An Introduction to Philosophy, Second Edition

Created Nov. 6, 2024 by Marc Skuster

Learning Objectives - On completing this chapter, you will be able to:

Identify key themes of Pre-Socratic thought and explain the difference between world views of the earliest Greek philosophers and the epic poets.
Describe the Socratic Method and discuss its application in the Euthyphro and the Apology.
Explain how the Divided Line expresses Plato’s metaphysical and epistemological views.
Discuss Plato’s Chariot Allegory and its implications for his understanding of personal and social virtue.
Explain the ways in which Aristotle’s metaphysical thought departs from the metaphysics of Plato.
Discuss and illustrate the meaning of “explanation” for Aristotle.

Our main focus in this chapter will be with the three major ancient Greek philosophers, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. It is in these thinkers that science and philosophy get started. But even these great minds were working in an intellectual tradition and it will be well worth a few minutes to appreciate the historical context in which they worked and the foundation it

The Presocratics

In the Iliad and the Odyssey, the early Ionian epic poet Homer (late 8th-early 7th century BCE) offers a view of the world as under the influence of the Olympian gods. The Olympian gods were much like humans, capricious and willful. In the Homeric view of the world, human qualities are projected onto the world via human-like gods. Here explanation of the natural world is modeled on explanation of human behavior. This marks the world view of the epic poets as pre-philosophical and pre-scientific. However, even in the early epic poems we find a moral outlook that is key to the scientific and philosophical frame of mind. In Homer and in later Greek tragedy, we find stories of the grief that human hubris brings upon us. The repeated warnings against human pride and arrogance make a virtue out of humility. Intellectual humility involves recognizing the fallibility of human thought, in particular one’s own. The willingness to submit one’s own opinions to rational scrutiny is essential to moving beyond the realm of myth and into the realm of philosophy and science. Intellectual humility makes it possible to see the world and one’s place in it as a matter for discovery rather than a matter of self-assertion.

The Milesians

The beginning of philosophy in ancient Greece is often given as 585 B.C.E, the year that the Milesian philosopher Thales (ca. 625-545 BCE) predicted a solar eclipse. Thales brings a new naturalistic approach to explaining the world. That is, his proposed explanations for natural phenomenon are given in terms of more fundamental natural phenomenon, not in supernatural terms. The step away from supernatural myth and towards understanding the natural world on its own terms is a major development. Thales is interested in the fundamental nature of the world and arrives at the view that the basic substance of the world is water. His reason for thinking that water is fundamental is that of the four recognized elements - earth, air, fire and water - only water can take the form of a solid, liquid, or a gas. According to Thales, earth is really water that is even more concentrated than ice and fire is really water that is more rarified than steam. While his view sounds absurd to us, the significance of his contribution is not the specific answer he gives to the question of the ultimate nature of the world, but how he proposes to answer this question. Thales takes an important step away from projecting ourselves onto the world through myth and superstition and towards explanations that invite further investigation of the world as it is independent of human will.

Pythagoreanism

Pythagoras of Samos (fl. 525-500 BCE) traveled in Egypt where he learned astronomy and geometry. His thought represents a peculiar amalgam of hard-nosed mathematical thinking and creative but rather kooky superstition. Pythagoras holds that all things consist of numbers. He saw mathematics as a purifier of the soul. Thinking about numbers takes one’s attention off of particular things and elevates the mind to the realm of the eternal. Scientific thinking, on this view, is not so far from meditation. Pythagoras is responsible for the Pythagorean Theorem which tells us that the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the remaining sides. He also discerned how points in space can define shapes, magnitudes, and forms:

1 point defines location
2 points define a line
3 points define a plane
4 points define solid 3 dimensional objects

Pythagoras introduces the concept of form. The Milesians only addressed the nature of matter, the stuff of the universe. A full account of the nature of the world must also address the various forms that underlying stuff takes. Form implies limits. For Pythagoras, this is understandable in numerical terms. Number represents the application of limit (form) to the unlimited (matter). The notion of form takes on greater sophistication and importance in the thought of Plato and Aristotle.

Pythagoras led a cult that held some rather peculiar religious beliefs. The more popular beliefs in the Homeric gods are not concerned with salvation or spiritual purification. There was the Dionysian religion, which sought spiritual purification and immortality through drunken carnal feasts and orgies. Pythagorean religious belief also aims at purification and immortality, but without the intoxication and sex. Pythagoras founded a religious society based on the following precepts:

At its deepest level, reality is mathematical in nature.
Philosophy can be used for spiritual purification.
The soul can rise to union with the divine.
Certain symbols have a mystical significance.
All brothers of the order should observe strict loyalty and secrecy.

