ASSIGNMENT No.1 Course: Social Theory I (4669) Semester: Autumn, 2022 MSc Pak Study
Answer:
nature worship, system of religion based on the veneration of natural
phenomena—for example, celestial objects such as the sun and moon and
terrestrial objects such as water and fire.
In the history of religions and cultures, nature worship as a definite and complex system of
belief or as a predominant form of religion has not been well documented. Among
the indigenous peoples of many countries, the concept of nature as a totality is unknown; only
individual natural phenomena—e.g., stars, rain, and animals—are comprehended as
natural objects or forces that influence them and are thus in some way worthy
of being venerated or placated. Nature as an entity in itself, in contrast
with human society and culture or even with God, is a philosophical or
poetic conception that has been developed among advanced
civilizations. This concept of nature worship, therefore, is limited primarily
to scholars involved in or influenced by the modern (especially Western) study of religion.
Nature as a sacred totality
To students of religion, the closest example
of what may be termed nature worship is perhaps most apparent in ancient
cultures in which there is a high god as the lord in heaven who has withdrawn
from the immediate details of the governing of the world. This kind of high
god—the deus otiosus, Latin for “hidden, or idle, god”—is one who
has delegated all work on earth to what are called “nature spirits,” which are
the forces or personifications of the forces of nature. High gods exist, for
example, in such indigenous religions on Africa’s west coast as
that of the Dyola of Guinea. In such religions the human spiritual environment is functionally structured by means of personified
natural powers, or nature spirits.
Pantheism (a belief system in which God is
equated with the forces of the universe) or Deism (a belief system based on a
nonintervening creator of the universe), as was advocated in the
rationalistic philosophy of
religion of
western Europe from the 16th to the 18th century, is not appropriate in studies
of nature worship in preliterate cultures. Worship of nature as an omnipotent entity, in the pantheistic sense, has
not as yet been documented anywhere.
The power or force within nature that has
most often been venerated, worshiped, or held in holy awe is mana. Often designated as “impersonal power” or
“supernatural power,” the term mana used by Polynesians and Melanesians was appropriated by 19th-century
Western anthropologists and applied to that which affected the common processes
of nature. Mana was conceptually linked to North American Indian terms that conveyed the same or similar
notions—e.g., orenda of the Iroquois, wakan of
the Dakotas, and manitou of the Algonquin.
Neither “impersonal power” nor “supernatural power” implies the true meaning
of mana,
however, because mana usually issues from
persons or is used by them, and the concept of a supernatural sphere as
distinct or separate from a natural sphere is seldom recognized by the peoples
who use the term.
Thus, a better designation for mana is “super force” or
“extraordinary efficiency.” A person who has mana is successful, fortunate,
and demonstrates extraordinary skill—e.g., as an artisan, warrior, or
chief. Mana can also be obtained from
the atuas
(gods), provided that they themselves possess it. Derived from a root term that
has aristocratic connotations, mana corresponds to Polynesian
social classifications. The ariki, or alii, the nobility of Polynesia,
have more mana than commoners, and both
their land and the insignia associated with them have mana.
Besides areas and symbolic elements that are associated with the ariki,
many objects and animals having special relationships with chiefs, warriors, or
priests have mana.
The Iroquoian term orenda, like mana, designates a power that
is inherent in numerous objects of nature but that
does not have essential personification or animistic elements. Orenda,
however, is not a collective omnipotence. Powerful hunters, priests,
and shamans have orenda to some degree.
The wakanda, or wakan, of the Sioux is described similarly, but
as Wakan-Tanka it may refer to a collective unity of gods with great power (wakan). The manitou of the Algonquin is not, like wakan,
merely an impersonal power that is inherent in all things of nature but is also
the personification of numerous manitous (powers), with
a Great Manitou (Kitchi-Manitou) at the head. These manitous
may even be designated as protective spirits akin to those of other North
American Indians, such as the digi of the Apache, boha of
the Shoshone, and maxpe of the Crow, as well as
the sila of
the Eskimo.
The super forces (such as Mulungu, Imana,
Jok, and others in Africa) that Western scholars have noted outside of the
Austronesian and American peoples are often wrongly interpreted as concepts of
God. Only the barakah (derived from the pre-Islamic thought
world of the Berber and Arabs), the contagious superpower (or holiness) of the saints,
and the power Nyama in the western Sudan that works as a force within
large wild animals, certain bush spirits, and physically handicapped
people—appearing especially as a contagious power of revenge—may be added with
a certain justification to that force of nature that is designated by mana.
A striking similarity with mana may also be noted in the
concepts of heil (good omen), saell (fortunate),
and hamingja (luck)
of the Germanic and Scandinavian peoples.
Heaven and earth as
sacred spaces, forces, or processes
Heaven and earth, as personified powers of
nature and thus worthy of worship, are evidently not of equal age. Although
from earliest times heaven was believed to be the residence of a high being or a
prominent god, the earth as a personified entity is much rarer; it probably
first occurred among archaic agrarian civilizations, and it
continues to occur in some less industrialized societies in which agriculture
is practiced. Gods of heaven, however, are characteristic spiritual beings of
early and contemporary hunting and gathering societies and are found in almost all cultures.
Some worldviews generally assume the earth to
be simply given (i.e., as continuously existing). Sometimes the earth is
believed to have emerged out of chaos or a primal sea or to have come into
existence by the act of a heavenly god, transformer, or demiurge (creator). Even in these worldviews, however, the
earth usually remains without a divine owner, unless through agriculture and
the cult of the dead the earth is conceived as the source of the renewing
powers of nature or as the underworld.
Heaven
The fact that heaven is animated by
rain-giving clouds (with lightning and thunder) and by a regular chorus of
warming and illuminating celestial bodies (sun, moon, and stars)
led to concepts of the personification of heaven from earliest times. Heavenly
deities, as the personification of the physical aspects of the sky, appear in
variations that are adapted to the types of cultures concerned. The listing
offered below does not represent a unilinear development that is applicable
everywhere.
The father of the family
The god of heaven is often viewed as an ever
active father of the family, often called upon but rarely the recipient of
sacrifices. He is able to intervene in human and natural affairs without the
aid of an intermediary—e.g., priest, medicine man, or ancestors. As a numinous (spiritual)
being, he is closer to humanity than other spiritual powers are. He sends lightning
and rain and rules the stars that are at most essential aspects of himself or
are members of his family subject to him. He is the creator and the receiver of
the dead. Modern scholars have designated such a being as the “high god,”
“supreme god,” the “highest being” of the “original monotheism” (according to
the theories of the German scholar P.W. Schmidt), the idealized god of heaven
(according to the views of the Italian historian of religion Raffaele Pettazzoni), or the familiar father deity (according to
the views of the British anthropologist Andrew Lang). Very human, often comical, or even
unethical and repulsive traits of such deities are often represented in myths that also sometimes include legends of animal or human ancestors.
This type of deity is generally found in its
most developed form among the old hunting and gathering peoples of the
temperate and arid areas (e.g., the North America forest dwellers, the Fuegians of South America, the indigenous peoples of Australia, and the African
Khoisan) and of the tropical primeval forests, where he is usually conceived as
a storm and thunder being (e.g., Tore of the Bambuti of the Ituri Forest). He
is also worshiped among the pastoral peoples as the “blue” or “white” sky of
the wide pastures in the steppes of northeastern Africa (e.g., Waka of the
Oromo) and of Central and North Asia (e.g., Torem, Num, and Tengri of the
Ugrians, Nenets, and Mongols). Among such peoples, heaven is often merged with
an old hunting deity, the lord of the animals, or it allows the latter to exist as a
hypostasis by his side.
The withdrawn god
The god of heaven may be a deus otiosus, who has, after completing the creation,
withdrawn into heaven and abandoned the government of the world to the human
ancestors or to nature spirits that are dependent on him and act as mediators.
This type of the god, who is able to intervene directly only in times of great
need, such as drought, pestilence, or war, can be found primarily where worship
of the dead or worship of individual local “earth spirits”—not yet integrated into an all-inclusive earth
deity—obscures everything else. This type of god occurs especially in areas of
so-called primitive agriculture (e.g., large parts of Africa, Melanesia, and
South America).
The first among equals
The god of heaven also may be the head of a
pantheon of gods, the first among equals, or the absolute ruler in a hierarchy of gods. This occurs in polytheism (belief in many gods) in its purest
form. The deities associated with him are often related to him by family ties
(genealogies of gods). Occasionally, the heavenly phenomena are distributed
among members of the clan of gods, the god of heaven himself thus becoming
rather vague. The divine pair heaven-earth represents only one among many
possible combinations—e.g., Dyaus-pitri (= heaven, male) and Prithivi (= earth,
female) in Vedic India or, with an unusual distribution of the sexes, Nut (=
heaven, woman) and Geb (= earth, man) in ancient Egypt.
Occasionally, as in the pantheons of Greece
and western Asia, generations of gods succeed each other. In such instances,
the more universal god of heaven is often replaced by the younger god of
thunderstorms (e.g., Zeus of the Greeks, Teshub of the Hittites, or Hadad of the Western Semitic peoples) or is
even relegated to the background by a goddess, such
as Inanna-Ishtar (the love or fertility goddess in
Babylonia) or Amaterasu, the sun goddess of Japan.
In ancient China, heaven (tian) ruled over the many more popular gods and
was even closely related to the representatives of the imperial household.
Deification of the celestial emperor is a cultic practice that extends
from Korea to Annam (part of Vietnam). The roots
of the worship of heaven in Asia are probably the beliefs of central and
northern Asian nomads in a solitary god of heaven. Gods of heaven, above or
behind a pantheon, probably originated in areas where a theocratic
stratified bureaucracy existed or where sacral kingdoms exist or have existed—e.g., in
the Sudanor northeastern Africa (Akan-Baule, Benin,
Yoruba, Jukun, Buganda, and neighbouring states), western Indonesia, Polynesia
and Micronesia, and the advanced civilizations of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and
South America.
Heaven and earth deities as partners
The god of heaven in many areas is a partner
of an earth deity. In such cases, other numina (spirits) are missing or are
subject to one of the two as spirits of nature or ancestors. Myths depicting the heaven-earth partnership
usually describe the foundations or origins of the partnership in terms of a
separation of a primeval chaos into heaven and earth or in terms of a
later separation of heaven and earth that originally lay close together, and
they describe the impregnation of the earth by the seed of the god (e.g., hieros gamos, Greek for “sacred marriage”). This
partnership of the god of heaven and the goddess of earth may be found in areas
of Africa that have been influenced by other civilizations (especially the
Sudan and northeastern Africa), in eastern Indonesia, and in some areas of
America under the influence of European civilizations.
Not infrequently the god of heaven and the
goddess of earth are fused into a hermaphroditic higher deity. This accords
with certain traits of ancient civilizations that try to show in customs and
myths that the dichotomies—for example, of heaven and earth, day and night, or
man and woman—need to be surmounted in a kind of bisexual spiritual force.
Certain myths express the loss of an original bisexuality of the world and
people. In a creation myth found in the Vedas, for example, it was Purusha, an androgynous primal human, who separated through
a primordial self-sacrifice into man and woman and
from whom the world was created with all its contrasts. Another such
creation myth is the cosmic egg, which was separated
into the male sky and the female earth.
The god of heaven viewed dualistically
In several religions the god of heaven has an
antagonistic evil adversary who delights in destroying completely or partially
the good creative deeds of the god of heaven. This helps to explain the
insecurity of existence and concepts of ethical dualism. In most such cases, the contrasts
experienced in the relationship between heaven and earth deities have been
reevaluated along ethical lines by means of exalting the heavenly elements at
the expense of the earthly ones (especially in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic sects in Europe, west-central and northern
Asia, and certain areas of northern Africa). The figure of an
antagonistic trickster or demiurge that has a somewhat ethical
component may be the result of diffusion and is rather rare in such cultures as those of the Khoisan and the indigenous peoples of Australia and North America.
The god of heaven viewed monotheistically
The god of heaven, viewed in his ethical
aspect, is always an active, single god—e.g., as in Christian, Jewish, and
Islamic monotheism.
