Classical Greeks | Classics in the Philosophy of Religion

CLASSICAL GREEK PHILOSOPHERS

From Classics in the Philosophy of Religion, by James Fieser

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CONTENTS

• Pre-Socratic Philosophers: Pythagoras, Xenophanes, Anaxagoras, Democritus, Protagoras (from Fragments)

• Plato: Dualism, Recollection, Immortality (from Euthyphro, Phaedo, Timaeus, Laws)

• Aristotle: Purpose, Prime Mover (from Physics, On the Soul, Metaphysics, Ethics)

The era of Classical Greek philosophy is commonly dated from 585-322 BCE, beginning with Thales' prediction of the solar eclipse and ending with the death of Aristotle. It encompasses a group called the "Pre-Socratics" (philosophers before Socrates), then the three giants, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Before the first philosophers appeared, the Greeks explained the world through its mythology. According to this, the gods created the cosmos through a sequence of births, marriages, and violent chains of events. Further, storms, earthquakes, and even good harvest were the result of a particular god acting within its domain. These mythologies did not explain what things were made of, or whether the same causes operated the same way every time. Each event had its own divine author, and there was no expectation that nature would follow any impersonal order. The first philosophers changed all that by offering non-mythological explanations of things. Their attitude toward the gods was not typically atheistic, but it was subversive. Several of them retained the word "god", while downplaying its mythological context and applying the term instead to their own concept of an impersonal principle of the universe. This move preserved reverence for something ultimate, while disconnecting that reverence from Zeus, Hera, and the rest of the Olympian deities. The first philosophers to do this were the Pre-Socratics, a diverse group that offered rival explanations of the cosmos. The bolder their theories were, the less relevant mythology was for them. Plato scrutinized all of their theories, and devised an even more grandiose system that articulated foundational issues in the philosophy of religion that we still explore today. He distinguished between body and soul, offered arguments for the immortality of the soul, rejected purely naturalistic explanations of the cosmos, and devised arguments for the existence of the gods and the creator deity. While Aristotle had less to say about religious matters than Plato, what he did say had an equally lasting impact on the philosophy of religion. For Aristotle, the cosmos itself is eternal, and thus not literally created by a divine being. However, throughout eternity past, a divine being has always been the attractive force of all motion in the cosmos, like a universal magnet. Despite Plato and Aristotle's commitment to an ultimate divine principle, the philosophical creativity begun by the Pre-Socratics continued. The next wave of philosophers after this classic period, during Hellenistic times, pursued even more secular approaches.

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PRESOCRATIC PHILOSOPHERS

The earliest Greek philosophers asked a new kind of question about that cosmos: what is everything made of, and by what process did an orderly world emerge? Instead of speculating about which god caused the world, they looked for a single underlying stuff or principle, such as water, air, an undefined boundless substance, fire, or numeric ratios. From these, all the variety within the world could be generated, and they tried to explain change, motion, and stability in terms of that principle's own properties, rather than in terms of divine intention. In doing so they simultaneously founded what would later split into separate disciplines: cosmology, physics, biology, mathematics, and metaphysics all begin from these same initial inquiries. Almost none of the Presocratics' original texts survived antiquity intact, since they existed only as individually copied scrolls. Over the centuries most were lost to fire, decay, war, or simple neglect as later readers turned to newer authors. What survives today comes almost entirely secondhand. There are brief quotations and summaries embedded in the surviving works of later writers like Plato and Aristotle, who cited their predecessors while developing their own arguments.

The selections below are from six Presocratic philosophers who commented specifically on religious themes. Pythagoras (c. 570–495 BC) founded a religious and philosophical community in southern Italy built around mathematics, music, and a strict way of life. The selections on reincarnation show him teaching that the soul is immortal and migrates from body to body across many lifetimes, human and animal alike. This is why he reportedly stopped a man from beating a dog, recognizing in its cries the voice of a dead friend. He claimed to remember his own earlier incarnation as Euphorbus, a warrior from the Trojan War, and taught that this cycle implies all living things are ultimately kin, forming one extended family. Heraclitus (c. 535–475 BC) of Ephesus was known for cryptic statements and a reputation for arrogance toward his fellow citizens. His fragments on change argue that everything is in constant flux, so that stepping into "the same" river twice is impossible, since new water is always flowing through it, and even apparent stability, like a straight path, is identical with its opposite. He unifies this flux under the notion of the Logos, a common rational principle governing all change that most people live oblivious to, and identifies fire, the most restless element, as the substance into which everything is convertible and out of which the ever-living cosmos is made. Xenophanes (c. 570–478 BC) was a wandering poet and critic who mocked the anthropomorphic gods of Homer and Hesiod. He observes that different peoples imagine their gods in their own image, Ethiopians as black, Thracians as red-haired. He jokes that horses would paint their gods as horses if they could. Against this, he proposes a single, unmoving, all-seeing God who rules the universe by thought alone, and resembles nothing mortal. He cautions, though, that no one can ever be certain their account of divine things is correct.

Anaxagoras (c. 500–428 BC) brought philosophy to Athens and was later prosecuted there for impiety over his cosmological views. His fragments describe Mind (nous), as an infinite and self-ruled force, which set an original undifferentiated mass into rotation. It separated the dense from the rare, the warm from the cold, and the dry from the moist. Accordingly, out of what had been a formless blend, it generate the ordered universe consisting of the sun, moon, and stars. Democritus (c. 460–370 BC) of Abdera developed, with his teacher Leucippus, the theory that reality consists only of atoms and void. The selections show him explaining traditional gods as large, roughly human-shaped image-particles (ideola) that drift through the air and can convey visions of the future, unusually durable but not literally immortal; ancient peoples, encountering these images, mistakenly took them for actual divine beings, when in fact nothing exists beyond atoms and their images. Protagoras (c. 490–420 BC) was the most famous of the traveling teachers known as Sophists, and was reportedly exiled from Athens and had his books burned for impiety. His one surviving remark on religion states that he cannot know whether the gods exist or what form they might take, since the subject is obscure and human life too short to settle it. He is this one of the earliest declared agnostics in the Western tradition.

PYTHAGORAS: ON REINCARNATION

He was the first, they say, to declare that the soul, bound first in this creature, later in that, thus goes on a round ordained of necessity. . . .

Regarding Pythagoras having been different people at different times, Xenophanes adds his evidence in an elegiac poem which begins thus: They say that once, when passing by, Pythagoras saw a dog severely beaten. He pitied him and spoke as follows to the man who beat him: "Stop now, and do not beat him, since in his body lives the soul of a dear friend of mine, whose voice I recognized as he was crying." [Diogenes Laertius, Lives, 8 (DK 7)]

What he told his audiences cannot be said with certainty, for he commanded silence upon his hearers. But the following is a matter of general information. He taught that the soul was immortal and that after death it transmigrated into other animated bodies. After certain specified periods, the same events occur again, and nothing was entirely new. Also, all animated beings were related, and should be considered as belonging to one great family. Pythagoras was the first one to introduce these teachings into Greece. [Porphyry, Life of Pythagoras (DK 8)]

He would remind many of his intimates of the former life lived by their soul before it was bound to their body. He would demonstrate by indubitable arguments that he had once been Eiuphorbus, son of Panthus, conqueror of Patroclus. [Iamblichus, Life of Pythagoras]

HERACLITUS: CHANGE AND THE LOGOS

Everything Changes

Into the same river we step and do not step; we are and we are not. [Heraclitus Homericus, Homeric Questions 24]

You cannot step twice into the same rivers; for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you. It scatters and it gathers; it advances and retires. [Plutarch, On the E at Delphi]

There is a new sun every day. [Aristotle, Meteorology, 2.2]

It rests by changing [Plotinus, Enneads 4.8.1]

The straight and the crooked path of the fuller's comb is one and the same. [Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies]

The way up and the way down is one and the same. [Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies]

It is the cold things that become warm, the warm that become cold, the moist that become dry, and the dry that become moist.

God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, satiety and hunger. But he assumes various forms, just as fire when it is mingled with different kinds of incense is named according to the savor of each. [Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies]

The Logos and Fire

It is wise to listen, not to me, but to the Logos, and to agree that all things are one. [Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies (DK 50)]

Though this Logos is always true, still people are as unable to understand it both when they hear it for the first time and when they have heard it at all again. For, though all things come into being in accordance with the Logos, people seem as if they had no experience of it, when they become acquainted with words and actions that I establish, dividing each thing according to its kind and showing how it truly is. As for the rest of the people, they do not know what they are doing when awake, just as they forget what they do once asleep. [Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians (DK 1)]

One ought to follow the lead of that which is common to all men. But although the Logos is common to all, yet most men live as if each had a private wisdom of his own. [Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians (DK 2)]

They have become separated from the Logos, the guide of all things, with which they are most continually associated; and things they meet with every day appear to them unfamiliar. [Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (DK 72)]

The cosmos, which is the same for all, was not made by one of the gods or by humans. Rather, it always was, is now, and forever will be an ever-living fire, ignited in measure, and extinguished in measure. [Clement, Miscellanies (DK 30)]

The transformations of fire are, first of all, sea; and one-half of the sea is earth and half the stormy wind. . . The sea is dispersed and keeps its measure according to the same Logos that prevailed before it became earth. [Clement, Miscellanies (DK 31)]

All things are exchanged for fire and fire for all things, just as wares are exchanged for gold and gold for wares. [Plutarch, On the E at Delphi (DK 90)]

XENOPHANES: ON GOD

Against Anthropomorphic Conceptions of God

Homer and Hesiod have ascribed to the gods all things that are shameful and disgraceful among mortals, such as theft, adultery and the deception of each other. [Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians (DK B11)]

Mortals suppose that the gods are born and have clothes and voices and shapes like their own. [Clement, Miscellanies (DK B14)]

If oxen and horses or lions had hands, and could paint with their hands, and produce works of art as people do, horses would paint the forms of the gods like horses, and oxen like oxen, and make their bodies in the image of their own kinds. [Clement, Miscellanies (DK B15)]

The Ethiopians make their gods black and snub-nosed; the Thracians say theirs have blue eyes and red hair. [Clement, Miscellanies (DK B16)]

Pantheistic God

There are some who spoke of the universe as if it were one entity, though they were not all alike either in the excellence of their statement or in its conformity to the facts of nature. . . . but these thinkers say the universe is unchangeable. . . . Xenophanes, the first of these partisans of the One (for Parmenides is said to have been his pupil), gave no clear statement, nor does he seem to have grasped the nature of either of these causes, but with reference to the whole material universe he says the One is God. [Aristotle, Metaphysics 1.5 (DK 30)]

There is one god, supreme among gods and men; resembling mortals neither in form nor in mind. [Clement, Miscellanies (DK B23)]

He sees all over, thinks all over, and hears all over. [Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians (DK B24)]

Without toil he rules all things by the power of his mind. [Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle's Physics (DK B25)]

He stays always in the same place, without moving at all, for it does not suit him to wander about here or there. [Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle's Physics (DK B26)]

It is just as impious to say that the gods are born as to say that they die. For it follows from either view that at some time or other they do not exist. [Aristotle, Rhetoric 2.23 (DK A12)]

There never was, nor ever will be, any man who knows with certainty the things about the gods and about all things which I say. For even if he does happen to get most things right, still he himself does not know it. But all may have their opinions. [Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians (DK B34)]

The gods did not reveal all things to men at the start; but, as time goes on, by searching, they discover more and more [Stobaeus, Selections (DK B18)].