Members of the inner circle were strict communist vegetarians. They were also not allowed to eat beans.

Heraclitus

Heraclitus (544-484 BCE) was born in Ephesus on the coast of Asia Minor. He is best known for his doctrine of eternal flux according to which everything undergoes perpetual change. “One can never step in the same river twice.” The underlying substance of the world is fire or heat according to Heraclitus. This is the least stable of the elements (earth, water, air, fire) and explains the transitory nature of all things. Everything is a kindling or extinguishing of fire. While everything is in a continual state of flux, this change is not without order. Heraclitus saw Logos or rational order as essential to the world. Changes are injustices, which by natural necessity are redressed in further changes. Heraclitus held ethical views worth noting as well. The good life involves understanding and accepting the necessity of strife and change.

The Sophists

Most of early Greek philosophy prior to the Sophists was concerned with the natural world. The desire to explain an underlying reality required natural philosophers to speculate beyond what is observable and they lacked any developed critical method for adjudicating between rival theories of substance change or being. In this situation, it is easy to see how many might grow impatient with natural philosophy and adopt the skeptical view that reason simply cannot reveal truths beyond our immediate experience. But reason might still have practical value in that it allows the skilled arguer to advance his interests. The Sophists were the first professional educators. For a fee, they taught students how to argue for the practical purpose of persuading others and winning their way. While they were well acquainted with and taught the theories of philosophers, they were less concerned with inquiry and discovery than with persuasion.

Pythagoras and Heraclitus had offered some views on religion and the good life. Social and moral issues come to occupy the center of attention for the Sophists. Their tendency towards skepticism about the capacity of reason to reveal truth and their cosmopolitan circumstances, which exposed them to a broad range of social customs and codes, lead the Sophists to take a relativist stance on ethical matters. The Sophist’s lack of interest in knowing the truth for its own sake and their entrepreneurial interest in teaching argument for the sake of best serving their client’s interests leads Plato to derisively label the Sophists as “shopkeepers with spiritual wares.”

One of the better known Sophists, Protagoras (481-411 BCE), authored several books including, Truth (or Refutations of science and philosophy), which begins with his best-known quote, “man is the measure of all things, of those that are that they are, of those that are not that they are not.” Knowledge, for Protagoras is reducible to perception. Since different individuals perceive the same things in different ways, knowledge is relative to the knower. This is a classic expression of epistemic relativism. Accordingly, Protagoras rejects any objectively knowable morality and takes ethics and law to be conventional inventions of civilizations, binding only within societies and holding only relative to societies.

Socrates

Socrates is widely regarded as the founder of European philosophy and rational inquiry. He was born around 470 BCE and tried and executed in 399 BCE. Socrates was the first of the three major Greek philosophers. The others were Socrates’ student Plato and Plato’s student Aristotle.

Socrates did not write anything himself. We know of his views primarily through Plato’s dialogues where Socrates is the primary character. Socrates is also known through plays of Aristophanes and the historical writings of Xenophon. In many of Plato’s dialogues it is difficult to determine when Socrates’ views are being represented and when the character of Socrates is used as a mouthpiece for Plato’s views.

Socrates was well known in Athens. He was eccentric, poor, ugly, brave, stoic, and temperate. He was a distinguished veteran who fought bravely on Athens’ behalf and was apparently indifferent to the discomforts of war. Socrates claimed to hear a divine inner voice he called his daimon, and he was prone to go into catatonic states of concentration.

The conflicting views of the Presocratic philosophers of nature encouraged skepticism about our ability to obtain knowledge through rational inquiry. Among the Sophists, this skepticism is manifested in epistemic and Moral Relativism. Epistemic relativism is the view that there is no objective standard for evaluating the truth or likely truth of our beliefs. Rather, epistemic standards of reasoning are relative to one’s point of view and interests. Roughly, this is the view that what is true for me might not be true for you (when we are not just talking about ourselves). Epistemic relativism marks no distinction between knowledge, belief, or opinion on the one hand, and truth and reality on the other. To take a rather silly example, if I think it’s Tuesday, then that’s what’s true for me; and if you think it’s Thursday, then that’s what is true for you. In cases like this, epistemic relativism seems quite absurd, yet many of us have grown comfortable with the notion that, say, beliefs about the moral acceptability of capital punishment might be true for some people and not for others.

