A History of Philosophy | 02 The Moral Universe in the Pre-Socractics

last time as you recall we were talking about the pre-socratic philosophers in the fashion that they're usually represented in histories of philosophy a fashion that was probably influenced by the fact that Aristotle in a passage from his book one of his metaphysics which will be reading later on Aristotle treated them that way as Prius scientific people speculating about the basic principles that make nature the way it is pre scientific speculation that tradition which seems to go back to Aristotle has been sort of perpetuated in histories of philosophy but I'm not convinced that it's the only way or the best way to see the pre-socratics there's a second tradition that I don't want to dwell on particularly that goes back actually to one of the early Roman thinkers who wrote about the developing concepts of God in the early Greeks so that you get also discussions of the pre-socratics as sort of a pre theology not just a pre science but a pre theology and you've been reading the fragments and you probably began to think that way about things like Heraclitus Lagos or an exec arras Deus mind reason is a there are a number of things which have kindled that line of inquiry and volumes written on the theology of the early Greek philosophers but there is a third way that is I think much less travelled which I find particularly fascinating and helpful and I suspect maybe closer to where those pre-socratic thinkers thought they were what they thought they were doing in order to make them out to be pre-scientific people you have to sort of say well they were stimulated to ask these questions about nature by living in that natural environment and encountering people from other cultures who had mythologies of their own well ok that's plausible but I think the first place to look is in their own Greek predecessors yes they in Greek literature and this is what I want to pursue this afternoon in fact I'm not even sure it's fair to Aristotle to say that he interpreted these as pre-scientific because he saw himself as pre scientific or scientific I think for Plato and Aristotle it's true that as far as they're concerned their metaphysical views theories of forms studies of nature really were part of a larger concern that they had namely to maintain that there is something that is good by Nature you'll see so their concern for the good in nature and in human experience is I think a more self-conscious theme so to Leon Plato's part and to a certain extent Aristotle's part then all of the metaphysics they get into and cosmology we'll see that as we get to Plato but in any case the the theme that I'm picking up on is what I've scribbled on the board here cosmic justice because in the predecessors of the pre-socratics the literary predecessors of the pre-socratics that's a notion that you get and I'm suggesting you'll see that the pre-socratics stand in continuity with these predecessors in pushing further the emerging idea of cosmic justice this is a moral universe you'll say in which justice will out they are pushing this emerging notion further than their literary predecessors and trying to tell us what kind of a thing Nate you're is that there should be some sort of rule of moral law in the universe did you get the overall idea you think that is to say these earlier literary figures recognize that there are ordered processes of nature but there are also ordered processes of moral life that you get you do you ought do reward the fete schedule you see so that you had the macrocosm nature as a whole is ordered nor gathered the microcosm your moral life is ordered nor governed and in between those two you have sort of an in-between the emerging idea of the city-state as a law governed order of society is he and there's a parallel between these three things the orderliness of nature the orderliness of the city-state the orderliness of the moral life and they see analogies between the three all the time now earlier Greek mythology the saw no intelligence behind natural processes producing any harmony or natural law nature and the forces behind it and the gods seemed all to be arbitrary and there was the notion of a very impersonal kind of fate Maire which lurks behind the scene and then gets you even the gods of Homer seem at least in the Iliad to be fickle limited in what they can do not particularly interested in human affairs the interest in that mythology it is much more in what's known as the heroic virtues the third you of the aristocratic hero beauty wealth status honor that was that's what makes the Greek hero but these heroes ignored the problems of society the desperate need of the ordinary people and even pursued their honor to the detriment of their own real self-interest nothing so as you read The Iliad which I assume you have done in western world lid you read The Iliad and Odysseus strives in vain to return home you think and all the while while he's struggling striving to get home there are his erstwhile friends devouring his resources and trying to seduce his wife you remember the narrative is he but take a step further than the Iliad to the Odyssey which centers around Odysseus son trying to keep things straighten out at home very much concerned to get its father back home in the Odyssey the gods are becoming interested there's a gradual evolution going on there is less focus on the heroic verge Jews and the goddess Athena gets involved and helps to secure justice bringing a Decius home it's an interesting development significant change now you