The Story of Philosophy-chapter 4- Spinoza

Will Durant seems quite sympathetic to the elders of the synagogue that excommunicated Spinoza. See page 197 as to how he justifies their intolerance. It could be the rationalization that any religous community uses to subdue freethinking and promote intolerance. After the excommunication Spinoza goes to live in the attic of Mennonites. After five years, they move and he follows them. quote from page 210 "people will always demand a religion phrased in imagery and haloed with the supernatural; if one such form of faith is destroyed they will create another. But the philosopher knows that God and nature are one being." quote from page 213 "the only permanent happiness is the pursuit of knowledge and the joy of understanding." quote from page 221 "by the help of god I mean the fixed and unchangeable order of nature, or the chain of natural events." quote from page 223 "Good and bad are relative to individual tastes and ends, and have no validity for a universe in which individuals are ephemera." my comment: There may not be universal good and bad but surely there is good and bad within a society. ....it's what keeps it together. Yes? page 228 summarizes Spinoza's thoughts on free will: "there is, consequently, no free will." "Men think themselves free because they are conscious of their volitions and desires, but are ignorant of the causes by which they are led to wish and desire." my comment: It's hard to prove either way. BUT it seems that IF there is free will, then by Pascal's wager a belief in free will would be the better belief system. page 230: "I have labored carefully not to mock, lament, or execrate, but to understand human actions" page 233: "each man must love himself and seek what is useful to him" page 238: "Precisely because men's actions are determined by their memories, society must for its protection form its citizen through their hopes and fears into some measure of social order and cooperation. All education presupposes determinism and pours into the open mind of youth a store of prohibitions which are expected to participate in determining conduct." page 247: "part of the individual's natural might is handed over to the organized community in return for the enlargement of the sphere of his remaining powers." page 248: "Laws against free speech are subversive of all law; for men will not long respect laws which they may not criticize." page 249: Spinoza, while recognizing the necessity of the state, distrusts it, knowing that power corrupts even the incorruptible." page 252: The defect of democracy is its tendency to put mediocrity into power. page 252: he who seeks equality between unequals seeks an absurdity

Francis Bacon

page 136: Francis Bacon ..left Trinity college with a strong dislike of its texts and methods and a confirmed hostility to the cult of Aristotle and a resolve to set philosophy into a more fertile path, to turn it from scholastic disputation to the illumination and increase of human good. page 140--His elevation seemed to realize Plato's dreams of a philosopher-king. page 141 quotes Bacon: "Crafty men condemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them....." page 145 Durant says of Bacon --" He does not admire the merely contemplative life; like Goethe he scorns knowledge that does not lead to action." page 141--Bacon's finest literary work was The Essays page 157-- I interpret those pages that although Bacon wants proof, he doesn't want to discard anything even the untested supernatural. page 167 "Every one has a cave of his own which refracts and discolors the light of nature. page 169- our trouble are due to dogma and deduction; we find no new truth because we take some venerable but questionable proposition as an indubitable starting -point page 178--hypothesis, deduction, experiment page 182--his inductive method gave to Locke the idea of an empirical psychology bound by observation and freed from theology and metaphysics The Royal Society founded in 1662 named Bacon as their model and inspiration.

