The Philosophical paradigm of Contemporary Philosopy: man in different, even contrary, interpretations is coming to the first place
The19th century forms and by means of different philosophical methods develops the conception of man as a unique wight (Existentialism, Philosophy of life, Intuitionalism) or as a social-historic wight (Positivism, Marxism).
The 20th century develops the conception of man as a biological wight (Freudism, Social-Darwinism) or as a socio-cultural wight (Neo-Kantianism, Cultural Anthropology, Philosophical Hermeneutic). The deficit of synthetic man’s essence conceptions is evident. It would not contradistinguish but combine the stated essence lines of integral man as their carrier.
The psychological paradigm: in the contemporary form it merges with philosophical paradigm, seeking for solving the essential basis of different states of soul-spiritual man’s activity, because it is already philosophically-engaged in a considerable degree. While exposing the depth of personality bases one can already speak about psychological philosophy or philosophical psychology. Problems of intuition, creation, act, conduct, activity, personality can not be solved without philosophical and methodological bases.
The Contemporary philosophy and psychology researches a significant unity of an object, problems and methodology of its learning, the base of such unity is man in all inhexhaustible forms of his vital functions, and the purport of his being is the main form of their realization.
We have already analyzed the problem of the purport of man’s being and we have made the conclussion that it is freedom-creativity.
The methodological principle of the course as a whole and of the current topic in particular can be illustrated by G.W.F.Hegel’s words, that the world history is progress in realization of freedom: man is born free, he is free himself and the essence of reasonableness just in that to be free.
LECTURE 3.
THE EASTERN PHILOSOPHY.
1. The Indian tradition
2. The Chinese tradition
3. The Near East philosophical thought.
The most common way of treating the history of Indian thought is to begin with Vedic literature, mainly Rig Veda, the ancient hymns, may go back to 1000 BCE, often seen as very early deliverance of the Aryan culture which came into India in the period from about 1500 onwards. It is of course the Vedas that served as the beginning of the holy tradition of the Brahmis, who in becoming the dominant priesthood of a whole civilization have laid their stamp upon the Hindu world. Vedic literature included 4 parts: Vedas - ancient hymns in verse that were used in the course of rituals. Brahmans was the explanation of sacrificial acts and techniques. Aranjaks were special books for anchorites, who preferred life of a hermit avoiding activity and gaining knowledge. Upanishads was the last part of Vedas, which included philosophical ideas. There was a voyage inwards into the soul as well as outwards into the Universe. It coincided with the revelation of a new doctrine - that is of reincarnation, the possibility of death and redeath over long cycles.
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The philosophical traditions of India had their beginnings in reflection on the Vedas and especially in attempts to interpret the Upanishads. A wide variety of schools emerged including some that specifically rejected the authority of the Vedas. Thus the Indian philosophy is commonly divided into two traditions: the orthodox schools of Hinduism that accepted Vedic authority, and the nonorthodox schools that did not accept that authority. Within the first category there were six major schools: Samkhya, Yoga, Vaisheshika, Nyaya, Mimamsa, and Vedanta. The second category consisted of Charvaka, Jainism, and Buddhism. Samkhya, one of the oldest and most influential of the schools, is traditionally held to have been founded by Kapila, who may have lived as early as the 7th century BC and to whom the Samkhya-sutra (Principles of Samkhya) is attributed. Samkhya metaphysics was based on the distinction between prakriti and purusha, which may be rendered as the objective, or nature, and the subjective, or self. All objects in the world were essentially constituted by the combination of atoms, which emerged from the eternal and uncaused prakriti.
Even the individual ego, or mind, was a result of the constant atomic flux of prakrili. Purusha, on the other hand, was not to be identified with the ego, or mind. It was uncaused, eternal, and unchanging and underlied the perceived ego. There was a plurality of such selves, which were the loci of consciousness and in combination with which prakriti evolved. The bondage to suffering that was the common starting point of all Indian philosophical thought arose from the involvement of purusha with prakriti. Release came when ignorance was overcome; that the attachment of purusha to the changing empirical world which was illusory became apparent.
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The means by which this ignorance was overcome were elaborated by the Yoga school. While accepting much of the Samkhya position Yoga, as developed by Patanjali (2d century BC), believed in a supreme self or purusha, identified with the god of Isvara. The method of Yoga was to bring the self to understanding by meditation designed to curb the constant changes brought on by involvement in the perceived world. The knowledge acquired through meditation was an intuitive, irrational, and direct cognition of the nature of things. This intuition was the cessation of individuality and the identity of the self with the eternal purusha. Some forms of Yoga were recognized as practical methods of enlightenment by most of the other Indian schools.
The Vaisheshika systemis thought to have been developed by Kanada in the 3d century BC. The essential aspect of Vaisheshika was a complex pluralistic metaphysics that recognized nine substances: earth, water, fire, air, ether, space, time, self, and mind. The first four material substances were atomic and gave rise to material composite objects. Mind was also atomic but did not give rise to composite objects. Vaisheshika tended to be theistic and saw God as guiding the world in accordance with the law of Karma. Human action perpetuated the workings of karma, and thus liberation was achieved through the cessation of actions, and achievement of a state beyond pleasure, pain, and experience in general.
Nyaya was closely associated with Vaisheshika, and they were often grouped together. The emphasis in Nyaya was stressed on methods of argument, and particularly on the elaboration of logical theory, which was used to justify Vaisheshika metaphysics. Nyaya distinguished various forms and origins of knowledge, as originally put forward by the founder of the school Gautama (the 2-nd century BC). In the course of time Nyaya developed a variety of arguments for the existence of God, as conceived by Vaisheshika, some of which parallel the classic arguments in the Western traditions.
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The Mimamsa was often divided into two main branches, the Purva Mimamsa and the Uttara Mimamsa. The Mimamsa sutra of Jainini dated perhaps from the 4th century BC and began a tradition in which later the two most important figures were Kumarila Bhatta and Prabhakara, both the 7th century AD. The Mimamsa in general was concerned with development of nature and demanded of religious law or duty (Dharma) as it was found in the Vedas. As such it tended to emphasize the practical, although Mimamsa thinkers had made important contributions into logic and theory of knowledge. The Mimamsa, particularly the Uttara Mimamsa, was closely associated with Vedanta and sometimes treated simply as a school within the Vedantic tradition. Vedanta means “the end of the Vedas” and in general suggested analysis and contemplation of the theory and vision of the Vedic material. The point of departure for Vedanta was Badarayana’s Brahma sutras, also known as the Vedanta sutras. This represented the earliest attempt to organize and explicate the Upnishads and was itself an extremely difficult text, which had served as the object of commentaries by the major figures of later Vedanta schools. Central to these schools was the interpretation of Brahman and its relation to atman (self). The best known of the schools was the nondualist, or advaita, Vedanta of Shankara (AD 788-820), for whom Brahman was undifferentiated, eternal, and unchanging and the world was illusion, or maya. The modified nondualism, or vishishtadvaita, of Ramanuja (1017-1137) argued for the reality of individual self (atman) and the world but claimed that they were dependent on Brahman. The dualist, or dvaita, Vedanta of Madhva (1197-1276) insisted on a sharp distinction between Brahman and atman, as well as between Brahman and the world.
