Blog on the Paper Process

Between BIC and Philosophy, I've written a substantial number of papers in my undergraduate career here at Baylor, and I can say quite confidently that the process we've used in this class has been by far the most beneficial.

In most classes, when you write a paper, you are given a prompt,you produce a paper, you turn it in, and then you recieve your grade and some feedback. In some cases, an outline or a draft is due prior to the paper's due date, but this is usually only in lower level classes. In these cases, a student is provided with some level of feedback to incorporate into their final draft, but usually this is done only to improve the quality of the grade that the student hopes to recieve on his final draft.

However, in this mode of doing the paper, the entire process was different. We were not given a prompt, but rather were able to research a topic that heavily interested us, with the minor stipulation that it relate to a Classical Philosopher in some manner or another. Before we produced a paper, we produced an abstract and got peer feedback on it. This enabled us to alter our trajectory for the paper before committing to one that didn't say what we were getting at fully enough. After the abstract, a rough draft was due. It didn't have to be as long as the final draft, which enabled us to actually use it as a rough draft (in contrast to those classes who say "turn in a rough draft, but it should closely resemble your final copy"). This allowed us to more fully develop our ideas and commit to them but still be open to critique and improvement which we got from 3 different sources: our peer editors, Dr. Schultz's edits, and our presentation. The presentation enabled us to explain our argument in different media. Through preparing for my presentation, I actually gained a better grasp on my argument myself, which enabled me to be more clear as I tweaked my paper for the final copy. Finally, the review that we wrote compelled us to look back at the process, and reinforce in our minds that it was more about the process thant the grade.

Overall, the seminar style of writing the paper was a definite success, and I can tell this by the fact that I've been thinking, not about tallyng up the scores on all my rubrics to see if I'm going to actually make an A on it, but about what I've gleaned fromt he process as a whole.

Knowing the Good = Doing the Good?

No matter how many times I read and reread this article by Robert Coles, it never ceases to strike me in an odd way each time. I can't help but think that these are some of the most true words in existence. Despite Socrates' claim that "to know the good is to do the good," it seems that many times in 'real' life we are left with people who seem to know the good and yet refrain from doing it. There are only two logical causes for this effect: either they do not really know the good (that is, that knowing the good is something other than intellectual knowledge of the good), or that knowing the good isn't sufficient for doing the good. I am more inclined to pick the first of the two.

I was actually having a conversation with my friend earlier today; we were discussing bad eating/exercise habits. He said "I know eating this way is really bad for me, and I am fully aware of the consequences, but I just don't really care that much." I mean, the kid practically lives on a diet of pasta, butter, cheese, and all things deep-fried. His first statement is true. Eating that way is bad for him. His last statement is probably true as well. It's the middle statement that is questionable: "I am fully aware of the consequences..." I argued against him, saying that if he was really truly aware of the consequences, he would care more. I mean, we all wonder at the logical sanity of the person who carries around an oxygen tank yet still smokes a pack a day, but how is that different from our daily claims that we should eat less and exercise more? In each case, we claim we know what we are doing is bad, but we don't care enough to change it. I think we don't honestly believe in the bad-ness of what we are doing. If we did, we would change. Hindsight is 20/20 - and that's because once we are suffering the consequences of our actions, we truly KNOW that the action was actually bad for us. Prior to that, we didn't believe it enough to change it.

I think Christianity speaks prominently on this issue. For years, until I made a decisively immoral decision, I struggled with feeling like I needed God. I mean, those promiscuous drug-addicts and alcoholics, they needed God; but me? I was 14 and couldn't even squish a bug without feeling horrendous guilt. For all intents and purposes, I was a pretty morally-upright kid. I struggled with feeling like I needed God, because I didn't KNOW I needed him. I didn't KNOW that I was sinful. I didn't KNOW that I couldn't be good enough to please Him on my own. Once I made that decisively immoral decision, I KNEW that I was deeply, inherently sinful, and that I needed God - and I mean, I knew it in the deepest fibers of my being. And once I KNEW that I needed God, repentance was almost immediate. I finally knew the good, and so I acted upon it.

The Coles article resonates deeply within me, because I've also had that same struggle that the girl Coles talks about had. When I was in the 10th grade, living overseas, I went to a missionary boarding school. Instead of dorms, we lived in group-home style houses called 'hostels.' Every hostel had a girls' hall and a boys' hall, and a living area in the middle. We lived together like a big family, and even affectionately termed each other "hostel siblings". One of my best friends lived in my hostel with me, and he was the most obviously Christian guy I knew. All of the adults in the community respected him, he led worship, and went to Bible Study every day. One night, he tried to rape me. It took me years to get over that, and now I can talk about it, but it's made this topic of prime interest to me. How could this "upstanding, Christian" guy do something so HORRIBLE? The only logical answer is that he didn't actually KNOW the good. He had all the outward appearances of knowing the good, but inside of his soul, if he had known the deep badness of the action he attempted, he could not possibly have done it. He could only know the deep badness of the action he attempted if he knew the good; otherwise, there's nothing to contrast it with. He didn't know the good and so he didn't know the bad. So, it makes doing the bad a whole lot easier. If he had known the good, he would have known the badness of his behavior.

