Camera Obscura: Aristotle, Marx, and Ptolemy

This text constitutes the introduction to an essay I wrote for a university competition in 1992. The essay was titled: Mirrors of the Divine, and subtitled Aristotle's Teleological Model of the World and the Interpretation of Ancient History. The main part of the essay was built on three pieces of text I'd written during my course. 

The first of these texts looked at the origins, definition and significance of the Polis within the Greek model of the world. 

The second part looked at the Assyrian understanding of the significance of the Mesopotamian Adapa Myth for the role of the king in both the Assyrian state, and  in the royal Assyrian court. This was titled Standing in the Place of Ea: the Myth of Adapa and Assyrian Kingship in the Sargonid Period. It was in fact a truncated version of my E Paper essay on Assyria, minus the footnotes. The paper also floated the idea that there were parallels with Aristotle's notions of kingship in Mesopotamian texts concerning the king, though I did not make heavy weather of it. This paper is now on this blog, in its full form, complete with the original (extensive) footnotes.

I would make some changes to it now, on the basis of what I've read since, and an exchange of mail with a leading Assyriologist, though I think the overall argument remains sound. Some of the letters referenced in the paper have been re-edited and published in new volumes. Though these volumes are on my shelves (The State Archives of Assyria series), I haven't replaced the translations with new versions and references, since the new versions don't suggest required alterations to any of the interpretations I made of these letters. 

The third part of the main body of the essay was a study of the proskynesis debate in the court of Alexander. This was about the adoption of Persian customs as Alexander took over Persian controlled territories, including bending the knee to kings, which was not a Macedonian or Greek custom. I interpreted this dispute in the context of Alexander's conquest of an empire which understood its king to be 'king of kings', 'king of the four quarters', and 'king of the world.'

Of course the essay didn't win the prize, which was no surprise then, or now. I began the essay by taking aim at the sociological underpinnings of the modern study of history, which wasn't going to make many friends. But by that time I'd come to the conclusion that the sociological approach was itself a real obstacle to our understanding the evidence. One of the reasons I'd chosen to study history was to fathom why our understanding of the past seemed so convoluted, and sometimes just plain blind to what was in the record.  

I wrote the introduction very quickly, since I was rapidly approaching my final exams at the time. I've improved the English rendition where necessary, but the argument is as it was.

***

Is it the case that we are blinded to the importance of

certain kinds of evidence by our preconceptions? There is a

tendency among classical scholars to treat the rise of Greek

civilisation and its formal institutions (such as the polis) as

the rise of civilisation itself. This is not to say that classical scholars 

are entirely unaware of developments in the near east during 

the third and second millennia B.C., but that there is in their minds 

a feeling that somehow Greece is the only case worthy of study; 

the paradigmatic case to which all earlier

civilisations might have aspired, but could never have reached.

Greece is the successful case, the one in which intellectual and

 cultural patterns reached a perfection worthy of their interest;

 only in Greece were institutions developed which possessed an

 excellence of their kind, and it is the excellence of the object

of study, the soaring nature of the Greek achievement, which

justifies its isolation as an academic field.

Ancient historians, on the other hand, have a twofold problem:

 their subject tends to follow the demarcation lines set by the

classical scholars (and the archaeologists concerned with Greece

and Italy), so that both those concerned with classical

 civilizations and the Near Eastern specialists have more

difficulty than is necessary in drawing on the insights of 

 other areas of scholarship. Further, the disciplines of history and
 archaeology in general have imported the methodology and
attitudes of other intellectual fields; particulary from sociology.
The effect of this importation has reinforced the trend in historiography
away from bad nineteenth century habits, such as an undue emphasis on

the role of the individual, and an unhealthy concentration on the

interests and views of those who exercised power in the periods

in question.

These are pressures which may distort our apprehension and

 understanding of ancient civilizations. In the former case, the

problem is that the worth and significance of the object of study

 has to a large extent already been decided; in the latter case,

 the movement away from an unsatisfactory approach to historical

 problems has resulted in a number of key questions not being

asked and being rendered virtually unaskable.