Aristotle

Chapter Two---Aristotle PAGE 77 quote: "Aristotle is resolved to concern himself with the objective present, while Plato is absorbed in a subjective future. Page 77-78 quotes: "Aristotle had a lusty preference for the concrete particular...but Plato so loved the general and universal that in the Republic he destroyed the individual to make a perfect state." page 80 quote: "Before Aristotle, science was in embryo, with him it was born." _________ I think I'm finally getting it as to why Plato's logic is considered deductive whereas Aristotle's logic is considered inductive. ________ page 94 quote:" Artistic creation springs from the craving for emotional expression.....The noblest art appeals to the intellect as well as to the feelings....and this intellectual pleasure is the highest form of joy to which a man can rise. page 96 begins the chapter on Ethics and happiness-quote paraphrasing Aristotle's beliefs: " the aim of life is not goodness of its own sake, but happiness." page 98: "Excellence is an art won by training and habituation: we do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have these because we have acted rightly; we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is not an act but a habit" page 102 starts the chapter on politics. Durant paraphrases Aristotle: " The power of the law to secure observance, and therefore to maintain political stability rests very largely on custom....." "Aristotle values individual quality, privacy, and liberty above social efficiency and power. page 104 has Aristotle speaking out against Plato's utopia. Durant paraphrasing Aristotle's views as follows: " The stimulus of gain is necessary to arduous work; and the stimulus of ownership is necessary to proper industry. When everybody owns everything then nobody will take care of anything." "Human nature, on average, is nearer to the beast than to the god. The great majority of men are natural dunces and sluggards; in any system whatever these men will sink to the bottom; and to help them with state subsidies is like pouring water into a leaking cask." He then goes on to explain how Aristotle rationalizes slavery. ` page 107: Aristotle was NOT a feminist like Plato. Ugh. page 111 talks about democracy and aristocracy. Here is a quote on page 114: "Because the people are so easily misled, and so fickle in their views, the ballot should be limited to the intelligent. What we need is a combination of aristocracy and democracy. Constitutional government offers this happy union."

Plato---

Will Durant's The Story of Philosophy page xxv He starts out defining philosophy and why we need it. page xxviii He discusses the five fields of philosophy: logic, esthetics, ethics, politics and metaphysics page 1 He starts out saying that the traders were the first philosophers because they encountered so many different religions. page 16 here is a quote on that page...Durant is talking about Plato "It filled him with such a scorn of democracy, such a hatred of the mob, as even his aristocratic lineage and breeding had hardly engendered in him; it led him to a Cantonic resolve that democracy must be destroyed, to be replaced by the rule of the wisest and the best. On pages 21 to 52... Durant starts talking about the Republic noting "references are to marginally-numbered sections" of The Republic. page 27--he seems to be saying that education is the key to making democracy work. I agree. And so it makes me wonder the motivation of people that don't want the state to offer excellent education free to everyone. page 30---seem a little crazy..Plato thinks kids should be taken away from their families to be taught in utopian schools? Like boarding schools? page 31-32----Plato: "through music the soul learns harmony and rhythm page 35 quote: "Plato believes that a nation cannot be strong unless it believes in God." and Durant continues to paraphrase Plato "it will do us no harm to believe, and it may do us and our children immeasurable good." page 38 quote: "There is, as the gentle Spinoza would say, a world of things perceived by the sense, and a world of laws inferred by thought..." Durant goes on to say that we need both the senses and rational thought page 40 quote: "we must classify and coordinate our sense experience in terms of law and purpose; only for lack of this does the mind of the imbecile differ from the mind of Caesar" ... "generalizations and absractions are worthless except that they be tested by this concrete world." page 41--who should become rulers page 42--explains what Plato means by aristocracy page 46--Plato was a feminist :-) page 46-47 Plato doesn't seem to be big on marriage. page 47---very radical thoughts.....I doubt few of the modern age would agree with Plato. He is advocating abortion. Plato isn't advocating choice, he is advocating abortion. BUT...maybe for his times, this wasn't so incredibly off the wall as it appears to me now in my culture. page 48---this is radical, yes? from Plato's Republic referencing (459-60) talking about Plato's Utopia: "Our braver and better youth, besides their other honors and rewards are to be permitted a greater variety of mates, for such fathers ought to have as many sons as possible." page 52 quote: "Morality, said Jesus, is kindness to the weak; morality, said Nietzsche, is the bravery of the strong; morality, says Plato, is the effective harmony of the whole. Probably all three doctrines must be combined to find a perfect ethics." page 56--Durant summarizes what's wrong with Plato's utopia. page 59 to 60--Even though this was written in the 1920's, Durant comes out strongly against the US's two party system. page 62 end the section on Plato.

