Philosophy

Saturday, December 30, 2006

ANCIENT PHILOSOPHERS

MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHERS

The Philosophers of the Renaissance: Transition to Modern Philosophy

MODERN PHILOSOPHERS

RECENT PHILOSOPHERS

Early Greek Naturalists - THE IONIANS

General Notions

As Greece is a mountainous and rather barren country, its inhabitants have been obliged from remote times to seek new lands that would offer them work and prosperity. At the beginning of the sixth century before Christ, we find one winding series of coastal colonies, extending from the coast of Asia Minor to Africa, to Spain and to southern Italy. Here the Greeks were so numerous that they outnumbered the inhabitants of Greece properly so called, and hence the name Magna Graecia was given to this far-flung territory. The colonies, favored by democratic liberties and economic well-being, and moreover having contact with a greatly advanced civilization, had an opportunity to develop their natural sense of culture.

Among the Grecian stocks which have contributed greatly to the formation of philosophy is the Ionian strain, which was spread through Asia Minor, the islands of the Aegean Sea (Ionia), and southern Italy and Sicily. It is among the Ionian colonies of Asia Minor that the story of philosophy takes its beginning, because it was in the flourishing city of Miletus that the first three Western philosophers were born and lived: Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes.

The problem which claims the attention of the thinkers of Miletus is for the most part cosmological. Nature, as presented to our senses, is a continuous "becoming" -- a passage from one state to another, from birth to death. However, this transition is not arbitrary; it happens according to a fixed law: everything repeats itself or flows in cycles -- day, night, the seasons, etc.

What is that first principle whence things draw their origin at birth, and whereto are all things resolved in death? This is the problem of the Ionians: the search for this principle which is the first reason for all succession in the world of nature. It is the principle which the Ionians believed they could discover in a natural element; by means of this element they attempted to explain nature through nature. The principle which they assign becomes conceived of as divine. Thus the Ionian thinkers are pantheists in so far as they do not distinguish God from nature.

Thales

Thales was born at Miletus about the year 624 B.C., and lived until about 546. Mathematician, astronomer, businessman -- to him are attributed many voyages and many discoveries. The more probable of these is that he was the first to foretell an eclipse.

For Thales the principle of things is water, which should not be considered exclusively in a materialistic and empirical sense. Indeed it is considered that which has neither beginning nor end -- and active, living, divine force. It seems that Thales was induced to proffer water as the first principle by the observation that all living things are sustained by moisture and perish without it.

Further, Thales affirms that the world is "full of gods." It is not easy to see how this second affirmation agrees with the first. It may be that he was induced by the popular belief in polytheism to admit the multiplicity of gods.

Anaximander

Anaximander was born at Miletus about the year 611 B.C., and died about 547. Probably a disciple of Thales, he also was a mathematician and astronomer, philosopher and poet. He was the author of a poem entitled Peri physeos, of which only a fragment is extant.

For Anaximander the first principle of all things is the "indeterminate" -- apeiron. There are no historical data to enlighten us as to what Anaximander may have meant by the "indeterminate"; perhaps it was the Chaos or Space of which physicists speak today. Whatever may be the answer to the this question, it is necessary to keep in mind that the problem consists in the search for a metaphysical principle which would give an account of the entire empirical world, and hence the apeiron is not to be confused with any empirical element.

All things originate from the Unlimited, because movement causes within that mysterious element certain quakes or shocks which in turn bring about a separation of the qualities contained in the Unlimited.

The first animals were fish, which sprang from the original humidity of the earth. Fish came to shore, lost their scales, assumed another form and thus gave origin to the various species of animals. Man thus traces his origin from the animals. Because of this, Anaximander has come to be considered the first evolutionist philosopher.

Anaximenes

Anaximenes also was born at Miletus toward the end of the sixth century B.C., and died about 524 B.C. Probably a disciple of Anaximander, he composed a treatise of unknown title.

For Anaximenes, the first principle from which everything is generated is aid. Air, through the two opposite processes of condensation and rarefaction, which are due to heat and cold, has generated fire, wind, clouds, water, heaven and earth.

Thus Anaximenes, like Thales and Anaximander, reduces the multiplicity of nature to a single principle, animated (hylozoism) and divine, which would be the reason for all empirical becoming.

With Anaximenes the School of Miletus closes, for the turn of events in this city ranked as one of the principal causes of the Graeco-Persian wars and Miletus was destroyed in 494 B.C. Its inhabitants were dispersed throughout the Greek world, and one of them was to reach Elea, a city of southern Italy, and there found the school which was to be called Eleatic, after the city of its origin.

THE PYTHAGOREANS

Pythagoras, founder of the Pythagorean School, was born at Samos about 570 B.C. His life is surrounded by legend. Many voyages -- one of them to Egypt -- are attributed to him. It is certain that at about the age of forty years he came to Italy in Magna Graecia, and in Croton, the Doric colony, founded a school with scientific, religious, and political leanings.

To this school were admitted youths of both sexes of the high aristocracy who were divided into various sections according to the grade of initiation to learning. The political aims of the school raised up much opposition, and in a popular uprising in 497 the school was given to the flames. Pythagoras seems to have removed himself to Metapontum before this uprising and died there either in the same or the following year. Pythagoras left no writings, and the doctrine which is known under his name must be attributed to him and to his disciples, especially to Philolaus, who lived until the time of Socrates.

The Pythagoreans cultivated the mathematical sciences and the study of mathematics led them to the observation that everything could be represented through a number. The number appears not as an abstraction, but as a real being, the generator of all things: they concluded that the number should be retained as the essence, the principle of reality.

This passing from the abstract order of number to the actual order of being today seems simple-minded and silly. It was not, however, so considered by the Pythagoreans, for they were the first to observe that number applied not only to the motions of the heavens and the succession of time, but also to the harmony of sounds (the height of the sound is in inverse proportion to the length of the string). It was easy for the cultivators of mathematics to bow down before the number and consider it as a divine reality.

Through a long theory on numbers the Pythagoreans attempted to explain the multiple and the notion of becoming. Numbers are divided into even and odd; the even numbers unlimited, the odd ones limited. Since everything is a number, the constitutive elements of things are the evens and the odds, the unlimited and the limited, the worse and the better. This radical opposition would give the explanation of all the world of multiplicity, even its moral aspects: justice is represented by the square (even multiplied by even); love, friendship, because they indicate perfect harmony, were identified with the number eight; health with the number seven.

Even and odd number originated from the "One." It is from the One that all the other numbers, which are the constitutives of multiplicity, proceed. Multiplicity hence is reduced to unity, and it is in unity that all differences and contrasts are annulled, and the harmony of the multiple ends in silence.

The perfect and sacred number for the Pythagoreans is ten, which results from the principal combinations: 1, 2, 3, 4 -- these are identified as the point, line, surface and volume, and when added, they result in the number ten. For the Pythagoreans there are ten heavens. To make up this number, they add to the traditional nine a tenth, which they call "antiterra." The heavens all revolve around one central point which is called "Fire."

For the Pythagoreans the soul is harmony. Descended to earth through some mysterious fault (Orphic-Dionysian doctrine), it passed through various bodies (even those of animals) by successive births (metempsychosis) to reestablish primitive harmony and to return to the place where it lived in happiness.

Pythagoreanism indicates progress over the Ionic School. It is elevated from a natural element found in the Ionic School to a conceptual one, such as number. The Pythagoreans also affirmed the sphericity of the earth and of the other heavenly bodies, and the revolution of the heavenly bodies around a central Fire. The concept of the soul and of its purification induced the Pythagoreans to ascetical practices although, of course, these were not shorn of superstitions.

HERACLITUS

Heraclitus, called the Obscure because of his manner of expressing his thoughts in a paradoxical and enigmatic form, was born in Ephesus, an Ionic colony in Asia Minor. Of royal or noble stock, he lived alone and deprecated vulgar knowledge and vulgar methods. He lived between the fifth and sixth centuries B.C., but the exact dates of his birth and death are not known. He wrote one works, Peri physeos, in verse, of which only large fragments are extant.

The preceding thinkers of Ionia and of Italy had sought to reach a principle distinct from becoming and from multiplicity, a principle which at the same time would be the ultimate reason for that same becoming and multiplicity. For Heraclitus this search for a principle distinct from becoming is vain, for becoming is itself the first principle of reality, the essence of things. Everything that exists, including man himself, exists because it is in a continuous process of passage from one state to another. If this passage should cease, reality would be annulled. "All things flow, everything runs, as the waters of a river, which seem to be the same but in reality are never the same, as they are in a state of continuous flow." This is the central point of the doctrine of Heraclitus.

