Debating schools

Not so thorough histories of philosophy tend to view Plato and Aristotle as an end of a progression starting from Socrates and even pre-Socratics. Yet, both philosophers did found schools of their own, which were active long after Plato and Aristotle had died. We've already seen that the followers of Plato emphasized the role of numbers even more than Plato had, either discarding the Platonic ideas or identifying them with the numbers – they clearly loved mathematics.

Followers of Aristotle took the opposite route and followed their master in concluding that numbers cannot be the primary explanation of all things: after all, how could unchanging numbers explain world of change around us. Instead, followers of Aristotle, such as Theophrastus, thought that their teacher's notion of a desire for ultimate perfection as the primary cause of all change and movement was at least more promising first principle. That doesn't meant that e.g. Theophrastus would have accepted his teacher's philosophy wholesale. Indeed, Theophrastus might not have accepted even the Aristotelian perfect being as the prime mover: why would an urge to perfection cause many different kinds of movement? Instead, Theophrastus suggests that perhaps e.g. stars do not move, because of an urge to perfect themselves, but because it is in their nature to move in a certain manner.

Despite their differences, Aristotle and Theophrastus shared some clear methodological elements. The most important is their acceptance of reliable experience as a source for testing metaphysical theories. It is then no wonder that Theophrastus spent quite a large part of his life in empirical studies of e.g. plants. But it is not Theophrastus and his even lesser known followers philosophers think of, when they are considering the time after Plato and Aristotle. Instead, it is Epicureanism and Stoicism that come to mind as the epitomes of philosophy in the so-called Hellenistic period of history.

Of these two schools, the Epicureanism was more faithful to its founder Epicurus, and indeed, some of its followers boasted that they still held the original ideas of Epicurus; their critics retorted that initiation in the Epicurean wisdom was like castration in its irreversibility. Stoics, on the other hand, were not so attached to the doctrines of the founder, Zeno, and even if they did not straightforwardly contradict him, they surely attempted to develop his views and emphasized different parts of philosophy according to their own interests.

Just like we saw in Aristotle, philosophy was not seen anymore as an undivided unity, but as consisting of interconnected modules that could be studied independently of one another, although there was a clear hierarchy of more and less important modules. Both Epicureans and Stoics were interested of the question of determining the basic modules and organizing them into a systematic whole. In Stoic school especially, number of schemes were suggested, but soon both school appear to have settled to a the three-part division of philosophy, where different parts answered different basic questions. The first question of the proper way to reveal truth was studied by Epicurean canonic and Stoic logic, while the second question of the structure of the world was studied in both schools by physics, and finally ethics investigated how one should live one's life.

Following Aristotle, both Hellenistic schools conceded that search for knowledge must begin from sensations or perceptions. In fact, they perhaps went a bit further and stated that perceptions were the necessary basis of knowledge, while Aristotle has emphasized the human capacity to recognize basic truths common to all experiences. Epicureans went even so far as to declare all information given to us by senses as true: if we see red, then we definitely see red. It is only when we start to interpret our sensations that mistakes start to happen, for instance, when I assume that there is a real red object causing the red sensation, if it just a hallucination. Still, even in these cases the mistake can be revealed only by other sensations, for instance, by our touch showing that there's nothing but air in front of us.

On the other hand, Stoics emphasized that not all perceptions are trustworthy as such: if I hallucinate, I have the misleading tendency to believe that what I hallucinate is really there. Thus, only some perceptions are to be accepted as reliable indicators of something that truly exists, and it is only such reliable perceptions we can accept as the foundation of truth.

For Epicureans, sensations were enough for knowledge. True, some reasoning might be in order to reveal things that we cannot directly experience, but even here one must be careful and admit the limits of human mind. Thus, they felt no need to carefully determine the intricacies of reasoning: why bother, when it is always better to directly perceive than to reason things.

