BCC Logic
Eric Gerlach
3/30/2010
LECTURE ON ISLAMIC AND EARLY EUROPEAN LOGIC
First, we look at the rise of Islamic civilization and its relationship to medieval European civilization with regard to logic, technology, science and scholarship. This is important to know, especially today. Second, we will look at central Islamic and medieval European philosopher/logicians (especially Avicenna and Aquinas).
America is particularly bad at Islamic Scholarship, though it is hard to beat out Europe. The United States has very few scholars who have contributed to the field. Because of this, there are no good comprehensive books about Islam published in the US, so books from the 50s and 60s are republished and taught (I have found this is true of Babylon and Persia as well). Centers for Islamic or ‘Near Eastern’ Studies focus on Islamic cultures in modern times, after the rise of Europe, so there is little opportunity to study the golden age of Islamic civilization and its massive influence on European civilization. In addition, philosophy departments rarely offer courses on Islamic philosophy or logic, and few departments of any subject study Islamic religion, literature, philosophy, or science.
Islamic civilization was the world’s great civilization before European civilization rose, so it is the natural place to look for the progression and development of philosophy, technology, and culture. It was the multi-cultural, scientific, and philosophical culture before Europe and it gave Europe an astonishing amount of technology and study. In spite of this, most scholars remain entirely ignorant as we rarely look outside of ancient Greek or Roman history to find influences on modern society. There is a greater appreciation of India and China in American scholarship, one that does not acknowledge equality with Europe but which acknowledges some depth. It is a good example of what has been called the “grandfather effect”: the grandfather (China and India) has tension with the father (Islam), the father has tension with the son (Europe) but the grandfather and grandson get along great because there is no direct relationship or conflict. Because Islam has always shared a border with Europe, Islam has always been portrayed in a negative light as warlike and despotic.
Here are some awesome ahadith, sayings of the prophet Mohammed, the second source of Islam after the Koran:
Go in quest of knowledge, even unto China.
It is better to teach knowledge one hour in the night than to pray straight through it.
A moment’s reflection is better than 60 years devotion.
The ink of the scholar is holier than the blood of the martyrs.
Algebra is possibly the most used device (if it can be called a device) in human history. It is important to consider algebra because in the second half of the course logic becomes an algebraic language (remember, logic used to be about debate in the ancient world, but it gradually became a highly specialized form of math that was intended to ground the foundations of mathematics). Before algebra, much of the world used the Egyptian doubling method (including ancient Greece and Rome) to do mathematics. Unfortunately, this method could not keep track of remainders and could not take account of series and other functions critical to the growth of math, trade and mechanical technology. Islamic mathematicians and logicians (some of whom are listed below) took the Indian base 10 system and began doing math in the form of equations we are all familiar with today (taught by law to everyone up through college).
Algebra allowed trade caravans to keep greater accounts of goods, as well as sophisticated forms of insurance and banking. Islamic merchants traded by caravan all the way up through Russia and Scandinavia, as coins discovered attest. In dark age Europe, Islamic culture was passing through town with the latest things and systems of thought (books come this way too from China). Castles are Questles, the Persian word for fort. Medieval dress and decoration are not modeled on Roman but rather Islamic Persian society. Consider hospitals with many beds, dosages measured with algebra, mechanical innovations such as gears, the chain and belt drive, pistons and clocks were all passed from Islamic to European hands before Europe became wealthy and successful.
While it is not central to the study of logic, it is important today to mention that law and protections for a diverse population were developed the most in Islam before Europe rose and took over. A woman had the right to sue her husband for divorce, and use algebra to get a percentage of his income. Nestorians and Jews fled to Islamic lands from European persecutions. Islam thus thrived as a multicultural and ‘cosmopolitan’ society. It would be centuries before Europe passed them.
Central to logic, it was with Islamic mathematics, philosophy, logic and science that equations became the language for structures. The ancient Greeks such as Euclid and Aristotle talked out problems in paragraph form. Today, many scholars use algebraic logic to explain ancient Greek ideas but is quite anachronistic and misleading to do this.
One of the sources of algebraic science was code-breaking or cryptography (also cryptanalysis). Between questles, codes had to be sent and algebra was used to make and break these codes. As nature was studied with mathematics, the philosopher/scientists discovered that algebra is an amazing tool for CODE BREAKING NATURE. What we call “science” is still very much this today. Consider the constant of gravity as a hidden code or message to be discovered and phrased in algebraic language.
Algebraic equations allowed for modern truth table logic and other forms that we study as Logic today. However, equations present us with a new problem that was recognized by the central philosophers of the golden age of Islamic civilization: Is the world truly structured by equations, or are they a model in the human mind? Positivists say that the world is truly mathematical and provides us with true knowledge, while skeptics say that mathematics builds models and remains human perspective and opinion. To see an interesting problem, consider the “proof that one equals two” (found easily online).
ISLAMIC LOGIC AND THE GREAT PHILOSOPHERS:
Islam has a long history of debate, called “Qiyas” (translated most often as reasoning or argument). There were three types: Analogy, Induction and Deduction. A big issue for Islamic philosophy was which of these was primary, and which secondary. Ibn Hazm said Inductive is the only one, the others are illusions of the mind, while Al Ghazali (Aquinas’ favorite author and source) says Analogy is first, then Deductive second.
We will see more of analogy as central to analysis today with Avicenna, and near the end of the course in the later thinking of Wittgenstein.
Al Kindi (801-873)
Pioneer of Islamic sciences, cryptography and the experimental method,
introduced Indian numerals and base ten system to Islam, where it was developed into Algebra. Wrote numerous medical treatises (including the memorable Treatise on Diseases caused by Phlegm). Unlike Galileo and Newton, who came much later, but like Einstein, argued that time and space were relative, as all things save Being or God are relative, subjective, and contingent. Avicenna took up this position powerfully later.
Argued that Islam and Philosophy/Logic are completely compatible. Our scholarship says that he mostly merged Neoplatonism and Aristotle, but he also incorporated Zoroastrianism and Indian/Buddhist Logic. Even though Christians in Europe followed Islamic Alchemy and Astrology for centuries, he was an early voice against both, saying they were both pseudo-sciences and the best method of knowledge was strictly observation and experimentation.
Al Farabi (872-950)
Little is known about Farabi’s origins or ethnic background. It is argued by scholars that he was Turkish or Persian. Farabi took the Aristotelian tradition of Alexandria, Egypt and expanded beyond. Maimonides famously said he could not understand Aristotle at all until he read Al-Farabi’s commentary, and then got it. Paid much attention to Imagination, as this is central to science, philosophy and religious prophecy. He argued that if you learn and get right, you have visions of the cosmos and its workings. This is close to Wittgenstein’s thought experiments in his later thought.
Avicenna or Ibn Sina (980-1037)
Foremost doctor of his time. His Cannon of Medicine was used as a text book for Europe in translation until the 1700s. His medicine was based on experimentation and clinical trials, fusing Persian, Greek, Indian and other texts together. He is credited with formulating the nature of infectious disease, randomized control trials, neuropsychiatry (hallucinations, insomnia, mania, dementia, epilepsy), and the syndrome, as well as hypothesizing microscopic organisms as the cause of disease. The first to correctly show the workings of the eye. He learned Indian Arithmetic from and Indian grocer. This is ignored in most. He was one of the key authors for understanding Aristotle and scientific investigation, even as he argued against Aristotle Europeans often took up his ideas as genuine fruit of Aristotle’s tradition of thought, thus ‘Aristotelian’.
The focus of the selection of Avicenna I gave you, was whether or not universals exist. Consider that Aristotle believed that universals are motions or forms of the eternal cosmos coming down from the stars. Today, in the wake of Islamic and European civilization, we understand universals to be concepts and mental rather than physical. Do our theories exist in the real world, or in our heads? This was the big issue. Avicenna asks: Does a unicorn exist? Does it exist in your head as one thing, the same way that a real horse is one thing? Does the horseness of the unicorn exist? Is it more or less real than the horseness of a real horse? Avicenna says that all are things (single beings) equally, but only the horse is real, while the unicorn and the universal ‘horseness’ are both mental. Avicenna uses the phoenix and unicorn as imaginary beasts to illustrate.
His floating man thought experiment, showing self-consciousness, shows imagination.
This is considered by some to be a source of Descartes’ ‘I think’ with demon.
After this, there was a split in his followers: which is primary, the essence or existence?
Essentialism (What it is 1st, the thing second) vs. Existentialism (thing first, what 2nd).
MOST IMPORTANT for this class: he pioneered propositional calculus, the medium of logic from here on out in this class (in most logic classes it is the only thing taught).
