the classical worldview

8/9/2019 The Classical Worldview

1/20

Unit 1: The Classical and Medieval World

Week 2: The Classical

Worldview

Kitto, H.D.F. Chapter 10:

The Greek Mind. The Greeks.

169-193.

Week 3: The Medieval

Worldview

Lewis, C. S. Chapter V: The

Heavens. The Discarded

Image. 92-121.


2/20

Your Instructor for Wks 2-3

A/P Loy Hui Chieh ([email protected])

Department of Philosophy (mainly

Classical Chinese Philosophy / GreekPhilosophy modules

Joint-appointment with USP(UHB2204: Virtue and Leadership)

RF, Cinnamon College (Levels 10-13)
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]


3/20

The Agenda Of Unit 1

This Week:

The Background to the Background (or just So

why do we have a Unit 1?)

A Snapshot of the Greek Mind

Next Week:

A Tourist Guide to the Medieval Synthesis

The Dawn of the (Early) Modern World


4/20

Remember This?

Module Description:

What moves nature? Who and What am I? What drives society?These arethree foundational questions that have shaped, and continue to shape, thepursuit of intellectual thought. This module surveys the different attempts at

answering them and tracks the controversies and challenges confronting eachattempted answer.

Organized as a two semester lecture series, students will be introduced to keyideas, thinkers, and paradigm shifts over the course of five intellectualperiods: Pre-Enlightenment, the Enlightenment, Post-Enlightenment,

Modernity, and Post-modernity. Each period maps the shifting social, political,and material contexts in which these questions have been raised, challenged,and raised again. The aim is to introduce students to a history of intellectualenquiry that is neither singular nor complete but contesting and contestable.

Module Description:

What moves nature? Who and What am I? What drivessociety?These are three foundational questions that have shaped, and continueto shape, the pursuit of intellectual thought. This module surveys the different

attempts at answering them and tracks the controversies and challenges confrontingeach attempted answer.

Organized as a two semester lecture series, students will be introduced to key ideas,

thinkers, and paradigm shifts over the course of five intellectual periods: Pre-Enlightenment, the Enlightenment, Post-Enlightenment,

Modernity, and Post-modernity. Each period maps the shifting social,political, and material contexts in which these questions have been raised, challenged,and raised again. The aim is to introduce students to a history of intellectual enquirythat is neither singular nor complete but contesting and contestable.


5/20

Paths: Taken and Not Taken

Q: Why a unit on the Classical and Medieval World?

The main narrative of the seminar = The (European)Enlightenment and its long aftermath

Q: But surely the foundational questions had been (arebeing) answered in other traditions? (Chinese, Indian,Islamic, etc.)

Q: Surely there is more to European (or broadlyWestern) intellectual history?


6/20

Background to the Background

A snapshot of the intellectual history that predated theEnlightenment, and that formed its background

Not so much the detailed pre-Enlightenment answersto the foundational questions, as much as key ideasthat continued as the legacy of the pre-Enlightenment

A Prologue, or Previously, on (Encouragement to continuing your own researches)


7/20

Athens and Jerusalem

The main streams that feed into the EuropeanEnlightenment and the Rise of Modernity

Greco-Roman Classical Antiquity Medieval Christianity (next week)

(Islam)

(Ideas from the East) (The New World, Colonialism)

(Renaissance, Reformation, Wars of Religion)


8/20

A Bit of Historical Context

The Classical Greek world (ca. 5th-4th C.BC) as a patchwork of independent

poleis (plural ofpolis, city)

Broadly similar language and culture;but diverse political forms

The prominence of Athens and Sparta

Macedonian control (323 BC)

Annexation by Rome (146 BC)

Greco-Roman culture of the Empire

Dominance of Greek culture in the

Eastern Mediterranean


9/20


10/20

The Greek Intellectual Tradition

Epic Poetry: Homer, Hesiod

Lyric Poetry: Sappho, Pindar

Drama: Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes

Rhetoric: Gorgias, Isocrates, Demosthenes

History: Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Polybius

Mathematics/Astronomy: Euclid, Ptolemy

Science/Medicine/Geography: Archimedes, Galen,

Strabo, Eratosthenes

Philosophy: Pythagoras, Parmenides, Zeno of Elea,Democritus, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Pyrrho


11/20

The School of Athens (Raphael 1509-1510)


12/20


13/20

Kitto, H.D.F. Chapter 10:

The Greek Mind. The

Greeks. 169-193.

