I took a very good course on the Greek Philosophers this past fall, and here I jotted down a storyline with some of the key ideas they proposed and how their thoughts related to one another.

The Presocratics

The Presocratics were the early philosophers trying to understand the nature and origins of the cosmos.

This included the Milesians, especially Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, believed that by understanding the smallest things — what all is made up of — this will explain how and why the bigger things work. They believed in material monism - that all is made of a single stuff - but differed in opinion as to what this stuff was and what it was like.

Other Presocratics include Heraclitus the champion of flux, Parmenides who denied change all together. Later also was the Pluralists, who expanded on Parmenides’ explanation of no fundamental change by proposing a sort of mixing and separation of fundamental stuffs, and the Atomists, who also drew from Parmenides.

Socrates

Socrates’ moral psychology: belief + desire = action

All people want to be happy. When people come to right definitions and brings their beliefs into line with the truth, they will act in accordance with the good and be happy.

Note: will doesn’t play a big role here

The goal: to come to an explanatory understanding of a real essence, particularly of that of the virtues and the good itself.

Socratic inquiry is primarily concerned with helping people grow in human wisdom: to not think they know what they don’t know.

Socratic inquiry is a particular method that aids in this. It generally starts with the question, “What is F?”, continues in “elencus”, a process of testing and examining the belief about whether it is a good definition and whether it is consistent with the interlocutor’s belief system, and typically ends in “aporia”, a state of perplexity and that tends to provide a shock like that of a torpedo, realizing he or she does not know something.

The journey looks like this

• false conceit ——> “human wisdom” ——————> “divine wisdom”

• false beliefs ——> don’t think you know what you don’t ——> def of virtue and consistency

Socrates’ role is as midwife and gadfly. Birth is painful. Socrates himself is barren, but he can bring on and ally the pain. Individuals discover within themselves beautiful things which they bring forth into the light. This is different from the Sophists, who claimed to be wise, skilled at teaching, and took money.

Method - especially as seen in the Meno

Socrates focusses on right method/process/principles (asking questions, holding high the law, humbling oneself to the political process and playing one’s role, focussing on principles, taking one’s time in working toward truth) instead of content (his life/death, the ending at the correct answer, ordered desire to work for goodness and care for the soul).

Process / truth / law / calling over particular / individual / content.

The law (and principles) can put into practice a process that will more likely yield correct particulars, be it a democratic judicial process that allows for the truth to be heard, or taking more time to listen to and think about both sides (as he advocates in 37a)

Regarding his conviction:

The laws were just, but this doesn’t mean the outcome was just. Beyond this, the democratic process wasn’t even abided to — the trial was sped against the rules of the process. Yet he did not flee prison.

Higher law / good

l l

just process just people / people working toward virtue

l l

optimize the likelihood of a just outcome

This was what he was working toward. Yet even when the outcome was unjust, he would abide by it. I don’t think this was a utilitarian thinking of “it will be better in the long run because this will be impactful”, I think it was more of a “this is the right thing to do, it is my role, I ought not go agains the laws”, and the secondary product was an offspring of this attitude.

I honestly would really enjoy going on and on about Plato and Aristotle. These are the two that most interested me. But here I’ll just write out a few highlights of each.

Plato

Plato agrees with a lot of what Socrates taught, but only thought Socratic aporia brought us so far and that his understanding of the human soul was also lacking. He wanted to take us further. He begins in dialogue with the naturalists, taking some elements of Socrates, and looking to provide theories that answer the areas where the naturalists were unable to go.

His method of investigation took the form of proposing a hypothesis and reasoning with it, versus the naturalists’ pure empiricism. In particular, he proposes the “psyche” — the principle of life — and the forms.

Plato believed there to be three types of things: beings (forms), becomings (always changing perceptibles), and psyche / souls (imperceptible, cognize beings in intelligence).

The forms are quite interesting. There are eternal, unchanging, uniform, indissoluble, divine, exist themselves by themselves, imperceptible, intelligible. There would be a form of beauty, goodness, equality, health, and other similar “things”.

The Psyche is the animating principle of any living thing or creature. It is tripartite, including the the rational and non-rational, the latter including spirit and appetite. Each part has its own desires, aversions and teloi.

Plato describes the psyche further in his work The Republic. In it, he begins using elenctic examination on various proposed definitions of justice, eventually ending in aporia. In order to pain what justice is, he describes it in the metaphor of a city. Justice is a sort of harmony in the city, where each part is playing its role well and in moderation. Human flourishing comes when each part of a person’s psyche is in harmony with the others under the governance of reason. Therefore unity, symmetry, concord, harmony is good, as it facilitates action as a unity.

In Plato’s Republic, we are given many great images, including the Allegory of the Cave. I wrote a paper on this allegory for class and posted it.

Again, even more to say about Aristotle, but I’ll keep it to highlights.

Aristotle

Student of Plato for 20 years. Then got into zoology for awhile and tutored Alexander the Great. Later returned to Athens and started the Lyceum. The writings we have of his are likely his teaching notes.

