CLASSICAL WESTERN PHILOSOPHY

Transcription

1 CLASSICAL WESTERN PHILOSOPHY BA PHILOSOPHY V SEMESTER CORE COURSE (2011 Admission) UNIVERSITY OF CALICUT SCHOOL OF DISTANCE EDUCATION Calicut university P.O, Malappuram Kerala, India

2 UNIVERSITY OF CALICUT SCHOOL OF DISTANCE EDUCATION STUDY MATERIAL Core Course BA PHILOSOPHY V Semester CLASSICAL WESTERN PHILOSOPHY Prepared by: Dr.Babu M N, Asst. Professor, Dept of Philosophy, S S U S Kalady, Scrutinized by: Dr.V.Prabhakaran (Co-ordinator), Sree Visakh, Thekkegramam Road, Sastha Nagar, Chittur, Palakkad, PIN Layout: Computer Section, SDE Reserved Classical Western Philosophy Page 2

3 CONTENTS Page No. UNIT 1 GREEK PHILOSOPHY 5 UNIT 2 AGE OF GREAT SYSTEMS 12 UNIT 3 MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY 21 Classical Western Philosophy Page 3

4 UNIT 1 GREEK PHILOSOPHY The earliest Western philosophers were Greeks. They spoke dialects of the Greek language. They were familiar with the Greek poems of Homer and Hesiod, and worshiped Greek Gods like Zeus, Apollo, and Aphrodite. They lived not on the mainland of Greece, but in outlying centers of Greek culture, on the southern coasts of Italy or on the western coast of what is now Turkey. They flourished in the sixth-century B.C, the century which began with the deportation of the Jews to Babylon. These early philosophers were also early scientists, and several of them were also religious leaders. In the beginning wisdom covered all branches of human knowledge and there was no distinction between philosophy and science, between theoretical sciences and practical sciences, between human science and natural sciences. The earliest thinkers in the Western philosophy were the pre-socratic philosophers and they lived before Socrates ( B.C.). These pioneering thinkers posed several questions and they wanted to know what holds everything together so that Earth and everything in it does not fly apart. The Pre-Socratic philosopher s central concerns were what is the nature of ultimate reality or the world?. What is the is relationship between the one and many? What is the nature of change? How did the universe begin?. The Pre- Socratic thinkers rejected mythology and poetry of Homer (the famous Greek poet Homer, author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, put many myths into writing) and Hesiod (a Greek poet who lived about 700 B.C.,). They avoided the pseudo-science of divination, where one tries to know the minds of gods. The early philosophers used reason, logic, evidence, argument, and sense experience. The pre-socratics questioned Homer s poetic accounts of the gods. They also questioned Hesiod s contention that heaven and Earth consisted of a god and goddess locked in an embrace until their son forced them apart Pre-Socratic philosophy and the philosophy of nature The pre-socratics are of much importance to the development of philosophic thinking not only when considered as the forerunners of the goldern era of Greek philosophy. Their central problem was the material universe,the nature/physis. They understood nature to be the sum total of all existing things with a principle/arch. The aim of the first philosophers was to find natural, or scientific, explanations instead of supernatural, or divine, explanations for the world and its processes. The original Western philosophers lived in Miletus, a Greek town in Ionia located Athens, Greece, in 600 B.C. The Milesian philosophers were known as natural philosophers Classical Western Philosophy Page 4

5 because their aim was to find natural instead of supernatural explanations for the world and the way it works. They were also known as the first materialists. They wanted to find out if there was a source from which all things came and to which all things returned. The Milesians wanted to understand the laws of nature. These pre-socratic philosophers discovered that change is possible only if there is some permanent source or substance that causes the world to exist. Without this permanent substance, each change would completely replace another, and nothing could be held together. These natural philosophers wanted to understand change and permanence by studying nature itself, not by reading or listening to stories about the gods. They speculated that all things arise from the same substance, take different forms at different times, and then return again to the same substance. This pre-socratic reasoning shows a major shift from the mythical explanation for the origins of the cosmos. Only fragments of what these natural philosophers said and wrote have survived. In fact, most of our information about the pre-socratics comes from the writings of Aristotle, who lived two centuries later. According to him, the first philosopher in the Western world was Thales. Thales ( B.C.) Thales is known as the father of Western philosophy. Thales of Miletus was the first known Greek philosopher, scientist and mathematician. Thales was the first to ask the questions, out of what substance is the world made? And, is there anything permanent that underlies all change? He said that water is the basic substance of everything in nature. All things have moisture, so water also must be the permanent substance that holds everything together. Thales says that life originated from water and life returned to water again, just as water turns to ice or vapor and then turns back into water again. Thales attempted to find naturalistic explanations of the world, without reference to the supernatural. He explained earthquakes by imagining that the Earth floats on water and those earthquakes occur when the Earth is rocked by waves. Herodotus cites him as having predicted the solar eclipse of 585 BC. Thales had a profound influence on other Greek thinkers. He is unanimously ascribed to have introduced the mathematical and astronomical sciences into Greece. He is unanimously regarded as unusually clever and first of the Seven Wise Men.He is also said to have used his knowledge of geometry to measure the Egyptian pyramids. He brought this knowledge back from his studies in Egypt. Thales believed that the Earth is a flat disk that floats on an endless expanse of water and all things come to be from water. This comes to us from Aristotle who suggested that Thales was the first to suggest a single material substratum for the universe. This is the first recorded monism, or monistic cosmology in history. Thales is also said to have discovered a method of measuring the distance to a ship at sea. Classical Western Philosophy Page 5

