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GREEK RATIONALISTS: Arguing for Argument

Had we lived in the classical age of Greece – Plato’s time – we would have confronted a new cultural hero: the philosopher-king. Homer’s warriors no longer occupy the higher reaches of human achievement: they have been replaced in the heroic pantheon by philosophers. This period is characterised by the first great transformation in Western thought, or what Nietzsche called ‘the genuine antagonism’. Had we been educated in Plato’s Academy we would have been told to ignore Homer’s Iliad and commit ourselves to Plato’s Utopia (described in The Republic). An odd development, one might say. And Nietzsche did say so, but that was over 2000 years later and most philosophers disagree with him in any case. Nietzsche thought that Homer was a glorifier of life and Plato a slanderer of life: a man who had to lie himself out of reality. Nietzsche was a naturalist and believed with Homer that there is only one world and this is it. Plato was a spiritualist and, in opposing two worlds to Homer’s single natural world, created fascinating philosophical problems.

Plato and his followers replace Homer’s emphasis on physical power and heroic action with the importance of logos: thinking and reasoning about the world. Those who dedicate themselves to logos are led to sophia – wisdom – and those who love (philo) wisdom are philosophers. Plato transcends Homer’s world because he replaces mythos – thinking about a God-driven world – with logos. The Homeric idea that man is Homo natura is replaced by the idea that man is Homo sapiens: man the knower, or man the truth-seeker. Plato thus creates a new cultural hero, replacing the sophisticated fighting animal with the truth-seeker. Virtue is transferred from the physical to the intellectual plane and the physical world is progressively devalued in favour of the spiritual world.

The first great transformation in Western thinking is a movement from one world to two – from this material world to a second, immaterial world. In the sixth century BC philosophers took seriously the idea that there are two worlds: a physical world accessible to the senses, and a metaphysical world accessible to the mind. Since the physical, everyday world is infected by sense-defeating illusions, the metaphysical world must be the true, or real, world. Since the mind is the key to penetrating this second world it is extolled in proportion as the senses are devalued. Here is the beginning of the Western rational tradition, and a libel on the natural world.

Philosophically, this tradition begins around 600 BC with Thales who claims that ‘everything is really water’. Now it is obvious that the world of the senses does not lead us to conclude that the world is really water. So, philosophically, the most important of Thales’ four words is ‘really’. The world we perceive is characterised by considerable diversity (rocks, trees, people, mountains, lakes, etc.), but the real world is uncontaminated by human perception: it is a single, metaphysical world. Since our everyday world of sense-perception is not the real world, it must be an apparent, illusory world, because in reality the world is one. So everything is really something else and not what it appears to be. A consequence of this reasoning is a devaluing of the natural, everyday world in favour of a private, mental world which is revealed by thinking. This private world is richer than the natural world because it enables us to build a bridge from mind to a supernatural world uncontaminated by the senses.

Thales was followed by philosophers who agreed with him in principle that the real world is unity but disagreed with his conclusion that the world is really water. Anaximander said that everything is really primal being, Pythagoras preferred number(s), Heraclitus fire, Empedocles love and strife, Democritus atoms. This proliferation of speculation is reminiscent of the various soapbox orators in The Life of Brian who predict the arrival, at different times and places, of the messiah.

By about 430 BC, in what is known as the ‘Athenian Period’, some thinkers attempted to bring a halt to these extreme and competing philosophical speculations. Led by Protagoras, the Sophists were sceptical about absolute truth and became the official opposition to the truth-seeking philosophers. The Sophists travelled from town to town arguing for one truth today and another tomorrow, (rather like today’s management consultants). In some cases they argued against the possibility of arriving at the truth at all. Forsaking truth-seeking for power and persuasion, their motto was not Homo sapiens but Homo mensura - man in the measure of all things - a view which leads to scepticism and subjectivity with respect to truth, pragmatism with respect to life, and relativism with respect to everything, except relativism. In our day, Protagoras is the only ancient philosopher favoured by the better-read postmodernists.