If god had not made brown honey, people would think that figs are far sweeter than they do think about them. [Herodian, On Peculiar Speech (DK B38)]

ANAXAGORAS: MIND'S KNOWLEDGE OF EVERYTHING AND THE SOURCE OF COSMIC REVOLVING

In everything there is a portion of everything except Mind, and there are some things in which there is Mind also. [Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle's Physics (DK B11)]

All other things partake in a portion of everything, while Mind is infinite and self-ruled, and is mixed with nothing, but is alone, itself by itself. If it were not by itself, but were mixed with anything else, it would partake in all things if it were mixed with any. For in everything there is a portion of everything, as I said earlier, and the things mixed with it would hinder it, so that it would have power over nothing in the same way that it has now being alone by itself. It is the thinnest of all things and the purest, and it has all knowledge about everything and the greatest strength. Mind has power over all things, both greater and smaller, that have life. Mind had power over the whole revolution, so that it began to revolve in the beginning. It began to revolve first from a small beginning; but the revolution now extends over a larger space, and will extend over a larger still. All the things that are mingled together and separated off and distinguished are all known by Mind. Mind set in order all things that were to be, and all things that were and are not now and that are, and this revolution in which now revolve the stars and the sun and the moon, and the air and the aether that are separated off. This revolution caused the separating off, and the rare is separated off from the dense, the warm from the cold, the light from the dark, and the dry from the moist. There are many portions in many things. But no thing is altogether separated off nor distinguished from anything else except Mind. All Nous is alike, both the greater and the smaller; while nothing else is like anything else, but each single thing is and was most manifestly those things of which it has most in it. [Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle's Physics (DK B12)]

When Mind began to move things, separating off took place from all that was moved, and so much as Mind set in motion was all separated. As things were set in motion and separated, the revolution caused them to be separated much more. [Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle's Physics (DK B13)]

Mind, whichever is, is certainly there, where everything else is, in the surrounding mass, and in what has been united with it and separated off from it. [Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle's Physics (DK B14)]

DEMOCRITUS: THE GODS AS IMAGE-PARTICLES

The Gods

Democritus says that certain image-particles (eidola) of atoms approach humans, and of them some cause good and others evil… These are large and immense, and difficult to destroy though not indestructible. They indicate the future in advance to people when they are seen to emit voices. As a result people of ancient times, upon perceiving the appearances of these things, supposed that they are a god, though there is no other god aside from these having an indestructible nature. [Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians (DK B166)]

They are the absurdities in which Democritus, or before him Leucippus, would indulge, saying, that there are certain light corpuscles, some smooth, some rough, some round, some square, some crooked and bent as bows; which by a chance meeting made heaven and earth, without the influence of any natural power. . . . At one time he thinks, that there are images endowed with divinity, inherent in the universality of things; at another, that the principles and minds contained in the universe are Gods; then he attributes divinity to animated images, employing themselves in doing us good or harm; and lastly, he speaks of certain images of such vast extent that they encompass the whole outside of the universe; all which opinions are more worthy of the country of Democritus [i.e., Abdera, which had a reputation for stupidity] than of Democritus himself. For who can frame in his mind any ideas of such images? Who can admire them? Who can think they merit a religious adoration? . . . We must either deny the existence of the Gods (as Democritus and Epicurus by their doctrine of images in some sort do), or, if we acknowledge that there are Gods, we must believe they are employed, and that, too, in something excellent. [Cicero, The Nature of the Gods 1, 2]

PROTAGORAS: AGNOSTICISM

As to Protagoras it is reported that he was called an atheist. In fact he, too, in writing about the gods used this sort of introduction: "About the gods, I am not able to know whether they exist or do not exist, nor what they are like in form; for the factors preventing knowledge are many: the obscurity of the subject, and the shortness of human life." [Eusebius, Preparation of the Gospel (DK B4)]

Source: Hermann Diels, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, translated by John Burnet, adapted.

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PLATO: DUALISM, RECOLLECTION, IMMORTALITY

Plato (c. 428–348 BC) was born into an aristocratic Athenian family. As a young man he became a student of Socrates. In 399 BC an Athenian jury condemned Socrates to death for corrupting the youth and impiety, and he was made to drink hemlock. Plato later wrote that he himself was not present at the execution, kept away by illness. Nevertheless, the event shaped his lifelong distrust of Athenian democracy and its treatment of philosophers. He left Athens for a period of travel and in southern Italy, and Sicily, where he encountered Pythagorean ideas that shaped his later metaphysics. Returning to Athens he founded the Academy, often considered the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. He taught there for decades, and the school continued in various forms for centuries after his death. His surviving texts are almost entirely in dialogue form, usually with Socrates as the central speaker. This has left scholars uncertain how much of Socrates' philosophy belonged to the historical man, and how much was Plato's own. Twice, decades apart, Plato traveled to Sicily hoping to turn the tyrant of Syracuse into his ideal philosopher-king. Both attempts failed badly, and on one trip he was reportedly sold into slavery before being ransomed and sent home. He died in Athens in his eighties, according to tradition while attending a wedding feast.

The selections blow are from several four works and cover five distinct themes. The first is the "Euthyphro Dilemma," from the dialogue of that name. Euthyphro first proposes to define piety as simply whatever all the gods love. Socrates then poses "The Dilemma": do the gods love the pious because it is already pious, or is something pious only because the gods happen to love it? Working through examples, Socrates gets Euthyphro to agree that being loved is a consequence of being pious, not its cause. Socrates then offers his criticism: since piety causes the gods' love rather than the reverse, then "loved by the gods" and "pious" cannot be the same thing. Thus, Euthyphro's definition has failed to say what piety actually is. The second theme concerns body-soul dualism, where Socrates argues that the body actively obstructs knowledge. In the section "The Soul cannot have True Wisdom while in the Body," Socrates contends that true realities, like absolute justice or beauty, can never be grasped through the senses, only through pure reasoning, so the philosopher should try to minimize the body's interference as much as possible, treating philosophy itself as a lifelong practice of preparing for death. In the section on "Recollection" Socrates argues that we first access these realities during a past life experience of the Forms, which through some effort we recollect in this life. He argues that sensible things, like two equal sticks, are never perfectly equal. Nevertheless, we still recognize them as approximating a perfect "equality" that we have never encountered with our senses. Thus, we must have known the Form of equality before birth and merely be recollecting it.

The third theme concerns arguments for immortality. Building on his recollection theory, Socrates argues that if we possessed knowledge of the Forms before birth, our souls must have existed prior to the body. This alone though, proves only pre-existence of the soul, not survival after death. Next he completes the argument argues by maintaining that the soul is more like the unchangeable forms than the changeable body. For, when the soul reasoning purely, it associates with the eternal and unchanging Forms. Thus, while the body belongs to the ever-changing sensible world, the soul is more like what is indissoluble and divine, and so is far less likely than the body to be destroyed at death. The fourth theme is on creation, and describes the origin of the cosmos. He first argues that a divine craftsman (Demiurge) shaped the world by looking to an eternal, unchanging model, rather than by inventing it arbitrarily. This explains why the world is good and beautiful. Next he argues that this craftsman placed a soul of the world (blended from both unchanging and changing elements) at the center of the cosmos to govern its body. He then argues that this craftsman created time as a moving image of eternity. For, unable to make the created world literally eternal, the craftsman instead made time itself, with its days, months, and years, as a moving image of eternity. Plato closes this theme describing how the craftsman created human souls by distributing them individually among the stars before their embodiment. Once embodied, the souls will live rightly or wrongly depending on whether they master (or are mastered by) bodily sensations, desires, and passions.

The final theme is on the existence and nature of the gods. First, Plato argues that there are three forms of impiety: (1) unbelief, (2) belief that the gods are indifferent to human affairs, and (3) belief that they can be bribed. He then considers, then rejects, a common proof for the existence of the gods based on the order of the heavens. This fails, though, since materialist philosophers explain the same cosmic order as the product of blind chance rather than mind. The second he discusses the dangerous implications of atheistic materialism and cultural relativism. Materialists like the atomists held that the elements and heavenly bodies arose by nature and chance alone. They also held that human laws and justice are mere artificial conventions that vary by place, and morality reduces to the rule of the stronger. Against this, Plato offers his a proof of the existence of the gods based on the soul being a self-moving first cause. He argues that only something capable of moving itself can be the ultimate origin of all other motion. Further that self-moving power is soul. Therefore soul, not inert matter, must be the oldest and most fundamental thing in the universe. It is this that makes the heavens themselves governed by divine soul. In the section on divine providence, Plato considers the complaint that we are neglected by the gods. He responds insisting that each part of the cosmos exists for the good of the whole. Further, he says, souls are sorted to better or worse conditions according to their own developed character, not by divine caprice. Finally, he criticizes the third form of impiety which claims that the gods can be bribed. He asks, what kind of guardian the gods could possibly be if flattery or gifts could turn them from justice?

EUTHYPHRO DILEMMA (from Euthyphro)

Definition of Piety: That which All the gods Love

Socrates: But they will be sure to listen if they find that you are a good speaker. There was a notion that came into my mind while you were talking. I said to myself: "Well, and what if Euthyphro does prove to me that all the gods regarded the death of the worker as unjust, how do I know anything more of the nature of piety and impiety? for granting that this action may be hateful to the gods, still piety and impiety are not adequately defined by these distinctions, for that which is hateful to the gods has been shown to be also pleasing and dear to them." Therefore, Euthyphro, I do not ask you to prove this. I will suppose, if you like, that all the gods condemn and hate such an action. But I will amend the definition so far as to say the following: what all the gods hate is impious, and what they love pious; and what some of them love and others hate is both or neither. Will this be our definition of piety and impiety?

Euthyphro: Why not, Socrates?

Socrates: Why not! Certainly, as far as I am concerned, Euthyphro, there is no reason why not. But whether this admission will greatly assist you in the task of instructing me as you promised, is a matter for you to consider.

Euthyphro: Yes, I would say that what all the gods love is pious, and the opposite which they all hate, impious.

Socrates: Should we inquire into the truth of this, Euthyphro, or simply to accept the mere statement on our own authority and that of others? What do you say?

Euthyphro: We should inquire, and I believe that the statement will stand the test of inquiry.

The Dilemma

Socrates: We will soon know better, my good friend. The point which I first wish to understand is "whether the gods love the pious because it is pious, or something is pious because the gods love it." [i.e., is there an external standard of piety, or is piety defined by what the gods love.]

Euthyphro: I do not understand what you mean, Socrates.

Socrates: I will try to explain. We speak of carrying and we speak of being carried, of leading and being led, seeing and being seen. You know that in all such cases there is a difference, and you know also in what the difference lies?

Euthyphro: I think that I understand.

Socrates: Is not that which is beloved distinct from that which loves?

