first opinion quoted. But in addition, it is also relevant due to its presentation of the divine response to the controversy: God decides that the walls will be built of both types of stones (here kadkhod is interpreted, by a play on words, as meaning “this and that”). Note that the book of Isaiah pre-dates the Talmud, wherein the controversy is described, by many centuries. It is, then, highly significant that the outcome of the later controversy establishes the meaning of the much earlier biblical text. Resolution of the controversy here does not merely settle the question by making a choice between various possible interpretations, but actually generates the meaning. This prompts the question, what is the role played by controversy in the talmudic literature? On the one hand, controversy can be seen as an attempt to uncover the meaning of a given term, text or teaching; on the other, it can be construed as assigning meaning to these elements. Now literary theory distinguishes between two positions: the view that the text has a fixed meaning, to be uncovered by the reader; and the view that the text has no meaning prior to its interpretation. It is possible to detect echoes of these positions in the various passages we have considered thus far. For instance, recall the passage from the Jerusalem Talmud that recounts how Moses was given all the possible interpretations of the law – forty-nine aspects in favor and forty-nine against – at Sinai (jSanhedrin 4:2). Upon comparing it with the Aggadic passage we have just looked at, the contrast between these two positions vis-à-vis the assignment of meaning is quite pronounced. Let us consider one more passage that takes a stand on the meaning issue: R. Judah said in the name of Rav, When Moses ascended on high he found the Holy One, blessed be He, engaged in affixing coronets to the letters. Said Moses, Master of the universe, who is holding you back?42 He answered, There will arise a man, at the end of many generations, Akiva b. Joseph by name, who will expound upon each tittle heaps and heaps of laws.



Hanina Ben-Menahem

Master of the universe, said Moses; permit me to see him. He replied, Turn thee round. Moses went and sat down behind eight rows [of R. Akiva’s students and listened to the discourses on the law]. Not being able to follow their arguments, he was ill at ease; but when, upon coming to a certain subject, the students said to the master, Whence do you know it? and the latter replied, It is a law given unto Moses at Sinai, he regained his composure. Thereupon he returned to the Holy One, blessed be He, and said, Master of the universe, Thou hast such a man and Thou givest the Torah through me! He replied, Be silent, for that is what occurred to Me. Then said Moses, Master of the universe, Thou hast shown me his Torah, show me his reward. Turn thee round, said He, and Moses turned round and saw them weighing out his flesh at the market‑stalls.43 Master of the universe, cried Moses, such Torah, and such a reward! He replied, Be silent, for that is what occurred to Me. bMenahot 29b

Having distinguished between uncovering and assigning meaning, we can now distinguish between two conceptions of the relationship between the Torah and the Sages. On one conception, the Torah, with all its detailed ordinances, was given to Moses, leaving the nation the humble task of discovering and applying it, whereas on the other conception, the Torah is continually being completed by human creativity and ingenuity. Our final example of a celestial controversy comes from the post-talmudic literature. The fact that the post-talmudic literature uses the device of heavenly controversy, which is relatively rarely used in the Talmud itself, demonstrates that it is nonetheless viewed as a legitimate metaphor. I also asked about the order of the passages in phylactery scrolls. My question was thus: I pray to You, great, mighty and awesome King, discerner of secrets, expounder of the recondite, guardian of the covenant and of loving-kindness, may Your loving-kindness toward us abound this day, and command Your holy angels to advise me regarding an uncertainty that has bewildered us with respect to the order of the passages in phylacteries. For some scholars say that the existential verses44 must be in the middle, and that if this order is changed, the phylacteries are invalid. Other scholars say that the passages should be in the order of their appearance in the Torah, and that if this order is changed, the phylacteries are invalid. Now, King of Kings, command Your holy angels to advise me in accordance with which view the law is decided, and whose opinion You favor. And they replied: Both are the words of the living God, and as there is controversy below, so there is above. The Holy One, blessed be He, says that the existential passages should be in the middle, while the entire heavenly entourage says that they should be in the order of their appearance in the Torah. This is the meaning of the verse, “Through them that are nigh unto Me I will be sanctified, and



Controversy in Jewish law 

before all the people I will be glorified” (Lev. 10:3). This is His glory, to mention first the passage that attests to divine sovereignty. Responsa Min Hashamayim,#345

Without getting into the halakhic details pertaining to the issue described here, let us attend to the use of the expression “both are the words of the living God”. Though this expression is frequently used in the halakhic sources, here it has a special salience. Usually, the expression denotes, as we saw, the fact that equal merit is ascribed to both sides of a controversy. In bGitin 6b, the expression was intended almost literally, describing an episode where the views of both sides were uttered by God. Here, it is intended more literally still, describing a heavenly controversy in which one of the sides to the dispute is God Himself. 3 Sources evincing a negative attitude to controversy Before turning to sources evincing a negative attitude to controversy, let us consider an ambivalent source. R. Haim Joseph David Azoulay (Hida) was asked about the enactment of the Sages mandating recitation of Abbaye’s account of Abba Saul’s order of the Temple service (bYoma 33a) in the morning prayers. The question arises because the view of Abba Saul on the matter is not accepted as the law. His answer evinces a certain ambivalence as to the value of controversy: Thus I reply to you, my dearest friend, apple of my eye, to inform you that the main reason for the enactment of our predecessors mandating recitation of Abbaye’s recounting of the Temple service in the morning prayers, is to gain merit for the whole nation by reciting a passage from the Mishna and Gemara. They chose this passage, which deals with the Temple sacrifices. And it is known from what is stated in the discussion in bEruvin 13b that all are “the words of the living God”. Relying on the scholars of France, R. Yomtov of Seville writes in his novellae (Hidushei Haritba) that the two contrary opinions are true. And Moses our teacher, may he rest in peace, asked the Holy One, blessed be He, But in accordance with whom is the law decided? and He answered that the decision is entrusted to the scholars of the given generation. Therefore, since such halakhic opinions are true, their recitation is tantamount to studying the Talmud. Even if they entail something not accepted as law, it does not matter, because this opinion is also true, and “both are the words of the living God”. As an example, I mention the enactment to recite a chapter of the Mishna, the fifth chapter of Zevahim, in the morning prayer. R. Joseph Caro writes in the name of R. Aaron Halevi46 that this chapter was chosen because it contains no controversy (Beit Yosef, Tur, Orah Haim 50). And the pre-eminent scholar of the generation,



Hanina Ben-Menahem

R. Haim Alfandari, of blessed memory, in his glosses on Bnei Hayai,47 notes that indeed, the chapter does not contain any controversy, but some of the laws mentioned there are disputed elsewhere by Sages of the Mishna. R. Yomtov of Seville, of blessed memory, goes even further: “My teacher,48 may God protect and deliver him, said that the choice of this chapter rests on the fact that it contains no controversy, though not all of it is accepted as law. For example, it is said there that the Passover sacrifice may be eaten until midnight, but we have a tradition from our teacher Nahmanides that the law is according to R. Akiva, who opines that it may be eaten all night, since his view is supported by an anonymous Mishna.49 Nevertheless, since the whole chapter is presented without a dissenting view, it is more appropriate for recitation than any other”(Hidushei Haritba, Avoda Zara 18). So this chapter contains controversial material and not all of it is considered law. Similarly, I saw the commentary of R. Simon b. Zemah Duran,50 of blessed memory, who says that some Sages of the Mishna disagree with R. Ishmael regarding some of his rules. Nevertheless, since we have the tradition that all are the words of the living God, it is all true Torah, and a person discharges his duty to study Scripture, Mishna and Gemara by reciting it. Although in the opinion of R. Jacob b. Asher (Tur) and R. Yomtov of Seville and their followers, the baraita of R. Ishmael is recited in place of Gemara, in any event, it is likely that the passage with Abbaye’s account is for the same purpose, for which it is suitable even if not all of it represents the law, because his reasoning is also true, since “both are the words of the living God”, as explained. Responsa Yosef Ometz, #51

The question under consideration in this responsum is why a Tannaitic passage that does not reflect the law is included in the prayerbook. The question is particularly acute given that the prayerbook is the quintessential philosophical work in the Jewish tradition, and the passages chosen to be included in it are by no means arbitrary selections. The Hida’s answer to this question reveals a certain ambivalence about controversy. He begins by asserting that the principle “Both are the words of the living God” is best exemplified by choosing a passage that does not reflect the law. This remark implies that he views controversy and differences of opinion as a positive phenomenon. However, the Hida goes on to mention yet another Mishnaic passage that is part of the prayerbook, one which also contains paragraphs that do not reflect the law, and quoting the Ritba, asserts that it was chosen precisely because it does not record any controversy between the Sages, and thus, is most appropriate for recitation: “Nevertheless, since the whole chapter is presented without a dissenting view, it is more appropriate for recitation than any other”. We see, then, that the responsum reflects a complex position which cannot be characterized as either positive or negative. On the one hand, the Hida understands the value of embracing a range of views, but on the other, he recognizes



Controversy in Jewish law 

the potential social dangers inherent in endorsing controversy. This ambivalence is itself a reflection of talmudic ambivalence about controversy. I now turn to sources evincing a clearly negative attitude to controversy. 3.1

Tosefta Sanhedrin 7:1 Said R. Jose: Initially there was no controversy in Israel; but there was the court of seventy in the Hall of Hewn Stone, and the other courts of twenty three were in the towns of the land of Israel... if one needs a ruling, he turns to the court in his town; if there is no court in his town, he goes to a court near his town. If they [the court] had heard [a tradition], they told it to them [the litigants]; and if not, [the initiator of the action] and the most eminent member of the court go to the court on the Temple Mount. If they had heard, they told it to them; and if not, he and the most eminent of them go to the court on the Rampart. If they had heard, they told it to them; and if not, these and the others go to the court in the Hall of Hewn Stone.... If they had heard, they told it to them; and if not, they stand up for a vote; if the majority is for impurity, they declare it impure, if the majority is for purity, they declare it pure. From there the law originates and is disseminated in Israel. When there multiplied students of Shammai and Hillel who did not attend their teachers sufficiently, controversies multiplied in Israel, and the law became like two sets of laws [lit., two Torahs]. Tosefta Sanhedrin 7:151

3.1.1 The emergence of controversy The passage describes the judicial hierarchy and the process of recourse to the courts at the time of the Temple. It relates how an individual with a legal grievance could take his adversary to court for resolution of his complaint. The court resolved the dispute by seeking to apply a known tradition to the case before it. If there was no relevant tradition known to the court, the case was heard before a higher court. The culmination of the process was appearance before the court in the Hall of Hewn Stone, which, if no relevant tradition was at hand, decided on the basis of a majority vote. The passage contrasts an ideal situation with an existent situation, the ideal situation being that in which there is no controversy, and the existent situation that in which controversy is endemic. We are not concerned, here, with the question of the historical veracity of this portrayal, but will take it at face value. What brought about the transition from the ideal situation to the non-ideal situation? The passage suggests two different answers to this question, hinting that the passage may, in fact, be compiled from two separate texts.52 One answer is explicitly formulated at the very end of the passage: “When there multiplied students of Shammai and Hillel who did not attend their teachers sufficiently, controversies



Hanina Ben-Menahem

multiplied in Israel, and the law became like two sets of laws”. We will discuss this answer shortly; now we need only point out that it is also found as an independent baraita in bSota 47b. The second answer, which is only implied, attributes the emergence of controversy to the destruction of the Temple and the elimination of the high court in the Hall of Hewn Stone. On this explanation, the emergence of controversy is linked to the absence of a decisive high court capable of resolving all cases that came before it, thereby precluding controversy. On either explanation, however, the baraita from Tosefta Sanhedrin provides a historical account of the emergence of controversy. That is, it regards controversy as a historical contingency rather than as inherent in the nature of the Torah. This type of attempt to explain controversy as a contingency, a historical accident, implies a critical attitude. This contrasts markedly with the accounts of controversy we saw above, in which controversy is presented as so inherently a part of Torah that it even occurs on high. However, although the relationship between the two states, the ideal state and the later reality, is presented as straightforward, in another talmudic account of the same judicial process we can find evidence that some sort of controversy was not entirely unheard-of even in the ideal state. Although its description of the early phases of the judicial process is indeed identical to that of the baraita found in Tosefta Sanhedrin, when the stage is reached where the case is heard before the court on the Rampart, there is a marked discrepancy: And he [who differed from his colleagues] declared: Thus have I expounded, and thus have my colleagues expounded; Thus have I taught, and thus have they taught. bSanhedrin 88b

Whether or not this passage leaves open the possibility that this phenomenon also existed at the earlier stages in the judicial process, these lines clearly depict a situation where contending analyses of a legal situation are being put forward. 3.1.2 Moral degeneration Let us now take a closer look at the first explanation offered for the emergence of controversy, which, as we said, also appears elsewhere, as an independent baraita, prefaced by another remark: When the haughty of heart multiplied, controversy multiplied in Israel.53 When there multiplied students of Shammai and Hillel who did not attend their teachers sufficiently, controversies multiplied in Israel, and the law became like two sets of laws. bSota 47b



Controversy in Jewish law

The context in which this passage appears is a list of different types of decline in moral character. It is clear here that controversy is perceived as an evil. What is not clear, however, is whether the emergence of controversy is being presented as a punishment for moral decline. Much depends on how we interpret the behavior of the students of Shammai and Hillel, who “did not attend their teachers sufficiently”. In this context, “attending” denotes activity necessary for the study of the law, a theme that recurs frequently in the Rabbinic literature. What is it, exactly, that the students are being charged with? On one interpretation, the students were unable to attend their teachers because of political upheaval that interfered with the development of close bonds with their masters, their teachers. That is, on this interpretation, controversy is perceived as an outcome of a historical contingency rather than as a punishment for wrongdoing. On another reading, however, one that appears to be more in line with the context of the baraita, which lists various manifestations of social decline, controversy is seen as inflicted upon the nation as a result of the students’ moral deterioration. 3.1.3 Adverse effects of controversy Having considered the factors put forward here as causes of controversy, let us now say a few words about the alleged result of its proliferation – “the law became like two sets of laws” [literally, like two Torahs]. Now what is the concern here? We can distinguish between two possible problems the baraita may be alluding to: sectarianism and doctrinal disagreement. The following passage from the Mishna describes types of halakhic controversies that are potentially divisive: The house of Shammai permit the rival-wives to the brothers, but the house of Hillel prohibit it. If they [the widows] had undergone the ceremony of halitza – the house of Shammai declare them ineligible for [marriage to] the priesthood, but the house of Hillel declare them eligible; if they had been taken in levirate marriage, the house of Shammai declare them eligible, but the house of Hillel declare them ineligible. mJebamot 1:4

Although concerned about the potentially segregative effects of controversy, the Mishna reports that the feared outcome did not materialize: Nevertheless, though one house prohibit what the other house allow, and one house declare unfit what the other house declare fit, yet the house of Shammai did not refrain from marrying women of the house of Hillel, nor the house of Hillel from marrying women of the house of Shammai. In spite of all the disputes regarding purity and impurity, in which one side declare pure what the other side





Hanina Ben-Menahem

declare impure, they did not refrain from making use of whatever pertained to the other in matters connected with purity. ibid.

To be sure, this idealized account is not corroborated by other traditions regarding the controversy between the two schools, which indeed confirm that the fears were not exaggerated. For example, It was taught in the name of R. Joshua Onia, The students of the house of Shammai stood below and killed the students of the house of Hillel. It was taught, Six of them went up and the rest blocked their way with swords and spears. jShabat 1:4 (3c)54

This tradition can explain the great sensitivity of the Sages to the potentially dangerous social implications of controversy. Digression: The rebellious elder The concern over the proliferation of controversy is reflected in the punishment of the rebellious elder,55 which is mandatory and cannot be abrogated. Come and hear. R. Josiah said: Three things did Zeira, an inhabitant of Jerusalem, tell me: If the husband renounced his warnings [to his wife whom he suspected of adulterous conduct], they are null; if the father and mother wished to pardon a stubborn and rebellious son, they may do so; and the court may pardon a rebellious elder, if it so desires. But when I went to my colleagues of the south, they agreed to the first two, but not to the rebellious elder, so that controversy would not increase in Israel. This is an irrefutable answer. bSanhedrin 88a-b

Above, we noted that concern about controversy and its possible repercussions was, to some extent, also motivated by theological considerations. A salient example is found in the Ritba’s commentary on a key talmudic passage dealing with controversy, bJebamot 13b-14a, discussed below. Since you are the children of one Father and one God, it is proper that you not form factions, as if there were two Torahs and two deities.

In any event, whether motivated by apprehension about adverse social or theological outcomes, the fear that the law will become two distinct bodies of law is discernible as a thread running through the talmudic corpus alongside the voices in favor of tolerating, or even encouraging, controversy. The alleged deleterious consequences of controversy are seen as an argument for minimizing the degree to which controversy can have more than purely theoretical significance, that is, the degree to which it can be acted upon.



Controversy in Jewish law 

Averting controversy remained a priority in the post-talmudic era. This is evident from discussion of the talmudic passage about an enactment concerning the precise procedure for blowing the shofar on Rosh Hashana. R. Abbahu ordained in Caesarea that there should be a long blast (tekia), three short blasts (shevarim) [groans], one wailing blast (terua) and another long blast (tekia). How can this be justified? If the sound [required by the Bible] is a kind of wailing, then there should be tekia, terua and tekia, and if it is a kind of groaning, should there not be tekia, three shevarim, and tekia? He was in doubt whether it was a kind of groaning or a kind of wailing. bRosh Hashana 34a

In addition to the undisputed requirement of blowing the tekia, R. Abbahu required that two additional kinds of blowing sounds be issued. Concerning this passage, R. Hai Gaon56 was asked how it could be that there was no clear tradition regarding the blowing of the shofar, which takes place every year. Our master [R. Hai Gaon] of blessed memory, was asked: Should we assume that before the time of R. Abbahu, the [obligation to fulfil the] precept of blowing the shofar was not discharged? Apparently, the sound of the terua was subject to doubt among them, as it is said, “this is surely a matter of controversy” (bRosh Hashana 33b), but there is no doubt that the issue must have been decided: Is it conceivable that they did not know the true procedure for a duty that had to be performed every year? Had they not seen how it was performed, each generation showing the next, one hearing the tradition from another, continuously, back to Moses our teacher, of blessed memory? And our master, of blessed memory, answered that the terua as prescribed by the Torah is certainly discharged with either a wailing or a groaning blast, because the Torah intended that the terua be composed of sounds and broken blasts. And in earlier times it was performed either as broken blasts or as wailing; it was a matter of individual preference, and the duty was in any event discharged. This was known to the learned, but ordinary people mistakenly thought that there was a difference between them, and therefore that one or another group was not discharging its obligation with respect to the precept. So to dispel this view held by the ignorant, and in order to prevent the Torah from becoming like two sets of laws [lit., two Torahs], R. Abbahu ordered that both customs be followed, and added one more terua blast at his own initiative, because he resolved to establish the terua in every possible customary broken sound. Since simple folks thought that there was controversy among them over this, the Talmud presents this in the style of a debate, that is, with objections raised and a resolution offered. Ritba ad loc., quoting a responsum of R. Hai Gaon



Hanina Ben-Menahem

3.2

Sifre Deuteronomy 9:6 – the injunction against factionalism

The normative formulation of the critical stance on controversy is the “do not form factions” injunction, the earliest source for which in the Rabbinic literature is Sifre Deuteronomy 96. “Ye shall not cut yourselves” (lo titgodedu) (Deut. 14:1). Do not form factions, but be united, as it is written, “It is He that buildeth His upper chambers in the heaven, and hath founded His vault57 on earth” (Amos 9:6). Sifre Deuteronomy 9:6

This somewhat indefinite general injunction, which at first sight might seem directed against the formation of sects outside the halakhic framework altogether, is ultimately endowed with a well-defined halakhic meaning in a celebrated controversy between Abbaye and Rava: Said Abbaye: The admonition against forming factions is only applicable to a case such as that of two courts of law in the same town, one of which rules in accordance with the views of the house of Shammai while the other rules in accordance with the views of the house of Hillel. However, in a case of two courts of law in two different towns, it is irrelevant. Said Rava to him, surely the case of the house of Shammai and the house of Hillel is like that of two courts of law in the same town? Whereas, said Rava, the admonition against forming factions is only applicable to a case such as that of a court of law in a given town, part of which rules in accordance with the views of the house of Shammai while the other part rules in accordance with the views of the house of Hillel. However, in a case of two courts of law in the same town, it is irrelevant. bJebamot 14a

This talmudic injunction is the subject of a tremendous amount of discussion and explication in the post-talmudic literature. The development of this discussion is far too sweeping to be addressed here, and merits separate examination. However, we will mention two central questions, on which much of the debate has focused. Does this injunction address the halakhic authority, or the individual? And with respect to the injunction, is there any difference between conduct grounded in custom (minhag) and conduct grounded in law? 3.3

mEduyot 1:6

Above, in exploring the positive attitude to controversy, we saw that mEduyot 1:5, manifesting a favorable attitude, presents the recording of minority views as a means of introducing some flexibility into the decision-making process, by empowering the judge to rely on a rejected minority view.



Controversy in Jewish law 

The contrary view, however, is also to be found there, immediately following that paragraph: R. Judah said: If so, why do they record the opinion of the individual against that of the majority to no effect? So that if one should say, ‘I have received such a tradition’, another may say, ‘You have heard it only as the opinion of so-and-so’. mEduyot 1:6

The position of R. Judah here58 is that the recording of minority views is motivated by the desire to strip them of any normative validity. This view is more pronounced in a variant reading of this Mishna, which, instead of construing the phrase “to no effect” as part of the question, sees it as part of the answer, reading it as, “To invalidate them!” 3.4

mEduyot 8:7 – the eradication of controversy

We will conclude by looking at the final passage in mEduyot. R. Joshua said: I have received a tradition from Rabban Johanan b. Zakai, who heard it from his teacher, and his teacher from his teacher, as a law given to Moses at Sinai, that Elijah will not come to pronounce impure or to pronounce pure, to send away or to bring near, but to send away those brought near by force and to bring near those sent away by force. The family of Bet Zerephah was on the other side of the Jordan, and Ben Zion sent it away by force; and yet another family was there, and Ben Zion brought it near by force. Elijah will come to pronounce such cases impure or to pronounce pure, to send away or to bring near. R. Judah says: to bring near, but not to send away. R. Simon says: to reconcile controversy. And the Sages say, neither to send away nor to bring near, but to make peace in the world, for it is said, “Behold I send to you Elijah the prophet... and he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children and the heart of the children to their fathers” (Mal. 3:23–24). mEduyot 8:7

Here we see Elijah the Prophet in a role different from that which he played in the passages above. In those passages, he served as an intermediary between the heavenly and the mortal spheres, whereas here he represents the end of days, the ideal future that mankind hopes to merit. This Mishna describes several views on the ways in which the world will be perfected, one of them being the elimination of controversy.59 Here, we must keep in mind the distinction discussed above between two senses of “controversy” – debate and social strife. However, it appears that in saying, “to reconcile controversy”, R. Simon is referring to controversy as debate.



Hanina Ben-Menahem

4 Conclusion Our examination of sources evincing a negative attitude to controversy opened with Tosefta Sanhedrin, which describes the idyllic past when there was no controversy, and ends with the messianic period to come, when there will once more be no controversy. The assumption underlying this utopian vision is that controversy is an unfortunate phenomenon. Human society, however, is not situated in these contention-free circumstances, but in historical eras that, as we have seen throughout this paper, have been replete with controversy and differences of opinion. Mankind, with its limitations and failings, has become involved in controversy in the course of a sincere search for truth. The pragmatic wisdom of the Sages was, therefore, to accept the reality of controversy and not attempt to muzzle or deny it. Indeed, they had the perspicacity to view it as a positive, enriching, inspiring and engaging process that allowed all segments of the learned community to express themselves, as we have seen. The only constraint limiting debate pertained, not to the content of the views expressed, but to the modes of expression used. Civility, respect and a positive attitude to one’s interlocutors, both past and present, were mandated as safeguards that enabled dissenting views to remain within the collective discourse. Tolerance of controversy indeed attests to strength and self-confidence, and it is hoped that this tolerance will continue to characterize the Jewish scholarly community, in the future, as it has in the past, and to make itself felt even beyond. Glossary Aggada

Non-legal portions of the Rabbinic literature, including historical narratives, anecdotes, legends, homiletics, theology, ethics, folklore, cosmological and scientific speculation, and conjecture about the future.

Amoraim (sing. Amora)

Sages of the post-Mishnaic period, from about 220 CE to the close of the fifth century. The Amoraim, both in the land of Israel and in Babylonia, engaged in the study and interpretation of the Mishna, and the generalization of Tannaitic rulings into abstract principles. Their teachings were in turn collected and compiled into the Gemara.



Controversy in Jewish law 

baraita

A Tannaitic law or teaching not included in the Mishna. Some are scattered throughout the Talmud; others are found in several extant collections, including the Tosefta.

Gemara

Amoraic commentary on the Mishna. The Mishna and Gemara taken together constitute the Talmud. The Gemara is much longer than the text on which it comments.

halakha

The term halakha is used to denote both law in the abstract, and specific laws.

house of Hillel/house of Shammai

Schools of halakhic thinking in the land of Israel during the late Second Temple period, the one led by Hillel the Elder, president of the Sanhedrin, the other by his friend and colleague Shammai. The Tannaitic literature records numerous controversies between the schools over the interpretation and application of the law on a wide range of subjects.

Midrash

The term has two meanings. It sometimes refers to a specific interpretive technique, whereby additional meanings are attributed to biblical passages. It more commonly refers to a genre of Rabbinic literature characterized by biblical exegesis and homiletics.

Mishna

A structured compilation, by R. Judah the Prince, of the oral law as expounded by the Tannaim. It is divided into six Orders, which are subdivided topically into tractates. The tractates are divided into chapters, and the chapters into paragraphs (mishnayot).60

novellae (pl.)

Novel interpretations of legal issues in the Talmud.

Rabbinic

Pertaining to the Tannaitic and Amoraic periods.

responsa (sing. responsum) Replies to queries on legal matters, most often sent to recognized halakhic authorities by judges adjudicating difficult or novel cases. Copies of responsa were saved for future reference, and frequently, collections of responsa were compiled and circulated.



Hanina Ben-Menahem

Sanhedrin

The Jerusalem court that served as the Jews’ chief judicial, legislative and religious body in the land of Israel during the Roman period. Made up of 71 scholars, it convened daily in the Temple’s Hall of Hewn Stone. Also the name of the fourth tractate in the Mishna’s Order Nezikin.

Sages

The term “the Sages” is used to refer to the scholars of the Rabbinic period, that is, to the Tannaim and Amoraim.

Talmud

The Mishna and its Amoraic elaboration, the Gemara, together constitute the Talmud. Due to the fact that academies for the study of the Mishna existed both in the land of Israel and in Babylonia, there are two different compilations of such Amoraic commentary, and hence two Talmuds: the Jerusalem and the Babylonian. The Talmud contains much Aggadic material, but is chiefly concerned with legal questions.61

Tannaim (sing. Tanna)

The Sages of the Mishnaic period (20 CE-220 CE), who studied the law in academies, and taught it to the people; this activity took place mainly in the land of Israel. Their legal teachings and biblical exegeses were gathered and compiled into the Mishna, the Tosefta, and other works.

thirteen exegetical principles

The thirteen interpretive principles of R. Ishmael, among them, a fortiori inference (kal vahomer) and inference from identical terms (gzeira shava), employed either to explicate a biblical passage or to apply a law beyond a given context.

Torah

The term is used in several senses: (1) the Pentateuch; (2) the Bible, that is, the Pentateuch, Prophets, and Hagiographa; (3) the divine law transmitted to Moses at Sinai, consisting of the written law, that is, the Bible, and the oral law, that is, the Talmud; and (4) the entire corpus of Jewish law, that is, the entire halakha.



Controversy in Jewish law 

Tosefta

A collection of Tannaitic baraitot, mainly laws, arranged in the order of the Mishna.

tractate

The individual volumes that make up the six Orders of the Mishna. The Gemara is arranged according to the tractates of the Mishna. Some tractates of the Mishna lack Gemara in either the Jerusalem or the Babylonian Talmud, or in both.

Notes 1. See H. Ben-Menahem, N.S. Hecht, and S. Wosner, (eds). Controversy and Dialogue in the Jewish Tradition: A Reader, with an interpretive essay by H. Ben-Menahem. London: Routledge, 2005. 2. See, e.g., Sifre Deuteronomy, Haazinu (Finkelstein edition, p. 370): “And Scripture states, “All of them valiant, wagers of war” (II Kings 24:16). Now what valor can people who are going into exile display? And what war can people wage when they are fettered in shackles and bound by chains? Rather, “valiant” refers to those who are valiant in Torah study. This is like the thrust of the verse, “Bless the Lord, O you His angels, valiant and mighty, who do His word ... ” (Ps. 103: 20); “wagers of war” – who engaged in dialogue and debate [lit., give and take] in the war of the Torah, as it is said, “Wherefore it is said in the book of the Wars of the Lord” (Num. 21:14).” 3. The story of R. Johanan b. Hahoranit quoted here by the Talmud appears in mSuka 2:7 (bSuka 28a); it is also found in bBerakhot 11a. The version that appears in these two passages includes the words “and they said nothing to him” within the house of Hillel’s report on the visit. On this account, the controversy between the house of Shammai and the house of Hillel is not simply about assessing the permissibility of R. Johanan b. Hahoranit’s behavior, but also about the actual facts of the incident – what was said at the time. Textual analysis favors the version in bEruvin 13b, which is supported by the text of the Mishna as it appears in the Jerusalem Talmud. 4. Hence, it is an early source. 5. The discussion focuses on a dispute over a question of purity and impurity. The precise issue had to do with a specific kind of oven, hence, the passage is known as the “oven of akhnai”; see mKelim 5:10 and mEduyot 7:7. R. Eliezer’s view regarding the purity of the oven is disputed by the Sages. 6. Palestine, 1488–1575. 7.

Halikhot Olam, gate 5, p. 101.

8. R. Solomon b. Isaac, Troyes, France, 1040–1105. 9. In variant texts, a different name is given. 10. The teaching of R. Ishmael here is far from clear. While the biblical verse speaks of a hammer that breaks up rock, the exegete focuses on a different aspect of the blow – the sparks it generates.

 Hanina Ben-Menahem 11. On the adage, “The Torah has seventy facets”, see Hananel Mack, “‘The Torah has Seventy Facets’ – the history of this expression” (Heb.), Jubilee Volume for R. Breuer, Jerusalem: 1992, pp. 449–462. 12. R. Menahem b. Solomon Hameiri, Provence, 1249–1316. 13. R. Yomtov of Seville (Ritba), Spain, c. 1250–1330. 14. The reference is to R. Jehiel of Paris, died c. 1265. 15. The Hebrew word for “play the harlot” (tizne) is derived from the word for food (mazon). 16. This discussion alludes to a controversy found in mGitin 9:10. 17. Some of the commentators maintain that R. Eviatar is nonetheless correct in maintaining that her culinary sloth was causally related to the master’s wrath, arguing that his anger was cumulative, being initially precipitated by the fly, then compounded by the hair. 18. Prague, 14–15th c. 19. R. Judah Loew b. Bezalel (Maharal) of Prague, c. 1525–1609. 20. R. Moses b. Nahman (Nahmanides), Spain-Palestine, 1194–1270. 21. As members of the scholarly community cannot be indifferent to the controversy, but must take a position, and, given the either-or nature of the controversy, no alternative position is possible, the community is in essence split into two legitimate camps. Hence, every individual can choose for himself which of the two he sides with. In that it divides the scholarly community so completely, the house of Shammai / house of Hillel controversy is a unique phenomenon in the history of Jewish law. 22. The reference here to 5:19 rather than 5:17 is due to the fact that there are a few different arrangements of the verses and chapters of mAvot. 23. By adding the numerical values of the letters (6 + 4 + 3 + 30 + 6). 24. “Assemblies” and “gather” share the same lexical root, as”f. 25. This attitude may be related to the Jerusalem Talmud’s overall policy of minimizing pluralism and presenting a unified front, see H. Ben-Menahem, Judicial Deviation in Talmudic Law, Chur, Switzerland, 1991, ch. 4. 26. R. Nissim b. Reuven Gerondi, Spain, 1310-c.1375. 27. bMegila 19b. 28. bBaba Metzia 59b. 29. R. Menahem Mendel Haim Landau, 1862–1935. 30. Code, Laws concerning Rebels 2:1. 31. 1813–1889. 32. Turkey, c. 1610-c. 1683. 33. By R. Samuel b. Moses Kalai, Turkey, 16th c. 34. R. Hananel b. Hushiel of Kairouan (North Africa), died c. 1056. 35. R. Isaiah Horowitz, Poland-Palestine, c. 1565–1630. 36. R. Haim Joseph David Azoulay, Palestine-Italy, 1724–1806. 37. On bKetubot 57a s.v. ha ka mashma lan. 38. Petah Einayim on bBaba Metzia 59b s.v. im halakha kamoti.



Controversy in Jewish law 

39. The reference is to the laws of leprosy, see Leviticus 13:10. 40. Maimonides, Code, Laws concerning the Uncleanness of Leprosy 2:9. 41. R. Moses Mintz, Germany, c. 1415-c. 1480. 42. According to Rashi, this is a description of Moses’ perplexity upon observing God affixing coronets to the letters of the completed Torah, that is, adding the small strokes (tagin) that serve as flourishes on certain letters. He questioned why the flourishes were needed, when all of mankind awaited the Torah. 43. R. Akiva died a martyr’s death at the hands of the Romans during the Hadrianic persecution; see bBerakhot 61b. 44. That is, Exodus 13:11 and Deuteronomy 11:13, the verses traditionally known as existential (havaiot), from the words “and it shall be” (vehaya) with which they open. 45. By R. Jacob of Marvege, France, late 12th-13th century. 46. R. Aaron b. Joseph Halevi, Spain, c. 1235–1300. 47. Bnei Hayai by R. Haim b. Menahem Algazi, Turkey, c. 1640-c. 1710. 48. R. Aaron Halevi. 49. Namely, mMegila ch. 2. 50. On Zevahim 5 (Maamar Hametz) and on the baraita of R. Ishmael. 51. There are a number of variants of this passage: Tosefta Hagiga 2:9, jSanhedrin 1:4 (19c), bSanhedrin 88b. 52. See David Z. Hoffmann, The First Mishna and the Controversies of the Tannaim, [Berlin, 1882] New York, 1977. 53. This additional sentence also appears in bHulin 7a, prefaced by “detenan” (for we have learned) which usually signifies that the quotation is of Mishnaic origin. However, it is not in the Mishna. 54. A parallel passage is found at the end of Megilat Taanit: “On the ninth of Adar, they decreed a fast, to mark the controversy between the house of Shammai and the house of Hillel, wherein three thousand of their students were killed”. And see bShabat 17a. 55. “Rebellious elder” denotes a judge who seeks a ruling from the high court in Jerusalem, and upon receiving it, rules otherwise in his own court; he is subject to capital punishment. 56. R. Hai b. David Gaon, head of the Pumbedita academy in Babylonia from 890 to 898. 57. The term for vault, “agudato”, is in the singular. 58. The Tosefta records the same dispute, except that the positions expressed are reversed (Tosefta Eduyot 1:4, Zuckermandel edition), with R. Judah upholding rather than disparaging controversy. 59. This Mishna is the basis for the popular understanding of the Aramaic word “teiku”, used to denote unresolved disputes in the Talmud, and derived from the word “kum”, to stand. On this popular conception, teiku is an acronym for tishbi [Elijah] yetaretz kushiyot ubeayot (Elijah will resolve difficulties and problems). 60. Our references to the Mishna, e.g., mEduyot 1:5, contain four elements: the initial “m”, which indicates that the reference is to the Mishna, followed by the tractate name, the chapter number, and the paragraph number. The Order is not given.



Hanina Ben-Menahem 61. Our references to the Talmud contain three elements: the initial letter indicates which Talmud, the Jerusalem or the Babylonian, is referred to, followed by a tractate name, and then for references to the Jerusalem Talmud, a chapter and paragraph number, e.g., jSanhedrin 4:2 (Venice edition 22a), and for references to the Babylonian Talmud, a page number, e.g., bHagiga 3b.

chapter 3

Debates and rhetoric in Sumer Simonetta Ponchia

1

Introduction

Among the literary texts inscribed on clay tablets recovered during a century and a half of archaeological research in Mesopotamia, a small but extremely significant group attests to the existence of a tradition of debate. They have been recognized as the most ancient examples of the genre of controversy and placed at the origin of rhetoric and dialectics, long before the development of the instruments of Greek philosophy (Alster and Vanstiphout 1987; Alster 1990; Bottéro 1991). The earliest texts, written in Sumerian, date to the beginning of the second millennium BC, but are probably copies of originals composed some centuries before; they represent the models for the subsequent tradition, which continues in the Assyro-Babylonian language and whose latest exemplars were preserved in Ashurbanipal’s library in Nineveh (7th cen. B.C.). Afterwards, specific literary parallels attest to the spreading of the genre as a whole and of individual motifs beyond the geographical and chronological limits of Mesopotamian history (for a general presentation of later parallels see Reinink and Vanstiphout 1991). To examine exhaustively this tradition and its implications we should consider various aspects and interrelations within and beyond the context of Mesopotamian literature and culture. We will, however, limit ourselves to presenting some general features of the corpus (partly summarized in the synoptic descriptive scheme in Table 1), and concentrating on the main questions related to the earliest phase of the flourishing of the genre. In Sumerian, debate poems are referred to as adamin (a-da = contest, debate; mìn = 2), a term used however for a larger group of texts with varying features, and therefore probably not to be considered a genre label in the technical sense, but rather an indication of the type of action described in the texts (Alster 1990: 2–5; Vanstiphout 1990).1 The content of the debates is a verbal challenge between two contenders, who boast their qualities and prerogatives, denigrate and vilify the



Simonetta Ponchia

prerogatives of the adversary, and try to gain victory by means of excellence in eloquence. The contenders belong to the same general category of objects or beings, in which they occupy opposing and complementary positions, such as hoe and plough in the sphere of agricultural tools, winter and summer in the cycle of the seasons, fish and bird among marsh-dwelling animals,2 sheep and grain among basic foodstuffs, and so on. They are not simply individual items, but archetypes, as often narrated in a prologue presenting their first apparition on earth and in their proper context, like the first Sheep, named dLa ar, and the first Grain, dAšnan/ Ezina (both written with the determinative for divine names). Archetypes such as these were created by the gods when mankind did not know bread or clothing, and lived by eating grass like sheep (referred to in this occurrence by the common name udu, so telescoping two different eras into the same passage). The debate may be harsh, but at the same time it highlights the complementarity of the contenders and the assumption that both are useful and necessary; at the end a winner is proclaimed, usually on the basis of a prerogative, chosen as discrimen among others, that refers to the cultural or social horizon. In the conclusion of the disputation of Hoe vs. Plough versatility is chosen: “(Hoe), like a handmaiden, always ready, you fulfill your allotted task” (l. 193);3 in Sheep vs. Grain, pre-eminence in the diet: “From sunrise till sunset, may the name of Grain be praised. People should submit to the yoke of Grain. Whoever has silver, whoever has jewels, whoever has cattle, whoever has sheep shall take a seat at the gate of whoever has grain, and pass his time there.” (ll. 187–191). The verdict, usually pronounced by a divine or royal judge, may at the same time point out the fundamentally equal utility and importance of both contenders, and the confrontation may conclude in harmony: “At its side they spend the day at a succulent banquet. Summer presents Winter with gold, silver and lapis lazuli. They pour out brotherhood and friendship like best oil. By bringing sweet words to the quarrel [?] they have achieved harmony with each other” (Summer vs. Winter, ll. 312–315); “Sheep and Grain should be sisters! They should stand together!” (Sheep vs. Grain, ll. 181–182). This is a clear statement that the challenge arises because both contenders are worthy of winning, as they are both essential to the development of civilization, and it clearly connects the conclusion with the prologue.4 The outline of the confrontation is not without variants, and may centre, as in the texts quoted above, on a matter of precedence, which appears clearly to be an artifice, an occasion for exercising rhetorical skill, but may include verbal insults,5 as well as physical violence, as at the beginning of Tree vs. Reed, when the two contenders fight “like bulls”, or in the case of Bird vs. Fish, in which the debate turns at a certain point into narrative, telling how the fish devastated the bird’s nest.6



Debates and rhetoric in Sumer 

2 The rhetorical tools Although no rhetorical classification is extant from Sumerian times, the technique of discourse employed in the disputations appears to be a well developed one and can be conveniently investigated by resorting to the current definitions and schemes derived from classical theorizations.7 The risk of proposing an anachronistic description, albeit limited to basic definitions, is worth running, on condition that we consider a larger set of texts providing evidence for the importance and role that the Sumerians attributed to the technique of discourse, especially in the political and juridical, and educational sectors. Broadly speaking the dialogic technique used in Sumerian debates may be described as being based on the use of topoi (utility, beauty, extension, simplicity, etc.). The ability of the contenders consists in presenting and classifying features and prerogatives in relation to specific categories that are well known and shared by the hearers, and in successfully using them against those chosen by the adversary. The particular relation of the contenders to a specific topos may even be overtly declared, and the argumentative strategy they consequently choose may be explicitly referred to: Thus Fish insulted Bird on that day. But Bird, with multicoloured plumage and multicoloured face, was convinced of its own beauty (sag9-ga-ni-šè), and did not take to heart the insults Fish had cast at it (...) (ll. 51–53). Thus Bird insulted Fish on that occasion. Fish became angry, and, trusting in its heroic strength and solidness, swept across the bottom like a heavy rain cloud. It took up the quarrel. It did not take to heart the insults that Bird had cast at it. It could not bring itself to submit, but spoke unrestrainedly (ll. 80–84). Fish: “Bird, you have not examined the question of my greatness (nam-ma -ĝu10); you have not taken due account of my nature. You could not understand my weakness (sig9-ga) and my strength (kalag-ga-ga2); yet you spoke inflammatory words. Once you have really looked into my achievements, you will be greatly humbled. Your speech contains grave errors; you have not given it due consideration” (ll. 91–94).

To demonstrate their superiority, the contenders must be clever in suggesting gradations of values, but mostly in reversing positive into negative, and vice versa, often taking up the argument(s) of the adversary and discarding them in favour of a different perspective. Hoe, described as “the child of the poor”, challenges Plough by demonstrating that its haughtiness is misplaced and its prestige false, because its high degree of specialization limits its occasions for useful employment; a fact which is equated, tout court, to inferior utility (Vanstiphout 1992: 344–347): Plough, you draw furrows – what does your furrowing matter to me? You break clods – what does your clod-breaking matter to me? When water overflows you



Simonetta Ponchia

cannot dam it up. You cannot fill baskets with earth. You cannot press [?] clay to make bricks. You cannot lay foundations or build a house. You cannot strengthen an old wall's base. You cannot put a roof on a good man's house. Plough, you cannot straighten the town squares. Plough, you draw furrows – what does your furrowing matter to me? You make clods – what does your clod-making matter to me? (Hoe vs. Plough, ll. 7–19).

The central issue in this debate is actually how the small triumphs over the big, the poor over the prestigious, on the basis of sounder, albeit less vaunted, merits, i.e. of a more substantial correspondence to the topos of utility. The confrontation is cleverly moved from the initial challenge, which vilifies the main ability of the Plough, to a more general level, in which all values appear relative, especially prestige. Hoe chooses a new perspective and in a few words discards this topos, on which Plough had dwelt for several lines: Plough, what does my being small (tur-ra-ĝu10) matter to me, what does my being exalted (buluĝ3-ĝa2-ĝu10 ) matter to me, what does my being powerful (peš10-ĝal2la-ĝu10) matter to me? (l. 64).

Hoe, however, answers explicitly and specifically on two points which in the evaluation of prerogatives and behaviour do not allow discussion: the relationship with the divine world, and the question of the sustenance of people, particularly of the weak: Plough: “I am the Plough, fashioned by great strength, assembled by great hands, the mighty registrar of father Enlil. I am mankind’s faithful farmer (...)” (ll. 21–22). Hoe: “(...) at Enlil’s place I take precedence over you, in Enlil’s temple I stand ahead of you” (ll. 65–66). Plough: “My threshing-floors punctuating the plain are yellow hillocks radiating beauty. I pile up stacks and mounds for Enlil. I amass emmer and wheat for him. I fill the storehouses of mankind with barley. The orphans, the widows and the destitute take their reed baskets and glean my scattered ears. People come to drag away my straw, piled up in the fields. The teeming herds of Shakkan thrive (...)” (ll. 41–51). Hoe: “I build embankments, I dig ditches. I fill all the meadows with water. When I make water pour into all the reed-beds, my small baskets carry it away. When a canal is cut, or when a ditch is cut, when water rushes out at the swelling of a mighty river, creating lagoons on all sides [?], I, the Hoe, dam it in. Neither south nor north wind can separate it. The fowler gathers eggs. The fisherman catches fish. People empty bird-traps. Thus the abundance I create spreads over all the lands. After the water has been diverted from the meadows and the work on the wet areas is taken in hand, Plough, I come down to the fields before you (...)” (ll. 67–82).

In the last passages rhetorical ability combines with literary taste in the art of evoking images through which values are summoned up. The undeniable evidence produced by Plough, according to the basic topos of general utility (brought about in



Debates and rhetoric in Sumer 

its case by abundance), is counterbalanced by showing how extended and diversified are the benefits produced by Hoe, reaching the gods and all human categories. But Hoe’s main argument consists in combining the topos of utility with that of priority: preparation of the terrain and irrigation precede ploughing, therefore, in practical terms, the Plough depends on the work of the Hoe, and in rhetorical terms Hoe has the right of precedence. This move appears a tested and decisive one if we compare Winter vs. Summer, where Winter wins because it secures plenty of water and irrigation, i.e., the necessary conditions for abundance. Having counter-attacked on the main points, Hoe does not allow its adversary the opportunity of a reply, but accumulates other arguments, which variously revolve around the basic themes of utility, simplicity, versatility, vs. prestige, complexity, high specialization. The refined ability of the speaker consists in presenting a new argument and in simultaneously recalling, through a subtle and sophisticated play on the vocabulary,8 the main scheme of demonstration which opposes smallness to greatness: Your work is slight (tur) but your behaviour is grand (ma ). My time of duty is twelve months, but your effective time is four months and your time of absence is eight months – you are gone for twice as long as you are present (ll. 104–108).

Managing to beat the adversary on its own terrain, i.e., prestige, I am the Hoe and I live in the city. No one is more honoured than I am (dugudda-me-en, “to be heavy, noble”). I am a servant following his master. I am one who builds a house for his master. I am one who broadens the cattle-stalls, who expands the sheepfolds (ll. 117–121).

Hoe demonstrates its usefulness in various technological sectors (building of houses, temples, palaces, city-walls, construction of boats, horticulture, etc.), and proceeds to place the ultimate utility in a cosmic frame, by evoking the image of the Flood, which represents in Mesopotamian thought a fundamental step in the history of mankind: (...) after, as houses were overwhelmed by the rivers and Enlil frowned in anger upon the land, Enlil had flooded the harvest, after Enlil had acted mightily thus, Enlil did not abandon us – the single-toothed Hoe was struck against the dry earth (ll. 168–173).

This kind of argument was probably part of a repertoire, as suggested by the reference to cosmic events not only in various prologues, but also in the course of the debate, as in the unfortunately partly fragmentary dialogue of Silver vs. Copper: Copper: “... the heavens were separated from the earth, there was no drinking water... In order that the people should eat food..., my father Enlil created me in a



Simonetta Ponchia

single day, and then the Tigris charged like a great wild bull. At that time, your feet did not move, and you did not walk around” (Segment D, 1–5).

The unrestrainable rhetoric of Hoe is finally stopped by the god Enlil, who assigns it victory over Plough. Considering the other well preserved debate, that of Sheep vs. Grain, a subtle variation in the use of the topoi is detectable. The text explicitly focuses on civilization, which, as narrated in the prologue, is determined by the appearance on earth of the two contenders, sources of food and clothing.9 Their fundamental function is clearly stated before the beginning of the debate, as well as the standard reference to the sustenance of the destitute,10 so that, from a rhetorical point of view, this is a topic that does not need demonstration by the contenders, although it may offer material for sustaining their arguments. The strategy followed by the two contenders concentrates in fact on their social value as demonstrated by various circumstances. Versatility, which in Hoe vs. Plough was recognized as the main advantage on a technological level, has to be differently evaluated in the social perspective, in which prestige has a determining role, but also harmony and wellbeing. So the argument of multiple employment, briefly put forward by Sheep with the aim of illustrating the various occasions on which its prestige shows,11 is left unanswered by Grain, which limits itself to pointing out the main social event that epitomizes the others, i.e., the banquet: When the beer dough has been carefully prepared in the oven, and the mash tended in the oven, Ninkasi (the goddess of beer) mixes them for me while your big billy-goats and rams are dispatched for my banquets (ll. 116–122).

And since the discourse focuses on civilization, utility for different human categories entails psychological and social sides, which are noted in turn by the contenders. Grain in particular stresses: I foster neighbourliness and friendliness. I sort out quarrels started between neighbours. When I come upon a captive youth and give him his destiny, he forgets his despondent heart and I release his fetters and shackles. I am Ezina-Kusu (Grain) (ll. 83–91); Your shepherd on the high plain eyes my produce enviously; when I am standing in stalks in the field, my farmer chases away your herdsman with his cudgel (ll. 123–125).

Grain appears to hold the initiative of the confrontation, introducing a new argument, or rather a new way of presenting the traditional topic of personal prestige. It boasts of its own physical strength: When gentle winds blow through the city and strong winds scatter, they build a milking pen for you; but when gentle winds blow through the city and strong



Debates and rhetoric in Sumer 

winds scatter, I stand up as an equal to Iškur (the god of storms). I am Grain, I am born for the warrior – I do not give up (ll. 135–142).

In this passage the important role and subtle play of metaphor in constructing the arguments also become apparent. It is often through imaginative equations that a certain value becomes evident. Following this strategy in the attempt to reverse the argument and show Grain’s weakness,12 Sheep chooses however a risky terrain: the injuries inflicted by man in processing cereals and flour. It refers clearly to another, possibly problematic, aspect of human civilization, which is particularly evident in meat consumption, as Grain in turn is ready to show to its own advantage: You are distributed into various measuring-containers. When your innards are taken away by the people in the market-place, and when your neck is wrapped with your very own loincloth, one man says to another: ‘Fill the measuring-container with grain for my ewe!’ (ll. 170–179).

The topic of food processing, on the other hand, is justified by the framework in which the contest takes place, the banquet,13 which is both a manifestation of civilization and a crucial moment for divine decisions concerning the development of mankind, as is well known from other literary texts. However, notwithstanding the harsh image of the sheep killed and wrapped in its own entrails, and the relevance of the argument to the framework, it does not seem to lead to victory. The preeminence of grain is decreed on the basis of the necessity of cereals in nutrition: the sheep may be exchanged with cereals, or moreover, even the sheep is fed on cereals. Apparently grain wins because it is recognized as a main element in sedentary and urban civilization. Another fundamental procedure based on the metaphoric scheme is the transferring of prerogatives, as highlighted in this other text, according to which to be used in dirty jobs or by dirty people is proof of ignoble status: Silver: “The porters with their arms tied to their work; the potter, digging the hoe in the ground, for days on end extracting the clay with his hands; the... worker from daybreak in a pit unfit for washing or bathing; the shipbuilder, caulking a boat, heating up fish oil, with garments not easy to clean; the cook, heating up oil, carrying... water, standing by like a witness; the brewer, who does not untie his belt in warm weather, whose hands do not dry the clay; the maltster, never resting in winter (...)” (Silver vs. Copper, Segment A, ll. 100–120).

But the perspective may be reversed by combining the analogic procedure with the one that dissociates notions. It may happen, for example, that a precious thing must be kept concealed to be protected, but obscurity is the very opposite of prestige: Copper: “Men caulk tiny, very strong boxes for you, as they do a boat. They cover you over with their oldest rags, and someone digs a hole for you in the middle of



Simonetta Ponchia

the cattle-pen. Or they pour clay on top of you, as on a jar with a sealed mouth, and then, in the darkest place inside the house, someone buries you in the most obscure corner of a grave. When the time of wet ground has arrived for me, you do not supply the copper hoes that chop plants in the hard ground, so no one concerns themselves with you (...)”14 (Silver vs. Copper, Segment D, ll. 18–26).

If one has to be valued on the basis of one’s actions and results, it must be considered that abundance requires hard and often obscure preparatory work: Winter was overcome by anger and he started a quarrel with Summer: ‘Summer, my brother, you should not praise yourself; whatever harvest produce you bring as gifts to the palace has not been made by your toil: you should not brag. As if you were the one who had done the hard work, as if you had done the farming, as if you had taken care of irrigation control during the spring floods, as if you had brought forth the [...] grain in the arable tracts with the dew from heaven – how much through my toil is it that you enter the palace! (Winter vs. Summer, ll. 112–120).

In sum, the various personifications appear not simply as stereotypes but as active contenders capable of mastering a plurality of rhetorical strategies with refined skill. The arguments certainly derive their force from the reference to natural and environmental aspects as well as to productive and technological activities, which the debates contribute to illustrating and classifying in detail. From these sectors of experience, some patterns of reasoning which take necessary preconditions and relationships of dependence into account appear to have developed. It seems, on the other hand, that social order, social cohesion, social functioning according to the best possible rules constitute the crucial issue of the debate. The ultimate aim of the confrontation is to specify, select and order values, confirming in this way those very assumptions that give fuel to the arguments, e.g.: prestige wins over factuality, usefulness in religious matters is nobler than usefulness in common ones, but the creation of abundance for the land and the protection of the humblest and poorest categories are the most appreciated virtues. Society is, like the world of the debates, made up of complementary elements, all of them useful, all of them productive in an ordered cosmos, all of them worthy of consideration and protection. In the peculiar ecological environment of southern Mesopotamia, which required the exhausting work of digging to keep a complex irrigation system functioning, and in a society which attained extraordinary levels of prosperity and cultural development thanks to the large surplus resulting from the organization of intensive agricultural labour, it is perfectly understandable that the issue represented a critical point deserving a kind of reconciliation, in which hard work is recognized and ennobled, and prestige reveals its function. So that, as in the conclusion of Winter vs. Summer, harmony is re-established according to divine will:



Debates and rhetoric in Sumer 

Summer spoke respectfully to Enlil: ‘Enlil, your verdict is highly valued, your holy word is an exalted word. The verdict you pronounce is one which cannot be altered – who can change it? There was quarrelling of brother with brother but now there is harmony. For as long as you are occupying the palace, the people will express awe (...)’ (Winter vs. Summer, ll. 298–301);

or in the violent confrontation between Bird (the one who lives in the palace) and Fish. This perspective may be considered vis-à-vis another aspect of Sumerian debates. They reveal in fact a playful side, as suggested by the festive frameworks described in the prologues, in which verbal confrontation appears as an intellectual divertissement (Vanstiphout 1991). Discourse technique does not only allow the subversion of the expected outcome of a confrontation, opening with a clearly unbalanced presentation of the contenders: On that day Winter taunted Summer. Summer, the hero whom one does not challenge, searched for rude insults. He was confident in himself, considering the harvest time, and turned aside. Like a great bull eating rich grass, he raised his head (ll. 153–156),

and closing with the triumph of the other. It also makes it possible to demonstrate that what is considered great may be small, the precious may be vile, and vice versa, according to different points of view. And it allows the subversion of the expected order of values, assigning victory, for example, to the giver of pleasure, the Bird, instead of to the useful Fish.15 On the basis of the extant texts it is not possible to evaluate how far this game was pushed, and if these fictitious examples mirror a deeply established attitude in Sumerian society, i.e., if this capacity of mastering the technique of discourse and of discussing values was used not only in the justification of the existing order but as a means for questioning traditional values and, therefore, at least potentially, as a tool for innovation and progress.16 Or else, if the rhetorical technique was confined to the scribal curriculum with a strictly didactic function. An answer is at the moment hazardous, but better focalisation of the problem might suggest a hypothesis for further study on the subject. 3 Enlarging the view: Education, literature, and power in ancient Sumer The original composition of at least some of the debates, as of other major pieces of literature, might date to the Ur III period (21st cen. B.C.), the last phase of vitality of Sumerian outside scholarly circles.17 The kings of the third dynasty of Ur are in fact mentioned in various debates either in the role of judges or in the general setting of the action, in court, festive and convivial occasions.18 To this framework



Simonetta Ponchia

of public and probably dramatic performance only a tiny amount of external supporting evidence has been associated, consisting of an administrative text of the same period recording the issue of meat on the occasion of “the dispute”,19 while the convivial framework is mirrored by some literary texts.20 The extant tablets, however, on which our texts were inscribed, date from the Old Babylonian period (19th-17th centuries B.C.), i.e., from the period of collection, study, and elaboration of the preceding Sumerian tradition, when the Sumerian language was presumably dead outside the school milieu. It is therefore difficult to establish beyond doubt if the written texts preserved are indeed the scholarly version of a lively ampler and older tradition consisting mostly of the oral technique of dialogue, and how exactly these texts interplay with Ur III ideology. Although no clear-cut answers can be proposed at the moment, it is possible at least to add some evidence on two relevant aspects: the importance that dialogic confrontation had in the education of the scribes (i.e., the administrators and clerks of a society which developed writing technique to regulate various relationships among its members), and the continuity of this tradition. A very early evidence dates to the Early Dynastic period (ca. 25th-24th centuries B.C.) and is provided by a text interpreted as a collection of phrases to be employed in a verbal contest.21 The coarse register of the sentences matches that of later texts depicting disputes among students, full of injurious appellatives, almost exercises in invective, belonging to the broader sector of the so-called é-dub-ba (“school”, lit. “the house of the tablet”) literature transmitted by Old Babylonian texts, but originating in the Ur III period.22 In the debates considered here, moreover, some images might be interpreted as playful references to the work and actions of the scribe, inscribing his texts on clay: “Hoe, digging miserably, weeding miserably with your teeth; Hoe, burrowing in the mud” (ll. 55–56).23 Entries in literary catalogues, copies in exercise extracts, and the spreading of the texts confirm that disputes, with a certain analogy with Medieval literature, were part of the scribal curriculum and represented (with their ample repertoire of technical vocabulary, grammatical forms, patterns of speech) probably one of the traditional educational tools, like sign and lexical lists, adopted since very ancient times. Excellence in speaking, on the other hand, is celebrated in royal hymns of the Ur III and Old Babylonian periods, as one of the virtues of the prince, as proclaimed in a hymn of the most prominent ruler of Ur, king Shulgi: When I was small, I was at the academy, where I learned the scribal art from the tablets of Sumer and Akkad. None of the nobles could write on clay as I could. There where people regularly went for tutelage in the scribal art, I qualified fully in subtraction, addition, reckoning and accounting. The fair Nanibgal, Nisaba, provided me amply with knowledge and comprehension. I am an experienced scribe who does not neglect a thing (Shulgi Hymn B, ll. 13–20);



Debates and rhetoric in Sumer 

When I pronounce a completed verdict, it is heartily welcomed, since I am wise and exalted in kingship. So that my consultative assemblies, sitting together to care for the people, inspire respect in their hearts when the chief herald sounds the horn, they should deliberate (ad gi4-gi4-da) and discuss (inim šár-šár-dam); and so that the council should decide policy properly, I have taught my governors to deliberate and to discuss. While the words at their dining tables flow like a river, I tackle crime, so that the foundations are securely established for my wide dominions. (...) My words can be words smooth as the finest quality oil; I know how to cool hearts which are hot as fire, and I know how to extinguish a mouth set on fire like a reed-bed. I weigh my words against those of the braggart. I am a man of the very highest standards of value. The importance of the humble is of particular value to me, and they cannot be counter-productive to any of my activities (Shulgi Hymn B, ll. 222–237).

It is therefore possible to hypothesize that the genre of debates was recognized as having a specific value in the education of bureaucrats and ministers, and even of the ruler, as well as in that of lower-ranked scribes responsible for administrative procedures. The frequent references to kingship in the debates may convey moreover two connected underlying messages: if kingship is the foundation and guarantee of social values and institutions, the art of discourse, and the scribal art, are the foundation of power. The art of discourse, and of verbal confrontation in particular, was acknowledged as having a fundamental function not only in the social context, but also in a duty peculiar to the prince: external conflicts, as revealed by the so-called epic cycle of Uruk, which again was almost certainly composed during the Ur III period, even if the most ancient copies of the texts date to the subsequent Isin-Larsa period (20th-18th centuries B.C.). It includes two texts which patently refer to the act of disputing and perhaps to the genre of debates,24 both narrating the rivalry between the Sumerian metropolis of Uruk and the fabulous land of Aratta. The tale of Enmerkar and Ensu girana,25 structured in various dialogues, is explicitly described at the beginning as an a-da-mìn-dug4-ga (a contest), and closes with the declaration of the victory of Enmerkar, lord of Uruk, according to the formula of the debates: “In the contest between Enmerkar and Ensu girana, because Enmerkar was greater (diri-ga-a-ba) than Ensu girana, praise be to Nisaba (goddess of grain and scribal art)”. A peculiarity of the tale is the reference to the use of different media by the two contenders: the traditional oral message by Ensu~girana, a written tablet by Enmerkar, who appears in this way to have mastered the technique of discourse as a whole. The style of the discourse, albeit inserted in a wider narrative framework, clearly reflects that of the genre of debate, with the ability to take up the adversary’s statements, centred in this case on the



Simonetta Ponchia

sacred marriage of the king to the goddess Inana, which guarantees royal power,26 and to create a gradation which overcomes that proposed by the adversary: Ensu girana: “He must submit to me, he must bear my yoke! If he submits to me well and truly, then, for him and me this means: he may live with Inana in the Egara, but I shall live with Inana in the Ezagina of Aratta. He may lie with her on a flowery bed, but I shall lie in sweet slumber with her on a bejeweled couch. He may meet with Inana in his dreams at night, but I shall converse with Inana between her gleaming legs! (...)” (Vanstiphout 2003: 28–31, ll. 25–32); Enmerkar: “He may live with Inana in the Ezagina of Aratta, but I live with her when she descends from heaven to earth! He may lie with her in sweet slumber on a bejeweled couch, but I lie in Inana’s flowery bed strewn with glistening plants. At its back there is an ug-lion; at its front there is a piriĝ-lion; the ug-lion chases the piriĝ-lion; the piriĝ-lion chases the ug-lion (...) And so day does not dawn, night does not pass...” (Vanstiphout 2003: 32–33, ll. 78–87).

The artful gradation constructed by the king of Uruk induces his rival to acknowledge his superiority: “What shall I say to him? What shall I say to him?” (ll. 120– 121), and to look for alternative means of confrontation such as magic (in a sense an upgraded version of the potency of speech), which represent the core of the tale. In the other story of the contest for hegemony between the two cities, Enmerkar and the lord of Aratta, disputations are recalled in a passage which has been considered an antecedent of the Biblical tale of the tower of Babel, and has received different interpretations, due to the difficulties and the ambivalence of Sumerian syntax, which allows sentences to be projected into the past as well as into the future. Because of its ambiguity it could in fact be viewed as a riddle, preceding the ones proposed in the rest of the tale. In any case it anchors the political challenge between Sumer and Aratta and the individual verbal challenges into which the story is divided, to a divine design. It is the spell of Nudimmud (god of wisdom = Enki): on that day there is no snake, no scorpion, there is no hyena, there is no lion, (...). There will be neither fear nor trembling, for man will then have no enemy. On that day the lands of Šubur and amazi, as well as the twin-tongued Sumer (...) together with Akkad (...) and even the land Martu (...), the whole world of well-ruled people, will be able to speak to Enlil in one language! For on that day, for the debates between lords (a-da-en) and princes (a-da-nun) and kings (a-da-lugal), (...) shall Enki, (…) lord of steadfast decisions, lord of wisdom and knowledge in the land (...) change the tongues in their mouth, as many as he once placed there, and the speech of mankind shall be truly one (Vanstiphout 2003: 64–65, ll. 135–155).27

We are left in doubt, and could perhaps discuss at length, whether according to Sumerian thought the progression is towards the differentiation or the unification



Debates and rhetoric in Sumer 

of languages, and whether the rationale of the passage is actually that a unifying power will put an end to all fights and dissensions. In any case it seems that by divine decision conflict and fighting have their origin in human speech. The two kings fight for political and economic supremacy, but the battles consist in proving one’s superiority through elaborate speeches and by inventing and solving ingenious riddles.28 The weapons are therefore speech and technology, i.e. the art of interpreting words and patterns, of manipulating raw materials, and of applying witty solutions to difficult problems. The king of Uruk wins all the challenges because he knows this art well; perhaps, in the perspective of the Shulgi hymns, because he is a well educated scholar. Our text does not state this point explicitly; technology appears in any case as a key element, and it includes writing, whose invention is explicitly narrated at the conclusion of the tale as the ultimate and perhaps decisive ruse, which leaves the rival dumbfounded: The lord of Aratta took from the messenger the tablet (and held it) next to a brazier. The lord of Aratta inspected the tablet. The spoken words were mere wedges – his brow darkened.29

Technological know-how, which in some of the debate poems provides important fuel for the arguments, allows here a demonstration of superiority which admits no question. And we cannot rule out the possibility that the scheme of the contest, presented at the beginning of the tale as inspired by the god of wisdom, Enki, is used as the theoretical model to represent and explain a process of innovation, which is the key to dominance. This perspective also matches to a certain extent with the references to economic and administrative development present in other texts and documented by archaeological sources. In the hymns of the founder of the Ur III dynasty, Urnamma, particular stress is laid on the excavation of irrigation canals, which guarantees abundant harvests: “Who will dig there, who will dig there, who will dig the canal there? (...) Who will dig the keškug – canal there? (...) Who will dig the pabilu – canal there? (...) Urnamma, the wealthy one, will dig it there!”30 The productive system and the management machinery are also based on other technical tools, mastered by the particular class of manpower represented by the scribes. Thousands of administrative texts (especially from the period of Shulgi and his successors) attest to the implementation of a complex system of production, exploitation, and redistribution of primary resources, of their processing, and of the commercialization of craft products, while the first attested law code not only fixes legal conventions but provides administrative instruments, such as standard weights and measures, and declares the protection of weak and destitute categories.31 In a complex society, in which hierarchy appears as a necessary condition and a result of technological progress and of the ensuing welfare, the mechanisms of



Simonetta Ponchia

discourse, on which the affirmation of power and of social stratification strictly depend, are studied, tested, and extended to a global interpretation of the world. Notwithstanding the difficulties deriving from the nature of the sources, we may admit that the question formulated at the end of the preceding paragraph, i.e. whether controversy was interpreted as a means of progress, may be answered in the affirmative, at least as far as the ideological programme and representation of the kings of the third dynasty of Ur is concerned. 4 A brief look at the stream of tradition For later periods, from the second half of the II millennium onwards, no reference to the debates outside the scribal activity is extant; the texts, defined tē ītu (the act of “going out” to confront an adversary),32 appear clearly as part of the scribal curriculum, probably with a specific didactic function, and new compositions in Assyro-Babylonian are written down, following in general the old scheme (see Table 1). The best preserved text, Tamaris vs. Palm (Wilcke 1989), confirms the continuity of tradition, it has in fact a Sumerian antecedent and is attested in versions dating from the Old Babylonian to the Neo-Assyrian periods. In the genre some innovations and narrative insertions are also evident, suggesting the absorption and fusion of elements typical of fable literature, such as a larger number of personages, for example in the Fable of the Fox.33 The scribes appear, however, not merely the perpetuators of a frozen tradition, or the masters of an eloquence confined to didactic purposes, but as intellectuals who exploit their lore and the dialogic instrument in crucial specific researches such as that on human suffering. Traditionally accepted views, such as the dogma of the divine retribution of human behaviour, are clearly questioned in the text of the Babylonian Theodicy, perhaps an expression of broader discussion of the principles governing the cosmos, of their intelligibility by humans, but also of social conventions and of the role of intellectuals and specialists in society. And it is, significantly, in the dialogue that the individual personality of the learned and the wise emerges, providing one of the few examples in Mesopotamian literature of the indication of authorship. From archetypes and personifications the debate has shifted to the individual and to a new awareness of his position in the cosmic and social sphere. On the technical level, the continuous refinement of the dialogic structure is evident both in highly poetic elaborations and in the structure of the arguments. In the text known by the modern title of Dialogue of Pessimism, the ancient art of classifying values through opposition is pushed to the extreme, and argumentation is employed to sustain a proposition and its contrary, revealing the ultimate relativity of values, but also suggesting perhaps that reality is made up of opposition.



Debates and rhetoric in Sumer 

Table 1  Debate poems from Sumer Contenders

Prologue and origin of the controversy

Main argument for assigning victory

Winner

Sumerian Hoe vs. Plough

address to the hoe, describing its aspect in a derogatory manner

versatility and humbleness is more useful than high specialization and prestige

Hoe

Sheep vs. Grain

primitive state of mankind when sheep and grain did not exist and men could not eat them; creation of Sheep and Grain.

pre-eminence in human diet

Grain

Summer vs. Winter

generation of the contenders by the divine couple Sky and Earth; products of each contender brought to the temple of Enlil where the question of precedence arises

Summer’s rich gifts depend on Winter’s hard labour, since he guarantees water

Winter

Tree vs. Reed

generation of the contenders by a divine couple; quarrel for precedence in entering the palace of Shulgi to bring products as gifts to the king

Copper vs. Silver

Tree

copper is useful in various fundamental tasks/copper is the material of vario������� u������ s fundamental tools

Copper

Bird

Birds vs. Fish

Enki regulates water, founds cities and gives mankind a king; creates marshes and places Fish and Bird there

the bird is frivolous and noisy, but gives comfort and pleasure to gods and mankind

Heron vs. Turtle

description of the various marshes of Sumer and Akkad

description of a confrontation

Goose [?] vs. Raven



Simonetta Ponchia

Contenders

Prologue and origin of the controversy

Main argument for assigning victory

Herdsman vs. Farmer

courtship of goddess Inana

particular text, which belongs to the Inana and Dumuzi (the herdsman) cycle and the sacred marriage rites

Winner Herdsman

Upper vs. Lower Millstone Assyro-Babylonian Tamarisk vs. Date-Palm

creation of kingship; trees planted in the court; quarrel after the banquet

usefulness for different members of society

Ox vs. Horse

after the two have eaten their fill in luscious pastures

peaceful work of the Ox providing sustenance also for Horse’s military exploits

Khamanirru vs. Ishqapikhu (two insects)

creation of the world and of animals, large and small

Date-palm

Poplar-tree vs. Laurel [?] Nisaba banquet framework (goddess of Cereals) vs. Wheat

Nisaba

Mule vs. [ ] Wine vs. [ ]

Therefore, although the extant examples are not numerous, it seems that the rhetoric which originated in the Sumerian age maintained a high status in the scribal curricular education through the different periods of Mesopotamian history. It provided the technical tools to cope with the most critical issues of society, fostering, at least, the process of interpretation of traditionally accepted mythical, social and political principles. The written examples distilled and preserved by scribal schools attest to the general adherence to those principles, but reveal at the same time that discovering truth was considered not an apodictic but a controversial procedure. The existence of a wider and perhaps even freer use of argumentation in oral discussions not recorded in fixed form must remain at the moment only a hypothesis.



Debates and rhetoric in Sumer 

References Alster, B. 1973. “An aspect of ‘Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta’”. Revue d’Assyriologie 67: 101–109. Alster, B. 1990. “Sumerian literary dialogues and debates and their place in ancient Near Eastern literature”. In E. Keck, S. Søndergaard and E. Wulff (eds), Living Waters. Scandinavian Orientalistic Studies Presented to Professor Dr. Frede Løkkergaard. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 1–16. Alster, B. 1992. “Interaction of oral and written poetry in early Mesopotamian literature”. In M. E. Vogelzang and H.L.J. Vanstiphout (eds), Mesopotamian Epic Literature. Oral or Aural?. Lewiston/Qeenston/Lampeter, 23–69. Alster, B. and Vanstiphout, H. L.J. 1987. “Lahar and Ashnan. Presentation and analysis of a Sumerian disputation”. Acta Sumerologica 9: 1–43. Annus, A. 2002. The God Ninurta. Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project. Black, J.A., Cunningham, G., Ebeling, J., Flückiger-Hawker, E., Robson, E., Taylor, J., and Zólyomi, G. 1998-. The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (http://etcsl.orinst.ox. ac.uk/). Oxford. Bottéro, J. 1991. “La ‘tenson’ et la réflexion sur les choses en Mésopotamie”. In Reinink and Vanstiphout (eds), 7–22. Flückiger-Hawker, H. 1999. Urnamma of Ur in Sumerian Literary Tradition. (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 166). Freiburg: Universitätsverlag – Göttingen: Vandenhoek and Ruprecht. Glassner, J. J. 2000. Écrire à Sumer. Paris: Seuil. Gordon, E.I. 1960. “A look at the wisdom of Sumer and Akkad”. Bibliotheca Orientalis 17: 122–152. Gragg, G. 1973. “The fable of the Heron and the Turtle”. Archiv für Orientforschung 24: 51–72. Kang, S.T. 1972. Sumerian Economic Texts from the Drehem Archive, vol. 1. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Klein, J. 2003. “An Old Babylonian edition of an Early Dynastic collection of insults (BT 9)”. In W. Sallaberger, K. Volk, A. Zgoll (eds), Literatur, Politik und Recht im Mesopotamien. Festschrift für Claus Wilcke (Orientalia Biblica et Christiana 14). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 135–149. Kramer, S.N. and Bottéro, J. 1989. Lorsque les dieux faisaient l’homme. Paris: Gallimard. Lambert, W.G. 1960. Babylonian Wisdom Literature. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Lapinkivi, P. 2004. The Sumerian Sacred Marriage (State Archives of Assyria Studies 15). Helsinki: Neo Assyrian Text Corpus Project. Perelman, C. and Olbrechts-Tyteca, L. 1958. Traité de l’argumentation. La nouvelle rhétorique. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Ponchia, S. 1996. La palma e il tamarisco e altri dialoghi mesopotamici. Venezia: Marsilio. Reinink, G.J. and Vanstiphout, H.L.J. (eds). 1991. Dispute Poems and Dialogues in the Ancient and Medieval Near East (Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 42). Leuven: Peeters. Roth, M. 1995. Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor (Writings of the Ancient World Series 6). Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. Sallaberger, W. and Westenholz, A. 1999. Mesopotamien. Akkade-Zeit und Ur III-Zeit (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 160/3). Freiburg: Universitätsverlag – Göttingen: Vandenhoek and Ruprecht. Streck, M.P. 2004. “Dattelpalme und Tamariske in Mesopotamien nach dem akkadischen Streitgespräch”. Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 94: 250–290.