move on to Hesiod and there's some allusion to this in stump the secondary source history you're reading here's the yard in his Theogony seems to think that Zeus is really in charge of human affairs and Zeus his daughter a DK which is the Greek word later for right justice Zeus is daughter decay actually oversees the affairs of mortals and then when you take a look at his eons work works and days it's about ordinary mortals about the ordered anis of their lives and in it his II odd coals for justice and honest labor among the common people now I've a hunch that none of you have read his eons works and days because I discovered there isn't a copy in the library but I discovered one elsewhere and here are a couple of selections which may be of interest to you listen now to justice rights Hesiod and forget violence complete for Cronus son Cronus time Acronis son set up this law for men fish flesh fowl each other may devour for right is not in them but right he gave to Maine and this is best by far don't fight it out but let justice prevail or this again those who give to every man those who are abroad and those from home straight judgments and do not transgress the just their city flourishes their people prosper to peace the children's Guardian patrols the land and Zeus far-seeing doesn't plain cruel wars against them upon the men who judge with honesty upon those men famine and disaster never wait they work at their appointed tasks with merriment those who delight in violence and wicked sinful deeds far-seeing Zeus the son of Cronus plans to punish get the idea of a justice that comes out in the course of time and this theme runs through his yard it's very noticeable the other road is better which leads toward just dealing for justice conquers violence and triumphs in the end or again the eyes of Zeus all-seeing and all-knowing behold us even now if thus he wills the sword of justice that this city deals in within herself will not escape his notice it is bad to be a man of justice if the less just is to have a greater right if things are inverted or this again get good measure from your neighbor and give good measure back ok fair measures scales return as much or better if you can so that when you are your self in need you will find him able to supply it some ins that are interesting parallels there incidentally to some of the things that you find in the book of Proverbs is a but notice the concern for justice the insistence that in the course of time in Cronus son in the course of time justice is going to be done it's very nature of things cosmic justice well if you go on from his II odd to Aeschylus arrest eeeh you remember the house of Atreus and the blood feud that was tearing that family apart and yet that blood feud is to be superseded by the rule of laws not by the vengeful faiths but by a rule of laws that harmonizes conflicting interests heavenly and earthly justice must be won or if you're familiar with Sophocles Antigone a similar story Antigone's brother has been killed in fighting to retrieve his throne Thebes from the usurp Christ's and King Croesus issues and edict that the body is to be left to rot but a Tigga need a thigh is the edict and obeys a higher law the kings threatens her with execution and demands that she confess her wrong did she choose flagrantly to disobey the Kings edict and here's her reply naturally since Zeus never promulgated such a law nor will you find that justice publishes such laws to men below I never thought your edicts had such force that they nullified the laws of heaven which unwritten not proclaimed can boast a currency that everlastingly is valid an origin beyond the birth of man and I who know men's frown will frighten far from risking heavens frown by flouting these okay the appeal to a higher justice the Justice of heaven again well my point in pulling in those literary figures is really to set the context of ethical thinking into which the pre-socratics come after all consider how how large a place the poetry and literature of the earlier Greeks played in their education later this is the stuff they were raised on schooled on but they celebrated is it so that it would be at least odd if something of this didn't appear in early Greek philosophy to the effect that this is a ordered universe yes in the macrocosm and in the microcosm a we must have law governed ordered city state and in a further microcosm the individual's moral life is part of a moral order in which justice will out you see so there's the picture now with that in mind turn to the anthology which I asked you please to bring and if you forgot this is your gentle reminder it's much harder to listen simply than to listen and look both show-and-tell is a lot easier than just tell but turn to page 8 where we have a selection first well preceded by Thalys but from the second philosopher in the whole list of pre-socratics that we ran over last time namely an exome ender on page 8 look at the bottom of the first column what he says the source of coming to be of existing things is that into which destruction to happens all right the processes of nature coming to be and passing out of existence okay generation destruction those processes happen and the quote according to necessity for they pay penalty and retribution to each other for their injustice according to the assessment of time the assessment of time Cronus son you see the assessment of time Kronus kronar son the assessment of time in the course of time things get balanced ouch of course that's a passage in which it's talking about natural processes