Euthyphro: Certainly.

Socrates: Excellent. Now tell me, is that which is carried in this state of carrying because it is carried, or for some other reason?

Euthyphro: No, that is the reason.

Socrates: The same is true of what is led and of what is seen?

Euthyphro: True.

Socrates: A thing is not seen because it is visible, but conversely, visible because it is seen. Nor is a thing led because it is in the state of being led, or carried because it is in the state of being carried, but the converse of this. Now I think, Euthyphro, that my meaning will be intelligible; and my meaning is, that any state of action or passion implies previous action or passion. It does not become because it is becoming, but it is in a state of becoming because it becomes; neither does it suffer because it is in a state of suffering, but it is in a state of suffering because it suffers. Do you not agree?

Euthyphro: Yes.

Socrates: Is not that which is loved in some state either of becoming or suffering?

Euthyphro: Yes.

Socrates: The same holds as in the previous cases: the state of being loved follows the act of being loved, and not the act the state.

Euthyphro: Certainly.

Criticism: What the gods Love is Irrelevant to what Piety Is

Socrates: What do you say of piety, Euthyphro: is not piety, according to your definition, loved by all the gods?

Euthyphro: Yes.

Socrates: Because it is pious, or for some other reason?

Euthyphro: No, that is the reason.

Socrates: It is loved because it is pious, not pious because it is loved?

Euthyphro: Yes.

Socrates: That which is dear to the gods is loved by them, and is in a state to be loved by them because it is loved by them?

Euthyphro: Certainly.

Socrates: Then, Euthyphro, that which is dear to the gods is not the same thing as the pious, nor is that which is pious the same thing as loved by the gods, as you affirm. They are two different things. [i.e., what the gods love is irrelevant to what piety is.]

Euthyphro: How do you mean, Socrates?

Socrates: I mean to say that we have already acknowledged that the pious is to be loved by the gods because it is pious, not pious because it is loved. [i.e., there is an external standard of piety.]

Euthyphro: Yes.

BODY-SOUL DUALISM (from Phaedo)

The Soul cannot have True Wisdom while in the Body

Socrates: Is there or is there not an absolute justice?

Simmias: Certainly there is.

Socrates: What about and absolute good?

Simmias: Of course.

Socrates: Did you ever see any of them with your eyes?

Simmias: Certainly not.

Socrates: Did you ever reach them with any other bodily sense? I am not only talking about these, but also about absolute greatness, health, strength, and of the essence or true nature of everything. Has the reality of them ever been perceived by you through the bodily organs? Rather, is not the nearest approach to the knowledge of their various natures made by him who orders his intellectual vision have the most exact conception of the essence of each thing which he considers?

Simmias: Certainly.

Socrates: He attains the purest knowledge of them who goes to each with the mind alone, not introducing or intruding in the act of thought sight or any other sense together with reason, but with the very light of the mind in her own clearness searches into the very truth of each. As far as he can, he attempts to rid himself of eyes and ears and, so to speak, of the whole body, since in his opinion these are distracting elements that, when they infect the soul, they hinder it from acquiring truth and knowledge. Who, if not this person, is likely to attain the knowledge of true being?

Simmias: What you say has great truth to it, Socrates.

Socrates: When real philosophers consider all these things, will they not be led to make a reflection which they will express in words something like the following? Have we not found, they will say, a path of thought which seems to bring us and our argument to the conclusion, that while we are in the body, and while the soul is infected with the evils of the body, our desire will not be satisfied? Our desire is for the truth, but the body is a source of endless trouble to us. It requires food and prone also to diseases which overtake and hinder us in the search after true being. It fills us full of loves, lusts, fears, illusions of all kinds, endless foolishness, and, in fact, as people say, it completely takes away from us the power of thinking. What is the source of wars, fighting, and factions? The body and the lusts of the body. Wars are caused by the love of money, and money has to be acquired for the sake and in the service of the body. Because of all these obstacles, we have no time to give to philosophy. Last and worst of all, even if we have free time and commit ourselves to some speculation, the body is always breaking in upon us, causing turmoil and confusion in our inquiries, and distracting us so that we are prevented from seeing the truth.

Experience shows that if we would have pure knowledge of anything, we must leave the body. The soul by herself must observe things in themselves. Then we will attain the wisdom which we desire, and of which we say that we are lovers, not while we live, but after death. If while in company with the body, the soul cannot have pure knowledge, one of two things follows: either knowledge cannot be attained at all, or, if at all, only after death. For then, and not till then, the soul will part from the body and exist in herself alone. In this present life we make the nearest approach to knowledge when we have the least possible contact or association with the body, and are not overindulged with the bodily nature, but instead keep ourselves pure until the hour when the god himself is pleased to release us. Thus having gotten rid of the foolishness of the body we will be pure and commune with the pure, and know of ourselves the clear light everywhere, which is nothing other than the light of truth. For the impure are not permitted to approach the pure.

Simmias: Undoubtedly, Socrates.

Socrates: But, my friend, if this is true, there is great reason to hope that, going where I go, when I have come to the end of my journey, I will attain that which has been the pursuit of my life. So, I go on my way rejoicing, and not I only, but every other man who believes that his mind has been made ready and that he is in a manner purified.

Simmias: Certainly.

Socrates: Purification, then, is just the separation of the soul from the body, as I was saying before. It is the tendency of the soul to gather and collect itself into itself from all sides out of the body. As far as it can, it resides alone in its own place, both now and in another life, where the soul is released from the chains of the body. Is this true?

Simmias: Very true.

Socrates: This separation and release of the soul from the body is termed death?

Simmias: Yes.

Socrates: The true philosophers, and they only, are ever seeking to release the soul. Is not the separation and release of the soul from the body their especial study?

Simmias: That is true.

Socrates: As I was saying at first, there would be a ridiculous contradiction in men studying to live as nearly as they can in a state of death, and yet complaining when it comes upon them.

Simmias: Clearly.

Socrates: The true philosophers, Simmias, are always occupied in the practice of dying, and for this reason they are troubled by death less than is anyone.

Recollection: Knowledge of the Forms Remembered from Previous Life

Socrates: Where did we obtain our knowledge? Did we not see equalities of material things, such as pieces of wood and stones, and gather from them the idea of an equality which is different from them? For you will acknowledge that there is a difference. Look at the matter in another way: Do not the same pieces of wood or stone appear at one time equal, and at another time unequal?

Simmias: That is certain.

Socrates: Are real equals ever unequal? or is the idea of equality the same as of inequality?

Simmias: Impossible, Socrates.

Socrates: Then these (so-called) equals are not the same with the idea of equality?

Simmias: Clearly not, I would say, Socrates.

Socrates: Yet from these equals, although differing from the idea of equality, you conceived and attained that idea?

Simmias: Very true.

Socrates: Which might be like, or might be unlike them?

Simmias: Yes.

Socrates: But that makes no difference. Whenever from seeing one thing you conceived another, whether like or unlike, there must surely have been an act of recollection?

Simmias: Very true.

Socrates: What would you say of equal portions of wood and stone, or other equals of material things? What is the impression produced by them? Are they equals in the same sense in which absolute equality is equal? or do they fall short of this perfect equality in a measure?

Simmias: Yes, he said, in a very great measure too.

Socrates: Must we not allow, that when I or anyone, looking at any object, observes that the thing which he sees aims at being some other thing, but falls short of, and cannot be, that other thing, but is inferior, he who makes this observation must have had a previous knowledge of that to which the other, although similar, was inferior?

Simmias: Certainly.

Socrates: Has not this been our own case in the matter of equals and of absolute equality?

Simmias: Precisely.

Socrates: Then we must have known equality previously to the time when we first saw the equals with material things, and reflected that all these apparent equals strive to attain absolute equality, but fall short of it?

Simmias: Very true.

Socrates: We recognize also that this absolute equality has only been known, and can only be known, through the medium of sight or touch, or of some other of the senses, which are all alike in this respect?

Simmias: Yes, Socrates, as far as the argument is concerned, one of them is the same as the other.

Socrates: From the senses then is derived the knowledge that all sensible things aim at an absolute equality of which they fall short?

Simmias: Yes.

Socrates: Then before we began to see or hear or perceive in any way, we must have had a knowledge of absolute equality, or we could not have referred to that standard the equals which are derived from the senses? For to that they all aspire, and of that they fall short.

Simmias: No other inference can be drawn from the previous statements.

Socrates: Did we not see and hear and have the use of our other senses as soon as we were born?

Simmias: Certainly.

Socrates: Then we must have acquired the knowledge of equality at some previous time?

Simmias: Yes.

Socrates: That is to say, before we were born, I suppose?

Simmias: True.

Socrates: If we acquired this knowledge before we were born, and were born having the use of it, then we also knew before we were born and at the instant of birth not only the equal or the greater or the less, but all other ideas. For we are not speaking only of equality, but of beauty, goodness, justice, holiness, and of all which we stamp with the name of essence in the dialectical process, both when we ask and when we answer questions. Of all this we may certainly affirm that we acquired the knowledge before birth?

Simmias: We may.

Socrates: But if, after having acquired, we have not forgotten what in each case we acquired, then we must always have come into life having knowledge, and will always continue to know as long as life lasts. For knowing is the acquiring and retaining of knowledge and not forgetting. Is not forgetting, Simmias, simply the losing of knowledge?

Simmias: Quite true, Socrates.

Socrates: Suppose that the knowledge that we acquired before birth was lost by us at birth, but afterwards, by the use of the senses, we recovered what we previously knew. Will not the process which we call learning be a recovering of the knowledge which is natural to us, and may not this be rightly termed recollection?

Simmias: Very true.

Socrates: So much is now clear. When we perceive something, either by the help of sight, hearing, or some other sense, from that perception we are able to obtain a notion of some other thing like or unlike which is associated with it but has been forgotten. From this, as I was saying, one of two alternatives follows. First, we had this knowledge at birth, and continued to know through life. Or Second, we acquired it after birth, and those who are said to learn only remember, and learning is simply recollection.

Simmias: Yes, that is quite true, Socrates.

ARGUMENTS FOR IMMORTALITY (from Phaedo)

Recollected Knowledge of the Forms Requires a Pre-Existing Soul

Socrates: But when did our souls acquire this knowledge? Not since we were born as men?

Simmias: Certainly not.

Socrates: Therefore, previously?

Simmias: Yes.

Socrates: Then, Simmias, our souls must also have existed without bodies before they were in human form, and must have had intelligence.

Simmias: Unless indeed you suppose, Socrates, that these notions are given us at the very moment of birth. For this is the only time that remains.

Socrates: Yes, my friend, but if so, when do we lose them? For they are not in us when we are born, as we have admitted. Do we lose them at the moment of receiving them, or if not, at what other time?

Simmias: No, Socrates, I perceive that I was unconsciously talking nonsense.

Socrates: Then, Simmias, may we not say the following. Suppose there are absolute realities of beauty, and goodness, and realities of all things (as we are always repeating). Having now discovered these to have existed in our former state, suppose further that it is to these that we refer all our sensations, and with this compare them. If this is the case, then, finding these realities to be pre-existent, they must be our inborn possessions. Our souls must have had a prior existence, and, if not, there would be no force in the argument. There is the same proof that these realities must have existed before we were born, as that our souls existed before we were born. If no realities, then no preexisting souls.

