Plato and Aristotle (4th Century B.C.)

Lecturer: Wu Shiyu

Email: shiyuw@sjtu.edu.cn

http://sla.sjtu.edu.cn/bbs

1. The Crisis of the Polis The end of the Peloponnesian War did not bring an end to

confrontations among major Greek city-states. Sparta, Thebes, and eventually Athens competed for

power and leadership of the Greek cities. The 4th century B.C. witnessed the shift of power balance,

and of political alliances. Warfare was constant. Persia, from time to time, would

also get into the act and sometimes played a major role.

1. The Crisis of the Polis Thebes became stronger than ever under the leadership of

two intimate friends, Epaminondas and Pelopidas. In 371 B.C. when the Spartans marched toward Thebes,

the end of them as a major power in Greece came. The two armies were met at the plain of Leuctra.

Theban Sacred Band and its novel tactics killed nearly half the Spartan present including their king. The remainder of the Spartan army withdrew.

Spartan Supremacy in hoplite warfare forever shattered. Theban army ravaged Laconia, setting free the helots.

1. The Crisis of the Polis Within a few years and with comparatively little loss of

life, Thebes accomplish what generations of Athenians could not. Sparta was finished as an international power.

But this did not mean that the Thebans supremacy was assured. Thebans were unable to replace Athenians and Spartan imperialism with Theban imperialism. Ultimately, Thebes gained nothing for itself.

By knocking out Sparta as military power, Epaminondas in fact did a great favor to Philip II of Macedon, the future conqueror of Greece, which we will come back in the next chapter.

1. The Crisis of the Polis

Therefore, all the efforts of the various major Greek states aimed to extend their hegemony over mainland Greece in the first half of the fourth century ended in failure. By the mid 350 B.C., no Greek city-state had the power to rule more than itself on a consistent basis.

2. Greek Phylosophy The Greek word, philosophos means “a lover of wisdom”. It had been a tradition in ancient Greece that thinkers had

taken pleasure in searching for principles underlying the cosmos and human life in it.

Democritus, for example, claimed that he would “rather find the explanation for a single phenomenon than gain the kingdom of Persia.” Ancient Greek thinkers devoted themselves to their pursuits in different shapes.

The most famous Greek from this turmoil fourth century B.C. was not a politician or a general, but the Athenian philosopher, Plato, Socrates’ most brilliant pupil.

3. Pupils of Socrates

If a teacher be judged by the enduring greatness of his pupils, who can equal Socrates?

Plato, who is the very foundation of philosophy. It has been said that all the western philosophy is

but a series of footnotes to Plato.

3. Pupils of Socrates And Plato’s pupil Aristotle is the intellectual father

of all the universities of the world today. And Xenophon, less influential, but a man of

action as well as ideas, like Plato, devoted to his teacher.

And all three of these intellectual figures were forever molded by what happened on one single day in the year 399.

4. Plato

Born between 429 and 423 B.C., an aristocrat from one of Athens’ most distinguished families.

As a member of the social elite, he was involved in politics at his young age.

In 399 B.C., Plato was profoundly shaken by Socrates’ death, and ever since then, he forever retreated from Athenian public life.

Plato (c. 428-348)

Socrates and Plato

4. Plato

Plato’s entire life reflected the influence of his teacher, Socrates. Over his lifetime, Plato composed numerous works called dialogues with settings and casts of conversationalists.

In most of those dialogues, Socrates played the principal part, talking about philosophical issues: What is beauty? What is piety? What is justice? What is love?

4. Plato

None of the conversationalists involved Plato himself. In other words, Plato never speaks in his own voice. Thus, scholars differ as whether Plato had adopted Socrates as his mouthpiece and uses the words of “Socrates” to express his own thoughts.

4. Plato

But “Socrates” in his different dialogues changed over time, which probably indicates that Socrates might serve as a vehicle for Plato’s own ideas.

In his dialogues, Plato’s interests varied, ranging widely in political philosophy, astronomy, mathematics, and metaphysics.

5. Theory of Forms

Chief among Plato’s ideas was his Theory of Forms.

Plato’s belief in Form is that the world as it seems to us is “not the real world, but only a shadow of the real world”.

There is an eternal, unchanging Form of everything, from sandals to triremes to sealing wax.