Of the three nonorthodox schools, the first two can be dealt with briefly. Charvaka was known only from fragments in the works of its opponents. It seemed to have been an extreme materialist reaction to the Vedic teachings and to have argued for the primacy of life in the world, the extinction of the individual at death, and perhaps an ethic of personal gratification. The common feature of all materialistic schools seemed to have rejected the future life, the laws of karma and samsara. To their opinion man was composed of matter, in particular, earth, air, fire and water, they inferenced spiritual appearing from this basic. As far as there is nothing in man what could live after his death they called to live a real life having pleasure and sufferings, realizing their particular equilibrium. These materialistic views were developed side by side with natural science development. They are known to have done a lot in natural science and have had a considerable effect.
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Jainism, on the other hand, was an ethical religion that arose in the 6th century BC.
From Juna (Jana)-victor-conqueror Jainism did without God or an Absolute. It insisted on the distinction between matter and soul and argued for a realistic atomism in the context of an atheistic universe. It conceived of many souls involved in the round of rebirth. Their souls were more material, as entities, which filled up the bodies to which they belonged. Jainism believed man to be of dual character that is material body and spiritual soul. They were linked in individual with the help of karma. There were 8 types of karma both positive and negative that influenced an innocent soul. Negative karmas corrupted it, positive hold the soul in the succession of rebirth, only by throwing off little by little bad and good karmas man liberated himself from the chains of samsara.
Salvation was achieved through three jewels that is faith, knowledge, and practice of the virtues, which were nonviolence, saying truth, not stealing, chastity, and not being attached to worldly goods and concerns. As for the outer world they believed the Universe to be eternal, non-created and undestroyable.
Buddhism originated as a sectarian movement in India in the 6th-5th century BC, spread over much of China, Southeast Asia, and Japan. According to the traditional accounts Buddha was born in a small place near the modern Nepalese border. Perhaps he was born in 563 and died in 483 BCE in a king’s family. His mother died after his birth and he was foretold to become a hermit if he happened to see a sick man, an old man or a deceased. His father did his best to keep him from the outer world. The boy got married, he had a son, but at the age of 29 he changed the clothes with his servant and late at night he left his house. He was deeply impressed by the life outside. He met an old man, a sick man and a monk, he was impressed with their sufferings and decided to devote his life to searching the ultimate truth. For six years he had been changing various teachers, made his body suffer and at last he had achieved enlightenment and so became the Enlightened One or Buddha.
In one way the doctrines of Buddha are deceptively simple. These were summed up in one way through Four Noble Truth which he presented at his first cermon:
1. Life is permeated by illfare or suffering;
2. The cause of sufferring is craving or thirst;
3. There is a cure to avoid this thirst;
4. The cure lies in the Noble Eightfold Path.
This latter culminated in three stages that signified different kinds of meditation or contemplative practice. As a consequence the individual successfully cured of suffering, would no longer be reborn. At the end of his life he would become a saint, or in the other words he would attain nirvana.
Buddha underlined practical side of his ethics and four divine virtues: benevolence compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity were the most characteristic of Buddhism, (especially compassion).
The Buddhist cosmology did not seem to have been very different from Upanishads. The idea of a supreme Creator was rejected. The Universe existed over huge periods and then relapsed into a kind of sleep, to be stimulated once again and to develop into ifs large and manifest form.
The Buddha’s rejection of things or substances went with his theory of causes and effects. He saw their relation eternal: one set of conditions simply gave rise to another set and so on. His resistance to the idea of substances transforming themselves was a part of critique of the sacrificial religion of Brahmin. Buddha did not seem to have denied many gods and spirits pervading the cosmos. They were not important for liberation but they had a certain limited power.
In the course of its history Buddhism had developed diverse philosophical traditions. The central teaching of Buddhism was the dharma. This term could mean a variety of things, including “the nature of things”,”the law” and “the true view of reality”. Dharmas, in plural, were usually held to be the genuine constituents of reality as opposed to the mere appearance. Common to almost all schools of Buddhist philosophy was the view that all things in the world had their origin in other things, a doctrine known as “dependent coorigination”. This doctrine led in most cases to metaphysics of flux, usually joined to a pluralistic atomism. Another doctrine common to almost all schools was that of anatta, that is the denial of a metaphysical self. The doctrine of anatta was often seen as a consequence of dependent coorigination, and the perceived self was analyzed as a bundle of skandhas, the five components of personality.
The Chinese Tradition.
The Philosophical thought in China was concentrated on social and political problems. This assertion does not mean that cosmological and metaphysical speculations were not taken. The I Ching reflected a complicated vision of the universe. The oracles of the I Ching began to assume a modern written form perhaps in the 7th century BC, and the book in general played an important role in the subsequent development of Chinese philosophy.
The famous relics and monuments of Chinese intelligence were five books, five classics which contained ancient poetry, history, laws and philosophy:
1. Classics of Poetry, (the 11th - 6th centuries BC) explained the origination of tribes and professions.
2. Classics of history, (the II-nd millennium BC).
3. Record of Rites, (the 4th - 1st centuries BC) described rituals, ceremonies, norms of religious and political actions.
4. Spring and autumn annals (the 7th - 5th centuries BC) were the chronicles and the patterns for solving ethical and cultural problems.
5. Classics of Changes (the12th - 6th centuries) was the most important as it contained the first Chinese regards of the world and man’s place in it. It reflected the base of the developing philosophical thought in China.
The basics for texts were 64 hexagrams, the symbols which were formed with a combination of six lines. With the help of them Chinese sage men made prophecy, which seemed to have the ontological character. Little by little these hexagrams had been transformed into 64 categories of the world. Chinese philosophers gave much consideration to those two forces, which were so prominent in their account of the cosmos: the yin and the yang. The yang was female, dark and passive; the yin was male, active and light. Their interchange was a way that all things occur. In traditional Chinese philosophies this way was called Tao. The Classics of change just reflected Tao as the way of the world’s development. Man was insisted to consider his own place in the world, in nature by combining his own forces with those of the nature. During the period of dynasties of Hsia and Shang which followed the Chou one there was a flourishing of Chinese philosophy. It was defined as the rival of a hundred of schoolls. Historians called this period the epoch of “warring states” (from 453 BC)
The first recognized philosopher in China, however, was Confucius (541-497 BC). Confucius taught that the goal of a philosopher was to become learned, but this concept meant more than merely knowing a large number of facts. Rather, on the basis of a broad learning in the classic texts, the canon of which he essentially formulated. Confucius held that a person regardless of his social status could become aware of the moral order of the cosmos and of his proper place in it. He taught the primacy of the family, and the duties incumbent upon its various members, stressing harmony and unity and the self-evident goodness of the ethical life. Kong’s originality laid in his critical yet positive view of institutions. He took traditional concepts and social norms and transformed them, in the service of education, humane life and good political rule. He was not, however, terribly successful in worldly terms. There were three attempts on his life from apprehensive rulers; he had to leave his native Lu for a long period; he never gained the unquestioned status of political adviser to a prince - and though he later on became a minister in Lu and a magistrate, he never reached the heights that his unquestioned abilities might have suggested. His chief accomplishments were as an educationist, and his disciples carried on a tradition, which helped to shape Chinese civilization. He had a vision, which was realized, but long after his death.