Simonetta Ponchia Sjöberg, A.W. 1973. “Der Vater und sein missratener Sohn”. Journal of Cuneiform Studies 25: 105–169. Sjöberg, A.W. 1975a. “Examentext A”. Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 64: 137–76. Sjöberg, A.W. 1975b. “The Old Babylonian Eduba”. In S.J. Lieberman et alii (eds), Sumerological Studies in Honor of Thorkild Jacobsen on his seventieth birthday (Assyriological Studies 20). Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press, 159–179. Sjöberg, A.W. (ed). 1984-. Sumerian Dictionary. Philadelphia: University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology – University of Pennsylvania. Van Dijk, J. 1970. “La ‘confusion des langues’”. Orientalia Nova Series 39: 302–310. Vanstiphout, H.L.J. 1984. “On the Sumerian disputation between the Hoe and the Plough”. Aula Orientalis 2: 239–251. Vanstiphout, H.L.J. 1990. “The Mesopotamian debate poems”. A general presentation. Part I”. Acta Sumerologica 12: 271–318. Vanstiphout, H.L.J. 1991. “Lore, learning and levity in the Sumerian disputations: A matter of form, or substance?”, in Reinink and Vanstiphout (eds), 23–46. Vanstiphout, H.L.J. 1992a. “The banquet scene in the Sumerian debate poems“. Res Orientales 4: 37–63. Vanstiphout, H.L.J. 1992b. “The Mesopotamian debate poems. A general presentation. Part II”. Acta Sumerologica 14: 339–367. Vanstiphout, H.L.J. 1997. “Sumerian canonical compositions. C. Individual Focus; 5. Disputations; 6. School Dialogues”. In H.W. Hallo (ed), The Context of Scripture, Vol. 1: Canonical Compositions from the Biblical World, Leiden: Brill, 575–593. Vanstiphout, H.L.J. 2003. Epics of Sumerian Kings: The Matter of Aratta. (Writings of the Ancient World Series 20). Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. Volk, K. 1996. “Methoden altmesopotamischer Erziehung nach Quellen der altbabylonischen Zeit”. Saeculum 47: 178–216. Volk, K. 2000. “Edubba’a und Edubba’a-Literatur: Rätsel und Lösungen”. Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 90: 1–30. Wilcke, C. 1989. “Die Emar-Version von ‘Dattelpalme und Tamariske’ – ein Rekonstructionversuch”. Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 79: 161–190.

Notes 1. While a system of classification of the texts clearly existed in Sumer, it is impossible to state at the moment if and to what extent it coincides with the concept of genre elaborated in later times. The use of the term “genre” and of its implications in the studies on Mesopotamian literature is therefore for the sake of convenience, and should not be considered as corresponding exactly to the ancient categorization. See also the entry in the Sumerian Dictionary with various attestations of the term. 2. Or, as stressed in a hymn of Urnamma, animals carried by the newly opened canal (Flückiger-Hawker 1999: 248–251). 3. Quotations from Sumerian texts are taken, if not otherwise stated, from Black, J.A. et al. (1998).



Debates and rhetoric in Sumer 

4. Compare in particular the conclusion of Summer vs. Winter with its prologue: “Enlil set about determining the destinies of Summer and Winter. For Summer founding towns and villages, bringing in harvests of plenitude for the Great Mountain Enlil, sending labourers out to the large arable tracts, and working the fields with oxen; for Winter plenitude, the spring floods, the abundance and life of the Land, placing grain in the fields and fruitful acres, and gathering in everything – Enlil determined these as the destinies of Summer and Winter”. 5. Invective and insults are often referred to in the debates, as in the following case: “Strong Copper cast his legitimate insults against Silver, and was full of hate against him – insults of a miserable dog, like water from a brackish well. He exerted his powers against him to harass him. And at this, Silver felt thoroughly harassed; it did not befit his dignity”. The ability to withstand verbal violence appears as a virtue of the contenders, and may be a specific feature of the genre going back to an older tradition (see below). 6. These narrative variations may also be the result of the debates being set in writing; for their possible relations with an oral performance of the genre, see below. For other texts in which the debate is only a part of the tale see § 2. 7. We use classical terminology and refer in general to the recent studies on rhetoric and argumentation beginning with Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1958). 8. This play is strictly dependent upon the nature of the Sumerian writing system in which a sign may have different values, e.g., the sign GÍD may be interpreted as “to be long”, or “to trace furrows” (see Vanstiphout 1984: 240–241) (ll. 20–25). 9. “The people of those days did not know about eating bread. They did not know about wearing clothes; they went about with naked limbs in the Land. Like sheep they ate grass with their mouths and drank water from the ditches”. 10. “They brought wealth to the assembly. They brought sustenance to the Land. They fulfilled the ordinances of the gods. They filled the store-rooms of the Land with stock. The barns of the Land were heavy with them. When they entered the homes of the poor who crouch in the dust they brought wealth. Both of them, wherever they directed their steps, added to the riches of the household with their weight. Where they stood, they were satisfying; where they settled, they were seemly. They gladdened the heart of An and the heart of Enlil” (ll. 54–64). 11. “The watch over the elite troops is mine. Sustenance of the workers in the field is mine: the waterskin of cool water and the sandals are mine. Sweet oil, the fragrance of the gods, mixed oil, pressed oil, aromatic oil, cedar oil for offerings are mine. In the gown, my cloth of white wool, the king rejoices on his throne. My body glistens on the flesh of the great gods (...)” (ll. 102–109). 12. “When you fill the trough the baker’s assistant mixes you and throws you on the floor, and the baker’s girl flattens you out broadly. You are put into the oven and you are taken out of the oven. When you are put on the table I am before you – you are behind me. Grain, heed yourself! You too, just like me, are meant to be eaten. At the inspection of your essence, why should it be I who come second? Is the miller not evil? What can you put against me? Answer me what you can reply!” (ll. 156–168). 13. “They drank sweet wine, they enjoyed sweet beer. When they had drunk sweet wine and enjoyed sweet beer, they started a quarrel concerning the arable fields, they began a debate in the dining hall” (ll. 65–70).



Simonetta Ponchia 14. This extremely interesting debate is unfortunately badly preserved, but seems to include references to various topics, such as civilization, human history, and allusions to other debates, and references to lexical lists. 15. On this point see in particular Vanstiphout (1991: 41). 16. The problem, on the other hand, was perceived by the scribes themselves, as suggested by a passage of a dialogue between two scribes where it is declared: “Thus you would greatly scorn obedience, which is the honor of humanity” (transl. Vanstiphout 1997: 591, l. 22). 17. On the complex question of the relations between Sumerian and Akkadian, on the texts originating from the Ur III period, and on the history of this phase of Mesopotamian history, see Sallaberger (1999), with previous bibliography. 18. Shulgi is mentioned several times in Bird vs. Fish where he pronounces the final verdict; Urnamma is mentioned, perhaps as arbiter of the contest, in Silver vs. Copper; Ibbi-Suen in Winter vs. Summer. 19. Quoted by Alster (1990: 13), from Kang (1972). For the cultic value of these ceremonies see references in Annus (2002: 62–63). 20. In particular Enki and Ninma~ and Enki’s Journey to Nippur which narrate the outbreak of a dispute between deities as a result of abundant drinking during a banquet, and, in the first case, the ensuing consequences for mankind (Kramer and Bottéro 1989: 143–144 and 191, and http:// etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/). 21. See Alster (1992: 31–32), who discusses in general the complex topics of oral tradition in Sumerian times and the place of the debates therein in particular. 22. See the Dialogue between Enkitalu and Enkihegal and between Enki-mansi and Girini-isag, between a Scribe and his Supervisor. Insults and injurious discourse appear to be a sector of the language studied and experimented by Sumerian scholars, perhaps in the framework of the systematic categorization of vocabulary and realia evident from the lexical lists. See also the Dialogue between two Women (Alster 1990: 7–10) and Klein (2003). The main difference from the disputes we have considered here, is that these dialogues usually lack the exposition of positive qualities and the development of a confrontation on this basis. For the other texts of the edubba, at least partly in dialogic form, see Sjöberg (1973, 1975a and b), Vanstiphout (1997). On the edubba and the education of the scribes see most recently Volk (1996 and 2000). 23. For this interpretation see Vanstiphout (1984: 249 and 1990: 285). 24. On the concordances in the literary structure of the tales and of disputations, but also on the fundamental differences of the two types of texts, see Vanstiphout (2003: 12). 25. Or Ensu kešdanna according to a previous reading of the name. For text, translation, and commentary see most recently Vanstiphout (2003: 23–48). 26. On this fundamental and very problematic aspect of Sumerian ritual see most recently Lapinkivi (2004) with previous bibliography. 27. For this interpretation of the passage see also Alster (1973), with previous bibliography. It is perhaps worth quoting the alternative translation: “One day there were no snake, no scorpion; there were no hyena, nor lion (...). There was no fear and terror, for man had no enemy. On that day the lands of Šubur and amazi, as well as the twin-tongued Sumer (...) together with Akkad (...) and even the land Martu (...), the whole world of well-ruled people, was able to speak to Enlil in one language! On that day, for the contests between lords and princes and kings, (...)



Debates and rhetoric in Sumer 

Enki, lord of steadfast decisions, lord of wisdom and knowledge in the land (...) changed the tongues in their mouth, placing contention, when the speech amongst men had been one”. On this interpretation, proposed by van Dijk (1970), see Glassner (2000: 41–42), who insists on the opposition harmony ( a-mun) vs. discord (kúr) and stresses that according to the Sumerians both are of divine origin. 28. The three tasks that the king of Uruk must solve are: to transport grain to Aratta without using the containers normally employed (Enmerkar soaks the grain that germinates and can be carried in large-mesh nets); to produce a sceptre not made of the usual materials (Enmerkar apparently uses a cast and create a sort of plastic material, with wax and other components, which may be moulded); to present a dog/champion (the term is ambiguous) not of an usual colour to fight against that of Aratta (Enmerkar apparently creates a peculiar multicoloured garment). 29. The passage, which is presented in the more widely accepted interpretation (here in the translation proposed by Vanstiphout 2003: 87), is actually an extremely difficult one and has been the subject of discussion. One of the latest, most interesting proposals is that of Glassner (2000: 43), who recognizes in the sentence the reference to the power inherent in writing of manipulating things. The high technological value of writing seems anyway the main assumption of the passage, notwithstanding the interpretive difficulties. 30. See in general all Hymn D (Flückiger-Hawker 1999: 244–253). To this the intensive building activity may be added, culminating in the erection of the zikkurats and requiring not only technical skills but also organizational ability (Sallaberger 1999: 137–139; 151–152). 31. Productive centres and organizations under the control of the crown or of the state functionaries are attested by great archives, in particular from the ancient cities of Ur, Puzriš-Dagan, Giršu, Umma, Nippur, relating to animal breeding, agriculture, textiles, leather and metallurgical production, trade. For the text of the code of Urnamma, see Roth (1995: 15–22). 32. Van Dijk (1970: 306). 33. The major edition of the texts in dialogic form, together with those pertaining to the socalled wisdom literature is Lambert (1960).

chapter 4

Persuasion in the Pre-Qin China The Great Debate revisited Han-liang Chang

1

Introduction

This essay attempts to present a major controversy in classical Chinese intellectual history, commonly called the Great Debate on ming (name) and shi (substance), and to interpret that debate in the light of the contention between logic and rhetoric, similar to the one that has characterized Western philosophy since Plato’s early dialogue The Gorgias. The English rendition of the “Great Debate”, being at once accurate but imperfect, is so popular that its source is hardly traceable. The added qualification of “great” suggests the importance of the issue, but the word debate unfortunately fails to transmit the double denotation of “differentiation” and “debate”, imposed on the homophone by modern usage.1 Thanks to contemporary scholars like Chmielewski (1962–1969), Graham (1989), Defoort (1997), Chang (1998, 2003), Lu (1998), Reding (2004), Cui (2004), we have become aware of the contention of logic and rhetoric and, to a lesser extent, the relation between logic and grammar suggested by these ancient texts. For instance, when Chmielewski points out that “in early Chinese philosophical texts we generally have to do with persuasion rather than demonstration” (1963: 92), his frame of reference is no doubt the classical opposition of rhetoric to logic outlined by Aristotle.2 Another source of confusion results from the translation of bian into debate, which gives one the mistaken impression that those who were involved in the event were actual interlocutors performing speech acts. This philological knowledge may serve as a reminder that our analysis has already been contaminated by language’s historical corruption and its cross-cultural dissemination. However, the confusion of bian as “differentiation” and bian as “debate” serves paradoxically to elucidate the inherent and necessary relation between semantics and pragmatics.



Han-liang Chang

2 Zixue in the Pre-Qin China The Debate took place in the Pre-Qin (Chin) China, that is, before the first empire – the Qin Empire, which was founded in 221 B.C. It was enacted by the exchanges among groups and generations of literati/intellectuals called zi (Elder or Sage), as in the suffix of such names as Mozi (ca. 476–390 B.C.), Xunzi (ca. 313–238 B.C.), Zhuangzi (369–286 B.C.), etc., over a period of three hundred years. Studies devoted to the doctrines and writings of zi are called zixue (knowledge of the Sages), and they constitute one of the four major divisions of classical learning, the other three being jing (the Confucian Canons), shi (Orthodox Histories), and ji (Authorial Collections). The substance of the zi writings is close to that of philosophy in the West; therefore, zixue is sometimes called zhexue (philosophy) (Tan 1978: 61). There are two important characteristics of the controversy over ming (name) and shi (substance or “actuality”) (Makeham 1994). First of all, because of the long time-span in which the controversy took place, and because of the historical distance which makes documentation of names and events difficult and sometimes dubious, the people who were involved in this debate, except in rare cases, could not have possibly been acquaintances, nor could they have been contemporaries actually engaged in immediate speech interaction. Thus all the extralingual and paralingual features essential to discourse as a speech interaction or the concrete manifestation of language are absent. This lack of immediate tête-à-tête contact is highlighted by a second characteristic, namely, the fact that none of these Sages (zi) could have authored the writings attributed to them. These were recorded and compiled by their disciples and by later scholars, sometimes as late as the Han Dynasty in the second century, and the respectable appellation of zi also serves to indicate the fact that their writings were posthumously published. I have termed this phenomenon of controversy among people of different generations as “controvert the dead” (Chang 2001). Because of their posthumous publication, quite a few of those zi writings have been regarded, maybe justifiably so, as apocryphal. It is not my intention here to address this thorny issue of apocrypha because the authenticity of this or that text bears little relevance to the nature and validity of the controversy. Regarding the origin of zi and zixue, there is little consensus either, though the following points are generally accepted. Firstly, zi is a respectable appellation accorded to their master by disciples of later generations. Secondly, extant materials indicate that there were two oldest interpretations regarding their origins. According to the Daoist (Taoist) master Zhuangzi in the chapter “Tianxia” (The Social World) of his collected writings, the so-called “Sages” can be traced to various philosophical schools in ancient times (“gu zi dao shu” [ancient knowledge], i.e., before the time of the Warring-States Period, ca. 475–221 B.C.). But according to



Persuasion in the Pre-Qin China 

the orthodox historian Ban Gu (32–92 A.D.) in his Hanshu yiwenzhi (Art and literature corpus of the History of Han), these Sages were descendants of wangguan (courtier-scholars) who lost their official jobs and went into the business of private teaching. Although Ban derived his material from his predecessors the Liu father (Liu Xiang, ca. 77–76 B.C.) and son (Liu Xin, 50 B.C.-20 A.D.), it is from his text that the expression zhuzi (Several Sages) have come down to us. Thirdly, the flourishing of contending schools in the Warring-States Period bears witness to the social change and political turmoil of the time, the rise of liberal thinking, private education, and wide circulation of books (Tan 1978: 72–73). With so many rival schools of “philosophers” proposing and propounding their theories and praxes, and oftentimes vying for official recognition and political gain, it is only natural that they should run into conflict, which manifests itself most explicitly in their polemics. In the following pages, I shall first outline the nature of such polemics, and then focus my discussion on one particular issue, which relates to the Sages’ different conceptualizations of language and its representational functions. This will bring us to the Chinese version of the “nominalist” versus “realist” debate on name and substance (Graham 1989: 82–83). 3 Three leading controversialists Among the philosophers engaged in verbal fencing, three are particularly worth mentioning, the Daoist Zhuangzi, the Confucianists Xunzi and Mengzi (better known to the West as Mencius, ca. 372–289 B.C.), and the anonymous members of the Mohist school or the Later Mohists. Zhuangzi was probably the first philosopher to launch a critique on the other schools, followed by Xunzi and Mengzi (Ji 1998: 14–15). Chronologically, one should start with Zhuangzi for his overall critique of his contemporaries in the chapter entitled “Tianxia”, and then move to Xunzi who attacks the twelve Sages of the time. However, it is Mengzi who is especially eloquent in expressing the moral urgency of disputation and the way in which disputation serves to fashion a person. Therefore, I shall begin with the well-known dialogue between Mengzi and his disciple Gongduzi, and then move on to Xunzi and Zhuangzi. 4 Mengzi’s Apologia Asked by his disciple why he is so fond of disputing, Mengzi comes to his self-defense in the following passage. I am quoting from the Scottish Sinologist James



Han-liang Chang

Legge’s (1815–1897) “archaic” translation from the late nineteenth century and have put in brackets the current standardized pinyin Latinization for Chinese names. The disciple Kung-tu [Gongdu] said to Mencius [Mengzi], “Master, the people beyond our school all speak of you as being fond of disputing. I venture to ask whether it be so”. Mencius replied, “Indeed, I am not fond of disputing, but I am compelled to do it” (Legge 1973: 278–279).

Mengzi then explains why he is fond of disputing. As a worthy disciple of Confucius, Mengzi laments the disintegration of political and social orders in the Warring-States Period. He observes, “After the death of Yao and Shun [two ancient sage rulers], the principles that mark sages fell into decay”; “corrupt speakings and oppressive deeds became more rife”; “unemployed scholars indulge in unreasonable discussions” (280). These include two most popular theoreticians, Yang Zhu [Yangzi, fl. late 5th-century B.C.] and Modi [Mozi, ca. 476–390 B.C.], whose words “fill the country”. And, continues Mengzi, “If you listen to people’s discourses … you will find that they have adopted the views either of Yang or of Mo” (282). “If the principles of Yang and Mo be not stopped, and the principles of Confucius not set forth, then those perverse speakings will delude the people, and stop up the path of benevolence and righteousness” (283). Mengzi admits to being “alarmed by these things”, and sets upon himself the task of defending “the doctrines of the former sages, and to oppose Yang and Mo” (283). He says: I drive away their licentious expressions, so that such perverse speakers may not be able to show themselves … I also wish to rectify men’s hearts, and to put an end to those perverse doctrines, to oppose their one-sided actions and banish away their licentious expressions; – and thus to carry on the work of the three sages. Do I do so because I am fond of disputing? I am compelled to do it (Legge 1973: 283–284).

One has to situate Mengzi’s apologia pro vita sua in the context of the afore-mentioned conflicts of philosophical doctrines. Mengzi’s primary target, as the text shows, is the contending Mo and Yang schools. His strategy is argumentation by authority, and his excuse the championship of the lost orthodox tradition, as he says rather self-righteously: “When sages shall rise up again, they will not change my words” (283). That tradition is based on the political order of rectification of names, whereby kings, courtiers, fathers and sons enter into a well-governed, unbroken chain of political and familial filiations.



Persuasion in the Pre-Qin China 

5 Xunzi contra twelve philosophers In the same manner as Mengzi criticizes Yangzi and Mozi for using “licentious expressions” to transmit “perverse doctrines”, another follower of Confucius, Xunzi, inveighs against his contemporaries’ abuse of language by “embellishing aberrant doctrines, and decorating devious statements”. His critique is directed at the twelve Sages (shierzi), in an essay that has been translated as “Contra twelve philosophers” (Knoblock 1988), reminiscent of the post-Hellenistic disputational tradition made popular by Sextus Empiricus and the Stoics. Xunzi’s criticism represents one of the positions regarding the use of language in philosophical and political argumentation. According to Xunzi (Wang 1955), all the twelve people, including Confucius’s followers Zisi (484-402 B.C.) and Mengzi, excel in persuasion, and “their arguments are well-grounded, and their speeches make good sense, so that they can deceive the ignorant and beguile the crowd” (my translation). In John Knoblock’s more elegant rendition, it reads “Some of what they advocate has a rational basis, and their statements have perfect logic, enough indeed to deceive and mislead the ignorant masses” (1988, 1: 223). It may look strange why this kind of sound persuasion, with “a rational basis” and “perfect logic”, is not acceptable. Such statements cannot but transmit truth arrived at through logical reasoning. Let us examine how Xunzi criticizes the twelve philosophers. Earlier he opens the chapter by passing his overall evaluation on the use of language by these philosophers. Knoblock renders this as: Some men of the present generation cloak pernicious persuasions in beautiful language and present elegantly composed but treacherous doctrines and so create disorder and anarchy in the world. Such men are personally insidious and ostentatious, conceited and vulgar, yet they spread through the whole world their confused ignorance of wherein lies the distinction between right and wrong and between order and anarchy (222–223).

Isn’t what Xunzi criticizes exactly the concern of rhetoric where the logical truthclaim is suspended, as in the case of Gorgias and other sophists? Xunzi divides the twelve philosophers he counters into six groups: (1) Tuo Xiao and Wei Mou; (2) Chen Zhong and Shi Qiou; (3) Modi (Mozi) and Song Yan; (4) Shen Dao and Tian Pian; (5) Hui Shi and Deng Xi; (6) Zisi and Meng Ke (Mengzi), but he does not label them by school names, these being a later invention by the Grand Historian.3 What do the twelve philosophers have in common, apart from their excellence in language’s social use? Xunzi does not seem to detect any problem in his faulting their use of “beautiful language” for “pernicious persuasions”; “elegant composition” for “treacherous doctrines”. The twelve philosophers’ doctrines on physical indulgence, repression of human emotions and innate

 Han-liang Chang

nature, economy and frugality, their ignorance of gradations of rank and status, their lacking “a classical norm for the state or to fix social distinctions” and “guiding rules or ordering norms for government” (Knoblock 1988, 1: 224), not understanding the guiding principles of the Confucian model – none of these drawbacks diminish their illocutionary and perlocutionary forces. These are ethical and political issues rather than linguistic ones, revealing an assumption that beautiful language has to be morally good and politically correct, or, in short, that there is an inherent agreement between name and substance. Therefore the heart of the matter lies in ethical considerations rather than rhetorical ones – for rhetoric is at the service of ethics, a fact none of the philosophers of the time would openly deny. This insistence on the politicized moral intent in language use, or more exactly, at the expense of language, underlies in fact the criticism of the Confucianists Mengzi and Xunzi though they have been regarded as representing two opposing camps amongst the followers of the Sage. There is no surprise that the late dialectician Gongsun Longzi (fl. 257 B.C.?) should become the common target of the Later Mohists, Xunzi, and his contemporary Zhuangzi.4 Their dispute centers on the relationship between name as signans and what it represents, i.e., its signatum, an issue to which we shall return after our survey of Zhuangzi. 6 Zhuangzi and the Mohists on differentiation Whereas Mengzi targets the two extreme versions of utilitarianism popularized by Mozi and Yangzi, and Xunzi criticizes all his fellow-philosophers, Zhuangzi’s practice is not unlike Xunzi’s when he launches a shooting spree on all the other schools. In the chapter “Tianxia”, the last chapter of the book attributed to him, Master Zhuang begins by giving a survey of the current intellectual climate. Many are the men in the world who apply themselves to doctrines and policies, and each believes he has something that cannot be improved upon […] The men of the world all follow their own desires and make these their “doctrine”. How sad! – the hundred schools going on and on instead of turning back, fated never to join again (Watson 1968: 362, 364).

Then he blames the followers of Mozi, who indulge in futile verbal games like the famous “hard-white” and “difference-sameness” sophisms and answer each other with contradictory phrases that do not match (367). As spokesmen of two dominant philosophical schools, Zhuangzi and Mozi differ in many aspects. Particularly relevant to our concern here are their opposing views about argumentation. It is not easy to reconstruct the chronology of their exchanges though it can be established by textual evidence that the debate on the



Persuasion in the Pre-Qin China 

nature and function of argumentation was between the Daoist philosopher and Mozi’s disciples. Throughout his writings, Zhuang as doxographer often alludes to the contention of Confucianism and Mohism.5 In “Qiwulun” or “Discussion on Making All Things Equal”, the second chapter of Zhuangzi, the philosopher succinctly represents their polemics. When the Way relies on little accomplishments and words rely on vain show, then we have the rights and wrongs of the Confucianists and the Moists [Mohists]. What one calls right the other calls wrong; what one calls wrong the other calls right. But if we want to right their wrongs and wrong their rights, then the best thing to use is clarity [ming]” (Watson 1968: 39; transliteration and emphasis added).

With the English translation, it seems Zhuangzi is suggesting a third party as the arbitrator. This is, however, not the case. The mediaeval annotator Guo Xiang (252–312 A.D.) questions the very possibility of a “clarified” supra-truth beyond the interlocutors’ positions and suggests a total erasure of truths through the two sides’ double negations of pros and cons (Guo 1975: 65). Towards the end of the same discourse, Zhuang picks up the adage again: A state in which “this” and “that” no longer find their opposites is called the hinge of the Way. When the hinge is fitted into the socket, it can respond endlessly. Its right then is a single endlessness and its wrong too is a single endlessness. So, I say, the best thing to use is clarity (Watson 1968: 40).

Here the cryptic “clarity” can be glossed by Zhuangzi’s refutation of Gongsun Longzi’s famous arguments of zhiwu (On Pointing at Things) and baima (On White Horse). Zhuang illustrates the principle of “clarity” by commenting on Gongsun’s sophisms: To use an attribute to show that attributes are not attributes is not as good as using a non-attribute to show that attributes are not attributes. To use a horse to show that a horse is not a horse is not as good as using a non-horse to show that a horse is not a horse. Heaven and earth are one attribute; the ten thousand things are one horse (Watson 1968: 40).

The allusions are to the two paradoxes popularized by Gongsun Longzi. The first one asserts, in the transliterated Chinese original, “wu mo fei zhi er zhi fei zhi” (“all things [concepts] are indicated [appellated], but indication [appellation] itself cannot be indicated [or the indicator itself is not what is indicated]”; my translation). And the second paradox – perhaps the more famous one – states, “bai ma fei ma” (“white horse is not horse”; my translation). This is not the occasion to disambiguate Gongsun Longzi’s puzzles. Much has been done in this regard (Chang 1998). The important thing is that the kind of epistemological enquiry into the nature of things based on differentiation is in diametrical opposition to that of



Han-liang Chang

Zhuangzi’s. The latter’s basic idea is to dismiss differentiation from our knowledge. Zhuang’s refutation of Gongsun may sound banal because of its tautological argument and the writer’s failure to comprehend, perhaps intentionally, Gongsun’s distinction between object-language and meta-language. 7 Zhuangzi and the Mohists on disputation There is no accident that it is in the same chapter where Zhuangzi refutes his contemporary Mohists and rhetoricians (alternatively called logicians or dialecticians) that he voices his position against argumentation or debate. The statement is so famous that it is worth quoting in length. Suppose you and I have had an argument. If you have beaten me instead of my beating you, then are you necessarily right and am I necessarily wrong? If I have beaten you instead of your beating me, then am I necessarily right and are you necessarily wrong? Is one of us right and the other wrong? Are both of us right or are both of us wrong? If you and I don’t know the answer, then other people are bound to be even more in the dark. Whom shall we get to decide what is right? Shall we get someone who agrees with you to decide? But if he already agrees with you, how can he decide fairly? Shall we get someone who agrees with me? But if he already agrees with me, how can he decide? Shall we get someone who disagrees with both of us? But if he already disagrees with both of us, how can he decide? Shall we get someone who agrees with both of us? But if he already agrees with both of us, how can he decide? Obviously, then, neither you nor I nor anyone else can decide for each other. Shall we wait for still another person? (Watson 1968: 48).

The statement revealing Zhuangzi’s idealist agnosticism can be construed as a direct response to Mozi and his disciples. The latter’s comments on debate are scattered mainly in chapter 40, “The Upper Canon”, and chapter 45, “The Small Pick” of the Mojing (Sun 2002; Li 1996). Mozi defines bian or disputation as “contending over claims which are the converse of each other”, and asserts that “winning in disputation is fitting the fact” (Graham 1978: 318). These characteristically elliptical and cryptic remarks are annotated as follows. [Bian]: One calling it “ox” and the other “non-ox” is “contending over claims which are the converse of each other”. Such being the case they do not both fit the fact; and if they do not both fit, necessarily one of them does not fit (not like fitting “dog”) (Graham 1978: 318).

A disputation can be established only when the two parties are not talking about the same thing in different names, e.g., there being no dispute between calling an



Persuasion in the Pre-Qin China 

animal gou (dog) and calling it quan (whelp), and when the two parties are not talking about different things in different names, e.g., there being no dispute between calling an animal niu (ox) and calling another ma (horse). Reding (2004) describes this situation in terms of the principle of non-contradiction. If we go back to the Chinese original, we may venture a less cryptic interpretation. “Bian refers to competition (zheng) between two opposite claims (bi), and it’s only right that one side wins [and the winner of the dispute has the valid argument]” (Li 1996: 289; my translation). This text is glossed with the following notes. An example of bian is as follows: One party claims an animal to be “ox”; the other “not ox” [or “non-ox”]. This illustrates zheng bi (competition between or disputation over opposite claims). It’s impossible that both sides’ claims are right. That not both claims are right means one claim is not right. The wrong claim is just like claiming an ox to be a dog (Li 1996: 289; my translation).

It is not my intention to challenge Graham’s reading, given, amongst other things, the well known difficulty of Mojing’s language. Apparently, the Mohist stance suggests, firstly, a common ground for debate, and then the possibility of transcendental arbitration. Both concepts – the existence of a common ground and the possibility of arbitration – are based on the assumption of language’s “objective cognitive content” (Reding 2004: 20; cf. Zhu 1988: 54ff); in other words, ming and shi correspondence. Reding explains the above instance in terms of the impossibility of contradiction and identifies the similar mechanism underlying Zhuangzi’s relativism regarding debate cited above (2004: 19–20). There was indeed no contradiction if by this one meant, literally, “self-contradiction” or “paradox”: a person making at once two contrary statements, or a doxa plus another doxa. One could say there is no paradox of contradiction in the Mohist example, but this does not lead to the conclusion that there is no controversy when two parties engage in language disputation. Dictio or versus – What’s in a name (or a line)? 8 From differentiation (bian) to disputation (bian) In Chapter two of Zhuangzi, the Daoist master criticizes the futile differentiation/ disputation (bian) between Confucianists and Mohists. This is the passage where he denounces disputation, which, strangely but logically, begins with differentiation of values. Words [yan] are not just wind [cui]. Words have something to say. But if what they have to say is not fixed, then do they really say something? Or do they say nothing? People suppose that words are different from the peeps of baby birds [gou yin], but is there any difference [bian], or isn’t there? What does the Way [Dao]



Han-liang Chang

rely upon, that we have true and false? What do words rely upon, that we have right [shi] and wrong [fei]? How can the Way go away and not exist? How can words exist and not be acceptable? When the Way relies on little accomplishments and words rely on vain show, then we have the rights and wrongs of the Confucians and the Moists. What one calls right the other calls wrong; what one calls wrong the other calls right (Watson 1968: 39; transliteration added).

This passage will lead to our subsequent discussion of Zhuangzi’s critique of his contemporary rhetoricians, in particular his close friend Hui Shi and the sophist Gongsun Long. Confused as it first seems, the passage nevertheless contains an implicit protolinguistic or proto-semiotic theory, a theory not incompatible with that held by the Mohists mentioned above. Several points can be made in this regard. Firstly, language has to make sense, and secondly its ultimate value closes on the transcendental signified Dao (Way). Whilst cui (wind) and gou yin (peeps of baby birds) also make sounds, yan (speech) as linguistic sign is characterized by its double articulation in sound (signifier) and sense (signified). On top of this basic signification that involves the phonic and semantic aspects of language is the higher metaphysical level that manifests Dao. Furthermore, human speech is not only restricted to the first-order of semiosis, i.e., signification, but also covers the second-order of semiosis which is none other than communication – discussion, debate, disputation – or its failure. It is at this point that semantic differentiation gives rise to, or gives way to, pragmatic disputation. This transformation is particularly conspicuous in Zhuangzi’s rejoinders to his fellow-logicians and rhetoricians. Criticizing his logician friend Hui Shi, Zhuangzi has this to say, “Hui Shih had many devices and his writings would fill five carriages. But his doctrines were jumbled and perverse and his words wide off the mark” (Watson 1968: 374). A bosom friend of Zhuang’s, but not short of his ridicule, Hui Shi is well known for his sophisms, such as “The southern region has no limit and yet has a limit” and “I set off for Yueh today and arrived there yesterday”. Others include: “Heaven is as low as earth; mountains and marshes are on the same level”; “The sun at noon is the sun setting”; “The thing born is the thing dying”. Zhuangzi comments: “With sayings such as these, Hui Shih tried to introduce a more magnanimous view of the world and to enlighten the rhetoricians” (Watson 1968: 375). The latter happily responded with other similar absurdities. Zhuang has identified and listed twenty-one of them. Examples are: “Fire is not hot”; “Mountains come out of the mouth”; “Wheels never touch the ground”; “Pointing to it never gets to it; if it got to it, there would be no separation”; “The flying bird’s shadow never moves”; “No matter how swift the barbed arrow, there are times when it is neither moving nor at rest”; “A dog is not a canine”; “A yellow horse and a black cow make three”; “The orphan colt never had a mother”; “Take a pole one foot long, cut away half of it



Persuasion in the Pre-Qin China 

every day, and at the end of ten thousand generations there will still be some left” (Watson 1968: 375–376). Zhuangzi singles out two prominent dialecticians, Huan Tuan and Gongsun Long, for his criticism. According to Zhuang, “Dazzling men’s minds, unsettling their views, they could outdo others in talking, but could not make them submit in their minds – such were the limitations of the rhetoricians”. But “Hui Shih day after day used the knowledge he had in his debates with others, deliberately thinking up ways to astonish the rhetoricians of the world” (Watson 1968: 376). Most of the afore-mentioned sophisms remind one of Zeno’s paradoxes, e.g., “Achilles and the tortoise” and “the flying arrow”, and hence may sound familiar to Western readers. Their origins can hardly be traced, because they are also found in the Mohist Canons and other texts. Suffice it to say that these commonplaces are reflective of philosophers’ general interest in logic and language, and they join to construct an intertextual and discursive space for disputation. As if to display his literary talent and mastery of the verbal art, Zhuangzi makes free use of all the available dramatic devices in his representations of Hui Shi and Gongsun Long, not short of logical fallacies and violation of cooperative principles, if gauged as real life situations. This forces us to reflect on the extent to which conventions of writing and constraints of genre interfere with speech pragmatics. In fact, many of the sophistic debates of the time are embedded in the popular genre of philosophical dialogue (Chang 2003). This is not a stylistic privilege of Zhuangzi’s, but a commonplace shared by many others, including Mengzi and Gongsun Long. For instance, four chapters of the surviving six attributed to Gongsun Long are written in dialogue form, whether or not the interlocutors are identifiable historical personages is another matter. In Zhuangzi’s refutation against Gongsun, the latter is now alluded to in passing as an a-personal third party (Benveniste 1971), now dramatized as an interlocutor engaged in verbal exchange with another person. Rhetoricians like Zhuangzi must have found dialogue a readymade strategy to exercise their power of persuasion. 9 Ming and Shi: Conjunction or disjunction? As has been pointed out, most of the sophisms lampooned by Zhuangzi boil down to some basic semantic and cognitive issues. The paradoxes “A dog [gou] is not a canine [quan]” and “The orphan colt [gu ju] never had a mother” clearly suggest that the logicians entertain their audiences by playing on the confusion of the linguistic sign’s functives of signifier and signified and its external reference. In other words, what is at issue here is the distinction between (or debate on) word and object, or name and substance (ming shi zhi bian). It was so popular in the logical



Han-liang Chang

writings of the time that it came to be confused with the later Daoist appellation of Xin ming (form/name) in the Han Dynasty. The debate involves almost all the PreQin philosophical schools because, like the philosophical traditions of other civilizations, naming seems to be a fundamental and universal concern. Laozi (fl. sixth century B.C.) begins by stressing the dialectics of namelessness and naming as the birth of the (human) universe; Confucius (551–479 B.C.) and his disciples are all in favor of rectifying names. Following Confucius’s famous statement of rectification of (political) names as a prerequisite for everything, Xunzi and Lu Buwei (ca. 290–235 B.C.) have each composed a treatise entitled “Zhengming” (rectification of names). It is interesting to note that in Lu’s treatise the author devotes much space to the dialectician Yinwenzi (ca. 360–280 B.C.) and alludes to the latter’s lost book entitled Mingshu (Book of names). The same Yinwenzi is the subject matter of another portrait by his dialectician follower Gongsun Long. From the perspective of modern logical semantics and semiotics, much of the discussion is confused and needs logical clarification and semiotic re-articulation. For instance, the semantic range of ming is too broad to be functional. Suffice it to cite the usages of three philosophers who are particularly concerned with the issue, Mozi, Xunzi and Yinwenzi. Mozi’s classification of names is quite well known. These are daming, leiming, and siming (Sun, Y. 2002, 15: 429), which can be respectively translated as “comprehensive name” (“unrestricted name”), “classifying name” and “proper name” (“private name”) (Chmielewski 1962: 18; Graham 1978: 325). Whilst daming refers to the name of any thing or object, leiming to that of a class of things or objects, such as ma for horse, siming to the proper name of a person or place, Yinwenzi makes the distinction among ming wu zhi ming (names of things), hui yu zhi ming (names in praise or blame), and kuang wei zhi ming (names for description). Xunzi calls them, respectively, sanming (random names), xingming (legal names), jueming (rank names), and wenming (embellished names) (Sun 1994: 153). Xunzi has traced these names to the Pre-Confucian Three Dynasties, the vanished Golden Age ruled by Sage Kings. It is then that the foundation for nomenclature was laid and any kind of deviation in language would confound that canonized system. I have elsewhere discussed the possibility of semantic and semiotic remodeling of this debate (Chang 1998). A logico-semantic remodeling of the discourse of Zhengming would make it possible for us to reread the concept as a problem of definitional logic, which is a pre-condition for a correct axiomatic-deductive, synthetic reasoning. From the logical point of view, the discussion of a dialectician like Gongsun Long involves the reasoning procedure from the definitional, to the propositional, and to the inferential logic. With this, the paradox of “bai ma fei ma” (“white horse” is not “horse”) can be easily disambiguated and rationalized by the type-token relation. But a semiotic modeling would more effectively solve the



Persuasion in the Pre-Qin China 

famous paradox because its analysis of the referring relation of sign-functives starts by suspending sign’s referentiality. The issue is no longer logico-semantic. I believe a more adequate approach to such sophisms would be semiotic. Gongsun Long is notorious for his insistence on clear distinction and explicit formalization of names. This has incited the joint attack of his fellow-logicians, including Xunzi, Zhuangzi, and the Later Mohists. In the chapter of “Xiaoqu” (the Small Pick) of the Mohist Canons, the author refutes Gongsun by asserting that “A white horse is a horse, and riding a white horse is riding a horse” (Li 1996: 378; my translation). This kind of rather simplistic distinction between type and token fails to articulate the more subtle semiotic mapping of the relationship between signifier and signified, or signans and signatum. From a different persuasion, Xunzi asserts that a true master (junzi) surely knows the difference between hardness and whiteness, thickness and non-thickness, but he has other concerns than indulging in dialectics. Zhuangzi launches his critique of Gongsun Long on several occasions. As we have shown, the Daoist metaphysician is not interested in the linguistic sign as relating signifier and signified, but in the sign’s referent. For him, any enquiry into the nuance of a sign’s constituents can be criticized as “devious argument for hardness and whiteness and treacherous explication of sameness and difference” (Guo 1975: 359; my translation). Zhuangzi’s argument is both evasive and simplistic: before language can be abolished, one should be content with its referential function. This can be evidenced by his comment on the white horse argument. He challenges Gongsun Long to the effect: “To use a horse to show that a horse is not a horse is not as good as using a non-horse to show that a horse is not a horse” (Watson 1968: 40). This refutation has little force because “A horse is not a nonhorse” is just like “A white horse is a horse”, both being analytic discourse based on tautological implicates, whereas “A white horse is not a horse” is mystical discourse based on contradictory implicates. The original Chinese “bai ma fei ma” contains a semiotic dimension, which cannot be represented by English unless it’s de-grammatized. The two signs “white horse” and “horse” linked by the negative copula can never be equated because of the differentiation in their sign-functives, be the referring relationship one of the Saussurian signifier/signified or the Peircean qualisign/sinsign. Ironically, in his treatise on ming and shi (“Mingshilun”) (Gao and Lin 1996: 212–215), Gongsun Long asserts: “What is ming? It is used to name shi. Knowing this ming does not refer to this shi, and knowing this shi is not available here, one should not use this ming. Knowing that ming does not correspond to that shi, and knowing that shi is not available here, one should not use that ming” (214; my translation). Here Gongsun Long, Zhuangzi, Xunzi and the Later Mohists seem to concur in their shared belief in ming and shi correspondence.



Han-liang Chang

10 Conclusion There is a touch of irony in Zhuangzi’s rather harsh criticism of Gongsun Long. He criticizes the latter for lacking respect for language’s referential function, and for concealing speech by rhetoric. Whilst Gongsun Long, motivated by his belief in differentiation, has suspended language’s referential function, Zhuang does exactly the same thing, but through other strategies to blur distinctions. He has recourse to pompous, highly imaginative writing. As a rhetorician, he is no less good than the dialectician at “employing paradoxical explanations, terms for vastness, expressions for infinity” (Guo 1975: 1098; my translation). All those involved in the Great Debate participate in a prolonged language game, and their polemical discourse only serves to highlight and reiterate the failure in communication because each disputer encodes his language in one way, but decodes others’ in another. References Aristotle. 1991. The Art of Rhetoric. H. Lawson-Tancred (trans). London: Penguin. Benveniste, E. 1971. Problems in General Linguistics. M.E. Meek (trans). Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami Press. Chang, H.L. 1998. “Controversy over language: Towards Pre-Qin semiotics”. Tamkang Review 28(3) (Special Issue on Chinese Semiotics): 1–29. Chang, H.L. 2001. “Controvert the Dead: Sextus Empiricus and Plutarch against the Stoics”. In M. Dascal, G. Fritz, T. Gloning, and Y. Senderowicz (eds), Controversy and Philosophy (Technical Report 2 of the Research Project “Controversies in the République des Lettres”), 25–35. Chang, H.L. 2003. “The Paradox of learning and the Elenchos: Plato’s Meno, Augustine’s De Magistro, and Gongsunlong’s Jianbailun”. Comparative Literature in the Cross-cultural Context. Nanjing: Yilin Press, 185–201. Chmielewski, J. 1962. “Notes on early Chinese logic (I)”. Rocznik Orientalistyczny 26.1. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 7–21. Chmielewski, J. 1963. “Notes on early Chinese logic (II)”. Rocznik Orientalistyczny 26.2. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 91–105. Chmielewski, J. 1965. “Notes on early Chinese logic (V)”. Rocznik Orientalistyczny 29.2. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 117–38. Chmielewski, J. 1966. “Notes on early Chinese logic (VI)”. Rocznik Orientalistyczny 30.1. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 31–52. Chmielewski, J. 1968. “Notes on early Chinese logic (VII)”. Rocznik Orientalistyczny 31.1. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 117–36. Chmielewski, J. 1969. “Notes on early Chinese logic (VIII)”. Rocznik Orientalistyczny 32.2. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 83–103. Cui, Q. 2004. Mojia luoji yu yalishiduode luoji bijiao yanjiu (Comparative Research on Mohist and Aristotelian Logic). Beijing: Renmin chubanshe.



Persuasion in the Pre-Qin China 

Defoort, C. 1997. The Pheasant Cap Master He Guan Zi: A Rhetorical Reading. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Gao, L.S. and Lin, H.S. (eds. and trans.). 1996. Shenzi yinwenzi Gongsunlongzi quanyi (A Complete Modern Translation of Shenzi, Yinwenzi and Gongsunlongzi). Guiyang: Guizhou Renmin chubanshe. Graham, A.C. 1978. Later Mohist Logic, Ethics and Science. Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press. Graham, A.C. 1989. Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China. La Salle, IL: Open Court. Guo, Q. 1975. Zhuangzi jishi (Collected annotations of Zhuangzi). Tainan: Weiyi Publishers. Knoblock, J. 1988–1994. Xunzi: A Translation and Study of the Complete Works. 3 vols. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Ji, Z. 1998 [1966]. Xianqin zhuzi xue (Pre-Qin Philosophy Studies). 2nd ed. Kaohsiung: Francis Y. Kai (private publication). Legge, J. 1973 [1892–1894]. The Four Books: Confucian Analects, The Great Learning, The Doctrine of the Mean, the Works of Mencius. New York: Dover (Reprint. 2 vols in one. Taipei: Dasheng shuju). Li, S.L. 1996. Mozi xinyi duben (A new translation of Mozi). Taipei: Sanmin shuju. Lu, X. 1998. Rhetoric in Ancient China, Fifth to Third Century, B.C.E.: A Comparison with Classical Greek Rhetoric. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press. Makeham, J. 1994. Name and Actuality in Early Chinese Thought. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Qian, M. 1935. Xianqin zhuzi xinian kaobian (An Inquiry into the Chronicle of Pre-Qin Philosophers). Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan. Reding, J.P. 2004. Comparative Essays in Early Greek and Chinese Rational Thinking. Aldershot, Hants: Ashgate. Shen, Y. 1980. Mojing de luojixue (Logic in the Mohist Writings). Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe. Sun, Y.A. 2002 [1894]. Mozi xiangu (Random Annotations of the Mohist Writings). Beijing: Beijing tushuguan chubanshe. Sun, Z.Y. 1994. Guibian yu luoji mingpian shangxi (Selected Readings of [Chinese] Sophists and Logicians). Taibei (Taipei): Shuiniu chubanshe. Tan, Z.B. 1978 [1936]. Guoxue gailun xinbian (New Edition of Classics Studies). Taibei (Taipei): Heluo chubanshe. Wang, X.Q. 1955. Xunzi ji jie (Collected Annotations of Xunzi). Taipei: Shijie shuju. Watson, B. 1968. The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu. New York: Columbia University Press. Zhu, Z.K. 1988. Mojing zhong de luoji xueshuo (Doctrines of Logic in Mojing). Chengdu: Sichu Renmin chubanshe.

Notes 1. The Chinese word for bian in its original form is double denotative; it means at once debate and distinction, but two different words (graphic forms or graphemic signifiers) are used for the two senses (signifieds) in modern Chinese. However, the semantic differentiation and identification denoted by the original form are important to our understanding of the complex rela-

 Han-liang Chang tionship between semantics and pragmatics, i.e., clarifying nuances of meaning and engaging in debate. 2. Whilst Aristotle begins his The Art of Rhetoric with the statement “Rhetoric is the counterpart of dialectic” (1991: 66), he subsumes the enthymeme or “rhetorical demonstration” under dialectic and stresses its difference from “logical syllogisms” (68, [Topics]). 3. It must be noted that there were no school titles in the Pre-Qin China. This practice is due to the Grand Historian, Sima Qian, who grouped the Pre-Qin zis into six schools, i.e., Yin-Yang, Confucian, Mohist, Nominalist, Legalist, and Daoist, in the first century B.C. 4. Here, again, a precise chronology is impossible. Graham points out: “There is a chronological difficulty about taking Chuang-tzu to be directly criticising Kung-sun Lung, who was a client of the Lord of P’ing-yüan (died 251 B.C.)” (1989: 179). Books like Qian Mu (1935) may help to clarify factual points of contact or the lack of them, but positivism fails to account for textualized (i.e., fictionalized) events and has little explanatory power for the philosophical issues involved. 5. To the supposedly older Mohist Canons or Jing are appended Commentaries on Canons or Jingshuo, presumably by the Later Mohists. Amongst the seventy-one chapters of extant Mohist writings, only six deal explicitly and almost exclusively with logic and language. They are (1) the Upper Canons (Jingshang); (2) the Lower Canons (Jingxia); (3) Commentaries on the Upper Canons (Jingshuoshang); (4) Commentaries on the Lower Canons (Jingshuoxia); (5) the Great Pick (Daqu); and (6) the Small Pick (Xiaoqu). Partly due to the shared critical commonplaces, these texts can be read intertextually as rejoinders to other philosophers’ discussions of linguistic and logical concepts. These and many other sophistic texts join to form an intertextual space where opinions crisscross and interact, which complicate the problems of chronology and authenticity of authorship.

chapter 5

‘In proper form’ Xunzi’s theory of xinger Peng Yi

1 This paper will deal with the term “form” in Xunzi (ca. 313–238 B.C.) in order to bring out the thinker’s polemical stance on human nature that will affect later debates in Chinese intellectual history well into the dawn of the modern age. While a constant battle of books rages around central questions such as the inherent good or evil of human nature (xingshan or xinger), ritual principles (li), names or terms (ming), and desire or needs (yu), it is perhaps within reason that this term unaffiliated to any hermeneutic tradition should receive little or no attention as to its role in shaping the direction of the controversies. But I wish to demonstrate in what follows that the question of form is related to the proper or due form of debate and will become the site of much controversy in the early Qing period where the discussions surrounding human nature actually hark back to Xunzi’s polemic on the basis of form. Most importantly, the motif is linked to the confrontation between paradigms at the time of crisis. One of the major aims of Bryan W. Van Norden’s “Mengzi and Xunzi: Two views of human agency” is to clarify the underlying reason of Xunzi’s proposition that human nature is evil. To put it simply at this stage, the conclusion he reached in connection with Mengzi is that Xunzi needs to differentiate himself unequivocally both from Mengzi and a shadowy third, Gaozi, who basically considers human nature as morally neutral and thereby implying a voluntarism that defeats Xunzi’s emphasis on the demanding work of cultivation (Van Norden 2002: 127). Based on Van Norden’s analysis, we can take a closer look at the beginning of an extended and complicated dialogue between Mengzi and Gaozi (in the example

 Peng Yi

below, Mencius and Kao Tzu, i.e., Gaozi). The question of form that arises tangentially has a bearing on our concern: Kao Tzu said, “Human Nature is like the ch’i willow. Dutifulness is like cups and bowls. To make morality out of human nature is like making cups and bowls out of the willow”. “Can you”, said Mencius, “Make cups and bowls by following the nature of willow? Or must you mutilate the willow before you can make it into cups and bowls. If you have to mutilate the willow to make it into cups and bowls, must you, then, also mutilate a man to make him moral...” (Lau 1970: 160–1).

Gaozi seems to be saying that the form of human nature, be it a cup or a bowl, is whatever you make of the raw material. In contrast, Mengzi emphasizes that the cup or the bowl is the sculpture that you have to chisel out of the marble. So the question is whether the cup should be seen as no different from the willow or whether the cup in its raw form is not what it will become and needs to be teased out of the willow. Disregarding for the moment the fine points of human nature, we can see that the argument is couched in the opposition between form as freely extracted and that which is necessarily arrived at. But the figure of form reemerges in Xunzi’s seminal treatise on human nature and the importance of rites or ritual principles. In “Human’s Nature is Evil”, Xunzi is of course at pains to accentuate the artificial creation rather than the invocation of morality out of human nature which is fundamentally evil. In the process of formulating the thesis, Xunzi employs, deliberately and with an axe to grind so to speak, the figure of bestowing form: “Thus, a warped piece of wood must await the application of the press-frame and force to bend its shape before it can be made straight. A dull piece of metal must first be whetted on the grindstone before it can be made sharp” (Knoblock 1999: 743). Immediately after this, Xunzi tackles directly Mengzi’s view of the inherent good of human nature. Without going into details of how Xunzi distances himself from the latter, we can take a look at the further complication of the metaphor of formation in the same work. An interlocutor questions Xunzi about the impossibility of deducing ritual and moral principle (yi) from a human nature that is fundamentally evil. Xunzi replies by again taking up the all-purpose form: The reply is that as a general rule ritual principles and moral duty are born of the acquired nature of the sage and are not the product of anything inherent in man’s inborn nature. Thus, when the potter shapes the clay to create the vessel, this is the creation of the acquired nature of the potter and not the product of anything inherent in his inborn nature. When an artisan carves a vessel out of a piece of wood, it is the creation of his acquired nature and not the product of his inborn nature (749, italics added).



‘In proper form’ 

In this seminal treatise, Xunzi not only confronts Mengzi on the discursive level but also engages him in the figurative series that Mengzi inaugurates. It is interesting to note that despite the fact that in the text Xunzi had indeed met Mengzi’s ideas head on a few paragraphs before, he deems it worthwhile not only to reiterate Mengzi’s thesis in the quoted passage but does this in a well-wrought scene all by itself. This deserves all the attention we can muster. Summing up what we have witnessed in the connection between Mengzi’s metaphor of the form and its continuation in Xunzi, I see this term as firstly instrumental in Xunzi’s works in bringing out his views on human nature in contrast to Mengzi’s. Secondly, as shown in the multilevel exchange between the two, the question of form is not just limited to the clarification of existing views. It also shores up the particular “manner” in which Xunzi engages his philosophical counterparts and structures the whole argument. Perhaps it is no accident that the issue of form is useful both on the conceptual level and on the strategic level. Proper form involves questions of ritual principles, their corrective relation to human nature, and the conditions of intellectual confrontation. This latter feature also provides an opportunity for us to further explore the methodological issues underlying the controversy over human nature. In a word, Xunzi’s efforts in locating a higher position from which he could adjudicate the debated issues impel him to produce metaphors such as of balance, or more importantly, the figural series related to form.1 The series embodies Xunzi’s endeavor in giving shape to the current debate so that a solution to thorny questions could be envisioned. Therefore, by concentrating on the motif of form we could address Xunzi’s views on human nature and what Xunzi considers to be the proper way to cut the Gordian knot. Most importantly, the motif series both places Xunzi on a different plane and makes the controversy between Xunzi and Mengzi, at least from the vantage point of the former, “a war in form only”, a war “in principle”. Finally, Xunzi’s philosophical speculation and his methodological employment of the motif as a way out of the deadlock point to the question of conditions of potential intellectual revolution, to appropriate Thomas S. Kuhn’s term. In this part, we will try to rethink Xunzi’s reformulation of the thesis of the inherent good of human nature in terms of an attempt at projecting a new paradigm: Xunzi’s thesis of human nature aims not at just another addition to the welter of normative discussions; more often than not, it tries to engage Mengzi’s discourse on the paradigmatic level which in the end pulls the foundation from under the very notion of human nature. This explains some of the peculiarities of the motif of form in Xunzi. But why use Kuhn to explain Xunzi? There are any number of studies of Xunzi’s theory of human nature and its connection with moral agency. The work of Antonio S. Cua not only treats some of the crucial ethical questions we are dealing with here, but also treats them in the context of argumentation. A brief note will

 Peng Yi

suffice here. In the beginning of his Ethical Argumentation, Cua maps out his intention of outlining several aspects of Xunzi’s speculation on argumentation. The themes outlined there basically handle the rational basis and condition of the possibilities of the exchange of ideas.2 By bringing in Kuhn’s theorization of scientific revolutions which puts in doubt their rational basis, I am indicating an alternative way of thinking about Xunzi’s mode of debating: one that seeks less the securing of a rational ground than the play of metaphor and semiosis that characterizes postmodern thinking. Also, by concentrating on the paradigmatic force of the metaphors of form, I am suggesting their potential for interpellation, rather than or in addition to the securing of a rational basis. The connection between my approach via Kuhn to Xunzi and well-known interpretations of the philosopher cannot be dealt with here, but a recent work by Masayuki Sato can provide a useful frame of reference in relation to which I can indicate this paper’s general direction, though the full implication of this direction remains to be seen. In the introduction to his work, Sato gives a brief sketch of the various approaches to Xunzi from the fall of the Qing Dynasty. The main thesis of Sato’s work is the emphasis on the centrality of li. For him, the pivotal status of Xunzi’s theorization of li articulates the major arguments of his study: first, the coherence of Xunzi’s thought can be seen in the rich philosophical and political implications of the concept. Second, the coherence of the concept derives from the fact that it is a response to the political crises and philosophical debates of the time. This means the particular idea of li, when properly examined, reveals a specific historical and philosophical scene in which the philosopher takes an active part. Sato, in short, is proposing the importance of the historical context in a proper assessment of Xunzi, whose thoughts, especially those concerning li, are accordingly both a continuation and completion of earlier thinkers. This puts both Xunzi and also Sato’s research in a particular light. Without going into details, on the basis of his enumeration of the three approaches to Xunzi and the result of historical scholarship by Japanese scholars, Sato’s stance basically extends the theoretical heritage of the crucial Taiwanese Neoconfucians who pay more attention to the coherence of Xunzi by foregrounding the role of li and its connection with the whole Confucian tradition. The study here would be in this schematic enumeration and belongs to an approach in which the researcher “singles out several of the most salient characteristics of Xun Zi’s thought and analyzes them as independent topics. In this approach, two of the most ‘prominent’ aspects of his thought have been subjected to constant scrutiny: ‘distinction between Heaven and man’, and the concept that ‘human nature is evil’” (Sato 2003: 2). This line of attack pertains mostly to Anglo-American studies of Xunzi. Some of the people Sato mentions, such as Cua, will be briefly touched upon here.



‘In proper form’ 

The present study follows the general orientation of this manner of reading Xunzi, but in view of the fact that this orientation is the approach that earns a brief treatment by Sato, the others would project a quite different theoretical scenario. Obviously, this approach of ours seems to be opting for a theoretical coherence in contrast to Sato’s effort to ground Xunzi’s concepts in a particular context so as to obtain a historical and philosophical coherence. This means that a deeper issue to be addressed is the relationship between the theoretical coherence and that particular Confucian or Neoconfucian coherence, or what is the significance, or the lack thereof, of ascertaining the essence of human nature without going back to the historical roots Sato tries so hard to invoke. A self-evident answer is, of course, that the works of Cua and many Western scholars like him are efforts in articulating Xunzi via a different vocabulary emerged from a different tradition. Historical situatedness seems to be the justification for the different approaches. But it is most tempting to speculate whether Xunzi’s concept of li or for that matter, proper form, would not also be used in the hunt for the context of contexts. In this sense, by tracing the transmigration of the metaphor we may also contribute to the understanding of the proper form of the context of contexts.

2 In a way, Xunzi is a very problematic figure in the history of Chinese philosophy. The ambivalence of his status is due to a combination of several things. For instance, although almost all scholars past or present would emphasize the inescapable yet divergent genealogical connection between him and the earlier Mengzi and their common root in Confucius, it is Mengzi who occupies the center stage most of the time. While commentaries abound around Mencius and the Analects, recognition for Xunzi’s works had to wait until the Tang Dynasty. Serious scholarly commentaries appear only in the 1890s (Watson 1963: 12–13). His family resemblance to Confucianism only makes his presence more charged and the response to that presence more often than not stereotypical. As we have seen, there is a revival of interest in the more marginal figures like Xunzi or Mozi at the fin-desiècle because of the challenge of Western philosophical developments. The former more than the latter has to take up arms once more against his eternal nemesis, Mengzi, at the threshold of modernity.3 Radical revolutionaries who propose an enlightened and historically justified appropriation of the classics in the interests of political overhaul usually enlist Mengzi as the embodiment of their thoughts, whereas intellectual reactionaries who advocate strict philological understanding of the canon usually show more affinity to Xunzi.4 His discussion of names is seen as the burgeoning of indigenous logical theory and his ideas of the innate evil of

 Peng Yi

human nature find ready proof in the age of colonial aggression and rampant domestic devastation. Finally, one of the reasons why Xunzi enjoys such an ambivalent status is perhaps that he tries always to rise above controversies and sophistry. Contentiousness, or a penchant for debate, is a description used mostly for Mengzi. This latter figure, Xunzi thinks, excels in speech and uses his knack for debate to quell controversies or heresies. Of course, whether the question of form is properly treated may not be sufficient explanation for the vicissitudes of Xunzi’s career, but I will try to outline the fact that an eye for “formality” and “proper form” better explains Xunzi’s contribution to the relevant debates. Below, I will examine several key words in Xunzi that are associated with form in one way or another. These words include shape or form (xing) and matrix (xingfan), entity or apparatus (qi or daqi), grand entity/apparatus (daju), and finally cavity or emptiness (xiu). The first few terms may seem to be naturally connected to the idea of form while the linkage between the last and the questions at hand may seem tenuous if not contradictory. A tentative explanation will be provided as I treat them in the context of various pieces. On the most physical level, form is used in connection with the shape and outlines of human physiognomy. In the context of Xunzi’s “Contra physiognomy”, the distinctive human forms of either the sage or the tyrant are denied any significance. It is crucial to know that to “physiognomize the external form (xing) is not as important as evaluating the mind or heart (xin), and evaluating the mind is not as important as selecting the proper methodology” (Knoblock 1999: 97). Apes and men share similar physical forms of being biped and featherless, but the similarity only forces us to realize that the true form of humans rests on their ability of making distinctions and being methodical: What is it that makes a man human? I say that it lies in his ability to draw boundaries [or “because he makes distinctions”, Dubs 1928: 71]. To desire food when hungry, to desire warmth when cold, to desire rest when tired, and to be fond of what is beneficial and to hate what is harmful – these characteristics man is born possessing, and he does not have to wait to develop them. They are identical in the case of Yu and in that of Jie. But even so, what makes a man really human lies not primarily in his being a featherless biped, but rather in his ability to draw boundaries (105).

A few subjects will be of importance. First, the question of desire (yu) is already in place. The basic needs of rest, food, and warmth are not only broached but they are defined in relation to human nature.5 Second, these basic needs are something that comes with our existence, or these needs are not “acquired characteristics”. One does not have to attend to it for desire to show its face. This concept of basic needs as innate and working by themselves in human beings carries the following



‘In proper form’ 

implications. Third, the basic needs, as traits that come without any waiting, are hardwired in us and need not be changed. In contrast to these innate characteristics, therefore, are those things that could be changed. Fourth, this is closely related to the crucial questions of ritual principles that open up avenues of categorical shift. Finally, the characteristics are the common property of both the sage king, Yu, and the notorious tyrant, Jie. The questions of innate evil of all, of the capacity for good and one’s unmediated communication with truth or principle (li) due to that capacity as a whole, occupy a prominent place in Chinese philosophy. But first let us outline the motif of form. Xunzi does not deign to refute the possible connection between physiognomical traits and the inner quality of a person. The discussion as it stands would only trivialize the relationship between appearance and true form. If this is the case, is he already indicating the possibility that it is exactly in appearance (as a kind of symbolic emanation) that the true nature of form (such as rites) is to be revealed, though there is an unbridgeable difference between appearance and form? (And would this then require the mediation of a third that bridges the gap?) Another related use is that of the mold or matrix (xingfan). This conceit appears in “On strengthening the state”, and the philosopher in the very beginning points out that as long as the mold is precise, the ore is rich or the fire in the furnace is at the right temperature, the matrix will produce Moye and breaking it open you will have Excalibur or Moye (501).6 The mimetic closeness between the mold and the molded is promptly revised by a series of additional elaborations culminating in the shattering of the bowl: “Nonetheless, if one has not stripped away the outer debris and sharpened the sword with a whetstone, then it could not even cut a marking-line. But if it has been stripped and sharpened, then the sword will slice the metal pan or bowl” (501). In this manner, the matrix conceits reinvent the physical likeness between mold and the object molded, where the relationship between the two is by design “artificial”. The fundamental dehiscence between imposed conditions and the object molded is what guarantees the development or evolution of the theme of artificial creation of the strong state through ritual and moral principles (li yi) (501). To pause for a look before and after, first we can say that physiognomy is not to be relied on, for to trust it is to succumb to what is biological and innate in us. To see the true human form under or above physiognomy is to be able to discern. The biological givens include the needs and our nature. We are endowed with them and we do not have to wait for them. On the other hand, the relationship accentuated by physiognomy embodies the ambiguous relationship between appearance and true form. Therefore, to move away from physiognomy is to reinvent the biological givens which are the foundation of physiognomy. The conceit of the matrix bypasses mimetic associations by discussing imposed conditions which is

 Peng Yi

in turn complicated by the conceit of the whetstone. The extended conceit of the matrix and the whetstone viewed together becomes a mold that tries to give new life to physiognomical and natural ties by giving us a womb that thrives on artificial invention. That is to say, this jarring womb, because it mobilizes not just mimetic blood ties but also artificial, “acquired characteristics”, in contrast to the innate characteristics, opens up all kinds of possibilities. And to put one’s trust in human nature, such as Mengzi seems to be doing by trusting inherent good, would amount to believing in fortune-telling and the art of physiognomy. In Xunzi’s terms, the revamping of the innate characteristics by acquired ones implies the transcending of needs by ritual deed. This of course is the heart of his theory. What we have outlined is that the dissonance between desire and moral principles is played out in the layering of the matrix conceits. Here we gain a glimpse of what it means for Xunzi to conduct a debate with Mengzi “on principle”: the imagistic ambiguity (of the human form under physiognomy and the matrix conceits) provides Xunzi with enough conceptual elevation from which he could obtain a bird’seye view of the matters of principles. Xunzi further develops the matrix conceit in the context of the empire as a special kind of instrument: an empire should not be thought of as something that can be possessed; it is an instrument that transcends its own boundaries. The empire per se is an instrument for the preservation of the polis, just as the ruler is wielder of his unique position and power for the benefit of the polis. Both the empire and the person of the ruler are in this sense instrumental; they are the vessel or the channel for the expression of moral principle that will ultimately sustain the polis. In at least two treatises (“Of kings and lords-protector” and “Rectifying theses”), Xunzi compares the empire as such or the realm of the sage king to great entity/apparatus (daqi or daju). I will concentrate on the latter treatise. In a way, the relevant passages deal with the questions of the ruler and the polis that are also the main issues of the “Rectifying theses”. But the main purpose of the work is of course the cessation of intellectual confusion through a critical rethinking of a list of key topoi: first, the relationship between the form and the cessation of controversy. Xunzi is providing essential clarification and making clear distinction against widespread sophistical persuasion: Now, to accord with popular opinion, persuaders’ theses make Jie and Zhou Xin the real possessors of the empire and Tang and Wu their servants – what utter nonsense this is! […] Accordingly, although it is possible for a state to be taken by force, it is impossible for the whole empire to be taken by force […] A man who resorts to force may possess a state, but he cannot by means of force possess the empire […] why is this? I say that a state being a small thing [a small entity/apparatus] can be possessed by a petty man […] The empire is a great entity [a grand



‘In proper form’ 

entity/apparatus], so it is impossible for a petty man to possess it […] The empire is the greatest of all, and only a sage can possess it (565).

Xunzi is distinguishing between moral franchise of the empire which releases it from physical possession and the state as chattel that can be taken possession of. But at the same time, Xunzi has made the transition from the instrumentality of the empire to that of the Son of Heaven, and this again titillates the limits of our conception of form, human form and all that it promises. As stated a few paragraphs before, this treatise aims at refuting sophistical persuasion. Xunzi shifts his attention to the portrayal of the Son of Heaven. One topic that emerges is that of abdication which also appears in “Rectifying theses”. Questions were put to Xunzi about whether Yao abdicated his kingship to Shun, both legendary sage kings: “In accordance with popular opinion, persuaders of the day say: ‘Yao and Shun abdicated and yielded their throne’. This is not so. Consider the Son of Heaven: his position of power and authority is the most honorable, having no match whatsoever. Further, to whom should they yield?” (575). Xunzi would not even admit to the fact that upon Yao’s death, relinquishment would necessarily occur, as suggested by the persuaders, for the simple reason that real succession occurs only when one sage king worthy of the empire “comes to be” another. The eventuality of death has nothing to do with the ideal lineage of the empire. Later on, in response to yet another question about relinquishment because of physical decay, Xunzi depicts the Son of Heaven as possessing the “position of power, his body enjoys the most perfect leisure” (577).7 In this sense, the king can never grow powerless though he may decay physically. In connection with this, Xunzi describes the lord as the one who “does not think yet knows, does not move yet accomplishes: rather, like a clod of earth he sits alone on his mat, and the world follows him as though it were of a single body with him […] This indeed may be described as the Grand Embodiment (daxing)” (Knoblock 1999: 399). The Grand Embodiment or form of the lord not only transcends his own physical limitations but also expands those of all the others. What this grand form or embodiment does (without doing anything) is to possess the power to transcend basic human nature in itself. This is a layered response to Mengzi. Firstly, human nature (as natura naturata) is deprived of its legitimacy in defining what it is to be a human for it is nothing but basic needs and physical limitations. But this in no way reduces human beings to mere slaves to basic needs and physicality. It opens up the possibility of artificial invention. That is, secondly, at the site of the demolished human nature, we are to cultivate an alternative humanity and the grand embodiment. The expression that Xunzi gives to all this which matches the transmutation from created nature to creation is “human nature is evil” or better still, “the fact that men desire to do

 Peng Yi

good is the product of the fact their nature is evil” (753). This last provocative thesis is a dialectical overturning that matches the transmutation from created nature to creation on the motif level (e.g., in terms of physiognomy and the Grand Embodiment). I consider the last statement a theoretic proposition designed to court incommensurability. In this sense, Xunzi confronts Mengzi’s views by maximizing their incompatibility. Combined with what we said above about the imagistic ambiguity, we can envision a clearer picture of Xunzi’s polemic against Mengzi’s view of human nature: Xunzi projects the ambiguity of the motif unto the dialectical overturning. Together, they are designed for optimal incompatibility. This weaving together of philosophical, metaphoric and rhetoric concerns poses great challenges to seeing Xunzi’s ideas of human evil as the opposite of Mengzi’s view. One way to define the source of that incommensurability is by taking a further look at Xunzi’s theory of desire and how the basic biological givens are able to spawn symbolic possibility. The exegeses of the polemical dictum of the inherent evil are extremely complicated, and the differences between schools often hinge on how one interprets the statement and its relationship with the rest of Xunzi’s ideas. Relevant to our discussion about the Grand Embodiment and how the physical body can be transformed into the former, I will only indicate the important topics involved. First, Xunzi’s relation with the historical context as a whole is an important concern: Is he part and parcel of his time? If he is, one would tend to highlight the consistency between Xunzi and other thinkers. If not, Xunzi’s iconoclastic nature could be envisioned. The description of the Grand Embodiment is related to Daoist influence on Xunzi and his subsequent appropriation of that tradition, which advocates the relinquishment of desire on the way to ultimate peace. David S. Nivison has dealt with the question in his “Xunzi and Zhuangzi”, where he attempts to show how Xunzi is able to acknowledge Zhuangzi’s views about human desire without accepting the solution of detachment (Nivison 2002: 180–182). For Nivison, the rituals are the means to a kind of disinterested interest, an inner peace “despite our involvement in loyalty and love” (184). This brings in another important concern linked to the philosophical and rhetorical import of Xunzi’s dictum as embodied by the Grand Embodiment. It can be seen as both a charismatic performance and a rhetorical overturning of a Daoist motif that aims at rhetorical shock effect and incompatibility. Nivison’s description of Xunzi’s way of appropriating and overturning philosophical predecessors seems to me exemplary. This delineation again indicates the rhetorical implication of the form and the Grand Form/Embodiment, and later on we will see that this Daoist motif can also be associated with Nivison’s interpretation of the birth of moral agency and the question of innate evil (see note 8).



‘In proper form’ 

3 In this part, I will discuss several ideas that serve as the final twist of Xunzi’s interpretation of human nature and an indication of responses that come after Xunzi. One key idea tucked away in the last quotation is that of desiring (yu). In our first quotation from “Contra physiognomy”, we have seen that to desire food and warmth is natural and we are born possessing these desires. Then what does it mean to desire to do good? Is there a difference between the desire for food and to do good? Starting from the question, based on the interpretation of Van Norden, David B. Wong, or T.C. Kline III, we see that the philosophical trajectories of Mengzi and Xunzi part company, and questions such as whether the basic animal needs are connected with the higher needs, whether the latter, similar to the basic needs, survive severe trials so that with the right encouragement can be revived, or whether the two sets of needs really belong together, take on importance.8 In several places in his works, Xunzi has stressed the centrality of desire. In “Rectifying theses”, of the few thinkers Xunzi names and criticizes at length, Master Song occupies an important place. Master Song advocates that we strive to curb our desires. Xunzi corrects him by saying essentially that it is natural to desire and to desire naturally is to desire more. Therefore, Master Song’s advocacy of constraints is fundamentally flawed (597–598). Indeed according to Xunzi, we desire nothing less than the fullest range of things (the word used is qi, the ultimate) and it is wrong to entertain the following assessment of human nature: “[I]t is the essential nature of man that the eye does not desire the full range of colors, the ear does not desire the full range of sounds, the mouth does not desires the full range of tastes” (597).9 In this light, Xunzi is strongly opposed to limiting our desire and instead, he clearly sees desire as constantly pushing against its own boundaries. The difference, if this is the right word to use, between the desire for food and the desire to do good can be said to reside in ritual forms, in our wants, and in the particular quality of our heart/mind. First, about ritual forms, evidence can be found in the very beginning of “Discourse on ritual principles”: “How did ritual principles arise? I say that men are born with desires which, if not satisfied, cannot but lead men to seek to satisfy them or to ‘want’ (qiu). If in seeking to satisfy their desires men observe no measure and apportion things without limits, then it would be impossible for them not to contend over the means to satisfy their desires” (601). Ritual principles as the centerpiece of Xunzi’s theory actually follow from human desire via the equally important role of seeking to satisfy desires, of deliberately “wanting and wishing” to achieve a goal.10 The emergence of the act of deliberation explains the difference between the desire for food and that to do good. In “On the correct use of names”, Xunzi spells out in detail the correlation between natural desire – what is achievable

 Peng Yi

through our wish – and the role of the heart/mind. The relevant context is again about having more or fewer desires: “Having desires” and “lacking desires” belong to different categories, those of life and death, not those of order and disorder. The quantity of our desires, few or many, belongs to a different category, that of the calculation of our essential nature, not that of order and disorder. Desire does not depend on the object of desire first being obtainable, but what is sought after follows after what is possible [Van Norden renders this as “[d]esire does not await being satisfiable, but what is sought follows upon what is approved of (suoke)”] (117).