For Stoics, on the contrary, the perceptions were only the basis of the truth and they had to still be transformed into the form of rational thought, that is, they had to be given a linguistic shape. In this part of their logic Stoics clearly shared common ground with Aristotle and his methodology: Stoics begin by defining how words are produced, how they are combined in e.g. statements and how statements can be deduced from one another. The main difference between Stoic and Aristotelian logic is that Stoics were far more interested of deductions based on the form of the whole statement: for instance, Stoics noted that a statement of the form ”if A, then B” could be used to deduce statement B from statement A.

In addition to a methods of finding or ascertaining truths, Stoic logic also contained practice for disseminating truths in form of speeches and writings. Epicureans were here also willing to ignore the subtleties and recommend only the use of every-day parlance so that truth would not be hidden behind lofty words.

Both Epicureans and Stoics were in a sense materialistic compared to Platonic and Aristotelian philosophies. This was especially true of Epicureans who had borrowed their worldview from atomists. The Epicurean world consisted mostly of material things, and these things required a container or empty space for movement. As Epicureans could not conceive how bodies might exist and be infinitely divisible, they supposed all division must end at a final point of hard and unbreakable atoms, of which all the other bodies were then composed. Furthermore, they could not conceive any limits for the world, and because in an infinite world, a finite number of atoms would quickly disperse and form no complex bodies, they also supposed an infinity of atoms.

This was as far as Epicureans were willing to let reason guide them. Beyond that, they assumed that the atoms must have somehow coalesced into such wholes as the cosmos we see around us – in fact, there probably were infinity of such wholes in existence. Yet, of the further happenings of such a cosmos, nothing certain could be said – perhaps lightning was caused by these reasons, perhaps by others.

Like in their logic, Stoics leaned in physics also to similar considerations as Aristotle, that is, they assumed that everything in the world consisted ultimately of a featureless material substance, sort of primordial slime. To make this substance into concrete things, an active force was required, on the one hand, to divide the original substance into pieces, on the other hand, to give different characteristics to different parts of the substance.

The Stoic active force was then nothing inseparable from the material substance, but was necessarily incorporated within matter. Some Stoics identified it with a particular thing, such as Sun, others thought only the whole cosmos could suffice as the body of this activity. Needless to say, this materialized force organizing everything played the role of God: it had created the cosmos as we knew it, and one day, when the current world was destroyed by fire, it would build everything anew.

The difference between Epicurean and Stoic notion of the origin of cosmos led to a completely different manners of looking at the world. While Epicureans admitted the impossibility of certainty on individual physical questions, they were eager to note that at least we did not need to assume any divine origin for phenomena: lightning was probably not caused by the wrath of Zeus. Epicureans did not deny the existence of divinities, although they insisted that gods must also be material. Still, they assumed that such perfect beings must be completely uninterested of anything beyond their own never-ending pleasure and thus could not be the cause of physical events. In this manner Epicureans wished to show how irrational it is to fear thunder and other physical events or try to appease gods.

Stoics were, understandably, of the opposite opinion. True, their original divinity was not supernatural either, but it was apparently very interested of the world around it. The cosmos had a purpose and it must show traces of divine influence all around. Stoics went even so far that they accepted traditional forms of divination as more or less reliable methods of ascertaining divine will.

The doctrines of the Epicureans and Stoics concerning the world as a whole reflected also their view of the human beings. Epicureans supposed that human beings must consist of atoms and that within the hard shell of human body existed a finer collection of atoms capable of sensing emanations from other atoms. Without this indwelling finer body, the external body would be just a lifeless heap, but furthermore, without its shell, the finer body would quickly scatter in the wind. No part of human beings could then exist without the body, but Epicureans saw no reason for sadness in this fact. Indeed, they even applauded the thought that human beings had no reason to fear eternal torture after death.

Stoics also shared the idea of two parts within human beings, but with them this view was better justified by their general doctrines. Just like world was passive matter controlled by an active force, all particular beings had a part of both the universal matter and the universal force. In case of humans, this embodied force could be called soul. Stoics were not really sure what happened to this force after the death of human beings. Perhaps it continued its individual existence for some time, if it just found some embodiment beyond its original body, but at least when the whole world was destroyed, the individual souls would return to the original life force and be swallowed in it.

