Philosophy Introductory Material.pdf

Philosophy Miller, Ed. L. Questions That Matter: An Invitation to Philosophy. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996. The Meaning of Philosophy Philosophy comes for a Greek word which means "love of wisdom." It was first used by the ancient Greek thinker Pythagoras, who likened philosophers – pursuers of wisd...

Philosophy Miller, Ed. L. Questions That Matter: An Invitation to Philosophy. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996. The Meaning of Philosophy Philosophy comes for a Greek word which means "love of wisdom." It was first used by the ancient Greek thinker Pythagoras, who likened philosophers – pursuers of wisdom – to spectators at ancient games. [The term philosophy is taken from the Greek word, (phileo) meaning "to love" or "to befriend" and, (Sophia) meaning "wisdom." Thus, "philosophy" means "the love of wisdom". Socrates, a Greek philosopher, used the term philosophy as an equivalent to the search for wisdom.] The Fields of Philosophy Metaphysics/Ontology: The study of reality (sometimes also the study of transcendent reality, reality which lies beyond the physical world and cannot therefore be grasped by means of the senses). (As a philosophical concept, metaphysics originated in the first century B.C. when Andronicus, a scholar in Rhodes, was editing Aristotle's works. He found it difficult to classify one of these works and simply placed it meta ta physika, which in Greek meant "after the physical [works]." By a happy coincidence the Metaphysics of Aristotle did in fact concern primarily the "first principle" of things, the ultimate causes that lie after or beyond (meta) the physical (physika).) The question of metaphysics is: What is reality? What is real? This involves, of course, many related questions, such as, Is reality some kind of "thing"? Is it many? If it is one, then how is it related to the many things around us? Can ultimate reality be grasped by the five senses, or is it supernatural or transcendent? And so on. Epistemology: The study or theory of knowledge. The question of epistemology is: What is knowledge? What does it mean "to know"? How is knowledge acquired? What, if anything, do the senses contribute to knowledge? What does reason contribute? Can we be really certain of anything? What is truth? Value Theory: The study of value. The question here is what is value? This question does not involve any particular sort of value but value in any and all of its manifestations. Ethics: The study of moral value, right and wrong. It is concerned with a particular sort of value, namely value as it applies to personal actions, decisions, and relations; it is concerned with moral value. It raises the question What is morally good? What is right? Are there any absolute or universal moral principles? Does the end ever justify the means? Am I my brother's keeper? Aesthetics: The study of beauty and art. It is also the study of a particular sort of value, namely, the values involved in art and our experience of beauty. It raises the question what is art? It addresses such issues as the relation of beauty to art, whether there can be any objective 1 standards by which artistic works may be judge (or is beauty in the eye of the beholder?), and the connection between art, reality, and truth. Logic: The principles of right reasoning. It is also a tool which philosophers employ as they set about to investigate these issues. Segal, Robert A. Myth: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford U P, 2004. Myth and philosophy There is a great array of positions held on the relationship between myth and philosophy: that myth is part of philosophy, that myth is philosophy, that philosophy is myth, that myth grows out of philosophy, that philosophy grows out of myth, that myth and philosophy are independent of each other but serve the same function, and that myth and philosophy are independent of each other and serve different functions. One of the ways of looking at the two is to say that mythic, or ‘mythopoeic’, thinking is primitive, is laden with emotion, is part of religion, and is the projection of mystical oneness onto the world. To avoid labelling mythic thinking ‘illogical’ or ‘nonlogical’, some philosophers call it ‘prelogical’: myths, while themselves stories, presuppose a distinctive mentality. In fact, philosophical and mythopoeic ways of thinking are more than different conceptions of the world. They are different perceptions of the world. The ‘fundamental difference’ is that for moderns the external world is an ‘It’, where for primitives it is a ‘Thou’ – terms taken from the philosopher Martin Buber. An I–It relationship is detached and intellectual. An I–Thou one is involved and emotional. The paradigmatic I–Thou relationship is love. To say that primitives experience the world as Thou rather than as It is to say that they experience it as a person rather than a thing. The coming of rain after a drought is ascribed not to atmospheric changes but to, say, the defeat of a rival god by the rain god, as described in myth. To understand the world as Thou is to efface various everyday, I–It distinctions. Primitives fail to distinguish between the merely subjective and the objective: they see the sun rise and set, not the earth circling it; they see colours, not wavelengths. They fail to distinguish between appearance and reality: the stick is crooked in the water rather than merely seeming to be so; dreams are real because experienced as real. Primitives fail to distinguish between a symbol and the symbolized: a name is identical with its possessor; Palmer, Donald. Does the Center Hold. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002. To many laypeople, philosophy is hard. It’s also intimidating. It’s not clear what the point of philosophy is. Its uses are not easy to detect. Its arguments are often very abstract; it is difficult to see how they relate to ‘real life.’ Though its practitioners often seem out of touch with the world, they are obviously very smart. Students are expected to read whole paragraphs – and sometimes, whole books – written by these philosophers in arcane or highly technical English, 2 often in translation. Such reading assignments happen almost nowhere else in one’s college career except in literature classes. But at least novelists write for a general audience, because nobody pays them if nobody understands them. For the most part, philosophers seem to write exclusively for each other. Worst of all, philosophers are contentious. They each seem to disagree with most other philosophers, so it’s hard to know what’s really true or whether any progress is ever made. One hopes that students will come to realize that there is a certain kind of philosophical analysis and form of argumentation whose skills can be learned and applied in other areas of their lives, not just in philosophy classes and that there are different kinds of payoffs. Also that once they get the hang of it, philosophy is fun. Philosophy poses a series of questions that it then tries to answer, and one of these questions is ‘What is philosophy? This fact itself tells us something about philosophy because it informs us of philosophy’s self-reflective nature. It is part of philosophy’s task to think about itself, because philosophy is an activity whose purpose involves questioning the assumptions of every system of thought, including its own. Perry, Marvin. Western Civilization Ideas, Politics, and Society. 9th Edition. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 2009. A Mythmaking Worldview A religious or mythopoeic (mythmaking) view of the world gives Near Eastern civilization its distinctive form and allows us to see it as an organic whole. Mesopotamians and Egyptians inherited from their prehistoric ancestors a great variety of communally produced imagery, rituals, and tales accounting for the origin of the world and human life. Giving free play to their imagination, they altered the old myths and elaborated new ones to resolve questions that today we try to answer with science. Mythmaking was humanity’s first way of thinking; it was the earliest attempt to explain the beginnings of the universe and human history, to make nature’s mysteries and life’s uncertainties comprehensible. Appealing primarily to the imagination and emotions, rather than to reason, mythical thinking, as expressed in language, art, poetry, and social organization, has been a fundamental formative element of human culture. Near Eastern people did engage in rational forms of thought and behavior. They certainly employed reason in building irrigation works, preparing a calendar, and performing mathematical operations. Moreover, in their daily life, men and women were often driven by purely pragmatic concerns. Fields had to be planted, goods sold, and household chores attended to. In dealing with these concerns, people did what had to be done in commonsense ways. They planned and prepared; they weighed actions as either beneficial or harmful and behaved accordingly. However, because rational or logical thought remained subordinate to a mythic- religious orientation, they did not arrive at a consistently and self-consciously rational method of inquiring into physical nature and human culture. Thus, Near Eastern civilization reached the first level in the development of science—observing nature, recording data, and improving technology in mining, metallurgy, and architecture. But it 3 did not advance to the level of self-conscious philosophical and scientific thought—that is, logically deduced abstractions, hypotheses, and generalizations. Mesopotamians and Egyptians did not fashion a body of philosophical and scientific ideas that were logically structured, discussed, and debated. They had no awareness of general laws that govern particular events. These later developments were the achievement of Greek philosophy. It gave a “rational interpretation to natural occurrences which had previously been explained by ancient mythologies.... With the study of nature set free from the control of mythological fancy, the way was opened for the development of science as an intellectual system.” Near Eastern Achievements Sumerians and Egyptians demonstrated enormous creativity and intelligence. They built irrigation works and cities, organized governments, charted the course of heavenly bodies, performed mathematical operations, constructed large-scale monuments, engaged in international trade, established bureaucracies and schools, and considerably advanced the level of technology and engineering skills. Without the Sumerian invention of writing— one of the great creative acts in history—what we mean by civilization could not have emerged. Many elements of ancient Near Eastern civilization were passed on to the West. The wheel vehicle, the plow, and the phonetic alphabet— all important to the development of civilization— derive from the Near East. In the realm of medicine, the Egyptians knew the value of certain drugs, such as castor oil; they also knew how to use splints and bandages. The innovative divisions that gave 360 degrees to a circle and 60 minutes to an hour originated in Mesopotamia. Egyptian geometry and Babylonian astronomy were utilized by the Greeks and became a part of Western knowledge. The belief that a king’s power came from a heavenly source, a key idea in historic Western political thought, also derived from the Near East. In Christian art, too, one finds connections to the Mesopotamian art forms—for example, the Assyrians depicted winged angel-like beings. Both the Hebrews and the Greeks borrowed Mesopotamian literary themes. For example, some biblical stories—the Flood, the quarrel between Cain and Abel, and the Tower of Babel—stem from Mesopotamian antecedents. A similar link exists between the Greek and the earlier Mesopotamian mythologies. Thus, many achievements of the Egyptians and the Mesopotamians were inherited and assimilated by both the Greeks and the Hebrews, the principal founders of Western civilization. Even more important for an understanding of the essential meaning of Western civilization are the ways in which the Greeks and Hebrews rejected or transformed elements of the older Near Eastern traditions to create new points of departure for the human mind. Mythical Thinking The mythopoeic mind accounts for causation by personifying inanimate substances. To explain through personification is to seek the who behind events, to attribute these events to the will of a god (or to an object suffused with divine presence). Thus, if a river did not rise, it was because it refused to do so; either the river or the gods were angry at the people. 