Horses in Philosophy
-"Loading quote..." -This page
"Loading quote..." -This page
The first word of Parmenides' "On Truth" is "horses" ("hippoi"), as Parmenides narrates being drawn in a chariot to the goddess. This early example is just one of many to come of horses being integral to the philosopher's pursuit of wisdom and truth.
- - -Xenophanes is famous for, among other less important things, saying that if horses could draw, they would draw their gods as horses. As with Parmenides, where we find contemplation of ultimate reality, horses are not far away.
- -
- Horses and horsemanship are a common theme in Plato's dialogues as an example of an art and its object - no doubt his example of choice because of the special status of horses in the pursuit of truth. In fact, horses are mentioned in 17 out of 25 works by Plato, or 68%. That's a number.
-Socrates uses this example in the Apology, drawing a parallel between himself as an improver of men and the trainer of horses as an improver of horses:
-I met a man who has spent a world of money on the Sophists, Callias the son of Hipponicus, and knowing that he had sons, I asked him: "Callias," I said, "if your two sons were foals or calves, there would be no difficulty in finding someone to put over them; we should hire a trainer of horses or a farmer probably who would improve and perfect them in their own proper virtue and excellence; but as they are human beings, whom are you thinking of placing over them?
-[...]
-Would you say that this also holds true in the case of horses? Does one man do them harm and all the world good? Is not the exact opposite of this true? One man is able to do them good, or at least not many; - the trainer of horses, that is to say, does them good, and others who have to do with them rather injure them? Is not that true, Meletus, of horses, or any other animals?
-In the same work Socrates appeals to the absurdity of not believing in horses to underscore the absurdity of the charges against him:
-Did ever any man believe in horsemanship, and not in horses? or in flute-playing, and not in flute-players? ...You might as well affirm the existence of mules, and deny that of horses and asses.
-In the Athenian court system, the plaintiff and defendant each propose penalties, and the jury decides between the two choices. It is likely that Socrates would not have been put to death had he simply picked a fine or exile. But instead, he picked this: -
What would be a reward suitable to a poor man who is your benefactor, who desires leisure that he may instruct you? There can be no more fitting reward than maintenance in the Prytaneum, O men of Athens, a reward which he deserves far more than the citizen who has won the prize at Olympia in the horse or chariot race, whether the chariots were drawn by two horses or by many. For I am in want, and he has enough; and he only gives you the appearance of happiness, and I give you the reality. And if I am to estimate the penalty justly, I say that maintenance in the Prytaneum is the just return.
-Of course, it should not be surprising that Socrates was put to death for esteeming his work as greater than the horseman's, because the object of the horseman's art is the horse, while the object of Socrates' art is only man. But I am sure many horses shed a tear when Socrates died.
-The theme of horses and horsemanship is not limited to the Apology. It can be found in Euthyphro as an example Socrates uses to undermine one of Euthyphro's definitions of piety: -
Euth. Piety or holiness, Socrates, appears to me to be that part of justice which attends to the gods, as there is the other part of justice which attends to men. -
Soc. That is good, Euthyphro; yet still there is a little point about which I should like to have further information, What is the meaning of "attention"? For attention can hardly be used in the same sense when applied to the gods as when applied to other things. For instance, horses are said to require attention, and not every person is able to attend to them, but only a person skilled in horsemanship. Is it not so? -
[...]
-Soc. And is not attention always designed for the good or benefit of that to which the attention is given? As in the case of horses, you may observe that when attended to by the horseman's art they are benefited and improved, are they not?
-Yet again, horses and gods tread nearly to each other.
- - - - - - -An analysis of horses in the Aristotelian corpus is forthcoming -
Aristotle was reportedly so impressed by the grandeur and majesty of the horse that he sought to become one himself.
- -In the Third Ennead, third tractate, section 1, Plotinus uses horses as a model for humanity: -
The Souls are in harmony with each other and so, too, are their acts and effects; but it is harmony in the sense of a resultant unity built out of contraries. All things, as they rise from a unity, come back to unity by a sheer need of nature; differences unfold themselves, contraries are produced, but all is drawn into one organized system by the unity at the source. The principle may be illustrated from the different classes of animal life: there is one genus, horse, though horses among themselves fight and bite and show malice and angry envy: so all the others within the unity of their Kind; and so humanity...
-Having attached all to this source, we turn to move down again in continuous division: we see the Unity fissuring, as it reaches out into Universality, and yet embracing all in one system so that with all its differentiation it is one multiple living thing- an organism in which each member executes the function of its own nature while it still has its being in that One Whole; fire burns; horse does horse work; men give, each the appropriate act of the peculiar personal quality- and upon the several particular Kinds to which each belongs follow the acts, and the good or evil of the life.