Moral relativism is the parallel doctrine about moral standards. The moral relativist takes there to be no objective grounds for judging some ethical opinions to be correct and others not. Rather, ethical judgments can only be made relative to one or another system of moral beliefs, and no system can be evaluated as objectively better than another. Since earlier attempts at rational inquiry had produced conflicting results, the Sophists held that no opinion could be said to constitute knowledge. According to the Sophists, rather than providing grounds for thinking some beliefs are true and others false, rational argument can only be fruitfully employed as rhetoric, the art of persuasion. For the epistemic relativist, the value of reason lies not in revealing the truth, but in advancing one’s interests. The epistemic and moral relativism of the Sophist has become popular again in recent years and has an academic following in much "post- modern" writing.

Socrates was not an epistemic or moral relativist. He pursued rational inquiry as a means of discovering the truth about ethical matters. But he did not advance any ethical doctrines or lay claim to any knowledge about ethical matters. Instead, his criticism of the Sophists and his contribution to philosophy and science came in the form of his method of inquiry.

As the Socratic Method is portrayed in Plato’s Socratic dialogues, an interlocutor proposes a definition or analysis of some important concept, Socrates raises an objection or offers counter examples, then the interlocutor reformulates his position to handle the objection. Socrates raises a more refined objection. Further reformulations are offered, and so forth. Socrates uses the dialectic to discredit others’ claims to knowledge. While revealing the ignorance of his interlocutors, Socrates also shows how to make progress towards more adequate understanding.

Euthyphro

A good example of the Socratic Method at work can be found in one of Plato’s early Socratic dialogues, Euthyphro. In Plato’s dialogues we often find Socrates asking about the nature of something and then critically examine proposed answers, finding assorted illuminating objections that often suggest next steps. In this dialogue, Socrates and Euthyphro are discussing the nature of piety or holiness. Socrates and Euthyphro never conclusively discover what piety is, but they learn much about how various attempts to define piety fail. The dialogue works the same if we substitute moral goodness for piety. Understood in this way, Euthyphro provides a classic argument against Divine Command Theory, a view about the nature of morality that says that what is right is right simply because it is commanded by God.

Socrates would not have us believe our questions have no correct answers. He is genuinely seeking the truth of the matter. But he would impress on us that inquiry is hard and that untested claims to knowledge amount to little more than vanity. Even though Euthyphro and Socrates don’t achieve full knowledge of the nature of piety, their understanding is advanced through testing the answers that Euthyphro suggests. We come to see why piety can’t be understood just by identifying examples of it. While examples of pious acts fail to give us a general understanding of piety, the fact that we can identify examples of what is pious suggests that we have some grasp of the notion even in the absence of a clear understanding of it.

After a few failed attempts to define piety, Euthyphro suggests that what is pious is what is loved by the gods (all of them, the Greeks recognized quite a few). Many religious believers continue to hold some version of Divine Command Theory. In his response to Euthyphro, Socrates points us towards a rather devastating critique of this view and any view that grounds morality in authority. Socrates asks whether what is pious is pious because the gods love it or whether the gods love what is pious because it is pious. Let’s suppose that the gods agree in loving just what is pious. The question remains whether their loving the pious explains its piety or whether some things being pious explains why the gods love them. Once this question of what is supposed to explain what is made clear, Euthyphro agrees with Socrates that the gods love what is pious because it is pious. The problem with the alternative view, that what is pious is pious because it is loved by the gods, is that this view makes piety wholly arbitrary. Anything could be pious if piety is just a matter of being loved by the gods. If the gods love puppy torture, then this would be pious. Hopefully this seems absurd. Neither Socrates nor Euthyphro is willing to accept that what is pious is completely arbitrary. At this point, Socrates points out to Euthyphro that since an act’s being pious is what explains why the gods love it, he has failed to give an account of what piety is. The explanation can’t run in both directions. In taking piety to explain being loved by the gods, we are left lacking an explanation of what piety itself is. Euthyphro gives up shortly after this failed attempt and walks off in a huff.