This vision turned on various key ideas. One was that of li, or ceremonious behavior. He saw education as training the young in formal patterns of acting, and he laid great store by traditional rites and music.
Now in taking li as a central phenomenon, Kong was building on something traditional which could easily be meaningless and arid. He saw in religious and other rituals more than repetitious behaviors: he transformed them into acts which had a deep inner meaning, in expressing the fabric of the ceremonial in a virtuous society. As we shall see, there were plenty of critics who thought that Kong overemphasized formality. But he saw with clarity the vital role which formal and educated behavior plays in the ongoing patterns of civilized society. Kong does not stress rights: but the emphasis on li towards others is a counterpart to the notion. One person's rights arc how others should perform towards her or him.
The danger, though, with a stress on li is that behavior might become insincere and mechanical. So Kong also talked a lot about human-heartedness or ren. The person of ren masters himself and returns to propriety or li. He is earnest, loyal to friends, truthful and generous. In fact ren sums up all the virtues. It is on the basis of Kong's praise of it that many scholars see in him a humanist. In the general sense that his ethic is one of concern for human welfare this is true. But together with humaneness there goes respect or awe in the face of Heaven.
In one important respect the idea of Heaven had to do with politics, in so far as the ruler stood in a special relationship to God. But for Kong the concept of heaven was much broader and more existential. It stood for the divine, moral presence. It seems to have been something always there in his consciousness, and he hoped that his disciples would stand in respect of it and its ethical pressures. While it does not seem to have represented a vivid personal God, but has a rather impersonal air in Kong’s words, it is given a strong ethical meaning. This was no doubt a transformation in traditional ideas, which Kong had wrought. So it was that rituals directed towards Heaven were not mere rituals, but helped to cement intentions to perform the good. On the other hand, he was not much interested in the lower forms of religion. He did not wish to discuss ghosts and spirits and the like, though he was committed to veneration of ancestors. He believed that he derived his virtue from Heaven, and there is therefore little doubt that he thought of ethics as grounded in a Transcendent Being, even if he did not talk much about such matters as the afterlife.
Though the idea of ren is so important other concepts were brought in to fill out the moral picture, notably the idea of shu. Kong once said that a single thread ran through all his teachings, and this was understood to refer to reciprocity, together with loyalty to one's own moral nature. Unless one had personal integrity, one might, despise oneself and in that case reciprocity would not have the desired quality. But given sell-respect, then reciprocity (not treating others in ways in which you would not like them to treat you) becomes foundational of moral attitudes. Moreover, the humane person exhibiting ren would want to raise the moral insight and stature of others as he would wish to raise his own. In all this Kong’s teaching was often a critique of the behavior of rulers and of the nobility. This is no doubt why he was not a great success in merely worldly terms. He sought by ethical teachings to put trammels on power. Not only this; his very passion for education, to which in a sense he devoted the whole of his life, involved a new conception of aristocracy. He lived in a feudal and hierarchically organized society, and there are elements of hierarchy in his thought (he emphasized the higher status of the ruler and of the male and so can be considered to agree with a kind of patriarchy). But he did not think of aristocracy in a simply hereditary way. On the contrary, his ideal was of the superior man or junzi as one who exhibits gentlemanly behavior. The junzi stands in awe of Heaven; is wise, benevolent and courageous; knows what the basic issues of life are; understands the Mandate of Heaven; follows what is right and does not concentrate on a high standard of living; helps to elevate his friends; is careful in speech and deed; and is not a mere 'utensil', being good for one sort of specialism and nothing else (he is thus in the broadest sense truly educated). There arc echoes of Kant in the last: you should never treat another human being merely as a means so you should not yourself be merely an instrument to others or to the State. We can sec in all this that the gentleman or junzi is defined, as has happened too in English, in a moral and behavioral way. So Kong did not see the aristocrat as someone just born into a certain position. We can draw a parallel with the Buddha’s treatment of the true Brahmin not as someone born a Brahmin but as someone who practices sell-restraint.
We may note that in his own life Kong rose to eminence largely by his own efforts in educating himself. He was the son of the third wife of a poor official. He married at 19, by which time he had already given himself a wide range of knowledge, so that in his early twenties his reputation for education was such that he began to take pupils. He was, concerned with teaching in line with his own upward mobility: it was through learning that a person elevated himself in spirit and in expertise and so gained gentlemanly or aristocratic status in the true sense. Whether or not he edited the Classics as traditionally has been held (he probably, however, himself wrote the Spring and Autumn Annals), he nevertheless upheld the idea that immersion in the values of the tradition was at the heart of learning; and through this ideal he stamped China with the most important idea of recruiting its chief officials through a Confucian examination system. Meritocracy was to be the pattern of imperial administration. Education became the central mode of Chinese commitment over more than two thousand years.
Kong came to be the main inspirer of Chinese culture with the vital flame of education. And this was in part because he held to a critical view of tradition and society, which was summed up in his idea of the true gentleman or junzi.
To sum up: Kong had a vision of the gentleman who displays benevolence or humaneness and has at heart the welfare of others, and of a society which was harmonious because it was morally ordered. A key value at the center of all this was li or appropriate performative behavior, under the moral pressures, however, of Heaven seen as the presiding moral presence in the universe All this was a vision which, of course, had had a profound effect on Chinese society down the ages. This vision has in many ways remained a dominant one in Confucianism. The recorded sayings of Confucius do not present a systematic vision.
The first figure in the Confucian tradition to move toward a philosophical system was Mencius (the 4th -3d century BC). Mencius argued for the essential goodness of persons - that divergence in moral responsibility was a result of a bad upbringing or environment. The results of a poor moral training could be overcome by education, and society was, thus, essentially perfectible. The duty of government was to foster the well-being of the people and bring society to perfection, a goal with which the genuine ruler was in accord due to his inborn goodness and moral sense.
