About some Greek thinkers

By Daniel Paquet                                                                                           dpaquet1871@gmail.com

ARISTOTLE

“Certain notions of the separate, isolated existence of phenomena and their interconnection appeared together with the emergence of philosophy.  Thus, the first Greek philosophers took interconnection as the basic principle for explaining various phenomena.  By  taking a substance or natural phenomenon (air, water, fire ) as the original source, Greek philosophers showed that all phenomena had appeared as a result of certain changes in that substance (phenomenon) and that, being but different states of one and the same nature, they were intrinsically interconnected, passing from one into another and into the original source. (...)

The first Greek philosophers regarded interconnection as the interpassage of phenomena into each other.  Later, however, this view was succeeded by another one, according to which interconnection was a mechanical joining and unjoining of the same immutable elements.  This view was held by Empedocles and Anaxagoras, among others.  Aristotle overcame the limitations of this dependence of things.  Aristotle wrote:  ‘All relatives have correlatives…’  He was the first to declare ‘relation’ as a category, thus lending it the necessary generality.

In contrast to Plato, Aristotle rejected the existence of an insurmountable wall between possibility and reality, although he acknowledged the separate, independent existence of these two categories.  He believed that the possible can turn into the real, and vice versa.  He considered primordial matter to be pure possibility, while the form that ultimately merged with God, who was the form of forms, was in this view pure reality.  The blending of form with matter resulted in the appearance of qualitatively definite things possessing possible and real existence and changing when one opposite (possibility) changed into another (reality).   According to Aristotle, the transition of possibility into reality did not occur as a result of forces and tendencies inherent in a thing – it was connected with the action of external factors, of outside force, i.e. of a certain really existing thing.  From a thing existing as a possibility, he believed, as a result of the action of another thing, also existing in reality.”[1]

Aristotle was born in 384 B.C. in the northern town of Stagira, far from the intellectual centre of Greece.  His father, Nicomachus, was a physician attached to the court of Philip of Macedon, and a plausible speculation ascribes to paternal influence not only Aristotle’s later connection with the Macedonian dynasty but also his powerful interest in, and love of, things scientific.

In 367, Aristotle moved south to Athens. Whether or not he was originally attracted there by the pull of Plato, he quickly became associated with the Academic circle, that brilliant band of philosophers, scientists, mathematicians and politicians which gathered in Athens under the inspiring leadership of Plato.

In 323 Alexander died in Babylon.  When the news reached Athens Aristotle, unwilling to share the fate of Socrates, left the city lest the Athenians put a second philosopher to death.  He went to Chalcis, where he died a few months later.  His will, which has survived, is a happy and humane document.”[2]

Furthermore, Aristotle says:  “Whatever is incapable of participating in the association which we call the state, a dumb animal for example and equally whatever is perfectly self-sufficient and has not need to (e.g. a god), is not a part of the state at all.

 Among all men, then, there is a natural impulse towards this kind of association; and the first man to construct a state deserves credit for conferring very great benefits.  For as man is the best of all animals when he has reached his full development, so he is worst of all when divorced from law and justice.  Injustice armed is hardest to deal with; and though man is born with weapons which he can use in the service of practical wisdom and virtue, it is all too easy for him to use them for the opposite purposes. Hence man without virtue is the most savage, the most unrighteous, and the worst in regard to sexual license and gluttony.  The virtue of justice is a feature of a state; for justice is the arrangement of the political association and a sense of justice decides what is just.”[3]

PLATO

“The ancient Greek philosopher Plato… represented objective idealism.  In his view, the real world around us consisted of ideal substances, while sensuous things were but imperfect copies of the latter that emerged as a result of the blending of an idea with amorphous matter existing merely as a possibility. (…)

Platonism is based on the division of all that exists into the real world, consisting of general ideas (‘ideal essences’), and the unreal world, made up of assorted sensuous things, being just a reflection or a shadow of the real world (the world of ideas).  To illustrate the correlations between the world of sensuous things (the unreal world) and the world of ideas (the real world), Plato gives the following example. Imagine a man chained to a pole in a dark cave, his back always to the entrance from where the sunlight comes, so that he cannot see what is going on outside the cave.