It seems that Protagoras was the first Greek to maintain that there are two opposing sides to every question. He gave public readings for which he charged handsome fees and was never short of an audience. In his Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Diogenes Laertius says that Protagoras would begin his lectures by announcing that man is the measure of all things, of things that are that they are, and of things that are not that they are not. Surprisingly, after such an ambiguous opening, he would still have an audience. He believed that the soul is nothing apart from the senses and as for the gods, as we have no means of knowing either that they exist or that they do not exist, it is pointless to argue about them. The two significant obstacles that impede knowledge were, for him, the obscurity of metaphysical questions and the shortness of human life. For these agnostic words the Athenians expelled him and burned his books in the market-place. He extolled carpe diem, instituted debating as an important cultural activity, and taught rival pleaders the tricks of the trade. He seems to have been the inventor of the Socratic dialogue of questioning, answering and more questioning.

The view that man is the measure of all things encouraged pragmatic thinkers to conclude that truth is what works. This, of course, makes all religions, voodoo, Indian rain-dancing and countless other absurdities true because they ‘work’ for true believers. Replacing logical and scientific truths with pragmatic truth is popular with the guardians of political correctness because if a true statement (i.e. one that corresponds with the facts) offends people, it clearly does not ‘work’ for the offended ones and so should not be uttered. That we have arrived at this state of intellectual affairs shows the influence of Protagoras and the Sophists who chime in well with the relativistic spirit of our times. After all, how can one give offence to another if the key question is not: ‘Does it correspond with the (inconvenient, upsetting) facts?’ but: ‘Does it work for you?’

Unlike postmodernists, the Sophists were not so naive as to believe that they could dispense with truth. However, their influence did lead to a widespread scepticism about the capacity of humans to arrive at the truth. Gorgias, in the 440s BC, claimed to have ‘proved’ that (a) there is nothing; (b) if there is anything, we cannot know it; (c) if we know it, we cannot communicate it. Such reasoning led many people to conclude that if one can ‘prove’ these propositions, one can prove anything. In our time this form of pragmatism has led to what philosophers in the nineteenth century called nihilism and what is today called postmodernism. The man who stood against the Sophists, relativism and lazy pragmatism, was Socrates.

To say human beings are the measure of all things is saying very little if we do not know what a human being is. To gain an understanding of individual human beings Socrates engaged his fellow Athenians in conversation and encouraged them to argue rather than merely express their feelings. Of all the functions of language, the expressive function is the most primitive since it merely serves to express the feelings of the speaker. The descriptive function is more sophisticated because it describes states of affairs. Of even greater sophistication is the argumentative function which serves to present and compare arguments in connection with questions or problems. These three functions constitute a logical hierarchy because when we describe we express, and when we argue it is about descriptions: we cannot argue about feelings. An argument serves as an outward expression of an internal state of a person. Insofar as it is about something it is descriptive. Since self-expression is revealing of feelings it is independent of truth or falsity; descriptions can be true or false; arguments can be valid or invalid. For example, a communication may hide or reveal the feelings of a speaker, describe a situation accurately or inaccurately, suppress or stimulate argument. Socrates encouraged his fellow citizens to embrace the higher functions of language because it is only by using descriptive and argumentative language that they can be said to be Homo sapiens.

The purpose of Socratic dialectic is to move knowledge outward to objective definitions and inward to the inner person. Socrates searches for truth through argumentation and he presupposes an ability and willingness to work with the rules of logical validity. His project is based on the famous motto: ‘The unexamined life is not worth living’ and it owes much to the unique individual who was Socrates. Short of stature with a strutting gait, he was by all accounts an ugly, urbane, even-tempered man who loved debate, a good dinner and plenty of wine. Plato describes him as indifferent to pleasure and careless of dress, morally courageous as he was physically courageous on the field of battle, and intellectually honest. He surprised his colleagues by his powers of physical endurance and could stand for hours, apparently lost in philosophical thought: the most famous instance was when serving in the army and he amazed his comrades by standing as if in a trance for a day and a night.

He delighted in engaging unsuspecting youths or retired military officers in conversation and quickly discovered that they did not know of what they spoke. When they used such words as ‘justice’, ‘courage’ or ‘love’ he would interrupt them with the question: ‘But what is ‘courage’?’ His interlocutors would give examples of Athenian courage, Trojan courage or Spartan courage and again Socrates would interrupt them: ‘I did not ask you for a laundry list. I asked you for the meaning of ‘courage’.’ The usual response to such a challenge was for his interlocutors to offer a definition which Socrates would throw back at them with the comment: ‘But this leads to an infinite regress since you have to define every word in your definition, ad infinitum.’ The Platonic dialogues show us this dialectical procedure in action and it is clear that Socrates controls the discussion because he asks unanswerable questions about the meanings of words. Indeed, he seems never to have accepted any answer to the question: ‘What is the essential meaning of a moral concept?’