5. Theory of Forms

Forms are the abstract representations of the many types and properties of things we see all around us, like Goodness, Justice, Beauty, and Equality.

Forms are invisible, invariable, and eternal entities, and are in the existence of a realm beyond the empirical world of human beings.

We cannot perceive the Forms with our senses. It is only through reason that we acquire knowledge of Form.

5. Theory of Forms Like the Forms, reason must be everlasting. But humans

are not everlasting, and yet we are endowed to a limited extent with reason. Therefore, there must be some part of us that is everlasting, in which reason can reside. That part, Plato believes, is soul.

This is Plato’s idea of the separation between immortal souls and human bodies.

Influenced by Pythagoras, who, taught the doctrine of the transmigration of souls which outlives the body. According to Plato, the soul brings with it knowledge of the Form.

5. Theory of Forms

Plato’s idea of the separation of soul and human body established the concept of dualism and this idea was appreciated in later philosophical and religious writers, especially early Christian writers.

Plato maintained that men should be in pursuit of perfect order and purity in their own souls by making rational desires control their irrational desires. The latter causes harm in various ways.

5. Theory of Forms An often cited example is wine drinking. A little

drink of wine makes one feel comfortable; yet the excessive drinking of wine makes one crazy and suffer the hangover to come the next day. And thus, people who are governed by irrational desires thus fail to consider the future of both body and soul. Finally, since the soul is immortal and he body is not, our present, impure existence is only one passing phase in our cosmic existence.

Plato in his Academy

6. Plato’s Ideals

In his works dealing with the organization of society, Plato spoke bitterly of Athenian democracy, calling it the as “perverted form of government”.

He believed that Pericles’ establishment of pay for service in public office had made the Athenians “lazy, cowardly, gabby, and greedy”.

6. Plato’s Ideals

Plato preferred what Aristotle and Isocrates later labeled “proportional” or “geometric” equality of democracy that accorded equal privilege to people of unequal merit.

For Plato, giving equal political power to all alike was no different from giving all students the same grade regardless of their performance on papers and exams.

7. The Republic

Against the background of this fierce critique of his own city-state, Plato, in his most famous dialogue, The Republic, showed how human society should be constructed in ideal world.

This work primarily concerns the nature of justice and the reasons that people should be just instead of unjust.

7. The Republic

Justice, Plato argues, is advantageous; it consists of subordinating the irrational to the rational in the soul.

By using the truly just and therefore imaginary polis as a model for understanding this notion of proper subordination in the soul, Plato presents a vision of the ideal structure for human society as an analogy.

7. The Republic

Like a just soul, the just society would have its parts in proper hierarchy, parts that Plato in the Republic presents as three classes of people, as distinguished by their ability to grasp the truth of Forms.

7. The Republic The highest class constitutes the rulers, or

“guardians” as Plato calls them, who are educated in mathematics, astronomy, and metaphysics. Next come the “auxiliaries,” whose function it is to defend the polis. The lowest class is that of the producers, who grow the food and make the objects required by the whole population. Each part contributes to society by fulfilling its proper function.

7. The Republic Women as well as men qualify to be guardians because

they possess the same virtues and abilities as men, except for a disparity in physical strength between the average woman and the average man.

The axiom justifying the inclusion of women –that virtue is the same in women as in men—is perhaps a notion that Plato derived from Socrates.

Never before in Western history had anyone proposed –even in fantasy, which the imaginary city of the Republic certainly is –that work be allocated in human society without regard to gender.

《理想国》又译作《国家篇》、《共和国》等，与柏拉图大多数著作一样以苏格拉底为主角用对话体写成，共分 10 卷，其篇幅之长仅次于《法律篇》，一般认为属于柏拉图中期的作品。这部“哲学大全”不仅是柏拉图对自己前此哲学思想的概括和总结，而且是当时各门学科的综合，它探讨了哲学、政治、伦理道德、教育、文艺等等各方面的问题，以理念论为基础，建立了一个系统的理想国家方案。

