'Interpreters of Interpreters'. Oracular and Grammatical Hermeneutics (original) (raw)
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Indo-European linguistics and classical philology, 2023
I. GREEK PHILOSOPHY AS A REFORM AND THERAPY OF THE ORDINARY LANGUAGE; II. HERACLITUS’ EXPERIMENTS WITH LANGUAGE, GRAMMAR AND STYLE The first part of this investigation draws attention to one understudied, and yet philosophically important approach to language in Greek philosophy from archaic times to Aristotle: the reform of ordinary language, word-making and attempts to discover or to create an ideal language or a language “conforming to nature”. The following cases at point are discussed: the critique of the ordinary language as a product of doxastic imagination in Heraclitus and Parmenides associated with linguistic idealism and the theory of “linguistic error” of mortals in ancient times that resulted in the origin of polytheism and belief in the reality of the phenomenal world of many things misnamed by empty words. The elimination of the words for “birth and death”, “generation and de- struction” as “deceptive” and their systematic replacement by new “correct” mechanistic terminology of “excretion from mixture, recombination and dissolution” of material particles in Ionian physics (Anaximander, Anaxagoras) and Empedocles. The theory of the “disease of language” as the root of mythology and anthropomorphic polytheism of poets in Sophists (Prodicus, the Derveni papyrus), Aristotle’s attempts to give names to “anonymous” moral qualities in Nicomachean Ethics. The idea of a “divine language” is to some extent anticipated in the Homeric topos of the “language of gods” which has Indo-European roots. A suggestion is made en passant that if the author of the “dream theory” in Plato's Theaetetus, quoted by Wittgenstein in Philosophical investigations, I.46 as an ancient antecedent of his simple “objects” in the Tractatus, is Heraclitus rather than Antisthenes (as we argue on the ground of the new reconstruction of grammatical analogy in Heraclitus’ logos-fragments), then a historical link can be established between Wittgenstein's linguistic idealism and Heraclitus’ analogies of “cosmic grammar” and “alphabet of nature”, although in Wittgenstein’s perception it was, of course, a theory of “Socrates” and Plato, not of Heraclitus. Part II is a case at point study of language and style in Heraclitus including following topics: oracular features, syntactic polysemy (hyperbaton), omission of the conjunction καί between opposites, omission of the verb ‘to be’ in the desсriptions of phenomenal change, omission of article with words referring to ‘appearances’ (τὰ φανερά, τὰ δοκέοντα), replacing a standard singularis (ποταμός) with pluralis (ποταμοί), because what we see is a series of rivers changing every moment, Fränkel’s “proportion” as a means of approaching the unknown, forms of chiasmus, chiastic (amoebean) structure of fragments as a mimesis of the natural cyclical processes (the ‘road up and down’). Keywords: ancient philosophy, theories of language, origin of religion and mythology, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Anaximander, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Democritus, Greek sophists, Prodicus, Plato, Aristotle, the Derveni papyrus.
In this paper I examine several phenomena in the grammar, phraseology, structure and motifs involved in the construction of oratio obliqua in various literary genres of Classical Greek (with a particular focus on dialogue texts of dramatic authors and Plato, as well as some evidence from Homer and Herodotus), through frame verbs and expressions, complementizers and content clauses. Around the core of the study, a descriptive account of an exhaustive examination of the complementizers ὅτι and ὡς in Plato’s Republic and Apology, I describe the combinability with neutral and non-neutral frame verbs of verba dicendi, affectuum, and other verbs and nominal expressions used in these capacities, and correlatives in the framing expressions, within a consideration of scales of subjectivity, commitment, irony, and other semantic as well as specific contextual motifs and topoi, and also some mention of a consideration apart, the differential uses in this corpus of ὅτι and ὡς and the reliability and precision of wording in quotations from texts and imaginary quotations in oratio obliqua – and recta (e.g. with ὅτι recitativum). Topics integrated into the exhaustive study of these two works by Plato are those treated preliminarily in section 1 (e.g. constructions shared by interlocutors, syntactic partition and integration between frame and content), in section 2 (e.g. ὅτι and ὡς and the notion of “subjectivity” vs. other more nuanced notions and criteria), in 3 (e.g. “subjective” ὅτι in Sophocles, Menander and other authors, differential factors such as hiatus, or lexical distinctions in the framing expression signified by choice of complementizer). The article closes with an account of previous research and some further observations of the terminology and ancient conceptions of linguistic signs and framing of oratio obliqua in transition from oratio recta to oratio obliqua.
By plato's time, literacy had given rise to many authoritative texts. their sense needed to be established, especially when a rival contested one's own construal. professionals therefore claimed expertise in interpreting texts. 'hermeneutics', the art of interpretation, derives from hermēneuo, 'to interpret' a foreign language or simply 'expound, explain'. Socrates' derivation of hermes' name from that god's being a hermēneus and messenger (Cratylus 407e6-8b) is not authentic, but it points to hermēneus as conveyor of messages. Most often, hermēn-words refer to getting across a message (Gonzalez 2015), but they
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The subject of this dissertation, which belongs to the field of Classical Philology, are the definitions of the art of grammar found in Greek and Latin sources from the Classical era to the second century CE. Definitions survive from grammarians, philosophers, and general scholars. I have examined these definitions from two main points of view: how they are formed, and how they reflect the development of the art itself.
Hermeneutics and the Ancient Philosophical Legacy: Hermeneia and Phronesis (2016)
The Blackwell Companion to Hermeneutics. Edited by Niall Keane and Chris Lawn. Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons., 2016
Hermeneutics as we understand it today is an essentially modern phenomenon. The chapter presents observations that illustrate some of the central ways in which the modern and late modern phenomena of philosophical hermeneutics relate to the ancient philosophical legacy. First, the roots of hermeneutics are traced to ancient views on linguistic, textual, and sacral interpretation. The chapter then looks at certain fundamentally unhermeneutic elements of the Platonic, Aristotelian, and Augustinian “logocentric” theory of meaning that philosophical hermeneutics and its heirs sought to call into question, reconsider, and deconstruct. Augustine's De doctrina christiana, can be regarded as an epitome and culmination of the ancient protohermeneutic heritage, theological as well as philological. Finally, Aristotle's practical philosophy, particularly the notion of phronesis, “practical insight”, is designated as an implicit ancient prototype of hermeneutic thinking, the reappropriation of which lay at the core of the Heideggerian and Gadamerian philosophical projects.
New Testament Studies, 2024
In this paper, I examine several sources of authority to which Origen laid claim as he set about the task of interpreting scripture. On occasion, in both his commentaries and his homilies, Origen provided accounts of his access to three different, though connected sources of authority that contributed to his self-presentation as an expert interpreter. These sources are as follows: 1) participation in the lineage of the apostles, particularly his exegetical role model, Paul. The second source of authority is a result of the first: 2) direct communication from the Logos, whom he understands to be Christ himself, and 3) angelic assistance and engagement with his pastoral exegetical project. In some instances, Origen even claimed to be on par with two of these sources of authority; he can be found claiming to have exegetical abilities similar to Paul's and, on some rare occasions, to have reached the same epistemological level as the angels. This analysis provides us not only with a case study of the kind of self-fashioning and authorising strategies used by elite scriptural exegetes in the first few centuries of the common era, but it also allows us to shift our focus away from exegetical methods towards the figure, personality and social position of the exegete him or herself. From this shift of focus we gain a better appreciation of a topic to which exegetical authors themselves dedicated considerable energy: just who it was that could occupy the office of authoritative Christian exegete and why.