Earth
Although in polytheistic religions the earth
is usually represented as a goddess and associated with the god of heaven as
her spouse, only rarely is there an elaborate or intensive cult of earth worship. There are in many religions mother goddesses who have elaborate cults and who have
assumed the function of fertility for land and human beings, but they hardly
have a chthonic (earth) basis. Some mother goddesses, such as Inanna-Ishtar,
instead have a heavenly, astral origin. There are, however, subordinate figures of various pantheons, such
as Nerthus in Germanic religion or Demeter and Persephone (earth mother and corn girl) in Greek religion, who have played greater roles than Gaea (the world mother). Among
Indo-Europeans, western Asians (despite their various fertility deities),
Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese, the gods of heaven, sun, and thunderstorms have
held a paramount interest.
When the common people have displayed
intensive attention to “mother earth” (such as the practice of laying down
newborn babies on the earth and many other rites), this partially reflects
older cults that have remained relatively free from
warrior and nation-building peoples with their emphasis on war (as in the
western Sudan, pre-Vedic India, and the Indian agrarian area of northern
Mexico). The Andean earth-mother figure, Pachamama (Pacha Mama), worshiped by the
Peruvians, stands in sharp contrast to the sun religion of the Inca (the
conquering lord of the Andes region). Earth deities are most actively venerated
in areas in which people are closely bound to ancestors and to the cultivation
of grain.
Mountains
Especially prominent mountains are favourite
places for cults of high places, particularly when they are isolated as
island mountains, mountains with snowcaps, or uninhabited high mountain ranges.
The psychological roots of the cults of high places lie in the belief that
mountains are close to the sky (as heavenly ladders), that clouds surrounding
the mountaintops are givers of rain, and that mountains with volcanoes form
approaches to the fiery insides of the earth.
Mountains, therefore, serve as the abodes of
the gods, as the centres of the dead who live underground, as burial places for
rainmakers (medicine men), and as places of oracles for soothsayers. In cosmogenic (origin of the world) myths, mountains are the first land to emerge from
the primeval water. They frequently become the cosmic mountain (i.e., the world
conceived as a mountain) that is symbolically represented by a small hill on
which a king stands at the inauguration. Pilgrimages to mountain altars or
shrines are favourite practices of cults of high places.
The larger mountain ranges and canyons
between volcanic mountains—especially in Eurasia from the Pyrenees to the Alps,
the Carpathian Mountains, the Caucasus Mountains, the Himalayas, the mountainous areas of
northern China, Korea, and Japan, and the mountainous areas of North and South
America (the Rocky Mountains, the Andes)—are most often centres of cults of high places. Elevations of the East
African Rift Valley (Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda), volcanic islands of the Pacific Ocean (e.g., Hawaii), and the mountains of
the Indian Deccan have also served as centres of the cults of high places.
In early civilizations the cults of high
places were closely combined with those of the earth; e.g., Mount Olympus in Greece, the mountains of Enlil or of
the “Mountain Mother,” Cybele, in western Asia, and the Meru mountain in India
were believed to bring heaven and earth into a close relationship and were
often viewed as the middle pillar of the world pillars upholding the sky. Bush
and wild spirits (such as the lord of the animals) of the cultures of the hunters and gatherers were often
believed to reside in inaccessible mountainous areas (e.g., the Caucasus).
More From
Britannica
Western theatre:
Nature worship
In addition to other mountain deities of a
more recent date (e.g., the god of the 12 mountains and the one-legged mountain
god), the Japanese mountain deity yama-no-kami has been demonstrated to have been a
deity of the hunt (i.e., god of the forest, lord of the animals) in
ancient Japan. Through the worship of farmers, the yama-no-kami assumed
the elements of a goddess of vegetation and agriculture. The mountain goddesses
(earth mothers) of non-Vedic India still incorporate numerous features of
hunt deities, and, because of indigenous influences, the Vedic gods and their
wives (e.g., Parvati, Uma, and Durga) have their abodes on mountains. The
isolated mountains of East Africa, surrounded by clouds, are believed to be
the dwelling places of the heaven and rain gods, and in Zimbabwe pilgrimages
are made to mountain sanctuaries that are viewed as the seats of the gods.
Pre-Islamic peoples of North Africa and the extinct inhabitants of
the Canary Islands (the Guanches people) associated mountain worship
with a cult of goats and sheep, which, when practiced in rituals, was
believed to secure rain and thunderstorms in the often arid landscape. Similar
cults are also found in the Balkans and in the valleys of the southern Alps.
Earthquakes
According to the beliefs of many peoples,
earthquakes originate in mountains. In areas of Africa where the concept
of mana is
particularly strong, many believe that the dead in the underworld are the
causes of earthquakes, though in the upper Nile basin of South Sudan and in East Africa an earth deity is
sometimes blamed. In some areas a bearer who holds the world up—a concept that
probably came from Arabia, Persia, or India—is believed to cause an earthquake
when he changes his position or when he moves his burden from one shoulder to
the other. World bearers often are giants or heroes, such as Atlas, but they also may be animals: an elephant
(India), a boar (Indonesia), a buffalo (Indonesia), a fish (Arabia, Georgia,
and Japan), a turtle (America), or the serpent god Ndengei (Fiji). In the Arab
world, on the east coast of Africa and in North Africa, an ox generally is
viewed as the bearer, sometimes standing on a fish in the water. Generators of
earthquakes also may be the gods of the underworld, such as Tuil, the
earthquake god of the inhabitants of the Kamchatka Peninsula, who rides on a sleigh under the earth. The
earthquake is driven away by noise, loud shouting, or poking with the pestle of
a mortar. Among peoples with eschatological (last times) views, earthquakes
announce the end of the world (Europe, western Asia).
Tides
The view that the tides are caused by the
moon can be found over almost all the earth. This regular natural phenomenon
seldom gives rise to cults, but the ebb and flow of the coastal waters have
stimulated mythological concepts. Not infrequently the moon acquires the status
of a water deity because of this phenomenon. The Tlingit of the northwestern United States view the moon as an old woman, the
mistress of the tides. The animal hero and trickster Yetl, the raven, is
successful in conquering (with the aid of the mink) the seashore from the moon
at low tide, and thus an extended area is gained for nourishment with small sea
animals.
The sun
Generally, the sun is worshiped more in
colder regions and the moon in warm regions. Also, the sun is
usually considered as male and the moon as female. Exceptions to these
generalizations, however, are notable: the prevalent worship of the sun in hot, arid ancient Egypt and in parts of western Asia; the conception of the moon as a man (who frequently is
believed to be the cause of menstruation) among many hunting and gathering
societies as well as certain pastoral and royal cultures of Africa; and the conception of the
female sun ruling northern Eurasia eastward to Japan and parts of North America.
In many state cults of ancient civilizations,
the sun plays a special role, particularly where it has replaced an old god of
heaven (e.g., Egypt, Ethiopia, South India, and the Andes) and especially where
it is viewed as a marker of time.
The sun as the centre of a state religion
In Africa ancient Egypt was the main centre from which solar deity concepts emanated. The solar religion, promoted by the state, was concerned with
the sun god Re (Atum-Re, Amon-Re, Chnum-Re), the sun
falcon Horus, the scarab Chepre, and a divine kingdom
that was determined by the sun (e.g., pharaoh Akhenaton’s solar monotheism c. 1350 BCE).
The sun religion reached—by way of Meroe, a sun sanctuary until the 6th century CE,
and the upper Nile—as far as western Ethiopia (e.g., the Hego cult in Kefa and
the sun kings in Limmu) and Nigeria (e.g., Jukun). In Asia the sun cult
culminated in the religion of Mithra of Persia. Mithra was transported by
Roman legionnaires to western Europe and became the “Unconquerable Sun” of the
Roman military emperors. In Japan the imperial deity in state Shintō is Amaterasu, the sun goddess from whom Jimmu Tennō, the first human emperor, descended. In
Indonesia, where the descent of the princes from the sun also is a feature, the
sun often replaces the deity of heaven as a partner of the earth. In Peru the
ruling Inca was believed to be the sun incarnate (Inti) and his wife the moon. A sun temple in
Cuzco contains a representation of Inti as the oldest son of the creator god.
The Natchez Indians of the southeastern United States, who are culturally connected with Central America, called their king “Great Sun” and the
noblemen “the Suns.”
The sun as a subordinate deity
The sun, within a polytheistic pantheon, often is revered as a special deity who is
subordinate to the highest deity, usually the god of heaven. This may be
observed in the great civilizations of ancient Europe and Asia: Helios
(Greece); Sol (Rome); Mithra (Persia); Surya, Savitr, and Mithra (India); Utu
(Sumer); and Shamash (Babylonian and other Semitic areas).
The sun not infrequently is considered
female—Shams of some Arabs, Shaph of ancient Ugarit in Palestine, Sun of Arinna
of the Hittites, as well as the female Sun of the Germanic peoples. Siberian people such as the Taymyr
Samoyed (whose women pray in spring to the sun goddess in order to receive
fertility or a rich calving of the reindeer) or the Tungus worship sun goddesses. They make
sacrifices to the sun goddess, and her symbols are embroidered on women’s
clothes.
The sun and moon as a divine pair
A sun god is often related to a moon goddess as one member of a divine pair (in the
place of heaven and earth as “world parents”). A sun-moon god exists among the
Munda in India (Singbonga); a sun-moon (earth) pair, partially seen as
bisexual, exists in eastern Indonesia; and Nyambe (the sun) among the Lozi in
Zambia is represented as united with the moon goddess as the ruling pair.
The sun as an attribute of the highest being
The sun sometimes is viewed as a coordinate
or subordinate attribute, or hypostasis, of the highest being. This may
possibly occur because of a partially weakened influence of a stronger solarism
in areas of older indigenous peoples, such as those of Sudan, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, northern East Africa, and Australia.
The sun as a mythical being
The sun in some religions is conceived as a
purely mythical being, cultically recognized in sun dances such as those of
prairie-dwelling Native Americans and in various celebrations of the solstice.
These rites may be either survivals of an earlier local cult of a sun deity or
influences of such a cult.
The moon
The moon is often personified in different
ways and worshiped with ritual customs; nevertheless, in contrast to
the sun, the moon is less frequently viewed as a powerful deity. It appears to
be of great importance as the basis of a lunar calendar but not in more advanced agrarian
civilizations. The moon, infrequently associated with the highest god, is
usually placed below heaven and the sun. When the moon with the sun together
(instead of “heaven and earth”) constitute an important pair of gods (world
parents), it frequently assumes the features of an earth deity. In
tropical South America, the sun and moon are usually purely
mythical figures.Between the Tropic of Capricorn and the Tropic of Cancer, the moon is
predominantly female. Only some remainders of ancient hunting peoples view the
moon as a male being. In the few significant male moon gods, such as both Khons and Thoth in Egypt, Sin-Nanna in Babylonia, and Chandra in India—in
contrast with the female Selene and Luna in the Greek and Roman
culture—a more ancient substratum may be present. Where the moon is considered
as male, he often determines the sexual life of the woman, especially among
the indigenous people of Australia.
The phenomenon of the moon that attracts all
people is the sequence of its phases. The waxing and waning of the moon crescent
is often interpreted as gaining or losing weight (eating, dieting). Thus,
the Taulipang in Brazil believe that the moon is
first nourished well and then inadequately by his two wives, Venus and Jupiter.
Where the moon is viewed as female, the phases represent pregnancy and
delivery. Elsewhere, people see childhood, maturity, and dying as the phases of
the moon: the first crescent is thus the rebirth or the replacement of the old
by a new moon.
Q.2 What is the fundamental
difference between the Socrates approach towards man and pre-Socrates
philosophers approaches? Elaborate the Socratic methods to examine good and
justice.
Pre-Socratics
The underlying assumptions of the early
philosophers, the early scientists of Greek culture were:
- There is an intelligible coherence in the
phenomenal world
- The universe is an intelligible whole
- There is an order, a cosmos, that
underlies the chaos of our perceptions and that
- The Order of the universe is
comprehensible to reason
In the works of the pre-socratics there is
obviously the progression from mythopoetic thought to a primitive scientific
thinking in the form of speculative inquiry and from that form of thought to
philosophy as rational inquiry. These thinker were searching for the arche or
the very first or most fundamental principles or causes. They wondered about
the immanent and lasting ground for existence. They were critical of the
cosmogony they had in the mythopoetic tales. They were looking for a cosmology
(an explanation for the order of the universe) that did not rely on the
gods.They did not base their thinking on belief but on reason.
