BOAZ ADHENGO

LOGIC
©2020 By Boaz Adhengo. All Rights Reserved

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 Table of Contents

Preface…………………………………………………………….. *
I The Process of Reasoning …………........................ 1.

II Predicates …………….….…..…………………………………. 11.

III Grammar…………………………………………………………. 41.
IV The Ache of Reason ……………………………………… 51.
V Proofs……………………………………………………………….. 63.

VI The Anxiety from Greece…………………………………. 75.

VII Hermeneutics……………….………………………………….. 95.
P RE FA CE

More interesting to the philosophy of mind is logical

behaviourism. This claims that what we are talking about when
we are talking about the mind and mental states is behaviour. It is
a claim about what the mind is, not merely how we can know
about it, arguing that our psychological concepts and words are
actually about behaviour – what people do and how they react.

Thinking is something that happens at a time and takes time. It

occurs, it is a mental occurrence. Good thinking can be hard work,
and you have to practice it. But it can also be great fun, and spare
you lots of pain and confusion from bad choices.

The fact is that throughout history, nearly all the people who have
ever lived have been wrong about many things. Wrong about
magic. Wrong about spirits. Wrong about gods. Wrong about
medicine. Wrong about diet. Wrong about astronomy. Wrong
about economics. Wrong about political theory. Wrong about
chemistry and physics. Wrong about biology. Wrong about the
afterlife. Wrong about the opposite sex. Wrong about psychology.
Wrong about pretty much everything. Indicating that the pattern
of thought is sporadically systemic and less structured, thus
resulting to wrong results. Arguments that derive wrong
conclusions or denials that result from ignorance and lack of
intellectual training. Yet, we all claim to have the capacity to
reason, to think and perceive reality in its ideal state.

The mind's ability to reason is considered a core human trait,

which has led to the development of art, science, mathematics,
language and philosophy. Logic gives form to reason by applying
principles and rules that allow the mind to infer the validity of any
statement. Practicing logic during our daily living will allow
individuals to bypass rhetoric and evaluate arguments based on
the validity of their premises, thereby judging any generated
conclusions by themselves. If an argument is not valid, the
conscious human mind can then decide to believe the argument
anyway or not.

i
Logic creates a system by which a conscious mind can apply a set
of principles to any problem or argument to determine its validity.
Consequently, most studies that lay the foundation for modern
human societies, including computer science and mathematics
amongst others, are built on logic.

This is a book for anyone who believes that logic is rare. It is a

book for those who think they are logical and wonder why others
aren't. It is a book for anyone who is curious about why logical
thinking doesn't come naturally. It is a book for anyone who
wants to be more logical.

There are many fine books on the rules of logic and the history of
logic, but here you will discover barriers we face in trying to
communicate logically with one another. There is also an
excellent chance that your thinking will be made better and your
ability to make eloquent ideas be vastly improved. Perhaps most
importantly, you will improve your capability to evaluate the
thinking and arguments of others - a tool that is invaluable in
almost any walk of life.

In as much as this book is about developing a good logical

behaviour, it is less concerned with the concept of mind, and shall
not delve into discussing how the mind operates. But using the
story of Atieno and Kamau, we will take a cultural twist from the
primitive psyche towards civilisation thereby connecting Africa to
Greece but mostly so, using the history of religious spiritualism as
a basis to develop logical conjectures which we will analyse in our
last chapter, hermeneutics.

Sex has been with the humankind for lifetimes and it would be
absurd to imagine a culture which defiles itself by ignoring the
societal importance of sex. Whether primitive, immoral or sacred,
sexual relations have served a connecting role and this will climax
as we analyse the promiscuity of the Greek god, Zeus who defiled
other gods and even the mortals whom he created. The logical
judgement on such a behaviour remains for you the reader to

ii
decide, whether it is right or wrong, such judgements are beyond
the scope of this book.

The simplest form that logical behaviourism can take is to claim

that a mental state is an actual behaviour, e.g. to believe
something is just to say that you believe it, to be in pain is just to
wince, shout, etc. But this is very implausible. First, we can, to
some extent, control our behaviour, e.g. I might stop myself from
showing that I am in pain. Second, the same mental state could be
expressed in different behaviours on different occasions. My
belief that there is food in the fridge can be expressed by my
stating this, but it could also be expressed by my simply going to
the fridge and looking inside when I am hungry. Third, many
mental states, such as knowledge, are dispositions, rather than
occurrences. They don’t occur at a time, like actual behaviour
does. A disposition, in its simplest form, is simply how something
will or is likely to behave under certain circumstances for
example, someone who knows Kiswahili knows Kiswahili even
when they are talking or reading in English.

Many mental concepts are also concepts of dispositions, so that

when we talk of someone having a certain mental state, like being
proud or believing that the earth is round, we are talking of what
they would do, could do, or are liable to do, in particular situations
or under particular conditions, including conditions that they are
not in at the moment. Having said that, it’s with sincere gratitude
to my cohorts during the royal days of SONU, millennials with
whom we founded the University of Nairobi Philosophical Society
to become an internationally recognised body thereby serving at
Federation International de Societies Philosophy (FISP) and even
Center for Inquiry Transnational. Notably, am grateful to Thuita
Mwangi, Edwin Mwaniki, Evans Manduku, Ruth Kenyah and the
passionate catalyst of my many activities back then, Ms. Veronica
Nyakoboke Nyabuto, the lady who shaped my horizon with
substance.

To this end, much gratitude to the late Prof. Chrispin Mbai, Ph.D
who forever lives in our encultured minds, a mentor he was not

iii
only to me but many who looked admiringly at the displayed
decorum of intellect and the grooming of administrative prowess
which has impacted how many of us millennials relate. You are
enjoying this book as a result of such a result.

As a dedicated Christian, some portions of this book have really

been tempting in effort to coordinate and relay the intended
meaning. Nevertheless, my faith is strong and to God is all the
glory mostly so that am able to share in education of many who
would have remained ignorant or rather not tasted a glimpse into
logic. Making philosophy accessible to the common man is not
only my key intent but to improve massively towards a
responsible relation, an aware society guided by g ood behaviour
and not only law remains a vital appetite.

It is my humble expectations that this book will be of much help

in promoting a culture of well-structured reasoning, a critical
approach to life and perhaps an appetite towards innovating better
moral values. In hope of developing this title into volumes of
editions, I welcome comments and deeper insights on how to
engage such a paradigm thereby a structure of a better mea ningful
understanding of whatever we have started, whether in behaviour
or abilities. Kindly contact me through my social pages or
instagram @adhengobeuze which is my standardized handle or if
you wish “#ASHTAG#”

iv
 CHAPTER ONE

the process of reasoning

LO G IC

Kamau and Atieno had been dating for two years now, ever since
that rendezvous at the Love Temple but things were turning
towards the uncertain. The spontaneous instant of becoming a
man and another questing to become a woman had developed into
the taboo love feeling which was forbidden by t he temple masters.
Sex had its sacred roles only during the season of procreation but
the normal duty was building men and women. The temple needed
people to offer a sacrifice of their virginity as men cheered away
their chastity; this was mostly seen as a rite of passage, an
initiation to boys and girls seeking adulthood. The village needed
warriors and workmen, its population had to be on a constant
increase; this meant more participants at the fertility festivals.

Ever since their first intimacy, Atieno had always bothered

Kamau with the need to serve as a maid in the temple, but
Kamau’s mind was troubled with seeking money and a better life
outside the village. He heard about some missionaries who were
preaching Christianity and they were teaching peop le something
called arithmetic. They also had better medicine than those
Chinese pills smuggled by the temple masters. Kamau also felt
that the goddess of love was punishing him by refusing to cure his
inconsistent erections which seemed to favour only Atieno. Little
did he know that Atieno had been putting herbs in his porridge,
and these herbs were the main cause for his logical sorrows but
somehow the goddess and the temple masters had to suffer blame.
His prayers for a smaller penis remained unanswered and soon he
had received requests to be serving as a priest in the temple of
love. He hated Agwara village and this antique town called
Bondox. He hated speaking dholuo and wished to learn other
nilotic dialects, somehow, he could get to understand how other
gods operated. Kamau felt the need for blessings but he was
confused as to what he really wanted. Was it a better future, a
better life, work at the Love Temple or an adventure to meet the
Christian missionaries who were camping along the river Nile.

Kamau feared foreign imaginations of an inexperienced life away

from Agwara village but the need to understand why the goddess
of love was punishing him by causing all these uncontrolled

1
 The Process of Reasoning

erections remained a pursuit for his mind. All his moral doings
were clean and however memorable he meditated, no logical
purpose came to his mind.

At this point, we could ask the most immediate question

concerning the process of thought. What is this thing called
reason? Is it only a preserve for a specific culture humans or
everyone considered genetically mankind?

The word reason itself is far from being precise in its meaning. In
common and popular discourse it denotes that power by which
we distinguish truth from falsehood, and right from wrong, and by
which we are enabled to combine means for the attainment of
particular ends. Reasoning being defined as the act, process or art
of exercising the faculty of reason; the act or faculty of employing
reason in argument; argumentation; disputation or discussion.

By the employment of the reasoning faculties of the mind we

compare objects presented to the mind as percepts or concepts,
taking up the raw materials of thought and weaving them into
more complex and elaborate mental fabrics which we call abstract
and general ideas of truth. An idea being a mental product of
which when expressed in words does not give a proposition while
thought becomes a mental product which embraces the relation of
two or more ideas.

The ideas of the understanding are of two general classes; abstract

ideas and general ideas. The thoughts are also of two general
classes; those pertaining to contingent truth and those pertaining
to necessary truth. In contingent truth, we have facts, or
immediate judgments, and general truths including laws and
causes, derived from particular facts; in necessary truth we have
axioms, or self‑evident truths, and the truths derived from them
by reasoning, called theorems. While everyone reasons, the fact is
equally true that the majority of persons reason incorrectly.

2
LO G IC

In order to reason correctly it is not merely necessary to have a

good intellect but rather a development in one’s intellectual
faculties and a person must learn the art of using them to the best
advantage. These intellectual faculties well develop ed are what
form the basis for logic which teaches us to reason well, and
reasoning gives us knowledge. Logic is therefore a science of
reasoning that enables us to distinguish between the good
reasoning which leads to truth, and the bad reasoning which
every day betrays people into error and misfortune.

***

Atieno had become an important element to Kamau, both in

tranquillity and progression. Ever since they met at the Agwara
Love Temple, things turned out to be obscure, non-normal and of
much interest. Atieno was especially different compared to most
other girls who came to the temple, but lately, the temple
committee had started complaining of corruption and favouritism.
Some families were not bringing their virgins as sacrifices and
some temple boys were not performing their assigned duties.

Atieno recalls the very first day she visited the Love Temple. A
story that always kept Kamau curious to know whether being a
Temple Boy was a divine calling and whether the moral laws of
Agwara village had any universal meanings to the Bantu people.
Was there anything as absolute good? Was there anyone very
fertile, be it male or female? The story of Atieno as she narrated to
Wambui had a lot to express…

The temple was a big building. I knocked at the huge gate of the
love palace. A man of about fourty years old met me. I told him
my name. He checked if it was on his list, then smiled
conspiratorially. I had done the medical examination the week
before and they had the results of my tests.

Come in, lady, – the man said looking at me. – Why was
he looking at me this way?

3
 The Process of Reasoning

Aren’t you too young to come here? – He asked when I

turned with my back to him.

I entered one of the doors. It’s a bit complicated to describe this

building. It’s like a maze, of rectangular shape, with six front
doors. I was in the hall. A middle-aged woman was sitting at the
table and writing something. I approached and said “Habari!” She
responded with a polite smile. I paid for a day at the Love Temple
and she gave me a mixture of a pudding in a bowl. I thanked her.
A gourd was there with a turbid solution to catalyse the effects of
the pudding, I ate and drunk. As the woman told me, eating and
drinking this would chase away the spirit of unwanted pregnancy
because we were not yet at the season of fertility, the festival was
not yet announced.

I looked back and said something like “No, it’s Ok ” and rushed to
the building along the dirt path. “Yes, maybe it’s I’m too young.
I’m just 18…” I even hesitated for a moment but then decided it
was silly to refuse as I’d made the first step already. I came here
with a specific goal – to become a woman.

I went into the corridor. When I was here making inquiries and
had looked around a bit, behind the first door was one of the many
bathrooms. This was where I was to have a shower; wash and dry
my hair. When leaving the bathroom, I left my clothes in a basket
specially intended for that.

One could be without clothes in the temple and many people did
use that opportunity. But I was nervous and felt shy. So, I put a
nilotic tunic which was usually worn by servants there or the
shyest visitors. The garments were free. Non-villagers had to pay
for admission only.

I walked along the corridors for a long time examining the

building and other visitors. They were men and women, old
people were here too. Some men would come up to me and offer
to have sex with them. I refused. I felt so uncomfortable.

4
LO G IC

I sat at the bench. About 10 minutes later a young man in his early
twenties sat beside me. I liked him.

Is it your first time here? – He asked.

I said “Yes” and he suggested we go into one of private rooms for

a conversation. I didn’t expect it from myself but I gave my
consent. The private room had two other doors: a tiny room with
armchairs and a table and another room with only a bed inside. I
sank into the armchair. There was a bowl with mapera fruits, a pot
of luo wine and a bucket with water. Servants brought the new
items each time a couple left the private rooms. We talked for
long with him, just about life. He didn’t tell me anything about
himself not even ask for my name. Anonymity of non-villager was
allowed at the Love Temple.

I sipped the wine through the piped straw and the better warm
feeling crept through my knees. A few tin lanterns lit up t he room;
these nyangile lanterns used sunflower oil to burn and the aroma
was romantic and cosy from a few crushed petals that were visible
all over. He moved to me closer and took my hand. I shuddered.
He released my palm. A pause…

I’m just nervous, – I pronounced.

Sorry. Do you really want to do this?

I hesitated but said:

Yes…

I decided that he would become my first man. I liked him. He was

so calm and shy. He didn’t make me do anything.

You should be sure whether you want it or not, – he said.

I liked the fact he allowed me to choose and I said more

confidently:

5
 The Process of Reasoning

I want to…

And it was the truth. I rose and went to the room with the bed. I lit
the nyangile lantern there as I wanted to see his face. I lay on the
bed and he lay beside me.

Are you a virgin? – He asked.

I confessed it was my first time. He took off the tunic off me. I
was lying nude and felt fear was rising inside me. His nakedness
joined mine in bed. We lay still for a few minutes looking at each
other. Then he stretched his arm and touched my cheek. His touch
was cold but I didn’t shudder. His fingers slid lower to my neck
passing my skin tenderly. When he reached for my breast my
heart started pounding with a creepy burning feeling. He was
squeezing my breasts. My nipples became hard with each of his
touch provoking a storm of emotions in my body. He passed his
palm over my belly and then lay on me witho ut putting all his
weight. My body shrank involuntarily and he whispered into my
ear: “Don’t be afraid, it’s going to be quick !” I relaxed. What
happened next I remember intensively. I felt something strange in
my body. It was painful, I gave a scream. When it was over I lay
for some time being afraid to move.

Then we did it again. It was less painful but I still felt

uncomfortable. He became bolder squeezing my breasts, kneading
my buttocks, kissing my neck and lips. I liked it so much! I was
with him, I loved him. We were together all the night, my first
night with a man…and he was son to the temple master. It all felt
divine in pain for Kamau but also loving the sensation of
goodness guaranteed that I was with the anointed. I was now to be
counted as a volunteer procreator of Agwara, I wouldn’t mind
this. I could live in the village if I chose to .

***

6
LO G IC

Whatever questions were developing inside Kamau’s head, was a

process of reason. The most fundamental principle of reasoning,
therefore, consists in the comparing of two objects of thought
through and by means of their relation to a third object. The
natural form of expression of this process of reasoning is called a
syllogism. I will explain this in detail when we adventure to
chapter two.

In considering the process of thinking, we must classify the

several steps or stages of thought that we may examine each in
detail for the purpose of understanding them combined as a whole.
In actual thinking these several steps or stages are not clearly
separated in consciousness, so that each stands out clear and
distinct from the preceding and succeeding steps or stages, but, on
the contrary, they blend and shade into each other so that it is
often difficult to draw a clear dividing line. The first step or stage
in the process of thinking is that which is called a concept, a
mental representation of anything. Thus the function by which we
mark off, discriminate, draw a line around, and identify a
numerically distinct subject of discourse is called conception; a
distinct act of the consciousness.

As we progress with object representations in our mind, the

language of understanding begins to develop and hence, the term
perception. But what becomes the difference between a percept
and a concept? The distinction is simple when properly
considered. A percept is the object of an act of perception; that
which is perceived. A concept is a mental representation. A
percept is the mental product of a real thing; a concept is a mere
idea or notion of the common attributes of things. A percept
represents some particular object; a concept is not particular, but
general. A percept can be described by particulars; a concept can
be described only by generals. The former can usually be
represented by an image, the latter cannot be imagined, it can only
be thought. For example, Adhengo is a man; in this sentence, the
general assumption is man but the particular is Adhengo as a man.
Meaning, there is a specific Adhengo and he is a man. Thus one is
able to image the percept of a particular man which has been

7
 The Process of Reasoning

perceived; but he is unable to image correctly the concept of man

as a class or generic term.

In connection with this distinction between perception and

conception, we may as well consider the subject of apperception,
a term favoured by many modern psychologists, although others
steadfastly decline to recognize its necessity or meaning and
refuse to employ it. Apperception may be defined as perception
accompanied by comprehension; perception accompanied by
recognition. The thing perceived is held to be comprehended or
recognized - that is, perceived in a new sense, by reason of certain
previously acquired ideas in the mind; the perception of things in
relation to the ideas which we already possess. It follows that all
individuals possessing equal active organs of perception, and with
equal active attention, will perceive the same thing in the same
way and in the same degree. But the apperception of each
individual will differ and vary according to his previous
experience and training, temperament and taste, habit and custom.

And so, we see that in a measure our concepts are determined not
only by our simple perceptions, but also materially by our
apperceptions. We conceive things not only as they are apparent
to our senses, but also as influenced by our previous impressions
and ideas. For this reason we find widely varying concepts of the
same things among different individuals. Only an absolute mind
could form an absolute concept.

The first step in the process of reasoning is that of conception or

the forming of concepts. The second step is that of judgment, or
the process of perceiving the agreement or disagreement of two
conceptions. Judgment in Logic is defined as the comparing
together in the mind of two notions, concepts or ideas, which are
the objects of apprehension, whether complex or incomplex, and
pronouncing that they agree or disagree with each other, or that
one of them belongs or does not belong to the other. Judgment is
therefore an affirmative or negation.

8
LO G IC

In every act of judgment there must be at least two concepts to be

examined and compared. This comparison must lead to a
judgment regarding their agreement or disagreement. For instance,
we have the two concepts, horse and animal. We examine and
compare the two concepts, and find that there is an agreement
between them. We find that the concept donkey is included in the
higher concept of animal and therefore, we assert that: “the
donkey is an animal.” This is a statement of agreement and is,
therefore, a Positive Judgment. We then compare the concepts
donkey and cow and find a disagreement between them, which we
express in the statement of the judgment that: “the donkey is not a
cow.” This judgment, stating a disagreement is what is called a
Negative Judgment.

