β. The Concealed one (διαλανθάνων) and the Electra[155] proceed from the contradiction of knowing and not knowing someone at the same time. I ask someone ‘Do you know your father?’ He replies ‘Yes.’ I then ask ‘Now if I show you someone hidden behind a screen, will you know him?’ ‘No.’ ‘But it is your father, and thus you do not know your father.’ It is the same in the Electra. ‘Can it be said that she knows her brother Orestes who stands before her or not?’ These twists and turns seem superficial, but it is interesting to consider them further. (αα) To know means, on the one hand, to have someone as ‘this one,’ and not vaguely and in general. The son thus knows his father when he sees him, i.e. when he is a ‘this’ for him; but hidden, he is not a ‘this’ for him, but a ‘this’ abrogated. The hidden one as a ‘this’ in ordinary conception, becomes a general, and loses his sensuous being, thereby is in fact not a true ‘this.’ The contradiction that the son both knows and does not know his father, thus becomes dissolved through the further qualification that the son knows the father as a sensuous ‘this,’ and not as a ‘this’ of idea. (ββ) On the other hand Electra knows Orestes, not as a sensuous ‘this,’ but in her own idea; the ‘this’ of idea and the ‘this’ here, are not the same to her. In this way there enters into these histories the higher opposition of the universal and of the ‘this,’ in as far as to have in the ordinary idea, means in the element of the universal; the abrogated ‘this’ is not only an idea, but has its truth in the universal. The universal is thus found in the unity of opposites, and thus it is in this development of Philosophy the true existence, in which the sensuous being of the ‘this’ is negated. It is the consciousness of this in particular which, as we shall soon see (p. 465), is indicated by Stilpo.
γ. Other quibbles of the same kind have more meaning, like the arguments which are called the Sorites (σωρείτης) and the Bald (φαλακρός).[156] Both are related to the false infinite, and the quantitative progression which can reach no qualitative opposite, and yet at the end finds itself at a qualitative absolute opposite. The Bald head is the reverse of the problem of the Sorites. It is asked, “Does one grain of corn make a heap, or does one hair less make a bald head?” The reply is “No.” “Nor one again?” “No, it does not.” This question is now always repeated while a grain is always added, or a hair taken away. When at last it is said that there is a heap or a bald head, it is found that the last added grain or last abstracted hair has made the heap or the baldness, and this was at first denied. But how can a grain form a heap which already consists of so many grains? The assertion is that one grain does not make a heap; the contradiction, that one thus added or taken away brings about the change into the opposite—the many. For to repeat one is just to obtain many, the repetition causes certain ‘many’ grains to come together. The one thus becomes its opposite,—a heap, and the taking of one away brings about baldness. One and a heap are opposed to one another, but yet one; or the quantitative progression seems not to change but merely to increase or diminish, yet at last it has passed into its opposite. We always separate quality and quantity from one another, and only accept in the many a quantitative difference; but this indifferent distinction of number or size here turns finally into qualitative distinction, just as an infinitely small or infinitely great greatness is no longer greatness at all. This characteristic of veering round is of the greatest importance, although it does not come directly before our consciousness. To give one penny or one shilling is said to be nothing, but with all its insignificance the purse becomes emptied, which is a very qualitative difference. Or, if water is always more and more heated, it suddenly, at 80° Reamur, turns into steam. The dialectic of this passing into one another of quantity and quality is what our understanding does not recognize; it is certain that qualitative is not quantitative, and quantitative not qualitative. In those examples which seem like jokes, there is in this way genuine reflection on the thought-determinations which are in question.