not about moral Dames but notice that the metaphor in the language is taken from morality and applied back to the processes of nature because obviously it's a familiar notion to him that there is some sort of justice that will out in the end in the course of time so that moral notion is applied back to the order of nature nothing well that that sentence the one that's in quotes they are ascribed to Anaximander is one that is immediately discussed in the literature on this particular interpretation of the pre-socratics it's sort of the text for the whole thing and if you're interested in pursuing some of the literature on it look at the book that I've listed on the board by Werner Yeager a book called Paideia which is really first steps first principles having to do with the learning of the Greeks a very excellent thing on the culture and ideas of ancient Greece so Anaximander makes that strange perplexing comment which i think only begins to make sense after we've read the poets you think oh right turn to page 12 where page 12 we have pythagoras who has the notion of a mathematical order to nature that balances the opposing forces that seem to be at work now one of the things that doesn't come through in this these selections is the way in which he applies this not only to nature's processes but also to the life of society in fact Pythagoras was the founder of a little community I noticed that our editor calls it a cult it's sometimes called a society a city-state well I suppose you could think of it like one of those religious or ethical communities founded in America in idealistic days late nineteenth century perhaps which there are several strewn around the Midwest as well as in the Anabaptist Mennonite groups in various parts of the country that is to say a morally idealistic community living together and ordering their lives in what we think of as counter cultural ways yes I well Pythagoras founded a group of that sort a group in which there was to be this harmony of opposing interests a balance of opposing influences and forces at work in the community a well-ordered rationally governed life characterized by justice now the word that he uses is the word Paris which is those of you who are into Greek no means of border or a boundary the Greeks know that the rest of you barbarians know it now so he distinguishes between Paris which is order and the other side of the coin the opposing force is a PI R on that which is undefined unlimited you remember that's the term that Anaximander hideo's for the basic stuff is an unlimited undefinable something you think so in addition to that sort of phenomenon which an ex amanda was aware of namely that the underlying stuff seems to have all sorts of unmanageable undefinable properties about it but it'll all come out in the wash in the course of times is a Anaximander now Pythagoras goes one step further and says there is actually an intelligible order to nature Paris and in the world of nature we can trace the order mathematically music well the way in which they work that out in society is reflected in some of the verbal isms the dicta in the second column on one on page 12 let's see number 6 follow the gods and restrain your tongue stir not the fire with iron why not well why do you think the handle on the tongues you use on the barbecue has wood on it rather than just picking up iron to take things off the barbecue you get the idea you see reason tells you that there is going to be some sort of crash some sort of pain if you stir the fire with iron reason steaks out the limits does those sorts of things and you can see all sorts of dietary restrictions as you go down the column there's thirty seven and eight stain from beans abstain from living things for whatever reasons they have dietary proposals ruling their lives by reason well alright Pythagoras on page let's say page 13 the Natha knees was an individual that wasn't included in my list he's not discussed by stump and is often omitted from discussions of the pre-socratics and I think that may be a prejudice created by viewing the Socratic so pre-scientific thinkers because Zinn atthenes really doesn't say much about nature at all so you can hardly think of him as a pre scientific thinker so leaves and often he's out ah but today we're not talking about the pre-socratics as pre scientific thinkers were thinking of them as ethical thinkers so what is Anitha knees have to say well notice on the first column on page 13 bottom of the page he talks about homer and hesiod who ascribed to the gods whatever is infamy and reproach among men theft adultery deceiving each other then I take that to be more a criticism of the gods and then at homer and hesiod who reported on the gods but what he is doing is pointing out obviously that that is the kind of life theft and adultery and deceiving each other which needs to be brought under some kind of just control and yet the gods are guilty of things that men are hanged for every day you'll see and so in contrast to that kinds of gods as Anopheles turns in our loftier direction he goes on mortal suppose that the gods are born and have clothes and voices and shapes like our own but Eve oxes and horses and lions had hands and could paint with their hands fashion works as men do they had paint horse like images of gods and the oxen would paint ups like images of gods and each would fashion bodies like their own so the Ethiopians consider the gods flat-nosed in black to Thracians blue-eyed and red-haired but there is only one God among gods and men the greatest not all like mortals