As can be seen from the two renditions, desire in Knoblock’s version seems to be the more prominent issue, whereas in Van Norden’s translation the question of conscious approval looms large. Below, Knoblock’s translation brings out the issue of the possible – what we deem possible despite impossible odds is quite different from what we approve of, exercising our rational judgment: “That the occurrence of desire does not depend on its object’s first being obtainable is a quality we receive from nature. That what we seek to satisfy our desires by following after what is possible is what we receive from the mind [or heart, xin]” (729).11 The logic of desire cannot be made clearer: the feasibility of the object of desire does not determine what makes desire desire. Although we desire to the fullest extent, moving from desire to mind/heart, the nature and limits of desire are simultaneously revealed and transcended. What we can or cannot do, whether we can impose order or allow disorder to reign, is what constitutes heart/mind’s say about nature and desire. In a way, what best example to use in an attempt to see the leap from basic needs to the desire to do good but desire itself, or the transition from desire to heart? This is not the end of the story, for what we witness in the process is also the emergence of knowledge and symbolic structure. To rewind a little, Xunzi’s theory of desire complicates Mengzi’s empathetic understanding of the interaction among heart, nature and heaven, for Xunzi emphasizes the limitations of nature and categorical difference between heart and heaven, or to put it in another way, the difference between heart and heaven is categorical and epistemological. To determine the categorical difference between heart and heaven, and to depict the form of the relationship between the two is, I think, one of the main purposes of “Discourse on nature (or heaven, tian)”. It is crucial to realize that what makes a man perfect is that he knows to distinguish between operations of heaven/ nature and those of mankind (535). In this parliament of beings, the heart is situated in the “central cavity” (central emptiness) and governs the senses, the natural endowments. In another piece, “Dispelling blindness”, the heart is further defined as the seat of the Way, and the reason that it could become so is because it is “emptiness, unity and stillness. The mind never stops storing; nonetheless, it possesses



‘In proper form’ 

what is called emptiness […] Men from birth have awareness. Having awareness, there is memory [zhi]” (683).12 Equipped with both stillness and movement, the heart creates memory or signs on its own. The Perfect Man turns his back on the work of nature/heaven to no disadvantage to himself. Instead, this negative capability of the Perfect Man will enable him to attain a mystical and symbolic relationship with nature and with heaven: “Heaven has its seasons; Earth its resources; and Man his government. This, of course, is why it is said they can form a triad” (535). Through a triangulation of man, heaven and earth, nature and desire are continued and transcended. Also, the form of man and even of the heart/mind plays the role similar to that of the extended conceits of the matrix: the empty and still form becomes the womb of the emerging symbolic triad. As I have pointed out in the notes, this emptiness is related to Nivison’s solution to the dilemma of the rise of a moral agent from an inherent self-interested being. The neutrality and emptiness of our desire to do good, i.e., morality for itself instead of self-interest only, turn its lack into motivation and empowerment. This empowerment through emptiness reveals the moral aspect of the triad of man, heaven and earth. Surrounding the “central cavity” we see the orbiting triad and moral transformation of the self-interested beings. The challenge for us is whether we focus on the image of the Platonic chora or the moral or epistemological freedom. If we take into consideration Xunzi’s description of the actual ritual sacrifice in “Discourse on ritual principles” and perhaps passages from “Discourse on music”, we realize that, both in the treatise on ritual principles and in “Discourse on nature”, he is laying the foundations of a symbolic edifice, an empire of symbolic forms.13 The triangular structuration of heart, nature and desire is ultimately incompatible with Mengzi’s utopia of the oneness of heart, nature and heaven. Yet by concentrating on the opposition between inherent good or native evil, we are likely to overlook the possibility that the incompatibility is at one with Xunzi’s aim of creating a symbolic universe where human nature is only one side of the triangle. Maybe Xunzi himself contributes to the situation by using the matrix conceits as tools for engaging Mengzi’s analogies while in the same breath trying to use these conceits to carry across his most important theoretic fiction.

4 On the other hand, however, we can look at Xunzi’s thesis about human nature as a theoretic and paradigmatic statement designed as a neutralization of the formidable

 Peng Yi

thesis of Mengzi, intended supposedly to affect “a limited group of people”. At least this is what one of the crucial significances of the term ‘paradigm’ for Kuhn: A paradigm governs […] not a subject matter but rather a group of practitioners. Any study of paradigm-directed or of paradigm-shattering research must begin by locating the responsible group or groups […] A revolution is for me a special sort of change involving a certain reconstruction of group commitments. But it need not be a large change, nor need it seem revolutionary to those outside a single community, consisting perhaps of fewer than twenty-five people. It is just because this type of change, little recognized or discussed in the literature of the philosophy of science, occurs so regularly on this smaller scale that revolutionary, as against cumulative, change so badly needs to be understood (Kuhn 1970: 180–181).

This small or elitist group of people will signal the beginning of a shift in the praxis. Revolution or paradigmatic shift may follow, but the less noticeable and seldom studied thing is that the actual scientific revolution often begins with an inaugural event of a handful of people. In a sense, Xunzi’s thesis may be interpreted as less an address to an existing community than “a call to community” targeted at a Freudian primal horde. Probably that is the reason why the imagistic motif is of such strategic and symbolic importance in conveying his thesis.14 In his 1969 postscript where key terms are explained and clarified in more detail and criticism answered, Kuhn stresses that paradigm for him delineates a community of practitioners (180). This use of the term describes the make-up of the community. He then proceeds to sketch the constellation of their commitments. If we see Xunzi’s view about human nature as a call to community, then the characteristics that Kuhn assigns to group commitments and common modes of consensus-building activities, and especially what happens when conflicting views clash will be helpful in understanding the fate of Xunzi’s thesis. In the second section of his postscript, Kuhn points out the inadequacy of the term “theory” in capturing the empowering capacity of particular theories in forming the underlying consensus of a community. He chooses to use “disciplinary matrix” as the better name for the kind of potentiality that is at issue.15 Among the four specific components of the disciplinary matrix, we can definitely see possible connections between some of them and Xunzi’s thesis on human nature. We need only to point out the fact that these enabling matrices propose to build consensus, provide pedagogic and heuristic exemplars and still preserve enough flexibility or potentiality to create more exemplars and ad hoc solutions. The other side of the story is the threat to an existing consensus from an emergent paradigm. Contrary to some of our expectations about intellectual exchanges or the process of proving or refuting something, the initial meeting between paradigms, such as the views of Mengzi and Xunzi, is characterized by incomprehension and



‘In proper form’ 

incompatibility. Since the raison d’être of the theory is exactly what is under fire, any objective debate about the superiority of one theory over the other is unattainable (198). The only way out of the deadlock is persuasion, conversion and the long process of translation: What one must understand, however, is the manner in which the particular set of shared values interacts with the particular experiences shared by a community of specialists to ensure that most members of the group will ultimately find one set of arguments rather than another decisive […] That process is persuasion, but it presents a deeper problem. Two men who perceive the same situation differently but nevertheless employ the same vocabulary in its discussion must be using words differently. They speak, that is, from what I have called incommensurable viewpoints. How can they even hope to talk together much less to be persuasive. Even a preliminary answer to that question demands further specification of the nature of the difficulty (Kuhn 1970: 200).

One of the most important outcomes of the incommensurable viewpoint is the breakdown of communication. This “epistemological break” is so fundamental that further efforts at persuasion are “foreclosed”. One way out of the paralysis where conversion or refusal is imminent is by undergoing the long process of translation between two originally incompatible viewpoints. The process allows the predominance of either persuasion or the breakdown of communication to give way to a partial or fundamental “internalization” of the new language (204). In sum, persuasion is basically a traumatic and unmediated shift of perspective, and translation takes over when persuasion stops. If we look upon Xunzi’s thesis as exemplifying communal praxis, it should be persuasive to potential believers and incompatible to others. The question for future generations, then, would be to force open or redress the difference between persuasion and translation. A more radical description of a similar scenario from the standpoint of literary studies can be seen in Stanley Fish. In one of his many works that discuss literary community and professionalism, Fish stresses, yet once more, the essentially centripetal (and therefore, with regard to other communities, incommensurable) nature of literary interpretation. For him, the possible opposition between persuasion and translation in Kuhn’s analysis is not readily available for literary critics. For literary critics and students it is fundamentally a question of persuasion, and even if translation does occur, it may well be in the service of persuasion or a question of professionalism: It might have appeared that I was telling you what you have to know before you can read Lycidas, but in fact I was telling you what you have to know in order even to ask what you have to know before you can read Lycidas. Or, rather, I was not telling you what you have to know in order even to ask what you have to know

 Peng Yi

before you can read Lycidas; I was showing you, offering myself as an example, much as a tennis coach does when he says to a pupil, “Do it like this” […] Where does that knowledge […] come from? […] It comes […] from the fact of my embeddedness (almost embodiment) in a field of practice that marks its members with signs that are immediately perspicuous to one another. These signs are not visible on the surface; rather they emerge when a member is offered a piece of behaviour by a non-member — by an outsider — and responds […] by saying […] “That’s not the kind of thing we do around here” (Fish 1995: 15–16).

A few points: Fish’s depiction of literary professionals resembles Kuhn’s discussion of the scientific community; exemplars are essential and are basically heuristic models aiming at covert persuasion and conversion. Second, for Fish, literary professionalism implies more a practice of persuasion than translation between two or more languages; therefore, for Fish, the typical answers that a literary professional would produce when facing a piece of trying reading would ultimately come down to either “[t]his is the kind of thing we do” or “[t]hat’s not the kind of thing we do around here”. Finally, in the quotation, Fish is able to establish the possible connection between examples as showing rather than telling, and the metaphor of embodiment: “An example of exemplary reading is a kind of embodiment of group praxis”. In this sense, Xunzi’s grand form or Grand Embodiment of the Son of Heaven could also be interpreted as self-exemplification. Another of Fish’s passages can also be helpful in exploring the implications of Xunzi’s theory of the heart/mind. The passage comes from the very beginning of his Doing What Comes Naturally, where he explains the basic tenets of the whole work. The title is of course intentionally provocative, for him our praxis is never just natural and from the heart: In the course of this book, I say very little about its title […] I intend it to refer to the unreflective actions that follow from being embedded in a context of practices. This kind of action […] is anything but natural in the sense of proceeding independently of historical and social formations; but once they are in place [...] what you think to do will not be calculated in relation to a higher law or an overarching theory but will issue from you as naturally as breathing. In the words of John Milton, “from a sincere heart […] ‘unimpos’d expressions’ will come ‘unbidden into the outward gesture’” (Fish 1989: 1).

Is this a kind of grand form or embodiment of the readers of canonical texts? The insistence on conversion and persuasion poses a fundamental challenge to rationality and the orderly progress towards greater truth, not to say that it calls into question the efficacy of debate as a means towards greater truth. A possible solution to the Kuhnian paradigmatic shift characterized by rupture followed by acts of persuasion, is by locating a stable core that persists despite scientific revolutions. We will be able to guarantee the acknowledgment of discontinuity resulting from



‘In proper form’ 

epistemological break and still preserve the continuity of scientific progress by distinguishing between “concept” and “theory”. According to Gary Gutting in his analysis of the difference between Kuhn and Canguilhem, the French philosopher of science, who he thinks is in a position to offer remedies, what causes the rupture and breakdown is the different interpretations and theoretic applications of key concepts: “[F]or example, the concept of a reflex action in an organism was first introduced by Thomas Willis in the context of vitalistic theory […] Later, however, this same concept was employed in the mechanistic theories”. Therefore continuity is to be sought in the concept of the reflex action although it is incorporated in various theories which are responsible for the rupturing effects (Gutting 2003: 57). Canguilhem’s differentiation aims at re-affirming the possibility of progress in the search for truth in spite of the paradigm shifts. What then, analogously, is the concept in contrast to theory in Xunzi? If we could somehow extract the concept from Xunzi’s idea of inherent evil (or from Mengzi’s inherent good), what would that be? Can human nature fit the description? Can human nature serve as the concept around which various theories of inherent characteristics or acquired characteristics congregate? Can we tell the dancer from the dance? Xunzi’s understanding of human nature is inextricably tied up with his view of human nature. As indicated in note 8, it is this mutual implication between the concept of human nature and the theory of inherent evil that impels Nivison to advocate the neutrality and emptiness of our primitive sense of duty. In order to ensure optimal possibility free from an infinite regress of the birth of moral sense, you need the empty vessel. The transformed empty Daoist vessel “carries” human nature. Therefore, instead of human nature, the empty form should be seen as “the concept”. Inherent evil may be “a theory” that satisfies various ends, e.g., of canceling out Mengzi’s idea, differentiating Xunzi’s position from Gaozi’s voluntarism (according to Van Norden), and charting a path skirting round Zhuangzi (according to Nivison). Ultimately, the theory of inherent evil can serve the crucial concept of the form best by dissuading and forestalling any lingering over human nature as such. If we recognize the centrality of the rituals and their symbolic significance, just as we recognize their formal emptiness, then perhaps we will be able to see that the theory of evil has as its aim the neutralization and “disavowal” of human nature. In a sense, human nature as such is not what is at stake. The proper understanding of the seminal emptiness of the form is the real subject. The next chapter of the unfolding story can be seen in how the motif of the form is expressed in the locus classicus from I ching (The Book of Changes): “That which is above form is called the Way and that which is below, entities” (Here entities literally mean receptacles). Both Dai Dongyuan and Zhang Xuecheng from the Qing Dynasty have discussed at length the mutuality between the Way as the transcendental and everyday entities, and the difference between the two pivots on

 Peng Yi

how they envision the relationship between Dao, the Way, and the entities or the receptacles. The question of human nature in the case of Dai Dongyuan returns with full force. In a way, the revival of Mengzi in contrast to Xunzi in Dai Dongyuan and Zhang’s critique of the former centers around the figures of the content and the container, the dance and the dancer, whether one takes precedence over the other or whether without the container the Way would arise. The problematic of the emptiness and its moral and metaphysical empowering capacity will find another lease of life in the debate between the two philosophers. And all this is played out around the various formulations of the receptacle. In his late work on Mengzi (Mengzi zhiyi shuzang), one of the central questions that Dai Dongyuan is trying to bring to closure is that of desire (yu). One of the ways for Dai to be able to clarify the importance of desire, of everyday desire and praxis, is by going back to the root of the controversy: what are everyday entities, instruments or examples in contrast to the transcendental Way or matrix. He is able to do this by a philological analysis of the Way and the entities. For him, the traditional gloss of the statement is flawed because it erroneously imposes hierarchy and mis-recognizes the subject. The words “above” and “below” are over-interpretations and make the Way and the entities the principle topics. Instead of paying too much attention to the charged terms of the Way and the entities, the real subjects are the varieties of form. Through this philological tour de force, Dai Dongyuan is able to change the whole terrain of the debate. The dichotomy between Dao and the mere entities loses ground but the concern for the relationship is not abandoned, for it is resurrected in individual “forms”. Dai Dongyuan then goes on to say that the talk about above or below the form misconstrues the whole problematic. It is actually a question of before and after: what is “before the form” is called the Way and what is “after the form” is called entities. This reading reconstitutes the debate around the “process” of the life of the forms, instead of the vertical and categorical “hierarchy” between the Way and the entities. Dai Dongyuan’s transvaluation of Mengzi against Xunzi is on the one hand strangely harkening back to the question of forms (but forms that shed their hierarchical implications and embrace continuum) and on the other hand recasting inherent good and evil in terms of his vision of a plurality of forms. Maybe we can consider inherent good as a manifestation of the necessary continuum between the Way and the everyday entities, which explains Dai’s critique of Xunzi, because he refuses to accept the categorical difference between what is good and what is evil. The mutual relationship between the Way and the entities is also crucial for Zhang Xuecheng. But the reciprocity between the two, expressed in remarks like “the unity of Dao and matter” (dao-qi he-i), is recognized more to show on the one hand the fundamental disagreement between the two thinkers, and Zhang Xuecheng’s opening up of new vistas on the other (quoted by Nivison 1966:



‘In proper form’ 

275–276). Zhang introduces the new concern of history as human praxis (in contrast to the classics as canonical texts: the six classics are nothing but history) into the ongoing debate. In terms of our earlier description of Xunzi’s concept of form, we see that Zhang and Dai flesh out the question of the form. In terms of the theory of human nature, Dai firstly brings back the debate between Mengzi and Xunzi but only to lead us to look less at the inherent characteristics of human nature than at human himself, his private desires. Secondly, Zhang introduces the new concern of history understood as distinct cases of human practices, so that the question of form instead of being looked at en bloc could also be examined in distinct cases of human practices responding to specific contextual problems, in short, a vision of history or histories that projects a kaleidoscope of human desires and forces us to revise our imagination of the form of both desires and histories. In closing, we can say that Xunzi’s theory of xinger is intimately connected with the question of modular human nature and the concept of the empty form. The theory, incorporated in the ideal emptiness of the Grand Embodiment, elevates the whole consideration of inherent characteristics to another level of second nature or a third. Xinger then is the rhetorical, persuasive token, a shibboleth, the first few syllables of the anthem that betokens the induction. As a call, a call to community, a war cry, this is a stratagem through which Xunzi seeks to engage Mengzi on an ideal battleground of his own choice, and as an interpellation, one that later philosophers like Dai Dongyuan, Zhang Xuecheng, and late Qing scholars such as Kang Youwei, Tan Sitong and Zhang Pinglin need to respond in their own ways. References Cua, A.S. 1985. Ethical Argumentation: A Study of Hsun Tzu’s Moral Epistemology. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Dai, T.Y. 1979. In Z.H. An (ed), Dai Zhen Zer Xuei Suan Chu (Selected Annotations of Dai Zhen’s Philosophical Works). Beijing: Chunghua Bookstore. Dubs, H.H. 1928. The Works of Hsuntze. London: Probsthain. Fish, S. 1989. “Preface” to Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric, and the Practice of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, ix-x. Fish, S. 1995. “Yet once more”. Professional Correctness: Literary Studies and Political Change. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1–17. Gutting, G. 2003. “Thomas Kuhn and French philosophy of science”. In T. Nickles (ed), Thomas Kuhn. New York: Cambridge University Press, 142–177. Hutton, E. 2002. “Does Xunzi have a consistent theory of Human Nature?”. In Kline and Ivanhoe (eds), 220–236. Kline, T.C. and Ivanhoe, P.J. (eds). 2000. Virtue, Nature and Moral Agency in Xunzi. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett. Knoblock, J. 1999. Xunzi. 2 vols. Beijing: Foreign Language Press.

 Peng Yi Kuhn, T.S. 1970. “Postscript” to The Structure of Scientific Revolution (2nd Ed.) Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 174–210. Lau, D.C. 1970. Mencius. London: Penguin. Li, D.S. 1991. Xunzi Ji Shi (Collected Annotations of Xunzi). Taipei: Xuexeng Bookstore. Nivison, D.S. 1966. The Life and Thought of Chang Hseuh-ch’eng (1738–1801). Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1966. Nivison, D.S. 2002. “Xunzi and Zhuangzi”. In Kline and Ivanhoe (eds), 176–187. Sato, M.S. 2003. “Introduction” to The Confucian Quest for Order: The Origin of the Political Thought of Xun Zi. Leiden: Brill, 1–25. Van Norden, B.W. 2002. “Mengzi and Xunzi: Two views of human agency”. In Kline and Ivanhoe (eds), 103–134. Wong, D.B. 2002. “Xunzi on moral motivation”. In Kline and Ivanhoe (eds), 135–154. Watson, B. 1963. “Introduction” to Hsün Tzu: Basic Writings. New York: Columbia University Press, 1–14.

Notes 1. In “On the correct use of names”, we see one of the more prominent examples of the metaphor: “That is why men become deluded about light and heavy. If the balance is not correctly adjusted, then any misfortune inherent in what we desire may be deemed good fortune and any good fortune inherent in what we dislike may be deemed misfortune” (735). 2. In Cua’s work, the four areas of interest that will clarify Xunzi’s concept of argumentation include ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ “����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� (1) the desirable qualities or attitudes of the participants, (2) the standards of competence, (3) phases of discourse, and (4) diagnoses of ills that beset the participants and corresponding remedial measures” (Cua 1985: 7). 3. Again, this points to Xunzi’s problematic modernity: to attest to his modernity, a modern scholar has to, for example, establish the connection between him and Maozi, that is, to justify him by invoking Mozi and his followers. Mou Zhongsan’s Ming jia u xunzi (The Logicians and Xunzi) is a case in point. 4. Kang Youwei and Tan Sitong would belong to the first category and Zhang Pinglin to the second. 5. As was pointed out earlier, the question of innate desire underlies the similarity between the sage king, Yu, and the infamous tyrant, Jie. In contrast, goodness is what is innate for Mengzi. The similarity between the two figures means that all of us, from Jie to Yu, are in touch with this goodness or whatever innate characteristics. This is one of the central theses of Mengzi. But for Xunzi, the pivotal question is that innate human desire or needs do not necessarily define human beings. This question of desire cannot be fully treated here, but we should recall that the emphasis on human desire lies at the heart of Dai Dongyuan’s revolutionary re-reading of Mengzi against the generation of Zhuxi. This and other issues had occupied both Song and Ming Dynasty Neoconfucian scholars and early Qing Dynasty philologists. Firstly, the perennial discussion surrounding human nature and innate good and means of communicating with those innate characteristics has been the bone of contention for generations. And secondly, for the Neoconfucian scholars, innateness embodying the transcendental principle or truth (li) implies a gap difficult to bridge between it and our actual existence beset with desire and needs of all



‘In proper form’ 

kinds, or between li and our existence swayed by desire. Thirdly, for later Qing scholars, innate good does not necessarily mean it has to be sullied by human desire. Indeed, this innate goodness is identical with human desire. 6. The matrix reminds us of something of the spirit of the jar in Wallace Stevens’ “Anecdote of the jar”: “The wilderness rose up to it,/And sprawled around, no longer wild./The jar was round upon the ground/And tall and of a port in air./It took dominion everywhere./The jar was gray and bare./It did not give of bird or bush,/Like nothing else in Tennessee”. 7. Knoblock consistently renders xing as body, as can be seen in his rendering of daxing as the Grand Embodiment. 8. The works of these scholars and other important specialists on Xunzi and Chinese philosophy in general are collected in the representative anthology, Virtue, Nature and Moral Agency in the Xunzi. The essays of Van Norden, Wong and Kline continue an ongoing debate over the tricky question of how the first sages could be sages if moral sense is not inborn and how they could teach it to the common people if they do not always possess it already, i.e. what gives rise to moral agency if some moral seeds do not exist already. The latter possibility of course goes against the grain for Xunzi. In the same collection, in his “Does Xunzi have a consistent theory of Human Nature?”, Eric Hutton’s solution to the dilemma is important in making the connection between our concern of the form and the controversial question of the birth of moral agency. Very briefly, Hutton quotes Nivison and stresses that an innate sense of duty posited by Xunzi does not really contradict with his idea of the inherent evil, for the innate sense only implies “a bare capacity that enables men to form societies with hierarchical social distinctions […] a capacity that has no positive content” (2002: 222). This capacity for duty that is devoid of positive content and is to be fulfilled for better or for worse should be compared to the empty form, the Grand Embodiment of the sage, to which we will come back. 9. In his “Xunzi on moral motivation”, David B. Wong tries to resolve, on the basis of Cua’s study, the quandary of moral agency without resorting to innate goodness by arguing that the desire to do good means exactly what it means – one desires what one lacks and because we do not possess goodness in the first place, we wish for it and this gives rise to moral agency: “Therefore, if one desires goodness, one lacks it, and human nature is evil or at least morally neutral. […] The basis of transition [from self-interested beings to moral agents] is precisely this seeking after what they lack” (2002: 144). The relevance of this interpretation in connection with Nivison’s statement about the neutrality of one’s nascent sense of duty is obvious. The connection amounts to saying that the birth of moral agents comes from the empty form of desire. 10. This description of human desire should be read against the background of Mengzi’s similar statements. “Mencius said, ‘The way the mouth is disposed towards tastes, the eye towards colours, the ear towards sounds, the nose towards smells, and the four limbs towards ease is human nature, yet therein also lies the Decree. That is why the gentleman does not describe it as nature. The way benevolence pertains to the relation between father and son, duty to the relation between prince and subject, the rites to the relation between guest and host [...] the sage to the way of Heaven, is the Decree, but therein also lies human nature. That is why the gentleman does not describe it as Decree’” (Lau 1970: 198–199). 11. This has implications not only for our discussion but also for a Lacanian or psychoanalytic reading of the whole question of the birth of morality. It is in this context that an alternative signi­ficance of wanting and “wishing” (in terms of wish fulfillment) can be developed.

 Peng Yi 12. Again I think this passage is a response to Mengzi’s explanation of the relationship among heart, nature and Heaven. “Mencius said, ‘For a man to give full realization to his heart is for him to understand his own nature, and a man who knows his own nature will know Heaven. By retaining his heart and nurturing his nature he is serving Heaven. Whether he is going to die young or to live to a ripe old age makes no difference to his steadfastness of purpose. It is through awaiting whatever is to befall him with a perfected character that he stands firm on his proper destiny’”; “Mencius said, ‘[T]hough nothing happens that is not due to destiny, one accepts willingly only what is one’s proper destiny […] He who dies after having done his best in following the Way dies according to his proper destiny’” (Lau 1970: Book VII, 182). 13. The word zhi is also glossed as knowledge, thinking, or even markings and traces by one commentator (Li 1991: 683). 14. One passage from “Discourse on ritual principles” is filled with insights on the psychology of ritual activities. A psychoanalytic interpretation of the mechanism of mourning and melancholia will be of use to start to highlight the contemporary significance of the passage or the work as a whole: “Sacrifice originates in the emotions stirred by remembrance and recollection of the dead and by thinking of and longing for the departed. There inevitably are occasions in everyone’s life when he is seized by an unexpected change of mood, when feelings of disquietude and melancholy cause him to sigh involuntarily or to feel that his breath is short from deep emotion. Thus even in the midst of enjoying himself with congenial company, the loyal company, the loyal minister and the filial son are sometimes overcome with such changes of mood. When they do come, they are profoundly moving. If they are repressed, the emotions stirred by remembrance of the dead will be frustrated and remain unexpressed, and the rituals in dealing with such matters will seem lacking and incomplete. Thus, the Ancient kings acted to establish proper forms wherein men could express the full measure of their obligation to pay honor to those deserving honor and to show affection to those whom they cherished” (643–644). 15. At the beginning of the second section, Kuhn chooses to forgo the use of “theory” to describe the common property of particular community. His choice is “disciplinary matrix”: “‘[D] isciplinary’ because it refers to the common possession of practitioners of a particular discipline; ‘matrix’ because it is composed of ordered elements of various sorts, each requiring specification” (182). Within this disciplinary matrix, Kuhn locates four component characteristics: symbolic generalization, metaphysical paradigms, values, and exemplars. For Kuhn, symbolic generalizations in science such as f = ma and I = V/R imply a kind of a law of nature. They also function as what he calls law and as definition of the symbols applied in the formula. Laws imply a different kind of commitment than do definitions. Laws are “‘corrigible’ and ‘piecemeal’ and definitions, being tautologies, are not” (183). Metaphysical paradigms or “the metaphysical parts of paradigm”, mean beliefs and in particular, models which include heuristic or ontological ones but they all “supply the group with preferred or permissible analogies and metaphors. By doing so they help to determine what will be accepted as an explanation and as a puzzle-solution; conversely, they assist in the determination of the roster of unsolved puzzles and in the evaluation of the importance of each” (184). Values contribute most among the four components to foster a sense of community among members. They often spring to action in times of crisis, for they help identify the crisis or anomalies and choose between incompatibles (185). Some of the values Kuhn has in mind include accuracy, quantitative predictability, simplicity and consistency, among others. Finally, exemplars are the “concrete problem-solutions that students encounter from the start of their scientific education […] To these shared examples should, howe-



‘In proper form’ 

ver, be added at least some of the technical problem-solutions found in the periodical literature […] that also show them by example how their job is to be done” (187). In its canonic form, Xunzi’s thesis about human nature as inherently evil may be interpreted as a “law of nature” that works somewhat like a definition (and thereby tautological?). In the context of the matrix conceits that we have discussed at some length, the thesis does provide major motif and analogy as an explanation of the moral and political puzzle the thinker is facing, and it does help refute inherent goodness or the neutrality of human nature. Read in isolation, the heuristic and modeling potential becomes constrained. Situated in a debate between rival viewpoints, the thesis does somehow serve the purpose of demonstrating to the accommodating readers how the central thesis is able to refute opposing theories. In brief, Xunzi’s thesis is intended to be defining (tautological), modeling, and exemplary at the same time.

chapter 6

The right, duty and pleasure of debating in Western culture Adelino Cattani

Is controversy a just war of words or is it just a war of words? Controversy and debate are both ruled by very different and complementary principles: dialogue and conflict, harmony and contest, peace and battle. All reference to controversy and to debate contains and echoes a double and opposite meaning, negative as well as positive. Thus, a “controversial question” is an ambiguous formulation which can mean “ignorance and irresolution” as well as “prudence and criticism”. Considering that Western civilization has a long history of neat as well as disordered controversies, I would like to sketch an overall analysis of some of the most relevant historical ideas of controversy, to see (1) when and why controversy was considered a source of pleasure, joy and entertainment; (2) when and why controversy became a dialectical path to the truth, a maieutic tool, a disputation exercise and an educational practice; (3) when and why controversy was labelled as conflict, contest or combat. To encapsulate some of the main tendencies, we can say that ancient Greek culture was more receptive to polemics, Renaissance and Enlightenment gave more attention to the right of discussing, while our contemporary scenario inclines towards the duty of dialoguing. From a theoretical point of view, the core of my study aims at isolating and defining the reasons why our – apparently very liberal and open-minded – Western world develops an ambivalent idea of controversy as a functional and almost necessary means to acknowledge progress or, on the contrary, as a marginal – if not even deleterious – form of exchange and challenge. *** Polemics does not have a good reputation. Usually, engaging in polemics, arguments, or altercations is not considered a desirable behavior. Although polemics is regarded as a negative value (with its positive counterpart in the dialogue), it permeates both history and culture. As curious as it may seem, the more polemics

 Adelino Cattani

plays an important role in our lives, the less it weighs in our thoughts, considering that we do not fully understand its reasons, functions, opportunities, motivations and morality. The common notion of polemics can be compared to the idea of sexual intercourse defended by Western traditional parties that it is an act accepted and justified only for reproductive purposes, a non-free act perceived as a duty and not as a pleasure. The idea of the right to be polemic is totally accessory, while the idea of the pleasure in being polemic is completely disregarded, despite the fact that many thinkers – from Heraclitus to Raymond Aron (Heraclitus 1951–1952: frag. 14; Aron 1992: 431) – have characterized polemos as an inborn quality of human beings and polemics as a constant device in the history of thoughts. It would be interesting and instructive to retrace the (entangled) history of the different, controversial forms and expressions of polemos. As well as polemics, controversy is something we are accustomed to dealing with in practice rather than in theory. We do not usually have a very clear understanding of what controversy is, why its presence and influence are so widespread, and what function it exerts in relation to its significance to us. A natural and illustrative source to look at for a first clarification of the term is the dictionary where the definition explains that controversy is: “a difference marked especially by the expression of opposing views” (Webster). A more refined source such as Lebniz “the Polemicist”, using the expression of Marcelo Dascal,1 provides the following definition: “a controversy is a question over which contrary opinions are held” (Leibniz 1982: 18). A scholarly essayist, Ernan McMullin, suggests that it is “a publicly and persistently maintained dispute” (McMullin 1987: 51): a disagreement falls into this category on the basis of its continuity and the public nature of the exchange. All these definitions highlight the fundamental positive or unbiased aspects of controversy and stress its being a confrontation of arguments and counterarguments. Confrontation, debate, discussion, dispute are essential components for production, improvement and evaluation of knowledge. However, the synonymic terms we find in our thesaurus have basically “negative” connotations: altercation, contention, disagreement, dissension, logomachy, polemic, squabbling, quarrel, strife, war of words, wrangling. As we know, polemics comes from the Greek word polemos. War is indeed a very stupid way to manage and solve controversies, as Sherlock Holmes explains to his friend Watson, examining a picture of a bloody battle. All the same – and according to what was already convincingly demonstrated by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in their famous Metaphors We Live By (Lakoff and Johnson 1980) – we enter into an argument with the same attitude as we were engaging in a war. We strive for life and for an idea. We declare “war on illness”, “war on drugs”, “war on corruption”, and we enter into a discussion as into a war. In a war of words,



The right, duty and pleasure of debating in Western culture 

whether it is a skirmish or an open conflict, we display all the weapons and strategies we have at our disposal. In this light, why do we not use a different terminology? In the act of debating, besides the clash of views and mutual disagreement, we also perform actions such as confronting, praising, expounding, emending, criticizing, confuting, exploring, researching, giving information, clarifying, understanding, formulating theories, creating connections, making progresses in knowledge, playing a serious play, etc. Thus, why do we not transfer the perfectly possible and suitable vocabulary of negotiation, travel, exploration, edification, dance, etc. to the semantic field of the debate? Needless to say, even these alternative metaphorical images have their reverse side: for example debates have been analogized to boxing matches, campaigns have been described as if they were horse races, and any number of different sports metaphors have been used… By blending politics and sports, however, these metaphors transform political events into entertainment spectacles. While this makes for good copy, it undermines public participation, discourages substantive discussion of the issues, and reinforces the existing political order (Herbeck 2003: 462).

The power of words to create behaviors can be explained through the following logic sequence: words create images, images create ideas, ideas create behaviors. We make exist what we say. For this reason, I would suggest applying a “pingpong” metaphor to controversy, merging the two metaphors taken respectively from the domain of war and sport. My purpose is to search out some historical images of controversial dynamics in order to determine:

(1) when and why controversy was extolled as pleasure, joy, and entertainment;



(2) when and why controversy was promoted to the level of a dialectical path to the truth, a maieutic tool, a disputing exercise and an educational practice;



(3) when and why controversy was devalued by its interpretation in the sense of conflict, contest, and combat.

Considering that Western tradition has a long history of noble as well as disorderly discussions, I would try to outline a concise excursus of some of the most relevant historical notions of the debate. Debate as a social interaction undergoes different critical evaluations according to chronotypical cultural parameters: sometimes it is the preference for dialogue and agreement that prevails, other times for polemics and competition. Using – if not even abusing – the term “debate” as a sort of umbrella-word devoid of any special and evaluative connotation and driven to the function of a neutral definition capable to include polemics as well as discussion and dialogue,

 Adelino Cattani

and all the other types of discursive (both co-operative and conflicting) exchanges, we can distinguish at least three differently oriented kinds of approach to the act of debating: the approaches inspired respectively by a sense of pleasure, of right, of duty. With plausible approximation we can isolate some major tendencies throughout the centuries: the pleasure of polemics in ancient Greece, the right of discussing from Renaissance to Enlightenment, and the rampant feeling of the duty of dialogue in contemporary society.2 In ancient Greece there are traces of a deeply rooted inclination to competition rather than dialogism. We do not keep any record of the best-timed performances scored at the stadium during the Olympic Games, because, as the custom was, the athletes competed with one another and not with the chronometer to gain the Olympic crown. But even though their performances were not timed, the agonistic commitment was highly rated. We have often been told that the duty of dialogue is a Platonic legacy: seemingly, Socrates cultivated the real dialogue form, while Plato used the dialogue structures of the report genre. As a matter of fact, the dialogical nature of some classics – such as the Platonic Dialogues – is actually spurious, as spurious as the dialogical attitude, for instance, of the Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems by Galileo Galilei. The full title of Galileo’s work is significant: “Dialogue by Galileo … where in meetings over the course of four days one discusses the two Chief World Systems, proposing indeterminately the Philosophical and Natural reasons for the one as well as for the other side”. This is what Maurice Finocchiaro properly defines as a real “rhetoric of indecision”, relying on the assumption that, obviously enough, Galileo cannot propose indeterminately his own reasons and the reasons of the counterpart (Finocchiaro 1980: 12). Ancient Greek culture enjoyed polemics. It was the very satisfaction and pleasure Helen had from Paris’ seductive logoi which made her surrender to his wooing. In his famous fragment on Gorgias, Plutarch writes that “who is not insensible is easily captured by the pleasure of logoi” (Moralia. De gloria Atheniensium, 5, 348c; cf. Plutarch 1985: 46–47). At that time, debating was a fair and enjoyable activity: debating meant amusement, play, pleasure and enjoyment,3 even when the debating was for its own sake and did not aim at heading towards any specific resolution nor any particular enhancement of knowledge: it was the pleasure of bringing a subject up and discussing the evidence with the purpose to verify its resistance to the most extravagant attacks; the pleasure of testing the validity of a thesis; the pleasure of inquiry and interrogation, the pleasure of irony (whose etymological meaning is indeed inquiry and interrogation). The main purpose of the debateand-controversy dynamics was not that of looking out for consensus. The standards of evaluation were reasonableness and rhetorical acceptability.



The right, duty and pleasure of debating in Western culture 

Among the supporters of the debate as enjoyment in and for itself we can mention Lucian of Samosata, Gorgias, Protagoras, Isocrates and later Isidore of Seville, Erasmus, the Scholastic philosophers, and all the pamphleteers and polemists. Their spirit is “Olympic” in the sense that it is fairly expressed by the following modern quotation: “The difference between Olympians and the rest of us is: they behave as longtime friends who occasionally compete, while we behave as longtime adversaries who occasionally get along”.4 Even more important, this attitude has also some remarkable educational implications (Erasmus 1985 [1974]: 25, 43). Erasmus defends the idea of controversy as an instrument of knowledge, a disputational exercise and an educational practice. And so does, for instance, Kenneth Burke, when he affirms: were the earlier pedagogic practice of debating brought back into favor, each participant would be required, not to uphold just one position but to write two debates, upholding first one position and then the other. Then, beyond this would be a third piece, designed to be a formal transcending of the whole issue, by analyzing the sheerly verbal maneuvers involved in the placing and discussing of the issue. Such a third step would not in any sense “solve” the issue, not even in the reasonable, sociological sense of discovering that “to an extent, both sides are right”. Nor would we advise such procedures merely as training in the art of verbal combat. For though such experience could be applied thus pragmatically, the ultimate value in such verbal exercising would be its contribution toward the “suffering” of an attitude that pointed toward a distrustful admiration of all symbolism, and toward the attempt systematically to question the many symbolically-stimulated goads that are now accepted too often without question (Burke 1955: 287).

Moreover, in encouraging disputatio and altercatio, Erasmus’ and Burke’s statements point out another noteworthy aspect: the right to debate. Debating is not only possible, but it is the right thing to do. Nothing is taboo. Everything is debatable, even the clearly evident truth which – if it is really true – does not have to fear anything. The truth cannot suffer from being challenged and put to the test. And if our truth is only partial, the soundness of our thesis rests on its dialectical validity. This possibility is connected with the concepts of freedom of speech and democracy. The basic purpose of debate (and I refer to its more important, not its sole, goal) is criticizing, comparing, critically evaluating: that is, to show what is wrong. “What could I say to show that you are wrong” and “what could I say to show you that I am right” are very asymmetrical questions. After all, we should keep in mind that Socrates’ daemon told him what he should not do, where he should not go, which conclusion he should not draw. The primacy of the negative evaluation is discussed and supported by many contemporary epistemologists and historians of science, and it is a position that

 Adelino Cattani

has been growing – especially after Karl Popper’s definition of refutability rather than demonstrability as the fundamental criterion of demarcation between science and pseudo-science. In his Galileo and the Art of Reasoning, Maurice Finocchiaro attaches, for example, a structural function in reasoning to negative evaluation, and ascribes first priority to critical over constructive argumentation. This condition of primacy “corresponds to trends and results discernible in other approaches to logic and other fields of scholarship and of culture in general” (Finocchiaro 1994: 21–35). Debating is a specific trait of human beings; the practice of debating is considered the hallmark of a civilized society and is an everyday way of exchange, whether formal (judicial negotiations, parliamentary debates, academic discussions, etc.) or informal (community debates, family talks, etc.). Nevertheless, the ability to debate is not an innate quality: it requires educational training, practice and certain guidelines. For this reason, the specialization in dialectics in ancient Greece, the education to rhetoric in ancient Rome, the methodology of controversy and disputation in Medieval European universities, the tradition of Buddhist debate in Asian countries, the contemporary schools of philosophical debate, all converged on the common view of the debate as a natural attitude and disposition as well as a logical process and practice. All of them have been conceived to develop essential abilities, such as critical mental habits, special techniques of inquiry, specific skills in analyzing the multiple facets of a problem, high oratorical competence, general criteria to evaluate the reasoning, right tools to give prompt and pertinent answers, rules and formulae of replication. Needless to say, all these skills and methods are related to the inclination towards polemics. Still needing a justification, it is for Aristotle to give us one, when he states: “We must be able to employ persuasion, just as deduction can be employed, on opposite sides of a question, not in order that we may in practice employ it in both ways (for we must not make people believe what is wrong), but in order that we may see clearly what the facts are, and that, if another man argues unfairly, we on our part may be able to confute him” (Rhetoric 1355 a 29–34; Aristotle 1984: 2154). This second group includes Seneca the Elder, Cicero, Quintilian, Giordano Bruno, Martin Luther, Michel de Montaigne, and John Stuart Mill. On one hand, considering that the right to debate hides in the pleasure, these authors could be actually ascribed to the previous group; on the other hand, the fact that pleasure is not necessarily incorporated into right forces us to consider the two groups separately. Among the various and heterogeneous quotations that can make my point, I would like to quote Michel de Montaigne: “When someone contradicts me, he arouses my attention, not my anger”;5 and, analogously, Edmund Burke’s “He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper”,6 up to the recent and quite surprising title of one of Anthony Campolo’s



The right, duty and pleasure of debating in Western culture 

books: “We have met the enemy and they are partly right. Learning from the critics of Christianity” (Campolo 1985). There is far more to learn from severe critics than from patronizing commentators, who support condescendingly our thesis. Critiques help us to see the shortcomings and flaws in our thoughts and practice. All these considerations draw a third characteristic of the debate to our attention: the duty of debating, event though the duty concerns unfortunately only the dialogical – rather than polemical – viewpoint of debating. Many contemporary authors disagree with the so-called “adversary paradigm”, that is, the idea according to which “the philosophic enterprise is seen as an unimpassioned debate between adversaries who try to defend their own views against any possible counter-example and produce counter-examples to opposite views” (Moulton 1983: 157). The objections concern especially the idea that “conditions of hostility are not likely to elicit the best reasoning” (Moulton 1983: 153). The third and biggest group includes, among many others, Boethius, T. H. Huxley, John Dewey, Guido Calogero,7 Aldo Testa, Mario Perniola and Deborah Tannen. Tannen justifies her opposition to the “argument culture” essentially for two reasons. In the first place, “when opposition becomes the overwhelming avenue of inquiry – a formula that requires another side to be found or a criticism to be voiced; when the lust for opposition privileges extreme views and obscures complexity; when our eagerness to find weaknesses blinds us to strengths; when the atmosphere of animosity precludes respect and poisons our relations with one another; then argument culture is doing more damage than good” (Tannen 1999: 25); in the second place, “When polarized debate is sought, those with the greatest expertise are often rejected or refuse to take part because they resist slotting complex issues into simplified debate format. Those who are willing or eager to cloak their moderate expertise – or lack of it – in fiery capes are given the platform instead. When this happens, the entire society loses” (Tannen 1999: 47). It is worth remarking that something which is disputable, controversial or polemical can be perceived in a negative light not only from a dogmatic but also from a sceptical point of view, a perspective which tends to recognize no use to argumentation or arguing (Popkin and Stroll 2004: 12). Thinking of a possible conceptual map, these discouraging viewpoints negatively associate debate and controversy with polemics and doubt. The negative characteristics of debate and controversy derive from two assumptions, one of epistemological nature, the other of ethical and social nature. First assumption: controversy generates doubt. The contemporary fear of relativism generates equal reactions towards controversy. Second assumption: controversy relies upon a challenging as well as destructive principle.

 Adelino Cattani

It is nevertheless true that besides these two options, other alternative hypotheses – connected to more favorable positions – regard controversy as a positive practice just because of its capability to generate doubts, and at the same time its contribution to dissolve skepticism, without underrating controversy’s flexibility and adaptability to friendly-hostile dynamics and safeguard principles. Controversy has Janus’ double-faced nature, one face blinking at dogmatic rigidity, the other at pluralism; this totally opposite orientation could be usefully compared to the client’s choice in a restaurant between the special menu of the day and all the available options. Controversy is double-sided because, in the reciprocal confrontation, it can combine the impulse to closure with its contrary inclination to communication, harmonizing one-sidedness with tolerant attitudes towards different beliefs, ethos with pathos and logos, demonstration with argumentation, rhetoric with logic. Besides logical validity, it is also necessary to introduce rhetorical and ethical, social and emotional standards of evaluation. As a matter of fact, controversy has at least three different structural dimensions which are commonly interacting and confronting one another: the epistemological dimension, the ethical dimension and the rhetorical dimension. (1) Epistemological dimension. Two opposite theses and their supporters end up conflicting with each other on the line of critical inquiry. Applying the rules of logic to this process, the confrontation progresses at a logical level. (2) Ethical dimension. The altercation develops in conformity with certain behavioral rules. Applying the code of politeness, the confrontation progresses at an ethical level. (3) Rhetorical dimension. Two parties resort to all their argumentative strategies in order to succeed in the dispute. Applying to the rules of rhetoricians, the confrontation progresses at a dialectical level. Thus, the evaluation of the debate is extremely complicated because we have to take account of three different evaluating aspects, according to the three components of the debate practice:

(1) the internal consistency of a thesis;



(2) the ability and the correctness of the contenders;



(3) the power of persuasion in relation to the audience.

Of course, there are many rhetorical uses and overuses of controversy, although in a quarrelsome society like ours, the persuasive manners, the deceiving techniques and the malpractices of lawyers tend indeed to prevail. Walter Lippman’s advice “Freedom can be maintained only by promoting debate” would be a beautiful and worthy risk to take, though.



The right, duty and pleasure of debating in Western culture 

In the absence of debate, unrestricted utterance leads to the degradation of opinion. By a kind of Gresham’s law the more rational is overcome by the less rational, and the opinions that will prevail will be those which are held most ardently by those with the most passionate will. For that reason the freedom to speak can never be maintained merely by objecting to interference with the liberty of press, of printing, of broadcasting, of the screen. It can be maintained only by promoting debate (quot. in Rossiter and Lare 1982).

Or, using Robert Wardy’s words: Were we already wise, then we could safely forgo argument, with all its attendant perils. Lovers of justice tolerate the obvious evils of an adversarial system in the faith that the clash of often self-interested or vindictive advocates will generate as much of the truth as our ignorance can attain. Lovers of philosophical truth put up with traditional accusations of sophistry, and the sophists active in their midst, in the conviction that only their paradoxical competitions have any chance of yielding knowledge (Wardy 1996: 149).

Sometimes controversy gives rise to another question: Is controversy more of a useful or useless practice? The ultimate, simple answer is given by a French moralist, Joseph Joubert: “It is better to debate a question without settling it, than to settle it without debate”.8 It is better saying: “I argue with you about something” rather than saying: “I tell you something”. There is no possible debate in an autocratic system of government or in a dictatorial régime. The idea of controversy and the practice of debating belong, so to speak, to popular sovereignty. The realm of logic can be compared to a monarchy, the realm of rhetoric, to a democracy. And to answer those who think of controversy and of debating as something disagreeable, we might say that not being able to debate would be far more disagreeable. There is a very sound morality in discussing a topic without even defining its problematic core. And even though it may appear true that in a contest every competitor keeps the balance between right and wrong, according to the idea that “much learned dust involves the combatants; each claiming truth and truth disclaiming both”,9 it is impossible to find a respectful way to determine that “the truth disclaims both” other than that of debating in the presence of a third party. Thus, the usefulness of the debate does not concern the two parties involved in the oratorical exchange, but a third external party. As unrealistic and hopeless as it may seem, the purpose of each pole of the disputation is not to convince the counterpart of their own reasons. This situation is perfectly exemplified by the following dialogue between Moses and the Squire: “I don’t rightly comprehend the force of your reasoning”…“Oh, Sir”, cried the Squire, “I find you want me to furnish you with argument and intellects too. No, Sir; there I protest you are too hard for me”.10 What

 Adelino Cattani

can change indeed – if anything is supposed to change as a result of a debate – is usually and exclusively the audience’s opinion or behavior: at the end of a debate, a third party can form a better idea of the topic discussed, a clearer understanding of the problem, and more reliable conclusions. We do not generally persuade our opponents that our argumentations are right, because they are already convinced of their own ideas and they do not get to understand our positions (besides, it is very hard to “furnish our antagonists with argument and intellects too”), but we can persuade an audience by giving it means of reasoning and comprehending. *** In our Western – apparently most liberal and open – tradition, there are various reasons to different tendencies: one supporting the idea of polemical controversy as a marginal, if not even deleterious form of exchange and defiant action (it is like saying: “stop arguing”); the other supporting the idea of controversy as a functional and essential tool for the progress of knowledge (it is like saying: “Argue, argue: something will rise!”). Comparing the metaphorical implications of argumentation to a war, I ask myself three questions: (1) Would it really be like Heaven on Earth with the abolition of polemics and the predominance of dialogue? (2) Debating is considered a good practice. War is considered a bad practice: thus, how can we explain the identification of the discussion-formula with war? If this association seems completely incongruous, when can it work productively? (3) To what extent does just a war of words become a just war? From my point of view, the metaphor of war used for debate is unsatisfactory at least for two reasons. On one hand, it is obviously selective and restrictive: every comparison has to do with the category of similarity (not with that of identity) and we can amplify the similarities up to the emergence of some evident difference. On the other hand, and more important, the metaphor fosters an entire network of connections linked to the idea of war conducted for a right cause, a position that owes its validity to the possibility of determining an opponent who is right and an enemy who is wrong, which is not the case of controversy or polemics, because nothing of them can be said right in its substantial meaning, and because the ultimate goal of controversy is establishing which thesis is right and which is wrong. The rightness of a controversy can concern only its procedure and its purpose. Focusing on the steps of the process, its strategies and objectives, the correctness of controversy emphasizes especially three dimensions: the epistemological, the ethical and the rhetorical. It would be important to select and define rules for reasonableness and fairness, just as there were, in the past, strict rules for disputatio, whose revival – which is obviously a novantiquus revival in spirit and practice –



The right, duty and pleasure of debating in Western culture 

would be, in my opinion, a good intellectual methodology as well as a fruitful educational training. In the light of the above-mentioned historical and theoretical considerations, it seems to me that the following points can be taken as the central tenets of our work:

(1) Referring to the dialogue-form, we had better put aside the common idea of the “absence of polemics”.



(2) The absence of polemics is not a guarantee of agreement, the same as the absence of quarrels among family members does not necessarily imply a happy ménage. On the contrary, the disputation dynamics exert a positive influence on personal relationships as well as on the philosophical community.



(3) Polemics can be seen as a means to gain consensus as well as a means to spread dissension. There are people who are afraid of a collapse of authority, because of the power of the Internet to turn us into experts and professionals. Rather than being worried, we should feel happier for the Internet to make knowledge circulating, while controversy makes us a little more competent and a little less authoritative. The antithesis of controversy is not dialogue, but authoritarianism, absolutism, dogmatism; that is, the same antitheses of rhetoric, whose opposite element is not logic, but all limitation of the freedom of speech.

Trying to find a balance between dissention and consensus, not only tolerating those who dissent, but encouraging them to dissent, is the key strategy for good societies and good controversies. When we think about dialogue, we do no have to remove the idea of polemics, because disputing has a positive influence both on (according to many psychologists) the stability of the couple and the equilibrium of the philosophical community. Now, in every community of free thinkers there are no leaders, but judges: and the function of controversy is exactly to push contrasting ideas to excavate and analyze all the available options, discuss all the possible consequences. We need to think as leaders, not to have leaders do our thinking. We have been told to think of the job of a leader as that of creating an organization that resembles Switzerland beginning with an organization previously similar to Iraq. Although this is not always desirable, it is as possible to make it happen in a social, political, or commercial system, as it is impossible to make it happen in cultural and intellectual settings. In his essay on the Pavlov affair, Torsten Rüting demonstrates convincingly the possible negative consequences of any leadership and the dreadful effects of a pseudo-controversy settled by a leader (Rüting 2005). The supporters of dialogue are right about society; the supporters of controversy are right about knowledge: thus, it would be useful to find a way to join the two parties together in a real dynamic tension, because – according to John Stuart

 Adelino Cattani

Mill – we need both, the defenders of order and the champions of revolution, not to attain a mild compromise, but to keep each other within mutual reasonable limits: “A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life reform… Each of these modes of thinking derives its utility from the deficiencies of the other, but it is in a great measure the opposition of the other that keeps each within the limits of reason and sanity” (Mill 2003: 48).11 Perhaps, ancient times were more inclined towards intolerance (in the sense of the right and pleasure of discussing) and sincerity; instead these days are more sensitive to tolerance (in the sense of the duty of dialoguing), even though tolerance often means simulation and fiction. Tolerance goes hand in hand with a remarkable dose of double-talking and pietism or – to use a very strong word – hypocrisy, an attitude which, despite the fact of its being socially justified, is intellectually unfavorable. Dialogue is certainly possible, convenient and necessary in social, domestic, commercial and working conflicts, while it is only slightly possible in ideological and religious conflicts, where the main goal would be to reduce the chances of conflicts rather than to solve conflicts. On the contrary, in the fields of sciences and humanities dialogue can become neither necessary nor convenient, because the intellectual confrontation possibly aims at amplifying the theoretical conflicts in order either to test the relative strength of opposite theses or to generate a tertium quid by the active clash of theses (Gilby 1949: 281). This notion of controversy goes beyond the Heraclitean idea of a perpetual conflict between two opposite principles and far beyond the oxymoron of concordia discors (“a discordant concord” or “inharmonious harmony”). From this perspective, what I would call “controversiality” is a sort of platform or scaffolding of controversies, or better, it is a meta-value: a controversial society is not a quarrelsome society but a group of people who believe in controversy, a social milieu where everyone is free to propose his own arguments and test them in debatable comparisons, without imposing their own ideas. The central issue of every controversy is laboriously decided by factual evidence or argumentative support. Outside controversy, the same issue may remain unsolved or simply solved by unilateral choices. Polemics and controversy are not admitted, for example, in monastic communities, where perfect “charitas”, absolute quiet and forced harmony are meant to reign. So, what is best for us? Answering this question is also explaining what controversy represents to us, to what extent it differs from or resembles dialogue, and, above all, when and why we can enjoy the duty (and the pleasure) of debating by the means of controversy in the same way as the duty to dialogue.



The right, duty and pleasure of debating in Western culture 

References Aristotle. 1984. Rhetoric. In The Complete Works of Aristotle. Ed. by J. Barnes. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Aron, R. 1992. La politica, la guerra, la storia. Ed. by A Panebianco. Bologna: Il Mulino. Burke, K. 1955. “Linguistic approach to problems of education”. In Modern Philosophies and Education, The Fifty-fourth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education. Chicago: NSSE. Burke, E. 1968. Reflections on the Revolution in France. Ed. by Conor C. O’Brien. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books [first published: 1790]. Calogero, G. 1977. Filosofia del dialogo. Milano: Edizioni di Comunità. Campolo. A. 1985. Partly Right. Dallas, TX: World Publishing. Dascal, M. 1978. La sémiologie de Leibniz. Paris: Aubier-Montaigne. Dascal, M. 2005. “The balance of reason”. In D. Vanderveken (ed), Logic, Thought and Action. Dordrecht: Springer, 27–47. Dascal, M. 2006. G.W. Leibniz. The Art of Controversies. Dordrecht: Springer. Erasmus Roterodamus. 1985 [1974]. “De conscribendis epistolis”. In J.K. Sowards (ed), Collected Works. Vol. 25. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Finocchiaro, M. 1980. Galileo and the Art of Reasoning. Dordrecht: Reidel. Finocchiaro, M. 1994. “The positive versus the negative evaluation of arguments”. In R.H. Johnson and A. Blair (eds), New Essays in Informal Logic. Windsor, ON.: Informal Logic. Gilby, Th. 1949. Barbara Celarent. A Description of Scholastic Dialectic. London: Longmans Green. Herbeck, D. 2003. “The athleticization of the political process: Sports metaphors and public argument”. In F.H. van Eemeren et al. (eds), Proceedings of the Fifth Conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation. Amsterdam: Sic Sat. Heraclitus. 1951–1952. In H. Diels and W. Kranz (eds), Die Fragmente der Vorsocratiker. 6th ed. Berlin: Weidemann, ch. 22. Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Leibniz, G.W. 1982. Vorausedition zur Reihe VI – Philosophische Schriften. Münster: Lebniz-Forshungstelle. McMullin, E. 1987. “Scientific controversy and its termination”. In H.T. Engelhard Jr. and A. Caplan (eds), Scientific Controversies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mill, J.S. 2003. In Stefan Collini (ed), On Liberty. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Montaigne, M. de. 1980. Montaigne’s Essays (1910), John Florio (trans). London: Everyman’s Library. Moulton, J. 1983. “A paradigm of philosophy: the adversary method”. In S. Harding and M. Hintikka (eds), Discovering Reality, Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science. Dordrecht: Reidel. Plato. 1997. Protagoras. In: Plato: Complete Works. Ed. by J.M. Cooper and D.S. Hutchinson. Indianapolis: Hackett. Plutarch. 1985. De Gloria Atheniensium. Ed. J.Cl. Thiolier. Paris: Presses de l’Université de ParisSorbonne. Popkin, R.H. and Stroll, A. 2001. Skeptical Philosophy for Everyone. Amherst, MA: Prometheus Books. Ital. transl. 2004. Il dovere del dubbio. Milano: Il Saggiatore.

 Adelino Cattani Rossiter, C. and Lare, J. (eds). 1982. The Essential Lippman. A Political Philosophy for a Liberal Democracy. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press. Rüting, T. 2005. “Just reflex or active learning? The Pavlovian and the Uexhüllian perspective on the study of behavior”. Paper presented at Controversy East & West. An International Conference, National Taiwan University, Taipei, 20th-23rd July 2005. Tannen, D. 1999. The Argument Culture. New York: Ballantine. Wardy, R. 1996. The Birth of Rhetoric. Gorgias, Plato and Their Successors. London and New York: Routledge.

Notes 1. Marcelo Dascal’s many and far-reaching projects about controversy were admittedly inspired by Leibniz. See, for example, Dascal (1978 and 2005) and, more recently his compilation, translation, and edition of a selection of Leibniz’s writings on controversies (Dascal 2006). 2. The terminology concerning the different types of discursive exchanges often appears idiosyncratic; we frequently feel the need for a standard and consensual use of concepts such as polemics, controversy, discussion, argument, disputation etc. 3. “Enjoyment” is perhaps best expressed by the following quotation: “enjoyment feels who is learning or acquiring knowledge, pleasure who is eating or feeling an agreeable bodily experience” (Plato, Protagoras, 337c). Following the translation by J.M. Cooper: “And then, too, we, your audience, would be most cheered, but not pleased, for to be cheered is to learn something, to participate in some intellectual activity, and is a mental state; but to be pleased has to do with eating or experiencing some other pleasure in one’s body» (Plato 1997: 769). 4. Advertising slogan for the Olympic Games of Athens 2004, subscribed by Nelson Mandela. 5. “When I am impugned or contraried, then is mine attention and not mine anger, stirred up: I advance my selfe toward him that doth gainesay and instruct me” (Montaigne 1980: 160). 6. The quotation is drawn from Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (Burke 1968: 278). 7. See, for example, his Filosofia del dialogo or “philosophy of co-existence”, which is a dialogue-prose conceived as an exercise of cohabitation and living together. 8. It is one of his Pensées (n. 115). 9. The quotation is taken by William Cowper, The Task, 1785, Bk III, l, 161: “Great contest follows, and much learned dust/involves the combatants; each claiming truth and truth disclaiming both”. 10. Exchange between Moses and the Squire in chapter 7 of The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith. 11. It is a quotation from chapter two of his On Liberty: “Of the liberty of thought and discussion”.

part 2

Medieval and Early Modern traditions Logic, dialectic, and rhetoric in controversy

chapter 7

The medieval disputatio Olga Weijers

1

Introductory remarks

The disputatio was one of the principal methods of argumentation in medieval Europe. It was a method of teaching and research in the universities and an ancient tool to treat controversies. I will start with some introductory words about the various kinds of disputations and about the organisation of the universities and the arts faculty before addressing the following three topics: the disputation as a means of teaching, of research, and of polemic. Several types of disputation coexisted during the Middle Ages. In the early Middle Ages, dialectical disputation, inherited from Antiquity, was practised in the schools of dialecticians. It opposed two disputants, in the tradition of Aristotle’s Topics, of whom one “opposed” and the other “responded”. The aim was not to find the right answer to a question, but to win the debate, applying strict dialectical rules. In the 12th century, dialectical disputation entered the field of the logica moderna and in the 13th century seemed to have reached its last stage in the ars obligatoria (the obligationes are discussed in this volume). Here, I will concentrate on a quite different type of disputatio, the scholastic disputation, which developed out of the questio, i.e., questions arising from the reading of basic texts, and was an important tool during the whole period of the universities (Weijers 1999: 509–517). As is well known, the university originated in Europe around 1200 by the association of teachers and students. The first universities were Bologna and Paris; Oxford followed soon and at the end of the 13th century there were universities in Italy, France, England and Spain. In the 14th and 15th century, many new universities were created, especially in Central Europe, often following the ancient models of Bologna and Paris. In its most complete form of organisation, a university had four faculties: arts, theology, law and medicine.1 In the arts faculty students received a propedeutical education. They learned not only the liberal arts (essentially grammar and logic) but also what we could call philosophy in a wide sense

 Olga Weijers

(metaphysics, physics, cosmology, biology, ethics, etc.), mainly based on the writings of Aristotle. As the universities developed out of the schools of the 12th century, they took over and developed the teaching methods, which were the same in all the faculties: the lectio or reading and commenting of the basic texts, the questio or discussion of problems arising from these lectures, and the disputatio, the discussion of questions related to the basic texts during special sessions with at least three actors and according to fixed rules. The disputatio probably originated from the questio in the 12th-century schools of theologians and jurists under the influence of dialectics. In contrast to the dialectical disputation, the aim of the scholastic disputation was to find the right answer to a question, i.e., it was a search for the truth. In the arts faculty students were trained in all three teaching methods, so they learned not only the disciplines of the programme, but also how to handle the tool of the disputatio, which they would have to use in the higher faculties as well. That is why I will draw examples from the field of the arts faculty. 2 The disputatio as a method of teaching The scholastic disputation was first of all a teaching method, developed, as said before, out of the interpretation of texts. The questio disputata or disputed question, the written result of a disputatio, was often concerned with the opposition of authorities or with objections against the text. During the first half of the 13th century, questions about the texts took the form of disputed questions, and from about the middle of the century appeared commentaries composed only of disputed questions, corresponding probably to the lectures in the form of questions. At the same time, the questions became more fundamental, discussing basic principles of the discipline according to dialectical rules.2 The basic structure of a disputed question was the following: formulation of the question, which generally could be answered by yes or no (sic or non) was followed by arguments for one of the possible answers, the affirmative or the negative, and by arguments for the opposite position (these last arguments were not directed against the previous ones, but were in favour of the opposite answer). Then the master gave his solution, choosing one of the possible answers or proceeding according to the distinction of the main concepts, and refuted the arguments which were against his solution. It has to be noted that the arguments were based on dialectical reasoning (mainly syllogisms), on authoritative texts, and sometimes on experientia, the observation of reality. The use of this kind of questions for teaching had the advantage that the master not only presented a fact or an opinion, but also explained the underlying argumentation: not only which were the rational arguments in favour of the right



The medieval disputatio 

answer, but also which were the arguments that could be brought against it and why they were not valid. Thus he exposed all sides of a problem. This pedagogical value was widely recognised and is commented on for instance by Thomas of Aquino in one of his Quodlibets (Thomas Aquinas, 13th century: IV, 9, 3). He says that the teacher must use arguments investigating the root of the truth, showing why something that is said is true, because, if he only uses authoritative texts, the pupil will not acquire any real knowledge or comprehension, and “he will go away empty”. Were these questions really disputed in the classroom? The complexity of the disputed questions of the 14th century shows that in that period they were probably prepared in advance and read by the master, but in the 13th century active participation from students in discussing the questions was probable. Already in the 13th century, questions arose apart from the reading of the texts, and were discussed in separate sessions during the afternoon, not during the lectures. Here we have the independant disputatio, an elaborate discussion according to certain rules and with several participants: the master who proposes the question, presides over the discussion and gives his definitive solution, and two bachelors or advanced students – a respondent, who gives his provisional answer and an opponent who argues against this position. There may be several respondents and opponents, as well as several positions before the master determines the question and refutes the preliminary arguments against his solution. The discussion between participants may be long and the solution by the master is often presented only the next day, or even later.3 This kind of disputations, which were also part of the regular teaching of a master, had a twofold function: they were meant not only to teach the important points of a discipline, but also to exercise the students in the handling of the instruments of disputation and argumentation. They were seen as the best tool of teaching about real problems and their implications, and prepared the participants for the function of teacher and for study in the higher faculties. The reports of these disputations which have been transmitted are mostly redactions made afterwards by the master with the help of the notes made by his assistant during the discussion. These redactions can be very detailed, but sometimes they give only short summaries of the discussion, in which case we have to guess the exact participation of the bachelors. 3 The disputatio as a method of research The same type of complex disputations can also correspond to a kind of collective research with colleagues about difficult problems. According to the statutes of the university of Paris, for instance, once a week a solemn disputation took place with

 Olga Weijers

all the masters of the faculty and their students. Bachelors of the various schools participated actively as respondents and opponents, but other masters (in addition to the one who organised and presided over the disputation) could also intervene. As an example of such a solemn disputation I will quote a question of John of Jandun, a 14th-century philosopher in Paris, about a problem of cognition: what comes first to mind, the confused knowledge of the most specialised species or the knowledge of the superior general concepts, or: are the particulars first known or not? (Kuksewicz [ed] 1970: 87–97). After the usual arguments for the affirmative and the negative answer, John says: “To that question a certain doctor, very subtle and honourable, as I think, said that indeed …”. So, the affirmative answer was supported by someone who is called doctor, a technical term for a master. This is proof that the text corresponds indeed to the kind of disputation in which other masters participated. John presents the three arguments given by the “doctor” and then says: “But it seems to me, with all respect for this doctor and his followers, that this is against the intention of Aristotle, who has to be believed more in this kind of matters than he, and it is against evident reason …”. Next, he summarises the arguments of the opponents and adds some of his own. About one of these arguments he says: The answer given to that argument by a subtle and honourable person during the disputation is right, but for brevity’s sake and because I do not remember much about this …, I will leave it aside for the moment, but if it pleases that dominus [a technical term for bachelor] or somebody else to defend that view, they should make their intention clear in script, and I declare that I will follow the view of Aristotle, or I will agree with them, if they come with demonstrative arguments. And it should not be considered inconsequent or weak or reprehensible if for the love of truth and the efficiency of the arguments somebody abandons his own opinion ….

I will come back to this last sentence later. After this abridged report of the discussion, John gives his solution, opting for the negative answer, which is: the more general concepts are known first and not the inferior species. He explains his position and finally refutes the preliminary arguments going against it. Some remarks can be made about this kind of disputations. Firstly, the arguments for the position that will be rejected are not considered useless; on the contrary, they are useful because they contribute to the discussion, and their refutation makes clear why the rejected answer is not right. Sometimes, a counter-argument can be right in itself, without being conclusive for the main question. In short, arguments are considered valuable even if they are rejected. Secondly, the solution of a certain number of disputations starts with the expositio terminorum, the exposition of the terms and concepts used in the formulation of the problem. This was especially frequent in Bologna, but also occurred elsewhere, and is a very recommendable feature in a dispute.



The medieval disputatio 

Thirdly, as we saw above in the example of John of Jandun, the solution is not always presented as definitive. In some cases the author says explicitly that he is ready to change his mind if somebody comes with a better argumentation. This is not only a habit of John of Jandun. Let me quote one other example: the Italian philosopher Franciscus of Ferrara, who taught in Padua (Clagett [ed] 1978: 3–63). His Question about the proportions of motions, disputed in 1352, ends like this: And here ends the report of this question, which gave me for a long time many doubts and many difficulties. But now my mind sees a clear evidence in these things, and even if it has not found and showed the truth completely, it still offers a more useful way to search for the truth. But if I said something not very probable and not in consonance with the truth, the diligent and perspicuous wisdom of scholars and students will correct it.

It is clear that in these situations the disputation was seen as an honest search for the truth, as a way to find the right answer to difficult and controversial questions. When we have a text corresponding to this kind of disputations, we have to ask ourselves if it is the result of a real disputation or not. It may be a redaction by the master after he disputed the question as is often but not always the case: it may also have been written from the beginning, as a treatise in the form of a disputed question without referring directly to a particular disputation. A certain number of texts have a hybrid form, presenting on the one hand a report of a real discussion and on the other hand, instead of the usual solution, a full-fledged treatise. For instance, a disputed question by the same John of Jandun already cited, “If the substantial form completing matter is corruptible”, starts with an elaborate discussion in which several respondents and opponents participate (John of Jandun 13th century: ms. Vatican, Vat. lat. 6768 fol. 176v-179v; Weijers 2002: 38–41). But then one reads: “These were the things that were said in the disputation about the question that was presented. In the present work (opusculum) we will put three chapters (capitula)”. So, here we have a disputed question that is clearly composed of two parts: the first gives a report of the first part of the disputation, that is, discussion about the proposed question, and the second, instead of being a report of the regular determination given by the master the next day, represents explicitly a treatise written some time after the disputation divided into three chapters. However, in his treatise the master refers to the previous disputation (“as was said by the respondent”, “the argument that was brought against the respondent in the disputation”), which shows that he sees the two parts as a unity. We have several other texts, dating from the beginning of the 14th century, which present the same hybrid features. However, there are many more disputed questions completely written from the beginning, in which we do not find any trace of a real oral disputation. For

 Olga Weijers

example, a question by Bartholomew of Bruges, written in Paris in about 1310, begins with his statement that the question is difficult and that there are various opinions about it; he then quotes the opinions and discusses them, but with formulas like “But you may object”, “If somebody objects”, etc., in a hypothetical form that does not explicitly refer to an actual disputation. It is probable that he simply applied the form of the disputed question to his written discussion. From the 14th century onwards, this kind of texts became frequent. One can quote as examples the well-known Question about velocity of John of Casali or the Question about the universals of John Sharpe. These are lengthy treatises and not reports of actual disputations (Weijers 2002). So in this respect, scholars used the procedure of the disputation (its basic scheme, dialectical tools like syllogism, discussions of other opinions) for private research, to analyse difficult problems or to discuss controversial questions. Still, it is not impossible that parts of these texts are taken from a disputation or from several disputations in which the author had participated before writing his treatise. The disputation was a very common practice in the universities and the masters had to organise these discussions very regularly. The handling of this instrument was familiar to them and they apparently thought it apt to be used also when writing a treatise.4 4 The disputatio and controversy As a matter of fact, every disputed question, even the most simple one, can be considered a hypothetical controversy: there are always two possible and opposite answers to a question, and both positions are accompanied by arguments before one of the answers is adopted in the solution or it is made clear why in some cases one position must be held, and in other cases the opposite. In the more complex disputed questions, those resulting from disputations with several masters and bachelors, one finds often real points of controversy. We saw an example in the question of John of Jandun quoted above: he first reports on a discussion with another master and later on a discussion with a bachelor with whom he does not agree. In the cases quoted above, controversy is present within one and the same disputation. In other cases, the controversy is between two scholars writing the reports of two different disputations in which they attack each other. Also, treatises in the form of disputed questions were often written for polemical purposes. To give just one example from the 15th century, Nicoletto Vernia wrote several questions in which he attacked the opinions of his masters Gaetano de Thiene and Paul of Venice (Lawn 1993: 85–86).



The medieval disputatio 

But let me quote a special case in which two masters opposed each other in different disputations. Both were famous philosophers: Matthew of Gubbio, who taught in Bologna from 1327 onwards, and Walter Burley, an English master of arts who taught in Oxford and also Paris. Among the numerous disputed questions of Matthew, apparently the direct results of disputations, one is about time and logical problems: “The question is if a proposition which is true about the past, has first been true about the present” (Matthew of Gubbio 14th century: ms. Vatican, Vat. Lat. 3006 fol. 7vb-8va). This question had been disputed in 1341. It has a rather simple structure, but in the refutation of the first preliminary argument after the solution, Matthew quotes explicitly the opinion of Walter Burley (“And this is why Burley proposes this solution in the fourth book of his Physics, in the part on time, saying that time itself is present by the present moment...”). So he refers to Burley’s commentary on Aristotle’s Physics and then seems to report an imaginary discussion with him: he says that Burley himself attacks the solution with three arguments followed by an answer to them; but objections are made against him so he proposes another solution, and is attacked again in several objections, and that is why Matthew proposes a different argument. But there is still one difficulty left, about the commentary of Averroes on the passage. Burley discusses the opinion of Averroes in his commentary and Matthew is so amazed by one of his arguments, that he goes against the opinion of Averroes in reply to an objection: “But we have to wonder very much about Burley, because he himself does not follow the opinion of the Commentator [Averroes], rather he destroys the commentary from the beginning to the end”. This question of Matthew of Gubbio is immediately followed in the same manuscript by another question, this time of Walter Burley, in which he seems to react to Matthew’s criticism. This question is about a completely different subject. It was written in 1347, but the scribe does not tell us where and when the question had been disputed. The structure of the question is typically English. One of the arguments refuted after the solution is about time and in that context Burley comes back to the problem that had been treated by Matthew: “And I say in the same way that for a proposition about the past there is not always a corresponding proposition which is true about the present”. And he adds: “And because a certain honourable colleague has recently denied in one of his questions that a proposition about the past is true which has never had any truth about the present, therefore I prove this conclusion against him, that it is possible to give a proposition that is true about the past, while it has never had any truth about the present”. It is clear that Walter Burley is reacting to the attack of Matthew. And because Burley has probably never been in Bologna, we must suppose that someone who assisted in the disputation of Matthew in Bologna reported it, at least partly, to Walter Burley while he was perhaps in Avignon or England. Burley took the opportunity of a disputed question to introduce

 Olga Weijers

in his refutation of the arguments a reply to Matthew’s attack. So, here we have an example of a polemic at distance between two scholars who belonged to the same academic world but were not in the same place, using a part of their respective disputations to argue with each other (Weijers, in press). 5 Conclusion To conclude, it can be said that the disputatio was an intellectual practice with several functions: it served in teaching, in research, in examination (about which I have not discussed here) and in polemic. Scholars were aware of its value, especially as a method of research, as a means to find the truth. But it was also an appreciated tool for resolving controversies, just as another much simpler form of disputation had served in religious controversies in the early Middle Ages. At the end of the 14th century through to the 15th century, the disputatio became a mere technique: it lost its flexibility and became a form of automatism. The same arguments were repeated, the element of research disappeared, the questions of the commentaries became simple and didactical, etc. The method was criticised and laughed at by the humanists (Rummel 1995), but still it remained in use for a long time, especially as a method of examination. To finish, let me say a few words about the geographical and cultural limits. The scholastic disputatio was used in the schools and universities of the Christian world. In the Arab world there existed also a kind of debates in the madrasa’s, but they seem rather different to me. In fact, the debates of the Arab schools have more similarity to what I have called the dialectical disputation, and are mainly concerned with juridical matters (Makdisi 1981). Of course, various kinds of disputations and intellectual debates can be found in other cultures.5 However, I think that the scholastic disputatio described above was a method particular to Christian Europe. It was known to non-Christian contemporaries in Europe, essentially Jewish scholars, like Gersonides, who constructed his Wars of the Lord in the manner of disputed questions (Sirat, Klein-Braslavy, Weijers, [eds] 2003). Let me finally quote Leon Joseph, a 14th-century Jew living in southern France. He says, talking about the Christian schools: “Their discussions and debates about the sciences do not stop and nothing is lacking in what merits reflexion. They are constantly discussing about their truth and making their errors evident. They take care to analyse in detail their questions and their answers, thanks to the disputation, and they make the truth appear from the middle of its opposite, explaining everything by way of its two contraries, like a rose in the middle of its spines” (quot. by Sirat; Holtz, Weijers, [eds] 1997: 507).6 This is exactly how the scholastic disputation worked.