The examples which Aristotle brings forward in his Elenchi, all show a very formal contradiction, appearing in speech, since even in it the individual is taken into the universal. “Who is that? It is Coriscus. Is Coriscus not masculine? Yes. That is neuter sex, and thus Coriscus is said to be neuter.”[157] Or else Aristotle (De Sophist. Elench. c. 24) quotes the argument: “To thee a dog is father (σὸς ὁ κύων πατήρ). Thou art thus a dog;” that is what Plato, as we already mentioned (p. 370), made a Sophist say: it is the wit of a journeyman such as we find in Eulenspiegel. Aristotle is really at great pains to remove the confusion, for he says the ‘thy’ and the ‘father’ are only accidentally (παρὰ τὸ συμβεβηκός), and not in substance (κατὰ τὴν οὐσίαν) joined to one another. In the invention of such witticisms, the Greeks of that and of later times were quite indefatigable. With the Sceptics we shall later on see the dialectic side further developed and brought to a higher standpoint.
[c. Stilpo.]
Stilpo, a native of Megara, is one of the most celebrated of the Eristics. Diogenes tells us that “he was a very powerful debater, and excelled all so greatly in readiness of speech that all Greece, in looking to him, was in danger (μικροῦ δεῆσαι) of becoming Megareans.” He lived in the time of Alexander the Great, and after his death (Ol. 114, 1; 324 B.C.) in Megara, when Alexander’s generals fought together. Ptolemy Soter, Demetrius Poliorcetes, Antigonus’ son, when they conquered Megara, bestowed many honours on him. “In Athens all came out of their work-places to see him, and when anyone said that they admired him like a strange animal, he replied, No, but like a true man.”[158] With Stilpo it was pre-eminently true that the universal was taken in the sense of the formal abstract identity of the understanding. The main point in his examples is, however, always the fact of his having given prominence to the form of universality as opposed to the particular.
α. Diogenes (II. 119) first quotes from him in relation to the opposition of the ‘this’ and the universal, “Whoever speaks of any man (ἄνθρωπον εἶναι), speaks of no one, for he neither speaks of this one nor that. For why should it rather be of this one than that? Hence it is not of this one.” That man is the universal, and that no one is specially indicated, everyone readily acknowledges, but some one still remains present to us in our conception. But Stilpo says that the ‘this’ does not exist at all, and cannot be expressed—that the universal only exists. Diogenes Laërtius certainly understands this as though “Stilpo abolished distinction of genera (ἀνῄρει καὶ τὰ εἴδη),” and Tennemann (Vol II., p. 158) supports him. But from what is quoted from him the opposite may clearly be deduced—that he upheld the universal and did away with the individual. And the fact that the form of universality is maintained, is further expressed in a number of anecdotes which are taken by Stilpo from common life. Thus he says: “The cabbage is not what is here shown (τὸ λάχανον οὐκ ἔστι τὸ δεικνύμενον). For the cabbage has existed for many thousand years, and hence this (what is seen) is not cabbage,” i.e. the universal only is, and this cabbage is not. If I say this cabbage, I say quite another thing from what I mean, for I say all other cabbages. An anecdote is told in the same reference. “He was conversing with Crates, a Cynic, and broke off to buy some fish;” Crates said, “What, you would avoid the question?” (for even in ordinary life anyone is laughed at or thought stupid who is unable to reply, and here where the subject was so important and where it would seem better to reply anything than nothing at all, no answer was forthcoming). Stilpo replied, “By no means, for I have the conversation, but I leave you, since the conversation remains but the fish will be sold.” What is indicated in these simple examples seems trivial, because the matter is trivial, but in other forms it seems important enough to be the subject of further inquiry.
