Socrates' Children Box Set 1685780091, 9781685780098

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Other Works of Interest from St. Augustine's Press

Rémi Brague, On the God of the Christians (e[on one or two others) Rémi Brague, Eccentric Culture: A Theory of Western Civilization Albert Camus, Christian Metaphysics and Neoplatonism Edward Feser, The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism H.S. Gerdil, The Anti-Emile: Reflections on the Theory and Practice of Education against the Prindples of Rousseau Gerhard Niemeyer, The Loss and Recovery of Truth James V. Schall, The Regensburg Lecture James V. Schall, The Modem Age Pierre Manent, Seeing Things Politically Peter Kreeft, Ecumenical Jihad Peter Kreeft, If Einstein Had Been a Surfer Peter Kreeft, I Surf Therefore I Am Peter Kreeft, Jesus-Shock Peter Kreeft, An Ocean Full of Angels Peter Kreeft, The Philosophy of Jesus Peter Kreeft, The Platonic Tradition Peter Kreeft, The Sea Within Peter Kreeft, A Socratic Introduction to Plato's Republic Peter Kreeft, Socratic Logic (yd Edition) Peter Kreeft, Socrates Meets Descartes Peter Kreeft, Socrates Meets Hume Peter Kreeft, Socrates Meets Kant Peter Kreeft, Soaates Meets Machiavelli Peter Kreeft, Soaates Meets Marx Peter Kreeft, Socrates Meets Sartre Peter Kreeft, Summa Philosophica Ellis Sandoz, Give Me Liberty: Studies on Constitutionalism and Philosophy Roger Kimball, The Fortunes of Permanence: Culture and Anarchy in an Age of Amnesia

Socrates' Children Ancient The ioo Greatest Philosophers Volume I: Ancient Philosophers Peter Kreeft

ei wu wei even to politics: he tells riders to "govern large nations

as yon cook small fish." Suppleness rather than rigidity is the ideal, being like stem cells, or like the flesh and malleable habits of babies rather than the brittle skin and settled habits of the old—or like willow trees that bend in the storm rather than hard oaks that crack. "The most valuable part of a bowl is the emptiness inside." A bowl—or a mind—that is full cannot receive and grow. You can't use a door unless it opens. Moral goodness can't come just from following rules, but only by an opening-up to Tao. (4) Yin and Yang, the cosmic feminine and masculine, expresses the relativity of all qualities: hot & cold, wet & dry, high & low, birth & death, pain & pleasure, strength & weakness, even good & evil in the sense of good fortune & bad fortune. Our attempts to get one half of the dualism without the other necessarily fail, because they run counter to nature, the "way" things are. Wisdom embraces both, in embracing the whole, which is the Tao. Each half implies and requires the other. Life is a dance, and "it takes two to tango." (Is this true of moral goods as well as physical goods? Do we have to be wicked in order to be saintly?)

T h e Tao Te Citing is, next to the Bible, the most translated book in the world, and one of the most read. It is loved not onlv bv Taoists but also bv Confucians, Buddhists, Hindus, and many Christians. It has some startling similarities to Jesus' "sermon on the mount" (Matthew 5-7), but without the context of a personal, loving God.

Selected Bibliography: Taoism, Watercourse Why by Alan Watts Christ the Eternal Tao bv Hiermonk Damascene The World's Religions by Huston Smith Two very different translations of Tao Te Chingìby Arthur Waley (with helpful historical notes) by Aldiss & Lombardo (the most literal and helpful) The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff

7. Mo Tzu (d 438 B.C.) (1) Mo Tzu, founder of Mohism, began as a Confucian but, like Lao Tzu, reacted against Confucius' emphasis on ceremony, hierarchy, elaborate rules, and social order. (2) His main idea is universal love as the primary human good and the foundation of both the family and the state. One must love all others with the same love as you love yourself. This morality was unattractive to politicians, since no successful state has ever been founded on its basis, and because love is not something rulers can control. (Compare Machiavelli, who says "it is better to be feared than to be loved, for men will love you when they will but fear you when you will.") (3) Mo Tzu also taught that "the will of Heaven" was a personal God, and that (4) Gods or spirits (something like angels) saw everything we do in life. (5) He also believed in free will and opposed fatalism. In all five of these ways, he was closer to Jesus' teachings than any other Chinese philosopher. (6) He also listed three criteria for judging any belief: (a) Trace its source, its past history. (b) Examine its present situation, how ordinary people experience it. (c) Test its future practicality by applying it to life, law, and politics. Mo Tzu's successor, Mencius (Meng-zi, d 289 B.C.) modified Mo Tzu's "universal love" to include a hierarchy with unequal levels: love family more than strangers and people more than things.

8. Jesus (4 B . C - 2 9 A.D.) Because he and his disciples claimed so much more for him, it is usually forgotten that Jesus was also a philosopher. For Jesus answers the four most fundamental questions of all philosophers, the question of metaphysics, the question of anthropology, the question of epistemologa and the question of ethics. His answers to those questions depend on something not original with him, but common to all of Biblical Judaism. In one word each, the answers are: (1) In Jesus' metaphysics, the ultimate reality, the standard, source, and key to all other reality, is the One God, the Creator, whose self-revealed name is "I AM." (2) In Jesus' anthropology, man is the creature who is made in God's image, and who is therefore also an "J," a person, conscious and free, knowing and willing. (3) In Jesus' epistemologa man's highest knowledge of the greatest reality comes through faith in what God has spoken to man, the "Word of God," which for Christians is ultimately Jesus Himself. (4) In Jesus' ethics, man's fundamental end, goal, and good is the love of God and man: "You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart and soul and mind and strength, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself." Buddhists believe that Buddha was a philosopher too, a wise man and a lover of wisdom, but also something more than a philosopher, for the whole point of his teach­ ing was the transcendence of ordinary rational consciousness into "enlightenment." In a similar way Christians believe Jesus was a perfect and complete man, and therefore also a wise man and a lover of wisdom, and a philosopher, but that He was much more than that: that he was and is the end and object of all philosophy, the Logos or Mind or inner Word of God become man. Buddhists summarize their philosophy in Four Noble Truths. Jesus's practical philosophy can also be summed up in "four noble truths": (1) The primary symptom (effect) of man's most fundamental disease (sin) is death. (2) The diagnosis of the disease (the cause of physical death) is sin (spiritual death), separation from God, the source of all life. (3) The cure for this disease is eternal life, or being "born again." (4) The prescription that brings about this cure is, on God's part, the gift ("grace") of the one who is named "Jesus" ("Savior"), titled "Christ" ("Messiah," the "Annointed one" or "Promised one"), and claimed to be the "son of God," and on man's part, repentance, faith, and baptism, which connect man up with God. The fundamental reason Christians have for believing all this is Jesus Himself. To understand this most influential man who ever lived, instead of reading later books about him and his teachings, first read the data, the four Gospels. Obviously this "philosophy," which is both the most popular one in the entire world and also the most controversial, cannot be evaluated in a short chapter in a short book like this. Therefore I will not try.

A Note on Muhammad Muhammad is one of the three or four most influential persons who ever lived, and the Qur'an is the most read, recited, and memorized book in the world. Yet we cannot treat Muhammad as a philosopher. For there is no such thing as "the philosophy of Muhammad." Muhammad was not a philosophical sage like Buddha or Lao Tzu or even Jesus (who was, after all, a rabbi, a teacher). His claim was to be simply a prophet, who wrote the very words, literally and exactly, that he heard from Allah through His archangel Gabriel. The Muslim claim is that nothing came from the mind of Muham­ mad, only from the Mind of God through His prophet; that Muhammad was simply one who listened and responded or "recited" (the meaning of "Qur'an"), who preached and practiced total "islam," ("surrender" or "submission") to the Will of Allah (the One God). If this is not true, and the Qur'an came only from Muhammad's mind instead, then Muhammad was the greatest philosopher who ever lived, at least as far as the na­ ture of ultimate reality, God, God's will, and morality are concerned—or else he learned his wisdom from the Jews and Christians he met.

Introduction to the Greeks About a quarter of the 1 0 0 most historically important philosophers, by my estimation, are ancient Greeks, and for the first 13 of them (the "pre-Socratics") we have only frag­ ments rather than any complete books. Yet because they were the pioneers, and accord­ ing to an ancient Greek saying, "Well begun is half done." My first and best philosophy teacher always took much time and care on the first T

few pages of a great book, show ing us how to read it, by example, and then leaving us to finish on our own—like a father teaching his children how to ride a two-wheeler bike by giving them a long push at the start. It worked with individual books, and I think it T

also w orks with the long book that is the whole history of philosophy, "the great conver­ sation/' In this history there have been four great centers of literary, philosophical, and scientific profundity and creativity, four places and times that drew great minds like magnets: Athens in the 5th century B.C., the medieval university of Paris in the 13th century, 18th century London, and 19th century Berlin. Almost everything of lasting value in Western civilization comes from either the Jews or the Greeks. The Jews gave us God, and the consequences of God everywhere, especially in morality. The Greeks gave us reason, and the consequences of reason everywhere, especially in philosophy, science, technology, literature, art, and politics. They invented just about everything from democracy to after-dinner speaking. Behind it all was their language, the very best language in the history of the world for philosophizing clearly, profoundly, and subtly, especially for making philosophical distinctions. The Greeks classified all other humans as "barbarians" because their lan­ guage was not Greek. "Barbarian" means "one who says 'bar-bar/ like a dog." (Greek dogs apparently said "bar-bar," not "bow-wow.") Thus "Barbara" is as insulting a name as "Sophia" is a flattering one. For "Barbara" means "barbarian" and "Sophia" means "wisdom," which is the great love of the philosopher's life. The early Greek philosophers are collectively called the "pre-Socratics" because they come before Socrates, who is a quantum leap forward in philosophy compared to all his predecessors. The pre-Socratics will appear crude, primitive, and even funny to you, like a toddler's crude, primitive, and funny first attempts to walk or talk. Yet the great­ est achievement, the greatest progress, in our lives comes in these early years. For in­ stance, learning language itself is a far greater achievement than learning a hundred new languages. We should see the "pre-Socratics" in the same way. Selected Bibliography on the Presocratics: Selections from Early Greek Philosophy edited by Milton Nahm The Presocratics edited by Philip Wheelwright Greek Philosophy by Robert Brumbaugh

9. Thaies of Miletus (624-546 B.C.) "What is great can only begin great," says Heidegger, arguing for our paying serious attention to the earliest, most "primitive" philosophers, the "pre-Socratics." If philosophy is great, it can only begin great—like you, dear reader. You are great because you are a member of the only known species in the universe that reasons, seeks wisdom, and philosophizes. Even your first faltering step was "great" to your parents. Thaïes took that first step in philosophy, uttering the first, barely articulate word of "the great conversation." The word was "water." (It was the same word that first brought Helen Keller into the world of human reason, in The Miracle Worker. Could that be a mere coincidence?) This was Thaïes' answer to a new question, and his importance is not in his answer ("Everything is water") but in his question. The (implied) question was: "What is everything?" The ancient Greeks saw the universe as a work of art, an ordered cosmos, not a chaos, and therefore as having a unity. Ever since, we have seen it that way. That is why we call it "the universe." The great question, then, was: What is its unity? What is "the one" behind "the many"? Though Thaïes did not realize it, the question has four aspects, first clearly distinguished by Aristotle two centuries later in his Metaphysics, which he began with the first history of philosophy, interpreting all previous philosophers as gradually learning to ask these four questions, one by one. Aristotle classified all questions, and thus all answers, explanations, or "becauses," into four categories, which are traditionally called "the four causes." When we ask about any x that is made or comes into being, we may ask (1) what x is made of (the "material cause"), (2) what x is made into (the "formal cause"), (3) what x is made by (the "efficient cause"), or (4) what x is made for (the "final cause"). As shown by his answer, Thaies was really asking only for one of the four causes, the "material cause." He was asking: What is the single stuff everything is made of? (This would also be the one constant that remains through all changes.) Thaïes did not distinguish philosophy from physical science. That distinction became wholly clear only with the rise of the scientific method, in the 16th and 17th centuries. Yet Thaies was asking a philosophical question, not just a scientific question, because in asking it he was moving from the particular to the universal, from the many to the one, from the changing to the constant, and from the visible and sensory to the invisible and rational. We have only four fragments of Thaïes, quoted by other authors, so we can only speculate about his reasons for selecting water as "the one" in the many. One reason might be its observed presence and need in all living things, since early cultures often saw all things as alive in some way. (E.g. the Australian Aborigines believe Ayers Rock is "alive" and "spiritual.") This belief that all matter is alive is called hylozoism (hyle =

matter, zoe = life). Another reason for selecting water might have been the observation that water is flexible: it exists in three states, solid (ice), liquid, and gas (vapor); thus the process of rarefaction and condensation could be seen as explaining how water became what seem to be other things. Earth would be further-condensed ice and fire further-rarefied vapor. Air (= more-rarefied water)

t Steam (= rarefied water)

t Liquid water Ice (= condensed water) Earth (= more-condensed water) The obvious problem with Thaïes' answer is that water is not sufficiently flexible or universal to account for everything. (1) For one thing, it does not seem to account for mind and thought, or spirits and gods. Thaies also said that "all things are full of gods," but he did not say that gods were water or that water was a god. The two kinds of explanation, material and spiritual, or what we might call scientific and religious, are both there but without being brought into any relationship. But if they are both about reality and if reality is truly one, they must be. (2) And even as a purely material explanation, water seems to be just one thing among many, not the one in all the many. It has an opposite: fire. It destroys fire and fire destroys it Little is known with certainty about Thaïes' life, but there are many perhapsmythical anecdotes. Many of the biographical anecdotes about the Greek philosophers come from the Roman Diogenes Laertius' gossipy Lives of Eminent Philosphers. (D) (1) Thaies was on every list of the fabled "Seven Sages" of ancient Greece. (2) On the basis of old Babylonian tables of the orbits of the sun and moon, he correctly predicted the year of a solar eclipse. (3) Herodotus says that "once when King Croessus was at a loss how to take his army across a river where there was no bridge, Thaïes switched the course of the river, diverting the uncrossable river into two shallower, crossable channels. (4) "While a woman servant was leading him through the fields by night in order that he might observe the stars, he tumbled into a ditch; whereupon the woman, as she helped him out, remarked, 'How can you expect to know all about the heavens, Thaïes, when you can't know what lies right under your feet?'" (D) (5) Aristotle tells us that "When people began mocking him, insinuating that his philosophy was of no practical use, he . . . predicted a large olive crop . . . he bought up all the olive presses cheaply. . . . when the time arrived and there was a sudden demand, he rented them out on his own terms, making large profits." (See? If philosophers really wanted to fill their wallets instead of their wisdom, they could.)

(6) "He held that there was no difference between life and death. 'Why, then, don't you kill yourself?' someone asked. 'Because there is no difference,' Thaïes replied." (D) The same story is told about some of the later Stoic philosophers. (7) "When asked what is most difficult, he replied, 'To know oneself; and when asked what is easiest, he replied, 'To give advice to others.'" (D) (8) "Having learned geometry from the Egyptians, he was the first person to describe a right angled triangle in a circle, and in honor of his discovery he sacrificed an ox." (D) (Would any modern mathematician do that?) (9) "On being asked why he did not become a father, he answered that it was because he was fond of children . . . when his mother exhorted him to marry, he said, 'It is not yet time,' and afterwards, when she was again pressing him earnestly, he said, 'It is no longer time.'" (D) (Again, this story is also told of some of the Stoics.) He said: "God is the most ancient of all things, for He had no birth; the world is the most beautiful of all things, for it is the work of God." (D) (10) "When asked how men might live most virtuously and justly, he said: 'Never do ourselves what we blame in others.'" (D) (This is probably the single most universal and cross-cultural ethical principle in the world.) Selected Bibliography: God and Philosophy, chapter 1, by Etienne Gilson

i o . Anaximander (610-546 B.C.) Because no philosopher answers every question, subsequent philosophers arise to give improved answers. Thaïes' successors improved on Thaies in many ways: (1) by finding more flexible, more universal candidates for "the one"; (2) by giving better and more explicit reasons for their "one"; (3) by explaining why many things don't appear to be "the one" by explaining the mechanism of change by which this "one" becomes "the many"; and (4) by asking more, and more clearly distinguished, questions, by adding the other three of "the four causes." These are 4 of the most basic criteria by which to judge philosophical explanations: (1) universality, (2) rationality, (3) explaining more of experience, "saving the appearances," and (4) improving the questions and making new, needed distinctions. Anaximander, who lived in the same time (born 611 or 6 1 0 B.C.) and place (Miletus) as Thaïes, picked up Thaïes' offensive rebound, so to speak, and shot again. Thus began the nature of the history of philosophy as "the great conversation," or dialog down the centuries. Anaximander's answer to Thaïes' question was to apeiron, "the infinite." Infinity was not a positive perfection to the ancient Greeks, as it is in Jewish and Christian theology. Even the Greeks' gods were finite, not infinite, except in longevity. For "infinite" means "not-limited"; and everything good, true, or beautiful that we can imagine has a limit, especially works of art. On the level of spatial imagination as distinct from abstract conception, "infinity" means simply "matter without form," a kind of shapeless blob or pure potentiality without actual determination; a "whatever." Anaximander's answer was a better one than Thaïes', however, (1) because it avoided the main problem with Thaïes' answer: that if "the one" were anything specific like water, it would annihilate all other elements. (2) Anaximander's "infinite" also explained more data. It explained what was common to opposites like fire and water. It was more universal, more flexible, than water, which has a finite form. It was not just one thing among many. "The infinite" was (1) externally unbounded, unlike Thaïes' water, which was apparently bounded by some things outside itself (fire, earth, and air) and (2) internally unbounded, because whatever is able to take on opposite forms like fire and water must be itself indeterminate in form. It was potentially all things by being actually none of them. But Anaximander's answer had two problems. (1) Like the word "whatever," it seemed to say nothing. It was a purely negative concept: not-finite. That may be what it's not; but what is it? And (2) it did not explain the process by which finite things came to be out of "the infinite." At least Thaïes could explain how other things came to be from water: by condensation and rarefaction. An interesting extra: on the basis of finding fish fossils in inland quarries, Anaximander speculated that humanity had somehow evolved from these lower forms of life: history's earliest known version of the theory of evolution.

i l . Anaximenés (585-525 B.C.) (You think you'll have trouble distinguishing all those names beginning with "Anax"? Just wait till you get to Anaxagoras!) Anaximenes' answer to Thaïes' question ("What is everything?") was air. The two Greek words psyche ("life" or "soul") and, pneuma ("air" or "breath") were often used interchangeably. The same identification is true in ancient Hebrew: ruah' means "air" or "wind," but also "breath" or "life," and "soul" or "spirit"). Anaximenes shows this connection in his one surviving fragment: "As our souls, being air, hold us together, so breath and air embrace the entire universe." Anaximenes' "air" seems to combine the desirable features of both Thaïes' "water" and Anaximander's "infinite." For (1) it is more indeterminate than Thaïes' water and more determinate than Anaximander's "infinite." (2) It also explains the process of generation of the many from the one by the condensation and rarefaction of air to produce the other three of the "four elements" of ancient Greek chemistry by the four possible combinations of the two basic qualities. This was a primitive approximation to modern chemistry with its three states of matter plus energy: Earth: cold and dry (solid matter) Air: hot and wet (gaseous matter) Fire: hot and dry (energy) Water: cold and wet (liquid matter)

But Anaximenes' solution has the same problem as Thaïes': it seems too specific, too concrete, to be the universal "one." Shankara's "one," reached by a very different route, seems philosophically more tenable, since infinite thought (Brahman) can (mentally) be all things while remaining itself. One could criticize Anaximenes for lacking both the desirable qualities of his predecessors, for he lacked both Thaïes' originality and Anaximander's abstract universality. We can see the structure of the history of philosophy in miniature among these first three thinkers. It is what Hegel would later call a "dialectical" process: a three-step, waltz-like movement from a "thesis" to its opposite "antithesis" and then to their reconciliation in a higher "synthesis" which preserves and combines the best features of both of the previous, opposite stages by attaining a higher point of view. This seems to be the process by which all humans learn all things. (1) When we are first born, we do not make distinctions among things. As Aristotle says, "the young child calls all men 'father.'" (2) Then, with growth, we make distinctions, we discriminate, we make choices, we become specialists. (3) Finally, with maturity we see both the whole and the part in structural relationships. Young children and old people are

generalists and contemplative philosophers; middle-aged people are pragmatic specialists. Our relationship with our parents also passes through these three stages, (i) Young children feel a natural unity, as if they are a kind of extension of the womb. (2) Teenagers naturally rebel to achieve independence and individuality. (3) And adult children are able to relate to their parents with more understanding and deeper love than they could in stage (1), because they have gone through stage (2). Jacques Maritain calls this principle: "Distinguish to unite," and he also applies it to the history of philosophy. A good liberal arts education also passes through these three stages. It begins with a general survey of the whole of human knowledge. It proceeds to some specialization, a "major." Finally, it integrates this specialty with the whole of human knowledge. It becomes philosophical. This structure can be seen in the history of philosophy. The first 3 philosophers we have studied show it: Thaïes = the thesis, Anaximander = the antithesis, and Anaximenes = the synthesis. The 3 stages of Greek philosophy in general show it too. (1) The earliest philosophers are called the "cosmological philosophers" since they focus their questions on objective reality or the cosmos. (2) Next come "the anthropological philosophers," the Sophists and Socrates, who ignore the cosmos and ask human, practical, ethical questions. (3) Finally, Plato and Aristotle give us philosophy's first two comprehensive syntheses of both dimensions. The history of philosophy as a whole also shows this structure. (1) Ancient and medieval philosophy is objective, like a child wondering about the world. Even its anthropological and ethical thinking is objective (e.g. unlike modern thought it almost always embraces a "natural law" morality). (2) Modern philosophy turns to the human subject, like a teenager wondering about him/herself. Unlike premodem thought, it tends toward skepticism and subjectivism. (3) We have not yet emerged into an adult synthesis of these two stages. Perhaps this book can stimulate one of its readers to do that.

12. Pythagoras (580-500 B.C.) Pythagoras was (a) the founder of a religious community and school, (b) a scientist, mathematician, geometer, and astronomer, (c) a Utopian political planner, and (d) a philosopher. These four things (religion, science, politics, and philosophy) were not only connected but almost identical in his mind.* Pythagoras was born around 580 B.C. on the Greek island of Samos and traveled to Egypt to study all four of these things under Egyptian priests. Later, he moved his school to Crotona, a Greek city in southern Italy. But its inhabitants believed him to be a dangerous wizard with magical powers, including a golden thigh, the power of bilocating (being in two different places at the same time), and turning a wild bear into a vegetarian simply by talking to it. (Eat your heart out, Gandhi!) According to Diogenes Laertius, he claimed to be the son of the god Mercury, who gave him the gift of remem­ bering all his previous reincarnations, both in the underworld and in this world, in­ cluding transmigrations into plants and animals. The members of his scientific-andreli-gious-order sold all their private property to be owned in common. For their first five years, his students were forbidden to either see or speak to Pythagoras, but could only listen to his nightly lectures. There were about 600 per night, who counted them­ selves privileged to hear these lectures. His authority was so great that the final answer to all questions was ipse dixit ("he himself has said it"), a saying which (in Latin) be­ came a cliché for unquestionable authoritarianism. He wrote nothing, and taught his deepest esoteric secrets only to an inner ring of the initiated, including his plans for a radical, Utopian polis (city-state)—an enterprise Plato would later make famous in his Republic. The suspicious town finally rioted, burned down his school, murdered some of his students and exiled the others. (Philosophy and politics seldom mix well. The only major philosopher in Western history who was also a major political success was Mar­ cus Aurelius, the Stoic Roman emperor.) Diogenes says that Pythagoras escaped the fire by walking over a human bridge made of his students, and ran away, but "he was caught and killed when he came to a place full of beans. He stopped there, saying that it was better to be caught than to trample on the beans . . . and so he was murdered." He thought of beans as sacred, and he didn't think his life was worth a hill of beans. Diogenes also notes that "he forbade his disciples to eat beans, because, as they were flatulent, they greatly partook of animal properties." An alternative explanation for the obsession with beans is that the word "bean" may have been a slang term for "testicle." (How clear-headed and reliable Diogenes is can be judged by the following typical quotation: "Aristotle says, in his treatise on beans, that Pythagoras enjoined his disci­ ples to abstain from beans either because they resemble some part of the human body, or because they are like the gates of hell (for they are the only plants without parts), or because they dry up other plants, or because they are used in elections in oligarchical governments.") Pythagoras' religion sounds to us like something invented by Monty Python. It aimed at mystical purification through training in mathematics, and included initiation

rites such as remaining underground away from sunlight for years; abstaining from beans, meat, cooked food, and drinks other than water; and a dramatic exhibition in a dark room, by a sudden flash of artificial lightening, of—The Sacred Grain Stalk. He taught that the air is filled with dead, disembodied souls who send dreams and prophecies to mortals. Some of his commandments were: "Do not throw stones into fountains," "Do not sit on a bushel measure," "Do not urinate in the direction of the sun," and "Adore the wind." (One suspects some confusion between the sun and the wind in these last two proverbs.) However, some of the philosophical ideas in his religion were influential, mainly because they were adopted by Plato: that (a) a man is his soul, not his body; (b) the soul is immortal; (c) the body (soma) is a tomb (sema); (à) the soul reincarnates; and (e) learning is really remembering what we already know in the depths of the unconscious and/ or a previous life. Pythagoras' "Big Idea" was that all things are numbers. He seems to have meant by this two different things (i) that numbers are the key to understanding everything and (2) that all things are in fact numbers, or made of numbers, rather than matter, such as Thaïes' 'water' or Anaximenes' 'air,' so that the essential nature of reality is its quantitative form. He did not distinguish these two meanings, the first being epistemological and the second metaphysical; but we must do this to evaluate him, for the first has proved fruitful and the second "fruity." (1) Pythagoras' discovery that nature obeyed mathematical laws, that math was the very "language of nature," was one of the most important discoveries in the history of science. He arrived at this generalization from a number of separate experiences, according to later perhaps-legendary stories: (a) Struck by the different tones emerging from a blacksmith's shop, he discovered that the heavier the hammer, the lower the lower pitch of the tone. He knew that weight could be mathematically measured, on scales, and concluded that tone could also, and could be correlated with weight through the common "language" of number. (b) He already knew that changes in pitch were caused by pressing down on a vibrating string of a lute or by blowing through holes at different lengths in a flute, but he added the discovery that if one string is twice the length of the other, the result is an octave; if one is 1V2 times longer than the other (ratio 3:2), the result was another harmonious interval, the fifth (do-sol); and if the ratio was 4:3 it is still another harmonious interval, the fourth (do-fa or sol-do). Thus number was the key to music. (c) The distances between earth and the 5 visible planets were calculated, fairly accurately by trigonometry, to follow the same "musical" mathematical intervals. This led Pythagoras to the conclusion that the cosmos was a gigantic musical instrument, designed to play "the music of the (heavenly) spheres." Asked why we did not hear this music, he replied that we are too close to it, like the blacksmith who no longer notices the sounds he hears all day in his shop. But if we attained a contemplative distance from it, we might actually hear it. This was one of the goals of his religious discipline: to purify the soul by the contemplation of pure mathematics so as to hear the music

that is the song of the cosmos. It was said that Pythagoras heard this music just once during his lifetime. (2) Pythagoras then generalized his discovery to "everything is number." In fact he taught that "things are numbers." This seems to be an obvious case of "reductionism," which is the fallacy of reducing a complex reality to only one aspect or dimension of it. But it is also a step forward in two ways: For one thing, it goes beyond the Milesians in recognizing a second fundamental dimension of things: form, and not just matter. Though number is only quantitative form, it is form and not merely matter. Material things are not just material! It is also a step forward in the ability to abstract this formal dimension of number from its various material contents. At primitive stages of their development, languages often have no abstract number words but only concrete number words, which indicate the things counted in the same word as the counting, like "two-slices of bread" or "five-head of cattle." Pythagoras first elevated numbers to nouns rather than mere adjectives. This was an essential step in the development of pure mathematics. Al­ though it is reductionism to say "things are (only) numbers" it is not reductionism but abstraction to say that "numbers are (a special, non-material kind of) things (entities)." Pythagoras' mathematical reductionism insisted on classifying eveiything math­ ematically. Since everything was number, and since numbers are either odd or even, everything was either odd or even, thus reducing all pairs to ipslis-of numbers. It was also the first philosophical rationalization for the prejudice against women and lefthanded people. This was his list: Odd

Even

Limited

Unlimited

Good

Bad

Male

Female

Active

Passive

Light

Dark

Right

Left

Straight

Crooked

Square

Oblong

Rest

Motion

Yet, as in Heraclitus (chapter 13) and as in Taoism's Yin and Yang (chapter 6). these opposite Pythagorean principles are in harmony as well as opposition, like bow and string on a lyre, and contribute to the cosmic "music of the spheres." * Almost always, we modems distinguish and separate far more than the ancients did. E.g. we think in terms of'the separation of church and state,' or 'the distinction be­ tween philosophy and science.' Some even speak of a conflict or tension between reli­ gion and science. But for Pythagoras, mathematics was a religious discipline! It

purified the soul. We deeply misunderstand the ancients if we read into their broader terms our narrower, separated modem meanings. E.g. when we hear Aristotle define Man as "the rational animal," we may think of an ape with a computer. But 'reason' meant to the ancients not just calculation but also understanding, contemplation, prac­ tical know-how, technological expertise, artistic invention, moral conscience, and aes­ thetic appreciation.

13* Heraclítus (535-475 B.C.) Like two other, later philosophers (Pascal and Nietzsche), "Heraclitus the Obscure" deliberately wrote in aphorisms or maxims. They are often paradoxical, puzzling, and/ or countercultural. He wrote "intentionally in an obscure style in order that only those who were able might comprehend it." (D) He does not argue from premises to conclu­ sions; we do not find in him the logical indicators "if. . . then . . ." which are so typical of later philosophers. For he asks us not to argue but to "look" and "see" nature in a different and even shocking way. He was apparently a pessimist, a misanthropist, and a snob. "While he was young he used to say that he knew nothing but when he had grown up, he then used to affirm that he knew everything." (D) (Exactly the opposite of Socrates!) When the citizens of his native Ephesus asked him to share his wisdom by drawing up a constitution for the city, he refused, saying "The Ephesians deserve to be hanged." He had no teacher and no students. Instead of teaching, he played dice with boys in the temple of Diana (Artemis); and when adults dared to watch, he said, "Why so surprised, you scoundrels? This is a better enterprise than your politics!" He became a hermit and lived in self-imposed exile in the mountains, eating grass and roots. This gave him dropsy. When his physicians "did not understand him, he shut himself up in a stable for oxen and covered himself with cow dung, hoping to cause the wet to evaporate from him by the warmth that this produced. And as he did himself no good in this way, he died." (D) (Students are invited to compose an appropriate epitaph.) His 124 short aphorisms that have been preserved speak to all five of the funda­ mental areas of philosophy which Aristotle later clearly distinguished: (1) cosmology (philosophy of nature), (2) metaphysics (philosophy of being), (3) epistemology (philos­ ophy of knowledge), (4) anthropology (philosophy of human nature), and (5) ethics. (1) His cosmology centers on the "big idea" that "everything changes" ("panta rhei," "everything flows,"), as Plato put it, or, in his own words, that "you cannot step into the same river twice, for other and yet other waters are ever flowing on." (a) He said that everything is made of fire rather than water, 'the infinite,' air, or number; thus the cosmos is a gigantic furnace, which "has not been made by any god 01 man, but it always has been, is, and will be: an ever-living fire, kindling itself and extinguishing itself by fixed measure." "There is exchange of all things for fire and of fire for all things, as there is of wares for gold and gold for wares." What did he mean by "fire"? It was apparently not merely literal physical fire, but neither was it a mere symbol for change or conflict, for it was the power or driving force or energy of the whole physical universe. It is another example (see above, the footnote on gage_54 concerning 'reason' and gage_52 concerning 'air' or 'spirit') of an ancient term which has not yet broken up into its two modern halves, here the literal vs. the symbolic and also the physical vs. the spiritual. The ancient term thus carries the suggestive power of both senses at once, as no modern term can do. (b) He also pictured the cosmos as war: "War is both father and king of all" and "all things come to pass through the compulsion of strife. . . . Homer was wrong in

saying, 'Would that strife might perish from among gods and men/ for if that were to occur, then all things would cease to exist." Harmony comes from strife: "that which is in conflict with itself is in harmony with itself. There is concord in tension, as with bow and lyre." This conflict is vertical as well as horizontal: "Gods and men: living in each other's death, dying in each other's life." Heraclitus was the first philosopher to struggle with the puzzle of change: how can a thing change (from being "the same old thing" to being something not the same but new) and yet remain the same thing? For if it is not the same thing, it is not that thing that changes. Thus to say "x changes" seems logically self-contradictory to the mind. Yet everything in nature, as it appears to our senses, seems to change. (In fact, minds change too.) Heraclitus accepted the testimony of our experience and embraced paradox in the reason. His opposite number, Parmenides, would make the opposite choice, embracing the consequences of logical reasoning even though they contradicted experience, in say­ ing that being (what-is, reality) cannot really change, even though it appears to. (2) Though Heraclitus taught that all things change, there is also a "law" or logos of change which is an unchanging abstract rational order or formula exemplified in all changing concrete things; a formula of change itself; an invisible but intelligible pattern in all visible changes in nature. "All things come to pass in accordance with this logos." 2

Newton's F=MA or Einstein's E=MC are essentially only much more sophisticated ver­ sions of Heraclitus' idea. Heraclitus' formula for the interchange of nature's funda­ mental elements was that "there is exchange of all things for fire and of fire for all things" and that "water comes into existence out of earth and souls out of water." This seems hopelessly confused compared with Newton or Einstein, but it was really the first attempt to formulate the logos of nature in terms both material in content, like the Milesians, and formal in form(ula), like the Pythagoreans. Since everything changed into its opposite, fire and water exchange places. Water, in turn, is transformed into the two opposites, air and earth. Thus Heraclitus substi­ tuted a dynamic order among the four elements for a static one. Air (life, souls)

Earth

Logos, the word Heraclitus used for the unchanging universal formula of all change, is one of the richest words in any language, and has at least three fundamental meanings: (I) essence, nature, structure, meaning, order, intelligibility, formula, form, law, or cause (real reason); (II) mind, thought, truth, intelligence, understanding, reason, knowledge, science, or explanation; and (III) word, speech, language, discourse, com­ munication, revelation. Gorgias the Sophist (chapter 22), a century later, was a complete "nihilist" ("nihil" is Latin for "nothing") and skeptic. He denied all three logoi (above) in teaching that

(I) nothing really exists, (II) even if it did, it could never be known, and (III) even if it were known, it could never be communicated. Heraclitus conceived the logos as governing all human affairs as well as all changes in nature. "For all human laws are nouiished by the one divine law, which prevails as far as it will, and suffices for all things." Heraclitus wrote: "Listen not to me but to the Logos." An excellent principle for all philosophy, science, religion and politics! r

(3) Heraclitus' epistemologa like Pythagoras', w as esoteric and elitist rather than exoteric and egalitarian. His attitude toward human intelligence was highly skeptical (at least for human beings not named 'Heraclitus'). He wrote, "Although the Logos is eter­ nally valid, yet men are unable to understand i t . . . although the Logos is common to all, most men live as if each of them had a private intelligence (logos) of their own." "Human nature has no real understanding; only the divine nature has it." Heraclitus' point here, as distinct from Heraclitus himself, is one of intellectual humility. For insofar as it means that appearance and reality are very different, and that therefore "unless you expect the unexpected, you will never find it [truth], for it is hard to discover," this is a truth essential to all intellectual progress, and it would be the driv­ ing force behind the philosophy of Socrates. It is Hamlet's lesson to Horatio, "There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy." (4) Heraclitus' anthropology moves between (a) the mystical and (b) the materi­ alistic, (a) On the one hand, "you could not discover the limits of soul, even if you trav­ eled by every path in order to do so." (b) But on the other hand, "soul is the least corpo­ real of things . . . soul is the vaporization out of which everything else is composed" and "a drunken man stumbles because his soul is moist." We wonder whether this means that souls are really water or that matter is really soul. Is Heraclitus lowering spirit to matter or raising matter to spirit? But when we ask this question we are imposing a later, modern distinction on a pre-modem mind, whose concept of matter is more spiritual, and whose concept of soul is more material, than ours. This "materialistic or mystical?" dilemma is a distinctively modern one, or at least a post-Platonic one. For Plato would be the first thinker to sharply distinguish these two things: matter and mind, body and soul, the physical and the spiritual. That distinction, which has come to live in the very foundation of our thinking, has given us new clarity and distinctions but at the price of no longer understanding the primitive unity out of which the two halves of the distinction came. T

(5) Heraclitus drew the logical consequences of these theoretical positions for prac­ tical ethics. If all things are relative (for us, at least, if not for a god), then so are values: "To the god all things are beautiful, good, and right; men, on the other hand, deem some things right and others wrong." In other words, as Polonius says in "Hamlet," "There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so." A century later, Plato would find an alternative to Heraclitus's metaphysics of "everything flows" in his "theory of (eternal) Forms," because of his determination to find an alternative to ethical relativism, which was being taught by the Sophists. One's

metaphysics always determines one's ethics. Practice always presupposes theory.

14- Xenophanes (570-480 B.C.) Xenophanes of Colophon was the first philosophical theologian. He reasoned his way to a clear monotheism and to a concept of the nature of God that stood out sharply against the anthropomorphism and polytheism of his contemporaries. He spent most of his life in exile from his native city, and lived to a very old age. (Both of these features were quite common among ancient philosophers.) H e was Parmenides' teacher. But while Parmenides was a monist, Xenophanes was a monot/ieist, teaching a single G o d transcendent to the world of things rather than Parmenides' pan­ theistic "One" which was all things. His ideas may have influenced Socrates, who was a far more influential monotheist among the Greek polytheists, and who paid for it with his life. (See chapter 23,)* 1

Xenophanes critique of anthropomorphism led h i m to the logical conclusion that God is in no way inferior to m a n , and therefore must have all of the following at­ tributes: (1) God is one and supreme . . . not at all like mortals. (2) It is the whole (of God) that sees, the whole that thinks, the whole that hears. (3) Without effort he sets everything in motion by the thought of his mind. (4) He always abides in the selfsame place, not moving at all. This entailed a scathing critique of polytheism and of its h u m a n origin: If oxen or lions had hands which enabled them to draw and paint pictures as men do, they would portray their gods as having bodies like their own: horses woidd portray them as horses, and oxen as oxen. Ethiopians have gods with snub noses and black hair, Thracians have gods with gray eyes and red hair. Homer and Hesiod attributed to the gods all sorts of actions which when done by men are disreputable and deserving of blame: such lawless deeds as theft, adultery, and deception. No man has existed, nor will exist, who has plain knowledge about the gods... yet everybody thinks he knows. This last saying is a perfect description of Socrates' thinking, and the one before it is essentially Plato's critique of Homer in the "Republic."

* I will not further define "monotheism," "polytheism," "anthropomorphism," "monism," "pantheism," or "transcendence." Look them up! Always have a dictionary nearby when you read good books. Expanding your vocabulary is a simple and pow­ erful way to expand not just your knowledge but your mind. For minds are only as big as their ideas, and ideas live only in idea-houses, which are words.

15. Parmenides (515-450 B.C.) Parmenides was influenced by Xenophanes' monotheism. But whereas Xenophanes is a monotheist, Parmenides is a pantheist, or rather a monist. Xenophanes taught that there is only one God, and that God transcends the many, changing creatures. Par­ menides taught that there is only one reality (which he does not call God, but "Being," but it has Godlike properties such as perfection, unity, and unchangeable eternity) and that there simply is nothing else: no many, no change. Whereas Xenophanes denied the existence of all other gods but one, Parmenides denied the existence of all other be­

ings but one. Parmenides is the polar opposite of Heraclitus. For Heraclitus, "everything flows." For Parmenides, nothing flows. Change is an illusion, and so is plurality. T h e only real­ ity is Being, which is single and changeless. T h e contrast between Heraclitus and Parmenides shaped the whole history of West­ ern philosophy; for both Plato and Aristotle, the two most influential philosophers who ever lived, had to find ways to mediate this extreme contrast and synthesize the insights of these two predecessors. Plato accepted both philosophies as true, but true of two dif­ ferent worlds, or levels of reality, the Forms and matter; while Aristotle joined them as the formal and material aspects of the one world. Parmenides was born in Elea in southern Italy. H e was probably influenced by the Pythagoreans. Plato says he visited Athens when he was very old and Socrates was very young (around 450 B.C.). Plato's "Parmenides" is the only dialog in which Socrates loses the argument (about Parmenides' "One"), to an older and wiser Parmenides. Parmenides' four-page poem is the earliest complete treatise of philosophy in the Western world (unless w e count "Ecclesiastes" as philosophy). In it, a goddess takes h i m on a journey to Heaven and reveals the logic of his argument about Being being only one. Some say the poetry is just window-dressing, clothing or makeup on a logical argu­ ment for the benefit of a religious audience. Others say it shows that Parmenides was really a mystic and not merely a logician, and did not expect his readers to accept his conclusion without a mystical experience like his. Still others say Parmenides was both a logician and a mystic. In any case, the rest of the Greeks, unlike Shankara's Hindus, simply could not be­ lieve this monistic conclusion. T h e y were too convinced of the reality of the empirical world, and too interested in it, to call it illusion. Exploring the outer world, they would be the inventors of the empirical sciences, while India would explore the inner world and invent the yogas, the inner sciences. Parmenides' single "big idea" can be expressed very simply. Only Being is; nonbeing cannot be. Only one thing exists, and it is not a being, a thing. It is simply Being. His argument is apparently infallibly logical. If anything other than Being existed, it would be non-being; but it is self-contradictory to say that non-being is. Another way to put the argument is this: If there were anything besides Being, it would have to be different from Being by something, but that 'something' could not be

Being (for then it would not be diffèrent from Being), so it would have to be non-being. But non-being cannot do anything, or make any difference. Therefore nothing differentiates. There are no real differences. Everything is one. This metaphysics entails an epistemologa Parmenides' metaphysical m o n i s m is the verdict of pure reason. T h e senses, on the other hand, tell us that things are many and changing. Parmenides chooses to follow reason rather than the senses. A n d since at the heart of reason is the law of non-contradiction, he cannot accept both of these two apparently contradictory testimonies, that of reason and that of sensation. His fundamental epistemological principle is that it is the same thing that can be thought and that can be, or, alternatively translated, thought and being are the same. So his 7

epistemologa is pure Rationalism with no concession to Empiricism. T h e same monistic conclusion was reached by Shankara in India, centuries before, not on the basis of rational argument but on the basis of mystical experience. Parmenides' point can be put in the single word esti, "it is." Greek does not have pronouns distinct from verbs, as English does, so esti can mean either "is" or "it is." Parmenides' point is that there is no "it" separate from "is." There is just "is," or being. A n d since "becoming" is other than "being" (for a thing "becomes," or changes, only when it no longer is what it once was), becoming lacks this "is," lacks being. Change does not really exist. Parmenides' words are: Never shall it be proven that non-being is.

The one way, that it is and cannot not-be, is the way of truth. The other way, that it is not and that non-bang must be, cannot be held by the mind, for you cannot know nonbeing and cannot express it. (Thus Parmenides affirms the three logoi that Gorgias was to deny: being, knowing, and speaking. Being can be, can be known, and can be said; non-being cannot.) There remains, then, but one word by which to express the (true) road: 'is.' Being has no beginning and will never be destroyed. It is whole, still, and without end. It neither was nor will be, it simply is. . . . How and whence could it have grown? I shall not allow you to say or think of it as coming from non-being, for it is impossible to say or think that non-being is. Besides, what could have stirred up activity so that it should arise from non-being later rather than earlier? Thus our decision must be made in these terms: Is or Is Not. Accordingly, all the usual notions that mortals accept and rely on as if true— coming-to-be and perishing, being and non-being, change of place and variegated shades of color—these are nothing more than names. Our evaluation of Parmenides finds one large plus and three large minuses. Even if we reject Parmenides' metaphysics of pure m o n i s m and his epistemology of pure rationalism, we must accept his fundamental principle that the law of noncontradiction is a law of all being, not just of thought—unless thought is neither about real being nor an example of something that really has being. This principle is presupposed by all rational philosophy, science, and even common sense. What Pythagoras

discovered as true about number—that not just mind but nature really speaks the lan­ guage of mathematics—Parmenides

insisted was true about logic—that all reality

speaks its language. Therefore if Parmenides' conclusion is false, his opponent must find a logical mis­ take in his argument. This is exactly what Plato and Aristotle would try to do. Instead of choosing between the two "ways" in Parmenides' poem, "the way of opinion," which is the common sense empiricism of the masses, and "the way of truth," which is the rational mysticism of the philosopher, they tried to "save (explain, validate) the appear­ ances" by their philosophy rather than ignoring or invalidating them. Three fundamental points of critique emerge, one practical, one logical, and one metaphysical. (1) In practice, Parmenides was also a Pythagorean mathematician and scientist. He wrote also about astronomy and biology. He expended m u c h thought on the world. But if his argument is sound, the world of many changing things cannot be real. Why both­ er? I know a m a n who believed in Mary Baker Eddy's religion of "Christian Science" (which is neither Christian nor science), which taught that matter was unreal; yet he taught physical chemistry at a prestigious college. He began his courses by saying that "I believe that matter is only a dream. This course is about the amazingly consistent properties of that dream." Why bother? (2) T h e logic of Parmenides' m o n i s m seems to contain a built-in self-contradiction. Even if, as Parmenides taught, change and plurality are illusion, no such illusion ought to appear at all on the hypothesis that all is one. If all is one and there are no real dis­ tinctions, then how can there be a real distinction between truth and illusion? A n d if there is no real change, how can one change his m i n d from the illusion of the masses to the truth of Parmenides' philosophy? (3) Finally, metaphysics can make room for both change and changelessness by making a key distinction. (Whenever two parts of the data seem to contradict each other, the most likely explanation is usually that the apparent contradiction comes from confusing two distinct aspects of the data which were not clearly distinguished.) If w e make a distinction between two meanings of "being"—essence, or what a thing is, and existence, or that it is—we can explain both change and changelessness. Essences do not change—redness does not become non-redness—but existence does: red things come into existence and go out of existence. But this distinction, between essence and existence, would not become clear until centuries later, especially in Aquinas.

16. Zeno ot Elea (490-430 B.C.) Zeno, another Eleatic (from Elea), was contemporary with and a disciple of Parmenides, and defended his master's anti-commonsensical philosophy by four famous "para­ doxes." Actually, there are six of them, and they are not really paradoxes. Paradoxes are apparent contradictions which are not really contradictions. Zeno's "paradoxes" are reductio ad absurdum ("reduction to absurdity") arguments, in which Zeno tried to show that common sense's belief in real change and plurality can be reduced to, or shown to logically entail, conclusions that are logically self-contradictor)' and thus absurd. These arguments are similar in purpose and logical strategy, though not in content, to the four "antinomies of pure reason" that the 18th-century German philosopher Kant would make famous. Kant's four sets of contradictor)' conclusions tried to show the impossible results of trusting "pure reason," or metaphysics that claims to know anything beyond empirical experience; that if you metaphysicize, your thought will reach absurdities. But Zeno would try to prove that if you do not believe in Pannenides' metaphysics, if you believe in sensory appearances instead, you will reach logical absur­ dities; that logic disproved the testimony of the senses. Zeno's four puzzles are as follows: (1) If things are many, they must be finite in number. For they must be as many as they are, neither more nor less.... On the other hand, if tilings are many, they must be infinite in number, for there are always other things between any that exist, and be­ tween these there are always others. (Therefore things are not many.) (2) If a thing exists, then either it has magnitude or it does not. Say it has no magni­ tude. Then if added to another existing thing it woidd not make the latter any larg­ e r . . . . It follows that die thing added is nothing. (Thus) if anything lacks magnitude it does not exist.... But by the same reasoning, each pait of a pait must have magni­ tude, and the same is true of each lesser part . . . without limit: no part, however small, can be the ultimate part. (Therefore different tilings do not exist.) (3) If anything is moving, it must be moving either in the place in which it is or in the place which it is not. But it cannot move in the place in which it is (for the place in which it is at any moment is of the same size as itself and hence allows no room to move in); and it cannot move in the place in which it is not (for it does not exist in the place in which it is not). Therefore movement is impossible. If at each instant the flying arrow is at rest, when does it move? (4) If place existed, it would have to be in something, i.e. in a place (et cetera, et cetera ad infinitum). (Therefore place does not exist.) Zeno's most famous paradoxes are two others, as reported by Aristotle, which are arguments against motion: The first of his arguments denies that motion exists on the ground that a moving body would have to go half the distance before it could go the entire distance. (In other

words, it is impossible to traverse an infinite number of points in a finite time. But is it? Is a point a space}) The second is the so-called "Achilles" argument. It declares that even the swiftest runner will never overtake the slowest, because the pursuer must first reach the point from which the pursued has set out, so that the slower runner will always be some dis­ tance ahead. (Therefore motion does not exist.)

College professors may wake up their sleeping students by using Zeno's logic here to prove that they can never leave the room. If any of the students are math majors, they may have learned the answers to Zeno's puzzles about motion from the Newtonian infinitesimal calculus, which allows us to calculate motion at a point. I will leave it up to you, the reader, to find these an­ swers—but to find them you may first have to leave the room! Sometimes you have to live an answer before you can understand it. Diogenes Laertius says that Zeno "had his head bent on one side . . . was thin, very tall, (and) had fat,flabby,weak legs." (D was probably describing his body, but per­ haps he was describing his arguments.) D gives this account of his death: "He, wishing to put an end to the power of Nearches, the tyrant, was arrested . . . and when he was examined as to his accomplices . . . he named all the friends of the tyrant. . . and then he said that he wished to whisper something privately to the tyrant, and when he came near him he bit him and would not leave his hold until he was stabbed . . . it was his nose that he bit off." Another account says that it was the tyrant's ear, and that while being stabbed "he said to the bystanders, T marvel at your cowardice if you sub­ mit to be slaves of the tyrant out of fear of such pains as I am now enduring.' And at last he bit off his tongue and spit it at him; and the citizens immediately rushed for­ ward and slew the tyrant with stones."

17. Empedocles (490-430 B.C.) Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and Democritus are called "pluralists" because they denied that all things are one, either in the sense that they are all made of the same kind of stuff, as the Milesians taught, or in the sense that plurality is an illusion, as Parmenides and Zeno taught. Their answer to the famous "problem of the one and the many" is that "the one" itself is many. Empedocles was a qualitative pluralist because he posited four different qualities (earth, air, fire, and water) as the ultimate constituents, or material causes, of all things. Anaxagoras (chapter 18) was also a qualitative pluralist because he posited the hidden presence of all qualities in all things. Democritus and Lucretius (chapters 1 9 & 20) were quantitative pluralists because they posited as the ultimate constituents of all things "atoms" that were identical except for quantitative size and shape. Empedocles was a native of Sicily and a physician. He taught that reality is always composed of the "four elements" that were already commonly recognized by Greek cosmology: earth, air, fire, and water. He calls them the "roots" of all things. He is a pluralist because he does not reduce them all to one: either to water, like Thaïes, or to air, like Anaximenes, or to fire, like Heraclitus. Nor does he reduce everything to number, like Pythagoras, or to changeless Being, like Parmenides. This cosmology of four elements is "primitive" if interpreted literally and scientifically. But pre-scientific cultures did not think in terms of our sharp distinction between the literal and the symbolic. This cosmology is not just ancient or Greek but cross-cultural and nearly universal. Even today something in us instinctively says "Yes!" to it if it is taken symbolically. For example, the popularity of "The Last Airbender" books is based on this cosmology. It is "natural" to us because these four elements are data taken from the most striking contrasts in our immediate experience. They were also explained as alternative combinations of two of the most striking qualities of matter, heat and moisture, as follows:

Also, these four are examples or symbols of the three states of matter (solid, gaseous, and liquid) plus energy (fire), so it is an inspired guess at basic chemistry, like Democritus' atomism. In addition to these four material causes (what things are made of), Empedocles posited also two efficient causes (what made them or moved them), namely, cosmic love and hate (or "strife"), which combined and separated the four elements. Things combine when the universe obeys the maxim "Make love, not war." Things separate when it obeys the maxim "Make war, not love." (That was the maxim a medieval wife inscribed on the chastity belt of her husband when he went on the crusades.) Aristotle

reports that "Empedocles says that tilings are sometimes in motion and sometimes at rest: when Love is producing the One out of many and Strife is producing many out of One, things are in motion, but in the intervening periods they are at rest." Aristotle, in the world's

first

history of philosophy

(the

first

book of his

Metaphysics), classified all previous thinkers by which of the four causes they recognized: Thaïes first recognized material causes, Pythagoras formal causes, Empedocles efficient causes, and Anaxagoras (next chapter) final causes (purposes, ends, or goals), by positing "Mind" in the universe. Love and Strife were for Empedocles thus a kind of primitive or poetic gravity and antigravity. We define love as a spiritual, or immaterial act, or choice, or will, or desire, or emotion, which cannot be quantified; while we define gravity as a physical force which can be quantified. We moderns have more clearly distinguished categories than r

the ancients, especially matter vs. spirit. A s Descartes defined these tw o "clear and distinct ideas," matter takes up space and does not think while spirit thinks and does not takes up space. This is clearly progress, but it is also regress if w e can no longer connect the different aspects of reality that w e have more clearly distinguished. T h u s we are surprised to see someone classify love as gravity or gravity as love, as Dante does in the T

last line of the "Divine Comedy," w hich speaks of "the love that moves the sun and the other stars." Who is more pitiable: the modern person who can no longer see the whole, or the premodern person who has not yet clearly distinguished the parts? A modern thinker like Descartes, who sees the h u m a n person as "a ghost in a machine" or a p r e m o d e m thinker like Aristotle who sees the soul as the form of the body and the body as the matter of the soul? Accepting Anaximander's notion of evolution (chapter 10). Empedocles also posited T

r

a means or mechanism by w hich it could have happened, which w as essentially that of "natural selection" by random chance. Like many modern biologists, Empedocles used this to explain even thought: "It is by chance that men have come to have conscious thought" Empedocles had a materiT

T

alistic conception of thought (w hich is probably natural to a physician, w hose attention is focused on bodies and on thought's dependence on bodies). He wrote: "The heart dwells in a sea of blood which flows back and forth around it That encircling blood is what men experience as thought" Like the Pythagoreans, he also had a fear of beans. (Is there a Latin word for that?) He wrote: "Wretches, utter wretches, keep your hands away from beans." (Perhaps he thought of beans as children of the Supreme Bean?) Reincarnation was also a part of Empedocles' cosmology. He wrote: "In the past I have been a boy and a girl, a bush, a bird, and a dumb water-dwelling fish." (It sounds fishy to m e too.) D says that Empedocles (and Plato too) were originally pupils of Pythagoras and that both were expelled from his school for revealing to the public Pythagoras' secret doctrines. D also says that Empedocles is believed to have committed suicide by leaping into the volcano of Mount Etna: "when he arrived at the crater of fire he leaped in and

disappeared, wishing to establish a belief that he had become a god." (Matthew Arnold wrote a poem about this, "Empedocles on Aetna.") He had spoken of himself as "a deathless god," and he habitually wore royal purple robes, a gold girdle, and bronze slippers, carried a staff, and always had a train of attendants. He thought to prove to the world his divinity and immortality by throwing himself into the volcano, but the vol­ cano had the last word: it threw back one of his bronze slippers to confirm his mor­ tality. But D adds that "Timaeus contradicts these stories . . . Heraclides [their author] is altogether a man fond of strange stories, and one who would assert that a man had fall­ en from the moon."

i8. Anaxagoras (500-428 B.C.) (Anaximander, Anaximenes, and now yet another "Anax . . ."! Try to keep them straight.) Born around 500 B.C. in Clazomenae in Asia Minor, near Heraclitus' native city of Ephesus, Anaxagoras came to Athens at the age of 20 and was the first famous philoso­ pher to teach there. Pericles, the greatest Greek statesman, and Euripides, the greatest Greek comic playwright, were among his pupils. Diogenes Laertius says that "he was eminent for his noble birth and his riches but still more for his magnanimity, inasmuch as he gave up all his inheritance to his rela­ tives. . . . He devoted himself to philosophy, abandoning politics, and when someone said to him, 'You have no love for your country,' he replied: T have the greatest love for my country,' pointing up to heaven." Because he taught that the heavenly bodies were stones and not gods (for instance, he said the sun was only a large fiery ball of stone larger than the Pelopennesus), he was tried for impiety and exiled from Athens. Athens was scandalized: he had replaced the gods with stones! And his theory seemed ridiculous: how could stones be up in the sky? But when a large meteorite fell in Sicily, people began to pay attention to him. (Perhaps they said, "Stones Happen.") Anaxagoras explained change by three principles. (1) He accepted the principle of Parmenides that being cannot come from nonbeing, that X cannot come simply from non-x. (2) But we see qualities like heat and light suddenly appear when fire is kindled. The only way to "save the appearances" and also the Parmenidean principle, Anaxagoras reasoned, is to suppose that these qualities must have been already really present but hiding in things, and are brought out into the open by acts like rubbing dry sticks together. So he explained change by the plurality and ubiquity (omnipresence) of the four primary qualities. He said that all qualities are hidden in all things as Empedoclean "seeds" or "roots." (3) Finally, he explained the orderliness of physical change by the transcendence of Mind as the source of this order—similar to, but more personalized than, Heraclitus' logos. This may sound religious to us, but to the Greeks it seemed to be atheism: an ab­ stract substitute for their many concrete gods with humanoid bodies and humanoid feelings and failings. Dishonored in Athens and exiled to Lampscus, Anaxagoras was honored there, and after his death Metrodorus, his disciple, explained the gods of Greek mythology as mere symbols of physical forces of nature. For instance, the fall of the god Phaethon was interpreted as a symbolic description of the fall of a meteorite which was seen by thousands. Greek religious faith was being replaced by Greek ratio­ nal philosophy and science. (Something very different would happen in the Middle Ages, when these two enterprises were collaborators rather than rivals.) Anaxagoras' 3 principles are illustrated by 3 of his sayings: (1) A real thing does not come to be or cease to be; what is called by that name is

really the mixing and separating of real things. For how could hair come from what is not hair, or flesh from what is not flesh? (2) Such being the case, we must suppose that composite things contain many ingredients of the greatest variety, the seeds of everything.,, in everything there is a portion of everything except Mind. Whatever there is the most of in a particular thing determines the manifest nature that we ascribe to it. (3) While other things have a share in the being of everything else, Mind is unlim­ ited, autonomous, and unmixed with anything, standing entirely by itself. For if Mind were to share in the universal mixture, the things with which it is mixed would prevent it from having command over everything, as it now does . . . Mind set in order all that was to be. Aristotle explains this last point, the necessary transcendence of Mind, as follows: "In order that it may rule and may have specific knowledge of what it is ruling, it must have essential knowledge of all things, and for this reason it has to be unmixed." For the knowledge of x as a whole cannot be any part of x. Socrates, in the Phaedo, would speak of this discovery of Anaxagoras (explanation by Mind, not just matter) as the only helpful idea he learned from any pre-Socratic philosopher; but he faults Anaxagoras for not carrying out the implications and conse­ quences of this idea. He says: "I heard a man reading from a book which he said was by a certain Anaxagoras, to the effect that Mind arranges everything that occurs and is the cause of everything. But on reading Anaxagoras' book I perceive that he does not make any use of his concept of mind, nor does he appeal to it in explanation of how things are ordered, but he treats air, aether, and water as the causes. . . . This is as if to say that the reason I remain here in prison is that my bones and muscles keep me here. But in fact it is because I deem that it is good and right for me to remain here." The issue is still with us: (1) Is there "final causality," or purpose, or "intelligent design," in nature? Is matter to be explained by mind? That is one option. (2) Or is mind to be explained by matter? That is a second option. (3) Or is there no connection at all between the two? That is a third. (4) Or is matter not just explained by mind but made of mind? A fourth possibility. (5) Or is mind not just explained by matter but made of matter? That is a fifth possi­ bility. By the very nature of the issue there seem to be only these five possibilities. Which one is true is a question that cannot be settled by empirical science but only by philo­ sophical reasoning, for all five theories account for science itself in different ways. They are: (1) teleology, in which mind moves and causes matter, like an artist, as in Plato and Aristotle; (2) epiphemomenalism, or qualified materialism, in which matter moves and caus­ es mind, but not vice versa (an "epiphenomenon" is an appearance that is not a cause but only an effect, like a car's exhaust, or a fart), as in Marxism;

(3) absolute dualism, as in Descartes; (4) mental monism, or immaterialism, as in some schools of Hindusim and Buddliism; or (5) material monism, or absolute materialism, as in Democritus. One of Anaxagoras' other strange and startling ideas was that there were inhab­ itants on other worlds in the sky; that life had reached earth bv falline from the skv and then evolving in complexity; and that the monster slain by Hercules, the Nemean Lion, had fallen from the moon.

