Vol. XVI, Sept. 2005 by Episteme: Denison's Undergraduate Journal of Philosophy

episteme An International Journal Of Undergraduate Philosophy ep•i•ste•me \ep' i ste' mé\ n. [Gk. epistém(é)]: knowledge; specif., intellectually certain knowledge

Volume XVI • September 2005 Denison University, Granville, Ohio

Episteme Volume XVI â&#x20AC;˘ September 2005 Episteme is published under the auspices of the Denison University Department of Philosophy in Granville, Ohio ISSN 1542-7072 Copyright ÂŠ 2005

For copy permission, please write the Editors at the address on the next page.

Editor-in-Chief Jason Stotts Assistant Editors Will Fortin Jake Neiheisel Public Relations Chair Miriam Stetz Editorial Board Taylor McCann Sam Benham Colan Baldyga Matt Morrell Hannah Brautigam Marc Andersen Faculty Advisor Mark Moller

Episteme is published annually by a staff of undergraduate students at Denison University. Please send all inquiries and submissions to: The Editors, Episteme, Department of Philosophy, Blair Knapp Hall, Denison University, Granville, Ohio 43023.

Statement of Purpose Episteme aims to recognize and encourage excellence in undergraduate philosophy by providing examples of some of the best work currently being done in undergraduate philosophy programs around the world by offering undergraduates their first opportunity to publish philosophical work. It is our hope that the journal will help stimulate philosophical dialogue and inquiry among students and faculty at colleges and universities. Episteme will consider papers written by undergraduate students in any area of philosophy; throughout our history we have published papers on a wide array of thinkers and topics, ranging from Ancient to Contemporary and philosophical traditions including Analytic, Continental, and Eastern. All papers undergo a process of blind review by the editorial staff and are evaluated according to the following criteria: quality of research, depth of philosophical inquiry, creativity, original insight, and clarity. Final selections are made by vote of the editors and the editorial board. Please see the Call for Papers in the back cover for information on submitting to our next volume.

Episteme An International Journal of Undergraduate Philosophy Volume XVI

September 2005

CONTENTS Statement of Purpose and Editorial Staff

Table of Contents

Affirming the Absurd: Philosophy and Fiction Leila Clare El-Qawas, The University of Reading

Integration in Greek Philosophy: Hellenistic Thought as a Case Study for Emerging Philosophic Methodology Rebecca Knapp, University of Chicago

The One, The Many, and Plato: A Critical Analysis of Platoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Theory of Forms Emann Allebban, University of Michigan-Dearborn

Acquitting Nietzsche: An Alternative View of his Infamous Misogyny Susan Parillo, Skidmore College

The Ethical Ramifications of Recent Advances in Ovarian 46 Transplantation Govind Persad, Stanford University Call For Papers, Vol. XVII (2006)

The editors express sincere appreciation to the Provostâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;s Office, the Denison Honors Program, Pat Davis, and Faculty Advisor Mark Moller for their assistance in making the publication of this journal possible. We extend special gratitude to the other Philosophy Department Faculty: Edwin England, Barbara Fultner, Tony Lisska, Jonathan Maskit, Ronald E. Santoni, Robert Thompson, and Steven Vogel for their support.

Affirming the Absurd Philosophy and Fiction

Leila Clare El-Qawas

he conception of Camus as primarily a novelist who was inclined to dabble in philosophy is an unduly prevalent one. However, the acute and particular conception that Camus outlines in ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’ of what exactly a novel is proceeds directly from that most fundamental and axiomatic realisation of all of his philosophy that reality is absurd, and is exemplary of what he characterises as an absurd existence. As a description of human reality, with stylisation rather than (speculative) rationalisation as its end, all artistic creation constitutes an investing of human life with human values, an affirmation of existence in spite of the metaphysical void. The absurd artist acknowledges the universal futility of both his life and his work and chooses to exult in both. Moreover, in recreating it to his own design, the artist can make sense of the world in a way that the rationalist or scientist never can. Through its artistic depiction, reality is subjugated to the artist’s requirements of order, unity and coherence, thus he displays a mastery of his situation. It is fiction above all else which constitutes for Camus the epitome of successful living in the face of the absurd, embodying in a single act the three foremost ideals of revolt, freedom and passion, which are at the heart of absurd life. Working on the contention that through his career as a novelist Camus is essentially practising his philosophy as he preaches it, this essay examines Camus’ acclamation of fiction as potentially instructive for both philosophy and for life. *** For the absurd man, the necessary dispensing of any notions of objective value systems and the exposure of human-ascribed values as precisely that has the upshot that everything must now be viewed as fundamentally equivalent in an ethical respect. The mood in which posLeila studied at the University of Reading (UK) where she gained a First Class Honours in Philosophy. She is currently pursuing a Master of Arts in Theory and Criticism at the University of Western Ontario. This essay forms part of her undergraduate dissertation.

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sibilities of experience are encountered from this impartial viewpoint is encapsulated by Meursault‟s unconcerned remark upon being pressed by his girlfriend on the subject of marriage; „it‟s all the same to me.‟ 1 This obligatory indifference is what gives rise to the peculiar imperative of quantity. Having surmised that life in its entirety can find summation in the experience contained therein, Camus reasons that the identification of that experience as equivalent in value means that the only remaining means of evaluation of that life must be in terms of its extent: “if I admit my freedom has no meaning except in relation to its limited fate, then I must say that what counts is not the best living but the most living.”2 Thus the only way that we, as free and responsible beings, can truly improve our lives is by pushing its boundaries and broadening its scope. This extension of life is, of course, to be taken not in the sense of mere existence, but of living to the full; of taking up as many of the world‟s offerings as is possible. Essentially „what counts‟ is what Camus characterises as absurd living: “Being aware of one‟s life, one‟s revolt, one‟s freedom, and to the maximum, is living, and to the maximum.”3 The absurd man must live with an appreciation of, and appetite for, life‟s possibilities, aiming to experience them in as large a quantity and as broad a range as possible, and he must do so through lucid and responsible choice. That the offerings of the world as artistic pabulum should be so numerous and diverse means that the potentialities for art are accordingly rich. The artist‟s freedom of choice in artistic creation extends to the far reaches of life itself, but as with philosophical understanding, can never stretch beyond it. As an object of ontological analysis within the absurd, the process of artistic creation reveals the artist in a complex and multifaceted relationship with the world and his work. Primarily, it represents the living out of an existential choice. In addition to this, artistic creation is always aware of itself as a deliberate undertaking. Accordingly, it involves an intellectual effort. Lastly, we can consider the creation itself as some kind of new entity within the world (abstract, physical or whatever) in that „there is a thing now which was not before‟. Thus the creative act literally manifests quantity, generating existence along two planes. As a choice of living, it is simultaneously passive, conscious and prolific. Furthermore, the consciousness of the artist is demanded within both of these planes of existence. The engagement of the artist in the artistic process is a coincident experience of both the act of creation by himself, as artist, and of the created work itself, just as when we ex-

Leila Clare El-Qawas

perience the work as an audience (this is especially obvious with the novel) we „inhabit‟ both the familiar and tangible world of our existence and the artistically fabricated world of imagination. Ricoeur emphasizes this amplification of „sense‟ within the novel: […] the world which is opened up… by writing is itself also a world which has an infinite horizon... Literature creates a world of fiction, of possibility, and, consequently, opens up a horizon of reality, too. Our sense of reality is multiplied by this world of fiction and possibility.4 Yet there is more to it than this. Since all possibilities are viewed as objectively equivalent, we may conclude that what is generated in art is in fact more of that stuff which comprises life itself: more experience. The transient cognitive occupation of a fictional universe through literature is as legitimate a possibility of existence as any other. “Creation” proclaims Camus, “is living doubly.”5 The idea of „living‟, however, must be read with all of its absurd implications. Any form of artistic reflection of the world is the reflection of it through its creator, and the resulting work can never be so easily separated from him. The strength of this involvement is indeed such that “the artist commits himself and becomes himself in his work.”6 „Commits himself‟ in that the artwork is not only something that is generated by the artist, but is an expansion of his own being in terms of his intentions, perspectives and ideas. Moreover, it is a record of the experience of the artistic process: it is determined by, and embodies, the choices and decisions that the artist makes. „Becomes himself‟ in that it is only through this engagement in the artistic process that the artist, following his initial choice to be an artist, truly is one. In creating, he is also self-creating. This idea is shrewdly articulated in Robert Cumming‟s examination of Sartre‟s aesthetic position: […] the structure of the work of art embodies what the artist is conscious of, but since his consciousness has been inherently articulative and selective in its constructive activity, the structure of the work of art is also a structure of decisions, whose interrelationship composes the artist‟s “choice of himself.” … the work of art is implicitly a self-portrait.7 Thus the discrimination involved in all artistic creation entails a sort of second order existential choice. The artist defines himself by making concrete certain possibilities, both in his choice of himself as artist, and

Affirming the Absurd

within the art itself. He is existing twice, and bearing his freedom responsibly twice. *** It is not difficult to see why Camus esteems fiction in particular as the greatest of all art forms. In fact, absurd fiction is exalted as a paradigm of absurd living and an exemplary manifestation of all the virtues that he ascribes to art as an absurd choice. An obvious preliminary observation is that in using language as its medium, fiction cannot fail to be overtly mimetic of reality.8 Language is not only our prime method of communication as human beings, but its very function is to express to us our world and our situation. As a means of human representation, language is paramount. Whilst music or dance may often seem perfectly suited to conveying emotion, abstract painting can seem to transcend conventional temporal restrictions, and photographyâ&#x20AC;&#x;s reproduction of the visual world is unmatched in its capacity for accuracy, the overall expressive capabilities of each is nonetheless severely restricted in comparison to literature. Even theatre (which as a literary creation employs many similar techniques and devices) is still comparatively limited in its representative capacities by its necessary structure of action. The novel, on the other hand, can conceive of entire universes. As such, the craftsmanship involved in the writing of a novel exemplifies artistically the ideal of quantity that Camus prescribes as a universal ethic for life under the absurd. Fiction, in representing the artistâ&#x20AC;&#x;s situation, can represent it more fully than any other art form. It is a bigger, more comprehensive description of the world. With such an inclusive diversity of aspect, the affirmation of the novelist is accordingly immense. In addition, this extensiveness of the novel above other art forms is also applicable to the revision of reality being proposed. Therefore the converse role of art as revolt is again magnified in fiction. Revolt is also inherently present in language by virtue of the organisation and coherence of its construction. Merely to speak is to impose a form of human order on an orderless world, to force it to conform to our requirements of understanding. Language is already a triumph in making human sense of the world. Of course the structural discipline of the novel extends far beyond its lingual substance; this in turn is bound by a skeletal literary structure which encompasses such elements as form, a temporal framework and the imposition of boundaries (chapters, divisions, the beginning and end of the

Leila Clare El-Qawas

book etc.). Yoseph Milman notes that the traditional tripartite structure of the fictional narrative as background, characters and plot corresponds directly to the “three principle aspects of the world” where the feeling of the absurd is most prevalent, that is respectively “the ontological (the nature of objects or „things‟), the psychological (man‟s nature, feelings and motivations) and the existential (the purpose of human action and the meaning and value of life).”9 Thus the novel is fundamentally suited to absurd expression. In choosing to write, the absurd novelist has already demonstrated a certain moral resolve. He has exercised his freedom in choosing, and in choosing to choose, his revolt against the apparent meaninglessness of his choice and his passion in his desire to create. Every absurd virtue that is manifested in the novel requires a conscious decision of the writer. That the artist must remain perpetually acutely aware of the futility of his task is merely a subsidiary upshot of his absurd consciousness, and yet still the effort of regarding his labours with a humble acceptance of their gratuity requires a moral discipline of admirable proportions. It is precisely this disciplined acceptance on the part of the artist which inspires that dynamic affirmation and denial of reality in fiction that operates at the very core of its being: Art can never be so well served as by a negative thought. Its dark and humiliated proceedings are as necessary to the understanding of a great work of art as black is to white… Performing these two tasks simultaneously, negating on the one hand and magnifying on the other, is the way open to the absurd creator. He must give the void its colours.10 Even as an embodiment of a universally human ethical struggle, fiction is nonetheless always a personal undertaking of the writer and an expression of his individual revolt against his situation. As the possibility of living in which man, in his extreme exposure to the absurd, feels most severely its exacting cries for integrity, artistic creation is also the one in which he is most keenly attuned to his unadorned existence in the world: Of all the schools of patience and lucidity, creation is the most effective. It is also the staggering evidence of man‟s sole dignity: the dogged revolt against his condition, perseverance in an effort considered sterile. It calls for a daily effort, selfmastery, a precise estimate of the limits of truth, measure and

