(Originally Written November 23, 2016 in Book 26)
Two Comic Dialogues:
Ion and Hippias Major
Plato (Hackett, 1983)
Both Ion and Hippias Major are important early works dealing with Plato's ideas of poetry and beauty.
Ion is a raphsodie - a reciter of epic poems who performed at festivals and private events for hire. Ion recited the poems, but also explained them and in so doing proclaimed himself an expert in the knowledge they possess. This makes him a likely target for Socrates who goes around showing those who proclaim to be wise that they are unwise.
"Homer was revered in antiquity not merely as a maker of beautiful poems, but as a source of information (Woodruff, 6).
Socrates has very high standards for knowledge.
Knowledge is differentiated however by the Greek term techne - knowledge in a craft or professional knowledge.
Greek poetry claims to come from inspiration from the gods (muses). Both Homer and Hesiod claim inspiration in their works.
In the Greek mind, for a man to be successful he must have divine inspiration. That there were successful men proved inspiration. It is common place in the Greek world. "Inspiration is neither extraordinary nor supernatural in Homer's world" (Woodruff, 7).
Plato sees the poet's inspiration as the gods using the pet as a mere vessel. Poetry comes from a madness brought about by an interaction with the divine.
The man who tries to master poetry by techne alone will be out shined by "the poetry of madness".
But the idea of poetry coming from a divinely induced madness is false. Those who are mad cannot speak coherently, let alone produce poetry.
Why did Plato then put forth this theory? Possible reasons:
1. He is really trying to make an argument for its case.
2. He is attacking poetry
3. He is claiming that poets do not have knowledge when they produce poetry but that philosophers can translate the truth from poetic utterances to the public like priests can translate prophetic utterances made by the oracles who are possessed by the gods when they make said utterances.
Goethe thought Plato attacked poetry. The Renaissance thinkers preferred option one. Most modern scholars believe the third option is likely the best.
Plato does attack poetry, but he also enjoyed it, "we must not forget that the poetry Plato rejected in the Republic was something he deeply loved" (Woodruff, 9).
To possess Techne one must possess a mastery of all knowledge within a field. Ion knows Homer but does not have techne because he knows nothing but techne. Ion knows only through inspiration.
Ion is unable to distinguish between well made verses that are good because they are pleasing to the ear an well made verses because they are true.
Ion
Socrates calls Homer the best poet and the most divine.
Ion claims to be an expert on Homer, but not on the other poets.
Ion claims that while the poets discuss the some topics, Homer does it best.
Socrates forces Ion to admit that there is an art to poetry as a whole and because Ion cannot speak to it as a whole he speaks on Homer not from techne.
Showing posts with label Hesiod. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hesiod. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 23, 2016
Tuesday, June 7, 2016
The History of Western Philosophy Ch. 11 - 14
(Originally written June 7, 2016 in Book 26)
What a fantastic day. Bill fixed our Volvo two days ago and then today, boom! The same thing happens. This time though the car died right in the middle of a busy intersection during rush hour. Other than that today was grand. No, I'm actually not too annoyed (and obviously don't blame Bill; though, that first sentence might've seemed to indicate it). The only truly frustrating thing was the car died. C'est la vie?
The History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell
Chapter 11 - Socrates
Socrates is a man we may know much or little about because two of his pupils, Xenophon and Plato wrote volumes about him. Those voluemes however don't always sync up to provide a precise picture.
Xenophon defends Socrates too well. If Xenophon's analysis was wholly correct Socrates would never have been put on trial. But one of the few undisputed facts we know about Socrates is his trial and death in 399 B.C.
Xenophon and Plato both agree that Socrates was concerned with putting the right people into powerful positions.
The problem with taking Xenophon's Socrates as the historical one is the fact that Xenophon makes Socrates so pure he wouldn't have been accused of corrupting the youth. The problem with taking Plato's Socrates as the historical model is Plato's ability as a writer.
Plato's Apology is widely considred as historical. This is Socrates' defense at his trial (which Plato was present at).
The grounds for Socrates' trial seems pretty lear: Socrates was evil, curious and constanly making the right seem wrong and the wrong seem right. The real grounds for the trial also seem clear: he was aristocratic and many of his pupils wre of that class and had acted perniciously while in power.
According to Athenian law, when Socrates was found guilty and stenced to death he was to offer a suitable, lesser punishment for the jury to choose between. Instead he annoyed the court by offering to pay a tiny fine so he would not be mistaken as accepting cupability.
The prosecutors held that Socrates did not follow the religion, introduced noew gods and taught (corrupted) the youth with such ideas.
In his defense Socrates states that he is on trial because the Oracle at Delphi had claimed him to be the wisest man. In pursuit of disproving this he has made many enemeies by exposing those who thought they were wise as being unwise.
In attacking one of his prosecutors he points out that he is on trial for introducting new gods but this prosecutor is accusing him of atheism.
In his defense he states, "fear of death is not wisdom, since no one knows whether death may not be the greater good" (Russell, 87).
After convicted of death, Socrates shames the court, "If you think that by killing men you can prevent someone from censuring your evil lives, you are mistaken; that is not a way of escape which is either possible or honourable; the easiest and the noblest way is not to be disabling others, but to be improving yourselves" (Russell, 89).
On death he contends, either death is a good, dreamless sleep or a migration to another world.
Plato describes him as the Orphic saint: "in the dualism of heavenly soul and earthly body, he had achieved the complete mastery of the soul over the body" (Russell, 91).
Socrates was more concerned with ethical questions than scientific knowledge. He believed however knowledge was important because no one sinned on purpose. Thus, by acquiring knowledge one could abstain from sin.
"The close connection between virtue and knowledge is characteristic of Socrates and Plato. To some degree, it exists in all Greek thought, as opposed to that of Christianity. In Christian ethics, a pure heart is essential, and at least as likely to be found among the ignorant as among the learned. The difference between Greek and Christian ethics has persisted down to the present day" (Russell, 92).
The dialectic, seeking knowledge via question and answer wasn't invented by Socrates; but, he definitely used it and developed it.
Chapter 12 - The Influence of Sparta
To understand philosophers from Plato onward it is necessary to know about Sparta. Sparta had a double impact on Greek thought; first, through reality and second, through myth.
The reality of Sparta was the Spartan defeat of Athens in the Peloponnesian War.
The myth is the impact of Lycurgus, immortalized by Plutarch, and its impact on later philosophies including Rousseau, Nietzsche and National Socialism.
Sparta arose out of some Dorian conquerors in Laconia. They reduced the indigenous population to serfdom. The citizens of Sparta owned the land but were forbidden to cultivate it because of the demeaning nature of the work and its interference with their time as soldiers.
The Helots worked the land. The Helots were Greek and resented the order of things. They rebelled often. The Spartans maintained a Police State apparatus to control the Helots and once a year declared war on them to weed out agitators.
"The sole business of a Spartan citizen was war, to which he was trained from birth" (Russell, 95).
Children who passed their inspection after birth were educated solely to become good and loyal soldiers. Those who did not pass this intial inspection were killed.
Boys became men at 20 (serving in the military). They became citizens at 30.
No Spartan was to be poor or rich. Their currency was made of iron.
Women received the same physical training as the men. They were forbidden to show any emotion that didn't coincide to the state's favor.
Sparta was ruled by two kings from two different hereditary lines. The two kings belonged to the thirty-man Council of Elders. The Council tried criminal cases and prepared matters for the Assembly. The Assembly was a body of all citizens who could only vote yes or no on matters.
In addition to these three bodies there were the Ephors. There were five Ephors who acted as the Supreme civil court and had criminal jurisdiction over the two kings.
Tradition held that Lycurgus laid down the Spartan law in 885 BC.
Most other Greek city-states admired SParta. Paritally as an ideal from a bygone era. Partially as a model of stability. Partially for their near invincible status in battle on land.
Aristotle was intensely critical of the Spartan way of governance. Aristotle probably was writing of the real Sparta whereas Plato and Plutarch wrote of the mythical Sparta. Pultarch's praise of Sparta and Lycurgus was of great importance to post-Renaissance thinkers.
Sparta was isolationist, often foiling pan-Greek alliances and forbade its citizens from travel and allowed very few foreigners into the city for fear of corrupting the values of the state.
Chapter 13 - The Source of Plato's Opinions
Plato and Aristotle are the two most influential philosophers in history, and Plato is more important than Aristotle.
Plato's top ideas: 1) Utopia, 2) Theory of ideas, 3) arguments in favor of immortality, 4) his cosmogony, 5) knowledge as reminiscence rather than reception
Plato was born in 428/7 BC during the early years of the Peloponnesian War into an aristocratic family. He was a young man when Athens was defeated by Sparta and coupled with his aristocratic background was staunchly anti-democratic, blaming it for the Athenian defeat.
He was a pupil of Socrates.
He was an admirere of Spartan government (primarily because of his anti-democratic bent)
He was influenced by Pythagoras, Parmenides, Heraclitus and Socrates, each leading him to a pro-Spartan outlook. From Pythagoras came the other-worldliness, religious and mystical bent. From Parmenides came the beleif that reality is eternal and change illusionary. From Heraclitus came the belief that nothing is permanent in the sensible world. From Socrates he took the obsession with ethics and a teleological view of the universe.
Chapter 14 - Plato's Utopia
Plato's most important dialogue is The Republic. In it is contained the earliest of Utopias.
One conclusion of Plato is that rulers must be philosophers.
The purpose of The Republic is to define justice.
Plato works to define justice by defining an ideally just state.
In this state he divides citizens into three classes:
1) Common people
2) Soldiers
3) Guardians
The guardians are the sole holders of political power, initially selected by a legislator but then passed through hereditary means. (Plato does allow for exceptional men to rise from the other two classes and for an ill-fated guardian to drop).
The guardians, as politcal agents, are Plato's main concern and that main concern begins with the proper education to rule.
Education was divided into Music and Gymnastics. Music covered everything considered today as culture. Gymnastics concerrned physical training. Musical education was about educating the ruling elite to become 'gentlemen'.
The training up of gentlemen began young. Stories were told to children only if they were approved. Homer & Hesiod were not allowed because:
1) They show the gods misbehaving
2) They cause the fear of death
Sidenote (Future Modern Ancient Greeks)
When discussing political systems with some Alien, the hero gets offended when America is not mentioned. The Alien responds, "Oh yes... the great petry dish, the grand experiment politik, the new Rome, a system built on complete contradictions, an aristocracy so perfect it fooled the lower classes into believeing it was egalitarian in nature. It was perfect until you side-tracked into a primitive hero worship of completely unimportant entitites. There's nothing wrong with admiring or even elevating your artists to godlike status but when you elevate your inartistic to artistic and then what you call the artistic to the status of demigods you get a rather sad and debased populace. A pity really becaue everything was going so well. You survived your Punic war with the Soviets but will you survive long enough to allow the rise of a new Parthia to give you the impetus to survive a millenia? Or have you sped up your timeline and already become decadent and too self-obssessed and self-assured to recognize the imminent but slow rot that overtakes all empires? Not of course you, per se, because you are now a child of the stars and without the wherewithal to return home to the decaying America. But even if your America could cut out the corrosion and you found an astronomically improbable way home, would you be satisfied with life back on a primitive planet now that you have seen just a portion of what other worlds have to offer?" The alien continued with his political treatise in soliliqy as (our hero) ost all sense of national pride and pondered a suddenly existential question, if he ever could make it home, would he want to?
Sidenote complete
3) The homeric poems approve of uncontrollable laughter
4) Homer praises lavishness
Homer and Hesiod cannot be taught in the ideal State because the ideal gaurdians of that State must respect religion (misbehaving gods of Homer are unworthy of respect), must be willing to die for the State and thus, cannot fear or mourn death, be in control of their emotion (no great mirth() and be temperate and praise temperance and simplicity.
Education of the gaurdians also forbids any stories where the wicked are happy or where the good are unhappy.
Plato also banned drama because authors and actors would have to portrait either villains or those beneath their status; thus, debasing themselves.
Music, diet and exercise were also strictly monitored for ideal outcomes.
The young gaurdians must also see no ugliness until they are fully trained and then be exposed to temptations that must be found untempting and terrors which must not terrify.
Economically, Plato insisted on a communist approach where the gaurdians have little private property but are not lacking or unhappy. Poverty and wealth both produce ills so both will be banished.
Wives and children will be common to all men who are gaurdians.
Women gaurdians will be equal to all men gaurdians and recieve the same education.
Interestingly, marriage ceremonies where bride and groom will be chosen (they think) by lot will actually be arranged by legislators to produce the best offspring.
Children will not know who their parents are and parents will not know their children. Thus, children are common to all parents.
Women are to bear children between 20-40. Men to father children should be 25-55. ALl sex outside of these ages is fair and free.
All this reorientation of familial structures is to create a loyalty to the State as the primary focus.
The government is to be built on one great lie, "one royal lie", to get the whole thing in motion.
This lie is that God made men of three kinds - gold, silver and brass/iron. The men made of gold are to be the gaurdians. The men made of silver are to be the soldiers. The men made of brass and iron are to do the manual labor.
The lie was well thought out. Plato assumed that the first generation of Utopia wouldn't buy it, but subsequent generations through indoctrination would.
Plato reaches his definition of justice in the three types of men God created living in harmony. The city becomes just when each is doing the job he ought to do without interfering with anyone from another class.
Like philosophers before him, and the poets who lived before the dawn of philosophy, Plato embodies the Greek notion of fate - everything having its place and function. Justice was the harmony of living within the boundaries of this fate.
Plato's definition of justice allows for inequality without injustice. The gaurdians, even though the smallest class, rule because they are the wisest and fated to do so. Injustice would only occur if someone from the lower two classes was wiser than a gaurdian. That is why Plato allowed exceptions for promotion or demotion.
Plato, unlike many later Utopians, saw his Utopia as viably feasible and wished to implement it. Unfortunately he chose to try with Syracuse and it failed. Soon thereafter the rise of Macedonia made the polis antiquated and the notion of establishing a Utopian city-state impossible in the face of empires.
What a fantastic day. Bill fixed our Volvo two days ago and then today, boom! The same thing happens. This time though the car died right in the middle of a busy intersection during rush hour. Other than that today was grand. No, I'm actually not too annoyed (and obviously don't blame Bill; though, that first sentence might've seemed to indicate it). The only truly frustrating thing was the car died. C'est la vie?
The History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell
Chapter 11 - Socrates
Socrates is a man we may know much or little about because two of his pupils, Xenophon and Plato wrote volumes about him. Those voluemes however don't always sync up to provide a precise picture.