19* Democritus (450-370 B.C.) Democritus was born in Abdera around the same time as Socrates, and lived to be 1 0 9 . (Be a philosopher; outwit your life insurance company.) He visited Athens while T

Socrates w as there and already famous, but did not seek h i m out. He complained, "I came to Athens and no one knew me." Status envy is c o m m o n among intellectuals. He is the only philosopher whose books Plato not only never mentions but even wanted to burn (literally!—but there were too many in circulation), apparently because he was a materialist, with no place in his theory of reality for mind or spirit, nor for val­ ues, morality, or choice. He said, "everything happens of necessity" because there is nothing but matter. Of all Greek philosophers' cosmologies, Democritus' came the closest to that of modern science, for he gave us the first developed version of the atomic theory. Actu­ ally, Democritus learned this theory from his teacher Leucippus of Elea, who in turn was a maverick student of Parmenides and Zeno; but we know very little about Leu­ cippus. T h e atomic theory was also suggested in ancient India, but never caught on there, as it did in Greece—probably because of the Greeks' greater curiosity about the material world and their interest in technology, which produced such things as voting machines and lottery machines for random jury selection. These afforded workable models or analogies to the universe as a very large machine. Aristotle describes Democritus' cosmology this way: According to the theory of Democritus it is the nature of the timeless objects to be tiny substances infinite in number. Accordingly, he postulates a place for them that is infinite in magnitude, which he designates by these names—'the void/ 'the nothing/ and 'the infinite/ whereas he speaks of each individual atom as 'the-real-thing/

'the

dense/ and 'being.' H e conceives them as so small as to elude our senses, but as having all sorts of forms, shapes, and different sizes. Treating diem as elements, he conceives of diem as combining to produce visible and otherwise perceptible objects. A s they move about in the void . . . they b u m p or brush against one another and tend to get ensnarled and interlocked. . . . When these substances remain joined for some time, it is explained by the fact that they fit snugly and so catch firm hold of one an­ other Democritus declares that die soul is a sort of fire or heat. For the atomic shapes are unlimited, and diose which are spherical, he says, make up fire and s o u l . . . because such shapes can penetrate all tilings. T h e theory can be analyzed into several distinct points: (1) T h e only things that are real are tiny, invisible atoms. ("Atom" means "uncuttable" or "unsplittable." Of course, in modern physics atoms are not only splittable but very complex. We are still searching for the most elementary particle; perhaps there is none.) (2) Everything that exists is made of atoms, including mind and thought. (3) Therefore everything else that we usually think is real, such as values, choices, sensations, and abstract thoughts are only "by convention, not by nature"—i.e. they are

only subjectively real, not objectively real; they are only names, not realities. T h u s the question of philosophy—what is being?—is answered by physics. (4) Atoms move because there is also "the void" or empty space. Space has no prop­ erties or powers. It is "non-being." (5) Atoms have no qualities to differentiate them. T h e y are identical except for the quantitatively measurable features of size, shape, position, and movement. Democritus called these "surface" (shape), "inclination" (direction of movement) and "intercontact" (adhesion). (6) Since the atoms have different shapes, they are differently combined. All things are explained as collisions and adhesions of atoms with "hooks," as Democritus' later Roman disciple, Lucretius, explained. (So the whole universe is a cosmic "hookup cul­ ture," a large "Animal House" dormitory.) (7) All events happen by direct transfer of momentum. There is no action at a dis­ tance. (8) There is no need for any other causes. Only the material cause is real. Form comes about simply through external geometrical arrangement of atoms. No agent or efficient cause of motion is needed because the atoms are eternally, and beginninglessly, in motion. A n d final causes or ends, purposes and designs, are only subjective illusions. (9) There is also a methodological implication, an atomism of method corresponding to an atomism of reality: anything real is understood by analysis into its smallest parts and finding the mechanism of their combination. There are a number of logical problems with this philosophy. This is a good time for an extensive critique of it, since we will find it again, in more sophisticated forms, in Hobbes, and in Marx, and also in Descartes for one half of his mind-matter dualism; and the arguments against the theory in all its forms are easier to see when we look at it in its earliest and simplest form. It is the first ancient philosophy that we have encoun­ tered so far that is still very m u c h alive, so a more detailed critique is called for. (1) Atoms are, in fact, not "atoms": they are splittable. But this is a mistake in physics, not philosophy, and corrected by physics, not philosophy. (2) T h e theory may explain the universe but it does not explain itself. T h e theory of atomism is a theory. T h e theory exists] atomists do think. How can a theory about atoms be, or be made of, merely some of those atoms? Theories are made of ideas, not atoms. Brains are made of atoms. Theories of brains are not brains. T h e theory says that all things are composed of atoms; it is a theory about all things. But a theory about, or the knowledge of, all of x cannot be one of the parts of x. Knowledge is about something other than itself. T h e knowledge of the whole material universe must be something more than the whole material universe. (3) To say that nothing but atoms exists is the main problem with materialism. For to say this seems to discount the data of our immediate experience, in many ways. (a) T h e experience of pain, though caused by atoms (matter), is not merely atoms.

T h e same physical cause, e.g. a knife cutting the skin, causes no pain in a dead body: the visitor (the knife) enters the house (the body) but nobody's home. Only beings with psyches feel pain, not rocks or trees. Pain is not just somatic but psychosomatic. It can be short-circuited either by (physical) drugs or by (mental) hypnosis. Mechanistic materi­ alism cannot account for the fact that breaking a limb off a dog is different in kind, not just in degree, from breaking a limb off a tree. (b) T h e theory does not account for mental or emotional pains, like depression, which can occur in perfectly healthy bodies without any physical cause but from mental or emotional causes. Mere thoughts can cause depression, and sometimes can cure it. (c) T h e theory may account for the fact that physical changes can cause mental changes—e.g. when you slap my face, I get angry—but it does not account for the opposite fact: that thought and will can cause physical changes. I will to move my hand, and my hand moves. A n d I directly experience not just the physical event but the causal connection, the fact that I caused my hand to move by willing it. For I experience the difference between being forced to move my hand by another person's superior phys­ T

ical pow er and moving my hand by my own will power. (I do experience this, yet I do not experience it by m y external material senses.) T

(d) H o w can atoms explain thought? Democritus' answ er was that fiery, tiny, spher­ ical atoms constitute thought because they move faster than others, and can penetrate others. But material penetration is a totally different kind of thing than thought, or mental "penetration." T h e word is only an analogy, as when I say I "see" your point even if I am blind. (e) To explain the difference between a true thought and a false thought by the dif­ ference between shapes or sizes or motions of atoms is simply a category confusion, like Pythagoras explaining the difference between m e n and w o m e n as the difference between odd and even numbers. (f) Materialism has great difficulty explaining morality. That people have moral ex­ periences and thoughts is a fact. We feel morally obliged, and we conceive concepts like T

justice and rights. Democritus tried to explain morality by atoms as follows: he said w e will be disturbed or at peace depending on whether the motions of atoms affect our body in a harmonious or a violent way. Peacefulness is the condition that causes happi­ ness, and happiness is the moral goal or good. A good society is one in which indi­ viduals associate like peaceful atoms, with few collisions. But this explains only feelings of happiness and material conditions of peace, not our personal moral obligation to produce these states. Another category confusion. Justice and rights have no geomet­ rical shapes. (g) Really, there are no such things as persons, according to the strict materialist. T

There are only things. We are only objects thinking that w e are subjects. But in a world T

of mere objects, how could subjectivity itself arise? How can an It become an I? A mere object of consciousness is not the same as, and cannot fully explain, a subject of con­ sciousness; and the consciousness of objects, of others, cannot fully explain or cause self-consciousness, consciousness of self. There is more in the effect than in the cause here. There is more in the data than in the hypothesis that supposedly explains it.

(h) Democritus is surprisingly similar to Parmenides here, for both philosophers require us to deny our direct and immediate experience. Parmenides denies the experi­ enced world and Democritus denies the experiencer. Parmenides denies the objects "outside" and Democritus denies the subject "inside." (i) There is no morality without free choice. We are morally obliged to do only what is in our personal power to choose. As Kant put it, "ought" implies "can." But materi­ alism entails determinism, which is the denial of free choice. As Democritus put it, "everything happens by necessity." Atoms have no will or choice. Atomism = deter­ minism = no free choice = no morality. (j) Of course our free choice is limited and conditioned by material events. It is influenced by material events, but it cannot be created by material events, for to create something is to make it begin to exist, but free choice has to already exist before it can be influenced. And our choice can also influence material events. How can this be if it is merely the effect of them? How can effects cause their causes, or causes be effected by their ef­ fects? (k) Even if free choice is an illusion, the illusion exists in the mind. But illusions, or false thoughts, cannot be explained by materialism. For the mind cannot be distin­ guished from objective reality if objective reality is simply the sum total of atoms and the mind and its thoughts are simply some of those atoms. How can some atoms be an illusion about other atoms? The materialist denies the very existence of the whole the­ ater of consciousness in which is performed the play of illusory thoughts as well as true thoughts. (1) If there is no free will, then we can't help how our tongue happens to wag or how our brain happens to work. In that case there is no reason for preferring any one theory to another. We always discount an idea when it can be shown to be determined by unfree and non-rational causes (e.g. when a terrified child believes all black dogs want to eat him because a black dog once bit him; or when a surgeon pokes at a brain with an electrode, causing the patient to hallucinate). But if materialism is true, all ideas are determined by unfree and unthinking, non-rational causes. Therefore all ideas are equally irrational—including that one! (4) How can the void be nothing and yet be? A disciple of Parmenides, Melissus, had argued against the void as follows: If it is totally empty, then there is nothing be­ tween the two bodies that are its boundaries. But if there is nothing between the two bodies, then they are together. And if they are together, there is no empty space be­ tween them. How can space do anything at all, how can it separate bodies, if it is noth­ ing? This is a physical rather than a philosophical mistake on the part of Democritus. Modern physics has corrected the theory here, as it has corrected the "uncuttability" of atoms. In modern physics, space has definite properties and powers. (5) There is a difference in kind between quantities and qualities. The difference it­ self is not merely quantitative. How can qualities like color, taste, and sound arise from things that have no qualities at all but only quantities? If the difference between blue

and red is caused by nothing but the difference between quantitatively different wave lengths of light, we seem to be violating the principle of causality, getting more out of less, getting a difference in kind out of a mere difference in degree. Something (qual­ ities) seems to be coming from nothing (no-qualities) here. Also, even if modern science may explain how colorless causes can produce color sensations, it cannot explain how w e know colors. In the materialist model of the brain as a chemical laboratory concocting color sensations upon receiving photons of light through optic nerves, what corresponds to the scientist in this laboratory? Whenever the materialist tries to explain h u m a n sensing or thinking, he omits the sensor or thinker! It's like astronomy without an astronomer. (6) Regarding the explanation of things as combinations of atoms, modern physics accepts something like Democritus' explanation here but modifies it in complexity, especially by the primacy of energy over matter and by positing four irreducible phys­ ical forces rather than just one. (7) We must say that there is action at a distance (e.g. gravity) if we are thinking only of solid matter, but not if we think of energy. This is especially true if we extend energy to include mental energy such as telepathy (for which there is considerable "soft" scien­ tific evidence). (8) Democritus ignores formal, efficient, and final causes. A s Aristotle would argue later, in his theory of the "four causes," without any efficient and final causes, material causes alone cannot explain how or why matter takes certain determinate forms. Words by themselves do not make books. Authors (efficient causes) make books, of certain kinds (formal causes), for definite ends (final causes). (9) With regard to method, analysis alone is not sufficient. Without some holistic, synthetic "big picture" to guide us, we cannot begin any directed analysis. Analysis and synthesis require and reinforce each other, like sensations and ideas, and like inductive and deductive thinking. Democritus' theory is not wrong for what it affirms but for what it denies. It is too simple, far simpler than reality. It is an example of "reductionism," reducing a complex whole to just one of its parts or aspects. That is its fundamental problem. It explains only some, but far from all, of the data. But what makes a hypothesis truly scientific is its adequacy in explaining the data. In other words, scientism is not scientific enough. Materialism is essentially a metaphysics, but its most crucial problem is the ethics it implies. One's ethics always must depend on one's metaphysics, for we cannot morally choose what w e believe is simply metaphysically unreal. A n d that is just the problem with materialism. A "materialist," in the popular sense, is a person with low ideals, who recognizes only material goods like money, pleasure, and power. Materialism in theory naturally entails this popular materialism in practice; a materialist metaphysics natu­ rally leads to a materialist ethics, and a materialistic life, and a materialistic person. This consequence can be resisted, and often is—some materialists are very ethical

people—but it takes a disconnect in the m i n d to do so. Materialistic thought cannot be happily married to non-materialistic ideals. To try to marry a high morality and a low metaphysics is like trying to marry a bird and a snake. Probably, one will eat the other. It also goes without saying that materialism also implies atheism. Not all atheists are materialists (since one can believe in the h u m a n spirit without believing in any superhuman spirit), but all materialists are atheists (since one cannot believe in super­ h u m a n spirit if one disbelieves in all spirit). This is why materialism, like atheism, is always a minority position. If atheism is true, then the vast majority of all h u m a n be­ ings in history, who have believed in some kind of religion, have invested their lives, their minds, their wills, their faith, their hope, their love, and their loyalty in a massive illusion, the greatest 'con job' in history. A n d if materialism is true, then atheism is true. Therefore if materialism is true, then the vast majority of all h u m a n beings are deeply deluded.

20. Lucretius (99-55 B.C.) Lucretius was not a Greek philosopher but a later Roman poet, but I put this short chapter on him after Democritus because it was Lucretius who popularized Dem­ ocritus' materialism in detail in De Rerum Natura, "On the Nature of Things," explain­ ing everything, including the soul, religion, morality, sensation, and thought, by the atomic theory. The simplest introduction to the materialistic world-view is Lucretius' On the Nature of Things. It is the first and classic text of philosophical materialism, and highly recom­ mended for reading, especially for comparing it with Plato's alternative. (Finite things are always best appreciated by contrast with their opposites.) It is beautifully written, both poetic and logically clear. Later, more complex versions of materialism (Epicurus, Bacon, Hobbes, Hume, Bentham, Mill, Comte, Spenser, Marx) can best be understood by starting with this simple, logically consistent, clear, and stylistically beautiful ancient masterpiece, just as later, more complex versions of Platonism, Buddhism, or Chris­ tianity can best be understood byfirstreading the words of Plato, Buddha, or Christ. All the essentials of materialism are here in a simple, primitive form: the meta­ physics, the cosmology, the anthropology, the epistemologa the ethics, the philosophy of religion. It is an instructive example of how a single philosophical idea can have rad­ ical thought-changing and life-changing consequences in every field. It is not necessary to specify the details of Lucretius' philosophy because all the essential ideas are in Democritus. What Lucretius adds is poetic style, technical details (e.g. of how sense perception works), and an emphasis on the religious and moral applications (how there are no gods or divine punishments to fear after death). Thus life as well as thought can be simple, devoted to pleasure and tranquility. Simplicity is the chief charm of this philosophy. It needs few words. Our language is full of names for things that it asserts simply do not exist: God, gods, spirits, demons, angels, souls, ghosts, Heaven, Hell, creation, commandments, miracles, absolutes, etc. Lucretius explains everything by only six simple principles: (1) Nothing is ever created out of nothing. (2) Nothing is ever annihilated. (3) Matter exists and consists of atoms. (4) There is also empty space ("the void") for matter to move in. (5) Besides matter and space, nothing else exists. (5) Atoms are indestructible and eternal. But like all Hellenistic philosophies, its point is practical, not theoretical: in four words, no religion, no fear (of divine punishments, cosmic justice, etc.). It is the world of John Lennon's "Imagine." How did it actually work out for Lucretius, this life devoted simply to pleasure and tranquility? Portraits of Lucretius show him frowning rather than smiling (perhaps be­ cause they were sculpted by his enemies), and he seems to have been searching for happiness with some desperation all his life, which according to some authorities he ended by suicide—which is something happy people do not do. Diogenes Laertius says that Lucretius was driven to madness and suicide by a love potion. In that case, he

didn't worry enough: you can't be too careful of your chemistry if you're a materialist.

21. Protagoras (481-420 B.C.) and the Sophists* Philosophy has been called "the great conversation." This conversation so far had passed through four logical stages, and the Sophists initiated the fifth and most inter­ esting one. (1) First, the Milesians tried to find a single explanation for all things in nature. (2) A second question arose: how this "one" became many, how it changed. Hera­ clitus answered that the "one" was change itself. T

(3) Parmenides countered with the opposite answ er: change was illusory. (4) The Pluralists (Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and Democritus) tried, in different ways, to reconcile the unchanging with the changing. (5) All previous philosophers had looked outward, at nature. The Sophists looked in­ r

ward, at man. They w ere the first to turn philosophy's attention to the philosopher. Protagoras of Abdera, who lived in Athens shortly before Socrates (5th century B.C.), was the most long-lived, rich, and successful of the "Sophists." The name means, literally, "wise men" or "wise guys." (The first was their interpretation, the second was T

their critics'.) They were itinerant educators w ho taught their "wisdom" for high fees to rich Athenians who needed to learn rhetorical skills to defend themselves in court T

r

w hen sued (which w as quite often, as in America). Their "wisdom" consisted mainly of clever tricks of rhetoric. ("Rhetoric" is the art of persuading by speech.) r

This w as a new response to a new need—in fact, for the rich it was a necessary sur­ vival skill in Athens, because of two recent inventions: democracy and the jury system. Both demanded demagoguery (the "augury" or power to persuade the "demos" or masses). In both the courts and in the public assemblies (where policies were decided by direct majority vote, not by elected representatives), verdicts were usually deter­ mined more by the cleverness of the speakers than by the inherent justice of the case. Into this need the Sophists inserted themselves, very profitably. Their most famous advertisement was: "We can make the weakest argument the strongest." D says that "Protagoras was a pupil of Democritus. And he was surnamed Wis­ T

dom. . . . He was the first person who asserted that in every question there were tw o sides to the argument exactly equal to one another . . . that everything was true." Also that "he was the first person who demanded payment of his pupils. . . . He it was too who first left facts out of consideration and fastened his arguments on words." The Sophists were skeptics in epistemologa relativists in ethics, and subjectivists in both. They denied the existence and knowability of objective truth and objective values. They believed that both truth and goodness were invented by and relative to subjective human minds and wills, whether individually or socially. Protagoras' famous quotation summarizing this position is that Man is the measure of all things Let's look more carefully at these two kinds of subjectivism. First, in ethics. T

T

T

We can distinguish two kinds of law s, or rules: positive law s and natural law s. "Positive" laws are laws that are "posited" or invented by human wills, like rules for the road and rules for using words. "Natural laws" are discovered rather than invented, like the law of gravity or the laws of geometry. Natural laws do not vary from culture to

culture, time to time, or individual to individual. But positive laws do; therefore they are also called "conventional" laws. T h e Greek word for a cultural conventions is nomos, and the word for a natural law is logos. (See Heraclitus, chapter 13 on logos.) T h e controversial question is: Is moral law logos or nomos? Are there natural moral laws as well as natural physical laws? Does logos include moral law? Are there three kinds of laws or only two? That is, are there (1) objective and universal moral laws that tell us what all people ought to do, as well as (2) objective and universal physical laws that tell us what all nature actually does do and (3) subjective and local civil laws that tell us what some people (the lawmakers) want other people to do? Are there laws of good and evil, right and wrong, that are not just the man-made laws of some society? If so, then social laws ("positive" laws) can be evaluated and criticized by the stan­ dard of these "higher" natural laws, and countercultural rebellion can be morally justi­ fied. If not, not. (Thus moral relativists and positivists, w h o believe that only positive moral laws exist, logically must be social conservatives and conformists, even though they are in fact usually nonconformists because the majority has always believed in "natural law" and positivists or relativists do not.) Nearly all law schools in Western civilization used to teach some version of a "nat­ ural law." Blackstone's classic law text was based on natural law. So was the American Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all m e n are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator [not by their government or their peers] with certain unalienable rights; that among these rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." (The origin version read 'property.') T h e vast majority of law schools today no longer teach that. They either ignore it or deny it, and teach some version o f ' l e g a l positivism' (e.g. Harvard's 'Critical Legal Stud­ ies'). So 2 4 0 0 years later, the Sophists have convinced the majority in the legal estab­ lishment of their main point. But they have not convinced the majority of other Amer­ icans, who, like the ancient Athenians, are shocked by this moral relativism. T h e issue divides our society, and is at the heart of our ongoing "culture wars." For instance, 'politically correct' language which forbids using morally 'judgmental' terms like 'unnatural acts,' is based on the Sophists' "big idea" that morality is not natural but conventional. (Most Americans, according to polls, are moral relativists only about sex, however logically inconsistent that may seem to be.) Aristophanes was a traditionalist who satirized the Sophists in his comic dramas, especially The Clouds (in which he classified Socrates as a Sophist, though Socrates was really their most formidable opponent). If Aristophanes saw our title 'Protagoras and the Sophists,' he would probably invent lyrics like these for the singing group: Live for pleasure; You're the measure. Live for power: Virtue's sour. Follow your itch: Get filthy rich. Just be clever.

Scruples? Never! "Truth"? A i m higher: Be a lawyer/liar. (Of course satire doesn't give your mind wisdom, but it does give your face smiles.) In epistemologa the Sophists were skeptics. T h e y taught that w e could not attain knowledge of objective truth, only subjective opinions. Another way of putting the same point is that w e cannot know reality, only appearances, which are subjective and relative to each observer. In Plato's Theaetetns Protagoras is represented as saying: "What I m e a n by a wise m a n is one w h o can alter people's ways of judging so that what appears [and is] to them bad now will appear [and will be] to them good. It is like the case of some food which appears [and is] bitter to a sick m a n but appears [and is] quite the opposite to a m a n in health. It should not be said that either of the two m e n is more knowing or more igno­ rant than the other; they are simply d i f f e r e n t . . . . My position, then, is that whatever seems right and admirable to a particular city-state is truly right and admirable— during the period of time in which that opinion continues to be held." Like advertisers, the Sophists believed that "image is everything," since all we could know were appearances, or images. (Advertising is the world's oldest profession: it was invented by the Devil in the Garden of Eden.) (It's a joke; don't write m e an angry let­ ter.) T h e Sophists would have applauded Machiavelli's principle that propaganda and the control of appearances is the key to political power, for "everyone sees what you seem to be; few know who you really are." (The Piince, chapter 18) There is a close con­ nection between the Sophists' (relativistic) ethics and their (skeptical) epistemology. Protagoras was especially skeptical of religion and the gods. He said, "As for the gods, I have no way of knowing that they do or do not exist, nor, if they exist, of what form they are." He was thus an agnostic (one who does not claim to know). But the Athenians perceived this as atheism, banished h i m from Athens and burned his books. There are serious philosophical problems with both epistemologica! and moral rela­ tivism: (a) Epistemologica! relativism, like skepticism (see chapter 26). seems to be self contradictory. (1) T h e self-contradiction can be seen in Plato's Theaetetus, which has Protagoras arguing that "it is not possible to think what is false, because one can only think what he experiences, and what he experiences is true [to him]." But this is self-contradictory, for it assumes that the traditional view, that w e can know objective truth, is false. So it is possible to think what is false: if the Sophists are right, all non-Sophists do exactly that! Another way to put the argument is that if every opinion is true, so is the opinion that not every opinion is true. If no opinion is false, neither is the opinion that some opinions are false. (2) Epistemologica! relativism also cannot account for science, which does in fact successfully come to know many objective and universal truths.

(3) If the Sophists are right, philosophy is "vanity of vanities." For philosophy is the love of wisdom; it is a Romeo-and-Juliet love story; and the Sophists' message to Romeo is that Juliet is dead. But philosophy always buries its undertakers. Actually, the terms are usually used interchangeably, skepticism is in a sense the exact opposite of epistemological relativism, for skepticism says that no one has the truth, while relativism says that everyone has it, for truth is only "my truth" or "your truth." Skepticism denies truth, relativism denies error. Since everyone wants the truth, and since having it makes you content, skeptics are never content and relativists are never discontent. (So skeptics make better philosophers!) (b) T h e Sophists' moral relativism has even more pressing problems than their epis­ temological relativism and/or skepticism, because these problems are practical, not just theoretical; about living, not just about thinking. (1) Moral relativism ignores consáence, which always speaks with absolute authority. Even people who believe it is impossible to know any other universal moral laws usu­ ally still believe it is always wrong to disobey their own individual conscience. Even rela­ tivists have one absolute, unless they get a consciencectomy. (2) Moral relativism also seems to violate the Golden Rule, the most basic and univ­ ersally agreed principle that you should do to others what you want others to do to you. We all want others to respect our rights and to give us justice—in other words, not to practice moral relativism. For the relativist there are no exceptionless moral laws, not even the Golden Rule, so it logically follows that it's OK to ask others to obey it while you don't. (3) Moral relativism also seems to destroy social bonds, and thus society itself, for keeping promises is a m i n i m u m requirement for all social bonds. Absent this moral bond, only external, physical force can hold a society together—and that is totali­ tarianism, tyranny, or dictatorship. Without the inner cop of conscience, society either dissolves or relies on the outer cop of force, as in Hobbes (chapter 74). T h e societies that lived the longest were always the most moraUy serious: Jewish (3500 years), Confu­ cian (2100 years), Islamic (1400 years), and Roman (700 years). (4) Moral relativism is boring. It makes heroism impossible. Moral relativists cannot write great stories. (5) Plato tries to prove in the Republic that it also makes you unhappy, for it under­ mines virtue, which is to the soul what health is to the body. It violates your very na­ ture. Although the Sophists' skepticism and moral relativism were negative and destruc­ tive, they made at least three very important positive contributions: (1) They changed the questions. They turned the interests of philosophers from sci­ ence to ethics, from the cosmos to man, from questions about physical facts to ques­ tions about h u m a n values, from metaphysics and cosmology to anthropology, episte­

mologa ethics, his way.

and politics. In this way, Socrates was the greatest Sophist. They paved

(2) They developed new methods of logical argumentation. Although these could eas­ ily be misused, they could also be effectively and rightly used—especially the technique of "dialectical" arguing, or arguing for both sides of an issue. Protagoras shocked the Athenians by setting up debate contests, training his students to argue both sides of an issue; and to the average citizen this implied that there was no real right or wrong. But this method—seeing what your opponent sees, looking at both sides from a neutral perspective before judging—is essential for law, for science, for good philosophy, and even for ordinary h u m a n relationships that are psychologically effective (if you want to be heard, first listen) and morally fair (remember the Golden Rule). In this way too (the use of dialectic), Socrates was a Sophist, though he used dialectic more honestly and convincingly than they did, avoiding their verbal quibbles, for he used it for the end of objective truth rather than for personal power, honor, or wealth. (3) By their skepticism and relativism, the Sophists drew a line in the sand: they posed a fundamental challenge to philosophy that all major philosophers for the next 2400 years would have to respond to in one way or another, either by essentially agree­ ing (as many, but not all, modern philosophers do) or essentially disagreeing (as nearly all pre-modern philosophers do), however much these later agreements or disagree­ ments were modified and nuanced. T h e Sophists, then, in raising this centrally impor­ tant issue, were a touchstone for all subsequent philosophers. Their challenge de­ manded a response: a clearer and stronger argument for the traditional belief in objec­ tive truth and values. (How would you refute Protagoras' argument in the Theaetetus above?) Plato devoted many of his dialogs to Socrates arguing with sophists, e.g. Ion,

Critias, Hippias, Gorgias, Protagoras, and Thrasymachus in Book I of the Republic. T h e great 20th-century historian Arnold Toynbee saw all of history as "challenge and response," and since philosophy is a crucial part of history, the history of philos­ ophy too is "challenge and response"; and the challenge, even if it is destructive and dangerous, is as necessary to progress as the response. T h e religiosity of a village needs the "village atheist" to keep it on its toes, and a political party needs competition and critique to stay honest. (Contrast single-party systems like Fascism and Communism.) Doubts and questions test and strengthen intellectual beliefs, just as sufferings and struggles test and strengthen personal faith and courage. T h e issue the Sophists raised is utterly contemporary, in fact it is probably the sin­ gle most important issue for modern Western civilization. For this civilization, envied and imitated by the rest of the world, now differs most radically from all others that have ever existed by the fact that most of its intellectuals, mind-molders and educators, both formal (universities) and informal (media), for the first time in h u m a n history, fundamentally agree with the Sophists. Mussolini wrote: "Everything I have said and done in these past years is relativism . . . . If relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories and for m e n who claim to be the bearers of an objective, immortal truth . . . then there is nothing more relativistic than Fascistic attitudes and activities. . . . From the fact that all ideologies are of equal value, that all ideologies are mere fictions, the modern relativist infers that everybody has the right to create for himself his own ideology and to attempt to enforce

it with all the energy of which he is capable." (Diuturna, pp. 374-77) T h e simple but crucial question that the relativist finds it hard to answer is: if you won't get caught and punished, why not? Why not be a Fascist or a Nazi if you want to and if "there is noth­ ing right or wrong, but thinking makes it so"? But the Sophists made for good jokes. One of Protagoras' clever students, Euathlus, made a legal contract with his teacher to pay his weighty tuition fee only after he won his first case in court. He then refused to try any cases in court, so Protagoras sued h i m for his tuition fee, arguing that "If Euathlus loses this case, he must pay me, according to the judgment of the court; but if he wins, he must pay me, according to the terms of our contract. A n d he must either lose or win. So he must pay m e in either case." Euath­ lus argued back, "If I w i n this case, I will not have to pay Protagoras, according to the judgment of the court; but if I lose, I will not have to pay, according to the terms of our contract. I must either w i n or lose. In either case, I do not have to pay." Protagoras for­ got the adage that a lawyer who tries his own case has a fool for a client. * This title sounds like a rock group, probably sixties doo-wop.

22. Gorgias the Sophist (483-375 B.C.) T h e most famous of all the Sophists in Athens was Gorgias, not because he was the philosophically profoundest but because he was the most eloquent. Citizens paid great s u m s of money to receive his instruction. Plato satirizes the worldliness, shallowness, and venality of his philosophy but shows great respect for his person in the dialog by his name, the "Gorgias.," Since this dialog is beautifully constructed, has great personal "existential" bite (its question is essentially H o w shall I live and w h o should I be?), and contains the essential moral point and argument of the "Republic" minus the ques­ tionable politics, I highly recommend it as the second best introduction to Socrates and Plato, next to the "Apology." Gorgias is famous for three philosophical assertions, all of which concern that pro­ found and multifaceted Greek concept of logos. Logos is the goal of all of Plato's philos­ ophy, and of philosophy itself as classically conceived. Gorgias's three assertions deny the three basic meanings of logos: the metaphysical, the epistemologica!, and the lin­ guistic. (1) There is no being. (There is no stable order, intelligibility, form, structure, or meaning.) (2) Even if there was being, there could be no knowledge of it. (There are no stable concepts, intelligence, understanding, truth, certainty, or wisdom.) (3) Even if there was knowledge of it, there could be no communication of it. (There are no meaningful words, language, speech, discourse, communication, or revelation.) Gorgias prophetically summarized the whole history of Western philosophy in those three sentences. For the history of Western philosophy consists largely of these three questions: (1) Ancient and medieval philosophy focuses on the first logos, order in reality, metaphysical order and meaning. For nearly all premodern philosophers, everything else—cosmology, philosophical anthropology, philosophical theology, epistemologa ethics, and politics—is derived from and dependent on metaphysics. For what the uni­ verse, or man, or God, or knowledge, or morality, or society is depends on what is, on what kinds of being or reality exist. (2) Classical modern philosophy, beginning with Bacon and Descartes, focuses on the second logos, the question of epistemologa the question of how w e know. (3) Twentieth century philosophy focuses on the third logos, language. Each of these three phases of Western philosophy ended in skepticism: (1) T h e upshot of pre-modern philosophy is metaphysical skepticism, stemming from Nominalism (the denial of reality to universals), especially in Ockham (chapter 52). If universals have no reality, neither does the supreme universal, being. (2) T h e upshot of classical modern philosophy is the epistemologica! skepticism of H u m e and the even more skeptical reply to H u m e given by Kant, which asserts that it is impossible for us to know "things-in-themselves," and which redefines knowledge as constructing all the meaning and order in the world rather than discovering it. Kant called this "the Copernican Revolution in philosophy." (3)

The

upshot

of

contemporary

postmodern

philosophy

of

language

is

Deconstructionism, which denies that words ("text") refer to reality ("world") at all, i.e. the objectively real world outside ourselves. This reference or pointing or signing (signifying) characteristic of words, and also of thoughts, is called "intentionality." For pre-modern thought, even things are words (signs, symbols); for Deconstructionism, even words are only things, not signs. In fact they are weapons, for they are used for power, not truth. To speak of truth is condemned as "logocentrism." T h u s the ghost of Gorgias has haunted the whole history of Western philosophy. In the next chapter w e will meet the first philosophical ghostbuster. His n a m e is Socrates.

23. Socrates (469-399 B.C.) Socrates never wrote a book. His teachings can be summarized in ten sentences (see below). Yet he gets more space in this book than most other philosophers, who wrote dozens of books and taught thousands of things. Why? Because Socrates was probably the second most important and influential h u m a n being who ever lived, next to Jesus. To see why, consider the following: T h e three most distinctive features of Western civilization are probably Jewish and Christian religion, philosophy, and science. Until the 18th century, philosophy and sci­ ence were not sharply separated. Newton's major work was entitled "Principles of Nat­ ural Philosophy." Each of the sciences gradually came to distinguish themselves from philosophy, like children leaving h o m e to form their own families and households. T h e foundation of most of Western philosophy (and science) is Aristotle. He is to the West what Confucius is to China. A s later generations called Confucius simply "the first teacher," the medievals called Aristotle simply "the Philosopher." T h e foundation of Aristotle is Plato. Aristotle is 7 5 % Plato; Plato plus; the first foot­ note to Plato; a correction to Plato. Without Plato, no Aristotle. A n d without Socrates, no Plato. T h e foundation of Plato is Socrates. Plato is to Socrates what St. Paul is to Jesus: he claims to be only his faithful follower and inter­ preter and systematizer. Socrates relativizes all previous philosophers, who are always collectively called "the pre-Socratic" philosophers, just as Jews call all others "Gentiles" and Christians call the whole of the Jewish scriptures "the Old Testament." A n d Socrates also relativizes the philosophers after h i m because every school of ancient philosophy after Socrates (ex­ cept the Epicurean materialists) claimed to be the authentic interpretation of Socrates, just as every Christian church claims to be the authentic interpretation of Jesus .* Socrates is to philosophy what Jesus is to religion. Like Jesus, Socrates divides mankind. No philosopher has ever provoked such con­ flicting interpretations and evaluations of him, sometimes within the same person. E.g. Alcibiades, the beautiful, powerful, clever, corrupt, and dissolute egotist, said of Socrates, "He is the only person w h o ever made m e a s h a m e d . . . . Many a time have I wished that he were dead, and yet I know that I should be so much more sorry than glad if he were to die . . . his absolute unlikeness to any h u m a n being that is or ever has been is absolutely astonishing." (Symposium) Plutarch said that "he was the first to show that life at all times and in all parts, in all that w e suffer or do, always admits philosophy." St. Justin Martyr wrote that "Christ is the Logos [Word, Mind, or Reason] of w h o m all m e n are partakers, and those who lived according to Reason are Christians even though they have been thought atheists, as, among the Greeks, Socrates." St. T h o m a s Aquinas compared h i m to Christ: "It was proper for Christ not to write down his teaching [since he so perfectly lived it] . . . which is also the reason why, among the pagans, Pythagoras and Socrates, who were the most excellent teachers, did not want to write anything."

Calvin wrote: "Socrates died like Christ; yet by killing h i m m e n achieved no valid refutation of his teaching." T h e Earl of Shaftesbury called h i m "the greatest of philosophers, the very founder of philosophy itself. . . the philosophical Patriarch . . . the divinest m a n who had ever appeared in the heathen world." Shelley called Socrates "the Jesus Christ of Greece." Fenelon called Jesus "the Socrates of Galilee." John Stuart Mill called h i m "the head and prototype of all subsequent teachers of virtue," and famously said, "It is better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied." R . H . Crossman observed that "Socrates was not famous for anything—except for being Socrates." Renan said that "Jesus founded religion as Socrates founded philosophy and Aris­ totle science . . . all has been built on the foundations which they laid." Heidegger wrote, "Socrates was the purest thinker of the O c c i d e n t . . . all thinkers since Socrates, their greatness notwithstanding, have to take cover before him." Kierkegaard wrote, "he was one of those h u m a n beings whose exterior is not enough. . . . What Socrates emphasized so much—to stand still and to reflect, i.e. to be silent—this is what his whole life means in relation to world history . . . there is a deep silence, until it is interrupted by the many very different schools, by the noisy at­ tempts of his students to derive their origin from this secret and mysterious source." "Socrates, in my opinion, is and remains the only reformer I k n o w . . . . There cannot really be the least doubt that what Christianity needs is another Socrates." Maritain wrote, "It was Socrates w h o saved Greek thought from the mortal danger into which the Sophists had brought i t . . . the Sophists claimed to know everything and did not believe in truth; Socrates professed ignorance and taught his hearers to seek nothing but the truth. T h u s his entire work was a work of conversion.. . . This work was of such importance for the future of the h u m a n intellect that it is not strange that Socrates accomplished it as a mission divinely inspired." His enemies are almost as numerous as his friends. Spinoza wrote, "The authority of Plato, Aristotle and Socrates has not m u c h weight with me." Like Luther, Rousseau compares h i m very unfavorably to Christ: "What blindness it takes to compare the son of Sophroniscus with the son of Mary!" T h e "humanist" Schiller calls him "the boon companion of all the dissolute young swells in Athens" and ranks h i m below Protagoras the Sophist, w h o m he calls "the wis­ est of men." Bertrand Russell blames h i m for unpardonable sins against science, and says "he is dishonest and sophistical in argument. . . . There is something s m u g and unctuous about him, which reminds one of a bad type of cleric. . . . Unlike some of his prede­ cessors, he was not scientific in his thinking, but was determined to prove the universe agreeable to his ethical standards. This is treachery to truth and the worst of philo­ sophic sins." (Russell says even worse things about Jesus.) Santayana too complains that "Socrates affected to care nothing about

natural

science" and says that his "edifying myths had disastrous consequences for philosophy: it created metaphysics." Nazi "philosophers" like Rosenberg accused h i m of being too plebeian, and Communists accused h i m of being too aristocratic. George Sorel says "Socrates' ethics was detestable" and complains of "all the evils which were to flow from his theses," especially that "he did not understand the labor question." H e says of Socrates' apolitical anti-totalitarianism:

"Since the time of

Socrates the idea of the State has been unable to establish itself." Jeremy Bentham, the founder of Utilitarianism, wrote: "Socrates and Plato were talking nonsense under pretense of teaching wisdom and morality. This morality of theirs consisted in words—this wisdom of theirs was the denial of matters known to every man's experience . . . what I read of Socrates was insipid." Matthew Arnold wrote of that passage in Bentham: "From the moment of reading that, I a m delivered from the bondage of Bentham!" T h e historian Macaulay wrote, "The more I read about him, the less I wonder that they poisoned him." Nietzsche accused h i m of killing the spirit of Greek tragedy with his rationalism, "the one great Cyclops eye of Socrates . . . that eye in which the sweet madness of artistic enthusiasm never glowed . . . this eye was forbidden to look with approval into the Dionysian abysses." T h e Nietzschean and proto-Nazi historian Oswald Spengler says, in The Decline of the West, that "Socrates was a nihilist." Socrates is also the only great philosopher who was executed by his society. Like Jesus, he died as a martyr, died for his beliefs, after an unjust trial. It was not just Socrates but philosophy itself that was on trial. A n d like Jesus, Socrates was tried for impiety when he was in fact the most pious m a n in his society. Why was Socrates so offensive to Athens, which was the world's most enlightened, tolerant, and democratic society in history so far? If w e do not understand that, w e do not understand Socrates, just as w e do not understand Jesus if we do not understand his offensiveness, and why the world's most religious society thought Jesus to be so evil and threatening to religion that he deserved to be crucified. He lived as a poor m a n in the golden age of a great city, the world's first democracy, which prided itself on its freedoms. Yet all segments of Athenian society conspired to­ gether to kill Socrates. His three accusers, Anytus, Meletus, and Lycon, represented the three most important segments of their society: the poets, the politicians, and the craftsmen. (Compare the division of departments in modern universities into the humanities, the social sciences, and the physical sciences.) Similarly, the charge against Jesus, nailed to the cross, was written in the three worldwide languages of Hebrew, Latin, and Greek. T h e whole world conspired to eliminate these two pests. Skeptical, relativistic Sophists and dogmatic, absolutistic traditionalists agreed on only one thing: Socrates was the enemy. Similarly, against Jesus, w e find an alliance of collaborationist Herodians and revolutionary Zealots, and also of "liberal," naturalistic, skeptical Sadducees and strict, supernaturalistic, legalistic Pharisees. Like Jesus, Socrates unites his

enemies and divides his world, into friends and enemies. It is a new and different divi­ sion than before: a new touchstone has come into history. H o w did he offend? Both by his method and by his teaching. His method, the famous "Socratic method," consists in cross-examining ideas as attorneys cross-examine witnesses. This inevitably showed up the inept defenders of foolish ideas as fools—a lesson people are not usually very grateful for. Socrates always began by teaching them Lesson One: the lesson of ignorance; that w e do not know what we think w e know; that there are only two kinds of people: fools, who think they are wise, and the wise, who know they are fools. It is the intellectual equivalent of Jesus' moral lesson that the only two kinds of people are sinners who think they are saints and saints w h o know they are sinners—another lesson to which most people did not re­ spond with gratitude! His teaching was minimal, but enough to be threatening: that your identity is in your soul, not your possessions or your body (Socrates had one of the ugliest bodies in h u m a n history, resembling a squashed frog), and that the care for the soul by wisdom and virtue was the only really necessary thing, and only fools neglect it—another lesson not likely to w i n many friends among the fools. To establish this, Socrates had to defend the validity, and objective reality, of wis­ dom and virtue, truth and goodness, against the Sophists' epistemological and moral relativism and subjectivism. So he alienated them as well, though he used and refined some of their dialectical (questioning-in-dialog) methods. If we value Socrates w e should be grateful to the Sophists, for their critique elicited his response; their under­ mining of wisdom and virtue stimulated h i m to find surer foundations for them. Socrates and the Sophists together revolutionized the content of philosophy as well as the method, for they turned the attention of philosophy away from cosmological questions about the universe—pre-Socratic philosophy had mostly been primitive sci­ ence—to questions about the nature of man, h u m a n life, and moral values—the ques­ tions of h u m a n existence. In this sense one could truly say that Socrates was the first Existentialist. He was either unemployed or, like his father, a mere stonecutter. He married Xan­ thippe, a remarkably shrewish woman, and had three remarkably unremarkable sons. Though he met many other philosophers (Parmenides, Zeno, the Sophists, and Pythagoreans), and though he was himself famous in his own lifetime, yet like Jesus he never traveled far from home, founded a school, wrote a book, inspired a war, or took sides in politics. His whole life was focused on one thing: "know thyself" (Gnothi seauton, the Delphic Oracle's first commandment, written over the door of its temple). It was not Socrates but Athens that impiously neglected this commandment of reli­ gious piety, yet Athens condemned Socrates to death—for impiety. One incident transformed his life, made Socrates Socrates, and made philosophy philosophy. It is so historically crucial that it should be told in his own words from his "Apology" ("Defense"): I will call the god in Delphi as witness of m y w i s d o m . . . Chairephon, my friend

since I was young . • • once went to Delphi and dared to ask this question of the ora­ cle . . . he asked if anyone was wiser than I was. H i e priestess answered, then, that no one was wiser. . . . Well, when I heard that reply I thought: 'What in the world does the god mean? What in the world is his riddle? For I know in my conscience that I am not wise in anything, great or small; then what in the world does he mean when he says I a m wisest? Surely he is not lying? For a god must not lie.' I was puzzled for a long time to understand what he meant; then I thought of a way to try to find out, something like this: I approached one of those who had the reputation of being wise, for there, I thought, if anywhere, I should test the revelation and prove that the oracle was wrong: "Here is one wiser than I, but you said I was wiser." When I examined him—I need not tell his name, but it was one of our statesmen . . . when I conversed with him, I thought this m a n seemed to be wise both to many others and especially to himself, but that he was not; and then I tried to show h i m that he thought he was wise but was not. Because of that he disliked me, and so did many others who were there, but I went away thinking to myself that I was wiser than this man; the fact is that nei­ ther of us knows anything beautiful and good, but he thinks he does know when he doesn't, and I don't know and don't think I do, so I am wiser than he is by only this tri­ fle, that what I do not know I don't think I do. After that I tried another, one of those reputed to be wiser than that man, and I thought just the same. Then he and many oth­ ers took a dislike to me. So I went to one after another after that, and saw that I was dis­ liked; and I sorrowed and feared, but still it seemed necessary to hold the god's busi­ ness of the highest importance, so I had to go on trying to find out what the oracle m e a n t . . . the truth really is, gentlemen, that the god in fact is wise, and in this oracle he means that h u m a n wisdom is worth little or nothing, and it appears that he does not say this of Socrates [only] but just adds my n a m e to take m e as an example, as if he were to say that this one of you h u m a n beings is wisest who like Socrates knows that he is in truth worth nothing as regards wisdom. This is what I still, even now, go about searching and investigating in the god's w a y . . . . I help the god by proving that m a n is not wise." (Apology) A n d this was the "impiety" for which he was tried, found guilty, and executed! Socrates' personality was ideal for this task: humble, gentle, ironic, humorous, and patient with his "patients" rather than egotistical, arrogant, or self-righteous. Neither a skeptic nor a dogmatist, he questioned everything because he knew he did not k n o w Skeptics do not question because they do not believe they will ever find the truth; dogmatists (in the popular sense of the word) do not question because they think they have it all already. According to Diogenes Laertius, "He often said that he wondered at those who made stone statues when he saw how careful they were that the stone should be like the man it was intended to represent, but how careless they were of themselves, as to guarding against being like stone." "He used to say that others lived to eat but he ate to live." His wife Xanthippe often threw things at h i m in public. When she screamed and then threw water at him, he replied, "Did I not predict that when Xanthippe thundered

she would soon rain?" (D) When a student asked h i m whether he should marry, Socrates asked h i m what he hoped to achieve by it, and when he replied "Happiness;" Socrates said, "Then marry. For if you get what you want you will be happy, and if you do not, you will be wise." (D) (Of the i o o greatest philosophers, less than half have been married, and less than half of these happily married. Nor is there a single w o m a n among the i o o most influ­ ential philosophers in history. This probably explains how easily philosophers can utter brilliant lunacies that so easily deceive other philosophers but would never deceive a wife.) No one knows exactly how much of Plato's picture of Socrates is historically accu­ rate and how much is Plato's idealization; but many other ancient sources corroborate, and none refute, the essential picture of Socrates that Plato gives us. It is very probably accurate because Plato wrote and circulated his Socratic dialogs within the lifetime of those who had known Socrates, so he could not have gotten away with great lies about Socrates among the Athenians who had known him, any more than the disciples of Jesus could have gotten away with a fundamentally false account of Jesus if this ac­ count, oral or written, circulated within the lifetime of those who had known him. That is why all "revisionist" accounts of Jesus depend on the idea that the Gospels were writ­ ten generations later. T h e same would be true for Socrates. Here is how Plato (who knew h i m best) describes his character, in the Symposium, in the words of Alcibiades: I say, then, that he is exactly like . . . the little figures craftsmen make which you see sitting in the shops . . . they can be opened down the middle and folded back, and then they reveal inside of them images of gods. . . . When he is opened out— well, I don't know if anyone else has seen those images inside him, but I saw them, and thought them divine, and I had to do what he commanded. . . . When you listen to Socrates' talk it seems at first to be silly . . . donkeys and blacksmiths and shoe­ makers and tanners are what he talks about, and he always seems to be saying the same tilings and the same words, so that the ignorant and foolish wotdd laugh at them; but when they are opened out and you get inside them, you find his words fidi of more sense than anyone else's, and the most godlike, and full of the best images of virtue, and reaching the farthest into what is the most profitable . . • When I hear Pericles and other great speakers, I think them fine orators but I feel no confusion in my soul or regret for my passion-enslaved life. But this Socrates here has moved m e to a state where I thought the life I was leading was not worth liv­ ing. . . . For he compels m e to admit that I a m a fool in neglecting myself while at­ tending to Athenian public business. . . . I a m ashamed before h i m and before no one else, for I know in my conscience that I cannot refute h i m

Sometimes I wish

he were no longer among the living. Yet if that should happen I know I would be even more distraught. I just don't know what to do with this man! H e doesn't care if someone is beautiful, or rich, or has any of the distinctions the public thinks are so great. He thinks of all these things as nothing . . .

On our military expedition to Poteidaiain . . . bearing hardships he exceeded not only m e but eveiyone else. W h e n w e were a i t off and had to go without food, as often happens on military campaigns, the others couldn't match him for endurance. Yet when there was plenty of good things, he was the only one w h o really enjoyed them. Especially drink. H e didn't really like it, yet when he was compelled to drink he beat them all, and yet—wonder of wonders—no one in the world has ever seen Socrates drunk. . . . Once there was a terrible frost and no one woidd go outside, or if he did he woidd put layers of clothes on h i m and wrap his feet up in felt and sheepskin, but this man went out wearing only the s a m e cloak he always wore, and marched barefoot over the ice more easily than the others who wore boots . . . Once, he got some idea into his head and stood there on one spot t h i n k i n g . . . he woidd not m o v e . . . . At last when evening came s o m e of the m e n brought out their pallets and slept near h i m (it was s u m m e r then) and watched him to see if he would stand all night. He did, until the sun rose, and then he offered a prayer to the sun and walked a w a y . . . When there was that battle for which the generals gave me the prize for courage, when not a single m a n woidd come to m y rescue this m a n saved m y life. I was wounded, but he would not leave m e . . . but when the generals looked at m y superior rank and wanted to give the prize to me, he was more eager than the generals that I should get it and not him. You may wonder: If Socrates was really so saintly, why did he offend so many people? T h e question is naïve. We have always martyred our saints. If you don't understand that, you understand neither the nature of m a n nor the nature of a saint. T h e only socially safe lifestyle is to be neither remarkably good nor remarkably bad. What was "the philosophy of Socrates?" Was it only "Lesson One," the wisdom that we have no wisdom? Almost, but not quite. There were some "Lesson Twos." Socrates often claimed to teach nothing, only to be a clarifying mirror, a kind of intellectual psychiatrist, showing others what their philosophy amounted to. Yet he unmistakably did believe and teach at least these ten things: (1) T h e task of philosophy, and of life, is to "know thyself," i.e. to know what the nature of humanity is and what the meaning and purpose of h u m a n life is. All other questions are trivial if not related to that, including the questions of physical science that occupied the attention of his predecessors. Anthropology (the philosophy of h u m a n nature), not cosmology (the philosophy of the physical cosmos), is the central issue, the key to philosophy. (2) To know the h u m a n self, you must know its telos, its purpose, its end, its summum bonum or "greatest good." Ethics is the key to anthropology. (3) This greatest good is not wealth, pleasure, power, fame, or honor but virtue (arête, "excellence"), which is not just good deeds but good character. Without that, even if you get A's in every subject, you flunk Life. Personal virtue is the key to ethics. (4) This key to the good life resides in the soul. For the true self is the soid. This was a radical idea in Socrates' day, for the word for "soul" in pre-Socratic Greek (psyche) meant only "ghost," a pale, hardly-alive image of the real, substantial, living flesh and

blood self. Socrates reversed the conventional relationship between body and soul: in­ stead of the soul being a pale copy of the body, the body was a pale copy of the soul, which is more real, solid, substantial, and alive than the body. T h e fundamental task of life is the care of the soul. Socrates would have called Jesus' saying "what does it profit 7

a m a n to gain the whole w orld and lose his own soul?" the most practical sentence ever spoken. (5) In fact, the soul is so alive that it is impervious to death; the soul is immollai. T h e supreme proof of immortality is Socrates himself: even death does not change him. Read the death scene in the Phaedo and you will see that when the idea of death and the idea of Socrates thus meet in your mind, it is not the idea of Socrates but the idea of death that is changed. (6) Because this was Socrates' answer to "know thyself"; because self = soul; there­ fore "no evil can happen to a good m a n in this world or the next." Good and evil do not happen, they are chosen. Others can harm m y body but only I can harm my soul, by ignoring its true goods, which are wisdom and virtue. T

(7) T h e cause of evil is ignorance, i.e. not know ing yourself, identifying the self with the body and its needs rather than the soul. We always seek the apparent good, but we do not ahvays seek the true good; it is wisdom that discriminates the true good from the apparent good; thus it is wisdom that is the key to all virtues. We always seek happi­ T

T

ness; if we only were w ise enough to know that virtue is the key to happiness, and to let r

that knowledge rule our Uves, w e would ahvays seek virtue too. If w e don't, we are igno­ rant. Vice is ignorance—not of facts but of values. (8) Virtue can be taught, not by lectures, either by God alone (in the "meno") or, if by men, but by self-questioning, by Socratic method. (9) It can be taught because knowledge of true values is innate in us. We forget this innate knowledge, and need to be reminded of it, need to remember it. T h u s "learning is remembering." T h e object of this remembering is not changing empirical facts but timeless values. (10) Philosophy seeks the truth about these values by defining terms like 'Justice/ 'Soul/ T e a c h i n g / 'Virtue/ 'Death/ 'Piety/ 'Courage/ 'Friendship/ 'Beauty/ 'Love/ 7

T

'Law / or 'Pleasure' (each of w hich is treated in a different Platonic dialog) to get at the essences, the essential natures of such things. This is the foundation of Plato's "Theory of Forms" or "Ideas," which is the metaphysics behind Socrates' question "W/iat is that?" That is a child's first question, and should also be the philosopher's. Socrates sought not just definitions of words but of realities, of the real natures or essences of things. Most of these "essences" that Socrates sought were "values." For after all, man's two great quests must coincide, in the end: (1) the mind's objective, impersonal quest for truth, for true being, for the metaphysical ultimate, and (2) the will's subjective, per­ 7

sonal quest for the good, for personal fulfillment, for the ethical ultimate. It w as Plato who accomplished this in his identification of true Being with "the Good." Selected Bibliography:

Philosophical Fragments, chapter i, by Kierkegaard Philosophy 101 by Socrates by Peter Kreeft Socrates by A.E. Taylor

Before and After Sonates by R M . Cornford * These philosophers include (i) Xenophon, who presents Socrates as a paradigm of practical, sensible wisdom; (2) Aristophanes, who in his satiric comedy The Clouds presents h i m as a Sophist; (3) Plato, whose Theory of Forms was the fulfillment of Socrates' search for universals; (4) Aristotle, for w h o m he was the inventor of inductive logic and definitions; (5) the mystic Plotinus and his "Neoplatonism"; (6) the Skeptics, who emphasized his attack on dogmatism; (7) the Stoics, who centered on his "live ac­ cording to reason, not passion"; (8) the Cyrenaics, who pointed to his principle that "reason regulates pleasures"; (9) even the Epicureans, who, though hedonists and ma­ terialists (unlike Socrates), were rationalists (like Socrates); (10) the Cynics, who ad­ mired Socrates' stand against social conventions; (11) the Megarians (early logicians), among the ancient Greeks; and, throughout the history of later philosophy, (12) St. Justin Martyr, for w h o m he was the proto-Christian; (13) Erasmus, for w h o m he was the proto-Humanist ("Saint Socrates, pray for us"); (14) Descartes and Hegel, who unSocratically systematized his rationalism; (15) rational Empiricists like Locke and Hume, who claimed his skeptical, open-minded spirit if not his doctrine; (16) Christian "Existentialists" like Pascal and Kierkegaard, for w h o m Socrates "existed" his philos­ ophy; (17) Marcel, who called his Personalist philosophy "Neo-Socratic"; (18) the atheist Existentialist Nietzsche, for w h o m Socrates and Jesus were his two most formidable opponents; (19) Charles Sanders Pierce, the founder of Pragmatism, which he says "ap­ pears to have been virtually the philosophy of Socrates," and also the Pragmatist William James, who says "There is absolutely nothing new in the pragmatic method. Socrates was an adept at it"; and even (20) Confucians, (21) Taoists, (22) Gandhian pacifists, and (23) Hindus, each of w h o m see Socrates as theirs; Radhakrishnan, e.g., sees h i m as a Hindu misunderstood by the Greeks (in Philosophy East and West). (24) Even T h o m a s Aquinas called h i m the greatest of philosophers. (ST 111,42,4)

24. Plato (427-347 B.C.) Plato's uniqueness Reading Plato is an experience like reading no other author. (1) He is a literary genius. (2) He is a psychological genius. (3) He is a logical genius. (4) He is a dramatic genius. It is impossible to remain an outside observer; he sucks you in to the dialog as a participant. No one makes you actively philosophize more effectively than Plato does. (5) Most remarkably, he is amazingly inexhaustible and fresh. After 2400 years of fame, after being interpreted to death by everyone from college freshmen to major philosophers and everyone in between, after tens of thousands of books and articles about him, one would think the Platonic cow would dry up, but it gives genuinely fresh milk again and again. Plato most perfectly exemplifies the nature of a classic. Ordinary books are like milk bottles: after you drink the quart dry, it is empty. Classics are like cows. They are alive. T h e y give fresh milk every morning, fresh insights every re­ reading. T h e dialogs of Plato are the classics of the classics. T h e y are to philosophy what the Bible is to religion. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, simply, "Plato is philosophy, and philosophy is Plato." Alfred North Whitehead said, "The safest characterization of the history of Western philosophy is that it is a series of footnotes to Plato." T

Plato's dialogs are the earliest complete books of philosophy that w e have. Yet not a single one of the thousands of later philosophical writers for 2400 years can compare with h i m as a writer and an introducer to philosophy. His dialogs are simply the most T

effective w ay of making beginners fall in love with philosophy that I have ever seen. A s a teacher I have tried everything and Plato wins by a mile. What does it mean to say that Plato's dialogs are alive? At least three things. (1) They are not outdated antiques. T i m e has not touched them, as it has touched most other books. Their appeal today is as great as it was 2400 years ago. (2) They have an effect on readers that only a living thing can have. They act on you, and you act on them. You are a participant, not a spectator. T h e y do things to you: ener­ gize you, change you, challenge you, make you feel toward them as Socrates' contem­ poraries felt toward Socrates: perturbed, confused, distressed, and even sometimes angry, yet fascinated and attracted. (No, "attracted" is too weak; it's more like falling in love.) They make you feel deeply dissatisfied and also deeply satisfied. (3) They are about real life, not just ideas. Some books are only full of words; others are only full of ideas, but Plato's dialogs are full of realities, full of life. (The word "logos" means all three things: word, idea, and intelligible reality, or truth.) They could be very successful stage plays or movies. They are dramas, both of ideas and of h u m a n personalities. Plato gives ideas arms and legs and eyes and mouths. Plato can change your life. Aristotle tells of a farmer who read Plato's Gorgias and "at once gave up his farm, mortgaged his soul to Plato, and sowed and planted Plato's

ideas there." This same dialog also changed Nietzsche's life, in the opposite direction: Nietzsche identified with that dialog's "villain," Callicles, rather than Socrates. Plato's literary talent is universally admitted. No other philosopher has ever suc­ ceeded in writing such satisfying dialogs, though many have tried, e.g. Augustine, T

T

Malebranche, Berkeley, Schelling, Santayana, Valéry.* For w hile other w riters may have had philosophical talent, Plato had, in addition, the literary (poetic) and psychological (dra­ T

matic) talents that most philosophers lack. (Indeed, only a very few great philosophers are fascinating to read because of who they are as persons even if you are not interested in philosophy. Augustine, Pascal, Kierkegaard, James, and Nietzsche are the only names that leap to mind.) It is an amazing coincidence that Socrates, the first and greatest of philosophers, who wrote nothing himself, should have as his student history's greatest philosophical writer and poet to write his dialogs. There has never been another Socrates, and there has never been another Plato. Their juxtaposition in time and place is an almost clum­ sily obvious piece of divine providence to anyone but an atheist. r

Socrates w as poor; Plato w a s rich. Socrates w a s ugly; Plato was handsome. He was probably a wrestler, with a broad ("platus" in Greek) forehead and/or shoulders, thus the nickname "Plato." His given n a m e was Aristocles. But (according to D) he had a very weak voice. Socrates mingled with ordinary people; Plato was an aristocrat. Like Jesus and Buddha, Socrates never wTote a book or founded a school; Plato wrote 30 great dialogs and founded the world's first university, the "Academy." Everything "aca­ demic" takes its name from that school, which lasted for 9 0 0 years. T

r

Unlike Socrates, w ho focused only on issues of individual morality, Plato w as inter­ ested also in politics. His two longest dialogs, Republic and Laws, are both about the just state. He did not go into politics in his native Athens, but when invited by the absolute monarch, Dionysius, to come to Syracuse in Sicily to teach h i m philosophy so that he could institute some of the reforms proposed in his Republic, he accepted, and was no­ T

toriously unsuccessful, barely escaping w ith his life from palace intrigues. Plato him­ self tells us the details of this story in his "Seventh Letter," which could be called the world's first autobiography. Plutarch tells us his first conversation with the king. He argued to Dionysius, as he r

did in the Republic, that virtue w as the greatest good and that of all m e n the tyrant pos­ sessed the least of it; that justice is the only road to happiness, while tyranny is the road to misery. Dionysius replied, "You talk like a dotard." Plato replied, "You talk like a tyrant." After his unsuccessful foray into actual politics, Plato returned to Athens and set up his Academy. There were other groups that tried to imitate Socrates and teach his art of r

r

logical cross-examination, but Plato's w as the only one that survived. It w as free and open to all, including women. Students were encouraged to disagree with each other and with Plato. (Contrast Pythagoras' school here.) Entrance exams were moral as well T

as intellectual; life had to match thought, practice match theory; for the w hole point of philosophy is wisdom, and w i s d o m is moral as well as intellectual. T h e curriculum of the school is described in book 7 of Plato's Republic. It became

the "core curriculum" of Western education for the next 2 0 0 0 years, known in the Mid­ dle A g e s as the "quadrivium" (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music) and the "trivium" (grammar, rhetoric, and logic). (See Dorothy Sayers' famous essay "The Lost Tools of Learning," in which she argues strongly for the restoration of this old idea.) The Dialogs What are the dialogs of Plato about? Everything under the sun (and some things above it): T h e Apology is a defense of Socrates, and of philosophy. T h e Gito is about Socrates' refusal to disobey the law even to save his Ufe. T h e Phaedo is about death and immortality in general, and Socrates' death. T h e Charmides is about temperance, or self-control, or moderation. T h e Lysis is about friendship. T h e Laches is about courage. T h e Euthyphro is about religious piety and its relation to reason. T h e Lesser Hippias is about whether it is better to do wrong intentionally or uninten­ tionally. T h e Greater Hippias is about the relation between goodness, pleasure, and beauty. T h e Jon is about artistic inspiration compared with philosophical wisdom. T h e Gorgias is about how to live, especially whether it is better to do wrong or to suffer wrong. T h e Protagoras is about whether all evil is due to ignorance. T h e Meno is about learning, which Plato says is really "remembering." T h e Euthydemus is about the relation between thought and words. T h e Cratylus is about the origin and nature of language. T h e Phaedms is about "Platonic love" and beauty, and the inferiority of books. T h e Symposium is also about love and beauty, and the superiority of Socrates. T h e Republic is about justice, and its "profit" in souls and states. T h e Theaetetus is about knowledge transcending sense perception. T h e Paimenides is about "The One," and whether plurality is an illusion. T h e Philebus is about the relation between pleasure and wisdom. T h e Sophist is about "the being of becoming (change)." T h e Statesman is about (surprise!) the statesman. T h e Timaeus is about the making of the universe. T h e Critias (incomplete) is about the legend of Atlantis. T h e Laws is a practical revision of the political aspects of the Republic. Every bookcase (and every mind!) should have these dialogs in it. The Significance of the Dialog Form T h e dialog form is not accidental for Plato, for he saw the very essence of philoso­ phizing as dialog: (1) within the soul, with yourself, (2) with other people, and (3) with the sought-for Truth above the self. Plato said (in the Phaedrus) that philosophy is not learned from books but only from live persons, who are not predictable like words on a

page, but are like ad-lib actors in a lived drama. His dialogs give us the process of think­ ing as well as the conclusions; and w e have to steer our own m i n d along each step of the winding road before w e get to the destination. T h e y deliberately discombobulate impatient, lazy minds. For, like Socrates, Plato wants to change not just your thoughts but your way of thinking. Y o u have to take time with his dialogs. Since their end is al­ ways some truth that is timeless, it is fitting that the means to that end, the process of thinking, demands that you stop watching your watch. Aristotle also wrote popular dialogs in the Socratic form, but all of them were lost, while all of Plato's (26 in all) were preserved. Scholars differ on how accurately they portray the historical Socrates, but most agree that the "early" dialogs (e.g. Meno) give us the actual conversations, or the actual kinds of conversations, that Socrates actually had; that the "middle" dialogs (e.g. the Republic) are Plato's more metaphysical specu­ lations to ground Socrates' ethical interests; and that in the "later" dialogs the figure of Socrates recedes and eventually disappears. T h e borderline between Book 1 and Books 2 - 1 0 of the Republic is probably the borderline between Plato's early, Socratic writings, and later, Platonic writings. T h e differences between them are that in the former, but not in the latter, (1) Socrates plays an active, lively personal role; he is not just a mouthpiece for Pla­ to's ideas. His unique personality is upfront and unforgettable. (Socrates and Jesus are probably the two people in history w h o m it is the most impossible to confuse with any­ one else.) (2) He has active opponents, whose personalities are also portrayed with great dra­ matic skill, and who argue against h i m with great strength of will, if not of mind. (3) T h e issue argued about is always the nature and definition of some moral virtue. Socrates was apparently not interested in either metaphysics or politics, as Plato was. He was really the first "Existentialist," while Plato was the first systematizer. (4) A n d the dialog comes to few or no definitive conclusions. T h e reader is left to pursue the question more fully himself—which is exactly what Plato did. T h u s the later, Platonic dialogs do not betray Socrates' intention but fulfill it. (Though it is highly unlikely that Socrates would have agreed with all their details, especially the 'benevolent totalitarianism' of the Republic.) Plato's whole work is a kind of Apology ("defense") of Socrates; it is the construction of a theoretical (metaphysical and epistemological) foundation under Socrates' practical (ethical and anthropological) philosophy. T h e ultimate question of practical philosophy is: What is the good? What is the good life? What is a good person? T h e ultimate ques­ tion of theoretical philosophy is: What is Being? What is true reality? For Plato, these two quests must coincide; the answer to both must be the same. T h e ultimate reality, for Plato, is "The Good," or Goodness Itself, or "the 'Form' (essence) of T h e Good." This is Plato's "Big Idea," and we will take up most of our space in explaining this sin­ gle idea, rather than trying to "cover" all his many other ideas; for Plato's philosophy, unlike many others, has just one single center to which everything else is subordinate, and this is it. It is also a fundamental dividing point for all subsequent philosophers.