Affirming the Absurd

strength. It constitutes an ascesis. All that „for nothing‟ in order to repeat and mark time. But perhaps the great work of art has less importance in itself than in the ordeal it demands of a man and the opportunity with which it provides him of overcoming his phantoms and approaching a little closer to his naked reality.11 Thus artistic creation, and fiction particularly, is a deeply profound and enriching experience for the artist. Yet it is not only within the personal situation of the novelist that fiction may serve as a life asset. *** I earlier identified fictional creation as exemplifying the quantitative ethic and in doing so highlighted the dual relationship of possibility concerning the artist and his work. As a finished product, standing on its own and subject to interpretation, the novel still incorporates this duality of possibility; firstly as the product of (and a documentation of) the creative process, and secondly as a possibility of further experience in virtue of its communicative abilities. This second possibility now stands in relation to the reader. If fiction adheres to the constraints of the absurd, then the involvement of the reader within its conceptual world will in many instances constitute an exploration of absurd possibilities. Through the inhabitation of a fictional universe, both the writer and the reader are able to explore hitherto personally unchartered avenues of absurd reality through the fictional narrative. The hypothetical, conceptual nature of the novel, coupled with its conspicuously phenomenological character, means that it can act as instructive by allowing one to experience something in the reading or writing of it that would be unattainable in the „real‟ world.12 Thus Camus praises the classical French novel for its persistent yet disciplined pursuit of passions to their limit: “they teach us the mathematics of destiny which are a means of freeing ourselves from it.”13 If there is a sense in which the absurd novel may be said to act as a means of escapism for the deluded reader, it is by enabling him to assume, through the use of imagination, an alternative perspective, to extricate himself from the network of involvements which constitutes his usual world of experience.14 Whilst in life we are constantly confronted with an often indistinct and confused variety of representations, the absurd novel provides us with a purer view of the world. Thus, as with phenomenology, in

Leila Clare El-Qawas

representing to us authentically our absurd situation, literature allows us to reach a clearer understanding of it. The elucidatory advantages of assuming the sort of perspective whereby we are not implicated within our familiar world is excellently illustrated by Joseph Fell‟s image of the astronaut, whose accomplishment of a vast distance from his usual worldly perspective is quite literal. From faraway, he is able to see this world “within a part of which we are usually preoccupied, as a whole, standing out in isolation against a field of black and empty nothingness.”15 The astronaut, in his lonely capsule, must feel keenly his helplessness in relation to the affairs of the world that he surveys. Yet upon his return to earth he may still retain an acute alertness to the contextual scope of his own existence. Such is the observational position of the reader of the novel, who in assuming the perspective of a helpless spectator, quite detached from his usual situation, is thus able to view it with a fullness and lucidity which he would not usually attain. Yet this lucidity may persist upon his disengagement from this position. It is in this way that absurd literature is conducive to an absurd sensibility. With regard to the first of the novel‟s instantiations of experience, I have already intimated certain ways in which the novel is exemplary of the demands of revolt, freedom and passion which configure life in the face of the absurd. Fiction, declares Camus, should be “that exercise in detachment and passion which crowns the splendour and futility of a man‟s life.”16 It is discernible that a glance to fiction as demonstrative of these ethical principles may be instructive for our behaviour in this regard. There are yet other ways in which the absurd novel may serve as an object lesson for absurd life. The apprehension and manipulation of reality in absurd fiction is a model instance of the valid imposition of a structure on randomness. We can learn from the way in which it faces reality head on, embracing it in all its chaos; its readiness to challenge its situation; its attention to life and its control over it. “This art”, affirms Camus, “is… born of an infinite possibility of suffering and of a firm decision to master this suffering by means of language.”17 The efficacy of the novel in its apprehension of the tools at our disposal is similarly estimable. As an exploration of, and creative use of, its artistic medium, it is effectively “giving man, in his struggle against destiny, the powers of language.”18 The simultaneous solitariness and solidarity of the novel, in both evoking the personal revolt and perspectives of its author, and at the same time being the „public‟ product of a time and culture, is an actual reconciliation of the artist‟s personal struggle and revolt with his naturally social existence. Further-

Affirming the Absurd

more, as a communicative phenomenon, the novel objectifies the abstract element of discursive relations between human beings. Its dual nature as at once both textually fixed, the product of its author, and an abstract focus of subjective interpretation, makes explicit the conflict of intentions that is characteristic of all discourse. It has already been noted that in his imaginative engagement with the text, the reader is provided with an unusual opportunity of disentangling himself from the network of involvements which constitutes his usual world of experience, and thus of seeing the world from an atypical perspective. However, we must not forget the novel‟s identity as the intentional product of its author. The relationship between the three entities involved is essentially a discursive one, with the novel functioning as the intermediary abstract element of the conversation, but bound by the static physicality of the text. But the dialogue has only one direction. It is a transmission of suggestion from the novelist to his reader. In entering cognitively into the immaterial realm of the narrative the reader is able to survey the fictional world from within, and in doing so is invited to take up its perspectives; not only as a transient observer, but also as an individual: as the reader. The novel is never innocent of suggestion. Just as the artist cannot help but get caught up in his work, to the extent that he „commits himself‟ within it by means of his intentions, discriminations, actions, and so forth, so this involvement may carry over into the reader‟s own life. The distinctions between the possibilities of experience of the fictional world and of the „real‟ world begin to blur as the reader, as essentially a „trans-world‟ consciousness, starts to become susceptible to the ideas contained within the novel. Of course the absurd novel, by definition, will not contain any semblance of argument, but to commend the description as pure is not to say that it is not opinionated. As the product of choice and discrimination, the novel is always representative of a particular perspective. Just as phenomenology claims to discover philosophy in any aspect of experience, so the novel can put forward a case without actually stating it. This peculiar persuasive character of the novel, its facility to provide a means by which the writer may collude with the reader in understanding reality, makes it particularly suited to the sort of curious, investigative approach that Camus, as a firm disciple of the Copernican turn, characteristically employs. His philosophy is not done from „outside‟ of life, as it were, but takes as its perspective that phenomenological of one within human existence. It first realises itself as a product of the human situation - that of thrownness in the world - and then

Leila Clare El-Qawas

starts to inquisitively explore within it, making observations and taking notes as it does, until it recognises that it has reached its limit. Having reached this limit, it reassesses its situation in light of its observations, and draws the appropriate conclusions. As Merleau-Ponty in his characterisation of phenomenology explains, “the only pre-existent Logos is the world itself… the philosophy which brings it into visible existence does not begin by being possible; it is actual or real like the world of which it is a part.”19 Similarly, the novel does not confront the reader with a view of things, but rather lays it out around the reader for the reader to explore for himself. It engages the reader within its midst through its characters and its narrative, and in doing so gives the reader an idea of what its like to be within a certain world; a world that it is constructed with the ideas of the novelist. Despite his denial of its pertinence to such „existentialist philosophers‟, the standpoint from which the absurd is recognised and presented very much resembles David Wiggins‟ characterisation of the „participant perspective‟ which “can contain together both the perception of incongruity and a nice appreciation of the limited but not necessarily infinitesimal importance of this or that particular object of concern.”20 It is a matter of „zooming out‟; of adopting a perspective that is so detached from the absorbing world of everyday concerns of artificial significance, that they can be seen within the vast context of metaphysical nullity, and our focus on them thus farcical in its disproportionateness. However, the perspective is never so detached as to be removed from the world it is reviewing; the considerations are not considered as separate or incompatible. By including the reader imaginatively within the ideational schema and thus allowing him an opportunity of experience of the ideas being proposed, the novel may bring the reader to acknowledge them in a way that he perhaps otherwise could not, or may naturally resist. This proposition is explored in depth by Cora Diamond, who advocates the notion of non-argumentative „convincing‟ by just such an imaginative „appeal to our intelligence‟ as is effected in the novel, within the context of moral philosophy. She does so on the basis that it is exactly these sorts of imaginative capacities, as are employed by fiction, that we naturally use in our moral self-definition. Similarly, Camus‟ philosophy, as a working through of absurd implications, is characterised by its concern with what it now means to be a human being: how we can, how we should, and why we should live. The Myth of Sisyphus famously opens with the question of suicide: “Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of

Affirming the Absurd

philosophy.”21 Practically, to judge whether life is worth living amounts to an exploration of what it is to live. The Myth of Sisyphus gives a philosophical answer to a philosophical question, but as to providing an account of life, it is far from complete, and is thus perhaps better conceived as the laying down of the format in which the study is to be conducted. Camus‟ expansion of his writing style to the novel is effectively an assertion that the traditional format of philosophical inquiry (the essay, the argument, the critical text) is inadequate for his purposes. It is a progressive accommodation of, and appreciation for, the shrewd, and yet quite blatant observation that “(w)e get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking.”22 It is an extension of philosophy‟s methodology to the descriptive realm of artistic creation, a vital development of its scope. Such an extension allows it not only a better access to those areas of its concern that Camus identifies as elemental to its task, but more significantly, a better means of communicating those ideas.23 The erroneousness of the common categorisation of Camus as “a novelist with a strong philosophical bent.”24 is effectively summed up by a judicious remark of Wittgenstein‟s: “People nowadays think that scientists exist to instruct them, poets, musicians, etc. to give them pleasure. The idea that these have something to teach them - that does not occur to them."25 Notes 1.

2. 3. 4.

5. 6. 7. 8.

Camus, L’Etranger, p.64. Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p.59. Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p.61. Erik Nakjavani, ‗Phenomenology and Theory of Literature: An Interview with Paul Ricoeur‘ in Interview: The Critical Exchange, p.1086. The Myth of Sisyphus, p.87. The Myth of Sisyphus, p.89 R. Cumming, The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, p.29. Although this is such a familiar characteristic that we would not usually take it into account when analysing the novel as a work of art, i.e. with reference to its meaning and intentions, as we might with say, the choice of material for sculpture. Camus‘ demand that art must always remain within the parame-

Leila Clare El-Qawas

ters of description and not attempt to explain the world is a direct outcome of that most rudimentary and foundational observation of all of Camus‘ philosophy that ‗as human beings, we are simply not equipped to deal with the world from outside of the scope in which it exists.‘ The avowal of the absurd man to confine himself to description stems from the same motive as that of phenomenology: a denial of the justification of any other means. It aims to derive its account of reality from the only possible source of human experience, but at a point before human explanation impairs reasonable analysis. An explicit discussion of the resemblances of an absurd life and phenomenology occurs in ‗Philosophical Suicide‘ within the Chapter ‗An Absurd Reasoning‘ in ‗The Myth of Sisyphus‘, although as the title suggests, the subject is broached within the context of Husserl‘s philosophy with the intent of exposing its shortcomings in relation to an absurd philosophy. 9. Yoseph Milman, Opacity in the writings of Robbe-Grillet, Pinter and Zach – A Study in the Poetics of Absurd Literature, p.11. 10. The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 103. 11. The Myth of Sisyphus, p.104. 12. Indeed, Camus frequently uses fictional characters to explore absurd possibilities. Fiction is a perfect context for an exploration of the full implications of living the absurd life, as it involves fictional consequences. For example, Meursault, in The Outsider, becomes a martyr for the absurd. Similarly, each of Camus‘ examples of ‗the absurd man‘ is drawn from literature (Don Juan, Sisyphus etc.). It is easy to see how it might be easier to attribute a certain consistency of virtues to a fictional life than to assimilate those virtues into one‘s own life. 13. Intelligence and the Scaffold, p.159. 14. To employ a Heideggerian characterisation of what is essentially the human perspective. 15. Joseph Fell, Heidegger and Sartre: An Essay on Being and Place, p.108. 16. The Myth of Sisyphus, p.94. 17. Intelligence and the Scaffold, p.157. 18. Intelligence and the Scaffold, p.157.

