Alhassanain(p) Network for Heritage and Islamic Thought

CHAPTER 2: GREEK PHILOSOPHY

RELIGIOUS ORIGINS OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY

Two aspects of Greek religion are selected for their significance:

Anthropomorphic religion of the gods of Olympus - made familiar by the Homeric epics…Gods exhibit, on a most majestic scale, human passions and concern for the affairs of human beings. The Homeric conception of the Gods as subject to fate may have contributed to the attitude of mind that produced the first Greek philosophy: the Milesian natural philosophy of the sixth century BCE.

Religious revival of sixth century BCE - associated with mystery cults. Mystery cults - local forms of gods: symbolizing individualism…the Dionysian cults join with the Orphic: doctrine of the immortal soul and its transmigration…perhaps incline toward philosophy - especially metaphysics - and especially to religiously oriented philosophies of Pythagoreans, of Parmenides and of Heraclitus.

GREEK PHILOSOPHY: ORIGINS

Early Greek philosophy

Problem of Substance (Metaphysics) - and The Philosophy of Nature

Thales c. (624 - 550 BCE): water is original stuff (possible observation: nourishment, heat, seed, contain moisture), out of water everything comes –but Thales does not indicate how.

Anaximander c. (611 - 547 BCE): the essence or principle of things is the infinite - a mixture, intermediate between observable elements, from which things arise by separation; moisture leads to living things…All animals and humans were originally a fish. All return to the primal mass to be produced anew.

Cosmology: physical: sphere of fire leads to eternal motion: separation: hot, cold leads to hot, surrounds cold on a sphere of flame: heat: cold leads to moisture leads to air: fire leads to rings with holes: heavenly bodies: sun (farthest), moon, planets.

Anaximines (588 - 524 BCE): first principle is definite: air; it is infinite. From air all things arise by rarefaction and condensation - a scientific observation.

These three philosophers - Thales, Anaximander and Anaximines, of Miletus, represent advance from qualitative-subjective to quantitative-scientific explanation of modes of emergence of being from a primary substance.

Pythagorean School: Pythagoras of Samos (c. 575 - 500 BCE). The Pythagorean School was concerned less with substance than with the form and relation of things. Numbers are the principles of things - number mysticism. Origin, in astronomy, of the dual: systematic, fixed stellar system and chaotic, dynamic - terrestrial - world. Ethics, too, rooted in number-mysticism.

Problem of change

…arises from the intuition that something from nothing is impossible.

Problem of Change:

Qualitative Theories of Change: Empedocles (495 - 435 BCE) and Anaxogoras (500 - 428 BCE). Quantitative theories: Atomism: transition from teleology to mechanism: Leucippus and Democritus (460 - 370 BCE). Metaphysics, cosmology, psychology, theory of knowledge, theology and ethics.

Heraclitus (535 - 475 BCE) born Ephesus: (1) Fire and universal flux, (2) opposites and their union, (3) harmony and the law.

Eleatic School: Xenophanes (570 - 480 BCE) Colophon, precursor, first basis of skepticism in Greek thought, Parmenides - founder of philosophy of permanence - change is relative: combination and separation (becoming)…paradoxes of being and nonbeing, Zeno (of the paradoxes) (490 - 430 BCE) and Melisus of Samos are defenders of the doctrine.

Democritus: same concept in atomic form. Metaphysics, ontology: space: nonbeing exists; motion in space: atomic. Psychology, theory of knowledge: information from object to sentient: propagation of actions through toms in air, soul atoms: the finest in-between body atoms.

Age of sophists

The development of Greek thought led to a spirit of free inquiry in poetry: Aeschylus (525 - 456 BCE), Sophocles (490=405 BCE), Euripedes (480 - 406 BCE); history: Thucydides (b. 471 BCE); medicine: Hippocrates (b. 460 BCE). The construction of philosophical systems ceases temporarily; the existing schools continue to be taught and some turn attention to natural-scientific investigation… The resulting individualism made an invaluable contribution to Greek thought but led, finally, to an exaggerated intellectual and ethical subjectivism. The Sophists who were originally well-regarded came gradually to be a term of reproach partly owing to the radicalism of the later schools: their subjectivism, relativism and nihilism. For Protagoras, all opinions are true (though some ‘better’); for Gorgias none are true (there is nothing; even if there were something we could not know it; if we could know it we could not communicate it). ‘Sophists exaggerated the differences in human judgments and ignored the common elements; laid too much stress on the illusoriness of the senses… Nevertheless, their criticisms of knowledge made necessary a profounder study of the nature of knowledge.’

