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The Foundations of
Western Philosophy
Pre-Socratics,
Socrates, Plato, Aristotle
"The basic theme of mythology is that the visible world is supported
and sustained by an invisible world."
-- Joseph Campbell
• Three periods in Greek Philosophy
– 1st- Pre-Socratic begins with Thales'
prediction of a solar eclipse in 585 B.C. and
ends in 400 B.C.
– 2nd- Known for its schools: Academy, Lyceum,
Epicureans, Stoics, and Skeptics
– 3rd- syncretism- begins circa 100 BC and ends
in 529 AD
• Justinian forbade the teaching of pagan philosophy
The Greek Failure
• Greek politics revealed the capabilities and
limitations of reason
• When people no longer regarded the law as an
expression of sacred traditions ordained by the
god and saw it as a human creation, respect for
the law diminished
• The Greeks originated the belief that humans
could regulate their political lives according to
reason but their history shows difficult it was to
maintain a rational society
Triumph of Greek Thought
• The emphasis on reason in the 5th century
BC marked a turning point in human
civilization
• They originated this norm, defined it, and
consciously applied it to their intellectual
and social life
• The Ionians were the first to seek physical
explanations for natural occurrence
• Said that there is an intelligible, hidden
structure
Why the Greeks?
• Maybe their familiarity with near eastern math
and science
• Maybe the poets’ conception of human behavior
as subject to universal destiny
• Or the philosophers’ belief that nature was
governed by law
• Maybe it was fostered by the Greeks’ freedom
from a priesthood and rigid religious doctrines
• Perhaps it was city life where law governed
human activity. Should not the universe also be
regulated by principles of order
Pre-Socratic Thought
• Started on the Greek cities of Ionia at the end of the
7th century BC
• Combined mythology with rationalism
• Sought to discover all the forces of which nature is
comprised- as to opposed to the Theocentrism and
anthropomorphism of their predecessors
– Explored the causes of creation
– Tried to discover the forces on which the universe and
humanity are founded
• Asia Minor, Thrace, Sicily and Southern Italy
• Modern concepts and sciences are the legacy of these
philosophers
– Substance, infinity, power, numbers, motion, being, atoms,
etc. are creations of this philosophical thought.
The Milesians: “Matter Philosophers”
• Cosmologists- sought to discover the principles
• Thales- proposed that the world was made up of water
in its 3 stages- omitted the gods- also predicted an
eclipse
– Based on observation- births, etc.
• Anaximander- rejected the 4 elements:
– Earth, air, fire, water oppose each other
– Makes it impossible for any one to be the basic stuff
• Apeiron- the boundless - the unobservable indefinite that composes
the observable elements
• Opposition creates a state of strife
• Anaximenes- criticized apeiron and appealed to 2
principles:
– Observation- more reasonable to use the observable
Pythagoreans
• A sort of religious cult in southern Italy
• Concern for the soul
– Focused on how one ought to live
– The soul is immortal and comes back in different human and
animal forms; became Vegetarians
– Must practice philosophy to care for the soul
– Must purify oneself to avoid reincarnations and insure
reunion with the one divine, originating soul
• Concern for mathematics
– Discovered that the musical intervals of the music scale
(octaves, 5ths and 4ths) are functions of fixed ratios
• They concluded that a fixed, rational structure can be understood
behind the confusion of the observable world
The World According to Math
• Practicing philosophy purifies the soul in 2 ways
– By studying and understanding the rational
structure of the world, the soul takes on the form of
that which it studies
• More rational, orderly and pure
– By studying the pure and rational instead of the
irrational and chaotic the soul is separated from its
worldly counterpart
• Emerging sense of dualism:
– Body/soul, necessary/contingent, a priori/a posteriori,
rational/empirical
Heraclitus
• Lived in Ephesus and was “the Obscure”
• 3 general theses
– All things in the world happen according to Logos
• Means to say or to speak but is hard to define
– John 1:1
• Logos is rational order and grasping it is Wisdom
– The world in Flux- commonsense is mistaken:
• That the world is stable
• That the world consists of things
– The balance of strife gives the impression of stability- a bow
– The Unity of Opposites- everything is really one
• Up and down are the same path, day and night are the
same day, etc.
