AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF BEIRUT Civilization Sequence Program
CVSP 202 FALL 2013–2014
LECTURE 1 (10th September 2013) ‘Philosophical Background’ [Dr. Nader El-Bizri] [email protected]
The ancient Greek legacies in philosophy, in particular the thoughts and experiences of Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus, influenced the intellectual history of the Abrahamic monotheistic traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, from late antiquity to the 13th century (This document offers simplified and adapted highlights about some of the main concepts of this ancient Greek philosophical background).
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PLATO [ca. 427–347 BC] أﻓﻼطﻮن / Πλάτων
‘The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato’ [Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929)]
The ‘Simile of the Cave’ (Plato’s Republic 514a-521b) Imagine a group of people who lived chained in a cave all their lives, and facing a blank wall on which shadows are projected from objects situated in front of a fire behind them. They ascribe forms to these shadows, and this is the closest they get to reality and truth. Unlike them, the philosophers are freed prisoners from the cave who understand that the shadows on the wall do not make up reality, and who also grasp the true form of the real and its source of illumination, rather than being fixated on mere shadows and appearances. They generally believe that their duty is to free the chained others by giving them knowledge in order to distinguish truth/reality from appearances.
A Theory of Forms Prior to Socrates and Plato (in Pre-Socratic times), there were two main Ancient Greek conceptions of reality in the 6th and 5th centuries BC. One was static (as represented by Parmenides) and the second dynamic (as represented by Heraclitus). According to the first, reality is one, undifferentiated, and immutable, while the second grasped reality as constantly changing and in flux. Plato attempted to bridge this divide by distinguishing the sensory material changing world of appearances (the spatial-temporal cosmos of motion, sense perception, and of particular things) from the intelligible and immaterial realm of the unchanging and eternal reality (the domain of rest, abstract forms, ideas, and universals).
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The immutable ‘Forms’ (or ‘Ideas’) are exemplars and archetypes, which are copied and imitated as models in the formation of the mutable objects of sense perception. A Form (eidos) or an idea would be akin to the essence of something. For example: the universal form or idea of ‘whiteness’ characterizes all particular instances of white things in the world; similarly, the universal form or idea of a ‘square’ characterizes all the particular things in the world (bodies and drawings) that have the shape of a square.
A Conception of ‘God’ as ‘Demiurge’ (‘Artisan Godhead’) An artisan Godhead, the Demiurge, acts on pre-existing matter to produce the cosmos of sensory perception as an orderly configuration analogical to the shapes of the archetypal models of the eternal Forms. The Demiurge does not create the eternal matter, but brings order to it as inspired by the pre-existing Forms (The four elements of air, water, fire, and earth have specific shapes as geometric solids, which are constituted from miniscule triangles. Acquiring knowledge about reality rests on geometry and abstract reasoning).
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ARISTOTLE [384 – 322 BC] أرﺳﻄﻮطﺎﻟﯿﺲ / Ἀριστοτέλης
Cultivated in Plato’s academy in Athens, Aristotle developed his independent own philosophy, which was as influential as that of his mentor. His millennial longstanding legacy earned him the title: ‘The First Teacher’.
Like Plato, Aristotle's philosophy aimed at universals, which he found in particular things. He called this: the ‘essence’ of things. His thesis implied an ascent from the study of particular phenomena to the knowledge of essences, while Plato’s method also entailed a descent from the knowledge of universal forms (or ideas) to an assessment of particular imitations of them in the world of sense perception.
Motion from Potentiality to Actuality Natural Philosophy is a branch of ancient inquiry that studies the phenomena and entities of nature, as composites of matter and form. It includes physics, biology, and other natural sciences. Motion (kinesis) is the principle of spatial-temporal change in nature. It is of various kinds: (i) growth and diminution: as a change in quantity; (ii) locomotion: as a displacement in space; (iii) alteration: as a modification in quality; etc. The generation of something (its birth or coming about) embodies the motion of bringing it forth from potentiality to actuality, as the happening of its form in matter through the connection between causes and their respective effects.
The Four Causes The generation of a given thing in the motion of bringing it from potentiality to actuality is attributed to four simultaneous active causes: material, formal, efficient, and teleological. Citing these four causes in a reasoned explanation is necessary and sufficient.