6 Anaximander ( B C.) Anaximander is the second of the physical philosophers of Ionia, belonged like his predecessor Thales, to the city of Miletus, agreed with his teacher that there is some permanent substance that underlies all change, but he disagreed that this substance was water. Anaximander said that the boundless (apeiron) was a basic principle of the world, the parts of which may be changing but itself as a whole remaining the same, eternally. This the boundless he gave no element or other significant character, instead clearly stating it to be something else. Anaximander said that unlimited boundless is defined as eternal motion. The motion is not created by anything. Because of its eternal motion, water and other elements in the boundless separate and come into existence. For example, hot and cold separated and became moisture. From moisture came air and then earth. The boundless, Anaximander argued, produces everything. Anaximander was the first Western philosopher to propose the idea of evolution. Although the word evolution had yet to be invented, he reasoned that humans developed from fish. Man himself and the animals had come into being by like transmutations. Mankind was supposed by Anaximander to have sprung from some other species of animals, probably aquatic. The sea Anaximander regarded as remaining first moisture, not dried up by the fire of the world formation. He seemed to believe that the sun continues to dry up the seas, so that in the future the earth will be barren. The primeval moisture also figures in his view that animals at first arose from moisture, later to move toward drier land, changing shape in the process - as did man. In the beginning man was similar to a different animal, namely, a fish. Anaximenes ( B.C.) Anaximenes is the third and last well-known philosopher from the Milesian school. He thought the substance that holds everything together was not water or the boundless, but air. He said that air is everywhere, and it is a tangible material substance. He believed that. As a mathematician, he reasoned that water is condensed air, earth is condensed water, and fire is rarefied air. Thus, air is the origin of earth, water, and fire, and air holds everything together. The Milesian philosophers were the first to raise the question about the ultimate nature of things. Considered the first scientists as well as the first philosophers, they believed that a single basic substance is the source of all things. Because they identified this single substance as water, the boundless, and air, we call their philosophy monistic materialism, or theories about the universe based on one material. As natural philosophers, the Milesians were interested in the physical world. They did not inquire into the nature of human knowledge, nor did they ask about the relation between spirit and body. They did not follow traditional Greek religious rituals. Classical Western Philosophy Page 6

7 Pythagoras ( B.C.) Pythagoras was the first pre-socratic philosopher and gives mathematical structure of the universe. He was born the island of Samos in the Aegean Sea just off the coast of Miletus. He was unhappy with the tyrannical rulers and moved to southern Italy. There he founded a society that combined science, religion, music, and mathematics into a philosophy that went beyond the naturalistic outlook of the Milesians. Pythagoras was the first to distinguish triangular numbers, square numbers, rectangular numbers, and spherical numbers as odd and even. Pythagoras also explained opposites such as one and many, straight and curved, rest and motion, and light and dark. He also discovered a critical geometrical formula called the Pythagorean Theorem. It states that in a right triangle, the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the squares of the other two sides. Pythagoras said that things are number. He combined mathematics and music. Pythagoras also believed that music is food for the soul. Music is the best medicine to help the diseased person regain harmony. According to Pythagoras, people tend to fall into three classes: (1) lovers of gain; (2) lovers of honor and (3) lovers of knowledge or wisdom. Pythagoras compared these types of people with those who attended the ancient Olympic Games. The lovers of gain are people who set up booths to sell souvenirs and make money. The lovers of honor are the athletes who compete in the games for honor and fame. The lovers of knowledge are the spectators who show little interest in either money or fame. The third class of people consists of philosophers who seek knowledge through music and mathematics to help purify and develop harmony of the soul. Three interests can be attributed to Pythagoras himself, and these were important in early philosophy. The first is in the development of mathematics. The details of the famous Pythagorean proof that the square on the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares on the adjacent sides is probably later from the mathematician Euclid. But the principle was known, and led to the discovery of irrational numbers. This created difficulties for arithmetic, and resulted in more attention being given to geometry (the study of plane fi gures), stereometry (the study of solid figures) and astronomy (the study of bodies in movement). The second interest was in music and harmonic theory. When it was discovered that something as beautiful and abstract as a melody depended on the exact mathematical ratios of the lengths of vibrating strings on the lyre, it was suggested that the planets, moving at proportionate speeds, might also produce different notes of the octave as they circled the heavens, resulting in the harmony of the spheres. And, if mathematical ratios were essential in these different contexts, perhaps the principle should be extended, and everything might have a numerical basis. The third interest was in the soul in two particular contexts: it was thought that music Classical Western Philosophy Page 7

