1) Thales of Miletus (624-546 BC)
The Presocratic philosophers rejected traditional mythological explanations of the phenomena they saw around them in favor of more rational explanations. These philosophers asked questions about "the essence of things":
From where does everything come?
From what is everything created?
How do we explain the plurality of things found in nature?
How might we describe nature mathematically?
Only fragments of the original writings of the presocratics survive. The knowledge we have of them derives from accounts of later philosophical writers (especially Aristotle, Plutarch, Diogenes Laërtius, Stobaeus and Simplicius), and some early theologians, (especially Clement of Alexandria and Hippolytus of Rome).
The first Presocratic philosophers were from Miletus on the western coast of Anatolia (current Turkey. The site of Miletus was once coastal, now is inland.). Thales (624-546 BCE) is reputed the father of Greek philosophy; he declared water to be the basis of all things
Thales attempted to explain natural phenomena without reference to mythology and was tremendously influential in this respect. Almost all of the other pre-Socratic philosophers follow him in attempting to provide an explanation of ultimate substance, change, and the existence of the world—without reference to mythology. The claim that Thales was the founder of European philosophy rests primarily on Aristotle (384–322 bc), who wrote that Thales was the first to suggest a single material substratum for the universe—namely, water, or moisture. |
| Thales (National Museum, Beirut) |
From where does everything come?
From what is everything created?
How do we explain the plurality of things found in nature?
How might we describe nature mathematically?
Only fragments of the original writings of the presocratics survive. The knowledge we have of them derives from accounts of later philosophical writers (especially Aristotle, Plutarch, Diogenes Laërtius, Stobaeus and Simplicius), and some early theologians, (especially Clement of Alexandria and Hippolytus of Rome).
The first Presocratic philosophers were from Miletus on the western coast of Anatolia (current Turkey. The site of Miletus was once coastal, now is inland.). Thales (624-546 BCE) is reputed the father of Greek philosophy; he declared water to be the basis of all things
In mathematics, Thales used geometry to solve problems such as calculating the height of pyramids and the distance of ships from the shore. He is credited with the first use of deductive reasoning applied to geometry, by deriving four corollaries to Thales' Theorem. As a result, he has been hailed as the first true mathematician and is the first known individual to whom a mathematical discovery has been attributed.
Thales attempted to explain earthquakes by hypothesizing that the Earth floats on water, and that earthquakes occur when the Earth is rocked by waves, rather than assuming that earthquakes were the result of supernatural processes. Thales was a Hylozoist (those who think matter is alive)
Thales' most famous belief was his cosmological thesis, which held that the world started from water. "Thales", says Cicero, "assures that water is the principle of all things; and that God is that Mind which shaped and created all things from water."
The universal mind appears as a Roman belief in Virgil as well:
"In the beginning, SPIRIT within (spiritus intus) strengthens Heaven and Earth,
The watery fields, and the lucid globe of Luna, and then --
Titan stars; and mind (mens) infused through the limbs
Agitates the whole mass, and mixes itself with GREAT MATTER (magno corpore)"
Thales had a profound influence on other Greek thinkers. Many philosophers followed Thales' lead in searching for explanations in nature rather than in the supernatural; others returned to supernatural explanations, but couched them in the language of philosophy rather than of myth or of religion.
Looking specifically at Thales' influence during the pre-Socratic era, it is clear that he stood out as one of the first thinkers who thought more in the way of logos than mythos. The difference between these two more profound ways of seeing the world is that mythos is concentrated around the stories of holy origin, while logos is concentrated around the argumentation.
Most philosophic analyses of the philosophy of Thales come from Aristotle, a professional philosopher, tutor of Alexander the Great, who wrote 200 years after Thales death. Aristotle, judging from his surviving books, does not seem to have access to any works by Thales, although he probably had access to works of other authors about Thales, such as Herodotus, Hecataeus, Plato etc., as well as others whose work is now extinct. It was Aristotle's express goal to present Thales work not because it was significant in itself, but as a prelude to his own work in natural philosophy.
2) Pythagoras of Samos (582-496 BC)
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| Bust of Pythagoras of Samos in the Capitoline Museums, Rome |
Many mathematical and scientific discoveries were attributed to Pythagoras, including his famous theorem, as well as discoveries in the field of music,astronomy, and medicine. No texts by Pythagoras are known to have survived, although forgeries under his name — a few of which remain extant — did circulate in antiquity.
Since the fourth century AD, Pythagoras has commonly been given credit for discovering the Pythagorean theorem, a theorem in geometry that states that in a right-angled triangle the area of the square on the hypotenuse (the side opposite the right angle) is equal to the sum of the areas of the squares of the other two sides. Although the Egyptians discovered this theorem, Pythagoras proved it to be true.
The earliest known mention of Pythagoras's name in connection with the theorem occurred five centuries after his death, in the writings of Cicero and Plutarch. Pythagoras' religious and scientific views were, in his opinion, inseparably interconnected. Religiously, Pythagoras was a believer of metempsychosis. He believed in transmigration, or the reincarnation of the soul again and again into the bodies of humans, animals, or vegetables until it became immortal. His ideas of reincarnation were influenced by ancient Greek religion.
Pythagoras set up an organization which was in some ways a school, in some ways a brotherhood (and here it should be noted that sources indicate that as well as men there were many women among the adherents of Pythagoras), and in some ways a monastery. It was based upon the religious teachings of Pythagoras and was very secretive. The adherents were bound by a vow to Pythagoras and each other, for the purpose of pursuing the religious and ascetic observances, and of studying his religious and philosophical theories. The claim that they put all their property into a common stock is perhaps only a later inference from certain Pythagorean maxims and practices Considerable importance seems to have been attached to music and gymnastics in the daily exercises of the disciples. Their whole discipline is represented as encouraging a lofty serenity and self-possession, of which, there were various anecdotes in antiquity
3) Xenophanes of Colophon
In today's philosophical and classics discourse, Xenophanes is seen as one of the most important presocratic philosophers. Colophon was a city in the region of Lydia (East of ancient Ionia in the modern Turkish provinces of Us,ak) in antiquity dating from about the turn of the first millennium-BC.
Xenophanes is quoted, memorably, in Clement of Alexandria, arguing against the conception of gods as fundamentally anthropomorphic:
"One god, greatest among gods and humans,
like mortals neither in form nor in thought."
"But mortals think that the gods are born
and have the mortals' own clothes and voice and form."
Clement was a Christian theologian whose parents were pagans, and he converted to Christianity. In one of his major works "the Protrepticus" he displays an extensive knowledge of Greek mythology and mystery religions, which could only have arisen from the practise of his family's religion. Clement criticizes Greek paganism in the Protrepticus on the basis that its deities are both false and poor moral examples, and he attacks the mystery religions for their obscurantism and trivial rituals. Regarding Xenophanes' theology five key concepts about God can be formed. God is: beyond human morality, does not resemble human form, cannot die or be born (God is divine thus eternal), no divine hierarchy exists, and God does not intervene in human affairs. While Xenophanes is rejecting Homeric theology, he is not questioning the presence of a divine entity, rather his philosophy is a critique on Ancient Greek writers and their conception of divinity. There is also the concept of God being whole with the universe, essentially controlling it, while at the same time being physically unconnected.
Xenophanes espoused a belief that "God is one, supreme among gods and men, and not like mortals in body or in mind.". He maintained there was one greatest God. God is one eternal being, spherical in form, comprehending all things within himself, is intelligent, and moves all things, but bears no resemblance to human nature either in body or mind. He is considered by some to be a precursor to Parmenides and Spinoza. Because of his development of the concept of a "one god greatest among gods and men" that is abstract, universal, unchanging, immobile and always present, Xenophanes is often seen as one of the first monotheists, in the Western philosophy of religion, although the quotation that seems to point to Xenophanes's monotheism also refers to multiple "gods" who the supreme God is greater than.
4) Parmenides of Elea (510-440 BC),
Parmenides of Elea (fl. early 5th century BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher born in Elea, a Greek city on the southern coast of Italy. He was the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy. Parmenides describes two views of reality. In "the way of truth" (a part of the poem), he explains how reality (coined as "what-is") is one, change is impossible, and existence is timeless, uniform, necessary, and unchanging. In "the way of opinion," he explains the world of appearances, in which one's sensory faculties lead to conceptions which are false and deceitful. These ideas strongly influenced the whole of Western philosophy, perhaps most notably through its effect on Plato. Parmenides claimed that the truth cannot be known through sensory perception. Only Logos will result in the understanding of the truth of the world. This is because the perception of things or appearances (the doxa) is deceptive. Genesis-and-destruction, as Parmenides emphasizes, is illusory, because the underlying material of which a thing is made will still exist after its destruction. What exists must always exist. And we arrive at the knowledge of this underlying, static, and eternal reality (aletheia) through reasoning, not through sense-perception.
The traditional interpretation of Parmenides' work is that he argued that the every-day perception of reality of the physical world (as described in doxa) is mistaken, and that the reality of the world is 'One Being' (as described in aletheia): an unchanging, ungenerated, indestructible whole. Under the Way of Opinion, Parmenides set out a contrasting but more conventional view of the world, thereby becoming an early exponent of the duality of appearance and reality. Parmenides' considerable influence on the thinking of Plato is undeniable, and in this respect Parmenides has influenced the whole history of Western philosophy, and is often seen as its grandfather. Even Plato himself, in the Sophist, refers to the work of "our Father Parmenides" as something to be taken very seriously and treated with respect. Parmenides made the ontological argument against nothingness, essentially denying the possible existence of a void. He held that any movement would require a void—which is nothing—but a nothing cannot exist. Einstein's theory of relativity provided a new answer to Parmenides, with the insight that space by itself is relative and cannot be separated from time as part of a generally curved space-time manifold.
5) Empedocles (490-430)
He was born in the small Sicilian village of what is now Agrigento, about 490 B.C Like most of his contemporaries, he was especially interested in constructing a philosophical view of how the universe was made. Earlier philosophers -- such as Thrales, Anaximander, and Heraclitus -- had attempted to identify a single basic substance from which all matter was made. It was Empedocles who established four ultimate elements which make all the structures in the world - fire, air, water, earth. The four elements were linked together by four qualities, each element possessing two of these. Firewas hot and dry with heat predominating. Air was hot and moist with moisture predominating. Water was moist and cold with cold predominating. Earth was cold and dry with dryness predominating. The interplay of these elements created matter. Empedocles' concept of the four elements had the most influence on later thinkers, including Aristotle, who adopted and extended Empedocles' ideas. Despite the mystical basis of Empedocles' ideas of the natural elements and the forces that control them, his theory, improved and extended by Aristotle, remained the cornerstone of chemical science for nearly 2,000 years, when it was finally replaced by the theory of chemical elements that react and intermingle to form the molecules that make up matter.