After encountering Socrates, debating, dining and getting drunk with him, the Athenian youths ran into difficulties with their parents. By arguing incessantly about the meaning of moral concepts, Socrates showed the sons of rich and powerful parents that they, and their parents, used words without knowing what they meant and so they literally did not know what they were talking about. He must have been the subject of many animated discussions around Athenian dinner tables where there would be no shortage of people willing to criticise and punish him. He may have been a gadfly but many people came to regard his eccentricities as dangerously subversive.

It is obvious that Socrates had an enviable ability to argue his opponents into the ground. He would choose an appropriate victim, set the agenda, invite his opponent to speak his thoughts freely, and then counterpunch the poor fellow into submission. Lacing his attacks with heavy irony, he was not content until he had elicited from his hapless victim a confession of ignorance. He would then propose that, after heavy debate and heavier drinking, they take to their beds and resume the battle another time. But, unsurprisingly, he never had a second dialogue with the same person. And many of those who had suffered by his words turned against him. He was, as he admitted, a gadfly whose chief delight was stinging the complacent Athenians into self-reflection, but that meant he irritated his powerful contemporaries in more ways than one. He tried to teach the Athenians the virtues of wisdom, courage, love and justice in the midst of corruption and cowardice. Such unarmed prophets are likely to come to grief.

In 399 BC he was charged by the Athenian democracy with corrupting the youth of Athens and introducing false gods to the community. Tried and sentenced to death for his refusal to compromise his intellectual integrity, he died a martyr to the truth. He lived and died arguing and his martyrdom is the best argument for argument in the Western rational tradition.

When asked by a friend what charges have been brought against him by the Athenian democracy, Socrates replies ironically that his accuser, Meletus, must be a wise man for he knows how the Athenian youth are corrupted and who their corrupters are. He cheerfully admits that he has a benevolent habit of pouring out himself to everybody, and would even pay for a listener. He knows that the Athenians think him too talkative and wonders why they do not merely laugh at him rather than engage in their serious and deadly project which is sure to end badly.

Socrates never denies the charge of corrupting the youth. He argues against Meletus that either he does not corrupt the youth or he corrupts them unintentionally. He asks Meletus to call several witnesses to testify on his behalf, but the closest he comes to denying the charge is his admission that his aim in life is to urge men to pursue virtue: if in saying these things he corrupts the youth that would be harmful indeed. However, Socrates refuses to defend himself in the usual manner. Rather than engage in the type of dialogue for which he is famous, he employs heavy rhetoric and emphasises the lies and prejudices of his accusers rather than address himself to the actual charges they brought against him.

Socrates’ speech to the court appears in Plato’s essay, Apology. Socrates begins his speech to the large jury by telling them that, unlike poets and politicians, he has a special sort of wisdom – he is wise because he knows that, with respect to philosophical matters, he knows nothing, and that is more than they know. He relates how he went to the artisans, conscious that he knew nothing and sure that they knew many important things. But he discovered that he was mistaken: they did know many things of which he was ignorant but he observed that even the good artisans fell into the same error as the poets. Because they were good workmen they thought they also understood all sorts of intellectual matters, and this defect in them overshadowed their wisdom. And so he asked himself whether he would like to be as he was, having neither their knowledge nor their ignorance, or like them in both, and he answered himself that he was better off as he was. He admits that this inquisition has produced many dangerous enemies and has given rise to slanderous criticism. He concludes that he is called wise, for his hearers always imagine that he possesses the wisdom which he finds lacking in others. The truth is that, compared to the gods, the wisdom of men is worth little or nothing.

Socrates will not agree that he is a curious evildoer who searches into things under the earth and in heaven, and he makes the worse appear the better cause. He has nothing to do with physical speculations, and does not teach for money. Rather, he admits to acquiring enemies because he refuses to speak or act hypocritically. After talking with a politician who had an impressive reputation, Socrates says that when he began to talk with him, he could not help thinking that he was not really wise, although he was thought wise by many, and still wiser by himself; and so he tried to explain to him that he thought himself wise, but was not really wise. The consequence was that he and his friends hated Socrates, who left him saying to himself that although he does not suppose that anyone knows anything really beautiful or good, he, Socrates, is better off than those who know nothing but think that they know. He neither knows nor thinks that he knows. In this latter particular, then, he believes he has the advantage of him.

