Primary Readings of Thomas Aquinas



PRIMARY SOURCE READINGS AND STUDY GUIDE QUESTIONSThe School of Athens by RaphaelTable of ContentsBattling the Philosophy of this Age – page 3Naturalist Philosophers – page 8Plato – page 20Aristotle – page 37Augustine – page 46Thomas Aquinas – page 59A Final Thought on Being Philosophers – page 70BATTLING THE PHILOSOPHY OF THIS AGEC.S. Lewis said, “"To be ignorant and simple now -- not to be able to meet the enemies on their own ground -- would be to throw down our weapons, and to betray our uneducated brethren who have, under God, no defense but us against the intellectual attacks of the heathen" … "Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered. . . . Most of all, perhaps, we need intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past has any magic about it, but because we cannot study the future, and yet need something to set against the present, to remind us that the basic assumptions have been quite different in different periods and that much which seems certain to the uneducated is merely temporary fashion. A man who has lived in many places is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village; the scholar has lived in many times, and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pouts from the press and the microphone of his own age."Thomas Aquinas said, “Philosophy is the handmaiden of theology and theology is queen of the sciences.”PHILOSOPHY IS NOT EVIL IN ITSELFIsaiah 1:18 - "Come now, let us reason together," says the LORD. "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool. 1 Peter 3:15 - . . . Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. Matthew 22:36-38 - . . . 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. Matthew 10:16 - I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves. PHILOSOPHY IS A COMBINATION OF THE GREEK WORDS FOR “LOVE” AND “WISDOM”Proverbs 1:7 - The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline. Proverbs 4:7 - Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, get understanding. Proverbs 8:11 - for wisdom is more precious than rubies, and nothing you desire can compare with her. PROPHETS AND APOSTLES REASONED WITH PEOPLE TO PERSUADE THEMEXAMPLE: PAULActs 17:2 - As his custom was, Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, Acts 17:17 - So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there. Acts 18:4 - Every Sabbath he reasoned in the synagogue, trying to persuade Jews and Greeks. Acts 18:19 - They arrived at Ephesus, where Paul left Priscilla and Aquila. He himself went into the synagogue and reasoned with the Jews. BEWARE OF BAD PHILOSOPHYCol. 2:8 - See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ. 1 Tim. 6:20-21 - . . . Turn away from godless chatter and the opposing ideas of what is falsely called knowledge, which some have professed and in so doing have wandered from the faith.SOME GREAT CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHERSOF THE PASTJustin MartyrAugustineAnselmBoethiusThomas AquinasGottfried LeibnizBlaise PascalGeorge BerkeleyJoseph ButlerThomas ReidJonathan EdwardsJosiah RoyceC. S. LewisFrancis SchaefferOF THE PRESENTAlvin PlantingaNicholas WolterstorffGeorge MavrodesWilliam Lane CraigJ. P. MorelandDallas WillardWilliam AlstonNorman GeislerFrancis BeckwithHarold O. J. BrownPeter KreeftNigel de CameronJ. BudziszewskiScott RaeCONSIDER THESE KEY WORDS IN PROVERBS 11-14RIGHTEOUS 11:8-10; 11:19; 11:21; 11:23; 11:28; 11:30-31; 12:3; 12:5; 12:7; 12:10; 12:12-13; 12:21; 12:26; 13:5; 13:9; 13:21-22; 13:25; 14:19; 14:32.TRUTHFUL 12:17; 12:19; 12:22; 14:5; 14:25WICKED 11:5; 11:7-8; 11:10-11; 11:18; 11:21; 11:23; 12:5-7; 12:10; 12:12; 12:21; 12:26; 13:5; 13:9; 13:17; 13:25; 14:11; 14:19; 14:32EVIL11:6; 11:19; 11:27; 12:12-13; 12:20; 13:19; 14:16; 14:19; 14:22FALSE 12:17; 13:5; 14:5; 14:25KNOWING TRUTH FROM FALSEHOOD, AND RIGHTEOUSNESS FROM WICKEDNESS AND EVIL, IS ESSENTIAL TO UNDERSTANDING THESE FOUR CHAPTERS OF PROVERBS. This will require philosophical thinking.KEY VERSES FROM PROVERBS 11-14 ON PHILOSOPHYProverbs 11:1 - The LORD abhors dishonest scales, but accurate weights are his delight. Proverbs 11:3 - The integrity of the upright guides them, but the unfaithful are destroyed by their duplicity. Proverbs 11:14 - For lack of guidance a nation falls, but many advisers make victory sure. Proverbs 13:5 - The righteous hate what is false, but the wicked bring shame and disgrace. Proverbs 14:15 - A simple man believes anything, but a prudent man gives thought to his steps. SENTENCES THAT SIMPLE PEOPLE SAY AND BELIEVE, WITHOUT QUESTIONING THEM“All religions are simply different ways to the same God.”“Doubt everything.”“God is all, and all is God.”“I don’t believe in anything I can’t see, hear, taste, touch or smell.”“It all depends . . .” (followed by nothing)“It can’t be wrong, if it feels so right.”“It doesn’t matter what you believe, as long as you’re sincere.”“Nobody knows anything for sure.”“Nothing is certain.”“One opinion is just as good as another.”“That’s true for you, but not for me.”“That’s your reality, but not mine.”“Trust no one.”“What’s right for you may not be right for me.”“Who are you to judge others?”“Who are you to say another culture’s values are wrong?”“You have the right to choose your own values.”YOU CAN DEFLATE THESE SLOGANSBegin by applying the statement to itself. In many cases, the statement will not withstand this treatment. (b, h, i, j, k, m)Reflect the question back to the questioner. Questions o and p involve the questioner in a violation of his/her premise.Supply extreme examples to show the danger of uncritically applying the statement. (e, f, g, l, n, p, q)Statement a is deflated by looking at a few of the main truth claims of the major religions.Statement c is deflated by noting that any term that indicates all possible things has no meaning.Statement d is deflated by pointing out that the speaker believes what he/she is saying, but not on the basis of sensing it, since it’s truth is not capable of being sensed.Following a few basic rules of logic like this will help you to win the battle. but you will lose the war, if your attitude has not been softened ahead of time by prayer and humility. HATE THE FALSEHOOD, BUT LOVE THE PERSON. REFUTE THE SLOGAN, BUT RESPECT THE SPEAKER.John 1:14 - The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. Philip. 2:5 - Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ JesusNATURALIST PHILOSOPHERSEpicurus A Greek philosopher who lived from 341-270 B.C.“Letter to Menoeceus”(In this letter, Epicurus summarizes his ethical doctrines.)Epicurus to Menoeceus, greetings:Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search of it when he has grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul. And to say that the season for studying philosophy has not yet come, or that it is past and gone, is like saying that the season for happiness is not yet or that it is now no more. Therefore, both old and young alike ought to seek wisdom, the former in order that, as age comes over him, he may be young in good things because of the grace of what has been, and the latter in order that, while he is young, he may at the same time be old, because he has no fear of the things which are to come. So we must exercise ourselves in the things which bring happiness, since, if that be present, we have everything, and, if that be absent, all our actions are directed towards attaining it.Those things which without ceasing I have declared unto you, do them, and exercise yourself in them, holding them to be the elements of right life. First believe that God is a living being immortal and blessed, according to the notion of a god indicated by the common sense of mankind; and so believing, you shall not affirm of him anything that is foreign to his immortality or that is repugnant to his blessedness. Believe about him whatever may uphold both his blessedness and his immortality. For there are gods, and the knowledge of them is manifest; but they are not such as the multitude believe, seeing that men do not steadfastly maintain the notions they form respecting them. Not the man who denies the gods worshipped by the multitude, but he who affirms of the gods what the multitude believes about them is truly impious. For the utterances of the multitude about the gods are not true preconceptions but false assumptions; hence it is that the greatest evils happen to the wicked and the greatest blessings happen to the good from the hand of the gods, seeing that they are always favorable to their own good qualities and take pleasure in men like themselves, but reject as alien whatever is not of their kind.Accustom yourself to believing that death is nothing to us, for good and evil imply the capacity for sensation, and death is the privation of all sentience; therefore a correct understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not by adding to life a limitless time, but by taking away the yearning after immortality. For life has no terrors for him who has thoroughly understood that there are no terrors for him in ceasing to live. Foolish, therefore, is the man who says that he fears death, not because it will pain when it comes, but because it pains in the prospect. Whatever causes no annoyance when it is present, causes only a groundless pain in the expectation. Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not. It is nothing, then, either to the living or to the dead, for with the living it is not and the dead exist no longer.But in the world, at one time men shun death as the greatest of all evils, and at another time choose it as a respite from the evils in life. The wise man does not deprecate life nor does he fear the cessation of life. The thought of life is no offense to him, nor is the cessation of life regarded as an evil. And even as men choose of food not merely and simply the larger portion, but the more pleasant, so the wise seek to enjoy the time which is most pleasant and not merely that which is longest. And he who admonishes the young to live well and the old to make a good end speaks foolishly, not merely because of the desirability of life, but because the same exercise at once teaches to live well and to die well. Much worse is he who says that it were good not to be born, but when once one is born to pass quickly through the gates of Hades. For if he truly believes this, why does he not depart from life? It would be easy for him to do so once he were firmly convinced. If he speaks only in jest, his words are foolishness as those who hear him do not believe. We must remember that the future is neither wholly ours nor wholly not ours, so that neither must we count upon it as quite certain to come nor despair of it as quite certain not to come.We must also reflect that of desires some are natural, others are groundless; and that of the natural some are necessary as well as natural, and some natural only. And of the necessary desires some are necessary if we are to be happy, some if the body is to be rid of uneasiness, some if we are even to live. He who has a clear and certain understanding of these things will direct every preference and aversion toward securing health of body and tranquillity of mind, seeing that this is the sum and end of a blessed life. For the end of all our actions is to be free from pain and fear, and, when once we have attained all this, the tempest of the soul is laid; seeing that the living creature has no need to go in search of something that is lacking, nor to look for anything else by which the good of the soul and of the body will be fulfilled. When we are pained because of the absence of pleasure, then, and then only, do we feel the need of pleasure. Wherefore we call pleasure the alpha and omega of a blessed life. Pleasure is our first and kindred good. It is the starting-point of every choice and of every aversion, and to it we come back, inasmuch as we make feeling the rule by which to judge of every good thing.And since pleasure is our first and native good, for that reason we do not choose every pleasure whatsoever, but will often pass over many pleasures when a greater annoyance ensues from them. And often we consider pains superior to pleasures when submission to the pains for a long time brings us as a consequence a greater pleasure. While therefore all pleasure because it is naturally akin to us is good, not all pleasure is should be chosen, just as all pain is an evil and yet not all pain is to be shunned. It is, however, by measuring one against another, and by looking at the conveniences and inconveniences, that all these matters must be judged. Sometimes we treat the good as an evil, and the evil, on the contrary, as a good.Again, we regard independence of outward things as a great good, not so as in all cases to use little, but so as to be contented with little if we have not much, being honestly persuaded that they have the sweetest enjoyment of luxury who stand least in need of it, and that whatever is natural is easily procured and only the vain and worthless hard to win. Plain fare gives as much pleasure as a costly diet, when once the pain of want has been removed, while bread and water confer the highest possible pleasure when they are brought to hungry lips. To habituate one's self, therefore, to simple and inexpensive diet supplies all that is needful for health, and enables a man to meet the necessary requirements of life without shrinking, and it places us in a better condition when we approach at intervals a costly fare and renders us fearless of fortune.When we say, then, that pleasure is the end and aim, we do not mean the pleasures of the prodigal or the pleasures of sensuality, as we are understood to do by some through ignorance, prejudice, or willful misrepresentation. By pleasure we mean the absence of pain in the body and of trouble in the soul. It is not an unbroken succession of drinking-bouts and of revelry, not sexual lust, not the enjoyment of the fish and other delicacies of a luxurious table, which produce a pleasant life; it is sober reasoning, searching out the grounds of every choice and avoidance, and banishing those beliefs through which the greatest tumults take possession of the soul. Of all this the beginning and the greatest good is wisdom. Therefore wisdom is a more precious thing even than philosophy ; from it spring all the other virtues, for it teaches that we cannot live pleasantly without living wisely, honorably, and justly; nor live wisely, honorably, and justly without living pleasantly. For the virtues have grown into one with a pleasant life, and a pleasant life is inseparable from them. Who, then, is superior in your judgment to such a man? He holds a holy belief concerning the gods, and is altogether free from the fear of death. He has diligently considered the end fixed by nature, and understands how easily the limit of good things can be reached and attained, and how either the duration or the intensity of evils is but slight. Fate, which some introduce as sovereign over all things, he scorns, affirming rather that some things happen of necessity, others by chance, others through our own agency. For he sees that necessity destroys responsibility and that chance is inconstant; whereas our own actions are autonomous, and it is to them that praise and blame naturally attach. It were better, indeed, to accept the legends of the gods than to bow beneath that yoke of destiny which the natural philosophers have imposed. The one holds out some faint hope that we may escape if we honor the gods, while the necessity of the naturalists is deaf to all entreaties. Nor does he hold chance to be a god, as the world in general does, for in the acts of a god there is no disorder; nor to be a cause, though an uncertain one, for he believes that no good or evil is dispensed by chance to men so as to make life blessed, though it supplies the starting-point of great good and great evil. He believes that the misfortune of the wise is better than the prosperity of the fool. It is better, in short, that what is well judged in action should not owe its successful issue to the aid of chance. Exercise yourself in these and related precepts day and night, both by yourself and with one who is like-minded; then never, either in waking or in dream, will you be disturbed, but will live as a god among men. For man loses all semblance of mortality by living in the midst of immortal blessings.Pythagoras: Music and Space"We shall therefore borrow all our Rules for the Finishing our Proportions, from the Musicians, who are the greatest Masters of this Sort of Numbers, and from those Things wherein Nature shows herself most excellent and compleat." Leon Battista Alberti (1407-1472)Pythagoras (6th century BC) observed that when the blacksmith struck his anvil, different notes were produced according to the weight of the hammer.Number (in this case "amount of weight") seemed to govern musical tone... See if you can hear the sound in your imagination before it comes, by judging from the proportions of the string lengths. The first one's easy.Then mouse-over the strings (-if you dont hear anything you'll have to click, it depends on your set-up.) INCLUDEPICTURE "" \* MERGEFORMATINET INCLUDEPICTURE "" \* MERGEFORMATINET Again, number (in this case "amount of space") seemed to govern musical tone. Or does musical tone govern number? He also discovered that if the length of the two strings are in relation to each other 2:3, the difference in pitch is called a fifth: INCLUDEPICTURE "" \* MERGEFORMATINET INCLUDEPICTURE "" \* MERGEFORMATINET ...and if the length of the strings are in relation to each other 3:4, then the difference is called a fourth. INCLUDEPICTURE "" \* MERGEFORMATINET INCLUDEPICTURE "" \* MERGEFORMATINET Thus the musical notation of the Greeks, which we have inherited can be expressed mathematically as 1:2:3:4 All this above can be summarised in the following. INCLUDEPICTURE "" \* MERGEFORMATINET INCLUDEPICTURE "" \* MERGEFORMATINET (Another consonance which the Greeks recognised was the octave plus a fifth, where 9:18 = 1:2, an octave, and 18:27 = 2:3, a fifth;) INCLUDEPICTURE "" \* MERGEFORMATINET INCLUDEPICTURE "" \* MERGEFORMATINET This triangular figure of numbers in the shape of the Greek letter Lamda is the Tetrad of the Pythagorians.As was discussed by Plato in his dissertation on the Composition of the Soul, it is a set of numbers whose relationships with each other seemed to summarize all the inter-dependent harmonies within the universe of space and time. Thus to have established the relationship between music and space/number fired the imagination of the Pythagorians and was taken up especially by the School of Plato and the subsequent Neo-Platonists. Pythagoras himself wrote nothing which has survived, and so it is the Platonists we have to thank for recording and developing what had hitherto been passed down through two hundred and fifty years of oral tradition. Pythagoras taught that each of the seven planets produced by its orbit a particular note according to its distance from the still centre which was the Earth. The distance in each case was like the subdivisions of the string refered to above. This is what was called Musica Mundana, which is usually translated as Music of the Spheres. The sound produced is so exquisite and rarified that our ordinary ears are unable to hear it. It is the Cosmic Music which, according to Philo of Alexandria, Moses had heard when he recieved the Tablets on Mount Sinai, and which St Augustine believed men hear on the point of death, revealing to them the highest reality of the Cosmos. (Carlo Bertelli, Piero della Francesca, p. 60.) This music is present everywhere and governs all temporal cycles, such as the seasons, biological cycles, and all the rhythms of nature. Together with its underlying mathematical laws of proportion it is the sound of the harmony of the created being of the universe, the harmony of what Plato called the "one visible living being, containing within itself all living beings of the same natural order". For the Pythagorians different musical modes have different effects on the person who hears them; Pythagoras once cured a youth of his drunkenness by prescribing a melody in the Hypophrygian mode in spondaic rhythm. Apparently the Phrygian mode would have had the opposite effect and would have overexcited him. At the healing centers of Asclepieion at Pergamum and Epidauros in Greece, patients underwent therapy accompanied by music. The Roman statesman, philosopher and mathematician, Boethius (480-524 A.D.) explained that the soul and the body are subject to the same laws of proportion that govern music and the cosmos itself. We are happiest when we conform to these laws because "we love similarity, but hate and resent dissimilarity". (De Institutione Musica, 1,1. from Umberto Eco, Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages. p. 31). ? J. Boyd-Brent - an article from About Scotland Arts Pages Lucretius(Roman poet and philosopher who lived from 99 B.C. to 55 B.C.)On the Nature of Things, Book I “Substance is Eternal”This terror, then, this darkness of the mind, Not sunrise with its flaring spokes of light, Nor glittering arrows of morning can disperse, But only Nature's aspect and her law, Which, teaching us, hath this exordium: Nothing from nothing ever yet was born. Fear holds dominion over mortality Only because, seeing in land and sky So much the cause whereof no wise they know, Men think Divinities are working there. Meantime, when once we know from nothing still Nothing can be create, we shall divine More clearly what we seek: those elements From which alone all things created are, And how accomplished by no tool of Gods. Suppose all sprang from all things: any kind Might take its origin from any thing, No fixed seed required. Men from the sea Might rise, and from the land the scaly breed, And, fowl full fledged come bursting from the sky; The horned cattle, the herds and all the wild Would haunt with varying offspring tilth and waste; Nor would the same fruits keep their olden trees, But each might grow from any stock or limb By chance and change. Indeed, and were there not For each its procreant atoms, could things have Each its unalterable mother old? But, since produced from fixed seeds are all, Each birth goes forth upon the shores of light From its own stuff, from its own primal bodies. And all from all cannot become, because In each resides a secret power its own. Again, why see we lavished o'er the lands At spring the rose, at summer heat the corn, The vines that mellow when the autumn lures, If not because the fixed seeds of things At their own season must together stream, And new creations only be revealed When the due times arrive and pregnant earth Safely may give unto the shores of light Her tender progenies? But if from naught Were their becoming, they would spring abroad Suddenly, unforeseen, in alien months, With no primordial germs, to be preserved