(See the author's The Platonic Tradition.)

Plato's "Theory of Forms" To understand Plato's "Form of the Good," w e must understand what Plato meant by a "Form." Plato's "Theory of Forms" (or as it is often misleadingly called, "Theory of Ideas") is probably the single most famous (or notorious) theory in the history of philosophy, and the heart and soul of Platonism. "Idea" is a misleading English translation (of eidos) because it connotes something subjective, something in the mind. Ideas exist only in minds. But Plato's Forms exist outside minds. They are objective. T h e y are the objects sought by thinking. When we think of a pyramid, the object is material (it is made of stone), spatial (it is so many feet high), and temporal (it gradually changes and wears away). But what is the object when w e think of a triangle? It is not a material object like a pyramid. Triangu­ larity is not made of stone, nor does it have a size, nor does it change. T h e truths of geometry that describe it do not change. It is not part of "the universe" (the s u m total of all material energy and things in space and time). Nor is it a mere idea in our minds, for it cannot be false. It is simply itself. Our ideas can be false, they can be mere opinions. They are judged by whether they conform to their objects. Just as my idea that the Great Pyramid of Cheops is only four feet high is false because there is a real Great Pyramid that is much larger than that, and that objective reality is the standard for judging my subjective idea; so the idea that all trian­ gles must have equal sides, or the idea that any of them can have more than 180 de­ grees in their three interior angles, is false because there is a real triangularity that is the standard for judging these opinions as false. Also, our ideas, our opinions and beliefs, change, for they are in our minds, which change. Our minds are in time even though not in space or made of matter; and they change just as material-spatial things change. But triangularity does not change. Our ideas of triangularity may change, but T h e Idea of Triangularity does not. So Ideas are not just ideas. They are Forms, natures, essences, "what's." They are a third kind of real­

ity besides matter and minds. Plato offered three kinds of arguments for their existence: (i) metaphysical, (2) epis­ temologica!, and (3) moral. Each of the arguments responds to the great debate in preSocratic philosophy between Parmenides and Heraclitus. (1) T h e metaphysical argument is that true Being, as distinct from Becoming, is un­ changeable, as Parmenides said (Being could change only into non-Being); but both the material world known by the senses and the world of our thoughts and opinions are changing, as Heraclitus said ("You can't step into the same river twice"). From these two premises it follows that true Being lies not in these two realms but in another. (2) T h e two premises of the epistemological argument are similar: that true knowl­ edge is of unchanging universal truths, as Parmenides maintained; but the world of the senses is composed of ever-changing particulars, as Heraclitus maintained. Therefore if there is true knowledge, it must be a contact with another world ("cosmos," "ordered reality"), another realm of objects. If the objects of true knowledge, as distinct from the objects of changing opinion, are unchanging and universal (like 2+2=4), while all the things in the material world that is the objects of the senses are changing particulars, it

follows that the source of true knowledge is not the sensory world. So if knowledge is possible, there must be a non-sensory reality. (3) T h e moral argument is that the world of Forms is necessary to account for ideals. We strive for as-yet-unrealized goals, such as perfect justice, beauty, happiness, or wis­ dom. These do not yet exist in the material world; that is why w e strive for them. A n d they do not exist perfectly in our minds and wills either. T h e desire for them is there; but desire is not what we are striving for. But if they existed nowhere, they could not motivate our striving and acting. T h e y must, then, exist beyond both our minds and our world, acting as "final causes," as Aristotle would call them: ends, or goals that causally act not by pushing but by pulling, so to speak, by drawing our will in their direction rather than in another direction. Since they do not exist in our minds or our world, and yet they cause our minds and our world to change in their direction, they must be real (because nothing unreal can cause anything) beyond these two "worlds" in their own third "world." We mustn't think of this "third world" as "up in the sky somewhere," for that mere­ ly puts them into some mythical part of the "first world." Nor can we think of them as "in our minds" as mere concepts or desires because they judge our concepts as true or false and our desires as good or bad. They are the objects of our souls, our minds and desires. Plato was not unaware of the problems and questions that this "Theory of Forms" raises; in fact he raised some of them himself in the later dialogs (especially the Sophist and the Parmenides). Nor did he ever claim to have attained adequate knowledge of the highest of all the Forms, "the Good." In the Republic he says that while the other Forms such as Justice can be denned (that is what the Republic claims to do), "the Good" is infinite and therefore indefinable; and therefore w e can only use analogies, parables, or myths; and even these show only the way to it. T h e most famous of these parables, in fact the single most famous passage in the entire history of philosophy, is the haunting "parable of the Cave":

I said, "Take the following parable of education and ignorance as a picture of the condition of our nature. Imagine mankind as dwelling in an underground cave with a long entrance open to the light across the whole width of the cave; in this they have been from childhood, with necks and legs fettered, so they have to stay where they are. They cannot move their heads round because of the fetters, and they can only look for­ ward, but light comes to them from fire burning behind them higher up at a distance. Between the fire and the prisoners is a road above their level, and along it imagine a low wall has been built, as puppet showmen have screens in front of their people over which they work their puppets." "I see," he said. "See then bearers canying along this wall all sorts of articles which they hold pro­ jecting above the wall, statues of men and other living things, made of stone or wood and all kinds of stuff, some of the bearers speaking and some of them silent, as you might expect." "What a remarkable image," he said, "and what remarkable prisoners!" "Just like ourselves," I said. "For, first of all, tell me this: What do you think such people would have seen of themselves and each other except their shadows, which the fire cast on the opposite wall of the cave?" "I don't see how they coidd see anything else," said he, "if they were compelled to keep their heads unmoving all their lives." "Very well, what of the things being carried along? Would not this be the same?" "Of course it would." "Suppose the prisoners were able to talk together, don't you think that when they named the shadows which they saw passing they would believe they were naming things?" "Necessarily." "Then if their prison had an echo from the opposite wall, whenever one of the

passing bearers uttered a sound, would they not suppose that the passing shadow must be making the sound? Don't you think so?" "Indeed I do," he said. "If so," said I, "such persons would certainly believe that there were no realities except those shadows of handmade tilings." "So it must be," he said. "Now consider," said I, "what their release woidd be like, and their a i r e from these fetters and their folly; let us imagine whether it might naturally be something like this. One might be released, and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round, and to walk and look towards the firelight; all this would hurt him, and he woidd be too much dazzled to see distinctly those things whose shadows he had seen before. What do you think he would say, if someone told h i m that what he saw before was foolery, but now he saw more rightly, being a bit nearer reality and turned towards what was a little more real? What if he were shown each of the passing tilings and compelled by questions to answer what each one was? Don't you think he would be puzzled, and believe what he saw before was more true than what was shown to him now?" "Far more," he said. "Then suppose he were compelled to look towards the real light, it woidd hurt his eyes, and he would escape by turning them away to the tilings which he was able to look at, and these he would believe to be clearer than what was being shown to him." "Just so," said he. "Suppose now," said I, "that someone should drag h i m thence by force, up the rough ascent, the steep way up, and never stop until he could drag him out into die light of the sun, woidd he not be distressed and furious at being dragged; and when he came into the light, die brilliance woidd fill his eyes and he woidd not be able to see even one of the things now called real?" "That he woidd not," said he, "all of a sudden." "He woidd have to get used to it, surely, I think, if he is to see the things above. First he woidd most easily look at shadows, after tìiat the images of mankind and the rest in water, lastly the things tìiemselves. After this he woidd find it easier to survey by night the heavens themselves and all that is in them, gazing at the light of die stars and moon, rather than by day die sun and the sun's light." "Of couse." "Last of all, I suppose, the sun; he coidd look on the sun itself in his own place, and T

see what it is like, not reflections of it in w ater or as it appears in some alien setting" "Necessarily," said he. "And only after diis he might reason about it, how tìiis is he who provides seasons and years, and is set over all diere is in the visible region, and he is in a manner the cause of all things which diey saw." "Yes, it is clear," said he, "diat after all diat, he woidd come to this last." "Very good. Let him be reminded of his first habitation, and what was wisdom in diat place, and of his fellow-prisoners diere; don't you think he woidd bless himself for die change, and pity them?"

"Yes, indeed." "And if there were honours and praises among them and prizes for the one who saw the passing things most sharply and remembered best which of them used to come before and which after and which together, and from these was best able to prophesy accordingly what was going to come—do you believe he would set his desire on that, and envy those who were honoured m e n or potentates among them? Would he not feel as H o m e r says, and heartily desire rather to be serf of some landless man on earth and to endure anything in the world rather than to opine as they did and to live in that way?" "Yes indeed," said he, "he would rather accept anything rather than live like that." "Then again," I said, "just consider, if such a one should go down again and sit on his old seat, would he not get his eyes full of darkness coming in suddenly out of the sun?" "Very much so," said he. "And if he should have to compete with those who had been always prisoners, by laying down the law about those shadows while he was blinking before his eyes were settled down—and it woidd take a good long time to get used to tilings—wouldn't they all laugh at h i m and say he had spoiled his eyesight by going up there, and it w a s not worth while so m u c h as to tiy to go up? A n d woidd they not kill anyone who tried to re­ lease them and take them up, if they could somehow lay hands on h i m and kill him?" (As they did to Socrates.) T h e Cave summarizes four steps, or levels, in Plato's philosophy of education (learning), and thus the four levels in Plato's epistemologa (philosophy of knowing), and thus also the four levels in his metaphysics (philosophy of being), as follows, using the image of the four parts of a "divided line" for this four-step "stairway to the stars". Epistemology

Metaphysics

4. philosophical wisdom, understanding

4. the Ideas (qualitative Forms)

3. logical & mathematical reasoning

3. mathematical (quantitative) Forms

2. first-hand sense experience

2. concrete individual things

i. second-hand sensing of images (perhaps

1. images of concrete individual things

also mental images, mere opinions, from "media") T h e ultimate reality, the "big Idea," the Idea of the Good, is not in one of these four categories, but is that which is pointed to, and gradually approached, by the four levels. T h e four are all finite and relative; the Idea of the Good is the one absolute, and is infi­ nite. (The fact that Plato calls it "infinite" is a remarkable breakthrough, for the typical Greek mind did not consider infinity a perfection but an imperfection; for every work of art is perfect precisely by its limits.)

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T h u s the ultimate metaphysical reality is also the ultimate ethical reality. So the pur­ pose of ethics, for Plato, is not only to rightly order our desires and our relations with each other; it is also to become more real. Goodness is not just human, it "goes all the way up" to ultimate reality. Plato uses a third analogy in the Republic for the Idea of the Good, in addition to the Cave and the "Divided Line." It is the sun. A s the sun makes everything visible, by physical light, this Idea makes everything inteDigible by a kind of mental, spiritual light. For w e understand a thing, in the last analysis, only when we know its value, what is is good for. The Oneness of Ethics and Metaphysics In all his dialogs, and most famously in his Republic, Plato offers an ethics that is an alternative to both that of the Sophists and the traditionalist populace (represented in the Republic by Thrasymachus and Cephalus respectively). T h e Republic centers on the "four cardinal virtues" of justice, wisdom, courage, and moderation (self-control). It includes a foundation for these virtues in a psychology or anthropology of the soul's three powers: the intellect, the "spirited part" (roughly, the will), and the appetites (desires). These three faculties need the three virtues of wisdom, courage, and moderation, with justice as the overall harmony of the three. Justice is to the soul what health is to the body: the right functioning and cooperation of all the or­ gans or powers. T h u s Plato proves that "justice is always more profitable (happifying) than injus­ tice" (the fundamental conclusion of the Republic), both for individual souls and for states. For states are built both by and for h u m a n beings and therefore mirror the

structures and virtues (or vices) of h u m a n souls. T h e structures and virtues and vices of souls and states are mirror images of each other. T h u s , for Plato, ethics must be dependent on anthropology, for the good for m a n (which is what ethics is about) must be dependent on the nature of m a n (which is what philosophical anthropology is about). You can't be a good self unless you know what a good self is, i.e. unless you "know thyself." Are w e pieces of God, gods, images of God, angels in disguise, ghosts in machines, cyborgs, trousered apes, big-brained beasts, evolved slime pools, or mere chemical equations? Are w e embodied souls? Or is Mind merely Brain? But this (anthropology), in turn, is dependent on metaphysics, for what man is de­ pends on what is. T h e most fundamental differences in ethics, like those between Socrates and the Sophists, are rooted in fundamental differences in metaphysics. "Goodness" and "Being," "values" and "facts," "what is" and "what ought to be," cannot be totally separated and independent of each other. To increase or decrease your good­ ness is to increase or decrease your being. So in order to do ethics w e must do metaphysics. We must ask questions like: Is Mind real? (Materialists answer No.) Is Matter real? (Immaterialists answer No.) Is Infi­ nite Goodness real? (Atheists answer No.) Are "ideals" real? (Cynics and Machiavellian pragmatists answer No.) Plato answers Yes to all these questions. His answer is contro­ versial, defended by some, attacked by others. T h e issue is not a matter of absentminded, head-in-the-clouds theory and academic speculation; it a matter of What Is Real and How We Should Live. T h e two great questions are aspects of a single ques­ tion. No philosophical divide is more fundamental. T h u s the Sophists, both in Plato's time and in our own, charge that Plato's ethic is 'unrealistic'; that his ideals (The Good, Justice, Wisdom, Courage, Self-control) are re­ ally only fits ideals, only subjective opinions. Plato wants to show that they are grounded in the nature of reality, that they "go all the way down"—or, to change the image, "go all the way up": that they are objective, universal, necessary, and unchangeable. Only thus can they be true for all people, times, places, and cultures. The View from the Cave: Who is the "Realist"? If the prisoners in the Cave agree with the Sophists' ethical relativism, it is because they agree with their metaphysical Naturalism: that only Nature is real. ("Nature" here means matter plus h u m a n minds.) According to this popular view, reality is merely what w e experience, without or within. In other words, the immaterial ideas w e think and ideals w e aspire to (truth and goodness) are only in our minds, only subjective, only within ourselves. We create ideas and ideals, w e do not discover them.

If this is your metaphysics—"the metaphysics of the Cave"—then to be logically consistent your ethics must also be "the ethics of the Cave." If the only realities are the realities in the cave, then the only "real" goods are the goods in the Cave. T h e Cave is Nature, the realm of time-bound things. If there is no super-natural reality, there can be no super-natural good, no good that transcends time, space, and matter. A n d in that case Socrates is the unrealistic "idealist" and the Sophists are the "realists." But for Plato it is Socrates who is the realist because he has gotten out of the cave and seen Reality. Plato wants to expand our metaphysics, and thus also our anthro­ pology and our epistemologa to justify an expanded ethics. There really exist Forms as ?

well as matter (in metaphysics), Soul as well as body (in anthropology), Reason as w ell as sensation (in epistemology); and therefore Virtue is more "realistic," more "real," than enlightened egotism (in ethics). Plato's "good news" is that There Is More; that w e are fools who have denied our true identity and destiny by having crawled into the Cave and refused to come out of its comfortable shadows. Plato does not deny that Nature is real, but he says it is like a picture, an "image" of what is more real; and that this "more real" reality is what the cave-dwellers think of as T

less real, as merely subjective ideas and ideals, w hich they think are only images or pic­ tures of Nature and desires for natural goods. So somebody has everything inside out! Who is it? Is it Socrates or the Sophists? T h e issue is fundamental for Plato. This is why most of his dialogs are arguments against the Sophists. (The Gorgias is the most fundamental, and a good place for read­ ers of Plato to start.) How shall we choose sides? Is the choice arbitrary? Is the choice between objectivism and subjectivism of ideals itself merely subjective? To say so is to r

prejudice the issue, to decide the answer by the very w ording of the question. It is also to undercut the authority of all reason and argument, including the argu­ ments for this materialism. If Reason is merely something subjective, merely the way

my mind happens to work, and not the light from reality outside the Cave, why pay attention to it? If my brain is just a computer programmed by chance, why trust it? We all assume that our sensations result from objective reality impinging on our sense organs. A n d Plato does not deny that. But he asks: Why do we assume that ideas and ideals are not from objective reality impinging on our rational mind? Why do we think they are just "made up," created rather than discovered? Do we not also expe­ rience the impinging on our minds of objective and unalterable truth, for instance in or

mathematics? We cannot change the objective fact that 2+2=4, ^Y

languages w e

use to express it. Similarly, we cannot change what justice is, we cannot make it unjust to be fair and altruistic, or make it just to be unfair and selfish. We "bump up against," or discover rather than invent, both quantitative (in mathematics) and qualitative (in ethics) Forms with our mind just as w e b u m p up against matter with our bodies. We find three kinds of these forms: physical, mathematical, and moral. We can change black rocks but we cannot change blackness or rockiness. We can change the length of a table from 2 feet to 4 feet, but we cannot change twoness or fourness. A n d T

r

we can change the law s of the state from unjust law s to just laws (e.g. by outlawing slav­ ery), but w e cannot change injustice into justice. If we made up "our" physical, mathematical, and moral truths as w e made up fic­ r

tions like mermaids or artifices like languages, w e could change them as w e can change our mermaids or our languages. But we can't. Something real resists us. Something comes to us, not just from us, with authority over our minds, so that w e can be right or wrong about it. These are Ideas, not ideas; they are hard, not soft; they hit our minds as rocks hit our heads. T h e first two "worlds," the worlds of matter and minds inside the cave, both reflect the same "third world" of Forms outside the cave. My correct geometrical ideas of trian­ T

gles (in "w orld" #2, my mind) and the triangular things I find or make (in "world" #1, the physical universe) by using these ideas (in "world" #2) both reflect the Form "Tri­ angularity" in "world" #3. Both the red rose and my sight of it have Redness. Both the T

good act and my right judgment about it have Goodness. Horseness explains w hy my idea of a horse and the material horse correspond, why my mental idea can be true of the physical horse: because they reflect the same Form. If the Form of Horseness in my T

mind were not the same Form of Horseness in the horse, I w ould not know the horse as it really is. This is not a "head in the clouds" issue of abstract theory; it has profound, lifechanging ethical/moral implications. Plato's larger metaphysics allows a larger ethics, for it allows a Good or End for m a n that is more than this-worldly happiness, or satis­ faction of personal desires, whether for myself or society. It makes room for a Good for m a n that is greater than man. T h u s it allows an authoritative ethic, what Kant will later call a "categorical imper­ ative," rather than a merely utilitarian, instrumental, pragmatic ethic of "hypothetical imperatives." In other words something absolute, not merely relative. Man is no longer, as in Protagoras, "the measure of all things." T h e Good measures man, m a n does not measure the Good. A n d this humbling of m a n under the Good really exalts him;

Platonic Man is a far greater thing than Sophistic Man. To put the philosophical point in different but analogous religious terms, m a n becomes taller when he bows his knees to pray. This is why Plato can be a "countercultural" rebel, and justify his critique of the Establishment's regime in Athens in the "Republic": he sees a higher standard. Only a transcendentalist or supernaturalist or Platonist can justify rebellion against the estab­ lished order and the powers that be because he has a higher standard by which to judge. Only a believer in a higher "natural law" can justify rebellion against h u m a n laws. If this "natural law" becomes traditional, only a traditionalist can be a rebel. For he has a higher, unchanging tradition with which to judge the lower, human, changing traditions. Only the eternal can judge the temporal, and only the objective can judge the subjective. T h e Good cannot judge us if it is only our fabrication. Sophists must logi­ cally be stick-in-the-mud conservatives. T h e y have no higher law to justify rebellion. But this ethical conversion requires a metaphysical conversion from ordinary "Cave" thinking to "Platonic" thinking; from thinking that (our) ideas are images of things to thinking that things are images of (the) Ideas. In this new way of thinking, the standard is neither our minds nor the visible world but the Forms. T h e "world" of Forms "outside the Cave" is the ideal and standard for both Nature and our ideas and desires. Oui" ideas are judged by the Ideas. T h e easiest way to understand this conversion of thought is by putting it into theistic terms by putting Plato's Ideas into the Mind of God. (Plato did not do this, but Augustine, the greatest Christian Platonist, did.) Thus, as our ideas copy Nature, Na­ ture copies God's Ideas, so that OUT science is thinking God's thoughts after h i m by reading His art (i.e. Nature). T h e easiest way to understand Plato is to Christianize him, to put his Ideas into the Mind of God, and then, having understood this, to deChristianize h i m again (for he was, of course, not a Christian but a pagan): keep the Di­ vine Ideas without the Divine Person. Now you have Plato. Plato's Anthropology Central to m a n is his knowledge of the Good. This knowledge is in the soul, not the body. Therefore Plato sees man's essence as the soul; not as a soul-and-body but as a soul in a body, a soul "imprisoned in" a body, limited by a body even while using a body. His argument for the soul's immortality in the Republic (Book 10) is that since soul and body are totally different things, like oil and water, the death of one does not cause the death of the other. Because for h i m souls are that "loose from" bodies, Plato calls Reincarnation "a likely story" in the Meno. For only if the body is not part of our essence, can w e get a totally different body by Reincarnation and yet remain the same person. This "soul only" view sharply contrasts with the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim belief in the importance and goodness of the body, and immortality as including a resurrected body as well as an immortal soul. Plato first clearly mapped the soul's three essential powers or faculties of (i) the mind, reason, or intellect, (2) the will (which he calls "the spirited part" and thinks of mainly as the ability to say No, or righteous indignation), and (3) the emotions (he calls

them simply "appetites"); (Plato had a rather primitive, simple, and shallow view of these last two powers.) Nearly every system of psychology since Plato begins with and modifies this essential tripartite map—e.g. Freud's "superego," "ego," and "id." They are the basis for Plato's famous "four cardinal virtues," another idea which almost all of Western civilization has inherited from him: (i) prudence or wisdom, which perfects the mind, (2) fortitude or courage, which perfects the will, (3) moderation or selfcontrol, which perfects the emotions, and (4) justice as the harmonious interaction of the other three, each doing its own proper work. Plato's Epistemology Since man is essentially the soul, knowledge is essentially intellectual rather than sen­ sory. A s Plato's metaphysics separates (1) universal, timeless, immaterial Ideas and (2) particular changing material things, and as his anthropology separates (1) soul and (2) body, so his epistemology separates and contrasts (1) rational, intellectual knowledge of these changeless universal Forms, which can be certain, and (2) sensory knowledge of changing material things, which cannot. In the Platonic Academy, the university he founded (the world's first and longestlasting university, which lasted until 529 A.D.), his successors eventually came to doubt the existence of the Platonic Forms, and this left no knowledge left at all in the sensory world, since the transcendent Forms were not immanent in the world (as Aristotle would later make them). This is why skepticism reigned in the Academy, and "aca­ demic" became a synonym for "skeptic" in the ancient world after Plato. E.g. St. Au­ gustine's Against the Academics is a refutation of skepticism. Plato's theory of teaching, learning and education centers around the idea that "learning is remembering" (anamnesis)—remembering the soul's innate but uncon­ scious knowledge of the Forms. This is the presupposition behind Socratic ques­ tioning, for to ask a question is to assume that the other party knows the answer, or has access to it. (Of course anyone can use the Socratic method without believing in

anamnesis.) For Plato, teaching and learning presupposes and requires five things. (Plato never lists these five systematically, but w e can see them in practice in each of his dialogs.) (1) There is objective, universal, and changeless Truth to learn. (2) T h e soul has access to it by its very nature, has at least hints or images or traces or seeds of it. All souls have "the equipment," native intelligence. (3) By Socratic questioning the student can be led to the "aha!" experience of discov­ ering these Ideas merely by thinking. (4) T h e student must, however, admit his own ignorance to begin with. (5) A n d he must passionately love the truth and be dissatisfied with his ignorance. Four Options Four options present themselves as "package deals" in ancient philosophy, each em­ bracing a metaphysics, an anthropology, an epistemology, and an ethics:

Philosopher

Metaphysics

Anthropology

Epistemolgy

Ethics: The End

Parmenides

Only The One (Monism) Ideas & Things (Dualism)

Pure Reason

Pure Reason.

Soul & Body (Dualism)

Reason vs. Sensation

Mystical Enlightenment Wisdom

Plato

Aristotle

Substance = Form & Matter (hylomorphism)

Soul = form of body

Rea son Virtue ( Soul ) abstracts from. & good sensation fortune (soft empiricism) (body)

Sophists, Democritus, Epicureans

Materialism

Biologism

Sensation P Pleasure (hard empiricism)

Of the four options, Aristotle is the most commonsensical, as well as the most com­ plete. Aristotle is essentially Plato revised, Plato's two "worlds" put together, Plato's Forms brought down to earth. Aristotle is the primary "footnote to Plato." He was in fact the prime pupil of Plato, as Plato was the prime pupil of Socrates. He is also to Western civilization what Confucius is to Chinese civilization: the default position, the touchstone of sanity. To him w e now turn. Selected Bibliography: Plato by A.E. Taylor What Plato Said by Paid Elmer More Suggested dialogs to begin with: ion, Meno, Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo Govf

gias, Republic Plato by Eric Voegelin Discoveiing Plato by Alexander Koyre The Republic of Plato by Alan Bloom * Even the author of this book has published over a dozen of them, in which Socrates meets a variety of other thinkers such as Descartes, Hume, Kant, Machiavelli, Marx, Sartre, Kierkegaard, Freud, doctors, lawyers, psychologists, confused students, and even Jesus. But they are Little League games. Plato is T h e Show.

25. Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) Coleridge said that "every m a n is born either a Platonist or an Aristotelian." Alas, most of us little bastards nowadays are neither. But Coleridge has a point: Plato is the archetype of the radical, surprising philosopher who comes to a point—he has one "big Idea"—while Aristotle is the archetype of well-rounded common sense. Plato is Tarzan swinging on a vine to rescue Jane from crocodiles in one fell swoop, wiiile Aristotle is the explorer carefully mapping every inch of the jungle. Plato's works are dramatic di­ alogs written for popular consumption, while Aristotle's are edited lecture notes kept in a research library. They are exciting to think but not to read; or rather they are exciting to read only because discovering order is exciting, in a deep, satisfying, purely intel­ lectual way. Aristotle's Life Aristotle's life is naturally divided into four parts. (1) His father was the court physician to the King of Macedonia (just north of T

T

Greece). His father died w hen he was young, and Aristotle w ent to Plato's Academy to study and stayed for 20 years as Plato's greatest student. Plato called him "the m i n d of the school." He wrote many popular dialogs in the Platonic style, but all of them are lost. During his lifetime he was not nearly as famous or popular as Plato. T

7

(2) He left the Academy w hen Plato died in 347 B . C . and Plato's nephew Eudoxus, rather than Aristotle, became the head of the school. He set up his own school for a T

w hile in Assos (in northwest Turkey), then returned to Macedonia to tutor Alexander r

the Great, who would conquer the w orld with armies and Greek civilization. (3) Later, Aristotle would return to Athens to found his own university (the Lyceum) T

and his own philosophical system, w ith the apologetic tribute to Plato: "Dear indeed is Plato but dearer still is truth." He was called the "peripatetic" (walker-around) because T

he would lecture while he and his pupils walked, since he believed that w alking was good for philosophy because it stimulated the conscious reason, while lying down on r

one's back was good for poetry because it stimulated the imagination and what w e now

T

call the unconscious. (Freud found the same thing to be true, thus he had his patients lie down during psychoanalysis.) T h e Lyceum was a scientific research university, complete with a zoo (with 500 T

species of animals supplied by Alexander from around the w orld), a laboratory (where T

50 species w ere dissected), a research library (including constitutions from 158 citystates), a m u s e u m , and Aristotle's lecture notes, which were edited and collected by ei­ ther Aristotle himself or his students (no one knows for sure) into the titles we now have. He recorded detailed observations of marine life, discovering, e.g., that dolphins were m a m m a l s rather than fish, since they gave live birth. r

He made many scientific errors (as was quite natural for a pioneer) as w ell as many important scientific discoveries. For instance: He thought that the brain was not the organ of thinking but of refrigeration for the blood. He thought the earth was the center of the universe (as nearly everyone did at the

time). He did, however, teach that it was not flat but a sphere, as did many others after him, especially in the Middle Ages. T h e idea that all premoderns believed the super­ stition that the earth was flat is a modern superstition. He thought there were crystal spheres, perfect circles in which all the heavenly bod­ ies were embedded and rotated round the earth. He did not believe empty space, or a vacuum, was possible (he said space is full of "aether"). He denied the possibility of atoms, as in Democritus. He believed that the man, and not the woman, produced all the form (genetic de­ termination) in reproduction. He believed that heavy objects fell faster than light ones. Most of these errors came about because he trusted to theory more than obser­ vation. Many medieval philosophers, on the false assumption of a necessary connection between his often-erroneous science and his common-sense philosophy, accepted both as a "package deal." Many modern philosophers reject both, on exactly the same false assumption. A n d if it is true that Aristotle often substituted philosophy for science, it is also true that many modern philosophers substitute science for philosophy. (4) After Aristotle directed the Lyceum for 12 years, Alexander died in 323. Athens exploded with anti-Macedonian feeling and s u m m o n e d Aristotle to appear in court to answer charges of "impiety" (shades of Socrates' ghost!). Unlike Socrates, Aristotle was too practical for martyrdom: he left Athens, explaining that "he would not allow the Athenians to sin twice against philosophy." He died in Euboea the next year, 322. When the great library of Alexandria was destroyed, many of Aristotle's books per­ ished. In 80 B.C., Roman soldiers found a separate collection of his manuscripts in a pit in Turkey and brought them to Rome, where they were copied. When Rome fell and when the Greek schools were closed, scholars brought them to Syria, then Iraq and Iran, where Muslim philosophers discovered and translated them from Greek to Latin to Syriac to Arabic. Diogenes Laertius says Aristotle wrote 445,270 lines. He lists 386 titles. T h e books recognized as Aristotle's today are compilations and anthologies edited by Andronicus of Rhodes, w h o organized 2 0 0 0 pages of text (twice the amount we have from Plato) into ordered categories. Many of them were probably lecture notes from his students. Later gossips say that he was either remarkably selfish or remarkably virtuous (he was probably very ordinary); that he had "a lisping voice . . . very thin legs . . . and small eyes" or that he was very handsome; and that he invented such things as a pretechnological alarm clock ("When he went to bed he took a bronze ball in his hand and had a bronze dish below it, so that when the ball fell into the dish he would be awak­ ened by the noise"). Heidegger, in a course on Aristotle, summarized the three things we know for certain about him: "He was born, he worked, he died." The Ordering of All Knowledge In the Middle Ages, each philosopher had a nickname. But Aristotle was known simply as "The Philosopher." He was also called "the master of those who know" because he

was the master orderer, the outliner of all reality. T h e basic structure of that outline is as follows. Here is Aristotle's classification of the sciences ("science" in the broad, premodern sense of "rationally ordered knowledge"): (Preliminary:) Instrumental knowledge A. Logic: using language for proof B. Rhetoric: using language for persuasion C. Poetics: using language for beauty I. Theoretical knowledge (knowledge of the truth for its own sake) A. "Natural philosophy," or physics 1. Chemistry 2. Botany 3. Zoology 4. Anthropology B. Mathematics C. Metaphysics (the study of the universal laws of all reality) II. Practical knowledge (knowledge for the sake of practice) A. Ethics B. Politics C. Economics III. Productive knowledge (knowledge for producing, for making: "techne" or "know-how," from which w e get the word "technology." We seek knowledge for three reasons: truth, goodness, and beauty or utility. We think, act, and make. In other words, we seek knowledge (I) for the knowledge itself. This is "theoretical" knowledge, from the Greek "theoria", which does not m e a n "uncertain, merely hypothetical" but "contemplative"; it is also called "speculative" knowledge from the Latin "speculum" which means "mirror." (II) for its practical application in acting, in living. "Practical" does not m e a n only "useful" or "what works" or "what is a means to an end" but "for practice." T h e most important question of ethics, in fact, is not about practical means but about the end: What is the final end or good of h u m a n life, to which everything else is a means? (III) for its application in making or mending things, improving the material world around us, including our own bodies (medicine). Our "techie" society ranks III the highest (we're certainly the best society in history at it), II next; and I last (we popularly call philosophy mere "theory" or speculation"); but Aristotle would say we have it exactly upside down. Practical knowledge should be more important to us than productive (technological) knowledge because it is closer to home: it perfects not our world but our lives. A n d for the same reason, theoretical knowledge should be ranked highest of all because it perfects our very essential selves, our souls, our minds: it expands our consciousness, not just our world or our behavior. Logic Aristotle discovered and formulated the basic rules of logic, in six books together

entitled the Organon or "instrument." Until the 20th century, Aristotelian logic was the only deductive logic. Francis Bacon (17th century) and John Stuart Mill (19th century) added important advances in inductive logic. Modern symbolic logic is not so much an alternative to Aristotelian logic as an addition, a refined symbolization, a mathematicization, and a Nominalization (see Vol. II, page 1 0 9 on Nominalism) of parts of Aris­ totle's logic. Aristotle's logic is perhaps the single most useful idea in the history of thought. For whatever w e think about, w e must think either logically or illogically about it. A n d whether w e are seeking Heaven or hamburgers, w e will m u c h more likely get it if w e think logically, i.e. clearly, truly, and reasonably. These are the three things logic seeks: clarity, truth, and proof. For there are three acts of the mind, classified by Aristoüe from a logical point of view: (1) conceiving and understanding a concept, a term, a meaning (like "man" or "mor­ tal"); this is not of itself either true or false; (2) judging or predicating one concept of another in a declarative sentence or propo­ sition (like "all m e n are mortal"); this is either true or false; (3) reasoning from one or more propositions (premises, assumptions) to another (a conclusion); giving reasons (premises) for our beliefs (conclusions). This is done by ei­ ther (a) induction (reasoning from many particular cases to a generalization—"he and he and she and she are mortal, therefore all are mortal" or (b) deduction (from a general principle to a particular conclusion: e.g. the syllogism "All m e n are mortal, and Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal"). Deduction yields certainty, induction only probability. Deductive arguments thus have three check points to pass before they prove their conclusions true: (1) Are the terms all clear and unambiguous? (2) Are the premises all true? (3) Is the logic valid? Does the conclusion logically follow from the premises? (Aris­ totle was the first to formulate the basic rules for deciding this.) The Four Causes Central to Aristode's philosophy of nature, or physics, is his theory of the "four causes." Next to his logic, this is probably the single most useful idea in the history of h u m a n thought for understanding and classifying things—any things (e.g. for organizing term papers!). There are only four kinds of questions anyone can ever ask about anything: (1) What is it made of? What is its raw material, or contents? Aristotle called this the "material cause." (2) What is it made into? What is its essential nature? Aristotle called this the "for­ mal cause." (3) What made it or changed it? Where did it come from? Aristotle called this the "efficient cause." (4) Where is it going to? What is its (natural or artificial) end? Aristotle called this

the "final cause." For instance: Thing or event

Material cause

Formal cause

Efficient cause

Final cause

draydle desk

clay wood

top desk

papa carpenter

chair

wood

chair

carpenter

bust of Socrates

ivory

Socrates' face

sculptor

acorn Socrates avalanche puppy eating argument virtue

chemicals animal body 9999 rocks organs food premises habit

oak seed rational soul rock slide poodle ingestion syllogism goodness

parent tree parents gravity parents chewing mind choice

"Moby Dick"

words

novel

Melville

child's play to hold books, papers to hold sitting persons to remember Socrates mature tree wisdom ground adult poodle health persuasion happiness (perfection) amusement & wisdom

T h e formal and material causes are the two intrinsic dimensions or aspects (we do not call them "causes" any more) and the efficient and final causes are the two extrinsic dimensions or aspects, of any thing or event. T h e word "cause" in Greek (aition) meant literally "responsibility for." It came from the law courts. A "cause" of x is anything that makes a difference to x, that makes it x rather than y, anything that accounts for and thus explains x. A full explanation of any x includes these four dimensions. Aristotle arrived at this comprehensive idea by reading and learning from all his predecessors, Plato and the "pre-Socratics." A s a result of this study Aristotle wrote the world's first history of philosophy, Book alpha of his Metaphysics, which showed that all previous philosophers had recognized no other causes than his four. It was obvious that these philosophers all gave many different answers, but Aristotle noted for the first time that they also were asking the same four questions: Thaïes ("water"), Anaximander ("the indeterminate"), Anaximenes ("air"), Heraclitus ("fire"), Empedocles (the "four elements" earth, air, fire, and water), Anaxagoras ("seeds"), and Democritus ("atoms") had all asked "What is it made of? This is the material cause, that out of which things come to be. Pythagoras ("numbers"), Parmenides ("Being") and Plato (the "Forms") had asked "What is it? What is its essence, its essential nature? This is expressed in a definition, the thing Socrates was always after in his dialogs. This is the formal cause. Empedocles ("love and hate") and Democritus (the motion of atoms) had asked "What moves or makes it?" This is the efficient cause. Heraclitus ("Logos"), Anaxagoras ("Mind") and Plato ("The Good") had asked "What

is its design, purpose, or end}" This is thermal cause. In his late dialog the Timaeus Plato had already brought together all four causes in his account of how the universe was formed: by a divine craftsman or "Demi-urge" (the

efficient cause) imposing the Forms (the formal cause) on matter (which Plato iden­ tified with space and called the "Receptacle" of Forms) for the end of "The Good" (the final cause). Aristotle universalized and demythologized Plato's account. T h e four causes can be applied to any subject. For instance, Aristotle's aesthetics and literary criticism classifies four dimensions of a good or bad narrative: (1) Its efficient cause is its author expressing his idea. (2) T h e material cause is the style, the actual words he uses. (3) T h e formal cause is the story itself, the artistic point or truth of the narrative. (4) T h e final cause is its effect on the audience. Modern physical science does not deal with formal or final causes, for its "scientific method" (probably the single most important discovery in the entire history of science) gets its power from its narrow focus, like laser light: it deals only with measurable, quantifiable aspects of things, thus only with material and efficient causes. (In fact it does not even deal with material causes in Aristotle's sense, with potentialities for re­ ceiving form, for these are not empirically observable.) Aristotle and his medieval followers often mistakenly tried to use formal and final causes in physical science, producing "fuzzy science." Modern philosophers, out of envy for the scientific method, often make the same mistake in reverse: refusing to use formal and final causes even in philosophy because these notions are not "scientific." Explaining gravity as love or computer cybernetics as personal h u m a n thought is bad science; but explaining love as merely gravity or personal h u m a n thought as merely computer cybernetics is bad philosophy. Teleology (Final Causes) T h e Greek word for "end" or "aim" or "purpose" is telos; thus the English word "tele­ ology" means the "logos" of "telos," the science (explanation, reasoning) of ends. Tele­ ology has a bad reputation in modern philosophy, and needs a defense. T h e reason final causes are necessary is simple: both in nature and in h u m a n art, things move in determinate directions rather than randomly. T h e y are generally pre­ dictable. There is a reason for everything (otherwise reality is simply unintelligible, and we had better abandon science as well as philosophy); therefore there must be a reason for this too, a reason for the fact that the efficient cause does not merely impose form on matter and make (or change) the form-matter compound (which Aristotle calls the "substance"), but it moves or changes it in one determinate direction rather than another. T h e final cause is the most important of all because it is the cause of all the other causes. Only because the puppy is directed by its own nature to the end of becoming an adult dog does it, without thought or choice, get hungry, eat meat and grow. Only be­ cause the author wants to write a novel does he, by thought and choice, put pen to paper. Partial explanations, without all four causes, are incomplete but perfectly valid. Aris­ totle would not be surprised that current biological science can successfully give a pure­ ly mechanical, material explanation of evolution by natural selection. He would say that such an explanation, while explaining the efficient mechanism of life's evolution, still

leaves unexplained why life has evolved in this constant direction, toward increasing complexity and consciousness. T h e efficient cause shows us the car's engine but not the road map. Aristotle's Solution to the Problem of Change: Hylomorphism Aristotle defines nature in terms of change, as "that whose principle [origin] of change is [at least partially] internal to itself." T h u s dogs, stars, and mouths are natural, while boats, wars, and pens are artificial, for they are made or manufactured by external agents. Aristotle distinguishes four ways in which things change or happen: (i) by nature (e.g. being born), (2) by art (e.g. building a bridge), (3) by violence, against nature (e.g. arresting the fall of a stone), and (4) by chance (e.g. bumping into things). T h e puzzle of change is: How can a thing change and yet remain itself? Heraclitus and Parmenides both said it could not; thus Heraclitus denied that things remained themselves and Parmenides denied that things really changed. Plato solved the prob­ lem by distinguishing two worlds: the Forms, which retained their unchangeable iden­ tities, and changing material things. Aristotle brought Plato's two worlds together with his "hylomorphism" (literally, "matter-and-form-ism"). T h i s is Aristotle's main difference from Plato, and main criticism of Plato: not the existence of the Forms but their "separation" (chorismos) from material and changing things, from Nature. T h e popular opposition between Plato and Aristotle as between idealist and realist, formalist and materialist, rationalist and. empiricist, mystic and scientist, is an oversimplification; the difference is more one of emphasis and method than content. A s Augustine later took Plato's Ideas and gave them a new home, in the Mind of God, so Aristotle gave the Ideas a new h o m e in the world of Nature. But both remained Platonists in the most basic sense: for both, the Platonic Forms or Ideas are not just ideas or ideals; they are real. Potentiality and Actuality Aristotle explains change by the composition of matter and form, which is also the composition of potency (potentiality) and act (actuality). So he also explains change as "the actualization of potentiality." Form and matter are the static aspects of change; actuality and potentiality are the dynamic aspects of change. Aristotle's notion of change as the actualization of potentiality is really quite commonsensical, even though potentiality is not empirically observable. Only because there is potentiality in a thing, can it change. T h e only reason acorns grow into oak trees and tulip bulbs don't, the only reason h u m a n babies learn to talk and monkey babies don't, is that acorns and h u m a n babies already have those potentialités in them while tulip bulbs and monkey babies don't. Potentiality comes from matter, actuality from form. Both words have changed their meaning. "Form" for Aristotle does not mean "external shape" but "internal essence, essential nature." It is visible to the intelligence, not the senses. A n d "matter" for Aris­ totle does not mean actual chemical elements, atoms or subatomic particles. These are

already formed, into carbon or helium or electrons or something. "Matter" means some­ thing more like formless energy. It is potential rather than actual. You never see matter alone, without form. It is the principle (i.e. the source) of indeterminateness or indefiniteness in change. It is why the same piece of wood can be made into a desk or a chair. Matter is not a substance, a noun, an entity, but an adjective, an aspect, a principle. A n d so is form (for Aristotle, though not for Plato). Form is the other principle, the limit of matter. But it is not just the spatial limit or shape; it is the specification of mat­ ter, the actualization of its potency to become this specific kind ("species") ofthing (star, planet, chair, desk, rat, shrew). Since everything in nature changes, everything in nature is composed of matter and form—except matter and form themselves. Forms themselves do not change (redness is always redness), but substances change. (Here is another word that has changed its meaning. Aristotle means by "substances" not chemical elements or compounds but concrete things.) A tree, or a leaf, changes from green to red in the fall. Its matter gets new form. T h e tree is a substance and its color is an accident, so when it changes from green to red, its substance (which is com­ posed of matter and substantial or essential form) gets a new accident, a new accidental form. Prime Matter and Substantial Change Aristotle distinguishes two kinds of change: substantial (essential) change and acci­ dental change. Most changes are accidental: e.g. only in quality (e.g. color), quantity (e.g. size), place, time, activity, receptivity, or relationship to other things. But in birth (or rather conception) there is substantial change: a new substance comes into exis­ tence, a new organism from its parent organisms; and in death it goes out of existence. T h e birth and death, beginning and ending, of any thing are substantial changes. T h e number of substances (beings) in the universe changes when substantial change hap­ pens. In the case of accidental change—e.g. a green leaf becoming red in the fall—the "hotel room" which the old guest (greenness) vacates and which the new guest (red­ ness) enters is the substance (the leaf), which is composed of substantial (essential) form and matter (as well as many accidental forms). But when the leaf dies and be­ comes leaf mold, the "hotel room" from which the guest departs is not any actual, formed thing at all but matter, energy, or potentiality itself. This has no form or qual­ ities: it is colorless, shapeless, tasteless, etc. (The only place you will find this kind of thing is in White Castle hamburgers.) Prime matter (pure matter, mere matter, formless matter) does not exist alone but only as the potentiality for change from one essential form to another, e.g. from leaf to leaf mold. It makes the substantial changes of birth and death possible. Prime matter is the "substratum" (or enduring identity of the subject) for substantial change (birth or death), as the substance (e.g. a dog) is the "substratum" for accidental change (e.g. from puppy to adult, or dirty dog to clean dog). T h e substratum (dog) is like the hotel room, the old form (puppy, or dirty) is like the departing guest, while the new form (adult, or

clean) is like the newly arriving guest in the room. But the image of the hotel room is misleading for substantial change, since the "hotel room" (substratum) for substantial change is not any thing at all but matter (potentiality) as such, "prime matter." Unlike matter in the m o d e m physical-chemical sense, this is not in principle observable by the senses, and therefore is not a possible object for physical science. M o d e m physical science rightly ignores it. But modern science also rightly ignores, or abstracts from, such things as (i) the " I " or subject pole of consciousness, (2) love as a free choice (as distinct from animal lust), (3) the supernatural, (4) beauty, (5) holiness, (6) emotional qualities, (7) moral values, (8) life after death, (9) the fact that anything at all exists rather than nothing, and (10) a child's affection for a dog. But that does not mean these things are unreal. Nor does sci­ ence's rightful ignoring of the philosophical concept of prime matter mean that prime matter is unreal. "Matter" means "potentiality" in Aristotle. Classical modern science does not use the non-empirical, metaphysical concept of matter as such, or "prime matter," or pure potentiality, only the empirical concept of quantitatively measurable material powers like kinetic energy or chemical bonding ability. But perhaps science does not totally ig­ nore this Aristotelian concept; perhaps the concept of "energy" which is transformable into any form of matter is Aristotle's "prime matter." Whether or not the philosophical concept of potentiality is necessary in modern sci­ ence, it is certainly necessary in philosophy, for Aristotle, to explain substantial change. Parmenides denied the very existence of change because he did not have the concept of potentiality. Because he did not have the categories to explain the data (that things change), he denied the data. This is "rationalism" in the worst sense of the word. Aris­ totle's approach is "empiricism" in the best sense of the word. He begins by accepting the data and then deduces the categories necessary to explain it. T h e data here is sub­ stantial and accidental change. T h e categories needed to explain this data include poten­ tiality. Potentiality is neither actuality nor nothing. It is real, but not a real thing. For real­ ity, for Aristotle, is not merely a zero-sum thing, "to be or not to be." A n d real change is also not a zero-sum thing, a simple either-or: one thing does not simply disappear and another simply appear. When A becomes B, A must have had in itself the potentiality T

to become B to begin with. That is w hy puppies can become dogs but not cats, why Uve cats can become dead cats but not stars, why stars can become Black Holes but not peo­ ple, and why a sighted person can see the color purple but a blind person cannot. There r

are potentialities as w ell as actualities. A n d that means that things are more than what they appear to be. A has in it something more than the actuality of being A; it also has the potentiality for becoming B (and not C). There are more dimensions of reality than what we can see, perhaps even more than we can think. "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio . . . " Categories "Substances" and "accidents" are the two basic kinds of reality or ways of being real,

according to Aristotle. A "substance" is not a chemical "substance" like helium, and an "accident" is not a car wreck. A n unplanned baby is a "substance" and not an "accident"! A "substance" is an individual being, an entity, expressed in language by a noun. It "stands-under" (the meaning of "sub-stans" in Latin) its accidents, i.e. its attributes, which Aristotle listed as (i) qualities, (2) quantities, (3) times, (4) places, (5) relations, (6) actions, (7) passions (receptions, or being-acted-upon), (8) postures (the order of its parts), and (9) possessions. These nine "accidents" are real, but never real in themselves, like a substance. They exist only "in" some substance, as attributes of the substance. Aristotle distinguished "primary substance," or the primary meaning of "substance," which is a concrete individual thing like Socrates or Fido, and "secondary substance," or the secondary meaning of 'substance," which is the universal species like Man or Dog. This is just the reverse of Plato's ranking of these two things. Aristotle's "categories" are natural, not artificial or man-made. Of course w e can artificially and arbitrarily "categorize" anything w e want in any way we want: e.g. w e can categorize persons as men, women, children, and non-humans, or as Irish and nonIrish; or w e can create categories like 'things I like,' 'things I hate,' and 'things I a m indiffèrent to,' or even 'pink things' and 'non-pink things.' But Aristotle's "categories" are not inventions but discoveries. They are made by nature before they are made by our mind. T h e y are not subjective but objective, not just in our minds but in reality. They are ten different ways anything can be real. (They are not sacrosanct or final. T h e y probably should be modified a bit: e.g. "relation" seems m u c h more important, and "posture" and "possession" less important, than Aristotle thought. "Posture" and "possession" are two of many kinds of relation.) So here is Aristotle's Outline of Everything: I Nonbeing II Being A Accidents (9 of them) B Substances 1 Spiritual substances (gods, angels) 2 Material substances a Non-living (inorganic minerals) b Living (organisms) (I) Plants (no sensations) (II) Animals (sensations) (A) Irrational animals (brutes) (B) Rational animals (humans) Aristotle's Metaphysics "Meta" is Greek for "beyond." But "metaphysics" does not study only non-physical things, it studies everything. It includes such principles as the law of non-contradiction (which is a principle of all reality, not just of our logical thinking about reality); how being can be both one and many; the difference between potentiality and actuality; and

the difference between time and timelessness. T h e above sections on form and matter, substance and accident, potentiality and actuality, are about metaphysics. Metaphysics is "beyond" physics in universality. There is a second, simpler account of the origin of the name: in the library of Alex­ andria Aristotle's untitled book on this subject was placed next to or beyond ("meta") the book he called Physics. Aristotle did not call it "metaphysics." H e called it "first philosophy." Metaphysics includes (but is not limited to) thinking about God or gods. Here are some important conclusions Aristotle came to on this subject: * Aristotle argued, by logical reasoning alone, without relying on any religious faith, that there must exist one supreme First, Un-caused Cause or Un-moved Mover for the entire universe of changing things. (like most people, h e called this being "God.") His argument is essentially the following: * Aristotle uses the word "motion" for all change. What w e call "motion," change in place, or locomotion, is only one kind of motion. All motion is the actualizing of

potentiality. * Nothing can move [change] itselfbecduse nothing not already actual can actualize it­ self. Nothing can give to another what it does not have itself. * We perceive many causal chains. In some of them, the cause comes before the ef­ fect (e.g. parents causing children). In others, the cause and the effect are simultaneous (e.g. the book is held u p by the desk—that is the effect—at the same time as the desk holds u p the book—that is the cause). "Second" does not mean only "later in time" but "dependent," and "moved" means not only "moved through space in time" but "caused in any way." * In both cases, the effect is dependent on its cause. Nothing can be the (efficient or final) cause of itself. Nothing can bring itself into being, because to do that it would have to exist before it began to exist.

* Either there is or there is not a "first" efficient and/or final cause)—that is, an un­ changed changer, an unmoved mover, an uncaused cause—or there is not.

* If there is not a "first [un-caused] cause," then there could not be second (caused) causes, since nothing can cause itself (the second point above).

* There are second [caused] causes. * Therefore there is a First [uncaused] Cause, an "Unmoved Mover," an unchanged, eternal being. It changes other beings but nothing changes it. T h e chain of causes that w e experience cannot begin in nothingness (and our trac­ ing effects back to causes cannot terminate in nothingness), but it must begin in a First Cause, and thus our tracing of effects back to their causes has to terminate in it. T h i s is like a first flick of the first domino if the causality is temporal, or a first ground that grounds everything else if the causality is simultaneous. T h e argument can be put in another, simpler way: Everything that is in motion is moved by something else, and the universe as a whole is in motion, therefore the uni­ verse as a whole is moved by something else. T h e series of causes m a y progress infinitely but our tracing causes back to their

causes in the series cannot regress infinitely. Why isn't this like negative and positive numbers, where an infinite series is possible in either direction? Because causality is not like numbers; it is a one-way relationship, like time (past leads to future but future does not lead to past). For (prior) causes do not depend on (subsequent) effects but (subsequent) effects do depend on (prior) causes. No matter how many cars there are in a train, without a locomotive (First Mover), no one car can move another car. A chain of dominoes can keep falling without ending, but it cannot fall without beginning. Aristotle's "God" is a very thin slice of the God of religion. "Uncaused cause" is only one of many attributes of the God of religion. Aristotle deduced a few others, such as not being in matter or time, since God is purely actual, without

potentiality—thus

God transcends Nature, since Nature is the realm of time and matter. Aristotle also ar­ gued that God lacked no perfection and was therefore self-conscious. ("Thought think­ ing itself," he calls it.) But he did not try to prove, nor did he believe in, many of the other attributes of the God of religion. For instance, Aristotle's God does not create, love, perform miracles in, or even pay attention to, this inferior world or h u m a n life. (It's a "snob God." Contrast pantheism's "blob God.") It is essentially the God of deism. In addition to the Uncaused Cause, Aristotle also deduced the existence of inter­ mediary spirits below God and above man—the equivalent of angels. Most cultures have believed in something like angels, but Aristotle deduced them from his primitive astronomy as necessary to move the heavenly bodies. He knew that nothing moves it­ self, and the heavens move (apparently perpetually), so he deduced the existence of superhuman perpetual movers. He did not know that on earth it is atmospheric friction that slows everything down but in a vacuum or near-vacuum like outer space, motion, like rest, can be perpetual; that a satellite in stable orbit can move forever without any­ thing moving it except gravity. In other words he knew only half of momentum: that a body at rests tends to remain at rest unless acted on by another body. He did not know the other half: that a body in motion tends to remain in motion unless acted on by an­ other body. Aristotle also argued that the universe is eternal along with God. He thought God moves the universe perpetually, not by a "push" but a "pull," not by efficient causality but by final causality, like a beautiful w o m a n in the middle of a crowded ballroom mov­ ing all the men, like stars in a spiral galaxy, to move around her to get closer to her. (Of course this is only an analogy; the stars are not m e n in love. But it is a fitting analogy because both stars and m e n are teleological; both move toward natural ends, ends determined by their nature.) Aristotle's G o d is not infinite, for Aristotle thought that an actual infinite woidd be an imperfection. (For Aristotle, "infinite" means 'indefinite.") In contrast, the God of Judaeo-Christian theology is infinite in definite perfections: infinitely wise, loving, powerful, etc.). Aristotle thought there were only potentially infinite things, like time, and numbers, which can be infinitely added or divided.

