Lecture 3. History of Ancient Philosophy

1. Cosmos and logos as the dominant of Ancient philosophy.

2. The Pre-Socratic Philosophy.

3. Classical Philosophy.

4. The Hellenistic school of thought.

 

Western Philosophy, by which we usually mean everything apart from the Eastern Philosophy of China, India, Japan, Persia, etc really began in Ancient Greece about the 6th Century B.C. Thales of Miletus is usually considered the first proper philosopher, although he was just as concerned with natural philosophy (what we now call science) as with philosophy as we know it. Thales and most of the other Pre-Socratic philosophers (i.e. those who lived before Socrates) limited themselves in the main to Metaphysics (enquiry into the nature of existence, being and the world). They were Materialists (they believed that all things are composed of material and nothing else).

For instance, Thales thought the whole universe was composed of different forms of water; Anaximenes concluded it was made of air; Heraclitus thought it was fire; and Anaximender some unexplainable substance usually translated as "the infinite" or "the boundless". Another issue the Pre-Socratics wrestled with was the so-called problem of change, how things appear to change from one form to another. At the extremes, Heraclitus believed in an on-going process of perpetual change, a constant interplay of opposites; Parmenides, on the other hand, using a complicated deductive argument, denied that there was any such thing as change at all, and argued that everything that exists is permanent, indestructible and unchanging.

This might sound like an unlikely proposition, but Parmenides’s challenge was well-argued and was important in encouraging other philosophers to come up with convincing counter-arguments. Zeno of Elea was a student of Parmenides, and is best known for his famous paradoxes of motion (the best known of which is that of the Achilles and the Hare), which helped to lay the foundations for the study of Logic. Their attempts were therefore important first steps in the development of philosophical thought.

They also set the stage for two other important Pre-Socratic philosophers: Empedocles, who combined their ideas into the theory of the four classical elements (earth, air, fire and water), which became the standard dogma for much of the next two thousand years; and Democritus, who developed the extremely influential idea of Atomism (that all of reality is actually composed of tiny, indivisible and indestructible building blocks known as atoms, which form different combinations and shapes within the surrounding void).

Another early and very influential Greek philosopher was Pythagoras, who led a rather bizarre religious sect and essentially believed that all of reality was governed by numbers, and that its essence could be encountered through the study of mathematics.

Classical Philosophy

Philosophy really took off, though, with Socrates and Plato in the 5th-4th Century B.C. (often referred to as the Classical or Socratic period of philosophy). His system, sometimes referred to as the Socratic Method, was to break problems down into a series of questions, the answers to which would gradually distill a solution. Although he was careful to claim not to have all the answers himself, his constant questioning made him many enemies among the authorities of Athens who eventually had him put to death.

Socrates himself never wrote anything down, and what we know of his views comes from the "Dialogues" of his student Plato, perhaps the best known, most widely studied and most influential philosopher of all time. In his writings, Plato blended Ethics, Metaphysics, Political Philosophy and Epistemology (the theory of knowledge and how we can acquire it) into an interconnected and systematic philosophy. He provided his important and famous theory of Forms and universals. Plato believed that virtue was a kind of knowledge (the knowledge of good and evil) that we need in order to reach the ultimate good, which is the aim of all human desires and actions. Plato's Political Philosophy was developed mainly in his famous "Republic", where he describes an ideal (though rather grim and anti-democratic) society composed of Workers and Warriors, ruled over by wise Philosopher Kings.

The third in the main trio of classical philosophers was Plato's student Aristotle. He created an even more comprehensive system of philosophy than Plato, encompassing Ethics, Aesthetics, Politics, Metaphysics, Logic and science, and his work influenced almost all later philosophical thinking, particularly those of the Medieval period. Aristotle's system of deductive Logic, with its emphasis on the syllogism (where a conclusion, or synthesis, is inferred from two other premises, the thesis and antithesis), remained the dominant form of Logic until the 19th Century. Unlike Plato, Aristotle held that Form and Matter were inseparable, and cannot exist apart from each other.

He thought that happiness could best be achieved by living a balanced life and avoiding excess by pursuing a golden mean in everything (similar to his formula for political stability through steering a middle course between tyranny and democracy).

Other Ancient Philosophical Schools.

In the philosophical cauldron of Ancient Greece, though (as well as the Hellenistic and Roman civilizations which followed it over the next few centuries), several other schools or movements also held sway, in addition to Platonism and Aristotelianism:

Sophism (the best known proponents being Protagoras and Gorgias), which held generally relativistic views on knowledge and generally skeptical views on truth and morality (although, over time, Sophism came to denote a class of itinerant intellectuals who taught courses in rhetoric and "excellence" or "virtue" for money).