When a judgment is expressed in words it is called a proposition;

a sentence, or part of a sentence, affirming or denying a
connection between the terms; limited to express assertions rather
than extended to questions and commands.

9
CHAPTER TWO

predicates
LO G IC

The Bondox, a terrain of deep valleys covered in thickets, vines

and jungle brush which services the meanderings of the
indigenous wild life. Great forest trees and miles of jungle
greenery are home to a myriad of wild life, some benign, some
treacherous.

On this late African evening the sparkling waters of river Nyando

reflect orange and yellow as the sun heads toward the horizon on
its nightly trip to the other side of the world. Long blue and purple
clouds stretch horizontally across the distant panorama where the
untamed land meets the vast ever expansive sky. Long, black
shadows begin to grow along the crests of the mountains and from
the base of the towering trees. On the plain, a lone gazelle beings
to gallop towards a slowly moving silhouette. In the village of
Ukambani, Mutiso, a lone servant, awaits patiently as the heat
blurs and obscures his vision of the giant amber sun which seems
to melt as it settles into the distant landscape. In the distance, a far
off mournful cry of a jungle bird can be heard cawing. Its call
seems panicked and alarmed as it signals the end of a day. For
Jakapiyo, it would soon be time for his arrival in Ukambani. But
he has to wait for dusk to meet Mutiso, he doesn’t want to be see
arriving in this foreign land. Agwara has been a long trek.

Once the cover of darkness falls and the village torches have been
lit, burning brightly with their darting and flitting orange flame s,
Jakapiyo makes his way into the nearby village of huts made of
sturdy amber bamboo and tree fawns , there he will find Mutiso.
He wears his leopard skin shawl and has a small spear strapped to
his side with a leather handle. In his hands he holds a small
wooden box which holds a precious piece of cargo he has brought
from Agwara village. The villagers mill about in the cooling night
air. They work to prepare the day’s final meal now that the heat
has abated with the setting of the sun.

"Jakapiyo!"A tall Bantu warrior calls out as Jakapiyo makes his

way to the master's huge, central hut within the village compound.
"Come and help us to skin the bushmeat for tonight!" He calls out
in his native kambaa tongue.

11
 Predicates
s

***

Our lives are a long parade of choices. W hen we try to answer

such questions, in order to make the best choices, we often have
only one tool, an argument. We listen to the reasons for and
against various options, and must choose between them. And so,
the ability to evaluate arguments is an abilit y that is very useful in
everything that you will do in your work, your personal life and
your deepest reflections.

Evaluating arguments is the most fundamental skill common to

math, physics, psychology, literary studies, and any other
intellectual endeavour. Logic alone tells you how to evaluate the
arguments of any discipline. The alternative to developing these
logical skills is to always be at the mercy of bad reasoning and, as
a result, you will make bad choices. Worse of, you will always be
manipulated by deceivers. And what logic teaches you is how to
demand and recognize good reasoning thereby avoiding deceit.
You are only as free as your powers of reasoning .

Logic is a skill. The only way to get good at understanding logic

and at using logic is to practice. It is easy to watch someone
explain a principle of logic, and easier yet to watch someone do a
proof. But you must understand a principle well enough to be able
to apply it to new cases, and you must be able to do new proofs on
your own. Practice alone enables this.

We begin the study of logic by building a precise logical

language. This will allow us to do at least two things: first, to say
some things more precisely than we otherwise would be able to
do; second, to study reasoning. We will use a natural language -
English - as our guide, but our logical language will be simple, far
weaker, but more rigorous than English.

We must decide where to start. We could pick just about any pa rt

of English to try to emulate names, adjectives, prepositions,
general nouns, and so on. But it is traditional, and as we will see
in later chapters, to begin with whole sentences. For this reason,

12
LO G IC

the first language we will develop is called the propositional

logic. It is also sometimes called the sentential logic or even the
sentential calculus. These all mean the same thing: the logic of
sentences. In this propositional logic, the smallest independent
parts of the language are sentences.

Principle of Bivalence maintains that each sentence of our

language must either be true or false, not both. Some scholars call
this the principle of non-contradiction.

Our language will be concerned with declarative sent ences,

sentences that are true or false, never both. Here are some
example sentences.

2+2=4.

Wairimu Little is tall.

If Raila wins the election, then Raila will be President.

The Earth is not the centre of the universe.

These are all declarative sentences. These all appear to satisfy our
principle of bivalence. But they differ in important ways. The first
two sentences do not have sentences as parts. For example, try to
break up the first sentence. “2+2” is a function. “4” is a name.
“=4” is a meaningless fragment, as is “2+”. Only the whole
expression, “2+2=4”, is a sentence with a truth value. The second
sentence is similar in this regard. “Wairimu Little” is a name. “is
tall” is an adjective phrase (we will discover later that logicians
call this a predicate). “Wairimu Little is” or “is tall” are
fragments, they have no truth value. Only “Wairimu Little is tall”
is a complete sentence.

A sentence like these first two we call an atomic sentence. The

word atom comes from the ancient Greek word atomoi, meaning
cannot be cut. When the ancient Greeks reasoned about matter, for
example, some of them believed that if you took some substance,

13
 Predicates

say a rock, and cut it into pieces, then cut the pieces into pieces,
and so on, eventually you would get to something that could not
be cut. This would be the smallest possible indivisible thing. (The
fact that science can now talk of having split the atom just goes to
show that we changed the meaning of the word atom. We came to
use it as a name for a particular kind of thing, which then turned
out to have parts, such as electrons, protons, and neutrons.) In
logic, the idea of an atomic sentence is of a sentence that can have
no parts that are sentences.

In reasoning about these atomic sentences, we could continue to

use English. But for reasons that become clear as we proceed into
later chapters of the book, there are many advantages to coming
up with our own way of writing our sentences. It is traditional in
logic to use upper case letters from P onwards (P, Q, R, S….) to
stand for atomic sentences. Thus, instead of writing

Wairimu Little is tall.

We could write
P

If we want to know how to translate P to English, we can provide

a translation key. Similarly, instead of writing

Wairimu Little is a great dancer

We could write

And so on. Of course, written in this way, all we can see about
such a sentence is that it is a sentence, and that perhaps P and Q
are different sentences. But for now, these will be sufficient.

Note that not all sentences are atomic. The third sentence in our
four examples above contains parts that are sentences. It contains
the atomic sentence “Raila wins the election” and also the atomic

14
LO G IC

sentence, “Raila will be President”. We could represent this whole

sentence with a single letter. That is, we could let

If Raila wins the elections, then Raila will be President

be represented in our logical language by

However, this would have the disadvantage that it would hide

some of the sentences that are inside this sentence, and also their
relationship. Our language would tell us more if we could capture
the relationship between the two parts of this sentence, instead of
hiding them. We will do this in chapter three.

An important and useful principle for understanding any language

is the difference between syntax and semantics. “Syntax” refers
to the shape of an expression in our language. It do es not concern
itself with what the elements of the language mean, but just
specifies how they can be written out. The morphology.

We can make a similar distinction (though not exactly the same)

in a natural language. This expression in English has an unc ertain
meaning, but it has the right shape to be a sentence:

Aeroplane tractor grinds rapidly.

In other words, in English, this sentence is syntactically correct,

although it may express some kind of error in meaning.

We contrast syntax with semantics. “Semantics” refers to the

meaning of an expression of our language. Semantics depends
upon the relation of that element of the language to something
else. For example, the truth value of the sentence, “The Earth has
one moon” depends not upon the English language, but upon
something exterior to the language. Since the self-standing
elements of our propositional logic are sentences, and the most
important property of these is their truth value, the only semantic

15
 Predicates

feature of sentences that will concern us in our propositional logic

is their truth value.

If semantics in the propositional logic concern only truth value,

then we know that there are only two possible semantic values for
P; it can be either true or false. We have a way of writing this and
will later prove helpful. It is called a “truth table”. For an atomic
sentence, the truth table is trivial, but when we look at other kinds
of sentences their truth tables will be more complex.

The "truth table method" was introduced in 1920 in the Ph.D.

dissertation of Emil Leon Post, a young Polish, Jewish emigrant
student at the College of the City of New York. Used extensively
to this day in the study of logic, a truth table is a table of all
possible combinations of true/false for the propositions involved
in an argument. The idea of a truth table is to describe the
conditions in which a sentence is true or false. We do this by
identifying all the atomic sentences that compose that sentence.
Then, on the left side, we stipulate all the possible truth values of
these atomic sentences by writing them down. On the right side,
we identify under what conditions the sentence (that is composed
of the other atomic sentences) is true or false.

Atomic sentence(s) that Dependent sentence composed of

compose the dependent the atomic sentences on the left
sentence on the right
All possible combinations of Resulting truth values for each
truth values of the composing possible combination of truth
atomic sentences values of the composing atomic
sentences

We stipulate all the possible truth values on the bottom left

because the propositional logic alone will not determine whether
an atomic sentence is true or false; thus, we will simply have to
consider both possibilities. Note that there are many ways that an
atomic sentence can be true, and there are many ways that it can
be false. For example, the sentence “Jakapiyo is Kenyan” might
be true if Jakapiyo was born in Nairobi, Kisumu, Nyeri, Marsabit

16
LO G IC

and so on. The sentence might be false because Jakapiyo was born
to Ugandan parents in Uganda, to Tanzanian parents in Zanzibar,
and so on. So, we group all these cases together into two kinds of
cases.

These are two rows of the truth table for an atomic sentence. Each
row of the truth table represents a kind of way that the world
could be. So here is the left side of a truth table with only a single
atomic sentence, P. We will write “T” for true and “F” for false.

P
T
F

There are only two relevant kinds of ways that the world can be,
when we are considering the semantics of an atomic sentence. The
world can be one of the many conditions such that P is true, or it
can be one of the many conditions such that P is false.

To complete the truth table, we place the dependent sentence on

the top right side, and describe its truth value in relation to the
truth value of its parts. We want to identify the semantics of P,
which has only one part, P. The truth table thus has the final form:

P P
T T
F T

This truth table tells us the meaning of P, as far as our

propositional logic can tell us about it. Thus, it gives us the
complete semantics for P. (As we will see later, truth tables have
three uses: to provide the semantics for a kind of sentence; to
determine under what conditions a complex sentence is true or
false; and to determine if an argument is good. Here we are
describing only this first use.)

****

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 Predicates

Jakapiyo holds up the small wooden box and replies. " I cannot
help you with dee bushemeat! The master waits for dis here! It is
dee box from Aa-ga-wa-r-a."

"AHHHHH!" The native replies with raised eyebrows, intimating

his understanding and also his surprise. " Den do not keep de
master wait-ing!" He continued to prepare the meat while waving
Jakapiyo on toward the main hut of the Kamba chief.

The main hut is huge and multi-roomed. Even from the exterior it
brings an impressive promise of the power and prestige within.
Large, stone statues guard the entrance to the hut, their faces as
large as a man's upper torso and their mouths chiselled in an open
scream. Jakapiyo pauses a moment at the main door which stands
closed and silent, and is festooned with skulls and small images of
items used in the dark arts of voodoo. He takes a breath and then
enters into the darkened hut. It is not his first time there, but it
makes little difference, as the magic that reverberate from the very
walls have a palpable sensation. When any man, friend or foe,
enters into the hut of the Kamba Chief, he is instantly aware that
the world around him has changed in a darkly, metaphysical way.

The interior is pitch black in its darkness despite the small fire
torches that decorate the corners of the hut walls. As Jakapiyo
makes his way through the maze of corridors that lead to the
master's chamber, it seems to him that he enters into a deep chasm
of darkness only meant for those who are not quite human, not
quite god. He bows his head as he passes through the colourless
beads that hang from the masters door which lead into the great
chamber. Few have been there save Jakapiyo and others whom the
Chief favours. Jakapiyo's eyes struggle to look into the deep
darkness before him as he waits for the master to address him.
There is flat silence, even surrounded by the awakening nightlife
of the jungle, for no sound from the exterior world may encroach
upon this protected sphere.

Before him, there is a small perception of light, first one and then
another, which in reality are not light, but the master's

18
LO G IC

materializing eyes. Slowly, evanescent eyes take shape as solid

white triangles lying on their sides. Jakapiyo has been closer to
the master than this and knows that in fact the eyes belong to the
great mask of the Chief. The mask is black and oblong shaped
with rounded ends at the top and bottom of the face. Su rrounding
the mask is a lion's mane of wild grasses and special tree barks
that fan out from the edge like long, irregular shaped sun beams.
Somewhere in the darkness before him, the master sits, and waits.

"My Lord." Jakapiyo begins. "I bring dis package from dee nah-
lo-tec mountains, the village of Aa-ga-wa-r-a "

After a long moment the deep, booming voice of the master

replies in slowly spoken syllables. " Excellent..... I 'ave been awai-
ting dee arrival of dee mes-sen-ger. Open dee box now, Mutiso my
servant, and inform me of its much needed con tents."

"Yes, my Lord." Mutiso responded and then began to work the lid
of the wooden box. In a moment the box was opened and
Jakapiyo reached within to retrieve its contents. Within the small
rectangular box was a doll figure of a nilotic woman. It was about
eight inches tall and was dressed in a black and blue costume . The
doll also had long kinky hair upon its head. Jakapiyo lifted the
doll into the darkness for the master to see.

"My Lord..... it ees dee doll of dee wo-man." Jakapiyo informed

the figure in the darkness.

"So I see.... so I see...." Came the deep, resonant tones of the

master's voice in response.

"Dee bushmeat.... dee bushmeat...... is ready."

"Your orders, my Lord?" Mutiso queried.

"Notify dee men in dee Kts-ah-vo.. Tell dem dat dee who-m-an is
not to be harmed. If any-ting happens to dee who-m-an..... dere
blood will boil mek voodoo stew. I have so spo-ken eet."

19
 Predicates

"It shall be done, me Lord."

"Leave dee doll and go." Came the order of the dark voice.

Jakapiyo nodded and placed the doll upon the ground before him
and then turned without looking up and exited into the labyrinth of
hallways and alleyways of the master hut. In the master's chamber
there was silence for a few moments and then the plodding of
slow heavy steps. The small doll of a woman stirred and then
seemed to float upwards into the darkness. It then stopped about
eight feet from the chamber floor. Large, glowing white eyes
appeared just above the doll's position.

There then was an echo of deep laughter. " HA ha HA ha HA!"

And then the voice continued. " Always do the weak..... fall before
the strong.... I ...... the strong........ I ..... the Voodoo Chief!"

In the darkness, the eyes seemed to move and glide without a solid
form and then there was a sudden flash of flame, as though special
seasoning had been thrown upon a grill covered in the hottest of
cooking oil. PUh-tasssshhh! came the sudden rush of noise and
popping sounds. Then a torch was lit and buried into what seemed
to be a large pot which had always been s itting there in the corner
of the room.

Smoke rose and the liquid boiled and bubbled. There was low
level moaning and chanting and then a small skull materialized
above the glowing orange and red water. " Jakapiyo's service has
provided me with many strong sons.....I now speak to his
continued blessing of progeny..." Voodoo Chief half sang and
half spoke as the room filled with dark smoke and ethereal magic.

"I now call forward my own progeny.... the progeny that awaits to
be born to Kamba Chief, the voodoo master.......and the fertile
adhiambosi! HahaHahaHahahahahahh!!!!!"

20
LO G IC

There was again a chorus of echoing laughter as both glowing

eyes and voodoo doll faded into blackness. In but a moment, the
chamber was once again a tomb of silence and darkness.

***
Kamau still insisted on his plan to explore other lands, this
rumours about a Christian God who was all powerful troubled his
mind. A God who had no other gods beside his reign, not even the
goddesses. If only he could see that temple p alace they called
Mission Church, he would be satisfied. Someone once hinted that
the place was along the river of Nile, somewhere in Ethiopia, a
wide trek towards the north, many miles past the lands of Tsavo
and through the ocean. The Ethiopian plains would be visible once
past the Tsavo.

The problem was meeting these other tribes, and being a nilotic
man, it meant invasion. Atieno might even be endangered because
of the preference for nilotic girls who were smuggled as items of
fertility sacrifices amongst the Kamba Bantus, they were made
possessions of the ranking chiefs because of their busting behind.
Somehow, they could produce divine babies who were stronger
compared to the offspring’s by local Cushitic neighbours and the
sexual sensation was close to divine. The Kamba tribesmen held a
myth about luo women whom they called adhiambosi. Nilotic
women were believed to be the custodians of the temple secrets in
Agwara, and were divinely prepared for fertility festivals.

Kamau and Atieno set out to seek the Christian Church, the
temple of the mighty God who unlike other gods did not have any
need for goddesses. By this time, Atieno had been adopted into
Agwara village and held a senior position at the Love Temple, she
was to be referred to as prophetess and reported only to queen of
the temple. Kamau had been made a temple boy, performing the
duties of transforming girls into womanhood and collecting the
virgin blood sacrifices during dedication month, where the temple
only allowed prayers from families that had barely eighteen year
old girls who bust a good amount of blood when their virginity
was offered to the temple boys or temple masters. But like

21
 Predicates

Kamau, Atieno had an interest to meet a different queen and

perhaps serve in a better capacity than a prophetess who went
about looking for virgins in Agwara and creating fertility calendar
for the village. She wanted a more challenging responsibility.
Little did she know that Jakapiyo had made a doll of herself and
sold it to the Kamba chief, lately she felt a strong u rge to travel
towards Tsavo and this made her to encourage Kamau so that they
travel into an adventure. A change would be better than a rest;
besides, the fertility festival was still many days away.

Meeting strangers along the way was now normal and it was easy
to trust them because they kept asking for directions not until they
reached Tsavo and there was this need for rest. This was where
they separated to look for a friendly village that could host them
for a few days as they prepared for the rest of the journey. Atieno
met a girl who gave her some water for the thirst. This must be the
reason she fell into a deep sleep.

With a grunt Atieno struggled to force herself awake. She cleared

her throat and suddenly noticed the acrid lingering smell of some
type of gas hanging in the air. She had been put inside a stuffy
crate that was uncomfortably hot. Her face was covered in sweat
which ran down her neck onto her back and she could feel the
gamy moistness of her clothing. Especially the soaked stockings
within her boots which she hated having to deal with at any time
because of the after smell. Opening her eyes, she noticed her
vision was blurred and her current location was pitch dark. Her
shoulders were pinned in and her head was only inches from a
plank of wood which kept her from looking downward toward the
rest of her body. Her entire body seemed roped and tied as she
tried to move her wrists and ankles which refused to budge.

Something metal was poking her just under her chin and seemed
stuck in between her breasts. Its hard metal cover seemed firmly
ensconced in her mammillar crevasse. " OOohhh... Atieno..." She
moaned to herself with a choke and a dry cough. " What have you
gotten yourself into this time, girl?"

22
LO G IC

The crate she was contained within s uddenly rocked back and
forth and there was a cracking noise as the cover of the wooden
crate seemed to be operated upon by some unseen outside force. It
was obvious to her that whatever long journey she had recently
travelled with Kamau was now coming to a final end just as she
begun to awaken.

