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HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY |
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Because the earliest Greek
philosophers focused their attention upon the origin and nature of the
physical world, they are often called cosmologists
or naturalists. Though monistic views (which trace the origins of the world to a
single substance) prevailed at first, they were soon followed by several
pluralistic theories (which trace it to several ultimate substances). (see also matter) |
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There is a consensus, dating back at
least to the 4th century BC and continuing to the present, that the first Greek
philosopher was Thales of Miletus, who
flourished in the first half of the 6th century BC. At that time the word philosopher
("lover of wisdom") had not yet been coined. Thales was counted,
however, among the Seven Wise Men (Sophoi),
whose name derives from a term that then designated inventiveness and practical
wisdom rather than speculative insight. Thales showed these qualities by trying
to give the mathematical knowledge that he derived from the Babylonians a more
exact foundation and by using it for the solution of practical problems--such as
the determination of the distance of a ship as seen from the shore or of the
height of the Pyramids. Though he was also credited with predicting an eclipse
of the Sun, it is likely that he merely gave a natural explanation of one on the
basis of Babylonian astronomical knowledge. (see also monism) |
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Thales was considered the first Greek
philosopher because he was the first to give a purely natural explanation of the
origin of the world, free from all mythological ingredients. He upheld that
everything had come out of water--an explanation
based on the discovery of fossil sea animals far inland. His tendency (and that
of his immediate successors) to give nonmythological explanations of the origin
of the world was undoubtedly prompted by the fact that all of them lived on the
coast of Asia Minor surrounded by a number of nations whose civilizations were
much farther advanced than that of the Greeks and whose mythological
explanations differed greatly both among themselves and from those of the
Greeks. It appeared necessary, therefore, to make a fresh start on the basis of
what a person could observe and figure out by looking at the world as it
presented itself. This procedure naturally resulted in a tendency to make
sweeping generalizations on the basis of rather restricted but carefully checked
observations. |
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Thales' disciple and successor, Anaximander
of Miletus (mid-6th century), tried to give a more elaborate account of the
origin and development of the ordered world (the cosmos). According to him, it
developed out of the apeiron, something both
infinite and indefinite (without distinguishable qualities). Within this apeiron
something arose to produce the opposites of hot and cold. These at once began to
struggle with each other and produced the cosmos. The cold (and wet) partly
dried up (becoming solid earth), partly remained (as water), and--by means of
the hot--partly evaporated (becoming air and mist), its evaporating part (by
expansion) splitting up the hot into fiery rings, which surround the whole
cosmos. Because these rings are enveloped by mist, however, there remain only
certain breathing holes that are visible to men, appearing to them as Sun, Moon,
and stars. Anaximander was the first to realize that upward and downward are not
absolute but that downward means toward the middle of the Earth and upward away
from it, so that the Earth had no need to be supported (as Thales had believed)
by anything. Starting from Thales' observations, Anaximander tried to
reconstruct the development of life in more detail. Life,
being closely bound up with moisture, originated in the sea. All land animals,
he held, are descendants of sea animals; because the first humans as newborn
infants could not have survived without parents, Anaximander believed that they
were born within an animal of another kind--specifically, a sea animal in which
they were nurtured until they could fend for themselves. Gradually, however, the
moisture will be partly evaporated, until in the end all things will have
returned into the undifferentiated apeiron, "in order to pay the penalty
for their injustice"--that of having struggled against one another. (see
also smooth
hound) |
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Anaximander's successor, Anaximenes
of Miletus (second half of the 6th century), taught that air
was the origin of all things. His position was for a long time thought to have
been a step backward because, like Thales, he placed a special kind of matter at
the beginning of the development of the world. But this criticism missed the
point. Neither Thales nor Anaximander appear to have specified the way in which
the other things arose out of the water or apeiron. Anaximenes, however,
declared that the other types of matter arose out of air by condensation and
rarefaction. In this way, what to Thales had been merely a beginning became a
fundamental principle that remained essentially the same through all of its
transmutations. Thus, the term arche, which
originally simply meant "beginning," acquired the new meaning of
"principle," a term that henceforth played an enormous role in
philosophy down to the present. This concept of a principle that remains the
same through many transmutations is, furthermore, the presupposition of the idea
that nothing can come out of nothing and that all of the comings to be and
passings away that men observe are nothing but transmutations of something that
essentially remains the same eternally. In this way it also lies at the bottom
of all of the conservation laws--those of the conservation of matter, of force,
and of energy--that have been basic in the development of physics. Though
Anaximenes of course did not realize all of the implications of his idea, its
importance can hardly be exaggerated. |
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The first three Greek philosophers have
often been called hylozoists because they seemed
to believe in a kind of living matter. But this is hardly an adequate
characterization. It is, rather, characteristic of them that they did not
clearly distinguish between kinds of matter, forces, and qualities nor between
physical and emotional qualities. The same entity is sometimes called fire and
sometimes the hot. Heat appears sometimes as a force and sometimes as a quality,
and again there is no clear distinction between warm and cold as physical
qualities and the warmth of love and the cold of hate. To realize these
ambiguities is important to an understanding of certain later developments in
Greek philosophy. |
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Xenophanes
of Colophon (born c. 560 BC), a
rhapsodist and philosophical thinker who emigrated from Asia Minor to Elea in
southern Italy, was the first to bring out more clearly what was implied in
Anaximenes' philosophy. He criticized the popular notions of the gods, saying
that men made their gods in their own image. But, more importantly, he argued