Cynicism, which rejected all conventional desires for health, wealth, power and fame, and advocated a life free from all possessions and property as the way to achieving Virtue (a life best exemplified by its most famous proponent, Diogenes).

Skepticism (aka Pyrrhonism after the movement's founder, Pyrrho), which held that, because we can never know the true inner substance of things, only how they appear to us (and therefore we can never know which opinions are right or wrong), we should suspend judgement on everything as the only way of achieving inner peace.

Epicureanism (named for its founder Epicurus), whose main goal was to attain happiness and tranquility through leading a simple, moderate life, the cultivation of friendships and the limiting of desires (quite contrary to the common perception of the word "epicurean").

Hedonism, which held that pleasure is the most important pursuit of mankind, and that we should always act so as to maximize our own pleasure.

Stoicism developed by Zeno of Citium, and later espoused by Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, which taught self-control and fortitude as a means of overcoming destructive emotions in order to develop clear judgement and inner calm and the ultimate goal of freedom from suffering.

Neo-Platonism (developed out of Plato's work, largely by Plotinus), which was a largely religious philosophy which became a strong influence on early Christianity (especially on St. Augustine), and taught the existence of an ineffable and transcendent One, from which the rest of the universe "emanates" as a sequence of lesser beings.

Required reading:

1. Luchte, James, Early Greek Thought: Before the Dawn, in series, Bloomsbury Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Bloomsbury Publishing, London, 2011. ISBN 978-0567353313

2. Couprie, D.L., R. Hahn, and G. Naddaf, Anaximander in Context. Albany 2003

3. "The Cyrenaics on Pleasure, Happiness, and Future-Concern," by Tim O'Keefe, Phronesis, vol. 47 no. 4 (2002), 395-416.

4. Trépanier, S. Empedocles: An Interpretation (London, 2004)

5. Furley, David. Anaxagoras, “Plato and Naming of Parts.” Presocratic Philosophy. Eds. Victor Caston and Daniel W. Graham. Burlington VT: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2002. 119-126.

6. Sider, David. The Fragments of Anaxagoras. 2nd ed. revised. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag, 2005

7. Aristotle, Poetics, Joe Sachs (trans.), Focus Philosophical Library, Pullins Press, 2006.

8. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Joe Sachs (trans.), Focus Philosophical Library, Pullins Press, 2002.

9. Reeve, C.D.C. Plato. The Republic. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2004).

10. Susanne Bobzien, Determinism and Freedom in Stoic Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.

11. Reale, Giovanni. 1990. A History of Ancient Philosophy, vol. 4. The Schools of the Imperial Age. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. [Edited. & translated by John R. Catan].

12. Russell, B: "A History of Western Philosophy". Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1972

Optional reading:

1. Ahbel-Rappe, Sara, and Rachana Kamtekar (eds.), A Companion to Socrates (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006).

2. Morrison, Donald R., The Cambridge Companion to Socrates (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

3. Rudebusch, George, Socrates (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009).

4. Bobonich, Christopher. Plato’s Utopia Recast (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).

5. Schofield, Malcolm. Plato: Political Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).

6. Barney, R. 2006. ‘The Sophistic Movement’, in M.L. Gill and P. Pellegrin (eds.), A Companion to Ancient Philosophy, 77-97. Oxford: Blackwell.

7. Rijk, Lambertus Marie de. Aristotle: Semantics and Ontology. Boston, M.A.: Brill, 2002.

8. Smith, Robin. “Aristotle’s Logic,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. E, Zalta. ed. Stanford, CA., 2000, 2007.

9. Caston, Victor. 1999. "Something and Nothing: The Stoics on concepts and universals" Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy17: 145-213.

10. Sihvola, Juha and Engberg-Pedersen, Troels (eds.) 1998. The Emotions in Hellenistic Philosophy. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Lecture 4. Medieval Philosophy (Arab-Muslim and Christian philosophy)

1. The problem of the relation of faith and reason in scholasticism.

2. The meaning and significance of proofs of God's existence in medieval philosophy.

3. Avicennism: reconcile aristotelianismand neo-platonism with Islamic theology.

4. Averroism and the theory of “double truth”.

5. Orthodoxal Islamic doctrine and Sufism.

 

After about the 4th or 5th Century A.D., Europe entered the so-called Dark Ages, during which little or no new thought was developed. By the 11th Century, though, there was a renewed flowering of thought, both in Christian Europe and in Muslim and Jewish Middle East.