The medieval disputatio 

References Clagett. 1978. See Franciscus of Ferrara. Franciscus of Ferrara. 14th century. Questio de proportionibus motuum. In M. Clagett (ed), Annali dell’Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza di Firenze 3 (1978): 3–63. John of Jandun. 14th century. Questio de notioritate universalium. Z. Kuksewicz (ed), Mediaevalia Philosophica Polonorum 14 (1970). John of Jandun. 14th century. Utrum forma substantialis perficiens materiam sit corruptibilis, ms. Vatican, Vat. lat. 6768 fol. 176v-179v. Kuksewicz. 1970. See John of Jandun. Lawn, B. 1993. The Rise and Decline of the Scholastic Questio disputata. Leiden: Brill. Makdisi, G. 1981. The Rise of Colleges. Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Rummel, E. 1995. The Humanist-Scholastic Debate in the Renaissance and Reformation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Sirat, C., Klein-Braslavy, S., Weijers, O. (eds). 2003. Les méthodes de travail de Gersonide et le maniement du savoir chez les scolastiques. Paris: Vrin. Sirat, C. 1997. “L’enseignement des disciplines dans le monde hébreu”. In O. Weijers and L. Holtz (eds), L’enseignement des disciplines à la Faculté des arts (Paris et Oxford, XIIIe-XVe siècles). Turnhout: Brepols. Thomas Aquinas. 13th century. Questiones quodlibetales. In R.-A. Gauthier (ed), S. Thomae de Aquino Opera omnia 25 (1996). Rome/Paris: Commissio Leonina/Editions du Cerf. Weijers, O. 1999. “De la joute dialectique à la dispute scolastique”. In Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. Comptes rendus des séances de l’année 1999. Paris: Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. Weijers, O. 2002. La ‘disputatio’ dans les Facultés des arts au moyen âge. Turnhout: Brepols. Weijers, O. In press. “La ‘disputatio’ comme moyen de dialogue entre les universitaires au moyen âge”. In Les échanges universitaires au Moyen Age et au début de l’époque moderne. Hommes, oeuvres, idées.

Notes 1. Many universities had less than four faculties. For instance, Bologna was at first a university of law only; afterwards, a faculty of arts and medicine and one of theology were added. 2. This development of commentaries in the form of disputed questions existed already in the first part of the 13th century in the faculty of theology (question commentaries on the Sentences of Peter Lombard). 3.

In Bologna the masters had to give their solution within one week.

4. The method of the disputed question survived for a long time in polemical treatises. 5.

As can be seen in the present volume.

6. English translation based on French translation of the Hebrew text by Colette Sirat.

chapter 8

Disputing about disputing The medieval procedure of positio and its role in a dispute over the nature of logic and the foundations of metaphysics Christopher J. Martin

The most important controversy in mediaeval Christianity was the “Great Schism” which divided the Greek speaking East from the Latin speaking West from 1054 onwards and which still today separates Orthodox from Roman Catholicism. There were many components to the mediaeval disagreement between the Greek and Latin churches but here I propose to consider just one of them. In my paper I will have nothing to say about the position and strategy of the Eastern Church nor will I be concerned with devices employed by the Western Church in its attempts to resolve its differences with the East.1 I will concentrate rather on the treatment by Latin philosophers of one aspect of the famous question of the Filioque2 in order to show how a disputational procedure became itself a matter of dispute as part of a much deeper controversy over the foundations of logic and metaphysics. The addition of Filioque to the Nicene Creed3 in the fifth century in the West committed the Church to the belief that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son as well as from the Father. The Greeks objected to this affirmation of a dual procession and their opposition was one of the reasons cited by both sides for the mutual excommunications of 1054. In 1098 Pope Urban II visited Bari to attend the enshrinement of the relics of St Nicholas of Myra in the church built to house them after their translation from Asia Minor. Urban took the opportunity of the West’s possession of the remains of one of the East’s most venerated saints to convene a council to discuss the issues which divided them and in particular the Filioque. To make the case for the West he called upon the skills of Anselm of Bec, later Saint Anselm, who at the time was conveniently exiled from England in Calabria.

 Christopher J. Martin

Anselm published his argument in favour of the Filioque in 1102 as the treatise de Processione Spiritus Sancti. Its conclusion is entirely uncompromising: “if the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Son, then the Christian Faith is destroyed” (St Anselm 1946: 215). Anselm’s argument is as usual both simple and clever and relies, according to him, only on principles accepted by both the Eastern and the Western Churches. In particular (1) God is a unity, (2) God is a plurality of persons, and (3) any predicate which holds of one person will hold of any other person so long as its holding is not incompatible with the relations required for the diversity of those persons. Anselm reduces these relations to only two. Since no person can be the cause of itself, God as a particular person may be either (a) actively, God from whom there is God, or else (b) passively, God who is from God. God the Father is thus God from whom there is God, i.e., both God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, but not God who is from God. God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, on the other hand, are both God who is from God. The Son and the Holy Spirit differ, however, in the modes in which each is God who is from God. The Son is from God the Father by being begotten, while the Holy Spirit is from God the Father by procession. All of this, according to Anselm, is agreed to by both Latins and Greeks. Anselm argues that it follows from the principle of the essential identity of the three persons as God that the Holy Spirit is God who is from God but not God from whom there is God and that the Son is both God who is from God and God from whom there is God. In particular, since the Father and the Son are both God and likewise the Father and the Holy Spirit, and the Father is God from whom there is God, then either the Son is God from whom there is God who is the Holy Spirit, or else the Holy Spirit is God from whom there is God who is the Son. All that remains is for Anselm to prove that the Holy Spirit cannot be God from whom there is God the Son. But on this the East and West are also in agreement. Therefore the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son. As an objection Anselm considers the possibility that someone might hold that the Holy Spirit is not God who is from God. To refute this suggestion he argues that if the Holy Spirit did not have its being from God the Father, then they would not be distinct. The fact that the Father has a son but the Holy Spirit does not is, Anselm agrees, certainly a difference between them but it is not, he claims, the reason for their being distinct: And in the same way just as the Son is not distinct from Father because the Son has a father but the Father does not have a father – for if the Father were to have a father, he would nevertheless still be distinct from the Son – so the Holy Spirit, because it proceeds from another but the Father does not, is not for this reason distinct from the Father; because if the Father were to proceed from something, he



Disputing about disputing 

would nevertheless still be other than Father from whom he proceeds (St Anselm 1946: 187–188).

Anselm here insists on the truth of two conditional propositions whose antecedents are impossible and known by him to be so: “the Father has a Father” and “the Father proceeds from something”. The logic of such counter-possible conditionals will be at the centre in later discussions of the Filioque and it is a disagreement about their logic that I propose to consider here. Anselm’s efforts seem to have been ignored by the East, as, indeed, were all Western attempts at a proof, and his argument appears also not to have had much influence in the West. The form of his conclusion, however, was of great interest to later theologians because it suggests that it is possible to reason coherently about acknowledged impossibilities. Since it was agreed that the relations between the persons of the Trinity hold with the highest degree of necessity, the hypothesis that the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Son was, according to a Westerner, impossible with the highest degree of impossibility. If it could be proved that the conditional proposition “if the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Son, then it is not distinct from the Son” is true, there would be a very easy argument in favour of the Western addition to the creed. Since the Greeks agree that the consequent of this conditional is false so long as they accept the validity of modus tollens,4 they must also accept that the antecedent is false and so that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son. The question seems first to have been raised by Thomas Aquinas in his commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sentences written around 1255 (St Thomas Aquinas 1929: 278). In the intervening century and a half logic had changed beyond recognition. Anselm knew only the works of the logica vetus, that is, Porphyry’s Isagoge, Aristotle’s Categories and de Interpretatione, and Boethius’ writings on topical inference and the hypothetical syllogism. By the time Aquinas embarked on his attempt to reconcile Christianity with Aristotle, mediaeval logicians had developed their own logical tradition, the logica modernorum, which included a procedure for reasoning about acknowledged impossibilities. To understand the application of this procedure to our problem we thus need to take rather a long historical detour. We begin in the first half of the twelfth century, a little after the death of Anselm, with the work of the greatest of all mediaeval logicians, Peter Abaelard. Abaelard’s access to Aristotle’s logical works was only very little better than Anselm’s. While he seems to have seen both the Sophistical Refutations and the Prior Analytics at some point, they play no role in his own logical theory. More importantly he does not seem to have known Aristotle’s Topics, though Boethius’ translation of it was perhaps recovered during his lifetime.5 Abaelard thus relied on Boethius for his information about ancient logic and on the basis of the disconnected remarks on infer-

 Christopher J. Martin

ence and conditional propositions which he found in his works set out to construct a unified theory of inference and argumentation.6 In his treatise On Topical Differences Boethius had proposed to show how arguments may be discovered to settle any given question. What is needed, he claims, is an “argumentum”, something which he defines as a “reason which brings conviction where something is in doubt”. A locus, or topic, is, he tells us, a source of argumenta. In each case what is needed to answer a question is a principle which is not itself provable, which Boethius calls a maximal proposition, and a relevant fact about the items mentioned in the conclusion. For example, by appealing to the maximal proposition that a genus is predicated of whatever its species is predicated and the truth that animal is the genus of human being we may infer from the premiss that Socrates is a human being the conclusion that he is an animal. The various relationships which Boethius holds may exist between the predicate and subject of a true categorical proposition, or between the antecedent and consequent of a true conditional, provide him with his loci, or more precisely his loci differentiae, i.e., loci in the sense of the differentiating features of maximal propositions. With each locus there are associated all the maximal propositions warranting inferences which may be made on the basis of that relationship – the differentia of that class of maximal propositions. The enthymeme above, for example, would be characterised as holding “from species”; that is, in virtue of the relationship in which a species stands to its genus. Loci are divided into the intrinsic, which have to do only with the things themselves about which a question is asked, and the extrinsic, which have no such connection with them. Examples of intrinsic loci are that from species, given above, and that from a defined term, for which one maximal proposition is: “of that of which a defined term is not predicated, the definition is not predicated”. Examples of extrinsic loci are that from authority, which justifies inferences from the authority of the majority of people, or the relevant experts, and loci from various kinds of opposites – supporting, for example, the inference from something’s being human to it’s not being a donkey. Argumenta drawn from the locus from authority are not necessary according to Boethius but they are probable in the sense of being generally convincing and so are appropriately used in dialectical contrast to demonstrative argumentation. Where Aristotle had taken probability and necessity to be properties of the premisses and conclusion of dialectical and demonstrative syllogisms, however, Boethius takes them to characterise the nature of the inference from the premiss, or premisses, to the conclusion of an argument and the corresponding connection between the antecedent and consequent of a conditional.



Disputing about disputing 

On the basis of Boethius’ remarks Abaelard thus proposes a new general definition of a locus as the warrant for an entailment. He then devotes hundreds of pages of his logical works to investigating the role of loci thus conceived in proving conditionals and validating the corresponding enthymemes. According to Abaelard, a proposition “p” entails a proposition “q”, just in case the corresponding conditional, or consequence, “if p, then q” expresses a relationship of following, or consecution (consecutio). For this to be so, he holds, the sense of the antecedent must require, or contain, that of the consequent. Abaelard characterises this kind of connection as necessary but insists that it must be distinguished from the satisfaction of the inseparability condition which it guarantees, but which alone provides only the necessity of what he calls association, or accompaniment (comitatio). For the inseparability of association all that is required is that it is not possible for the antecedent to be true and the consequent false at the same time. Inseparability alone is, however, according to Abaelard, both necessary and sufficient for the validity of an argument since it guarantees that starting from truths we will never infer falsehoods. If the premisses are all true, and it is impossible for them to be conjointly true and at the same time for the conclusion to be false, then the conclusion must be true. While it is necessary, however, satisfaction of the inseparability requirement is not sufficient for the truth of a conditional, since for this a genuine connection is needed between the antecedent and the consequent. Someone who asserts that if p, then q, is asserting, according to Abaelard, that there is a genuine connection between p and q. Abaelard notes that if inseparability alone were sufficient for entailment, then we would have to accept that all conditionals with impossible antecedents are true. Conditionals, that is, such as “if Socrates is a stone, then Socrates is a donkey”. Note that Abaelard’s impossible antecedents are “natural impossibilities”. Socrates’ human nature is incompatible with that of a stone and so, as contemporary modal semantics would have it, there is no possible world in which he is a stone, and so no possible world in which he is a stone but not a donkey. While he recognises this fact about the inseparability requirement, however, Abaelard does not formulate the famous principle of explosion, ex impossibili quodlibet – anything follows from an impossibility. He could not be expected to since he thinks that it is false. Abaelard distinguishes as perfect entailments conditionals and the corresponding arguments, which are true7 in virtue of their form. That is, no matter what terms we uniformly substituted for those which occur in them the result is always a true conditional. All conditionalised instances of the moods of the categorical and hypothetical syllogisms are thus perfect entailments and according to Abaelard no locus is needed to guarantee the truth of such conditional.8

 Christopher J. Martin

Imperfect entailments, on the other hand, are those for which some topical warrant is required. They are instances of maximal propositions and so hold only for the substitution of certain classes of terms specified by the appropriate locus differentia. For example, since the meaning of a defined term, according to Abaelard, contains the meaning of the definition, so long as we substitute for “human being” and “mortal rational animal” in “if Socrates is a human being, then Socrates is a mortal rational animal” terms which are related as a defined term to its definition, the result is a true conditional. The conditional thus holds in virtue of the maximal proposition “of whatever a defined term is predicated its definition is predicated” which falls under the locus differentia “from a defined term”. Abaelard devotes a great deal of space in his logical works to deciding which of the various loci warrant imperfect entailments and which do not. He believed that a criterion for distinguishing between them had been given by Boethius when he reported an argument from Aristotle’s discussion in Book II of the Prior Analytics of the relation between the truth-values of the premisses and the conclusion of syllogisms. According to Boethius, following Prior Analytics II.4, it is not possible for a proposition to follow both from some other proposition and the opposite of that proposition. That is, as Abaelard read him, it is not possible for two conditionals of the form “if p, then q” and “if not p, then q” both to be true. Abaelard generalises this claim and argues that it is likewise not possible for two conditionals of the form “if p, then q” and “if p, then not q” to be true. In particular the conditionals “if not p, then p” and “if p, then not p” must both be false. In the twentieth century these rejection rules have been taken to characterise what has become known as connexive logic (McCall 1966). Assuming all this, Abaelard supposed that he could prove that a given locus does not warrant imperfect entailments by showing that if such conditionals were true then the connexive principles would be contravened. For example, suppose the conditional “if Socrates is a donkey, then Socrates is not a human being” were true. Abaelard accepts the logical operation of simplification, the inference of each of a pair of conjuncts from their conjunction, and so holds the conditional “if Socrates is a donkey and a human being, then Socrates is a donkey” is true. It would thus follow according to him that “if Socrates is a donkey and a human being, then Socrates is not a human being” is true. But according to Abaelard “if Socrates is not a human being, then it is not the case that Socrates is a human being and Socrates is a donkey” is also true – by simplification and contraposition. It follows that “if Socrates is a donkey and Socrates is a human being, then it is not the case that Socrates is a donkey and Socrates is a human being” would be true, contrary to the connexive principles. Thus, according to Abaelard, “if Socrates is a human being, then Socrates is not a donkey” is false, as is every other conditional warranted by



Disputing about disputing 

the locus from opposites even though the truth of the antecedent is inseparable from that of the consequent. Abaelard’s work on the theory of entailment is one of the high points of mediaeval logic. Unfortunately it was fatally flawed by his inconsistent intuitions about the relation of logical consequence. The principle of simplification is in fact incompatible with the connexive principles. This was not a problem for Boethius, since he did not acknowledge the principle of simplification, but it was a problem for Abaelard. The inconsistency in Abaelard’s system was discovered some time in the 1130’s by his great opponent Alberic of Paris. Alberic argued that Abaelard regarded the conditional “if Socrates is a human being, then he is an animal” as a paradigm of entailment. He had thus to accept each step of the following argument: (1) if both Socrates is a human being and Socrates is not an animal, then Socrates is not an animal; (2) if Socrates is not an animal, then Socrates is not a human being; (3) if Socrates is not a human being, then it is not the case that both Socrates is a human being and Socrates not an animal; therefore (4) if Socrates is a human being and Socrates is not an animal, then it is not the case that both Socrates is a human being and Socrates is not an animal. This amounted to contravening his commitment to the connexive principles. Alberic’s discovery of this problem precipitated a truly profound crisis in thinking about the conditional and the foundations of logic. Although I cannot discuss it here, the development and resolution of this controversy are absolutely fascinating. We have much more information about it than we do about the famous controversy over the conditional among the ancient Greeks. Each of the four or five schools of logicians active in Paris in the middle decades of the twelfth century proposed a solution and attempted to refute the positions of the other schools by producing counter examples to their accounts of entailment. By the last quarter of the twelfth century, however, the schools of logicians had given way to the corporation of teaching masters which would form the University of Paris. The standard view was now that inseparability is both necessary and sufficient for the truth of a conditional proposition. It was explicitly accepted that anything follows from an impossibility and that a necessity follows from anything. It was indeed proved in the standard logic of the time that anything follows from a formal contradiction – thus anticipating by eight hundred years the very proof named after the modal logician C. I. Lewis in the twentieth century (Martin 1986). A distinction was, however, made in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries between so-called “accidental consequences” which satisfy only the inseparability condition and “natural consequences” in which, in addition, the sense of the antecedent contains that of the consequent. This terminology is taken from Boethius and the difference between the two kinds of consequence corresponds to his

 Christopher J. Martin

account of the different relationships between a natural kind and its definition, and between a natural kind and non-definitional features which are inseparable from that kind. An example of the first is “if Socrates is human, then Socrates is an animal” and of the second “if Socrates is human, then Socrates is able to laugh”. Being able to laugh, it was held, is not part of the definition of a human being but it is impossible to be a human being and not able to laugh. Somewhat earlier, probably by the middle of the twelfth century, logicians seem to have developed the rule-governed procedure for making inferences under acknowledged impossibilities which I mentioned at the beginning. It is an instance of what is known as an obligatio, an obligation. Later logicians will classify obligationes as a form of practice disputation. The need for practice followed upon the realisation that one may reason about acknowledged impossibilities. This was prompted by Boethius’ observation that impossibilities may be posited “in order”, as he says, “to see what follows”, and by an example of such a hypothesis – that God does not exist – in his discussion of the nature of creaturely goodness (Martin 1993). In obligational disputation one participant, the respondent, agrees to sustain an hypothesis and to reply to questions put to him by the opponent. His reply to any given question must be consistent with the original hypothesis and all of his previous answers. The aim of the opponent is to force a respondent to contradict himself. The most important form of obligation was the one known as positio in which the opponent posits, and the respondent agrees to accept as true something which is in fact false. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries it had two forms, depending on whether the positum was false but possibly true – possible positio – or an impossibility – impossible positio. The earliest surviving treatise on impossible positio recognises that if one accepts the principle that anything follows from an impossibility, no coherent argumentation is available under such an hypothesis. It stipulates instead that where the positum is an acknowledged impossibility, the respondent should accept only consequences in which the consequent is contained in the antecedent and so not those with an affirmative antecedent and negative consequent – the theory uniquely characteristic of Abaelard and his followers. Later treatments of impossible positio require, however, only that they be conducted using consequences satisfying the containment condition. With this background we can return to the impossibility that interests us, that is, that the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Son. Aquinas maintains that if this were so they would no longer be distinct and so has an argument against the Greeks. Over the next fifty years or so, some theologians agreed with Aquinas but others disagreed. Their disagreement turned on the legitimacy of impossible hypotheses.



Disputing about disputing 

In response to the objection that such hypotheses are unacceptable John Duns Scotus writing at the beginning of the fourteenth century discusses the workings of impossible positio. The problem according to the objector is that the hypothesis of our question includes incompatible opposites and so the respondent will be forced to contradict himself. To show that this is not so Scotus insists on a distinction between the ways in which opposites, i.e., contrary or contradictory claims may follow from an impossible positum. While we are not permitted to posit an explicit contradiction in impossible positio we may, Scotus maintains, posit a conjunction from which a contradiction follows. One part, however, follows in a natural consequence where “the consequent is understood in the antecedent” and the other may follow only in an accidental consequence, which “holds in virtue of an extrinsic locus. That is, the antecedent cannot be true without the consequent but the consequent is not understood in the antecedent” (Scotus 1950: 135–137). As an illustration Scotus observes that we may be asked to posit an impossible positio that a human being is not able to laugh. Having accepted this we must concede only what follows in a natural consequence and in particular we should not concede the truth of the conditional “if Socrates is a human being, then Socrates is able to laugh” since the consequence has been destroyed by the hypothesis. The same holds, Scotus argues, for the proposition in question since the impossible positum that the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Son includes only as it were accidentally that the Son and the Holy Spirit are not distinct. In contrast, the same positum includes essentially that the Son is the Son and that the Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit. According to Scotus the maximal proposition required to answer our question is the rule that if P is a property of a subject of kind S, then if something does not have the property P, it is not an S. Since being able to laugh is a property of human beings this principle guarantees the truth of the accidental consequence that if something is not able to laugh, then it is not a human being. In the case of both God and creatures, however, the guarantee is only of accidental consequence. Having posited per impossibile that the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Son we are bound still to concede that the Son is the Son but we cannot now allow appeal to the extrinsic locus in a proof that the Son is not the Son. Scotus insists that the question at issue here is whether the consequent of the conditional “if the Holy Spirit were not to proceed from the Son, it would not be distinct from the Son” follows formally (formaliter), i.e., naturally, or essentially, from the antecedent. To settle it he invokes a procedure which we may call radical circumscription which, he claims, allows him to posit a hypothesis from which a pair of contradictories both follow in natural consequences. With the aid of this

 Christopher J. Martin

procedure, he claims, we may establish what it is in the first place that distinguishes one thing from another. Radical circumscription allows one to posit, for example, that a human being is an animal but not rational and to ask whether it is still distinct from a stone. The answer, according to Scotus, is “yes” since it is being an animal which in the first place distinguishes humans from stones. Scotus holds that radical circumscription reveals that the conditional we are interested in is false if for its truth it is required that the consequent follows formally from the antecedent: Thus I say that it does not follow formally that if the Holy Spirit is not from the Son, it is not distinguished from Him, but it does, however, follow concomitantly (Scotus 1950: 145–146).

Scotus here uses “formally” to mean the same as “naturally” or “essentially”, and requires for following formally that the consequent is included in the antecedent. To follow “concomitantly” (concomitanter), on the other hand, is to follow in an accidental consequence and so for concomitant following no more is required than inseparability of the truth of antecedent and consequent. Though he does not quite use the language of his famous formal distinction in dealing with our question we can easily translate for him.9 Scotus holds that within numerically one and the same thing there may be items which are inseparable from one another and from the thing of which they are parts. They are nevertheless distinct from one another independently of the operations of the mind and so they are distinct in reality, even though they are not distinct things. According to Scotus they are in this case ‘formally distinct’, a necessary and sufficient condition for A to be formally distinct from B being that A and B are numerically one and the same thing but being B does not follow formally from being A, that is, being B is not included in the definition of what it is to be A. The most famous example is perhaps the formal distinction which Scotus holds exists in an individual such as Socrates between the common nature which Scotus claims makes him the kind of thing which he is and the individuating principle which he claims makes Socrates the individual which he is. Scotus could thus reformulate his answer by saying that the removal of a property does not formally entail the removal of the subject because, though they are numerically one and the same thing (res), they are formally distinct. The difference between Scotus and the earlier writers to whom he replies was limited to a disagreement over the logic of impossible hypotheses and Scotus sought to resolve it by clarifying that logic. The objections to Scotus’ position raised by William of Ockham, the leading philosopher of the next generation, are much more fundamental and turned on the relationship between logic and metaphysics.



Disputing about disputing 

Like Scotus, Ockham holds that the Son and the Holy Spirit would remain distinct even if per impossibile the Holy Spirit did not proceed from the Son. He disagrees, however, over the status of the conditional proposition “if the Holy Spirit were not to proceed from the Son, then it would not be distinct from the Son”. Ockham makes no reference to Scotus or to formal distinction in his treatment of this question. It is perfectly clear, however, that it is Scotus’ metaphysics which is his target and what he proposes to use against it is an entirely new account of formal following. Contrary to Scotus, Ockham holds that the consequent of the conditional we are interested in does indeed follow formally from the antecedent: I maintain that this follows formally and necessarily: the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Son, therefore it is not distinguished from the Son (Ockham 1967: 369–370).

It follows formally according to Ockham but not evidently so. His arguments, however, reveal that by “formal consequence” he means something quite different from Scotus. Ockham maintains that the consequence follows formally because it is warranted by a maximal proposition which is in effect the same as that appealed to by Scotus in his account of the argument. In Scotus’ terminology Ockham’s argument thus relies upon an appeal to an extrinsic locus. For just this reason Scotus could not accept that it proves that the consequent of the conditional that we are interested in follows formally from the antecedent. Rather all that is proved is that the consequence holds concomitantly. Ockham famously allows no distinction on the side of reality other than ‘real distinction’: two items are really distinct if and only if each can exist without the other. All other distinctions he insists are merely conceptual. He refuses to countenance, and argues repeatedly against, Scotus’ notion of ‘formal distinction’. Likewise, Ockham allows no logical relation of following other than that of accidental consequence. His often repeated appeal, against Scotus, to the indiscernibility of real identicals is, in another form, a dogmatic insistence that there is only one kind of consequence relation, and that this requires merely the impossibility of the antecedent being true without the consequent also being true. The additional requirement of evidence mentioned above is crucial for Ockham’s answer to the question of the status of the consequence but it is not a logical requirement, much less the basis for an ontologically significant distinction. Ockham thus relies on a quite different notion of formal consequence from Scotus’ one, and it is this new notion that appears in his account of the classification of consequences in his great logic textbook, the Summa Logicae (Ockham 1974: III-1, 587–590). Here, the distinction between the accidental and the natural

 Christopher J. Martin

which had appeared in all earlier accounts is replaced with one which divides consequences into material and formal. A material consequence, according to Ockham, is one which satisfies the condition that it is not possible for the antecedent to be true and the consequent false at the same time merely in virtue of the truth values of its antecedent and consequent. To characterise a formal consequence Ockham appeals to the notion of an extrinsic middle (his term for a locus). “If p, then q” is a formal consequence true in virtue of an extrinsic middle according to Ockham, if it is an instance of a general rule “which makes no reference to the particular terms occurring in the antecedent and consequent”. So for example “if only a human being is a donkey, then every donkey is a human being”, and any other instance obtained by uniform substitution for “human being” and “donkey” holds in virtue of the extrinsic middle “an exclusive proposition and the corresponding universal proposition with the terms transposed signify the same and convert with one another”. The description and the examples given by Ockham in the Summa seem to limit extrinsic middles to rules referring only to the form of the antecedent and consequent in the modern sense of form. Ockham’s treatment of the Filioque, however, indicates that extrinsic middles may refer to more than form in our sense. In particular they must include rules such as that which both he and Scotus rely on to connect the presence or absence of properties, inseparable accidents, and with the presence or absence of their subjects. The difference between them is that for Ockham the availability of an extrinsic middle is all that is needed to guarantee formal following whereas for Scotus more is required. Ockham’s class of formal consequences thus includes many consequences which Scotus would hold to be merely accidental. Indeed the only accidental consequences which are not included are those which Ockham classifies as material, and these are the merely trivial consequences which are true because of the semantic principles that anything follows from an impossibility and the necessary follows from everything. Ockham can thus find a formal consequence where Scotus found only an interesting concomitance. According to Scotus the proposition “if the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Son, then it is not distinct from the Son” is not a formal consequence and so if a respondent admits its antecedent as positum in an impossible positio, he is not bound to concede its consequent. Ockham gives just this impossible positio as an example in his treatment of obligationes in the Summa Logicae, and he too thinks that the respondent should not concede the consequent if it is proposed. Unlike Scotus, however, his reason is not that a logical condition for consequence fails to be met but rather that the epistemological requirement of evidence is not satisfied. Ockham begins his account of impossible positio by noticing, like Scotus, that there is a difference between accepting a consequence with an impossible antecedent



Disputing about disputing 

and consequent and positing a categorical impossibility (Ockham 1974: III-3, 739). Like Scotus, too, Ockham notes that in the case of impossible positio one may on occasion admit as positum the antecedent of a good consequence but not be required to concede its consequent. Unlike Scotus, however, he does not explain this possibility in terms of the difference between accidental and natural necessity but rather introduces into the characterisation of impossible positio the requirement that the positum not evidently entail contradictories. Ockham’s rules of procedure for impossible positio thus contain a requirement of evidentness. Much more importantly, although he refers here to natural consequence and this is one of the few places that he does, where Scotus and earlier writers on obligationes had explained such consequence in terms of conceptual containment, Ockham explicitly refers them to the kinds of rules in terms of which he has defined formal consequence. I suppose that Ockham referred here to such consequences as “natural” rather than “formal” simply because earlier accounts of impossible positio had done so. Much more important, I think, is the question why Ockham refers to formal rather than natural consequence in his account of the various forms of inference. Natural consequence and conceptual containment are at the heart of Scotus’ account of formal distinction. Ockham rejects such a distinction and his formal consequence cannot be used to support it. Ockham thus not only denied the Scotists their distinction but seems to have added insult to injury by taking from them the name that they would naturally have chosen for the kind of consequence that is crucial for their theory. He also completely changed the terms of the debate. His acceptance of impossible positio as a disputational procedure is extremely grudging and his own account of it renders it useless for making the distinctions that Scotus was interested in. In the next generation of theologians, debate raged over the need to employ impossible hypotheses but Ockham seems to have won the day as far as the logic textbooks were concerned. Rules for obligational disputes starting from impossible hypotheses are absent from treatises written later than the Summa Logicae. The demands of metaphysics had succeeded in reshaping logic. References Adams, M. M. 1989. William Ockham. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Chadwick, H. 2003. East and West: The Making of a Rift in the Church. From Apostolic Times until the Council of Florence. Oxford: Oxford University Press. John Duns Scotus. 1950. Lectura in Primum Sententiarum, I, d. 11, q. 2, Vaticana edn., vol. XVII. Saint Anselm. 1946. De Processione Spiritus Sancti. In F. Schmidt (ed), Opera Omnia, vol. II. Edinburgh: Nelson, 178–219.

 Christopher J. Martin Saint Thomas Aquinas. 1929. Thomae Aquinatis Scriptum super libros Sententiarum, Lib. I, dist. 11, art. 1. P. Mandonnet and M. Moos (eds). Paris: Lethielleux. William of Ockham. 1967. Scriptum in librum primum Sententiarum, d. 11, q. 2, Opera Theologica, St. Bonaventure edn., vol. III. William of Ockham. 1974. Summa Logicae. In Opera Philosophica, St Bonaventure edn., vol. I. Iwakuma, Y. and Ebbesen, S. 1992. “The logico-theological schools from the second half of the twelfth century: A list of sources”, Vivarium 30, 173–210. Martin, C. J. 1986. “William’s machine”. Journal of Philosophy 83: 564–572. Martin C. J. 1993. “Obligations and liars”. In S. Read (ed), Sophisms in Medieval Logic and Grammar. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 357–381. Martin, C. J. 2004. “Logic”. In J. Brower and K. Guilfoy (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Abelard. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 158–199. McCall S. 1996. “Connexive implication”. The Journal of Symbolic Logic 31: 451–433.

Notes 1. That is to say, for example, the sending of missions and the calling of Church Councils where the issues dividing East and West were debated. One fascinating aspect of the history of the Great Schism is that the principal parties on each side of the controversy did not speak the language of the other side. Disputes thus arose over the meaning of terms and their proper translation. 2. ‘and the Son’. This was not, in the first place at least, the most important issue which divided the East from the West. The basic disagreement was, and remains, political, the structure of authority within the Church and the primacy of the Papacy. In addition to political and theological differences there were also liturgical disagreements. 3. The Nicene Creed of 325 requires commitment only to the belief that “The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father”. From the fifth century onwards, however, and initially to emphasise their opposition to Arianism, Westerners added “and the Son”. On the history of the Great Schism, see Chadwick (2003). 4. The validity, that is, of the inference “if p, then q, but not q; therefore not p”. 5. Likewise he knew nothing of Aristotle’s Rhetoric but he did have access to Cicero’s writing and the pseudo-Ciceronian Rhetorica ad Herrenium. 6. For an extended discussion of Boethius and Abaelard’s logical theories, see Martin (2004). 7.

Or valid in the case of the corresponding arguments.

8. This was a controversial claim in the first half of the twelfth century and one of the defining theses of the logical theory of Abaelard and his followers, the Nominales. See Iwakuma and Ebbesen (1992). 9. For Scotus’ formal distinction and Ockham’s objections to it, see Adams (1989: ch. 2).

chapter 9

Antibarbarous contra pseudophilosophers Metaphors in an early modern controversy Cristina Marras

1

Introduction

The early modern period in Europe is full of controversies in all areas of learning. Rhetoric occupies a central position in these debates, in particular in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, where the very possibility of rhetoric and the need to chart anew its limits are at stake (Baxter 1962; Fumaroli 1980; Weinberg 1961). There are at least three principal factors that contribute to the development of a new concept of rhetoric (Garin 1961; Gensini 1999): changes in the knowledge of classical rhetoric (e.g., the discovery of new texts), a new system of organization in the fields of studies in which the concept of humanitas becomes central (Kristeller 1979: 242), and the development of a new education method. These factors are certainly rooted in the “alternative” proposed by Humanism to Scholastic philosophy. The alternative promotes a new concept of man and his relations to the society, a new concept of education (paideia), a new notion of science, and a new consideration of the role of language (Gensini 1999) therein. But Humanism also owed a heavy debt to the Middle Ages, particularly to its approach to language, embodied in the artes sermocinales, as stressed by Kristeller (ibid.). Against the background of this scenario, two basic questions can be raised regarding the language-related controversies of the period. The first concerns their analysis of the role rhetoric has in these controversies, insofar as such a role should mirror the contenders’ conceptions of the status to be granted to rhetoric. In fact, the question is how – if at all – the redefinition of the status of rhetoric, as illustrated in intellectual, ‘philosophical’ debates, legitimizes its use in the emerging dialectics, characteristic of the new language of science. The second question is whether the reshaping of the domain and scope of philosophical inquiry in course

 Cristina Marras

during the 16th and 17th centuries gave rise to a corresponding reshaping of the conditions of expression and, if so, to what extent. To answer these questions, different tools and models of analysis are certainly needed. In the framework of a research on “Controversies in the République des Lettres: 1600–1800”, Gloning (2002: 20) singles out a set of specific assumptions concerning controversies, including: (1) there is something like a typical linguistic or pragmatic “form” of controversies; (2) there are certain rules governing this specific form of communication; (3) to contribute to a controversy is to perform linguistic acts according to one’s goals in the controversy and according to these rules; (4) the pragmatic form of controversies is subject to change and to historical development over time. All these aspects render controversies or, more generally, debates a “pluri-multidimensional” phenomenon. In this paper, I have chosen to focus on metaphor as an appropriate tool for this multidimensional task of analyzing one particular controversy of the period under examination, as well as for assessing what is at stake in the issue of the redefinition of the status of rhetoric. Metaphor, the most important figure of speech, has the capability, in my opinion, of highlighting the multiple aspects involved in a debate. Attention on the metaphors employed by the contenders, through which the close relationship between talking and behaving in a debate is expressed (Cattani 2001: 61), permits also to identify a debate’s individuating features: Different types of debate lead to different metaphors, which reflect different ways to argue, different rules obeyed, different ways to perceive the opponent, to offend the adversary and to feel offended by her, etc. Furthermore, the use of metaphors in philosophical controversies touches in fact the tension between the freedom of creativity and the exactitude and formality of philosophical and scientific discourse and, at the same time, the necessity for philosophical activity to strike a balance between them. In the first part of my paper, I will examine a specific controversy, that of the Antibarbarous contra the Pseudophilosophers, which took place from 1543 to 1555. Section 2 introduces the two protagonists and lists orderly the ‘primary text’ of the controversy. Even a quick glance at the sequence of titles allows one to perceive the character, the tone, and the dynamics of the controversy. Section 3 is devoted to the “letter to readers”, explicitly addressed against Maioragio (Nizolius ad Lectores contra Majoragium),1 with which Nizoli prefaces his De Veris Principiis et Vera Ratione Philosophandi contra Pseudophilosophos Libri IV. In quibus Statuuntur Ferme Omnia Vera Verarum Artium et Scientiarum Principia... et praeterea Refelluntur Fere Omnes M. A. Majoragii Obiectationes contra eundem Nizolium, published in Parma in 1553. In Nizoli’s letter to the readers, I would like to stress the role of metaphor as a cognitive tool contributing to the conceptualization of the issues at stake, as well as to how the choice of metaphors highlights the irreconcilable



Antibarbarous contra pseudophilosophers 

positions of the two contenders, the distance between them and the personal motives involved, such as Nizoli’s “wounded pride”. In the second part of the paper, I will shift my attention to the “reaction” of the German philosopher G. W. Leibniz (1646–1716) to this controversy a century later, and to his use of metaphor for assessing the positions of Nizoli and Maioragio and sort of deciding who won the contest.2 Nizoli’s ideas in his debate with Maioraggio were somehow vindicated when Leibniz decided to publish a new edition of his work in 1674.3 To understand Leibniz’s motives in so doing, it is mandatory to examine at least some parts of his preface, titled Dissertatio Praeliminaris de Instituto Operis atque optima philosophi Dictione, where he expounds his views on philosophical style and the role of metaphor therein, and also takes a stand on the controversy Nizoli-Maioragio, albeit not unrestrictedly favourable to the former.4 In Leibniz’s preface, a particular metaphor – that of the scales – functions as a structuring principle of argumentation, and as a tool for the “reconciliation” of Nizoli’s and Maioragio’s positions, as we will see. The present article continues my previous work on this controversy, co-authored with Giovanna Varani, where I mainly concentrated on the structure of the debate and the philosophical position of Leibniz in his Dissertatio Praeliminaris (Marras and Varani 2004b). Here, with the focus turned instead to the role of metaphor, I will first analyze the structure of the arguments and the use of metaphor therein. 2 The Antibarbarous contra the Pseudophilosphers controversy The ‘Antibarbarous’ – Mario Nizoli – and the ‘Pseudophilosopher’ – Antonio Maria Conti di Maioragio – are the principal actors in one of the major theaters of polemics in the European scene during the 16th and 17th centuries. They are the protagonists in the dispute between the “new” and the “old”. In fact, the controversy between the two positions is about a new concept of dialectics (which has to be reaffirmed) and the role of rhetoric and poetry (which has to be redefined). It is not only a matter of futile debate between schools. Nizoli represents Cicero and a new concept of rhetoric, and Maioragio represents Aristotle and a new concept of philosophy. Mario Nizoli, an education reformer (Breen 1956: lxiv), was one of the major figures of Italian Anti-Aristotelism in the 16th century. His work contains many of the ideas that would later contribute to a new interest in the truth and the “use” of metaphysical thinking. He stressed the necessity to renew language as well as to forsake the logical categories, and affirmed the importance of the liberty of philosophical thinking over syllogistic schemes: “The four general principle of truth is

 Cristina Marras

the freedom and true capability of forming an opinion and judging about everything, as true itself and the nature of things dictates”.5 One of Antonio Maria Conti di Maioragio’s aims was to revive the ancient use of declamation. In fact, he considered declamation to be one of the fundamental bases for a political career. Thanks to his didactic activities, at the age of twentysix, in competition with Mario Nizoli, he obtained the chair of eloquence at the University of Milano. He also founded the Accademia dei Trasformati on the model of the ancient schools of declamation.6 The two contenders were both well versed in rhetoric and for the two the risk of being involved in a controversy was great. They risked their reputation, their credibility and their audience. The tone of the fight was inflamed, no stone was left unturned: invectives, offences, and provocations. Only the death of one of them put an end to the battle, but the controversy remained unsolved. The complete sequence of the texts involved in the controversy is listed in Table 1: Table 1  Antibarbarous contra Pseudophilosphers controversy: The texts Year

Author

Text title

Description

1535

Mario Nizoli

Prologue of the controversy.

1544

A. Maria Conti di Maioragio

Observationes in M.T. Ciceronem; Thesaurus Ciceronianus Decisiones XXV quibus M. Tullium Ciceronem omnibus Caeli Calcagnini criminationibus liberat

1546

A. Maria Conti di Maioragio

1546

Mario Nizoli

Antiparadoxa sive suburbanarum quaestionum libri sex in quibus omnia M.T. Ciceronis paradoxa refelluntur Epistola a M.A. Majoragium

Maioragio agrees with Nizoli’s positions regarding the role of the orator and the importance of Cicero. He refutes the critiques made about Cicero by Clelio Calcagnini in his Disquisitiones in libros officiorum M. Tulli of 1535. With this text the position of Maioragio changes. He discredits Cicero as a philosopher. Nizoli, who at the beginning approved the work of Maioragio, after the Antiparadoxa started to keep his distance, affirming the value of the discourses of the orators.



Antibarbarous contra pseudophilosophers 

Year

Author

Text title

1547?

A. Maria Conti di Maioragio

1548

Mario Nizoli

Apologia sive recusatio contra Nizolium: qua et Antiparadoxon ab eius criminationibus liberat et in ipsum crimina retorquet. Pamphlet

1547–1578? Mario Nizoli

1549

A. Maria Conti di Maioragio

1549

A. Maria Conti di Maioragio

1553

Mario Nizoli

Antapologia pro M.Cicerone et Oratoribus contra M. Antonium Majoragium Ciceromastigem Reprehensionum libri duo contra M.Nizolium

Recusatio omnium eorum quae Nizolius in decisiones Majoragii, tamquam male positas, notavit De veris principiis et vera ratione philosophandi contra pseudophilosophos libri IV. In quibus statuuntur ferme omnia vera verarum artium et scientiarum principia... et praeterea refelluntur fere omnes M. A. Majoragii obiectationes contra eundem Nizolium

Description

The pamphlet was written against the Disquisitiones of Calcagnini, but also against Maioragio’s Defensiones.

The publication of the book suffered and was also characterized by several attempts to conciliate the two positions from friends of the two scholars. A reply to the Defensiones... contra disquisitiones C. Calcagnini.

Maioragio died in 1555.

3 Nizolius ad lectores contra Majoragium In 1549 Maioragio published a severe critique of Nizoli (Reprehensiones ad Marium Nizolium), to which Nizoli responded violently four years later accusing his critic of being, among other things, a pseudophilosopher (De Veris Principis). This book highlights the irreconcilable differences between the two scholars and the

 Cristina Marras

unbridgeable distance between their positions on most of the central issues under discussion at the time. Nizoli prefaces his De Veris Principis with a “letter to the readers” attacking Maioragio’s address to the readers of his own book, Nizolius ad lectores contra Majoragium (ad lectores). On can find in Nizoli’s letter a summa of typical rules, strategies, and rhetorical devices belonging to the repertoire of pragmatic tools used by disputants in the early modern period. It is characterized by a very sharp language and is full of offensive words. Nizoli opens with the traditional appeal to the readers and a captatio benevolentiae, addressing those “readers who love the truth” (lectores veritatis amantissimi; Nizoli 1956: 7). And truth is, in fact, one of the central topics of the controversy between the Antibarbarous and the Pseudophilosophers. Nizoli’s opening statement is that he is going to use the same words and invectives that Maioragio used against him. From the first lines of the letter, Nizoli represents Maioragio as an animal, an insect: a “scorpion” and a “hornet”. A few lines later Maioragio, the Pseudophilosopher is depicted as a “donkey” and as a “toothless man” who is unable even to eat correctly, and someone else has to give him his food already half-chewed: Maioragio, even when trying to speak about the biggest or the most obscure themes of philosophy, is an asofos – ασοφος – and he knows philosophy as a donkey knows music. When Maioragio is writing philosophy, Ottaviano Ferrario7 gives him every argument, and he puts the food in his mouth half-chewed. Not as you would simply feed a child, but as you would a toothless man (Nizoli 1956: 7).8

Apart from stressing Maioragio’s ignorance through the donkey simile, this sentence also makes use of the conceptual metaphor “ideas are food” (Lakoff and Johnson 1980: 46): understanding requires the ability of properly “eating” and “digesting” ideas, which are “food of knowledge”; the Pseudophilosophers’ incapacity of properly “chewing” and “swallowing” this “food” prevents them from learning and assimilating knowledge, not to mention using it properly. In this part of the letter, Nizoli exaggerates the import of Maioragio’s customary polite praise of Ferrario as doctissimo viro, ‘very cultivated man’ (Maioragio 1549: 97) and takes advantage of Maioragio’s own exaggeration of the usual expressions of politeness visà-vis the latter: “I vehemently admire and venerate this man for his supreme and diversified knowledge of the most precious things”.9 In the same breath, he chastises Maioragio for accusing him of perpetua tarditas & ignorantia, ‘perpetual stupidity and ignorance’, in several passages of the Reprehensiones (e.g., Maioragio 1549: 121).10 The discrediting of Maioragio, which starts at the beginning of Nizoli’s “letter to the readers” (human beings vs. animals, knowledge vs. ignorance), goes on with a series of what Lakoff and Johnson (1980: 19) call “experiential based metaphors”:



Antibarbarous contra pseudophilosophers 

men vs. homunculi (big vs. small); important vs. unimportant (up vs. down); senior vs. junior (old vs. young); authority vs. subordination (top vs. bottom of hierarchy). For example: “he – Maioragio – wrote against me: a sort of apologia full of invectives and abuses disregarding both age and friendship, he has been provoked by me without any offence, but only as a friend, like someone who is young by someone older” (Nizoli 1956: 8); “We vile and obscure creeps, we are not worthy of giving them the pitale” (ibid.). The ironic depicting of himself and his Antibarbarous fellows as “homunculi” as well as “creeps”, as “obscure” implies that their opponents are true and superior human beings, with a clear vision and mind that endows them with knowledge. Together, these oppositions trace a sharp metaphorical distance, intellectually, emotionally, and socially charged, between the two contenders. In the central part of the letter, Nizoli elaborates upon the features of this distance, with further metaphorical tools. The Pseudophilosophers (as well as the dialecticians and metaphysicians) and all the “supporters” of Aristotelian philosophy are said to create “monstrous” figures. Maioragio, their prominent representative, is unreliable, for he has a “stinking foul mouth” (putrido et foetendi illo ore; Nizoli 1956: 8), someone who has a “repulsive, hideous appearance” and who speaks using venomous words (calamis et chartis venenatissimi; Nizoli 1956: 8). This representation of the opponent also permits to reconstruct the context of the controversy. Nizoli is very critical about the philosophical tradition. He rejects philosophical technicality and affirms the value of rhetoric: only philology and rhetoric can provide the critical force to combat the philosophical drive to speculative “systematization”. On the opposite side, Maioragio’s unequivocal anti-rhetorical position is clearly delineated. In accordance with Pico della Mirandola, who said that a rhetor cannot be a good philosopher, Maioragio agrees with those who consider logic to be the indispensable cornerstone of good philosophy. Nizoli, of course, is opposed to a position such as this, which he considers both as unjustified and as dangerously preventing thought from fulfilling its critical duties: [I]f someone will justly defend all or some of those things, then we speak without reason and we don’t oppose those who are considered or will be considered big philosophers, dialecticians, metaphysicians and scholars (Nizoli 1956: 8; italics mine).11

According to Nizoli, the big philosophers hold a concept of philosophy based on an idea of perfect knowledge and “pure” metaphysics, which they express in a language full of useless technical terms – probably intended to crash their homuncular opponents. To this Nizoli opposes an idea of philosophy and science conceived also as practical and capable to be understood by and therefore guide human action: “non solum cognoscendi ac sciendi, sed etiam agendi et faciendi omnes res mundi” (Nizoli 1956: 26; italics mine).

 Cristina Marras

A crucial point in the letter is when Nizoli explicitly describes himself (and all the Antibarbarous) as being accused by Maioragio (and with him all the Pseudophilosophers) of committing a crime (Maioragio 1549: 121). The scenario becomes juridical, which entails substantial changes in the burden of proof, i.e., the dialectical tasks of each side, defendant and accuser: [I]t is necessary to judge the lifestyle and customs of both of us, and he who really was the first to harm the other is the one who bears the guilt for all the hate and hostility that have arisen between us” (Nizoli 1956: 8).12

According to Nizoli, the Pseudophilosophers have accused him of an “unheard-of crime” (inauditum scelus) committed against philosophy: [H]e [Maioragio] and the other Pseudophilosophers shout and proclaim in a loud voice that an enormous and an incredible crime has been committed by us. Philosophy, they contend, was well erected and grounded by Aristotle about two millenia ago, and was accepted and approved for many centuries by so many great erudite men. And now, we, ignoble and obscure homunculi, who do not deserve even to be offered a chamber-pot, dare to call it into question, perturb and pervert it (Nizoli 1956: 8; italics mine).13

The gap between the opponents is presented, in this way, as virtually unbridgeable – a clash between fundamental beliefs and attitudes. In his defense, Nizoli retorts that in fact, the large number of those who have approved Aristotle’s philosophy for centuries did not prove its truth. All the existence of such indiscriminate approval proves is the existence of a large number of inexperienced people and of the long duration of this inexperience (Nizoli 1956: 9). It is not the large numbers and the long duration that are the judge of philosophy; rather, it is the truth of philosophy that has to judge the authority of the ancients.14 And he concludes his “defence”, saying: I briefly answer this: if the ancients said such absurd and false things, they have been justly criticized by us. And, if our reasons are grammatical, rhetorical, vulgar and vain, they are superior and more solid than the logical, metaphysical, monstrous and barbarous reasons. Under no circumstances, as humble and despicable human beings as we are, can we be blamed for the impudence of criticizing the ancients (Nizoli 1956: 9; italics mine).15

Now the positions of the two opponents, as far as their “metaphorical-conceptual distance” is concerned, is radically inverted. The homunculi become human beings, the reasons of the Antibarbarous are “superior” and “more solid” than those of the Pseudophilosophers, who – the inversion move hints – are perhaps the subhuman contenders, for they still believe in monstrous and barbarous reasons.16



Antibarbarous contra pseudophilosophers 

Nizoli’s prefatory letter thus builds up, with the help of well chosen metaphors, composition, and argument, a rhetorically masterful picture of the controversy, so as to render its solution all but impossible. Rather than narrowly concerned with his personal divergences with Maioragio, he is in fact engaged in the much bigger clash that was to lead from the Renaissance to Early Modern thought – a clash that, for Nizolius, was insurmountable. In fact, how could a connection between the truth of the orator and the truth of the philosopher be established? How could the absolute truth of a demonstrative science, allegedly grounded on unshakeable metaphysic assumptions and syllogistic logic, be reconciled with the historicity, variability and subjectivity, of the requirements of rational persuasion, supported by the mastery of rhetorical skills? 4 Leibniz’s reaction Leibniz was very knowledgeable about the rhetorical treatises of his time and particularly about the Aristotelian tradition. Given his own interest in language and logic, in the so-called Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes, and in controversies, it is not surprising that he decided to prepare a new edition of Nizoli’s book. In Leibniz’s Dissertatio Praeliminaris to this new edition, one cannot but recognize a model of argumentation: that of the scales. In fact, in order to explain his position vis-à-vis the Nizoli-Maioragio controversy, Leibniz uses the the scales metaphor as the backbone of his argument. This metaphor, which is central to his philosophy and to his conception of a ‘soft’ form of rationality (see Dascal 2001, 2005, for example), functions in the Dissertatio as the backbone of his argumentative strategy, just as in the evaluation of the controversy between Thomas Hobbes and Bishop Bramhall that he 40 years later appended to the Theodicy (Dascal 2005; Marras 2001, 2004a, 2006). Leibniz frequently employs the metaphor of the scales (libra, trutina, statera) in order to conceptualize reason as an instrument (organon) and its uses in human endeavours, practical as well as theoretical (Marras 2004: 206–234). The most widely used scales in his time comprised essentially a central pivot, a beam, and two scales. The neutrality (i.e., reliability) of the scales is ensured by the equidistance of the pivot from the scales, by the rigidity of the beam, and by the equipollence of the scales’ weights, as well as by the uniformity of the standard weights employed in weighing. Furthermore, the scales – especially in alchemical and chemical experimental settings or in the weighing of valuables – had to be protected from external distorting factors, e.g., sources of oscillation, and had to be placed on a strictly level surface. Finally, all of these properties of the scales should

 Cristina Marras

be subjected to repeated and careful verification and calibration, processes themselves requiring reliable standards and tools, some of which might also involve the use of scales. In spite of these precautions, the vast literature on scales at the time points out that an absolutely perfect equilibrium is unattainable, being rather a regulative ideal towards which constructors of scales and their users should strive. Leibniz spells out in great detail the correspondence between the epistemological properties the ‘balance of reason’ should possess and these and other properties of the material scales he was familiar with (cf. Dascal 2006: 20–21). Leibniz opens his Dissertatio Praeliminaris to his edition of Nizoli’s book with an extensive picture of the intellectual and cultural context of his time and of the time in which the controversy took place. He evokes the different schools and positions, as well as the major figures animating the Renaissance and Medieval debates and traditions, and compares their contributions (Leibniz 1966: 405–406). Then he presents Nizoli in praiseworthy terms and mentions some of his works, particularly those on Cicero. Apparently, he is putting all the weight on one of the scales’ pans, as the very fact of having decided to edit Nizoli (rather than one of his opponents) would make the reader expect. Maioragio was usually neglected by the humanist tradition, which favored Nizoli’s position, but Leibniz makes clear from the outset that he will not ignore him in spite of his complaints against Nizoli’s lack of fairness in criticizing him. Step by step the scales begin to move towards Maioragio’s direction. In the battle between Cicero (rhetoric) and Aristotle (philosophy), with which the controversy is metonymically equated, Maioragio’s earlier defense of Cicero vis-à-vis Calcagnini’s17 attacks is received with comprehension by Leibniz. Furthermore, he is particularly fond of the fact that, in spite of Maioragio’s later anti-Ciceronian turn, he at some point had considered it possible to defend both Aristotle and Cicero (Leibniz 1966: 406). In fact, Leibniz begins to balance the two positions. On the one hand, he approves the linguistic reform proposed by Nizoli. In particular, he considers the fact that rhetoric is a science and an art in need of a new logic, and that one does not have to look for eternal laws of discourse but for “a useful discipline”. In general, he considers positively the aim of trying to reach a state of human knowledge which has to be closer to utility and not only to truth. He also stresses that language has to be close to its common usage: communis loquendi consuetudo (Leibniz 1966: 408–409). On the other hand, however, he criticizes the anti-Aristotelian position assumed by Nizoli and suggests going back to the “authentic” Aristotle.18 As the balancing act seems to come to fruition, Leibniz turns his argument around, and one pan of the scales moves down decidedly in favor of Maioragio. Leibniz lists Nizoli’s “many major mistakes” (Leibniz 1966: 425) and stresses the major points of distance between the two contenders.19 Nevertheless, he continues



Antibarbarous contra pseudophilosophers 

to weigh the arguments of the two scholars until he is able to claim that they are actually moved by the same ultimate aim: they both want a reform of philosophy. At this point he explicitly undertakes to elaborate the conciliation between the two positions. He acknowledges, on Nizoli’s side, the importance of his programme – the need to “clean up and purge” philosophy (Leibniz 1966: 421), which is also addressed against the rigidity of scholasticism; on Maioragio’s, the need to value a theoretical perspective as an essential component of philosophy. Leibniz thus stresses the complementarity between rhetoric and dialectic, practice and theory. Nizoli is right in stressing the former, the political-civil function of rhetoric itself, and in pleading for a philosophical style free of technical jargon, which is incomprehensible for non professionals (Leibniz 1966: 420ff.); Maioragio, however, is also right in stressing the need of a rigorous logic and a precise scientific language. At the end, however, equilibrium is not reached and the scales lean towards one of the sides. Reaffirming the weight of the reasons in favour of the “authentic” Aristotle (Marras and Varani 2004: 209), Leibniz ends up by acknowledging the superiority of Aristotle over Cicero (Leibniz 1966: 426). When carefully assessed, the relative weight of opposing arguments “inclines” the scales, rather than categorically “deciding” who us the ultimate and absolute victor. Equilibrium remains the definitional feature of the scales, the ideal condition for their pragmatic use to measure inclinations. And conciliation is achieved by granting each contender the share of the cake he justly deserves. 5 Conclusion In the texts of Nizoli and Leibniz directly examined in this paper, where the justification and character of a new philosophical style are argued for, metaphor looms large – albeit with different degrees of intensity. Both authors consider this issue important in the light of their belief that language and thought are closely related, rather than wide apart from each other.20 And both not only theorize about metaphor’s role in this new style, but exemplify it in their actual way of arguing. While Nizoli virtually had to choose – by virtue of the circumstances of the controversy in which he found himself engaged – the adversarial mode, Leibniz, with the benefit of a century of distance and no contender to defeat, could address the underlying issues more leisurely and distribute praise and blame more equitably between Nizolius and his adversary. While victory was for Nizoli the only satisfactory outcome, for Leibniz conciliation was mandatory as the only way to show that Cicero and Aristotle, rhetoric and dialectic, the expressive and the logic-semantic function of language (Corsano 1952; Gensini 1991: 24) not only could, but also should cohabit in the new, comprehensive philosophical house he, by demonstrating the

 Cristina Marras

compatibility of the apparently irreconcilable positions of Nizolius and Maioragio, was eager to continue to build. In this paper I have concentrated on the use of metaphor as a tool capable of expressing and revealing pointedly not only the nature of the thematic opposition between two scholars or two schools and approaches and the attempt to analyze, assess, and eventually overcome such oppositions, but also the kinds of attitudes and moods that are part and parcel of any such oppositions and the attempt to resolve theme. This kind of analysis, in my opinion, demonstrates how metaphor must be conceived as more than a “rhetorical ornament”. Metaphor, in spite and perhaps by virtue of its informal character, functions as a methodical and nonconventional way of structuring discourse. This is essential for capturing the cognitive role of metaphors, which started to be acknowledged in the transformations that the study of language underwent in the time elapsed, roughly, between the Nizoli-Maioragio controversy and Leibniz’s subtle assessment of its significance.21 References Baxter, H. 1962. The Age of Criticism. The Late Renaissance in Italy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Breen, Q. 1956. “Introduction”. In M. Nizolio, De Veris Principiis et Vera Ratione Philosophandi contra Pseudophilosophos, Libri IV. Vol. 1. Roma: Bocca, xv-lxxiv. Cattani, A. 2001. Botta e Risposta. Bologna: Il Mulino. Corsano, A. 1952. G. W. Leibniz. Napoli: ESI. Dascal, M. 2001. “Nihil sine ratione → blandior ratio”. In H. Poser (ed), Nihil sine ratione. Akten der VII Internationaler Leibniz-Kongress. Berlin, 276–280. Dascal, M. 2005. “The balance of reason”. In D. Vanderverken (ed), Logic, Thought and Action. Dordrecht: Springer, 27–47. Dascal, M. 2006. G. W. Leibniz. The Art of Controversies. Dordrecht: Springer. Fumaroli, M. 1980. L’Âge de l’Éloquence. Geneva: Librairie Droz. Garin, E. 1961. La Cultura Filosofica del Rinascimento Italiano. Firenze: Sansoni. Gensini, S. 1993. Volgar Favella, Percorsi del Pensiero Linguistico Italiano da Robortello a Manzoni. Firenze: La Nuova Italia. Gensini, S. 1999. “Retorica, filosofia del linguaggio e studio delle lingue nella tradizione umanistica”. In P. Schmitter (ed), Geschichte der Sprachtheorie 4. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 230–253. Gensini, S. 2001. Il Naturale e il Simbolico. Roma: Bulzoni. Gloning, T. 2002. “Early modern (theory of) controversies: The rules of the game and the role of the persons involved”. In M. Dascal, G. Fritz, T. Gloning, and Y. Senderowicz (eds), Scientific Controversies and Theories of Controversy (Technical Report 3, Research Group Controversies in the République des Lettres). Giessen, 21–34. Kristeller, O. 1979. Renaissance Thought and its Sources. New York: Columbia University Press. Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. 1980. Metaphors We Live by. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.



Antibarbarous contra pseudophilosophers 

Leibniz, G.W. 1966 [1674]. “Dissertatio Praeliminaris, de alienorum operum editione, de scopo operis, de philosophica dictione, de lapsibus Nizolii”. In G.W. Leibniz, Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe. Ed. von der Deutschen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, VI, 2, 398–432. Leibniz, G.W. 1978. Die Philosophischen Schriften von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, 7 vols., C.I Gerhardt (ed)Hildesheim and New York: G. Olms. Marras, C. 2001. “The reception of the Hobbes-Bramhall controversy according to Leibniz’s ‘Réflexions sur l’ouvrage que M. Hobbes a publié en anglois, de la liberté, de la necessité et du hazard’”. In M. Dascal, G. Fritz, T. Gloning and Y. Senderowicz (eds), The Hobbes-Bramhall Controversy (Technical Report 1, Research Group Controversies in the République des Lettres). Tel Aviv, 49–61. Marras, C. 2004a. On the Metaphorical Network of Leibniz’s Philosophy. PhD Dissertation. Tel Aviv University. Marras, C. and Varani, G. 2004b “I dibattiti rinascimentali su retorica e dialettica nella ‘Prefazione al Nizolio’ di Leibniz”. Studi Filosofici 27: 184–216. Marras, C. 2006. “Dalla scienza come dimostrazione alla scienza come persuasione: quale linguaggio?”. In S. Bonfiglioli and C. Marmo (eds), Retorica e Scienze del Linguaggio. Teorie e Pratiche dell’Argomentazione e della Persuasione. Bologna: Aracne, 275–290. Mathieu, V. 1983. “Leibniz, Nizolius et l’Histoire de la Philosophie”. In A. Heinekamp (ed), Die Rolle der Philosophiegeschichte in Leibniz’ Denken. Wiesbaden: Steiner, 143–150. Nizoli, M. 1956 [1553]. De Veris Principiis et Vera Ratione Philosophandi contra Pseudophilosophos, Libri IV. In Q. Breen (ed), Edizione Nazionale dei Classici del Pensiero Italiano, serie II. 2 vol. Roma-Milano: Bocca. Rossi, P. 1953. “Il ‘De Principiis’ di Mario Nizoli”. In E. Garin, P. Rossi and C. Vasoli (eds), Archivio di Filosofia, Testi Umanistici su la Retorica. Roma-Milano: Bocca, 57–91. Tillmann, B. 1910. Leibniz’ Verhältnis zur Renaissance im Allgemeinen und zu Nizolius im besonderen. Bonn: P. Hanstein. Varani, G. 1995a. Leibniz e la “Topica” Aristotelica. Milano: Istituto di Propagazione Libraria. Varani, G. 1995b. “Ramistische Spuren in Leibniz’ Gestaltung der Begriffe ‘dialectica’, ‘topica’ und ‘ars inveniendi’”. Studia Leibnitiana 27(2): 135–156. Varani, G. 2005. “Impegno ‘editoriale’ e temi retorici nella prefazione a Nizolio”. In S. Gensini (ed), Linguaggio, Mente, Conoscenza. Intorno a Leibniz. Roma: Carocci, 39–58. Weinberg, B. 1961. A History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Notes 1.

I will quote from this letter as it is published in Breen (1956: 7–9). Translations are mine.

2. Nizoli’s De Veris Principiis, his controversy with Maioragio and the Leibniz preface have been studied by several scholars. Among the pioneers were Tillmann (1910), Breen (1956), Rossi (1953), Corsano (1952). I would like to mention here the invaluable and stimulating work on this controversy and on Leibniz’s preface to Nizoli by G. Varani (1995a, 1995b, 2005). She carefully reconstructed the philosophical context and debates from the Renaissance to the early modern period. It is thanks to our many discussions and constant correspondence that I became

 Cristina Marras aware of the importance of this controversy as a crucial knot in the thematization of the “language-philosophy-knowledge” relation between the 16th and 17th centuries. 3. The introduction of the expression ‘Antibarbarus Philosophicus’ in the title of Leibniz’s edition of Nizoli’s De Veris Principiis seems to be due to the publisher, Hermann von Sand (Varani 2005: 54, n.2). Quirinus Breen (1956: lxxiii-lxxv), who studied the controversy in the 1950s, affirms that the title “seems a printer’s substitution to promote the sale of the book”. 4. Leibniz’s preface is indeed followed by an attempt to reconcile Aristotle with the moderns, Epistola de Aristotele Recentioribus Reconciliabili. 5. “Quartum generale principium veritatis est libertas et vera licentia sentiendi ac judicandi de omnibus rebus ut veritas ipsa rerumque natura postulat” (Nizoli 1956: 26–27; italics mine). 6. Mario Nizoli was born in Bersello, in the province of Modena in 1489 and died in 1566; Antonio Maria Conti di Maioragio was born in Mairago, in the province of Milan in 1514 and died (apparently exhausted from the intensity of his studies) in 1555. 7. Ottaviano Ferrario, 1518–1586, was professor of philosophy at Padua. Leibniz describes him as a famous and erudite peripatetic, whom Nizoli had in high esteem. 8. “Quibus si quando Majoragius ipse, qui licet de magnis et obscuris Philosophiae rebus loqui conetur, tamen vere est ασοϕος et tantum scit de Philosophia, quantum asinus de Musica, vel Octavianus Ferrarius, qui Majoragio de philosophia scribendi omnia suppediat, et tanquam non infanti, sed viro vere edentulo quasi praemansum in os cibum inserit”. 9. “[E]go virum propter summam & variam plurimarum rerum cognitionem, vehementer admirer atque colo” (Maioragio 1549: 90). 10. Maioragio indeed claimed, in this vein, that Nizoli had misunderstood Cicero (Maioragio 1549: 40) and Aristotle (p. 136), and that instead of reading the primary, authoritative sources, he in fact used to rely on unreliable commentators (p. 14). 11. “[S]i quis inquam unquam haec omnia aut aliquod unum horum recte poterit defendere, nihil causae dicimus neque recusamus, quin illi et sint et habeantur quamlibet magni Dialectici, magni Metaphysici, magni Philosophi, magni docti, magni sapientes”. 12. “Ex eis enim tanquam ex certissimis et locupletissimis testibus non solum de doctrina sed etiam de moribus nostris judicium fieri volo: et praetera ex eo, quod ille prior nulla dum a me lacessitus injuria”. 13. “Quod autem et ille et alii quidam Pseudophilosophi clamitant et tantum non vociferantur, magnum quoddam et inauditum scelus a nobis admitti, quod Philosophiam ab Aristotele prope duobus ante millibus annorum bene constitutam et fundatam et a tot tantisque viris dictissimis per tot secula receptam et approbatam, nunc demum homunculi ignobiles ac obscuri, ac ne matellam quidem illis porrigere digni, in dubium revocare, perturbare pervertere audeamus”. 14. In this and other respects, Maioragio contends that Nizoli’s opinion about the Latin writers is simply false: “Iudicium Nizolii de latinis scriptoribus penitus esse falsum” (Maioragio 1549: 185). 15. “Breviter quoque hoc respondeo, si antiqui illi tanquam falsissima et absurdissima dicentes, recte a nobis fuerunt reprehensi, et si rationes nostrae ita ut sunt grammaticales, rhetoricales, vulgares et vanae multo sunt meliores et firmiores quam logicales, metaphysicales, monstrosae et barbarae, nullo pacto nos, quamvis humiles et abjectos, ob antiquorum reprehensionem, etiam quamlibet inverecundiusculam esse vituperandos”.



Antibarbarous contra pseudophilosophers 

16. The same conceptualization of the contenders’ evaluation by Nizoli is repeated several times in his De Veris Principiis: the “Grammarians”, and especially Cicero are clearer, closer to the truth and much better than the Dialecticians, the Metaphysicians and all the “Philosophastros” (Nizoli 1956: 24). 17. Clelio Calcagnini (1479–1541) was an Italian humanist, professor of belles lettres at the University of Ferrara. In 1525 he participated in the religious controversies on free will with his De Libero Animi Motu, echoing Erasmus’ De Libero Arbitrio, and in 1535 he was involved in the controversy about the importance of Cicero for philosophy, writing a book against Cicero: Disquisitiones in Libros Officiorum M. Tullii. 18. “The Leibniz notes have both assent and dissent with respect to Nizolius” (Breen 1956: lxx). However, Breen does not analyze Leibniz’s argumentation in terms of a reconciliatory position. 19. Leibniz also stresses the “superiority” of Maioragio in a note to his edition of Nizoli’s De veris principiis, saying that Maioragio’s objection is so sharp that Nizoli is unable to give a solid reply to him (Leibniz 1966: 473). 20. “Every act of thinking and willing is interlaced with words” (implexus sit verbis omnis cogitandi volendique actus; Leibniz 1966: 420); “words are the closer tool of thought, but they are the only tool for instructing about our thoughts” (verba sint proximum cogitandi instrumentum, docendi autem cogitata nostra sint unicum; ibid.). 21. A reconstruction of the Italian intellectual framework wherein the cultural-linguistic transformation between the 16th and the 17th centuries took place is carried out by Gensini (1993: 24–50).

chapter 10

Dialectics, topology, and practical philosophy in early modern times Merio Scattola

1

Introduction

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries kept on using to great extent ancient and medieval patterns of knowledge. This is particularly evident in the so called “practical disciplines” (Aristotle 1957: 1025b 25; Thomas 1980: 145a; Arnisaeus 1648 [1615]: 280a–291a) of that time, which included not only practical philosophy in the strict sense, i.e., political theory, ethics and economics, but also moral theology and law. These were branches of human wisdom that could not give necessary explanations because, according to the Aristotelian account, they did not deal with eternal and unchangeable objects, like the phenomena of astronomy or mathematics, but concerned human experience, which is irregular, unpredictable and continuously varying (Aristotle 1954 [1894]: 1140a31–b4). Thus, this kind of knowledge could not create a theory or a science in a proper sense. It rather yielded that peculiar type of wisdom that deals with the particular and was called prudence in the Aristotelian tradition. This kind of knowledge was in its essence a product of dialectical reasoning. The first three decades of the seventeenth century were without a doubt the age of the rising scientific revolution, which produced the works of Galileo Galilei, but practical disciplines of those times remained deeply indebted to the medieval ways of creating and transmitting knowledge. 2 Dialectical knowledge in early modern times A quotation from a work by Bartholomaeus Keckermann, a German logician and philosopher of the early seventeenth century, is a good starting point for explaining the fundamental qualities of practical knowledge. In various classes that he held at the High School (Gymnasium illustre) of the reformed city of Danzig,

 Merio Scattola

Keckermann developed a full philosophical encyclopaedia, which after his death was gathered together and published by Johann Heinrich Alsted with the very interesting title of System of All Systems (Keckermann 1613). Towards the end of the second volume of this Systema systematum we can find a course held by Keckermann in the year 1609 in which he describes the basic elements of practical philosophy, writing a kind of “practical epistemology”. Already the title of the course is instructive: Practical Device, or Methodical and Complete Idea of the Full Practical Philosophy, Including Ethics, Economics and Politics, in Which is Shown the Best Way of Shaping the Study of Practical Philosophy and of Collecting Common Places, and Finally of Reading with a Certain Utility Both Political and Historical Writers (Keckermann 1613 [1609]). This title suggests that practical wisdom or prudence, required for every good politician or even for every good citizen, can be achieved in three steps: first of all one has to make oneself acquainted with some fundamental teachings or with a studium at a university; then, as most of the writers on practical philosophy of the early seventeenth century said (Scattola 1995: 1–11; Scattola 2002c: 61–73; Scattola 2003a: 40–46, 121–125), one must organise one’s practical experiences through a net of commonplaces; and finally one should increase the amount of known cases by reading good authors. In a main passage of his text Keckermann emphasizes the idea that practical knowledge is essentially connected with the collection and distribution of commonplaces: Collecting commonplaces is one of the actions belonging to the art of logic, and therefore is an effect of the logical doctrine about method, so that it is for you impossible to collect commonplaces in the right way if you are not a logician. As a matter of fact, this exercise is peculiar to the art of logic and it lets us (1) explain every question; (2) discuss in controversies and defend both parties; (3) judge in a clear and sure way about each single problem and so give good advices; and (4) strengthen our memory. Whatever is in the whole world, whatever happens or ever happened in the world, it can be referred to a particular discipline, and if we want to judge correctly about it, we must actually refer it to a discipline. Like everything can be referred to a discipline, in the same way every word and every sentence may be reduced to a discipline. Words are signs for things, and so they follow closely the things that they are signs for, in the same way as a shadow follows its body. But everything that belongs to and can be referred to a discipline has these two main requisites: (1) it is methodical; (2) it is complete. In the same way the commonplaces about things and words must have those two requisites too: (1) they should be methodical according to the method of their discipline; (2) they should be complete. The commonplaces will be methodical (1) if they have been arranged according to the different disciplines, so that we have as many different and separate genera of commonplaces as the many genera of the disciplines; (2) if each genus of commonplaces has been arranged in the same order in which the discipline they belong to is arranged. The commonplaces will be entire and com-



Dialectics, topology and practical philosophy in early modern times 

plete, not deficient and imperfect, if you dispose in your book not only the most general titles of the corresponding discipline, but also the most specific ones, beginning with the most general ones and going down until the most particular ones, so that you might note in your commonplaces every genus and every species of things enclosed in the discipline […]. But each single thing can pertain to various disciplines according to its different aspects. Therefore, when you hear or read something interesting about one particular thing, you must immediately ask yourself, in which respect this thing belongs to this or that discipline, and according to the different aspects you will note it into different books (Keckermann 1613 [1609]: 1700a–b).