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19. Merleau-Ponty, preface to The Phenomenology of Perception, p.xx. 20. David Wiggins, ‗Truth, Invention and the Meaning of Life‘ in Needs, Values, Truth: Essays in the Philosophy of Value, p.114. 21. The Myth of Sisyphus, p.11. 22. The Myth of Sisyphus, p.15. 23. ‗More significantly‘ because the first achievement of the novel as philosophy, as we have seen, mirrors the achievement of phenomenology in assuming a descriptive methodology, and because the communication of ideas is, in practice, of equal importance to any discipline as the occurrence of those ideas. 24. Egan, David, Spark Note on The Myth of Sisyphus, ‗Context‘. 25. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p.36e

Works Cited Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1975. Camus, Albert. L’Etranger, Paris: Gallimard, 1942. Camus, Albert. ―Intelligence and the Scaffold,‖ Confluences; Special Edition entitled ‗Problemes du Roman‘, July 1943. Collected in Albert Camus – Lyrical and Critical, trans. Philip Thody. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1967. pp. 153-159. Cumming, Robert. The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre. London: Methuen, 1979. Diamond, Cora. ―Anything But Argument?‖, The Realistic Spirit; Wittgenstein, Philosophy, and The Mind. Massachussets: MIT Press, 1991. pp.291-306.

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Egan, David. SparkNote on The Myth of Sisyphus, http:// www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/sisyphus/context.html. Fell, Joseph. P. Heidegger and Sartre: An Essay on Being and Place. New York: Columbia University Press, 1979. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962. Milman, Yoseph. ―Opacity in the writings of Robbe-Grillet, Pinter and Zach – A Study in the Poetics of Absurd Literature,‖ Studies in Comparative Literature, vol. 18. Lewiston Lampeter: Edwin Mellen Press, 1991. Nakjavani, Erik. ―Phenomenology and Theory of Literature: An Interview with Paul Ricoeur,‖ Interview: The Critical Exchange, MLN, vol. 96, no.5: Comparative Literature, Dec 1981, pp.1084-90. Wiggins, David. ―Truth, Invention, and the Meaning of Life,‖ Needs, Values, Truth: Essays in the Philosophy of Value (3rd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press Inc., 1998. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Culture and Value, trans. Peter Winch, ed. Von Wright, G.H. and Nyman, Heikki. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980.

Integration in Greek Philosophy Hellenistic Thought as a Case Study for Emerging Philosophic Methodology

Rebecca Knapp

particular achievement of Greek philosophers, speaking in the most general sense, was an approach to philosophy as an integrated system of thought. Plato, in contrast to earlier philosophers who had focused primarily on explaining the natural world, wrote not just about metaphysics, or epistemology, or ethics, or politics, but about all of these. Moreover, each particular subject of Plato‘s thought was connected to and consistent with a wider view of humanity and the world. His view of the realm of Forms was connected to his view of how one should seek the good (as an entity existing in its pure form only in that realm), which was in turn connected to his view of how and by whom a city should be ruled (by those able to attain the closest knowledge of the true good). This approach to philosophy as an integrated system became an implicit model for philosophy. The Hellenistic philosophers who became prominent after Aristotle‘s death might arguably have been concerned with a different, more individualized view of philosophy than the philosophers of the Classical Period had been, and yet their treatment of the different branches of philosophy as part of an integrated system followed Plato‘s model. Both Epicureanism and Stoicism, the two leading philosophies of the Hellenistic Period, demonstrate this integration. The two philosophies may have held opposing conceptions of virtue – the Epicureans viewed virtue as a pragmatic means to an end; the Stoics viewed it as the end, the goal and the focus of living – but these two philosophies were not limited to their conceptions of virtue. Each was a cohesive, unified, philosophic system. A fascinating exemplification of this lies in the juxtaposition of Hellenistic metaphysical and ethical views: more particuRebecca, originally from New Jersey, is a fourth year at the University of Chicago. She is majoring in Classics, and plans to go to law school.

Rebecca Knapp

larly, in connections between a view of the gods and a view of virtue. Both Epicureanism and Stoicism drew such connections. Their separate conceptions of ―god‖ not only influenced, but in some sense necessitated their separate conceptions of virtue. This is true in two ways. The first is because followers of both philosophies were advised to imitate the gods. This principle of imitation bound virtue inextricably to divine models. The second is because the premise that underlies each conception of divinity leads, logically, to a particular view of virtue. The imitation of divine models is an idea propounded by Stoics and Epicureans alike. Epicurus writes, ―For the gods always welcome men who are like themselves, being congenial to their own virtues and considering that whatever is not such is uncongenial‖. Balbus, a Roman Stoic, puts forth the same view according to Cicero‘s The Nature of the Gods: ―Man has emerged for the contemplation and imitation of the universe; though he is in no way perfect, in a sense he is a fragment of perfection.‖ For followers of both schools of thought, the concept of divine imitation is an important one. For the Epicureans, the model to follow consisted of a god detached from human affairs, detached from everything external to himself, floating, infinitely wise, and entirely at peace. Epicurus describes the god, ―First, believe that god is an indestructible and blessed animal…Believe of him everything which is able to preserve his blessedness and indestructibility.‖ Lucretius elaborates, more poetically: For perfect peace gods by their very nature, Must of necessity enjoy, and immortal life, Far separate, far removed from our affairs. For free from every sorrow, every danger, Strong in their own powers, needing naught from us, They are not won by gifts nor touched by anger. The Epicurean god was self-contained, self-sufficient, disinterested, and implacable. He existed in a realm separate from the earth and enjoyed a quiet, eternally pleasant state of being.

Integration in Greek Philosophy

Epicurus taught an approach to morality that directly imitated this model. He taught that his followers should pursue, above all, a state of mind free from disturbance: ―One [should] refer every choice and avoidance to the health of the body and the freedom of the soul from disturbance, since this is the goal of a blessed life.‖ He taught that they should strive to remove any form of dependency from their lives: ―we believe that selfsufficiency is a great good, not in order that we might make do with few things under all circumstances, but so that if we do not have a lot we can make do with few.‖ He taught them to remove themselves from the affairs of society: ―The purest security is that which comes from a quiet life and withdrawal from the many.‖ In short, Epicurus taught to his mortal followers the same mental freedom from disturbance, self-sufficiency, and removal from the world that he described in the immortal gods. Epicureans sought to foster divine qualities within themselves. The Stoics followed quite a different godly-model. Zeno conceived of a god, not removed from the world system, but identical with it, and with the universe as a whole. This god‘s distinguishing characteristic was not an emotional state (calm contentment), but a state of perfect, ideal rationality. According to Balbus, in Cicero, ―The universe is alive, and endowed with consciousness, intelligence, and reason; and the logical conclusion from this is that the universe is God.‖ The Stoics described their god not with images of lonely floating, but of fiery heat. In Cicero: ―elemental heat possesses within it a life-sustaining force which extends throughout the whole universe,‖ and slightly later, ―…this hot, fiery substance percolates the whole of nature in such a way that it becomes both the forceful begetter and the cause of bringing into existence.‖ This ―fire‖, in the god, was the animating, life-giving quality of rationality. The Stoic god was not only involved with the world; he controlled it entirely. He deterministically mapped out the movement of its every particle, and wrote the laws of both nature and man. The universe is thus described as a place of perfect regularity. Balbus catalogues in depth the movements of the heavens, and exclaims, ―The heavens contain no chance or ran-

Rebecca Knapp

dom element, no erratic or pointless movement; on the contrary, all is due order and integrity, reason, and regularity.‖ What is more, the Stoic god plans according to the interests of humanity as a whole: ―All that is in [the universe] has been provided and devised for us to enjoy; for the universe is, so to say, the shared dwelling of gods and men, or a city which houses both.‖ The Stoic god is civic-minded. There are scores of parallels in Stoicism between these descriptions of divinity and the Stoic injunctions for human action. Man, like the god, strives, under Stoicism, for perfect rationality, free from emotions that will cloud his judgment. Plutarch writes, in accordance with Stoicism, that virtue is ―a certain character and power of the soul‘s commanding-faculty, engendered by reason, or rather, a character which is itself consistent, firm, and unchangeable reason,‖ and reminds that ―passion is vicious and uncontrolled reason which acquires vehemence and strength from bad and erroneous judgment.‖ The same fire of life and rationality which permeates the universe permeates man as well. Like the god, man is defined by an element of control – even in spite of fate. ―By the work of [his] hands [man] strive[s] to create a sort of second nature within the world of nature.‖ Man shapes his own life and surroundings, and in so doing strives for the same perfection that characterizes divinity. A. A. Long describes the Stoic idea that, ―if human nature is perfectible nothing short of its perfection can be admissible as the ultimate goal,‖ and writes, ―Stoic ethics is an epitome of idealism‖. Finally, like the god, man acts for the benefit, not just of himself, but of his friends, his city, of all of humanity – for the benefit of the afore-mentioned ―shared dwelling of gods and men‖. The Stoics, according to Long, advocated, ―a communal way of life‖. They emphasized the importance of benefiting others, as the gods benefit humanity. Both the Stoics and Epicureans had a definite view of the gods that they strove to imitate in their own lives. Yet this is not the only connection between conceptions of divinity and conceptions of virtue. There is also a certain causal link between the

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two. The premises the Epicurean accepted as part of his definition of the gods led him to certain conclusions about virtue. The same is true of the Stoics. The Epicureans, as we have seen, viewed the gods as detached. They had no role in human affairs, and so had no role in human virtue. Epicurus rejected what he considered to be a false view of the gods as entities of justice, who would punish men for their wrongdoing. Lucretius writes that humans could only have accepted that false view of divinity out of fear. He writes: Let us now think why reverence for the gods Has spread through mighty nations and filled cities with altars… What man does not quail with fear of the gods, With shrinking mind and flesh creeping with terror… Lest for some foul deed or contemptuous word The solemn hour of punishment be near. The fear Lucretius describes is the fear that the gods, as the final judges of virtue, will punish men for failing to be virtuous – for committing ―foul deeds‖. Epicureanism seeks to excise this fear by denying the premise that has caused it – the premise that the gods are a source of virtue. Instead, the Epicureans described virtue as a practice, which arose by convention because it prevented violence and was thus in the interest of all. Lucretius, describing humanity‘s historical progression into civilization, writes: So things fell back to utter dregs and turmoil As every man sought power for himself. Then some men taught them to appoint magistrates With rights established and the rule of law; For mankind worn by a life of violence And weakened by its feuds, was ready now To yield to the rules of law and binding statutes. In this description, virtue does not arise from a divine will, but from a practical need. Epicurus, by removing the fear of the gods as a judge of virtue, changed virtue from a divine mandate into a convention. In this vein, he wrote, ―Prudence is…the