These thinkers were naturalists and
materialists as they sought answers to physical questions that were rooted in
the physical itself. They were looking for the stuff out of which the universe
was composed and they wanted an answer that was itself made of the same stuff.
The matter of the universe would have its explanation in matter. They were, for
the most part, materialists, rejecting spiritual or religious explanations for
the causes and stuff of the universe.
Introduction to the Presocratics
Thales
Thales was looking for the basic stuff
(physis) out of which all else is made. He expressed his idea concerning the
basic stuff in his claim that “All things are made of water” Now at first you
might think that his idea is pretty silly and definitely wrong, however, that
would be the wrong approach. What do you suppose was meant by that claim?
Thales was attempting to express an idea at a time when his language was not
developed to the point where he could express an abstraction. We are accustomed
to thinking in abstraction and we are that way in part because we have a language
with many words that are linked with abstractions. The Greeks at this time did
not have that to work with. For example, if someone wanted to call for justice,
they would call upon the goddess who in their tales represented what today we
consider in the abstract as justice. So instead of saying” I want justice” or
“Give me justice” they might say something of this sort ”May the goddess Themis
settle this by sending us a sign”
Thales claim is most likely the claim that
there is “Unity in Difference” In other words, Thales was attempting to claim
that there was some basic stuff out of which all things are made. He selects
water perhaps because it has properties which enable all the people of his time
and our time to experience water in three different states: Liquid, solid and
gas. Now if one thing such as water can exist in three very different forms
then there must be something , like water, that is the basic stuff, physics, of
the universe. Today, scientists make a similar claim. All reality, all that
exists in the universe is made of or composed of or manifests as: energy. So
from Thales comes the idea that no matter how things may appear, all things are
made up of the same stuff: Everything is one thing!
Anaximander: (ca. 612-545 BC)
Anaximander rejected Thales basic stuff,
water, and speculated that the ultimate reality could not be identified with
any one particular element. He came up with the basic stuff being the
boundaries or the infinite or the unlimited. This basic stuff was infinite and
without a beginning. He also conceived of the theory of species evolving from
one another through time in response to the need to adapt. He thought of the
earth as revolving. He speculated that all life originated in the sea and moved
onto the land. With this thinker abstraction and materialism developed further.
Anaximenes (585-528 BC)
Anaximenes hypothesized that it was not water
but AIR that was the fundamental stuff of the universe and that air can be
condensed or rarefied to take on the properties of what appear to be other
elements. He sought to simplify and clarify the model of the universe.
Anaxagoras (500-428 BC)
Anaxagoras appears to have taught that all
that is can be explained with a combination of nous and matter. For him the
universe of matter was set into its form and motions by Nous or mind. This mind
is immortal, homogeneous, omnipotent, omniscient and orders all phenomena. He
did not believe in gods and goddesses. He did not think that the sun was a god
and the moon a goddess. He thought the sun was a ball of fire and the moon a
rock which reflected light from the sun. He was to be executed for blasphemy by
the Athenians but escaped to another land. Socrates was interested in his
theories until Socrates learned that for Anaxagoras the nous acted at the beginning
of the universe, setting all in motion, and was not invoked by Anaxagoras to
explain motions including those of humans. Socrates was to focus on the actions
of humans and believed that their minds had a great deal to do with their
actions.
Parmenides (540-470 BC)
Parmenides taught that all that is has always
been and always will be. Reality is that which never changes. Reality is being and
not becoming. Changelessness is the nature of all reality. This is not obvious
to our senses. Parmenides trusted in his reason over his senses. The appearance
of things can be deceiving, so trust in reason. All change is illusion for
Parmenides. Change cannot be real. The truth is what is arrived at by thought
and the truth is set over and against opinions based upon sense impressions and
common beliefs. The REAL is changeless.
He arrives at his ideas through a process of
reasoning. Consider the following:
- If something exists, it must come from
something.
- Something can not come from nothing. If
there ever were nothing, there would need to be nothing forever.
- Something can not come from nothing.
- There is something now.
- The something from which the present
something comes must always have been.
- There must always have been something,
because something can not come from nothing.
- So that which is has always been and will
always be.
- Change is an illusion.
- Permanence is real.
- All is one, permanent and at rest.
Being never comes into existence, nor does it
cease to be. Being always is. It cannot be added to or divided. It is whole and
complete in itself, one. It is unmoved and unchangeable. Being is. Being does
not become. Becoming is not. Becoming is unreal. Being is and is self-identical
and uncaused.
Absolute Idealism
So with Parmenides Philosophy comes to trust
in reason over the senses. His thought liberates reason from the senses. There
is in his work the recognition of the autonomy of thought and the use of
independent criteria for judging thought; namely, coherency & consistency
over probability.
Philosophy is born in the recognition of the
importance of abstract general principles. Philosophy develops as a rigorous
process of inquiry involving insights and deductive reasoning. In Philosophy
the human mind comes to recognize its own creation.
Socrates
We now will now turn to look at the life and
thought of Socrates. It was he who developed the philosophical process of
thought and who focused on matters of great concern to humans. He was concerned
with the question: How do I live a Good Life? He was concerned with questions
of knowledge, truth, beauty and Goodness. He was executed for his beliefs and
virtues. An interesting story and a life that produced such a great impact on
the world that it is true to say that what Socrates did changed the world. If
Socrates had not lived as he did you and I would not be as we are today. In
fact we probably would not exist at all. Socrates led to Plato who led to
Aristotle who together produced an impact on how people in the West thought
about life and the world and reality and ethics. The ideas for which they
provided the foundation and methodology led to movements and actions and
creation of institutions that shaped the history of the world.
Socrates spent most of his life speaking with
his fellow Athenians and anyone else who wished to speak with him. He spoke
about matters of great importance to him, he sought after answers to important
questions. He was not a Sophist as he never charged anyone for any lessons
concerning anything. He did not claim to know the answers. He did not attempt
to win contests with prizes. He was seriously interested in learning about
truth, beauty, goodness and virtue. He entered the public spaces of Athens each
day to speak with and question his fellows and pursue after wisdom to know the
difference between what he knew and what he did not know.
Socrates seeks after the wise to learn what
their wisdom is and how one could acquire it. He questions those who claim to
have knowledge. In the Ion Socrates is questioning
someone who has won a prize for public speaking (recitation and who thinks that
because he has memorized some lines on a subject that he really understands
what it is all about. Socrates questions show that he doesn't.
Socrates left the town limits of Athens only
three times in his entire life. All three times was as a soldier to defend
Athens! Socrates acts heroically. Alcibiades is a handsome young man and great
warrior, a soldier of fortune, who enjoys himself a great deal.
Euthyphro
On his way to the trial Socrates comes across
a young man named, Euthyphro, who is returning form the courthouse. Socrates
learns that he is returning from posting charges against someone and so
Socrates inquires as to the defendant. He is shocked to learn that the young
man has brought charges against his own father! Socrates inquires as to why he
is doing this and does he think that he is correct in doing so. The young man
informs him that he has charged his father with murder for allowing a servant
who killed another servant to die while tied up awaiting for the authorities to
arrive to arrest him.
Socrates asks the young man why he thinks it
is a good thing to bring charges against his own father. The young man replies
that it is the pious thing to do. Socrates asks him if he knows what piety is.
Euthyphro responds by saying that he believes that piety is to please the gods.
Socrates asks how we know how to do that and Euthyphro responds that to do as
the gods do is to please them. He cites passages from the epic tales that
describe a god taking actions against his own father and provides this as a
justification for doing what he is doing. Socrates presses on with his
questions. For Socrates this is a most important matter. Socrates is attempting
to learn how one knows what is good. How do you know what the right thing to do
would be. It must be good. We all want to do good. We want good answers, good
friends, and a good life. So how do you know what is good. Euthyphro thinks he
knows what is the good. It is whatever is pleasing to the gods. The gods are
the standard for goodness. Now Socrates has a major problem with this approach.
There are problems with it. Socrates asks Euthyphro the key questions. Which
gods are we to please. Not all the gods agree. The stories report that they war
among themselves. So what is pleasing to one may be displeasing to another.
There were stories of gods respecting their parent s and stories of the gods
killing their own parents. Likewise there were stories of the gods killing
their own children, committing murder, lying, raping and every other horrible
act.
So what is the basis for the good. Here is
the question that set Socrates apart from all others of his day. A question
that sets Philosophy apart from religion and a question that Socrates could not
answer. He died without an answer. Plato devised an answer but Socrates had not
reached that point at his death.
Do we call those acts good because the gods
do them or do the gods do them because they are good? Are acts good just
because the gods do them and whatever a god does is good just because the god
did it? Or, are certain acts good and that is why a god does it?
Euthyphro can’t even understand the question
and states that he must be going and thus ends the dialogue. Most people of
Socrates time could not understand the importance of the question. If the gods
do what they do because it is good then there would be a standard for goodness,
which even the gods would answer to and it would exist apart from the gods to
be held over them for the sake of judgment. But for the Greeks there was nothing
above the gods. The theory that Euthyphro put forward is called the Divine
Command Theory. Many people who believe in a single deity also hold for such a
theory. Perhaps you think so too.
The Trial of Socrates
Socrates is just over 70 years of age at the
time he is accused of a crime. He had never before been accused of anything
wrong or criminal. He had served as a justice but never been a defendant. He
was very well known. He was at least regarded as a great thinker, something of
a scientist for his musings on the nature of the universe and as a moralist for
all his talk about virtue. Who were his accusers and why did they charge him?
The accuser, Meletus, went to the town hall
and presented the charge along with a requested penalty. The charge was
impiety-disbelieving in the gods of the Athenians and corrupting the young, the
penalty was death.
When the Democratic Party overthrew the
tyrants, the “Thirty”, they needed to bring about a harmony within the polis.
They declared an amnesty for any and all crimes that may have been committed
during the previous few years that the tyrants had been inducing people into
crimes in order to silence their criticisms and gain their support. No one was
to mention anything that had occurred or any one’s relation to the thirty
tyrants. Now the democratic order did not rest upon the leaders being noble
born. It did not rest upon the power of the military. The Athenians had
governments run by kings, military commanders and wealthy people. Now they were
ruling themselves -- Democracy. They rested that form of government on the will
of the people and their willingness to accept that whatever the majority wanted
would be the correct thing to do. This democracy did not involve the voting of
all Athenians. The voting in Athens included only: males, born of Athenian
mothers, born free, and born legitimate, no bastards. Those men would vote on
all matters and the majority would rule.
Socrates presented a threat to the Democratic
Party and form of government. Socrates had for many years been asking questions
and he kept asking questions hoping to get the correct, final and truthful
answer. He asked a series of questions that were threatening to the political
order because they focused directly on the basic principle underlying the
democratic rule. The answers to the questions below were the same in 399 BC as
they are today. Even today to push this issue would result in someone be
criticized for being anti-democratic or anti-American! Socrates would ask
questions such as:
Is there any guarantee that whenever a
majority of the people votes on something declaring that it is true, that that
vote makes it true ?
The answer was, NO, there is no such
guarantee!
Is there any guarantee that whenever a
majority of the people votes on something declaring that it is beautiful, that
that vote makes it beautiful?
The answer was, NO, there is no such
guarantee!
Is there any guarantee that whenever a
majority of the people vote on something declaring that it is good, that that
vote makes it good?
The answer was, NO, there is no such
guarantee!
Is there any guarantee that whenever a
majority of the people votes on something declaring that it is justice, that
that vote makes it justice?
The answer was, NO, there is no such
guarantee!
Now this was a threat to the system of
government and Socrates was seen as a danger to the state, a clear and present
danger, that needed to be dealt with and removed in a manner that would not
injure the state. Socrates questioning was a threat to national security.
What was at stake here was a clash between
the way of adventure that had characterized the history of Athens with its open
door policy and the way of safety that had characterized the development of the
state of Sparta with its rigid discipline and narrow range of variations
permitted. Socrates was the past of Athens and now in a precarious condition,
some Athenians wanted to make the state more secure and the questioning of the
old man, Socrates, was threatening to the order and security of the people.
Socrates was not accused of crimes because of
his association with the thirty young tyrants. Although several of the thirty
had known Socrates and had listened to him, he did not encourage or teach them
to be tyrants. In fact when they attempted to silence him for his criticisms of
them he refused to arrest Leon of Salamis on their orders and he refused to
observe their ban against teaching people to speak in public.
