A History of Western Philosophy: Modern Philosophy II

God \ Mind \ Matter: For Descartes, extension is the essence of matter; for Spinoza, only God alone; Leibniz rejected extension as the attribute of substance, and a denial of the reality of matter

The conception of Substance: derived from subject and predicate. Some words can be either subjects or predicates; others can only occur as subjects -- these words are held to designate substances.

Descartes

- Principia Philosophaie 1644 -- regarded the bodies of men and animals as machines; animals he regarded as devoid of consciousness; men have a soul which comes into contact with 'vital spirits', and though the soul cannot affect the quantity of motion in the universe, it can alter the direction of motion. 'My arm moves when I will that it shall move, but my will is a mental phenomenon and the motion of my arm a physical phenomenon. Why...does my body behave as if my mind controlled it? ...Suppose you have two clocks: whenever one points to the other hour, the other will strike, so that if you saw one and heard the other, you would think the one caused the other to strike'

- the idea was that the soul was in a sense, wholly independent of the body.**This theory explained the appearance of interaction while denying its reality. The first law of motion - a body left to itself will move with constant velocity in a straight line, but there is no action thereafter. All interaction if of the nature of impact.

- Discourse on Method 1637, Meditation 1642 -- 'I think therefore I am'. I may have no body or be deceived by my surroundings, but nothing could deceive me if I did not exist. I am a thing that thinks. The process by which this argument is reached is called 'Cartesian doubt'. The qualities of an object can change, but the essence of the object, can still be understood by the mind, hence the conclusion that the perception of external things is acquired by the mind, and not the senses. 

Spinoza

-Ethics -- sets forth an ethic baed on metaphysics and the psychology of the will

- God \ Mind \ Matter -- mind and matter were independent substances, but were both attributes of God. There is no free will as everything that happens is a manifestation of God's nature. The mind has knowledge of the eternal and infinite essence of God but the passions distract and obscure our intellectual vision of the whole. Passions are governed by self-preservation until we realize that what is real and positive is what unites us to the whole. When man grasps the sole reality of the whole, he is free. 'The mind can bring it about, that all bodily modifications or images of things may be referred to the idea of God'. There is something in the human mind that is eternal, and in God an idea which expresses the essence of this, and this idea is the eternal part of the mind.

- It is important to distinguish Spinoza's ethics from his metaphysics. His metaphysic can be called 'logical monism' - that the world as a whole is a single substance, and the belief that every proposition has a single subject and predicate, which leads us to the conclusion that relations and plurality is illusory. 

- In his ethics, he shows how it is possible to live nobly even when we realize the limits of human power - e.g. 'nothing that a man can do will make him immortal, and it is therefore futile to spend time in fears and lamentations over the fact that we must die'

Leibniz

- extension involves plurality and therefore belongs to an aggregate of substances; an infinite number of substances, which he called 'monads' . Monads form a hierarchy, in which some are superior to others in the clearness and distinctness which they mirror the universe; a human body is composed of monads, but there is one dominant monad, the soul. 

- Arguments for the existence of God: 

1) in the case of God, essence implies existence, because it is better that a Being who possesses all perfection exists that not, and a perfection is defined as a quality which is positive and absolute

2) refers back to Aristotle's argument of the unmoved mover. Everything finite has a cause, which in turn had a cause, and so on. But the first term must not be uncaused, and that is God. Kant - if the existence of the world can only be accounted for by the existence of a necessary Being, then there must be a Being whose essence involves existence. And if so, then reason alone, without experience, can define such a Being. There must be a reason for this contingent world, and this reason must be sought among eternal truths; hence a reason for existence must exist, and can only exist as eternal truths as thoughts in the mind of God, the single cause that regulated the minds. 

A History of Western Philosophy: Modern Philosophy 1

- 'Modern history: - the diminishing authority of the Church, and the increasing authority of science; states replaced the Church as the authority that controls culture
- Science prevails by its intrinsic appeal to Reason. Arguments are made on a basis of probability and regarded as liable to modification 
- Theoretical Science is an attempt to understand the world // Practical Science is an attempt to change the world
- Modern Philosophy retains an individualistic and subjective character; marked in Descartes who builds up all knowledge from the certainty of his own existence
- Italian Renaissance (15th C): broke down the scholastic system, revived the study of Plato, demanded independent thought and intellectual activity as a delightful social pursuit
- 5 important states: Milan, Venice, Florence, the Papal Domain, Naples
- The Reformation and Counter-Reformation represent the rebellion of less civilised nations against the intellectual domination of Italy -- Luther, Calvin, Loyola. Luther and Calvin reverted to Saint Augustine with the purpose of diminishing the power of the Church. By the doctrine of predestination, the fate of the soul after death was made wholly independent of the actions of the priests.
- Copernicus believed that all celestial motions must be circular and uniform. The merits of the new astronomy were the recognition that what one believed since ancient times could be false; second, the test of scientific truth is a collection of facts, combined with speculations
- Kepler's discovery of his 3 laws of planetary motion (1609): 1. the planets describe elliptic orbits, of which the sun occupies one focus; 2. the line joining a planet to the sun sweeps out equal areas in equal times; 3. the square of the period of revolution of a planet is proportioned to the cube of its average distance from the sun
- 1. the substitution of ellipses for circles involves the abandonment of an aesthetic bias which has governed Greek astronomy 2. the varying velocity of the planet at different points of its orbit appeared shocking and asymmetrical 3.
- Galileo: explained the importance of acceleration (change of velocity) in dynamics; any change, either in rapidity or direction, is due to the action of 'force' -- this is later enunciated by Newton as the 'first law in motion'. Galileo established the law of falling bodies: 'when a body is falling freely, its acceleration is constant' -- what he proved was there was no measurable difference of velocity based on the size of the same substance. If a body were not falling, it would cover a certain horizontal distance in flight, and fall vertically with a velocity proportional to the time during which it has been in flight -- Parabola
-Newton: defined 'force' as the cause of change of motion. 'Every body attracts every other with a force directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them'
-17th C:
1) removal of almost all traces of animism from the laws of physics. The first law of motion proposed that lifeless matter, once set moving, will continue to move unless stopped by some external cause. The solar system will keep going by its own momentum without the need of outside interferences.
2) conception of man's place in the universe. In Newtonian world, the earth was a minor planet rather than the centre of heavens
3) abandonment of absolute space and time