4 The following excerpts from Mesopotamian literature are examples of personification. Whereas we regard table salt as an ordinary mineral, to the Mesopotamians it was alive, a fellow being. In one passage, a person appeals to salt to end his bewitchment. In the second, an afflicted person who believes himself bewitched calls on fire to destroy his enemies. O Salt O Salt, created in a clean place, For food of gods did Enlil [father of the Sumerian gods] destine thee. Without thee no meal is set out in Ekur, Without thee god, king, lord, and prince do not smell incense. I am so-and-so, the son of so-and-so, Held captive by enchantment, Held in fever by bewitchment. O Salt, break my enchantment! Loose my spell! Take from me the bewitchment!—And as My Creator I shall extol thee. Scorching Fire Scorching Fire, warlike son of Heaven, Thou, the fiercest of thy brethren, Who like Moon and Sun decidest lawsuits— Judge thou my case, hand down the verdict. Burn the man and woman who bewitched me; Burn, O Fire, the man and woman who bewitched me; Scorch, O Fire, the man and woman who bewitched me; Burn them, O Fire; Scorch them, O Fire; Take hold of them, O Fire; Consume them, O Fire; Destroy them, O Fire. From Mythos to Logos The Hebrew conception of ethical monotheism, with its stress on human dignity, is one principal source of the Western tradition. The second major source is ancient Greece. Both the Hebrews and the Greeks absorbed the achievements of Near Eastern civilizations, but they also developed their own distinctive viewpoints and styles of thought, which set them apart from the Mesopotamians and Egyptians. The great achievements of the Hebrews lay in the sphere of religious-ethical thought; those of the Greeks lay in the development of rational thought. As Greek society evolved, says British historian James Shiel, there was a growing reliance on independent reason, a devotion to logical precision, progressing from myth to logos [reason]. Rationalism permeated the whole social and cultural development.... Architecture... developed from primitive cultic considerations to sophisticated mathematical norms; sculpture escaped from temple image to a new love of naturalism and proportion; political life proceeded from tyranny to rational experiments in democracy. From practical rules of 5  thumb, geometry moved forward in the direction of the impressive Euclidian synthesis. So too philosophy made its way from “sayings of the wise” to the Aristotelian logic, and made men rely on their own observation and reflection in facing the unexplained vastness of the cosmos. The Greeks conceived of nature as following general rules, not acting according to the whims of gods or demons. They saw human beings as having a capacity for rational thought, a need for freedom, and a worth as individuals. Although the Greeks never dispensed with the gods, they increasingly stressed the importance of human reason and human decisions. They came to assert that reason is the avenue to knowledge and that people—not the gods—are responsible for their own behavior. In this shift of attention from the gods to human beings, the Greeks broke with the mythmaking orientation of the Near East and created the rational outlook that is a distinctive feature of Western civilization. The Greeks broke with the mythopoeic outlook of the Near East and conceived a new way of viewing nature and human society, which is the basis of the Western scientific and philosophical tradition. After an initial period of mythical thinking, by the fifth century B.C. the Greek mind had gradually applied reason to the physical world and to all human activities. This emphasis on reason marks a turning point for human civilization. The development of rational thought in Greece was a process, a trend, not a finished achievement. The process began when some thinkers rejected mythical explanations for natural phenomena. The nonphilosophical majority never entirely eliminated the language, attitudes, and beliefs of myth from their lives and thought. For them, the world remained controlled by divine forces, which were appeased through cultic practices. Even in the mature philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, mythical modes of thought persisted. What is of immense historical importance, however, is not the degree to which the Greeks successfully integrated the norm of reason, but the fact that they originated this norm, defined it, and consciously applied it to their intellectual and social life. Philosophy The first theoretical philosophers in human history emerged in the sixth century B.C., in the Greek cities of Ionia in Asia Minor. Curious about the essential composition of nature and dissatisfied with earlier creation legends, the Ionians sought physical, rather than mythic- religious, explanations for natural occurrences. In the process, they arrived at a new concept of nature and a new method of inquiry. They maintained that nature was not manipulated by arbitrary and willful gods, nor was it governed by blind chance. The Ionians said that there is an intelligible pattern to nature; that nature contains a hidden structure—principles of order or general laws—that governs phenomena; and that these fundamental rules were ascertainable by the human mind. They implied that the origin, composition, and structure of the world can be investigated rationally and systematically. Thus, in seeking to account for rainbows, earthquakes, and eclipses, the Ionians posited entirely naturalistic explanations that relied on observation, had an awareness of cause and effect, and excluded the gods. This new outlook marks the beginning of scientific thought. 