in body or mind he sees as a whole thinks as a whole here's as a whole and without toil because there are no opposites in conflict without toil he moves everything by just the thought of his mind he thinks and it's done there's a conception of a purely rational immaterial being merging among the Greeks is it what's the point of it the point is not some sort of theological or metaphysical speculation the point is to find an alternative to the debasing conceptions of the gods among the Greeks one that holds ordered unity in life in society in the cosmos erroring comes from this one God well for that reasons and often ease is sometimes um discussed along with Parmenides Zeno and the Le addicts remember the absolute monists they said that everything is one without the vision without plurality without change as if sir nopony's is pointing in a similar direction well he was not a man of Elia he was not an Ellie attic he was an independent thinker elsewhere and his motivation seems to be entirely in terms of this moral vision of cosmic justice well from Zenith eni's on 13 turn to Heraclitus Heraclitus 15 and following and you remember I had linked Heraclitus and Pythagoras suggesting that their double aspect monists two sides to nature they ordered and the disordered the change and the permanent ordered unity of things well you find that in Heraclitus first column towards the bottom of the page doze awake have one ordered universe in common Merton sleep all those in sleep each turns away to his own world okay now you awake are you a same that's what he's asking the thinking faculty is in common to all he goes on so if you're awake if you're thinking you'll see there has to be one ordered universe that is common to all name we live in one and the same ordered universe with one on the same ordered laws for all one in the same justice for all macrocosm microcosm and so of the law gasps there's that word we mentioned last time of that law gas which is as I describe it men always proved to be uncompromising before they've heard it and once they've heard it for all those things happen according to this Lagos men are like people of no experience even when they experience words and deeds as I explained and so forth well he doesn't tell us what it is but all things happen according to this Lagos so he goes on it's necessary to follow this this Colin this Universal view of one ordered universe for although the Lagos is in common to all many live as though they had private understandings those dreams in the night when are asleep now if there is a universal order if there is a universal law of reason you think then rational conclusions will really be should really be the same for everybody all in common so listen not to me but to love us if they not to a private understanding but to the Lagos cosmic reason it's wise to agree that all things are one and so the Lagos concept emerges out of this whole theme of cosmic order and cosmic justice well the subsequent passages come back to the same theme not in those words look on the second page a little over halfway down what is in opposition is in concert from what differs comes the most beautiful harmony harmony and then war is the father of all and the king of all that is to say it's the clash of opposite in a process of change which seems to underline each's processes so you see says one must know that war is commons universal justice is found through strife all things happen through strife and necessity but in the course of time the laws of justice Lagos you see notice the comments he makes about Homer in the second column about a third of the way down Homer deserves to be thrown out of the contests and whipped yeah for the virtues that he espoused those heroic virtues the Greek Jaques you thing I trust that a Wheaton jocks are not like Greek ones in those regards with the wrong values the most popular teacher is his II odd of him people think he knew most who didn't even know day and night that one he hadn't pressed into the cosmology unlike and then towards the bottom of the column to God all things are beautiful and good and just the men have supposed some things to be unjust and some just now that passage has been taken two ways one espousing the view of God singular perhaps like us that everything in the end works out right justly the other taking the view that this is critical of the Greek gods who let anything go and said ah that's all right and some men have been more discerning than that calling something's just someone just now which way is it meant I don't know okay and then in 17 in the first column if happiness lay in bodily pleasures oh yeah there were the hedonists of that day too if happiness lay in bodily pleasures we would call ox and happy when they find veg to eat okay Aristotle says something similar if pleasure is the highest end of man then I suppose you could call a healthy cabbage happy or a pig wallowing in the stuff is it okay no that there's something more and the next next same right after that one it's not good for men to obtain all they wish then the next same thinking is the greatest virtue wisdom is speaking the truth and acting according to nature paying heed according to the moral order of nature so Heraclitus there's this logoff concept is is a fascinating one the term if you if you trace its meaning in Greek language in antiquity it can mean not simply a speech that's heard an utterance the emphasis is rather on the the rationality of it it's the word from which we get our word logic Yesi it's it sometimes means measure in measuring out goods