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2013 | H AU : Journal of Ethnographic Theory 3 (1): 192–96

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons | © Carlo Severi. Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported. ISSN 2049-1115 (Online)

|Book Symposium|

Philosophies without ontology

Comment on LLOYD, G. E. R. 2012. Being, humanity, and understanding . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Carlo SEVERI, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales

In Being, humanity, and understanding, Geoffrey Lloyd poses central questions forthe epistemology of social anthropology with a rare matter-of-fact, elegant, andtolerant attitude. He repeatedly stresses that, in discussing matters concerninghuman cosmologies, we need to refer “more to comments than to verdicts” (Lloyd2012: 40). For him, we should constantly remember that: “there are occasions

when plural answers to an apparently single question are appropriate, even

indispensable” (ibid.: 111). From a theoretical point of view, he argues for what wemight call a controlled pluralism: “to treat realism and relativism as mutuallyexclusive and exhaustive alternatives is liable to mislead. In a sense, we need both.”(ibid.: 105).

The risk of taking un-nuanced positions on these matters is well described in apassage that deserves a full citation: “Just as we have every reason to be cautious inconsidering some set of beliefs, thinking we fully comprehend them, so there isevery reason to be cautious in endorsing any metaphysical system; the implicationsof which may be very unclear” (ibid.: 40).

This cautious and reflexive epistemological stance is one of the two best

qualities of the book, the other being the constant comparison of contemporaryethnography with the historical-epistemological analysis of the Greek and Chineseancient worlds that Lloyd has realized in the rest of his oeuvre . Conceptual analysisand comparison: both these strategies allow him to give a very rich account of thenature and implications of the questions the book is concerned with. Everywherethe evaluation of possible solutions goes along with the appreciation of possibletheoretical risks. Greek philosophy, especially the Presocratic thinkers, Chinesetraditional thought (and, sometimes, Sumerian astronomy) constantly offer, by wayof contrast or of analogy, matter for further arguments, and for possible extensionsto the analysis of cosmologies coming from other parts of the world. Sometimes,

Lloyd’s way to study cosmologies come close to anthropology itself, and namely to

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the sociology of knowledge practiced by Frederik Barth (e.g., 1989). Like Barth, hedoes not want to discuss the “kind of truth” that cosmologies might convey—“ontologies are in principle comprehensive accounts of whatever there is. As such,they are not subject to straightforward verification or falsification” (Lloyd 2012: 39).He chooses instead to identify the historical and sociological conditions that might

generate them: “Both the Chinese and the Greek data,” writes Lloyd, “suggest thedifficulty of generalizing about the ontology of either civilization. . . . At the sametime, more positively, they enable us to identify some of the conditions thatprompt . . . the proliferation of ontologies, whether we are talking about theproposal put forward by articulate writers, or the background of commonly sharedassumptions” (ibid.: 67).

In the spirit of Lloyd’s book, to “offer more comments than verdicts” (and alsofor respecting the limits imposed here: the book is very rich, and other topics

would certainly deserve a detailed discussion), I would like to focus myintervention on the comparison of indigenous cosmologies with the Presocratic

tradition of thought. I have two remarks. One concerns the concept of ontology inthis tradition, and in particular, the enormous difference that exists betweenParmenides and the other Presocratic thinkers. The other concerns thecomparison itself and the kind of conceptual risks it might involve. As I havealready noted, the Presocratic tradition is one of the terms of comparison thatLloyd uses in his discussion of different kind of cosmological ideas. Actually, the

very perspective of discussing this Greek tradition of thought, Chinese traditionalknowledge, and non-western cosmologies in terms of a “logique du concret ” (Lévi-Strauss 2008) is very tempting, and it often proves fruitful. Everywhere, the subjectof ontological explanation is constituted by what seems to be a sort of common

mythical universe: natural forces incarnated in conflicting beings, processes ofgeneration and transformation, mythical genealogies of the gods and the humanbeings, attempts of explanation of certain natural phenomena, etc.