6 The Cosmologists: Rational Inquiry into Nature (offering a natural explanation for the origin of nature and life, holding that nature was lawful) The first Ionian philosophers are called cosmologists because they sought to discover the underlying principles of the universe: how nature came to be the way it was. They held that some single, eternal, and imperishable substance, which underwent various modifications, gave rise to all phenomena in nature. Ionian philosophy began with Thales (c. 624– 548 B.C.) of Miletus, a city in Ionia. He concerned himself with understanding the order of nature. Thales said that water was the basic element, which gave rise to everything else in the world. Thales revolutionized thought because he omitted the gods from his account of the origins of nature and searched for a natural explanation of how all things came to be. He broke with the commonly held belief that earthquakes were caused by Poseidon, god of the sea, and offered instead a naturalistic explanation for these disturbances: that the earth floated on water and when the water experienced turbulent waves, the earth was rocked by earthquakes. Thales was the first person to predict an eclipse of the sun. To do this, he had to dismiss traditional mythical explanations and to grasp a crucial scientific principle—that heavenly objects move in regular patterns, which can be known. Anaximander (c. 611–547 B.C.), another sixth-century Ionian, rejected Thales’ theory that water was the original substance. He rejected any specific substance and suggested that an indefinite, undifferentiated substance, which he called the Boundless, was the source of all things. Like his fellow Ionians, Anaximenes, who died around 525 B.C., made the transition from myth to reason. He also maintained that a primary substance, air, underlay reality and accounted for nature’s orderliness. Air that was rarefied became fire, whereas wind and clouds were formed from condensed air. If the process of condensation continued, it produced water, earth, and eventually stones. Anaximenes also rejected the old belief that a rainbow was the goddess Iris; instead, he saw it as the consequence of the sun’s rays falling on dense air. The Ionians have been called “matter philosophers” because they held that everything issued from a particular material substance. Other sixth century B.C. thinkers tried a different approach. Pythagoras (c. 580–507 B.C.) and his followers, who lived in the Greek cities in southern Italy, found the nature of things not in a particular substance but in mathematical relationships. The Pythagoreans discovered that the intervals in the musical scale can be expressed mathematically. Extending this principle of structure and proportion found in sound to the universe at large, they concluded that the cosmos also contained an inherent mathematical order and harmony. Thus, the Pythagoreans shifted the emphasis from matter to form, from the world of sense perception to the logic of mathematics. The Pythagoreans were also religious mystics who believed in the immortality and transmigration of souls. Consequently, they refused to eat animal flesh, fearing that it contained former human souls. [Before we move to Sophists and Socrates, let’s look at three philosophers. we have two philosophers who were concerned with the question of being: Heraclitus and Parmenides. Heraclitus known for the things he says: "Everything that exists is in a state of flux"; "You can't 7 step into the same river twice." He speculates a universe without beginning. He comes up with a category that becomes very important later on: the category of becoming. Being and becoming. Aristotle talks about actuality and potentiality (what we will be). Human being or human becoming (experiencing potential, still in a process, moving, changing, you are not eternally the same). We can notice his existentialist appeal: no absolute, only the now, individual existence, no essence]. Parmenides applied to philosophical argument the logic used by the Pythagoreans for mathematical thinking. In putting forth the proposition that an argument must be consistent and contain no contradictions, Parmenides became the founder of formal logic. Despite appearances, asserted Parmenides, reality—the cosmos and all that is within it—is one, eternal, and unchanging. It is made known not through the senses, which are misleading, but through the mind; not through experience, but through reason. Truth could be reached through abstract thought alone. Parmenides’ concept of an unchanging reality apprehended by thought alone influenced Plato and is the foundation of metaphysics—the branch of philosophy that at tempts to define ultimate reality, or Being. Parmenides’ thought also had religious implications. Although he did not refer to True Being as God, he did ascribe to it the attributes of oneness, transcendence, permanence, and perfection. Such a description of Being abounds with religious meaning. Particularly as developed by Plato, the quest for Being would greatly influence religious thought, including Christian theology, in the ancient world. [Zeno: the skeptic of antiquity. He wanted to attack all forms of philosophy. He made famous the argument reductio ad absurdum (reduction to absurdity), a form of argument which attempts either to disprove a statement by showing how it inevitably leads to a ridiculous, absurd, or impractical conclusion, or to prove one by showing that if it were not true, the result would be absurd or impossible.] Democritus’ (c. 460–370 B.C.) model of the universe consisted of two fundamental realities: empty space and an infinite number of atoms. All things consisted of atoms, and combinations of atoms accounted for all change in nature. His atomic theory did not derive from any empirical evidence of atoms but was purely speculative. Concepts essential to scientific thought thus emerged in embryonic form with Greek philosophers: natural explanations for physical occurrences (Ionians), the mathematical order of nature (Pythagoras), logical proof (Parmenides), and the mechanical structure of the universe (Democritus). By giving to nature a rational, rather than a mythical, foundation and by holding that theories should be grounded in evidence and that one should be able to defend them logically, the early Greek philosophers pushed thought in a new direction. Greek thinkers established the crucial principle that a proposition is not considered true unless it can be supported by logic or empirical evidence. These early philosophers made possible theoretical thinking and the systematization of knowledge—as distinct from the mere observation and collection of data. 8 From Cosmologists to Sophists: A Rational Investigation of Human Society In their effort to understand the external world, the cosmologists had created the tools of reason. These early Greek thinkers were developing a new and profound awareness of the mind’s capacity for theoretical thinking. And equally important, they were establishing the mind’s autonomy—its ability to inquire into any subject, relying solely on its own power to think. Greek thinkers then turned away from the world of nature and attempted a rational investigation of people and society, dismissing efforts to explain the social