The Antinomy of Practical Reason

Kant defines an “antinomy” quite straightforwardly in The Metaphysics of Morals as “an unavoidable dialectic in which both thesis and antithesis make equal claims to the validity of two conditions that are inconsistent with each other” (MM 44). In the Critique of Practical Reason’s discussion of the highest good he claims we encounter such a dialectic in practical reason.

However, what Kant means by the highest good must be clarified. In defining it, it is not meant in the supreme sense, that is to say, as the unconditional condition, or virtue. Rather, Kant takes it in the sense of a “whole which is no part of a yet larger whole of the same kind” (CPrR 110). He thus means a complete good. That, as it so happens, must be virtue (the supreme good) coupled with happiness in proportion to that virtue. Interestingly, this highest good must be a demand of reason, since it is the “entire object of pure practical reason, i.e., of a pure will” (CPrR 109), meaning it is “a priori (morally necessary)” (CPrR 113) to freely bring it forth.

For Kant, though, this idea of the highest good is problematic. For, since it is an admixture of two different concepts which together precede experience, then as a synthetic a priori concept, there must be some connection between its elements. The only way to connect virtue with happiness, Kant declares, is to make one the cause of the other. If neither works, then the moral law is simply a chimera, for its entire object would be untenable. Therefore, a thesis and an antithesis arise: the first is that “striving for happiness produces a ground for a virtuous disposition” and the latter that “a virtuous disposition necessarily produces happiness” (CPrR 115).

As Kant shows in the Analytic of Pure Practical Reason, the first thesis is impossible. There he distinguishes between the “empirical principles [that] constitute the entire foundation” (CPrR 92) of the doctrine of happiness and the non-empirical aspect that must make up the doctrine of morality. But neither is the antithesis possible, namely, that a virtuous disposition necessarily produces happiness. For happiness depends not on the will’s disposition as it does on “knowledge of natural laws and the physical capacity of using them to its purposes.” Therein lies the tension.

Kant then proceeds as he did earlier in the Critique of Pure Reason, which is to say, he resorts to the distinction between appearances and things in themselves. Recall that the world of things in themselves, the noumenal world, is one that we cannot access. The one we can access, the world of experience, sees things (appearances) as “determinable in time” (CPrR 94). Time, for Kant, is the “form of all inner sensible intuitions” (MV 975), which would clearly have no place in the noumenal world, thereby making “the concept of causality as natural necessity” (CPrR 94) impossible in it.

Taking these things into consideration, there is still hope for morality. Looking over the thesis and antithesis again, the first one will remains completely false, but the second is now redeemed. For, at first, it was simply implied that a “virtuous disposition is…the form of causality in the world of sense” (CPrR 115). But if we see our existence justifiably “as that of a noumenon” (CPrR 115) which is determined not by natural necessity, but by the moral law within as our causality instead, we can still consider a moral disposition a cause of happiness in the world of the senses as long as we assume this indirect relation as “mediated by an intelligible Author of nature.”


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WORKS CITED*

Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Practical Reason. Trans. Lewis White Beck. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1993.

Kant, Immanuel. Metaphysics of Morals. Trans. Mary Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Kant, Immanuel. “Metaphysik Vigilantius.” Lectures on Metaphysics. Ed. Paul Guyer and Allen Wood. Trans. Karl Ameriks and Steve Naragon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

*As should be noted, MM = Metaphysics of Morals, CPrR = Critique of Practical Reason, and MV = Metaphysik Vigilantius.

One God Apart

God: The Greatest Question

Man is a creature with needs and desires. As such, we have always sought both comfort and truth—since we like to feel special and we also possess a natural desire for knowledge. With regards to this, different cultures in separate regions throughout time have gone about in very peculiar ways to find out why nature works as it does and trying to unite how it relates to us. The result has been a rich pantheon of gods throughout history—from Apollo to Zeus—as well as a variety of religious traditions in honor of these deities.

Today, of course, many of these so-called gods are rightly seen as manmade fabrications. Take for instance the Greek gods we find in a typical mythology book. Their purpose was oftentimes to explain different sorts of mysterious phenomena such as lightning and fire. As such, they were invoked to bridge the gaps of our knowledge. However, as soon as science started telling us how things work, they were rendered more and more useless. By simply utilizing Ockham’s razor, there was no rational choice but to disbelieve in such deities. But science, of course, will never eliminate one particular divinity.

Philosopher G.W. von Leibniz famously asked “Why is there is there something rather than nothing?” The question, I believe, can be tied to the existence of this “God” that science cannot reject or discover. This is because the God I speak of is one that is the source and reason for all of nature in general, whether directly or indirectly. Lying outside the limits of the scientific method, i.e. the natural world, the question of this God’s existence is one of philosophical interest and will never be eliminated by scientific advances.

But why is the topic philosophical? There is a whole host of reasons. Take, for instance, the way it impacts our ethics. If there is a God, particularly one which is personal and cares for us, such as the one espoused by the Judeo-Christian tradition, it is quite obvious that we would have to act in a specific way during our short stays on Earth. If there is no God, then it may very well be possible, to paraphrase Dostoevsky that “everything is permitted.” As such, the proper way to live is influenced by whether or not God exists. This then influences our views on equality, liberty, justice, and other topics of philosophical interest.

The existence of God would also potentially impact our notions of matter. If there is a God, for instance, then reductionist materialism like that of Daniel Dennett would have to be flatly rejected unless God is a placeholder for the word “nature,” as a pantheist may believe. God’s substance would have to be non-physical, i.e. spiritual, and this would force us to accept the possibility of people having souls, which like God, would have to be real and outside of time, or eternal.

The existence of God is also a philosophical topic because the answer can give us clues to the deepest questions our reason can ever come up with. For instance, it is not hard to accept that a nihilist’s depressing views on life would be radically altered if he or she found some revelation from God. As such, it is the case that God impacts the way we should conceive of both of ourselves and nature in general. Questions that deal with such issues are the ultimate “Why” questions, which are those which we want to know the answer to the most. These deal with our purpose, the purpose of the cosmos, as well as the meaning of it all. Therefore, we can claim with much confidence that God’s existence is in a sense the ultimate topic in philosophy.

It should come as no surprise then that philosophers have tried hard to come up with solutions to the issue of God's existence. A notable example is found in St. Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic Aristotelian who formulated “Five Ways” to affirm the existence of God. As a man of faith, his “Ways” should not to be seen as distinct and rock-solid rational proofs for God. Nevertheless, they are often seen in such a light and are thus prone to severe misinterpretation. What I wish to do is highlight two of his ways. One will be that which appears to me most convincing as well as that which is most sorely lacking. Contrasting such modes of demonstrating God will allow us to see very different approaches to the issue and will let us make a balanced judgment of what Aquinas wishes to express.

In my opinion, the most convincing demonstration offered by Aquinas is the second way, which stems from “the nature of efficient cause” (526). In it, he claims that there must have necessarily been a first cause which allowed all the effects with intermediate causes to ultimately occur. This cause must exist in order to avoid effect-negating infinite regresses. To clarify this, one need only read his well-put wording:

“Now in efficient causes it is not possible to go on to infinity, because in all efficient causes following in order, the first is the cause of the intermediate cause, and the intermediate is the cause of the ultimate cause, whether the immediate cause be several or one only.”