So, why was he indicted and why was he found
guilty and sentenced to die? There are a number of factors that probably
contributed to a sizable amount of public opinion being set against Socrates.
1. Socrates was
seen as a dangerous intellectual innovator, on the order of Anaxagoras, who had
been driven out of Athens.
2. Socrates
speculated about the universe. He was practicing the “new science” and was
suspected of atheistic tendencies.
3. Socrates did
question people in a manner similar to the Sophists. He cross examined many who
claimed to have knowledge or wisdom in the hope of gaining what they had.
Socrates used the dialectical method of inquiry. He, unfortunately, showed that
many people who claimed to know things actually did not. He embarrassed the
poets, statesman, and artisans of his day. Many people thought of Socrates as
they did the Sophists, although he was not one of them.
4. Socrates was
indiscriminate in his associations. He would allow anyone to question him and
observe him. He did not care who they were. Over time, foreigners,
mathematicians, the young, the Thirty who later became tyrants, Sophists,
politicians all would come to speak with Socrates. Many Athenians might have
harbored suspicions or distrust of Socrates associates and wonder about
Socrates’ true plans or role in their actions.
5. Socrates
questioning process was a threat to the democratic ideal, the foundation of the
political and social order.
What was really on trial then were the social
values to be found in the actions and inquiries of Socrates.
Both Plato and Xenophon report on the trial
itself. There is no text indicating that Plato has distorted what occurred at
the trial. The prosecutor presented his charges and then Socrates was given his
chance to speak. He knew that he had until sundown of that day to present
whatever he wanted to present. He has taken an oath, sworn to the gods, to tell
the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. He has sworn an oath to
accept the verdict of the jury and the penalty imposed by the jury. It is his
desire to keep these oaths that will be his undoing. His desire to be faithful
to his oaths make him say things that disturb many of the jurors and make him
remain in prison to die when he could have left and gone into exile.
Socrates opening points out that it is his
duty to speak the truth and it is the duty of the jury to provide for justice.
Socrates will speak in his normal manner and he maintains that he is not a
clever speaker (in the fashion of the Sophists). He is not accustomed to
dealing with courts, as he has never been a defendant. He attempts to deal with
the two sets of charges. He fears that the rumors concerning him are more
damaging than the charges. He can’t deal with them, as he would want because
the charges are not made specific. He thinks he is there due to the suspicions
surrounding him that he is involved in strange investigations and that he is
associated with sophistry. There were no witnesses to support these charges and
no evidence to show that Socrates ever charged money for instruction as
Sophists did. The god, the oracle at Delphos, has given him his business. When
the oracle said, “There is no one wiser than Socrates”, he took it to be giving
him the charge to seek after wisdom. He began to question all who may have had
wisdom in any form only to find that it was not so. His questioning of the
statesmen, poets and artisans did find them guilty of pride (hubris) for
thinking that they were wise when they were not. This also won Socrates their
enmity. Socrates does not believe that he can deal with all the antagonisms by
which he was disliked by so many. He does not believe that he can deal with the
prejudices of so many in so short a time allotted. So he turns to the specific
charges.
Corruption of the young
Socrates questions Meletos concerning this
charge. Apparently, Meletos believes that Socrates is the only guilty of this.
Socrates makes light of that idea. Socrates inquires as to whether or not the
alleged corruption is deliberate or accidental and notes that either option
leads to a course of action other than to charges and a death penalty.
Meletos could name no individuals that
Socrates had corrupted. No one in the court room named a single corrupted
child.
Impiety
The charge is explained by Meletos to mean
that Socrates is an atheist and believes in no gods. Socrates points out that
he is not like Anaxagoras who did not believe in the gods. Meletos admits under
questioning that Socrates teaches about “spiritual” things and when he does so,
Socrates forces Meletos to admit that Socrates must then believe in spirits if
he teaches about spiritual things and that spirits are gods and so Socrates
must believe in the gods.
Had Socrates concluded his defense at this
point, he might have been acquitted, as the jury was most likely laughing at
the prosecutor. But Socrates did not stop there. Under oath to tell the whole
truth, Socrates proceeded to inform the jury as to the real reasons he believed
he was charged with crimes. He informed Meletos and the Jury that Meletos and
his conspirators did not know he true charge to place against him. They could
not even bring up his loose association with some of the thirty tyrants due to
the amnesty. Socrates knows why he is disliked by so many and now begins to
make a defense of the type of life he has lived. He has only to consider
whether one does right or wrong. The god has posted him to be a philosopher to
test himself and others. He does not fear death. It is unknown. He fears
disobeying god, this is definitely bad. He is not afraid to speak the truth as
so many others are. He will act as the god has posted him to act. He will
always be a philosopher, a seeker after wisdom. He will do this and obey god
rather than the mob. He will always question others concerning truth and
virtues and persuade them to care for its soul and its virtue rather than for
fame or money or power. He has acted always according to what he thought to be
right. If he considered doing otherwise, an inner voice (daemon) would speak to
him to warn him away from doing wrong. He has done so and shall continue to do
so in his private and public life. In public he has never done wrong. He never
took money and his finances show it. In public he refused the demand of the mob
for a trial of ten generals together and instead insisted on separate trials.
He refused the tyrants order to arrest Leon of Salamis. He does not believe
that he has done wrong anywhere. He does not believe that he corrupted anyone.
Socrates informs the jury that he is asking
for justice and not mercy or charity. He would not resort to appeals for mercy
as many others had done before him. He would not bring his wife and small
children out to remind them of his family obligations. These appeals make
Athens look ridiculous in the eyes of others. This encourages the jurors to
disrespect their oaths to provide for justice. These are oaths they swore to
the gods as jurors.
Nevertheless, Socrates is found guilty. 281
to 219!
At this point the prosecutor was to present a
penalty and the defendant could either accept it or he would offer an
alternative and defend it. Meletos asks for death. Socrates’ friends are
horrified. They encourage him to propose an alternative. Socrates speaks aloud
wondering what is the punishment befitting his crime. As he does not believe
that he hasn’t committed a crime, how can he propose a punishment? Socrates
states that it would appear that his “true’ crime was not having the sense to
live an idle life; neglecting his own household affairs, not making money, not
pursuing military appointments and for believing himself too honest to involve
himself in tawdry business affairs and political plots as so many others had
done. For that “crime” he thinks the fitting punishment should be free room and
board for he, his wife and children in the town hall for the rest of their
lives! He could not recommend anything that was negative as a consequence of
leading a good life. Many of the jurors become incensed over this offering.
Socrates’ friends on the jury encourage him to propose another penalty.
Socrates considers alternatives. Death is not that upsetting since Socrates
does not know for sure what that is, prison, fines and exile are considered.
Exile is not acceptable since Socrates would be labeled as a criminal and
wherever he went he would not be able to follow the instruction of the god for
he would not be allowed to speak with others and continue his pursuit of
wisdom. Socrates reconsiders a fine but he has no money. His friends take up a
collection and he offers to pay that amount as a penalty for his crimes. The
jury votes and he is sentenced to die by a larger vote than found him guilty.
360-140!. That meant that there were men on the jury who voted that he was not
guilty and then voted to put him to death anyway! The old man had offended them
with his brazen stance affirming his virtue over their practices.
Socrates now chastises the jurors who are
putting him to death, pointing out that their deed will allow non-Athenians to
criticize them. They will call Socrates wise and Athens foolish. He is an old
man and they could not wait for him to die. They needed to go out of their way
to kill him. Socrates spoke to his friends and encouraged them not to fell so
badly for him. He was not afraid of death but of wickedness. He is confident
that the result has been a good one since that inner voice or daemon had not
spoken to him and warned him away from attending the trials and speaking as he
did. He says it is far harder to out run wickedness than death. Death comes to
us all but wickedness is what we should be concerned with and avoid. We can’t
avoid death. Death was either a dreamless sleep or a journey to another place.
If it was a dreamless sleep, Socrates thought that it would not be bad at all.
If it were a journey to another place where the gods and goddesses and heroes
were he would be happy to be with them and question them and learn the answers
that had eluded him.
Socrates was convinced that no harm can come
to a good man either living or dead! He was taken away to prison to await his
execution. In prison he is invited to flee and live in exile but refuses to do
so!
Q.3 Critically analyze the
central doctrines of Plato. To what extent his thoughts helped the man
understand the world in his time?
Answer:
Plato (c. 427-347 B.C.E.) developed such
distinct areas of philosophy as epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and
aesthetics. His deep influence on Western philosophy is asserted in the famous
remark of Alfred North Whitehead: “the safest characterization of the European
philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”
He was also the prototypical political philosopher whose ideas had a profound
impact on subsequent political theory. His greatest impact was Aristotle, but
he influenced Western political thought in many ways. The Academy, the school
he founded in 385 B.C.E., became the model for other schools of higher learning
and later for European universities.The philosophy of Plato is marked by the
usage of dialectic, a method of discussion involving ever more profound
insights into the nature of reality, and by cognitive optimism, a belief in the
capacity of the human mind to attain the truth and to use this truth for the
rational and virtuous ordering of human affairs. Plato believes that
conflicting interests of different parts of society can be harmonized. The
best, rational and righteous, political order, which he proposes, leads to a
harmonious unity of society and allows each of its parts to flourish, but not
at the expense of others. The theoretical design and practical implementation
of such order, he argues, are impossible without virtue.
1. Life – from Politics to Philosophy
Plato was born in Athens in c. 427 B.C.E.
Until his mid-twenties, Athens was involved in a long and disastrous military
conflict with Sparta, known as the Peloponnesian War. Coming from a
distinguished family – on his father’s side descending from Codrus, one of the
early kings of Athens, and on his mother’s side from Solon, the prominent
reformer of the Athenian constitution – he was naturally destined to take an
active role in political life. But this never happened. Although cherishing the
hope of assuming a significant place in his political community, he found
himself continually thwarted. As he relates in his autobiographical Seventh Letter, he could not identify himself with any of
the contending political parties or the succession of corrupt regimes, each of
which brought Athens to further decline (324b-326a). He was a pupil of
Socrates, whom he considered the most just man of his time, and who, although
did not leave any writings behind, exerted a large influence on philosophy. It
was Socrates who, in Cicero’s words, “called down philosophy from the skies.”
The pre-Socratic philosophers were mostly interested in cosmology and ontology;
Socrates’ concerns, in contrast, were almost exclusively moral and political
issues. In 399 when a democratic court voted by a large majority of its five
hundred and one jurors for Socrates’ execution on an unjust charge of impiety,
Plato came to the conclusion that all existing governments were bad and almost
beyond redemption. “The human race will have no respite from evils until those
who are really philosophers acquire political power or until, through some
divine dispensation, those who rule and have political authority in the cities
become real philosophers” (326a-326b).
It was perhaps
because of this opinion that he retreated to his Academy and to Sicily for
implementing his ideas. He visited Syracuse first in 387, then in 367, and
again in 362-361, with the general purpose to moderate the Sicilian tyrants
with philosophical education and to establish a model political rule. But this
adventure with practical politics ended in failure, and Plato went back to
Athens. His Academy, which provided a base for succeeding generations of Platonic
philosophers until its final closure in C.E. 529, became the most famous
teaching institution of the Hellenistic world. Mathematics, rhetoric,
astronomy, dialectics, and other subjects, all seen as necessary for the
education of philosophers and statesmen, were studied there. Some of Plato’s
pupils later became leaders, mentors, and constitutional advisers in Greek
city-states. His most renowned pupil was Aristotle. Plato died in c. 347 B.C.E.
During his lifetime, Athens turned away from her military and imperial
ambitions and became the intellectual center of Greece. She gave host to all
the four major Greek philosophical schools founded in the course of the fourth
century: Plato’s Academy, Aristotle’s Lyceum, and the Epicurean and Stoic
schools.
2. The Threefold Task of Political Philosophy
Although the Republic, the Statesman, the Laws and a few shorter dialogues are
considered to be the only strictly political dialogues of Plato, it can be
argued that political philosophy was the area of his greatest concern. In the
English-speaking world, under the influence of twentieth century analytic
philosophy, the main task of political philosophy today is still often seen as
conceptual analysis: the clarification of political concepts. To understand
what this means, it may be useful to think of concepts as the uses of words.