But is is not logic or physics we remember when we speak of Hellenistic philosophy, but ethics. Indeed, both Epicureans and Stoics thought that the aim of philosophy was to show how we should live. As with their physical doctrines, in ethics both schools were influenced by previous philosophers, but they also developed the ideas of their predecessors considerably.

Epicureans were often disparaged as followers of Cyrenaic school, but they were quick to distinguish their views from the views of their hedonistic predecessors. True, Epicureans also admitted that pleasure was the end of good human life, but their pleasure resembled more what Aristotle had called happiness. Epicureans assumed that not all pleasures were of equal rank, because some of them involved pain and uneasiness, just like drinking too much wine results in a headache

Indeed, Epicureans thought it best to search for stable pleasures, like aesthetic enjoyment of art and delight on the presence of good friends, and pleasure that were necessary for human life, such as eating nourishing food when truly hungry. Especially they strived for painless life, and this quest for removing pain required also intellectual capacities. Because bad luck could strike anyone, a capacity to accept and endure even unpleasant states was also required. A truly happy man would then not just live the most pleasant life as possible in the circumstances, but he must also be wise and virtuous.

Stoics were said to have been influenced by Cynics, and indeed, Zeno was apparently thought by a Cynic. Thus, they shared something of the austere way of life favoured by Cynic and especially endorsed the ideal of living according to nature. But unlike Cynics, Stoics had a developed theory of the world and its denizens, and in this case, of the living beings. The aim of every living thing, according to Stoics, is to maintain itself, and therefore even plants feed themselves. While plants are senseless, animals can sense and feel things and therefore they can even feel when they have stumbled on something useful for their own maintenance: in that case they feel pleasure. Humans, on the other hand, have developed even further and have rational abilities to analyse their situation. Thus, they need not pleasure to know what to do, and instead, they should live by the guidance of their reason.

Now, reason and life according to it are then the only truly good thing, without which life would be full of misery. Compared to rationality, all else is useless: you might have fancy clothes or not, and it would not affect the quality of your life. Needless to says, Stoic were quite skeptical of emotions, which were more like a remnant of animal life. Especially negative emotions are to be avoided, and an ideally wise person would at most enjoy life, be cautious of dangers and wish for a good future.

This figure of an ideally acting person or wise sage was then important for both Epicureans and Stoics, and while one emphasized pleasures and other life according to reason, they both accepted that a life of a wise person would be both pleasant and rational. Stoics especially emphasized how different sages were from ordinary people. Radically they insisted that all people who were not sages would live badly, that is, there was no mediate stages between complete wisdom and utter depravity. Then again, becoming a sage was apparently an incontrovertible revolution, and once you knew how to live properly, you couldn't turn back.

Even though both Epicureans and Stoics spoke of ideals of wise persons, their ideals were also different in important points. Epicurean wise man was still in a sense an egoist, because it was only the pleasure of his own and his close friends that interested him mostly. Epicureans were doubtful of all communal efforts beyond association of friends, and they even felt family life to be a hindrance. Still, they suggested that even a wise person should follow the customs of his living environment, just as long as they were not completely against good reason.

The ideas of Stoics provide an interesting contrast to Epicurean views, because while latter accepted social norms, at least early representatives of the Stoic school were apparently still closer to the Cynic teachers, as they insisted that a wise person could ignore common customs, if it was rational to do so: if a sage wanted to cannibalize his companions, then it was good to do so. Later Stoics were, on the contrary, eager to point out that even sages lived usually customary life – they just did it better than others. On the other hand, communal life was far more important for Stoics than it was for Epicureans. Early Stoics spoke even of founding a community of wise people, which apparently resembled in some measure Plato's ideal community, because, for instance, instead of individual marriages, all wise shared their spouses with one another. Even later Stoics admitted that the life of a sage contained working, parenting children and taking part in communal endeavours – no wonder then that Stoicism was more accepted in the state-oriented Roman empire.