It was the custom in Socrates’ time to propose to the jury a penalty for his alleged crime. Socrates proposes that which is his due. He asks what returns should be made to a man who has never been idle in his life but who has been careless of matters of wealth, family interests, military offices, magistracies, and plots and parties. Reflecting that he was really too honest a man to be a politician and live, he devoted himself to doing the greatest good privately to as many people as possible. He did his best to persuade every man in the jury that he must look to himself, and seek virtue and wisdom before he looks to his private interests. But as he never harmed anyone, he refuses to try to refute great slanders so that he does not harm himself. He will not admit that he deserves any evil, or propose any penalty. Why should he?

After the good democrats of Athens condemned Socrates to death, he addressed them saying that he was convicted because he did not have the impudence or inclination to address them as they would have liked him to do, weeping, wailing and lamenting, and saying things which they have been accustomed to hear from others, and which, Socrates maintains, are unworthy of him. During the trial he thought that he ought not to do anything common or mean even though he was in danger: nor does he now repent of the style of his defence since he would rather die having spoken authentically than speak in their manner and live.

He concludes with addresses to his accusers and to his friends and predicts that his murderers will suffer grievously for their actions. Without his restraining influence, accusers will appear who will be more inconsiderate and brutal. If the good citizens of Athens believe that by killing men they can prevent accusers from censuring their evil lives, they are seriously mistaken. There is no possibility of escaping from them in an honourable manner; the noblest way is not to disable others, but to improve oneself.

To his friends Socrates points out that death is not to be feared, but welcomed. Either death is like an eternal peaceful sleep and therefore not to be despised, or death is a journey to another place where all the dead reside; it represents a fascinating journey for all of us. He looks forward to the possibility of conversing with Homer. He is excited by the prospect of conversing with ancient heroes who have suffered death through unjust judgements. Above all, he shall be able to continue his search for knowledge and he hopes to discover who is wise, and who pretends to be wise, and is not. In another, better world they do not put a man to death for asking questions.

Many readers of Plato have wondered why Socrates did not defend himself better. Did he want to die by effectively committing suicide? He neither presented himself as a noble man, nor put the jury into a receptive mood. Indeed, he deliberately antagonised them by attacking politicians, poets, playwrights and craftsmen for claiming knowledge of matters of which they were ignorant. In lacing his speech with heavy irony and dubious rhetoric, Socrates was identified with the worst of the Sophists and it is therefore unsurprising that he was brought to trial. Socrates knew what he was doing and in the Apology tells us that he refused to humble himself before the jury and speak in a language he detested. In choosing not to speak in the manner expected of a defendant, he remained true to his life’s project: to urge people to pursue virtue. His project required that he tell the truth and act virtuously and this is what he did, even if it meant his death. Because he claimed that he knew nothing, he was accused of dishonesty, but his ignorance was the foundation of his teaching. He aimed for the truth – to be a true Homo sapiens - but he was accused of intellectual corruption.

Socrates made many enemies. People in positions of authority do not like to be humiliated by people who are clever with words. He was so clever and vehement in debate that his fellow citizens set upon him with their fists and tore his hair out. Widely despised and laughed at for the eccentric that he was, he bore it all with surprising patience. He exercised his body to keep fit, prided himself on his plain living, and was obviously a man of strong ‘I’, which helped him survive several plagues in Athens. When asked whether one should marry or not, he replied that whichever decision we take, we will repent it. When he was told that someone had spoken ill of him he said that the unfortunate fellow had never learnt to speak well.

Socrates spent his last day talking with his wife who was holding their child in her arms. When she saw her husband’s friends she burst into tears and Socrates asked one of them to take her home. After a lengthy discussion about the immortality of the soul (in which the Platonic Socrates believed), Socrates drank the hemlock. His friends had tears in their eyes and one broke out in a passionate cry which unmanned them. Socrates alone retained his composure and pointed out that he asked the women to leave so that they might not misbehave since he wished to die peacefully. He wrapped his head in his cloak and died quietly among his friends, believing he was going to a better world in which he would at last discover the truth and rightness of existence. At his passing Phaedo remarked that of all men of his time whom he had known, Socrates was the wisest and best. After he died the Athenians soon felt such remorse that they closed the training grounds and gymnasia, put Meletus to death, banished the other accusers, and honoured Socrates with a bronze statue.

