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If a newborn baby could talk, it would probably say something about what an extraordinary world it had come into. We see how it looks around and reaches out in curiosity to everything it sees.
Depends on its physical and mental condition, a bit optimistic.
‘You’ve just grown so used to the world that nothing surprises you any more.’
Socrates ‘called philosophy down from the sky and established her in the towns and introduced her into homes and forced her to investigate life, ethics, good and evil.’ But Socrates differed from the Sophists in one significant way. He did not consider himself to be a ‘sophist’ – that is, a learned or wise person. Unlike the Sophists, he did not teach for money. No, Socrates called himself a philosopher in the true sense of the word. A ‘philosopher’ really means ‘one who loves wisdom.’
The most subversive people are those who ask questions. Giving answers is not nearly as threatening. Any one question can be more explosive than a thousand answers.
Socrates thought that no one could possibly be happy if they acted against their better judgment. And he who knows how to achieve happiness will do so. Therefore, he who knows what is right will do right. Because why would anybody choose to be unhappy?
since human reason is in fact eternal and immutable.
Is it?
Philosophers will try to ignore highly topical affairs and instead try to draw people’s attention to what is eternally ‘true,’ eternally ‘beautiful,’ and eternally ‘good.’
Plato came to the conclusion that there must be a reality behind the ‘material world.’ He called this reality the world of ideas; it contained the eternal and immutable ‘patterns’ behind the various phenomena we come across in nature. This remarkable view is known as Plato’s theory of ideas.
In short, we can only have inexact conceptions of things we perceive with our senses. But we can have true knowledge of things we understand with our reason.
According to Plato, man is a dual creature. We have a body that ‘flows,’ is inseparably bound to the world of the senses, and is subject to the same fate as everything else in this world – a soap bubble, for example. All our senses are based in the body and are consequently unreliable.
The sight of it is sufficient to awaken in the soul a faint recollection of the perfect ‘horse,’ which the soul once saw in the world of ideas, and this stirs the soul with a yearning to return to its true realm. Plato calls this yearning eros – which means love. The soul, then, experiences a ‘longing to return to its true origin.’
Let me quickly emphasize that Plato is describing an ideal course of life, since by no means all humans set the soul free to begin its journey back to the world of ideas. Most people cling to the sensory world’s ‘reflections’ of ideas.
Plato believed similarly that all natural phenomena are merely shadows of the eternal forms or ideas. But most people are content with a life among shadows. They give no thought to what is casting the shadows. They think shadows are all there are, never realizing even that they are, in fact, shadows. And thus they pay no heed to the immortality of their own soul.
What Plato was illustrating in the Myth of the Cave is the philosopher’s road from shadowy images to the true ideas behind all natural phenomena.
The Myth of the Cave is found in Plato’s dialogue the Republic.
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Like every aspect of Plato’s philosophy, his political philosophy is characterized by rationalism. The creation of a good state depends on its being governed with reason. Just as the head governs the body, so philosophers must rule society.
While Plato used his reason, Aristotle used his senses as well. We find decisive differences between the two, not least in their writing. Plato was a poet and mythologist; Aristotle’s writings were as dry and precise as an encyclopedia.
In a sense, the sculptor had seen the horse’s form in the block of granite, because that particular block of granite had the potentiality to be formed into the shape of a horse. Similarly Aristotle believed that everything in nature has the potentiality of realizing, or achieving, a specific ‘form.’ Let us return to the chicken and the egg. A chicken’s egg has the potentiality to become a chicken. This does not mean that all chicken’s eggs become chickens – many of them end up on the breakfast table as fried eggs, omelettes, or scrambled eggs, without ever having realized their potentiality.
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Aristotle believed that there is a purpose behind everything in nature. It rains so that plants can grow; oranges and grapes grow so that people can eat them. That is not the nature of scientific reasoning today.
One example will suffice. If I first establish that ‘all living creatures are mortal’ (first premise), and then establish that ‘Hermes is a living creature’ (second premise), I can then elegantly conclude that ‘Hermes is mortal.’ The example demonstrates that Aristotle’s logic was based on the correlation of terms, in this case ‘living creature’ and ‘mortal.’
But there had to be something causing the heavenly bodies to move. Aristotle called this the ‘first mover,’ or ‘God.’ The ‘first mover’ is itself at rest, but it is the ‘formal cause’ of the movement of the heavenly bodies, and thus of all movement in nature.
Aristotle advocated the ‘Golden Mean.’ We must be neither cowardly nor rash, but courageous (too little courage is cowardice, too much is rashness), neither miserly nor extravagant but liberal (not liberal enough is miserly, too liberal is extravagant).
only by exercising balance and temperance will I achieve a happy or ‘harmonious’ life.
