Hamartia: The Concept of Error in the Western Tradition : Essays in Honor of John M. Crossett (Texts and Studies in Religion ; V. 16)

316 Pages·1983·5.248 MB·English

by  Donald Stump

HA MA R Tl A
The Concept of Error in the Western Tradition
Essays in honor of John M. Crossett
Edited by
Donald V. Stump
James A. Arieti
Lloyd Gerson
Eleonore Stump
Texts and Studies in Religion
Volume 16
The Edwin Mellen Press
New York and Toronto
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Main entry under title:
Hamartia : the concept of error in the western
tradition
Includes index.
1. Error— Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. Crossett,
John M.— Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Stump,
Donald V. , 1946- . II. Crossett, John M.
BD171.H28 1983 128'.4 83-13087
ISBN 0-88946-802-8
Texts and Studies in Religion ISBN 0-88946-976-8
Copyright © 1983, Donald V. Stump
All rights reserved. For more information contact:
The Edwin Mellen Press
P.O. Box 450
Lewiston, New York 14092
Printed in the United States of America
To the memory of John M. Crossett
Ye shall know the truth,
and the truth shall make you free.
(John 8:32)

CONTENTS
PREFACE
page xi
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
page xv
James A. Arieti
HISTORY, HAMART!A, HERODOTUS
page 1
Norman Kretzmann
ABRAHAM, ISAAC, AND EUTHYPHRO:
GOD AND THE BASIS OF MORALITY
page 27
Carol Lindsay
APHRODITE AND THE EQUIVOCAL ARGUMENT
HAM ART! A IN THE HIPPOLYTUS
page 51
Janet E. Smith
THE HAMARTIA OF MISOLOCIA
page 73
Hippocrates C. Apostle
AN ARISTOTELIAN ESSAY ON ERROR
page 97
Lloyd Cerson
ISA TA HAMARTEMATA:
THE STOIC DOCTRINE
"ALL ERRORS ARE EQUAL"
page 119
Eleonore Stump
HAMARTIA IN CHRISTIAN BELIEF:
BOETHIUS ON THE TRINITY
page 131
Steven Baldner
THE USE OF SCRIPTURE
FOR THE REFUTATION OF ERROR
ACCORDING TO ST. THOMAS AQUINAS
page 199
Carolynn Van Dyke
THE ERRORS OF GOOD MEN:
HAMARTIA IN TWO MIDDLE ENGLISH POEMS
page 171
S. P. Zitner
HAMLET AND HAMARTIA
page 193
Donald V. Stump
GREEK AND SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY:
FOUR INDIRECT ROUTES
FROM ATHENS TO LONDON
page 211
James S. Cutsinger
ERROR IN COLERIDGE
page 297
Elizabeth Holtze
ARISTOTLE AND GEORGE ELIOT:
HAM ART! A IN ADAM BEDE
page 267
JOHN M. CROSSETT: A MEMOIR
page 281
EULOGY
page 289
INDEX
page 293

PREFACE
The editors of this book originally conceived the idea of a
festschrift for John Crossett after reminiscing one evening
about how much he had given to us, his former students,
and how little we had repaid him. At that time, we hoped to
be able to hand him a copy of this book on his sixtieth
birthday and, by that token of our affection and admiration,
to make him some small return for the endless effort he lav­
ished on us, both during and after the time we were his
perverse and obstreperous students.
We were too slow; he is now dead. Instead of being a
gift for him, this volume has become a memorial to him. It
is, however, not his only nor his best memorial. All of us
who were influenced by his peculiar combination of selfless
dedication to truth and warm care for others are his true
memorial. In the best of our work and character, his spirit
lives on.
In planning the book, we decided to look for a unifying
theme that would honor Crossett and also elicit fruitful new
studies from his former students and colleagues. The clas­
sical concept of hamartia seemed an ideal choice for both
purposes. Crossett had worked out an extraordinarily useful
definition of hamartia as double-mindedness (a definition
explained at length by James A. Arieti in the first essay of
the volume). With this idea, Crossett had helped to eluci­
date the genre of tragedy as it was practiced in a variety of
cultural settings. At the time of his death, he had nearly
completed his share of the commentary and translation for a
new edition of Aristotle's Poetics, which he was preparing
jointly with Hippocrates G. Apostle. He had also written
extensive research notes and essays on the function of
hamartia in the work of dramatists as diverse as Sophocles,
Shakespeare, and Anouilh, and he had examined the notion
of tragedy evident in the non-dramatic works of poets such
as Geoffrey Chaucer and Edmund Spenser. He had also
extended his research on the term to include its role in eth­
ical and theological contexts. In particular, he had carried
out extensive philological and theological studies of the New
Testament in order to trace the shift in meaning from "error"
in older Greek writings to "sin" in Christian documents.
Unfortunately, most of Crossett’s research on hamartia
survives only in rough draft and will never see print.
Therefore, it seems all the more appropriate for us to extend
the investigation here, knowing that no other topic could
have pleased him more. As we discovered when we first
sent out letters of inquiry to potential contributors, the con­
cept is also germane to the scholarship of many of his col­
leagues and former students. Like logos and eros, hamartia
has had a profound and pervasive influence on Western cul­
ture. It has played a part in areas as diverse as Greek
history and Renaissance drama, Hellenistic theology and Vic­
torian fiction. Because of its significance in Greek philos­
ophy and literary criticism, the term has been most influen­
tial in those subsequent ages which self-consciously returned
to the standards of antiquity, most notably the Renaissance
and the eighteenth century. But even in the Middle Ages,
when the Greek classics were little known, and in the nine­
teenth century, when many writers were turning away from
the neo-classicism of the preceeding century, the notion of
hamartia often proves useful in interpreting works of philos­
ophy and literature.
Nearly half the essays in this volume discuss hamartia
in connection with Greek antiquity. James A. Arieti investi­
gates its importance as the primary unifying theme in the
work of the Greek historian Herodotus. Norman Kretzmann
considers the term in its New Testament definition and exam­
ines the old problem cogently posed by Plato in the
Euthyphro: Does God disapprove of a thing because it is
bad, or is a thing bad because because God disapproves of
it? Carol Lindsay and Janet Smith both investigate hamartia
as a threat to rational thought and discourse--an abrogation
of the all-important Greek commitment to logos. Lindsay
interprets Euripides's Hippolytus as a play about errors of
the tongue, and Smith discusses the importance of the idea
of tragic misologia in the dialogues of Plato, particularly in
the Phaedo. Hippocrates G. Apostle brings together in one
essay a variety of Aristotelian distinctions between the var­
ious forms of error, and Lloyd Gerson discusses the Old
Stoic paradox "All errors are equal," pointing out the psy­
chological and ethical assumptions that underlie it and make
it alien to the philosophy of Plato and the Middle Stoa.