Plato and Aristotle - Research Proposal Example

Plato and Aristotle: differences and similarities Plato (428-347 B.C was a pupil of Socrates, the philosopher who was condemned to death, for publicly expounding his ideas, by drinking hemlock ordered by the Greek state of the time. Socrates did not plead for mercy but drank the hemlock and died. Plato was Socrates' pupil and was 29 years old at the time of his teacher's death. Socrates did not write down his ideas. We owe it to Plato who wrote down Socrates' Apology to the jury to learn about his views. Also in the Dialogues, Plato set down the discussions he and others had with Socrates which reveal how Socrates elicited profound ideas from his interlocutors by gently questioning them in such a way that they were forced to accept the conclusions finally arrived at. This practice is to this day referred to as Socratic dialogue and is much valued by pedagogues and counselors. Plato was, from the beginning concerned with the relationship between what is eternal and immutable, and what is more transient and 'flows' in nature. This was a preoccupation of both Socrates as well as the pre-Socratic sophists, who were more concerned with human morality and the societal ideals or 'virtues'. While the sophists, like today's postmodernists held that ideas of right and wrong varied from state to state and were equally valid, this was not accepted by Socrates. He believed that there were absolute rules for right and wrong. He believed in eternal, immutable laws because human reason was eternal and immutable. Plato is concerned not only with what is eternal and immutable as regards morals (right and wrong) in society, but also what is eternal and immutable in nature. For Plato, there was no dichotomy as the two problems were the same. The reality he tried to grasp behind the appearances was what was eternally, 'true', beautiful' and 'good'. Before Plato arrived on the scene, Empedocles and Democritus had drawn attention to the fact that, although in nature everything appears to be transient, there must be 'something' underlying this flow that never changes. Plato agreed with the view that everything 'flows' and that there are no 'substances' that time cannot dissolve and erode, but that what is permanent is in the idea of a timeless 'form' which is eternal and immutable. So, for Plato, what was immutable was not anything physical and demonstrable, but a conception of a spiritual and abstract pattern that underpin all tangible things in the world. For example, while individual, physical horses may differ in several dimensions, there is an unchanging model of what a horse is or should be and each individual horse conforms to it. Plato decided that there were a limited number of forms giving rise to all the varied forms we experience around us. Plato called these forms ideas. Plato concluded that there was a greater reality behind the observable, material world and that this reality resolved itself into the world of ideas. These are the eternal and immutable patterns behind all observable phenomena and were the basis for Plato's theory of ideas. Plato observed that nothing that is perceived by the senses could last forever. Plato therefore, expounded the view that we could not have true knowledge of things that are in a constant flux and are changing. We can have true knowledge of things that are understood by the use of our faculty for reasoning while we can only have opinions about what we perceive through our senses. He illustrated his belief that all natural phenomena are merely shadows of their true forms and ideas by utilizing the 'myth of the cave'. He likened normal people to those living in an underground cave sitting with their backs to the mouth of the cave and unable to move or look around. Meanwhile there are shadows of human-like creatures projected on a wall, and to the cave dwellers that is the only observed 'reality' for them. They cannot know what is behind these shadows. If however, one of the cave dwellers were to free him/herself and see the actual figures who cast the shadows, he/she should have a somewhat better grasp of the reality of the situation. However, when this person returns to the cave and tries to convince others of what he had seen as the 'reality', they do not believe him and, eventually they kill him. The person with a better grasp of reality, the philosopher, is disdained as Socrates was. By the Myth of the Cave, Plato wanted to reinforce his belief that those living in ignorance in the cave corresponded to the forms of the natural world and the one who escaped corresponded to the world of ideas. While Plato expounded these ideas in the 'Republic', he also presented his view of the ideal state, a Utopia. He believed that the Utopian state should be governed by philosophers. For him, the human body corresponded to the body politic. The human body was tripartite. Reason belonged to the head; will to the chest, and appetite to the abdomen. Each of these three faculties of the human soul also has an ideal or 'virtue'. Reason is aligned with wisdom; will with courage, and appetite with temperance. Harmony of the three faculties leads to virtuousness. Plato envisioned the state to be similarly constructed. The head that governs are the rulers. The chest that executes the orders are the auxiliaries and the abdomen which carries out the orders are the labourers. Everyone knowing their place and carrying out their respective duties makes for a healthy and harmonious society. Although this model is that of a totalitarian state, Plato believed in sex equality. Men and women had the same powers of reasoning. He was one of the first to advocate state responsibility for child rearing. However, Plato shifted later from the totalitarian state to a constitutional state when he wrote the 'Laws'. He now introduced private property and family ties which tended to restrict the freedom of women. Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), a student who attended Plato's Academy in Athens for almost 20 years was the first to challenge Plato's ideas. He was Europe's first known biologist and was interested in nature, while Plato was preoccupied with the world of ideas and took little interest in nature study. Aristotle was of a different temperament and wanted to get his hands dirty in studying the lowliest of life forms such as frogs and fish. While Plato was mainly concerned with exercising reason, Aristotle was keen to make full use of his senses. Although Plato would have banned poets from his utopian state, he was at heart a poet and mythologist. In contrast, Aristotle's writings were precise and encyclopedic based on his field studies. Records indicate that Aristotle wrote 170 treatises of which only 47 survive. They are not books, but lecture notes, since philosophy at the time was still an oral activity. Aristotle is regarded as the creator of modern scientific terminology who founded and classified the various sciences extant today. He formulated the field of natural philosophy by summarizing what the natural philosophers before him had considered relevant. While Plato clung to the notion of the superiority of the 'idea' as perfect and eternal in comparison with the imperfect and contingent nature of the sensory world. Aristotle turned this concept upside down. The ideal for him was a construction of the human mind, an abstraction and a generalization from that which had been observed over and over again. There was no model or form beside the available sample from the species. While for Plato, the highest degree of reality was that we are able to think and reason, for Aristotle, the highest degree of reality was that which we can perceive with our five senses. For Plato the natural world, like the shadows in his mythical cave, was only a reflection of a higher order reality of ideas and absolutes that are characteristic of the human soul, while for Aristotle, it was the natural world apprehended by the senses that was real, and ideas were abstractions from nature which was the real world. For Aristotle, nothing could exist in human consciousness that was not first experienced as part of the real, sensory world. There are no innate forms or ideas in the way that Plato believed, but by powers of reasoning we organize what we have seen, heard, felt, tasted and sensed into categories, classes and concepts. Aristotle thought of form and substance differently from Plato. Things that exist out there must have a unity of form and substance. While substance is what the objective world is made of, form exists as specific characteristics of each thing out there. While observing changes in nature Aristotle observed that substance contains the potentiality to achieve a specific form. According to Aristotle, every change in nature, is a transformation of 'substance' from the potential to the 'actual'. Here, Plato would have said of the actual that it is a manifestation of the ideal. What is outlined below has no parallel with the thinking of Plato. Aristotle spoke of four different types of causes in nature. He spoke of a 'material' cause, an 'efficient' cause, a 'formal' cause and a 'final' cause. Take as an example, the causes of rain. When the moisture in the cloud cools, it condenses into raindrops, and gravity pulls them to earth. Here we have the first three causes. The material cause is that the cloud was there when the air cooled. The efficient cause is that moisture cools, and the formal cause is that it is in the nature of water to fall to earth. But the purpose of why it was raining has not been addressed. This is the final cause, since according to Aristotle, rain is a requirement for plants, animals and humans to survive. Unlike Plato who was silent on such issues, Aristotle believed that there was a purpose to everything that is revealed in nature. In terms of causality though, Aristotle is unlikely to have influenced modern scientists who do not believe in final causes. What follows from Aristotle's concern with form and substance is his classification of natural phenomena into categories and subcategories. This is not random but a logical process. He was the first to found the science of logic by demonstrating a number of laws governing how to draw conclusions from valid arguments with proof. The syllogism is one of his well recognized forms of logical deduction. Aristotle divided the natural world into two categories, living and non-living. The non-living has no potential for change by themselves. They can be changed only by external influence or force. Living things have an innate potential for change. He has two further subcategories for living things. They are plants and creatures. Creatures can also be subdivided into animals and humans. This is a seamless hierarchy of complexity from inanimate objects, plants, to animals, to humans. Mankind is distinguished by its capacity for rational thought. Aristotle places God at the top of the hierarchy and calls Him the 'first mover'. He is the cause of all movement in nature. According to Aristotle, man can live the good life by using all his capacities. He has a soul, with a plant-like part, an animal-like part, and a rational part. There are three ways that man could live a happy life. The first type of happiness is one of pleasure and enjoyment. The second is the life of a free and responsible citizen. The third is the life of a thinker or philosopher. If all three ways of being happy are activated one can lead a harmonious and balanced life. He rejected extremes and advocated the 'Golden Mean'. Both Plato and Aristotle appear to agree on the ethics of a good life, and reflect the stress on balance and temperance advocated by Greek medicine. Aristotle believed man to be a political animal and extolled the virtues of citizenship and fellowship within a state. While Plato advocated the rule of the philosopher, Aristotle describes three different types of constitution equally viable. First is monarchy with only one head of state. For a monarchy to work well, it should not degenerate into a tyranny. Aristocracy is another viable constitutional form. Here there is a group of rulers, which should not degenerate into an oligarchy (a junta). The third form is called polity, which actually means democracy. There is the danger that even this can degenerate into mob rule. Aristotle's views on women were rather negative, quite in contrast to Plato's. For him, a woman was an incomplete man. He believed that, in his terminology, woman was 'form' while man was the 'substance'. While Plato and Aristotle have continued to influence Western thought for over 2500 years, it is not so much the substance of their thinking that still pervades present day thinking, but the impetus it gave to independent thought as evidenced by the many influential philosophers who succeeded them. (2161 words) Bibliography 1. Aristotle The Ethics of Aristotle, The Nichomachean Ethics (Penguin classics paperback) 1955 2. Bambrough, Renford New Essays on Plato and Aristotle New York, New American Library, New York, 1963 3. Barker, Ermnest, Sir Greek political theory: Plato and his predecessors, London, Methuen, 1964 4. Broadie, Sarah Aristotle and beyond: essays on metaphysics and ethics, Cambridge University Press, 2008 5. Stenzel, Julius Plato's method of dialectic, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1940 Read More