Plato’s Cave

I’ve read this passage several times before, but this time around having done the pre-Socratics, it really struck me how Plato is kind of drawing to its logical conclusion, or at least bringing into a really strong emphasis, a lot of ideas that earlier philosophers have brought up.  Xenophanes’ description of how the wise man (he himself) with more knowledge than the others should be revered, but instead is treated as less than athletes, looks a lot like how in the cave, people who can predict what will show up on the wall (read: anticipate and respond to things happening in the material world) are valued but the person who actually sees the truth and wants to convey it will be killed.  Heraclitus’ conception of the one logos being true and governing the world, but of everyone conforming to their own mistaken logos, is also similar to the cave where everyone is mistaken about what is real.  Also Heraclitus’ aphorism about there being one common world for the waking, but different ones for those asleep, looks kind of like the cave where people are seeing the wrong things and making conclusions based off that, while real life is going on somewhere else that they can’t see.  The way the one freed from the cave gets out–he doesn’t set himself free, he is freed by someone else and forced to look around and is dragged up to the light even though he resists–looks very similar to the beginning of Parmenides’ poem, where he is completely passive while goddesses and mares and maidens take him along the path of knowledge.  Empedocles says “Very difficult for men and spiteful is the invasion of conviction into their minds” (B114), which we definitely see in the end of the cave story where when the free soul tries to release the chained ones, they turn on him and kill him.

Peloponnesian War

I really enjoyed Nick’s presentation on the Peloponnesian War, particularly because it made philosophy seem much more important.  Previously, I had kind of seen the philosophers as just these guys who had fun and interesting thoughts about the world, and thought they were worth writing down and sharing with people.  They all seemed kind of like Empedocles, being ostentatious and doing crazy things to get peoples’ attention, or Thales, complaining about how people didn’t respect him more than they did athletes.  I thought the pre-Socratics were worth reading, but none of them has anything more than a guess or a nice theory about how the world might be, with no absolute point of reference.  I’ll admit, I still kind of think that (it’s the Protestant in me), but I have a much more serious view on what the philosophers thought they were doing after learning about the world events that were going on during that time.

Where before, I thought of the philosophers as kind of just recognizing something influential, in philosophy, and keeping it going by introducing new nuances to it all the time, now I think they were doing something that they saw as really important and necessary.  It’s one thing to philosophize in peacetime, fulfilling what Aristotle saw as our purpose when there’s nothing around to threaten that.  It’s quite another to do it in wartime, when the world as we know it is being radically changed, the balance of power and influence is shifting, and one’s identity (as Athenian, Spartan, Sicilian, etc.) hangs in the balance.  There are a lot of more “important” things these philosophers could have been doing with their minds–drawing up war strategies, working as diplomats (which Gorgias in fact did), or joggling the power structures so they could end up at the top.  Instead, they chose to write philosophy.  They’re not just playing in some metaphysical sandbox to see what they can come up with.  They think the nature of non-being, the arche, the life of the soul, are more important than the world-shaking events going on around them.  Knowing this definitely makes me respect the philosophers more.

Anaxagoras and Plato

I read the Timaeus over the summer, and it struck me reading this passage that where Socrates criticizes Anaxagoras’ theories and practice of philosophy, Plato changes many of those problems in the Timaeus.  I noticed in the Timaeus that the medieval ideas where everything was how it is because that was fitting for it must have come from this dialogue (one of my teachers said this was the only Plato the medievals had for a while).  In the Phaedo, Socrates has this as his complaint with Anaxagoras: he sets up a system in which Mind organizes everything perfectly, and is the cause of everything that exists, and then he fails to explain how in fact Mind works, instead talking about earth and air and “many other strange things”.  Plato fixes this problem in the Timaeus, which spends a great deal of time explaining how the demiurge mixed together different substances in order to create everything that exists–the gods, humans, the earth, the universe, and so on.  He painstakingly explains how each thing is exactly fitting for what it is like–the head is held apart from the body by the neck, because reason and the rational nature is the highest part of mankind, divided from the other parts.  The god of the Timaeus is not aloof, as Socrates sees Mind being; it is intimately involved with creation and the way things are, mixing together elements in a cosmic mixing bowl.  Instead of Mind simply making everything start moving, and then leaving it to work itself out, the demiurge gets involved with every aspect of creation.

 

The Philosopher’s Reputation

Based on some things said in class, and a few lines in the Parmenides, I want to talk a bit about the various philosophers’ ideas on reputation.  Some of them seem eager to have fame and honor, some value their ideas more, and some manage to incorporate both.

