Ancient Greeks: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle

A Brief Essay 

By Jon Saul

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It is sometimes said that all human thought is but a footnote to the ancient Greeks. This is because these people thought about the entire range of human existence and were free to postulate (speculate, guess) as to the true nature of the universe around them. Some Greeks thought the world was made of water (who? see if you can find this in the encyclopedia) others that the world was made of fire (who? finding these in the encyclopedia is good reading practice).

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Socrates 

Socrates (470?-399 BC) is often referred to as the 'father of philosophy'. 

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This is not only because he gave up (sacrificed) his life for the sake of the pursuit of truth and wisdom. It is also because the particular path he wanted to follow, asking questions, is the best way people have ever come up with to arrive at the truth of a situation. In the last 3,000 years, human beings have not improved on the Socratic method: posing questions and then answering them.

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The vaunted (highly valued) scientific method, which has been the source of so much progress for humankind, is really an extension of the Socratic method: the scientist asks a question (in the form of an hypothesis, an educated guess) and then answers it (in an experimental fashion). The scientist's answer (the result of the experiment) provides information concerning, insight into, wisdom about the question (hypothesis) that the scientist posed. Other questions are asked, that is, additional hypothesis are stated and additional experiments are conducted, and the scientist eventually arrives at a conclusion.

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Socrates did not leave any written records of his questioning. Almost everything we know today about Socrates has been learned from the writings of one of his students, Plato.

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Plato

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Plato (427 - 347 BC) wrote several books, they were actually dialogues (conversations). Socrates is always the main character. In each dialogue that Plato wrote, Socrates seeks the truth by asking questions of another. The point, for Plato, is to prove that

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1) the methodology of asking questions leads to the truth (wisdom) and

2) that Plato's wisdom, as evidenced in the dialogues, is, in fact, the truth and that Plato's own way of looking at the world is the true and only correct point of view.

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With regard to the former, Plato used what is today called the dialectic method of teaching or discussion: a process of asking a person or student a series of questions designed to lead to a logical conclusion, which is known in advance (foreseen) by the questioner.

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With regard to the latter, Plato presents us with the archetypical Idealist. His concept was that there was only one truth and that is perfect. This perfection was not to be found in this imperfect, real world we live in, but rather, on some ideal plane (dimension, universe, place) that human cannot perceive.

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Allow me to illustrate:

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Are you sitting on a chair? Imagine that you are looking at one. The particular chair you are viewing may have four legs, a seat, a back, armrests; it may be made of wood, plastic, metal, fabric; to might be hard or soft, or even mold to the contours of your body. In other words, as we all know, there are a multitude(one could even say an infinite number of) possible configurations for the word (symbol) chair.

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For Plato, this meant that there was an idea of a chair (out there somewhere) and that all these actual, real, possibilities were attempting to manifest (become) that ideal chair.

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In fact, in Plato's view (and the view of all idealists), it is the ideal plane (place) where the idea of the chair exists that is the true reality. This place that we live is really just a poor attempt to actualize (make real) the ideal. It is, for Plato, the ideal that is real.

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In fact, he believed that the chair is trying to become the ideal chair, in its way; that all things in this world that we perceive are really attempts to actualize the ideal.

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Plato believed that human life was the unfolding of the potential of the human embryo. Just as an acorn can grow to a huge oak tree, if the environment is right (water, sunlight, soil), human beings can unleash the ideal within them.

One of his most famous proofs involved the Pythagorean theorem: that the square of the length of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the length of the other two sides. You may or may not remember this from geometry.

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Plato set put to prove that this theory, which he believed to be ideal (and therefore, real) was truly embedded in every human being and needed only the right circumstances to unfold. He chose a slave and, through a series of questions and answers (by Socrates) showed that the slave understood the theorem (even if he could not put it into words).

For humans, Plato believed in a tripartite soul: humans had three parts to their souls. One part was the part that made us think, another was the part that made us strong and able to fight and the third part was the part that wallowed us to farm, produce products and live our daily lives.

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In Plato's view, in each person one of these parts was dominant: and that determined what role that person should play in society. (Plato presents these views in his book of dialogues called The Republic.) The strong people should be the soldiers. The productive people should be the laborers. The wise people should be the philosophers. And the philosophers should be kings (he called them philosopher-kings).

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Plato was the first such Idealist. Many, many other philosophers have adopted this view of the world and have attempted to explain the world in idealist terms.

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Plato's most famous student, Aristotle, however, did not follow his way of thinking. 

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Aristotle 

Aristotle (384-322 BC) set about examining the world in an entirely different way than did Plato. Aristotle studies everything. He then wrote down everything he knew: The Physics catalogued everything in the physical world. The Politics described the political universe (the world of power). The Metaphysics discussed all of the things of the human mind.

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Aristotle's method (the Aristotelian method) was built on syllogisms: reasoning logically from one statement to the next. For example:

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All human are mammals.
You are human.
You are a mammal.

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This process is one of arriving at two general statements believed to be true (called a premise), such as all humans are mammals and you are human, and then determining (drawing) a logical conclusion from them. This is a form of reasoning from the general to the specific (called deduction).

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Aristotle was a realist: he believed that the world of our sense, the things we saw, felt, touched, heard and tasted, were real. And because they were real, they represented the truth. This was later called empirical or practical. This is the exact opposite perspective from Plato. These two ways of perceiving the world are said to be diametrically opposed.

Many philosophers throughout the years of human history continued these two different perspectives on life. The dichotomy (two things, parts, categories so split apart they cannot come together) between the idealist and the realist has been one of the major debates in the history of philosophy. What do you think?

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Before you jump to "of course the real world is real", ask yourself this question: are there any absolutes in life? Do you believe in absolute truth, or absolute goodness or kindness or love? Do you believe in right and wrong? Do you believe that there are rules that people must follow or they are not behaving correctly?

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If you believe any of these things, then there is a little bit of the idealist in you. Depending on how much your belief in these things shapes the way you live your life, the decisions you make, the choices you take, and the way you perceive yourself and others, you may be following the idealist’s way of thinking.