Machiavelli
- Political Philosophy (uses scientific techniques, values process over ends) -- Machiavelli's philosophy is scientific and empirical, based upon his own experience of affairs, concerned to set forth the means to assigned ends, regardless of whether the ends are good or bad
- The Prince: concerned with how principalities are won, how they are held and lost. It is necessary for a prince to  be 'a great feigner and dissembler...'
- Discourses: discussion of the papal powers. Begins by placing eminent men in an ethical hierarchy: 1st the founders of religion, 2nd the founders of monarchies, then literary men. He holds that religion should have a prominent place in the State, not on the ground of truth, but as a social cement. His criticism of the Church are that its conduct has undermined religious belief, and the temporal powers of the popes prevents the unification of Italy. His political arguments are not based on Christian grounds as compared to medieval writers who had a conception of a 'legitimate' power , which was that of the Pope and Emperor. In Machiavelli, power is for those who have the skill to seize it in a free competition. 
- He prides national independence, security, and well-ordered constitutions. The best constitution is one which apportions legal rights among prince, nobles and people in proportion to their real power.
- To achieve a political end, power is necessary; it can be advantageous to seem more virtuous than your adversary

Erasmus and More
- the Northern Renaissance was associated with piety and virtue, in applying standards of scholarship to the Bible
- Erasmus, The Praise of Folly: two kinds of Folly - one praised ironically, the other praised seriously i.e. Christian simplicity
- More, Utopia: all things are held in common; the government is a representative democracy; family life is patriarchal

Francis Bacon
-The Advancement of Learning 'knowledge is power'
-he believed that while reason could show the existence of God, everything else in theology could only be known by revelation. 'double truth' -- that of reason and revelation
-'idols' -- bad habits of mind that cause people to fall into error

Hobbes
-empiricist like Locke, but also an admire of mathematical method, inspired by Galileo
-Leviathan:
- declares that life is a motion of the limbs, therefore automata have an artificial life
- the commonwealth, which he calls Leviathan, is a creation of art and is an artificial man
- sensations are caused by the pressure of objects like sound, color, and not the object itself. the qualities in objects that correspond to our sensations are motions. the succession of our thoughts is governed by laws sometimes those of association, sometimes those of purpose. \\there is nothing universal but names and without words we would not conceive any general ideas. without language, there would be no truth or falsehood as those words are attributes of speech.\\
-reason is not innate but developed by industry
-we call a thing 'good' when it is an object of desire and 'bad' when it is an object of aversion. 'will' is the last aversion remaining in deliberation -- it is merely the strongest in the case conflict (Hobbes denies free will)
-all man are naturally equal. every man desires to preserve his own liberty and to acquire dominion over others. his desires are dictated by the impulse to self-preservation.
-social contract: when a number of people come together to choose a sovereign (a supreme power) which exercises authority over them. the covenant is not an agreement between the citizens and the ruling power; it is a covenant to obey the ruling power as chosen by the majority.
-a multitude so united is called a commonwealth. this 'leviathan' is a mortal god
-the laws of property are to be entirely subject to the sovereign
-liberty is the absence of external impediments to motion. it is consistent with necessity.
- the right of self-preservation is regarded as absolute and subjects have the right of self-defense, even against monarch. in addition, a man has no duty to a sovereign who cannot protect him.
- the best form of State, according to Hobbes, is monarchy. this reflects his contention that powers of the State should be absolute
- to note that Hobbes always considers the national interest as a whole with the implicit assumption that all citizens are the same

A History of Western Philosophy: Catholic Philosophy

-Catholic philosophy dominated European thought from Augustine to Renaissance
-the Church brought philosophic beliefs into a closer relation to social and political circumstances
-first period was dominated by Saint Augustine and Plato; second period culminates in Saint Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle
-end of Middle Ages/13th C: growth of a rich commercial class + growth of strong national monarchies in France, England and Spain
-751, the Lombards captured Ravenna, capital of Byzantine Italy. Holy Roman emperors were often destitute of real power; they only became emperors when the Pope crowned them. The emancipation of the Pope from Byzantine domination was essential both to the independence of the church and the ultimate establishment of a papal monarchy in the government of the Western Church. 
- Dark Ages (600-1000) in Western Europe vs. what was happening around the world (Tang Dynasty in China, the flourishing of Islam in India to Spain)


