British Journal for the History of Philosophy 16(4) 2008: 811–833 BOOK REVIEWS Downloaded By: [University of Oxford] At: 10:22 13 March 2009 Christopher Gill: The Structured Self in Hellenistic and Roman Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, pp. xxii þ 522. ISBN 978-0-19815268-2 Christopher Gill’s recent book is both intellectually and physically substantial. Its 500 pages of careful argument and detailed scholarship form a sequel to his previous book Personality in Greek Epic, Tragedy, and Philosophy in which he examined conceptions of personality and self from Homer to the beginnings of Hellenistic thought. In this new work Gill moves forwards to explore conceptions of the self in Hellenistic and Roman thought, and he promises us a further volume devoted to the second century AD (esp. Galen and Marcus Aurelius) to complete a trilogy. The work is divided into three main sections. The first part examines the concept of the structured self in Stoicism and Epicureanism, and this is perhaps the most important part of the work in terms of its programmatic agenda. The second part focuses in on the Stoic theory of the passions and its relationship with Platonism, paying particular attention to Platonist readers of the Stoic theory such as Plutarch and Galen. This effectively functions as a case study for the wider programmatic claims made in the first part. The third part touches on some more theoretical issues raised during the course of the work and also the literary reception of the conceptions of the self that have been discussed. These closing reflections are effectively extended appendices to the main work, but they are no less valuable for that. What does Gill mean by the phrase ‘structured self’? He means the idea that human beings are unified and structured wholes rather than merely a conglomeration of parts. This claim has two aspects to it. The first is a broadly Socratic claim about psychological monism that contrasts with what we usually think of as the Platonic tripartite theory of a soul that is often in conflict with itself. The second is an emphasis on the human being as a unity of soul and body (psychophysical holism), again in contrast to the Platonic focus on the soul as the core of the person, with the body being a mere appendage. It is this double sense of a unified and structured self that Gill attributes to both the Stoics and the Epicureans. On this issue, if not others, Gill argues that the Stoics and Epicureans share much in common and that together they offer a distinctively new approach to the self in ancient thought. The first (and most significant) part of the volume opens with a brief outline of Platonic and Aristotelian accounts of the self as centred on a British Journal for the History of Philosophy ISSN 0960-8788 print/ISSN 1469-3526 online http://www.informaworld.com DOI: 10.1080/09608780802407878 Downloaded By: [University of Oxford] At: 10:22 13 March 2009 812 BOOK REVIEWS specific core in order to contextualize and draw a contrast with the holistic accounts of the self that are the book’s central concern. While the former focus their attention on what part of me is essentially me, the latter are more concerned with what it is that holds me together and gives me a sense of unity. However, Gill is also keen to note the potential Platonic and Aristotelian influences on Hellenistic (and, in particular, Stoic) psychophysical holism, citing Plato’s Timaeus and Aristotelian hylomorphism as possible sources. He also charts the move from Democritean to Epicurean atomism. But regardless of these influences, the important point here is that, notwithstanding their many other philosophical differences, the Stoics and Epicureans share a basic commitment to a naturalism or materialism that leads them to agree about certain essential features of the self: ‘both Stoicism and Epicureanism exhibit, I think, a combination of non-reductive physicalism and non-dualistic interactionism in their thinking about the psyche-body relationship and about advanced psychological functions’ (30). In his introduction to Stoic psychophysical holism Gill draws attention to the important difference between the Stoic conception of self-perception as expressed by the late Stoic Hierocles and modern conceptions of selfconsciousness associated with Descartes. For Hierocles, self-perception or ‘consciousness’ (sunaistheˆsis) applies not merely to humans but also to animals, and includes an animal’s implicit awareness of its entire body and instinctive awareness of its natural capacities. It can also encompass behaviour during sleep. This is close to the modern concept of ‘proprioception’, which refers to ‘that continuous but unconscious sensory flow’ of information from all parts of our bodies to the central or controlling part of the mind that the Stoics called the heˆgemonikon (41). Gill suggests that this approach to self-perception is ‘objectivist’ rather than ‘subjectivist’ and he draws a parallel with the work of Daniel Dennett. In Hierocles, animals (including humans) are analysed from a third-person perspective and viewed as ‘coherent organic psychophysical systems’ (43). At first glance one might think that the fragmented atomism of Epicureanism would offer a model of the self quite different from the organic Stoic model. In his psychology Epicurus is, like the Stoics, a physicalist. For Epicurus this is not merely explanatory physicalism (mental events should be explicable by referring to physical events) but rather, a stronger ontological physicalism (mental events are themselves examples of physical events). Here, Gill follows Everson in rejecting the reading of Book 25 of On Nature which tries to attribute to Epicurus a form of ‘emergent dualism’. This commitment to ontological physicalism in psychology in no way implies that Epicurus holds on to a form of psychophysical holism. While both body and mind may be constituted of atoms, those atoms do not seem to possess any necessary unity. Again, following Everson, Gill suggests that some systems of atoms can only be understood as systems of atoms rather than merely as a collection of