Via Moderna & mini-workshop in Ancient Philosophy

On Wednesday 19 March we're hosting two guest speakers as part of a mini-workshop in Ancient Philosophy. Our guest speakers are Prof. Pavol Labuda, from the University of Olomouc (Czech Republic), who visits us for that week on an Erasmus exchange programme, en Prof. Dominic Scott from the University of Oxford. The topics of their talks (see abstracts below) are Aristotle's concept of rationality and epiphany in Plato and Tolstoy.

We hope to see you there!

Hannah Laurens & Han Thomas Andriaenssen

Wednesday 19 March 2025

13.00–14.15 Via Moderna: Han Thomas Adriaenssen, Suárez on the Contingency of Causal Origins
14.30–15.45 Pavol Labuda, Palacký University of Olomouc, Is Aristotle's Conception of Rationality Transformative or Additive?
16.00–17.15 Dominic Scott, University of Oxford, Tolstoy and Platonic Inspiration
17.30 drinks
18.15 dinner

Abstracts

Pavol Labuda, University of Olomouc, Is Aristotle's Conception of Rationality Transformative or Additive?

In his papers (2012, 2016, 2017) Matthew Boyle argues for a transformative account of Aristotle’s conception of rationality. Although Boyle states that he is not concerned with historical veracity, he meticulously justifies not only the substantive but also the interpretive correctness of Aristotle’s transformativism. I criticize Boyle’s interpretation of Aristotle for contradicting three important points of Aristotle’s philosophy: (i) the extensional definition of the human soul as a set of three operatively irreducible and mutually irreplaceable explanatory parts, (ii) the operative autonomy of perceptual faculty (whose results, though they can and ought to be, are not necessarily regulated or transformed by our rational faculty), and (iii) the otherness of rationality, which, according to Aristotle, enters into the overall model of the human soul from outside. Hence, the aim of the critical part of my paper, is to show that if we were to adopt a transformativist interpretation of rationality à la Boyle, we would lose the very moments by means of which Aristotle’s model captures and accounts for such qualitatively different types of human behaviour as instinctive behaviour, habit, and action based on rational decision.

However, I do not end with a critique of Boyle’s position. I argue directly in favour of an additive account of rationality in Aristotle and claim that the explanatory robustness of Aristotle’s model of the human soul is based precisely on the fact that rationality is the additional cognitive faculty which has a power to transform the material acquired by means of perception but only when it is initiated and properly developed through some normative practice. My argument for an additive and normative account of rationality is based on a certain interpretation of Sens. 1, 4-17: our perceptual faculties (specifically, our faculty of hearing) must function operationally independent of our faculty of rationality, because when we listen to the speech we do not speak, the result of our auditory perception is, though discerned, but still non-conceptual. The content of our auditory perception turns conceptual only when we are familiar with the normative rules of a particular language (the syntactic and semantic rules), when we know how the parts of that language are related to the world and/or to our practice of thinking and feeling. Only then we grasp the content of perception (conceptually) and we are ready to start working with the conceptual content in a mode as if (we are able to make inferences). I conclude that normative practice (of a language) is necessary in order to initiate and properly develop our rational practice (in order to play the inferential game of giving and asking for reasons).

Dominic Scott, University of Oxford, Tolstoy and Platonic Inspiration

One of the best-known themes in Plato is the idea of a journey from the mundane to the eternal, most famously represented in the cave allegory of the Republic, but also described in the Symposium, Phaedo and Phaedrus, where it is closely linked to discussions of love and death. The notion has metaphysical, ethical and epistemological aspects, bringing with it a whole cluster of other well-known themes in Plato: in metaphysics, the distinction between forms and particulars; in epistemology, the theory of recollection; in ethics, the purification of bodily desires and other passions.

Quintessentially Platonic, this cluster of ideas has played a major role in the philosopher’s reception. This paper looks at the way it plays out in certain episodes in Tolstoy’s fiction. Tolstoy had a life-long interest in Plato and ranked him very highly among the philosophers he studied. My focus will be on the way in which some of the Platonic themes just described manifest themselves in specific episodes in Tolstoy: passages in which a central character experiences an epiphany or similar process of inspiration, taking him from a mundane level of experience towards an entirely new one, sometimes described as infinite, eternal or divine. As in Plato, this new perspective transforms his previous outlook and is sometimes represented in terms of recollection and as a kind of catharsis.

Some of these Platonic epiphanies are to be found in Tolstoy’s most famous novels, War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Indeed, two of them are prompted by a character encountering a peasant named Platon, which makes it appropriate to group these passages together. In addition, I highlight a short passage in The Kreutzer Sonata, which I think also counts as an epiphany, even though it is only fleeting. Because it has clear similarities to passages from War and Peace and Anna Karenina, it makes a suitable companion to the other, better-known, epiphanies that I discuss.

Advance reading suggestions

The below offers suggestions for those who wish to read Plato and Tolstoy in advance. However, I shall present my paper in a way that is accessible even if people have not read these works.

Plato:

·       Republic. VI 485a–487a and VII 514a–517al

·       Phaedo 64b–69e and 82c–84b

·       Symposium 210b–211e and 215e–216c

·       Phaedrus 244a–257b

Tolstoy:

• War and Peace. I shall focus on the chapters that describe the moral journeys of two of the main characters, Andrei Bolkonsky and Pierre Bezukhov. For Andrei, see I iii 16 & 19, II iii 19, III ii 24, and IV i 15. The chapters relevant to Pierre all come from vol. IV: i 12–13, ii 11–12, iii 12–14, and iv 12.

• Anna Karenina. My focus will be on the way Levin resolves his existential crisis in Part VIII, chs 11–14.

• The final section of my paper looks at the discussion of music in The Kreutzer Sonata, ch 23.