Can anyone tell me the difference between Aristotle and Plato

In Goldstein's book about Spinoza, she talks about the differences between Aristotle and Plato. So I need to try to understand what she's saying. On page 81 Goldstein says thatAristotle's explanations relied heavily on final causes, a final cause is the end for which the event or process took place. teleological. She says he was the greatest philosopher of his time. But the great thinkers of the 17th century (Galileo, Descartes and Newton) would dismantle Aristotle's teleological explanations. Spinoza would join the camp of Descartes in this regard. So I googled Plato/Aristotle in hopes of getting some understanding. I found the below. I'm still confused. But based on the below and other conversations, it seems that Aristotle starts with experiments and makes inductive conclusions from those experiments about universal truths. Whereas Plato thinks it's possible (via intuition) to understand universal truths. So that makes me wonder if Einstein might be more a student of Plato than Aristotle. He seemed to come up with some of his theories via intuition. Plato and Aristotle http://www.blavatsky.net/magazine/theosophy/ww/additional/ancientlandmarks/PlatoAndAristotle.html below is from the above link: THEOSOPHY, Vol. 27, No. 11, September, 1939 (Pages 483-491; Size: 26K) (Number 55 of a 59-part series) ANCIENT LANDMARKS PLATO AND ARISTOTLE WHEN Socrates was sixty years old, Plato, then a youth of twenty, came to him as a pupil. When Plato was sixty years old, the seventeen-year-old Aristotle presented himself, joining the Teacher's group of "Friends," as the members of the Academy called themselves. In passing from Plato to Aristotle, we at once become conscious of a distinct change in philosophical concepts and methods. This is all the more noticeable because of our ignorance of Aristotle's complete system. The writings which have come down to us comprise only about a quarter of his works. These are all incomplete, some of them seeming to be notes intended for elaboration in his lectures. They are often sketchy and obscure, highly technical and full of repetitions. Sometimes they are so abstruse that we are obliged to call upon the imagination to supply the missing links of his deductions. Before reaching our Western scholars his works passed through too many hands to remain immaculate. In the eleventh century, however, the Aristotelian doctrine of Forms became the bone of contention which divided philosophers into two classes which, from that day to this, have remained separate. On the one side were the Nominalists, who maintained that Universals are mere names for the common attributes of things and beings. On the other side were the Realists, whose thought crudely resembled the Platonic doctrine of Ideas as independent realities. While there is evidence that Aristotle never lost his high personal regard for Plato, the fact remains that in his later writings he never mentions Plato except to refute his doctrines, maintaining that the Platonic method is fatal to science. At every period of the world's history some philosopher has asked the eternal question: Is there, in the universe or outside of it, an underlying Reality which is eternal, immovable, unchanging? The ancient Egyptians believed, as Hermes taught: "Reality is not upon the earth, my son. Nothing on earth is real. There are only appearances. Appearance is the supreme illusion." In the still more ancient East, only the eternal and changeless was called Reality. All that is subject to change through differentiation and decay was called Maya, or illusion. It is the task of Philosophy to investigate this all-important question: What is real? At first glance, Aristotle's definition of philosophy seems to agree with Plato's. Plato described philosophy as the science of the Idea, the science which deals with noumena rather than phenomena. Aristotle defined it as the science of the universal essence of that which is real or actual. Plato, the Initiate, taught that there is one Reality lying behind the numberless differentiations of the phenomenal world. Aristotle maintained that there is a graded series of realities, each step in the series revealing more and more those universal relationships which make it an object of true knowledge. At the end of the series, he said, lies that which is no longer relative, but absolute. Plato taught that "beyond all finite existences and secondary causes, all laws, ideas and principles, there is an Intelligence, or Mind, the first principle of all principles, the Supreme Idea upon which all other ideas are grounded, ... the ultimate substance from which all things derive their being and essence, the first and efficient Cause of all the order and harmony and beauty which pervades the Universe." This he called the "World of Ideas." What, actually, is this Intelligence, this Cosmic Mind of which Plato spoke with such assurance? Theosophy explains that Universal Mind is not something outside the universe, but includes all those various intelligences which were evolved in a previous period of evolution. Evolution, therefore, is the further development of those intelligences. This unfolding is the result of conscious experience, beginning in the highest state of manifested matter and descending more and more into concrete forms until the physical is