What is it that makes it convincing? The answer is simple, there really does not appear to be a clear-cut logical way around it. Opposing it seems to entail either thinking that not all effects have causes, that there is an infinity of previous causes, or that something is the efficient cause of itself. Let us see how effective this really is, though.

Suppose we believe the first possible objection, namely that not all effects must have a cause. Would this not entail, that the universe, or Big Bang, could have popped into being ex nihilo? Defenders of this view will say that phrasing it in such a way is erroneous, since the Big Bang was the beginning of both space and time. But still, is there a doubt that admitting such a possibility still entails assuming something causes itself unless it is eternal? Aquinas makes a good case for rejecting such a notion, as he writes that there “is no case known (neither is it, indeed, possible) in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself; for so it would be prior to itself, which is impossible.” This is not to say the problem is totally solved, but it is certainly difficult to rationally give credence to a wholly causeless event with a particular origin.

As for Aquinas’ weakest way to demonstrate God’s existence, I point to the fourth way. The fourth way deals with “the gradation to be found in things.” It essentially claims that since some things are certain ways, they are all reflective in different degrees of that which most possesses such a certain quality. Aquinas writes that it is “as a thing is said to be hotter according as it more nearly resembles that which is hottest” (526-527). Therefore, it follows that there is something “which is truest, something best, something noblest, and consequently, something which is most being.” This of course, is said to be God.

I find the fourth way unconvincing because it simply treats evil as privation instead of giving it enough consideration. I believe that had Aquinas carried things out more efficiently, he may have to had to conclude that there is something along the existence of an anti-God, assuming God is as described. This is because had he seen evil as something that is not just a privation of something else, he would had to accept that which is most ignoble and worst. On the other hand, as Professor Gabbey said, Aquinas could simply have posited that goodness is a privation of evil. I believe the proof does not deserve much more consideration in helping conclude something about God’s existence, since it appears to sidestep the issue of evil’s relation to goodness and God.

Judging by the two ways seen above, Aquinas certainly had different approaches to the issue of God, at times sounding very convincing and at others sadly unconvincing. Are his two ways, along with the other three, totally demonstrative of God? Probably not, as these have been at our disposal for quite a while and debate still goes on over each and every one of the five ways. But at the very least what we see in action is a philosopher performing the highest kind of philosophy, since what Aquinas seeks to make understandable is an object of faith that has the greatest implications on everything we can imagine. Therefore, even if not entirely convincing, his effort is entirely commendable.

WORK CITED

Aquinas, Thomas. “Latin Philosophy in the Thirteenth Century” Philosophy in the Middle Ages: The Christian, Islamic, and Jewish Traditions. Ed. Arthur Hyman and James J. Walsh.

Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1986.

Kant and Berkeley: Friends or Foes?

Some philosophers are known for holding counterintuitive views on important issues like the nature of reality. A perfect example of this is George Berkeley. He is known, rather notoriously, for denying the existence of matter, also known as corporeal substance. In James Boswell’s Life of Johnson there is a humorous anecdote making fun of said belief, as the great Dr. Samuel Johnson kicks a stone in order to refute his point. More seriously, the issues his philosophy brings up are quite difficult to tackle. However, in the reader-friendly Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, Berkeley presents several of his ideas in an engaging format. Years later, however, German philosopher Immanuel Kant came up with his own system designed to oppose the “dogmatic idealism” represented by figures like Berkeley. Unfortunately for Kant, however, his ideas were in fact seen as supporting Berkeley. But, as we shall see, Berkeley and Kant cannot be reconciled. The latter’s transcendental idealism is both fundamentally different as well as too much to handle for defenders of Berkeley.

Before comparing Berkeley’s idealist philosophy with Kant’s transcendental idealism, it is necessary to present the former’s arguments for believing that only minds and their ideas, unlike material substrates, can possibly exist. This, it must be noted, entails that to exist is to be perceived, or esse est percipi. It follows because if only minds with ideas exist, then there cannot exist anything that is not perceived, since every idea belongs to some mind. And since these ideas are mind-dependent, nothing we perceive is external in the sense that it contains a chunk of matter that underlies it. Rather, what we perceive are intertwined bundles of qualities. An easy way to visualize some of these brief remarks is by imagining what would happen if stripping X object of every quality it possessed. Would there be nothing left at some point? If you believe there would not be anything else, you approach things in a Berkelian manner. Others, however, will obviously disagree. A startling consequence of Berkeley’s thinking is that appearances become all there is—i.e. there is no such thing as an underlying “thing-in-itself.” To hold such a view entails expecting opponents. Berkeley’s challenge was to convince those who doubted him.

In his Dialogues, Berkeley offers a number of points in the quest to make converts to the considerably radical “phenomenalistic” ideas described above. For one, he has to demonstrate that what is sensible depends exclusively on what our minds say. One of several ways he attempts this is by positing an argument based on how subjective our opinions are when it comes to something’s qualities. Philonous tells Hylas that “that which at other times seems sweet, shall to a distempered palate appear bitter” (180). This is called the argument from illusion. From this Berkeley believes that we can generalize all sensory qualities such as those mentioned at the beginning of Dialogue I (175: colors, sounds, odors, etc.) as ideas.

But what about those other qualities we generally call “primary” such as number and extension? Surely, it would seem, these do not depend on our minds, but rather are independent of it. Shockingly enough, Berkeley groups them together with the other sensible qualities mentioned above, which are commonly known as secondary qualities. He recycles his same arguments from the earlier parts of Dialogue I. For instance, Berkeley uses the same illusion argument used earlier for motion and solidity (188-191). Collectively these sensory qualities are the only things we can sense.

If ideas are in the mind, then why do we come across “ideas” that oppose our will and seem to belong to an external world? To explain these sorts of ideas (the things we come across with in daily life) Berkeley postulates that they are unfolding in God’s mind. And by making God the existential ground of everything, Berkeley also makes his philosophy theo-centric like Leibniz and Descartes did in their respective ways. As Philonous tells Hylas, “I…immediate and necessarily conclude the being of a God, because all sensible things must be perceived by him” (212). God becomes an infinite mind and we live in a narrative taking place inside it.

Now that we have gone over the basics of Berkeley’s idealism, it is time to clarify any lingering doubts before moving on to Immanuel Kant. For instance, we have said that if we accept with Berkeley that minds and their ideas are all there is, then there can be no material things in the sense that Pierre Gassendi and René Descartes believed in. But would that mean that there are no things with causal power? The answer is both yes and no, depending on whether we are conceiving of such things in terms of ideas. And again, someone may ask what impact Berkeley has on instruments on measurement. Are they helpful or true in any way? Interpret it as you may, Berkeley would endorse anything that increases our knowledge of the world, and objects like these clearly do. Thus, as we can observe, it is important to know that Berkeley’s project is not to turn all our commonly held beliefs upside down. It is just that from the perspective of the way language is typically used, his theories are hard to swallow. But as mind-loving Philonous says in Berkeley’s place, he is “not for changing things into ideas, but rather ideas into things” (244).