Socrates and the Socratic schools

Socrates (469 - 399 BCE), Xenophon: ‘The Socratic problem was to meet the challenge of sophistry, which, in undermining knowledge, threatened the foundations of morality and state.’ Socratic method: includes the elements: (1) skeptical, (2) conventional, (3) conceptual or definitional, (4) empirical or inductive, (5) deductive… a ‘dialectical’ process for improving understanding of a subject.

The treatment to this point has been more detailed since (1) I am relatively ignorant of it, and (2) a detailed study of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle - a natural study of the tree supreme Greek philosophers - is left for later.

Ethics: knowledge is the highest good. Knowledge is virtue.

GREEK PHILOSOPHY: THE AGE OF GREAT SYSTEMS

Plato (427 - 347 BCE)

The method of Socrates suggested: a system of thought to be worked out. Plato’s system incorporates and transforms the doctrines of his predecessors…The problems suggested are the intimate ones: meaning of human life, human knowledge, human conduct, human institutions which depend for an adequate answer upon the study, also, of their interrelations and their place as parts of the larger Ontological Question (and indeed are not comprehensible without an ontology - at least ‘an implicit’ one). Plato developed such a system.

The division of philosophy into (1) logic or dialectic (including theory of knowledge), (2) metaphysics (including physics and psychology), and (3)ethics…is implied in Plato’s work.

Dialectic and Theory of Knowledge: Plato recognizes the importance of the problem of knowledge.

Sense perception, opinion cannot lead to genuine knowledge.

Eros, the love of truth, is necessary for advance…it arouses the contemplation of beautiful ideas…dialectic is the art of thinking in concepts: the essential object of thought.

Ideas do not have origin in experience…we approach the world with ideals: truth, beauty, the good; in addition to the value-concepts. Plato also came to regard mathematical concepts and certain logical notions, or categories, such as being and nonbeing, identity and difference, unity and plurality, as inborn, or a priori.

Therefore, conceptual knowledge is the only genuine knowledge.

What guarantee, then, is there of the truth of conceptual knowledge? (Plato’s answer is based on the metaphysics of certain of his predecessors, especially Parmenides: thought and being are identical; Parmenides speaks of or indicates the world of logical thought as true, and the world of sense perception as illusion.)

For Plato, knowledge is correspondence of thought and reality (or being) - knowledge must have an object. If the concept is to have value as knowledge, something real must correspond to it - realities must exist corresponding to all our universal ideas: there must be, for instance, pure absolute beauty corresponding to the concept of beauty…conceptual knowledge presupposes the reality of a corresponding ideal or abstract objects…Or, in contrast to the transient world of the senses, which is mere appearance, illusion: true being is unchangeable, eternal. Conceptual thought alone can grasp eternal and changeless being: it knows that which is, that which persists, that which remains one and the same in all diversity, namely the essential forms of things.

Plato’s theory of knowledge:

Conjecture Mere sense impression Guess (opinion)

Belief Sensible objects Sense perception (opinion)

Understanding Mathematical and other Hypothesis (and education)

Rational (insight) Forms or ideas Dialectic

Hierarchy of the Sciences: Arithmetic; geometry; astronomy; harmonies; dialectic - the coping stone of the sciences.

Dialectic knowledge considers forms as constituting a systematic unity - as related to the form of the Good; rests on categorical first principles - not hypothesis.

Doctrine of ideas: (Plato’s most original philosophical achievement.)

According to Plato, universals exist. Corresponding to the concept of horse, as example, there is a universal or ideal entity; it is the idea that is known in conceptual knowledge, reason.

The variety of ideas or forms is endless: there are ideas of things, relations, qualities, actions and values…(these are some classes of ideas): of tables and chairs; of smallness, greatness, likeness; of colors and tones; of health, rest and motion; of beauty, truth and goodness…The ideas or archetypes constitute a well-ordered world or rational cosmos; arranged in a connected, organic unity, a logical order subsumed under the highest idea: the Good.

The Good, the supreme idea, the logos or cosmic purpose, the unity of pluralities, the source of all ideas…is also the truly real. The function of philosophy, by exercise of reason, is to understand this inner, interconnected order of the universe and to conceive its essence by logical thought.

Outline of the doctrine: (1) The forms, or ideas defined as objects corresponding to abstract concepts are real entities. The Platonic form is the reification or entificiation of the Socratic concept; (2) there are a variety of forms; (3) they belong to a realm of abstract entities, a ‘heaven of ideas’, separate from their concrete exemplification in time and space (the Platonic dualism); (4) form is archetype, particular: copy; form is superior: forms are real, particulars mere appearances; (5) the forms are neither mental - they exist independently of any knowing mind, even God’s - nor physical: yet real; (forms are non-temporal and non-spatial: eternal and immutable); (7) they are logically connected in a ‘communicative’ hierarchy in which the supreme form is the Good; (8) forms are apprehended by reason, not sense; (9) the relation between a particular and a form which it exemplifies is ‘participation’; all particulars with a common predicate participate in the corresponding form; a particular may participate simultaneously in a plurality of forms or successively (in change) in a succession of forms.