Aristotle's Anthropology (i) Aristotle famously defined m a n as "a rational animal." "Animal" is man's genus (the aspect of his essence that he shares with other beings) and "rational" is his specific dif­ ference (the distinctive aspect of the essence). T h e rational soul and the animal body are not two substances but are the form and matter of the one substance man. The sold is the form of the body, the body is the matter of the soul. Soul and body are two dimensions of man, as the meaning and the words are two dimensions of a book. Aristotle believed in what psychologists today call the "psychosomatic unity." We are neither ghosts nor machines nor ghosts in machines. This anthropology is neither materialistic (all of us is matter) nor spiritualistic (the soul is the whole self and is a spirit, a separate substance, like an angel or a ghost or a god). This means, on the one hand, that the mind, as a power of the soul, is not simply the brain, or brain functioning, as materialists claim. But on the other hand it also means that the m i n d cannot (normally) work without the brain, any more than an au­ T

thor can normally communicate meaning without words. (This might, how ever, in principle leave room for mental telepathy, mystical experiences, or "out-of-body experi­ ences" precisely because these are not normal or natural.) (2) T h e single h u m a n soul has three levels of powers ("faculties"): the vegetative (nutrition and reproduction, shared even with plants), the sensoiy (sense perception and sensory appetites, shared with animals), and the rational (intellect and will, which are specifically human). But it is one and the same soul that has all these powers. T h e soul is not a little ghost haunting the body, or an immaterial puppeteer-spirit pulling the strings of its material body-puppet; it is the very life of the whole embodied person, on all three levels. Evidence for this is the fact that at death, when the body loses its sotd, all the powers cease at once. (3) Aristotle believed in free will, though he did not use that term. (He called it "voluntariness.") He did not reduce m a n to a complex robot or a clever ape. That is why he thought moral words, words of praise, blame, command, and advice, were mean­ ingful. We do not blame the broken Coke machine, expect it to feel guilty, or send it to confession. We do not advise or educate animals; we train them. But we blame our criminals, advise our friends, and educate our children. (4) Aristotle apparently did not believe in the immortality of the individual soul (his language is somewhat ambiguous on this point) but only of the species, the universal, "human nature." He says "all soul" (i.e. soul as such) is immortal because it is not a physical substance. But your soul is the form of your body, and when your body dies its form must die with it, according to Aristoüe, since Aristotle, unlike Plato, denies the separate existence of Forms. He does, however, call active reason "the Godlike part of man." A n d gods are immortal. Plato had no problem with the immortality of the soul because he believed in the separate existence of Forms. One's anthropology depends on one's metaphysics. But not necessarily in a simple way: T h o m a s Aquinas, much later, combined Plato's

immortal soul with Aristotle's anthropology (soul = form of body) and metaphysics (hylomorphism). This is possible but not easy. Aristotle's Epistemology (i) Aristotle is a "soft empiricist," or moderate empiricist. He believed that all h u m a n knowledge begins with sense perception, but is not limited to it, since the reason can abstract universal forms from the individual material substances presented to the senses, understand those forms, and make deductions from them. This works in four steps. For instance, (I) With our senses w e see many m e n die. (II) With our reason w e x-ray these events, so to speak; w e abstract the universal forms "human nature" and "mortality" from these material events, and make the universal judgment "man is mortal" or "all m e n are mortal" by induction, or "inductive abstraction," moving from many particulars to a single universal. (Ill) In this process, we understand this universal; w e understand that mortality is not just an accident but necessary, an essential property of h u m a n nature, since it is inherent in man's animality, or animal body. (IV) T h e n w e reason deductively: "All m e n are by nature mortal, I a m a man, therefore I a m by nature mortal." T h e conclusion is certain because it logically follows from premises that are certain, and the premises are certain because w e understand that they are necessary, not accidental. Compare Plato's "Divided Line" (p. 112). Aristotle's step I is Plato's level 2. Aristotle's step 2 is not in Plato because Plato does not need a theory of abstraction since he believes that the Forms are already abstract, separate from matter. Aristotle's step 3 is Plato's level 4. A n d Aristotle's step 4 is Plato's level 3. (2) Our words thus reflect the concepts in our understanding, which in turn reflect the forms (natures, kinds, essences, or whats) in reality. T h e single Greek word "logos" means all three of these: (I) word (or language), (II) thought (or concept or reason), and (III) form (or intelligible essence). T h u s what w e express in our language (I) is our knowledge (II) of what things really are or are not (III). Many modern philosophers question this basic epistemological assumption as "naïve." (See Gorgias' denial of all three.) Perhaps it is naïve, but I would not myself accept an invitation to Thanksgiving dinner in the house of any philosopher w h o is not sure that he knows the real difference between the logos of a turkey and the logos of a tarantula. (3) Aristotle defined truth simply as thinking and saying what is: "if one says of what is that it is, or of what is not that it is not, he speaks the truth, but if he says of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, he does not speak the truth." What a wonderfully simple answer to an apparently difficult but really very simple question! Philosophers don't get more commonsensical than that. (4) Like Plato, Aristotle distinguishes knowledge from opinion, and certainty from probability. He refutes skepticism (the belief that certainty is impossible) by noting that even the skeptic cannot and does not doubt self-evident principles like the law of noncontradiction (x is not non-x) or "the whole is greater than the part." A famous

argument of the skeptics was that only proof gives you certainty, but proof requires premises, and these premises also require proof, and thus more premises, ad infini­ tum. Aristotle pointed out that the regress is not infinite but stops at such self-evident principles that "prove themselves," so to speak. We cannot doubt that x=x. Aristotle said that this regress also stops at immediate external or internal sensations like seeing color or feeling pain, which w e also cannot doubt that w e are doing. (Compare Descartes' more universal doubt (chapter 55, Vol. III).) (5) Aristotle's epistemology contrasts with Plato's because his metaphysics does the same. (One's epistemology always and necessarily depends on one's metaphysics as well as on one's anthropology.) Plato is not an empiricist but a rationalist. For Plato, the only role of the senses is to remind us to look at the innate Ideas embedded in our rea­ son but forgotten. A n d there is no need for the abstraction of form from matter in Plato, as there is in Aristotle, because the Forms are already separate from matter in Plato, so w e do not have to make them separate by the act of abstraction. To understand abstraction, think of a hunter entering a jungle to capture a lion, tranquillize it, remove it from the jungle, and put it in a cage. T h e hunter is the mind, the jungle is the material world, the lion is the form, the removal is the abstracting, and the cage is the concept. For Plato, the lion is already in the cage. T h e two different epistemologies also follow from two different anthropologies. For Plato, the rational soul is a substance on its own and acts on its own to know the Forms, which exist on their own. For Aristotle, the soul is the form of the body so it acts with the body to sense and to know forms that exist in matter, by abstracting them. Aristotle's Ethics (1) There are three fundamental ethical concepts that naturally occur to our minds, three doors through which we can enter the realm of ethics: the good, the right, and the ought. Modern thinkers tend to emphasize the last two, ancient and medieval thinkers the first. For "good" is an ontological term, a metaphysical term, while "right" is a legal term and "ought" is a psychological term. (Obligation in an inner feeling or expe­ rience.) "Good" is the most basic term in ethics. For it is only because there is a real ethical (moral) good that there are real natural rights (for w e have a right to what is good, not evil) and real natural moral laws (to define goods and evils); and it is only because there is a real good that there are real obligations or personal duties (for w e have obligations to do good and shun evil). Premodern ethics is almost always based on metaphysics. A n d in premodern meta­ physics, goodness is part of reality, not just thinking or willing; it is objective, not just subjective. Reality includes goodness; facts include values. At the beginning of his classic Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle defines "good" as "the object of desile," as truth is the object of knowledge. When w e desire something evil, that can be only because it appears as good (desir­ able) in some way, even though it may not really be. T h u s the desired is not necessarily the same as the desirable. In other words, (subjective) wants are not the same as

(objective) needs. Ethics studies what is really, not just apparently, good. This means that "facts" and "values" are not mutually exclusive concepts, as they are in m u c h modern ethical philosophy. Values (Aristotle spoke of "goods" rather than "values," as did all pre-modern thinkers) are a certain kind of facts. T h e y are not empir­ ical or scientific facts, but they are objectively real. Some things, like courage or spinach or friends, are really good for us while other things, like theft or cocaine or suicide, are really bad for us. (2) Aristotle distinguishes two kinds of goods, ends and m e a n s . Ends are things de­ sired for themselves, like pleasure, beauty, or understanding. Means are things desired only for the sake of other things, in order to attain other things. Examples of means are money, medicines, and cars, which are means to the things money can buy, health, and travelling. Some things, like health and food, are desired both as ends and means. Health is the end of medicine, but also a means to work and to sports. Food is an end of farming and a means to health. Since many ends are also means to further ends, the question naturally arises, then: Is there one final end of everything w e desire and do? If so, what is it? What is the end of ends, the greatest good (the " s u m m u m bonum"), the point and purpose and goal of h u m a n life? "What's it all about, Alfie?" "What is the meaning of life?" (3) In one sense, the answer is easy. It's what everybody seeks as the end of every­ thing else, and never as a means to anything else. It's happiness. But the Greek word "eudaimonia" that Aristotle uses here means not just subjective satisfaction or contentment but objective perfection or blessedness. It is not just feeling good but being good. It is objectively real goodness, or well-being, and not merely the mental awareness of it and the felt pleasure of it, which are the effects of its real pres­ ence to us. T h u s suffering, which can help us cultivate virtues like courage and wis­ dom, can be part of the happiness of "eudaimonia" even though it is not part of the happiness of mere contentment. A n d thus moral virtue, which not everyone (subjec­ tively) wants, is still what everyone (objectively) needs in order to reach true happiness, or eudaimonia. Y o u can't be really happy unless you're really good. (4) Everyone seeks happiness as the end, for no one wants to be happy as a means to another end, while everyone seeks other things because they believe they will bring happiness as their end. So it's a "no-brainer" to call happiness the " s u m m u m bonum," the ultimate end. But in another sense, the answer to the question of the " s u m m u m bonum" is not obvious or easy, for what constitutes happiness? What is happiness made of? Is it money, or the things money can buy, or power, or honor, or fame? No, for these are all external. Is it health or pleasure? T h e s e are internal but not distinctively h u m a n but c o m m o n to animals too. H u m a n happiness, says Aristotle, is "activity of the soul ac­ cording to virtue in a complete life." It is something we do, first of all with our choices, so w e are largely in control of it and responsible for it. It is primarily a matter of the soul, with its powers of mind and will; but it also requires sufficient bodily goods and time ("a complete life"), and these are not wholly under our control. So happiness is

good moral habits (virtues) plus good luck. But the key ingredient is moral virtue. T h e main "lesson" of Aristotle's ethics is the same as that of Plato and your grandmother: if

ya wanna be happy, ya gotta be good. (5) "Virtue" ("arete") means not just any kind of goodness but "excellence" (excelling goodness) in doing something. For moral habits, that "something" is living a h u m a n life, doing and choosing to do good things. For intellectual habits, it's thinking. For habits of art, it's making. A virtue is a good habit; a vice is a bad habit. A habit is a way of consistently acting so as to perform well your natural function, natural end or "final cause." Habits are produced by repeated acts and also, in turn, help to produce further acts. They are not unfree, passive ruts but active patterns of freely behaving. Not all free choices are fully conscious: w h e n a young m a n gives an old w o m a n his seat, he may do it out of habit rather than deliberate thought, but he is responsible for it because he has chosen to be­ come the sensitive and kind sort of person who does that kind of thing. To be "happy" in Aristotle's sense is to fulfill your h u m a n potentialities, to perfect your h u m a n nature. Aristotle's ethics is a "natural law" ethics; its principles are found­ ed on h u m a n nature and its natural, inherent teleology (purpose, end, final cause), and its needs, what it needs to attain this end, especially friendship, knowledge, wisdom, and virtue. Virtues make up character. Aristotle's ethics focuses on character more than actions, laws, duties, or rights. It centers on becoming a good person. (6) How do we acquire virtue, and its product, character? Not merely by teaching, as Plato taught ("to know the good is to do it"). Nor is it inborn, as Rousseau and Lao Tzu taught. Nor is it artificially imposed by external authorities contrary to our innate viciousness, as Machiavelli, Calvin, and Hobbes taught. Virtue is a habit and therefore it is acquired by practice, by repeated right choices and actions. It is neither part of h u m a n nature from the beginning nor is it against nature, but it makes up our "second nature." We are neither innately virtuous nor innately vicious. That's why moral educa­ tion is so important. (7) H u m a n virtue is twofold: intellectual and moral; for intellect and will are the two distinctively h u m a n powers. Intellectual virtues include understanding universal prin­ ciples, reasoning inductively to them and deductively from them, and applying them wisely to particular concrete cases in practice. Moral virtues include Plato's four "car­ dinal virtues" of justice, practical wisdom, courage, and moderation or self-control, and many other lesser virtues such as modesty, "proper pride," generosity, and wit. (8) T h e matter (content, raw material) of each virtue is physical actions and emo­ tional passions. T h e form imposed on this matter to construct a virtue is always a "thus far and no further," a mean between two extremes of action or passion, both of which are vices. (This has come to be called "the golden mean.") For instance, courage is a mean between cowardice (too m u c h fear) and foolhardiness (too little fear). Modesty is a mean between shyness (too m u c h shame) and shamelessness. Righteous indignation is a m e a n between uncontrolled wrath and indifference. Proper pride is a m e a n

between egotistic arrogance and undue (false) humility. Generosity is a m e a n between stinginess and prodigality. A n d so forth. Virtue is like art: the construction of a thing of beauty by imposing form on matter. T h e Greek word kalon means both "virtuous" and "beautiful"; it is often translated "fine" or "noble" or "praiseworthy." T h e Greeks thought of moral virtue and the arts as very similar; w e moderns tend to think of them as opposites, even as natural enemies. We expect artists to be immoral and saints to be unartistic and "hokey." T h e alternative to this tragic split would seem to be one of the many things w e can learn from our forgotten ancestors. (9) T h e matter of virtue, the passions, are not evil, as the Stoics would later claim. Nor are the passions inherently good, as modern Romantics like Rousseau would claim. They are neutral, but they have the potentiality to become good when informed by virtue. T h e y are like wild dogs that are to be perfected by taming. Unlike most ani­ mals, dogs are happier when tamed, when lifted up into the realm of h u m a n values and incorporated into a loving h u m a n family. A similar thing happens to the passions when they are tamed and trained by virtue. (10) Of all h u m a n goods, Aristotle has the most to say about friendship. It is neces­ sary for happiness. It is superior to justice, even for the state, for it is the prime creator of community, public as well as private. Aristotle distinguishes three kinds of friendship, based on the three kinds of goods: friendships of pleasure ("I enjoy you"), of utility ("I need you"), and of virtue ("I admire you"). He says the first is typical of children, the second of old people, and the third of mature people (but maturity is not measured only in years). T h e fact that these are the only three kinds of good means that there are only three good reasons for anyone to do anything: pleasure, utility, and virtue, or enjoyment, need, or morality. If it isn't delightful, necessary, or virtuous, forget it. Such typically Aristotelian common sense can wonderfully simplify your life! (11) Aristotle speaks of one other form of happiness which he says is the most per­ fect and Godlike of all: the contemplation of eternal truth. But he says this is attainable only by a few special people and only for a short time. Something close to snobbery occasionally surfaces in Aristotle. T h e contrast with Socrates is striking. But perhaps Aristotle is speaking of mystical experience here, which can come to anyone, rather than intellectual contemplation, which is enjoyable only by intellectuals. (12) Because Aristotle, unlike Plato, taught that material goods were a necessary part of happiness (even though not the primary part), and because these were often depen­ dent on chance (thus they are called the "goods of fortune"), he ended up not knowing how to refute the pessimistic saying of Solon the sage: "Call no m a n happy until he is dead." For tragedy may strike tomorrow, as it did in The Iliad to King Priam of Troy, the Greek version of fob—in which case virtue alone is not sufficient for happiness. But because Aristotle did not believe in life after death, he could not call a m a n happy after he was dead either! Aristotle at first seems more positive and optimistic about life than Plato: yet Plato,

in the end, is the more optimistic about attaining happiness, in this life as well as the next. Perhaps he knew, from Socrates, a secret that Aristotle did not. For by Aristotle's standards, Socrates could not be perfectly happy, since he was poor, ugly, and misun­ derstood all his life and lost all the goods of fortune in the end when he was unjustly executed: wealth, health, honor, material pleasures, and life itself. Yet Socrates, like the saints and martyrs, was deeply happy, and one of the few things he ever claimed to know with certainty was that "no evil could possibly happen to a good man, in life or in death." What was his secret that went beyond Aristode's c o m m o n sense? No philosopher is without blind spots or compromising faults. One of the reasons why most of the early Christian writers admired Plato more than Aristoüe was a radical contradiction between Aristotle and Christ about the good m a n and the good life. For Christianity, charity is a virtue; for Aristotle too much of it can be a vice. When some­ one once blamed h i m for giving alms to a beggar, Aristoüe defended himself by reply­ ing, "I did not pity the m a n but his condition." (Another version of the story has h i m saying: "I did not give to a m a n but to humanity.") He taught that "the great-souled man" should avoid lowering his thoughts to lesser things like slaves, children, or w o m e n and should take care to walk and talk always in a grave a serious way. T h e word "snob" comes to mind. According to Christianity, pride is a deadly sin and humility a foundational virtue; but Aristotle ranked pride among the virtues and humility among the vices! (Granted, he spoke only of "proper" pride and "undue" humility, but he did not speak of "improper" pride as a vice or "due" humility as a virtue.) I may be wrong, but I can almost imagine Aristotle singing Sinatra's song "I Did It My Way" on his deathbed. For Christianity, that's the song they sing as they enter Hell. Aristotle's Politics (i) "Man is by nature a political animal," says Aristotle. A m a n outside society is "either a beast or a god." For Aristotle, as for all pre-modern philosophers except the Sophists, politics, like language, is natural, not artificial, in essence; though different political regimes, like different languages, are invented by different cultures. Most classical modern political philosophers deny this, with their "social contract theory" and their notion that "the state of nature" is different from "the state of civil society." This is true of both optimists and Romantics like Rousseau and cynics and pessimists like Machiavelli and Hobbes. For Aristotle the family, the tribe (extended family or village) and the state are the three levels of natural community and the three steps of h u m a n social evolution. (2) T h e basic political virtue is justice, which means giving each his due (his "just desserts"). There is a natural and universal justice as well as a legal, conventional jus­ tice that differs from one society to another; and the first justice is the standard for judging the second. T h u s w e can judge not just that some people and actions are un­ just but also that some societies and some laws are unjust. There are standards of nat­ ural justice to judge the standards of conventional justice. (If not, the Nuremburg trials of the Nazi war criminals was a sham, for they were heroes by their culture's Nazi stan­ dards of justice.)

But friendship surpasses justice as a necessity for the good life politically as well as privately. (3) What makes a good state is not the number of its rulers. Rule by one (monar­ chy), by a few (aristocracy), or by all citizens (democracy) can each be either a good or bad regime, dependent on whether it attains the end of the common good, the happi­ ness (which is first of all a matter of the moral and intellectual virtue) of the people. Any regime that makes itself its own end rather than serving its people is a bad one. T h e main point is teleology again: a good government, whoever mans it, works for the right end, the welfare of its citizens; a bad one does not. (4) Unlike Plato, Aristotle defended and actually preferred democracy, noting that as history progressed it became more popular and monarchy less so. It is the "least bad" regime, though also the least good. Monarchy, by contrast, can be the best but is often the worst, since "the corruption of the best is the worst." (5) Size matters. Like Plato, Aristotle idealizes the small city-state ("polis"), where every citizen can know every other one, as the only true public community. (6) Like Plato, Aristotle insisted on education, public as well as private, as the most important cause of good government. This meant especially moral education, for it is wisdom and goodness, not riches, power or freedom, or even merely factual knowledge, that makes m e n fit to rule. This moreal education included education in the arts, espe­ cially music (which Plato also prioritized in his "Republic" for a similar reason: its power to shape souls). (7) Like all ancients except the Jews, Aristotle defended slavery as a natural and necessary institution, claiming that some m e n were born "slaves by nature." (8) He also thought that women, though fully human, were by nature unfit for pub­ lic rule, only household management. After Aristotle After Aristotle, no philosopher for 500 years, until Plotinus and Neoplatonism ("new Platonism"), had the ambition to try to conquer the whole world of philosophy (as Aris­ totle's pupil Alexander the Great conquered the whole world militarily) by creating a new all-encompassing system, starting with a metaphysics, as Plato and Aristoüe did. When ancient classical civilization declined, first in Greece and then in Rome, philoso­ phers turned away from these idealistic goals to the more modest one of arresting the decline of sanity and peace in themselves even though they could not arrest the decline in the world. Wonder and speculative ambition gave way to a kind of early version of pop psychology, a cultivation of personal peace of m i n d in an increasingly decadent world. Four schools of philosophy continued in Athens, supported by the state, until the emperor Justinian, in a fit of Christian fundamentalism, closed all pagan schools in 529 A . D . They were the Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic, and Epicurean schools (the

Academy, the Lyceum, the Painted Porch, and the Garden). T h e latter two were the most popular of all, especially among ordinary people. In addition to the four schools, there were also philosophical movements without official schools, such as Skepticism and Cynicism. Pythagoreanism also lived on as an influence in many places. Selected Bibliography: Aristotle (everything in one volume, highly condensed) by W.D. Ross Aristotle for Everybody: Difficult Thought Made Easy (it's true to its title) by Mortimer Adler Aristotle (shows how Platonic Aristotle really is) by A . E . Taylor Nicornachean Ethics (utterly commonsensical, practical, readable) by Aristotle Guide for the Perplexed by E.F. Schumacher

26. Pyrrho (360-270 B.C.) and Skepticism Pyrrho of Elis is considered the founder of Skepticism (sometimes called "Pyrrhon­ ism"). Pyrrho became a skeptic while traveling the world with Alexander the Great. He studied under gurus in India and magi in Persia and observed a great diversity of life­ styles, beliefs, and justifications for them in different cultures; and he concluded that it was mere narrowness of mind, provincialism and dogmatism to say that your own was superior. A later skeptic, Carneades (214-129 B.C.), offered the same argument in theoretical form, causing great commotion when he visited R o m e and gave two public lectures, one in which he explained and justified the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle and a second in which he disproved everything he had said in the first. Pyrrho's skepticism has two basic ideas: (1) Nobody knows anything real, really. Certainty is impossible. We know only ap­ pearances, not reality; therefore no one can know which appearances really correspond to reality, as no one knows which photograph of a person is accurate if they cannot see the person. (This is a serious problem in modern epistemology, especially in Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant.) Therefore we should suspend judgment in all cases. There is always an equally good argument for both sides of every issue, even if the two sides logically contradict each other. Especially, value judgments are uncertain. "Who knows what's good or evil?" No one. We have no knowledge but only opinions, and customs and laws that are based on them. If w e renounce all opinions, we will also renounce all desires, and thus never be frustrated in our desires. (This is essentially the point of Buddha's "four noble truths": see chapter 4.) (2) T h e greatest good is ataraxia, inner peace and tranquility, the absence of worry and agitation. This is also called apatheia or apathy. It is attained by believing and prac­ ticing principle (1) above. So (1) is the means, and (2) is the end. Pyrrho began as a painter and became a philosopher by studying the writings of Democritus and those followers of Socrates w h o were called the Megarians, w h o emphasized Socrates' "learned ignorance." (Every school of philosophy seems to have taken one point from Socrates and left the rest behind.) Personally frustrated by his inability to determine which of the many schools of philosophy was correct, and realizing that they all contradicted each other, Pyrrho con­ cluded that their c o m m o n mistake was an uncritical dogmatism, an unproved assump­ tion that true knowledge was possible for man. He practiced the skepticism he preached by prefacing every assertion with "it seems," "it appears to me." "perhaps," or "apparently." Apparently (i.e. according to later stories, which may be real or may be only appar­ ent), his friends had to accompany h i m for protection wherever he went because he re­ fused to protect himself by making assumptions like "That carriage will run over me" or "I will fall over that cliff" or "That dog will bite me" and to act on such assumptions. He lived until he was 90. Apparently, he had many friends.

Like Socrates, he wrote nothing, but his ideas are known through the book Outlines of Pyrrhonism by Sextus Empiricus, a Greek skeptic of the 3rd century A.D. This whole chapter is, of course, nothing but an uncritical, naïve, dogmatic superstition if Pyrrho is right. In fact, so is this whole book. In fact, so is the whole world and everything in it. Including that philosophy. T h e serious point against universal skepticism is that it seems self-contradictory. There are many ways to put this point. For instance, Universal skepticism is not universally skeptical: it is not skeptical of skepticism. You have to draw a Une in the sand somewhere, even if it is only a line between drawing lines and not drawing lines. If all opinions are equal, what about the opinion that not all opinions are equal? To refute the claim that reason can know certain truth, you are presupposing and using reason's claim to know that truth even in your act of reasoning. If you only know probabilities, and therefore not certainties, is that only probable also, and therefore not certain? If all truth is only subjective, is that truth only subjective too? Must we be dogmatic about not being dogmatic? Is relativism absolute? These arguments are theoretical and logical. But the fundamental reason for skepticism was practical rather than theoretical: suspension of judgment was supposedly the means to tranquility of mind. But the fundamental reason against skepticism is also practical: how can we live without knowing what is true and what is not? Sextus Empiricus answers that we can live by appearances, since that is all we know. But we have a practical need, as well as a theoretical desire ("wonder") to critique appearances to judge them by truth, to distinguish those that are true (or real) from those that are not. After Pyrrho, Carneades (ca. 2 1 4 - 1 2 9 B.C.) modified the skeptical claim and said we can know truth, but only with degrees of probability, never certainty. T h e problem with this probablism, of course, is the same as with simple skepticism: you can't measure degrees of probability except by a standard of certainty. If it's only probable that a given idea is only probable, then perhaps that idea is certain. How can it be certain that nothing is certain? A n d if it cannot be certain that nothing is certain, then there is an infinite regress: is it only probable that it's only probable that everything is only probable? Skepticism produces a very conservative temperament, for there is no justification for change if w e cannot know what is truer or what outcome is better. T h e happiness promised by skepticism is a rather low, pale, and boring one: merely suspending judgment. It is only the absence of unhappiness rather than the presence of happiness. Unlike Platonism, Aristotelianism, Epicureanism, and Stoicism, Skepticism did not have its own separate school in the Hellenistic world. But when Plato's relative Arcesileus, who was a skeptic, inherited the Academy, "academic" became a synonym for "skeptic" for the next 200 years. Arcesileus had a standing offer to refute any argument any student woidd ever offer for any truth-claim at all. T h e later Roman skeptic, Sextus Empiricus, listed four reasons for Skepticism: (1) Each animal species has different sense organs, therefore physical things appear

differently to different animals. (2) A m o n g h u m a n s , there are differences of opinion about everything. "We shall have to believe either all m e n or some. But if w e believe all, w e shall be attempting the impossible and accepting contradictories; and if some, let us be told whose opinions w e are to endorse." (3) Every argument proves its conclusion only if its premises are true; but no argu­ ment proves its own premises. Whatever other argument is used to prove those premis­ es, also has unproven premises. T h u s there is infinite regress. (Cf. Aristotle's reply to this argument in his epistemologa) (4) What criterion shall w e decide to use for truth? "If they shall say it is incapable of decision, they will be granting on the spot the propriety of suspension of judgment; while if they say it admits of decision, let them tell us what it is to be decided by, since we have no accepted criterion and do not even know, but are still inquiring, whether any criterion exists. Besides, in order to decide the dispute which has arisen about the criterion, w e must possess an accepted criterion . . . all demonstration requires a demonstrated criterion, while the criterion requires a proved demonstration." This problem of the criterion for truth will deeply occupy Augustine (chapter 36) and Descartes (chapter 58), many centuries later. Answering skepticism was the whole point of Descartes' new method. How would you answer these 4 arguments? Probably the most readable, attractive, and commonsensical skeptic, though not an original philosopher himself, was the Frenchman Montaigne (17th century). T h e most serious, important, and logical one was David H u m e (18th century); see chapter 65.

27. Diogenes (412-323 B.C.) and Cynicism Diogenes, his teacher Antisthenes, and his student Crates, are the three main Cynic philosophers. Diogenes was born in Sinope in 3 9 9 B.C., the year Socrates died, and he died in Corinth on the same day Alexander the Great died in Babylon. T h e Corinthians erected on his tomb a white marble pillar surmounted by a dog, since "Cynic" means, literally, "dog." To the ancients, dogs were not cute, beloved pets but dirty scavengers. T h e Athe­ nians gave Diogenes this name as an insult, because his lifestyle resembled a dog's. He actually lived with a pack of stray dogs. But he took the name as a compliment and a title. Like a dog, he lived by nature, not convention or law. Unlike Platonism, Aristotelianism, Epicureanism, and Stoicism (the four main schools of Greek philosophy in the ancient world), Cynicism had no school building or courses. It was only a school of thought and, above all, of life. T h e only philosopher the Cynics admired was Socrates, who also was poor, socially shocking, wrote nothing, and started no school. Antisthenes walked 5 miles every day to hear Socrates. (Eveiy one of the many schools of ancient philosophy, except the Epicurean materialists, claimed to be true disciples of Socrates, as every one of the 20,000+ Christian denominations claims to be the true disciples of Christ.) T h e philosophy of Cynicism is very simple. It is that life should be very simple. T h e philosophy consists essentially of two points, one positive, one negative. Positively, virtue is the only good. Negatively, all the things society prizes are worthless: money, property, comfort, power, pleasure, fame, glory, politics, even family. Diogenes lived this philosophy as a radical ascetic, naked and alone in a barrel and begging or stealing his food. Since virtue is the only real good, the distinction between virtue and vice, good and evil, is the only real distinction. Therefore all other distinctions are vain: social conven­ tions, economic classes, private and public, my property and yours, naked and clothed, Greek and barbarian. (Diogenes was the first to use the word "cosmopolitan," to call himself a citizen of the order ("polis") of the cosmos rather than his native land.) We have no writings from Diogenes, probably because he produced none. His life was his philosophy. No philosopher more completely illustrates the axiom that "Actions speak louder than words." A n d no philosopher has more humorous anecdotes told about h i m than Diogenes. For instance: Alexander the Great, hearing his fame, came to h i m to hear him. T h e following conversation ensued: Alexander: "I a m Alexander the Great." Diogenes: "And I a m Diogenes the dog." Alexander: "What can I do for you?" Diogenes: "You can get out of my sunlight." Diogenes believed that all political patronage would compromise his freedom and integrity. Alexander respected that so much that he said, "If I were not Alexander, I would choose to be Diogenes." When a m a n held forth about heavenly bodies, Diogenes asked h i m how many

days it had been since he had been in heaven. When Plato was giving a logic lesson in his university (the Academy), and gave, as an example of a correct non-essential definition, "Man is a two-legged animal without feathers," Diogenes plucked a chicken, threw it at Plato, and said to the class, "Behold Plato's man!" Plato corrected himself and added to the definition "with broad, flat nails." (He didn't know about penguins.) Diogenes said, "Plato winces w h e n I track dust across his rugs; he knows that I'm walking on his vanity." When he saw a child drinking water from his cupped hands, he threw away his cup as a luxury. He said "athletes are made mostly of beef and pork." He criticized musicians for tuning their instruments but not their lives; linguists for knowing the wanderings and misfortunes of Ulysses but not their own; and orators who knew how to speak well but not live well. To train his body to ignore pleasure and pain, he walked barefoot in the winter and rolled in hot sand during the summer. When a disciple of Zeno claimed to disprove motion, Diogenes got up and walked away. When people complained that he was an extremist, he replied that the teachers of singing had to sing louder than the students. Invited to dinner by a rich man, he was insulted by one of the guests who threw bones at him, like a dog. His reply was to act the dog by lifting his leg and urinating on his host. Asked why he disdained money, he replied, "Because it costs too much." Asked what good thing money could not buy, he replied, "Poverty." Whenever anyone would compliment him, he would slap himself and say, "Shame on me. I must have done something wicked." He would walk in the market place at noon with a lantern, searching, he said, for an honest man. Asked his advice about getting married, he replied, "Marriage is too soon for a young m a n and too late for an old man." He walked backward in the market place, attracting attention. T h e n he explained what he was doing: "Exactly what you are doing with your lives." Asked "What is the difference between life and death?" he answered, "There is no difference." Asked, "Why then don't you commit suicide?" he replied "Because there is no difference." He used to urinate, defecate, and masturbate in public. He said there was nothing wrong with stealing from a temple, or eating h u m a n flesh. He advocated the abolition of the family and a community of wives and children. (All this made Michel Foucault fascinated with h i m 2300 years later.) If philosophers had to change jobs, many would be unemployed, but Diogenes would be a popular standup comedian in late R o m e or America.

28. Epicurus (342-270 B.C.) and Epicureanism (Hedonism) T h e philosophers of the Hellenistic age (after Alexander the Great) produced no new systems of metaphysics as the philosophers of the previous, Hellenic, age had done, but concentrated on personal ethics and practical popular psychology, especially on the problem of how to avoid pain and fear, physical and mental trouble, in a troubled world. T h e first and simplest answer to this practical question was Epicureanism. Epicureanism is a form of "hedonism"—derived from the Greek word hedone, plea­ sure, which the Epicureans declared to be the supreme good and the purpose of life. Aristippus of Cyrene (430-350 B.C.) was the first of the hedonist philosophers, who were also called Cyrenaics, after Aristippus' luxurious h o m e town of Cyrene. T h e modern word "epicure" means a connoisseur of good food, since Epicurus identified the good life with happiness, happiness with pleasure, and the greatest plea­ sure with "a good digestion." But Epicurus' hedonism was very different from the modern connotation of Hedonism as wild, uncontrolled pleasure-seeking; although pleasure was the only standard, and thus there could be no bad pleasures or good pains, Epicurus' hedonism called for a careful, prudent, rational assessment of plea­ sures and the self-discipline to reject present pleasures if they would cause future pains—in other words, "delayed gratification." Epicurus wrote, "My body exalts in liv­ ing delicately on bread and water and it rejects the pleasures of luxury, not in them­ selves but because of the trouble that follows upon them." "Delicacy" can be as hedo­ nistic as profligacy. Hedonism entails subjectivism, since pleasures are subjective. If I say, "I feel pain," no one argues, "No, you feel pleasure." T h u s for the hedonist, whatever feels good to any individual, is good—to that individual. This philosophy naturally blended well with the subjectivism and skepticism of the Sophists, typified by Protagoras' saying "Man [the individual]) is the measure of all things." It also blended in well with the Sophists' relativism about moral goodness. Epicurus wrote, "There never was such a thing as absolute justice, but only agreements made in mutual dealings among people in var­ ious places and times, which provide against suffering or harm." Born on the island of Samos, Epicurus taught the materialist philosophy of Dem­ ocritus (chapter 19). He wrote over 300 books (according to D) and founded a famous, popular and long-lasting school in Athens. T h e Roman writer Lucretius (ist century A.D.) popularized Epicurus' practical hedonism as well as Democritus' theoretical ma­ terialism (which naturally fit together) in his poetic classic "On the Nature of Things" (see chapter 20). It was a kind of ancient version of current scientists' dream of a "The­ ory of Everything" through empirical, quantitative science alone. Epicureanism identified pleasure as the supreme good; but since many pleasures bring pain (e.g. the unbridled lust for money, sex, power, or drink), the ideal was not primarily m a x i m u m pleasure but m i n i m u m pain and disturbance (ataraxia), both bod­ ily and mental; or at least a quantitative preponderance of pleasure over pain. Though "every pleasure is good," yet "not every pleasure is to be chosen" because some bring more pains than they are worth. T h e ideal of painless, untroubled pleasure is symbolized by Epicurus' walled

garden, behind which he lived the life of a yuppie m o n k untroubled by the world out­ side. His "school," "the Garden," was known for pleasant living and socializing. Like the most "progressive" modern culture, it was shocking to the mores of its society by being very tolerant—both of a variety of sexual lifestyles (Epicurus' mistress was a pros­ titute) and of all races, genders, and social classes. Epicurus identified the three greatest sources of trouble, fear, and pain as (i) death, (2) divine intervention, and (3) fate. (1) His solution to the problem of death is a materialist metaphysics that denies the existence of a spiritual soul that can survive death. T h e two ways this eliminates the fear of death are, first, that there is no fear of punishment in an afterlife, and, second, that "death is of no concern to us, since all good and evil lie in sensation, and sensation ends with death. . . . Death, the most dreaded of evils, is therefore of no concern to us since so long as we exist, death is not present, and when death is present, w e no longer exist. It [death] does not therefore concern either the living or the dead, since for the former it is not and the latter are no more." (Can you find a logical fallacy in that argument?) (2) His solution to the fear of divine intervention by the unpredictable and capri­ cious Greek or R o m a n gods is that if the gods do not exist, they cannot intervene, and if they do exist, they must be supremely blessed (otherwise they are not gods), but to be supremely blessed is to be untroubled by anything, and therefore untroubled by our h u m a n troubles. For if they intervene in h u m a n troubles, they would share in our trou­ bles. So the gods are irrelevant to us; either they do not exist or, like Rhett Butler, they just don't give a damn. (And therefore they do not damn us.) Lucretius later wrote, "Epicurus saved mankind from religion." (Logically, then, since all religions claim to save mankind from something, both sides of the dispute about religion claim to be ways of salvation, and in that sense reli­ gions.) (3) Epicurus's Democritean materialism naturally led to determinism and fatalism. He wrote, "The s u m total of things w a s always such as it is now, and such as it will ever remain. For there is nothing into which it can change. For outside the s u m of things there is nothing which could enter into it and bring about change." Even souls and gods are made of matter and are merely parts of the material universe, small cogs in a great machine. There is no supernatural. But Epicurus tried to make room for free choice in a materialistic and fatalistic world by noting that though Democritus said, rightly, that nothing exists but matter, in the form of atoms, yet these atoms may spontaneously deviate from their fated, straight course. In other words, w e have no spiritual free will, since there is no spiritual reality, but the atoms have a kind of material free will. Compare the Copenhagen interpre­ tation of Heisenberg's Indeterminacy Principle. (Ask your professor.) I can't help commenting that this looks like a double category confusion: first he conceives of persons as only impersonal atoms, then he conceives of atoms as if they were persons (things that have free will). T h e obvious problem with Epicureanism is that it fails to account for, or to motivate

anyone to pursue, a life of moral heroism. Even John Stuart Mill the 19th-century Utili­ tarian philosopher w h o was an atheist and a hedonist like Epicurus, argued against this lowering of the ideals. He famously said that "it is better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied." l i k e Socrates, he judged pleasures not just by their quantity or inten­ sity (the only standard Epicurus used) but by their quality, by the higher standard of their relationship to truth and moral goodness, rather than vice versa.

T h e practical consequences of Epicureanism also seem self-refuting. For if everyone is out for their own "personal growth" or "self-fulfillment," they will feel free to walk out of duties and relationships (especially promise-keeping, parenting and marriage) which are necessary for the happiness of society as a whole and thus for all of its mem­ bers. Empirical, scientific studies abundantly prove this last point. So socially as well as individually, there is "the hedonistic paradox" that the harder you try to be happy, the unhappier you become, like a hypochondriac w h o worries himself sick about getting sick. Massive experience teaches that happiness comes only as a byproduct of some­ thing higher, something self-forgetful and unselfish. Logically, the point is that hedonism has no justification for altruism, or for con­ demning behavior that hurts others. Epicurus himself was careful to avoid aD unpleas­ ant relationships with people whose poverty, needs, or problems would disturb his tranquility. Epicureanism also seems to deny the data of altruism, especially martyrdom. It ex­ plains even acts of self-sacrifice as hedonistic. One might naturally ask: What did Jesus get out of crucifixion, anyway?

29. Epictetus (50-130 A.D.) and Stoicism Stoicism was the single most popular philosophy in the Hellenistic world. Its teachers included: * a Greek philosopher (Zeno, its founder, about 334-265 or 340-262 B.C., who lec­ tured on a "stoa" or porch—thus the term "Stoic"), * an ex-slave to Emperor Nero's secretary (Epictetus, born 5 0 - 6 0 A.D.), * a Roman patrician (Seneca, first century A.D.), * an Emperor, Marcus Aurelius (second century A.D.), history's only example of a successful philosopher-king. T h e essentials of Stoicism are most clearly and succinctly put in Epictetus. All the Stoics say pretty much the same thing. Unlike Platonism, Stoicism did not change and develop as a philosophy; there was no "Neo-Stoicism." Following Socrates' example, Epictetus wrote nothing. His little classic the Enchirid­ ion consists of notes taken down by his students. "Enchiridion" means "handbook," and this was literal: it was made into books the size of a h u m a n hand and pocket so that Roman soldiers could carry copies with them wherever they went, as Christian sol­ diers later carried the New Testament. What w e mean today by a "stoic" is pretty historically accurate: someone w h o "keeps a stiff upper lip," like an English schoolboy. (English public [i.e. private] schools' classical curriculum included Stoic philosophers.) He controls his emotions, endures pain and inconvenience without complaining, believes in fate, and takes moral virtue and honor very seriously. Like all schools of ancient philosophy except Epicureanism, Stoicism begins with Socrates, concentrating on his conviction that the good, or happy, or blessed life cannot depend on factors outside ourselves. Let's take it in steps. (1) Stoicism is essentially a practical ethics, and its essential psychological foun­ dation is what early modern psychologists called "the principle of apperception," which could be summarized in the maxim of Polonius in Hamlet, "There is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so" In Epictetus' words, "Men are disturbed not by things but by the view which we take of things." For the m i n d is not a passive tablet onto which the world writes willy-nilly, but an active interpreter and judger of all experiences. Money, for instance, or power, does not automatically make you rich or strong. It can be a blessing or a curse, depending on whether it makes you proud or grateful, lazy or industrious, selfish or unselfish, greedy or content, hard-hearted or sympathetic, responsible or irresponsible, happy or un­ happy, personally enriched or impoverished. It all depends on your wisdom, judgment, attitude, and use. You are responsible for your own happiness or misery! Your attitude is always under your control, though your world is not. (2) T h e Enchiridion begins with this principle: "There are things which aie within oui power and there aie things which aie beyond our power. Within our power are opinion, aim, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever affairs are our own. Beyond

oiu power are body affairs." Centuries later, Machiavelli would use the same distinction as his premise for a very different conclusion than Stoicism. He too divided everything in life into two cate­ gories, which he called "virtu" (power, what you can control) and "fortuna" (luck, chance, what you cannot control). He defined success as the maximization of "virtu" and the minimization of "fortuna." He applied this to external, material success, espe­ cially military and political, while the Stoics applied it to personal, inner, spiritual suc­ cess. Epictetus probably learned the distinction between the few things that are in our power and the many that are not from his life as a slave, where his very life was not his 7

ow n. Once, as he was being tortured for another slave's mistake, he said, calmly, to his T

master, "If you continue to twist my leg, it w ill break." His angry master twisted and broke it. Epictetus replied, sweetly, "See? I told you so." There are only three necessary virtues for the Stoic: (I) the resignation to accept what cannot be changed, T

(II) the courage to change w hat can be changed, and (III) the wisdom to know the difference. Stoicism is challenging. If we dare to honestly survey our lives, w e must ask our­ 7

selves how much effort w e waste fruitlessly fighting or worrying about external things that we cannot control (category I), or lazily and irresponsibly ignoring internal things that we can control (category II), or thoughtlessly confusing these two areas of life (cate­ gory III). (3) T h e result of this wisdom is inner freedom: "If you take for your own only that which is your own and view what belongs to others just as it really is, then no one will ever compel you, no one will restrict you . . . you will do nothing against your will, no T

one will hurt you . . . nor will you suffer any harm." T h e Stoic hero is Socrates, w ho 7

in his Apology declared this one of the very few things he was certain of: that "it is

impossible for a good man to be harmed by a bad one, either in this world or in the next" Socrates' argument for this striking conclusion is that a m a n is his soul (that was his answer to the oracle's command "know thyself"), and the physical harms that others can inflict on my body cannot harm my soul; only my own follies and vices can do that. In the words of Henly's famous poem "Invictus," " J am the master of my fate/ I am the captain of my sou/." "External things touch not the soul," says Marcus Aurelius. "If you wish to be a m a n of modesty and fidelity, who shall prevent you? . . . The judge per­ haps will pass a sentence against you which he thinks formidable, but can he likewise make you receive it with shrinking?" (4) Since the soul is not passive, but active, even the supreme passivity, death, changes its meaning when acted on by the soul's choice of attitudes toward it. In the words of Marcus Aurelius, "Dying . . . is one of the acts of life—this act by which we die—it is sufficient then in this act also to do well what w e have in hand." T h u s Epicte­ tus argues: "Death is nothing terrible, else it would have appeared so to Socrates. But the terror consists in our notion of death, that it is terrible." We—the true self, the

soul—are free even here, where w e seem most unfree. We seem unfree only because we confuse ourselves with our bodies. (5) Essential to Stoicism is the control of feelings by reason. Our feelings are free only insofar as they are subject to our reason, our mind; they are unfree insofar as they are subject to our bodies. To maximize freedom, Stoics minimize feelings. They often use the analogy of the turtle: as the turtle can draw his soft, sensitive and vulnerable limbs inside his hard, protective shell, w e can draw our feelings inside our thoughts. Even today, a "Stoic" means someone who controls his feelings, especially painful feel­ ings, by resolute will and rational thought. T h e pronoun "his" here is significant: Stoicism, more than almost any other philos­ ophy in history, is almost always a man's philosophy and never a woman's. (6) T h e result, or "payoff," for the Stoic is peace of m i n d and serenity. Socrates was a stoical husband, serene with Xanthippe, the scolding shrew of a wife. He was not dis­ turbed that he was so misunderstood, hated, and feared that he was executed. Since he did not seek any of the "gifts of fortune"—riches, fame, glory, honor, beauty, political power, or any material success—he was not disturbed by not having them. Only one thing was necessary, and that is under our control. (Compare Diogenes the Cynic's basic principle here, that "virtue is the only good.") (7) Stoicism is an essentially practical, or "existential," philosophy, an ethic; but it has theoretical, metaphysical, and cosmological foundations. Its "life-view" is grounded in a "world-view." T h e essence of this world-view is the notion of law. T h e entire cos­ mos is ruled by law. Everything that happens is part of a single lawful order and design, and each part is determined by the whole, as in a work of art or a machine. Viewed cosmically, everything that happens is necessary and good, except h u m a n follies and vices. There are no such things as physical evils, only moral evils, and these are always at­ tempts to violate the laws of h u m a n nature. In fact, Stoics call the universal order of things "God." T h u s they are pantheists (God is everything and everything is God). However, they usually conceive of "every­ thing" as material rather than spiritual (thus they are often materialists), and their "God" is not a spirit, much less a person, but an impersonal order or "logos" in all things. In the 17th century, Spinoza (chapter 57) would have a similar concept of God: that "God" and "nature" were the very same thing looked at from two different points of view. (8) Stoics are cosmopolitans. (The word means "citizens of the cosmos.") Local, na­ tional and family loyalties and duties are subordinated to universal ones. T h e Stoics laid the foundations for universal h u m a n rights, international justice, and the critique of nationalism and racism. (9) T h e Stoics were most famous for their morality. While Epicureans claimed that pleasure was the only good, Stoics claimed that pleasure was only a byproduct of the true good, as the pleasant taste of healthy food is a byproduct of the food. Pleasure itself

does not keep you alive or healthy, any more than mere taste does. Stoics criticized Epi­ cureans for seeking the byproduct rather than the product. Virtuous people will be happy, Stoics insisted, but only if they seek virtue rather than happiness. Stoics tend to be conservatives, who accept and enjoy what has been dealt to them in the present rather than investing their happiness in a desired future. They look at the glass as half full, not half empty. This repudiation of the Epicureans' desire and de­ m a n d for future pleasure, the Stoics argued, actually resulted in more pleasure in the present rather than less. T h e y argued, against the Epicureans, that if the good = pleasure, then the evil = pain and suffering; but this could not be true or else good m e n like Socrates woidd not have suffered. (They got this argument from Diogenes the Cynic.) When asked why the gods, or the Logos, would make good m e n suffer, the Stoics answered that there must be a reason, and that there were visible analogies in life to what that invisible reason might be. For instance, wise rulers entrust the most difficult tasks to the most virtuous and courageous persons, especially in the army; and wise teachers give their best students the most difficult lessons. T h e most famous Stoic philosopher of all time was not an ancient Greek but an T

18th-century German, Immanuel Kant, w hose ethic centered (a) subjectively on ratio­ nal-moral "duty," which he defined as "respect for [moral] law" to the exclusion of exter­ nal fortune, consequences, and natural inclinations (the s u m of which was the desire for happiness), and (b) objectively on the rational "categorical imperative," whose three formulations were essentially (1) the Golden Ride ("do unto others what you will them to do to you"), (2) respect for all persons as ends rather than using them merely as means, and (3) personal autonomy and total responsibility. (See chapter 64) Like Kant, the Stoics deduced, from the three premises (1) that personal virtue is the only thing that matters, and (2) that w e are responsible only for what is under our con­ trol, and (3) that only our personal intention is directly under our control, the conclu­ sion (4) that personal intention is the only thing that matters. Since the only good is virtue, the only virtue is what you can control, and the only thing you can control is your attitude, your will's intention, it follows that the only virtue is a good intention. (5) And, as in Kant, the only good intention is the will to do your moral duty, to obey the moral law. Stoics are always big on duty. But there is a logical problem with the Stoics' call to do your duty, for if all is subject to necessary law (the cosmic Logos), how can anyone ever violate moreal law? So why preach? A s Aquinas argues, "Man has free will; other­ wise all counsels, commands, prohibitions, rewards and punishments are in vain.") T h e essence of Buddha's philosophy, the "four noble truths" (chapter 4), is also essentially Stoicism, though with two important differences: Buddha (1) disbelieved in the existence of individual souls, egos, or wills, and (2) added a mystical foundation and end, namely "Nirvana." But like Buddha, Epictetus says: "Remember that desire de­ mands the attainment of that of which you are desirous . . . that he who fails of the object of his desire is disappointed . . . [therefore] altogether restrain desire; for if you desire any of the things not within your own power, you must necessarily be

disappointed. . . . Demand not that events should happen as you wish, but wish them to happen as they do happen." A n d like Epictetus, Buddha says: "'These sons be­

long to me, this wealth belongs to me'—with such thoughts a fool is tormented. He himself does not belong to himself; how much less sons and wealth?" A great example of a sympathetic yet critical portrait of a Stoic character in modern fiction is "the Fox" in C S . Lewis's historical novel Till We Have Faces. Good examples of living stoics are war heroes like John McCain and fames Stockdale (who expressly credits his survival to Epictetus' Enchiridion), the paralyzed public figures like actor Christopher Reeve and physicist Stephen Hawking, and psychologist Viktor Frankl, whose classic Man's Search for Meaning derives Stoic (but also more-than-Stoic) lessons from the experience of Auschwitz. Stoicism is a "mature" philosophy, not one for spoiled brats. T h e older one gets, the wiser Stoicism seems, while Epicureanism, by contrast, seems increasingly shallow and external. Stoicism's essential lesson is that happiness is always internal, and no amount of external goods can in fact make us deeply happy. Their essential argument is expe­ rience rather than logic. Most people, independent of age, have a mixed reaction to Stoicism. To anyone but an Epicurean, there is something noble and admirable about it. It is uplifting; it raises the level of what it means to be h u m a n and gives us a high ideal to aspire to. Yet to any­ one but a Stoic there is also something disturbingly inhuman about it. Each of its main "up" points has a "downside." (1) If "there is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so," then thinking cannot discover any real goods or evils, and morality must be merely subjective, even though it is universal and rational. This weakens morality rather than strengthening it. It also destroys honest personal sympathy to believe that "there is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so." Epictetus says: "When you see anyone weeping for g r i e f . . . be ready to say 'What hurts this m a n is not this occurrence itself—for an­ other m a n might not be hiut by it—but the view he chooses to take of it . . . aci t . . . ac- yourself to him and, if need be, groan with him, but take heed not to groan inwardly too." What a shocking lack of sympathy! T h e "groaner" needs your honest care and love and presence with him in his suffering; real groans, not pretended ones. Contrast Jesus' "groaning" at the death of his friend Lazarus (John n ) . (2) Epictetus says: "If it concerns anything beyond our power, be prepared to say that it is nothing to you." This Stoic detachment from all that we cannot control sounds good—until w e apply it to the sufferings and joys of other people. Indifference to their sufferings is more obviously bad than indifference to our own sufferings is good. It seems to treat others as pawns on our moral chessboard, means to our own perfection, rather than objects of our h u m a n love. No woman, and no happily married man, was ever a consistent Stoic. " B e not elated by any excellence not your own" (Epictetus) for­ bids us to rejoice at others' goods, even God's! (3) "I a m the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul"—is that triumph or

arrogance? "No evil can happen to a good man"—but evils do happen to m y body. Is my body only a machine made of meat, and am I only a ghost that manipulates it? A m I only a pure spirit wrongly trapped in an alien body? Is that a healthy psychology? (4) We can indeed always actively choose our attitudes; but are w e not also in­ evitably passive to pain, disease, bad fortune, and death? Only God is pure act. Is That who w e are? (5) Control of selfish emotions by reason is a cardinal virtue (moderation or temper­ ance or self-control), and almost the very definition of civilization. But not all emotions are selfish, and "control" can be cold and inhuman. Stoics seem like Mr. Spöck in StaiTrek: only half human. (6) Stoic peace depends on the belief that everything is good, since it depends on the perfect Logos (rational law). Yet the failure to be a Stoic is not good by Stoic stan­ dards. If everything is good, so that evil is illusory, then that illusion itself is an evil. "Thus either there is evil to fear, or that very fear [of unreal evils] is evil." (St. Augus­ tine) (7) If everything is good because it is determined by Fate or the Logos, then m y rea­ son and will are also determined, so I cannot freely choose to accept or reject Stoicism. "Whatever will be, will be," so why do Stoics exhort, preach, moralize, or philosophize? (8) Stoicism so emphasizes the acceptance of what we cannot change that it radi­ cally de-emphasizes what w e can change, and minimizes hope, effort, and optimism. It is a philosophy for a passive, pessimistic age. Marcus Aurelius writes, "Seek not to have things happen as you choose them, but rather choose that they should happen as they do." Was that a good philosophy for Jews under Hitler? (9) Stoic acceptance makes sense for things superior to us—God, moral values, objective truth—but not for things inferior to us, material events in this world. A Stoic would tend to simply endure a disease rather than spend great effort to try to cure it. (10). Stoic "cosmopolitanism" can be noble, but true cosmopolitanism is an exten­ sion of local loyalties. "Charity begins at home." Ignoring family and friends for strangers, prioritizing an abstraction like "mankind" or "Society" over concrete indi­ vidual persons, is not a superior morality but an inferior one. It enables you to "love" mankind while despising or ignoring your neighbor. We are individuals first and have individual duties first. We are not responsible for the whole cosmos because w e are not God. (Stoics tend to forget that rather obvious fact.) (11) Most Stoics justified suicide on the grounds that the time and way one dies, as distinct from the fact that one is doomed to die, is one of the few things one could con­ trol. Are there not great things that w e can but should not control? Stoic epistemologa like all materialist epistemologa cannot account for our knowl­ edge of universals. If all reality is material, all knowledge is empirical and therefore

particular and concrete. Although our will can be active, our m i n d is passive for Sto­ icism, and can know only what experience delivers. Experience delivers only particulars. How then do Stoics know universals like law, duty, logos, fate, or the cosmos? Comparing Stoicism and Epicureanism In their metaphysics, Stoics and Epicureans are both usually materialists (everything is matter) and monists (all is one), though Epicureans are usually atheists while Stoics usually speak of "the divine." But both forms of materialistic m o n i s m , the atheistic and the religious, end up denying personal identity, for two reasons: their materialism (no souls or spirits) and their m o n i s m (no separate independent individuals). This will hold true in modern philosophy too, for both religious, Stoic-like monists like Spinoza and Hegel (who were not materialists) and atheistic, Epicurean-like materialists like Hume, who also denied any substantial self and mockingly spoke of self-consciousness as a "tiny perspiration of the brain." A s w e will see when we get to modern philosophy, the "Enlightenment," which began with Descartes' one absolute certainty that "I think, therefore I am," ironically culminated in the conclusion (in Hume) that w e don't really exist! Stoicism and Epi­ cureanism are too h u m a n and commonsensical to go that far, but for both, w e don't re­ ally count. We are dust in the wind, lost in the cosmos among the atoms and fate. Stoicism and Epicureanism have a c o m m o n goal: peace of mind by detachment from the world's troubles. Epicurus withdrew into his walled garden, while Stoics with­ drew into their own souls, even while one of them was ruling the world and

fighting

battles (Emperor Marcus Aurelius). Stoics trust in the impersonal divine Logos, believing that all events are part of a perfect divine plan and that the w i s d o m of the Logos is accessible within everyone's soul. Marcus Aurelius writes, "Look within. Within is the fountain of good." This gives Stoicism a dignity, depth, and height that Epicurean materialism lacks. Yet the Epi­ curean is humble while the Stoic is proud. T h e Epicurean confuses m a n with an ani­ mal, while the Stoic confuses m a n with a god or an angel. These same two tendencies will reappear in modern philosophers: materialists (Machiavelli, Hobbes) vs. idealists (Spinoza, Leibnitz), empiricists (Bacon, Hume) vs. rationalists (Descartes, Hegel). One might see cats as Stoics and dogs as Epicureans. Cats are clean and beautiful and noble, but aloof, even snobbish. T h e y don't chew your shoes but they don't wag their tail wildly at you w h e n you come home either. Dogs are dirty and messy, but they greet you with amazing love and pleasure. T h e choice between Epicureans and Stoics is like the choice between slobs and snobs. Neither is ideal, but if pride is worse than lust and greed, then snobs are worse than slobs. It's remarkable how deeply even the secular post-Christian West has im­ bibed Christian values here. Stoics are more righteous, but also more self-righteous, than Epicureans, so that, paradoxically, they're farther from perfection because they're closer. Yogi Berra said, profoundly, that "If this world was perfect, it wouldn't be." Per­ haps the same is true of people as the world. Selected Bibliography:

The Five Great Philosophies of Life by William De Witt Hyde

30. Seneca (4 B.C.-65 A.D.) Roman Stoic philosopher, rhetorician, statesman, playwright (Shakespeare was influ­ enced by his plays), and autobiographer, Seneca's philosophy is not original (it is clas­ sical Stoicism) or even terribly interesting, but his life is. Raised by an aristocrat father, Seneca the Elder, he rose to become the greatest rhetorician in Rome. (Remember, rhetoric had the power in ancient R o m e that a combination of political speechwriting, journalism, and media control would have today.) He became tutor, chief advisor, and "spin control speechwriter" for the emperor Nero. A s one of his critics said, "while denouncing tyranny, he w a s making himself the teacher of a tyrant." If there is one outstanding attribute that Seneca manifests, it would have to be hypocrisy. He preached republican virtue and self-restraint, then used his rhetoric to make the lawless tyrant Nero look like a merciful father. He preached Stoic poverty but accumulated enormous money, lands, power, and fame. Most remarkable of all, he can­ didly confessed his struggles with his hypocrisy and vices in his Moral Letters, which are strikingly similar to Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions, especially in their selfindulgence and rationalizations. His most famous quotation is "To err is human" (Enare humanuni est). Shakespeare the Christian later added, "to forgive, divine." In 39 A.D., the emperor Caligula became jealous of Seneca's reputation and plotted to poison him, but one of Caligula's mistresses talked him out of it, since Seneca was apparendy dying anyway. Instead, it was Caligula that was dead in two years. T h e new emperor, Claudius, accused Seneca of adultery with his sister, and he was exiled to Cor­ sica. After Claudius was also poisoned, probably by his niece and wife Agrippina, Nero became emperor at 17. Seneca had been recalled to tutor him from the age of 12, and later became his chief advisor. Seneca approved Nero's murder of his own son, yet composed an essay on mercy which he dedicated to Nero. He later collaborated with Nero in finishing Nero's botched murder of his own mother, then covered it up with superb PR work, fooling the Senate. Eventually Nero had Seneca killed too. He allowed h i m the "dignity" of suicide, but it took painfully long for h i m to bleed to death after severing several veins. He then tried unsuccessfully to poison himself. He entered a w a r m bath to ease his pain but suffocated from the vapor. His philosophy is unoriginal Stoicism, emphasizing ways to accept one's own mor­ tality. T h e only three ideas of Seneca that seem new and worthy of discussion are (1) the claim (in On Anger) that anger is the worst of all the passions because it is the hardest to control, (2) the claim that gratitude is crucial to h u m a n relationships, and (3) the no­ tion that the will is the master of the soul.

31. Marcus Aurelíus (121-180 A.D.) Marcus Aurelius' philosophy, like Seneca's, is not original or remarkable. What is re­ markable about him, and what makes h i m one of the most famous and admired m e n who ever lived, is two things: his book and his life. His book, the Meditations (literally, "to himself"), has been one of the most popular books in the world for over 1800 years. It is a practical and accessible compendium of practical Stoic wisdom. Many public figures have called it their favorite book, including T

former President Bill Clinton—though it is not clear whether it w as Marcus' political power or his morality that attracted h i m most. Here are some famous quotations from the book: If you are pained by any external thing, it is not this thing that pains you but your own judgment about it. A n d it is in your power to abolish this judgment now. Soon you will be ashes or bones, a mere n a m e at best, and even that is only a sound, an echo. The things w e desire in life are empty. Take away opinion and no one will think himself wronged. If no one will think himself wronged, then there would be no more any such tiling as wrong. Look at the immensity of time before you and the time after you, another boundless expanse. In this infinity, what is the difference between one who lives three days and one who lives three generations? When you wake in the morning, tell yourself: T h e people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and nasty. They are like this be­ cause they can't tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good and the ugliness of evil. A n d I have accepted that the evildoer has the same h u m a n nature as myself— not the s a m e blood but the same mind. We both possess a share of the divine. Even more remarkable is his life, and how he practiced what he preached. Here is history's only successful example of Plato's "philosopher-king." By temperament a philosopher, scholar, contemplative, and recluse, he was made emperor and was forced to live with action, chaos, war, calamity, conspiracy, deception, and publicity. He was surrounded by fools, flatterers, and would-be assassins. He was betrayed by his most trusted general, suffered the death of four of his five sons, and endured public rumors that his wife had many lovers. His Stoical philosophy enabled him to not only survive but to thrive. He lived as well as believed his own advice to himself: Look within. With­ in is the fountain of good, and it will always bubble u p if you will always dig. He re­ fused to fire his incompetent stepbrother who was his co-emperor, performing all the impereal duties himself. He persuaded the senate to pardon the general who had be­ trayed him. He stood by his wife despite public rumors and his own soldiers' mocking of his manhood. T h e average person's first and instinctive objection to Stoicism is that it is a set of high ideals that are impossible to live in the practical, hurly-burly world. Marcus Aurelius is the living refutation of that objection. Not everyone admires him. Bertrand Russell called his philosophy "sour grapes,"

and summarized it this way: "We can't be happy, but we can be good; let us therefore pre­ tend that, so long as we are good, it doesn't matter being unhappy!'