world through inherited beliefs about the gods. The Sophists exemplified this shift in focus. They were professional teachers who wandered from city to city teaching rhetoric, grammar, poetry, gymnastics, mathematics, and music. The Sophists insisted that it was futile to speculate about the first principles of the universe, for such knowledge was beyond the grasp of the human mind. Instead, they urged that individuals improve themselves and their cities by applying reason to the tasks of citizenship and statesmanship. The Sophists answered a practical need in Athens, which had been transformed into a wealthy and dynamic imperial state after the Persian Wars. Because the Sophists claimed that they could teach political aretē—the skill to formulate the right laws and policies for cities and the art of eloquence and persuasion needed for success in public life—they were sought as tutors by politically ambitious young men, especially in Athens. The Sophists were philosophical relativists— that is, they held that no truth is universally valid. Protagoras, a fifth-century Sophist, said that “man is the measure of all things.” By this he meant that good and evil, truth and falsehood, are matters of community and individual judgment; there are no universal standards that fit all people at all times. Human laws and ethical beliefs have evolved according to a particular community’s needs; they are simply human contrivances and conventions, not objective truths or standards written into nature. Some Sophists attacked the ancient Athenian idea of sophrosyne—moderation and self- discipline— because it denied human instincts. Instead of moderation, they urged that individuals should maximize pleasure and trample underfoot the traditions that restricted them from fully expressing their desires. As these radical Sophists saw it, the concept of sophrosyne was invented by the weak to enslave nobler natures. From Sophists to Philosophers: Socrates and the Rational/Ethical Individual [The unexamined life is not worth living I never stop showing what I think is just. If not in words, I show it by actions Only One Good, One Value: The Will to Do Good] In attempting to comprehend nature, the cosmologists had discovered theoretical reason. The Sophists then applied theoretical reason to society. In the process, they created a profound problem for Athens and other city-states: the need to restore the authority of law and a respect for moral values. Conservatives argued that the only way to do so was by renewing allegiance to the sacred traditions that the Sophists had undermined. 9 One of the most extraordinary figures in the history of Western civilization is Socrates. Both the Sophists and Socrates continued the tradition of reason initiated by the cosmologists, but unlike the cosmologists, both felt that knowledge of the individual and society was more important than knowledge of nature. For both, the old mythological traditions, which had served as a foundation for religion and morality, were no longer valid. Socrates and the Sophists endeavored to improve the individual and thought that this could be accomplished through education. Despite these similarities, Socrates’ teaching marks a profound break with the Sophist movement. Socrates attacked the Sophists’ relativism, holding that people should regulate their behavior in accordance with universal values. As he saw it, the Sophists taught skills but had no insights into questions that really mattered: What is the purpose of life? What are the values by which man should live? How does man perfect his character? Here the Sophists failed, said Socrates; they taught the ambitious to succeed in politics, but persuasive oratory and clever reasoning do not instruct a man in the art of living. He felt that the Sophists had attacked the old system of beliefs but had not provided the individual with a satisfactory replacement. Socrates’ central concern was the perfection of individual human character, the achievement of moral excellence. Moral values, for Socrates, did not derive either from a transcendent God, as they did for the Hebrews, or from an inherited mythic-religious tradition. They were attained when the individual regulated his life according to objective standards arrived at through rational reflection: that is, when reason became the formative, guiding, and ruling agency of the soul. For Socrates, true education meant the shaping of character according to values discovered through the active use of reason. Socrates wanted to subject all human beliefs and behavior to the scrutiny of reason and in this way remove ethics from the realm of authority, tradition, dogma, superstition, and myth. He believed that reason was the only proper guide to the most crucial problem of human existence: the question of good and evil. Socrates taught that rational inquiry—a questioning mind—was a priceless tool, allowing one to test opinions, weigh the merit of ideas, and alter beliefs on the basis of knowledge. To Socrates, when people engaged in critical self-examination and strove tirelessly to perfect their nature, they liberated themselves from prevailing opinions and conventions and based their conduct on convictions that they could rationally defend. Socrates believed that people with questioning minds could not be swayed by sophistic eloquence or delude themselves into thinking that they knew something when they really did not. Socrates’ fundamental premise was that wrong thinking resulted in wrongdoing and, conversely, that knowledge of what is right gave one the strength of will to do what is right. Critics, including religious thinkers, have castigated this assumption as naive, arguing that Socrates credited others with his own extraordinary inner strength and underestimated the immense power of instinct and passions, which drive people, even those who know better, to do what is wrong. Dialectics [To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge. To find yourself, think for yourself] 10 In urging Athenians to think rationally about the problems of human existence, Socrates offered no systematic ethical theory, no list of ethical precepts. What he did supply was a method of inquiry called dialectics, or logical discussion. As Socrates used it, a dialectical exchange between individuals (or with oneself), a dialogue, was the essential source of knowledge. In dialogue , individuals became thinking