Whether rationalism when concerned with explanations of moral motivation should stand in opposition to the relevant Humean approach is a perplexing question that is oversimplified when reduced to a rationalism vs. Humeanism clear cut opposition about the possibility of rational control over desires.This paper criticizes the significance of this simplification as well as the hypothesis of unitary psychological states constituted by beliefs and desires (referred to as 'besires') and their alleged capacity to secure rational control over desires. Besires contribute in (...) the explanation of moral motivation only indirectly, that is, not as permanent unitary psychological states but only as relatively very short-term 'backgrounds' to subsequently detached matured desires.This interpretation further explored shows that the rational demandfor a genuine rational control over desires presupposes rather than opposing to the Humean belief desire distinctness - the latter actually securing the possibility of genuine moral incoherence as long as we intend to understand it neither as irrationality, nor as psychological deficiency. (shrink)

Moral internalism and moral externalism compete over the best explanation of the link between judgment and relevant motivation but, it is argued, they differ at best only verbally. The internalist rational-conceptual nature of the link’ as accounted by M. Smith in The Moral Problem is contrasted to the externalist, also rational, link that requires in addition support from the agent’s psychological-dispositional profile; the internalist link, however, is found to depend crucially on a, similarly to the externalist, psychologically ‘loaded’ profile. It (...) is also argued that the differentiation of the two competing explanations is insufficient partly because they both fail to consider crucial quantitative parameters of the judgment-motivation link. Such parameters become very important particularly in the light of Smith’s claim that this link is grounded on the observable “striking fact” where changes in the set of one’s moral beliefs systematically bring about changes in one’s moral behavior. Examples of algorithms measuring moral coherence and moral worth are provided to serve as evidence for what it comes down to, vis-à-vis the alleged fact, only a verbal dispute between the two camps. Finally, the ‘misfiring’ of these explanations is understood in connection to the irreducibility of concepts such as ‘moral worth’, and/or, ‘moral sensitivity’. (shrink)

The logical form of an inductive step figures as a deductive fallacy: concluding the antecedent from affirming a conditional and its consequent. In the sphere of practical rationality, however, where concerned with the presuppositions of action and the interactions between beliefs and desires, certain schemata have been proposed that express rational demands on agents who desire things to happen in the world. In this context, if agent A desires to φ and believes that ψ brings about φ, then, A is (...) rationally expected to desire to ψ. But it is equally rational to expect that A’s desire to φ presupposes her belief that a certain state of affairs obtains where φ is a possibility. It then follows that assuming a desire to φ and a belief that ψ brings about φ, we can derive an logical form that approximates that of the above inductive step: the beliefs that φ is possible and that ψ brings about φ entail the belief that ψ is possible. It remains an open question whether this conclusion adequately supports the rationality of the exact inductive schema. (shrink)

A quantitative interpretation is given of the (in)coherence that moral agents experience as a tension between their ordered moral judgments over n physically incompatible actions, and the competitive ordering of motivating intensities (or, desires). Then a model describing one’s tendency to reduce the experienced in-coherence is constructed. In this model, moral sensitivity (S) and desire attachment (e) function as primitives that motivate from opposing perspectives the reduction of incoherence. Two distinct sub-processes of this reduction are therefore initiated by (S) and (...) (e) co-ordinated (more or less efficiently) by the agent’s degree of rationality (R) characteristic of her capacity to handle such internal tensions. This process ends when a new equilibrium between what motivates and what resists (further) reduction has been reached. A macro-equilibrium is described involving (R) constrained by weakness-of-will (W w ). A reinterpretation of the Aristotelian characters (enkratês, akratês, etc.) and an exegesis of Hume’s ‘Calm Passions’ follow as applications. (shrink)

Summary This paper argues that Lampito, the Spartan character who takes part in the pacifist plot of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata (411 BC), has been inspired by both parents of Agis II, the king of Sparta who led the war against Athens at the time of the Peloponnesian War and fortified Deceleia in 413 BC. Agis’ mother bore the quite rare name of Lampito as well; his father, the ‘pacifist’ King Archidamos II, voted against the war at the Spartan Assembly in (...) 432. Aristophanes knew of Archidamos’ speech from oral tradition, possibly from the report of the Athenian ambassadors at Sparta or, alternatively and more probably, from public readings of Thucydides’ account of the pre-war debate that took place in the Spartan Assembly. (shrink)