Socrates is today regarded as a legendary figure who lived and died for the truth. But in a world which no longer values truth as he did, he is now treated as something of a relic. His dialogues are widely regarded as difficult, boring and pointless. Since the 1970s and the rise of the postmodern world, thinking has been challenged by feeling, and argument is widely regarded as aggressive, rude and confronting. Consequently, we have to endure conversations laced with ‘in my opinion’, ‘it seems to me’, ‘I feel’, ‘subjectively speaking’ and such other phrases as enable people to pretend they are friendly by not causing offence to others. What these phrases actually do is protect their users from criticism. Expressions of personal feelings cannot be true or false since no one can know another’s feelings. To immunise oneself against criticism, then, one has only to use these apologetic phrases to disarm opponents. Socrates was not interested in how people felt, but in the truth of their descriptions of the world and themselves and in the validity of their arguments. He would be appalled that, 2400 years after his death, we lack the courage to submit ourselves to debate for fear of offending others. Socrates, to his credit, went out of his way to offend others by stating the truth and arguing about human existence: he died for his belief that the truth should be acknowledged no matter whom it might offend.

Today’s political correctness guardians do not respond warmly to Socrates. They would probably put him on trial again because in following the truth wherever it led him, he offended many people. His view was that a truth unuttered is a crime against philosophy and humanity and if people did not like to hear truths expressed, they needed to be educated. But he was surrounded, as we are today, by people who feared freedom of expression and sought to prohibit it. Consequently, the great age of Greek enlightenment was characterised by many trials for ‘corrupting the public’ and Socrates and Protagoras were two of many philosophers and dramatists who were found guilty and severely punished. Very little has changed over the centuries.

Of those who succeeded Socrates, the most famous is Plato who was too distressed to be with his mentor on his last day. Born in 427 BC, Plato was a young aristocrat whose disdain for democracy increased after the democrats put Socrates to death. Philosophically, he was greatly influenced by Pythagoras, Parmenides and Socrates from whom he derived his spiritualism, ontology and ethical ideas. At age 40 he was summoned to Syracuse but he found tutoring a tyrant uncongenial and the relationship ended badly. Upon his return to Athens, he joined a group of friends who wanted to establish an institution of learning – the Academy - with Plato at its head. After writing several of his now famous dialogues, Plato was invited back to Syracuse to advise its rulers on how to build a strong and glorious city-state. Again, Plato failed to convince the politicians and he returned to the intellectual delights of the Academy where he lectured and wrote more dialogues. His most famous dialogue – The Republic – is the outcome of what proved to be three unsuccessful visits to Syracuse. The Academy lasted for more than a thousand years and has never really left us since the universities of the Western world attest to its influence and inspiration.

Plato was greatly influenced by Socrates’ obsession with the meaning of moral concepts. In his famous parable of the cave he asks his readers to imagine being members of a group of people chained together and able only to face a wall. Behind them is a source of light and between them and the light something moves, thus throwing shadows on the wall of the cave. When asked questions about the ‘real’ world the only possible answers are ‘shadowy’ because the shadows represent the world of the cave-dwellers. Imagine that one person is released from bondage. She finds an escape route. But is she courageous enough to escape into the unknown? Assuming that she is, she climbs a tunnel with difficulty (the analogy here with school and vocational training is obvious). She considers turning back because the effort is considerable (one stops studying after school). But she perseveres and discovers another escape route. Does she have the courage to take the opportunity offered to her? Assuming that she does, she encounters the sunlight. The sun is too bright and there is a strong temptation to return to her friends in the safety of the cave. She has spent considerable energy in climbing out of the tunnel (the hard work of training) and exposure to the sun is tiring and painful. However, she perseveres and eventually finds comfort and rewards in the sun: she has become enlightened. As a member of a community her duty is to return to the cave and pass on her knowledge to the other cave-dwellers. This is a dangerous enterprise because she now speaks a different language and introduces new, strange images and ideas to her colleagues. Her probable fate is, like Socrates, death and so it is prudent to keep the cave-dwellers chained until they too ‘see the light’ and in their turn enlighten others.

Teachers have for centuries followed Plato’s advice and endeavour to keep their students chained by examining them, even when postmodern students announce that exams are unreasonable because their (low) grades are based on their teachers’ feelings. It has to be said that teachers brought this upon themselves with the popular belief that education should be free of competition and stress and that students should be seen as customers who demand, and should therefore receive appropriate service by passing their subjects. And so it is suggested (half-jokingly) that students should not be failed on the grounds that this discriminates against those with low ability. Socrates would appreciate the half-joke: Plato would not.