Slightly dated in some

details, but the whole

book is still worth reading


14/20

Taking a Leaf from Kitto

The wholeness of things (169-176) Greek words (kalos, hamartia, sphrosyn, aret, etc.); refusing to sharply

compartmentalize their applications

Body & Soul equally important; the games is part of their religion (rather thanthe other way round)

Firm belief in Reason (176-183) Passion for asking useless questions; purely disinterested inquiry

Despite appearances, there is an explanation for everything, and it is simple;the universe is not capricious

Sense of Form, Love of Symmetry, Creative/Constructive Bent (183-194) Man is part of Nature; Nature too, will be symmetrical

Tended to impose pattern where it is not to be found

Mathematics as the most characteristic of Greek discoveries


15/20

What Moves Nature Wait, It Moves?

Zeno (b. ca. 490 BC); Paradoxes of Motion

(1) Something that moves must arrive at the half-way stage before itarrives at the goal, ad infinitum.

(2) Achilles is attempting to overtake the tortoise. By the time hereaches where the tortoise was a moment ago, the tortoise wouldhave moved on, ad infinitum.

(3) Since an arrow that is apparently flying is not moving at a slice oftime, adding time slices ad infinitum wont give us an actually flying

arrow.

Zenos General Conclusion: Motion is impossible

The arguments are framed in terms of locomotion (movement inrespect of space) but can be generalized to change in general


16/20

Smart Alexes of the Ancient World

At this point in the lecture, Diogenes the Cynic (ca. 412-323 BC) gotup quietly, and started walking around

Challenge: It is manifestly the case that things move. Just open youreyes and see for yourselves.

Z: Im not denying that thats how it appears. But is motion real?

Z: If motion is real, then whats wrong with my arguments?

A: Suppose motion is real and theres nothing wrong with myarguments, then we have to conclude that reality is unintelligible(not subject to logic). Since I dont accept that, the only conclusionis that motion is not real.


17/20

Historically Speaking

Many attempts to refute Zeno (beginning with Aristotle)

Wide-ranging influence on the history of Western philosophy

Whether Zenos reasoning is right is one thing

The fact that his reasoning was taken seriously by many smartpeople is another thing

The paradox of motion remains one of the considerations cited infavor of modern non-classical logics that rejects the principle ofnon-contradiction

Zenos paradox and the reactions to it as an indication of the GreekLegacy to European intellectual history

(China and India)

(The role of abstract math in modern physics)


18/20

Some Lessons

Appearance vs. Reality

The intelligibility of the universe

Logic as the benchmark of intelligibility A Priori reasoning as a way to gain knowledge

about the nature of the world

Metaphysics


19/20

Side Note on Reason and Observation

There are writers on Medicine who take, as the basis of theirdiscussion, some hypothesis that they have arbitrarily chosenTheHot and the Cold, the Wet and the Dry, whatever they think fit. Thusthey reduce the number of the causes of diseases and death amongmen, making them the same in all cases. These writers are mistaken inmany of their actual statements, but their worst mistake is that it is acraft, and a most important one, that they are dealing with.(Hippocrates of Cos (ca. 460-370 BC), On Ancient Medicine; Kitto 188)

Hs point is that medicine is apractice that depends uponobservation, its principles cannot be discovered by deduction from

first principles

There were Greek scientists who cared about observation

Experimentation (for deciding between theories) is another thing


20/20

Postscript and Akan Datang

The End of the Classical World in the West

Its continuation in the (Greek) East

Its legacy in the Islamic world Its legacy in Medieval Christianity

the classical worldview

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