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Right and Left in Greek Philosophy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

G. E. R. Lloyd
G. E. R. Lloyd
Affiliation:
King's College, Cambridge
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Extract

The purpose of this article is to consider how the symbolic associations which right and left had for the ancient Greeks influenced various theories and explanations in Greek philosophy of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. The fact that certain manifest natural oppositions (e.g. right and left, male and female, light and darkness, up and down) often acquire powerful symbolic associations, standing for religious categories such as pure and impure, blessed and accursed, is well attested by anthropologists for many present-day societies. Robert Hertz, in particular, has considered the significance of the widespread belief in the superiority of the right hand, in his essay ‘La prééminence de la main droite: étude sur la polarité religieuse’ [Revue Philosophique lxviii (1909), 553 ff., recently translated into English by R. and С. Needham in Death and the Right Hand (London, 1960) 89 ff.]. It is, of course, well known that the ancient Greeks shared some similar beliefs, associating right and left with lucky and unlucky, respectively, and light and darkness with safety, for example, and death. Yet the survival of certain such associations in Greek philosophy has not, I think, received the attention it deserves. I wish to document this aspect of the use of opposites in Greek philosophy in this paper, concentrating in the main upon the most interesting pair of opposites, right and left. Before I turn to the evidence in the philosophers themselves, two introductory notes are necessary. In the first, I shall consider briefly some of the evidence in anthropology which indicates how certain pairs of opposites are associated with, and symbolise, religious categories in many present-day societies. The second contains a general summary of the evidence for similar associations and beliefs in pre-philosophical Greek thought.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 82 , November 1962 , pp. 56 - 66
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1962

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References

1 I must express my gratitude to Professor Meyer Fortes and Mr Edmund Leach, Professor and Reader in Social Anthropology in the University of Cambridge, for their help on several questions of anthropology connected with this paper.

2 I am grateful to Dr and Mrs Needham for permission to quote extracts from their translation of Hertz's essay.

3 Hertz remarked on the connexion between the predominance of the right hand and the superior development of the left part of the brain (op. cit., 90, see also Needham's note in his translation referring to Scott, G. B. D., Man lv (1955) 67 ff.)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, but suggested that as the exercise of an organ leads to the greater nourishment and consequent growth of that organ, we might as well say that we are left-brained because we are right-handed, as say that we are right-handed because we are left-brained.

4 Cf. Evans-Pritchard, E. E., Nuer Religion (Oxford, 1956) 234 ff.Google Scholar, where a number of other practices illustrating this belief are given.

5 Op. cit., 100.

6 As Evans-Pritchard notes (in his Introduction to Death and the Right Hand, 22), Hertz mentions this example (108 f.) only to dismiss it as a ‘secondary development’. The fact that the Zuni are a peaceful agricultural people no doubt contributes to the relative estimation in which they hold the right, or spear, hand, and the left, or shield, hand.

7 Cf. Granet, M., La Pensée Chinoise (Paris, 1934) 361 ff.Google Scholar The Chinese attitude to this antithesis is complex, for while the Left is generally superior and Yang, and the Right inferior and Yin, yet in the sphere of what is itself common or inferior, the Right in some sense has precedence over the Left. Thus, the right hand is used for eating (Granet, 364). The right side is the appropriate side for women (while the left belongs to men, id., 368).

8 Op. cit., 97. Among the Maori ‘man is sacred, woman is profane: excluded from ceremonies, she is admitted to them only for a function characteristic of her status, when a taboo is to be lifted, i.e. to bring about an intended profanation’. Cf. also Evans-Pritchard, , Nuer Religion, 234Google Scholar, on the Nuer belief that the female principle is associated with evil.

9 Many primitive societies appear to classify things generally into groups of opposites (often corresponding to opposite groups in the society itself). A number of notable examples of such classifications are given by Van der Kroef, J. M. (American Anthropologist lvi (1954) 847 ff.)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, among them that of the people of Amboyna in Indonesia who, according to this authority, correlate pairs of opposites in the following way:

10 Evans-Pritchard, , Nuer Religion, 235.Google Scholar

11 These two categories of gods are often referred to in invocations, e.g. Aesch., Ag., 89, Supp. 24 f.; Eur., Hec. 146 f.; Plato, , Laws 7173b.Google Scholar The impor tance of the distinction between them has been particularly stressed by ProfessorGuthrie, , The Greeks and their Gods (London, 1950), ch. viii and ixGoogle Scholar; cf. p. 209 ‘The distinction between Olympian and chthonian, aetherial and sub-aetherial, or to put it more simply, between gods of the heaven and gods of the earth, is one which I hold to be fundamental for the understanding of Greek religion’.