However, in the Presocratic tradition, the discourse “about what it is” takes two very different forms: the one we find in Parmenides’ and the one thatcharacterizes, in a sense, all the others, with the possible exception of Heraclitus.

As Guthrie (1965) and indeed Lloyd (1979: 68–72) himself on other occasions,have written, there is a crucial difference between Parmenides and the otherPresocratic thinkers. The famous statement of Guthrie (1965: 1), “Presocraticphilosophy is divided in two halves by the name of Parmenides,” is not to beunderstood only in terms of chronology or in reference to the exceptional gifts ofthis thinker. It has a logical character. Before and after him, authors likeHeraclitus, Democritus, Leucippus, or Empedocles all write peri phuséos , “onnature.” The aim of their inquiry is to identify the fundamental elements of matter,and the various forces that might combine to generate observable physicalphenomena. Empedocles, for instance, who is “at pains to deny that the originalmixture of the elements is anthropomorphic or theriomorphic” (ibid.: 168), stilldescribes the cosmos in entirely physical terms. For him, the first stage of itsexistence was governed by a force he calls Love. At that time: “no twin branchessprang from its back, no feet nor nimble knees, but it was a sphere in all directionsequal to itself” (ibid.), where the four elements were thoroughly blended (ibid.:

170). Only the force of Strife, which comes in a second stage, will introducechange and motion into the Sphere of the Cosmos.

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No doubt, Parmenides has his own story to tell about the origins of theuniverse. In his poem, he also speaks of light and darkness. He also refers to agenealogy of gods, and puts “love and desire among things as a first (physical)cause” (ibid.: 61). But he also adopts an entirely different point of view. He notonly disagrees with this or that opinion expressed before him about the physical

“elements” that govern the universe. The argument he formulates about the natureof “what it is” changes radically the subject of this philosophical tradition. Thedimension of the ontological problem which he wants to identify is situated, in the

words of Aristotle, metà ta phisika , beyond the appearance of things. His mainargument, then, is not about the various material constituents of the universe (fire,

water, air, etc.) and their different ways to combine (through Love or Strife, as it was, for instance, for Empedocles). For the first time, he formulates an argumentabout “being itself.” His search aims to the construction of a science of abstractprinciples, through an unprecedented “sustained deductive argument” (Lloyd1979: 69), about “being” as an abstract feature, not as a mythical discourse about

the origins of what physically exists.His argument concerns a logical status of “what it is” which has nothing to do with observable phenomena. He, and all the other metaphysicians from Plato toKant at least, look for a rational and general principle governing both the worldand the thought. If one cannot think what does not exist, then “to exist and tothink” are the same (to gar auto’ noein estin te kai einai , Frgm. 8, in: Parmenides1984: 56–57).

Nor does Parmenides look for a classification of the different beings inhabitingthe universe. He wants to identify an abstract relationship between nous and

phusis . He looks for the conditions under which the world is thinkable. He speaks

of the abstract principle of being, not of the categories of things and living beingsthat one might observe in the empirical world. His philosophical heritage isconsequently much closer to the Aristotelian idea of metaphysics as a “thinking ofthinking” (Lloyd 2012: 14)—a way to study the intelligible forms of the world, asthey are continually thought by God’s thinking—than to subsequent theoriesconcerning the nature of the matter, like, for instance, Epicurean atomism.

This approach generates another crucial difference between Parmenides andthe others Presocratic thinkers. Because “it is the same thing that can be thoughtand can be” (Lloyd 1979: 69) his perspective generates a systematic theorizing,both about the foundation of reality and about the principles of thought. It isimportant to remember that, in philosophy (from Plato to Kant and beyond) onlya theory about invisible principles, developed following the method of systematicdeduction, like Parmenides deductive argument, deserves the name of “ontology.”

