Transcript Backgrounds to English Literature

Backgrounds to English
Literature
Lecture 9: Greek Philosophy 1
=Historical map of the Ancient Greek Philosophy
-The Pre-Socratics
-The Sophists
-Socrates
-Plato
-Aristotle
-Hellenistic Philosophy (the Cynics, Sceptics, Epicureans and Stoics.)
=Origin of the term, Philosophy
-The English word philosophy came from Old French filosofie (12c.,
Modern French philosophie)
-filosofie directly from Latin philosophia and from Greek philosophia
-philo =loving + Sophia = knowledge, wisdom: love of knowledge,
pursuit of wisdom
Pre-Socratics
=The Ionic School
-About 600 BC, the Greek cities of Ionia were the intellectual and
cultural leaders of Greece -Miletus, the southernmost Ionian city,
was the wealthiest of Greek cities and the main focus of the “Ionian
awakening”
-The first group of Greek philosophers is a triad of Milesian thinkers:
Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes.
-Main characteristics:
1. Their approach required the rejection of all traditional explanations
based on religious authority, dogma, myth and superstition. They all
agreed on the notion that all things come from a single “primal
substance.”
2. Their main concern was to come up with a cosmological theory
purely based on natural phenomena (scientific method).
3. Observation was important for them. Anaximander, based on the
fact that human infants are helpless at birth, argued that if the first
human had somehow appeared on earth as an infant, it would not have
survived: therefore, humans have evolved from other animals whose
offspring are fitter.
-Why Look at the Pre-Socratics?: Socrates, Plato and Aristotle
produced their philosophy in reaction to and developing from that of
the pre-Socratics.
=Thales (624-550B.C.)
-Founder or father of the Ionic School of philosophy. The very first
philosopher
-Believed that the universe was controlled by fixed laws
-The principle of all things is water, that all comes from water & to
water all returns
-the earth is a flat disc which floats upon water
-The significance of Thales is not that this “water” philosophy has
any value in itself, but that this was the first recorded attempt to
explain the universe on naturalistic and scientific principles (not by
myths & gods).
=Other philosophers
-Anaximander (610 – 546 B.C.): the beginning or first principle is an
endless, unlimited mass, subject to neither old age nor decay, which
perpetually yields fresh materials from which everything we can
perceive is derived.
-Anaximenes (585 – 528 B.C.): everything in the world is composed
of air
-Pythagoras (582-500 B.C.): The universe could only be understood
through numbers. Famous for the Pythagorean Theorem: a2 + b2 =
c2
=The Sophists
-Etymology of the term, sophist:
1. From Greek sophists: a master of one's craft, a wise or prudent
man, one clever in matters of daily life
2. Greek sophistes came to mean: one who gives intellectual
instruction for pay
-Who are the Sophists?: The sophists were itinerant professional
teachers and intellectuals who went around Athens and other Greek
cities in the second half of the fifth century B.C. In return for a fee,
the sophists offered young wealthy Greek men an education in arete.
-Democracy
1. About 500 B.C., Athens implemented a socio-political innovation
by which all free male citizens had equal rights regardless of their
origin and fortune.
2. Democracy allowed all free citizens to be part of the important
decisions of the polis. They could engage in the discussions held
during deliberative assembly and tribunals, their voices could be
heard everywhere and had the same value as any other voice.
3. Speech and rhetoric: being able to discuss different topics
effectively and to persuade others, granted a competitive advantage
for a precondition of political success and also indispensable as a
form of self-defence in the event that one was subject to a lawsuit.
-Sophists
1. Protagoras (490-420 B.C.): Most famous of the Sophists. Plato
reports he was the first to charge fees using that title. He believed
that reason and knowledge should be used to achieve a comfortable,
safe, and happy life.
2. Gorgias (485 - c.390 B.C.), Antiphon (470-411 B.C.), Hippias
-The historical and philological difficulties confronting an
interpretation of the sophists: Only a handful of sophistic texts have
survived and most of what we know of the sophists is drawn from
second-hand testimony.
-The generally hostile depiction of them in Plato’s dialogues.
Socrates (469 - 399 B.C.)
=Who is Socrates?
-Little is known about him, apart from the fact that he was born in
Athens in the year 469 B.C.; his father was a sculptor and his mother
a midwife; portraits and descriptions make it clear that he had a
heavy, rather ugly, face, with a snub nose, prominent eyes beneath
shaggy eyebrows, and a large full mouth.
-Left no writings
-Stories about Socrates
1. Socrates instructing a young and naive Plato to destroy his
youthful attempts at poetry
2. Socrates standing for a day and a night rooted to the spot
(wrestling with a thought), while others brought up mattresses to
watch and take bets on how long he’d stay there
3. The death of Socrates
-He is the most influential philosopher and his footprints are
everywhere, but the man himself as an elusive figure is nowhere to
be found
-Most famous student: Plato
-The drawing of Socrates and Plato from Mathew Paris (1217-1259)
in a 13th century manuscript (Bodelian Library, Oxford) and Derrida’s
response to it: he “stumbled across it” he “stopped dead, with a
feeling of hallucination . . . and of revelation at the same time, an
apocalyptic revelation.” It seems as if Plato is dictating to his teacher,
Socrates, who is reduced to child-like obedience (the funny hat).
=Opening a new chapter in philosophy
-Like the Sophists, Socrates enjoyed teaching, but unlike the
Sophists he never requested a fee in return and lived a life of
austerity.
-He either underestimated or ignored most of the topics that were
popular among his predecessors. Before the time of Socrates,
philosophers’ main concern had been the physical world and how to
explain it naturally.
