Philosophy Paper

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PLATO and ARISTOTLE

Plato (429-347 BCE)

  • The “idealist” or “utopian” or “dreamer”
  • Born into a wealthy family in the second year of the Peloponnesian War
  • Name means “high forehead”
  • Student of Socrates
  • Left Athens when Socrates died but

returned to open a school called the Academy

in 385 BCE

  • Wrote 20 books, many in the dialectic style

(a story which attempts to teach a specific

concept) with Socrates as the main character

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Plato’s Ideas

  • Idealist, believes in order and harmony, morality and self-denial
  • Immortality of the soul
  • Virtue as knowledge
  • Theory of Forms – the highest function of the human soul is to achieve the vision of the form of the good

Anti-Democratic Plato

  • Most perfect form of government: “Philosopher Kings” (i.e. very smartest) rule over an essentially communistic society
  • Why Philosopher Kings?
  • Plato believed they alone possess the intellectual capacity to achieve the highest form of human contemplation
  • Such penetrating powers of insight necessary to distinguish between truth (i.e. that which is eternal and unchanging and therefore is “really real”) from that which is untrue (changeable stimuli received by our faulty instruments of perception that serve to trick us into thinking that something is in fact “real”)

Plato’s Impact

  • Plato’s thinking on the immortality of the soul, Plato’s conception of a world beyond the sensory and his god-like form of good have very much shaped Christian thinking on God, the soul, and an afterlife
  • Nietsche called Christianity “Plato for the people”

Real World

Form of the cat:

perfect and eternal

Echo/illusion/ shadow of the perfect cat.

  • Everything we experience in this world is a vague shadow of what it really is

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  • Forms are the perfect expression of something.
  • Episteme/epistemology - true knowledge.
  • True knowledge attained via reason NOT sense experience (sight, smell, touch, sound and taste.)
  • Sense Experience creates illusions called Eikasia.
  • The Forms exist in the Noeton.
  • Our world that is based on senses is the Horaton (phenomena)
  • All physical objects seen with senses are dependent on and simply shadows of the Forms (concepts.)

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Qualities of Forms

The Forms are perfect/ Ideal=

  • Everything we experience is imperfect, such as beauty.
  • We never see perfect beauty in this world
  • The form of beauty – beauty itself- is perfect.
  • Each form is the one and only original perfect example.

The Forms are invisible=

  • The perfect element of the Forms means they are invisible.


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The Forms are more real=

  • Forms are more real than the illusion we experience.
  • For the existence of things in our world depends on the existence on the Forms.
  • For example beauty that we see is a distorted and imperfect image of what beauty really is.
  • All these images rely on the existence of the Form of Beauty being there.
  • Without the form there would be no existence of beauty.

The Forms are eternal =

  • They always have been there
  • They always will be there.
  • While beautiful things may come and go, beauty itself remains.

The Forms are changeless =

  • Always stay the same.
  • Plato’s world of forms contains fixed truths which are absolutely true for all time, people and places

Form of the Good

*

Ultimate Form

  • There are many Forms, and because there are so many forms there must be a Form of the Forms.
  • Plato called this supreme Form the ‘Form of the Good.’
  • The Form of the Good is the Form of all other forms. This is because everything has good in it.
  • Try describing beauty, justice, truth without mentioning ‘goodness.’
  • All perfection flows down from the Form of the Good.

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  • According to Plato, knowledge of the Good is the highest knowledge a human is capable of.
  • The ordinary person (that’s you and me) struggle to see past the illusion of this world because we are ruled/controlled by our senses.
  • Only the philosopher is capable of seeing beyond, because he can make ‘a priori’ judgments.
  • This is because he thinks independently of the sense in his search for Truth.

*

Aristotle (384-322 BCE)

  • The “real” or “encyclopedist” or “inspired common sense” or “the prince of those who know”
  • Studied under Plato at the Academy
  • Son of a Macedonian doctor, returned home to become the teacher of Alexander of Macedon for three years, beginning in 343 BCE
  • Later returned to Athens to open

school called the Lyceum in 335 BCE

Mark Steel Lectures: Aristotle

Why were there so many philosophers during Aristotle’s time?

What does Plato mean by the perfect form?

What are some examples of what Aristotle researched?

What is his ‘4 Essence’ theory?

What did Politics address concerning nature?

Why did he feel the rich AND poor were unfit to rule?

How was he before his time?