Al Ghazali (1058-1111), Persian
One of the most celebrated scholars of Sufism. A pioneer of skepticism and doubt.
His work ‘The Incoherence of the Philosophers’ criticized Kindi, Farabi and Avicenna as thinking too much of arriving at certain human knowledge. When he says ‘The philosophers say’ I have read authors say, ‘this means Plato and Aristotle’, but I trust the scholars who say he means ‘Avicenna says’ as the position he always attacks. He does say that Avicenna is beyond all doubt the most distinguished philosopher. He argued that Atoms are the only true things, and all else in the world is accidental. In his ‘Alchemy of Happiness’, wrote of Negative theology of embracing the One. St. Thomas Aquinas, the great ethics teacher of Christianity, read Ghazali as his favorite and central author. Unfortunately, Aquinas is in spell check today, while Ghazali is not.
Averroes, Ibn Rushd (1126-1198) Cordoba, Spain
Wrote commentaries on all of Aristotle’s works, thus central for Europe Aristotle.
Wrote ‘The Incoherence of the Incoherence’, arguing against Ghazali and for Farabi etc.
He was another central author in Europe for science and philosophy. He turned back to Aristotle from Avicenna, and Europe followed him. He is credited more than anyone with turning Europe on to Aristotle. Our science is now more like Avicenna, but for the longest time it was Aristotleian thanks to Averroes. It was only with Sir Francis Bacon in the 1600s declaring the syllogism as necessary to be flawed that Europe swung back into a ‘all is contingent’ Avicenna direction.
THE GREAT MEDIEVAL EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHER/LOGICIANS
Aquinas (1225-1274)
Lived just after Averroes, about 200 years after Avicenna.
Augustine is the bringer of Plato and Aristotle into medieval Europe thanks to his reading of Islamic authors. He studied at the University of Naples until he was 16. Showed he was brilliant, so the Dominican order offered to support his scholarship. He became a Dominican, then was kidnapped by his parents who wanted him to come back home. His brother’s brought him a prostitute, but ‘he drove her away’. Then the Pope intervened, and he went back to being a Dominican.
He seems influenced primarily by Al Ghazali and Averroes, both of whom we said were critics of Avicenna, Averroes a supporter of Aristotle. Three years after his death, Aquinas was excommunicated for heresy due to following Averroes’ interpretation of Aristotle’s works, but then the Church reversed its position. This is after Aquinas defended the Church again and again as the only source of true authority and knowledge.
50 years after his death, he was pronounced a Saint. Later, at the First Vatican Council he was pronounced the central thinker of the Church (and thus Europe).
As an Averroist Aristotelian, Aquinas believed that universals are real beings that are even more real than physical objects. Thus, he is an essentialist. His argument for the existence of God shows this. He argues that all things are dependent on, possible because of, and less than a highest thing, which must be God, Being itself. Thus, like European thought, Being is essence of essences (we will see this in Hegel next week). The Superman argument is often used today in philosophy classrooms to shoot this down, along with Descartes who follows Aquinas’ argument for highest, most necessary being as God.
William of Ockham (1288-1348)
An Avicenna style Existentialist: Only objects and individuals are real, all else is mental construction and conception. Often called the first modern thinker, we can see that he is putting forward Avicenna’s ideas. His nominalism says that concepts are just our names for things, our add-ons. Just like Avicenna, only Being (God) is not contingent and custom.
Ockham is also known for ‘Ockham’s razor’: the simplest explanation is often correct.
Notice how this does away with hierarchies of universals as real, to call them simply mental and thus the simplest reasoning is the best.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Logic Midterm Review
BCC Logic
Eric Gerlach
3/18/2010
LOGIC MIDTERM REVIEW
Form of the Midterm: First multiple choice questions about the lectures (ex: Aristotle thinks that skeptics like Heraclitus are no better than PLANTS, Kanada believes there are 6 categories, including KARMA/action, etc). Second short answers that demonstrate your knowledge of the forms that we have learned so far (ex: recreate the square of opposition, the forms of syllogisms, Nyaya proof). No essay.
Logic, Magic and Riddles: We read in Malinowski’s Rational Mastery by Man of His Surroundings that tribes use all of the grammatical forms and pieces of reasoning that we all use. We saw difference of practice and theory, constantly intertwined, in the difference between shallow water fishing and deep sea fishing. We saw in the next article that in baseball, the same sort of split occurs between hitting/pitching and fielding. In wisdom tales, understanding contradiction. Logic switched from the study of debate in early cultures to foundations of mathematics in modern times with the rise of algebra.
Kanada: Karma as action/energy. We saw the basic structure of IF-THEN hypothetical statements. The Modus Tollens transformation: (If p then q), means also (if not q then not p). Ex: If we know “If there are clouds then there is rain”, we know “If there is no rain then there are no clouds”.
Nyaya: We saw the Nyaya form of the two sided debate: (X is Y) vs. (X is not Y). We saw that there are four sources of knowledge: perception, inference, comparison, and testimony.
Inference shows us induction leading to deduction, gathering leading to rules/principles.
The Nyaya proof: Rule, Example, Reason, Conclusion
Wherever there is smoke, there is fire. As in a kitchen.
Because the hill is smoky, therefore the hill is on fire.
Whatever is produced is not eternal, as a pot. (If p, then n, pot is both)
Because it is produced, Sound is not eternal. (Because s is p, s is n)
Note the subtle attack on the older tradition of the Vedas in the last two examples.
While Nyaya scholars believe X is Y or not Y, exclusively, we see that Jains think it must be some Y and some not Y, neither ALL or None. Buddhists argue that X can sometimes and somewhere be Y but also sometimes and somewhere not be Y. Nagarjuna’s Catuskoti.
Aristotle: Genus and Species (ex: animal, human), substances can have contrary qualities but only at different times, “if someone admits contrary qualities, his contention is unsound”, skeptics are destroyers, plants.
Square of opposition, All X is Y, No X is Y, Some X is Y, Some X is not Y as four corners.
Top pair (universals) can’t both be true, bottom pair (particulars) can’t both be false.
If we know All X is Y is true, then we know two things are false: No X is Y & Some X is not Y.
If we know No X is Y, then we know All X is Y and Some X is Y are false.
If we know Some X is Y, then we know No X is Y is false.
If we know Some X is not Y, then we know All X is Y is false.
Exclusive and Inclusive OR:
Inclusive Or: X or Y and you can choose more than one.
Exclusive Or: X or Y but you can only choose one exclusively.
The Four Forms of the Perfect Syllogism:
First, the Positive Universal, ‘Barbara’:
All A are B, All B are C, therefore All A are C.
Example: If it’s a human, animal, living thing.
(Venn diagram of A within B, B within C, or partially/fully collapsed)
Second, the Negative Universal, ‘Celarent’
All A are B, No B are C, therefore No A are C.
Ex: All men are animals, No animals are stone, therefore No men are made of stone.
Third, the Positive Particular, ‘Darii’
Some A are B, All B are C, therefore Some A are C.
Ex: Some animals are humans, All humans are funny, therefore some animals are funny.
Fourth, the Negative Particular, ‘Ferio’:
Some A are B, No B are C, therefore Some A are not C.
Ex: Some animals are humans, No humans are reptiles, therefore Some H are not R.
Greek Skepticism: Heraclitus says do not trust experts, we are all a bunch of apes. Pyrrho argues anything against anybody, then the opposite. Sextus Empiricus says inference can be wrong.
Chinese Paradox: Lao Zi’s Wheel (positive, negative, both), Zhuang Zi’s perspective, sage’s this always has a that, Hui Shih’s left today arrived yesterday and greater and lesser similarity and difference, Kung-Sun Lung’s white horse is not a horse argument and two uses of “is”.
Eric Gerlach
3/18/2010
LOGIC MIDTERM REVIEW
Form of the Midterm: First multiple choice questions about the lectures (ex: Aristotle thinks that skeptics like Heraclitus are no better than PLANTS, Kanada believes there are 6 categories, including KARMA/action, etc). Second short answers that demonstrate your knowledge of the forms that we have learned so far (ex: recreate the square of opposition, the forms of syllogisms, Nyaya proof). No essay.
Logic, Magic and Riddles: We read in Malinowski’s Rational Mastery by Man of His Surroundings that tribes use all of the grammatical forms and pieces of reasoning that we all use. We saw difference of practice and theory, constantly intertwined, in the difference between shallow water fishing and deep sea fishing. We saw in the next article that in baseball, the same sort of split occurs between hitting/pitching and fielding. In wisdom tales, understanding contradiction. Logic switched from the study of debate in early cultures to foundations of mathematics in modern times with the rise of algebra.