Likewise, the boy in question in Coles article didn't know the good. He had outward behaviors of knowing the good (good test scores, good grades, etc.) but he didn't know it in his soul. He didn't KNOW it in the deepest part of him. It didn't resonate with him. So, he knew it in his head, but he didn't know it in his soul. I think those two things are profoundly different. I can learn about what it's like to be homeless, but until I've been homeless I can't know it in my soul. By learning intellectually about homelessness, sympathy can be sparked within me, and I think that's like a shadow of actually knowing what homelessness is like, but it isn't the real thing. When we learn intellectually about the good, that knowledge can yield a sort of 'sympathy', if you will, and can give us a shadow of the good, but we can't truly KNOW the good through intellectual knowledge alone. It has to be something more?

So, how do we know the good? As a Christian, I believe that God reveals the good to me. If God is the good for which I am striving, then my relationship with Him is all about knowing Him, and consequently is about knowing the good. The more I know God, the more I will act according to His will, and the more I will act in a way that is pleasing to Him.

How do we know the good apart from God? I would answer that apart from God, there is no such thing.

Pleasure vs. Happiness

In Book 10 of Nichomachean Ethics, Eudoxus posits that pleasure could potentially be the supreme good because we often pursue things for pleasure's sake, and it also makes other things more desirable.

Aristotle makes the case that there are many things we value that are not necessarily pleasant. For example, exercising may be good for me, but running definitely does not bring me pleasure.

He also says that pleasure cannot be a process because it does not start out incomplete and then become complete, and it does not take place over time. Thus, it can never fit in with virtue, because he has already established that virtue is a consistent habit.

Because pleasure cannot be the chief end, Aristotle says that happiness is the chief end with contemplation being its highest and most complete form. Today, most people associate pleasure with happiness, and think that they always come as a package deal. However, Aristotle would say that there is a measure of habituation that comes with happiness. Furthermore, most do not see contemplation as a thing that brings pleasure, but Aristotle says that to contemplate like the gods do is to be happy.

Happiness, then, is a step above moral virtue, which Aristotle has spent the previous parts of the book explicating. The key difference between happiness and virtue is that happiness entails the intellect, or rational contemplation. Additionally, the moral virtues are all done for the sake of happiness. Aristotle's definition of happiness is most like philosophical contemplation.

So here I am in the library on a Friday night, working on my research paper, doing a lot of philosophical contemplation, and being "happy," per Aristotle, though not necessarily filled with pleasure :P

Aristotle, Friendship, and the Lover-Beloved Relationship

Aristotle describes three different types of friendship: friendships of utility, friendships of pleasure, and friendships of virtue, with the latter being the most Good. Aristotle argues that friendship is complete virtue, and so it should be placed above all other virtues, including honor and justice.

First, Aristotle describes friendships of utility. He says that elderly people, because they are more experienced and efficient in life, are prone to these sorts of friendships because they are looking to find what is advantageous for them. This comes from a self-love of utility, which is ultimately selfish.

Second, Aristotle describes friendships of pleasure, saying that the young are more likely to make these sorts of friendships because they are passion-filled and seeking pleasure. They flit around from one friendship to another, because they are filled with self-love of pleasure. This also is ultimately selfish.

Third, Aristotle describes friendships of virtue which are the most esteemed. In this friendship between two people of equally virtuous status, each person wills only the good for his friend, disregarding self-love of pleasure and of utility. Only good people - or people pursuing the Good - can handle these sorts of friendships, because there is nothing to gain since both friends are equal to each other, and united in their pursuance of virtue.

Aristotle believes that true love is the product of a virtuous friendship.

In Book 8, Chapter 7, Line 11, Aristotle starts talking about friendships that are based on superiority, such as that which would arise between a younger man and an older man. He argues that "in all friendships based on a superiority, the feelings of friendly affection too ought to be proportional" according to the ranks of superiority. For example, if a person that is more esteemed or older becomes friends with one who is less esteemed or younger, it is proper that the lesser individual should love the greater more than the greater loves the lesser.  In doing this, the hierarchy sort of levels out, and they can have that virtuous sort of friendship that is the best kind. This appears to me to be analogous to the lover-beloved relationship discussed in the Symposium. In Chapter 8, Aristotle goes on to say "But the many seem, on account of their love of honor, to wish to be loved more than to love." This also seems to be the problem in the Symposium with all the tension and drama that occurs, especially with Alcibaides (however you spell his name). He is jealous for the honor one gets from being the beloved of Socrates, and thus wants to be loved more than he wants to truly love Socrates. This is why their relationship seems strained, and perhaps if Alcibaides was more focused on loving than on being loved, then their relationship would be Good and they could pursue virtue together. This holds true for many relationships today as well. (Yay Aristotle with that good ol' marriage advice!)

Alcibiades: An Ancient Greek Soap Opera.

The 5 most important things that Diotima tried to teach Socrates about love were that:

1. Socrates was wrong in saying that if Love desired x, Love must not have x. For example, if Love desires beauty, Love cannot be beautiful. Rather, Diotima says that desire of something does not necessarily mean complete lack of that thing. She posits that Love is the mean between 2 extremes, such as the mean between wisdom and ignorance, and explains this through the story of its birth. In this way, Love can both be beautiful and yet desire beauty.
2. Love means wanting to possess the good forever, and that is why we pursue Love with such eagerness and zeal.
3. The true kind of Love is achieved through pursuing the good, but there is a slight perversion of Love that occurs when people pursue happiness through indirect means, such as money or fame.
4. Love gives birth to beauty. In a way, reproduction leads to immortality, and in the act of reproduction/pregnancy, the parents become more joyful and more beautiful - more good. So, reproduction is the act that allows Love to possess the good forever.
5. Love must desire immortality.

