GREEK PHILOSOPHY
- The Socratic Period
- The Sophists.
They were a group of wandering teachers in 5th century B.C. Greece
who came to Athens to teach the young men how to succeed in political
life. Their name comes from the Greek word sophistes which
means "ones who make men wise" or "wise ones."
They changed the emphasis of philosophy from cosmological speculations
of the pre-socratic period to anthropological and sociological
questions. They were interested in language, rhetoric, education,
social and political philosophy. They were the first philosophers
to teach for money which was in part why they were held in contempt.
Since no one could hope to succeed as a politician unless he
could speak, and speak well, the Sophists professed to teach them
to do this, training him in the art of Rhetoric. They were the
first rhetoricians who professed to teach the right way to win
lawsuits. This meant teaching men how to make an unjust cause
appear to be just. Thus they were not concerned with objective
truth, but with what works. They were interested in the practical,
not the speculative. Thus sophistry, the practical teaching of
these men, became synonymous with the art of making an invalid
but misleading argument seem reasonable and plausible. Thus the
term "sophist" came to acquire an unsavoury flavor,
meaning a quibbler or a deceptive liar. The word "sophism"
has come into such disrepute that it now usually means misleading
or false reasoning, by which something true is either refuted
or made dubious, or something false is proved and made plausible.
- Protagoras (481-411 B.C.) [Abdera, Athens]
- The oldest and most successful of the Sophists and his fees
for teaching were described as large. He studied under Democritus.
- He was first to maintain and argue that there are two sides
to every question, which are opposed to each other. All opinions
are true.
- He is said to hold that "Man is the measure of all things,
of existing things that they exist, and of non-existing thing
that they exist not." By "measure" he means the
criterion, and by "things" the objects of the senses,
so that he is virtually asserting that man is the criterion of
the existence of all objects. Only those objects perceived by
the senses are things, that is, do exist, but those which do not
do not exist.
- He accepted the Heraclitean theory of the flux of all things.
Thus there is no absolute truth, since all things change. He
reduced all knowledge to perceptions. Thus all knowledge is not
only relative but is relative to each perceiver at the moment
of perceiving. Opinions are tested by their practicality: do
they work? Those that work are acceptable; those that fail are not.
- He is depicted as saying that ethical judgments are relative
and that the wise man should attempt to substitute sound practices
for unsound. In other words, there is no question of one ethical
view being true and another false, but there is a question of
one view being more useful or expedient, than another. He, however,
used his relativistic ethical doctrines to support tradition and
authority.
- In the introduction to a book entitled On the Gods
he wrote: "As to the gods, I have no means of knowing either
that they exist or that they do not exist. For many are the obstacles
that impede knowledge, both the obscurity of the question and
the shortness of human life." It appears that he tried to
apply his relativism to the problem of the existence or nonexistence
of the gods. This agnosticism got him into trouble with Athenians.
They expelled him and burned his works in the market-place, after
sending around a herald to collect them from all who had copies
in their possession. After being driven from Athens, he died
on a voyage to Sicily, when his ship went down.
- Prodicus (c.460-399 B.C.) [Cera, Athens]
- He was a pessimist, holding that death is desirable in order
to escape the evils of life. Fear of death is irrational.
- He held that in the beginning men worshipped as gods the
things that were useful to them and gave them food. Later the
inventors of various arts were worshipped as the gods such as
Demeter, Dionysus, Hephaestus, etc. Prayer on this view would
be superfluous and he seems to have got into trouble in Athens.
- Like Protagoras, he studied the science of grammar and wrote
a treatise on synomyms. He seems to have been pedantic in his
forms of expession. He advocated moderate length for speeches.
- Socrates said he studied with him but only could take the
short course; however, he sent students to him.
- Hippias (5th century B.C.) [Elis, Athens]
- A younger contemporary of Protagoras was famous for his versatility,
being acquainted with and lecturing on various subject, including
mathematics and astronomy.
- He was interested in literature and music.
- He was also interested in archaeology and politics. He served
as ambassador from Elis.
- He regarded Law as opposed to Nature, and a tyrant over man.
He said, "law, being the tyrant of men, forces them to do
many things contrary to nature."
- Gorgias (483-380 B.C.) [Leontini, Athens]
- The second most important Sophist. He was at first a student
of Empedocles and concerned himself with questions of natural
sciences. He may have written a book on Optics.
- He was led to skepticism by the dialectic of Zeno and published
a work entitled On Not-being or Nature. He reacted to
the Eleatic dialectic differently than Protagoras: the latter
said the everything is true, Gorgias maintained the very opposite.