Xenophon defends Socrates too well. If Xenophon's analysis was wholly correct Socrates would never have been put on trial. But one of the few undisputed facts we know about Socrates is his trial and death in 399 B.C.
Xenophon and Plato both agree that Socrates was concerned with putting the right people into powerful positions.
The problem with taking Xenophon's Socrates as the historical one is the fact that Xenophon makes Socrates so pure he wouldn't have been accused of corrupting the youth. The problem with taking Plato's Socrates as the historical model is Plato's ability as a writer.
Plato's Apology is widely considred as historical. This is Socrates' defense at his trial (which Plato was present at).
The grounds for Socrates' trial seems pretty lear: Socrates was evil, curious and constanly making the right seem wrong and the wrong seem right. The real grounds for the trial also seem clear: he was aristocratic and many of his pupils wre of that class and had acted perniciously while in power.
According to Athenian law, when Socrates was found guilty and stenced to death he was to offer a suitable, lesser punishment for the jury to choose between. Instead he annoyed the court by offering to pay a tiny fine so he would not be mistaken as accepting cupability.
The prosecutors held that Socrates did not follow the religion, introduced noew gods and taught (corrupted) the youth with such ideas.
In his defense Socrates states that he is on trial because the Oracle at Delphi had claimed him to be the wisest man. In pursuit of disproving this he has made many enemeies by exposing those who thought they were wise as being unwise.
In attacking one of his prosecutors he points out that he is on trial for introducting new gods but this prosecutor is accusing him of atheism.
In his defense he states, "fear of death is not wisdom, since no one knows whether death may not be the greater good" (Russell, 87).
After convicted of death, Socrates shames the court, "If you think that by killing men you can prevent someone from censuring your evil lives, you are mistaken; that is not a way of escape which is either possible or honourable; the easiest and the noblest way is not to be disabling others, but to be improving yourselves" (Russell, 89).
On death he contends, either death is a good, dreamless sleep or a migration to another world.
Plato describes him as the Orphic saint: "in the dualism of heavenly soul and earthly body, he had achieved the complete mastery of the soul over the body" (Russell, 91).
Socrates was more concerned with ethical questions than scientific knowledge. He believed however knowledge was important because no one sinned on purpose. Thus, by acquiring knowledge one could abstain from sin.
"The close connection between virtue and knowledge is characteristic of Socrates and Plato. To some degree, it exists in all Greek thought, as opposed to that of Christianity. In Christian ethics, a pure heart is essential, and at least as likely to be found among the ignorant as among the learned. The difference between Greek and Christian ethics has persisted down to the present day" (Russell, 92).
The dialectic, seeking knowledge via question and answer wasn't invented by Socrates; but, he definitely used it and developed it.
Chapter 12 - The Influence of Sparta
To understand philosophers from Plato onward it is necessary to know about Sparta. Sparta had a double impact on Greek thought; first, through reality and second, through myth.
The reality of Sparta was the Spartan defeat of Athens in the Peloponnesian War.
The myth is the impact of Lycurgus, immortalized by Plutarch, and its impact on later philosophies including Rousseau, Nietzsche and National Socialism.
Sparta arose out of some Dorian conquerors in Laconia. They reduced the indigenous population to serfdom. The citizens of Sparta owned the land but were forbidden to cultivate it because of the demeaning nature of the work and its interference with their time as soldiers.
The Helots worked the land. The Helots were Greek and resented the order of things. They rebelled often. The Spartans maintained a Police State apparatus to control the Helots and once a year declared war on them to weed out agitators.
"The sole business of a Spartan citizen was war, to which he was trained from birth" (Russell, 95).
Children who passed their inspection after birth were educated solely to become good and loyal soldiers. Those who did not pass this intial inspection were killed.
Boys became men at 20 (serving in the military). They became citizens at 30.
No Spartan was to be poor or rich. Their currency was made of iron.
Women received the same physical training as the men. They were forbidden to show any emotion that didn't coincide to the state's favor.
Sparta was ruled by two kings from two different hereditary lines. The two kings belonged to the thirty-man Council of Elders. The Council tried criminal cases and prepared matters for the Assembly. The Assembly was a body of all citizens who could only vote yes or no on matters.
In addition to these three bodies there were the Ephors. There were five Ephors who acted as the Supreme civil court and had criminal jurisdiction over the two kings.
Tradition held that Lycurgus laid down the Spartan law in 885 BC.
Most other Greek city-states admired SParta. Paritally as an ideal from a bygone era. Partially as a model of stability. Partially for their near invincible status in battle on land.
Aristotle was intensely critical of the Spartan way of governance. Aristotle probably was writing of the real Sparta whereas Plato and Plutarch wrote of the mythical Sparta. Pultarch's praise of Sparta and Lycurgus was of great importance to post-Renaissance thinkers.
Sparta was isolationist, often foiling pan-Greek alliances and forbade its citizens from travel and allowed very few foreigners into the city for fear of corrupting the values of the state.
Chapter 13 - The Source of Plato's Opinions
Plato and Aristotle are the two most influential philosophers in history, and Plato is more important than Aristotle.
Plato's top ideas: 1) Utopia, 2) Theory of ideas, 3) arguments in favor of immortality, 4) his cosmogony, 5) knowledge as reminiscence rather than reception
Plato was born in 428/7 BC during the early years of the Peloponnesian War into an aristocratic family. He was a young man when Athens was defeated by Sparta and coupled with his aristocratic background was staunchly anti-democratic, blaming it for the Athenian defeat.
He was a pupil of Socrates.
He was an admirere of Spartan government (primarily because of his anti-democratic bent)
He was influenced by Pythagoras, Parmenides, Heraclitus and Socrates, each leading him to a pro-Spartan outlook. From Pythagoras came the other-worldliness, religious and mystical bent. From Parmenides came the beleif that reality is eternal and change illusionary. From Heraclitus came the belief that nothing is permanent in the sensible world. From Socrates he took the obsession with ethics and a teleological view of the universe.
Chapter 14 - Plato's Utopia
Plato's most important dialogue is The Republic. In it is contained the earliest of Utopias.
One conclusion of Plato is that rulers must be philosophers.
The purpose of The Republic is to define justice.
Plato works to define justice by defining an ideally just state.
In this state he divides citizens into three classes:
1) Common people
2) Soldiers
3) Guardians
The guardians are the sole holders of political power, initially selected by a legislator but then passed through hereditary means. (Plato does allow for exceptional men to rise from the other two classes and for an ill-fated guardian to drop).
The guardians, as politcal agents, are Plato's main concern and that main concern begins with the proper education to rule.
Education was divided into Music and Gymnastics. Music covered everything considered today as culture. Gymnastics concerrned physical training. Musical education was about educating the ruling elite to become 'gentlemen'.
The training up of gentlemen began young. Stories were told to children only if they were approved. Homer & Hesiod were not allowed because:
1) They show the gods misbehaving
2) They cause the fear of death
Sidenote (Future Modern Ancient Greeks)
When discussing political systems with some Alien, the hero gets offended when America is not mentioned. The Alien responds, "Oh yes... the great petry dish, the grand experiment politik, the new Rome, a system built on complete contradictions, an aristocracy so perfect it fooled the lower classes into believeing it was egalitarian in nature. It was perfect until you side-tracked into a primitive hero worship of completely unimportant entitites. There's nothing wrong with admiring or even elevating your artists to godlike status but when you elevate your inartistic to artistic and then what you call the artistic to the status of demigods you get a rather sad and debased populace. A pity really becaue everything was going so well. You survived your Punic war with the Soviets but will you survive long enough to allow the rise of a new Parthia to give you the impetus to survive a millenia? Or have you sped up your timeline and already become decadent and too self-obssessed and self-assured to recognize the imminent but slow rot that overtakes all empires? Not of course you, per se, because you are now a child of the stars and without the wherewithal to return home to the decaying America. But even if your America could cut out the corrosion and you found an astronomically improbable way home, would you be satisfied with life back on a primitive planet now that you have seen just a portion of what other worlds have to offer?" The alien continued with his political treatise in soliliqy as (our hero) ost all sense of national pride and pondered a suddenly existential question, if he ever could make it home, would he want to?
Sidenote complete
3) The homeric poems approve of uncontrollable laughter
4) Homer praises lavishness
Homer and Hesiod cannot be taught in the ideal State because the ideal gaurdians of that State must respect religion (misbehaving gods of Homer are unworthy of respect), must be willing to die for the State and thus, cannot fear or mourn death, be in control of their emotion (no great mirth() and be temperate and praise temperance and simplicity.
Education of the gaurdians also forbids any stories where the wicked are happy or where the good are unhappy.
Plato also banned drama because authors and actors would have to portrait either villains or those beneath their status; thus, debasing themselves.
Music, diet and exercise were also strictly monitored for ideal outcomes.
The young gaurdians must also see no ugliness until they are fully trained and then be exposed to temptations that must be found untempting and terrors which must not terrify.
Economically, Plato insisted on a communist approach where the gaurdians have little private property but are not lacking or unhappy. Poverty and wealth both produce ills so both will be banished.
Wives and children will be common to all men who are gaurdians.
Women gaurdians will be equal to all men gaurdians and recieve the same education.
Interestingly, marriage ceremonies where bride and groom will be chosen (they think) by lot will actually be arranged by legislators to produce the best offspring.
Children will not know who their parents are and parents will not know their children. Thus, children are common to all parents.
Women are to bear children between 20-40. Men to father children should be 25-55. ALl sex outside of these ages is fair and free.
All this reorientation of familial structures is to create a loyalty to the State as the primary focus.
The government is to be built on one great lie, "one royal lie", to get the whole thing in motion.
This lie is that God made men of three kinds - gold, silver and brass/iron. The men made of gold are to be the gaurdians. The men made of silver are to be the soldiers. The men made of brass and iron are to do the manual labor.
The lie was well thought out. Plato assumed that the first generation of Utopia wouldn't buy it, but subsequent generations through indoctrination would.
Plato reaches his definition of justice in the three types of men God created living in harmony. The city becomes just when each is doing the job he ought to do without interfering with anyone from another class.
Like philosophers before him, and the poets who lived before the dawn of philosophy, Plato embodies the Greek notion of fate - everything having its place and function. Justice was the harmony of living within the boundaries of this fate.
Plato's definition of justice allows for inequality without injustice. The gaurdians, even though the smallest class, rule because they are the wisest and fated to do so. Injustice would only occur if someone from the lower two classes was wiser than a gaurdian. That is why Plato allowed exceptions for promotion or demotion.
Plato, unlike many later Utopians, saw his Utopia as viably feasible and wished to implement it. Unfortunately he chose to try with Syracuse and it failed. Soon thereafter the rise of Macedonia made the polis antiquated and the notion of establishing a Utopian city-state impossible in the face of empires.
Tuesday, August 4, 2015
Heraclitus
Heraclitus
The Classical Mind
W.T. Jones
1980
-For Heraclitus, the original stuff is fire. "This world...was ever, is now, and ever shall be an everlasting fire" (Jones, 14).
-Heraclitus was influenced by the Milesian three, but was more subtle and refined
-Heraclitus' notion to resolve the problem of how one thing becomes every thing and is still one was to make the 'one thing' a non-material thing. For Heraclitus, the one thing then was the process itself.
-For Heraclitus, who like most men have difficulty in truly thinking abstractly, let alone communicating abstract thoughts, he called this process 'fire', which is always changing and yet still fire.
-The problem for the Milesian three was they held a belief in unity and still needed to reconcile the fact that things changed. Heraclitus however in proclaiming process as the one thing went to the extreme and created the problem of permanence. Because everything was fire and process, everything was always changing. This is the state of flux.
-Flux accounts for the change. Permanence is accounted for by accepting that the thing that is changing appears permanent because the rate of change is always the same.
-In addition to the Milesian three's problem of one and the many, Heraclitus has the problem of the world as it appears and the world as it really is.
-Heraclitus did not stop at describing the physical world as the Milesian three did. He dabbled into more areas.
-He used the eternal flux in describing how politics works as well. The political system is a constant tension of opposites. For example, without strife peace could not exist.
-Heraclitus' political theory was representative of his time. There was constant strife between the various city states and peace only existed when neither of the warring city states had enough power to overcome the other. Likewise, in the individual city states the nobles and the commoners only achieved a balance of peace when neither party was powerful enough to impose their will on the other. Heraclitus was on the side of the nobility.
-Heraclitus was contemptuous of the masses.
-In addition to social theory, Heraclitus showed an interest in religion. For Heraclitus, his aristocratic contempt for the masses extended to his religious sentiments. Accepting the scientific nature of the Milesian three, he rejected the contemporary religion of the masses.
-Heraclitus is quoted as saying 'the wisest man is an ape compared to God, just as the most beautiful ape is ugly compared to man'
-Heraclitus sometimes identifies his god as the process of flux
-Heraclitus' god was not personal. It was indifferent to human conceptions of right and wrong, justice and was immune to men's prayer.
-Heraclitus equated the flux/process sometimes with 'logos'.
-Some passages indicate that Heraclitus' ethics held that the chief good of man is to listen to the logos and even become absorbed by the logos
-Heraclitus was both a scientific and religious philosopher.
The History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell
1972
[The Greeks] "discovered mathematics and the art of deductive reasoning. Geometry, in particular, is a Greek invention, without which modern science would have been impossible" (Russell, 39). The limitation to this Greek way of thinking though is that it is reasoned deductively from self-evident facts rather than inductively from empirical observations.
-Heraclitus was an aristocratic person from Ephesus.
-famous for his theory that everything is in a state of flux
-He was mystical in thought
-Fire was the fundamental substance
-everything is born by the death of something else
-there was a unity in the world, but that unity came out of the combination of opposites
-believed that mankind was so inherently bad that only force would compel them to act for their own good
-believed that War was necessary and good
-believed that strife was justice and that all things come into being and pass away through strife
-"His ethic is a kind of proud asceticism, very similar to Nietzsche's" (Russell, 42).
-The soul was a mix of fire and water, the fire being the noble part.
-Claimed the 'dry' soul was the best, but that it is pleasurable to the soul to get 'wet'. Hence, the asceticism
-He was hostile to the Bacchic religion, for example he wrote "They vainly purify themselves by defiling themselves with blood, just as if one who had stepped into the mud were to wash his feet in mud. Any man who marked him doing this, would deem him mad" (Russell, 43).
-Perpetual change was the state of the world.
-The unity in the world was a result from diversity.
-His god did not care about mankind - "To God all things are fair and good and right, but men hold some things wrong and some right" (Russell, 44).
