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Introduction Philosophy can be described as a historical discipline subject to change over time. The pre-Socratic epoch represents the birth of Western philosophical speculation in the greater Greek diaspora. The classical Greek philosophers (Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle) drew on the preSocratic traditions—as well as one another’s teachings—to construct the first full-blown philosophical systems, particularly those of Plato and Aristotle. The Hellenic and Roman worlds inherited these classical doctrines and incorporated them into their own philosophic perspectives.
A. Philosophy can be defined as the rational pursuit of truths conceived as answers to perennial questions. 1. Metaphysics or ontology is the study of being or the ultimate nature and structure of the universe. 2. Ethics is the study of the nature of the good life and good itself. 3. Aesthetics examines the nature of the beautiful and its embodiment in art and nature. 4. Epistemology examines the question of knowledge. 5. Philosophy of mind, or psychology, examines the workings of the soul or mind, analyzing its functions and mechanisms. 6. Natural philosophy offers a rational account of the natural world (both organic and inorganic) with an eye to rational explanation.
B. Philosophy can be described as a historical discipline subject to change over time. 1. Different epochs are concerned with different issues. In addition, philosophic questions that prove tractable often cease to remain philosophical. The philosophy of Galileo and Newton later become the foundation of physics. 2. Different epochs frame issues differently. 3. Philosophy and its practitioners occupy different cultural and social roles in different epochs—ancient, medieval, and modern.
C. Philosophy is also what its name implies, the “love of wisdom.”
II. The pre-Socratic epoch represents the birth of Western philosophical speculation in the greater Greek diaspora.
A. The first phase of pre-Socratic thought was devoted to understanding the natural world, or the world of objects. 1. The Ionians sought to understand the natural world by reducing its multiplicity to a finite number of entities: earth, air, fire, water. 2. The Pythagoreans sought to reduce material realities to mathematical objects, highlighting the ways in which mathematics helps us model our experience. 3. Heraclitus and Parmenides addressed the problem of change and continuity. In approaching these questions in an abstract and logical way, they helped give rise to metaphysics as a logical discipline.
B. The second phase of pre-Socratic thought turned to an analysis of the human world, or the world of subjects. 1. Both Heraclitus and the Pythagoreans offered ethical doctrines, though of a radically different nature. 2. The Sophists represent the first full-blown engagement with the problems of politics, ethics, and human sociability. Their analysis was empirical and realistic, the basis for subsequent philosophy.
III. The classical Greek philosophers (Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle) drew on the pre-Socratic traditions-—as well as one another’s teachings—to construct the first full-blown philosophical systems, particularly those of Plato and Aristotle.
A. The great breakthrough of Socrates was the development of ethical rationalism. 1. Socrates argued that ethical truth was absolute and demonstrable, much like the truths of geometry. 2. Socrates taught that ethical truths were not only rational but also teachable. 3. Socrates also taught that all people act on the basis of their beliefs: “To know the good is to do the good.”
B. Plato, Socrates’s student, injected his teacher’s ethical rationalism into an overarching philosophical synthesis. 1. Plato’s metaphysics addressed the problem of change raised by Heraclitus and the Eleatics. His doctrine of forms divided natural objects into their structures or essential natures (forms) and material contents. In this way, Plato offered the first dualist ontology, or view that there is another realm beyond that of sense and appearance. 2. Plato’s ethical and political doctrines are informed by his adoption of the ethical rationalism of Socrates. Thus, Plato’s political thought is prescriptive rather than descriptive and is the source for the subsequent idealist tradition in political speculation. 3. Plato’s psychology draws on his metaphysics, in that it is based on a dualism of soul (form) and body (material content). Plato further analyzes the psyche or soul/mind into three distinct faculties or functions: the rational, the spirited, and the appetitive, roughly comparable to the later mental structure proposed by Freud.
C. Aristotle, Plato’s student, adopted the overall approach of his mentor but criticized some of his central doctrines on realistic grounds. 1. Aristotle rejected the metaphysical separation of form and content, arguing that forms exist only in their “participation” in actual things. Aristotle resolved the problem of change with his doctrine of entelechy. This doctrine held that natural objects have natural ends or “potentials” toward which they tend. For Aristotle, the soul is the final cause of motion in organic matter, and he identifies four forms of souls. The ultimate form is the Pure Actuality of God, the prime mover who sits atop the chain of being. 2. Aristotle also criticized the conclusions of Plato’s political and ethical philosophy on realistic grounds.
IV. The Hellenic and Roman worlds inherited these classical doctrines and incorporated them into their own philosophic perspectives.
A. The Stoics and Epicureans tried to give meaning and direction to ethical and spiritual life without recourse to traditional mythologies. B. Cicero, like Polybius, practiced a philosophical eclecticism, whereby he selectively drew on different elements of different philosophies to construct his own worldview.