Here we can see an important difference in method:

• The presocratics started with atoms

• Plato started with the forms

• Aristotle started with individual organisms

He developed syllogistic logic with the categories

The Categories

There are ten categories accounting for the things that are. These include substance, quality, quantity, relation, where, when, etc. There are particulars (primary) and universals (secondary) in each category. Primary substances include “Jimbo the horse” or “Socrates”, and their corresponding secondary substances are “horse” and “man”. For quality, an example of a particular is “this turquoise” whereas a universal would be “turquoise”. With these, Aristotle developed syllogistic logic, and essential and accidental predication.

The Physics

In response to Parmenides’ denial of change, Aristotle proposed hylomorphism.

Hylomorphism means that ordinary physical objects are complexes of matter and form. This allows for a particular subject to remain the same subject while also undergoing a change. For example, at a high level view, if Socrates is not musical at t1, and he is musical at t2, then he may be the same Socrates, but now he is a compound entity, a musical human.

Matter underlies and persists through substance changes. It provides potentiality.

Form causes matter to be a particular kind of thing, imposing a sort of structure or organization to the matter. It actualizes its potentiality.

Substance is a compound of form and matter, which is the basic building block that Aristotle uses.

Aristotle saw the Presocratics as “unskilled boxers in fights, who often land good punches, but are not guided by knowledge.” (meta 985a) He believed that they were correct in determining two of the four types of causes.

He agrees that they were thinking in the right direction, that they were thinking about the material cause and most of them were also thinking about the efficient cause (like Empedicles with love and strife), but they weren’t considering the formal and final causes necessary to understanding things.

For Aristotle, to have explanatory understanding of something, say, a statue, one must be able to explain its four causes.

The Material cause: that from which a thing is made (the bronze of the statue)

The Formal cause: the essence (the shape of the statue)

The Efficient cause: the producer or initiator (the artisan)

The Final Cause: that for the sake of which (its purpose: to be looked at)

Aristotle believes that the final cause is needed to explain why everything is so organized, predictable and regular. For example, it helps explain internal principles within a person or animal that dictate our physical development, like our teeth. It helps explain the similarity in human developmental stages like in crawling. It helps explain that when humans reproduce, we get humans not plants.

Aristotle conceived the psyche as having up to three levels of capacity: nutritive, perceptive, and intellective. The human soul was the form that brought all three of these capacities.

Perhaps his most famous work is the Nicomachean Ethics. He argues that there is a highest good, eudaemonia, that all people pursue. He argues that they are able to pursue this well by developing virtue of character and virtues of thought.

There is so much to The Ethics, and so much more to Aristotle and the other ancient philosophers, but for now I will keep it here.

Onward and Upward!

I took a very good course on the Greek Philosophers this past fall, and here I jotted down a storyline with some of the key ideas they proposed and how their thoughts related to one another.

The Presocratics

The Presocratics were the early philosophers trying to understand the nature and origins of the cosmos.

This included the Milesians, especially Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, believed that by understanding the smallest things — what all is made up of — this will explain how and why the bigger things work. They believed in material monism - that all is made of a single stuff - but differed in opinion as to what this stuff was and what it was like.

Other Presocratics include Heraclitus the champion of flux, Parmenides who denied change all together. Later also was the Pluralists, who expanded on Parmenides’ explanation of no fundamental change by proposing a sort of mixing and separation of fundamental stuffs, and the Atomists, who also drew from Parmenides.

Socrates

Socrates’ moral psychology: belief + desire = action

All people want to be happy. When people come to right definitions and brings their beliefs into line with the truth, they will act in accordance with the good and be happy.

Note: will doesn’t play a big role here

The goal: to come to an explanatory understanding of a real essence, particularly of that of the virtues and the good itself.

Socratic inquiry is primarily concerned with helping people grow in human wisdom: to not think they know what they don’t know.

Socratic inquiry is a particular method that aids in this. It generally starts with the question, “What is F?”, continues in “elencus”, a process of testing and examining the belief about whether it is a good definition and whether it is consistent with the interlocutor’s belief system, and typically ends in “aporia”, a state of perplexity and that tends to provide a shock like that of a torpedo, realizing he or she does not know something.

The journey looks like this

• false conceit ——> “human wisdom” ——————> “divine wisdom”

• false beliefs ——> don’t think you know what you don’t ——> def of virtue and consistency

Socrates’ role is as midwife and gadfly. Birth is painful. Socrates himself is barren, but he can bring on and ally the pain. Individuals discover within themselves beautiful things which they bring forth into the light. This is different from the Sophists, who claimed to be wise, skilled at teaching, and took money.

Method - especially as seen in the Meno

Socrates focusses on right method/process/principles (asking questions, holding high the law, humbling oneself to the political process and playing one’s role, focussing on principles, taking one’s time in working toward truth) instead of content (his life/death, the ending at the correct answer, ordered desire to work for goodness and care for the soul).

Process / truth / law / calling over particular / individual / content.

The law (and principles) can put into practice a process that will more likely yield correct particulars, be it a democratic judicial process that allows for the truth to be heard, or taking more time to listen to and think about both sides (as he advocates in 37a)

Regarding his conviction:

The laws were just, but this doesn’t mean the outcome was just. Beyond this, the democratic process wasn’t even abided to — the trial was sped against the rules of the process. Yet he did not flee prison.

