Plato, Aristotle, and Virgil

427-348/47 BCE

An introduction

SOCRATES, PLATO AND ARISTOTLEGreek Philosophers

Socrates and Plato

• Socrates himself (see pp. 7-8) wrote nothing; we know what we do about him mainly from the writings of his pupil Plato, a philosophical and literary genius of the first rank.

• It is very difficult to distinguish between what Socrates actually said and what Plato put into his mouth, but there is general agreement that the Apology, which Plato wrote as a representation of what Socrates said at his trial, is the clearest picture we have of the historical Socrates.

Socrates on Trial Apology

• He is on trial for impiety and “corrupting the corrupting the youthyouth.”

• He deals with these charges, but he also takes the opportunity to present a defense and explanation of the mission to which his life has been devoted.

A defiant speech

• The Apology is a defiant speech; Socrates rides roughshod over legal forms and seems to neglect no opportunity of outraging his listeners.

• But this defiance is not stupidity (as he hints himself, he could, if he had wished, have made a speech to please the court), nor is it a deliberate courting of martyrdom.

No compromise

• It is the only course possible for him in the circumstances if he is not to betray his life’s work, for Socrates knows as well as his accusers that what the Athenians really want is to silence him without having to take his life.

• What Socrates is making clear is that there is no such easy way out; he will have no part of any compromise that would restrict his freedom of speech or undermine his moral position.

the improvement of the soul

• The speech is a sample of what the Athenians will have to put up with if they allow him to live; he will continue to be the gadfly that stings the sluggish horse.

• He will go on persuading them not to be concerned for their persons or their property but first and chiefly to care about the improvement of the soulimprovement of the soul.

• He has spent his life denying the validity of worldly standards, and he will not accept them now.

refused to disobey the laws

• He was declared guilty and condemned to death.

• Though influential friends offered means of escape (and there is reason to think the Athenians would have been glad to see him go), Socrates refused to disobey the laws; in any case he had already, in his court speech, rejected the possibility of living in some foreign city.

execution

• The sentence was duly carried out. And in Plato’s account of the execution we can see the calmness and kindness of a man who has led a useful life and who is secure in his faith that, contrary to appearances, “no evil can happen to a good no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after man, either in life or after deathdeath.”

Dramatic form

• The form of the Apology is dramatic: Plato re-creates the personality of his beloved teacher by presenting him as speaking directly to the reader.

• In most of the many books that he wrote in the course of a long life, Plato continued to feature Socrates as the principal speaker in philosophical dialogues that explored the ethical and political problems of the age.

The Republic• These dialogues (the the RepublicRepublic the

most famous) were preserved in their entirety and have exerted an enormous influence on Western thought ever since.

Plato and Athenian politics

• the execution of Socrates by the courts of democratic Athens disgusted him with politics and prompted his famous remark that there was no hope for the cities until the rulers became philosophers or the philosophers, rulers.

• His attempts, however, to influence real rulers―the tyrant Dionysius of Syracuse in Sicily and, later, his son—ended in failure.

399 BCE

• The death of Socrates in 399 B.C., coming as it did around the turn of the century, has made it a convenient point of demarcation in the history of Greek philosophy.

“pre-Socratic philosophers”

• Thus Socrates’ predecessors of the sixth and fifth centuries are commonly called the “pre-Socratic philosophers.”

• Socrates represents a shift in emphasis within Greek philosophy, away from the cosmological cosmological concerns of the sixth and fifth centuries toward political and ethical matters.

Plato (427-348/47)

• Plato (427-348/47) was born into a distinguished Athenian family, active in affairs of state;

• he was undoubtedly a close a close observerobserver of the political events that led up to Socrates’ execution.

Academy 388 BCE

• After Socrates’ death, Plato left Athens and visited Italy and Sicily, where he seems to have come into contact with Pythagorean philosophers.

• In 388 Plato returned to Athens and founded a school of his own, the Academy, where young men could pursue advanced studies.

The first university

• In 388 BCE Plato founded an Academy in Athens, often described as the first university.

• It provided a comprehensive curriculum, including astronomy, biology, mathematics, political theory, and philosophy.

• http://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/math5.geometry/unit6/unit6.html

idealism

• The carpenter replicates the mental idea as closely as possible in each table he makes, but always imperfectly.

The divine craftsman: the demiurge

• There is a divine craftsman who bears the same relationship to the cosmos as the carpenter bears to his tables.

• constructed the cosmos according to an idea or plan, so that the cosmos and everything in it are replicas of eternal ideas or forms—but always imperfect replicas because of limitations inherent in the materials available to the Demiurge.

Idea and material

• In short, there are two realms: a realm of forms or ideas, containing the perfect form of everything;

• and the material realm in which these forms or ideas are imperfectly replicated.

Allegory of the cave

• Plato illustrated this conception of reality in his famous “allegory of the allegory of the cavecave,” found in book VII of the Republic. Men are imprisoned within a deep cave, chained so as to be incapable of moving their heads. Behind them is a wall, and beyond that a fire.

Light and shadow

• People walk back and forth behind the wall, holding above it various objects, including statues of humans and animals; the objects cast shadows on the wall that is visible to he prisoners.

Imperfect images of objects

• The prisoners see only the shadows cast by these objects; and, having lived in the cave from childhood, they no longer recall any other reality.

• They do not suspect that these shadows are but imperfect images of objects that they cannot see; and consequently they mistake the shadows for the real.

order and rationality of the cosmosorder and rationality of the cosmos

He had no intention of restoring no intention of restoring the gods of Mount Olympus, who the gods of Mount Olympus, who interfered in the day-to-day interfered in the day-to-day operation of the universeoperation of the universe, but he was convinced that the order and order and rationality of the cosmosrationality of the cosmos could be explained only as the imposition of an outside mind.

