Taylor; Nomos and physis in Democritus and Plato.pdf

NOMOS AND PHUSIS IN DEMOCRITUS AND PLATO

BY C. C. W. TAYLOR

I. INTRODUCTION

In the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., one of the questions central to

Greek thought was that of the relation between how things are in reality,

independent of human thought, and how they are represented by human

thoughts and practices. That is the most general characterization of a

contrast which took different forms in different areas of thought. 1 One of

the most fundamental applications of the contrast was the question of

whether our ordinary beliefs represent things as they really are. Thus, the

fifth-century philosopher-poet Empedocles says (DK31B9) that when we

describe a plant or animal as being generated or as perishing, what is

really happening is not that anything is actually coming to be or ceasing

to be, but simply that portions of the eternal changeless elements, earth,

air, fire, and water, are being mixed together and then separated again; he

comments: “they [i.e., people in general] do not call it what they ought,

but I too comply with their usage.” “Usage” renders nomos, from the verb

nomizein, to have a usage or custom. Nomos is ho nomizetai, what is cus-

tomary or enshrined in usage. The term is standardly contrasted with

phusis, literally “nature,” which in this general contrast is simply the

abstract noun for how things are independent of human thought or belief.

A related sense of nomos is “norm,” or more specifically “law,” derived

from the basic sense via the normativity of custom and usage. In that

sense of nomos, the question of the relation of nomos to phusis is a question

of the status of moral and other norms (including legal norms). Are they

in some sense part of or grounded in the real nature of things, or are they

mere products of human customs, conventions, or beliefs? In this essay, I

shall explore the treatment of some of these issues by Democritus and by

Plato in the Protagoras, the Gorgias, and the Republic. I shall argue that

while in his physical theory Democritus draws a sharp contrast between

the real nature of things and how they are represented by human con-

ventions, in his political and ethical theory he maintains that moral con-

1 On the nomos-phusis contrast in general, see Felix Heinimann, Nomos und Physis: Herkunft

und Bedeutung einer Antithese im Griechischen Denken des 5. Jahrhunderts (Schweizerische Beiträge

zur Altertumswissenschaft 1) (Basel: Verlag Friedrich Reinhardt, 1945; reprinted 1965); W. K. C.

Guthrie, AHistory of Greek Philosophy, vol. 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956),

chap. 4; and Richard D. McKirahan, Jr., Philosophy Before Socrates: An Introduction with Texts

and Commentary (Indianapolis, IN, and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1994),

chap. 19.

C. C. W. TAYLOR

ventions are grounded in the reality of human nature. Plato builds on that

insight in the account of the nature of morality which he puts into the

mouth of the sophist Protagoras in the dialogue of that name. That account

provides material for a defense of morality against the attacks by Callicles

in the Gorgias and Thrasymachus and Glaucon in the Republic, all of

whom rely on the nomos-phusis contrast to devalue morality.

II. DEMOCRITUS

Perhaps the most familiar of the surviving fragments of Democritus is

DK68B9, TD16: 2

By convention sweet and by convention bitter, by convention hot, by

convention cold, by convention color; but in reality atoms and void.

In contrast to atoms and the void, which exist in reality, independently of

how things appear to human beings or how they are believed to be,

sensible qualities such as colors and tastes exist only nomô(i) ; 3 that is,

their existence is in some way relative to the way they appear, or to

conventional ways of characterizing those appearances.

While the basic sense of nomos is “usage” or “custom” (see above), the

related sense of the verb as “hold or believe to be . . .” points toward a

secondary understanding of ho nomizetai as “what is believed.” 4 Hence,

the point of Democritus’s contrast may be either that, whereas atoms and

void exist in reality, sensible qualities in some sense exist by custom or

convention, or that atoms and void really exist, whereas sensible qualities

are (merely) believed to exist (but in fact do not). Sextus Empiricus 5

( M. vii.135; DK68B9, T179a) explicitly interprets Democritus in the latter

way: “In some places Democritus does away with the sensory appear-

ances, and says that none of them appear in reality ( kat ’ alêtheian ) but only

in opinion ( kata doxan ).... For he says, ‘By convention sweet . . . in

reality atoms and void.’ That is to say, the sensible qualities are conven-

tionally considered and thought to exist, but in reality they do not exist,

but only atoms and the void.” Galen, 6 however, interprets the contrast as

that between atoms and void, which exist “according to the nature of

2 Fragments and testimonia of Democritus are enumerated according to the systems

employed in DK and in C. C. W. Taylor, The Atomists: Leucippus and Democritus: Fragments,

A Text and Translation with a Commentary (Toronto, Buffalo, London: Toronto University

Press, 1999). The latter will be abbreviated in the text as T, and each passage cited will be

given its enumeration in both volumes, e.g., “DK68B9, TD16.”