reached. Then begins the ascent, plus the experience gained. Plato held that the Ideas, the Forms of things, are self-existent, and not dependent upon the ever-changing objects of the senses. The noumenon, according to Plato, is the real, the phenomenon only appearance. Aristotle wrote extensively in criticism of Plato's doctrine of Ideas, affirming that "no universals exist over and above the individual objects and separate from them." He refused any substantial reality to "the unity which is predicated of many individual things." Universal principles, he held, are real, and are the objects of our reason, as distinguished from the physical objects of sense-perception. Yet universals are real only as they exist in individuals. "It is," he said, "apparently impossible that any of the so-called universals should exist as substance." This conflict between Plato and Aristotle on the subject of reality led to almost infinite controversy and confusion among later philosophers. To the extent that Aristotle endows universals with reality, he is Platonic in thought. His commentators have endeavored to interpret Aristotle according to their predilection. One writer maintains that "according to Aristotle, the formal aspect of universality is conferred by the mind, and therefore, the universal, as such, does not exist in individual things, but in the mind alone." (William Turner, History of Philosophy, p. 132.) Another points out that while both the Categories and the Metaphysics are based on the assumption of the reality of individual substances, "the Categories (cap. 5) admits that universal species and genera can be called substances, whereas the Metaphysics (Z 13) denies that a universal can be a substance at all." Yet Aristotle is constrained to regard as "substance" the universal essence of a species of substance, "because the individual essence of an individual substance really is that substance, and the universal essence of the whole species is supposed to be indivisible and therefore identical with the individual essence of any individual of the species." (Encyc. Brit., "Aristotle," 11th ed.) In maintaining this Aristotle seems to invalidate all his arguments against the existence of universals independent of particulars. It was doubtless such difficulties in the comprehension of Aristotle's real meaning that led H.P.B. to remark upon the abstruse character of his writings, asking, "What do we know so certain about Aristotle?" (Isis Unveiled I, 320.) It seems that in spite of his demand for research into particulars, Aristotle was forced to return to the Platonic view of origins. This is indicated by H.P.B.'s explanation of his theory of Privation, Form and Matter. As Lange points out in his History of Materialism, Aristotle's admission of the reality of the universal, in things, "leads, in its logical consequences, little as Aristotle cared to trouble himself with these, to the same exaltation of the universal over the particular which we find in Plato. For if it is once conceded that the essence of the individual lies in the species, the most essential part of the species must again lie on a still higher plane, or, in other words, the ground of the species must lie in the genus, and so on." (I, 88.) Thus, as one of Aristotle's translators has observed, "he is ultimately driven back to the very standpoint he derides in Platonism." This writer, Hugh Tredennick, makes clear the internal contradictions in Aristotle's thought: He is emphatic that form cannot exist in separation from matter; and yet the supreme reality turns out to be a pure form. He blames the Platonists for using metaphorical language, and yet when he comes to explain the ultimate method of causation he has to describe it in terms of love or desire. The truth is that Aristotle's thought is always struggling against Platonic influences, which nevertheless generally emerge triumphant in his ultimate conclusions. His great contribution to philosophy was on the side of method; but it was Plato, acknowledged or unacknowledged, who inspired all that was best in the thought of his great disciple. (Metaphysics, Introduction, I, xxx.) The structural stresses and strains in the philosophy of Aristotle are due to his attempt to subject to critical analysis according to his own theory of knowledge the principles and ideas he had learned from Plato. Aristotle, however, refused to recognize supersensible cognition as the source of knowledge, while the clairvoyant vision of the soul was the only channel to truth, according to Plato. But Aristotle had not this vision; hence his dependence on sense-perception and his elevation of the physical world to the status of reality. While admitting that knowledge must be in terms of concepts, of universals -- thus escaping the chaos of mere empiricism -- he held that we become aware of universals only by abstracting them from the phenomena of the senses. Thus principles or universals are in things, whether they be regarded as essences or as concepts. It seems almost as though Aristotle devoted his life to the task of showing that he, Aristotle, could point the way to final truth, without being initiated into the Mysteries, and that in order to do this he constructed a theory of knowledge which did not involve initiation as a prerequisite to real knowing. For the eye of wisdom he substituted the eye of sense. Hence