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| 4 elements by american Sculptor Paul Howard Manship, Water, wind, Earth, Fire. |
6) Zeno of Elea (490 BC – ca. 430 BC)
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| Zeno shows the Doors to Truth and Falsity (Veritas et Falsitas). Fresco by Pellegrino Tibaldi in the Library of El Escorial, Madrid. |
If the contradiction of an assertion (not-p) can be derived logically from the assertion (p) it can be concluded that a false assumption has been used. Logical Form:
Assume P is true.
From this assumption, deduce that Q is true.
Also deduce that Q is false.Thus, P implies both Q and not Q (a contradiction, which is necessarily false).
Therefore, P itself must be false.
This is a fairly good fallacy to remember when watching courtroom drama series, as lawyers may try to use this fallacy to show that a witness is lying. For example, a witness could make a claim on the stand, such as, “I know she was driving a blue car.”Lawyer: “How do you know this?”Witness: “Because I’m an interior decorator and I always notice the colors of cars on the road.”Lawyer: “Oh really? Can you tell us then, when you came to court today, what was the color the car that parked in front of you? To your left? Your right? What was the color of the car that was behind you on the freeway? [etc.]“The lawyer has just used a reductio ad absurdum in this rather contrived example to show that the witness’s testimony that they “always notice the colors of cars” is very likely to be a false premise because when it is followed to its logical extent (that they would be able to answer the lawyer’s question about every car they saw that day) it is an absurd claim.
Zeno's paradoxes are a set of philosophical problems generally thought to have been devised by Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea (ca. 490–430 BC) to support Parmenides's doctrine that "all is one" and that, contrary to the evidence of one's senses, the belief in plurality and change is mistaken, and in particular that motion is nothing but an illusion. Zeno was the first major thinker in the West to point out the problems of infinite divisibility:
In the paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise, Achilles is in a footrace with the tortoise. Achilles allows the tortoise a head start of 100 metres, for example. If we suppose that each racer starts running at some constant speed (one very fast and one very slow), then after some finite time, Achilles will have run 100 metres, bringing him to the tortoise's starting point. During this time, the tortoise has run a much shorter distance, say, 10 metres. It will then take Achilles some further time to run that distance, by which time the tortoise will have advanced farther; and then more time still to reach this third point, while the tortoise moves ahead. Thus, whenever Achilles reaches somewhere the tortoise has been, he still has farther to go. Therefore, because there are an infinite number of points Achilles must reach where the tortoise has already been, he can never overtake the tortoise
We’re not sure that Zeno intended “space” in his argument, but no matter the resulting entity, each new thing breeds yet another new thing, ad infinitum. Zeno then concludes that a limited number of things in the world is impossible, because any plurality requires this infinite progression of new things. Therefore, the world, by process of elimination, must be one thing, just as Parmenides believed.
Infinite processes remained theoretically troublesome in mathematics until the late 19th century. The epsilon-delta version of Weierstrass and Cauchy developed a rigorous formulation of the logic and calculus involved. These works resolved the mathematics involving infinite processes.
While mathematics can be used to calculate where and when the moving Achilles will overtake the Tortoise of Zeno's paradox, philosophers such as Brown and Moorcroft claim that mathematics does not address the central point in Zeno's argument, and that solving the mathematical issues does not solve every issue the paradoxes raise.
In the arrow paradox (also known as the fletcher's paradox), Zeno states that for motion to occur, an object must change the position which it occupies. He gives an example of an arrow in flight. He states that in any one (durationless) instant of time, the arrow is neither moving to where it is, nor to where it is not. It cannot move to where it is not, because no time elapses for it to move there; it cannot move to where it is, because it is already there. In other words, at every instant of time there is no motion occurring. If everything is motionless at every instant, and time is entirely composed of instants, then motion is impossible.
In 1977, physicists E. C. G. Sudarshan and B. Misra studying quantum mechanics discovered that the dynamical evolution (motion) of a quantum system can be hindered (or even inhibited) through observation of the system. This effect is usually called the "quantum Zeno effect" as it is strongly reminiscent of Zeno's arrow paradox.
7) Democritus (460 – 370)
He born in Abdera, Thrace, Greece. Many consider Democritus to be the "father of modern science".
Democritus followed in the tradition of Leucippus, who seems to have come from Miletus, and he carried on the scientific rationalist philosophy associated with that city. They were both strict determinists and thorough materialists, believing everything to be the result of natural laws. Unlike Aristotle or Plato, the atomists attempted to explain the world without reasoning to purpose, prime mover, or final cause. For the atomists questions should be answered with a mechanistic explanation ("What earlier circumstances caused this event?"), while their opponents search for explanations which, in addition to the material and mechanistic, also included the formal and teleological ("What purpose did this event serve?"). Modern science has focused on mechanistic questions, which have led to scientific knowledge, especially in physics
The theory of Democritus and Leucippus held that everything is composed of "atoms", which are physically, but not geometrically, indivisible; that between atoms lies empty space; that atoms are indestructible; have always been, and always will be, in motion; that there are an infinite number of atoms, and kinds of atoms, which differ in shape, and size. Of the mass of atoms, Democritus said "The more any indivisible exceeds, the heavier it is." But his exact position on weight of atoms is disputed. The Democritean atom is an inert solid (merely excluding other bodies from its volume) that interacts with other atoms mechanically. In contrast, modern, quantum-mechanical atoms interact via electric and magnetic force fields and are far from inert. They reasoned that the solidness of the material corresponded to the shape of the atoms involved. Thus, iron atoms are solid and strong with hooks that lock them into a solid; water atoms are smooth and slippery; salt atoms, because of their taste, are sharp and pointed; and air atoms are light and whirling, pervading all other materials.
8) Socrates (469 BC – 399 BC)
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| Bust of Socrates in the Vatican museum |
It is unclear how Socrates earned a living. Ancient texts seem to indicate that Socrates did not work. In Xenophon's Symposium, Socrates is reported as saying he devotes himself only to what he regards as the most important art or occupation: discussing philosophy. In The Clouds Aristophanes portrays Socrates as accepting payment for teaching and running a sophist school with Chaerephon, while in Plato's Apology and Symposium and in Xenophon's accounts, Socrates explicitly denies accepting payment for teaching.
A Sophist (Latin: sophista) was a specific kind of teacher in both Ancient Greece and in the Roman Empire. Many sophists specialized in using the tools of philosophy and rhetoric. The sophists' rhetorical techniques were extremely useful for any young nobleman looking for public office. The societal roles the Sophists filled had important ramifications for the Athenian political system at large. The Sophists were notorious for their claims to teach virtue/excellence and for accepting fees for teaching.
Perhaps his most important contribution to Western thought is his dialectic method of inquiry, known as the Socratic method or method of "elenchus", which he largely applied to the examination of key moral concepts such as the Good and Justice. It was first described by Plato in the Socratic Dialogues. To solve a problem, it would be broken down into a series of questions, the answers to which gradually distill the answer a person would seek. The influence of this approach is most strongly felt today in the use of the scientific method, in which hypothesis is the first stage.
The Socratic method is a negative method of hypothesis elimination, in that better hypotheses are found by steadily identifying and eliminating those that lead to contradictions. Socrates once said, "I know you won't believe me, but the highest form of Human Excellence is to question oneself and others."
To this day, the Socratic Method is still used in classroom and law school discourse to expose underlying issues in both subject and the speaker. The method is used by modern management training companies facilitating skills, knowledge and attitudinal. The principal trainer acts as a facilitator who uses a high percentage of open questions to allow the participants to reflect critically on their own way of thinking, feeling, or behaving in a given context - usually involving a problem or desired outcome - and guiding participants to form the conclusion or an axiom/principle/belief through their own efforts, potentially highlighting dissonance, conflicts of thought and actions with questions for further discussion. The generalized form may then be elaborated with more specific detail through an example, e.g. a case study led by the trainer.
One of the best known sayings of Socrates is "I only know that I know nothing". The conventional interpretation of this remark is that Socrates' wisdom was limited to an awareness of his own ignorance. Socrates believed wrongdoing was a consequence of ignorance and those who did wrong knew no better.
Especially for Plato's writings referring to Socrates, it is not always clear which ideas brought forward by Socrates (or his friends) actually belonged to Socrates and which of these may have been new additions or elaborations by Plato – this is known as the Socratic Problem. Generally, the early works of Plato are considered to be close to the spirit of Socrates, whereas the later works – including Phaedo and Republic – are considered to be possibly products of Plato's elaborations.
9) Aristippus (c. 435 – c. 356 BCE)
He was born in Cyrene, current coast town in Libya. He was a pupil of Socrates, but adopted a very different philosophical outlook, teaching that the goal of life was to seek pleasure by adapting circumstances to oneself and by maintaining proper control over both adversity and prosperity.
The Cyrenaics were an ultra-hedonist Greek school of philosophy founded in the 4th century BCE, supposedly by Aristippus of Cyrene, although many of the principles of the school are believed to have been formalized by his grandson of the same name, Aristippus the Younger.
10) Plato (423 BC – 347 BC)
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| Plato (left) and Aristotle (right), a detail of The School of Athens, a fresco by Raphael. |
He founded the Academy in Athens, an institution devoted to research and instruction in philosophy and the sciences. His works on philosophy, politics and mathematics were very influencial and laid the foundations for Euclid's systematic approach to mathematics. He was teacher of Aristotle.
Building on the demonstration by Socrates that those regarded as experts in ethical matters did not have the understanding necessary for a good human life, Plato introduced the idea that their mistakes were due to their not engaging properly with a class of entities he called forms, chief examples of which were Justice, Beauty, and Equality.
Plato's sophistication as a writer is evident in his Socratic dialogues; thirty-six dialogues and thirteen letters have been ascribed to him. Plato's writings have been published in several fashions; this has led to several conventions regarding the naming and referencing of Plato's texts. Plato's dialogues have been used to teach a range of subjects, including philosophy, logic, ethics, rhetoric, and mathematics. Plato is one of the most important founding figures in Western philosophy.
"Platonism" is a term coined by scholars to refer to the intellectual consequences of denying, as Socrates often does, the reality of the material world. In several dialogues, most notably the Republic, Socrates inverts the common man's intuition about what is knowable and what is real. Plato's interpretation of universals is linked to his Theory of Forms in which he uses both the terms (eidos: "form") and (idea: "characteristic") to describe his theory. Forms are mind independent abstract objects or paradigms (patterns in nature) of which particular objects and the properties and relations present in them are copies. Form is inherent in the particulars and these are said to participate in the form. Classically idea has been translated (or transliterated) as "idea," but secondary literature now typically employs the term "form" (or occasionally "kind," usually in discussion of Plato's Sophist and Statesman) to avoid confusion with the English word connoting "thought". In Platonic realism, forms are related to particulars (instances of objects and properties) in that a particular is regarded as a copy of its form. For example, a particular apple is said to be a copy of the form of Applehood and the apple's redness is an instance of the form of Redness. Participation is another relationship between forms and particulars. Particulars are said to participate in the forms, and the forms are said to inhere in the particulars. Notable Western philosophers have continued to draw upon Plato's work since that time. Plato's influence has been especially strong in mathematics and the sciences. He helped to distinguish between pure and applied mathematics by widening the gap between "arithmetic", now called number theory and "logistic", now called arithmetic. He regarded logistic as appropriate for business men and men of war who "must learn the art of numbers or he will not know how to array his troops," while arithmetic was appropriate for philosophers "because he has to arise out of the sea of change and lay hold of true being. The theory of forms is also the based of modern software architect as the Object Orientated Programming (OOP).