Simmias: Yes, Socrates. I am convinced that there is precisely the same necessity for the one as for the other. The argument retreats successfully to the position that the existence of the soul before birth cannot be separated from the existence of the essence of which you speak. For there is nothing which to my mind is so patent as that beauty, goodness, and the other notions of which you were just now speaking, have a most real and absolute existence. I am satisfied with the proof.

Socrates: Well, but is Cebes equally satisfied? for I must convince him too.

Simmias: I think, that Cebes is satisfied: although he is the most incredulous of mortals, yet I believe that he is sufficiently convinced of the existence of the soul before birth. But that after death the soul will continue to exist is not yet proven even to my own satisfaction. I cannot get rid of the feeling of the many to which Cebes was referring, namely, the feeling that when the man dies the soul will be dispersed, and that this may be the extinction of it. For admitting that she may have been born elsewhere, and framed out of other elements, and was in existence before entering the human body, why after having entered in and gone out again may she not herself be destroyed and come to an end?

Cebes: Very true, Simmias. About half of what was required has been proven, namely, that our souls existed before we were born. That the soul will exist after death as well as before birth is the other half of which the proof is still lacking, and has to be supplied. When that is given the demonstration will be complete.

The Soul is more Like the Unchangeable Forms than the Changeable Body

Socrates: Is the soul more like the unseen, and the body like the seen?

Cebes: That is most certain, Socrates.

Socrates: Remember what we said before about when the soul uses the body as an instrument of perception, that is, when it uses the sense of sight, hearing or some other sense (for the meaning of perceiving through the body is perceiving through the senses). Were we not saying that the soul is then dragged by the body into the region of the changeable, where it wanders and is confused. The world spins around it, and it is like a drunkard when under their influence?

Cebes: Very true.

Socrates: But when returning into itself, the soul reflects. Then it passes into the realm of purity, eternity, immortality, and unchangeableness, which are its relatives. When with them, the soul lives forever, when she is by herself and is not let or hindered. Then it ceases from its erring ways, and now, being in association with the unchanging, it too is unchanging. Is not this state of the soul called wisdom?

Cebes: That is well and truly said, Socrates, he replied.

Socrates: To which class is the soul more nearly alike and related, as far as may be inferred from this argument, as well as from the preceding one?

Cebes: I think, Socrates, that, in the opinion of everyone who follows the argument, the soul will be infinitely more like the unchangeable. Even the most stupid person will not deny that.

Socrates: The body is more like the changing?

Cebes: Yes.

Socrates: Yet once more consider the matter in this light. When the soul and the body are united, then nature orders the soul to rule and govern, and the body to obey and serve. Now consider which of these two functions is more like the divine, and which is more like the mortal. Doesn't the divine appear to you to be that which naturally orders and rules, and the mortal that which is subject and servant?

Cebes: True.

Socrates: Which does the soul resemble?

Cebes: The soul resembles the divine and the body the mortal. There can be no doubt of that, Socrates.

Socrates: Then reflect, Cebes, whether the conclusion of the whole matter is this. The soul is in the very likeness of the divine, and immortal, and intelligible, and uniform, and indissoluble, and unchangeable. By contrast, the body is in the very likeness of the human, and mortal, and unintelligible, and multiform, and dissoluble, and changeable. Can this, my dear Cebes, be denied?

Cebes: No, indeed.

Socrates: If this is true, then is not the body susceptible to speedy dissolution? Also, is not the soul almost or altogether indissoluble?

Cebes: Certainly. . . .

Socrates: That soul, which is invisible, departs to the invisible world and goes to the divine and immortal and rational. Arriving there, it is secure of happiness and is released from the error and foolishness of men, their fears and wild passions and all other human ills, and forever dwells, as they say of the initiated, in company with the gods. Is not this true, Cebes?

Cebes: Yes, beyond doubt.

CREATION (from Timeas)

Creator (Demiurge) Creates the World from a Pattern

First then, in my judgment, we must make a distinction and ask two questions. What is that which always is and has no becoming? What is that which is always becoming and never is? That which is apprehended by intelligence and reason is always in the same state. That which is conceived by opinion with the help of sensation and without reason is always in a process of becoming and perishing, and never really is. Now everything that becomes or is created must of necessity be created by some cause, for without a cause nothing can be created. The work of the creator, whenever he looks to the unchangeable and fashions the form and nature of his work after an unchangeable pattern, must necessarily be made fair and perfect. When he looks to the created only and uses a created pattern, it is not fair or perfect. Was the heaven or the world, whether called by this or by any other more appropriate name, always in existence and without beginning, or was it created and had a beginning? This question has to be asked at the beginning of an inquiry about anything. Created, I reply, being visible and tangible and having a body, and therefore sensible. All sensible things are apprehended by opinion and sense, and are in a process of creation and created. Now that which is created must, as we affirm, of necessity be created by a cause. But the father and maker of all this universe is past finding out. Even if we found him, to tell of him to all men would be impossible.

There is still a question to be asked about him. Which of the patterns had the artificer in view when he made the world, the pattern of the unchangeable, or of that which is created? If the world is indeed fair and the artificer good, it is manifest that he must have looked to that which is eternal. If what cannot be said without blasphemy is true, then he looked to the created pattern. Everyone will see that he must have looked to the eternal, for the world is the fairest of creations and he is the best of causes. Having been created in this way, the world has been framed in the likeness of that which is apprehended by reason and mind, and is unchangeable. It must therefore of necessity, if this is admitted, be a copy of something. Now it is all-important that the beginning of everything should be according to nature. In speaking of the copy and the original, we may assume that words are akin to the matter which they describe. When they relate to the lasting, permanent, and intelligible, they ought to be lasting and unalterable. As far as their nature allows, they should be irrefutable and immovable, nothing less. But when they express only the copy or likeness and not the eternal things themselves, they need only be likely and analogous to the real words. As being is to becoming, so is truth to belief.

If then, Socrates, amid the many opinions about the gods and the generation of the universe, we are not able to give notions which are altogether and in every respect exact and consistent with one another, do not be surprised. It is enough if we adduce probabilities as likely as any others. We must remember that I who am the speaker, and you who are the judges, are only mortal men, and we ought to accept the tale which is probable and inquire no further.

Creation of the World's Soul

Such was the whole plan of the eternal God about the god that was to be. For this reason, he gave it a body that was smooth and even, having a surface in every direction equidistant from the center. It was a body entire and perfect, formed out of perfect bodies. In the center he put the soul, which he diffused throughout the body, making it also the exterior environment of it. He made the universe a circle moving in a circle, one and solitary, yet by reason of its excellence able to converse with itself and needing no other friendship or acquaintance. Having these purposes in view, he created the world a blessed god. God did not make the soul after the body, although we are speaking of them in this order. Having brought them together, he would never have allowed the elder to be ruled by the younger. This order of presentation is merely a random manner of speaking on our part, because we ourselves are very much under the dominion of chance. In contrast, God made the soul prior to and older than the body in both origin and excellence, intending her to be the ruler and mistress, and the body to be her subject. He created the soul out of the following elements and in the following way. Out of the indivisible and unchangeable, and also out of that which is divisible and pertains to material bodies, he compounded a third and intermediate kind of essence. This essence partook of the nature of the same and of the other, and he placed this compound in a mean between the indivisible and the divisible material nature.

Time Created as a Moving Image of Eternity

When the father and creator saw the creature he had made moving and living, a created image of the eternal gods, he rejoiced. In his joy, he determined to make the copy still more like the original. As the original was eternal, he sought to make the universe eternal so far as possible. Now, the nature of the ideal being was everlasting, but to bestow this attribute in its fullness upon a created being was impossible. Therefore, he resolved to create a moving image of eternity. When he set the heaven in order, he made this image eternal, moving according to number, while eternity itself rests in unity. This image we call time.

There were no days, nights, months, and years before the heaven was created, but when he constructed the heaven, he created them also. They are all parts of time. The past and future are created species of time, which we unconsciously but wrongly transfer to the eternal essence. We say that it "was," it "is," and it "will be," but the truth is that "is" alone is properly attributed to it. "Was" and "will be" are only to be spoken of becoming in time, for they are motions. That which is immovably the same cannot become older or younger by time. It never became, has become, or will hereafter be older or younger. Nor is it subject at all to any of those states which affect moving and sensible things, of which generation is the cause. These are the forms of time, which imitates eternity and revolves according to a law of number. Moreover, when we say that what has become is become, that what becomes is becoming, that what will become is about to become, and that the nonexistent is nonexistent, all these are inaccurate modes of expression. But perhaps this whole subject will be discussed more suitably on some other occasion.

Human Souls Created

Thus he spoke, and once more into the cup in which he had previously mingled the soul of the universe, he poured the remains of the elements and mingled them in much the same manner. They were not pure as before, but diluted to the second and third degree. Having made the mixture, he divided the whole into souls equal in number to the stars, and assigned each soul to a star. Having placed them there as in a chariot, he showed them the nature of the universe and declared to them the laws of destiny. According to these laws, their first birth would be one and the same for all, so that no one should suffer a disadvantage at his hands. They were to be sown into the instruments of time severally adapted to them, and to come forth as the most religious of animals. Since human nature was of two kinds, the superior race would hereafter be called man.Now, when they should be implanted in bodies by necessity, and be always gaining or losing some part of their bodily substance, first of all it would be necessary that they should all possess one and the same faculty of sensation, arising out of irresistible impressions. In the second place, they must have love, in which pleasure and pain mingle, as well as fear, anger, and the feelings akin or opposite to them. If they conquered these, they would live righteously, but if they were conquered by them, unrighteously.

THE EXISTENCE AND NATURE OF THE GODS (The Laws, Book 10)

The Three Forms of Impiety

Athenian: We have already stated in general terms what the punishment for sacrilege will be, whether fraudulent or violent. Now we must determine the punishment for those who speak or act disrespectfully toward the gods. First, we must give them a warning, which may be framed in the following terms. No one who believed in the gods in obedience to the laws ever intentionally committed an unholy act or uttered an unlawful word. Anyone who did so must have assumed one of three things. Either he believed that the gods did not exist, which is the first possibility. Secondly, he may have believed that if they did exist, they took no care of humanity. Thirdly, he may have believed that they were easily appeased and turned aside from their purpose by sacrifices and prayers.

Cleinias: What will we say or do to these persons?

Athenian: My good friend, let us first hear the jests which I suspect that they, in their superiority, will utter against us.

Cleinias: What jests?