C. Skepticism emerged as a result of the profusion of metaphysical and philosophical doctrines in the late Hellenic era. Essential Reading: Bertrand Russell, Introduction to the Problems of Philosophy (New York: 1959). Supplementary Reading: Frederick Copleston, S. J., A History of Philosophy, Book I, Vol. I., pp. 1—12 (New York: 1985). Questions to Consider: 1. How did Plato’s metaphysics shape the development of Western philosophy? 2. What was the basis of Aristotle’s critique of Platonic philosophy? Aesthetics: The study of the nature of the beautiful and its embodiment in both nature and works of art. Allegory of the Cave: name given by scholars to a particularly important passage from Plato’s Republic, book 7. Anamnesis: Recollection. Apatheia: Freedom from pathos and suffering. Archi: GK, “beginning, origin.” Arete: GK, “virtue or excellence.” Artaraxia: A condition of disciplined withdrawal. Cardinal virtues (Aristotle): Courage, justice, temperance, practical wisdom. Contemplation: from a Greek word for “beholding”, this is a technical term in Plato and Aristotle for the act of intellectual vision or seeing the Forms (i.e. actually looking at them with our mind’s eye, not just having them in our knowledge or memory). Medieval writers contrast the contemplative life of monastic prayer (which leads to vision of God) and the active life of bishops and others who must run things (for the good of one’s neighbors). Distributive justice: Giving people that which they deserve. To each, his own. Dualism: this term has many philosophical meanings, but with regard to Plato it refers specifically to soul/body dualism, the theory that the human self consists tn two distinct parts, the material body and the non-material, immortal soul. Empiricism: What experience shows us actually works in a consistent manner. Entelechy: Holds that natural objects have natural ends or natural potentials toward which they tend if not interrupted. Epistemology: Examines the question of knowledge. Attempts to characterize the nature of truth, science, and rational inquiry and endeavors to offer criteria for each. Epistolai: Letters of advice. Essence: a word that can have many meanings (the root sense of the original Greek term is “being”) but in Platonic and Aristotelian usage it is typically identified with Form. Form: for Plato, the eternal essence of things, separate from this world (also called idea); for Aristotle, the essence of a material thing (also called “nature”) which is inseparable from the thing--embodied in it, so to speak. Hence for Plato the Form or essence of a horse exists separate from physical horses, while for Aristotle it does not. Ethics: The study of the nature of the good life and the nature of good itself. Eudaimonia: Happiness, success. Hedonist: A philosopher who thinks the goal of human life is to feel good. Hylomorphism: The relation of form or structure to matter or content. Idea: originally a Greek word meaning “something seen”; Plato uses it to mean something seen with the mind the equivalent of Form (q.v.). In Plotinus and in Christian Platonism. Ideas are located in the divine Mind. Descartes introduced the modern habit of talking about ideas as belonging within the human mind. Intellect: in the Platonist and Aristotelian traditions this refers to the highest function of the soul, its understanding of Form (in Greek, “understand,” noein, is the verb cognate to the noun “intellect,” nous). Intelligible: adjective designating the sort of thing which is perceived by the intellect (as “sensible” designates the sort of thing perceived by the senses). Metaphysics: The study of being. The study of the ultimate nature and structure of the universe. Natural philosophy: Attempts to offer a rational account of the natural world, both organic and inorganic. Philosophy: Literally, the love of wisdom (GK, philo + sophia). The rational pursuit of truths, which are perceived as answers to perennial and eternal questions; also, a historical study of intractable problems—as these problems become tractable, they cease to be philosophical. Philosophy of mind (psychology): The study of the workings of the soul/mind. Phusis: GK, “nature.” Physics: For Aristotle, the science of movement. Platonic forms: The unchanging essence or form of things in this world. Psyche: Soul, life. Psychology: in reference to ancient philosophy, this term means specifically, theories about the nature of the soul (which is psyche in Greek). Reductio ad absurdum: A method of attacking philosophical positions by exposing their latent absurdities. Sophia: GK, “wisdom.” Substance: key term in Aristotle’s metaphysics, meaning a thing not dependent on other things for its existence (e.g. “horse” designates a substance, but “brown” does not, for “brown” can only exist in other things such as horses). Teleology: from the Greek word telos, meaning “end” or “goal,” this technical term describes Aristotle’s notion that all natural motion tends toward some appropriate end or purpose.