This process of becoming finds its origin in Fire, an animated and primordial element, not to be confused with empirical fire. Because of its unstable nature Fire most closely corresponds to becoming. The process which this primordial element underlies is the so-called stairway down and the stairway upward. Thus Fire is changed into water and this latter into earth (descending steps). Through the Great Year (of unknown duration) the earth will be transformed into water and the water into Fire (ascending stairway).

The laws of becoming are antitheses, the passage from one state to its contrary (the law of contraries). "Struggle is the rule of the world, and war is the common mother and mistress of all things." We would not wake up if first we did not sleep, and vice versa; the same is true of everything else that exists. Construction and destruction, destruction and construction -- this is the law which extends to every sphere of life and of nature. Just as the same universe (cosmos) arose from the primordial Fire, so must it return to it again. Thus the root of Heraclitus' teaching is found in the double process of life and death, of death and life, which forever is developed and developing.

Since for Heraclitus everything originates from Fire, the human soul is a small particle of this Fire, and in the universal palingenesis (rebirth) will return to Fire. Nature is animated because the first principle, Fire, is animated (hylozoism).

THE ELEATIC SCHOOL

General Notions

The Eleatic School resumed discussion of the problem of being and becoming and attacked the opposition between sense knowledge and intellectual knowledge. The problem can be summed up: Reality in a logical manner appears to us under two different aspects -- accordingly as it is presented to our senses, or as it is presented to our mind.

Our senses perceive the multiplicity, the becoming, while our mind perceives the unity. Now the characteristics of unity are opposed to those of multiplicity. To which of the two must our consent be given for the ultimate reality? Heraclitus had answered that the only reality is becoming; the Eleatics say the opposite, that unity alone is being and that multiplicity is non-being, an illusion, considered both from the viewpoint of logic and metaphysics.

Xenophanes

The founder of the Eleatic School is Xenophanes, who was born at Colophon in Asia Minor about 580 B.C., and died at the age of more than ninety years. From his youth he was a soldier and had taken part in the defense of the Greek Ionian colonies against the Persian invasion. When these fell to the Persians, Xenophanes, in order not to submit to the conqueror, took up the life of a minstrel and went about singing the stories of the gods and heroes in the public squares. Finally he stopped in the Ionic colony of Elea in southern Italy, whence his school took its name.

Xenophanes, author of a poem of which only a few fragments remain, was a poet-philosopher who sought to draw the attention of men away from course anthropomorphism to the highest concept of divinity. "There is one God, sovereign alike over gods and men, unlike man either in appearance or in thought."

To represent the gods as men is to alter their nature in order to make them similar to us. These errors are due to the imaginations of men. If oxen or horses had a way of representing the gods, they would picture them as oxen or horses. Negroes represent their gods with black face and flat nose. But the "Optimus" is one, and bears resemblance to no one. "He sees all things entirely, hears all things entirely, and thinks all things entirely." Still it seems that Xenophanes confused God with space and with the universe taken it its totality.

Parmenides

The most noted thinker of the Eleatic School is Parmenides, who was born at Elea about 540 B.C. He was called "the Great" by Plato. He was author of a poem about nature which he divides into two parts: Voices of Truth and Voices of Opinion. A few fragments remain.

Xenophanes' criticism of popular religion and anthropomorphism was taken up and transferred by Parmenides to cosmic nature. Here also we find ourselves face to face with Unity, which is the totality of reality.

There is an extant fragment of Parmenides which summarizes his theory of knowledge. "Nothing can be but what can be thought." This statement indicates that Parmenides is the first philosopher to affirm the identity of being and intelligibility. According to his thought, however, intelligibility seems to mean a clear representation of the imagination.

Of far greater interest were Parmenides' metaphysical speculations, which upset Greek thought and influenced the subsequent development of metaphysics. The principle of Parmenides is: "Being is. Non-being is not." Let us try to grasp what this statement involves, for it is more difficult than it may seem at first glance.

Let us consider the first part of the principle: Being is. We know that Parmenides' predecessors, such men as Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, and Pythagoras, posed the question of what is the ultimate element or the source of the becoming and multiplicity of beings. Their answers varied and included water, fire, number, and other elements. Commenting on these solutions, Parmenides said that there can be doubt about what they meant by water, fire, and the life; but regardless of what they meant, each element they chose was being. Therefore: Being is. Whatever is not being does not exist and cannot be conceived. Thus he concludes: Being is. Non-being is not.

From this principle Parmenides drew some very interesting conclusions:

Being is one. Indeed, each being should distinguish itself from every other being. Now such a distinction should proceed either from being or from non-being. But neither is possible. The distinction cannot come from being because the second being, in so far as it is being, agrees with the first and cannot be distinguished from it. Moreover, such a distinction cannot come from non-being, for non-being does not exist and cannot be conceived. From nothing comes nothing. Therefore, being is one.
Becoming is also impossible. Nothing can become what it already is. For example, white cannot become white, for it is already white. But every becoming is nothing other than becoming a being. Thus, being becomes being by becoming, which is utterly inconceivable. Therefore, being is one and exists in its absolute immutability. Birth and death are illusions.

The One of Parmenides is not born; it is eternal, immutable, and always itself. Moreover, it is limited, since in Greek philosophy the unlimited is a sign of imperfection, and it is conceived as a finite sphere. It is the same One as that of Xenophanes but it is divested of all divine and religious attributes and reduced to one pure metaphysical and logical principle.

If the One is being and becoming is non-being, what then is all the cosmic becoming, including the life of man? Is it all a dream, an illusion? Parmenides leaves the problem unsolved. If he had solved it in conformity with his principles, the answer would have had to be affirmative and the life of the universe would appear a complete mystery.

Zeno

Zeno, chosen disciple of Parmenides, was born in Elea about the year 500 B.C. He is called by Aristotle the first dialectician because he assumed the task of proving with arguments (Sophistic) how much of paradox there was in the doctrine of his master.

Parmenides had reduced becoming to non-being and to illusion. Zeno attempted to prove just what exactly is becoming. To understand the arguments of Zeno it is necessary to remember that becoming signifies movement. If the movement were not real but illusory, it would follow that becoming also has no other consistency save that of illusion. This is the task which Zeno assumed.

His argument are four, but they follow the same pattern; for they all begin with the supposition that space (the line) is composed of infinite parts, and that it is impossible to cross these infinite parts of which space is composed. As a consequence, all that to us seems to move does not move in reality, for movement is an illusion.

Take, for example, the so-called argument of Achilles. The hero of the winged foot can never overtake the turtle -- symbol of slowness -- because the hero gives the turtle the handicap of space. Let us supposed that this interval between Achilles and the turtle is twenty feet, and while the hero runs twenty feet, the turtle advances one foot. Achilles cannot reach his running mate, because while he runs twenty feet the animal moves one foot, and while runs a foot, his rival will run one-twentieth of a foot, and successively, while Achilles run one-twentieth of a foot, the animal will have traveled one-twentieth of a twentieth of a foot, and so on, ad infinitum.

The same is to be said of the arrow which will never reach its target. Before striking the target, the arrow must traverse half the distance, and before it reaches half this space it must traverse one-half of this half, ad infinitum. Thus the arrow remains ever at the same place, no matter how much it may seem to be displaced. Such Sophistic arguments, as Aristotle noted well, are based on a false prejudgment that space is made up of an infinite number of parts.

Melissus

Among the Eleatics must be numbered Melissus, who was born at Samos and lived during the fifth century B.C. He accepts and defends Parmenides' doctrine of being, but unlike his master, he maintains that being is infinite, because it cannot be limited, neither by another being, in so far as being is one, nor by non-being, which does not exist. In agreement with Parmenides he maintains that change and motion do not exist in nature, for both imply an absurd transition from being to non-being.

The Eleatic School had the merit of calling the attention of philosophers to the concept of being and becoming, of motion, of time, of space, and of continuity. Its importance is such that all succeeding thought represented a victory over the one-sided and apparently contradictory conceptions held by Parmenides (unchanging being) and Heraclitus (successive becoming).

THE PLURALISTS

General Notions

The Pluralists are those philosophers who, putting to themselves the problem of being (Parmenidean) and of becoming (Heraclitean), attempt a reconciliation between the two factions by having recourse to more primordial elements. They accept on the one side the being of Parmenides, but they break it up into various parts, so that the root of things would be found in various elements. The composition and decomposition of these original elements would give the explanation of the becoming of Heraclitus.

Thus the Pluralists believe that they have overcome the opposition between being and non-being. The chief philosophers of this group are Empedocles of Agrigentum, Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, and Democritus of Abdera.