Rebecca Knapp

greatest good. That is why prudence is a more valuable thing than philosophy. For prudence is the source of all the other virtues…The virtues are natural adjuncts of the pleasant life.‖ In other words, the virtues do not come from philosophical principles, but from simple common sense. Virtue, with the stamp of divinity removed, became a pragmatic mechanism. This meant that the Epicurean concept of virtue was mutable. Take, for example, the virtue of justice. Long and Sedley quote Epicurus: ―And even if what is useful in the sphere of justice changes but fits the preconception for some time, it was no less just throughout that time.‖ Also: ―Justice was never anything per se, but a contract, regularly arising at some place or other in people‘s dealings with one another.‖ That is to say, justice has no absolute or objective nature, it is simply a ―contract‖. It is whatever is useful and mutually advantageous to human interaction in a given situation. Epicurus‘ defined the gods in a particular way, and in so doing accepted the premise that virtue was not derived from a divine standard. This led him to the view of virtue as a practical convention rather than an objectively defined principle. Because virtue had no divine definition, it had no definition. It changed depending on circumstance. The connection between these two views is an instance of the way the Epicurean philosophy fit together as a system – for the purposes of our case-study, as an integration of metaphysics and ethics. The Stoic philosophy was in many ways diametrically opposed to Epicureanism, yet Stoicism too evidences a direct link between its metaphysical understanding of the gods, and its approach to morality and virtue. Unlike the Epicureans, the Stoics viewed their god as not only an arbiter of virtue, but as the standard for virtue itself. See Long and Sedley, where Stobaeus is quoted: ―Zeno represented the end [of life] as: ‗living in agreement‘. This is living in accordance with one concordant reason, since those who live in conflict are unhappy. His successors expressed this in a more expanded form, ‗living in agreement with nature‘.‖ In other words, since god is equivalent to nature, the Stoics defined virtue as living in

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agreement with nature – living in accordance with god‘s perfect conception of morality. Because the Stoics believed there was an absolute standard for virtue – i.e. god – they believed that virtue was a principle never to be deviated from, which demanded perfection. Again, see a quote from Long and Sedley, this time from Seneca: ―Therefore if every thing, when it has perfected its own good, is praiseworthy and has reached the end of its own nature, and man‘s own good is reason, if he has perfected reason, he is praiseworthy and has attained the end of his nature. This perfect reason is called virtue and is identical to rectitude.‖ Virtue, then, is rationality – which, as we have seen earlier, takes its ultimate form in divinity. And virtue is (in theory) perfectible – because it is derived from a perfect standard: god. The Stoics advocated a life devoted to virtue, because they believed virtue had a nature independent of human circumstances, and thus that it was possible to devote oneself to following it consistently. This belief, in turn, came from the Stoic conception of the gods. The Stoics, like the Epicureans, were led necessarily from a view of the gods to a view of virtue. A fascinating consequence of the view that these two Hellenistic philosophies were integrated systems of thought is that this view allows a comparison between the two philosophies that indicates a kind of basic similarity. Ultimately, both the Epicurean system – the idea that virtue is bound to practicality, because there is no divine standard – and the Stoic system – the idea that virtue is the goal of life, because it is a divinelydetermined standard to which one can hold oneself – both of these are derived from another premise, a deeper one, which both philosophies share. This is the premise that aside from god, there is no way to define virtue objectively – that human beings are not able to reach an absolute definition of virtue if that definition is not divinely mandated. The Epicureans believe this. They believe that because there is no divine mandate, virtue is naught but pragmatic convention. The Stoics believe it. They believe that they must act virtuously because there is a divine mandate – because a god has created nature in such a way as to demand it.

Rebecca Knapp

Neither philosophy holds that virtue can be defined in absolute terms if it is independent of god. The historical progression of these early ties between virtue and divinity is a topic outside the scope of this paper. However, noting the consistencies within two disparate philosophical systems allows this broader similarity to emerge. Stoicism and Epicureanism, if the study of relationships between metaphysics and ethics are any indication, are consistent, integrated systems of thought, following an implicit model for philosophy as a unified whole of divergent branches. That basic model constitutes a significant contribution of Greek thought to the study of philosophy.

Works Cited. Cicero. Nature of the Gods. Trans. P. G. Walsh. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Cleanthes. ―Manual‖. Trans. A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley. The Hellenistic philosophers: Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. 386. Epicurus. ―Ancient Collections of Maxims.‖ Trans. Brad Inwood and L. P. Gerson. The Epicurus Reader: Selected Writings and Testimonia. Ed. Brad Inwood and L.P. Gerson. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1994. 32-40. Epicurus. ―Key Docrtines.‖ Trans. A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley. The Hellenistic philosophers: Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. 125. Epicurus. ―Letter to Menoeceus.‖ Trans. Brad Inwood and L. P. Gerson. The Epicurus Reader: Selected Writings and Testimonia. Ed. Brad Inwood and L.P. Gerson. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1994. 28-31

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Long, A. A. Hellenistic Philosophy: Stoics, Epicureans, Skeptics. 2nd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986. Lucretius. On the Nature of the Universe. Trans. Ronald Melville. Ed. Don and Peta Fowler. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Seneca. â&#x20AC;&#x2022;Lettersâ&#x20AC;&#x2013;. Trans. A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley. The Hellenistic philosophers: Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. 395. Stobaeus. Trans. A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley. The Hellenistic philosophers: Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. 394.

The One, The Many, and Plato A Critical Analysis of Plato’s Theory of Forms

Emann Allebban

lato‘s theory of forms conveys his theories of both reality and knowledge, attracting the attention of philosophers of his time all the way to the present. The theory, however, is not without its problems. As will be demonstrated in the following, Plato‘s theory of forms fails in resolving the One/Many problem and does not overcome the objection raised by Plato in Parmenides – the failure to figure out the exact relation between the form and the particular. Before that, a brief review of relevant aspects of the theory is necessary. Plato postulates the existence of what he calls eternal Forms, which particular objects in the sensory world imitate and from which they derive their existence and nature. Thus a desk participates in the Form of ―Hardness‖ and is an imitation and reflection of that Form. Objects can, of course, participate in more than one Form at once. So a monkey may participate in the Form of ―Monkeyness‖ and the Form of ―Maleness‖, among others. These Forms are eternal and unchanging, while the sensory world is not. The theory of forms is most clearly revealed through his Cave Allegory and Divided Line Image, which divides our knowledge into four levels: conjecture/imagining, belief, thinking/understanding, and reason/intelligence.1 The first level, also the bottom level of knowledge, is the level of conjecture and imagination. It coincides with the prisoners sitting in front of the cave wall, watching the shadows of the props being cast on the wall. These images are distortions of real objects and do not repEmann currently attends the University of Michigan, where he majors in Philosophy and Liberal Studies with concentrations in Anthropology, History, and Communications. He plans on attending a graduate program in philosophy and religion. His primary interests in Philosophy are philosophy of religion, Islamic philosophy, metaphysics, and logic. He was born and raised in Knoxville, Tennessee and now resides in Dearborn, Michigan

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resent the truth of an object but allow for conjecture and guesswork. In this level, one takes a reflection (shadows) of a reflection (props) to be reality. In the world as we know it today, taking second hand information from politicians, the media, religion, parents, or peers as reality would fall under this category of knowledge. One level up is the level of belief and is represented by the fire level in the cave, where the prisoner is released from his chains only to find the fire and the shadows of the props it casts. The prisoner then takes the fire to be real, instead of the shadows. The source of knowledge is the objects themselves, thus this level is characterized by taking the sensory world to be the real world. While in reality, according to Plato this world of particulars (particular objects, ideas, etc) is nothing but a reflection of the real world â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the world of Forms. Plato argues that the objects in the sensory world are always changing, and thus cannot be truly real. Thus for anything to be real and fully exist, it must be constant and have a fixed and definite character. A circular object is not perfectly circular, just as a tall person is not perfectly tall. It is only in the world of Forms that you will find the perfection of circularity, tallness, and so on. The third level is the level of thinking/understanding, and it involves mathematics and the study of the essence of the mathematical Forms, such as square, triangle, point, etc. Although these Forms are reflected in the material world, their true nature can only be grasped via the use of reason and not sensory experience. Plato, however, identifies two problems with mathematics: it relies on assumptions that are never proven and it relies on the senses, as sensory experience, for Plato, will not reveal reality. Thus mathematics, due to these two problems, is not the highest level of knowledge. The last and highest level of knowledge is that of reason and intelligence. In this level, the Forms are directly studied, the highest Form being the Form of the Good. Through understanding the Form of the Good, one understands the purpose and meaning of existence and all that is within it, including all the other Forms, such as truth, justice, beauty, etc. This world of

Emann Allebban

Forms can only be acquired via the use of reason, not sensory experience, which only yields understanding of imitations of reality and particulars, which again are not perfect beauty. So understanding beauty entails going beyond the study of beautiful objects to the study of beauty itself, which is the common element that is found in all of these different objects that partake in beauty. This can only occur with the use of reason. Thus the Forms are more real, unchanging, and eternal, and are the source of existence for all the particulars in the sensory world. As is evident from Plato‘s four levels of knowledge, claims made about the physical or visible world are mere opinion, some founded while others are not – but neither are considered knowledge. The last two levels are of the world of things thought, and of the world of reason. Reason, instead of sensory experience, results in knowledge, knowledge and understanding namely of the ―Forms‖ or ―Ideas‖ such as beauty and justice. These Forms can only be understood via reason, and they represent Justice itself, Beauty itself, etc instead of individuals‘ ideas of justice and beauty. It is through Plato‘s theory of forms that he attempts to solve the One/Many problem. The One/Many problem was formulated by the Pre-Socratics as an ontological one, and was characterized by asking such questions as: ―What is the ultimate nature of what is?” and ―Is everything that exists ultimately “one” thing or “many” different things?” Plato‘s theory of forms, however, fails in solving the One/Many problem due to the many problems that have been voiced with his theory – from both critics of his time, like Aristotle, critics of later generations, and even a critic closer to home – Plato himself. The problem to be focused on in this paper is the failure of the theory to provide an explanation of the relationship between the forms and particular things, since Plato asserts that the forms are separate from matter.2 This problem was voiced by both Aristotle and Plato, in his dialogue Parmenides, where he entertains and rejects four metaphysical hypotheses: the One is not many, the One exists, that it is not one, and that it does not exist.3 In the dialogue, Plato attempts to explain the relationship between the forms and the particulars via

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the use of his participation metaphor: an object is beautiful, for example, because it participates in the Form of Beauty. But what exactly does ―participates‖ mean?4 There are two possible ways of participation: whole participation in the Form or partial participation in the Form, and unfortunately both result in logical absurdities.5 If it is asserted that the particular participates wholly in the Form, then the Form is many and thus separate from itself, as it is in a number of particulars. In this case, the Form will be multiplied. If, however, it is asserted that the particular participates partly in the Form, then the Form is divisible into many parts. This then means, for example, that we are all humans because we share in part in the form of Humanness. I am then in part human. Thus, in the second case, the Form is divisible. In both cases, the Form loses its unity and results in such absurdities.6 Plato then attempts to explain the participation metaphor in terms of resemblance, which is also rejected by way of what has come to be known as the Third Man Argument – if large things are large in virtue of something distinct from them (the Form of Large), then the Large itself and the other large things will be large in virtue of another Form of Large, ad infinitum.7 The argument continues to be developed by scholars such as Gregory Vlastos and Wilfrid Sellars.8 This argument, however, will not be developed here for brevity‘s sake. So it seems as though the participation metaphor has received a fatal blow, and thus fails to explicate the relationship between the Form and the particulars. It is possible, however, to entertain a possible objection, an objection that Plato raises: the stated problems with the metaphor only arise if the Forms are to be taken as material, physical ―objects.‖ However, the forms are immaterial and thus would not be subject to division and multiplication.9 Although a seemingly strong objection, asserting the immaterialness of the Forms only raises another objection to the theory: if the Forms are immaterial and the particulars that derive their existence from these Forms are material, then how can materialness be derived from immaterialness? Where does the

Emann Allebban

materialness of the particulars come from, if the Forms they imitate are immaterial? This response serves to further amplify the failure of Plato in identifying the exact relationship between the Forms and the particulars- a problem so strong that it hinders the theory of forms from solving the One/Many problem. Thus, as has been seen through examination of only one of the many problems with the theory of forms, the theory does not resolve the One/Many problem and does not overcome the objection raised by Plato – the failure to figure out the exact relation between the form and the particular. Notes 1. Details of the theory will be drawn from Jordan, pp. 84-96 and Plato‘s Republic, Books 6 - 7 in Rouse, pp. 281-341. 2. Cresswell, p. 153 3. Gross, p. 276 4. Jordan p. 141 5. Peck, p. 178 6. Whitaker, Parmenides 131a-e; Scoon, p. 118 7. Pickering, p. 263-264 8. Vlastos, pp. 319-349; Sellars, pp. 405-437 9. Peck, pp. 174 – 177 Works Cited Cresswell, M.J. ―Is There One or Are There Many One and Many Problems in Plato?‖ The Philosophical Quarterly 22 (1972): 149154. Gross, Barry. The Great Thinkers on Plato. New York: G.P. Putnam‘s Sons, 1968. Jordan, James. Western Philosophy From Antiquity to the Middle Ages. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1997.

