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    Logic of Imagination: The Expanse of the Elemental
    Logic of Imagination: The Expanse of the Elemental
    Logic of Imagination: The Expanse of the Elemental
    Ebook485 pages8 hours

    Logic of Imagination: The Expanse of the Elemental

    By John Sallis

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    The Shakespearean image of a tempest and its aftermath forms the beginning as well as a major guiding thread of Logic of Imagination. Moving beyond the horizons of his earlier work, Force of Imagination, John Sallis sets out to unsettle the traditional conception of logic, to mark its limits, and, beyond these limits, to launch another, exorbitant logic—a logic of imagination. Drawing on a vast range of sources, including Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Freud, as well as developments in modern logic and modern mathematics, Sallis shows how a logic of imagination can disclose the most elemental dimensions of nature and of human existence and how, through dialogue with contemporary astrophysics, it can reopen the project of a philosophical cosmology.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherIndiana University Press
    Release dateJul 20, 2012
    ISBN9780253013644
    Logic of Imagination: The Expanse of the Elemental

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      Logic of Imagination - John Sallis

      100a18–21.

      1 THE LOGIC OF CONTRADICTION

      A. ONES

      In Plato’s dialogues there is no logic. Assuredly, it is possible retrospectively—that is, anachronistically—to identify passages in the dialogues that carry out procedures similar to those that will later be characterized as logical inferences; it is even possible to find formulations similar to those that will later be identified as logical principles. For instance, the principle of noncontradiction—or at least something closely resembling it—puts in numerous appearances in the dialogues. And yet, in these texts there is no logic, no coherent discourse to which the later title logic or the Aristotelian term analytics can properly be applied. Because there is no Platonic logic, there are also no purely logical principles. Recognizing and acknowledging that the operation of these texts is anterior to the formation of logic is imperative if they are to be addressed in their own right and allowed to effect their proper manifestation; for there is nothing that more obstructs access to the Platonic texts and distorts their sense than the practice of projecting back upon them subsequent developments that they themselves first make possible but from which they remain withdrawn in a way that may draw them toward other, archaic possibilities.

      A formulation resembling the principle by which subsequently contradiction will be prohibited appears in Book 4 of the Republic. The context is the discussion between Socrates and Glaucon concerning the soul and its partition. The passage in question initiates the portion of the discussion that leads to the distinction between the calculating part of the soul (τὸ λογιστικóν) and the noncalculating and desiring part (ἀλογιστικóν τε καὶ ἐπιθυμητικóν). In order to set up this distinction, Socrates gives an analysis of thirst. Once he has established that the man who is thirsty wants nothing other than to drink and is impelled toward drink, then it must be granted that a counteraction is sometimes operative, for there are cases in which men are thirsty but not willing to drink. Thus the formulation, the protoprinciple, on which the entire discussion turns is the following: For of course, we say, the same thing would not perform opposed actions [τἀναντία πράττει] concerning the same thing with the same part of itself at the same time.¹ Since there are in fact opposed actions performed by the soul, the soul must be partitioned, must include at least two distinct parts that are themselves sufficiently opposed to bring about opposed actions. It remains, then, only to name these parts in accord with the action that each performs.

      The generality of this protoprinciple and its explicit declaration of limiting conditions (concerning the same thing, with the same part of itself, at the same time) anticipate the Aristotelian formulation. On the other hand, it is a pronouncement about action, not about being; and the opposition (τἀναντία = τὰ ἐναντία) to which it refers is not contradiction (ἀντίϕασις). While both opposed actions cannot be performed by the same thing (under the declared conditions), it is of course possible for the soul to perform neither of the actions, neither thirsting nor checking the impulse to drink. This opposition comes closer to what, from Aristotle on, will be distinguished, as contrariety, from contradiction.

      In Book 5 of the Republic, there are several passages that display affinities with the future principle, yet in every case retaining a certain distance that heralds other possibilities. What is especially striking is that in these passages contradiction is not submitted to outright prohibition, that it is not simply banished to an outside, as it were, from which the citadel of sense and truth would be closed off and protected. Rather, in the very opening of the philosophical center of the entire dialogue, there is an affirmation of contradiction. For what is taken to differentiate the sensible from the intelligible is that it sustains contradiction, that it both is and is not. Hence, the affirmation of contradiction plays a decisive role in posing the distinction between intelligible and sensible, the distinction that will command virtually the entire history of what will be called metaphysics.

      This relation to contradiction is perhaps most transparent in the passage in which, having posed the paradox of the philosopher-ruler, Socrates and Glaucon set out in search of the philosopher. In order to discover the philosopher, they undertake to determine what knowledge (γνῶσις, ἐπιστήμη) is and to distinguish it from opinion, from a mere view as to what or how something is (δóξα). To this end, Socrates introduces—for the very first time in the dialogue—explicit discourse about εἴδη, calling attention to this move with his remark to Glaucon: It would not be at all easy to explain it to another; but you, I suppose, will grant [ὁμολογέω] me this. In this discourse Socrates declares then that εἴδη that are opposite to one another are set utterly apart. Socrates says: Since beautiful is the opposite [ἐναντίον] of ugly, they are two. When Glaucon expresses his agreement, Socrates continues: Then since they are two, isn’t each also one?² The point is not just that εἴδη such as beautiful and ugly are countable but, more significantly, that their relation has a structure like that of numbers. Just as the number two, which in Greek mathematics is the smallest number, results from counting off two distinct ones, so likewise the dyad of beautiful and ugly is such that each is a distinct one, opposed to and apart from the other. Just as two ones must be distinct in order to be countable as two, so beautiful and ugly, or, more pointedly, being-beautiful and not-being-beautiful, admit of no mixing or blending. The arithmetic-like structure excludes all mixing of being and not-being, of is and is not. It thus prohibits or at least denounces discourse that would say, at once, both is and is not, all discourse that in what it says on the one side takes away what it says on the other, and conversely, speaking thus against itself. It is precisely this noncontradiction and the correlative demand for noncontradictory discourse that are distinctive of that to which knowledge is directed. Opinion, on the other hand, is directed precisely at that which both is and is not, at that which is such as to be and not to be (εἶναί τε καὶ μὴ εἶναι),³ at that which mixes being and not-being, so that contradiction holds sway. The discourse of opinion is such that it cannot for long avoid contradiction. Therefore, the differentiation between knowledge and opinion and correlatively between what comes to be called the intelligible (τὰ νοητóν) and the sensible (τὰ αἰσθητóν) is linked closely to the difference between an arithmetic-like structure that prohibits contradiction and a mixing of being and not-being that cannot be said otherwise than by way of

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