Philosophy of nature

Matter (the second principle, diametrically opposed to the idea) is the raw material upon which the idea is impressed. Dualism. Matter is perishable, imperfect, unreal, nonbeing.

Cosmology

The Demiurge or Creator (more an architect than a creator) fashions the world out of matter in the patterns of the ideal world…The four factors in creation enumerated in Timmaeus are (1) the Demiurge or God: the active principle or dynamic cause of the world; (2) the pattern as archetype of the world; (3) the receptacle: the locus and matrix of creation; matter; brute fact; source of indeterminacy and evil; and (4) the form of the Good.

Plato’s cosmology, garbed in myth: an attempt to identify the causes in (and creation of) the actual world (interpretation)

The influence of Plato’s doctrine of ideas, and cosmology is enormous - upon Aristotle: the four causes of Aristotle are the four factors in Plato’s cosmology… and in Christian (medieval) thought…(argument from design)

Psychology

‘Faculty’ psychology: (1) rational faculty (mind), (2) spirited faculty (emotions…it is doubtful that Plato considered will and free choice), (3) appetitive faculty: desire, motivation.

Doctrine of immortality

(From psychology: the part of the individual, which ‘knows’ sense impression and opinion, is the body; the soul knows or has genuine knowledge or science. Because the soul possesses apprehension of ideas prior to its contact with the world: all knowledge is reminiscence and all learning is awakening.)

Arguments for Immortality: Epistemological: (1) The soul has contemplated eternal ideas and only like can know like: (2) from the doctrine of reminiscences. Metaphysical: (1) From the simplicity of the soul: it cannot be produced by composition or destroyed by disintegration, (2) from vitality: as the source of its own motion, the soul is eternal (a survival of atomistic conceptions) (first cause argument, perhaps)…and various other metaphysical arguments. Moral and Valuational: from the superiority and dignity of the soul: it must survive the body; a variation: everything is destroyed by its ‘connatural’ evil; the evils of the soul (its worst vices: injustice, etc.) do not destroy the soul - hence its indestructibility. (There are hardly any arguments advanced in the literature on immortality which are not foreshadowed by Plato.)

Ethics

Ethical being is one in which the superior principles dominate: rationality. Wisdom: reason over other impulses of the soul; bravery: reason over emotion (fear, pain); temperance: reason over desire…Justice: wisdom with bravery and temperance.

Politics

Plato’s theory of the state (in The Republic) is based on his ethics. Social life is a means to perfection of individuals. Laws result from imperfection of individuals which leads to the state. Classes in society result from functions of the soul; harmony among the classes results from functional relations of the healthy soul:

Ruling class: those embodying reason (philosophers)

Warriors: the spirited. Their function: defense.

Agriculturists, workers, merchants, artisans: lower appetites. Their function: production.

Justice in state: each class functions according to its character.

The ideal society is a family: Plato opposes monogamy, private property, recommends for the two upper castes - who are to be supported by workers - communism and common possession of wives and children…Plato recommends: eugenic supervision of marriages and births, exposure of weak children, compulsory state education, education of women for war and government, and censorship.

The state is an educational institution, the instrument of civilization; its foundation must be the highest kind of knowledge which is philosophy. The education of the children of higher classes will follow a definite plan: identical for the sexes during the first twenty years: myths selected for ethicality, gymnastics for body and spirit; poetry, music –harmony, beauty, proportion and philosophical thought; reading, writing; mathematics which tends to draw the mind from the concrete and sensuous to the abstract and real. At 20, superior young men will be selected and shall integrate their learning. At 30, those who show greatest ability in studies, military officers, etc., will study dialectic for five years. Then they will be put to test as soldiers, militias and in subordinate civic offices. Starting at the age of fifty, the demonstrably worthy will study philosophy until their turns come to administer the offices for their country’s sake.

Aristotle (384 - 322 BCE)

Aristotle’s Problems: Plato’s system had difficulties and inconsistencies to be overcome; it was left to Aristotle to reconstruct it in a more consistent and scientific manner. First, the problem of transcendent ideas and the degradation of the world of experience to mere appearance and, second, the concept of the secondary Platonic element matter and the gulf between form and matter provided difficulties. Other difficulties: changing forms, immortal souls in human bodies, makeshift nature of the Demiurge.

Aristotle claims the changeless eternal forms but as inherent, immanent in things: form and matter are eternally together…Because of his realism, Aristotle studied science sympathetically, his theories always in close touch with it and he encouraged the natural sciences.

