Greek words: nomos, kalos k'agathos comment?

There are two greek terms I have wondered about, asked online about, and wondered about again. So now I’m asking anyone on here with knowledge of greek (especially satyr, who is greek in soul and body) what they know about these terms.

  1. nomos: As in Plato’s Symposium, where in Diotima’s speech she talkes about rising in the hierarchy of types of beauty. One of these levels is appreciation for the “nomos”, which, in classical greek, means either “law” or “tune”. I suppose both of these might be forms of tradition in the hellenic culture. I think in modern greek the words for these ideas are different.

So, the question is, are we to appreciate music, or politics?

  1. kalos k’agathos: I’ve been told this ancient term is still used in modern greek. Literally, it’s something like the pretty and the noble, or the truely morally good, or in modern greek I hear it has the connotation of “the innocent”. Where the Loeb Clssics translates it as “gentleman” (in the last chapter of the Eudemian Ethics), Aristotle defines it as he who does the good because it is the good and not because it is what is good for society.

Would anyone shed light on these terms?

mrn

My knowledge is mostly of Modern Greek which has altered and mutated through the many, many centuries, but I’ll do my best.

In Modern Greek the word νομος means decree or law.
When the accent is placed on the last omicron it can also mean province.

The Greeks are fatalists.
I know that modern Greeks see reality as something to be endured.
One learns to appreciate what he cannot escape.
I own a copy of Plato’s Symposium but could you offer a quote, so as to save time, so that we can see the context within which the term was used?

I know that in ancient Greek the term καλος meant beauty.
In Modern Greek it means the same, if the accent is placed on the alpha, but also it means good, if the accent is placed on the omicron.
I believe the ancients used it similarly making goodness and beauty tautologies

Αγαθος also has the meaning of good with the added nuance of lacking guile, which can also be used to mean simple-minded or pure.

Epitēdeuma is habits, practices, businesses, way of life.

The image that Diotima is presenting in her Ladder of Eros is the turning from the love of one thing, perhaps a beautiful body, a unique beauty, to seeing beauty more collectively, first in many bodies, realizing that beauty is all of them, and from that to seeing that beauty is in the soul and not the body; and from that, that investments in the contemplation on the kinds of things that improve the soul are necessary, seeing what is beautiful in actual human practices and laws that hold people together, seeing beyond bodies themselves, and then from actual practices onto to specific knowledges.

Nomos is law, but it can also mean alternately, pasturage. It literally means “the assigned” as its from the verb nemō, meaning “to distribute, to dispense”, or alternately “to pasture or graze”. Key to understanding it is seeing it as a working division within harmony, just as land can be divided for uses. The reason that it can mean also a melody is this very same quality, the divisions that work and hold together. One is supposed to see how that beauty found in laws and practices is “in-born with itself”, or as another translates “it is in itself all akin to itself” (idein oti pan auto autō suggenes estin) In looking at laws and practices one is suppose to see the logos, the beautiful [kalon] shining through, beyond individual examples of beauty.

It means “tune” in the sense of law → order → harmony.

I recently wrote the following about “nomos”:

Sauwelios, I hope you are not using Nietzsche to explicate what Plato meant.

And I don’t know what dictionary you are using, but might I suggest the Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, which is pretty much definitive, and can be found on the Perseus site:

perseus.tufts.edu/

(for instance nemein does not mean “to take”–as Nietzschean as that would sound. It is merely the active infinite of nemō , which as I mentioned is “to distribute, to dispense, deal out, assign”. “to inhabit, hold, possess, manage” is a later development, and not the dominate or root meaning of the verb nemō.)

This is not about what Plato meant. It’s about what nomos meant (for instance in Diotima’s speech). And no, I’m not using Nietzsche to explicate that.

Thank you for the link, but according to my dictionary - Wolters’ Handwoordenboek Grieks-Nederlands -, both the sense of “giving” and of “taking” were derived from the original sense of “moving, wielding” (managing). I am currently doing a line of investigation in the matter.

I am curious about this. Is this something in particular to the verb nemō, (there is no reason to reference its infinitive form), or a grand theory about “moving” and “wielding” that has nothing to do with nemō.

I paste the entry for nemō (in transliteration) below, for your interest:

perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/pt … 3D%2370189

Research can always use additional information.

I did find something interesting in Leonard Palmer’s The Greek Language, which seems to support something of where you seem to be going with this:

So nomós, pasture, is an agent noun of a received action. And nómos, is ‘law, custom’, and is considered an action noun, similar to the nouns for “child, offspring”, “a nurse” , “a cast, throw”, “singer”, “wheel”.

I’m not sure if this is in support of your thesis or not. But something to add.

According to my dictionary, and my memory and other sources, nemo (I myself had formed the infinitive) does not mean “to take” only in the Medium; in fact, the Medium means “to take (in possession) for oneself”: if you take an area in possession, you may let some vassal live there; but the Medium means you go live there yourself.

Also, I am Dutch, and the Dutch nemen, the German nehmen, and the O.E. and Gothic niman all mean “to take”. I don’t believe these words have been derived from the Greek; I think both the Greek and the examples mentioned have been derived from an older, PIE word. What I’d like to know, and am trying to find out, is what did that root word mean, and how did it come to mean “to take” if it didn’t originally mean that. Note that it only means “to take” in German:

http://dict.leo.org/ende?lp=ende&lang=de&searchLoc=0&cmpType=relaxed&sectHdr=on&spellToler=on&search=nehmen&relink=on

The entry “to wreak” is really nonsense, that only applies in the case of “Rache nehmen”, “to wreak vengeance” or “to take revenge”. “Anteil nehmen” literally means “to take a share”, so the “sharing” is in the word “Anteil”, not in the “nehmen”.