Virtue:
the key term in ancient ethics (especially Aristotle), from a Greek word whose
root meaning is “excellence;” in Aristotle human virtue is a good state of the
soul, a habit. Anaximander of Miletus (c. 610—c.547/6 BCE). The first Greek philosopher whose thought we know in any detail. He held that the ultimate reality is the apeiron—the boundless, limitless, imperishable, and eternal surrounding. Anaximander went beyond Thales in perceiving that the ultimate matter of the universe must be independent of the structure and form of particular kinds of matter. Anaximenes of Miletus (fi. c. 546 BCE). The junior member of the Miletian school and probably Anaximander’s pupil. He held that one primary substance-air—produces all the others, either through rarefaction or condensation. He offers the first physical account in Western philosophy of particular substances as modifications of one primary substance. Aristotle (384—322 BCE). Born in Stagira in northern Greece, the son of Nicomachus, a physician in the Macedonian court. Aristotle studied at Plato’s Academy in Athens between 367 and 347 BCE. From 342 until 339, he tutored the young heir to the Macedonian throne, later known as Alexander the Great. Aristotle later returned to Athens, where in 355, he opened his own school—the Lyceum. He engaged in wide-ranging intellectual pursuits while in Athens, lecturing or writing on physics, metaphysics, logic, ethics, biology, politics, rhetoric, and the arts. An upsurge in anti-Macedonian sentiment following Alexander’s death in 323 forced Aristotle to flee to Chalcis in Euboea, where he died in 322. Cicero (106—43 BCE). Roman orator, philosopher, and politician. He suffered personal exile, served in the Roman Senate, and was a bitter opponent of Julius Caesar and Marc Antony. Among his oeuvre are philosophical works, famous orations, a handbook on oratory, and personal letters that reveal an enormous amount about ancient Roman life. Democritus of Ahdera (c. 460-c. 370 BCE). Along with Leucippus, the founder of classical atomism, Democritus held that ultimate reality consists of atoms—indivisible, homogeneous, solid, and unchanging units. These atoms are in eternal motion and combine in various ways to form all material things. Heraclitus of Ephesus (d. after 480 BCE). Held that logos governs all things and is somehow associated with fire, which is preeminent among the four elements. Heraclitus is principally remembered for the doctrine of the “flux” of all things. Marcus Aurelius (121—180 CE). Roman emperor of the late second century AD, Stoic philosopher, and author of The Meditations. He was adopted at age seventeen by his uncle, the Roman emperor Antonius Pius, and married Antonius’s daughter, Faustina. Marcus became emperor on his uncle’s death in 161 and voluntarily shared rule with his adoptive brother Lucius Aurelius Verus. Marcus spent much of his time defending the empire against Britons, Parthians, and Germans—considered by the cultivated Romans to be barbarians. He wrote The Meditations while commanding Roman troops north of the Danube. He curbed the gladiatorial games, mitigated some of the worst injustices against slaves, and placed the security and welfare of the Empire before his own. He nevertheless persecuted Christians, fearing that they would weaken the Empire. Parmenides of Elea (b. c. 515 BCE). Probably the most important pre-Socratic philosopher, he held that what is real must be ungenerated, imperishable, indivisible, perfect, and motionless. Plato (428 — 348 B.C.E.) was born of distinguished aristocratic parents in ancient Athens. At age 18, he became closely attached to Socrates, and for the next decade, until Socrates’s execution, accepted him as teacher and friend. Plato’s youth was also spent under the shadow of the great civil war between Athens and Sparta that ended in 404 B.C.E. with the total defeat of the former. Plato saw this as a judgment on the weakness of Athenian democracy and the need for a new political system, the meritocracy suggested in his key text, The Republic. Both Plato and Aristotle spent the crucial formative years of their youthful intellectual development (ages 18-28) with inspired teachers of philosophy: Plato with Socrates and Aristotle with Plato himself (for a full 20 years, from 367-347 B.C.E.). As we have noted, Plato’s study with Socrates ended in the trauma of Socrates’s execution by Athenian democrats. Aristotle, who eventually founded his own school in Athens (called the Lyceum, next to Plato’s Academy), could observe his teacher lead a long and productive life as a creative and influential figure, another proof for Aristotle that the political life of Greece was not quite as desperate and deplorable as Plato portrayed it. Polybius (203?—120 BCE). A Greek historian and exponent of Thucydidean history. His greatest work, charting the rise of Rome in the context of a universal history, exists only in fragments. Pythagoras (b. c. 570 BCE). Founder of a quasi-religious society in Crotona in southern Italy. He taught the doctrine of reincarnation and held that the cosmos is explicable in terms of harmony or number. Sextus Empiricus (fl., third century AD). A Greek Skeptic philosopher, medical doctor, and historian. He was opposed to syllogistic proofs but was a proponent of Pyrrhonistic “suspension of judgment,” whose philosophy anticipated many of the philosophical disputes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Socrates (469—399 BCE). Late-fifth—century Athenian philosopher and teacher of Plato. In his youth, he probably practiced stone sculpture. Socrates fought as a hoplite for Athens during the Peloponnesian War. Famous for his view that “the unexamined life is not worth living,” Socrates combined skepticism and logic in his resolute pursuit of wisdom. His technique of questioning others in pursuit of the consequences of statements is often referred to as the “dialectical” or Socratic method. Socrates was tried, found guilty, and executed for corrupting the youth of Athens and not believing in the gods of the city. Thales of Miletus (fl. 585 BCE). The first Greek to search for the ultimate substance of things, which he identified with water.
Zeno of Citium
(c.
334—c. 262 BCE). Founder of Stoicism. After turning from Cynicism to Socratic
philosophy, he gradually
developed the metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics
that compose the Stoical system.