He held that
- Nothing exists, for if there were anything, then it would
have either to be eternal or to have come into being. But it
cannot have come into being for neither out of Being nor out of
Not-being can anything come to be. Nor can it be eternal, for
the infinite is impossible.
- If there is anything, then it could not be known. For if
there is knowledge of being, then what is thought must be. In
which case there can be no error, which is absurd.
- If there could be knowledge of being, it could not be communicated.
Every sign is different from the thing signified; for example,
how could we impart knowledge of colors by words, since the ear
hears sounds and not colors?
Gorgias, no doubt, did not believe that nothing exists. He was
probably employing the Eleatic dialectic in order to reduce the
Eleactic philosphy to absurdity. Afterwards, renouncing philosophy,
he devoted himself to rhetoric.
- He regarded rhetoric as the art of persuasion which led him
to a study of practical psychology.
- Other Sophists.
- Lycophron (5th century B.C.) [Athens]
He was a disciple of Gorgias who suggested the elimination of
the copula, that is, the verb "to be," in interests
of clarity.
- Thrasymachus (5th century B.C.) [Chalcedon]
He is a main character in Book I of Plato's Republic as
the defender of the "Might-is-right" theory of justice.
Defined justice as the interest of the stronger and drew a distinction
between natural and conventional justice.
- Callicles (5th century B.C.) [Acharnae]
He enters Plato's dialogue, Gorgias, as a contemporary
of Socrates. He made explicit the superiority of natural over
conventional justice. He argues that the natural law by which
the strong rule is also a natural right and an expression of natural
justice. He argues that the conventions of society must be thrown
off in order to act according to natural justice. He also argued
for pleasure as the goal of life.
- Antiphon (5th century B.C.) [Athens]
He also distinguished between natural and conventional justice,
holding that the authority of laws is imposed artificially while
the authority of nature is intrinsically binding. He also asserts
the equality of all men and denounces the distinction between
nobles and commons, Greek and barbarians, as itself a barbarism.
He made education to be the most important thing in life.
- Critias (5th century B.C.) [Athens]
He studied under Gorgias and Socrates. Becoming a political leader,
he was banished from Athens and returned as one of the overseers
of the city. He was regarded as the most unscrupulous of the
thirty tyrants. He put forth the theory that both law and religion
were inventions of those in authority to control the people.
He held that the laws of the state and the teachings of religion
transformed men from savages to citizens by means of the fear
of punishment.
- Cratylus (5th century B.C.) [Athens]
He held to an extreme form of the Heraclitean doctrine that all
things change, maintaining that one could not step into the same
river even once. Acting consistently with this view, he is said
to have renounced speech and merely pointed to things. In Plato's
dialogue, Cratylus, he defends the Heraclitean view that a thing's
nature is frequently discoverable through its name, and that there
is a natural connection between a thing and its name.
- Sophism - Summary
- Sophism made man the center of philosophy, shifting from
cosmological questions to epistemological and ethical questions.
- All knowledge is relative and no objective knowledge of absolutes
are possible - skepticism. Each man has his own perceptions and
that one man's perceptions are as good as another man's. Therefore
there is no absolute truth binding all alike - relativism. One
man's opinion is true (or false) as another man's.
- Raised many problems, particularly in epistemology and ethics,
but were unable to solve them.
- Introduced the distinction between the natural and conventional
in law, justice, society and religion.
- Socrates (469-399 B.C.) [Athens]
- His life. He was the son of an Athenian stone cutter, named
Sophroniscus, and a mid-wife. Socrates learned his father's trade,
but in a sense, practiced his mother's. Plato makes him describe
himself as one who assists at the birth of ideas. With exception
of two periods of military service, he remained in Athens all
his life. He is described as ugly of face, shabby in dress, frugal,
but broadly tolerant. He claimed to be guided by a diamon which
warned him against what was wrong. Plato suggests that Socrates
enjoyed mystical experiences. Much of his time was spent in high-minded
philosophic discussion with those he chanced to meet in the public
places of Athens. The young men enjoyed his easy methods of discussion
and delighted in his frequent quizzing of the Sophists. Socrates
characterized his mission in life to be that of a gadfly, causing
the lazy stead of Athens to bestir herself. He was eventually
accused by a group of young politicians in the Athenian citizen
court of
(i) not worshipping the gods that the state worships,
but introducing new and unfamiliar religious practices and
(ii) corrupting the youth. The Athenians had earlier
imprisoned Anaxagoras and exiled Protagoras for atheism and skepticism.