This passage suggests a particular idea of knowledge, which was to a large extent common to all “practical disciplines” of early modern times such as jurisprudence or politics. According to this description, knowledge looks like a huge amount of arguments and the whole world itself is a great framework, a fabric, of arguments. From this description we can draw three conclusions. First, that human knowledge must be already complete and closed. We, as humankind, already know all that we need. All arguments are known from the antiquity and/or the Middle Ages. In practical philosophy this idea can be explained in the following way. Practical philosophy deals with the world of the particular and must define some general rules according to the qualities of our changing and unpredictable world. Proceeding by induction, it must gather all possible cases before it can formulate its principles. But practical wisdom cannot formulate necessary and eternal conclusions since the particular is endless; nevertheless, it can identify some significant cases and important questions concerning human life. So, it is highly probable that in the long space of the time of its history mankind has already detected all fundamental topics. Therefore, the antiquity of an argument counts as the crucial reason to define its validity, since only what is really worthy can have survived such a long time. We can now perhaps add some marginal arguments, but we cannot discover something really new, something that was completely unknown before. Therefore, all that we use in practical wisdom is, as even the learned history of the early eighteenth century said, novantiquum, “old news” (Pasch 1700: 1–6; Jaumann 1991: 84–85). The second conclusion we can draw is that the academic disciplines of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries had a strong dialectical or topological structure. As we understand from the passage by Keckermann, the arguments are not disposed in a logical order, in the descending stairway of deduction, but are grouped within a dialectical disposition. It is impossible to link together all pieces of human knowledge in a descending deductive chain, by means of a sequence of conclusions (per modum conclusionis). They must be compared together in order to understand which among them is compatible with all others. In general, since every one of them is proved to be true, each element or argument of practical

 Merio Scattola

knowledge must be compatible with each other element. But this relationship is not evident immediately and must be searched for, and this search is a typical dialectical task. The tradition is often full of arguments that are apparently opposite. The duty of dialectic discussion is to demonstrate that this opposition is only apparent and that one argument is part of the other, if only we understand it in the right way. The weaker argument must be therefore a specification, an exception, and a subordinate case of the stronger one. This was the same task of medieval dialectics since the times of Abaelard; it began always by listing opposite arguments that were both true – sic et non at the same time, and its aim was to demonstrate how they have to be understood in order not to exclude one of them, but to maintain both as parts of the same argumentation. In the sixteenth century this dialectical approach is particularly evident in the tradition of Catholic Scholastic, which inherited from medieval Scholastic not only the subjects discussed, but also the way of discussing them. So the works of Francisco de Vitoria, Domingo de Soto or Diego de Covarrubias, which oft are commentaries on the Summa theologiae by Thomas Aquinas, repeat closely the scheme of the medieval quaestio (Vitoria 1981; Soto 1967 [1556]; Scattola 2001b: 21–47). We can find it as well in the works of Hugo Grotius, who is deeply indebted to the Spanish theologians of the sixteenth century. For instance, in his Commentary on the Law of Prize and Booty, Grotius discussed the question whether both enemies in a war may have an equal right to fight. The opinions in the debate about this topic can be reduced to two main positions. On the one hand, the traditional point of view of lawyers and theologians was that war is an act of jurisdiction and that therefore only one side can be right according to the legal and moral circumstances of the disputed case (Antoninus 1582: III, 4, 1, 9, fo. 65va; Vitoria 1981: 4, 1, 6, p. 138). On the other hand, humanistic jurisprudence could assume that both parties were justified to move to war. Andrea Alciato, who held the position of Raffaele Fulgosio, believed that in most cases the reasons that lead to a war are so uncertain and obscure that it is in practice impossible to find out on whose side justice is (Alciato 1537: II, 21, p. 101–105; Fulgosio 1544: I, 1, 5). Grotius proposed on the contrary a complex explanation that seems to take elements from both traditions (Haggenmacher 1983: 305–311). In fact he maintains the scholastic doctrine, but systematizes it into a general frame, in which the humanistic objections appear as particular cases and can be solved without contradiction. He observes that the question about justice in a war can be formulated in the strict sense only for rulers (Grotius 1868: VII, p. 82–83). As he explains, justice has the logical form of the relationship between the “contraries” on the traditional Square of Opposition (Aristotle 1980 [1949]: 17b 2–6; 20–26; Zanatta 1992: 34–39), that is, between two universal propositions of the types A and E, and has the same truth table as the relation “~p v ~q” (Weinberg 1950 [1936]: 92; Copi 1953: 123–150;



Dialectics, topology and practical philosophy in early modern times 

Copi: 1954: 66–75). These are his words: “Here too happens the same that happens between contrary propositions, which can be both false, but not both true” (Grotius 1868: VII, p. 83). The order of justice does not tolerate that two kings have exactly the same rights, and one of them must have something more, whereas the other one will have necessarily something less. The fighting subjects follow the pattern of “subcontrary” propositions, that is, the relationship between two particular sentences of the types I and O, which can be valid at the same time and has the same truth table as “p v q” (Copi 1953: 123–150; Copi 1954: 72–73). The necessary condition for subjects fighting in a war is that they are truly subjected to their ruler. Each of them is bound by an oath, which is equally true, but refers to two different commonwealths or kings. This legal condition institutes a true subject, capable of fighting, and two of these subjects recognise each other as true enemies (Grotius 1868: VII, p. 83–84). Since soldiers are rightful enemies on both sides, Fulgosio and Alciato’s opinion is true, but it can be accepted only on the condition that it refers to subordinate fighters. The idea that only one enemy is in the right and the idea that both enemies are in the right seem to exclude each other, but they are both true when we place them at two different levels of the argumentation. The first is really valid when we consider the rulers at the top of the argument. But if we look at the bottom of the argument, the second one becomes true as well. On the other hand, in the Protestant universities of the German territories, the legal and political literature of the late sixteenth century abandoned the strict form of the medieval quaestio, but maintained nevertheless the general pattern of the summa. In works written in this context we can find a typical sequence of topics and problems, which reflects the old division in quaestiones and articula, even if the discussion of the single points does not follow the three canonical steps (pro et contra, arguitur, responditur). So, practical disciplines remained an architecture of questions and arguments organised in topological patterns, which were sometimes called commonplaces.1 Contributing to this persistence of ancient schemes in the academic literature of early modern times was without doubt the practice of the disputatio in many universities, especially in the Holy Roman Empire. In the German territories most genres of academic literature were built upon the disputation. The use was that the newly appointed professor in a philosophical field (logic, physics, metaphysics, politics or ethics) divided his teaching in a series of topics, which were like chapters of an ideal book. Then he gave each of these topics to a student, who had to defend the positions of the teacher in an academic exercise or in a public discussion in order to attain an academic degree. After the discussion, the real dialectical play, the text of the disputation, which was mostly written by the professor himself, was published in various forms. Sometimes each dissertation was edited separately, but the single chapters were almost edited together like a collective book, which

 Merio Scattola

had a single title and went then under the name of the professor (Stolleis 1988: 213; Ahsmann 1995; 99–114; Scattola 2003a: 21–32). We have now many examples of collections of this type. Here are some titles chosen from the field of political theory in the German universities: Melchior Iunius, One Hundred and Thirteen Political Questions. First Part (1602); Johann Gerhard, A Century of Political Questions (1608a [1604]); Philipp Heinrich von Hoen, Two Books of Disputations (1608a); Hermann Kirchner, The Republic (1608b); Johann Crüger, The Rudder of Commonwealths, or Political Course (1609a); Christian Matthiae, Political Course (1611); Christoph Besold, First Part of The Political Course, Presenting Nature and Constitution of The Commonwealth (1614a); Johann Ulrich Wolff von Todtenwarth and Johann von Elswych, Political and Legal Biga, Completed through Fourteen Disputations (1615); Johann Angelius Werdenhagen, A Decade of Political Problems (1616); Reinhard König, A Legion of Political Disputations Methodically Disposed (1618); Christian Liebenthal, Political Course (1619a); Christoph Forstner, A Hundred Political Annotations (1623); Johann Konrad Dannhauer, Course of Ethical and Political Exercises (1626); Iohannes Loccenius, A Collection of Political Dissertations (1644). In some cases the first edition as a political course (Collegium politicum) was only the first step in a longer history, because the author published again the same work, often with only marginal variations, as a handbook for politics under his own name, as if it were a new work. In this way, Henning Arnisaeus published between 1605 and 1606 twelve disputations on political matters (Arnisaeus 1605a), which he edited in 1606 as a handbook under his name with the title Political Doctrine Reduced to the Proper, that is the Aristotelian, Method, whereas in 1615 he began to publish a series of very detailed treatises on the same topics, On Republic, or Two Books of Political Lessons. The same Arnisaeus wrote in 1611 a brief dissertation, in which he denied the right to resist to an unjust king, and republished it the following year as an enlarged text in the form of a treatise on the right to resist (Arnisaeus 1612). The adversary of Arnisaeus, Iohannes Althusius, behaved in the same way: he defended in 1602 a disputation On Foundation and Administration of a Kingdom (Althusius 1996 [1602]) and the following year used the same pattern and the same argument of the brief academic writing to compose his handbook Political Doctrine Methodically Digested (1610 [1603]). A third very interesting case is that of Christoph Besold, who published the same text three times: first as a disputation in a collection, second as the first chapter of a political handbook, and third as an independent political treatise (Besold 1614c: 1–34; Besold 1620 [1618]: 1–53; Besold 1625: 1–88). The third conclusion we can draw deals with the task of the author. All the literary genres we mentioned use a strong topological disposition and organised arguments that were mostly known from antiquity. This implies that the task of the



Dialectics, topology and practical philosophy in early modern times 

author consisted not in discovering new arguments, but in finding the right, appropriate or definitive disposition of the knowledge he already possessed. In this sense, when legal and political authors of the early seventeenth century intended to point out their merits, they did not mention the originality of the ideas they propagated, but praised the high quality, the accuracy or originality of their method of teaching. Even the titles of the political, ethical and legal works of that time declared explicitly this formal intent. So, these works were methodical (Pruckmann 1587), methodically digested (Althusius 1592 [1586]; Althusius 1603; Hoen 1608a), methodically drawn up (König 1618), methodically composed (Kirchner 1608a), methodically treated (Liebenthal 1619a), arranged in a methodical way (Keckermann 1601), in accordance with the rules of method (Althusius 1588 [1586]), written with a careful method (Felwinger 1652), written according to The logical method (Matthiae 1611), reduced to The proper method (Arnisaeus 1606; Martini 1630), and so on. We can find some clear examples of this methodical attitude in the legal and political treatises by Iohannes Althusius, who is one of the best-known German authors of that time. In the prefaces to his works, which mostly contain his programmatic declaration, Althusius wrote explicitly that the duty of the political writer is first of all to order inherited knowledge in a clear way. In the foreword to his great legal treatise Dicaeologica (Doctrine of Justice) (1967 [1617]) he expounded his programme: I have reduced the matter of law, which was scattered in many books, to precise titles and genera. I have brought back to the right place and put in the right order arguments that had been confused and displaced from their original position. I disposed each thing – as it seems – according to the right order and method, so that what precedes illuminates what follows, and what follows takes light from what precedes. Some issues, nomadic and homeless, were wandering between uncertain places: some authors attributed them to property or possession, some other authors to contracts, others to crimes, others to judgements, and some others gave them a particular and separate commonplace. And some other issues were in exile and banned from the country of law and, like people without a fatherland, did not enjoy citizenship in jurisprudence. To each of them I gave what they deserved and what was taken them away unjustly; I brought them to their hearth and returned them to their home (Althusius 1967 [1617]: [:]2r-v).

Here Althusius tells us that the real scientific contribution of an author of his time consisted in identifying the “matter scattered in many books”, in organising it in “titles”, in chapter and “genera” and in giving to each known arguments its proper place or sedes, a word which here means both the sedes materiae in the strict sense and the commonplace in the broader sense of a rubric. The author had already at his disposal all possible pieces of knowledge, but his task was particularly hard since the right order had been destroyed or had not been discovered yet, with the

 Merio Scattola

consequence that many arguments were classified under the wrong commonplace or had not found yet a proper position or were even taken into a wrong teaching.2 To find (invenire) the right order meant that each element had to be put into the place it deserved, so that “what preceded illuminated what followed, and what followed took light from what preceded”. The merit of a good political author had therefore to be seen in the fact that he indicated the right order of the matter3 and through a dialectical exercise of inventio found out the dispositio disciplinae, the disposition of the whole matter of a teaching, as Bartholomaeus Keckermann put it (Keckermann 1600: III, 2, 1, p. 591; Keckermann 1601: III, 21, p. 146; Keckermann 1613 [1601]: III, 27, p. 962a; Scattola 2002a: 284–287). In fact, when Althusius intended to point out his merit, he indicated first of all his contributions to the organisation of the political doctrine. In the preface to the second edition of his Political Doctrine (1610 [1603]), while explaining the changes in the new edition, he addresses the Provincial Estates of Eastern Frisia with the following words: Illustrious States, when I saw that my first political outlines were approved by many scholars and that the printer was going to prepare a new edition because he had sold out all copies of the first one, it seemed to me a good occasion to revise and improve that book. In order to achieve this end I used all the time that public affairs left free to me, but at the end I saw that my recent considerations had produced a new political work, different from the former outlines in form, method and quantity of matters (Althusius 1610 [1603]: 2r ).

Thus, the second edition, which here is presented as an opus novum or a new work, is original not so much in the doctrine, but in the “form”, in the “method” and in the “quantity of matters”. The “form” is the literary style, which in the first edition was that of the sciagraphia, as Althusius said, of the Outlines, of the Lineamenta, which pursued in the literary system of the early seventeenth century an educational purpose. In the preface to the first edition Althusius had explained this fundamental aim: Most famous and wise Sirs, most honourable relatives and friends, I tried to put in the right order the arguments of politics, which many writers handed on in many books, and I tried to see if I could follow in my work a methodical way of teaching according to the precepts of logicians. As the end and reason of this, my attempt was to show, if I ever could, the light of understanding, prudence and memory to the students of political doctrine (Althusius 1603: 2r).

Repeating the same point, Althusius reminds the readers that his work is nothing else than a collection, a digest of political precepts and examples, which are composed or digested into a particular order (tum praecepta politica eorumque exempla, tum modus horum digerendorum et ordinandorum, Althusius 1603: 6v; 3r). In



Dialectics, topology and practical philosophy in early modern times 

the same preface from the year 1603 he explains as well that he understands by the concept of methodus the same as ordo, dispositio disciplinae:4 In every discipline I want the right method and order, and this is what I have been looking for above all and the reason that let me undertake this enterprise. It is quite impossible to say how that clear way of teaching is useful both to pupils and teachers. Having seen these advantages one will be a good witness because one will know by one’s own experience that method is the mother of understanding and memory and the counsellor of every proper judgement (Althusius 1603: 3r).

Method and order, which in the contemporary discussion were carefully detached, are here equivalent notions: to find the right method means here to find the proper order, the right disposition of the argument, which is explained in the tables that are inserted in all the works of Althusius. The method of politics is the collection of its tables, which really changed in the different editions of the Political Doctrine (Scattola 2002b: 217–234). The third element, rerum multitudo or plenty of matters, can be easily explained because the text of the second edition was three times as much as the first and the third was enlarged with another fifth part. The elements, with which the political author operated, were, as Althusius said, on the one hand precepts and examples (tum praecepta politica eorumque exempla) and, on the other, the different way of summarizing and combining them together in a discipline (tum modus horum digerendorum et ordinandorum). Both were laid in front of him: on the one hand he had the list of all possible questions or topics about his discipline and on the other, the list of all possible answers or arguments to those questions. His task was first of all to shape the list of questions into a meaningful pattern and then to select the greatest number of answers and to insert them in the empty structure of questions. He accomplished a kind of combinatory art by means of dialectic argumentation. 3 Sources of patterns We can reconstruct the dialectical or topological structure of the practical philosophy of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by means of four sources. First, the particular literary genus of legal topics or legal dialectics (topica legalis, dialectica legalis or topica legalia). The first modern work of this group was the Legal Dialectics, or Legal Dispute on the Method of Arguing and the Commonplaces of Arguments, which Pietro Andrea Gambaro published in 1507 in Bologna. A great number of similar books followed soon. We can here mention the Book on Topics or Legal Commonplaces by Nicolaas Everaerts (1516), the Legal Topics by Claudius Cantiuncula (1520), the Five Books on Legal Dialectics by Christoph Hegendorff (1539 [1531]),

 Merio Scattola

the Methodical Order of Dialectics Adapted to Jurisprudence by Johann Apel (1535), the Treatise on Legal Arguments by Jean Bellon (1551), the Teaching of Legal Topics by Johann Oldendorp (1555), the Economics, or Rules from Both Laws Arranged into Commonplaces by Iohannes Ramus (1570 [1557]), the Three Books on Dialectics of Civil Law by Nikolaus Vigel (1597 [1573]), perhaps the most detailed book in this genre, the Four Books on Legal Topics by Jean de La Reberterie (1575), the Two Books on Logics of Lawyers by Iohannes Thomas Freigius (1590 [1582]), the Dialectics of Civil Law by Lorenz Neidecker (1601), and the Exact and Complete Legal Dialectics by Matthias Stephani (1610). Many of these works were then gathered together in the great collections of legal treatises of the sixteenth century like the Treatises Collected from Many Interpreters of Law (Tractatus 1549). Most of these books, like the works by Gambaro, Cantiuncula, Apel and Hegendorff, explain the general ideas of dialectics, then propose a traditional list of commonplaces, following Cicero or Boethius, and finally offer some brief examples, as if their purpose were to serve as an introduction to an ability that the reader should then train by himself (Gambaro 1549 [1507]: 278va–290ra). Upon this basis two different developments were possible in the sixteenth century, which dissolved the ancient doctrine of commonplaces either into the simple argument or into the formal structure of the academic teachings. Matteo Gribaldi Moffa is a good example for the first way of understanding commonplaces (Gribaldi Moffa 1549 [1541]: I, 17, fo. 397va). Instead of the old twenty-four commonplaces of Themistius and Boethius gathered in three different levels or classes (proper, extern and mixed),5 Gribaldi Moffa listed 350 loci communes in alphabetical order and 100 sedes materiae, i. e., typical sites, where a particular matter is treated within the Corpus iuris civilis. He added then another list of more than 600 titles under which all possible legal questions and matters could be classified and which comprehended items like “Adoption”, “Obligation” or “Sale”. Gribaldi’s work is particular in three different ways: first it multiplies the number of commonplaces, second it identifies the commonplaces with the arguments or with the main divisions of the arguments, and finally it contains an alphabetical index, with the consequence that even the legal dictionaries can be thought of as collections of commonplaces. The extreme point in this evolution was reached around 1630 by Johann Jakob Speidel, who composed two huge collections of legal and political questions and gathered together more than 14,000 arguments disposed in alphabetical order: the Collection of Legal and Political Questions (more than Fourteen Thousand), Mostly Practical, Arranged According to Both the Alphabetical Order and the Series of Subjects, and Decided by Referring to the Most Famous and New Authors. A Work Which Can Provide a General Index and a Collection of Commonplaces and the Collection of Legal and Political Questions, Mostly Practical, Arranged According to Both the Alphabetical Order and the Series of Subjects. Second Part.



Dialectics, topology and practical philosophy in early modern times 

Where the Reader Can Found more than Eight Thousand Decisions, Resolved by Referring to the Most Famous and New Authors. A Work Which Can Provide a General Index and a Collection of Common Places (Speidel 1629, 1631). The second main orientation in the Legal Topics of the sixteenth century took the opposite direction and probed the possibility of finding a formal scheme in order to embrace the whole of a teaching. Following mainly the doctrine of Philipp Melanchthon, authors such as Johann Apel or Christian Hegendorff concentrated themselves mainly on that part of dialectics that deals with the simple theme and was called topics in the strict sense, while neglecting the part called critics, dedicated to complex sentences (Hegendorff 1549 [1531]: III, 1–IV, 1, fo. 237vb). To the simple theme they then applied repeatedly one simple operation, dividing and defining the starting point, so that at the end they could explain the whole discipline (Vulte 1586: 3; Vigel 1597 [1573]: I, p. 5). Bartholomaeus Keckermann explained this kind of dialectical research in the following way: A simple issue is a single subject proposed to our consideration. For instance: human being, virtue […]. In the discussion of a simple issue we use the simple elements from the first part of logics. We have therefore to take into account: (1) Explanation of name and its further division, when it is ambiguous; (2) Study of genus using tables of predicates; (3) Study of difference, form and matter in the case of substances; (4) Description of efficient and final causes, especially in the case of accidents; (5) Arrangement of the definition; (6) Account of effects and peculiar accidents; (7) List of connections, circumstances and concomitances in singular accidents; (8) Division of the issue in its parts; (9) List of related and of opposite issues (Keckermann 1601: Manuductio, I, 4–9, p. 149).6

The Books on Legal Dialectics of this type referred to Plato’s diaeretical method, to Cicero’s authority, whose Topics was transformed by Boethius into a kind of dichotomic process (Boethius 1847: III, col. 1201D–1202D), to Galen’s “definitive method” and to the ramistic programme in the last decades of the century. By means of a repeated division of a simple definition they reached an “artificial” description, totally based on the internal commonplaces of a teaching. Works of this type, which by the end of the sixteenth century were often called Methodus (Troje 1977: 741–754), were the Methodical Teaching of Both Laws by Konrad Lagus (1552 [1543]), the Commentaries on Civil Law by François Connan (1557 [1553]), the Method of Civil Law by Nikolaus Vigel (1565 [1561]), the Divisions of Both Laws (1581 [1571]) and the Justinianean Questions (1578) by Iohannes Thomas Freigius, the Logical Idea of Method in Justinian’s Civil Law (1586) and the Roman Jurisprudence (1598 [1590]) by Hermann von Vulte and the Two Books of Roman Law by Iohannes Althusius (1586, 1592). Follows an example of subsequent division applied to the same idea of argument, which is taken from the Two Books on Logic of Lawyers by Iohannes Thomas Freigius (1590 [1582]: Tabula logicae inventionis).

 Merio Scattola

Consentaneum

Dissentaneum Primum

Comparatum

Argumentum

Quantitatis

Qualitatis

A primo ortum

Nomen

Modo Subiectum quodam Adiunctum Diversa

Simplex

Artificiale

Abso- Causa lute Effectum

Efficiens Materia Forma Finis

Disparata Opposita Contraria

Relata Adversa Contradicentia Privantia

Paria Imparia

Maiora Minora

Similia Dissimilia

Coniugata Notatio

Distributio Definitio

Inartificiale: Testimonium

Second sources, very useful to reconstruct the internal pattern of topological argumentation, were those dissertations and treatises that offered a general introduction to the study of jurisprudence or politics. We have many examples of these writings, which were sometimes composed as an epistle to a young pupil or were put at the beginning of a textbook as a methodological preface or prolegomena. Often they were published with titles like On Nature and Constitution of Politics or Epistle on the Order of Political Study. Here are some examples of this literary genre from the first decade of the seventeenth century: Johann Kahl, Practical Propaedeutics (1595); Iohannes Caselius, Propolitician (1600); Christophorus Colerus, Epistle on the Order of Political Study (1602); Jakob Bornitz, Political Discourse on Political Prudence and on its Achievement (1602); Johann Gerhard, First Decade (1608b [1604]); Henning Arnisaeus, First Political Disputation. On Constitution of Political Doctrine (1605b); Philipp Heinrich von Hoen, First Disputation. On Definition and Subject of Political Doctrine (1608b); Philipp Scherb, On Nature of



Dialectics, topology and practical philosophy in early modern times 

Political Doctrine (1608); Hermann Kirchner, First Political Disputation (1608c); Johann Crüger, First Disputation of the Political Course. On Constitution of Political Doctrine and on Civil Society in General (1609b); Henricus Velstenius, First Decade of Noble Political Questions. On Nature and Constitution of Political Doctrine (1610b); Henricus Velstenius, On Constitution and Nature of Political Doctrine (1610c).7 These works gave a general survey upon the main problems of the teaching and offered what we could now call an epistemological introduction to political or legal theory.8 So, they identified the right definition of politics, its parts, and the right way to teach it, as well as the first principles and the main questions it deals with. In addition, they often dedicated a special section to the political literature of their times and listed it according to the sequence of the arguments. As a third source to identify the topological pattern of the political and legal theory we can consider the indexes of topics that some authors of the early seventeenth century put in front of their collections of dissertations. These were the lists of questions the dissertations had to answer and they can give a general idea of the internal structure of a teaching. Johann Gerhard, Henricus Velstenius, Christoph Besold and Christian Liebenthal offer good examples of this habit. We can here briefly consider the lists of Gerhard and Velstenius because they show two different levels of complexity in arranging the topics (Gerhard 1608a [1604]: 3v–A1v; Velstenius 1610a: A4r– B2v; Besold 1614a: 3v–4v; Besold 1614b: 2r–v; Liebenthal 1619a: †3v–††3v).9 Index of the questions treated in this century

First decade (1) Whether political doctrine can be taught through reliable precepts. (2) Whether human beings are born to live in civil society. (3) Whether lonely life can be tolerated. (4) Whether cities or families were founded at first. (5) Whether the Philosopher defined commonwealth in the right way. (6) Whether commonwealths are of three kinds. (7) Whether monarchy is the best kind of commonwealth. (8) Whether aristocracy is to be preferred to democracy. (9) Whether the condition of the Roman Empire is monarchic or aristocratic. (10) Whether the Turkish kingdom is a monarchy. (Gerhard 1608a [1604]: 3v)

As we can see from this example, Gerhard treats in the first disputation themes that belong to the introductory chapter and to the chapter about the constitutional forms. The scheme of Velstenius was on the contrary much more specialised and he devoted a single disputation to every single main problem, discussing all possible questions about it. Here are the indexes of the two first disputations.

 Merio Scattola

Index of the questions treated in this century

First decade. On nature and constitution of political doctrine (1) Whether true practical philosophy consists of Aristotle’s Books of Ethics, whereas his Books of Politics are necessary only by chance. (2) What is politics, what are its matter and its end. (3) How politics should be divided. (4) What political prudence is. (5) Whether the politicians of our times should be considered among the Christians. (6) Whether one should regard as true politicians those people who in discussions are able to adapt themselves to different places, times and people. (7) Whether one should consider theology in judging political controversies. (8) Whether politics can be reduced to a reliable doctrine. (9) How political doctrine differs from jurisprudence. (10) How political doctrine agrees with history. Second decade. On matrimonial society. (1) What is family and how many persons are necessary to make a family. (2) Which unions among human beings should be and were the first ones, what was their beginning and foundation, and which progressions they made. (3) What is matrimonial society and which subjects belong to it. (4) Which is the efficient cause of matrimony. (5) Whether the approval of parents or of those people who act as parents is necessary not only for the honesty of matrimony, but also for its lawful validity. (6) What is the matter of matrimony. (7) Whether polygamy is absolutely intolerable and what we should think about the polygamy of ancient patriarchs. (8) What is the form of matrimonial union. (9) Whether husband and wife can divorce justly and legitimately nowadays under the New Testament and for some reasons. (10) What is the end of matrimony. (Velstenius 1610a: A4r)

Finally, the fourth source is the bibliographic literature of the seventeenth century, which classifies the political and legal writings with patterns that repeated the topological distribution within the doctrines. Here are two examples of bibliographic classifications drawn from the works of Johann Heinrich Boeckler. In the first part of his Political Discourses upon the Politics by Iustus Lipsius Boeckler recommends first the Propolitica by Hermann Conring […]. The second point is the method of teaching civil prudence […]. The third one includes the systematic writers both ancient and modern […]. The fourth part deals with political discourses, a literary genre that moved from Italy to the other nations […]. The



Dialectics, topology and practical philosophy in early modern times 

fifth part comprehends those authors who wrote political questions, which are of various types […]. The sixth part should mention only writers of single subjects […]. The seventh part is about Lipsius himself (Boeckler 1709: 69–74). But in arranging a political bibliography you should take the following books into account: (1) Introductions, which have been already presented; (2) Doctrinal books, which either describe whole precepts in summaries and systematic explanations or treat single subjects with many particulars and remarks; (3) Historical books, whose different divisions have been described by others; (4) Books that contain public acts from many countries and of different kinds; (5) Books that comment and judge from a political point of view historical facts of various times, persons and qualities; (6) Books containing political dissertations of many kinds; (7) Collections of controversies about aspects of public law, particularly when they concern one’s country, or describing and explaining some pieces of public law; (8) Commentaries about private laws and institutions related to commonwealth; (9) Books offering advice to judges; (10) Books that suggest what to do and what to omit in public affairs; (11) Books containing political secrets; (12) Aids for public oratory; (13) Miscellaneous books (Boeckler 1674: VII, 4, p. 229).

Combining the four different sources, we can reconstruct the general structure of the arguments in political and/or legal theory. Of course, this is a fully artificial scheme, which never existed in this form, but nevertheless it summarises most of the classifications really used by the authors. I tried to describe this general pattern in a previous publication about political bibliography in Germany in the seventeenth century (Scattola 2003b). As we can see now, it constitutes the pattern of a topological and dialectical distribution of all possible arguments within political theory. Introduction to political doctrine On the nature of political doctrine On political method On political prudence in general … How to achieve political prudence … Political doctrine Sources … On the matter of a commonwealth … On the constitution of a commonwealth On the constitution of a commonwealth in general On the highest good, i.e. civil happiness

 Merio Scattola

On commonwealth On territory On political power On majesty On royalties On the form of commonwealth On monarchy and kingdom On royal election and succession On dictatorship On democracy On aristocracy On mixed commonwealth On confederations On the best commonwealth On faulty commonwealths On mastery On tyranny and tyrants On oligarchy On the right to resist On administration of a commonwealth On ordinary administration On administration of a commonwealth in general On civil administration … On religious administration … On war administration … On extraordinary administration … On change and conservation of a commonwealth … Special political doctrine, or description of a single commonwealth On the description of a single commonwealth in general On Hebrew commonwealth On Greek commonwealth On Roman commonwealth On German commonwealth … On Holy Roman Empire



Dialectics, topology and practical philosophy in early modern times 

… On the conditions of European commonwealths.10

4 Three important ideas: Principle, system and method Since knowledge in the practical disciplines was to a large extent a matter of dialectics and topological disposition, many fundamental concepts of the scientific language had at that time quite a different meaning. If we consider three main ideas from modern philosophy, such as “principle”, “system” and “method”, we can see that in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries they were used in a typical topological and dialectical way. Since the late seventeenth century, principle, system and method are tightly bound together and form a kind of “epistemological triangle” (Scattola 2004b: 3– 7). Samuel Pufendorf explained in the Scandinavian Quarrel (2002 [1686]) that a genuine doctrine of natural law must identify a first principle that contains in itself all possible conclusions. On the other hand, all propositions of a system must be gained through a continuous deduction from its first principle (Pufendorf 2002 [1678]: IV, 1, p. 142). We can describe this mutual dependence by saying that a principle is a condensed system, whereas a system is an expanded principle: both express the same content in two different states of aggregation. The method is the device to transform a principle into a system or a system into a principle. On the main features of this doctrine, most authors of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries both in practical and theoretical philosophy, from Leibniz to Schelling, agree. In the twentieth century we then find the best definition of this relationship in the theory of legal positivism, in Hans Kelsen’s Philosophical Foundations of Natural Law Doctrine and Legal Positivism (1949 [1928]).11 But if we look at the early seventeenth century, those three ideas appear quite different. The idea of the principle was at that time not unknown and we can really find a rich literature about the problem of the principle of jurisprudence since the sixteenth century (Scattola 2004a: 99–101). Belonging to this literary genus are the works of Christoph Ehem, Jean de Coras and Joachim Hopper. It is nevertheless true that these old writings did not know a single principle or something like a fundamental proposition. In 1556 Christoph Ehem published his Seven Books on Principles of Law (1601 [1556]) and applied to them a strong analytical method. He separated in the notion of jurisprudence its two elements, ius and prudence, and went on dividing it until he came to the first, not further divisible parts of law. Such are method, order, the four Aristotelian causes, the intellectual habits, the moral virtues and the general rules of Roman law. Joachim Hopper went further on in the same direction and both in the Three Books on Art of Law (1582 [1553]) and in the

 Merio Scattola

Seduardus (1656 [1590]) enumerated a whole list of principles of law: universal, general, particular, primary, secondary, divine, natural and external principles. In this sense, principle of law is God as well as passions and habits, and even injustice is considered a principle of justice. What Hopper understood as principles was evidently the smallest parts of a discourse, the atoms of a theory, which cannot be reduced to a single proposition because they are independent from one another. For instance the Ten Commandments were thought about in this sense and were conceived by Philipp Melanchthon as ten different rules that cannot be derived from one another, but are immediately valid and as such were written by God himself in the hearths of all human beings (Melanchthon 1850 [1550]: 227–228; Melanchthon 1854 [1559]: 715–716).12 Human knowledge dealt therefore always with a plurality of principles in each of its branches: jurisprudence was made by a plurality of principles, and thus were theology, medicine, politics and ethics. Those principles were uncompressible, like stones, and sometimes they apparently contradicted one another. For example, we must defend ourselves and we should not hurt others, which sometimes cannot be possible without injuring or even killing others. The task of argumentation was therefore to find out the way in which all principles co-existed with one another. And this was a dialectical task. Whereas modern practical philosophy and natural law try to reduce the whole of knowledge to a single statement, in the pre-modern theory we find exactly the opposite, the goal being maintaining the differences, even if this implies an endless argumentation. Also the “system” of the sixteenth century was not so “systematical” as we might expect. Both Greek and Latin forms of the word were used at the beginning of the seventeenth century by German authors of Calvinistic denomination, very often in the titles of works that in the Catholic tradition would have been called summa or summula (Keckermann 1600; Keckermann 1602; Casmann 1603; Timpler 1604; Timpler 1605).13 So this modern word was a kind of emergency measure. The word itself came from the medical tradition of Galen, who had used it to indicate a complex of different pieces of knowledge that are proved by common experience and form therefore a doctrine or a craft. His definition systema enkatalepseon syngegymnasmenon is translated by Karl Gottlob Kühn in the modern edition as congeries praeceptorum exercitatione comprobatorum (Galenus 1830: II, 233, p. 350). A system is here a congeries, a mass or a heap of precepts confirmed through exercise. In the sixteenth century the word systema was translated as comprehensio, a kind of linguistic cast of the Greek, or as ordo constans, or methodica dispositio. System was therefore only a collection, a disposition of things or arguments, and it was methodical because it followed the rules of the commonplaces of a particular doctrine. In this sense system was a dialectical operation. This old concept of a system is tightly bound to the idea of method. Really, the whole order of a system is its method. Brilliant logicians of the sixteenth century,



Dialectics, topology and practical philosophy in early modern times 

like Giacomo Zabarella, make a clear distinction between method and order, the first being the way of shaping new knowledge in sciences and the second being the way of disposing already assured knowledge in order to transmit it.14 But this distinction was often forgotten, with the consequence that both ideas were confused and mistaken one for another.15 The method of political theory or jurisprudence was therefore nothing else than the disposition of arguments within the academic teaching. An important consequence was that the main methodological discussions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were debates not so much about the method, but about the order. In that early modern world method was therefore the same as order, principles were a plurality of basic elements, and system was a composition of opposing arguments. This is not the picture of a scientific world, this is a description of a world organised by dialectics. References Agricola, R. 1992 (1539). De inventione dialectica libri tres. Drei Bücher über die Inventio dialectica. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Ahsmann, M. J. A. M. 1995. “Teaching in Collegia: The organization of disputationes at universities in the Netherlands and in Germany during the 16th and 17th centuries”. In A. Romano (ed), Università in Europa. Messina: Rubettino, 99–114. Alciato, A. 1537. Paradoxorum ad pratum libri sex. Lugduni: Iunta. Althusius, I. 1586. Iuris Romani libri duo ad leges methodi Rameae confirmati et tabula illustrati. Basileae: Waldkirchius. Althusius, I. 1588 (1586). Iurisprudentia Romana, vel potius iuris Romani ars, duobus libris comprehensa et ad leges methodi Rameae conformata. Herbornae: Corvinus. Althusius, I. 1592 (1586). Iurisprudentiae Romanae methodice digestae libri duo. Herbornae: Corvinus. Althusius, I. 1592. “Epitome et brevis anakephalaiosis dicaeologicae Romanae”. In Althusius 1592 (1586): 1–47. Althusius, I. 1996 (1602). Disputatio politica de regno recte instituendo et administrando. M. Scattola (ed), Hugo Pelletarius (resp), Quaderni fiorentini 25: 23–46. Althusius, I. 1603. Politica methodice digesta. Herbornae Nassoviorum: Corvinus. Althusius, I. 1610 (1603). Politica methodice digesta. Arnhemii: Iansonius. Althusius, I. 1967 (1617). Dicaeologicae libri tres. Aalen: Scientia. Antoninus Florentinus. 1582. Summae sacrae theologiae, iuris pontificii et Caesarei tertia pars. Venetiis: Iunta. Apel, J. 1535. Methodica dialectices ratio ad iurisprudentiam adcommodata. Norimbergae: Peypus. Aristotle. 1954 (1894). Ethica Nicomachea. I. Bywater (ed), Oxonii: Typographeum Clarendonianum. Aristotle. 1980 (1949). Liber de interpretatione. Categoriae et Liber de interpretatione. L. MinioPaluello (ed), Oxonii: Typographeum Clarendonianum, 47–72. Aristotle. 1957. Metaphysica. W. Jaeger (ed), Oxonii: Typographeum Clarendonianum.

 Merio Scattola Arnisaeus, H. 1605a. Disputationum politicarum in academia Iulia propositarum prima[–duodecima]. Helmaestadii: Lucius. Arnisaeus, H. 1605b. Disputationum politicarum in academia Iulia propositarum prima, de constitutione politices. I. A. Werdenhagen (resp). In Arnisaeus 1605a: A1–C2. Arnisaeus, H. 1606. Doctrina politica in genuinam methodum, quae est Aristotelis, reducta. Francofurti [ad Viadrum]: Thieme. Arnisaeus, H. 1612. De autoritate principum in populum semper inviolabili […] commentatio politica. Francofurti [ad Viadrum]: Thimius. Arnisaeus, H. 1648 (1615). De republica seu relectionis politicae libri duo. In Arnisaeus. Opera politica omnia. Argentorati: Zetznerus. Bellon, J. 1551. Antinomiarum iuris dissolutiones. De figuris iuris opusculum. De argumentis legum tractatus. Lugduni: Beringus. Besold, Ch. 1614a. Collegii politici classis prima, reipublicae naturam et constitutionem XII disputationibus absolvens.Tubingae: Cellius. Besold, Ch. 1614b. Collegii politici classis posterior, de republica in omnibus partibus gubernanda IX disputationibus tractans. Tubingae: Cellius. Besold, Ch. 1614c. Praecognita prudentiae politicae. G. Ch. a Schallenberg in Biberstein (resp). In Besold 1614a: 1–34. Besold, Ch. 1620 (1618). Politicorum libri duo. Francofurti: Cellius. Besold, Ch. 1625. Dissertatio prima praecognita philosophiae [= politices] complectens. In Besold. Principium et finis politicae doctrinae. Argentorati: Zetznerus: 1–88. Boeckler, J. H. 1674. Institutiones politicae. U. Obrecht (ed), Argentorati: Zetznerus. Boeckler, J. H. 1709. Discursus sive dissertationes ad Lipsii Politica. In Boeckler. Tractatus quidam posthumi. J. H. Möllenbeck (ed). Francofurti ad Moenum: Andreae, 65–184. Boethius, A. M. S. 1847. De differentiis topicis libri quatuor. In Migne J.-P. (ed). Patrologiae cursus completus. Series Latina. Vol. 64. Lutetiae Parisiorum: Migne, 1173–1216. Bornitz, J. 1602. Discursus politicus de prudentia politica comparanda. Erphordiae: Birnstilius. Cantiuncula, C. 1520. Topica legalia. Basileae: Cartandrus. Caselius, I. 1600. Propolitikos. Helmaestadii: Lucius. Casmann, O. 1603. Doctrinae et vitae politicae methodicum ac breve systema. Francofurti: Palthenius. Coler, Ch. 1602. De studio politico ordinando epistola. In P. C. Tacitus, De situ, moribus et populis Germaniae libellus. Hanoviae: Marnius, 88–117. Connan, F. 1557 (1553). Commentariorum iuris civilis libri X. Basileae: Episcopius. Copi, I. M. 1953. Introduction to Logic. New York: MacMillan. Copi, I. M. 1954. Symbolic Logic. New York: MacMillan. Coras, J. de and Hopper, J. 1582. Tractatus de iuris arte duorum clarissimorum iurisconsultorum. Coloniae Agrippinae: Gymnicus. Coras, J. de. 1582 (1560). De iuris arte liber, quatuor partibus conclusus. In Coras and Hopper 1582: 1–292. Crüger, J. 1609a. Clavus rerumpublicarum sive collegium politicum. Giessae: Chemlinus. Crüger, J. 1609b. De constitutione politices et societate civili in genere. G. L. a Freybergk (resp). In Crüger 1609a: A1–C2. Dannhauer, J. K. 1626. Collegium exercitationum ethico-politicarum. Argentorati: Glaser. Ehem, Ch. 1601 (1556). De principiis iuris libri VII. Hanoviae: Antonius. Everaerts, N. 1516. Topicorum seu de locis legalibus liber. I. Munterius (ed), Lovanii: Martinus.



Dialectics, topology and practical philosophy in early modern times 

Felwinger, J. P. 1652. Institutionum politicarum libri duo accurata methodo conscripti. Francofurti ad Moenum: Weis. Forstner, Ch. 1623. Hypomnematum politicorum centuria. Argentorati: Zetznerus. Freigius, I. Th. 1581 (1571). Partitiones iuris utriusque. Basileae: Henricpetri. Freigius, I. Th. 1578. Quaestiones Iustinianeae in Institutiones iuris civilis. Basileae: Henricpetri. Freigius, I. Th. 1590 (1582). De logica iureconsultorum libri duo. Basileae: Henricpetri. Fulgosio, R. 1544. In primam Pandectarum partem commentariorum tomus I. et II. Lugduni: Porta. Galenus, C. 1830. Definitiones medicae. In Galenus, Opera omnia Vol. 19. C. G. Kühn (ed), Lipsiae: Cnoblochius, 346–462. Gambaro, P. A. 1549 (1507). De modo disputandi et ratiocinandi in iure liber primus[–tertius]. In Tractatus 1549: 278va-290ra. Gerhard, J. 1608a (1604). Centuria quaestionum politicarum. Ienae: Lippoldus. Gerhard, J. 1608b (1604). Decas prima. M. Rauchbarus (resp). A2r–B3r. Gribaldi Moffa, M. 1549 (1541). De methodo ac ratione studendi libri tres. In Tractatus 1549: 390ra–412rb. Grotius, H. 1868. De iure praedae commentarius. H.G. Hamaker (ed), Hagae Comitum: Nijhoff. Günther, O. 1586. Methodorum tractatus duo. Helmstadii: Lucius. Haggenmacher, P. 1983. Grotius et la doctrine de la guerre juste. Paris: PUF. Hegendorff, Ch. 1549 (1531). Dialectica legalis sive disserendi demonstrandive ars. In Tractatus 1549: 237rb–252vb. Hoen, Ph. H. von. 1608a. Libri duo disputationum: prior politicarum methodice digestarum, posterior iuridicarum ad selectas aliquot Pandectarum materias. Herbornae Nassoviorum: [Corvinus]. Hoen, Ph. H. von. 1608b. Disputatio prima. De definitione et obiecto politicae. Item de origine et legibus reipublicae. Ch. Th. Esselius (resp). In Hoen 1608a: 1–14. Hopper, J. 1582 (1553). De iuris arte libri tres. In Coras and Hopper 1582: 293–608. Hopper, J. 1656 (1590). Seduardus, sive de vera iurisprudentia ad regem libri XII. H. Conring (ed), Magdeburgi: Gerlachius. Iunius, M. 1602. Politicarum quaestionum centum et tredecim pars prima. Argentorati: Zetznerus. Jaumann, H. 1991. “Pasch, Georg”. In W. Killy (ed), Literatur Lexikon. Autoren und Werke deutscher Sprache Vol. 9. Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 84–85. Kahl, J. 1595. Propaideia practica. Francofurti: Fischerus. Keckermann, B. 1600. Systema logicae tribus libris adornatum. Hanoviae: Antonius. Keckermann, B. 1601. Systema logicae, compendiosa methodo adornatum. Hanoviae: Antonius. Keckermann, B. 1613 (1601). Systema logicae minus, succincto praeceptorum compendio, tribus libris annis ab hinc aliquot adornatum. In Keckermann 1613: I, 767–975. Keckermann, B. 1602. Systema sacratissimae. theologiae, tribus libris adornatum. Hanoviae: Antonius. Keckermann, B. 1613 (1609). Apparatus practicus, sive idea methodica et plena totius philo­ sophiae practicae, nempe ethicae, oeconomicae et politicae. In qua ostenditur ratio studii practici dextre conformandi et locos communes colligendi atque adeo tum politicos tum historicos cum certo fructu legendi. In Keckermann 1613: II, 1697–1816 + fo. A1–Z4. Keckermann, B. 1613. In J. H. Alsted (ed), Systema systematum. Hanoviae: Antonius. Kelsen, H. 1928. Die philosophischen Grundlagen der Naturrechtslehre und des Rechtspositivismus. Berlin: Heise.

 Merio Scattola Kelsen, H. 1949 (1928). Natural Law Doctrine and Legal Positivism. Transl. of Kelsen 1928 by W. H. Kraus. In Kelsen 1949 (1945): 389–446. Kelsen, H. 1949 (1945). General Theory of Law and State. A. Wedberg (trans). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kirchner, H. 1608a. Militia ad artium praecepta methodice composita. Marpurgi Cattorum: Huttwelckerus. Kirchner, H. 1608b. Respublica. Marpurgi Cattorum: Huttwelckerus. Kirchner, H. 1608c. Disputatio I. politica. I. Melideus (resp). In Kirchner 1608b: A1–4. König, R. 1618. Acies disputationum politicarum methodice instructa. Ienae: Steinmammus. La Reberterie, J. de. 1575. Topikon iuris libri quatuor. Parisiis: Richerius. Lagus, K. 1552 (1543). Iuris utriusque traditio methodica. Francofurti: Egenolphus. Leinsle, U. G. 1985. Das Ding und die Methode. Methodische Konstitution und Gegenstand der frühen protestantischen Metaphysik. Augsburg: Maro. Liebenthal, Ch. 1619a. Collegium politicum, in quo de societatibus, magistratibus, iuribus maiestatis et legibus fundamentalibus […] methodice et perspicue tractatur. Giessae Hessorum: Hampelius. Liebenthal, Ch. 1619b. De constitutione politices. H. Heisen (resp). In Liebenthal 1619a: 1–20. Loccenius, I. 1644. Dissertationum politicarum sintagma. Amstelodami: Ianssonius. Lotze, L. 1618. Erotemata dialecticae et rhetoricae Philippi Melanthonis […] breviter selecta et contracta. Lipsiae: Apelius. Martini, J. 1630. Politica in genuinam Aristotelis methodum redacta. [Witebergae]: Bergerus. Matthiae, Ch. 1611. Collegium politicum secundum iuxta methodum logicam conscriptum. Giessae: Chemlinus. Melanchthon, Ph. 1846 (1547). Erotematum dialectices liber primus[–quintus]. Opera quae supersunt omnia. Volumen XIII. K. G. Bretschneider and H. E. Bindseil (eds), Halis Saxonum: Schwetschke, 507–752. Melanchthon, Ph. 1850 (1550). “Ethicae doctrinae elementorum libri duo”. Opera quae supersunt omnia. Volumen XVI. K. G. Bretschneider and H. E. Bindseil (eds), Halis Saxonum: Schwetschke, 227–228. Melanchthon, Ph. 1854 (1559). Loci praecipui theologici. Opera quae supersunt omnia. Volumen XVI. K. G. Bretschneider and H. E. Bindseil (eds), Halis Saxonum: Schwetschke. Neidecker, L. 1601. Dialectica iuris civilis et disserendi, imo iudicandi artis […] libri tres comprehensa. Moguntiae: Albinus. Oldendorp, J. 1555. Topicorum legalium […] exactissima traditio. Lugduni: Gryphius. Pasch, G. 1700. De novis inventis, quorum accuratiori cultui facem praetulit antiquitas, tractatus. Lipsiae: Grossius. Poppi, A. 1972. La dottrina della scienza in Giacomo Zabarella. Padova: Antenore. Pruckmann, F. 1587. Tractatus de regalibus sive explicatio brevis et methodica cap. 1. Quae sint regalia, in Usibus feudorum. Berlini: Voltzius. Pufendorf, S. 2002 (1678). Specimen controversiarum circa ius naturale ipsi nuper motarum. In Pufendorf 2002 (1686): 112–197. Pufendorf, S. 2002 (1686). Eris Scandica und andere polemische Schriften (Gesammelte Werke 5). F. Palladini (ed.). Berlin: Akademie. Ramus, I. 1570 (1557). Oikonomia seu dispositio regularum utriusque iuris in locos communes. Coloniae Agrippinae: Gymnicus. Riedel, M. 1990. “System, Struktur”. In O. Brunner, W. Conze and R. Koselleck (eds.), Geschicht­ liche Grundbegriffe Vol. 6. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 285–322.



Dialectics, topology and practical philosophy in early modern times 

Ritschl, O. 1906. System und systematische Methode in der Geschichte des wissenschaftlichen Sprachgebrauchs und der philosophischen Methodologie. Bonn: Georgi. Scattola, M. 1995. “Geschichte der politischen Bibliographie als Geschichte der politischen Theorie”. Wolfenbütteler Notizen zur Buchsgeschichte 20: 1–37. Scattola, M. 1999. Das Naturrecht vor dem Naturrecht. Zur Geschichte des ius naturae im sechzehn­ ten Jahrhundert. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Scattola, M. 2001a. “Models in History of Natural Law”. Ius commune. Zeitschrift für Europäische Rechtsgeschichte 28: 91–159. Scattola, M. 2001b. “Naturrecht als Rechtstheorie: Die Systematisierung der res scholastica in der Naturrechtslehre des Domingo de Soto”. In F. Grunert and K. Seelmann (eds), Die Ordnung der Praxis. Neue Studien zur Spanischen Spätscholastik. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 21–47. Scattola, M. 2002a. “Arnisaeus, Zabarella e Piccolomini: la discussione sul metodo della filosofia pratica alle origini della disciplina politica moderna”. In G. Piaia (ed), La presenza dell’aristotelismo padovano nella filosofia della prima modernità. Roma: Antenore, 273– 309. Scattola, M. 2002b. “Von der maiestas zur symbiosis. Der Weg des Johannes Althusius zur eigenen politischen Lehre in den drei Auflagen seiner Politica methodice digesta”. In E. Bonfatti, G. Duso and M. Scattola (eds), Politische Begriffe und historisches Umfeld in der Poli­ tica methodice digesta des Johannes Althusius. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 211–249. Scattola, M. 2002c. “La storia e la prudenza. La funzione della storiografia nell’educazione politica della prima età moderna”. Storia della storiografia 42: 42–73. Scattola, M. 2003a. Dalla virtù alla scienza. La fondazione e la trasformazione della disciplina politica nell’età moderna. Milano: Angeli. Scattola, M. 2003b. L’ordine del sapere. La bibliografia politica tedesca del Seicento (= Archivio della Ragion di Stato 10–11, 2002–2003). Scattola, M. 2004a. “Il principio del diritto nella riflessione di Ugo e Guglielmo Grozio”. In V. Fiorillo and F. Vollhardt (eds), Il diritto naturale della socialità. Tradizioni antiche ed antropologia moderna nel XVII secolo. Torino: Giappichelli, 79–101. Scattola, M. 2004b. “Principium oder principia? Die Diskussion über den Rechtsgrundsatz im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert”. In B. Sh. Byrd, J. Hruschka and J. C. Joerden (eds), Jahrbuch für Recht und Ethik. Annual Review of Law and Ethics. Band 12 (2004). Themenschwerpunkt: Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte moralischer Grund-Sätze in der Philosophie der Aufklärung. The Development of Moral First Principles in the Philosophy of the Enlightenment. Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 3–26. Scherb, Ph. 1608. In C. P. (ed), De natura politicae, item de recta iuvenum institutione sententia. Francofurti: Rothius. Soto, D. de. 1967 (1556). De iustitia et iure libri decem. Diego Carro (ed), Madrid: Instituto de Estudios Políticos. Speidel, J. J. 1629. Sylloge quaestionum iuridicarum et politicarum (ultra quatuordecim milia) maximeque practicabilium, secundum alphabeti et materiarum seriem dispositarum, quae per remissionem ad praeclarissimos, ac neotericos inprimis authores deciduntur. Opus, quod indicis universalis locorumque communium vicem supplere potest. Tubingae: Brunnius. Speidel, J. J. 1631. Sylloges quaestionum iuridicarum et politicarum, maximeque practicabilium, secundum alphabeti et materiarum seriem dispositarum, pars altera. Ubi per remissionem ad praeclarissimos, ac neotericos inprimis authores ultra octo milia decisionum reperiuntur. Opus, quod indicis universalis locorumque communium vicem supplere potest. Tubingae: Brunnius.

 Merio Scattola Stephani, M. 1610. Dialectica iuris exactissima et absolutissima. [Francofurti ad Moenium]: Kop­ fius. Stolleis, M. 1988. Geschichte des öffentlichen Rechts in Deutschland. Erster Band. Reichspublizistik und Policeywissenschaft (1600–1800). München: Beck. Thomas Aquinas. 1980. Sententia libri Ethicorum. In Thomas Aquinas, Opera omnia. R. Busa (ed), Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 143c–234c. Timpler, K. 1604. Metaphysicae systema methodicum. Steinfurti: Caesar. Timpler, K. 1605. Physicae seu philosophiae naturalis systema methodicum. Hanoviae: Antonius. Tractatus. 1549. Primum volumen tractatuum ex variis iuris interpretibus collectorum, continet eos tractatus, qui de cognitione et interpretatione iuris ac verborum significatione summatim et in genere tractant. Lugduni: Bertellus. Troje, H. E. 1977. “Die Literatur des gemeinen Rechts unter dem Einfluß des Humanismus”. In H. Coing (ed), Handbuch der Quellen und Literatur der neueren europäischen Privatrechtsgeschichte. Zweiter Band: Neuere Zeit (1500–1800). Das Zeitalter des gemeinen Rechts. Erster Teilband: Wissenschaft. München: Beck, 615–795. Velstenius, H. 1610a. Centuria prima quaestionum politicarum. Witebergae: Schmidt. Velstenius, H. 1610b. Decas prima nobilium quaestionum politicarum. De natura et constitutione politices. M. Trostius (resp.). In Velstenius 1610a: A1–B4. Velstenius, H. 1610c. De constitutione et natura politicae. I. Cotzebuvius (resp). Witebergae: Henckelius. Vigel, N. 1565 (1561). Iuris civilis universi absolutissima methodus. Basileae: Oporinus. Vigel, N. 1597 (1573). Dialectices iuris civilis libri III. Basileae: Gemusaeus. Vitoria, F. de. 1981. Relectio de iure belli o paz dinámica. Escuela Española de la Paz. Primera generación 1526–1560. L. Pereña (ed)., Madrid: CSIC. Vulte, H. von. 1586. “Idea methodi iuris civilis Iustinianei logica”. Tractatus tres. Francofurdi: Wechelus, 1–58. Vulte, H. von. 1598 (1590). Iurisprudentiae Romanae a Iustiniano compositae libri duo. Marpurgi: Egenolphus. Weinberg, J. R. 1950 (1936). Introduzione al positivismo logico. L. Geymonat (trans). Torino: Einaudi. Werdenhagen, J. A. von. 1616. Decas problematum politicorum. G. Mullerus (resp). Helmaestadii: Lucius. Wolff von Todtenwarth, J. U. and Elswych, J. von 1615. Biga iuridico-politica XIV disputationibus absoluta et completa. Rostochii: Saxo. Zabarella, G. 1578. “De methodis libri quatuor”. Opera logica. Venetiis: Meietus, 89–224. Zanatta, M. 1992. “Introduzione”. In Aristoteles, Della interpretazione. Milano: Rizzoli, 7–75. Zwinger, Th. 1566. Aristotelis Stagiritae De moribus ad Nicomachum libri decem, tabulis perpetuis, quae commentariorum loco esse queant, explicati et illustrati. Basileae: Oporinus.

Notes 1. Ramus 1570 [1557]: †3r–4r: “Edidi non quidem totum opus, sed tantum enchiridion, hoc est ipsa locorum communium summa capita, per quae brevissima regularum interpretatio, veluti per grado eo ordine incedit, quo sunt Institutiones imperiales dispositae. […] Quae dispo-



Dialectics, topology and practical philosophy in early modern times 

sitio, cum in aliis plaerisque, tum in eo maxime erit utilis, quod locorum communium instar studiosis futura sit, quos privatim quisque, cum erit usus, locupletet”. 2. We find a similar judgement in Vulte 1586: 2–3: “Nam ars iuris libris Iustinianeis comprehensa non tam artis nomen meretur quam vagae alicuius et non admodum sibi constantis farraginis, quippe quae non secundum artificium logicum, sed secundum Edicti perpetui ordinem congesta sit. In solis Institutionum imperialium libris aliqua videtur esse adhibita methodus. Sed illa quam amethodos sit, quam imperfecta, quam inartificiosa, quam denique nulla iam pridem a magni nominis iurisconsultis animadversum et annotatum est. Ad eam igitur iuris artem Iustinianeam studium iuris instituere perinde est ac si quis doceat quomodo grammatica sit discenda nec tamen certam aliquam grammaticam, sed vagam quandam congeriem praeceptorum grammaticorum inter se confusorum discenti proponat”. 3. Freigius 1581 [1571]: A3v: “Neque enim hic ulla propria inventio (res enim e iureconsultorum scriptis desumpta est) verum sola dispositio et methodi lux iudiciumque rerum propositarum laudari potest”. 4. Coras 1582 [1560]: I, 9, p. 30: “Dum illud primum sciamus methodum aliud esse nihil quam brevem quandam et compendiosam cum ratione docendi viam, qua omnes artis partes subtiliter inveniuntur et inventae recto iudicio distinguuntur et docentur. Cuius duas esse partes constat, nempe ordinem et viam seu modum”; Zwinger 1566: 18: “Quatenus ergo plura uno concurrunt, ordinem quendam dari oportet, hoc est habitudinem prioris ad posterius; quatenus vero alia notiora sunt, alia minus nota, methodum, tanquam instrumentum cognitionis. Et quidem si pauca sint numero ea, quae declarandi causa adhibentur, methodo sola contenti esse possumus ad dispondendum simul et ad declarandum; sin plura, ordo dispositionis gratia primum requiretur, inde methodus ad singulas partes illustrandas. Hinc factum, ut ordinem vulgo dispositionem partium totius artis appellent; eumque ex causarum et effectuum, sive principiorum et principiatorum varia relatione triplicem constituant: definitivum, compositivum et resolutivum. Methodum vero quadruplicem: syllogismum, definitionem, resolutionem, divisionem”. 5. Boethius 1847: III, col. 1201–1202: “In ipso: 1. A substantia; 2. A definitione; 3. A descriptione; 4. A nominis intepretatione; 5. A consequentibus; 6. A toto vel genere; 7. A partibus vel species; 8. Ab efficientibus; 9. A materia; 10. A forma; 11. A fine; 12. Ab effectibus; 13. A corruptionibus, ab usibus; 14. A communiter accidentibus. Extrinsecus: 1. A rei iudicio; 2. A similibus; 3. A maiore; 4. A minore; 5. Ex oppositis vel contrariis vel relativis vel secundum privationem et habitum vel per affirmationem et negationem; 6. A proportione; 7. A transumptione. Medii: A casibus, a coniugatis, a divisione”. 6. Cf. Keckermann 1613 [1601]: III, Progymnasmata, I, 3–4, p. 964a–b; Agricola 1992 [1539]: I, 4, p. 30–37; Melanchthon 1846 [1547]: V, De methodo, col. 573–574; Lotze 1618: 53. 7.

For more examples, cf. Scattola 2003a: 32–59; Scattola 2003b: 337–339, 343–344.

8. The possibility of such an “epistemological introduction” was stated by Zabarella 1578: I, 4, p. 117. Cf. Liebenthal 1619b: 2; Arnisaeus 1606: I, p. 4. 9. For more examples, cf. Scattola 2003b: 449–467. 10. For the complete scheme, cf. Scattola 2003b: 441–445. 11. Kelsen 1928: I, 1–6, p. 7–12. Cf. Kelsen 1949 [1928]: I, A–F, p. 391–398 and Kelsen 1949 [1945]: “Nomodynamics”, X, b, p. 112: “It is essential only that the various norms of any such system are implicated by the basic norm as the particular is implied by the general, and that,

 Merio Scattola therefore, all the particular norms of such a system are obtainable by means of an intellectual operation, viz., by the inference from the general to the particular”. 12. Cf. Scattola 1999: 28–55; Scattola 2001a: 109–114. 13. Cf. Leinsle 1985: I, p. 271–287; Ritschl 1906: 5–40; Riedel 1990: 289–294. 14. The classic place for discussion about order and method in the sixteenth century is Zabarella 1578: I, 3–9, p. 93–129. Cf. Poppi 1972: 161–195. 15. Really, Zabarella’s careful distinction between method and order was more an exception than a rule because both in Italy and in the rest of Europe the two notions used to be confused until the beginning of the seventeenth century. Cf. Günther 1586: I, 2, 1, fo. 25r: “Methodus universalis est omnium partium artis acute inveniendi, apte collocandi et dextre explicandi habitus”; Keckermann 1600: III, 2, 1, p. 591. Cf. Scattola 2002a: 278–287.

part 3

Modern traditions The rise of scientific disciplines

chapter 11

Legal controversy vs. scientific and philosophical controversies* João Lopes Alves

Controversy is of course a pivot of Western Law, inasmuch as Law’s main role consists grosso modo in solving, under its rules, conflicts supported by controversies. In recent times, the relevance of controversies for the mechanisms of scientific and philosophical work has been also strongly emphasized. In parallel, some theoretical approaches claim that the legal controversy paradigm (namely the judicial one) could contribute to a better understanding of the general meaning and limits of the scientific and philosophical varieties of controversy. Accordingly, legal controversy has been seen as capable of supplying something like a common logic for Practical Reason (as discussed further ahead, in the comments on Perelman). Nevertheless, in this study what I will underline is not the epistemological convergence that is stressed by some theoretical statements, but rather the drastic differences opposing legal controversies and scientific and philosophical controversies. This is a point relatively neglected by the theory, despite its relevance to the appraisal of what is specific to the intentions and praxis of Law, in contrast with those of Science and Philosophy. Two preliminary remarks must be made, however, before pursuing my goal. First remark: legal controversy, for the purpose of my paper, concerns controversies that occur “within” the Law, under the command of its logical and institutional constraints. Accordingly, I shall elude all controversies “about” Law, whether about its nature, its sociology, its anthropological foundations, its history, and so forth. This is not to consider them irrelevant (quite on the contrary, they are often of a major importance for the knowledge of Law), but rather a mere question of focus. The controversies touching Law that I set aside here share their structural features with those stemming from Science and Philosophy; so they are scientific and philosophical matters too. Insofar as I focus here on clarifying the differentiating traces between controversies arising intrinsically within Law on the one hand, and scientific and philosophical controversies on the other, the elision of

 João Lopes Alves

controversies about Law (scientific and/or philosophical) is simply an option related with the goal of our present study. Second remark: The importance attributed to scientific and philosophical controversies mentioned above means that the role of controversy has not been a virgin territory for theory in the past. As a matter of fact, the influence of controversies on the emergence and development of Science and, a fortiori, Philosophy is well known and generally admitted. What is relatively new nowadays consists in the increasingly noticeable claim that controversies, far more than instrumental, are “substantive to scientific work”. Controversies are no longer seen as a signal of information or reflection gaps that must be surpassed, or as an external force pushing forward the progress of sciences, but as an “internal” factor embedded “necessarily” within the movement of progress.1 The acknowledgment of this factor amounts to a further step in the demise of the classical notion of Science as an achievement of infallibility and absolute truth. This is the kernel from which the idea that legal rationality could take the role of a model regarding the basic assumptions of scientific rationality or of philosophical reflection emerged. The logician and philosopher Chaïm Perelman (1912–1984) produced a considerable and influential mass of theory about this very sensitive point. Perelman’s driving idea is that the historical arising of the human experience of Law, as well as its permanence, resulted from what he calls “the imperfection of Reason”. This “imperfection” expresses the inability of Reason to accomplish its traditional aim of being an invariable, permanent and transparent factor of knowledge and a standard of valuation of life’s interactions. Similarly to Haemon considering in the Antigone the possibility of Creon being the best of kings if in a desert, human Reason could aspire to the majestic attributes of invariability, permanence and communicative transparency only in utterly uninhabited spaces. However, quite contrarily, real Reason is immersed in populated spaces of cooperation and conflict, that is to say, spaces in which the endless clash of opinions is the rule, whether opposing individuals, groups, or peoples. In an article of 1966 suggestively titled “What the philosopher can learn by the study of Law” (Perelman 1990: 444–459), Perelman argued that the claim for Law is a consequence of the insuperable situation of controversy around values, facts and interpretations. Following one schema of Jerzy Wróblewski, we can sketch the general idea that human controversies can be solved by force [vis], by hazard [fortuna] or by rational argumentation [ratio] (Wróblewski 1990: 41–54). With hazard having been pushed off the legal scenario,2 Law shows its remarkable aptitude to combine both rational arguments, in order to decide the controversies, and coercion to enforce its decisions. Therefore, we face a sort of reason – that of Law – that is committed with controversial contingence, far from a supposedly breachless and omission-free one that would stand as the Reason of Science.3



Legal controversy vs. scientific and philosophical controversies 

In parallel, an institutional coercion emerges as well, although not at all through the arbitrary power of pure violence. The Hobbesian Leviathan illustrates this situation perfectly: Of course the sword of imposition is always acting or threatening to act, but it is under the control of an impersonal chain of laws that the Leviathan creates and itself “obeys”. After a fashion, Perelman’s imperfection of Reason4 illuminates indirectly something of the nature and function of Law: Law does not exist to solve theoretical questions of knowledge or speculation, but “to settle practical problems arising from controversial life situations”. This is why Perelman enhanced within legal Reason, judicial reasoning (where inter partes controversies command the substantial logic of the situation) as the basis of a “New Rhetoric” (see Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1958) able to supply, against illusions of rational absolutism developed by traditional Metaphysics or scientism, the logical foundations of a flexible Practical Reason, which could be very helpful to clarify the nature and real limits of scientific and philosophical work.5 According to this wide perspective, legal rationality could play a fundamental role similar to that which Mathematics played regarding modern Science, or Geometry regarding platonic-oriented Metaphysics. The general orientation of Perelman’s ideas converges with a style of thinking very influential in this day and age. Richard Rorty summed up this point underlining, in complicity with his own neo-pragmatism, that the fundamental question of traditional philosophical thought, typical of contemplative philosophies, to wit, “What is our nature?”, has been replaced by a different set of questions oriented towards philosophies of malleability, to wit “What can we make of ourselves?” (Rorty 1994). Participating in this style are other influential trends of thought, in spite of their intrinsic disagreements (an example of scientific/philosophical controversy in progress!), such as Habermas and Apel’s deliberative paradigm (characteristic of their “ethics of discourse”), Theodor Viehweg’s “Topik”, Toulmin’s, MacCormick’s or Alexy’s theories of legal argumentation, or Dascal’s works on the epistemological heuristics of controversy. Nevertheless, an approach to this theoretical environment is beyond my present purpose. In its stead, I prefer to immediately engage myself with a very different point, connected closely with the sharp distinction between legal controversies and scientific controversies. The point is as follows: In contrast with the environment of the free-flowing surge of controversies of science or philosophy, and with consideration to the “practical goals” contemplated by Law, the framework of legal controversies undergoes a “previous” hierarchical selection and definition, in an abstract way, by Law itself. So, Law is not subjected to the unrestricted quest for knowledge and truth that originates the emergence of scientific and philosophical controversies. On the contrary, Law accepts only matters that refer to the practical values Law itself stipulates. All that remains is rejected, and it is

 João Lopes Alves

quite instructive that this selection does no privilege the so-called “Big Questions”. Let us use an illustration that may be too speculative and a little bit baroque, but is nonetheless expressive, or so I presume. It is hard to conceive something more important to the evolution of our current societies than the prevailing orientations in science, or a more significant controversy to the path science would take than the famous one between Nils Bohr and Albert Einstein concerning the foundations of quantum mechanics. Even though it is of an extraordinary relevance, both theoretically and practically, it is absolutely unthinkable in our time to consider any eventual intention of submitting this controversy to a legal court decision. Fortunately, one might add, for things would be rather different if Bohr and Einstein engaged in their controversy in Giordano Bruno’s or Galileo Galilei’s time, I am afraid. In the opposite extreme, no one is surprised by the courts’ acceptance of its jurisdiction over “minor” controversies, such as crossing a street away from the authorized passages. Law’s subordination to the concerns of the practical regulation of social life, which the Law itself defines in accordance with time-epochs, places and patterns of controversy, implies a tautological onus which is rather difficult for Law to avoid. It is Law’s role, and its only role, to establish “what is legal to the Law”, as well as the rules for its interpretation and exercise. One extremely complex web intervenes at this point, covering the creation of a highly specialized language, the structure and operation of legislative bodies, the criteria of what is right and what is wrong, the framework either of family life or business activity, all judicial procedures, and so on and so forth. “We live in and by the Law”, Dworkin underlined, “It makes us what we are: citizens and employees and doctors and spouses and people who own things” (Dworkin 1986: vii). Thus, common legal controversies are related with the circumstances of our common life, since they are under the constraints established by the rules and obligations of Law. In no case is the complexity of selective Law uncontrolled. Formally and in general, it presupposes the category of order, “a term which is among the most complex ones of the philosophical lexicon of the Western tradition” (Giuliani 1990: 31). Without the intercession of this category, the practical discourse of Law cannot bring an answer to the obligations of correctness, or moreover, as Giuliani (Giuliani: 31–39) emphasized, there is no possibility of reaching any rational knowledge. If order operates in one side of the processes of Law, coercion [Zwang] acts in the other. As Kant and Fichte point out, and before them Christian Thomasius, by granting effectiveness to the legal commands, coercion becomes the element that differentiates Law from other normative codes (morality, courtesy rules, and so on). The binomial ambiguity of Law is evident: Obsessed with a rational order, Law is paradoxically moved by the instable malleability of controversies responding to the “imperfection” of Reason, but only up to the point when one final



Legal controversy vs. scientific and philosophical controversies 

decision is made. As the final decision is reached, discussion reaches its end and the devices of coercion begin their own act, whether by actually being carried out or by the simple intimidation of their possibility. Nothing contrasts more significantly with the dynamics of scientific or philosophic controversies than the explicit or implicit role played by coercion in the legal mechanics. Today, at least in the context of Western civilization, the worst thing protagonists in scientific or philosophical controversies can expect to come by as forms of the effects of coercion are, say, injuries to self-respect (the emphasis is on TODAY, I insist; for in different historical periods or even today, but in considerably specific places or circumstances, the expectance is much more risky). In legal controversies, the protagonists face a very different quality in so far as the effects of decisions are concerned. In extreme situations, the risks could reach dramatic levels, true, such as misery, deprivation of liberty, or even the death penalty. Besides, the risks are taken under the uncertainty of the content of the final decision. *** Perelman sums up the civilization background to which the schema I am trying to sketch belongs, in an outline where every word counts: Law, as being a normative body technically autonomous, exists only in societies where – between calculation which suppresses all individual decision, and the limitless as well as arbitrary political power of decision – a space is open for an order established by the multiplicity of human will.6

And of course, “the multiplicity of will” is a synonym for the openness of controversial spaces. In the light of the ideas stated above, we can say that: (1) the flexible plurality of human wills pre-exists modern Law, and that is the problem-solving which should be managed in relation with the coercive power monopolized by the state; (2) what Perelman calls the imperfection of Reason derives from the multiplicity of such divergent wills; (3) if the “reason of necessity” of Law plunges its roots in this imperfection, it is easily understandable why Perelman defends the study of Law – i.e., the study of legal procedures, of interpretation criteria, of the provisions of proof, and so on – as a helpful contribution to the philosopher or the scientist, in order to avoid the traps of a utopian perfection, that is to say, perfectly just societies, or, on the other extreme, perfectly tyrannical ones. In the last resort, what science or philosophy can learn from the study of Law is how to take advantage of the experience of secular Law in finding practical intellectual devices to solve problems, as an instrument to help in the conception of

 João Lopes Alves

societies that are not rationally dogmatic, but “reasonably” flexible. Perelman states this clearly: By attentively studying and carefully analyzing the procedural and interpretative legal techniques, which allow people to live in a State of Law (Rechtsstaat), the philosopher, instead of dreaming the utopia of a paradisiac societiy, could be inspired by reflecting about what centuries of experience have taught those persons responsible for organizing reasonable societies on earth.7

Everything considered, the study of Law can provide a prophylactic approach that can help to remove any illusions about the omniscience and communicative transparency of the work of human Reason. A good exercise to understand a contrario what Law means consists in comparing the role of the Law with ideas from utopian literature. The jus-philosopher Paul Foriers explored this material with very interesting results, which Perelman glossed. Foriers observed that the Law and all institutions implied by it are suppressed, or reduced to minor expression in the ideal societies of Utopia. As a result of the perfection expected in their utopian societies, authors like Thomas More or Thommaso Campanela tend to cancel the conflicts and, therefore, abolish the inherent controversies: “The utopian builders of ideal cities or visionary reformers are committed to designs, which, due to their very perfection, reduce the place, the role and the influence of the Law”, mainly because, being in harmony, “the ideal city doesn’t experiment any dissonance at all” (Foriers 1963: 234–235). Conflicts are considered accidents or diseases of the mind. One must call for a police officer or a doctor then, not a jurist. On the contrary, jurists are seen by the extremists of utopian thought as a disturbing species, who deserve nothing else but being expelled from the Perfect Society, charged as mercenaries of tricks of language, or as experts in rhetorical traps – quite similarly to the expulsion of poets from Plato’s ideal Polis. Jurists are viewed by writers of utopias as a threat to the search for truth. Truth and justice, they sustain, could be easily understood by ordinary people, with no need of mediators if the legislators were genuinely interested in being transparent. Contrariwise, they argue, professional jurists tend to hoard and complicate interpretations and to producen intentional misunderstandings.8 The way is open thus to the suppression of courts and the license of jurists:9 “The utopian society, due to its perfection, ignores conflicts as well as courts; everyone knows his role and his duty, doing spontaneously what is expected of him” (Perelman 1990: 431). Clearly, we are supposed to inhabit Eden down here, and it is hard to imagine an Eden full with conflict, courts and lawyers. The problem, however, as everyone knows, is that our lives are carried out in the backwater quarters of the Garden of Eden.