When we use general words, such as “table,” “chair,” “pen,” or political terms,
such as “state,” “power,” “democracy,” or “freedom,” by applying them to
different things, we understand them in a certain way, and hence assign to them
certain meanings. Conceptual analysis then is a mental clearance, the
clarification of a concept in its meaning. As such it has a long tradition and
is first introduced in Platonic dialogues. Although the results are mostly
inconclusive, in “early” dialogues especially, Socrates tries to define and
clarify various concepts. However, in contrast to what it is for some analytic
philosophers, for Plato conceptual analysis is not an end to itself, but a
preliminary step. The next step is critical evaluation of beliefs, deciding
which one of the incompatible ideas is correct and which one is wrong. For
Plato, making decisions about the right political order are, along with the
choice between peace and war, the most important choices one can make in
politics. Such decisions cannot be left solely to public opinion, he believes,
which in many cases does not have enough foresight and gets its lessons
only post factum from disasters recorded in history. In
his political philosophy, the clarification of concepts is thus a preliminary
step in evaluating beliefs, and right beliefs in turn lead to an answer to the
question of the best political order. The movement from conceptual analysis,
through evaluation of beliefs, to the best political order can clearly be seen
in the structure of Plato’s Republic.
3. The Quest for Justice in The Republic
One of the most fundamental ethical and
political concepts is justice. It is a complex and ambiguous concept. It may
refer to individual virtue, the order of society, as well as individual rights
in contrast to the claims of the general social order. In Book I of the Republic, Socrates and his interlocutors discuss the
meaning of justice. Four definitions that report how the word “justice” (dikaiosune) is actually used, are offered. The old man
of means Cephalus suggests the first definition. Justice is “speaking the truth
and repaying what one has borrowed” (331d). Yet this definition, which is based
on traditional moral custom and relates justice to honesty and goodness; i.e.
paying one’s debts, speaking the truth, loving one’s country, having good
manners, showing proper respect for the gods, and so on, is found to be
inadequate. It cannot withstand the challenge of new times and the power of
critical thinking. Socrates refutes it by presenting a counterexample. If we
tacitly agree that justice is related to goodness, to return a weapon that was
borrowed from someone who, although once sane, has turned into a madman does
not seem to be just but involves a danger of harm to both sides. Cephalus’ son
Polemarchus, who continues the discussion after his father leaves to offer a
sacrifice, gives his opinion that the poet Simonides was correct in saying that
it was just “to render to each his due” (331e). He explains this statement by
defining justice as “treating friends well and enemies badly” (332d). Under the
pressure of Socrates’ objections that one may be mistaken in judging others and
thus harm good people, Polemarchus modifies his definition to say that justice
is “to treat well a friend who is good and to harm an enemy who is bad” (335a).
However, when Socrates finally objects that it cannot be just to harm anyone,
because justice cannot produce injustice, Polemarchus is completely confused.
He agrees with Socrates that justice, which both sides tacitly agree relates to
goodness, cannot produce any harm, which can only be caused by injustice. Like
his father, he withdraws from the dialogue. The careful reader will note that
Socrates does not reject the definition of justice implied in the saying of
Simonides, who is called a wise man, namely, that “justice is rendering to each
what befits him” (332b), but only its explication given by Polemarchus. This
definition is, nevertheless, found unclear.
The first part of Book I of the Republic ends in a negative way, with parties
agreeing that none of the definitions provided stands up to examination and
that the original question “What is justice?” is more difficult to answer than
it seemed to be at the outset. This negative outcome can be seen as a
linguistic and philosophical therapy. Firstly, although Socrates’ objections to
given definitions can be challenged, it is shown, as it stands, that popular
opinions about justice involve inconsistencies. They are inconsistent with
other opinions held to be true. The reportive definitions based on everyday usage of
the word “justice” help us perhaps to understand partially what justice means,
but fail to provide a complete account of what is justice. These definitions
have to be supplied by a definition that will assist clarity and establish the
meaning of justice. However, to propose such an adequate definition one has to
know what justice really is. The way people define a given word is largely
determined by the beliefs which they hold about the thing referred to by this
word. A definition that is merely arbitrary or either too narrow or too broad,
based on a false belief about justice, does not give the possibility of
communication. Platonic dialogues are expressions of the ultimate communication
that can take place between humans; and true communication is likely to take
place only if individuals can share meanings of the words they use.
Communication based on false beliefs, such as statements of ideology, is still
possible, but seems limited, dividing people into factions, and, as history
teaches us, can finally lead only to confusion. The definition of justice as
“treating friends well and enemies badly” is for Plato not only inadequate
because it is too narrow, but also wrong because it is based on a mistaken
belief of what justice is, namely, on the belief grounded in factionalism,
which Socrates does not associate with the wise ones but with tyrants (336a).
Therefore, in the Republic, as well as in other Platonic dialogues,
there is a relationship between conceptual analysis and critical evaluation of
beliefs. The goals of these conversations are not merely linguistic, to arrive
at an adequate verbal definition, but also substantial, to arrive at a right
belief. The question “what is justice” is not only about linguistic usage of
the word “justice,” but primarily about the thing to which the word refers. The
focus of the second part of Book I is no longer clarification of concepts, but
evaluation of beliefs.
In Platonic
dialogues, rather than telling them what they have to think, Socrates is often
getting his interlocutors to tell him what they think. The next stage of the
discussion of the meaning of justice is taken over by Thrasymachus, a sophist,
who violently and impatiently bursts into the dialogue. In the fifth and fourth
century B.C.E., the sophists were paid teachers of rhetoric and other practical
skills, mostly non-Athenians, offering courses of instruction and claiming to
be best qualified to prepare young men for success in public life. Plato
describes the sophists as itinerant individuals, known for their rhetorical
abilities, who reject religious beliefs and traditional morality, and he
contrasts them with Socrates, who as a teacher would refuse to accept payment
and instead of teaching skills would commit himself to a disinterested inquiry
into what is true and just. In a contemptuous manner, Thrasymachus asks
Socrates to stop talking nonsense and look into the facts. As a clever man of
affairs, he gives an answer to the question of “what is justice” by deriving
justice from the city’s configuration of power and making it relative to the
interests of the dominant social or political group. “Justice is nothing else
than the interest of the stronger” (338c). Now, by contrast to what some
commentators say, the statement that Thrasymachus offers as an answer to
Socrates’ question about justice is not a definition. The careful reader will
notice that Thrasymachus identifies justice with either maintenance or
observance of law. His statement is an expression of his belief that, in the
world imperfect as it is, the ruling element in the city, or as we would say
today the dominant political or social group, institutes laws and governs for
its own benefit (338d). The democrats make laws in support of democracy; the
aristocrats make laws that support the government of the well-born; the
propertied make laws that protect their status and keep their businesses going;
and so on. This belief implies, firstly, that justice is not a universal moral
value but a notion relative to expediency of the dominant status quo group;
secondly, that justice is in the exclusive interest of the dominant group;
thirdly, that justice is used as a means of oppression and thus is harmful to
the powerless; fourthly, that there is neither any common good nor harmony of
interests between those who are in a position of power and those who are not.
All there is, is a domination by the powerful and privileged over the
powerless. The moral language of justice is used merely instrumentally to
conceal the interests of the dominant group and to make these interests appear
universal. The powerful “declare what they have made – what is to their own
advantage – to be just” (338e). The arrogance with which Thrasymachus makes his
statements suggests that he strongly believes that to hold a different view
from his own would be to mislead oneself about the world as it is.
After presenting his statement, Thrasymachus
intends to leave as if he believed that what he said was so compelling that no
further debate about justice was ever possible (344d). In the Republic he exemplifies the power of a dogma.
Indeed he presents Socrates with a powerful challenge. Yet, whether or not what
he said sounds attractive to anyone, Socrates is not convinced by the statement
of his beliefs. Beliefs shape our lives as individuals, nations, ages, and
civilizations. Should we really believe that “justice [obeying laws] is really
the good of another, the advantage of the stronger and the ruler, harmful to
the one who obeys, while injustice [disobeying laws] is in one’s own advantage”
(343c)? The discussion between Socrates and his interlocutors is no longer
about the meaning of “justice.” It is about fundamental beliefs and “concerns
no ordinary topic but the way we ought to live” (352d). Although in Book I
Socrates finally succeeds in showing Thrasymachus that his position is
self-contradictory and Thrasymachus withdraws from the dialogue, perhaps not
fully convinced, yet red-faced, in Book II Thrasymachus’ argument is taken over
by two young intellectuals, Plato’s brothers, Glaucon and Adeimantus, who for
the sake of curiosity and a playful intellectual exercise push it to the limit
(358c-366d). Thrasymachus withdraws, but his statement: moral skepticism and
relativism, predominance of power in human relations, and non-existence of the
harmony of interests, hovers over the Western mind. It takes whole generations
of thinkers to struggle with Thrasymachus’ beliefs, and the debate still
continues. It takes the whole remainder of the Republic to present an argument in defense of
justice as a universal value and the foundation of the best political order.
4. The Best Political Order
Although large parts of the Republic are devoted to the description of an
ideal state ruled by philosophers and its subsequent decline, the chief theme
of the dialogue is justice. It is fairly clear that Plato does not introduce
his fantastical political innovation, which Socrates describes as a city in speech,
a model in heaven, for the purpose of practical implementation (592a-b). The
vision of the ideal state is used rather to illustrate the main thesis of the
dialogue that justice, understood traditionally as virtue and related to
goodness, is the foundation of a good political order, and as such is in
everyone’s interest. Justice, if rightly understood, Plato argues, is not to
the exclusive advantage of any of the city’s factions, but is concerned with
the common good of the whole political community, and is to the advantage of
everyone. It provides the city with a sense of unity, and thus, is a basic
condition for its health. “Injustice causes civil war, hatred, and fighting,
while justice brings friendship and a sense of common purpose” (351d). In order
to understand further what justice and political order are for Plato, it is
useful to compare his political philosophy with the pre-philosophical insights
of Solon, who is referred to in a few dialogues. Biographical information about
Plato is fairly scarce. The fact that he was related through his mother to this
famous Athenian legislator, statesman and poet, regarded as one of the “Seven
Sages,” may be treated as merely incidental. On the other hand, taking into
consideration that in Plato’s times education would have been passed on to
children informally at home, it seems highly probable that Plato was not only
well acquainted with the deeds and ideas of Solon, but that these deeply
influenced him.
The essence of the constitutional reform
which Solon made in 593 B.C.E., over one hundred and fifty years before Plato’s
birth, when he became the Athenian leader, was the restoration of righteous
order, eunomia. In the early part of the sixth century
Athens was disturbed by a great tension between two parties: the poor and the
rich, and stood at the brink of a fierce civil war. On the one hand, because of
an economic crisis, many poorer Athenians were hopelessly falling into debt,
and since their loans were often secured by their own persons, thousands of them
were put into serfdom. On the other hand, lured by easy profits from loans, the
rich stood firmly in defense of private property and their ancient privileges.
The partisan strife, which seemed inevitable, would make Athens even more weak
economically and defenseless before external enemies. Appointed as a mediator
in this conflict, Solon enacted laws prohibiting loans on the security of the
person. He lowered the rate of interest, ordered the cancellation of all debts,
and gave freedom to serfs. He acted so moderately and impartially that he
became unpopular with both parties. The rich felt hurt by the reform. The poor,
unable to hold excess in check, demanded a complete redistribution of landed
property and the dividing of it into equal shares. Nevertheless, despite these
criticisms from both sides, Solon succeeded in gaining social peace. Further,
by implementing new constitutional laws, he set up a “mighty shield against
both parties and did not allow either to win an unjust victory”
(Aristotle, The Athenian
Constitution). He
introduced a system of checks and balances which would not favor any side, but
took into consideration legitimate interests of all social groups. In his
position, he could easily have become the tyrant over the city, but he did not
seek power for himself. After he completed his reform, he left Athens in order
to see whether it would stand the test of time, and returned to his country
only ten years later. Even though in 561 Pisistratus seized power and became
the first in a succession of Athenian tyrants, and in 461 the democratic leader
Ephialtes abolished the checks upon popular sovereignty, Solon’s reform
provided the ancient Greeks with a model of both political leadership and order
based on impartiality and fairness. Justice for Solon is not an arithmetical
equality: giving equal shares to all alike irrespective of merit, which
represents the democratic concept of distributive justice, but it is equity or
fairness based on difference: giving shares proportionate to the merit of those
who receive them. The same ideas of political order, leadership, and justice
can be found in Plato’s dialogues.