-Instead, Socrates set in motion a new approach by focusing entirely
on moral and psychological questions. His methodology sought to
define key questions such as: what is virtue? what is patriotism? what
do you mean by morality?
-Socrates set the standard for Western philosophy as we know it
today in that he abandoned the study of natural science and turned to
the study of human life.
=Socratic way of doing philosophy: Socrates’ dialectic method as a
departure from earlier philosophers
-Socrates’ method of discussion was a question/answer system in
which he claimed ignorance and questioned the aristocratic youths of
Athens.
-5 steps:
1. Admit ignorance.
2. Never rely on tradition.
3. Continuously question.
4. Formulate your own opinions.
5. Test your opinions with others.
=Socrates on Trial
-399 B.C. 3 Athenian citizens (Meletus, Anytus, Lycon) accused
Socrates of two charges: corrupting the minds of the youth and
heresy (impiety against the pantheon of Athens). He drank poison
hemlock.
-Why?: The trial and execution of Socrates in Athens in 399 B.C.
puzzles historians. Why, in a society enjoying more freedom and
democracy than any the world had ever seen, would a seventy-yearold philosopher be put to death for what he was teaching?
-The two surviving accounts of the defense (or apology) of Socrates
both come from disciples of his, Plato and Xenophon. Historians
suspect that Plato and Xenophon, intent on showing their master in a
favorable light, failed to present in their accounts the most damning
evidence against Socrates.
-Historical and political contexts:
1. By combining a humble spirit (he never claimed to be any wiser
than anyone else) and a strict agnosticism (he said he knew nothing)
with a method that challenged conventional assumptions and an
intolerance for unclear thinking, Socrates gradually earned enemies
from various sectors of Athenian society.
2. Wealthy parents of these young men were not happy with the new
ideas their sons were espousing, and, since many of them were
involved in politics, they managed to make Socrates a controversial
political figure.
-Socrates’s acceptance of the penalty: Athenians did not like to
condemn a citizen to death, therefore, this was merely a formal
sentence and he was offered the possibility to escape. He refused to
do so and obeyed the jury’s decision: a mixture containing poison
hemlock took away his life, but his example granted him immortality.
-Plato described Socrates' death in the Phaedo:
“The man … laid his hands on him and after a while examined his feet
and legs, then pinched his foot hard and asked if he felt it. He said
‘No’; then after that, his thighs; and passing upwards in this way he
showed us that he was growing cold and rigid. And then again he
touched him and said that when it reached his heart, he would be
gone. The chill had now reached the region about the groin, and
uncovering his face, which had been covered, he said — and these
were his last words — ‘Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius. Pay it and
do not neglect it.’ ‘That,’ said Crito, ‘shall be done; but see if you
have anything else to say.’ To this question he made no reply, but
after a little while he moved; the attendant uncovered him; his eyes
were fixed. And Crito when he saw it, closed his mouth and eyes.”
=Who is Plato? (427 - 347 B.C.)
-Served in the military from 409-404 B.C., the end of the
Peloponnesian War.
-Opted for a political career after the war, joined the oligarchy of the
Thirty Tyrants, but their violent acts disillusioned him and he left.
-In 403 B.C. democracy returned to Athens, but Plato seemed little
interested in politics.
-Plato was a student of Socrates who left Athens disgusted by the
death of his teacher in 399 B.C. Travelling to Egypt, Sicily, and Italy.
-In 387 B.C. he returned and founded the Academy. He presided
institution, which encouraged research and instruction in philosophy
and science, until he died.
-He is the best known Greek philosopher in the western philosophy.
Alfred North Whitehead: “The safest general characterization of the
European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of
footnotes to Plato.”
=Identity of Philosophy?
-Plato, “The Prince of Philosophy,” asked many of the fundamental
philosophical questions that philosophers still ask today
-Plato attempts to establish the notion of philosophy, differentiating
it from other disciplines.
=Criticism on literature in Plato’s Republic X
-Point 1: Representation of poetry and art is Illusion
-Point 2: Art and poetry appeal to the lower, less rational part of our
nature.
-Point 3: Dramatic poetry in particular, has a bad effect on its
audiences, who learn to admire and imitate the faults it represents.
=Distinction between sophist and philosopher
-Histories of philosophy tend to begin with the Ionian ‘physicist’
Thales, but the presocratics referred to the activity they were
engaged in as historia (inquiry) rather than philosophia.
-The notion that philosophy begins with Thales derives from the mid
nineteenth century.
-The terms ‘philosopher’ and ‘sophist’ were disputed in the fifth and
fourth century B.C. The subject of contention between rival schools
of thought.
-It was Plato who first clearly and consistently refers to the activity of
philosophia.
-The related questions as to what a sophist is and how we can distinguish the
philosopher from the sophist were taken very seriously by Plato.
=Theory of Ideas
-One of his most influential insights is the Theory of Ideas or Forms
-Notions like virtue, justice, beauty, goodness, etc., would not be possible
unless we had some direct knowledge of these things in an earlier existence.
-The world that appears to our senses is in some way defective and filled
with error, but there is a more real and perfect realm, populated by entities
(called “forms” or “ideas”) that are eternal, changeless.
-The most fundamental distinction in Plato's philosophy is between the many
observable objects that appear beautiful (good, just, unified, equal, big) and
the one object that is what beauty (goodness, justice, unity) really is, from
which those many beautiful (good, just, unified, equal, big) things receive their
names and their corresponding characteristics.
Group discussion
-Question 1:
Imagine that you are Socrates, and what is your decision on the death
sentence, which is not fair. Are you going to accept it or escape from
it? If you accept it, what are your last words?
-Question 2:
Do you think your life is fully fixed by your own choice? Or is there
any area of power which has a crucial influence on your life?