The forms (or ideas) are the only realities in the world. We observe, for instance, just actions, and we know that some men are just. But both in the actions and in the persons designated as just there exist many imperfections; they are only partly just. In the world above us there exits justice, absolute, perfect, unmixed with injustice, eternal, unchangeable, immortal. This is the Idea of justice.
In the allegory of the cave (Republic, VII, 514 d) a race of men are described as chained in a fixed position in a cavern, able to look only at the wall in front of them. When an animal, e.g. a horse, passes in front of the cave, they, beholding the shadow on the wall, imagine it to be a reality, and while in prison they know of no other reality. When they are released and go into the light they are dazzled, but when they succeed in distinguishing a horse among the objects around them, their first impulse is to take that for a shadow of the being which they saw on the wall. The prisoners are "like ourselves", says Plato.
The soul, Plato teaches, consists of three parts: the rational soul, which resides in the head; the irascible soul, the seat of courage, which resides in the heart; and the appetitive soul, the seat of desire, which resides in the abdomen. These are not three faculties of one soul, but three parts really distinct. His description of the future state of the soul is dominated by the Pythagorean doctrine of transmigration. Plato holds the spiritual nature of the soul as against the materialistic Atomists, and that he believes the soul to have existed before its union with the body. The whole theory of Ideas, in so far, at least, as it is applied to human knowledge, presupposes the doctrine of pre-existence. "All knowledge is recollection" has no meaning except in the hypothesis of the soul's pre-natal intuition of Ideas. It is equally incontrovertible that Plato held the soul to be immortal. The considerations which he offers in favour of immortality, in the "Phaedo", have helped to strengthen all subsequent generations in the belief in a future life.The great majority of the Christian philosophers down to St. Augustine were Platonists. They appreciated the uplifting influence of Plato's psychology and metaphysics, and recognized in that influence a powerful ally of Christianity in the warfare against materialism and naturalism.
Virtue is order, harmony, the health of the soul; vice is disorder, discord, disease. The State is, for Plato, the highest embodiment of the Idea. It should have for its aim the establishment and cultivation of virtue. The reason of this is that man, even in the savage condition, could, indeed, attain virtue. In order, however, that virtue may be established systematically and cease to be a matter of chance or haphazard, education is necessary, and without a social organization education is impossible. In his "Republic" he sketches an ideal state, a polity which should exist if rulers and subjects would devote themselves, as they ought, to the cultivation of wisdom. The ideal state is modelled on the individual soul. It consists of three orders: rulers (corresponding to the reasonable soul), producers (corresponding to desire), and warriors (corresponding to courage). Those who govern should be distinguished by qualities which are distinctly intellectual. Plato is an advocate of State absolutism, such as existed in his time in Sparta. The State, he maintains, exercises unlimited power. Neither private property nor family institutions have any place in the Platonic state. The children belong to the state as soon as they are born, and should be taken in charge by the State from the beginning, for the purpose of education. These impractical schemes reflect at once Plato's discontent with the demagogy then prevalent in Athens and in his personal predilection for the aristocratic form of government. Indeed, his scheme is essentially aristocratic in the original meaning of the word; it advocates government by the (intellectually) best.These are some of Plato famous quotes:
Wealth is the parent of luxury and indolence, and poverty of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent.
The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life.
Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils — no, nor the human race, as I believe — and then only will this our State have a possibility of life and behold the light of day.
I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.
Democracy, which is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.
Democracy passes into despotism.
11) Diogenes of Sinope (404 BC-323 BC)
Diogenes was born in the Greek colony of Sinope (current Turkey) on the south coast of the Black Sea. Along with Antisthenes and Crates of Thebes, Diogenes is considered one of the founders of Cynicism. The ideas of Diogenes, like those of most other Cynics, must be arrived at indirectly. No writings of Diogenes survived even though he is reported to have authored over ten books, a volume of letters and seven tragedies. Diogenes maintained that all the artificial growths of society were incompatible with happiness and that morality implies a return to the simplicity of nature. Diogenes is credited with the first known use of the word "cosmopolitan". When he was asked where he came from, he replied, "I am a citizen of the world (cosmopolites)". This was a radical claim in a world where a man's identity was intimately tied to his citizenship in a particular city state.
Diogenes taught by living example. He tried to demonstrate that wisdom and happiness belong to the man who is independent of society and that civilization is regressive. He scorned not only family and political social organization, but also property rights and reputation. He even rejected normal ideas about human decency. Diogenes is said to have eaten in the marketplace, urinated on some people who insulted him, defecated in the theatre and pointed at people with his middle finger.
The term "Cynic" itself derives from the Greek word, kynikos, "dog-like" and that from, kyôn, "dog" (genitive: kynos). Many anecdotes of Diogenes refer to his dog-like behavior, and his praise of a dog's virtues. It is not known whether Diogenes was insulted with the epithet "doggish" and made a virtue of it, or whether he first took up the dog theme himself. Diogenes believed human beings live artificially and hypocritically and would do well to study the dog. Besides performing natural bodily functions in public with ease, a dog will eat anything, and make no fuss about where to sleep. Dogs live in the present without anxiety, and have no use for the pretensions of abstract philosophy. In addition to these virtues, dogs are thought to know instinctively who is friend and who is foe. Unlike human beings who either dupe others or are duped, dogs will give an honest bark at the truth. Diogenes stated that "other dogs bite their enemies, I bite my friends to save them.
The meeting of Diogenes of Sinope and Alexander the Great is one of the most well-discussed anecdotes from philosophical history. Many versions of it exist. The most popular relate it as evidence of Diogenes' disregard for honor, wealth, and respect. According to legend, Alexander the Great came to visit the Greek philosopher Diogenes of Sinope. Alexander wanted to fulfill a wish for Diogenes and asked him what he desired. According to the version recounted by Diogenes Laërtius, Diogenes replied "Stand out of my light. The statement by Alexander, "if I were not Alexander the Great, I would like to be Diogenes," also crops up in some other versions of the anecdote.
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| Diogenes sculpture at Corinth (June 2012) |
The fundamental principles of Cynicism can be summarised as follows:
-The goal of life is happiness which is to live in agreement with Nature.
-Happiness depends on being self-sufficient, and a master of mental attitude.
-Self-sufficiency is achieved by living a life of Arete.
-The road to arete is to free oneself from any influence such as wealth, fame, or power, which have no value in Nature.
-Suffering is caused by false judgments of value, which cause negative emotions and a vicious character.
Many of the ascetic practices of Cynicism may have been adopted by early Christians, and Christians often employed the same rhetorical methods as the Cynics. Some Cynics were actually martyred for speaking out against the authorities. One Cynic, Peregrinus Proteus, lived for a time as a Christian before converting to Cynicism, whereas in the 4th century, Maximus of Alexandria, although a Christian, was also called a Cynic because of his ascetic lifestyle. Christian writers would often praise Cynic poverty, although they scorned Cynic shamelessness: Augustine stating that they had, "in violation of the modest instincts of men, boastfully proclaimed their unclean and shameless opinion, worthy indeed of dogs.". The ascetic orders of Christianity also had direct connection with the Cynics, as can be seen in the wandering mendicant monks of the early church who in outward appearance, and in many of their practices were little different from the Cynics of an earlier age
12) Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC)
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| Aristotle |
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology. Together with Plato and Socrates (Plato's teacher), Aristotle is one of the most important founding figures in Western philosophy. Aristotle's writings were the first to create a comprehensive system of Western philosophy, encompassing morality, aesthetics, logic, science, politics, and metaphysics.
Aristotle's views on the physical sciences profoundly shaped medieval scholarship, and their influence extended well into the Renaissance, although they were ultimately replaced by Newtonian physics. In the zoological sciences, some of his observations were confirmed to be accurate only in the 19th century. His works contain the earliest known formal study of logic, which was incorporated in the late 19th century into modern formal logic.
He was perhaps the philosopher most respected by European thinkers during and after the Renaissance, these thinkers often took Aristotle's erroneous positions as given, which held back science in this epoch. For example He posited a geocentric cosmology that we may discern in selections of the Metaphysics, which was widely accepted up until the 16th century. From the 3rd century to the 16th century, the dominant view held that the Earth was the rotational center of the universe.However, Aristotle's scientific shortcomings should not mislead one into forgetting his great advances in the many scientific fields. For instance, he founded logic as a formal science and created foundations to biology that were not superseded for two millennia. Moreover, he introduced the fundamental notion that nature is composed of things that change and that studying such changes can provide useful knowledge of underlying constants.
Metaphysics is one of the principal works of Aristotle and the first major work of the branch of philosophy with the same name. The Metaphysics is considered to be one of the greatest philosophical works. Its influence on the Greeks, the Muslim philosophers, the scholastic philosophers and even writers such as Dante, was immense. It is essentially a reconciliation of Plato’s theory of Forms that Aristotle acquired at the Academy in Athens, with the view of the world given by common sense and the observations of the natural sciences. According to Plato, the real nature of things is eternal and unchangeable. However, the world we observe around us is constantly and perpetually changing. Aristotle’s genius was to reconcile these two apparently contradictory views of the world. The result is a synthesis of the naturalism of empirical science, and the rationalism of Plato, that informed the Western intellectual tradition for more than a thousand years
The book was lost in the Latin West from the collapse of Rome until the twelfth century. For a period, scholars relied on Latin translations of the Arabic, who relied on Arabic translations from early Syriac translations from the Greek. In the thirteenth century, following the Fourth crusade, the original Greek manuscripts became available. Some of the books of this work:
Book I or Alpha outlines "first philosophy", which is a knowledge of the first principles or causes of things. The wise are able to teach because they know the why of things, unlike those who only know that things are a certain way based on their memory and sensations. Because of their knowledge of first causes and principles they are better fitted to command, rather than to obey.
Book II or "little alpha": The purpose of this chapter is to address a possible objection to Aristotle’s account of how we understand first principles and thus acquire wisdom. Aristotle replies that the idea of an infinite causal series is absurd, and thus there must be a first cause which is not itself caused. This idea is developed later in book Lambda, where he develops an argument for the existence of God.
Book III or Beta lists the main problems or puzzles of philosophy
Book IV or Gamma: Chapters 2 and 3 argue for its status as a subject in its own right. The rest is a defense of (a) what we now call the principle of contradiction, the principle that it is not possible for the same proposition to be (the case) and not to be (the case), and (b) what we now call the principle of excluded middle: tertium non datur - there cannot be an intermediary between contradictory statements.