Throughout his speech about Socrates, Alcibiades mentions many things about their relationship that are characteristic of the way Love has been described throughout the evening. For example, Alcibiades talks about how Socrates is so beautiful and wonderful that it makes him feel shame, which is one of the characteristics of love that Phaedrus mentioned. He also mentioned that Socrates tends to Love beautiful boys, which shows that Love is the pursuit of beauty, as Diotima said. Most importantly, he talks about how willing he was to surrender all he was to Socrates so that Socrates might make him good. This means that he recognizes, at least in some small way, that Love is pursuance of the good, and would make him more beautiful and more wise. I think this is why he wishes to consummate the relationship with Socrates, perhaps because he understands that the act of consummation is the act that would allow their Love to become cemented in the pursuit of the good forever.

I think that Alcibiades is only pretending to be drunk, because it seems to be his primary goal to get Socrates drunk. I don't really know what their relationship is at this point, but perhaps he thinks if Socrates is drunk, he will be more loose with Alcibiades, though he mentions bitterly that no matter how much he drinks, Socrates will not become drunk. I've never been drunk before, so I can't say for sure, but it seems to me that he is wayyyyyy too articulate to be drunk as well. That factor aside, I think other things point to his sobriety as well - perhaps he is only pretending to be drunk so that they will let him into the party in an attempt to calm him down. He seems to be angry about Socrates sitting next to Agathon, so it seems possible that he came to break up the Love party and make sure that Socrates was being faithful to him, and just used the guise of being drunk to be allowed in.

The 5 different definitions of love in Plato's Symposium

Phaedrus (Young) - 178a-180b

• Love is the oldest of all the gods, and thus confers the most benefits.
• Love teaches us shame in acting disgracefully and pride in acting well (we feel more ashamed to be caught doing something disgraceful when we are caught by a loved one).
• Love, then, leads to bravery, courage, and honor because if there were an army of lovers and beloveds, they would rather die than display cowardice in front of their partners.
• The gods value love as a guide to action, because they allow people who loved greatly to return from the underworld.
• Speaks in the context of male-male love (as most of the others do as well)

Pausanias (Agathon's life-partner) -180c-185c

• There are two kinds of love: heavenly and common (see blog post below)
• Love in itself is neither commendable nor detestable; rather, if it is done properly, it is esteemed and if it is not, then it has no merit.
• The main purpose of love is to produce virtue, which is why male-male relationships between the wise lover and the younger beloved are so esteemed (His praises of the longevity of relationships make sense given his relationship with Agathon.)
• Pausanias agrees with Phaedrus that love is good, but makes an improvement by adding the distinction between heavenly love and common love, and adding the qualifier that love is good only if it is the former.

Eryximachus (Doctor) 185c-189b

• Commends Pausanias's distinction between the two types of love and agrees with him therein.
• Agrees that it is good to gratify good people, and bad to gratify bad people.
• Expands upon Pausanias's explanation of love by saying that love is not purely emotional, as Pausanias has suggested, but rather that it is bodily as well (which makes sense, given that he's a doctor).
• He completes an analogy by saying that it is appropriate to gratify the healthy parts of the body, and bad to gratify the diseased parts of the body.
• Eryximachus then expands this idea of love to show that love has its place in music, agriculture, medicine, etc. It is the doctor's role to implant the good kind of love in the body and flush out the bad, restoring the body to a homeostasis of harmony. Likewise, love is manifested in unity and harmony in other subjects as well.
• Love is ever-present, all-powerful, and primarily concerned with unity

Aristophanes (Great comic playwright) 189c-193e

• There used to be 3 genders: male, female, and androgynous. The gods sliced them in half because they were getting too powerful, and love is the reunion of the two halves of a person.
• Androgynous individuals are heterosexual, with the other two genders being homosexual (I use the word "homosexual" loosely, since some would protest to the lover/beloved relationship being stigmatized this way).
• Aristophanes praises the male-male relationship for the same reasons that Pausanias does.
• "Love" is our desire for wholeness, and restores us to our formerly whole selves (This gets at what Eryximachus is getting at too).

Diotima

• Socrates shows that love is desirous of something which it does not have, meaning that if what the previous orators have said is true, then love can be neither beautiful nor good since it desires what is both beautiful and good.
• BUT, love does not have to be ugly and bad, since Diotima says that things don't have to be one thing or their opposite, but can fall somewhere in the middle. For example, love is not mortal or immortal but is a sort of spirit.
• gods use spirits to communicate with humans, so love is like a message to the humans from the gods.
• Love is the child of Poverty and Resource, and is like both of them, but somewhere in between. For example, love is always poor but very tough; somewhere in between ignorance and wisdom; always in need but can scheme to get what he wants; is neither immortal or mortal so it can result in forever friendship or a temporary relationship (in contrast to what Pausanias says).
• Diotima dismisses what Aristophanes says about lovers looking for their other half, and instead posits that love searches for what is good. In the same manner of Eryximachus, she says that we want to amputate diseased limbs meaning we only want to be attached to what is good.
• Love is the desire to have the good forever, and the closest we can get to this is through birth and reproduction because that's what gets us closest to immortality.
• She, like the others, advocates the male-male relationship by saying that men can be pregnant in both body and mind. They can be pregnant in body and seek to reproduce with a female, or they can be pregnant in mind and seek to reproduce wisdom and virtue in the mind of a younger beloved.
• As far as the whole "loving the bodies is bad but loving the minds is good" thing that Pausanias gets at, Diotima says that boys begin to love a beautiful body until they realize that there are lots of beautiful bodies, so they move onto the mind. Then, the love of the mind becomes more important and the love of the body falls away. Then, he just loves beauty in general rather than beautiful bodies or things.
• Then, he grows to love knowledge, which ultimately leads to love, which is the knowledge of beauty, which is eternal.