-Like Hegel, Heraclitus seems to believe that a synthesis of opposites creates the world as it is.
-Heraclitus has a sense of cosmic justice in his system as no single thing can ever prevent one thing from totally taking over its opposite
-For Heraclitus, his God is distinct from the gods. His God is the embodiment of cosmic justice.
-Both Plato and Aristotle agreed that Heraclitus taught that nothing ever is, everything is always becoming.
-"The doctrine of perpetual flux, as taught by Heraclitus, is painful, and science, as we have seen, can do nothing to refute it. One of the main ambitions of philosophers has been to revive hopes that science seemed to have killed. Philosophers, accordingly, have sought, with great persistence, for something not subject to the empire of Time. This search begins with Parmenides" (Russell, 47).
Early Greek Philosophy
Jonathan Barnes
2001
-Heraclitus came from Ephesus in Asia Minor, circa 500 BC
-He was nicknamed 'The Obscure' and 'The Riddler'
-Even Socrates, when given a book of Heraclitus by Euripides states what he understood was splendid and was sure that what he didn't understand was splendid as well.
-Heraclitus rebuked and condemned a lot of people for their ignorance in his writings
-He claims all things are one, 'day and dusk - for they are one', 'the path of the carding-comb is straight and crooked', 'the path up and down is one and the same', etc.
-He was very critical of everyone he disagreed with, which was basically everyone. "Much learning does not teach thought - or it would have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras, and again Xenophanes and Hecataeus" (Barnes, 53).
-He defines wisdom as the ability to grasp the knowledge of how all things are steered through all.
-He was regarded by some of the ancients as arrogant and purposefully obscure
-He claimed that all things were made of fire and perished back into the fire
-Everything that exists is harmonized by the transformation of opposites
-Everything is full of souls and spirits
-He distrusted sensory perception
John Stobaeus quotes a couple of interesting Heraclitus sayings:
-It is better to hide folly than to make it public
-It is not good for men to get what they want
-To be self-controlled is the greatest excellence. And wisdom is speaking the truth and acting with knowledge in accordance with nature.
-All men can know themselves and control themselves
Again, he is not very complimentary of the common man: "For what thought or sense, he says, do they have? They follow the popular singers and they take the crowd as their teacher, not knowing that most men are bad and few good" (Barnes, 58).
He claims that most men satisfy themselves like beasts. The best men seek fame from mortals.
He is especially critical of Pythagoras. "Pythagoras, son of Mnesarchus, practiced inquiry more than any other man, and selecting from these writings he made a wisdom of his own - much learning, mere fraudulence" (Barnes, 59).
-He held that the world was uncreated
Stobaeus says "Heraclitus said that a man's character is his fate" (Barnes, 62).
On God Plutarch remarks that Heraclitus believed "In all respects superior to us, [god] is especially unlike and different from us in his acts; but of divine acts, the majority, according to Heraclitus, escape our knowledge through lack of trust" (Barnes, 66).
He claimed that philosophical men must be versed in many things
He distrusted the senses - bad witnesses for men are eyes and ears of those who have foreign souls (the mark of a foreign soul is to trust in non-rational perceptions)
War is to be praised in Heraclitus because it brings about strife, which is justice.
Aristotle describes his cosmology as the harmony achieved through the blending of the most contrary principles.
Again, he's not real complimentary of the masses, claiming that donkeys would prefer rubbish to gold.
The Classical Mind
W.T. Jones
1980
-For Heraclitus, the original stuff is fire. "This world...was ever, is now, and ever shall be an everlasting fire" (Jones, 14).
-Heraclitus was influenced by the Milesian three, but was more subtle and refined
-Heraclitus' notion to resolve the problem of how one thing becomes every thing and is still one was to make the 'one thing' a non-material thing. For Heraclitus, the one thing then was the process itself.
-For Heraclitus, who like most men have difficulty in truly thinking abstractly, let alone communicating abstract thoughts, he called this process 'fire', which is always changing and yet still fire.
-The problem for the Milesian three was they held a belief in unity and still needed to reconcile the fact that things changed. Heraclitus however in proclaiming process as the one thing went to the extreme and created the problem of permanence. Because everything was fire and process, everything was always changing. This is the state of flux.
-Flux accounts for the change. Permanence is accounted for by accepting that the thing that is changing appears permanent because the rate of change is always the same.
-In addition to the Milesian three's problem of one and the many, Heraclitus has the problem of the world as it appears and the world as it really is.
-Heraclitus did not stop at describing the physical world as the Milesian three did. He dabbled into more areas.
-He used the eternal flux in describing how politics works as well. The political system is a constant tension of opposites. For example, without strife peace could not exist.
-Heraclitus' political theory was representative of his time. There was constant strife between the various city states and peace only existed when neither of the warring city states had enough power to overcome the other. Likewise, in the individual city states the nobles and the commoners only achieved a balance of peace when neither party was powerful enough to impose their will on the other. Heraclitus was on the side of the nobility.
-Heraclitus was contemptuous of the masses.
-In addition to social theory, Heraclitus showed an interest in religion. For Heraclitus, his aristocratic contempt for the masses extended to his religious sentiments. Accepting the scientific nature of the Milesian three, he rejected the contemporary religion of the masses.
-Heraclitus is quoted as saying 'the wisest man is an ape compared to God, just as the most beautiful ape is ugly compared to man'
-Heraclitus sometimes identifies his god as the process of flux
-Heraclitus' god was not personal. It was indifferent to human conceptions of right and wrong, justice and was immune to men's prayer.
-Heraclitus equated the flux/process sometimes with 'logos'.
-Some passages indicate that Heraclitus' ethics held that the chief good of man is to listen to the logos and even become absorbed by the logos
-Heraclitus was both a scientific and religious philosopher.
The History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell
1972
[The Greeks] "discovered mathematics and the art of deductive reasoning. Geometry, in particular, is a Greek invention, without which modern science would have been impossible" (Russell, 39). The limitation to this Greek way of thinking though is that it is reasoned deductively from self-evident facts rather than inductively from empirical observations.
-Heraclitus was an aristocratic person from Ephesus.
-famous for his theory that everything is in a state of flux
-He was mystical in thought
-Fire was the fundamental substance
-everything is born by the death of something else
-there was a unity in the world, but that unity came out of the combination of opposites
-believed that mankind was so inherently bad that only force would compel them to act for their own good
-believed that War was necessary and good
-believed that strife was justice and that all things come into being and pass away through strife
-"His ethic is a kind of proud asceticism, very similar to Nietzsche's" (Russell, 42).
-The soul was a mix of fire and water, the fire being the noble part.
-Claimed the 'dry' soul was the best, but that it is pleasurable to the soul to get 'wet'. Hence, the asceticism
-He was hostile to the Bacchic religion, for example he wrote "They vainly purify themselves by defiling themselves with blood, just as if one who had stepped into the mud were to wash his feet in mud. Any man who marked him doing this, would deem him mad" (Russell, 43).
-Perpetual change was the state of the world.
-The unity in the world was a result from diversity.
-His god did not care about mankind - "To God all things are fair and good and right, but men hold some things wrong and some right" (Russell, 44).
-Like Hegel, Heraclitus seems to believe that a synthesis of opposites creates the world as it is.
-Heraclitus has a sense of cosmic justice in his system as no single thing can ever prevent one thing from totally taking over its opposite
-For Heraclitus, his God is distinct from the gods. His God is the embodiment of cosmic justice.
-Both Plato and Aristotle agreed that Heraclitus taught that nothing ever is, everything is always becoming.
-"The doctrine of perpetual flux, as taught by Heraclitus, is painful, and science, as we have seen, can do nothing to refute it. One of the main ambitions of philosophers has been to revive hopes that science seemed to have killed. Philosophers, accordingly, have sought, with great persistence, for something not subject to the empire of Time. This search begins with Parmenides" (Russell, 47).
Early Greek Philosophy
Jonathan Barnes
2001
-Heraclitus came from Ephesus in Asia Minor, circa 500 BC
-He was nicknamed 'The Obscure' and 'The Riddler'
-Even Socrates, when given a book of Heraclitus by Euripides states what he understood was splendid and was sure that what he didn't understand was splendid as well.
-Heraclitus rebuked and condemned a lot of people for their ignorance in his writings
-He claims all things are one, 'day and dusk - for they are one', 'the path of the carding-comb is straight and crooked', 'the path up and down is one and the same', etc.
-He was very critical of everyone he disagreed with, which was basically everyone. "Much learning does not teach thought - or it would have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras, and again Xenophanes and Hecataeus" (Barnes, 53).
-He defines wisdom as the ability to grasp the knowledge of how all things are steered through all.
-He was regarded by some of the ancients as arrogant and purposefully obscure
-He claimed that all things were made of fire and perished back into the fire
-Everything that exists is harmonized by the transformation of opposites
-Everything is full of souls and spirits
-He distrusted sensory perception
John Stobaeus quotes a couple of interesting Heraclitus sayings:
-It is better to hide folly than to make it public
-It is not good for men to get what they want
-To be self-controlled is the greatest excellence. And wisdom is speaking the truth and acting with knowledge in accordance with nature.
-All men can know themselves and control themselves
Again, he is not very complimentary of the common man: "For what thought or sense, he says, do they have? They follow the popular singers and they take the crowd as their teacher, not knowing that most men are bad and few good" (Barnes, 58).
He claims that most men satisfy themselves like beasts. The best men seek fame from mortals.
He is especially critical of Pythagoras. "Pythagoras, son of Mnesarchus, practiced inquiry more than any other man, and selecting from these writings he made a wisdom of his own - much learning, mere fraudulence" (Barnes, 59).
-He held that the world was uncreated
Stobaeus says "Heraclitus said that a man's character is his fate" (Barnes, 62).
On God Plutarch remarks that Heraclitus believed "In all respects superior to us, [god] is especially unlike and different from us in his acts; but of divine acts, the majority, according to Heraclitus, escape our knowledge through lack of trust" (Barnes, 66).
He claimed that philosophical men must be versed in many things
He distrusted the senses - bad witnesses for men are eyes and ears of those who have foreign souls (the mark of a foreign soul is to trust in non-rational perceptions)
War is to be praised in Heraclitus because it brings about strife, which is justice.
Aristotle describes his cosmology as the harmony achieved through the blending of the most contrary principles.
Again, he's not real complimentary of the masses, claiming that donkeys would prefer rubbish to gold.
Xenophanes
Xenophanes
The Classical Mind
W.T. Jones
1980
Like Heraclitus, Xenophanes attacked the old Greek theology, calling it immoral and untrue. He attacked its anthropomorphic qualities. His famous quote about the anthropomorphic qualities of Greek religion is as follows, "Yes, and if oxen and horses or lions had hands, and could paint with their hands, and produce works of art as men do, horses would paint the forms of the gods like horses, and oxen like oxen, and make their bodies in the image of their several kinds" (Jones, 19).
Xenophanes, while attacking the old gods, was not atheistic. He had one God, which was neither like man in form or thought. While this seems to be a monotheistic notion, it was probably pantheistic like Heraclitus' religion.
The reason that the populace never took up the religions of Heraclitus or Xenophanes was that it was too abstract to replace the common religion. It didn't offer the necessary emotional connection to replace the old religion. It left a void.
The History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell
1972
-Xenophanes falls between Pythagoras and Heraclitus. Xenophanes references Pythagoras and Heraclitus references Xenophanes.
-Xenophanes was an Ionian but lived in Southern Italy
-He believed that all things were made of earth and water
-He believed in one God, unlike man in thought or form
-He mocked the Pythagorean theological notion of the transmigration of the soul
-He believed that any theological knowledge was impossible. Even if man happened to say something correct about God, it was by accident.
Early Greek Philosophy
Jonathan Barnes
2001
-Xenophanes was a peripatetic poet from Colophon in Ionia.
-Despite being a typical poet, writing on drink, love, war and games, he was considered a philosopher and the teacher of Parmenides
-wrote against Hesiod and Homer for their teachings about the gods
-Stobaeus, quotes Xenophanes stating that the gods did not reveal things to mortals, but through inquiry man makes discoveries
-Xenophanes criticized Homer and Hesiod for ascribing to the gods shameful and blameworthy things like theft and adultery
-Claimed that one and all is god
-believed that the one god governed everything by thought
-believed that nothing comes into being or is destroyed or changes
According to Hippolytus, Xenophanes said "All men are destroyed when the earth is carried down into the sea and turns into mud; then they begin to be born again. And this is how all the worlds begin" (Barnes, 47).
The Classical Mind
W.T. Jones
1980
Like Heraclitus, Xenophanes attacked the old Greek theology, calling it immoral and untrue. He attacked its anthropomorphic qualities. His famous quote about the anthropomorphic qualities of Greek religion is as follows, "Yes, and if oxen and horses or lions had hands, and could paint with their hands, and produce works of art as men do, horses would paint the forms of the gods like horses, and oxen like oxen, and make their bodies in the image of their several kinds" (Jones, 19).
Xenophanes, while attacking the old gods, was not atheistic. He had one God, which was neither like man in form or thought. While this seems to be a monotheistic notion, it was probably pantheistic like Heraclitus' religion.
The reason that the populace never took up the religions of Heraclitus or Xenophanes was that it was too abstract to replace the common religion. It didn't offer the necessary emotional connection to replace the old religion. It left a void.
The History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell
1972
-Xenophanes falls between Pythagoras and Heraclitus. Xenophanes references Pythagoras and Heraclitus references Xenophanes.
-Xenophanes was an Ionian but lived in Southern Italy
-He believed that all things were made of earth and water
-He believed in one God, unlike man in thought or form
-He mocked the Pythagorean theological notion of the transmigration of the soul
-He believed that any theological knowledge was impossible. Even if man happened to say something correct about God, it was by accident.
Early Greek Philosophy
Jonathan Barnes
2001
-Xenophanes was a peripatetic poet from Colophon in Ionia.
-Despite being a typical poet, writing on drink, love, war and games, he was considered a philosopher and the teacher of Parmenides
-wrote against Hesiod and Homer for their teachings about the gods
-Stobaeus, quotes Xenophanes stating that the gods did not reveal things to mortals, but through inquiry man makes discoveries
-Xenophanes criticized Homer and Hesiod for ascribing to the gods shameful and blameworthy things like theft and adultery
-Claimed that one and all is god
-believed that the one god governed everything by thought
-believed that nothing comes into being or is destroyed or changes
According to Hippolytus, Xenophanes said "All men are destroyed when the earth is carried down into the sea and turns into mud; then they begin to be born again. And this is how all the worlds begin" (Barnes, 47).