32. Cicero (106-43 * *) B

c

Like Diogenes, Cicero is more famous for his life than for his thought. Yet his life was quite the opposite of Diogenes'. He was a very well-known and well-loved R o m a n senator and lawyer as well as a political and moral philosopher. He is universally recognized as probably the greatest orator of all time and the greatest master of the Latin language. He translated and popularized Greek philosophy for the Romans and created a Latin philosophical vocab­ ulary that would dominate philosophy for almost 2 0 0 0 years. He especially admired Plato's ethical and political philosophy, though not his metaphysics. During the chaotic first century B.C., when Rome was changing from a republic to an empire and a dictatorship under Julius Caesar, Cicero defended the old republi­ canism. He was not part of the conspiracy to assassinate Caesar in 4 4 B.C., but he was very happy about it. When Brutus lifted his bloodstained dagger, he called out, "Cicero, restore the Republic!" This made Cicero as well as Brutus an enemy of Mark Antony, who had h i m labeled an enemy of the state, exiled, and eventually assassinated as he was about to escape on a ship for Macedonia. Antony's wife Fulvia took Cicero's decap­ itated head, pulled out his tongue, and jabbed it again and again with a hairpin to take revenge against his speeches. T h e name "Cicero" comes from the Latin word for chick pea ('cicer"). Plutarch (the late R o m a n who wrote The Lives of the Great Philosophers) says this came from the fact that his ancestor had a cleft in the tip of his nose that looked like a chick pea. T h e alter­ native explanation is simply that Cicero's family made their money by farming and sell­ ing chick peas. Cicero's main influence on philosophy is his transmission of the Platonic and Aris­ totelian notion of a natural moral law. A s a lawyer, Cicero deduced from this meta­ physical premise the legal conclusion that all citizens had innate h u m a n rights, a con­ cept not explicitly in Plato or Aristotle. Like all Stoics, Cicero was a cosmopolitan. Here is his justification for universal moral law overarching and uniting not only all m e n but also m e n and gods (compare Socrates in Plato's Euthyphro): Since reason exists in both m e n and God, it is the first possession c o m m o n to both m e n and God. But those who have reason in c o m m o n must also have right reason in common. A n d since right reason is [moral] law, w e must believe that all m e n have law in c o m m o n with the gods. Furthermore, those who share law must also share justice, and those who share justice are m e m b e r s of the same com­ monwealth. Cicero's political philosophy inspired the founding fathers of the U . S . John Adams wrote that "all the ages of the world have not produced a greater statesman and philoso­ pher combined than Cicero." (He was thinking of his writings; personally, his letters show h i m to be vain, pompous, and arrogant—like many "great" statesmen in history.) Marx's ghost writer Engels called h i m "the most contemptible scoundrel in history" for upholding republican democracy but not class reforms. His important works were frequently quoted from by other R o m a n authors, but none survive intact. They include On the Republic. On the Laws, On the Orator, On the

Ends of Good and evil, On the Nature of the gods, On Friendship, On Duties, and the Hortensius, an introduction to philosophy that was universally praised but almost com­ pletely lost. It radically changed Augustine's life, made him a philosopher, and began his conversion to God, according to Augustine himself in his Confessions. His most lasting and often-quoted work, especially in the Middle Ages, is "The Dream of Scipio," part of his On the Republic, which is Cicero's Stoic version of Plato's Republic. In it, the spirit of Scipio Africanus, hero of the Second Punic War, appears to his son and shows h i m the Logos of the universe and the place of morality and justice in it.

33* Plotínus (204-270 A.D.) and Neoplatonism There have been three great syntheses in the history of philosophy. Plotinus claimed to have synthesized all the insights of all the previous ancient philosophers. Aquinas syn­ thesized both the ancient and the medieval philosophers. A n d Hegel claimed to have done the same for all philosophers, though it is a safer claim to say that he did it for all modern philosophers. Plotinus was the last great ancient philosopher. He was the founder of Neopla­ tonism, which claimed to be the faithful fulfillment of Platonism, though it moved in some very new directions than Plato's philosophy. It had a great influence on many early Christian theologians like Origen and Augustine, and on the whole of medieval thought. Plotinus explicitly repudiated Christianity, but his philosophy in many ways was similar to the Christian religion, and also in many ways very different from it. T h e most important difference shows in the very first sentence of The Life of Plot­ inus written by his disciple Porphyry: "Plotinus seemed ashamed of having a body." Where Christianity's fundamental contrast was good vs. evil, Plotinus'

fundamental

contrast was spirit vs. matter. For Christianity, the most evil thing of all is a pure spirit, the Devil, while matter is God's creation and is good. A n d where Christianity was a "religion," whose ultimate end was a faith-hope-and-love "relationship" (almost the lit­ eral meaning of "religion") with a personal Creator-God, Neoplatonism was a "spiri­ tuality," whose ultimate end was a solitary escape from matter and the body, "the flight of the alone to the Alone." Like Shankara's Hinduism, Plotinus' philosophy is a Monism, centering on "the One." In fact, Plotinus longed to go east to India to study Hinduism, of which he had heard rumors in Alexandria, but instead went west and lived and taught in Italy. Unlike Shankara, however, Plotinus is not a pantheist. ("Pan-theism" means that "God = everything and everything = God"; that there is nothing but God.). Plotinus is almost the polar opposite of this. In fact Plotinus' "One" (his absolute, a kind of imper­ sonal God) is so totally transcendent and apart from everything that it is even "beyond being." It does not "exist" because it does not partake of existence or of anything else. "Being," or "existence," meant for Plotinus something manifold, not one: the many Pla­ tonic Ideas, essences, finite intelligible Forms. But like Shankara, Plotinus was a m a n of one idea. "The One" is so totally one that it is in no way many. Therefore (1) it is not finite (for finite things have limits, edges, which distinguish these things from other things, thus they involve plurality). (2) It has no name (for all names distinguish). (3) It neither has any knowledge (since knowledge is a relation between two things, knower and known) nor can It be known as the object of knowledge, because this again involves the dualism of knowing subject and known object, and also because only different finite objects can be intelligible, as "this" vs. "that." (4) It cannot even be said to be (see the previous paragraph). So T h e One "tran­ scends" finitude, language, thought, and being. It is totally "mystical." It is not the God of religion, for it is not a person, has no will, is not a Creator; and has no nature or character. (In theistic religions God, though infinite, has a character: infinitely wise, just, merciful, loving, etc.). Nor is it a Platonic Form, for the Forms are

finite and intelligible. Yet Plotinus thought of himself as a faithful Platonist. He iden­ tified T h e One with Plato's "the Good" in the Republic and with "the Beautiful" in the Symposium, both of which Plato called infinite. T h e One is not a being because it is the transcendent source and end of all beings, and of man. All being is an eternal and necessary emanation (not creation) from it and a movement back to it. Being is the cosmic drama of "exitus-redditus," exit and return, a kind of universal circulatory system with T h e One as its heart. T h e whole meaning of life is this "return" by detachment from body, matter, time, and finitude through the contemplation and love of T h e One. Plotinus identified this process with the "ladder of love" in Plato's Symposium and the ascent from the Cave through (and beyond) the Di­ vided Line in the Republic. In Plotinus' cosmic hierarchy, T h e One (level #i) emanates first T h e Intelligence (#2), which is a single eternal impersonal Mind in which are all the Platonic Ideas. Augustine would later teach something similar: that the cosmic home for Plato's Forms was the Logos, the Mind or Intelligence of God. But as a Christian Augustine identified this as a divine Person, who assumed h u m a n nature and matter in Christ (the "Incar­ nation"— concept Plotinus found deeply repugnant). From T h e One, through T h e Intelligence, comes next (by eternal necessity) T h e World-Soul (hierarchical level #3), which is the source of time and motion (and, in us, life and desire). A s T h e One is eternal oneness and T h e Intelligence is eternal manyness (all the many Platonic Forms), T h e Soul is temporal manyness. At the level of T h e One, consciousness is mystical (beyond the subject-object dualism); it is intuitive at the level of the Intelligence, and it is discursive (logical) at the level of the Soul. You could think of the three levels by the analogy of a movie as (1) single and simul­ taneous in its projector, as (2) manifold (many frames) but simultaneously present when unrolled in the projecting room, and as (3) temporally manifold when projected onto the screen, scene by scene. Soul, both cosmically and individually (in man), has two aspects, or "faces," as Augustine would call them: it faces the Forms as transcending the body, and it faces the body in animating it. T h e same soul both thinks eternal truths and keeps your body alive. This bridges the gap between spirit and matter, and between eternity and time. Man is an amphibian, inhabiting two worlds. This Soul fabricates a concrete material world (level #4) by imposing the Forms (level #2) on matter (level #5), which is the lowest, darkest, most unintelligible level (since Form is the source of all intelligibility), and which is the source of all evil because it is the closest to non-being, or absolute nothingness (level #6). T h e meaning of life is to fly like Superman "up, up and away" from the separations and manyness of matter back toward T h e One (but not, like Superman, or the philosopher in Plato's parable of the Cave, back down again to fight and work and help poor mankind). Bodies, made of matter, constitute the limit of T h e One's emanations, for matter it­ self is formless and unintelligible; it is almost nothing at all. It is also maximally plurified, dispersed through space, with parts outside of other parts. Since T h e One is T h e Good, and the source of all goodness, its opposite, matter, is the source of all evil.

The first three of Plotinus' levels may seem similar to the Christian Trinity, since (i) The One, like God the Father, is the source of all; (2) The Intelligence is the Logos that is like an eternal Word "from" The One and is cosmic Reason or Mind; and (3) The World-Soul is a "holy spirit" that moves in the world. But Plotinus' three (a) aie not per­ sons, (b) are not a single being, (c) and are not equal but hierarchical. And (d) the world is not freely created by, but necessarily emanated from, The One. Plotinus explores the experience of this mystical ascent more than any other nonreligious thinker. Unlike religious mysticism, it is not received by faith or given by di­ vine grace, but it is a do-it-yourself intellectual ascent through self-purification. Its essential human prerequisite is not repentance, humility, faith, or charity, or a con­ forming of the will to God's will, but an introspective journey of the mind, "upward via inward;" a discovery of the center of the soul as something inherently Godlike; a purifi­ cation not from sin but from body and matter, which is the source of all evil. It is this experiential dimension of Plotinus, rather than the highly abstract philos­ ophy, that has not lost its fascination down through the ages. The following excerpts should whet appetites and to flesh out what reading Plotinus feels like. The excerpts are from the treatise on Beauty, the only one out of the 81 treatises in the Enneads that was known to the Middle Ages. ("Enneads" means "nines;" there are 9x9=81 treatises.) Elmer O'Brien says, in The Essential Plotinus, "This, the earliest of the treatises, is an ad­ mirable introduction to all the rest. For centuries "Beauty" was the sole treatise by which Plotinus was known. But such is its quality that succeeding generations knew r

their Plotinus w ell in knowing only it." "Clearly it [Beauty] is something detected at first glance, something that die sold— remembering—names, recognizes, gives welcome to, and, in a way, fuses with. When die sold falls in with ugliness, it shrinks back from it as disagreeable and alien. We therefore suggest that the soul, being what it is and related to the reality above it, is de­ lighted when it sees any signs of kinship, anything diat is akin to itself, takes its own to itself, and is stirred to new awareness of whence and what it really is." "Seeing thus, one undergoes a joy, a wonder, a distress more deep than any other because here one touches truth. Such emotion all beauty must induce—an aston­ ishment, a delicious wonderment, a longing, a love, a trembling that is all de­ light. . . . All perceive it. Not all are stung sharply by it. Only diey whom we call lovers ever are." "Seeing, widi what love and desire for union one is seized . . . all odier loves than diis he must despise, and all that once seemed fair he must disdain. Those who have witnessed the manifestations of divine or supernatural realities can never again feel the old delight in bodily beauty." "The one who does not attain to it is life's unfortunate, not die one who has never seen beautiful colors or beautiful bodies or who has failed of power and of honors and of kingdoms. He is the true unfortunate who has not seen this beauty, and he alone. It were well to cast kingdoms aside and the domination of the entire earth and sea and sky if, by this spurning, one might attain diis vision." "He must not hanker after die graceful shapes that appear in bodies, but know

them for copies, for shadows, and hasten away towards that which they bespeak." "Let us flee then to the beloved Fatherland. Here is sound counsel. But what is this flight? H o w are w e to gain the open sea? For surely Odysseus is a parable for us h e r e . . . . The Fatherland for us is there whence w e have come. There is the Father. What is our course? What is to be the manner of our flight? Here is no journeying for the feet; feet bring us only from land to land. Nor is it for coach or ship to bear u s off. We must close our eyes and invoke a new manner of seeing, a wakefulness that is the birthright of us all, though few put it to use." "Only the mind's eye can contemplate this mighty beauty. But if it comes to con­ templation purblind with vice, impure, weak, without the strength to look upon bril­ liant objects, it then sees nothing even if it is placed in the presence of an object that can be seen. For the eye must be adapted to what is to be seen, have some likeness to i t . . . nor will any that is not beautiful look upon the beautiful. Let each one therefore become godlike and beautiful w h o would contemplate the divine and beautiful." One need not be a disciple of Plotinus to be moved and inspired by his writings. He has two main kinds of critics: (i) skeptics, who ask how such mystical claims can be verified by non-mystics, and (2) Christians, like St. Augustine, who (a) point to the con­ tradictions between Neoplatonism and Christianity mentioned above, especially the identification of evil with matter, and who (b) ask the simple question how we can climb this mystic ladder. Even if Plotinus' road m a p is true, a road m a p is not a car. Without divine grace, how can weak natural m a n attain this high, supernatural, super­ h u m a n end? T h e ladder is too long for us to be able to climb it without help. That is the essential practical problem. Three more theoretical problems especially r

arise w ith Plotinus: freedom, evil, and plurality. (1) If everything follows with necessity from the emanations of T h e One, how can we have the free choice between good (return to T h e One) and evil (sinking down into matter)? (2) If bodies come from the last emanations from T h e One, which is T h e Good, how can they be evil? If, on the other hand, evil comes not from bodies but from nonbeing, how can evil be real? (3) Why does the perfect, pure One produce imperfect multiplicities? It needs noth­ ing. Is it bored with itself? If you read Plotinus' Enneads, get Stephen MacKenna's poetic, exhilarating rather than literal translation. Don't try to master it; browse in it. Reading it is like watching a storm at sea: you are swept along by the waves. Plotinus is the last great ancient pagan philosopher. T h e next era in philosophy, the medieval Christian, really begins a few centuries before the ancient era ends, w h e n John the Evangelist equates Christ with the Platonic and Stoic Logos. What distin­ 7

guishes medieval philosophy from ancient is not its dates, nor a new philosophical school, but a new religion. All medieval philosophers were Christians, Muslims, or Jews. No ancient philosophers were. Selected Bibliography:

The Essential Plotinus ed. by Elmer O'Brien

Other Works of InterestfromSt Augustine's Press Rémi Brague, On the God of the Christians ( A ,

These are all analogies. Analogies prove nothing, but they illumine and suggest much. Good analogies do not contradict, but complement, each other.

Modera vs. Medieval One of the best short answers to how modern philosophy differs from medieval is given by Frank Parker in The Story of Western Philosophy: (1) "The most basic and general feature of the transition from medieval to modern philosophy is a new, deeper, and more enduring separation of reason from faith. 7

"This new freedom of man's mind from its medieval tie to a revealed transcendent God who establishes nature and man's bond with nature will be seen to grow gradually into . . . the isolation of the h u m a n subject from nature, which develops out of rea­ son's isolation from a transcendent author of nature. . . . Subjectivity, the freedom of the subject from the objective world, therefore will emerge as the defining essence of modern philosophy as a whole. (2) "Secondarily and less fundamentally modern philosophy will be marked by a struggle to achieve the correct definition of this freed h u m a n reason in terms of a prop­ er balance between its conceptual and its sensory powers, between sensation and rea­ son in the narrow sense of intellection and conceptualization. . . . Continental Ratio­ nalism (Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz) will emphasize deductive, conceptual reason; British Empiric-ism (Bacon, Locke, Berkeley, Hume) will emphasize inductive, sensory experience; and the final movement, usually called G e r m a n Idealism (Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel . . .) will seek a synthesis of rationalism and empiricism in a . . . a . . . -dy- conception of m i n d . . . "To understand better this interplay of faith and reason and reason and sensation, and also to grasp the mediating position of T h o m a s Aquinas as a background of the development of modern philosophy, let us use the image of m a n as created lower than the angels and higher than the brutes. Man is the highest being in the natural order but the lowest being in the supernatural order. Caught in between these two orders of existence, he shares something with both and also possesses a unique in-betweenness, his own peculiar difference. T h e supernatural factor in man, that which he shares with the angelic and the divine, is his participation in God's vision by means of divine reve­ lation. T h e purely animal factor in man, that which he shares with the brutes, is his r

sense experience, an aw areness of the particular and fluctuating features of the things in nature. A n d his peculiar inbetweenness, his distinctively h u m a n characteristic, 7

which marks h i m off both from the brutes below and the angels above, is his rea­ 7

son. . .his native pow er of discerning the unchanging and universal characteristics of things through his sense experience. . . . T h u s did T h o m a s Aquinas try to hold sensation, reason, and revelation all together in a harmony in which each is necessary and none is reducible to any other. What basically distinguishes late medieval and early r

modern philosophy is the gradual breaking dow n of this union." We could summarize the five typical new features of modern philosophy as: (1) Its relation to religion: not a marriage but a divorce or a separation; (2) Man's adversarial relationship with nature; the subject (the "conqueror") vs. the object (the "conquered"); (3) T h e crisis of reason; the priority of epistemology; the problem of skepticism and

solipsism; (4) T h e turn to self-consciousness and subjectivity; (5) Dropping two key concepts of pre-modern ethics and politics: the "natural moral law" and the summum bonum. Introduction to Epistemologa T h e following is a very oversimplified introduction to a difficult subject. "Epistemology" means "the science of knowing." It is the division of philosophy that studies how h u m a n knowledge works or ought to work. This is a typically modern question. Pre-modern philosophers usually began with (1) metaphysics and (2) philo­ sophical anthropology, and deduced their (3) epistemology from this, since they thought that (3) how m a n knows depends on (2) what m a n is, and that (2) what m a n is depends on (1) what is. But modern philosophers, beginning with Bacon and Descartes, typically begin with epistemology, since they think that a builder should examine his tools before he builds buildings. For them, the justification of reason comes before the use of it. Like all of philosophy, epistemology is distinctively human, for even if animals have consciousness, only h u m a n s have self-consciousness, and therefore think about think­ ing. Three main questions emerge here: (1) the origin, (2) the nature, and (3) the extent of h u m a n knowledge. Three main answers, or schools of thought, emerge, each of which answers all three of these questions: Rationalism, Empiricism, and G e r m a n Ide­ alism. Their differences concern the relationship between the two parts or poles of h u m a n knowing, sensation and reason, or intellection. They differ on: (a) Which of the two do we begin with? (b) Which is closer to the essence of knowledge? and (c) Which gives us more certainty? Rationalism answers "reason" and Empiricism "sensation" to all three of these questions. A third epistemologica! answer, an alternative to both Rationalism and Empiricism, which Kant calls "the Copernican revolution in philosophy," joins reason and sensa­ tion, but not as Aristotle and Aquinas did, by abstracting rational concepts from sense images, but in the opposite way, by reason imposing its structures on experience so that objects conform to knowing rather than knowing conforming to objects. (This will become clearer when we get to Kant.) We can distinguish five possible answers to question (c) above, the question of cer­ tainty, arranged in a hierarchy from less certainty to more: (1) Skepticism: w e know nothing with certainty at all. (2) Kantianism: w e cannot know "things in themselves" (objective reality) but only phenomena (appearances, how things appear to h u m a n minds). (3) Empiricism: we can know only what is given in sense experience (and reflection, or inner experience), andd (usually) only with probability. (4) Epistemological realism (Aristotle): w e can know the nature of real things by intellectually abstracting their forms (natures) from sense images of material things;

and w e can know what w e can deduce from these things (e.g., a First Cause). (5) Rationalism: w e can know beyond experience by direct intellectual intuition into essences (Plato) or deduction from innate "clear and distinct ideas" (Descartes). If you find this section too confusing at this point, just ignore it and read the philosophers instead; then come back to it and it will look simple—probably m u c h too simple. Four Epistemologies Classical modern philosophy is neatly divided. Its main interest is epistemology, and the three positions that emerge are all geographically located. (I) First there is Continental

(European) Rationalism, with Descartes (French),

Spinoza (Portuguese and Dutch), and Leibnitz (German). T h i s has roots in Plato and Augustine. (II) T h e n there is British Empiricism, with Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, who were respectively English, English, English, Irish, and Scotch. This episte­ mology has roots in William of Ockham and Roger Bacon among the medievals, who were also British. Most Empiricists are British and most British philosophers are Em­ piricists. (Don't ask m e why; maybe it's in the Guinness.) (III) T h e n there is G e r m a n Idealism, Kantianism, or Voluntarism, including Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and Schopenhauer. This position is a new one, in fact so new that Kant called it "the Copernican revolution in philosophy." All five of these philoso­ phers are German. (Don't ask m e why; maybe it's in the sausages.) (IV) A fourth epistemology, that of Aristotle and Aquinas, is surprisingly absent from the list of modern options, especially since it is the most popular and most commonsensical option in the opinion of most non-philosophers. These four epistemologies, or theories of how h u m a n knowledge works, can be visualized by the following diagram: /

Key to the symbols: Subjective h u m a n faculties of knowing: A. Senses; B . Intuitive Reason C. Calculating Reason.

Objects known: I: concrete particular substances; II: abstracted universal forms Operations in knowing: i. Sensation; 2. Abstraction; 3. Understanding; 4. Deduction T h i s is a picture of how h u m a n knowledge works according to Aristotle: in four steps. (1) First, the senses perceive particular concrete substances (e.g., h u m a n beings), which are made up of form and matter. (2) Then, the intellect abstracts the forms of the substances from the matter (soul from body), and the essence from the accidents (bodyand-soul from height, weight, gender, etc.). (3) This form or essence is understood by intellectual intuition. (4) On the basis of this understanding, the reason deduces conse­ quences, e.g., that all h u m a n beings, even those w e do not see or those yet to be born, can think (because they have minds), and die (because they have bodies). Step (2) is the connector between steps (1) and (3) to explain where w e get universals, and step (3) is the connector between steps (2) and (4) to explain the mutual depen­ dence of induction, or "inductive abstraction," and deduction. T h e other three epistemologies can be plotted on this graph. They all lack the dis­ tinctive Aristotelian step of abstraction (step 2). Cartesian Rationalism begins with (3) as innate ideas, then deduces from them (step 4). H u m e a n Empiricism begins and ends with (1). Descartes affirms only the top half of the circle, H u m e the bottom. Both lack the link between them (step 2). Kant, like Aristotle, synthesizes top and bottom, reason and sensation, but "backwards," with form imposed on matter instead of ab­ stracted from it. (If this strange looking picture hinders you more than it helps you to understand the four epistemologies, just ignore this sub-section. Diagrams are sometimes almost as hard to explain as jokes.) Rationalism is essentially acts (3) and (4) without (1) and (2). It begins not with sense experience (1), but with innate clear and distinct ideas (3), and emphasizes deduc­ tion (4) rather than induction or abstraction (2). Empiricism is essentially acts (1) and sometimes (2), but without (3) and (4); but act 2 signifies only induction, not abstraction, for all empiricists are suspicious of abstract, universal ideas. T h e y are Nominalists. Rationalism is essentially the affirmation of the top part of the circle, and Empiri­ cism the bottom part. Kantian epistemology, like Aristotelianism, joins the two halves of the circle, but it reverses the direction of it (the movement goes from the top down rather than from the bottom up), since it has the m i n d actively imposing three kinds of innate structures, (a) sensory, (b) logical, and (c) metaphysical, on the objects known rather than abstracting them from the objects. (If you don't understand this yet; don't worry; we'll get to Kant soon. If you do understand it, perhaps you ought to worry.) T h e four epistemologies fit with four metaphysics, four answers to the classical "problem of universals." Rationalism fits Extreme Realism, for if universals exist separately from particular things, they can be known separately, as "innate ideas." Aristotelian "soft Empiricism" fits Moderate Realism, for if universals exist but only in particular concrete sensible things, they can be known by abstraction from those

things. Kantian epistemology fits Abelard's "conceptualism" or "moderate Nominalism": universals are needed, but they are only mental concepts, not existing realities. H u m e a n "hard Empiricism" fits extreme Nominalism: there are no universals, pe­ riod. They are not even concepts, only words. "Hard Empiricists" mercilessly attack "ab­ stract ideas." Metaphysics and epistemology always go together. Which one comes first, which is the source of the other, is a "chicken/egg" question. But Empiricism in epistemology always corresponds to an Empiricist metaphysics, as Rationalism in epistemology al­ ways corresponds to a Rationalist metaphysics. For the objects of empirical knowledge, such as Zeus, Socrates, Lassie, the apple you just ate, and Uranus,* are always (1) concrete and individual, not abstract and universal; (2) temporal and changing, not timeless; and (3) contingent (they could be different), not necessary. T h u s our knowledge of them is only probable, not certain. For the Empiricist's world is full of a plurality of concrete, changing, contingent particulars. But the objects of rational, intellectual knowledge, such as the essential nature of a god, a man, a dog, an apple, or a planet, are (1) abstract and universal, (2) timeless, and (3) necessary. T h u s the Rationalist's world is full of Ideas, Forms, truths, laws, and principles which are general (universal), changeless, and necessary, and known with certainty. * For instance, consider the process by which the apple you just ate emerges from Uranus.

55* Rene Descartes (1596-1650) His Historical Importance Descartes' Discourse on Method (1637) changed the philosophical landscape. It made more of a difference to how philosophy was done than any other book ever written, ex­ cept perhaps Plato's dialogs. Every major philosopher for the next 2 0 0 years, except Pascal, followed Descartes in attempting to apply some aspects of the scientific method to

philosophy,

though

they

all produced

different

philosophical

systems

than

Descartes'. Descartes' revolution was similar to that of Socrates': both changed the meaning of "reason" itself by tightening it, so to speak. Socrates was the first person in history who T

clearly understood and practiced the art of deductive reasoning, while Descartes w as the first to deliberately apply to philosophy the new scientific method. Or the second: Bacon had done this too, before Descartes; but where Bacon emphasized the empirical and inductive aspect of the scientific method, Descartes emphasized the mathematical and deductive aspect of it. Why did Descartes try to do philosophy by a new method? Because he noticed two things: that every one of the sciences had progressed remarkably in his age, and that philosophy had not. He asked the simple question: Why? What made the difference? A n d his answer was: T h e scientific method. That was the common factor in the progress of all the sci­ ences. Yet no one had applied it to philosophy. He then asked: What was in this new method that gave it the power to progress to a point where disagreements were actually settled conclusively for the first time in his­ tory? A n d he answered: T h e method of mathematics. He wrote: I took especially great pleasure in mathematics because of the certainty and the evi­ dence of its arguments. But I did not yet notice its true usefulness and, thinking that it seemed useful only to the mechanical arts, I was astonished that, because its founda­ tions were so solid and firm, no one had built anything more noble upon them. On the other hand, I compared the writings of the ancient pagans who discuss morals to very proud and magnificent palaces that are built on nothing but sand and mud. They place virtues on a high plateau and make them appear to be valued more than anything else in the world, but they do not sufficiently instruct us about how to know them. If we imagine a great palace on a foundation of sand next to a little shed on a foun­ dation of rock, w e can see why Descartes wanted to rebuild the old palace on the new foundation.

T

ñ Descartes's "buildings," i.e., his essential conclusions (that God and the world, mind and matter, soul and body, all exist) are quite traditional, but his method of proving them (the new "foundation") is radically new. (Socrates too was also both traditional and radical in the same way.) Descartes's revolution can best be defined by comparing Plato's "Divided Line" in the Republic. Plato distinguishes four levels of reason and, thus, of education: (1) seeing second-hand images of real things, (2) first-hand sense perception of real things, (3) logical and mathematical reasoning, and (4) intellectual intuition, wisdom, or understanding of the eternal Forms. T h e scientific method essentially omits (1) and (4), for opposite reasons (because (1) is too low and (4) is too high). It combines (2) observation of empirical data with (3) exact reasoning. Descartes's method demands mathematical exactness, what he calls "clear and distinct ideas"—like numbers. His ideal is a universal mathematical science. Aristotle had taught that method depends on object (subject matter), and that there are different sciences and different methods because there are different objects, or subject matters, dealt with by the different sciences. He distinguished the methods of practical science from the methods of theoretical sciences and, within the latter, three different levels of abstraction and thus three different kinds and methods of theoretical sciences: physical, mathematical, and metaphysical (philosophical). Descartes' contrary idea is that there is one and only one best method for every subject. (Thus his title is literally "Discourse on T H E Method," Discours de la method.) It is probably not possible to decide whether Descartes's attempt to do philosophy by the method of science can work until w e see how he does it. But even if his attempt proves to be a confusion and a failure, the attempt was inevitable. Philosophy was in a sorry state in 1637, divided between (1) verbal quibbles and partisan battles among unoriginal late medieval Scholastics who used highly technical language and multiplied abstract verbal distinctions, (2) flaky nature-mystics and occultists like Paracelsus, and (3) smart but cynical skeptics like Montaigne. Every other science had made more progress in the previous 2 0 0 years than in the previous 2 0 0 0 , but not philosophy. Why? Descartes' answer seemed obvious. T h e scientific method was the fuel that sent all the other rockets (sciences) up. Why not use it for philosophy too?

Descartes's Life Descartes was the m a n to do it. He was one of the most intelligent m e n who ever lived. He thought of himself primarily as a scientist rather than a philosopher. He personally knew all the great scientists of his day, many of w h o m congregated around a circle of friends in Paris of which Descartes was the center. He made essential contributions in geometry (he invented analytic geometry), optics, astronomy, physiology, and other sci­ ences. He was one of the last of the universal geniuses, before the age of specialization. He summarized his intellectual biography briefly and charmingly in DM (Discourse on Method). Trained in the best Jesuit schools in the world, interacting with all the greatest minds of his age, he sought certainty rather than probability or arguments from "fittingness" or from authority; and he found certainty nowhere except in mathe­ matics. He wondered why this exact reasoning had been confined to quantity (number) alone, and not applied to the great questions of philosophy such as the nature of knowl­ edge, truth, h u m a n nature, God, and the soul. One day, returning from the battlefields of the Thirty Years' War (which terribly traumatized Europe and tarnished the religion(s) that caused it), while snowbound in a little heated room, he conceived the essential idea for a whole new philosophy, which was (i) to come from his own individual m i n d alone rather than relying on the great philosophers of the past, (2) to begin with his own experience, and (3) to use only scien­ tific reasoning and the mathematical method. This was the beginning of the career of the most famous philosopher in the world. T h e end came when the Queen of Sweden, a would-be intellectual herself, persuaded Descartes to come to Sweden to instruct her. Descartes accepted, but died of pneu­ monia, brought on by the Swedish winter and the Queen's demand to rise at 4:30 A . M . to give her philosophy lessons. Reading the Discourse on Method (DM) DM is one of the easiest and clearest philosophy books ever written. Section i is a brief and charming intellectual autobiography. Section 2 sets forth the four rides of the Method. Section 3 gives four temporary and pragmatic rules of practice to live by in an un­ troubled way until a more scientific ethics is formulated. Section 4 summarizes, in 5 pages, the application of the Method to philosophy. Descartes expanded this to a whole book in Meditations. These two books should be read together. Section 5 is about some applications of the method to physics. Section 6 forecasts that the application of the method would result in a utopia, the conquest of nature, the cure of an infinity of maladies, both of body and mind, and even perhaps the enfeeblement brought on by old age. Despite the contrast between Descartes's rationalism and deductivism and Bacon's empiricism and inductivism, these opposite methods, or opposite emphases within the scientific method, were used by both philosophers as means to the same end: a Utopian Heaven on earth brought about by what Bacon called "man's conquest of nature" by science and technology, the

new summum bonum of modernity. T h e Starting Point DM begins with a revolutionary claim: the claim that reason (which Descartes calls "good sense" or "common sense") is by nature equal in all men. This amounts to a re­ definition of "reason." For this is obviously not true of wisdom, the ultimate meaning of "reason" for the ancients and the fourth level of Plato's "divided line"; but it is true of levels 2 and 3, which together make up the scientific method. This method, unlike wis­ dom, is impersonal and public; anyone can do it; it does not require superior personal gifts of wisdom. T h u s Descartes democratizes "reason," and implies that if everyone used the same method, everyone would discover the same truths and come to the same conclusions, so that the terrible ideological and religious wars that were destroying Europe could end. A bold and idealistic hope indeed! But Descartes had to conceal this radical dimen­ sion of his philosophy from the censors, and only hint at it for the few more perspi­ cacious readers who would pick up the hints—thus in practice treating reason as not so democratic after all. Good sense is the most evenly distributed commodity in the world, for each of us considers himself to be so well endowed with it that even those w h o are the most diffi­ cult to please in all other matters are not likely to desire more of it than they have. It is not likely that anyone is mistaken about this, but it provides evidence that the power of judging lightly and of distinguishing the true from the false (which, properly speaking is what people call good sense or reason) is naturally equal in all men.* If "reason" means "wisdom," it is obviously not equal in all men. But if it means only what w e call "science," it is. Wisdom is personal, science is impersonal. Because of this difference, philosophers and ordinary people who seek wisdom have always dis­ T

agreed, while scientists, w ho have lowered their aims from "wisdom" to "testable empirical knowledge," have always eventually come to consensus and agreement. Descartes's revolution here is to seek universal agreement in philosophy by using the methods of science. This would overcome "diversity of opinions"—if, as Descartes goes on to say, this diversity is based not on innate differences in wisdom but only differ­ ences in (1) method and (2) data, which can easily be overcome by (1) using the scien­ tific method and (2) sharing data. Thus the diversity of our opinions does not arise from the fact that some people are (innately) more reasonable than others, but merely from the fact that w e conduct oui thoughts along different lines (methods) and do not consider the same things (data). Machiavelli (see ch. 69) had divided all causes of h u m a n achievement into two cate­ gories: virtu (internal strength of m i n d and will) and fortuna (external chance). Descartes claims that everyone has equal rational "virtu," or strength of mind, so it must have been mere chance ("fortuna"), and not his innate genius and superiority ("virtu"), that caused h i m to discover this new method: I have never presumed that m y m i n d was in any respect more perfect than anyone else's. (Can he really m e a n this?) But . . . I have been fortunate; I have, since m y

youth, found myself on paths that have led m e t o . . . have formed a method. T h e old method for philosophy had always begun by humbly learning from past 1

philosophers before entering "the Great Conversation' at the present point in its his­ tory. Philosophy was a historical and communal activity, not a purely individual and private one. Descartes is the first to repudiate this method and to claim to begin all over again, all alone, like Adam in Eden, as if there was nothing to learn from his prede­ cessors except their mistakes: I thought that book learning . . . having been built up from and enlarged grad­ ually by the opinions of many different people, does not draw as near to the truth as the simple reasonings that can be made naturally by a m a n of good sense concerning what he encounters. . . . For I have already reaped from it (this method) such a harvest that . . . I take i m m e n s e satisfaction in the progress that I think I have made in the search for truth. (What would Socrates say about this "satisfaction"?) H i e Method In Part II, Descartes gives us the four rules of his new method: (1) H i e first was never to accept anything as true that I did not know evidently to be so; that is, carefully to avoid precipitous judgment and prejudice; and to include noth­ ing more in my judgments than what presented itself to my mind with such clarity and distinctness that I woidd have no occasion to doubt it. (2) The second, to divide each of the difficulties I was examining into as many parts as possible and as is required to solve them best. (3) The third, to conduct my thoughts in an orderly fashion, commencing with the simplest and easiest to know objects, to rise gradually, as by degrees, to the knowledge of the most composite things, and even supposing an order among those things that do not naturally precede one another. (4) A n d last, everywhere to make enumerations so complete and reviews so general that I woidd be sure of having omitted nothing. On the one hand, these rules seem commonsensical, useful, practical, and openminded. On the other hand, they have hidden assumptions: (ia) Can we in fact doubt everything} How can we begin with nothing at all? (ib) Is clarity and distinctness the criterion for either certainty or truth? Aren't some truths unclear and confusing, and aren't some falsehoods quite clear and distinct? (2) Is all truth reached by analysis ("division") and not synthesis? (3) Is all truth reached by moving from oneness to manyness, from simple to com­ plex rather than vice versa? (4) If we are not infallible and omniscient, can we ever be sure our enumerations and reviews have been total? Descartes then makes an amazing claim for this method: These long chains of rea­ soning, each of them simple and easy, that geometricians commonly use to attain their most difficult demonstrations, have given m e occasion for hoping that all the things

that can fall within h u m a n knowledge follow one another in the s a m e way and that, provided only that one abstain from accepting anything as true that is not true (rule i) and that one always maintain the order to be followed in deducing the one from the other (rule 3), there is nothing so far distant that one cannot finally reach nor so hidden that one cannot discover. T h i s is the typical "Enlightenment" optimism: the hope of answering all questions and solving all problems, theoretical and practical, by scientific reason. (Has it in fact been fulfilled? Can it be? Why or why not?) Universal Methodic Doubt Rule i is the most important and radical one. It consists of (a) universal methodic doubt and (b) the clarity and distinctness of an idea as the test of its truth. Descartes, far from embracing doubt as his conclusion, like the skeptics, wants to overcome it more definitively than ever before. But to do that, he begins, as his premise, with a more total doubt than ever before. He climbs down to the depth of the doubter's pit because he is convinced he has a ladder strong enough to escape into total sunlight. T h e doubt is only methodic, not lived. He is not a skeptic; in fact he is the opposite of a skeptic: he demands absolute certainty. But to get there, he begins with skepticism, with universal doubt, as his method. In the scientific method, doubt is essential. Ideas must be treated as guilty (doubt­ ful) until proven innocent (certain). But in real life, persons, in their words, and even things, in their appearances, should be treated as innocent (truthful) until proven guilty (deceptive). Which of these two methods should philosophy use? Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle all said that philosophy should begin with wonder, which is not the same thing as doubt. Rabbi Abraham Heschel says that "wonder rather than doubt is the root of all knowledge." A n d Augustine said, in his Confessions (VI,5), "I began to realize that I had 7

believed countless things which I had never seen or which had taken place w hen I was not there to see, so many events in the history of the world, so many facts about places and towns which I had never seen; and so m u c h that I believed on the word of friends or teachers or various other people. Unless w e took these things on trust, w e should accomplish absolutely nothing in life." Descartes does not disagree with this rule for practical everyday life. T h e question that divides Descartes from these thinkers is whether philosophy should more resemble science or life. For Descartes, it is science; and that is the essence of the Enlightenment. Socrates too began by doubting others' ideas, but he gave the believer the default position, so to speak, taking upon himself the onus of disproof. It was a kind of me­ thodic faith. ("Let's assume you are r i g h t . . . but. . .") Descartes puts the onus of proof on the believer, no matter what idea is believed. A n d this is indeed the strict scientific method. But he does not pretend to live this way. There is a disconnect be­ tween philosophy and Ufe in Descartes because philosophy is now conceived as a sci­ ence in the modern sense. No one can live as a skeptic, but a scientist should think as a skeptic.

Descartes mentions four levels of doubt, each one more radical and universal than the one before: (1) Thus, since our senses sometimes deceive us, I decided to suppose that nothing was exactly as our senses would have us imagine. (2) A n d since there are m e n w h o err in reasoning, even in the simplest matters of geometry . . . judging that I was just as prone to error as the next man, I rejected as false all the reasonings that I had previously taken for proofs. (3) A n d finally, taking into account the fact that the same thoughts w e have when we are awake can also come to u s when w e are asleep, without any of the latter thoughts being true, I resolved to pretend that everything that had ever entered m y mind was no more true than the illusions of my dreams. ("Is all that w e see or s e e m / But a dream within a dream?"—Edgar Allen Poe) (4) In the Meditations he adds: I will suppose not a supremely good God, the source of truth, but rather an evil genius, as clever and deceitful as he is powerful, who has di­ rected Iiis entire effort to misleading m e . I will regard the heavens, the air, the earth, colors, shapes, sounds, and all external things as nothing but the deceptive games of my dreams, with which he lays snares for m y credulity. I will regard myself as having no hands, no eyes, no flesh, no blood, no senses, but as nevertheless falsely believing that I possess all these tilings. H o w can you be certain that all your consciousness is not hypnosis and mental telepathy from the Devil? This is, of course, a mere methodic thought-experiment, a puzzle to be solved by a philosopher, not a real doubt to be lived. That would be para­ noia in need of psychoanalysis .* T h e most distinctively Cartesian aspect of the method is the demand for "clear and distinct ideas" as the criterion for truth, or rather for certainty about truth. Descartes demands not just truth, like any honest philosopher, but certainty. This also is distinc­ tively Cartesian. By the "clarity" of an idea Descartes means its power to impress itself upon the mind. By the "distinctiveness" of an idea Descartes means its being so sharply sepa­ rated from all other ideas (like whole numbers) that there is no overlapping, nothing in common between the two ideas to allow them to be confused with each other. This "atomistic" conception of ideas corresponds to an atomistic conception of real­ ity, especially the clear and total distinction between mind and matter, which will lead to Descartes's most famous and problematic heritage, the "mind-body problem." Mind = thought without spatial extension, matter = spatial extension without thought; there­ fore it seems that the two cannot meet or touch, any more than two positive integers can.-" Descartes's provisional ethics Part 3 of DM is a purely pragmatic, temporary moral code to live by "conveniently" while working on a serious philosophy, which eventually would produce a more scien­ tific, rationally certain ethics. Descartes never produced this ethics. He is one of the very few major philosophers who never wrote an ethics. Perhaps he just died too early.

But more likely, he was not really all that interested in ethics. For ethics consists in con­ forming the soul and its desires to objective reality in the form of spiritual moral prin­ ciples; but from D M Part 6 it is clear that what interested Descartes most was the oppo­ site: the Baconian program of conforming objective reality in the form of the material world to the desires of the soul, and among these desires not so m u c h the desire for moral virtue but for material pleasure, long life, and contentment* T h e four rules of the provisional ethics (DM 3) parallel the four rules of the method (DM 2) in form. T h e first is about what to doubt. T h e second is about procedural suc­ cess. T h e third is about order and priorities. T h e fourth is about a universal review. But the content of the first three of these four rules is just the opposite of the content of the first three rides of the method. (1) T h e method tells us to doubt everything in thinking; the ethics tells us to doubt nothing in practice. The first (ride) is to obey the laws and customs of my country. It is not profitable, in a conservative society, to appear to be a revolutionary, even (especially) if you really are one. (2) The second m a x i m was to be as firm and resolute in my actions as I coidd be, and to follow with no less constancy the most doubtful opinions, once I have decided on them, than if they were very certain. This works best in practice, even though its exact opposite works best in scientific theorizing. (3) The third maxim was always to tiy to conquer myself rather than fortune, to change my desires rather than the order of the world. This is the exact opposite of the Baconian program of conquering nature by applied science. Descartes advises us to be humble, conservative, and traditional in ethics, but radical, progressive, and demand­ ing in science. His successors would change his ethical advice but not his scientific ad­ vice. (4) Finally . . . to review the various occupations that m e n take up in this life so as to try to choose the best one. Descartes applied his new scientific method to every other division of philosophy— metaphysics, cosmology, natural theology, anthropology, and epistemology—but not ethics. Kant, who took ethics m u c h more seriously and centrally, tried to do just that 150 years later—to construct a purely rational, logical, almost geometrical, ethics (though with a different epistemology than either Bacon's Empiricism or Descartes' Rationalism)—thus filling in this blank space in Descartes' "Enlightenment" program. Descartes's Door to Certainty: "Cogito Ergo Sum" "Cogito ergo sum" ("I think, therefore I am") is probably the single most famous sen­ tence in the history of philosophy. It is Descartes' first and foundational certainty, the first rung on his escape "ladder" from skepticism. It is his "Archimedean point." Archimedes, the Greek scientist who discovered that the power of the lever to move heavy objects was proportionate to the length of the lever, reputedly said, "Give m e only a lever long enough and a fulcrum to rest it on, and I can move the whole world." A philosopher's "Archimedean point" is his first premise, starting point, or foundation for the rest of his philosophy.

I resolved to pretend that everything that had ever entered my mind was no more true than the illusions of my dreams. But immediately afterward I noticed that, during die time I wanted thus to think that everything was false, it was necessary that I, who thought thus, be something. A n d noticing that this truth—I think, therefore I am—was so firm and so certain that the most extravagant suppositions of the skeptics were un­ able to shake it, I judged that I coidd accept it without scruple as the first principle of the philosophy I was seeking. This even answers the Méditations' extreme skepticism in which he asks how he can be sure he is not being hypnotized by a demon: But there is a deceiver (I know not who he is) powerful and sly in the highest degree, w h o is always purposely deceiving m e . Then there is no doubt that I exist, if he deceives m e . A n d deceive m e as he will, he can never bring it about that I a m nothing so long as I shall think that I a m something. Thus . . . the statement "I am, I exist" is necessarily true every time it is uttered by m e or conceived in my mind. Augustine had used the same argument long ago, in his Contra Académicos ('Against the Skeptics'). His version was "Dubito ergo sum" ("I doubt, therefore I am"). But he had not based his whole subsequent philosophy on it, as Descartes is about to do. Descartes had studied Augustine, and clearly borrowed this argument from him (but without crediting h i m with it, for Descartes is claiming to begin philosophy anew). There is an obvious strength to this argument against skepticism. Even if a demon is deceiving me, I must exist in order for him to deceive me. So my own existence is the one thing I cannot doubt. But there are also weaknesses to Descartes^ "cogito ergo sum" refutation of skepticism. T h e most obvious weakness is that it is a deductive argument, and thus presup­ poses unproved premises. It is an enthymeme, a syllogism with an implied premise: Implied premise: Whatever thinks, exists. Expressed premise: I think. Conclusion: I exist. This argument is logically valid (the conclusion follows with logical necessity from its premises), both its premises are true, and all its terms are unambiguous and clear. So there is nothing logically wrong with it. But it is a syllogism, i.e., an argument with two premises. A total skeptic would doubt each premise and demand proof for them. And that would require two more arguments with four more premises. This process would never end: the skeptic would demand premises for the premises of the premises, et cetera ad infinitum. A s one skeptic said, Descartes should have written, "I think I think, therefore I think I am—I think." In Meditations, published four years later, Descartes avoids this difficulty, because there he calls "I am, I exist" not the conclusion of an argument but a self-evident propo­ sition. He says: the statement "I think, I exist" is necessarily true. A necessary truth or self-evident proposition like "A=A" or "X is not non-X" or "black birds are birds" needs no proof and no premises; it proves itself. It is literally in­ dubitable. Its denial is self-contradictory, self-refuting, because its predicate merely re­ peats all or part of its subject. Its predicate is essential, not accidental, to its subject.

"Birds" is part of the essence of "black birds," as "small" is not. Will this refutation of skepticism work? If the proposition "I exist" is necessarily true, as Descartes claims, then his whole philosophy is founded on a certainty, if not, not. Everything in his philosophy depends on this, since everything else in his system is deduced from this. T h e system is like an upside down pyramid, standing on its point. But "I exist" is not logically self-evident, or "necessarily true," as Descartes claims it is. For its predicate, "exist," is not essential but accidental to its subject, which is Descartes. Descartes exists contingently, not necessarily. He is given existence at birth (or conception) and no longer exists in this world after death. Only God's existence is essential, is His essence. Descartes is implicitly confusing himself with God. (He was, after all, a bit arrogant, like most geniuses!) "I exist" is, however, psychologically self-evident even though it is not logically selfevident. T h e individual who utters it can be absolutely certain that it is true, even though no one else can. That is why Descartes added the last phrase to the sentence in Meditations: "I exist" is necessarily true every time it is uttered by me or conceived in my mind. It is certain to him but only to him. It is a private certainty. "I do not exist" is per­ sonally, practically, subjectively, or existentially self-contradictory. T h e proposition does T

not contradict itself; it contradicts the person proposing it w hile he is in the very act of proposing it. But that is not science. What Descartes needs is a public certainty, not just a private one. His "cogito" is not the logical foundation for an objective, scientific philosophy, as he thinks it is; but it can be the personal foundation for a subjective, experiential philosophy, i.e., for what later would be called Existentialism. Sartre, the inventor of the term "Existentialism," explicitly credits Descartes for this subjectively certain starting point. But that was far from Descartes' intention. He wanted to found a scientific philosophy, not an "existential" one. Another logical problem with the "cogito ergo sum" is that thinking does not neces­ sarily logically imply an individual h u m a n thinker as its cause. T h e cause of thinking might be God (as it is for the pantheist Spinoza, the next great Rationalist philosopher after Descartes), or a single impersonal universal Mind (as it is for some forms of Hin­ duism and Buddhism). Descartes's Anthropology Now that he has his first certainty, that he exists, Descartes's next step is to investigate what he can know with certainty about what he is. He has not yet proved his senses to be trustworthy, or the material world to be real, so all he knows about himself so far is that he thinks. A n d this proves to h i m that thinking is his essence: Then, examining with attention what I was, and seeing that I could pretend that I had no body and that there was no world nor any place where I was, but that I could not pretend, on that account, that I did not exist; and that, on the contraiy, from the very fact that I thought about doubting the truth of other things, it followed very evi­ dently and veiy certainly that I existed. On the other hand, had I simply stopped

thinking, even if all the rest of what I have ever imagined were true, I would have no reason to believe that I existed. From this I knew that I was a thing which in order to exist, needed no place and depended on no material tiling. T h u s this "I," that is, the soul through which I a m what I am, is (i) entirely distinct from the body, (2) and is even easier to know than the body, (3) and even if there were no body, the sold would not cease to be all that it is. (Why does Descartes believe these three conclusions logically follow? Is he right or wrong? Why?) Descartes' anthropology centers on these four theses: (1) T h e essence of the self is simply the soul, or at least its power of thinking, i.e., the mind. Descartes often identifies self with soul, soul with mind, mind with reason, and reason with his new, narrowed, mathematically clear scientific reasoning.) (2) T h e soul and body are two distinct substances. His criterion of truth, "clear and distinct ideas/' proves this; for mind and body are two clear and distinct ideas, and therefore two clear and distinct realities. They are two clear and distinct ideas because a mind can think and is not extended in space (it has no physical size), while a body is ex­ tended in space but cannot think. Descartes is not a materialist but a dualist. A materialist believes that only matter exists; a dualist believes that both matter and mind, or soul, or thought, exists. A brain is not a mind; a brain is an organ of a body. Brains do not think; persons, souls, or minds think, using brains. When the soul (the source of life) leaves the body, at death, all brain activity stops. Brains, of themselves, can no more think than typewriters can type. People do both. (3) T h e soul (mind) is known not empirically, from sensory experience of what it does (e.g., art, speech, technology), but is known directly, easily, and with certainty, by immediate self consciousness ("I think"). This, Descartes believes, is our essence, because it cannot be thought away. Descartes argues that we can be certain only of essences, not accidents. He shows this by the famous example of a piece of wax. T h e wax changes all its visible, bodily acci­ dents when melted or reshaped, but not its (chemical) essence. It becomes hotter, smaller, or rounder, but not more or less waxy. T h u s w e can be certain of our minds, which are our essence, but not our bodies, which change like the wax. Our minds can know unchanging truths, by reason, which can give us certainty, while our bodies can only know changing material things, by sensation, which does not give us certainty. (4) Souls are immortal. T h e soul has an essence distinct from the body, for it thinks, while bodies don't; and bodies have size (spatial extension), while souls don't. There­ fore the soul must be a separate substance, for (Descartes assumes) what is essentially distinct in thought must be essentially distinct in reality. A n d since the soul is a sepa­ rate substance, a separately existing entity, it follows that it is not dependent on the body for its existence. A n d therefore it does not die when the body dies, since each sub­ stance has its own existence. (This is similar to Plato's argument in Book 1 0 of his "Republic") It is instructive to contrast Descartes with Aquinas here. Aquinas, using Aristotle's

hylomorphism (matter-form theory), saw m a n as one substance, not two, with the soul as the form of the body (and, implicitly, the body as the matter of the soul). This is essentially what psychologists call "the psychosomatic unity": body and soul are two dimensions of one person, like the words and the meaning of a book. So Aquinas would disagree with all four of these theses of Descartes—though he also affirmed the substantiality and immortality of the soul, as Plato did and Aristotle did not. T h e relation between these two substances constitutes the "mind-body problem" that Descartes left to his successors. We will see how difficult it is to solve that problem at the end of this chapter. Descartes's Epistemology: the Criterion of Truth If m a n is essentially mind, then knowledge is essentially reason, not

sensation.

(Descartes is a Rationalist, not an Empiricist.) This means essentially two things: (1) that reason, not sensation, is to be trusted, and (2) that reason, not sensation, is the origin of true and certain knowledge. T h e criterion for truth, then, is the indubitability of a rational idea. T h e second half of the first rule of the Method tells us that this certainty comes from two qualities of the idea. T h e first is positive: its clarity (as the open eye cannot avoid seeing light, the m i n d cannot avoid "seeing" the essence or meaning of an idea like " 2 " or "mind" or "size"). T h e second is negative: the idea's distinctness (absence of any confusion with any other idea). Descartes offers this argument for clear and distinct ideas as the universal criterion for truth: After this, I considered in a general way what is needed for a proposition to be true and certain; for since I had just found one proposition that I knew was true ("I exist"), I thought I ought also to know in what this certitude consists. A n d having noticed that there is nothing in all of t h i s — J think, therefore I am—that assures m e that I a m utter­ ing the truth, except that I see veiy clearly that, in order to think, one must exist, I judged that I could take as a general rule that the things w e conceive very clearly and very distinctly are all true. This is a merely inductive argument, from a particular example to a universal prin­ ciple, and therefore only probable. (In fact, it is from only one example, so it is a very weak induction.) Later, Descartes will strengthen his case by a deductive argument from God's perfection (a perfect God would not deceive us). But he has not yet proved God's existence. If he uses his criterion of truth to prove God's existence and also uses God to prove his criterion of truth, he is arguing in a circle. This criticism is so famous it has come to be called "the Cartesian circle." His contemporary Arnauld put it this way: "I have . . . an uncertainty about how a circular reasoning is to be avoided in saying: the only secure reasons w e have for believing that what w e clearly and distinctly perceive is true, is the fact that God exists. But w e can be sure that God exists only be­ cause we clearly and evidently perceive t h a t . . . " If clear and distinct ideas do not deceive us, what is the cause of error? Descartes's answer is that the cause of error is not the mind itself but its improper use by the will,

when the will runs ahead of the evidence presented by the mind and makes judgments precipitously. There is no error in simple concepts like "Socrates" and "angel," but only in hasty judgments like "Socrates is an angel." For judgment is an act made (or at least caused) by the will, which actively chooses to combine two concepts, that had been pas­ sively received by the mind, as subject and predicate of a proposition; and while the mind is limited to the essences it knows, the will is unlimited in its ability to choose 7

how to combine these essences in judgments, so that the will can easily run ahead of the mind in making judgments. Descartes's Arguments for God's Existence Descartes has now (1) doubted everything, (2) proved his own existence, (3) deduced that the self is essentially a soul (mind), and (4) arrived at clear and distinct ideas as the criterion for truth. (5) Where can he go from here? He is still confined to his ideas and has not yet proved that anything in the external world exists, including his own body. He cannot use sense experience to prove anything without abandoning his universal doubt. All he T

know s are ideas. Are there any ideas which, simply by being the ideas they are, prove the existence of anything else, anything outside the ideas? Descartes finds one and only one such idea, the idea of God. God will be his only T

logical bridge between the knowledge of himself and the knowledge of the w orld, be­ tween subject and object, mind and matter. Of course he cannot prove God's existence from any external data such as the exis­ tence of things or design or causal order in the universe, because thus far he has only doubted, and not proved, the universe. But two unique aspects of the idea of God, he r

thinks, give Descartes tw o ways to prove God's existence. (1) "God" means "a wholly perfect being." Descartes knows that his mind is imper­ fect, for it is full of doubts and ignorance. Where could the idea of a perfect being have come from? Not from his own imperfect self, nor from anything else in an imperfect world, but only from God Himself. Why? Because the cause of something perfect can­ not be less than perfect. T h e effect cannot be greater than the cause. Descartes takes this principle of causality as a logically self-evident truth: It is evi­ dent by the light of nature (natural reason) that at the very least there must be as much in the total efficient cause as there is in the effect of that same cause. For, I ask, where can an effect get its reality unless it be from its cause? A n d how can the cause give that reality to the effect unless the cause also has that reality? Hence it follows that some­ thing cannot come into existence from nothing, nor even can what is more perfect, that is, that contains in itself more reality, come into existence from what contains less. T

A n d the idea of God as a w holly perfect being does exist, at least in his mind. Why does Descartes think that this proves that it must exist in reality? Because by the prin­ ciple of causality, something that exists has to cause the existence of the idea of God, and 7

the cause cannot have less perfection or less reality than its effect. How could the

imperfect m i n d of Descartes be the adequate cause of something as infinitely perfect as the idea of God?* (2) Descartes also uses St. Anselm's "ontological argument," which also argues not from any external data in the world but from the perfect idea of God to the reality of God, but without using the principle of causality. Instead, A n s e l m deduces God's exis­ tence from His essence (definition). T h e shortest way to put his argument is: (a) "God" means "the being that lacks no conceivable perfection." (b) Real, objective existence, independent of a mind, is a conceivable perfection: it is more perfect than merely subjective, mental existence, dependent on a h u m a n mind. (c) Therefore God cannot lack real, independent, objective existence. If you say that He does, you contradict yourself: you say that the being which by definition has all conceivable perfections lacks this one conceivable perfection. Descartes realizes that this argument "feels" wrong because we are deducing the real existence of something from its mere idea. It feels like a magician pulling a live rabbit out of nothing but a paper hat. But he explains why he thinks it is logically legit­ imate to deduce God's existence merely from His essence, or definition, or concept, even though he cannot do this validly for anything else: because I saw veiy well that by supposing, for example, a triangle, it is necessary for its three angles to be equal to two right angles, but I did not see anything in all this which would assure m e that any tri­ angle existed. On the other hand, returning to an examination of the idea I had of a perfect being, I found that existence was contained in it, in the same way as the fact that its three angles are equal to two right angles is contained in the idea of a tri­ angle. . . . a n g l e . . . . quently it is at least as certain that God (a being so perfect) ex­ ists as any demonstration in geometry can possibly be. (See Aquinas and Kant for critiques of this argument.) (3) There is also a third, and most commentators think weaker, argument for the existence of God in Descartes: that God must exist as the ultimate cause of the origin of Descartes's thinking self, because if he had been his own cause and creator, he would not have made himself with any imperfections, which he evidently has (e.g., ignorance and doubt). The World But all Descartes has proved so far is his own m i n d and God. A m o n g the countless ideas in his mind, they are the only two that prove themselves. How can he build a T

bridge from self (mind) to world? How can he escape solipsism? How can he be sure that even if he perfectly obeys the rules of his method, his conclusions will be true not just in the realm of ideas but also in the realm of objective reality that these ideas claim to reveal? A n assurance that thinking according to the Method will correspond to the world cannot come from the Method itself. Nor can it come from the world, for that has not been proved to exist yet. It must therefore come from God. God is Descartes's "bridge" r

from self to w orld. For a perfect God would neither deceive nor be deceived. A n d if God is the author of my m i n d and my senses, He would "program" these powers in m e

correctly, so to speak, so that so long as I used these instruments properly, I would not err. Since G o d is no deceiver, it is very manifest that He does not communicate to m e these ideas (of material things) immediately and by Himself. . . . For since H e has given m e no faculty to recognize that this is the case, but on the other hand a very great inclination to believe that they are conveyed to m e by corporeal objects, I do not see how H e could be defended from the accusation of deceit if these ideas were produced by causes other than corporeal objects. Hence w e must allow that corporeal tilings exist. T h u s the validity of sense experience and the existence of the material world they reveal, all of which Descartes began by doubting, are now proved. Notice that the idea of matter thus "proves itself," in a sense, just as the idea of self and God did: If any one of my ideas (viz. the idea of the material world) is of such a nature as clearly to make m e recognize that it is not in m e . . . and t h a t . . . I cannot be the cause of it, it follows of necessity . . . that there is another being . . . which is the cause of this idea. Descartes also argues that the material world often influences m e against my will (e.g., pain and death), so that I could not have been its author. Is it true that w e cannot help believe that material things exist? Yes, answers Descartes, and that is his premise for concluding that they do exist. Berkeley would an­ swer No, and say that w e not only can but should believe that matter does not exist, but only mind. (See ch. 61) Pascal criticized Descartes here not logically but psychologically, by pointing out that once Descartes proved God's existence and deduced from it the reliability of our mind and senses, and thus the reality of the world, he was no longer interested in God at all, but only in our scientific and technological conquest of that world. God was merely the necessary foundation for science; and, like the foundation for a building, re­ mained underground, invisible and forgotten. He was used as means rather than as the End (though Descartes, as a Catholic, does not deny that He is our final End). Descartes claims to prove the existence of (i) his own mind, (2) God, and (3) bodies (the material world), in that order. But he never attempts to prove a fourth thing: the existence of other minds (although he does believe they exist). Descartes's " S u m m u m Bonum" Pascal's criticism may be unfair, but it is certainly true that the rest of Descartes's life, and the rest of the Discourse on Method, is entirely concerned with "the conquest of na­ ture." In Part V he predicts the triumphs in physics that the use of his Method would bring. T h e method is a means to a better (more certain) philosophy, which in turn is a means to a better (more certain) foundation for physical science, which in turn is a means to the technological "conquest of nature" which is Descartes's

"summum

bonum" or final end as much as it is Bacon's. A s at least a nominal Catholic, Descartes would believe, or say he believed, that our " s u m m u m bonum" is God's conquest of m a n (salvation), but in his philosophical practice his " s u m m u m bonum" was "man's

conquest of nature" (technology). In Part V I he gives us his "salesman's pitch" and prophecy of the Utopia that the new technology would give to humanity

I quote it at length because this is for

Descartes the ultimate goal of his whole philosophy: A s soon as I had acquired some general notions in the area of physics, and, begin­ ning to test diem on various specific difficulties, I had noticed just how far they can lead and how much they differ from the principles that people have used up until the present, I believed I coidd not keep them hidden away without greatly sinning against the law that obliges us to procure as best w e can die common good of all men. (This is the only time Descartes gets serious enough to use the word "sinning.") For diese general notions show m e that it is possible to arrive at knowledge that is very useful in life and that in place of die speculative philosophy taught in the Schools, one can find a practical one, by which, knowing die force and die actions of fire, water, air, stars, the heavens, and all the other bodies that surround us, just as w e understand die various skills of our craftsmen, w e could, in die same way, use diese objects for all die purposes for which they are appropriate, and thus make ourselves, as it were, mas­ ters and possessors of nature. ("Speculative" means not "uncertain" but "seeking truth for its own sake as an end rather than as a means to use"; see Vol. I, pp. 1 2 2 - 1 2 3

o

n

Aristotle's defense of this "speculative" or "theoretical" knowledge.) This is desirable not only for the invention of an infinity of devices diat woidd en­ able us to enjoy without pain (back to Eden!) the fruits of the earth and all die goods one finds in it, but principally for the maintenance of health, which unquestionably (sic!) is the first good and die foundation of all the other goods in this life. (Nearly all philosophers offer candidates for the " s u m m u m bonum"; has any other one ever of­ fered health? Is this the philosophy of the young or of the old?) For even the mind depends so gready upon the temperament and on die dispo­ sition of the organs of the body that, were it possible to find some means to make m e n generally more wise and competent that they have been up until now, I believe diat one should look to medicine to find diis means. Descartes may be obscurely thinking of something like the fruits of genetic engineering here, though of course he did not know about genetics; for he continues: It is true diat the medicine currently practiced contains little of such usefulness; but without trying to ridicule it, I a m sure that diere is no one, not even among those in the medical profession, who would not admit that everything w e know is almost nothing in comparison to what remains to be known, and that we miglit rid ourselves of an infinity of maladies, both of body and mind, and perhaps also of the enfeeblement brought on by old age, were one to have a sufficient knowledge of their cause and of all the remedies that nature has provided for us. "Man's conquest of nature" is not complete until he has conquered pain, disease, old age, and perhaps even death itself, nature's trump card. Descartes wrote, in a letter (to Burnham), It should not be doubted that h u m a n life coidd be prolonged if we knew die appropriate art. If that is what Descartes had in mind, this raises the ghost of the serpent-tempter in Genesis 3 ("you shall be as gods"). It is the dream of Faust, and of Prometheus, and of the Tower of Babel.