Progress in philosophy

We no longer believe in any clear pattern in the philosophy of history – we do not see it as an inevitable progression, where the ideas of one philosopher lead naturally to its overcoming by the next philosopher and finally perhaps to some Philosophy itself where all the problems of previous millenia have been solved. Science may go forward, but philosophy seems like a mere endless bickering over the very same questions as before.

The era of ancient philosophy I have studied in the previous texts was earlier taken as a clear example of such inevitable progression. Thus, we see Hegel putting all the pre-Socratics in a neat order, where every link adds some important philosophical concept to the development, placing Socrates in the middle with his addition of ethics and method of discussion and topping it all with the works of Plato and Aristotle encompassing all that has gone before.

Such tales of progression could be easily criticized: for instance, there's no clear line of influence leading from one pre-Socratic to another, because their live overlapped with one another and some of them lived indeed even to the times of Socrates. Furthermore, it is not clear that anyone living at the time of Plato and Aristotle would have considered their philosophy to be the ultimate solution to all the questions of previous philosophers. Indeed, there were many philosophical schools, like Cynics, that Hegel places before Plato and Aristotle, which were still live and well and would have contested Hegel's reasoning. It is only the later times that raised the status of the two masters – and it's impossible to tell, how justified this raising is, because we have no full works of their contemporary rivals.

Still, we might discern at least some lines of influence leading up to Plato and Aristotle – although they were not the only ends of these lines. I remarked already at the beginning of my studies that the Ionians begun by stating theories based on studies of nature: theories concerning the constitution of world, its generation and possible future destruction and the constitution of the worldly things. Such studies were probably continued by a number of persons, although such empirical studies were not part of any profession in those days. We can discern features of such studies in some of the pre-Socratics and especially in stories recounting their lives. Plato confronted such empirical information in his Timaeus, alhtough he was clearly skeptical of its certainty. Finally Aristotle collected lot of this ”empirical science” and probably made also personal contributions, especially in his studies of animals. Because works of Aristotle were the first extant works containing this empirical treasure trove, he was often considered to have actually started many of the empirical sciences.

It is much harder to determine whether there were any development of religious type. I have suggested that several of the pre-Socratics were actively interested of religious issues: certainly Pythagoras and Xenophanes, possibly even Heracleitus – we may perhaps discern some religious strands even in Parmenidian idea of the unity behind everything. Most influential religious notion was still the idea of world as on the whole good and wisely governed: Anaxagoras thought there was a reason governing everything and Plato based his whole philosophy on supreme idea of goodness. Even Aristotle held on to this idea, when he noted that all existing things tried to imitate, as best as they could, the perfect being or God living in eternal bliss.

Empirical findings and religious ideas seem somewhat extrinsic to philosophy itself, but there were already a number of essentially philosophical questions. The eldest of these was probably the Parmenidian challenge: can we allow the existence of motion and multiplicity? This question was probably discussed by Empedocles, Anaxagoras and atomists, and it was definitely on the agenda of Plato and Aristotle. The common assumption of all these philosophers was that Eleatic school was wrong and there really was motion and multiplicity, and even the basic answer was same – there is some stability, but this still allows for the variability of some issues.

Study of nature began with Ionians, interest in religious issues originated with Pythagorians and metaphysical questions started with Eleatics. It was common in ancient times to ascribe the invention of ethics to Socrates, which is true only partially. Certainly there were people interested in the Socratic question: how should we live well, both individually and collectively? Indeed, the seven wise men of Greek history were supposedly wise just because they knew answers to these questions. In imitation of these wise men, sophists named themselves also ”wise men”, but at least some of them appeared to understood the required wisdom in the sense of a capacity to find means for required goals.