In this article, an introduction to a proposed more comprehensive treatment of the subject, I wish to discuss the contribution that the parabasis makes to the understanding and interpretation of Aristophanes’ comedies. The study of this part of the plays has in the past concentrated upon two main areas: firstly, its role in the development of comedy, including questions about its original position in the dramatic structure and its relationship to other elements such as the parodos and agon; and (...) secondly, its role as the repository of Aristophanes’ personal views.1I shall touch but incidentally on the first of these, though my argument will have some bearing on it; to the second I shall return at the end. My aim is to consider an aspect of the parabasis that has not so much been neglected as dismissed as non-existent: the relation between the contents of the parabasis and those of the rest of the play. It is generally agreed that the parabasis deals with matters that are irrelevant to the dramatic action, but I wish to argue that it has a significant role as the focus of the most important themes in the play: far from breaking up the unity of the play, the parabasis provides indications as to where that unity is to be found, besides giving hints about the meaning of the play and the nature of Aristophanic comedy generally.2. (shrink)

In 394 most editors of the Knights read, cited uniquely from this passage in the lexica, in the sense ‘dry up, parch’, referring, for the condition and appearance of the prisoners after long captivity and privations, to Nub. 186, where the allusion is to the squalor and emaciation of the Socratics. Now Aristophanes' skill in maintaining allusively an image, once a keyword has been supplied, makes me wonder how line 394 was intended to complete the metaphor of the harvest (...) and the crop in 392–3. (shrink)

Every living science, especially in its early stages, is compelled to devise fresh terms, either by coining new words or by giving new meanings to old ones. Unless and until these fresh terms become absorbed in the vocabulary of everyday speech, their unfamiliarity makes them a target for the shafts of the humourist. There can be no doubt that in the late fifth century B.C. literary criticism was still a new science. We can trace its beginnings in the treatises of (...) the Sophists, many titles of which have been handed down to us. Strepsiades' lesson in metric, though of itself amusing enough, would certainly gain in topical appropriateness if enacted at a time when such investigations were not only much in the air, but were still novel. And the whole ‘Agon’ of the Frogs, the character of which is forecasted in lines 796–802, depicts in the strongest colours the contrasted views of technician and inspirationist. We should therefore naturally expect a play of such a kind, written at such a time, to be full of technical jargon, barely understood by the ‘man in the street,’ and forming the object of his half-contemptuous amusement. That is, I believe, exactly what we do find, to an extent insufficiently recognized. Professor Radermacher, in his recent edition of the Frogs, has rendered valuable service by pointing out the frequent occurrence in that play of technical terms which meet us later in Dionysius of Halicarnassus and other critics. But I believe that technical language lurks unsuspected in many other passages, though the precise meaning may often be beyond recovery. (shrink)

One of the ironies of literary history is that the survival of Aristophanic comedy and indeed of all Greek drama is due to the more or less faithful transmission of a written text. Reading a play and watching one, after all, are very different sorts of activities. Unlike a book, in which the reader can leaf backward for reminders of what has already happened or forward for information about what is to come, a play onstage can be experienced in one (...) direction only, from ‘beginning’ to ‘end’. Nor can a play be put down and picked up again at one's leisure or interrupted while the audience puzzles over a difficult or intriguing passage. Live theatre is an ephemeral and essentially independent thing, which must be experienced in its own time and on its own terms or not at all, and as a result we modern readers, dependent on the written page, are at a marked disadvantage in understanding ancient drama. Taplin's study of staging in Aeschylus has shed considerable light on the dramatic technique of Athenian tragedy. Stage-practice in Aristophanic comedy, and in particular the ways in which names and naming are used there, has received much less attention. (shrink)

One of the ironies of literary history is that the survival of Aristophanic comedy and indeed of all Greek drama is due to the more or less faithful transmission of a written text. Reading a play and watching one, after all, are very different sorts of activities. Unlike a book, in which the reader can leaf backward for reminders of what has already happened or forward for information about what is to come, a play onstage can be experienced in one (...) direction only, from ‘beginning’ to ‘end’. Nor can a play be put down and picked up again at one's leisure or interrupted while the audience puzzles over a difficult or intriguing passage. Live theatre is an ephemeral and essentially independent thing, which must be experienced in its own time and on its own terms or not at all, and as a result we modern readers, dependent on the written page, are at a marked disadvantage in understanding ancient drama. Taplin's study of staging in Aeschylus has shed considerable light on the dramatic technique of Athenian tragedy. Stage-practice in Aristophanic comedy, and in particular the ways in which names and naming are used there, has received much less attention. (shrink)

It is characteristic of Aristophanes that, in the fifth-century debate on the conflicting moral claims of and he tended to adopt a conservative stance, and in general to support the claims of Most of his plots concern an imbalance.in cosmic order , and the hero's which is undertaken to correct it. Often the cosmic imbalance is caused by the pre-eminence of those who place their own above , and the hero's self-imposed task is to reverse this state of affairs.