- -In the Sixth Ennead, seventh tractate, section 9, Plotinus describes how the Thought of Horse is an Intellect: -
We must reflect that, since the many forms of lives are movements- and so with the Intellections- they cannot be identical: there must be different lives, distinct intellections, degrees of lightsomeness and clarity: there must be firsts, seconds, thirds, determined by nearness to the Firsts. This is how some of the Intellections are gods, others of a secondary order having what is here known as reason, while others again belong to the so-called unreasoning: but what we know here as unreasoning was There a Reason-Principle; the unintelligent was an Intellect; the Thinker of Horse was Intellect and the Thought, Horse, was an Intellect.
- - -
- In Summa Theologica I.44.3, Aquinas addresses an objection dealing with Platonic Forms: -
Article 3. Whether the exemplar cause is anything besides God?
-Objection 2. Further, whatever is by participation is reduced to something self-existing, as a thing ignited is reduced to fire, as stated above (Article 1). But whatever exists in sensible things exists only by participation of some species. This appears from the fact that in all sensible species is found not only what belongs to the species, but also individuating principles added to the principles of the species. Therefore it is necessary to admit self-existing species, as for instance, a "per se" man, and a "per se" horse, and the like, which are called the exemplars. Therefore exemplar causes exist besides God.
-Aquinas discusses the Form of Horses further in I.65.4:
-Article 4. Whether the forms of bodies are from the angels?
-I answer that, It was the opinion of some that all corporeal forms are derived from spiritual substances, which we call the angels. And there are two ways in which this has been stated. For Plato held that the forms of corporeal matter are derived from, and formed by, forms immaterially subsisting, by a kind of participation. Thus he held that there exists an immaterial man, and an immaterial horse, and so forth, and that from such the individual sensible things that we see are constituted, in so far as in corporeal matter there abides the impression received from these separate forms, by a kind of assimilation, or as he calls it, "participation" (Phaedo xlix). And, according to the Platonists, the order of forms corresponds to the order of those separate substances; for example, that there is a single separate substance, which is horse and the cause of all horses, whilst above this is separate life, or "per se" life, as they term it, which is the cause of all life, and that above this again is that which they call being itself, which is the cause of all being. Avicenna, however, and certain others, have maintained that the forms of corporeal things do not subsist "per se" in matter, but in the intellect only. Thus they say that from forms existing in the intellect of spiritual creatures (called "intelligences" by them, but "angels" by us) proceed all the forms of corporeal matter, as the form of his handiwork proceeds from the forms in the mind of the craftsman. This theory seems to be the same as that of certain heretics of modern times, who say that God indeed created all things, but that the devil formed corporeal matter, and differentiated it into species.
-In III.1.1, Aquinas address an objection having to do with the Incarnation:
-Objection 2. Further, it is not fitting to unite things that are infinitely apart, even as it would not be a fitting union if one were "to paint a figure in which the neck of a horse was joined to the head of a man" [Horace, Ars. Poet., line 1]. But God and flesh are infinitely apart; since God is most simple, and flesh is most composite--especially human flesh. Therefore it was not fitting that God should be united to human flesh.
-Note carefully that in the Horace quote, the objection is to the union of a horse and a man. Note also that in the analogous example the objection discusses, the objection is to the union of God and man. Matching by their shared member, man, the parallel is therefore between the horse and God, continuing the earliest theme found in Parmenides and Xenophanes.
- - -In the First Replies, Descartes attempts to harness the idea of a horse with or without wings to illustrate a point, but he abandons the example in favour of another because "their [horses'] natures are not transparently clear to us". Descartes thus illustrates the folly of man to try and bridle the spirit of freedom which is the horse.
- -In her Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy, Conway uses the horse in an extended explanation about the mutability of creatures. Regarding the horse, she says, "let us take a horse, which is a creature edued with diverse degrees of perfection by his creator, as not only strength of body, but (as I may so say) a certain kind of knowledge, how he ought to serve his master, and moreover also love, fear, courage, memory, and diverse other qualities which are in man..." While Conway gives examples of a horse being perfected to the level of man, she may be forgiven for this oversight, we knowing with our modern knowledge that it is man who must be perfected to the level of a horse.
- -In his Essay Concerning Human Understanding II.xxiii.4, Locke chooses to use horses as an example of a corporeal substance.