3 The term nomô(i) renders

, the dative singular of

, meaning “by convention.”

The character ( i ) represents the Greek iota subscript.

4 See Liddell and Scott, Greek-English Lexicon, rev. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940),

5 Skeptical philosopher, second century A.D.

6 Medical writer and philosopher, second century A.D.

«ιν

and

NOMOS AND PHUSIS IN DEMOCRITUS AND PLATO

things” and sensible qualities, which “come into being relative to our

perception of them, from the combination of atoms” ( On the Elements

according to Hippocrates 1.2; DK68A49, T179d). Galen says that nomô(i)

means “relative to us” ( pros hêmas ), in contrast with eteê(i), a term of

Democritus’s own coining, which amounts to “in the nature of things”

( kat’ autôn tôn pragmatôn tên phusin ). On this interpretation, Democritus is

distinguishing, not what really exists from what we falsely believe to

exist, but what exists independently of us from what is dependent on our

modes of observation. (Galen is, then, an objective relativist, who holds,

contrary to Sextus’s view that it is false to call an apple red, that the apple

really is red, only not intrinsically, but in relation to perceivers.) Given

that interpretation, the question arises why Democritus should have used

the word nomô(i) to express the idea “relative to us as perceivers.” A

possible explanation is that he may have been relying (a) on an estab-

lished contrast between the way things are in reality and the way we

describe them via linguistic conventions, and (b) on the belief that our

linguistic conventions of description are shaped by our sensory experi-

ence. Evidence for (a) is provided by the fragment of Empedocles cited

earlier: (b) amounts to the belief that we describe things as being such

and such ultimately because they seem to us to be such and such—for

example, that we call grass green because it looks green.

Democritus may then be taken (following Sextus) as maintaining

that things are not in fact flavored or colored, but are merely (falsely)

called so (because that is how they seem to be), or (following Galen)

as maintaining that things are flavored, colored, etc., not intrinsically,

but insofar as that is how they seem to us and, consequently, how we

(conventionally) describe them. It may be that Democritus did not in

fact distinguish these two theses, which are not in any case sharply

distinguished from one another, since it is frequently disputed how far

something’s being generally regarded as F, or called F, is constitutive of

its actually being F.

Democritus (like Empedocles) thus makes explicit use of the contrast

between reality and convention (or belief ) in the context of physical

theory, not in a moral or political context. The contrast had already been

drawn in the latter area by Archelaus, reportedly a teacher of Socrates and

hence probably a generation older than Democritus. Archelaus is reported

by Diogenes Laertius 7 ( Vitae Philosophorum ii.16; DK60A1) as saying that

the just and the shameful are so (or “exist”) not by nature but by con-

vention: to dikaion einai kai to aischron ou phusei, alla nomô(i). In its moral

application, the contrast clearly allows for the same ambiguity as we have

identified above in the physical sphere. On the one hand, we have the

thesis that, though we believe some things to be just and some shameful,

nothing is in fact just or shameful. Hence, all our moral beliefs are false;

7 Biographer, probably third century A.D.

C. C. W. TAYLOR

this amounts to what is called an “error theory” of moral belief. 8 On the

other hand, we have the thesis that things are just, or shameful, not

intrinsically, but insofar as there is an established usage of regarding them

as such. These different versions open the way for more or less radical

criticisms of morality. At one extreme, if all moral beliefs are false, moral-

ity would appear to have the status of a discredited theory, such as

witchcraft or astrology, and a defender of morality would have the dif-

ficult task of showing why it is better to hang on to a set of false beliefs

than to abandon them, and to accommodate to a better theory the phe-

nomena that those beliefs attempted to describe. 9 Somewhat less radi-

cally, the theory that moral characterizations are relative to our social

practices seems to shift the criticism and defense of morality to the level

of those practices themselves. To the extent that those practices are arbi-

trary, grounded in nothing more than local usage or ancestral tradition (or

even the product of conscious fraud perpetrated by interested parties),

the moral judgments that express them are arbitrary too; but to the extent

that those practices can be seen as well-founded (e.g., as meeting funda-

mental human needs, or interests that are constant across a wide range of

different cultures), the moral judgments in which they issue can be

defended as themselves well-founded. It is familiar enough that these

issues were discussed in a wide range of writings of the fifth and fourth

centuries B.C.; 10 in what follows, I shall deal with some traces of these

discussions in Democritus and Plato.