The staging of Aristophanes' Ecclesiazusae is complicated considerably by the large number of individual male citizen parts in the play. These include Praxagora's husband Blepyrus, Blepyrus' anonymous Neighbour and his friend Chremes, the First Citizen and the Second Citizen, the Young Man ‘Epigenes’, and the δεσπτης who leads out the Chorus. These are not necesarily all independent characters, but the great difficulty with the play is in deciding precisely who is to be identified with whom. R. G. Ussher, the (...) most recent Oxford editor of the text, distinguishes four separate characters, and divides the parts in the following way. (shrink)

Over sixty years ago, Walter Headlam identified Ecclesiazusae 960–76 as a paraclausithyron, or song sung by an excluded lover from the street to his beloved within. In 1958, however, C. M. Bowra suggested that the whole of Eccl. 952–75 was actually the sole surviving example of a previously unrecognized genre of Greek lyric poetry, the informal love duet. The thesis has been widely accepted, and is adopted by Rossi, Henderson and Silk, as well as by the Oxford editor, Ussher, who (...) rejects Headlam's identification explicitly. Only Zimmermann has failed to embrace Bowra's interpretation wholeheartedly, although he offers no detailed discussion of the passage. In fact, Eccl. 952–75 is not evidence for a lost lyric genre, but a sophisticated literary parody, carefully designed as an elaborate poetic comment on the larger action of the play in which it appears. Bowra's ‘love duet’ is a critical fantasy, whose fictional existence only serves to obscure the real purposes and humour of this Aristophanic love-song. (shrink)

This article argues that Aristophanes'Cloudstreats Socrates as distinctly interested in promoting self-knowledge of the sort related to self-improvement. Section I shows that Aristophanes links the precept γνῶθι σαυτόν with Socrates. Section II outlines the meaning of that precept for Socrates. Section III describes Socrates' conversational method in theCloudsas aimed at therapeutic self-revelation. Section IV identifies the patron Cloud deities of Socrates' school as also concerned to bring people to a therapeutic self-understanding, albeit in a different register from that (...) of Socrates. Section V discusses a sequence of jokes connected to ‘stripping’ that give a concrete image to the search for self-knowledge. Both the action of the Clouds and the tales of cloak-stripping provide models for understanding self-knowledge in a Socratic key. Section VI argues that Socrates' other interest in thephrontistērion, myth-rationalization, is consistent with the promotion of self-knowledge. Section VII supports the claim that Plato'sPhaedrusalludes constantly to theClouds, and because thePhaedruspays careful attention to self-knowledge, Plato must think that theCloudsdoes too. It notes in particular that we can explain the Platonic Socrates' famous self-knowledge-related curiosity about his similarity to Typhon as Plato's allusion to Aristophanes, an allusion made apt by Aristophanes' coordination of Socrates with self-knowledge. Section VIII concludes the paper. (shrink)

This article investigates the relationship between comic speech and political authority in democratic Athens through a reading of Aristophanes’ Knights. The article surveys three different interpretations of how Aristophanes constructs the authority of his comic persona in the play: he contrasts comic speech with rhetorical speech to illustrate the superiority of the former ; he reflexively reveals to the audience the potential deceptiveness of comic speech ; and he mocks his own claims to authority through the construction of (...) a comically boastful persona. It is argued that the final two readings best capture the spirit of Aristophanic comedy, pointing to an affinity between the comic authority constructed by Aristophanes and the democratic conception of authority in operation in classical Athens. (shrink)

Over sixty years ago, Walter Headlam identified Ecclesiazusae 960–76 as a paraclausithyron, or song sung by an excluded lover from the street to his beloved within. In 1958, however, C. M. Bowra suggested that the whole of Eccl. 952–75 was actually the sole surviving example of a previously unrecognized genre of Greek lyric poetry, the informal love duet. The thesis has been widely accepted, and is adopted by Rossi, Henderson and Silk, as well as by the Oxford editor, Ussher, who (...) rejects Headlam's identification explicitly. Only Zimmermann has failed to embrace Bowra's interpretation wholeheartedly, although he offers no detailed discussion of the passage. In fact, Eccl. 952–75 is not evidence for a lost lyric genre, but a sophisticated literary parody, carefully designed as an elaborate poetic comment on the larger action of the play in which it appears. Bowra's ‘love duet’ is a critical fantasy, whose fictional existence only serves to obscure the real purposes and humour of this Aristophanic love-song. (shrink)

This book presents a close, linear reading of Aristophanes’ Birds. It argues that the play provides a continuation and deepening of the author’s critique of the sophists found in Clouds.