Empedocles

Empedocles lived from approximately 490 to 430 B.C. Of Doric origin, he was a physician, naturalist, poet, philosopher, and wonder-worker. He wrote two books, Physics and Purifications, of which large fragments remain. It is said that the people revered him as a worker of wonders and that he died on a exploration of Mount Etna in Sicily.

Like Parmenides, Empedocles admits that being is not born nor does it die, because it is eternal. Unlike Parmenides, he says that being quadruple: land, water, air, and fire. These four elements are the roots of things, the latter being only different combinations of these elements. To explain the process of these combinations, Empedocles has recourse to two forces, primitive and fundamental -- love and strife.

From the beginning, since elements were regulated by love, they were an indistinct whole and formed the sphere. In the process of time, strife, which circulated about the sphere, penetrated and divided the elements. Thus they came to form the stars (zone of fire), ether (air), the oceans, and the earth; and from the earth came forth all things, including plants and men. An alternating balance of hate and of love destroys men until, by a natural reaction of love, hatred will be banished and everything will return to form once more the ancient sphere, to begin again a new period of hate and love similar to the first.

That part of Empedocles' theory dealing with the four elements endured longest, and fell into decline only with the advent of modern chemistry.

Anaxagoras

Anaxagoras, who was of Ionic origin, was born about 500 B.C. Invited by Pericles, he went to Athens, where he remained about thirty years. Accused of impiety, he was obliged to leave the city in 431 B.C., and went to Lampsacus, where he founded a school. He died in 428 B.C. Anaxagoras was the first philosopher to enter Athens. He wrote a work entitled Peri physeos, of which large fragments are extant.

Parmenides' being is constituted, according to Anaxagoras, of an infinite number of particles, homogeneous but qualitatively different. Aristotle called this agglomerate "homoeomeries," that is, homogeneous parts. They enter to make part of every becoming, and the prevalence of a given quality of particles over another is the reason for the qualitative difference of things. Such particles are endowed with an immanent intelligence, which Anaxagoras designated with the name "Nous." The "Nous" gathers and distinguishes the "homoeomeries" of the original Chaos; for this reason the "Nous" is the cause of their distinctions and groupings.

No matter how often Anaxagoras had admitted that to give a reason for the distinctions and groupings of an infinite number of particles it was necessary to have recourse to intelligence, every time he explains becoming he fails to make use of the "Nous" and runs to the conduct of natural laws. Hence he is reproved by Plato and Aristotle for not having known how to use his discoveries in the determination of final causes.

The Atomists: Leucippus & Democritus(pictured)

Leucippus -- probably of Miletus -- and Democritus of Abdera were physicians. Leucippus was the founder of the Atomist School; but his disciple Democritus, who was born about 460 B.C., and lived about ninety years, was its greater exponent. A naturalist and an avid searcher for knowledge, he journeyed into many regions to increase his notions, and many fragments of his works remain.

In Democritus, as in those who preceded him, we assist at the breaking up of the being of Parmenides into an infinity of particles, each of them indivisible. Democritus called these particles "atoms." The atoms are material, qualitatively homogeneous, but of different form and gravity and are endowed with motion "ab aeterno," from higher to lower.

Because atoms are endowed with motion, Democritus admits a second primordial element, the void, that is, infinite space which surrounds the atoms and gives them the possibility of movement. The differences in gravity cause the atoms to whirl into motion, thus giving origin to the formation of things. Every union of atoms indicates a birth, just as every separation of atoms indicates a death. Thus from the primitive void have come the stars and the earth and all beings, including man.

The soul also is formed of light atoms similar to those of fire, and with death it is resolved into atoms.

Democritus does not deny the gods, but even they, he says, are subject to the universal mechanism: they arose from the composition of atoms, and will be reduced to their component parts by decomposition. They live in interastral space, happy and not concerned with the destiny of men. The wise man does not fear them because they are powerless to do either good or evil.

Democritus admits only sensitive cognition, a product of the motion of atoms, which in a light form separate themselves from the body, penetrate the empty spaces of our organism and set in motion the atoms of our sensitive faculties. The movement produces cognition. Indeed, not everything that comes to us through the senses is really outside the sensitive faculty.

To this end, Democritus distinguishes the objective properties which are real in bodies -- such as form, size, movement, etc.; and the subjective qualities which are due to the reactions of our faculties -- for example, odor, color, taste, etc. These are in the objects only as a point of origin; in the subject they exist as specific qualities.

The system of Democritus, the model upon which all the materialistic systems will more or less be re-formed, presents to us a world regulated by mechanics (motion) and by the natural laws which act in the picture of cosmic necessity. No rationality is possible in this world of mechanical forces and hence no finality or purpose.

Thus are formed and are broken up the heavens and earth; thus human generations succeed one another, without there being a reason for their birth or for their decomposition; they are unconscious effects of unconscious causes. Life and death have no value, and everything is swallowed up in the night of atoms, whence everything took its origin. Such a system does not solve, but aggravates the problem of life, and inclines one to despair without comfort.

Philosophy of the Sophists

Background Information

The second period of Greek philosophy occupies the entire fourth century before Christ. The problem which claims the interest of thinkers during this period is no longer the cosmological question, but man in his concreteness, namely, in his knowledge, his morality, his rights.

The causes which determined the above passage were many, and the most important of these were the following: (1) The Greek victory over the Persian army, which showed how much a small but cultured people can do against a numberless but disordered multitude of barbarians; (2) Contact with other populations living in different countries and practicing different customs, and the resultant investigation of the real value of morality and justice; (3) The democratic constitution of Athens, by virtue of which every citizen could aspire to some position in public administration and, with this end in view, the necessity of everyone's developing his personality through culture and education.

These facts determined a crisis in Greek life at the end of the fifth century before Christ. The exponents of this crisis were the Sophists, molders of thought who, distrusting the results of the preceding thinkers, intended to educate youth according to the new exigencies of the times.

The Sophists centered their efforts on the problem of knowledge as well as on the problem of morality and justice. This is why Socrates rose against them and established once and for all the fact that true knowledge means knowing through concepts. Never, perhaps, had the human mind made a greater advance in the philosophical field than that which was achieved after Socrates had shown in what true knowledge consists.

First, Plato developed the Socratic concept, and finally Aristotle systematized the entire body of Greek thought. The results obtained in this period were to influence all subsequent ages.

The teaching of Socrates was to give rise to the Minor Socratic Schools, which in turn were to give origin to Stoicism and Epicureanism. The thought of Plato was revived in the later Academies, and in particular in the last important movement of Greek thought, Neo-Platonism. The philosophy of Aristotle was later enriched by Medieval thought, and is still accepted as the traditional philosophy or perennial philosophy even in this contemporary age.

General Notions

Those who impersonated this new state of mind were the Sophists, philosophers from all parts of the Grecian world in search of fortune. They were said to possess and encyclopedic knowledge, and they offered, at a price (for the first time requested for teaching the liberal arts), to instruct youth in the art of governing.

The means was oratory, in which some (such as Protagoras, and above all Gorgias) became most highly admired. In fine, it was the aim of the Sophists to create in youth the ability to argue over the proper use of words (Eristic Method), or their misuse (Sophistic Method). Plato, implacable enemy of these philosophers, was the first to call them by the name of Sophists, which has remained their title in history.

In the picture of history, Sophistic thought can be considered as a transition from the old cosmological concepts to the new ideas about man. Its importance is slight in so far as, both in the problem of knowledge and in that of morals and justice, it logically resulted in Skepticism, as we shall soon see. However, one cannot deny the Sophists the merit of having recalled philosophy to an analysis of the subject; and though Sophism remained incipient, it would in the immediate process of time culminate in the high speculations of Plato and Aristotle.

Theory of Knowledge

The Pre-Socratics had turned all their attention to the physical world (cosmology) and in a diversity of opinions they (with the exception of Democritus) had shown that the world has a divine origin. In this search, man, even if he had not been completely passed over, had been considered as one of the many phenomena of the physical world.

The disagreement among philosophers who had not succeeded in establishing what had been the germ element or elements of the world, and the changed conditions of the time combined to direct the attention of philosophers away from the object and toward the subject, from the world to man, from cosmology to psychology.

The Sophists were the first to show complete indifference to the problem of the world of matter and to center their efforts upon man. But man can be an object of study in his sense knowledge as well as in that more profound one of reason. The Sophists stopped at the first, at the immediacy of sense impressions. (The analysis of reason was reserved to Socrates and his disciples.)