The Pre-Socratics: Physics and
Metaphysic Lou Markos, Ph.D. In this lecture, we witness the exciting birth of philosophy in the speculations and systems of the pre-Socratics. We shall explore how these philosophical forerunners shifted the focus of learned thought from religious questions of “who” and “why” to scientific questions of “what” and “how,” and by so doing, “kicked-off’ an ongoing dialogue that still continues 2,500 years later. First, we shall consider the attempts of the Milesian physicists and the Pythagoreans to locate the primal origin of all things. Second, we shall see how Heraclitus and the Eleatics argued, respectively, that the true nature of reality is endless change (pluralism) or unchanging being (monism) and how their debate fueled much of the philosophy to come. I. The pre-Socratics are so named because they precede Socrates chronologically and because they laid down a philosophical framework that Socrates (and later, Plato and Aristotle) both developed and countered. A. The pre-Socratics flourished from the late sixth to the mid-fifth centuries BCE. B. They did not (like Socrates) call Athens their home; they hailed, first, from the Ionian coast (Asia Minor) and, later, from the coasts of Italy and Sicily. 1. This geographical fact is vital, because it places the pre-Socratics along major trade routes, thus exposing them to a plethora of foreign ideas and cults. 2. Geography was particularly important for the founders of preSocraticism (Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes), who lived in the Ionian city of Miletus. 3. Perhaps these three men were inspired by growing up in the bustling markets of Miletus, where every conceivable religious system was advocated, to search for answers that were more pluralistic, less tied to cultural norms. C. To guide their search, they formulated a new set of questions. I. Previously, Greek poets, such as Hesiod, attempted to account for the present state of man and nature by tracing the origins and actions of the gods. 2. In Theogony, Hesiod presents himself as called by the muses to explain why things are as they are and by what divine agency they came into being. 3. The Milesian “physicists” (from phusis, the Greek word for nature) rejected this supernatural, religious orientation with its questions of “why” and “who” in favor of a more naturalistic and scientific approach. 4. Their interest was not in who created the world but what the universe was made of, not why but how things came into being and passed away in terms of physical processes. 5. Although the pre-Socratics were not necessarily anti-religious, God or the gods play no significant role in their materialistic systems. 6. The pre-Socratic view was unlike Genesis (“In the beginning, God”) or the Gospel of John (“In the beginning was the Logos”). These philosophers posited that the origin of all life is “stuff’ (matter); even if the gods do exist, they are as much outgrowths of this primal stuff as is man, nature, or the universe itself. 7. indeed, the pre-Socratics are, arguably, the true founders of evolution.
D. All the pre-Socratics shared a common
belief that the material building blocks of 1. These four elements are, in ascending order, earth, water, air, and fire. 2. Around these elements, the Greeks posited a long series of qualitative pairs: hot and cold, dry and moist, rare and dense, light and dark, and so on. 3. The first two pairs were often directly linked to the elements: i.e., earth is cold and dry, water is cold and moist, air is hot and moist, fire is hot and dry.
II.
The Milesians and the Pythagoreans sought to
posit a first principle (Greek: arché) A. Thales, with whom all ancient accounts of the history of science and philosophy begin, was a keen observer of the natural world. 1. He accurately foretold an eclipse in 585 BCE, measured the pyramids, and cornered the market on olive presses by predicting a large olive crop. 2. Although he learned the techniques for these deeds from Egypt, Thales is unique in that he borrowed knowledge that, in Egypt, was practical in nature and put it in new terms that were abstract and scientific. 3. In the same way, Pythagoras, noting that the Egyptians used the ratio of 3:4:5 to determine, practically, if an angle was 90 degrees, converted this knowledge into the abstract-scientific-philosophical Pythagorean theorem: in any right triangle the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. 4. Turning his keen analytical mind to the nature of the universe, Thales proposed that the first principle of all things is water. 5. Thales is the first philosopher, not because he chose water as the origin of all things, but because, in so doing, he asserted both that an origin exists and that that origin could be determined through observation.
B. His pupil Anaximander did Thales one better by pushing the origin back, not to water but to something deeper and more primal than the four elements. 1. If one of the elements (say, water) and its physical qualities (cold and moist) were to dominate, it would eliminate both the other elements (earth, air, and fire) and their corresponding and opposing qualities (hot and dry).
2. This original “something,” Anaximander
called the unlimited (or boundless), a sort of cosmic soup out of which the four
elements (and all of nature) separated. C. Anaximenes, the third Milesian, took a step backward from Anaximander to Thales to posit that the first principle was, in fact, an element: air. 1. This philosophical/scientific lapse, however, is surely due to the fact that his real interest was not in the “what” question but in the “how” question. 2. The real contribution of Anaximenes was to offer an explanation, not for what the source was, but for how all the elements could be generated out of it. 3. He calculated that, by an upward process known as rarefaction, air became fire and that, by the opposing process of condensation, it transformed downward from wind to cloud to water to earth to stone. 4. Hindsight suggests that Anaximenes would have done better to stick with water as his first principle, because water not only shifts between three “elements” (ice, water, steam) but also exists as three substances (solid, liquid, gas).
D. Pythagoras, and the school/cult he started, offered a more elaborate, quasi-religious solution to the problem of origin: all is number. 1. Noting that a direct relationship exists between numerical ratios and the harmonies of music, Pythagoras reasoned that just as numbers undergird music, so are they the very stuff and pattern of the universe. 2. Indeed, so firm was his faith that all the natural world must display numerical order, Pythagoras would often indulge in great leaps of logic to accommodate his “conspiracy theory” view of numbers and nature. 3. For example, although Pythagoras observed nine heavenly spheres, he unscientifically posited a tenth (the “counter-earth”) to harmonize the heavens with the Pythagoreans’ near-worship of the number ten. 4. Pythagoras believed that the numerically based movements of these spheres produced a heavenly music that could be heard only by the initiate who had purified his body, mind, and soul. 5. Pythagoras believed that the soul was immortal and that, until the soul achieved an inner harmony or attunement to the greater harmonies of the cosmos, it would return to earth in a series of incarnations. 6. Pythagoreanism has had a profound impact on philosophy, religion, and science: it paved the way for Plato’s theories of the transmigration of the soul, the Middle-Age obsession with numerology, and Galileo’s claim that math is the “language of the universe.”
III. Out of the early speculations of Pythagoras and the Milesians arose a related question: is the true nature of reality singular or plural, fixed or changing?