A strain in Confucianism diametrically opposed to the idealism of Mencius arose a generation later in the thought of Hsun-tzu (330-225 BC). Hsun-tzu argued that, far from good, the inborn nature of persons was evil, or uncivil. Rather than eliciting innate moral virtues through education, Hsun-tzu insisted on the need to impose them from without. This doctrine had been variously interpreted; such a position led to the nonabsoluteness of ethical norms and hence led as much in the direction of liberalism as authoritarianism. Yet another facet of Hsun-tzu's thought was an acute logical sense, and he left a penetrating essay on names and meaning. Until the advent of Neoconfucianism in the medieval period, Hsun-tzu was usually considered a superior thinker to Mencius. The Neoconfucians emphasized an essentialist moral striving based on Confucius, Mencius, and two texts, the Great Learning and Doctrine of the Mean. In its various forms, Neoconfucian thought dominated Chinese learning and social life until the beginning of the 20th century
The second important indigenous Chinese tradition was Taoism. The teaching of the Tao Te Ching, a work attributed to the semilegendary Lao-Tsu (6th century BC), was elusive and complex and could perhaps best be characterized as teaching the eternal principle of reality and the way in which all things were governed by and found their true natures in it. It implied metaphysics of impermanence and change, and the philosopher who attained a clear vision of the eternal Tao and its relation to this flux acquired happiness and peace. The most important later Taoist philosopher was Chuang-tzu. In Chuang-Tzu the Taoist divergence from and rejection of, the Confucian ideals became pronounced. Whereas the Confucian tradition believed in the molding of the person through education, Chuang-tzu saw the classical teachings of the schools as tending to lead the person away from an understanding of the nature of things, the Tao, and thus away from a genuine awareness of his own nature and place in the world. This outlook sometimes led to Taoism could be seen as antisocial. Nevertheless, both Chuang-tzu and Mencius, who was perhaps his contemporary, saw the goal of philosophy as attaining awareness of the essential harmony of things, although they disagreed on the origin of this harmony and how awareness was to be attained.
Only the two main strands in Chinese thought have been mentioned. The Moists, who taught the existence of a Supreme Spirit that possessed equal and universal love for all people; the Legalists, who advocated a practical philosophy of political domination; and the Buddhists, who became important from the 4th century AD on, also exercised wide influence in Chinese thought. Within the Neoconfucian tradition a variety of positions emerged.
The Near East philosophical thougth.
The origin of philosophical thought in Ancient Babylon and Egypt dates back to the end of the 4th - the beginning of the 3 millennium BC, when the development of slave-owning relations in these countries achieved the top. This process was closely connected with the first steps of science. The economic development required practical knowledge of natural regularities and, of course, great experience.
Thus, Egyptians built channels, pools, water reservoirs and dams. Also they were occupied with shipbuilding, construction of roads, harbours and palaces.
Huge pyramids, temples, irrigation systems are the evidence of significant level of technical thought of that time.
Nyle’s banks were the earliest stage, where the basics of astronomy, geometry and algebra were founded. The land surveying, construction of pyramids, need to calculate the periods, when water rose and fell down, give evidence to this.
The Egyptians knew four arithmetic actions, fractions; they could put a number into degree, solved equations with two unknowns. Also they used number pi, which was known in European mathematics only in 14th century.
But the solution of problems was found by the empirical method, because the Egyptians did not know logical reasoning and the deductive mathematics did not exist.
The significant successes in mathematics also were achieved in Ancient Babylon. The number system, which was applied throughout the world and preceded an Arab one, appeared there.
Both Ancient Egyptian and Babylonian natural science contributed to philosophical view about nature. The lists of more then 300 plants, birds, animals were made in Ancient Egypt. Also the veterinary book was written there. Medicine was of great importance for developing rational views on nature. For the first time a thought, that brain is a centre of mental activity, providing action of all organism was stated there.
The origin of philosophical thought in Ancient Babylon and Egypt was connected not only with the first steps of science. The worldview of Ancient Babylonians, Egyptians as well as other peoples of the Near East was unseparable from mythology - the first attempt to think over different natural phenomena. Myth was the only way to work out well regulated and meaningful for everybody world conceptions. It was just the mythology where the beginnings of philosophy were hidden. In Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt myth served as a universal explanation of the achieved knowledge. Myth integrated contradictory elements: things mastered and realized by man from one side and enemical natural world from the other one. To realize strange natural phenomena the cosmological myths were created, in which some stable order, which was used in social relations, was established. The theme of struggle of chaos and order was the characteristic feature of all Near East area at that time (Enuma Elish: Marduc God fought against Tiamat, who was solt fore fatherocean, and defeated him.)
In Ancient Egypt in a spontaneous form of myth man tried to solve a problem of material base of natural things.
In the epos about Gilgamesh, the most ancient one we know, one could see themes of worldview character, such as: the theme of life and death and the theme of tragedy of human being. Being shocked by his friend’s death Gilgamesh realized that deathlessness was possible only in man’s activity, good deals, which he could leave after his death.
In Mesopotamian literature we often could find the question "How can we leave?" which was answered by numerous proverbs, advice and instructions. In the "Dialogue of Master with his slave" the contradiction of being was reflected. In real life everything may be comprehended only with regard to something. There is no absolute good or truth.
In the "Harpist's song" the doubt of existence of afterdeath life was stated. So people should improve their earthly life. On the other side reality did not prove the possibility to get happiness during earthly life. The death was considered as liberation.
The short summary of the history of philosophical thought in Ancient Babylon and Egypt shows us the existence of beginnings of philosophical and social thought in Ancient East. In the monuments of this culture the material base of natural phenomena were stated in a spontaneous form. Also it was mentioned that cool water was a source of all leaving beings and air was the substance, which filled up entire space and existed in all things. But on these territories the philosophical thought did not aproach the level, which was achieved by more developed slave-owning countries. Nevertheless these views influenced the following development of science and material thought of Ancient World.
LECTURE 4.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ANTIQUITY.
1. Development of Ideas in “Physical” Schools in Pre-Socratic Philosophy.
2. Ideas and Thinkers in the Classic period of Antiquity.
3. The Hellenistic period as the final stage of Antiquity.
Western regarding for man originated in Antique Greece and Rome. To compare with Eastern philosophy Antiquity from the very beginning contradicted itself to mythology and religion. It opposed reason and knowledge to faith and imagination.
Nevertheless Antique Philosophy was not less than Eastern dependent on mythology, but it was trying to overcome the mythology of feelings with the mythology of reason. This conflict between sensitive-intuitive and rational was intrinsic for all Antique Philosophy and further all European philosophy as well.
Antique mythology was divided into two periods. The first one symbolized Gods as enemical to people, horrowable and wild like monsters. With the time passing they became ennobled and manlike.
The Gods who lived on Olympus mountain were a tribal community of corporally deathless beings. It was just deathlessness that differed them from people with all their merits and credits.
The most important feature of antique worldview was cosmologism, in particular they laid earthly relations on the world nature. They considered cosmos the bound of the extreme beauty and truth.
To compare with Eastern philosophical tradition, which dissolved man and society in nature, in Antiquity man, was laid on the nature and Cosmos transforming and developing them. So antique philosophy separated itself from mythology attempting to give it rational explanation.
Ionian and mainland Greece, which were to be the parents of Greek thought, were richly placed: the Persian empire to the East, Asia Minor, together with Babylonia and Mecca, Egyptian civilization, in that they had living contacts with some of the high cultures of the period, in the sixth and fifth centuries BCE, when the first major stirrings of philosophy took place.