Socrates noted that before determining means, one should at first determine what one should aim at and take as one's goal. Furthermore, he took as his explicit task to find out what goals really deserved to be goals, while as far as we know, his predecessors in ethical issues were content just to proclaim what is good. Just like after Parmenidian establishment of metaphysics, no single line of development captivated the mind's of people. Still, the question itself connected various ethical doctrines, and it became in some circles the most important question of them all. Indeed, Plato at least begun by trying to find solutions for moral problems, even if answering these problems meant discussing also metaphysics. Aristotle forms an interesting exception, as ethics forms with him only a secondary topic and the true wisdom is to be found in a mystical contemplation of the origin and archetype of goodness.

The one thing were there has been evident development is methodology. Unfortunately, most of the earliest philosophers left no record as to how they arrived to theories they presented. Still, we might find interest in arguments at least starting from the Eleatic school. By the time of sophists, such argumentation had been dressed in ornate decoration and flowery rhetoric – the development of rhetoric was probably influenced by a need to master public speeches in city councils and courts. While rhetorical speeches tried to convince passive listeners, Socrates raised the listener into a bit more active role by making him a partner in discussion, although the true control was still in the hands of the clever interrogator. Plato generalized then this style of arguing into a proper methodology for seeking truth. He also distinguished this dialectical method clearly from mere rhetoric: it had more in common with mathematical argumentation than convincing people in courts. Aristotle then completed this development by noting that certain figures of argumentation or syllogisms worked always so that one had no choice but to accept their conclusion if one just accepted their premisses  He could thus envision the possibility of presenting human knowledge in a style, where statements expressing the essence of something led to further truths through valid deductions.

How to do things with words

The highest point in practical investigations for Aristotle was investigating the final end of all human endeavours  that is, happiness of individuals and communities. The final aim of such investigation was action for the sake of action, but usually activities aim at producing something. Because the end of these actions is something else than the action itself, a science investigating such an action will be lower in status than the science investigating happiness. Thus, we get a third class of sciences, which Aristotle calls poetic.

Now, the easiest examples of such productive activities are perhaps handicrafts: we do not pay for a tailor to continue his activities indefinitely, but to make clothes for us. Aristotle, like any good Greek gentleman, in all likelihood felt that such menial activities are beneath him and thus worthy of no interest. Still, he did study some productive activities, that is, those to do with language.

In one sense we have already seen Aristotle tackle one such productive science, namely, in his methodological writings: after all, the point of scientific method is not the method itself, but its result or science. Even more clear example is provided by rhetoric or the investigation of how to make eloquent and convincing speeches.

Rhetoric shares some features with scientific methodology and even more with debating on scientific and philosophic matters. Yet, the aim of rhetoric is not to find truth, but to convince others that something is true. Hence, a speaker must do something more than just spin out intricate proofs. The speaker must, for instance, make the impression that she is a reliable and trustworthy character. In order to do so, she must know what sort of characters e.g. persons of different age or of different social status have.

In addition to showing a good front to her audience, the speaker must also use some proofs. Yet, the proofs of a speaker must be less intricate than full scientific proofs. Thus, a speaker often leaves some of the assumptions of her proofs implicit, so that she will not appear a bore repeating self-evident matters. Furthermore, a speaker must often rely on mere probabilities and leave the search of certainty for philosophers. Finally, a speaker cannot usually go through all possible individual cases, if she wants to justify some general proposition, but she must be satisfied with few paradigmatic examples.

Mere knowledge of argument forms is not enough to set up a proof, and speaker must therefore be acquainted with a variety of topics, depending on what she is speaking of. Speeches were used in Aristotle's time for convincing citizens of a community to decide on future actions in certain manner. Thus, a speaker should know politics: she should understand what a community and its citizens are striving for, how different communities work and how to achieve desired ends. She should also have clear understanding of what is possible and what is not.

Speeches could also be used to praise or damn persons either living or dead. Because a speaker should already have the ability to make her own character to look good, she should have no trouble convincing people that a character of someone else is good or bad. Furthermore, she should be able to augment or diminish the worth of things and persons, whatever the case requires.