Aristotle, continued

  • Believed in the Golden Mean
  • i.e. all things follow the middle course; by avoiding extremes, one will enjoy a maximum of happiness and a minimum of pain
  • Called the “encycolpedist” as he had a profound love of order
  • Numerous fields of scientific study he either invented or contributed to:
  • Logic, biology, zoology, botany, psychology, chemistry, astronomy, cosmology, metaphysics, ethics, political theory, constitutional history, history of sport

Aristotle, continued

  • Founder of scientific method
  • A valid and reliable process by which all scientific analyses of a given phenomenon could take place
  • Led to explosive advances in the Greek scientists’ capacity to conduct scientific research
  • Middle Ages’ scholars felt Aristotle knew almost as much as God, therefore called him “The Philosopher”

Elements of the Art of Rhetoric

  • Ethos = Ethics
  • Appeal based on the trustworthiness/character of the speaker
  • Relies on the reputation of the author
  • Logos = Logic
  • Appeal based on logic or reason
  • Found primarily in scholarly articles and corporate financial reports
  • Pathos = Pathetic, sympathy, empathy
  • Appeal based on emotion
  • Found in advertisements
  • The more people react without full consideration for the “why,” the more effective an argument can be
  • Although it can be manipulative, it is the cornerstone of moving people to action

Legacy of Greek Philosophers

  • Taught us how to think
  • Provided a great deal of insight into the natural world
  • Provided many of the most profound and meaningful answers to the great philosophical questions that have befuddled humans since the dawn of civilization
  • Provided a comprehensive, valid, and reliable method by which we could test whether or not a given idea is true

Aristotle (384-322 BCE)

ARISTOTLE

  • Aristotle is a towering figure in ancient Greek philosopher, making contribution to logic, metaphysics, mathematics, biology, botany, ethics, politics, agriculture, medicine, dance and theater.

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  • He was a student of Plato who in turn studied under Socrates. He was more empirically-minded than Plato or Socrates and is famous for rejecting Plato’s theory of forms.
  • As a prolific writer and polymath, Aristotle radically transformed most, if not all, areas of knowledge he touched. It is no wonder that Aquinas referred to him simply as “The Philosopher.” In his lifetime, Aristotle wrote as many as 200 treatises, of which only 31 survive.

Saint Thomas Aquinas

“The Philosopher”

Socrates

  • Aristotle was the first to classify areas of human knowledge into distinct disciplines such as mathematics, biology, and ethics. Some of these classifications are still used today.
  • As the father of the field of logic, he was the first to develop a formalized system for reasoning. Aristotle observed that the validity of any argument can be determined by its structure rather than its content. A classic example of a valid argument is his syllogism: All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; therefore, Socrates is mortal.

  • Mathematics

  • Biology
  • Ethics

Aristotle’s

ARISTOTLE’S LIFE

  • Aristotle was born in 384 BCE at Stagirus, a now extinct Greek colony and seaport on the coast of Thrace. His father Nichomachus was court physician to King Amyntas of Macedonia, and from this began Aristotle’s long association with the Macedonian Court, which considerably influenced his life.
  • While he was still a boy his father died. At age 17 his guardian, Proxenus, sent him to Athens, the intellectual center of the world, to complete his education. He joined the Academy and studied under Plato, attending his lectures for a period of twenty years.

ARISTOTLE’S LIFE

  • It is reported that Aristotle’s writings were held by his student Theophrastus, who had succeeded Aristotle in leadership of the Peripatetic School.

ARISTOTLE’S WRITINGS

The works of Aristotle fall under three headings:

  • Among his writings of a popular nature the only one which we possess of any consequence is the interesting tract On the Polity of the Athenians.

ARISTOTLE’S LOGIC

  • Aristotle’s writings on the general subject of logic were grouped by the later Peripatetics under the name Organon, or instrument. From their perspective, logic and reasoning was the chief preparatory instrument of scientific investigation. Aristotle himself, however, uses the term “logic” as equivalent to verbal reasoning.

“Organon”

Peripatetics

ARISTOTLE’S METAPHYSICS

  • Aristotle’s editors gave the name “Metaphysics” to his works on first philosophy, either because they went beyond or followed after his physical investigations. Aristotle begins by sketching the history of philosophy. For Aristotle, philosophy arose historically after basic necessities were secured. It grew out of a feeling of curiosity and wonder, to which religious myth gave only provisional satisfaction.

  • Aristotle sees the universe as a scale lying between the two extremes: form without matter is on one end, and matter without form is on the other end. The passage of matter into form must be shown in its various stages in the world of nature. To do this is the object of Aristotle’s physics, or philosophy of nature. It is important to keep in mind that the passage from form to matter
    within nature is a movement

towards ends or purposes.

Everything in nature has its

end and function, and nothing

is without its purpose. Everywhere

we find evidences of design and rational plan.

ARISTOTLE’S PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE

ARISTOTLE’S ETHICS

  • Ethics, as viewed by Aristotle, is an attempt to find out our chief end or highest good: an end which he maintains is really final. Though many ends of life are only means to further ends, our aspirations and desires must have some final object or pursuit. Such a chief end is universally called happiness. But people mean such different things by the expression that he finds it necessary to discuss the nature of it for himself.

  • Aristotle does not regard politics as a separate science from ethics, but as the completion, and almost a verification of it. The moral ideal in political administration is only a different aspect of that which also applies to individual happiness. Humans are by nature social beings, and the possession of rational speech (logos) in itself leads us to social union.

ARISTOTLE’S POLITICS