It was, then, on the Ionian mainland of Asia Minor that the first seeds of free-ranging thought sprouted. Eventually, as we know, the main center for philosophy came to be Athens, partly because of the free spirit of that city, partly because Socrates performed his probing work there, and partly because of the high level of its literary culture, of which – Plato’s works were a fine and perhaps the most impressive body.
The Ionian school began the quest to find the underlying basis of the world. The speculation there might be a single material source of the universe corresponds to one of the traditional forms of philosophy. In this sense the Ionians stand at the beginning of a powerful process which led through the Presocratics to Socrates and beyond to Plato and Aristotle, Stoicism and a whole number of other schools.
These provided something of an intellectual religion for the Greeks and Romans. For myth had already conceived of some primeval substance out of which the world had been formed. But the new speculations had a different spirit, one in which reliance on tradition was unimportant and something of a free and new look at the world was taking place.
Antiquity broke off with mythology, and the first philosophers tried to account for the world, proceeding from itself, and also their deductions were rationally-logically based in the form of the cosmological theory. Philosophy began to research man’s essence (Socrates), processes of cognition and their laws (Plato, Aristotle), ethics and aesthetics, politics and other.
The main peculiarities of Antique Philosophy are as following:
1. In was based on cosmological theory.
2. It was universal, syncretical in its nature that is all problems were solved in their principal unity, undistributably. Ethical categories were expanded to the whole Universe.
3. Concepts were created and involved into philosophy (Plato’s “ideas”, Aristotle’s “forms”, Stoics’ notion of “sense”, “purport”), at the same time Greeks almost did not know laws of science.
4. The Ethics of Antiquity was mostly ethics of virtues, but not of duties and values as it is now.
5. Philosophy of Antiquity was really practical, gu iding people in their behavior and conduct.
The whole period of Antiquity may be devided into three stages: Pre-Socratic, Classical and Hellenistic (including Roman-Latine time) ones. The first stage was characterized by the entire interest to nature, with seeking for the initial stuff of the Universe. Miletian school was the first philosophical school in ancient Greece.
Thales, who lived in Miletus, flourished at about 580 BCE. We do not have his original writings and the fragmentary evidence we have about him we owe principally to Aristotle. We know that he thought that everything was composed of water and that the earth itself floated on water (in its pure form). No doubt the observation of phenomena such as steam and ice were suggestive in showing how water could easily change its properties
Anaximanderwas a younger contemporary of Thales, and held a more dialectical view, seeing the four substances of hot, cold, dry and wet as being in polar interplay. But if so, the basic material or stuff of the cosmos must be something which is not bounded or defined in the way in which these forces are. The very possession of particular properties seemed to rule out a substance as the primodial source-material. And so he posited the limitless or unbounded. This lies beyond perception. In a vital way, Anaximander is the father of theory in the West, for his postulation of the imperceptible apeiron takes him beyond the manifest surface of things.
Anaximander explained the particular features of the cosmos in terms of these forces. The ocean, for instance, was the moisture left after the congealing of the earth under the influence of the hot. As for men, they had come from animals, which first formed in the ocean before coming onto dry land. This was a primitive anticipation of evolutionary theory. We can see from all this that the bent of Anaximander was naturalistic. He stood at the dawn of human science.
If for Anaximander the primodial substance was the apeiron, for Anaximenes(flourished 545 BCE), the third of the great Milesians, it was air, which can rarefy into fire or condense into wind, water, earth and rock in successive stages. He did not like the idea of “separating off” which had been brought in by Anaximander to explain the transition from the apeiron to the polarity of hot and cold. He wanted to see all manifestations as due to the varying states of the one substance air. Quantitative change of this one mode of thing led to qualitative differences. But in some other ways Anaximenes’ account of the world was more simplistic than that of Anaximander.
Another Greek, for he came from the island of Samos, Pythagoras(c. 570-490 BCE) migrated to Croton in South Italy where he became leader of a community there. It is possible that it was he who invented the word philosophia. At any rate the notion of the love of wisdom was vital, for his community and its sisters in other cities in South Italy that were religious in character and aimed at cultivating the soul, partly through intellectual inquiry and partly through ascetic practices, like abstaining from the eating of meat and beans. The cosmos was seen as a harmony in which limit was imposed on the apeiron. Human beings and animals were thought of as being in the process of transmigration or rebirth from one life to the next. The cosmos was a vast system of things whose inner nature was numerical. The discovery that musical harmonies could be represented mathematically was considered to be of profound importance. The universe itself was seen therefore as a huge mathematical and musical harmony.
This model of numbers as forming the basis of things in part reflected the fact that already mathematics was beginning to develop in Greece and could be seen as the paradigm of knowledge, being certain and precise. This idea of the priority of numbers had a grip on Plato and was to have momentous consequences in the evolution of science in the West.
Heraclitus, who flourished about 501 BCE, was a mysterious and poetic writer. He considered the stuff of the cosmos to be fire in varying forms. But in order to explain change it was necessary to postulate strife, a force opposite to love, which stirs things up in the world. It tears things apart, as love brings them together. This dialectical interplay explained change. Change itself was continuous: as Heraclitus’s famous dictum had it, panta rhei, all things flow. You cannot step into the same river twice. In all this Heraclitus, clearly saw something - you could combine the notions of change and stability by postulating a law or formula according to which things regularly change. This principle he called Logos — a word of wide-ranging meaning in Greek, meaning reason, or formula, or definition or — most commonly — word. It is of course the term that was later in the New Testament used for the Word, or underlying principle of Creation. Heraclitus thus had a dialectical and formulaic notion of the way things operate in the world, which was more important than his identification of fire as the fundamental element underlying the cosmos.
The problem of change and permanence had already of course been posed in principle by the Pythagoreans. Numbers seemed unchanging, but the cosmos appeared to change. Pythagoras considered the world as self-sufficient entity. It was the members of the Eleatic school, and in particular its chief figure, Parmenides, who posed the question in the starkest form. If it is the case that there is something unchanging, and yet panta rhei, then what are we to make of this?
Parmenides (bc. 515 BCE) of Elea in southern Italy (hence the name “Eleatic” to pinpoint his school) produced his own cosmology though there were some reminiscences of Heraclitus’s schema. The importance of Parmenides is that he posed a severe question to those philosophers, who wished to affirm something eternal or unchanging. The very idea of a thing suggested something unchanging beneath changing appearances. It was partly because of him that Aristotle opted for a theory of substances which dictated the norm for Western philosophy. His principle was –“nothing can come from nothing”.
Empedocles dating from the first part of the fifth century BCE, was a political leader in his own city before being exiled; he practiced healing; had wide scientific interests; wrote two major poems; and claimed to be divine: he was an all-round sage. Probably his chief contribution to the later development of ideas was his notion of the four elements. He agreed with the principle which had been laid down by Parmenides, namely that nothing can come out of nothing. But he felt that anything which would explain the cosmos would have to be multiple. You could not get differentiation out of a single substance like fire or water. So he postulated a theory of four elements, the everlasting particles of which combined or uncombined under the influence of the two cosmic forces of love and hate. The four “roots of all things” were earth, air, fire and water. This theory of elements was taken up by, among others, Plato and Aristotle. Empedocles, as well as believing in the material roots of things also postulated a soul. Thus individuals also obey the law that nothing can come from nothing. Rather, they are continually being reborn.