T h i s is typical "Enlightenment" optimism, not only concerning how far science and technology can progress but also concerning the social consequences of this progress, which the "Enlightenment" took to be wholly benign. Because of what w e have seen of the use of technology in the twentieth century, "the century of genocide," the century of Auschwitz and Hiroshima, most people are much less optimistic today. Descartes may be "the father of modern philosophy" but it is Pascal, Descartes's less famous, less rationalistic, less optimistic, and more "existential" critic, who seems m u c h more prophetic for our present and future. "The Mind-Body Problem" This is the loose thread Descartes left hanging in his system. Mind and body are two clear and distinct ideas, for m i n d = thought without spatial extension and body = exten­ sion without thought. Since clear and distinct ideas are the criterion of truth, it must be true that mind and body really are distinct. This produces the problematic anthropology of "the ghost in the machine." A mere ghost cannot change a machine; it has no physical fingers to press buttons. Nor can a machine change a ghost, e.g., you can't kill a ghost with a gun. But our constant experience seems to show that this "ghost" and "machine" con­ stantly interact causally, or, even more intimately, always act together like two blades of a scissors, two dimensions of one thing rather than two things. If they are indeed two substances, they must meet somewhere in order to interact. Where? Why does my arm actually move when my mind commands it to move? Descartes's only answer was the pineal gland, a newly discovered ductless gland at the base or center of the brain. Of course this is no answer at all, for it is wholly on the material side, and not a bridge to spirit. If the mind has no size, it cannot be a gland, or in a gland; for a gland, no matter how small, has size. A n d if the m i n d has no size, how can it influence things that do have size? A n d how can things that do have size influ­ ence thought, which has no size? T h e dualism also seems to entail a very strange view of animals, which Descartes views as merely complex machines, so that there is no essential difference between breaking a lever off a machine and breaking a leg off a dog. T h e mind-body dualism also seems to invalidate Descartes's argument for the real existence of the corporeal world (bodily things); in fact, it seems to make it impossible for the m i n d to know (and thus be influenced by) bodies at all. If bodies (the universe) cannot act on minds, they cannot produce ideas of themselves in minds. "Occasionalism": Geulincx and Malebranche None of Descartes's successors solved the "mind-body problem" that he left to them. His immediate disciples, Geulincx and Malebranche, offered "occasionalism" as the solution: since m i n d and matter, as two clear and distinct ideas and therefore two clear and distinct substances, have nothing in common, they cannot touch or cause or act on each other. Therefore the apparent causal interaction between our minds and bodies must be brought about not by mind on body or by body on m i n d but by God, w h o

authored both and can change both. On the occasion of God knowing an event hap­ pening in one of these two worlds, He, and He alone, causes a corresponding event in the other world. Geulincx ( 1 6 2 4 - 1 6 6 9 )

affirmed only God-to-body causality, not

God-to-mind

causality: when I will my arm to move, God moves it, but when my eye sees a tree God does not put the idea of the tree into my mind. Matter, not God, moves m y mind, through my senses; but m y mind does not move m y body; God does. Malebranche ( 1 6 3 8 - 1 7 1 5 ) , more consistently, said that God was the cause of mental events as well as bodily events. On the occasion of His knowing that a knife cuts our flesh, He causes our pain-awareness. There are no natural, finite causes at all. God does everything. He is not only the First Cause but the sole cause. This is possible, Male­ branche said, because all finite minds are "in" God's mind as bodies are in space. (This is a kind of semi-pantheism, which Spinoza would extend into a full pantheism.) This "occasionalism" is similar to that of the Muslim Ash'arite philosophers of the Middle Ages: creatures are nothing, God is everything. Augustine flirted with this sort of explanation just a little bit, but only in the area of explaining sensation, since as a Platonist he also believed, like Descartes, that matter could not act on mind. T h e "mind-body problem" is not just a conceptual problem for philosophers, but a social and psychological problem for modern m a n as a whole: our felt alienation from nature, our reduction of nature to a passive, lifeless object for physical science and the reduction of ourselves to mental, detached scientific observers of it, has spilled out of the laboratory into life, and has produced a deep longing to "return to nature." Such a longing is unknown in pre-modern societies, because they did not feel the modern problem of alienation. That problem comes more from Descartes than from any other philosopher. But this alienation seems inseparable from science itself, for science succeeds only when it reduces the world to manageable dimensions, ignoring any that do not fit its method. T h e only difference between Descartes and a materialist is that he affirms m i n d as well as body. But he reduces the bodily half of his mind-body dualism to a machine. This includes our own bodies, as well as animals. They are only complex machines. His own body is thus depersonalized into an "it" rather than a "him." It is not part of his r

soul but a part of the external w orld. This is deeply problematic psychologically: to see a h u m a n body, even your own, not as a dimension of a person, a subject, "in here," but as an object, as part of the "out there." One cannot help wondering how many distinctively modern psychological prob­ lems, especially in the area of sexuality, are rooted in this Cartesian dualism. * Can you detect the logical fallacy of "begging the question" in Descartes' argu­ ment in this very first paragraph? * Pascal argued, against Descartes, that this doubt will not lead us to certainty; that we cannot be certain by reason alone; that w e must make an initial leap of faith in rea­ son itself, since our reason cannot, without begging the question, decide whether or not to trust our reason, i.e., to trust that it comes from a trustable Mind (God) rather

than an untrustable Mind (the Devil) or from no Mind at all but only blind chance (which is just as untrustable). But must there not also be reasons for any faith or trust? Is this a "which comes first, the chicken or the egg?" problem? *" Many questions arise here: (1) Is time atomistic, like numbers? Are its moments separate? (2) Is space? (3) Are events'? Is one historical event related to another one as numbers are? (4) On the other hand, doesn't quantum physics reduce all physical reality to atom­ istic quanta? Yet light is both continuous waves and discontinuous particles (photons). * This perhaps defines the difference between pre-modem and modern m a n more primordially than anything else. C. S. Lewis puts it simply and strikingly in The Aboli­ tion of Man: "There is something which unites magic and applied science (technology) while separating both from the 'wisdom' of earlier ages. For the wise m e n of old, the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique." * Dostoyevski's argument against atheism is an intuitive version of Descartes's: How could such selfish, ignorant apes as m e n invent such a perfect idea as God? It gives us far too m u c h credit.

56. Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) Pascal versus Descartes—this is not only a personal contrast and a contrast in philo­ sophical styles but a cultural contrast that will characterize modern Western civilization as a whole. It is the contrast between "Enlightenment" scientific rationalism and antirationalism. Pascal is really the founder of modern Existentialism. One can find his influence on almost every page of Kierkegaard. T h e term "existentialism" was invented by Sartre in the early 1 9 4 0 s , but he defined it so narrowly that only his own position fit it: that "existence precedes essence," i.e., that we have no essence, nature, meaning, or purpose but must invent our own. T h e term is now used by philosophers more broadly—indeed, so broadly that it applies to very diverse philosophers: atheists and theists, optimists and pessimists, humanists and anti-humanists. It has a definite meaning, but it points not to a set of answers but to a set of questions; not a doctrine or teaching but a method or approach or point of view, which is typically modern rather than ancient in being subjective and personal rather than objective and impersonal. It tends to be individualistic and suspicious of universals and abstractions. If philosophy is "the love of wisdom," existentialists inter­ pret this love as a passionate personal romance rather than a cerebral scientific curios­ ity. What distinguishes the modern mind the most is "the turn to the subject." In this sense, Augustine's Confessions is a historical anomaly: a uniquely modern book from pre-modern times. It is significant that when he knew he was dying Pascal gave away his entire large library except for the Bible and the Confessions. Pascal's Pensées, like the Confessions, is a dramatic journey. It is a quest for the two things he says we all want most and get least: truth and happiness. More attention is paid to the journey and its troubles than to the outcome. A s in the early Socratic dialogs, w e are shown the thought process and its failures and problems as well as the solution. A n d when w e get the solu­ T

tion, Pascal proposes it as a "w ager" or gamble (what later existentialists will call a "leap of faith") rather than a proof. Pascal is rightly classified as an "existentialist" because the questions he deals with T

are the typically "existential" questions, w hich intrigue not just professional philoso­ phers but all sensitive h u m a n beings—questions such as: personal identity, unhappiness, uncertainty, alienation from nature, death, evil, h u m a n vanity, passion, love, suffering, freedom, immortality, and God. (Many existentialists are atheists but none are indifferent to the question.) Pascal was also a scientific genius, who invented the world's first working computer (a simple mechanical calculating machine that he designed for his accountant father to relieve his arthritic fingers), vacuum cleaner, and urban public transportation system (in Paris), as well as making important discoveries in physics. Descartes tried to use the scientific mind and method for philosophy, but Pascal did not; he contrasted the scien­ tific, "geometrical" mind with the "intuitive" mind, and famously said that "the heart has its reasons which the (scientific) reason does not know." Because his style is so clear and "punchy," I have used his own words to summa­ rize him, adding only topical headings to make clear the logical outline and order of his

thoughts. His masterpiece, the Pensées ("thoughts"), is not a book but almost i o o o short notes for one. T h e book was cut short bv that inconvenient visitor, death. (Outline) First Part: Wretchedness of m a n without God. Second Part: Happiness of m a n with God. (Method) We think playing upon man is like playing upon an ordinary organ. It is indeed an organ, but strange, shifting and changeable. Those who only know how to play an ordi­ nary organ would never be in tune on this one. You have to know where the keys are. (Our Fundamental Fourfold Data) We desire truth, and find in ourselves nothing but uncertainty. We desire happiness, and find only wretchedness and death. We are incapable of not desiring truth and happiness and incapable of (attaining) either certainty or happiness. (The Greatness and Wretchedness of Man) Man is neither angel nor beast, and it is unfortunately the case that anyone trying to act the angel acts the beast. It is dangerous to explain too clearly to m a n how like he is to the animals without point­ ing out his greatness. It is also dangerous to make too much of his greatness without his vileness. It is still more dangerous to leave h i m in ignorance of both. If he exalts himself, I humble him. If he humbles himself, I exalt him. A n d I go on contradicting him until he understands that he is a monster that passes all under­ standing. Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed. There is no need for the whole universe to take up arms to crush him: a vapour, a drop of water is enough to kill him. But even if the universe were to crush him, m a n woidd still be no­ bler than his slayer, because he knows that he is dying and the advantage the universe has over him. H i e universe knows none of this. Thus all our dignity consists in thought. It is on thought that w e must depend for our recovery, not on space and time, which w e could never fill. Let us then strive to think well; that is the basic principle of morality. It is not in space that I must seek my h u m a n dignity, but in the ordering of my thought. It will do m e no good to own land. Through space the universe grasps m e and swallows m e up like a speck; through thought I grasp it. Man's greatness comes from knowing he is wretched: a tree does not know it is wretch­ ed. Thus it is wretched to know that one is wretched, but there is greatness in knowing one is wretched.

All these examples of wretchedness prove his greatness. It is the wretchedness of a great lord, the wretchedness of a dispossessed king. Who indeed would think himself unhappy not to be king except one who had been dispossessed? . . . Who would think himself unhappy if he had only one mouth and who woidd not if he had only one eye? It has probably never occurred to anyone to be distressed at not having three eyes, but those who have none are inconsolable. (Vanity) How vain painting is, exciting admiration by its resemblance to tilings of which w e do not admire the originals! Let each of us examine his thoughts; he will find them wholly concerned with the past or the future. We almost never think of the present, and if w e do think of it, it is only to see what light it throws on our plans for the future. . . . Thus w e never actually live, but hope to live, and since we are always planning how to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so. A trifle consoles us because a trifle upsets us. Anyone who wants to know the full extent of man's vanity has only to consider the causes and effects of love. The cause is a je ne sais quoi. A n d its effects are terri­ fying. . . . fying. . . . Cleopa- nose: if it had been shorter the whole face of the earth woidd have been different. (The Vanity of H u m a n Justice) 'Why are you killing m e for your own benefit? I a m unarmed.' 'Why, do you not live on the other side of the water? My friend, if you lived on this side, I should be a murderer, but since you live on the other side, I a m a brave m a n and it is right/ H i e r e no doubt exist natural laws, but once this fine reason of ours was corrupted, it corrupted everything. As m e n coidd not make might obey right, they have made right obey might. A s they coidd not fortify justice they have justified force. Right is open to dispute, might is eas­ ily recognized . . . being thus unable to make right into might, w e have made might into right. When everything is moving at once, nothing appears to be moving, as on board ship. When everyone is moving towards depravity, no one seems to be moving, but if some­ one stops he shows up the others who are rushing on, by acting as a fixed point. (The Weakness of H u m a n Reason) H i i s internal war of reason against the passions has made those who wanted peace split into two sects. Some wanted to renounce passions and become gods, others wanted to renounce reason and become brute beasts. But neither side has succeeded, and reason

always remains to denounce the baseness and injustice of the passions and to disturb the peace of those who surrender to them. A n d the passions are always alive in those who want to renounce them. Imagination: it is the dominant faculty in man. . . . Would you not say that this magistrate, whose venerable age commands universal respect, is m i e d by pure rea­ son? . . . See him go to hear a sermon in a spirit of pious zeal, the soundness of his judgment strengthened by the ardour of his charity. . . . If, when the preacher ap­ pears, it turns out that nature has given him a hoarse voice and an odd sort of face . face . - whatever great truths he may announce, I wager that our senator will not be able to keep a s traigli t face. Put the world's greatest philosopher on a plank that is wider than need be: if there is a precipice below, although his reason may convince him that he is safe, his imagination will prevail. . .If physicians did not have long gowns and nudes, if learned doctors did not wear square caps and robes four times too large, they woidd never have deceived the world. . . . If they possessed true justice, and if physi­ cians possessed the true art of healing, they woidd not need square c a p s . . . (The Refutation of Both Dogmatism and Skepticism) What amazes m e most is to see that everyone is not amazed at his own weak­ ness. . . . Nothing strengthens the case for skepticism more than the fact that there are people who are not skeptics. H i e strongest of the skeptics' arguments . . . is that w e cannot be sure that these (selfevident first) principles are true, faith and revelation apart, except through some natural intuition. Now this natural intuition affords no convincing proof that they are true. (For) There is no certainty, apart from faith, as to whedier m a n was created by a good God, an evil demon, or just by chance, and so it is a matter of doubt, depending on our origin, whether diese innate principles are true, false or uncertain

I pause at

the dogmatists' only strong point, which is that we cannot doubt natural principles if we speak sincerely and in all good faith. To which the skeptics reply, in a word, that uncertainty as to our origin entails uncertainty as to our nature. The dogmatists have been trying to answer that ever since the world began. . . . You cannot be a skeptic without stifling nature, you cannot be a dogmatist without turning your back on rea­ son. (Alienation; Relativity; Lostness) Nature is an infinite sphere whose centre is everywhere and circumference is nowhere. . . . For after all, what is man in nature? A nothing compared to the infi­ nite, a whole compared to the nothing, a middle point between all and nothing, infin­ itely remote from an understanding of the extremes; the end of tilings and their prin­ ciples (origins) are unattainably hidden from h i m in impenetrable secrecy. EquaUy incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is e n g u l f e d . . . . We are floating in a m e d i u m of vast extent, always drifting uncer­ tainly, blown to and fro; whenever w e think we have a fixed point to which w e can cling

and make fast, it shifts and leaves us behind; if w e follow it, it eludes our grasp, slips away, and flees eternally before us. Nodiing stands still for us. This is our natural state and yet the state most contrary to our inclinations. We burn with desire to find a firm footing, an ultimate, lasting base on which to build a tower rising up to infinity, but our whole foundation cracks and die earth opens up into the depth of the abyss. When I consider the brief span of my life absorbed into the eternity which conies before and after— 'as the remembrance of a guest that tarrieth hut a day'—the small space I occupy and which I see swallowed up in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I know nodiing and which know nodiing of me, I take fright and a m amazed to see myself here rather than there: diere is no reason for m e to be here rather than there, now

T

radier tìian dien. Who put m e here? By whose command and act were this time and place allotted to me? (Death) Anyone with only a week to live will not find it in his interest to believe diat all this is just a matter of chance. Between us and heaven or hell is diere is only life half-way, the most fragile thing in die world. Imagine a number of m e n in chains, all under sentence of death, some of w h o m are each day butchered in the sight of the odiéis; those remaining see their own condition in that of dieir fellows, and looking at each other with grief and despair await their turn. This is an image of the h u m a n condition. The last act is bloody, however fine the rest of die play. They throw a little earth over your head and it is finished forever. We run heedlessly into die abyss after putting somediing in front of us to stop us seeing it. (Selfishness) H i e bias towards self is the beginning of all disorder, in war, politics, economi c s . . . . We are born unfair. Anyone who does not hate the self-love widiin h i m and the instinct which leads h i m to make himself into a G o d must be really blind. Who can fail to see diat there is nodiing so contrary to justice and truth? For it is false that we deserve this position and unjust and impossible to attain it, because everyone demands the same diing. We are dius born into an obviously unjust situation from which w e cannot escape but from which we must escape. The predicament in which it dius finds itself arouses in it die most unjust and criminal passion that coidd possibly be imagined, for it conceives a deadly hatred for the truth which rebukes it and convinces it of its faults. It woidd like to do away with this truth,

and not being able to destroy it as such, it destroys it as best it can, in die consciousness of itself and others; that is, it takes eveiy care to hide its faidts both from itself and oth­ ers, and cannot bear to have them pointed out or noticed. It is no doubt an evil to be full of faidts, but it is a still greater evil to be full of them and be unwilling to recognize them, since this entails the further evil of deliberate self-delusion. There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sin­ ners who think they are righteous. (The Pseudo-Solution of Diversion) If our condition were tndy happy, we should not need to divert ourselves from thinking about it. Sometimes, when I set to thinking about the various activities of men, the dangers and troubles which they face at Court or in war, giving rise to so many quarrels and pas­ sions, daring and often wicked enterprises and so on, I have often said that the sole cause of man's unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room. Hiat is why we prefer the hunt to the capture. That is why m e n are so fond of hustle and bustle. That is why prison is such a fearful punishment. That is why the pleasures of solitude are so incomprehensible. AU our life passes in this way: w e seek rest by struggling against certain obstacles, and once they are overcome, rest proves intolerable because of the boredom it produces. We must get away from it and crave excitement. A given m a n lives a life free from boredom by gambling a small s u m every day. Give h i m every morning the money he might win that day, but on condition that he does not gamble, and you will make h i m unhappy. It might be argued that what he wants is the entertainment of gaming and not the winnings. Make h i m play then for nothing; his interest will not be fired and he will become bored. So it is not just entertainment he wants. A half-hearted entertainment without excitement will bore him. H e must have excitement, he must delude himself into imagining that he woidd be happy to win what he would not want as a gift if it meant giving up gambling. H e must create some target for his passions and then arouse his desire, anger, fear, for this object he has cre­ ated, just like children taking fright at a mask they have made themselves. (The Pseudo-Solution of Indifference) Copernicus' opinion need not be more closely examined. But this: It affects our whole life to know whether the soid is mortal or immortal. H i e immortality of the soid is something of such vital importance to us, affecting us so deeply, that one must have lost all feeling not to care about knowing the facts of the matter. AU our actions and thoughts must foUow such different paths, according to whether there is hope of eternal blessings or not, that the only possible way of acting

with sense and judgment is to decide our course in the light of this point, which ought to be our ultimate objective. A n d that is why, amongst those who are not convinced, I make an absolute distinction between those who strive with all their might to learn and those who live without troubling themselves or thinking about it. I can feel nothing but compassion for those who sincerely lament their doubt, who regard it as the ultimate misfortune, and who, sparing no effort to escape from it, make their search their principal and most serious business. But as for those wlio spend their lives without a thought for this final end of life . . . I view them veiy differently. This negligence in a matter where they themselves, their eternity, their all are at stake, fills m e more with irritation than pity. It astounds and appalls me; it seems quite monstrous to me. I do not say this prompted by die pious zeal of spiritual devotion. I mean on the contrary that we ought to have this feeling from principles of h u m a n

interest and self-

esteem . . . how can such an argument as this occur to a reasonable man?: 'I do not know who put m e into the world. . . . All I know is that I must soon die, but what I know least about is this very death which I cannot evade. Just as I do not know whence I come, so I do not know whither I a m going. . . . A n d my conclusion from all this is that I must pass my days without a thought of seeking what is to happen

to

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m e . . . and allow myself to be carried off limply to my death, uncertain of my future state for all eternity/ Who woidd wish to have as his friend a m a n who argued like that? Who woidd choose him from among others as a confidant in his affairs? Who woidd resort to h i m in adversity? To what use in life could he possibly be turned? It is truly glorious for religion to have such unreasonable m e n as enemies

With everything

else they are quite different: they fear the most trifling things, foresee and feel them; and the same m a n who spends so many days and nights in fury and despair about losing some office or at some imaginary affront to his honour is die very one who knows tìiat he is going to lose everything through death but feels neither anxiety nor emotion. It is a monstrous thing to see one and the same heart at once so sensitive to minor diings and so strangely insensitive to die greatest. It is an incomprehensible spell, a supernatural torpor . . . (The Alternative: Passionate Truth-Seeking) T

To render (diverting) passions harmless let us behave as though w e had only a week to live. Tliere are only three sorts of people: tìiose who have found G o d and serve him; those who are busy seeking him and have not found him; those who live without either seeking or finding him. The first are reasonable and happy, the last are foolish and unhappy, those in the middle are unhappy and reasonable. Nature has nothing to offer m e that does not give rise to doubt and anxiety. If I saw no sign diere of a Divinity I should decide on a negative solution; if I saw signs of a Creator everywhere I should peacefully settle down in the faith. But seeing too much to deny and not enough to affirm, I a m in a pitiful state. . . . My whole heart strains to know what the true good is in order to pursue it: no price woidd be too high to pay for

eternity. Truth is so obscured nowadays and lies (are) so well established that unless we love the truth w e shall never recognize it. (Three Places to Search; Three Metaphysical Levels) The infinite distance between body and mind symbolizes the infinitely more infinite distance between mind and charity. . . . They are three different orders differing in kind. . . . All bodies, die firmament, die stars, the earth, and its kingdoms are not worth the least of minds, for it knows them all and itself too, while bodies know nothing. All bodies together and all minds together and all their products are not worth the last impulse of charity. This is of an infinitely superior order. Out of all bodies together we could not succeed in creating one little thought. It is impossible, and of a different order. Out of all bodies and minds we coidd not extract one impulse of true charity. It is impossible, and of a different, supernatural, order. Philosophers: they surprise the ordinary run of men. Christians: diey surprise the philosophers. (The Heart as an Epistemological Subject) We know the truth not only through our reason but also through our heart. It is through the latter that we know first principles. It is die heart which perceives G o d and not the reason. That is what faith is: G o d perceived by the heart, not by the reason. The heart has its reasons, of which reason knows nothing. We know this in countless ways. I say diat it is natural for the heart to love the universal being or itself, according to its allegiance, and it hardens itself against eitìier as it chooses. You have rejected one and kept die other. Is it reason that makes you love yourself? (The Relation Between Faith and Reason) Two excesses: to exclude reason, to admit nothing but reason. One must know when it is right to (skeptically) doubt, to (rationally) affirm, to (faithfully) submit. Anyone who does odierwise does not understand the force of reason. Some m e n rim counter to diese three principles, either affirming that everything can be proved, because diey know nothing about proof, or doubting everything, because diey do not know when to submit, or always submitting, because tìiey do not know when judgment is called for. Reason woidd never submit unless it judged tíiat there are occasions when it ought to submit. It is right, dien, that reason should submit when it judges that it ought to submit. Reason's last step is the recognition that diere are an infinite number of things which

ai e beyond it. It is merely feeble if it does not go as far as to realize that. (Why God Hides) God wishes to move die will rather than die mind. Perfect clarity woidd help die mind and haim die will. H u m b l e dieir pride. There is enough light for those who desire only to see, and enough darkness for diose of a contrary disposition. If there were no obscurity m a n would not feel his corruption; if there were no light m a n coidd not hope for a cure. Thus it is not only right but useful for us that G o d should be partly concealed and partly revealed, since it is equally dangerous for m a n to know G o d without knowing his own wretchedness as to know his wretchedness with­ out knowing God. Knowing God without knowing our own wretchedness makes for pride. Knowing our own wretchedness without knowing God makes for despair. Knowing Jesus Christ strikes the balance because he shows us bodi G o d and our own wretchedness. If he had wished to overcome die obstinacy of the most hardened, he coidd have done so by revealing himself to diem so plainly that they coidd not doubt. . .as he will ap­ pear on the last day. . . . H i i s is not the way he wished to appear when he came in mildness. . . The way of God, which disposes all diings widi gentleness, is to instill religion into our minds widi reasoned arguments and into our hearts with grace; but attempting to instill it into hearts and minds with force and threats is to instill not reli­ gion but terror. (The Wager) Either God is or he is not. But to which view shall we be inclined? Reason cannot de­ cide tiiis question. Infinite chaos separates us. At the far end of diis infinite distance a coin is being spun which will come down heads or tails. How will you wager? Reason cannot make you choose either, reason cannot prove eidier wrong. Do not then condemn as wrong those who have made a choice, for you know noth­ ing about it. 'No, but I will condemn them not for having made diis particular choice, but any choice; for although die one who calls heads and the other one are equally at faidt, the fact is that diey are bodi at faidt. The right thing is not to wager at all.' Yes, but you must wager. There is no choice, you are already embarked. Which will you choose then? Let us see. Since a choice must be made, let us see which offers you die most interest. You have two diings to lose: the true and the good; and two things to stake: your reason and your will, your knowledge and your happiness; and your nature has two diings to avoid: error and wretchedness. Since you must necessarily choose, your reason is no more affronted by choosing one radier than the other. That is one point cleared up. But your happiness? Let us weigh up die gain and the loss involved in calling heads

that God exists. Let us assess the two cases: if you win you win everything, if you lose, you lose nothing. Do not hesitate then: wager that he does exist. Thus our argument carries infinite weight, when the stakes are finite in a game where there are even chances of winning and losing and an infinite prize to be won. . . . what harm will come to you from choosing this course? You will be faithful, honest, humble, grateful, full of good works, a sincere, true friend. It is true you will not enjoy noxious pleasures, glory and good living, but will you not have others? I tell you that you will gain even in this life, and that at eveiy step you take along this road you will see that your gain is so certain and your risk so negligible that in the end you will realize that you have wagered on something certain and infinite for which you have paid nothing. For a modern practical and commonsensical defense of Pascal's "wager" see William James on "The Will to Believe" in Volume IV, p. 9 0 .

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V

For a contemporary attempt to (i) organize the Pensees into a logical and practical order, and to (2) unpack their "existential," personal "bite," see my Christianity for Modern Pagans: Pascal's Pensées Edited and Explained.

57* Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) Spinoza's family were Jews from Portugal who during the previous century had be­ come prosperous businessmen in Amsterdam, a refuge of tolerance in an age of reli­ gious persecution. "Benedictus" was his "Christian" name, though he was not a Chris­ tian; "Baruch" was his Jewish name, though he was solemnly excommunicated from the Jewish community for his heretical v i e w s . ! Nor was he an atheist; in fact he was called "the God-intoxicated man." T h e most accurate label for his views is something like rationalistic pantheism. He studied Talmud only until he was 1 3 , and he found in traditional Jewish philoso­ phers like Moses Maimonides, author of the medieval classic Guide to the Peiylexed, only perplexity rather than guidance. He preferred the atomistic materialism of Democritus, Lucretius and Epicurus, and above all the Stoics, to the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle. From the medieval Scholastics he took only their terminology and syllo­ gistic method. Like Descartes, he tried to tighten and refine philosophy's method by modeling it after Euclid's geometry, since this alone gave h i m what he demanded: demonstrable certainty—a demand he shared with Descartes. Like everyone in the seventeenth century, he was deeply influenced by Descartes, but disagreed with his matter-mind dualism. His master idea was that in the last anal­ ysis there was only one reality (that is monism) and this was God (that is pantheism). God and nature were one; the distinction between them came about only through men­ tally different points of view, when we distinguish "nature naturing" (natura naturans) and "nature natured" (natura naturata). All who knew h i m testified that he was simple, modest, frugal, gentle, generous, and loyal. He made enough money to live on as a lens grinder. But his real world was the world of the mind. He so prized his freedom that he refused the prestigious chair of philosophy that the University of Heidelberg offered to him, even though he was promised complete freedom, because he feared that his views might interfere with the established religion of the principality. Religion, Faith and Reason This "God-intoxicated man" was the polar opposite of an atheist. Yet he was often called an atheist because he did not believe in the God of the Bible, the Creator. He was a pantheist. A n atheist believes there is no Creator, a pantheist believes there is no cre­ ation. A n atheist believes there is nothing above nature; a pantheist believes that there is nothing below God. Spinoza's God was not the living, acting, personal G o d of Jew­ ish, Christian, or Islamic religion. God was simply "substance," or being itself. (See below, the section on his metaphysics.) Yet at the same time he claimed to be also a good religious Jew, because he taught a kind of "two truth" theory similar to that of Averroes and Siger of Brabant (see Vol II): that faith, a religion of a personal God ("I AM"), divine revelation, miracles, divine law, free will, immortality, judgment, Heaven and Hell were good myths for the masses, who could not rise to the philosophical abstractions which made them unnecessary for

the enlightened philosopher. T h u s Spinoza would agree with Pascal that there is a great gap between what Pascal called "the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob" and "the God of the philosophers and scholars." But where Pascal chose the God of Abraham, known by the old "Faith," whose epistemic organ he located in the "heart" or intuitive m i n d ("The heart has its reasons which the reason does not know"), Spinoza chose the God of the philosophers, known by the new Cartesian kind of mathematical reason. His Tractatus Logico-Politicus was the first influential m o d e m source of "higher crit­ icism" of the Bible, and of "demythologization," which classified everything in it that was supernatural or miraculous as myth, allegory or metaphor. T h i s was done not on the basis of scientific or textual evidence, but on the basis of a prior philosophical conviction that the supernatural was unreal. In light of this philo­ sophical premise, Spinoza had to radically reinterpret the textual data in the Bible if he wanted to claim that he accepted the religion of the Bible. Spinoza argued that his un­ orthodox views were in fact the views of the earliest Jews before the religion was per­ verted and changed into its present form: I might even venture to say that m y view is the s a m e as that entertained by the Hebrews of old. This is also what Manicheans, Muslims, and Christian Modernists said about the Christian scriptures: that they are a later corruption of an originally Manichean, or Muslim, or Modernist text (which is now, conveniently, totally lost and can only be "reconstructed"). See Augustine's cri­ tique of this in Confessions: "But they made no claim to produce any of the uncorrupted copies." T

T h e fundamental problem w ith Biblical Judaism for Spinoza was its metaphysical dualism of Creator vs. creatures. This dualism stemmed from the distinctively Jewish notion of God creating, out of nothing, a world really distinct from Himself by an act of 7

omnipotent will. Ancient Hebrew even has a word for this unique concept that appears in no other ancient language: the word bara.' That verb always has God, not man, as its subject. For Spinoza, G o d is not, as in the Bible, a Person ("I AM"); this is only our projec­ tion. I believe that a triangle, if it could speak, would in like manner say that G o d is eminendy triangular. (Compare Xenophanes, Vol. I, page 62.) Neither intellect nor will pertains to the nature of God. . . . T h e mind of G o d is all the mentality that is scat­ tered over space and time, the diffused consciousness that animates the world." (Can consciousness be "diffused" rather than centered in an "I"? Is this being misled by a material metaphor?) Like later religious "modernists," Spinoza believed that all religions were one or could be made one, and that the polemics between Jews and Christians could be re­ solved by a compromise about Jesus: that he was not God but the best of men. Like the "modernists" he opposed all dogmas and creeds and churches as divisive and hoped that their abolition would finally bring about universal h u m a n brotherhood. Metaphysics Spinoza's masterpiece is the Ethics, which begins with, and bases everything on, his

metaphysics. T h e book could not be safely published in his lifetime because of its heretical theological views, but afterwards it became cherished by Lessing, Herder, Schleiermacher, Novalis, Goethe, Wordsworth,

Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Fichte,

Schelling, and Hegel. Yet it is one of the most difficult books ever written. Its style is that of Euclidean geometry, far more severely mathematical than Aquinas's Summa, which is loose by comparison. Every word counts, and it is long. Yet its summary is quite short and simple: There are only three terms that cover everything that is: (A) substance, (B) attribute, and (C) mode. Of these the first is by far the most important. (Ai) By "substance" I mean that which is in itself and is conceived by itself; in other words, that the conception of which does not need the conception of another thing. In other words, substance = the absolute, both in being and in concept. (A2) This definition allows only one substance. Any second substance, in order to be second, would be relative to the first substance and thus would not be substance as Spinoza has defined it, i.e., absolute. T h u s he posits a m o n i s m or pantheism by defi­ nition. (A3) Substance must be infinite and not limited by or dependent on anything else in any way. This means it must have an infinity of attributes, since it is not qualitatively limited, and that it must be eternal, since it is not quantitatively limited by time. (A4) It is not immaterial, however. Both spirit and matter are real, and are the only two of the infinite attributes of substance that we know. T h u s it (God) and the material universe and mind are one being, not three. (A5) It must also be the uncaused cause of everything, even itself. He calls it causa sui ("cause of itself"). This is a logical impossibility for an efficient cause. (How can something bring itself into existence? It would have to be metaphysically prior to itself.) But Spinoza means by "cause" not efficient or final cause but formal (and material) cause. It is the immanent form or formula for a thing's essence, as dogginess causes a dog to be a dog, (A6) Spinoza does not dismiss the plurality of beings in time and space as illusions, as some Hindu or Buddhist monists or pantheists do, but explains that they are (for­ mally, not efficiently) generated by substance as conclusions are generated by axioms in geometry. This is not free creation but logical emanation or necessity, as in Plotinus. From it, he says, infinite things in infinite ways, that is to say, all things, have neces­ sarily flowed, or continually flow by the s a m e necessity, in the same way as it follows from the nature of a triangle, from eternity and to eternity, that its three angles are equal to two right angles. (A7) T h u s God and nature are identical. T h e only difference is how we look at it: from above (natura naturata, nature as active cause) or below (natura naturans, nature as receptive effect). God IS nature and nature IS God. (A8) Spinoza gives three arguments for the existence of this God. All are similar to

A n s e l m e "ontological argument/' T h e first argument essentially repeats Anselm's. T h e second is that God's nonexistence coidd not be because this coidd not have a cause, and it could not have a cause because nothing could be great enough to cause God's nonex­ istence. T h e third is that if we admit that finite beings exist, w e must admit that infinite Being exists, for the concept of finitude is meaningless without the concept of infinity. If only finite things exist, it follows that things finite are greater than the absolutely infinite Being (since that Being does not even have existence). A n d that is selfcontradictory: that the finite is greater than the infinite. In all these arguments Spinoza assumes that what is true of concepts is true of real­ ity. This is one way of labeling the essential assumption of metaphysical Rationalism: that reality is a (partial or imperfect) mirror of concepts rather than concepts being (par­ tial or imperfect) mirrors of reality. (Bi) By "attribute" I mean that which the intellect perceives of Substance, as consti­ tuting its essence. Attributes are answers to the question "What is it?" But all attributes are essential, nothing is accidental from God's point of view ("sub specie aeternitatis," from the viewpoint of eternity). One is tempted to ask Spinoza how he as a mere creature has acquired God's point of view, but he would have a ready answer: nothing is a creature, everything is a "mode" of God (see point C). (B2) Infinite substance must have infinite attributes. (B3) T h e only two w e know are thought and extension. T h u s Spinoza solves Descartes's mind-body problem at a cosmic level. (C) By mode I understand the modifications of Substance or that which is anodier thing tiirough which also it is conceived. This means all the concrete things that exist. To put the point in a crude and unfair but memorable image (from C. S. Lewis), God is like a pudding, its attribute is tapioca, and all things, including ourselves, are lumps of it. To balance this probably unattractive exposition of Spinoza's monism, we should note its attractive and exhilarating aspect. But this comes out most clearly in our next section, Epistemology. Epistemology: die "Coherence Theory of Truth" (1) Spinoza distinguishes four levels of h u m a n consciousness. They are: hearsay knowl­ edge; vague empirical experience; clear rational, deductive reasoning; and the intel­ lectual vision of eternal and necessary truth. These four steps are quite similar (though not identical) to the four steps of Plato's "divided line," and they lead us upward to per­ fect happiness through seeing things "sub specie aeternitatis," a kind of optimistic fatalism similar to that of Buddhism and Stoicism. (2) This is the heart of Spinoza's passion for philosophy: not just explanation and the search for rational certainty but ultimate meaning and happiness, a "beatific vision" to be attained not in Heaven by divine grace but on earth through philosophical

reasoning. Philosophy is for h i m what religion is for most people: the way to supreme happiness, the way of salvation (though not from sin but from ignorance, and not by divine grace, faith, or moral choice but by the intellectual understanding of the ultimate meaning of all things). T h u s philosophy is worth giving up the world for: After experience had taught me that all diings which frequendy take place in ordinary life are vain and feeble . . . I determined at last to inquire whether there be anything which might be tndy good, and able to communicate its goodness. . . . I determined, I say, to inquire whether I might discover and attain the power of enjoying throughout eternity continual supreme happiness. (On the Improvement of the Understanding) r

That is his great question. A n d here is his answ er: The greatest good is the union which the mind has with the whole of nature. For "nature" is just another word for "God," or the whole. (3) One's epistemology always matches one's metaphysics.* T h u s Spinoza's monis­ T

tic pantheism matches his "coherence theory of truth." Since reality is one, not tw o, there­ fore truth is the oneness, or coherence, of an idea within itself, or within a single sys­ tem of ideas, rather than the correspondence between an idea and some second thing. Like the Hindu Upanishads, Spinoza believes that "the idea of oneness is the source of all truth; the idea of twoness is the source of all error" Most of his predecessors, including Descartes, had assumed the more commonsensical "correspondence theory of truth": that propositions are true when they correspond to objective reality. This theory fit Descartes's dualism between mind and matter, m a n and nature, subject and object, knower and known (though the correspondence theory is older and more widely held than the new Cartesian dualism). 7

But the Occasionalists had shown that if Descartes's dualism was true, the w orld of matter could not act on minds to cause ideas that corresponded to it. Spinoza solved this problem by his monism: that both the world with its things and our minds with their ideas are modes of the same single substance, God. This monistic metaphysics requires a coherence theory of truth, which means that ideas are judged true not because they correspond to the material things and events that cause them (which for Spinoza is impossible) but because they cohere in a logical unity, or (to say the same thing more metaphysically) that they manifest the only true reality, God. T h u s no idea is absolutely true except the idea of God. All other ideas are more or less true insofar as they manifest more or less of this unity. T h e bigger and more God­ like an idea is, the truer it is. T h u s no idea is simply false.^; (Spinoza, as a victim of intolerance, saw this idea as promoting tolerance for all ideas, since there is some truth in all of them.) Spinoza's point is that there are levels of understanding anything. Another person, e.g., can be understood as (a) "just somebody," or as (b) "Alice," or as (c) "my sister w h o m I've lived with for twenty years, my closest friend," or (d) as God understands Alice. r

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To understand any one thing or person completely, w e w ould have to understand

everything in the universe, because everything is related to everything in nature not externally and accidentally but intrinsically and essentially. Nature is not only one sin­ gle system but one single thing, one substance, in which all apparenúy distinct things are really only modes of the same substance. T h u s to know any part of it rightly is to T

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know the w hole of it. It is like Tennyson's poem "Flower in the Crannied Wall": "Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies. Were I to know you, all in all, I would know all God and m a n is." Ethics (i) Spinoza begins his Ethics the same way Aristotle does, by defining "the good" as "the object of desire." T h e supreme good, or happiness, is simply the satisfaction of all desires. A n d this is the perfection, or actualization, or self-realization, of each person. (2) However, whereas for Aristode (and for common sense) this "realization" or per­ fection must be attained by willing, choosing, and practicing the virtues, for Spinoza it is already there—everyone and everything is already perfect—so that the only actual­ ization or self-realization that is necessary or even possible is mental, a realization of our already-existing eternal perfection through our divine identity. There are, in fact, no real potentialities at all for Spinoza. Everything is already actual, everything is eternal (not just everlasting but timeless, like a concept). This logically fol­ lows from monism; for since everything is, in the last analysis, one, therefore time, which separates things and persons and events, must be, in the last analysis, not real but only apparent. This is very similar to the moksha or mukti of Hinduism, expressed in the formula "tat tvam asi" ("Thou art that," your deepest identity, Atman, is identical to the divine identity, Brahman). It is not future but present and timeless. Buddhism makes a sim­ ilar point: that in the realization of Nirvana or satori or kensho, it is not reality that changes but only your consciousness of it, from sleeping to waking ("enlightenment"). (3) Since there is no time or potentiality, there is no free choice between potential futures. Free will is an illusion, even though common sense believes it is a necessary prerequisite for morality. (Kant expressed that common belief by saying that " I ought implies Í can.") What w e mistake for freedom, according to Spinoza, is only ignorance of the neces­ sary causes that determine our choices and our future. Spinoza is a determinisi. T h e mechanistic determinism that Descartes ascribed only to the material half of his cosmic dualism, Spinoza sees in mind and spirit as well. There are no potentialities or possi­ bilities; everything is either necessary or impossible. Neither m a n nor even God is free to choose among alternatives. T h e intellect is not like a navigator and the will like a cap­ tain, so that the captain can obey or disobey the navigator's advice; in fact will and intel­ lect are one and the same thing, for a volition is merely an idea which . . . has

remained long enough in consciousness to pass over into action. Spinoza's argument for this surprising conclusion is that for anyone to say that God could have chosen differently and made things different (e.g., to have created or em­ anated a universe without any frogs in it) is to place a limit on God, who is unlimited. For this alleged possibility of a frogless universe would be either better than this one— in which case a perfect God would have necessarily chosen it—or worse—in which case it woidd have been impossible for Perfection to have chosen it. Leibnitz argued that this must be "the best of all possible worlds." Spinoza thought there was only one pos­ sible world: this one. Spinoza does speak of freedom, but this is only the freedom of self-determination, which is itself determined and necessary. It is merely the freedom from fear and igno­ rance, not from determinism; the freedom which comes from seeing that everything is necessary. This optimistic fatalism is similar to Stoicism's amor fati ("love of fate"), and teaches us how we ought to behave with regard to things of fortune, or those which are not in our power . . . it teaches us to bear each form of fortune because we know that all things follow from the eternal decree of God with the same necessity by which it fol­ lows from the essence of a triangle that its three angles are equal to two right angles. To put this "existential bottom line" of Spinoza's into perspective, we might distin­ guish four possible philosophies of life: Atheism: There is no God and no real eternal necessities, therefore we must live by our own wisdom, cleverness and power, not His T

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Paganism: There are gods, w ho are unpredictable, therefore w e have much to hope and much to fear Judaeo-Christian theism: There is a God of love and wisdom, therefore we should live by our free choice of faith and trust in Him and love of each other Pantheism: There is nothing but God, therefore all is necessary. We must learn to accept it. (4) Immortality, like freedom, is affirmed but not in the commonsense version. There is no individual personal immortality, but only the immortality of the God who is all things, including ourselves. Individuals cannot hope to become immortal after death, but only to become aware during their lifetime of the immortality they share with everything; and they do this by realizing that they are only modes of the immortal God. Man is no more immortal than any other mode of God, but man alone can know this. Medieval Christians prayed, "From a sudden and unprovided death, good Lord, de­ liver us." Socrates saw philosophy as "a rehearsal for death." Spinoza wrote, The free man never thinks of death, but life. r

Spinoza argues that personal life after death is impossible because it w ould require the survival of individual memory, but The mind can neither imagine nor recollect any­ thing save while it is in the body. So there is no Last Judgment, no Hell, and equally no Heaven. There are no eternal rewards or punishments, except the ones in this world. For just as there is no real difference between nature and God, there is no real differ­ ence between this life and a next life. He ends his Ethics by saying that Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself.

(5) There is no absolute morality. There is neither a divine law nor a natural moral law but only eternal Necessity everywhere. Petitionary prayer is an error. By the help of God I mean the fixed and unchangeable order of nature.* God is not a moralist. "Good" and "evil" are only human constructs, not an objective law or an obligation from a divine Other. Whenever, then, anything in nature seems to us evil, it is because we have but a partial knowledge of things . . . in fact, what our reason pronounces bad is not bad as regards the order and laws of universal natine. . . . As for the terms good and had, they indicate nothing positive considered in themselves. Can you imagine Spinoza preaching this to his descendants in Auschwitz? * His heresies included the notion that God had a material body (the universe), and that angels, immortality, and free will were illusions. This was the solemn ritual of excommunication, as described by Willis: "During the reading of the curse, the wailing and protracted note of a great hom was heard to fall in from time to time; the lights, seen brightly burning at the beginning of the ceremony, were extinguished one by one as it proceeded, till at the end the last went out—typical of the extinction of the spiritual life of the excommunicated man—and the congregation was left in total darkness." The formula of the excommunication, as translated by Van Vloten, read as follows: "With the judgment of the angels and the sentence of the saints, we anathematize, execrate, curse and cast out Baruch de Espinoza, the whole of the sacred community assenting, in presence of the sacred books with the 613 precepts written therein, pronouncing against him the malediction wherewith Elisha cursed the children, and all the maledictions written in the Book of the Law. Let him be accursed by day and accursed by night; let him be accursed in his lying down and accursed in his rising up; accursed in going out and accursed in coming in. May the Lord never more pardon or acknowledge him; may the wrath and displeasure of the Lord burn henceforth against this man, load him with all the curses written in the Book of the Law, and blot out his name from under the sky . . . Hereby then are all admonished that none hold converse with him by word of mouth, none hold communication with him by writing; that no one do him any service, no one abide under the same roof with him, no one approach within four cubits length (6') of him, and no one read any document dictated by him or written by his hand." Who cares passionately enough about anything to write such things anymore? * Which comes first? Must we not first know what is to know what knowledge is? But must we not first know how to knœv before we can know being? This would later be called "the "gnoseo-ontological circle." Zi A Thomist critic would say that this theory makes sense regarding essences, but not regarding existence; i.e., it makes sense regarding concepts (the "first act of the mind" in Aristotelian logic) but not regarding judgments (the "second act of the mind"). Concepts (like "God," "one," or "evil") are never simply false, but more or less adequate, more or less clear. Falsity arises only when we make judgments (like "God is evil" or "God is not one"). * When Spinoza speaks of "nature," he seems to mystically exalt it into God, but

when he speaks of "God," he seems to reduce God to the cosmic computer that is na­ ture.

58. Gottfried Leibnitz (1646-1716) Ufe The first of many great German philosophers, Leibnitz was probably one of the four or five most sheerly intelligent men who ever lived. (Only Aristotle, Aquinas, Newton, and Einstein come to mind as rivals for that tide.) He is often labelled the last universal ge­ nius in history, before the age of specialization. He was reading Scholastic philosophy at 13. As a teenager he assimilated the thought of Galileo, Boyle, Descartes, Pascal, and Spinoza (whom he met). He published a treatise at 2 0 that anticipated later crucial dis­ coveries in logic and mathematics. He wrote tens of thousands of letters. He drafted schemes for the reunification of Protestant and Catholic churches, as well as a panEuropean alliance of states. He invented the calculus three years before Newton did (which provoked charges of plagiarism from Newton's friends). He designed a new sci­ ence of statistics and probability, invented symbolic logic, and conceived the idea of a universal language of computers. Among many other things. The rationalistic optimism typical of the "Enlightenment" could be summarized in the single word "calculemus" ("let us calculate"): if only we used reason (in the modern mathematical sense: the method of geometry, algebra, or logic), all darkness would be turned to light and mankind would be perfected. Logic Leibnitz distinguishes two kinds of truths: the necessary and the contingent, or truths of reason and truths of fact. (These are essentially what Hume would later call "relations of ideas" and "matters of fact," and what Kant would later call "analytic" propositions, whose predicates are already contained within their subjects, and "synthetic" propo­ sitions, whose predicates add to their subject.) Necessary truths are known to be true by the law of non-contradiction alone (to deny them is to commit a self-contradiction), while contingent truths are not. Thus "All triangles are three-sided" and "Bachelors are unmarried" are truths of reason, but "The earth is round" and "Thousands of bachelors exist" are truths of fact. This is put concretely in speaking of possible worlds. Some things are impossible in all worlds (universes), such as a four-sided triangle or a married bachelor. Some things are necessary in all worlds, such as triangles having three sides or bachelors being unmar­ ried. And some things are possible in some worlds but not in others, such as a ten-foothigh man or an oval earth. Truths about such things are contingent. That a triangle is equilateral is possible, that a triangle is three-sided is necessary (in all possible worlds), and that a triangle is four-sided is impossible (in all possible worlds). That a man is ten feet tall is possible (in some worlds), that a man has reason is necessary (in all possible worlds), that a man has no body is impossible (in all possible worlds). Thus whatever is actual is possible, but not everything possible is actual. Physics studies this actual world; metaphysics studies all possible worlds. A possible world is a world in which many contingent truths are "compossible" or possible together.

The Law of Non-contradiction is the test for truths of reason. The Principle of Suffi­ cient Reason is the test for truths of fact. It states that for every contingent truth, there must be a reason or cause sufficient to rationally explain why this truth is true or why this effect exists. There are two basic principles of all reasonings, the principle of contradic­ tion . . . and the principle that a reason must be given . . . or, in the common phrase, that nothing happens without a cause. From the viewpoint of human reason there are many contingent truths and many possible worlds. Only empirical observation reveals that the earth is round or the sky is blue. However, according to Leibnitz, from God's omniscient viewpoint all truths are necessary, i.e., all are "truths of reason" or "analytic propositions." And therefore, since God sees things truly, each thing and each person already contains all of its or his or her attributes and actions; so that if we, like God, understood the whole nature of each person or thing, we could deduce all attributes and acts that are truly predicable of them. For instance, if we knew the subject "Alexander," we could know the predicates "Macedonian king," "conqueror of the world," "successful with the phalanx," and "des­ tined to despair and drink himself to death." I consider a true proposition as such that every predicate, necessary or contingent, past present or future, is contained in the concept of the subject... This is a startling conclusion. Things are radically different than they seem. It seems to us as if our future is open and partly dependent on other beings as external causes. E.g., Waldo is paralyzed only because a car crashed into him. But Leibnitz's logic deduces instead a kind of deterministic fatalism: each individual already has within his essence all his accidents, and every proposition that has that individual as its sub­ ject is really a necessary proposition, no matter what its predicate may be, even though we cannot know that necessity. So Waldo's paralysis comes not just from the car but from his essence. Leibnitz also deduces a pluralism in which each individual entity (which he calls a monad) is windowless, or closed to external dependency on other monads. We are all that we are not by external causes or relations but only by internal necessity of our own nature. This logic seems to contradict four commonsensical ideas: (i) free will, (2) the con­ tingency of events, (3) the dependence of one thing on another, and (4) the externality of causal relationships. Leibnitz's philosophy is thus a very useful challenge to your thinking if you want to maintain both logic and common sense as, e.g., Aristotle does. After you finish reading this section on Leibnitz, come back to this paragraph and eval­ uate these four conclusions. Metaphysics If we had to summarize the metaphysics, or "world-views," of Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibnitz in one word each, we could call them Dualism, Monism, and Pluralism, re­ spectively. Instead of reality being either Mind or Matter, as in Descartes, and instead of all things being modes of God, or Nature, as in Spinoza, reality is composed of many

monads, or individual substances for Leibnitz. (1) All possible worlds must be composed of a plurality of entities, which are (a) individual, i.e., divided from others but undivided in themselves they are ivindowless. i.e., not related to or dependent on anything else but 7

(b) self-contained and with no external relations (this seems to logically follow from (a); and r

(c) eternal, since nothing else in the w orld could create or destroy them (this seems to logically follow from (b)). (2) These monads are not the material atoms of Democritus or of the external world which was half of Descartes's dualism. Atoms are extended in space, but the essence of Leibnitz's monads is not spatial extension or size but force or activity (or energy). This follows from i(b), for extension in space is an external relation. (3) All monads are spiritual, not material, since they are not extended. (Thus (3) fol­ lows from (2). All things are made of mind, not matter. Leibnitz argued, against Descartes, that if we accepted Descartes's dualism plus his principle of clarity and distinctness, then matter could not have any real connection to mind, and could not act on mind to produce ideas; so mind could even know that mat­ ter exists. (4) The principle of the identity of indiscernibles states that if any two monads are identical in nature, they must be identical in number (that is, they must be one, not T

tw o). There can never be two totally identical twins, not even Tweedledum and Tweedledee in Alice in Wonderland (whose author, by the way, was a professor of logic and mathematics at Oxford). Plurality is accounted for not by matter duplicating form (as in Aristode) or by distinct acts of existence (as in Aquinas), but by form, nature, or essence. Everything has a different essence from everything else. r

Contrast this with tw o previous philosophers, both more aligned with the common sense opinion. Aristotle explained plurality by matter: two substances of the same na­ ture can be like two copies of the same book, sharing the same form but different mat­ ter. Aquinas agreed and also used the real distinction between essence and existence to r

explain plurality, so that two things, with tw o different acts of existence, can have the same essence. What Aquinas says of angels, Leibnitz says of all monads: that each is its own species; that there is only one member of each species; that Tweedledum is as dif­ T

ferent from Tw eedledee as the species Dog is different from the species Cat. (5) Like Aquinas's angels, Leibnitz's monads are arranged in a hierarchy. His prin­ ciple of continuity states that there are no gaps or leaps between them: each differs from the next only minimally. In other words, they are like positive integers. The "iden­ tity of indiscernibles" principle specified that no place on the hierarchy or continuum can be filled by two monads; and "the principle of continuity" specified that every pos­ sible place is filled. So there can be one and only one example of each possible kind of entity. Everything is utterly unique. (Compare Duns Scotus's similar but not identical

principle of hecceitas or "suchness.") Leibnitz distinguished three kinds of monads: rational monads were human minds, sensory monads were animals, and "stunned" or "swooning" monads were unconscious, either inorganic or merely vegetative (think of surfer dudes). No monads are mere bodies; in fact Leibnitz calls them three kinds of "living souls"; everything is alive in some way. (6) Space is not independently real material extension but a projection of monads, on the three levels of consciousness distinguished above. (Kant would say something similar about space: that it is not objectively, independently real but a form imposed by minds in the act of external sensation.) (7) Individual substances, whether planets, pansies, poodles or people, are ex­ plained by a kind of metaphysical gravity called virtual aggregation. Monads form aggregates or compound substances dominated by the superior monad. People are aggregates of all three levels of monads but dominated by the ruling monad of mind, reason, or spirit. (8) Pre-established harmony explains the appearance of interaction among monads, which Leibnitz has denied can really exist. At the moment of creation, God preestablished a perfect synchronization of all monads, so that they are like billions of clocks all keeping the same time. None are externally related to any others; God is the only external agent. (This would be quite a shock to two lovers, and even more of a shock to two enemies who are killing each other.) Leibnitz compared these harmonized monads to several different bands of musi­ cians and choirs, playing their parts separately, and so placed that they do not see or even hear one another . . . (they) keep perfectly together, by each following their own notes, in such a way that he who hears them all finds in them a harmony.... Every substance expresses the whole sequence of the universe in accordance with its own viewpoint or relationship to the rest, so that all are in perfect correspondence with each other.* Theology Once this pre-established harmony is accepted, it proves the existence of a divine harmonizer and pre-establisher. Another argument for God is similar to Augustine's: that eternal "truths of reason" require an eternal mind to know them. Still another is a new version of Anselm's "ontological argument," the "possible worlds version." It is similar to Duns Scotus's argument that if God is possible (which He is, since the concept of God contains no self-contradiction), He must actually exist because nothing could prevent this possibility from being actualized. God is also proved by the Principle of Sufficient Reason, for nothing else explains why some possibilities become actualities and others do not, since monads cannot act on each other. (So it is really God, not Leibnitz, who wrote the Monadologe)

This leaves us with a famous problem. If it is God who chooses, among possible worlds, which one to make actual, and if God is perfect, then this world must be the best of all possible worlds. Leibnitz is a Christian, not a Neoplatonist, so he believes God freely creates the world rather than necessarily emanates it; but He must have had a sufficient reason, and that reason must have been perfect. If another possible world were better than this one, He would have created it instead, for He always does what is best. The obvious problem with this is that this is clearly NOT the best of all possible worlds. (1) There is no such thing as the best possible world for the same reason there is no such thing as the highest possible positive integer. One more good thing can always be added to a finite world, as one more number can always be added to any other number. (2) Voltaire, in Candide, satirized Leibnitz's optimism in his fictional philosopher Dr. Pangloss, who explained the catastrophe of the Lisbon earthquake, which killed 6 0 , 0 0 0 people, by noting that the undertakers were now fully employed. (3) If this is the best possible world, how awful all the others must be! (4) Schopenhauer the pessimist went so far as call this the worst of all possible worlds. (If this point (3) makes Leibnitz a pessimist, does that make Schopenhauer an optimist?) (5) The simplest refutation is the simple fact that evil exists. Even if, as Leibnitz claims, physical evils are necessary in a finite world, moral evils are not, for they are blameworthy. (That is the point of the story of the Fall in Genesis 3—it was a free choice—and of the Ten Commandments—we freely choose to disobey them.) Leibnitz answers these objections by arguing that evil is merely the absence of good, and that evils in the part are necessary for good in the whole: If you look at a veiy beautiful picture, having covered up the whole of it except a veiy small part, what will it present to your sight... but a confused mass of colors, laid on without selection and without art? Yet if you remove the covering and look at the whole picture from the right point of view, you will find that what appeared to have been carelessly daubed on the canvas was really done by the painter with veiy great art. The twentieth-century Amer­ ican novelist Thornton Wilder, in The Bridge of San Luis Rey, uses the analogy of loose threads on the back side of a beautiful tapestry. They are all that we can see, while God sees the other side and therefore sees its perfection. Using Leibnitz's "modal logic," we can ask three questions about this vision: (1) Can this be proved (to be necessary)? (2) Can it be disproved (proved to be impossible)? (3) Can it be believed (to be possible)? One can also ask: If God is maximally good, wise, and powerful, and therefore necessarily chooses the best of all possible worlds, is any other world, any world less good than this one, even possible? Apparently not. But wouldn't a world without dogs be less good than this one? And isn't that a possible world, since it contains no logical self- contradiction ? Freedom

Spinoza would say no; that eventhing possible is actual and there are no unactualized possibilities at all. Thus we have a fatalism and determinism. But Leibnitz too seems to be a determinist because of his notions of "the best of all possible worlds" and the "preestablished harmony." Today most determinists are materialists ("determinism from below"); Leibnitz, like Calvin, believes in a kind of predestination or "determinism from above." How can free will coexist with this divine determinism? He claims that it can. Neither (God's) foreknowledge nor (His) predestination dero­ gate from liberty. For God being moved by his supreme reason to choose, among many series of possible tilings or worlds, the one in which free creatures should make such or such resolutions (though not widiout his concourse), has thereby rendered eveiy event certain and determined once and for all; but he has not derogated thereby from die liberty of those creatures; that simple decree or choice did not change, but only actualized, their free natures, which he saw in his Ideas. Neither does moral necessity derogate from liberty. For when a wise being, and especially God, who has supreme wisdom, chooses what is best, he is not on that account less free; on the contrary, not to be hindered from acting in the best manner . . . is the most perfect liberty . . . the good inclines without necessitating. But Leibnitz's account of human freedom is that it is not, like Gods freedom, the will's power to choose among genuine alternatives, but the power of self-determination rather than determination by another; determinism from within rather than from without.:: It is my own nature that determines all my actions. I am destined but I am free from obstructions. What we commonsensically call freedom is only our ignorance of this determinism. The problem with this answer is simply that that is not what most people mean by free will. Augustine distinguished two kinds of freedom, free will ("liberum arbitrium"), or free choice, and liberty ("libertas"), or self-realization. The first was a means to the second. Leibnitz claims that we have the second but not the first. Yet Leibnitz is surely right in arguing that (i) God can infallibly foresee and predes­ tine our free actions (see Boethius and Aquinas on this), and that (2) we are still free when we do something that flows from our character and is predictable. A saint's gen­ erosity and hospitality is no less free for its being more predictable than that of a nonsaint. Leibnitz is one of those philosophers who becomes richer and more complex with each rereading and rethinking. Even if you do not end up agreeing with him, you will T

end up w ith more mental muscle. * Compare this with the Hindu myth of the universe as a net of mirrored dia­ monds, and contrast it with C. S. Lewis's "great dance" at the end of Perelaiidra. * The traditional view is exactly the opposite: what Leibnitz says about human free­ dom is true of Gods freedom, and vice versa.