Love

The two main types of love discussed in Plato's Symposium are popular love and heavenly love.

Popular love is described as being sort of haphazard and driven by the fleeting passions. It is directed either towards a woman or towards a man, and is driven by a lust for the body rather than a desire for the soul's wisdom. It admires accomplishments in the beloved, but takes no notice of the manner in which they were required. It is characterized by a lack of harmony between the two individuals, and is considered wicked or base.

In contrast, heavenly love is considered noble, and is only directed towards a male, from a male. It is not a passion for boys, but rather is a love of wisdom and goodness. Thus, this love is captivated by the beauty of the mind or of the soul, and because it seeks wisdom and goodness, it makes both individuals wise and good. Essentially, the elder of the two is the pursuer, and he teaches wisdom and knowledge to the younger, who in turn gratifies the elder because it is considered right to gratify good men. This creates a sort of harmony between the two, and results in a forever friendship, even when the lover/beloved relationship dissipates.

Thus, love is the pursuit of wisdom that results in unity between a lover and a beloved.

Guard Your Soul (Protagoras 309a-314e)

"You cannot know to whom you are entrusting your soul,—whether it is to something good or to something evil."

When Socrates hears that Hippocrates is desiring to go see the Sophist, Protagoras, who has just arrived in town, Socrates is shocked that he would so willingly pay a sum of money just to go see him, unsure of what he will actually be gaining. Socrates establishes that if Hippocrates were to pay a sculptor or a painter, he would want to be taught the profession of painting and sculpting. Likewise, if he is paying a Sophist, he must therefore want to become a Sophist as well. Unable to describe what it is exactly that he wishes to gain from Sophistry, Hippocrates concedes to Socrates that what he is really wanting is education, not learning the profession, because he does not want to become a Sophist himself - in fact, Hippocrates says he would be ashamed to be a Sophist. Socrates then establishes that a part of education is indoctrination - at least when dealing with Sophistry - and that he is surprised Hippocrates would pay to be indoctrinated with an unknown doctrine by going to visit Protagoras.

In this excerpt, Socrates recognizes something that we often fail to recognize in this day and age: the sacredness - and malleability - of the human soul. He states that Hippocrates cannot just carry away what the Sophist gives him in his arms - no, he must carry it in his soul. Forever (314a). As consumers, we often fail to recognize that some of the things we purchase and take part in will not just alter our life through the function of the object, but will actually change us. We don't notice that the sort of music we choose to listen to, the lyrics we hum under our breath, the movies we watch, the things we read, the things our ears listen to, the arguments we buy, the things we allow our soul to become aware of are all slowly changing the very essence of who we are. Our generation is young, wild, and free of all repercussions regarding our rumspringa actions....so we think.

Growing up in the Church, we always heard statistics regarding youth who essentially fell off the Church grid during and after college. Our youth pastors all pleaded with us to be careful that we not "lose our faith" too. I think this "loss of faith" (disregarding a discussion of whether one can actually "lose their faith") is due to the fact that the new age is filled with the exhortation to be more open-minded. If you don't want to listen to someone else's point of view or opinion on how the world is or how it should be, then you are labeled as a closed-minded bigot. Because of this, more and more young people are opening their souls to doctrines that cannot help but change it. Strangely enough, I think Socrates would be on the God's side this time (haha). I don't think Socrates is advocating for closed-mindedness, necessarily, but I think he is cautioning one to take much care with what they allow their soul to be privy too. You can think critically about your faith (or whatever the belief/mindset in question is), and that's a good thing, but don't go listen to random, unknown doctrines when you don't want their effects on your soul. After all,

"You cannot know to whom you are entrusting your soul,—whether it is to something good or to something evil."

The Sophists, but mostly Anthiphon

After reading the excerpts about Antiphon, I realized that the majority of Plato's writings about Justice, especially his conversations in The Republic about the nature of Justice, were constructed on the foundation that Antiphon provided.

First of all, Antiphon posits that Justice is following what the nomoi prescribe when there are witnesses present, and following the decrees of phusis when witnesses are not present. After a little research, I discovered that that the numoi/nomos are laws, lawmakers, having to do with societal law, etc., and that phusis is essentially the law of nature, or that natural conscience you have within you. Essentially,  Antiphon says that following the phusis are necessary, while the numoi are simply extra laws that everyone has agreed upon. Thus, when one is in private, one need only follow the phusis, but in public or in society you must follow the agreed upon laws. To do this is Justice.