Time to find out... she thought to herself as the lid was removed
and bright sunlight flooded her face and blinded her unadjusted
eyes. There was a noise of movement by many persons whom she
could not see above her prostrate form. There was a foreign
tongue being spoken between agents and she struggled to get a
look at her captors as they moved above her in silhouette shards
and half shapes. She felt mostly aware of the sudden vulnerability
of her entire form. Roped and tied from head to toe, whoever the
dark figures above her represented, they could view her whole
body and if they wanted, could take full advantage of their
superior position.....even if it was driving knife though her
unprotected chest.

As the hot, yet cooling breeze of the Ukambani landscape rushed

into the sweltering crate and cooled the sheen of sweat which
covered her body, a dark hand reached in and pulled the metal
tube from her breasts. He spoke in his Kamba dialect and gave
orders to several others whom Atieno could barely make out
through one thinly closed eyelid. They grabbed her shoulders with
powerful hands and lifted her from the crate. She grunted and
moaned as her body suddenly found freed om to move and stretch
after such a cramped confinement. The two men held her aloft as
her booted feet dangled just above the sandy grassland beneath
them.

A large African dressed in ceremonial grasses and reeds with

many beads and strips of animal fur around his torso and arms
appeared before her as her chin still rested on her chest. He
grabbed hold of Atieno’s chin and raised her eyes to meet his
own. With tightly squeezed eyes and chapped, dry lips, she faced
him silently.

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 Predicates

Looking down into her eyes he said in surprising English, " You
are de wo-man know as dee gwara-prophetes.... no?"

Still hurting and uncomfortable, she struggled to find her voice,

and only garbled some gibberish to him in response. She did this
mostly to allow her inquisitor the opportunity to see how parched
she was and perhaps, in order to get the answers he desired, he
would bring her some much needed water. Impatient, he spat
orders to another she could not see behind her as she hung in the
grip of the two huge, powerful men who held her above the
ground. In an instant there was a clear jar of shining water brought
to her captor who then held it high in the sunlight.

"Do not waste dis, wo-man." He told Atieno as her eyes adjusted
to the brutal midday sun. "Dee wah-ter comes from far away, and
is for MY people, not for da en-ti-tled n-ihi-lot."

Thankfully, the water was very cool, and as he poured it into the
weakened and dried out mouth of the prophetess , she felt a
swelling of deep appreciation for which she might have indeed
become quite presumptive. Mostly, the presence of clear clean
water in a place far from nam lolwe, she drank and cleared her
throat. Then nodded her appreciation to the big Kamba kinsman.

"Thank you." She said with an added measure of respect. " Yes, I
am the Agwara Prophetes from Love Temple."

"I am .... who I am...." She said while straightening her spine.

He nodded. "Dee master will be most pleased."

She swallowed hard and asked, " Where am I? Why am I here?"

The warrior grabbed Atieno’s face with his powerful hand and
stared down into her eyes. He told her, "Aban-don all hope, Aa-
ga-wara witch. You belong to dee master now."

24
LO G IC

Atieno groaned as her body began to overly relax, and her mind
began to fog over. Thinking and focusing her eyes was now
becoming a major accomplishment and her knees began to give
way.

There were strange, yet amazing smells, making their way toward
her nose, and in the back ground, somewhere behind her, there
was a slow and steady beat of drums. The drums seemed to call to
her with their repeated ukambani sounding rythms. Dum-dee-dum
dum, dee dum dum deeee. The drums went and the sound seemed
to mix with the cocktail of magically altered fluids that had now
been injected into her blood stream.

****

And so Jakapiyo had turned to be a traitor, made a doll of the

village prophetess and a penis of Kamau the Temple Boy. For a
few riches promised by the Kamba Chief, he had submitted the
items for voodoo. The two temple servants trekking to Ethiopia in
their mission to visit the Christian Church where the all-powerful
God dwelt didn’t know of their fate. They had been betrayed by
the greedy gateman, Jakapiyo and all along their use of the guide
map was amounting to no progress.

Kamau noticed that Atieno hadn’t returned from her departure,

they had agreed to meet and share opinio ns of the best village.
Maybe she loved the home she had been welcomed into and forget
that Kamau and the other temple maids whom had joined their
expedition, were all awaiting for her news. In all these, still
Kamau couldn’t help suspect Atieno to be in s ome sort of danger,
they were strangers in strange lands; anything could happen.

***
Two propositions (called the premises) would be taken to be true,
and another (called the conclusion) would follow from the
premises, forming a three-line argument, called a syllogism. "A
syllogism," according to Aristotle, is discourse in which, certain

25
 Predicates

things being stated, something other than what is stated [a

conclusion] follows of necessity from their being so. In other
words, a syllogism accepts only those conclusions that are
inescapable from the stated premises. Remember our definition in
chapter one and the terms judgment, proposition et.cetera.

As we noted previously, there are sentences of a natural language

like English that are not atomic sentences. Our examples included

If Raila wins the election, then Raila will be President.

The Earth is not the centre of the universe.

We could treat these like atomic sentences, but then we would

lose a great deal of important information. For example, the first
sentence tells us something about the relationship between the
atomic sentences “Raila wins the election” and “Raila will be
President.” And the second s entence above will supposedly have
an interesting relationship to the sentence, “The Earth is the centre
of the universe”. To make these relations explicit, we will have to
understand what “if…then…” and what “not” mean. Thus, it
would be useful if our logical language was able to express these
kinds of sentences also, in a way that made these elements
explicit. Let us start with the first one.

The sentence “If Raila wins the election, then Raila will be
President” contains two atomic sentences, “Raila wins the
election” and “Raila will be President.” We could thus represent
this sentence by letting

Raila wins the election

be represented in our logical language by

And by letting

26
LO G IC

Raila will be President

be represented by

Then the whole expression could be represented by writing

If P then Q

It will be useful, however, to replace the English phras e

“if…then...” by a single symbol in our language. The most
commonly used such symbol is “→”. Thus, we would write

P →Q

One last thing needs to be observed, however. We might want to

combine this complex sentence with other sentences. In that case,
we need a way to identify that this is a single sentence when it is
combined with other sentences. There are several ways to do this,
but the most familiar (although not the most elegant) is to use
parentheses. Thus, we will write our expression

(P→Q)

This kind of sentence is called a “conditional”. It is also

sometimes called a “material conditional”. The first constituent
sentence (the one before the arrow, which in this example is “ P”)
is called the “antecedent”. The second sentence (the one after the
arrow, which in this example is “Q”) is called the “consequent”.

We know how to write the conditional, but what does it mean? As

before, we will take the meaning to be given by the truth
conditions - that is, a description of when the sentence is either
true or false. We do this with a truth table. But now, our sentence
has two parts that are atomic sentences, P and Q. Note that either
atomic sentence could be true or false. That means, we have to
consider four possible kinds of situations. We must consider when

27
 Predicates

P is true and when it is false, but then we need to consider those

two kinds of situations twice: once for when Q is true and once
for when Q is false. Thus, the left hand side of our truth table will
look like this:

P Q
T T
T F
F T
F F

There are four kinds of ways the world could be that we must
consider.

Note that, since there are two possible truth values (true and
false), whenever we consider another atomic sentence, there are
twice as many ways the world could be that we should consider.
Thus, for n atomic sentences, our truth table must have 2 n rows. In
the case of a conditional formed out of two atomic sentences, like
our example of (P→Q), our truth table will have 2 2 rows, which is
4 rows. We see this is the case above.

Now, we must decide upon what the conditional means. To some

degree this is up to us. What matters is that once we define the
semantics of the conditional, we stick to our definition. But we
want to capture as much of the meaning of the English
“if…then…” as we can, while remaining absolutely precise in our
language.

Let us consider each kind of way the world could be. For the first
row of the truth table, we have that P is true and Q is true.
Suppose the world is such that Raila wins the election, and also
Raila will be President. Then, would I have spoken truly if I said,
“If Raila wins the election, then Raila will be President ”? Most
people will agree that I have. Similarly, suppose that Raila wins
the election, but Raila will not be President . Would the sentence

28
LO G IC

“If Raila wins the election, then Raila will be President ” still be
true? Most agree that it would be false now. So the first rows of
our truth table are uncontroversial.

P Q (P→Q)
T T T
T F F
F T
F F

Some students, however, find it hard to determine what truth

values should go in the next two rows. Note now that our principle
of bivalence requires us to fill in these rows. We cannot leave
them blank. If we did, we would be saying that sometimes a
conditional can have no truth value; that is, we would be saying
that sometimes, some sentences have no truth value. But our
principle of bivalence requires that - in all kinds of situations -
every sentence is true or false, never both. So, if we are going to
respect the principle of bivalence, then we have to put either T or
F in for each of the last two rows.

It is helpful at this point to change our example. Let us consider

one different example to illustrate how best to fill out the
remainder of the truth table for the conditional.

Assume that a is a particular natural number, only you and me

don’t know of its value (the natural numbers are the whole
positive numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4…). Consider now the following
sentence.

If a is evenly divisible by 4, then a is evenly divisible by 2.

(By “evenly divisible,” I mean divisible without remainder.) The

first thing to ask yourself is: could this sentence be true? I hope
we can all agree that it is - even though we do not know the value
of a.

29
 Predicates

Let

a is evenly divisible by 4

be represented by

and let

a is evenly divisible by 2

be represented by

N
Our sentence then is

(M→N)

And its truth table - as far as we understand right now - is:

M N (M→N)
T T T
T F F
F T
F F

Now consider a case in which a is 6. This is like the third row of

the truth table. It is not the case that 6 is evenly divisible by 4, but
it is the case that 6 is evenly divisible by 2. And consider the case
in which a is 7. This is like the fourth row of the truth table; 7
wouldn’t be evenly divisible by neither 4 nor 2. But we agreed
that the conditional is true - regardless of the value of a! So, the
truth table must be:

30
LO G IC

P Q (P→Q)
T T T
T F F
F T T
F F F

If you are dissatisfied by this, it might be helpful to think of these

last two rows as vacuous cases. A conditional tells us about what
happens if the antecedent is true. But when the antecedent is false,
we simply default to true.

We are now ready to offer, in a more formal way, the syntax and
semantics for the conditional.

The syntax of the conditional is that, if Φ and Ψ are sentences,

then

(Φ→Ψ)

is a sentence.

The semantics of the conditional are given by a truth table. For

any sentences Φ and Ψ:

Φ Ψ (Φ → Ψ)
T T T
T F F
F T T
F F F

Remember that this truth table is now a definition. It defines the

meaning of “→”. We are agreeing to use the symbol “→” to mean
this from here on out.

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 Predicates

The elements of the propositional logic, like “→”, that we add to

our language in order to form more complex sentences, are called
“truth functional connectives”. This I will not attempt to explain
further for fear of confusing the reader, but my hopes that the
explanation is well captured since the beginning of our flow.

Notably, English includes many alternative phrases that appear to

be equivalent to the conditional. Furthermore, in English and other
natural languages, the order of the conditional will sometimes be
reversed. We can capture the general sense of these cases by
recognizing that each of the following phrases would be translated
as (P→Q). (In these examples, we mix English and our
propositional logic, in order to illustrate the variations succinctly.)

If P, then Q.
Q, if P.
On the condition that P, Q.
Q, on the condition that P.
Given that P, Q.
Q, given that P.
Provided that P, Q.
Q, provided that P.
When P, then Q.
Q, when P.
P implies Q.
Q is implied by P.
P is sufficient for Q.
Q is necessary for P.

An oddity of English is that the word “only” changes the meaning

of “if”. You can see this if you consider the following two
sentences.

Scooby is a dog, if Scooby is a mammal

Scooby is a dog only if Scooby is a mammal

Suppose we know Scooby is an organism, but don’t know of what

kind. It could be a dog, a cat, a grey whale, a ladybug, a sponge. It

32
LO G IC

seems clear that the first sentence is not necessarily true. If

Scooby is a grey whale, for example, then it is true that Scooby is
a mammal, but false that Scooby is a cat; and so, the first sentence
would be false. But the second sentence looks like it must be true
(given what you and I know about cats and mammals).

We should thefero be careful to recognize that “only if” does not

mean the same thing as “if”. (If it did, these two sentences would
have the same truth value in all situations.) In fact, it seems that
“only if” can best be expressed by a conditional where the “only
if” appears before the consequent (remember, the consequent is
the second part of the conditional - the part that the arrows points
at). Thus, sentences of this form:

P only if Q.
Only if Q, P.

are best expressed by the formula

(P→Q)

At this point, we are ready to address better complex styles of

syntax and we shall embark on our unused sentence. Consider
this: The Earth is not the centre of the universe.

At first glance, such a sentence might appear to be fundamentally

unlike a conditional. It does not contain two sentences, but only
one. There is a “not” in the sentence, but it is not connecting two
sentences. However, we can still think of this sentence as being
constructed with a truth functional connective, if we are willing to
accept it to be of equivalence to the following sentence.

It is not the case that the Earth is the centre of the

universe.

If this sentence is equivalent to the one above, then we can treat

“It is not the case” as a truth functional connective. It is traditional
to replace this cumbersome English phrase with a single symbol,

33
 Predicates

“¬”. Then, mixing our propositional logic with English, we would

have:

¬ The Earth is the centre of the universe.

And if we let W be a sentence in our language that has the

meaning “The Earth is the centre of the universe”, we would
write:

¬W

This connective is called “negation”. Its syntax is: if Φ is a

sentence, then

¬Φ

is a sentence. We this type of a sentence a “negation sentence”.

The semantics of a negation sentence is also obvious. If Φ is a

sentence, then

Φ ¬Φ
T F
F T

To deny a true sentence is to speak a falsehood. To deny a false

sentence is to say something true.

Our syntax always is recursive. This means that syntactic rules

can be applied repeatedly, to the product of the rule. In other
words, our syntax tells us that if P is a sentence, then ¬P is a
sentence. But now note that the same rule applies again: if ¬P is a
sentence, then ¬ ¬P is a sentence. And so on. Similarly, if P and
Q are sentences, the syntax for the conditional tells us that (P→Q)
is a sentence. But then so is ¬ (P→Q), and so is (¬ (P→Q) →
(P→Q)). And so on. If we have just a single atomic sentence, our

34
LO G IC

recursive syntax will allow us to form infinitely many different

sentences with negation and the conditional.

*****

Somehow, Atieno managed to escape and reconnected with

Kamau who apparently was still focused on his quest for Ethiopia.
surprised at how Atieno had survived all that she was narrating,
Kamau decided to listen…

I was trying to make my brain work but it was impo ssible, I

finally came to the realization that my temple maid Kachut was
dead, probably killed in his sleep, I knew that the only way to stay
alive was to stay calm and not panic, even though I was on the
edge of a total breakdown.

“Do you speak dholuo,” I asked in a wavering voice, not sure if

that would be a good sign or not? I repeated the question and got
no response, and if they understood me they weren’t letting on,
but when one of them used the end of his spear to motion me to
get up, I didn’t hesitate, and scrambled quickly to my feet, it was
at that moment I got a first good look at my male servants from
the Love Temple, Mwangi and Omolo, as the tears welled up in
my eyes, I could see their throats had been cut from ear to ear. I
wanted to reach down and touch them to make sure, but the sharp
point of a spear in my back prodded me to move off into the
jungle with my captors.

As they made their way through the dense jungle floor, I had the
chance to observe the men as they walked silently down the
narrow path in single file, and while none of them were taller that
five and a half feet, they were all well-muscled and although I
tried not to notice, they were all incredibly well hung, their long
black phalluses swung in time with their steps.

****

35
 Predicates

After several hours we finally reached their remote village, a

crowd of young boys scampered all around, staring at my big
buttocks and nilotic hairstyle, while pointing at my ciondo and
laughing. Two older women appeared, and after having a short but
terse conversation with one of the men, took me by the arm and
led me to a mud hut at the far end of the village. Once inside,
without so much as a word, both of them undressed me and had
me lay down on a straw mat, where upon they proceeded to
massage my body with a sweet smelling oil that had a slight
tingling sensation on my skin, they then pushed the fingers coated
with it deep inside my genitals which also gave me a tingling
sensation and made me want to rub it.

I was still frightened out of I mind, but it didn’t seem like that for
a moment; that I was in any real danger. And as the two women
continued the massage, one of them offered me a gourd filled with
a fruit flavoured liquid, I thought it better not to argue the point
and with a little bit of trepidation I sipped it, after a while I felt
myself floating as if in a narcotic induced fog, then once again
everything went black.

I didn’t know how long I had been unconscious, but the sensation
of extreme heat brought me round, it was night and I suddenly
realised that my situation had now turned into something really
bad, I was naked and tied spread eagle in a large wooden frame
unlike the crate. A huge fire only twenty feet away from me
burned bright in the pitch black night as naked chanting warriors
danced with spears held high around the crackling flames, while
the entire spectacle was ringed by the woman of the village who
chanted in unison with the brightly painted warriors who were
driving themselves into a sexual frenzy. With the oil that the
village women had applied to my body glistening in the eerie
light, it crossed my mind that I might well be the main course in
some sort of a cannibalistic barbecue, and when I began
screaming at the top of my lungs, it only tended to drive the
Kamba warriors into more of a frenzy as they danced and cavorted
their hard oiled bodies with their huge black erections bouncing
menacingly before them.

36
LO G IC

As if signalled by some unknown force, five or six naked women,

leapt to their feet, and began running their hands a ll over my
straining oil covered body, paying particular attention to my
smooth shaved vagina. Slowly but surely, trying as I might, still I
couldn’t resist the feeling that was coursing through my body, the
raw lust in my vagina erupted in a thunderous orgasm that only
seemed to intensify with the chanting of the delirious dancers, but
just when I was recovering from my climax, I noticed that each
warrior in turn was breaking from the circle and dancing his way
towards me, as he stepped forward his hips st arted to thrust
forward which made his engorged cock swing between his legs, as
it swung forward the massive head was hitting his hard stomach,
when they got near to me they then started to ejaculate, long drops
of their thick cum spewed out into the night air, a lot falling on my
body.

‘This must be it,’ I thought to myself, as tears began forming in

my eyes, ‘Now they’re going to kill me!

With no one so much as moving a muscle, from the far end of the
village I could hear the low rumble of the chanting beginning once
again, and into the light, strode a brightly painted warrior who I
immediately assumed was the voodoo chief. As he made his way
towards me the chanting grew in crescendo as he danced around
my spread eagled form, driving himself into a frenzy. If manhood
and power created the pecking order in this village, I could see
right away why this warrior stood head and shoulders above the
rest of his fellow tribesmen, as his erection stood, black, long, and
thick from his groin, at least ten inches lo ng and as thick as a
woman’s wrist. All of the women as if in a trance, began
masturbating wantonly as the chief danced in a very provocatively
way around me and the fire.

The chanting warriors now pounded the butt ends of their spears
on the ground in unison, creating deafening cacophony that only
inflamed the chief more, his erection, now dripping profusely with
precum shimmered in the eerie light, and much to my dismay,

37
 Predicates

caused my vagina to lurch with the unbridled anticipation of

getting raped. The chief stopped abruptly in front of me as one of
the masturbating women came forward and grabbed the chief’s
huge throbbing cock and guided it into my open wet vagina. This
seemed to be a signal to the rest of the warriors, because from the
second the chief’s cock slammed into me, the women on the sides
ran to their men, and in an unbelievable display of pure lust, they
bent over and let the warriors take them from the rear like wild
animals. My mind was now in sensory overload as my own vagina
was being pounded into submission by this gigantic cock, while I
watched as at least fifty native couples engaged in the rawest form
of lust filled sexual intercourse you could ever imagine. While
orgasm after orgasm engulfed me, I watched wide eyed as the
native women allowed their men to take them in the most brutally
vicious way possible, their screams and moans echoing into the
night.