Kanada: Karma as action/energy. We saw the basic structure of IF-THEN hypothetical statements. The Modus Tollens transformation: (If p then q), means also (if not q then not p). Ex: If we know “If there are clouds then there is rain”, we know “If there is no rain then there are no clouds”.
Nyaya: We saw the Nyaya form of the two sided debate: (X is Y) vs. (X is not Y). We saw that there are four sources of knowledge: perception, inference, comparison, and testimony.
Inference shows us induction leading to deduction, gathering leading to rules/principles.
The Nyaya proof: Rule, Example, Reason, Conclusion
Wherever there is smoke, there is fire. As in a kitchen.
Because the hill is smoky, therefore the hill is on fire.
Whatever is produced is not eternal, as a pot. (If p, then n, pot is both)
Because it is produced, Sound is not eternal. (Because s is p, s is n)
Note the subtle attack on the older tradition of the Vedas in the last two examples.
While Nyaya scholars believe X is Y or not Y, exclusively, we see that Jains think it must be some Y and some not Y, neither ALL or None. Buddhists argue that X can sometimes and somewhere be Y but also sometimes and somewhere not be Y. Nagarjuna’s Catuskoti.
Aristotle: Genus and Species (ex: animal, human), substances can have contrary qualities but only at different times, “if someone admits contrary qualities, his contention is unsound”, skeptics are destroyers, plants.
Square of opposition, All X is Y, No X is Y, Some X is Y, Some X is not Y as four corners.
Top pair (universals) can’t both be true, bottom pair (particulars) can’t both be false.
If we know All X is Y is true, then we know two things are false: No X is Y & Some X is not Y.
If we know No X is Y, then we know All X is Y and Some X is Y are false.
If we know Some X is Y, then we know No X is Y is false.
If we know Some X is not Y, then we know All X is Y is false.
Exclusive and Inclusive OR:
Inclusive Or: X or Y and you can choose more than one.
Exclusive Or: X or Y but you can only choose one exclusively.
The Four Forms of the Perfect Syllogism:
First, the Positive Universal, ‘Barbara’:
All A are B, All B are C, therefore All A are C.
Example: If it’s a human, animal, living thing.
(Venn diagram of A within B, B within C, or partially/fully collapsed)
Second, the Negative Universal, ‘Celarent’
All A are B, No B are C, therefore No A are C.
Ex: All men are animals, No animals are stone, therefore No men are made of stone.
Third, the Positive Particular, ‘Darii’
Some A are B, All B are C, therefore Some A are C.
Ex: Some animals are humans, All humans are funny, therefore some animals are funny.
Fourth, the Negative Particular, ‘Ferio’:
Some A are B, No B are C, therefore Some A are not C.
Ex: Some animals are humans, No humans are reptiles, therefore Some H are not R.
Greek Skepticism: Heraclitus says do not trust experts, we are all a bunch of apes. Pyrrho argues anything against anybody, then the opposite. Sextus Empiricus says inference can be wrong.
Chinese Paradox: Lao Zi’s Wheel (positive, negative, both), Zhuang Zi’s perspective, sage’s this always has a that, Hui Shih’s left today arrived yesterday and greater and lesser similarity and difference, Kung-Sun Lung’s white horse is not a horse argument and two uses of “is”.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Logic Lecture March 15: Chinese Paradox
BCC Logic
Eric Gerlach
3/15/2010
CHINESE LOGIC AND PARADOX
In China, we find Daoists, Logicians and Chan/Zen Buddhists showing the skeptical side of logic and human thought that we have already seen in India (Jainism & Buddhism) and Greece (Heraclitus, Pyrrho and Sextus Empiricus).
DAOISM: LAO ZI & ZHUANG ZI
The Dao De Jing (formerly the Tao Te Ching) is the book by the fist Daoist patriarch Lao Zi (600 BCE) according to tradition. This book and the book of the second Daoist Patriarch Zhuang Zi (370-300 BCE) have many excellent examples of paradox and contradiction. We will consider some of these before the paradoxes of the Chinese logicians Hui Shih and Kung-Sun Lung.
Chapter 11 of the Dao is one of my favorites. It tells us that a wheel is only useful because of the hole in the center. The same is true of a jar made of clay, and the space in a room as well as the doors and windows. We naturally think of things as positives, as beings, but non-being, the holes and emptiness, goes hand in hand with the being. These things (as well as everything else, the text suggests) are and are not in very specific ways. The wheel is both solid and empty at the same time, but not in all of its parts equally. Positive and negative, being and non-being, work together to make things what they are.
If positivism tries for black and white judgments, all yes or all no, and skepticism tries for relative judgments, some yes and some no, this teaching on the wheel and the jar tells us that the solid objects that surround us, the things about which we are most certain, are somewhat and are not somewhat!
There is a Buddhist koan that says at first we see a thing as a thing, then after practice and contemplation we see the thing as a non-thing (a concept, or illusion), and then after further practice and contemplation we again see the thing as a thing (but also, in this third stage, as also a non-thing, our conception). Hegel, whose logic we will learn later, sees this same three-fold process in every stage of individual thought and history of philosophy. At first, if asked, the wheel is a thing, not a nothing or non-thing. Then, we see the hole when it is pointed out to us. Finally, we can see that the solidity and the emptiness of the wheel are both necessary and essential to the wheel being what it is together.
In the Zhuang Zi there are many excellent passages that back up this two-sided view. There are many parts of the text that are almost identical to fragments of Heraclitus. Both Zhuang Zi and Heraclitus say that things can be good to some and bad to others at the same time, dependent on the perspective of the viewer. Heraclitus says that salt water is poisonous for us to drink, but not for the fish who require it to live and breathe. Heraclitus also says that pigs like to bathe in filth. Zhuang Zi asks us which animal knows what tastes good if each eats something different? He says that birds like to sleep in trees, but humans certainly do not. Both thinkers say that humans are ugly to non-humans. Zhuang Zi says that the beautiful women of legend frightened minnows, deer and birds. Clearly, human beauty is of no matter to animals who find us frightening and ugly.
One passage I love asks if words say something or nothing and compares them to the peeps of baby birds. It goes on to say that a sage has a this and a that, but a sage’s this also has a that, and a sage’s that also has a this. Speaking of the Confucians and the Moists (two competing schools of Chinese thought at the time the text is being written) it says that what one calls right the other calls wrong, but we should right their wrongs and wrong their rights. Notice how similar this is to chapter 11 of the Dao. It suggests that a sage would see the wrong to a right and the right to a wrong, would see how something said is both meaningful and meaningless.
Another passage asks if the one who wins an argument is necessarily right, or if there must be one who is right and one who is wrong (remember the Nyaya form of debate and Gotama and Aristotle teaching tactics of debate).
Another passage which is important for the logicians to follow says that among the 10,000 things (the number signifies all, like “a billion” today) there are none that are not big, small, right, wrong, useful and useless. If we consider relativity, any particular thing must be bigger that some other thing and smaller than some other thing. If right and wrong, useful and useless are similarly relative, then the sage should see the back and forth, the some and some not to each of these in considering each individual thing.
THE LOGICIANS: HUI SHIH & KUNG-SUN LUNG
Hui Shih (380-305 BCE) is very similar to the Greek thinker Zeno. Both consider paradoxes of relativity in size, motion and other basic properties of things. When he says that heaven or the sky is as low as the earth, he is pointing out that the two meet in the middle, and so low and high are in a particular place equally low and high. When he says one goes to the state of Yueh today and arrives there yesterday, this is a famous puzzle that is quite like the wisdom tales we read in the beginning of the semester: if one crosses the border of Yueh at the stroke of midnight, then one was in Yueh and not in Yueh both today and yesterday, so one could say that one was going there today and arrived yesterday.
The paradox that is most impressive is the Lesser and Greater Similarity and Difference which many have said is similar to observations made in fractal geometry and chaos theory. He says that a great similarity is different from a small similarity, the lesser similarity and difference, but at the same time all things are similar to one another and different from one another, the greater similarity and difference. Consider a bowl with two apples and two oranges. An apple is quite similar to an orange in many ways but it is also different in many ways (the lesser). Anyone can tell that two apples are more alike than an apple and an orange, just as two oranges are more alike than an orange and an apple (this is the lesser similarity and difference). However, on the other hand, it is also true that any two apples are alike and yet different as any two oranges are alike and yet different (this is the greater similarity and difference). Notice that this means the first apple is similar and different to the second apple as well as to an orange. Viewed in a black or white way, the apples are the same and the apple and orange are different, but it is also true to say that the apples are different and the apple and orange are similar.