Several methods have been devised, more or less unconsciously,

in order to isolate Greek civilization and its institutions from

 contamination; these need not be listed or discussed here. What
is important is that the polis is often treated as though it is a specifically

 Greek phenomenon, to be understood only within the Greek context;

 and that it is necessarily something which arose from that

particular context alone. Comparison with other cultures is

regarded as illegitimate beyond certain limited bounds. Either

connections are de facto not there, or in cases where connections

 are very apparent, obvious conclusions are often treated as a priori
unsound, if they threaten the autochthonous model of Greek civilisation.

What is allowed is the retrojection of the supposed universal laws which
underpin the development of human society, and which must have

 underpinned all social and political structures since their first

creation. Scholars look for these, and the precise details of the

cultures under scrutiny do not so much give rise to theories as

 to their place and meaning, as lend support to the universality

 of the retrojected picture of cultural development.

  

Much of our view of the development of Greek (Athenian) politics

between the 7th and 4th centuries comes from Aristotle; from two

works on politics: the Politics itself, known from antiquity, and

from the Athenian Constitution, recovered from Egypt at the end

 of the last century (1890s). The Politics tells us of what sort of

political ideas could be thought in the context of the fourth

 century in Athens (particularly in conjunction with the Republic

of Plato, the Statesman etc,). It also gives some comparative

information about other constitutions, such as the Cretan, the

 Spartan, and of particular interest, the Carthaginian. Other

sources are few: apart from inscriptional evidence, there is

little apart from the writings of Homer, Hesiod, Herodotus and

 Thucydides to draw upon for the early development of the Greek

conception of the polis. Each of these sources has to be used

with care, for the very simple reason that the writers themselves

often did not fully understand the evidence they were trying to

explain.

In the case of Aristotle for instance, it is most often understood by 

scholars that he portrays the polis as (in practice) a development 

towards democracy (which was not seen as positive by

Aristotle). Whereas (for Aristotle, in the Politics, at least)

the true struggle is the need to balance the conflicting

interests of the rich and poor: seemingly what has always

 underpinned the development of society and its institutions. The

recognition of the necessity of observing the true nature of this

struggle is taken to be a mark of Aristotle's empirical approach

 to data.

That the reforms to the institutional arrangements within the

archaic polis might have been intended to broaden democratic

participation, or even to balance the forces at work within its

structure, these possibilities are currently rejected by historians, who 

see instead a series of reforms designed to support established power (or

insufficient evidence either way). This approach appears to

provide an adequate explanation for the major reforms for which

 we have evidence: the reforms of Solon, Cleisthenes, and to a

lesser extent, that of Ephialtes.

Thus, the developments are understood to be broadly explicable

in terms of what are taken to be “universals” (i.e., this is how

human beings behave when the chips are down): in terms of the

human interest in power and the creation of ideological

 constructs to support the pursuit of power and its maintenance.

Naturally it is not a matter of dispute that what human beings

do in critical circumstances and in daily life is shaped by their

surroundings and events (amounting to at least one half of a

dialectical equation). It is often argued however, that the

pattern of ideas in which men operate is the product of their particular 

circumstances: the various forces, physical, social, economic; and is

 therefore to be understood as an extension of

the material dynamic on which the society is based: i.e., we

should concentrate our attention on those factors which

contribute to the make up of human culture and institutions which

are universally true and which operate in all the different kinds

 of organisation which can be created. In other words, we should

 study the material dynamic.

This way of looking at things seems to be axiomatic.  Though in

 fact it bears as much necessary relation to the actual practice of

historians as the theoretical pattern of scientific methodology

does to the way scientists actually work. However, the

theoretical basis of the methods of modern historians does have

an effect on the way things are done. This is because the model

is fundamentally beyond testing. 

Though few historians are now marxist in any significant sense, 

part of the legacy of the marxist input into the development of the

modern study of history is a thoroughgoing materialism among

scholars. The acceptance of the material basis of reality is so

complete that it seems beyond question that Marx's observation

must be right, that the evidence must bear out the truth of the

material interpretation of the world, even if all the evidence

 appears to point in the opposite direction. Hence Marx's use of the

metaphor of the  ”camera obscura”: if we don't see how it fits, we

haven't looked hard enough. If the picture looks as if it is

 upside down, then it is not the case that the theory is wrong,

it is just that we have failed to get to grips with the

complexity of the reality presented to us. This means that,
whether or not the materialist interpretation of history is in fact true,

it cannot be tested, certainly as long as we are prepared to

admit limitless complexity in the interpretation of the evidence.

