Basic Philosophical Questions



Lecture 1: What is Philosophy?

(1) What is philosophy?

ETYMOLOGY:

Philosophy, literally, means The Love of Wisdom:

“philein” [philos] is to love, and “sophia” is wisdom.

What are some other words that look like “philos” in English that mean love or have something to do with love?

- Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love

- bibliophile, lover of books

There are four variations of love in ancient Greek:

Eros: love, desire, often designates “sexual love”

What are some other words that look like “eros” in English that mean love or have something to do with this particular type of love?

Phileo: [philos, philein] love, familial love, “to have affection for”

Agapao: [agape] love, often designates “Christian” love, “have regard for, be contented with”

Stergo: love, “used especially of the love of parents and children or a ruler and his subjects”

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(2) Wisdom is different from knowledge:

Knowledge is typically intentional: Knowledge is knowledge of something.

Wisdom: is knowing what you do not know (Socrates, Apology); knowing the limits of your knowledge wherein this “knowing” is more like insight than fact.

Philosophy, as wisdom, is like learning to know where and how to begin and what we should strive for. We need to know what the questions are, what it is that we do not know, how to think about these questions, and what is the grander picture we are looking at the details of?

Theoretical physics and quantum mechanics think so far beyond the box that they, in a sense, begin by investigating not how the world simply is, but how it might be, what it might otherwise be like, what if our basic understanding of the basic structures of reality are wrong, and where to proceed from there, what instruments to develop to test these theories, etc.

The love of wisdom does not limit the thinker to knowing a set of skills—how to fix a bike, how to sing a song—rather it is a love of the totality of what is possible to know: Plato expressed this by saying that: “Philosophy begins in wonder.”

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(3) Originally, philosophy included the study of (non-exhaustively): Logic, physics, medicine, all natural sciences (biology, entomology, astronomy, etc.), ethics, politics, poetics, rhetoric, art, religion…

Philosophy was the science of thinking and was everything that the thinking was about. Everything engaged in thought is philosophy.

Now… What is the discipline of philosophy today?

The discipline, however, has veered from its roots. Imagine the beginnings of philosophy as a great mirror that reflected every aspect of life… then imagine this mirror being shattered. Philosophy, as it is studied today, is like this shattered mirror: something made up of many, many divisions. Science is no longer considered philosophy, politics and psychology have their own departments, art is done all by itself… And… What the philosophy departments themselves study is dramatically divided.

As a discipline, philosophy has become like a shattered mirror; what was before a cohesive tool that could be used to see, is now a loose pile of splinters.

Can anyone think of some reason why philosophy became shattered in this way, into so many different areas?

A main reason for this splintering was that everyone began to specialize in separate areas. While specialization has many benefits, its consequence is that we now cannot see the big picture. We have forgotten that philosophy is the love of wisdom, the pursuit of knowledge: not just one piece of wisdom or one type of knowledge.

If knowledge grants us, in a sense, knowledge of “how” to do something, what negative consequences might there be when “philosophy,” the love of wisdom, rather than just the accumulation of knowledge, is removed from our studies?

- “why” we should do it

- how does this knowledge effect the larger picture

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(4) Let me tell you about a few of these divisions to give you a better idea of what the discipline of philosophy looks like today:

The GREEKS studied all of thought, but classified it in order to better understand it; thus, they give us divisions like:

Now, before I start listing the main areas of ancient Greek philosophy, many of which are still studied in philosophy to this day, what experience do you all have with philosophy? Can you guess what some areas of philosophy might be?

Physics: “Physics” is from the Greek word physika, which means “the things of nature.”

Metaphysics: was Aristotle’s manuscript that was filed meta, above, his work Physics and studied the nature of existence and reality.

Ontology:

From the Greek verb, “to be” (on ta) Is the study of being. It asks about fundamental features and properties of human existence.

Epistemology:

Episteme is the Greek word for “knowledge.” It is the branch of philosophy that asks what is knowledge: what is its nature, what is its source, its limits?

Ethics:

Asks questions about how we ought to behave in the world; asks of moral judgments.

Aesthetics:

Aesthetics is from aisthesthai, the Greek verb “to perceive.” It is the branch of philosophy that explores the nature of art and beauty. This includes questions of taste, our value judgments about art and the beautiful, and the faculties by which we make these judgments.