That the universal should in Philosophy be given a place of such importance that only the universal can be expressed, and the ‘this’ which is meant, cannot, indicates a state of consciousness and thought which the philosophic culture of our time has not yet reached. As regards the ordinary human understanding, or the scepticism of our times, or in general the Philosophy which asserts that sensuous certainty (that which we see, hear, &c.), is the truth, or else that it is true that there are sensuous things outside of us—as to these, nothing, so far as the reasons for disbelieving them are concerned, need be said. For because the direct assertion that the immediate is the true is made, such statements only require to be taken with respect to what they say, and they will always be found to say something different from what they mean. What strikes us most is that they cannot say what they mean; for if they say the sensuous, this is a universal; it is all that is sensuous, a negative of the ‘this,’ or ‘this’ is all ‘these.’ Thought contains only the universal, the ‘this’ is only in thought; if I say ‘this’ it is the most universal of all. For example, here is that which I show; now I speak; but here and now is all here and now. Similarly when I say ‘I,’ I mean myself, this individual separated from all others. But I am even thus that which is thought of and cannot express the self which I mean at all. ‘I’ is an absolute expression which excludes every other ‘I,’ but everyone says ‘I’ of himself, for everyone is an ‘I.’ If we ask who is there, the answer ‘I’ indicates every ‘I.’ The individual also is thus the universal only, for in the word as an existence born of the mind, the individual, if it is meant, cannot find a place, since actually only the universal is expressed. If I would distinguish myself and establish my individuality by my age, my place of birth, through what I have done and where I have been or am at a particular time, it is the same thing. I am now so many years old, but this very now which I say is all now. If I count from a particular period such as the birth of Christ, this epoch is again only fixed by the ‘now’ which is ever displaced. I am now thirty-five years old, and now is 1805 A.D.; each period is fixed only through the other, but the whole is undetermined. That ‘now’ 1805 years have passed since Christ’s birth, is a truth which soon will become empty sound, and the determinateness of the ‘now’ has a before and after of determinations without beginning or end. Similarly everyone is at a ‘here’—this here, for everyone is in a ‘here.’ This is the nature of universality, which makes itself evident in speech. We hence help ourselves through names with which we define perfectly anything individual, but we allow that we have not expressed the thing in itself. The name as name, is no expression which contains what I am; it is a symbol, and indeed a contingent symbol, of the lively recollection.
β. Inasmuch as Stilpo expressed the universal as the independent, he disintegrated everything. Simplicius says (in Phys. Arist. p. 26), “Since the so-called Megarics took it as ascertained that what has different determinations is different (ὧν οἱλόγοι ἕτεροι, ταῦτα ἕτερα ἐστιν), and that the diverse are separated one from the other (τὰ ἕτερα κεχώρισται ἀλλήλων), they seemed to prove that each thing is separated from itself (αὐτὸ αὑτοῦ κεχωρισμένον ἔκασον). Hence since the musical Socrates is another determination (λόγος) from the wise Socrates, Socrates was separated from himself.” That means that because the qualities of things are determinations for themselves, each of these is fixed independently, but yet the thing is an aggregate of many independent universalities. Stilpo asserted this. Now because, according to him, universal determinations are in their separation only the true reality, and the individual is the unseparated unity of different ideas, to him nothing individual has any truth.
γ. It is very remarkable that this form of identity came to be known in Stilpo, and he in this way only wished to know propositions identically expressed. Plutarch quotes from him: “A different predicate may in no case be attributed to any object (ἕτερον ἑτέρου μὴ κατηγορεῖσθαι). Thus we could not say that the man is good or the man is a general, but simply that man is only man, good is only good, the general is only the general. Nor could we say ten thousand knights, but knights are only knights, ten thousand are only ten thousand, &c. When we speak of a horse running, he says that the predicate is not identical with the object to which it is attributed. For the concept-determination man is different (τοῦ τί ἦν εἶναι τὸν λόγον) from the concept-determination good. Similarly horse and running are distinct: when we are asked for a definition of either, we do not give the same for both. Hence those who say something different of what is different are wrong. For if man and good were the same, and likewise horse and running, how could good be used of bread and physic, and running of lions and dogs”?[159] Plutarch remarks here that Colotes attacks Stilpo in a bombastic manner (τραγῷδίαν ἐπάγει) as though he ignored common life (τὸν βίον ἀναιρεῖσθαι). “But what man,” Plutarch reflects, “lived any the worse for this? Is there any man who hears this said, and who does not know that it is an elaborate joke (παῖζοντός ἐστιν εὐμούσως)?”