Higher law / good

l l

just process just people / people working toward virtue

l l

optimize the likelihood of a just outcome

This was what he was working toward. Yet even when the outcome was unjust, he would abide by it. I don’t think this was a utilitarian thinking of “it will be better in the long run because this will be impactful”, I think it was more of a “this is the right thing to do, it is my role, I ought not go agains the laws”, and the secondary product was an offspring of this attitude.

I honestly would really enjoy going on and on about Plato and Aristotle. These are the two that most interested me. But here I’ll just write out a few highlights of each.

Plato

Plato agrees with a lot of what Socrates taught, but only thought Socratic aporia brought us so far and that his understanding of the human soul was also lacking. He wanted to take us further. He begins in dialogue with the naturalists, taking some elements of Socrates, and looking to provide theories that answer the areas where the naturalists were unable to go.

His method of investigation took the form of proposing a hypothesis and reasoning with it, versus the naturalists’ pure empiricism. In particular, he proposes the “psyche” — the principle of life — and the forms.

Plato believed there to be three types of things: beings (forms), becomings (always changing perceptibles), and psyche / souls (imperceptible, cognize beings in intelligence).

The forms are quite interesting. There are eternal, unchanging, uniform, indissoluble, divine, exist themselves by themselves, imperceptible, intelligible. There would be a form of beauty, goodness, equality, health, and other similar “things”.

The Psyche is the animating principle of any living thing or creature. It is tripartite, including the the rational and non-rational, the latter including spirit and appetite. Each part has its own desires, aversions and teloi.

Plato describes the psyche further in his work The Republic. In it, he begins using elenctic examination on various proposed definitions of justice, eventually ending in aporia. In order to pain what justice is, he describes it in the metaphor of a city. Justice is a sort of harmony in the city, where each part is playing its role well and in moderation. Human flourishing comes when each part of a person’s psyche is in harmony with the others under the governance of reason. Therefore unity, symmetry, concord, harmony is good, as it facilitates action as a unity.

In Plato’s Republic, we are given many great images, including the Allegory of the Cave. I wrote a paper on this allegory for class and posted it.

Again, even more to say about Aristotle, but I’ll keep it to highlights.

Aristotle

Student of Plato for 20 years. Then got into zoology for awhile and tutored Alexander the Great. Later returned to Athens and started the Lyceum. The writings we have of his are likely his teaching notes.

Here we can see an important difference in method:

• The presocratics started with atoms

• Plato started with the forms

• Aristotle started with individual organisms

He developed syllogistic logic with the categories

The Categories

There are ten categories accounting for the things that are. These include substance, quality, quantity, relation, where, when, etc. There are particulars (primary) and universals (secondary) in each category. Primary substances include “Jimbo the horse” or “Socrates”, and their corresponding secondary substances are “horse” and “man”. For quality, an example of a particular is “this turquoise” whereas a universal would be “turquoise”. With these, Aristotle developed syllogistic logic, and essential and accidental predication.

The Physics

In response to Parmenides’ denial of change, Aristotle proposed hylomorphism.

Hylomorphism means that ordinary physical objects are complexes of matter and form. This allows for a particular subject to remain the same subject while also undergoing a change. For example, at a high level view, if Socrates is not musical at t1, and he is musical at t2, then he may be the same Socrates, but now he is a compound entity, a musical human.

Matter underlies and persists through substance changes. It provides potentiality.

Form causes matter to be a particular kind of thing, imposing a sort of structure or organization to the matter. It actualizes its potentiality.

Substance is a compound of form and matter, which is the basic building block that Aristotle uses.

Aristotle saw the Presocratics as “unskilled boxers in fights, who often land good punches, but are not guided by knowledge.” (meta 985a) He believed that they were correct in determining two of the four types of causes.

He agrees that they were thinking in the right direction, that they were thinking about the material cause and most of them were also thinking about the efficient cause (like Empedicles with love and strife), but they weren’t considering the formal and final causes necessary to understanding things.

For Aristotle, to have explanatory understanding of something, say, a statue, one must be able to explain its four causes.

The Material cause: that from which a thing is made (the bronze of the statue)

The Formal cause: the essence (the shape of the statue)

The Efficient cause: the producer or initiator (the artisan)

The Final Cause: that for the sake of which (its purpose: to be looked at)

Aristotle believes that the final cause is needed to explain why everything is so organized, predictable and regular. For example, it helps explain internal principles within a person or animal that dictate our physical development, like our teeth. It helps explain the similarity in human developmental stages like in crawling. It helps explain that when humans reproduce, we get humans not plants.

Aristotle conceived the psyche as having up to three levels of capacity: nutritive, perceptive, and intellective. The human soul was the form that brought all three of these capacities.

Perhaps his most famous work is the Nicomachean Ethics. He argues that there is a highest good, eudaemonia, that all people pursue. He argues that they are able to pursue this well by developing virtue of character and virtues of thought.

There is so much to The Ethics, and so much more to Aristotle and the other ancient philosophers, but for now I will keep it here.

Onward and Upward!