For Plato, like for Solon, the starting point
for the inquiry about the best political order is the fact of social diversity
and conflicting interests, which involve the danger of civil strife. The
political community consists of different parts or social classes, such as the
noble, the rich, and the poor, each representing different values, interests,
and claims to rule. This gives rise to the controversy of who should rule the
community, and what is the best political system. In both the Republic and the Laws, Plato asserts not only that factionalism
and civil war are the greatest dangers to the city, more dangerous even than
war against external enemies, but also that peace obtained by the victory of
one part and the destruction of its rivals is not to be preferred to social
peace obtained through the friendship and cooperation of all the city’s parts (Republic 462a-b, Laws 628a-b). Peace for Plato is, unlike for
Marxists and other radical thinkers, not a status quo notion, related to the
interest of the privileged group, but a value that most people usually desire.
He does not stand for war and the victory of one class, but for peace in social
diversity. “The best is neither war nor faction – they are things we should
pray to be spared from – but peace and mutual good will” (628c). Building on
the pre-philosophical insights of Solon and his concept of balancing
conflicting interests, in both the Republic and the Laws, Plato offers two different solutions to the
same problem of social peace based on the equilibrium and harmonious union of
different social classes. If in the Republic it is the main function of the
political leadership of philosopher-rulers to make the civil strife cease, in
the Laws this mediating function is taken over
by laws. The best political order for Plato is that which promotes social peace
in the environment of cooperation and friendship among different social groups,
each benefiting from and each adding to the common good. The best form of
government, which he advances in the Republic, is a philosophical aristocracy or monarchy,
but that which he proposes in his last dialogue the Laws is a traditional polity: the mixed or composite
constitution that reconciles different partisan interests and includes
aristocratic, oligarchic, and democratic elements.
5. The Government of Philosopher Rulers
It is generally believed today that
democracy, “government of the people by the people and for the people,” is the
best and only fully justifiable political system. The distinct features of
democracy are freedom and equality. Democracy can be described as the rule of
the free people who govern themselves, either directly or though their representatives,
in their own interest. Why does Plato not consider democracy the best form of
government? In the Republic he criticizes the direct and unchecked
democracy of his time precisely because of its leading features (557a-564a).
Firstly, although freedom is for Plato a true value, democracy involves the
danger of excessive freedom, of doing as one likes, which leads to anarchy.
Secondly, equality, related to the belief that everyone has the right and equal
capacity to rule, brings to politics all kinds of power-seeking individuals,
motivated by personal gain rather than public good. Democracy is thus highly
corruptible. It opens gates to demagogues, potential dictators, and can thus
lead to tyranny. Hence, although it may not be applicable to modern liberal
democracies, Plato’s main charge against the democracy he knows from the
ancient Greek political practice is that it is unstable, leading from anarchy
to tyranny, and that it lacks leaders with proper skill and morals. Democracy
depends on chance and must be mixed with competent leadership (501b). Without
able and virtuous leaders, such as Solon or Pericles, who come and go by
chance, it is not a good form of government. But even Pericles, who as Socrates
says made people “wilder” rather than more virtuous, is considered not to be
the best leader (Gorgias, 516c). If ruling a state is a craft, indeed
statecraft, Plato argues, then politics needs expert rulers, and they cannot
come to it merely by accident, but must be carefully selected and prepared in
the course of extensive training. Making political decisions requires good
judgment. Politics needs competence, at least in the form of today’s civil
servants. Who then should the experts be and why? Why does Plato in the Republic decide to hand the steering wheel of
the state to philosophers?
In spite of the idealism with which he is
usually associated, Plato is not politically naive. He does not idealize, but
is deeply pessimistic about human beings. Most people, corrupted as they are,
are for him fundamentally irrational, driven by their appetites, egoistic
passions, and informed by false beliefs. If they choose to be just and obey
laws, it is only because they lack the power to act criminally and are afraid
of punishment (Republic, 359a). Nevertheless, human beings are not
vicious by nature. They are social animals, incapable of living alone (369a-b).
Living in communities and exchanging products of their labor is natural for
them, so that they have capacities for rationality and goodness. Plato, as later
Rousseau, believes that once political society is properly ordered, it can
contribute to the restoration of morals. A good political order, good education
and upbringing can produce “good natures; and [these] useful natures, who are
in turn well educated, grow up even better than their predecessors” (424a).
Hence, there are in Plato such elements of the idealistic or liberal world view
as the belief in education and progress, and a hope for a better future. The
quality of human life can be improved if people learn to be rational and
understand that their real interests lie in harmonious cooperation with one
another, and not in war or partisan strife. However, unlike Rousseau, Plato
does not see the best social and political order in a democratic republic.
Opinions overcome truth in everyday life. Peoples’ lives and the lives of
communities are shaped by the prevailing beliefs. If philosophers are those who
can distinguish between true and false beliefs, who love knowledge and are
motivated by the common good, and finally if they are not only
master-theoreticians, but also the master-practitioners who can heal the ills
of their society, then they, and not democratically elected representatives,
must be chosen as leaders and educators of the political community and guide it
to proper ends. They are required to counteract the destabilizing effects of
false beliefs on society. Are philosophers incorruptible? In the ideal city
there are provisions to minimize possible corruption, even among the
good-loving philosophers. They can neither enjoy private property nor family
life. Although they are the rulers, they receive only a modest remuneration
from the state, dine in common dining halls, and have wives and children in
common. These provisions are necessary, Plato believes, because if the
philosopher-rulers were to acquire private land, luxurious homes, and money
themselves, they would soon become hostile masters of other citizens rather
than their leaders and allies (417a-b). The ideal city becomes a bad one, described
as timocracy, precisely when the philosophers neglect
music and physical exercise, and begin to gather wealth (547b).
Q.4 Make a critical analysis of
Aristotle’s theory of form and matter. How does this theory differ from the
theory of Plato?
Answer:
Aristotle believes that all sensible
substances can be analyzed into matter and form, but such an analysis is not
restricted to the things he calls substances. Matter can itself be divided into
matter and form: for instance, bricks are made of clay, shaped into cuboid
blocks. Again, clay has its own matter—mud, say—and so on. Eventually, if one
pursues this hierarchy of matter far enough downwards, Aristotle believes that
one will reach the four elements, earth, air, fire and water. He agrees with
Empedocles that everything in the sub-lunar world is ultimately made up of
different ratios of these four elements. Matter then should really be
understood as a relative notion—it is always the matter of something.
Aristotle distinguishes between a thing’s proximate matter, the stuff it is
most immediately made of, and its less proximate matter, i.e., the matter of
its matter, or even further down the hierarchy, culminating in its ultimate
matter, the elements. The organic body which is a human being’s proximate
matter is essentially alive, but this need not apply to all of the other matter
further down the chain. Aristotle distinguishes between homoiomerous and
heteromerous parts (Parts of Animals i 1,
640b25–30). Homoiomerous parts are stuffs, like bronze or flesh, which
Aristotle believes have no internal structure. Every part of a homoiomerous
stuff is the same as every other part, containing the same ratio of elements.
This view of homoiomerous parts is consistent with Aristotle’s denial of atomism;
he believes that matter, as well as space and time, are infinitely divisible.
The bodily organs, hands, feet, eyes, hearts, etc., are heteromerous, since
they do have internal structure, with different parts of them made up of
different stuffs. A person’s hand, for instance, is made of flesh, bones, blood
and other such biological matter, which in turn are made of earth, air, fire
and water. It may be that flesh too is functionally defined, so that dead flesh
is only called “flesh” homonymously as well. Even if nothing biological can
exist when not alive, it seems clear that the elements at least must be able to
do so. Therefore there will be some, low-level matter to serve as the thing
that underlies the coming to be and passing away of organisms, even though an
organism’s proximate matter exists for precisely as long as it does.
2. Prime matter
One obvious question pertains to how low such
underlying levels might go. In fact there is considerable controversy
concerning how to conceive the bottom rung of Aristotle’s hierarchy of matter.
Aristotle believes that everything is made of earth, air, fire and water. These
elements are defined by their possession of one of each of the two fundamental
pairs of opposites, hot/cold and wet/dry. Aristotle also thinks that these
elements can change into one another (On the Heavens iii 6,
305a14–35). If his analysis of change is correct, when some water changes into
some air, there must be something underlying, some substrate, which persists
through the change, initially having the essential properties of water (being
wet and cold, on Aristotle’s view) and then later those of air (being wet and
hot). The thing that underlies this kind of change cannot be any of the
elements, since it must be capable of possessing the properties characteristic
of each of the elements successively, capable of being first cold and then hot,
for example. The traditional interpretation of Aristotle, which goes back as
far as Augustine (De Genesi contra Manichaeos i
5–7) and Simplicius (On Aristotle’s Physics i 7),
and is accepted by Aquinas (De Principiis Naturae §13),
holds that Aristotle believes in something called “prime matter”, which is the
matter of the elements, where each element is, then, a compound of this matter
and a form. This prime matter is usually described as pure potentiality, just
as, on the form side, the unmoved movers are said by Aristotle to be pure
actuality, form without any matter (Metaphysics xii 6). What it
means to call prime matter “pure potentiality” is that it is capable of taking
on any form whatsoever, and thus is completely without any essential properties
of its own. It exists eternally, since, if it were capable of being created or
destroyed, there would have to be some even lower matter to underlie those changes.
Because it is the matter of the elements, which are themselves present in all
more complex bodies, it is omnipresent, and underlies not only elemental
generation and destruction, but all physical changes. As a completely
indeterminate substratum, prime matter bears some similarities to what modern
philosophy has called a “bare particular” (see Sider 2006), although, not being
a particular, it may have more in common with so-called “gunk” (see Sider
1993).
A similar idea is to be found in
Plato’s Timaeus, 49–52, where, in addition
to his Forms and the particulars which instantiate them, he argues for the
existence of a third category of thing, “a receptacle of all coming to be”
(49a5–6):
it must always be called by the same term.
For it does not depart from its own character at all. It both continually
receives all things, and has never taken on a form similar to any of the things
that enter it in any way. For it is laid down by nature as a recipient of
impressions for everything, being changed and formed variously by the things
that enter it, and because of them it appears different at different times.
(50b6–c4)
Plato also motivates his receptacle by
appealing to the phenomenon of the elements changing into one another, and,
although he refers to it as “space” and not “matter”, the traditional
interpretation has it that, as he often does, Aristotle has adopted an idea
first developed by his mentor.
More recently, opponents of attributing a
doctrine of prime matter to Aristotle have complained that there is
insufficient evidence for his holding this kind of view, and that it is so
philosophically unappealing that principles of charity militate against it as
an interpretation. Such scholars point out that Aristotle actually criticizes
Plato’s account from the Timaeus, in On
Generation and Corruption ii 1:
what Plato has written in the Timaeus is
not based on any precisely-articulated conception. For he has not stated
clearly whether his “Omnirecipient” exists in separation from the elements; nor
does he make any use of it. (329a13–15)
Although Aristotle is clearly criticizing
Plato here, it may be that his point is simply that Plato was not sufficiently
clear that prime matter is never to be found existing apart from the elements,
and that he did not give good enough reasons for its introduction, not that he
was wrong to believe in it.
Nature is prime matter (and this in two ways,
either prime in relation to the thing or prime in general; for example, in the
case of bronze works the bronze is prime in relation to them, but prime in
general would be perhaps water, if everything that can be melted is water).
(1015a7–10)
Here Aristotle is referring to his
predecessor Thales’ view that everything is ultimately made of water, which he
in fact rejects.
In other passages too Aristotle seems to
leave the question of whether or not there is prime matter deliberately open.
In Metaphysics ix
7, he uses a conditional to talk about the possibility:
it seems that what we call not this, but
that-en—for example, we call the box not wood, but wooden, nor do we call the
wood earth, but earthen, and again earth, if it is this way, we do not call
something else, but that-en—that is always potentially without qualification
the next thing…But if there is something primary,
which is no longer called that-en with respect to something else, this is prime
matter. For example, if earth is airy, and air is not fire but firey, fire is
prime matter, being a this. (1049a18–22…24–27)
Here Aristotle uses the generic adjective
“that-en” (ekeininon),
a word that he coins, to mean made of that material. If a material
could not be so described, it would be prime matter. Again, he shows himself
aware of prime matter as a possibility, without wanting to commit to it here.