A classification of the categories of different beings, following for instance thedistinctions between animate/inanimate, human/animal, male/female (which isoften understood as “ontological” by anthropologists) technically does not makefor an “ontology.” In the works of Aristotle, for instance, the study of these formsof knowledge belongs to the Parva Naturalia , not to the doctrine of Being, which isthe object of metaphysics.

Actually, one might object that this conceptual distinction only concerns thehistory of Greek (and subsequent Western) philosophy. Why should we

anthropologists (working, for instance, in Melanesia, Amazonia, or Central America) bother about? Why should we not leave it to philosophers? After all, our

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task is the interpretation of ethnography, not the reconstruction of Presocratictradition of thought. The short answer could be: because, as Lévi-Strauss hasrepeatedly noted (cf., for instance, Lévi-Strauss 1998), philosophy is back in socialanthropology, and we have already started to speak its language. To put it in amore detailed way, one might identify at least two reasons for taking this question

seriously. One is that this distinction concerns the logical nature and the socio-logical conditions of the cosmologies we work on. To describe them as“ontologies” involves the risk of leaving their specific logical form unidentified.

And the other is that this distinction also concerns the conceptual tools we use tothink about them. So a comparative elucidation of the concept of cosmology isrelevant not only to their way of thought, but also to ours , to the detailed study ofcosmologies and to the epistemological status of social anthropology as adiscipline.

In short, the risk involved in ignoring the distinction between Parmenides andthe other Presocratic thinkers, is to mistake Melanesian or Amazonian

“conceptions of the world,” founded on “background commonly sharedassumptions” about physical and social observable phenomena (Lloyd 2012: 67),for pseudo-Parmenidean ontologies. And, consequently, to understand them ascoherent systems of thought: “unique, immobile, and unchanging” as theParmenidean concept of Being. I think that there are no empirical reasons to thinkso. Only a wrong decision to view cosmologies as such may transform them intosystematic ontology, or even (adopting an extreme Heideggerian idealism) intoindigenous metaphysics. In this latter case, cosmologies would become no morethan anthropological artifacts.

In my view, what we anthropologists tend to call “cosmologies” are de facto

regularities in the establishment of a number of shared assumptions, very rarelyexpressed in the form of an explicit argument, and always related to specificpractices, systems of relationships, and genre of discourses, either ritual ormythological. These discourses might sometimes intersect, generating the appear-ance of a unitary “discourse on the nature of what it is.” But what is particularlyinteresting about them, is precisely their unsystematic character, the fact that theyalways leave a space open for different strategies of thought. In this sense,indigenous cosmologies (while being sometimes comparable to Chinese traditionalthought, or to authors like Democritus or Empedocles) are philosophies without an ontology , as Parmenides has defined it.

As Lévi-Strauss has written, philosophy is back in anthropology, and one can behappy or unhappy about its return. Be it as it may. At any rate, thanks to thebrilliant work of Geoffrey Lloyd, we can show today that an apparently unrelatedand obscure philosophical distinction, between Parmenides’ ontology and theother Presocratic discourses on “what it is,” can decisively influence the epistem-ology of our discipline. In the definition of the logical form of ontologies, thechoice, for Parmenides or against him, concerns both anthropology andphilosophy.

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eferen es

Barth, Fredrik. 1989. “The guru and the conjurer: Transactions in knowledge andthe shaping of culture in Southeast Asia and Melanesia.” Man 25 (4): 640–53.

Guthrie, W. K. C. 1965. The Presocratic tradition from Parmenides to

Democritus . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1998. “Lévi-Strauss no 90, voltas ao pasado.” Mana 4 (2):

105–6.

———. 2008. La pensée sauvage . In Oeuvres . Paris: Gallimard-La Pléiade.

Lloyd, G. E. R. 1979. Magic, Reason and Experience: Studies in the origins anddevelopment of Greek science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

———. 2012. Being, humanity, and understanding . Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress.

Parmenides. 1984. Le poème . Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Carlo SeveriLaboratoire d'Anthropologie Sociale

College de France52 Rue du Cardinal Lemoine

75005 ParisFrance

[email protected]

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