8 could be used as therapy to calm souls in an emotional state and so bring individuals into harmony with their surroundings, and the idea of transmigration of the soul on the death of one body to another of the same or a different species was adopted. The evidence for this is from Pythagoras' near contemporary, Xenophanes of Colophon. Anaxagoras ( B.C.) Anaxagoras was born in Clazomenae, Ionia,on the coast of Asia Minor. He was the first philosopher to make a distinction between mind, or nous/intellect, and matter. Anaxagoras agreed with Empedocles that everything is a mixture of earth, air, fire, and water, but he rejected love and strife as the forces that combine and separate things. Furthermore, he did not agree with the Milesians that one single substance could be the basic substance made into everything we see in nature. Anaxagoras believed there are an infinite number of tiny, invisible particles that are the building blocks of nature. He called these extremely small particles that carry the blueprint of everything else seeds. For Anaxagoras, the mind, or intelligence, produces the orderly structure of the world. Love and strife do not combine or separate things in an orderly pattern. It is the nous/intellect that allows for the structure of the world. And nous had power over the whole revolution, so that it began to revolve in the beginning. Mind animates everything in nature and is present in all living things i.e., the sun, stars, earth, plants, and humans. Mind does not create matter because matter is eternal. Yet, Mind does bring order to matter, because mind has all knowledge about everything. Anaxagoras claimed that mind is the finest of all things and the purest. By distinguishing Mind from matter, he did not necessarily separating mind from matter. Anaxagoras said that the sun is not a god. But a red-hot stone, bigger than Greece s Peloponnesian peninsula. Studies on astronomy, he found that all heavenly bodies are made of the same materials as earth and that the Moon produces no light of its own.its light comes from earth. These statements of Anaxagoras upset the Athenians that they accused him of being an atheist and forced him to leave the city. He sailed across the Aegean Sea to the city of Lampsacus where he became a schoolteacher. For centuries after his death, Lampsacus celebrated his birthday as a school holiday. The Atomists: Leucippus and Democritus They are contemporary with Socrates. The atomists belong here with the Pre- Socratic group because they produced a physical theory that brought to a natural end the investigation of the composition and structure of the cosmos initiated by the Milesians. Probably Leucippus initiated the theory, using a rather exotic vocabulary, and further details and supporting arguments were provided by Democritus, but the two are usually Classical Western Philosophy Page 8

9 taken together and referred to as the (early) atomists. They were both from Abdera, on the north-east coast of Greece; Democritus later visited Athens and perhaps settled there, where he was disappointed to find that no one had heard of him. Like Empedocles and Anaxagoras, the atomists accepted the Eleatic denial of absolute generation and destruction. Pluralism has to be understood in the strict sense that, since many cannot come from one, the many things always exist, and these were called atoms. Such atoms were described as solid, eternal, immutable minimal units, too small to be seen, of different shapes and sizes but having no qualitative differences,. To be able to move and initiate change they require room for movement. Leucippus and Democritus supposed that the present world order arose as a result of a rotation of a group of atoms in the void, and there was a consequent sifting of the heavier atom clusters to the centre of the grouping and the lighter outwards, with the whole held together Leucippus is considered as the founder of the atomistic school. Democritus is believed to be a disciple of Leucippus. The atomists are the last pre-socratics who gave their answers to Thales s question of fundamental principle of the universe. These philosophers formulated a theory about the nature of things that has a similarity to some of today s scientific views. The atomists agreed with their predecessors that there must be something permanent in nature, something that underlies all change and holds everything together. Atoms The atomists say that all things consist of a single kind of matter broken into diverse combination. Atom means uncuttable and indivisible parts which cannot be broken down further. They claimed that atoms are principles of all things. Atoms are alike in quality, differing only in size, shape and weight. Each atom is endowed with movement. All bodies are formed by the union of atoms and are destroyed by the separation of atoms. Democritus believed that our thoughts also result from atoms. In other words, when you see a monkey, it is because monkey atoms enter your eyes. Monkey atoms make an impact upon your soul atoms, and a thought is born. For Democritus, the soul is made up of round, smooth soul atoms. At death, the soul atoms will scatter and could, like body atoms, become part of a new soul formation. This idea suggests there is no personal, immortal soul. For Democritus, the soul, including thought, connects to the brain. Once the brain dies, we cannot have any form of consciousness The sophistic Philosophy The Sophists were skeptical of the pre-socratic findings of universal substance. They questioned the ability to know the truth about things such as substance, permanence, and change. As part of the findings Thales said the basic substance was Classical Western Philosophy Page 9