that are being sold balance harmony in harmonizing opposing influence opposing forces you see in other words it's that which gives order value meaning to life I think there's an echo of that in the first gospel of first chapter of John's Gospel when John begins in our KN Holocaust in the beginning was the logos meaning that in the beginning there was order meaning to life the love us by whom and for whom all things were made well this is the beginning of that lagos notion then in in Heraclitus turn lastly in this or next to lastly in this run down to annex a giris on page 41 incidentally you can see where Kaufman's interest is because of all those pages he puts in on Zeno's paradoxes he really loves to play with those paradoxes having to do with cosmology and nature he not particularly interested in the ethical question but turn to annex a giris on page 41 now I remember annex a grouse was one of the pluralists who held that there were as many different elements as there are different qualities properties so there is a seed of this a seed of that a seed of all the other things that can be observed right tena fide okay and that running through this in order to give it order harmony bring an ordered world of nature into being there is this cosmic noose vind intelligence reason however the word noose happens to be translated okay now look at the second column then on page 41 second column page 41 the paragraph numbered 11 in in everything there is a portion of everything except mind some things contain mind also okay there is vast variety of different seeds of everything going to make up our bodies with all the multitudinous variety of properties the various aspects of the body have seeds of everything now in some in everything there is a portion of everything but some things contain mind also not everything contains mind using a handful of slime gives no evidence of loose living but a thinking human being does now just we're in between II would draw the line of course is an interesting question depending whether you think of news is simply the giving of intelligence of a conscious sort or nooses evidenced in ordered nests okay some ordered cohesive unity that gives a thing identity that's distinguishable and definable or whether you think of news as the Greeks did of soul as that which gives life and enemies okay in which case a hunk of iron would have no noose at a cabbage would so various questions that can arise about this but he focuses on the concept mind noose now other things he goes on all contain a part of everything but mind is infinite and self ruling is mixed with no thing that is alone by itself if it were not by itself what were mixed it would have had a share of all things if it were mixed with anything then he goes on further down it is the finest of all things the purest has complete understanding of everything the greatest power all things that have life both the greater and the less are ruled by mind while they participate in mind in some way do they have mind in them or are they ruled from outside by some external mind mind took command of the universal revolution revolution not in the sense of a overthrow of authority but in the sense of that cosmic vortex in which everything is twisted around together as the Greeks conceived okay that primal chaos mind took command of that universal revolution so as to make things revolve at the outset and then from all of that revolving mass of stuff separates off draws off the various ordered kinds of things into an ordered cosmos well it almost sounds as if the King James translators may have read an exacting the earth was without form and void and God said and it was so now I say almost perhaps they did after all King James Version was translated after the Renaissance of learning which brought Greek thought back into the consciousness in in fact the Roman Cicero in his book on the nature of the gods I alluded to it earlier in his book on the nature of the gods Cicero says the first human thinker to hold that the orderly disposition of the universe is designed and perfected by the rational power of an infinite mind was an examples now notice what this annex a gross mind does you think don't say that annex a giris mind is a creator a certainly not in any judeo-christian sense in which we think of creation of course as ex nihilo out of nothing no prior materials no primal chaos no primal blopp of any sort yes I know rather what an exome Enders mind is does is to bring order out of chaos more of a shape or a fashion or an architect that a creator bringing things into being out of nothing but this seems to be approaching the the pinnacle of how far these people go Plato isn't satisfied with an ex Icarus an exact Rasmus in a number of places in his dialogues he's critical of the man because he sees order that he fails to see that there is purpose as well in the way things are made oh yes now I said that an X amend I said last time Anaximander seems to have a teleological view and ordered universe yes but not by virtue of intelligent conscious person in fact Plato may not have a notion of intelligent conscious purpose his concept of purpose seems to be unconscious though intelligent so he's criticizing an ex Amanda for not seeing and in oriented natural process nature's processes are ordered but not ordered to achieve ends and it's that achievement of aims that Plato is going to be concerned about an Aristotle an old medieval tradition well that's the picture yet there is a counter force you know they say there's always opposites well there's an opposite to all