Abstract

This dissertation analyzes the language of clarity and obscurity in Plato and Aristotle. For each of them Heraclitus serves as a paradigm of obscurity. Against this foil, a strictly philosophical notion of clarity comes to be defined. ;Chapter One frames the topic by examining Lucretius' critique of Heraclitus in the first book of De Rerum Natura. In it I take Lucretius' condemnation of Heraclitus' obscura lingua as exemplifying the dominant conception of what philosophical language must be after Plato and Aristotle. ;Chapter Two contains a reading of the metaphors of light which dominate the central books of the Republic. Here Plato sets out for the first time in anything like a systematic way his conception of what philosophy is. I examine how, early in the discussion of philosophical education, Plato introduces Heraclitus' metaphorical use of sunlight as antithetical to his own, and uses the contrast to formulate his own sun-metaphors in the analogy, the divided line and the cave mythos. ;In Chapter Three I turn to the Cratylus. The problem presented to Platonic philosophy by Heraclitus is here defined not only around a specific set of doctrines which need to be countered, but also around the issues of clarity and obscurity in language. ;In Chapter Four, I analyze two distinct conceptions of metaphorical obscurity in the writings of Aristotle. In theoretical philosophical discourse, Aristotle analyzes metaphor as necessarily generating obscurity. Such obscurity is almost universally condemned as establishing an impassible barrier to the truth. In the Rhetoric and the Poetics, on the other hand, while the connection between metaphora and asapheia remains strong, Aristotle gives a certain guarded approval to the alienating effect of metaphorical obscurity in that it can be shown to generate a unique form of insight. Heraclitus plays a prominent role in the framing of each conception. ;An appendix examines the notion of narrative obscurity as formulated by Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Longinus