As the chief pounded his gigantic cock in and out of my dripping

vagina I could not help but feel the rising tide of lust and
expectation of a huge orgasm, as wave after wave of lust coursed
through my jerking body, I screamed out load as I reached the
point of orgasm, my whole body going rigid as my cum flowed.

My body went limp from the exhaustion brought on by the

incredibly draining sexual encounter I had just experienced, and
for a second I thought I might still be in mortal danger when the
chief pulled a long knife from his belt, but thankfully he used it to
cut my bindings, allowing me slide gratefully to the ground. It
wasn’t long before several of the women picked me up and led me
to the largest hut in the village, which I soon found out belonged
to the chief and his four wives. I had just been initiated into
bearing children for the village chief, children believed to be
divinely created, a prediction of some oracle.

In the centre of the room was a large black cast iron pot. It had
been partially filled with a mixture of oils and water, and there
was a slow flame beneath it burning on large pieces of dark wood.
Warmed, the oil rose to the surface and then rolled back down into

38
LO G IC

the pot once more, with tiny little air bubbles trapped within its
undulating waves. I was guided over to the pot while held high on
the mat and then the procession gently lowered one half of the mat
and allowed my body slide feet first into the pot of oils.

As my naked body slid into the oils, an intense warming sensation

filled my mind and I gasped in rapturous surprise. Up and down
my spine there was a thrilling needling on my skin and my
muscles relaxed and tensed to the epidermal sensation. I grabbed
the sides of the pot lip and hung on.

***

39
CHAPTER THREE

grammar
LO G IC

Nevertheless, Kamau was happy that Atieno had managed to

escape. As for the Kamba sexual ritual, that wasn’t a bother; they
were both custodians of the Love Temple in Agwara and had been
accustomed to fertility orgies. What mostly surprised Atieno was
the size of individual manhood displayed by the Kamba kinsmen
and how primitively they conducted their rites. Still the escape
wouldn’t be that difficult for a woman with vast ecological
responsibilities like Atieno; she was the village prophetess and
Agwara was one of the outstanding nilotic habitation in Bondex
town. She had seen it all, nyando valley was not an easy terrain.
But how did she plant her escape? Was she assisted?

All through this adventure, Atieno had noticed that whenever they
stopped to confirm directions using their maps by asking traders
randomly found in the routes, they ended up deeply lost. She also
remembered that their trek from Bondex through Maraland had
been as indicated in the map Kimani was reading. One thing was
even clearer that the deeper into the lost, away from Agwara they
moved, the more tragedy encapsulated them; there was something
mysterious pulling them into division and so, in trying to
determine the best way to engage these unknown spirits that were
defiling them, Atieno developed a number of hypotheses.

One hypothesis was that someone somewhere was attacking them

using very strong magic. The idea here was that some dark force
was working against them to ensure that they always separated in
scattered. But Atieno observed that her two male servants from
the Love Temple had been attacked brutally regardless of them
being together; therefore, just being close to each other wasn’t
strength enough.

Another hypothesis was that whenever she chanted her fertility

prayers to bless the Agwara villagers and the strange lands she
passed throughout this adventure, somehow she felt in control and
much focused. This meant there could be spiritual protection
within her enchantments which she led in a song like tune while
always repeated word for word.

41
 Grammar

Atieno therefore concluded that the best way to stay safe within
their journey towards Ethiopia was to stay together and constantly
chant their traditional prayers. Evoking the Agwara spirits would
somehow protect them. On the contrary, Kamau in his wishes
admitted that if they had developed a relationship with the
Christian God, then their prayers would have been much
effective, considering that the Ethiopian God was considered all
powerful.

But how can we be sure Atieno’s reasoning was good? She was
essentially considering a series of arguments. Let us turn to the
question: how shall we evaluate these arguments?

First and foremost, our logical language developed thus far allows
us to say conditional and negation statements. This may not seem
like much of a progress, but tracking from the previous chapters,
our language is now complex enough for us to develop the idea of
using logic not just to describe things, but also to reason about
those things.

We will think of reasoning as providing an argument. Here, we

use the word “argument” in the sense not of two or more people
criticizing each other, but rather in the sense we mean when we
say, “Adhengo’s argument”. In such a case, someone is using
language to try to convince us that something is true. Our goal is
to make this notion very precise, and then identify what makes an
argument good. We have seen that Aristotle in his complex
expression, defined this as a “syllogism”, which in our English
language means “argument”.

We need to begin by making the notion of an argument precise.

Our logical language so far contains only sentences. An argument
will therefore consist of sentences. In a natural language, we use
the term argument in a strong way, which includes the suggestion
that the argument should be good. However, we want to separate
the notion of a good argument from the notion of an argument, so
that we can identify what makes an argument good, and what
makes an argument bad. To do this, we will start with a minimal

42
LO G IC

notion of what an argument is. Here is the simplest, most minimal

notion:

Argument is an ordered list of sentences, one of which we

call the “conclusion”, and the others of which we call
“premises”.

The everyday notion of an argument is that it is used to convince

us to believe something. This thing that we are being encouraged
to believe is the conclusion. Following our definition of
“argument”, the reasons that the person gives will be what we are
calling premises. But belief is a psychological notion. We instead
are interested only in truth. Thus, we can reformulate this intuitive
notion of what an argument should do, and think of an argument
as being used to show that something is true. The premises of the
argument are meant to show us that the conclusion is true.

We define a valid argument as one where, necessarily, if the

premises are true, then the conclusion is true. It would seem the
best way to understand this is to say, there is no situation in which
the premises are true but the conclusion is false. But then, what
are these situations? Fortunately, we already have a tool that looks
like it could help us, the truth table.

If Jupiter is more massive than Earth, then Jupiter has a

stronger gravitational field than Earth. Jupiter is more
massive than Earth. In conclusion, Jupiter has a stronger
gravitational field than Earth.

This looks like it has the form of a valid argument, and probaly an
astrophysicist would tell us it is sound. Let’s translate it to our
logical language using the following translation key. (We’ve used
up our letters, so I’m going to start over. We’ll do that often:
assume we’re starting a new language each time we translate a
new set of problems or each time we consider a new example.)

P: Jupiter is more massive than Earth

Q: Jupiter has a stronger gravitational field than Earth

43
 Grammar

This way of writing out sentences of logic and sentences of

English we can call a “translation key”. We can use this format
whenever we want to explain what our sentences mean in English.

Using this key, our argument can be formulated

(P→Q)
P
Q

That short line is not part of our language, but rather is a handy
tradition. When quickly writing down arguments, we first write
the premises, and then the follow with conclusion, and draw a
short line just above the conclusion.

This is an argument: it is an ordered list of sentences, the first two

of which are premises and the last of which is the conclusion.

To make a truth table, we identify all the atomic sentences that

constitute these sentences. These are P and Q. There are four
possible kinds of ways the world could be that matter to us then:

P Q
T T
T F
F T
F F

We’ll write out the sentences, in the order of premises and then
conclusion.

premise premise conclusion

P Q (P→Q) P Q
T T
T F
F T
F F

44
LO G IC

Now we can fill in the columns for each sentence, identifying the
truth value of the sentence for that kind of situation.

premise premise conclusion

P Q (P→Q) P Q
T T T T T
T F F T F
F T T F T
F F T F F

We know how to fill in the column for the conditional because we

can refer back to the truth table used to define the conditional, to
determine what its truth value is when the first part and second
part are true; and so on. P is true in those kinds of s ituations where
P is true, and P is false in those kinds of situations where P is
false. And the same is so for Q.

Now, consider all those kinds of ways the world could be such
that all the premises are true. Only the first row of the truth table
is one where all the premises are true. Note that the conclusion is
true in that row. That means, in any kind of situation in which all
the premises are true, the conclusion will be true. Or, equivalently,
necessarily, if all the premises are true, then the conclu sion is true.

premise premise conclusion

P Q (P→Q) P Q
T T T T T
T F F T F
F T T F T
F F T F F

Consider in contrast, an argument based on our ongoing story of

Atieno and Kamau, which is an invalid argument with all true
premises and a true conclusion.

45
 Grammar

If Kamau is the prophetess for the Love Temple, then

Kamau is in Agwara. Kamau is not the prophetess for the
Love Temple. Therefore, Kamau is not in Agwara .

We’ll use the following translation key. Let,

R: Kamau is the prophetess for the Love Temple

S: Kamau is in Agwara

And our argument is thus:

(R→S)
¬R
¬S

Represented in the truth table as:

premise premise conclusion

R S (R→S) ¬R ¬S
T T T F F
T F F F T
F T T T F
F F T T T

Note that there are two kinds of ways that the world could be in
which all of our premises are true. These correspond to the third
and fourth row of the truth table. But for the third row of the truth
table, the premises are true but the conclusion is false. Yes, there
is a kind of way the world could be in which all the premises are
true and the conclusion is true; that is shown in the fourth row of
the truth table. But we are not interested in identifying arguments
that will have true conclusions if we are lucky. We are interested
in valid arguments. This argument is invalid. There is a kind of
way the world could be such that all the premises are true and the
conclusion is false. We can highlight this.

46
LO G IC

premise premise conclusion

R S (R→S) ¬R ¬S
T T T F F
T F F F T
F T T T F
F F T T T

Hopefully it becomes clear why we care about validity. Any

argument of the form, (P→Q) and P, therefore Q, is valid. We
don’t have to know what P and Q mean to determine this.
Similarly, any argument of the form, (R→S) and ¬R, therefore
¬S, is invalid. We don’t have to know what R and S mean to
determine this. So logic can be of equal use to the astronomer and
the financier, the computer scientist or the sociologist.

*****

The village was a rush with hurried and excited bodies. Warriors
ran into their huts and retrieved their spears then rushed again out
into the city and down the major pathways. The women hurriedly
gathered up their frightened children and ran for cover wherever
cover could be found. There was shouting and confusion on every
path.

A man noticed the sudden panic of the villagers and poked his
head out of his hut to investigate. As he did, the lead warrior came
running up to him with a wild eyed face.

"Chief! Chief!" He shouted. "We have big problems! Big,big

problems!"

The first man held up his hands and tried to steady his comrade.
"What has happened? Why are you so upset?"

47
 Grammar

"Dee wo-man.... dee wo-man we brought from Aa-ga-wa-ra has

escaped!!!!" He told him with as much breath as he had left in
him.

The first man looked upon the warrior with wide, panicked eyes
and responded, "We are all dead men! We are all dead!"

In the village, several of the women who had attended to Atieno

when she had first arrived were being brutally interrogated by
large warriors with long swords and thick, baseball bat like sticks.
They begged and pleaded for mercy from the men, but the men
simply would not listen.

"You are dee ones!" The huge warrior shouted at the women who
were now down on their knees in the mud. " You helped dee
woman to escape!"

"No! No! We only did the job you told us to do..... she escaped all
on her own!" They forcefully protested.

"Silence!" The warrior insisted. He then took his large sword and
began to slit the women's throats one by one. They each fell into
silence on the grassy, dusty ground as they were executed by the
warrior's bloody sword.

"Dee master does not tolerate failure." The man spat at the fallen
women as others now approached from the village with wails and
tears, holding the dead bodies of the wives and mothers who had
just been slain. Tearful embraces and rocking bodies followed as
the shock of loss took hold upon the surrounding gentry. The
blood of the dead pooled and darkened the nearby land.

The warrior turned to the assembling men who now had their
swords and spears well in hand and were reporting back to their
leader. "Get after dee wo-man!" He ordered them. "Dee master
will have our troats cut next if she is not recovered!"

48
LO G IC

Three dozen warriors had gathered at the spot and received the
order to head into the jungle to re-capture the escaped fertility
prophetess. They turned enmasse and charged out in to the jungle
brush with a mighty, thudding rumble. The rising dust obscured
them from view as they left.

Little did they know that Atieno had reunited with her race and
were deep into the gone, galloping atop the camels as they
stormed through the plains of Marsabit into Ethiopia, but then, the
question still remains to puzzle the uncritical mind. How did
Atieno escape? Mostly so, having been raped, was she pregnant
with the voodoo chiefs offspring?

We will have to revisit the episode of the hut, but not before we
do some housekeeping. Now, let’s see how other continents
outside of Africa developed their thought system, perhaps later on
we will reconnect to Atieno.

49
CHAPTER FOUR

the ache of reason

LO G IC

Often a time, logical misconceptions such as conversion are more

pronounced if every day similar examples are used. This is
because individuals invariably try to bring their personal
knowledge and experiences to the logical task rather than
evaluating the validity of the inference as it stands. For exa mple,
suppose I declare truthfully, " All taxicabs are yellow. Your car is
not a taxicab." Does it logically follow that your car is not
yellow? When examining questions of logic, you must ignore
external facts. Don't think about the actual colour of your
particular car. The correct answer is not yes or no, depending on
the paint job of your car. Yet some will answer, " Yes, it follows
because my car is green." If I give you less knowledge, you might
be more logical. Suppose I declare truthfully, " All taxicabs are
yellow. My car is not a taxicab." Is it yellow? Now you can't use
knowledge about my car because you haven't seen it. It may be
easier to come to the correct conclusion, which is, " Maybe, maybe
not."

Valid arguments, and the methods that we are dev eloping, are
sometimes called deductive reasoning. This is the kind of
reasoning in which our conclusions are necessarily true if our
premises are true, and these arguments can be shown to be good
by way of our logical reasoning alone. Two important, and closely
related, alternatives to deductive reasoning are scientific reasoning
and statistical generalizations (or probability).

Scientific method relies upon logic, but science is not reducible to

logic because scientists conduct empirical researches. That is, they
examine and test phenomena in the world making it a key
difference from pure logic.

However, an important feature of scientific reasoning must be

kept in mind; that there is some controversy over the details of the
scientific methodology, but the most basic view is that scientists
formulate hypotheses about the possible causes or features of a
phenomenon. They make predictions based on these hypotheses,
and then they perform experiments to test those predictions. The
reasoning here uses the conditional: if the hypotheses are true,

51
 The Ache of Reason

then the particular prediction will be true. If the experiment

shows that the prediction is false, then the scientist rejects the
hypothesis.

Important to note is that scientific conclusions are about the

physical world and are never about logic. This means that
scientific claims are not always valid but correctly put, science
identifies claims that may be true, or (after some progress) are
very likely to be true, or (after very much progress) are true.

Scientists keep testing their hypotheses, using different

predictions and experiments. Very often, they have several
competing hypotheses. To decide between these, they can use a
range of criteria. In order of their importance, these include:
choose the hypothesis with the most predictive power (the one
that correctly predicts more kinds of phenomena ); choose the
hypothesis that will be most productive of other scientific
theories; choose the hypothesis consistent with your other
accepted hypotheses; choose the simplest hypothesis. In summary,
the scientific process with its entire methodological paradigm
progresses like this:

1. We develop a hypothesis about the causes or nature of a

phenomenon.
2. We predict what (hopefully unexpected) effects is a
consequence of this hypothesis.
3. We check with experiments to see if these predictions
come true:
 If the predictions prove false, we reject the
hypothesis;
 If the predictions prove true, we conclude that
the hypothesis could be true. We continue to test
the hypothesis by making other predictions (that
is, we return to step 2).

This method can result in more than one hypothesis being shown
to be possibly true. Then, we chose between competing

51
LO G IC

hypotheses by using criteria like the following (here ordered by

their relative importance; theory can be taken to mean a
collection of one or more hypotheses):

1. Predictive power: the more that a hypothesis can

successfully predict, the better it is.
2. Productivity: a hypothesis that suggests more new
directions for research is to be preferred.
3. Coherence with Existing Theory: if two hypotheses
predict the same amount and are equally productive, then
the hypothesis that coheres with (does not contradict)
other successful theories is preferable to one that does
contradict them.
4. Simplicity: if two hypotheses are equally predictive,
productive, and coherent with existing theories, then the
simpler hypothesis is preferable.

****

Atieno might have been naïve during her first acquaintance to the
Love Temple, maybe unconceptualised in her decision to remain
loyal and serve as an intercessor for all those women who felt
infertile or lonely. Her main achievement was being closer to
Kamau, whom she has loved ever since that first night into
womanhood. Kamau had been so tender and guardedly sincere;
they both enjoyed their roles to serve Agwara village and the
denial of whatever the temple queen called a secular world hadn’t
met its proper truth. The unknown God of Ethiopia where
Christians were believed to exist in plenty had proven difficult to
find, yet for the love he had and the never ending future with
Kamau, her instincts made her press on to persevere. She had read
a lot of tales about the Christian community but the most
disgusting part was cannibalism. Someone once told her that the
Christian leader called Jesus Christ always reincarnated in the
form of babies who were sacrificed and eaten in the church. These
people also drunk blood. How pathetic. But fear was not one of
Atieno’s weaknesses, s he was not going to ruin Kamau’s quest of

52
 The Ache of Reason

visiting Ethiopia by giving him scary tales; however much true,

they were destined to be together.

The idea of a mystery religion that offered salvation to its initiates

was not alien to the Romans. Several such religions, like the Cult
of Isis and Mithraism, were imported to the Roman world. Most
were tolerated, though some were suppressed - like the Cult of
Bacchus, because it involved sexual rites.

The Christian religion, however, was largely unacceptable to

conservative Romans of the time. The Romans were a religious
people, but many saw Christianity as a threat to their religious
system. Unlike members of other new religions, Christians
refused to sacrifice to the gods, proclaiming instead that there was
only one God.

Pagan Romans were not only offended by this, but also felt it
threatened their society. They believed that society was protected
by the pax deorum: the peace, or agreement, with the gods. The
gods protected cities, towns, and empires in exchange for sacrifice
and worship. Since Christians refused to do these things, the
pagans believed that the Christians endangered themselves and
everyone around them.

In addition, because Christians refused to worship or sacrifice to

the emperor, they were suspected of treason. Christians held that
the emperor was only a man, and that worship had to be reserved
for God and Christ, but to pagans and representatives of the
Roman state, this seemed very suspicious. This was not helped by
the fact that Christians gathered together for church services and
excluded non-Christians from such services. These services
seemed like secret meetings held by possible traitors. Many
rumours spread about Christians. They were accused, perhaps due
to garbled understandings of the Eucharist, of being cannibals.
Early Christians celebrated the agape, a “love feast.” While such
feasts celebrated brotherly and sisterly love among all members of
the church, rumours spread that the Christians were practicing
open sex and incest.

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LO G IC

In this early Imperial Age, the steadily growing Christian

movement was to be viewed with suspicion by both the authorities
and the people of Rome; in the second century, the Roman
rejection of Christian teachings, customs, and practices resulted in
a most intriguing countermovement. During this century, two
types of negative responses to the Christian faith had become
established. The first encompasses the anti-Christian accusations
circulating among the Roman population during most of the
period, occasionally resulting in Christians being persecuted. At
the end of the century, supplementary controversy arose from
within the intellectual world. Those who engaged in this polemic
were authors who had studied Christian customs, and who
consequently targeted the substance of the Christian teachings.