that there could be only one God, the ruler of the universe, who must be
eternal. For, being the strongest of all beings, he could not have come out of
something less strong, nor could he be overcome or superseded by something else,
because nothing could arise that is stronger than the strongest. The argument
clearly rested on the axiom that nothing can come out of nothing and that
nothing that is can really vanish. |
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This axiom was made more explicit and
carried to its extreme consequences by Parmenides
of Elea (first half of the 5th century BC), the founder of the so-called school
of Eleaticism, of whom Xenophanes has been
regarded as the teacher and forerunner. In a philosophical poem Parmenides
insisted that "what is" cannot have come into being and cannot pass
away because it would have to have come out of nothing or to become nothing,
whereas nothing by its very nature does not exist. There can be no motion
either; for it would have to be a motion into something that is--which is not
possible since it would be blocked--or a motion into something that is
not--which is equally impossible since what is not does not exist. Hence
everything is solid immobile being. The familiar world, in which things move
around, come into being, and pass away, is a world of mere belief
(doxa). In a second part of the poem,
however, Parmenides tried to give an analytical account of this world of belief,
showing that it rested on constant distinctions between what is believed to be
positive--i.e., to have real being, such as light and warmth--and what is
negative--i.e., the absence of
positive being, such as darkness and cold. |
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It is significant that Heracleitus
of Ephesus, a contemporary of Parmenides, whose philosophy was later considered
to be the very opposite of Parmenides' philosophy of immobile being, came, in
some fragments of his work, near to what Parmenides tried to show: the positive
and the negative, he said, are merely different views of the same thing; death
and life, day and night, or light and darkness are really one. |
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Parmenides had an enormous influence on
the further development of philosophy. Most of the philosophers of the following
two generations tried to find a way to reconcile his thesis that nothing comes
into being nor passes away with the evidence presented to men by their senses. Empedocles
of Acragas (mid-5th century) declared that there are four material elements (he
called them roots of everything) and two forces, love
and hate, that did not come into being and would never pass away or increase or
diminish. But the elements are constantly mixed with one another by love and
again separated by hate. Thus, through mixture and decomposition composite
things come into being and pass away. Because he conceived of love and hate as
blind forces, Empedocles had to explain how through random motion living beings
could emerge. This he achieved by means of a somewhat crude anticipation of the
theory of the survival of the fittest. In the process of mixture and
decomposition the limbs and parts of various animals would be formed by chance.
But they could not survive. Only when by chance they had come together in such a
way that they were able to support and reproduce themselves would they survive.
It was in this way that the various species were produced and continued to
exist. (see also strife) |
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Anaxagoras
of Clazomenae, a 5th-century pluralist, believed that because nothing can really
come into being, everything must be contained in everything, but in the form of
infinitely small parts. In the beginning all of these particles had been mixed
in an even mixture, in which nothing could be distinguished, much like the
indefinite apeiron of Anaximander. But then nous,
or intelligence, began at one point to set these particles into a whirling
motion, foreseeing that in this way they would become separated from one another
and then recombine in the most various ways so as to produce gradually the world
in which men live. In contrast to the forces assumed by Empedocles, the nous of
Anaxagoras is not blind but foresees and intends the production of the cosmos,
including living and intelligent beings; but it does not interfere with the
process after having started the whirling motion. This is a strange combination
of a mechanical and a nonmechanical explanation of the world. |
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By far of greatest importance for the
later development of philosophy and physical science was an attempt by the
Atomists Leucippus (mid-5th century) and (in the
following generation) Democritus to solve the
Parmenidean problem. Leucippus found the solution in the assumption that,
contrary to Parmenides' argument, the nothing does
in a way exist, viz., as empty space. There are then, however, only two
fundamental principles of the physical world, empty space and filled space--the
latter consisting of atoms that, in contrast to those of modern physics, are
real atoms; that is, they are absolutely
indivisible because nothing can penetrate to split them. On these foundations,
laid by Leucippus, Democritus appears to have built a whole system, aiming at a
complete explanation of the varied phenomena of the visible world by means of an
analysis of its atomic structure. This system begins with elementary physical
problems, such as that of why a hard body can be lighter than a softer one. The
explanation is that, although the heavier body contains more atoms, they are
equally distributed and of round shape; the lighter body, however, has fewer
atoms, most of which have hooks by which they form rigid gratings. The system
ends with educational and ethical questions. A sound and cheerful man, useful to
his fellowmen, is literally well composed. Although destructive passions involve
violent long-distance atomic motions, education can help to contain them,
creating a better composure. Democritus also developed a theory of the evolution
of culture, which influenced later thinkers. Civilization, he thought, is
produced by the needs of life, which compel man to work and to make inventions.
When life becomes too easy because all needs are met, there is a danger that
civilization will decay as men become unruly and negligent. (see also void) |
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All of the post-Parmenidean
philosophers, like Parmenides himself, presupposed that the real world is
different from the one that men perceive. Thus the problems of epistemology, or
theory of knowledge, arose. According to Anaxagoras, everything is contained in
everything. But this is not what people perceive. He solved this problem,
however, by assuming that, if there is a much greater amount of one kind of
particle in a thing than of all other kinds, the latter are not perceived at
all. The observation was then made that sometimes different persons or kinds of
animals have different perceptions of the same
things. He explained this phenomenon by assuming that like is perceived by like.
If, therefore, in the sense organ of one person there is less of one kind of
stuff than of another, he will perceive the former less keenly than the latter.