Immanuel Kant, some will say, is extremely similar to Berkeley. Hopefully this hypothesis can be dispelled more easily by looking first at the definition of transcendental idealism before plunging into his ideas in more detail. For one, the word “transcendental” does not come from “transcendent”—and to associate the two is a mistake which can lead to severe misinterpretations. Instead of having to do with that which lies beyond the realm of experience, the transcendental “precedes…all experience” and is “not destined for anything more than solely to make cognition by experience possible” (Kant 373n). As for the “idealism” part, it is necessary to conjoin it with “transcendental,” for otherwise it may be confused for what Kant means simply by “idealism”—which is something he actually opposes. With regards to his “idealism,” we can define its purpose as allowing us to conceive “the possibility of our cognition a priori of the objects of experience” (374n). On the other hand, the other idealism that demarcates the philosophy of Berkeley and others is defined by Kant as holding the belief that there is “none other than thinking beings” (4: 289). This goes to show how careful we must be in interpreting Kant’s terminology. And to sum up what is meant by both terms together as meant by Kant, we can say that transcendental idealism in general asserts that what we can perceive are only representations, not the noumenal world of things-in-themselves. Furthermore, it considers that these representations are fixed into an intuition-based time and space framework in order to give them coherence in our minds.

With the definition of transcendental idealism in mind, as well as Kant’s definition of “idealism,” it is time to turn to the relationship his thought has with the ideas that make up Berkeley’s philosophy. Firstly, we will discuss a very fundamental difference between the two. Berkeley, it is clear, claims that appearances make up what there really is. It is impossible, according to his system, to think otherwise. In contradistinction, Kant obviously does not adhere to that. Appearances, as mentioned earlier, are mere representations of an external (i.e. mind-independent) world which becomes synthesized by our minds in a complex interplay of its faculties. They fall in the realm of experience, while the noumenal world of things-in-themselves does not. Kant writes:

“…I do indeed admit that there are bodies outside us, i.e. things which, although wholly unknown to us, i.e. as to what they may be in themselves, we know through the representations which their influence on our sensibility provides for us, and to which we give the name of bodies.” (Kant 4: 289)

Thus Kant, as seen in the passage, disagrees with a central tenet of Berkeley’s idealism.

Why, one may ask, can we not know anything about the noumenal world which causes our experience? The answer lies in the very question: it causes our experience and is not part of it. We can make truthful and verifiable claims that lie in the realm of what we can sense, but once we venture beyond that, our reason has already reached its boundaries (4:354)—thus making any proofs concerning God, the soul, etc. not conclusively demonstrable. In fact, when philosophizing on difficult and topics such as these, equally valid opposite proofs can be formulated. And the antinomy, as this is called, is referred to by Kant as “the strangest phenomenon of human reason” (4:340). This is important when comparing Kant’s transcendental idealism with Berkeley’s idealism because the latter’s theo-centric philosophy is metaphysically daring, making confident claims about the most mysterious topics and the nature of reality proper. Also worth noting when considering their differences is that Kant believed that if metaphysics were to be possible at all, we would have to be able to make claims about the world that are not found in the world. These are synthetic a priori statements (4:276). Berkeley, on the other hand, denied any a priori knowledge at all, yet still believed metaphysics was possible. This is a result of his empiricism. And what does this tell us? It tells us that despite any appearances to the contrary, there are some powerful differences in the two philosophers’ mode of operation that cannot allow them to reach the same conclusions under any logical circumstances.

Since we have seen why Berkeley and Kant think as they do, it is only right to refresh ourselves and sum up the conclusions of Kant’s transcendental idealism and Berkeley’s phenomenalism in order to make the differences clear so as to be able to judge which is sounder. Berkeley denies a priori knowledge and the existence of matter while accepting the fact that everything we encounter takes place in God’s mind. By positing a system of ideas and minds, appearances become things-in-themselves, or more coherently, things-in-themselves are rejected. On the other hand, Kant believes in the existence of a priori knowledge. In fact, our own notions of time and space are a priori and give the world we experience structure. As such, appearances are mere representations, since we are distorting them, or synthesizing them through our understanding, so that they make sense to us. And, most importantly, our reason is bounded and unable to go beyond these “mere interpretations”—as there is a noumenal world of things-in-themselves. And while it may sound Berkelian to claim that we can only know appearances, by accepting the possibility of a noumenal world any chance of reconciliation between Kant and Berkeley remains impossible. If they could be united in some way, it would have to be by positing Kant’s transcendental idealism as a rationalistic version of Berkeley’s idealism (which, of course, does not reconcile them). It would have to be rationalistic because the role of the a priori is too important to dismiss in Kant’s system, as it is what makes metaphysics possible.

So who holds the sounder position? It would seem that Kant has the edge, as tabula rasa beliefs about our minds do not seem to be supported today, since our brains are seen as having modules for certain things and as being hardwired to act in certain ways. But speaking from a more philosophical perspective, there is a problem in accepting Berkeley’s claim that to exist is to be perceived. As Kant points out in his Critique of Pure Reason, some things may be too small to be perceived. On Berkeley’s grounds, it would seem as if we have to deem these things as inexistent. Yet that, surely, is nonsensical. Furthermore, it seems as if there appears to be no truly defensible way to demonstrate that other human minds exist if we use Berkeley’s philosophy, as he seems to believe there are. Also in favor of Kant, there is the advantage that his philosophy has in assuring me of the presence of external things. Whereas with Berkeley I need to have faith that what I am seeing is real, with Kant I need only know that since I am deploying my mental faculties in producing a representation, there must be something external to me. This, in turn, ratifies that I am a self with an identity, going even beyond Descartes’ cogito.

WORKS CITED

Berkeley, George. Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous. New York: Oxford

University Press, 2005.

Kant, Immanuel. Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics. Trans. Peter Lucas and Günter

Zöller. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Reflections on God and Science: Pt. 1

Theoretical physicist Leonard Susskind writes in his book on string theory that science doesn’t quite get at the question of why there is something rather than nothing. It’s a good, fair, and totally valid point. This is because science answers the “how” questions as opposed to the “why” questions. We will never discover, via science, if everything was created by some divine Creator in charge of ensuring that certain things would play out in certain ways. I mean, how can one objectively deny that?

So what role, if any, should science have in helping come to grips with what life-view to adopt? For one it can help us become aware of our roots, our future on Earth, as well as our place in the universe. Some may take this and think: “Oh, look I’m this meaningless piece of stardust in a huge galaxy and my planet will cease to be some day. Clearly I’m not special, clearly there’s no point in life, and clearly God, at least the one of the major religions, does not exist.” Fair point, it seems. But if anything, it’s at root an emotional argument for atheism. The theistic equivalent would run as follows: “What were the chances that we would ever come to exist in a huge galaxy with the probabilities against us? It seems as if this was planned, as if there’s something special, particularly with humans since they can reason about this. Isn’t it just scary to think that a universe of non-living matter evolved into a self-conscious universe?” At heart, it’s emotional. None of these two stances is grounded by irrefutable propositions and the like. Therefore, we shall consider them invalid “reasons” to believe X or Y. Rather, both involve having faith, or banking on the idea that something is one way as opposed to another. Furthermore, both may be interpreted as the results of wishful thinking by their contraries.

Distinguishing a Philosophical Problem

Many problems are reasonably dissimilar. Case in point: a mathematical problem and an emotional one. How much more different can they be? To resolve a problem of either type entails a particular approach and a specific degree of expertise. In addition, the issues dealt with are simply of another nature. Nonetheless, despite these unequivocal differences, diverse sorts of problems often do share something crucial: namely that they can be solved. If everything is carried out correctly, it should always be the case.