The Sophists stopped at the data of experience, at empirical and not rational knowledge, and from this point of view they wished to judge the world of reality. With them was born relativism of knowledge and Skepticism: the man-measure of Protagoras, and the "nothing exists" of Gorgias.

In the fragment of Protagoras which Plato has preserved for us, it is stated:

"Man is the measure of all things, of those that are in so far as they are,
and those that are not in so far as they are not."

From this he deduces that the subjective phenomena of our sensations become judges of reality. There is no reality of itself, but only reality as it appears to us:

"Man is the measure of what exists."

Thus to two different individuals the same reality can appear in opposite aspects; e.g., air is hot for one, cold for another; both sensations are true and both denote states of reality. Everything is relative. Reality being thus reduced to the subjectivism of experience, it was easy to make the transition of Gorgias to complete Skepticism.

"Nothing exists," said Gorgias; "if something does exist, we cannot know it; if we come to know it, we cannot teach it to others." This transition from the relativism of Protagoras to Skepticism seems logical. If reality is relative to the knowledge of empirical data, there is no reality of itself. Hence nothing exists. If it should exist, it would be impossible for it to be known by us as it is in itself, because we can be witnesses only of the impressions in their sensible immediacy, and no one assures us that this is representative of reality. Nor can we teach others what we know, since everyone has a different manner of feeling, and the manner of feeling of the master is not the same as that of his students.

Hence the only thing remaining is the use of the word, and Gorgias affirmed that all things can appear true and just, if oratorical power is capable of revealing things as true and just, beyond every pretension of reality of content.

Ethics and Right

The traditional belief of the Greeks had been that their cities had received their laws from some divinity, protector of the city, and that good (happiness) consists in conforming one's life to these laws, accepted as divine and eternal. The Sophists shook this faith to its very roots.

As in the case of the problem of knowledge, by defending relativism they ended in Skepticism; so also in the question of morals, by the same subjectivist prejudice they end in utilitarianism and hedonism. Thus, that is good which satisfies one's instincts and passions.

The belief in immutable principles upon which ethics may be founded is a prejudice and often an impediment which it is necessary to remove. The good, as experience shows, consists in securing for oneself the greatest possible quantity of possessions, without regard for the means used to attain them; for these goods can satisfy the instincts and the passions in which happiness consists. To strive to strengthen one's personality in order to surpass others in violence and in the contest or struggle for earthly goods -- this is the moral ideal of the Sophist.

The Sophist also violently attack the traditional belief about right -- that derivation from principles based on justice -- and they substitute the concept of force for that of justice. From the moment changed political conditions and the participation of the people in democratic power began to bring about the change of many laws, the Sophists profited from the situation not only to discredit positive and political right, but by nature they did not mean the rational part of man, but his instincts and passions. Hence for them right is that which succeeds in imposing itself through force, or an imposition established by force and violence.

Men by nature are not equal; there are the strong and the weak, and the moment right consists in force it becomes the office of the strong to command and make laws; the weak must obey. The Sophist Thrasymachus, in the first book of Plato's Republic, maintains that natural law "is the right of the stronger." It is the strong man who, despising all laws advanced by the weak in the name of justice, imposes his will, which becomes right, as Callicles maintains in Plato's Gorgias.

Here we are at the same extremism that we noted in the Sophists' doctrine. Such extremism must have been pleasing to the youth of Athens in the time of Pericles. All young men were anxious to obtain offices which would assure them wealth and pleasure. Sophistic teaching, by battering all the orders of ethics and justice, opened up to men a way that made possible and justified the use of all deception and the most violent passions. Thus is explained the popular favor that surrounded certain Sophists, such as Protagoras, who was received with triumph and entertained as a guest in the homes of the most noted Athenians.

So also is explained the noble mission of Socrates who, to restore the values of a morality sacred and inviolable because based upon reason and not unruly passions, spent his entire existence, and not in vain. See: The Philosophy of Socrates.

Philosophy of Socrates

Introduction

The traditional belief of the Greeks had been that their cities had received their laws from some divinity, protector of the city, and that good (happiness) consists in conforming one's life to these laws, accepted as divine and eternal. The Sophists shook this faith to its very roots.

As in the case of the problem of knowledge, by defending relativism they ended in Skepticism; so also in the question of morals, by the same subjectivist prejudice they end in utilitarianism and hedonism. Thus, that is good which satisfies one's instincts and passions. The belief in immutable principles upon which ethics may be founded is a prejudice and often an impediment which it is necessary to remove. The good, as experience shows, consists in securing for oneself the greatest possible quantity of possessions, without regard for the means used to attain them; for these goods can satisfy the instincts and the passions in which happiness consists. To strive to strengthen one's personality in order to surpass others in violence and in the contest or struggle for earthly goods -- this is the moral ideal of the Sophist.

The Sophists also violently attack the traditional belief about right -- that derivation from principles based on justice -- and they substitute the concept of force for that of justice. From the moment changed political conditions and the participation of the people in democratic power began to bring about the change of many laws, the Sophists profited from the situation not only to discredit positive and political right, but also natural right as well. They defended natural right, but by nature they did not mean the rational part of man, but his instincts and passions. Hence for them right is that which succeeds in imposing itself through force, or an imposition established by force and violence.

Men by nature are not equal; there are the strong and the weak, and the moment right consists in force it becomes the office of the strong to command and make laws; the weak must obey. The Sophist Thrasymachus, in the first book of Plato's Republic, maintains that natural law "is the right of the stronger." It is the strong man who, despising all laws advanced by the weak in the name of justice, imposes his will, which becomes right, as Callicles maintains in Plato's Gorgias.

Here we are at the same extremism that is indicative of the whole doctrine of the Sophists. Such extremism must have been pleasing to the youth of Athens in the time of Pericles. All young men were anxious to obtain offices which would assure them wealth and pleasure. Sophistic teaching, by battering all the orders of ethics and justice, opened up to men a way that made possible and justified the use of all deception and the most violent passions. Thus is explained the popular favor that surrounded certain Sophists, such as Protagoras, who was received with triumph and entertained as a guest in the homes of the most noted Athenians.

So also is explained the noble mission of Socrates who, to restore the values of a morality sacred and inviolable because based upon reason and not unruly passions, spent his entire existence, and not in vain.

General Notions

The Sophists had turned their attention to man, but they had stopped at sensitive impressions, at empirical data. They logically ended in Skepticism. Socrates moves on the same plane as the Sophists, i.e., the study of man, and raises the Delphic motto: "Know thyself" as the standard of his teaching. He does not stop at sensations, at opiniative knowledge; his investigation tended to scrutinize the more intimate part of man, that by which man is man, his reason. It is in this intimacy of reason that he discovers a knowledge which has the characteristics of universality and necessity: the concept. Behold the great Socratic discovery through which philosophy finds its road and later arrives at the greater systems which the human mind has been able to construct.

Socrates, like the Sophists, was not concerned with metaphysics, but excused himself by saying that nature is under the direction of gods. He concentrated all his attention on the search for moral concepts; he was convinced that the practice of morality must be preceded by a concept of justice, and was opposed to that destructive idea which was the basis of Sophistic teaching.

After the great discover of Socrates the Sophists did not entirely disappear; we find them also during the time of Aristotle, but they lose all their influence and importance.

Life of Socrates

Socrates was born in 470 or 469 B.C.E., in Athens, the son of Sophroniscus, a sculptor, and Phaenarete, a midwife. He first learned his father's art, but later dedicated himself to meditation and to philosophic teaching without recompense, notwithstanding his poverty. Conscious of his vocation, which he considered to be a divine mission, he did not allow himself to be distracted by domestic preoccupations and political interests. He married an Athenian woman, Xanthippe, to whom legend attributes many strange whims. Certainly, Xanthippe was not an ideal wife, but it must be admitted that neither was Socrates an ideal husband; he forgot his domestic duties out of his extreme interest in philosophy.

Socrates did not take an active part in politics, although as a youth he had been a soldier and had saved the life of the youth Alcibiades in the battle of Mantinea. He believed that it would be better to serve his country by offering himself as an example of a most perfect man, obedient to its laws, even to the point of sacrifice, and by preparing a wise youth in opposition to that egotistic and power-crazed youth which the Sophists had turned loose upon the nation.

But Socrates' critical and ironic attitude and the consequent education imparted by him gave rise to a general malcontent and to popular hostility and personal enmities against him, notwithstanding his probity. Socrates appears as the head of an intellectual aristocracy, opposed to the popular tyranny and even to certain reactionary elements. This hostile state of mind toward Socrates crystallized and took juridical form in the accusation formulated against him by Meletus, Anytus, and Lycon: of corrupting youth, denying the national gods, and introducing new ones in their stead.