The Medieval period of philosophy represents a renewed flowering of Western philosophical thought after the intellectual drought of the Dark Ages. The early Christian theologians St. Augustine and Boethius represent a link between the Roman and Medieval periods, and arguably had more in common with the later medieval philosophers than with the earlier Romans (where they have been included for the purposes of this guide).

An important development in the Medieval period was the establishment of the first universities with professional full-time scholars. Establishment of the first universities was an important factor in the subsequent development of philosophy. It should also be noted that there was also a strong resurgence in Islamic and Jewish philosophy at this time.

The most influential movements of the period were Scholasticism and its off-shoots Thomism and Scotism, and the Islamic schools of Averroism, Avicennism and Illuminationism. Scholasticism tried to reconcile the philosophy of the ancient classical philosophers (particularly Aristotle) with Christian theology. The Scholastic method was to thoroughly and critically read the works of renowned scholars, note down any disagreements and points of contention, and then resolve them by the use of formal Logic and analysis of language.

St. Anselm (best known as the originator of the Ontological Argument for the existence of God by abstract reasoning alone) is often regarded as the first of the Scholastics, and St. Thomas Aquinas (known for his five rational proofs for the existence of God, and his definition of the cardinal virtues and the theological virtues) is generally considered the greatest, and certainly had the greatest influence on the theology of the Catholic Church.

Other important Scholastics included Peter Abelard, Albertus Magnus, John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham. Each contributed slight variations to the same general beliefs. Roger Bacon was something of an exception, and actually criticized the prevailing Scholastic system, based as it was on tradition and scriptural authority.

The Scholastic method is to thoroughly and critically read a book by a renowned scholar or author (e.g. The Bible, texts of Plato or St. Augustine, etc), reference any other related documents and commentaries on it, and note down any disagreements and points of contention.

Among the great Islamic philosophers of the Medieval period were Avicenna (11th century, Persian) and Averroes (12th century, Spanish/Arabic). Avicenna tried to reconcile the rational philosophy of Aristotelianism and Neo-Platonism with Islamic theology, and also developed his own system of Logic, known as Avicennian Logic. He also introduced the concept of the "tabula rasa" (the idea that humans are born with no innate or built-in mental content), which strongly influenced later Empiricists like John Locke.

Averroes's translations and commentaries on Aristotle (whose works had been largely lost by this time) had a profound impact on the Scholastic movement in Europe, and he claimed that Avicenna's interpretations were a distortion of genuine Aristotelianism.

Avicenna argued that some existing thing must necessitate, impart, give or add existence to an essence and that "essence precedes existence" (Essentialism).

Later in the 12th Century, the Sufi mystic Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi (1155-1191) developed Illuminationism, a combination of Avicennism and ancient Persian philosophy, along with many new innovative ideas of his own. However, Avicennism was also criticized by several Muslim theologians.

Al-Ghazali (1058-1111), Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (1149-1209) and the Ash'ari theologians objected to Avicennism mainly on the grounds of its inconsistencies with the Qur'an and Hadith. Al-Ghazali's famous work "The Incoherence of the Philosophers" was specifically aimed at Avicenna, particularly his assertions that the world has no beginning in the past and is not created in time, that God's knowledge includes only classes of beings and not individual beings (universals not particulars), and that after death the souls of humans will never again return into bodies.

In the 17th Century, Mulla Sadra (c. 1571-1640) combined the vision of Sufi metaphysics with some of the rationalistic approach of Avicenna, eventually leading to a whole new philosophy known as Transcendent Theosophy. However, he opposed Avicennism's Essentialism, and espoused the opposite idea of "existence precedes essence", a key foundational concept of later Existentialism.

Averroes believed that Scripture sometimes uses metaphorical language, and that those without the philosophical training to appreciate the true meaning of the passages in question are obliged to believe the literal meaning. Siger expanded this to claim that there exists a "double truth": a factual or "hard" truth that is reached through science and philosophy, and a "religious" truth that is reached through religion.

The Roman Catholic Church in the ecclesiastical centres of Paris and Oxford condemned 219 of Averroes' theses in 1277.

Despite the condemnations, many Averroistic theses survived to the 16th Century and can be found in the philosophies of Italian Renaissance thinkers like Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494), Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) and Cesare Cremonini (1550-1631), who talked about the superiority of philosophers to the common people and the relation between the intellect and human dignity.

Some scholars consider Averroes to be the founding father of secular thought in Western Europe.

The Jewish philosopher Maimonides also attempted the same reconciliation of Aristotle with the Hebrew Scriptures around the same time.

 

Required Readings:

1. St. Augustine. The City of God Against the Pagans, translated by R.W. Dyson, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought, Cambridge University Press 1998.