This reasoning was also used to explain why some animals see better by night and
others by daylight. According to Democritus, the atoms have no sensual qualities
such as tastes, smells, or colours at all. Thus, he tried to reduce all of them
to tactile qualities (explaining a bright white colour, for instance, as sharp
atoms hitting the eye like needles), and he made a most elaborate attempt to
reconstruct the atomic structure of things on the basis of their apparent
sensual qualities. (see also appearance) |
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Also of very great importance in the
history of epistemology was Zeno of Elea
(mid-5th century), a younger friend of Parmenides. Parmenides had, of course,
been severely criticized because of the strange consequences of his doctrine
that in reality there is no motion and no plurality either because there is just
one solid being. To support him, however, Zeno tried to show that the assumption
that there is motion and plurality leads to consequences that are no less
strange. This he did by means of his famous paradoxes, saying that the flying
arrow rests since it can neither move in the place in which it is nor in a place
in which it is not and that Achilles cannot outrun a turtle because when he has
reached its starting point, the turtle will have moved to a further point, and
so on ad infinitum--that, in fact, he cannot even start running, for, before
traversing the stretch to the starting point of the turtle, he will have to
traverse half of it and again half of that and so on ad infinitum. All of these
paradoxes are derived from the problem of the continuum.
Although they have often been dismissed as logical nonsense, many attempts have
also been made to dispose of them by means of mathematical theorems, such as the
theory of convergent series or the theory of sets. In the end, however, the
difficulties inherent in his arguments have always come back with a vengeance,
for the human mind is so constructed that it can look at a continuum in two ways
that are not quite reconcilable. (see also paradoxes of Zeno, Achilles
paradox) |
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All of the philosophies mentioned so far
are in various ways historically akin to one another. Toward the end of the 6th
century, however, there arose quite independently another kind of philosophy,
which only later entered into interrelation with the developments just
mentioned: the philosophy of Pythagoras of
Samos. Pythagoras traveled extensively in the East and in Egypt and, after his
return to Samos, emigrated to southern Italy because of his dislike of the
tyranny of Polycrates. At Croton and Metapontum he founded a philosophical
society with strict rules and soon gained considerable political influence. He
appears to have brought his doctrine of the transmigration of souls from the
East. Much more important for the history of philosophy and science, however,
was his doctrine that "all things are numbers," which means that the
essences and structures of all things can be determined by finding the numerical
relations contained in them. Originally, this, too, was a very broad
generalization made on the basis of comparatively few observations: for
instance, that the same harmonies can be produced with different
instruments--strings, pipes, disks, etc.--by means of the same numerical
ratios--1:2, 2:3, 3:4--in one-dimensional extensions; the observation that
certain regularities exist in the movements of the celestial bodies; and the
discovery that the form of a triangle is determined by the ratio of the lengths
of its sides. But because the followers of Pythagoras tried to apply their
principle everywhere with the greatest of accuracy, one of them-- Hippasus of
Metapontum--about 450 BC made one of the most fundamental discoveries of the
entire history of science, that of incommensurability,
viz., that the quantitative relation between the side and diagonal of such
simple figures as the square and the regular pentagon cannot be expressed as a
ratio of integers. At first sight this discovery seemed to destroy the very
basis of the Pythagorean philosophy, and the school thus split into two
sections, one of which engaged in rather abstruse numerical speculations while
the other succeeded in overcoming the difficulty by ingenious mathematical
inventions and laid the foundations of all quantitative science. Pythagorean
philosophy also exerted a great influence on the development of Plato's thought
in his later years. (see also number
system, acousmatics) |
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The speculations described so far
constitute in many ways the most important part of the history of Greek
philosophy because all of the most fundamental problems of Western philosophy
turned up here for the first time and one finds here the formation of a great
many concepts that have continued to dominate Western philosophy and science to
the present day. |
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In the middle of the 5th century BC,
Greek thinking took a somewhat different turn through the advent of the Sophists.
The name is derived from the verb sophizesthai,
"making a profession of being inventive and clever," and aptly
described the Sophists, who, in contrast to the philosophers mentioned so far,
asked money for their instruction. Philosophically they were, in a way, the
leaders of a rebellion against the preceding development, which more and more
had resulted in the belief that the real world is quite different from the
phenomenal world. "What is the sense of such speculations?" they
asked, since men do not live in these so-called real worlds. This is the meaning
of the pronouncement of Protagoras of Abdera
(mid-5th century) that "Man is the measure of all things, of those which
are that they are and of those which are not that they are not." For man
the world is what it appears to him to be, not something else; and, though he
meant man in general, he illustrated it by pointing out that even in regard to
an individual man it makes no sense to tell him that it is really warm when he
is shivering with cold, because for him it is cold--for him, the cold exists, is
there. (see also ethical
relativism) |
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His younger contemporary Gorgias
of Leontini, famous for his treatise on the art of oratory, made fun of the
philosophers in a book Peri tou me ontos e peri physeos ("On
that which is not, or on Nature"), in which--referring to the "truly
existing world," also called "the nature of things"--he tried to
prove (1) that nothing exists, (2) that if something existed, man could have no
knowledge of it, and (3) that if nevertheless somebody knew it, he could not
communicate his knowledge to others. |
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The Sophists were not only skeptical of
what had by then become a philosophical tradition but also of other traditions.