Socrates was found guilty, and sentenced to die. He submitted to the court's
verdict and drank the hemlock poison. Thus ended the life of
one of the greatest Athenians.
- Socrates wrote nothing and he is known through three widely
divergent contemporary accounts. The comic poet Aristophanes
has caricatured him in the Clouds as the culmination of
Sophistry. Xenophon has described him, with personal respect
but little understanding of his philosophical depth. Plato's
dialogues idealize him and probably develop the Socratic philosophy
far beyond his original ideas.
- Socrates in his early twenties turned away from the cosmological
speculations of the Ionians towards the study of man himself.
It seems certain that Socrates began by studying the cosmological
theories in the philosophies of Archelaus, Diogenes of Apollonia,
Empedocles and others. He was probably a member of the School
of Archelaus, who was the successor of Anaxagoras at Athens.
When he was perplexed by the disagreement of the various philosophical
theories, he received sudden light from the passage where Anaxagoras
spoke of Mind as being the cause of all natural law and order.
Delighted with the idea, Socrates began to study Anaxagoras,
in the hope that the latter would explain how Mind works in the
world, ordering all things for the best. What he actually found
was that Anaxagoras introduced Mind merely in order to get the
vortex-movement going. This disappointed Socrates and apparently
set him on his own line of investigation, abandoning the Natural
Philosohy which seemed to lead nowhere, except to confusion and
opposing opinions.
- Socrates is probably best known for his method. The Socratic
method is a way of teaching in which the teacher professes to
impart no information or knowledge (In the case of Socrates he
claimed to have none), but draws out of the student more and more
definite answers by means of pointed questions. The method is
best illustrated in Socrates' questioning of a uneducated slave
boy presented in Plato's dialogue Meno. The boy is led,
step by step, to a demonstration of a special case of the Pythagorean
theorem. Socrates' use of the method is predicated on the belief
that children are born with knowledge already in their souls,
which they have forgotten, and they cannot recall or remember
this knowledge without some help (theory of anamnesis).
The method is also associated with what is called Socratic
Irony; that is, the pretension of ignorance on the part of
questioner, who may be in fact quite wise.
- Aristotle credits Socrates with two contributions to philosophy:
"inductive arguments and universal definitions." Aristotle
does not mean that Socrates developed a theory of the inductive
method or of universals. Rather he is referring to Socrates'
actual practice and method. By inductive argument Aristotle is
referring to Socrates' method of examination of individual cases
in order to discover what they have in common, the characteristics
under which they are to be classed. Thus this method moves from
the particular to the universal which is expressed in the formulated
definition. This is what Socrates is presented as doing in the
early dialogues of Plato: in Euthyphro piety is defined,
in Charmides temperance, and in Lysis friendship. In these dialogues
Socrates' typical method or "dialectic" was to question
the use of a word and this led to a consideration of cases. Although
in the above dialogues he does not reach any definitive results,
Socrates purpose is clear; he is attempting to arrive at a universal
definition which is true everywhere and always. According to
Book I of the Republic, definitions are to be rejected
if they can be reduced to absurdity, or shown to be either vague
or inconsistent. The use of these critera distinguishes Socrates
from the Sophists who used the ambiguities of ordinary language
to win arguments and to defend their relativism.
- Socrates' purpose was primarily ethical. Aristotle says
quite clearly that Socrates "was busying himself about ethical
matters." Socrates' search for universal definitions was
the basis for his central ethical doctrine that knowledge and
virtue are identical: knowledge is virtue and virtue is knowledge.
That is, the wise man, who knows what is right, will also do
what is right. In other words, no one does evil knowingly with
a set purpose. Men do evil because they are ignorant of the good.
That is, they have mistaken the evil for good or they have confused
apparent goods for the real good. In this doctrine "ethical
intellectualism" Socrates means by "good" whatever
will lead to man's true happiness (eudaimonia). Socrates'
ethics is eudaemonistic as well as rationalistic.
- Socrates also held to the doctrine that it is always better
to suffer than to do evil. He made this ethical point with his
death; he refused to do evil to escape from death. His argument
is that when another aims at doing evil to you, all he succeeds
in doing is laying down a challenge the facing of which will develop
inner strength. This is analogous to the hardships of physical
training by which the body becomes stronger. But when in response
to another's attempt to do evil to you, one returns evil, then
the evil is no longer an external condition, but becomes an inner
reality which weakens one's soul and decreases one's inner strength.
- Whether Socrates held to the doctrines of the immortality
of the soul and of reality of ideas or forms is part of the larger problem,
"the Socratic problem": how much of the material in
the Platonic dialogues was really the philosophy of Socrates and
how much was the philosophy of Plato?