From procreant unions at an adverse hour. Nor on the mingling of the living seeds Would space be needed for the growth of things Were life an increment of nothing: then The tiny babe forthwith would walk a man, And from the turf would leap a branching tree- Wonders unheard of; for, by Nature, each Slowly increases from its lawful seed, And through that increase shall conserve its kind. Whence take the proof that things enlarge and feed From out their proper matter. Thus it comes That earth, without her seasons of fixed rains, Could bear no produce such as makes us glad, And whatsoever lives, if shut from food, Prolongs its kind and guards its life no more. Thus easier 'tis to hold that many things Have primal bodies in common (as we see The single letters common to many words) Than aught exists without its origins. Moreover, why should Nature not prepare Men of a bulk to ford the seas afoot, Or rend the mighty mountains with their hands, Or conquer Time with length of days, if not Because for all begotten things abides The changeless stuff, and what from that may spring Is fixed forevermore? Lastly we see How far the tilled surpass the fields untilled And to the labour of our hands return Their more abounding crops; there are indeed Within the earth primordial germs of things, Which, as the ploughshare turns the fruitful clods And kneads the mould, we quicken into birth. Else would ye mark, without all toil of ours, Spontaneous generations, fairer forms. Confess then, naught from nothing can become, Since all must have their seeds, wherefrom to grow, Wherefrom to reach the gentle fields of air. Hence too it comes that Nature all dissolves Into their primal bodies again, and naught Perishes ever to annihilation. For, were aught mortal in its every part, Before our eyes it might be snatched away Unto destruction; since no force were needed To sunder its members and undo its bands. Whereas, of truth, because all things exist, With seed imperishable, Nature allows Destruction nor collapse of aught, until Some outward force may shatter by a blow, Or inward craft, entering its hollow cells, Dissolve it down. And more than this, if Time, That wastes with eld the works along the world, Destroy entire, consuming matter all, Whence then may Venus back to light of life Restore the generations kind by kind? Or how, when thus restored, may daedal Earth Foster and plenish with her ancient food, Which, kind by kind, she offers unto each? Whence may the water-springs, beneath the sea, Or inland rivers, far and wide away, Keep the unfathomable ocean full? And out of what does Ether feed the stars? For lapsed years and infinite age must else Have eat all shapes of mortal stock away: But be it the Long Ago contained those germs, By which this sum of things recruited lives, Those same infallibly can never die, Nor nothing to nothing evermore return. And, too, the selfsame power might end alike All things, were they not still together held By matter eternal, shackled through its parts, Now more, now less. A touch might be enough To cause destruction. For the slightest force Would loose the weft of things wherein no part Were of imperishable stock. But now Because the fastenings of primordial parts Are put together diversely and stuff Is everlasting, things abide the same Unhurt and sure, until some power comes on Strong to destroy the warp and woof of each: Nothing returns to naught; but all return At their collapse to primal forms of stuff. Lo, the rains perish which Ether-father throws Down to the bosom of Earth-mother; but then Upsprings the shining grain, and boughs are green Amid the trees, and trees themselves wax big And lade themselves with fruits; and hence in turn The race of man and all the wild are fed; Hence joyful cities thrive with boys and girls; And leafy woodlands echo with new birds; Hence cattle, fat and drowsy, lay their bulk Along the joyous pastures whilst the drops Of white ooze trickle from distended bags; Hence the young scamper on their weakling joints Along the tender herbs, fresh hearts afrisk With warm new milk. Thus naught of what so seems Perishes utterly, since Nature ever Upbuilds one thing from other, suffering naught To come to birth but through some other's death. And now, since I have taught that things cannot Be born from nothing, nor the same, when born, To nothing be recalled, doubt not my words, Because our eyes no primal germs perceive; For mark those bodies which, though known to be In this our world, are yet invisible: The winds infuriate lash our face and frame, Unseen, and swamp huge ships and rend the clouds, Or, eddying wildly down, bestrew the plains With mighty trees, or scour the mountain tops With forest-crackling blasts. Thus on they rave With uproar shrill and ominous moan. The winds, 'Tis clear, are sightless bodies sweeping through The sea, the lands, the clouds along the sky, Vexing and whirling and seizing all amain; And forth they flow and pile destruction round, Even as the water's soft and supple bulk Becoming a river of abounding floods, Which a wide downpour from the lofty hills Swells with big showers, dashes headlong down Fragments of woodland and whole branching trees; Nor can the solid bridges bide the shock As on the waters whelm: the turbulent stream, Strong with a hundred rains, beats round the piers, Crashes with havoc, and rolls beneath its waves Down-toppled masonry and ponderous stone, Hurling away whatever would oppose. Even so must move the blasts of all the winds, Which, when they spread, like to a mighty flood, Hither or thither, drive things on before And hurl to ground with still renewed assault, Or sometimes in their circling vortex seize And bear in cones of whirlwind down the world: The winds are sightless bodies and naught else- Since both in works and ways they rival well The mighty rivers, the visible in form. Then too we know the varied smells of things Yet never to our nostrils see them come; With eyes we view not burning heats, nor cold, Nor are we wont men's voices to behold. Yet these must be corporeal at the base, Since thus they smite the senses: naught there is Save body, having property of touch. And raiment, hung by surf-beat shore, grows moist, The same, spread out before the sun, will dry; Yet no one saw how sank the moisture in, Nor how by heat off-driven. Thus we know, That moisture is dispersed about in bits Too small for eyes to see. Another case: A ring upon the finger thins away Along the under side, with years and suns; The drippings from the eaves will scoop the stone; The hooked ploughshare, though of iron, wastes Amid the fields insidiously. We view The rock-paved highways worn by many feet; And at the gates the brazen statues show Their right hands leaner from the frequent touch Of wayfarers innumerable who greet. We see how wearing-down hath minished these, But just what motes depart at any time, The envious nature of vision bars our sight. Lastly whatever days and nature add Little by little, constraining things to grow In due proportion, no gaze however keen Of these our eyes hath watched and known. No more Can we observe what's lost at any time, When things wax old with eld and foul decay, Or when salt seas eat under beetling crags. Thus Nature ever by unseen bodies works. STUDY GUIDE FOR GREEK & ROMAN NATURALIST PHILOSOPHERSIntroductory OverviewWe begin our philosophical survey by studying the earliest rational thinkers in the Western world—the pre-Socratic philosophers (that is, philosophers before Socrates). Through them we will gain insight into the first philosophical questions asked and the first answers given about the nature of the world and those of us who live in it.It has been 2,000-2,500 years since these pioneering philosophers asked the questions as “How did the world come into being?” “What is the world made of?” and “How can we explain the process of change?” Even today, scientists and philosophers continue to return to the pre-Socratics for insight into complex philosophical questions—even though those early philosophers lacked today’s sophisticated techniques.The pre-Socrates philosophers offered alternative theories to their basic questions: “What is the substance out of which the world is made?” and “How can we explain the process of change in matter?” As materialists, the Milesians sought to discover the basic substance that held the universe together. For Thales, this basic substance was water, for Anaximander it was the boundless pool of opposites, and for Anaximenes it was air.As thinkers probed deeper into the structures of the universe, Pythagoras found numbers the basic principle on which all else depends. The Pythgoreans were the first to conceive of form as well as matter. Heraclitus concluded that the universe is in a constant state of flux (change) and that the underlying substance and unity is fire.Parmenides disagreed that motion existed at all. For him, reality is permanent, unchanging, indivisible, and undifferentiated Being. Zeno developed clever paradoxes to show that motion is impossible in principle. Empedocles agreed that Being is the permanent and true reality. But he argued for a plurality of Beings that change only in position. Love and Strife are the two forces that cause the change of positions.Anaxagoras argued the Nous (mind) puts the universe in motion by acting on matter. The Atomists maintained that uncreated, imperceptible, indestructible, indivisible, and eternal atoms in motion compose the universe. All of the pre-Socratic philosophers engaged primarily in natural philosophy, the study of material substance and the problem of change.The Atomists marked the end of Greek natural philosophy. After the Atomists, philosophers turned their concentration from the physical world to question about how people should behave. The next great development in philosophy started with the Sophists and Socrates, who turned from natural philosophy to concentrate on the nature of human beings, their ethical problems, and philosophy of life. They struggled with the problems that confront every thinking human being: Who am I? What do I want out of life?Pythagoras and the PythagoreansWhy are they so concerned with numbers?What brings about harmony?Tell about the idea of the soul, as conceived by this group of philosophers.What contributions do these philosophers make to culture?What is the music of the spheres?EpicurusWhat did he teach about pleasure?Did he teach that one could do whatever wanted to do, regardless of negative consequences? Explain your paring his teachings to those of the Bible, name one area of conflict.LucretiusWhat is eternal? Explain.Describe four major points of his poem.Questions from the Nash Chapter on Naturalism(Please refer also to the PowerPoint presentation on naturalism.)Bertrand Russell said, “No philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand.” What was he talking about?What theory is Democritus famous for developing?Explain the basics of this theory.Democritus’ theory teaches that all quality is an illusion. Why would he say such a thing?What are two questions that naturalists don’t like to ask, concerning atoms?What did Epicurus think were the three great obstacles to happiness? How does Epicurus help overcome them?Lucretius thought that religion is humankind’s greatest affliction. Why would a naturalist think this?Consciousness is the Achilles’ heel of materialism. Why?Naturalists such as Epicurus believed that ____________ was the highest good.Nash teaches that a weakness of any philosophical “-ism” is that the discovery of only one thing that is impossible to explain by the “-ism” invalidates the whole “-ism.” Explain.Name two things that naturalism is incapable of explaining.What does the story about the stones arranged to spell “THE BRITISH RAILWAYS WELCOMES YOU TO WALES” seek to demonstrate?Is naturalism is self-referentially absurd? Why?“If everything must be exactly as it is, there is futility in saying it ought to be otherwise.” A person who believed this would have no place in her worldview for _________________. Why?How did Epicurus’ naturalism make him unafraid of death, and unbothered by other fears?Lucretius wrote that “nothing from nothing ever yet was born” (no thing comes from nothing, nothing ever could). Where then do things come from? His answer was that each thing came from ____________________.What did Lucretius think of the idea of annihilation?Why is it important for Lucretius to teach that Nature wears things down?Plato(Greek Athenian philosopher who lived from 429-347 B.C.)The ApologyHow you have felt, O men of Athens, at hearing the speeches of my accusers, I cannot tell; but I know that their persuasive words almost made me forget who I was - such was the effect of them; and yet they have hardly spoken a word of truth. But many as their falsehoods were, there was one of them which quite amazed me; - I mean when they told you to be upon your guard, and not to let yourselves be deceived by the force of my eloquence. They ought to have been ashamed of saying this, because they were sure to be detected as soon as I opened my lips and displayed my deficiency; they certainly did appear to be most shameless in saying this, unless by the force of eloquence they mean the force of truth; for then I do indeed admit that I am eloquent. But in how different a way from theirs! … And I must beg of you to grant me one favor, which is this - If you hear me using the same words in my defence which I have been in the habit of using, and which most of you may have heard in the agora, and at the tables of the money-changers, or anywhere else, I would ask you not to be surprised at this, and not to interrupt me. For I am more than seventy years of age, and this is the first time that I have ever appeared in a court of law, and I am quite a stranger to the ways of the place; and therefore I would have you regard me as if I were really a stranger, whom you would excuse if he spoke in his native tongue, and after the fashion of his country; - that I think is not an unfair request. Never mind the manner, which may or may not be good; but think only of the justice of my cause, and give heed to that: let the judge decide justly and the speaker speak truly. And first, I have to reply to the older charges and to my first accusers, and then I will go to the later ones. For I have had many accusers, who accused me of old, and their false charges have continued during many years; and I am more afraid of them than of Anytus and his associates, who are dangerous, too, in their own way. But far more dangerous are these, who began when you were children, and took possession of your minds with their falsehoods, telling of one Socrates, a wise man, who speculated about the heaven above, and searched into the earth beneath, and made the worse appear the better cause. These are the accusers whom I dread; for they are the circulators of this rumor, and their hearers are too apt to fancy that speculators of this sort do not believe in the gods. … Men of Athens, this reputation of mine has come of a certain sort of wisdom which I possess. If you ask me what kind of wisdom, I reply, such wisdom as is attainable by man, for to that extent I am inclined to believe that I am wise; whereas the persons of whom I was speaking have a superhuman wisdom, which I may fail to describe, because I have it not myself; and he who says that I have, speaks falsely, and is taking away my character. … Chaerephon asked the oracle at Delphi to tell him whether there was anyone wiser than I was, and the Pythian prophetess answered that there was no man wiser. …Why do I mention this? Because I am going to explain to you why I have such an evil name. When I heard the answer, I said to myself, What can the god mean? and what is the interpretation of this riddle? for I know that I have no wisdom, small or great. What can he mean when he says that I am the wisest of men? And yet he is a god and cannot lie; that would be against his nature. After a long consideration, I at last thought of a method of trying the question. I reflected that if I could only find a man wiser than myself, then I might go to the god with a refutation in my hand. I should say to him, "Here is a man who is wiser than I am; but you said that I was the wisest." Accordingly I went to one who had the reputation of wisdom, and observed to him - his name I need not mention; he was a politician whom I selected for examination - and the result was as follows: When I began to talk with him, I could not help thinking that he was not really wise, although he was thought wise by many, and wiser still by himself; and I went and tried to explain to him that he thought himself wise, but was not really wise; and the consequence was that he hated me, and his enmity was shared by several who were present and heard me. So I left him, saying to myself, as I went away: Well, although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better off than he is - for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows. I neither know nor think that I know. In this latter particular, then, I seem to have slightly the advantage of him. Then I went to another, who had still higher philosophical pretensions, and my conclusion was exactly the same. I made another enemy of him, and of many others besides him. After this I went to one man after another, being not unconscious of the enmity which I provoked, and I lamented and feared this: but necessity was laid upon me - the word of God, I thought, ought to be considered first. And I said to myself, Go I must to all who appear to know, and find out the meaning of the oracle. And I swear to you, Athenians, by the dog I swear! - for I must tell you the truth - the result of my mission was just this: I found that the men most in repute were all but the most foolish; and that some inferior men were really wiser and better. I will tell you the tale of my wanderings and of the "Herculean" labors, as I may call them, which I endured only to find at last the oracle irrefutable. When I left the politicians, I went to the poets; tragic, dithyrambic, and all sorts. And there, I said to myself, you will be detected; now you will find out that you are more ignorant than they are. Accordingly, I took them some of the most elaborate passages in their own writings, and asked what was the meaning of them - thinking that they would teach me something. Will you believe me? I am almost ashamed to speak of this, but still I must say that there is hardly a person present who would not have talked better about their poetry than they did themselves. That showed me in an instant that not by wisdom do poets write poetry, but by a sort of genius and inspiration; they are like diviners or soothsayers who also say many fine things, but do not understand the meaning of them. And the poets appeared to me to be much in the same case; and I further observed that upon the strength of their poetry they believed themselves to be the wisest of men in other things in which they were not wise. So I departed, conceiving myself to be superior to them for the same reason that I was superior to the politicians. At last I went to the artisans, for I was conscious that I knew nothing at all, as I may say, and I was sure that they knew many fine things; and in this I was not mistaken, for they did know many things of which I was ignorant, and in this they certainly were wiser than I was. But I observed that even the good artisans fell into the same error as the poets; because they were good workmen they thought that they also knew all sorts of high matters, and this defect in them overshadowed their wisdom - therefore I asked myself on behalf of the oracle, whether I would like to be as I was, neither having their knowledge nor their ignorance, or like them in both; and I made answer to myself and the oracle that I was better off as I was. This investigation has led to my having many enemies of the worst and most dangerous kind, and has given occasion also to many calumnies, and I am called wise, for my hearers always imagine that I myself possess the wisdom which I find wanting in others: but the truth is, O men of Athens, that God only is wise; and in this oracle he means to say that the wisdom of men is little or nothing; he is not speaking of Socrates, he is only using my name as an illustration, as if he said, He, O men, is the wisest, who, like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing. And so I go my way, obedient to the god, and make inquisition into the wisdom of anyone, whether citizen or stranger, who appears to be wise; and if he is not wise, then in vindication of the oracle I show him that he is not wise; and this occupation quite absorbs me, and I have no time to give either to any public matter of interest or to any concern of my own, but I am in utter poverty by reason of my devotion to the god. There is another thing: - young men of the richer classes, who have not much to do, come about me of their own accord; they like to hear the pretenders examined, and they often imitate me, and examine others themselves; there are plenty of persons, as they soon enough discover, who think that they know something, but really know little or nothing: and then those who are examined by them instead of being angry with themselves are angry with me: This confounded Socrates, they say; this villainous misleader of youth! - and then if somebody asks them, Why, what evil does he practise or teach? they do not know, and cannot tell; but in order that they may not appear to be at a loss, they repeat the ready-made charges which are used against all philosophers about teaching things up in the clouds and under the earth, and having no gods, and making the worse appear the better cause; for they do not like to confess that their pretence of knowledge has been detected - …And now I will try to defend myself against these new accusers. … What do they say? Something of this sort: - That Socrates is a doer of evil, and corrupter of the youth, and he does not believe in the gods of the state, and has other new divinities of his own. Come hither, Meletus, and let me ask a question of you. You think a great deal about the improvement of youth? Yes, I do. Tell the judges, then, who is their improver; for you must know, as you have taken the pains to discover their corrupter, and are citing and accusing me before them. Speak, then, and tell the judges who their improver is. Observe, Meletus, that you are silent, and have nothing to say. But is not this rather disgraceful, and a very considerable proof of what I was saying, that you have no interest in the matter? Speak up, friend, and tell us who their improver is. The laws.But that, my good sir, is not my meaning. I want to know who the person is, who, in the first place, knows the laws. The judges, Socrates, who are present in court. What do you mean to say, Meletus, that they are able to instruct and improve youth? Certainly they are.What, all