《理想国》是西方政治思想传统的最具代表性的作品，通过苏格拉底与他人的对话，给后人展现了一个完美优越的城邦。

柏拉图把国家分为三个阶层：受过严格哲学教育的统治阶层、保卫国家的武士阶层、平民阶层。他鄙视个人幸福，无限地强调城邦整体、强调他一己以为的“正义”。在柏拉图眼中，第三阶层的人民是低下的，可以欺骗的。他赋予了统治者无上的权力，甚至统治者“为了国家利益可以用撒谎来对付敌人或者公民”

西方哲学家几乎都认为这篇对话是一部“哲学大全”。

《理想国》讨论的主题是正义问题，首先讨论国家的正义。柏拉图认为一个好的国家应该具备智慧、勇敢、自制、正义这 4 种德性。

7. The Republic Plato argues the best form of government

ultimately, is one ruled by a philosopher-king. "Until philosophers rule as kings or those who are

now called kings and leading men genuinely and adequately philosophise, that is, until political power and philosophy entirely coincide, while the many natures who at present pursue either one exclusively are forcibly prevented from doing so, cities will have no rest from evils,... nor, I think, will the human race."

8. Plato’s Practice

Hoping to realize this goal in an immediate and concrete manner, Plato made three trips to Sicily in an attempt to educate a philosopher-king. But the experiment turned out to be futile. He also traveled in Italy, Egypt, and Cyrene. He then returned to Athens at the age of forty.

9. Plato’s Academy Close to home, Plato founded the Academy, one of the

earliest known organized schools in Western Civilization on his belief that knowledge could be taught to others.

It received its name because of its location by the groves( 树丛 ) of the ancient hero Academus. The Academy was not a school or college in the modern sense but rather an informal association of people, who were interested in studying philosophy, mathematics, and theoretical astronomy with Plato as their guide.

9. Plato’s Academy It is said that, over the entrance, the Academy had the

following inscription: “Let no one unversed in geometry enter here.”

The Academy became so famous as a gathering place for intellectuals that it continued to operate for nine hundred years.

Until AD 529, Justinian I of Byzantium closed it, who saw it as a threat to the propagation of Christianity.

Many intellectuals, including many famous philosophers, astronomers, mathematicians, and even scientists, were schooled in the Academy. The most prominent one is Aristotle.

10. Plato

The writings of Plato may be regarded as the origin of intellectual communication. The famous quote: “All philosophy is but a footnote to Plato” exemplifies the fact that Plato is the necessary starting point for any study of Western philosophy.

Part II: Aristotle Together with Plato and Socrates, Aristotle (384 – 322

B.C.), a pupil of Plato, is one of the most important founding figures in Western philosophy.

Born in Stageira, an Ionian city, in 384 B.C. His father Nicomachus was the royal personal physician to Macedon and so as a boy, Aristotle was educated as a member of the aristocracy.

At eighteen, Aristotle studied at Plato’s Academy in Athens and remained there for nearly twenty years, until after Plato's death in 347 B.C.

Aristotle (384 – 322 B.C.)

Aristotle

After he left the Academy, he travelled with his friends to Asia Minor and took residence in its island Assos, where they together researched the botany ( 植物学 )and zoology.

Later on, he was invited by Philip II of Macedon to serve as tutor to his son Alexander.

Aristotle Upon his returned to Athens in 335 B.C., he founded the

great institution of scientific learning at Athens, the Lyceum.

Aristotle conducted courses at the school for the next twelve years.

During this period, Aristotle composed many of his works. Upon Alexander's death, anti-Macedonian sentiment in

Athens erupted. Aristotle was accused of impiety and then he fled the city, explaining, "I will not allow the Athenians to sin a second time against philosophy." He died the following year.

Aristotle Over his lifetime, Aristotle studied almost every

subject possible at the time, and also made significant contributions to most of them.

In physical science, Aristotle’s interests included anatomy, astronomy, embryology, geography, geology, meteorology, physics and zoology.

In philosophy, he contributed to aesthetics, ethics, government, metaphysics, politics, economics, psychology, rhetoric and theology.

Aristotle

He also devoted his studies to education, foreign customs, literature and poetry. His combined works constitute a virtual encyclopedia of Greek knowledge.

Therefore Aristotle was referred to as the last person who knew everything there was to be known in his own time.

Aristotle

Aristotle was the founder of formal logic. Aristotle’s works mostly survived in treatise form.

In the early 1st century AD, his logical works were compiled into six books which form the core of the logical theory, and his conception of it was the dominant form of Western logic until 19th century advances in mathematical logic.