Abstract:The Thesmophoriazousai brims with themes of imitation, from its broader tragic parodies to its finer sonic textures. This study uncovers the functions and effects of imitation on the dramatically crucial (but often neglected) verbal level by means of Echo—a bizarre metatheatrical character who embodies the dynamics of mimicking speech and parody. The aural echo is provided as a conceptual frame, illustrating how verbal mimicry functions to both degrade and bolster identity and status in Echo's scene and elsewhere in the play. (...) Echo's speech patterns ultimately serve to perform, manipulate, and expand forms of mimicry in Old Comedy. (shrink)

In 1023ff. the poet explains that he has not been spoiled by success. The verb ༐κτελσαι in 1024 has been suspected, and though recent editors accept it, taking it as absolute, I am far from convinced that it is what the author wrote. Blaydes, in his usual fashion, records conjectures and makes some of his own, but though he hits the mark quite often in Aristophanes as he does in Sophocles, in this passage his efforts, e.g. ༐κγελσαι, fail to (...) satisfy. I propose instead ༐κχαλσαι, ‘relax’. It might be transitive, but I slightly prefer to take it as intransitive. It is a rare word and all the more likely to be corrupted. The best parallel I can find is Hippocrates, De Octimestri Partu 1.2 : ουες ༐υ oσι τυ ρχυ ༐τρøη, ὣσπερ τυ σταχωυ, ζεχλασαυ πρσθευ υαγκαζμευου 祴 τελεως ζαδρυυθυαι τυ καρπυ. The verb is correctly transmitted in the best MS, Marc.gr. 269, while the other main source of the treatise, Vat.gr. 276, offers ζεκλεσαυ9, which is clearly due to an error by a scribe who did not recognize the unusual word required by the context. As to the date of this treatise, it is believed by one of the best modern authorities to be no later than the end of the fifth century and is therefore nearly contemporary with Aristophanes. (shrink)

In 1023ff. the poet explains that he has not been spoiled by success. The verb ༐κτελσαι in 1024 has been suspected, and though recent editors accept it, taking it as absolute, I am far from convinced that it is what the author wrote. Blaydes, in his usual fashion, records conjectures and makes some of his own, but though he hits the mark quite often in Aristophanes as he does in Sophocles, in this passage his efforts, e.g. ༐κγελσαι, fail to (...) satisfy. I propose instead ༐κχαλσαι, ‘relax’. It might be transitive, but I slightly prefer to take it as intransitive. It is a rare word and all the more likely to be corrupted. The best parallel I can find is Hippocrates, De Octimestri Partu 1.2 : ουες ༐υ oσι τυ ρχυ ༐τρøη, ὣσπερ τυ σταχωυ, ζεχλασαυ πρσθευ υαγκαζμευου 祴 τελεως ζαδρυυθυαι τυ καρπυ. The verb is correctly transmitted in the best MS, Marc.gr. 269, while the other main source of the treatise, Vat.gr. 276, offers ζεκλεσαυ9, which is clearly due to an error by a scribe who did not recognize the unusual word required by the context. As to the date of this treatise, it is believed by one of the best modern authorities to be no later than the end of the fifth century and is therefore nearly contemporary with Aristophanes. (shrink)

Only two articles in the past century have attempted reconstructions of this play: Gilbert Norwood in 1930 conjectured a basis in tragic burlesque, specifically a parody of Aeschylus’Edoni, due largely to the presence of Dionysus and a chorus of Babylonians. An entirely different plot was proposed in 1983 by David Welsh, who took as his starting point Herodotus’ account of the fall of Babylon; he thought that the chorus, envisioned as a group of refugees from the Persian empire, reflected the (...) recent arrival in Athens of the grandson of the Persian primarily credited with the capture of Babylon. Though commentators on Aristophanic comedy and politics often affect to be on firm footing about this play, the total dissimilarity of these two reconstructions actually highlights our ignorance. (shrink)