If we substitute talk of God making things right or wrong by way of commanding them for talk of the gods loving what is pious in this exchange of ideas, we can readily see that Divine Command Theory has the rather unsavory result that torturing innocent puppies would be right if God commanded it. We will return to this problem when we take up ethical theory later in the course. While we don’t reach the end of inquiry into piety (or goodness) in Euthyphro, we do make discernible progress in coming to see why a few faulty accounts must be set aside. Socrates does not refute the skeptic or the relativist Sophist by claiming to discover the truth about anything. What he does instead is show us how to engage in rational inquiry and show us how we can make progress by taking the possibility of rational inquiry seriously.

Apology

This dialogue by Plato is a dramatization of Socrates’ defense at his trial for corrupting the youth among other things. Socrates tells the story of his friend Chaerophon who visits the Oracle of Delphi and asks if anyone in Athens is wiser than Socrates. The Oracle answered that no one is wiser than Socrates. Socrates is astounded by this and makes it his mission in life to test and understand the Oracle’s pronouncement. He seeks out people who have a reputation for wisdom in various regards and tests their claims to knowledge through questioning. He discovers a good deal of vain ignorance and false claims to knowledge, but no one with genuine wisdom.

Ultimately, Socrates concludes that he is wisest, but not because he possesses special knowledge not had by others. Rather, he finds that he is wisest because he recognizes his own lack of knowledge while others think they know, but do not.

Of course people generally, and alleged experts especially, are quite happy to think that what they believe is right. We tend to be content with our opinions and we rather like it when others affirm this contentment by agreeing with us, deferring to our claims to know or at least by “respecting our opinion” (whatever that is supposed to mean). We are vain about our opinions even to the point of self identifying with them (I’m the guy who is right about this or that). Not claiming to know, Socrates demonstrates some intellectual humility in allowing that his opinions might be wrong and being willing to subject them to examination. But in critically examining various opinions, including those of the supposed experts, he pierces the vanity of many of Athens’ prestigious citizens. Engaging in rational inquiry is dangerous business, and Socrates is eventually brought up on charges of corrupting the youth who liked to follow him around and listen to him reveal people’s claims to knowledge as false pride. The Apology documents Socrates’ defense of his of behavior and the Athenian assembly’s decision to sentence him to death anyway.

Plato

Plato (429-347 BCE) came from a family of high status in ancient Athens. He was a friend and fan of Socrates and some of his early dialogues chronicle events in Socrates’ life. Socrates is a character in all of Plato’s dialogues. But in many, the figure of Socrates is employed as a voice for Plato’s own views. Unlike Socrates, Plato offers very developed and carefully reasoned views about a great many things. Here we will briefly introduce his core metaphysical, epistemological and ethical views.

Metaphysics and Epistemology

Plato’s metaphysics and epistemology are best summarized by his device of the divided line. The vertical line between the columns below distinguishes reality and knowledge. It is divided into levels that identify what in reality corresponds with specific modes of thought.

Objects	Modes of Thought
The Forms	Knowledge
Mathematical Objects	Thinking
Particular Things	Belief /Opinion
Images	Imaging

Here we have a hierarchy of Modes of Thought, or types of mental representational states, with the highest being knowledge of the forms and the lowest being imaging (in the literal sense of forming images in the mind). Corresponding to these degrees of knowledge we have degrees of reality. The less real includes the physical world, and even less real, our representations of it in art. The more real we encounter as we inquire into the universal natures of the various kinds of things and processes we encounter. According to Plato, the only objects of knowledge are the forms which are abstract entities.

In saying that the forms are abstract, we are saying that while they do exist, they do not exist in space and time. They are ideals in the sense that a form, say the form of horseness, is the template or paradigm of being a horse. All the physical horses partake of the form of horseness, but exemplify it only to partial and varying degrees of perfection. No actual triangular object is perfectly triangular, for instance. But all actual triangles have something in common, triangularity. The form of triangularity is free from all of the imperfections of the various actual instances of being triangular. We get the idea of something being more or less perfectly triangular. For various triangles to come closer to perfection than others suggests that there is some ideal standard of “perfectly triangularity.” This for Plato, is the form of triangularity. Plato also takes moral standards like justice and aesthetic standards like beauty to admit of such degrees of perfection. Beautiful physical things all partake of the form of beauty to some degree or another. But all are imperfect in varying degrees and ways. The form of beauty, however, lacks the imperfections of its space and time bound instances. Perfect beauty is not something we can picture or imagine. But an ideal form of beauty is required to account for how beautiful things are similar and to make sense of how things can be beautiful to some less than perfect degree or another.