Kung-sun Lung (325-250 BCE) gives us the famous A White Horse Is Not A Horse argument. Many say that this argument is faulty, but if we follow the thinking of the Daoists and Hui Shih we can see what Kung-Sun is trying to say. He does not mean that a white horse is not in any way a horse, but that in one particular way “a white horse” is not the same thing as “a horse”. He argues that if one brings us a yellow horse, it would not fit the description “a white horse” but it would do fine for the description “a horse”. The two are thus different sets and are not identical though one set is a subset of the other. This means that “a white horse” is and is not “a horse” (in one way “is” and in another way “is not”), and so he can truly say that “a white horse is not a horse”.
Consider that your finger is you but also is not you. If we use “is” in terms of strict identity (like Clark Kent is Superman) then your finger is not you because you are much more than a finger. However, if we use “is” to mean a part incorporated within a thing (like a tree is green) then your finger is oneself because it is part of you. Bill Clinton famously tried explaining this with his “that depends what your definition of ‘is’ is”. Being an individual human, you are and are not humanity. In fact, you are only one human out of quadrillions so far, so you are very much NOT humanity, but what are you more than a human, thus of humanity?
CHAN (ZEN) BUDDHISM: HUI-NENG & JOSHU
Hui-Neng (683-713 CE) became one of the central patriarchs of the Chan (Zen in Japanese) Buddhist tradition by outdoing his fellow student in a poetry competition to see who had the superior understanding and would succeed the master. The student who everyone expected to be the next master wrote:
The body is the tree of enlightenment, The mind is like a clear mirror-stand.
Polish it diligently time and again, Not letting it gather dust.
Hui-Neng was illiterate as well as a southerner who was considered different and inferior by the other students. After having a boy read the first submitted verse to him, he composed his reply:
Enlightenment originally has no tree, And a clear mirror is not a stand.
Originally there is not a single thing, Where can dust gather?
The master called Hui-Neng and said that this verse showed the superior understanding. Consider the similarity of this exchange to chapter 11 of the Dao and the Zhuang Zi.
Joshu (780 CE) is my favorite Chan/Zen thinker. Many of his short quotes became focal koans for study by students of Zen. I will read passages in class.
(69, 77, 79, 177, 182, 222, 232, 291, 352, 370, 431, 470)
Eric Gerlach
3/15/2010
CHINESE LOGIC AND PARADOX
In China, we find Daoists, Logicians and Chan/Zen Buddhists showing the skeptical side of logic and human thought that we have already seen in India (Jainism & Buddhism) and Greece (Heraclitus, Pyrrho and Sextus Empiricus).
DAOISM: LAO ZI & ZHUANG ZI
The Dao De Jing (formerly the Tao Te Ching) is the book by the fist Daoist patriarch Lao Zi (600 BCE) according to tradition. This book and the book of the second Daoist Patriarch Zhuang Zi (370-300 BCE) have many excellent examples of paradox and contradiction. We will consider some of these before the paradoxes of the Chinese logicians Hui Shih and Kung-Sun Lung.
Chapter 11 of the Dao is one of my favorites. It tells us that a wheel is only useful because of the hole in the center. The same is true of a jar made of clay, and the space in a room as well as the doors and windows. We naturally think of things as positives, as beings, but non-being, the holes and emptiness, goes hand in hand with the being. These things (as well as everything else, the text suggests) are and are not in very specific ways. The wheel is both solid and empty at the same time, but not in all of its parts equally. Positive and negative, being and non-being, work together to make things what they are.
If positivism tries for black and white judgments, all yes or all no, and skepticism tries for relative judgments, some yes and some no, this teaching on the wheel and the jar tells us that the solid objects that surround us, the things about which we are most certain, are somewhat and are not somewhat!
There is a Buddhist koan that says at first we see a thing as a thing, then after practice and contemplation we see the thing as a non-thing (a concept, or illusion), and then after further practice and contemplation we again see the thing as a thing (but also, in this third stage, as also a non-thing, our conception). Hegel, whose logic we will learn later, sees this same three-fold process in every stage of individual thought and history of philosophy. At first, if asked, the wheel is a thing, not a nothing or non-thing. Then, we see the hole when it is pointed out to us. Finally, we can see that the solidity and the emptiness of the wheel are both necessary and essential to the wheel being what it is together.
In the Zhuang Zi there are many excellent passages that back up this two-sided view. There are many parts of the text that are almost identical to fragments of Heraclitus. Both Zhuang Zi and Heraclitus say that things can be good to some and bad to others at the same time, dependent on the perspective of the viewer. Heraclitus says that salt water is poisonous for us to drink, but not for the fish who require it to live and breathe. Heraclitus also says that pigs like to bathe in filth. Zhuang Zi asks us which animal knows what tastes good if each eats something different? He says that birds like to sleep in trees, but humans certainly do not. Both thinkers say that humans are ugly to non-humans. Zhuang Zi says that the beautiful women of legend frightened minnows, deer and birds. Clearly, human beauty is of no matter to animals who find us frightening and ugly.
One passage I love asks if words say something or nothing and compares them to the peeps of baby birds. It goes on to say that a sage has a this and a that, but a sage’s this also has a that, and a sage’s that also has a this. Speaking of the Confucians and the Moists (two competing schools of Chinese thought at the time the text is being written) it says that what one calls right the other calls wrong, but we should right their wrongs and wrong their rights. Notice how similar this is to chapter 11 of the Dao. It suggests that a sage would see the wrong to a right and the right to a wrong, would see how something said is both meaningful and meaningless.
Another passage asks if the one who wins an argument is necessarily right, or if there must be one who is right and one who is wrong (remember the Nyaya form of debate and Gotama and Aristotle teaching tactics of debate).
Another passage which is important for the logicians to follow says that among the 10,000 things (the number signifies all, like “a billion” today) there are none that are not big, small, right, wrong, useful and useless. If we consider relativity, any particular thing must be bigger that some other thing and smaller than some other thing. If right and wrong, useful and useless are similarly relative, then the sage should see the back and forth, the some and some not to each of these in considering each individual thing.
THE LOGICIANS: HUI SHIH & KUNG-SUN LUNG
Hui Shih (380-305 BCE) is very similar to the Greek thinker Zeno. Both consider paradoxes of relativity in size, motion and other basic properties of things. When he says that heaven or the sky is as low as the earth, he is pointing out that the two meet in the middle, and so low and high are in a particular place equally low and high. When he says one goes to the state of Yueh today and arrives there yesterday, this is a famous puzzle that is quite like the wisdom tales we read in the beginning of the semester: if one crosses the border of Yueh at the stroke of midnight, then one was in Yueh and not in Yueh both today and yesterday, so one could say that one was going there today and arrived yesterday.
The paradox that is most impressive is the Lesser and Greater Similarity and Difference which many have said is similar to observations made in fractal geometry and chaos theory. He says that a great similarity is different from a small similarity, the lesser similarity and difference, but at the same time all things are similar to one another and different from one another, the greater similarity and difference. Consider a bowl with two apples and two oranges. An apple is quite similar to an orange in many ways but it is also different in many ways (the lesser). Anyone can tell that two apples are more alike than an apple and an orange, just as two oranges are more alike than an orange and an apple (this is the lesser similarity and difference). However, on the other hand, it is also true that any two apples are alike and yet different as any two oranges are alike and yet different (this is the greater similarity and difference). Notice that this means the first apple is similar and different to the second apple as well as to an orange. Viewed in a black or white way, the apples are the same and the apple and orange are different, but it is also true to say that the apples are different and the apple and orange are similar.
Kung-sun Lung (325-250 BCE) gives us the famous A White Horse Is Not A Horse argument. Many say that this argument is faulty, but if we follow the thinking of the Daoists and Hui Shih we can see what Kung-Sun is trying to say. He does not mean that a white horse is not in any way a horse, but that in one particular way “a white horse” is not the same thing as “a horse”. He argues that if one brings us a yellow horse, it would not fit the description “a white horse” but it would do fine for the description “a horse”. The two are thus different sets and are not identical though one set is a subset of the other. This means that “a white horse” is and is not “a horse” (in one way “is” and in another way “is not”), and so he can truly say that “a white horse is not a horse”.
Consider that your finger is you but also is not you. If we use “is” in terms of strict identity (like Clark Kent is Superman) then your finger is not you because you are much more than a finger. However, if we use “is” to mean a part incorporated within a thing (like a tree is green) then your finger is oneself because it is part of you. Bill Clinton famously tried explaining this with his “that depends what your definition of ‘is’ is”. Being an individual human, you are and are not humanity. In fact, you are only one human out of quadrillions so far, so you are very much NOT humanity, but what are you more than a human, thus of humanity?