Book V or Delta ("philosophical lexicon") is a list of definitions of about fifty key terms such as cause, nature, one, and many.
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Book IX or Theta: Theta sets out to define potentiality and actuality. We learn that this term indicates the potential ( dunamis) of something to change: potentiality is "a principle of change in another thing or in the thing itself qua other". In chapter 6 Aristotle turns to actuality. Actuality is the completed state of something that had the potential to be completed. The relationship between actuality and potentiality can be thought of as the relationship between form and matter, but with the added aspect of time. Actuality and potentiality are diachronic (across time) distinctions, whereas form and matter are synchronic (at one time) distinctions.
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Book XII or Lambda: Further remarks on beings in general, first principles, and God or gods. This book includes Aristotle's famous description of the unmoved mover, "the most divine of things observed by us", as "the thinking of thinking".
Let's review some critical concepts in Aristotle world:
- Aristotle proposed a fifth element, aether, in addition to the four proposed earlier by Empedocles.
- Four causes:
Aristotle suggested that the reason for anything coming about can be attributed to four different types of simultaneously active causal factors:
- Material cause describes the material out of which something is composed. Thus the material cause of a table is wood, and the material cause of a car is rubber and steel
- The formal cause is its form, i.e., the arrangement of that matter. It tells us what a thing is, that any thing is determ.
- The efficient cause is "the primary source", or that from which the change or the ending of the change first starts. It identifies 'what makes of what is made and what causes change of what is changed' and so suggests all sorts of agents, nonliving or living, acting as the sources of change or movement or rest
- The final cause is its purpose, or that for the sake of which a thing exists or is done, including both purposeful and instrumental actions and activities.
It is a common mistake to conceive of the four causes as additive or alternative forces pushing or pulling; in reality, all four are needed to explain.
Aristotle’s four causes are answers to four common sense questions we can ask about change in the world around us. They are; What is a thing made of?, Who made it?, What is it that is being made?, and What is it being made for? When it comes to human productions, the answer to these questions is usually easy. When it comes to answering these questions as they occur in nature, it becomes more difficult.
Regarding human production, if you asked a shoemaker what he was making his shoes out of he might reply “leather.” If you asked a gunsmith producing a rifle what he was making it out of he might reply “wood and steel.” According to Aristotle, what a thing is made of is the material cause. It is one of four indispensible factors without which the production would not or could not occur.
The second question is: Who made it? Aristotle calls this the efficient cause. When we are dealing with human productions, this would seem to be the easiest question of all. The shoemaker maker makes the shoe. The gunsmith makes the gun. However, when dealing with natural processes this question is much harder to answer.
The third question is: What is it that is being made? Aristotle calls this the formal cause. The answer to this question can seem simple but Aristotle means something specific in using the word “formal” in this instance. The formal cause for the gunsmith would be a gun. The formal cause for the shoemaker would be a shoe.
The fourth question is: What is it being made for? Put simply we might say: Why is it being made? Aristotle calls this the final cause. For the gunsmith, the final cause for producing a gun might be “for protection.” For the shoemaker the final cause for producing shoes might be “comfort.”
For instance, for a statue:
The Material Cause, that out of which the statue is made, is the marble or bronze.
The Formal Cause, that according to which the statue is made, is the idea existing in the first place as exemplar in the mind of the sculptor, and in the second place as intrinsic, determining cause, embodied in the matter.
The Efficient Cause, or Agent, is the sculptor.
The Final Cause is that for the sake of which (as, for instance, the price paid the sculptor, the desire to please a patron, etc.) the statue is made.
- Potentiality and actuality: In philosophy, potentiality and actuality are principles of a dichotomy which Aristotle used to analyze motion, causality, ethics, and physiology in his Physics, Metaphysics, Ethics and De Anima (which is about the human psyche).
The concept of potentiality, in this context, generally refers to any "possibility" that a thing can be said to have. Aristotle did not consider all possibilities the same, and emphasized the importance of those that become real of their own accord when conditions are right and nothing stops them.
Potentiality can be either rational or irrational, depending on whether the change is effected by a rational agent or happens naturally. Aristotle distinguishes rational potentiality from irrational potentiality, saying that rational potentiality can produce opposites. For example, the rational potentiality of medicine can produce either health or sickness, whereas the irrational potentiality of heating can produce only heat and not cold. All potentialities must eventually be realized: if a potentiality never becomes an actuality, then we do not call it a potentiality but an impossibility. Consider bronze: the matter of bronze has the potential to be many things such as a cube or statue. When a bronze cube is changed in a statue, the matter of the bronze remains the same throughout the change.
Aristotle identifies actuality with form, and hence substance, while identifying matter with potentiality. If a bronze cube’s matter is bronze, then the cubeness is its form. In other words, bronze is always potentially a cube (among other things) and only becomes a cube when it receives the form of cubeness.
Aristotle wrote for example that "matter exists potentially, because it may attain to the form; but when it exists actually, it is then in the form"
Aristotle discusses motion (kine-sis) in his Physics quite differently than modern science does. Aristotle's definition of motion is closely connected to his actuality-potentiality distinction. Taken literally, Aristotle defines motion as the actuality (entelecheia) of a "potentiality as such".
In the Metaphysics Aristotle takes the stand that the actual is of its nature antecedent to the potential, that consequently, before all matter and all composition of matter and form, of potentiality and actuality, there must have existed a Being Who is pure actuality, and Whose life is self-contemplative thought.
The God of Aristotle is pure form, or pure actuality. It is perfection in the sense that it has no potentiality, and thus cannot be greater in any way. Logically, there are attributes that follow from being pure actuality: immateriality (as materiality is potentiality), immutability (as change requires potentiality), eternal (as becoming would require change) and etc. Within the works of Aristotle the terms energeia and entelecheia, often translated as actuality, differ from what is merely actual because they specifically presuppose that all things have a proper kind of activity or work which, if achieved, would be their proper end.
- Substance: Aristotle examines the concepts of substance and essence (ousia) in his Metaphysics (Book VII, Zeta), and he concludes that a particular substance is a combination of both matter and form. In book VIII, he distinguishes the matter of the substance as the substratum, or the stuff of which it is composed. For example, the matter of a house is the bricks, stones, timbers etc., or whatever constitutes the potential house, while the form of the substance is the actual house, namely 'covering for bodies and chattels' or any other differentia (see also predicables) that let us define something as a house. To Aristotle, God is the first of all substances, the necessary first source of movement who is himself unmoved. God is a being with everlasting life, and perfect blessedness, engaged in never-ending contemplation. In the Metaphysics he takes the stand that the actual is of its nature antecedent to the potential, that consequently, before all matter and all composition of matter and form, of potentiality and actuality, there must have existed a Being Who is pure actuality, and Whose life is self-contemplative thought (noesis noeseos). The Supreme Being imparted movement to the universe by moving the First Heaven, the movement, however, emanated from the First Cause as desirable. In other words, the First Heaven, attracted by the desirability of the Supreme Being "as the soul is attracted by beauty", was set in motion, and imparted its motion to the lower spheres and thus, ultimately, to our terrestrial world.
- Uninstantiated universals: Plato argued that there are some universal forms that are not a part of particular things. For example, it is possible that there is no particular good in existence, but "good" is still a proper universal form. Aristotle disagreed with Plato on this point, arguing that all universals are instantiated. Aristotle famously rejected Plato’s theory of forms, which states that properties such as beauty are abstract universal entities that exist independent of the objects themselves. Instead, he argued that forms are intrinsic to the objects and cannot exist apart from them, and so must be studied in relation to them. Aristotle argued that there are no universals that are unattached to existing things. According to Aristotle, if a universal exists, either as a particular or a relation, then there must have been, must be currently, or must be in the future, something on which the universal can be predicated. Consequently, according to Aristotle, if it is not the case that some universal can be predicated to an object that exists at some period of time, then it does not exist. In addition, Aristotle disagreed with Plato about the location of universals. As Plato spoke of the world of the forms, a location where all universal forms subsist, Aristotle maintained that universals exist within each thing on which each universal is predicated. So, according to Aristotle, the form of apple exists within each apple, rather than in the world of the forms.
- Aristotle's psychology, given in his treatise On the Soul (peri psyche, often known by its Latin title De Anima), posits three souls ("psyches") in humans: the vegetative soul, the sensitive soul, and the rational soul. Humans share the vegetative soul with all living things, and the sensitive soul with all animals, but only humans of all beings in the world have a rational soul. For Aristotle, the soul (psyche) was a simpler concept than it is for us today. By soul he simply meant the form of a living being. Since all beings are composites of form and matter, the form of living beings is that which endows them with what is specific to living beings, e.g. the ability to initiate movement (or in the case of plants, growth and chemical transformations, which Aristotle considers types of movement)
- Logic: Aristotle observed that the validity of any argument can be determined by its structure rather than its content. A classic example of a valid argument is his syllogism: All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; therefore, Socrates is mortal. Given the structure of this argument, as long as the premises are true, then the conclusion is also guaranteed to be true. Aristotle’s brand of logic dominated this area of thought until the rise of modern propositional logic and predicate logic 2000 years later. Aristotle's logical works contain the earliest formal study of logic that we have. It is therefore all the more remarkable that together they comprise a highly developed logical theory, one that was able to command immense respect for many centuries: Kant, who was ten times more distant from Aristotle than we are from him, even held that nothing significant had been added to Aristotle's views in the intervening two millennia.
Aristotle was perhaps the first truly systematic philosopher. Aristotelian logic was the first type of logic to attempt to categorize every valid syllogism. A syllogism is a form of argument that is guaranteed to be accepted, because it is known (by all educated persons) to be valid. A crucial assumption in Aristotelian logic is that it has to be about real objects. Two of Aristotle's syllogisms are invalid to modern eyes. For example, "All A are B. All A are C. Therefore, some B are C." This syllogism fails if set A is empty, but there are real members of set B. In Aristotle's syllogistic logic you could say this, because his logic should only be used for things that really exist ("no empty classes"). The application of Aristotelian logic is preceded by having the student memorize a rather large set of syllogisms. The memorization proceeded from diagrams, or learning a key sentence, with the first letter of each word reminding the student of the names of the syllogisms. Each syllogism had a name, for example: "Modus Ponens" had the form of "If A is true, then B is true. A is true, therefore B is true.". Most university students of logic memorized Aristotle's 19 syllogisms of two subjects, permitting them to validly connect a subject and object. A few logicians developed systems with three subjects, or described a way of elaborating the rules of three subjects.