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
Thales
Early Greek Philosophy
Jonathon Barnes
2001
Chapter 2 - Thales
According to Aristotle, Thales was the founder of natural philosophy and lived sometime between 625 BC and 545 BC. He is famous for observing or predicting an eclipse on May 28, 585 BC.
Thales may have or may not have written a book. There were no existing texts authored by him by the time of Aristotle so all knowledge we have of him comes from later writers.
"Thales was a man of practical wisdom, one of the so-called Seven Sages of early Greek history, and he was regarded by posterity not only as an original contributor to science and philosophy, but also as an astute statesman" (Barnes, 9).
Herodotus notes that he formed a political system for Ionia and that he engineered an easier crossing point for an army, marking both his ability as a statesmen and an engineer.
Aristotle notes that Thales held that everything was made from water and that water was the material principle of the world. This material principle comes and goes and is born and destroyed, returning to the original principle; thus, the substance remains while its properties change. He also notes that Thales seems to have believed that the soul was the cause of motion and that the soul is mixed with everything in the universe. "Perhaps this is why Thales thought that everything was full of gods" (Barnes, 12).
Proclus, a student of Aristotle, gives Thales credit for numerous geometrical functions that were used in practical matters, like the theorem that states a pair of triangles with one equal side and two equal angles are equal, which Thales used to determine the distance of ships out to sea.
Many ancient writers said Thales was descended from an exiled Phoenician family, but this is doubtful. He is most likely a native of a well-to-do Milesian family.
Various ancient writers have said that he was a great many things, and a great many first of things. He is thought to have been an early astronomer, geometry master, philosopher, scientist and an early proponent of the notion of an immortal soul.
Hermippus quotes Thales giving thanks for three things: "First, that I am a man and not a beast; secondly, that I am male and not female; thirdly, that I am Greek and not foreign" (Barnes, 15).
He was ascribed numerous aphorisms, my favorite of which is when he claimed that life is no different than death. A smart ass then asked, why don't you die? To which, Thales replied, because death is no different than life. In dealing with sin he said that no man can escape the notice of the gods if he does wrong, even if he thinks of doing wrong. When someone who had committed adultery asked him if he should lie about it in court, he told the man perjury is no worse than adultery.
His ethical stance comes from another aphorism in answering the question 'how can we live most justly? To which he replied, by not doing ourselves what we blame others for doing.
A History of Western Philosophy - The Classical Mind
W.T. Jones
1980
Chapter 1 - Pre-Socratic Philosophy
Thales was from Miletus, an Ionian colony on the coast of Asia. According to Aristotle, who lived 250 years later, Thales believed that water is the cause of all things and that all things were filled with gods.
While much of our knowledge of Thales is conjectural and second hand (and third hand and fourth hand, etc.) just those two things show that Thales viewed the world process in natural terms, in breaking with the more mystical earlier elements of Greek thought. His cosmology wasn't quite science yet, but it was no longer a mere genealogy of deities describing natural events.
Thales, being interested in the natural world must have seen water as being able to transform into various things (air through evaporation, earth through witnessing deltas, etc.) and his predisposition to believing that the world was somehow one thing, water seemed like a natural choice.
Thales was a break from the Hesiods of the world. Hesiod was a master poet, but his Theogony was merely a poetic genealogy of gods wrapped into a creation myth. Later poets could improve upon the poetry aspect and be better poets than Hesiod, but they would still be trading in myths. Thales' greatest contribution was his breaking from the myth business and entering the scientist business. Better science and scientists would come along after Thales, but without his break from myth, science could never have started. Thales proposed a theory, something testable. And while water may not be the original substance, it could be falsified, rejected and a new theory could be produced. Hesiod's Theogony cannot be refuted, it can only be written from a different point of view, if the different point of view had a more fluid style of poetry.
"Thales' name is remembered then, because he was the first person whom we know to have answered in natural terms the question, 'Why do things happen as they do?'" (Jones, 9). Much of western philosophy for a long time was shaped by testing Thales' assertion, rejecting or revising it because of the various paradoxes it produced.
Thales' first major assumption was monism. That is to say, that there was one thing that was the cause of everything else. His second major assumption was that this one thing was in fact a thing, not a god. Thirdly, he assumed that the ultimate stuff is active and can change. In his notion that 'everything was full of gods' he was not making a theological statement, rather explicitly denying divine causation. The Greek notion, beginning with Homer, was that the gods were causal agents. By Thales' assertion that everything was full of gods, he was denying the Homeric notion that the gods caused change, but the thing itself was the cause of change.
The History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell
1972
Chapter II - The Milesian School
Miletus was a flourishing commercial city in Asia Minor when Thales was making his discoveries. But it was a city rife with class struggles between a large slave population and the lower and upper classes. The commercial nature of the Ionian coastal towns brought them into contact with the Kingdom of Lydia and Egypt. These contacts brought them contact with the wider ancient world.
"His science and philosophy were both crude, but they were such as to stimulate both thought and observation" (Russell, 26).
A great story that Russell relates is that Thales was made fun of for being poor. So, Thales purchased all of the olive presses in the town in winter at a low price and rented them out for an exorbitant profit in summer time. He is said to have stated, 'philosophers could be rich if they wanted, but their aims are elsewhere'.
Jonathon Barnes
2001
Chapter 2 - Thales
According to Aristotle, Thales was the founder of natural philosophy and lived sometime between 625 BC and 545 BC. He is famous for observing or predicting an eclipse on May 28, 585 BC.
Thales may have or may not have written a book. There were no existing texts authored by him by the time of Aristotle so all knowledge we have of him comes from later writers.
"Thales was a man of practical wisdom, one of the so-called Seven Sages of early Greek history, and he was regarded by posterity not only as an original contributor to science and philosophy, but also as an astute statesman" (Barnes, 9).
Herodotus notes that he formed a political system for Ionia and that he engineered an easier crossing point for an army, marking both his ability as a statesmen and an engineer.
Aristotle notes that Thales held that everything was made from water and that water was the material principle of the world. This material principle comes and goes and is born and destroyed, returning to the original principle; thus, the substance remains while its properties change. He also notes that Thales seems to have believed that the soul was the cause of motion and that the soul is mixed with everything in the universe. "Perhaps this is why Thales thought that everything was full of gods" (Barnes, 12).
Proclus, a student of Aristotle, gives Thales credit for numerous geometrical functions that were used in practical matters, like the theorem that states a pair of triangles with one equal side and two equal angles are equal, which Thales used to determine the distance of ships out to sea.
Many ancient writers said Thales was descended from an exiled Phoenician family, but this is doubtful. He is most likely a native of a well-to-do Milesian family.
Various ancient writers have said that he was a great many things, and a great many first of things. He is thought to have been an early astronomer, geometry master, philosopher, scientist and an early proponent of the notion of an immortal soul.
Hermippus quotes Thales giving thanks for three things: "First, that I am a man and not a beast; secondly, that I am male and not female; thirdly, that I am Greek and not foreign" (Barnes, 15).
He was ascribed numerous aphorisms, my favorite of which is when he claimed that life is no different than death. A smart ass then asked, why don't you die? To which, Thales replied, because death is no different than life. In dealing with sin he said that no man can escape the notice of the gods if he does wrong, even if he thinks of doing wrong. When someone who had committed adultery asked him if he should lie about it in court, he told the man perjury is no worse than adultery.
His ethical stance comes from another aphorism in answering the question 'how can we live most justly? To which he replied, by not doing ourselves what we blame others for doing.
A History of Western Philosophy - The Classical Mind
W.T. Jones
1980
Chapter 1 - Pre-Socratic Philosophy
Thales was from Miletus, an Ionian colony on the coast of Asia. According to Aristotle, who lived 250 years later, Thales believed that water is the cause of all things and that all things were filled with gods.
While much of our knowledge of Thales is conjectural and second hand (and third hand and fourth hand, etc.) just those two things show that Thales viewed the world process in natural terms, in breaking with the more mystical earlier elements of Greek thought. His cosmology wasn't quite science yet, but it was no longer a mere genealogy of deities describing natural events.
Thales, being interested in the natural world must have seen water as being able to transform into various things (air through evaporation, earth through witnessing deltas, etc.) and his predisposition to believing that the world was somehow one thing, water seemed like a natural choice.
Thales was a break from the Hesiods of the world. Hesiod was a master poet, but his Theogony was merely a poetic genealogy of gods wrapped into a creation myth. Later poets could improve upon the poetry aspect and be better poets than Hesiod, but they would still be trading in myths. Thales' greatest contribution was his breaking from the myth business and entering the scientist business. Better science and scientists would come along after Thales, but without his break from myth, science could never have started. Thales proposed a theory, something testable. And while water may not be the original substance, it could be falsified, rejected and a new theory could be produced. Hesiod's Theogony cannot be refuted, it can only be written from a different point of view, if the different point of view had a more fluid style of poetry.
"Thales' name is remembered then, because he was the first person whom we know to have answered in natural terms the question, 'Why do things happen as they do?'" (Jones, 9). Much of western philosophy for a long time was shaped by testing Thales' assertion, rejecting or revising it because of the various paradoxes it produced.
Thales' first major assumption was monism. That is to say, that there was one thing that was the cause of everything else. His second major assumption was that this one thing was in fact a thing, not a god. Thirdly, he assumed that the ultimate stuff is active and can change. In his notion that 'everything was full of gods' he was not making a theological statement, rather explicitly denying divine causation. The Greek notion, beginning with Homer, was that the gods were causal agents. By Thales' assertion that everything was full of gods, he was denying the Homeric notion that the gods caused change, but the thing itself was the cause of change.
The History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell
1972
Chapter II - The Milesian School
Miletus was a flourishing commercial city in Asia Minor when Thales was making his discoveries. But it was a city rife with class struggles between a large slave population and the lower and upper classes. The commercial nature of the Ionian coastal towns brought them into contact with the Kingdom of Lydia and Egypt. These contacts brought them contact with the wider ancient world.
"His science and philosophy were both crude, but they were such as to stimulate both thought and observation" (Russell, 26).
A great story that Russell relates is that Thales was made fun of for being poor. So, Thales purchased all of the olive presses in the town in winter at a low price and rented them out for an exorbitant profit in summer time. He is said to have stated, 'philosophers could be rich if they wanted, but their aims are elsewhere'.
God and Nature in Hesiod
A History of Western Philosophy - The Classical Mind
W.T. Jones
1980
Just like Homer, Hesiod was a man of his times. In Hesiod's age, Greece was suffering from some socioeconomic pressures. Small farmers were being pressured to choose between serfdom and emigration. Hesiod, in his writings, appears to have been such a small farmer, as he railed against the nobles who oppressed the poor.
This conception changed the theology surrounding Zeus. If Zeus was like the capricious kings of the Homeric age that punished human insolence rather than human wrongdoing in Homer, Zeus was a ruler who would eventually punish all human wrongdoing in Hesiod. Homer lived in a warrior class society and thus, hübris (insubordination) was the chief sin. Hesiod lived in a society where oppression was rife and thus, oppression became the chief sin.
Zeus was transformed from a capricious and impulsive god in Homer to a justice-minded ruler in Hesiod. In that way, the cosmos lost its impulsive nature and became much more well ordered in Hesiod's writings.
Hesiod also transformed fate from something indifferent to the plights of men into a force which Zeus used to form the moral law and the enforcement of that moral law.
A typical Greek view is expressed in Hesiod's Works and Days: "Man is different from the rest of nature; he has an obligation to live in a characteristically human way, to do certain acts and to abstain from doing others... Man must live up to his responsibilities as a man" (Jones, 7).
Moderation is a key concept of being a man. Animals are not expected to temper their impulses. But, man is capable of discipline and must live by this principle. For, if they don't live by this unique human aspect, they will pay for their sins.
In spite of the advancements of theology surrounding Zeus and the morality of human beings and gods, Homer and Hesiod both exist in pre-philosophy and the mythic. Hesiod's Theogony reads like a genealogy of anthropomorphizing the natural world.
W.T. Jones
1980
Just like Homer, Hesiod was a man of his times. In Hesiod's age, Greece was suffering from some socioeconomic pressures. Small farmers were being pressured to choose between serfdom and emigration. Hesiod, in his writings, appears to have been such a small farmer, as he railed against the nobles who oppressed the poor.
This conception changed the theology surrounding Zeus. If Zeus was like the capricious kings of the Homeric age that punished human insolence rather than human wrongdoing in Homer, Zeus was a ruler who would eventually punish all human wrongdoing in Hesiod. Homer lived in a warrior class society and thus, hübris (insubordination) was the chief sin. Hesiod lived in a society where oppression was rife and thus, oppression became the chief sin.
Zeus was transformed from a capricious and impulsive god in Homer to a justice-minded ruler in Hesiod. In that way, the cosmos lost its impulsive nature and became much more well ordered in Hesiod's writings.
Hesiod also transformed fate from something indifferent to the plights of men into a force which Zeus used to form the moral law and the enforcement of that moral law.
A typical Greek view is expressed in Hesiod's Works and Days: "Man is different from the rest of nature; he has an obligation to live in a characteristically human way, to do certain acts and to abstain from doing others... Man must live up to his responsibilities as a man" (Jones, 7).
Moderation is a key concept of being a man. Animals are not expected to temper their impulses. But, man is capable of discipline and must live by this principle. For, if they don't live by this unique human aspect, they will pay for their sins.
In spite of the advancements of theology surrounding Zeus and the morality of human beings and gods, Homer and Hesiod both exist in pre-philosophy and the mythic. Hesiod's Theogony reads like a genealogy of anthropomorphizing the natural world.
Notes on Early Greek Philosophy (Precursors)
Early Greek Philosophy
Jonathan Barnes
2001
Thales, though considered the first philosopher, did not operate from an absolute starting point. Instead he drew on two primary sources that influenced his philosophy. The first was his pre-philosophic Greek writers, mainly poets. Two of these were most definitely Homer and Hesiod. Especially in Hesiod's Theogony you see an order forming.
Hesiod claims that the 'race of immortals who exist forever' came from first the Expanse. Expanse bore Darkness and Night. Night bore Ether and Day by joining with Love. Earth and Heaven and Mountains and Sea and Ocean were born as well as other gods. The account of the origins of the earth by Hesiod wasn't scientific, but a scientific story as many of the gods are personifications of naturally occurring phenomena.