Xenophanes, we saw a few weeks ago, was chagrined at the lack of influence philosophers had in his time period.  “These ways are misguided and it is not right to put strength ahead of wisdom, which is good”, he says, and “superior to the strength of men or horses is my wisdom” (B2).  This complaint ties into his questioning of knowledge; everyone values things that are familiar to them, he says, and so when they encounter true knowledge they don’t like it.

Pythagoras had the most success, so far, integrating reputation with good teaching–he had a school of followers in his lifetime, who continued to be influential for years afterwards.  But his reputation seems to have obscured his person; we know what his various sects say about him, but we have a really hard time seeing the man behind the legend.

Empedocles, as Luke talked about in his presentation, was pretty concerned with his reputation.  He dressed flamboyantly; he claimed to be a god; and the most popular story of his death is that he leapt into a volcano.  Empedocles had good ideas, but maybe the reason he didn’t have a school of followers like Pythagoras or an enduring sect is that he devoted a lot of his influence to making people be in awe of him personally, not his ideas.

In the Parmenides, Socrates responds doubtfully to one of Zeno’s questions, who thereupon tells him that as he gets older he will stop caring what people think of his philosophy.  This seems to have been true, since he is killed for bothering everyone in Athens.

Which way is most successful?  Gathering followers who pervert one’s ideas; being ostentatious in order to get attention; or ignoring public opinion to one’s own detriment?

Empedocles: Materialist?

Empedocles confused me in a few places, because I can’t tell if he is a materialist or has some idea of existence beyond matter, the soul or something like that.  He seems at first look to have an idea of reincarnation, according to passages like B117, “for I have already been born as a boy and a girl and a bush and a bird and a fish”, or B127 and 147 which seem to me to show some kind of progress of the soul, first a lion, then becoming a prophet or chief, and finally a god.  This would accord with what some of our earlier philosophers have stated about the soul, also.

But it also seems as though the only existence, for Empedocles, is material.  He makes the argument that “of the whole, nothing is empty; from where, then could anything come to be added to it?” (B14), which seems to be saying that everything in existence is all that there is, nothing can be created or destroyed.  He says this more clearly in B17.34-36: “There are just these very things, and running through one another at different times they come to be different things and yet are always and continuously the same. We come together into one kosmos”.  But does this mean that only matter is, or that the spiritual realm has the same kind of cycle?  This could explain why Empedocles has been multiple different beings, but “before they took on the fixed form of mortals and after they have dissolved, they are then nothing” (B15).  Also, the god seems to be a spiritual entity, who “is only mind, holy and indescribable, darting through the entire kosmos with his swift thoughts” (B134).

It’s interesting that Empedocles apparently believes that a spiritual realm exists, and yet he does not see the soul as anything in particular worth talking about, certainly not eternal.

Parmenides and control

The ‘power structure’, for lack of a better term, intrigued me in Parmenides’ account of the universe.  He gives an account wherein the major powers are Fate, Necessity, and Justice; other things, like Love, are subsequent.

This was brought to mind by a few different conversations in classes recently.  In my theology class, we discussed Peter Abelard’s concept of atonement; for him, the only thing ‘constraining’ God’s actions is love.  God can do anything he wants, out of love for us, uninhibited by justice.  Anselm of Canterbury disagrees, arguing that God is not governed by any necessity, except the necessity of perfection.  If someone who claims to be God lies, he says, that does not make lying right; on the contrary, the liar is not God.  This is a tricky claim because on the one hand, God is above all necessity and cannot be governed by anything except who he is; on the other hand, we do not want to posit a God who is less than perfectly good, or who could choose what morality is.  Anselm’s account makes our conception of morality logically prior to God.  These ideas were also brought up in philosophy class the other day, when we talked about triangles (i.e. logic), number, words, and whether any of these are eternal.  If we make any of these prior to God, we claim something is either a competing power or a constraint on God.  But we cannot conceive of an existence before number–and after all, God has number within himself. (I would posit that number exists because of God, in the same way that justice and love are reflections of Godly qualities.)

Parmenides’ account of the universe, therefore, has some similarities and some differences to what we discussed.  Justice, or Dike, governs the doors of Night and also allows “neither coming to be/ nor perishing . . . but she holds [the universe] fast” (B8).  Necessity (Ananke?) also constrains the universe, apparently in its spacial limits (B8, B10).  And Fate is mentioned as determining what-is “to be whole and changeless” (B8).  These are the powers prior to Parmenides’ universe; Love, on the other hand, was created by the goddess at the center of all things (B12, B13).  What kind of worldview would it create, to have Fate, Justice, and Necessity as ultimates, and other qualities like Love only contingent?