A. Heraclitus ascribed to the latter, arguing that all nature is in constant flux. 1. Heraclitus possessed one of the richest, most enigmatic intellects of the ancient world. All his speculations were recorded in cryptic aphorisms that have influenced such thinkers as Blake, Nietzsche, and T. S. Eliot. 2. Still, his basic theory is clear and is best expressed in his well-known saying: you can never step in the same river twice. 3. The only constant in the universe is change itself. A perpetual yet creative strife exists between the elements and their qualitative pairs. 4. Heraclitus used the twin images of the bow and the lyre to express how harmony can arise out of opposing (seemingly destructive) forces.
B. Parmenides of Elea, on the other hand, held that reality is one and unchanging. 1. In what may be a parody of Hesiod, he presents himself as called by the goddess of truth to discern between true knowledge, which rests on nature (phusis) and is apprehended by speculative reason, and mere opinion, which rests on custom (nomos) and is perceived by the senses. 2. Although opinion tells us that things (being) change and move (pluralism), reason dictates that this change is an illusion: Being is perfect and complete and, therefore, cannot change; non-being does not exist and, therefore, there can be no empty space for being to move around in (monism). Heraclitus believed in pluralism. 3. Further, being is eternal. If, at a certain point, being came into existence, then it could only have sprung out of not-being and not-being does not exist. 4. That is to say, nothing can come from nothing: being simply is.
C. Parmenides’s pupil Zeno defended monism from ridicule by demonstrating (in a series of paradoxes) that a belief in change, when taken to its logical end point, yields results that are more ridiculous. 1. This method of attacking philosophical positions by exposing their latent absurdities is known as reductio ad absurdum. 2. In his most well-known paradox, Zeno exposes the self-contradictory nature of movement by “proving” that Achilles, though twice as swift, could never catch an opponent that was given even a ten-foot head start. 3. When Achilles had run ten feet, his opponent would have moved forward by five; when Achilles runs the five, the opponent is still ahead by two-and-a-half; and so forth, reductio ad absurdum.
D. The philosophical impasse between the theories of Heraclitus and the Eleatics (Parmenides and Zeno hailed from Elea, Italy) made it incumbent on all future philosophers to try to reconcile change and continuity. I. Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and the atomists Democritus and Leucippus (all pre-Socratics) devised ingenious schemes for reconciling the two. 2. Plato, who posited a non-physical world of being, populated by eternal forms that can only be apprehended by reason, and a physical world of becoming, populated by fluctuating matter perceived by the senses, offered the fullest solution to the preSocratic riddle. Essential Reading: Philip Wheelwright, The Presocratics (New York: 1966). Supplementary Reading: G. S. Kirk, and J. E. Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers: A Critical History with a Selection of Texts (Cambridge: 1984). Questions to Consider: 1. What is the true nature of reality? Is it one (monist) or many (pluralist)? If logic tells us it is one and our senses tell us it is many, which should we trust?
2. Which question is more vital: what
is the nature of reality or who
created it;
how did things come into being or why (for what purpose) did they come into
being?
The Sophists and Social Science Jeremy Adams, Ph.D. This lecture discusses the impact of the Sophists on public policy and private morality in the fourth century BCE. Some see Sophistic analysis of conventional law (and hence, ethics) based on their premises about nature as the beginning of political science, or at least as a forerunner to that science. Beginning with a discussion of pre-Socratic Jonian science, this lecture considers typical Sophist attitudes to questions of power, morality, and religion. The lecture concludes with a case study: the Melian dialogue, a famous passage from Thucydides, the Sophist-influenced fifth-century historian whose highly influential book on the Peloponnesian War (460—445, 431—404) is hailed by many as the first work of social science. I. The Sophists of the fifth and fourth centuries BCE have been given a bad name by Plato (427—347 BCE), because his mentor, Socrates, considered them immoral, intellectually and sometimes otherwise. This insult survives in the current English usage of the word, but it is a misnomer. The Sophists were professional teachers who tried to meet the educational needs of citizens of the Greek polis (city-states) of their time, a moment of social change and economic and cultural expansion. They are in many ways the forerunners of the modern professional intellectual, scientist or humanist. A. The Sophists both carried on and disagreed with the learning of the Wise Men of Ionia (the eastern shore of the Aegean Sea, now western Turkey). 1. One aspect of Ionian scientific teaching was the conviction that the ethical laws deeply revered by traditional Greek religion and lawmakers had some basis in natural science. The Sophists partly disagreed. To them, most if not all myth-based laws were artificial, merely conventional agreements. Some laws about human behavior, the Sophists felt, did inhere in nature, but once rationally analyzed, they turned out to be pretty shocking. 2. This Sophist conviction, which they taught openly, is an instance of their maintaining the Ionian scientific tradition.
B. An instance of the Sophists’ fundamental disagreement with Ionian thought was their abandonment of the objective analysis of nature for the subjective analysis of the human being and human society. 1. Thales of Miletus (615?—546? BCE), for instance, decided that the primal element of the world was water and explained many things by deduction from that premise; his pupil Anaximander thought that the primal element must be even simpler and inaccessible to us; his pupil Anaximenes thought it must be air; and so on. 2. By contrast, the Sophists of the fifth and fourth centuries preferred to speculate analytically about the inner motives of human individual and group behavior.