On the basis of the observation that different nations have different rules of
conduct even in regard to things considered most sacred--such as the relations
between the sexes, marriage, and burial--they concluded that most rules of
conduct are conventions. What is really important is to be successful in life
and to gain influence on others. This they promised to teach. Gorgias was proud
of the fact that, having no knowledge of medicine, he was more successful in
persuading a patient to undergo a necessary operation than his brother, a
physician, who knew when an operation was necessary. The older Sophists,
however, were far from openly preaching immoralism. They, nevertheless,
gradually came under suspicion because of their sly ways of arguing. One of the
later Sophists, however, Thrasymachus of Chalcedon
(late 5th century), was bold enough to declare openly that "right is what
is beneficial for the stronger or better one"; that is, for the one able to
win the power to bend others to his will. |
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By many of his contemporaries, Socrates
(5th century BC) was also considered to be a Sophist because of his tricky
arguments, though he did not teach for money and his aims were entirely
different from theirs. Although there is a late tradition according to which
Pythagoras invented the word philosopher, it was certainly through Socrates--who insisted that he
possessed no wisdom but was striving for it--that the term came into general use
and was later applied to all earlier serious thinkers. In fact, all of the
records of his life and activity left by his numerous adherents and disciples
indicate that he never tried to teach anything directly. But he constantly
engaged in conversations with everybody--old and young, high and low--trying to
bring into the open by his questions the inconsistencies in their opinions and
actions. Though he never taught directly, his whole activity rested on two
unshakable premises: (1) the principle never to do wrong nor to participate,
even indirectly, in any wrongdoing and (2) the conviction that nobody who really
knows what is good and right could act against it. He demonstrated his
unshakable adherence to the first principle on various occasions and under
different regimes. When, after the Battle of Arginusae, the majority of the
Athenian popular assembly demanded death without trial for the admirals,
Socrates, who on that day happened to be president of the assembly (an office
changing daily), refused to put the proposal to the vote because it was wrong to
condemn anyone without a fair trial. He refused to do so even though the people
threatened him, shouting that it would be terrible if the sovereign people could
not do as they pleased. (see also good and evil, right
and wrong) |
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When, after the overthrow of democracy,
the so-called Thirty Tyrants, who tried to
involve everybody in their wrongdoings, ordered him to arrest an innocent
citizen whose money they coveted, he simply disobeyed. This he did although at
that time such disobedience was still more dangerous than disobeying the
sovereign people had been at the time of unrestricted democracy. Likewise, in
the time of the democracy he pointed out by his questions the inconsistency of
allowing oneself to be swayed by the oratory of a good speaker instead of first
inquiring into his capability as a statesman, whereas in private life a sensible
citizen would not listen to the oratory of a quack but would try to find the
best doctor. When, after the overthrow of democracy, the Thirty Tyrants had many
people arbitrarily executed, he asked everybody whether a man was a good
shepherd who diminished the number of the sheep instead of increasing it and did
not cease doing so when Critias, the leader of
the Thirty, warned him to take heed not to diminish the number of the sheep by
his own, Socrates', person. But the most fundamental inconsistency that he tried
to show up everywhere was that most people by their actions showed that they
considered what they found to be good, wonderful, and beautiful in others--such
as, for instance, doing right at great danger to oneself--not to be good for
themselves, and considered to be good for themselves what they despised and
condemned in others. Though all of these stands won him the most fervent
admiration of many, especially among the young of all classes, it caused also
great resentment among leading politicians, whose inconsistencies were shown up
publicly by him and his adherents. Though Socrates had survived unharmed through
the regime of the Thirty--partly because it did not last long, partly because he
was supported by some close relatives of their leader Critias--it was under the
restored democracy that he was accused of impiety and of corrupting the youth
and finally condemned to death, largely also in consequence of his intransigent
attitude during the trial. (see also Athens) |
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After Socrates' death his influence
became a dominating one through the greater part of Greek and Roman philosophy
down to the end of antiquity and was more or less noticeable even in all of the
rest. Many of his adherents--among them Xenophon,
a military man and a historian, and Aeschines of
Sphettus, one of those present at his death--tried to preserve his
philosophical method by writing Socratic dialogues. Some founded schools or
sects that perpetuated themselves over long periods of time, Eucleides
of Megara emphasizing the theoretical aspects of Socrates' thought, and Antisthenes
stressing the independence of the true philosopher from material wants. The
latter, through his disciple Diogenes of Sinope,
who carried voluntary poverty to the extreme and emphasized freedom from all
conventions, became the founder of the sect of the Cynics. Aristippus
of Cyrene, traditional founder of the Cyrenaic
school, stressed man's independence from material needs in a somewhat different
way, declaring that there is no reason why a philosopher should not enjoy
material goods as long as he is completely indifferent to their loss. Though
Aristippus renounced his son because he led a dissolute life, the school that he
founded (through his daughter and his grandson) was hedonistic, holding pleasure
to be the good. |
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By far the most important disciple of
Socrates, however, was Plato, a scion of one of the most noble Athenian
families, who could trace his ancestry back to the last king of Athens and to
Solon, the great social and political reformer. |
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As a very young man Plato became a
fervent admirer of Socrates in spite of the latter's plebeian origin. Contrary
to his master, however, who always concerned himself with the attitudes of
individuals, he believed in the importance of political institutions. In his
early youth he had observed that the Athenian masses, listening to the glorious
projects of ambitious politicians, had engaged in foolhardy adventures of
conquest, which led in the end to total defeat in the Peloponnesian War. When,
in consequence of the disaster, democracy was abolished, Plato at first set
great hopes in the Thirty Tyrants--especially since their leader, Critias, was a
close relative. But he soon discovered that--to use his own words--the despised
democracy had been gold in comparison with the new terror. When the oligarchy
was overthrown and the restored democracy, in 399, adopted a new law code--in
fact, a kind of written constitution containing safeguards against rash
political decisions--Plato again had considerable hope and was even inclined to
view the execution of Socrates as an unfortunate incident rather than a logical
consequence of the new regime. It was only some years later, when demagogy
appeared to raise its head again, that he "despaired and was forced to say
that things would not become better in politics unless the philosophers would
become rulers or the rulers philosophers." He wrote a dialogue, the Gorgias,
violently denouncing political oratory and propaganda and then traveled to
southern Italy in order to study political conditions there. Again, however, he
found the much vaunted dolce vita of the Greeks there, in which the rich lived
in luxury exploiting the poor, much worse than the democracy at Athens. But at Syracuse
he met a young man, Dion, brother-in-law of the
ruling tyrant, Dionysius I, who listened eagerly to his political ideas and
promised to work for their realization if any occasion should arise. On his
return to Athens, Plato founded the Academy, an
institution for the education of philosophers, and in the following years
elaborated, besides other dialogues, his great work, Politeia
(The Republic),
in which he drew the outlines of an ideal state.