Now, he goes on to prove that being Just is best, or leads to the most happiness, which Plato also argues in the Republic. He says that though the numoi may seem to be in conflict with phusis, and may seem to cause discomfort or pain, or at times seem not adequately just, it is better to live in communion with others and heed the numos rather than to abide in nature and live by the phusis. Thus, Hobbes' saying "human nature is nasty, brutish..." seems also to be an echo of Antiphon. He argues that nomos is grounded in phusis.

Antiphon also lays down the foundation for the idea that only the person who is Just in private as well as in public is the truly Just person (Ring of Gyges and all that...).

He then moves on to talk about eunomia and anomia, eunomia meaning proper order and right conduct, and anomia meaning the opposite (I think basically Justice and injustice). Antiphon argues that tyranny springs from "nothing else but anomia". He says that this only happens when nomoi and justice dissipates.

Thus, the groundwork is laid for Plato's Just city in The Republic

Democritus' Epistemology

Democritus is a materialist: he believes that physical matter is the only reality and that psychological states can be explained as physical functions.

So he starts thinking about what someone can know, and he comes up with two things
      First, he believes that only things that can be perceived are real or true.
     Secondly, he thinks that the truth of something is in its appearance.

But, given his atomic theories, he realizes that there are opposite and infinite appearances of one thing due to the shape, arrangement, and position of its atoms…and all of these appearances can’t be true!

So….What can we know?

Well, he says that thought and sensation are caused by atoms impinging on the body from the outside, but this leads us to a huge epistemological problem: If what we know about the world is derived from our sense experiences, but the senses themselves are not in direct contact with the nature of things, just these atoms, then we can’t really know anything. And, he’s not a skeptic, so he wants a better answer than that.

He wonders if the mind could overthrow the senses, but this wouldn't work because he still thinks that the senses are the mind’s only route to truth. They’re all we’ve got to go on, but they just aren’t substantial enough. For example, you can’t perceive atoms with your mind, you have to sense them. Our knowledge of the properties of atoms is always based on the senses. But then you have this conflict because the senses report properties that the atoms don’t really possess in their nature, like colors and tastes. This means that there’s this huge potential for doubt – there’s a large gap between what we can perceive, and what actually exists.

So basically, here’s where we’re at. Democritus says that the knowledge of truth is difficult, because perception through the senses is subjective. The same senses prescribe different impressions for each individual, meaning that we can’t perceive the Truth through our senses. We can only interpret the sense data through the intellect and try to grasp the truth.

 So, he comes up with the fact that there are two kinds of knowledge.

        The first is bastard knowledge, which is Concerned with the perception through the senses. He says this is insufficient for knowing truth, because it is subjective according to the individual. It’s subjective because sense-perception is due to the effluences of the atoms from the objects to the senses. When these different shapes of atoms come to us, they stimulate our senses according to their shape, and our sense-impressions arise from those stimulations.

          The second is legitimate knowledge. It’s achieved through the intellect, and you must evaluate “Bastard” knowledge/sensory perceptions through inductive reasoning.  After you take into account subjective sense impressions, you can:

1)      Examine the causes of the appearances
2)      Draw conclusions about the laws that govern the appearances
3)      Discovery the causality by which they are related.

Once you have these three things figured out, you can be pretty sure of your knowledge!

Anaxagoras and Metaphysics

Anaxagoras, evidently influenced by Parmenides' theories about the "what-is", proposed a metaphysical theory that said the entire cosmos was driven by the "nous," which refers to the intellect or the mind. His physical theories state that, basically, everything is in everything. Here he draws from the Milesians as to the ingredients of the cosmos, and says that whatever these ingredients are, they are all mixed up together. They cannot be separated, but the mixture is not homogenous. Thus, there is a bit of everything in everything, even if one thing is distinguishable from another. These distinguishable things are formed when the nous starts the mass swirling. So basically, the universe is like a giant oreo milkshake. The oreos are part of the milkshake, but distinguishable from the milkshake stuff, and the blender is the nous.

In his aphorisms, we can see that there are 3 undergirding principles to Anaxagoras's metaphysical theory:
1) There is no becoming or passing away.
2) Everything is in everything.
3) There is no smaller or larger.

In aphorism 17, Anaxagoras says that there is no coming to be or passing away, but that everything is either mixed together or dissociated. So apparently the laws of the conservation of mass and energy have been around since 500BCE (Sorry Antoine Lavoisier, he beatcha to it). I guess if he thinks that everything is one ginormous swirling vortex, it would be hard for something to separate out of it, and it would also not make sense for things to be able to be created or discarded, because everything that exists is IN that giant swirling vortex.

From this, it naturally follows that everything is in everything. He strangely distinguishes, in aphorism 11 that nous is not only the driving force behind everything, but is also IN some things (yet not in others).  Perhaps he means that not all objects are sentient or intellectual beings, thus, nous would not be present in things that are not humans, animals, or plants (he thinks plants have intellects too).

He has an interesting discourse on the topic of the smaller or the larger. I think what he's getting at is that the cosmos is so big that everything in relation to the cosmos looks to be equally miniscule. In aphorism 3, he explains this and says "...there is a smaller for what-is cannot not be, but also for the large there is always a larger. And the large is equal to the small in extent, but in relation to itself each thing is both large and small." This is where he's reminiscent of Parmenides because he realizes that the what-is can never not be, which directly influences statement #1 in the list above.