of them, or some only and not others? All of them. By the goddess Here, that is good news! There are plenty of improvers, then. And what do you say of the audience, - do they improve them? Yes, they do. And the senators? Yes, the senators improve them. But perhaps the members of the citizen assembly corrupt them? - or do they too improve them?They improve them. Then every Athenian improves and elevates them; all with the exception of myself; and I alone am their corrupter? Is that what you affirm? That is what I stoutly affirm. I am very unfortunate if that is true. But suppose I ask you a question: Would you say that this also holds true in the case of horses? Does one man do them harm and all the world good? Is not the exact opposite of this true? One man is able to do them good, or at least not many; - the trainer of horses, that is to say, does them good, and others who have to do with them rather injure them? … Happy indeed would be the condition of youth if they had one corrupter only, and all the rest of the world were their improvers. …But still I should like to know, Meletus, in what I am affirmed to corrupt the young. I suppose you mean, as I infer from your indictment, that I teach them not to acknowledge the gods which the state acknowledges, but some other new divinities or spiritual agencies in their stead. These are the lessons which corrupt the youth, as you say. Yes, that I say emphatically. Then, by the gods, Meletus, of whom we are speaking, tell me and the court, in somewhat plainer terms, what you mean! for I do not as yet understand whether you affirm that I teach others to acknowledge some gods, and therefore do believe in gods and am not an entire atheist - this you do not lay to my charge; but only that they are not the same gods which the city recognizes - the charge is that they are different gods. Or, do you mean to say that I am an atheist simply, and a teacher of atheism? I mean the latter - that you are a complete atheist. That is an extraordinary statement, Meletus. Why do you say that? Do you mean that I do not believe in the godhead of the sun or moon, which is the common creed of all men? …Someone will say: And are you not ashamed, Socrates, of a course of life which is likely to bring you to an untimely end? To him I may fairly answer: There you are mistaken: a man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong - acting the part of a good man or of a bad. Whereas, according to your view, the heroes who fell at Troy were not good for much, and the son of Thetis above all, who altogether despised danger in comparison with disgrace; and when his goddess mother said to him, in his eagerness to slay Hector, that if he avenged his companion Patroclus, and slew Hector, he would die himself - "Fate," as she said, "waits upon you next after Hector"; he, hearing this, utterly despised danger and death, and instead of fearing them, feared rather to live in dishonor, and not to avenge his friend. "Let me die next," he replies, "and be avenged of my enemy, rather than abide here by the beaked ships, a scorn and a burden of the earth." Had Achilles any thought of death and danger? For wherever a man's place is, whether the place which he has chosen or that in which he has been placed by a commander, there he ought to remain in the hour of danger; he should not think of death or of anything, but of disgrace. And this, O men of Athens, is a true saying. Strange, indeed, would be my conduct, O men of Athens, if I who, when I was ordered by the generals whom you chose to command me at Potidaea and Amphipolis and Delium, remained where they placed me, like any other man, facing death; if, I say, now, when, as I conceive and imagine, God orders me to fulfill the philosopher's mission of searching into myself and other men, I were to desert my post through fear of death, or any other fear; that would indeed be strange, and I might justly be arraigned in court for denying the existence of the gods, if I disobeyed the oracle because I was afraid of death. …(Socrates is found guilty by the jury and condemned to death)There are many reasons why I am not grieved, O men of Athens, at the vote of condemnation. I expected it, and am only surprised that the votes are so nearly equal; for I had thought that the majority against me would have been far larger …And so he proposes death as the penalty. And what shall I propose on my part, O men of Athens? Clearly that which is my due. And what is that which I ought to pay or to receive? What shall be done to the man who has never had the wit to be idle during his whole life; but has been careless of what the many care about - wealth, and family interests, and military offices, and speaking in the assembly, and magistracies, and plots, and parties. Reflecting that I was really too honest a man to follow in this way and live, I did not go where I could do no good to you or to myself; but where I could do the greatest good privately to everyone of you, thither I went, and sought to persuade every man among you that he must look to himself, and seek virtue and wisdom before he looks to his private interests, and look to the state before he looks to the interests of the state; and that this should be the order which he observes in all his actions. What shall be done to such a one? …Someone will say: Yes, Socrates, but cannot you hold your tongue, and then you may go into a foreign city, and no one will interfere with you? Now I have great difficulty in making you understand my answer to this. For if I tell you that this would be a disobedience to a divine command, and therefore that I cannot hold my tongue, you will not believe that I am serious; and if I say again that the greatest good of man is daily to converse about virtue, and all that concerning which you hear me examining myself and others, and that the life which is unexamined is not worth living - that you are still less likely to believe. …Wherefore, O judges, be of good cheer about death, and know this of a truth - that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death. He and his are not neglected by the gods; nor has my own approaching end happened by mere chance. But I see clearly that to die and be released was better for me; and therefore the oracle gave no sign. For which reason also, I am not angry with my accusers, or my condemners; they have done me no harm, although neither of them meant to do me any good; and for this I may gently blame them. Still I have a favor to ask of them. When my sons are grown up, I would ask you, O my friends, to punish them; and I would have you trouble them, as I have troubled you, if they seem to care about riches, or anything, more than about virtue; or if they pretend to be something when they are really nothing, - then reprove them, as I have reproved you, for not caring about that for which they ought to care, and thinking that they are something when they are really nothing. And if you do this, I and my sons will have received justice at your hands. The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways - I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows.The Allegory of the Cave [Socrates] And now, I said, let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened: --Behold! human beings living in a underground cave, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the cave; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets. [Glaucon] I see. [Socrates] And do you see, I said, men passing along the wall carrying all sorts of vessels, and statues and figures of animals made of wood and stone and various materials, which appear over the wall? Some of them are talking, others silent.[Glaucon] You have shown me a strange image, and they are strange prisoners. [Socrates] Like ourselves, I replied; and they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave? [Glaucon] True, he said; how could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads? [Socrates] And of the objects which are being carried in like manner they would only see the shadows? [Glaucon] Yes, he said. [Socrates] And if they were able to converse with one another, would they not suppose that they were naming what was actually before them? [Glaucon] Very true. [Socrates] And suppose further that the prison had an echo which came from the other side, would they not be sure to fancy when one of the passers-by spoke that the voice which they heard came from the passing shadow? [Glaucon] No question, he replied. [Socrates] To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images. [Glaucon] That is certain. [Socrates] And now look again, and see what will naturally follow if the prisoners are released and disabused of their error. At first, when any of them is liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round and walk and look towards the light, he will suffer sharp pains; the glare will distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of which in his former state he had seen the shadows; and then conceive some one saying to him, that what he saw before was an illusion, but that now, when he is approaching nearer to being and his eye is turned towards more real existence, he has a clearer vision, -what will be his reply? And you may further imagine that his instructor is pointing to the objects as they pass and requiring him to name them, -will he not be perplexed? Will he not fancy that the shadows which he formerly saw are truer than the objects which are now shown to him? [Glaucon] Far truer. [Socrates] And if he is compelled to look straight at the light, will he not have a pain in his eyes which will make him turn away to take and take in the objects of vision which he can see, and which he will conceive to be in reality clearer than the things which are now being shown to him? [Glaucon] True, he now. [Socrates] And suppose once more, that he is reluctantly dragged up a steep and rugged ascent, and held fast until he 's forced into the presence of the sun himself, is he not likely to be pained and irritated? When he approaches the light his eyes will be dazzled, and he will not be able to see anything at all of what are now called realities. [Glaucon] Not all in a moment, he said. [Socrates] He will require to grow accustomed to the sight of the upper world. And first he will see the shadows best, next the reflections of men and other objects in the water, and then the objects themselves; then he will gaze upon the light of the moon and the stars and the spangled heaven; and he will see the sky and the stars by night better than the sun or the light of the sun by day? [Glaucon] Certainly. [Socrates] Last of he will be able to see the sun, and not mere reflections of him in the water, but he will see him in his own proper place, and not in another; and he will contemplate him as he is. [Glaucon] Certainly. [Socrates] He will then proceed to argue that this is he who gives the season and the years, and is the guardian of all that is in the visible world, and in a certain way the cause of all things which he and his fellows have been accustomed to behold? [Glaucon] Clearly, he said, he would first see the sun and then reason about him. [Socrates] And when he remembered his old habitation, and the wisdom of the cave and his fellow-prisoners, do you not suppose that he would felicitate himself on the change, and pity them? [Glaucon] Certainly, he would. [Socrates] And if they were in the habit of conferring honors among themselves on those who were quickest to observe the passing shadows and to remark which of them went before, and which followed after, and which were together; and who were therefore best able to draw conclusions as to the future, do you think that he would care for such honors and glories, or envy the possessors of them? Would he not say with Homer, Better to be the poor servant of a poor master, and to endure anything, rather than think as they do and live after their manner? [Glaucon] Yes, he said, I think that he would rather suffer anything than entertain these false notions and live in this miserable manner. [Socrates] Imagine once more, I said, such an one coming suddenly out of the sun to be replaced in his old situation; would he not be certain to have his eyes full of darkness? [Glaucon] To be sure, he said. [Socrates] And if there were a contest, and he had to compete in measuring the shadows with the prisoners who had never moved out of the cave, while his sight was still weak, and before his eyes had become steady (and the time which would be needed to acquire this new habit of sight might be very considerable) would he not be ridiculous? Men would say of him that up he went and down he came without his eyes; and that it was better not even to think of ascending; and if any one tried to loose another and lead him up to the light, let them only catch the offender, and they would put him to death. [Glaucon] No question, he said. [Socrates] This entire allegory, I said, you may now append, dear Glaucon, to the previous argument; the prison-house is the world of sight, the light of the fire is the sun, and you will not misapprehend me if you interpret the journey upwards to be the ascent of the soul into the intellectual world according to my poor belief, which, at your desire, I have expressed whether rightly or wrongly God knows. But, whether true or false, my opinion is that in the world of knowledge the idea of good appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort; and, when seen, is also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light and of the lord of light in this visible world, and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual; and that this is the power upon which he who would act rationally, either in public or private life must have his eye fixed.[Glaucon] I agree, he said, as far as I am able to understand you. [Socrates] Moreover, I said, you must not wonder that those who attain to this beatific vision are unwilling to descend to human affairs; for their souls are ever hastening into the upper world where they desire to dwell; which desire of theirs is very natural, if our allegory may be trusted. [Glaucon] Yes, very natural. [Socrates] And is there anything surprising in one who passes from divine contemplations to the evil state of man, misbehaving himself in a ridiculous manner; if, while his eyes are blinking and before he has become accustomed to the surrounding darkness, he is compelled to fight in courts of law, or in other places, about the images or the shadows of images of justice, and is endeavoring to meet the conceptions of those who have never yet seen absolute justice? [Glaucon] Anything but surprising, he replied. [Socrates] Any one who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eyes are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind's eye, quite as much as of the bodily eye; and he who remembers this when he sees any one whose vision is perplexed and weak, will not be too ready to laugh; he will first ask whether that soul of man has come out of the brighter light, and is unable to see because unaccustomed to the dark, or having turned from darkness to the day is dazzled by excess of light. And he will count the one happy in his condition and state of being, and he will pity the other; or, if he have a mind to laugh at the soul which comes from below into the light, there will be more reason in this than in the laugh which greets him who returns from above out of the light into the cave. [Glaucon] That, he said, is a very just distinction. [Socrates] But then, if I am right, certain professors of education must be wrong when they say that they can put a knowledge into the soul which was not there before, like sight into blind eyes. [Glaucon] They undoubtedly say this, he replied. [Socrates] Whereas, our argument shows that the power and capacity of learning exists in the soul already; and that just as the eye was unable to turn from darkness to light without the whole body, so too the instrument of knowledge can only by the movement of the whole soul be turned from the world of becoming into that of being, and learn by degrees to endure the sight of being, and of the brightest and best of being, or in other words, of the good. [Glaucon] Very true. [Socrates] And must there not be some art which will effect conversion in the easiest and quickest manner; not implanting the faculty of sight, for that exists already, but has been turned in the wrong direction, and is looking away from the truth? [Glaucon] Yes, he said, such an art may be presumed. [Socrates] And whereas the other so-called virtues of the soul seem to be akin to bodily qualities, for even when they are not originally innate they can be implanted later by habit and exercise, the of wisdom more than anything else contains a divine element which always remains, and by this conversion is rendered useful and profitable; or, on the other hand, hurtful and useless. Did you never observe the narrow intelligence flashing from the keen eye of a clever rogue --how eager he is, how clearly his paltry soul sees the way to his end; he is the reverse of blind, but his keen eyesight is forced into the service of evil, and he is mischievous in proportion to his cleverness. [Glaucon] Very true, he said. [Socrates] But what if there had been a circumcision of such natures in the days of their youth; and they had been severed from those sensual pleasures, such as eating and drinking, which, like leaden weights, were attached to them at their birth, and which drag them down and turn the vision of their souls upon the things that are below --if, I say, they had been released from these impediments and turned in the opposite direction, the very same faculty in them would have seen the truth as keenly as they see what their eyes are turned to now. [Glaucon] Very likely. [Socrates] Yes, I said; and there is another thing which is likely. or rather a necessary inference from what has preceded, that neither the uneducated and uninformed of the truth, nor yet those who never make an end of their education, will be able ministers of State; not the former, because they have no single aim of duty which is the rule of all their actions, private as well as public; nor the latter, because they will not act at all except upon compulsion, fancying that they are already dwelling apart in the islands of the blest. [Glaucon] Very true, he replied. [Socrates] Then, I said, the business of us who are the founders of the State will be to compel the best minds to attain that knowledge which we have already shown to be the greatest of all-they must continue to ascend until they arrive at the good; but when they have ascended and seen enough we must not allow them to do as they do now. [Glaucon] What do you mean? [Socrates] I mean that they remain in the upper world: but this must not be allowed; they must be made to descend again among the prisoners in the cave, and partake of their labors and honors, whether they are worth having or not. [Glaucon] But is not this unjust? he said; ought we to give them a worse life, when they might have a better? [Socrates] You have again forgotten, my friend, I said, the intention of the legislator, who did not aim at making any one class in the State happy above the rest; the happiness was to be in the whole State, and he held the citizens together by persuasion and necessity, making them benefactors of the State, and therefore benefactors of one another; to this end he created them, not to please themselves, but to be his instruments in binding up the State. [Glaucon] True, he said, I had forgotten. [Socrates] Observe, Glaucon, that there will be no injustice in compelling our philosophers to have a care and providence of others; we shall explain to them that in other States, men of their class are not obliged to share in the toils of politics: and this is reasonable, for they grow up at their own sweet will, and the government would rather not have them. Being self-taught, they cannot be expected to show any gratitude for a culture which they have never received. But we have brought you into the world to be rulers of the hive, kings of yourselves and of the other citizens, and have educated you far better and more perfectly than they have been educated, and you are better able to share in the double duty. Wherefore each of you, when his turn comes, must go down to the general underground abode, and get the habit of seeing in the dark. When you have acquired the habit, you will see ten thousand times better than the inhabitants of the cave, and you will know what the several images are, and what they represent, because you have seen the beautiful and just and good in their truth. And thus our State which is also yours will be a reality, and not a dream only, and will be administered in a spirit unlike that of other States, in which men fight with one another about shadows only and are distracted in the struggle for power, which in their eyes is a great good. Whereas the truth is that the State in which the rulers are most reluctant to govern is always the best and most quietly governed, and the State in which they are most eager, the worst. [Glaucon] Quite true, he replied. [Socrates] And will our pupils, when they hear this, refuse to take their turn at the toils of State, when they are allowed to spend the greater part of their time with one another in the heavenly light? [Glaucon] Impossible, he answered; for they are just men, and the commands which we impose upon them are just; there can be no doubt that every one of them will take office as a stern necessity, and not after the fashion of our present rulers of State. [Socrates] Yes, my friend, I said; and there lies the point. You must contrive for your future rulers another and a better life than that of a ruler, and then you may have a well-ordered State; for only in the State which offers this, will they rule who are truly rich, not in silver and gold, but in virtue and wisdom, which are the true blessings of life. Whereas if they go to the administration of public affairs, poor and hungering after the' own private advantage, thinking that hence they are to snatch the chief good, order there can never be; for they will be fighting about office, and the civil and domestic broils which thus arise will be the ruin of the rulers themselves and of the whole State. [Glaucon] Most true, he replied. [Socrates] And the only life which looks down upon the life of political ambition is that of true philosophy. Do you know of any other? [Glaucon] Indeed, I do not, he said. [Socrates] And those who govern ought not to be lovers of the task? For, if they are, there will be rival lovers, and they will fight. [Glaucon] No question. [Socrates] Who then are those whom we shall compel to be guardians? Surely they will be the men who are wisest about affairs of State, and by whom the State is best administered, and who at the same time have other honors and another and a better life than