Because it is the passions and desires of men that cause all disturbances in
society, the state must be ruled by an elite governed exclusively by reason and
supported by a class of warriors entirely obedient to them. Both ruling classes
must have no individual possessions and no families and lead an extremely
austere life, receiving the necessities of life from the working population,
which alone is permitted to own private property. The elite receives a rigid
education to fit it for its task. At the death of Dionysius I, Dion induced
Plato to come to Syracuse again to try to persuade Dionysius' successor to
renounce his power in favour of a realization of Plato's ideals. But the attempt
failed, and in his later political works, the Politicus (Statesman)
and the Nomoi (Laws),
Plato tried to show that only a god could be entrusted with the absolute powers
of the philosopher-rulers of his Politeia.
Human rulers must be controlled by rigid laws, he held--though all laws are
inevitably imperfect because life is too varied to be governed adequately by
general rules. But the Nomoi still
placed strict restrictions on the ownership of property. |
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In the field of theoretical philosophy,
Plato's most influential contribution was undoubtedly his theory of Ideas,
which he derived from Socrates' method in the following way: Socrates, in trying
to bring out the inconsistencies in his interlocutors' opinions and actions, had
often asked what it is that makes men say that a certain thing or action is good
or beautiful or pious or brave; and he had asked what people are looking at when
they make such statements. Plato sometimes made Socrates ask what is the Eidos,
or the Idea--i.e., the image--that a
person has before him when he calls something "good." A definite
answer is never given, however, because no abstract definition would be
adequate, the purpose being rather to make the interlocutor aware of the fact
that he somehow does look at something undefinable when making such statements. |
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What was at first simply a way of
somehow expressing something that is difficult to express developed into a
definite theory of Ideas when Plato made the discovery that something similar
could be observed in the field of mathematics. No two things in the visible
world are perfectly equal, just as there is nothing that is perfectly good or
perfectly beautiful. Yet equality is one of the most fundamental concepts not
only in mathematics but also in everyday life--the foundation of all
measurement. Hence, like the notion of the good and the beautiful, it appears to
come from a different world, a world beyond that of the senses, a world that
Plato then called the world of Ideas. Further intimations of such a realm beyond
the immediate realm of the senses may be found in the fact that men, in
construing a system of knowledge, constantly
prefer what is more perfect to what is less perfect; i.e.,
what is formed and thus recognizable to what is not, what is true to what is
false, a sound logical conclusion to a logical fallacy, even an elegant
scientific demonstration to a clumsy one, without considering the former as good
and the latter as bad. |
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According to Plato, all of the things
that men perceive with their senses appear to be but very imperfect copies of
the eternal Ideas. The most important and fundamental one of these is the Idea
of the Good. It is "beyond being and
knowledge," yet it is the foundation of both. "Being"
in this connection does not mean existence, but being something specific--a man,
a lion, or a house--being recognizable by its quality or shape. |
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Knowledge begins with a perception of
these earthly shapes, but it ascends from there to the higher realm of Ideas,
which is approachable to the human mind. In the famous myth
of the cave in the seventh book of Politeia,
Plato likened the ordinary person to a man sitting in a cave looking at a wall
on which he sees nothing but the shadows of the real things that are behind his
back, and he likened the philosopher to a man who has got out in the open and
seen the real world of the Ideas. Coming back, he may be less able to
distinguish the shades because he has been blinded by the light outside; but he
is the only one who knows reality, and he conducts his life accordingly. |
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In his later thinking, in Theaetetus,
Plato criticized a sensualist theory of knowledge, anticipating the explanations
of the 17th-century English sensualists, such as Thomas Hobbes. In the Timaeus,
he tried to build up a complete system of physics, partly employing
Pythagorean ideas. Most modern Positivists do not take Plato seriously any
longer. But one of the greatest physicists of the 20th century, Werner
Heisenberg, has insisted that the modern physicist still has to learn a
good deal from Plato concerning the foundation of his science. |
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After Plato's death the Academy
continued to exist for many centuries under various heads. When Plato's nephew, Speusippus,
was elected as his successor, his greatest disciple, Aristotle, left to go first
to Assus and then to the island of Lesbos, where he met Theophrastus,
who became his most gifted disciple. But soon thereafter he was called to the
Macedonian court at Pella to become the educator of the crown prince, who was
later to become Alexander the Great. After the
latter had become king, Aristotle returned to Athens and opened there a school
of his own, whose members became known as the Peripatetics. |
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Aristotle had become a member of the
Academy at the age of 17, in the year 367 (during Plato's absence in Sicily),