Logic:

The study of correct reasoning, based upon premises, conclusions and the arguments that lead from the former to the latter.

(5) There is also the way of dividing philosophy into four historical periods:

The history of philosophy is roughly divided into four historical periods: the ancient, medieval, modern, and contemporary periods. Within each period, together stretching over approximately 2,500 years, many divisions can be drawn, although we will try to keep this to the minimalist of accounts.

Ancient Philosophy:

Ideally, this includes Greek, Roman, and Asian thinkers up until the first couple hundred years of the common era, but this is rare; most “ancient” philosophy is composed of the Greek:

Pre-Socratic Philosophers: who asked what is everything made out of (seeking the absolute most basic substance that explains reality), what can we know (limits of knowledge) and what can we doubt.

Socrates / Plato and Aristotle:

Foundations of western civilization; there is no aspect of human thought not indebted, in some way, to Plato and Aristotle; they gave us a framework by which to think (and left us thought on all of the above divisions).

Medieval Philosophy:

Medieval philosophy (ca. 5th-15th c.) was half influenced by Plato and Platonists and half by Aristotle and Aristotelians. These two schools, while in competition, gave birth to new ideas that reconciled (and sometimes distorted) Platonic and Aristotelian arguments. The main topic of medieval philosophy was working out the theory of religious thought; however, in this project it broached fascinating questions about being, ethics, human nature, time, language, and the question of evil, etc..

Modern Philosophy:

The Renaissance (ca. 14th-16th c.) reawakens philosophical thought in a new vein. Early Modern Philosophy breaks from Medieval thought in breaking from the authority of tradition and desires to establish a solid foundation upon which to ground thought. This new foundation cast away much of the Medieval reliance on balancing questioning and authority.

One of the greatest main themes in modern work is the dichotomy of experience and reason. Science was rejected from the Church and embraced by philosophy.

Later Modern philosophy stretches from the 17th to 19th c., sparked by the industrial revolutions and center, predominately, on two German philosophers, Kant and Hegel (to be discussed more later). In addition to these questions about knowledge, the Modern period reveals a deep concern with questions of morality, politics, aesthetics, language, logic, and so forth.

Contemporary philosophy:

Really begins with the 19th c. Analytic and Continental divide: between logical positivism and phenomenology or between scientific fact and subjective experience.

Phenomenology: school of philosophy that studies the way phenomena appear to us and how we describe (know) such—method of epoché (bracketing bias to see the essence).

Existentialism: born out of phenomenology; an intense return to the study of the individual in the world.

The main contemporary division is between Continental and Analytical Thought:

Continental Philosophy:

European 19th-20th c. thought. Influenced by the Greek’s holistic conception of philosophy and inclusive of the history of philosophy, it rejected the absolute reliance on modern science and logic to answer philosophical questions. Includes phenomenology, existentialism, hermeneutics, structuralism, postmodernism [which, arguably, includes deconstruction, post-structuralism, etc.], and the history of philosophy.

Analytical Philosophy:

British-American 19th-20th c. thought. It was a break away from idealism and strongly utilized linguistics and logic to try and seek the concrete and factual. Includes formal logic, positivism, linguistic analysis, and sometimes includes philosophy of science.

There is a school of “American philosophy” that often tries to bridge these two studies and is composed of varying comparative studies, pragmatism, and applied philosophy (environmental ethics, business ethics, medical ethics, etc.).

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(6) Now… let us discuss the Pre-Socratics and give us some lead-up to our readings in Plato:

Ancient

Pre-Socratic Philosophers

The philosophers, mainly Greek, who lived before and during the time of Socrates (470-399 BCE). Their surviving writings are in fragments only, and some of them only through the re-telling by later thinkers. They are truly the fathers of Western Philosophy as they began to re-ask questions that their civilizations had answered primarily through myths. We can roughly divide the Pre-Socratics by those who sought to know and those who doubted that that was possible.

WHAT IS EVERYTHING MADE OUT OF?

