First-Century Cynicism in the Epistles of Heraclitus (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 339 complete and accurate. The following one-paragraph presentation of Aristotle's theory of pleasure as activity is typical of Sullivan's treatment and illustrates its defects. We must not begin by taking [pleasure] to be a process (a kin~sts)or a coming-to-be (a genesis) of which we become aware when it happens to us. For as we have seen, kinetic activity always aims at something other than itself, while men always seek pleasure as an intnnslc good. We do often experience pleasure while developing our abilities , or while satisfying appetites involving some deficiency, e.g., hunger and thirst, or while undergoing remedial processes such as recuperation But the pleasure involved in these is derived from the functioning of natural characteristics we already or still have. That such processes are only 'incidentally pleasurable' and do not disclose the essential nature of pleasure is shown by the fact that the processes are no longer pleasurable once the state of deprivation has been remedied Pleasure therefore ~s, by its very nature, attached primarily to the doing of nonkinetic activities, those worth doing for their own sake. (P. 47) Nothing is said to explain why anyone might have thought pleasure was a kin~sis or genesis (and which kin~sis?), what these "natural characteristics" are whose functioning is supposedly the source of our pleasures, or what precisely it means to say that something is "incidentally pleasurable ." And what does Aristotle think pleasure is? We are not distinctly told. Moreover, the argument Sullivan attributes to Aristotle here is (apparently without his noticing it) actually undermined by a point he has made one page earlier. According to Sullivan on page 46, Aristotle is clear about the ability of men "to value intrinsic goods as instrumentalities and instrumentalities as intrinsic goods"; but if so, he ought not to argue that merely because men seek pleasure as an intrinsic good it must be one, rather than something instrumentally good, as curative processes, and so on, are. For no apparent reason, in citing Aristotle's texts Sullivan uses a lineation other than that of Bekker, which is universally employed in scholarly work on Aristotle. It is very annoying to discover that by "1170a26-b15" he means 1170a25-b14 (p. 16); and such discrepancies occur throughout the book. Of course, those using translations wdl hardly notice, but it would have cost nothing to cater also for the reader consulting the Greek. Sullivan himself uses transliterated Greek terms liberally and provides a useful glossary to explain them. (In the glossary four Greek words are misaccented.) The book is set in a small type that makes it difficult and unpleasant to give it the close reading that its style and purpose require. There is an amusing misprint on page 1, where Aristotle is said to have been a "metric, a resident alien" in Athens. Other misprints abound: pp. 13, 34, 43, 44, 49, 52, 89, 107, 112, 190, 193. In his preface Sullivan projects a trilogy of books, of which this is the first, on the moral philosophies of Aristotle, Kant, and Dewey. This first volume does not justify any enthusiasm for the project. JOHN M. COOPER University of Pittsburgh Harold W. Attridge. First-Century. Cynicism in the Epistles of Heraclitus. Harvard Theological Studies, vol. 29. Missoula, Montana: Scholars Press, 1976. Pp. ix + 92. Wenn die (aller Wahrscheinlichkeit nach im 1. Jhdt. n. Chr. entstandenen) pseudepigraphen Heraklitbriefe seit mehr als hundert Jahren eine st~irkere und breiter gestreute Beachtung gefunden haben als die meisten anderen der zahlreichen aus der Antike iaberkommenen pseudepigraphen Briefcorpora, so verdanken sie dies Jacob Bernays, der im Jahre 1869 den Bewels zu fiihren versucht hatte, 1 dab drei der neun Briefe (namlich die Briefe 4, 7, und 9) von einem jiidischen Jacob Bemays, Die herakhtischenBriefe (Berhn 1869). 340 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Autor verfaBt bzw. fiberarbeitet worden seien, und der ihnen dadurch aul3er dem Interesse der Klassischen Philologen auch das der Historiker der j0dischen und fr0hchristlichen Geistesgeschichte gesichert hatte. Bernays' These war schon sehr bald und in st~indig zunehmendem MaBe auf Kritik gestol3en. 2 Sie endgtiltig aus der Welt zu schaffen, ist die Aufgabe, die sich Attridge im ersten Teil seiner Arbeit...