II. Some examples of Sophist analysis, radically challenging traditional opinions, include those outlined below. A. Gorgias (483—375), a native of the polis of Leontini in Sicily who lived much of his adult life in Athens, wrote a book entitled On Non-Being and Nature in which he argued—and seemed to demonstrate logically—that nothing really exists. I. We don’t know whether Gorgias really meant this doctrine (later known as nihilism) or was using it to prove the absurdity of logical argument. He then abandoned philosophy to teach rhetoric, the art of persuasion. 2. Gorgias also argued that it was better to succumb to the emotions of tragic drama than to show that you have no literary sensitivity.
B. Protagoras (500?/481—41 1BCE) can be considered the founder of linguistics and the social sciences. I. When challenged concerning his belief in the gods, Protagoras replied that he knew nothing about them; he preferred to study the laws and customs of men and the language used to convey them. 2. Protagoras especially enjoyed contrasting law and nature, an intellectual exercise that led him to an ever sharper sense of the absurdity of most human tradition. (Socrates reacted strongly against him.)
C. Callicles, of whom little is known, argued that might is right and that it is natural for human beings to be driven by the will of power.
D. Thrasymachus, who is presented at considerable length in Plato’s dialogue The Republic, argued that what men call “justice” is simply the will of the strongest man or party. Socrates dismantles him through the use of logic.
III. This kind of Sophistry had a corrosive effect on the patriotic and moral myths that sustained the social cohesion of the polis. Once the sacred stories were dismissed as nonsense, a crisis of legitimation arose that disturbed the moral equilibrium of Athens and, eventually, all of the Greek political world.
IV. The Sophists coincided with the Greek invention of history, first by Herodotus (484—428, author of The Histories, a large and broadly speculative book that sought to explain the Persian Wars ending in 479 BCE), then by Thucydides (465?—400?), author of The Peloponnesian War.
A. Herodotus offers a psychological interpretation of the rulers of Asia perhaps the beginning of political science or anthropology.
B. Thucydides’s account of his native Athens’ eventual defeat by Sparta after a generation of struggle is a masterpiece of institutional and psychological analysis. I. It is difficult to single out a central or final message of this masterpiece of history writing. Thucydides clearly believed that human behavior was complex and hard to predict, but the systematic analysis of past events seemed to him the most fascinating exercise of human reason, possibly of use to the more prudent conduct of political affairs in the future. He seems to avoid a formal theory of history. 2. One of the most strikingly dramatic moments in The Peloponnesian War is Thucydides’s account of a debate between the officers of an Athenian invasion force and the leading citizens of the oligarchic polis of Melos, a small and strategically insignificant island in the Aegean, in the sixteenth year of the war. Militarily, this event was minor, but it exemplified for the author much of Athenian behavior and serves as a prime example of Sophistic political reasoning. 3. The basic conflict in the dialogue is that between the Melian leaders’ appeal to justice, honor, and the tradition of liberty their polis had guarded for seven centuries and the Athenian representatives’ argument that Athens could not afford to leave Melos out of their maritime empire. A neutral Melos would be proof of Athenian weakness and a source of danger to the empire, because it is a law of nature that power must expand to its limits or start retracting. 4. Neither side persuades the other, as reported by Thucydides. The Athenians isolate the town of Melos with a land wall and blockade the port; eventually Melos surrenders, all the men of military age are killed, and all the women and children sold into slavery. 5. One can’t help wondering how many of the Athenian officers had been pupils of Protagoras, Callicles, or Thrasymachus. The Sophistic distinction between nature and law is evident here.
Mary Fitt and Kathleen Freeman, trans. and intro., Ancilla to the Presocratic Philosophers (Harvard, 1962). Drew A. Hyland, The Origins of Philosophy (New York: 1973). Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, Vol. 1, chapters 2—13. Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, trans. by Rex Warner (Penguin, 1972). Questions to Consider: 1. How far can a democracy go in using “Sophistic” analyses of political selfinterest?
2. How much does modern social science
differ from the premises, methods, and conclusions of its Sophistic forebears? Phillip Cary, Ph.D.
Plato is the most influential philosopher in the West, in large part because he invented what came to be called metaphysics, the study of true being. He aligns himself with the practice of his teacher and hero, Socrates, who drew people into critical dialogue on such issues as “What is virtue?” Plato theorized that the proper answer to this question refers to an eternal and invisible essence of virtue, which he called a form or idea. This famous Platonic theory of forms is the basis for Plato’s picture of the ascent of the soul to a vision of the world above.
I. Who was Plato? A. Philosopher of Athens, fourth century BCE, student and follower of Socrates. B. In many ways, Plato was the founding figure of Western philosophy; although there were philosophers before him (the “pre-Socratics”), his writings were the first that founded a lasting Western philosophy.
II. When postmodern philosophers look back at the history of Western thought, they often see it as dominated by the philosophical tradition originating with Plato: the project of metaphysics or the philosophy of true being.
A. Metaphysics means roughly: the quest for true being beneath, behind, above, or within the world of appearance—the quest for deep truths or higher realities to be grasped by the inquiring or contemplative mind.
B. Although the word “metaphysics” was invented by Plato’s student Aristotle, the project of metaphysical thought can be said to have begun with Plato.