Legal controversy vs. scientific and philosophical controversies 

Between the illusory rational absolutisms and an impotent radical scepticism unable to solve life’s problems, Law institutes a platform made of compromises and intellectual devices (e.g., the burden of proof, presumptions, fictions, prescriptions, etc.) in order to deal with practical questions, relying on the equilibrium of individual positions and of justice. I am not as sure as Perelman when he presumes that scientists or philosophers could learn with the study of Law. Nevertheless, as to the radical contrast separating legal controversies from scientific ones, I have no doubts at all. If Law is an exercise of compromise aiming to preserve concerns of equity and justice within a context of stability and reciprocal safety amongst men,10 science and philosophy by their own nature reject all strategies of compromise. Scientific controversies can become sources of innovation and knowledge development, but only where the determination of the “objective truth” of controversial issues is taken as an unconditional aim and the protagonists try to arrive as near to it as possible. Of course, these are more aspirations than actual achievements, and consequently controversies in science and philosophy abound, including about whether there is such a thing as an objective truth – a controversy itself rules, paradoxically, by the aim of finding the objectively true solution of this problem. This is not the case with the Law. The search for truth, the removal of falsities, could be part of Law’s important desiderata, as for instance regarding the determination of the facts in a given lawsuit. But it is not the desideratum par excellence. In law practice, truth-values could enter in collision with other values, namely those of stability and safety, or, eventually, the search for truth could be disturbed by concerns about the protection of individual rights (e.g., the presumption of innocence may interfere with the correct determination of factual truth).11 The collision is evident, when, besides the presumption of innocence mentioned above, we also pay attention to other aspects of current legal practice, such as the burden of proof and the irrefutable or juris et de jure presumption. In any of these cases, truth-values could be weakened – whether because innocence is presumed when it eventually does not exist, or the burden of proof creates great difficulties (sometimes impossibilities) for reaching the truth, or even when a barely plausible prevision, albeit in fact false, is accepted without admission of contradiction by evidence. There are a lot of good reasons to justify this legal surrendering, as it were, of objective truth, but there is no doubt that a price must be paid, marking a clear severance between Law and science. Even more impressive is the ab initio “prohibition” of searching for the truth, which derives from negative prescriptions or is a consequence of the allegation that one concrete final judgement was previously obtained on the same controversial situation (as in the case of the French chose jugée, or the Portuguese caso julgado). If the respective legal presuppositions are fulfilled, pending or judicial

 João Lopes Alves

procedures not yet initiated could be cancelled and with them all diligences regarding the factual truth. Another extreme contrast derives from the use of the so-called legal fictions. “Fictions” represent here “technical lies instituted due to practical necessities”, as stressed by von Ihering (apud Pérez de Ayala 1968: 242). Taking advantage of a definition proposed by José Luiz Perez de Ayala, a legal fiction consists in a legislator’s creation – or, I should add, the courts’ creation, inasmuch as judicial decisions could be sources of Law – attributing certain legal effects to certain factual presuppositions in contradiction with the “real nature” of these presuppositions (Pérez de Ayala 1968: 189). Perelman illustrates this notion with a somewhat amusing example from the English history of Law. A criminal law precept of the eighteenth century established the death penalty for convicts of “grand larceny”, a qualification covering thefts whose amount was at least of forty shillings or two pounds. In order to avoid the stupid ferocity of the law, English judges created the following precedent: any theft amount would be fixed at 39 shillings, no matter what its real value. One extreme case occurred in 1808, when a theft of an amount that undoubtedly reached ten pounds was actually estimated as of thirty-nine shillings. The practical problem at stake here should be quite clear: having no power whatsoever to directly change an unacceptable law, judges modified its legal effect by means of fictive qualifications (Perelman 1990: 726). Differently from the juris et de jure presumption, which takes as true an only plausible fact without allowing its refutation by evidence, the fictio juris consists in an artifice “establishing a certain legal truth contra natura” (Alves 1968: 12). The pragmatic vocation of Law is here quite visible: facing one practical difficulty, the Law “lies” ostensibly, in order to solve it. The distance from science and philosophy becomes abysmal in cases such as these. Another fracture is found in the different attitudes of Law and science towards the existence or possibility of a “judge of controversies”, to use a Leibnizian expression. As far as scientific controversies are concerned, the definition of the “judge of controversies” is a desideratum; regarding legal controversies, it is a problematic fact. Leibniz, quite probably the modern scientist and philosopher who paid most attention to the question of the “judge of controversies”, worked on this subject from his earliest writings. In an almost unknown text that already shows his characteristic acumen,12 he draws an analogy between the balance which weighs material things and the balance which weighs reasons, and arrives at the conclusion that the construction of an absolutely precise “Balance of Reason” – which would be an even more important achievement for mankind than the “fabulous science of producing gold” – is coincidental with the formal logic of a perfect Reason. For the ideal judge of controversies, the metaphorical balance of weighing reasons, carefully described by the young Leibniz, is a device absolutely necessary for reaching the impartial and



Legal controversy vs. scientific and philosophical controversies 

irrefutable rational decision of every controversy. This metaphor, of course, accurately points at the heart of the problem, but does not provide its solution. Along his subsequent theoretical career, Leibniz persevered in trying to develop the solution he had hinted at, namely to provide Reason with logical instruments to solve controversies by “calculating”, instead of by disputing or negotiating. With such instruments, any reasoning errors would be errors of calculation, easily discernible and correctible. This ambitious project of a Characteristica Universalis, is but one of the pieces of Leibniz’s monumental rationalist utopia in which legal rationality was to have also a role as a tool and a model for the rational control of the realm of contingency and its controversies. If Leibniz’s project had been carried out successfully, humankind would have at its disposal an ideal judge of controversies genuinely infallible, something indeed more valuable than striking gold. But it did not, and the very geniality of the failed project demonstrates that its failure was inevitable. The fallibility of contingency is something that human Reason cannot overcome by suppression. What could be – and is – a possible rational, albeit less ambitious project, instead, consists in developing the means for Reason to interact effectively with fallibility.13 When we consider the judge of controversies issue in relation with the universe of Law, we are evidently changing galaxies – for the simple reason that the judge is not an ideal construct, but a very real essential component of the legal system. Whatever one’s position in the controversy about the judge’s status and role, jurists and philosophers of law in general agree that he or she is not supposed participate as a party in any judicial controversy brought before his or her court; his or her task is not to argue with the litigants. Rather, the judge inquires, listens, commands the procedures, and finally decides. The judge’s role is thus intimately connected with the problem of decision and – as is well known – judicial decisions are the object of a specific, rigorous legal discipline. Very briefly, the basic principle is that the judge is required to decide with “rational sustentation”; this, along with the requirement of “publicity of the decision”, implies an outstanding historical achievement of the State of Law – a fundamental way of protecting individual rights and freedoms from the arbitrary opacity of judgement and the restrictions of secrecy. The modern legal system is currently wrestling with the problem of how to combat arbitrary decisions deprived of acceptable rational support, or with situations that can lead to a collapse due to professional negligence or dishonest temptations. This control – absolutely crucial for modern Law – is assigned to the examination of the integrity of judges’ decisions by other courts, higher up in the hierarchy. Legal controversies play, of course, a central role in this process. Their “prophylactic” role goes, however, beyond their formal role in decision making, if one takes into account the fact that judges, are, in a sense, also involved in informal “silent controversies”, i.e., in debates with themselves.14 They must not only

 João Lopes Alves

weigh the pros and cons of the arguments actually presented to them by the litigants; they must also try to mentally anticipate the arguments against their decisions that could possibly be adopted by the courts of appeal. This kind of self-debating implies that they should think according to the mechanics of controversy – a fact not at all without influence on the type of decisions the judges end up elaborating and making. Two other institutional aspects of the contrast between legal and scientific controversies have to do with the latter’s subordination to two constraints: the term limit for making a decision and the obligation to pass sentence. It is well known that in scientific controversies there is no timeframe for the closing of a controversy. A controversy can be pursued indefinitely (and there are historical examples, of both scientific and philosophical controversies). Furthermore, it is not obligatory to decide such controversies. We can cease the pursuit of a controversy because we lose interest in the problem, or we face a difficulty we cannot solve, or even by sheer lack of intellectual or material means. The framework of legal controversies is altogether different. Normally there are legal timeframes for making a decision, and the judge is under strict obligation to pass sentence. This obligation is accountable by coercive sanction. If the judge refuses to sentence, even when invoking an omission, obscurity or insufficiency of the law, his refusal is punishable in criminal proceedings, as stated in the paradigmatic article 4 of the Napoleonic Code. The endowment of the judges, according to the influential Napoleonic system, with powers to supply omissions or solve obscurities (which means to impose on the law an interpretation of their own), is very interesting if we remember that the dominant ideology of the French Revolution was in opposition to this, reducing the judge’s role to that of a passive interpreter of the law, which was supposed to carry an univocal meaning. Then, one may ask, why this “official” attack against the Zeitgeist? One possible reason is that, as they evolve, legal “practices” call attention to yet another modality of the inescapable imperfections of Reason, this time concerning the legislator. Commenting on the above mentioned article 4, Portalis, a leading redactor of the Napoleonic Code, clearly states the problem as follows: It is impossible for the legislator to take care of every detail. A multitude of things are left for usage to decide, for educated people to discuss, or for the arbitration of judges (…) When the law is clear, we must follow it; when it is obscure we must search deeply for the meaning of its dispositions. If there is no law, we must rely on usage or equity. Equity means the appeal to natural law, in presence of the silence, opposition or obscurity of positive law.15

The practical demands of Law make the judge’s relinquishing of passing sentence unacceptable, in contrast to the mathematician’s freedom to set aside a mathematical



Legal controversy vs. scientific and philosophical controversies 

problem that he considers at present insoluble. It is not allowed for Law to lack the intellectual means necessary to make a decision on a legal controversy. A judge is obliged to do everything within (and even beyond) his or her reach in order to rationally decide the dispute. The Law provides him or her with the necessary competence to do so, and defines general and abstract guidelines to overcome a crisis generating by the apparent lack of means to decide. This is a duty, under serious penalty if it is not accomplished within the legal terms and stipulated timeframe. So it is in Law, but “it is not so” in science or philosophy. *** In conclusion, the dividing features between legal and scientific controversies I discussed in this paper are:

(1) Legal pre-selection of the matters admitted to judicial appraisal, according to the kinds of controversies involved, the cultural traditions, the social demands, and so forth.



(2) Coercive power of Law.



(3) Judge of Controversies, ideal in Science and Philosophy, institutional in the Law.



(4) Obligation of sentencing in judicial controversies.



(5) Secondary importance attributed to the search for the objective truth of the “facts” in judicial controversies.

The depth of the opposition might lead one to call into question the very possibility of a general theory of rational controversy, as demanded by the fundamental role Perelman et alii claimed for legal rationality, but I am not in a condition to treat this matter suitably in the present paper. I can only say that, since both legal and scientific controversies are, obviously, “controversies”, and since one should, again obviously, expect to find significant conceptual oppositions between different types of controversy, I am inclined to agree with Wróblewski is certainly right when he asserts that the availability of a general theory of controversy depends on the degree of abstraction one is prepared to accept (Wróblewski 1990: 51). With the differentiating elements of legal controversies being basically institutional, another important issue I have left without treatment is the examination of the extent to which institutional constraints influence the internal framework of the controversies, as well as the reasoning and arguing practices. It surely does, but exactly how deserves careful study. Finally, it is my belief that even if one finds it unnecessary to advise the jurists on how to learn from science and philosophy (after all, the entire history of Law manifests a permanent interaction with scientific and philosophical developments), it would be acceptable, or so I hope, to suggest to my colleagues in Law that they

 João Lopes Alves

also follow Perelman’s recommendation addressed to scientists and philosophers: to learn from the study of the features of Law. That is to say, to call upon jurists to “learn with the Law”, i.e., to learn how to clarify not only what is patent in the Law, but also what the Law hides about the things which it decides to take in charge. References Alves, J.L. 1968. “Algumas notas de crítica à validade teórica do conceito de ‘ficções’ no direito fiscal”. Ciência e Técnica Fiscal 119: 7–41. Dascal, M. 2005a. “The balance of reason”. In D. Vanderveken (ed), Logic, Thought and Action. Dordrecht: Springer, 27–47. Dascal, M. 2005b. “Debating with myself and debating with others”. In P. Barrotta and M. Dascal (eds), Controversies and Subjectivity. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 33–73. Dascal, M. 2006. G. W. Leibniz. The Art of Controversies. Dordrecht: Springer. Dworkin, R. 1986. Law’s Empire. London: Fontana. Engisch, K. 1964. Einfürung in das juristiche Denken. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. Foriers, P. 1963. “Les utopies et le droit”. In Les utopies à la renaissance. Bruxelles: Presses Universitaires de Bruxelles, 233–261. Gil, F. (ed). 1990. Scientific and Philosophical Controversies. Lisbon: Fragmentos. Giuliani, A. 1990. “La logique de la controverse dans la procédure judiciaire”. In Gil (ed), 31–39. Locke, J. 2004 [1690]. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. London: Penguin Classics. Olaso, E. de. 1990a. “Leibniz e a arte de disputar”. Filosofia (Revista da Sociedade Portuguesa de Filosofia) 4(1/2): 1–15. Olaso, E. de. 1990b. “Sobre la filosofia leibniziana de las controversias’. In Gil (ed), 115–130. Perelman, C. 1990. Éthique et Droit. Bruxelles: Éditions de l’Université Libre de Bruxelles. Perelman, C. and Olbrechts-Tyteca, L. 1988 (1958). Traité de l’Argumentation. La Nouvelle Réthorique. Brussels: Éditions de l’Université de Bruxelles. Pérez de Ayala, J.L. 1968. “Las ficciones en el derecho tributário”. In Memoria de la Asociación Española de Derecho Financiero. Madrid: Editorial de Derecho Financiero, 183–374. Rorty, R. 1993. “Human rights, rationality and sentimentality”. In S. Schute and S. Hurley (eds), On Human Rights – The Oxford Amnesty Lectures – 1993. New York: Basic Books, 111–134. Wróblewski, J. 1990 “Présomption et fardeau de la preuve dans la controverse”. In Gil (ed), 41–54.

Notes * Text based on a lecture at the Center of Philosophy of Science, Lisbon University. I acknowledge the contributions of discussion and comments by Olga Pombo, Marcelo Dascal, António Bracinha Vieira, Fernando Belo, and Orlando Lourenço. 1. I am using here (as well as in other points of my text) the word “Science” as including philosophical reflection, approximately as in the example of the German term Wissenschaft.



Legal controversy vs. scientific and philosophical controversies 

2. Hazard has played a considerable role on human decisions in the past, a fact which has not vanished entirely (as seen, for instance, in the hazardous methods of nominating the members of a court jury). 3. We refer here to science stricto sensu; Philosophy is always very doubtful on the topic, et pour cause. 4. Probably the word “imperfection” is not a good terminological choice. We are facing here not “imperfections” properly, but rather a different organization of rational values related with the different contexts of use. 5. For this matter, see the proceedings of a remarkable debate about Perelman’s ideas (debaters: Perelman, Wahl, Géroult, Koyré, Ricoeur, Schuhl, Lacan, Robinet, …) held at the Société Française de Philosophie, and published under the title “L’idéal de rationalité et la règle de justice”, in Perelman 1990: 118–177. 6. “Le droit n’éxiste, comme discipline téchniquement autonome, que dans les sociétés qui font place – entre le calculable, qui élimine toute décision individuelle, et le politique, où le pouvoir de décision serait illimité et arbitraire – à un ordre à l’établissement duquel concourent une multiplicité de volontés humaines” (Perelman 1990: 442). 7. “En étudiant avec attention et en analysant avec soin les téchniques juridiques de procédure et d’interprétation, qui permettent aux hommes de vivre dans un État de droit (Rechtsstaat), le philosophe, au lieu de rêver l’utopie d’une société paradisiaque, pourrait s’inspirer, dans ses réflexions, de ce que l’expérience séculaire a enseigné aux hommes chargés d’organiser sur terre une société raisonnable” (Perelman 1990: 443). 8. This has been claimed not only by utopian authors. For example, John Locke remarked that any legal precepts perfectly clear to common people tend to become obscure after comments by experts (Locke 2004: 442). 9. It is interesting to note how lawyers, the paradigmatic performers of the controversy episodes in the Law scenario, are seen actually with antipathy by public opinion, and in some historical circumstances were even the object of severe measures of prohibition, though for reasons not related with utopian prospects. One example among many is the formal prohibition of lawyer practice during the reign of the Portuguese King Pedro I (14th century). 10. “Justice” is a crucial notion in Philosophy of Law and beyond, criss-crossing as it does horizontally every normative discourse on human experience. Perelman delineates an inventory which comprehends six different notions of Justice, but he also mentions that it is a vain attempt to classify exhaustively all the possible meanings of Justice (Perelman 1990: 13–86). 11. We must be careful here, for “factual truth” is a very ambiguous notion. “Facts” do not count, or rarely do so in their empirical form for Law, requiring thus legal adjustments to produce legal effects (see, e.g., Engisch 1964). 12. Commentiuncula de Judice Controversiarum, seu Trutina Rationis et normâ Textus (Brief Ccommentaries on the Judge of Controversies or the Balance of Reason and Norm of theText). This text, written between 1669 and 1671, is the object of insightful analyses by Marcelo Dascal (2005a) and Ezequiel de Olaso (1990a). An annotated English translation is now available in Dascal (2006). 13. About Leibniz, it is remarkable, as Dascal points out, that “next to the well known ‘hard’ rationalist, there is another Leibniz, a ‘soft’ rationalist”, coping with a “dialectical”, more than “metric” or “algorithmic” notion of Reason (see Dascal 2005a: 44). This “soft” rationalism is

 João Lopes Alves closely related with the contemporary theory of controversies (see de Olaso 1990b). It is also instructive that the attempts to overcome the fallibility of contingency realized by the “hard” rationalism par excellence encompassed in “artificial intelligence” did not succeed, leading the theory of AI as well as the computing arts in general to other ambitions than the frustrated one of ending with fallibility. 14. For an analysis of intra-personal debates, their relations with inter-personal ones, and the kinds of rationality involved in them, see Dascal (2005b). 15. “Il est impossible au législateur de pourvoir à tout. Une foule de choses sont abandonées à l’empire de l’usage, à la discussion des hommes instruits, à l’arbitrage des juges (...) Quand la loi est claire, il faut la suivre; quand elle est obscure, il faut en approfondir les dispositions. Si l’on manque de loi, il faut consulter l’usage ou l’equité. L’équité est le retour à la loi naturelle, dans le silence, l’opposition ou l’obscurité des lois positives” (apud Perelman 1990: 539).

chapter 12

The controversy over the foundation of sociology and its object Simmel’s form vs. Durkheim’s collectivity Amos Morris-Reich

1

Introduction

The following case-study in the history of sociology is offered in the context of recent historical-philosophical studies of controversies and of scientific controversies in particular (Dascal 1998; Dascal and Cremaschi 1999; Freudenthal 1998). The subject of this article is the controversy between two of the founders of modern, academic sociology: Georg Simmel (1858–1918) and Emile Durkheim (1858– 1917). This controversy deserves investigation because of the importance of the issues under dispute for the history of sociology, because of the special characteristics of this controversy, and because it shows that the epistemological foundations of sociology were varied from its very beginning. The focus of this controversy is the foundation of sociology and its object of research. However, the form that this controversy takes is almost cryptic. It is possible to condense it into two terms – Simmel’s “form” vs. Durkheim’s “collectivity” – terms that stand at the core of their theories. In the following pages, I will explain the terminology employed in this article, and present the encounter between Simmel and Durkheim in 1897– 1898 surrounding the publication of Simmel’s article by Durkheim. Then, I will describe Simmel’s conception of form, and analyze Durkheim’s review of Simmel. Subsequently, I will show Simmel’s undermining of Durkheim’s project. I will conclude with a brief analysis of the form of this controversy.

 Amos Morris-Reich

2 A note on terminology I would like to differentiate between the following kinds of texts and data: the “primary texts” of the controversy, namely, the published texts in which the controversy is carried out; the “co-text”, that is, additional relevant texts; and the “context”, that is, situational data (my use of terminology follows Dascal 1990: 63). While this terminology is necessary for the reconstruction and the analysis of this controversy, the specific form that this controversy takes raises certain empirical questions. The “primary texts” in this controversy are few. They include an article by Simmel published in Durkheim’s journal, Durkheim’s review of Simmel in an Italian journal, reviews by Durkheim of books by Simmel, and an additional article written by Durkheim. While it is clear that on at least two occasions Simmel is addressing Durkheim, on both occasions he does so without referring to him by name. This is not a technical matter; it pertains to the form of this controversy. Therefore, I treat these texts as “primary texts” rather than as “co-text”. Furthermore, it is most probable that during the first stage of their encounter (1897–1898) Simmel and Durkheim had corresponded with each other directly. However, this correspondence has been lost (Rammstedt 1997: 446, n.5). On the other hand, letters that Durkheim wrote to some of his colleagues in which he relates to Simmel (“co-text”) did survive. Thus, while we have important pieces of “co-text” we must be aware that they represent only a fraction of the actual “co-text”, and that this part represents only Durkheim’s angle. While situational data, in turn, are available, the “context” of this controversy has been interpreted by various authors very differently. As will become apparent shortly, I believe that the methodological means developed for analyzing controversies are particularly effective in exposing the core of this one. 3 The encounter between Simmel and Durkheim Commemorating the 140th anniversary of the birth of Simmel and Durkheim and the 100th anniversary of Année sociologique, Otthein Rammstedt has recently reconstructed the relationship between Simmel and Durkheim placing their encounter in the context of the Dreyfus affair (Rammstedt 1997: 444–457). Rammstedt throws light on one aspect of their encounter.1 However, on the festive occasion of their jubilee, the disagreements between them are mentioned in a way that plays them down. Nonetheless, Rammstedt’s account may serve as a convenient entrance point into their controversy. Rammstedt notes that Durkheim and Simmel intended to cooperate together in forming a “purely scientific sociology” (rein wissenschaftlich Soziologie) and that



The controversy over the foundation of sociology and its object 

Simmel was on the editorial board of Durkheim’s journal Année sociologique. Indeed, Rammstedt’s account highlights their intention to cooperate. However, to be able to do so he distinguishes between three spheres of their encounter: their respective views on politics, religion, and sociology. On the basis of this distinction, he argues that Durkheim and Simmel shared their political agendas, disagreed on the foundation of sociology but did not let this disagreement disturb their cooperation, and conducted a covert, friendly textual dialogue concerning religion. In the terms introduced above, Rammstedt pays much more attention to the “context” and the “co-text” than to the “primary text”. In fact, Rammstedt mentions the “primary texts” very briefly only in the last page of his article (1997: 455). The distinction between these spheres allows one to recognize two points that are of significance for our discussion. First, that Simmel and Durkheim could be viewed as belonging to the same political wing. Second, that the core of the controversy between Simmel and Durkheim, as one reconstructs it from the “primary texts”, lied not in their views on politics but in their different scientific programs. Third, the result is that there is no necessary correlation between the political and scientific spheres. However, by paying much more attention to the “context” than to the “primary texts”, Rammstedt neglects the scientific for the political, and in effect drastically plays down the controversy between Durkheim and Simmel. From the perspective of the “primary text”, the “co-text” and the “context” read very differently than the friendly Simmel-Durkheim relationship in Rammstedt’s account. Simmel and Durkheim were exact contemporaries. They knew each other through Célestine Bouglé, who was a student and colleague of Durkheim and initiated a connection with Simmel when he wrote a book on the social sciences in Germany. Durkheim invited Simmel to publish an article in the first volume of his newly founded sociological journal, the Année sociologique (Papilloud, Rammstedt and Watier 2002: 393). Simmel did not accept the invitation at once. And the letter exchange between Durkheim and Bouglé reveals that once the article, which was entitled “Die Selbsterhaltung der Gesellschaft”, arrived, Durkheim immediately raised questions about it. Even before Durkheim forwarded Simmel’s article to Bouglé for translation, he informed Bouglé about his intention to edit Simmel’s article. After reading the manuscript, Durkheim wrote to Bouglé that he thought a more accurate title for the essay would be “Forms of organization that preserve the unity of their social groups above the mobile flow of individuals” (Des formes d’organization par lesquelles se maintient l’unité des groupes sociaux par-dessus le flux mobile des individus; quoted in Papilloud, Rammstedt and Watier 2002: 396). Durkheim suggested to Bouglé several alternative titles for Simmel’s article. Moreover, he thought the article could be improved by being shortened, and offered to restructure it by the addition of sub-titles. Finally, Simmel’s essay appeared entitled as “Comment les formes sociales se maintiennent” (Rammstedt 1997: 445). “Society”

 Amos Morris-Reich

(Gesellschaft) in Simmel’s title turned into “social forms” (formes sociales), and the new title now meant “how social forms maintain themselves”, rather than the original which meant “the self-existence, or self-persistence of society”. However, an additional, possibly more serious matter arose. Simmel was asked by Durkheim to delete two sections of the article: a reference to honor (Ehre) as a factor in group-endurance and a reference to the attempt carried out by modern Zionism to recreate or reproduce (wiederherstellen) on the local level the groupunity (Gruppeneinheit) of the Jews. Rammstedt places both requests in the context of the Dreyfus affair and the wave of anti-Semitism that France was seeing at the time (1897–1898), and the fact that Durkheim and Simmel were Jews or came from Jewish backgrounds. In that context, for Durkheim, who was a Dreyfusard, the passage on honor was read as support for the anti-Dreyfus campaign. Concerning Simmel’s exemplification of his ideas by allusion to Zionism, Durkheim wrote to Bouglé that he was afraid he himself would be viewed as a Zionist (Rammstedt 1997: 453). As Durkheim knew Simmel knew that both were Jews, Durkheim was astonished when Simmel declined his request to delete both passages. Rammstedt explains that Durkheim, who was a Jew, had a German sounding surname, and came from a French-German border area, was afraid that if he would not cut off his ties with Simmel, the Jew and German who speaks openly of Zionism in the first volume of his sociological journal, he would badly risk damaging the reception of his sociology by being himself labeled a Zionist. As for Simmel, Rammstedt (1997: 450, 452) claims that Simmel’s declining of Durkheim’s request was caused by misunderstanding; Simmel did not comprehend Durkheim’s situation in France, since Durkheim did not put in explicit terms the reasons for his request. The assumption underlying Rammstedt’s interpretation is that, were Simmel to understand the situation in France as a Jew, he would have given his consent to Durkheim’s request. However, if there was a misunderstanding in this case, it was certainly not as simple as Rammstedt wants us to believe. For one, it is not clear whether at this stage Simmel considered himself a Jew at all, and if he did, what significance this biographical fact should have for his professional work. In any case, it is quite obvious that he did not consider himself a Jew in the same sense or at the same degree as Durkheim did. Consequently, it is not unquestionable that a request based on the implicit assumption that both were Jews would necessarily win Simmel’s compliance. In fact, it is possible that Simmel did not want to be reminded or even told by anyone, let alone in this specific context and by a Jew, that he came from a Jewish background; it may well be that Durkheim’s insinuation was that which caused him to decline his request in order to make the point. My speculations are of course no better than Rammstedt’s and I only raise them in order to show that a historical argument based on the limited contextual data we have is bound to be historically anachronistic (it might perhaps



The controversy over the foundation of sociology and its object 

tell us more about the historian than about the case studied). If only for this reason, in our case it is advantageous to accord primacy to the “primary text” over situational data. This chapter of the affair ends as Simmel receives a copy of the journal only to find out that Durkheim had carried out his editorial authority to delete these two passages against Simmel’s expressed wish and without his knowledge (Simmel 1896–1897; Papilloud, Rammstedt and Watier 2002: 399). While this short, unhappy affair is not the heart of the controversy between Simmel and Durkheim, it is indispensable for the understanding of the controversy that developed later. After this encounter, the direct ties between Simmel and Durkheim were cut off, and from 1897 onwards they virtually ignored each other. Rammstedt is convinced that Simmel and Durkheim were professionally very tolerant of each other’s views, and that it was only the misunderstanding (rather than disagreement) that evolved round the two passages in Simmel’s text that led to the break of ties between them. However, the “co-text” (as well as the “primary text” to which we shall turn shortly) from the period reveals a different situation. While Durkheim writes in a letter to Bouglé that it is “neither necessary nor desirable that everyone hold the same formula” (ni nécessaire ni désirable que tout le monde ait exactement la même formule; quoted in Papilloud, Rammstedt and Watier 2002: 394), in a letter to his nephew, Marcel Mauss, he makes clear as early as June 1897 that he is not enthusiastic about Simmel’s work.2 In another letter to Bouglé he comments on Simmel’s work that “the complications of the phrase are not relative to the complication of the idea, which is, on the contrary, rather simple” (d’autant plus que les complications de la phrase ne sont pas en rapport avec la complication de l’idée, qui est, au contraire, assez simple; quoted in Papilloud, Rammstedt and Watier 2002: 399). Thus, there are clear co-textual indications that Durkheim was never “in love”, so to speak, with Simmel’s work. In the time that passed from the first volume of his journal to the second, Durkheim changed his editorial policy. From the second volume onward the journal moved away from its early pluralistic approach towards being defined as the flagship of Durkheim’s sociological school. It is interesting that the real controversy began after Durkheim and Simmel’s personal cooperation ended. While they already knew each other, having corresponded prior to Durkheim’s publication of Simmel’s article, after their direct encounter Durkheim only reviewed a small number of Simmel’s publications, who never addressed him directly nor corresponded with him privately again. As indicated above, on the personal level after this early encounter they both basically ignored each other. However, while their direct mutual correspondence ended and they seemed to be ignoring each other’s work, they started a controversy that was in its entirety addressed to a “third party” readership. Here, each opted for a different strategy: Durkheim referred to Simmel’s works on only very few occasions,

 Amos Morris-Reich

always critically, and primarily in book reviews. Simmel, on the other hand, referred to Durkheim’s methods on very few occasions, always in order to undermine them, never even mentioning him by name. It is essential for understanding the form of this controversy to note that Simmel does not write to Durkheim, Durkheim does not write to Simmel, and Simmel does not respond to Durkheim. Rather, Simmel publishes an article in Durkheim’s journal; Durkheim criticizes Simmel’s project in a different journal, in Italian, and also publishes short book reviews of Simmel’s books in the Année sociologique; Simmel, on his part, criticizes Durkheim’s work in two books, on both occasions without referring to Durkheim by name. The controversy takes place over a long period of time. But it is intense. While relatively few arrows are shot in this duel, the arrows which are shot are masters’ arrows: they are precise, and they hit their target. I believe it is possible to explain the controversy in the following way: both Durkheim and Simmel wish to establish sociology as the science of society. Both believe that in order to do so they have to find a way to formulate sociology’s object of research as distinct from the object of other disciplines, primarily psychology. Simmel’s formulation is based on the notion of “form”, while Durkheim’s formulation is based on the notion of the “collectivity”. Both conceive their theories as competing and as excluding each other. 4 Simmel’s definition of sociology’s object From his earliest works Simmel states that the object, any object, is one inasmuch as its parts interact dynamically.3 Simmel “commences from ‘a regulative world principle that everything interacts in some way with everything else, that between every point in the world and every other force permanently moving relationships exist’” (Frisby 1994: 332). Simmel then proceeds to society in particular. The general modern spiritual tendency, he states, is also apparent regarding society, society being the amount (Summe) of interconnections taking place between its parts. Simmel extends his definition of object to encompass society. Society is not an absolute, closed entity, but merely the secondary result of the interaction of its parts.4 After having recognized society in terms of interactions which make up a unity, Simmel is engaged in finding a way to speak of bodies, objects or forms which these interactions bring about without acknowledging the interacting elements themselves as entities.5 Therefore, he goes on to observe that the effects of these interactions should not cause us to understand them as real, or substantial, closed entities. What defines an object is not its physical-chemical attributes, that is, one is always able to divide it further, but its effects (Simmel 1989b: 131). Society, in Simmel’s words, is only the name for the sum of these interactions (132 and 133).6



The controversy over the foundation of sociology and its object 

However, if any entity is not final, Simmel is obliged to justify why society, and not the individuals out of which it is composed, is worthy of being viewed as a distinct object of research and in what senses it is different from the individuals out of which it is made. This is what causes Simmel to formulate “the concept of society” (Der Begriff der Gesellschaft) as something distinct from the mere “sum of individuals” (Summe der Einzelnen).7 Individual interaction produces forms that win a life of their own and persist. These forms condition individuals’ actions. Sociology, accordingly, isolates “societal forms” out “of the mere sum of living men” (Simmel 1950b: 228). In “The problem of sociology”, which opens his 1908 Soziologie (1992) (though originally published already in 1894), Simmel radicalizes his definition of society, and affirms that society and interaction are one and the same thing. “Society exists”, he claims at the beginning of his essay, “where a number of individuals enter into interaction” (Simmel 1971: 23).8 “If, therefore, there is to be a science whose subject matter is society and nothing else, it must exclusively investigate these interactions, these kinds and forms of sociation” (Simmel 1971: 24–25; Frisby 1992: 12). In his later definition Simmel postulates society as one and the same as interconnection between individuals; society can no longer be a sum (and certainly not a total). Simmel therefore reduces society from being both society as sum and society as interconnection in his first definition to being only interconnection in his later definition. 4.1

Differentiation between biological and sociological aspects

The foundation of society as the distinct object of sociology is based on two additional differentiations. The first one is the form-content differentiation. “There is perhaps no necessity of thought which is so hard to cast off as the analysis of things into content and form”, Simmel write; “in countless modifications, [...] this division cuts across our image of the world. It is one of the organizers and flexible instruments with which the mind gives structure to the mass of all, that is, a mass which, in its immediate unity, is structureless” (Simmel 1959: 288). The second differentiation, to which Simmel applies the first one, is between individuals-asindividuals and individuals-as-members-of-society. The individual-as-individual is comprised of biological and psychological needs, which are according to Simmel not social themselves (and therefore the object of other disciplines). The latter is comprised of the diverse forms of interaction brought about by the former. Only

 Amos Morris-Reich

the latter is the object of sociology. Simmel presents these conditions concisely in his 1917 “small” sociology (Grundfragen der Soziologie): The motive derives from two propositions. One is that in any human society one can distinguish between its content and its form. The other is that society itself, in general, refers to the interaction of individuals. This interaction always arises on the basis of certain drives or for the sake of certain purposes. Erotic instincts, objective interests, religious impulses, and purposes of defense or attack, of play or gain, of aid or instruction, and countless others cause man to live with other men, to act for them, with them, against them, and thus to arrange their conditions reciprocally – in brief, to influence others and to be influenced by them. The significance of these interactions lies in their causing the individuals who possess those instincts, interests, etc., to form a unit – precisely, a “society”. Everything present in the individuals … in the form of drive, interest, purpose, inclination, psychic state, movement – everything that is present in them in such a way as to engender or mediate effects upon others or to receive such effects, I designate as the content … In themselves, these materials … are not social … They are factors in sociation only when they transform the mere aggregation of isolated individuals into specific forms of being with and for one another – forms that are subsumed under the general concepts of interaction. Sociation thus is the form … in which individuals grow together into units that satisfy their interests. These interests … form the basis of human societies (Simmel 1950b: 12).

Simmel believed that only this differentiation could guarantee sociology an object of research distinct from every other discipline without admitting any collective moment. 5 Durkheim’s review of Simmel As noted, Durkheim was eager to publish some of Simmel’s work in his newly founded sociological journal. As noted, their direct ties were cut. The only places in which Durkheim referred at any length to Simmel’s work are short book reviews published in the Année sociologique, and an article published in 1900 in Italian, entitled “Sociology and its scientific field”. The status of this article is historically unclear. Gary Jaworsky has suggested that it was written in Italian for a special issue of the Rivista Italiana di Sociologia. According to Jaworsky, the purpose of the article was “to counter Simmel’s growing reputation in Europe and correspondingly gain favor for his own approach” (1983: 33). Jaworsky further suggests that this was a response to an article of Simmel that appeared earlier in the same year in Riforma sociale.



The controversy over the foundation of sociology and its object 

While reconstructing Simmel’s terms, Durkheim translates Simmel’s key term Form/Inhalt in German, which corresponds to form/content in English, into contenant/contenu in French, which corresponds rather to container/contained in English. Several authors explained the disagreement between Simmel and Durkheim as a result of the mistranslation of the terms of the latter by the former. While this mistranslation from German into French is no doubt part of the controversy, the core of the controversy goes beyond this mistranslation to the fundamentals of their theories. In this sense the mistranslation is less a matter of a naïve failure on behalf of Durkheim to convey Simmel’s meaning and more a rhetorical means of the former in the controversy with the latter. It will become apparent that Durkheim did not merely mistranslate Simmel’s German terms, but that he did so intentionally in order to destroy the logic underlying Simmel’s notions.9 Simmel introduces the form/content differentiation in order to secure logically, rather than empirically, the object of sociology as distinct from that of other sciences. Even before he comes to discuss Simmel directly, Durkheim states that “it is asking too much of a science that it define its subject matter with excessive precision, for the part of reality that it intends to study is never neatly separated from other parts” (1960b: 354). Thus, before discussing Simmel directly, Durkheim is undermining Simmel’s attempt to formulate a logical (rather than empirical) formulation that will allow sociology to study phenomena which are studied by other disciplines as well. He then proceeds to a direct treatment of Simmel’s definitions. I will show that more important than the mistranslation is the fact that Durkheim reduces Simmel’s terms to his own. Durkheim begins his reference to Simmel by reconstructing for the readers Simmel’s main rationale: “Georg Simmel has made a notable, an almost violent, effort to trace the limits of the subject matter of sociology. The basis of his argument is the idea that, if sociology is to be, it must constitute a particular system of investigations that are perfectly distinct from those of the sciences which have long existed under the names of political economy, history of civilization, statistics, demography, and so on” (Durkheim 1960b: 355). Durkheim goes on in his reconstruction: The difference lies in the fact that these other sciences study what occurs in society, not society itself. The religious, moral, and legal phenomena which they treat occur within particular groups; but these groups must themselves be the object of a different inquiry, one which is independent of these others; and it is precisely this independent study that constitutes sociology. With the help of the very society which they form, men living in society achieve many kinds of different ends – some religious, others economic, still others aesthetic, and so on; the special sciences have as their subject matter the particular processes by which these ends are attained (1960b: 355).

 Amos Morris-Reich

Attempting to recapitulate Simmel’s form/content differentiation, Durkheim states that [i]n the complex usually called society, there exist two kinds of elements which must be clearly distinguished: there is the content, the diverse phenomena that occur among the associated individuals; and there is the container, the association itself, within which such phenomena may be observed. Association is the only truly sociological thing, and sociology is the science of association in the abstract (1960b: 355).

Durkheim wonders about Simmel’s ideas: “But these processes are not in themselves social – at least, they have a social character only indirectly and only in so far as they develop in a collective environment. These sciences, therefore, are not properly sociological” (1960b: 355, italics added). In his reconstruction of Simmel’s theory, Durkheim adds a key term – a term Simmel labors hard to avoid – “collective”. Durkheim uses “collective” where Simmel would use “social form”. Durkheim continues his review of Simmel after changing a key term into his own vocabulary: Consequently, in order to eliminate from sociology the various phenomena which constitute the web of social life, one has to demonstrate that they are not the work of the collectivity, but come from wholly different origins to place themselves within the general framework constituted by society (1960b: 357; italics added).

Now, Durkheim is no longer relating to Simmel’s “form”. If collectivity is anyhow the source of the social in society – as Durkheim, but not Simmel, believes – there is no more any sense in abstracting “container” (which really corresponds to “behälter” in German). Therefore, it is only in the context of replacing form with collectivity that the mistranslation of form/content into container (rather than forme in French) and content assumes its significance. “By what right are the container and the content of society separated, and separated so radically? Only the container is claimed to be of a social nature; the content is not, or only indirectly so. Yet there is not a single proof to confirm such an assertion which, though far from being accepted as a self-evident axiom, may yet overwhelm a student” (1960b: 357). Was Durkheim’s mistranslation a naïve act devoid of intention, a mere misunderstanding or miscommunication? The pragmatic analysis of controversies gives a clear answer to this question. Misunderstandings can easily be prevented, detected, and once they have already occurred, corrected. In “controversies the contendants seem to forego the use of such devices. Instead of taking steps to decrease the likelihood of misunderstanding, they seem to be particularly fond of increasing it” (Dascal 1990: 82). Indeed, “[i]f your adversary has a fairly good argument, which you must defeat, why not represent his argument as less good than it actually is, i.e., why not misrepresent it slightly?” (83). It is therefore probable that



The controversy over the foundation of sociology and its object 

Durkheim’s mistranslation is a rhetorical means to weaken the apparent logic underlying Simmel’s theory. There is a certain irony in Durkheim’s mistranslation, as Simmel’s form/content differentiation aims at de-ontologizing society, whereas Durkheim’s mistranslation of form into container ontologizes society. However, it is Durkheim, not Simmel, who views society as an ontological entity. Thus, by mistranslating Simmel’s form into container and then criticizing this view Durkheim is criticizing a view that in the ontological sense is closer to his view of society than it is to Simmel’s. Durkheim accompanies this move with another, even stronger one: the insertion of “collective” into the reconstruction of Simmel’s theory. It is the shift in vocabulary rather than the mistranslation that displays what separates their views sharply. Simmel introduces the notion of form in order to avoid opposing individual to collectivity (thus placing the social on the side of the collective), whereas Durkheim’s paradigm is constituted on this opposition. One need only remember Durkheim’s “social fact”, sociology’s only true subject-matter, or his famous statement that “every time that a social phenomenon is directly explained by a psychological phenomenon, we may be sure that the explanation is false” (1964: 104). Form is introduced by Simmel to maintain “society” as a legitimate object of research, without recognizing collectivities as distinct. For Durkheim, “les faits sociaux” are things. It is easier to follow Durkheim’s review of Simmel if you understand that his reading of Simmel’s form is filtered by his own opposition of the individual and the collective. Yet it is immediately clear that the collective traditions and practices of religion, law, morality, and political economy cannot be facts less social than are the external forms of the collectivity; and if one deepens the study of these facts, one’s first impression is confirmed: everywhere we find society at work elaborating them, and their effect on social organization is evident. They are society itself, living and working. What a strange idea it would be to imagine the group as a sort of empty form of trivial cast that can indifferently receive any kind of material whatever!” (1960b: 357).

“Social life is built out of various manifestations”, Durkheim maintains, “they all have the common characteristic of having emerged from a group, simple or complex, which is their source” (1960b: 358). Thus, Durkheim concludes concerning Simmel’s form/content differentiation that “[t]he basis which the proposed abstraction seems to constitute when the two are opposed as container and content disappears once the significance of those words is more exactly specified, and it

 Amos Morris-Reich

becomes clear that they are no more than metaphors, inexactly applied” (1960b: 358). Durkheim ends with harsh words: These are the characteristics of Simmel’s investigations. We appreciate their subtlety and ingenuity, but we think it is impossible to trace the main divisions of our science as he understands it in an objective manner. No connection can be discovered among the questions to which he draws the attention of sociologists; they are topics of mediation that have no relation to an integral scientific system. In addition, Simmel’s proofs generally consist only of explanations by example; some facts, borrowed from the most disparate fields, are cited but they are not preceded by critical analysis, and they often offer us no idea of how to assess their value. For sociology to merit the name of a science, it must be something quite different from philosophical variation on certain aspects of social life, chosen more or less at random according to the leanings of a single individual. What is needed is the formulation of the problem in a way that permits us to draw a logical solution (1960b: 359).

In effect, Durkheim suggests that Simmel’s sociology is not objective, and therefore cannot qualify as a science. Durkheim ends his review of Simmel’s The Philosophy of Money with words aimed at disqualifying and diminishing Simmel’s work as science: L’imagination, les sensations personnelles auraient donc le droit de s’y donner libre carrière et les démonstrations rigoureuses n’y seraient pas de mise. Mais nous avouons ne pas attacher un très grand prix, quant à nous, à ce genre de spéculation bâtard, où le réel est exprimé en termes nécessairement subjectifs, comme dans l’art, mais abstraits comme dans la science; car, pour cette raison même, il ne saurait nous donner des choses ni les sensations vives et fraiches qu’éveille l’artiste ni les notions distinctes que recherche le savant (1902: 145). ‘[The] imagination, personal feelings are thus given free reign here, and rigorous demonstrations have no relevance. For my own part, I confess not attaching a very high price to this type of hybrid-illegitimate speculation where reality is expressed in necessarily subjective terms, as in art, but also abstractly, as in science. For this very reason, it can offer us neither the fresh and living sensation of things that the artist arouses nor the precision which is the scientist’s goal’ (translation source: Durkheim 1994: 328; Frisby 1994, Vol. 1: 159).

He does basically the same in two more short book reviews two years later. In a review of Simmel’s 1903 Über räumliche projectionen socialer Formen, Durkheim criticizes Simmel’s agility (souplesse) in passing from one idea to the other, from one subject to another, resulting, according to Durkheim, in conceptions which generally lack a degree of precision (1904: 647). In his review of Simmel’s article (Simmel 1902, 1903), Durkheim criticizes what appears to him as Simmel’s decontextualizations of the empirical data he uses (1904: 648). Here Durkheim again



The controversy over the foundation of sociology and its object 

criticizes what he presents as Simmel’s wavering and imprecision (1904: 649). He also compares Simmel’s treatment of this topic with Friedrich Ratzel’s, only in order to determine that Ratzel’s is more precise and that Simmel does not refer to Ratzel’s work. This is in line with his attempt to portray Simmel as an author that does not abide to the scientific “rules of the game”. The arsenal of the arguments he raises against Simmel’s work is therefore determined. He criticizes Simmel’s methodology or epistemology as well as Simmel’s style of writing, thus trying from different angles to reduce Simmel’s work from a possible, legitimate, and effective foundation of a new science to the idiosyncratic impulse of a single individual. Durkheim also writes that “the task of the sociologist is not simply to describe these diverse phenomena … He must want to explain them, that is, connect them with their causes and determine their functions” (1960b: 361). In his publications Durkheim never again mentions Simmel’s name after 1904 (Levine 1984b: 94). Interestingly, Simmel replies to Durkheim’s allegations only after 1904. Indeed, we will soon see that it is precisely the point above, the explanation of the causes, that Simmel responds to, and in the same way. Durkheim tackles the question and ends up by attacking Simmel’s differentiation between form and content: “But how can one achieve this abstraction [of form from content]? If it is true that all human associations are formed with particular ends in view, how can one isolate association-in-general from the various specific goals which such association serves?”(Durkheim 1964: 86; Sorokin 1965: 146). To conceive the sociation of individuals subtracting the intention the individual was pursuing, one must first realize that Simmel is defending what for him is the inevitable price sociology must pay for establishing itself as a distinct discipline; sociology cannot claim to deal with what is already dealt with in other disciplines. Sociology’s distinct object is not the individual motives – although it cannot do without them – but the form they assume. For Durkheim, there is no way to conceive forms without conceiving what first induced them, because what induced them in the first place is collective, not individual. 6 Simmel’s answer to Durkheim Simmel’s answer to Durkheim’s criticism is that Durkheim’s sociology, despite its pretension, cannot give a causal account of individuals’ motives or intentions, but only describes the sociologist’s subjective synthesis. Simmel (1977) confronts Durkheim at least twice without mentioning him by name. He undercuts Durkheim’s project. Distinguishing between two kinds of law – Keplerian and Newtonian – he undermines Durkheim’s statistical method. Keplerian laws, Simmel states, reveal no causality, but only describe statistical probability of social patterns (body

 Amos Morris-Reich

motions). Newtonian laws, on the other hand, give causal explanations to body motions. To make his point he provides examples: statistical patterns of suicide – the title and topic of one of Durkheim’s famous books (1897). It is significant that both Simmel and Durkheim choose as their paradigmatic example for individualform/collective relationship what is usually considered the most individual act possible to imagine: suicide. Simmel writes: Suppose the following is described as a “social law”. Among ten thousand cases of death per year, there is a certain number of suicides. This description seems to be misleading; each act of suicide is only the result of the social and psychological forces – laws, for example – that govern it. The fact that there are a given number of suicides during a certain year is the result of the application of these laws to a given set of cases, but this fact is not itself a law… In other words, this proposition states a matter of fact; it does not identify the cause of this fact. The individual suicide is obviously not concerned with the question of whether a certain number of other people also commit suicide (1977: 140; italics mine).

Thus, as we can see, Simmel answers Durkheim precisely with the same argument Durkheim had raised against himself: that his sociology is not able to explain, but at best to describe. Simmel continues: “it is evident that the following is not one of those natural laws the real consequences of which are ultimately responsible for this act: that in ten thousand cases of death per year, there is a certain number of cases of suicide. The addition of cases is a synthesis undertaken by the observer” (140; italics mine).10 Simmel’s reply to Durkheim’s attack on him is to undermine the force and significance of Durkehim’s statistical method. “What is responsible for the fact that this statistical correlation seems to be purely superficial and – as we might put it – without force? It is only the requirement imposed on it: the statistical correlation should identify the direct causes of social elements” (1977: 140). Statistical patterns of suicide, according to Simmel, are equivalent to Keplerian laws – they cannot explain the personal individual reasons for the suicide but only describe certain statistical regularities.11 The causes being individual, statistical regularities tell us nothing about the individual causes – and individuals are not subordinate to these regularities. However, one should not overlook the fact that as Durkheim’s criticism of Simmel was based on a methodology or epistemology that Simmel denies, so here, Simmel’s criticism is based on an epistemology that Durkeheim rejects. In fact, the main thesis which Durkheim develops in his book Le suicide is precisely that the rate of suicides as compared with particular suicide cases “constitute by itself a new and sui generis fact, which has its unity and its individuality” (constitue par lui-même un fait nouveau et sui generis, qui a son unité et son individualité; 1930: 8).



The controversy over the foundation of sociology and its object 

In his 1917 Grundfragen der Soziologie (1999) Simmel returns once again to the question of sociology’s object of research and undermines two conceptions that differ from his own. “It is remarkable”, he writes, “that the denials either minimize or exaggerate this concept [i.e., society] … Existence, we hear, is an exclusive attribute of individuals, their qualities and experiences. ‘Society’, by contrast, is an abstraction”. [O]n the other hand it is said all that men are and do occurs within society, is determined by society, and is part of its life; there is no science of man that is not science of society. The science of society thus ought to replace the artificially compartmentalized special disciplines, historical, psychological, and normative. But, obviously, this definition which wants to give sociology everything, takes as much away from it as did the first conception that left it nothing” (Simmel 1950b: 4).

While the former statement, the one which according to Simmel plays sociology down, is aimed at Wilhelm Dilthey, the latter, which overplays sociology, aims at Durkheim. Without mentioning him by name, Simmel attempts to ridicule Durkheim’s “sociological imperialism” (Lukes 1973: 392–405). 7 Individual and society in terms of part and whole Simmel’s and Durkheim’s formulations of sociology’s object of research are different, and I believe contradictory. The difference is particularly apparent as both formulate their theories in terms of part and whole. It is possible that because their theories are both based on a contradictory part-whole relationship, they entered into such sharp disagreement. We could see above that Simmel accords primacy to the parts over the whole. In fact, he moves from talking of parts to talking of fragments, which do not form a whole at all. For Durkheim, on the other hand, when elements combine, a new reality derives from their combination which has entirely new characteristics, characteristics that are sometimes even opposed to those observable in the component elements. Two soft bodies, copper and tin, unite to form bronze, one of the hardest materials known … Thus, if non-living particles can unite to form a living being, it is not extraordinary that an association of individual minds becomes the field of action of phenomena sui generis which these minds could not have produced by the strength of their nature alone (Durkheim 1960b: 364).

As can be clearly seen from Durkheim’s previous lines concerning the new entity which emerges out of the union between different elements, “element” has here two different meanings.12 The individual is in one sense the element out of which the collectivity is made. However, in another sense the individual is also the

 Amos Morris-Reich

outcome of the collectivity. These two meanings of individual as element are not on a par. This dialectic is both hierarchical and holistic. The individual is not estranged in this dialectic but rather finds his proper place in the new entity. Simmel’s, on the other hand, is one of self- estrangement.13 In another place Durkheim writes that: We can say, therefore, with assurance and without being excessively dogmatic, that a great number of our mental states, including some of the most important ones, are of social origin. In this case, then, it is the whole that, in a large measure, produces the part: consequently, it is impossible to attempt to explain the whole without explaining the part – without explaining, at least, the part as a result of the whole (1960a: 325).

Thus, for Durkheim, the part is subordinated entirely to the whole. 8 The impact on the individual The respective part and whole conceptions have a direct impact on the epistemological or methodological understanding of the individual. As noted earlier, Simmel’s social form is viewed by him as secondary to the individuals constituting it; Durkheim, on the other hand, states that Although sociology is defined as the science of societies, it cannot, in reality, deal with the human groups that are the immediate object of its investigation without eventually touching on the individual who is the basic element of which these groups are composed. For society can exist only if it penetrates the consciousness of individuals and fashions it in “its image and resemblance” (1960a: 325). Concepts … are always common to a plurality of men. They are constituted by means of words, and neither the vocabulary nor the grammar of a language is the work or product of one particular person. They are rather the result of a collective elaboration, and they express the anonymous collectivity that employs them (327).14

For Durkheim, sociology must be that of collectivities. For this reason, there can be no such thing as sociology which is not of a historically determined society. Thus, Durkheim “viewed society as a ‘system of active forces’ operating upon individuals, Simmel viewed society as constituted by interactional ‘forces’ between individuals” (Frisby 1992: 14).15 Durkheim claimed that “the social fact is not social because it is general but rather general because it is collective” (Lukes 1973: 14– 15), that is, he distinguished between individual, general, and collective. Durkheim was looking for ways to identify “factors that are specific to particular societies; that is, the factors are neither strictly personal features of individuals nor universal attributes of human nature” (Lukes 1973: 14–15). Simmel was searching for general



The controversy over the foundation of sociology and its object 

(universal) social forms rather than collective (historically determined societies). Contrary to Durkheim, Simmel viewed social facts as social because they are general (universal) rather than because they are collective. The part-whole relationship is in fact a metonymy for two matters which pertain to sociology and social philosophy in a particular way, and which it is profitable to separate at this stage: the first relates to the existence of the parts (individuals) and the whole (society) and the second relates to the relationship between individuals-as-individuals and individuals-in-society. These two considerations, as we will see, correspond to ontological and epistemological considerations.16 Let us first look at the differentiation between individual-as-individual and individual-in-society, a differentiation shared by both. This differentiation is of an epistemological nature. Simmel accords primacy to the individual-as-individual over the individual-in-society. Durkheim accords primacy to the individual-in-society over the individual-as-individual. Simmel arrives at this view from moving from individuals-as-individuals through individuals-in-society to social forms; Durkheim starts from collectivities, goes through individuals-in-society to arrive at individuals-as-individuals. While both use similar terms (individual, individualin-society, social form/collectivity), each employs a contrary form of reduction: Simmel reduces social phenomena to individual motives; Durkheim reduces individual motives to collectivities. These different forms of reduction are also reflected in their respective understandings of social types. For Durkheim, apart perhaps from the organic biological “sensual appetites”, the individual’s behavior is the outcome of the impact of society (normal and pathological). He wishes to typify and explain individuals’ behavior according to statistical patterns; that is, “social type” is attached to social patterns of behavior according to the distinction between the normal and the pathological. “A social fact is normal, in relation to a given social type at a given phase of its development, when it is present in the average society of that species at the corresponding phase of its evolution. The pathological is what differs from the general-normal” (Durkheim 1964: 64). Simmel’s conception of social types is very different. His three sociological a priori’s stand at the basis of his theory of social types. The first a priori is the social mediation of action: every action is always already social. The relations between actors are the product of a generalized image of the other since it is impossible to completely know the other or to characterize him as an object with fixed properties. The second a priori is that “every element of a group is not only a societal part but, in addition, something else” (Simmel 1950a: 350). The fact that the individual is not entirely an element of society “constitutes the positive condition for the possibility that in other respects he is: the way in which he is sociated is determined or codetermined by the way in which he is not” (350). The third a priori rests upon the phenomenological structure of

 Amos Morris-Reich

society: “The life of society … takes its course as if each of its elements were predestined for its particular place in it” (351). Social types have nothing to do with normal versus pathological social patterns, but with the interrelationship between individuality and being apprehended and typified by others. Simmel states in several places that “[f]or the fabric of social life it is particularly true: no weaver knows what he’s weaving”. This means that each individual is free to choose in what form he will get “stuck”. Simmel’s notion of form necessitates an individual who is estranged both from himself and from other individuals. Forms necessitate the action of the individual that are from the very beginning inevitably disrupted and disturbed. In having to by-pass forms in order to realize his intended ends the individual is diverted from his intention. He is thrown into a teleological chain that is itself entangled in irrational contingent forms which he seeks to overcome. He ends up aiming at tools to achieve his intended aim, thus form changes his aims (money, of course, being Simmel’s strongest example). He is forced to take bypasses that in due time become another form, which again stands between intention and realization, and so on. Rather than finding a “proper place” as a component in, or a member of a collective, the individual is, quite on the contrary, condemned to ever-growing estrangement from his own and his fellows’ intentions in the modern condition. There is an individual intention, then, but it is submitted to form. However, he does not tell us what brings which individual to choose getting stuck in which form. Interestingly, as Giddens has noted, Durkheim fails on this very point as well (1971: 227). Let us now look at the question of the existence of individuals and societies. This is an ontological question. From Simmel’s point of view, it is clear that only individuals (i.e., parts) exist, and society (i.e., the whole) is merely a name. Durkheim, on the other hand, repeatedly speaks about society as “reality sui generis”, and states that society has “its own nature” and “consequently its requirements are quite different from those of our nature as individuals: the interests of the whole are not necessarily those of the part” (Durkheim 1960a: 328).17 Thus, according to Durkheim, society exists ontologically. He states that “the individual is a product of society more than he is its cause” (1898: 8). In certain important senses Durkheim views the individual as basically the body (1960a: 337). Thus, ontologically, Durkheim and Simmel differ sharply. In the case of Simmel and Durkheim there is a positive correspondence between the epistemological and the ontological considerations. Simmel believes that only individuals exist (ontology) and that anything social can only be explained in terms of individuals (epistemology). Durkheim categorically rejects epistemological individualism and considers society as existing beyond individuals (ontology). Durkheim accords epistemological and ontological primacy to society over individuals. This is expressed in terms of part and whole: individuals are



The controversy over the foundation of sociology and its object 

a part of the whole; the whole (i.e., society) cannot exist without the parts (i.e., individuals). However, the whole is not identical to the parts, as it has an existence of its own (ontology). Thus, in epistemological terms as well, the parts (i.e., individuals) can be explained only in terms of the whole. 9 The encounter between Simmel and Durkheim as a form of controversy I would like to conclude with a brief analysis of the form of controversy between Simmel and Durkheim. Two things are particularly important in this context: first, the form of communication and, second, the nature of the arguments. What I would like to argue is that there is a connection between the fact that the controversy between Simmel and Durkheim took place after their cooperation ended, that is, the fact that they did not correspond with each other directly, and the nature of their arguments. Simmel and Durkheim both act under the supposition that their theories compete and exclude each other. Therefore, rational argumentation is used in order to undermine or to eliminate the force of the other’s theory, rather than to negotiate with it or even formulate points of consensus and of difference. They do not appeal to each other with arguments meant to win the other’s appreciation, support or understanding. The controversy takes the form of a zerosum game, where the gain of the one corresponds to the loss of the other. They both argue against the other’s theory as a whole, rather than suggesting that it has to be modified on particular points. They target what they perceive to be the most essential, the other’s conceptual presuppositions and their implications. Thus, for instance, criticisms concerning empirical accuracy are either entirely neglected or subordinated to topics conceived as more fundamental. Both attack what they perceive as the weakest conceptual point in the other’s theory in order to eliminate the rational basis that supports it and the consequences that derive from it. If one separates between attack and defense in controversies (Dascal 1990: 78; Freudenthal 1998: 157), it becomes apparent that in their direct engagement both Simmel and Durkheim attack each other rather than defend their views. Durkheim does this by reducing Simmel’s terms to his own while reconstructing for the readers Simmel’s notion of form. In this sense, Durkheim’s mistranslation of Simmel is primarily a rhetorical means aimed at neutralizing the logic underlying Simmel’s theory, and not a naïve linguistic inaccuracy. Simmel, however, responds neither by alluding to Durkheim’s mistranslation and defending his own terms, nor by analyzing where Durkheim’s reconstruction of his own theory goes astray. Rather, Simmel answers with an attack aimed at neutralizing Durkheim’s statistical study of society by claiming that it is merely a subjective synthesis which cannot serve as the basis of science.

 Amos Morris-Reich

10 Conclusion Some controversies lead to irreconcilable conflict. This one began after the conflict took place. Some controversies take place in private correspondence. This one was carried out only for a “third party”, readers, in published works. Some controversies are mildly and elegantly articulated. Some controversies are carried out in a subtle and friendly manner. Simmel and Durkheim articulated themselves unsympathetically towards each other. Indeed, they ignored each other and most of each other’s work. However, even this image of their relationship is only a partial one. Levine has established that very late in their lives and before WWI ended Simmel canceled his participation in a conference in St. Louis in order to meet with Durkheim and Gabriel Tarde in France (Levine 1993: 78). Thus, the historical and psychological complexity involved in their relationship and their controversy is greater than the harsh correspondence would lead us to believe. Some controversies lead to new syntheses of knowledge. Simmel and Durkheim believed, to the very end of their lives, that the foundations of sociology and the object of research they were advancing were irreconcilable. Simmel once wrote that the sentence “‘Whoever is not for me is against me’ is only a half-truth. Only the indifferent person is against me – one whom the ultimate questions for which I live move neither to a For nor an Against. But whoever is against me in a positive sense, one who ventures onto the plane where I exist and combats me on that plane – that person is in the highest sense for me” (Levine 1984b: 89). In this sense, perhaps only in this sense, Durkheim and Simmel were in their unique ways for each other. References Coser, L. (ed). Georg Simmel. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Dascal, M. 1990. “The controversy about ideas and the ideas about controversy”. In F. Gil (ed), Scientific and Philosophical Controversies. Lisboa: Fragmentos, 61–100. Dascal, M. 1996. “The dispute on the primacy of thinking or speaking”. In M. Dascal, D. Gerhardus, K. Lorenz and G. Meggle (eds), Philosophy of Language: An International Handbook of Contemporary Research, Vol. II. Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 1024–1041. Dascal, M. 1998. “The study of controversies and the theory and history of science”. Science in Context 11(2): 147–155. Dascal, M. and Cremaschi, S. 1999. “The Malthus-Ricardo correspondence: Sequential structure, argumentative patterns, and rationality”. Journal of Pragmatics 31: 1129–1172. Durkheim, E. 1897–1898. “De la définition des phénomènes religieux”. L’Année sociologique 2: 1–29. Durkheim, E. 1898. “L’individualisme et les intellectuels”. Revue bleue series 4: 7–13.



The controversy over the foundation of sociology and its object 

Durkheim, E. 1900. “La sociologia ed il suo dominio scientifico”. Rivista Italiana di Sociologia 4: 127–148. Durkheim, E. 1902. L’Année sociologique 5: 140–145. Durkheim, E. 1904. L’Année sociologique 7: 646–649. Durkheim, E. 1930. Le Suicide: Etude de sociologie. Paris: Félix Alcan. Durkheim, E. 1960a. “The dualism of human nature and its social conditions”. In K. H. Wolff (ed), Essays on Sociology and Philosophy by Emile Durkheim. New York: Harper and Row, 325–340. Durkheim, E. 1960b. “Sociology and its scientific field”. In K.H. Wolff (ed), Essays on Sociology and Philosophy by Emile Durkheim. New York: Harper and Row, 354–375. Durkheim, E. 1964. The Rules of Sociological Method. New York: Free Press. Durkheim, E. 1994. “Durkheim’s Review of Georg Simmel’s Philosophie des Geldes”. Peter Baehr (trans). Social Research 46: 321–328. Freudenthal, G. 1998. “Controversy”. Science in Context 11(2): 155–160. Frisby, D.P. 1990. “Simmel’s concept of society”. In M. Kaern, B.S. Phillips and R.S. Cohen (eds), Georg Simmel and Contemporary Sociology. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Press, 39–55. Frisby, D.P. 1992. “The study of society”. In D.P. Frisby (ed), Simmel and Since: Essays on Georg Simmel’s Social Theory. London: Routledge, 155–160. Frisby, D.P. 1994. “The foundation of sociology”. In D. Frisby (ed), Georg Simmel: Critical Assessments, Vol. II. London and New York: Routledge, 329–346. Gephart, W. 1982. “Soziologie im aufbruch. Zur weckselwirkung von Durkheim, Schäffle, Tönnies und Simmel”. Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 34(1): 10–19. Giddens, A. 1971. “The ‘individual’ in the writings of Emile Durkheim”. European Journal of Sociology 12: 210–228. Jaworsky, G.D. 1983. “Simmel and the Année”. The Journal of the History of Sociology 5: 28–41. Levine, D.N. 1984a. “Ambivalente begegnungen: Negationen Simmels durch Durkheim, Weber, Lukacs, Park und Parsons”. In H.-J. Dahme and O. Rammstedt (eds), Georg Simmel und die Moderne Neue Interpretationen und Materialien. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 318–387. Levine, D.N. 1984b. The Flight from Ambiguity: Essays in Social and Cultural Theory. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Levine, D.N. 1988. “Das problem der vieldeutigkeit in der begründung der soziologie bei Emile Durkheim, Max Weber und Georg Simmel”. In Rammstedt (ed), 181–195. Levine, D.N. 1993. “Howard Woodhead – An American correspondent on Simmel”. Simmel Newsletter 3: 74–78. Lukes, S. 1973. Emile Durkheim, His Life and Work: A Historical and Critical Study. New York: Harper and Row. Maffesoli, M. 1988. “Ein vergleich zwischen Emile Durkheim und Georg Simmel”. In O. Rammstedt (ed), Simmel und die frühen Soziologen: Nähe und Distanz zu Durkheim, Tönnies und Max Weber. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 163–180. Naegele, K.D. 1958. “Attachment and alienation: Complementary aspects of the work of Durkheim and Simmel”. American Journal of Sociology 62: 580–589. Neyer, J. 1960. “Individualism and socialism in Durkheim”. In K.H. Wolff (ed), Emile Durkheim et al. Essays on Sociology and Philosophy. New York: Harper & Row, 32–76. Papilloud, C., Rammstedt, A., and Watier, P. 2002. “Editorischer Bericht”. In Georg Simmel Französisch- und Italienischsprachige Veröffentlichungen. Mélanges de Philosophie Relativiste. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 379–420.

 Amos Morris-Reich Rammstedt, O. 1988. “Die attitüden der klassiker als unsere soziologischen selbstverständlichkeiten. Durkheim, Simmel, Weber und die konstitution der modernen soziologie”. In Rammstedt (ed), 275–307. Rammstedt, O. 1997. “Das Durkheim-Simmelsche projekt einer ‘rein wissenschaftlichen soziologie’ im schatten der Dreyfus-affäre”. Zeitschrift für Soziologie 26(6): 444–457. Rammstedt, O. (ed). Simmel und die frühen Soziologen: Nähe und Distanz zu Durkheim, Tönnies und Max Weber. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Reddy, M.J. 1994. “The conduit metaphor: A case of frame conflict in our language about language”. In A. Ortony (ed), Metaphor and Thought, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 164–201. Simmel, G. 1896–1897. “Comment les formes sociales se maintiennent”. Année sociologique 1: 71–109. Simmel, G. 1902–1903. “The number of members as determining the sociological form of the group”. The American Journal of Sociology 8: 1–46, 158–196. Simmel, G. 1950a. “How is society possible?”. In K.H. Wolff (ed), The Sociology of Georg Simmel. Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 350–351. Simmel, G. 1950b. “Fundamental problems of sociology: Individual and society”. In K.H. Wolff (ed), The Sociology of Georg Simmel. Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 3–79. Simmel, G. 1959. “On the nature of philosophy”. In K.H. Wolff (ed), Georg Simmel, 1858–1918. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 282–309. Simmel, G. 1971. “The problem of sociology”. Transl. K.H. Wolff. In D.N. Levine (ed), Georg Simmel on Individuality and Social Forms. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 23–35. Simmel, G. 1977. The Problems of the Philosophy of History: An Epistemological Essay. G. Oakes (trans. and ed). New York: Free Press. Simmel, G. 1989a. “Die probleme der geschichtsphilosophie: Eine erkenntnistheoretische studie”. Aufsätze 1887–1890. Über sociale Differenzierung. Die Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie (1892). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 346–348. Simmel, G. 1989b. “Über sociale differenzierung”. Aufsätze 1887–1890. Über Sociale Differenzierung. Die Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie (1892), Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 109–295. Simmel, G. 1991. Einleitung in die Moralwissenschaft: Eine Kritik der ethischen Grundbegriffe, Band II. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Simmel, G. 1992. Soziologie: Untersuchungen über die Formen der Vergesellschaftung. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Simmel, G. 1997. Kant. Die Probleme der Geschichtsphilosophie (1905/1907). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 320–322; 350–353. Simmel, G. 1999. Der Krieg und die geistigen Entscheidungen. Grundfragen der Soziologie. Vom Wesen des historischen Verstehens. Der Konflikt der modernen Kultur. Lebensanschauungen. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Sorokin, P. 1965. “A critique of Simmel’s method”. In Coser (ed), 142–153. Tenbruck, F.H. 1965. “Formal sociology”. In Coser (ed), 77–96. Wolff, K.H. 1958. “The challenge of Durkheim and Simmel”. The American Journal of Sociology 63: 590–596. Wolff, K.H. (ed). 1950. The Sociology of Georg Simmel. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.



The controversy over the foundation of sociology and its object 

Notes 1. The best account of Durkheim’s relationship to Simmel’s work continues to be Levine’s condensed five-page one (Levine 1984b: 89–94). However, Levine’s account is firmly focused on the one-sided disavowal of Simmel by Durkheim. The following analysis brings out Simmel’s reaction to and undermining of Durkheim, a matter which has been surprisingly neglected to date and in this sense may complement Levine’s classic account. 2. Durkheim states that, “As for Simmel, you know that I am far from being enthusiastic. But I would not like to give the impression of isolated arrogance, and publish only my own paper” ([p]our ce qui est de Simmel, tu sais que je suis loin d’en être enthousiaste. Mais je ne voulais pas avoir l’air de me poser dans un isolement trop orgueilleux, ou de ne publier que de ma copie ; quoted in Papilloud, Rammstedt and Watier 2002: 401). 3. “Now, for me it is certain that there is only a single reason that provides at least a relatively objectivity of standardization; the interaction of the parts. We designate every object as standardized when its parts stand in mutual dynamic interaction” (Es ist mir nun unzweifelhaft, daß es nur einen Grund giebt, der eine wenigstens relative Objektivität der Vereinheitlichung abgiebt: die Wechselwirkung der Teile. Wir bezeichnen jeden Gegenstand in demselben Maße als einheitlich, in dem seine Teile in gegenseitigen dynamischen Beziehungen stehen; Simmel 1989b: 129). 4. “Society is not a totally sealed entity, an absolute unity … It is secondary to the interaction of the parts. (Ein in sich völlig geschlossenes Wesen, eine absolute Einheit ist die Gesellschaft nicht ... Sie ist gegenüber den realen Wechselwirkungen der Teile nur sekundär; Simmel 1989b: 130). See also Frisby 1990: 45; Frisby 1994: 332. 5. Simmel’s intention here is double. First, to dismantle a stable and essentialist view of entities by stressing that every entity can always be further divided into smaller particles. Second, to avoid the view according to which individual human beings are hermetically closed entities. “The dissolution of society into the sum of the interaction of its parts is placed within the tendency of modern spiritual life [Geisteslebens]: the solid, identical to itself, substantially dissolves into function, force, movement … Nobody can deny that interaction between parts of that which we call society takes place. Society, similarly to the individual, is neither a closed being nor an absolute entity. Rather, against the real interaction of the parts, it is secondary. It is just the result, indeed both factually as well as for [the] observation [of the scientist]” (Die Auflösung der Gesellschaft in der Summe der Wechselwirkungen ihrer Teilhaber liegt in der Richtung des modernen Geisteslebens überhaupt: das Feste, sich selbst Gleich, Substanzielle ins Funktion, Kraft, Bewegung aufzulösen und in allem Sein dem historischen Prozeß seines Werdens zu erkennen ... Daß nun eine Wechselwirkung der Teile unter dem statt hat, was wir eine Gesellschaft nennen, wird niemand leugnen. Ein in sich völlig geschlossenes Wesen, eine absolute Einheit ist die Gesellschaft nicht, so wenig wie das menschliche Individuum es ist. Sie ist gegenüber den realen Wechselwirkungen der Teile nur sekundär, nur Resultat, und zwar sowohl sachlich wie für die Betrachtung; Simmel 1989b: 130; italics mine). 6. See also Simmel quoted in Frisby 1990: 45. 7. “Simmel advanced his theory”, Friedrich Tenbruck writes, “in pointed opposition to previous attempts at accounting for social life. These attempts were based either on a supra-individual entity (such as Volksseele or similar organismic notions) or on instincts, drives, and other strictly individual properties. Simmel submitted that it is interaction which sustains society” (Tenbruck 1994: 347).

