History of Philosophy

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, p. 53 [Free Press, 1969]; the painting is the School of Athens (Scuola di Atene) by Raphael, with Plato, pointing up, and Aristotle, gesturing down, in the middle [note].

BILL MURRAY: "What did you study?"
SCARLETT JOHANSSON: "Philosophy."
BILL MURRAY: "Yeah, there's a good buck in that racket."
SCARLETT JOHANSSON: "Well, so far it's pro bono."
Lost in Translation, 2003, Focus Features

Traditionally, these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead.
Stephen Hawking, and Leonard Mlodinow, The Grand Design, p.5 [Bantam Book, 2010, 2012]

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We, on the contrary, now send to the Brahmans English clergymen and evangelical linen-weavers, in order out of sympathy to put them right, and to point out to them that they are created out of nothing, and that they ought to be grateful and pleased about it. But it is just the same as if we fired a bullet at a cliff. In India our religions will never at any time take root; the ancient wisdom of the human race will not be supplanted by the events in Galilee. On the contrary, Indian wisdom flows back to Europe, and will produce a fundamental change in our knowledge and thought.

Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, Volume I, §63, p. 356-357 [Dover Publications, 1966, E.F.J. Payne translation] [note]

Eastern Philosophy

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Copyright (c) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved

Plato and Aristotle,
Up and Down

Rafael has Plato pointing up and Aristotle gesturing down to indicate the difference in their metaphysics. For Plato, true existence is in the World of Forms, in relation to which this world (of Becoming) is a kind of shadow or image of the higher reality.

Aristotle, on the other hand, regards individual objects in this world as "primary substance" and dismisses the existence of Plato's Forms -- except for God, who for Aristotle is pure form, pure actuality --

-- without matter.
However, when it comes to ethics and politics, the gestures should be reversed. Plato, like Socrates, believed that to do the good without error, one must know what the good is.

Thus, we get the dramatic moment in the Republic where Plato says that philosophers, who have escaped from the Cave and come to understand the higher reality, must be forced to return to this world and rule, so that their wisdom can benefit the state. Aristotle, on the other hand, says that the "good" is simply the goal of various particular activities, without one meaning in Plato's sense. The particular activities of most human affairs involve phrónêsis (

, prudentia), "practical wisdom." This is not sophía (

, sapientia), true wisdom, which for Aristotle involves the theoretical knowledge of the highest things, i.e. eternal truths, the gods, the heavens, and God. Thus, for philosophy, Aristotle should be pointing up and would represent a contemplative attitude that was certainly more congenial to religious perspectives in the Middle Ages.
Similar caution should be exercised in considering Aristotle's contribution to what we now think of as science. This was gravely hampered by his lack of interest in mathematics. Although Aristotle in general had a more empirical and experimental attitude than Plato, modern science did not come into its own until Plato's

Pythagorean confidence in the mathematical nature of the world returned with Kepler, Galileo, and Newton. For instance, Aristotle, relying on a theory of opposites that is now only of historical interest, rejected Plato's attempt to match the Platonic Solids with the elements -- while Plato's expectations are now in fact realized in mineralogy and crystallography, where the Platonic Solids occur naturally. It is arguable that Aristotle's view of mathematics, and his inductive theory of "scientific" method, not only inhibited the development of science during the Middle Ages, but continued to confuse philosophers and scientists at least until Karl Popper.
Therefore, care is in order when comparing the meaning of the metaphysics of Plato and Aristotle with its significance for their attitudes towards ethics, politics, and science. Indeed, if the opposite of wisdom (

) is, not ignorance (

), but folly (

), then Socrates and Plato certainly started off with the better insight.

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Prudence, Goodness, and Wisdom

Schopenhauer on English Clergymen

While Schopenhauer was correct about the lack of impact of English Christian evangelism on India, he has failed to recall, or perhaps at the time did not know, that a large part of the population of India, 25% or so, had already converted to Islâm, which in turn drove Buddhism to extinction in the land of its birth. Islâm, as much as Judaism and Protestant Christianity, was lacking the key ingredient to real religion, as far as Schopenhauer was concerned: Monasticism. What was worse, Islâm offered explicit promises of very earthly pleasures for the Saved in Paradise. This earned nothing but contempt from Schopenhauer. Christian evangelism, of course, was soon, after the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857-1858, renounced as any part of official British policy in India.

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