The earliest Pre-Socratic philosopher we know of is Thales (610-547 BCE; all dates are approximate) who tried to deduce this “basic stuff” that all nature is composed of. Thales considered this “basic stuff” to be water—i.e., a fluid, flexible substance that could take on many forms. Many of the other Pre-Socratics, interested in this same search for the most primary matter, turned to one of the four elements of earth, air, water, and fire. One of his students, Anaximander (611-547 BCE), began to revolutionize this designation of the primary matter because he thought that the basic substance that made up everything else must be more elemental, i.e. must be ageless, boundless, and indeterminate.

Another approach was taken by Pythagoras (580-500 BCE) and his students, the Pythagoreans {--anyone who has studied mathematics ought to recognize this name, as he is considered to be the father of the Pythagorean theorem --} Pythagoras proposed that the basic nature of everything was numbers i.e. this is a point, two points makes a line, three points determine a surface, and surfaces make a solid, and solids make up bodies, everything physical in this world is a body, thus, all is numbers.

As you can start to see, by asking what is everything made out of, we are also asking about Being and about the nature of all things. For example, Heraclitus (535-475 BCE) believed that the basic substance of the world was fire, but why this was important was because it means that he was trying to account for the basic nature of everything as being change or motion—fire as something that is perpetually changing and that changes other things. This perpetual change led him to say that there is no reality except for the reality of change, i.e., permanence is an illusion (For example, he said that one cannot step into the same river twice). Change, however, is not random, but is fixed in order by logos (the word). Logos creates a system where everything is in harmony with its opposite.

Then we have a series of later Pre-Socratics who established greater methodological conclusions that can be seen as the basis of modern science, the two most famous of which are:

Anaxagoras (500-428 BCE) investigated the basic substance and the dichotomy of appearance and reality, and concluded that all changes in an object of experience are changes in the arrangements of underlying particles. He also believed these particles were infinitely divisible. Each substance had its own corresponding kind of particle (think of DNA), and each substance has every other kind of particle in it as well. What distinguishes X from Y is the kind of particle unique to each. (He was pre-cursor to the Atomists Leucippus and Democritus).

Anaxagoras laid the foundation for Democritus (460-370 BCE), a brilliant mathematician who worked out the familiar to our modern ears theory of atomism—essentially, that all things are composed of atoms. Atoms were tiny, imperceptible, indestructible, eternal, and uncreated particles composed of exactly the same matter but different in size, shape, and weight. Atoms are numerous and constantly in motion. They combine and separate, which causes generation, decay, decomposition, erosion, and burning.

DOUBTING:

In contradistinction to these theories of basic substances, methodological developments, questions of mind and knowledge, we also have the other side of the debate—those who question what it is that we can know.

The two main divisions of these doubters were the Skeptics and the Sophists. Both divisions can be broadly defined and classified, even equated as being the same thing, but essentially, the Skeptics doubted the possibility of certain knowledge, or truth, and the Sophists were rhetoricians, the earliest professors, who despised speculation for its uncertainty, yet used it for arguing, debating, and “proving” what was thought to be un-provable. Many of these un-provable things were standards of behavior, and therefore, in a sense, they created moral philosophy. They are accused of arguing for the sake of arguing about anything, and were said to be able to devise an argument, no matter how ridiculous, about anything.

Xenophanes (560-478 BCE) is our earliest know skeptic. His skepticism is about ever being able to know the truth; he said that even if truth was stated it could not be known. Essentially, he doubted that knowledge at all was possible. And is this not a question that we still ask today? Science may make us think we know true truth, but looking at the history of science we can find so many examples of when “true truths” turned out to be wrong—is the earth flat, does the sun revolve around the earth, etc. A very similar statement comes from the latter Sophist Gorgias (485-380 BCE), who said that “There is no reality, and if there were, we could not know of it, and even if we could, we could not communicate our knowledge.” This can be said even another way, as was by Protagoras (490-421 BCE), who famously said that “man is the measure of all things.” This means that there is no absolute knowledge. One’s person’s views about the world are just as valid as the next person’s views.