under the acting chairmanship of Eudoxus of Cnidus, a great mathematician and
geographer. It is a controversial question as to how far Aristotle, during the
20 years of his membership in the Academy, developed a philosophy of his own
differing from that of his master. But two things can be considered as certain:
(1) that he soon raised certain objections to Plato's theory of Ideas, for one
of the arguments against it attributed to him is discussed in Plato's dialogue Parmenides,
which Plato must have written soon after his return from Sicily, and (2)
that it was during his membership in the Academy that Aristotle began and (to a
considerable extent) elaborated his theoretical and formal analysis of the
arguments used in various Socratic discussions--an enterprise that (when
completed) resulted in the corpus of his works on logic,
a new science, which Aristotle himself claimed to have originated and about
which (until rather recent times) it used to be said that he completed it in
such a way that hardly anything could be added. |
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Certainly quite some time before his
return to Athens to open a school of his own, Aristotle declared that it is not
necessary to assume the existence of a separate realm of transcendent Ideas of
which the individual things that men perceive with their senses are but
imperfect copies; that the world of perceived things is the real world; and that
it is necessary merely to be able to say that something is generally true of
certain types or groups of things in order to build up a system of knowledge
about them. Thus, it would be wrong to say that, having abandoned the theory of
Ideas, Aristotle was left with a completely contingent world. The last chapters
of his Analytica posteriora (Posterior
Analytics) show, on the contrary, that he merely replaced Plato's
transcendent Ideas with something (katholou)
corresponding to them that the human mind can grasp in individual things. |
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Aristotle retained another important
element of the theory of Ideas in his teleology,
or doctrine of purposiveness. According to Plato, individual things are
imperfect copies of perfect Ideas. Aristotle pointed out, however, that all
living beings develop from an imperfect state (from the seed, the semen, through
the germinating plant, or embryo, to the child and young adult), to the more
perfect state of the fully developed plant or the full grown mature animal or
man--after which they again decay and finally die, having reproduced themselves.
But not all individuals reach the same degree of relative perfection. Many of
them die before reaching it; others are retarded or crippled or maimed in
various ways in the process. It is, therefore, of the utmost importance for man
to find out what the best conditions are for reaching the most perfect state
possible. This is what the gardener tries to do for the plants; but it is even
more important for man to do it in regard to himself. The first question, then,
is what kind of perfection a human being as human can reach. In answering this
question Aristotle observed that man, being the
social animal par excellence, can reach as an individual only some of the
perfections possible for man as such. Cats are more or less all alike in their
functions; thus each can fend for itself. With bees and termites, however, it is
different. They are by nature divided into worker bees, drones, and queen bees
or worker termites, soldier termites, and queens. With human beings the
differentiation of functions is much more subtle and varied. Men can lead
satisfactory lives only on the basis of a division of labour and distribution of
functions. Some human individuals are born with very great talents and
inclinations for special kinds of activity. They will be happy and will make
their best possible contribution to the life of the community only if they are
permitted to follow this inclination. Others are less one-sidedly gifted and
more easily adaptable to a variety of functions. These people can be
happy shifting from one activity to another. That this is so is an enormous
advantage the human species has over all other animals because it enables it to
adapt to all sorts of circumstances. But the advantage is paid for by the fact
that no human individual is able to develop all of the perfections that are
possible for the race as a whole. |
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There is another possible and, in its
consequences, real disadvantage to such adaptability; the other animals, tightly
confined to the limits set by nature, are crippled almost exclusively by
external factors; but man, in consequence of the freedom of choice granted to
him through the variety of his gifts, can and very often does cripple and harm
himself. All human activities are directed toward the end of a good and
satisfactory life. But there are many subordinate aims that are sensible ends
only as far as they serve a superior end. There is, for example, no sense in
producing or acquiring more shoes than can possibly be worn. This is
self-evident. With regard to money, however,
which has become exchangeable against everything, the illusion arises that it is
good to accumulate it without limit. By doing so, man harms both the community
and himself because, concentrating on such a narrow aim, he deprives his soul
and spirit of larger and more rewarding experiences. Similarly, an individual
especially gifted for large-scale planning needs power to give orders to those
capable of executing his plans. Used for such purposes, power is good. But
coveted for its own sake, it becomes oppressive to those subdued by it and
harmful to the oppressor because he thus incurs the hatred of the oppressed.
Because of his imperfection man is not able to engage in serious and fruitful
activities without interruption. He needs relaxation and play, or amusement.