Athenian: They will make some irreverent speech of this sort. "O inhabitants of Athens, Sparta, and Knossos," they will reply, "you speak truly. Some of us deny the very existence of the gods, while others, as you say, are of the opinion that they do not care about us. Others believe that they are turned from their course by gifts. Now, in the matter of laws, we have a right to claim what you yourself allowed. Before you are hard upon us and threaten us, you should argue with us and convince us. You should first attempt to teach and persuade us that there are gods by reasonable evidence. You should also prove that they are too good to be unrighteous, or to be propitiated and turned from their course by gifts. When we hear such things said of them by those who are considered to be the best of poets, orators, prophets, and priests, the thoughts of most of us are not set upon abstaining from unrighteous acts. Instead, we think about doing those acts and then atoning for them. When lawgivers profess that they are gentle and not stern, we think that they should first of all use persuasion with us. They should show us the existence of gods in a truer manner than other men do, and who knows but that we will listen to you? If our request is a fair one, please accept our challenge.

Inadequate Proof of the Gods

Cleinias: But is there any difficulty in proving the existence of the gods?

Athenian: How would you prove it?

Cleinias: How? In the first place, the earth, the sun, the stars, and the universe furnish proofs of their existence. The beautiful order of the seasons, divided into years and months, provides proof as well. There is also the fact that all Greeks and barbarians believe in them.

Athenian: My sweet friend, I fear the contempt with which the profane will likely attack us, though I will not say that I care much about it. You do not understand the nature of their complaint. You imagine that they rush into impiety only from a love of sensual pleasure.

Cleinias: Why, Stranger, what other reason is there?

Athenian: There is a reason which you, living in a different atmosphere, would never guess.

Cleinias: What is it?

Athenian: It is a very grievous sort of ignorance that is imagined to be the greatest wisdom.

Cleinias: What do you mean?

Athenian: At Athens, there are tales preserved in writing which the virtue of your state, as I am informed, refuses to admit. They speak of the gods in prose as well as verse. The oldest of them tell of the origin of the heavens and of the world. Not far from the beginning of their story, they proceed to narrate the birth of the gods and how they behaved toward one another after they were born. Whether these stories have a good or a bad influence in other ways, I should not like to be severe upon them, because they are ancient. However, looking at them with reference to the duties of children to their parents, I cannot praise them. I do not think that they are useful or at all true. Of the words of the ancients I have nothing more to say, and I wish to say of them only what is pleasing to the gods.

As for our younger generation and their wisdom, I cannot let them off when they do mischief. Consider the effect of their words. When you and I argue for the existence of the gods and produce the sun, moon, stars, and earth, claiming a divine nature for them, these philosophers tell a different story. If we listen to them, we would say that the heavenly bodies are earth and stones only. They can have no care at all for human affairs, and all religion is merely a concoction of words and a make-believe.'

Atheistic Materialism and Cultural Relativism

Athenian: Consider now the widespread doctrine that all things come into being, have come into being, and will come into being, some by nature, some by art, and some by chance.

Cleinias: Is that not true?

Athenian: Well, philosophers are probably right. At any rate, we may as well follow in their track and examine what they and their disciples mean.

Cleinias: By all means.

Athenian: They say that the greatest and fairest things are the work of nature and of chance, and the lesser are the work of art. Art receives from nature the greater and primeval creations, and then molds and fashions all those lesser works which are generally called artificial.

Cleinias: How is that?

Athenian: I will explain my meaning still more clearly. They say that fire, water, earth, and air all exist by nature and chance, and none of them exist by art. As for the bodies which come next in order, such as the earth, sun, moon, and stars, they have been created by means of these absolutely inanimate existences. The elements are severally moved by chance and some inherent force according to certain affinities among them, such as hot with cold, dry with moist, soft with hard, and according to all the other accidental admixtures of opposites formed by necessity. After this fashion and in this manner, the whole heaven has been created, along with all that is in the heaven, as well as animals, all plants, and all the seasons. All these come from these elements, not by the action of mind, as they say, or of any god, or from art, but as I was saying, by nature and chance only. Art sprang up afterward out of these, mortal and of mortal birth. It produced in play certain images and very partial imitations of the truth, having an affinity to one another, such as music, painting, and their companion arts create. There are other arts which have a serious purpose, and these cooperate with nature, such as medicine, husbandry, and gymnastics. They say that politics also cooperate with nature, but in a lesser degree, having more of art. Likewise, legislation is entirely a work of art, and it is based on assumptions which are not true.

Cleinias: How do you mean?

Athenian: In the first place, my dear friend, these people would say that the gods exist not by nature, but by art, and by the laws of states, which are different in different places according to the agreement of those who make them. They say that the honorable is one thing by nature and another thing by law, and that the principles of justice have no existence at all in nature. Instead, mankind is always disputing about them and altering them. The alterations made by art and by law have no basis in nature, but are of authority only for the moment and at the time at which they are made. These, my friends, are the sayings of wise men, poets, and prose writers, which find a way into the minds of youth. They are told by them that the highest right is might, and in this way the young fall into impieties, under the idea that the gods are not such as the law bids them imagine. Hence arise factions, as these philosophers invite them to lead a true life according to nature, that is, to live in real dominion over others, and not in legal subjection to them.

Cleinias: What a dreadful picture you have given, Stranger, and how great is the injury thus inflicted on young men, to the ruin of both states and families!

Proof of the Existence of Gods: Soul as Self-Moving First Cause

Athenian: I mean this: when one thing changes another, and that another, will there be any primary changing element among them? How can a thing which is moved by another ever be the beginning of change? It is impossible. But when the self-moved changes another, and that again another, and thus thousands upon tens of thousands of bodies are set in motion, must not the beginning of all this motion be the change of the self-moving principle?

Cleinias: That is very true, and I quite agree.

Athenian: Or, to put the question in another way, making answer to ourselves: If, as most of these philosophers have the audacity to affirm, all things were at rest in one mass, which of the principles of motion would first spring up among them?

Cleinias: Clearly the self-moving principle. There could be no change in them arising out of any external cause, so the change must first take place in themselves.

Athenian: Then we must say that self-motion is the origin of all motions, and the first to arise among things at rest as well as among things in motion. It is the eldest and mightiest principle of change, whereas that which is changed by another and moves another is second.

Cleinias: Quite true.

Athenian: At this stage of the argument, let us put a question.

Cleinias: What question?

Athenian: If we were to see this power existing in any earthy, watery, or fiery substance, simple or compound, how should we describe it?

Cleinias: You mean to ask whether we should call such a self-moving power life?

Athenian: I do.

Cleinias: Certainly we should.

Athenian: And when we see soul in anything, must we not do the same? Must we not admit that this is life?

Cleinias: We must. . . .

Athenian: And what is the definition of that which is named "soul"? Can we conceive of any other than the one already given, namely, the motion which can move itself?

Cleinias: You mean to say that the essence defined as the self-moved is the same as that which bears the name of soul?

Athenian: Yes. If this is true, do we still maintain that anything is lacking in the proof that the soul is the first origin and moving power of all that is, has become, or will be, along with their contraries, when it has been clearly shown to be the source of change and motion in all things?

Cleinias: Certainly not. The soul, being the source of motion, has been most satisfactorily shown to be the oldest of all things.

Athenian: And is not that motion which is produced in another by reason of another, but never has any self-moving power at all, being in truth the change of an inanimate body, to be reckoned second, or by any lower number you prefer?

Cleinias: Exactly.

Athenian: Then we are right, and speak the most perfect and absolute truth, when we say that the soul is prior to the body. The body is second and comes afterward, born to obey the soul, which is the ruler.

Cleinias: Nothing can be more true.

Athenian: Do you remember our old admission, that if the soul was prior to the body, the things of the soul were also prior to those of the body?

Cleinias: Certainly.

Athenian: Then characters, manners, wishes, reasonings, true opinions, reflections, and recollections are prior to the length, breadth, depth, and strength of bodies, if the soul is prior to the body. . . .

Athenian: Shall we say, then, that it is the soul which controls heaven, earth, and the whole world? Is it a principle of wisdom and virtue, or a principle which has neither wisdom nor virtue? Suppose we make answer as follows.

Cleinias: How would you answer?

Athenian: My friend, if we say that the whole path and movement of heaven, and of all that is in it, is by nature akin to the movement, revolution, and calculation of mind, and proceeds by kindred laws, then it is plain we must say that the best soul takes care of the world and guides it along the good path. . . .

Athenian: Must we not say the same in like manner of the stars, the moon, the years, months, and seasons? Since a soul or souls possessing every sort of excellence are the causes of all of them, those souls are gods, whether they are living beings residing in bodies to order the whole heaven, or whatever the place and mode of their existence may be. Will anyone who admits all this venture to deny that all things are full of gods?

Divine Providence and the Responsibility of Human Free Will

Athenian: Let us say to the youth: The ruler of the universe has ordered all things with a view to the excellence and preservation of the whole, and each part, so far as possible, has an action and passion appropriate to it. Over these, down to the smallest fraction of them, ministers have been appointed to preside, who have wrought out their perfection with exact detail. One of these portions of the universe is your own, unhappy man, which, however small, contributes to the whole. You do not seem to be aware that this and every other creation exists for the sake of the whole, in order that the life of the whole may be blessed. You are created for the sake of the whole, and not the whole for the sake of you. Every physician and every skilled artist does all things for the sake of the whole, directing his effort toward the common good, executing the part for the sake of the whole, and not the whole for the sake of the part. You are annoyed because you are ignorant of how what is best for you happens to you and to the universe, so far as the laws of common creation admit. Now, as the soul combines first with one body and then with another, it undergoes all sorts of changes, either of itself or through the influence of another soul. All that remains to the player of the game is to shift the pieces, sending the better nature to the better place and the worse to the worse, assigning to each its proper portion.

Cleinias: In what way do you mean?

Athenian: In a way which makes the care of all things easy to the gods. If anyone were to form or fashion all things without any regard to the whole—if, for example, he formed a living element of water out of fire, instead of forming many things out of one or one out of many in regular order, attaining to a first, second, or third birth—the transmutation would have been infinite. But as it is, the ruler of the world has a wonderfully easy task.

Cleinias: How so?

Athenian: I will explain. When the king saw that our actions possessed life, with much virtue in them and much vice, and that the soul and body, although not eternal like the gods of popular opinion, were indestructible once brought into existence (for if either had been destroyed, there would have been no generation of living beings); and when he observed that the good of the soul was ever by nature designed to profit humanity, and the evil to harm it—seeing all this, he contrived to place each of the parts so that their position might procure the victory of good and the defeat of evil in the whole in the easiest and best manner. He contrived a general plan by which a thing of a certain nature found a certain seat and place. However, the formation of qualities he left to the wills of individuals. Every one of us is made pretty much what he is by the bent of his desires and the nature of his soul.

Cleinias: Yes, that is probably true.

Athenian: Then all things which possess a soul change, and they contain within themselves a principle of change. In changing, they move according to law and the order of destiny. Natures which have undergone a lesser change move less and remain on the earth's surface. Those which have suffered more change and have become more criminal sink into the abyss, that is to say, into Hades and other places in the world below, the very names of which terrify people, and which they picture to themselves as in a dream, both while alive and when released from the body. Whenever the soul receives more good or evil from its own energy and the strong influence of others, when it has communion with divine virtue and becomes divine, it is carried into another and better place which is perfect in holiness. But when it has communion with evil, it changes the place of its life accordingly. "This is the justice of the gods who inhabit Olympus" [Odyssey 19.43]. O youth or young man, who imagine that you are neglected by the gods, know that if you become worse, you will go to the worse souls, or if better, to the better. In every succession of life and death, you will do and suffer what like fitly suffers at the hands of like.