10 water, Anaximander said it was the boundless, Anaximenes said air, Pythagoras said number, Heraclitus said fire, Parmenides and Zeno said Being, Empedocles said the four root elements, Anaxagoras said mind, and the atomists said atoms. Consequently, the Sophists turned their attention away from physical elements of nature to the human side of life. Socrates was a student of the Sophists. But he never agreed with their skepticism. Socrates believed the human soul has the capacity to know eternal, unchanging elements such as truth, beauty, and goodness. Socrates believed that to gain knowledge of these things is the most important goal of our lives. For Socrates, the unexamined life is not worth living. The term Sophists from a Greek word that means wise/learned, and they made their living charging fees for teaching. The most outstanding Sophists in Athens were Protagoras and Gorgias. These thinkers believed that absolutes such as Truth, Beauty, and Goodness do not exist in this world. Because right and wrong are relative to a culture. They claimed that they are able to instruct on philosophy, political administration, speech making, law and other such theoretical and practical science. But in 5 th century B.C., a different kind of Sophists appeared in Greece. They were notorious for their clever and crooked arguments. They claimed to teach people art of successes in life. Protagoras ( B.C.) Protagoras, native of Abdera in northeast Greece, was the most famous and probably also the first of the professional Sophists (educators who taught the art of clever speaking). Well known in Athens, he was asked by Pericles to draft a constitution for the new colony of Thurii. Protagoras wrote two books, Truth and On the Gods. He is discussed extensively in Plato s Protagoras and Theaetetus and in Aristotle s Metaphysics. It is difficult to determine definitively the authentic details of Protagoras's own thought. The Sophists in general are important to the history of philosophy because they are reasonably considered to be, along with Socrates, the founders of systematic moral philosophy. While many pre-socratics as well as epic and lyric poets make ethical claims, before the Sophists there are not explicit ethical positions delineated and defended in a systematic way. The dialogue by Plato states that Protagoras himself seems to have claimed not only to teach rhetoric, but also to teach excellence ( arete) itself. In the fifth century, the question of whether excellence is teachable was hotly debated. Traditionally, excellence was thought to be conferred by some combination of one's birth and resulting social status, nature, and divine grace. Protagoras, in claiming to be an expert who possessed the skill or craft (techne) of virtue, advocated the democratic-sounding idea that excellence was teachable (the sophists taught only the sons of the wealthy who could afford to pay their fees). Classical Western Philosophy Page 10

11 The most famous Sophist Protagoras stated that man is the measure of all things. The principle means that each man s experience is a criterion of what is true for himself. He rejected everything the pre-socratic philosophers thought was true. He denied any ultimate principle or truth that we can know. For Protagoras, truth is relative. According to Protagoras, all opinions would be equally true and therefore worthy of equal respect. It follows that knowledge is relative to the one who knows knowledge is nothing but a mere adjustment between the knower and the object known. Protagorean relativism held for epistemology and ontology in addition to ethics. Relativism maintains that there is no truth, but that truth really is as it appears to each person. Democritus holds that the perception of what we would call secondary qualities is mere convention, he still maintains the existence of an objective nature, namely atoms and void. By contrast, relativism appears to deny the existence of any objective nature whatsoever. Locke and other moderns, more in line with Democritus, would argue that the same water's appearing hot to A and cold to B is evidence that heat and coldness are not properties of the object itself. Protagorean relativism insists that the water really is hot for A and really is cold for B. This perhaps explains why, in Plato's and Aristotle's discussions, PR is conjoined with an ontological theory of Heracleitean flux, which maintains that the object is actually changing its properties in accord with the truth in each person's perception; but there is no independent evidence that Protagoras himself elaborated his views in this way. The Theaetetus also poses the famous objection against Protagorean relativism that if it applies to all things then it applies to relativism of Protagoras itself and so it is true only for those who believe it is. Protagoras was also apparently an agnostic about the existence of the gods. Classical Western Philosophy Page 11

12 UNIT II AGE OF GREAT SYSTEMS Socrates ( B.C.) Socrates mentor of Plato and founder of moral philosophy, was the son of Sophroniscus and Phaenarete (a midwife). According to a late doxographical tradition, he followed for a time in his father s footsteps a claim regarded as apocryphal by most scholars. He also describes himself as an intellectual midwife who, although himself barren, delivers young men of ideas with which they are pregnant. It is generally believed to be Plato's middle-period description of Socrates rather than Socrates description of himself. Socrates was uncommonly ugly, flat-nosed with protruding eyes, thick and lips. He dined simply, bathed infrequently, always wore the same clothes, and went about barefoot even in the dead of winter. Possessed of remarkable powers of endurance, he could go without sleep for days. He was intimately acquainted with Athenian intellectual and cultural life, he was mightily unimpressed with both. He had little interest in the philosophical ideas of his predecessors. He disputed the alleged wisdom and moral authority of the poets. He expressed deep misgivings about the truth of Homeric theology. He lamented the lack of virtue in public and private life, and he had a low opinion of the Sophists who professed to teach it. He had an even lower opinion of the politicians, whom he denounced as panderers to public taste more interested in beautifying the city than in improving the citizenry. Socrates had initially tried to refute the oracle by interrogating numerous people with a reputation for wisdom including the politicians, the poets, and the craftsmen in hopes of finding someone wiser than himself. But he had failed. This disappointing venture had convinced him that the god was right: no one is wiser than Socrates. He concluded that he had been given a divine mission to spend his life philosophizing, examining himself and others, convicting them of moral ignorance, and persuading them that they are in the same deplorable epistemic condition as he. At the age of seventy, he was accused of not believing in the gods of the city, of introducing new gods, and of corrupting the youth. Found guilty, he was sentenced to death by hemlock. Having declined the chance to escape from prison, he was executed in 399. Since Socrates wrote nothing, our knowledge of him is based wholly on the testimony of others such as Aristophanes, Xenophon, and Plato. Classical Western Philosophy Page 12