constituent elements. The human individual is a psychophysical system of atoms that can only be understood Downloaded By: [University of Oxford] At: 10:22 13 March 2009 BOOK REVIEWS 813 qua system. It is this emphasis on the system that gives Epicurean psychology its psychophysical holism. In particular, the blend of psyche atoms through the body ‘creates a special type of complex unity’ (51), a system that forms the foundation for advanced psychophysical functions such as thought and sensation. In the light of this, Gill concludes that in fact the Stoic and Epicurean positions do share a surprising amount in common. Both offer a physicalist account of the psyche. Both conceive the relationship between mind and body as one of a blending or mixture of different types of physical entity. Both share an interest in physiology and a desire to correlate psychological processes with physiological ones. On this point both schools also share much in common with medical thinking of the day, although it may be better to see this as a convergence of thinking rather than any direct influence one way or the other. Most importantly of all, both schools hold the view that the physical mixture of mind and body is a unity by way of its own complex system or structure. These claims about psychophysical and psychological holism do not on their own constitute what Gill means by the phrase ‘the structured self’, however. This phrase also involves a series of Socratic claims about happiness (eudaimonia) requiring reason, virtue and perfection of character. It is the combination of this famous Socratic ethical thesis with the two types of holism, along with a commitment to ontological naturalism, that forms the distinctive view of the self shared by the Hellenistic philosophies under discussion. The later sections of the book build upon this central thesis about the structured self and use it to look afresh at debates about the nature of emotions in ancient philosophy and the literary reception of ancient philosophical ideas. It is not possible to discuss these at any length here but anyone interested in either of these subjects will find much of interest. One later section worth noting in the present context deals with theoretical issues surrounding subjectivist versus objectivist conceptions of the self (325–407). In Gill’s earlier book Personality in Greek Epic, Tragedy, and Philosophy he argued that up until Aristotle, Greek conceptions of the self were primarily objectivist, in contrast to the subjectivist conceptions of the self that have tended to dominate contemporary thinking about the self. A number of scholars have suggested that it is with the Hellenistic philosophers – the later Stoic Epictetus is often cited – that we find the beginnings of the modern subjectivist conception of the self. Gill is ‘highly sceptical about this idea’ (326) and suggests that in Hellenistic and Roman thought the self continued to be conceived in an objectivist fashion. Attempts to find the origins of the subjectivist self in this period may simply be an anachronistic projection of modern-day preconceptions about the nature of the self. Gill responds to arguments put forward by a number of scholars and situates his own position in opposition to the subjectivist account of the self in this period proposed by Michel Foucault. 814 BOOK REVIEWS In sum, Gill has produced an impressive work that should be essential reading for anyone concerned with Stoicism or Epicureanism, and strongly recommended for those with wider interests in ancient philosophy or anyone interested in the philosophical history of concepts of the self. Although this substantial work looks to be aimed squarely at specialists, its patient and lucid mode of exposition should make it accessible to a much wider philosophical audience. Downloaded By: [University of Oxford] At: 10:22 13 March 2009 John Sellars UWE, Bristol ª 2008, John Sellars Alexander W. Hall: Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus. Natural Theology in the High Middle Ages. London Continuum Studies in Philosophy, pp 170. £65.00. ISBN 0 8264 8589 8 As many theological commentators have noticed, Scotus’s apparently innovative claim that there are concepts under whose extension both God and creatures fall is directed not against Aquinas’s claim that terms predicable of both God and creatures are at best analogous, but rather against a position related to Aquinas’s held by Henry of Ghent. The commentators who – quite rightly – make this historical claim, generally make little effort to explicate what the claim might mean in terms of the way in which relations between the theories of Aquinas, Henry, and Scotus should correctly be understood. Into this rather underdeveloped discussion, Hall’s thesis blows a small breath of fresh air. Hall’s thesis is that the positions of Scotus and Aquinas turn out to be much closer than commentators often assume. He argues the point as follows. According to Aquinas, the analogy of words predicable of God and creatures is explained not by means of any semantic relation between the relevant terms, but rather by means of a metaphysical relation between the attributes signified by the terms. Henry’s claim is that there are analogous concepts predicable of God and creatures, but that this relation is explained neither in semantic nor metaphysical terms. Henry’s position is thus rightly held by most commentators to be somewhat mysterious, and Scotus criticizes it in much this way. Scotus believes that there are concepts that (improperly) apply to both God and creatures, and that the relations between these concepts can be sufficiently analysed semantically. Aquinas holds that there are terms properly predicable of God and improperly of creatures on the basis of a metaphysical relationship that exists between God, as cause, and creatures, as effects. Against Aquinas, Scotus simply does not believe that certain words primarily or properly signify God rather than creatures, since this would require historical knowledge of the ways in which the words were first used, and we have no access to such knowledge. Aquinas’s account