Socrates disdained to defend himself and thus made concessions to the vanity of the judges to the point of humiliating himself before them and more or less excusing his actions. He had, before the eyes of his spirit, not an empirical acquittal for his terrestrial life but, rather, the eternal judgment of reason for immortality. He preferred death. Declared guilty by a small majority, he stood with indomitable spirit before the tribunal, and was condemned to death.

Socrates was obliged to remain in prison for a month before execution. (A law prohibited the carrying out of capital punishment during the absence of the sacred ship sent yearly to Delos.) Socrates' disciple Crito came to him and proposed flight to his master. Socrates refused, however, declaring that he did not wish to fail at any cost in obedience to his country's laws.

He passed his time preparing himself for death by spiritual converse with his disciples. Famous above all was his dialogue on the immortality of the soul, which must have taken place shortly before his death and which is recounted with incomparable art by Plato in the Phaedo. Socrates' last words to his disciples, after quietly taking the deadly draught of hemlock, were: "I owe a cock to Aesculapius." Aesculapius, the god of medicine, had delivered him from the evil of life with the gift of death. It was the year 399 B.C.E., the seventy-first of Socrates' life.

The Doctrine of Socrates: Concepts

The doctrine of Socrates can be summed up in two words: concepts, morality -- or better, moral concepts.

For Socrates, the concept is that of which all think when they speak of a thing. In the rational part of every man there exist some notions which are common to all and hence enjoy universality and necessity, and which form the substratum of true understanding or knowledge. The concept of which the Sophists speak is merely an opinion, a fleeting instant of knowledge. Socrates does not undervalue such knowledge, but neither does he consider it to be full; for knowledge should be well enough established to serve as the foundation of science. True science is universal; that is, it is common to all men and to all times; it is objective, and is not subject to the changes of fortune. True science consists in understanding through concepts, which have the same universal characteristics as science itself.

To arrive at an understanding of such concepts, Socrates used the inductive method of dialogue (Socratic method), the principal parts of which were two: irony and maieutics. In general the process was as follows:

Socrates first posed a question -- for example, "What is justice?" Since he had said that he did not himself know what it could be (Socratic ignorance), he asked his pupils what they thought was justice.

The pupils, for the greater part Sophists, answered according to the Sophistic method, adducing many examples; e.g., "Zeus is just"; "the gods are just," etc. (Exemplification.) "Oh, how many justices!" answered Socrates. "I asked what is justice, and you answer by bringing me a great number of justices."

Thus he passed over to a criticism (irony) of the examples adduced, through which he cleared the disciples' minds of prejudices and false notions about the question proposed.

From irony he passed to maieutics -- the art which Socrates said he had learned from his mother; she helped the parts of the body, he aided those of the spirit. (The word is derived from the Greek "maieutikos," pertaining to midwifery. The maieutic method was Socrates' way of bringing out ideas latent in the mind.) Maieutics was the conclusive part of the dialogue, in which Socrates tried to make his disciples see how, by reflecting upon themselves, they could observe the presence of certain elements common and necessary to all justices (the concept of justice).

Such elements took concrete form in the definition, which summed up in a few words the characteristics that were judged necessary to the concept of the question proposed.

It is needless to say that the Socratic dialogues did not always succeed in stabilizing the definition. In such cases, the so-called Socratic ignorance which Socrates professed at the beginning of the question was not fictitious. Thus the dialogue was a work of self-criticism, done with the help of the students for the purpose, if possible, of arriving at a concept -- a true understanding of the question proposed.

The Doctrine of Socrates: Ethics

In ethics, Socrates did not surpass the prejudice of Greek intellectualism, which made the practice completely dependent upon theory. It is enough to know virtue in order to be virtuous. Everyone wishes to be happy. If he does not attain happiness, it is because he does not know the way that leads to happiness. Consequently, so-called evil men are in reality only ignorant; the evil is reduced to error. As vice is synonymous with ignorance, so knowledge of the good is synonymous with virtue. Thus it is easy to see why Socrates, who intended to form a virtuous youth, restricted his teaching to the search for moral concepts. It is to be noted that moral intellectualism is present in all Greek thought, not excepting the great ethical systems of Plato and Aristotle.

Minor Socratic Schools

The teaching of Socrates had had two main points: the concept and morality or ethics. However, not all Socrates' disciples succeeded in understanding the profundity of the master's teaching. Many of them had first been at the school of the Sophists or of the Eleatics, and they did not succeed in overcoming their initial positions and in grasping the meaning of the Socratic concept in its purity. They believed that the Socratic concept was not much different from Protagoras' "man -- measure-of-all-things," and that the good was the same as the one of Parmenides. The spiritual heir of Socrates is Plato, who in the Academy carried the doctrine of his master to its highest development.

The others, after the death of Socrates, returned to their native cities and opened schools with a teaching which indicates a return to the Sophistic or Eleatic doctrines. These schools were called Minor Socratic Schools: Socratic, because after the example of Socrates they were interested in the knowledge of morality; Minor, because the thought of Socrates was not expounded for its own good but with inclinations toward former positions.

The Minor Schools are four:

The Megarian, founded by Euclid of Megara;

The Elian, founded by Phaedo;

The Cynic; and

The Cyrenaic.

We shall explain the principles of the last two. They possess a certain importance since they can be considered as historical and doctrinal antecedents of two other monuments of Grecian thought of major importance -- Stoicism and Epicureanism.

The Cynic School. This school was opened by Antisthenes, who first was a disciple of Gorgias and then of Socrates. He taught in the Cynosarges of Athens, whence the name Cynic. Antisthenes taught that knowledge (cognition) could not pass beyond the data of the senses; and since every sensation is individual, he concluded that only the individual is real. Moreover, as every individual has his own essence and no other, Antisthenes inferred that error is impossible and finally every definition is impossible.

What, then, were the concepts which Socrates had discussed? Simply the names of nouns. In a word, Antisthenes was an empiric nominalist. Of him it is related that in a debate with Plato about concepts, he said: "O Plato, I see the horse, but the horseness -- that I do not see." Plato answered: "You do not see the horseness because you have nothing but the eyes of the body."

In ethics, virtue is not a means to attaining good, but is the good itself. As virtue is the only good, so vice is the sole evil. But in what does virtue consist? In autarchy, i.e., in the possession of one's own reason, that which tells us that pleasures, riches, and everything which is called the civilization of a people is vice, because it is evil to feel the need of them. The Cynic, hence, went apart from society to live as a primitive man with few things, and these few supplied by nature itself. Between nature and society as we know it, with all the comforts of life, there is the same difference as between virtue and vice. To live according to nature understood thus -- such is the model of the Cynic's life.

The most famous Cynic was Diogenes of Sinope. Cynicism is a reaction of the poorer classes against the aristocracy; the reaction was made in the name of nature.

The Cyrenaic School. This school was founded by Cyrene, in those times an enchanting city of Libya, by Aristippus who, before becoming a disciple of Socrates, had heard the lectures of Protagoras.

Regarding cognition, for Aristippus only the subjective sensations are knowable; this implies that the field of knowledge is restricted to the cognition of one state after another which the subject notices in himself as sensations. Thus we are in pure sensism, according to which reality is but a succession of subjective phenomena, with no relation whatsoever to any external object. For Aristippus no metaphysics is possible, since the subject remains closed up in sensations.

Regarding ethics, the Cyrenians, in opposition to the Cynics, affirm that virtue consists in pleasure, and vice in pain. In accordance with their logic, virtue is a pleasing sensation, vice a painful one. The Cyrenians had a theory of sensations: there are three species, pleasant, painful and indifferent. The wise man will seek to keep away the painful or reduce them to the least possible, while he will change the indifferent into pleasant sensations. In a word, virtue consists in procuring for oneself the greatest possible quantity of tender emotions. Hence it is not in the passive, pleasant sensation that virtue consists, but in a supreme effort to secure for oneself the maximum of pleasures. (This is called dynamic hedonism.)

The wise man must preserve mastery over himself while yet living in the midst of pleasures. He must possess them and yet not be possessed by them, as Horace was to say later. In fine, the wise Cyrenian is the happy man who finds a limit only in reason.

The followers of Aristippus developed this rational motive further than that of immediate sensible pleasure and finished by concluding with Theodore the Atheist that nothing exists except pleasure. Others, with Hegesias, the Persuader of death, came to the conclusion that a life is not worth living if it is devoid of pleasure.