Only opinion can be had regarding the physical things, events, and states of affairs we are acquainted with through our sensory experience. With physical things constantly changing, the degree to which we can grasp how things are at any given place and time is of little consequence. Knowledge of the nature of the forms is a grasp of the universal essential natures of things. It is the intellectual perception of what various things, like horses or people, have in common that makes them things of a kind. Plato accepts Socrates’ view that to know the good is to do the good. So his notion of epistemic excellence in seeking knowledge of the forms will be a central component of his conception of moral virtue.

Ethics

Plato offers us a tripartite account of the soul. The soul consists of a rational thinking element, a motivating willful element, and a desire-generating appetitive element. Plato offers a story of the rational element of the soul falling from a state of grace (knowledge of the forms) and dragged down into a human state by the unruly appetites. This story of the soul’s relation to the imperfect body supports Plato’s view that the knowledge of the forms is a kind of remembrance. This provides a convenient source of knowledge as an alternative to the merely empirical and imperfect support of our sense experience. Plato draws an analogy between his conception of the soul and a chariot drawn by two horses, one obedient, the other rebellious. The charioteer in this picture represents the rational element of the soul, the good horse the obedient will, and the bad horse, of course, represents those nasty earthly appetites. To each of the elements of the soul, there corresponds a virtue; for the rational element there is wisdom, for the willing element of the soul there is courage, and for the appetitive element there is temperance. Temperance is matter of having your appetites under control. This might sound like chronic self-denial and repression, but properly understood, it is not. Temperance and courage are cultivated through habit. In guiding our appetites by cultivating good habits, Plato holds, we can come to desire what is really good for us (you know, good diet, exercise, less cable TV, and lots more philosophy - that kind of stuff).

Wisdom is acquired through teaching, via the dialectic, or through “remembrance.” Perhaps, to make the epistemological point a little less metaphysically loaded, we can think of remembrance as insight. A more general virtue of justice is conceived as each thing functioning as it should.

To get Plato’s concept of justice as it applies to a person, think of the charioteer managing and controlling his team; keeping both horses running in the intended direction and at the intended speed. Justice involves the rational element being wise and in charge. For a person to be just is simply a matter of having the other virtues and having them functioning together harmoniously.

Given Plato’s ethical view of virtue as a matter of the three elements of the soul functioning together as they should, Plato’s political philosophy is given in his view of the state as the human “writ at large.” Project the standards Plato offers for virtue in an individual human onto the aggregate of individuals in a society and you have Plato’s vision of the virtuous state. In the virtuous state, the rational element (the philosophers) are in charge. The willing element (the guardians or the military class) is obedient and courageous in carrying out the policies of the rational leadership. And the appetitive element (the profit-driven business class) functions within the rules and constraints devised by the rational element (for instance, by honestly adhering to standards of accounting). A temperate business class has the profit motive guided by the interests of the community via regulation devised by the most rational. The virtuous business class refrains from making its comfort and indulgence the over-riding concern of the state. Plato, in other words, would be no fan of totally free markets, but neither would he do away with the market economy altogether.

Plato’s vision of social justice is non-egalitarian and anti-democratic. While his view would not be popular today, it is still worthwhile to consider his criticism of democracy and rule by the people. Plato has Socrates address this dialectically by asking a series of questions about who we would want to take on various jobs. Suppose we had grain and wanted it processed into flour.

We would not go to the cobbler or the horse trainer for this, we’d go to the miller. Suppose we had a horse in need of training. We obviously would not go to the miller or the baker for this important task, we’d go to the horse trainer. In general, we want important functions to be carried out by the people with the expertise or wisdom to do them well. Now suppose we had a state to run. Obviously we would not want to turn this important task over to the miller, the cobbler, or the horse trainer. We’d want someone who knows what he or she is doing in charge. Plato has a healthy regard for expertise. As Plato sees it, democracy amounts to turning over the ethically most important jobs to the people who have the least expertise and wisdom in this area. There is very little reason to expect that a state run by cobblers, millers, and horse trainers will be a virtuous state.

Aristotle

Aristotle (384-322 BCE) is a towering figure in the history of philosophy and science. Aristotle made substantive contributions to just about every philosophical and scientific issue known in the ancient Greek world. Aristotle was the first to develop a formal system of logic. As the son of a physician he pursued a life-long interest in biology. His physics was the standard view through Europe’s Middle Ages. He was a student of Plato, but he rejected Plato’s other-worldly theory of forms in favor of the view that things are a composite of substance and form. Contemporary discussions of the good life still routinely take Aristotle’s ethics as their starting point. Here I will offer the briefest sketch of Aristotle’s logic and metaphysics. We will return to his ethics later in the course.