On the side of cosmology the various schools of thought we have looked at point towards the atomic theory which was to be put forward primarily by Leucippus and Democritus. About the former we know little, but he probably lived in the second part of the fifth century, while Democritus’ life may have been from 460 to 370, in Abdera. He is supposed to have starved himself to death during a plague, but generally was known for his cheerfulness, being nicknamed ‘the laughing philosopher”. His writings were extensive and it was he who worked out the details of the atomistic worldview.
The fact is that the attempt to work out a cosmology by postulating one or more substances, such as fire or water, raised the issue of particles of such substances. Moreover, the Parmenidean principle that nothing comes from nothing, so what is must be everlasting, was highly persuasive. The Pythagorean notion of cosmos suggested a self-sufficient entity. If you put these thoughts together you may come to think that the universe is composed of a void with scattered in that void an infinite number of atomic, that is indivisible or uncuttable, entities. These, swirling about, form larger combinations and out of this we have the formation of the world as we know it. Since there is no reason why atoms should be one shape rather than another, they have an infinity of different shapes.
The Atomists, consistently, had a materialist view of the soul, which was composed, according to Democritus, of round atoms, good for smooth penetration; and an account was given of the engagement of the senses with images coming from outside. In general the Atomists rejected all notions of design in the cosmos. Everything was to be explained in terms of the necessities arising from the constitution and combination of atoms. As for the theory of knowledge, Democritus held a kind of modified empiricism. The data, which we have about the world come through the senses, but sense-experience, can be very misleading. We have to go beyond it in order to understand the world, for by and large the atoms themselves are invisible. And as the world is to be explained by atomic theory, so ethics does not have a supernatural sanction. Moral behavior should be moderate, and the pleasures of the soul are better than those of the body. Nevertheless Democritus did not deny the existence of gods, who seem to be refined denizens of the cosmos. There are, consistently with his theory, a large number of worlds, many without sun or moon or water.
The various Pre-Socratic philosophies have some general resemblance to the world of the Buddha and of the early Upanishads. The Greeks seem to have been more inclined towards physical science; in India medicine was best developed.
The Sophists, who might be described as a new class of critical educators, one of whose main interests was rhetoric, have been given a bad name by both Plato and Aristotle, who accused them of producing sham knowledge or wisdom in order to make money, and of using rhetoric in a cynical way. They could be thought to be destructive of received or traditional ideas (but so were Plato and Aristotle).
In some ways their nearest analogy elsewhere are ancient Chinese philosophers, especially in the tradition of Kong. Their interest too was educational. They thought that virtue could be enhanced or taught, and while they were less given to ritual, they nevertheless had a strong concern with the performative. For it was above all by the “magical” use of words that we persuade one another. Moreover, some Sophists appealed to innate or natural tendencies as the basis of law and ethics: thus Protagoras (500-430 BCE) held that aidos or shame is imparted to all humans. He was the first who considered that man is the measure of the things. This idea was supported by Socrates.
Classical stage of Antiquity is characterized by the shift of philosophical investigations towards man. Philosophy of man becomes the key to the philosophy of nature.
Socrates (469-399 BC). Undoubtedly the most influential teacher of philosophy in ancient Greece, he lived in Athens practically all his life. Besides serving in the Athenian army, he also held several minor public offices. Because he eventually attained a secure financial position, he was able to teach without asking for fees. This, along with his refusal to submit to teaching official government doctrines when he felt they were contrary to good judgment, aroused the ire of both officialdom and his fellow teachers. He was accused of corrupting the youth of Athens, and was subsequently tried and sentenced to death. On several occasions he could have escaped from prison with the help of his many friends, but he insisted upon his obligation to respect the sentence, even though it was wrong. His justification for his own death, and his willing, philosophical acceptance of the poisonous hemlock that he felt it was his duty to drink, earned him the admiration of both his contemporaries and posterity. He is mainly known to history through the dialogues of Plato, who was his student. His philosophy was based on his famous characterization of himself as an ignorant person whose only virtue was that he was aware of his ignorance. Rather than possess superficial knowledge, he would prefer to remain ignorant. However, his very knowledge of his ignorance compelled him to seek true knowledge. The road to such knowledge was through reason, and the result was virtue. According to him, then, virtue, which is embodied in knowledge, is the highest end of man. He left no written works.
Yet he influenced on the development of philosophy greatly. He was greatly impressed by Sophists’ regarding man as the measure of all things. He followed that tradition and put man into the center of his philosophy. Thus he started the epoch of classical Antique Philosophy. He considered Reason to be the basics of all perceived things, Reason that controls and governs the universe. He meant not only the ultimate Reason or Mind, but man’s mind as well. The principle “aware yourself” which he found out on the wall of Appolo Temple in Delphas struck him so much that he made it the main principle of his philosophy. He combined ontological problems with moral ones, with the problem of human ego. Man possesses the sole that promotes consciousness, cognition, mental activity and moral virtues. The potential of man’s sole is realized in his cognitive activity, the lack of which leads to ignorance. Through cognition man consciously comes to main virtues: wisdom, justice, moderatioin and thus he acquires the harmony of the sole, that is freedom. Man’s happiness means to be virtual and free.
He philosophized in a dialogical manner asking questions which made his partner contradictory to himself and then Socrates manifested his own position. His peculiarity was his irony, which gave him an impulse for further self-awareness and self-development, an example of which was his famous “I know that I know nothing”.
He contributed greatly into the development of philosophy by regarding the truth as a concept: both as being and as cognition. His universal notions preceded man’s activity they were a kind of patterns for man to follow. He questioned for the universal definitions of such attributes as courage or piety, but he failed to expose their origination. Later Plato, his best disciple named them the Ideas or Forms and manifested his own theory based on Socrates’ ideas.