of this and maybe spotted it in your reading that the opposite is Democritus did you catch that the opposite is Democritus yet Democritus has no noose has no law das yes Democritus views the order of the cosmos as being the result of sheer chance the chance conglomeration of inert particles atoms whirling around in a cosmic vortex producing the the particular combination of things which survived a purely mechanistic account so Democritus is not likely to celebrate the natural order like the others do Democritus is not likely to find a microcosm in the law governed city-state he's not likely to stress cosmic justice and indeed that's what you find in Democritus if you look at page 44 middle of the second column everything happens according to necessity the cause of coming into being is the world at cosmic vortex that necessity things collide becoming tangled form larger substances so on and so forth and then in the next column at the very bottom first column of 45 notice this about aesthetic qualities sweet exists by convention bitter by convention color by convention and when you turn to where he talks about matters of ethics on 47 the very bottom of the second column pleasure and the absence of pleasure are the criteria of what is profitable and what is not or the very bottom of 48 paragraph 188 the criterion of the advantageous and disadvantageous is enjoyment lack of enjoyment the very bottom of 49 paragraphs two hundred people are fools who live without enjoyment why because in a world of sheer chance with no intrinsic order that insures that right will out eat drink and be married is he now admittedly he would recommend temperance in your eating and drinking and merriment because too much of it tends to cause pain rather than pleasure don't you know you think so you get a very different ethic resulting from Democritus mechanistic materialism than you do from these others who are pondering reflecting on the idea of an ordered law governed cream which we are part so that a law governed life should be part of the whole picture well next time we'll be looking at the Sophists and Socrates and notice how at least some of the Sophists seem to be closer to Democritus and without the least bit of interest or belief in a law governed cosmos and so the dichotomy between these two views if you like these two worldviews these two worldviews before we even get to play no surfaces and it's in to that conflict between worldviews that play those steps that Socrates emerges and so forth speaking to precisely the issues which this conflict of worldviews poses well by my chronometer we have five minutes before time which means five minutes for feedback you have sat silently as if this were a sermon instead of a class okay what do you want to ask yeah yeah not till you're logical enough it depends how you define teleology but here teleology usually spoken of with reference to belief in a natural order and purpose yes a but sometimes you find it use for just one of these the order without the pearls and an exact or seems to have order with intelligence behind it but no in here on purpose yes Plato wants to say that natural cross are in deceiving or if you like there are ideals inherent in all natural processes to what they should accomplish okay you know you're familiar perhaps with teleological arguments for the existence of God some people speak of an argument simply from the ordered nosov nature as a teleological argument but a full-blown teleological argument would be the kind of ordinance which gives evidence of intelligent purpose so the the terms are ambiguous one yeah Ruth yeah yeah very much so you know I said last time that the pre-socratics sort of posed the agenda at the Western philosophy there's a sense in which they also stake out the alternatives is the empiricism versus speculative rationalism a purely materialistic view versus something other than just the material view yeah very much so a hedonistic ethic versus an ethic of moral law yeah in fact I have a friend who this sounds like a horrible thing to do but as I understand it he used to introduce people to philosophy he was teaching in a seminary but he used to introduce people to philosophy who'd never had any philosophy by taking them through the pre-socratics now compare that with the wonderful intro to philosophy course you had here under the label issues of worldviews and you see a difference but on the other hand you can see that it's possible you think it's possible obviously you'd have to supply an awful lot in addition but yeah it sets the agenda and for that matter it poses the main alternatives yes yeah the the double aspect in Pythagoras is Paris and a pyrin limitation and unlimited chaos in Heraclitus it's Lagos and the fiery vapor oops I said vapor fiery vapor which is the way he talks about the natural elements yeah so these are the two aspects of one in the same thing notice that not only is the emerging God in this account not an ex nihilo creator the emerging God isn't really a transcendent God in Pythagoras and Heraclitus just another aspect of nature it's almost a pen sziasztok anticipation Anaximander comes perhaps closer and implying that this news is always unmixed it never is mixed up with all the elements

Channel: wheatoncollege

Views: 141,025

Rating: 4.8613415 out of 5

Keywords: wheaton, college, illinois, Philosophy (Field Of Study), Morality (Quotation Subject), History Of Philosophy (Field Of Study), University, Chicago

Id: c2dyP-OtruM

Length: 63min 17sec (3797 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 02 2015