CHAN (ZEN) BUDDHISM: HUI-NENG & JOSHU
Hui-Neng (683-713 CE) became one of the central patriarchs of the Chan (Zen in Japanese) Buddhist tradition by outdoing his fellow student in a poetry competition to see who had the superior understanding and would succeed the master. The student who everyone expected to be the next master wrote:
The body is the tree of enlightenment, The mind is like a clear mirror-stand.
Polish it diligently time and again, Not letting it gather dust.
Hui-Neng was illiterate as well as a southerner who was considered different and inferior by the other students. After having a boy read the first submitted verse to him, he composed his reply:
Enlightenment originally has no tree, And a clear mirror is not a stand.
Originally there is not a single thing, Where can dust gather?
The master called Hui-Neng and said that this verse showed the superior understanding. Consider the similarity of this exchange to chapter 11 of the Dao and the Zhuang Zi.
Joshu (780 CE) is my favorite Chan/Zen thinker. Many of his short quotes became focal koans for study by students of Zen. I will read passages in class.
(69, 77, 79, 177, 182, 222, 232, 291, 352, 370, 431, 470)
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Ethics Lecture March 12: Perspective, Heraclitus, Zhuang Zi and Hegel
BCC Ethics
Eric Gerlach
3/12/2010
LECTURE ON PERSPECTIVE:
HERACLITUS, ZHUANG ZI & HEGEL
Perspective is not simply individual, but social. We share reality in so far as we share perspective. This means that we should not only try to see as many perspectives or as much perspective as we can, but also resisting the tendency to accept one’s own perspective as reality or the whole truth. Truth is in each and every perspective, but it is also always beyond and outside of each and every perspective. Focusing on the concept of perspective forces us to affirm our views as truths but also deny our views as the Truth (with a capital T).
Two of the greatest ancient thinkers on perspective are Heraclitus from ancient Greece and Zhuang Zi from ancient China. To consider perspective as an ethical concept we will be looking at the strikingly similar things that these two ancient thinkers say and then end with some insights of the German philosopher Hegel and discoveries of modern psychology.
HERACLITUS:
Heraclitus’ most famous idea is a memorable image: you can never step in the same river twice. Just as a river is always flowing and changing, so is reality always flowing and changing, such that nothing stays exactly the same for any two moments. You step in a river, then step out, then step back in the same river, but it is no longer ‘the same river’. Heraclitus says this is also true of himself.
According to one source, Heraclitus was a king who abandoned the title to become a philosopher. This has been identified as a close resemblance to the story of the Buddha in India, and some scholars have argued that Heraclitus was in fact the Buddha from India while others have argued that the Buddha was in fact Heraclitus from Greece. Both thinkers were mythologized as a king who left powerful king position and became a sage, and both believe in the enlightening sun rising above the watery chaos of reality and human perception, but it is quite likely the two were not the same individual.
Heraclitus is a very skeptical thinker. This does not mean he saw all things as negative. He was convinced that wisdom and inquiring within show us that all is one big cosmic fire, and things that unify the community and the individual bring wholeness and true happiness. However, he believed that humans are often foolish and let their minds divide themselves from the whole and from each other such that their understandings are disjointed and ignorant.
This is very typical thinking of skeptics the world over. A positivist would say that there are specific truths that are certain and must be separated from the uncertain, specific goods that must be separated from the evil. A skeptic would say, like Heraclitus and the Daoists from China, that the truth and the good is the whole and the great One, and the tendency of the mind to divide the good and the true from the rest is the opposite of true understanding and wisdom.
Heraclitus was not a fan of experts and specialists, and he ridiculed the cultural leaders of his time. He says that the common people are completely asleep, but far more dangerous are the experts who have a small piece of the puzzle and say that they know the entire truth. He calls the poets (Hesiod and Homer) and the Pythagoreans frauds, and says that there are no permanent truths or laws other than the constant formation of watery chaos by the sun and cosmic fire.
Notice that this does not question the set up of the cosmos as we have studied it everywhere (and what the Persians gave to the Eastern Greek city states). Many often ask, “Why, then, should I listen to Heraclitus, since he is simply an expert?”. Heraclitus replies as most skeptics do: don’t take my word for it, but look into the world and within yourself and you will find that it is true.
This is a psychological skepticism that is criticizing the human ability to know particular things as permanent that are able to be separated from the One and All (the cosmic fire). Only the All is permanent. All the other things are wandering temporal forms. The many beings arise from the energy of Being, and then they fall back into the fire and disappear. The cosmos resembles the chaos yet order of the human community centered on authority by spoken word. The LOGOS, the word/plan/order/command, is the formative force in the cosmos, the force of fire and light in the watery chaotic world. The cosmic fire speaks with its ever-present Logos (fire over air) and this brings about the firmament in the chaos (the earth rising out of the water). This process, however, does not bring about eternal or stable beings, but chains of beings that are in flux and interdependent.
This goes also for laws, which Heraclitus says have to be defended as if they were city walls. This is sometimes read that Heraclitus thought human law was important and had to be defended, which he did, but in fact he is also telling us that human laws are impermanent like walls made out of earth. They may seem eternal and permanent, but as any former citizen or city of the Persian empire knows, empires fall and impressive city states are overthrown and change hands. The eternal word of the fire forever forms the cosmos, but human speech and walls are temporary, and therefore take force and effort to maintain. As a skeptic, Heraclitus believes that the divisions made by the mind are mortal, not eternal, like the human body. Our knowledge and laws are impermanent like mounds of dirt.
Heraclitus was one of the most famous thinkers of the Greek and Roman world. He was a big influence on Plato, though Plato is very much opposed to his thinking as we will see next week. Both Heraclitus and Plato were big influences on Christianity which initially flourished not in Israel but in Greece and Syria. If a primal speaking of the Word or Logos sounds familiar, Heraclitus was a central influence on the Greek and Roman stoics, and the author of the Gospel of John was almost certainly a Greek stoic writing in Roman times. The opening of the Gospel of John famously reads: the Logos/Word/Order was with God (Fire/Cosmos), and God spoke (“let there be light”) and light was separated from darkness.
It was only in the late 1700s and 1800s that German scholars rediscovered the presocratics and gave them attention and study. Before this time, Greek Philosophy was considered to have originated with Socrates (hence, “presocratics”) and most scholars were only versed in the surviving writings of Plato and Aristotle. Schleiermacher, one of the most famous and central protestant theologians and an opponent of Hegel, was a major force in bringing popularity to Heraclitus and a major translator of Plato. The philosopher Hegel, who we will study later, saw Heraclitus as a skeptic who is put in balance with Plato and other positivists by the course of history itself. Nietzsche, the great skeptical philosopher who we will also study, wrote that he felt closer to Heraclitus than any other thinker. Nietzsche believed, like Heraclitus, that we are proud of our learning and achievement but we are in fact little better than apes.
We are going to go through the fragments according to themes, that show how Heraclitus sees the individual within the cosmos.
(1): The word from which all things follow (Fire-air(spirits)-earth(firm) in water.
Criticism of the experts and knowledge holders, who try for separate essences.
(92, 97, 98, 119, 121, 125)
Criticism of the commoners, asleep and isolated in otherness, (94)
(2): Listen to the great word and all is one, beyond experts and common
(5, 6) Many say they know (certain) but can’t speak and listen (give and take)
(7) Seek the unknown- Knowledge is a blockage (18,19- wisdom beyond- wisdom lit)
(10) Things keep their secrets- unknown in all things
Fire as all things (20, 21, 22, 26, 27, 28)
(25) Air-Fire, Water-Earth (with fragment of souls smell- smoke by both)
Contending tensions/powers set all things (24, 25, 29, 31)
Hot cold and wet dry (39, 40)
Dry soul good, Wet soul pleasured, bad (72)
War is father of all, thus harmonies (46, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61)
(41) River twice, (81) I am and am not like the river (unknown)
(52, 53) Everything has qualities by perspective (relativity)
(71) No depth to soul- explored forever, (80) inquire within
(130) Silence- Healing (Note the parallels with Buddhism out of Jainism)
ZHUANG ZI
Zhuang Zi, the second patriarch of Daoism, lived from 370 to 301 BCE and worked as a manager in a lacquer warehouse, a large ‘factory’ for making vases, bowls and general wood products (like bento boxes). Other than this, we know little of his life other than his work. Daoist tradition holds that Zhuang Zi wrote the ‘inner chapters’ of his work, and that the anecdotes about him and other stories were added by his disciples, the early proto-Daoists.
