On self-sufficiency, non-technically and non-ethically.

As I've mentioned, much of my work concerns self-sufficiency. It's a fascinating thread to trace through the history of ancient ethics -- and also ancient theology and metaphysics, in ways that connect back with ethics.

For instance: pre-Socratic philosophical cosmology often begins with inquiry into the basic substances of the universe.* But what Thales (6 century BCE), Anaximenes, &c. &c. mean by substance is really: something that doesn't depend on anything else for its existence. They made self-sufficiency a basic concept of natural philosophy. (The term "natural philosophy," not much in use now, is meant to encompass theoretical and speculative levels of the natural and physical sciences, and also some other philosophy -- as, of course, do the sciences themselves.) When Thales (maybe) argued that water was the most basic component of the universe, he was saying that water was what could exist without anything else -- that it was self-sufficient. He was also adding something not strictly implied by self-sufficiency: that this basic thing is also productive of other things, even of everything else. This will become a theme in the intellectual history of self-sufficiency.

Meanwhile self-sufficiency was developing an explicit association with divinity. After all, what could be a better candidate for independence of external causation than a god? And Zeus, like water, is taken to have some productive or creative powers. Are they in virtue of his self-sufficiency? The power to influence things outside oneself seems to get mixed up with the power to sustain oneself when the self-sustainer we are discussing is taken to be ultimate: the most basic substance or divinity.

It's an interesting issue to raise with regard to any conception of self-sufficiency that we encounter: is it tied up with creative or productive capacities? If so, do they involve creating, producing, or sustaining something outside the self-sufficient self or not? -- It'll be especially interesting for later ethicists, especially those who accept a kind of analogy between virtue and the crafts, and also wonder whether that entails believing that virtue aims at producing something outside itself (like the craft of making musical instruments) or occupies itself only with the craft-activity itself (like the craft of making musical instruments).


* Ignoring the way Aristotle regularizes their terminology by applying his own. "Substance" is his term for something that exists independently. (Actually "substance" -- rather, "substantia" -- is Cicero's [I assume, since he invented about all Latin philosophical terminology] translation of Greek "hupokeimenon." Both mean roughly 'what lies beneath.' I know, it sounds like a horror movie.)