Saint Augustine (end of 4th C)
1. Theory of time: Plato's God is an artificer / architect, rather than a Creator. The idea of creation out of nothing, as taught in the Old Testament, was foreign to Greek Philosophy. Pantheism holds that God and the world are not distinct. Augustine maintains that the world was created from nothing, of which God created substance. Time was created when the world was created. God is an eternal present; there is no before or after. Time is only an aspect of our thoughts - extreme form of subjectivism.
2. Philosophy of History: The City of God is the society of the elect. There are things that can be discovered by reason, but for all other knowledge, we must rely on Scriptures. The shamefulness in the independence of will. The implication that the State could only be part of the City of God by being submissive to the Church in all religious matters
3. Theory of Salvation: Focuses on combating Pelagic heresy. Pelagic believed in free will, questioned the doctrine of the original sin, and thought that man acted out of their own moral effort. For Augustine, it is taught that certain people are chosen to go heaven by God's grace. They do not go because they are good, but because they are saved by God.

John the Scot (9th C)
- contended that reason and revelation are both sources of truth, and therefore cannot conflict; but if they seem to conflict, reason is to be preferred
- On the Division of Nature: universals are anterior to particulars . Everything that emanates from God strives to return to Him.  God does not know Himself, because He is not a what; he is incomprehensible to himself and to every intellect. The class of things that create and are created embraces the whole of the prime causes, or prototypes. The total of these prime causes is Logos. They give rise to the world of particular things, the materiality of which is illusory. Sin has its source in freedom; it arose because man turned towards himself instead of God.
- his Pantheism and view of creation as timeless is contrary to Christian doctrine (is it also because if creation is timeless, it undermines the idea of afterlife, and therefore Judgment day and being saved by the ultimate grace of God?)

Mohammedan Culture and Philosophy (7th - 8th)
- Hegira (The Islamic Prophet Muhammed's flight from Mecca to Medina, also recognised as the start of the Islamic Calendar 622) marks the start of Arab conquests
- Arab Empire: -an absolute monarchy, under the caliph, who was the successor of the Prophet; the caliphate soon became hereditary
- Arabs' main motive was wealth; the Persians were deeply religious / since the death of Muhammed's son-in-law Ali in 661, Mohammedans have been divided into 2 sects: Sunni and Shiah (Persians)
- the Arabs first acquired their knowledge of Greek philosophy through Syrians; contact with India gave them insight into astronomy; one of the best features of Arab economy was agriculture and irrigation
- Averroes: holds that the existence of God can be proven by reason independently of revelation; adheres closely to Aristotle's view that the soul is not immortal but intellect (nous) is. He regarded religion as containing philosophic truth in allegorical form, in particular, creation.

12th - 15th Century
- 12th C: the increase of papal and ecclesiastical power
--- the conflict of empire and papacy, the rise of Lombard cities, the Crusades, the growth of scholasticism
- 13th C: fall of Rome
- 14th C: the dissolution of institutions
- 15th C: the beginning of modern philosophy

Saint Thomas Aquinas
- regarded as the greatest scholastic philosopher
- most important work 'Summa contra Gentiles' was concerned with establishing the truth of the Christian religion to a non-Christian
- Wisdom per se is concerned with the end of the universe. The end of the universe is Truth. This pursuit is the most perfect, sublime and delightful of all pursuits.
- The existence of God is proved by the argument of the unmoved mover (Aristotle) - which is further expound by Aquinas : 'God is pure activity. In God, there is no composition, therefore He is not a body...God is His own essence...In God, essence and existence are identical..In God there is Will. In willing Himself, God wills other things also, for God is the end of all things.'
- The ethical question of Evil - 'Evil is unintentional, not an essence, and has an accidental cause which is good'

The Eclipse of the Papacy
- the Western Church developed from a republic into a monarchy
- contact with Constantinople and Mohammedans
- the rise of a rich commercial class and the increase of knowledge in North Italian cities, that had a spirit of independence, and soon turned against the Pope

History of Western Philosophy III: After Aristotle

3 periods:
1. Free City States, brought to an end by Philip and Alexander -- freedom and disorder
2. Macedonian domination, also known as the Hellenistic Age (between death of Alexander and the conquest of Egypt by the Roman Empire) -- subjection and disorder; also known as the best works of science and mathematics in Greece; includes the foundation of the Epicurean and Stoic schools
3. Roman Empire -- subjection and order, the rise of Christianity

Hellenistic Age

- at Alexander's death, his empire was divided between 3 generals. The European part fell to Antigonus's descendants. Ptolemy obtained Egypt and made Alexandria the capital. Seleucus obtained Asia, where Antioch later became the chief city
- Alexandria was the most successful from a Hellenistic point of view. Egypt was less exposed to war, and Alexandria was in a favoured position for commerce. Specialization characterized the world of learning.
- After Alexander's conquests, there was no longer an incentive to take an interest in public affairs, and the Hellenistic world lacked a ruler strong enough to produce social cohesion

Cynics and Sceptics

- Greek philosophers turned aside from politics to the problem of individual virtue and salvation -- from Christianity evolved a gospel of individual salvation which inspired the Church and a missionary zeal
- the school of Cynics was founded by Diogenes - believed in the 'return to nature', with no government, no private property, no marriage, no established religion, no slavery, no luxury and pursuit of artificial pleasures. Popular Cynicism does not teach abstinence, but only a certain indifference.
- Scepticism was first proclaimed by Pyrrho, who maintained that there could never be any rational ground for preferring one course of action to another. This meant that one conformed to the customs without any of the actual beliefs required -- 'a lazy man's consolation'
- The Greeks admitted logic that was deductive, which had to start from general principles that were regarded as self-evident. A modern Sceptic would point out that a phenomenon merely occurs, and is neither valid nor invalid. 