that of politics? [Glaucon] They are the men, and I will choose them, he replied. [Socrates] And now shall we consider in what way such guardians will be produced, and how they are to be brought from darkness to light, -- as some are said to have ascended from the world below to the gods? [Glaucon] By all means, he replied. [Socrates] The process, I said, is not the turning over of an oyster-shell, but the turning round of a soul passing from a day which is little better than night to the true day of being, that is, the ascent from below, which we affirm to be true philosophy? [Glaucon] Quite so. The Ring of Gyges (Glaucon speaks)Now that those who practise justice do so involuntarily and because they have not the power to be unjust will best appear if we imagine something of this kind: having given both to the just and the unjust power to do what they will, let us watch and see whither desire will lead them; then we shall discover in the very act the just and unjust man to be proceeding along the same road, following their interest, which all natures deem to be their good, and are only diverted into the path of justice by the force of law. The liberty which we are supposing may be most completely given to them in the form of such a power as is said to have been possessed by Gyges the ancestor of Croesus the Lydian. According to the tradition, Gyges was a shepherd in the service of the king of Lydia; there was a great storm, and an earthquake made an opening in the earth at the place where he was feeding his flock. Amazed at the sight, he descended into the opening, where, among other marvels, he beheld a hollow brazen horse, having doors, at which he stooping and looking in saw a dead body of stature, as appeared to him, more than human, and having nothing on but a gold ring; this he took from the finger of the dead and reascended. Now the shepherds met together, according to custom, that they might send their monthly report about the flocks to the king; into their assembly he came having the ring on his finger, and as he was sitting among them he chanced to turn the collet of the ring inside his hand, when instantly he became invisible to the rest of the company and they began to speak of him as if he were no longer present. He was astonished at this, and again touching the ring he turned the collet outwards and reappeared; he made several trials of the ring, and always with the same result-when he turned the collet inwards he became invisible, when outwards he reappeared. Whereupon he contrived to be chosen one of the messengers who were sent to the court; where as soon as he arrived he seduced the queen, and with her help conspired against the king and slew him, and took the kingdom. Suppose now that there were two such magic rings, and the just put on one of them and the unjust the other; no man can be imagined to be of such an iron nature that he would stand fast in justice. No man would keep his hands off what was not his own when he could safely take what he liked out of the market, or go into houses and lie with any one at his pleasure, or kill or release from prison whom he would, and in all respects be like a God among men. Then the actions of the just would be as the actions of the unjust; they would both come at last to the same point. And this we may truly affirm to be a great proof that a man is just, not willingly or because he thinks that justice is any good to him individually, but of necessity, for wherever anyone thinks that he can safely be unjust, there he is unjust. For all men believe in their hearts that injustice is far more profitable to the individual than justice, and he who argues as I have been supposing, will say that they are right. If you could imagine any one obtaining this power of becoming invisible, and never doing any wrong or touching what was another's, he would be thought by the lookers-on to be a most wretched idiot, although they would praise him to one another's faces, and keep up appearances with one another from a fear that they too might suffer injustice.Socrates’ Reply to Glaucon Socrates -- Well, I said, and now having arrived at this stage of the argument, we may revert to the words which brought us hither: Was not some one saying that injustice was a gain to the perfectly unjust who was reputed to be just?Glaucon -- Yes, that was said.Socrates -- Now then, having determined the power and quality of justice and injustice, let us have a little conversation with him.Glaucon -- What shall we say to him?Socrates -- Let us make an image of the soul, that he may have his own words presented before his eyes.Glaucon -- Of what sort?Socrates -- An ideal image of the soul, like the composite creations of ancient mythology, such as the Chimera or Scylla or Cerberus, and there are many others in which two or more different natures are said to grow into one.Glaucon -- There are said of have been such unions.Socrates -- Then do you now model the form of a multitudinous, many-headed monster, having a ring of heads of all manner of beasts, tame and wild, which he is able to generate and metamorphose at will.Glaucon -- You suppose marvellous powers in the artist; but, as language is more pliable than wax or any similar substance, let there be such a model as you propose.Socrates -- Suppose now that you make a second form as of a lion, and a third of a man, the second smaller than the first, and the third smaller than the second.Glaucon -- That, he said, is an easier task; and I have made them as you say.Socrates -- And now join them, and let the three grow into one.Glaucon -- That has been accomplished.Socrates -- Next fashion the outside of them into a single image, as of a man, so that he who is not able to look within, and sees only the outer hull, may believe the beast to be a single human creature. I have done so, he said. And now, to him who maintains that it is profitable for the human creature to be unjust, and unprofitable to be just, let us reply that, if he be right, it is profitable for this creature to feast the multitudinous monster and strengthen the lion and the lion-like qualities, but to starve and weaken the man, who is consequently liable to be dragged about at the mercy of either of the other two; and he is not to attempt to familiarize or harmonize them with one another-- he ought rather to suffer them to fight and bite and devour one another.Glaucon -- Certainly, he said; that is what the approver of injustice says.Socrates -- To him the supporter of justice makes answer that he should ever so speak and act as to give the man within him in some way or other the most complete mastery over the entire human creature. He should watch over the many-headed monster like a good husbandman, fostering and cultivating the gentle qualities, and preventing the wild ones from growing; he should be making the lion-heart his ally, and in common care of them all should be uniting the several parts with one another and with himself.Glaucon -- Yes, he said, that is quite what the maintainer of justice say.Socrates -- And so from every point of view, whether of pleasure, honour, or advantage, the approver of justice is right and speaks the truth, and the disapprover is wrong and false and ignorant.Glaucon -- Yes, from every point of view.Socrates -- Come, now, and let us gently reason with the unjust, who is not intentionally in error. `Sweet Sir,' we will say to him, what think you of things esteemed noble and ignoble? Is not the noble that which subjects the beast to the man, or rather to the god in man; and the ignoble that which subjects the man to the beast?' He can hardly avoid saying yes--can he now?Glaucon -- Not if he has any regard for my opinion.Socrates -- But, if he agree so far, we may ask him to answer another question: `Then how would a man profit if he received gold and silver on the condition that he was to enslave the noblest part of him to the worst? Who can imagine that a man who sold his son or daughter into slavery for money, especially if he sold them into the hands of fierce and evil men, would be the gainer, however large might be the sum which he received? And will any one say that he is not a miserable caitiff who remorselessly sells his own divine being to that which is most godless and detestable? Eriphyle took the necklace as the price of her husband's life, but he is taking a bribe in order to compass a worse ruin.'Glaucon -- Yes, said Glaucon, far worse--I will answer for him.Socrates -- Has not the intemperate been censured of old, because in him the huge multiform monster is allowed to be too much at large?Glaucon -- Clearly.Socrates -- And men are blamed for pride and bad temper when the lion and serpent element in them disproportionately grows and gains strength?Glaucon -- Yes.Socrates -- And luxury and softness are blamed, because they relax and weaken this same creature, and make a coward of him?Glaucon -- Very true.Socrates -- And is not a man reproached for flattery and meanness who subordinates the spirited animal to the unruly monster, and, for the sake of money, of which he can never have enough, habituates him in the days of his youth to be trampled in the mire, and from being a lion to become a monkey?Glaucon -- True, he said.Socrates -- And why are mean employments and manual arts a reproach Only because they imply a natural weakness of the higher principle; the individual is unable to control the creatures within him, but has to court them, and his great study is how to flatter them.Glaucon -- Such appears to be the reason.Socrates -- And therefore, being desirous of placing him under a rule like that of the best, we say that he ought to be the servant of the best, in whom the Divine rules; not, as Thrasymachus supposed, to the injury of the servant, but because every one had better be ruled by divine wisdom dwelling within him; or, if this be impossible, then by an external authority, in order that we may be all, as far as possible, under the same government, friends and equals.Glaucon -- True, he said.Socrates -- And this is clearly seen to be the intention of the law, which is the ally of the whole city; and is seen also in the authority which we exercise over children, and the refusal to let them be free until we have established in them a principle analogous to the constitution of a state, and by cultivation of this higher element have set up in their hearts a guardian and ruler like our own, and when this is done they may go their ways.Glaucon -- Yes, he said, the purpose of the law is manifest.Socrates -- From what point of view, then, and on what ground can we say that a man is profited by injustice or intemperance or other baseness, which will make him a worse man, even though he acquire money or power by his wickedness?Glaucon -- From no point of view at all.Socrates -- What shall he profit, if his injustice be undetected and unpunished? He who is undetected only gets worse, whereas he who is detected and punished has the brutal part of his nature silenced and humanized; the gentler element in him is liberated, and his whole soul is perfected and ennobled by the acquirement of justice and temperance and wisdom, more than the body ever is by receiving gifts of beauty, strength and health, in proportion as the soul is more honourable than the body.Glaucon -- Certainly, he said.Socrates -- To this nobler purpose the man of understanding will devote the energies of his life. And in the first place, he will honour studies which impress these qualities on his soul and disregard others?Glaucon -- Clearly, he said.Socrates -- In the next place, he will regulate his bodily habit and training, and so far will he be from yielding to brutal and irrational pleasures, that he will regard even health as quite a secondary matter; his first object will be not that he may be fair or strong or well, unless he is likely thereby to gain temperance, but he will always desire so to attemper the body as to preserve the harmony of the soul?Glaucon -- Certainly he will, if he has true music in him.Socrates -- And in the acquisition of wealth there is a principle of order and harmony which he will also observe; he will not allow himself to be dazzled by the foolish applause of the world, and heap up riches to his own infinite harm?Glaucon -- Certainly not, he said.Socrates -- He will look at the city which is within him, and take heed that no disorder occur in it, such as might arise either from superfluity or from want; and upon this principle he will regulate his property and gain or spend according to his means.Glaucon -- Very true.Socrates -- And, for the same reason, he will gladly accept and enjoy such honours as he deems likely to make him a better man; but those, whether private or public, which are likely to disorder his life, he will avoid?Glaucon -- Then, if that is his motive, he will not be a statesman.Socrates -- By the dog of Egypt, he will! in the city which is his own he certainly will, though in the land of his birth perhaps not, unless he have a divine call.Glaucon -- I understand; you mean that he will be a ruler in the city of which we are the founders, and which exists in idea only; for I do not believe that there is such an one anywhere on earth?Socrates -- In heaven, I replied, there is laid up a pattern of it, methinks, which he who desires may behold, and beholding, may set his own house in order. But whether such an one exists, or ever will exist in fact, is no matter; for he will live after the manner of that city, having nothing to do with any other.Glaucon -- I think so, he said.Study Guide for Readings of Plato (& Socrates)“Apology”Socrates said, “The ______________ life is not worth living.” Do you agree? Why or why not?What was the reputation of Socrates in Athens?Socrates said, “I know very well that I am not _________.” Why did he say this?How did Socrates justify his decision to not back away from his quest to find a truly wise man in Athens? What example from his own past did he use?How would Socrates respond to the common modern-day claim that religion and philosophy should never be mixed?In our society of mutual funds, health clubs, casinos and millionaire athlete/entertainers, how do you think Socrates would be received?“Plato’s Allegory of the Cave”What does the cave wall symbolize, in Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave?”Why would the prisoners not accept the report of the escapee?In the allegory, Socrates says, “Our argument shows that the power and capacity of learning exists in the soul already.” Compare this with Romans 1:18-20.What does Socrates have to say about the clever rogue with a keen eye? How does this compare with the teaching of Proverbs about the fool (1:16, 7:23, 14:9, etc.)?Notice how the allegory is, at first, about the fate of individuals: the prisoners, and the escapee. Then, in discussing the allegory with Glaucon, Socrates uses it as a springboard for a discussion on how the ideal state should be set up. Why isn’t Socrates content with only the fate of the individuals in the allegory?Who does Socrates think should be entrusted with “the care and providence of others?”The Ring of GygesHere the speaker (Glaucon) is testing the idea that justice is really not a g__________ (something to be desired for its own value) but rather a lesser e__________ (something which is less painful that the alternatives). Nobody would choose to follow rules and laws if he could get away with ignoring them. The test takes shape: let both a just man and an unjust man each have the power to do what he wants, and “see whither d__________will lead them.”What power does Gyges receive when he finds the ring?What does Glaucon suggest this story proves? How does he get you to agree? Notice that Glaucon asks two questions, basically. (1) Would the totally unjust man continue to be totally unjust if he appeared to everyone else to be totally just, yet could keep all the external benefits of being unjust? (2) Would the totally just man continue to be totally just if he appeared to everyone else to be totally unjust, yet would keep all the internal benefits of being just? How do you answer these two questions?Socrates’ Reply to GlauconChimeraCerberuseraCerberusWhy does Socrates want Glaucon to imagine a many-headed monster, and a lion, and a man?After Socrates succeeds in getting Glaucon to imagine these things, what are the two options given to Glaucon to consider?Socrates says, “Come now, and let us gently reason with the unjust, who is not intentionally in error.” In issuing this plea, do you think Socrates is being straightforward, or is he being sarcastic here?How would it profit a man if he received gold and silver on the condition that he was to enslave the noblest part of him to the worst?Socrates moves from a discussion of the individual to a discussion of the State, again. Why do you think he is not satisfied with leaving us with a lesson about the individual?Does it make a difference whether an injustice is undetected and unpunished?What will happen when a man looks “at the city which is within him?”Aristotle Greek philosopher who lived from 384-322 B.C.)De Anima (On the soul) From Book III Chapter 3 That perceiving and practical thinking are not identical is therefore obvious; for the former is universal in the animal world, the latter is found in only a small division of it. Further, speculative thinking is also distinct from perceiving -- I mean that in which we find rightness and wrongness -- rightness in prudence, knowledge, true opinion, wrongness in their opposites; for perception of the special objects of sense is always free from error, and is found in all animals, while it is possible to think falsely as well as truly, and thought is found only where there is discourse of reason as well as sensibility. For imagination is different from either perceiving or discursive thinking, though it is not found without sensation, or judgement without it. That this activity is not the same kind of thinking as judgement is obvious. For imagining lies within our own power whenever we wish (e.g. we can call up a picture, as in the practice of mnemonics by the use of mental images), but in forming opinions we are not free: we cannot escape the alternative of falsehood or truth. Further, when we think something to be fearful or threatening, emotion is immediately produced, and so too with what is encouraging; but when we merely imagine we remain as unaffected as persons who are looking at a painting of some dreadful or encouraging scene. Again within the field of judgement itself we find varieties, knowledge, opinion, prudence, and their opposites; of the differences between these I must speak elsewhere. Thinking is different from perceiving and is held to be in part imagination, in part judgement: we must therefore first mark off the sphere of imagination and then speak of judgment. If then imagination is that in virtue of which an image arises for us, excluding metaphorical uses of the term, is it a single faculty or disposition relative to images, in virtue of which we discriminate and are either in error or not? The faculties in virtue of which we do this are sense, opinion, science, intelligence. …Opinion involves belief (for without belief in what we opine we cannot have an opinion), and in the brutes though we often find imagination we never find belief. Further, every opinion is accompanied by belief, belief by conviction, and conviction by discourse of reason: while there are some of the brutes in which we find imagination, without discourse of reason. It is clear then that imagination cannot, again, be (1) opinion plus sensation, or (2) opinion mediated by sensation, or (3) a blend of opinion and sensation; this is impossible both for these reasons and because the content of the supposed opinion cannot be different from that of the sensation (I mean that imagination must be the blending of the perception of white with the opinion that it is white: it could scarcely be a blend of the opinion that it is good with the perception that it is white): to imagine is therefore (on this view) identical with the thinking of exactly the same as what one in the strictest sense perceives. But what we imagine is sometimes false though our contemporaneous judgment about it is true; e.g. we imagine the sun to be a foot in diameter though we are convinced that it is larger than the inhabited part of the earth. …Chapter 8 Let us now summarize our results about soul, and repeat that the soul is in a way all existing things; for existing things are either sensible or thinkable, and knowledge is in a way what is knowable, and sensation is in a way what is sensible: in what way we must inquire. Knowledge and sensation are divided to correspond with the realities, potential knowledge and sensation answering to potentialities, actual knowledge and sensation to actualities. Within the soul the faculties of knowledge and sensation are potentially these objects, the one what is knowable, the other what is sensible. They must be either the things themselves or their forms. The former alternative is of course impossible: it is not the stone which is present in the soul but its form. It follows that the soul is analogous to the hand; for as the hand is a tool of tools, so the mind is the form of forms and sense the form of sensible things. Since according to common agreement there is nothing outside and separate in existence from sensible spatial magnitudes, the objects of thought are in the sensible forms, viz. both the abstract objects and all the states and affections of sensible things. Hence (1) no one can learn or understand anything in the absence of sense, and (when the mind is actively aware of anything it is necessarily aware of it along with an image; for images are like sensuous contents except in that they contain no matter. …Chapter 12 The nutritive soul then must be possessed by everything that is alive, and every such thing is endowed with soul from its birth to its death. For what has been born must grow, reach maturity, and decay -- all of which are impossible without nutrition. Therefore the nutritive faculty must be found in everything that grows and decays. But sensation need not be found in all things that live. For it is impossible for touch to belong either (1) to those whose body is uncompounded or (2) to those which are incapable of taking in the forms without their matter. But animals must be endowed with sensation, since Nature does nothing in vain. For all things that exist by Nature are means to an end, or will be concomitants of means to an end. Every body capable of forward movement would, if unendowed with sensation, perish and fail to reach its end, which is the aim of Nature; for how could it obtain nutriment? Stationary living things, it is true, have as their nutriment that from which they have arisen; but it is not possible that a body which is not stationary but produced by generation should have a soul and a discerning mind