 Amos Morris-Reich 8. “For sociology”, Frisby writes, “this implied the study not of society as substance but as interaction of its elements” (Frisby 1994: 333). 9. For an alternative opinion see Gephart (1982). Gephart argues that Simmel’s and Durkheim’s sociology are in fact extremely close on certain key notions. For other accounts, see Wolff (1958). Jaworsky (1983) views Durkheim’s “social morphology” as based on Simmel’s content/form differentiation. However, for reasons which transcend the scope of this article it is more reasonable to view “social morphology” as a development of Friedrich Ratzel’s geographical work. Ratzel’s work was positively reviewed by Durkheim at much greater length in Année sociologique. See also Naegele (1958), Maffesoli (1988), Levine (1988), and Rammstedt (1988). 10. See also Simmel (1991) Vol 2, 179–185. According to him, “The law, to which statistics is subordinated, does not reside in it, but in the mind of the observer, that subsumes it with other [objects]. The statistical law is a subjective synthesis, and the individual in its reality has nothing to do with, it is free from it” (Das Gesetz, dem die Statistik ihn unterordnet, liegt nicht in ihm, sondern nur in dem Geiste des Beobachters, der ihn mit so und so vielen Anderen zusammenbringt; das statistische Gesetz ist also eine subjektive Synthese, und das Individuum in seiner Realität ist ihm fremd, ist frei von ihm, 182). In the same vein, Simmel also rejects Heinrich Rickert’s distinction between the science of human phenomena (“idiographic”) and natural phenomena (“nomothetic”). Rickert, Simmel’s argument goes, confuses between the causal law and the actual occurrence. The fact that human phenomenon is singular in its occurrence – it occurs once – bears no significance for being submitted to the notion of the causal law. The occurrence – natural or human – can theoretically take place once (or not at all) or it can take place a million times. For the notion of the causal law this difference is only a technical one: “A is ‘valid’ – it holds or functions – regardless of whether the case it describes occurs one time or a million times” (Simmel 1977: 129). The earlier version of the original German text makes the context of Lotze’s notion of validity still clearer: “The laws of things have nothing to do with the reality of these things. The validity remains valid if the cases they describe take place once or a million times” (Die Gesetze der Dinge haben mit der Wirklichkeit derselben absolut nichts zu thun; sie bleiben in ihrer Geltung bestehen, gleichviel ob der Fall, den sie beschreiben, einmal oder millionenmal stattfinden; Simmel 1989: 346–348). Simmel believes his conception of sociology “renders the choice” between the “timelessly valid” and the “uniquely historical” “unnecessary” (Simmel 1971: 28). 11. Newton’s famous statement “hypotheses non fingo” disapproves scientific speculation about causes, accepting only causal questions within a system (Durkheim’s statistical patterns could count as a system). It is not clear if Simmel knew this statement and his intention evidently was to undermine the foundations of Durkheim’s project. I would like to thank Marcelo Dascal for this remark. 12. “Element”, like “member”, is a concept of set theory, whereas “component” is a concept of mereology, i.e., the logic of the part/whole relationship. This distinction was probably not known to Durkheim (or Simmel) as it was only formulated after his time and he uses “element” where the part (individual)/whole (collectivity) relationship is his real object of discussion. Thus, for the sake of clarity it would probably be more accurate to replace Durkheim’s “element” with “component”. 13. See Levine 1984a: 331 and 355. “Formal sociology [Simmel’s sociology]”, writes Tenbruck, “rests on the assumption that meaningful action can originate in the individual. It is this assumption which allows for the peculiar understanding of society in which man is at once object



The controversy over the foundation of sociology and its object 

and subject” (1965: 95). In other words, according to Tenbruck, there is only the individual, but all the same the individual encounters himself as object; he encounters form. The individual certainly has his intentions, but since forms stand between him and the realization of his intentions, he is forced to by-pass them to achieve his intended ends. 14. Another, derivative sense of disagreement between Simmel and Durkheim relates to the form of communication between individuals. According to Durkheim, as the above quotation shows, concepts flow from the collective directly, in an unmediated way, into the minds of the individuals. Simmel’s individuals suffer necessarily from the fact that communication, as any other form of social interaction, is always socially mediated and always includes aspects not intended by the individuals. Simmel’s and Durkheim’s respective views accord with Reddy’s two alternative metaphors for communication, “conduit” (Durkheim) and “tool makers” (Simmel) (Reddy 1994: 164–201). I owe this reference to Marcelo Dascal. 15. As Giddens (1971: 210–228) shows, Durkheim draws a clear line between individualism as a modern social phenomenon and individualism as a methodological means. The latter Durkheim believes cannot serve as the basis of sociology; the fomer Durkheim views as a modern phenomenon, itself the outcome of society. Giddens also shows that Durkheim confuses the individual as flesh and blood and the “pre-social” individual, that is, the individual of utilitarian theory. Indeed, Simmel’s conception of the individual reiterates in certain important senses utilitarian theories. 16. For a concise explanation of forms of primacy, see Dascal 1996: 1025–1026. 17. Durkheim reiterates the same view in different variations in many of his writings. For example, he states that “society has its manner of being which is peculiar to it. It has its passion, its practices ... its needs, which are not those of private individuals, and it stamps its imprint on all that it creates” ([l]a société a sa manière d’être qui lui est propre; Elle a ses passion, ses habitudes, […] ses besoins qui ne sont pas ceux des particuliers et qui marquent de leur empreinte tout ce qu’elle conçoit ; 1897–1898: 25).

chapter 13

Controversies about politeness Chaoqun Xie Does everything that we do not find conspicuous make an impression of inconspicuousness? Does what is ordinary always make the impression of ordinariness (Wittgenstein 1958a: 156e)? Anyone who does not understand why we talk about these things must feel what we say to be mere trifling (Wittgenstein 1974: 174).

1

Introduction

The last thirty years or so have witnessed a sharp rise of interest in politeness phenomena, but there are several issues of central and fundamental importance that remain to be comfortably or satisfactorily settled. The present paper focuses on some controversies about politeness, arguing that most of these controversies are caused by politeness researchers themselves, who entertain an inadequate picture of language and who insist on seeking for a universal, determinate and predictive politeness theory. This paper argues that a deeper understanding of politeness can never be obtained without a deeper understanding of man, that universality does not and cannot exist in nature, and that, given the uncertain nature of human life, prediction making should not be the major goal of politeness studies. Language is part of our life. It can make us smile or cry, happy or unhappy; it can also make us a success or a failure. Language is, so to speak, multifunctional; no one can ever afford to overlook the power of language. And it is always a top priority to learn how to better understand and interpret language to live a successful and peaceful life (Dascal 2003). In fact, many people have realized and underpinned its importance: [A] word is as good as a chemical. But it has its toxins as well. […] A discourse can poison, surround, close off, and imprison, or it can liberate, cure, nourish and fecundate (Irigaray 2002: 4–5).

 Chaoqun Xie

Language is a labyrinth of paths. You approach from one side and know your way about; you approach the same place from another side and no longer know your way about (Wittgenstein 1958a: 82e). Man speaks. We speak when we are awake and we speak in our dreams. We are always speaking, even when we do not utter a single word aloud, but merely listen or read, and even when we are not particularly listening or speaking but are attending to some work or taking a rest. We are continually speaking in one way or another. We speak because speaking is natural to us (Heidegger 1971: 189).

It can be said that without language, the very existence of man would become unbelievable if not totally impossible (Lin and Xie 2005), and we may say that human beings do live in language, and living in language is, in a sense, “struggling with language” (Wittgenstein 1998: 13e). This may account for why, though we use language every day, there is still much to learn about it. Suppose, for instance, one day someone asked us where language came from; would we be able to answer this question easily and quickly? A survey of past and present literature on linguistic origins soon reveals that this appears to be a mission next to impossible (Herder 1772; Lieberman 1975; Taylor 1997; Blackmore 1999; Comrie 2000; Knight et al. 2000; Trabant and Ward 2001; Johansson 2005). The origin of language seems to be a topic of the past, the remote past, and here, Saussure’s views are worth quoting and remembering: In fact, no society has ever known its language to be anything other than something inherited from previous generations, which it has no choice but to accept. That is why the question of the origins of language does not have the importance generally attributed to it. It is not even a relevant question as far as linguistics is concerned (2001: 72).

The same appears to be true of issues pertaining to politeness phenomena. Although we probably use politeness every day, it is no easy matter to explain the very notion cleanly and clearly in a few words; actually, “[t]he aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity” (Wittgenstein 1958: 50e). It can be said that politeness is at once an old and new topic of human concern. In English, the word “polite” is said to be etymologically derived from the Latin politus in about the 15th century, meaning “to cater”, “to smooth” or “to be sociable” (Kasper 1998; Sifianou 1992). In Chinese, the closer approximation to the English word “politeness” seems to be lǐmào, the origin of which is closely related to the old Chinese word lǐ (Gu 1990). The notion of lǐ, which, according to archeological evidence, probably appeared during the period between 3500 B.C. and 2000 B.C., is claimed to be roughly identical to the notion of culture in its broad sense (Yang 2001).



Controversies about politeness 

It is generally agreed that, in the last thirty years or so, the pioneering and inspiring contributions of Goffman (1967), Lakoff (1973), Grice (1975), Brown and Levinson (1978) and Leech (1983) have greatly stimulated scholars’ interest in the study of politeness, resulting in a nearly geometric, or “mammoth-like” increase in relevant articles, monographs, and book chapters (Chen 2001: 87; see DuFon et al. 1994 for a partial and incomprehensive list). Among them, Brown and Levinson’s politeness model, “proven to be the most influential proposal, extremely powerful in its generation of research and controversy” (Kasper 1996: 1; italics mine), seems to have developed into a strong and successful meme in the sense of Dawkins (1976). Now it seems hard to talk about politeness without the mention of the names Brown and Levinson; actually, it can be said that the study of politeness, thanks to Brown and Levinson, has become a discipline of salience, popular with people specialized in the areas of, say, pragmatics, applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, psychology, anthropology, inter-cultural and intra-cultural communication and cognitive linguistics. It goes without saying, however, that the large body of literature on politeness does not mean that many if not most issues in politeness have been solved; rather it suggests that there exist some controversies in terms of the ontology, epistemology and methodology of politeness studies (Eelen 2001). More specifically, despite all this seemingly encouraging prosperity, many issues fundamental to a deeper and better understanding of the very notion of politeness remain to be satisfactorily tackled, some of which are as follows. What is the real truth about politeness? How can we or how should we deal with politeness? What can be the right, if not the best means to collect data for politeness studies? What is the true color about gender and politeness? Why have non-verbal or non-linguistic elements been denied access to, if not excluded from, the linguistic politeness market? Are they not at all important in the realization of politeness (see Jaworski 1993 for the power of silence and Sifianou 1997 for a good discussion of silence and politeness)? Are women always more polite than men as usually assumed (Mills 2003)? Is impoliteness a real Cinderella in politeness studies (Culpeper 1996, 2005; Kienpointner 1997; Culpeper et al. 2003; Xie et al. 2005)? The list of questions concerning politeness and impoliteness can go on and on. That politeness is “ubiquitous in language use’’ (Brown 2001: 11620) makes it a ‘‘definitionally fuzzy and empirically difficult area’’ (Held 1992: 131). At this point, it might be of some help to be reminded of the fact that “what is most obvious may be what is most difficult to understand” (Wittgenstein 1998: 25) and that what appears to be ordinary may turn out to be extraordinary. There are various controversies on the current politeness market. In this paper, I would like to focus on three of them, taking both theoretical and empirical aspects into consideration, with an attempt to dig out the sources of the controversies and, more

 Chaoqun Xie

importantly, to present some meta-theoretical reflections on politeness in particular and humanities research in general. 2 The controversy on politeness as social norms I will first concentrate on the theoretical side by looking at the view of politeness as social norms. In his discussion of four perspectives on politeness, Fraser sums up the social-norm view as follows: Briefly stated, it assumes that each society has a particular set of social norms consisting of more or less explicit rules that prescribe a certain behavior, a state of affairs, or a way of thinking in a context. A positive evaluation (politeness) arises when an action is in congruence with the norm, a negative evaluation (impoliteness = rudeness) when action is to the contrary (1990: 219).

There are a number of politeness researchers who seem to advocate the socialnorm view of politeness, arguing that politeness is a norm imposed by social conventions (Gu 1990, 1992; Blum-Kulka 1992; He 1995). Gu rejects Brown and Levinson’s “face-threatening acts” and the politeness strategies for redressing those acts as unsuitable for the Chinese context, arguing that politeness is more normative than instrumental: [I]t would be a serious oversight not to see the normative aspect of politeness. Failure to observe politeness will incur social sanctions. In the Chinese context, politeness exercises its normative function in constraining individual speech acts as well as the sequence of talk exchanges. Politeness is a phenomenon belonging to the level of society, which endorses its normative constraints on each individual (Gu 1990: 242).

Gu goes on to elaborate upon four maxims (the Self-denigration Maxim, the Address Maxim, the Tact Maxim and the Generosity Maxim) subsumed under one “politeness principle”, which is “understood as a sanctioned belief that an individual’s social behavior ought to live up to the expectations of respectfulness, modesty, attitudinal warmth and refinement” (Gu 1990: 245). If we follow the reasoning of the social-norm view of politeness, we seem to be able to infer that all the members of a certain socio-cultural background share one and the same politeness system and that all the members refer to this system in making politeness or impoliteness evaluations. Besides, this assumption seems to entail another assumption. On the one hand, if an individual uses polite language, he or she is regarded as “having good breeding”; on the other, if a person uses impolite language, it appears to indicate that the very person is uncultured (Gu 1992: 13). As a consequence, since all the social members “are claimed to have a shared knowledge of the rules, maxims,



Controversies about politeness 

scripts, etc.” (Eelen 2001: 131), they are assumed to share only one kind of culture that is homogeneous rather than heterogeneous. This is a sheer illusion. It goes without saying that there is some element of truth in the social-norm view of politeness; after all, norms abound in this social universe, written or unwritten, compulsory or optional. Indeed normativity may be regarded as one of the defining features of politeness, and sometimes we may consciously or subconsciously evaluate according to social norms a person’s linguistic or non-linguistic behavior as polite or impolite. What is problematic about the social-norm view, however, is that it seems to assume or presuppose, among other things, that social norms are the only criteria people resort to in their evaluation of politeness or impoliteness, and that all the social members follow the same set of social norms. If we accept the assumptions and presuppositions of the social-norm view, we might thus infer that people are simply passive machines that follow social order and homogeneous cultural institutions accurately and blindly. As a result, within the homogeneous culture, things that are individual seem to have been wiped out, and we seem to have little idea about how culture and things of individual characteristics relate to each other, how culture impacts the individual, or how the individual contributes to the growth and evolution of culture. Interestingly or ironically enough, although the individual does not have any position to occupy, many researchers, more often than not, begin their study of politeness with a small number of individuals before they universalize their sampled findings (Eelen 2001: 165–166). As I see it, in real-life encounters, social norms are not the only criteria used to evaluate the politeness or impoliteness of speech acts. In other words, social norms are not the whole story. Recently, more and more studies have shown the evaluative nature of politeness, which in turn urges one to acknowledge the argumentativity, subjectivity and indeterminacy of most if not all evaluations, positive or negative (Eelen 2001; Mills 2003; Watts 2003; Fukushima 2004; Lakoff and Ide 2005; Xie et al. 2005). Politeness evaluations are no exception. First, politeness evaluations are argumentative in the sense that people may employ different standards or take into account various factors in evaluating the same verbal or non-verbal act. Second, politeness evaluations are subjective in the sense that, due to the embodied nature of language and cognition (Gibbs 2006), people’s embodied experience will undoubtedly and inevitably have an impact when it comes to making an evaluation. In fact, it can be said that to evaluate is seldom neutral; people’s mental states, emotions, attitudes, or even prejudices may all have a part to play in the process of politeness evaluations. Third, politeness evaluations are indeterminate in the sense that since human affairs are basically indeterminate and uncertain, it is not always easy to make correct evaluations. Finally, it should be pointed out that these three defining characteristics of evaluation are interrelated.

 Chaoqun Xie

If what has been argued above is somewhat acceptable, it seems reasonable to understand why social norms are not and cannot be the whole story when it comes to making politeness or impoliteness evaluations. Individuals may, for instance, take into account, in addition to social norms, various factors including individual interactional history, life trajectory, context, etc. As Mills points out: [W]hat might be judged to be aggressive behaviour in others might not be in their case. Individuals expect others to judge them on the basis of their verbal habits; particularly in relation to politeness, they expect to be judged not only in relation to the community-of-practice norms or the wider society’s norms, but rather in relation to their own particular habitual style (2003: 22).

Within the social-norm view, however, it seems hard to see the initiative of the social members in the process of communication and interaction. It is true that we live in one world; it is equally true that the world we live in is at once similar and different for us social members, similar in the sense that we possess one and the same world, of which every individual is a member, different in the sense that every individual possesses his or her own life history and feels the world from a relatively unique position. At least, “[t]he world of the happy is quite another than that of the unhappy” (Wittgenstein 1922: 183). In real life, people are different from one another in various aspects including family background, life process, social practice, life experience and educational background, which may exercise great or even decisive influence on people’s views on social norms and politeness norms, upon which not every individual necessarily agrees (Eelen 2001). What we can aim for is a certain kind of “family resemblance” in the sense of Wittgenstein (1958a). As argued earlier, the social-norm view of politeness assumes that all the members of a certain culture share the same cultural system and the same set of politeness norms. If we go a step further, we may find that what underlies such a view are simplification, idealization and standardization, regardless of time, place, situation and other contextual factors. The social-norm view of politeness overlooks such characteristics of politeness as contextualization, locality and adaptability. This kind of view, which reflects a static social reality, is no more than an external embodiment of homogeneous culture, social determinism and universalism. In one word, the social-norm view of politeness fails to present a truthful and adequate account of politeness complexities in real life, or to use Fraser’s words, “a viable theory of politeness cannot rest upon a set of rules based on social, normative behavior” (1990: 234). The social-norm view simply cannot reflect the dynamic social reality; in other words, within the social-norm view, social reality is perforce static rather than dynamic, distorted rather than authentic. Finally, “an interpretation based on a single norm does not seem to hold its ground, as it involves a misinterpretation of reality” (Eelen 2001: 144). It can be said that the



Controversies about politeness 

social-norm view of politeness is an illusion. And this may also have some empirical support in politeness studies data – the issue to which we now turn. 3 The controversy on empirical data in politeness studies Kasper once argued that methodological considerations should occupy a vital position in pragmatics, stating that “given the decisive impact of data collection on substantive findings and theory construction, research into adequate data gathering methodology remains a lasting concern in pragmatics research” (Kasper 2000: 340). Politeness studies are no exception. Given that the means by which data are collected can be of crucial importance to the conclusions that are to be reached, how to gather appropriate data to explore research issues pertaining to politeness phenomena has always obsessed politeness researchers. A quick glance at the literature on politeness reveals that a number of methods are employed in data gathering for the investigation of a certain speech act through which politeness or impoliteness is realized. It seems that it has become a common practice for people doing politeness research to collect empirical data by means of discourse completion tests (DCTs), role-plays, interviews, etc., with the explicit or implicit assumption that only through numbers or percentages can we present a clear and adequate picture of politeness phenomena in real-life encounters. Since many politeness researchers entertain a homogeneous view of culture, it appears to be of little necessity to conduct nation-wide surveys; rather a sample of data should be enough to understand how a whole nation understands politeness phenomena and other related issues. As summarized by Eelen: Those procedures boil down to asking informants to give a public display (albeit anonymously in DCTs) of what they consider (or would claim) to be their characteristic behavior in certain hypothetical situations (Eelen 2001: 39).

As a consequence, we are often presented with sampled data as follows. In order to investigate how the speech act of requesting is realized in Chinese, Zhang and Wang (1997) chose 100 subjects and sent out 100 questionnaires, with 87 answers returned; in order to examine the expression patterns of Chinese and English refusals, Wang (2001) designed 9 situations and selected 100 Chinese and 100 Americans; in order to analyze how teachers in English classrooms use politeness, Xu (2003) selected some colleges and filmed 8 classes. Such examples are numerous in politeness literature. Some of the questions they raise are as follows. First, do the views of 100 subjects really represent all the Chinese people’s usage of the speech act of requesting? Second, do 8 classes really represent the use of politeness on the part of all the English teachers throughout China? As Xu herself admits, it

 Chaoqun Xie

remains to be further demonstrated how the survey results can be regarded as general (2003: 68). More often than not, it seems plausible to say that facts speak louder, but we should know how facts are brought about. At this point, it might be useful to remember that sampled facts or sampled studies can only lead to sampled conclusions at best. In other words, conclusions drawn from statistics are of statistical significance only; they can never represent the views of the people as a whole. We will come back to this point later. As a matter of fact, there are more serious problems with current data collecting methods for politeness research. Here I would like to single out the DCTs, one of the major data gathering methods used in empirical politeness research, for a relatively detailed discussion. As is usually acknowledged, human interaction is an extremely complicated activity with numerous factors at work, and it is because of this very fact that the oversimplified DCTs are simply unable to reflect truthfully the actual complexities in real life. Since written DCTs usually require written responses, we cannot make sure that these written answers are more or less the same as those that appear in real-life talk-in-interaction. Since the informants have enough time to think before they produce answers that are thought to be most likely or most appropriate, the informants may intentionally hide their true views or thoughts by manipulating the answers. Besides, it is no easy matter to guarantee that the informants are familiar with all those hypothetical situations and all aspects of social interactions, and that the informants have only one set of discourse system rather than various sets of discourse systems at their disposal. Actually, what underlies the DCTs seems to be a big assumption taken for granted by politeness scientists for a long, long time, namely that language is always used only to express our thought. This assumption is inadequate. It is true that language can express our thought, but it is equally true that language can conceal our thought, too. Here is what Wittgenstein has to say in this respect: Language disguises the thought; so that from the external form of the clothes one cannot infer the form of the thought they clothe, because the external form of the clothes is constructed with quite another object than to let the form of the body be recognized (Wittgenstein 1922: 63). ‘[T]he expressions of our thoughts can always lie, for we may say one thing and mean another’. Imagine the many different things which happen when we say one thing and mean another! – Make the following experiment: say the sentence “It is hot in this room”, and mean: “it is cold”. Observe closely what you are doing (Wittgenstein 1958b: 42).

These quotations seem to invite us, among other things, to ponder over the relationship between language and politeness, between language and the world, and between language and people. Though this does not seem the right place to do full



Controversies about politeness 

justice to these issues, it is nevertheless necessary to emphasize here some points that I believe are unfortunately neglected if not largely invisible in the current politeness debate. The first point is that politeness does not always reside in language; it may lie outside language, too. As a result, locating politeness in surface syntactic structures may only contribute to misrepresenting or misinterpreting the truth of politeness; it does not mean much for a full and adequate picture of politeness phenomena in real-life communication and interaction, making the latter become even more fuzzy and mysterious. More importantly, since language can express or disguise thought, it is reasonable to argue that we may not mean what we say, and this very fact confirms once again the need and difficulty to distinguish between what is said (or utterance meaning) and what is meant (or speaker meaning). This distinction entails the need to differentiate between politeness of language and politeness of language users. Just as what is said is not always what is meant, the politeness of language is sometimes or often at best equal to the politeness of language users, but they are not and cannot be identical to each other all the time. Here, it might be of some help to say something about Dawkins’ meme notion. Originally, a meme was defined as “a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation”, and “[e]xamples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches” (Dawkins 1976: 206). Later, Dawkins revised the definition and redefined meme as “a unit of information residing in a brain”, and “[t]he phenotypic effects of a meme may be in the form of words, music, visual images, styles of clothes, facial or hand gestures” (Dawkins 1982: 109). If we regard politeness as a kind of meme in the sense of Dawkins (1976), we might say that politeness, in addition to being genetic factors, is largely something we acquire through imitation. As Blackmore points out: “As long as that information can be copied by a process we may broadly call ‘imitation’, then it counts as a meme” (Blackmore 1999: 66; see Sperber 2000 for a different view). In this sense, the following point needs to be emphasized once again: Polite behaviour, which can be imitated, does not require any individualized creativity, nor does it require the parallel development of internal quality or cultivation. In other words, politeness can be achieved out of a person’s own will, and even a vulgar, ill-educated person can, under special circumstances, behave in a very polite and genteel manner (Xie et al. 2005: 439).

This again shows that sincerity can never be one of the “cardinal principles” (Gu 1990) of politeness; there is no necessary correspondence between politeness and sincerity simply because we can be polite sincerely or insincerely (Xie 2005). It just depends. Some people may argue that when they are studying politeness, they are

 Chaoqun Xie

studying man. For me, this is not always the case. Here, Pascal’s views are worth quoting in full: I had spent a long time studying abstract sciences, and I was put off them by seeing how little one could communicate about them. When I began the study of man I saw that these abstract sciences are not proper to man, and that I was straying further from my true condition by going into them than were others by being ignorant of them. I forgave others for not knowing much about them, but I thought I should at least find many companions in my study of man, since it is his true and proper study. I was wrong. Even fewer people study man than mathematics. It is only because they do not know how to study man that people look into all the rest (Pascal 1966: 244–245; italics mine).

The same can be said about people doing politeness studies. And it is at this point that it can be said that a deeper understanding of politeness can never be obtained without a deeper understanding of man and of the self. For Pascal, What sort of a freak then is man! How novel, how monstrous, how chaotic, how paradoxical, how prodigious! Judge of all things, feeble earthworm, repository of truth, sink of doubt and error, glory and refuse of the universe! (Pascal 1966: 64) Man is neither angel nor beast, and it is unfortunately the case that anyone trying to act the angel acts the beast (Pascal 1966: 242). The self is hateful (Pascal 1966: 229).

For Wittgenstein, The I, the I is what is deeply mysterious! (Wittgenstein 1961: 80e). I objectively confront every object. But not the I (Wittgenstein 1961: 80e). It is hard to understand yourself properly since something that you might be doing out of generosity & goodness is the same as you may be doing out of cowardice or indifference. To be sure, one may act in such & such a way from true love, but also from deceitfulness & from a cold heart too (Wittgenstein 1998: 54e).

If we do not have a deeper knowledge of the “I”, we may not be successful in getting a deeper understanding and interpretation of politeness. Politeness will remain a myth, and we will still be staying on the surface, with what is hidden below being kept untouched: Grasping the difficulty in its depth is what is hard […] For if you interpret it in a shallow way the difficulty just remains. It has to be pulled out by the root; & that means, you have to start thinking about these things in a new way. The change is as decisive, e.g. as that from the alchemical to the chemical way of thinking – The new way of thinking is what is so hard to establish (Wittgenstein 1998: 55e).



Controversies about politeness 

For a human being the eternal, the consequential is often hidden behind an impenetrable veil. He knows: there is something under there, but he cannot see it; the veil reflects the daylight (Wittgenstein 1998: 92e).

Some politeness researchers do not bother to make a distinction between politeness of language and politeness of language users; rather, they often attribute the former to the latter, which partly contributes to further confusion, casting further doubt upon the adoption of DCTs in politeness research, since informants may not really mean what they say or write and there is reason to believe that responses have been made insincerely. The discussion of DCTs, by the way, seems to lend some further support to Weigand’s suspicions about so-called “empirical data” in linguistics research in general: I always wonder what the phrase “linguistic evidence” is intended to mean. There is no independent phenomenon called evidence or linguistic evidence […which] has to be established by the human mind with respect to a certain question, and even the question has to be posed by the human mind. Empirical “data” as such do not mean anything (Weigand 2004: 379–380).

Finally, we are not sure how far DCTs can go in giving a truthful and reliable account of politeness in real-life interaction (Golato 2003); people’s true ideas or thoughts may easily escape DCTs and politeness researchers may end up in producing rather than describing politeness (see Xie et al. 2005 for elaboration). Again, it can be said that the method of DCTs is also an illusion. 4 The controversy on a universal, determinate and predictive politeness theory If we go a step further, we may find that what underlies the social-norm view of politeness and the employment of DCTs in empirical politeness research is yet another big and ambitious assumption, namely, that politeness research should and can find a universal, determinate and predictive account of politeness phenomena. This is an illusion, too. In what follows, we attempt to anatomize it. Actually, this third controversy may well be the source of the first two discussed earlier. As pointed out earlier in this paper, one of the disadvantages of the social-norm view of politeness is that it seems to imply or entail the existence of a kind of homogeneous culture, where how the individual contributes to the development and evolution of culture is unknown to us. As Geertz argues: [T]he differences among individuals and among groups of individuals are rendered secondary. Individuality comes to be seen as eccentricity, distinctiveness as accidental deviation from the only legitimate object of study for the true scientist:

 Chaoqun Xie

the underlying, the unchanging, normative type. In such an approach, however elaborately formulated and resourcefully defended, living detail is drowned in dead stereotype: we are in quest of a metaphysical entity. Man with a capital “M”, in the interests of which we sacrifice the empirical entity we in fact encounter, man with a small “m” (1973: 51).

Besides, the social-norm view of politeness seems to claim the existence of a universal, determinate and predictive theory of politeness. There is no denying that universality is usually the theoretical foundation of social structures, without which the so-called society may be made up of disorderly fragments only. However, this does not mean that we can afford not to heed to the existence of particularity, diversity, and the accidental. One of the reasons is that “[w]hat social science is properly about is the human variety, which consists of all the social worlds in which men have lived, are living, and might live” (Mills 1959: 132). For, many times, although what we are talking about are merely things local, limited or immediate, it is hard to resist the temptation to go beyond the local, the limited and the immediate and come to something universal. And this very temptation often makes us excited and courageous. As a result, long before we are able to find the right answer, we tend to use imagination, superficial analogies or false explanations to satiate our longing for generalizations. According to Saussure, one of the aims of linguistics is: [T]o determine the forces operating permanently and universally in all languages, and to formulate general laws which account for all particular linguistic phenomena historically attested (2001: 6; italics mine).

And the result? “[A] paradoxical consequence of this general interest is that no other subject has fostered more absurd notions, more prejudices, more illusions, or more fantasies” (Saussure 2001: 7). Under the spell of universality or universal laws, we may intentionally reduce or eliminate at our own will a lot of interfering factors; guided by the false belief that what is universal is scientific, we may oversimplify, cut down and manipulate various kinds of variables that are simply an inseparable part of human life. Actually, such oversimplification, reduction or manipulation mirrors, to some extent, the dilemma of human beings’ knowledge about the world around them and about themselves because, as a consequence, what is seemingly universal often turns out to be particular only. In one word, universality appears to be the result of our own imagination. It is not something that exists in nature; there is no such thing as universality in nature. It only represents a mode of thinking rather than a mode of social reality (MacBride 2005). In other words, universality is not something out there that can be found. Rather, it is something made, and made by people. Due to the numerous variables involved, it



Controversies about politeness 

is also something impossible. Perhaps it is a mere mistake to search for universality in academic research. Viewed from another perspective, the social-norm view of politeness seems to imply that politeness is something determinate and predictable. In point of fact, many politeness scientists have defended, explicitly or implicitly, the universality, certainty and predictability of politeness (e.g., Brown and Levinson 1978; Hill et al. 1986; Holtgraves 1990; Janney and Arndt 1993; Meier 1997; Usami 2002). Many people approach politeness with the firm belief that the goal of research is to find laws and to make predictions. Some of them feel an inescapable responsibility to become experts of predictions, though it is often the case that what has been predicted may not be identical to what actually happens. As mentioned earlier, within any culture, the individual always possesses some degree of autonomy and freedom; he is not a mere ordinary machine blindly following the given social order and cultural institutions, and “[i]n so far as men have some degree of freedom, what they may do will not be readily predictable” (Mills 1959: 116). For Pascal, predictions are hard to understand; “[w]e only understand prophecies when we have seen the events occur” (Pascal 1966: 322). For Wittgenstein, “[w]hat wasn’t foreseen, wasn’t foreseeable; for people lacked the system within which it could have been foreseen” (Wittgenstein 1975: 186); “all happening and all being-so is accidental” (Wittgenstein 1922: 183; italics mine), and “[o]nly those which we ourselves construct can we foresee” (Wittgenstein 1922: 147). Although there is some element of pessimism in Pascal’s and Wittgenstein’s observations, they seem to urge us to face up to the following questions: What do we want to predict on the basis of our research? How can we and how should we make predictions? What is the basis of prediction? If we base our predictions upon manipulating or filtering various kinds of variables as usually practiced in DCTs, will such a kind of prediction be still reliable? As I see it, given the basic indeterminacy of human affairs, prediction making should not and cannot be the primary goal of academic research in the human sciences. After all, the future of the world is not something that we can make correct predictions about; or perhaps we can only make weak predictions at best. Mills makes this point by saying that “[t]o say that ‘the real and final aim of human engineering’ or of ‘social science’ is ‘to predict’ is to substitute a technocratic slogan for what ought to be a reasoned moral choice” (Mills 1959: 116). The actual world is characterized by chaos and confusion, and by a high degree of complexity, indeterminacy and unpredictability. Partly for this reason, we cannot grasp the world totally and completely, nor can we precisely predict the future by means of the present; there is not any necessary link between today and tomorrow. As Pascal rightly reminds us: “We desire truth and find in ourselves nothing but uncertainty” (1966: 146). Perhaps one may ask: What is certainty, and

 Chaoqun Xie

what is uncertainty? This can be answered by instantiations. Suppose I have a class at 8 pm. If I am still at home when the clock strikes eight, I will be late for class. This we may call certainty. Suppose I am leaving my home for a class at 8 pm, but before I leave my home, I don’t know what will happen or whom I will encounter on my way to school. And this we may call uncertainty. As a matter of act, life is full of uncertainties, and we “must bear in mind that the language-game is so to say something unpredictable. I mean: it is not based on grounds. It is not reasonable (or unreasonable)” (Wittgenstein 1969: 73e). If we accept Wittgenstein’s language-game theory, we may as well regard politeness as a kind of game, and such a kind of game is also largely unpredictable. Throughout his life, the British philosopher Bertrand Russell was in pursuit of certainty, but at the end of his life, he had to acknowledge that the acquisition of certainty was not as easy as he had thought. No wonder that he wrote on the last page of his work Human Knowledge that “[h]uman knowledge is uncertain, inexact and partial” (Russell 1948: 527). Of course, in the face of life and knowledge’s uncertainty, unpredictability and chance, we should not and cannot shrink back or shirk; rather we should learn to live with chance and negotiate with and overcome various kinds of uncertainty and unpredictability that appear in our life process. Looking back, we may find uncertainty to be one of the defining features of life, where human beings go from one uncertainty to another, from one unknown to another. That life is full of all kinds of unknowns and uncertainties makes it more real and more natural. In this world, order and chaos co-exist with each other, which can make the world move forward, bog down or fall back. And the key issue is how to integrate chaos and order into an organic whole. Finally, it should be emphasized once again that, in real life, it is not easy to predict politeness correctly all the time. More often than not, we are manipulating rather than predicting politeness; “any scientific attempt at prediction in politeness matters immediately and unavoidably becomes a case of prescription” (Eelen 2001: 249). 5 Concluding remarks As Wittgenstein writes: We want to understand something that is already in plain view. For this is what we seem in some sense not to understand … Something that we know when no one asks us, but no longer know when we are supposed to give an account of it, is something that we need to remind ourselves of (1958a: 42e).

For me, the same is true of politeness; politeness can be the very something Wittgenstein talks about. We believe that we know what politeness is when no one asks



Controversies about politeness 

us, but that is no longer the case when it comes to talking about it, which may explain to some extent why there are currently various kinds of controversies on the politeness market. I have presented in this paper three controversies pertaining to the topic of politeness, arguing against the social-norm view of politeness, against the adoption of DCTs in empirical politeness research, and against the enthusiasm for pursuing a universal, determinate and predictive politeness theory. It seems worthwhile to emphasize once again that the third controversy is actually the source of the first two. This paper attempts to clarify rather than solve problems of politeness, with the knowledge that “what I am writing here may be feeble stuff; well, in that case I am just not capable of getting out the big, important thing” (Wittgenstein 1998: 75e). So, the question still remains: What is politeness? References Blackmore, S. 1999. The Meme Machine. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Blum-Kulka, S. 1992. “The metapragmatics of politeness in Israeli society”. In Watts et al. (eds), 255–280. Brown, P. 2001. “Politeness and language”. In P.B. Baltes and N.J. Smelser (eds), International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (revised edition). Oxford: Elsevier, 11620–11624. Brown, P. and Levinson, S.C. 1978. “Universals in language usage: Politeness phenomena”. In E. N. Goody (ed), Questions and Politeness: Strategies in Social Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 56–289. Chen, R. 2001. “Self-politeness: A proposal”. Journal of Pragmatics 33(1): 87–106. Comrie, B. 2000. “From potential to realization: An episode in the origin of language”. Linguistics 38(5): 989–1004. Culpeper, J. 1996. “Towards an anatomy of impoliteness”. Journal of Pragmatics 25(3): 349–367. Culpeper, J. 2005. “Impoliteness and entertainment in the television quiz show: The Weakest Link”. Journal of Politeness Research 1(1): 35–72. Culpeper, J., Bousfield, D., and Wichmann, A. 2003. “Impoliteness revisited: With special reference to dynamic and prosodic aspects”. Journal of Pragmatics 35(10–11): 1545–1579. Dascal, M. 2003. Interpretation and Understanding. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Dawkins, R. 1976. The Selfish Gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dawkins, R. 1982. The Extended Phenotype. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DuFon, M.A., Kasper, G., Takahashi, S., and Yoshinaga, N. 1994. “Bibliography on linguistic politeness”. Journal of Pragmatics 21(5): 527–578. Eelen, G. 2001. A Critique of Politeness Theories. Manchester: St. Jerome. Fraser, B. 1990. “Perspectives on politeness”. Journal of Pragmatics 14(2): 219–236. Fukushima, S. 2004. “Evaluation of politeness: The case of attentiveness”. Multilingua 23(4): 365–387. Geertz, C. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books. Gibbs, R.W. 2006. Embodiment and Cognitive Science. New York: Cambridge University Press.

 Chaoqun Xie Goffman, E. 1967. Interaction Ritual. Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior. New York: Doubleday Anchor Books. Golato, A. 2003. “Studying compliment responses: A comparison of DCTs and recordings of naturally occurring talk”. Applied Linguistics 24(1): 90–121. Grice, H.P. 1975. “Logic and conversation”. In P. Cole and J.L. Morgan (eds), Syntax and Semantics, Vol. 3: Speech Acts. New York: Academic Press, 41–58. Gu, Y. 1990. “Politeness phenomena in Modern Chinese”. Journal of Pragmatics 14(2): 237–257. Gu, Y. 1992. “Politeness, pragmatics and culture”. Foreign Language Teaching and Research 24(4): 10–17 [in Chinese]. He, Z. 1995. “Study of politeness in Chinese and English cultures”. Journal of Foreign Languages 99: 2–8. Heidegger, M. 1971. Poetry, Language, Thought. A. Hofstadter (trans). New York: Harper & Row. Held, G. 1992. “Politeness in linguistic research”. In R.J. Watts et al. (eds), 131–155. Herder, J.G. 1772. Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache. Berlin: Christian Friedrich Voss. Hill, B., Ide, S., Ikuta, S., Kawasaki, A., and Ogino, T. 1986. “Universals of linguistic politeness: Quantitative evidence from Japanese and American English”. Journal of Pragmatics 10(3): 347–371. Holtgraves, T. 1990. “Politeness as universal: Cross-cultural perceptions of request strategies and inferences based on their use”. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 59: 719–729. Irigaray, L. 2002. To Speak is Never Neutral. G. Schwab (trans). New York: Routledge. Janney, R.W. and Arndt, H. 1993. “Universality and relativity in cross-cultural politeness research: A historical perspective”. Multilingua 12(1): 13–50. Jaworski, A. 1993. The Power of Silence: Social and Pragmatic Perspectives. London: Sage. Johansson, S. 2005. Origins of Language: Constraints on Hypotheses. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Kasper, G. 1996. “Politeness”. In J. Verschueren, J.-O. Östman, J. Blommaert and C. Bulcaen (eds), Handbook of Pragmatics: 1996 Installment. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1–20. Kasper, G. 1998. “Politeness”. In J. Mey (ed), The Concise Encyclopedia of Pragmatics. Oxford: Elsevier Science, 677–687. Kasper, G. 2000. “Data collection in pragmatics research”. In H. Spencer-Oately (ed), Culturally Speaking: Managing Rapport Through Talk Across Cultures. London: Continuum, 316–341. Knight, C., Studdert-Kennedy, M., and Hurford, J. R. (eds). 2000. The Evolutionary Emergence of Language: Social Function and the Origins of Linguistic Form. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lakoff, R.T. 1973. “The logic of politeness; or, minding your p’s and q’s”. In C. Corum, T.C. Smith-Stark and A. Weiser (eds), Papers from the 9th Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 292–305. Lakoff, R.T. and Ide, S. (eds). 2005. Broadening the Horizon of Linguistic Politeness. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Leech, G.N. 1983. Principles of Pragmatics. London and New York: Longman. Lieberman, P. 1975. On the Origin of Language. New York: Macmillan. Lin, D. and Xie, C. 2005. Intercultural Communication: Theory and Practice. Fuzhou: Fujian People’s Press [in Chinese]. MacBride, F. 2005. “The particular-universal distinction: A dogma of metaphysics”. Mind 114: 565–614. Meier, A.J. 1997. “Teaching the universals of politeness”. ELT Journal 51: 21–28. Mills, C.W. 1959. The Sociological Imagination. New York: Oxford University Press.



Controversies about politeness 

Mills, S. 2003. Gender and Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pascal, B. 1966. Penesées. A. J. Krailsheimer (trans). Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Russell, B. 1948. Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits. New York: Simon and Schuster. Saussure, F. de. 2001. Course in General Linguistics. R. Harris (trans). Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press and Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd. Sifianou, M. 1992. Politeness Phenomena in England and Greece: A Cross-Cultural Perspective. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Sifianou, M. 1997. “Silence and politeness”. In A. Jaworski (ed), Silence: Interdiscipline Perspectives. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 63–84. Sperber, D. 2000. “An objection to the memetic approach to culture”. In R. Aunger (ed), Darwinizing Culture. The Status of Memetics as a Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 163–173. Taylor, T.J. 1997. “The origin of language: Why it never happened”. Language Sciences 19(1): 67–77. Trabant, J. and Ward, S. 2001 (eds). New Essays on the Origin of Language. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Usami, M. 2002. Discourse Politeness in Japanese Conversation: Some Implications for a Universal Theory of Politeness. Tokyo: Hituzi Syobo. Wang, A. 2001. “Refusal realization patterns in English and Chinese”. Foreign Language Teaching and Research 33(3): 78–185 [in Chinese]. Watts, R.J. 1992. “Linguistic politeness and politic behaviour: Reconsidering claims for universality”. In Watts et al. (eds), 43–69. Watts, R.J. 2003. Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Watts, R.J., Ide, S. and Ehlich, K. (eds), Politeness in Language: Studies in Its History, Theory and Practice. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Weigand, E. 2004. “Empirical data and theoretical models”. Pragmatics & Cognition 12(2): 375–388. Wittgenstein, L. 1922. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. C.K. Ogden (trans). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Wittgenstein, L. 1958a. Philosophical Investigations. G.E.M. Anscombe (trans). Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Wittgenstein, L. 1958b. The Blue and Brown Books. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Wittgenstein, L. 1961. Notebooks 1914–1916. G.E.M. Anscombe (trans). Oxford: Blackwell. Wittgenstein, L. 1969. On Certainty. D. Paul and G.E.M. Anscombe (trans). Oxford: Blackwell. Wittgenstein, L. 1974. Philosophical Grammar. A. Kenny (trans). Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Wittgenstein, L. 1975. Philosophical Remarks. R. Hargreaves and R. White (trans). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Wittgenstein, L. 1981. Zettel. G.E.M. Anscombe (trans). Oxford: Blackwell. Wittgenstein, L. 1998. Culture and Value. P. Winch (trans). Oxford: Blackwell. Xie, C. 2005. “Politeness and beyond”. Paper presented at the 4th International Conference on Chinese Sociolinguistics. Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, China. Xie, C., He, Z., and Lin, D. 2005. “Politeness: Myth and truth”. Studies in Language 29(2): 431–461. Xu, Y. 2003. “EFL teacher’s politeness in the classroom: An investigation”. Foreign Language Teaching and Research 35(1): 62–68 [in Chinese]. Yang, Z. 2001. A Study of Ritual System in China. Shanghai: East China Normal University Press [in Chinese].

 Chaoqun Xie Zhang, S. and Wang, X. 1997. “A Contrastive Study of the Speech Act of Requests”. Modern Foreign Languages 20(3): 63–72 [in Chinese].

Note 1. Thanks go to professors Han-liang Chang and Marcelo Dascal for encouragement and patience. Thanks also to Professor Maria Sifianou for helpful comments. Needless to say, all remaining errors or misinterpretations that might be found in this work are entirely my own.

chapter 14

Controversies over controversies An ontological perspective on the place of controversy in current historiography Ofer Gal

1

Introduction

This much is non-controversial: Sometime between 1664 and 1666 Isaac Newton allowed a light ray, slipping through a crack in his window shutters and directed through a prism, to go all the way to the opposite wall of his Trinity College room, some twenty feet away. Still a Cambridge undergraduate and engaged in optical experiments, he decided to pay particular attention to the fact that, at that relatively long distance, the projection on the wall was an oblong spectrum. Contemporary experimental practices (in which the projection was observed much closer to the prism) as well as “the common and received laws of dioptrics” decreed a circular, concentric spectrum of rainbow colors. As long as the prism is placed symmetrically, the reasoning was, the light ray is refracted identically on entering and leaving it, and the colored rays should not disperse. A series of experiments convinced Newton, however, that his finding was not an artifact, perhaps of an asymmetrically placed prism, but rather a genuine effect of the nature of light. The sunlight surrounding us, he concluded, was not a simple entity, and refraction did not modify it. Rather, “light itself is a heterogeneous mixture of differently refrangible rays; broken by the prism to its fundamental elements: primitive rays, each characterized by distinct color and distinct angle of refraction”. Newton presented this astonishing “New Theory of Light and Colour” as a lecture course in Cambridge in 1670, and then submitted it to the Royal Society of London in 1672, in a letter that cited only three of the experiments. One of them was specifically designated experimentum crucis, establishing Newton’s interpretation of the previous results – to his mind, beyond reasonable doubt. It comprised of directing the colored ray through a second prism, demonstrating that they retain their color and angle of refraction (whether Newton was demonstrating the unique colors or the unique indices of refrangibility to

 Ofer Gal

persevere through the second refraction was importantly disputed, and is part of the controversy to which I will attend momentarily). Since the rays were not modified by the second refraction, was the argument, exiting the second prism with the same color and in the same angle as they did the first one, these colors and angles could not have been created by that first refraction. Refraction, the experimentum crucis demonstrated, did no modify the characteristics of white light. It exposed the real and immutable properties of primary rays. The theory’s first introduction “mett both with a singular attention and an uncommon applause” (Oldenburg to Newton, cited in Shapiro 1996: 65). The members of the Royal Society endorsed it with all the excitement allowed by their gentlemanly stature, and their professional authority on optics and experimentation, Robert Hooke, approved Newton’s experimental design and its effects. But the smooth reception did not last. Newton’s experiments were challenged as unrepeatable (e.g., by Pardies and Mariotte, though the former recanted) and his theory as spurious (e.g., by Hooke), and Newton found the ensuing disputes so unpalatable that he angrily withdrew from public scientific life until the 1680s. Yet he finally emerged as the undisputed victor. His Optics, published in 1704 (after the death of Hooke, his most avowed and feared challenger), was received with little controversy, and within a generation became the paradigm of optical theory and experimentation. “After 1726 or 1728 […] to oppose [Newton’s theory] was to initiate being removed from the mainstream of the scientific community”, claims Alan Shapiro (1996: 125). Simon Schaffer disagrees on the dates: “The 1740s saw important […] specific criticisms of some of Newton’s apparent claims” (Schaffer1989: 99), he insists. Yet he also points out that “in popular texts such as Voltaire’s Elements of Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophy (1738) and Algarotti’s Newtonianism for Ladies (1737) it was claimed that those who had not succeeded in replicating Newton’s trials ‘had not been happy enough in the Choice of […] prisms’” (Schaffer 1989: 91–92). This, however, is where agreement about the episode ends and controversy commences. The two papers that compete for the definitive account of the ascendance of Newton’s optics to its consensual status – the earlier, shorter one by Simon Schaffer (1989) and the massive reply by Alan Shapiro (1996) – contest every other aspect of the episode. Take for example Newton’s decision to cite only three of his experiments in the letter to Oldenburg in which he submitted his theory to the Royal Society. Clearly, Newton was violating the Baconian mores of proper experimental undertaking venerated by the Society, as well as the example set by the paradigmatic New Experiments Physico-Mechanical of the Society’s great inspirational patron, Robert Boyle. Shapiro does not see much agency in Newton’s deviation from the Society’s declared epistemology, definitely not a conscious defiance. From his point of view,



Controversies over controversies 

the succinct presentation was a simple rhetorical mistake. It prevented Newton’s powerful experiments from speaking for themselves and carrying the onus of explanation and persuasion for his theory. Being so radically new, it thus remained largely misunderstood by the gentlemen-philosophers of the Society and much of the community Oldenburg’s correspondence was weaving around them. Schaffer, on the other hand, does not seem to believe experiments carry their own persuasive power, nor does he think that Newton did. The careful choice of experiments, he maintains, was not a mistake but a conscious attempt to endow the double-refraction one with the emblematic status befitting an experimentum crucis. Indeed, this very label was borrowed from an experiment that Hooke presented as a decisive argument against Cartesian optics. Moreover, the very meaning of the experimentum crucis is under contention. Most of Newton’s contemporaries seem to have assumed that it was demonstrating the immutability of colors through the second refraction, i.e., of colors’ being genuine qualities of the rays rather than modifications of homogeneous white light. This was a mistake, contends Shapiro, part of the aforementioned misunderstanding, and regrettably shared by historians. It was actually the unique angle of refraction that Newton was demonstrating as immutable, a fact he had to explain to those who, convinced by the great Edme Mariotte, contended that one can discern stains of different colors in the twice-refracted rays. Newton indeed insisted that the experimentum crucis demonstrated the immutability of index of refraction rather than that of primitive colors, explains Schaffer, and indeed his opponents found it hard to follow him. That, however, was through no fault of their own; Newton was intentionally changing the interpretation of the experiment as a way to conquer the more recalcitrant adversaries and the insistence on the angles of refraction rather than colors was one such move. And what did determine the fate of these last adversaries, especially the group of English Jesuits from Liège who would simply not relent, is yet another disputed aspect of the story. According to Shapiro, the Jesuits’ lingering failure to replicate Newton’s results, well after he met all other important challenges to his experiments and in spite of his patient attempts to instruct them in the proper use of prisms and lenses, convinced the scientific community that they were outright incompetent and their claims unworthy of further attention. The Jesuits undoubtedly lost the attention of the community, Schaffer would agree, and Newton’s success in marginalizing them is a perfect example of establishing authority in a contested field: controlling the rules of the controversy, manipulating the interpretation of the theory, adapting the understanding of the experimental results and dictating the experimental set up. Finally, to make its fundamental issue completely clear, the historians’ controversy turns directly to the very question of controversy: was Newton’s experimental

 Ofer Gal

“authority […] necessarily unstable and contested” even well after his death and near-deification as Schaffer contends (Schaffer 1989: 100), or does “Schaffer, as a constructivist, focus almost exclusively on controversy” (Shapiro 1996: 60–62)? This is the allusion of my title. And this is also the reason why the controversy over Newton’s optics is pertinent to this volume not just as an interesting exemplar but also as an exploration of the very epistemological status of controversies; it is a controversy over controversies. To wit: there are, in effect, only rather marginal disagreements between Schaffer and Shapiro concerning the details of the route of Newton’s optics from a controversial theoretical interpretation of a set of contested experimental results, to a paradigm of theoretical acuteness and a criterion of experimental competence. What the two are actually debating is the historiographic import of scientific controversies and their resolution. And far from an esoteric methodological concern of historians of early modern science, I am going to claim, this controversy goes beyond debating the proper epistemological significance of controversies to touch upon the very ontological commitments entailed in recounting the coming to being of modern science. 2 Ontology It is indeed ontology that distinguishes between Schaffer and Shapiro; a basic disagreement about the make up of our world, no less. And as is common in controversies of this kind, the protagonists are rather shy – or perhaps unreflective – concerning their own metaphysical standpoint, but rather sharp in exposing their opponents’ follies. For Shapiro, Schaffer’s concentration on controversies has a clear – and distorting – intention: it allows him to “reduce the issue of acceptance to one of power and authority” (Shapiro 1996: 60–62). The view of science that Shapiro ascribes to Schaffer is nicely summed up by someone Shapiro will be surprised to find on his side – the feminist critic Donna Haraway, whom one would expect to be much more sympathetic to Schaffer’s views than to Shapiro’s: From this point of view, science […] is rhetoric, a series of efforts to persuade relevant social actors that one’s manufactured knowledge is a route to a desired form of very objective power. Such persuasion must take account of the structure of facts and artefacts, as well as of language-mediated actors in the language game. Here, artefacts and facts are part of the powerful art of rhetoric. Practice is persuasion, and the focus is very much on practice. All knowledge is a condensed node in an agonistic power field (Haraway 1996: 250).

Haraway’s real “issue is ethics and politics perhaps more than epistemology” (op. cit., 252). The weak and disenfranchised, whose voice she would like to sound, have



Controversies over controversies 

a clear stake in the ability “to talk about reality with more confidence than we allow to the Christian Right when they discuss the Second Coming” (op. cit., 250). There is little hope for them in a world where even knowledge rests on power and rhetoric. Interpreted this way, Schaffer’s conception of science, its foundations and its products repel Haraway no less than aggravate Shapiro: The imagery of force fields […] which is the working metaphor in many arguments about socially negotiated reality for the postmodern subject, is […] an imagery of high-tech military fields, of automated academic battlefields, where blips of light called players disintegrate (what a metaphor!) each other in order to stay in a knowledge and power game. […] It shouldn’t take decades of feminist theory to sense the enemy here (Haraway 1996: 250–251).

One would think that a coalition between thinkers of such different intellectual motivations and aspirations as Haraway and Shapiro is an extremely powerful one and that Schaffer’s position in the controversy is precarious. But this is not exactly the case. To begin with, it is far from clear that Schaffer subscribes to, or that his analysis entails, the concepts of “power and authority” against which Shapiro and Haraway unite. Turning her glance to Newton’s controversies, the historian is obviously forced to pay careful attention to his ways of winning them. In doing so Newton was, beyond doubt, exercising, manipulating and gathering “power and authority”; this much is apparently accepted by Shapiro, who rebels less against the way in which Schaffer (“as a constructivist”) analyzes controversies, and more against his alleged over-emphasis of them, as Shapiro’s defiant title (“The gradual acceptance of Newton Optics”) stresses. But there is more to the “knowledge and power game” than brute application of repressive authority, gathered by “conspirators” and distributed to “acolytes” (Shapiro 1996: 60). This is indeed a delicate point, and goes well beyond the scope of this paper, but it necessitates a simple example of an account of power which Shapiro and Haraway should find satisfactory. Newton’s route to authority led, by definition, through the persuasion of the mathematical natural philosophy – what will become “scientific” – community budding throughout Europe. This community was not a natural phenomenon; it was defined for Newton, to a large degree, through the correspondence network weaved by Henry Oldenburg around the Royal Society. There is no other way to view Oldenburg’s creation but politically: it involved decisions about alliances and confrontations, about inclusions and exclusions; it established center and periphery, distinguished and formed relations between them; it staked claims for expertise and created the institutional power to sanction these claims. And as a political process, one is indeed hard pressed to think about the making of Newton’s audience in terms other than those of power. Oldenburg assembled people of particular class and culture and created for them the privilege to collect, assess and

 Ofer Gal

distribute knowledge. Nor can one overstate the immediate relevance of this very particular group – its personal makeup and its philosophical, religious and educational leaning – not only to the outcome of Newton’s controversies but to the very shaping of his knowledge claims. Schaffer is pointing exactly in this direction when he wonders about the discrepancy between the experiments Newton performed and those he submitted to the Royal Society. Yet there is nothing in this depiction of the relations between “knowledge and power” that suggests “disintegrating players”. Quite the opposite. Oldenburg was constructing new “players” and creating new arenas for them to play in by enabling new modes of argumentation, experimentation and communication of knowledge. One needs not be an avid Foucauldian to acknowledge this; a leaf through Bacon should suffice. Moreover, Shapiro does not appreciate a concentration on controversies because controversies, presumably, are power arenas, and like Haraway, he would like “acceptance” instead of power – “situated knowledges” is Haraway’s term, which I think he could adopt (probably protesting the plural). This is indeed a more pleasant imagery than that of “high-tech military fields”, but at least in Shapiro’s historiography it does not lead so much to disregarding controversies as to inevitably favoring their winners. Where Shapiro’s Newton “explains”, the Jesuits “insist” (Shapiro 1996: 77); where Newton’s critics “fail to replicate”, his supporters “elide difficulties” and so forth (Shapiro 1996: 94). This means that, from Schaffer’s perspective, Shapiro sees reasons where he should have seen effects; he cites the interpretation Newton enforced by winning a controversy as the reason for that very win. Thus Shapiro explains, with Newton, why Venetian glass was inadequate for replicating Newton’s experiments, instead of investigating how Newton succeeded to ascribe every failure in replication to the (low) quality of the equipment or the (lack of) skills of rival experimenters. Or he declares that Malebranche “was won over by Newton’s method and the convincing nature of the theory and account of experiments in the Optics” as if a theory can be “convincing” by its very “nature” (Shapiro 1996: 100).1 For Shapiro, in short, Newton’s controversies were concluded in Newton’s favor because that was their only proper conclusion. They could not have had any other resolution. And here, I think, lies the real kernel of the controversy over controversies. The debate between Shapiro and Schaffer is only secondarily about the import of controversies in the history of science or the means by which they are resolved. It is primarily about the question whether they could have been resolved otherwise. In other words, the controversy is not about power, but about contingency.



Controversies over controversies 

3 Contingency In Schaffer’s historiography, the resolution of what Collins called “the experimenter dilemma” (Collins 1985) – whether to treat a failed experiment as a refutation of the theory supporting it or of the experimenter performing it; whether to attribute the failure to the inadequacy of the experiment or to that of the inspected theory – is genuinely open ended. To tell the story of Newton’s optics like Schaffer does, one has to accept that eighteenth century scientific community really could have taken the fact that Newton’s experiments could not be replicated “with Venetian glass, long considered Europe’s best” (Shapiro 1996: 128) as a refutation of Newton’s claims. To follow Schaffer is to accept that it was indeed a contingent fact that this community decided to accept Desaguliers’ arguments that the failure was due to bad prisms; that a slightly different, and wholly imaginable turn of events could have ended up with the arguments, and the theory, being rejected. But why should the contingent resolution of scientific controversies be unacceptable to a historian of Shapiro’s convictions? Is not human history contingent, entirely dependent on events and decisions that could have transpired and emerged differently? Definitely so, when it comes to all-human creations: culture, social institutions, material artifacts. But “knowledge”, from a Shapiro-like perspective, is not a human creation. Science is, and its history is subject to all human vicissitudes: of course, anything could have happened to Newton and his theory, and we may have yet to, or never, come by it. But if Newton was right – and he was, was he not? white light is comprised of colored rays – then to know is to think like Newton. “Knowledge”, in traditional history of science – and Shapiro is far from being an unsophisticated representative of this tradition – is not a proper name for a changing human institution. It is a complimentary adjective, denoting success – we know when we manage to properly reflect reality as it is, independent of us. This is a legitimate, commonsensical principle, with a venerable philosophical tradition behind it. It should not be confused with the much more naïve notion that truth prevails; that given the chance to present his arguments and experiments, Newton, given that he was right, was bound to win the controversy. But both these epistemological perspectives share the conviction that truth, hence knowledge, is independent of us humans, and has no history, even if science, striving towards it, does have. And since the truth was on Newton’s side, the story Shapiro is left, or will allow, to tell, is that of his journey to its “acceptance”; “explaining”, “eliding difficulties” etc. If the community were, contingently, to reject Newton’s optics, they would have been, necessarily, wrong, and there is no way to write this fundamental epistemic fact out of the historiography of the episode. This distinction between science as a human activity and knowledge as accurate representation of reality may seem irrelevant to the issue at hand. After all, it

 Ofer Gal

is real controversies and their resolution that Shapiro and Schaffer are arguing about, not philosophical abstractions. But the abstract epistemological differences affect the controversy about controversies in a most immediate manner. This is best demonstrated in Shapiro’s most surprising rhetorical move: “Schaffer,” he complains, “avoids scientific theory as much as possible, since it offers a source of meaning outside controversy, negotiation and power” (Shapiro 1996: 64). Knowing the indebtedness of approaches like Schaffer’s to Kuhn’s version of the notion of “theory ladenness”, one would expect Schaffer to stress that all experimental results are theory-mediated. But the image that Shapiro strives to establish – more accurately, the image he finds Schaffer abusing – has theory (not “theorizing”!) as the moment of knowledge. Not because experiments are unimportant – Shapiro has done more than anyone else to bring Newton’s optical experiments to light – but because knowledge is “meaning”. It is not a process, activity or institution, but a relation; a relation between independent realms, which experiments (and calculations, observations, controversies, etc.) can lead towards, but not constitute. 4 Epistemology Thus the roots of the controversy over the import of controversies go no shallower than the level of epistemology. The debate between Schaffer and Shapiro is not about power, but about contingency. Its fundamental question is whether Newton won his controversies because of the immanent superiority of his claims or the apparent “immanence” of Newton’s superiority is the outcome of his victory. To assign controversies a fundamental role in the history of knowledge is to accept the latter position, and with it, the inescapable consequence that Newton might have lost, and we would still have a true theory of light. That not only might the history of the science of optics have been different, but that our knowledge of optics could have been different; that we could have known something else. This is a difficult idea to entertain, but from a purely logical point of view, Schaffer’s position is much stronger. It is based on a simple rejection of the apparent petitio principii in Shapiro’s arguments: if we are to explain Newton’s success, we cannot refer to that very success in our explanations. Not because we are not certain whether Newton was correct. Quite the opposite: it is because we believe Newton that we cannot use the truth of his claims as the reason for this belief. Our belief in the truth of Newton’s claims is based on his arguments, so we cannot use this truth to explain why these very arguments succeeded – otherwise we would be guilty of committing a most basic sophism. Or in more general terms, since we do not have any better access to truth than current science, and since current science is the object of our inquiry, we cannot refer to the truth of this science in order to



Controversies over controversies 

account for its emergence. It would not do to say that science since Newton has confirmed his claims with new findings and theoretical structures: these were all based on Newton’s theory, and a true believer in the contingency of knowledge is fully entitled to argue that, were Newton’s rivals to win, our science would have been shaped just as successfully to support their original claims. Take for example the question of the proper preparation of the optical apparatus. Newton claimed that the failure of Mariotte to repeat his experiments stemmed from misplacing his prisms and lenses. We may very well agree with Newton that with his arrangement of apparatus, Mariotte had no chance to produce Newton’s effects. But to argue that it was therefore “mis-placing” is to adopt Newton’s effects as a criterion for correct arrangement of the apparatus. Yet this is exactly the question facing the historian, namely: how did Newton’s contemporaries, and we in their trail, come to treat his experiments as judging not his theory but the skills and tools of the experimenter? It does not help that we, now, may be able to explain in detail why it is that Newton’s experiments succeeded with one arrangement of prisms and not the other. First, because of the obvious reason that unless this explanation was available to Newton or his adversaries, it could not have participated in forming their convictions concerning the reasons for failure; even if truth does prevail, it cannot do so without presenting itself. Secondly, because these explanations were developed post hoc, using the very theoretical apparatus that the experiments were expected to confirm. Again: if one truly believes in the contingency of controversies, one has to grant that were Newton’s opposition to win the day and be given the chance to develop their accounts for the experiments, these accounts would have been as detailed and as convincing. Does this bring the controversy over controversies to a closure, with Schaffer as the winner? Far from it. Let us avoid Shapiro’s presentism and leave it to Newton and his contemporaries to resolve their controversy with their contingent, locallyhistorically-culturally bound resources. Let them decide whether Newton’s experimental results were a confirmation of his theory; a demonstration of an important phenomenon, open to any theoretical account; or an artifact, reproducible only with Newton’s prisms. Let them decide whether Newton was vigorously promoting the use of quality prisms or violently enforcing the use of his own apparatus. And let us admit that our adoption of the former alternative (a partial adoption – we no longer believe in the corpuscular make up of light which was part and parcel of Newton’s “New Theory of Light and Color”) arises from their negotiations and cannot be used to explain the outcomes of these negotiations. Admitting all this, how much flexibility, how much contingency, should we actually grant these practitioners in deciding among the alternatives? For anyone convinced by the arguments for contingency or just impressed by Schaffer’s historiography, it is tempting to reply: “complete contingency” – there is

 Ofer Gal

no effect, experimental result or observation which cannot be re-interpreted in light of theoretical, cultural, political, financial or any other pressure. History of knowledge – not just of scientific institutions – is part of human history, and as contingent as any other part of it. Everything else, the claim will be, is nothing but the self-serving, self-righteous, self-aggrandizing attitude one finds in every national epos, and can be given as much credit for scientific objectivity. But the assumption of complete contingency, luring as it may be, has rather awkward ramifications. Newton, this assumption implies, won his theoretical debates with Hooke and his experimental debates with Mariotte and the Liège Jesuits because of all the human – contingent – resources he amassed: rhetorical skills, instrumental capabilities, political capacities. It could have turned the opposite way, we assert: had any of his rivals managed to compile comparable resources, Newton could have been defeated. But of course, one thing that neither Newton nor his rivals could change is Nature itself; Nature is not contingent upon human history. So the one thing that did not feature in the outcome of these controversies is Nature; the ascription of complete contingency to the resolution of scientific controversies entails that the fate of Newton’s optics was determined by everything but the optical behavior of prisms. Or in general terms: if we assume that Nature does not change with human decisions about its make-up, and we still like to claim that the resolution of scientific controversies is wholly contingent, we find ourselves surmising that everything is relevant to the study of Nature, everything is relevant to the historiography of science, except Nature itself. 5 The agnostic option But perhaps I overstated the dilemma. Perhaps it can be dissolved by simple, healthy agnosticism: it is not that we deny that Nature plays a role in resolving controversies about Nature, the approach will be: we simply do not know what Nature’s role was in each particular controversy. And how should we know? All we know about Nature comes from the reports of the participants in the controversy. All we know, especially in historical cases, is what they said they were observing and what were their interpretations of these observations. Surely, the agnostic will maintain, Newton was not seeing “differently refrangible rays”. He was seeing colored rays, just like Mariotte and his other adversaries. He chose to interpret it one way; his rivals – the other. Agnosticism is not an idealist position. It fully acknowledges Nature’s independence (of human toils) and involvement (in determining matters of fact). Newton, the agnostic agrees, could not observe anything he wanted. The mysteries of ancient kingdoms would not have appeared inscribed on the screen on which Newton projected the sun rays; no matter how much he



Controversies over controversies 

would have manipulated the prisms and lenses on the one hand and his interpretations on the other; Nature is recalcitrant. Still, the agnostic will remind, theory is radically under-determined by observations. Even if Nature forbids most of the effects we may attempt to coax out of her, she still allows infinitely many interpretations of the effects she does produce, and neither Newton’s nor Mariotte’s claims were comparable to declaring the divination of ancient mysteries; both were, in terms of commonsense and current theory, legitimate interpretations of given phenomena. All we need to do in order to solve our dilemma, so the agnostic says, is to describe Mariotte’s experimental results in a neutral language, committing to neither his nor Newton’s terminology and theoretical biases. Then we can watch them bring their controversy into its contingent resolution, using whatever human means at their disposal. This would be the agnostic way of keeping the desired contingency in controversy without sinking into idealism. But it does not take long for the attraction of this approach to wane, even – perhaps especially – for the committed controversialist. Its weakness reveals itself, of course, in this ominous expression – “neutral language”. There simply is no such thing. This is the lesson that Schaffer and his lot learned from Kuhn. Newton was seeing differently refrangible rays. What else could he see? And Mariotte saw mixed, modified colored rays. There is no way one could describe the effects produced by Mariotte in a language that is neither his nor Newton’s, a language that makes use of none of the categories under dispute. There is no description of the phenomena, agreeable to both sides in the controversy, in which the appearance of blue and violet in Mariotte’s twice-refracted red ray is neither a demonstration of the mutability of the colored rays nor a demonstration of poorly placed prisms. Perhaps we can produce such a description, but then we will simply have a third theory, a third party to the controversy, acceptable to neither one of the original sides. 6 Aporia So the dilemma of contingency is back with a vengeance. Here is another way to put it: if we follow Schaffer, we assume that science, like any human undertaking, could have proceeded any odd way. We are thus particularly interested in controversies, where the route which science has taken is determined in a human, contingent way. Up till now, very reasonable. But to truly allow for this contingency, to allow that whatever way the controversy was to resolve should have counted as proper “knowledge”, we need to recount the controversy without presupposing its winner. So we cannot use the winner’s terminology to describe the experiments and phenomena that the controversy was about, and since our science and our

 Ofer Gal

terminology are inevitably descendants of the winner’s, we also cannot use ours. And since, as we have just recalled, there is no other way to talk about Nature’s involvement, no “neutral” or “theory-free” language, we find ourselves mute about Nature’s role. Going Schaffer’s way, then, we find that, recounting the controversy about light, light is the only thing we deliberately leave out. Strange indeed. If, on the other hand, we take Shapiro’s route, we assume that Nature did determine the outcomes of the experiments conducted by Newton, Mariotte and the Liège Jesuits. This is also a very reasonable assumption. So we simply recount these experiments, their expected and actual results, and use the only terminology we know for doing so: Newton’s. Of course, by recounting the controversy from Newton’s perspective, we find ourselves taking for granted that he should have convinced Mariotte and silenced the Jesuits. Going Shapiro’s way, the winners of scientific controversies become the inevitable, predetermined winners, and with their outcome known, controversies lose much of their charm. This by itself is perhaps no disaster, but it does have the unpleasant consequence of taking science out of history. With all its controversies predetermined, with all its turns in all its junctures set in advance, the history of science becomes a march towards truth guided by Nature itself; a march that might have stalled or failed, but could have never arrived at any other stable station of knowledge but the one it actually occupies now. Without genuine history, science ceases to be a human endeavor, and this is an even stranger idea. So the core of the controversy about controversies is the dilemma of contingency. It can be thought of as a simple methodological dilemma: how should the historian recount scientific controversies allowing both for the human contingency of the outcome and for the relevance of the natural subject matter? But methodological questions are rarely innocent, and the epistemological rift lurks not far behind: to lean towards Nature is to recount the Newton-Mariotte controversy as if we knew all along who would be the winner, and this is to declare ourselves as having some independent recourse to the truth of the matter. How did we obtain such a lofty position? To choose contingency is to deny Newton his right to distinguish real effects from mere experimental artifacts, and that is to deny him the very achievement he was rightfully so proud of and celebrated for. From what perspective, what standpoint, can we do that? And at the end of the day epistemological dilemmas are always ontological worries in disguise. If scientific controversies are truly contingent, then so is our knowledge. But this means we give up the assumption we made above, namely, that our changing views of Nature do not change Nature. In other words: to allow that Nature does have a role in the resolution of scientific controversies, and yet their outcome is contingent is to be willing to say that “Newton indeed saw differently-refrangible rays, and Mariotte was wrong, but if Mariotte were to win, Newton would have been seeing mutable rays”.



Controversies over controversies 

Or more specifically: “In 1681 Mariotte may still have been right, but by 1704 he was misplacing his prisms. Between these dates Nature, science, society and Newton’s career have been all reshaped so as to yield primitive colored rays when a prism was properly placed between a lens and a screen”.2 Certainly, this may sound as the strangest alternative of all, less appealing and farther from commonsense than either sides of the dilemma, but maybe it just means that it is about time to change our commonsense, as controversies sometimes force us to do. References Baird, D. 1999. “Internal history and the philosophy of experiment”. Perspectives on Science 7: 383–407. Bloor, D. 1999. “Anti-Latour”. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 30(A): 81–112. Collins, H.M. 1985. Changing Order. London: Sage. Gal, O. 2003. “Constructivism for philosophers”. Perspectives on Science 10(4): 523–549. Haraway, D. 1996. “Situated knowledges”. In E.F. Keller and H.E. Longino (eds), Feminism and Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 249–263. Latour, B. 1993. We Have Never Been Modern. C. Porter (trans). New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Latour, B. 1999. “For David Bloor…and beyond: A reply to David Bloor’s ‘Anti-Latour’”. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 30(A): 113–129. Schaffer, S. 1989. “Glass works: Newton’s prisms and the uses of experiment”. In D. Gooding, T. Pinch and S. Schaffer (eds), The Uses of Experiment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 67–104. Shapin, S. 1994. A Social History of Truth: Gentility, Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Shapin, S. and Schaffer, S. 1985. Leviathan and the Air-Pump. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Shapiro, A.E. 1996. “The gradual acceptance of Newton’s Theory of Light and Color, 1672–1727”. Perspectives on Science 4: 59–140.

Notes 1. For the sake of highlighting the philosophical standoff, I am forced to somewhat overstate the methodological differences between the protagonists, and that may result in an unfair depiction of their analytical skills. Shapiro, e.g., has no difficulty pointing out that “Newton succeeded in yoking his theory to the rising star of [painters’] primaries” (Shapiro 1996: 98). 2. For further development of this radical solution to the conundrum of contingency (or symmetry between natural and human aspects of knowledge) see Latour, (1993 and 1999) and Gal (2003).

chapter 15

Traditions of controversy and conflict resolution Can past approaches help to solve present conflicts?* Marcelo Dascal Violence erodes the basis of Israel’s democracy. It must be denounced, condemned and isolated. Yitzchak Rabin Last speech, minutes before he was murdered, 4 November 1995

1

Introduction

This chapter is about three distinguished representatives of three traditions of controversy – Jewish, Muslim, and Christian – and about one resilient conflict – the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. My purpose is to single out in the thought and practice of the selected three representatives approaches to controversy and conflict that might perhaps offer innovative ideas as to how to increase the chances of solving the conflict in question. In a conflict like this, where two different traditions and cultures confront each other, and the tendency of the contenders is to highlight their differences, it is important to try to single out those elements of similarity or at least of sufficient closeness in order to allow for the overcoming of the differences and, eventually, for reconciliation. To be sure, both the thinkers considered and the circumstances in which they operated are extremely different. Yet, one of the purposes of this chapter is to show that it makes sense to compare their approaches and even to try to combine them into a set of complementary models capable to help us to overcome the deadlock in which the attempts to solve a conflict is stalled by lack of new ideas – as analysts and politicians claim. Relevant new ideas, I contend, may come not only from our present creativity, but also from that of great thinkers of the past; not only from one’s own tradition of controversy, but

 Marcelo Dascal

also from of other traditions. The methodological innovation I want to introduce here is thus simply the idea of “fishing for good ideas in the past”. Old ideas that remained unnoticed or unapplied may prove to be useful for re-framing our current dilemmas. We will seek their help by examing three quite different models of conflict resolution, drawn from King Solomon, Ibn Rushd, and Leibniz. Violent conflicts are extreme forms of confrontation, where latent antagonisms become explicit and apparently irresolvable except by the use of force – and sometimes not even by the use of force. The hundred years old Israeli-Palestinian conflict seems to be of this type. For those of us whose life is marked by the daily suffering imposed by this conflict, this apparent lack of any prospect of solution is unbearable. Appealing to philosophy in such dire circumstances may seem to be nothing but a form of escapism. What could philosophy offer us, except perhaps a stoic acceptance of a destiny we cannot change? Or – worse – injunctions to be moral and just, kind and loving, truthful and reasonable, and, above all, not to give up hope, in circumstances where nothing of what these injunctions aim at seem even to be possible to achieve? Well, I happen to believe that philosophical reflection can offer much more than that. It can offer a perspective for a deeper understanding of conflicts in general and of this conflict in particular, as well as guiding principles of action in conflict situations. Not only that. It can also help to identify the practical tasks that must be addressed by those who do not content themselves with lamenting the human incapacity to solve the most difficult problems of human existence in this imperfect world. Let us begin with taking some distance and thereby gaining some perspective. We all dream of an idyllic world of peace, where all conflicts will have been solved to the full satisfaction of all those involved. Historically, however, conflicts are rather enduring phenomena, quite difficult to solve (or eliminate) once and for all. Their acute periods of violence are nothing but salient episodes in an ongoing dialectical process in the course of which they wear milder guises such as political, economic, cultural or other forms of competition. A violent phase of a conflict is usually preceded and/or followed by periods of intense verbal activity – be it in the form of mutual criticism, accusations and threats, negotiations of cease-fires or other arrangements to reduce belligerent activities, and even treaties of cooperation and reconciliation, which amount to partial (hence, far from perfect) peace agreements. I have examined elsewhere the relationship between the concepts of argument and war, and have argued that they are not only connected in the wellknown metaphorical way, but also in a metonymic, causal way: when the guns roar, no argument is possible; it is better to talk than to fight (cf. Dascal 2004). These popular sayings, in their customary way, simplify things, for the truth is that, in most conflicts, communication between the parties goes on in both ways



Traditions of controversy and conflict resolution 

– through bombs (or arsenal building) and words (be they belligerent declarations or the drafting of peace treatises) – simultaneously. Viewed from this perspective, “our” Palestine / Israel conflict is no exception. We have gone through all these phases, and currently we are undergoing another predominantly (but unfortunately not exclusively) verbal-cum-physical violence round, with hopes as well as doubts whether this will lead to a renewal of a really meaningful ‘peace process’. But the situation is fluid, not to say volatile, and the relationship between these two aspects of the conflict may invert itself quickly, as it often did in the past – especially in view of the fact that on both sides there are powerful groups that are more interested in the persistence of violence than in some peaceful form of coexistence. Under these circumstances, the questions that arise, for those who rather look for a peaceful coexistence, are perforce modest in their scope, albeit perhaps more difficult to answer than the ultimate question of eternal peace and an absolute just solution. For the crucial question should deal with how to devise and enforce practical, viz. political and inter-human arrangements capable of sustaining and thereby prolonging the more peaceful periods and thus somehow reducing the risk of new eruptions of violence. We should therefore ask such questions as: How to define, agree upon, develop and reinforce the “joint interests” of the parties that provide the basis for such political arrangements? How to establish the “fundamental interests”, i.e., the essential and just demands of each side without whose sa­ tisfaction no sustainable arrangement can function? What are the ethical principles of dialogue that allow the parties in conflict to negotiate a lasting and just arrangement without self-denial and other-denial? Can one restrain the modalities of violence so as not to let them damage irremediably the prospects of reconciliation? How to maintain open and active, even in the height of periods of violence, the dialogical channels that will be needed once the period of reconciliation arrives? And finally, in a more metaphysical vein, can there be lasting arrangements, given the ontologically dynamic and dialectical nature of the conflict process? None of these questions is easy to answer, and to deal properly with each of them, taking into account the several philosophical disciplines involved, as well as the relevant contributions of many other disciplines, is impossible here. I will rather focus – alas! too briefly – on two of the questions mentioned: the “joint interests” and the “fundamental interests”. In so doing, I will draw upon contemporary philosophy, of course. But I will also draw upon models of conflict resolution that can be found in the three traditions that play a decisive role, in one way or another, in the conflict with whose resolution we are here concerned – Judaism, Islam, and Christianity.