he is truly spoken of as the Father of Modern Science. Plato's science of all sciences was Dialectic, the doctrine of the Idea in Itself, just as physics is the science of the Ideas manifesting in nature, and Ethics is the science of Ideas applied to human action. Aristotle's science of sciences was Logic, the science of analysis, the weaknesses of which form the theme of Boris Bogoslovsky's book, The Technique of Controversy. Plato divided knowledge into two classes, the one dealing with the noumenal, the other with the phenomenal world. The first he called real knowledge, the second, opinion. In this statement we find a clear reiteration of the forty-ninth Aphorism of Patanjali. Speaking of Wisdom -- that form of knowledge which is absolutely free from error -- Patanjali says: "This kind of knowledge differs from the knowledge due to testimony and inference; because, in the pursuit of knowledge based upon these, the mind has to consider many particulars and is not engaged with the general field of knowledge itself." (Bk. I.) Considering real knowledge as the only object worthy of the attention of the true philosopher, Plato began by postulating certain universal principles as the basis for understanding all particular phenomena. Aristotle, on the other hand, began with particulars and proceeded by gradual stages to the consideration of universal principles, declaring that "our knowledge of the individual precedes our knowledge of the universal." The inductive method, which Aristotle established in the Western world -- still slavishly followed by scientific thinkers -- is defended on the supposition that it deals with things as they are. Knowledge gained through sense-perception, on which all learning is dependent, according to Aristotle, is therefore more reliable than any a priori concept of an ideal reality. start here again. No student of Theosophy would deny the value of reasoning on the basis of many observed particulars. But he would add that this value is lost when the observer is ignorant of the fact that the phenomenal universe is in a constant state of change. How can changing phenomena be properly evaluated unless there is something changeless with which they may be compared? Philosophy, like Physics, must have its "whereon to stand." As Dr. A. Gordon Melvin observes in his latest book, The New Culture, The Aristotelian tends to be cocksure. He knows what he is talking about, but he does not talk about anything of importance. For the characteristic limitation of this type of search is that it apprehends bit by bit. It knows a corner of the world as long as that corner remains stationary. But it does not know wholes or fundamentals. The veil of matter is a particularization of truth, not its full realization. Once we admit that real knowledge does exist, our next question will be: How can it be acquired? Aristotle answered the question by declaring that real knowledge can be gained only through, although not from, the senses. The intellectual faculty discerns the principles of things in the objects of the senses, and knowledge is the product of this abstraction. There are both external and internal senses, according to Aristotle. Memory and imagination are defined as internal senses, as is also the "sense" of self-consciousness. This latter sense, he said, resides in the heart. There is no room in Aristotle's philosophy for the doctrine of innate ideas. Considering that there is nothing in the mind which is not first an image acquired through the senses, he taught that mind itself is only the potential power to think. All objects of thought are sensuous. Plato answered the question in another manner. He taught that the nous of man, being "generated by the divine Father," possesses a nature akin to and homogeneous with the Divine Mind, and is therefore capable of beholding Reality. The faculty by which Reality is perceived is not a sense faculty, but one which belongs to the Soul. Theosophy describes this faculty as Intuition, by which a man may gaze directly upon ideas. Intuition is thus beyond and above the reasoning faculty, and is not dependent upon it. The use of that faculty is gained through the form of concentration described by Patanjali in his Yoga Aphorisms. When this form of concentration is perfected one is able to cognize all the inherent qualities of any object whatsoever, becoming completely identified with the thing considered and experiencing in himself all the qualities exhibited by the object. Plato knew that the best way to awaken that faculty is by turning the mind toward universal ideas; only such sublime objects of thought can produce the steadiness necessary for true contemplation. In many cases, the teaching of Aristotle may be regarded as the exoteric version of Platonic truth. From the same ontological principles as his teacher, Aristotle reasoned to certain conclusions which to him seemed to follow necessarily, although resulting in a contradiction with one or another of Plato's doctrines. An instance of this kind is explained by H.P.B.: Aristotle argued that the world was eternal, and that it will always be the same; that one generation of men has always produced another, without ever having had a beginning that could be determined by our intellect. In this, his teaching, in its exoteric sense, clashed with that of Plato, who taught that "there was a