Gods Cannot be Bribed

Athenian: The other notion, that the gods are appeased by the wicked and take gifts, is something we must not concede to anyone. Every man should disprove it to the utmost of his power.

Cleinias: Very good. Let us do as you say.

Athenian: Well then, by the gods themselves, I call on you to tell me: if they are to be propitiated, how are they to be appeased? Who are they, and what is their nature? Must they not be, at the very least, rulers who unceasingly order the whole heaven?

Cleinias: True.

Athenian: And to what earthly rulers can they be compared, or who can be compared to them? How can we find an image of the greater in the lesser? Are they charioteers of contending pairs of steeds, or pilots of vessels? Perhaps they might be compared to the generals of armies, or likened to physicians providing against the diseases that make war upon the body. They might be compared to husbandmen observing anxiously the effects of the seasons on the growth of plants, or perhaps to shepherds of flocks. We acknowledge that the world is full of many goods and also of evils, indeed of more evils than goods, and so there is an immortal conflict going on among us that requires marvelous watchfulness. In that conflict, the gods and demigods are our allies, and we are their property. Injustice, insolence, and folly are our destruction; justice, temperance, and wisdom are our salvation. The place of these latter virtues is in the life of the gods, although some vestige of them may occasionally be discerned among mankind.

Upon this earth, however, we know that souls possessing an unjust spirit reside. They may be compared to brute animals that fawn upon their keepers, whether dogs, shepherds, or the best and most perfect masters. As the voices of the wicked declare, they prevail by flattery, prayers, and incantations, and they are allowed to make their gains with impunity. This sin, termed dishonesty, is an evil of the same kind as disease in living bodies or pestilence in seasons of the year. In cities and governments, it bears another name, which is injustice.

Cleinias: Quite true.

Athenian: What else can anyone say who declares that the gods are always lenient to the doers of unjust acts if those doers divide the spoil with them? It is as if wolves were to toss a portion of their prey to the dogs, and the dogs, mollified by the gift, allowed them to tear the flocks. Must not anyone who maintains that the gods can be propitiated argue in this way?

Cleinias: Precisely so.

Athenian: To which of the above-mentioned classes of guardians would any man compare the gods without absurdity? Will he say that they are like pilots who are turned away from their duty by libations of wine and the savor of fat, ultimately overturning both ship and sailors?

Cleinias: Assuredly not.

Athenian: And surely they are not like charioteers who are bribed to give up the victory to other chariots?

Cleinias: That would be a fearful image of the gods.

Athenian: Nor are they like generals, physicians, husbandmen, or shepherds, and no one would compare them to dogs silenced by wolves.

Cleinias: That is a thing not to be spoken of.

Athenian: Are not all the gods the highest of all guardians, and do they not guard our highest interests?

Cleinias: Yes, the highest.

Athenian: Shall we say, then, that those who guard our noblest interests, and are the best of guardians, are inferior in virtue to dogs or to human beings of even moderate excellence, who would never betray justice for the sake of gifts impiously offered to them by unjust men?

Source: Plato, Euthyphro, Phaedo, Timeas, The Laws, translated by Benjamin Jowett, adapted.

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ARISTOTLE: PURPOSE, PRIME MOVER

Aristotle (384–322 BC) was born in Stagira, in northern Greece, the son of a physician to the Macedonian royal court. At seventeen he traveled to Athens and joined Plato's Academy, remaining there for two decades until Plato's death, choosing to leave the city rather than accept the Academy's new leadership. He spent several years traveling and studying marine life on the island of Lesbos before King Philip II of Macedon summoned him to tutor his teenage son, the future Alexander the Great. He held this role for several years, though little is known about what passed between them. Aristotle later returned to Athens and founded his own school, the Lyceum, where he reportedly lectured while walking through its covered colonnade, later giving rise to the label "Peripatetic", Greek for "walkers" for his followers. His surviving works, covering logic, biology, physics, ethics, and metaphysics, were never intended for publication. They are largely lecture notes, and their often unpolished style reflects that origin. When anti-Macedonian sentiment flared in Athens after Alexander's death, Aristotle fled the city, reportedly remarking that he would not let Athens sin twice against philosophy, a reference to Socrates' execution. He died the following year, in 322 BC, on the island of Euboea.

The selections below from several of his works and cover three main themes that were particularly influential in the philosophy of religion. The first of these is on purpose in the natural world. There he distinguishes between four types of causes we see operating in the natural world: material, formal, efficient and final". The material cause something is made of (e.g., stone), the form or definition that makes it what it is (e.g., the shape of a stone statue), the agent that brought about the change (e.g., the sculptor), and the end or purpose the change serves (e.g., honoring a hero). He continues, though, that all four causes involve a purpose, and we must give a full scientific explanation for all four causes. However, the formal, efficient, and final causes often collapse into one another, as when a human parent produces another human. He argues further that nature itself acts for a purpose, and not from mere chance. He defends the concept of final cause against a rival, proto-evolutionary explanation, that structures like sharp front teeth arose by sheer necessity and merely happened to prove useful. Aristotle counters that such features arise regularly rather than randomly, and regularity rules out chance. Accordingly, nature's productions must be for the sake of something, not merely byproducts of necessity.

The second theme concerns the human soul. He opens arguing that the study of the soul" is among the most valuable inquiries, since soul is the origin of all living things. He argues that the soul is not itself a body, but the "actuality," the realized form, of a natural body that has the potential for life. Aristotle compares this to the difference between simply knowing a subject vs. actively thinking about it at a given moment. A person asleep still has their knowledge, just as a living body still has its soul, even when neither is being actively exercised. Next he argues that the soul requires a body and cannot exist without it, a view later called hylomorphism. Accordingly, to ask whether soul and body are "one" is as misguided as asking whether wax and its shape are one. The soul relates to body just as vision relates to the eye. Thus, the soul is the body's defining function, rather than a separate substance riding inside the body. He then itemizes the different abilities or powers of the soul: nutrition, sensation, locomotion, and thought. Even plants, he says, possess the most basic of these, nutrition and growth, which is why we say that they too live.

The third theme is the Prime Mover. He argues that the eternal motion of the heavens requires a first cause that moves everything else, while that first cause itself remains entirely unmoved. It does not act by pushing, but by " being loved", that is, it is an object of desire that draws things toward it. Aristotle concludes this mover must be without size or parts and be unchangeable. Its own activity can only be thinking about itself, since thinking about anything lesser would lessen its perfection. He continues arguing that divine activity consists of contemplation. Considering that divine beings must be supremely happy, he asks what such beings could actually be doing, since acts of justice, courage, or generosity all seem beneath divine life. The only fitting divine activity left is speculative contemplation. Aristotle concludes that human happiness, too, is essentially contemplative. The wise person who most exercises reason coming closest to the gods' own blessedness and, for that reason, being most beloved by them.

PURPOSE IN THE NATURAL WORLD

Four Causes: Material, Formal, Efficient and Final (Physics 2.3)

We must next consider the question of the causes that make a thing what it is: what they are and how they are to be classified. For knowledge is the object of our studies, and we can hardly be said really to know a thing until we have grasped the "why" of it, that is, until we have grasped the causes that are most directly responsible for it. Clearly, then, this must be our aim also regarding the phenomena of becoming and perishing and all forms of physical change, so that having grasped the underlying principles we may employ them in the explanation of particular phenomena.

[1. Material cause.] In one sense, then, the "reason" for anything means the material out of which an object is generated and which is immanent in the generated object: for example, the bronze of a statue, the silver of a bowl, and also the genera to which such materials belong.

[2. Formal cause.] Next, it may mean the form or pattern, that is, what the thing is defined as being essentially. It also may mean the genus to which this essence belongs. Thus the ratio 2:1 is a formal condition of the musical octave. Generally speaking, number and the causes that make up the definition of a thing are what constitute its formal condition.

[3. Efficient cause.] A third meaning is the immediate source of change or of cessation from change. In this sense a man who gives advice acts as "determining agency" [on him who receives it], a father on his offspring, and generally speaking whatever produces or changes anything on the product or on the thing changed.

[4. Final cause.] Finally, the reason for anything may mean the end (telos) or purpose for the sake of which a thing is done: for example, health may be a determining cause in going for a walk. Why is he taking a walk?" we ask. "In order to be healthy." Having said this, we think we have given a sufficient explanation. Under this category must also be put all the intermediate steps which the agent must take as means to the end. Examples are losing weight, defecation, also drugs and surgical instruments, as means to health. All these are for the sake of an end, although they differ in that some are actions to be performed while others are instruments to be used. Thus we have enumerated the various ways in which one thing can cause another.

The Four Causes involve Purpose (Physics, 2.7)

It is clear, then, that there are such things as determining causes and that they are of four kinds, as we have stated. These correspond to the four meanings of the question "why." The "why" of anything may be referred: (1) to the essential nature of the thing in question [i.e., formal cause], when it is a question of things that do not involve change (for example, in mathematics, where our reasoning ultimately falls back upon the definition of a straight line or commensurability or the like); or (2) to the thing that started a movement going [i.e., efficient cause] (for example, "Why did they make war? Because they had been raided"); or (3) to the end in view [i.e., final cause] (for example, [they make war] in order to gain sovereign power); or (4) in the case of things that come into existence, to the material out of which they come [i.e., material cause]. These, then, being the four kinds of determining cause that there are, it is the business of the natural philosopher to understand them all. His explanations, to be scientifically adequate, must take account of each of them: the matter, the form, the moving force, and the goal.

It sometimes happens that the last three of these causes coincide. The essential nature of a thing may often be regarded as identical with the fundamental purpose which it serves. Both of these aspects must be identical in kind with the source of the thing's movement, for example, man being produced only by man. This latter identity holds true in all cases where the efficient cause is itself something that changes. As for the opposite sort of case (that is, where the efficient cause possesses within itself neither movement nor the power of movement, but is motionless), this falls outside the province of natural science. From this we may distinguish three branches of inquiry: one of things to which movement is foreign, a second of moving but imperishable things, and a third of things that perish.

In short, then, when we explain anything we must immediately take into account its material, its essential character, and the source of its movement. For, this is principally how explanations of occurrences are sought. "What comes into existence, and what has preceded it?" "What was the force or agent that started the process, and on what did it act?" Questions such as these, properly ordered, are essential to every [scientific investigation].

The principles that give rise to and govern physical movement or change are of two kinds. One of them does not itself partake of change, and is therefore not physical. I refer to whatever produces movement or change in other things without itself being affected. This is the absolutely unalterable and primary [aspect of things], their essential character, or form. It is thus also their end and goal. As nature is inherently goalful, the natural scientist must not neglect this aspect. He must, in short, explain the "why" of things in all four of its aspects, showing (1) how one thing necessarily, or at any rate normally, arises from another [efficient cause]; (2) how one thing is a precondition of another's existence, as premises provide the material for a conclusion [material cause]; (3) how this or that [entity or aspect] manifests a thing's essential nature [formal cause]; (4) and why it is better that this or that should be as it is (not, of course, without qualification but relatively to the whole character of the thing in question).