Extant writings

1. Logic: Organon includes: Categories, De Interpretationae, Prior and Posterior Analytics (includes induction and the syllogism), Topics, Sophistic Fallacies (Topics are largely concerned with dialectic reasoning)

2. Natural sciences: Physics (8 books); On the Heavens (4); Origin and Decay (2); Meteorology (4); Cosmology (spurious), Botany (spurious); History of Animals (10); On the Parts of Animals (4); On the Progression of Animals; On the Origin of Animals (5); On the Locomotion of Animals (spurious)

3. Psychology: On the Soul (3, treating sensation, memory, imagination, thought); Parva Naturalia (including De Memoria et Reminiscentia, On Dreams…)

4. Metaphysics: (14) ‘First Philosophy’

5. Ethics: Nicomachean Ethics (10) Eudaemian Ethics (revision of Nicomachean by Eudaemas); Magna Moralia, the Greater Ethics (compilation of the two proceeding)

6. Politics: (8, apparently incomplete); On the Constitution of Athens (discovered 1890) (the work on economics attributed to Aristotle is not authentic)

7. Rhetoric: Rhetoric to Theodectes (based on Aristotle’s teachings); Rhetoric to Alexander (spurious); Rhetoric (3, the third is of doubtful authenticity), Poetics (part of 2 books extant; concerned with principle forms of literature: epic, tragic, comic)

Philosophy and the sciences

The universe is an ideal world, an organic whole of interrelated parts, a system of eternal, unchangeable ideas or forms: these are the ultimate essences and causes…ideas are, in contrast to Plato, immanent in the world giving it form and life…experience is real - the basis of knowledge; starting from experience we rise to the science of ultimate principles.

Genuine knowledge is not merely factual but consists in knowing the reasons and causes of things. Philosophy or science in the broad sense is reasoned knowledge. Metaphysics is concerned with being qua being.

Aristotle’s classification of sciences: (1) Logic, the method of inquiry, (2) theoretical sciences (mathematics, physics, biology, psychology and first philosophy or metaphysics), (3) practical sciences in which knowledge is a means to conduct (ethics, politics), (4) productive sciences in which knowledge is subordinate to artistic creation (poetics)

Logic

The creation of the science of logic is in a certain sense Aristotle’s most amazing achievement (there is no parallel case in intellectual history where a single thinker has brought to completion a new science). (There have been only two revolts against the Logic in recent times - Francis Bacon’s advocacy of inductive method and the nineteenth-twentieth century revolution in mathematical logic.)

Function: method of obtaining logic: the science of sciences.

Theme: analysis of form and content of thought. Scientific truth is characterized by strict necessity: to establish a scientific proposition it must be proved that it could not possibly be otherwise.

Demonstration: the form of thought: propositions from propositions: the syllogism.

Intuition or induction: establishment of primary propositions. Intuition is the apprehension of the universal element in the particular: or induction.

Content: the doctrine of the categories (also part of his metaphysics): categories are the fundamental, indivisible concepts of thought: the most fundamental and universal predicates that can be affirmed of anything, not mere forms of thought or language but also predicates of reality…the ten categories (1) what (e.g., man: substance), (2) how it is constituted (e.g., white: quality), (3) how large (quantity), (4) relation (double, greater…), (5) where (space), (6) when (time), (7) posture, (8) condition (e.g., armed: state), (9) activity (what it does), (10) what it suffers (what is done to it)

Metaphysics

Substance (that which exists), abstractly defined in metaphysics, is a key concept…and is in sharp contrast to the Platonic notion. In rejecting the Platonic theory of ideas, Aristotle offers two broad criticisms (seven actual items): (1) ideas, though intended to explain the nature of things, are not adequate to do so, and (1) the relation between things and ideas is inexplicable (and even somewhat contradictory leading to a regress: the idea of the relation, the idea of the idea of…)

In contrast to Plato who held that things were incomplete copies of universals (the form is the substance) and in contradiction to the atomism of Democritus, Aristotle regards particular objects as real substances, but the essence of a thing is its form: the class to which it belongs.

There is plurality of substances, hierarchically arranged: indeterminate matter…physical objects…plants…animals…man…God.

The process of becoming, or change: the substratum (matter) persists and changes, governed by forms (qualities) which are responsible for diversity and change.

Related to the relationship of form to matter is the relationship of potentiality to actuality: the stages in development: (acorn / oak : materials / building corresponds to potential / actual)…the series from potential to actual is, progressively, realization of form over matter…Form realizes itself in the thing: it causes the thing to move and to realize an end or purpose.

(Aristotle has been called the ‘father of Biology’…Plato of ‘Physics’.)

Four causes.

(1) Material (constituents), (2) formal (structure), (3) efficient or moving (the producer’, (4) the final cause (end or purpose)

Everything is explicable, at the same time, by all four causes. In nature causes 2 and 4 coincide as do 2 and 3, so the only causes are form and matter.