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Peck, Arthur L. ―Plato Versus Parmenides.‖ The Philosophical Review 71 (1962): 159-184. Pickering, F. R. ―Plato‘s ‗Third Man‘ Arguments.‖ Mind 90 (1981): 263-269. Rouse, W.H.D. Great Dialogues of Plato. New York: New American Library, 1999. Scoon, Robert. ―Plato‘s Parmenides.‖ Mind 51 (1942): 115-133. Sellars, Wilfrid. ―Vlastos and the Third Man.‖ The Philosophical Review 64 (1955): 405-437. Vlastos, Gregory. ―The Third Man Argument.‖ The Philosophical Review 63 (1954): 319-349. Whitaker, Albert. Plato’s Parmenides. Focus Publishing: 1996.

Acquitting Nietzsche An Alternative View of his Infamous Misogyny

Susan Parillo

riedrich Nietzsche is widely regarded as a man who hated women. His work has been assaulted with accusations of misogyny. It is true that his writing contains numerous references to women, few of which seem complimentary when taken at face value. From his earliest works, to those composed at the end of his life, one can identify dozens of excerpts to support the misogyny charge. One can read almost any work by Nietzsche, employ a narrow interpretation, and conclude that he was in fact a misogynist. His comments regarding women appear, at best, ambiguous. At their worst, they seem down right degrading. At least prima facie, Nietzsche seems perhaps the most sexist philosopher in history. A closer examination of his book Beyond Good and Evil will reveal a different picture. There is a different exegesis of Nietzsche which exonerates him from the charge of misogyny. Properly construed, Nietzsche is revealed as a man who appreciated the natural instincts and potential power of women, and who, through his use of irony and his criticisms of both ―woman as such‖ and women, wished to educate women on approaching the emancipation issue more effectively without losing their inherent femininity. He in fact implored women to cease in the cannibalization of other women and ―woman as such‖ in order that they could better achieve their goal of emancipation or even better, from Nietzsche‘s perspective, to achieve a goal of self-overcoming, and in so doing become free spirits. It is first and foremost important to comprehend the organization of Nietzsche‘s writing and his use of language. Those who read his work often conclude it is the work of a madman; Susan recently graduated from Skidmore College in May of this year with a BA in Philosophy. She plans to continue with philosophy and earn her PhD. Her primary interests are in both Continental and Ancient Philosophy. She is originally from Los Gatos, CA and now resides in Saratoga Springs, NY.

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the work appears convoluted, disorganized, and selfcontradictory. The supposed convolution and disorganization of Nietzsche‘s writing demands that the reader explore the work at a deeper level, as if removing a mask, to uncover what the philosopher was truly attempting to convey. Furthermore, Nietzsche appears to often contradict himself because he employed such irony and humor in his rhetoric, causing the reader to experience an unexpected, delayed reaction contrary to the initial reaction when thinking about the issue at hand. Nietzsche‘s treatment of issues concerning gender and gender equality is consistent with his treatment of other controversial issues such as truth, philosophy, religion, and politics. Secondly, Nietzsche struggled with language as a whole, believing that to speak one‘s view is to distort it. He felt one can never adequately convey one‘s meaning to another unless each person involved has had precisely the “same experiences in common.”1 He probably utilized the tools of irony, parody, and humor as a way of coping with his difficulties concerning the accuracy and value of language. Finally, because his work is so anfractuous, it is absolutely critical that any one comment of Nietzsche‘s be explicated only in context with the greater whole of his work. It is virtually impossible to make singular selections or anthologize Nietzsche without distorting his meaning. As a final point of clarification, it is also critical that one understand the difference between Nietzsche‘s usage of the term ―women‖ and his usage of ―woman as such.‖ In her book review of a recent translation of Beyond Good and Evil, Dr. Maudmarie Clark perceptively notes that Nietzsche employed the term ―das Weib an sich‖ (―woman as such‖ or occasionally abbreviated simply to ―woman‖) to refer to the social construction, psychology, physiology, and politics of the female and not about individual women who may or may not exemplify it. When writing about an individual woman, he used the term ―Frau,‖ the German term applicable to an individual woman indicating tremendous respect for her. Walter Kaufman, who translated Beyond Good and Evil, translates this as simply ―women.‖2 This distinction is important for two reasons. First, by understanding that Nietzsche

Susan Parillo

differentiated between ―woman as such‖ (or ―woman‖) and ―women,‖ it becomes clearer that the object at which Nietzsche proceeded to direct his derogatory comments was not individual women, but rather the social construction and generalization of women and the way in which women at the time were attempting their emancipation. Additionally, it is important to note Nietzsche‘s use of the word ―Frau‖ because it presupposes a level of respect that he held for women, which he would not hold were he truly a misogynist. In understanding Nietzsche‘s organization, his use of linguistic tools such as irony, parody, and humor, and his definitions of ―woman‖ verses ―women‖ it is now possible to venture into the text of Beyond Good and Evil free of gender-biases and attempt to untangle what he actually said about women and the struggle of ―woman as such‖ to attain equal rights through emancipation. It is far too easy to read a seemingly derogatory passage, misconstrue Nietzsche‘s true meaning, and draw erroneous conclusions. When reading certain excerpts, it appears that there is no way whatsoever to defend Nietzsche against the misogyny charge. For example, he seemingly advises men to treat women as possessions destined for service. A man, on the other hand, who has depth, in his spirit as well as in his desires, including that depth of benevolence which is capable of severity and hardness and easily mistaken for them, must always think about woman as Orientals do: he must conceive of woman as a possession, a property that can be locked, as something predestined for service and achieving her perfection in that.3 This passage, taken by itself, is notably harder to defend than others. Alone, it could never be construed positively or used to exonerate him. It does appear that here Nietzsche is claiming that any man with spirit (something Nietzsche holds as valuable) would only keep a woman as a possession. It is hard to know

Acquitting Nietzsche

what Nietzsche is trying to say in this excerpt. I surmise that he is perhaps bestowing the reader with the same forms of irony, parody, and humor that he utilizes elsewhere throughout the book. As I claimed previously, it is impossible to make individual selections or anthologize Nietzsche without distorting him. Admittedly, this particular selection casts Nietzsche in a bad (i.e., misogynist) light. I can only recommend not taking this passage by itself, but in context with the remainder of Nietzsche‘s work, viewed as a whole product. It seems unlikely that Nietzsche would write an entire book throughout which women and ―woman‖ are treated with respect (called Frau, and counseled on more appropriately approaching issues of equality without compromising themselves or cannibalizing one another) and then arbitrarily include small passages betraying an ulterior misogyny. Because he left us no clarification, we must settle for simply not knowing his true meaning in this passage. We must weigh it against, and place it in the context of, a work that is evidently largely pro-female. There is adequate evidence that Nietzsche was in fact in favor of women, and in favor of educating women about approaching ―woman as such‖ more effectively. He can be elucidated as a man who admired woman‘s instincts as inherently feminine and respected women, not as an evil misogynist. In various ways throughout the book, Nietzsche demonstrates his appreciation for ―instincts‖ and ―the natural.‖ For example, to summarize his thoughts on the history of morals, Nietzsche describes morality as being against instinct. Morality is therefore bad. If a person holds virtues at all, they must be in accord with instincts. Here, he reveals his respect for that which is instinctual. His treatment of women is consistent with his other thoughts regarding the value of nature and instinct. He holds an appreciation and respect for the natural instincts of women. Woe when ―the eternally boring woman‖ – she is rich in that! - is permitted to venture forth [toward emancipation]! When she begins to unlearn thoroughly and on principle her prudence of art – of

Susan Parillo grace, of play, of chasing away worries, of lightening burdens and taking things lightly – and her subtle aptitude for agreeable desires!4

Initially, this passage could appear to be one of his ―sexist remarks.‖ At a very superficial level, one could be offended, claiming that Nietzsche is first calling woman boring and is secondly stating that woman should not be allowed to venture forth: ―Woe‖ when woman is allowed to attempt it. There is, however, another interpretation of this text. First, one must know that ―the eternally boring woman‖ is in reference to Goethe‘s Faust and his allusion to ―the Eternal-Feminine.‖ Goethe held women in the highest esteem, claiming ―Women, eternally, show us the way.‖5 By alluding to Goethe, Nietzsche divulges his respect for woman. He acknowledges her instincts, her prudence, of grace, play, chasing away worries, lightening burdens, etc. These are abilities of woman that are notably good. Nietzsche‘s ―woe‖ is not a grievance over women who might venture forth! The antecedent of his ―woe‖ is his theory that woman will unlearn those instinctual drives within her which are good, and that she will unlearn them completely and as a matter of principle. To cease being that which is most instinctually feminine in an effort to obtain equal rights misses the point of having those rights. He continues exploring the nature of women: What inspires respect for woman, and often enough even fear, is her nature, which is more ―natural‖ than man‘s, the genuine, cunning suppleness of a beast of prey, the tiger‘s claw under the glove, the naiveté of her egoism, her uneducability and inner wildness, the incomprehensibility, scope, and movement of her desires and virtuesWhat, in spite of all fear, elicits pity for this dangerous and beautiful cat ―woman‖ is that she appears to suffer more, to be more vulnerable, more in need of love, and more condemned to disappoint than any other animal.6

Acquitting Nietzsche

Here again, one could find Nietzsche‘s words offensive. One could focus solely on the appearance that Nietzsche is calling women naive, uneducable, incomprehensible, in need of pity, and doomed to always disappoint. A better interpretation is that this is Nietzsche‘s respect for woman. He holds a healthy respect, albeit based in fear, for that which is natural in woman. He finds her sleek, as a beast of prey, dangerous, uneducable – that is, unable to be tamed. She is wild and free, yet appears soft, supple, in need of love, and vulnerable. A woman is condemned to disappoint not because she is inherently a disappointing creature, but because she is inherently a paradoxical creature, one who appears so vulnerable on the exterior and yet bears the tiger‘s claw if one is able to get her glove off. It is precisely this interior resistance against being tamed that causes woman to act as she does: ―In revenge and in love woman is more barbarous than man.‖7 A woman in love (or hate) is more barbarous, i.e. passionate, than a man. Love is a natural instinct which Nietzsche must honor, for he states, ―Whatever is done from love always occurs beyond good and evil.‖8 Clark writes, ―A major point of these passages concerning the instinct of woman may be to point to the contradictions in our idea of the female—which, Nietzsche shows us, includes being both more natural hence animal-like and more spiritual than the male—which make it impossible for any individual woman to exemplify [these traits].‖9 Perhaps because he appreciates the natural instincts of women, Nietzsche wants to educate women about woman as such on two fronts. He wants to first show them how they are viewed, criticizing their behaviors, to draw to light the actions of women that inhibit the progress and emancipation of woman as such. Secondly, he appears to want to educate women on the errors they make while attempting to achieve progress and the goal of emancipation. In simple terms, he seems to say ―You women act like xyz and perhaps if you did not act like xyz, you would have better luck at obtaining your goal of abc.‖ Nietzsche‘s criticisms of woman and women are found throughout the book. He criticizes women claiming ―Woman has much reason for shame; so much pedantry, superficiality, school-