- Motion: Everything in nature has its end and function, and nothing is without its purpose. Everywhere we find evidences of design and rational plan. No doctrine of physics can ignore the fundamental notions of motion, space, and time. Motion is the passage of matter into form, and it is of four kinds: (1) motion which affects the substance of a thing, particularly its beginning and its ending; (2) motion which brings about changes in quality; (3) motion which brings about changes in quantity, by increasing it and decreasing it; and (4) motion which brings about locomotion, or change of place. Of these the last is the most fundamental and important. Aristotle rejects also the definition of space as the void. Empty space is an impossibility. Time is defined as the measure of motion in regard to what is earlier and later. It thus depends for its existence upon motion. If there where no change in the universe, there would be no time. As to the infinite divisibility of space and time, and the paradoxes proposed by Zeno, Aristotle argues that space and time are potentially divisible ad infinitum, but are not actually so divided.
- Ethics: The Nicomachean Ethics is the name normally given to Aristotle's best known work on ethics. The work, which plays a pre-eminent role in defining Aristotelian ethics, consists of ten books, originally separate scrolls, and is understood to be based on notes from his lectures at the Lyceum, which were either edited by or dedicated to Aristotle's son, Nicomachus, but this is only a supposition, since the work itself does not contain any reference to a Nicomachus. In his work, Aristotle says that Happiness must be based on human nature, and must begin from the facts of personal experience. Thus, happiness cannot be found in any abstract or ideal notion, like Plato’s self-existing good. It must be something practical and human. It must then be found in the work and life which is unique to humans. But this is neither the vegetative life we share with plants nor the sensitive existence which we share with animals. It follows therefore that true happiness lies in the active life of a rational being or in a perfect realization and outworking of the true soul and self, continued throughout a lifetime. For Aristotle, logos is something more refined than the capacity to make private feelings public: it enables the human being to perform as no other animal can; it makes it possible for him to perceive and make clear to others through reasoned discourse the difference between what is advantageous and what is harmful, between what is just and what is unjust, and between what is good and what is evil.
- Politics: To Aristotle and Plato, Monarchy was the ideal system. Plato said that the ideal form of government was an Aristocracy ruled by Philosopher Kings. Aristotle also came to the conclusion that monarchy is the superior form of government. Aristotle argues that the good society will be one in which the citizens are enabled to achieve eudaimonia, or flourishing. Aristotle believes that a democracy is not a good form of rule because a rule of the majority, the rule of the poor does not achieve the telos (telos is the end or purpose) of the city-state. For Aristotle, a democracy is the rule of the poor and the rule of the majority. When making his decision on virtuous or non-virtuous, Aristotle says that a rule of the majority must be non-virtuous in practice because it is too difficult to find a majority who can be virtuous. This means that the rule of the majority, the rule of the poor under a democracy does not help the city-state achieve its telos – the good life for its citizens. One reason a democracy does not achieve the telos of the city-state, and therefore cannot be a virtuous form of government, is because a democracy is based in a bad definition of freedom – according to Aristotle. “Democracies define freedom badly….everyone lives as he wants and toward whatever end he happens to crave.” For Aristotle, this is a non-virtuous end. The common good, for Aristotle, is the telos of the city-state: providing the good life for its citizens.For Aristotle, a good government/virtuous government is one that is ruled aristocratically; meaning on the basis of merit. However, in a democracy as Aristotle defines it, ruling is done on the basis of numerical equality. In a democracy the decisions are made by people who do not have the telos of the city-state at the core of their actions, then the telos of the city-state will never be reached, and the government will not be virtuous. For Aristotle, the poor are concerned with getting more wealth, which means they are putting their individual good above the common good while they are engaged in ruling. The city-state is composed of more than the poor citizen; the city-state also has wealthy citizens. For a person to govern in a virtuous manner, they must be able to put the common good – the good of the city-state – above their individual good. For Aristotle, the people who can do this are a select few, and so a rule by majority must, of necessity, include those who are non-virtuous in their governance. When the poor govern, as they do in a democracy, then the good of the city-state becomes the good of the poor, which is not the good of the city-state as a whole, and so does not reach the telos of the city-state. Aristotle believes in aristocracy – rule by merit. The rule based on numerical equality is in direct conflict with Aristotle’s belief in rule by merit. In a democracy, with the characteristics above, a non-virtuous person has an opportunity at rule, regardless of merit. This leads to a city-state that cannot attain its telos and therefore is, by definition, a non-virtuous form of governance.
- Philosophy: For Aristotle, therefore, philosophic method implies the ascent from the study of particular phenomena to the knowledge of essences, while for Plato philosophic method means the descent from a knowledge of universal ideas to a contemplation of particular imitations of those ideas. In a certain sense, Aristotle's method is both inductive and deductive, while Plato's is essentially deductive. Aristotle substituted the scientific tendency to examine first the phenomena of the real world around us and thence to reason to a knowledge of the essences and laws which no intuition can reveal, but which science can prove to exist. In fact, Aristotle's notion of philosophy corresponds, generally speaking, to what was later understood to be science, as distinct from philosophy. For Aristoteles the mind discovers the intelligible in the sense-perceived. The mind does not, as Plato imagined, bring out of a previous existence the recollection of certain ideas, of which it is reminded at sight of the phenomenon. It brings to bear on the phenomenon a power peculiar to the mind, by virtue of which it renders intelligible essences which are imperceptible to the senses, because hidden under the non-essential qualities. The fact is, the individual substance (first substance) of our sense experience--this book, this table, this house--has certain individuating qualities (its particular size, shape, colour, etc.) which distinguish it from others of its species and which alone are perceived by the senses. But in the same substance, there is underlying the individuating qualities, its general nature (whereby it is a book, a table, a house); this is the second substance, the Essence, the Universal, the Intelligible. Now, the mind is endowed with the power of abstraction, generalization, or induction (Aristotle is not very clear as to the precise nature of this power) by which it removes, so to speak, the veil of particularizing qualities and thus brings out, or leaves revealed, the actually intelligible, or universal, element in things, which is the object of intellectual knowledge. In this theory intellectual knowledge is developed from sense-knowledge in so far as that Process may be called a development in which what was only Potentially intelligible is rendered actually intelligible by the operation of the active intellect.
Quotes by Aristotle:
“Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies”.
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit”.“The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control, and outnumbers both of the other classes”.“You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor”.“The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead”.“It is just that we should be grateful, not only to those with whose views we may agree, but also to those who have expressed more superficial views; for these also contributed something, by developing before us the powers of thought”.
“No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness.”
“Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime”.
“It is not enough to win a war; it is more important to organize the peace”.
“Misfortune shows those who are not really friends”.“Evils draw men together”.
“The life of money-making is one undertaken under compulsion since wealth is not the good we are seeking and is merely useful for the sake of something else.”
More than twenty-three hundred years after his death, Aristotle remains one of the most influential people who ever lived. He contributed to almost every field of human knowledge then in existence, and he was the founder of many new fields.
With the loss of the study of ancient Greek in the early medieval Latin West, Aristotle was practically unknown there from c. AD 600 to c. 1100 except through the Latin translation of the Organon made by Boethius. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, interest in Aristotle revived and Latin Christians had translations made. Aristotle is referred to as "The Philosopher" by Scholastic thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas. Thinkers like him blended Aristotelian philosophy with Christianity, bringing the thought of Ancient Greece into the Middle Ages. It required a repudiation of some Aristotelian principles for the sciences and the arts to free themselves for the discovery of modern scientific laws and empirical methods.
Christians in Syria knew Aristotle’s writings and passed them on to the Islamic Arab world, beginning in the eighth century. The Arabs produced two outstanding commentators on Aristotle, Avicenna and Averroes. But their task didn’t come easily. Avicenna confessed that he read the Metaphysics forty times without understanding it. According to Averroes, Aristotle’s philosophy denied personal immortality, contradicting Christian teaching on the afterlife. Besides that, Averroes’s assertion that the world was eternal seemed to deny that God had created it. Another problem concerned the idea of a universal mind. Averroes held that there is only one mind, in which individuals participate, since they do not have their own personal minds. This contradicted Christian teaching about the soul, with its faculties of mind and will. Having been introduced to Aristotle’s works during his early studies in Naples, Thomas Aquinas developed such great esteem for the Greek that he always referred to him as "the Philosopher." So in the Middle Ages he was revered as "the Philosopher." It was largely due to Thomas Aquinas that the Church was able to draw what was good from Aristotle and incorporate it into Christian philosophy. Not knowing Greek, Thomas had to use Latin translations, but he was able to use newer translations which were done directly from the Greek into Latin. Thomas examined Aristotle’s thought closely and distinguished it from the errors of the Arabian commentators. In a little work titled On the Eternity of the World Against Murmurers, he reaffirmed that Christian faith teaches the world is not eternal. He showed that even if it were, as Aristotle thought, that would not do away with the need for a Creator. The world still would have to be created because it does not contain within itself sufficient reason for its own existence. Thomas was canonized in 1323, and the Dominican defenders of his teaching assured a victory for the cause of Christian Aristotelianism. This movement became known as Scholasticism. It continued to exert great influence up to the time of the Renaissance and Reformation, when a reaction against Aristotle set in throughout Europe. From the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries, the humanist and scientific movements left Aristotelianism aside in favor of newer approaches to thought. Still, Aristotle never completely lost influence, for some scholars continued to study him. Aristotle was studied especially in Catholic circles. Around the time of the Council of Trent, the study of philosophy based on Thomas (known as Thomism) was renewed along with its basis in Aristotle. This began in Italy and flourished in Portugal and Spain, notably at the Dominican school at Salamanca. In 1879 Pope Leo XIII again encouraged the study of Thomism in the encyclical Aeterni Patris. This helped spur the Neo-Scholasticism that developed in the twentieth century with such philosophers as Jacques Maritain and Etienne Gilson. Although interest in Thomas and Aristotle declined after the Vatican Council, in recent years it has picked up again. For example, a renewal of moral theology is being carried out by thinkers such as Germain Grisez and John Finnis, who have not only gone back to what Thomas and Aristotle said about natural law, but are developing it further in a modern perspective. From his small school in Athens, Aristotle never could have foreseen the impact his thought was to have on Western civilization. Through the propagating influence of Thomas, he "won the West," not with armies clashing in battle but with the most powerful force known to history: ideas.
13) Epicurus (341 BC – 270 BC)
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| Bust of Epicurus at the Louvre, made on 2nd century AD |
Epicurus' philosophy is based on the theory that all good and bad derive from the sensations of pleasure and pain. What is good is what is pleasurable, and what is bad is what is painful. Pleasure and pain were ultimately, for Epicurus, the basis for the moral distinction between good and evil. If pain is chosen over pleasure in some cases it is only because it leads to a greater pleasure. Although Epicurus has been commonly misunderstood to advocate the rampant pursuit of pleasure, he was actually after the absence of pain (both physical and mental, i.e., suffering) - a state of satiation and tranquility that was free of the fear of death and the retribution of the gods. When we do not suffer pain, we are no longer in need of pleasure, and we enter a state of 'perfect mental peace'. Although Epicureanism is a form of hedonism, insofar as it declares pleasure to be the sole intrinsic good, its conception of absence of pain as the greatest pleasure and its advocacy of a simple life make it different from "hedonism" as it is commonly understood.