Enlightenment is intimately connected in Plato with his theory of the Forms. While we can conjecture about images, have beliefs about objects, understand concepts, it is through pure reason that we have knowledge of the Forms. The Forms (or objective ideas) are universals, such as Justice, Courage, Love and Beauty. Perfect, adamantine, unchanging, such universals exist on their own unmixed with time and space or each other. No particular action can be called truly courageous: only Courage is really courageous. While Plato maintains that the Forms are external to the individual, it is clear that since they are spaceless and timeless, they cannot be said to be anywhere. In short, they are everywhere and nowhere. Nonetheless, if through philosophical reflection we can entertain some notion of, say, Courage, we are in a better position to act rationally and wisely with respect to courageous action. We can be trained to act courageously, but we cannot know Courage thereby. Really to know Courage we need to be educated and this requires at least some knowledge of moral concepts. As education is concerned to draw out the innate knowledge which resides in the mind, Platonic education is governed by the rules of deductive reasoning and based on the practice of dialectic.

In one of Plato’s later dialogues, Parmenides, Socrates encounters the venerable Parmenides and discusses with him the theory of the Forms. Parmenides replies with a devastating critique of the theory and reduces Socrates, for the first time in Plato’s dialogues, to despair. There are three difficult questions to be answered before the theory of the Forms can be accepted. First, are there Forms of everything? Socrates is sure that there are forms of Beauty and Goodness. But he suffers doubts about whether there are Forms of mud, hair and dirt. Second, are Forms thoughts in the mind? Parmenides objects that thoughts are of real things and so cannot be thoughts in the mind. Third, are the Forms cut off from the world? Since knowledge must be of real things, it is difficult to see how one can know the Forms, which are by definition unreal because they are universals. Furthermore, how is it possible to talk about Forms? If we say that a painting is beautiful we imply that the painting partakes of the Form of Beauty. But if we say with Plato that the Form of Beauty is eternal, we seem to be saying that the Form of Beauty partakes of the Form of Eternity and this appears to mean that the Forms communicate with each other, which Plato denies. Socrates offers no convincing answers to Parmenides’ challenges but this is attributed to his insufficient education which, when improved, may enable him to save the theory of Forms. They have not been saved although they have been modified by generations of spiritualists and religionists.

Education is, for Plato, the noblest profession since it helps others climb the greatest of human heights. At the summit, people will understand the true meaning of moral concepts and so will have acquired wisdom through rational means. And since rational people are wise, they do not engage in evil intentionally. Accordingly, they should be the rulers of Plato’s ideal society, outlined in The Republic. Unlike Homer, who thought that the best warriors should be rulers, Plato prefers philosopher-kings, because they think rationally and act wisely. Warriors are well-trained but ill-educated. Rulers must be trained and educated: they must be philosophers.

Plato realises, however, that warriors are disinclined to accept their exclusion from rulership. In his attempt to address and correct this dilemma, Plato is led into an apparent paradox when he argues that since philosophers are those who love truth, rulers must nonetheless lie so that they may gain the acceptance of warriors and workers. He is adamant that it is the business of political rulers to tell lies and so deceive both its enemies and its own citizens for the benefit of the state and no one else must touch this privilege. If the citizens lie, the rulers must punish them for introducing a practice which injures and endangers the state. Plato goes even further and asks whether rulers could fabricate a single lordly lie with which they can persuade even the rulers themselves. The lordly lie is that some people are born to rule and this audacious lie has been accepted down the ages by rulers who see it as the perfect justification for legitimating power.

Around 1945, Karl Popper scandalised a large part of the philosophical world with his attack on Plato in The Open Society and its Enemies. Popper charged Plato with being the spokesman for a closed society ruled by totalitarian gangsters. He argued that, unlike Socrates, Plato compromised his integrity with every step he took. He was opposed to free thought and the pursuit of truth, and defended lying, superstition and brutal violence.

Plato may have been a defender of totalitarian politics but he also raised important philosophical questions which still exercise the imagination. What, for example, do we mean when we talk of ideal justice or ideal courage? Are these universals mere abstractions, nothing more than words? Or are we able in some imperfect way to come to an understanding that beyond the data of our five senses there is a world of perfection against which we judge ourselves and others? When we strive for excellence, what do we strive for? Is there some eternal, unchanging ideal standard of excellence which we dimly apprehend and which guides us through life? To be sure, only a few people can gain an imperfect appreciation of ideals, but does that invalidate their existence? Plato asks fascinating and important questions to which we still strive to find answers.