participants in a quest for knowledge - Dialogues (Socratic/Platonic) have 3 parts: 1. Young man (20yrs) presents his wisdom and is praised by Socrates who claims ignorance: head swells 2. Socrates objects and starts cross-examining and deconstructing the argument and tears it apart 3. Both admit ignorance and try to discover truth which remains undiscovered. Arrogance that hides ignorance: internal contradiction Destruction/Deconstruction construction Plato: The Rational Society Plato (c. 429–347 B.C.) used his master’s teachings to create a comprehensive system of philosophy, which embraced both the world of nature and the social world. But Plato had a more ambitious goal than Socrates’ moral reformation of the individual. He tried to arrange political life according to rational rules and held that Socrates’ quest for personal morality could not succeed unless the community was also transformed on the basis of reason. Many of the problems discussed by Western philosophers for the past two millennia were first raised by Plato. We focus on two of his principal concerns, the theory of Ideas and the theory of the just state. Theory of Ideas Socrates had taught that universal standards of right and justice exist and are arrived at through thought. Building on the insights of his teacher Socrates and of Parmenides, who said that reality is known only through the mind, Plato postulated the existence of a higher world of reality, independent of the world of things that we experience every day. This higher reality, he said, is the realm of Ideas, or Forms—unchanging, eternal, absolute, and universal standards of beauty, goodness, justice, and truth. To live in accordance with these standards constitutes the good life; to know these Forms is to grasp ultimate truth. Plato saw the world of phenomena as unstable, transitory, and imperfect, whereas his transcendent realm of Ideas was eternal and universally valid. For him, true wisdom was to be obtained through knowledge of the Ideas, not the imperfect reflections of the Ideas perceived with the senses. 11 [How can we account between being and becoming? For Plato our world is of becoming. Above this world of becoming is the world of being, where the real world exists. The formal truth is the highest truth. Ideas are not constructs of human mind; they are on ontological status real beings. He was called a realist because his ideas are not imaginary but real and has profound effect on us.] A champion of reason, Plato aspired to study human life and arrange it according to universally valid standards. In contrast to Sophist relativism, he maintained that objective and eternal standards do exist. Although Plato advocated the life of reason and wanted to organize society according to rational rules, his writing also reveals a religious-mystical side. At times, Plato seems like a mystic seeking to escape from this world into a higher reality, a realm that is without earth’s evil and injustice. Because Platonism is a two-world philosophy, which believes in a higher world as the source of values and in the soul’s immortality, it has had an important effect on religious thought. Christian (as well as Jewish and Muslim) thinkers could harmonize Plato’s stress on a higher nonmaterial reality and an immortal soul with their faith. The Just State In adapting the rational legacy of Greek philosophy to politics, Plato constructed a comprehensive political theory: the fashioning of a rational model of the state. Plato said that if human beings are to live an ethical life, they must do so as citizens of a just and rational state. In an unjust state, people cannot achieve Socratic wisdom, for their souls will mirror the state’s wickedness. Plato rejected the fundamental principle of Athenian democracy: that the average person is capable of participating sensibly in public affairs. People would not entrust the care of a sick person to just anyone, said Plato, nor would they allow a novice to guide a ship during a storm. Yet in a democracy, amateurs were permitted to run the government and to supervise the education of the young. No wonder Athenian society was disintegrating. Plato felt that these duties should be performed only by the best people in the city, philosophers, who would approach human problems with reason and wisdom derived from knowledge of the world of unchanging and perfect Ideas. Only these possessors of truth would be competent to rule, said Plato. Whereas Socrates believed that all people could base their actions on reason and acquire virtue, Plato maintained that only a few were capable of philosophical wisdom and that these few were the state’s natural rulers. The organization of the state, as formulated in The Republic, corresponded to Plato’s conception of the individual soul, of human nature. Plato held that the soul had three major capacities: reason (the pursuit of knowledge), spiritedness (self-assertion, courage, ambition), and desire (the “savage many-headed monster” that relishes food, sex, and possessions). In the well- governed soul, spiritedness and desire are guided by reason and knowledge— standards derived from the world of Ideas. 12 Plato divided people into three groups: those who demonstrated philosophical ability should be rulers; those whose natural bent revealed exceptional courage should be soldiers; and those driven by desire, the great masses, should be producers (tradespeople, artisans, or farmers). In what was a radical departure from the general attitudes of the times, Plato held that men and women should receive the same education and have equal access to all occupations and public positions, including philosopher-ruler. Plato felt that the entire community must recognize the primacy of the intellect and sought to create a harmonious state in which each individual performed what he or she was best qualified to do and preferred to do. This would be a just state, said Plato, for it would recognize human inequalities and diversities and make the best possible use of them for the entire community. Clearly, this conception of justice was Plato’s response to the radical Sophists, who taught that justice consisted of the right of the strong to rule in their own interest or that justice was doing whatever one desired. In The Republic, philosophers were selected by a rigorous system of education open to all children. Those not demonstrating sufficient intelligence or