Aristotle describes three good forms of constitution. One is monarchy, or kingship – which means there is only one head of state. For this type of constitution to be good, it must not degenerate into ‘tyranny’ – that is, when one ruler governs the state to his own advantage. Another good form of constitution is aristocracy, in which there is a larger or smaller group of rulers. This constitutional form must beware of degenerating into an ‘oligarchy’ – when the government is run by a few people. An example of that would be a junta. The third good constitutional form is what Aristotle called
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I never thought of that.’ ‘Then you have a big problem, because a human is a thinking animal. If you don’t think, you’re not really a human.’
‘What a lot of things I don’t need!’
The best known of the Cynics was Diogenes, a pupil of Antisthenes, who reputedly lived in a barrel and owned nothing but a cloak, a stick, and a bread bag. (So it wasn’t easy to steal his happiness from him!) One day while he was sitting beside his barrel enjoying the sun, he was visited by Alexander the Great. The emperor stood before him and asked if there was anything he could do for him. Was there anything he desired? ‘Yes,’ Diogenes replied. ‘Stand to one side. You’re blocking the sun.’ Thus Diogenes showed that he was no less happy and rich than the great man before him. He had
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The Stoics, moreover, emphasized that all natural processes, such as sickness and death, follow the unbreakable laws of nature. Man must therefore learn to accept his destiny.
Nothing happens accidentally. Everything happens through necessity, so it is of little use to complain when fate comes knocking at the door. One must also accept the happy events of life unperturbed, they thought. In this we see their kinship with the Cynics, who claimed that all external events were unimportant. Even today we use the term ‘stoic calm’ about someone who does not let his feelings take over.
The story goes that the Epicureans lived in a garden. They were therefore known as the ‘garden philosophers.’ Above the entrance to this garden there is said to have hung a notice saying, ‘Stranger, here you will live well. Here pleasure is the highest good.’
Epicurus also believed that a pleasurable result in the short term must be weighed against the possibility of a greater, more lasting, or more intense pleasure in the long term.
‘Death does not concern us,’ Epicurus said quite simply, ‘because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist.’
This could be applicable in many different scinarios
The gods are not to be feared. Death is nothing to worry about. Good is easy to attain. The fearful is easy to endure.
The word ‘epicurean’ is used in a negative sense nowadays to describe someone who lives only for pleasure.
Cynicism, Stoicism, and Epicureanism all had their roots in the teaching of Socrates. They also made use of certain of the pre-Socratics like Heraclitus and Democritus.
I am saying that there is something of the divine mystery in everything that exists. We can see it sparkle in a sunflower or a poppy. We sense more of this unfathomable mystery in a butterfly that flutters from a twig – or in a goldfish swimming in a bowl. But we are closest to God in our own soul. Only there can we become one with the great mystery of life. In truth, at very rare moments we can experience that we ourselves are that divine mystery.
Now you might feel that it cannot be particularly pleasant to ‘lose oneself.’ I know what you mean. But the point is that what you lose is so very much less than what you gain. You lose yourself only in the form you have at the moment, but at the same time you realize that you are something much bigger. You are the universe. In fact, you are the cosmic spirit itself,
This was a dramatic shift in the meaning of an age-old expression with warlike overtones. People were expecting a military leader who would soon proclaim the establishment of the Kingdom of God, and along comes Jesus in kirtle and sandals telling them that the Kingdom of God – or the ‘new covenant’ – is that you must ‘love thy neighbor as thyself.’
married folk grow to resemble each other.
Their doctrine was half religion and half philosophy, asserting that the world consisted of a dualism of good and evil, light and darkness, spirit and matter. With his spirit, mankind could rise above the world of matter and thus prepare for the salvation of his soul. But this sharp division between good and evil gave the young Augustine no peace of mind.
like Plotinus, that evil is the “absence of God.” Evil has no independent existence, it is something that is not. For God’s creation is in fact only good. Evil comes from mankind’s disobedience, Augustine believed. Or, in his own words, “The good will is God’s work; the evil will is the falling away from God’s work.”’
‘Yes, perhaps he can. But not “now.” For God, time does not exist as it does for us. Our “now” is not God’s “now.”
‘It was an ancient Christian and Jewish belief that God was not only a man. He also had a female side, or “mother nature.” Women, too, are created in God’s likeness. In Greek, this female side of God is called Sophia. “Sophia” or “Sophie” means wisdom.’
Perhaps the best remedy against violence would be a short course in philosophy.
“memento mori,” which means “Remember that you must die.”
all the beauty that surrounds us must one day perish.’
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more; it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.’
Descartes was a mathematician; he is considered the father of analytical geometry,
‘“When I consider this carefully, I find not a single property which with certainty separates the waking state from the dream,” writes Descartes. And he goes on: “How can you be certain that your whole life is not a dream?”’
‘But Descartes tried to work forward from this zero point. He doubted everything, and that was the only thing he was certain of. But now something struck him: one thing had to be true, and that was that he doubted. When he doubted, he had to be thinking, and because he was thinking, it had to be certain that he was a thinking being. Or, as he himself expressed it: Cogito, ergo sum.’ ‘Which means?’ ‘I think, therefore I am.’