Plato believes that reason should guide and control the feelings which sabotage our quest for truth. If we are well-educated and pursue a rational approach to life, we will act wisely. We should have a physician of the body to cure our physical problems, and a physician of the ‘soul’ to cure our psychological problems. He seems to have invented ‘soul’ for the practical purpose of helping people live in truth. But in arguing that people who act irrationally are suffering from illnesses of the soul, he fathered the mental illness industry. Plato’s views, therefore, encourage those in power to act against individuals like Socrates because they are ‘mad’. He starts out lamenting the fate of Socrates but he ends with a philosophy which has encouraged totalitarians to incarcerate or kill those who argue against them, either by indicting them for a crime or by depriving them of their liberty by labelling them as mentally ill. This paradox worried Plato’s most famous pupil – Aristotle.

Aristotle was born in 384 BC in northern Greece. His father was court physician to the king of Macedon. At the age of 17 he studied at Plato’s Academy in Athens where he remained for 20 years until Plato’s death in 347 BC. He assumed that he would take over as head of the Academy but the job went to a justly forgotten opponent. He then worked for a philosopher-king in Sicily after which he tutored the youth who was to be known as Alexander the Great. Aristotle returned to Athens in 336 BC and founded his own academy – the Lyceum – discovered by archaeologists in 1996. Alexander’s unexpected death in 323 BC saw Aristotle, like Socrates before him, charged with impiety. Unlike Socrates, he prudently went into voluntary exile in order to prevent the Athenians from committing a second sin against philosophy. Sadly his exile took him away from his philosophical colleagues and he soon died at age 62 leaving an impressive body of work.

Close to Plato in many ways, Aristotle developed a theory of body, psyche and mind which informs his influential theory of ethics. He believed that philosophy begins with a sense of wonder before nature and concluded that the best and happiest people spend as much time as possible in philosophical activity, using their reason to govern their actions and thinking.

Aristotle is widely regarded as a philosopher of common sense: Plato diluted by common sense as Bertrand Russell quipped. He is difficult because Plato and common sense do not mix easily. In contrast to the idealistic Plato he is more interested in scientific investigations. He is not as distrustful of the evidence of the senses as was Plato, preferring theories of the natural world to metaphysical speculation. While respecting Plato, he could not accept his eternal, unchanging world of Forms. Rather, he thought of the Forms as metaphors that distract us from the empirical study of the natural world and the relationships between people. Yet, he could not entirely abandon Plato from whom he took the view that reality lies in form.

He has two questions for Plato: (a) If the Forms are essences of things, how can they exist separated from things? (b) If they are the cause of things, how can they exist in a different world? Aristotle concludes that Plato’s theory of two worlds is an intellectual disaster and that Forms are not separate entities but are embedded in particular things. They are in the world, not separated from it. Consequently, they are singulars, not universals. Forms are in a body and matter is what is unique to the object. All trees have the same form but no two trees have the same matter. Aristotle is also critical of Plato’s inability to explain motion and change. Unsurprisingly, Plato regarded change as a feature of the perceived world and permanence as a feature of a transcendental world. Aristotle argues that Plato cannot account for the causal relationships between the two worlds. Indeed, this problem bedevils all two-world theories: how does one world interact with the other? Nor can Plato’s Forms account for motion and change since the former are timeless and spaceless. Having renounced them, Aristotle faces the problem of how to introduce notions of stability into his philosophy. His answer involves a distinction between actuality and potentiality. Matter and form are represented by potentiality and actuality, as we can see in the example of an acorn. The acorn’s matter contains the potentiality of becoming an oak tree which is the acorn’s actuality.

Nature is, for Aristotle, a teleological system which strives towards perfection (rather than towards Plato’s transcendental ‘Good’). He suggests that perfection must exist in the telos towards which things strive. This he calls the Prime Mover and it is the only thing in the universe with no potentiality: it is pure actuality. The nature of things consists of an innate tendency to develop in a certain direction that demands an external cause. The only unmoved mover is the Prime Mover which is immaterial and pure actuality and engaged in eternal thought: a pure mind whose only object of thought is itself.