The Epicureans

- Epicurus: the pleasure of the mind is the contemplation of the pleasures of the body. Virtue is the 'prudence in the pursuit of pleasure'. Justice consists in so acting as not to have reason to fear other men's resentment. Dynamic pleasures consists in the attainment of a desired end. Static pleasures consist in a state of equilibrium. E.g, the satisfying of hunger is a dynamic pleasure -- the state of quiescence after the hunger is satisfied is a static pleasure
- Absence of pain, rather than presence of pleasure, is the goal. Above all, live so as to avoid fear.

Stoicism

- Founder Zeno
- early Stoics were mostly Syrian, the later ones mostly Roman. Socrates was the chief saint of the Stoics. Later Stoics followed Plato with regards to the soul as immaterial; earlier Stoics agreed with Heraclitus that the soul was composed of material fire. Zeno was concerned with Virtue, and had little patience for metaphysical tendencies.
- main doctrines are about cosmic determinism and human freedom. Zeno did not believe in chance, but that the course of nature is determined by natural laws. Soon there will be a cosmic conflagration and all will become fire, which concludes a cycle, and the whole process will repeat itself endlessly. All things are parts of one single system -- Nature; the individual life is good when it is in harmony with Nature. Virtue is the sole purpose of a man's life. Since Virtue resides in will, everything good or bad depends only upon himself. Man has perfect freedom to pursue Virtue. The Stoic is not virtuous in order to do good, but does good in order to be virtuous.
- inherent contradictions in Stoicism: on the one hand, the universe is a deterministic single whole; on the other hand, the individual will is autonomous
- main importance of the Stoics -- the theory of knowledge and the doctrine of natural laws. Theory of knowledge - they accepted perception, between things which can be known with certainty on the basis of perception, and those which are only probable. A questionable doctrine in their theory of knowledge is the belief in innate ideas and principles. Greek logic was deductive and based on first premises, which were general and could not be proven, though it could be used as the starting point of definitions.
- Doctrine of natural right: by nature, all human beings are equal.

Neoliberalism

- Neoliberalism : free-market capitalism
- https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot

• 'sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations...redefines citizen as consumers whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling...'
• looks to minimize tax & regulation, privatize public services, discourage unions & labor bargaining
• 1944, Ludwig von Mises & Friedrich Hayek 'The Road to Serfdom': argued that government planning would lead to totalitarianism control. As it evolved, Hayek's view that the government should regulate competition moved to the belief that monopoly could be seen as reward for efficiency
• As Keynesian policies fell apart in 1970s, neoliberalism ideas entered mainstream policy-making and was adopted by Jimmy Carter in US --> Margaret Thatcher & Ronald Reagan era: massive tax cuts for the rich, crushing of trade unions, deregulation, privatization, competition in public services
• Freedom from trade unions and collective bargaining = freedom to suppress wages, to pollute; Universal competition = universal quantification, assessment and monitoring; Privatization = corporations setting up tollbooths in front of vital national services eg. mobile services
• 'fascist movements build their base not from the politically active but the politically inactive, the 'losers' who feel, often correctly, they have no voice or role to play in the political establishment' - when political debate no longer appeals and facts appear irrelevant, people become responsive to slogans, symbols, sensation. 
• The invisible hand of corporations - Institute of Economic Affairs is funded by British American Tobacco since 1963; Charles and David Koch founded the Tea Party Movement* -- the market is fraught with power relations; the funding of productive and socially useful activities is used interchangeably with the purchase of assets to create rent, interest, dividends and capital gains
• Keynesianism works by stimulating consumer demand to promote economic growth, which are also the motors of environmental destruction*
• A new economic program needs to be designed, tailored to the demands of the 21st C

*Keynesianism advocates an active role for government intervention - monetary policy actions -  during recession. It served as the model during the Great Depression, post WW2

-- problems such as unemployment result from imbalances in demand and whether the economy was expanding or contracting; therefore necessary for government spending to increase demand, increase economic activity, and reduce unemployment

*Tea Party Movement: 'fake grassroots movement' composed of well-meaning people who think they are fighting elite power, but have been organized by the very interests they believe they are confronting  eg. 2009 Defending the American Dream, convened by Americans for Prosperity -- AFP mobilized opposition to Obama's heathcare reforms. eg. Cato Institute (organized by Koch Brothers), the first free-market think tank (*think tank: an organization that performs research and advocacy on topics like social policy, political strategy, military, technology, culture)

History of Western Philosophy II: Plato and Aristotle

Plato

• The most important matters in his philosophy: 1) Utopia; 2) Theory of ideas; 3) Immortality; 4) Cosmogony; 5) Knowledge as reminiscence rather than perception 
• Influenced by Pythagoras, the Orphic elements and the intermingling of intellect and mysticism. From Parmenides, the belief that reality is eternal and timeless and change is illusory. From Heraclitus, the doctrine that nothing is permanent. Together, the conclusion that knowledge is derived from the intellect, not from the senses. 
• The best state is the one which most nearly copies the heavenly model by having a minimum of change and a maximum of static perfection, the eternal Good. Plato had a core of certainty which can only be communicated through a way of life, that is the combination of intellectual and moral discipline. 