 Marcelo Dascal

2 Collective interests and intentions Let us begin with the notion of ‘joint interests’. The philosophical theory of collective action may be helpful. An action is properly called ‘collective’ when the individual intentions-in-action of each individual involved in the collective action refer in a non-eliminable way to a ‘we’ that jointly performs the action. In this sense, one may say that an action is collective when underlying it there is a ‘we-intention’ its performers share. A group of friends organizing a party shares the intention to organize the party, and each accepts to undertake the specific actions this collective intention assigns to her, so that each of these actions makes sense only by reference to the group’s we-intention.1 Notice that the mere fact that the interests of different individuals or groups coincide at some level does not make their actions ‘collective’ in the defined sense. Undoubtedly there is a joint interest of Hamas and the Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank: both oppose the “road map” and the kind of (partial) peaceful settlement of the conflict it might lead to. Their actions or those of their agents foster this common interest by creating an action-reaction causal chain of violence that undermines the conditions for carrying out the negotiations and practical steps required to implement the “road map” or any other version of the “peace process”. In this sense, they help each other. But, unless one holds a far-fetched conspiratorial view of history, one cannot say that these two groups share a ‘weintention’ to jointly perform particular actions designed to “help each other” in achieving their coinciding objectives. In so far as each side’s actions refer to the other side, the latter figures as a radically alien and hostile ‘they’, not as part of a ‘we’; therefore, not only each side’s actions do not refer in a non-eliminable way to a ‘we-intention’ shared with the opposing side; they in fact completely reject the other side’s aspirations and intentions and actually seek to eliminate each other. From the point of view of the theory of collective action, a negotiation process aiming at resolving the conflict cannot take for granted the existence of ‘joint interests’. It should rather be viewed as a process of generating a set of acknowledged we-intentions shared by the opponents. Once available, these intentions will then underlie each party’s actions intended to fulfill their joint aim of solving the conflict. Negotiations that conclude successfully in this respect can be said to have created ‘we-intentions’ that can act as the ‘prior intentions’ required for leading to the ‘intentions-in-action’ that will engender, at the appropriate moments, the appropriate joint actions.2 But it is not enough, of course, to have decided about such prior intentions – we all know that due to the phenomenon of weakness of the will (akrasia), so widespread among political leaders, or to the changing circumstances, many of our prior intentions do not lead to appropriate action and may even lead to actions



Traditions of controversy and conflict resolution 

that run against a solemnly declared and rationally formed prior intention – be it collective or individual. It is necessary, therefore, that the negotiations envisage the creation of the conditions for sustaining the collective prior intentions, for maintaining and expanding their shared status and, above all, for ensuring that they will be strong enough to dodge the obstacles – such as those just mentioned – that will certainly stand in the way of their translation into appropriate intentions-in-action and their corresponding implementing actions. For the (relative) success of such actions and the feedback they provide is, ultimately, what can ensure the process initiated by the negotiations to go on and to reinforce itself. A major factor in allowing for the generation, as well as for the sustaining, of the appropriate we-intentions is the de-fixation of strongly held beliefs and the re-framing of entrenched conceptual structures, which permit to overcome obstacles such as prejudice, stereotypes and mental sets each party holds vis-à-vis the other.3 For example, the idea of the Right of Return of the refugees, which is often viewed by the Palestinians as a sine qua non and by the Israelis as an unacceptable demand, is usually understood by both sides as referring to “return to the whole Land” and as to be granted only to the Palestinian (refugees). Yet, it has been creatively reformulated in the Ayalon-Nusseibeh Plan as “To Israel” (for the Jews) + “To the Palestinian State” (for the Palestinians). A reformulation such as this may contribute to a new, more realistic understanding, and thereby to the re-framing of beliefs, hopes and fears. Terminological innovation can indeed be a useful tool for promoting re-framing. The expression ‘Palestinian Authority’ was instrumental in overcoming Israeli opposition to a ‘Palestinian State’, which is by now an accepted, unproblematic idea among Israelis. And the mere title of a lecture I recently attended to, “Big Dreams vs. Small Hopes”, by the Palestinian researcher and peace activist Muhammad Dajani of Al Kuds University, induces a perspective shift in one’s way of seeing and interpreting the scenes of the conflict one is familiar with. More difficult to handle is the radical difference between the two sides’ historical accounts, either back to ancient times (each supporting their respective claims regarding “historical rights” over the land) or back to 1948 (Naqba vs. Independence, expulsion vs. flight of the Palestinians). How can these partisan historical accounts be de-fixated and re-framed? Is there an “objective history” capable of doing us this service? Or, given that history is in the eyes of the beholder, and no side has the monopoly over objectivity, the best would be to abandon any attempt to “set the historical record right”? De-fixation and re-framing, which are successful therapeutic practices in psychotherapy, pave the way for the innovative and creative moves needed in dealing with thorny, persistent problems. In our case, they may lead to a “fresh start”, based not on the problematic notions of “historical rights” or “who is the victim”, but on “universal rights” and “justice”: self-determination, territorial viability, de facto

 Marcelo Dascal

presence in the land, etc. Such re-framings go a long way towards the perception of a solution as shareable and thus to forming the joint intentions for concerted collective action. They also contribute, to some extent, to modifying the perception of each side’s “fundamental” interests (both by itself and by the opponent). But in order to be effective they must be coupled with a re-framing of the basic assumptions regarding the nature of a “just” solution, the way to find and implement it, and whether and to what extent what seems to be an irreconcilable opposition between contradictory positions allows for conciliation through compromise. 3 Historical models 3.1

Solomon

King Solomon’s wisdom was praised well beyond his kingdom. Not only his citizens, but also other kings and princes consulted him, for they trusted his capacity to use his wisdom in order to find the truth and thus to impart justice. The paradigmatic story of the child claimed by two alleged mothers (I Kings, 3) is often given as an example of Solomon’s abilities. In this story, Solomon’s strategy seems to assume an absolute and irreconcilable opposition of fundamental claims and strategic goals of the two ‘mothers’ at the level of possession (child belongs entirely to y vs. child belongs entirely to z), as well as an asymmetric commitment by them to a further aim, which is higher than the strategic goal for y, and lower than it for z (the child’s life or well being). It further assumes that there is a truth of the matter that should dictate the just decision. The indicator (symptom) of truth (i.e., of who is the mother) is taken to be the level of commitment of the parties to the asymmetric further aim as compared to their commitment to the strategic goal (preference for child’s life vs. preference for possession of child). Solomon’s “threattest” (cutting the child in half) reveals the true commitment of each party, and thereby makes the just decision obvious. In addition to the reliable deterrence of the threat, the condition for the efficacy of this test lies in the exclusive alternative underlying the claim to possession (either y or z, but not both, is the mother). Under such conditions, the case is perfectly clear-cut.4 But what would Solomon do in case two mothers were possible – e.g., a biological and an adoptive mother? What do present-day courts do in such cases? Or in similar ones, like divorce, where a sort of “division of possession of the child” seems to be the rule? Obviously, Solomon’s approach would not be so clear-cut in cases were there would also exist the further alternative of “dividing the child” – which is a possibility in the case of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. What is interesting in this case is not only the existence of this tertium, but also the very fact that (a) each of the



Traditions of controversy and conflict resolution 

contending parties comprises sub-groups which differ in their ranking of the preferences and is, therefore, far from monolithic in this respect; and (b) that a large, growing and active segment of opinion in each of the parties believes in the possibility of retaining full possession without the destruction of the object of possession (the land). This segment is persuaded (i) that its right of possession is Godgiven and thus inviolable; (ii) that the opponent’s claim to a right of possession is absolutely false – hence will not be held if the opponent is submitted to strong and persistent pressure; (iii) that the opponent, therefore, is not as deeply committed to the land as oneself; (iv) that, ultimately, the opponent will be either defeated by force or will withdraw thanks to the intervention of an external factor (be it Allah, the Messiah, or the international community). All these beliefs may seem to be, to an external observer, completely ungrounded. Nevertheless, they are firmly entrenched for the segments of the two populations that believe in them and act accordingly (violently and dangerously for their own aims). It doesn’t seem to be sufficient to simply attribute this behavior to ‘irrationality’; nor to the inability of understanding the other, since both segments display a similar pattern of beliefs and behavior, and are therefore quite familiar with it. Furthermore, both display similar strategies, i.e., similar forms of instrumental rationality, under their parallel faith-based belief sets. And both are not only radically opposed to each other, but also to the other, secular segments of their own camps, whose ‘rationality’ with its pragmatic openness to compromise they reject uncompromisingly. Re-framing under such a firm belief in the absolute and complete truth and justification of one’s position, which bars all but superficial forms of dialogue with the ‘other’ (both within and without one’s own camp), seems to be simply impossible. But is this indeed the case? There is another, less known story about Solomon’s wisdom. Ashmadai, king of the netherworld, who also heard about Solomon’s fame, comes to the palace and proposes to show him something he had never seen: “a man with two heads and four eyes”. After interrogating the man briefly, the king asks him whether he wants to return home – which he declares to be eager to do. Ashmadai, however, tells the king that this is impossible. The double-headed man settles in our world, marries, becomes wealthy, and has seven sons, one of them double-headed like him. When he dies the heirs quarrel: the six single-headed ones demand the division of the estate in seven parts, whereas the double-headed son claims that, being in fact two, he is entitled to two of the eight parts in which the estate should be divided according to him. The case is brought before Solomon. His decision is based on the following principle: “If one head knows and feels what I do to the other head, then the man is one; if not, then he is two”. When hot water is poured on one of the heads, the two-headed man shouts in despair: “Sir, we are dying! We are dying!”, truth emerges, and justice is done.

 Marcelo Dascal

Like in the other story, we have here a sharp decision based on a decisive ‘crucial experiment’ – as some present-day epistemologists would call it. But, by reference to the Palestine-Israel conflict, this story suggests also something else. I see it as calling attention to the very close relationship between these two ‘heads’, so tightly linked. Recognition of this relationship, in its turn, highlights the need for a tight coordination between the thoughts, feelings, and actions of the two heads, without which the composite body would be in danger of disintegration. This is especially critical when the heads are subject to contrary stimuli, pulling in opposite directions or clashing with each other. The image of the two heads forces one to ask whether in cases of strongly contrary, perhaps actually contradictory, tendencies, the disintegrating pull or clash can be avoided, and if so, how. To be sure, Solomon’s test permits to establish, for juridical purposes, whether the man is one or two, but it gives us no hint about what mechanisms are at work for accommodating the co-existence in a restricted body space of two conflicting ‘heads’, full of prejudice, ideology, and emotions against each other. 3.2

Ibn Rushd

Sooner or later, in a conflict torn world, the best minds were bound to devote their efforts to reflecting about, and eventually devising, such accommodating mechanisms. About two millennia after Solomon, Abu l-Walid Muhammad Ibn Muhammad Ibn Ahmad Ibn Ahmad Ibn Rushd, known in the Christian world as Averroes, was born in 1126 in the city of Cordoba. He grew in a time of violent ideological, political, and military clashes, both within Al-Andalus – where they led to the fall of the Almoravids and to the rise of the Almohads – and with the Christians in the north. The wisdom Ibn Rushd developed, although couched mainly in theoretical terms, couldn’t but be motivated by – and therefore applicable to – the conflicts he witnessed in his formative years, and was put into practice when he became Grand Cadi of Seville, the highest juridical authority of the Almohad capital of Al-Andalus. At the theoretical level, he faced two main problems: on the one hand, the sectarianism of the different theological schools that confronted themselves in kalam dialectics, each claiming that their interpretation of the revealed truth was the only correct one; on the other, the opposition – perceived by some as irreconcilable (e.g., by Al Ghazali in Tahafut al-Falasifa, “The Incoherence of the Philosophers”) – between the true knowledge that stems from Revelation and the factitious philosophical knowledge. The consequence of these ideational conflicts in an organic, religion-based society was the undermining of the ordered fabric of life brought about by the competition of many ‘heads’ pulling the social structure in opposed directions. No wonder that Ibn Rushd’s combat against this danger consisted in an



Traditions of controversy and conflict resolution 

attempt to restrain each position’s intolerance vis-à-vis its competitors by showing that the competition was in fact less irreconcilable than they believed. Against the practice of unconstrained interpretation of the Koran by the ‘dialecticians’, he argues that there is only a relatively small number of passages that cannot be understood in terms of their literal meaning, and therefore require interpretation. This fact permits to reduce interpretative arbitrariness by means of an “inductive examination” that determines whether a proposed interpretation fits the literal understanding of the rest of the book. This procedure, however, does not grant certainty to an interpretation, which remains conjectural; consequently no absolute, exclusive status can be claimed by any interpretation and the ideological grounds for sectarianism are thus suppressed. Against those who conceive the opposition reason / revelation, again, in absolute terms, Ibn Rushd undertakes to show how they can – and must, according to Revelation itself – be “brought into conformity”. For this purpose he makes use of both revelation and reason: on the one hand, he relies on Koranic passages which, according to him, call the wise to use their reason, passages that he believes to be of the kind that does not require interpretation (e.g., Koran 259,2; relied upon in Decisive Discourse, paragraph 3); on the other, he undertakes – in Tahafut al-Tahafut, “The Incoherence of The Incoherence” – to refute rigorously each of Al Ghazali’s allegations against Al Farabi and Ibn Sina. By relying on both, the authority and intelligibility of the sacred text and rigorous rational argumentation, Ibn Rushd is showing in practice what his strategy of ‘bringing in conformity’ two allegedly irreconcilable opponents, of bridging an allegedly insurmountable gap, consists in. Such a strategy comprises, no doubt, a significant element of openness, thanks to which different ‘sources of knowledge’ can be acknowledged and combined. Yet, one should not forget that Ibn Rushd is not just a philosopher, but a Moslem philosopher. This qualification implies that the ‘conformity’ is necessarily hierarchic, Revelation occupying the top position. The conceptual and social order Ibn Rushd is concerned to restore seem to permit a measure of pluralism only in so far as it is contained within an essentially hierarchic order. For example, another ‘inductive test’ of the reliability of a piece of (revealed) knowledge he sometimes employs is its presence in “all Revelations”; although this might suggest a parity between Judaism, Christianity and Islam, in fact the weight of Islam overshadows that of its predecessors, both because it is the most recent (and the last) Revelation and because of its alleged complete truthfulness. Similarly, he admits three legitimate modes of understanding, each characteristic of one of the three types of persons to whom three different types of address, argument and knowledge are appropriate – the ‘demonstrative’, the ‘dialectic’, and the ‘rhetorical’. Nevertheless, there is a hierarchy (whose political implications are obvious) between the three types of person, discourse, argument, and knowledge – the ‘man of demonstration’ occupying

 Marcelo Dascal

the top position (Decisive Discourse, paragraph 16). Although the Koran acknow­ ledges all of them and addresses each appropriately, so that its intended audience is both universal and differentiated, the differences should be carefully respected – the ‘man of demonstration’, for example, should not attempt to explain demonstratively to the masses that which they can only be persuaded of rhetorically. From the point of view of the formation and implementation of joint interests or “we-intentions”, which we posited as a necessary step in reducing violence and sustaining prolonged peaceful phases of a conflict, the model found in Ibn-Rushd’s writings is promising. For this model stresses the possibility and need of mutual acknowledgment by the contenders of their respective legitimacy and value. Without such an acknowledgment, persons could hardly become intention-partners, except under coercion. The model also stresses the possibility and need of ‘bringing into conformity’ the contending positions, i.e., of overcoming their apparent incommensurability and elaborating intermediary alternatives acceptable to both parties through mutual concessions and compromise. Furthermore, it actually exemplifies how these two essential conditions of conflict resolution can be implemented in the conflicts Ibn Rushd addresses. By dealing, however, with what are basically ‘internal conflicts’ within a community where the basis of assent, even if momentarily downplayed, overrides by far the amount of dissent, this model allows itself to assume what usually lies at the heart of ‘external conflicts’. Of particular importance in this respect is the assumption by the model that the restored or new order sought relies on given or consensual hierarchies. “Our” conflict is a case in which this assumption is not valid. In Al Andalus, as well as elsewhere in the Islamic world in various periods, the Jewish minority had an assigned place in the hierarchical intellectual and social order, which it did not question. But with the advent of Israel this is no longer a given, a consensual basis upon which the resolution of the conflict can rest – for none of the contenders is, or is likely to be, ready to accept the likes of the hierarchical asymmetries the old consensus took for granted. After all, we live today in an age where human rights, equality, and self-determination loom large, at least in our discourse. 3.3

Leibniz

Another historical leap, of about half a millennium, brings us now perhaps to add the missing piece to the puzzle, with the help of the wisdom of another thinker, deeply concerned with the resolution of conflicts whose catastrophic consequen­ ces he witnessed. A German philosopher, born in the town of Leipzig at the end of the 30 years war between Catholics and Protestants – a war that brought catastrophe to his country as well as to other parts of Europe –, spent much of his intellectual energy in attempting to resolve this conflict within Christianity. I am



Traditions of controversy and conflict resolution 

referring to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, the great mathematician and logician, whose political and theological endeavors to bring about the reunion of the Christian confessions should be acknowledged as having led to results not less important for the theory of rationality than his work in logic and mathematics. Leibniz addressed the solution of the conflict in question through a twopronged strategy: looking “up” in search of very basic and general principles shared by the contenders and looking “down” at the details of their claims and divergences. The first strategy would emphasize the extent to which both sides were in agreement. When not apparent, this agreement could be brought to light by an analytic effort. For example, by generalizing/analyzing the idea of ‘Catholic Church’ as referring to ‘all men of goodwill’, whose ultimate allegiance is to the principles of “the love of God” and of “the public good”, one reaches two ideas that are so powerful and wide-ranging that they overshadow all the issues that divide Protestants and Catholics. In fact, they could be extended beyond Christendom and encompass other religions as well. This strategy thus consists in raising the discussion to a higher ground with the aim of finding uniting principles that can be used as the basis for the claim that there is no disunion, but rather union around such principles – that is, a sound basis for a we-intention for collective action towards a reasonable solution of the conflict. It is the second strategy, however, that provides the content for the required we-intentions. For it is the painstaking examination of each complaint, offense, demand, claim, and proposal of each side on each topic of contention that reveals, at the required level of detail, where and to what extent and depth, there is real disagreement or perhaps possible concessions, and thus permits to unearth eventual seeds of agreement hitherto unnoticed, i.e., eventual sources for we-intentions. Leibniz’s double-pronged approach emphasizes the need to work simultaneously along the two lines and suggests that rarely conflicts can be solved through any one of them alone. General principles are useful, be it as guidelines or as basic preconditions for forming the required joint intentions and acting upon them. But when one comes down to the details of the issues, one realizes that inevitably there is some measure of truth and justice in each side’s position, and a just solution must take these “fragments of truth and justice” into consideration. One further realizes that each side assigns different values or weights to these fragments, so that it is hard to attribute to them absolute, ‘objective’ weights. The image that often is used by Leibniz in this context is not that of the strictly formal-calculative reason for which he became famous, a reason similar to Solomon’s wisdom, capable of sharply deciding every issue. Rather, it is the image of a reason that operates as a pair of scales, under conditions of relative imprecision, where the reasons pro

 Marcelo Dascal

and con a given decision – whose weights are only approximately known – are put in each plate, yielding an inclination of the scales towards the one or the other: Just as in weighing it is necessary to pay attention that all the weights are put into place, to check that they are not in excess, to check that they are not adulterated by other metals nor heavier or lighter than they should, to verify the balance’s correct position, with the arms equidistant, the scales with equal weights, etc.; so too in this rational balance attention must be paid to the propositions as to the weights, to the balance as to their connection, and no unexamined weight or proposition is to be admitted. Just as one is to estimate the gravity of the weights, so too [one should measure] the truth of a proposition; just as the gravity of the weights measures the gravity of the things to be weighed, so too the truth of the propositions adduced in the proof measures the truth of the principal proposition of the question under discussion; just as one must take care that no weight be omitted or added, so too one is to take care that nothing unfavorable or favorable to the topic examined be omitted or that the same thing, expressed in different words, be repeated. The mechanism of the balance is similar to the connection of the propositions; just as one scale should not be lighter than the other, so too if one of two premises is weaker than the other, the conclusion must follow from the weaker one; just as the arms must be linked to each other by the beam, so too from pure particulars nothing follows, for they are sand without lime; just as the arms must be at equal distances from the beam, so too the place of the proposition must be such that the middle term be equidistant from the major and the minor, which is achieved by observing an exact and eternal Sorites (Leibniz 2006: 20–21).

Obviously the decision reached by means of these scales, even if the mechanism is properly built, maintained and used, is far from absolute or logically necessary. Nevertheless, though the inclination can be very slight indeed, if the weighing is done as best we can, then it can be relied upon as the ground for a reasonable decision. Furthermore, the inclination may be reverted, for example through new evidence that was not previously taken into account. We are thus talking about a kind of rationality that does not yield certainty. It is, however, a rational basis for decisions, as far as our knowledge and action in this contingent world of ours goes. Sometimes, indeed, a small, rational inclination is all that is needed in order to set in march a fruitful and benefic process. How could this model be applied in the Israeli-Palestinian case? How could a basis for a we-intention be established by weighing the reasons, i.e., the joint and opposed interests of each side in the conflict? Would the model help to discern between each side’s ‘fundamental’ interests from its other interests? Well, for the different segments of the population a different reply to these questions is in order. And perhaps there is a reply suitable to each segment, thus providing a basis for internal reunion as well as for the identification of joint interests with the ‘enemy’.



Traditions of controversy and conflict resolution 

For secular segments of the population, the procedure of weighing reasons should help to raise the issue above ‘external’, contingent, historical, or political myths or facts, as well as the subjective (and understandable) desire for revenge motivated by such myths and facts, reaching a level of ‘subjective objectivity’ based on the universality of ethical principles and justice requirements, in its turn based on deep conviction of their universality and consequent commitment to them. This should be coupled, at the factual level, with a ‘realistic’ assessment – based on a serious effort of understanding the other side’s position through ‘placing oneself in the other’s place’ – of the other side’s willingness to stand by (a) its claim to the land, (b) its deep commitment to this claim, and (c) its willingness to compromise in order to stand a chance of materializing – at least partially – its claim and commitment. For religious/militant segments of the populations, the model would, likewise, permit to emphasize the uniting factors rather than the dividing ones, but on the religious level: (a) there is one God for both sides and (b) there is one set of moral and behavior imperatives commanded by this God for both sides. This requires downplaying the particularistic divisive components of both religions and traditions, up to eventually viewing them as Revelations which are on a par or nearly so. In each of these cases, the weights of the different factors put in the plates will be different. And perhaps the mechanism of the balance too, for it will not be strictly a ‘rational balance’. For it will neither be, strictly speaking, a matter of instrumental rationality, since it will involve, in addition to means-ends considerations, imponderables such as the willingness to sacrifice one’s (or the other’s) life (and perhaps the land itself) on the assumption that the external power’s (God) design will solve the issue in the best interest of oneself, whatever the practical outcome. For the secular populations these imponderables consist, more likely, in attaching symbolic value to the mere fact of “standing one’s ground no matter what” or to a belief in the “absolute justice” of one’s claim – in which case the maxim of instrumental and pragmatic rationality, “do not be right, be clever”, would not hold. How does the balance of reasons work in each case, and how to neutralize the ‘wrong’ or destructive weights and increase the ‘right’ ones – i.e., those leading to a solution that is ‘good’ (or ‘right’ in a non-absolute sense) for both parties? This is, of course, the one-million-dollars question. Given the many more millions the conflict has already wasted, and not only in money, it is a question worthy pursuing. In a sense, it brings us back to the ‘practical’, ‘small hope’ rather than ‘big dream’ questions we raised at the beginning. Only, we are back with a considerable additional baggage, which we should put to use in the next leg of our trip. What the three models we briefly explored give us can perhaps be summed up by saying that (a) only in quite simple situations there is a clear-cut method that provides a clear-cut, unquestionably true and just decision; (b) entrenched beliefs

 Marcelo Dascal

and assumptions that prevent the resolution of a conflict can be identified and thus become the focus of efforts of de-fixation and re-framing; (c) it is more often than not the case that what appear to be unbridgeable, insurmountable oppositions in fact are not and some way of ‘bringing them in conformity’ can be devised; (d) if one’s stakes are not placed too high (certainty, big dreams, etc.), it is possible and feasible to proceed rationally by developing and applying a workable notion of reasonableness especially fit for conflict situations; (e) none of the models here considered (nor the many others proposed by conflict-solvers of all varieties) has proven to have more than very limited efficacy; (f) a multi-model inter-disciplinary approach should therefore be envisaged, where each model would contribute most to the solution of those conflicts that fit the model’s basic assumptions. Taken together, these points suggest a pluralistic approach to conflict resolution, which requires debating earnestly the positions in conflict as the only way to reach not the absolute truth, but at least a reasonable and sustainable solution.5 It is this suggestion that the striking midrash on God’s decision to put the final touch to the creation of the world by creating humans seems to support. It was a tie; the heavenly vote was split right down the middle – two in favor; two against. At issue – “Should man be created?” The ministering angels formed parties: Love said, “Yes, let him be created, because he will dispense acts of love”; while Truth argued, “No, let him not be created, for he is a complete fake”. Righteousness countered, “Yes, let him be created, because he will do righteous deeds; and Peace demurred, “Let him not be created, for he is one mass of contention”. The score was even: Love and Righteousness in favor, Truth and Peace against. What did the Lord do? He took Truth and hurled it to the ground, smashing it into thousands of jagged pieces. Thus he broke the tie. Now, two to one in favor, man was created. The ministering angels dared to ask the Master of the Universe, “Why do You break Your emblem, Truth?”, for indeed Truth was His seal and emblem. He answered, “Let truth spring from the earth”. (Bereshit-Rabba 8, Genesis Rabbah VIII).6

References Ben-Menahem, H. (ed.). 2005. Controversy and Dialogue in the Jewish Tradition: A Reader. London and New York: Routledge. Dascal, M. 2003. Interpretation and Understanding. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Dascal, M. 2004. Argument, war, and the role of the media in conflictmanagement. In T. Parfitt with Julia Ergorova (eds.). Jews, Muslims and Mass Media. London: Routledgecurzon, 228– 248. Dascal, M. and Dascal, V. 2004. “A des-fixação da crença”. In F. Gil, P. Livet, and J.P. Cabral (eds.), O Processod da Crença. Lisboa: Gradiva, 321–353. Leibniz, G.W. 2006. The Art of Controversies. Ed. by M. Dascal. Dordrecht: Springer.



Traditions of controversy and conflict resolution 

Searle, J.R. 1983. Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wear, K.S. “Exegetical theory and practice in Origen and Bereshit Rabba”. Accessed at http:// humanities.uchicago.edu/journals/jsjournal/wear.html.

Notes * A German version of this chapter, titled “Solomon, Ibn Rushd, Leibniz and the Israel/Palestine conflict”, was published in G. Meggle (ed.), Deutschland, Israel, Palästina: Streitschriften, Hamburg, Europäische Verlagsanstalt (EVA), 2007. 1. On the notion of ‘we-intention’ and its essential role in collective action, see Dascal (2003: Chapter 5). 2. These basic notions of the theory of individual action have been developed by John Searle (1983). 3.

On the notions of de-fixation and re-framing, see Dascal and Dascal (2004).

4. The Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, in his speech at the United Nations General Assembly (September 1974), referred to Solomon’s trial. He compared the Palestinian refusal to accept the U.N. partition plan to the mother’s refusal to divide the child, which proved who was the real mother and, by analogy, the real owner of the land. 5. “It is known that debating all the conflicting sides of an issue in the course of study and learning will yield the truth about that matter, and clarify it beyond any doubt. Hence, doubts, comments and queries are the principal avenue for reaching this objective … This point should be kept in mind by all those who seek the truth in books and in wisdom. It is known that doubts cannot be allayed unless the two sides to the question confront each other, as querier and respondent, to bring the law to light” (R. Solomon b. Isaac Beit-Halevi, 16th century, Lev Avot, commentary on tractate Avot; in Ben-Menahem 2005: 123). 6. This midrash seems to fit what Kenneth Wear identifies as “the exegetical theory behind the Bereshit Rabba”, namely a theory that “essentially relies on discussion and debate to draw out the possible meanings of Scripture”.

About the contributors

Sir Geoffrey Lloyd is currently Senior Scholar in Residence at the Needham Research Institute. He serves on the editorial committee of several journals, including Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, Journal of the History of Astronomy, Physis, History of the Human Sciences, Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, and Endoxa, and has published many books and articles – many of which translated into other languages. Soon to be published are his articles on Chinese Warring States Rhetoric, Fourth Century Greek Astronomy, Sign-inference in Greek Medicine, and The “Mathematisation of Physics” in Greece and China. His most recent book is Cogniitve Variations: Reflections on the Unity and Diversity of the Human Mind (2007). Hanina Ben-Menahem is Montesquieu Professor of Comparative Law and Legal History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His areas of expertise are jurisprudence and philosophy of Jewish law. Among the books he has written or edited are Judicial Deviations in Talmudic Law, the multi-volume anthology and commentary, Controversy and Dialogue in the Halakhic Sources (in Hebrew), and Controversy and Dialogue in the Jewish Tradition: A Reader. Simonetta Ponchia is Associate Professor of History of the Ancient Near East at the University of Verona. Her research activity has concentrated in particular on the history of Mesopotamia and Syria in the first millennium BC. Literary texts in general as well as their cultural and ideological relevance and setting represent another of her main interests. She is a member of the scientific committee of the international journal Kaskal: Rivista di storia, ambienti e culture del Vicino Oriente antico. Han-liang Chang is Professor of Comparative Literature at National Taiwan University. His current research interests include the history of semiotics and comparative systematics in Chinese and Western natural history. Peng Yi is Associate Professor in the Department of English, National Central University in Jhongli, Taiwan. He works mainly on Edmund Spenser and 16th Century English literature. His current research and publications focus on the connection between theories of psychoanalysis and Chinese philosophical thought as a means to reflect on questions of tradition and modernity.

 Traditions of Controversy

Adelino Cattani is Associate Professor of theory of argumentation at the University of Padua, in the Philosophy Department and Educational Sciences Faculty. His present research interests include the theory of reasoning and of common, scientific and juridical argumentation, fallacies, and the theory and practice of debate. He is the author of Forme dell’argomentare. Il ragionamento tra logica e retorica (1994), Discorsi ingannevoli. Argomenti per difendersi, attaccare, divertirsi (1995) Botta e risposta. L’arte della replica (2001, 2006). He is a member of the Interdepartmental Center of Cosmological Studies (CISC), and treasurer of the International Association for the Study of Controversies (IASC). Olga Weijers is Senior Research Fellow at the Huygens Instituut, a research institute of the Royal Dutch Academy for Arts and Sciences at The Hague. She published the Dictionary of Medieval Latin from the Netherlands (8 vols., finished in 2005) and several studies on intellectual life in the Middle Ages, especially concerning the history of universities and the University of Paris. Christopher John Martin is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Auckland New Zealand. He holds a PhD in Philosophy from Princeton. His special interest is mediaeval philosophy and in particular mediaeval logic on which he has published numerous articles. He has recently contributed a study of the history of mediaeval logic to the second edition of Macmillan’s Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Cristina Marras (PhD Tel Aviv University) is currently a researcher at the Lessico Intelletuale Europeo project of the National Research Center (CNR) at Rome. Her main research interest is the philosophy of Leibniz. Her other research interests include the philosophy of language, epistemology, history of philosophy (17th and 18th centuries), rhetoric and linguistic mediation, as well as the history and theory of controversies. She is the secretary of the International Association for the Study of Controversies (IASC). She recently wrote the entry “scientific metaphors” for the Enciclopedia Italiana di Filosofia and has published several articles in journals and collective volumes. Merio Scattola is Associate Professor of the history of political ideas and Lecturer of German literature at the University of Padua. He published Italian and German books on the history of law, on the theory of war in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and on the history of political thought, especially in early modern times. João Lopes Alves practiced law and taught at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Lisbon. He is currently a member of the Center of Philosophy of Science of the University of Lisbon, and Distinguished Guest Lecturer at the Political Studies Institute of the Portuguese Catholic University. His books include Rousseau,



About the contributors 

Hegel e Marx. Percursos da Razão Política (1983), O Estado da  Razão. Da Ideia hegeliana de Estado ao Estado segundo a Ideia hegeliana (2004) and Ética & Contrato Social (2005). He edited the volumes Information Technology & Society. Theory, Uses, Impacts (1992) and Ethics and the Future of Democracy (1998), and published a number of articles on Law and Moral Philosophy. Amos Morris-Reich (PhD Hebrew University of Jerusalem) is a specialist in Jewish history within the history of German and American social science. His articles appeared in Telos, Theory, Culture & Society, History of European Ideas, Studies in Contemporary Jewry, Jewish Social Studies, Jewish Quarterly Review, and Israel Studies. He is the editor of the first forthcoming volume of translations of Georg Simmel in Hebrew. His book The Quest for Jewish Assimilation in Modern Social Science: Jewish Difference in Light of Franz Boas and Georg Simmel is in press. He is currently a Kreitman Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Jewish Thought in Ben-Gurion University, Beer-Sheva. Chaoqun Xi is Associate Professor at the Foreign Languages Institute, Fujian Normal University, Research Fellow at the National Key Research Center for Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies. His main areas of interest are the philosophy of language and pragmatics. His publications include four books in Chinese, Intercultural Communication: Theory and Practice (2005), Three Theories in Pragmatics (2007), Ten Lectures in General Linguistics (2008), Cognitive Mechanisms in Discourse (Im)politeness Interpretation (2007), plus a number of articles and reviews in academic journals, such as Applied Linguistics, Journal of Pragmatics, Language in Society, Studies in Language, Foreign Language Teaching and Research, Pragmatics & Cognition, and Modern Foreign Languages. Ofer Gal teaches at the unit for History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Sydney. He is the author of Meanest Foundations and Nobler Superstructures: Hooke, Newton and the Compounding of the Celestiall Motions of the Planetts (2002) and of numerous papers on the history of early modern science and related philosophical issues. Marcelo Dascal is Professor of Philosophy and former Dean of Humanities at Tel Aviv University. His main research areas are the philosophy of language, pragma­ tics, the philosophy of mind, the history of modern philosophy, particularly Leibniz, and the study of controversies. His recent authored and edited books include Negotiation and Power in Dialogic Interaction (2001), Interpretation and Understanding (2003), The Gust of the Wind: Humanities in a New-Old World (2004, in Hebrew), Controversies and Subjectivity (2005), G. W. Leibniz. The Art of Controversies (2006), Leibniz: What Kind of Rationalist? (forthcoming), Leibniz the

 Traditions of Controversy

Polemicist: The Practice of Reason (forthcoming). He is the editor of the journal Pragmatics & Cognition and of the book series Ma? Da! (in Hebrew) and Controversies, and co-editor of the book series Human Cognitive Processes. He is the current president of the International Association for the Study of Controversies (IASC). He has received many awards, including the Humboldt Prize.

Index A Abaelard, P  153, 155–158, 164, 184 action  49, 63, 71, 116, 117, 122, 134, 171, 237, 239, 240, 246, 252, 282, 292 collective  284–286, 291, 295 individual  295 intention-insee intention  284, 285 adamin  63 Adams, M.M  164 adversarial  3, 133, 175 adversary  9, 49, 64, 65, 67, 74, 76, 129, 131, 137, 166, 175, 186, 232, 269, 275, 276 aggada  43–45, 56, 58 agnostic  276, 277 agnosticism  92, 276 agreement  42, 90, 127, 135, 152, 268, 291 Akkra, Rabbi A  29 akrasia  284 Al Andalus  290 Alberic of Paris  157 Alciato, A  184 Al Farabi  289 Algazi, Rabbi N.S  41 Al Ghazali  288 allocutor  xii Alsted, J.H  182 Alster, B  63, 82 Althusius, I  186–189, 191 Alves, J.L  216 Amoraim  19, 21, 26, 42, 45, 56–58 Analects  99, 105 ancient  ix, xiii, xiv 3–5, 13, 14, 63, 71–73, 76, 79, 80, 83, 85, 86, 88, 141, 168, 172, 181, 185, 190, 194, 277, 285 China x  6 Greece x  125, 128, 130, 157 logic  153

Rome 130 Annus, A  82 Anselm  151–153 antagonism  282 antiquity  183, 186 Apel, J  190, 191 aporia  277 Aquinas, Th  143, 153, 158, 184 Arafat, Y  295 archaeology  80 archetype  64, 76 argumentation  4, 76, 78, 81, 88–92, 103, 104, 120, 130–134, 141–145, 154, 158, 167, 173, 179, 184, 185, 189, 192, 198, 210, 211, 241, 272, 289 argumentum  154, 192 Aristotelian  9, 171, 173, 174, 181, 186, 197 Aristotle  9, 12, 85, 100, 130, 142, 144, 153, 154, 167, 172, 174, 175, 178, 181, 184 Arndt, H  261 Arnisaeus, H  181, 186, 187, 192, 205 Aron, R  126 ars obligatoria  141 see also obligatio artes sermocinales  165 assembly  5–9, 12, 35–37, 41, 44, 73, 81 astronomy  11, 14, 181 Athens  7, 8, 138 atman  6 audience  5, 6, 11–14, 132, 134, 138, 168, 271, 290 authoritative  135, 142, 143, 178 authority, xiii  6, 9–13, 17, 23, 25–27, 39–41, 54, 88, 109, 135, 142, 154, 164, 171, 172, 191, 227, 268–271, 288 locus from  154 see also topics and topoi

Averroes  147, 288 see also Ibn Rushd Azoulay, Rabbi H.J.D. (Hida)  41, 42, 47, 48, 60 B Babylonian  63, 72, 76, 78 see also Talmud Bacon, F.  xiii, xiv, 272 Ban Gu  87 Bartholomew of Bruges  146 bat kol see heavenly voice Baxter, H  165 belligerent  282, 283 Bellon, J  190 Ben Isaac, Rabbi S  59 Ben Isaac Beit-Halevi, Rabbi S.  295 Ben-Menahem, H.  x, 59, 60, 295 Benveniste, E  95 Besold, C  186, 193 bian  85, 92, 93, 95, 99 Bible  23, 53, 58 see also Scripture and Torah Biblical  23, 24, 27, 31, 36, 45, 57–59, 74 Big Men  5 Bird vs. Fish  64, 82 Black, J.A  80 Blackmore, S  250, 257 Bloor, D  279 Blum-Kulka, S  252 Boethius, A.M.S  131, 153–158, 164, 190, 191, 205 Bohannan, J  4, 14 Bornitz, J  192 “Both are the words of the living God”  19, 23, 24, 25, 27, 34, 39, 40, 42, 46, 48 Bottéro, J  63, 82 Bouglé, C  225–227 Boyle, R  268 Breen, Q  167, 177–179

 Traditions of Controversy Bronkhorst, J  6 Brown, P  251, 252, 261 Bruno, G  130 burden of proof  172, 215 Burke, E  138 Burke, K  129 Burley, W  147 C Calogero, G  131 Campolo, A  131 Canguilhem, G  117 Cantiuncula, C  189, 190 Caselius, I  192 Catholic  151, 184, 198, 291, 298 Cattani, A.   xi, 166 certainty  44, 261, 262, 289, 292, 294 Chadwick, H  164 Chang, H  86, 91, 95, 96, 266 chaos  261, 262 Chen, R  251 Chen Zhong  89 China  4, 6 see also ancient and Chinese Chinese  3, 5, 9–15, 85–88, 91, 93, 97–101, 105, 107, 121, 250, 252, 255, 264–266 see also philosophy Chmielewski, J  85, 96 Christian  148, 152, 271, 281, 288, 291 Christianity  131, 151, 153, 289, 291 Church  151, 163, 164 Cicero, M.T  130, 164, 167, 174, 175, 178, 179, 190 civilization  64, 68, 69, 82, 125, 213, 231 classifying  65, 70, 76, 96 see also taxonomy coercion  211–213, 290 coexistence  19, 283 Colerus, C  192 collectivity  223–247 Collins, H.M  273 comitatio  155 commonplace  95, 100, 182, 183, 185, 187–191 communication,  xii, 94, 132, 254, 257, 272, 282 asymmetric  xii auto-  xii, 251 cross-cultural  xii

failure  98, 115 form of  166, 241, 247 unmediated  107 community  114–116, 1119, 122, 130, 136, 254, 271 international  287 philosophical  135 scientific   xiv, 116, 268, 269, 273 compromise  8, 136, 215, 286, 287, 290, 293 Comrie, B  250 conceit  107, 108 conceptual containment  163 concession  290, 291 conciliation  175, 286 see also reconciliation concubine  26, 27 conditional proposition  153–157, 159–161 conflict, xv  20, 73, 75, 87–88, 125, 127, 136, 209, 210, 214, 242, 244, 281–286, 288, 290–294 external  73, 290 ideational  288 internal  290 Israel/Palestine  295 latent  282 Palestine/Israel  281, 283 philosophical  88  religious  136 resilient  281 resolution  281–295 violent  282 conformity  132, 289 confrontation  11, 30, 64, 66, 68, 70–74, 82, 101, 103, 126, 132, 136, 282 Confucianism  11, 86, 90, 91, 94, 96, 100, 104, 105 Confucius  11, 88, 89, 96, 105 see also Analects Connan, F  191 connexive logic  156 Conring, H  194 consecutio  155 consensus  8, 25, 38, 86, 114, 128, 135, 138, 241, 268, 290 consequence, logical  215, 260 accidental  157, 159, 160–162 formal  161–163 material  162 natural  159, 163

context  5, 12, 23, 24, 34, 36, 51, 63, 64, 73, 88, 103–106, 108, 110, 112, 116, 117, 121, 123, 147, 171, 174, 177, 185, 213, 215, 223–226, 232, 241, 246, 252, 254, 291 contextualization  254 contingency  240, 273–274, 276–278, 292, 293 contradiction  30, 31, 159, 184, 215, 216 explicit  159 formal  157 law of  25, 26 non-  93 paradox of  93 self-  93 contradictory  17, 24, 41, 90, 97, 106, 159, 237, 286, 288 contraposition  156 controversial  48, 78, 121, 125–127, 131, 136, 145, 146, 164, 211, 213, 215, 267, 270 controversiality  3–5, 12, 136 controversy  ix, xv, 3, 4, 14, 20, 25, 26, 37, 38, 101, 106, 125, 126, 135, 138, 141, 148, 165, 166, 173, 176, 179, 182, 194, 195, 209, 211–219, 221, 223, 224, 232, 241, 242, 249, 251, 263, 279 absence of  28 ambivalence about  43, 47–49 and pluralism  24 as debate  55 as instrument  29–32, 210, 287, 293 between the houses of Hillel and Shammai  19, 28, 29, 31 biblical  31, 45 celestial  43–46 elimination of  55 emergence of  24, 49. 50, 51 form of  241 intractable  33 judicial  217 legal  17, 209, 211–213, 215, 216, 218, 219 negative attitude to  18, 47, 49, 50, 56 pervasiveness of  17, 24, 49 philosophical  211 positive attitude to  18, 43, 54, 56, 71 practice of  x, xi, 133

proliferation of  51, 52 scientific  xiv, xvi, 211, 215–219, 223, 270, 273, 276, 278 social implications of  52 spectrum of  12, 28, 267–278 theological repercussions of  52 tolerance of  56, 13 tradition of  ix-xii, xiv-xv, 281–295 two senses of  34, 55 validity of  86 Coras, J. de  197 Corsano, A  175, 177 cosmology  11–13, 142 Cossack  5 co-text  224, 225, 227 counter-possible conditional  153 Covarrubias, D. de  184 Crüger, J  186, 193 Cua, A.S  103–105, 120 Cui, Q  85 Culpeper, J  251 culture  5, 6, 63, 253–255, 271, 273 ancient  ix cross-  xi definition of  xii homogeneous  253, 254, 259 specificity  x Western 125–138 D Dai Dongyuan  117–119, 120 Dajani, M  285 Dannhauer, J.K  186 Daoist  86, 87, 91, 93, 96, 97, 100, 110, 117 Dascal, M.  x, xi, 3, 4, 12, 126, 138, 173, 174, 221–224, 232, 241, 246, 247, 249, 266, 295 Dascal, V  295 Dawkins, R  251, 257 daxing 109 see also embodiment debate  xi, 4, 5, 8–12, 10, 12, 53–56, 101, 103, 106, 108, 115, 116, 118–123, 125–136, 141, 163, 166, 167, 184, 221, 257, 272, 274 constraints of  56 Great  xv, 85–100 live  10, 17 model  13

Index  Mytilenean  7 poem  75, 77 Sumerian  63–83 debating  13, 43, 104, 125, 127–131, 133, 136, 220, 270, 294 self-  218 decision-making  21, 25, 31, 35, 40, 54, 217 de-fixation  285, 294 Defoort, C  85 De Man, P.  xv democracy  129, 133, 193, 196, 281 demonstration  67, 68, 75, 85, 100, 132, 275, 277 see also proof Deng Xi  89 denial  283 Descartes, R.   xiv, 269 desire  38, 43, 55, 101–121, 261, 293 logic of  112 Detienne, M  5 dialectic  100, 110, 125, 127, 129, 132, 139, 141, 142, 146, 148, 154, 172, 175, 181, 183–185, 188, 189, 191, 195, 197, 198, 221, 238, 282, 283 dialectician  90, 96, 98 dialectics  63, 96, 97, 130, 142, 165, 167, 184, 189–191, 197, 199, 288 dialogic  x, xii, 65, 72, 76, 82, 83, 128, 131, 283 dialogue  xi, xii, 17, 59, 67, 76, 82, 85, 95, 101, 125, 127, 133, 134, 136, 138, 225, 283, 287, 294 cross-cultural  ix, xi, xii duty of  128 form  128, 135 oral technique of  72 philosophical  95 dichotomy  xi1, 18 Dilthey, W  237 disagreement  5, 12, 26, 37, 42, 51, 118, 126, 127, 151, 153, 158, 160, 164, 225, 227, 231, 237, 247, 270, 291 see also agreement discipline  ix-xvi, 14, 122, 142, 143, 174, 182, 183, 189, 191, 217, 221, 230, 235

discourse  17, 56, 65, 68, 71, 73, 76, 82, 86, 91, 96–98, 103, 120, 174, 176, 198, 211, 212, 221, 249, 255, 256, 290 scientific  166 discussion  3, 6, 13, 17–19, 24, 32, 33, 36, 38, 45, 47, 53, 54, 59, 60, 66, 76, 83, 87, 94, 96, 105, 107, 110, 115, 116, 120, 121, 126, 127, 134, 138, 142–147, 156, 158, 164, 170, 184, 185, 189, 191, 206, 213, 222, 225, 246, 251, 252, 256, 259, 291, 292 dispositio  188, 189, 198, 205 disputatio  129, 134, 141–149, 185 see also scholastic dispute  79, 189 see also disputatio disputing  30, 73, 87, 88, 127, 135, 151–164, 217 dissent  5, 6, 11, 28, 38, 135, 179, 290 dissenting  4, 29, 32–34, 36–38, 48, 56 see also minority “do not form factions”  54 see also sectarianism double-headed  287 Dreyfus affair  224, 226 Dubs, H.H  106 DuFon, M.A  251 Duns Scotus, J  159 Durkheim, E  223–247 Durrant, S.W  10 duty  48, 53, 67, 73, 102, 117, 121, 125, 126, 128, 131, 136, 184, 187, 214, 219 Dworkin, R  212 E early modern  5, 165, 170, 177, 181, 183, 185, 199, 270 East  1, 79, 138, 151, 152, 153, 163, 164, 265 Eastern  79, 151, 152, 188 Ebbesen, S  164 eclecticism  x education  8, 65, 71–78, 82, 87, 122, 125, 127, 129, 130, 135, 137, 141, 167, 188, 254, 272 Eelen, G  251, 253–255, 262 Ehem, C  197 either-or  31–33, 60 Elijah  20, 26, 27, 55, 61

 Traditions of Controversy Elswych, J. von  186 embodiment  105, 109, 116, 253, 254 Engisch, K  221 Enmerkar and Ensuhgirana  73, ˘ 75 Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta  79 entailment  155–157 perfect  155, 156 imperfect  156 epideixeis  8 epistemic  21, 22, 30, 273 epistemology  119, 132, 137, 244, 274 Erasmus  129, 179 ethics  9, 11, 90, 104, 119, 132, 142, 181, 185, 186, 198, 211, 270 ethos  132 Everaerts, N  189 evidence  11, 13, 26, 27, 50, 65, 66,72, 90, 111, 128, 136, 145, 161, 162, 215, 216, 250, 259, 292 ex impossibili quodlibet  155 exact  143, 225, 292 exegesis  25, 35, 36, 41, 57 exegetical  27, 39, 58, 295 experiment  256, 267–269, 272–275, 277–279, 288 experimental  173, 267–270, 274–278 experimentation  268, 272 experimentum crucis  267–269 explanation  21, 22, 33, 42, 44, 50, 100, 106, 122, 123, 184, 233, 235, 247, 269, 275 expositio terminorum  144 F Fable of the Fox  76 face  9, 12, 49, 65, 106, 132, 211, 213, 218, 252, 261, 262 fiction, legal  216 Filioque  151–153, 162 Finocchiaro, M  128, 130 Fish, S.  115, 116 Flückiger-Hawker, E  80 follow the majority  19, 20, 34, 37, 38, 41 see also majoritarian principle Foriers, P  214 form, proper  101, 105, 106, 122 see also controversy and dialogue

formal  160, 161, 163, 164 see also consequence Forstner, C  186 Franciscus of Ferrara  145 Fraser, B  252 freedom of choice  30 Freigius, I.T  190, 191, 205 Freudenthal, G  223, 241 Frisby, D.P  228, 229, 234, 238, 245, 246 Fukushima, S  253 Fulgosio, R  184, 185 Fumaroli, M  165 G Gal, O  279 Galen, C  198 Galilei, G.  xiii, 128, 130, 137, 181, 212 Gambaro, P.A  189, 190 Gao, L.S  97 Gaozi  101, 102 Geertz, C.  xi, 259, 263 Gemara  31, 41, 45, 47, 48 Gensini, S  165, 175, 179 Gephart, W  246 Gerhard, J  186, 192, 193 Gerondi, Rabbi N. (Ran)  37, 38, 40, 43, 44, 60 Gersonides  148 Gibbs, R.W  253 Giddens, A  240, 247 Gilby, Th  136 Gileah see concubine Giuliani, A.  212 Glassner, J.J  83 Gloning, Th  166 Gluckman, M  4 Goffman, E  251 Golato, A  259 Gongsun Long  90, 91, 94–98, 100 Gongsun Longzi see Gongsun Long Gorgias  8, 12, 85, 89, 128, 129 government  6, 11–13, 90, 113, 133 Graham, A.C  85, 87, 92, 96, 100 Great Debate see debate Great Schism  151, 164 Greece  3–6, 8–10, 12–15, 128, 130, 265

Greek  7–10, 12, 14, 15, 63, 99, 125, 126, 128, 151, 196, 198 Gribaldi Moffa, M  190 Grice, H.P  251 Grotius, H  184, 185 Gu, Y  250, 252, 257 Guo, Q  91, 97, 98 Gutting, G  117, 119 H Hamas  284 Hanfeizi  10, 11 Haraway, D  270, 271, 272 harmony  64, 68, 70, 71, 83, 125, 136, 214 He, Z  252 heart  35, 50, 55, 65, 68, 81, 90, 106, 108, 111–113, 116, 120, 122, 163, 217, 227, 258, 290 heavenly voice  18–23, 30–33, 39, 40, 43, 44 Hebrew  19, 60, 149, 196 Hegendorff, C  189–191 Heidegger, M  250 Held, G  251 Herbeck, D  127 Herder, J.G  250 hierarchy  9, 49, 5, 118, 121, 171, 211, 217, 238, 289, 290 Hill, B  261 Hillel see house of Hillel Hippocratic corpus  8 historical  12, 25, 27, 28, 49–51, 56, 85, 86, 95, 104, 105, 110, 116, 125, 127, 135, 153, 166, 195, 210, 213, 217, 218, 221, 223, 226, 237, 242, 246, 264, 276, 285, 290, 293 historiography  15, 267, 272–276 history  4, 14, 28, 60, 63, 67, 78, 82, 85, 101, 105, 119, 125–127, 164, 183, 186, 194, 209, 216, 219, 223, 231, 242, 254, 272–274, 276, 278, 279, 284, 285, 297–299 see also science Hoe vs. Plough  64, 66, 68 Hoen, P.H. von  186, 192 Holtgraves, T  261 Homer  6 honor  80 Hooke, R  268, 269, 276 Hopper, J  197, 198

Horowitz, Rabbi I. (Shela)  41– 43, 60 Hou Han Shu  10 house of Hillel  18–61 house of Shammai  18–61 Hui Shi  89, 94, 95 Hui Shih see Hui Shi Hulsewé, A.F.P  9 humanism  165 Hutton, E  121 I Ibn Rushd  282, 288–290 Ibn Sina  289 Ide, S  253 imitation  257 impasse  20 see also stalemate impoliteness see politeness incoherence  288, 289 incommensurability  110, 290 India  6, 12 individual  80, 229, 237, 244 induction  119, 183, 289 innovation  3, 4, 11, 13, 14, 24, 71, 75, 215, 281, 282, 285 inseparability  155 intelligibility  76, 289 intention  in-action  284, 285 we-  284, 285, 290- 292, 295 interlocutor  xi, xii, 56, 85, 91, 95, 102 interpretive  59, 83 intolerance  136, 289 invective  72 inventio  188, 205 irenic  3 Irigaray, L  249 irony  21, 98, 128, 171, 233 Islam  149, 283, 289, 290 Israel  28, 31, 36–38, 45, 49, 50, 52, 263, 282, 285, 286, 288, 290, 292 “it is not in heaven”  20, 38 Iunius, M  186 Iwakuma, Y  164 J Janney, R.W  261 Jaworski, A  251

Index  Jewish  17, 18, 48, 56, 59, 60, 148, 226, 281, 284, 290, 294 law  17, 60 tradition  59, 294 Ji, Z  86, 87 Johansson, S  250 John of Casali  146 John of Jandun  144–146, 149 Johnson, M  126, 170 Judaism  283, 289 Jurisprudence  190, 191 jury  7, 9, 220 justice  133, 184, 185, 198, 214, 215, 221, 257, 285–287, 291, 293 K Kahl, J  192 kalam  288 Kang, S.T  82 Kang, Y  119, 120 Kasper, G  250, 251, 255 Keckermann, B  82, 183, 187, 188, 191, 198 205, 206 Kelsen, H  205 Keplerian  235, 236 Kirchner, H  186, 187, 193 Klein, J  82 Klein-Braslavy, S  148 Kline, T.C  111, 121 Knight, C  250 Knoblock, J  89, 90, 102, 106, 109 König, R  186, 187 Koran  289, 290 Kramer, S.N  82 Kristeller, O  165 Kuhn, Th.  xiv, 103, 104, 114, 115, 117, 122, 277 Kühn, K.G  198 Kung-sun Lung see Gongsun Long L Lagus, K  191 Lakoff, G  126, 170 Lakoff, R.T  251, 253 Lambert, W.G  83 Laozi  96 Lapinkivi, P  82 Lare, J  133 La Reberterie, J. de  190 Latour, B  279 Lau, D.C  102, 121, 122 law court  8 Lawn, B  146

Leech, G.N  251 Legge, J  88 Leibniz, G.W.   xvi, 126, 138, 167, 173–179, 197, 216, 217, 221, 282, 290, 291 Leon Joseph  148 Levine, D.N  235, 242, 245, 246 Levinson, S.C  251, 261 Lewis, C.I  157 Lewis, M.E  10 li  101, 104, 107, 120–122, 250 Li, D.S  122 Li, S.L  92, 93, 97 Liebenthal, C  186, 187, 193, 205 Lieberman, P  250 Lin, H.S  97 Lipsius, I  194, 195 Lloyd, G.E.R.  x, xi, 11, 12, 15 Loccenius, I  186 Locke, J  221 logic see ancient, connexive, consequence, controversy, desire, nature, and validity definitional  96 perfect  89 Lotman, I  11, 12 Lozi  4 Lukes, S  237, 238 Luther, M  130 M MacBride, F  260 McCall, S  156 McMullin, E  126 Maffesoli, M  246 Maharal  28, 60 Maioragio, A.M.C. di  166–174, 176–179 majoritarian principle  7–9, 19, 32, 39, 40, 49 majority  20, 32, 55, 154 follow the  19, 20, 34, 37, 38, 41 Makdisi, G  148 Makeham, J  86 Mariotte, E  268, 269, 275–279 Marras, C.  167, 173, 175 Martin, C.J  157, 158, 164 Matthew of Gubbio  147 Matthiae, C  186, 187 Mauss, M  227 maximal proposition  154, 156, 159, 161

 Traditions of Controversy meaning, xiv  24, 156, 164, 197, 218, 269, 274 assignment of  45, 46 biblical  23 change of  36 fixed  45 halakhic  54 incompatible  23 ironical  128 see also irony literal  289 of definition  156 opposite  125 speaker  257 utterance  257 Medieval  72, 79, 130, 139, 164, 174 see also Middle Ages Meier, A.J  261 Meiri, Rabbi M., 33 Melanchthon, P  191, 198, 205 meme  251, 257, 265 Mencius  11, 87, 88, 102, 105, 121, 122 see also Mengzi Meng Ke 89 see also Mengzi Mengzi  87–90, 95, 101–103, 105–111, 114, 118–120 see also Mencius Mesopotamia  63, 70, 79, 297 Mesopotamian  63, 67, 76, 78, 79, 80, 82 metaphor  xiv, 43, 46, 69, 102, 103–105, 110, 116, 120, 122, 126, 127, 134, 164, 166, 167, 173, 175, 177, 217, 234, 247, 271 cognitive role of  176 conceptual  170 metaphysics  122, 142, 151, 160, 161, 163, 171, 185, 264 method  186, 189, 191, 243 metonymy  239, 282 Middle Ages  141, 148, 165, 183 see also Medieval Midrash  27 Mill, J.S  130, 136 Mills, C.W  260, 261 Mills, S  251, 253, 254 ming  85, 86, 91, 93, 95–97, 101 minority  8, 32, 35, 39, 54, 55, 290 see also dissenting Mintz, Rabbi M. (Maharam Mintz)  44, 61

Mishna  22, 32–34, 47, 48, 51, 55–59, 61 mistranslation  231–233, 241 misunderstanding  226, 227, 232, 269 modeling  96, 123 modern  ix, xiii, xv, 4, 5, 11, 76, 85, 96, 99, 101, 120, 129, 162, 176, 189, 194, 197, 198, 211, 213, 216, 217, 223, 226, 228, 240, 245, 247, 270 see also early modern modernity  105, 120, 297 Modi  88, 89 see also Mozi Mohism  87, 91, 93, 95, 97–100 Montaigne, M. de  130 moral agency  103, 110, 121 moral principle  102, 107, 108 Moslem  281, 289 motivational  26–28 Moulton, J  131 Mozi  11, 86–92, 96, 105, 120 see also Modi multiplicity see also pluralism principle  43 of truth  31 of will  213 Muhlhausen, Rabbi Y.L  28 N Naegele, K.D  246 Nahmanides  31, 48, 60 natural  128, 163, 197, 202, 203 law  197, 198, 218, 236 nature acquired  102 inborn  102 of logic  151 negotiation  299 Neidecker, L  190 Neoconfucian  104, 105, 120 Newton, I  267–269, 271–279 Newtonian  235, 236 Nizoli  166–179 Nivison, D.S  110, 117, 118, 121 O obligatio  158, 163 see also ars obligatoria Ockham, William of  160 Olaso, E. de  221 Olbrechts-Tyteca, L  81, 211

Oldenburg, H  268, 271, 272 Oldendorp, J  190 On the Nature of Man  8 ontology  31, 122, 233, 239, 240, 267, 270, 278 opposition  20, 76, 83, 85, 91, 102, 113, 115, 131, 136, 142, 151, 164, 176, 184, 218, 219, 233, 245, 275, 285, 286, 288, 289 optics  268–274, 276 organon  173 oven of akhnai  20, 44, 59 P Palestine  59, 60, 283, 288 Palestinian  281, 282, 286, 292, 295 Authority  285 Panofsky, E.  xv Papilloud, C  225, 227, 245 paradigm  9, 14, 103, 114, 117, 122, 131, 137, 157, 209, 211, 233, 268, 270 paradox  91, 93, 96, 97 Pascal, B  258, 261 Pavlov, I.P  135 peace  294 Perelman, C  81, 209–216, 219, 221, 222 Pérez de Ayala, J.L  216, 220 Perspective  65, 66, 69, 71, 75, 115, 131, 136, 138, 282 cultural  12 God’s  25 human  25 logical  96 ontological  267–279 overall  28 shift of  285 social  68 universal  xi persuasion  9, 85, 287, 290 philosophical argument  13 debate  130, 175, 177 discussion  13 controversies  209–213, 218 truth  133, 172 philosophy Aristotelian  171, 172 Chinese  81–100, 103–105, 107, 110, 121 Greek  63 of law  221

of malleability  211 of science  114 practical  181–206 Scholastic  165 social  239 Western  85, 86 Plato  9, 128, 138 Platonic  113, 128, 211 pleasure  xi, 71, 77, 125–138 pluralism  60, 132, 227, 289, 294 see also multiplicity halakhic  331 principle  24, 35, 37, 227 Plutarch  128 polemical  98, 101, 110, 134, 146, 149 polemics  3–5, 8, 11, 14, 87, 91, 125–128, 130, 131, 134, 135, 138, 167 politeness  xi, 132, 170, 251–265 and sincerity  257 evaluation  252, 253 language and  256, 257, 259 predictability of  260–262 social-norm view of  252, 254–256, 259, 260–262 politics  5–13, 87–90, 127, 135–137, 183–190, 192–198, 225, 270, 282–284, 288–291 Popkin, R.H  131 Poro  6 positio impossible  158, 159, 162, 163 possible  158 post-modern  xv, 104, 271 power  10, 38, 71–76, 83, 95, 100, 108, 109, 127, 132, 135, 196, 211, 213, 216, 219, 249, 251, 269, 270, 271, 272, 274 practice  30, 31, 130, 133 see also philosophy, practical pragmatic  56, 175, 216, 287 pragmatics  x, xi, 94, 166, 170, 232, 255 predictable  261 see also unpredictable predictive  249, 259, 260, 263 presumption  40, 215, 216 juris et de jure  215, 216 procedure  19, 53, 129, 134, 153, 158–160, 217, 221, 255, 289, 293 administrative  73 analogic  69 arbitrary  4

Index  Chinese  10 controversial  78 decision  xiv disputational  146, 151, 163 for majority vote  8 judicial  212, 216 legal  212 of radical circumscription  159, 160 no appeals  7 reasoning  96 rule-governed  158 proof  19, 20, 22, 36, 41, 69, 106, 144, 153, 157, 159, 213, 232, 292 see also demonstration burden of  171, 215 prophet  23, 24, 27, 55 Protestant, xv  185, 290, 291 prudence  125, 181, 182, 188, 194, 195, 197 pseudophilosopher  165, 167, 169, 170 Pufendorf, S  197 punishment  9, 11, 51, 52, 61 Q quaestio  142, 184, 185 Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes  xiii-xvi, 173 Qian, M  100 Qian, S  100 Quintilian, M.F  130 R Rabin, Y  281 radical circumscription  159, 160 Rammstedt, O  224–227, 245, 246 Ramus, I  190, 204 Rashi  26, 42, 61 rationality  116, 173, 210, 211, 217, 219, 220, 222, 242, 287, 291, 292, 293 real distinction  161 reason  172, 221, 272, 274, 289 balance of see scales of barbarous  172 calculative  291 formal  291 imperfection of  210, 211, 213 natural  128, 131 personal  236, 272 scales of  26, 216, 217, 291–293

reasonable  8, 129, 136, 214, 246, 254, 257, 262, 267, 277, 278, 282, 291, 292, 294 reconciliation  70, 167, 281, 282, 283 see also conciliation redaction  145 Reddy, M.J  246 Reding, J.P  85, 93 reframe  23, 36 re-framing  282, 285–287, 294, 295 Reinink, G.J  63 relativism  x, 93, 131 religion  9, 225, 233, 288 religious  6, 70, 136, 148, 179, 196, 230, 231, 272, 293 Renaissance  125, 128, 149, 173, 174, 176, 177 reputation  8, 9, 13, 125, 168, 230 revelation  288, 289 rhetoric  10, 63–68, 70–71, 78, 81, 85, 89, 90, 98, 110, 119, 128, 130–135, 139, 165–168, 170–176, 231, 233, 269–271, 274, 276 riddle  74, 75 right  91–94, 129, 131, 133, 144, 185, 212, 232, 273, 293 answer  141, 142, 144, 145, 260 cause  134 Christian  271 definition  193 disposition  187, 189 historical  285 human  290 individual  215, 217 method  187–189 of debating  129, 130 of discussing  125, 128, 136 of possession  287 of precedence  67 of return  285 order  187–189 to distinguish  278 to fight  184 to resist  186, 196 to speak  6 universal  285 way  182, 184, 193 Ritba, Rabbi Y. of Seville  25, 35, 41, 42, 48, 53, 60 Rome  10, 130, 149 Rorty, R  211 Rossi, P  177

 Traditions of Controversy Rossiter, C  133 Roth, M  83 Royal Society  267, 268, 271, 272 Ruben, W  6 Rummel, E  148 Russell, B  262 Rüting, T  135 S sage  6, 23, 24, 27, 43, 86, 88, 90, 96, 102, 106–109, 120, 121 Sallaberger, W  82, 83 sampling  253, 255, 256 Sanhedrin  27, 36, 56–58 Sato, M  104, 105 Saussure, F. de  260 Schaberg, D  10 Schaffer, S  268–275, 277 Schelling, F.W.J. von  197 Scherb, P  192 scholastic  141, 142, 148, 184 scholasticism  175 science, history of  210, 272, 276, 278 language of  167 notion of  167, 210, 241, 270, 271 reason of  211 scientific  10–14, 114–117, 166, 181, 187, 197, 199, 207–216, 218- 225, 230, 234, 235, 243, 246, 260, 262, 268–274, 276, 278 see also controversy and discourse scribal curriculum  71, 72, 76 Scripture  30, 34, 35, 37, 39, 41, 48, 59, 295 see also Bible and Torah Searle, J.R  295 sectarianism  51, 54, 288, 289 sedes materiae  187, 190 semiotics  94, 96–98, 297 Seneca the Elder  130 Sextus Empiricus  89 Shammai see house of Shammai Shapiro, A  268–274, 279 Sharpe, J  146 Sheep vs. Grain  64, 68 Shen Dao  89 Shi  89, 94, 95, 120 Shiji  11 Shi Qiou  89 Shulgi  72, 73, 75, 82

Shulgi Hymn  72, 73 Sifianou, M  250, 251, 266 Silver vs. Copper  67, 69, 70, 82 Simmel, G  223–247 simplification  156, 157, 254, 282 Sirat, C  148, 149 Sivin, N  10–12 Sjöberg, A.W  82 social see also controversy determinism  254 fact  233, 238, 239 group  225 norm  252- 254 strife  34, 55 type  239 sociological  129, 225–227, 229, 230, 232, 237, 239, 244 sociology  229, 230, 243, 244 Socrates  9, 12, 128, 154–160 Solomon  282, 286- 288 Song Yan  89 sophist  94 Sorokin, P  235 Soto, D. de  184 Speidel, J.J  190, 191 Sperber, D  257 stalemate  13, 20 see also impasse statistics  231, 246, 256 Stephani, M  190 stereotype  70, 105, 260, 285 strategy  32, 33, 65, 68–70, 88, 95, 98, 127, 132, 134, 35, 151, 170, 173, 215, 227, 252, 264, 286–289, 291 Stroll, A  131 subversion  71 suicide  236 Sumer  63, 65, 71, 72, 74, 76–83 summa  170, 185, 198, 204 Summer vs. Winter  64, 81 Sun, Y  92, 96 Sun, Z.Y  96 syllogism  100, 142, 146, 153–156, 167, 173 T Taiwan  104, 138, 297 Talmud  xi, xv, 17–62 Babylonian  58, 59, 62 Jerusalem  19, 21, 24, 35, 36, 45, 59, 60, 62 Tamaris vs. Palm  76

Tan, Z.B  87 Tannaim  19, 21, 48, 58, 57, 61 Tannaitic  19, 21, 48 Tannen, D  131 Tarde, G  242 taxonomy  3, 9, 11 Taylor, T.J  250 Tenbruck, F.H  245–247 Themistius  190 Thucydides  7 Tian Pian 89 Tillmann, B  177 Tiv  4, 14 tolerance  56, 132, 136, 227 topics  100, 141, 153, 189, 190, 191, 200 see also topoi topoi  10, 65–68, 108 see also topics topology  181–206 Torah  17, 20, 24, 25, 27, 28, 31, 34–41, 43, 44, 46, 48, 50, 53, 59–61 see also Bible and Scripture Trabant, J  250 Tree vs. Reed  64 truth criterion of  9, 25 objective  9, 38, 44, 215, 219 philosophical  133 truths  24, 31, 91, 155 Tuo Xiao  89 two heads  287, 288 see also double-headed two mothers  286 U uncertainty  27, 46, 213, 261, 262 understanding  14, 17, 28–30, 3540, 42, 61, 90, 99, 105, 112, 114, 117, 126, 127, 134, 170, 188–190, 209, 227, 228, 238, 241, 246, 249, 251, 258, 269, 282, 285, 287, 289, 293 universal  x, xi, 18, 23, 96, 162, 184, 198, 238, 239, 249, 259, 260, 263, 264, 285, 290 universalism  254 universality  249, 260, 261, 265, 293 unpredictable  181, 183, 262 see also predictable Upanishads  6 Usami, M  261

utopia  56, 113, 213, 214, 217, 221 V validity  246 by antiquity  183 by consensus  25 by convention  25 by human decision  38 dialectical  129, 134 logical  132, 153, 155, 164 normative  55 of controversy  86 of matrimony  194 Van Dijk, J  83 Van Norden, B.W  101, 112, 117, 121 Vanstiphout, H.L.J  63, 71, 74, 81, 82, 83 Varani, G  167, 175, 177, 178 Velstenius, H  193, 194 verdict  12, 64, 71, 73, 82 Vernia, N  146 victory  9, 12, 64, 68, 69, 71, 73, 175, 274 Vigel, N  190, 191 violence modalities of  283 physical  64, 283 verbal  81 violent  19, 71, 231, 282, 288 Vitoria, F. de  184

Index  Volk, K  82 Vulte, H. von  191 W Wang, A  255 Wang, X  254–255 Wang, X.Q  89 war  126, 134 just  125, 134 Ward, S  250 Wardy, R  133 Watson, B  90–92, 94, 95, 97, 105 Watts, R.J  253 Wear, K.S  295 Weigand, E  259 Wei Mou  89 Weijers, O  141, 145, 148 Weinberg, B  165 Weinberg, J.R  184 Werdenhagen, J.A. von  186 West  1, 45, 85–87, 95, 105, 125–127, 134, 138, 149, 151–153, 163, 164, 209, 212, 213, 284 wisdom  20, 38, 56, 74, 75, 79, 83, 145, 181–183, 286–291, 295 see also sage Wilcke, C  76 Wittgenstein, L  262 Wolff, K.H  246 Wolff von Todtenwarth, J.U  186 Wong, D.B  111, 121

Wróblewski, J  210, 219 X Xie, C  250, 251, 253, 257, 259 xin  106, 112 xing  106, 121 xinger  101, 119 xingfan  106, 107 xingshan  101 Xu, Y  255–256 Xunzi  11, 86–90, 96–99, 101–114, 117–121 Y Yang, Z  250 Yang Zhu see Yangzi Yangzi  88–90 Yinwenzi  96 Z Zabarella, G  199, 205, 206 Zempléni, A  6 Zhang, S  254–255 Zhang Xuecheng  117–119 Zhu, Z.K  93 Zhuangzi  11, 86, 87, 90–95, 97, 99, 110, 117, 120 Zionism  226 Zi Si  89

In the series Controversies the following titles have been published thus far or are scheduled for publication: 5 4 3 2 1

Walton, Douglas: Dialog Theory for Critical Argumentation. 2007. xviii, 308 pp. Dascal, Marcelo and Han-liang Chang (eds.): Traditions of Controversy. 2007. xvi, 309 pp. Frogel, Shai: The Rhetoric of Philosophy. 2005. x, 156 pp. Eemeren, Frans H. van and Peter Houtlosser (eds.): Argumentation in Practice. 2005. viii, 368 pp. Barrotta, Pierluigi and Marcelo Dascal (eds.): Controversies and Subjectivity. 2005. x, 411 pp.