time when mankind did not perpetuate itself"; but in spirit both doctrines agreed, as Plato adds immediately: "This was followed by the earthly human race, in which the primitive history was gradually forgotten and man sank deeper and deeper"; and Aristotle says: "If there has been a first man he must have been born without father or mother -- which is repugnant to nature. For there could not have been a first egg to give a beginning to birds, or there should have been a first bird which gave a beginning to eggs; for a bird comes from an egg." The same he held good for all species, believing, with Plato, that everything before it appeared on earth had first its being in spirit. (Isis Unveiled I, 428.) Every natural body, according to Aristotle, is brought into existence by three principles: Privation, Form, and Matter. Privation, says H.P.B., "meant in the mind of the great philosopher that which the Occultists call the prototypes impressed in the Astral Light -- the lowest plane and world of Anima Mundi." (S.D. I, 59.) Privation is not, however, "considered in Aristotelic philosophy as a principle in the composition of bodies, but as an external property in their production; for the production is a change by which the matter passes from the shape it has not to that which it assumes." (Isis Unveiled I, 310.) As to Form, "His philosophy teaches that besides the original matter, another principle is necessary to complete the triune nature of every particle, and this is form; an invisible, but still, in an ontological sense of the word, a substantial being, really distinct from matter proper." (Ibid. I, 312.) This substantial form Aristotle called the soul. Plato, starting with universal principles, declared that the soul of man is derived from the Universal World-Soul, and is therefore identical in essence with that which is a radiation of the ever-unknown Absolute. Aristotle, starting from below, approached the subject of the soul by eliminating one by one those things which the soul is not. The conclusion he finally reached was that the soul is the form of the body. This soul, however, is plainly the astral or psychic principle, for Aristotle says in De Anima, "It cannot be that the body is the full realization or expression of the soul; rather on the contrary it is the soul which is the full realization of some body." (It may be noted that the term Entelechy, which is here translated "full realization," has been borrowed by members of the modern vitalist school of Biology to represent the formative principle of organic life.) Besides the psyche or mortal soul, Aristotle taught that there is in man a rational soul, the "creative reason," and with Plato held this Nous to be pre-existing and eternal, although he denied that the mind-principle carries with it the knowledge gained by individual experiences in the past, speaking of metempsychosis as "absurd." Thus, with Aristotle, the immortal element in man seems to lose its individual character on the death of the body. Aristotle's cosmological speculations were in many cases opposed to the teachings of Plato. Plato, for one thing, was well versed in the heliocentric system. Aristotle adopted the astronomy of Eudoxus, which taught that the world is the center of the universe, and that it is round and stationary. He described the earth as being surrounded by a sphere of air and a sphere of fire, saying that the heavenly bodies are fixed in these spheres. In formulating his ethical system Aristotle started with Plato's query: What is the end of life, the highest good toward which a man can aspire? Reasoning inductively, Aristotle showed that a man's highest aim is not merely to live, for that aim he shares with the whole of nature. Nor is it to feel, for that is shared with the animals. As man is the only being in the universe who possesses a rational soul, Aristotle concluded that man's highest aim is the activity of the soul in conformity with reason. Although Plato taught that every man should concentrate upon the particular virtue which was most necessary for him at his own stage of evolution, he declared that Justice is the highest of all virtues, being inherent in the soul itself. That idea is clarified by Mr. Judge's statement that "all is soul and spirit ever evolving under the rule of law (or Justice) which is inherent in the whole." Aristotle, on the other hand, taught that the highest virtue is intellectual contemplation. True happiness, according to Plato, is found only in the performance of one's own duty, which is determined individually by the degree of evolution achieved, and politically by the position one occupies in the State. Aristotle disagrees with Plato's view that individual happiness should be sacrificed for the good of the community. He believes that individual happiness depends not only upon virtue, but also upon wealth, pleasure and the opportunity for leisure. He does not advocate spending those leisure hours in the cultivation of any art, as he considers that artistic craftsmanship belongs to the field of manual labor, and that professional skill in any of the arts is a disgrace to a free citizen. The ideal life, from Aristotle's point of view, seems to be one which is given over entirely to intellectual research and contemplation -- the life of a cultivated and reflective country gentlemen, remote from the workaday world.