• 1) Utopia: In Republic, the nominal purpose was to define 'justice'. Citizens are to be divided into 3 classes: commoners, soldiers, guardians. Only the guardians have political power, and are chosen by the legislator, after which they usually succeed by heredity. In exceptional cases, a promising child may be promoted from an inferior class. Education is divided into music and gymnastics. Music = province of the muses / culture; Gymnastics = physical training / athletics. There must be rigid censorship, and materials must teach that God is good. Austerity in the training of the body. Both wealth and poverty and harmful. Equality between men and women. To minimize possessive emotions, all children are to be taken away from their parents from birth, and people are addressed 'father', 'mother', 'brother', 'sister'. A 'lie' created to deceive the majority of people, is that God has created men of three kinds. Every person or thing has his or its appointed place and appointed function, closely connected to the idea of fate. An impersonal law is necessary to punish hubris. 
• Justice in Plato is almost synonymous with 'law' - which is concerned mainly with property rights. This differs from our modern association of justice with equality. Justice presupposes a state organized either on traditional lines or some ethical ideal. As a man has no legal father, the purpose of the government is essential in determining a man's job. The difference between an 'ideal' and an ordinary object of desire is that the former is impersonal, with no special reference to the ego of the man. 
• A fundamental question in ethics and politics: Is there any standard of 'good' and 'bad'? This question does not really exist for Plato. He is convinced that there is 'The Good' and that he can prove that his ideal Republic is good. 

• 2) Theory of Ideas: The philosopher is a man who loves the 'vision of truth'. The man who has knowledge of something, that is to say, of something that exists, for what does not exist is nothing. Thus knowledge is infallible. Opinion is mistaken, because it is both of what is and is not. Opinion is of the world presented to the senses, whereas knowledge is of an eternal world; e.g. opinion is concerned with beautiful things, but knowledge is concerned with beauty itself. [assuming that beauty exists a priori to us experiencing beautiful things]
• The theory of 'ideas' or 'forms' is partly logical, partly metaphysical. The logical part has to do with the meaning of general words. The metaphysical part has to do with a certain ideal. Whenever a number of individuals have a common name, e.g. cat, they have also a common 'idea' or 'form'. 
• The world of the intellect is distinguished from the world of the senses. 'Reason' is concerned with pure ideas and its method is dialectic. 'Understanding' is inferior to reason as it uses hypotheses which it cannot test. 
• Plato's cave: the world of ideas is what we see when the object is illumined by the sun, while the world of passing things is a confused twilight world. The eye is compared to the soul, and the sun, as the source of light to truth and goodness. 'The underlying assumption is that reality, as opposed to appearance, is completely and perfectly good'. 
• This is the first theory to emphasize the problem of universals. We cannot express ourselves in a language composed wholly of specific names, but must have also general words such as 'man', or relational words such as 'similar'. Here, Plato's mistake is in thinking that the universal 'man' is the name of the model man created by God - and in realizing the gap between universals and particulars. Socrates: 'There are certain ideas of which all other things partake, and from which they derive their names'. Parmenides: 'Does the individual partake of the whole idea, or only of a part?' When an individual partakes of an idea, there will have to be another idea embracing the particulars and the original idea, and so on ad infinitum. Any attempt to divide the world into portions, of which one is more 'real' than the other, is doomed to failure. 
• Another difficulty is that the contingent world created by God is the everyday world which has been condemned as bad and illusory. Therefore, it seems that God created only illusion and evil. Perhaps Plato does not have to be charged with this as he did not say that God created everything, but only what is good. 

• 3) Immortality: Phaedo describes the last moments in the life of Socrates and presents Plato's ideal of a man who is wise and good in the highest degree. 'Death, says Socrates, is the separation of soul and body' -- Plato's dualism of reality and appearance, reason and sense-perception, soul and body. This distinction stems from Orphic who proclaims that from earth comes the body, from heaven the soul. We are told that the body is a hindrance in the acquisition of knowledge, yet this implies a complete rejection of empirical knowledge. 'Thought is best when the mind is gathered into itself, and is not troubled by sounds or sights or pain or pleasure', and when it aspires after 'absolute justice, absolute beauty and absolute good', that is 'the essence or true nature of everything'. 'Purity' in Orphic terms has a primarily ritual meaning. For Plato, it means freedom from slavery to the body and its needs. 
• The first argument is that 'all things which have opposites are generated from their opposites' - e.g. life and death generate each other. The second argument is that knowledge is recollection, and therefore the soul must have existed before birth. Thus the pre-existence of the soul with knowledge. But to assume that knowledge, especially that of logic and mathematics, is a priori, dismisses empirical knowledge. 