59- Francis Bacon (1561-1626) Bacon was famous not only for his philosophy but also for (1) His wide-ranging and very popular essays, which include many quotations that have become famous, e.g., Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some to be chewed and digested; and He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to Fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. (He was never in love, and wrote: Great spirits keep out of this weak passion.) (2) His political rise and fall: he became a lawyer and a Member of Parliament at 23, Solicitor-General, Attorney-General, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, Lord Chancellor, baron, and viscount, but was convicted of accepting bribes and dismissed in disgrace from all offices. (3) His idealization of science as the solution to all human ills; his contributions to the inductive logic that is central to the scientific method; and his insistence on and practice of the method of experiments. (He died of pneumonia which he caught while T

stuffing a chicken with snow to test the usefulness of refrigeration.) In his Utopian New Atlantis, he called for international governmental organization of science and tech­ nology, the socialization of science for the collective conquest of nature and the enlarge­ ment of man's power.* He was either an atheist who had to conceal his opinions in a time when they were socially dangerous, or a nominal believer who simply did not care much about God, the soul, or Heaven. His interests and innovations are in science, not religion; this world, not the next; man, not God; power, not virtue; and matter, not spirit. All these changing interests characterized the Renaissance and early modern times in general, in a gradual way; but in Bacon they are unusually sudden, clear, and radical. The two most radically new and influential points of his philosophy are closely con­ nected as means and end; and both are summarized in books whose title begins with 7

the word "new": (1) The new means is a new, inductive logic. (Induction reasons from many con­ crete particular examples to an abstract general principle, and claims only probability; deduction reasons from principle to example and claims certainty.) Many of the rules and fallacies of induction were formulated by Bacon in The Neiv Organon. The old Organon ("instrument") was the title of the six books of Aristotle's deductive logic. Bacon pillories Aristotle as the source of most of the errors in science. Deductive logic, he says, with its definitions and syllogisms, is useless as a tool for new scientific discovery. He criticized deductive, rationalistic thinkers as spiders who spin webs from their own minds without contact with the real world. But he also criticized mindless, merely-empirical data-gatherers as ants who do not know what to do with the data they gather. Bacon famously classified four typical kinds of fallacies as (1) Idols of the Tribe: fallacies common to all men, inherent in human nature, such as sensory illusions, judging by feelings, and oversimplifying; (2) Idols of the Cave: fallacies particular to one's unique individuality;

(3) Idols of the Market Place: fallacies of language and communication, especially verbal ambiguities; (4) Idols of the Theater: reifying words or ideologies; mistaking philosophical sys­ tems for realities. Like almost all English philosophers, Bacon not only emphasized induction in prac­ tice but was also an Empiricist in principle. He formulated the empirical aspects of the scientific method more clearly than anyone had done before him, especially the role of observation and controlled experiment. A little later, Descartes formulated and used the mathematical and deductive as­ pects of the scientific method, and tried to apply this to philosophy as well as science. Late medieval philosophers had worked out something very close to the modern scien­ tific method in theory. But it was Bacon who more than any other individual is respon­ sible for formulating this method, which is the single most important discovery in the history of science, since it is like a skeleton key that opens all the other doors. The negative side of this emphasis is the tendency to exclude from philosophy as well as from science all that did not fit under this method, especially formal and final causes. While pre-moderns tended to do their science by methods appropriate to philosophy, moderns tended to do their philosophy by methods appropriate to science. (2) Bacon's new end, stated in many of his essays and exemplified in the Utopian novel The Neiv Atlantis, is nothing less than a new "summum bonum," a new answer to the most important of all questions, the question of mankind's purpose, goal, end, greatest good, or "meaning of life." Every thinker in the past (except the Sophists) had taught that this is some kind of conformity of the human soul to objective reality, how­ ever differently that reality was conceived; and that the means were inner, personal wis­ dom and virtue. For Bacon, the end is the conformity of objective reality (at least mate­ rial reality) to the desires of the human soul, and the means is technology, or applied science. Machiavelli's end was power too, but only power over other men. Bacon's end is power over the universe, over nature. Nearly three centuries later, Nietzsche would explore this "will to power" as the essence of life. For the ancients, knowledge of the truth was an end in itself. For Bacon it is only a means: knowledge for power. Aristotle had ranked the sciences in a hierarchy, by the standard of the end for which truth is sought. The highest end was simply knowledge, the second was practice, and the third and lowest was power over material nature. Truth came first, then goodness, then utility. Bacon turns this hierarchy on its head and explicitly says that utility is a higher and more humanly appropriate end than truth for its own sake. In other words, technology is more important than philosophy, reli­ gion, or morality. I asked myself what could most advantage mankind . . . when I searched, I found no work so meritorious as the discovery and development of the arts and inventions. Knowledge is the means, power over nature the end. This new answer to the most important of all questions most deeply defines the difference between mod­ ern Western civilization and all others in history. The old end was somehow to conform earth to Heaven; the new end is to create Heaven on earth, to abolish pain: the relief of man's estate. That end requires technology, which requires science, which requires a

better method, which requires inductive logic. When this is combined with a focus on the body more than the soul, the result is that physicians should be honored. . .as dispensers of the greatest earthly happiness that could well be conferred on mortals. Descartes also ranked medicine, not philos­ ophy, theology, cosmology, ethics, or politics, as the single most important science. Here is Bacon's defense against the charge that this new end of power is merely selfish: It would not be amiss to distinguish the three kinds, and as it were grades, of ambition in mankind. Thefirstis of those who desire to extend their power in their na­ tive country; which kind is vulgar and degenerate. The second is of those who labor to extend the power of their country and its dominion among men; this certainly has more dignity, but not less covetousness. But if a man endeavor to establish and extend the power and dominion of the human race itself over nature, his ambition is without doubt both a more wholesome thing and a nobler. Notice that what makes it "nobler" is not a different quality but a different quantity. 7

With Bacon we see a new relationship between man and nature. Nature is no longer "Mother Nature" but a set of puzzles to solve or even an enemy to conquer. Bacon described the controlled experiment, science's most powerful tool, as a kind of torture: We must put nature on the (torture) rack to compel her to bear witness so that 7

we can attain the hidden knowledge that gives us pow er over her. This is strikingly sim­ ilar to Machiavelli's image of the relation beUveen man and nature ("fortune"), at the end of The Punce: "For Fortune is a woman (the word he uses suggests a whore) and it is necessary to beat and coerce her." When the Japanese mountain climbing team climbed the world's second highest mountain, K2, for the first time, they explained to the Americans why they stopped 50 feet short of the summit: it was out of respect for the mountain. The philosophy was in the verbs: while Westerners spoke of "conquering" it, they spoke of "befriending" it. They were not Baconians. Bacon's ethics, unsurprisingly, are Machiavellian. He writes: We aie beholden to Machiavelli, and writers of that kind, who openly and unmasked declare what men do in fact and not what they ought to do. He advised a judicious mixture of deceit and honesty, and practiced the same. It is logically consistent with his new "summum bonum." If technology rather than ethics is the highest end, then ethics can only be a means. And a means is relative to its T

end. The end does justify the means; that's w hat a "means" means. Bacon's psychology is implicitly materialist and an early version of Behaviorism. He denied the idea of free will as well as the distinction between the will and the intellect which free will assumes. (Do you see why this is assumed?) * Contrast C. S. Lewis's dystopian take on this ideal in the Brave New World-like novel That Hideous Strength. A good debate topic.

6o. John Locke (1632-1704) Locke will formulate the basic principles of Empiricism, which seem to him quite harmless and commonsensical. Berkeley will criticize Locke for not drawing the logical conclusions of his premises. At least one of these conclusions is very radical: that matter does not exist! T

Hume will do to both Locke and Berkeley w hat Berkeley did to Locke: draw out the logical conclusion of both their premises. And that conclusion is skepticism. r

Raised in a Puritan family, Locke learned the virtues of thrift, hard w ork, simplicity, and common sense. (To understand his personality, think of Dr. "Bones" McCoy in "Star Trek.") Educated at Oxford, he was a tutor, a medical doctor, and a political diplo­ mat and advisor to the Earl of Shaftesbury. He wrote on such diverse topics as politics (Two Treatises on Civil Government and the famous Essay concerning Toleration), theology (The Reasonableness of Christianity), and economics (The Consequences of Lowering interest and Raising the Value of Money) as well as epistemology (Essay Concerning Human Understanding). The common theme in all of Locke's writings is the simplification of human knowl­ edge. For Locke, it is less than we usually think it is. It is really bound to the inside of Plato's Cave: the simple ideas we receive from sensation and reflection are the bound­ aries of our thoughts, beyond which the mind . . . is not able to advance one jot; nor can it make any discoveries when it would piy into the nature and hidden causes of these ideas* T

It w as not logical consistency but instinctive common sense that prevented Locke from drawing the conclusion of skepticism from this premise of Empiricism, as Hume did. No Innate Ideas Locke begins his Essay by refuting the Rationalists' theory of "innate ideas," which he regards as the root error of Rationalism and the source of "dogmatism." Later, Kant would try to find an alternative to both what he called "dogmatic" (Rationalistic, Carte­ sian) and "skeptical" (Empiricistic, Humean) epistemologies. It is ironic for both Locke and Kant to accuse Descartes of "dogmatism," for Descartes insisted on beginning with universal methodic doubt. But what they had in T

mind as "dogmatism" was not Descartes's method but his assumption that w e have "clear and distinct ideas" that are not derived from sense experience but are "innate" in the mind. r

Locke argues against "innate ideas" that babies have none. How ever, the defenders of this theory did not claim that these ideas were actually and consciously present from 7

birth, but only potentially and unconsciously present, so Locke refutes a "straw man." Locke also argues, from observation, that blind men have no ideas of colors, and that when any one of the five senses is destroyed, all the ideas that come through that sense cease. Aristotle and Aquinas both make this point too, and both teach that all our ideas

begin in sensation, but they do not say that they are confined to sensation because they have a theory of abstraction of universal forms from particular matter. Modern Empiri­ cists reject "abstract ideas" because they are Nominalists, and thus they hold that there are no universal forms in reality to abstract. Like Aristode, Locke said that the mind at birth is a tabula rasa, a blank writing tablet, on which only the senses write information. Ralph Cudworth, one of the "Cam­ bridge Platonists," argued, against Locke, that if the mind is merely a "tábida rasa" and "there is nothing in the intellect that was not first in the senses," atheism logically fol­ lows, since the idea of a God cannot be in the sense. Locke replied that the cosmological arguments for God do not depend on any "innate ideas." The strongest argument for "innate ideas" is that everyone knows certain selfevident first principles such as the law of non-contradiction in logic and "do good, not evil" in ethics. No one is ignorant of them, no one denies them, and no one doubts them. Locke replied (i) that these are certain not because they are innate but because our minds do not permit us to think otherwise; (2) that universal consent is not the same as innateness, and (3) that such highly abstract ideas coidd not be present in the T

minds of children. (Hume's answ er, later, would be that they are not "matters of fact" at all but empty tautologies, mere "relations of ideas.") Ideas as Objects of Knowledge The opening line of Book II of Locke's Essay defines an idea this way: Idea is the object T

of thinking. In other w ords, we do not think things, we think ideas. Ideas are not acts of knowing or means of knowing but objects of knowing. What we know first of all is our own ideas. Locke is not a skeptic (no certain knowledge) or a subjectivist (no knowledge of objective reality) or a solipsist (no knowledge of anything but yourself); but his premise seems to entail these conclusions, and it was only his common sense, not his logic, that prevented him from embracing these conclusions. For if all we know are our own 7

ideas, it seems to follow that we do not know the real world outside of our own ideas. If r

we see only pictures of things, we do not see things, only pictures. How then can w e possibly know which pictures correspond to real things and which do not? (Locke held a commonsensical "correspondence theory of truth": that an idea is true if it corre­ sponds to a real thing or event.) One may reasonably suspect that this problem—whether we can know that the T

world outside our ow n ideas really exists or not—has never been seriously questioned by any philosopher who is married, has children, and has had to deal with baby diaper poo. One may also wonder why that job description is true of only a small minority of great philosophers. Locke avoided skepticism by affirming that "sensitive knowledge" bridges the gap between ideas and realities, and that although the objects of our knowledge are only our ideas, they include the idea that these ideas come into the mind from the outside r

world. But if this idea—that ideas come from the outside w orld—is only an idea, we 7

T

cannot know w hether it is objectively true either. Or, if Locke says that the entrance of

an idea into the mind is not merely an idea, Locke is contradicting his first principle that the object of every act of knowing is an idea. To observe a man enter a hotel from the street, we must first see him in the street. Locke was an Empiricist but not a materialist. Like Descartes, he was a dualist: he held that both matter "out there" and mind "in here" are real, and that ideas came from two sources: external sensation and the mind's internal reflection on its own operations which were awakened by these sensations. He did not resolve the "mind-body prob­ lem" and explain how material things coidd cause mental effects, any more than Descartes did. The Subjectivity of Secondary Qualities Locke distinguished two kinds of qualities in material things. "Primary qualities" are quantifiable, such as size, weight, motion, and shape. "Secondary qualities" are nonquantified: sensations of color, heat, hardness, odors, and sounds. (Later philosophers would call non-sensible qualities such as moral, religious and aesthetic values "tertiary qualities.") According to Locke only primary qualities exist in the objective world; secondary qualities are subjective: they exist only in our minds. The hard, round, white, rolling snowball really is round and rolling but it is not really hard or white. Secondary qual­ ities are the subjective effects of primary qualities; they are mental, not physical. This is essentially Democritus' materialistic view of the world. Unlike Democritus and like Descartes, Locke added an inner, mental world; but objective reality is reduced to the quantitative and mathematical, and thus the physical. All qualities not detectable by the scientific method are deposited in the mind. One of Locke's arguments for the subjectivity of secondary qualities such as heat was the "hands in water" experiment. Put your left hand in a bucket of hot water and your right hand in a bucket of cold water. Then removed both hands and plunge them into a third bucket of lukewarm water. Your left hand will tell you that the third bucket is cold, whüe your right hand will tell you it is hot. Since it cannot be both, and the hands are equal witnesses, it must be neither. Berkeley would later argue that all the arguments for the subjectivity of secondary qualities apply equally to primary qualities. But rather than draw the conclusion that both were objective, he drew the conclusion that both were subjective. The Critique of Substance Locke does not draw as many radical conclusions as Berkeley or Hume do from his premise of Empiricism, but he does draw some. One is his critique of the idea of sub­ stance. Inherited from Aristotle, the idea of "substance" is what is grammatically expressed as a noun. It means a being that possesses qualities, quantities, and other attributes, the "substratum" that supports them. For instance, a big, red, bouncing ball is a sub­ stance, but big, red, and bouncing are not. Locke argues that we sense these attributes (or "accidents" as Aristotle calls them)

but we do not sense the being that has them. If we know only what we sense, it follows that we do not know substance. Locke declares it a meaningless idea, a "something I know not what." He says of the qualities that we sense that because we cannot conceive how they should subsist alone, nor one in another, we suppose them existing in and supported by some common subject, which support we denote by the name substance, diough it be certain that we have no clear or distinct idea of that thing. If this is true of bodies (material substances) it must be true of minds too (mental substances). But Locke's common sense would not let him deny the existence of selves, minds, egos, or souls. However, Hume would later draw that radical conclusion, thus ranging as far as possible from Descartes, who thought that the self was not only real but the most certain thing knowable ("I think, therefore I am"). Locke's Ediics Locke abandons his Empiricism in his ethics. First, like a Rationalist, he says: I am bold to diink diat morality is capable of demonstration, as well as mathematics; since the precise real essence of the things moral words stand for can be perfectly known. (But knowledge of real essences does not seem to fit an Empiricist epistemology and its corresponding Nominalist metaphysics.) Although Locke was neither a materialist nor a hedonist, like them he identified the good (the most fundamental term in ethics) with pleasure: Tilings are good or evil only in reference to pleasure or pain. That we call good which is apt to cause or increase pleasure, or diminish pain in us. That is consistent with Locke's Empiricism but not, it seems, with the rest of Locke's ethics. Locke distinguishes three kinds of laws, the law of (social) opinion, civil law, and di­ vine law. The law of opinion is a community's judgments about moral good and evil. This changes somewhat, though not completely, from one culture, time, and place to another. Civil law tends to follow the law of opinion. Only divine law is unchanging and universal, and diis is the only touchstone of moral rectitude. Locke says we can all 7

know this divine law by the (innate!) light of natural reason: That God has given a mie whereby men should govern themselves, I think there is nobody so brutish as to deny. r

(Locke did not live in the tw enty-first century!) Unlike Aristotle, Augustine and Aquinas, Locke does not speak of a natural moral 7

law in his ethics (it is identified with divine law ); but he does speak of it in his politics, as part of the "state of nature." Locke's Political Philosophy Locke both agrees and disagrees with Hobbes. He agrees that man is not by nature a political animal as Aristotle claimed, and says that the State (civil society) is created by the artifice of the "social contract." So there is a distinction between "the state of na­ ture" and "the state of civil society." Even if there was no historical "state of nature" before civil society, the fact that we choose to live in our civil society rather than leave it constitutes tacit consent to the so­ cial contract.

But Locke disagrees with Hobbes about this "state of nature." It is not egotistic and T

amoral, a state of w ar of each against each that is "solitary, nasty, poor, brutish, and short," as Hobbes said. Instead, Locke inherits the tradition of natural law from Richard Hooker (1553-1600), and says that morality is natural to man, and naturally known (by "natural reason"). Reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind who will but considt it, tiiat, being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions. Locke also includes in the natural law the notion that each person has intrinsic value because he has been created by God in His image. Thus natural rights are not given by man, or the State, but by God; and therefore they are inalienable; and each right brings a corresponding duty to respect it. Kant, later, will teach a similarly high, idealistic, and personalistic ethics, but with­ 7

out a metaphysics of God and natural law and without an epistemological realism (that we can know objective reality as it really is) as its basis. Kant said that he demoted theo­ retical reason to make room for practical (moral) reason.* Locke says that the State is invented not to give man rights but to enforce them and to adjudicate disputes about them. Disputes arise because the three kinds of laws do not afrvays coincide, and the reason for this is that people tend to foolishly choose immediate and lesser goods (pleasures) over the greater, long-range and lasting goods. The distinctive Lockean emphasis in political philosophy is the concept of the right of property. Locke has a broad definition of property: it includes people's lives, liberty and estates, which I will call by the name property since these are all proper to every man by nature. Locke believes that this is self-evident by the light of natural reason (even though this sounds suspiciously close to "innate ideas"). Since rights are natural and inalienable, the State must rest on free consent of the governed. Men being . . . by nature free, equal and independent, no one can be put out of this estate and subjected to the political power of another without his consent. Many of the fundamental ideas of the American Constitution and Declaration of Inde­ pendence are obviously influenced by Locke here. * A suggestion: since philosophers are usually less skeptical about their ethics than about their epistemology, perhaps they should deduce their epistemology from their ethics instead of vice versa.

6i. George Berkeley (1685-1753) Ufe Like most great philosophers, Berkeley was a child prodigy. All his great philosophical T

works w ere written while he was in his twenties. Born in Ireland, he was educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He was an Anglican priest, and in 1734, he became the bishop of Cloyne, Ireland. He is buried in Oxford. T

He w as a typical Enlightenment figure, fascinated with the new science and eager to experiment. He watched an eruption of Mount Vesuvius dangerously close-up; had himself hanged (by a friend) and revived at the last minute to see what a Near-Death7

Expe-ence felt like (he felt nothing); crawled through Italian caves to find new species of tarantulas; and wrote extensively on the medical benefits of tar-water, supposedly proven by scientific experiments. He proposed numerous "thought-experiments" which have fascinated later "ana­ lytic" philosophers, especially that of thinking without language. He wrote: I shal1 . . . e n l . . . en as far as I am able, to take off the mask of words, and obtain a naked view of my own particular ideas. In the twentieth century Wittgenstein would propose something similar but less radical: a therapeutic purging of the supposed philosophical deceptions inherent in language. Berkeley tried to purge language itself from human thought, in an attempt to return to the immediate experience of the world that pre-verbal infants have, but with an adult intelligence. (Sounds like Zen Bud­ dhism!) He traveled to America and lived in Newport, Rhode Island for three years, plan­ T

?

ning to found a college in Bermuda w hose purpose w ould be the reformation of man­ ners among the English in oui' western plantations and the propagation of the Gospel among the American savages. It failed to raise enough funds (a common problem even today in Bermuda). Later, a California city and university which is near better beaches for surfing than those in Bermuda were named after him. But that name is pro­ nounced "Berk-lee"; the philosopher's is "Bark-lee." Remember that when you read the poem three pages ahead. Berkeley's "Big Idea" Berkeley is famous for a single idea. The idea is a startling one: that esse est percipi, "to be is to be perceived." To understand this, we must first remember that for Berkeley, as an Empiricist, mental conception was not distinct in kind, only in degree, from sensory perception. Thus "to perceive" meant for him simply "to be aware of." If "to be is to be perceived," then nothing exists that is not perceived. This is startling because nearly everyone in the world believes the opposite: that the world of material substances exists even when no one perceives it. When a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, is there noise? Some say yes and some say no depending on what they mean by "noise": is "noise" the subjective experience of hearing or the 7

sound w aves that are the objective physical causes of it? But almost no one says the tree

doesn't even exist if no one perceives it. Berkeley does. Berkeley denied the existence of matter, in the usual sense of the word. When Boswell told Samuel Johnson about Berkeley's philosophy, Johnson replied by kicking a stone and saying "I refute him thus." However, all he accomplished was a wounded toe, not a wounded philosophy. For Berkeley maintained that "esse est percipi" did not contradict common sense at all, as it seemed to, since it did not entail the consequence that trees, horses, books, or chairs popped into and out of existence as we turned our eyes to or away from them. For if we believe his philosophy, he wrote, we are not deprived of any one thing in nature. What­ ever we see, feel, hear or any wise conceive or understand, remains as secure as ever, and is as real as ever. There is a rerum natura, and the distinction between realities and chimeras retains its full force . . . I do not argue against the existence of any one thing that we can apprehend, either by sense or reflection... . The only thing whose existence we deny is diat which philosophers call matter, or corporeal substance. Relation to Locke Berkeley maintained that his conclusions, so apparenfly contradictory to common sense, followed logically from the principles of his Empiricist predecessor Locke, who, ironically, was widely regarded as the most commonsensical of philosophers. For Locke began his "Essay" by defining an "idea" as "the object of perception." Ideas are what we are immediately aware of, whether these ideas are sensory, like "red," or non-sensory, like "two." (Contrast Aquinas (ST I, 85, 2; Vol. II, page 9 6 , par. 2), who says that ideas and per­ ceptions are not the objects ("quod") of awareness but the means ("quo") of awareness; that we know real material things, not just our ideas of them.) If all that we know are our own ideas, as Locke says, and if both our minds and our ideas are mental rather than physical, then we do not and cannot know anything nonmental. Therefore we have no reason to claim that matter independent of mind exists at all Arguments Berkeley has many ingenious arguments for this startling conclusion, especially in his most popular work, Three Dialogs between Hylas ("matter-guy") and Philonous ("mindlover"): (1) The idea of matter is meaningless. For matter, in the popular sense of the word, is a radically different kind of reality than mind, spirit, or thought. Descartes had defined these two as "clear and distinct ideas." If all knowledge is thought, it is literally mean­ ingless to assert that there is in knowledge also something that is not thought, and has nothing in common with thought. People say that our sensory images are "copies" of material things, or that they "correspond to" material things—and Locke follows this popular usage—but how coidd a mental experience like a color or a sound be an image of, or correspond to, or have anything in common with, something that is not a mental experience at all? A color can

only be "like" another color, an idea "like" another idea, especially if Descartes is right in totally separating these two "clear and distinct ideas" of matter and mind. T

(2) As an Empiricist Berkeley begins w ith the premise that all knowledge is in empirical experience (inner or outer). Thus it is self contradictory to assert the popular belief in the existence of something (matter) that is by definition not in experience (sensation) but outside it (since experience is mental and matter is not). T

But can't w e imagine things existing without anyone seeing them? No, says Berke­ ley, for you are mentally seeing them! Remember, as an Empiricist Berkeley cannot maintain that there is also another level of awareness, namely intellectual conception, which is independent of experience, i.e., independent of both sensory perception and imagination. So he cannot say that we know what we do not perceive or imagine. But, say you, surely there is nothing easier than to imagine trees, for instance, in a park or books existing in a closet, and nobody by to perceive them. I answer: You may do so, there is no difficulty in it; but what is all this, I beseech you, more than framing in your mind certain ideas (remember Locke's first premise, that all we know direcdy are ideas) which you call "books" and "trees," and at the same time omitting to frame the idea of anyone that may perceive them? But do not you yourself perceive 01 think of them all the while? . . . to make out this (i.e., to defend the common idea of matter existing outside thought), it is necessary that you conceive them existing unconceived . . . the mind, taking no notice of itself, is deluded to think it can conceive bod­ r

ies existing unthought-of. In other w ords, is it not a logical contradiction to think that any thing exists when no one thinks of it? (Can you find the grammatical ambiguity in that last sentence? Which verb does T

the adverbial phrase beginning with "w hen" modify? Does the logical distinction be­ T

tween the first tw o acts of the mind, conceiving and judging, clarify this?) (3) It is inconsistent with Locke's proof of the subjectivity of secondary qualities, which Berkeley considered conclusive proofs. Berkeley argued, against Locke's assertion that primary (quantifiable) qualities are objective while secondary (non-quantifiable) qual­ ities are subjective, that the very same arguments that proved the subjectivity of sec­ ondary qualities also proved the subjectivity of primary qualities. (See Locke's "hands r

r

in w ater" experiment, e.g., on page 81.) The tw o kinds of qualities cannot be separated. E.g., we cannot perceive, or even imagine, a colored surface without any size or shape, or a real thing with size and shape but no color. We can only conceive such abstract ge­ ometrical lines and figures, but these are not real; Berkeley's Empiricism and Nomi­ nalism rejects all universal "abstract ideas." Locke had tried to preserve the objective reality of only those aspects of the material T

w orld that the new quantitative physical science recognized, i.e., "primary qualities" like shape and size, wiiile relegating all other, non-quantifiable qualities like color, taste, and sound to subjective, mental status. He maintained that our subjective percep­ tions of secondary qualities like color were caused by objectively real particles of matter T

r

w hich really possessed only primary qualities like shape and size. This w as a conve­ T

T

nient "tw o w orlds" theory for previous philosophers like Descartes and Locke, who

wanted to affirm that Newtonian science was objective, that physics could not be re­ duced to psychology. Berkeley uncomfortably demolished this comfortable dualism. (4) We cannot separate any of the ingredients in an experience from each other. E.g., when we put our hand into afire,we feel heat and pain all at the same time. There is no reason to call the heat objective and the pain subjective, as we usually do. Since pain is obviously subjective—no one thinks pain is "out there"—therefore heat is too. Both must exist only in the mind. Nominalism Locke had denied that there are any universal realities, but had admitted the meaningfulness and usefulness of universal ideas (i.e., abstract, general ideas like "human na­ ture" or "triangularity" or "justice"). Berkeley, as a more consistent Nominalist, goes further and denies all "abstract ideas," including matter, substance, number, geomet­ rical figure, time, and qualities. He says these are all fictions, and our mental life is lived largely among these verbal fictions. Tis not to be imagined what a marvelous emptiness and scarcity of ideas that man shall discover who will lay aside all words in his meditations. For most words, except for proper nouns, are universal rather than singular. T

Hume, who came immediately after Berkeley, w ould praise Berkeley for his consis­ tent Nominalism. He spoke of him as a great philosopher (who) . . . asserted that all general ideas are nothing but particular ones. . . . I look upon this to be one of the T

greatest and most valuable discoveries that has been made. Hume w ould draw an even more radical conclusion from Berkeley's Nominalism in rejecting Uvo more "abstract ideas," viz. causality, the fundamental principle of all scientific and commonsensical explanations, and the self, mind, soul, or spiritual substance. The same argument that Berkeley used to reject Locke's notion of material substance (viz., the argument that by Empiricist standards "material substance" or substratum is unperceivable, and there­ T

fore inconceivable), Hume used to reject spiritual substance, self, or mind. So w e can sum up Berkeley and Hume by "No matter; never mind." Locke had already reduced the idea of substance to a something we know not what, since all "whats" are qualities; but he did not reduce it to nothing whatever, since he thought, commonsensically, that there had to be something that held together the qual­ ities. Berkeley disagreed. He drew the logical conclusion from Locke's definition of sub­ T

stance that an "I know not what" is indistinguishable from nothing at all. You can see that the operative "bottom line" difference between Locke and Berkeley r

is that Berkeley preferred logical consistency to common sense. (Can these tw o contra­ T

dict each other? If so, w hich do you choose? Why? See Thomas Reid (ch. 63) on this issue.) All of these main-line modern philosophers, from Descartes through Hume, are using Ockham's Razor, the principle of simplicity: that we should always prefer the simplest, sparest explanation, in philosophy just as in science. And therefore their T

world-views keep shrinking from one philosopher to the next. Finally, w ith Hume, we will reach a point of nearly nothing, a nearly universal skepticism.

God Berkeley thought his philosophy to be the definitive refutation of atheism. For if we ac­ cept his principles, God is absolutely necessary to maintain nature in existence when no human mind perceives it. When I deny sensible things an existence outside of the mind, I do not mean my mind in particular, but all minds. Now it is plain that they have an existence exterior to my mind, since I find them by experience to be inde­ pendent of it. (Is that possible, on his principles?) There is therefore some other mind wherein they exist, during the intervals between the times of my perceiving them. In other words, Bishop Berkeley whispered darkly: "If God don't see ya, you don't be ya." Or, more elegantly, in the words of Ronald Knox, There was a young man who said, 'God Must think it exceedingly odd If He finds that this tree Continues to be When there's no one about in the Quad.' Reply: Dear Sir: Your astonishment's odd: i am always about in the Quad. And that's why the tree Will continue to be, Since observed by Yours faithfully, God. And since human minds are temporal and intermittent, often diverted from per­ ceiving, this mind must be eternal, omnipresent, and omniscient, knowing all things and thus keeping them in existence. Thus the only two things that exist are God and our minds. Everything else is a kind of indirect mental telepathy between our minds and the divine mind. Two theological problems seem to arise here. First, Berkeley seems closer to some forms of Hinduism or Buddhism than to Christianity, central to which are the doc­ trines of creation and Incarnation, which make Christianity the most materialistic reli­ gion in the world. Second, why would not Ockham's Razor dictate pantheism as the simplest of all hypotheses? How can Berkeley prove the existence of other human minds? This is a surprisingly tricky problem for one who demands logical proofs for everything and refuses to accept the authority of common sense.

A logical problem also arises. If "to be is to be perceived," then the perceiver must also exist (since a nonexistent perceiver cannot perceive), and since all "to be" is "to be perceived," then that "to be" must also be perceived by another perceiver, et cetera et cetera ad infinitum, necessitating an actually infinite number of perceivers at once, at every time. This is as impossible as the infinite regress of efficient causes in Aquinas's cosmologica! arguments. If, on the other hand, the perceiver (or subject) exists but can­ not be perceived (as an object of perception), then "esse est percipi" is not universally true.

62. David Hume (1711-1776) r

If you want to understand most contemporary philosophers w ho write in English today, you must know Hume. For most of these philosophers identify themselves as "analytic philosophers," and Hume is the single most important source of this philosophical school or method. He is also the most formidable, challenging, and difficult-to-refute skeptic in the history of human thought. His logic is powerful. Once you grant his apparently commonsensical and attractive premises, it is difficult or impossible to avoid his radical and unattractive skeptical conclusions. Ufe Hume's life, like that of most philosophers, was not spectacular. Born in Edinburgh as David Home (it was pronounced "Hume," so he changed the spelling), he entered the University of Edinburgh at 1 1 , leaving at 15 without a degree. His father had died when he was an infant, and he was raised by his strict Presbyterian mother. This included three-hour church services and long daily family prayers. He lost his childhood faith in religion very early, through reading Locke and other philosophers. His family pres­ sured him to study the lucrative profession of law, but when he discovered philosophy, he says (in his autobiography) that there opened up to me a new Scene of Thought Thought - Law, which was the Business I designed to follow, appealed nauseous to me, and I could think of no other way of pushing my Fortune in the World but that of a Scholar and Philosopher.]: His earliest and most important philosophical influence was Francis Hutcheson, a Scotch ethicist at the University of Glasgow who taught that morality is based neither on reason nor faith, neither natural nor divine law, but feeling and sentiment. Hume conceived the project of extending this "subjectivist" principle to all our mental activity, not just morality. This would undermine nearly all previous philosophy. He was 18 at the time! r

For six months Hume w orked feverishly on his new "science of thought." The re­ sult was a nervous breakdown which remained so severe that for nine months he could not follow a train of thought. He tried working for a businessman, but found it unsuit­ able. At 23 he settled in France, at La Fleche, the prestigious Jesuit university where Descartes had studied. He lived in a tiny apartment on a country estate where he could use the college library, and completed his Treatise on Human Nature in 1737, at age 2 6 . He returned to London and found a publisher, but only by (in his own word) castrating his book of its most offensive attacks on religion. He was bitterly disappointed when it found few readers and no favorable reviewers. He wrote that his book fell deadborn from the press. T

His next disappointment was being turned dow n for a professorship at both Edin­ 7

burgh and Glasgow because of his skepticism and apparent atheism. He became a pri­ vate tutor to various wealthy persons. His first pupil was literally insane. When he re­ T

turned to Paris (the Mecca for atheists), he w as suddenly famous and successful and T

fulfilled what he called his riding passion—the love of literary fame. He w as known as

"le bon David." He abandoned philosophy (once skepticism is established, what else can one say?) and wrote a long history of Great Britain, which brought him fame and fortune there. He retired on a large pension, had a fine house built in Edinburgh, on St. David's Street. Some claim the street was named for him; some not. He was a gentle man, personally beloved by all who met him (except the volatile and paranoid Rousseau—see p. 233). He did not look like a philosopher. Lord Charlemont described him this way: "His face was broad and fat, his mouth wide, and without any other expression than that of imbecility. His eyes vacant and spiritless and the corpulence* of his whole person was far better fitted to communicate the idea of a turtle-eating alderman than of a refined philosopher. His speech in English was ren­ dered ridiculous by the broadest Scotch accent, and his French was, if possible, still more laughable, so that wisdom never before disguised herself in so uncouth a garb." Hume and Benjamin Franklin would party together in Paris with "bluestocking ladies" on their laps. But Hume was as un-clever with the ladies as Rousseau was clever. Once at a party game he was put between two beautiful women and told to play the part of a sultan trying to win the love of his slaves. He could do nothing but slap his knees and belly and say, over and over, "Well, young ladies, well, there you are, then. Well, there you are." After 15 minutes the ladies left. Like Kant, he never married, though he did fall in love once, when he was 52, with a married but separated woman, Madame de Bouffiers. She fell out of love with him and married a prince whose mistress she had been, but he remained loyal and friendly to her until his death. Five days before he died he wrote her a letter of condolence for the death of her husband. He died peacefully, of cancer, in his home. Boswell, Samuel Johnson's biographer, visited him shortly before he died, because he could not believe an intelligent man could die peacefully and without either faith or fear, with no hope of life after death. But Hume maintained his skepticism to the end, moved only by logical consistency. He called life after death a most unreasonable fancy. When asked whether he did not at least hope there was a Heaven, he answered, Not at all; it is a most gloomy thought. Hume's Historical Situation Hume lived at the height of the "Enlightenment." Philosophically speaking, the year 1637 is probably the best candidate for the year of its beginning—the publication of Descartes's Discourse on Method. In one sense the "Enlightenment" has not yet ended, for most intellectuals in the Western world still put their faith in science and not in the "pre-scientific" world-view of the Catholic Middle Ages. But in another sense the "En­ lightenment" is over, for the faith that reason, especially scientific reason, is selfevident, self-validating, and able to solve all theoretical and practical problems—this faith was given its philosophical death blow by Hume, reason's greatest critic. So per­ haps the date of his death, 1776, is the best candidate for the end of the "Enlight­ enment." Or perhaps it is 1831, the death of Hegel, the last great rationalist systembuilders. The two centuries between 1637 and 1831 saw a jungle growth of philosophy, of

science, and of optimism about reason. Newton had apparently unlocked nature's last secrets. Alexander Pope was not being satirical or ironic when he wrote: "Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night; God said: Let Newton be! and all was light." Locke had already argued, as early as 1 6 6 4 , that the laws of nature must govern 7

human reason and human life as w ell as the rest of the universe (Hume agreed), and he had attempted to map these laws in epistemology (as did Hume). The result was a rational, scientific Empiricism whose premises Hume inherited and took to their more radical but logical conclusions. Locke also applied this philosophy of natural reason to ethics, and the result was a philosophy of universal rights. He wrote: "Reason . . . teaches all mankind wiio will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions." This was the rational "Enlightenment" ethic that justified England's "Glorious Revolution," or "Bloodless Revolution," of 1 6 8 8 which re­ placed absolute monarchy with representative democracy. It also would inspire, in sig­ nificantly different ways, both the American (1776) and French (1789) Revolutions. Hume, beginning with Locke's epistemologica! premises, would radically under­ mine Locke's claims for the power of reason both in epistemology and in ethics. He would cut the epistemological legs out from under the "Enlightenment." In philosophy, both Rationalists and Empiricists claimed Newton as their model. But they were philosophical opposites. Rationalists (Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibnitz) produced quasi-mathematical systems of cosmology and metaphysics, while Empiri­ cists (Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume) were skeptical of metaphysics, and largely confined themselves to epistemology. r

The Empiricists focused especially on tw o questions that would begin the move to­ ward skepticism that culminated in Hume. The first question was directed to all claims to rational knowledge; it was simply: How do you know that? The second question was: What are the limits of human kno]vledge? Hume's "Bottom Line": Limiting Human Knowledge Here, in two paragraphs, is the upshot or "bottom line" of all of Hume's philosophy. It is exactly the opposite of that of Plato's "Cave" or of Hamlet's "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy." For Hume there is far less. Nothing, at first view, may seem more unbounded than the thought of man, which . . . is not even restrained within the limits of nature and reality. To form mon­ sters, and join incongruous shapes and appearances, costs the imagination no more trouble than to conceive the most natural and familiar objects. And while the body is confined to one planet, along which it creeps with pain and difficulty, the thought can in an instant transport us into the most distant regions of the universe, or even beyond the universe . . . nor is any thing beyond the power of thought except what implies

an absolute contradiction. But though our thought seems to possess this unbounded liberty, we shall find, upon a nearer examination, that it is really confined widiin very narrow limits, and diat all this creative power of die mind amounts to no more dian the faculty of compounding, transposing, augmenting, or diminishing the materials afforded us by the senses and experience. When we tiiink of a golden mountain, we only join two consistent ideas, gold and mountain, widi which we were formerly acquainted. . . . In short, all the materials of thinking are derived eidier from our outward or inward sentiment: die mixture and composition of diese belongs alone to the mind and will. Or, to express myself in philosophical language, all our ideas or more feeble perceptions are copies of our impressions or more lively ones. For Hume it is not the Cave that is the illusion, it is the world outside the Cave. r

Hume set out to destroy Plato's philosophy of tw o worlds (matter and Forms), two parts of human nature (body and soul), two powers of knowledge (sensation and reason), and T

tw o degrees of certainty (opinion and knowledge). The second level, in each case, does not exist for Hume. Plato's "Divided Line" leads not to wisdom but to nothing. This is closely connected, in Hume's mind, with the "Enlightenment" project of refuting "superstition" (supernatural religion, most especially Catholicism, which Hume, like Hobbes, always regarded as his primary enemy) by undermining its epistemologica! assumptions. Hume even uses the military language of spiritual "war" and "enemies" in referring to this philosophical project. He says that philosophies that go beyond strict Empiricism and make metaphysical claims are not properly a science, but arise either from the fruitless efforts of human vanity, which would penetrate into subjects utterly inaccessible to the understanding, or from the craft of popidar superstitions . . . and many, through cowardice and folly, open die gates to the enemies and willingly receive them with reverence and submission, as dieir legal sovereign. But is tìiis a sufficient reason why philosophers should . . . leave superstition still in possession of her retreat? Is it not possible to draw an opposite conclusion, and perceive the necessity of carrying die war into the most secret recesses of the enemy? Hume's Three Basic Premises Though Hume is an Empiricist, not a Rationalist like Descartes, his philosophy is a deductive system in that everything follows from his three basic premises, just as in Descartes everything follows from "Cogito ergo sum." Here are the premises: (i) Like Locke, Hume assumes that the first and immediate object of all thinking is not real things but ideas, or perceptions. (What Locke calls "ideas" Hume calls "perceptions" or "perceptions of the mind.") Hume does not specify this assumption in the Enquiry, from which we are quoting here, but simply assumes it. But in the Treatise he says that properly speaking, 'tis not our body we perceive when we regard our limbs and members, but certain impressions, which enter by the sense. This is his most fundamental questionable assumption that entails his radically skeptical conclusion: that we do not know anything outside our own impressions and ideas.*

(2) Hume then divides "perceptions" into "impressions" and "ideas": We may di­ vide all the perceptions of the mind into two classes or species,^; which are distin­ guished by their different degrees of force and vivacity. The less forcible and lively are commonly denominated THOUGHTS or IDEAS. The other species want a name in our language

Let ns, therefore . . . call them IMPRESSIONS

By the term im­

pression I mean all our more lively perceptions, when we hear, or see, or feel, or love, or hate, or desire, or will. (3) Hume's next move—the most crucial one—is to make ideas totally dependent on impressions, in fact mere images or feeble copies of impressions: All our ideas or more feeble perceptions are copies of our impressions or more live­ ly ones. This is his radical Empiricism. Since all ideas are copies or images of impressions, Hume's strategy in critiquing all ideas is to demand: "Show me the impression it was copied from." If none can be found, the idea is dismissed as meaningless: When we entertain, therefore, any suspi­ cion that a philosophical term is employed without any meaning or idea (as is but too frequent), we need but enquire, from what impression is that supposed idea derived? And if it be impossible to assign any, this will serve to confirm our suspicion. By bringing ideas into so clear a light, we may reasonably hope to remove all dispute which may arise concerning their nature and reality. T

This goal w as Descartes's dream too, and the dream of the "Enlightenment": to eventually end all disputes or differences of opinion in philosophy, as was being done in science. (Is this possible? If so, why has it never been done? If not, why not?) As we shall see shortly, this Humean principle that all meaningful ideas are copies of sense impressions logically eliminates all ideas that are not copied from impressions, including God, the soul, the self, immortality, substance, moral good and evil, and causality. All these ideas are not merely false but meaningless! Metaphysics, science (which depends on the principle of causality), ethics, and religion are all, in the last analysis, reduced to subjective feeling. They are not rational. T

Hume w ill show these very radical conclusions to follow from the principle that all ideas are copies of impressions. Hume's logic is tight. If his premises aie true, his rad­ ical conclusions are also true. If his conclusions are not true, his premises are not true either. So his argument may be regarded as either (I) a demonstration of skepticism, as was his intention, if one thinks his premises more obviously right than his conclusions obviously wrong, or (II) as a reductio ad absurdum (a "reduction to absurdity") of his premises, if one thinks his conclusions more obviously wrong than his premises obvi­ ously right. One cannot, however, comfortably accept his premises without his conclu­ sions, as his predecessors did. Here is how Hume proves his crucial Empiricist premise that all ideas are copies of impressions: To prove this, the two following arguments will, I hope, be sufficient. First, when we analyze our thoughts or ideas, however compounded or sublime, we always find

that they resolve themselves into such simple ideas as were copied from a precedent feeling or sentiment. Even diose ideas which, at first view, seem the most wide of this origin are found, upon a nearer scrutiny, to be derived from it. The idea of God, as meaning an infinitely intelligent, wise and good Being, arises from reflecting on the operations of our own mind, and augmenting, without limit, those qualities of good­ ness and wisdom. We may prosecute this inquiry to what lengdi we please; where we shall always find that every idea which we examine is copied from a similar impression. Those who woidd assert fliat diis position is not universally true nor without exception, have only one, and that an easy method of refuting it: by producing diat idea which, in dieir opinion, is not derived from this source. It will dien be incumbent on us, if we woidd maintain our doctrine, to produce die impression or lively perception which corresponds to it. Second, if it happen, from a defect of the organ, diat a man is not susceptible of any species of sensation, we always find that he is as little susceptible of die correspondent ideas. A blind man can form no notion of colours; a deaf man of sounds. Restore eidier of diem diat sense in which he is deficient; by opening this new inlet for his sensa­ tions, you also open an inlet for the ideas; and he finds no difficulty in conceiving diese objects.* The Inner Gravity of Ideas: Association Here is where Hume attempts to be the Newton of the mind. Newton formulated the fundamental principle binding all physical things together in his law of universal gravi­ tation, and Hume formulates what he claims to be the three principles of mental gravi­ tation which bind together all mental things, all ideas. Though it be too obvious to escape observation that different ideas are connected to­ gether, I do not find diat any philosopher has attempted to enumerate or class all the principles of association; a subject, however, diat seems worthy of curiosity. To me, diere appear to be only three principles of connexion among ideas, namely Resemblance, Contiguity in time or place, and Cause or Effect. That diese principles serve to connect ideas will not, I believe, be much doubted. A picture naturally leads our thoughts to the original. (Resemblance) The mention of one apartment in a building naturally introduces an inquiry or discourse concerning die others. (Contiguity) And if we think of a wound, we can scarcely forbear reflecting on die pain which follows it. (Cause and Effect) This last one is by far the most important, and is the foundation of all scientific rea­ soning as well as common sense. Hume's attack on the very notion of causality (below, p. 100) is an attack on the belief that either science or common sense can give us knowledge (as distinct from opinion) about the real world. Hume's three laws of association of ideas seem at first to be simply an uncontroversial observation of mental data, but there is a hidden questionable assumption here: that this mental data, or ideas, are like atomistic particles rather than continuous waves; that they do not come already "associated" but require mental activity on our part to associate them.

Hume explains complex ideas by our power to join simple ideas together. Thus we can imagine things we have never seen, like a golden mountain or a talking horse, only because we have seen mountains, gold, horses, and talking. We can imagine a missing shade of blue, wiiich we have never seen before, halfway between medium blue and light blue, simply by extrapolation or projection, as on a graph. (This will also be Hume's explanation of the origin of our idea of God: our projection, toward infinity, on a curve, like a hyperbola, made up of a finite number of points of experienced finite perfections.) Hume's New Logic: "Relations of Ideas" vs. "Matters of Fact" When Hume spoke of "the association of ideas," he meant by "ideas" not propositions but terms, or concepts. When he speaks now of "relations of ideas" vs. "matters of fact" he speaks of propositions, which relate subject terms and predicate terms together. The following distinction is absolutely crucial, not only for Hume but also for all subsequent "analytic" philosophers: All the objects of human reason or enquiry may naturally be divided into two kinds, to wit, Relations of Ideas and Matters of Fact. Of the first kind are the sciences of Geometry, Algebra, and Aridimetic, and in short, every affirmation which is eitìier intuitively or demonstratively certain. Titat the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the square of the two sides, is a proposition which expresses a relation between these figures. That three times five is equal to the half of thirty, expresses a relation between these numbers. Propositions of this kind are discoverable by the mere operation of thought, widiout dependence on what is anywhere existent in die universe . . . Matters of fact, which are the second objects of human reason, are not ascertained in the same manner; nor is our evidence of their truth, however great, of a like nature widi the foregoing. Tlie contrary of every matter of fact is still possible, because it can never imply a contradiction, and is conceived by the mind widi die same facility and distinctness as if ever so conformable to reality. Tixat the sun wiU not rise to-morrow is no less intelligible a proposition, and implies no more contradiction, than that it will rise. We should in vain, therefore, attempt to demonstrate its falsehood. Were it demonstrably false, it woidd imply a contradiction, and cotdd never be distinctly conceived by die mind. What Hume means by "matters of fact" here is not simply anything that is true, but propositions that can be verified by sense observation. Thus, as we shall see below, the existence or non-existence of God, the self, the soul, moral laws, immortality, universals, substances, and causality are not "matters of fact" for Hume. They are neither true nor false; they are simply not knmvledge. At most they are subjective, psychological feelings. It's not merely that Hume is agnostic about these things, that he thinks they can't be proved. How many craters ten miles or more in diameter there were on the moon ten million years ago can't be proved or known, but it is an objective fact. The above items are not matters of objective fact at all for Hume. For him it is a linguistic confusion to wonder whether there is a God and whether we can prove or disprove His existence, or

whether Plato is right or wrong when he argues in the Republic that "justice is always more profitable (to the soul) than injustice." It is impossible in principle to do this, by Hume's new, narrower logic. It eliminates as meaningless just about everything inter­ esting that all previous philosophers had ever said. The historical import of this abstract logic is intense and immense. It demolishes all claims for meaningful knowledge of objective reality, not just in religion and meta­ physical philosophy, but also in common sense and even in science. Modern science T

had apparently show n the power of human reason to penetrate into nature and find certain universal principles, such as Newton's laws of motion. But Hume is pulling rea­ son and nature apart. He is confining reason to the kind of thing a computer can do (determining whether two ideas are logically consistent or inconsistent with each other—which is all that he means by "relations of ideas"); and he is confining our knowledge of nature to the kind of thing an animal can do: sense observation of "mat­ ters of fact" which are contingent and can be determined as true or false not by logical analysis but only by sense experience. We are only apes with computers. Because of the radical influence of this idea, we have to go into it in more detail, even though this detail is very abstract and technical. For Hume's confinement of all human knowledge to "relations of ideas" and "matters of (empirical) fact" is the single most enduring and influential idea in all of Hume. It is the basis for modern "analytic philosophy" and its new logic ("symbolic logic" or "mathematical logic" or "propositional logic") which replaces the old Aristotelian logic that (a) began with terms rather than propositions, (b) classified predicates, relations to their subjects as genus, species, difference, property, or accident, and (c) implicitly assumed a realism rather than a Nominalism of universals. Hume divides all propositions into only two classes. (1) "Relations of ideas" are what Kant later called "analytic propositions." They are true by definition, by the law of non-contradiction alone; it is contradictory to deny them. "Red things are red." "Red things are things." "Red unicorns are red," and "Red unicorns are unicorns" are all "relations of ideas." Their predicates are necessary and essential to their subjects. (2) "Matters of fact" are what Kant called "synthetic propositions." They are known to be true only by sense observation. Their predicates are not necessary or essential to their subjects, but accidental. "Tomatoes are red," "Unicorns do not exist," and "Toma­ toes are healthy" are all "matters of fact." (3) Aristotle would say that there is also a third kind of proposition. The predicate of the first kind of proposition is always the genus, species, or specific difference of the sub­ ject; and the predicate of the second kind of proposition is always an accident of the subject; but there is a third possibility: a predicate may also be a property, or "proper accident" of its subject, e.g., "All men are mortal" or "Justice is always profitable to the soul." These propositions are known to be true not merely by the law of non­ contradiction, like (1), nor merely by sense observation, like (2), but by intellectual understanding, or wisdom: if you truly understand human nature, you know that mor­ tality is always a property of it, and if you truly understand virtue and its relation to the

soul, you know that the virtue of justice always profits the soul. This assumes that there are such universal essences or forms or natures as human nature, body, soul, and justice. But that is metaphysical realism rather than Nomi­ nalism. Nearly all modern philosophers (except the Rationalists) are Nominalists. That is why they prefer modern logic to Aristotelian logic. Logic is not philosophically neu­ tral. Hume's Critique of Causality Immediately after announcing the division between "relations of ideas" and "matters of fact," Hume proceeds to his most radical skeptical application of this principle, viz. his famous critique of causality. It is important to see the logical connection between these two points, the premise (the last section) and the conclusion (this section). It is because die contrary of every matter of fact is still possible, because it can never imply a contra­ diction that Hume next says: It may, dierefore, be a subject worthy of curiosity to en­ quire what is the nature of that evidence which assures us of any real existence and matter of fact, beyond the present testimony of our senses or the records of our mem­ ory. And his answer is that All reasonings concerning matter of fact seem to be founded on the relation of Cause and Effect By means of that relation alone we can go beyond die evidence of our memory and senses. If you were to ask a man why he believes any matter of fact which is absent—for instance, that his friend is in the country, or in Fiance—he woidd give you a reason; and diis reason would be some odier fact, as a let­ ter received from him, or the knowledge of his former resolutions and promises. A man, finding a watch or any odier machine in a desert island, would conclude diat diere had once been men in diat island. All our reasonings concerning fact are of die same natine. And it is constantly supposed diat diere is a connection between die present fact and diat which is inferred from it. Were there nothing to bind them together, the infer­ ence would be entirely precarious. The hearing of an articulate voice and rational dis­ course in the dark assures us of the presence of some person. Why? Because these are die effects of die human... If we woidd satisfy ourselves, therefore, concerning die nature of diat evidence which assures us of matters of fact, we must enquire how we arrive at the knowledge of cause and effect. I shall venture to affirm, as a general proposition, which admits of no exception, diat die knowledge of diis relation is not, in any instance, attained by reasonings a priori, but arises entirely from experience, when we find that any particular objects are constantly conjoined with each odier. Let an object be presented to a man of ever so strong natural reason and abilities; if that object be entirely new to him, he will not be able, by die most accurate examination of its sensible qualities, to discover any of its causes or effects. Adam, diougli his rational facidties be supposed, at die veiy first, en­ tirely perfect, coidd not have inferred, from the fluidity and transparency of water, that it would suffocate him, or from the light and warmth of fire, that it woidd consume

him. No object ever discovers, by the qualities which appear to the senses, either the causes which produced it or the effects which will arise from it; nor can our reason, unassisted by experience, ever draw any inference concerning real existence and matter of fact... We fancy that were we brought on a sudden into this world, we could at first have inferred that one billiard-ball woidd communicate motion to another upon im­ pulse . . . pidse . . . is the influence of custom.... B u t . . . the mind can never possibly find the effect in the supposed cause by the most accurate scrutiny and exami­ nation. For the effect is totally different from the cause, (Is this true? Look at examples.) and consequently can never be discovered in it. Motion in the second billiard-ball is a quite distinct event from motion in the first, nor is there any thing in the one to sug­ gest the smallest hint of the other . . . eveiy effect is a distinct event from its cause. It coidd not, therefore, be discovered in the cause... Also, Hume points out, causality itself, the causal connection, is not something we can ever sense. What color or shape is it? . . . we are never able, in a single instance, to discover any power or necessary connexion, any quality which binds the effect to die cause and renders the one an infallible consequence of the other. We only find that the one does actuaUy in fact follow the other.... All events seem entirely loose and sepa­ rate. One event follows another, but we never can observe any tie between them. They seem conjoined, but never connected. And as we can have no idea of any thing which never appeared to our outward sense or inward sentiment (Hume's Empiricist premise), the necessary conclusion seems to be that we have no idea of connexion or power at all, and that these words are absolutely without any meaning. Hume's argument so far amounts to this: (1) All matters of fact are contingent; that is, their opposite is logically possible, and not self contradictory. (2) It is our reason and only our reason that tells us what "relations of ideas" are and are not contradictory, but it is our senses and only our senses that tell us "matters of fact." (3) Therefore all our knowledge of matters of fact come not from our reason but from sense experience. (4) But we believe we have knowledge of matters of fact that lie beyond our present, immediate sense experience. (5) Is this belief true? If this is true, it can only be by reasoning from what we sense to what we do not sense by the principle of cause and effect. That is, we think we can deduce the unseen causes and effects of what we see. (6) But we cannot do this deduction, because of point 3 above. We cannot know what we have not experienced, unseen past causes or future effects. (7) Another reason is that we cannot sense causality itself. (8) Therefore our belief that we have such knowledge is only subjective, not objec­ tive; it is due to custom and habit, not reason. It is just a feeling in us. We expect the sun to come up tomorrow only because we have seen it happen so many times in the past. All we can know is our own mental habits, not the real causes of sunrise or of any

other event in the universe! If you disagree with this radical, skeptical conclusion, Hume argues, you must answer the following question: These two propositions are far from being the same, (i) I have found that such an object has always been attended with such an effect, and (2) I foresee that other objects, which are in appearance similar, will be attended with simñar effects. I shall allow, if you please, that the one proposition may justly be inferred from the other; I know in fact that it always is inferred. But if you insist that the inference is made by a chain of reasoning, I desire you to produce the reasoning. The connexion between these propositions is not intuitive. There is required a medium, which may enable the mind to draw such an inference, if indeed it be drawn by reasoning and argument. What that medium is, I must confess, passes my comprehension; and it is incumbent on those to produce it who assert that it really exists and is the origin of all our conclusions concerning matter of fact. The usual answer to Hume's question here (is there another one?) is called "the principle of the Uniformity of Nature": that the future will resemble the past, that the laws of nature will continue to operate. But Hume asks how we can know that principle. On the basis of his epistemology, we can't; for it is not a "relation of ideas," since its denial is not self-contradictory; nor is it a "matter of fact," since we cannot sense, in the present, the future unchangingness of these laws of nature: We have said that all arguments concerning existence aie founded on the relation of cause and effect; that our knowledge of that relation is derived entirely from experience; and that all our experimental conclusions proceed upon the supposition that the future will be conformable to the past. To endeavor, therefore, the proof of this last supposition by . . . arguments regarding existence, must be evidently going in a circle, and taking that for granted which is the veiy point in question. . . . For all inferences from experience (pre)suppose, as their foundation, that the future will resemble the past, and that similar powers will be conjoined with similar sensible qualities. Hume is here casting doubt on the rationality of belief in science as much as belief in religion. Unseen physical and natural causes and effects are just as much forever beyond the grasp of our reason as spiritual or supernatural ones. Newton's principles are just as doubtable as Aquinas's. This was the most total and the most logical skepticism the world of thought had ever seen. It had to be answered. The answer would come from Kant. But the answer would be, in a different way, even more skeptical than the question. Essentially, it would be this: the subjectivity that Hume took to be the problem, Kant would take to be the answer. Hume reduced causality from a known objective fact to a subjective mental habit; and from this premise he derived the conclusion of skepticism, because he assumed a second premise, a premise that every philosopher before Kant had assumed and that Kant would deny: that the proper work of human reason is to know objective reality, or "things-in-themselves," as Kant would call them. Kant (1) generalized Hume's reduction of causality to subjectivity to the reduction

of all human knowledge to subjectivity, but he (2) denied that this entailed the conclu­ sion of skepticism; for he said that this is all that human reason could ever do, this was its proper work: to create, not to discover, the forms and structures and order of the world. (We haven't studied Kant yet, so if you don't understand this yet, don't worry. Perhaps you should worry if you do.) Hume's Solution: Causality is Only "Custom" Hume's Empiricism limits our knowledge to our experience. We know only what we experience. But we do not experience causality itself, because causality is not an empir­ ical thing or event but the relationship between the two events that we call the "cause" and the "effect." A relationship between two empirical things is not itself empirical. Hume calls this supposed relationship a necessary connection* and a secret (invisible) power that emanates from the cause so as to produce the effect, as one billiard ball communicates motion to a second, or as a mother gives birth to a baby. Bottom line: since, as Hume has shown, (1) all our knowledge of "matters of fact" beyond immediate sense experience comes from cause and effect, and since (2) cause and effect is not known by reason (since reason is confined to experience for all of its knowledge of "matters of fact" as distinct from mere "relations of ideas"), therefore (3) causality is removed from reason, mind, and understanding—and (4) thereby is also re­ moved all knowledge of matters of fact. But we do think in terms of causality. Why? What is the origin of this thinking? Not either reason or experience but a feeling, an instinct, a habit, a "custom." He immediately infers the existence of one object from die appearance of the other. Yet he has not, by all his experience, acquired any idea of knowledge of the secret power (causality) by which the one object produces the other, not is it by any process of reasoning that he is engaged to draw this inference. But still he finds himself deter­ mined to draw it . . . though . . . his understanding has no part in the operation. . . . (therefore) There is some other principle which determines him to form such a conclusion. This principle is CUSTOM OR HABIT. For wherever the repetition of any partic­ ular act or operation produces (really "causes"?) a propensity to renew the same act . . .