C. Plato invented metaphysics as a form of inquiry in the process of writing dialogues (in effect, philosophical dramas) in which his teacher, Socrates, was the main character and (eventually) the mouthpiece for Plato’s own thought.
III. The Athens in which Plato grew up was undergoing dramatic changes in many areas, including education.
A. The old practice was for the sons of gentlemen to be educated for citizenship by their fathers.
B. The Sophists (from the Greek sophia = wisdom), on the other hand, were teachers from other city-states who would come to Athens offering education for a fee—promising, typically, to equip young men for a life of public service and power by training them to speak well on all topics. (Eloquence was a primary form of political power in a democracy before the electronic age.)
C. To speak persuasively in an ancient political setting, one had to be able to discuss justice and injustice, and virtue and vice (i.e., what makes a course of action or a person good or bad).
D. In Plato’s presentation, Socrates is not pretending to be wrong but rather insisting on asking the prior question. In other words, before teaming to speak about virtue (or a specific virtue, such as justice or courage or piety), one must ask what it is.
IV. In the early (“Socratic”) dialogues, Socrates was content to ask critical questions that led to a conclusion of perplexity and a mutual recognition of ignorance (neither Socrates nor his interlocutor knew the answers).
A. Socrates’s way of asking critical questions has since been dubbed “the Socratic method,” and his conclusion that we must recognize our own ignorance has been called “Socratic wisdom.”
B. Many later philosophers, including some in Plato’s own school, the Academy, interpreted Socrates’s message to be one of skepticism; that is, we cannot really know what virtue, justice, and so on, are.
C. Plato became the inventor of metaphysics when he started to think that perhaps a way of answering these questions was through critical thinking and dialectic.
D. Plato’s way of answering these questions was his famous doctrine of the forms (also termed “Platonic ideas”).
V. The notion of true being is the birth of Western metaphysics.
A. Platonic answers to Socratic questions: 1. For Plato, a question such as “What is virtue?” was asking for the essence or true being of virtue. 2. He wanted this essence to be universal, equally valid for all particular instances of virtue (a one that governs a many). 3. He also wanted this essence to be stable and unchanging, not subject to the historical changes of our notions of virtue. 4. Plato called the answer to this kind of question “virtue itself’ (or "justice itself,” “the good itself,” and so on) and labeled it a "form.” 5. He also called it an “idea” (which is Greek for “something you see,” i.e., with the mind’s eye). 6. Platonic "ideas” or forms are thus unchanging essences that we can “see” or understand with the eye of the mind—in contrast to the many changing things of the visible world that we literally see with our eyes. B. A mathematical analogy is instructive. 1. Plato may have been thinking of the essence or form of virtue by analogy with mathematical figures. 2. Imagine a math class in which you are thinking about the properties of a triangle drawn on a chalkboard (e.g., you are proving the Pythagorean theorem). 3. Imagine now that the chalk triangle is erased. Has the triangle you’ve been thinking about been destroyed? 4. Plato clearly thought not. The true triangle is not made of chalk but is an unchanging form whose “ideal” being is unchanging and permanent and, therefore, more real than the being of the chalk triangle. 5. This idea takes some getting used to. For Plato, the ideal triangle (which most of us today tend to think of as a mere abstraction) was more real than the triangle we can see and touch.
C. Consider Plato’s thoughts on the nature of the forms. 1. Our contemplation of the true triangle (the form or ideal triangle) deserves the name “knowledge,” while our thinking about the chalk triangle, which changes and is destroyed, is mere “opinion.” 2. The chalk triangle is at best an imitation of the true triangle (its lines not perfectly straight, and so on). The Pythagorean theorem is true of the ideal triangle, not of the chalk triangle. The true triangle belongs in the world of being, while the chalk triangle belongs to the world of becoming. 3. Hence, a key Platonic distinction: the chalk triangle is sensible (an object perceived by the senses), whereas the real triangle is intelligible (perceptible to the intellect or mind—visible, as it were, to the mind’s eye). 4. All this (the distinction between knowledge and opinion, intelligible and sensible) applies to virtue and justice, as well as to triangles, Plato believed.
D. The “Allegory of the Cave” illustrates the vision of the forms. 1. In this crucial and immensely influential passage from The Republic, Plato imagined souls chained up in a dark cave, representing the “visible” world of bodily things, and the “shadows” in the cave, representing what we mistakenly call “real things.” 2. Then he imagined souls liberated from their chains (a “conversion”) and climbing out of the cave to the world above, where they see real things in the light of day in a kind of “Platonic heaven” called “the intelligible world.” 3. This represents the ascent of the soul to the vision of true being, the forms. 4. The highest form of all is the “sun” shining in that world—too bright to look at, at first—which Plato called the good (and which many Christians would later call “the Supreme Good” or God). 5. Once one has become educated to seeing in the light, it is difficult to see in the dark. (That’s why such philosophers as Socrates seem impractical, even comical, as if they were stumbling around in broad daylight.) 6. But the soul that has seen should be required to go back and rule the Republic; the man who has seen and understood the essence of justice and virtue is the philosopher we should make king. 7. Knowledge of true being is essential to the truly good life. Essential Reading: Plato, Apology of Socrates, from Complete Works, J. Cooper, ed. (Indianapolis: 1997). Because there are so many different editions and translations of the dialogues, passages from Plato’s works are usually indicated by referring to the marginal page numbers (e.g., “Phaedo 57a—84c”), which are the same in all editions. “Allegory of the Cave” (= Republic 507b—52 lb). Supplementary Reading: D. Melling, Understanding Plato (New York: Oxford, 1987). Questions to Consider: 1. What do you think young people need to learn to become wise, and is it possible for anyone to teach it to them? 2. Do you think such things as Plato’s forms exist: the invisible and eternal essence of things, their true being that we might see with our “mind’s eye?” (Would this idea make more sense for mathematical objects, such as triangles, than for ethical concepts, such as “virtue”?)