Another key passage where Aristotle has been
thought to commit himself more decisively to prime matter is Metaphysics vii
3. Here we are told:
By “matter” I mean that which in itself is
not called a substance nor a quantity nor anything else by which being is
categorized. For it is something of which each of these things is predicated,
whose being is different from each of its predicates (for the others are
predicated of substance, and substance is predicated of matter). Therefore this
last is in itself neither substance nor quantity nor anything else. Nor is it
the denials of any of these; for even denials belong to things accidentally.
(1029a20–26)
Although the word “prime” does not occur
here, Aristotle is evidently talking about prime matter. A natural way to read
this passage is that he is saying there is a wholly indeterminate underlying
thing, which he calls “matter”, and it is not a substance. Those who wish to
avoid attributing a doctrine of prime matter to Aristotle must offer a
different interpretation: that if we were to make the mistake of regarding
matter, as opposed to form, as substance, we would be committed (absurdly) to
the existence of a wholly indeterminate underlying thing.
In addition to disputing the correct
interpretation of these passages where Aristotle explicitly mentions prime
matter, much of the debate has centered around, on the one hand, whether what
he says about change really commits him to it, on the other, whether the idea
is really absurd. Some opponents of prime matter have argued that Aristotle
does not, after all, wish to insist that there is always something which
persists through a change (see Charlton 1970, Appendix, and 1983). In
particular, when one of the elements changes into another, there is an
underlying thing—the initial element—but in this case it does not persist. They
point out that in the key passage of Physics i 7, where Aristotle
gives his account of change in general, he uses the expressions “underlying
thing” and “thing that remains”. While readers have usually supposed that these
terms are used interchangeably to refer to the substance, in cases of
accidental change, and the matter in substantial changes, this assumption can
be challenged. In the elemental generation case, perhaps there is no thing that
remains, just an initial elements that underlies. The worry about this
interpretation is whether it is consistent with Aristotle’s belief that nothing
can come to be out of nothing. If there is no “thing that remains” in a case of
elemental generation, how is an instance of water changing into air to be
distinguished from the supposedly impossible sort of change whereby some water
vanishes into nothing, and is instantly replaced by some air which has
materialized out of nothing?
The main philosophical objections to prime
matter are that it is, at best, a mysterious entity that we cannot know
anything about, since we never perceive it directly, but only the things it
underlies. Of course, there can be good theoretical reasons for believing in
things that we never actually see. No one has ever seen a quark, but we can
still know things about them, based on the kind of theoretical work that they
are required to perform. Still, Aristotle’s theory will be more parsimonious,
if he can manage without positing such theoretical entities. At worst, prime
matter is said to be outright contradictory. It is supposed to be capable of
taking on any form whatsoever, and thus to have no essential properties of its
own. The idea that it has no essential properties of its own seems to make it
difficult for us to characterize it positively in any way: how can it be
invisible, or eternal, or the ultimate bearer of properties, if these are not
properties that belong to it essentially? Moreover, if it is what ultimately
underlies all properties, it seems that it must be able to take on properties
that are inconsistent with what we would like to be able to think of as its own
nature: when Socrates turns blue, there is also some prime matter that
underlies him, which also turns blue. But how can prime matter be simultaneous
invisible and blue? To get around these problems, it looks as though proponents
of prime matter will have to distinguish between two different kinds of
property that prime matter has, or perhaps two different ways in which it has
properties. There are its essential properties, which define the kind of entity
that it is, and which it has permanently, and then there are its accidental
properties, which it gains and loses as it underlies different sorts of thing.
A worry about this solution is, if one can distinguish between the prime matter
and its essential properties, this might suggest that there is a need for a
further entity to act as the underlying thing for those properties, and then
this further entity would need to have its own nature, and something to
underlie that nature, and so on. It seems best to try to avoid such an infinite
regress by insisting that prime matter can underlie its own essential
properties, without being a compound of those properties and some further
matter.
3. The principle of individuation
Another reason that some scholars have
thought that Aristotle needs something like prime matter is to serve as a
so-called “principle of individuation”. While the predominant view has been
that this role is reserved for matter, other scholars have maintained either
that Aristotle means it to be form, or that he does not see the need for a
principle of individuation at all. Some of this controversy seems to have
resulted from a failure to be clear about what a principle of individuation is,
or what problem it is supposed to solve.
To see why this is so, one may focus on a
controversy about individuation which Popper sought to dissolve, by pointing
out that it derived from a false opposition. This was a controversy begotten by
a disagreement between Anscombe and Lukasiewicz regarding the principle of
individuation in Aristotle (see Anscombe et al. 1953). Popper points out that
their disagreement is only apparent, due to the fact that they are answering
different questions: Lukasiewicz insists that form should be counted as the
“source of individuality” because it explains how a thing with many parts is a
single individual and not a plurality, it accounts for the unity of
individuals. He has in mind questions like “How do all these bricks constitute
a single house?” or “What makes this collection of flesh and bones Socrates?”,
and here Aristotle does indeed appear to make use of form. On the other hand,
Anscombe says that it is matter which makes an individual the individual it is,
numerically distinct from other individuals of the same (and other) species.
Yet this is an issue about numerical distinctness rather than unity. It is
perfectly consistent to say that Socrates is one man because of his form, which
unifies his matter into a single whole, and he is a numerically distinct
individual from Callias because his matter is numerically distinct from
Callias’ matter.
It has become conventional to call an answer
to Lukasiewicz’s problem a principle of unity, and an answer to Anscombe’s
problem a principle of individuation. The traditional view has been that
individuation is a metaphysical issue: what is it that makes one individual
different from another (of the same kind)? However, some scholars have argued
that Aristotle at no point addresses this issue, but is instead concerned with
the epistemological question of how we tell one individual from another (see
Charlton 1972).
It is worth considering why one might think
that the metaphysical issue is not worth pursuing. The obvious reason is if one
thought that there was no answer to the question “what makes this individual
numerically distinct from that one?”—that nothing makes them
distinct, they just are. An advocate of this view might point out that even if
we accept that matter is what makes this individual distinct from that one, we
still have no answer to the question “what makes this portion of matter
numerically distinct from that one?”. There will always be certain of these
numerical distinctness facts that remain unexplained on any theory. But if
explanation has to stop somewhere, why not stop at the beginning? Why not just
say that it is a bare fact that Socrates is numerically distinct from Callias,
and leave matter out of it?
One might think that one could respond to
this argument by insisting that there is an answer to the question what makes
Socrates’ matter numerically distinct from Callias’ matter: it is the matter
itself. If matter can explain the distinctness of individual substances, why
should it not also explain its own distinctness from other matter? Whether or
not this move is legitimate will depend on which facts are and which facts are
not in need of explanation but may correctly be assumed to be primitive. The
problem is that “this matter is distinct from that matter because it is this
matter” seems to be a very similar sort of explanation to “Socrates is distinct
from Callias because he is Socrates”—both are cases of x explaining
its own distinctness from y. Either both should count as adequate
explanations or neither should. But the advocate of matter as principle of
individuation adopted this view precisely because she found this sort of
explanation unsatisfactory, or not an explanation at all. Therefore this
response does not seem to be open to her.
It seems that those who are committed to
there being something which accounts for the numerical distinctness of
individuals must say that there is nothing that accounts for the numerical
distinctness of the distinctness-makers. The only alternative would be to
introduce some further thing to account
for their distinctness,
and so on; but this results in an infinite regress, which, as well as being
ontologically bloated, appears to be vicious, since we can never grasp the full
account of what makes Socrates and Callias distinct. Both sides agree that
explanation must stop somewhere, but they differ over where it is appropriate
to stop: is it a basic, inexplicable fact that Socrates is numerically distinct
from Callias, or that their matter is distinct? (See Markosian 2008, §8, for a
contemporary discussion of this question.) At any rate, even if it is difficult
to prove that there is an important metaphysical question here, the traditional
interpretation of Aristotle is that he thinks there is.
There are two main texts which have been
thought to show Aristotle advancing the view that matter is the principle of
individuation: Metaphysics v 6, 1016b31–2,
and vii 8, 1034a5–8. In the first of these, we are told:
Moreover, some things are one in number, some
in form, some in genus, some by analogy; in number those whose matter is one…
According to the traditional interpretation,
here we have the claim that x and y are numerically
identical (or “one in number”) if, and only if, they have the same matter (or
the matter of x is “one” with the matter of y). An alternative
reading takes this passage to be about unity rather than individuation:
Aristotle would be saying that x is numerically one if and only
if x’s matter is one, where a thing’s matter being “one” means that it is
one continuous piece (of bone, for example).
The second important passage for detecting
Aristotle’s views about individuation comes at vii 8, 1034a5–8:
And when we have the whole, a form of such a
kind in this flesh and in these bones, this is Callias or Socrates; and they
are different in virtue of their matter (for that is different), but the same
in form, for their form is indivisible.
According to the traditional interpretation,
these lines are saying that Socrates and Callias are numerically distinct
because of their matter, not their form, and on the face of it this is the
clearest example of Aristotle affirming that matter is the principle of
individuation. We can adopt an alternative reading, however, if we suppose that
“different” means not numerically distinct, but qualitatively different. In
that case, the passage could be making an epistemological claim about how we
discern Socrates and Callias: suppose Callias is pale and Socrates dark; they
are different, but not different in form; they differ because of their matter,
since pallor and darkness primarily qualify their skin, i.e., part of their
body.
There is a difficulty for the idea that
matter can act as the principle of individuation, which arises out of the
following problem that can be raised for Aristotle’s hylomorphism (see Fine
1994). It seems that two substances, e.g., Socrates and Callias, may have
numerically the same matter at different times; that it is possible (however
unlikely) for all and only the particular elements that now compose Socrates to
end up composing Callias at some later date. In such a case, Socrates and
Callias would have the same matter, albeit at different times. Moreover, both
being human beings, they would have the same form. But they themselves are
compounds of matter and form, so if their matter and form are numerically the
same, they must themselves be numerically the same.
Put schematically, the argument looks like
this:
1.
It is possible that Socrates and Callias be
composed of numerically the same matter (albeit at different times).
2.
Socrates and Callias have the same form.
3.
Socrates and Callias are compounds of matter
and form.
4.
Therefore, it is possible that Socrates and
Callias are numerically the same.
Of course two different people cannot be
numerically the same. So, if the argument is valid, at least one of its
premises must be false.
One possible rejoinder to this argument is
that it turns on an equivocation in the meaning of “matter”. As we have seen,
for Aristotle matter comes in different levels. In the situation envisaged
Socrates and Callias would have the same remote or low-level matter (the same
elements) but they might still have different proximate matter, since the
proximate matter of a human being is his body. Since a substance is a compound
of a substantial form and some proximate matter, we are not
entitled to conclude that Socrates and Callias are the same. Although this may
be an effective way of dealing with the initial problem, it can be restated so
as to avoid this objection that the argument equivocates on “matter”. Each
level of matter is a compound of the matter at the level immediately below it
and a form. If the proximate matter of two things is to be different, despite
their lower-level matter being the same, the reason must be that the forms of
the proximate matters are different. We can redescribe the situation so that
not only are Socrates’ and Callias’ forms the same, but the forms of their
bodies are also the same, and the forms of the matter of their bodies, and so
on all the way down. Although it is unclear what in general is required for the
matter of two things of the same form to have the same form, e.g., for
Socrates’ and Callias’ bodies to have the same form, it seems reasonable to
suppose that it is sufficient for two things to have the same form that they be
qualitatively the same. So we can ensure that Socrates’ and Callias’ matters
have the same form, if we suppose that they are qualitatively the same. One
might insist that no two things are qualitatively the same, but there is little
reason to think that Aristotle is committed to Leibniz’s doctrine of the
identity of indiscernibles. What is more, although strict qualitative identity,
i.e., having all the same non-relational and relational properties, may require
demanding metaphysical assumptions such as an eternally cyclic universe,
probably all that is required is that there be no relevant qualitative
difference between Socrates and Callias, where “relevant” means such as to
result in them or their matter having different forms. While one might insist
that two things must be qualitatively the same to have the same form, this also
does not seem to be Aristotle’s view. So if we tailor our example to this
requirement, we can thwart the charge of equivocation. The argument then is
valid, so we must choose one of its premises to reject.