strength of character were to be weeded out to be come workers or warriors, depending on their natural aptitudes. After many years of education and practical military and administrative experience, the philosophers were to be entrusted with political power. If they had been properly educated, the philosopher-rulers would not seek personal wealth or personal power; their only concerns would be pursuing justice and serving the community. To prevent the philosopher-rulers from pursuing their own interests rather than the good of the community, they would not be permitted to own property or to have families. Since the children they sired would come from a community of wives, no one would know which child was his. The purpose of The Republic was to warn Athenians that without respect for law, wise leadership, and proper education for the young, their city would continue to degenerate. Plato wanted to rescue the city-state from disintegration by recreating the community spirit that had vitalized the polis—and he wanted to re-create it not on the basis of mere tradition but on a higher level, with philosophical knowledge. The social and political institutions of Athens, Plato thought, must be re shaped according to permanent and unalterable ideals of truth and justice, and this could be done only when power and wisdom were joined. He aimed to fashion a just individual and a just state by creating conditions that permitted reason to pre vail over the appetites, self-interest, and class and party loyalties. [Plato’s Theory of Recollection “We do not learn, and that what we call learning is only a process of recollection.” Plato believes that everyone of us has an eternal soul. It has always been, and it is from the realm of forms/ideas. The eternal soul has all the knowledge that is eternal. You are being born with the knowledge of the eternal. He talks about innate ideas, inherent ones, born within the human mind; they aren’t learned or acquired. God is built in our souls, wrote his law on our hearts. The soul is eternal. Once the body captures the soul, the impact of the body on the soul is to dull the clarity of vision found in a pure soul. The body is the prison house of the soul. The mind is the higher power. The senses are always distorting reality. Even if they have a perfect grasp of 13 reality, what they see is an imperfect reality. To get real knowledge, you have to get in touch with the rational. You get it through recall, recollect, remembrance: how by questioning, contemplating, reasoning, you cut through the prison bars of the body to get to the rudimentary idea buried in the soul. That is the process of education: to get out information that are already there. To prove this, he wrote Meno dialogue (what is called Meno’s paradox. That is why in the Phaedo, whose theme is precisely the death of Socrates, Plato talks about philosophy as an exercise of death. Why? Because it is the separation of the soul and the body, and the philosopher spends his time trying to detach his soul from his body. To purify himself, the philosopher must purify himself, try to collect his soul, and deliver it from the dispersion and distraction which the body imposes upon it.] Aristotle: A Synthesis of Greek Thought Aristotle (384–322 B.C.) stands at the apex of Greek thought because he achieved a creative synthesis of the knowledge and theories of earlier thinkers. Aristotle undertook the monumental task of organizing and systematizing the thought of the Pre Socratics, Socrates, and Plato. He shared with the natural philosophers a desire to understand the physical universe; he shared with Socrates and Plato the conviction that reason was a person’s highest faculty and that the polis was the primary formative institution of Greek life. His range of interests and intellect is extraordinary. He was the leading expert of his time in every field of knowledge, with the possible exception of mathematics. Even a partial listing of his works shows the universal character of his mind and his all-consuming passion to understand the worlds of nature and of humankind: Logic, Physics, On the Heavens, On the Soul, On the Parts of Animals, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, Rhetoric, and Poetics. Critique of Plato’s Theory of Ideas [Aristotle never denied the philosophical significance of the abstractions that Plato called “Forms” (e.g., Truth, Justice, Beauty, Appleness, and so forth), but he denied that these forms had an independent reality superior to the physical world. For him the physical world was the real world, and sensorial acts which perceived that world were of great epistemological experience. To comprehend reality, said Aristotle, one should not escape into another world. For him, Plato’s two-world philosophy suffered from too much mystery, mysticism, and poetic fancy; moreover, Plato undervalued the world of facts and objects revealed through sight, hearing, and touch, a world that was important to Aristotle. The Forms were not located in a higher world outside and beyond phenomena but existed in things themselves. Being and becoming are found in each entity. Everything contains matter and form. Form gives the subject its being. Without participating in being, whatever is can’t be. For Aristotle, in each object there is matter and form: formal is eternal being, matter is changing locus of potential.] Aristotle’s Ethical and Political Thought [The good life, for Aristotle, was the examined life; it meant making intelligent decisions when confronted with specific problems. Individuals could achieve happiness when they exercised the 14 distinctively human trait of reasoning, when they applied their knowledge relevantly to life, and when their behavior was governed by intelligence and not by whim, tradition, or authority. He maintained that by proper training people could learn to regulate their desires. They could achieve moral well-being, or virtue, when they avoided extremes of behavior and rationally chose the way of moderation, “Nothing in excess” is the key to Aristotle’s ethics. Only the polis would provide people with an opportunity to lead a rational and moral existence, that is, to fulfill their human potential. He placed his trust in law rather than in individuals, for they are subject to passions.] Aristotle’s Logic: Terms and Concepts [Logic is not a type of knowledge it is a tool, an organon (instrument) of all science. The