Dennis Dalton, Ph.D. This lecture begins with the question that Plato poses throughout The Republic: what is the meaning of justice? The definitions offered by the main characters in this dialogue begin with the assertion of Polemarchus that justice means “giving each man his due,” or “an eye for an eye.” After Socrates refutes this by arguing that justice or right conduct must never involve harming another, Thrasymachus enters the discussion. He contends that justice denotes superior power, and “might is right.” Socrates refutes this, as well as Glaucon’s argument that just conduct means acting only in one’s selfish interest.
I. Socrates then asserts that for the just society or Republic to be attained, three major reforms or “waves” of social and political change must first occur: equality of male and female rulers; abolition of the nuclear family and private property; and the institution of philosophers as rulers. The last of these, especially, suggests Plato’s strong criticism of democracy, as illustrated by his parable of the “Ship of State.”
Finally, Plato’s theories of justice, power, and leadership are expressed in his “Allegory of the Cave.” This vision asserts that the just state or polis cannot emerge until philosophers rule and political power is, thus, wielded wisely.
Plato, born in 428 BCE, founded the Academy at the age of forty. He seeks in The Republic to define right conduct, both for the individual and the city.
II. The Republic takes the form of a dialogue between Socrates and a series of interlocutors, each of whom offers a definition of right conduct, or justice. Three main responses come forth:
A. Poletnarchus asserts the traditional definition of right conduct. 1. He argues that right conduct, or justice, means “giving each man his due.” His assertion is a form of retributive justice based on the ethic of “an eye for an eye. 2. Socrates responds that harming another person can never be just—although it might be expedient. He introduces the concept of arete—the idea of individual excellence or virtue—and calls for treatment in a humane manner.
B. Thrasymachus, a cynic, offers a definition of right conduct as the rule of the stronger. 1. He argues that might makes right; the stronger party defines as ‘just” what is in that party’s interest. “Injustice” brings happiness, at least to those who practice it. 2. Socrates responds by drawing an analogy between the ruler and a physician. Just as the physician qua physician seeks to benefit not himself but his patients, so does the ruler qua ruler seek to benefit his subjects. The ruler, like the physician, must possess the scientific knowledge that is proper to his craft. We need a kind of Hippocratic oath for politics. The ideal ruler thinks of the common interest, not his personal interest. Justice, for Socrates, is a relationship that is notable for its human concern.
C. Glaucon, an older brother of Plato, presses Socrates to offer a more convincing refutation of Thrasymachus’s argument. 1. Glaucon argues that justice arises not from a moral imperative of eternal truth but from expedience. Justice has its origins in the desire of the weaker for security against the stronger. Given the opportunity, all people will pursue their own self-interests regardless of law or justice. Glaucon cites the “myth of Gyges,” from Herodotus, to support the social-contract theory of justice. He challenges Socrates to defend justice as a good in itself, apart from its practical benefits. 2. Socrates offers his philosophy of the state. In reply to both Thrasymachus and Glaucon, he dismisses such a cynical view of human society. Justice consists of the right ordering of reason, spirit, and desire, with reason ruling over all.
III. Socrates argues that people can be led through education to gain real knowledge rather than mere opinion and to live according to reason. The rule of reason requires three “waves” of revolutionary change in Athens.
A. Qualified women must be allowed to hold political power.
B. The nuclear family and private property among the ruling class, or “guardians,” must be abolished to reinforce its adherence to the common interest. In this extended family, the guardians won’t be tempted by nepotism or the accumulation of wealth.
C. Finally, philosophers, or “guardians,” should rule with absolute power. Reason will rule in the polis.
IV. Plato offers the parable of the “Ship of State” to describe the deficiencies of democracy and the need for meritocratic rule.
A. The ship’s master (representing the demos) is physically imposing but somewhat ignorant, shortsighted, and deaf.
B. The master is subdued by the crew (representing the corrupt politicians who manipulate and dominate the demos). Asserting that navigation requires no special skill, the crew members seize control of the ship and operate it in their own interest. Both they and the master are guided by opinion rather than knowledge.
C. Only the navigator (representing the philosopher) understands the science of how to sail the ship correctly, but he is ignored by the crew. He is not corrupted by power, because he understands that only knowledge of this science will ensure that the ship reaches its destination. The parable teaches that the ship of state should be guided by those who possess real knowledge, not mere opinion. D. In short, we want a ship run by a navigator, not the crew.
V. Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” illustrates his theory of cognition in depicting intellectual development as a journey from the darkness of opinion to the limit of real knowledge. A. The people in the underground cavern cannot see the light.
B. After the philosopher discovers the highest truths outside the cave, he must return to the cave and assume political leadership, even at the risk of his own life. In just this way, Socrates tried to bring the truth to Athens.
C. Apprehension of the truth brings freedom from illusion and, thus, from fear.
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