13 Theory of Knowledge and Ethics Aristotle in his Metaphysics says that there are two things may be fairly ascribed to Socrates- inductive arguments and universal definitions. By inductive arguments it does not mean that Socrates was occupying with problem of logic, but Socratic Method of question and answer. Socratic Method includes two processes, called ironic and maieutic (one who act like a midwife). In the ironic stage Socrates attempted to make the people to realize their own ignorance. He believed that the worst evil of man is the ignorance of his own ignorance. The first step to be wise is to admit that on is not wise. The admission of ignorance demands a rigorous self examination. Pretending himself to be ignorant, he asks questions and from the answers he draws material for further questions until one comes to the realization of one s own ignorance of real nature of things. This Socratic irony is the way for drawing the truth out of the mind of the listeners. The second stage is called midwifery/ maieutic method is the art of delivering truth. Socrates stated that conversations and arguments help to discover the universal ideas lying hidden in the human mind. Socrates was influenced by his parent s profession of midwifery. He does this all by going to the streets and market places asking questions to the cobblers, works, leaders, the young and old by asking questions. Socrates did not believe we are born with blank minds that our teachers, parents, and peers fill with information. He believed souls have the hidden knowledge of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. Just as a midwife aids a pregnant mother in giving birth, Socrates helped pregnant souls give birth to the knowledge hidden within them. Socrates ethics is just the opposite of Sophists dictum that man is the measure of all things. The core of Socratic ethics is the concept of virtue. According to Socrates knowledge is virtue and ignorance is vice. He again says that as virtue is knowledge, virtue can be taught and virtue is one. Knowledge and virtue are one in the sense that the wise man who knows what is right and will always do what is right. In other words no one does evil knowingly. Socrates appearance on the fifth-century Athenian scene marked a radical turning point in the development of Greek philosophy. According to Aristotle(Metaphysics), Socrates searched for general and universal definitions of ethical terms. He asked questions such as what is piety? ( Euthyphro), what is temperance? ( Charmides), what is courage? (Laches). He objected to elucidating moral concepts by appeal to particular cases or commonly held opinions and insisted on exact definitions. According to him, any adequate definition of piety must state the common character ( eidos) possessed by all pious actions by which they are pious. The same is true of all the other virtues. Insofar as such a definition constitutes the necessary and sufficient conditions governing the application of the term under investigation. Only such definitions enable their possessor Classical Western Philosophy Page 13

14 to escape from the epistemically unstable and morally precarious state of mind called belief or opinion ( doxa) and to attain knowledge ( episteme). Aristotle adds that, unlike Plato, Socrates did not ascribe separate existence to these universals a remark which has prompted many scholars to conclude that the historical Socrates did not subscribe to the full-blown Theory of Forms set forth in the Phaedo and the middle books of the Republic. Plato's early dialogues reflect the Socratic conception of philosophy as a collaborative enterprise a joint search for moral truth. Socrates has no system. On the contrary, he disavows all knowledge. Yet although devoid of wisdom, he is a lover of it a searcher in search not only of truth, but also of other searchers. Unlike other philosophers who employ the dialogue form, Socrates does not refute his interlocutors' false beliefs in hopes of replacing them with true ones, but in hopes of replacing them with a desire for true ones. His primary task is to convict his interlocutors of moral ignorance and thereby render them fit dialectical partners. The proximate end of philosophizing is not the discovery of truth, but the realization that one does not have it. As a lover of wisdom, Socrates is distinguished from all who claim to be wise. Philosophy is search. According to Socrates, this is not only the best life, it is the only life. The unexamined life is not worth living ( Apology). It is in living the examined life, rather than in enjoying the epistemic benefits which result from living it, that the highest human happiness is to be found. The activity of philosophizing is not a means to happiness, understood as an end distinct from philosophizing and contingently connected to it as a causal consequence. Socrates would be complete without a brief discussion of his views. They are (1) the soul is more important than the body. By the soul, Socrates does not mean some metaphysical entity distinct from the body and capable of existing independently of it. The soul is that in us, whatever it is, which is concerned with justice and injustice, it is our most priceless possession and its care our most important task. (2) One ought never to requite evil with evil. Since the soul is benefited by acting justly and harmed by acting unjustly one ought never to act unjustly not even if one has been treated unjustly oneself(3) It is better to suffer than to commit injustice. Since acting unjustly harms the soul of the wrongdoer, thereby damaging that in him which is concerned with justice and injustice, it is psychologically and morally preferable to endure any amount of unjust treatment than to be unjust oneself. (4) No one does wrong knowingly. (5) The doctrine of the unity of the virtues. Socrates believed that the virtues constitute a unity not in the sense that each is identical with the others, but in the sense that they are inter-entailing in such a way that one cannot have any single virtue without having all the others, e.g. one cannot be courageous without being wise. Classical Western Philosophy Page 14