name given by Aristotle’s followers to his six works on logic. The instrument to construct real knowledge is logic (necessary knowledge for all intelligible discourse). Without it there will be a breakup of all coherent rational thought. - A priori (Latin: from the earlier), knowledge we are born with, prior to experience, built in, inherent. - A posteriori (Latin: from the latter), knowledge we learn later. - Aristotle did not invent logic; what he sought to do was to articulate how logical categories function (what has to be in order for us to speak intelligibly about a discipline; basic needs for intelligibility to occur): statements be logically constructed, not violate the 1 st law of logic, the law of contradiction: A cannot be A and non A at the same time in the same way (relationship). I can be a mother, daughter, and sister at the same time but not in the same relationship. This is necessary for understanding. Logic depends upon the relationship between the general and the particular; subject and predicate. If I want to define an ameba to distinguish it from a frog: it is something then I would predicate characteristics and mention particulars that distinguish it then compare and contrast that definition with the particulars that define a frog. - In defining things, you pay attention to similarities and differences (predications): get more and more precise. This is necessary for science to take place and for language to take place. - Syllogism. A syllogism consists of certain assumptions or premises from which a conclusion can be deduced: All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal.] Mimesis [Aristotle believed that the world we are born into is the real world and not just a shadow of a more ultimate world. He brought Plato’s philosophy down to earth by claiming that the Forms must be “imbedded in matter.” The same applies to mimesis: he never denied that art is mimesis, imitation. His defense of art against Plato’s accusation goes as follows: Arts imitates an action but not in the way history does by telling us what has happened; rather, it tells us what can happen. Art deals with universals not particulars. More philosophical than history, yet inferior to philosophy. As for Plato’s claim that art appeals to passions, Aristotle believes that art purges the passions (catharsis).] 15 Shomar, Towfic. Causation and Order in Islamic Kalam”. Islamic Philosophers Throughout the first four centuries of Islamic civilization two main currents may be distinguished. The first is Falsafa, philosophers (followers of the Greek stream of philosophy) and the other is Mutakelimun (Kalam Scientists). The following table summarizes the three main schools of Kalam Kalam Main Schools Al-Jbriah Al-Moatazilah Al-Ashariah Fatalism all actions (humans Humans have the choice: Humans are responsible for or non-human) are a direct human actions are a direct their actions because they acted consequence of God’s will result of their own will in their free will, although God’s will supersedes the Human will Hassen Al-Basri (110/726) Wasel Bin A’taa (131/748) Abu Al-hassen AlAshari Al-Natham (231/845) 324/935 Al-Baqalani 403/1013 Abu Huziel Al-A’laf 234/849 Abu Al-Ma’ali Al-Jouini 478/ Al-Jah’eth 254/868 1123 Al-Khaiat 289/902 Al-Sarkhasi 490/1097 Al-Qadi Abd-Algabbar Abu Hamed Al-Ghazali 415/1024 504/1111 Fakher Al-Dain Al-Razi 606 / 1210 Modern Philosophy [The entire history of Western civilization has been the great struggle between two ways of seeing the world: the Platonic (rationalist) and the Aristotelian (empiricist). However, we can say that since the 19th century, there are new directions. For example: Karl Marx and Fredrich Nietzsche. Marx in his concept of praxis, "action oriented towards changing society" and Nietzsche’s nihilism. Marx’s praxis is an activity unique to man, which distinguishes him from all other beings, referring to the free, universal, creative and self-creative activity through which man creates and changes his historical world and himself. He also affirms the primacy of praxis over theory, claiming that theoretical contradictions can only be resolved through practical activity. According to Marx, Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.] 16 Perry, Marvin. Western Civilization Ideas, Politics, and Society. 9th Edition. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 2009. Nietzsche attacked the accepted views and convictions of his day as a hindrance to a fuller and richer existence. He denounced social reform, parliamentary government, and universal suffrage; ridiculed the vision of progress through condemned Christian morality; and mocked the liberal belief in man’s essential goodness and rationality. According to Nietzsche, man must understand that life, which is replete with cruelty, injustice, uncertainty, and absurdity, is not governed by rational principles. There exist no absolute standards of good and evil whose truth can be demonstrated by reflective reason. Nothing is true; there is no higher purpose or sense to the universe or human existence. There is only the naked individual living in a godless and absurd world. There are no higher worlds, no transcendental or metaphysical truths, no morality derived from God or nature, and no natural rights, scientific socialism, or inevitable progress. We are wandering through an eternal nothing in which all the old values and truths have lost their intelligibility. This nihilism—the belief that moral and social values have no validity—has caused a crisis in European life. But the death of God and of all transcendental truths can mean the liberation of man, insisted Nietzsche. Man can surmount nihilism by adopting a new orientation that gives primacy to the superior man—the overman or superman who asserts his will, gives order to chaotic passions, makes great demands on himself, and lives life with a fierce joy. The overman aspires to self-perfection; without fear or guilt, he rejects traditional religion and morality and creates his own values and defines his own self, his own life. Such a man can overcome the deadening uniformity and mediocrity of modern civilization. He can undo democracy and socialism, which have made masters out of cattlelike masses, and surmount the shopkeeper’s spirit, which has made man soft and degenerate. European society lacks heroic figures; everyone belongs to a vast herd, but there are no leaders. 17