In order to examine this hostile attitude, it is essential to focus on

a small number of concrete accusations directed at the Christian
communities. Aside from allegations of atheism, two additional,
seemingly remarkable, forms of imputation against Christians
were voiced within Roman society.

Athenagoras, a Christian author from the second half of the

second century, notes: ‘Three things are alleged against us:
atheism, Thyestean feasts, OEdipodean intercourse’. The latter
two accusations are explicitly mentioned in the writings of
Christian apologists alone, writings that served to counter
allegations voiced against the Christian teachings and that
generally follow the same pattern: a description of the
accusations, followed by a defence. As a result of these texts, the
nature of the original allegations has fortunately been preserved.

By the term OEdipodean intercourse, Athenagoras referred to

certain tenacious rumours circulating within the Roman Empire,
relating to the alleged sexual excesses in which Christians were
said to indulge during secret gatherings. In the Greek myth, the
hero Oedipus marries his mother, Locaste, after having murdered
his father Laïos. The acts committed at these meetings would
therefore be sexually immoral because of the multiple sexual and
incestuous contacts that the Christians were allegedly maintaining.

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 The Ache of Reason

The fact that the rumours of sexual misconduct were being spread
among the population as a whole, and not just in intellectual
circles, is underlined by a tragedy that took place the year 177, in
the French towns of Lyon and Vienne. That year saw riots
between pagan and Christian inhabitants of the two neighbouring
townships. Before being put on trial, the local Christians had
suffered various hardships, such as exclusion from public baths
and meetings. When they were eventually forced to appear before
the governor, the allegations made by the population were
announced: sexual immorality and cannibalism. As a result of
these accusations, the defendants died martyrs.

The nature of the charges brought against the Christians of Lyon

and Vienne suggests that, in addition to the allegations of sexual
and incestuous orgies, Christians faced another remarkable form
of negative publicity. They were said to be guilty of killing people
and consuming human flesh in the Thyestean feasts.

In Greek mythology, Thyestes had an affair with the wife of his

brother Atreus. When Atreus discovered this act of infidelity, he
invited his brother to a banquet. During the feast, the unsuspecting
Thyestes was served his three sons, whom Atreus had assassinated
and processed into the meal. The fact that pagan authors named
the Christians’ festive gatherings after Thyestes’ myth is
consequently a highly significant implication.

Regarding the origin of the rumours, the fact that, up until the late
second century, the Roman population lacked understanding of
Christian culture is a significant starting point. The Romans had
gained scant knowledge of this superstitio, as a result of which
they were only aware of a few basic facts about Christianity. In
their eyes, Christians were followers of the Jew Jesus, who
refused to worship other gods. The accusation of liberal sexual
relations and incest may have been founded on the erroneous
interpretation of ‘brotherly love’. The Christian community was
characterized, among other things, by the perceived equality of all
its members. At their assemblies, Christians referred to one
another as brothers and sisters, bestowing the ‘kiss of peace’ upon

55
LO G IC

each other. Pagan citizens could have exaggerated this ritual to

produce the aforementioned allegations of incestuous activities.
Similarly, the cannibalism charge can potentially be linked to
another principal Christian ritual, the celebration of the Eucharist.
During this part of the service, the ‘body of Christ’ is consumed
and his ‘blood’ drunk. According to some academics,
distinguishing a clear link between the cannibalism rumours and
this Christian ritual does not require an overly imaginative mind.
Consequently, accusations of cannibalism and sexual promiscuity
became a definitive factor into equating Christianity to the pagan
religions, for which they named the congregation to be an
assembly of vampires, the evil creatures who made the Roman
gods pass disfavoured judgments against their citizens. The god of
the vampires could not be worshiped and as Christians met
secretly to drink blood and enjoy sexual orgies; they were no
different than vipers. They were to be avoided at all cost, possibly,
banished from Rome.

***

Atieno being in endless committed love to Kamau didn’t limit her

appetite for adventure. She knew that whenever the Christians
existed, the pagans were visible and there was a powerful goddess
of fertility who controlled even the Love Temple in Agwara, her
name was Artemis. She wanted to see if neighbours of Ethiopia,
whom people called Coptic Romans, had that temple. She wanted
also to visit Rome, her curiosity increased with much anxiety as
they made their way towards Ethiopia.

The truth to be told is that the attacks on Christians were sporadic

persecutions. The first took place very early on in Rome, in 64
AD, when Emperor Nero cracked down on the Christians of the
city. He had some Christians thrown to the beasts, and he had
others burned alive - some, supposedly, in his garden, to act as
torches at night. But Nero seems to have been using the Christians
as scapegoats for the Great Fire of Rome, which consumed much
of the city, and which the populace suspected Nero of having
started.

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 The Ache of Reason

When Pliny the Younger, a Roman author and magistrate, toured

the eastern provinces for Emperor Trajan and asked how to deal
with Christians, the emperor advised him not to seek out
Christians, but only to punish those who stand accused by their
neighbours based on hard evidence. Some Christians were
executed, but rooting out Christianity was not a major concern of
the state. Some persecution also probably happened on the local
level in times of hardship or disaster, when the Christians refusal
to sacrifice to the Roman gods made them blame takers.

In the third century, as the Roman Empire entered a period of

crisis, persecution of Christians intensified. Barbarians broke
through the borders of the empire, plague ravaged the cities, and
the Roman economy went into a sharp decline. This period also
saw a rapid turnover of emperors, as political instability, civil war,
and bloody battles resulted in the death of many emperors before
they had a chance to rule for very long. Some of the short -lived
emperors in this period were friendly toward Christianity. Philip
the Arab, for example, seems to have been interested in the
religion and corresponded with Christian intellectuals. His
successor, Decius, however, was far less tolerant. Blaming the
catastrophes afflicting the empire on Christianity, Decius
instituted the first empire-wide persecution of Christians. In 250
AD, Decius required all citizens of the empire to sacrifice to the
emperor, and receive a certificate to prove that they had done this.
Those without a certificate could be executed. Decius’ persecution
was short lived, however, and failed to stamp out Christianity.

The Crisis of the Third Century came to an end with the reign of
Emperor Diocletian, who reorganized and strengthened the empire
by creating the tetrarchy, a system of four ruling emperors.
Diocletian and one of his tetrarchs, Galerius, agreed to persecute
Christians, because part of their project of reunifying the empire
involved uniting all Romans behind a shared belief in the old
gods. This persecution - often called The Great Persecution -
began in 303 AD. Several thousand Christians were killed,
including many Christian leaders. This was one of the most trying

57
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times for Christianity, but the religion was able to survive and
eventually triumph.

But let’s turn our minds to the confusion of Atieno; she thought
Christians were cannibals but loved the idea that they did sexual
orgies. Most terrifying, there was that grimace about Christians
acting as blood thirsty maniacs, constantly devouring on non -
Christians whom they gave chance to convert because they didn’t
just killed anybody. Those who cooperated were kept alive but at
the cost of their blood being drained, not until they joined to
become Christians. Christians had this disturbing myth about an
eternal life, meaning they were immortals. Really? Are vampire
stories even true to begin with?

These Roman accusers defined vampires to be a revenant,

reanimated corpse, or phantom of the recently deceased, which
maintains its former, living appearance when it comes out o f the
grave at night to drink the blood of humans . That they lack of
decomposition or rigor mortis, have a pallid face and sharp
protruding canine teeth. These creatures must suck blood from
humans or mammals for sustenance and victims are turned into
vampires themselves when they are killed or forced to drink the
creature’s blood. At daybreak the vampire must return to its grave
or coffin.

This wasn’t true. The Christians went into hiding for fear of being
persecuted, especially when such attacks became sporadic;
Christians were highly discriminated against and most were
considered as good as dead, they were the lowest of low in society
and the pagan citizens trod against them with much hate and
blame for the misfortunes that the Roman Empire was
experiencing at the time. Christians invited others to join into their
faith through persuasion and salvation through the blood of Jesus
Christ; this didn’t have to mean that they contaminated others
with their blood. Hence, the folklore myth of vampire creatures as
an attack against Christianity had no logical basis when truth is to
be collected from historical conjectures documented and justified
as real experiences.

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 The Ache of Reason

It is from such shameful naming that the Christian apologetics

rose to defend and protect what was morally right; and this meant
giving counter definitions to what the pagans of the fifth century
had advanced. Thus, in 1679, Paul Ricaut from England redefined
the term vampire to its origins; that of the pagan Romans who
were cultured in offering human sacrifices through demonic acts
of kidnapping persons. Most of those killed were the unknowing
Christians who often found themselves slaughtered at the pagan
alters; however much they believed in life after death.

Ricaut defines it as a pretended demon, said to delight in sucking

human blood, and to animate the bodies of dead persons; thus, the
vampire was to be those alters , those unseen spirits who were
ravaging on Christian lives.

But was it only an act of Christians to believe in afterlife or

eternal life? Were the Egyptians not custom to these, yet Egypt
formed the southern part of the Roman Empire.

For the Egyptians, the soul was made up of several parts. The
“ba” was the individual soul that made each person an individual
and the “ka” was the body double of a person’s spirit that left the
body upon death. In order to achieve immortality, the ka and ba
had to be united. In order for this to occur, the ka required an
uncorrupted or mummified body called the “khat.” The ka also
required sustenance such as flowers, herbs, food, and drink. If the
ka was not given provisions, then it was believed it would leave
the tomb clad in its burial clothes and drain the living of energy or
blood. It would seem apparent that the ka staggering around in its
body wrap would be the origin of the myth of the wandering
mummy; however, there is no written evidence to support this
claim. We will discuss this in detail when analysing the historical
connection of the Roman gods to world civilisations. As at now,
let us understand the advent of Christianity, its progress before
Bartholomew the disciple brought it to Ethiopia where it is
claimed they escaped into hiding away from persecutions that
were unfair to many followers of Christ.

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It is said that when Christianity finally reigned, it turned the

nature deities into devils, spells into magic, and spa wives into
witches - but could not banish the ideas from the imagination of
men. Thus, adopted stones and wells turned spells into exorcism
and benedictions and charms into prayers. The willingness of the
early Church to compromise was a great asset to the promotion of
Christianity. One of these compromises was to superimpose
Christian celebrations over the non-Christian festivities. A
specific example of compromise is Christmas, the celebration of
Christ’s birthday; during the first three hundred years, the Church
in Rome discouraged such a celebration, concerned that it would
appear to be more like a pagan ritual than a Christian holiday. As
Church officials attempted to convert Romans to Christianity,
many of the people continued to celebrate “Saturnalia” which
commemorated the birth of the unconquerable sun. This
celebration lasted a week and culminated on December 25th , the
time of the winter solstice. The theme for this celebration was the
welcoming of the sun and the rebirth of the world. Since
Christians believed that Jesus Christ was born to save the world,
Pope Julius I chose December 25th as the birth of Christ. These
two traditions fit nicely together since one is celebrating the return
of the light to the world, and the other is celebrating the birth of
the “Light of the World.”

The prehistoric man of Africa knew that life was uncertain and
sometimes short and that death was inevitable, sometimes abrupt.
Every time he set out for the hunt he was aware that someday the
end would come with a slash and an outpouring of blood. It is not
difficult to understand why he should have come to the conclusion
not merely that blood was essential to life, but that it was the
essence of life itself. Blood is the soul and had to be accorded
religious respect, this was no different when the Christians
adopted this as a method in their Eucharistsm; it was an activity
already in practice even by those whom the civilised Greeks
considered primitive. That is, the African sages.

The miracles that the apostles performed in the name of Jesus

Christ and those that were witnessed of Christ himself, left many

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 The Ache of Reason

romans insecure about their medical systems. During those days,

it was only believed that leprosy could be cured by the blood of
the innocent, mainly children and virgins which were considered
royal medicine due to the difficulty in obtaining them; yet
someone in the name “King of the Jews” was offering cure to
masses who were poor and undeserving while the royal emperors
suffered in deep struggle to gain such cures.

Evidently, the logical processes of the Romans had been clouded

by an advanced state of the mystic myths borrowed extensively
from the greconian culture. Trying to draw logical conclusions
about Christianity by using a non-Christian religion as a tool for
exegesis was first and foremost an invalid argumentation. This we
shall explain in chapter six when we look deeply into the worship
systems of the Greeks. But first, let’s develop better skills on how
to analyse arguments, the skills that the mighty Romans failed to
develop amongst themselves, thereby erroneously accusing Jesus
and sentencing him to be crucified disgracefully, a shameful death
that was offered only to thieves and those who committed treason
against the emperor.

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CHAPTER FIVE

proofs
 LO G IC

There are certain principles of ordinary conversation that we

expect ourselves and others to follow. These principles underlie
all reasoning that occurs in the normal course of the day and we
expect that if a person is honest and reasonable, these principles
will be followed. The guiding principle of rational behaviour is
consistency. If you are consistently consistent, I trust that you will
not try to deceive me. If yesterday you told me that you loved
Chapati and today you claim to hate it, because I know you to be
rational and honest I will probably conclude that something has
changed. If nothing has changed then you are holding
inconsistent, contradictory positions. If you claim that you always
look both ways before crossing the street and I see you one day
carelessly ignoring the traffic as you cross, your behaviour is
contradicting your claim and you are being inconsistent.

These principles of consistency and non-contradiction were

recognized very early on to be at the core of mathematical proof.
In The Topics, one of his treatises on logical argument, Aristotle
expresses his desire to set forth methods whereby we shall be able
to reason from generally accepted opinions about any problem set
before us and shall ourselves, when sustaining an argument, avoid
saying anything self-contradictory. To that end, let's consider both
the law of the excluded middle and the law of non-contradiction
(principle of bivalence discussed in chapter two) - logical truisms
and the most fundamental of axioms. Aristotle seems to accept
them as general principles.

The law of the excluded middle requires that a thing must either
possess a given attribute or must not possess it. A thing must be
one way or the other; there is no middle. In other words, the
middle ground is excluded. A shape either is a circle or is not a
circle. A figure either is a square or is not a square. Two lines in a
plane either intersect or do not intersect. A statement is either true
or not true. However, we frequently see this principle misused.
For example, the sentence either you're with me or you're against
me is not an instance of not the excluded middle; in a proper
statement of the excluded middle, there is no in-between.

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Proofs

Politicians frequently word their arguments as if the middle is

excluded; forcing their opponents into positions they do not hold.

Interestingly enough, this black-and-white error was common

even among the politicians of ancient Greece. The Sophists,
whom Plato and Aristotle dismissed with barely concealed
contempt are said to have attempted to use verbal manoeuvring
that sounded like the law of the excluded middle. For example, in
Plato's Euthydemus, the Sophists convinced a young man to agree
that he was either "wise or ignorant," offering no middle ground
when indeed there should be.

Closely related to the law of the excluded middle is the law of

non-contradiction. The law of non-contradiction requires that a
thing cannot both be and not be at the same time. A shape cannot
be both a circle and not a circle. A figure cannot be both a square
and not a square. Two lines in a plane cannot both intersect and
not intersect. A statement cannot be both true and not true. When
he developed his rules for logic, Aristotle repeatedly justified a
statement by saying that it is impossible that " the same thing both
is and is not at the same time."

Should you believe that a statement is both true and not true at the
same time, then you find yourself mired in self-contradiction. A
system of rules for proof would seek to prevent this. The Stoics,
who developed further rules of logic in the third century B.C.,
acknowledged the law of the excluded middle and the law of non -
contradiction in a single rule, "either the first or not the first" –
meaning always one or the other but never both.

The basic steps in any deductive proof, either mathematical or

metaphysical, are the same. We begin with true (or agreed upon)
statements, called premises, and concede at each step that the next
statement or construction follows legitimately from the previous
statements. When we arrive at the final statement, called our
conclusion, we know it must necessarily be true due to our logical
chain of reasoning. Either a good argument or invalid it is.

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Given that we can test an argument for validity, it might seem that
we have a fully developed system to study arguments. However,
there is a significant practical difficulty with our semantic method
of checking arguments using truth tables (you may have already
noted this practical difficulty in chapter 3). Consider the following
argument:

Alison will go to the party.

If Alison will go to the party, then Beatrice will.
If Beatrice will go to the party, then Cathy will.
If Cathy will go to the party, then Diane will.
If Diane will go to the party, then Elizabeth will.
If Elizabeth will go to the party, then Fran will.
If Fran will go to the party, then Giada will.
If Giada will go to the party, then Hilary will.
If Hilary will go to the party, then Io will.
If Io will go to the party, then Julie will.

Julie will go to the party

Most of us will agree that this argument is valid. It has a rather

simple form, in which one sentence is related to the previous
sentence, so that we can see the conclusion follows from the
premises. Without bothering to make a translation key, we can see
the argument has the following form

P
(P→Q)
(Q→R)
(R→S)
(S→T)
(T→U)
(U→V)
(V→W)
(W→X)
(X→Y)
Y

65
Proofs

However, if we are going to check this argument, then the truth

table will require 1024 rows! This follows directly from our
observation that for arguments or sentences composed of n atomic
sentences, the truth table will require 2 n rows. This argument
contains 10 atomic sentences. A truth table checking its validity
must have 2 10 rows, and 2 10 =1024. Furthermore, it would be
trivial to extend the argument for another, say, ten steps, but then
the truth table that we make would require more than a million
rows!

For this reason, and for several others (which become evident
later, when we consider more advanced logic), it is very valuable
to develop a syntactic proof method. That is, a way to check
proofs not using a truth table, but rather using rules of syntax.

Here is the idea that we will pursue. A valid argument is an

argument such that, necessarily, if the premises are true, then the
conclusion is true. We will first start with our premises. We will
set aside the conclusion, only to remember it as a goal. Then, we
will aim to find a reliable way to introduce another sentence into
the argument, with the special property that, if the premises are
true, then this single additional s entence to the argument must also
be true. If we could find a method to do that, and if after repeated
applications of this method we were able to write down our
conclusion, then we would know that, necessarily, if our premises
are true then the conclusion is true.

The idea is much clear when we demonstrate it. The method for
introducing new sentences will be called “rules of inferencing”.
We introduce our first inference rules for the conditional.
Remember the truth table for the conditional:

Φ Ψ (Φ→Ψ)
T T T
T F F
F T T
F F T

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Look at this for a moment. If we have a conditional like (P→Q)

[looking at the truth table above, remember that this would mean
that we let Φ be P and Ψ be Q], do we know whether any other
sentence is true? From looking at (P→Q) alone we do not.
Whether (P→Q) is true, P could be false or Q could be false. But
what if we have some additional information? Suppose we have as
premises both (P→Q) and P. Then, we would know that if those
premises were true, Q must be true. We have already checked this
with a truth table.

premise premise
P Q (P→Q) P Q
T T T T T
T F F T F
F T T F T
F F T F F

The first row of the truth table is the only row where all of the
premises are true; and for it, we find that Q is true. This of course
generalizes to any conditional. That is, we have that:

premise premise
Φ Ψ (Φ→Ψ) Φ Ψ
T T T T T
T F F T F
F T T F T
F F T F F

We now capture this insight not using a truth table, but by

introducing a rule. The rule we will write out like this:

(Φ→Ψ)
Φ
Ψ

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Proofs

This is a syntactic rule. It is saying that, whenever we have written

down a formula in our language that has the shape of the first row
(that is, whenever we have a conditional), and whenever we also
have written down a formula that has the shape in the second row
(that is, whenever we also have written down the antecedent of the
conditional), then it’s okay to write down a formula as it is in the
third row (the consequent of the conditional). The rule talks about
the shape of the formulas, not their meaning. But of course we
justified the rule by looking at the meanings.