In the ethical and social context, nomos in the sense of “usage” or

“convention” was not sharply distinguished from nomos understood as

“law,” since (on the one hand) established or customary views on what

8 The term “error theory” was introduced by J. L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and

Wrong (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977). See Simon Blackburn, The Oxford Dictionary

of Philosophy (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 125:

error theory . . . a theory according to which everyday thought in some area is suffi-

ciently infected by mistaken philosophical views to be widely in error....Theprin-

cipal problem confronting an error theory is to say how our thinking ought to be

remedied to free us of the error. One suggestion is wholesale eliminativism, counsel-

ling us to abandon the area entirely; other less radical moves would counsel various

cleaning-up operations.

9 To say that this task is difficult is not to say that it is impossible. In various areas of

philosophy, such as philosophy of science and philosophy of mathematics, varieties of

fictionalism seek to show that while certain theoretical statements are literally false, they are

justified in view of their utility in making sense of the relevant phenomena. For a survey of

different applications of this strategy, see M. E. Kalderon, ed., Fictionalism in Metaphysics

(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005); and for its application to moral statements, see M. E.

Kalderon, Moral Fictionalism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005). Applied to moral statements,

the basic idea is that fictionalism achieves the theoretical advantages of noncognitivism

without the implausibility of a nonrepresentational semantics. A moral statement such as

“Infanticide is wrong” expresses a moral proposition, but someone who makes that state-

ment sincerely does not express belief in that proposition (any more than someone who

asserts “Sherlock Holmes lived at 221B Baker Street” expresses the belief that Sherlock

Holmes lived at 221B Baker Street) but some other attitude, such as disapproval of infanticide.

10 See note 1.

NOMOS AND PHUSIS IN DEMOCRITUS AND PLATO

kinds of conduct were admirable, permissible, or disgraceful had nor-

mative force and (on the other hand) law, narrowly understood as the

content of individual or collective legislation, was typically seen as

encapsulating the moral traditions of the community. In the ethical

fragments of Democritus, the term nomos is best understood as apply-

ing to both normative convention and positive law, though individual

uses may indicate that one or other application is primary in the par-

ticular case. Thus, DK68B259, TD123 includes the provision:

According to the ancestral nomoi one may kill an enemy in every

form of community, provided that nomos does not prohibit it.

The fragment then continues by listing three specific forms of prohibition

(viz. the religious enactments of each state, treaties, and oaths). Here we

have, in the first place, ancestral nomoi (plural) common to all kinds of

community, licensing the killing of enemies in all communities whatever

their particular legal system; consequently, these nomoi may or may not be

enshrined in explicit legal enactments, depending on the situation in any

particular community. This universal norm is then limited in the case of

each community by formal legal provisions ( nomos , singular) 11 specific to

that community, of which three kinds are listed. Thus, in a single sen-

tence, the term nomos is applied both to traditional, customary law and to

specific enactments of various kinds, the only difference being that in the

former application the term is plural and in the latter singular. The precise

significance of that difference is unclear; the point may be to emphasize

that what limits the application of the ancestral nomoi is not further nomoi

of the same kind, but a different kind of nomos. We should avoid con-

cluding from this single fragment that, in general, Democritus uses the

singular nomos to refer to positive law specifically; in other fragments (see

below), the wider application is at least as appropriate.

Two other fragments that explicitly mention institutional nomos and

nomoi (DK68B245, TD109; and DK68B248, TD112) are complementary.

The first runs:

The laws would not prevent every person from living as he pleased,

if one did not harm another; it is envy which prompts the beginning

of civil strife.

Here nomoi are seen as devices to protect individuals from the aggression

of others, which is prompted by envy. There would be no need for these

devices if everyone was willing to allow everyone else to live as they

11 The singular nomos seems here to designate formal legal provisions in the abstract. A

possible alternative is that it should be understood as “unless a formal legal provision, e.g.,

an oath, prohibits it.” I am not, however, aware of any case of an oath or a treaty being

designated as a nomos.

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