without also having sensation. (Nor yet even if it were not produced by generation. Why should it not have sensation? Because it were better so either for the body or for the soul? But clearly it would not be better for either: the absence of sensation will not enable the one to think better or the other to exist better.) Therefore no body which is not stationary has soul without sensation. From MetaphysicsALL men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves; and above all others the sense of sight. For not only with a view to action, but even when we are not going to do anything, we prefer seeing (one might say) to everything else. The reason is that this, most of all the senses, makes us know and brings to light many differences between things.By nature animals are born with the faculty of sensation, and from sensation memory is produced in some of them, though not in others. And therefore the former are more intelligent and apt at learning than those which cannot remember; those which are incapable of hearing sounds are intelligent though they cannot be taught, e.g. the bee, and any other race of animals that may be like it; and those which besides memory have this sense of hearing can be taught. The animals other than man live by appearances and memories, and have but little of connected experience; but the human race lives also by art and reasonings. Now from memory experience is produced in men; for the several memories of the same thing produce finally the capacity for a single experience. And experience seems pretty much like science and art, but really science and art come to men through experience; for 'experience made art', as Polus says, 'but inexperience luck.' Now art arises when from many notions gained by experience one universal judgement about a class of objects is produced. For to have a judgement that when Callias was ill of this disease this did him good, and similarly in the case of Socrates and in many individual cases, is a matter of experience; but to judge that it has done good to all persons of a certain constitution, marked off in one class, when they were ill of this disease, e.g. to phlegmatic or bilious people when burning with fevers-this is a matter of art. With a view to action experience seems in no respect inferior to art, and men of experience succeed even better than those who have theory without experience. (The reason is that experience is knowledge of individuals, art of universals, and actions and productions are all concerned with the individual; for the physician does not cure man, except in an incidental way, but Callias or Socrates or some other called by some such individual name, who happens to be a man. If, then, a man has the theory without the experience, and recognizes the universal but does not know the individual included in this, he will often fail to cure; for it is the individual that is to be cured.) But yet we think that knowledge and understanding belong to art rather than to experience, and we suppose artists to be wiser than men of experience (which implies that Wisdom depends in all cases rather on knowledge); and this because the former know the cause, but the latter do not. For men of experience know that the thing is so, but do not know why, while the others know the 'why' and the cause. Hence we think also that the masterworkers in each craft are more honourable and know in a truer sense and are wiser than the manual workers, because they know the causes of the things that are done (we think the manual workers are like certain lifeless things which act indeed, but act without knowing what they do, as fire burns,-but while the lifeless things perform each of their functions by a natural tendency, the labourers perform them through habit); thus we view them as being wiser not in virtue of being able to act, but of having the theory for themselves and knowing the causes. And in general it is a sign of the man who knows and of the man who does not know, that the former can teach, and therefore we think art more truly knowledge than experience is; for artists can teach, and men of mere experience cannot. …Again, we do not regard any of the senses as Wisdom; yet surely these give the most authoritative knowledge of particulars. But they do not tell us the 'why' of anything-e.g. why fire is hot; they only say that it is hot. …At first he who invented any art whatever that went beyond the common perceptions of man was naturally admired by men, not only because there was something useful in the inventions, but because he was thought wise and superior to the rest. But as more arts were invented, and some were directed to the necessities of life, others to recreation, the inventors of the latter were naturally always regarded as wiser than the inventors of the former, because their branches of knowledge did not aim at utility. Hence when all such inventions were already established, the sciences which do not aim at giving pleasure or at the necessities of life were discovered, and first in the places where men first began to have leisure. This is why the mathematical arts were founded in Egypt; for there the priestly caste was allowed to be at leisure. …For it is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and at first began to philosophize; they wondered originally at the obvious difficulties, then advanced little by little and stated difficulties about the greater matters, e.g. about the phenomena of the moon and those of the sun and of the stars, and about the genesis of the universe. And a man who is puzzled and wonders thinks himself ignorant (whence even the lover of myth is in a sense a lover of Wisdom, for the myth is composed of wonders); therefore since they philosophized order to escape from ignorance, evidently they were pursuing science in order to know, and not for any utilitarian end. And this is confirmed by the facts; for it was when almost all the necessities of life and the things that make for comfort and recreation had been secured, that such knowledge began to be sought. Evidently then we do not seek it for the sake of any other advantage; but as the man is free, we say, who exists for his own sake and not for another's, so we pursue this as the only free science, for it alone exists for its own sake. …"Evidently we have to acquire knowledge of the original causes (for we say we know each thing only when we think we recognize its first cause), and causes are spoken of in four senses. In one of these we mean the substance, i.e. the essence (for the 'why' is reducible finally to the definition, and the ultimate 'why' is a cause and principle); in another the matter or substratum, in a third the source of the change, and in a fourth the cause opposed to this, the purpose and the good (for this is the end of all generation and change).From Nichomachean EthicsEvery art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim. …If, then, there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake (everything else being desired for the sake of this), and if we do not choose everything for the sake of something else (for at that rate the process would go on to infinity, so that our desire would be empty and vain), clearly this must be the good and the chief good. Will not the knowledge of it, then, have a great influence on life? Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what is right? If so, we must try, in outline at least, to determine what it is, and of which of the sciences or capacities it is the object. It would seem to belong to the most authoritative art and that which is most truly the master art. And politics appears to be of this nature; for it is this that ordains which of the sciences should be studied in a state, and which each class of citizens should learn and up to what point they should learn them. …In view of the fact that all knowledge and every pursuit aims at some good, what it is that we say political science aims at and what is the highest of all goods achievable by action. … there is very general agreement; for both the general run of men and people of superior refinement say that it is happiness, and identify living well and doing well with being happy; but with regard to what happiness is they differ, and the many do not give the same account as the wise. For the former think it is some plain and obvious thing, like pleasure, wealth, or honour; they differ, however, from one another- and often even the same man identifies it with different things, with health when he is ill, with wealth when he is poor; but, conscious of their ignorance, they admire those who proclaim some great ideal that is above their comprehension. Now some thought that apart from these many goods there is another which is self-subsistent and causes the goodness of all these as well. … To judge from the lives that men lead, most men, and men of the most vulgar type, seem (not without some ground) to identify the good, or happiness, with pleasure; which is the reason why they love the life of enjoyment. For there are, we may say, three prominent types of life- that just mentioned, the political, and thirdly the contemplative life. Now the mass of mankind are evidently quite slavish in their tastes, preferring a life suitable to beasts …A consideration of the prominent types of life shows that people of superior refinement and of active disposition identify happiness with honour; for this is, roughly speaking, the end of the political life. But it seems too superficial to be what we are looking for, since it is thought to depend on those who bestow honour rather than on him who receives it, but the good we divine to be something proper to a man and not easily taken from him. Further, men seem to pursue honour in order that they may be assured of their goodness … The life of money-making is one undertaken under compulsion, and wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking; for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else. …Let us again return to the good we are seeking, and ask what it can be. It seems different in different actions and arts; it is different in medicine, in strategy, and in the other arts likewise. What then is the good of each? Surely that for whose sake everything else is done. In medicine this is health, in strategy victory, in architecture a house, in any other sphere something else, and in every action and pursuit the end; for it is for the sake of this that all men do whatever else they do. Therefore, if there is an end for all that we do, this will be the good achievable by action, and if there are more than one, these will be the goods achievable by action. …Now we call that which is in itself worthy of pursuit more final than that which is worthy of pursuit for the sake of something else, and that which is never desirable for the sake of something else more final than the things that are desirable both in themselves and for the sake of that other thing, and therefore we call final without qualification that which is always desirable in itself and never for the sake of something else. Now such a thing happiness, above all else, is held to be; for this we choose always for self and never for the sake of something else, but honour, pleasure, reason, and every virtue we choose indeed for themselves (for if nothing resulted from them we should still choose each of them), but we choose them also for the sake of happiness, judging that by means of them we shall be happy. Happiness, on the other hand, no one chooses for the sake of these, nor, in general, for anything other than itself.From PoliticsEvery state is a community of some kind, and every community is established with a view to some good; for mankind always act in order to obtain that which they think good. But, if all communities aim at some good, the state or political community, which is the highest of all, and which embraces all the rest, aims at good in a greater degree than any other, and at the highest good. …The family is the association established by nature for the supply of men's everyday wants, and the members of it are called by Charondas 'companions of the cupboard,' and by Epimenides the Cretan, 'companions of the manger.' But when several families are united, and the association aims at something more than the supply of daily needs, the first society to be formed is the village. And the most natural form of the village appears to be that of a colony from the family, composed of the children and grandchildren, who are said to be suckled 'with the same milk.' And this is the reason why Hellenic states were originally governed by kings; because the Hellenes were under royal rule before they came together, as the barbarians still are. Every family is ruled by the eldest, and therefore in the colonies of the family the kingly form of government prevailed because they were of the same blood. . . .When several villages are united in a single complete community, large enough to be nearly or quite self-sufficing, the state comes into existence, originating in the bare needs of life, and continuing in existence for the sake of a good life. And therefore, if the earlier forms of society are natural, so is the state, for it is the end of them, and the nature of a thing is its end. For what each thing is when fully developed, we call its nature, whether we are speaking of a man, a horse, or a family. Besides, the final cause and end of a thing is the best, and to be self-sufficing is the end and the best.Hence it is evident that the state is a creation of nature, and that man is by nature a political animal. And he who by nature and not by mere accident is without a state, is either a bad man or above humanity. …Now, that man is more of a political animal than bees or any other gregarious animals is evident. Nature, as we often say, makes nothing in vain, and man is the only animal whom she has endowed with the gift of speech. And whereas mere voice is but an indication of pleasure or pain, and is therefore found in other animals (for their nature attains to the perception of pleasure and pain and the intimation of them to one another, and no further), the power of speech is intended to set forth the expedient and inexpedient, and therefore likewise the just and the unjust. And it is a characteristic of man that he alone has any sense of good and evil, of just and unjust, and the like, and the association of living beings who have this sense makes a family and a state. …So much for this subject; the relations of husband and wife, parent and child, their several virtues, what in their intercourse with one another is good, and what is evil, and how we may pursue the good and good and escape the evil, will have to be discussed when we speak of the different forms of government. For, inasmuch as every family is a part of a state, and these relationships are the parts of a family, and the virtue of the part must have regard to the virtue of the whole, women and children must be trained by education with an eye to the constitution, if the virtues of either of them are supposed to make any difference in the virtues of the state. And they must make a difference: for the children grow up to be citizens, and half the free persons in a state are women. Of these matters, enough has been said; of what remains, let us speak at another time. Regarding, then, our present inquiry as complete, we will make a new beginning. And, first, let us examine the various theories of a perfect state. The Aristotle Readings Study GuideLife’s Ultimate Questions, Chapter 4De Anima: Aristotle’s work on the human soul. Metaphysics: Aristotle’s work on knowledge.Nicomachean Ethics: Aristotle’s work on ethics.The Politics: Aristotle’s work on social and political philosophy.Discuss one reason why Aristotle thought the soul was not separable from the body.If the soul is part of the body, can it be destroyed? Discuss Aristotle’s answer to this question.What is the best way to get knowledge about particulars? Discuss Aristotle’s answer to this question.Some objects of knowledge are far more important than others. According to Aristotle, what are these? Discuss his position.Aristotle uses the metaphor of archers aiming for the mark when he is discussing ethics. What did he believe the most important “bullseye of life” (my term, not his) to be?Of all the things a human can do, which of these are most permanent? Why?Discuss Aristotle’s reasons for saying “Man is a political animal.” To be a non-citizen was to be virtually non-existent, in his mind. Why?Aristotle found the State (Gr. polis) to be the highest and all-embracing institution of society. Discuss what the State is supposed to do for humans.Reality is caused. What are the four causes identified by Aristotle? Things can be categorized or classified. What are the ten categories Aristotle used for doing this?Change is all around us. What are the four kinds of change Aristotle talked about?Is the soul the same as the mind? How did Aristotle answer this question?Why are there three levels of soul for Aristotle?How does the soul relate to the body, according to Aristotle?The active intellect is special, for Aristotle. Why?What does it mean to say that God is a metaphysical necessity?What brings happiness, according to Aristotle?Why is the path of virtue shown by the Golden Mean?What is the paradox of hedonism?How important to Aristotle’s worldview is God?AugustineA Christian philosopher who lived from 354-430 A.D.Confessions, Book Three: Philosophy Opens His Eyes1. I came to Carthage, where a caldron of unholy loves was seething and bubbling all around me. I was not in love as yet, but I was in love with love; and, from a hidden hunger, I hated myself for not feeling more intensely a sense of hunger. I was looking for something to love, for I was in love with loving, and I hated security and a smooth way, free from snares. Within me I had a dearth of that inner food which is thyself, my God--although that dearth caused me no hunger. And I remained without any appetite for incorruptible food--not because I was already filled with it, but because the emptier I became the more I loathed it. Because of this my soul was unhealthy; and, full of sores, it exuded itself forth, itching to be scratched by scraping on the things of the senses. Yet, had these things no soul, they would certainly not inspire our love. To love and to be loved was sweet to me, and all the more when I gained the enjoyment of the body of the person I loved. Thus I polluted the spring of friendship with the filth of concupiscence and I dimmed its luster with the slime of lust. Yet, foul and unclean as I was, I still craved, in excessive vanity, to be thought elegant and urbane. And I did fall precipitately into the love I was longing for. My God, my mercy, with how much bitterness didst thou, out of thy infinite goodness, flavor that sweetness for me! For I was not only beloved but also I secretly reached the climax of enjoyment; and yet I was joyfully bound with troublesome tics, so that I could be scourged with the burning iron rods of jealousy, suspicion, fear, anger, and strife. 2. Stage plays also captivated me, with their sights full of the images of my own miseries: fuel for my own fire. Now, why does a man like to be made sad by viewing doleful and tragic scenes, which he himself could not by any means endure? Yet, as a spectator, he wishes to experience from them a sense of grief, and in this very sense of grief his pleasure consists. What is this but wretched madness? For a man is more affected by these actions the more he is spuriously involved in these affections. Now, if he should suffer them in his own person, it is the custom to call this "misery." But when he suffers with another, then it is called "compassion." But what kind of compassion is it that arises from viewing fictitious and unreal sufferings? The spectator is not expected to aid the sufferer but merely to grieve for him. And the more he grieves the more he applauds the actor of these fictions. If the misfortunes of the characters--whether historical or entirely imaginary--are represented so as not to touch the feelings of the spectator, he goes away disgusted and complaining. But if his feelings are deeply touched, he sits it out attentively, and sheds tears of joy. 3. Tears and sorrow, then, are loved. Surely every man desires to be joyful. And, though no one is willingly miserable, one may, nevertheless, be pleased to be merciful so that we love their sorrows because without them we should have nothing to pity. This also springs from that same vein of friendship. But whither does it go? Whither does it flow? Why does it run into that torrent of pitch which seethes forth those huge tides of loathsome lusts in which it is changed and altered past recognition, being diverted and corrupted from its celestial purity by its own will? Shall, then, compassion be repudiated? By no means! Let us, however, love the sorrows of others. But let us beware of uncleanness, O my soul, under the protection of my God, the God of our fathers, who is to be praised and exalted--let us beware of uncleanness. I have not yet ceased to have compassion. But in those days in the theaters I sympathized with lovers when they sinfully enjoyed one another, although this was done fictitiously in the play. And when they lost one another, I grieved with them, as if pitying them, and yet had delight in both grief and pity. Nowadays I feel much more pity for one who delights in his wickedness than for one who counts himself unfortunate because he fails to obtain some harmful pleasure or suffers the loss of some miserable felicity. This, surely, is the truer compassion, but the sorrow I feel in it has no delight for me. For although he that grieves with the unhappy should be commended for his work of love, yet he who has the power of real compassion would still prefer that there be nothing for him to grieve about. For if good will were to be ill will--which it cannot be--only then could he who is truly and sincerely compassionate wish that there were some unhappy people so that he might commiserate them. Some grief may then be justified, but none of it loved. Thus it is that thou dost act, O Lord God, for thou lovest souls far more purely than we do and art more incorruptibly compassionate, although thou art never wounded by any sorrow. Now "who is sufficient for these things?" 