12 On this distinction, cf. Guthrie, op. cit., 113 ff.

13 White is associated with good luck: a white vote was used, in classical times, for acquittal (e.g. Luc., Harm. 3); cf. the expression ‘λευκὴ ἡμέρα’ for a lucky day. Conversely, black is the colour of death (e.g. Il. ii 834) and is associated with various things and personifications of evil omen: in Aeschylus, for instance, it is used of the Erinyes (e.g. Ag. 462 f.) of misfortune (Supp. 89), of “Ατη (Ag. 770) and of a curse (Th. 832). It may be that as a general rule the colour of the victim sacrificed to an Olympian deity was white, that of the chthonians' sacrificial victims black (cf. Il. iii 103 ff., where a white ram and a black ewe are sacrificed to the sun and to earth). Other general distinctions between the rites associated with the Olympians and those of the chthonian deities have been collected by Guthrie, op. cit., 221 f., and several of these reflect the symbolic associations of such pairs of opposites as up and down, high and low.

14 At Th. 591 ff. the whole race of women— Pandora's offspring—is ‘ὀλώιον’, a πῆμα μέγα to men, and at Op. 90 ff. it is said that before Pandora, men lived on earth free from evils, suffering and disease. The idea of the innate inferiority of women recurs, of course, in Greek philosophy: in the Timaeus 90ef, it is suggested that cowardly and unjust men are transformed to become women in their second incarnation, and Aristotle considers the female sex a deviation from type, a ‘natural deformity’, cf. GA 767b 6 ff., 775a 14 ff.

15 It has been suggested that Hector's words at Il. xii 238 ff., (sc. ) refer simply to the position of the Trojan lines, facing North, but it is surely much more likely that they describe a general method of interpreting omens, in which ἐπὶ δεξιά is identified with πρὸς ἠῶ. The theory (taken up more recently by Cuillandre, J., La droite et la gauche dans les poèmes homériques, Paris, 1943)Google Scholar that right is identified with light because the worshipper faces the rising sun, which then passes to his right on its transit westwards, was rightly dismissed by Hertz, op. cit., n. 86. A decisive argument against the theory is that we should expect the opposite correlation to be made by many peoples in the southern hemisphere (if they face the sun at its rising, it passes, of course, to their left) whereas this is not the case: for the Maori and Australian aborigines, for example, right is the good side and is associated with life and light, as for the ancient Greeks.

16 The complete list of opposites is:

17 Cf. Hertz, op. cit., n. 50. It may be noted that several of the so-called ὰκούσματα or αύμβολα attributed to the Pythagoreans (or rather to one sect of them) emphasise a ritual distinction between certain pairs of opposites, e.g. ‘Putting on your shoes, start with the right foot; washing your feet, start with the left’ (Iambl., Protr. 21 DK 58 C 6; cf. V.P. 83, DK C 4). ‘Do not sacrifice a white cock’ (Iambl., V.P. 84; cf. Diogenes' gloss, viii 34, DK C 3: ).

18 Cf. Laws 717ab, where ‘even’ and ‘left’ are assigned as honours to the chthonian deities, and their superior opposites ‘odd’ and ‘right’ to the Olympians.

19 Galen, who quotes Fr. 67 in Epid. vi 48, xvii A 1002 K, probably took Empedocles' theory to be that males are formed in the hotter parts of the womb, females in the colder (he compares it directly with Parmenides' theory which also referred to different parts of the womb). But Aristotle, who quotes the equally ambiguous Fr. 65 at GA 723a 24 ff., took Empedocles to be referring to variations in temperature in the womb as a whole over the monthly cycle (the womb is hotter at the beginning of the cycle just after menstruation has occurred, cf. 764a 1 ff.). Censorinus' interpretation, 6, 6, DK 31 A 81—that Empedocles, like Anaxagoras, held that males were formed by seed from the right-hand side of the body, females by seed from the left—should probably be ruled out: Aristotle clearly differentiates between those (among whom Empedocles) who held ‘hot and cold’ and those who held ‘right and left’ as the causes of male and female, cf. GA 765a 3 ff.