Such are two examples of the Minor Socratic Schools. The greatest of the Socratic schools, however, referred to as the Major Socratic School, was the Academy of Plato, which stayed closer to the original intent of the teachings of Socrates.

Philosophy of Plato

Life and Works

Plato was born in Athens in the year 428 or 427 B.C.E. He was of a noble family and was related through his father to Codrus and on his mother's side to Solon. His real name was Aristocles, but he was called Plato by his instructor in gymnastics because of his broad shoulders. Physically perfect, he had an artistic and dialectical temperament which remained with him through his whole life and made of him the philosopher-poet.

He was at first in the school of Cratylus, a follower of Heraclitus and the Sophists, and from him received his start in the study of poetry and an understanding of the philosophers.

At the age of twenty he came under the tutelage of Socrates; he felt profoundly the ethical influence of his master during the eight years he spent in his companionship. During his entire life he remained attached to Socrates, having a profound admiration for him because of the teaching he had received from the master and also because of personal friendship. "I thank the gods for having been born a Greek and not a foreigner, a man and not a woman, free and not a slave, but above all for having been born during the time of Socrates."

We do not know whether Plato was in Athens during the trial of Socrates. It is certain that if not before that time then shortly afterward he left Athens where, after the demise of the great master, the air was not healthy for his disciples. With some friends Plato retired to Megara, to the school of Euclid.

Between 390 and 388 B.C.E. Plato began long voyages in order to place himself in contact with the principal schools which flourished at that time. He visited Egypt, whose venerable antiquity and political stability he admired. He also went to southern Italy, where he was in contact with the Pythagoreans and studied their doctrines. He then went to Sicily and was at the court of Dionysius the Elder, the tyrant of Syracuse. There he formed a friendship with Dion, brother-in-law of the tyrant.

Falling under suspicion Plato was consigned by Dionysius as a prisoner of war to a Spartan ambassador and was then sold into slavery. Freed by a friend in 388 B.C.E., he returned to Athens. There, about the year 387 B.C.E., he founded his famous school, which was called the Academy from the gardens of Academus, where the classes took place. Here Plato imparted his philosophical teachings to his followers. He taught in the Academy for fifty years, that is, until he died.

During this period Plato left Athens twice to go to Syracuse. The first time was in 366 B.C.E. when, after the death of Dionysius, his successor, Dionysius the Younger, and Dion invited him to come there; he went with the hope of carrying out an experiment in his form of the ideal state. When Dion was sent into exile, the deluded philosopher returned to his native city. He returned again to Syracuse in 361 to reconcile Dionysius with Dion. His attempt failed, and he was held a prisoner by Dionysius. Plato was liberated, probably through the intercession of Archytas of Tarentum, general, scientist, and Pythagorean philosopher. After these unhappy attempts, Plato never left Athens again, but became absorbed in his teaching, in metaphysical speculations, and in the editing of his works. Death, which came in 347, interrupted this work. The philosopher was eighty years old.

Plato is one of the most accomplished geniuses humanity has ever known. In him are united the speculative and scientific spirit and the sense of artistic beauty, the influence of which have been felt in all times. All the known works of Plato remain extant, that is, thirty-six dialogues, thirteen letters and a collection of definitions. Critical study casts some doubt on a few -- for example, the definitions, which appear apocryphal, and some of the letters. The most important part of Plato's literary activity is represented by the dialogues, which are authentic in their greater part. In default of the chronological order in which these works were published, they are commonly classified in four groups, representing the various developments of Plato's thought.

They are as follows:

Socratic Dialogues, youthful writings in which Plato, as yet lacking a personal system of philosophy, expounds and defends the doctrine of Socrates: Laches; Charmides; Euthyphro; Lesser Hippias; Apology for Socrates; Crito; Ion; Lysis.

Polemical Dialogues against Sophistic doctrine. In these works Sophism is given a concise critical revision under logical, ethical and political aspects, and the doctrine of Socrates defended: Gorgias; Meno; Euthydemus; Cratylus; Theaetetus; Menexenus; Greater Hippias.

Dialogues of Maturity. Plato, now in complete possession of his system, expounds the theory of the Idea, basis of all his problems: Phaedrus; the Symposium; Phaedo; the Republic.

Dialogues of Late Maturity, or of his revised teaching: Parmenides; the Sophist; the Statesman; Philebus; Timaeus; Laws.

These dialogues are the most representative of Plato's thought in all its divisions.

Doctrine: General Ideas

Socrates had spoken about concepts, and had affirmed their existence in the field of logic and morality. But he had said nothing of the nature of concepts and of their origin. Plato, his greatest disciple, not only inherited his master's doctrine on concepts, but sought to complete it, giving it a metaphysical foundation. For Plato, the concepts of which Socrates had spoken are representative of a metaphysical world which really exists. This is the world of Ideas; Plato conceives of these Ideas as having all the attributes of the being of Parmenides.

Ideas, for Plato, are subsistent realities, distinct both from the mind that possesses them and the material objects in which they appear. Ideas are eternal, immovable. Opposed to the world of Ideas there is Chaos, the element which receives the form. And between the worlds of Ideas and Chaos there are Demiurge and souls. Demiurge infuses the soul in the Chaos and, working upon it, makes possible this visible world, the world of becoming, of which Heraclitus had spoken.

Another important characteristic of the speculation of Plato, one which he had inherited from Socrates, is that philosophy is conceived of in its practical order. Man must seek the truth; and once the truth is discovered in the purely speculative field, it must serve to find the solution of practical problems: Philosophy must render man morally better. This was the philosophic labor, the quest in which Plato spent his whole noble existence, and it explains the great influence his philosophy has exercised on all ages up to the present day.

Theory of Knowledge

Plato distinguishes four degrees of knowledge:

Apprehension of pure sense images, such as dreams and imaginations;

Perceptive knowledge of sensible objects, the purpose of which is to form a particular judgment, such as "This rose is red;...this light is beautiful";

Mathematical knowledge -- for instance, the apprehension of the particular shape of the perceived rose (Plato observes that mathematical apprehension can be held also independently of any object -- circularity can be apprehended in itself, independently of a circular object);

Philosophical knowledge, which consists in the apprehension of the Ideas, as absolute, unconditioned and eternal realities.

The first two degrees constitute what Plato calls opinion, because the things appear in this manner, but they could appear also in a different manner. The last two degrees constitute true understanding, because their object is the reality which is, and which cannot be otherwise. (See "The Myth of the Cave" in Plato's Republic, VII, 1-3.)

The four degrees of knowledge may be reduced to two fundamental classes:

Sense knowledge, which includes apprehension of sensorial images, and perception of sensible objects;

Intellective knowledge, which includes mathematical notions and knowledge of ideas.

For Plato, the inferior degrees constitute knowledge in so far as they express the necessity of something which transcends them; they are steps through which the soul ascends to the world of Ideas. The soul, which understands that its happiness consists in the world of Ideas, never is satisfied with the knowledge of the inferior degrees. Thus it appeals from the inferior to the superior degrees, till the knowledge of Ideas is reached. This continuous dissatisfaction of the soul is what Plato calls Love or Eros, the god of love. (See "The Myth of Eros" in the Symposium.)

General Metaphysics

The World of Ideas: Plato's investigations begin on the Socratic plan, that is, with sensitive cognition, with the purpose not only of transcending the data of sense and arriving at concepts (a problem already solved by Socrates), but also of going beyond Socratic concepts to the point of reaching a world where concepts are actual realities and not only simple representations.

There are two ways to knowledge: the senses and the intellect. The two kinds of knowledge which result differ essentially: sensitive cognition tells us that a thing is, but does not tell us what that thing is; sensitive cognition shows us the existence but not the essence of the thing known. Consequently sense knowledge is devoid of the characteristics of universality and necessity. On the other hand, intellective (conceptual) knowledge tells us what the object is that we know, and has at the same time the characteristics of necessity and universality.

According to Plato, these two kinds of knowledge are not derivable one from the other. Intellective knowledge does not take its origin from sensitive cognition. First of all, the characteristics of both are diametrically opposed: sensitive cognition is contingent and particular; intellective knowledge is necessary and universal. Since the perfect cannot be derived from the imperfect, intellective knowledge cannot be derived from that which is sensitive.

Moreover, Plato, led by his mathematical and aesthetic studies, finds not only that these concepts cannot be derived from experience, but also that such concepts precede experience. I must, for example, have first the concept of a circle in my mind in order to know whether that particular figure on the blackboard is a circle or not. If the knowledge of just what a circle is (the concept of a circle) were not anterior to the data of the senses (the circle drawn on the board), I would be unable to affirm that the given figure is a circle.