• 4) Cosmogony: In Timaeus, Plato puts intelligence in the soul and the soul in the body. There is only one world, which is 'a created copy designed to accord as closely as possible with the eternal origin apprehended by God'. It is a globe because the circular motion is the most perfect. The 4 elements - fire, water, earth, air - are represented by a number harmonized in equal proportion 
• Origin of time: 'wherefore (God) resolved to have a moving image of eternity...he made this image eternal but moving according to number, while eternity itself rests in unity; and this image we call Time'
• 2 kinds of causes: the intelligent, which is endowed with mind; the other that in being moved by others, are compelled to move others, and produce chance effects without order or design
• Space is an intermediate between the world of essence and the world of transient things: God is 'one kind of being which is always the same, uncreated and indestructible...of which the contemplation is granted to intelligence only'; Life/reality is 'perceived by sense, created, always in motion...apprehended by opinion and sense'; 'space...is eternal...and provides a home for all created things...and is hardly real'

• 5) Knowledge and Perception: Theatetus concerns itself with the definition of 'knowledge' but finds no satisfactory answer. The proposal: 'one who knows something is perceiving the thing that he knows...knowledge is nothing but perception' -- this can be identified with Protagoras' doctrine that 'man is the measure of all things' -- argument 1: while one judgment cannot be truer than another, it can be better, in the sense of having better consequences -- suggesting pragmatism -- argument 2: Heraclitus 'doctrine of flux is held to state that everything is always changing in both respects', therefore we cannot be right in saying we 'see a thing' since seeing is perpetually changing into not-seeing' -- argument 3: we perceive through our bodily organs rather than with them; it is the mind that judges the existence of things, which follows that we cannot know things through the senses alone -- we can, instead, interpret that 'knowledge is judgments of perception' / we can think of 'percept' as something that happens - when filled out with images of touch becomes an 'object'; when filled out with words and memories becomes a 'perception'
• Existence 'belongs to everything, and is among the things that the mind apprehends by itself; without reaching existence, it is impossible to reach truth'
• Mathematical truth is independent of perception; but it is truth of a different kind, concerned only with symbols -- thus numbers are 'formal' i.e. they have a form 
• Protagoras' doctrine: we should first distinguish between percepts and inferences. Percepts are subjective and personal. Inferences are, in a sense, equally fallacious. However, there is some impersonal standard of correctness . 
• 'Logical oppositions have been invented for our convenience, but continuous change requires a quantitative apparatus' (which has been ignored by Plato)

Aristotle

• 1) Metaphysics: to start with his criticism of Plato's theory of ideas and his own doctrine of universals. Aristotle's 'universal' refers to 'that which is of such a nature as to be predicated of many subjects, by 'individual' that which is not thus predicated'. A 'substance' is signified by a proper name, and it is a 'this'. A 'universal' is signified by an adjective or class-name (e.g. man) and it is a 'such'. However, you can argue that an adjective is also dependent on what is meant by a proper name, but not vice versa. e.g. the quality 'redness' cannot exist without some kind of subject, but it can exist without a specific 'this' subject. The distinction is therefore linguistic, derived from syntax, but this distinction has been interpreted metaphysically. 
• Aristotle's 'essence' refers to 'properties which you cannot lose without ceasing to be yourself'.
• The distinction of 'form' and 'matter': it is in virtue of the form that the matter is a definite thing, and therefore becomes the substance of the thing. 'A 'thing' must be bounded, and the boundary constitutes its form'. The 'form' is what gives unity to a portion of matter, and that unity is usually teleological. e.g. The soul is what makes the body one thing. The Form is 'more real than matter' which is reminiscent of the Plato's conception of Ideas. Zeller: Aristotle's growth of ideas 'are metamorphosed in the end from a logical product of human thought into an immediate presentment of a supersensible world'
• The distinction of potentiality and actuality: 'bare matter is conceived as a potentiality of form ...that which has more form is considered to be more actual'. One problem with such a statement is when potentiality is used as a fundamental and irreducible concept. 
• 3 kinds of substances: 1) sensible and perishable, like plants and animals; 2) sensible and non-perishable, like heavenly bodies; 3) neither sensible nor perishable, like God and the rational soul in man. God is the First Cause, the thing which originates motion and is in itself unmoved and eternal and actual. God is also the Final Cause of all activity, which the world is continually evolving towards and becoming progressively more like God. Types of Causes: 1) material e.g. the marble; 2) formal e.g. the form of the statue to be produced; 3) efficient e.g. the process of chiseling the marble; 4) final e.g. the end result
• On the Soul: the soul is bound up with the body, and therefore perishes with the body. The soul 'must have a substance in the sense of the form of a material body'. The soul 'is substance in the sense which corresponds to the definitive formula of a thing's essence'. 'The soul is the final cause of the body'. The soul is what moves the body and perceives sensible objects. The mind is higher than the soul, and less bound to the body. It is timeless and can be immortal. 
• In the soul, there is an element that is rational, and an element that is irrational. The irrational is the vegetative, which exists in all living creatures. The rational consists in contemplation. The irrational soul is connected with the body and reflects individuality. The rational soul is divine and impersonal and unites men. 