Plato (427-347 BC). Born on the island of Aegina, a colony of Athens, he was one of the most enduring of the ancient Greek philosophers. He was given the best education available and spent eight years as a student of Socrates. He acquired a broad knowledge of pre-Socratic philosophies (e.g. Thales, Heraclitus, Parmenides etc.) and founded his own school in Athens in 387. He taught at the Platonic Academy until his death. His philosophy represents one of the great and lasting strains of thought in history, and still remains of major significance and influence. The entire construction of his thought is based upon his conception of true reality as a world of Ideas. These Ideas, or Forms (the terms are used interchangeably), are universal, immaterial essences that contain the true and ultimate realities (being) of things, while the actual world of things perceivable by the senses is only a vague, transitory and untrustworthy copy. Thus, since the function of thought is to perceive reality, its function becomes precisely to perceive the world of Ideas. Only the cognition of Ideas, or of the Universal Forms, enables man to perfect himself and to act with wisdom. In line with this view, Plato criticized reliance on knowledge gained through the senses because the objects of true senses exist only as imperfect manifestations of the Universal Forms (Ideas) that comprise their essences; such knowledge, therefore, is itself imperfect—in his words, opinion, not truth. Through the reasoned exercise of the mind, however, man is able to arrive at true knowledge by the rational perception of the Universals (Forms, Ideas) that contain the essence of all sensible, material things. The mind is able to perceive the Universal Ideas by virtue of the fact that the mind has its own Universal Idea (i.e. there is a Universal Mind that contains the essence of all finite and individual minds).) Plato states further that within the world of Universal Ideas there is a certain hierarchy. The Idea of Good is at the top, and all other Ideas participate in it and derive from it, just as all material objects participate in and derive from their own Universal Ideas. The Idea of Good, being the ultimate Idea, permeates all things. The relation, then, of man to ultimate reality (The Universal Ideas) is basically an imitative one (i.e. man should mentally perceive and imitate the perfection of the Universal Idea of himself).) Although there are contradictions and unresolved conflicts in Plato's system, especially as it relates to the various subdivisions of philosophy (ethics, metaphysics, etc.), and although his system has never been able to be worked out to the total satisfaction of logic, it is a grand design that has had profound, lasting and valid significance. His method is best defined as dialectic, in that he demonstrated his arguments by opposition. He believed in the unity of opposites, and it is said by some that the dialectical style in which his works were written is the true reflection of his philosophy— that, reality consists in the unity of opposites and that the cognition of this unity constitutes knowledge of reality
In his own manner Plato had political ambitions. The main idea of society organization was justice. The major point which informed Plato’s thinking was that since virtue, to be deep, involved the higher knowledge, including geometry and the dialectical inquiry into the arrangement and hierarchy of the Forms, not excluding the ultimate and unspeakable vision of the Good, there was need of a ruling class of wise people. Philosophers thus shall be kings. There is in this way a solidarity between ethics and politics.
This is also brought out by Plato’s thinking of human psychology as a kind of microcosm of the polls. The human soul according to him has three aspects. The highest is rational aspect. Next there is that aspect which is full of spirit: we might call it the courageous aspect. Then there is the lowest aspect, which is the appetitive (self-control). Roughly these correspond to the three main classes which Plato envisages.
If the rich dialogues remained a monument to Plato’s thought, there was another that for many centuries was perhaps even more vital: the Academy. This community of inquirers lasted until 529 CE, when Justinian forbade the teaching of Platonism as such, though of course Plato had, through Neo-Platonism, an immense influence upon Christianity. The Academy was not a kind of university, but was devoted to knowledge and to mutual teaching through the joint practice of dialectic.
Aristotle (384-322 BC). Born in the Greek colony of Stagira in Macedonia, at 18 he became a student of Plato at Athens and remained for nearly 20 years as a member of the Platonic Academy. After Plato’s death, he left Athens and, among other things, became the tutor of young Alexander of Macedonia, later known as Alexander the Great. Eventually he returned to Athens (335) where he spent 12 years as head of a school he set up in the Lyceum (known as the Peripatetic School). As the result of an outbreak of anti-Macedonian feelings in Athens after the death of Alexander (323), he was forced to leave the city for Chalcis, where he died a year later.
Aristotle possessed one of the few truly encyclopedic minds in the history of western man. Those of his works which still exist cover all the sciences known to his time and are characterized by subtlety of analysis, sober and dispassionate judgment, and a superior mastery of facts and evidence — collectively, they constitute one of the most monumental achievements ever credited to a single mind.
He divided the sciences into the theoretical, the aim of which was objective knowledge; the practical, the aim of which was the guidance of conduct; and the productive, whose aim was the guidance of the arts. He put above and before these three divisions the science and art of logic — called by him analytics — its mastery the requisite to all other investigations, since its purpose was to set forth the conditions to be observed by all thinking that had truth as its aim. Beginning with this principle, he spent his lifetime ferreting out the truths of all the sciences, from ethics to art, from physics to politics. He was the originator of the syllogism (that form of reasoning whereby, given two propositions, a third follows necessarily from them by nature of a term common to both premises — e.g. all men have brains; Jack is a man; therefore, Jack has a brain) which is the core of deductive logic.
At the heart of his complex philosophy is his concept of dualism — the duality of all things in the universe — a concept he initiated and which has had an unalterable influence on the course of philosophy ever since. Everything is made of a union of matter and form, he postulated, and the two are interdependent, one incapable of existing without the other. The matter of an object is what makes it an object; the form is what makes an object the particular thing it is (table, man, etc.). The two together constitute the being of an object (matter possessing the capacity for form, form requiring matter to define its being). Aristotle developed this philosophy primarily to refute Plato’s doctrine that being belongs only to the universal Ideas of things (the Forms) and cannot exist in the material manifestations of these Ideas (in other words, the being of a chair or tree is not in the particular chair or tree, but in the universal Idea of the chair or tree, for each object is but a single, imperfect manifestation of a singular, perfect Idea).
To support and complement his doctrine of the dualism of being, Aristotle also developed a corresponding dualism of potentiality and actuality: matter is the potentiality of any object, while form is that which gives the object its actuality. With these twin distinctions in hand, he claimed to have solved the difficulties that earlier thinkers had encountered in attempting to explain the process of change, visible in everything about them. Change, according to Aristotle, is the process by which matter becomes form, by which potentiality becomes actuality (and not the passage from non-being to being,) as previous thinkers had considered change to be). He called this process, entelechy.
The system of nature as thus developed by Aristotle consists of a series of matter-and-form existences on many levels, in which the forms of simpler beings act as the matter for the next higher beings, and so on. Hence, at the base of nature is prime matter which, having no form is mere potentiality and not actual being. The simplest formed matters are the primary elements — earth, air, fire, and water. These, in their forms, constitute the matter for the next in the line of ascending forms; and these forms comprise the matter for the next higher, etc., until man is reached, the highest of the universe’s beings. Man’s reason is the highest of the forms, and is what gives him actuality as man and defines him; whereas God, existing, so to speak, at the opposite end of the spectrum from prime matter, is pure form. These basic principles, formulated by Aristotle in his Analitics, were carried into all the diverse studies he undertook and helped to solve the problems raised by each inquiry. He explained all questions in the light of his conclusions in logic and applied these conclusions with equal effectiveness to, among other things, problems about time and space, God, human good, the state, and the arts. Although modern science has rendered much of Aristotle’s thought obsolete, he is still a force in modern thought; further, a very large part of our technical vocabulary, both in science and philosophy, is rooted in the terms Aristotle used and defined.
Hellenism(from Greek Hellas) the name of that ancient Greeks gave to their motherland. This period is characterized by threadening Greek culture to the Mediterranian areas. The epoch of Hellinism began with the Alexander Macedonian invading the East. He founded a great empire which was broken up after his death. The culture of various realms manifested a synthesis of Greek and local cultures. Later when this area was invaded by Rome their culture had been enriched by the Rome one.
The late Hellenism may be defined as a cross-cultural process of Antiquity and Christianity.