Parmenides
• Concerned with argument- show why
• The way of truth
• Challenged the Ionians that all things emerged from
one originally substance
• Applied the mathematical logic of the Pythagoreans to
philosophy
• Became the founder of formal logic
• His followers were Eleatics- named after Parmenides
hometown of Elea in Southern Italy
– Zeno of Elea- the intuitive view is subject to difficultiesreductio ad absurdum
Legacies of Parmenides
• The Pluralists- revisionists, could not accept
Parmenides but could not fix it either
– Empedocles- “it is” is the 4 elements and 2 forces (love and
strife)
– Leucippus and Democritus- plurality of particles
• A void exists and it is filled with indivisible particles called atoms
• The Sophists- Nihilistic tendencies- Nothing is true
– Denied the gap between the way the world is and the way it
appears
• Nothing is; if something was it couldn’t be known; if something could
be known it couldn’t be communicated
• Religious implications- He never did refer to True
Being as God but he ascribed it with the attributes of
oneness, transcendence, permanence, and perfection
The Sophists
• Invented formal secular education
• They were philosophical relativists
• Concerned mostly with human activity and
institutions
• Immoralism- when humanism meets nihilism
– Justice benefits others
– Injustice benefits the agent
– Only the weak or the stupid would strive to benefit
others
• A reaction to this is seen in the philosophies of
Socrates and his disciples
The Socratic Tradition
"The Death of Socrates" by Jacques-Louis David (1787)
Socrates
Who is he?
– Three testimonies
• Aristophanes- comic poet who shows Socrates to be a
sophist natural philosopher who would help anyone
willing to pay turn a bad argument into a good one and
who denied the city gods
• Xenophon- a military general would sees Socrates as a
moral instructor and religious man who was quick to give
advice and was an example of morality
• Plato- disciple of Socrates who shows him to deny the
sophists, deny natural philosophy, deny that he knows
anything, to espouse non-traditional morality
The Delphic Oracle- Apology
• An oracle told Socrates’ friend that they was no one
wiser than Socrates
• Socrates was flabbergasted and decided to find out
what made him wise
– He believed that he knew nothing
• Divine mission
–
–
–
–
Examine all that claim to have knowledge
If they have the knowledge, learn from it
If they don’t, make them aware of their ignorance
3 features of the mission
• Socratic method
• Professions of ignorance
• Care for the soul
Socratic Method
• Concerned with questions and answers,
and definitions
• Elencho (refutation or examination)
– Encourage the interlocutor to express a belief
– Get him to express some other beliefs
– Show that the latter beliefs deny the prior
– He then concluded that the interlocutor
doesn’t know what he is talking about and
invites him to come search
Professions of Ignorance
• Socratic irony- he assures and encourages his
interlocutors to continue talking
• Some believe that this and his claim that he does not
know are forms of deception
• Others claim that he is skeptical of his interlocutors’
grasp of knowledge but is sincere in seeking to learn
from them if they are truly knowledgeable
• Socratic Epistemology- distinction between knowledge
and true belief
– Knowledge is more stable than belief
– Greater stability results from the knowers ability to work out
the reason why
Socrates and the Sophists
• Socrates appears to abandon cosmological
speculation in favor of humanism
• Socratic ignorance may resemble nihilism
• It seems that people are persistently unable to
answer the questions without falling prey to
inconsistency or absurdity
• Sophists thought it was hopeless
• Socrates saw the pursuit of knowledge as the
valuable occupation
– If you find knowledge you become an expert in the area
and moral expertise was the most noble
• Socrates was concerned with the perfection of the
human character
Care for the Soul
• Ethics- concerned with the nature of good and
bad, right and wrong
– Wanted to remove it from the realm of authority,
tradition, dogma, superstition, or myth
– Reason is the only proper guide
• Socratic Intellectualism
– Virtue is knowledge
– Views concerning three things:
• Nature of human happiness
• Effect of virtuous and vicious acts on the soul
• Ability to act contrary to perceived goodness
Happiness (eudaimonia)
• Happiness is the ultimate human good and it results
from a flourishing healthy soul
– A virtuous soul
• Acting viciously makes the soul vicious
• Weakness of the will- we all seek the good
– Someone who desires bad things either thinks they are good
or bad
– To want something is to want to possess it
– To want to possess is to feel that it would be a benefit
– To think it beneficial is to think it good
– Nobody desires bad things thinking they are bad
– Someone who desires bad things thinking they are good
really desires good things
Two Corollaries
• Wrongdoing is involuntary
– It is done out of ignorance
• Unity of virtues
– To be virtuous is to maintain all virtue
• If you are courageous you are temperate
• If you are temperate you are holy
• If you are holy you are courageous
Plato
• None of Plato’s philosophy is written in the
1st person
• Plato is only mentioned 3 times in all his
writing
• Socrates sometimes speaks for Plato
Theory of Recollection
• After questioning Meno on his beliefs regarding
virtue, meno is perplexed
• Socrates asks his to join him to search for the
knowledge
• Meno questions how this search could happen
– We either know what we are looking for or we don’t
– If we know what we are looking for, the search is
pointless
– If we don’t know then it is impossible
– So the search is either pointless or impossible
• Depends on an all or nothing concept of
knowledge that Plato will attack
A Priori Knowledge
• Plato believed that learning is recollection
• Prior to birth, the soul knows everything but in the
process of birth, it forgets what it knew
• So Meno’s search was an attempt to remember what
the soul knows but has forgotten
• Plato denied the 2nd premise, not the 3rd
– 2- If we know what we are looking for, the search is
pointless
– 3-If we don’t know then it is impossible
• If the soul existed before physical existence, what is
implied about the soul after the physical?