Logic

Aristotle’s system of logic was not only the first developed in the West, it was considered complete and authoritative for well over 2000 years. The core of Aristotle’s logic is the systematic treatment of categorical syllogisms. You might recall this argument from Chapter 2:

All monkeys are primates.
All primates are mammals.
So, all monkeys are mammals.

This argument is a categorical syllogism. That’s a rather antiquated way of saying it’s a two premise argument that uses simple categorical claims. Simple categorical claims come in one of the following four forms:

All A are B
All A are not B
Some A are B
Some A are not B

There are a limited number of two premise argument forms that can be generated from combinations of claims having one of these four forms. Aristotle systematically identified all of them, offered proofs of the valid one’s, and demonstrations of the invalidity of the others.

Beyond this, Aristotle proves a number of interesting things about his system of syllogistic logic and he offers an analysis of syllogisms involving claims about what is necessarily the case as well.

No less an authority than Immanuel Kant, one of the most brilliant philosophers of the 18^th century, pronounced Aristotle’s logic complete and final. It is only within the past century or so that logic has developed substantially beyond Aristotle’s. While Aristotle’s achievement in logic was genuinely remarkable, this only underscores the dramatic progress of the 20^th century. The system of symbolic logic we now teach in standard introductions to logic is vastly more powerful than Aristotle’s, and while this system was brand new just a century ago, it is now truly an introduction, a first step towards appreciating a great many further developments in logic. Reasonably bright college students now have the opportunity to master deductive reasoning at a level of sophistication unknown to the world a mere 150 years ago. The methods and insights of modern symbolic logic are already so thoroughly integrated into contemporary philosophy that much of contemporary philosophy would not be possible without it.

Metaphysics

While Aristotle was a student of Plato’s, his metaphysics is decidedly anti-Platonist. The material of the world takes various forms. Here it constitutes a tree and there a rock. The things constituted of matter have various properties. The tree is a certain shape and height, the rock has a certain mass. Plato accounts for the various forms matter takes and the ways things are in terms of their participating in abstract and ideal forms to one degree or another. Plato’s metaphysics centrally features an abstract realm of eternal unchanging and ideal forms. Plato’s forms are not themselves part of the physical spatio-temporal world. Aristotle rejects the theory of abstract forms and takes everything that exists to be part of the physical spatio-temporal world. It might thus be tempting to think of Aristotle as a materialist, one who thinks all that exists is matter, just atoms swirling in the void. Some pre-Socratic philosophers could accurately be described as materialists. But this would miss key elements of Aristotle’s metaphysics. While Aristotle denies the existence of an abstract realm of eternal and unchanging ideal entities, his account of the nature of things includes more than just matter. Aristotle holds the view that form is an integral part of things in the physical world. A thing like a rock or a tree is a composite of both matter and form. In addition to matter, the way matter is gets included in Aristotle’s metaphysics.

Among the ways things are, some seem to be more central to their being what they are than others. For instance, a tree can be pruned into a different shape without the tree being destroyed. The tree can survive the loss of its shape. But if it ceased to be a plant, if it got chipped and mulched, for instance, it would also cease to be a tree. That is to say, being a plant is essential to the tree, but having a certain shape isn’t. An essential property is just a property a thing could not survive losing. By contrast, a property something could survive losing is had accidentally. Aristotle introduces the distinction between essential and accidental characteristics of things. This was an important innovation. When we set out to give an account of what a thing is, we are after an account of its essence. To say what a thing is essentially is to list those ways of being it could not survive the loss of. My hair length is not essential to me, and neither is my weight, my having four limbs, or a given body/mass index. But my having a mind, perhaps, is essential to being me.

How a thing functions is a critical aspect of its nature in Aristotle’s view. As an organism, I metabolize. As an organism with a mind, I think. These are both ways of functioning. For Aristotle, what makes something what it is, its essence, is generally to be understood in terms of how it functions. Aristotle’s account of the essential nature of the human being, for instance, is that humans are rational animals. That is, we are the animals that function in rational ways.

Functioning is, in a sense, purposeful. Aristotle would say that functioning is ends oriented. The Greek term for an end or a goal is telos. So Aristotle has a teleological view of the world. That is, he understands things as functioning towards ends or goals, and we can understand the essence of things in terms of these goal-oriented ways of functioning. We still understand people’s actions as teleological or goal oriented. We explain why people do things in terms of their purposes and methods. Aristotle similarly understands natural processes generally as ends oriented. Even Aristotle’s physics is fundamentally teleological. So water runs downhill because it is part of its essential nature to seek out the lower place.