The Main peculiarities of Hellenistic philosophy:
1. The key problem was man’s being in the universe (ontological aspect, the problem of man’s existence) to compare with social-ethical tendency in classic Antiquity.
2. Irrationalism.The prevailing of will, contemplation and intuition over reason. The picture of the world became more figurative, mythological, mystic.
3. Being was regarded as a unity of different spheres which were transformed in their approach to Devine being.
Philosophy of that period remained anthropological in its nature but the problem of the sense of life was set forth.
There are four main philosophical teachings of Hellinism: Scepticism, Stoicism, Epicureanism and Neo-Platonism.
Scepticismwas founded by Pyrrho of Elis at the end of the 4th age BC. According to their opinion the world was flowing, changeable, relative and illusory. One can not have any account of it, as human perceptions of the world are wrong and human reason is contradictory. One should be very careful in making conclusions which only have probabilistic character. The sceptics did not suppose that man and the world were knowable, they rejected rational ground for moral norms. In their conceptions relativism reached its top. They rejected the existence of good and evil, logics in the being of the universe and society. They did not only consider the world unknowable, but even more they did not consider it to be worth awaring.There are three truths to their opinion:
1. Nothing exists.
2. If something exists it is unknowable.
3. If something is knowable it is unexpressible.
So their aim was getting an irony as for the world, avoiding any stable judgements and keeping self-control, equanimity, tranquility, wise silence aimed to achieve salvation.
Stoicismwas founded by Zeno of Citium (c. 336— c. 264 BCE) at the Stoa in Athens. Stoicism had its own interest in logic and rhetoric, but as a worldview it was interested in removing dualism between forms and individual entities and between souls and bodies. For the Stoics there were only particulars, apprehended by sense-perception, and then classified through memory and through general ideas formed by reason. There are active and passive forces in the cosmos, but essentially the universe is a single entity, moved by fire, which is also identified with God, who is the dynamic soul of the cosmos. He sows in the world the seed principles, which unfold as individuals. Very often the world goes up in a universal conflagration and then is renewed in a new cycle of existence, when everything is repeated exactly as in the prior world-period. There is no radical human freedom, therefore: freedom is doing consciously and with agreement what would happen in any event. Fate rules all, or to put it more mildly, the Providence of God. All is ordered for the best, even if viewed by itself an act or happening may seem bad and or painful. In the wider scheme of things there is perfection.
Life should be lived in accord with nature, that is, the necessities of the universe. Virtue means being in consonance with reason, the ruling pattern of nature and identical with Zeus or Fire. Moral evil in essence consists in the attitudes brought to bear by human beings, while virtue is its own reward. The Stoics sought above all to cultivate equanimity in the pursuit of four chief virtues of Wisdom, Courage, Self-Control and Justice. Pleasure, sorrow, desire and fear are the feelings we possess and should be eliminated, for they are irrational. Humans therefore should aim at a heroic self-sufficiency.
An important side to Stoicism was its cosmopolitanism. All humans equally share in Reason, drawn from God, and so we should see ourselves above all as citizens of the cosmos as a whole. The attractions of this ethical outlook, especially its courageous self-control and equanimity, to late Republican Romans, wishing to restore the virtues of the older Roman State, gave Stoicism a certain influence in the Roman world. Some noble Romans followed its example of suicide as an honored way to go in the face of dishonor.
Epicurus, who opened his school at Athens in 306 BC, created a worldview at variance with Stoic values. He taught that pleasure and happiness are the natural ends of life. Contrary to later misinterpretations, he did not advocate the bold pursuit of pleasure for its own sake, but only those pleasures that are consistent with reason and moderation. Joys of the mind are superior to pleasures of the body. His concept of nature mainly followed the atomism of Democritus, though he disavowed determinism and established a doctrine of cosmic chance (i.e. an element of chance enters into the atoms’ motions and causes deviations, thus accounting for both natural and psychic disorders).
Epicurus saw the cosmos as composed of innumerable atoms of various weights, forms and sizes, existing in a vast empty void. Teeming downwards in oblique paths, they collide and form larger entities as they get stuck to one another. Vortices are formed out of which emerge various worlds separated from one another by huge empty spaces. Human souls are composed of atoms too, and dissolve at death. The Epicureans did not deny the gods, who (also material) lived a luxurious life in the interstices between worlds. They can be honored, but fear of them is ridiculous. They have neither interest in nor access to human worlds. Pleasure is the highest goal for humans, but to get the best out of it, it needs to be pursued in moderation.
Neo-Platonism is a philosophical strain, which completed the philosophy of Antiquity and met Christianity. Its name is stipulated for all representing philosophers followed the ideas of Plato attempting to make a synthesis with Aristotelian philosophy and Christian worldview.
The Main peculiarities of Neo-Platonism are:
1. A clear delimitation of spiritual and material start points in the world with the primacy of spiritual.
2. Universal is as emanation of Devine Principle into various kinds of being, but the Devine remains in otherworld.
3. Awareness of the Devine and the world is possible by means of mystic contemplation.
Plotinus, born in Egypt, he lived and taught in Rome for over 25 years, and died there. At first a pagan, he became an authority on and advocate of the philosophy of India, as well as the idealism of Plato. He based his thought on the theory that the material reality perceived by the senses is of a lower order and value than spiritual reality conceived by mind, which is the true reality. He maintained a hierarchy of reality, each less than the next in value and all emanating from the ultimate One. Mind (nous) and soul (psyche) emanate directly from the One, while further down the ladder is matter, then material objects. Since man participates in all these emanations, he is a composite of spirit and matter. Because of this, sense knowledge is virtually valueless in the quest for truth, since that which the senses are capable of knowing (material objects) are of a lower order and value than the sensory agent (man). Thus, very much like the Universals of Plato, his reality consists of Intelligible Ideas and is headed by the Idea of Beauty, which is the One. The climax of knowledge consists in an intuitive and mystical union with the One.
Proclus, a man of wide-ranging knowledge, tended to multiply the staged emanation, Proclus was more concerned with the life of contemplation saw the practice of virtue and the spiritual life as a kind of turning back, which is the mirror-image of the whole process of emanation. The soul turns back to its Source, through control, asceticism, higher knowledge and finally the intuitive vision of the One. He also held that everything in the world reflects every other.
There are those, of course, who see a large gap between Plotinus and Neo-Platonism on the one hand and Plato on the other. There are two or three points of some divergence. Thus the later Platonists were less Pythagorean than Plato himself. Their interests were less in science than in religion or salvation. Second, whereas the Forms were depicted by as if they hung loose from God, they are firmly anchored in the Nous in Neo-Platonism. Third, Plato may or may not have thought of his vision of the Good in mystical terms, that is, as a “vision” yielded by contemplative or yogic practice; but this is the main thrust of Neo-Platonism. It thus converged with the growing interest in mysticism exhibited in Christianity. The ascetic life was a way of affirming values which were likely to wither since Christianity became the official faith of the Empire.
LECTURE 5.
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