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Notes on History of Philosophy I -- Phil A211 William Jamison - Instructor Lecture 3 Reflections on first lecture So much of the material from the earliest time periods we discuss is so exciting I find myself mulling over so much it is hard to sleep after class. One of you (I haven’t learned everyone’s name yet) asked what point I was trying to make with the various things I brought up – and I know some pedagogic advice is that you should teach one thing – I feel having only one main point to make in two hours and forty five minutes is a waste of everyone’s time. Rather, there is an ocean of information that we have and many themes we can describe – who can say the ocean exists for one main reason? Instead, we should immerse ourselves in the ocean and learn as many fascinating things about it we can. Who knows what set of things we learn about it might eventually come to help us solve some future – or present! – problem? So what sorts of themes come to mind? A first point: studying Iphigeneia (I was playing this at the start of class) notice this movie is on line and if you get a few hours to watch it that would be great. The play is the work of Euripides. It is an important classic and has had tremendous influence of course. One thing I find most interesting is that Iphigeneia is similar to a Christos – an anointed one. The innocent lamp sacrificed for the community (while the scape goat is usually set free to carry away the sins of the community.) She also is thought to have become deified for her sacrifice. Have a look at all the interesting traditions about her. Point 2: Brian Boyd’s The Origin of Stories – what are stories try to teach? He argues the main moral of the Odyssey is restraint. Think before you act. This seems a novel development in the way people think. There is a theme here that I will try to emphasize during the course. We are looking at the progress of the human mind. From Conan the Barbarian or Achilles and the ethic of brutality to our contemporary culture where I think we rightly consider our society the best human society that has ever been. How did we get this way from thinking the Good was crushing your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of the women? Point 3: Julian Jaynes ties in to the theme of progress with a theory concerning the progress of consciousness. Notice in his book chapter 3 on the Mind of Iliad. They do not seem to have self-conscious awareness in the story. Were the ancient Greeks unable to think of themselves as modern people do? Everyone seems to argue for this – self-consciousness is a modern development. The “program” that runs in our minds that enables us to think of ourselves as modern individuals only developed over time and only in certain cultures! Harold Bloom (who I didn’t mention) argues in his book Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human that the modern human specifically arrives in Shakespeare’s play Hamlet. Even more specifically – in the soliloquy “To be or not to be.” Thucydides: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/eb11-thucydides.html The History of the Peloponnesian War: main page http://classics.mit.edu/Thucydides/pelopwar.html Pericles' Funeral Oration: http://classics.mit.edu/Thucydides/pelopwar.2.second.html Destruction of Melos: http://classics.mit.edu/Thucydides/pelopwar.5.fifth.html Aspasia: http://www.livius.org/as-at/aspasia/aspasia.html and see Menexenus by Plato on the funeral oration. Plato Sophists taught for money. They were hired by wealthy parents to teach their children what would enable them to accumulate wealth, power and prestige. What we consider the virtues had little or no importance among them, winning was all that counted. No matter what was necessary, get that dollar was the goal. Since that is what the people wanted, that is what the Sophists taught, popular opinion was right. In our country, popular opinion directs policy. Presidents lead by polling their constituents and playing to the desires of the people. Socrates thought this was a horrible way for his community to raise their children. He engages the wise men of his day in dialogues. He does this for two reasons. One is that he seeks the wisest man. He is interested in doing this because a friend of his had asked the Oracle at Delphi, was there anyone wiser than Socrates and the mouth of Apollo said, "None." Socrates could not believe this, and so, he spent the rest of his life in search for a man that was wiser than he was. The second reason he engages the wise in dialogues is to teach them a lesson. They think they know many things. While they may know much concerning their specialty, they let that fool them into thinking that they know a lot about everything. They have failed to examine themselves. Above the entrance to the temple of Apollo is the phrase, "The unexamined life is not worth living." For Socrates, this is true. He engages those who consider themselves wise in dialogue to examine his own life and to encourage others to examine theirs. We view this, today, as wonderful, engaging dialogue, but for the elite, the wise, the Sophists of Athens, this was insulting and corrupting. They put Socrates on trial and found him guilty of corrupting the youth and not worshipping the gods. Prior to class, read PCV1 up through the end of the Apology. This is Socrates' defense at his trial. Stephanus references
The Socratic Problem Meet the challenge of sophistry with Socratic method Socratic method challenge hasty and popular opinions with tests from everyday life get others to think for themselves through dialogue Socratic ethics Knowledge is virtue - "Know thyself." Socrates met this challenge so well the elite of his community came to hate him and put him on trial. The charge was that he did not worship the Gods, and that he corrupted the youth. He was found guilty and condemned to death by drinking hemlock. Aristocles was one of Socrates' students and began a school in a public garden in Athens named the Academy. He became known as Plato which means "broad." (Some say this was because he had a very broad head, others that it was because he had such broad knowledge, still others because he was fat.) His first slide: Hierarchy of the Sciences 1 Arithmetic 2 Geometry 3 Astronomy 4 Harmonics 5 Dialectic Doctrine of Ideas Idea of the Good as source of all the rest (logos) Forms or Ideas are real entities Ideas belong to a realm, a "heaven of Ideas" Ideas are eternal and not dependent on a mind Ideas are apprehended by reason, not by sense
Nature - Mater is perishable, imperfect, unreal Cosmology Demi urge - urge to create order and beauty Pattern - order and beauty follows the Ideal Receptacle - source of evil, matter, brute factuality Good - animates the world soul as our soul animates us, source of all reason and natural order Psychology - Soul is principle of life, immortal 1 Rational 2 Spirited 3 Lower appetites
Eros - sensuous love and desire for the beautiful and good is the same basic impulse as desire for eternal values and immortality Ethics - the ideal is a well-ordered soul body is the prison house of the soul, release and return to Ideal World the goal and end of life reason rules over the spirited faculty - brave reason rules over appetites - temperate Politics - the Republic is "Man writ large" Explanation: Plato came to conclude that we did know virtue, but that our relationship with the ideas was closest before we were born. Our souls are united with all of the ideas in heaven, where everything is perfect. At birth we enter into a material body. The shock of our entering into the material world causes us to forget much that we knew. By following a well set up program following the hierarchy of the sciences, we can gradually come to remember much of what we forgot. Learning is remembering. Our connection with the material world causes us to experience pain and deprivation because we long to return to where our soul feels at home, in heaven. Next to the Bible, Plato's Republic has had the greatest impact on western culture of any book. Plato's philosophical position is called Idealism. We will see more about this later. In discussing "the pious" the link to the word used in the dialog and meaning
of the word in Greek is here:
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