Harold Cherniss

Harold Fredrik Cherniss (born March 11, 1904 in St. Joseph , Missouri , † June 18, 1987 in Princeton , New Jersey ) was an American university professor and respected expert on ancient philosophy .

biography

Cherniss studied Greek, Latin and Sanskrit at the University of California at Berkeley , in Göttingen and in Berlin. In 1930 he received his doctorate with a thesis on Gregor von Nyssa . In the same year he started teaching at Cornell University . After a position at Johns Hopkins University and a professorship at the University of California , he became a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. During the Second World War he worked in the US Army in the British secret service.

Cherniss attached great importance to academic teaching, which he understood in terms of Humboldt's university idea. As can be seen from the numerous mentions of thanks in - often excellent - philosophical-historical works by American and Scandinavian researchers, he achieved a considerable impact. In contrast to his publications, his teaching covered the entire field of ancient philosophy. Politically, Cherniss was left-wing liberal; When Ernst H. Kantorowicz lost his job at the University of California in connection with the Loyalty Oath affair in 1950 , Cherniss arranged for his appointment to the Princeton Institute - then headed by JR Oppenheimer . In 1958 Cherniss was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . Since 1949 he was a member of the American Philosophical Society . In 1956 he became a corresponding member of the British Academy .

Cherniss' career was interrupted by a serious illness that left him unable to work for the last two decades of his life.

Works and effect

Cherniss has published relatively few, if almost entirely fundamental, essays. His main works are the two extensive books on Aristotle 's criticism of the pre-Socratics (1935) and of Plato and the Academy (1946); only the first part of the latter has been published. An impression of Cherniss' massive erudition, the sovereign overview of the entire research literature and the precision of his analyzes can be given by the lectures held in 1942 on the "Riddle of the Older Academy", which appeared in 1945 and since then in numerous languages, including German ( "The Older Academy", 1966), Italian, French, Czech, have been and still are translated. All of his books have been reprinted, some of them several times - not exactly common for scientific works.

Cherniss has shown in extremely detailed investigations that Aristotle's representations of the teachings of his philosophical predecessors should not be regarded as reliable sources for the knowledge of the theses and arguments of these thinkers, because Aristotle always presupposes his own philosophy in his doxographies and ascribes theses to earlier philosophers, which they did not actually represent, but which, in his opinion, they should actually have represented. The basic idea of ​​this line of argument was known even before Cherniss, but no one before him has shown in such detail how strongly the Aristotelian doxographies are permeated by certain assumptions and problematic argumentation patterns. After this critical passage through Aristotelian tradition - which is at the same time the main source of knowledge of pre-Socratic philosophy - the picture of pre-Aristotelian philosophy looks quite different than before. However, Cherniss' very far-reaching assertions have not been fully accepted by a majority of researchers, but his remarks still serve as the starting point for critical examination of the tradition of the history of philosophy in the specialist discussion. More recent works almost always endeavor to defend Aristotle's doxographies against Cherniss' criticism. More recently, Cherniss' method has also been criticized, which interprets “Plato ex Platone” and therefore remains within the domain of the doxographic itself without entering into the philosophical debate.

Cherniss' lectures on the older academy attracted particular interest due to the fact that, fourteen years before Hans Joachim Kramer's first publications, they delivered an anticipated criticism of the theory of unwritten doctrine , in which a considerable part of the arguments that were later made available against Krämer and the "Tübingen Plato School" were brought into the field. In a long section of his dissertation “Arete in Plato and Aristotle” (1959), Krämer dealt sharply and sometimes polemically with Cherniss. Cherniss did not respond to this criticism; his pupil Eugène Napoléon Tigerstedt gave an answer from the perspective of his school. Among other things, it is due to Cherniss' influence that the Tübingen interpretation of the unwritten doctrine in the English-speaking world - despite the work of John Niemeyer Findlay ('The Written and Unwritten Doctrines of Plato', London 1974), which was independent of Krämer and Konrad Gaiser emerged, but went in the same direction - hardly found supporters.

Fonts

List of scriptures can be found in the following two publications:

• The Senior Academy. A historical riddle and its solution. Translated by Josef Derbolav . - Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1966. ( Library of Classical Classical Studies . NF, 2nd row.) (Pp. 123–128)
• Selected Papers of Harold Cherniss. Edited by Leonardo Tarán . - Leiden: Brill, 1977. (pp. 524-530)

Main publications:

• The Platonism of Gregory of Nyssa. - Berkeley, Calif .: University of California Press, 1930. - (Reprint: New York: Burt Franklin, 1971 = Burt Franklin research and source works Series; 685.)
• Aristotle's Criticism of Presocratic Philosophy. - Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1935.
• The Riddle of the Early Academy. - Berkeley, Calif .: University of California Press, 1945.
• Aristotle's Criticism of Plato and the Academy. Vol. 1. - Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1946.
• Plato (1950-1957). - In: Lustrum 4 (1959) / 5 (1960), pp. 1-648.
• Plutarch's Moralia , Vol. 12. Translated by Harold Cherniss and WC Helmbold. - Cambridge, Mass .: Harvard University Press, 1957. (Loeb Library.) (Translation of "De facie in orbe lunae")
• Plutarch's Moralia , Vol. 13. Part 1: Platonic Essays . - Part 2: Stoic Essays. Translated by Harold Cherniss. - Cambridge, Mass .: Harvard University Press, 1976. (Loeb Library.)

literature

• Paul A. Van der Waerdt, Cherniss, Harold Frederik. - In: Ward W. Briggs Jr. (ed.), Biographical Dictionary of North American Classicists. Westport / Conn.-London 1994, 93-95.
• New York Times, July 12, 1987: Obituary Harold F. Cherniss.
• Encyclopedia Judaica 2, 1971, 351.
• Aminta W. Marks: Princeton & Classics: A Notable Record. In: Princeton Alumni Weekly, Volume LXVI, No. 15: February 1, 1966.
• “But who is going to risk becoming unemployed?” Eckart Grünewald in conversation with Robert L. Benson. - In: Ernst H. Kantorowicz: Gods in Uniform. Studies on the development of western royalty. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1998, p. 367.
• Richard William Baldes: Aristotle's relation to Democritus reconsidered and vindicated as against the criticism of Harold Cherniss. Ann Arbor, Mich .: University Microfilms, 1972. (Diss. Loyola University of Chicago 1972).
• Gail Fine: On Ideas. Aristotle's Criticism of Plato's Theory of Forms. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993.
• Hans Krämer: L'opera di Konrad Gaiser 'La dottrina non scritta di Platone', e sua collocazione all'interno della Scuola di Studi Platonici di Tubinga (1963-1993). In: Konrad Gaiser: La dottrina non scritta di Platone. Studi sulla fondazione sistematica e storica delle scienze nella scuola platonica. Milano: Vita e pensiero, 1994. (Temi metafisici e problemi del pensiero antico. Studi e testi; 37.) pp. XI-XVIII, here p. XIV.
• Eugène N. Tigerstedt: Interpreting Plato. Stockholm: Alqvist & Wiksell International, 1977. (Acta Universitatis Stockholmensis; 17.) pp. 63-91.

Web links

• Entry on Harold Cherniss in the Database of Classical Scholars (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Member History: Harold F. Cherniss. American Philosophical Society, accessed June 18, 2018 . 
2. ^ Deceased Fellows. British Academy, accessed May 14, 2020 .