15 Plato ( B.C) Plato, Greek philosopher, one of the most creative and influential thinkers in Western philosophy was born at Athens in an aristocratic family. His father, Ariston, was believed to have descended from the early kings of Athens. Perictione, his mother, was distantly related to the 6th-centuryB.C., lawmaker Solon. When Plato was a child, his father died, and his mother married Pyrilampes, who was an associate of the statesman Pericles. He is one of the greatest philosophers of all times. Plato was the pupil of Socrates. Plato became committed to philosophy as a result of the execution of Socrates. In 387 Plato founded the Academy in Athens, the institution often described as the first European university. It provided a comprehensive curriculum. Besides philosophy the studies extended over a wide range of subjects like astronomy, biology, mathematics, political theory, and philosophy. Aristotle was the Academy's most prominent student. Plato's writings were in dialogue form; philosophical ideas were advanced, discussed, and criticized in the context of a conversation involving two or more persons. Dialectic Dialectic is introduced in the Republic as having a special bearing on first principles a feature it continues to possess in Aristotle particularly on those of the mathematical sciences. The importance of these sciences in Plato's thought is twofold. First, they provided a compelling example of a rich body of precise knowledge organized into a deductive system of axioms, definitions, and theorems a model of what philosophy itself might be. Second, the brilliant mathematical treatment of harmony developed by Pythagoras of Samos and his followers. The problem Plato found with mathematical science lay in its first principles. Scientists treat these as absolute starting points, and either provide conceptually inadequate accounts or definitions of them or simply leave them undefined. Yet if they are false, the entire system collapses. It is here that dialectic comes in. Dialectic defends these starting points it renders them unhypothetical not by deriving them from something yet more primitive In the process, they undergo conceptual revamping, so that their consistency with one another. This enables the dialectician to knit them all together into a single unified theory of everything and so to see things as a whole. It is this unified, holistic theory, and not recollection, that is now supposed to provide the philosopher with genuine knowledge. The earliest collection of Plato's work includes 35 dialogues and 13 letters. The authenticity of a few of the dialogues and most of the letters has been disputed. The dialogues may be divided into early, middle, and later periods of composition. The earliest represent Plato's attempt to communicate the philosophy and dialectical style of Socrates. In the earliest period the dialogues are Charmides (on temperance), Lysis (on friendship), Protagoras (virtue is knowledge and can be taught), Euthyphro (on piety), and Book I of the Republic (on justice).the dialogues of the middle and later periods of Plato's Classical Western Philosophy Page 15

16 life reflect his own philosophical development. The ideas in these works are attributed by most scholars to Plato himself, although Socrates continues to be the main figure. The works of the middle period include Gorgias (ethical questions), Meno (nature of knowledge), the Apology (Socrates' defense of himself at his trial against the charges of atheism and corrupting Athenian youth), Crito (Socrates' defense of obedience to the laws of the state), Phaedo (discusses the theory of Forms, the soul, and immortality), the Symposium (on beauty and love), the Republic (the nature of justice).the works of the later period include the Theaetetus (denial of knowledge with sense perception), Parmenides (a critical evaluation of the theory of Forms), Sophist (theory of Ideas/Forms) and the Laws (analysis of political and social issues). Theory of knowledge:- Theory of Ideas Socrates has developed a definite intellectual attitude through his maieutic method. Plato has transformed this method into a dialectic one and he saw the contrast between the phenomenon and its true reality. Dialectical method as a philosophical method is the effort of human mind to rise from the contemplation of phenomena of the Idea to the true knowledge ( episteme). Plato's philosophy is his theory of Forms /Ideas. His view of knowledge, his ethical theory, his psychology, his concept of the state, and his perspective on art must be understood in terms of this theory. It is by means of the dialectic method that the knowledge of Idea is attained. According to Plato,(Theaetetus) there are two general realms of knowledge. First is the non-natural realm of eternal/ideal/forms ( ideos) that are transcendent, unchanging, perfect, and intelligible with certainty.secondly,the natural realm of ordinary sensations and particular things that are temporal,changing,unstable, unintelligible, and uncertain. The first is the realm of true because it being grasped by intellect. The second is realm of becoming grasped by our fallible senses. The everyday world of our senses does not give us knowledge since sense knowledge is uncertain imperfect, illusory and relative. Plato says that knowledge to be true knowledge must be certain, perfect precise absolute. Plato held that true knowledge as opposed to the illusory knowledge of the sense, is derived from an awareness of the eternal Forms. The philosophy of Plato is known as theory of Forms/Ideas. According to Plato, over and above the world of sense perception, there is a transcendent world of ideas/forms. The transcendent world is more real than our everyday world. Plato s theory of ideas is based on realism. Plato is searching for true knowledge in contrast to mere opinion. His dialectical method includes both epistemological and ontological method. Against the Sophists Plato stresses the distinction between knowledge and opinion. Socrates has already developed the doctrine of concepts. Plato says that knowledge (episteme) which is different from opinion (doxa) is the knowledge of true reality. In order to know a thing, it is necessary and sufficient to have the concept of that thing. One of the Classical Western Philosophy Page 16