Nature acts for a Purpose, Not from mere Chance (Physics, 2.8)

We must now explain in what sense nature belongs to the class of final causes. Then [in the next chapter] we will consider what is meant by necessity when spoken of with reference to natural phenomena. For, people are constantly appealing to necessity as the cause of things, arguing that since the hot and the cold and all the other qualities are each of a certain definitive nature, the objects which they characterize. must exist and be created by necessity. Even those who admit some further determining principle of things (such as [Empedocles and his] Love and Strife, or [Anaxagoras and his] Mind) do not consistently adhere to their explanations [but fall back upon the idea of necessity].

[With reference to our first question] it may be objected that nature does not act with reference to a goal nor by reason of the fact that one thing is better than another, but instead for the same reason that it rains, that is, not to make the corn grow, but of necessity. When rain falls, so the argument runs, it is simply because the rising vapor has become cooled, and being cooled turns to water, which descends, causing the corn to grow. It is on the same basis as, when rain spoils the crops on the threshing-floor, we do not suppose it fell for the sake of spoiling them but that it merely happened to do so. Why, then, should it not be the same with the organic parts of nature? Take the case of our teeth, for example: the front teeth are sharp and suitable for tearing the food, the back ones broad and flat, suitable for grinding it. May they not have grown up thus by simple necessity, and their adaptation to their respective functions be purely a coincidence? The same argument can be offered about any organic structure to which purpose is commonly ascribed. It is further explained that where the organic structures happen to have been formed as if they had been arranged on purpose, the creatures which thus happen to be suitably organized have survived, while the others have perished (such as Empedocles relates of his man-faced ox-creatures).

While these and similar arguments may cause difficulties, they certainly do not represent the truth. For in the first place, teeth and all other natural phenomena come about in a certain way if not invariably at least normally, and this is inconsistent with the meaning of luck or chance. We do not appeal to luck or coincidence in explaining the frequency of rain in winter [in Athens where winters are wet and summers are dry] nor of heat in mid-summer. We would, however, if the situation were to be reversed. As every occurrence must be ascribed either to coincidence or to purpose, if such cases as the foregoing cannot be ascribed to coincidence or chance, they must be ascribed to purpose. But since even our opponents [such as Empedocles] will admit that all such occurrences are natural events, it follows that there is such a thing as purpose in nature and its processes [that is, final cause].

ON THE HUMAN SOUL

The Importance of the Study of the Soul (On the Soul, 1.1)

It may be assumed that all knowledge is beautiful and admirable. But one branch may be more so than another, either because of the exactness which is required for its examination, or for treating of objects more important and wonderful than any others. For both of these reasons, then, we may reasonably assign the first place to an inquiry into soul. For the knowledge of the soul promises to greatly contribute to all truth, and most especially to truth about nature, since, as we say, it is the origin of living beings. The object of our inquiry, then, is to study and discover its essential nature as well as its accidents. Among these, some seem to be affections unique to the soul, and others to belong to living beings, as original properties, through the soul.

Soul as Actuality of a Natural Body that Potentially Possesses Life (On the Soul, 2.1)

Let us attempt to determine what soul is, and what is the most general definition that can be given of it.

Substance is the name that we assign one class of existing things. This substance may be viewed from several perspectives, either, first, as matter, meaning by matter that which in itself is not any individual thing; or, secondly, as form and specific characteristic in virtue of which an object comes to be described as such and such an individual; or, thirdly, as the result produced by a combination of this matter and this form. Further, while matter is merely potential existence, the form is perfect actualization (a conception which may be taken in two types, either as resembling knowledge possessed or as corresponding to observation in active exercise).

These real substances again are thought to correspond for the most part with bodies, and more particularly with natural bodies, because these latter are the source from which other bodies are formed. Now among such natural bodies, some have and others do not have life. By life we mean the process of nutrition, increase and decay from an internal principle. Thus every natural body possessed of life would be a real substance, and a substance which we may describe as composite.

Since then the body, as possessed of life, is of this compound character, the body itself would not constitute the soul. For body is not something attributed to a subject [as is the case with life and soul]. Rather, the body acts as the underlying subject and the material basis. Thus then the soul must necessarily be a real substance, as the form which determines a natural body possessed potentially of life. The reality however of an object is contained in its perfect actualization. Soul therefore will be a perfect actualization of a body such as has been described. Perfect actualization however is a word used in two senses: it may be understood either as an implicit state corresponding to knowledge as possessed, or as an explicitly exercised process corresponding to active observation. Here, in reference to soul, it must evidently be understood in the first of these two senses. For the soul is present with us as much while we are asleep as while we are awake. While waking resembles active observation, sleep resembles the implicit though not exercised possession of knowledge. Now in reference to the same subject, it is the implicit knowledge of scientific principles which stands prior.

Soul therefore is the earlier or implicit perfect actualization of a natural body possessed potentially of life. Such potential life belongs to everything which is possessed of organs. Organs, we must remember, is a name that applies also to the parts of plants, except that they are completely uncompounded. Thus the leaf is the protection of the pericarp [i.e., the wall of a fruit] and the pericarp of the fruit. While the roots are analogous to the mouth in animals, both being used to absorb nourishment. Thus then, if we be required to frame some one common definition, which will apply to every form of soul, it would be that soul is the earlier perfect actualization of a natural organic body.

Soul requires Body (Hylomorphism): Soul plus Body parallels Sight plus the Eye (On the Soul, 2.2)

The definition we have just given should make it evident that we must no more ask whether the soul and the body are one, than ask whether the wax and the figure impressed upon it are one, or generally inquire whether the material and that of which it is the material are one. For, though unity and being are used in a variety of senses, their most distinctive sense is that of perfect actualization.

A general account has thus been given of the nature of the soul. It is, we have seen, a real substance which expresses an account of a thing. Such a substance is the manifestation of the inner meaning of such and such a body. Suppose, for example, that an instrument such as an axe were a natural body. Then its axehood (or its being an axe) would constitute its essential nature or reality, and thus, so to speak, its soul. For, if this axehood were taken away from it, it would be no longer an axe, except in so far as it might still be called by this same name. However, the object in question is as matter of fact only an axe. It has no soul that is the account and manifestation of the meaning of a body of this kind. Rather, that axe is only a natural body possessing within itself a cause of movement and of rest.

The theory just stated may also be viewed in reference to the separate bodily parts. Suppose that the eye was a living thing [like an animal]. Vision would be its soul, because vision is the reality which expresses the idea of the eye. The eye itself, on the other hand, is merely the material substratum for vision. When this power of vision fails, it no longer remains an eye, except in so far as it is still called by the same name. It would be just in the same way as an eye carved in stone or depicted in a painting is also called an "eye". Now what is true of the part must be applied to the living body taken as a whole. For perception as a whole stands to the whole sensitive body, as such, in the same ratio as the particular exercise of sense stands to a single organ of sense.

The part of our definition which speaks of something as "potentially possessed of life " must not be taken to mean that which has thrown off its soul, but rather that which has it. For, the seed and the fruit is such and such a body potentially. In the same way, then, just as cutting is the full actualization of an axe, or actual seeing the actualization of the eye, so too waking may be said to be the full actualization of the body. But it is in the sense in which vision is not only the exercise but also the implicit capacity of the eye that soul is the true actualization of the body. The body on the other hand is merely the material to which soul gives reality. Just as the eye is both the pupil and its vision, so too the living animal is together the soul and body in combination.

It is not then difficult to see that soul (or certain parts of it if it naturally allows for division) cannot be separated from the body. For in some cases the soul is the actualization of the parts of body themselves. It is however perfectly conceivable that there may be some parts of it which are separable and this because they are not the expression or actualization of any particular body. Indeed it is further matter of doubt whether soul as the perfect actualization of the body may not stand to it in the same separable relation as a sailor to his boat. This much may suffice as a description and sketch of the nature of the soul.

Abilities of the Soul: Nutrition, Appetite, Sensation, Locomotion, Thought (On the Soul, 2.2-3)

It may serve as a fresh beginning for our inquiry to say that the animate is distinguished from the inanimate or soulless by the fact of life. There are a number of ways in which a thing is said to live. Yet it needs to possess only one of them, such as reason, sense perception, locomotion and rest, and additional movement regarding nutrition, as well as of decay and growth. In all these cases we say it lives. Hence it is that all plants are thought to live. For, they clearly contain within themselves a power and principle that enables them to acquire growth and undergo decay in opposite directions. They do not while growing upwards not grow downwards. Rather, they grow in both directions and on all sides, and they continue to live so long as they can take in nourishment.

Now this faculty of nutrition may be separated from the other functions. But in the case of mortal creatures, the other faculties cannot exist separately from this, as indeed is evident from plants which possess no other psychic power except this faculty of growth. . . .

The term real substance is, as we have before remarked, used in three senses. It may denote either the specific form, or the material substratum, or thirdly the combination of the two. Of these different aspects of real substance, the matter or substratum is only the potential ground, whereas the form is the perfect actualization. Since then it is the product of the two that is animate, it cannot be that the body is the full actualization or expression of the soul. Rather on the contrary, it is the soul which is the full actualization of some body. This fact fully supports the view of those who hold that the soul cannot exist without some sort of body, yet cannot be identified with a body of any sort whatever. The truth is that soul is not body but it is something which belongs to body. Hence further, it exists in a body and in a body of such and such a nature. It cannot be left undetermined in the way that earlier thinkers introduced the soul into the body, without first determining what sort of body it was, although it does not even look as though any casual thing admitted any other casual thing.

This same conclusion may be reached also on a priori grounds. The full realization of each object is naturally reached only within that which is potentially existent and within that material substratum which is appropriate to it. It is clear then from these considerations that soul is a kind of full realization or expression of the idea of that which has potentially the power to be of such a character.

THE PRIME MOVER

Prime Unmoved Mover (Metaphysics, 12.7-8)

The first heaven [i.e., the outer sphere of the universe] must be eternal. There is therefore also something which moves it. Since that which moves and is moved is intermediate, there is something which moves without being moved, being eternal, substance, and actuality. The object of desire and the object of thought move in this way: they move without being moved. The primary objects of desire and of thought are the same. … The final cause is (a) some being for whose good an action is done, and (b) something at which the action aims. Of these the latter exists among unchangeable entities though the former does not. The final cause, then, produces motion as being loved, but all other things move by being moved. … On such a principle, then, depend the heavens and the world of nature. …

It is clear then from what has been said that there is a substance which is eternal and unmovable and separate from sensible things. It has been shown also that this substance cannot have any size, but is without parts and indivisible (for it produces movement through infinite time, but nothing finite has infinite power. While every size is either infinite or finite, it cannot, for the above reason, have finite size, and it cannot have infinite size because there is no infinite size at all). But it has also been shown that it is impassive and unalterable, since all the other changes are posterior to change of place. . . .