Having affirmed the distinction of inderivability and the precedence of intellective over sensitive knowledge, Plato makes of our concepts more than representative signs; he makes of them a world of actual realities. The Ideas of Plato are endowed with real existence in a world superior to the world which we see, which is the object of sensitive cognition. Ideas as they appear in our own mind are but the images or representations of things in this world apart.

Plato was induced to admit the existence of this world of Ideas from a parallelism which he noted between intellective and sensitive cognition. If sense knowledge presupposes a world constituted of beings and is derived from them, equally so must it be said of intellective knowledge: hence there exists a world of beings (Ideas) from which our ideas draw their representations.

The suprasensible world of Plato must be considered as constituting a multiplicity of subsistent ideas which find their unity in the Idea of the Good (God). Platonic Ideas in fact are but the realities which refract the single Idea (the Good). Granted, then, the identity of the Good and of the True and the Beautiful, all ideas are at the same time true, good and beautiful, i.e., perfect models. The world of Ideas is the world of true reality.

The existence of a transcendent world (Ideas) presents Plato with new and grave problems regarding cosmic and psychic nature. Both the sensible world and the human intellect participate in the world of transcendence, the first under the form of essence and the second under the form of Ideas. How can this participation be understood? In other words, what is the relationship between the sensible world and that of transcendence; why are ideas present in the human mind independently of all contact with the sensible world? The attempt to resolve these new problems forms what we will call the cosmology and the psychology of Plato.

Cosmology

The sensible world is presented to us under a twofold aspect, the first rational, the second irrational, corresponding respectively to form (essence) and matter. Let us take a tree as an example. We know that it is a tree because it has the form of a tree. If we prescind from that form and from any other form whatsoever, what remains? There remains an element without form and hence unintelligible.

Now if we follow this line of abstraction with reference to all things in the sensible world, if we thus prescind from all form, we find ourselves confronting a space without form but filled with formless matter. This is Chaos, Platonic non-being, called such not because it is nothing, but because there is in it no form (intelligible being). These two aspects of sensible reality correspond to two metaphysical states, preexistent to the sensible world. Thus there is had on one hand non-being (chaos, unformed matter) and on the other being (Ideas), co-eternal and opposed to each other. But how are these two opposed worlds united to form this sensible world, which is presented under the aspect of being and non-being?

To resolve this problem Plato has recourse to Demiurge, a divine artificer, the intermediary between unformed matter and the world of Ideas. Demiurge first infuses a soul into matter, by means of which space takes on life and form. Then, with successive infusions of souls, it forms the heavens and the earth. Demiurge is directed in its labor according to the order of the world of Ideas, which are as it were models in ordering the matter.

In this way matter has become a participant in the intelligible world, and through this participation the world of experience is made up of a combination of rational and irrational elements, of being and non-being. Matter, in the order given to it by Demiurge, remains always an opaque, irrational element which tends to resist complete penetration by the form, and hence is the root of multiplicity of beings and also of their imperfections. (Evil takes its origin from matter.) The rational element is represented by the form. But how is the form made present in matter by Demiurge? Plato gives various answers. At times he speaks of the descent of idea into matter; at other times he speaks of imitation.

Psychology

The Soul

We have said that Plato, once having admitted that knowledge of Ideas is anterior to sensitive cognition, is presented with the question of when and how the soul came into possession of this knowledge. To solve this difficulty, Plato has recourse to the Pythagorean theory of preexistence. Souls exist before their bodies, and as Ideas and unformed matter are eternal. From eternity they exist together with Ideas, and it is thus that they have come to know Ideas. Cast out of the ideal world because of some mysterious fault, souls carry within themselves the knowledge of these Ideas (Innatism).

Such knowledge, however, from the very moment the soul was banished from the ideal world and was united to the body, falls into a kind of lethargy. It will be the sensation, as we shall presently see, that shakes the mind from its sleep and brings it once more to the realization of the presence of Ideas within itself. The soul which descends from the invisible world to put on the mortal remains which it must keep for the course of earthly life, finds that the body already has an irrational soul subdivided into two parts: the irascible (impulsive and disdainful), with its seat in the heart; and the consupiscible, residing in the bowels and inclined to the ignoble pleasures of the senses. The rational soul is that which comes from the invisible world and takes its seat in the head. Its union with the body is extrinsic; the body is as it were its tomb, and it must regulate the impulse of the irascible soul and repress the desires of the concupiscible soul if it wishes to live according to reason.

The immortality of the soul is a consequence of the doctrine of the preexistence of souls. If souls existed before the body the latter is not necessary for their existence, and hence with death souls return to live as before this union. In the Phaedo, Plato has other more valid arguments, such as that deduced from the nature of the knowledge of Ideas, from which he deduces the fact that the soul must be by nature similar to Ideas, i.e., simple and not subject to changes.

Cognition as reminiscence

The fundamental grades of cognition are two: sensitive and intellective. The first is bound up with the object which appears to our senses, hence it is bound up with matter, and deprived of all necessity and universality. It generates opinion, which is a knowledge of the particular; it is incapable of being taken as a basis of science, which must transcend the particular and is founded on the necessary and absolute.

Intellective cognition, on the other hand, is real knowledge and forms the basis of science. As we have said, the one is inderivable from the other. Thus sensitive cognition, containing the image (though faded) of the invisible world, offers to the intellective soul the occasion of awakening again in itself knowledge of the Ideas which it already had in the suprasensitive world. The soul, in the presence of the image offered by the senses, acts like a slave who, bound to the door of a cave, recognizes from the shadow projected on the cave's depths whose image the shadow may be. ("The Myth of the Cave," Republic, VII, 1-3.) Intellective cognition for Plato is not the acquisition of new content, but the reawakening of a knowledge already possessed: it is nothing other than reminiscence.

Ethics

The ethics of Plato is an application in practice of the principles which had been reached in the metaphysical field. We know that the soul, which was happy in the contemplation of the ideal world, now finds itself imprisoned in the body and impelled by the pleasures of sense. To give in to these impulses would mean to strengthen yet more the bonds with matter and to render oneself ever more distant from true happiness, which is in the world of Ideas.

Reason wills, therefore, that the soul overcome the obstacles which render it unworthy of participating again in the ideal world and living according to reason. The soul can be compared to the driver of a chariot drawn by two horses, one fast and the other slow: it is the duty of the driver to restrain the first and to urge on the second. These two horses are the two aspects of the irrational soul, the irascible and concupiscible. The driver, the rational soul, must restrain the first from its inconsiderate impulses, and must incite the second to good whenever it stops before the pleasures of sense.

Mastery over irascible and concupiscible impulses gives origin to two virtues, fortitude and temperance. One who is strong tempers the impulses of anger and eager enthusiasm; he who is temperate moderates the pleasures of the senses by bringing them under the dominion of reason. The actuation of fortitude and temperance is not possible without a third virtue, namely, justice. Justice is fundamental in Plato's philosophy in so far as, granted the destiny of the soul, justice wills that during the course of earthly life the rational soul must live by dominating the two aspects of the irrational soul without being overcome by them. All three of the virtues mentioned, justice, fortitude and temperance, have their origin in a fourth, wisdom, the contemplation of the truth of the ideal world, which is in itself virtue and happiness.

This wisdom which is now found sleeping in the soul must be aroused through the images of it which are found in sensible things, and from sensible things it must arise to the invisible and supreme beauty, which is nether born nor dies. (Symposium.) In so far as we draw near to the contemplation of this supreme beauty, by so much are we separated from the illusory life. Hence Plato calls philosophy "the contemplation of death."

Regarding the destiny of souls after death, Plato is dependent not only on his philosophy but also on the Orphic-Dionysian mysteries. In general he distinguishes three classes of souls:

Those that have committed inexpiable sins, and hence are condemned forever;

Those that have committed expiable sins;

Those living according to justice.

Souls in the last two categories are reborn and reincarnated in order to receive their due punishment or reward. According to Phaedo, a fourth class of souls must be added, that of the philosophers, seers of the idea, who are free forever from the temporal life.

Politics

The politics of Plato are the rigid application of all that he had already recognized as true in metaphysics and ethics. He does not regard the empirical reality which surrounds him, the various constitutions of Grecian cities, but has in view the ideal world which is the norm of the true and the good and hence of every virtue. He traces the lines of a republic in which men must be organized in such a way that they may realize to the maximum extent that which it is given them to know of the ideal world. And animated by the conviction that material reality must be sacrificed to the ideal, Plato is not brought to a stop even by those consequences which at first sight seem paradoxes, such as the partial abolition of property and of the family.