17 feature of the concept is that it is universal. For Plato, the universal concepts such as green, beauty, humanity are not merely subjective concepts but they express objective essence. They are not made by us, but we discover them. Each group of things having a common name or a common nature has a corresponding objective essence which Plato called Forms/Idea. The theory of Ideas as presented in Plato s dialogues is a multifaceted doctrine. Many critics say that Plato s dialogues are not scientific treatises. But Plato gives several theories to prove his theory of Ideas. They are (a) the theory of ideas as a logical theory,(b)theory of ideas as psychology and epistemology and (c) the ory of ideas as metaphysics. Plato did not stop at the logico-semantic and psychologico-epistemological assumptions. Plato is hailed as an idealist and the following are the summary of the Platonic metaphysics. (a) Ideas are unchangeable and eternal (b) Ideas do not exist in space and time (c) Ideas are ideal models of which particular things are imperfect copies. (d) Ideas are in one way or another causes of what happens in the material world. (e) Ideas are more valuable than the things of the sensible world. Plato s Allegory of the Cave shows us the journey we must all make from the physical world that is ignorance, to the realm of eternal Truth, Beauty, and Goodness that is reality. Plato says that as they are ignorant, the people inside the cave are satisfied to live among the shadows, and they do not give much thought to what is causing the shadows. As the cave dweller had to turn completely around to see the light, the entire soul must turn away from believing that the physical world of the senses is as important as the knowledge of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. Plato s ethics is known as eudemonism, an ethical doctrine that characterizes the value of life in terms of happiness. Plato s philosophic thinking is an inquiry about the good and beautiful. He says that the highest good ( summum bonum) is happiness. Plato s ethics is eudemonistic in sense that it is directed towards the attainment of man s highest good. This highest good of man may be said to be true development of man s personality as a rational and moral being, the right cultivation of his soul, the general harmonious wellbeing of life. Plato held that happiness is the result of the pursuit of virtue which is seen as a harmony and order of the soul. He seems to follow the Socratic identification of virtue with knowledge. Classical Western Philosophy Page 17

18 In the Republic Plato considers four cardinal virtues- wisdom, courage, temperance and justice. Wisdom is the virtue of the rational part of the soul, courage of the spirited part, while temperance consists in the union of reason. Justice is a general virtue consisting of every part of soul. In the Gorgias Plato argues against the identification of good and evil with pleasure and pain. Aristotle ( B.C.) Aristotle was born in Stagira. His father, Nicomachus, was a doctor at the court of Macedonia. The profession of medicine may well have influenced Aristotle's interests, and his association with Macedon was lifelong. He became tutor to Alexander the Great. After Alexander's death in 323, the political climate in Athens turned anti-macedonian, and Aristotle went into voluntary exile. He died shortly thereafter, in 322. At the age of 17 Aristotle went to Athens and studied at Plato's Academy for twenty years, until the death of Plato in 348. There is no solid reason for supposing that Aristotle was disaffected with the Academy, or ever expected to become its head;. It was during this period that Aristotle acted as tutor to Alexander; Aristotle returned to Athens in 335 and founded his own school, the Lyceum. Plato s genius and noble character had a deep influence on Aristotle. A master of many subjects, Aristotle invented logic, or laws of thought, and wrote treatises on physics, biology, ethics, meteorology, metaphysics, political science, and poetics. Aristotle's Poetics may be one of the most influential documents ever produced on the art of the drama. Aristotle s other works are treatises on logic, called Organon, works on natural science include Physics, which gives a vast amount of information on astronomy, meteorology, plants, and animals. His writings on the nature, scope, and properties of being, which Aristotle called First Philosophy, were given the title Metaphysics. To his son Nicomachus he dedicated his work on ethics, called the Nicomachean Ethics. Other essential works include his Rhetoric, his Poetics etc. The first several books of the Aristotelian corpus Categories, interpretation, Prior Analytics, Posterior Analytics, Topics (are commonly referred to as the Organon or instrument of philosophizing. Aristotle's categories are variously types of predication and kinds of being: the predicate term in "S is P" may indicate what S is, its substance (ousia) it is a man, a horse or how much of it there is in one or another dimension, or one way or another in which it is qualified, or something to which it is related, where it is, when it is, and so on. Alternatively, these terms give us different types of being: substances, quantities, qualities, relatives, places, times, and so on. So construed, substances form the bottom level, and so-called primary substances the rock-bottom of that level. In the Categories, the primary substances are individuals: men, horses, etc. Aristotle's fullest list of these categories (Categories 4, Topics I 9) enumerates ten. Elsewhere fewer are listed: the enumeration is not fixed. If we conceive "logic" more narrowly, as the analysis of the structure of argument or the study of validity, only the Prior Analytics and the Topics Classical Western Philosophy Page 18