20 The text of GA 765a 21 ff. appears to suggest that Leophanes' theory was that if the right testis is tied up, males will be produced. Yet either we should transpose the words ἀρρενοτοκεῖν and θηλυτοκεῖν, or they have been mentioned in this order (males first) without due regard for their correlation with what has gone before (right mentioned before left at a 23). That the theory in question was that the right testis is responsible for males (which are, then, produced when the left testis is tied up) is clear not only from the passage in Superf. L viii 500 8 ff., but from Aristotle's own subsequent remarks. At GA 765a 34 ff., he says that the earlier theories which took hot and cold, or right and left, to be the causes of male and female, were not altogether unreasonable, and it is clear that he correlates male with right (and hot), female with left (and cold) and not vice versa: seed from the right side will be hotter, more concocted, and therefore more fertile than seed from the left.

21 Cf. Granet, op. cit., 370.

22 The evidence from dissections is first introduced at GA 764a 33 ff. when Aristotle is criticising Empedocles' theory (that hot and cold are the causes of male and female), but it is also relevant to Parmenides' theory that males are produced on the right of the womb, females on the left, and Aristotle refers to it again when criticising that theory later, at GA 765a 3 ff. (cf. 16 ff.).

23 A passage in HA vii 3 (583b 2 ff.) is interesting. There Aristotle says that the first movement of male embryos usually takes place on the right side of the womb, that of females on the left, although he goes on to qualify or correct this statement: This might, perhaps, be taken as evidence that, at one stage, Aristotle had been less critical of the theory that males are on the right, females on the left, of the womb.

24 Aristotle also notes (IA 705b 33) that it is easier to hop on the left leg, and elsewhere (PA 671b 32 ff.) he says that men raise their right eyebrows more than their left. Some of his evidence seems to be contradictory: while he states that men step off with the left foot (IA 706a 6 ff.), he believes that horses step off with the off-fore (712a 25 ff.). His interpretation of much of the evidence which he adduces appears to be quite arbitrary.

25 On the complex problem of the meaning of the phrase as applied to circular motion, and its interpretation in Cael. 285b 20, cf. Braunlich, A. F., AJP lvii (1936) 245 ff.Google Scholar; cf. Boeckh, A., Untersuchungen über das kosmische System des Platon (Berlin, 1852) 112 ff.Google Scholar; Darbishire, H. D., Reliquiae Philologicae (Cambridge, 1895) 65 ff.Google Scholar; Heath, T. L., Aristarchus of Samos (Oxford, 1913) 231 ff.Google Scholar Whether applied to circular motion meant the direction which we call ‘clockwise’, or the direction we call ‘counter-clockwise’, the association with right marks it clearly as the more honourable direction.

26 The blood-vessel which Aristotle calls corresponds to the superior and inferior Venae Cavae: whether we take it also to include the right auricle of the heart itself will depend on how we interpret the three chambers of the heart which Aristotle recognises. See further n. 30.

27 Cf. also on the relative position of the two kidneys (PA 671b 28 ff.): Aristotle believes diat the right kidney is always higher than the left (although in fact this is not so, e.g. in man himself, where the left kidney is usually higher), and he gives the reason that motion starts from the right, and organs on the right push upwards above their opposites. He also believes that the right kidney is less fat than the left (PA 672a 23 ff.) and again explains this by referring to the right side being better suited for motion. Several more instances in which Aristotle explains the relative positions of organs, and other phenomena, by referring to the superiority of right, front and above over their opposites, left, back and below, are given by W. Ogle in a note to PA 648a 11 (Ox. trans., 1912).

28 Aristotle believes that the spleen on the left in some way balances the liver on the right, cf. PA 669b 26 ff., 36 ff.

29 According to Aristotle's own theory, stated at GA 765b 8 ff., male and female are distinguished by their ability or inability to concoct and discharge semen, yet because concoction works by means of heat, males must be hotter than females (b 15 ff.). Further, it is due to a lack of heat that females are formed (the male element is too weak to master the female, 766b 15 ff.: Aristotle believes that young people, those in old age, and people of a ‘wet’ or ‘feminine’ disposition are all more likely to produce female children, GA 766b 27 ff., and these are all persons in whom the ‘natural heat’ is weak, b 33 f.).