What is interesting about Hesiod's origin of the gods poem is that later philosophers used the problem of infinite regress to refute him. Diogenes Laeritus, writing in the 5th century BC basically asks, if Expanse came first How could that be? He had nothing to come from and nowhere to go in the beginning so Expanse couldn't have come first. Therefore, "These things existed always" (Barnes, 5). Likewise Sextus Empiricus (circa 160-210 AD) recounts how Epicurus turned to philosophy. When Epicurus asked the schoolmaster what Expanse came from if it came first, the teacher replied it wasn't his job to explain that, it was the job of the philosopher. From that moment Epicurus took up the mantle of philosophy.
Many of the later ancient Greeks seemed to think think that the early Pre-Socratics got their philosophy going when they visited eastern lands like Assyria and Egypt. In fact there are some resemblances between Hesiod's cosmology and that of the Babylonian Epic the Enuma Elishu and that of the Egyptian Creation Myth.
For Barnes though, "Both the Babylonian and the Egyptian stories bear comparison with Hesiod as examples of mythical cosmogony. Many scholars compare stories more directly with Greek philosophy, suggesting (for example) that Thales' ideas about the importance of water may derive from the primordial significance of Mummu-Tiamat and Nun. To me Thales seems to live in a different and a more luminous world" (Barnes, 8). In other words, while there are superficial resemblances to the precursors to the Pre-Socratics and the creation myths of the Ancient Near East, Thales seems to be a break from those in a more philosophical/scientific way of thinking than the much earlier mythical cosmologies.
Jonathan Barnes
2001
Thales, though considered the first philosopher, did not operate from an absolute starting point. Instead he drew on two primary sources that influenced his philosophy. The first was his pre-philosophic Greek writers, mainly poets. Two of these were most definitely Homer and Hesiod. Especially in Hesiod's Theogony you see an order forming.
Hesiod claims that the 'race of immortals who exist forever' came from first the Expanse. Expanse bore Darkness and Night. Night bore Ether and Day by joining with Love. Earth and Heaven and Mountains and Sea and Ocean were born as well as other gods. The account of the origins of the earth by Hesiod wasn't scientific, but a scientific story as many of the gods are personifications of naturally occurring phenomena.
What is interesting about Hesiod's origin of the gods poem is that later philosophers used the problem of infinite regress to refute him. Diogenes Laeritus, writing in the 5th century BC basically asks, if Expanse came first How could that be? He had nothing to come from and nowhere to go in the beginning so Expanse couldn't have come first. Therefore, "These things existed always" (Barnes, 5). Likewise Sextus Empiricus (circa 160-210 AD) recounts how Epicurus turned to philosophy. When Epicurus asked the schoolmaster what Expanse came from if it came first, the teacher replied it wasn't his job to explain that, it was the job of the philosopher. From that moment Epicurus took up the mantle of philosophy.
Many of the later ancient Greeks seemed to think think that the early Pre-Socratics got their philosophy going when they visited eastern lands like Assyria and Egypt. In fact there are some resemblances between Hesiod's cosmology and that of the Babylonian Epic the Enuma Elishu and that of the Egyptian Creation Myth.
For Barnes though, "Both the Babylonian and the Egyptian stories bear comparison with Hesiod as examples of mythical cosmogony. Many scholars compare stories more directly with Greek philosophy, suggesting (for example) that Thales' ideas about the importance of water may derive from the primordial significance of Mummu-Tiamat and Nun. To me Thales seems to live in a different and a more luminous world" (Barnes, 8). In other words, while there are superficial resemblances to the precursors to the Pre-Socratics and the creation myths of the Ancient Near East, Thales seems to be a break from those in a more philosophical/scientific way of thinking than the much earlier mythical cosmologies.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Notes on Theogony
(Originally written March 3, 2010 in the Journal)
Theogony
Hesiod
Mnemosyne - memory
Aphrodite - came from froth and she presides over the whispers, smiles and tricks which girls employ
Ceto - monster
Eros - desire
Epimetheus - brings bad luck on men
"This was the origin of the damnable race of women - a plague men must live with"
"So Zeus the thunder god made women mischievous in their ways and a curse for men"
Metis - wisdom
Themis - law
The purpose of the fates (Clotho, Lachesis and Atropus) is to dispense good and evil to mankind.
Clotho - spinner
Lachesis - allotter
Atropus - inflexible
Euphrosyne - happiness
Thalia - festivity
Ares - the sacker of cities, father of panic and fear
Memnon - the king of the Ethiopians, known by his bronze crest
I read the Theogony in about an hour. It was good and I'll use some of it for The House of Urtsiul.
Theogony
Hesiod
Mnemosyne - memory
Aphrodite - came from froth and she presides over the whispers, smiles and tricks which girls employ
Ceto - monster
Eros - desire
Epimetheus - brings bad luck on men
"This was the origin of the damnable race of women - a plague men must live with"
"So Zeus the thunder god made women mischievous in their ways and a curse for men"
Metis - wisdom
Themis - law
The purpose of the fates (Clotho, Lachesis and Atropus) is to dispense good and evil to mankind.
Clotho - spinner
Lachesis - allotter
Atropus - inflexible
Euphrosyne - happiness
Thalia - festivity
Ares - the sacker of cities, father of panic and fear
Memnon - the king of the Ethiopians, known by his bronze crest
I read the Theogony in about an hour. It was good and I'll use some of it for The House of Urtsiul.
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Notes on the Republic Ch. 2-5
(Originally written September 14, 2006 in Book 10)
Classics of Philosophy
Louis Pojman
The Republic
Plato
Chapter 2: The challenge to Socrates
Glaucon and Adeimantus (Plato's brothers) demand a full justification of Socrates' claim that morality enables one to prosper.
Glaucon holds that morality is not good, only a lesser evil.
Adeimantus holds that morality is valued only for its external rewards.
Socrates has to prove that morality is intrinsically good and that it contributes towards a person's happiness.
Glaucon sets out to:
1) Explain the usual view of morality
2) Show that it is practiced reluctantly as a necessary thing, not a good thing.
3) Show that this is unreasonable because an immoral man is happy than a moral one
Morality is originated by people coming into contacts with one another and forming laws.
Morality is a compromise. It isn't good, but it is valued because it prevents wrong doing.
If people are given a choice between morality and immorality people will always choose immorality. If someone were to choose morality if given a choice, he would rightly be seen as a fool.
The pinnacle of immorality is being immoral while still appearing to be moral.
If we are to truly believe that a person is moral for morality's sake, we must treat him as a sinner and see if he will still live as a saint. Then we can gauge who is happier: a moral person or an immoral person.
Adeimantes then barks in and defines morality from the standpoint of the rewards it brings.
Adeimantes claims that the gods give moral people rewards.
Adeimantes affirms that appearance of morality is much more important than the reality of morality.
Adeimantus claims that those who believe morality is good have never refuted those who claim immorality is not good.
Glaucon and Adeimantus hold that it is not enough to show morality is better than immorality because that is a praise of morality's rewards and a condemnation of immorality's stigma. They contend that if one only does this they accept Thrasymachus' claim that it is good to be immoral and appear to be moral, rather than being moral outright.
Chapter 3: Fundamentals of Inner Politics
Socrates calls Glaucon and Adeimantus "sons of Ariston" (godlike) because of their articulation of immorality and resistance to its rewards.
Socrates wants to investigate morality by investigating the morality of a community, then of an individual.
A community is formed when men realize they are deficient in some manner and combined with other men to overcome their deficiencies. We have lots of needs and lots of deficiencies so we form large communities to meet all of these needs. Different people are inherently better suited for different trades, thus we need all sorts of people in our community.
Success comes from specialization, not a man endeavoring in numerous tasks.
So once the community is formed does it contain morality and immorality? Adeimantus remarks if it does it must have something to do with how the inhabitants treat one another.
A community's size must be increased to the point of bloating to fulfill all of the human non-necessary wants.
As the community grows the community's appetites will increase and the community will have to commandeer part of their neighbor's land to fulfill their wants. But that other community will need to do the same to our community. The next step would then be an inevitable war.
War would produce a need for an army and an army would need soldiers and thus, the community would grow.
The community will need guardians to protect the community from aliens and to educate the young nobility.
The guardian must be like the noblest of dogs: vicious to strangers and lovers of knowledge.
"Anyone who is going to be a truly good guardian of our community, then, will have a philosopher's love of knowledge, and will be passionate, quick on his feet, and strong" (Pojman, 129).
Chapter 4: Primary Education for the Guardians
Guardians must have a natural aptitude.
A guardian's education must be started young and inculcate values.
Young guardians must have only morally sound stories. Immoral stories must be censored.
The guardian role in the community is the most vital of the whole community. Every person is predestined by their abilities to a certain task. All these tasks work together to form a functional community. The guardian's task is to make sure the community functions properly.
Education begins young because the mind is most impressionable when it is young.
Story-telling is the first step in education. Story writers must be scrutinized so that only moral stories are told to the guardians (because guardians must be moral) by their nurses and mothers.
Homer and Hesiod must be censored because the distort heroes and the gods.
While Socrates admits that these poets' stories are allegorical, he states that since young children cannot distinguish allegory from reality, the stories must be chucked altogether.
Whatever stories are told, they must be in accordance to the nature of God, which is good.
Anything good is harmless. Anything harmless cannot cause damage. Anything that cannot cause damage cannot do anything bad. Anything that cannot be bad cannot be held responsible for anything that is bad.
Goodness is responsible for all things good in a state and bad things are not bred out of goodness.
Chapter 5: The Guardian's Life and Duties
There are three castes of people: Guardians, Auxiliaries and Workers.
Guardians - rulers - "Gold"
Auxiliaries - Militia - "Silver"
Workers - Craftsmen - "Copper" or "Iron"
God wants there to be three casts and the members of each caste must believe this. There is a little room for change however.
The best, oldest guardians ought to be the rulers and the rest the subjects. The old and best have the best skill and most complete love for the community.
The community fails or success according to the rule of the guardians (and vice-versa). Thus, the guardians have a vested interest.
Rulers are selected through careful watch throughout their whole lives and selected based on their devotion to the community.
Rulers are chosen on their adherence to the beliefs instilled in them from a very young age. It won't do at all to select a ruler who is liable to lose his faith.
To set up this community one will have to develop a tall tale (as Homer and Hesiod did) to instill the values of the community:
1) All men were formed in earth
2) All crafts were formed in each
3) The earth spit out the men and crafts into a specific land, which is their home to love and defend with honor
4) All men are brothers, but not equal
5) Some men were made with gold (guardians), some men were made with silver (military), some men were made with copper and iron (workers/farmers)
6) Gold, silver, copper/iron are one's class
7) Man beget children of the same class, but occasionally a gold man will beget a silver body and silver man will beget a gold boy. If a son of a farmer or worker is born predisposed to silver or gold nature then he must be elevated.
The most important job of the guardians is to maintain the three classes and to make certain that everyone is placed in the right class (even if they are born of another class)
The guardians and auxiliaries are to live an alert military life and own no property (much like Sparta).
The guardians/auxiliaries are not to own property because it will corrupt them and the community will fall.
The guardians/auxiliaries will not be happy in the vulgar, materialistic form but can be happy in a greater sense. But, if they aren't it doesn't matter because the happiness of the whole community is greater than the happiness of any single part.
It is vital that the classes do not act as one another. A guardian ought not act as an auxiliary. An auxiliary ought not to act as a guardian or as a worker. A worker must act as a worker. But, it is also as important that a higher class citizen not abuse or exploit a lower class and a lower class ought not to intimidate or rebel against a higher class.
Gold men (guardians) and silver men (warriors) are not to desire earthly gold or silver because that gold/silver is tainted and the gold/silver in them is untainted. They are to be paid in only their stipend to live which should leave them no excess and also not leave them wanting.
If Gold/silver men obtain property they will become envied/hated by copper and iron men and will lord over their lesser brethren. They will become enemies of their community and the community will collapse.
The individual is sacrificed to the community of Socrates so that all will have a share in a higher happiness and not the lower, vulgar happens individual now seek in gluttony.
Plato maintains that the stability of the community lies in the guardians' ability to keep workers working. They must not become too rich or too poor.
The military of Plato's community will not be able to sustain prolonged warfare so must appear ferocious and aim to solve conflict with fear and diplomacy.
Education and a good system will provide all three classes with structure so a huge amount of laws will not be needed.
Overly wealthy people become too lazy in their work. Overly poor people will create inferior products/labor.
Too much wealth brings "indulgence, indolence, and innovation". Too much poverty brings "miserliness, bad workmanship and innovation"
Innovation is bad because the system is good and no change is needed.
The size of the community is important. It mustn't be too small or too large. It must remain a unity.
Good education produces good people. Good people (if they continue the education) will better the education and make it more complete.
Music must be regulated because new music will affect people's moods about the law. Change is bad.
All aspects of life will be orderly and spring out of good, early education and needn't be legislated, which is foolishness.
In a good society, with proper education orderliness and rules of conduct will spring forth out of the good character of all the citizens of a good society. There will be no need of continual lawmaking and editing. The goodness of their nature will suffice to provide all the rule of law they need. (on top of the broad constitution of the State).
Classics of Philosophy
Louis Pojman
The Republic
Plato
Chapter 2: The challenge to Socrates
Glaucon and Adeimantus (Plato's brothers) demand a full justification of Socrates' claim that morality enables one to prosper.
Glaucon holds that morality is not good, only a lesser evil.
Adeimantus holds that morality is valued only for its external rewards.
Socrates has to prove that morality is intrinsically good and that it contributes towards a person's happiness.
Glaucon sets out to:
1) Explain the usual view of morality
2) Show that it is practiced reluctantly as a necessary thing, not a good thing.
3) Show that this is unreasonable because an immoral man is happy than a moral one
Morality is originated by people coming into contacts with one another and forming laws.
Morality is a compromise. It isn't good, but it is valued because it prevents wrong doing.
If people are given a choice between morality and immorality people will always choose immorality. If someone were to choose morality if given a choice, he would rightly be seen as a fool.
The pinnacle of immorality is being immoral while still appearing to be moral.
If we are to truly believe that a person is moral for morality's sake, we must treat him as a sinner and see if he will still live as a saint. Then we can gauge who is happier: a moral person or an immoral person.
Adeimantes then barks in and defines morality from the standpoint of the rewards it brings.
Adeimantes claims that the gods give moral people rewards.
Adeimantes affirms that appearance of morality is much more important than the reality of morality.
Adeimantus claims that those who believe morality is good have never refuted those who claim immorality is not good.