This doubting is taken to a very interesting level by Zeno of Elea (489-430 BCE), a famous student of Parmenides, who revealed both logic and absurdity by saying that an arrow traveling from the bow to the target can never get there because in order to get there it must travel half way, but to travel half way it must travel a quarter way, etc. You can never reach your destination because there are infinite steps there. A sliver of a step requires a sliver of time to transgress, which means each sliver of a step requires a sliver of time, which means that you need infinite time to cover an infinite distance, thus motion is impossible. His other argument against movement is that when a thing, let’s say a dog, moves from here to there, at every moment of her travel she occupies a space equal to her length. But, for a thing to occupy a space of its length means it is at rest. Thus at each moment the dog is at rest. If she is at rest at each moment, there is no movement.

SOCRATES & PLATO:

Socrates influenced more of Western Civilization than it is easy to comprehend; each historical period we look at today, and the books we read this semester will reveal his influence. He was called a gadfly and torpedo fish; he was a libidinous man who could drink without becoming drunk; he was reputedly ugly, yet loved by nearly all the young men of Athens. He wrote nothing down, but we know of his exploits and thoughts through Plato’s dialogues [what is the role of pseudonymity in philosophy?]. Socrates had an amazing mind because he knew how to ask questions. He engaged people in conversations and worked through philosophical questions by elenctic dialogue, which is a dialectical method of argument in which: a topic would be given (by any person or event); you propose a thesis about that topic; Socrates would ask a question clarifying your thesis; this would reveal a mistake in your thesis and you would refine it; and the questions would continue until you disprove that theory and move to an alternative and deal with the new thesis the same way. Typically, this questioning leads not to an answer, but to aporia, a state of perplexity, which is not failure, but, perhaps, the only state from which true knowledge may be born. The scientific method. But, in general, it is still accurate to say that Socrates used questions to get to the bottom line. This is a search for proper definitions. The famous Greek Oracle at Delphi pronounced Socrates the wisest person. Socrates said this must mean that he was the person who knew (admitted) his own ignorance.

Plato was Socrates’ student and is considered to be the greatest mind in Western history. Plato has had an amazing impact on our entire human thought from formulating the basis for monotheism, socio-political and educational organization. He started the first multi-subject school, called the Academy, in 387 BCE and it lasted nine centuries. He wrote on topics from art to law to sex to governing. He came up with theories about everything from existence to morality to the nature of thinking. Most of his writings are in dialogue, like in plays, and star Socrates. A number of the dialogues are expounding the beliefs of Socrates, where others are (presumably) solely Plato’s thoughts.

Perhaps Plato’s most famous contribution is his Theory of Forms, formulated in various works, but most notably in his renowned dialogue the Republic. According to this theory, what we encounter in the world through sensory experience is not the truly real, what is truly real is the eternal and unchanging Forms, also called Ideas, which can only be grasped intellectually. That is, all that is is a representation of the eternal (if this sounds theological, that is correct; this premise grounds all emanation theories of Judeo-Christian creation). The best way to understand this is to think about circles. Imagine the perfect circle. This circle does not exist in the natural world; instead there are round things in the world, but no perfect circle. The perfect circle is the Form “Circle.” When we measure this or that round thing, we compare its roundness to the perfect one, the Form. [Or, all rulers are imitations of a master ruler, kept in a museum somewhere, and all estimations are imitations of the imitations, etc.] Perfection, therefore, is what is ideal; all of the ideals are Forms. The Good and Beauty are also Forms; they are something that you cannot point to in the world (you would only point to an instance of each), but they exist as some sort of ideal measure against which we compare things. As Plato puts it, things “participate” in the in the Forms, so a beautiful thing participates in the Idea of Beauty.

According to Plato, knowledge is true because it is knowledge of what is. It is not enough to know the truth; you must strive to become the truth. Here epistemology becomes ontology: to know is to be. Ignorance is almost universal, but what allows us to come out of the cave of ignorance and see the light of knowledge is the Forms. Everyone, in his/her soul has the Forms, which can be remembered—something like the recollection of innate knowledge. Remembering these Forms is what constitutes the activity and product of true knowledge. To remember the Forms is to know the absolute truth and to become just and wise.

In two of his dialogues that we will read, the Phaedrus and the Symposium, Plato relates this coming out of ignorance and striving for wisdom to the pursuit of love. Love is that by which we know and realize the truth. Love is a process of seeking higher stages of being.