Because the necessities of life frequently force man to work beyond the limit
within which working is pleasant, the illusion arises that a life of constant
amusement would be the most pleasant and joyful. In reality nothing is more
tedious. (see also free
will, political power) |
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Aristotle's teleology seems to be based
entirely on empirical observation. It has nothing to do with a belief in divine
providence and is not, as some modern critics believe, at variance with the law
of causality. It forms the foundation, however, of Aristotle's ethics and
political theory. Aristotle was an avid collector of empirical evidence. He
induced his students, for instance, to make collections of the laws and
political institutions (and their historical developments) of all known cities
and nations in order to find out how they worked and at what points their
initiators had been mistaken regarding the way in which they would work. In
later times, Aristotle came to be considered (and by many is still considered) a
dogmatic philosopher because the results of his inquiries were accepted as
absolutely authoritative. In reality, however, he was one of the greatest
Empiricists of all times. |
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After Aristotle's death his immediate
disciples carried on the same kind of work, especially in the historical field:
Theophrastus wrote a history of philosophy and works on botany and on
mineralogy, Eudemus of Rhodes wrote histories of
mathematics and of astronomy, Meno a history of
medicine, and Dicaearchus of Messene a history
of civilization and a book on types of political constitutions. The next two
generations of Peripatetics spread out in two different directions: literary
history, in the form of histories of types of poetry, epic, tragedy, and comedy,
and of biographies of famous writers, and physical science, Straton
of Lampsacus creating a new kind of physics based on experiments, and the
great astronomer Aristarchus of Samos inventing
the heliocentric system. The school then went for some time into eclipse until,
in the 1st century AD, after the rediscovery of Aristotle's lecture manuscripts,
there arose a great school of commentators on his works, which had an enormous
influence on medieval philosophy. (see also Aristotelianism) |
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The period after the death of Aristotle
was characterized by the decay of the Greek city-states, which then became pawns
in the power game of the Hellenistic kings who succeeded Alexander. Life became
troubled and insecure. It was in this environment that two dogmatic
philosophical systems came into being, the Stoic and the Epicurean, which were
destined to give their adherents something to hold onto and to make them
independent of the external world. (see also Hellenistic Age, Roman
Republic and Empire) |
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The Stoic system was created by a
Syrian, Zeno of Citium (about the turn of the
3rd century BC), who went to Athens as a merchant but lost his fortune at sea.
Zeno was consoled by the Cynic philosopher Crates,
who taught him that material possessions were of no importance whatsoever for a
man's happiness. He therefore stayed at Athens, heard the lectures of various
philosophers, and--after he had elaborated his own philosophy--began to teach in
a public hall, the Stoa Poikile (hence the name Stoicism). |
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Zeno's thought comprised, essentially, a
dogmatized Socratic philosophy, with added ingredients derived from Heracleitus.
The basis of human happiness, he said, is to live "in agreement" (with
oneself), a statement that was later replaced by the formula "to live in
agreement with nature." The only real good for man is the possession of
virtue; everything else (wealth or poverty, health or illness, life or death) is
completely indifferent. All virtues are based
exclusively on right knowledge--self-control (sophrosyne) being the knowledge of
the right choice, fortitude the knowledge of what must be endured and what must
not, and justice the right knowledge "in distribution." The passions,
which are the cause of all evil, are the result of error in judging what is a
real good and what is not. Because it is difficult to see, however, why murder,
fraud, and theft should be considered evil if life and possessions are of no
value, the doctrine was later modified by making among the "indifferent
things" distinctions between "preferable things," such as having
the necessities of life and health; "completely indifferent things";
and "anti-preferable things," such as lacking the necessities of life
or being ill--while insisting still that the happiness of the truly wise man
could not be impaired by illness, pain, hunger, or any deprivation of external
goods. In the beginning, Zeno also insisted that either a man is completely
wise, in which case he would never do anything wrong and would be completely
happy, or he is a fool. Later he made the concession, however, that there are
men not completely wise but progressing toward wisdom. Though the latter might
even have true insight, they are not certain that they have it, whereas the
truly wise man is also certain of having true insight. The world is governed by
divine Logos--a word originally meaning
"word" or "speech," then (with Heracleitus) also a speech
that expresses the laws of the universe, and, finally, "reason." This
Logos keeps the world in perfect order. Man can deviate from or rebel against
this order, but by doing so he cannot disturb it but can only do harm to
himself. |
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Zeno's philosophy was further developed
by Cleanthes, the second head of the school, and
by Chrysippus, its third head. Chrysippus
elaborated a new kind of logic, which did not
receive much attention, however, outside the Stoic school until in recent times
(under the name of "propositional logic") it has been hailed by some
logicians as superior to the "conceptual logic" of Aristotle. In the
mid-2nd century BC, Panaetius of Rhodes adapted
Stoic philosophy to the needs of the Roman aristocracy (whose members were then
governing the known world) and made a great impression on some of the leading
men of the time, who tried to follow his moral precepts. In the following
century, in the time of the decay of the Roman Republic, of civil war, and of
slave rebellions, Poseidonius of Apamea, who was
also one of the most brilliant historians of all times, taught that the Stoic
takes a position above the rest of mankind, looking down on men's struggles as
on a spectacle. In the periods of the rising monarchy and of its established
rule, Stoicism became the religion of the republican opposition. The most famous
Stoic was the younger Cato, who committed
suicide after the victory of Julius Caesar. It was also the guiding philosophy
of Seneca the Younger, the educator and (for a
long time) the adviser of Nero, who tried to
keep Nero on the path of virtue but failed and finally had to commit suicide on
the orders of the Emperor. In spite of the oddities of Zeno's original doctrine,
Stoicism gave consolation, composure, and fortitude in times of trouble to many
proud men to the end of antiquity and beyond. |
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The thought of Zeno's contemporary Epicurus
also comprised a philosophy of defense in a troubled world. It has been (and
still is) considered--in many respects justly--the opposite of Zeno's. Whereas