Aristotle

Aristotle loved science. He grouped all science into three categories: practical, poetical, or theoretical.

By practical science, he means ethics and politics; by poetical science, he means the study of poetry and the other fine arts; by theoretical science, he means physics, mathematics and metaphysics.

亚里士多对科学的分类

（ 1 ）理论的科学 ( 数学、自然科学和后来被称 为形而上学的第一哲学 ) ；

（ 2 ）实践的科学 ( 伦理学、政治学、经济学、战略学和修饰学 ) ；

（ 3 ）创造的科学，即诗学。

Aristotle In the quest for understanding, Aristotle was never happier

than in the meticulous observation. His stay in Asia Minor and the island Assos proved to be

particularly rewarding to him because it afforded him opportunity for observing on life there.

His writings provide an account of many scientific observations, such as History of Animals and Generation of Animals.

Aristotle

He wrote, “The craftsmanship of nature provides extraordinary pleasures to those who are able to recognize the causes in things and who have a natural inclination to philosophy”.

Living things excited Aristotle and also inspired him the desire to classify them. Aristotle's classification of living things contains some elements which were still in existence in the nineteenth century.

Plato and Aristotle

Aristotle

A well-known of Aristotle quote goes, “Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth”. It, in fact, reveals a profound difference between Aristotle and his teacher, Plato.

While Plato was happiest contemplating the eternal truths of mathematics, Aristotle thrived in the constantly changing world of nature.

Plato, Aristotle thought, had failed to account for change. Quite differently, for Aristotle, the dynamic power of change accounted for a great deal of the excitement of mental life.

Aristotle And not only this: It was movement toward a particular

end –teleology, that he saw as the guiding force behind life.

A prime mover, he argued, shaped the universe in accord with his ends. Only the prime mover itself was not itself moved. Loosely speaking, the prime mover was what most people would call god.

Aristotle’s philosophy was very popular in Europe during the Middle Ages, when Thomas Acquinas (1225 -1274 AD) adapted it to Christian theology.

Aristotle Plato finds that the universal exists independent of

particular things, and is related to them as their prototype. So for Plato, philosophic method means the descent from a knowledge of universal Forms to a contemplation of particular imitations of these.

Aristotle found the universal in particular things, which he called the essence of things. And so, for Aristotle, philosophic method implies the ascent from the study of particular phenomena to the knowledge of essences.

Aristotle

For Aristotle, "form" still refers to the unconditional basis of phenomena but is "instantiated" in a particular substance.

In a certain sense, Aristotle's method is both inductive( 归纳的 ) and deductive, while Plato's is essentially deductive from a priori principles.

Aristotle 亚里士多德首先是个伟大的哲学家，他虽然是柏拉图

的学生，但却抛弃了他的老师所持的唯心主义观点。 柏拉图认为理念是实物的原型，它不依赖于实物而独

立存在。亚里士多德则认为实在界乃是由各种本身的形式与质料和谐一致的事物所组成的。“质料”是事物组成的材料，“形式”则是每一件事物的个别特征。就像是现在有一只鼓翅乱飞的鸡，这只鸡的“形式”是它会鼓翅、会咕咕叫、会下蛋等。当这只鸡死时，“形式”也就不再存在，唯一剩下的就是鸡的物质。

柏拉图断言感觉不可能是真实知识的源泉。亚里士多德却认为知识起源于感觉。这些思想已经包含了一些唯物主义的因素。

Aristotle: The five elements

Fire, which is hot and dry. Earth, which is cold and dry. Air, which is hot and wet. Water, which is cold and wet. Aether( 以太 ), which is the divine substance that

makes up the heavenly spheres and heavenly bodies (stars and planets).

Aristotle: The five elements Each of the four earthly elements has its natural

place; the earth at the centre of the universe, then water, then air, then fire. When they are out of their natural place they have natural motion, requiring no external cause, which is towards that place; so bodies sink in water, air bubbles rise up, rain falls, flame rises in air. The heavenly element has perpetual circular motion.

Aristotle’s Universe

Aristotle: Causality, The Four Causes

Material cause describes the material out of which something is composed.

The formal cause tells us what a thing is, that any thing is determined by the definition, form, pattern, essence, whole, synthesis or archetype.