Zeno

After reading Zeno, I am sure of only one thing: I am not a metaphysics person. That being said, the following is an attempt to talk about Zeno without talking about metaphysics.

Zeno says that his many metaphysical arguments are purely efforts to defend Parmenides' argument that the what-is is one. In this spirit, he advances many different metaphysical arguments countering things like plurality and movement. Through them, he shows that there is only one thing in the universe, which runs counter to what we are able to perceive. In a roundabout way, Zeno is not only focused on metaphysics but also on epistemology. Just because we can perceive something doesn't mean we can know it - we must think logically about things in a metaphysical manner to be able to know things.

However, I'm not so sure that Zeno accomplishes what he sounds like he's trying to prove. Parmenides, when speaking about the what-is, was speaking about Truth. Parmenides is a monist and was saying that there is only one, objective Truth, NOT that there was only one single entity in the entire universe.

That being said, I don't think that Zeno misunderstand Parmenides and what he was trying to say (how could he, if they were so close?). I think that those who heard Parmenides' monism may have misunderstood him to be saying that there is only one actual thing in the whole universe (let's be honest, the whole "what-is" thing is just a tad confusing), and that Zeno was actually defending Parmenides' thesis by making counter-arguments to what common people thought Parmenides was saying. Thus, in order to be Parmenides' defender, he didn't  have to defend Parmenides ACTUAL thesis, he just had to counter what others interpreted that thesis to mean (which was also easier).

In doing this, Zeno challenges common perceptions of the physical world, and shows that there is much more than meets the eye (and the ear).

Parmenides' Poem

Upon reading Parmenides' poem, I was surprised, because it seemed as if he was reverting to the ways of Homer and Hesiod. In part, I think he has. He uses the same musing style of the Greek poets to talk about how he figuratively journeyed to visit a goddess who dispensed Truth and wisdom to him. An allegorical understanding of his poem is crucial to deriving its meaning. Parmenides mentions the roads of Night and Day - Night and Day are two goddesses - which lead to a gate opened by a being named Justice. The goddess which actually dispenses Truth to Parmenides is Night, who just happens to be Zeus's counselor. Night is known for counseling Zeus in how to maintain unity in all he does. This turns out to be a key point for understanding Parmenides' metaphysics, which deal quite heavily with the concept of unity throughout the cosmos. Hence, I think it is safe to conjecture from his allegorical poem that Parmenides believes in an absolute, unified Truth which lights the way to Justice, a concept Plato later explores (I actually just really love Plato, so I have to talk about him in every blog post. I would say I'm sorry but......it's Plato......)

In aphorism 7, Parmenides says "do not let habit, rich in experience, compel you along this route, to direct an aimless eye and an echoing ear and tongue, but judge by reasoning...". It would seem that here he is rejecting the senses as a way to empirically gather truth; thus, he is no materialist. He continues with an interesting exploration into what he dubs "what-is" and "what-is-not". Throughout all of his aphorisms, he seems to be saying that Truth will reveal itself and sort itself out. Truth is that which is "what-is", and as the name reveals, it just simply is. Falsity is that which is "what-is-not" and is sure to pass away, leaving Truth behind - as long as we use the logos of our wisdom and judgment, that is.

 My favorite quote of Parmenides' is when he says "Nor will the force of true conviction ever permit anything to come to be." If you allow it to sink in for a moment,

No

Really







Let it sink in.





It's really quite profound. What-is will always be. What is Truth will always be. What is Right will always find its way to the surface, leaving what-is-not behind. It doesn't matter what we want Truth to be. It doesn't even matter what we think Truth must be. It doesn't matter what our senses tell us Truth is. Truth is still there, lingering, unified, one, whole, complete. Because any falsity in our thoughts and convictions simply is-not. The pure conviction on our part that Truth is this or that means nothing, because we cannot bend Truth to our will. Truth will simply always be there, waiting for us to discover it, giving us glimmers here and there if only we stop and think and perceive. And even if we never find Truth, maybe that's ok. Maybe it's only about the journey, and about searching, and in the end, Truth will always be, and we'll find out what what-is is anyways.

Coming Soon: A Presentation on the Epistemological Musings of Democritus!

After reading Democritus's aphorisms and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on him, I have come up with the following conclusions about his epistemological thoughts:

At first glance, Democritus actually appears to be a relativist. In aphorism #49 he says "In reality, we know nothing about anything, but for each person opinion is a reshaping of the soul atoms by atoms entering from without", which sounds like we can never know truth, but can only have our opinions on it.  He then, however, seemingly contradicts this with aphorism #57 where he says "To all humans the same thing is good and true, but different people find different things pleasant." His actual epistemological theory appears to be a combination between the two: there is an underlying objective truth, which no one can ever really know (Aphorism 50); however, each person has their own conjecture about this truth, and that conjecture is formed by the atomic action related to their soul.