2. St. Augustine. Against the Academicians and The Teacher, translated by Peter King, Hackett Publishing Company, 1995

3. St. Augustine. Confessions, translated by Henry Chadwick, Oxford University Press, 1991.

4. John Scottus Eriugena. Treatise on Divine Predestination, with an Introduction by Avital Wohlman, Brennan, Mary, (tr.) (1998). Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

5. Abelard, P. Dialogue between a Philosopher, a Jew, and a Christian (or Collationes). Orlandi, G. and J. Marenbon (trans). Peter Abelard: Collationes. Oxford medieval texts. (Oxford: Clarendon 2001) also translated in Spade 1995.

6. Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works. Trans. Brian Davies and Gillian Evans (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998)

7. Duns Scotus, John. Philosophical Writings (1987). Trans. and ed. Allan Wolter. Indianapolis: Hackett.

8. Boehner, Philotheus, ed. & trans. 1990. William of Ockham: Philosophical Writings, rev. ed. Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett. (Original edition, London: Thomas Nelson, 1957.) Selections from several texts.

9. McInerny, Ralph, 1998. Thomas Aquinas Selected Writings. London: Penguin Classics.

10. Gilson, Etienne, 2002. Thomism: The Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. Trans. L.K. Shook and A. Mauer. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies.

Optional reading:

1. King, Peter (2003). “Scotus on Metaphysics,” Chapter 1 in Williams [2003], 15-68.

2. Pasnau, Robert (2003). “Cognition,” Chapter 9 in Williams [2003], 285-311.

3. Panaccio, Claude, 2012. “Ockham's Externalism.” In Gyula Klima (ed.) [2012], Intentionality, Cognition and Mental Representation in Medieval Philosophy, Ney York: Fordham University Press.

4. Dewan, Lawrence, 2006. Form and Being: Studies in Thomistic Metaphysics. Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press.

5. Jensen, Steven J., 2010 Good and Evil Actions: A Journey Through Saint Thomas Aquinas. Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press.

6. Carlson, John W., 2012. Words of Wisdom: A Philosophical Dictionary of the Perennial Tradition. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

7. Cessario, Romanus, O.P., 2003. A Short History of Thomism. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press.

8. Haldane, John (ed.), 2002. Mind, Metaphysics, and Value in the Thomistic and Analytical Traditions. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

9. Kerr, Fergus (ed.), 2002. After Aquinas: Versions of Thomism. Malden: Blackwell.

10. Tatakis, B., Byzantine Philosophy, tr. N.J. Moutafakis (Indianapolis: Hackett 2003).

Required Readings:

1. Avicenna, 2005, The Metaphysics of The Healing: A Parallel English-Arabic Text, M.E. Marmura (ed. and trans.). Provo (Utah): Brigham Young University Press.

2. al-Ghazâlî, 2000, The Incoherence of the Philosophers / Tahâfut al-falâsifa, a Parallel English-Arabic Text, M. E. Marmura (ed. and trans.), 2nd. ed., Provo (Utah): Brigham Young University Press.

3. Ibn Rushd, Decisive Treatise & Epistle Dedicatory. C. Butterworth (trans.). (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 2001).

4. Ibn Rushd, Faith and Reason in Islam [al-Kashf]. I. Najjar (trans.). (Oxford: Oneworld, 2001).

5. J. Lameer, Conception and Belief in Sadr al-Din Shirazi (Tehran: Iranian Academy ofPhilosophy, 2005).

6. Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Ibrahim Kalin, Metaphysical Penetrations: A Parallel English-Arabic Text by Mulla Sadra (Provo: Brigham Young Press, 2013).

7. Colin Turner, Challenging Islamic Fundamentalism: The Three Principles of Mulla Sadra (London: Routledge, 2011).

Optional Readings

1. Adamson, P. (2007) Al-Kindi (New York: Oxford University Press).

2. David Reisman and Ahmed al-Rahim (eds), Before and After Avicenna, Leiden/Boston, 2003.

3. O. Leaman, An Introduction to Classical Islamic Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)

4. Christian Jambet, The Act of Being: The Philosophy of Revelation in Mulla Sadra. Jeff Fort (trans.). (New York: Zone Books, 2006).

5. Ibrahim Kalin, Knowledge in Later Islamic Philosophy. Mulla Sadra on Existence, Intellect, and Intuition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).

6. Muhammad Kamal. From Essence to Being: The Philosophy of Mulla Sadra and Martin Heidegger (London: ICAS Press, 2010).

7. Sayeh Meisami, Mulla Sadra (Oxford: Oneworld, 2013).

8. Mohammed Rustom, The Triumph of Mercy: Philosophy and Scripture in Mulla Sadra (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2012).