When Aristotle returns to mere mortals he struggles mightily with the concept of psyche. In his way of thinking perfect precedes imperfect, so psyche is a product of the perfect mind. Psyche is, however, inseparable from the human body: psyche is form, body is matter. All the powers of psyche (except nous: the power of abstract thought) have bodily organs and he ridicules those who characterise psyche as immaterial. He argues against Plato’s widely-held view of psyche which involves the absurd idea of an immaterial substance in the body but no explanation of how they interact. For Aristotle, then, possessing a psyche is like possessing a skill: psyche cannot be separated from the body.

Furthermore, mind and psyche are different. Mind is an independent, indestructible substance implanted within a psyche which moves the body and is characterised by sensation, feeling and motivation. Mind, on the other hand, has the higher function of thinking and has no relation to the body and the senses. Psyche contains rational and irrational elements. When we think rationally we are united through logic and valid reasoning; when we think irrationally we are separated from each other because we lack a common ground on which to conduct ourselves through language. As Aristotle says, we partake of the divine through the glory of rational thinking and, if successful, our egoism is eliminated and we find comfort in the greater force of intelligent community. Personal power resides in the capacity to think and act rationally.

In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle emphasises his distance from Plato. Our object is not that we may know what virtue is, but that we may become virtuous. Humans are political animals, and while self-sufficiency is an important human achievement, it must be embedded in a web of social and political obligations since man is born for citizenship.

Humans are teleological creatures: their acts are performed for some purpose. The ultimate goal of human life is happiness and our function is to engage in an activity of the psyche which is in accordance with virtue and which follows a rational principle. Virtue takes two forms: intellectual and moral. A character is morally virtuous if it moves towards a ‘golden mean of moderation’. For example, when facing danger we can act in either of two extreme ways: in a cowardly or foolhardy fashion. The mean of moderation would be to act courageously and we learn to act courageously by the exercise of choice and trial and error elimination. Intellectual virtue derives from inheritance and education and the highest virtue is associated with the exercise of pure reason which is achieved through disinterested thought, the goal of which is philosophical wisdom. Since we are political animals we need to combine theorising with practical matters. Here Aristotle anticipates Kurt Lewin’s famous quip that there is nothing as practical as a good theory.

Sadly there are obstacles to the achievement of happiness. Before we can pursue happiness through philosophical activity we need: good friends, riches, political power, good health, good birth, good children, and leisure. While he acknowledges that there are alternatives to the philosophical life, Aristotle clearly favours a life based on a rational ‘I’. We may, for example, pursue a life of pleasure and amusement (like children and animals), or we may pursue a life of virtuous public service. He discounts the life of pleasure and amusement because it fails to elevate men above the animals and thus denies what is quintessentially human. He respects those who choose a life of virtuous public service but praises above all else the philosophical life because it informs the life of public service.

We reveal ourselves by the way of life we choose. Our choices should be based on careful deliberation and not on desire or impulse. We reveal our character by what we do voluntarily and for which we are responsible. Our virtue is especially revealed by rational control over our irrational emotions. If we cannot control our emotions we are immature and morally weak. In the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle has much to say about the qualities of noble individuals who are good in the highest degree because they deserve more than the average person. They are pleased at honours that are conferred by good people, but they despise honours from unimportant people and on trifling grounds. When in danger they are unsparing in their lives, knowing that there are conditions in which life is not worth having. They are dignified towards people who enjoy a high position but unassuming towards those of the lower class. They are open in their hate and in their love, for they believe it is cowardly to conceal their feelings. They speak their thoughts because they tell the truth except when they speak ironically to vulgar people. They are people who possess beautiful and profitless things rather than profitable and useful ones. It is their duty to promote logic and noble rhetoric which seeks to perfect individuals by showing them better versions of themselves, whereas base rhetoric influences people in the direction of evil.

Obviously Aristotle’s description of noble individuals does not apply to the majority of people and so the question arises as to whether we can regard as morally enlightened a society that confines the noble philosophical life to the few. While Plato and Aristotle suffer no doubts about this issue, Stoics and Christians disagree arguing that virtue is for all people, and democrats agree although they add qualifications about power and property. Aristotle is clear: the aim of the State is to promote and produce ‘cultured, noble gentlemen’. After the French Revolution of 1789, industrialism, the world wars of the first half of the twentieth century, modernism and postmodernism, the days of the cultured, noble gentlemen have, for good or ill, passed.