- Minor Socratic Schools.
- The Megarian School.
- Euclid (450-374 B.C.) [Megara]
- His Life. Euclid (not to be confused with the mathematician)
was an early disciple of Socrates and was present at his death.
After his death Plato and other Socratics took refuge with Euclid
at Megara.
- His Philosophy. He was acquainted with the doctrine of the
Eleatics, which he modified and conceive of the One as the Good.
He also asserted that the One is known by many names, identifying
the One with God and with Reason. He denied multiplicity, which
he held with the Eleatics as an illusion.
- Eubulides of Miletus, who developed an Eristic, a kind of
polemic, characterized by the use of logical subtleties and ingenious
arguments designed to disprove a position through a reductio
ad absurdum. He developed the Paradox of the Liar.
- Philo of Megara defined Material Implication.
- Diodorus of Cronus identified the actual and the possible:
only the actual is possible.
- Stilpo of Megara taught ethics in Athens, but was afterwards
banished. He taught apatheia, resigned self-sufficiency.
Zeno the Stoic, was his pupil. He attacked Plato's theory of Ideas.
- The Elean-Eretrian School. Named after Phaedo [Elis] (the
Phaedo of Plato's Dialogue) and Menedemus of Eretria. Phaedo
used the dialectic like the Megarians, and Menedemus was chiefly
interested in ethics, holding to the unity of virtue and knowledge.
- The early Cynic School
- Antisthenes (444-366 B.C.) [Athens] was founder of the School
which met in a gymnasium known as the Kynosarges, whence the name
of the School (disciples of the dogs). Admiring Socrates' independence
of character, he set up this independence and self-sufficiency
as an ideal or end in itself. Virtue is sufficient by itself
for happiness: nothing else is required. Virtue is the absence
of desire, freedom from wants. Later developed by the Stoics.
He opposed Plato's theory of Ideas.
- Diogenes (412-323 B.C.) [Sinope, Athens] was an extreme adherent.
He called himself the "Dog," and held up the life of
animals as a model for mankind.
- The Cyrenaic School
- Aristippus (c. 435-356 B.C.) [Cyrene, Athens].
He founded the School. From the Sophist Protagoras he taught
that our sensations alone give us certain knowledge, not of things
or sensations of others, but as a subjective basis for practical
conduct. It follows that the end of conduct is to obtain pleasurable
sensations. Pleasure is the sole end of life. This doctrine
is known as Hedonism. Socrates had indeed declared that
virtue is the one path to happiness, and he set happiness as a
motive for the practice of virtue. Aristippus interpreted this
to mean pleasure is the sole end of life. The sole criterion
of pleasure is intensity. He held that bodily pleasures are to
be preferred over intellectual pleasures, as being more an intense
and powerful. Positive pleasure, and not absence of pain, is
to be sought. Unrestrained excesses are to be avoided, because
they lead to pain. The wise man will use judgment in order to
enable him to evaluate the different pleasures of life. If he
allows himself to be enslaved to pleasure, then he cannot be enjoying
pleasure, but rather pain. This teaching was continued by the
Epicureans.
- Theodorus the Atheist, who denied the existence of anything
divine, held that end of life is an enduring emotion of joy rather
than momentary feelings of pleasures. The happiness produced
by wisdom is the greatest good.
- Hegesias stressed the advoidance of pain rather than the
cultivation of pleasure. Since the pains of life outweigh the
pleasures, the task of philosophy was teach how pain is to be
avoided. He was so convinced of the miseries of life and of the
impossibility of attaining happiness, that he emphasized a negative
concept of the end of life. His lectures at Alexandria were so
dramatic that many of his hearers committed suicide and they were
banned by Ptolemy I.
- Annikeris stressed the positive side of Cyrenaicism, making
positive pleasure and, indeed, individual acts of gratification
the end of life. He differed from Aristippus in limiting pleasure
to those derived from social relationships; thus he recommended
that we should be willing to suffer pain in order to gain pleasures
of friendship, parental respect, the gratitude of others, and
patriotism.
- Democritus (460-370 B.C.) [Abdera]
- He was a disciple of Leucippus and was adherent of the Atomist
school.
- He gave attention to the problem of knowledge raised by Protagoras
(there is no absolute separation between sense and thought) and
to the problem of conduct which the relativistic doctrines of
the Sophist had raised (happiness is the end of conduct, and pleasures
and pain determine happiness). "The best thing for a man
is to pass his life so as to have as much joy and as little trouble
as may be."