In several places, we see the idea of perspective which we encountered in Heraclitus. Mao Quiang and Lady Li were famous beautiful women, but fish, birds and deer were frightened by them. Heraclitus said that all human beauty and achievement is nothing but apes to the gods as apes are only apes to us. Who knows what is beautiful, humans, birds, fish, or deer? Which of them knows what tastes good?
Another great passage is the Peng bird who migrates for the Winter, an act which the dove and the cicada (a large insect) find ridiculous. They have no frame of reference to understand such an act. This suggests that the wisdom of Daoism will sound ridiculous and foolish to those who are not experienced and wise. We read in the text "Truth sounds like its opposite!", just as Heraclitus said "The way forward is the way back".
In the Chapter, The Secret of Caring for Life, we meet Cook Ting and his famous butcher’s knife. Cook Ting tells his master that his blade never goes dull, for he can always find the hidden spaces in things, and then his blade goes right through. This is very much like the reasoning of the wise mind, that can use reason to chop anything up easily and naturally, without striking up against anything in opposition.
Notice that Confucius appears many times in the Zhuang Zi, used to argue AGAINST his own position and in favor of a Daoist position. Many times Confucius says that his own way is inferior to the Daoist way. Clearly, these are texts written by Daoists who appreciate the good in Confucianism but think their own school to be superior. For example, page 65, in the chapter ‘The Sign of Virtue Complete’, Confucius says of Wang T’ai, “If you look at them from the point of view of their differences, then there is liver and gall, Ch’u and Yueh (two warring kingdoms in China). But if you look at them from the point of view of their sameness, then the ten thousand things are all one.” I still use this contradiction of one and many to this day. It shows you much about how people make judgments and arguments.
HEGEL AND THE MASTER/SLAVE RELATIONSHIP
Hegel, a German philosopher who lived in the late 1700s and early 1800s, believed that the history of the world and the process of thought in history and the individual was an evolution of perspective that works from opposite sides to bring itself to greater completion. One of the most famous parts of his Phenomenology of Spirit, a history of the evolution of thought, is the Master/Slave dialectic. This concept became very important for anti-sexism (like the feminist De Beauvoir), anti-racism (like Franz Fanon and Angela Davis) and anti-class thinkers (like Hegel’s student Karl Marx). These will be the last three topics for this class, the “Big Three” in universities since the sixties.
Hegel argues that as the self or identity (like a nation) comes into the world, it cannot understand how there can be others like itself that are not itself and so it tries to fight and kill its others. Then the self figures out that it does not have to kill its others and that it is more productive to enslave them (consider that the most selfish individual would tell everyone else “You are wrong” but the slightly smarter but still selfish individual would tell everyone else “That is just what I have been saying”, neither capable of tolerating opinions other than their own).
At first, the master is in the superior position. However, over time, the slave comes to do everything for the master and thus learns through experience while the master grows lazy and ignorant. The slave comes to realize that he can do things he never thought of for someone or something else, comes to grasp subjectivity and perspective, and thus overturns the master and becomes the greater and more highly developed master.
INSIGHTS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY:
INTERNAL/EXTERNAL ATTRIBUTION & THE HOSTILE MEDIA EFFECT
Modern Psychology has learned much from experiments in recent years about how individuals tend to interpret reality. This teaches us many things about perspective that extend and develop what Heraclitus, Zhuang Zi and Hegel had to say.
Internal vs. External Attribution:
Many experiments have confirmed what is often called the actor/observer bias or internal vs. external attribution. If an individual succeeds at a task, they often attribute the success to themselves or the group to which they belong (internal attribution – “I/We are really good at that”). If an individual fails at a task, they often attribute the failure to the situation (external attribution – “It was because of that thing”). However, if the same individual watches another (especially someone disliked or ‘other’ to the individual) succeed at a task, they often attribute the success to the situation (external attribution – “They just got lucky”, or “It was easier that time”), and when they watch another fail at a task, they often attribute the failure to the other person or the group to which they belong (internal attribution – “That shows they are stupid”).
Notice the complete reversal and the contradiction of opposite perspectives given the same evidence. The attribution and perspective is one way or the complete opposite depending on who does the task and whether or not they succeed.
The Hostile Media Effect:
Other experiments have confirmed that both sides of an issue view media coverage and moderation (judges, referees) as hostile to their side. For example, liberals are angry that the media is conservative, and conservatives are angry that the media is liberal. One study at Stanford showed American media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to pro-Israeli students and pro-Palestinian students, and both sides said the coverage was clearly biased in favor of the other side. Another study had students from Princeton and Dartmouth (a big East Coast rivalry) view a Princeton vs. Dartmouth football game, and each group saw more illegal moves on the other side and each said that the referees missed more of these for the other side.
If we consider perspective, anyone in the middle of an issue is to the opposite side of anyone on the edges. I have a card I like that shows children on a see-saw with one standing on the middle, and it reads “I know I am being fair when both sides accuse me of unfairness”. Unfortunately, this is often true in the world of competing and opposite perspectives.
Eric Gerlach
3/12/2010
LECTURE ON PERSPECTIVE:
HERACLITUS, ZHUANG ZI & HEGEL
Perspective is not simply individual, but social. We share reality in so far as we share perspective. This means that we should not only try to see as many perspectives or as much perspective as we can, but also resisting the tendency to accept one’s own perspective as reality or the whole truth. Truth is in each and every perspective, but it is also always beyond and outside of each and every perspective. Focusing on the concept of perspective forces us to affirm our views as truths but also deny our views as the Truth (with a capital T).
Two of the greatest ancient thinkers on perspective are Heraclitus from ancient Greece and Zhuang Zi from ancient China. To consider perspective as an ethical concept we will be looking at the strikingly similar things that these two ancient thinkers say and then end with some insights of the German philosopher Hegel and discoveries of modern psychology.
HERACLITUS:
Heraclitus’ most famous idea is a memorable image: you can never step in the same river twice. Just as a river is always flowing and changing, so is reality always flowing and changing, such that nothing stays exactly the same for any two moments. You step in a river, then step out, then step back in the same river, but it is no longer ‘the same river’. Heraclitus says this is also true of himself.
According to one source, Heraclitus was a king who abandoned the title to become a philosopher. This has been identified as a close resemblance to the story of the Buddha in India, and some scholars have argued that Heraclitus was in fact the Buddha from India while others have argued that the Buddha was in fact Heraclitus from Greece. Both thinkers were mythologized as a king who left powerful king position and became a sage, and both believe in the enlightening sun rising above the watery chaos of reality and human perception, but it is quite likely the two were not the same individual.
Heraclitus is a very skeptical thinker. This does not mean he saw all things as negative. He was convinced that wisdom and inquiring within show us that all is one big cosmic fire, and things that unify the community and the individual bring wholeness and true happiness. However, he believed that humans are often foolish and let their minds divide themselves from the whole and from each other such that their understandings are disjointed and ignorant.
This is very typical thinking of skeptics the world over. A positivist would say that there are specific truths that are certain and must be separated from the uncertain, specific goods that must be separated from the evil. A skeptic would say, like Heraclitus and the Daoists from China, that the truth and the good is the whole and the great One, and the tendency of the mind to divide the good and the true from the rest is the opposite of true understanding and wisdom.
Heraclitus was not a fan of experts and specialists, and he ridiculed the cultural leaders of his time. He says that the common people are completely asleep, but far more dangerous are the experts who have a small piece of the puzzle and say that they know the entire truth. He calls the poets (Hesiod and Homer) and the Pythagoreans frauds, and says that there are no permanent truths or laws other than the constant formation of watery chaos by the sun and cosmic fire.
Notice that this does not question the set up of the cosmos as we have studied it everywhere (and what the Persians gave to the Eastern Greek city states). Many often ask, “Why, then, should I listen to Heraclitus, since he is simply an expert?”. Heraclitus replies as most skeptics do: don’t take my word for it, but look into the world and within yourself and you will find that it is true.
This is a psychological skepticism that is criticizing the human ability to know particular things as permanent that are able to be separated from the One and All (the cosmic fire). Only the All is permanent. All the other things are wandering temporal forms. The many beings arise from the energy of Being, and then they fall back into the fire and disappear. The cosmos resembles the chaos yet order of the human community centered on authority by spoken word. The LOGOS, the word/plan/order/command, is the formative force in the cosmos, the force of fire and light in the watery chaotic world. The cosmic fire speaks with its ever-present Logos (fire over air) and this brings about the firmament in the chaos (the earth rising out of the water). This process, however, does not bring about eternal or stable beings, but chains of beings that are in flux and interdependent.