I know someone who would know this answer, if it is as you imagine. I’ll ask him. But so that I get you straight, you are under the impression that both the Greek nemo, and your German words are derived from the same PIE word, and that is what you are looking for. Is this right? And is this supposition an intuition of yours, or do you have any evidence of it? How would you explain the primary meanings of Greek nemo, which seem quite far from your thesis. (Just look at the early Homer references in the dictionary entry I posted).

Both:

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=niman&searchmode=none

http://m-w.com/dictionary/nimble

I thought you said that you were looking for the PIE word, but apparently you have found it:

What are you looking for?

“To divide”, “to distribute”, and “to allot” are more or less synonomous; but “to take” is not. I would like to know a unitive theory for this root meaning, comparable to the wave/particle duality of light. There must be an explanation that accounts for both meanings. I suspect that it originally meant “to take into one’s hand”: either from one’s own collection, in order to allot to somebody else, or from outside one’s collection, in order to add to that.

Wow. I was right there with you until you went quantum on me. I’m not one for that kind of thing, but…

This is what I found. The core PIE meaning seemed to be simply to take or give one’s due, (suitably, if you give one’s due, you have to distribute or divide). Presumably as well, ancient people’s saw the gods as the ones doing the distributing, a common epithet, the moira, Nemisis etc. With the inherent concept of “one’s due”, certainly justice seems to be involved.

You may want to play with these databases: ieed.nl/index2.html

And here is your PIE, *nem, “to give or take one’s due”:

starling.rinet.ru/cgi-bin/respon … oot=config

It seems that in the Greek the meaning of distribution is the one that followed, while in the German, that of taking. Let me know if you find anything more. I’ll ask this Classical linguist I know, and see what he says.

Thank you very much for the links and your efforts. I am curious as to what your Classical linguist has to say.

my real name,

I would also add that the kalos k’agathos, has something of the distinction of the “fair and the good”, in the sense of kalon has a bit of the quality of appearing good or being beautiful, and the agathos, something of the quality of being literally good, or even good-for-something. So the phrase is, at least generally, a good that embraces both the appearance of goodness, and the practicality/reality of goodness.

my real name

Ultimately you have to make your own mind up. There is no final answer, i.e., we can never really know what these terms meant, we can only hazard guesses, and hope for inspired ones at that! For a long time I had problems with the Greek term, “prohairesis.” There is no exact English equivalent, or none that we can be sure of.

Both words and language have this strange quality of wriggling about as soon as you begin to examine them a little too closely. We read, as it were, something that is blurred and indistinct and it seems there are no spectacles available to correct the problem. I am told by fluent speakers in that tongue that French is very much more precise and subtle than English. In the final analysis you can only gain a very imperfect understanding. It is the nature of the beast. But hey, this forum is not called I Love Philology! Don’t we have enough on our plates with wisdom!

In the Phaedrus Plato writes:

“SOCRATES. He who thinks, then, that he has left behind him any art in writing, and he who receives it in the belief that anything in writing will be clear and certain, would be an utterly simple person, and in truth ignorant of the prophecy of Ammon, if he thinks written words are of any use except to remind him who knows the matter about which they are written.”

[The prophecy of Ammon, (according to Socrates): “. . .trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise.”]

According to Harold North Fowler, (translator of the Loeb Library edition): “Toward the end of the Phaedrus, Plato inserts a remarkable discussion of the relative value of the spoken and the written word. It is somewhat startling to find so voluminous a writer maintaining that the written word is only a plaything, or, at best, a reminder; yet this must, apparently, be accepted as his deliberate judgement. In the Academy he laid great stress upon oral instruction, and this passage seems to indicate that he considered that instruction more important than his writings.”

Regards,

Peter

Dunamis

Epictetus said:

Is this, then, the great and admirable thing, to understand or to interpret Chrysippus? Who says that? What, then, is the admirable thing? To understand the will of nature. Well, then, do you understand it alone and by yourself? What more, then, do you require? For if it is true that all men err unwillingly, and you have apprehended the truth, then you must be on the right path already. ‘But in fact I do not understand the will of nature.’ Who, then, interprets it? People say ‘Chrysippus.’ I go to find out what that interpreter of nature has to say. I begin not to understand what he is saying, and look for one to explain. ‘Look and consider what this means’—just as if it were written in Latin! What right, then, does the interpreter have to be proud? Not even Chrysippus has cause, if he only explains the will of nature, and does not follow it himself; how much less the one who interprets him.

[Discourses, I. XVII. Dobbin]

Nice to see your intelligence back on these forums!

Regards,

Peter

my real name

Concerning, nomos.

I would suggest that Plato means divine law, (as opposed to the law of men.)

By divine law is meant, the law common to all things : the General Law (nomos), which is Right Reason pervading everything, is the same as Zeus, the Supreme Head of the government of the universe. And this very thing constitutes the virtue of the happy man and the smooth current of life, when all actions promote the harmony of the spirit dwelling in the individual man with the will of him who orders the universe. [Zeno of Citium]

In Christ-ian terms the law of the spirit as opposed to the law of the flesh, or,
the law of Christ not the law of Moses.

Regards,

Peter