4. But at that time, in my wretchedness, I loved to grieve; and I sought for things to grieve about. In another man's misery, even though it was feigned and impersonated on the stage, that performance of the actor pleased me best and attracted me most powerfully which moved me to tears. What marvel then was it that an unhappy sheep, straying from thy flock and impatient of thy care, I became infected with a foul disease? This is the reason for my love of griefs: that they would not probe into me too deeply (for I did not love to suffer in myself such things as I loved to look at), and they were the sort of grief which came from hearing those fictions, which affected only the surface of my emotion. Still, just as if they had been poisoned fingernails, their scratching was followed by inflammation, swelling, putrefaction, and corruption. Such was my life! But was it life, O my God? 5. And still thy faithful mercy hovered over me from afar. In what unseemly iniquities did I wear myself out, following a sacrilegious curiosity, which, having deserted thee, then began to drag me down into the treacherous abyss, into the beguiling obedience of devils, to whom I made offerings of my wicked deeds. And still in all this thou didst not fail to scourge me. I dared, even while thy solemn rites were being celebrated inside the walls of thy church, to desire and to plan a project which merited death as its fruit. For this thou didst chastise me with grievous punishments, but nothing in comparison with my fault, O thou my greatest mercy, my God, my refuge from those terrible dangers in which I wandered with stiff neck, receding farther from thee, loving my own ways and not thine--loving a vagrant liberty! 6. Those studies I was then pursuing, generally accounted as respectable, were aimed at distinction in the courts of law--to excel in which, the more crafty I was, the more I should be praised. Such is the blindness of men that they even glory in their blindness. And by this time I had become a master in the School of Rhetoric, and I rejoiced proudly in this honor and became inflated with arrogance. Still I was relatively sedate, O Lord, as thou knowest, and had no share in the wreckings of "The Wreckers" (for this stupid and diabolical name was regarded as the very badge of gallantry) among whom I lived with a sort of ashamed embarrassment that I was not even as they were. But I lived with them, and at times I was delighted with their friendship, even when I abhorred their acts (that is, their "wrecking") in which they insolently attacked the modesty of strangers, tormenting them by uncalled-for jeers, gratifying their mischievous mirth. Nothing could more nearly resemble the actions of devils than these fellows. By what name, therefore, could they be more aptly called than "wreckers"?--being themselves wrecked first, and altogether turned upside down. They were secretly mocked at and seduced by the deceiving spirits, in the very acts by which they amused themselves in jeering and horseplay at the expense of others. 7. Among such as these, in that unstable period of my life, I studied the books of eloquence, for it was in eloquence that I was eager to be eminent, though from a reprehensible and vainglorious motive, and a delight in human vanity. In the ordinary course of study I came upon a certain book of Cicero's, whose language almost all admire, though not his heart. This particular book of his contains an exhortation to philosophy and was called Hortensius. Now it was this book which quite definitely changed my whole attitude and turned my prayers toward thee, O Lord, and gave me new hope and new desires. Suddenly every vain hope became worthless to me, and with an incredible warmth of heart I yearned for an immortality of wisdom and began now to arise that I might return to thee. It was not to sharpen my tongue further that I made use of that book. I was now nineteen; my father had been dead two years, and my mother was providing the money for my study of rhetoric. What won me in it [i.e., the Hortensius] was not its style but its substance. 8. How ardent was I then, my God, how ardent to fly from earthly things to thee! Nor did I know how thou wast even then dealing with me. For with thee is wisdom. In Greek the love of wisdom is called "philosophy," and it was with this love that that book inflamed me. There are some who seduce through philosophy, under a great, alluring, and honorable name, using it to color and adorn their own errors. And almost all who did this, in Cicero's own time and earlier, are censored and pointed out in his book. In it there is also manifest that most salutary admonition of thy Spirit, spoken by thy good and pious servant: "Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ: for in him all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily."[63] Since at that time, as thou knowest, O Light of my heart, the words of the apostle were unknown to me, I was delighted with Cicero's exhortation, at least enough so that I was stimulated by it, and enkindled and inflamed to love, to seek, to obtain, to hold, and to embrace, not this or that sect, but wisdom itself, wherever it might be. Only this checked my ardor: that the name of Christ was not in it. For this name, by thy mercy, O Lord, this name of my Saviour thy Son, my tender heart had piously drunk in, deeply treasured even with my mother's milk. And whatsoever was lacking that name, no matter how erudite, polished, and truthful, did not quite take complete hold of me. 9. I resolved, therefore, to direct my mind to the Holy Scriptures, that I might see what they were. And behold, I saw something not comprehended by the proud, not disclosed to children, something lowly in the hearing, but sublime in the doing, and veiled in mysteries. Yet I was not of the number of those who could enter into it or bend my neck to follow its steps. For then it was quite different from what I now feel. When I then turned toward the Scriptures, they appeared to me to be quite unworthy to be compared with the dignity of Tully. For my inflated pride was repelled by their style, nor could the sharpness of my wit penetrate their inner meaning. Truly they were of a sort to aid the growth of little ones, but I scorned to be a little one and, swollen with pride, I looked upon myself as fully grown. Confessions, Book One & Book Eight: Augustine’s Conversion1. "Great art thou, O Lord, and greatly to be praised; great is thy power, and infinite is thy wisdom." And man desires to praise thee, for he is a part of thy creation; he bears his mortality about with him and carries the evidence of his sin and the proof that thou dost resist the proud. Still he desires to praise thee, this man who is only a small part of thy creation. Thou hast prompted him, that he should delight to praise thee, for thou hast made us for thyself and restless is our heart until it comes to rest in thee. Grant me, O Lord, to know and understand whether first to invoke thee or to praise thee; whether first to know thee or call upon thee. But who can invoke thee, knowing thee not? For he who knows thee not may invoke thee as another than thou art. It may be that we should invoke thee in order that we may come to know thee. But "how shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? Or how shall they believe without a preacher?" Now, "they shall praise the Lord who seek him," for "those who seek shall find him," and, finding him, shall praise him. I will seek thee, O Lord, and call upon thee. I call upon thee, O Lord, in my faith which thou hast given me, which thou hast inspired in me through the humanity of thy Son, and through the ministry of thy preacher. 2. And how shall I call upon my God--my God and my Lord? For when I call on him I ask him to come into me. And what place is there in me into which my God can come? How could God, the God who made both heaven and earth, come into me? Is there anything in me, O Lord my God, that can contain thee? Do even the heaven and the earth, which thou hast made, and in which thou didst make me, contain thee? Is it possible that, since without thee nothing would be which does exist, thou didst make it so that whatever exists has some capacity to receive thee? Why, then, do I ask thee to come into me, since I also am and could not be if thou wert not in me? For I am not, after all, in hell--and yet thou art there too, for "if I go down into hell, thou art there." Therefore I would not exist--I would simply not be at all--unless I exist in thee, from whom and by whom and in whom all things are. Even so, Lord; even so. Where do I call thee to, when I am already in thee? Or from whence wouldst thou come into me? Where, beyond heaven and earth, could I go that there my God might come to me--he who hath said, "I fill heaven and earth"? …19. Then, as this vehement quarrel, which I waged with my soul in the chamber of my heart, was raging inside my inner dwelling, agitated both in mind and countenance, I seized upon Alypius (a friend who also is considering converting to Christianity) and exclaimed: "What is the matter with us? What is this? What did you hear? The uninstructed start up and take heaven, and we--with all our learning but so little heart--see where we wallow in flesh and blood! Because others have gone before us, are we ashamed to follow, and not rather ashamed at our not following?" I scarcely knew what I said, and in my excitement I flung away from him, while he gazed at me in silent astonishment. For I did not sound like myself: my face, eyes, color, tone expressed my meaning more clearly than my words. There was a little garden belonging to our lodging, of which we had the use--as of the whole house--for the master, our landlord, did not live there. The tempest in my breast hurried me out into this garden, where no one might interrupt the fiery struggle in which I was engaged with myself, until it came to the outcome that thou knewest though I did not. But I was mad for health, and dying for life; knowing what evil thing I was, but not knowing what good thing I was so shortly to become. I fled into the garden, with Alypius following step by step; for I had no secret in which he did not share, and how could he leave me in such distress? We sat down, as far from the house as possible. I was greatly disturbed in spirit, angry at myself with a turbulent indignation because I had not entered thy will and covenant, O my God, while all my bones cried out to me to enter, extolling it to the skies. The way therein is not by ships or chariots or feet--indeed it was not as far as I had come from the house to the place where we were seated. For to go along that road and indeed to reach the goal is nothing else but the will to go. But it must be a strong and single will, not staggering and swaying about this way and that--a changeable, twisting, fluctuating will, wrestling with itself while one part falls as another rises. 20. Finally, in the very fever of my indecision, I made many motions with my body; like men do when they will to act but cannot, either because they do not have the limbs or because their limbs are bound or weakened by disease, or incapacitated in some other way. Thus if I tore my hair, struck my forehead, or, entwining my fingers, clasped my knee, these I did because I willed it. But I might have willed it and still not have done it, if the nerves had not obeyed my will. Many things then I did, in which the will and power to do were not the same. Yet I did not do that one thing which seemed to me infinitely more desirable, which before long I should have power to will because shortly when I willed, I would will with a single will. For in this, the power of willing is the power of doing; and as yet I could not do it. Thus my body more readily obeyed the slightest wish of the soul in moving its limbs at the order of my mind than my soul obeyed itself to accomplish in the will alone its great resolve. 21. How can there be such a strange anomaly? And why is it? Let thy mercy shine on me, that I may inquire and find an answer, amid the dark labyrinth of human punishment and in the darkest contritions of the sons of Adam. Whence such an anomaly? And why should it be? The mind commands the body, and the body obeys. The mind commands itself and is resisted. The mind commands the hand to be moved and there is such readiness that the command is scarcely distinguished from the obedience in act. Yet the mind is mind, and the hand is body. The mind commands the mind to will, and yet though it be itself it does not obey itself. Whence this strange anomaly and why should it be? I repeat: The will commands itself to will, and could not give the command unless it wills; yet what is commanded is not done. But actually the will does not will entirely; therefore it does not command entirely. For as far as it wills, it commands. And as far as it does not will, the thing commanded is not done. For the will commands that there be an act of will--not another, but itself. But it does not command entirely. Therefore, what is commanded does not happen; for if the will were whole and entire, it would not even command it to be, because it would already be. It is, therefore, no strange anomaly partly to will and partly to be unwilling. This is actually an infirmity of mind, which cannot wholly rise, while pressed down by habit, even though it is supported by the truth. And so there are two wills, because one of them is not whole, and what is present in this one is lacking in the other. 22. Let them perish from thy presence, O God, as vain talkers, and deceivers of the soul perish, who, when they observe that there are two wills in the act of deliberation, go on to affirm that there are two kinds of minds in us: one good, the other evil. They are indeed themselves evil when they hold these evil opinions--and they shall become good only when they come to hold the truth and consent to the truth that thy apostle may say to them: "You were formerly in darkness, but now are you in the light in the Lord." But they desired to be light, not "in the Lord," but in themselves. They conceived the nature of the soul to be the same as what God is, and thus have become a thicker darkness than they were; for in their dread arrogance they have gone farther away from thee, from thee "the true Light, that lights every man that comes into the world." Mark what you say and blush for shame; draw near to him and be enlightened, and your faces shall not be ashamed. While I was deliberating whether I would serve the Lord my God now, as I had long purposed to do, it was I who willed and it was also I who was unwilling. In either case, it was I. I neither willed with my whole will nor was I wholly unwilling. And so I was at war with myself and torn apart by myself. And this strife was against my will; yet it did not show the presence of another mind, but the punishment of my own. Thus it was no more I who did it, but the sin that dwelt in me--the punishment of a sin freely committed by Adam, and I was a son of Adam. …25. Thus I was sick and tormented, reproaching myself more bitterly than ever, rolling and writhing in my chain till it should be utterly broken. By now I was held but slightly, but still was held. And thou, O Lord, didst press upon me in my inmost heart with a severe mercy, redoubling the lashes of fear and shame; lest I should again give way and that same slender remaining tie not be broken off, but recover strength and enchain me yet more securely. I kept saying to myself, "See, let it be done now; let it be done now." And as I said this I all but came to a firm decision. I all but did it--yet I did not quite. Still I did not fall back to my old condition, but stood aside for a moment and drew breath. And I tried again, and lacked only a very little of reaching the resolve--and then somewhat less, and then all but touched and grasped it. Yet I still did not quite reach or touch or grasp the goal, because I hesitated to die to death and to live to life. And the worse way, to which I was habituated, was stronger in me than the better, which I had not tried. And up to the very moment in which I was to become another man, the nearer the moment approached, the greater horror did it strike in me. But it did not strike me back, nor turn me aside, but held me in suspense. 26. It was, in fact, my old mistresses, trifles of trifles and vanities of vanities, who still enthralled me. They tugged at my fleshly garments and softly whispered: "Are you going to part with us? And from that moment will we never be with you any more? And from that moment will not this and that be forbidden you forever?" What were they suggesting to me in those words "this or that"? What is it they suggested, O my God? Let thy mercy guard the soul of thy servant from the vileness and the shame they did suggest! And now I scarcely heard them, for they were not openly showing themselves and opposing me face to face; but muttering, as it were, behind my back; and furtively plucking at me as I was leaving, trying to make me look back at them. Still they delayed me, so that I hesitated to break loose and shake myself free of them and leap over to the place to which I was being called--for unruly habit kept saying to me, "Do you think you can live without them?" 27. But now it said this very faintly; for in the direction I had set my face, and yet toward which I still trembled to go, the chaste dignity of continence appeared to me--cheerful but not wanton, modestly alluring me to come and doubt nothing, extending her holy hands, full of a multitude of good examples--to receive and embrace me. There were there so many young men and maidens, a multitude of youth and every age, grave widows and ancient virgins; and continence herself in their midst: not barren, but a fruitful mother of children--her joys--by thee, O Lord, her husband. And she smiled on me with a challenging smile as if to say: "Can you not do what these young men and maidens can? Or can any of them do it of themselves, and not rather in the Lord their God? The Lord their God gave me to them. Why do you stand in your own strength, and so stand not? Cast yourself on him; fear not. He will not flinch and you will not fall. Cast yourself on him without fear, for he will receive and heal you." And I blushed violently, for I still heard the muttering of those "trifles" and hung suspended. Again she seemed to speak: "Stop your ears against those unclean members of yours, that they may be mortified. They tell you of delights, but not according to the law of the Lord thy God." This struggle raging in my heart was nothing but the contest of self against self. And Alypius kept close beside me, and awaited in silence the outcome of my extraordinary agitation. 28. Now when deep reflection had drawn up out of the secret depths of my soul all my misery and had heaped it up before the sight of my heart, there arose a mighty storm, accompanied by a mighty rain of tears. That I might give way fully to my tears and lamentations, I stole away from Alypius, for it seemed to me that solitude was more appropriate for the business of weeping. I went far enough away that I could feel that even his presence was no restraint upon me. This was the way I felt at the time, and he realized it. I suppose I had said something before I started up and he noticed that the sound of my voice was choked with weeping. And so he stayed alone, where we had been sitting together, greatly astonished. I flung myself down under a fig tree--how I know not--and gave free course to my tears. The streams of my eyes gushed out an acceptable sacrifice to thee. And, not indeed in these words, but to this effect, I cried to thee: "And thou, O Lord, how long? How long, O Lord? Wilt thou be angry forever? Oh, remember not against us our former iniquities." For I felt that I was still enthralled by them. I sent up these sorrowful cries: "How long, how long? Tomorrow and tomorrow? Why not now? Why not this very hour make an end to my uncleanness?" 29. I was saying these things and weeping in the most bitter contrition of my heart, when suddenly I heard the voice of a boy or a girl I know not which--coming from the neighboring house, chanting over and over again, "Pick it up, read it; pick it up, read it." Immediately I ceased weeping and began most earnestly to think whether it was usual for children in some kind of game to sing such a song, but I could not remember ever having heard the like. So, damming the torrent of my tears, I got to my feet, for I could not but think that this was a divine command to open the Bible and read the first passage I should light upon. For I had heard how Anthony, accidentally coming into church while the gospel was being read, received the admonition as if what was read had been addressed to him: "Go and sell what you have and give it to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven; and come and follow me." By such an oracle he was forthwith converted to thee. So I quickly returned to the bench where Alypius was sitting, for there I had put down the apostle's book when I had left there. I snatched it up, opened it, and in silence read the paragraph on which my eyes first fell: "Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof." I wanted to read no further, nor did I need to. For instantly, as the sentence ended, there was infused in my heart something like the light of full certainty and all the gloom of doubt vanished away. 30. Closing the book, then, and putting my finger or something else for a mark I began--now with a tranquil countenance--to tell it all to Alypius. And he in turn disclosed to me what had been going on in himself, of which I knew nothing. He asked to see what I had read. I showed him, and he looked on even further than I had read. I had not known what followed. But indeed it was this, "Him that is weak in the faith, receive." This he applied to himself, and told me so. By these words of warning he was strengthened, and by exercising his good resolution and purpose--all very much in keeping with his character, in which, in these respects, he was always far different from and better than I--he joined me in full commitment without any restless hesitation. Then we went in to my mother, and told her what happened, to her great joy. We explained to her how it had occurred--and she leaped for joy triumphant; and she blessed thee, who art "able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think." For she saw that thou hadst granted her far more than she had ever asked for in all her pitiful and doleful lamentations. For thou didst so convert me to thee that I sought neither a wife nor any other of this world's hopes, but set my feet on that rule of faith which so many years before thou hadst showed her in her dream about me. And so thou didst turn her grief into gladness more plentiful than she had ventured to desire, and dearer and purer than the desire she used to cherish of having grandchildren of my flesh. From The City of God Of the adversaries of the name of Christ, whom the barbarians for Christ's sake spared when they stormed the city (Alaric and his Goths stormed Rome in 410 A.D.)For to this earthly city belong the enemies against whom I have to defend the city of God. Many of them, indeed, being reclaimed from their ungodly error, have become sufficiently creditable citizens of this city; but many are so inflamed with hatred against it, and are so ungrateful to its Redeemer for His signal benefits, as to forget that they would now be unable to utter a single word