Plato believes that the world of ideas is integral thanks to the Idea of the Good, and is eternal, whereas separate things and phenomenon are transient and temporary.  They emerge from the amorphous and vague being (matter) as a result of combining with a certain idea, but as soon as the idea abandons the thing it has created, the latter ceases to exist.  It follows then that real things and phenomena are created by ideas, which ultimately take their beginning in God.

Plato’s theory of ideas was severely criticized by Aristotle, whose teaching is the pinnacle of ancient Greek philosophy. (…)

Aristotle proved that no general ideas exist outside and independently of things.  Aristotle vacillated between materialism and idealism.  He held that all things originated from primordial matter characterized by vagueness and a lack of form, i.e. in fact it was just the possibility of existence.  This possibility turned into a real sensuous thing only when matter combined with a form (Aristotle’s term), which gave it definiteness.  Although Aristotle, world view was basically materialist, it also had idealistic overtones.” [4]

Plato was born in 427 BC, (he died in -347) some four years after the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War and just over a year after the death of Pericles.  His father, Ariston, who died when Plato was a few years old, was a member of an old and distinguished Athenian family, as was also his mother Perictone.  Ariston and Perictone had two other sons, both older than Plato, Adeimantus and Glaucon, who are two of the main characters in the Republic.  After Ariston’s death Pericton married again, as was the normal Greek custom, her second husband being Pyrilampes, a close friend and supporter of Pericles and himself prominent in public life.  Plato thus came of a distinguished family with many political connections.  Through his stepfather he had a link with Pericles, who gave his name to the great age of Athenian history, and to whom Athenian democracy, as Plato knew it, owed many of its characteristic features…

And it is important to remember what a democracy in fifth- and fourth century Greece was like.  The Greeks lived in city-states, small communities consisting of a ‘city’ nucleus, with an area of agricultural land attached, from which the urban population varied in size, but were all small by the standards of a modern city.  The population of Athens when Plato was born was perhaps 200-300,000, including men, women, and slaves; and Athens was by Greek standards large. In a democracy the vote was confined to the adult male citizen population. At Athens slaves may have numbered some 60-80,000, and there were perhaps 35 – 40,000 ‘metics’, that is residents who because they had been born elsewhere did not qualify for citizenship.”[5] 

Greater Athens’ population is 3,413,990 in 2015 accordingly to Le Petit Larousse dictionary at page 1297.

“The question of possibility and reality has been attracting philosophers’ attention since ancient times.  Plato’s solution, for instance, was to distinguish possible form actual or real existence.  He held that the world of ideas and ideal essences possessed the property of real being, whereas the world of things possessed possible being.  Since it could not change into reality and acquire real existence. There was, Plato believed, a necessary division between real and possible being.”[6]

SOPHOCLES

We then had a ‘dialogue’, with two giants of human thought; tragedians of this era were also brilliant thinkers.  “Sophocles (born ca. 496 B.C., died after 413) was one of the three major authors of Greek tragedy.  Of his 123 plays, only seven survive in full.  Antigone, written and first performed in the late 440s B.C., is among his most often revived plays; its strong roles, and its conflicts between individual morality (championed by a brave young woman) and the overbearing political needs of the state, have never lost their compelling interest through the generations.”[7] 

Others include:  Ajax, The Women of Trachis, Electra, Philoctetes.”[8]

 

 

Archives: La Vie Réelle

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[1] Sheptulin, A. P., Marxist-Leninist Philosophy, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1978, pages 187-188, 239

[2] Aristotle, Introduction to Ethics, Penguin  Classics, Markham, 1976, pages 10-11

[3] Aristotle, The Politics, The State as an Association, Penguin Classics, Toronto, 1981, page I ii

[4] Sheptulin, pages 18, 38-40

[5] Plato, The Republic, Translator’s Introduction, Penguin Classics, Toronto, 1987, page xxv

[6] Sheptulin, pages 238-239

[7] Sophocles, Antigone, Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1993, page v

[8] Grene, David; Lattimore, Richmond, The Complete Greek Tragedies, A Washington Square Press Book,        New York, 1973, 264 pages