Zeno had proclaimed that the wise man would try to learn from everybody and
would always acknowledge his debt to earlier philosophers, Epicurus insisted
that everything he taught was the result of his own thinking, though it is
obvious that his physical explanation of the universe is a simplification of
Democritus' Atomism. And whereas the Stoics had taught that pleasure and pain
are of no importance for a man's happiness, Epicurus made pleasure
the very essence of a happy life. Moreover, the Stoics from the beginning had
acted as advisers of kings and statesmen. Epicurus, on the other hand, lived in
the retirement of his famous Garden, cultivating intimate friendships with his
adherents but warning against participation in public life. The Stoics believed
in divine providence; Epicurus taught that the gods pay no attention whatsoever
to human beings. Yet in spite of these contrasts, the two philosophies had some
essential factors in common. Though Epicurus made pleasure the criterion of a
good life, he was far from advocating a dissolute life and debauchery; he
insisted that it was the simple pleasures that made life happy. When in his old
age he suffered terrible pains from prostatitis, he asserted that philosophizing
and the memory and love of his distant friends made pleasure prevail even in the
grips of such pain. Nor was Epicurus an atheist. His Roman admirer, the poet Lucretius
Carus (c. 95-55 BC), in his poem De
rerum natura (On the Nature of Things), praised
Epicurus enthusiastically as the liberator of mankind from all religious fears;
and Epicurus himself had affirmed that this had been one of the aims of his
philosophy. But although he taught that the gods are much too superior to
trouble themselves with paying attention to mortals, he said--and, as his
language clearly shows, sincerely believed--that it is important for human
beings to look at the gods as perfect beings, since only in this way could men
approach perfection. It was only in Roman times that people began to
misunderstand Epicureanism, holding it to be an atheistic philosophy justifying
a dissolute life, so that a man could be called "a swine from the herd of
Epicurus." Seneca recognized the true nature of Epicureanism, however, and
in his Epistulae morales (Moral
Letters) deliberately interspersed through his Stoic exhortations
maxims from Epicurus. |
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There was still another Hellenistic
school of philosophy, the Skeptic school initiated by another of Zeno's
contemporaries-- Pyrrhon of Elis--a school that
was destined to become of great importance for the preservation of a detailed
knowledge of Hellenistic philosophy in general. Pyrrhon had come to the
conviction that no man can know anything for certain nor ever be certain that
the things he perceives with his senses are real and not illusory. He is said to
have carried the practical consequences of his conviction so far that, when
walking in the streets, he paid no attention to the vehicles and other
obstacles, so that his faithful disciples always had to accompany him to see
that he came to no harm. Pyrrhon's importance for the history of philosophy lies
in the fact that one of the later adherents of his doctrine, Sextus
Empiricus (2nd-3rd century AD), wrote a large work, Pros
dogmatikous ("Against the Dogmatists"), in which he tried to
refute all of the philosophers who had a more positive philosophy, and in so
doing he quoted extensively from their works, thus preserving much that would
otherwise have been lost. It is a noteworthy fact that the British sensualists
of the 18th century, such as David Hume, and also Immanuel Kant derived most of
their knowledge of ancient philosophy from Sextus. |
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All of the philosophical schools and
sects of Athens that had originated in the 4th century BC continued into late
antiquity, most of them until the emperor Justinian I
ordered all of them closed in AD 529 because of their pagan character. Within
that whole period of nearly 1,000 years only two new schools were added; even
these, however--the Neo-Pythagorean and the Neoplatonic
schools--drew their inspiration from early Greek philosophy, though only the
latter was of importance for the history of philosophy. Neoplatonism began with Ammonius
Saccas (first half of the 3rd century AD), who had been brought up as a
Christian but had abandoned his religion for the study of Plato and developed
his own kind of Platonic philosophy. Because he wrote nothing, his philosophy is
known only through his famous disciple, Plotinus.
But Plotinus did not publish anything either. His philosophy is known, however,
through the Enneads, a collection of his writings arranged by his disciple Porphyry,
who also wrote a biography of Plotinus. |
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The philosophy of Plotinus (and
Ammonius) was derived from the study of Plato. It, moreover, used many
philosophical terms first coined by Aristotle and adopted some elements of Stoic
philosophy as well. Yet it is essentially a new philosophy, agreeing with the
religious and mystical tendencies of its time. Plotinus assumed the existence of
several levels of Being, the highest being that of the
One, or the Good, which are identical but indescribable and indefinable
in human language. The next lower level is that of the nous,
or pure intellect or reason; the third is that of the soul
or souls. There then follows the world perceivable by the senses and, finally,
at the lowest level there is matter, which is the cause of all evil. The highest
bliss for man is union with the One, or Good, attained by contemplation and
purification. That this is not a lasting state attained once for all--like the
status of the Stoic wise man, who was supposed never to lose his wisdom
again--is shown by the fact that Porphyry, in his Vita Plotini, said that Plotinus had experienced this supreme bliss
seven times in his life, whereas he, Porphyry, had experienced it only once.
(see also perception) |
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The further history of Neoplatonism is
extremely complicated. While Porphyry had emphasized the ethical element in
Plotinus' philosophy, his disciple Iamblichus of
Chalcis in Syria (died c. AD 330),
founder of a Syrian branch of the sect, mingled Neoplatonism with
Neo-Pythagoreanism, writing on the Pythagorean way of life and on number theory.
Above all, he multiplied the levels of being, or the emanations from the One,
which enabled him to incorporate the traditional Greek gods into his system.
Another branch of the school was founded in Pergamum, in western Asia Minor, by
his disciple Aedesius, who with his disciple Maximus
tried to revive the ancient Greek mystery religions, such as Orphism. All of
these developments became of great importance in the 4th century when the
emperor Julian attempted to revive paganism. In the following century the
Athenian school reached a new high point when Proclus
combined ideas of his predecessors into one comprehensive system. When in 529
Justinian closed all of the philosophical schools in Athens, however, a branch
continued to exist in Alexandria. The Athenian Neoplatonists found refuge at the
court of the Persian king Khosrow, and in 535
they were permitted to return to Athens. But gradually pagan philosophy as such
died out, though it continued to exist as an influence in the development of
Christian philosophy and theology. (K.v.Fr.) |
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