The efficient cause is that from which the change or the ending of the change first starts.

The final cause is that for the sake of which a thing exists or is done, including both purposeful and instrumental actions and activities.

Aristotle’s Politics Aristotle's conception of the city is organic; the

city to be a natural community. Moreover, he considered the city to be prior to the

family which in turn is prior to the individual. He is also famous for his statement that "man is

by nature a political animal." What he actually said is that people are animals

whose nature it is to live in a polis. Only in a polis could individuals realize their social natures and grow through the sharing of ideas.

Aristotle’s Politics It should be noted that the modern understanding of

a political community is that of the state. However, the state was foreign to Aristotle. He referred to political communities as cities.

Aristotle understood a city as a political "partnership". Subsequently, a city is created not to avoid injustice or for economic stability , but rather to live a good life: "The political partnership must be regarded, therefore, as being for the sake of noble actions, not for the sake of living together".

Aristotle’s Politics Aristotle had such a powerful belief in natural

hierarchies that he recurred with some frequency to this theme of the inferiority of women to men.

Whereas Plato’s utopia entailed a unisex education aimed at producing guardian men and women together, Aristotle was a staunch supporter of patriarchy, which believed had a solid basis in women’s biological inadequacy.

Aristotle’s Politics

Women, he maintained, had colder bodies than men. For this reason, though they were able to provide matter for embryos, only men could provide the soul.

In the womb, embryos that stopped short of full development for lack of heat became female. Thus women were literally half-baked.

The female, he contended, “is, so to speak, a deformed male”.

Aristotle Aristotle believed that women are colder than men

and thus a lower form of life. His assumption carried forward unexamined to Galen and others for almost two thousand years until the sixteenth century.

Aristotle’s power of observation deserted him when women were his subject. The twentieth-century philosopher Bertrand Russell quipped that Aristotle would not have claimed that women had fewer teeth than men if he had allowed his wife to open her mouth.

阿拉伯人描绘的亚里士多德上课图

Aristotle Since he was perhaps the philosopher most respected by

European thinkers during and after the Renaissance, these thinkers often took Aristotle's erroneous positions as given, which held back science in this epoch.

However, Aristotle's scientific shortcomings should not mislead one into forgetting his great advances in the many scientific fields.

For instance, he founded logic as a formal science and created foundations to biology that were not superseded for two millennia. Moreover, he introduced the fundamental notion that nature is composed of things that change and that studying such changes can provide useful knowledge of underlying constants.

Aristotle 亚里士多德对世界的贡献之大，令人震惊。他至少撰

写了 170 种著作，其 中流传下来的有 47 种。当然，仅以数字衡量是远远不够的，更为重要的是他渊博的学识令人折服。他的科学著作，在那个年代简直就是一本百科全书，内容涉及天文学、动物学、胚胎学、地理学、地质学、物理学、解剖学、生理学，总之，涉及古希腊人已知和各个学科。他的著作包含三个方面：一是前人的知识积累，二是助手们为他所作的调查与发现，三是他自己独立的见解。

Aristotle Quotes

All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind. Education is the best provision for the journey to

old age. Law is mind without reason. Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime. With regard to excellence, it is not enough to

know, but we must try to have and use it.

Aristotle Quotes

It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen.

One swallow does not make a summer, neither does one fine day; similarly one day or brief time of happiness does not make a person entirely happy.

The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law.

Aristotle Quotes

To perceive is to suffer. (感知即痛苦 ) Man perfected by society is the best of all animals;

he is the most terrible of all when he lives without law, and without justice.

A flatterer is a friend who is your inferior, or pretends to be so.

A friend is a second self.

Aristotle Quotes

All virtue is summed up in dealing justly. Liars when they speak the truth are not believed. To the query, "What is a friend?" his reply was "A

single soul dwelling in two bodies." To the query, in the same text, "what is love?" he

replied "What is life without love? Love is like the sun; without light, there's no life"

Aristotle Quotes

吾爱我师，吾更爱真理。 · 战争才能带来和平。 · 法律就是秩序，有好的法律才有好的秩序 · 对上级谦恭是本分，对平辈谦逊是和善，对

下级谦逊是高贵，对所有人谦逊是安全。 · 幸福来源于我们自己。