30 There is some doubt as to which are the three chambers of the heart to which Aristotle refers (e.g. HA 513a 27 ff.; PA 666b 21 ff., cf. Somn. Vig. 458a 15 ff.). Ogle (note to PA, loc. cit., Ox. trans.) took them to be the two ventricles and the left auricle (he thought the right auricle is taken to be part of the ‘great blood-vessel’, cf. supra, n. 26). D'Arcy Thompson, on the other hand, took ‘the largest of the three chambers’ (HA 513a 32; cf. PA 666b 35 f.) to refer to the right auricle and ventricle combined (note to HA, loc. cit., Ox. trans., 1910), which would account for the statement that the other two chambers are ‘far smaller’ (HA 513a 34 f.) than the third. The suggestion that traditional or mystical ideas have influenced Aristotle in ascribing three chambers to the heart, cannot be ruled out, although many features of his account show, as Thompson said, ‘clear evidence of minute inquiry’.

31 Ogle (note to PA 666b 35 f.) pointed out that ‘in an animal, especially one killed by strangulation, as recommended by Aristotle …, the right side of the heart and the vessels connected with it would be found gorged with dark blood and contrasting strongly with the almost empty left side and vessels’. (At HA 511b 13 ff., Aristotle discusses the difficulties involved in making observations of the vascular system, and at 513a 12 ff., he recommends that the animal to be examined should be starved and then strangled).

32 From PA 671b 30 f. and 672a 24 f., it appears that Aristotle held that the right side is naturally stronger (and ‘drier’) than the left. But in several passages he notes that the degree to which right and left are differentiated varies in different species, e.g. HA 497b 21 f.; IA 705b 21 ff.

33 Cf. HA 526b 16 f., and a description of the two claws (chelae) at 526a 15 ff. It is not true that the chelae are used solely for locomotion (PA 684a 35 f.; cf. Ogle, note ad loc.): indeed Aristotle himself remarks at HA 526a 24 f. that they are naturally adapted for prehension.

34 In some animals, right and left are distin guished not in form, but in function alone (cf. Cael. 285a 15 f., b 3 ff.). As regards the stromboid Testaceans, he says that they are ‘δεξιά’ because they do not move in the direction of the spire, but opposite to it (IA 706a 13 ff.; cf. HA 528b 8 ff., and Thompson's note). He appears to argue that because they move in the direction opposite to the spire, therefore the spire must be assumed to be on the right-hand side.

35 Cf. IA 714b 16 ff. Elsewhere, however, Aristotle is somewhat more cautious in his statement of the difference between right and left in the Carcini (Crabs) at least. Cf. HA 527b 6 f.

36 At HA 502b 25 f., Aristotle remarks that the monkey (κῆβος) and suchlike animals (e.g. ape and baboon, πίθηκος and κυνοκέφαλος cf. 502a 16 ff.) are found on dissection (διαρεθεντα) to have similar internal organs to those of man. Yet in these animals (as also, e.g., in the mole) the heart is on the left. Cf. Ogle's note to PA 666b 6 ff.

37 Aristotle's statement that in all animals which have kidneys the right one is higher (PA 671b 28) is another inaccuracy: in man, for example, the left kidney is generally slightly higher than the right.

38 Cf. HA 494a 26 ff. It is interesting that elsewhere Aristotle states that man alone of all the animals can learn to be ambidextrous (HA 497b 31 f.; cf. EN 1134b 33 ff.; MM 1194b 31 ff.), yet he continues to believe that the right is ‘most right-sided’ in man (IA 706a 21 f.) and that the right is naturally better than the left and separated from it (IA 706a 20 f.).

39 This is so especially in Cael. ii 2, where Aristotle agrees with the Pythagorean idea that right and left apply to the universe as a whole (284b 6 ff.), but adopts the opposite view to theirs, saying that we live in the lower of the two hemispheres, and on the ‘left’, not, as the Pythagoreans said, in the upper hemisphere and on the ‘right’ (285b 23 ff.). He also criticises the Pythagoreans for not having recognised above and below, and front and back, as principles, as well as right and left (285a 10 ff.; cf. his own view, expressed at 284b 20 ff.).

40 A radical view of the effects of training and habit on the use of the two hands is expressed in the Laws (794d–795d) where Plato recommends that children should be taught to use both hands equally. He criticises the view that right and left are naturally different in their usefulness, pointing out that this is not the case with the feet and the lower limbs (794d 5 ff.). He says He notes that athletes can become quite ambidextrous, and he says that the Scythians are in fact so. (Aristotle too recognises that we can become ambidextrous, but says that the right side is still naturally stronger than the left: EN 1134b 33 ff.; cf. MM 1194b 31 ff.)