We describe this by saying that the third line is “derived” from the
earlier two lines using the inference rule.

This inference rule is old. We are therefore embalmed with its

well-established, but not very enlightening, name: “modus
ponens”. Thus we say, for the above example, that the third line is
derived from the earlier two lines using modus ponens.

Now let’s get into the depth of our chapter title, the d etailed
concept of proof; specifically, the direct proof. The idea of a direct
proof is that we write down as numbered lines the premises of our
argument. Thereafter, we can write down any line that is justified
by an application of an inference rule to earlier lines in the proof.
When we write down our conclusion, we are done.

Let us make a proof of the simple argument above, which has

premises (P→Q) and P, and conclusion Q. We start by writing
down the premises and numbering them. There is a useful bit of
notation that we can introduce at this point. It is known as a “Fitch
bar”, named after a logician Frederic Fitch, who developed this
technique. We will write a vertical bar to the left, with a
horizontal line indicating that the premises are above the line.

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1. (P→Q)
2. P

It is also helpful to identify where these steps came from. We can

do that with a little explanation written out to the right.

1. (P→Q) premise
2. P premise

Now, we are allowed to write down any line that follows from an
earlier line using an inference rule.

1. (P→Q) premise
2. P premise
3. Q

And finally we want a reader to understand what rule we used, so

we add that into our explanation, identifying the rule and the lines
used.

1. (P→Q) premise
2. P premise
3. Q Modus ponens, 1,2

This is a complete direct proof.

Notice a few things. The numbering of each line, and the

explanations to the right, are bookkeeping; they are not part of our
argument, but rather are used to explain our argument. Always do
them, however, since it is hard to understand a proof without
them. Also, note that our idea is that the inference rule can be
applied to any earlier line, including those lines derived using
inference rules. It is not just premises to which we can apply an
inference rule. Finally, note that we have established that this

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Proofs

argument must be valid. From the premises, and an inference rule

that preserves validity, we have arrived at the conclusion.
Necessarily, the conclusion is true, if the premises are true.

The long argument that we started with at the beginning of the

chapter with can now be analysed with a direct proof.

1. P premise
2. (P→Q) premise
3. (Q→R) premise
4. (R→S) premise
5. (S→T) premise
6. (T→U) premise
7. (U→V) premise
8. (V→W) premise
9. (W→X) premise
10. (X→Y) premise
11. Q modus ponens, 2,1
12. R modus ponens, 3, 11
13. S modus ponens, 4, 12
14. T modus ponens, 5,13
15. U modus ponens, 6, 14
16. V modus ponens, 7, 15
17. W modus ponens, 8, 16
18. X modus ponens, 9,17
19.. Y modus ponens, 10,18

From repeated applications of modus ponens, we arrived at the

conclusion. If lines 1 through 10 are true, line 19 must be true.
The argument is valid. And we completed it with 19 steps, as
opposed to writing out 1024 rows of a truth table.

We can see now one of the very important features of

understanding the difference between syntax and semantics. Our
goal is to make the syntax of our language perfectly mirror its

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semantics. By manipulating symbols, we manage to say

something about the world. This is a strange fact, one that
underlies one of the deeper possibilities of language, and also
ultimately of computers.

****

In many instances of ordinary thought and expression the

complete syllogistic form is omitted, or not stated at full length. It
is common usage to omit one premise of a syllogism, in ordinary
expression, the missing premise being inferred by the speaker and
hearer. A syllogism with one premise unexpressed is sometimes
called an enthymene, the term meaning “in the mind.” For
instance, the following: “We are a free people, therefore we are
happy,” the major premise “All free people are happy” being
omitted or unexpressed. Also in “Poets are imaginative, therefore
Byron was imaginative,” the minor premise “Byron was a poet” is
omitted or unexpressed.

Thus in the Sermon on the Mount, the verses known as the

Beatitudes consist each of one premise and a conclusion, and the
conclusion is put first. ‘Blessed are the merciful: for they shall
obtain mercy.’ The subject and the predicate of the conclusion are
here inverted, so that the proposition is really ‘The merciful are
blessed.’ It is evidently understood that ‘All who shall obtain
mercy are blessed,’ so that the syllogism, when stated at full
length, becomes: ‘All who shall obtain mercy are blessed; All who
are merciful shall obtain mercy; Therefore, all who are merciful
are blessed.’ This is a perfectly good syllogism.

Importantly, remember that whenever we find any of the words:

“because, for, therefore, since,” or similar terms, we may know
that there is an argument.

We have seen that there are three special kinds of propositions,

namely,

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Proofs

1. Categorical Propositions, or propositions in which

the affirmation or denial is made without reservation
or qualification;
2. Hypothetical Propositions, in which the affirmation
or denial is made to depend upon certain conditions,
circumstances, or suppositions; and
3. Disjunctive Propositions, in which is implied or
asserted an alternative.

Categorical Syllogisms, which are far more common than the

other two kinds, have been considered in the previous chapters,
and the majority of the examples of syllogisms given in this book
are of this kind. In a Categorical Syllogism the statement or denial
is made positively, and without reservation or qualification; the
reasoning thereupon partakes of the same positive character. In
propositions or syllogisms of this kind it is asserted or assumed
that the premise is true and correct, and, if the reasoning be
logically correct it must follow that the conclusion is correct, and
the new proposition springing therefrom must likewise be
categorical in its nature.

Hypothetical Syllogisms, on the contrary, have as one or more of

their premises a hypothetical proposition which affirms or asserts
something provided, or “if,” something else be true. Often we
wish first to bring out, if only conditionally, the truth upon which
a proposition rests, so as to see if the connection between this
conclusion and the major premise be admitted. The whole
question will then depend upon the matter of treating the minor
premise. This has the advantage of getting the major premise
admitted without the formal procedure of proof, and the minor
premise is usually more easily proved than the major.
Consequently, one is made to see more clearly the force of the
argument or reasoning by removing the question of the material
truth of the major premise and concentrating attention upon the
relation between the conclusion and its conditions, so that we
know clearly what we have first to deny if we do not wish to
accept it. The Hypothetical Syllogism may be either affirmative or
negative; that is, its hypothetical proposition may either

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hypothetically affirm or hypothetically deny . The part of the

premise of a hypothetical s yllogism which conditions or questions
(and which usually contains the little word “if”) is called the
antecedent. The major premise is the one usually thus
conditioned. The other part of the conditioned proposition, and
which part states what will happen or is true under the conditiona l
circumstances, is called the consequent. Thus, in one of our earlier
examples: “If Raila wins elections” is the Antecedent; and the
remainder of the proposition: “Raila will be President” is the
Consequent. The Antecedent is indicated by the presence of some
conditional term as: if, supposing, granted that, provided that,
although, had, were, etc., the general sense and meaning of such
terms being that of the little word “if.” The consequent has no
special indicating term.

The Disjunctive Syllogism is one having a disjunctive proposition

in its major premise. The disjunctive proposition also appears in
the conclusion when the disjunction in the major premise happens
to contain more than two terms. A disjunctive proposition, we
have seen, is one which possesses alternative predicates for the
subject in which the conjunction “or” (sometimes accompanied by
“either”) appears. In example, consider the following: instance:
“The meal is either lunch or dinner;” or, “Arches are either round
or pointed;” or, “Angles are either obtuse, or right angled, or
acute.” The different things joined together by “or” are called
alternatives, the term indicating that we may choose between the
things, and that if one will not answer purpose we may take the
other, or one of the others if there be more than one other.

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 CHAPTER SIX

the anxiety from greece

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Before entering upon many strange beliefs of the ancient Greeks

and the extraordinary number of gods they worshiped, we must
first consider what kind of beings these divinities were.

In appearance, the gods were supposed to resemble mortals

whom, however, the surpassed in beauty, grandeur and strength;
they were also more commanding in stature, height being
considered by the Greeks an attribute of beauty in man and
woman. They resembled human beings in their feelings and
habits; intermarrying and having children, and requiring daily
nourishment to recruit their strength and refreshing sleep to store
their energies. Their blood, a bright ethereal fluid called Ichor,
never engendered any disease, and when shed, had the power of
producing new life.

The Greeks believed that the mental qualifications of their gods

were of much higher order than those of men, but nevertheless,
they were not considered to be exempt from human passions and
frequently behold them actuated by revenge, deceit and jealousy.
They however always punish the evil-doer, and visit with dire
calamities any impious mortal who dares to neglect their worship
or despise their rites. We often here them visiting mankind and
partaking of their hospitality; and not unfrequently, gods and
goddesses become attached to mortals with whom they unite
themselves, the offspring of these unions being called heroes or
demi-gods, who were usually known for their great strength and
courage. But although there were many points of resemblance
between gods and men, there remained one characteristic
distinction; the gods were immortal. Still, they were not
invulnerable and often hear of them being wounded and suffering
in consequence such exquisite torture that they have earnestly
prayed to be deprived of their privilege of immortality.

The gods knew no limitation of time and space, being able to

transport themselves to incredible distances with the speed of
thought. They possessed the power of rendering themselves
invisible at will, and could assume the forms of other men or
animals as it suited their convenience. They could also transform

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human beings into trees, stones, animal’s et.cetera either as

punishment for their misdeeds or as a means of protecting the
individual, thus transformed from impending danger.

Their robes were like those worn by the mortals but perfect in
form and of much fine texture. Their weapons also resembled
those used by mankind; we hear of spears, helmets, shields, bows
and arrows et.cetera being employed by the gods. Each deity
possessed a beautiful chariot, which, drawn by horses or ot her
animals of celestial breed, conveyed them rapidly over land and
sea according to their pleasure. Most of these divinities lived on
the summit of Mount Olympus, each possessing his or her
individual habitation and all meeting together on festive occasio ns
in the council chamber of the gods, where their banquets were
enlivened by the sweet strains of Apollo’s lyre, while the beautiful
voices of the Muses poured forth their rich melodies to their
harmonious accompaniment.

Magnificent temples were erected to their honour, where they

were worshiped with the greatest solemnity; rich gifts were
presented to them and animals and sometimes human beings were
sacrificed on their altars.

When the Greeks first settled in Italy, they found in the country
they colonized a mythology belonging to the Celtic inhabitants,
which according to the Greek custom of paying reverence to all
gods, known or unknown, they rapidly adopted, selecting and
appropriating those divinities which had the greatest affinity to
their own, and thus they formed a religious belief which naturally
bore the impress of its ancient Greek source. As the primitive
Celts, however, were a less civilised people than the Greeks, their
mythology was of a more barbarious character and this
circumstance, combined with the fact that the Romans were
captivated with the vivid imagination of their Greek neighbours,
leaves its mark on the Roman mythology which is far less fertile
in fanciful conceits and deficient in all those fairy -like stories and
wonderfully poetic ideas which strongly characterize that of the
Greeks.

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Religion was a bargaining process: if a man did his duty, he had a

right to expect the god to do his. Do ut des – I give so that you
may give – was the usual sacrificial prayer. Romans were always
in spirit an agricultural people, thinking in terms of cause and
effect, of reaping what one sows. The rhythms of their worship
followed the rhythms of the seasons.

The ancient Greeks had several different theories about the origin
of the world but, the generally accepted syllogisms were that
before this world came into existence, there was only the infinite
space known as Chaos. Inside this void were two creatures Erebus
and Nyx, two big birds with black wings. Nyx laid a golden egg
and for ages sat upon it. When it finally hatched, out came Eros,
the god of love. One half of the shell rose up to become the sky or
firmament and constituted itself into a vast overarching vault. The
other half of the shell transformed into a solid mass beneath. This
was the beginning of the two great primeval deities of the Greeks,
Uranus and Gaia.

Uranus, the more refined deity, represented the light and air of
heaven, possessing the distinguished qualities of light, heat, purity
and omnipresence, while Gaia, the firm flat, life-sustaining earth,
was worshiped as the great all-nourishing mother. Her many titles
refer to her more or less in this character and she appears to have
been universally revered among the Greeks, there being scarcely a
city in Greece which did not erect a temple in her honour.

Uranus the heaven was believed to have united himself in

marriage with Gaia, the earth; and their first-born child was
Oceanus, the ocean stream, the vast expanse of ever flowing water
which encircled the earth. The ocean is formed from the rains
which descend from heaven and the streams which flow from the
earth. They had many other children; among them were three
giants and seven titans.

It is presumed that two siblings Erebus (darkness) and Nyx (night)

copulated resulting into that big egg because they were the very
first creatures to exist within Chaos; but when Uranus was born, it

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made it difficult for Erebus to habituate freely because of too

much light and thus was forced to flee and reign in that
mysterious world where no ray of sunshine, no gleam of daylight,
nor vestige of health-giving-terrestial life ever appeared. Nyx, the
sister of Erebus, represented night and was worshiped by ancients
with greatest solemnity.

Uranus was also united with Nyx and their children were Eos
(Aurora) the Dawn and Hemera, the Daylight. Nyx again, on her
side was also doubly united, having been married for some
indefinite period to Erebus.

As we have noted in the beginning, Uranus fathered the Titans

upon Gaia after he had thrown his rebellious sons, the Cyclopes
(or three giants), into Tartarus, a gloomy place in the underworld,
which lies as far distant from the earth as the earth does from the
sky; it would take a falling anvil nine days to reach its bottom. In
revenge, Gaia persuaded the Titans to attack their father; and they
did so, led by Cronus, the youngest of the seven, whom she armed
with a flint sickle. They surprised Uranus as he slept, and it was
with the flint sickle that the merciless Cronus castrated Uranus,
grasping his genitals with the left hand (which has ever since been
the hand of ill - omen) and afterwards throwing them, and the
sickle too, into the sea by Cape Drepanum. But drops of blood
flowing from the wound fell upon Gaia, and she bore the Three
Erinnyes, furies who avenge crimes of parricide and perjury - by
name Alecto, Tisiphone, and Megaera. The nymphs of the ash -
tree, called the Meliae, also sprang from that blood.

Cronus married his sister Rhea, to whom the oak is sacred. But it
was prophesied by Gaia, and by his dying father Uranus, that one
of his own sons would dethrone him. Thus, every year he
swallowed the children whom Rhea bore him: first Hestia, then
Demeter and Hera, then Hades, then Poseidon.

Rhea was enraged. She bore Zeus, her third son, at dead of night
on Mount Lycaeum in Arcadia, where no creature casts a shadow
and, having bathed him in the River Neda, gave him to Gaia; by

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whom he was carried to Lyctos in Crete, and hidden in the cave of

Dicte on the Aegean Hill. Gaia left him there to be nursed by the
Ash - nymph Adrasteia and her sister Io, both daughters of
Melisseus, and by the nymph Amaltheia. His food was honey, and
he drank Amaltheia's milk, with nymph Pan, his foster brother.
Zeus was grateful to these three nymphs for their kindness and,
when he became Lord of the Universe, set Amaltheia's image
among the stars, as Capricorn. He also borrowed one of her horns,
which resembled a cow's, and gave it to the daughters of
Melisseus; it became the famous Cornucopia, or horn of plenty,
which is always filled with whatever food or drink its owner may
desire. But some say that Zeus was suckled by a sow, and rode on
her back, and that he lost his navel - string at Omphalion near
Cnossus.

Around the infant Zeus's golden cradle, which was hung upon a
tree to hide him from Cronus, stood the armed Curetes who were
also sons to Rhea's. They clashed their spears against their shields,
and shouted to drown the noise of his wailing, lest Cronus might
hear it from far off. For Rhea had wrapped a stone in swaddling
clothes, which she gave to Cronus on Mount Thaumasium in
Arcadia; he swallowed it, believing that he was swallowing the
infant Zeus. Nevertheless, Cronus got wind of what had happened
and pursued Zeus, who transformed himself into a serpent and his
nurses into bears: hence the constellations of the Serpent and the
Bears.

Zeus grew to manhood among the shepherds of Ida, occupying

another cave; then sought out Metis the Titaness, who lived beside
the Ocean stream. On her advice he visited his mother Rhea, and
asked to be made Cronus's cup - bearer. Rhea readily assisted him
in his task of vengeance; she provided the emetic potion, which
Metis had told him to mix with Cronus's honeyed drink. Cronus,
having drunk deep, vomited up first the stone, and then Zeus's
elder brothers and sisters. They sprang out unhurt and, in
gratitude, asked him to lead them in a war against the Titans, who
chose the gigantic Atlas as their leader; for Cronus was now past
his prime.

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The war lasted ten years but, at last, Gaia prophesied victory to
her grandson Zeus, if he took as allies those whom Cronus had
confined in Tartarus; so he came secretly to Campe, the old jailer
of Tartarus, killed her, took her keys and, having released the
Cyclopes (giants), strengthened them with divine food and drink.
The Cyclopes thereupon gave Zeus the thunderbolt as a weapon of
offence; and Hades, a helmet of darkness; and Poseidon, a trident.

After the three brothers had held a counsel of war, Hades entered
unseen into Cronus's presence, to steal his weapons; and, while
Poseidon threatened him with the trident and thus diverted his
attention, Zeus struck him down with the thunderbolt. The three
Giants now took up rocks and pelted the remaining Titans and a
sudden shout from nymph Pan put them to flight. The gods rushed
in pursuit. Cronus, and all the defeated Titans, except Atlas, were
banished to Africa in the farthest west (or, some say, confined in
Tartarus). Atlas, as their war - leader, was awarded an exemplary
punishment, being ordered to carry the sky on his shoulders; but
the Titanesses were spared, for the sake of Metis and Rhea.

Hera, daughter of Cronus and Rhea, having been born on the

island of Samos or, some say, at Argos, was brought up in Arcadia
by Temenus, son of Pelasgus. The Seasons were her nurses. After
banishing their father Cronus, Hera's twin - brother Zeus sought
her out at Cnossus in Crete or, some say, on Mount Thornax (now
called Cuckoo Mountain) in Argolis, where he courted her, at first
unsuccessfully. She took pity on him only when he adopted the
disguise of a bedraggled cuckoo, and tenderly warmed him in her
bosom. There he at once resumed his true shape and ravished her,
so that she was shamed into marrying him.

All the gods brought gifts to the wedding; notably Gaia gave Hera
a tree with golden apples, which was later guarded by the
Hesperides in Hera's orchard on Mount Atlas. She and Zeus spent
their wedding night on Samos, and it lasted three hundred years.
Hera bathes regularly in the spring of Canathus, near Argos, and
thus renews her virginity.

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Only Zeus, the Father of Heaven, might wield the thunderbolt;

and it was with the threat of its fatal flash that he controlled his
quarrelsome and rebellious family of Mount Olympus. He also
ordered the heavenly bodies, made laws, enforced oaths, and
pronounced oracles. When his mother Rhea, foreseeing what
trouble his lust would cause, forbade him to marry, he angrily
threatened to violate her. Though she at once turned into a serpent,
this did not daunt Zeus, who became a male serpent and, twining
about her in an indissoluble knot, made good his threat. It was
then that he began his long series of adventures in love. He
fathered the Seasons and the Three Fates on Themis; the Charites
on Eurynome; the Three Muses on Mnemosyne, with whom he lay
for nine nights; and, some say, Persephone, the Queen of the
underworld, whom his brother Hades forcibly married, on the
nymph Styx. Thus he lacked no power either above or below
earth; and his wife Hera was equal to him in one thing alone: that
she could still bestow the gift of prophecy on any man or beast she
pleased.