Physis and psyche

• If the physikoi found the source of order in physis (nature), he would locate it in psyche (mind). Plato depicted the cosmos as the handiwork of a divine craftsman, the Demiurge.

Demiurge: a mathematician

• Besides being a rational craftsman, the Demiurge is a mathematician, for he constructed the cosmos on geometrical principles.

• Plato’s account borrowed the four roots or elements of Empedocles: earth, water, air, and fire.

• But (probably under Pythagorean influence) he reduced them to mathematical ingredients or components. Plato made these the basis of a “geometrical atomism”—associating each of the elements with one of the geometrical solids. Fire is the tetrahedron, air is the octahedron, water the icosahedron, and earth the cube. Plato also found a function for the docedahedron by identifying it with the cosmos as a whole.

"Let no one destitute of geometry enter my doors."

ARISTOTLE

384-322 B.C.

Not a native Athenian

• One member of Plato’s Academy, Aristotle, was to become as celebrated and influential as his teacher. He was not, like Plato, a native Athenian; he was born in northern Greece, at Stagira, close to the kingdom of Macedonia, which was eventually to become the dominant power in the Greek world. Aristotle entered the Academy at the age of seventeen but left it when Plato died (347 B.C.).

Tutor to Alexander

• He carried on his researches (he was especially interested in zoology) at various places on the Aegean; served as tutor to the young Alexander, son of Philip II of Macedon; and returned to Athens in 335, to found his own philosophical school, the Lyceum, where he established the world’s first research library.

Lyceum

• At the Lyceum Lyceum he and his pupils carried on research in zoology, botany, biology, physics, political science, ethics, logic, music, and mathematics.

Encyclopedic scope

• He left Athens when Alexander died in Babylon (323 B.C.) and the Athenians, for a while, were able to demonstrate their hatred on Macedon and everything connected with it; he died a year later.

• The scope of his written work, philosophical and scientific, is immense; he is represented here by some excerpts from the Poetics, the first systematic work of literary criticism in our tradition.

Poetics

• Aristotle’s Poetics, translated by James Hutton (1982), is the best source for the student.

Alexander the Great

希臘化時期Hellenistic period

Alexander the Great

• His father Philip of Macedon (r. 359-336) united Greece

– battle of Chaeronea 338 BCE– Professional army

• Alexander conquered –334-331 Persia; –330 Bactria; –327-326 Indus River

Pattern of rule: a mixture of Greek and Persian–Greek-speaking governors, Greek

settlers. –Intermarriage: to breed a new upper

class –‘Oriental’ despotism; glamour and

ostentation: dress, court etiquette, self-proclaimed god

40

Hellenistic Culture• Diffusion of Greek Culture; fusion of east and west• Patrons:

– Art, literature and science as source of prestige– Looking for unique items– Extravagant and sentimental, – Or light and undemanding: escapism

• Meander’s comedies of romantic love; the pastoral poetry

– Or displaying formal skills, most obviously in ungainly, ‘unnatural’ postures

• The end of the polis as the centre of human endeavours– Philosophers on the good life: Stoicism, Epicureanism

LATIN CULTURESLATIN CULTURESRoman Empire and

【【羅馬王政時代羅馬王政時代】】

• 古羅馬氏族制度向階級社會過渡的時代，約當公元前８世紀中葉至６世紀末葉，因傳說此時相繼有七個「王」（ rex ）執政，故名。

• 王政時代，是羅馬的父系氏族制時代，據說當時羅馬有三百個氏族，每十個氏族組成一個胞族（庫里亞－－ Curiae ），十個胞族組成一個部落，共三個部落，三個部落構成羅馬人公社整體。

帝國興起 帝國興起 [DVD] = Rome : Power [DVD] = Rome : Power and glory-The riseand glory-The rise

• 興起於 2000 年前的羅馬帝國 , 輝煌盛世的法律、觀念與語言遺留至今 , 使今日的整個西方社會仍深受影響。這些盛世時的榮耀 , 仍令後世社會心生嚮往 , 起而效尤。 Discovery Channel將與您一起去了解羅馬帝國影響後人至深的規章制度。

• 740.222 8445

軍事民主軍事民主制制• 王政時代的羅馬人公社會實行軍事民主制，

管理機構有三：一是元老院，由三百個氏族長組成，有權處理公共事務、批準和否決人民大會的決議。二是人民大會，由武裝的成年男子參加，每個庫里亞有一票表決權，大會通過或否決一切法律，選舉高級公職人員，其中包括對「王」的選舉。三是「王」，由人民大會選出，是軍事首長，同時又是最高祭司和審判官，但尚無真正國王的權力。

平民平民 (plebian)(plebian)• 王政時代已出現階級分化，有些父家長家族富裕起來，上升為氏族貴族，有的氏族成員貧困而成為「被保護人」，受貴族的剝削和奴役。

• 另外出現平民，他們是被征服者及外來的移民，人身自由，但不屬於羅馬氏族成員，沒有氏族權利，無權分級公地，不能參加人民大會，許多平民租佃貴族的土地，有的因借債而淪為奴隸。

階級社會階級社會• 王政時代的奴棣主要從事家內勞動，數量

不多。貴族、被保護人、平民和奴棣構成王政時代階級對立關係的萌芽形式。由此可見，王政時代氏族制已趨於解體，階級社會正在形成。

塞維塞維‧‧圖里阿改革圖里阿改革• 史學界一般認為，王政時代後期，羅馬處

於伊達拉亞人統治之下，公元前６世紀末，發生塞維‧圖里阿改革，改革使氏族制遭受破壞，王政時代的最後一個統治者塔克文是個暴君，到公元前５１０年（或前５０９）被黜，王政時代結束，伊達拉里人統治被解除，羅馬共和國建立起來。