Susan Parillo

marmishness, petty presumption, petty licentiousness and immodesty lies concealed in woman.‖10 He questions, ―Has ever a woman conceded profundity to a woman‘s head, or justice to a woman‘s heart? And is it not true that on the whole ―woman‖ has so far been despised most by woman herself – and by no means by us?‖11 Of course these criticisms are painful to hear, especially as it must be confessed that the observations are largely accurate, though no individual woman likes to admit this is the case. Women have possibly done far more to damage both individual women and woman as such than men have conceived. Venture into any high-school, college, office, or PTA meeting, and witness women‘s treatment of woman. This is the cannibalization theory of woman. Women practically eat woman alive with pettiness, back-stabbing, gossip, and spite. The seemingly inherent nature of the stereotypical female to behave in such manner against other females is far more notably a cause for the lack of successes for woman than male oppression. ―Women themselves always still have in the background of all personal vanity an impersonal contempt – for ‗woman.‘12 There exists a ridiculous notion that any time a male criticizes a female, he is sexist or misogynist. Criticisms can and should be constructive, especially when they are accurate and they can potentially assist the process of self-overcoming, leading to achievement of a goal. That Nietzsche criticizes women for their treatment of woman, regardless of the notably harsh tone of the critique, does not make him a misogynist. One can charge Nietzsche with being abrupt and crass but cannot indict him as a sexist on the basis of his critique. His criticisms show him to be interested in the cause of woman. He is essentially educating women on the cannibalization behaviors that must cease if they are to succeed in emancipation. After all, no attempt at emancipation can succeed as long as women are still contemptuous toward ‗woman.‘ Nietzsche witnessed the beginning of the women‘s emancipation movement in Europe and keenly observed that it was that very movement which was dulling feminine instincts. Women were losing touch with their femininity. Additionally,

Acquitting Nietzsche

women were also losing what influence they had without even being aware of it. Woman‘s influence in Europe has decreased proportionately as her rights and claims have increased; and the ―emancipation of woman,‖ insofar as that is demanded and promoted by women themselves (and not merely by shallow males) is thus seen as an odd symptom of the increasing stupidity in this movement, an almost masculine stupidity of which a woman who had turned out well… would have to be thoroughly ashamed.13 Superficially, one could claim that Nietzsche is calling the emancipation movement stupid, claiming that women should be ashamed of attempting this movement. To the contrary, this passage is not demeaning to women or woman, it is demeaning to men! The stupidity of the movement was not the movement itself, but rather that woman could not see how, by going about the movement all wrong, she was actually losing her influence. If this were true, it would indeed be an incredibly stupid mistake to make, and Nietzsche claims it is the kind of mistake a man would make. It seems as though Nietzsche wished to educate women as to how to approach their struggle for equality. As it was, women were approaching equality by abandoning their femininity and feminine instinct and, in essence, trying to become men. He would rather have woman become ever more womanly and man ever more manly. By attempting to masculinise women we run the risk of simultaneously feminizing men, jeopardizing the future. Nietzsche claims ―One must know how to conserve oneself: the hardest test of independence.‖14 Women do not fall outside of this prerequisite for independence. ―We men wish that woman should not go on compromising herself through enlightenment.‖ He is not saying ‗we men wish women would not become enlightened!‘15 No, he is saying, ‗become enlightened, just please do not lose yourself, your instincts, your femininity in the process! Do not compromise yourself!‘ He criticizes the way that

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women attempt emancipation as clumsy and overly scientific.16 He poses the question, ―Is it not in the worst taste when woman sets about becoming scientific in that way?‖17 He observed ―It was for woman‘s good when Napoleon [said]: woman should be silent when it comes to politics! And I think it is a real friend of women that counsels them today: women should be silent about woman.”18 This rhetoric could easily be misconstrued as perhaps the worst, most degrading comment about women, advising them to just be quiet. I do not concur! Nietzsche is trying to be a ―real friend‖ to woman by advising her that she should stop talking about women, cannibalizing them, thwarting their own efforts at equality. He further advises women to be wary of the models they adduce in favor of ―woman as such.‖ Evidently, at the time, women were misinterpreting and therefore erroneously employing three representatives in defense of their movement. Nietzsche warns them that these examples were merely comical and actually counterarguments, actually counterproductive to their cause.19 Were he against the women‘s emancipation movement, or a hater of women, Nietzsche would never counsel accordingly! Moreover Nietzsche also equally harshly criticizes men for inhibiting woman‘s progress from occurring more properly. To be sure, there are enough imbecilic friends and corrupters of woman among the scholarly asses of the male sex who advise woman to defeminize herself in this way and to imitate all the stupidities with which ―man‖ in Europe, European ―manliness‖ is sick: they would like to reduce woman to the level of ―general education,‖ probably even reading the newspapers and talking about politics. Here and there they even want to turn women into freethinkers and scribblers – as if a woman without piety would not seem utterly obnoxious and ridiculous to a profound and godless man.‖20 It is not that Nietzsche believes women should not be allowed to read newspapers or talk about politics. Nietzsche holds a vision

Acquitting Nietzsche

for woman that is so much grander than what they are striving for. Do they not see that men are socializing them into being male-defined? And that the gross majority of males can only define themselves, let alone woman, as a part of the herd? Nietzsche seems to want to counsel, ‗stop being male-defined and actively engage in creating woman‘s identity.‘ Nietzsche saw that in woman‘s efforts to become equal, she was accidentally and unknowingly reducing herself to mediocrity. To become equal would be to become a part of the herd. He wants woman to avoid ―the degeneration and diminution into the perfect herd animal.‖21 He encourages woman against striving for mere mediocrity, imploring her to reach higher, perhaps toward the principles of self-overcoming, actualizing her will to power, and becoming a free-spirit. Because Nietzsche valued will to power, his condemnation of women is likely targeted at their denial of power within themselves. For Nietzsche, power is the highest value. Pain, suffering, unhappiness and cruelty all have a power-enhancing quality to them if one is able to overcome them. Tension of the soul in unhappiness cultivates us. Courage, strength, perseverance, spirit, masks, cunning, and greatness are all achieved only through suffering – great suffering.22 Woman is constantly faced both with oppression by males and cannibalization by other women. Because of the great suffering inherent in the existence of woman (in Nietzsche‘s day) there must, by Nietzsche‘s philosophy, have been a great pearl of wisdom in woman – a great potential seed of power to be harvested. If only woman could move toward her potential, draw forth her ―granite of spiritual fatum,‖23 she could realize the basic aspect of will to power – the will to surface and the will to knowledge24 and be well on her way toward becoming a free spirit! But, first things first, woman must be able to overcome herself and she must be able to overcome the social construction of femininity and the desire to conform to male images of the feminine. Charges that Friedrich Nietzsche was a misogynist are erroneous. His work, when read as ironic, parodying, and subverting stereotypes about women, can actually be useful for the

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feminist movement. His ideas and criticisms of women, when taken constructively, show him to have great compassion for their struggles and have founded many feminist ideas. Some scholars might beg us to ignore Nietzsche‘s comments on women – claiming he is such a good philosopher elsewhere, we should just ignore them. To ignore Nietzsche on women and woman as such would be to rob him of some important ideas. While some passages concerning females are admittedly inexplicable, most can be shown to be favorable to women without straining the text in any way whatsoever. Because of this, it is unfair to dismiss Nietzsche as a sexist who speaks to us from the past and whose concerns are now obsolete and inaccessible to us. The richness of these apparently sexist selections should lead readers to be suspicious of the initial impression they make, causing her to delve deeper. After more carefully reviewing the text, I have concluded that Nietzsche should be acquitted of the indictment of misogyny. In evaluating my interpretation of Beyond Good and Evil, I do not feel I have strained the text or distorted it in Nietzsche‘s defense. My finding of Nietzsche as pro-female is well grounded in the text. Nietzsche should be regarded as a philosopher who respected women, held them in high esteem, and wished to encourage and guide them in their efforts at emancipation. Notes 1. BGE, 216 2. Clark, NDPR 2002.08.02 3. BGE, 167 4. BGE, 163 5. Goethe, 305 6. BGE, 169 7. BGE, 88 8. BGE, 90 9. Clark, NDPR 2002.08.12 10. BGE, 163 11. BGE, 164 12. BGE, 82

Acquitting Nietzsche

13. BGE, 168 14. BGE, 52 15. BGE, 164 16. BGE, 162 17. BGE, 163 18. BGE, 164 19. BGE, 164 20. BGE, 169 21. BGE, 118 22. BGE, 154 23. BGE, 162 24. BGE, 161 Works Cited Clark, Maudemarie. ―A Book Review of: Nietzsche, Friedrich, Beyond Good and Evil, Rolf-Peter Horstmann and Judith Norman (eds.), translated by Judith Norman, Cambridge University Press, 2002.‖ Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (NDPR). 2002.08.12. 15 Dec. 2003. <http://ndpr.icaap.org/content/ archives/2002/8/clark-nietzsche.html >. Goethe, Johan Wolfgang Von. Goethe: The Collected Works Volume 2 Faust I and II. Ed. Stuart Atkins. Princeton University Press. Princeton, NJ 1994. P 305. This piece was used as a cross reference to better understand Nietzsche‘s Goethe reference, Beyond Good and Evil p.163. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future. Trans. Walter Kaufman. Vintage Books. New York, NY 1989. Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Gay Science: With a Prelude of Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs. Trans. Walter Kaufman. Vintage Books. New York, NY 1974. The Gay Science, though not specifically referred to in this paper, indubitably swayed my thinking as it relates to Beyond Good and Evil.

