PLATO<<<<<<>>>>>>>>ARISTOTLE

About 400 B.C.                                    Plato’s student. Died 322 B.C.

Early Plato- Evil=Ignorance                           Evil= Excess

Later Plato- Evil= Failure to control the emotions

               = disharmony with the universe

MORE ON PLATO

“Everything, without exception, in this world of ours [Plato] regarded as being an ephemeral, decaying copy of something whose Ideal Form has a permanent and indestructible existence outside space and time”  The Story of Philosophy, Brian Magee, p. 27.

Therefore, “everything is becoming, nothing is.” Since everything is changing “right before our eyes,” so to speak, we could know nothing about reality with any certainty if there were not unchanging “Forms” or “Ideas” of which the objects of our sense perceptions are imperfect “copies.”

Hence, “only eternal being-not temporal becoming- can be the object of certain knowledge.” Introduction to “Plato, Timeus”, in The Problem of Evil: A Reader, Mark Larrimore, ed.,  p.4.

Re Human Beings- “There is a part of us that can be seen, while underlying there is a part that cannot be seen but which our minds are capable of achieving awareness… the ultimate aim in life shoulc be to pierce the surface of things and penetrate to the level of underlying reality… the individual needs to see through…the decaying ephemera that constitute the world of the senses, to free himself  from their attractions and seductions” (Magee, p. 29)

THEREFORE- Evil= ignorance of the Ideal, changeless existence of the Forms, and preoccupation with the shallow, frivolous, meaningless affairs of a world that is passing away.

“Plato sees the human individual as made up of three conflicting elements: passion, intellect, and will. And he deems it essential for the intellect to be in control, governing passions through the will.” (Magee p. 30)

IMPLICATIONS? – Dictatorship of an intellectual elite?

Lack of interest in messy details of ordinary life?

Aversion to a sloppy and dangerous material world? (Philosophical O.C.D.)?

Anti-empiricist epistemology?

Openness to religious belief- yet “Plato…arrived at [his conclusions] by philosophical argument. They do not call for any belief in a God…and during the period since him they have been accepted by many who were not religious.” (Magee, p. 29)

“The only real harm that can come to a person is harm to the soul and therefore it is better to suffer wrong than to commit it.” (Magee, p. 26)

The Myth of the Cave, from The Republic, by Plato

MORE ON ARISTOTLE

Plato’s “Forms” are fine, but they are not “out there,” or “up there,” but rather inhere within the objects we observe in the physical world. “Aristotle’s most striking example of this is human beings. ‘Take Socrates,’ he says, ‘The matter of which his body consists is changing every day, and it changes in its entirety every few years; yet throughout his life he goes on being the same Socrates.” (Magee, p. 35)

“Aristotle always saw the true essence of any object as consisting not in the matter of which it is made but the function it performs: he once saud that if the eye had a soul it would be seeing.” (Magee, p. 37)

The “Golden Mean”= “a virtue is is the midway point between two extremes, each of which is a vice.”

    Cheap<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>wastefulness

    Recklessness<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>cowardice

   Shamefulness<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>stuck-up (Magee, p. 38)

For Aristotle, the goal of human life is eudaimonia. “Scholars in fact dispute whether eudaimonia is best rendered as ‘happiness’ or ‘flourishing’ or ‘living well’ or simply transliterated and left an untranslated technical term.^[24] … eudaimonia is achieved, according to Aristotle, by fully realizing our natures, by actualizing to the highest degree our human capacities, and neither our nature nor our endowment of human capacities is a matter of choice for us.” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Aristotle”.)

Therefore, for Aristotle “Evil”= that which mitigates against the fulfillment of eudaimonia, and deviates from the “Golden Mean”.

Implications?

Embraces a more empiricist epistemology?

More interest in the material world? (science, art, etc.)

“…the true purpose of government is to enable its citizens to live the full and happy life…” (Magee, p. 39)

“…it is only by being a member of society that an individual can [hope to achieve eudaimonia]- happiness and self-fulfillment are not to found in personal isolation.”