Explanation: The Four Causes

What does it mean to explain something? If we’d like to have some idea what we are up to when we explain things, giving some account of explanation should seem like an important methodological and epistemological issue. In fact, the nature of explanation continues to be a central issue in the philosophy of science. Aristotle was the first to address explanation in a systematic way, and his treatment of explanation structures and guides his philosophical and scientific inquiry generally. According to Aristotle, to explain something involves addressing four causes. Here we need to think of “causes” as aspects of explanation or “things because of which . . . .” Only one of Aristotle’s four causes resembles what we would now think of as the cause of something. Three of the four causes, or explanatory principles, are reflected in Aristotle’s metaphysics and will be familiar from the discussion above. Part of explaining something involves identifying the material of which it is made. This is the material cause.

Thales account of the nature of the world addressed its material cause. A further part of explaining something is to give an account of its form, its shape and structure. The chair I am sitting on is not just something made of wood, it is something made of wood that has a certain form. A complete explanation of what this chair is would include a description of its form. This is the formal cause. Pythagoras and Plato introduce the explanation of formal causes. The idea of a final cause refers to the function, end, or telos of a thing. What makes the chair I’m sitting on a chair is that it performs a certain function that serves the end or telos of providing a comfortable place to sit. Again, Aristotle sees final causes as pervasive in the natural world. So part of explaining what a tomato plant is, for instance, will involve giving an account of how it functions and the goals towards which that functioning is aimed. Bear in mind Aristotle’s interest in biology here. A complete biological account of an organism includes both its anatomy (its material and formal causes) and physiology (which involves functioning and final causes). The remaining cause (explanatory principle) is the one we can identify as a kind of cause in our normal sense of the word. The efficient cause of a thing is that which brings it into existence or gives form to its material. So, for instance, the activity of a carpenter is the efficient cause of my chair.

From Ancient to Modern Philosophy

The following two chapters focus on what is known as the modern classical period which runs roughly concurrent with the scientific revolution. About 2000 years elapse between the ancient Greek philosophy and the modern classical period. This chapter will end with a very brief sketch of some trends and developments over the course of those two millennium.

The rise and fall of Rome follows the golden age of ancient Greece. Greek philosophical traditions undergo assorted transformations during this period, but Rome is not known for making significant original contributions to either philosophy or science. Intellectual progress requires a degree of liberty not so available in the Roman Empire. Additionally, the intellectual talent and energy available in ancient Rome would have been pretty fully occupied with the demands of expanding and sustaining political power and order. Rome had more use for engineers than scientists, and more use for bureaucrats than philosophers. Christianity becomes the dominate religion in Rome after emperor Constantine converts in the 4th century A.D., Also in the 4th century, the great Christian philosopher Augustine (354-430) under the influence of Plato, formulates much of what will become orthodox Catholic doctrine. After a rather dissolute and free-wheeling youth, Augustine studies Plato and finds much to make Christianity reasonable in it. With the rise of the Catholic Church, learning and inquiry are pursued largely exclusively in the service of religion for well over a millennium. Philosophy in this period is often described as the handmaiden of theology. The relationship between philosophy and theology is perhaps a bit more ambiguous, though. As we’ve just noted in the case of Augustine, much ancient Greek philosophy gets infused into Catholic orthodoxy. But at the same time, the new faith of Christianity spearheads an anti-intellectual movement in which libraries are destroyed and most ancient Greek thought is lost to the world forever.

Through the West’s period of Catholic orthodoxy, most of what we know of Greek science and philosophy, most notably Aristotle’s thought, survived in the Islamic world. What remains of the complete works of Aristotle covers subjects as far ranging as metaphysics, ethics, politics, rhetoric, physics, biology, and astronomy, and amounts to enough writing to fill 1500 pages in the fine print translation on my bookshelf. But even this consists largely of lecture notes and fragments. Most of his polished prose is lost forever.