One might try to reject the first premise of
the argument, on the grounds that a person’s matter is essential to them. We
have seen that Aristotle plausibly does believe this about a person’s proximate matter—their
body—since a dead body is only homonymously a “body”. Nevertheless, he is
committed to their more remote matter—the elements that make them up, for
instance—being capable of existing independently of them. He needs there to be
something to underlie the change whereby a substance comes into or goes out of
existence, to make it consistent with his account of change in general in Physics i
7. There seems to be no reason to deny that, when a tree, for instance, dies,
the earth, air, fire and water that constituted it still exist in the dead
stump. But, if so, there seems no reason to think they could not leave the
stump, and end up becoming the matter of some new tree. This is all that is
needed for the problem to arise. Prime matter, if it exists, will not help: if
the elements are allowed to escape the substances that they underlie, it seems
that the prime matter that underlies them should also be capable of
doing so. It is supposed to be capable of underlying anything;
so insisting that it is confined to being the prime matter of a particular sort
of thing makes no sense.
Differences in Contributions
In Philosophy
Plato believed that concepts had a universal
form, an ideal form, which leads to his idealistic philosophy. Aristotle
believed that universal forms were not necessarily attached to each object or
concept, and that each instance of an object or a concept had to be analyzed on
its own. This viewpoint leads to Aristotelian Empiricism. For Plato, thought
experiments and reasoning would be enough to "prove" a concept or
establish the qualities of an object, but Aristotle dismissed this in favor of
direct observation and experience.
In logic, Plato was more inclined to
use inductive reasoning, whereas Aristotle used deductive reasoning. The syllogism, a basic unit of logic (if A = B, and B = C,
then A = C), was developed by Aristotle.
Both Aristotle and Plato believed thoughts
were superior to the senses. However, whereas Plato believed the senses could
fool a person, Aristotle stated that the senses were needed in order to
properly determine reality.
An example of this difference is the allegory of the cave, created by Plato. To him, the world was
like a cave, and a person would only see shadows cast from the outside light,
so the only reality would be thoughts. To the Aristotelian method, the obvious
solution is to walk out of the cave and experience what is casting light and
shadows directly, rather than relying solely on indirect or internal
experiences.
Q.5 What is the theory of categories propounded
by Aristotle? How many of the categories had been presented in this theory?
Elaborate each category.
Answer:
. According to Aristotle, quantity divides
into continuous and discrete quantities; continuous quantity divides into line,
surface, body, time, and place; and discrete quantity divides into number and
speech (4b20–23). Hence, we have the following genus/species structure:
- Quantity
- Continuous
Quantities
- line
- surface
- body
- time
- place
- Discrete
Quantities
- number
- speech
Like substance, quantity seems like a
reasonable candidate for a highest kind — quantities exist; quantities are not
substances; substances are not quantities, and it is not clear what kind would
stand above quantity. So, Aristotle’s decision to make quantity a highest kind
appears well motivated. Aristotle’s treatment of quantity, however, does raise
some difficult questions.
Perhaps the most interesting question
concerns the fact that some of the species in quantity appear to be quantified
things rather than quantities themselves. Consider, for instance, body. In its
most natural sense, ‘body’ signifies bodies, which are not quantities but
rather things with quantities. The same is true of line, surface, place, and
arguably speech. Of course, there are quantities naturally associated with some
of these species. For instance, length, breadth, and depth are associated with
line, body, and surface. But Aristotle does not list these as the species under
quantity. So, in the first instance, we can ask: does Aristotle intend his
division of Quantity to be a division of quantities or quantified things?
The difficulties involved in Aristotle’s list
of species in the category of quantity can be made more precise by noting that
in several places he seems to commit himself to the view that body is a species
in the category of substance (Top. 130b2, DC 2681–3, DA 434b12, Meta. 1079a31,
1069b38). And as I have drawn the genus-species structure in the category of
substance above, body is one of the two species immediately under substance.
Yet body also appears as a species under the species Continuous Quantity. The
difficulty arises because Aristotle is committed to the view that no species
can occur in both the category of substance and in some other category. For, he
thinks that a species in substance is said-of primary substances while species
in the other categories are not said-of primary substances. Hence, any species
in both substance and some accidental category would be said-of and not said-of
primary substance. Aristotle’s list of species in the Category of Quantity is
thus not merely puzzling but seems to commit Aristotle to a contradiction. So,
a second question about Aristotle’s category of quantity naturally suggests
itself: how can body be a species in both the category of quantity and the
category of substance? (Studtman 2002)
A number of other questions about Quantity
could be asked. For instance, Aristotle’s treatment of quantity in the Metaphysics includes
species not present in his treatment in the Categories (Meta. 1020a7–34),
which raises questions as to the extent to which the set of doctrines in
the Categories coheres
with the doctrines in his other physical and metaphysical works. Furthermore,
questions about Aristotle’s views about the nature of some of the species in
quantity arise. So, for instance, to what does Aristotle think the species
number corresponds? He surely does not think that numbers exist apart from the
material world. But then what exactly does Aristotle think a number is? All we
get for an answer from the Categories is that number is a
discrete quantity. But such an answer hardly provides much of an understanding
as to what Aristotle has precisely in mind. Moreover, why does Aristotle
include speech as a species in the category of quantity? Speech hardly seems
like a natural candidate for this category. Perhaps, Aristotle has in mind the
quantities of vowels and syllables of Greek words. But, if anything, speech would
seem to be some kind of vocal sound, which arguably is a kind of affection.
Each of these questions is interesting and worth pursuing. I shall not,
however, offer any answers to them here. Rather, I hope only to have
illustrated how deeply intriguing and yet difficult to pin down fully
Aristotle’s Categories is.
2.2.3 Relatives
After quantity, Aristotle discusses the
category of relatives, which both interpretively and philosophically raises
even more difficulties than his discussion of quantity. A contemporary
philosopher might naturally think that this category contains what we would
nowadays call ‘relations’. But this would be a mistake. The name for the
category is ta pros ti (τὰ πρός τι), which
literally means ‘things toward something’. In other words, Aristotle seems to
be classifying not relations but rather things in the world in so far as they
are toward something else. It would seem, however, that for Aristotle things
are toward something else insofar as a relational predicate applies to them. Aristotle
says: Things are called ‘relative’ if as such they are said to be of
something else or to be somehow referred to something else. So, for instance,
the greater, as such, is said to be of something
else, for it is said to be greater than something (6a36).
Perhaps the most straightforward reading of
Aristotle’s discussion is the following. He noticed that certain predicates in
language are logically incomplete — they are not used in simple
subject/predicate sentences of the form ‘a is F’
but rather require some type of completion. To say ‘three is greater’ is to say
something that is incomplete — to complete it requires saying what three is
greater than. Nonetheless, Aristotle accepted a doctrine according to which
properties in the world always inhere in a single subject. In other words,
although Aristotle countenanced relational predicates, and though he certainly
thought that objects in the world are related to other objects, he did not
accept relations as a genuine type of entity. So, Aristotle’s category of
relatives is a kind of halfway house between the linguistic side of relations,
namely relational predicates, and the ontological side, namely relations
themselves.
For our purposes, we need not determine how
to best interpret Aristotle’s theory of relatives, but can rather consider some
issues that Aristotle’s discussion raises. First, anyone who is comfortable
with relational properties will no doubt find Aristotle’s discussion somewhat
confused. Although Aristotle does discuss important features of relational
predicates, for instance, that relational predicates involve a kind of
reciprocal reference (6b28), his fundamental stance, according to which all
properties in the world are non-relational, will appear wrongheaded. Second,
Aristotle’s category of relatives raises interpretive issues, in particular the
issue concerning what exactly his categorical scheme is meant to classify. As
in the case of quantity, Aristotle seems to be focusing on things that are
related rather than relations themselves. Indeed, this is evident from the name
of the category.
This latter fact, namely that in his
discussion of relatives Aristotle seems focused on related things rather than
relations, places pressure on the easy characterization of the categories that
I discussed previously, namely that each category is a distinct type of
extra-linguistic entity. If that easy characterization were correct, Aristotle
should have countenanced some type of entity corresponding to relatives as a
highest kind. But he did not. Hence, it is tempting to shift to an
interpretation according to which Aristotle is after all focused on
linguistically characterized items. And perhaps he thinks that the world
contains just a few basic types of entity and that different types of
predicates apply to the world in virtue of complex semantic relations to just
those types of entity. As it turns out, many commentators have interpreted him
in this way. But their interpretations face their own difficulties. To raise
just one, we can ask: what are the basic entities in the world if not just
those that fall under the various categories? Perhaps there is a way to answer
this question on Aristotle’s behalf, but the answer is not clearly contained in
his texts. So again we are once again forced to admit just how difficult it is
to pin down a precise interpretation of Aristotle’s work.
2.2.4 Quality
After relatives, Aristotle discusses the
category of quality. Unlike quantity and relatives, quality does not present
any obvious difficulties for the interpretation according to which the Categories classify
basic types of entity. Aristotle divides quality as follows (8b26–10a11):
- Quality
- Habits
and Dispositions
- Natural
Capabilities and Incapabilities
- Affective
Qualities and Affections
- Shape
Each of these species looks like an
extra-linguistic type of entity, and none of the species appears to be a
species in another category. Hence, any difficulties with Aristotle’s treatment
of quality concern the appropriateness of the divisions he makes rather than
the extent to which the category fits into a larger interpretation of the
categorial scheme. But, as with just about everything in Aristotle’s scheme,
the divisions he makes among qualities have been severely criticized. J.L.
Ackrill, for instance, criticizes Aristotle as follows:
He [Aristotle]
gives no special argument to show that [habits and dispositions] are qualities.
Nor does he give any criterion for deciding that a given quality is or is not a
[habit-or-disposition]; why, for example, should affective qualities be treated
as a class quite distinct from [habits and dispositions]? (Ackrill 1963)
Ackrill finds Aristotle’s division of quality
at best unmotivated. And Ackrill, it would seem, is being polite. Montgomery
Furth has said: ‘I shall largely dispense with questions like…the rationale (if
there be one) for comprehending into a single category the monstrous motley
horde yclept Quality…’ (Furth 1988).
It must be admitted, that Aristotle’s list of
the species in quality is at first blush a bit odd. For instance, why should we
consider any of the species listed as falling directly under quality? Indeed,
when Aristotle lists the species, he does not follow his usual procedure and
provide the differentiae that distinguish them. If there are such differentiae,
we should expect that habits and dispositions, for instance, can be defined as
such and such a quality. The same would of course be true for the other
qualities. But not only does Aristotle not provide these differentiae, but it
is also difficult to see what they might be. To appreciate the difficulty, one
need only ask: what differentia can be added to quality so as to define shape?
To be fair, Aristotle’s category of quality
has had its defenders. In fact, some of those defenders have gone so far as to
provide something of a deduction of the species in the category from various
metaphysical principles. Aquinas, for instance, says the following about the
category in his Summa Theologiae:
Now the mode of determination of the subject
to accidental being may be taken in regard to the very nature of the subject,
or in regard to action, and passion resulting from its natural principles,
which are matter and form; or again in regard to quantity. If we take the mode
or determination of the subject in regard to quantity, we shall then have the
fourth species of quality. And because quantity, considered in itself, is
devoid of movement, and does not imply the notion of good or evil, so it does
not concern the fourth species of quality whether a thing be well or ill disposed,
nor quickly or slowly transitory.
But the mode of determination of the subject,
in regard to action or passion, is considered in the second and third species
of quality. And therefore in both, we take into account whether a thing be done
with ease or difficulty; whether it be transitory or lasting. But in them, we
do not consider anything pertaining to the notion of good or evil: because
movements and passions have not the aspect of an end, whereas good and evil are
said in respect of an end.
On the other hand, the mode or determination
of the subject, in regard to the nature of the thing, belongs to the first
species of quality, which is habit and disposition: for the Philosopher says (Phys.
vii, text. 17), when speaking of habits of the soul and of the body, that they
are “dispositions of the perfect to the best; and by perfect I mean that which
is disposed in accordance with its nature.” And since the form itself and the
nature of a thing is the end and the cause why a thing is made (Phys.
ii, text. 25), therefore in the first species we consider both evil and good,
and also changeableness, whether easy or difficult; inasmuch as a certain
nature is the end of generation and movement.
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