ARISTOTLE:

Aristotle was Plato’s most distinguished pupil, and spent most of his writings rebelling against his teacher. He was incredibly influenced by Plato, but also disagreed with him on many details. Christianity, first heavily influenced by Plato, became even more heavily dependent on Aristotle, who had been Alexander the Great’s tutor. Aristotle was a scientist in the truest terms; he was methodical and sought comprehensive knowledge, which means that he wrote about many different things, from poetry to ethics, the soul to biology, logic to being. We owe our classification of plants and animals (species, genus, etc.) to Aristotle as well as most Judeo-Christian thought owes its cosmology and conception of the soul’s relation to the body to Aristotle. We won’t read any Aristotle this semester, although many of his theories will surface in the lectures, especially when we read Pseudo-Dionysius and Descartes.

Aristotle is probably most famous for his work the Metaphysics. He is, in fact, responsible for the name “metaphysics;” what we think of today as meaning the study of reality and being originally meant that it was his book that was shelved after the Physics, which examines nature, or natural beings, as all that is in motion. Metaphysics, on the other hand, examines being; he opens this work with the famous line “all men by nature desire to know.” The goal of the Metaphysics is comprehensive (not certain) knowledge about what it is to be. For Aristotle, to be is to be something. And things are composed of form and matter (i.e. a statue is carved (form) marble (matter)). Both form and matter are crucial to a thing’s existence, but it is the form that is the essential nature of the thing because it is that which differentiates the thing from something else composed of the same matter.

Existence (if it is), though, is only a first judgment to be made. After we have decided something exists, we must determine its essence (that it is, ousia) in two main steps: the first asks what is a thing in itself, what is it uniquely; and secondly, what is it that makes it like all these other things. After these two judgments, we then must determine “on account of what it is,” which means to find its cause, and “what it is,” which means to determine its being.

As you can tell from even this brief description, the Metaphysics is a very methodical work; it is extremely difficult, sometimes dry and repetitive, but also a work of extreme importance and influence on later philosophy.

Plato’s Apology:

Historical Background to the Apology:

Pre-500 bce Tyrant Rule

500-490 bce Battle the Persians

490 bce Build Navy

479 bce Battle and Defeat Persians

479-431 Golden Age of Athens –Empire-

431 bce Peloponnesian War (Sparta vs. Athens)

420 bce Peace of Nicias (50 yr. Peace Accord)

415 bce Alcibiades led attack on Sicily

404 bce Sparta and Persians attack Athens

Athens defeated. Spartan-loyal

Oligarchy installed, “the Thirty”

Impose a reign of terror

403 bce Exiled democrats led offensive and defeated

“the Thirty;” democracy Restored

399 bce Socrates’ Trial

Building the Empire: After 500 BCE, after Tyrant rule, various battles against the Persians led to the development of the Greek empire and Athens’ Golden Age. Greek colonies near Turkey came under threat from Persia, the Athenians offered support to the colonies, thus unleashing a Persian invasion of the Greek mainland. In 490 the Athenians won a great land battle at Marathon, 26 miles from Athens, rejecting the Persian assault. This battle initiated the Greek’s building of a navy, which was soon to become their central power, defeating the Persians for a second time in 479. After the second Persian assault, Athens formed a defense league that eventually became its empire. Athens had popular government at home, but ruled over those overseas, thus, from this empire it became rich, instigating massive development, architectural wonders like the Acropolis, and began to attract many intellectuals.

Peloponnesian War: 431 B.C.E., between Sparta and Athens; the Spartans were powerful on land and the Athenians, with their large Navy, by sea, thus creating a long war where both sides were worn, but no major advances or victories happened by either side. After about ten years of fighting, a 50 year peace accord was signed, the Peace of Nicias (named after the Athenian general). Nicias, however, had fierce rivalry in the Assembly, notably by Socrates’ student, Alcibiades. Alcibiades, against Nicias, convinced the people to attack the island of Sicily in 415 B.C.E. This attack was a disaster, leaving Athens weak, which was the opportunity that the Spartans had been waiting for; they attacked with the aid of the Persians (out of resentment for an attack by Athens in the early 5th c. B.C.E.). In 404 B.C.E., almost thirty years after the war began, Athens saw its defeat by Sparta.