A third use of speeches beyond planning for the future and praising of present persons is convincing court officials that a certain event has or has not happened in the past, e.g. that someone has committed a crime. Thus, speakers should know a thing or two about motives of human beings, especially as it comes to unjust actions, and also be acquainted with the laws in question. In addition, some basic knowledge of how to establish past events is required.

In addition to proving things through their own speech, especially in courts the speakers can have sometimes recourse to other sort of evidence. One example are witnesses, but a good speaker must also know when to use witnesses, how to make them look reliable and how to discredit witnesses of the opponent.

A speaker should not just know human character and modes of reasoning, but also human passions: that is, how certain emotions arise and what are they targeted at. Thus, she should be able to, for instance, make people pity a person and thus look at him in favourable light, or on the contrary, envy and therefore despise him.

The core of a speech should consist of the justification of the statement to be defended. In addition to this, usually just the statement itself is necessary, Aristotle thinks. At least one does not need a long prologue just to awaken the interest of the listener – usually the listener is most apprehensive in the beginning, while the attention starts to lag only after a while. The end of the speech might require a recapitulation of the main points, if the justification has been long.

Aristotle also considers the style in which the speech should be made. He is somewhat reluctant to speak of the topic, because style is something extraneous to the matter to be discussed. Still, the speaker must know stylistic issues, because these affect the listeners. Even so, complex and too poetic style should be avoided, as it just makes listeners confused.

If rhetoric is just hindered by too ornate language, a second productive science studied by Aristotle or poetic thrives in metaphors. Poetry is one species of activities characterized by the desire to capture natural and social life in presentations – nowadays we would speak of arts. Such arts use many different media, Aristotle notes: for instance, some use musical instruments, others painting. The medium specific for poetry is language, which imitates events of real social life through words.

Now, poetry itself falls into different categories. On the one hand, we can differentiate types of poetry or literature through objects they imitate: some of them describe lives of noble persons, such as legendary heroes, while others describe lives of commoners and even rabble – Aristotle was apparently used to seeing such characters only in comedies. On the other hand, we can differentiate types according to the literary strategies used in them. In this respect tragedies as dramatic texts are closer to comedies than to epics, which described heroes as well as Greek tragedies.

While Plato had disparaged poets and denied letting them in his ideal society, Aristotle had a more positive idea of poetry. As pieces of art poetic texts were meant to imitate, but even imitations may have beneficial results. Indeed, poetic works produced emotions of sympathy and thus purified human mind from all repressed feelings.

Aristotle is interested not just to describe poetic works, but also to find some rules how to make better literature and especially dramas. His answer is that one should concentrate on the most important element of dramas or the plot – all other elements, such as character building are subservient to the plot, and especially means for the actual theatrical production of a play are completely superfluous in comparison. Because of the importance of the plot, the play should be small enough so that the spectator couldn't forget all the intricacies of the events. Thus, good dramas should concentrate on one problematic and not use many plot strands, unlike epics which allowed for a more variety.

The role of dramas and especially tragedies was to purge emotions by showing events of tragic nature, which then aroused feelings of pity toward the characters in play. Aristotle noted that misfortunes of bad persons do not arouse pity, because the spectator feels that bad person deserves bad luck. Indeed, seeing bad persons get lucky is also not tragic, but an outrage. Furthermore, when an incomparably good person faces misfortune, we are bound to feel horrified instead of pitying him. It is then only misfortunes of persons like or slightly more better than us, caused by mistakes that we ourselves could have also made, which cause most pity and thus form the most suitable topic of tragedies.

Aristotle also considered the problem whether tragedies were of more value than epics. He admitted that the theatrical form of tragedies appeared to hinder the true enjoyment of their literary qualities. Yet, this is more of a question of bad stagecraft, which concentrates on more spectacular aspects of theater. Even tragedies merely as read fare better than epics, Aristotle contested, because they could unravel and analyse one incident more completely than epic, which had to use many different plot strands to keep the reader awake. Thus, tragedies as a whole, as pieces of literature and combined with stagecraft, are much more dignified than epics.