Other problems are not quite like that. Some have stood the test of time and remained essentially unanswered. A lot of these are considered philosophical problems. Problems of this nature often deal with particular themes which subsequently entail a host of consequences. For instance, an important philosophical issue is the issue of free will. If it exists, it would mean X and if it does not, then it would mean Y. Thus, an issue of this sort can and should impact the way we deal with situations. However, to paraphrase William Alan Gabbey, the deal with problems of philosophy is that they do not promise firm and solid answers. This is important, as hinted previously, for it might as well mean that we will never be certain of many things about ourselves and the world we inhabit.

This seemingly unfortunate distinction is not the only thing that differentiates a philosophical problem from other kinds of problems. Another important one is that the former is dealt with in a very peculiar way. For example, a biologist would use the scientific method in an experiment. The scientific method is a paradigmatic example of an experience-based way of dealing with things. This does not occur only in natural sciences, but also in social sciences and other fields. Philosophical problems are not analyzed in such a way. Philosophy is, obviously, very theoretical and the “experiments” performed are many times thought-based. For instance, the paradox of Buridan’s Ass deals with an animal placed from two equidistant haystacks. It deals with free will and is a classic thought experiment. The reason as to why a philosophical problem must be dealt with in ways like these is yet another feature that distinguishes them from other problems.

Philosophical problems are unique in that they somehow seek to investigate what lays at the ground of many different fields, such as those based on experiential notions (among others—see next example). For instance, a philosophical problem would be to investigate the nature of mathematics in order to evaluate the subject’s validity and/or build a new foundation on which to base all subsequent additions, subtractions, and multiplications. Many of the tenets presumed in different areas are not presumed in philosophy. Rather, these things are studied by philosophers. Other examples are the concepts of liberty and equality—things we accept by nature. This is what makes the scope of philosophical problems very rich, because basically what we consider the “big questions in life” are the ones which fall under the category. We will look at two pairs of contrasting notions, namely “appearance and reality” and “necessity and contingency” to get a feel for how to deal and look at philosophical problems.

With regards to the topic of appearance and reality, we can begin by asking “What can be considered real?” In terms of common sense it would seem as if anything we observe can be deemed as such. But if we stop and think for a moment, it is certainly true, as Descartes writes, “that the senses are sometimes deceptive” (60). Furthermore, one’s frame of reference can differ from another’s and what we observe can be consequently different even if it is regards to the same object. For instance, from one angle a rectangular table may have one leg and from another it may have four legs. Is one particular view correct? Is there possibly a ten-leg angle that we cannot even perceive? We thus see that some issues can and do get hairy when over-analyzed.

Descartes dealt with the issue of reality and appearances in his short classic Meditations on First Philosophy. His method for figuring things out is appealing and very philosophical. At the beginning of the text he attempts to rid himself of many presumptions scientists and others take for granted. He writes “I will attack straightaway those principles which supported everything I once believed” (Descartes 60). He then proceeds to figure out what he can still know regardless of the situation and manages to deduce the following: “it must be finally established that this pronouncement “I am, I exist” is necessarily true every time I utter it or conceive it in my mind” (64). From then on he goes to explain other things. So what he does is build a foundation of well-grounded arguments and towards the end of the book confirms that the things outside the mind are real because of the God he presumably proved in the earlier sections. So in his system he gets a firm and solid answer. The problem, of course, is that there are many systems in philosophy.

Michel de Montaigne wrote the following about the writings the ancients: “the one I am listening to always seems to me the strongest; I find each one right in his turn, although they contradict each other” (Popkin 75). This can happen in modern philosophy as well. A possible case in point is George Berkeley, whose ideas on matter were radical and contrary to Descartes’. For Berkeley, as he writes in A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, “it is indeed an opinion strangely prevailing amongst men, that houses, mountains, rivers, and in a word all sensible object have an existence natural or real, distinct from their being perceived by the understanding” (Berkeley 24). Later on he claims that “there is not any other substance than spirit, or that which perceives” (25). Clearly then, either both philosophers are wrong or one is right. That is why philosophical problems, to reiterate a previous point, do not promise firm and solid answers.

With the other issue, namely that of necessity and contingency, we also see problems and contradictions that can leave thinkers in a despairing state of aporia. Before seeing why, however, it appears best to give cursory definitions of the two terms. When something happens by necessity, it could not have been otherwise. When something contingently happens, it could have been otherwise. Are our actions all contingent or necessary? If the latter, it would appear as if we are bound to a certain destiny and ultimately lack free will. If they are contingent, it sounds liberating but slightly contradictory when seen in the light of a possible God who knows the future and should consequently know what you will do in the future. What possible way, then, is there to prove that what we do is either necessary or contingent? Some may speculate that our actions are contingent since we tend to think things out before executing them. But it might as well be possible that we were necessarily going to think about two options and end up picking a specific one. This is already delving into the other philosophical problems of determinism and free will. And from yet another standpoint we can see the problems of necessity and contingency in the light of synthetic (not necessarily true) propositions and analytic propositions. Is a mathematic proposition necessary or contingent? Is it synthetic or analytic? Issues like these, either dealing with our everyday actions or other abstractions will keep philosophy running for a long time.

Thus we now know how philosophical problems are different from other types of problems. The themes dealt with often form the bases for other problems yet nonetheless do not guarantee us truths with a capital “T.” Theories can look convincing from two different and opposed points of view and may leave us more lost than we were at first. This does not mean, however, that we are to quit since it is to no avail. On the contrary, by building a history of ideas we may still retain hope to approximate some truths like never before.

Cited

Berkeley, George. A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge. Ed. Kenneth

Winkler. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1982.

Descartes, Rene. Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy. Ed. Donald A.

Kress. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1998.

Montaigne, Michel. “The Apology for Raimond Sebond.” The Philosophy of the 16^th and 17^th

Centuries. Ed. Richard H. Popkin. New York: The Free Press, 1966.

Looking at the Ontological Argument

St. Anselm had written a work called the Monologion. In it, “Anselm offers a treatise on the existence and essence of God making no appeal to the authority of Scripture” (Davies 158). Not perfectly satisfied with it (it was, as Anselm described it, “made up of a connected chain of many arguments”), he decided to write the Proslogion, for he wondered:

if perhaps it might be possible to find one single argument that for its proof required no other save itself, and that by itself would suffice to prove that God really exists, that He is the supreme good needing no other and is He whom all things have need of for their being and well being, and also to prove whatever we believe about the Divine Being. (158)

As for what God meant for St. Anselm, he took a view similar to that of Seneca and St. Augustine and defined Him as aliquid quo maius nihil cogitari potest or “something than which nothing can be thought” (159). Assuming that is what God is not too bad, for it is rather contradictory to picture something superior to utter perfection. From that, St. Anselm seems to deduce God must exist in reality, because given that “God is that than which nothing greater can be thought, he must exist not only in the mind…but also in reality” (159-160).

There do seem to be translation issues, though. The phrase St. Anselm uses is Si enim vel in solo intellectu est potest cogitari esse et in re quod maius est. That can be translated as either “For if it is only in the mind it can be thought in reality as well, which is greater” or “For if it is only in the mind, what is greater can be thought to be in reality”. Both translations imply different arguments. For the former translation, his argument would be as follows:

1. God is something than which nothing greater can be thought.

2. God exists in the mind since even the Fool [a person mentioned in the Psalms] can think of (have in mind) something than which nothing greater can be thought.

3. But God cannot just be in the mind since it is greater to be in reality than it is to be only in the mind and since God is something than which nothing greater can be thought.

For the latter translation, the argument would be:

1. God is something than which nothing greater can be thought.

2. God exists in the mind since even the Fool can think of (have in mind) something than which nothing greater can be thought.