Democritus vehemently opposes the idea that senses can lead to perception, calling them the "bastard sort of judgment" (Aphorism 45), but doesn't expound upon his idea of what "legitimate" judgment entails. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy does describe his theory of perception, however. We can establish from his aphorisms that he believes that matter does not degenerate, but rather atoms simply shift in the emptiness. All of these atoms are sort of moving around with the same pulsating motion (Aphorism 26). Perceptions are formed by atoms sloughing off of other surfaces and coming into contact with our souls, and clinging to them. He refers to these atoms as "images".
We then get this very Plato-esque vibe from him. There is truth, but we don't know it. We can only know these images, or our own perceptions of the Truth. In aphorism #4 he says "Truth is appearance and appearances are opposite and infinite", meaning that there are countless opinions/images, and if we could know what that one True appearance really was, then we could know truth. His reason for trusting in perception/"images" yet not the senses comes to us in aphorism #5: "Atoms are so small they escape our senses"; thus, Democritus distinguishes between perception and the senses.
In aphorism #42 he talks about how some people conjecture that atoms move the soul, and the soul moves the body. He then says "The soul does not appear to move the body in this way, but through choice of some kind and through thought." He doesn't say much more on this topic, but it seems that the knowledge of the soul evades him as does knowledge of the Truth...perhaps they are one and the same, and knowing the soul would mean one could know Truth as well.

As for ideas about my lesson, I will definitely have a handout and sort of a lecture time, but then I'm thinking of an activity - maybe showing a scene from the Matrix at the beginning (because I feel like in talking about what appears real, one should always show the Matrix), or having some sort of activity where you reach into different bags and feel things that are "Truth", but then you have to say what you THINK it is (showing how perception is different than reality).

Pythagoras

While other Philosophers were deciding what basic material the world was made up of, or what God's nature was, Pythagoras was more concerned with deciding what ordered the cosmos. While everyone else was concerned with substance, Pythagoras was more concerned with method. None of Pythagoras's aphorisms provided to us even show that he expressed an interest in encountering any sort of divinity or source of the order that the universe demonstrated.

He did, however, believe that both humans and animals have souls, which must mean that he was concerned with some aspect of the transcendence of temporal life. Usually this sort of thinking reveals a belief in a deity or theory about an afterlife. One of the aphorisms attributed to him mentions the cyclical-reincarnation theories of the Egyptians, which in true Pythagorean nature, is precise and ordered, stipulating that the soul must past through all terrestrial, winged, and marine animals before becoming human again, and that the entire circuit takes 3,000 years. 3,000 years is an even number, and is divisible by 10.

Pythagoras's quest for order overflowed into every aspect of his life, as evidenced by aphorism # 14.

Do not stir the fire with a knife - Use things for their proper purpose, like spoons for stirring.
Rub out the mark of a pot in the ashes - Restore things to their previous, ordered condition.
Do not wear a ring - I suppose you'd need to wear two, so it would be an even number...
(Etc).

I know that many Philosophy/Humanities majors may comment that Math is not their thing (as I was just about to end my post by doing), however, I realized that there is always a certain order to thought processes presented in philosophical theses, and that order is what enables us to understand the progression of an argument (though I am doubtful as to whether this is the type of order Pythagoras meant), and so, even a Math-hater can find a reason to love Pythagoras! After all, the first philosophers were "Natural Philosophers", whom we now refer to as "Scientists," and at many points the disciplines of science, math, and Philosophy are intertwined - perhaps that point is in regard to the natural, mathematical, and moral order of the universe.

Xenophanes: Where Epistemology Begins

Whereas Heraclitus was concerned with the division between knowledge and comprehension, Xenophanes was concerned with the division between knowledge and belief. He argues emphatically against Hesiod's conception of the Greek gods, which is shocking because it doesn't really seem like he's reached an epistemological explanation for an objective, singular God's existence. He claims to have reached his explanation of God through rational inquiry, yet he also claims that God is "not at all like mortals in body or thought." This reminds me of Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy, in which Descartes rationally deduces that there must be a God with x, y, and z qualities, partially because he sees imperfect parts of these x, y, and z qualities within himself, and the source of something is always more perfect and more grand than the product or the effect. In this way, he deduces that we are reflections of God, hence made in His image. For Xenophanes to claim that God is not at all like mortals, it makes me wonder how Xenophanes came to any sort of rational conclusions about God's nature.

Xenophanes' biggest argument against the Greek gods was his rejection of the idea that they were born and died and thus were not eternal. It follows that he believes God to be eternal, but it still seems as though he cannot know anything about God, because he also claims that no one can ever know the truth about God/the gods. It then becomes a matter of belief, at the point where one's rational inquiry runs out, and the point at which you can know the truth runs up against a wall. (I feel like there's a term for this philosophy - the idea that you know as much as you know, and then the rest must be taken on faith).

William James' lecture on "The Will to Believe" in 1896 fully rejects this philosophy, as James thinks that it is proper to believe in the existence of religious principles and God, even if there existed no rational or epistemological basis for knowing that God existed.

Heraclitus: The pre-Plato Platonist

Heraclitus does not so much ask or attempt to answer why the earth was made, but is more concerned with how we can come to understand why the earth was made. His many aphorisms claim that we can think and learn all that we like, but it does not mean that we can understand things or have proper insight. In this, he becomes a precursor to Platonic thought. Heraclitus writes that there exists an independent, objective Truth (much like Plato's idea of the forms) which we know of because of divine inculcation, but we are all asleep with regards to being able to truly understand it (Plato depicts this with his famous allegory of the cave). In essence, the divine law answers any and every question we can ever ask with regards to substance, method, why, or how, if only we can learn the proper insight that discovering the answers requires. We know the logos exists, but still need to remember how to wake up to its Truth.