When we say...that pleasure is the end and aim, we do not mean the pleasures of the prodigal or the pleasures of sensuality, as we are understood to do by some through ignorance, prejudice or wilful misrepresentation. By pleasure we mean the absence of pain in the body and of trouble in the soul. It is not by an unbroken succession of drinking bouts and of revelry, not by sexual lust, nor the enjoyment of fish and other delicacies of a luxurious table, which produce a pleasant life; it is sober reasoning, searching out the grounds of every choice and avoidance, and banishing those beliefs through which the greatest tumults take possession of the soul.
He also believed (contra Aristotle) that death was not to be feared. When a man dies, he does not feel the pain of death because he no longer is and he therefore feels nothing. Therefore, as Epicurus famously said, "death is nothing to us." When we exist death is not, and when death exists we are not. All sensation and consciousness ends with death and therefore in death there is neither pleasure nor pain. The fear of death arises from the belief that in death there is awareness.
From this doctrine arose the Epicurean epitaph: Non fui, fui, non sum, non curo (I was not; I was; I am not; I do not care) – which is inscribed on the gravestones of his followers and seen on many ancient gravestones of the Roman Empire. This quote is often used today at humanist funerals.
The "Epicurean paradox" is a version of the problem of evil*. It is a trilemma argument (God is omnipotent, God is good, but Evil exists); or more commonly seen as this quote:
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?
This type of trilemma argument (God is omnipotent, God is good, but Evil exists) was one favoured by the ancient Greek skeptics, and this argument may have been wrongly attributed to Epicurus by Lactantius, who, from his Christian perspective, regarded Epicurus as an atheist.
In contrast to the Stoics, Epicureans showed little interest in participating in the politics of the day, since doing so leads to trouble. He instead advocated seclusion. His garden can be compared to present-day communes.
Epicurus was an early thinker to develop the notion of justice as a social contract. He defined justice as an agreement "neither to harm nor be harmed." The point of living in a society with laws and punishments is to be protected from harm so that one is free to pursue happiness. Because of this, laws that do not contribute to promoting human happiness are not just. He gave his own unique version of the Ethic of Reciprocity, which differs from other formulations by emphasizing minimizing harm and maximizing happiness for oneself and others: It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and well and justly (agreeing "neither to harm nor be harmed"), and it is impossible to live wisely and well and justly without living a pleasant life.
Viewing marriage and what attends it as a threat to one's peace of mind, Epicurus lived a celibate life but did not impose this restriction on his followers. Epicurus laid great emphasis on developing friendships as the basis of a satisfying life.
Epicurus' view was that there were gods, but that they were neither willing nor able to prevent evil. This was not because they were malevolent, but because they lived in a perfect state of ataraxia, a state everyone should strive to emulate; it is not the gods who are upset by evils, but people.
Epicureanism rejects immortality and mysticism; it believes in the soul, but suggests that the soul is as mortal as the body. Epicurus rejected any possibility of an afterlife, while still contending that one need not fear death: "Death is nothing to us; for that which is dissolved, is without sensation, and that which lacks sensation is nothing to us."
After the official approval of Christianity by Constantine the Great, Epicureanism was repressed. Epicurus' materialist theories that the gods were physical beings composed of atoms who were unconcerned with human affairs and had not created the universe, and his general teaching that one's own pleasure, rather than service to God, was the greatest good were essentially irreconcilable with Christian teachings.
His emphasis on minimizing harm and maximizing happiness in his formulation of the Ethic of Reciprocity was later picked up by the democratic thinkers of the French Revolution, and others, like John Locke, who wrote that people had a right to "life, liberty, and property." This triad, as well as the egalitarianism of Epicurus, was carried forward into the American freedom movement and Declaration of Independence, by the American founding father, Thomas Jefferson, as "all men are created equal" and endowed with certain "inalienable rights" such as "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Jefferson considered himself an Epicurean. In An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, David Hume uses Epicurus as a character for explaining the impossibility of our knowing God to be any greater or better than his creation proves him to be.
Karl Marx's doctoral thesis was on "The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature." Epicurus was also a significant source of inspiration and interest for both Arthur Schopenhauer, having particular influence on the famous pessimist's views on suffering and death, as well as one of Schopenhauer's successors: Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche cites his affinities to Epicurus in a number of his works. Nietzsche was attracted to, among other things, Epicurus' ability to maintain a cheerful philosophical outlook in the face of painful physical ailments. Nietzsche also suffered from a number of sicknesses during his lifetime. However, he thought that Epicurus' conception of happiness as freedom from anxiety was too passive and negative.
In modern popular usage, an epicure is a connoisseur of the arts of life and the refinements of sensual pleasures; epicureanism implies a love or knowledgeable enjoyment especially of good food and drink—see the definition of gourmet at Wiktionary. This can be attributed to a misunderstanding of the Epicurean doctrine, as promulgated by Christian polemicists.
(* The problem of evil is the question of how to reconcile the existence of evil with that of a deity who is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent .
With regard to the nature of evil, it should be observed that evil is of three kinds — physical, moral, and metaphysical.
- Physical evil includes all that causes harm to man, whether by bodily injury, by thwarting his natural desires, or by preventing the full development of his powers, either in the order of nature directly, or through the various social conditions under which mankind naturally exists. Physical evils directly due to nature are sickness, accident, death, etc. Poverty, oppression, and some forms of disease are instances of evil arising from imperfect social organization. Mental suffering, such as anxiety, disappointment, and remorse, and the limitation of intelligence which prevents humans beings from attaining to the full comprehension of their environment, are congenital forms of evil each vary in character and degree according to natural disposition and social circumstances.
- By moral evil are understood the deviation of human volition from the prescriptions of the moral order and the action which results from that deviation. Such action, when it proceeds solely from ignorance, is not to be classed as moral evil, which is properly restricted to the motions of will towards ends of which the conscience disapproves.
- Metaphysical evil is the limitation by one another of various component parts of the natural world. Through this mutual limitation natural objects are for the most part prevented from attaining to their full or ideal perfection, whether by the constant pressure of physical condition, or by sudden catastrophes. Thus, animal and vegetable organisms are variously influenced by climate and other natural causes; predatory animals depend for their existence on the destruction of life; nature is subject to storms and convulsions, and its order depends on a system of perpetual decay and renewal due to the interaction of its constituent parts. The nature and degree of pain in lower animals is very obscure, and in the necessary absence of data it is difficult to say whether it should rightly be classed with the merely formal evil which belongs to inanimate objects, or with the suffering of human beings.
It is evident again that all evil is essentially negative and not positive; i.e. it consists not in the acquisition of anything, but in the loss or deprivation of something necessary for perfection. Pain, which is the test or criterion of physical evil, has indeed a positive, though purely subjective existence as a sensation or emotion; but its evil quality lies in its disturbing effect on the sufferer.
Schopenhauer, who held pain to be the positive and normal condition of life (pleasure being its partial and temporary absence), nevertheless made it depend upon the failure of human desire to obtain fulfillment--"the wish is in itself pain". Thus it will be seen that evil is not a real entity; it is relative. What is evil in some relations may be good in others; and probably there is no form of existence which is exclusively evil in all relations, Hence it has been thought that evil cannot truly be said to exist at all, and is really nothing but a "lesser good." But this opinion seems to leave out of account the reality of human experience. Though the same cause may give pain to one, and pleasure to another, pain and pleasure, as sensations or ideas, cannot but be mutually exclusive. No one, however, has attempted to deny this very obvious fact
No system of philosophy has ever succeeded in escaping from the obscurity in which the subject is involved; but it is not too much to say that the Christian solution offers, on the whole, fewer difficulties, and approaches more nearly to completeness than any other.
When the universe is considered as the work of an all-benevolent and all-powerful Creator, a fresh element is added to the problem. If God is all-benevolent, why did He cause or permit suffering? If He is all-Powerful, He can be under no necessity of creating or permitting it; and on the other hand, if He is under any such necessity, He cannot be all-powerful. Again, if God is absolutely good, and also omnipotent, how can He permit the existence of moral evil? We have to enquire, that is to say, how evil has come to exist, and what is its special relation to the Creator of the universe.
The solution of the problem has been attempted by three different methods.
I. It has been contended that existence is fundamentally evil; that evil is the active principle of the universe, and good no more than an illusion, the pursuit of which serves to induce the human race to perpetuate its own existence. This is the fundamental tenet of Buddhism, which regards happiness as unattainable, and holds that there is no way of escaping from misery but by ceasing to exist otherwise than in the impersonal state of Nirvana.
Pessimism, as a metaphysical system, is the product of modern times. Its chief representatives are Schopenhauer and Von Hartmann, both of whom held the actual universe to be fundamentally evil, and happiness it to be impossible. The origin of the phenomenal universe is attributed by Schopenhauer to a transcendental Will, which he identifies with pure being; and by Hartmann to the unconscious, which includes both the Will and the Idea (Vorstellung) of Schopenhauer. According to both Schopenhauer and Hartmann, suffering has come into existence with self-consciousness, from which it is inseparable.
II. Evil has been attributed to one of two mutually opposed principles, to which respectively the mingled good and evil of the world are due. Zoroaster attributed good and evil respectively to two mutually hostile principles (hrízai, or árchai) called Ormuzd (Ahura Mazda) and Ahriman (Angra Mainyu). Each was independent of the other; but eventually the good were to be victorious with Ormuzd, and Ahriman and his evil followers were to be expelled from the world.
For many greek philosophers The notion that evil is necessarily inherent in matter. Plato held God to be "free from blame" (anaítios) for the evil of the world; its cause was partly the necessary imperfection of material and created existence, and partly the action of the human will (Timeaus, xlii; cf. Phaedo. lx). With Aristotle, evil is a necessary aspect of the constant changes of matter, and has in itself no real existence (Metaph., ix, 9). The Stoics conceived evil in a somewhat similar manner, as due to necessity; the immanent Divine power harmonizes the evil and good in a changing world. Moral evil proceeds from the folly of mankind, not from the Divine will, and is overruled by it to a good end.
Christian philosophy has, like the Hebrew, uniformly attributed moral and physical evil to the action of created free will. Man has himself brought about the evil from which he suffers by transgressing the law of God, on obedience to which his happiness depended. Evil is in created things under the aspect of mutability, and possibility of defect, not as existing per se : and the errors of mankind, mistaking the true conditions of its own well-being, have been the cause of moral and physical evil
III. The third way of conceiving the place of evil in the general scheme of existence is that of those systems of Monism, by which evil is merely viewed as a mode in which certain aspects of moments of the development of nature are apprehended by human consciousness. The problem of the origin of evil is thus merged in that of the origin of being. Moral evil, in particular, arises from error, and is to be gradually eliminated, or at least minimized, by improved knowledge of the conditions of human welfare (Meliorism).
