Dr. Ari Santas Notes on:
Background for Plato and Aristotle
A.
Pre Socratics:
Controversy in Cosmology
What is the archē? The Milesians
Thales (585 BC) – the archē
is (the world is reducible to) water
Anaximander (570BC) – the archē
is unlimited (apeiron)
Anaximenes (546 BC) – the archē
is (unlimited) air
Is the World
Fundamentally in Permanence or Flux?
Heraclitus (501 BC) – complete
flux (archē is fire) – “you can’t step in the same river twice”
Parmenides (475 BC) – complete
permanence and monism – “being is one, unchanging, eternal”
Zeno of Elea (464 BC) – motion
(change in position) is impossible
paradoxes of motion
Achilles and
the Tortoise (the fastest cannot overtake the slowest
the Arrow (can
never reach its target)
Democritus (435 BC) – atomism
and pluralism – individual indivisible particles of matter
Atoms are
unchanging, but their rearrangement
changes things
Shortly after
the birth of reason, there it a plurality of disagreements and it seems that
there are limitations to the mere appeal to reasons in justification
B.
Cultural Clashes-- More Controversy
Along with
the controversies over cosmology came a crisis in morals. Traditions came into question as the Greeks
encountered other cultures. For example: the Greeks and Callatians at the court of King
Darius of Persia
In funerary
practices, the Greeks burned the bodies of the dead while the Callatians ate
them, yet both group was equally appalled at the practice of the other
Such
experiences give rise to an early version of Cultural Relativism.
Some began to ask: Are our ways natural, or are they merely cultural, hence
accidental to our circumstances? They even gave rise to outright skepticism:
there is no truth at all—on any matters scientific or moral
C.
The Sophists
About that
time (5th century BC) a group of people who called themselves the
Sophists came to Athens. They were critical of both the theoretical
speculations of the Pre-Socratics and the social traditions of Greece
All this
searching for Absolute Truth is useless!
Truth is
illusory
There is no
reason, only reasoning and persuasion
There is no
Absolute Right, right and wrong are relative
In light of
this, the goals of education should be rhetorical skills. It’s more practical: win debates, gain power
Protagoras (c. 490-c. 420BC) for instance
claimed: “Man is the measure of all things”
Thrasymachus (c. 459- c. 400) goes one
step further: “Might makes right”
Gorgias (c. 483-
c. 375 BC) goes perhaps
too far, arguing that:
1. Nothing
exists;
2. If it did, we
couldn’t know it:
3. If we could
know it, we couldn’t communicate it
Socrates, in
some ways, was like the Sophists (some say the best of them all), but in other
ways unlike them. He was like them in that:
He had great
rhetorical skills which allowed him to defeat verbal opponents readily
(including sophists);
He too was
skeptical about claims to knowledge of absolute truth
Yet he was unlike
them in that:
He was not a
total skeptic – he believed we could know about practical things – right and
wrong
He did not
use the skills for personal gain (didn’t take pay) or to establish anyone’s pet
doctrines
His
dialectical skills were used to show two sorts of things:
That most
people don’t know as much as they thought they did. Later gets him into trouble
That we can
reach agreement and find truth on some matters through discussion and debate
(so long as we begin with our common ground)
His primary
legacy is arguably the Socratic Method
of dialogue. He will also be a central
figure in the moral systems of the schools of Cynicism and Stoicism.
Socrates
wandered around the streets of Athens philosophizing but never wrote
anything. The only way we know of his
thought is through Plato, Xenophon, and Aristophanes. He appears in all (except one – the Laws) of Plato’s dialogues, be we cannot
be sure how much of the portrait Plato paints is Socrates and how much is
Plato. This difficulty is often called
the Socratic Problem
Most scholars
believe, however, that the most accurate reflection of Socrates is in Plato’s
early dialogues (esp. the Apology),
where we get some of Socrates’ ethical views.
Plato’s work
is generally divided into three periods:
1) Early
– definition dialogues – closely reflect the views of Socrates, his teacher;
e.g.:
Euthyphro
(what
is piety?)
Apology (Socrates’
Defense)
Meno (can virtue
be taught?)
2) Middle--
Socrates is used to mouth Plato’s own views (theory of Forms); e.g.:
Republic
(what is the nature of Justice, and what is the ideal
society?)
Crito (should
Socrates escape?)
Phaedo (what is the
nature of death, the soul and the afterlife?)
3) Late--
Plato still using Socrates, comes to question his own views
G.
Plato’s Dualism
Plato was
less skeptical than Socrates, and tried to make sense of the conflict between Heraclitus
and Parmenides by sticking the two universes on top of each other (similar to
the early modern metaphysics of Descartes),
giving Parmenides top billing. Also answered the question – what are the causes
of things?
The Divided Line
Searching for
definitions, essences, then forms, Plato believed that the highest realities,
which gave everything else its reality, were ideal objects called Forms (or
Ideas). These cannot be perceived by the
senses, but are those entities by virtue of which ordinary things have their
properties. They are the answers to the
questions:
what makes
something red? a chair? beautiful?
just? pious? hot or cold?
Where
Socrates fit in is that his method of questioning people – dialectic – could be
used to ferret out our implicit knowledge of the Forms. Plato gave Socratic Method a positive
content. Plato’s
Academy was a training ground for answering the great questions through
Socratic dialectic
Born in
Stagira near Macedonia, his father was a physician (hence the interest in
biology)
the physician of
Alexander the Great’s great-grandfather
367 BC went to
Athens to study with Plato
347 BC Plato
died and Aristotle left Athens, founded school in Mytilene or Lesbos
343-2 BC
began tutoring young Alexander the Great
335-4 BC
returned to Athens and founded the Lyceum, which became a rival school that
emphasized the empirical description of nature and came to be known as the
peripatetic school (they walked around)
323 BC
Alexander dies and anti-Macedonian sentiments lead to accusation of Aristotle
as impious. Aristotle flees to Chalcis
(where he studied the tides). It is said that this is one reason why so many of
his works are lost
322 BC Dies
one year later
J.
Disagreement with Plato
Aristotle
rejected Plato’s theory of Forms. He
believed that whatever it is that makes things the way they are, they are not outside
of them. Aristotle had a theory of substantial
forms and essences. An essence is
what makes something what it is (“the what it is to
be”). It is the property which, if you
took it away, the thing would change
the essence of
bachelorhood – being unmarried
the essence of
chair includes – a sitting function
Aristotle’s
dualism was more modest
essences and
accidents are both in the things
Because of
this, Aristotle was more concerned with things in this world than in the transcendent
world of Plato’s Forms.
K.
Reading Aristotle
Aristotle is
often difficult to read. There are several reasons: the subject matter is often tough; the texts
have been lost or corrupted through the centuries, and editors want to preserve
what they have so they don’t change it too much; all of his “popular” works
(dialogues) are lost-- what are left are his “lecture notes.”
To overcome
the difficulty: read carefully and more than once; look out for definitions,
note them and keep them in mind as you proceed.