We might usefully compare this situation with the career of the epicyclic

 interpretation of planetary motions. The system arose as the

result of a suggestion by Plato to his pupil Eudoxos that he

 devise a mathematical description which saved the evidence. This

he did, employing circles because, since the planets were divine,

and since what is divine is necessarily possessed of perfection

and completion, no other motion would be appropriate for them.

 This model of the world survived the renaissance (being used by

Milton as the frame for ”Paradise Lost”, despite the fact that he

was well aware of developments in the understanding of planetary

motion) precisely because it provided a satisfactory description

of what was happening in the sky. 

In one sense, this example is the inverse of the problem with the 

materialist interpretation of history, for the  Ptolemaic system 

arose according to its nature in order to preserve an idea, the idea 

that circles, perfection and the divine are inextricably linked with one

 another. Whereas the materialist interpretation of history arose

as a reaction, if not to a prevailing orthodoxy, then to a

 pattern of ideas, and was supposed to destroy a political arrangement

 in the world which he regarded as inextricably linked with these

 philosophical notions. By inverting these, and revealing that they were
the product of false consciousness, it followed

that the political structures must fall (once everyone understood that 

his analysis was correct). 

In another sense however, the situation is the same: materialism, 

shorn of its marxist connotations, is still a pattern of ideas, and has 

become associated with our understanding of history. Therefore it

 functions  as an orthodoxy, and orthodoxies are not in the

business of hacking at their own validity during every minute of

 their existence.

Of course it is not necessary to have to abandon a materialist
perspective in order to deal with a quite different model of reality
 which appears to have been normative in antiquity, from the near east

to the Mediterranean lands. We can regard their alien "mindset"

as the input of the irrational; we can look at this (from the

point of view of the universality of the material dynamic) as the

intrusion of error and misunderstanding of the ideological

function of roles and structures, if their behaviour and

understanding is not consistent with the material dynamic.

In fact their perception was the inverse of materialism, as

Marx's materialism was consciously an inversion of

Hegels'exaltation of the world of spirit: they saw their culture

as an ephemeral manifestation of the divine with the divine

condition as the target. The truly real belonged somewhere else

in the universe, and mankind, the earth and all visible and

tangible things were bad copies and third rate adumbrations of

the genuine article.

We, on the other h and, find it difficult to deal with this way of
looking at things. What I am concerned with in this essay is their
perception of how things operated and

how that ”perception" influenced their actions and decisions; their

institutions and beliefs. I.e., to examine the superstructure of

the dynamic (which, unlike the Marxists, they took to be its root).

The principal difficulty with ancient evidence is that it belongs

to a world which was understood to function teleologically: that

is, the evidence was produced by people who saw their world as

being suspended from the divine, and who, when attempting to

explain events, chose their facts according to the requirements

of this model of the world. We, in attempting to understand the

production of ancient cultures and the textual evidence of

ancient authors, make of it what we can, and look for evidence

which remains valid whatever kind of model of reality is being

employed. But to know that we do this successfully, we have to

understand the nature of the model which filters both the

character of ancient cultural production and the selection and

arrangement of data in ancient texts.

I argue that we cannot easily disengage "neutral" evidence from

what remains: indeed that very little "neutral" evidence remains

at all, and that to piece together evidence which seems to

support, say, a developmental and evolutionary picture of events,

which in fact belongs to a teleological argument, is to misuse

the data.  There is no great public neutral reality in ancient

history, beyond the fact of the textual and archaeological

remains (and even that is often problematic). All the evidence is

shaped by both material laws (in antiquity understood as the

strictures of necessity and craft) and the input of contemporary

intellectual apprehensions of what it is that reality means.
Thus, in order to get to grips with antiquity we have to grasp

both ends of the dialectical interplay: the material dynamic and

the intellectual model of the world, the ancient teleology.

The fact that historians can provide a plausible description of

what is going on using a paradigm essentially based on the

perceived reality of the Aristotelian efficient cause (rather

than the final cause), does not mean that the events have been

understood and explained. A description is just that: it has no

essential connection with what is actually happening (just as the

Ptolemaic cosmology was a description and not an explanation,

with no essential connection with the real processes operating

in the solar system). If we allow endless epicyclic emendations

because the basic theory is assumed to be axiomatically correct
and therefore explanatory, we have confused description with 
explanation. To explain antiquity we require to take cognisance
 of  all of the real forces at work.