This goes also for laws, which Heraclitus says have to be defended as if they were city walls. This is sometimes read that Heraclitus thought human law was important and had to be defended, which he did, but in fact he is also telling us that human laws are impermanent like walls made out of earth. They may seem eternal and permanent, but as any former citizen or city of the Persian empire knows, empires fall and impressive city states are overthrown and change hands. The eternal word of the fire forever forms the cosmos, but human speech and walls are temporary, and therefore take force and effort to maintain. As a skeptic, Heraclitus believes that the divisions made by the mind are mortal, not eternal, like the human body. Our knowledge and laws are impermanent like mounds of dirt.
Heraclitus was one of the most famous thinkers of the Greek and Roman world. He was a big influence on Plato, though Plato is very much opposed to his thinking as we will see next week. Both Heraclitus and Plato were big influences on Christianity which initially flourished not in Israel but in Greece and Syria. If a primal speaking of the Word or Logos sounds familiar, Heraclitus was a central influence on the Greek and Roman stoics, and the author of the Gospel of John was almost certainly a Greek stoic writing in Roman times. The opening of the Gospel of John famously reads: the Logos/Word/Order was with God (Fire/Cosmos), and God spoke (“let there be light”) and light was separated from darkness.
It was only in the late 1700s and 1800s that German scholars rediscovered the presocratics and gave them attention and study. Before this time, Greek Philosophy was considered to have originated with Socrates (hence, “presocratics”) and most scholars were only versed in the surviving writings of Plato and Aristotle. Schleiermacher, one of the most famous and central protestant theologians and an opponent of Hegel, was a major force in bringing popularity to Heraclitus and a major translator of Plato. The philosopher Hegel, who we will study later, saw Heraclitus as a skeptic who is put in balance with Plato and other positivists by the course of history itself. Nietzsche, the great skeptical philosopher who we will also study, wrote that he felt closer to Heraclitus than any other thinker. Nietzsche believed, like Heraclitus, that we are proud of our learning and achievement but we are in fact little better than apes.
We are going to go through the fragments according to themes, that show how Heraclitus sees the individual within the cosmos.
(1): The word from which all things follow (Fire-air(spirits)-earth(firm) in water.
Criticism of the experts and knowledge holders, who try for separate essences.
(92, 97, 98, 119, 121, 125)
Criticism of the commoners, asleep and isolated in otherness, (94)
(2): Listen to the great word and all is one, beyond experts and common
(5, 6) Many say they know (certain) but can’t speak and listen (give and take)
(7) Seek the unknown- Knowledge is a blockage (18,19- wisdom beyond- wisdom lit)
(10) Things keep their secrets- unknown in all things
Fire as all things (20, 21, 22, 26, 27, 28)
(25) Air-Fire, Water-Earth (with fragment of souls smell- smoke by both)
Contending tensions/powers set all things (24, 25, 29, 31)
Hot cold and wet dry (39, 40)
Dry soul good, Wet soul pleasured, bad (72)
War is father of all, thus harmonies (46, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61)
(41) River twice, (81) I am and am not like the river (unknown)
(52, 53) Everything has qualities by perspective (relativity)
(71) No depth to soul- explored forever, (80) inquire within
(130) Silence- Healing (Note the parallels with Buddhism out of Jainism)
ZHUANG ZI
Zhuang Zi, the second patriarch of Daoism, lived from 370 to 301 BCE and worked as a manager in a lacquer warehouse, a large ‘factory’ for making vases, bowls and general wood products (like bento boxes). Other than this, we know little of his life other than his work. Daoist tradition holds that Zhuang Zi wrote the ‘inner chapters’ of his work, and that the anecdotes about him and other stories were added by his disciples, the early proto-Daoists.
In several places, we see the idea of perspective which we encountered in Heraclitus. Mao Quiang and Lady Li were famous beautiful women, but fish, birds and deer were frightened by them. Heraclitus said that all human beauty and achievement is nothing but apes to the gods as apes are only apes to us. Who knows what is beautiful, humans, birds, fish, or deer? Which of them knows what tastes good?
Another great passage is the Peng bird who migrates for the Winter, an act which the dove and the cicada (a large insect) find ridiculous. They have no frame of reference to understand such an act. This suggests that the wisdom of Daoism will sound ridiculous and foolish to those who are not experienced and wise. We read in the text "Truth sounds like its opposite!", just as Heraclitus said "The way forward is the way back".
In the Chapter, The Secret of Caring for Life, we meet Cook Ting and his famous butcher’s knife. Cook Ting tells his master that his blade never goes dull, for he can always find the hidden spaces in things, and then his blade goes right through. This is very much like the reasoning of the wise mind, that can use reason to chop anything up easily and naturally, without striking up against anything in opposition.
Notice that Confucius appears many times in the Zhuang Zi, used to argue AGAINST his own position and in favor of a Daoist position. Many times Confucius says that his own way is inferior to the Daoist way. Clearly, these are texts written by Daoists who appreciate the good in Confucianism but think their own school to be superior. For example, page 65, in the chapter ‘The Sign of Virtue Complete’, Confucius says of Wang T’ai, “If you look at them from the point of view of their differences, then there is liver and gall, Ch’u and Yueh (two warring kingdoms in China). But if you look at them from the point of view of their sameness, then the ten thousand things are all one.” I still use this contradiction of one and many to this day. It shows you much about how people make judgments and arguments.
HEGEL AND THE MASTER/SLAVE RELATIONSHIP
Hegel, a German philosopher who lived in the late 1700s and early 1800s, believed that the history of the world and the process of thought in history and the individual was an evolution of perspective that works from opposite sides to bring itself to greater completion. One of the most famous parts of his Phenomenology of Spirit, a history of the evolution of thought, is the Master/Slave dialectic. This concept became very important for anti-sexism (like the feminist De Beauvoir), anti-racism (like Franz Fanon and Angela Davis) and anti-class thinkers (like Hegel’s student Karl Marx). These will be the last three topics for this class, the “Big Three” in universities since the sixties.
Hegel argues that as the self or identity (like a nation) comes into the world, it cannot understand how there can be others like itself that are not itself and so it tries to fight and kill its others. Then the self figures out that it does not have to kill its others and that it is more productive to enslave them (consider that the most selfish individual would tell everyone else “You are wrong” but the slightly smarter but still selfish individual would tell everyone else “That is just what I have been saying”, neither capable of tolerating opinions other than their own).
At first, the master is in the superior position. However, over time, the slave comes to do everything for the master and thus learns through experience while the master grows lazy and ignorant. The slave comes to realize that he can do things he never thought of for someone or something else, comes to grasp subjectivity and perspective, and thus overturns the master and becomes the greater and more highly developed master.
INSIGHTS OF MODERN PSYCHOLOGY:
INTERNAL/EXTERNAL ATTRIBUTION & THE HOSTILE MEDIA EFFECT
Modern Psychology has learned much from experiments in recent years about how individuals tend to interpret reality. This teaches us many things about perspective that extend and develop what Heraclitus, Zhuang Zi and Hegel had to say.
Internal vs. External Attribution:
Many experiments have confirmed what is often called the actor/observer bias or internal vs. external attribution. If an individual succeeds at a task, they often attribute the success to themselves or the group to which they belong (internal attribution – “I/We are really good at that”). If an individual fails at a task, they often attribute the failure to the situation (external attribution – “It was because of that thing”). However, if the same individual watches another (especially someone disliked or ‘other’ to the individual) succeed at a task, they often attribute the success to the situation (external attribution – “They just got lucky”, or “It was easier that time”), and when they watch another fail at a task, they often attribute the failure to the other person or the group to which they belong (internal attribution – “That shows they are stupid”).
Notice the complete reversal and the contradiction of opposite perspectives given the same evidence. The attribution and perspective is one way or the complete opposite depending on who does the task and whether or not they succeed.
The Hostile Media Effect:
Other experiments have confirmed that both sides of an issue view media coverage and moderation (judges, referees) as hostile to their side. For example, liberals are angry that the media is conservative, and conservatives are angry that the media is liberal. One study at Stanford showed American media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to pro-Israeli students and pro-Palestinian students, and both sides said the coverage was clearly biased in favor of the other side. Another study had students from Princeton and Dartmouth (a big East Coast rivalry) view a Princeton vs. Dartmouth football game, and each group saw more illegal moves on the other side and each said that the referees missed more of these for the other side.