to its prejudice, had they not found in its sacred places, as they fled from the enemy's steel, that life in which they now boast themselves. Are not those very Romans, who were spared by the barbarians through their respect for Christ, become enemies to the name of Christ? The reliquaries of the martyrs and the churches of the apostles bear witness to this; for in the sack of the city they were open sanctuary for all who fled to them, whether Christian or Pagan. To their very threshold the blood-thirsty enemy raged; there his murderous fury owned a limit. Thither did such of the enemy as had any pity convey those to whom they had given quarter, lest any less mercifully disposed might fall upon them. And, indeed, when even those murderers who everywhere else showed themselves pitiless came to those spots where that was forbidden which the licence of war permitted in every other place, their furious rage for slaughter was bridled, and their eagerness to take prisoners was quenched. Thus escaped multitudes who now reproach the Christian religion, and impute to Christ the ills that have befallen their city; but the preservation of their own life- a boon which they owe to the respect entertained for Christ by the barbarians- they attribute not to our Christ, but to their own good luck. They ought rather, had they any right perceptions, to attribute the severities and hardships inflicted by their enemies to that divine providence which is wont to reform the depraved manners of men by chastisement, and which exercises with similar afflictions the righteous and praiseworthy- either translating them, when they have passed through the trial, to a better world, or detaining them still on earth for ulterior purposes. And they ought to attribute it to the spirit of these Christian times that, contrary to the custom of war, these blood- thirsty barbarians spared them, and spared them for Christ's sake, whether this mercy was actually shown in promiscuous places, or in those places specially dedicated to Christ's name, and of which the very largest were selected as sanctuaries, that full scope might thus be given to the expansive compassion which desired that a large multitude might find shelter there. Therefore ought they to give God thanks, and with sincere confession flee for refuge to His name, that so they may escape the punishment of eternal fire- they who with lying lips took upon them this name, that they might escape the punishment of present destruction. For of those whom you see insolently and shamelessly insulting the servants of Christ, there are numbers who would not have escaped that destruction and slaughter had they not pretended that they themselves were Christ's servants. Yet now, in ungrateful pride and most impious madness, and at the risk of being punished in everlasting darkness, they perversely oppose that name under which they fraudulently protected themselves for the sake of enjoying the light of this brief life. …That the saints lose nothing in losing temporal goods: These are the considerations which one must keep in view, that he may answer the question whether any evil happens to the faithful and godly which cannot be turned to profit. Or shall we say that the question is needless, and that the apostle is vapouring when he says, "We know that all things work together for good to them that love God?" They lost all they had. Their faith? Their godliness? The possessions of the hidden man of the heart, which in the sight of God are of great price? Did they lose these? For these are the wealth of Christians, to whom the wealthy apostle said, "Godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and raiment, let us be therewith content. But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil; which, while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows." They, then, who lost their worldly all in the sack of Rome, if they owned their possessions as they had been taught by the apostle, who himself was poor without, but rich within- that is to say, if they used the world as not using it- could say in the words of Job, heavily tried but not overcome: "Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; as it pleased the Lord, so has it come to pass: blessed be the name of the Lord." *0021 Like a good servant, Job counted the will of his Lord his great possession, by obedience to which his soul was enriched; nor did it grieve him to lose, while yet living, those goods which he must shortly leave at his death. But as to those feebler spirits who, though they cannot be said to prefer earthly possessions to Christ, do yet cleave to them with a somewhat immoderate attachment, they have discovered by the pain of losing these things how much they were sinning in loving them. For their grief is of their own making; in the words of the apostle quoted above, "they have pierced themselves through with many sorrows." For it was well that they who had so long despised these verbal admonitions should receive the teaching of experience. … Consequently those persons who obeyed their Lord when He warned them where and how to lay up treasure, did not lose even their earthly possessions in the invasion of the barbarians; while those who are now repenting that they did not obey Him have learnt the right use of earthly goods, if not by the wisdom which would have prevented their loss, at least by the experience which follows it.Study Outline for AugustineI.? His Early Life and ConversionA.? Opening Prayer of ConfessionsB.? Places1.? Thagaste2.? Carthage3.? Hippo Regius4.? Milan5.? RomeC.? People1.? Monica - His Mother2.? Adeodatus - His Son3.? Alypius - His Friend4.? Ambrose - Bishop of MilanD.? Worldviews1.? Christianity2.? Manicheanism3.? Skepticism4.? NeoplatonismE.? Major Events1.? Born in North Africa - 3542.? First visit to Carthage - 3713.? Takes a mistress - 3724.? Adeodatus is born - 3735.? Begins a nine-year attachment to Manicheanism - 3736.? Crosses the sea to Rome - 3837.? Becomes public orator at Milan - 3848.? Conversion - 386II.? The ConfessionsA.? QuoteB.? The Woman (His Mistress)1.? Apocryphal Response2.? Probable ResponseC.? MonicaD.? Translation1.? Influence of Plotinus and Neoplatonism2.? Changing of his views over timeE.? Last Four Books1.? Two Meanings of "Confessions"a.? Admit sinsb.? Glorify God2.? Anti-Manichean writingIII.? Faith and ReasonA.? Groups of Writings1.? Anti-Manichean2.? Anti-Pelagian3.? Anti-DonatistB.? Faith and Reason1.? Definition of Reason2.? Definition of FaithC.? "I believe in order that I may understand."D.? Working Together1.? Faith is first in time.2.? Reason is first in importance.IV.? The Problem of EvilA.? Refutation of Dualism (C.S. Lewis)1.? How do you know which god is the good god?2.? There must be a higher standard by which we judge.3.? The higher standard must be good, because all evil is a corruption of some higher good.4.? You cannot have two gods; God must be the only standard.B.? Evil is the absence of good.C.? "The Free Will Defense"V.? PelagianismA.? Major Beliefs1.? Denies Original Sin2.? Denies Total Depravity3.? Denies Causal Connection with Adam4.? Ability to Achieve Moral Perfection5.? Salvation by WorksB.? Augustine's View on Sin1.? Posse Non Peccarea.? Able not to sinb.? Adam before the fall2.? Non Posse Non Peccarea.? Not able not to sinb.? All mankind after the fall3.? Non Posse Peccarea.? Not able to sinb.? All mankind in heavenc.? ChristVI.? DonatismA.? Persecution in North AfricaB.? Split between Donatists and CatholicsC.? Augustine Responds to the DonatistsVII.? SkepticismA.? Self-contradictory1.? No one can know anything.2.? Do you know this?B.? If I am wrong, I still am.1.? One thing that everyone knows2.? Solipsism3.? Comparison to Descartes VIII.? Philosophy of HistoryA.? Linear View of HistoryB.? The City of God1.? Written after Arian Christians sacked Rome2.? Christianity was blamed for weakening Rome.3.? Two Partsa.? Books I-X: Rebuttalb.? Books XI - XXII: Philosophy of History4.? Contrasts City of God and City of Man5.? Book XIX - The Peace of God IX.? Theory of KnowledgeA.? Downward Path - Becoming1.? God2.? Soul3.? BodiesB.? Levels of Reason1.? Eternal Reason2.? Human Reasona.? Higher Reason - Wisdomb.? Lower Reason - KnowledgeC.? Upward Path - Knowing1.? Sensation2.? Cogitation3.? IntellectionX.? Theory of Divine IlluminationThomas AquinasA Christian philosopher who lived from 1225-1274 Reasons in Proof of the Existence of GodSumma Theologia Article II. Whether the existence of God is demonstrable: Let us proceed to the second point. It is objected (1) that the existence of God is not demonstrable: that God's existence is an article of faith, and that articles of faith are not demonstrable, because the office of demonstration is to prove, but faith pertains (only) to things that are not to be proven, as is evident from the Epistle to the Hebrews, 11. Hence that God's existence is not demonstrable. Again, (2) that the subject matter of demonstration is that something exists, but in the case of God we cannot know what exists, but only what does not, as Damascenus says (Of the Orthodox Faith, I., 4.) Hence that we cannot demonstrate God's existence. Again, (3) that if God's existence is to be proved it must be from what He causes, and that what He effects is not sufficient for His supposed nature, since He is infinite, but the effects finite, and the finite is not proportional to the infinite. Since, therefore, a cause cannot be proved through an effect not proportional to itself, it is said that God's exisence cannot be proved. But against this argument the apostle says (Rom. I., 20), "The unseen things of God are visible through His manifest works." But this would not be so unless it were possible to demonstrate God's existence through His works. What ought to be understood concerning anything, is first of all, whether it exists. Conclusion. It is possible to demonstrate God's existence, atthough not a priori (by pure reason), yet a posteriori from some work of His more surely known to us. In answer I must say that the proof is double. One is through the nature of a cause and is called propter quid: this is through the nature of preceding events sirnply. The other is through the nature of the effect, and is called quia, and is through the nature of preceding things as respects us. Since the effect is better known to us than the cause, we proceed from the effect to the knowledge of the cause. From any effect whatsoever it can be proved that a corresponding cause exists, if only the effects of it are sufficiently known to us, for since effects depend on causes, the effect being given, it is necessary that a preceding cause exists. Whence, that God exists, although this is not itself known to us, is provable through effects that are known to us. To the first objection above, I reply, therefore, that God's existence, and those other things of this nature that can be known through natural reason concerning God, as is said in Rom. I., are not articles of faith, but preambles to these articles. So faith presupposes natural knowledge, so grace nature, and perfection a perfectible thing. Nothing prevents a thing that is in itself demonstratable and knowable, from being accepted as an article of faith by someone that does not accept the proof of it. To the second objection, I reply that, since the cause is proven from the effect, one must use the effect in the place of a definition of the cause in demonstrating that the cause exists; and that this applies especially in the case of God, because for proving that anything exists, it is necessary to accept in this method what the name signifies, not however that anything exists, because the question what it is is secondary to the question whether it exists at all. The characteristics of God are drawn from His works as shall be shown hereafter. Whence by proving that God exists through His works as shall be shown hereafter. Whence by proving that God exists through His works, we are able by this very method to see what the name God signifies. To the third objection, I reply that, although a perfect knowledge of the cause cannot be had from inadequate effects, yet that from any effect manifest to us it can be shown that a cause does exist, as has been said. And thus from the works of God His existence can be proved, although we cannot in this way know Him perfectly in accordance with His own essence. Article III. Whether God exists. Let us proceed to the third article. It is objected (1) that God does not exist, because if one of two contradictory things is infinite, the other will be totally destroyed; that it is implied in the name God that there is a certain infinite goodness: if then God existed, no evil would be found. But evil is found in the world; therefore it is objected that God does not exist. Again, that what can be accomplished through a less number of principles will not be accomplished through more. It is objected that all things that appear on the earth can be accounted for through other principles, without supposing that God exists, since what is natural can be traced to a natural principle, and what proceeds from a proposition can be traced to the human reason or will. Therefore that there is no necessity to suppose that God exists. But as against this note what is said of the person of God (Exod. III., 14) I am that I am. Conclusion. There must be found in the nature of things one first immovable Being, a primary cause, necessarily existing, not created; existing the most widely, good, even the best possible; the first ruler through the intellect, and the ultimate end of all things, which is God. I answer that it can be proved in five ways that God exists. The first and plainest is the method that proceeds from the point of view of motion. It is certain and in accord with experience, that things on earth undergo change. Now, everything that is moved is moved by something; nothing, indeed, is changed, except it is changed to something which it is in potentiality. Moreover, anything moves in accordance with something actually existing; change itself, is nothing else than to bring forth something from potentiality into actuality. Now, nothing can be brought from potentiality to actual existence except through something actually existing: thus heat in action, as fire, makes fire-wood, which is hot in potentiality, to be hot actually, and through this process, changes itself. The same thing cannot at the same time be actually and potentially the same thing, but only in regard to different things. What is actually hot cannot be at the same time potentially hot, but it is possible for it at the same time to be potentially cold. It is impossible, then, that anything should be both mover and the thing moved, in regard to the same thing and in the same way, or that it should move itself. Everything, therefore, is moved by something else. If, then, that by which it is moved, is also moved, this must be moved by something still different, and this, again, by something else. But this process cannot go on to infinity because there would not be any first mover, nor, because of this fact, anything else in motion, as the succeeding things would not move except because of what is moved by the first mover, just as a stick is not moved except through what is moved from the hand. Therefore it is necessary to go back to some first mover, which is itself moved by nothing---and this all men know as God. The second proof is from the nature of the efficient cause. We find in our experience that there is a chain of causes: nor is it found possible for anything to be the efficient cause of itself, since it would have to exist before itself, which is impossible. Nor in the case of efficient causes can the chain go back indefinitely, because in all chains of efficient causes, the first is the cause of the middle, and these of the last, whether they be one or many. If the cause is removed, the effect is removed. Hence if there is not a first cause, there will not be a last, nor a middle. But if the chain were to go back infinitely, there would be no first cause, and thus no ultimate effect, nor middle causes, which is admittedly false. Hence we must presuppose some first efficient cause---which all call God. The third proof is taken from the natures of the merely possible and necessary. We find that certain things either may or may not exist, since they are found to come into being and be destroyed, and in consequence potentially, either existent or non-existent. But it is impossible for all things that are of this character to exist eternally, because what may not exist, at length will not. If, then, all things were merely possible (mere accidents), eventually nothing among things would exist. If this is true, even now there would be nothing, because what does not exist, does not take its beginning except through something that does exist. If then nothing existed, it would be impossible for anything to begin, and there would now be nothing existing, which is admittedly false. Hence not all things are mere accidents, but there must be one necessarily existing being. Now every necessary thing either has a cause of its necessary existence, or has not. In the case of necessary things that have a cause for their necessary existence, the chain of causes cannot go back infinitely, just as not in the case of efficient causes, as proved. Hence there must be presupposed something necessarily existing through its own nature, not having a cause elsewhere but being itself the cause of the necessary existence of other things---which all call God. The fourth proof arises from the degrees that are found in things. For there is found a greater and a less degree of goodness, truth, nobility, and the like. But more or less are terms spoken of various things as they approach in diverse ways toward something that is the greatest, just as in the case of hotter (more hot) which approaches nearer the greatest heat. There exists therefore something that is the truest, and best, and most noble, and in consequence, the greatest being. For what are the greatest truths are the greatest beings, as is said in the Metaphysics Bk. II. 2. What moreover is the greatest in its way, in another way is the cause of all things of its own kind (or genus); thus fire, which is the greatest heat, is the cause of all heat, as is said in the same book (cf. Plato and Aristotle). Therefore there exists something that is the cause of the existence of all things and of the goodness and of every perfection whatsoever---and this we call God. The fifth proof arises from the ordering of things for we see that some things which lack reason, such as natural bodies, are operated in accordance with a plan. It appears from this that they are operated always or the more frequently in this same way the closer they follow what is the Highest; whence it is clear that they do not arrive at the result by chance but because of a purpose. The things, moreover, that do not have intelligence do not tend toward a result unless directed by some one knowing and intelligent; just as an arrow is sent by an archer. Therefore there is something intelligent by which all natural things are arranged in accordance with a plan---and this we call God. In response to the first objection, then, I reply what Augustine says; that since God is entirely good, He would permit evil to exist in His works only if He were so good and omnipotent that He might bring forth good even from the evil. It therefore pertains to the infinite goodness of God that he permits evil to exist and from this brings forth good. My reply to the second objection is that since nature is ordered in accordance with some defined purpose by the direction of some superior agent, those things that spring from nature must be dependent upon God, just as upon a first cause. Likewise, what springs from a proposition must be traceable to some higher cause which is not the human reason or will, because this is changeable and defective and everything changeable and liable to non-existence is dependent upon some unchangeable first principle that is necessarily self-existent as has been shown.Summa Theologiae: On Sacred DoctrineSince a teacher of catholic truth should instruct not only the advanced but beginners as well - as St. Paul says, "Like babes in Christ I fed you milk and not meat" (I Cor. 3:1) - our intention in this work is to convey the content of the Christian religion in a way fit for the training of beginners. We have seen that novices in this study are greatly hindered by the various writings on the subject. They are hindered partly because of the multiplication of useless questions, articles and arguments in these writings; partly because the order in which essential material is delivered in these writings is determined, not by the nature of doctrine itself, but by the books on which the writings are commenting; and partly because frequent repetition has bred boredom and confusion in the minds of hearers. Eager to avoid these and other pitfalls we shall now attempt to examine the content of sacred doctrine briefly and clearly, so far as the material allows, twisting in God's aid. Question 1: Sacred doctrine, what it is and what it includes.In order to contain our investigation within limits, we must first investigate sacred doctrine itself, asking what it is and how far it extends. Ten questions must be asked. Whether it is necessary Whether it is a science Whether it is one or many Whether it is speculative or practical How it compares with other sciences Whether it is wisdom What is its subject Whether it is argumentative Whether it should use metaphorical or symbolic language Whether the sacred scripture containing this doctrine is to be interpreted according to several senses.Article 1: Whether it is necessary to have another doctrine besides the philosophical disciplines.Let us proceed to the first point. It seems that there is no necessity for any doctrine beyond the philosophical disciplines. Man should not strive after that which is beyond his reason. As Ecclesiasticus says, "Do not be curious about what is above you" (Ecclus. 