The Ethical Ramifications of Recent Advances in Ovarian Transplantation

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varian transplantation, for all its apparent novelty, has a long history: as Oktay and Yih observe, "The idea of fresh orthotopic autologous ovarian transplantation in humans is neither novel nor sophisticated; a New York surgeon reported on this technique as early as in 1906."1 However, fresh autologous transplantation -- removing the ovary from the same location to which it is retransplanted -- is not particularly useful in itself; rather, two modern advances, frozen autologous transplantation and heterologous transplantation, have returned ovarian transplantation to the spotlight. The former, made possible by improved cryopreservative technology, enabled a woman, Ouarda Touirat, whose ovaries were removed and frozen while she underwent chemotherapy, to become pregnant after ovarian retransplantation.2 Meanwhile, Dr. Sherman Silber's transplant of fresh ovarian tissue between identical twins Melanie Morgan and Stephanie Yarber3 has transformed heterologous ovarian transplantation from a philosophical thought-experiment into a genuine possibility. Before the above procedures become standard medical practice, they deserve an ethical analysis that is informed by upto-date literature. When compared to ARTs4 such as embryo cryopreservation, ovarian transplantation has the advantage of avoiding the creation or destruction of potential human life. However, as Robertson states in his discussion of an autologous ovarian transplant following cryopreservation, Govind is a third-year philosophy and biological sciences double major at Stanford University. His favorite areas of philosophy are ethics and personal identity, both of which he was able to study at Oxford University this past spring. His senior thesis is on body ownership and the moral authority of advance directives. He thanks Ellen Porzig for her helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper

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Although this advance is unlikely to generate the controversies that reproductive innovations such as surrogacy and cloning have, important ethical issues will arise if such techniques lead to premenopausal ovarian storage by healthy women or ovary donation from cadavers or fetuses.5 The former issue Robertson raises relates to autologous transplantation, while the latter involves concern about heterologous transplants. Since many ethical problems in autologous transplantation also apply to heterologous transplantation, I will initially consider autologous transplantation, and then move on to issues unique to heterologous donation. This call to consider ethical issues is not a demand for a halt or slowdown in progress -- in fact, I hope to do just the opposite. Effective ethical analysis will suggest new areas in which this technology might be useful and should be accelerated, while realistically assessing its limitations in other arenas. In particular, I hope to treat religious views not as a roadblock to technological progress, but as an encouragement to develop technologies that serve patients whose religious beliefs prevent them from using current ARTs. AUTOLOGOUS TRANSPLANTATION Recent work on autologous ovarian transplantation has focused on cryopreservation of ovarian tissue, which enables strips of an ovary to be stored while ovary-damaging procedures, such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy, are performed on the patient.6 These strips can then be retransplanted into the patient after the therapy is complete. The interim cryostorage of ovarian tissue produces ethical questions that parallel those raised by similar ARTs, such as oocyte and embryo cryopreservation. Imagine a patient who dies from complications of chemotherapy after her ovaries have been removed and cryopreserved. Had she had oocytes or embryos

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preserved, her partner or other family members might want to use them for vitro fertilization and/or surrogate gestation. This produces two ethical challenges: 1) difficulties in confirming the deceased's intent to become a genetic parent 2) concern for the welfare of the offspring, who will lack a biological mother (2) can be countered on the grounds that posthumous donation is analogous to anonymous oocyte or sperm donation, which is not thought to harm the offspring.7 However, this analogy is not perfect. Children of an anonymous oocyte donor will be unlikely to know the life story of their biological mother, while children of a posthumous donor will likely be raised with a full and perhaps saddening knowledge of their dead parent. Claim (1) seems even more troubling: imagine the case of a parent bringing grandchildren into the world against the wishes of a (now-dead) child, for example. Notwithstanding these issues, however, oocyte and embryo cryopreservation do make posthumous procreation possible. In contrast, the ovarian tissue cryopreservation patient would likely be unable to procreate posthumously. Heterologous transplantation of the ovary would be fraught with immunological problems.8 Neither in-vitro ovarian maturation nor ovarian xenotransplantation into immunodeficient mice, which would avoid organ rejection problems, are medically mature technologies; the latter is also ethically and epidemiologically problematic.9 The ovary would therefore be unable to produce oocytes, because no location to which it might feasibly be transplanted would exist. This limitation might be considered an advantage. Unlike a cryopreserved embryo, where the moral status of the embryo and the claim of the father must be considered, cryopreserved ovarian tissue would be an extension of the patient's body, only usable as long as she exists. However, whether this restriction is counted a benefit or a disadvantage, the appropriate disposal

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procedure for "stranded" ovarian tissue in the case of donor death -- should it be discarded? stored indefinitely in hope of advances in transplant technology? donated to research? -- must be established before ovarian tissue cryopreservation moves from experimental technique to standard medical practice. A second issue involves safety and patient access. Respect for patient autonomy suggests that ovarian cryopreservation could be permissible even in the absence of clear medical indications such as cancer: The autonomy of both males and females should be respected. Each person should be able to take measures to preserve his or her fertility whether threatened by disease or voluntary chosen interventions (such as vasectomy) or life-plan considerations (the wish to have a child later).10 Ovarian cryopreservation promises women the same fertilitypreservation options that sperm banking currently offers men. As well, cryopreservative technology could remove age-related gender inequalities both by decreasing the danger of aneuploidy caused by aging ovaries and by allowing reproductive potential to continue beyond current menopause. As such, ovarian cryopreservation seems potentially both practically and ethically beneficial to patients who are not in danger of cancer. As Dr. Sherman Silber's infertility clinic states, "Ovarian tissue freezing is a new solution for these women who feel that by the time they do get married, or are otherwise ready to start a family, they will have lost all of their fertile eggs due to the aging process."11 However, the greater invasiveness and lower effectiveness of ovarian cryopreservation upsets the comparison with sperm banking. The ESHRE Task Force argues that the surgery is not medically beneficent: Whilst the use of frozenâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;thawed sperm has become routine, the case is different for reproductive tissue cryopreservation. In view of the lack of suc-

GOVIND PERSAD cess and clinical applications in the case of ovarian tissue, this application should not be offered to women as a means to preserve their fertility potential when there is no immediate threat to their fertility.12

Robertson argues for a ban by invoking another ethical principle, that of non-maleficence: [T]he burdens of elective oophorectomy would seem so much greater than the benefits that a physician who performed an oophorectomy in this situation might well be violating the medical ethical principle primum non nocere.13 The clash between autonomy and beneficence/non-maleficence suggests a combination of both principles. Given that women have no fertility preservation method as effective as sperm banking--embryo freezing requires a partner, oocyte freezing is still unreliable,14 and both require risky, expensive, and complicated ovarian stimulation--experimental research into ovarian tissue cryopreservation should be encouraged and accelerated as a means to gender equity. Simultaneously, concern for gender equity implies that strong standards, possibly including restrictions on availability of oocyte cryopreservation outside of experimental studies, must be enforced to ensure that society does not foist unsafe fertility management treatments on women rather than providing support for fertility choices that do not involve invasive surgery, such as flex-time work and maternity leave. This demand for evidence is no different from what is expected of any other ART; the issues of gender equity simply make it more important. Finally, I will consider an surprising possibility for autologous ovarian transplantation. Retransplantation can be performed either heterotopically, where the ovary is retransplanted to another site in the body (often the forearm), or orthotopically, where the ovary is returned approximately to its

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prior location in the pelvis.15 The latter method allows for "natural" pregnancy rather than egg retrieval followed by IVF: In theory, natural pregnancy might be achieved via orthotopic transplantation (an autograft placed near the infundibulopelvic ligament) if the fallopian tubes remain intact and the transplant does not become sequestered under the peritoneum.16 This method, orthotopic transplantation, worked exactly as described above in the case of Ouarda Touirat: "We should stress that conception arose spontaneously since neither ovarian stimulation nor IVF had been done."17 Orthotopic transplantation, since it does not necessitate IVF, offers fertility preservation to patients who, for religious reasons, would not consent to oocyte or embryo cryopreservation or to oocyte retrieval from a heterotopic transplant followed by IVF. Faiths that reject IVF include Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism,18 as well as some interpretations of Jewish tradition.19 Thus, ovarian cryopreservation and transplantation could potentially succeed in preserving fertility in religious patients where other ARTs currently cannot. HETEROLOGOUS TRANSPLANTATION Heterologous transplantation introduces an entirely new set of ethical questions, many of which relate to organ transplantation and gamete donation rather than gamete cryopreservation. The first is that of immunological rejection. It is possible that Silber's transplant between identical twins will remain a special case: "The risk of tissue rejection means that ovary transplants of this sort are only really practical with identical twins and there just aren't many pairs out there that this could help. "20 However, Silber is described as believing that "such a transplant could be useful between non-related women, but only if anti-rejection medicines became safer."21 Even with such improvements, the

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risk of rejection remains high: [A]llografting ovarian tissue is an enormous inconvenience compared with oocyte donation: it requires ongoing immunosuppressant treatment to avoid graft rejection. The burden of immunosuppressant treatment is known for vital grafts such as the kidney, heart liver, or lung; is it permissible to accept such a risk for an organ and nonvital function as the ovary and fertility? Also, in the case of an ovarian tissue recipient, immunosuppressant treatment not only affects the woman herself, but may also produce worse pregnancy outcomes such as prematurity and low birth weight.22 While it is true that many healthy children have been born to immunosuppressed patients, accepting additional risk to the newborn as a result of a treatment primarily intended to produce a healthy newborn seems both illogical and in potential violation of the neonate's best interests. Like Henderson23 and Robertson,24 I can conceive of few situations where oocyte donation would not be equally effective at bringing about desired reproductive outcomes and less hazardous to all individuals concerned. While oocyte donation did fail in the St. Louis case, heterologous transplantation was made drastically safer by the twins' genetic identity. Thus, heterologous transplantation seems biologically interesting but medically limited. One exception might be in religious cases where IVF and/or egg donation are taboo: if the donated ovary is considered to belong to the gestational mother rather than to the donor, then, through heterologous transplantation, a child could be born through natural pregnancy to a previously infertile woman. The genetic parentage of the child might be considered unimportant. There is support for this line of thought in Jewish practice.25 Given Silber's admirable grasp of the Jewish halachic tradition and its impact on ART treatments,26 he may have foreseen this option when he made the optimistic comments above.

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The Jewish idea stated above raises questions about the status of the ovary. The ovary, unlike other frequently transplanted organs such as the kidney, is both an endocrine and a germline tissue. As a germline tissue, it has the capability to continue the genetic line of the ovary donor. Given this difference, does agreeing to organ donation involve agreeing to ovary donation? Robertson sees this as a possibility: Women while alive might sign organ donor cards that encompass ovarian donation when they die, or families might consent to donate the ovaries of deceased young women for preservation and later reproductive use by infertile couples.27 However, the scenario Robertson envisions involves the use of the ovary purely as a source for oocytes, rather than as an organ to be transplanted into the body. We do not permit organ transplant recipients, even recipients of other nonessential organs such as corneas, to use donor organs for purposes other than implantation into their own bodies; nor do we authorize the next of kin to donate or sell a deceased person's organs to private individuals. Thus, I would argue that "heterologous transplantation" as described by Robertson is really postmortem gamete donation, not organ donation. In Britain, for example, this redefinition would prohibit their use without explicit permission from the donor herself.28 I do not argue that postmortem game donation is wrong -- just that it is not organ transplantation. In contrast to the procedure Robertson outlines, a donated ovary could in fact be transplanted into the body of the recipient. As well as for the religious reasons outlined above, this might be done in order to reap health benefits: "[A]llografting has a large advantage over oocyte donation, that of reestablishing the endocrine functions of the ovary and thus enabling the grafted patient to avoid need for replacement hormones."29 Dr. Silber considered this beneficial effect when making the decision to perform ovarian transplantation.30 It could be argued that if a ovarian transplant were performed from a cadaver donor, the

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reproductive potential of the ovary could be considered a case of double effect, and the transplant be considered an organ donation rather than a gamete donation. Consider McCarty's example of double effect: A doctor who believed that abortion was wrong, even in order to save the mother's life, might nevertheless consistently believe that it would be permissible to perform a hysterectomy on a pregnant woman with cancer. In carrying out the hysterectomy, the doctor would aim to save the woman's life while merely foreseeing the death of the fetus. Performing an abortion, by contrast, would involve intending to kill the fetus as a means to saving the mother.31 Thus, on the double effect model, one could believe that gamete donation was wrong without donor consent and still transplant an ovary into a recipient, as long as the aim was organ transfer rather than egg transfer. However, aside from the immunological problems already discussed, there are two arguments against this approach. First, there are other ways, such as hormone replacement therapy, to restore hormone levels in the body. It is likely that a human ovary will be more effective; however, this may not justify the potential violation of the donor's wishes. Second, the ovary's reproductive function could be separated from its endocrine function: donor ovary recipients who are not authorized to use the gametes contained in the ovary could be required to undergo sterilization or use a near-perfect contraceptive method. This would undermine the claim of double effect. Despite these concerns, I believe that the double effect claim is compelling, given that the ovary's reproductive and endocrine functions are so closely related. It seems counterintuitive to consider a part of one's own body to have a right against one that it be treated in a certain way. Therefore, to respect the donor's will, I would argue that, rather than limiting the rights of organ recipients over their