3. But we can think of something which is greater than something existing only in the mind.

4. So something than which nothing greater can be thought cannot exist only in the mind.

Unfortunately, St. Anselm does not make it clear for translators what argument is exactly his. As Davies writes, “he simply draws to a close with an emphatic reiteration of the claim that something existing only in the mind cannot be that than which nothing greater can be thought.” And that entails, for St. Anselm, that that than which a greater cannot be thought exists in the mind alone, this same that than which a greater cannot be thought is that than which a greater can be thought. But this is obviously impossible. Therefore there is absolutely no doubt that something than which a greater cannot be thought exists both in the mind and in reality.

Either way, the argument sounds quite reasonable but the end result is of so high a magnitude that criticism is essential in understanding the veracity of what St. Anselm is saying. Many great thinkers have criticized St. Anselm’s ontological proof, ranging from Gaunilo to St. Thomas Aquinas to Immanuel Kant to Bertrand Russell and others. Yet multiple thinkers, such as Descartes and Spinoza, seem to have been influenced by what St. Anselm believed. Allen Wood of Stanford University points out Descartes’ support of the Ontological Argument from his Fifth Meditation:

Major Premise

Whatever we clearly understand to pertain to the nature of anything can with truth be affirmed of that thing.

Minor Premise

But it pertains to the nature of God that he exists.

Conclusion

Therefore, it can with truth be affirmed of God that he exists. (Kitcher 269)

So who is right after all, the critics or the adherents? In trying to solve this, the main traditional criticisms (Gaunilo, St. Thomas, and Kant) will be discussed in detail.

The aforementioned Gaunilo was a monk that wrote his criticism at a time in which St. Anselm could answer him back, and he certainly did. Gaunilo had two principal criticisms of St. Anselm’s argument. The first criticism is as follows:

I can so little think of or entertain in my mind this being (that which is greater than all those others that are able to be thought of, and which it is said [i.e. by Anselm] can be none other than God Himself) in terms of an object known to me either by species or genus, as I can think of God Himself….For neither do I know the reality itself, nor can I form an idea from some other things like it since, as you [i.e. Anselm] say yourself, it is such that nothing could be like it (163).

It means to say people cannot have God in the understanding because He is so incomprehensible.

His second point attacks the wild conclusions St. Anselm’s proof might entail. He postulates a nonexistent utopian island called “Lost Island.” It is supposed to be better than all the islands in reality. But because it is so, it would have to be accepted as existent on Anselmian grounds because an island that exists in reality is superior to one that exists only in the mind. Is the critique valid? St. Anselm responded:

You often reiterate that I say that that which is greater than everything exists in the mind, and that if is in the mind, it exists also in reality. However, nowhere in all that I have said will you find such an argument. For “that which is greater than everything” and “that than which a greater cannot be thought” are not equivalent for the purpose of proving the existence of the thing spoken of (165).

Davies supplements the passage by mentioning a point on which St. Anselm is correct, namely that someone “can believe that X is the greatest existing thing without needing to describe it as “that than which a greater cannot be thought.” And that which is, in fact, greatest could be very imperfect indeed.” The Lost Island can, in essence, be better. God cannot.

But as pertains to the first criticism, maybe Gaunilo is right in a few things (such as God not belonging to any species or genus). However, St. Anselm may argue, as Brian Davies writes, like this:

1. God is something than which nothing greater can be thought.

2. If we can think of something greater than X, then X is not God.

3. We can think of something greater than anything which exists only in intellectu.

4. So something existing only in intellectu cannot be God.

5. So God does not only exist in intellectu.

And he might add:

6. God is something than which nothing greater can be thought.

7. We can think of something which can fail to exist.

8. Something which can fail to exist is less great than something which cannot fail to exist.

9. So something which can fail to exist cannot be God.

10. So God is not something which can fail to exist. (167)

So it certainly seems as if Gaunilo did not rebut St. Anselm that greatly.

St. Thomas Aquinas was another opponent of the Ontological Argument. He believed that St. Anselm’s definition did not apply to everyone:

Perhaps not everyone who hears this word "God" understands it to signify something than which nothing greater can be thought, seeing that some have believed God to be a body. Yet, granted that everyone understands that by this word "God" is signified something than which nothing greater can be thought, nevertheless, it does not therefore follow that he understands that what the word signifies exists actually, but only that it exists mentally. Nor can it be argued that it actually exists, unless it be admitted that there actually exists something than which nothing greater can be thought; and this precisely is not admitted by those who hold that God does not exist. (Aquinas 11)

Despite different concepts of God for different people, as Kenneth Einar Himma of Seattle Pacific University writes, that does not affect the existence of such a thing, as the label of “God” makes no difference:

The problem with this criticism is that the ontological argument can be restated without defining God. To see this, simply delete premise 1 and replace each instance of "God" with "A being than which none greater can be conceived." The conclusion, then, will be that a being than which none greater can be conceived exists - and it is, of course, quite natural to name this being God (http://www.iep.utm.edu/o/ont-arg.htm#SH2c)

Himma believes that St. Thomas’s second criticism may be flawed. This is when St. Thomas says in the passage quoted above that “granted that everyone understands that by this word "God" is signified something than which nothing greater can be thought, nevertheless, it does not therefore follow that he understands that what the word signifies exists actually, but only that it exists mentally.” Himma writes about its lack of promise in terms of disproving St. Anselm:

"One natural interpretation of this somewhat ambiguous passage is that Aquinas is rejecting premise 2 of Anselm's argument on the ground that, while we can rehearse the words "a being than which none greater can be imagined" in our minds, we have no idea of what this sequence of words really means. On this view, God is unlike any other reality known to us; while we can easily understand concepts of finite things, the concept of an infinitely great being dwarfs finite human understanding. We can, of course, try to associate the phrase "a being than which none greater can be imagined" with more familiar finite concepts, but these finite concepts are so far from being an adequate description of God, that it is fair to say they don't help us to get a detailed idea of God.

Nevertheless, the success of the argument doesn't depend on our having a complete understanding of the concept of a being than which none greater can be conceived. Consider, for example, that, while we don't have a complete understanding (whatever this means) of the concept of a natural number than which none larger can be imagined, we understand it well enough to see that there does not exist such a number. No more complete understanding of the concept of a maximally great being than this is required, on Anselm's view, to successfully make the argument. If the concept is coherent, then even a minimal understanding of the concept is sufficient to make the argument."

Therefore, it may seem to some as if St. Thomas himself might not be able to get rid of St. Anselm’s Ontological Argument.