- -In his Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, intro.10, Berkeley describes his faculty of imagination:
-I can imagine a man with two heads, or the upper parts of a man joined to the body of a horse. I can consider the hand, the eye, the nose, each by itself abstracted or separated from the rest of the body.
-Undoubtedly Berkeley was affected with no less wonder than philosophers have had since the beginning as with Parmenides and Xenophanes.
- -In his A Treatise of Human Nature, book III, part III, section I, after introducing sympathy as the origin of morals, Hume discusses beauty (emphasis mine): -
Our sense of beauty depends very much on this principle; and where any object has atendency to produce pleasure in its possessor, it is always regarded as beautiful; as every object, that has a tendency to produce pain, is disagreeable and deformed. Thus the conveniency of a house, the fertility of a field, the strength of a horse, the capacity, security, and swift-sailing of a vessel, form the principal beauty of these several objects.
-Some have suggested that Hume marks a shift from the value of horses being derived from their inner nobility to the value of horses being derived from their usefulness to man, for example, from their strength. This may be carried out by Hume's later discussion in his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, in section II: -
When we think of a golden mountain, we only join two consistent ideas, gold, and mountain, with which we were formerly acquainted. A virtuous horse we can conceive; because, from our own feeling, we can conceive virtue; and this we may unite to the figure and shape of a horse, which is an animal familiar to us.
-Hume's example of a virtuous horse is usually omitted in favor fo the example of the golden mountain, no doubt because the idea of virtue is analytic to horses.
-Like Berkeley, Hume also brings up horses when discussing imagination in section V, part II: -
We can, in our conception, join the head of a man to the body of a horse; but it is not in our power to believe that such an animal has ever really existed.
-Most likely, we are not capable of believing that such an animal has existed because no head of man could be worthy of such a body.
- - - -In his Ethics, Spinoza frequently discusses horses in the context of mind. In a note on Part II, Proposition 18:
-PROP. XVIII. If the human body has once been affected by two or more bodies at the same time, when the mind afterwards imagines any of them, it will straightway remember the others also.
-[...]
-For a soldier, for instance, when he sees the tracks of a horse in sand, will at once pass from the thought of a horse to the thought of a horseman, and thence to the thought of war, &c.; while a countryman will proceed from the thought of a horse to the thought of a plough, a field, &c. Thus every man will follow this or that train of thought, according as he has been in the habit of conjoining and associating the mental images of things in this or that manner.
-Recall what Aristotle once said: "The soul is in a sense all things." For Spinoza, it seems that the horse is, in a sense, all things as well. However, Spinoza's attitude on horses sours further into the Ethics. - -
- - - - -In his essay "Meta-Ontology", van Inwagen uses unicorns and horses as an example:
-To say that unicorns do not exist is to something very much like saying that the number of unicorns is 0; to say that horses exist is to say that the number of horses is 1 or more.
- - -On page 98 of The Principle of Sufficient Reason: A Reassessment, Pruss divides the Big Conjunctive Contingent Fact into horsey facts, contingent true propositions that entail there is a horse, and unhorsey facts, which are inferior.
-As a parody of subtraction arguments meant to establish the possibility of nothing existing, Pruss developed the following argument that there are infinitely many horses:
-1. For any finite number n, if there can be n horses, there can be fewer than n horses.
2. There cannot be fewer than zero horses.
3. Thus there must be an infinite number of horses.
The inference proceeds as follows. Imagine that there can be some finite number, say 10, of horses. Then by applying (1) ten times, we will conclude that there can be fewer than zero horses.
- - - -
+
+Horses and horsemanship are a common theme in Plato's dialogues as an example of an art and its object - no doubt his example of choice because of the special status of horses in the pursuit of truth. In fact, horses are mentioned in **17 out of 25** works by Plato, or **68%**. That's a number.
+
+Socrates uses this example in the *Apology*, drawing a parallel between himself as an improver of men and the trainer of horses as an improver of horses:
+
+> I met a man who has spent a world of money on the Sophists, Callias the son of Hipponicus, and knowing that he had sons, I asked him: "Callias," I said, "if your two sons were foals or calves, there would be no difficulty in finding someone to put over them; we should hire a trainer of horses or a farmer probably who would improve and perfect them in their own proper virtue and excellence; but as they are human beings, whom are you thinking of placing over them?
+
+> [...]
+
+> Would you say that this also holds true in the case of horses? Does one man do them harm and all the world good? Is not the exact opposite of this true? One man is able to do them good, or at least not many; - the trainer of horses, that is to say, does them good, and others who have to do with them rather injure them? Is not that true, Meletus, of horses, or any other animals?