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bodies, germline organ donation ought to be separated from somatic organ donation in donor consent forms This idea of the donor having interests in the state of the donated ovary suggests another question: whose ovary is it, really -- and whose child is its product? In the St. Louis case, this worry was diminished by the shared genetic identity of the twin sisters, but would be salient elsewhere. In the case of somatic tissues, the consensus is that they are the recipient's, but in germline donation cases, the donated tissues seem to remain the donor's. For example, in the case of oocyte transfer, the birth mother is considered simply a gestational surrogate for the donor's egg. Stephen Munzer argues that DNA identity is a necessary criterion for organ identity, and thus that the donor determines the eggs produced in their former ovaries: Again, having the same DNA bears importantly on the genetic makeup of children conceived after the transplantation of gonads. Though rare, transplants of ovaries and testicles have taken place. The donor determines the genetic make-up of ova and sperm. This is obviously true in the case of ova, for at birth the ovaries of a female contain all the ova she will ever possess.32 Genetic determination alone, however, does not establish maternity. The parent of a clone would entirely determine the genetic make-up of the clone and of the clone's gametes, but it does not follow from this that she would be the parent of the clone's offspring. Thus, there must be something more than genetic identity or genetic determination to parenthood. I argue that a better definition of "parent of a child" would be "the individual whose ovary secretes the egg from which the child is produced." I also argue that, unlike other transplantable tissues such as ova or embryos, the ovary, once transplanted, becomes part of the transplant recipient's body. A natural result analogous to that of heterologous ovarian transplantation is empirically present in the documented case

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of a true hermaphrodite chimera; this person has one ovary and one testis, and thus two different germ cell lines.33 This person's offspring would not be merely the product of one of the two germ cell lines, but of the person. Heterologous ovarian transplantation similarly makes the recipient a germline chimera, just as bone marrow transplant recipients become somatic-cell chimeras. Just as the natural chimera's offspring, from either cell line, would be her own, the offspring would then arguably be the ovary recipient's, because they share their genetic material with one of the germ lines in her body and are produced by an egg from her ovary. While they are also genetically identical to the donor's germline and somatic cell lines, this does not imply that the donor is their parent. I will close by noting the resemblance of this idea to the Jewish convention, discussed above, that defines the recipient of an ovarian transplant as the mother. Rosner retells this story: A woman had been infertile for ten years, and rather than being required to divorce her husband, she underwent an ovarian transplant, and one year later gave birth. They asked Rav Kamelhaar: Is the donor of the ovary considered to be the babyâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;s mother, or the woman who bore it? A very serious question! He answered with Solomonic wisdom: the baby belongs to the woman who bore it; though barren for ten years, it is possible that her own ovary produced the egg in the eleventh year of her marriage.34 The ingenious Rabbi Kamelhaar might have been more right than he realized. Once the woman undergoes the transplant, the ovary really does, I argue, become "her own ovary." This example brings ancient religious tradition, cuttingedge medical science, and the analytical tools of modern philosophy together to answer the questions that ovarian transplantation raises. As such, it perfectly encapsulates the project I discussed at the beginning of the paper -- one that advances and

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guides new technologies rather than stymieing their progress. As ovarian transplantation matures medically and technologically, there will be many more opportunities both to benefit and to harm, and new ethical investigations will be required. However, the fundamental framework of ethical analysis as both interdisciplinary informed and forward-looking will remain central to these new efforts. Notes 1. Kutluk T. Oktay and Melissa Yih, "Preliminary Experience with Orthotopic and Heterotopic Transplantation of Ovarian Cortical Strips," Seminars in Reproductive Medicine 20 (2002): 63. 2. Denise Grady, "Report of First Birth For Cancer Survivor In a Tissue Implant," New York Times, 24 September 2004, sec. A, pg. 1. 3. Cheryl Wittenauer, "In Rare Operation, Woman Gives Twin Sister Ovarian Tssue in Effort to Restore Fertility," Associated Press Newswire, 22 April 2004. 4. Assisted reproductive technologies. 5. Robertson, John A., "Ethical Issues in Ovarian Transplantation and Donation," Fertility and Sterility 73:3 (2000):443. 6. Oktay and Yih, 63. 7. Robertson, 445. 8. Yves Aubard, "More to Ovarian Transplantation Than Meets the Eye," Fertility and Sterility 74:2 (2000): 423. 9. Ibid., 423-24 10. ESHRE Task Force on Ethics and Law, "Ethical Considerations for the Cryopreservation of Gametes and Reproductive Tissues for Self Use," Human Reproduction 19:2 (2004): 460-61. 11. The Infertility Center of St. Louis, "Ovarian Tissue Preservation," http://www.infertile.com/treatmnt/treats/ freeze2.htm (accessed February 28, 2005). 12. ESHRE Task Force on Ethics and Law, 461. 13. Robertson, 444. The English translation of the Latin is "First, do no harm."

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14. Practice Committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, "Ovarian Tissue and Oocyte Cryopreservation," Fertility and Sterility 82:4 (2004): 996. 15. Practice Committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, 994. 16. Ibid. 17. Jacques Donnez, et al., "Livebirth After Orthotopic Transplantation of Cryopreserved Ovarian Tissue." Lancet 364:9443 (2004): 1408. 18. U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Infertility: Medical and Social Choices, (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1988), 364. 19. Rabbi Mordechai Halperin, "In Vitro Fertilization (IVF), Insemination and Egg Donation," Assia - Jewish Medical Ethics 1:1 (1988), 5. 20. Mark Henderson, "Daring Fertility Treatments Make the Headlines But Can Produce More Questions Than Answers." The Times (London), October 23, 2004, sec. Body and Soul, pg. 5. 21. Wittenauer, ibid. 22. Anne PrĂŠvot, Stephan Martini, and Jean-Pierre Guignard, "In Utero Exposure to Immunosuppressive Drugs," Biology of the Neonate 81:2 (2002): 73. 23. Henderson, 5. 24. Robertson, 445. 25. Fred Rosner, "An Introduction to Organ Transplantation," Assia - Jewish Medical Ethics 3:1 (1997): 5-6 26. Melissa Levine, "Sherman Silber: Be Fruitful and Multiply," Lifestyles 27:160 (1999), 27. Robertson, 445. Here, I would suggest a sidelight that brings out the gendered aspects of the debate. Would society be as sanguine if postmortem testicular removal and transplantation were proposed? I do not believe so. 28. Ibid. 29. Aubard, 423. 30. Associated Press Online, "Alabama Woman Will Receive Twin's Ovary," 21 April 2004

ETHICS OF OVARIAN TRANSPLANTATION

31. Alison McCarty, "Doing Away with Double Effect," Ethics 111:2 (2001): 220. 32. Stephen Munzer, "Transplantation, Chemical Inheritance, and the Identity of Organs," British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 45 (1994): 565. 33. Lisa Strain, John C.S. Dean, Mark P.R. Hamilton, and David T. Bonthron, "A True Hermaphrodite Chimera Resulting from Embryo Amalgamation after in Vitro Fertilization," New England Journal of Medicine 338:3 (1998): 166. 34. Rosner, ibid.

Works Cited Associated Press Online, "Alabama Woman Will Receive Twin's Ovary," 21 April 2004. Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe, http://www.lexis-nexis.com/universe/ Aubard, Yves. "More to Ovarian Transplantation Than Meets the Eye." Letter. Fertility and Sterility 74:2 (2000): 423-24. Donnez, Jacques, et al. "Livebirth After Orthotopic Transplantation of Cryopreserved Ovarian Tissue." Lancet 364:9443 (2004): 1405-1410. ESHRE Task Force on Ethics and Law. "Ethical Considerations for the Cryopreservation of Gametes and Reproductive Tissues for Self Use." Human Reproduction 19:2 (2004): 460-62. Grady, Denise. "Report of First Birth For Cancer Survivor In a Tissue Implant." New York Times, 24 September 2004, sec. A, pg. 1. Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe, http://www.lexis-nexis.com/universe/

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Halperin, Mordechai. "In Vitro Fertilization (IVF), Insemination and Egg Donation." Assia - Jewish Medical Ethics 1:1 (1988): 5. Henderson, Mark. "Daring Fertility Treatments Make the Headlines But Can Produce More Questions Than Answers." The Times (London), October 23, 2004. LexisNexis Academic Universe, http://www.lexisnexis.com/universe/ Levine, Melissa. "Sherman Silber: Be Fruitful and Multiply." Lifestyles 27:160 (1999). McCarty, Alison. "Doing Away with Double Effect." Ethics 111:2 (2001): 219-255. Munzer, Stephen R. "Transplantation, Chemical Inheritance, and the Identity of Organs." British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 45 (1994): 555-570. Oktay, Kutluk H., and Melissa Yih. "Preliminary Experience with Orthotopic and Heterotopic Transplantation of Ovarian Cortical Strips." Seminars in Reproductive Medicine 20:1 (2002): 63-74. Practice Committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. "Ovarian Tissue and Oocyte Cryopreservation." Fertility and Sterility 82:4 (2004): 99398. PrĂŠvot, Anne, Stephan Martini, and Jean-Pierre Guignard. "In Utero Exposure to Immunosuppressive Drugs." Biology of the Neonate 81:2 (2002): 73-84. Robertson, John A. "Ethical Issues in Ovarian Transplantation and Donation." Fertility and Sterility 73:3

ETHICS OF OVARIAN TRANSPLANTATION (2000): 443-46. Rosner, Fred. "An Introduction to Organ Transplantation." ASSIA - Jewish Medical Ethics 3:1 (1997): 5-6. Strain, Lisa, John C.S. Dean, Mark P.R. Hamilton, and David T. Bonthron. "A True Hermaphrodite Chimera Resulting from Embryo Amalgamation after in Vitro Fertilization." New England Journal of Medicine 338:3 (1998): 166. The Infertility Center of St. Louis. "Ovarian Tissue Preservation." <http://www.infertile.com/treatmnt/treats/ freeze2.htm> U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment. Infertility: Medical and Social Choices. OTA-BA-358. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1988. Wittenauer, Cheryl. "In Rare Operation, Woman Gives Twin Sister Ovarian Tssue in Effort to Restore Fertility." Associated Press Online, 22 April 2004. LexisNexis Academic Universe, http://www.lexisnexis.com/universe/

Episteme Announces the Scheduled Publication of Volume XVII • September 2006

CALL FOR PAPERS Episteme is a student-run publication that aims to recognize and encourage excellence in undergraduate philosophy by providing students and faculty examples of some of the best work currently being done in undergraduate philosophy programs. Episteme will consider papers written by undergraduate students in any area of philosophy. Papers are evaluated according to the following criteria: quality of research, depth of philosophical inquiry, creativity, original insight, and clarity. Submissions to be considered for the seventheenth issue (September 2006) should adhere to the following stipulations: 1. A maximum length of 5,000 words. 2. Combine research and original insight. 3. Provide a cover sheet that includes the following information: author‘s name, mailing address (current and permanent), email address, telephone number, college or university name, and title of submission. 4. Include a Works Cited page in MLA bibliographic format. 5. The title page should bear the title of the paper only; the author‘s name should not appear on the submission itself. 6. Provide three double-spaced paper copies with numbered pages and one (electronic) copy formatted for Microsoft Word on a CD or a 3.5” disk or submitted by e-mail.

Submissions must be postmarked by January 29, 2006, addressed: The Editors • Episteme Dept. of Philosophy • Blair Knapp Hall Denison University • Granville, OH 43023 Questions should be submitted to The Editors (episteme@denison.edu)