Theology

Eternal motion on the part of matter presupposes an eternal unmoved mover: God: the cosmological argument…God is pure form, unadulterated by mater, complete actuality, substance par excellence, thought-thinking-thought (which has been ridiculed on account of its inadequacies)

Physics

Science of bodies and motion: motion is change: matter is dynamic, atomism rejected (empty space is rejected)…four kinds of motion: (1) substantial (origin and decay), (2) qualitative, (3) quantitative, (4) local (place). Qualities are things: there are, therefore, absolute qualitative changes in matter…nature is teleological and qualitative.

Biology

Aristotle may be called the founder of systematic and comparative zoology which he subordinates to the teleologic, dynamic, qualitative interpretation. Aristotle’s biology may be described as vitalism: it posits an animating and directing vital principle in organisms.

Psychology

Man is the microcosm and the final goal of nature, distinguished from all other living beings by the possession of reason…Man’s soul is like the plant soul: lower vital function, and animal soul: perception, common sense, imagination, memory, pleasure, pain. (Pleasure arises when functions are furthered, pain when they are impeded; these feelings arouse desire and aversion which alone cause the body the move.) Desire with deliberation is called rational will.

Besides the foregoing function the human soul possesses the power of conceptual thought, or thinking the universal and necessary essences of things. Reason comes to think concepts as follows: creative reason is pure actuality, the essences are directly cognized: thought and object are here one (in passive reason concepts are merely potential), passive reason is the mater on which creative reason, the form, acts…thee is a distinction –formal and material phases of reason.

Perception, imagination, memory are connected with the body and perish with it: creative reason is absolutely imperishable, absolutely immaterial.

Ethics

(Aristotle’s ethics are based in his metaphysics and psychology and is the first comprehensive scientific theory of morality…it attempts to give a define answer to the Socratic question of the highest good.)

All human action has some end in view…what is the highest end or good? For man this must be his essence: the life of reason, the complete and habitual exercise of the functions which make him human: eudaemonia (happiness is a substitute provided it does not mean pleasure)

A virtuous soul is a well-ordered soul…and since the soul does not consist of reason alone, it is one in which the right relation exists between reason, feeling and desire…

The highest good for man is self-realization (:not selfish individualism) - he realizes his true self when he loves the supreme part of his being: the rational part…when he is moved by a motive of nobleness, promotes the interests of others and of country…’The virtuous man will act often in the interest of friends, country and if need be die for them…surrender money, honour and all the goods for which the world contends, reserving only nobleness for himself…’

Justice is a virtue implying a relation to others, for it promotes the interest of others…it is taken in two senses: lawfulness and fairness…Nor is the happiness-theory understood in the hedonistic sense - a pleasure theory: therefore, all things which are honorable and pleasant to the virtuous man are honorable and pleasant.

Aristotle rejects the Socratic maxim that knowledge is virtue: we must in addition to a knowledge of virtue, endeavor to possess and exercise it…Moral action is fostered by a moral society…Laws are required to teach us the duties of life…The state should seek to provide a social environs conducive to the morality of its citizens…Anyone who wishes to elevate the people must acquaint himself with the principles of legislation…therefore: ethics and politics are never divorced by Aristotle: the moral ends of man are promoted by legal and political means.

Politics

Man is a social being who can realize his true self only in society and the state…the state as the goal of evolution of human life is prior in worth and significance to its component societies…Social life is the goal or end of human existence…the aim of the state is to produce good citizens…Aristotle was perhaps even more successful than Plato in steering a middle course between ‘statism’ and individual.

The constitution of the state must be adapted to the character and requirements of its people. It is just when it confers equal rights on the people in so far as they are equal, and unequal rights in so far as they are unequal.

There are good constitutions: the monarchy, the aristocracy and the polity - a norm in which the citizens are nearly equal - and bad forms: the tyranny, oligarchy and democracy…As the best state for his own time Aristotle advocates a city-state in which only those citizens who are qualified by education and by position in life participate actively in government - that is, an aristocracy. He justifies slavery on the grounds that it is a rational institution: it is just that the inferior foreigners should not enjoy the same rights as the Greeks.

Aristotle’s Genius and Influence: Aristotle’s claim to the title ‘master of those who know’ can easily be substantiated. He occupies a unique position in philosophy by whatever standard we judge him, breadth of learning, originality, or influence…Aristotle’s philosophy is perhaps the most comprehensive synthesis of knowledge ever achieved by the mind of a human being - with the possible exception of Hegel.

His genius is his ability to use an enormous amount of knowledge into a unified whole: which he achieves by means of certain integrating concepts: substance, matter, form, actuality, potentiality, etc.

His influence was greatest during the Middle Ages but it is also apparent in the greatest systems of the modern period including those of Descartes, Leibniz and Hegel.