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Let us take the case of a wooden table as an example: (1) Its material cause is the matter from which it is made, namely: wood. (2) Its formal cause is the configuration of its matter, namely its form: as a model that existed in the mind of the carpenter, in the drawing of the table’s geometric shape, and as actualized in carving and cutting the wood to make it. (3) Its efficient cause is the primary source from which a change or its ending is initiated. It refers to the agent that causes change, and sets a thing in motion. In this context, it is the maker (the carpenter) as engaged in the acts of producing the wooden table. (4) Its teleological cause (from telos; end), is the final purpose or reason for which it exists and is made to serve. It encompasses volition, need, and motivation; like the aim of making a wooden table for dining purposes and other uses.
Ten Categories (ways of accounting for beings in their being) A thing-in-itself as substance is the subject of predicates other than itself, which are its attributes. A property-bearer is distinguished from the properties it bears:
SUBSTANCE in its primary sense it refers to a specific individual being (Socrates) Quality characterizes the kind and nature of something (educated, Greek) Quantity answers the question ‘how much?’ (double, half) Relation being towards something (the parent of a child) Place answers the question ‘where?’ (auditorium, marketplace) Time answers the question ‘when?’ (now, tomorrow) Position location [of the parts of a body] (standing here, sitting there) Possession state of having something (wearing glasses, having knowledge) Action acting upon something (cutting, carving, lifting) Affection being affected by an other (motivated by the attentiveness of students)
A Conception of ‘God’ as ‘Unmoved Mover’ The Unmoved Mover lets nature flow in its causal course by imparting motion on it. It is the ultimate primary cause of all there is in the universe without itself being in motion or caused.
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PLOTINUS [ca. 204/5–270/1 CE] أﻓﻠﻮطﯿﻦ / Πλωτῖνος
Plotinus’ legacy gives a mystical expression of Platonism whilst responding critically to the Aristotelian doctrines, and in certain respects also reconciling them with some of Plato’s teachings (Plotinus’ tradition is more commonly known as ‘Neo-Platonism’).
A Conception of ‘God’ as ‘The ONE’ ‘Being’ (existence) applies to all the finite changing entities of sense experience. The ONE, as the ultimate source and causal principle of reality, is necessarily above the realm of the senses and transcends the world of finite things and of human experience. As the generator of Being, ‘The ONE is beyond being!’ as a pure simplex, an unbroken unity, perfection, and absoluteness.
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Emanation All beings issue forth from The ONE as their primeval ultimate origin by necessity, and they are emanated as such through intermediaries. The basic principle of this emanation is that: it is necessary that the less perfect proceed in a flux from the more perfect. This describes a grand hierarchical ‘chain of being’ that is causal and animated by imitative (mimetic) analogies:
‘The ONE’ (Akin to Plato’s ‘Good’ as the Form of all forms) ↓ Universal Intellect (Nous – Akin to Plato’s Demiurge) ↓ World Soul ↓
The first emanation from The ONE is the Universal Intellect. The Platonic Forms and Ideas are gathered in it. This Intellect is akin to Plato’s Demiurge, without being distinct from the Forms and Ideas that it uses as models in shaping the cosmos. The Intellect is beyond time, and grasps all things in an eternal present. The World Soul, as an emanation from the Intellect, is the link between the realm of the Forms and Ideas, as found in the Intellect, and the sensible/sensory universe. The emanation of the cosmos from The ONE is like being illuminated by rays of light from the sun: (i) the sun and its rays are distinct; (ii) although the rays of the sun are dependent on it, the sun itself does not exist without its rays; (iii) yet, as the rays become more distant from their source and origin, they lose the intensity of their brilliance, and eventually fade away into the darkness of opaque matter. Plotinus focused on the triad: The ONE, Intellect, and World Soul, whilst subsequent Neo-Platonists added more intermediaries between The ONE and the physical universe in a great ‘chain of being’ (or a ‘scala naturae’, as a ‘ladder of nature’ and a hierarchical structure in ordering life and matter).
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Selected references (entries on Aristotle, Plato, Plotinus, and their legacies): STANFORD ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY http://plato.stanford.edu/ ROUTLEDGE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY http://www.rep.routledge.com/
[N.B.: The contents of this document are simplified and adapted to meet the CVSP 202 requirements]
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