Glaucon and Adeimantus hold that it is not enough to show morality is better than immorality because that is a praise of morality's rewards and a condemnation of immorality's stigma. They contend that if one only does this they accept Thrasymachus' claim that it is good to be immoral and appear to be moral, rather than being moral outright.
Chapter 3: Fundamentals of Inner Politics
Socrates calls Glaucon and Adeimantus "sons of Ariston" (godlike) because of their articulation of immorality and resistance to its rewards.
Socrates wants to investigate morality by investigating the morality of a community, then of an individual.
A community is formed when men realize they are deficient in some manner and combined with other men to overcome their deficiencies. We have lots of needs and lots of deficiencies so we form large communities to meet all of these needs. Different people are inherently better suited for different trades, thus we need all sorts of people in our community.
Success comes from specialization, not a man endeavoring in numerous tasks.
So once the community is formed does it contain morality and immorality? Adeimantus remarks if it does it must have something to do with how the inhabitants treat one another.
A community's size must be increased to the point of bloating to fulfill all of the human non-necessary wants.
As the community grows the community's appetites will increase and the community will have to commandeer part of their neighbor's land to fulfill their wants. But that other community will need to do the same to our community. The next step would then be an inevitable war.
War would produce a need for an army and an army would need soldiers and thus, the community would grow.
The community will need guardians to protect the community from aliens and to educate the young nobility.
The guardian must be like the noblest of dogs: vicious to strangers and lovers of knowledge.
"Anyone who is going to be a truly good guardian of our community, then, will have a philosopher's love of knowledge, and will be passionate, quick on his feet, and strong" (Pojman, 129).
Chapter 4: Primary Education for the Guardians
Guardians must have a natural aptitude.
A guardian's education must be started young and inculcate values.
Young guardians must have only morally sound stories. Immoral stories must be censored.
The guardian role in the community is the most vital of the whole community. Every person is predestined by their abilities to a certain task. All these tasks work together to form a functional community. The guardian's task is to make sure the community functions properly.
Education begins young because the mind is most impressionable when it is young.
Story-telling is the first step in education. Story writers must be scrutinized so that only moral stories are told to the guardians (because guardians must be moral) by their nurses and mothers.
Homer and Hesiod must be censored because the distort heroes and the gods.
While Socrates admits that these poets' stories are allegorical, he states that since young children cannot distinguish allegory from reality, the stories must be chucked altogether.
Whatever stories are told, they must be in accordance to the nature of God, which is good.
Anything good is harmless. Anything harmless cannot cause damage. Anything that cannot cause damage cannot do anything bad. Anything that cannot be bad cannot be held responsible for anything that is bad.
Goodness is responsible for all things good in a state and bad things are not bred out of goodness.
Chapter 5: The Guardian's Life and Duties
There are three castes of people: Guardians, Auxiliaries and Workers.
Guardians - rulers - "Gold"
Auxiliaries - Militia - "Silver"
Workers - Craftsmen - "Copper" or "Iron"
God wants there to be three casts and the members of each caste must believe this. There is a little room for change however.
The best, oldest guardians ought to be the rulers and the rest the subjects. The old and best have the best skill and most complete love for the community.
The community fails or success according to the rule of the guardians (and vice-versa). Thus, the guardians have a vested interest.
Rulers are selected through careful watch throughout their whole lives and selected based on their devotion to the community.
Rulers are chosen on their adherence to the beliefs instilled in them from a very young age. It won't do at all to select a ruler who is liable to lose his faith.
To set up this community one will have to develop a tall tale (as Homer and Hesiod did) to instill the values of the community:
1) All men were formed in earth
2) All crafts were formed in each
3) The earth spit out the men and crafts into a specific land, which is their home to love and defend with honor
4) All men are brothers, but not equal
5) Some men were made with gold (guardians), some men were made with silver (military), some men were made with copper and iron (workers/farmers)
6) Gold, silver, copper/iron are one's class
7) Man beget children of the same class, but occasionally a gold man will beget a silver body and silver man will beget a gold boy. If a son of a farmer or worker is born predisposed to silver or gold nature then he must be elevated.
The most important job of the guardians is to maintain the three classes and to make certain that everyone is placed in the right class (even if they are born of another class)
The guardians and auxiliaries are to live an alert military life and own no property (much like Sparta).
The guardians/auxiliaries are not to own property because it will corrupt them and the community will fall.
The guardians/auxiliaries will not be happy in the vulgar, materialistic form but can be happy in a greater sense. But, if they aren't it doesn't matter because the happiness of the whole community is greater than the happiness of any single part.
It is vital that the classes do not act as one another. A guardian ought not act as an auxiliary. An auxiliary ought not to act as a guardian or as a worker. A worker must act as a worker. But, it is also as important that a higher class citizen not abuse or exploit a lower class and a lower class ought not to intimidate or rebel against a higher class.
Gold men (guardians) and silver men (warriors) are not to desire earthly gold or silver because that gold/silver is tainted and the gold/silver in them is untainted. They are to be paid in only their stipend to live which should leave them no excess and also not leave them wanting.
If Gold/silver men obtain property they will become envied/hated by copper and iron men and will lord over their lesser brethren. They will become enemies of their community and the community will collapse.
The individual is sacrificed to the community of Socrates so that all will have a share in a higher happiness and not the lower, vulgar happens individual now seek in gluttony.
Plato maintains that the stability of the community lies in the guardians' ability to keep workers working. They must not become too rich or too poor.
The military of Plato's community will not be able to sustain prolonged warfare so must appear ferocious and aim to solve conflict with fear and diplomacy.
Education and a good system will provide all three classes with structure so a huge amount of laws will not be needed.
Overly wealthy people become too lazy in their work. Overly poor people will create inferior products/labor.
Too much wealth brings "indulgence, indolence, and innovation". Too much poverty brings "miserliness, bad workmanship and innovation"
Innovation is bad because the system is good and no change is needed.
The size of the community is important. It mustn't be too small or too large. It must remain a unity.
Good education produces good people. Good people (if they continue the education) will better the education and make it more complete.
Music must be regulated because new music will affect people's moods about the law. Change is bad.
All aspects of life will be orderly and spring out of good, early education and needn't be legislated, which is foolishness.
In a good society, with proper education orderliness and rules of conduct will spring forth out of the good character of all the citizens of a good society. There will be no need of continual lawmaking and editing. The goodness of their nature will suffice to provide all the rule of law they need. (on top of the broad constitution of the State).
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes and Heraclitus
(Originally written August 30, 2006 in Book 10)
Classics of Philosophy
Louis Pojman
Pre-Socratic Testimonies
Thales
1. [A12] Thales is the origination of the theory that all stuffs in the world came from an original substance. He founded monism. This original substance is constantly changing, yet remains its original self at some level. For Thales, this substance is water. It is water because everything proceeds from the nourishment of water and water is essential for everything's growth. - Aristotle
2. Thales is one of the Seven Wise Men. He was the first to pursue natural philosophy. Water was the beginning and the end of the world. Water is the causal agent of all things occurring naturally. Water, the causal agents is the impersonal force called god; god or water is eternal. In addition to being the first to pursue natural philosophy, was the father of Greek astronomy. - Hippolytus
3. [A22] Thales believed the soul to be a cause of motion. He held that "all things are full of god". Since water is the god and the primary substance, all things are gods or a manifestation of god. Souls are the cause of motion, thus water formed as a soul is a special type of the god that is in all things. - Aristotle
Anaximander
1. [A9] Like Thales, Anaximander believed all things came from a single substance. He denied that this substance was water or any other element. He believed the substance to be one of an indefinite or boundless nature. His poetic language shows how everything continues to change from opposite to indefinite to opposite to bring "Greek" justice to the world of substances. - Simplicius
2. [A10] Anaximander, Thales' companion, held that the boundless was the sole causal agent of origin and destruction in the physical world. He held that time was infinite and cyclical. As for the physical shape of earth, he believed it to be cylindrical. The physical universe was formed by substances breaking off from the boundless, first hot and cold, then a fire which formed earth and the stars. Man's origin came about from an evolution from fish - PseudoPlutarch
3. [A11] The earth is self-sustaining, unsupported by anything. He held we walk on the surface and there is surface opposite that surface. he held the heavenly bodies to be circles of fire, surrounded by air. Eclipses occur when breathing holes are blocked. Living creatures came to be through the moist being evaporated by the sun. Man was originally a fish-like creature. All things in nature originate from other things. - Hippolytus
Anaximenes
1. [A7] Anaximenes believed air to be the source of all other substances. Air produced the gods and all other things came from the divine. Air is perpetual motion and this causes all the changes in the air to produce the substances we all see. Dispersed air becomes fire, condensed air becomes wind, condensed air becomes wind, condensed wind becomes water, condensed water becomes earth, condensed earth becomes rock. Temperature causes the condensing and dispersing. The earth is flat and supported by air. All other heavenly bodies are the same. Like Anaximander, he believes all natural weather is caused by other manifestations of the first substance, in this accuse air. - Hippolytus
2. [B1] Hot or cold are not substances, but properties of substances - Plutarch
Heraclitus
The Word (logos)
1. [B1] The word is forever and forever incomprehensible. The Word is the cause of all things, but men comprehend it as much as they comprehend waking while sleeping.
2. [B40] Collection of data is not knowledge. Hesiod, Pythagoras, Xenophanes and Hecataeus were collectors.
3. [B50] All things are one, despite their appearances, thus sayeth the Word.
The world is everlasting fire.
4. [B30] The world is uncreated and eternal. It is a fluctuating fire
5. [B31a] Fire became sea, sea became earth and fire, wind.
6. [B90] The substances are exchanges with fire.
7. [B60] Everything that appears different is really the same.
8. [B12] "On those stepping into rivers staying the same other and other waters flow" (Pojman, 14).
9. [A6] All things are in perpetual motion. -Plato
10. Everything is in flux. -Plato
11. [B10] Everything comes from and returns to one thing (which is fire).
12. [B51] Man does not understand that everything comes from and returns to one thing (which is fire).
13. [B88] Everything is opposite, living and dead exist simultaneously in all beings; as one is engaged in proximity to one it is never separated from its opposite.
Soul is fire
14. [B36] Souls die becoming water; water dies becoming earth; but, earth gives brith to water and water to soul
15. [B119] "The character of man is his destiny"
16. [B114] Human law springs up from the divine law and common sense is knowledge of the divine law.
17. God is all opposites as fire is
18. The oracle of Delphi is mysterious, neither revealing nor concealing, only showing signs.
Classics of Philosophy
Louis Pojman
Pre-Socratic Testimonies
Thales
1. [A12] Thales is the origination of the theory that all stuffs in the world came from an original substance. He founded monism. This original substance is constantly changing, yet remains its original self at some level. For Thales, this substance is water. It is water because everything proceeds from the nourishment of water and water is essential for everything's growth. - Aristotle
2. Thales is one of the Seven Wise Men. He was the first to pursue natural philosophy. Water was the beginning and the end of the world. Water is the causal agent of all things occurring naturally. Water, the causal agents is the impersonal force called god; god or water is eternal. In addition to being the first to pursue natural philosophy, was the father of Greek astronomy. - Hippolytus
3. [A22] Thales believed the soul to be a cause of motion. He held that "all things are full of god". Since water is the god and the primary substance, all things are gods or a manifestation of god. Souls are the cause of motion, thus water formed as a soul is a special type of the god that is in all things. - Aristotle
Anaximander
1. [A9] Like Thales, Anaximander believed all things came from a single substance. He denied that this substance was water or any other element. He believed the substance to be one of an indefinite or boundless nature. His poetic language shows how everything continues to change from opposite to indefinite to opposite to bring "Greek" justice to the world of substances. - Simplicius
2. [A10] Anaximander, Thales' companion, held that the boundless was the sole causal agent of origin and destruction in the physical world. He held that time was infinite and cyclical. As for the physical shape of earth, he believed it to be cylindrical. The physical universe was formed by substances breaking off from the boundless, first hot and cold, then a fire which formed earth and the stars. Man's origin came about from an evolution from fish - PseudoPlutarch
3. [A11] The earth is self-sustaining, unsupported by anything. He held we walk on the surface and there is surface opposite that surface. he held the heavenly bodies to be circles of fire, surrounded by air. Eclipses occur when breathing holes are blocked. Living creatures came to be through the moist being evaporated by the sun. Man was originally a fish-like creature. All things in nature originate from other things. - Hippolytus
Anaximenes
1. [A7] Anaximenes believed air to be the source of all other substances. Air produced the gods and all other things came from the divine. Air is perpetual motion and this causes all the changes in the air to produce the substances we all see. Dispersed air becomes fire, condensed air becomes wind, condensed air becomes wind, condensed wind becomes water, condensed water becomes earth, condensed earth becomes rock. Temperature causes the condensing and dispersing. The earth is flat and supported by air. All other heavenly bodies are the same. Like Anaximander, he believes all natural weather is caused by other manifestations of the first substance, in this accuse air. - Hippolytus
2. [B1] Hot or cold are not substances, but properties of substances - Plutarch
Heraclitus
The Word (logos)
1. [B1] The word is forever and forever incomprehensible. The Word is the cause of all things, but men comprehend it as much as they comprehend waking while sleeping.
2. [B40] Collection of data is not knowledge. Hesiod, Pythagoras, Xenophanes and Hecataeus were collectors.
3. [B50] All things are one, despite their appearances, thus sayeth the Word.
The world is everlasting fire.
4. [B30] The world is uncreated and eternal. It is a fluctuating fire
5. [B31a] Fire became sea, sea became earth and fire, wind.
6. [B90] The substances are exchanges with fire.
7. [B60] Everything that appears different is really the same.
8. [B12] "On those stepping into rivers staying the same other and other waters flow" (Pojman, 14).
9. [A6] All things are in perpetual motion. -Plato
10. Everything is in flux. -Plato
11. [B10] Everything comes from and returns to one thing (which is fire).
12. [B51] Man does not understand that everything comes from and returns to one thing (which is fire).
13. [B88] Everything is opposite, living and dead exist simultaneously in all beings; as one is engaged in proximity to one it is never separated from its opposite.
Soul is fire
14. [B36] Souls die becoming water; water dies becoming earth; but, earth gives brith to water and water to soul
15. [B119] "The character of man is his destiny"
16. [B114] Human law springs up from the divine law and common sense is knowledge of the divine law.
17. God is all opposites as fire is
18. The oracle of Delphi is mysterious, neither revealing nor concealing, only showing signs.
Homer, Hesiod, The Milesians, Heraclitus & Xenophanes
(Originally written August 30, 2006 in Book 10)
Book 10: History of Philosophy I
This note book, or at least the beginning of this notebook is dedicated to the readings for History of Philosophy I.
