Luke Lea (Columbia University)
Against the prevalent scholarly reconstruction of the concept of physis in Antiphon’s sophistic fragments, this paper argues that Antiphon’s physis serves as the anchor of a well-developed ethical theory, in which physis features as the sole locus of human value. These fragments include perhaps the earliest surviving discussion of the nomos/physis antithesis, which left so definitive a mark on the Greek literature of the classical period. Correctly recovering the meaning of this concept in Antiphon’s writings is a task of great importance to historians of Greek philosophy and literature.
The dominant view (initiated by Neschke-Hentschke 1995) has held sway for the last two decades, amplified by the publication of the two most recent scholarly monographs on Antiphon (Hourcade 2001; Gagarin 2002). Its proponents agree that physis neither includes rules regarding human behavior nor issues imperatives. Yet, the discussion of the antithesis in P. Oxy. 1364 leaves little doubt that Antiphon conceives of physis as in some way action-guiding for human beings. Accordingly, recent scholarship has attempted to explain how this might be so in light of the prevalent view that Antiphon’s physis is morally neutral (Riesbeck 2011; Gavray 2019; Bonazzi 2020; 2021). These attempts, constrained by their commitment to the alleged neutrality of physis, have failed to appreciate the role of physis as the locus of human value in Antiphon’s ethical theory.
My argument stands on two legs. First, through a study of the syntax of physis in P. Oxy. 1364, I show that Antiphon’s usage of the term conforms to a lexical-conceptual network familiar from the Hippocratic corpus. This study is partially indebted to Heinimann (1945) and Furley (1981). Within this conceptual network, physis denotes the human physiological system with a view to its capacity to be benefitted by environmental factors well suited to it and harmed by those at odds with it. Since harm and advantage belong to this usage of physis as close adjuncts within the same network, physis is conceptualized in Antiphon’s writings as morally charged in the following way: physeis grow naturally into good and healthy states, aided in doing so by “advantages.” They can however be diverted into bad and unhealthy states, primarily through nomos. Pace Gagarin, the hostility of nomos to physis is not to be understood as the imposition of form onto a neutral and unformed material substrate, but as the harmful distortion toward an unnatural form of a physis otherwise destined to grow into its natural form.
Secondly, I test this conception of physis against the prevalent scholarly model of a neutral physis by examining the implications of each for a landmark fragment in the history of the nomos/physis discourse: Antiphon’s “buried bed” thought experiment (87B15 DK). The morally charged model affords the better interpretation; the thought experiment is coherent and compelling if Antiphon understands nomos as causing the harmful conversion of physis into a form that is not natural to it. On the other hand, his thought-experiment is inscrutable if physis is construed as neutral and homogenous substrate.