Amorous Zeus lay with numerous nymphs descended from the

Titans or the gods and, after the creation of man, with mortal
women too; no less than four great Olympian deities were born to
him out of wedlock. First, he begat Hermes on Maia, daughter of
Atlas, who bore him in a cave on Mount Cyllene in Arcadia. Next,
he begat Apollo and Artemis on Leto, daughter of the Titans Coeus
and Phoebe, transforming himself and her into quails when they
coupled; but jealous Hera sent the serpent Python to pursue Leto
all over the world, and decreed that she should not be delivered in
any place where the sun shone. Carried on the wings of the South
Wind, Leto at last came to Ortygia, close to Delos, where she bore
Artemis, who was no sooner born than she helped her mother
across the narrow straits, and there, between an olive - tree and a
date - palm growing on the north side of Delian Mount Cynthus,
delivered her of Apollo on the ninth day of labour.

It will be later seen that Zeus love for sexual affairs even resulted
in him having relations with many mortals whom he had created

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with the help of Prometheus. This would be the beginning of

godmen.

Prometheus, the creator of mankind, whom some include among

the seven Titans, was the son either of the Titan Eurymedon, or of
Iapetus by the nymph Clymene; and his brothers were Epimetheus,
Atlas, and Menoetius. Gigantic Atlas, eldest of the brothers, knew
all the depths of the sea; he ruled over a kingdom with a
precipitous coastline, larger than Africa and Asia put together.
This land of Atlantis lay beyond the Pillars of Heracles, and a
chain of fruit-bearing islands separated it from a farther continent,
unconnected with Africa. Atlas’s people canalized and cultivated
an enormous central plain, fed by water from the hills which
ringed it completely, except for a seaward gap. They also built
palaces, baths, race-courses, great harbour works, had temples;
and carried war not only westwards as far as the other continent,
but eastward as far as Egypt and Italy.

Zeus was suspicious of other gods who lived away from Olympus
and wanted to create humans whom would serve him at
unconditionally, he had a lengthy discussion with Prometheus
who agreed to help, both in advice and managing whatever was
created. The first race was perfect and cast out of gold. They never
grew old, and happily lived off of the trees fruit. However, they
lived in such peacefulness that did not wake up after going to
sleep. Zeus then melted down their bodies and left their souls to
watch over the people he would create next. They were created
out of silver, extraordinarily vain and beautiful; they would stare
at themselves endlessly and from their pride assumed that they
themselves were the gods who ruled the earth. This was
unacceptable, so Zeus buried the race of silver and created the
Bronze race instead. They immediately began to create tools and
build industries. This satisfied Zeus, but then the race used their
tools, arrows, swords, and clubs, to turn on each other and
slaughtered themselves in war. Zeus had to begin again, and this
last race was created from iron, the only metal left to him. This
race grew old and rusted. They worked, loved, an d died. Because
of this, they also prayed to the gods and fearfully revered them.

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When he was creating the earliest of this race, Zeus requested aid
from one of the Titans name Prometheus, who soon became
intrigued with these humans. He trusted them as Zeus did not, for
Zeus feared that they may one day overpower him as he had his
father, and as his father had before as well. Thus, on the command
of Zeus, fire was hidden from mankind, and there was no chance
for this newest race to rise higher than those before him. Without
fire, they must eat raw meat, eat no bread, or make tools or
weapons of metal. They would not be able to make pots or bowls
of clay, as they did not have fire to harden them by.

Prometheus pitied mankind, and decided to steal fire fro m Mount

Olympus and give it to them so that they could rise above the
beasts. He knew how terrible and long his punishment would be,
but he did it anyway.

One night he carried the flame from Olympus to earth. As soon as

it was on earth and the first blaze was kindled, mankind had it
forever. Prometheus made haste and taught man how to use fire,
and by the time Zeus saw what was happening, man was already
quite civilized. He instantly who had given this gift of fire, and
decided on a most horrible punishment. A giant vulture was sent
to eat Prometheus’s liver as he was chained to a stone. This was
not only a one-time thing, as every day the vulture would come,
and every night a new liver would grow. He was to be punished
forever in this way.

Zeus also decided to give his own terrible gift to mankind. He

said, I myself will offer them a gift. It is a beautiful one, and they
will love it dearly. However, it shall bring them suffering, and
many ills now and for eternity.

First he summoned his son Hephaestus, god of craftsmen and all

who labour at the workshop or kiln, to make a lovely image out of
clay. It was in the shape of a maiden, likened in the shape of the
goddesses themselves. Then Athena, goddess of wisdom and
weaving and needlework, taught her all that she knew. Then the

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quick-witted messenger, Hermes, taught her to speak and to tell

clever lies in order to deceive men. Aphrodite, goddess of love
and beauty, made her beautiful so that men should fall in love and
break themselves because of her. Zeus was finally pleased and
blew life into the image. He gave her a beautiful box, and told her
that she must never open it. Your name is Pandora said Zeus. It
means all-gifted for we have all given you gifts. He was speaking
of the gifts that formed her being, but he said this purposefully,
for he knew that Pandora would think he was speaking of the
treasures in the box.

Hermes then took her and the precious box down to Earth and
gave her to Epimetheus, who was the brother to Prometheus.
Prometheus, who had the gift of foresight, warned Epimetheus
never to accept a gift from Zeus, as it could cause terrible
consequences among humankind. Epimetheus, however, could not
refuse such a beautiful gift. Epimetheus, said Hermes, you have
been chosen to be the luckiest of men. This is Pandora, the first
woman, and she has chosen you to be her husband. Take her and
she will tend to you and care for you. Take this box as well, but
guard it carefully and never let anyone open it, for it could bring
destruction to mankind. Above all, do not let Pandora open it!

He then flew back to Olympus, leaving Epimetheus extremely

happy, for he had fallen in love with her immediately. Life was so
dull and lonely without a woman he said. I have been given this
beautiful creature, the first of her kind! They were very happy at
first. Pandora cooked and cleaned, and looked after Epimetheus,
and was perfect for him. But she was curious to see what was in
the box that was given to her, and constantly questioned him
about it. This was the only thing he could not do for her;
numerous times he told her not to touch the box, but each time her
desire to know grew stronger.

They are mine, and the immortals gave them to me. My name
means all-gifted, they are for me to open! She often imagined the
treasures inside that lay waiting for her, the garments that longed
to be worn, all in colours more brilliant than the sun.

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At last her curiosity could no longer wait, and she snuck away to
the magic box one night, broke the seal, and raised the lid. There
was a great whirlwind, and out like a thousand bats flew the
plagues that Zeus had prepared for humankind. Want, and
suffering, Hunger, thirst, Jealousy and mistrust of fellow man, lies
and envy, and all diseases which plague men, immune to all
medicines. The terrified Pandora slammed the box shut, but it
was too late. All the evils had already been let out and were
around the globe causing troubles to all of mankind.

Only one of these gifts was good, and this alone allowed mankind
to continue. This gift was hope. For without this gift, man would
die of despair. But hope is always the last resort for all troubles; it
seems that it is brought out only when situations cannot get any
worse. That after misfortune, things will turn around. This is the
gift of hope that we now have, urging us to look forward to all of
our futures.

***

And so this gives a glimpse into the generation of gods, their

intermarriages was expected to produce more gods and this
became a justification for pluralistic worship amongst the Greeks.
From two sibling deities, an endless number of gods was produced
who transformed how the infinite space called Chaos was to
purpose itself; and with the belief that Zeus and his aide,
Prometheus created mankind before sending the woman Pandora
to be defiled, there had to be a need for worship. These being
myths, they still explain to a greater extent the scope of
civilisation as we experience it today.

However, it is quite remarkable that all these myths could latterly

have been considered as relatively late creations of speculation or
exegesis. With full regard to the caution that is here called for it
may still be positively asserted that of all possible interpretations
this is the least probable. Whatever the original meaning of thes e
stories may have been, their astonishing, romantic, and gigantic

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qualities are proof of their validity as creations of genuine and

original mythic thought, or rather, viewpoint. They are quite
analogous to the first rank growth of myths among primitive
civilizations and strike us with the same sense of strangeness

In this context of traditional Greek story, myths are traditional

credence narratives whose principal characters are gods and other
supernatural beings, whose events are set in the remote past
during the formative era of the cosmos, and whose central topics,
taken as a whole, are the origins of the physical world
(cosmogony), of the gods (theogony), and of human beings
(anthropogony), as well as the establishment of cosmic order.
Other notable topics of Greek myth are important events in the
lives of the gods (birth, loves and conflicts, acquisition of
prerogatives, founding of cult sites), the establishment of the
conditions of human life such as the advent of toil and death, and
cosmic catastrophes such as the Great Deluge. The lives of the
gods are only partial biographies, for once divinities are born they
quickly mature and thereafter remain indefinitely at a particular
developmental stage, usually mature adulthood .

Toward the end of the mythic period, the physical cosmos

possesses its present structure and nature in its essentials, the
Olympian gods are in firm charge, the relationship of gods and
humans has been defined, and the basic qualities of human
existence have been determined. In s hort, the big matters have
been taken care of.

The mythic era as described above is a feature of the Greeks more

than it should be of the Roman tradition; at least initially, since
Roman sources preserved of little native traditional myth. Such
myths as the Romans once had either ceased to be told or were
historicized by being converted into episodes of early Roman
history. Subsequently the Romans reacquired myth s by
borrowing, primarily from the Greeks.

A study of Greek mythology should begin with a co nsideration of

what political and religious systems existed in Europe before the

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arrival of Aryan invaders from the distant North and East. The
whole of Neolithic Europe, to judge from surviving artefacts and
myths, had a remarkably homogeneous system of religious ideas,
based on worship of the many-titled-mother-goddess, who was
also known in Syria and Libya.

Although it is usual in anthropological and folkloristic scholarship

to characterize myth as sacred narrative, this feature is not part of
the present definition because sacredness does not make a good fit
in the Greek and Roman case, and classicists rarely speak of
myths and sacredness in the same breath. Myths do not appear to
have been regarded as sacred stories in the classical lands, unless
one means by sacred a narrative in which deities play a role, in
which case the category of sacred story is too large to be of any
practical use. The Greeks did acknowledge a genre of traditional
story to which they expressly attributed the quality of sacredness,
namely, “sacred story” (hieros logos).

In very remote times, the Greeks had no shrines or sanctuaries

devoted to public worship, but performed their devotions beneath
the vast and boundless canopy of heaven, in the great temple of
nature itself. Believing that their divinities throned above the
clouds, pious worshippers always sought the highest available
points, in order to place themselves in the closest communion
possible with their gods; hence the summits of high mountains
were selected for their devotional purposes, and the more exalted
the rank and importance of the divinity invoked, the more elevated
was the site for his or her worship. But the inconvenience of
attending this mode of worship gradually suggested the idea of
erecting edifices which would afford means of shelter from the
inclemency of the weather. These structures, were, in the first
instance, the most simplest of form and without any decorations;
but with the progress of civilisation, the Greeks became a wealthy
and a powerful people. Temples were built and adorned with the
greatest splendour and magnificence, talent, labour and wealth
being lavished unsparingly on their erection and decoration;
indeed, so massively were they constructed and today, some have
withstood the ravages of time. The city of Athens especially

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contains numerous remains of these building of antiquity. On the

Acropolis we may still hold other monuments of ancient art, the
temple of Athene-Polius and that of Theseus, the latter which is
the most entire ancient edifice in the world. In the island of Delos,
also, are to be seen the temples of Apollo and Artemis, both of
which are in a wonderful state of preservation. These ruins are
most valuable, being sufficiently complete to enable us to study,
by their aid, the plan and character of their original structure.

A temple was usually dedicated to two or more gods, and was

always built after the manner considered most acceptable to the
particular divinities to whom it was consecrated; for just as trees,
birds and animals of every description were held to be sacred to
certain deities, so almost every god had a form of building
peculiar to himself, which was deemed more acceptable to him
than any other. Thus, the Doric style of architecture was sacred to
Zeus, Ares and Heracles; the Ionic to Apollo, Artemis and
Dionysus; and the Corinthian to Hestia.

In the porch of the temple stood a vessel of stone or brass,

containing the holy water (which had been consecrated by putting
into it a burning torch, taken from the altar), with which all those
admitted to take part in the sacrifices were besprinkled. In the
inmost recess of the sanctuary was the most holy place, into which
none but the priests were suffered to enter.

Temples in the country were usually surrounded with grooves of

trees. The solitude of these shady retreats naturally tended to
inspire the worshipper with awe and reverence, added to which
the delightful shade and coolness afforded by tall leafy trees is
peculiarly grateful in hot countries. That this practice must be of
very remote antiquity is proved by the Biblical injunction, having
its objects for separation of the Jews from all idolatrous practices:
“Thou shalt not plant thee a grove of trees near unto the altar of
the Lord thy God”.

In the new age, which conceives the essence of the world and of
human life in lofty figures, myth no longer enjoys the sovereign

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independence and capacity for the fabulous which it had

possessed in the prehistoric period. The distinction between the
two will become clear in the sequel.

Along with ancient myth, magic also perished, and though both
may have survived here and there in Greece in one form or
another, the main line of the Greek spirit proves that it had once
and for all decided against them. The god’s no longer practiced
enchantment, even though at times they bring things to pass in a
manner reminiscent of ancient magic. Their might, like their
essence, is based not on magical power, but on the being of
nature. "Nature" is the great new word which the matured Greek
spirit opposed to ancient magic. From here the path leads directly
to the arts and to the sciences of the Greeks.

****
Greek mythology has inspired almost every person who has come
into contact with its countless delights and bewitching magic.
Because these ancient stories are so exciting and present
interpretations of some natural phenomena, they are constantly
cropping up in various forms today. We see them in modern plays,
novels, television programs, movies and even in advertisements.

The mediaeval emissaries of the Catholic Church brought to

Great Britain, in addition to the whole corpus of sacred history, a
continental university system based on the Greek and Latin
Classics. Such native legends as those of King Arthur, Guy of
Warwick, Robin Hood, the Blue Hag of Leicester, and King Lear
were considered suitable enough for the masses, yet by early
Tudor times the clergy and the educated classes were referring far
more frequently to the myths cited in Ovid, Virgil, and the
grammar school summaries of the Trojan War. Though official
English literature of the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries
cannot, therefore, be properly understood except in the light of
Greek mythology, the Classics have lately lost so much ground in
schools and universities that an educated person is now no longer
expected to know (for instance) who Deucalion, Pelops,
Daedalus, Oenone, Laocoön, or Antigone may have been. Current

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knowledge of these myths is mostly derived from such fairy -story

versions as Kingsley’s Heroes and Hawthorne’s Tanglewood
Tales; and at first sight this does not seem to matter much,
because for the last two thousand years it has been the fashion to
dismiss the myths as bizarre and chimerical fancies, a charming
legacy from the childhood of the Greek intelligence, which the
Church naturally depreciates in order to emphasize the greater
spiritual importance of the Bible. Yet it is difficult to overestimate
their value in the study of early European history, religion, and
sociology.

Mythology and mythological ideas permeate all languages,

cultures and lives. Myths affect us in many ways, from the
language we use to how we tell time; mythology is an integral
presence. The influence mythology has in our most basic
traditions can be observed in the language, customs, rituals, values
and morals of every culture, yet the limited extent of our
knowledge of mythology is apparent. In general we have today a
poor understanding of the significance of myths in our lives. One
way of studying a culture is to study the underlying mythological
beliefs of that culture, the time period of the origins of the
culture’s myths, the role of myth in society, the symbols used to
represent myths, the commonalties and differences regarding
mythology, and the understanding a culture has of its myths. Such
an exploration leads to a greater understanding of the essence of a
culture.

Mostly so, the words which came from Greek before the
Renaissance were generally popular borrowings that they were
adopted by the common people, who knew no Greek, rather than
by scholars. Furthermore, such words often entered English
indirectly, not only by way of Latin, but sometimes by way of Old
French, or even, in some cases, through Arabic. They therefore
usually show considerable divergence in form from the Greek
original. But conclusively, the world languages as we know them
today have much been influenced by the mythologies of the
Greek, for example, phobia means a fear of. The word phobia
comes from the name Phobos, the son of the Greek god Ares.

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Phobos literally meant fear or terror. Example of use: Mary Ellen

had a phobia about speaking English to her boss until she gained
some confidence by taking an English class. Atlas is a book of
maps from Atlas, a Titan who held the world on his shoulders.
Example of use: I looked in the atlas to learn more about the
European countries. Cereal is wheat, oat and corn from Ceres,
goddess of agriculture. Example of use: The restaurant served a
range of healthy cereals for breakfast. Cloth is fabric formed by
weaving from Clotho, the Fate that spun the thread of life.

Among scholarly interpreters of the West, it has been widely

understood that Western civilization was formed from three
distinct traditions: (1) the classical culture of Greece and Rome;
(2) the Christian religion, particularly Western Christianity; and
(3) the Enlightenment of the modern era. Although many
interpreters have seen Western civilization as a synthesis of all
three traditions, others have emphasized the conflict among these
threads.

Consequently, myths relate the creation of the world and

sometimes its future destruction as well. They tell how gods
created men. They depict the relationships between various gods
and men. They provide a moral code by which to live. In short,
myths largely deal with the significant aspects of human and
superhuman existence.

Myths, whether in written or visual form, serve a vital role of

asking unanswerable questions and providing unquestionable
answers. Most of us, most of the time, have a low tolerance for
ambiguity and uncertainty. We want to reduce the cognitive
dissonance of not knowing by filling the gaps with answers.
Traditionally, religious myths have served that role, but today -
the age of science - science fiction is our mythology.

The Greek mythology is most likely rooted to the old religions of

Creti (Kríti), an area (island) in the Aegean Sea, where about 3000
B.C the earliest civilization in this area emerged. Those
individuals were convinced that the totality of natural things

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acquired spirits, and some things or fetishes acquired exceptional

supernatural capacities. Throughout times, changes occurred
within those convictions and became a group of legends including
natural things, animals and gods acquiring humankind shape.
Then, among those legends, there were certain legends remaining
within the classical Greek mythology.

As Greeks life and way of thinking changed, social circumstances

were not the same. Art became better, poetry and philosophy
became complex, so utterance of the mythical stories and their
meanings were no more the same and were transformed.
Mythology was not a fixed and unchanging system; rather it
witnessed development and change. Greek mythology has to be
considered as a collection of legends passed down through
individuals and persons who used poesy during generations;
constantly depicting the growing life and soul of a significant
race.

It is widely argued that the intellectual collection of the greconian

myths including but not limited to their plagiarised culture, has
had a great influence to western civilisation, a time that Europe
has defined global trend to be the middle ages. Thus, European
middle ages form a complex and varied as well as a very
considerable period of human history. Within their thousand years
of time they include a large variety of peoples, institutions, and
types of culture, illustrating many processes of historical
development and containing the origins of many phases of modern
civilization. Contrasts of East and West, of the North and the
Mediterranean, of old and new, sacred and profane, ideal and
actual, give life and colour and movement to this period, while its
close relations alike to antiquity and to modern world assure it a
place in the continuous history of human development. Both
continuity and change are characteristic of middle ages, as indeed
of all great epochs of history.