Spartan Control: The Spartan’s now had unlimited yet indirect control over the Greek city-states; instead of ruling directly by implanting their own appointee, the Spartan’s pressured the Athenian Assembly to vote to choose thirty men as a Spartan-loyal oligarchic government, thus known as “the Thirty.” The Thirty effectively eliminated all political opposition with the support of the Spartan troops bringing on a fierce reign of terror. Their reign caused many Athenians to flee Athens as exiles, including the former generals of the prior democracy, notably including Anytus and Thrasbulus (the former being one of the men who indicted Socrates).

In 403 the exiled democratic Athenians led an offensive on Athens, eventually defeating the Thirty. Democracy was restored and an amnesty was decreed asking for the exile of those friendly to the Thirty and disallowing any criminal cases concerning matters before the restoration of the democracy.

{Why was Socrates on trial?} Socrates had remained in Athens during the Thirty’s rule, yet did not become involved with their crimes (although 5,000 Athenians had fled, and 1,500 of those who stayed were killed). In fact, he invited his own downfall by refusing to carry out a mission he had been given by the Thirty to arrest a man; had the Thirty not fallen soon after his refusal, he would likely have been killed. Nonetheless, there was a lot of hostility towards him; previously he had been seen as a bit of an eccentric, but not harmful nor dangerous. With the restoration of democracy, however, a great deal of blame, suspicion, and anger was directed at him; notably, he was seen as somehow responsible for his students’ (Alcibiades,[1] Critias,[2] Charmides,[3] etc.) behavior in weakening Athens, supporting the Thirty, etc. Also, there were prolific writers (notably the politically conservative comedic writer Aristophanes[4]), who were writing hyperbolic or spoof accounts of the dangers of Socrates.

Assembly: decision-making body of Athens’ politics, all males over 18 could attend and vote.

Council: prepared the agenda for the Assembly, composed of 500 males over 30 years elected by lot for roughly one year term (approx. 10-11 months).

Jury: 501 jurors (drawn by lot out of a pool).

Note: The initial and restored democracies were direct, not representative democracies like the US (although there may have been a few elected positions, based on merit, like the war generals, who did hold great power), hence the continual rotation of decision makers and their large numbers.

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[1] Alcibiades, student of Socrates, was a great military leader known for his beauty, passion, ambition, and desire for superiority; these traits may be the direct cause for his tumultuous career in politics. The Athenians variously loved him and hated him; in times of praise, he was very powerful and fought strongly for Athens abroad, in times of critique, like when he was accused (possibly framed) of defacing the statues of Hermes, he fled the country instead of answering to the charges. In anger for being accused, he went to Sparta and helped the Spartans attack and defeat Athens, without his help, Sparta likely would not have been victorious. Alcibiades is portrayed in Plato’s Symposium as being madly infatuated with Socrates, recounting his boyhood attempts to seduce Socrates, and exhibiting his reverence or admiration for his bravery during war times.

[2] Critias, a student of Socrates and second-cousin to Plato, is best known for his leading role in the Thirty although he was also a prolific writer of everything from plays to philosophical works to poetry. He was politically active with his fellow student Alcibiades, likely seeking exile with him around 406 B.C.E., although returned the same year from exile to join the oligarchic factions and essentially lead the Thirty, notably their execution legions, during this time he turned on his old friend Alcibiades and issued a declaration for his assassination in 403. Critias was killed in bloody fighting with the pro-democratic exiles who stormed Athens; with his death the other members of the Thirty were leaderless and confused, and eventually toppled.

[3] Charmides was also a student of Socrates and a cousin of Plato’s. He was the leader of the ‘Ten’ who held control of the Piraeus (near the harbor, right outside of Athens) for the Spartans during the tyrannical rule of the Thirty. Also, as reported in the Platonic dialogue that bears his name, was said to have surpasses all of the other boys in beauty and quite impressed Socrates with his physical, although not necessarily psychical, beauty.

[4] Despite his vicious portrayal of Socrates in the Clouds, Aristophanes figures as a main character in Plato’s Symposium, engaged in friendly, almost flirtatious, conversation with Socrates (ie. end discussion on comedy/tragedy).

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