However, it all may have come to a dead end by the time Immanuel Kant managed to offer a solution. Maybe existence is not a perfection, not a sign of being greater than something else. As Patricia Kitcher of Columbia University writes,

Kant’s critique of the ontological argument is often summarized in a slogan—“existence is not a predicate.” To say that a house “exists” seems very different from saying that it is, for example, “messy.” “Messiness” is a property of some houses at some house, but not of all houses at all times; by contrast all real houses—and cabbages and kings—must exist. Alternatively, only an existing thing can have any properties at all, so existence cannot be considered on a par with “other” properties, and “exists” is not a proper predicate. (Kitcher xvii)

Is that an accurate way to get rid of an ontological argument’s validity? Allen Wood begs to differ. For him, Kant’s only argument is the following (from the Critique of Pure Reason):

No matter which and how many predicates I think in a thing (and even if I think it as completely determined), I still do not add the least bit to it when I posit that this thing is. For otherwise it would not be just the same thing I thought in my concept which exists, and I could not say that it is precisely the object of my concept which exists. If I think in a thing every reality but one, the missing reality is not added when I say that this defective thing exists. On the contrary, it exists encumbered with precisely the same defect I thought in it, since otherwise what exists would be something other than what I thought. (275)

Wood responds to it:

Kant’s argument may, I think, be fairly paraphrased as follows: Let us give the name “almost perfect being” to any entity which has every perfection but one. And let us suppose that we have before us the concept of such a being, only we do not know which reality is the missing one in the case of that particular almost perfect being. Now Kant’s contention is that we are led into absurdities if we assume that “existence” is the reality we are seeking. For suppose it is. In that case, if the almost perfect being we are thinking of existed, it would have the missing reality, and therefore would not be almost perfect, but wholly perfect. But this contradicts the assumption that we are thinking of an almost perfect being, and hence is absurd. Existence, therefore, cannot be the reailty we are looking for. But no restrictions whatever were placed on the reality missing from our almost perfect being. Consequently, if existence cannot be the missing reality, this can only be because existence is not a reality at all. And this is what Kant desired to prove.

…I find it astonishing that this argument has stood up for so long, and that so many philosophers who are otherwise clearheaded and critical have found it convincing. We can see at once that it cannot be correct if we run through it again, this time supposing “omnipotence” (or any other undisputed real predicate) to be the reality missing from our almost perfect being. In that case too we would have to admit that if the almost perfect being were omnipotent, it would have the missing reality, and hence be wholly perfect, contrary to our original supposition. Thus if Kant’s argument succeeded in showing that existence is not a real predicate, it would also succeed in showing that nothing could be one.” (275)

So maybe Kant could not entirely disprove the Ontological Argument. But, then again, “Kant does succeed in setting forth a view about existence and predication which, if it is correct, dies rid us once and for all of the concept of logically necessary existence, and with it the ontological argument” (276). The view is widely accepted, it seems, but there does not seem to be enough of a reason to justify his beliefs. However, if any view puts the ontological argument in trouble it is this one.

Final note on the ontological argument: For the sake of brevity and time, I cannot outline more arguments against the ontological argument or the modern modal version of the argument presented by Alvin Plantinga. But we can still conclude that the ontological argument has never been universally convincing in possibly the same way its diverse “dismantlings” have never been fully convincing. It is one of those offerings history has offered mankind to chew upon for centuries on end.

**Proper citations should hopefully be available soon!**

A Jesuit Speaks on Atheism and Modernity

My own proposition, derivative from the Bible, is that atheism is never the conclusion of any theory, philosophical or scientific. It is a decision, a free act of choice that antedates all theories.

-J.C. Murray, S.J.

Fr. John Courtney Murray (1902-1967) was one of America’s most distinguished theologians. In a series of lectures given at Yale University in 1963, he dealt with “the problem of God”—a phrase he considers “distinctively modern” (1). However, despite whatever looks of modernity it may have, the problem, Murray writes, “is as old as the oldest traditions of the Bible.” The issue is of utmost importance, as is implied in the introduction to this research project. Murray wholeheartedly agrees,

…the problem of God is primary among the fateful human questions that, as Pascal said, “take us by the throat.” The whole man—as intelligent and free, as a body, a psychic apparatus, and a soul—is profoundly engaged both in the position of the problem and its solution. (4)

I intend on focusing in-depth on Murray’s view of modern atheists, focusing mainly on two chapters in particular from his book The Problem of God: Yesterday and Today. The two chapters are “The Godless Man of Modernity” and “The Godless Man of the Post-Modern Age.”

THE GODLESS MAN OF MODERNITY

Murray believes that in the modern age there are two types of “godless man” (86). And by modern age he means what “first begins in the quattrocento with the rise of what Lagarde has called…the laicist mentality; ….through the nineteenth century.” The first sort of godless man is one of “the Academy, bearer of the aristocratic atheism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.” Murray writes that the “dynamic behind his atheism was the will to understand and explain the world without God, meaning by “world,” nature, man, history, society.” The second sort of godless man is the one of the Marketplace, “the bearer of the bourgeois atheism of the nineteenth century.”

Murray hypothesizes the origins of the modern worldview from three pivotal events that took place in the Middle Ages. The first event was “the transposition of the problem of God into a problem for the philosophical intelligence, a formally metaphysical, gnoseological, and linguistic problem” (88). Murray considers this something bold, because the “exposure of the problem of God to rational inquiry was an invitation to betrayal of the tradition of reason.” Such a betrayal happened when modernity decided to separate faith from reason after so much time in unity. Murray believes it “was by this choice that the way was opened to the atheist conclusions of modern philosophy.”

The second event “was the Thomist reception of Aristotle.” Now the universe “was a subsistent order of being” considered “radically distinct from God” and “endowed with its own proper autonomy.” Aquinas apparently would tergiversate the “biblical view of the world as an order of reality outside the order of the divine, revealing God indeed but not containing him” (89). Man was given more importance, giving some reason to the belief of Protagoras that man is the measure of all things. This time, though, it came from the idea of man being “the image of God in virtue of his endowment with intelligence.” Now that the world was man’s to analyze rationally, “there lurked an invitation to betrayal of the tradition.” Then the betrayal happened when one exclusive form of rational truth was accepted, with “one method for its pursuit” and “one measure of the certitudes attained” (90). Further consequences of this event led modernity to consider Christianity a “religion of myths” (91) and to a scientism that “supervened upon rationalism” (90). God, like Christianity, was “relegated to the order of fantasy.”

The third event was “the construction of the problematic of creation” (92) which Murray describes as “the central problem of Christian philosophy.” This problem is two-dimensional because it deals with both a metaphysical and moral side. The focus here will be on the former. Metaphysically speaking, if “God is, and if God is what he is, how can anything else be?” The Scholastics did not manage the problem well, and part of the difficulty is as Murray writes,

Outside the infinite, necessary, eternal, absolute being of God there seems to be no room for another order of being that is finite, contingent, temporal, relative.

The issue led to an invitation to “betrayal of the tradition” yet again. Modernity “decided to consider the problem as a choice between alternatives that really are contrary.” Both alternatives were atheist ones: either God is all that is or the world is all that is. If the former were chosen, one would be advocating pantheism, which as Murray says “pantheism is atheism” (93) because it is “the denial of God as Creator, and if God is not the Creator, he is not God.” Murray writes that the modern will to atheism’s direction goes against “the Christian affirmation that God is the Creator of the world.” The second alternative, on the other hand, is just materialism, which is obviously atheist. Murray summarizes it eloquently in a brief passage:

The material universe, man included, is a self-sufficient, self-contained entity and order. It subsists by itself, and it always has been there—from eternity, even. Somehow or other it managed to originate itself, if indeed here be any sense at all in speaking of its origination. In any case, it serves to explain itself. Beyond this world lies nothing. There is, first and last, no God.

Modernity, thus, is trapped in atheism either way for Murray when it comes to the metaphysical issue of creation.