Although Plato treats of state organization in Politics and in Laws, his fundamental treatise is the ten books of the Republic. His thought can be summarized as follows:

First of all Plato finds that the necessity for society and the state resides in human nature itself. No one is sufficient in himself; everyone needs the aid of others in order to live a life worthy of man. Hence man must live with others in society in order to make use of them both materially and morally.

From the moment society arises out of the necessity of meeting the needs of man, the members which make up society must be organized into different classes according to the diversity of works to be be performed. Led by the theory that in man there are two different souls, one of which has two aspects, Plato establishes the teaching that in society also there must be three different organizations or classes: philosophers, warriors, and producers, corresponding to the rational soul and the two aspects of the irrational soul (the irascible and the concupiscible).

Each of these classes has its special work to fulfill:

The philosophers must direct the state;

The warriors must defend the state;

The producers (subdivided into various groups of arts and skills) must attend to the material production of those things that are needed by the state.

Thus Plato's state is eminently aristocratic. Its direction is confided to a few philosophers who, granted the Platonic identification of wisdom and virtue, are also the best and hence are worthy of directing all the others.

The philosophers, who live in the contemplation of the ideal world, are, in the state, the representatives of wisdom, which is the fundamental virtue, as we have seen. The philosophers, because they are wise, also know the essence of the state and can show the other two classes the way that must be followed in order to attain the end of the state. They must restrain the warriors from their irrational impulses, and thus there arises rational fortitude; they must restrain the passions and greed of the producers; this restraint gives rise to the virtue of temperance. Thus is attained the virtue of justice, which we know to be, after wisdom, the fundamental virtue of human life.

The state must also take care of education in order to procure new leaders. Practically speaking, education is restricted to the warrior class, from which the (philosophers) were elected to the head of the state. The producers' class is not considered because of the Greek prejudice against manual labor. Education comprises music and gymnastics, the first to render the spirit amiable; music includes not only music properly speaking, but also poetry, history, and so forth -- all the activities presided over by the Muses. Hence the name "music." Gymnastics serves to render the body shapely and strong, and must be subordinated to music because physical development, if not regulated by the mind, produces unmannerly and materialistic people. Hence Plato has a certain aversion to physical exercise.

The state thus thought out by Plato is an ethico-religious organism which must care for the material good of the citizens and above all lead them to the attainment of the ideal of virtue. The citizens of Plato's state must concern themselves with living in accord with the transcendent world and not give in to the inclinations of sense and passion. The great personage is not the one who does great things, but the one who knows how to live wisely.

Plato is ready to sacrifice everything. Thus he denied the family and the right of private property to the philosopher and warrior classes. He understood that attachment to one's own family and greed for material goods could be grave impediments preventing these two classes from fulfilling their duty, in view of the fact that the latter have to defend the state even at the cost of their lives and the former have to live completely in the contemplation of virtue. In Plato private property and the family find place only in the class called producers.

To see Plato as the precursor of present-day Socialism and Communism is to misconstrue his entire ethical teaching. He denied the family and the right to property to two classes in the state because these classes must be completely freed from the shackles of material goods and intent on attaining a grade of spiritualization. On the contrary, Socialism and Communism of the present day deny private property and would abolish the institution of the family for a thoroughly materialistic purpose, that is, to make possible greater material prosperity.

Art

In Book X of the Republic, Plato strives to prove that art is a secondhand imitation (a shadow of a shadow) of being and of good, but that only the wise (the philosophers) have a knowledge of these. He concludes that, with the exception of lyric poetry in honor of the gods and heroes, art has no place in the well-organized state. Art, according to Plato, is a copy of empirical reality. A bed which the artist reproduces upon canvas is only a copy of a bed which he finds in the multiplicity of nature, and this in turn is a copy of a bed in se which exists in the world of Ideas.

Poetry, both because of its unrealistic content (Homer represents Zeus as a bird, and the souls of the deceased as a swarm of bees), and because of its end, which is to excite the passions that have their seat in the concupiscible soul, is an imitation which is far from the true and the good; hence poetry must be banished from a well-organized city, where men must live in such a way as to ascend to the ideal world.

It is the usual preoccupation with morals which induces Plato to condemn art in so far as he sees in it the danger of corruption rather than a means of elevation. But as an artist-philosopher, Plato could understand that art is not a simple imitation, a reproducing of empirical reality. In the Symposium he affirms that art is a mania, a divine madness which places the artist above the common run of man, and he concludes that a person who does not have this divine influence knocks in vain at the door of art.

Religion

In the Republic, Plato compares the Idea of the Good to the sun, as the supreme cause of all knowledge and existence. As the multiplicity of individuals is unified in the respective Ideas, in the same manner the multiplicity of Ideas is unified in the Idea of the Good. Hence in the Platonic system the Idea of the Good is the supreme reality on which all other ideas and all ethical, logical and aesthetic values of the sensible world depend. The Idea of the Good is the reality through which the world of becoming is made possible and rational. Thus it is truly the god of Plato.

But the Idea of the Good has neither personality nor the power of creating. According to Plato, Demiurge is the divine artificer which forms the heavens and the earth by successive infusions of souls. Demiurge, however, cannot be identified with God, for if he is superior to matter, he is inferior to ideas, which furnish the model he uses to arrange matter and transform Chaos in the visible world.

Since God is identified with the impersonal Idea of the Good, which lacks any activity with reference to nature and man. He can be attained only by reason, and the cult of reason is due Him.

Regarding popular religion, Plato is opposed to anthropomorphism. So greatly is he opposed to it that, as we have seen, he wished to banish the poets, not excepting Homer, from the ideal state on account of the fantastic and immoral myths with which they represent the gods. He is not opposed, however, to a form of astral polytheism in which a multitude of gods subject to Demiurge animates the stars and the cosmic universe. These are the visible gods which Plato wishes to substitute for rough and uncouth Grecian mythology.

Insufficiencies of Plato's System

The problem which most troubled the mind of Plato was that which had already been posed by the Pre-Socratics: the being of Parmenides and the becoming of Heraclitus. Plato attempted a reconciliation of these by introducing the world of Ideas, which should have given a rational explanation of both systems of thought.

The being of Parmenides would be the ideal world, intelligible, the supreme Good. But differing from Parmenides, who held this being to be one, solid, and massive, Plato breaks it up, we might say, into the multiplicity of Ideas, whose unity lies in their relation to the supreme Good.

Now along with this logico-metaphysical being, Plato advances another, non-being, which is co-eternal with Ideas. This is a metaphysical dualism such as is found in all Greek philosophers in the absence of a concept of creation. According to Plato, Demiurge should be the artificer which is able to find the answer to Heraclitus' problem of becoming. Plato places Demiurge before matter (non-being, opposing the intelligible, the necessary), in order that the descent of Ideas might be effected. The intelligible, through the operation of Demiurge, is imposed upon non-being. However, the non-being, the origin of evil, is never completely overcome by the intelligible. The metaphysics of Plato is essentially dualistic: the good (Ideas), and the evil (non-being). Plato unsuccessfully attempts to explain the becoming of Heraclitus by a penetration of the irrational by the rational, of matter by the intelligible.

From this dualism it follows that evil is a metaphysical and insuppressible necessity. Cosmic reality is a struggle between good and evil, between Demiurge and non-being. In the face of the impenetrability of non-being, Demiurge must be declared impotent.

Certainly no one has felt more than Plato the religious significance of the world and of life. However, a false notion of non-being, uncreated and co-eternal, the origin of evil, has impeded the philosopher from attaining a completely rational and religious vision of man and of nature. Plotinus was to attempt to overcome this difficulty, which would finally be answered in St. Augustine.

The Academy

The Academy, the philosophic school founded by Plato, lasted about a thousand years after him -- until the sixth century after Christ. It is usually divided into three periods:

The Ancient Academy occupies the century immediately after the death of the master. It numbered among its members men of outstanding influence and doctrine, such as Speusippus and Arcesilaus.

The Middle Academy is predominantly Skeptic. Carneades (214-129 B.C.E.) is the predominant representative of this tendency. He denied the possibility, in the speculative field, of attainting truth; and in the practical order he defended the sufficiency of probabilism.

The New Academy, which endured until the beginning of the era of dissolution of Grecian culture, returned to the ancient dogmatism, with particular sympathy for Eclecticism and Pythagoreanism.

But the Academy survived also these tendencies of the New Academy, and assumed its ultimate form in Neo-Platonism, which represents the last grandiose effort of Greek thought to solve the philosophical problem, by developing dualism into emanative pantheism.