19 qualify for the label. The former gives us Aristotle's formal analysis of argument, in which all arguments are said to reduce to "syllogisms": arguments having three terms in two premises employing one of the four quantified predicational patterns "every B is an A," ''some B is an A," "no B is an A," and "some B is not an A." Aristotle's treatment of these arguments is awesome, as is his formulation of a completeness theorem for his logic: the claim that all arguments can be so analyzed. Aristotle attempts to extend his syllogistic to include modal syllogisms (premises such as those above modified by necessarily and possibly). This is some of the most difficult material in Aristotle, and there appears to be some confusion in his treatment of it. In the Topics, Aristotle gives rules of thumb for dialectical argument: argument that takes place between two individuals in dialogue. This work goes back to the Academy, where such dialectical arguments were used as training techniques. Form and Matter (eidos and hyle) / (substance) The most famous developed mentalist Aristotle started as a follower of Plato and gradually drifted in a more empirical direction. This has been challenged on the ground that the fragmentary material from the early lost works already shows Aristotle objecting to Plato's views; on more than one point, one might see Aristotle as later approaching rather than receding from Platonism. But many continue to find this approach unpromising. Like Plato and the philosophers before him, Aristotle also wanted to know what is real. The pre-socratics had searched for reality in the material universe. Plato, the metaphysician, had found reality in the Forms, the eternal and perfect ideas. As a scientist, Aristotle took a different view. He agreed with Plato that the form of horse is eternal, but he said we could not know the form horse if it existed in a realm beyond the physical world because we cannot know that realm. To know the form horse, we must see an actual physical horse, because the form, or characteristics, of a horse are in the horse itself. The same is true of matter. To know the substance matter, we must see an actual physical object, such as the horse. For Aristotle, form and matter must come together Aristotle says that Forms/ideas do not exist in the abstract/isolated from individual objects. He made a distinction between substance and universal. To Aristotle a substance is an individual object e.g. a human being, a horse, a house, a tree, a dog etc. He defined that a substance is something that we can point out as this. A substance can change its properties without losing its identity. Only a substance exists in primary sense. If substance did not exist nothing at all would exist. He held that universals are extremely real but are not separate from their particulars. They are real entities existing in particulars. The mind becomes aware of universals by intuitive induction. Universals are concepts (thoughts/ideas) that are constructed by the mind after experiencing particular and recognizing the common quality the share. Classical Western Philosophy Page 19

20 The Categories Aristotle s theory of categories is a part of his Metaphysics. Aristotle defined Metaphysics/First Philosophy as a science which investigates being as being. It is the science that studies being qua being. It means metaphysics has for its object the totality of things. It never studies particular being/substance. Metaphysics considers being as such in a universal manner in its highest and most general, and seeking the ultimate causes. According to Aristotle, substance is the first category. By category Aristotle means the most fundamental and universal predicate. He gives ten supreme categories of thought. It includes one substance and nine accidents (property).aristotle classified things as genus (class), species (sub -class) differentia and property. Science deals with the category of substance which is the most important. The categories are substance, quantity,quality, relation,place,time,position, state,action,and passion. The Four Causes Aristotle discovered four causes and it governs change in everything from art to nature because they develop from their potentiality to their actuality. The four causes are: 1) the formal cause; or form; 2) the material cause, or matter; 3) the efficient cause, or motion; and 4) the final cause, or end. For example in carving a marble statue, the formal cause is the plan the sculptor has in mind, the material cause is the marble, the efficient cause is the sculptor shaping the statue, and the final cause is the end, or purpose of the statue, which would be as a decoration. Aristotle says that everything in nature contains these four causes and the potential to grow into its actuality. Everything in nature is always in motion, eternally moving, changing and keeps everything in motion is the Unmoved Mover. Pure actuality to Aristotle is eternal, immaterial, and perfect as it has no potentiality. He called pure actuality the Unmoved Mover, another term for God or the principle of eternal motion. As motion is eternal, there never was a time when the world did not exist. Therefore, the Unmoved Mover is not a creator god. Being pure actuality, it has no physical body, and, lacking nothing, it has no emotional desires. The activity of the Unmoved Mover consists of pure thought. Because the highest human faculty is reason, we find our perfection in contemplating the Unmoved Mover. Classical Western Philosophy Page 20

21 UNIT III MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY Characteristics of Medieval Philosophy During the decline of Greco-Roman civilization, Western philosophers turned their attention from the scientific investigation to the problem of salvation in another and better world. In 3rd century A D, Christianity had spread to the more educated classes of the Roman Empire. The religious teachings of the Gospels were combined by the metaphysical ideas of Aristotle and Plotinus to establish important Christian doctrines about the divinity of Jesus and the nature of the Trinity. During the late 4th and early 5th centuries the process of reconciling the Greek emphasis on reason with the emphasis on religious emotion in the teachings of Christ and the apostles found expression in the writings of Saint Augustine. He developed a system of thought with amendments and became the authoritative doctrine of Christianity. With his influence Christian thought was Platonic in spirit until the 13th century, when Aristotelian philosophy became dominant. Augustine argued that religious faith and philosophical understanding are complementary. He considered that the soul a higher form of existence than the body. The Platonic philosophy was combined with the Christian concept of a personal God who created the world and decided in advance. Augustine attempted a rational understanding of the relation between divine predestination and human freedom, the existence of evil, a perfect and all-powerful God, and the nature of the Trinity. Augustine also came to a pessimistic view about original sin, grace, and predestination: the ultimate fates of humans. Augustine conceived of history as a dramatic struggle between the good in humanity, as expressed in loyalty to God. He believed that without the religious virtues of faith, hope, and charity, which require divine grace to be attained, a person cannot develop the natural virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. His analyses of time, memory, and inner religious experience have been a source of inspiration for metaphysical and mystical thought In the 9th century the Irish monk John Erigena developed a pantheistic interpretation of Christianity, identifying the divine Trinity with the one, logos, and World Soul of Neo-Platonism and maintaining that both faith and reason are necessary to achieve the ecstatic union with God. The most important medieval philosopher was Saint Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican monk who was born in Italy in 1225 and later studied under Albertus Magnus in Germany. Aquinas combined Aristotelian science and Augustinian theology into a comprehensive system of thought that later became the authoritative philosophy of the Roman Catholic Church. He wrote on philosophy and Classical Western Philosophy Page 21