ETHICAL PERIOD (ABOUT 350 - 200 BCE)

Epicureanism and stoicism

The following on Epicureanism and Stoicism is a brief complement to the longer discussion on Stoicism, which is taken up again, below.

The Epicureans and Stoics. These thinkers were concerned primarily with ethics - however the ethics needed a metaphysics and cosmology and a theory of knowledge and truth in terms of sense experience - they were pioneers of the empirical tradition in epistemology. They were nominalists - a universal is not a reality but a mark or sign: the only realities are particulars. They were also forerunners of medieval nominalism. Opinions and hypotheses must be confirmed by sense experience or at least suggested by perception and not contradicted by them.

Epicurean metaphysics is, in its essentials, a restatement of the atomistic and materialistic mechanism of Democritus. Psychology - also derives from the emanationism of Democritus - likewise soul - the nimble fiery soul atom - is material; soul has a rational part, is mortal - there is no afterlife to be feared.

Epicurean ethics is hedonism - based on pleasure - but not a basis for debauchery: some pleasures are followed by pains and many pains are followed by pleasures; therefore not all pleasures are to be chosen and not all pains avoided. Mental pleasures are greater than pleasures of the body, mental pains worse than physical pains - therefore a life of prudence and wisdom is good and this has a naturalistic basis in the caprice of the world. In truth, Epicureanism is an ethics of enlightened self-interest: Epicurus extolled the same virtues as did Plato, Aristotle and the stoics - wisdom, courage, temperance and justice - but for different reasons. (However, although the pleasure-theory of Epicurus is not a doctrine of sensuality, it came to be so interpreted by many.)

Epicurean 341 - 270 BCE social and political philosophy: the enlightened self-interest of the individual is the highest good; from here follows justice and right, laws and institutions, practical rules of action - but only as means.

Skepticism and eclecticism

Skepticism was contemporary with Stoicism and Epicureanism. After Socrates and the great system of Plato and Aristotle, time was right for a new period of movement of doubt. The Skeptics filled this function: the thought common to this school is that we cannot know the nature of things: Pyrrho (365 - 270 BCE) may be called the founder but wrote nothing: his views were set down by Timon of Phlius (320 - 230 BCE). After Timon, the Skeptical school was absorbed by the Platonic Academy and did not emerge as an independent school until the Academy - called the Middle Academy during the Skeptical period - purged itself of Skepticism under Philo of Larina and Anticus: Skepticism again became an independent movement at the beginning of the Christian era and was later represented by Sextus Empircus. Eclecticism was encouraged by the growing intercourse between Greek scholars and the Romans. The Romans had no genius for philosophy; it was only after Rome conquered Macedonian 168 BCE and Greece became a Roman Province (146 BCE) that interest arose in philosophical speculation. The Romans produced no independent system: they selected and modified according to their practical needs: ‘They sought and found in Philosophy, nothing but a rule of conduct and a means of government.’ Subsequently, Eclecticism made its way into nearly all the schools, into the Academy (Plate), the Lyceum (Aristotle) and the Stoa; the Epicureans alone remained true to their creed.

Stoicism - continued

Zeno (336 - 264 BCE) b Citium, Cyprus, came to Athens in 314, and in 294 opened his school in the Stoa Poikile (painted corridor or porch, from which ‘Stoicism’) and was founder of the school. Zeno was esteemed for his upright character, the simplicity of his life, his affability and moral earnestness…He was followed by his pupil Cleanthes (264 - 232 BCE) who lacked the qualities needed to defend the school against the Skeptics and the Epicureans…Next came Chrysippus of Soli, Cilicia (232 - 204 BCE), a man of great ability who clearly defined the teachings of the school, gave unity to the system, and defended it against the Skeptics. His pupils included Zeno of Tarsis, Diogenes of Babylon, Antipater of Tarsus…Stoicism as developed by Chrysippus found favor in Rome during the Republic: Panaetius (180 - 110 BCE) being one of the first Roman adherents of note. During the Empire it divided into two schools: one popular, represented by Musonius Rufus (first century CE), Seneca (3 - 65 CE), Epictitus (first century CE) and Emperor Marcus Aurelius (121 - 180): the other scientific, whose sole aim was to preserve intact and interpret the old doctrine.

Logic and the theory of knowledge

The goal of Stoic philosophy is to find a rational basis for ethics: they start with logic, the science of thoughts and discourses. Stoic logic included grammar, and thus Stoics are founders of the traditional science of grammar…the dialectical part of logic deals with the theory of knowledge: of which there are two problems: (1) what is the origin (source) of knowledge, and (2)what is the criterion of knowledge.

