Introduction

Two Reasons to Study Ancient Greek Philosophy

Ancient Greek philosophy began with Thales, who correctly predicted an eclipse that occurred in 585 BCE, and culminated in the monumental works of Aristotle, who died in 322.1 (Unless otherwise noted, all dates in this book are BCE.) The simple fact that these thinkers lived over 2,000 years ago should provoke a question: in the age of the microchip and the engineered gene, why bother with them?

One good answer immediately springs to mind: to become educated. The Greeks were the intellectual ancestors of western culture. They laid the foundations for all future developments in the natural sciences, medicine, mathematics, history, architecture, sculpture, tragic and comic drama, lyric and epic poetry, as well as philosophy. To the extent that one must know one's heritage in order to know oneself, it is imperative to study the ancient Greeks.

This is particularly true in the field of philosophy. Alfred North Whitehead famously said, "the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists in a series of footnotes to Plato" (Whitehead 1969, p. 63). Even if he exaggerated, it is undeniable that in his some 25 dialogues Plato (429-347) addressed an extraordinary range of questions that remain alive and well (and unanswered) even today. What is knowledge? What is courage? What is the best possible political regime and the best possible human life? Can one know that an action is wrong but nevertheless perform it? What makes language meaningful? Are values relative? Should one obey a law even if it is unjust? What does mathematics tell us about the world?

Even if he had influenced no one else, Plato's impact on western culture would be huge simply because he taught Aristotle (384-322), who was a student in his school (the Academy) from 367 to 347. In turn, Aristotle became far and away the dominant thinker for at least the next 1,500 years. Thomas Aquinas, for example, and other medieval philosophers (Arab, Christian, and Jewish) simply had to say "The Philosopher," and their readers knew Aristotle was being named. In the middle ages European universities first came into being, and their curricula were decisively shaped by the works of Aristotle.

Even if Plato and Aristotle were the unmatched giants of Ancient Greek Philosophy, they did not arise in a vacuum. In the sixth and fifth centuries thinkers powerful in their own right set the stage for their emergence. The "Presocratics," who lived before or contemporaneously with Socrates (469-399), made remarkable leaps in what today we call natural science. Democritus (born ca. 460), for example, formulated a rudimentary version of atomic theory. Empedocles (493-433) planted the seeds of a theory of biological evolution. Pythagoras (living in the sixth century) arrived at the insight fundamental to the development of modern physics, namely that the universe has a mathematical structure. He understood that the "book of nature," as Galileo said, "is written in mathematical characters."

A curious feature of ancient Greek philosophy, which will be discussed at some length in chapter 1, is that in critical ways these Presocratics were more modern in their outlook than their successors, Plato and Aristotle. Indeed, to put the point anachronistically, and as chapter 4 will elaborate at length, Aristotle criticized the Presocratics precisely for being too modern in their thinking. In a parallel fashion, when the great proponents of the "scientific revolution" (such as Bacon, Galileo, Descartes, and Spinoza) in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries began to develop their new vision of philosophy and science, they did so by attacking Aristotle, who had dominated European intellectual life for centuries. In doing so they were often turning back, both explicitly and implicitly, to the Presocratics.

Another group of innovative thinkers crucial to the emergence of Plato and Aristotle, and significant on their own, were the Sophists, especially Protagoras (born ca. 485) and Gorgias (483-376). As chapter 2 will show, their views are stunningly similar to many professed today. They believed, for example, that ethical values were relative, and that neither objective knowledge of the external world nor a definitive interpretation of a given text or event were possible. For the Sophists language was responsible for constructing our relationship to the world. As such, they prefigure the segment of twentieth-century thought that originated with Nietzsche and came to be known as "postmodernism." Just as Aristotle argued against the Presocratics, much of Plato's work is an attempt to overcome the Sophists. Strangely enough, even though he lived over 2,000 years ago, Plato was in a position to criticize Postmodernism.

In sum: a good reason to study ancient Greek philosophy is to become educated about thinkers who were enormously influential in shaping western culture. This book will help the reader begin this task.

There is, however, a second, and better, reason to study the Greeks, especially Plato and Aristotle: in order to retrieve and revitalize their views. In other words, one can, and should, turn back to the Greeks not only to become knowledgeable about the venerable past, but because the Ancients may still have much to teach us today. They may have come up with better answers to the urgent questions human beings, in every age, invariably face.

This reason may be especially appealing to those who, like myself, often find themselves deeply troubled by the very nature of the modern world in which we live. To many of us, something seems to have gone wrong. Often this feeling is sparked by witnessing the enormous level of destruction technological development has caused. Seeing pictures of the Amazon jungle going up in smoke, or the ice-cap melting in the Arctic, or learning the number of animal species becoming extinct by the day, often trigger a feeling of despair. Perhaps even more troubling is the thought of weapons of mass destruction, all of which were produced by the very scientific techniques of which we are so proud. The image of highly trained technicians, dressed in the clean white garb we associate with laboratories and hospitals, working together to produce "weapons-grade" bacteria is revolting. Something, we often feel, has gone wrong in a scientific culture capable of producing, but not knowing how to use or being able to control, the awesome tools of modern technology. We wonder if human cloning will in fact be attempted, and if the chemistry of the brain will become so well understood that a feeling of well-being will be easily attained by the taking of a pill.

A sentiment distantly but importantly related to this was expressed by Edmund Husserl in a lecture titled "Philosophy and the Crisis of European Humanity," written in 1935. Even if his prose was forbidding, Husserl's message was clear. "The European nations," he wrote, "are sick. Europe itself, it is said, is in crisis" (Husserl 1970, p. 270). Husserl was specific in identifying what had gone wrong: "The European crisis has its roots in a misguided rationalism" (p. 290).

A materialist, mechanistic conception of nature, studied by a mathematically based science, which in turn spawned the powerful technologies we now both take for granted and occasionally dread, has come to dominate not only all modes of human reasoning, but western culture itself. This is the crisis. Like a giant shadow, modern science and technology have blotted out all other forms of human knowledge and inquiry. Most important, the hegemony of modern science, based always on the paradigm of mathematical physics, has obliterated the possibility of gaining knowledge of the "meaning" of human life itself. For this "meaning" requires natural or ordinary language, and resists mathematical or scientific articulation.

Facing this crisis, Husserl refused to succumb to a common twentieth-century temptation, namely to abandon western rationalism altogether. In fact, his love of reason was steadfast, and he denied that "the European crisis . [means] that rationality as such is evil" (p. 290). Instead, the task he undertook was to reform reason, to expand it so that it could not only account for material bodies in motion, but also for the meaning of human life. He called his new science "phenomenology," a word composed of two Greek words, phenomena, "the appearances," and logos, "rational account."

What Husserl said about Einstein typifies his critique of modern European rationality and gives some inkling of what he meant by phenomenology:

Einstein's revolutionary innovations concern the formulae through which the idealized and naively objectified physics is dealt with. But how formulae in general, how mathematical objectification in general, receive meaning on the foundation of life and the intuitively given surrounding world - of this we learn nothing; and thus Einstein does not reform the space and time in which our vital life runs its course.(p. 295)

To make the same point, Husserl says this: "the scientist does not become a subject of investigation" (p. 295). In other words, modern science, always speaking the language of mathematics, "objectifies" the world. It understands how material things work and can predict and thereby manipulate their movements, but has nothing whatsoever to say about the unique...