The Crusades were a series of conflicts between the Christian and Islamic world towards the end of the middle ages. This conflict between Christianity and Islam was also an occasion for cultural exchange, and the Crusades led to the re-introduction of Aristotle and other ancient Greek scholarship to the west. Aristotle’s philosophy and science was too carefully reasoned, systematic, and subtle to be dismissed as pointless pagan speculation. Instead, Christian thinkers in the West set out to understand Aristotle and interpret him in a manner that would cohere with Catholic doctrine. St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) is the most famous philosopher to engage in this work of Christianizing Aristotle. He found ways to harness Aristotle’s metaphysical arguments in the cause of advocating the existence of a Christian God.

Aristotle’s views about the natural world quickly come to be received as the established truth in the Christian world. Aristotle’s physics, for instance becomes the standard scientific view about the natural world in Europe. Aristotle also wrote about the methods of science, and he was much more empirical than his teacher Plato. Aristotle thought the way to learn about the natural world was to make careful observations and infer general principles from these. For instance, as an early biologist, Aristotle dissected hundreds of species of animals to learn about anatomy and physiology. The Scholastics who studied Aristotle obviously did not adopt the methods Aristotle recommended. But some other people did. Galileo, Leonardo da Vinci, and Copernicus were among the few brave souls to turn a critical eye to the natural world itself and, employing methods Aristotle would have approved of, began to challenge the views of Aristotle that the Scholastics had made a matter of doctrine. Thus begins the Scientific Revolution.

Where the Renaissance is the reawakening of the West to its ancient cultural and intellectual roots, the Scientific Revolution begins as a critical response to ancient thinking, and in large part that of Aristotle. This critical response was no quick refutation. Aristotle’s physics might now strike us as quite naïve and simplistic, but that is only because every contemporary middle school student gets a thorough indoctrination in Newton’s relatively recent way understanding of the physical world. The critical reaction to Aristotle that ignites the scientific revolution grew out of a tradition of painstakingly close study of Aristotle. The scholastic interpreters of Aristotle were not just wrongheaded folks stuck on the ideas of the past. They were setting the stage for new discoveries that could not have happened without their work. Again, our best critics are the ones who understand us the best and the one’s from whom we stand to learn the most. In the Scientific Revolution we see a beautiful example of Socratic dialectic operating at the level of traditions of scholarship.

Europe also experiences significant internal changes in the 16th century that pave the way for its intellectual reawakening. In response to assorted challenges to the authority of the Catholic Church and the decadence of 16th century Catholic churchmen, Martin Luther (1483-1546) launches the Reformation. The primary tenet of the reformation was that faith concerns the individual’s relation to God who is knowable directly through the Bible without the intermediary of the Catholic Church. The Reformation and the many splintering branches of Protestant Christianity that it spawns undermines the dogmatic adherence to a specific belief system and opens the way for more free and open inquiry. The undermining of Catholic orthodoxy brought on by the Reformation combined with the rediscovery of ancient culture in the Renaissance jointly give rise to the Scientific Revolution and, what we often refer to as the Modern Classical period in philosophy. The reawakening of science and philosophy are arguably one and the same revolution. Developments in philosophy and science during this period are mutually informed, mutually influencing, and intermingled. Individuals including Newton, Leibniz, and Descartes are significant contributors to both science and philosophy.

Review and Study

Review Questions:

Explain Protagoras’ epistemic relativism.
How does Socrates oppose epistemic relativism?
What is the Socratic Method?
How does Socrates respond to Euthyphro’s suggestion that the pious is what is loved by all the gods? How does his response point us towards a critique of Divine Command Theory? What is the problem with the view that what is pious is pious because it is loved by the gods?
What are Plato’s forms? Why does Plato take the forms to be the most real sorts of entities?
What is temperance and why is it a virtue in Plato’s view?
How is Plato’s vision of justice non-egalitarian and anti-democratic?
How do Plato and Aristotle’s views on form differ?
What is the difference between essence and accident?
What does it mean to say that Aristotle held a teleological view of the world?
Explain Aristotle’s four causes as principles of explanation.
What is the role of Aristotle’s philosophy and science in leading to the scientific revolution?

Names, Terms, Concepts

Homer
Hubris
Thales
Pythagoras
Heraclitus
Logos
Sophists
Protagoras
Socrates
Epistemic Relativism
Moral Relativism
Socrates
Socratic Method
Dialectic
Euthyphro
Divine Command Theory
Apology
Plato
Divided Line
Forms
Remembrance
Chariot Allegory
Justice
Aristotle
Categorical Syllogism
Essence
Accident
Telos
Four Causes
Augustine
Thomas Aquinas
Renaissance
Scientific Revolution
Martin Luther
Reformation

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