Conversation with a Slave Boy
• “What is the length of the side of a square that
is double the area of a square whose side is 2
feet long?”
• Three parts
– The boy says 4 then 3 then admits that he doesn’t
know
– Socrates continues to question and shows
diagrams that lead the boy to see his mistake
– The boy has converted his belief regarding the
length of the side by being asked the same
question over and over and in different ways
Two-Worlds Theory
• World of things that are
– Beauty, equality, justice, holiness
• World of things that are not
– Common objects that we sense
• Knowledge is restricted to necessary
truths. They can be known but not
believed
– The length of the side of the square
– Courage is a virtue
Theory of Forms
• What is virtue? What is the thing that all
virtuous items share?
• Forms are the things that are
– These are the things that are known prior to
birth
– The equal sticks strive to be like Equality but
fall short
Allegory of the Cave
• Prisoners are bound in a cave seeing only
shadows on the wall
• They can’t turn to see themselves or the things
that are creating them
• They are forced to believe that what they see is
real
• One man is freed and sees what is outside
• He is faced with three options:
– Teach and be persecuted, leave the cave forever, or
go back to his old ways of thinking
Affinity Argument
• Something is composite insofar as it is likely to survive
• Something is constant and unvarying insofar as it is likely to be
incomposite
• Forms are constant and unvarying: sensibles vary and are
never constant
• So forms should survive while sensibles should not
• Forms are invisible; sensibles are visible
• The soul is invisible; the body is visible
• So, the soul is similar to forms and the body to the sensibles
• The soul studies the forms when it is unhindered by the body
and the sensibles while it is
• So, the soul is similar to forms and the body to the sensibles
• The soul should be master and the body its slave
• So, the soul is similar to forms and the body to the sensibles
• So the soul is likely to survive, the body is not
• Sensibles resemble Forms like a copy resembles an original
Trinitarian approach
• Justice in the city is when its three parts are
functioning peacefully
– Rulers are ruling
– Soldiers are soldiering
– Workers are working
• Justice in the soul is similar
– 3 parts of the soul
• The Appetite- Passion
• Reason
• The spirit
• Does this resemble the paradigm of mind, body, and
spirit?
Justice in the Soul
• The appetite desires for its own sake
• Reason rules the appetite and pursues goods
for their own sake and for the sake of
consequence
• The spirit is the motivation and conscience in
a sense because it focuses on consequence
• Justice in the individual
– Each part of the soul is performing its task:
• Reason ruling
• Spirit conscientiously and courageously defending the
dictates of reason against the cravings of appetite
Raffaele’s School of Athens
Plato and Socrates
Aristotle
• Undertook the monumental task of
organizing and systematizing the thought
of the Materialists, Socrates, and Plato
• He believed that reason was the highest
human faculty and the polis was the
foundation of Greek life
• He believed in Plato’s universal principles
but felt that they were derived from human
experience with the material world
Critique of Plato’s Forms
• His confidence lay in the senses- empiricism
• He wanted to swing the pendulum from the higher world
to the material world
• Plato’s belief in a separate metaphysical world beyond
space and time seemed t contradict reason
• This seemed to be mystical and showed that Plato
undervalued the physical world
• Said that forms were not located in a higher world but
existed in things themselves
• Aristotle favored the empirical sciences that were based
on observation
– It became the task of science to arrange facts into a system of
knowledge
Ethics
• Knowledge of ethics was possible through
reason
• The good life was the examined life
• People are not entirely rational and
passion can’t be ignored or eliminated
• With proper training and habituation,
people could learn to subordinate passion
to reason
• The doctrine of the mean
The Legacy
• Western thought begins with the Greeks
– Reason
– Freedom
– Humanism
• By discovering theoretical freedom, defining
political freedom, and affirming the worth and
potential of human personality, the Greeks broke
from the past and founded the rational and
humanist tradition of the West” (Perry 2004, 99).