Sources: Knowledge is gained through perception. The mind has the faculty of forming general ideas and concepts of a large number of cases which are alike and of forming universal judgments. This faculty, reason, is a faculty of thought and speech identical with the universal reason which pervades the world…the Stoics posited objected rationality in the world and yet opposed the Platonic doctrine of ideas: only particular objects have real existence and universals are subjective abstractions.

Criterion: A sense image is true when it is an exact copy of the object. A concept is true when it agrees with the qualities pervading similar things. How shall we distinguish true from false? Man is entitled to his conviction when he has satisfied himself that his sense organ is in normal condition, that the percept is clear and distinct and that repeated observations by him and others verify his first impression. Since true premises are deduced logically from true premises, the faculty of drawing correct inferences is accordingly another means of reaching the truth - and dialectic an essential qualification of the Stoic sage. Consequently, the stoics gave considerable attention to formal logic, particularly the syllogism, which they regarded as its most important phase (they made minor additions to Aristotle’s scheme of syllogism and revised his table of categories)

Metaphysics

Stoic metaphysics - a materialistic version of Aristotelian metaphysics: force (or form) and matter are both corporeal…but force consists of a finer kind of stuff, while matter as such is coarse, formless and immovable…Only forces have causality - the effect which results, however, is not a cause or a force - nor is it a body - but a mere accidental state of the body…The forces in the universe form one all-pervasive force or fire: the rational active soul of the world. The universe is a cosmos - a beautiful, well-ordered, perfect whole. The rational principle is related to the world as the human soul is to its body (the pervasion of the cosmos by a rational principle is pure pantheism)…but just as the governing part of the soul is situated in a particular part of the body, so the ruling part of the world soul, the Deity, or Zeus, is seated at the outermost circle of the world: pantheism and theism dwell together in the Stoic system (as in many modern systems), however in Stoicism the pantheistic aspect clearly prevails.

Cosmology

The Stoics offer a detailed description of the evolution of the world from the original divine fire: every recurring world will resemble its predecessors in every detail - the theory of cyclic recurrence - for each world is produced by the same law…Man is free in the sense that he can assent to what fate decrees, but, whether he assents or not, he must obey…Now, if everything is a manifestation of God, how shall we explain evil in the world? (1) The negative solution denies the existence of evil - what we call evils are only relative evils; (2)the positive solution regards evil, such as disease, as the necessary and inevitable consequence of natural processes or as a necessary means of realizing the good.

Psychology

A man is free when he acts in accordance with reason; that is, obedience to the eternal laws of nature. The Stoic conception of freedom is one of rational self-determination…

The Stoic doctrine of cyclic recurrence implies that all souls necessarily reappear with the recreation of the universe.

Ethics

Man is part of the universal order, a spark of the divine fire, a small universe (microcosm) reflecting the greater universe (macrocosm). Hence it behooves man to act in harmony with the purpose of the universe…to reach the highest possible3 measure of perfection. To do this he must put his own soul in order: reason should rule him as reason rules the world…to live according to nature for a human being is to act in conformity with reason, the logos…to live thus is to realize one’s self and to realize one’s true self is to serve the purposes of universal reason and to work for universal ends. The Stoic ethical ideal implies a universal society of rational beings with the same rights - for reason is the same in all and all are part of the same world soul.

A truly virtuous act is one which is consciously directed toward the highest purpose or end, and is performed with conscious knowledge of moral principle. Thus, virtuous conduct implies complete and certain knowledge of the good and a conscious purpose, on the part of the doer, to realize the supreme good. To act unconsciously and without knowledge is not virtue. Virtue is one, a unity, for everything depends on disposition, on the good will: a man either has it or he has it not: there is no middle ground: he is either a wise man or a fool…Virtue is the only good, vice the only evil - all else is indifferent.

Evil conduct is the result of wrong judgment, or false opinion: the Stoics sometimes regard evil as the cause, sometimes the effect of the passions or immoderate impulses. The four such passions are pleasure, desire, grief and fear. These passions and their many variations are diseases of the soul which it is our business, not merely to moderate, but to eradicate, since they are irrational…Apathy or freedom from passion is, accordingly, the Stoic ideal.

Religion.

True religion and philosophy are one, according to the Stoics. (Little wonder that Stoic philosophy should appeal to the Jesuits.)