Nietzsche holds evil to be purely relative, and its moral aspects at least, a transitory and non-fundamental concept. With him, mankind in the present state, is "the animal not yet properly adapted to his environment". In this mode of thought the individual necessarily counts for very little, as being merely a transient manifestation of the cosmic force; and the social aspects of humanity are those under which its pains and shortcomings are mostly considered, with a view to their amelioration. Hence, the various forms of Socialism: The idea conceived by Nietzsche of a totally new, though as yet undefined, form of social morality, and of the constitution and mutual relations of classes; and the so called ethical and scientific religions inculcating morality as tending to be generally good.
In the light of Catholic doctrine, any theory that may be held concerning evil must include certain points bearing on the question that have been authoritatively defined. These points are
-the omnipotence, omniscience, and absolute goodness of the Creator;
-the freedom of the will; and
-that suffering is the penal consequence of wilful disobedience to the law of God.
A complete account may be gathered from the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas, by whom the principles of St. Augustine are systematized, and to some extent supplemented. Evil, according to St. Thomas, is a privation, or the absence of some good which belongs properly to the nature of the creature. The universe would be less perfect if it contained no evil. Thus fire could not exist without the corruption of what it consumes; the lion must slay the ass in order to live, and if there were no wrong doing, there would be no sphere for patience and justice.
God is said (as in Isaiah 45) to be the author of evil in the sense that the corruption of material objects in nature is ordained by Him, as a means for carrying out the design of the universe; and on the other hand, the evil which exists as a consequence of the breach of Divine laws is in the same sense due to Divine appointment; the universe would be less perfect if its laws could be broken with impunity.
It should be observed that the universal perfection to which evil in some form is necessary, is the perfection of this universe, not of any universe: metaphysical evil, that is to say, and indirectly, moral evil as well, is included in the design of the universe which is partially known to us; but we cannot say without denying the Divine omnipotence, that another equally perfect universe could not be created in which evil would have no place.
St. Thomas also provides explanations of what are now generally considered to be the two main difficulties of the subject, viz., the Divine permission of foreseen moral evil, and the question finally arriving thence, why God choose to create anything at all. First, it is asked why God, foreseeing that his creatures would use the gift of free will for their own injury, did not either abstain from creating them, or in some way safeguard their free will from misuse, or else deny them the gift altogether? St. Thomas replies (C. G., II, xxviii) that God cannot change His mind, since the Divine will is free from the defect of weakness or mutability. Such mutability would, it should be remarked, be a defect in the Divine nature (and therefore impossible), because if God's purpose were made dependent on the foreseen free act of any creature, God would thereby sacrifice His own freedom, and would submit Himself to His creatures, thus abdicating His essential supremacy--a thing which is, of course, utterly inconceivable.
Secondly, to the question why God should have chosen to create, when creation was in no way needful for His own perfection, St. Thomas answers that God's object in creating is Himself; He creates in order to manifest his own goodness, power, and wisdom, and is pleased with that reflection or similitude of Himself in which the goodness of creation consists.
God has not made the world primarily for man's good, but for His own pleasure; good for man lies in conforming himself to the supreme purpose of creation, and evil in departing from it (C.G., III, xvii, cxliv). It may further be understood from St. Thomas, that in the diversity of metaphysical evil, in which the perfection of the universe as a whole is embodied, God may see a certain similitude of His own threefold unity (cf. I, Q. xii); and again, that by permitting moral evil to exist He has provided a sphere for the manifestation of one aspect of His essential justice (cf. I, Q. lxv, a. 2; and I, Q. xxi, a. 1, 3).
It is obviously impossible to suggest a reason why this universe in particular should have been created rather than another; since we are necessarily incapable of forming an idea of any other universe than this. Similarly, we are unable to imagine why God chose to manifest Himself by the way of creation, instead of, or in addition to, the other ways, whatever they may be, by which He has, or may have, attained the same end. We reach here the utmost limit of speculation; and our inability to conceive the ultimate reason for creation (as distinct from its direct motive) is paralleled, at a much earlier stage of the enquire, by the inability of the non-creationist schools of thought to assign any ultimate cause for the existence of the order of nature. It will be observed that St. Thomas's account of evil is a true Theodicy, taking into consideration as it does every factor of the problem, and leaving unsolved only the mystery of creation, before which all schools of thought are equally helpless. It is as impossible to know, in the fullest sense, why this world was made as to know how it was made; but St. Thomas has at least shown that the acts of the Creator admit of complete logical justification, notwithstanding the mystery in which, for human intelligence, they can never wholly cease to be involved. On Catholic principles, the amelioration of moral evil and its consequent suffering can only take place by means of individual reformation, and not so much through increase of knowledge as through stimulation or re-direction of the will.
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14) Zeno of Citium (334 BC – 262 BC)
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| Zeno of Citium, a detail of The School of Athens, a fresco by Raphael. |
Zeno was, himself, a merchant until the age of 42, when he started the Stoic school of philosophy. Named for his teaching platform, the Painted Porch ("stoa" is Greek for "porch"), his teachings were the beginning of Stoicism,
Stoicism is a school of philosophy founded (308 BCE) in Athens by Zeno of Citium (Cyprus). It teaches self-control and detachment from distracting emotions, sometimes interpreted as an indifference to pleasure or pain. This allows one to be a clear thinker, levelheaded and unbiased. In practice, Stoicism is intended to imbue an individual with virtue, wisdom, and integrity of character. Students are encouraged to help those in need, knowing that those who can, should. Stoicism also teaches psychological independence from society, regarding it as an unruly and often unreasonable entity. The Stoics held that unhappiness and evil are the results of human ignorance of the reason in nature. If someone is unkind, it is because they are unaware of their own universal reason, which leads to the conclusion of kindness. The solution to evil and unhappiness then, is the practice of Stoic philosophy—to examine one's own judgments and behavior and determine where they diverge from the universal reason of nature.
Like the Cynics, Zeno recognised a single, sole and simple good, which is the only goal to strive for. "Happiness is a good flow of life," said Zeno, and this can only be achieved through the use of right Reason coinciding with the Universal Reason (Logos), which governs everything. A bad feeling (pathos) "is a disturbance of the mind repugnant to Reason, and against Nature." This consistency of soul, out of which morally good actions spring, is Virtue, true good can only consist in Virtue. Zeno deviated from the Cynics in saying that things that are morally indifferent could nevertheless have value. Things have a relative value in proportion to how they aid the natural instinct for self-preservation. That which is to be preferred is a "fitting action" (kathêkon), a designation Zeno first introduced. Self-preservation, and the things that contribute towards it, has only a conditional value; it does not aid happiness, which depends only on moral actions.
Just as Virtue can only exist within the dominion of Reason, so Vice can only exist with the rejection of Reason. Virtue is absolutely opposed to Vice,the two cannot exist in the same thing together, and cannot be increased or decreased; no one moral action is more virtuous than another. All actions are either good or bad, since impulses and desires rest upon free consent, and hence even passive mental states or emotions that are not guided by reason are immoral, and produce immoral actions. Zeno distinguished four negative emotions: desire, fear, pleasure and pain (epithumia, phobos, hêdonê, lupê), and he was probably responsible for distinguishing the three corresponding positive emotions: will, caution, and joy (boulêsis, eulabeia, chara), with no corresponding rational equivalent for pain. All errors must be rooted out, not merely set aside, and replaced with right Reason.
The Universe, in Zeno's view, is God: a divine reasoning entity, where all the parts belong to the whole. This divine fire, or aether, is the basis for all activity in the Universe, operating on otherwise passive matter, which neither increases nor diminishes itself. The primary substance in the Universe comes from fire, passes through the stage of air, and then becomes water: the thicker portion becoming earth, and the thinner portion becoming air again, and then rarefying back into fire. Individual souls are part of the same fire as the world-soul of the Universe. Following Heraclitus, Zeno adopted the view that the Universe underwent regular cycles of formation and destruction. God as the world-creating entity is personalized in Christian thought, but Stoicism equates God with the totality of the universe, which was contrary to Christianity. Also, Stoicism, unlike Christianity, does not posit a beginning or end to the universe, nor does it assert that the individual continues to exist beyond death. Further, in Christianity is believed that Virtue alone does not suffice for man's happiness, for "all moral acts are referable to something further" (St. Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles, III, 34). Christian do not believe that the passions are bad in themselves; instead, they see them as neutral. They become morally good or evil when "they engage reason and will" (CCC, n. 1773).
Stoics, contrary to Catholics, believed that "suicide could be justified if one fell victim to severe pain or disease."
Stoicism was later regarded by the Fathers of the Church as a 'pagan philosophy'; nonetheless, some of the central philosophical concepts of Stoicism were employed by the early Christian writers. Examples include the terms "logos", "virtue", "Spirit", and "conscience". But the parallels go well beyond the sharing and borrowing of terminology. Both Stoicism and Christianity assert an inner freedom in the face of the external world, a belief in human kinship with Nature or God, a sense of the innate depravity—or "persistent evil"—of humankind, and the futility and temporarily of worldly possessions and attachments. Both encourage Ascesis with respect to the passions and inferior emotions such as lust, envy and anger, so that the higher possibilities of one's humanity can be awakened and developed.
[The Logos: In Stoic philosophy, which began with Zeno of Citium c. 300 BC, the logos was the active reason pervading and animating the universe. It was conceived of as material, and is usually identified with God or Nature. The Stoics took all activity to imply a Logos, or spiritual principle. As the operative principle of the world, to them, the Logos was anima mundi, a concept which later influenced Philo of Alexandria, although he derived the contents of the term from Plato. Christ is, according to St John, the Logos made flesh. That is a difference between a distant and unknowable ‘force’ or providence (Stoic), and serving a flesh-and-blood person, who was born in a particular place and time and according to the gospels suffered and died for mankind. As the Logos, Jesus Christ is God in self-revelation (Light) and redemption (Life). He is God to the extent that he can be present to man and knowable to man. The Logos is God,[Jn 1:1] as Thomas stated: "My Lord and my God."[Jn 20:28] Yet the Logos is in some sense distinguishable from God, for "the Logos was with God."[1:1] God and the Logos are not two beings, and yet they are also not simply identical. In contrast to the Logos, God can be conceived (in principle at least) also apart from his revelatory action?although we must not forget that the Bible speaks of God only in his revelatory action. The paradox that the Logos is God and yet it is in some sense distinguishable from God is maintained in the body of the Gospel. That God as he acts and as he is revealed does not "exhaust" God as he is, is reflected in sayings attributed to Jesus: I and the Father are one"[Jn 10:30] and also, "the Father is greater than I."[14:28] The Logos is God active in creation, revelation, and redemption. Jesus Christ not only gives God's Word to us humans; he is the Word.[1:14] [14:6] He is the true word?ultimate reality revealed in a Person. The Logos is God, distinguishable in thought yet not separable in fact. This was decreed at the First Council of Constantinople (381).