we always say that this propensity is the effect (a real "effect"}) of

Custom. . . . All inferences from experience, therefore, are effects of custom, not of reasoning. Causality is reduced to a purely subjective habit of thought. All science is thus re­ duced to psychology. r

r

Kant woidd pick up on this answ er and modify it in just one important w ay: for him, this habit or custom, though just as subjective as it is for Hume, is universal and necessary and therefore rational. Causality, for Kant, will become a "category" of ratio­ nal thought, but he will agree with Hume that it is not a known aspect of objective real­ ity. In fact, Kant will cut us off even more from any knowledge of objective reality than Hume did. For he will maintain that even immediate sense experience is only a mental projection of our subjective (but universal and necessary) categories such as space and

time and causality out onto a reality ("things in themselves") which we can never know as it is in itself, like the constant projection of a movie onto a screen from the projecting machine which is our own minds. Hume's Critique of Substance and Self From Hume's simple, apparently innocent premise of Empiricism he deduces the rad­ ical consequence that no substance, including the self, can be known: (1) If we do not know what we do not sense (Hume's Empiricist premise); (2) and if we sense only qualities but not any underlying substance holding these qualities together; (3) then we do not know any substance. (4) But we think of ourselves as substances, either (a) single material substances, if we are materialists like Hobbes, or (b) single spiritual substances, if we are spiritualists like Plato, or (c) two separate substances, if we are dualists like Descartes, or (d) a single substance composed of matter (body) and form (soul), if we accept Aristotle's and Aquinas's anthropology of hylomorphism or (to use current terms) psy­ chosomatic unity. (5) All four of these concepts of ourselves are wrong. We know no self, since we know no substance. As far as we know, there is no self. We do not exist. Only our thoughts and perceptions and experiences exist. There's nobody there to know them. There's nobody home. Descartes argued, "I think, therefore I am"; Hume replies, "I think that I am not." There is no humean being. Hume's strict Empiricist premise necessitates this conclusion. We know only what we sense, and we do not sense the self, the sense?, only the sensed objects. Meaningful ideas must be copies of impressions, therefore there is no meaningful idea of the self, for from what impression could this idea be derived? The question is impossible to an­ swer. . . . It must be some one impression that gives rise to eveiy real idea. But self or person is not any one impression, but that to which our several impressions and ideas are supposed to have a reference. If any impression gives rise to the idea of the self, that impression must continue invariably the same through the whole course of our lives, since self is supposed to exist after that manner. But there is no impression con­ stant and invariable. . . . all the nice and subtle questions concerning personal identity can never pos­ sibly be decided, and are to be regarded rather as grammatical than as philosophical difficulties. This is Hobbes's linguistic ploy (see pp. 2ioff.): dissolving rather than solv­ ing metaphysical questions by declaring them linguistically meaningless—a technique of many early (and some late) analytic philosophers. The self for Hume is not so much false or nonexistent as meaningless, since it is not an idea copied from any impression. At this point, if not before, most readers will turn to "common sense," as Reid did (see next chapter) and argue that if Hume has not made a mistake in his reasoning, then far from proving his radically skeptical and anti-commonsensical conclusion from his Empiricist premise, as he thinks he has done, he has refuted his premise. For if

any premise leads to such absurd conclusions, it must be false. Contrary to his own intentions, Hume has not established but refuted his own Empiricism. His whole philosophy is an elaborate reductio ad absurdum. For if there is no Hume, then with hume are we arguing when we argue with Hume? Hume's answer is the same as Buddha's: there is no soul or self (Buddha calls this the anatta or "no-Atman" theory): I am only the coming-together of perceptions, like the knotting of strands (skhandas) of a rope. Its unity is only apparent, not real. I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement... the mind is a kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appearance. A modern movie theater is an even better image than Hume's stage theater. The movie seems real but it is only a rapid succession of images, 32 frames per second, too fast for us to see the gaps between them, but none of them is substantial. Nothing holds successive perceptions together, not even memory, for there is no subject or agent to do the remembering. Life is a movie without a projector.* Empiricists have always had a problem accounting for other minds (selves, I's, sub­ jects, souls, persons, or egos). But Hume has no such problem: they are in the same position as his own mind. They do not exist. Hume has an a posteriori and experiential argument for the "no-substance" theory of the self, as well as the above a priori deductive argument from the premise of Em­ piricism and its denial of any kind of substance. He argues, in his earlier Treatise, that he can never catch "himself" as an observed object, no matter how hard he tries: For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself I always stumble upon some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I can never catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can ob­ serve anything but the perception... But Hume's inability to innerly "see" himself as an object is exactly what we should expect if the commonsensical belief in a substantial self or subject were true. The sub­ ject is not an object, any more than the projecting machine in the movie theater is one of the images you can see on the screen.^ This insubstantiality of the self also entails the conclusion that there can be no life after death: And were all my perceptions removed by death, and coidd I neither think nor feel nor see nor love nor hate after the dissolution of my body, I should be entirely annihilated.... If anyone, upon serious and unprejudiced reflection, thinks he has a different notion of himself I must confess I can reason no longer with him. AU I can allow Mm is t h a t . . . we are essentially different in this particular. He may, perhaps, perceive something simple and continued, which he calls himself though I am certain there is no such principle in me. Like Hobbes, Hume's "comeback" against traditional metaphysical beliefs is not a logical refutation but a linguistic one: he finds your terms meaningless. This is a pow­ erful and intimidating debating technique because it cannot be answered. Hume is de­ manding that you meet him on his own Empiricist terms, not any others; nor is he

prepared to debate those terms. He demands that you show him what he, from the beginning, insists that his mind simply cannot take in or understand. His criteria for meaning is too narrow, but he will not expand it. He is in Plato's Cave and he will not come out. And the Cave is too small to contain the world outside it* Like a child, he can simply say "I just don't understand you"—and seem not childish but sophisticated! Is this "serious and unprejudiced reflection"? Hume's Critique of Free Will Free will was a problematic concept for Hume's contemporaries because it seemed to find no place in Newton's deterministic clockwork universe. If every event had deter­ mining causes, human choices must also have determining causes—in which case, it seemed, they were not free. Hume argues that free will does not contradict determining causality. In fact, ac­ cording to any reasonable sense which can be put on these terms . . . the whole con­ troversy (between free will, or liberty, and necessity, or causal determinism) has hith­ erto turned merely upon words. Again he turns to the linguistic ploy: the problem is linguistically dissolved rather than logically solved. His two linguistic ploys are: (1) to deny the usual notion of physical determinism as real necessary causal con­ nection (see his critique of causality above) and to redefine natural causality as merely observed repetition rather than real causal connection; and (2) to deny the usual notion of human free will as the spirit or soul actively initi­ ating an action on its own, from within, rather than just passively transmitting a chain of determining causes from without, from biological heredity or physical environment. Hume redefines human freedom as simply unimpeded movement, the physical ability to do what you want to do. This makes it the same kind of thing as happens in nature. Hume sees no difference between natural causality (e.g., clouds causing rain) and human causality (a man causing a murder), for in neither case, material or intelligent, is there any constraint observed. If the man is chained, he cannot cause the murder, and if the rain is impeded by a tent roof, it cannot wet the ground beneath it. He then argues that there is no contradiction between human free will and Newto­ nian deterministic physics, because on the human side free will does not mean some­ thing uncaused, and on the side of nature causality does not mean necessity but simply regularity. Thus Newtonian determinism and human free will are compatible. Contem­ porary philosophers call this view of free will "compatibilism." It presupposes "natu­ ralism"; that is, it works only if human free will is defined materialistically, merely as unimpeded power. This is one of the reasons why Hume thinks that a Newtonian kind of science of human nature and human thought is just as possible as Newton's science of physics. Modern Behaviorist psychologists often follow him here.* Hume's Critique of God

Almost all of Hume's contemporaries, both friends and enemies, thought Hume was an atheist. This is why universities refused to employ him. Hume argued in print that his philosophy does not entail atheism, but this is pretty clearly a less-than-honest defensive ploy that Hume thought pragmatically necessary to avoid public trouble, for (i) Hume clearly says in his autobiography that he lost his religious faith before he began his writing career, and (2) the argument Hume uses in the Enquiry for the com­ patibility of his philosophy with Christianity is so weak that it may be deliberately in­ tended to be ridiculous. He argues there that only a faith that cannot be defended by reason, i.e., that contradicts reason (as he will show Christianity does when he claims to prove that miracles do not exist), i.e., only a faith that is shown by reason to be false, is the true faith, i.e., is "our most holy religion." He says this at the end of his refutation of miracles: I am the better pleased with the method of reasoning here delivered, as I think it may serve to confound those dangerous friends or disguised enemies to the Oiristian Religion, who have undertaken to defend it by the principles of human reason. Our most holy religion is founded on Faith, not on reason; and it is a sure method of expos­ ing it to put it to such a trial as it is by no means fitted to endure. In his Dialogs Concerning Natural Religion he refutes all arguments for the existence T

of God, as w e would expect him to do since he has already come to the conclusion that reason cannot prove anything at all about "matters of fact." He refutes first Descartes's arguments, then the argument from design. Descartes's main proof, in the Meditations, is essentially Anselm's "ontological argument," which tries to prove the existence of God a priori by simply analyzing the idea or definition of God. Hume argues, commonsensically, that ideas prove only ideas; you need a fact to prove another fact. (That is essentially Aquinas's reason for rejecting Anselm's argument too.) He also argues from his Empiricist premise that ideas that cannot be traced back to impressions are meaningless—and this argument undercuts not just Anselm's or Descartes's but all arguments for God, since God is not an impres­ sion. Oui ideas reach no farther than our experience. We have no experience of divine attributes. I need not conclude my syllogism. You can draw the inference yourself. The only way to deny the conclusion is to deny one of the two premises. Since the idea of God is not copied from any impression, it is neither true nor false but meaningless. This is even farther from theism than atheism is, just as "You are meaningless to me" is farther from "I believe in you" than "I don't believe in you" is. T

This argument, from Empiricism as a premise, refutes Descartes's other tw o argu­ ments for God, which are causal arguments, because it refutes all causal arguments. Causal arguments try to prove God as the only possible cause of certain effects, whether physical effects (like motion) or psychological effects (like the idea of God). Hume re­ futes these arguments (1) by his Empiricist premise, above, that all meaningful ideas are copies of impressions; (2) by his critique of causality; (3) by his logic of "relations of ideas" vs. "matters of fact"—because the contrary of every matter of fact is still possible, we cannot prove any matter of fact, even in nature; and (4) by his reduction of all mean­ ingful terms to empirical or mathematical terms. That is, he refutes all arguments for

God not by refuting the truth of their diverse premises but by refuting the meaningfulness of their common conclusion. Descartes tried to prove the existence of God as the only possible cause of our idea of Him as an infinitely perfect being, since the imperfect cannot be the total or ade­ quate cause of the perfect. Hume argues that we can explain our idea of God simply as a projection of our own finite perfections in the direction of infinity. Hume answers all cosmological arguments for God, which argue from premises of observed facts about the cosmos to God as their only adequate cause, (i) by his critique of causality, and (2) by arguing that the universe, not God, could just as well be the first, uncaused cause, the eternal being. T

The most popular argument for God in Hume's day w as the argument from design. (Sometimes this is classified as one of the cosmological arguments, sometimes sepa­ rately.) Science had discovered far more order or design in the universe than ever be­ fore, and design seems to imply an intelligent Designer. Paley famously argued that if T

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w e found a w atch in the w ilderness we would infer, from its design, that it was made by an intelligent mind; but the universe has much more design and order in it than a watch; therefore it is reasonable to believe that there is a great mind behind all this magnificent order in the universe. Hume replies (1) that no argument from experience can ever establish a certainty; (2) that there is no proportion between an infinite cause and a finite effect; (3) that the argument depends on the analogy between human and divine designers, but we have no experience of the second half ofthat analogy; (4) that it does not prove monotheism, for many human beings together design machines like watches; (5) that the world resembles a vegetable, which just grows by itself, more than a designed machine like a watch; (6) that apparent design coidd have arisen by a Humean anticipation of Dar­ r

winian "natural selection"; (7) that the universe coidd have emerged like a spider's w eb from a giant spider, not by intelligence but by instinct; (8) that the world is not like any r

one thing in it such as a w atch, but is "entirely singular"; (9) that the concept of causal­ ity, whether mental or physical, cannot be applied beyond the realm of empirical ap­ pearances, to God and His relation to the universe which contains all appearances; (10) that the universe also contains much undesign (randomness); (11) that like many earlier and poorly working versions of the invention of the watch, many worlds might have been botched and bungled, throughout an eternity, ere this system was struck out; and (12) that the world contains also much bad design, i.e., what we call evil, both physical (pain) and moral (injustice). Twelve strikes should be more than enough to declare a batter out* Hume acknowledges that religious belief seems innate to mankind, but explains its origin in the same way he explains the origin of the idea of causality: by subjective feel­ ings, in this case the fear of death and the desire for immortality. This seems to imply that Christianity is myth, not truth. Yet Hume also argues (probably for the sake of the censors) that his skepticism is a friend, not an enemy, of religion, and that To be a philosophical skeptic is, in a man of letters, the first and most essential step towards being a sound, believing Christian, for a person seasoned with a

just sense of the imperfections of natural reason will fly to revealed truth with the great­ est avidity. (But why, one must ask, to Christianity rather than any other equally irra­ tional belief, whether Zen Buddhism or the invisible flying spaghetti monster? Hume can't be serious here. Yet many "fideist" Christians have not only interpreted him seri­ ously but agreed with him!) Hume's Critique of Miracles T

As we have seen, Hume claims that we cannot really know , by reason, any matter of fact. However, there seems to be one exception to this in Hume's mind: we can know that no miracle has ever happened as a matter of fact. Writing to a friend, Hume ex­ pressed great excitement and enthusiasm over the fact that he thought he had finally come up with an argument that refuted miracles. He saw this not as an impersonal scientific conclusion but as part of the spiritual war against superstition. (1) He begins with an assumption that was later called "Clifford's Rule," after a twentieth-century Oxford logician: A wise man . . . proportions his belief to the evi­ dence. No evidence, no belief; weak evidence, weak belief; strong evidence, strong be­ lief; certain evidence, certain belief. (Like Ockham's Razor, this is a good principle of scientific method, but when other people are involved it is questionable because it does not allow us to take account of per­ sonal trust or loyalty. Should a judge treat his spouse at home the same way he or she treats an accused criminal in court?) (2) Next follows Hume's definition of a miracle: A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature. (This too can be questioned, since it is only the cause of a miracle that is outside the natural order; once it happens, if it ever does happen, it becomes part of nature as a meteor from outer space becomes a rock on the earth's surface when it falls. Even a vir­ gin birth follows the ordinary course of a nine-month pregnancy.) (3) The nub of Hume's argument comes next: that miracles, though not logically self-contradictory, are more improbable than anything else, for the following reason: . . . as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws (of nature), the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined. To speak of the testimony of experience as "unalterable" seems to beg the question: it seems to assume the conclusion he is trying to prove, viz. that no one has ever experi­ T

enced a miracle, i.e., a violation of the law s of nature. Thus Hume says It is no miracle that a man, seemingly in good health, should die on a sudden: because such a kind of death, though more unusual than any other, has yet been frequently observed to hap­ pen. (Notice that Hume does not appeal to causality here, only to frequency of obser­ vation.) But it is a miracle that a dead man should come to life, because that has never been observed. This assumption, that miraculous events like resurrections have never been observed, is precisely what believers deny and Hume must prove rather than as­ sume. (4) His argument is linguistic rather than empirical when he goes on to say that

There must, therefore, be a uniform experience against eveiy miraculous event, other­ wise the event would not merit that appellation. (Italics mine) And as an uniform experience amounts to a proof, there is here a direct and full proof, from the nature of the fact, against the existence of any miracle. (It seems very strange that Hume here violates his own skeptical principles. He never calls any other historical or empirical claim for or against anything at all "a direct and full proof") (5) Hume then adds an argument from probability, calculating that it is always more probable that those who claim to have witnessed miracles are either hallucinating or lying than that miracles actually happen, because we know already that many people 7

do hallucinate or lie but we do not know that miracles happen: When anyone tells me that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself whether it be more probable that this person should either deceive (lie) or be deceived (hallu­ cinate), or that the fact which he relates should really have happened. (Why is a miracle improbable? Because it is so unusual, so unique. But so is each 7

individual human being w ho has ever lived. Yet they are real.) 7

(6) He then gives reasons for doubting the veracity of all w ho claim to have seen miracles: there is not to be found, in all history, any miracle attested by a sufficient number of men, of such unquestioned good sense, education, and learning, as to se­ cure us against all delusion in themselves; of such undoubted integrity as to place them beyond all suspicion of any design to deceive others. (What about the thousands of saints, innocent children, and people of sound mind and morals who were bribed, pressured, threatened, persecuted, tortured, and martyred and yet maintained this claim?) It forms a strong presumption against all supernatural and miraculous relations that they are observed chiefly to abound among ignorant and barbarous nations. (Why are they "ignorant and barbarous"? Why, because they believe in miracles! Another arguing in a circle, or begging the question. Very surprising for such a logical thinker as Hume.) Prodigies, omens, oracles . . . grow thinner eveiy page in proportion as we ad­ vance nearer the enlightened ages. (Why are later ages more "enlightened"? Because they disbelieve in miracles. The circle again.) . . . such prodigious events never happen in our days. 7

(That is his conclusion; how can it be his premise? Circularity again.) Hume lived in a society that was almost uniformly Christian, except among its T

intellectuals. He w as quite familiar with Christianity and the crucial importance of the miracle of Christ's resurrection for Christians. So in calling believers in miracles either deceived or deceivers (liars), he must here be thinking primarily of Christians, all of whom, from the apostles to present day believers, claim this miracle—Christ's resur­ rection—as central and necessary to their religion (cf. I Cor. 1 5 : 1 2 - 1 9 ) . Hume's Critique of Morality

All societies, cultures, and religions in history have believed in some form of what is traditionally called the natural moral law, i.e., moral principles that are universal (for all human beings), absolute (inescapable obligations), and objective (not just subjective de­ sires or feelings). There is only one exception: modern Western civilization. Denial of any natural moral law has increased each century, from the "Enlightenment" onward, and has spread from intellectuals and philosophers to the masses. Hume is one of the most influential philosophers in this development, i.e., in the rise of moral subjec­ tivism and moral relativism, just as he is in the rise of modern "analytic" logic. There is a close connection between these two developments. "The fact-value dis­ tinction" is a staple of modern "analytic" philosophers, and it stems from Hume's abso­ lute distinction between "matters of fact" and "relations of ideas." Moral values* fit into neither category, therefore they are not rational. They are mere feelings, emotions. That is Hume's "bottom line" in ethics. This classification of moral values as feelings is based on the psychology, or anthro­ pology, of human reason as weak and incapable of guiding the will, or the feelings ("passions"), or the actions: Nothing is more usual in philosophy, and even in common life, than to talk of the combat of passion and reason, to give the preference to reason, and to asseit that men are only so far virtuous as they conform themselves to its dictates.]:... In order to show the fallacy of all this philosophy, I shall endeavor to provenirsi, that reason alone can never be a motive to any action of the will; and secondly, that it can never oppose passion in the direction of the will. Hume argues that mere knowledge of facts cannot motivate the will to act. E.g., even if I know-" that I must be morally good in order to be happy, or, as Plato put it, that "justice is always more profitable than injustice," this knowledge will not, as Plato thought, motivate me to be good or just unless I already seek happiness as my end; and this seeking is done not by the reason or by the will, but by feeling, emotion, or sentiment: . . . the ultimate ends (goods, values, purposes) of human actions can v

never, in any case, be accounted for by reason" -. but recommend themselves entirely to die sentiments and affections of mankind, without any dependence on the intel­ lectual faculties. Hume goes farther: Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them. (This is exactly what Hobbes said: see p. 215, par. 3, p. 2 1 6 , point 8.) Reason cannot make moral judgments at all! It can only calculate what things are likely to satisfy our desires, but it cannot judge any desires at all as right or wrong. In fact, Hume makes the astonishing claim that 'Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger. (See the previous footnote on the meaning of "reason" in Hume.) Hume then proceeds to refute the traditional view, that some human actions are in fact good or evil, right or wrong, by using his Empiricist premise to reduce everything objectively real to merely sensory qualities:

Take any action allowed to be vicious: Willful murder, for instance. Examine it in all lights, and see if you can find that matter of fact, or real existence, which you call vice. In whichever way you take it, you find only certain passions, motives, volitions and thoughts. There is no other matter of fact in the case. The vice entirely escapes you, as long as you consider die object. You can never find it, till you turn your reflexion into your own breast, and find a sentiment of disapprobation, which arises in you, towards this action. Here is a matter of fact; but 'tis the object of feeling, not of reason. It lies in yourself, not in the object. So that when you pronounce any action or character to be vi­ cious, you mean nothing but that from the constitution of your nature you have a feel­ ing or sentiment of blame from the contemplation of it. (But that is a very blatant confusion, and the confusion is in Hume, not in the rest of humanity, whom he is criticizing for linguistic confusion; for "blame" is not a feel­ ing, it is ajudgtnent. "That is a wicked act" does not mean "I feel in a blaming mood when I look at that." I may feel "non-blaming" and desire not to blame, yet I blame any­ way. A good judge cannot go by his feelings! Nor can a defendant: "But judge, I don't feel guilty" is hardly an excuse for a crime.) So for Hume, we do not feel good about justice or charity because they are good, or bad about injustice or cruelty because they are bad. They're not! They're value-free. Only because we feel good or bad when we contemplate them do we (misleadingly) call them good or bad. The Nazis felt good about murdering the Jews, therefore they called it "good." The deed, in reality, was neither good nor evil. (A convenient philosophy for tyrants! In his philosophical musings, Diuturna, Mussolini explicitly identifies Fascism with Relativism.) Hume then announces the absolute divide between is and ought, facts and values, truth and goodness that is, for him, fatal to traditional rational or philosophical ethics: In eveiy system of morality which I have hitherto met with, I have always remarked that. . .instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is and is not, I meet with. . . an ought or ought not... what seems altogether inconceivable (is) how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it.* What moral principles can be used, then, if there really is no virtue or vice, no good or evil, no right or wrong? Hume reduces moral judgments to two: judgments about what is agreeable or useful. Aristotle said, commonsensically, that "good" could mean three things: the virtuous, the pleasant, or the useful. Hume reduces these three to two. We can calculate what will give us pleasure and what will work. That is all. There is no more. We can't give ourselves or each other any reason to prefer saving a life to scratch­ ing our head. Moral judgments are just as irrational as judgments about the taste of foods. "I love violence" is related to "I love peace" as "I love spicy cheese" is related to "I love plain cheese." This idea of Hume's gave Jeremy Bentham the basic premise for his new morality of Utilitarianism (the reduction of the good to the useful). When he read Hume, Ben­ tham wrote, "I felt as if scales had fallen from my eyes." Hume thinks this does not lead to social destruction because he optimistically relies on the universality and strength of the feeling of sympathy, which works for

community and communality in all of us. Hume did not live to see "the century of genocide." What's Left? Hume has set himself against universal common sense, against nearly all previous philosophy, and against all religion. He has undermined reason's power to know any­ thing beyond sense impressions: metaphysics, religion, science, common sense, causal­ ity, substance, self, mind, soul, spirit, other minds, immortality, providence, freedom, God, miracles, and morality. He is the most complete skeptic in the history of philos­ ophy. His famous "bottom line" at the end of the Enquiry is: When we run over libraries, persuaded of diese principles, what havoc must we make? If we take into our hand any volume of school metaphysics, for instance, let us ask: Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it dien to the flames. For it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion. By these very standards, the first book to go into the flames would be Hume's own work. For the statement that the only meaningful statements aie one of these two— "relations of ideas" or "matters of (empirical) fact"—is itself neither one, and therefore, by its own standards, meaningless. "Commit it then to the flames. For it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion." What is left? Only the flames. Hume does not admit that this philosophy is self-contradictory and thus unthink­ able. But he does admit that it is unlivable. He says that he is ready to reject all belief and reasoning, and look upon no opinion even as more probable or likely than anodier. Where am I, or what? From what causes do I derive my existence, and to what condi­ tion shall I return? Whose favor shall I court, and whose anger must I dread? What be­ ings surround me? And on whom have I any influence, or who have any influence on me? I am confounded widi all these questions, and begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable, environed with the deepest darkness and utterly de­ prived of die use of eveiy member and faculty. (But) To whatever length anyone may push his specidative principles of skepticism, he must act. . . and live and converse like other men . . . It is impossible for him to persevere in total skepticism or make it appear in his conduct. His only solution to this radical disconnect is to abandon his philosophy in his life, to embrace a "double truth theory," in order to avoid depression and perhaps insanity: Most fortunately it happens diat since reason is incapable of dispelling diese clouds, nature herself suffices to diat purpose, and aires me of diis philosophical melancholy and delirium, eidier by relaxing the bent of mind, or by some avocation and lively im­ pression of my senses, which obliterate all fliese chimeras. I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse and am merry with my friends; and when, after three or four hours' amusement, I would return to diese speculations, diey appear so cold and strained and ridiculous diat I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther. Four possible general answers to Hume:

(1) One could throw old Aristotle into the conversation, as I have implicitly done, and I think he would quite hold his own with Hume, even on Empiricist premises. (2) Reid (next chapter) will defend common sense against Hume, even on Empiri­ cist premises. (3) Pascal would say that Hume's heart is far wiser than his head; that "the heart has its reasons which the reason does not know." That would be something like the an­ swer of the later Existentialists like Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. (4) But before they come on the scene, one more strictly rational attempt to answer Hume's great skeptical challenge appears, and his name is Immanuel Kant. * I have taken the liberty to modernize Hume's florid punctuation in quoting him, but have not altered any of his words or capitalizations. * When you compare Scotch and French cooking you know why he put on a lot of weight in France. * For a critique of this assumption and an alternative to it, see the beginning of the Locke chapter. Hume's assumption here logically seems to lead to solipsism (the belief T

that we can know nothing but ourselves). Solipsism may be believable but it is certainly not livable by any Humean being. In fact Dostoyevski and C S . Lewis identify it as the psychology of Hell!—see Fr. Zossima's reflections on Hell halfway through Dostoyevski's The Brothers Karamazov and ch. 8 of Lewis's The Problem of Pain. v

~'" Hume means by "species" merely "conventional classes," not "natural kinds." Natural kinds are not distinguished by mere differences of degree (like "smart men" vs. "stupid men" or "bright colors" vs. "dull colors") but only by differences in kind, in essential nature (like "men (rational animals)" vs. "brutes (irrational animals)" or "col­ ors" vs. "shapes"). * This is not an original argument: it was used by Aristotle and Aquinas, who were neither Empiricists nor Rationalists, to refute Plato's rationalistic notion of innate ideas. * But many causal relationships seem not necessary but contingent, either by free will or by chance: for instance, singer A may sing song X or song Y, while song X may be sung by singer A or singer B; and a given avalanche could smother a wolf or a fox, whichever happened to be in its way; while the wolf could be smothered by avalanche A or avalanche B, whichever mountain he happened to be prowling on. The singing of songs may necessitate a singer, but they do not necessitate this singer. * For a powerful concrete case for the need for a substantial self, read Robert Bolt's play about Thomas More, "A Man for all Seasons," especially his comments, in his Preface, on the dissolution of the substantial self in modern life. And see the AcademyAward-winning movie based on this play. One may ask: How then do we know this non-object? One possible answer is what Marcel calls "recollection" (see ch. Vol. IV, 77). * (See C. S. Lewis's satire on this in The Silver Chair. Hume is like the Witch of the Underland, and Reid (next chapter) will be like Puddleglum.) * For a critique of the applications of such a psychological science see C S . Lewis, The Abolition of Man and Joseph Wood Krutch, The Measure of Man. * If readers know Thomas Aquinas well, they may guess how he would defend his

five cosmologica! arguments against these critiques. * Before the eighteenth century, "values" was not used to refer to ethics, but eco­ nomics. The word that was used in morality was "laws." But "laws" cannot be subjec­ tive to me; they impinge on my will, so that I must either obey or disobey them. But "values" is a more flexible term. Values can be either subjective or objective, either cre­ ated or discovered, either freely chosen or bindingly "imposed." * This is true. In fact it is the very essence of classical morality, pagan as well as Christian. Hume will now undermine this essential foundation. Hume would not call this "knowledge" at all, but only "belief." Hume cannot say that anything moral is "knowledge" because moral qualities or values are not empirical. They are not "ideas" because they are not copied from any sensory "impressions." They are therefore cognitively meaningless. They are mere feelings, and therefore it is not logically possible to meaningfully argue about them. But this is what we always do: we argue about whether an act would be right or wrong, but we do not argue about whether a taste felt pleasant or unpleasant. So Hume is telling us that all the arguments about morality that have occupied nearly all philosophers and ordinary people through­ out history are mistakes, linguistic errors, and cognitively meaningless. *** This conclusion follows from Hume's new, narrowed, "analytic" notion of "rea­ son" as mere logical consistency ("relations of ideas," which are judged true or false by the law of non-contradiction alone), not wisdom or understanding. Contrast what near­ ly all pre-Humean philosophers meant by "reason." * The answer to Hume's question is that moral reasoning does not deduce an "ought" from an "is" alone but from an "is" premise (e.g., "Murder is evil") plus an "ought" premise ("Evil ought not to be done"). This latter principle is traditionally held to be morally self-evident just as the law of non-contradiction is logically self-evident. Both were part of traditional "reason."

63. Thomas Reid (1710-1796) BY DR. STEVEN SCHWARZ, PH.D. Reid's Life and Place in the Histoiy of Philosophy Reid, founder of the Scottish school of common sense philosophy and its most famous member, was professor of philosophy at King's College, Aberdeen, and later professor of moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow, where he took the position from which Adam Smith had just resigned. His major works are An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense (1764), Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (1785) and Essays on the Active Powers of Man (1788). He sent a copy of his Inquiry to Hume, who read it and wrote back, commending the work as a serious challenge to his ideas, as it was to the many Scottish philosophers who had accepted Hume's skep­ ticism. Reid was a deeply moral man, committed to the search for truth, patient and persevering, a warm and concerned friend to many, and a deeply devoted husband to his wife, Elizabeth, and father to his five children. Though born a year before Hume, he really comes after Hume in terms of his place in the history of philosophy. He died 2 0 years after Hume, and that is where we should place him. He follows the classic British Empiricists—Locke, Berkeley, and Hume— and he sees his task as cleaning up the mess they made. That mess is a skepticism that doubts or denies what we all know to be real; what common sense tells us is real. We'll look at this in three key areas. Reid's Big Idea Common sense is, or at least should be, the foundation of all philosophical inquiry. Therefore, in any conflict between philosophy and common sense, we should take the side of common sense. Philosophy is not superior to common sense, as Hume appar­ ently thought. It can help us understand better what we already know from common sense. It can go deeper and move beyond common sense; but it can never take away what common sense makes obvious for us. This is because philosophy itself must begin with common sense and must build on it. In daily life, the most skeptical philosopher lives his common sense, not his philosophical theory. (1) Sense Perception and the Real World By our five senses we perceive the world. I open my eyes, I see a tree, and so I know it is there. What could be simpler? What could be more obvious? But Reid soon finds out it is not so simple or obvious. How do we perceive things? Locke said it is by having ideas. We have a tree-idea in our mind, and that leads us to believe that there is a tree out there. But how do we get from the idea in our mind to the real tree? In the story from Locke to Hume the answer is as simple as it is devastating: we don't! Here, in brief, is how the story unfolds. Locke says that nothing is perceived but what is in the mind of the perceiver. We do not really perceive external objects but only ideas representing them in our minds. From these ideas we infer the existence of external objects. Berkeley quickly sees that

such an inference can never work. If all we can get to are our own ideas, then that's all we have. We can simply drop the "external objects" Locke claimed are there. Our per­ ceptual experience is the same with or without those Lockean "external objects." Hume agrees, and drops even more things. And so the story ends in a complete skepticism. As Reid puts it in the Dedication to his inquiry, "if my impressions and ideas are the only existences of which I can have any knowledge or conception, . . . [then] upon this hypothesis, the whole universe about me. . . sun, moon, stars, and earth, friends and relations, all things without exception, which I imagined to have permanent existence, whether I thought of them or not, vanish at once." That's the task: rescue the world of common sense; show that in perception we actually reach external objects. Does Reid succeed? Let's see what happens as he exam­ ines each of the five senses. In smelling I have a certain sensation; that's in me. There's also a quality in the object. But, Reid tells us, the sensation bears no resemblance to the quality in the object. Taste is the same. As I munch on the steak I experience a sensa­ tion, what I call the taste of the steak. But that taste quality is not really an objective fea­ ture of the steak the way roundness is an objective feature of a basketball. Again there is no resemblance. I hear the sound of a coach, and immediately realize there is a coach outside. But of course I don't really hear the coach; what I hear is the sound made by a coach. And that sound is a sensation in me, which has no resemblance to the coach it­ self. I say the fire is hot; but what I experience is a sensation of heat in my mind. When it is very intense we say it is a pain. Clearly a pain is not something out there in the world existing independently of me. It's something in me. And the same applies to all the other sensations. How about the sense of touch? Surely we can reach external objects in this way. I know there is a table here because I can feel it by touching it. Reid examines it care­ fully. I press my hand against the table. I feel a certain sensation. That's something in me. How do I get from what is in me to the table out there? How are they connected? Reid admits he doesn't know! A sword pierces my skin. I feel a pain. But I also claim that I feel the sword as sharp and pointed. How do I get to these objective qualities of the sword from my sensation which is in me? We seem to be back with Locke's view that we perceive only ideas or sensations in us, and that these have no resemblance to anything out there in the world. How about vision? We see a color. Reid distinguishes the appearance of the color which is an idea in us, from the quality of color in the object which is the unknown cause of the coloridea in us. Again we can't reach an objective reality out there; we don't see a real color in objects, but only an idea in us. But Reid has another item: visible figure. By this he seems to mean shape and size. Here he says there is a resemblance; the visible figure is a sign of the real figure, the actual shape that the object has. Is the visible figure we perceive an idea in our minds? Or is it the object itself in its shape and size? Reid doesn't tell us directly. But he seems to mean that the visible figure we perceive is an idea in our minds; else why would he say there is a resemblance? One can't have a resemblance unless there are two distinct things that resemble each other. If in

perceiving the visible figure I perceive the object itself, then there is one object of per­ ception; hence no two things, one of which can be said to be a resemblance of the other. If this is his position - that visible figure is an idea in my mind and that this idea resembles the real figure (actual shape and size) of the object out there - then we can ask him how he knows that there is this resemblance? He admits he doesn't know. He seems to have fallen back to the very position he set out to criticize: Locke's view that we perceive only our own ideas and sensations, and that we then somehow infer a world of real things existing out there independently of us. In a word: perception hath always an object distinct from the act by which it is per­ ceived; an object which may exist whether perceived or not. The object may be a tree, with trunk and branches; the act is something in my mind of which I am conscious. They are clearly distinct. Why then believe in the real existence of the tree, if all you are really aware of in perception is your own act? That act means having an idea in your mind, one essentially distinct from the real tree out there. I am aware that this belief which I have in perception stands exposed to the strongest batteries of skepticism. But Reid holds fast to his belief in the existence of the real world out there. This be­ lief. . . . is none of my manufacture; it came from the mint of nature; . . . I even took it upon trust. 7

That's the basic story. Does Reid succeed in his task of rescuing the w orld of com­ T

mon sense and showing that in perception w e actually reach external objects? On one level he clearly doesn't. He falls back into the 'we perceive only our own ideas' trap that r

he originally w anted to escape from. But the fact that he wanted to escape from this trap, that he was not satisfied in accepting Hume's radically skeptical conclusion, is I think highly significant. He sets the philosophy of perception in the right direction. Why didn't he reach the goal? There are, I think, two main factors. First, he uncritically accepts the language and concepts of his adversaries: that per­ ception starts with ideas and sensations in us; and that these may or may not have a resemblance to what's out there. That is a program for failure. Modem thinkers such as G. J. Warnock and Don Locke have offered us an alternative, which I'm sure Reid would have eagerly embraced. Let me briefly outiine what this is. I press hard on the table. What do I feel? I feel the table itself; I feel its real quality of hardness. True, I feel a sensation; but to feel such a sensation is to feel the table. I feel (and thereby perceive) the table by means of this sensation. Feeling the sensation is not an alternative to feeling the table: the sensation is not what I perceive but what I have when I perceive the table. The old view of Locke, continued by Reid, separated what should have been kept together. The same applies to the pain caused by the sword piercing my skin; that sensation (very painful) is essentially a perception of the real sword and its real quality of sharpness. The same applies to vision. To see the visible figure of the tree is to see the tree it­ self. It is to see the tree as it now appears to me. Appearances will vary with distance, perspective, light and other factors. But appearances are not alternatives to the real T

T

thing; they are not ideas in the mind w hich have to be somehow brought back into a

relation to the thing itself. An appearance is essentially an appearance of something: the thing we perceive. Distinction does not mean separation. We can distinguish the surface of the chair from the chair itself. Still, to sit on the surface of the chair is to sit on the chair itself, and vice versa. So too with appearances: to see the appearance of the tree is to see the tree itself. And what is true of visible figure applies also to color. As Warnock puts it in his book, Berkeley, "in seeing the color of the grass we see the grass itself." Second, perception is really a very difficult topic. It is not all that surprising that Locke, Berkeley, and Hume went off the track. We can retreat back to our own perspec­ tive of things and then wonder how that connects to the real thing. How do I get from my bodily sensations when I press against the table to the table itself? How do I get from the visual image I have when I see something to the thing itself? What is that image? It's what the eye doctor tests when he asks me which of two lenses give me a clearer picture. And how does that image come to exist in my mind as a result of some brain event caused by what happens in my eyes and my optic nerve? All these are caus­ es for wonder! "Philosophy begins in wonder and wonder is the spirit of a philosopher" (Plato, Theaetetus, 155). Reid's contribution is that he set philosophy off in the right direction. He argued strongly that we have to get away from the Locke-Berkeley-Hume model. He made a good start, but then lost his way (or dropped the ball). His call was to get back to com­ mon sense, and later thinkers such as Wamock, Don Locke, and G. E. Moore have heeded that call; and so Reid really belongs with them in the Common Sense School.* He is their original inspiration. One more point of the greatest importance needs to be made. The whole discussion of perception in all these thinkers - about distinguishing sensations and ideas and ap­ pearances from what is out there in the real world, material objects and their qualities would not be possible if we did not actually perceive the real things in the world. To take a famous example, the stick that is really straight but looks bent when half im­ mersed in water: we would never notice this discrepancy unless we saw the real object, both when it appears straight and when it appear bent. We see both and so we can compare them. When the stick is in the water we still see the stick itself, not a mere idea of it (as many philosophers are wont to say). We see the stick as bent. (2) The Reality of the Self and Personal Identity A second key area where Reid wants to clean up the skeptical mess is the reality of our own existence. What could be more obvious? Yet, as we saw in the last chapter, Hume claimed that there is no self, no substantial "I"; only a bundle of fleeting impressions and ideas. It's hard to imagine a more radical betrayal of common sense! Reid reminds us of what we all already know by our common sense: I am a person, a self, a substantial being, who has various experiences; and that I exist as the same person over time, what I know as my own personal identity. He points out that the con­ viction which every man has of his identity, as far back as his memory reaches, needs no aid of philosophy to strengthen it, and no philosophy can weaken it without

producing some degree of insanity. This immediate conviction is presupposed every moment of our waking lives. I reason, going from one step to another; at the last step, I must know that it was me, the same person, who took the first step. When I remember a past event in my life, I not only remember the event but also that it was I, the same person I am now, who experienced that event. Without this experienced continuation of myself as the same person, there could be no memory of past events. My personal identity, therefore, implies the continued existence of that indivisible thing which I call myself. Whatever this self may be, it is something which thinks, and deliberates, and resolves, and acts, and suffers. If there are fleeting impressions and ideas, who has them? Who experiences them? They cannot just float by themselves in empty space; there must be a conscious being who has these impressions and ideas. That being is the self, the substantial self which exists as the same person over time. My thoughts, and actions, and feelings, change every moment; they have no continued, but a successive existence; but that self or I, to which they belong, is permanent, and has the same relation to all the succeeding thoughts, actions, and feelings which I call mine. (3) The Reality of Causal Connections A third key area where Reid wants to clean up the skeptical mess is causality: the reality of causal connections in the world. Billiard ball A strikes billiard ball B, and ball B moves. We say ball A caused ball B to move, that it produced the motion in ball B; that there is therefore a real connection between the motion of A and the motion of B. Again, what could be more obvious? Yet, as we saw, Hume denies all this. "All I can see is the motion of the two balls, and that B comes after A, not that it comes because of A. I can't see any real connection, so why suppose there is one? I expect B to move after being struck by A, but that's just a habit in me, not anything out there in the real world. There is no real causality in the world." Reid finds this incredible. Of all the paradoxes this author [Hume] has advanced, diere is not one more shocking than this, that tilings may begin to exist witìiout a cause. This woidd put an end to all speculation, as well as to all the business of life. In his usual manner, Reid appeals to what we all know by common sense. A child knows that when one of his toys is missing, somebody took it away; diere is a cause. Suppose a man is found dead on a highway, his body pierced with deadly wounds. The matter is investigated, and goes to a jury trial. But we may venture to say, that, if Mr. Hume had been of such a jury, he would have laid aside his philosophical principles, and acted according to the dictates of common prudence. Like all the other members of die jury, Hume woidd seek to find the most likely cause, based on the firm conviction that there had to be a cause, and that that cause coidd only be one that was sufficient to actually produce die effect; not some event diat merely came before. Hume denied that we have a conception of causality as an active power that produces its effects. Reid counters that we know this from our immediate experience in bodily actions. I will to move my hand and it moves. I know that my willing causes it to move, and so we have a direct and immediate experience of causal power in ourselves;

hence a clear conception of it, contrary to Hume. That is, the very conception or idea of active power, and of efficient causes, is derived from our voluntary exertions in pro­ ducing effects. This is what is called today agent causation, in distinction to event causation as we find it in nature. Richard Taylor expresses this difference when he compares two gram­ matically similar sentences: 'This man started that forest fire" and "This match started that forestfire";the first is agent causation, the second is event causation, the striking of the match being part of an event that brought about the fire. The match cannot liter­ ally be said to start the fire in the way the man can be said to start it; the match "can only be used to start afire"(Action and Pw~pose). Reid is important as the forerunner of the modem theory of agent causation, developed by thinkers such as Richard Taylor and Roderick Chisholm. * So does Aquinas. See St I, 85, 2 (Vol. II, p. 9 6 , par. 2) and G. K. Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas, the Dumb Ox for a defense of Aquinas as the philosopher of common sense.

64* Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) Life and Personality Kant's life was remarkably unremarkable. He was born in Koenigsburg, in East Prussia (later part of the U.S.S.R.) and never, in his 8 0 years, traveled more than 6 0 miles away from his home town. He was raised in a very rigorous Puritanical Lutheran sect, the "Pietists," which taught and practiced a lifestyle that was severely moral, thrifty, consci­ entious, careful, and highly structured. It was individualistic and anti-ecclesiastical, but emphasized the fear of Hell and divine justice. Kant later abandoned the sect but not the moral seriousness. He later wrote: People may say what they will of Pietism. Those in whom it was sincere were worthy of honor. They possessed the highest thing that man can have—the quiet, the content, the inner peace, which no suffering can disturb. There are close similarities between Kant's ethics, Pietism, and Stoicism. (See Vol. I, ch. 2 9 ) After six years at the University of Koenigsburg, Kant refused a financially comfort­ able offer to be a preacher and instead supported himself for nine years with a very small income from private tutoring. In 1775 he was certified by the University as a "Privat-do-cent," which enabled him to teach at the University, but "privately," with his salary being paid directly by student tuitions. He was such a good teacher that he at­ tracted many students. He said he always paid the most attention to students of middle ability, since the stupid ones were hopeless and the geniuses could teach themselves. The University gave him a professorship in 1 7 7 0 , to replace his teacher, Knutzen, who was a disciple of Wolff, who was a disciple of Leibnitz. As we shall see below, Kant began as a Leibnitzean Rationalist but was shaken from his "dogmatic slumber" by Hume, and conceived his radically new philosophy as an operation to rescue reason, the foundation of the Enlightenment, from Hume's Empiricist critique by inventing a new epistemology which was neither Rationalist nor Empiricist. Kant was the first major philosopher since the Middle Ages to be a professional aca­ demic. Not until the twentieth century did this situation become the normal one. (That probably accounts for the dullness of twentieth-century philosophy, outside of the Exis­ tentialists.) Study and teaching was his life. It was fascinatingly dull, so regular that it was irreg­ ular. One biographer described it as "like the most regular of regular verbs," to which another answered: "But this verb was never conjugated: Kant never married." He planned to propose to two women, at different times, but procrastinated so long that both of them got impatient and left. "Live according to reason" and "think before you act" is the philosophy of a lifelong bachelor. Kant described marriage as an agreement between two people for the reciprocal use of each other's sexual organs. One can imag­ ine the words he would have used had he actually proposed to one of these women—or perhaps one cannot. He was short (5' 2") and slight (under 1 0 0 lbs.), with an unusually narrow' chest. One shoulder was higher than the other. His health was delicate. He was a hypochon­ driac. For instance, he would not converse outdoors, except in summer, because he

believed that breathing fresh cold air through the mouth was dangerous. He may have had an irregularity in the structure of his sex organs. The poet Heinrich Heine describes his passionately regular life this way: "I do not believe that the great cathedral clock of this city accomplished its day's work in a less passionate and more regular way than its countryman, Immanuel Kant. Rising from bed (at exactly 4:55 A.M.), coffee-drinking (exactly one cup), writing, lec­ turing, eating (one full meal a day: a 2 hour lunch, at 1 P.M with not less than 2 nor more than 5 guests), walking—everything had its fixed time; and the neighbors knew that it must be exactly half past three when they saw Professor Kant, in his gray coat (he had only one), with his cane in his hand, step out of his house door and move toward the little lime tree avenue, which is named after him, the Philosopher's Walk. Eight times he walked up and down that walk at every season of the year, and when the weather was bad, or the gray clouds threatened rain, his servant, old Lampe, was seen anxiously following him with a large umbrella under his arm like an image of Provi­ dence." He missed his walk only once: when he discovered the writings of Rousseau. He did not like music, except for marching bands, and was so indifferent to the visual arts that he had only one object of art in his rooms: a portrait of Rousseau. Yet one of his three most important books, the Critique of Judgment, is about aesthetics. His most val­ ued physical possession was his watch. He hated noise, and moved twice to avoid noisy neighbors. He once wrote a letter to the police complaining about the hymn-singing of the inmates of a nearby prison. But he was universally admired as a friend and conversationalist. His public univer­ sity lectures were so popular that students arrived at 6 A.M. to get a seat for the 7 A.M. lecture. Everyone knew him as a very kind and generous man. Yet, though he loved r

and supported his brother and tw o sisters, he did not exchange a word with them for 25 years. When he was 7 0 , King Frederick William II of Prussia, a much more repressive ruler than his predecessor, Frederick the Great, who had supported "Enlightenment" figures like Rousseau and Voltaire, threated him with "unpleasant consequences" if he continued to publish religiously and politically unorthodox opinions, as he had done in Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone. Kant politely promised henceforth to "refrain from all public statements on religion." There was a political motive behind this warning. (Politicians rarely have religious reasons for caring about religion.) It was Kant's enthusiasm about the French Revo­ lution, which had set all the thrones in Europe quaking. When Kant, then 65, had heard the news of the Revolution, he said, with tears in his eyes, "Now I can say, like Simeon, 'Lord, let now Thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen Thy salva­ tion.'" No one expected this mild, personally conservative professor to startle the world even more than Hume had done. But he did, suddenly, in 1781, at the age of 59, with his masterpiece, The Critique of Pure Reason, the single most important book of philos­ ophy in the last 7 0 0 years. It is so revolutionary that philosophers typically divide all

philosophy into "pre-Kantian" and "post-Kantian," as Christians divide history into "B.C." and "A.D." The book was at first little read, understood, or appreciated. For it is one of the most difficult books ever written. Philosophy students approach it with dread and boast for­ r

ever if they read the w hole thing. Kant himself called it "dry, obscure, opposed to all ordinary notions, and moreover long-winded." He deliberately avoided all concrete illustrations and examples because, he said, that would make it too long. (It is 7 0 0 T

pages as it is.) He sent it to Herz, a professional scholarly friend, w ho returned it unfin­ ished, with the explanation "If I go on to the end, I fear I shall go insane." For the sake ?

of the reader's sanity, w e will oversimplify the book. Even so, it will take many pages. Kant died peacefully at 8 0 , after years of gradual mental and physical decline. His last words were: It is good. Influences The three main influences behind Kant's work are (1) Newton, (2) Enlightenment Rationalism (Descartes, Leibnitz, Christian Wolff, and Kant's own teacher, Knutzen), and (3) Hume. Every philosopher has some non-negotiable absolute, an "Archimedean point," an unquestioned and unarguable foundation for all argument, even if it is the demand for Cartesian "universal doubt." For Christian, Jewish, and Muslim philosophers of the Middle Ages this was their scriptures, which they believed to be infallible divine reve­ lation. For Kant it was Newtonian science. Kant's philosophy is essentially a rescue of Newtonian reason, the very foundation T

for the w hole "Enlightenment," from Hume's critique. And the "bottom line" assump­ tion of his argument is essentially that if Hume is right, Newtonian science is under­ mined, therefore Hume cannot be right. Like most "Enlightenment" thinkers, Kant was simply using a different non-negotiable starting point (viz. the validity of Newto­ nian science) than the one used by the clergy who criticized Kant for undermining, altering, or weakening Christianity (viz. the validity of their scriptures). Kant will argue that Hume did indeed destroy "dogmatic" metaphysics, though not Newtonian science. Kant famously writes: I openly confess that my remembering David Hume was the very thing which many years ago fust interrupted my dogmatic slumber . . . since the origin of metaphysics so far as we know its history, nothing has ever happened which could have been more decisive to its fate than the attack made upon it by David Hume. Kant believed that Hume's Empiricist critique had destroyed forever what Kant called "dogmatic" (i.e., Rationalist) metaphysics: e.g., Plato, Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibnitz. Why? Because this metaphysics had no data from sensory experience to prove or disprove its theories. It meets no resistance. It is not falsifiable. Kant makes this point in a famous image: The light dove, cleaving the air in her free flight, and feeling its resistance, might imagine that its flight would be still easier in empty space. It was thus that Plato left the world of the senses, as setting too narrow limits to the understanding, and ventured out

beyond it on the wings of the Ideas, in the empty space of the pure understanding (thinking without sensing). He did not observe that with all his efforts he made no ad­ vance, meeting no resistance... Like Hume, Kant is going to limit rather than enlarge reason's power. He is going to reverse Plato's image of the Cave: his education will move us out of the upper world and down into the lower. But the lower world here is not merely sensation as opposed to thought but all appearances as opposed to reality, whether these appearances are sen­ sory or mental. In Kant's terms, this means we can know only "phenomena" and never "noumena" or "things-in-themselves," objective reality as it is independent of our awareness. Even Hume had allowed that we could know "matters of fact" in the real world with probability, though not with certainty, through sensation. That is why Kant is even more skeptical than Hume: he limits reason's ability to know reality even more. Kant, however, did not consider this to be skepticism at all, but a justification of reason. The Critique of Pure Reason is not a "critique" in the sense of a criticism, but an investi­ gation which establishes reason's validity by claiming that (a) reason's task is more modest than we used to think—it is not to know "things-in-themselves" but only to structure appearances—but that (b) it succeeds quite well in performing this modified task. Point (a) sounds like skepticism but point (b) is the opposite. The medievals assumed that "nature makes nothing in vain" and that therefore any universal, innate, natural human desire can be satisfied. Kant disagrees. We innately want to know objective reality, but we cannot ever do it. Human reason has this pecu­ liar fate t h a t . . . it is burdened by questions which, as prescribed by the very nature of reason itself, it is not able to ignore, but which, as transcending all its powers, it is also not able to answer. What a koan puzzle! What was in question, for Kant, was the very heart and foundation of the "Enlight­ enment," human reason itself. Descartes had tried to validate reason by redefining it as mathematical, scientific reason, in an attempt to be more critical. The result, Kant thought, was the opposite: "dogmatic" a priori systems (remember the "light dove" image). Locke had substituted Empiricism, which, against his will, led to Hume's ma­ terialism and skepticism. Berkeley had responded with a refutation not just of materi­ alism but of matter itself, from Locke's Empiricist premises. But Hume did to mind what Berkeley did to matter. What was left? Only the flames (p. 115). Another answer was possible: that reason is not the judge but the criminal, not the hero but the villain, not the savior but the sin. Let feeling triumph over reason! That was Rousseau's answer. It was not Kant's. But Rousseau's problem was Kant's prob­ lem: he needed a critique of reason—not to dethrone it, as Rousseau had done, but to rethrone it. We had to judge the judge, to certify the certifier. We had to redefine rea­ son in order to rethrone it, but in a different way than Descartes did. This is Kant's "Copernican revolution in philosophy." The redefining of reason itself had been done twice before: by Socrates and by Descartes. Socrates had redefined reason by separating it from tradition, authority, intuition, and myth and reforming it into syllogistic logic and the intellectual under­ standing of Platonic Forms (these are the two top quarters of Plato's "divided line").

Descartes had further redefined and narrowed it into scientific method (essentially, the second and third quarters of the Line). Kant will redefine it again, into the active sub­ jective shaping of mental perspectives rather than the receptive knowledge of objective reality ("things-in-themselves"). Kant's "Copeinican Revolution in Philosophy" Kant's "koan puzzle," four paragraphs above, in boldface type, sounds even more skep­ tical than Hume. But Kant thinks of it as the answer to Hume's skepticism. Why? Be­ cause it denies the common unquestioned assumption of both the dogmatic Rationalist and the skeptical Empiricist, the assumption that reason's proper task is to know things-in-themselves, and that if it cannot do that, we must be skeptics. Kant denies that common premise. His Critique tries to show that reason performs its task quite adequately, but its task is not to tell us what is "there," but to make what is there—not to make its very existence but its essence, its nature, its "logos," its form, its intelligibility, its knowability. Reason's business is not to discover but to create.*

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ally think science is (a way to discover w hat's "out there"). Reason is active; it is con­ struction work. This is truly revolutionary because it disagrees with every previous philosopher in history. Aristotle typifies traditional, commonsensical philosophy when he defines truth as "knowing and saying of what is that it is and of what is not that it is not." Kant redefines knowledge: not as the conformity of mind to things but of things to mind. We do not abstract form, order, "logos," or universals from things; we impose them upon things. In other words, in a sense all our knowledge is subjective, not objec­ tive. However, truth is not subjective in the sense that it is individual or arbitrary, but universal and necessary. It is not "my truth" or "your truth." All minds necessarily work in essentially the same way, and Kant will explain and try to justify that way. We live in a work of art we ourselves create, but we create it universally rather than individually, and necessarily rather than arbitrarily, though we do this unconsciously rather than consciously—rather like people looking through colored glasses that they don't notice they have on, and unthinkingly thinking everything they see is colored. Kant does not mean that the mind creates objects, but that it forms them. There is in­ deed a world "out there," though we cannot know it as it is in itself independent of our knowing. "Things-in-themselves" really exist, and influence our thinking; that is why our thinking is receptive. We must yet be in a position at least to think them as thingsin-themselves; otherwise we shoidd be landed in the absurd conclusion that there can be appearance without anything that appears. But we can never know what these things really are in themselves, only how we structure them by thought. We can only know the forms we project onto them, like images on a movie screen. Kant will explain that we have three sets of such forms: (i) the forms of sense per­ ception, time and space; (2) the categories of logic, and (3) the ideas of world, self, and God, which he calls the metaphysical "Ideas of Pure Reason." None of these can be known to be real (or, for that matter, unreal). We are limited to the Cave and its shad­ ows. But we are projecting all the shadows. These three sets of forms are not "innate ideas," as in Plato. They are empty forms, T

structures, w ays of thinking rather than thoughts. T

Socrates and Descartes (and, in a w ay, Hume) each redefined "reason" as the way to truth, but Kant is even more revolutionary: he redefines "truth" itself. It is conformity of being to thought, not thought to being. Here is the most important paragraph Kant ever wrote, from the Preface to the second edition of The Critique of Pure Reason: Until now it has been assumed that all our knowledge must conform to objects. But all our attempts to extend our knowledge of objects by establishing something in regard to them a priori by means of concepts have, on this assumption, ended in failure. We must, therefore make trial whether we may not have more success in the tasks of meta­ physics if we suppose that objects must conform to our knowledge. . . . We shoidd then be proceeding precisely on the lines of Copernicus' primary hypothesis. Failing of satisfactoiy progress in explaining the movements of the heavenly bodies on the suppo­ sition that they revolved around the spectator, he tried whether he might not have

better success if he made the spectator to revolve and the stars to remain at rest. A sim­ ilar experiment can be tried in metaphysics. Somewhere along the way Kant seems to forgets that he called this just a thought "experiment," and he treats it as a given, as a knowable "thing-in-itself." But if this is anything more than a mere thought-experiment, it seems self-contradictory, for it is to claim that we can not just construct, as a thought-experiment, but know, as an objec­ tively real state of affairs, or "thing-in-itself," that we cannot know "things-inthem-selves." The reader may think that the analogy to Copernicus shows exactly the opposite of what Kant means by his "revolution," since Copernicus made the knowing subject (man on earth and his motion) relative to the object (the sun), while Kant is making the objects of knowledge relative to the (active structuring of the knowing human) subject. But we can also take the analogy the other way: pre-Copernican thought did not know that we on earth are moving, and that that movement is what makes the stars appear to move; similarly, pre-Kantian thought forgot that our minds and senses are moving and acting to impose form on the world, so that it appears that the forms are "out there" in the world when they are in fact only in the knower, as the motion in the sun and the stars appears to be "out there" when it is really in us. An old "New Yorker" magazine cartoon gives us the best picture I know of the human situation if Kant's "Copernican revolution" is true. Two lonely castaways on a desert island find a bottle washed up on the beach with a note in it. They see the note as contact with the outside world, but when they read it their faces fall. The caption reads: "It's only from us." For Kant, all the wonderful form and order and intelligibility and design that we seem to find in the universe is not really there, but is only from us. So Kant has not escaped Hume's solipsism; he has deepened it. He has only made it universal and necessary. This is surely not a happy solution! Do we not long to escape our own skins and relate to the real Other, whether divine, human, or natural? If Kant is right, we can never do that. Is that not a philosophy of despair? Is that not, in fact, the psychology of Hell, the eternal impossibility of escape from self, whether individual or collective? Or is it noble humanism that saves rather than damns reason? There is a story (probably apocryphal) that Kant once responded to an astronomer's argument that "as­ tronomically speaking, man is quite insignificant" by retorting, "But astronomically speaking, man is the astronomer." Kant thought he had rescued human reason and moral freedom and dignity from the materialistic world-view that reduced man to a cog in the Newtonian clockwork universe. A useful way of approaching Kant's "Copernican revolution" might be by asking the question: Why are the lam of thought also the laws of things? Why do intelligence and intelligibility coincide? Why is "logos" both objective and subjective? What is the ulti­ mate reason for this "coincidence" that is obviously more than an accident? There are three possible answers: (i) Things determine thought. This is the answer of Empiricists, both "soft" (Aris­ totle) and "hard" (Hume). It is also the answer of Cartesian and Platonic Rationalists,

but for them the "things" that determine thought are Ideas or Forms rather than mate­ rial things. (2) Thought determines things. This is the answer of the Kantian Idealist, the an­ swer of the "Copernican revolution." (3) God made the two to correspond, like a man and a woman. (Indeed, the same word, "conception," is used both for the product of sex and for the product of knowl­ edge.) Whether the first or the second answer above is correct—whichever corresponds to which—the ultimate reason for the correspondence is that God is the source of both. That is why they coincide, like twin children of the same Father. This is the answer of Augustine and Aquinas. Answer (3) is logically compatible with either (1) or (2).

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