But in late antiquity and the middle ages, the otherwise fairly
steady progress of Western civilization in accumulating
knowledge was interrupted several times. As school curricula

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became more restricted and fewer people received any education

at all, people wrote and read less, and some of the literary works
in these earlier times were permanently lost. Eventually, each of
these periods of relative ignorance ended with a new expansion of
knowledge. The cultural setbacks, of varying severity, maybe
called dark ages; the cultural revivals, of varying vigour, may be
called renaissance. The background for this renaissance is
extensive. Many of the ancient Greek writings had survived in the
Byzantine Empire. Their translation into Arabic began with
alchemical, astrological, and medical texts in the time of the
Umayyads. It was accelerated under the Abbasids and included
both scientific and philosophical works. Partly on the basis of
Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus there developed a tradition of
Islamic philosophy that included Al-Kindi, Al-Razi, Al-Farabi, Ibn
Sina, Al-Ghazali, Ibn Rushd, and others.

In the twelfth century, many of these works in Greek, Hebrew,

and Arabic were translated into Latin - the literary and
philosophical language of Catholic Europe. There were a number
of places that functioned as conduits for this literature. Sicily was
one. Spain was another. Within Spain, translation was done at
many cities, but one of the great centres was Toledo. The twelfth
century in Europe was in many respects an age of fresh and
vigorous life. The epoch of the Crusades, of the rise of towns, and
of the earliest bureaucratic states of the West, it saw the
culmination of Romanesque art and the beginnings of Gothic; the
emergence of the vernacular literatures, the revival of the Latin
Classics and of Latin poetry and Roman Law; the recovery of
Greek science, with its Arabic additions, and of much of Greek
philosophy; and the origin of the first European universities. The
twelfth century left its signature on higher education, on the
scholastic philosophy, on European systems of law, on
architecture and sculpture, on the liturgical drama, on Latin and
vernacular poetry.

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CHAPTER SEVEN

hermeneutics
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When you read, your mind sees shapes on the page. We call them
letters. By years of being taught and associating you have learned
(with your mind) that these shapes stand for sounds (vowels and
consonants). You have also learned that, when grouped in certain
ways (tens of thousands of ways), these letters make words that
signify objects and persons and actions and descriptions and ideas
and feelings.

You have learned (by the use of your mind) that thousands of
these words correspond to realities (milk, darkness, joy, love, and
mother). And you have learned that, since other people also know
what these words correspond to, you can communicate. Ideas that
are inside another person’s mind can be transferred through words
into your mind.

This is one of the main goals of reading. I text you a message:

“Meet you at the shop in five.” The aim of reading this message is
not a mystical experience or a creative reconstruction. The aim is
for my idea - my intention - to move from my mind to your mind.
This takes thinking. We have done it so often that there is virtually
no effort in this act of thinking. Your brain is really working as
you read and construe the meaning of this message. But you are so
good at it that there’s no effort. Your mind is superbly trained for
this. You could not have done this when you were a two year old.
The training of your mind has come a long way.

So reading involves thinking - the astonishing act of recognizing

symbols and making connections that enable you to construe
meaning. We only recognize what a challenge this is when we
start to read more complex texts - texts that have unfamiliar
words, or involved sentence structure, or logical connections that
are not immediately clear. When that’s the case, either we give up
quickly or we think harder. This is what we have in mind by
thinking - working hard with our minds to figure out meaning
from texts. Then, of course, we go on from there to think how that
meaning relates to other meanings from other texts and from
experiences in life. On and on the mind goes, until we build a

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coherent view of the world so that we can live a life that is rooted
in a true understanding of meaning.

We have already seen in chapter two that by logic - or you could

use the word reason - that way of thinking that enables you to
see how the words works and that keeps you from using them
wrongly. For example, when logic or reason is working well, you
don’t say things like: “All dogs have four legs. This horse has four
legs. Therefore, this horse is a dog.” If you heard this you would
say it’s not true. And the reason it’s not true is that the conclusion
does not follow from the premises. “All dogs have four legs”
doesn’t mean only dogs have four legs. And therefore the premise
doesn’t lead you to believe that a horse is a dog. Other animals
have four legs besides dogs.

Human understanding has become the universal door, process,

filter, through which all thought of whatever kind must pass. The
being of the world, the being of truth, the being of one's own
existence are all to be understood. We are always already in
comprehension of things before they are linguistically articulated
or interpreted. There is a prior having, a prior grasp, and then a
seeing of something as something - the "hermeneutical as" is the
universal element found in every act of understanding in every
discipline in every mundane act whatsoever. Understanding is not
a transparent medium; it is complexly structured but nevertheless,
cannot be ignored.

In the mental universe, or better, in the structure of being,

understanding is the process present everywhere, the process by
which everything is apprehended, placed, understood as
something. Hermeneutics seeks to define this process.

The term "hermeneutics" seems to be related etymologically to the

Greek god Hermes. Hermes, you will recall from the Iliad and the
Odyssey, was the messenger of the gods. He carried messages
from Zeus to everybody else, especially from the divine realm and
level down to the humans. In doing so, he had to bridge an
ontological gap, that gap between thinking of the gods and that of

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humans. According to legend, he had (1) a mysterious helmet

which could make him invisible and then suddenly reappear, (2)
magical wings on his sandals to carry him swiftly over long
distances, and (3) a magical wand that could put you to sleep or
wake you up. So he not only bridged physical distances and the
ontological gap between divine and human being, he bridged the
difference between the visible and the invisible, and between
dreams and waking, between the unconscious and the conscious.
He is the mercury god of sudden insights, ideas, and inspirations .
He is also the trickster god of thefts, highway robbery, and of
sudden windfalls of good luck.

An important notion in the discussion o f any spirituality is the

idea of mystery. Mystery involves that which transcends human
understanding. Although it pertains to the inexplicable, mystery
captures and engages the human imagination permeating the
relational understanding of spirituality in terms of connectedness
to self, others, the world or universe, and to the transcendent as
outlined in much of the contemporary literature. While spirituality
can be described using human language and concepts, it cannot be
confined to these. Nonetheless, an encounter with it may prompt
the recognition that one is dealing with mystery. That is to say, it
is possible to recognise ‘the mystery of the sacred in what is’.

While the natural sciences seek the attainment of knowledge and

truth through method and through adherence to a set of rules
pertaining to a particular method, the philosophy underpinning
hermeneutic phenomenology is that knowledge is realised in the
interpretation and understanding of the expressions of human life.
It is a tradition that attempts to be attentive to the way in which
things (phenomena) appear to be, and to be interpretive, since all
phenomena are encountered meaningfully through lived
experience and can be described in human language.

Hermeneutics has been described as the interpretation of texts, the

purpose of which is to obtain a common understanding of the
meaning of a particular text. It has been in common usage among
Biblical scholars for the interpretation of Scripture.

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Phenomenology seeks to provide a true description of an object

(phenomena), based on what the object is in itself. It is concerned
with allowing that which shows itself to be seen from itself in the
very way in which it shows itself from itself. In order to do this, a
phenomenological text has to contain thickened language; that is,
richly descriptive and evocative language that invites the reader to
encounter the phenomenon in a new and fresh way. Such language
has the effect of dispelling the everyday and taken-for-granted
meanings about the particular phenomena that is the object of the
researcher’s interest.

If the description is phenomenologically powerful, then it acquires

a certain transparency, so to speak; it permits us to see the deeper
significance, or meaning structures, of the lived experience it
describes.

Hermeneutics as the exegesis of texts relates in antiquity to

rhetoric, which had a much broader scope in ancient times than it
generally does today, but also it applied to explicating dreams,
oracles, and other difficult texts, plus legal t exts and precedents,
and literary and religious texts. Traditions of interpretation of
rules for how to interpret literary, legal, and religious texts have
come down from antiquity, and these furnish the subject matter of
hermeneutics broadly defined as related to the interpretation of
texts.

The quest for general principles of interpretation has a great

meaning in epistemology and hermeneutical methods , which can
be easily demonstrated to be an epistemological character. Their
epistemological aspects possibly determine universality of
hermeneutical approach in contrast to the ontology of
understanding a concentration of issues around being and
experience. There is need to explore hermeneutical approaches
with the intent of adequately understanding the log ical texts.

It is evident in the academia of logic in view of the numerous

ambiguities found in the texts of the so called pioneers of modern

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logic which often generate different interpretations and theories

based on diverse (sometimes contradictory) analysis of the same.

Initially, hermeneutics was developed to interpret the Bible,

which, while considered to be a work of divine inspiration, needed
to be interpreted so that the significance of the divine revelation
could be applied to one’s life in general. It was the Reformation
which produced an enormous expansion in the use of
hermeneutics as both Catholic and Protestant theologians argued
over the “correct” principles to be employed in interpreting the
Bible. Hermeneutical scholars have viewed this period as the
genesis of modern hermeneutics and the application of
hermeneutics was not limited to interpretation of the Bible only.
Even earlier, during the late middle ages, hermeneutics had also
been applied to the interpretation of legal judgments an d then
later, during the Renaissance period, it was also applied to
philology in an effort to revive classical learning .

The interpretation of past meanings through the study of

linguistics allowed for the bringing of appropriate messages to
contemporary audiences.

We recapitulate below some more ancient of these biblical “pre-

hermeneutical” rules. Their classification is done by means of the
principle of ascension ; beginning from the simplest modes and
methods of interpretation to the most complex of them and in
accordance with the simplicity or complexity (possible
inconsistency of understanding) of interpreting parts and theses of
the Old Testament. Thus, we have the following list:

1. An interpretation by analogy. It is the simplest way of

conveying the sense of interpreting fragment. To this rule
corresponds

2. A request for literal understanding of most rigorously

keeping commandments. A literal understanding of
everything rigorously keeping (for ins tance, the “law”)
would be accomplished just under condition that an

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interpreter avoids ambiguity in interpretation (of the

same “law”). Hence, it follows that it is necessary that
interpretation would be based on

3. A disambiguity of interpretation. But if there is in the text

some fragment, which could be understood in two ways,
then one need to find another fragment, close by sense to
the former, and accept his disambiguity as true.

4. There would not be any contradictions in interpretation ,

but if two fragments contradict one another, then the
third fragment must be found which reconciles them
both.

5. Complex and obscure fragments would be interpreted

proceeding from the global sense of the whole context.

Comparing means placing one thing in relation to another by way

of analogy and juxtaposition. Grammatically comparisons
function on two planes: (1) on the plane of analogy (x = y) they
establish similarity suggesting equivalence; (2) as middle part in a
three-element series the comparative, by yielding its position to
the superlative, operates on an axiological plane. Finally,
propositional analytics, utilizing two juxtaposed comparisons of
the first kind (syllogism) commonly serve as logical proof. By
maintaining only first level comparisons of equivalence while
seeking, in a gradual process of understanding (the hermeneutical
circle) to accommodate alterity, comparative hermeneutics aims at
making sense by way of tentatively phrasing and rephrasing the
vocabulary that enables genuine dialogue. Only in dialogical
openness are new understandings able to emerge, understandings
that are not simply a yielding of one position to another, but a
genuine preservation of the insight contained in either.

Understanding and comparing, as mental activities that we engage

without necessarily being aware of them as cognitive behaviour,
are linguistic acts. Language being a medium in which and
through which human beings relate to the world and to each other.

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It is through language that the world is opened up for us. We learn

to know the world by learning to master a language. Language
thus is both the vessel in which experience articulates itself and is
the vehicle for its communication, as sign receiving and producing
human beings or as speaking and spoken subjects .

We are enmeshed in communication with others in particular

localities and situations, and across the temporal trajectory of past,
present, and future. Moreover, language, understood in a broad
sense as ensemble of varying signs, games or discursive
formations is the primary medium for communicating and sharin g
meanings. Neither can we make sense of phenomena in the world
nor can we really understand ourselves unless we understand
ourselves as situated in a linguistically mediated, historical
culture.

Discursivity characterises our life-world as one that is always

already semantically organized and charged by experience. We
are not Adam and Eve naming creation but we live in a man-made
world determined by earlier human activity and its manifold traces
that, broadly speaking, as texts we are potentially cap able of
reading. By reading, we mean making sense in so far as “reading”
that is synonymous with interpretation is predicated on
understanding.

Understanding is not only about symbolic communication that

enables us to share objective reality through common signs. For
contemporary philosophy, understanding has become the
touchstone of human life and existence as such. As an
interrogation into the deepest conditions for symbolic interaction
and culture in general, the art of understanding: hermeneutics is
providing the critical horizon also for rethinking transnational and
transcultural forms of knowing.

Hermeneutics is the ancient, historically modified, art of

understanding and interpretation of texts. All cultural products are
“texts” (understood here as any phenomena that is subject to
interpretation) and must be interpreted as such because language

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is not a transparent medium in which the world is given

unequivocally. For the sign, consisting of signifier (a word) and
signified (what the word denotes), depends for its meaning on the
usage to which it is put by speakers and writers over time.

More so, semantic and semiotic meaning are never identical in

creative representation that, unlike numerical renditions in
unambiguous formal language where 1+1=2, depend on the dual
intervention of producer (maker, speaker, writer, artist, author)
and receiver (interpreter, reader). A glance into a dictionary
confirms what every translator knows: the instability of the
meaning and significance of signs. Moreover, producer and
recipient of natural language and creative representation do not
necessarily share the same context. This is of particular concern
when it comes to making sense of texts from cultural context s that
are different to our own, and especially of making sense of texts
handed over to us from the past. It is here that hermeneutics as the
development and study of theories of the interpretation and
understanding of texts provides a method for reading a nd
equitable communication.

The etymology of the term encompasses the Greek verb

hermeneuo, the nouns hermeneia (understanding, exegesis) and
hermeneutice (the agent who practices understanding). The Latin
verb interpretari comes closest to the Greek hermeneuo.

Etymologists do not agree as to the origin of the word

hermeneutice. Related to the name of the Greek god Hermes in his
role as the interpreter of the messages of the gods, the word thus
bears the connotation of one who transmits meaning and make s it
clear. Plato, for example, called the poets the hermeneutice of the
gods. It is certain, though, that hermeneuo refers to the verbs
meaning “to express”, “to explain” and “to translate”.

Despite its decidedly modern (Renaissance) coinage the link

between understanding and interpretation dates back to the history
of hermeneutics beginning with ancient Greek philosophy. Thus,
addressing the understanding of religious intuitions, Plato used

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this term in a number of dialogues, contrasting hermeneutic

knowledge to that of sophia. Religious knowledge is knowledge
of what has been revealed or said and, in contrast to sophia, does
not involve knowledge of the truth-value of the utterance.
Aristotle carried this use of the term a step further, naming his
work on logic and semantics Peri Hermeneias, which was later
rendered as De interpretatione, thus somewhat blurring the
distinction between understanding and interpretation that was to
become important for 20th century Continental Philosophy. For
Aristotle words spoken are symbols or signs (symbola) of
affections or impressions (pathemata) of the soul (psyche); written
words are the signs of words spoken. As writing, so also is speech
not the same for all races of men. But the mental affections
themselves, of which these words are primarily signs (semeia), are
the same for the whole of mankind, as are also the objects
(pragmata) of which those affections are representations or
likenesses, images, copies (homoiomata).

More concerned with a typology of knowledge and language,

Platonic and Aristotelian hermeneutics arguably lack a
methodological awareness of the problems of textual
understanding. It is only with the Stoics, and their reflections on
the interpretation of myth that we encounter a hermeneutic
method of reading texts. This suggests that temporal, spatial and
cultural distance occurring through written transmission, rather
than proximity of interlocutors in direct verbal contact call for a
hermeneutics that are outlined as reconstruction, construction, and
deconstruction of meaning.

The reproductive nature of hermeneutical understanding is

accurate only in the very limited sense that understanding cannot
step out of its historical situation as a whole. Therefore, while we
can consciously examine particular dimensions of tradition
through dialogical processes of understanding, some other aspects
of tradition remain effective without our knowledge of them. All
linguistic expressions – including ideological ones – are in
principle open to hermeneutical understanding because such an
understanding ultimately encompasses everything that enters the

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medium of language. The concept of dialogical rationality is

based on similar post-metaphysical and post-foundational
premises of communicative rationality thus the core of the
hermeneutical dialogue is the ideal of the truth of the subject
matter (die Sache selbst) that transcends the given context of
interpretation and thus creates a similar distinction between
factual and valid. In this context, the truth of the subject matter
refers to the regulative ideal orienting understanding – that is, the
shared goal of truth and agreement that allows the dialogue
partners to reach beyond their particular horizons towards an
enriched, deepened and a more justified understanding of the
subject matter.

If we bring to mind the idea that understanding is a dialogical

process that occurs in the dialogical interplay between the
interpreter and the text, it becomes evident that the nature and the
meaning of die Sache is not something fixed or predetermined but
rather being worked out and negotiated in the course of the
dialogue. The truth of the subject matter is thus an ideal goal of
dialogue that points beyond the interpreter’s pre-given horizon
and motivates the interpreter to enter into a dialogue with the text,
to put his or her own preconceptions at risk and to justify him or
herself in the light of the truth claims that the text presents. The
focus on die Sache distinguishes genuine dialogues from other
forms of conversation as it secures the fundamental openness of
understanding and prevents it from becoming arbitrary or
idiosyncratic. Hence, this dimension of truth is absolutely
essential in order to distinguish philosophical hermeneutics from a
historicist form of relativism.

Philosophical hermeneutics is not concerned with methods of

interpretation and understanding but rather with the question of
what enables understanding to occur. It is not the procedures of
coming to an understanding that are important, instead it is what
happens to us over and above our wanting and doing. Thus
hermeneutics is not about the recovery of existing meanings, but
instead, the creation of meaning itself and understanding is
composed of both previous and new meanings.

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A unique characteristic of hermeneutical inquiry is that it accords

priority to questioning, which results in a persistent search for
questioning about meaning. These questions resist easy answers or
solutions. There is a search for finding the genuine question, but
in finding the genuine question it must be recognized that there
may be genuine questions but never final or closed ones. A
distinctive feature of hermeneutics is that this form of inquiry
remains open-ended and ambiguous.

However, it has become clear that in constructing the desirable

ideals, aims and ends of logic, it is impossible to bypass the
impact of not only postmodern philosophies, but also the
postmodern conditions within our society’s culture that have been
influential in rationality and knowledge. Many of the ‘grand
narratives’ of modernity are undeniably in crisis. They have been
challenged by a new multiplicity of different identities,
worldviews and value commitments, which place into question,
for instance, the idea of a unified process of rationalization and
the conception of a universal or uniform mode of rationality.

Processes of learning must be regarded as fundamentally open-

ended and unfinishable, as no interpretation of any subject matter
is ever an exhaustive or a final one, but there is always more to
learn and experience.

105
Mr. Boaz Adhengo is Chair Emeritus, University of Nairobi Philosophical Society (NUPHIS)
and a communications expert with a special intrigue towards the economy of creativity.
Having written fifteen books with seven currently used as course texts at Universities abroad
and selectively in Kenya, he manages the Adhengo & Associates consulting group. He is also
the founding president at the Creative Arts Society of Kenya.