GREEK PHILOSOPHY: THE RELIGIOUS PERIOD (150 BCE - 500 AD)

Greek philosophy began in Greek religion; and after its formative phase, described earlier, reached an apex in Socrates, Plato, Aristotle. The subsequent ethical theories of the Epicurean and Stoic schools, the nihilism of the Skeptics and the piece-meal practicality of the Eclectics did not satisfy all types of mind…’We come now to a period in History when Philosophy seeks refuge in Religion’…The new attitude sought to know and see God, brought about by and expresses consciousness of the decline of the classical peoples and their culture, ‘gave rise to a philosophy strongly tinctured with religious mysticism,’ ‘brought to life not only Christianity, but, before its advent, pagan and Jewish Alexandrianism and its kindred phenomena’…’We may distinguish three currents to this religious philosophy: (1) an attempt to combine an Oriental religion, Judaism, with Greek speculation: Jewish Greek Philosophy, (2) an attempt to construct a world-religion upon Pythagorean doctrines: Neophythaore4anism;(3) an attempt to make a religious philosophy of the Platonic teaching: Neoplatonism’…Here are some comments on the main tendencies:

Jewish Greek philosophy

The main exponent is Philo (30 BCE-50 CE). Philo read Greek philosophy, especially Platonism and Stoicism, into the Scriptures by the allegorical method which was common in Alexandria (founded by Alexander the Great in 333 BCE, which had become under the descendents of his general Ptolemy (328 - 181 BCE) the leading commercial and intellectual center of the world and the chief meeting place of Hellenic and Oriental civilization. Here a great scientific museum with its celebrated library of 700,000 volumes was established under Ptolemy - which attracted poets, men of science, philosophers from every region of the classical world). The fundamental concept in the system of Philo is God and his powers are the Logos, the Divine reason or Wisdom, which we recognize through the logos in ourselves…Man, the most important piece of creation, is a microcosm which, like the universe, is composed of both soul and matter (the source of defects and evils in the world)

Neo-Pythagoreanism

…has its sources in Platonism. Plato in his old age absorbed the number-theory and the religious mysticism of the Pythagoreans: his immediate successors in his school emphasized these latter day teachings. With the rise of Aristotelianism, the Academy abandoned Pythagoreanism. The Pythagorean secret societies with their mysteries, continued to lead a precarious existence until they were revitalized by the religious upsurge which took possession of the Roman world in the first century CE and the spirit of the times encouraged them to devote themselves once more to philosophy. The leaders in the movement, however, did not go back to early Pythagoreanism but to the doctrine as it appeared in Platonism and combined it eclectically with other elements of Greek philosophy, including Aristotelianism and Stoicism. All this they naively ascribed to Pythagoras.

Neoplatonism

Generally regarded to have been founded by Plotinus (204 - 169 BCE.)

…derives from Pythagoreanism. Plato’s system becomes the framework for a religious worldview. The main figure is Plotinus (204 - 269 BCE). His philosophy is briefly summarized: (1) God is the source of all being (the One whose infinity contains all, the first causeless cause, the unity prior to all being and beyond all being), (2) the stages of being are (I) pure thought or mind, (ii) soul and (iii) matter; (3) the human soul is part of the world soul and its freedom consists in turning away from sensuality towards its higher nature. If it fails to do this it becomes attached after death to another human, animal or plant body according to the degree of its guilt. The ideal in life is return to God - this occurs only on rare occasions, (4) ordinary virtues do not suffice to return to God; first purification - from the sense, the body - then contemplation, and finally the mystical union with God in which the soul transcends its own thought.

Common to all these theologies, or theosophies, are: the concept of God as a transcendent being, the dualism of God and world, the idea of revealed and mystical knowledge of God, asceticism and world denial, the belief in intermediary beings, demons and angels.

THE DECLINE OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY

The closing of the school at Athens

The period from Aristotle on is a decline in quality and originality…Neoplatonism was revived by Procleus (410 - 485) the head of the Academy at Athens. He was succeeded by Marius, Isidorius, and Damascius. In 529 the School at Athens was closed by an edict of the Emperor Justinian. After this time some good commentaries on the writings of Plato and Aristotle were published by Simplicus, the younger Olympiodorus, and by Boethius (c. 470 / 475 - 524) and Philoponnus. The works of Boethius as well as his translations of Aristotelian writings and of Porphyry (Porphyry’s Introduction to the Categories - of Aristotle: Porphyry of Tyre (232 - 304) was a pupil of Plotinus) contributed largely to the knowledge of Greek philosophy in the early Middle Ages.

The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius

…written while imprisoned (he came to high political office under Theodoric but was accused of conspiracy against Theodoric), takes its place along with Marcus Aurelius’ Meditation (Stoic philosopher, Emperor 121 - 180) and Thomas á Kempis Imitation of Christ (fourteenth century mystic: 1380 - 1471) as the great documents in which religious, philosophical and ethical ideas are applied in the personal life of their authors.

In the sixth century, Greek Platonism was making its final desperate attempt to maintain itself in competition with the new Christian worldview but Greek philosophy at this period had lost its vitality, had outlived its usefulness. The future belonged to Christianity; and by a strange irony of fate, the Christian religion, in it attempt to conquer the intellectual world, made an ally of the philosophy of the Greeks.