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