As for the second sort of atheism, that of the Marketplace, Murray dedicates only a little to. It is worth reading basically the entire definition of it as seen by Murray:

In the Marketplace, said les gens de bien…, we have no need of God; therefore he does not exist. The project of these men was not to explain the world but simply to make a living in it. To them the sole realities of life were economic. The business of business is business, they might have said.... And to the business of business, God is irrelevant. He is not needed for the success of the economic enterprise, which is the only enterprise that matters. (98)

Murray refers to it as “atheism of distraction” and claims that it “served to prepare the way for the later proletarian atheism” and their “atheism of indifference” (99).

THE GODLESS MAN OF THE POST-MODERN AGE

Murray’s idea of post-modern is not the typical one. For him it basically means anything from the time of Marx on. Generally, for someone in our age, by postmodern we mean something else. Post-modern was simply the label Murray gave the present (which is now over forty years ago) due to its new atheisms. Notwithstanding minor clarifications, he believed in two godless men of post-modernity: the one of the communist world revolution and the one of the Theater.

The godless man of the communist social revolution is not an individual per se. Murray uses the term party instead (101). Murray explains and then defines the aim of a man in that party:

The new Marxist man wills to transform the world. By “world" he means all that Marx meant by “nature,” that is, the total system of material production and human relationships that the labor of man has brought into being throughout history. The world is the industrial world, the world wrought by man’s industry. (101-102)

These people are, in a sense, in search of freedom on earth alone.

As for the godless man of the Theater, unfortunately it was too recent a concept by the time Murray gave his lecture. Regardless, by Theater he meant “the world of the public imagination, common impressions, generally shared feelings about things” (102). The man of the Theater is, in some sense, not philosophical. He is interested in man’s “situation” and has an “ethic of the situation” as well. Murray writes,

His postulate is that man has no nature; man is not an essence. Man is only a presence, a sort of process, or , if you give the word something of its primitive Hebraic sense, an existence, a continual “standing forth,” an actual “being-there-in-the-moment” in action and in freedom.

The will of the godless man of the Theater is not that of his predecessor of the Academy—the will to understand and explain the world without God. For him the world is absurd. Still less does he will to change the world; for it would still be absurd no matter what the change. His project is simply to “exist” the godless word…Even more exactly, his project is to “exist” himself, the man who wills to be godless in a world that he sees to be godless through his intention that it should be godless like himself. He wills the absence of God. (103)

Both types of men are very different. However, they do have some similarities. Murray describes six characteristics in detail. For reasons of brevity and time, it is most prudent to simply list those six characteristics:

1. They “share a common problematic” dealing with the issue of evil in the world.

2. They both accept Nietzsche’s (mythical) belief that God is dead. History now becomes only man’s playing field.

3. Both new atheisms are postulates and not conclusions.

4. God is considered not only some “needless superfluity” (106) but a “positive menace to be actively combatted and done away with.”

5. Their active antagonism to God is based on the idea that He opposes man’s freedom

6. Both have a “highly concrete concept of freedom” not based on legalism and the like.

In this same content-rich chapter of Murray’s book, he also offers his conclusion. For the Academy, the big deal was “the intelligibility of God, as allied with issue of the intelligibility of the world” (119). For the post-moderns, though, God is dead, and thus those issues do not matter. Furthermore, for the post-moderns, “the problem of God has come back in its biblical mode of position.” This is so because:

The problem of God today is not posited simply in the order of ideas and affirmation where the terms of argument are essence and existence. Its plane of position is the historical-existential order, where the terms of argument are presence or transparency and absence or opacity. This is the plane on which the problem was posited by the Lord God of Israel when he visited and redeemed his people. This, too, is the plane on which it has again been posited by the man of the Revolution and by the man of the Theater, who have come to visit, if not redeem, us. (119-120)

Murray thus gives an excellent history of the rise of atheism from the modern age to the time of his book. One can say that Murray, though he claims he is not trying to persuade or prove anything (3), does seem to have more sympathy towards the new atheism (amongst the atheisms) since it seems to bring us back to our biblical roots. Now it is just a matter of what is better—knowing God or ignoring him (121). That is where we are at, and we better make a decision (atheism, Murray reasonably believes, is a decision) because this is certainly of great importance.

**I would cite the work in detail if I had the information**

Understanding Plato's Phaedo

What is the soul for Simmias?

For Simmias the soul is a kind of harmony, meaning that it vanishes and dies with the body. He makes the correlation because “a harmony is something invisible, without body, beautiful and divine in the attuned lyre [like the soul], whereas the lyre itself and its string are physical bodily, composite, earthy, and akin to what is mortal [like the body]” (124). In consequence, by following the analogy, the soul dies because when an instrument is broken or destroyed, the harmony supposedly is as well. He is thus claiming that the body determines the soul’s state and recognizes that it is not immortal. You can make the claim that he is a naturalist.

What is the soul for Cebes?

For Simmias, the soul is something that precedes the body but is mortal nonetheless. He is against Simmias in believing that the soul is stronger and more long-lasting than the body. Socrates summarizes his point succinctly: “Cebes, I thought, agrees with me that the soul lasts much longer than the body, but that no one knows whether the soul often wears out many bodies and then, on leaving its last body, is now itself destroyed” (129).

Is the soul corporeal? If yes, in what sense?

For Simmias the soul is corporeal. This is so because it is not beyond the natural realm; it dies the moment the body does and appears the moment it does as well. If Simmias’ ideas were modernized, he would probably sound a lot like the empirical scientists/philosophers that claim everything in the universe is made up of atoms and the like (e.g. Daniel Dennett, Francis Crick). While Simmias may ascribe qualities to the soul unseen in corporeal things, he is still undeniably subjecting it to whatever happens to the body—thus making the soul part of it.

For Cebes the soul is not corporeal in the extreme sense held by Simmias. However, the possibility of a soul’s death makes it corporeal in some sense. By allowing such a possibility, he robs the soul of its divinity and makes for a very bizarre concept.

What is the relationship between soul and body?

The answer to this question is remarkably simple with regards to the views of Simmias and Cebes. If the soul is a kind of harmony for Simmias, then he must believe the body generates the soul. For Cebes, on the other hand, the soul generates the body since it precedes it. In fact, Cebes answers this question directly: “[A] weaver had woven and worn out many such cloaks. He perished after many of them but before the last…The image illustrates, I think, the relationship of the soul to the body.”

Work Cited:

Plato. Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo (Second Edition). Trans. G.M.A. Grube. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2002.

An Aristotelian Linkage to Socrates

Nicomachean Ethics I: Aristotle and the Socratic Paradox

The first book of Aristotle’s highly-regarded collection of lecture notes known as the Nicomachean Ethics is a blueprint of what man’s ultimate aim is in life. It is undoubtedly a daring and ambitious philosophical enterprise. However, Aristotle manages to effectively defend his views on important and controversial topics such as the chief good and the completeness and self-sufficiency it must possess. His views with regards to this chief good are influenced by several strands of thought, but the philosophy of Socrates in particular seems to stand out in the first section of his masterpiece work on ethics. The purpose of this essay will be to survey different ideas brought up by Aristotle in the opening book of the Ethics and to look at how they stem from his engagement with Socrates’ notorious so-called “Socratic Paradox.”