Despite entering the Philosophical conversation post-Thales who disregarded Hesiod and Homer's discussion of the gods as the source of the universe, Heraclitus provides an intriguing return to the question of divine authority, using Thales' own declaration that the universe came from a single source for justification. Heraclitus proposed the idea of the logos, the single divine law of the universe. Heraclitus used this idea as both a substance - the stuff that the universe was made of - as well as a method - the law that governed the stuff that the universe was made of. By using logos as both a substance and a method, Heraclitus accomplished something that neither Thales, Anaximander, or Anaximenes, was able to do while simultaneously fulfilling their monistic hypotheses as well.
Just as "the beginning and the end are common on the circumference of a circle", Heraclitus proposes that all is tied up together in divinity. Thus, the quest has come full circle (pun intended), and has somewhat reconciled Thales with Homer yet also managed to make epistemological progress in many different directions as well.

Why am I here?

Hey there everyone!

I'm Stef! I love Jesus, thinking, drinking coffee, cooking and baking, eating all things chocolate, engaging in debates of all sorts, reading everything I can get my hands on, wearing comfy sweaters, singing, writing poetry, walking barefoot in the rain, and serving others.

I'm originally from Papua New Guinea, where I spent 17 years growing up as a missionary kid. My parents and younger sister still live over there, while my brother and I attend college here in the United States. My roots are still sunk deeply in Papua New Guinea, and my experience as a missionary kid has shaped the way I think and go about life in many key ways.

I go to Baylor University where I study Philosophy, Spanish, and pre-Law, work in the BIC and Philosophy departments, am a member of the Mock Trial team, participate in the BIC and Honors Programs, and teach an ESL class to under-privileged Hispanic adults.

This blog is going to be formed as an ongoing conversation with the texts and other members of my History of Classical Philosophy class. I am taking this class because I think understanding from whence our great thinkers came is extremely essential to how we interpret the works they have left behind for us to read and learn from. I am interested in Philosophy as a whole because I am extremely interested in thinking critically about different schools of thought in my own little quest for the correct way to approach the world in which we live. I desire to be a lover of wisdom, and discover all that being a philosopher entails. In addition, Philosophy teaches one to think in a certain way that prepares an individual wholly for many aspects of life and vocation.

Proverbs 4:6-7, "Do not forsake wisdom, and she will protect you; love her, and she will watch over you. Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, get understanding."

Creationism vs. Science in the PreSocratic Era

The growth of Philosophy into all that it is today was caused by one man's rejection of the blindly accepted status quo, and his subsequent rational inquiry about the nature of justification. This was not Plato's exploration of justice, but rather Thales' search for justification of previously accepted truths, such as the origin of the world.

Prior to Thales and the other preSocratics existed a group of intellectuals who, in their writings, invoked the Muses, which reflects an uncritical belief that there existed an objective source and an authority for their thoughts. No explanation, no logical proofs, and no rationale was necessary to first show that the Muses existed as their inspiration for certain grounded reasons. Rather, theogonists such as Hesiod used the Muses as their mouthpieces for their stories of creation. A substance, a method, and a motive for the gods' creation of the world were superfluous, because the Muses offered to Hesiod a divine warrant which was to be unquestioned.

Thales rejected this lack of rational explanation, and began searching for a more definite foundation for the existence of the world, rather than that the gods had just breathed it into being. The definite foundation he decided upon was water, of all things. He hypothesized that the (flat) earth floated on its surface, and that everything on earth was formed by water: water was the basic foundation of all materials on earth. Thales' supposed 'rational inquiry' into the origin of the world started with a belief  (see next paragraph) that the entire world floats on water. Anaximander, Thales' student, rejected his hypothesis and instead stated that the world was made of an unknown sort of boundless matter. Anaximenes in turn rejected Anaximander's hypothesis and decided that air was the thing that all things on earth were made up of. He improved upon his predecessors in the sense that he proffered methods (such as condensation and rarefaction) for air to do its work. Water, the boundless, and air, are a far cry from the atom, but what I find interesting is not their missing of the accurate mark, but their lack of an explanation as to why the earth was made. All three offered a substance and one offered a method, but no one offered a motive or cared to explain why the earth was formed or came into being. This seems, to me, to be the most important starting place in a quest for justification, which is what Thales claimed to be primarily concerned with, and which it is apparent he is concerned with, due to his immediate rejection of divine intervention as justification for the world's existence.

The irony is that Thales' logical hypothesis was actually still a belief. He had never observed with any of his senses water taking any permanent shape or form in the world, and he had never seen water conforming to the behavior he claimed it did. He chose to believe that his logic was True, even if he had never obtained any solid proof regarding its trueness.

Interestingly enough, centuries later we've still not reached a truly empirical answer for the absolute origins of the universe. I believe Thales' reaction to divine authority still pervades society to this day. Thales' refusal to use divine intervention as a warrant for the origin of the earth is reflected today in the fact that many scientists do not view creationism, or divine intervention by God, as a plausible or factual explanation for the existence of the world. After all, the early Philosophers were also the first scientists in that they were interested in the origins and tendencies of nature and life. It is shocking that we rarely hear about the preSocratics (after all, Plato and Socrates stole the thunder of the Philosophy world), yet they left a pervasive mark on the world that is still evident centuries later: "mere" belief is still not considered to be a plausible key to Truth, because it is not the sort of theory that can be justified empirically.

As if Truth were strictly empirical.