+
+In the same work Socrates appeals to the absurdity of not believing in horses to underscore the absurdity of the charges against him:
+
+> Did ever any man believe in horsemanship, and not in horses? or in flute-playing, and not in flute-players? ...You might as well affirm the existence of mules, and deny that of horses and asses.
+
+In the Athenian court system, the plaintiff and defendant each propose penalties, and the jury decides between the two choices. It is likely that Socrates would not have been put to death had he simply picked a fine or exile. But instead, he picked this:
+
+> What would be a reward suitable to a poor man who is your benefactor, who desires leisure that he may instruct you? There can be no more fitting reward than maintenance in the Prytaneum, O men of Athens, a reward which he deserves far more than the citizen who has won the prize at Olympia in the horse or chariot race, whether the chariots were drawn by two horses or by many. For I am in want, and he has enough; and he only gives you the appearance of happiness, and I give you the reality. And if I am to estimate the penalty justly, I say that maintenance in the Prytaneum is the just return.
+
+Of course, it should not be surprising that Socrates was put to death for esteeming his work as greater than the horseman's, because the object of the horseman's art is the horse, while the object of Socrates' art is only man. But I am sure many horses shed a tear when Socrates died.
+
+The theme of horses and horsemanship is not limited to the *Apology*. It can be found in *Euthyphro* as an example Socrates uses to undermine one of Euthyphro's definitions of piety:
+
+> **Euth.** Piety or holiness, Socrates, appears to me to be that part of justice which attends to the gods, as there is the other part of justice which attends to men.
+
+> **Soc.** That is good, Euthyphro; yet still there is a little point about which I should like to have further information, What is the meaning of "attention"? For attention can hardly be used in the same sense when applied to the gods as when applied to other things. For instance, horses are said to require attention, and not every person is able to attend to them, but only a person skilled in horsemanship. Is it not so?
+
+> [...]
+
+> **Soc.** And is not attention always designed for the good or benefit of that to which the attention is given? As in the case of horses, you may observe that when attended to by the horseman's art they are benefited and improved, are they not?
+
+Yet again, horses and gods tread nearly to each other.
+
+
+
+In *Summa Theologica* I.44.3, Aquinas addresses an objection dealing with Platonic Forms:
+
+> **Article 3. Whether the exemplar cause is anything besides God?**
+
+> **Objection 2.** Further, whatever is by participation is reduced to something self-existing, as a thing ignited is reduced to fire, as stated above (Article 1). But whatever exists in sensible things exists only by participation of some species. This appears from the fact that in all sensible species is found not only what belongs to the species, but also individuating principles added to the principles of the species. Therefore it is necessary to admit self-existing species, as for instance, a "per se" man, and a "per se" horse, and the like, which are called the exemplars. Therefore exemplar causes exist besides God.
+
+Aquinas discusses the Form of Horses further in I.65.4:
+
+> **Article 4. Whether the forms of bodies are from the angels?**
+
+> **I answer that**, It was the opinion of some that all corporeal forms are derived from spiritual substances, which we call the angels. And there are two ways in which this has been stated. For Plato held that the forms of corporeal matter are derived from, and formed by, forms immaterially subsisting, by a kind of participation. Thus he held that there exists an immaterial man, and an immaterial horse, and so forth, and that from such the individual sensible things that we see are constituted, in so far as in corporeal matter there abides the impression received from these separate forms, by a kind of assimilation, or as he calls it, "participation" (Phaedo xlix). And, according to the Platonists, the order of forms corresponds to the order of those separate substances; for example, that there is a single separate substance, which is horse and the cause of all horses, whilst above this is separate life, or "per se" life, as they term it, which is the cause of all life, and that above this again is that which they call being itself, which is the cause of all being. Avicenna, however, and certain others, have maintained that the forms of corporeal things do not subsist "per se" in matter, but in the intellect only. Thus they say that from forms existing in the intellect of spiritual creatures (called "intelligences" by them, but "angels" by us) proceed all the forms of corporeal matter, as the form of his handiwork proceeds from the forms in the mind of the craftsman. This theory seems to be the same as that of certain heretics of modern times, who say that God indeed created all things, but that the devil formed corporeal matter, and differentiated it into species.