The Classical Mind
W.T. Jones
Chapter One: "Pre-Socratic Philosophy"
When did Western Philosophy begin?
-In the 6th century B.C. with Thales. Thales is the father of Greek and thus, Western philosophy.
-"But, the history of philosophy itself does not have a definitive starting point" (Jones, 1).
It's impossible to pinpoint a time when there was no philosophy; thus no pinpoint of a beginning. Philosophy began as a gradual continuum and exists in that state today.
God and Nature in Homer
Zeus is not the omnipotent God in Christianity. He is "dominated by the members of his household" (Jones, 4).
The Homeric State was a monarchy, but no king was to be absolute. The nobility and warrior class played a part in limiting the king's power. But, a king often overrode the nobility and nobody complained.
Nature was not viewed as cyclical by Homer. Yes, there were regular occurrences, but when irregularities occurred they were attributed to the gods.
The gods were impulsive and that nature was the cause of life's irregularities.
While the gods were impulsive they operated under some form of rationale. (i.e. they punished Achilles for his excessive anger).
Lack of moderation and hubris (insubordination) were great iniquities for Homer. Arrogance came out of men of excess or hubris. Arrogant men were rarely tolerated by the gods.
In the Illiad Achilles is punished for his lack of moderation: Agamemnon is not punished for his infliction of misery and suffering, but for his violation of the god's regulations.
Homer does not make the gods to be moral role models. He does not believe the divine rules were established by the gods for the benefit of man.
The gods were egotistical, lustful, selfish, vain, unscrupulous, dishonest and childish.
Homer's men worship the gods because they were powerful, not because they are good.
Worship is a business transaction between a god and a man.
Homer's gods are causal agents. They are the cause of the regular state of affairs and the disruptive irregularities of life as well.
Above the dos is a blind will known as fate. Fate was above both gods and men. It was impersonal and unresponsive to anybody's volition.
God and Nature in Hesiod
Hesiod was probably from the 8th century B.C.
To Hesiod, Zeus was justice and justice would eventually punish the wicked and make restitution for the abused.
Homer saw the greatest sin of man being hubris (insubordination) or "not knowing one's place". Hesiod contrastingly saw man's worst iniquity as the oppression of the weak by the strong.
Zeus was moral and powerful enough to enforce the divine law in Hesiod, not the impotent, immoral god of Homer.
"Fate became the concept of a pervasive moral law" in Hesiod. (Jones, 6).
Hesiod sets man apart from the rest of nature. The Greeks took pride in their humanity and believed that humans had to live up to a higher standard than animals, a human responsibility.
Moderation is one of the great differentiators between humans and animals.
Despite Hesiod's innovations, his cosmogony is very anthropomorphic.
Thales
Thales was from Miletus, a Greek colony in Ionia (on the coast of Asia Minor)
He predicted an eclipse in 585 B.C.
He believed water was the cause of all things and that all things were filled with god or filled with soul.
Thales marked a chance for science to be founded; prior to him everything was attributed to the gods. Thales' belief of water as the cause of all things shifts causation from the supernatural to the natural and thus, under the scope of science.
Thales is remembered because he was the first man to answer the question: Why do things happen as they do? without giving a total answer of because of the gods...
Thales assumed that:
1) There is some one thing that was the cause of everything else (monism is born)
2) That the cause was in fact a thing or the "ultimate stuff"
3) The ultimate stuff is active and contains an internal principle of change
The third assumption is what Thales meant by stating that things are full of gods. Gods were causal agents in Ancient Greece. Thus, Thales was stating things happen because "things" change. Since things were causal agents and the common religion held gods to be the sole causal agents, by believing things to be causal agents he called them gods.
Thales marks a chance for an expansion of knowledge for Ancient Greece. It is actualized when Thales' successors acutely critiqued each others' hypotheses and moved from the stage of myth to philosophy.
Anaximander
Anaximander was a Milesian and a younger contemporary of Thales.
He wrote a book and a single sentence survived: "From what source things arise, to that they return of necessity when they are destroyed; for they suffer punishment and make reparation to one another for their injustice according to the order of time" (Jones, 11).
Anaximander agreed with Thales in that:
1) There is a one "stuff"
2) There is a process by which this one stuff becomes the many individual things that exist.
He also added a third:
3) This process is a necessary one
HE believed this first stuff was not water or any other element, but something preceding the elements and this substance was "boundless"
Anaximander contended that water couldn't be the first substance because things that are dry would have to be made of water. This is a logical contradiction and Anaximander exploited it.
Anaximander noticed that the world existed in opposites: hot-cold, wet-dry, etc. Each of these opposites would become its own opposite.
A substance returns to the boundless and reemerges as the opposite or some in betwixt substance.
He believed the world to be overall disorderly and felt the orderliness of the world was an abnormality and needed an explanation.
Anaximander put forth a precursor to modern evolutionary theories to explain how the boundless stuff became the many things in existence.
Anaximenes
Anaximenes was the third Milesian philosopher and critiqued Anaximander's theory the way Anaximander critiqued Thales' theory.
Like the other two Milesians, Anaximenes believed in a one stuff.
Anaximenes doubted the boundless stuff because it had no characteristics. He rejected it because Anaximander's view held conflicting positions: a material evolutionary process and a boundless infinite stuff are incompatible.
He explained that qualitative changes were changes in the destiny of air:
Air dilated becomes fire
Air condensed becomes Wind
Wind condensed becomes water
Water condensed becomes earth
Earth condensed becomes rock
Neither Thales nor Anaximander nor Anaximenes knew anything of scientific experimentation and thus never tested their theories.
The Milesian philosophers were ignorant of scientific method (as were all Greeks) but the Milesians laid the foundation for the scientific method.
Heraclitus
Heraclitus was another Ionian.
HE held that the world was composed of an everlasting fire.
Heraclitus believed the problem of one substance becoming many substances was an insoluble one, as long as the "one substance" is taken to be a material thing.
He held that his one substance, the everlasting fire, was not a material thing, but a process of perpetual change.
Heraclitus proposed everything was in a constant state of flux. He then stated things appear to be still, but that is because the flux is constant. Heraclitus developed the notion of appearances and reality.
Moral and Social Theory
The Milesians were focused on the nature of the physical world. Heraclitus was primarily concerned with man and his destiny.
He believed the social world existed in flux, just like the physical world.
He held war to be the "king of all" and believed strife to be justice. He held this because without strife there can be no peace.
Strife was the hidden tensions between opposites.
His contempt oft he public masses can be summed up in his aphorism: "Asses would rather have straw than gold" (Jones, 17).
Religion
The men who accepted the Milesian science rejected the old religion of Homer and Hesiod. Heraclitus was Milesian in thought and looked down on the public for their adherence to the old religion.
Heraclitus was not an atheist. He believed god was connected to the everlasting fire. He believed this god to be indifferent to men.
His rejection of a personal god, but acceptance of the universal nature of god laid the foundation for the concept of natural law.
Despite his rejection of common Greek religion and a personal deity, his theological concepts of "logos" and man's chief good as being "listening to the logos" were absorbed into Stoicism and Christianity.
Logos was the process for Heraclitus.
He was both a scientific and religious philosopher.
Xenophanes
Xenophanes discovered every man makes god in his own image.
Xenophanes was an Ionian and followed Heraclitus in his religious views.
Xenophanes believed in one God who is not in form or thought like men. This God sees all. But, he was probably still a pantheist like Heraclitus.
The religion of Xenophanes and Heraclitus cut away at the ancient myth religion of Greece and caused the undermining of the Greek society. The collapse of the ancient religion led to the decline of morality in Ancient Greece.
Axiomatic Geometry
The Greeks took a basic geometric understanding from he Egyptians and developed it.
Axiomatic Geometry slowly formed over the 6th and 5th B.C. The Earliest complete text is Euclid's Elements written about 300 BC.
Axiomatic Geometry starts with self-evident statements (axioms) then uses logical reasoning to produce theorems. Theorems are then combined with one another to form more complex theorems and so on. Euclid had a large demonstrable book by the end of his reasoning.
Axiomatic geometry pushed Greeks to rely on reasoning rather than sense perception.
Euclid's theorems were not challenged until the 19th century. "Most of Western Philosophers have regarded it as the paradigm of human reasoning" (Jones, 20).
Book 10: History of Philosophy I
This note book, or at least the beginning of this notebook is dedicated to the readings for History of Philosophy I.
The Classical Mind
W.T. Jones
Chapter One: "Pre-Socratic Philosophy"
When did Western Philosophy begin?
-In the 6th century B.C. with Thales. Thales is the father of Greek and thus, Western philosophy.
-"But, the history of philosophy itself does not have a definitive starting point" (Jones, 1).
It's impossible to pinpoint a time when there was no philosophy; thus no pinpoint of a beginning. Philosophy began as a gradual continuum and exists in that state today.
God and Nature in Homer
Zeus is not the omnipotent God in Christianity. He is "dominated by the members of his household" (Jones, 4).
The Homeric State was a monarchy, but no king was to be absolute. The nobility and warrior class played a part in limiting the king's power. But, a king often overrode the nobility and nobody complained.
Nature was not viewed as cyclical by Homer. Yes, there were regular occurrences, but when irregularities occurred they were attributed to the gods.
The gods were impulsive and that nature was the cause of life's irregularities.
While the gods were impulsive they operated under some form of rationale. (i.e. they punished Achilles for his excessive anger).
Lack of moderation and hubris (insubordination) were great iniquities for Homer. Arrogance came out of men of excess or hubris. Arrogant men were rarely tolerated by the gods.
In the Illiad Achilles is punished for his lack of moderation: Agamemnon is not punished for his infliction of misery and suffering, but for his violation of the god's regulations.
Homer does not make the gods to be moral role models. He does not believe the divine rules were established by the gods for the benefit of man.
The gods were egotistical, lustful, selfish, vain, unscrupulous, dishonest and childish.
Homer's men worship the gods because they were powerful, not because they are good.
Worship is a business transaction between a god and a man.
Homer's gods are causal agents. They are the cause of the regular state of affairs and the disruptive irregularities of life as well.
Above the dos is a blind will known as fate. Fate was above both gods and men. It was impersonal and unresponsive to anybody's volition.
God and Nature in Hesiod
Hesiod was probably from the 8th century B.C.
To Hesiod, Zeus was justice and justice would eventually punish the wicked and make restitution for the abused.
Homer saw the greatest sin of man being hubris (insubordination) or "not knowing one's place". Hesiod contrastingly saw man's worst iniquity as the oppression of the weak by the strong.
Zeus was moral and powerful enough to enforce the divine law in Hesiod, not the impotent, immoral god of Homer.
"Fate became the concept of a pervasive moral law" in Hesiod. (Jones, 6).
Hesiod sets man apart from the rest of nature. The Greeks took pride in their humanity and believed that humans had to live up to a higher standard than animals, a human responsibility.
Moderation is one of the great differentiators between humans and animals.
Despite Hesiod's innovations, his cosmogony is very anthropomorphic.
Thales
Thales was from Miletus, a Greek colony in Ionia (on the coast of Asia Minor)
He predicted an eclipse in 585 B.C.
He believed water was the cause of all things and that all things were filled with god or filled with soul.
Thales marked a chance for science to be founded; prior to him everything was attributed to the gods. Thales' belief of water as the cause of all things shifts causation from the supernatural to the natural and thus, under the scope of science.
Thales is remembered because he was the first man to answer the question: Why do things happen as they do? without giving a total answer of because of the gods...
Thales assumed that:
1) There is some one thing that was the cause of everything else (monism is born)
2) That the cause was in fact a thing or the "ultimate stuff"
3) The ultimate stuff is active and contains an internal principle of change
The third assumption is what Thales meant by stating that things are full of gods. Gods were causal agents in Ancient Greece. Thus, Thales was stating things happen because "things" change. Since things were causal agents and the common religion held gods to be the sole causal agents, by believing things to be causal agents he called them gods.
Thales marks a chance for an expansion of knowledge for Ancient Greece. It is actualized when Thales' successors acutely critiqued each others' hypotheses and moved from the stage of myth to philosophy.
Anaximander
Anaximander was a Milesian and a younger contemporary of Thales.
He wrote a book and a single sentence survived: "From what source things arise, to that they return of necessity when they are destroyed; for they suffer punishment and make reparation to one another for their injustice according to the order of time" (Jones, 11).
Anaximander agreed with Thales in that:
1) There is a one "stuff"
2) There is a process by which this one stuff becomes the many individual things that exist.
He also added a third:
3) This process is a necessary one
HE believed this first stuff was not water or any other element, but something preceding the elements and this substance was "boundless"
Anaximander contended that water couldn't be the first substance because things that are dry would have to be made of water. This is a logical contradiction and Anaximander exploited it.
Anaximander noticed that the world existed in opposites: hot-cold, wet-dry, etc. Each of these opposites would become its own opposite.
A substance returns to the boundless and reemerges as the opposite or some in betwixt substance.
He believed the world to be overall disorderly and felt the orderliness of the world was an abnormality and needed an explanation.
Anaximander put forth a precursor to modern evolutionary theories to explain how the boundless stuff became the many things in existence.
Anaximenes
Anaximenes was the third Milesian philosopher and critiqued Anaximander's theory the way Anaximander critiqued Thales' theory.
Like the other two Milesians, Anaximenes believed in a one stuff.
Anaximenes doubted the boundless stuff because it had no characteristics. He rejected it because Anaximander's view held conflicting positions: a material evolutionary process and a boundless infinite stuff are incompatible.
He explained that qualitative changes were changes in the destiny of air:
Air dilated becomes fire
Air condensed becomes Wind
Wind condensed becomes water
Water condensed becomes earth
Earth condensed becomes rock
Neither Thales nor Anaximander nor Anaximenes knew anything of scientific experimentation and thus never tested their theories.
The Milesian philosophers were ignorant of scientific method (as were all Greeks) but the Milesians laid the foundation for the scientific method.
Heraclitus
Heraclitus was another Ionian.
HE held that the world was composed of an everlasting fire.
Heraclitus believed the problem of one substance becoming many substances was an insoluble one, as long as the "one substance" is taken to be a material thing.
He held that his one substance, the everlasting fire, was not a material thing, but a process of perpetual change.
Heraclitus proposed everything was in a constant state of flux. He then stated things appear to be still, but that is because the flux is constant. Heraclitus developed the notion of appearances and reality.
Moral and Social Theory
The Milesians were focused on the nature of the physical world. Heraclitus was primarily concerned with man and his destiny.