• 2) Ethics: two kinds of virtue: 1) intellectual which results from teaching; 2) moral which is from habit. By becoming compelled to acquire good habits, we shall in time come to find pleasure in performing good actions. The Golden Mean: every virtue is a mean between two extremes, each of which is a vice. Courage is a mean between cowardice and rashness. Proper pride between vanity and humility. Justice involves the right proportion, which is only sometimes equality. Ethics is considered a branch of politics - monarchy is the best form of government, followed by aristocracy. Aristotle and Plato can regard a community which confines the best things to a few a morally satisfactory situation. Moral merit concerns itself with acts of will; that wherever two courses of action are possible, conscience tells one which is right and which is sin  -- virtue consists in the avoidance of sin, rather than in anything positive. 
• Aristotle takes the view that virtues are means to an end, namely happiness. The first business of ethics is to define the good, and that virtue is to be defined as the action that produces the good. Pleasure is regarded as distinct from happiness. Pleasure is 1) never good; 2) some is good but most is bad; 3) pleasure is good but not the best. Not all pleasures are bodily; all things have something divine and therefore some capacity for higher pleasures. The proper pleasure of man is connected with reason. 
• Happiness lies in virtuous activity, and perfect happiness lies in the best activity, which is contemplative. 
• When asking questions about ethics: 1) is it internally self-consistent? 2) is it consistent with the remainder of the author's views? 3) Does is give answers to ethical problems that are consonant to our own ethical feelings? 
• Aristotle's ethics are consistent with his metaphysics. He believes in the scientific importance of final causes, and this implies the belief that purpose governs the course of development in the universe. 
• His acceptance of inequality is repugnant to much modern sentiment.  The modern interpretation of Justice has to do with Equality. In Aristotle's times, on grounds of religion, each thing or person had its own proper sphere, to overstep which is 'unjust'.

• 3) Politics: the importance of the State, which is the highest kind of community and aims at the highest good. The family, which is built on the fundamental relations of man and woman, master and slave, will come to form a village, followed by the State. An individual cannot fulfil his purpose unless he is part of a state. Without law, man is the worst of animals.
• Good governments: monarchy, aristocracy, constitutional government. Bad government: tyranny, oligarchy, democracy. There is oligarchy when the rich govern without consideration for the poor. There is democracy when power is in the hands of the poor and they disregard the interest of the rich. Greek conception of democracy is extreme - the assembly of the citizen was above the law and decided each question independently. To provide revolution, we need education, respect for law, and justice in law and administration 'equality according to proportion, and for every man to enjoy his own'. *Consider the difficulty in measuring 'proportion'
• 'Citizens should not lead the life of mechanics or tradesmen', citizens should own the property, education is only for children who are going to be citizens
• The aim of the State is to produce cultured gentlemen, who combine aristocratic mentality with love of learning and the arts, a combination which existed in the Athens of Pericles

• 4) Logic: Syllogism: an argument consisting of a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion. Aristotle thought that all deductive inference is syllogistic. This system was the beginning of formal logic, but it is open to criticism: 1) formal defects within the system ; 2) Over-estimation of the syllogism ; 3) Over-estimation of the deduction 
• E.g. the mistake of thinking that a predicate can be a predicate of the original subject. 'Socrates is Greek, all Greeks are human' - however, 'human' is not a predicate of 'Greek', and neither is 'Greek' a predicate of 'Socrates'. 2, how do we know the first premise from which deduction starts? 3. What about non-syllogistic inferences? 
• In Aristotle, there are 10 categories to represent ideas: substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, state, action, affection. Aristotle's theory of 'Definition' is a statement of a thing's essential nature. The essence: those of its properties which it cannot change without losing its identity. Substance is supposed to be the subject of properties, and to be something distinct from its properties. But when we take away the properties, we can't imagine the substance by itself. Substance becomes a linguistic convenience of bundling events. 

• 5) Physics: Two sets of phenomena: the movements of animals, and the movements of heavenly bodies. The ultimate source of all movement is Will: on earth the will of human beings and animals, in heaven the will of the supreme being. 
• Physics, 'phusis', in Greek is translated as 'nature'-- 'growth'. To Aristotle, the 'nature' of a thing is its end, that for the sake of which it exists. Some things like animals and plants exist by nature, with an internal principle of motion. Things have a 'nature' if they have an internal principle of this kind. 'Motion' is the fulfilling of what exists potentially. 
• One unmoved mover, which directly causes a circular motion, a primary and single motion which is continuous and infinite. The Earth, which is spherical, is at the centre of the universe. Elements of earth, water, air, fire, and a fifth of which heavenly bodies are composed, make up the sublunary sphere.

History of Western Philosophy I

- philosophy is the grey area between science 'definite knowledge' and theology 'dogma'
- the search for something permanent is derived from love of home and the desire for a refuge from danger - religion seeks permanence in two forms, God and immortality. Conception of eternity as an 'existence outside the whole temporal process...and therefore no logical possibility of change' (p46)
- the conception of Purpose, is only applicable within reality, and not to reality as a whole (applicable in the context of which you are operating within -- it is arbitrary)
- Dialectic, the method of seeking knowledge by question and answer was first practised systematically by Zeno, the disciple of Parmenides
- modern definitions of truth, such as pragmatism and instrumentalism, are practical rather than contemplative, inspired by industrialism rather than aristocracy
- Greek astronomy was geometrical, not dynamic - they did not have the conception of force; they thought of the motions of the heavenly body as compounded of circular motions
- 'any hypothesis, however absurd, may be useful in science, if it enables a discoverer to conceive things in a new way; but that, when it has served this purpose by luck, it is likely to become an obstacle to further advance' (p131)