+
+In III.1.1, Aquinas address an objection having to do with the Incarnation:
+
+> **Objection 2.** Further, it is not fitting to unite things that are infinitely apart, even as it would not be a fitting union if one were "to paint a figure in which the neck of a horse was joined to the head of a man" [Horace, Ars. Poet., line 1]. But God and flesh are infinitely apart; since God is most simple, and flesh is most composite--especially human flesh. Therefore it was not fitting that God should be united to human flesh.
+
+Note carefully that in the Horace quote, the objection is to the union of a horse and a man. Note also that in the analogous example the objection discusses, the objection is to the union of God and man. Matching by their shared member, man, the parallel is therefore between the horse and God, continuing the earliest theme found in Parmenides and Xenophanes.
+
+[(link)](http://www.newadvent.org/summa/index.html)
+
+## Horses in Modern Philosophy
+
+### Rene Descartes
+
+In the *First Replies*, Descartes attempts to harness the idea of a horse with or without wings to illustrate a point, but he abandons the example in favour of another because "their [horses'] natures are not transparently clear to us". Descartes thus illustrates the folly of man to try and bridle the spirit of freedom which is the horse.
+
+### Anne Conway
+
+In her *Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy*, Conway uses the horse in an extended explanation about the mutability of creatures. Regarding the horse, she says, "let us take a horse, which is a creature edued with diverse degrees of perfection by his creator, as not only strength of body, but (as I may so say) a certain kind of knowledge, how he ought to serve his master, and moreover also love, fear, courage, memory, and diverse other qualities which are in man..." While Conway gives examples of a horse being perfected to the level of man, she may be forgiven for this oversight, we knowing with our modern knowledge that it is man who must be perfected to the level of a horse.
+
+### John Locke
+
+In his *Essay Concerning Human Understanding* II.xxiii.4, Locke chooses to use horses as an example of a corporeal substance.
+
+### George Berkeley
+
+In his *Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge*, intro.10, Berkeley describes his faculty of imagination:
+
+> I can imagine a man with two heads, or the upper parts of a man joined to the body of a horse. I can consider the hand, the eye, the nose, each by itself abstracted or separated from the rest of the body.
+
+Undoubtedly Berkeley was affected with no less wonder than philosophers have had since the beginning as with Parmenides and Xenophanes.
+
+### David Hume
+
+In his *A Treatise of Human Nature*, book III, part III, section I, after introducing sympathy as the origin of morals, Hume discusses beauty (emphasis mine):
+
+> Our sense of beauty depends very much on this principle; and where any object has atendency to produce pleasure in its possessor, it is always regarded as beautiful; as every object, that has a tendency to produce pain, is disagreeable and deformed. Thus the conveniency of a house, the fertility of a field, **the strength of a horse,** the capacity, security, and swift-sailing of a vessel, form the principal beauty of these several objects.
+
+Some[^some] have suggested that Hume marks a shift from the value of horses being derived from their inner nobility to the value of horses being derived from their usefulness to man, for example, from their strength. This may be carried out by Hume's later discussion in his *Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding*, in section II:
+
+[^some]: Literally nobody
+
+> When we think of a golden mountain, we only join two consistent ideas, gold, and mountain, with which we were formerly acquainted. A virtuous horse we can conceive; because, from our own feeling, we can conceive virtue; and this we may unite to the figure and shape of a horse, which is an animal familiar to us.
+
+Hume's example of a virtuous horse is usually omitted in favor fo the example of the golden mountain, no doubt because the idea of virtue is analytic to horses.
+
+Like Berkeley, Hume also brings up horses when discussing imagination in section V, part II:
+
+> We can, in our conception, join the head of a man to the body of a horse; but it is not in our power to believe that such an animal has ever really existed.
+
+Most likely, we are not capable of believing that such an animal has existed because no head of man could be worthy of such a body.
+
+
+
+### Benedict Spinoza
+
+In his *Ethics*, Spinoza frequently discusses horses in the context of mind. In a note on Part II, Proposition 18:
+
+> PROP. XVIII. If the human body has once been affected by two or more bodies at the same time, when the mind afterwards imagines any of them, it will straightway remember the others also.
+
+> [...]
+
+> For a soldier, for instance, when he sees the tracks of a horse in sand, will at once pass from the thought of a horse to the thought of a horseman, and thence to the thought of war, &c.; while a countryman will proceed from the thought of a horse to the thought of a plough, a field, &c. Thus every man will follow this or that train of thought, according as he has been in the habit of conjoining and associating the mental images of things in this or that manner.
+
+Recall what Aristotle once said: "The soul is in a sense all things." For Spinoza, it seems that the horse is, in a sense, all things as well. However, Spinoza's attitude on horses sours further into the *Ethics*.
+
+