The first principle or primary being is not movable either in itself or accidentally, but produces the primary eternal and single movement. Now, since (a) that which is moved must be moved by something, and (b) the first mover must be in itself unmovable, and (c) eternal movement must be produced by something eternal and a single movement by a single thing, and (d) since we see that besides the simple spatial movement of the universe, which we say the first and unmovable substance produces, there consequently are other spatial movements which are eternal, namely, those of the planets. Each of these movements also must be caused by a substance both unmovable in itself and eternal. For the nature of the stars is eternal just because it is a certain kind of substance, and the mover is eternal and prior to the moved, and that which is prior to a substance must be a substance. Evidently, then, there must be substances which are of the same number as the movements of the stars, and in their nature eternal, and in themselves unmovable, and without size, for the reason before mentioned. It is also evident that the movers are substances, and one of these is first and another second according to the same order as the movements of the stars. . . . The number of all the spheres (both those which move the planets and those which counteract these) will be fifty-five. Let this, then, be taken as the number of the spheres, so that the unmovable substances and principles also may probably be taken as precisely so many.

The nature of the divine thought involves certain problems. For while thought is held to be the most divine of things observed by us, the question how it must be situated in order to have that character involves difficulties. For if it thinks of nothing, what dignity is there in this? It is just like one who sleeps. If it thinks, but this depends on something else, then (since that which is its substance is not the act of thinking, but a potency) it cannot be the best substance. For it is through thinking that its value belongs to it. Further, whether its substance is the faculty of thought or the act of thinking, what does it think of? Either of itself or of something else. If of something else, either of the same thing always or of something different. Does it matter, then, or not, whether it thinks of the good or of any chance thing? Are there not some things about which it is incredible that it should think? Evidently, then, it thinks of that which is most divine and precious, and it does not change. For change would be change for the worse, and this would be already a movement. First, then, if "thought" is not the act of thinking but a potency, it would be reasonable to suppose that the continuity of its thinking is wearisome to it. Secondly, there would evidently be something else more precious than thought, namely, that which is thought of. For both thinking and the act of thought will belong even to one who thinks of the worst thing in the world, so that if this ought to be avoided (and it ought, for there are even some things which it is better not to see than to see), the act of thinking cannot be the best of things. Therefore it must be of itself that the divine thought thinks (since it is the most excellent of things), and its thinking is a thinking on thinking.

Divine Activity as Contemplation (Nicomachean Ethics, 10)

8. . . . That perfect happiness is a species of speculative activity will appear from the following consideration among others. Our conception of the Gods is that they are preeminently happy and fortunate. But what kind of actions do we properly attribute to them? Are they just actions? But it would make the Gods ridiculous to suppose that they form contracts, restore deposits, and so on. Are they then courageous actions? Do the Gods endure dangers and alarms for the sake of honor? Or liberal actions? But to whom should they give money? It would be absurd to suppose that they have a currency or anything of the kind. Again, what will be the nature of their temperate actions? Surely to praise the gods for temperance is to degrade them; they are exempt from low desires. We may go through the whole category of virtues, and it will appear that whatever relates to moral action is petty and unworthy of the Gods.

Yet the Gods are universally conceived as living and therefore as displaying activity; they are certainly not conceived as sleeping like Endymion. If then action and still more production is denied to one who is alive, what is left but speculation? It follows that the activity of God being preeminently blissful will be speculative, and if so then the human activity which is most nearly related to it will be most capable of happiness.

It is an evidence of this truth that the other animals, as being perfectly destitute of such activity, do not participate in happiness; for while the whole life of the Gods is fortunate or blessed, the life of men is blessed in so far as it possesses a certain resemblance to their speculative activity. But no other animal is happy, as no other animal participates at all in speculation.

We conclude then that happiness is coextensive with speculation, and that the greater a person's power of speculation, the greater will be his happiness, not as an accidental fact but in virtue of the speculation, as speculation is honorable in itself. Hence happiness must be a kind of speculation.

9. Man, as being human, will require external prosperity. His nature is not of itself sufficient for speculation, it needs bodily health, food, and care of every kind. It must not however be supposed that, because it is impossible to be fortunate without external goods, a great variety of such goods will be necessary to happiness. For neither self-sufficiency nor moral action consists in excess; it is possible to do noble deeds without being lord of land and sea, as moderate means will enable a person to act in accordance with virtue. We may clearly see that it is so; for it seems that private persons practice virtue not less but actually more than persons in high place. It is enough that such a person should possess as much as is requisite for virtue; his life will be happy if he lives in the active exercise of virtue. Solon was right perhaps in his description of the happy man as one " who is moderately supplied with external goods, and yet has performed the noblest actions,"—such was his opinion—"and had lived a temperate life," for it is possible to do one's duty with only moderate means. It seems too that Anaxagoras did not conceive of the happy man as possessing wealth or power when he said that he should not be surprised if the happy man proved a puzzle in the eyes of the world; for the world judges by externals alone, it has no perception of anything that is not external.

The opinions of philosophers then seem to agree with our theories. Such opinions, it is true, possess a sort of authority; but it is the facts of life that are the tests of truth in practical matters, as they possess a supreme authority. It is right then to consider the doctrines which have been already advanced in reference to the facts of life, to accept them if they harmonize with those facts, and to regard them as mere theories if they disagree with them.

Again, he whose activity is directed by reason and who cultivates reason, and is in the best, i.e. the most rational, state of mind is also, as it seems, the most beloved of the Gods. For if the Gods care at all for human things, as is believed, it will be only reasonable to hold that they delight in what is best and most related to themselves, i.e. in reason, and that they requite with kindness those who love and honor it above all else, as caring for what is dear to themselves and performing right and noble actions.

It is easy to see that these conditions are found preeminently in the wise man. He will therefore be most beloved of the Gods. We may fairly suppose too that he is most happy; and if so, this is another reason for thinking that the wise man is preeminently happy.

Source: Aristotle, Physics, translated by Philip Wheelwright; On the Soul, translated by Edwin Wallace; Metaphysics, translated by William David Ross; Nicomachean Ethics, translated by James Edward Cowell Welldon. All translations adapted.

STUDY QUESTIONS

Please answer all of the following questions.

1. According to the text, how did the early Pre-Socratic philosophers subvert traditional Greek mythology without necessarily being explicitly atheistic?

2. According to the fragments of Pythagoras, what is the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, and why does it imply that all living beings belong to one great family?

3. According to Heraclitus, what is the nature of the Logos, and how is fire related to the eternal transformations of the cosmos?

4. According to Xenophanes, why are traditional Homeric and Hesiodic depictions of the gods problematic, and how does his own concept of a single God differ from mortal human forms?

5. In Plato's Euthyphro, what is the "Euthyphro Dilemma," and why does Socrates conclude that "loved by the gods" cannot be the definition of piety?

6. According to Socrates in Plato's Phaedo, why is the physical body an obstacle to acquiring pure knowledge, and why do true philosophers engage in the practice of dying?

7. According to Plato's doctrine of recollection in the Phaedo, how does our perception of imperfect sensible equality prove that we possessed knowledge of absolute equality before birth?

8. According to Socrates in the Phaedo, why does the soul's affinity for the unchangeable and intelligible Forms imply that it is far less susceptible to dissolution than the mortal body?

9. In Plato's Timaeus, why did the Demiurge look to an eternal, unchangeable pattern rather than a created one when fashioning the world?

10. According to Plato in the Timaeus, how did the creator construct the soul of the world, and why is time created as a "moving image of eternity"?

11. According to Plato in the Timaeus, what destiny and psychological struggles were assigned to individual human souls when they were distributed among the stars?

12. In Book 10 of Plato's Laws, what are the three distinct forms of impiety that lead to sacrilege and lawlessness?

13. According to Plato in The Laws, why do materialist explanations of the universe fail, and how does the self-moving nature of the soul prove that soul is prior to matter?

14. According to Plato in The Laws, why is the claim that the gods can be appeased or bribed by gifts and prayers a degrading betrayal of their role as perfect guardians?

15. According to Aristotle in the Physics, what are the four causes (material, formal, efficient, and final), and how do formal, efficient, and final causes often coincide in nature?

16. According to Aristotle in the Physics, how does the regular occurrence of natural structures like teeth prove that nature operates for a final cause rather than by chance?

17. According to Aristotle in On the Soul, what is the general definition of the soul as the "first actualization" of a natural body, and why can it not exist without a body?

18. According to Aristotle in the Metaphysics, how does the Prime Mover produce eternal motion in the cosmos "by being loved" without undergoing change itself?

19. According to Aristotle in the Metaphysics, why must the divine thought think strictly about itself ("thinking on thinking")?

20. According to Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics, why is speculative contemplation the only activity fitting for the supreme happiness of the gods, and why does this make the philosopher most beloved by them?

21. Short Essay Options: Please select one of the following and answer it in a minimum of 100 words.

(a) Critics argue that Xenophanes' epistemological skepticism ("no man knows with certainty") undermines his own positive theology of a single, non-anthropomorphic God; if human knowledge of the divine is impossible, he has no ground to assert that God is unmoving or rules by thought. How might Xenophanes respond?

(b) Critics argue that Plato's Euthyphro Dilemma creates a false dichotomy for classical theism; if moral goodness is grounded in the unchangeable nature of God rather than arbitrary divine commands or an independent external law, the dilemma falls apart. How might Plato respond?

(c) Critics argue that Plato's argument for immortality from the self-moving nature of the soul in The Laws proves at most that life or motion is eternal, but fails to prove that individual personal identity and memory survive physical death. How might Plato respond?

(d) Critics argue that Aristotle's Prime Mover is religiously useless; an impersonal deity that only thinks about itself and is utterly unaware of human existence cannot be an object of worship, prayer, or moral obligation. How might Aristotle respond?

(e) Critics argue that Aristotle's teleological view of biology in Physics 2 mistakes functional utility for intentional design, failing to anticipate how unguided evolutionary mechanisms like natural selection can produce regular adaptation without final causes. How might Aristotle respond?

(f) Critics argue that Democritus's atomic reductionism cannot account for human consciousness or moral purpose; if the mind is merely a collision of physical atoms in the void, subjective experience and normative values are reduced to meaningless illusions. How might Democritus respond?

(g) Critics argue that Anaxagoras's concept of Nous introduces a dualism that undermines physical causality; if Mind is completely unmixed and separate from matter, it becomes unintelligible how an immaterial principle can physically impart rotational motion to a material mass. How might Anaxagoras respond?

(h) Critics argue that Protagoras's agnosticism is a form of intellectual cowardice that leads to social conformity; by refusing to take a stance on divine truth, the Sophist inevitably acquiesces to whatever conventional religious myths are enforced by the state. How might Protagoras respond?

(i) Critics argue that Plato's strict body-soul dualism in the Phaedo denigrates physical existence and human embodiment, treating the natural world as a prison to be escaped rather than a good creation to be cultivated. How might Plato respond?

(j) Critics argue that Aristotle's intellectualist vision of ultimate human happiness in the Nicomachean Ethics is elitist and narrow; by defining the supreme good strictly as philosophical contemplation, he excludes the vast majority of human beings who lack the leisure, resources, or capacity for high theory. How might Aristotle respond?