The Rise of Greek Civilization

• invention of writing in Egypt
• fertility cults in Egypt and Babylonia
• arrival of the Greeks: Ionians (rationalist tradition), Achaens, Dorians
• Homer - the gods are human though immortal, they are of a conquering aristocracy
• Bacchus - liberation through physical or spiritual intoxication, excessiveness
• Orpheus - asceticism. believes in the transmigration of the souls and aims at becoming 'pure'
• Philosophy begins with 'Thales', from Miletus, 585 B.C - 'water is the original substance, out of which all others are formed' 
• Anaximander - all things come form a single primal substance, which is not water, but an infinite, eternal substance that is transformed into the various substances with which we are familiar with; between cosmic and human conflicts, there is a kind of natural law which perpetually redresses the balance 
• Pythagoras - transmigration of souls, equality between men and women. the word 'theory', interpreted as 'passionate sympathetic contemplation', was intellectual, and issued in mathematical knowledge for Pythagoras. 'Personal religion is derived from ecstasy, theology from mathematics; and both are to be found in Pythagoras'. What appears to be Platonism is, the conception of an eternal world revealed to the intellect, when analyzed, derived from Pythagoras. Geometry is however not perfect and exact, and suggests that 'all exact reasoning applies to ideal as opposed to sensible objects'
• Heraclitus - regards fire as the fundamental substance; that the unity in the world is formed by the combination of opposites -- and a belief in war. He promoted the doctrine that everything is in flux, that 'nothing ever is, everything is becoming' (Plato) -- and that it was impossible to ascertain the truth in matters of theology
• Parmenides - 'On Nature': the senses are considered deceptive and things are mere illusion. The only one true being is 'the One' which is infinite and indivisible. Thought and language require objects outside themselves - that when you can think of something, you use a name, which must be the name of something, which indicates that it must exist. Consequently there can be no change since change indicates things coming into being or ceasing to be. However, this is based on the assumption that words have a constant meaning. This impossibility of change is considered too difficult a paradox, but what he offers, is the notion of the indestructibility of 'substance'. 
• Empedocles - the discovery of air as a separate substance. He holds that the material world is a sphere, that Strife is outside and Love is inside, and gradually they will switch places, and this cycle of opposite movements will repeat itself. 

Athens

• Athens was at its heights during the age of Pericles, during the two Persian Wars (490 B.C, 480-79 B.C). The vigour and imagination of ancient Greek philosophers, and the 'undue emphasis on man as compared with the universe', and the attempt to acquire fresh knowledge, is hard to be found in later philosophies. 
• First Persian War - the chief glory went to the Athenians // Second Persian War - Athenians fought best at sea but glory on land went to the Spartans // Peloponnesian War (431 B.C) and the death of Pericles -- Spartans reigned supreme and conquered Athens

• Anaxagoras - he regarded the mind as a substance which enters into the composition of living things; it is infinite, self-ruled and the source of all motion
• Leucippus and Democritus 'the Atomists' - the belief that everything is composed of atoms, which are physically indivisible and indestructible. Atoms are always in motion, moving at random, and as they collide, they form vortices which generate bodies and ultimately worlds. They were seeking to mediate between monism and pluralism, to explain the world without introducing the notion of 'purpose' or 'final cause'. There can be no motion without a void. There is no One plenum, but an infinite number that move in the void, and 'by coming together, they produce coming-to-be, while by separating they produce passing-away'. (However, there can be motion in a plenum) 'According to this view, space is not nothing but is of the nature of a receptacle...' The theory that a void exists involves the existence of places (Aristotle). Can we really believe that empty space exists? 'Where there is not matter, there is still something, notably light-waves. -- Leibniz maintains that space is merely a system of relations. For example, distance is between events, not between things, and involves time as well as space. 
• Protagoras: 'Man is the measure of all things, of things that are that they are, and of things that are not that they are not' -- each man is the measure of all things, and when they differ, there is no objective truth of which is right and wrong
• Socrates: Apology (Socrates' defence speech at his trial, reported by Plato some years after) : The Stoics held that the supreme good is virtue, which cannot be deprived by outside causes; the contention of Socrates that the judges cannot harm him. The Cynics despised worldly goods and eschewed the comforts of civilization, which led Socrates to go bare-foot and ill-clad. The Platonic Socrates maintains that he is only wiser than others in knowing that he knows nothing, and only knowledge is needed to make men virtuous. The matters that are suitable for a Socratic dialectic method are those to which we have already enough knowledge to come to a right conclusion, but have failed, through confusion of thought or lack of analysis. 

Sparta

• The mythical Sparta that enabled the Spartans to defeat Athens, that influenced Plato's political theory, is to be found in Plutarch's Life of Lycurgus 
• Laconia, capital of Sparta
• Spartans were the ruling race / Serfs were called helots / free inhabitants were 'perioeci' and had no share of political power
• War was the sole business of a Spartan citizen; the Spartan was simple, neither destitute nor rich, men and women received the same physical training, women were not allowed to show emotion -- Spartan constitution remained stable and unchanged