He believed the social world existed in flux, just like the physical world.
He held war to be the "king of all" and believed strife to be justice. He held this because without strife there can be no peace.
Strife was the hidden tensions between opposites.
His contempt oft he public masses can be summed up in his aphorism: "Asses would rather have straw than gold" (Jones, 17).
Religion
The men who accepted the Milesian science rejected the old religion of Homer and Hesiod. Heraclitus was Milesian in thought and looked down on the public for their adherence to the old religion.
Heraclitus was not an atheist. He believed god was connected to the everlasting fire. He believed this god to be indifferent to men.
His rejection of a personal god, but acceptance of the universal nature of god laid the foundation for the concept of natural law.
Despite his rejection of common Greek religion and a personal deity, his theological concepts of "logos" and man's chief good as being "listening to the logos" were absorbed into Stoicism and Christianity.
Logos was the process for Heraclitus.
He was both a scientific and religious philosopher.
Xenophanes
Xenophanes discovered every man makes god in his own image.
Xenophanes was an Ionian and followed Heraclitus in his religious views.
Xenophanes believed in one God who is not in form or thought like men. This God sees all. But, he was probably still a pantheist like Heraclitus.
The religion of Xenophanes and Heraclitus cut away at the ancient myth religion of Greece and caused the undermining of the Greek society. The collapse of the ancient religion led to the decline of morality in Ancient Greece.
Axiomatic Geometry
The Greeks took a basic geometric understanding from he Egyptians and developed it.
Axiomatic Geometry slowly formed over the 6th and 5th B.C. The Earliest complete text is Euclid's Elements written about 300 BC.
Axiomatic Geometry starts with self-evident statements (axioms) then uses logical reasoning to produce theorems. Theorems are then combined with one another to form more complex theorems and so on. Euclid had a large demonstrable book by the end of his reasoning.
Axiomatic geometry pushed Greeks to rely on reasoning rather than sense perception.
Euclid's theorems were not challenged until the 19th century. "Most of Western Philosophers have regarded it as the paradigm of human reasoning" (Jones, 20).
Homer & Hesiod
(Originally Written August 30, 2006 in History I)
The Classical Mind by W.T. Jones
Chapter 1: Pre-Socratic Philosophy
When did western Philosophy begin? In the 6th century with Thales.
Thales was the father of Greek philosophy.
"But, the history of philosophy itself does not have a definitive starting point" (Jones, 1).
It's impossible to pinpoint a time when there was no philosophy, thus no pinpoint of a beginning. Philosophy began as a gradual continuum and exists that way presently.
God and Nature in Homer:
Zeus is not the omnipotent God of Christianity. He is dominated by the members of his household analogous to a human father of ten is.
The Homeric state was a monarchy, but no king was absolute. The nobles and the warriors played a part in limiting the kings' powers. But a king often overrode the wishes of the nobility and no one dared complain.
Nature was not seen as a cyclical event in Homer. Yes, there were regular occurrences, but when irregularities occurred they were attributed to the acts of the gods.
The gods were impulsive and they acted in some sort of rational manner, i.e. punishing Achilles for his excess.
Lack of moderation and hubris (insubordination) were the great iniquities in Homer. Arrogance came out of men of excess or hubris. Arrogant men were rarely tolerated by the gods.
In the Illiad, Achilles was punished for his lack of moderation. Agamemnon is not punished for his causing misery and suffering, but for his violation of the gods' regulations.
Homer does not make the gods to be moral role models. He does not believe the divine rules were established for man's benefits. The gods are egotistical, lustful, selfish, vain, unscrupulous and dishonest.
Homer's men worship the gods because they are powerful, not because they are good. Worship is a business transaction between a particular god and man.
Homer's gods are causal agents. They are the cause of the regular state of affairs and the cause of all the disruptive irregularities of life.
Above the gods is a blind will known as fate. Fate was above both gods and men, unresponsive to anyone's volition.
God & Nature in Hesiod:
Hesiod was probably from the 8th century B.C.
Hesiod wrote against the power grabbing of the nobility.
To Hesiod, Zeus was justice and justice would eventually punish the wicked and correct the abuse.
Homer saw the greatest iniquity of man as insubordination or not knowing one's place in life. Hesiod saw the greatest iniquity of man to be the oppression of the weak by the strong.
Zeus was moral and powerful enough to enforce the law in Hesiod. "Fate became the concept of a pervasive moral law" in Hesiod (Jones, 6).
Hesiod sets man apart from the rest of nature. The Greeks took pride in their humanity and believed that humans had to live up to a higher standard than animals, a human responsibility. Moderation is one of the great differentiating aspects between humans and animals.
Despite Hesiod's innovations, his cosmogony was very anthropomorphic.
The Classical Mind by W.T. Jones
Chapter 1: Pre-Socratic Philosophy
When did western Philosophy begin? In the 6th century with Thales.
Thales was the father of Greek philosophy.
"But, the history of philosophy itself does not have a definitive starting point" (Jones, 1).
It's impossible to pinpoint a time when there was no philosophy, thus no pinpoint of a beginning. Philosophy began as a gradual continuum and exists that way presently.
God and Nature in Homer:
Zeus is not the omnipotent God of Christianity. He is dominated by the members of his household analogous to a human father of ten is.
The Homeric state was a monarchy, but no king was absolute. The nobles and the warriors played a part in limiting the kings' powers. But a king often overrode the wishes of the nobility and no one dared complain.
Nature was not seen as a cyclical event in Homer. Yes, there were regular occurrences, but when irregularities occurred they were attributed to the acts of the gods.
The gods were impulsive and they acted in some sort of rational manner, i.e. punishing Achilles for his excess.
Lack of moderation and hubris (insubordination) were the great iniquities in Homer. Arrogance came out of men of excess or hubris. Arrogant men were rarely tolerated by the gods.
In the Illiad, Achilles was punished for his lack of moderation. Agamemnon is not punished for his causing misery and suffering, but for his violation of the gods' regulations.
Homer does not make the gods to be moral role models. He does not believe the divine rules were established for man's benefits. The gods are egotistical, lustful, selfish, vain, unscrupulous and dishonest.
Homer's men worship the gods because they are powerful, not because they are good. Worship is a business transaction between a particular god and man.
Homer's gods are causal agents. They are the cause of the regular state of affairs and the cause of all the disruptive irregularities of life.
Above the gods is a blind will known as fate. Fate was above both gods and men, unresponsive to anyone's volition.
God & Nature in Hesiod:
Hesiod was probably from the 8th century B.C.
Hesiod wrote against the power grabbing of the nobility.
To Hesiod, Zeus was justice and justice would eventually punish the wicked and correct the abuse.
Homer saw the greatest iniquity of man as insubordination or not knowing one's place in life. Hesiod saw the greatest iniquity of man to be the oppression of the weak by the strong.
Zeus was moral and powerful enough to enforce the law in Hesiod. "Fate became the concept of a pervasive moral law" in Hesiod (Jones, 6).
Hesiod sets man apart from the rest of nature. The Greeks took pride in their humanity and believed that humans had to live up to a higher standard than animals, a human responsibility. Moderation is one of the great differentiating aspects between humans and animals.
Despite Hesiod's innovations, his cosmogony was very anthropomorphic.
Saturday, July 8, 2006
Plato's Utopia
(Originally written July 8, 2006 in Book 4)
The History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell
Chapter 14 - Plato's Utopia
The construction of an ideal commonwealth is the function of Plato's Utopia. It is the earliest and first of these attempts.
In a Utopia the government is run by philosophers
The nominal purpose of the Republic is to define justice.
Utopia declares that a state must be just for it to be good.
Plato divides citizens into three classes:
1) The common people
2) The soldiers
3) The guardians
The guardians are the only class to have political power.
The guardians are initially chosen by a legislator, then succeed by heredity. In rare cases an exceptional child may rise from one of the larger, yet lower social classes and incompetent guardians can be demoted.
Plato focuses on the guardians because they are the definers of society. Therefore considerations must be made into their purpose and instruction.
First, there are educational considerations. Education is divided into two parts:
1) Music (culture in modern times)
2) Gymnastics (athletics in modern times)
Culture (music) is purposed to create gentlemen.
The aristocracy is unchecked in Plato's Utopia. They have absolute political power.
Gravity, decorum and courage were the qualities cultivated in education.
Rigorous censorship of literature was required so young minds would not be corrupted. Homer & Hesiod were not allowed for a number of reasons:
1) The gods' behavior in these stories is not befitting them. God is the author of only good things, not evil.
2) Homer and Hesiod make their readers fear death. Education should make young men willing to die in battle.
3) Decorum demands no loud laughter and Homer articulates this in the gods.
4) They discourage the virtue of temperance
5) The authors speak of good men being unhappy and wicked men prospering, which discourages men of striving to be good.
Dramas are banished because they contain villains and no good man should imitate a bad man, a woman or an inferior man. Therefore, dramas are nearly impossible.
Music was to be censored as well. No Ionian or Lydian harmonies were permitted. Lydian music expresses sorrow, Ionian, relaxation. Rhythms had to be simple. Dorian music was good for courage. Phrygian was good for temperance.
Body training was strict:
1) No fish was to be eaten
2) Meat had to be roasted
3) Sauces and confectionary were forbidden
Young people were never to see ugliness or vice. Then when they are ready are to be shown terrors, but not to be afraid. They were to be shown evil pleasure, but not to be seduced. When they pass this test they are fit to be guardians.
Guardian males should see war, but not fight.
Communism was the economic system fro guardians and soldiers.
Guardians were to have small homes and simple food, live in a camp and dine together.
Gold and silver were forbidden.
Both wealth and poverty are deemed harmful and thus should not exist.
Allies would easy to come by because Plato's Utopia would not want to share in the spoils of war.
Girls were to have the same exact training as boys. Women were to have equality with men.
Marriage would be quite different. They would be arranged to ensure the best match for the betterment of society as a whole.
Children were to be taken from their parents at birth. No parents were to know exactly who their children were and no children were to know exactly who their parents were.
Mothers are to be 20-40 years old; fathers are to be 25-55. After this age sex is free, but abortion and infanticide compulsory.
The objective of Plato's logic is to minimize private possessive emotions.
Deception is a prerogative and lying a tool of the government to subdue its inhabitants.
The great lie or 'one royal lie' is that God made three kinds of men: the top of gold, middle of silver, low of brass and iron. The gold are go be guardians, silver, the soldiers, the brass and iron, the common laborers. This lie was not going to fool the first generation, but through education it could fool subsequent ones.
Justice occurs when every being does their own job and doesn't interfere with the other classes.
What distinguishes Plato's Utopia from modern utopias is that it was intended to be founded. It wouldn't have been as difficult as we would think either. Pythagoras attempted to have philosophers rule and was still very influenctial in Sicily and Southern Italy. Most of his ideas were achieved in some scale in Sparta. Unfortunately for Plato, he went to Syracuse, a great commercial city and faced a war with Carthage.
The History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell
Chapter 14 - Plato's Utopia
The construction of an ideal commonwealth is the function of Plato's Utopia. It is the earliest and first of these attempts.
In a Utopia the government is run by philosophers
The nominal purpose of the Republic is to define justice.
Utopia declares that a state must be just for it to be good.
Plato divides citizens into three classes:
1) The common people
2) The soldiers
3) The guardians
The guardians are the only class to have political power.
The guardians are initially chosen by a legislator, then succeed by heredity. In rare cases an exceptional child may rise from one of the larger, yet lower social classes and incompetent guardians can be demoted.
Plato focuses on the guardians because they are the definers of society. Therefore considerations must be made into their purpose and instruction.
First, there are educational considerations. Education is divided into two parts:
1) Music (culture in modern times)
2) Gymnastics (athletics in modern times)
Culture (music) is purposed to create gentlemen.
The aristocracy is unchecked in Plato's Utopia. They have absolute political power.
Gravity, decorum and courage were the qualities cultivated in education.
Rigorous censorship of literature was required so young minds would not be corrupted. Homer & Hesiod were not allowed for a number of reasons:
1) The gods' behavior in these stories is not befitting them. God is the author of only good things, not evil.
2) Homer and Hesiod make their readers fear death. Education should make young men willing to die in battle.
3) Decorum demands no loud laughter and Homer articulates this in the gods.
4) They discourage the virtue of temperance
5) The authors speak of good men being unhappy and wicked men prospering, which discourages men of striving to be good.
Dramas are banished because they contain villains and no good man should imitate a bad man, a woman or an inferior man. Therefore, dramas are nearly impossible.
Music was to be censored as well. No Ionian or Lydian harmonies were permitted. Lydian music expresses sorrow, Ionian, relaxation. Rhythms had to be simple. Dorian music was good for courage. Phrygian was good for temperance.
Body training was strict:
1) No fish was to be eaten
2) Meat had to be roasted
3) Sauces and confectionary were forbidden
Young people were never to see ugliness or vice. Then when they are ready are to be shown terrors, but not to be afraid. They were to be shown evil pleasure, but not to be seduced. When they pass this test they are fit to be guardians.
Guardian males should see war, but not fight.
Communism was the economic system fro guardians and soldiers.
Guardians were to have small homes and simple food, live in a camp and dine together.
Gold and silver were forbidden.
Both wealth and poverty are deemed harmful and thus should not exist.
Allies would easy to come by because Plato's Utopia would not want to share in the spoils of war.
Girls were to have the same exact training as boys. Women were to have equality with men.
Marriage would be quite different. They would be arranged to ensure the best match for the betterment of society as a whole.
Children were to be taken from their parents at birth. No parents were to know exactly who their children were and no children were to know exactly who their parents were.
Mothers are to be 20-40 years old; fathers are to be 25-55. After this age sex is free, but abortion and infanticide compulsory.
The objective of Plato's logic is to minimize private possessive emotions.
Deception is a prerogative and lying a tool of the government to subdue its inhabitants.
The great lie or 'one royal lie' is that God made three kinds of men: the top of gold, middle of silver, low of brass and iron. The gold are go be guardians, silver, the soldiers, the brass and iron, the common laborers. This lie was not going to fool the first generation, but through education it could fool subsequent ones.
Justice occurs when every being does their own job and doesn't interfere with the other classes.
What distinguishes Plato's Utopia from modern utopias is that it was intended to be founded. It wouldn't have been as difficult as we would think either. Pythagoras attempted to have philosophers rule and was still very influenctial in Sicily and Southern Italy. Most of his ideas were achieved in some scale in Sparta. Unfortunately for Plato, he went to Syracuse, a great commercial city and faced a war with Carthage.
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