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The word "stoic" commonly refers to someone indifferent to pain, pleasure, grief, or joy. The modern usage as "person who represses feelings or endures patiently" was first cited in 1579 as a noun, and 1596 as an adjective. The sense of the English adjective 'stoical' is not utterly misleading with regard to its philosophical origins.
Some other famous Stoic philosophers were Seneca and Marcus Aurelius.
15) Philo of Alexandria (20 BC – 50 CE)
Philo of Alexandria (20 BC – 50 CE), also called Philo Judaeus was a Hellenistic Jewish Biblical philosopher born in Alexandria. Philo used philosophical allegory to attempt to fuse and harmonize Greek philosophy with Jewish philosophy.
Philo agreed to represent the Alexandrian Jews in regard to civil disorder that had developed between the Jews and the Greeks in Alexandria (Egypt). According to Jewish historian Josephus, Philo and the larger Jewish community refused to treat the emperor as a god, to erect statues in honor of the emperor, and to build altars and temples to the emperor. Josephus says Philo believed that God actively supported this refusal. Philo says Flaccus, the Roman governor over Alexandria, permitted a mob to erect statues of the Emperor Caius Caligula in Jewish synagogues of Alexandria, an unprecedented provocation. This invasion of the synagogues was perhaps resisted by force, since Philo then says that Flaccus "was destroying the synagogues, and not leaving even their name."
Flaccus then "issued a notice in which he called us all foreigners and aliens... allowing any one who was inclined to proceed to exterminate the Jews as prisoners of war." Philo says that in response, the mobs "drove the Jews entirely out of four quarters, and crammed them all into a very small portion of one ... while the populace, overrunning their desolate houses, turned to plunder, and divided the booty among themselves as if they had obtained it in war.". Philo even says, "the most merciless of all their persecutors in some instances burnt whole families, husbands with their wives, and infant children with their parents, in the middle of the city, sparing neither age nor youth, nor the innocent helplessness of infants."
Philo used philosophical allegory to attempt to fuse and harmonize Greek philosophy with Jewish philosophy. His method followed the practices of both Jewish exegesis and Stoic philosophy. His allegorical exegesis was important for several Christian Church Fathers, but he has barely any reception history within Judaism. Exegesis is a critical explanation or interpretation of a text, especially a religious text. Traditionally the term was used primarily for exegesis of the Bible; however, in contemporary usage it has broadened to mean a critical explanation of any text, and the term "Biblical exegesis" is used for greater specificity. Philo bases his hermeneutics (the art and science of text interpretation) on the assumption of a twofold meaning in the Bible, the literal and the allegorical. He distinguishes the "ad litteram" in contrast to "allegorice". The two interpretations, however, are not of equal importance: the literal sense is adapted to human needs; but the allegorical sense is the real one, which only the initiated comprehend.
Philo’s doctrine of the Logos is blurred by his mystical and religious vision, but his Logos is clearly the second individual in one God as a hypostatization of God’s Creative Power – Wisdom. The supreme being is God and the next is Wisdom or the Logos of God. The Divine Logos never mixes with the things which are created and thus destined to perish, but attends the One alone. This Logos is apportioned into an infinite number of parts in humans, thus we impart the Divine Logos. As a result we acquire some likeness to the Father and the Creator of all. The Logos is the Bond of the universe and mediator extended in nature. The Father eternally begat the Logos and constituted it as an unbreakable bond of the universe that produces harmony. The Logos, mediating between God and the world, is neither uncreated as God nor created as men. So in Philo’s view the Father is the Supreme Being and the Logos, as his chief messenger, stands between Creator and creature.
Philo regards the physical nature of man as something defective and as an obstacle to his development that can never be fully surmounted, but still as something indispensable in view of the nature of his being. With the body the necessity for food arises, as Philo explains in various allegories. The body, however, is also of advantage to the spirit, since the spirit arrives at its knowledge of the world by means of the five senses. But higher and more important is the spiritual nature of man. This nature has a twofold tendency:
one toward the sensual and earthly, which Philo calls sensibility ( aistesis), and
one toward the spiritual, which he calls Intellect or Reason (nous).
Sensibility has its seat in the body, and lives in the senses, as Philo elaborates in varying allegoric imagery. Connected with this corporeality of the sensibility are its limitations; but, like the body itself, it is a necessity of nature, the channel of all sense-perception. Sensibility, however, is still more in need of being guided by reason. Reason is that part of the spirit which looks toward heavenly things. It is the highest, the real divine gift that has been infused into man from without ("De Opificio Mundi", i.15; "De Eo Quod Deterius Potiori Insidiatur", i.206); it is the masculine nature of the soul. The nous, "mind" is originally at rest; and when it begins to move it produces the several phenomena of mind .The principal powers of the reason are:
judgment,
memory, and
language.
More important in Philo's system is the doctrine of the moral development of man. Of this he distinguishes two conditions:
that before time was, and
that since the beginning of time.
In the pretemporal condition the soul was without body, free from earthly matter. Without sex, in the condition of the generic man, morally perfect, i.e., without flaws, but still striving after a higher purity. On entering upon time the soul loses its purity and is confined in a body. The nous becomes earthly, but it retains a tendency toward something higher.
Philo is not entirely certain whether the body in itself or merely in its preponderance over the spirit is evil. But the body in any case is a source of danger, as it easily drags the spirit into the bonds of sensibility. Philo is undecided whether sensibility is in itself evil, or whether it may merely lead into temptation, and must itself be regarded as a mean . Sensibility in any case is the source of the passions and desires. The passions attack the sensibility in order to destroy the whole soul. The "desire" is either the lustful enjoyment of sensual things, dwelling as such in the abdominal cavity, or it is the craving for this enjoyment, dwelling in the breast. It connects the nous and the sensibility, this being a psychological necessity, but an evil from an ethical point of view.
The soul is first aroused by the stimuli of sensual pleasures; it begins to turn toward them, and then becomes more and more involved. It becomes devoted to the body, and begins to lead an intolerable life. It is inflamed and excited by irrational impulses. Its condition is restless and painful. The sensibility endures, according to Gen. iii.16, great pain. A continual inner void produces a lasting desire which is never satisfied. All the higher aspirations are stilled.
The worst consequence of this moral death is, according to Philo, absolute ignorance and the loss of the power of judgment. Sensual things are placed above spiritual; and wealth is regarded as the highest good. Too great a value especially is placed upon the human nous; and things are wrongly judged. Man in his folly even opposes God, and thinks to scale heaven and subjugate the entire earth. In the field of politics, for example, he attempts to rise from the position of leader of the people to that of ruler "Sensual man generally employs his intellectual powers for sophistry, perverting words and destroying truth". The biblical patriarch Abraham is seen by Philo as the symbol of man leaving sensuality to turn to reason. Philo holds that there are three methods whereby one can rise toward the divine: through teaching, through practise, and through natural goodness .
Philo's doctrine of virtue is Stoic, although he is undecided whether complete dispassionateness (apateia) or moderation designates the really virtuous condition. Philo identifies virtue in itself and in general with divine wisdom.
The Garden of Eden is "the wisdom of God" and also "the Logos of God" and "virtue." The fundamental virtue is goodness; and from it proceed four cardinal virtues—prudence, courage, self-control, and justice — as the four rivers proceeding from the river of Eden.
An essential difference between Philo and the Stoics is found in the fact that Philo seeks in religion the basis for all ethics. Religion helps man to attain to virtue, which he can not reach of himself, as the Stoics hold.
God must implant virtue in man. Hence the goal of the ethical endeavor is a religious one: the ecstatic contemplation of God and the disembodiment of souls after death.
According to Philo the highest knowledge man may have is the knowledge of infinite reality which is not accessible by the normal senses, but by unmediated intuition of divinity. Humans were endowed with the mind, i.e., ability to reason and the outward senses. Thus by this divine gift men are able to come to a conclusion about the existence of the divinity. They can do it in two ways: one is the apprehension of God through contemplation of his creation and forming a “conjectural conception of the Creator by a probable train of reasoning”(Praem. 43). And in the process the soul may climb the ladder to perfection by using natural means i.e., natural dispositions, instruction, i.e., being educated to virtue, or by meditation.
The other is a direct apprehension by being instructed by God himself when the mind elevates itself above the physical world and perceives the uncreated One through a clear vision
Such a direct vision of God is not dependent on revelation but is possible because we have an impression of God in our mind, which is nothing but a tiny fragment of the Logos pervading the whole universe, not separated from its source, but only extended. And we receive this portion of the Divine Mind at birth being endowed with a mind which makes us resemble God. The notion of God’s existence is thus imprinted in our mind that needs only some illumination to have a direct vision of God
16) Epictetus (55–135)
He was born a slave at Hierapolis, Phrygia (present day Pamukkale, Turkey), and lived in Rome until his banishment, when he went to Nicopolis in northwestern Greece for the rest of his life. He was a Greek sage and Stoic philosopher. He was born a slave at Hierapolis, Phrygia (present day Pamukkale, Turkey), and lived in Rome until his banishment, when he went to Nicopolis in northwestern Greece for the rest of his life.
He spent his youth as a slave in Rome to Epaphroditos, a wealthy freedman and secretary to Nero. Early in life, Epictetus acquired a passion for philosophy, and with the permission of his wealthy owner, he studied Stoic philosophy.
In some manner Epictetus obtained his freedom, sometime after Nero's death in the year 68 AD.,and began to teach philosophy in Rome. About 93 AD Emperor Domitian banished all philosophers from the city,and Epictetus fled to Nicopolis in Epirus, Greece, where he founded a philosophical school.
He lived a life of great simplicity, with few possessions and lived alone for a long time, but in his old age he adopted a friend's child who would otherwise have been left to die, and raised him with the aid of a woman. Epictetus was never married.
Epictetus maintains that the foundation of all philosophy is self-knowledge, that is, the conviction of our ignorance and gullibility ought to be the first subject of our study. To Epictetus, all external events are determined by fate, and are thus beyond our control; we should accept whatever happens calmly and dispassionately. However, individuals are responsible for their own actions, which they can examine and control through rigorous self-discipline.
The essence of God is goodness; we have all good that could be given to us. The gods too gave us the soul and reason, which is not measured by breadth or depth, but by knowledge and sentiments, and by which we attain to greatness, and may equal even with the gods. We should, therefore, cultivate the mind with special care. If we wish for nothing but what God wills, we shall be truly free, and all will come to pass with us according to our desire.
Anyone who finds life intolerable is free to quit it, but we should not abandon our appointed role without sufficient reason. The Stoic sage will never find life intolerable and will complain of no one, either God or human. Those who go wrong we should pardon and treat with compassion, since it is from ignorance that they err, being as it were blind.
The philosophy of Epictetus is well known in the American military through the writings and example of James Stockdale, an American fighter pilot who was shot down over North Vietnam, became a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War, and later a vice presidential candidate.
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