A rudimentary outline of the Socratic Paradox before delving into any further analysis will help illuminate what follows. The so-called “Paradox” appears to consist of two central ideas. First, there is the considerably controversial one found in Plato’s Meno that “all men desire good things” (Meno 77c). Seeing that Socrates believed bad things harm their possessor, the claim leads directly into the second and more notorious idea made in the Protagoras. The statement is the following: “none of the wise men thinks that any human being willingly makes a mistake or willingly does anything wrong or bad” (Protagoras 345e). The overall theory can be seen as paradoxical because it is considerably counterintuitive and seemingly refutable with just a few simple examples of wicked people throughout history. However, Aristotle would not be the sort of thinker to hastily disregard something like the Socratic Paradox, seeing that, in his Topics, he attaches importance to reputable opinions—which are those accepted “by all, or by the majority, or by the most notable and reputable of [men]” (Topics I.100b). Obviously Socrates falls in the latter category among people and thus his theory should not be held at the same level as a charlatan’s or fraud’s. In fact, as is turns out, Aristotle not only considers the seemingly illogical quite idea worthy of reflection, but rather, actually some elements of it.

The first instance of any influence on behalf of the Socratic Paradox on Aristotle’s ethical theory is found in the opening sentence of the Ethics. The sentence runs as follows: “Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim” (NE 1.1094.1-3). Here Aristotle is opening his work with a very contentious claim, though he prudently places “thought to” in the sentence’s first clause in order to declare that he may be referring to Plato and/or Socrates and not stating it as dogma. However, it becomes clearer throughout the first book that Aristotle does at least essentially back up the primordial idea of the Paradox that “all men desire good things.” This is so because it seems to form the basis of his theory of the chief good. His approval of this first part of the paradox, the one found in the Meno, is essentially the extent of his fragmentary agreement with Socrates’ theory; the other part, that nobody does wrong willingly, is of little importance in Book 1, and is combated later on in Book 7 of the Ethics when dealing with the issue of incontinence.

It is worth noting that Aristotle’s first sentence of the Ethics is loaded with more meaning than may be taken from it in the first reading. From it readers observe the incredible impact the first leg of the Socratic Paradox has on Aristotle’s notion of a chief good being the ultimate aim of man. Notice the second clause of the sentence: “and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.” The clause is unusually disjointed with regards to the first part of the sentence. Why does it follow that “for this reason” some aim singularly called “the good” is humanity’s ultimate ambition? It seems to stem from the fact that there is a variety of subordinate goods and a myriad of fields and activities with different aims. Why would there be many goods, art, inquiries, and aims if not to satisfy some self-sufficient good that is to be desired above all others? Aristotle writes that since “there are evidently more than one end, and we choose some of these (e.g. wealth, flutes, and in general instruments) for the sake of something else, clearly not all ends are complete ends; but the chief good is evidently something complete” (NE 1.1097a.25-29). Though it may sound distant from Socrates’ point, it all derives from the same idea mentioned in the beginning that all men desire good things.

Anyhow, this chief good is supposed to be the end of the highest art, the all-encompassing art, which for Aristotle is politics. But unfortunately the words “complete” and “self-sufficient” have been thrown around a few times already in describing the qualities of this chief good so maybe a more detailed analysis of what these notions entail is necessary before delving into what exactly this chief good consists of. Since the chief good by necessity must be the highest good-in-itself as opposed to an intermediary good, it must be “fulfilling.” Aristotle writes “the chief good is evidently something complete” (NE 1.1097a.27-28) and to be “complete without qualification” (NE 1.1097a.35) means being “desirable in itself and never for the sake of something else” (NE 1.1097a.35-36). In other words, this chief good is desire’s dead end. It is also found to be self-sufficient. For Aristotle, something self-sufficient is that “which when isolated makes life desirable and lacking in nothing” (NE 1.1097b.15-16). Now that these important terms have been defined, Aristotle’s idea of what this chief good consists of will become clearer.

In the first book of the Ethics, this chief good that stems from Socrates’ original idea that men desire good things is defined as happiness. The term “happiness,” by the way, should not be confused with the same one people speak of in the English language. This Greek notion of happiness is more encompassing and the Greek word for it is “eudaimonia” but for the sake of ease the English term will be used throughout. Aristotle believes that this happiness as ultimate aim is basically something universally agreed upon as he claims that “both the general run of men and people of superior refinement” (NE 1.1095a.17-18) seem to give it the utmost importance. Beyond happiness there is nothing to want, for, as Aristotle writes, it is “the best, noblest, and most pleasant thing” (NE 1.1099a.24-25). Curiously, this seems to match one of the requirements of the Socratic Paradox, which is the belief that people desire good things because nobody in their right mind desires to live wretchedly. Living wretchedly is obviously the opposite of happiness, so once again some possible Socratic influence in Aristotle’s theory of the chief good becomes apparent.

However, there seems to be an issue with happiness being the highest good. While it may be agreed upon that it is the ultimate aim of human action and behavior, different people have different ideas of what it consists of. The reason for this is because some people are clearly picturing happiness as something that is not in fact complete or self-sufficient. For instance, some may say excellence is “the end of the political life” (NE 1.1095b.31-32), but Aristotle believes that “even this appears somewhat incomplete; for possession of excellence seems actually incompatible with being asleep, or with lifelong inactivity, and, further, with the greatest sufferings and misfortunes” (NE 1.1095b.32-34). Aristotle goes on to state that “a man who was living so one would call happy, unless he were maintaining a thesis at all costs” (NE 1.1096a.1-2). So the error in human thinking seems to be taking these incomplete and insufficient goods as the highest goods.

What could happiness consist of if it is self-sufficient? Aristotle hypothesizes that this may relate to the function of man in general. This comes from the idea that the good of a function or activity resides in the function it has. So if man has any function it is to be an exclusive one. This function would have to involve “the rational element” (NE 1.1098.3-4) found only in human beings. For Aristotle, “the function of man is an activity of soul in accordance with, or not without, rational principle” (NE 1.1098.8-9) However, this would involve a certain sort of accordance with reason, the most excellent one possible. Thus “human good turns out to be activity of soul in conformity with excellence, and if there are more than one excellence, in conformity with the best and most complete” (NE 1.1098.16-18) in “a complete life” (NE 1.1098.19).

In sum, everything in this well-structured exposition of man’s ultimate aim has its foundation in Aristotle’s theory of action and human motivation, a surrogate and edited version of the Socratic Paradox’s first leg. This is so because claiming “every action and choice” aims at some good is in fact almost synonymous with claiming that “all men desire good things.” What saves Aristotle from being trapped in the realm of seeming “paradoxicality,” though, is that he makes little mention of the idea that nobody does wrong willingly, even though he would agree that nobody aims for a wretched life. What also prevents Aristotle’s theory from gaining instant notoriety is found in the intermeshing of “goods” with “aims.” This association of the good with causality makes the previous absurdity of claiming that “every action and choice…is aimed at some good” more difficult to discard because it is less ambiguous than Socrates’ original idea. Aristotle thus manages to strip away the latter element of the Socratic element in the first book of the Nicomachean Ethics and sticks with a more explicative version of the first part in order to arrive at very important conclusions that determine the way we should act and the best way to live.

WORKS CITED:

Aristotle. “Nicomachean Ethics.” A New Aristotle Reader. Ed. J.L. Ackrill. Princeton, NJ:

Princeton University Press, 1989. 363-478.

Aristotle. “Topics.” A New Aristotle Reader. Ed. J.L. Ackrill. Princeton, NJ: Princeton

University Press, 1989. 60-78.

Plato. “Meno.” Plato: Complete Works. Ed. John M. Cooper. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett

Publishing Company, 1997. 870-897.

Plato. “Protagoras.” Plato: Complete Works. Ed. John M. Cooper. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett

Publishing Company, 1997. 746-790.