3:22). The things which can be investigated by reason are sufficiently covered in the philosophical disciplines, however. Thus it seems superfluous to have some doctrine beyond the philosophical disciplines. Furthermore, any doctrine can deal only with that which is; for nothing can be known except that which is true, and that which is true is identical with that which is. Yet everything other signification, through which the things signified by the words signify something else in turn, is called the spiritual sense. It is based on the literal sense and presupposes it. But on the contrary Paul says, "All divinely-inspired scripture is useful for teaching, arguing, correcting and instructing in justice" (II Tim. 3:16). Divinely- inspired scripture does not pertain to philosophical disciplines, however, for they are discovered by human reason. Thus it is useful to have another, divinely- inspired doctrine besides the philosophical disciplines. Response: It must be said that, besides the philosophical disciplines which are investigated by human reason, another doctrine based on revelation was necessary for human well-being. Such is true, in the first place, because man is ordered by God to a certain end which exceeds the grasp of reason. As Isaiah says, "Eye has not seen, God, without you, what you have prepared for those who love you" (lsa. 64:4). The end must be fore known to man, however, since he must order his intentions and actions to that end. Thus it was necessary to human well-being that certain things exceeding human reason be made known to man through divine revelation. Even in the case of those things which can be investigated by human reason, it was necessary for man to be instructed by divine revelation. The truth concerning God, if left to human reason alone, would have appeared only to a few, and only after a long search, and even then mixed with many errors; yet all of man's well-being, which is in God, depends on knowledge of this truth. Thus, in order that this well-being should become known to men more commonly and more securely, it was necessary that they be instructed by divine revelation. Thus it was necessary that, besides the philosophical doctrines which can be investigated by reason, there be a sacred doctrine known through revelation. To the first argument, therefore, it must be said that, although what is above human knowledge should not be investigated by reason, once revealed by God it should be accepted through faith. Thus it is added in the same chapter of Ecclesiasticus, "Many things above human understanding are shown to you" (Ecclus. 3:25). Sacred doctrine consists of these things. To the second argument it must be said that there are diverse sciences because things can be known in various ways. For example, the astronomer and the natural philosopher both demonstrate the same conclusion, such as that the world is round; yet the astronomer does so through mathematics, while the natural philosopher does so in a way that takes matter into account. Thus there is no reason why those things treated by the philosophical disciplines through natural reason should not also be treated by another science insofar as they are known by the light of divine revelation. Thus the theology which pertains to sacred doctrine differs from that theology which is a part of philosophy. Article 5: Whether sacred doctrine is worthier than the other sciences.Let us proceed to the fifth point. It seems that sacred doctrine is not worthier than other sciences. Certitude contributes to the worth of a science; yet other sciences, the premises of which cannot be doubted, seem to be more certain than sacred doctrine, the principles of which (that is, the articles of faith) are open to doubt. Furthermore, it is characteristic of a lower science to draw on a higher one, just as music draws on arithmetic. Sacred doctrine draws from the philosophical disciplines, for Jerome says that "the ancient teachers so filled their books with the doctrines and opinions of philosophers that you do not know which to marvel at first, their worldly erudition or their knowledge of the scriptures." Thus sacred doctrine is inferior to other sciences. But on the contrary, other sciences are called the maidservants of this one. Proverbs says, "She has sent her servants to invite to the tower (Prov. 9:3). Response: It must be said that, since this science is practical in one respect and speculative in another, it transcends all other sciences, both speculative and practical. Among the speculative sciences, one is said to be worthier than another either because of its certainty or because of the worth of its subject. This science exceeds all others on both counts. It does so in regard to certainty because other sciences gain their certainty through the light of natural reason, which can err, whereas this one gains its certainty through the light of divine wisdom, which cannot be deceived. It does so in regard to the dignity of its matter because this science deals principally with things which transcend reason, being above it, whereas other sciences consider only those things which are subject to reason. Among the practical sciences, one is said to be worthier if it is ordered to a higher end. Thus the study of politics is worthier than that of warfare because the good of an army is ordered to the good of the city it serves. The end of this science insofar as it is practical is eternal bliss, to which all other practical sciences are ordered as the ultimate end. Thus it is evident that this science is worthier than all others in every way. To the first argument, therefore, it must be said that there is nothing to prevent that which is more certain in itself from being less certain to us because of the weakness of our intellects, which, as Aristotle says, "are related to the most evident things as the eyes of a bat are to the sun." Thus the doubt some people experience regarding articles of the faith is not due to their uncertainty, but to the weakness of the human mind. Nevertheless, as Aristotle observes, the smallest inkling of the highest matters is more desirable than certain knowledge of the least important matters. To the second argument it must be said that this science can borrow something from the philosophical disciplines, not because it needs to do so, but in order to clarify its content. For it accepts its principles, not from other sciences, but immediately from God through revelation. Thus it does not receive from other sciences as from superiors, but rather uses them as inferiors and servants, just as an architect uses workers or a statesman uses soldiers. Moreover, its use of other sciences is due, not to any defect or insufficiency within itself, but to a defect in our intellect, which are more easily led to the things above reason set forth in this science if they travel by way of those things known through natural reason, which is the source of other sciences. Article 8: Whether one can defend this doctrine through argument.Thus we proceed to the eighth point. It seems that this doctrine cannot be defended through argument, for Ambrose says, "Away with argument where faith is sought!" Faith, however, is primarily sought in this doctrine, for as John says, "These things are written in order that you may believe" (Jn. 20:30). Thus sacred doctrine cannot be defended through argument. But on the contrary, Paul says that a bishop should "embrace the faithful word according to sound doctrine, so that he will be able to exhort in sound doctrine and argue with those who deny it" (Titus 1:9). Response: It must be said that other sciences do not argue to prove their premises, but rather argue from these premises to establish other times within the particular science. Thus this doctrine does not argue to prove its premises, which are the articles of faith, but proceeds from them to establish other things, just as the apostle Paul argues from the resurrection of Christ to prove a general resurrection (I Cor. 15:12). It must be born in mind, then, that within the philosophical sciences the inferior sciences neither prove their principles nor dispute with those who deny them. They leave that task to a superior science. The supreme philosophical science, metaphysics, can dispute against someone who denies its premises only if the adversary will concede something. If he concedes nothing, then debate is impossible, although it may still be possible to show that the adversary's argument is invalid. Thus sacred scripture, having no superior, can debate with one who denies its premises only if the adversary concedes some part of divine revelation. In this way we debate with heretics on the basis of sacred doctrine, using one article which they accept to support another which they deny. If the adversary believes nothing of what is revealed in sacred doctrine, then there is no way left to prove the articles of faith through reason. It is still possible to refute arguments advanced against the faith, however. Since the faith rests upon infallible truth and it is impossible to prove what is contrary to truth, it is clear that arguments against the faith are not really proofs and can be refuted. To the first argument, therefore, it must be said that the arguments of human reason cannot prove the faith, but one can argue from articles of faith to other conclusions, as was said above. To the second, it must be said that argument from authority is very appropriate to this doctrine, since its premises are derived from revelation. Thus one must believe in the authority of those to whom the revelation was given. Nor does this fact derogate from the worth of this doctrine, for an argument from authority may be the weakest kind when it is based on human revelation, but it is the strongest kind when based on divine revelation. Nevertheless, sacred doctrine also uses human reason. It does so not to prove the faith - for that would detract from the merit of faith - but to clarify some of its implications. Therefore, since grace protects nature rather than erasing it, natural reason should serve faith just as the natural inclination of the will obeys love. The apostle Paul speaks of "bringing every understanding into captivity in the service of Christ" (II Cor. 10:5). Thus sacred doctrine appeals to the authority of philosophers in those areas where they were able to arrive at the truth through natural reason, just as Paul employs a passage from Aratus, saying, "As some of your poets have said, we are the offspring of God" (Acts 17:28). Nevertheless, sacred doctrine employs such authorities only insofar as they can provide extraneous arguments, the proofs of which are probable rather than certain. It appeals to the authority of canonical scripture as an authority proper to itself, that of the teachers of the church, but here again the arguments are merely probable. For our faith rests on the revelation made to the apostles and prophets who wrote the canonical books, and not on any revelation (if such there was) made to teachers. Thus Augustine says in his letter to Jerome, "Only to those books of the scripture called 'canonical' have I learned to pay such honor that I believe no author to have erred in writing them. Other writers I read in such a way that, whatever holiness and learning they display, I do not consider what they say to be true simply because they say it." Summa Theologiae: On LawWhether law is something pertaining to reasonLaw is a rule and measure of actions through which one is induced to act or restrained from acting. Lex, "law," is derived from ligare, "to bind," because it binds one to act. The rule and measure of human activity is reason, however, for it is the first principle of human acts. Indeed, it is the function of reason to order to an end, and that is the first principle of all activity according to Aristotle. That which is the first principle in any genus is the rule and measure of that genus, e.g., unity in the genus of number or first movement in the genus of movement. Thus it follows that law is something pertaining to reason. Whether law is always ordered to the common goodLaw pertains to that which is the principle of human acts because it is a rule and measure. Just as reason is the principle of human acts, however, there is something in reason which is principle of all the rest. It is to this that law principally and mostly pertains. The first principle in activity, the sphere of practical reason, is the final end. The final end of human life is happiness or beatitude. Thus law necessarily concerns itself primarily with the order directing us toward beatitude. Furthermore, since each part is ordered to the whole as imperfect to perfect, and since each single man is a part of the perfect community, law necessarily concerns itself particularly with communal happiness. Thus Aristotle, in defining legal matters, mentions both happiness and the political community, saying, "We term 'just' those legal acts which produce and preserve happiness and its components within the political community." For the state is a perfect community, as he says in his Politics. In any genus, that which is called "most of all" is the principal of everything else in that genus, and everything else fits into the genus insofar as it is ordered to that thing. For example, fire, the hottest thing, is cause of heat in mixed bodies, which are said to be hot insofar as they share in fire. Thus, since law is called "most of all" in relation to the common good, no precept concerning action has the nature of law unless it is ordered to the common good. Whether anyone can make lawsLaw principally and properly seeks the common good. Planning for the common good is the task of the whole people or of someone ruling in the person of the whole people. Thus lawmaking is the task of the whole charge of the whole people; for in all other matters direction toward an end is the function of him to whom the end belongs. Whether promulgation is an essential part of law Law is imposed on others as a rule and measure. A rule and measure is imposed by being applied to those who are ruled and measured. Thus in order for a law to have binding power - and this is an essential part of law - it must be applied to those who ought to be ruled by it. Such application comes about when the law is made known to those people through promulgation. Thus such promulgation is necessary if a law is to have binding force. Thus from the four preceding articles we arrive at a definition of law: Law is nothing other than a certain ordinance of reason for the common good, promulgated by him who has care of the community. Whether there is an eternal lawA law is nothing more than a dictate of the practical reason emanating from a ruler who governs some perfect community. Assuming that the world is ruled by divine providence, however, it is clear that the whole community of the universe is governed by divine reason. Thus the very idea of the governance of all things by God, the ruler of the universe, conforms to the definition of a law. And since, as we read in Proverbs 8:23, the divine reason's conception of things is eternal and not subject to time, a law of this sort can be called eternal. Whether there is a natural law in usSince law is a rule or measure, it can be in something in two ways: As that which regulates and measures, or as that which is regulated and measured, for insofar as something participates in a rule or measure it is itself regulated and measured. Since everything subjected to divine providence is regulated and measured by eternal law, it is clear that everything participates in the eternal law in some way. That is, everything inclines to its own proper acts and ends because such an inclination is impressed on it through eternal law. The rational creature is subject to divine providence in a more excellent way than other beings, however, for he is a participant in providence, providing both for himself and for others. Thus he is a participant in that eternal reason through which he has a natural inclination to his proper act and end, and this participation of the rational creature in eternal law is called "natural law." Thus the psalmist says, "Offer a sacrifice of justice" (Ps. 4:6) and then, as if someone were asking him what the works of justice are, he adds, "Many say, 'Who shows us good things?'" He replies, "The light of your countenance is impressed upon us, Lord," thus implying that the light of natural reason, by which we discern what is good and bad (which is the function of natural law), is nothing else than an impression of the divine light upon us. Thus it is clear that natural law is nothing other than the rational creature's participation in the eternal law. Whether there is a human lawLaw is a certain dictate of practical reason. The process is the same in the case of practical and speculative reason. Each proceeds from certain premises to certain conclusions. Accordingly it must be said that, just as in speculative reason we draw from naturally known, in demonstrable principles the conclusions of various sciences, and these conclusions are not imparted to us by nature but discovered by the work of reason, so it is that human reason starts from the precepts of natural law as from certain common and in demonstrable premises, proceeding from them to more particular determinations of certain matters. These particular determinations devised by human reason are called "human laws," provided that all the other conditions included in the definition of "law" are observed. Thus Tully says that "justice took its start from nature, then certain things became customary because of their usefulness. Later the things which started in nature and were approved by custom were sanctioned by fear and reverence for the law." Whether it was necessary that there should be a divine lawIt was necessary for the direction of human life that, beyond natural and human law, there should be a divine law. There are four reasons for this need. First, it is through law that man is directed to the acts which are proper to him in view of his ultimate end. If man were ordered only to an end which did not exceed his natural faculties, it would not be necessary for him to have any rational direction beyond natural law and that human law derived from it. Since, however, man is ordered to the end of eternal beatitude, which exceeds natural human faculties, it was necessary that he be directed to this end by divinely-given law in addition to natural and human law. Second, due to the uncertainty of human judgment, particularly regarding contingent and particular things, there tend to be differing judgments regarding human acts, from which proceed diverse and contrary laws. Therefore, in order for man to be secure in the knowledge of what should be done and what avoided, it was necessary that his acts be directed by a divinely-given law which cannot err. Third, man can make laws in those areas where he is competent to judge. His judgment does not extend to interior acts which lie hidden, however, but only to exterior acts which are apparent. Nevertheless, perfect virtue involves righteousness in both. Thus human law was unable to curb and direct internal acts sufficiently, and it was necessary that divine law supervene in this task. Fourth, as Augustine says, human law cannot punish or prohibit all things that are evil, for in the process of removing evil it would also eliminate much that is good and impede the advancement of the common good, thus hurting society. Thus, in order to leave no evil unprohibited and unpunished, a divine law, through which all sins are punished, had to intervene. These four causes are touched upon in the Psalm, where it is said (Ps. 18:8), "The law of the Lord is unspotted" (that is, permitting no foulness of sin), "converting souls" (because it directs not only exterior but also interior acts), "the testimony of the Lord is sure" (due to certainty of truth and rectitude), "giving wisdom to little ones" (insofar as it orders man to a supernatural and divine end). A FINAL THOUGHT ON BEING PHILOSOPHERS“The unexamined life is not worth living,” a Greek philosopher named Socrates confidently declared. Aristotle agreed, and enlarged the scope of inquiry to the entire world with an exclamation: “Philosophy begins in wonder!”But where does it end?Ours is a skeptical culture. For good reasons and with honorable intentions, we are constantly urged:Take nothing for granted.Trust no one. Doubt every fact.Scrutinize every motive.Therefore, we have been conditioned to judge a person to be highly educated who asks many questions. (After all, Socrates did.) Furthermore, it seems so profound when you can end every paragraph with a query. Finally, people think you are wise beyond your years when your important conversations always end with a sigh and a disclaimer: “But who can really know for sure?”However, if philosophy succeeds at nothing but raising unanswerable questions, it is an abject failure, and an irresponsible waste of time. If you are leaving this class thinking “I will never understand . . . after all, who really does?” then we have failed.For the study of philosophy to be worthwhile, for it to have any “cash value,” it must conclude some things. Indeed, philosophers throughout history have been bold enough to announce their conclusions about the nature of reality, rationality, knowledge, morality, beauty, justice, and the ultimate. What gave them the audacity to actually believe they had discovered truth? I believe they each held a faith in the human mind and spirit: answers could be discerned. I believe they each also held a belief in the world: the universe is a place of order and regularity; its sameness and the consistency of its operating overwhelm its anomalies. Their unspoken creed seemed to be, “If I probe deeply enough, if I reflect long enough, I will hit, or maybe stumble upon, the answers.” For most of the time humans have been sniffing around for the scent of knowledge, they have NOT felt helpless and hopeless. Encountering the perplexity of many odors, the chaotic variety of tracks, and the confusing tangle of possible trails, they nevertheless have not abandoned the search. Because of their courage and their dogged perseverance, they enriched the world in which they lived with what they found. Their thoughts stimulated the generations of inquirers that followed them. Philosophers can do the same today.Philosophy can point the inquirer away from bad logic, mere appearances, unjustified opinions, uncritiqued moral assumptions, ignorance about injustices, apathy concerning beauty, and a shrugging off of the ultimate meanings. Philosophy can point the questioner towards arguments that work, reality that lives, knowledge that illuminates, goodness that ennobles, peace that endures, harmony that blesses, and purpose that energizes. Philosophy, however, never lays down its weapons against the unknown, never shrinks away from the battle. The stakes are too high, and the cost of failure is too dear. Believing we have found truth, could we be mistaken? Yes. Must we be mistaken? The answer to this must be a resounding NO, or there is no point in asking.A wise man once promised, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” Later, one of his captors rhetorically whined, “What is truth?” His faith that answers exist, waiting to be discovered, made the first a hero by whose arrival on Earth many literally mark time. Disbelief that there is even a point to it at all made the second a mere footnote in history, known to us today only because for a brief moment he stood in the shadow of the first, then turned away. Philosophy asks, “Which one will you be?” This is not a rhetorical question. ................
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