If we consider perspective, anyone in the middle of an issue is to the opposite side of anyone on the edges. I have a card I like that shows children on a see-saw with one standing on the middle, and it reads “I know I am being fair when both sides accuse me of unfairness”. Unfortunately, this is often true in the world of competing and opposite perspectives.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Ethics Midterm Review
BCC Ethics
Eric Gerlach
3/9/2010
Review for Ethics Midterm
The Midterm Exam will consist of 20 multiple choice questions, three short answer questions covering central concepts, and an essay.
Principle, Moral & Law: Kant
Kant is a positivist with regard to principle, morals and laws. Kant believes that reason should rule over desire (like the early cosmology above) and principles that are figured out by reason should always be followed regardless of the consequences (note that the opposite position can be found in the Utilitarian/consequentialist position below). Kant believes that one starts with good will (good in itself without question) and reasoned principles follow, and one should use this good beginning regardless of what consequences follow (though he says this naturally aims at and leads to good consequences even if this is secondary). Kant calls this “the categorical imperative” and “unconditional universal law”. The example of this is the guy with the knife who asks you “Where did your friend go?”, to whom one should not lie regardless of how easy a good end can come from lying. One must “Do one’s Duty” even if one goes down with the ship.
Virtue & Merit: Aristotle
Virtue is like principle in being a good beginning, but it is also a state or end to obtain. Also, virtue can be individual in a way that principle is collective and for the group. The idea is that one gains virtue, merit or “goodness”, and one can then use this ability/capacity to do good. A virtue-ethicist believes that becoming good or virtuous is more important than following principles or simply having good consequences. One should be virtuous even if it means breaking principles or bad results in a particular situation. The upside of this is a virtue centered ethic is not slave to principle or always seeking the best consequences. The downside is that one could believe that oneself or one’s group is “the virtuous” and ignore principles and consequences to the degree that it becomes a problem for oneself or others.
Consequence, Utility & End: Mill
Consequentialism or Utilitarianism argues that one should focus completely on the ends or results to determine if an act or person is good or bad. Specifically, one should try to maximize pleasure/happiness and minimize pain/suffering for everyone, taking a long view (not a short, 15 minute view). Epicurus was an early Greek consequentialist, and he is followed by the Utilitarian school of Bentham and Mill. While Bentham leaned towards the positive side of the ‘pleasure principle’, maximizing happiness, Mill leaned towards the negative, minimizing harm. Mill is the best known, and has had an important impact on modern thought and theory of law.
Mill’s Utilitarianism is opposite yet similar in many ways to Kant. Both see their side as fundamental and the other side as a secondary consequence. Kant says always follow principle and you will likely be happy, and Mill says always try for happiness and you will likely be principled. Both see their own primary focus as good in itself without the possibility of proof or question.
Attacks on Utilitarianism include: Paradox of the bad as good example, Marx’s guess who gets to use who for whose happiness (the rich and elite), Happiness as unobtainable ideal, Environmental challenge to using the world for human purposes.
Balance & The Mean: Egyptian Wisdom & Confucius
Meaning and value work through pairs of opposites (good/evil, open/closed, individual/collective). A reoccurring theme of the world’s wisdom is that seeking the mean or middle between opposites is better than clinging to either side of an opposition. We can see some beautiful examples of this thinking in the Egyptian wisdom and Confucius passages. In the Egyptian wisdom, moderation of eating and drinking, luxury, and balancing one’s own interest with others are the clearest examples. Confucius offers particularly insightful sayings that call for a balance of one’s self with others for the cultivation of self and society.
Self Interest, Self Esteem and Drive: Nietzsche & Rand
Self is very much an end, though like Mill it can be phrased as a principle (focus on the ends).
While early ethics (in accord with ancient cosmology above) focused on the collective good, modern society has taken a turn towards the individual good. These two have always been complimentary, but devices and media have allowed us to be more enabled as individuals than ever before. Nietzsche and Rand both focus on individual achievement as the central end of life, but they are completely different as far as trusting judgment and truth. Nietzsche trusts no truth at all, calling all collectivism “slave morality” and performing his own misogyny as “Philosophy is always the personal confession of the author”. Rand believes her opinions to be objective, and calls her school the “Objectivists”. Rand’s idea of believing in yourself was repackaged as “self esteem” in the 1980s. While it is important to have self esteem, problems can arise when one trusts one’s own judgment and rejects all opposing judgments entirely.
Perspective & Intersubjectivity: Heraclitus & Chuang Tzu
A balance between thinking our views are completely right or wrong, truth or illusion, is the concept of perspective. The “objective” is very much the intersubjective, the similarity and difference of a group of subjective perspectives. Heraclitus and Chuang Tzu are both excellent thinkers to read to get good examples of this sort of thought. Both use perspectives of animals to show that collective human opinion is just that (pigs sleep in mud, birds sleep in trees). The concept of perspective is good for showing us that all views count, but they are also each limited and capable of progress and expansion.
Eric Gerlach
3/9/2010
Review for Ethics Midterm
The Midterm Exam will consist of 20 multiple choice questions, three short answer questions covering central concepts, and an essay.
Principle, Moral & Law: Kant
Kant is a positivist with regard to principle, morals and laws. Kant believes that reason should rule over desire (like the early cosmology above) and principles that are figured out by reason should always be followed regardless of the consequences (note that the opposite position can be found in the Utilitarian/consequentialist position below). Kant believes that one starts with good will (good in itself without question) and reasoned principles follow, and one should use this good beginning regardless of what consequences follow (though he says this naturally aims at and leads to good consequences even if this is secondary). Kant calls this “the categorical imperative” and “unconditional universal law”. The example of this is the guy with the knife who asks you “Where did your friend go?”, to whom one should not lie regardless of how easy a good end can come from lying. One must “Do one’s Duty” even if one goes down with the ship.
Virtue & Merit: Aristotle
Virtue is like principle in being a good beginning, but it is also a state or end to obtain. Also, virtue can be individual in a way that principle is collective and for the group. The idea is that one gains virtue, merit or “goodness”, and one can then use this ability/capacity to do good. A virtue-ethicist believes that becoming good or virtuous is more important than following principles or simply having good consequences. One should be virtuous even if it means breaking principles or bad results in a particular situation. The upside of this is a virtue centered ethic is not slave to principle or always seeking the best consequences. The downside is that one could believe that oneself or one’s group is “the virtuous” and ignore principles and consequences to the degree that it becomes a problem for oneself or others.
Consequence, Utility & End: Mill
Consequentialism or Utilitarianism argues that one should focus completely on the ends or results to determine if an act or person is good or bad. Specifically, one should try to maximize pleasure/happiness and minimize pain/suffering for everyone, taking a long view (not a short, 15 minute view). Epicurus was an early Greek consequentialist, and he is followed by the Utilitarian school of Bentham and Mill. While Bentham leaned towards the positive side of the ‘pleasure principle’, maximizing happiness, Mill leaned towards the negative, minimizing harm. Mill is the best known, and has had an important impact on modern thought and theory of law.
Mill’s Utilitarianism is opposite yet similar in many ways to Kant. Both see their side as fundamental and the other side as a secondary consequence. Kant says always follow principle and you will likely be happy, and Mill says always try for happiness and you will likely be principled. Both see their own primary focus as good in itself without the possibility of proof or question.
Attacks on Utilitarianism include: Paradox of the bad as good example, Marx’s guess who gets to use who for whose happiness (the rich and elite), Happiness as unobtainable ideal, Environmental challenge to using the world for human purposes.
Balance & The Mean: Egyptian Wisdom & Confucius
Meaning and value work through pairs of opposites (good/evil, open/closed, individual/collective). A reoccurring theme of the world’s wisdom is that seeking the mean or middle between opposites is better than clinging to either side of an opposition. We can see some beautiful examples of this thinking in the Egyptian wisdom and Confucius passages. In the Egyptian wisdom, moderation of eating and drinking, luxury, and balancing one’s own interest with others are the clearest examples. Confucius offers particularly insightful sayings that call for a balance of one’s self with others for the cultivation of self and society.
Self Interest, Self Esteem and Drive: Nietzsche & Rand
Self is very much an end, though like Mill it can be phrased as a principle (focus on the ends).
While early ethics (in accord with ancient cosmology above) focused on the collective good, modern society has taken a turn towards the individual good. These two have always been complimentary, but devices and media have allowed us to be more enabled as individuals than ever before. Nietzsche and Rand both focus on individual achievement as the central end of life, but they are completely different as far as trusting judgment and truth. Nietzsche trusts no truth at all, calling all collectivism “slave morality” and performing his own misogyny as “Philosophy is always the personal confession of the author”. Rand believes her opinions to be objective, and calls her school the “Objectivists”. Rand’s idea of believing in yourself was repackaged as “self esteem” in the 1980s. While it is important to have self esteem, problems can arise when one trusts one’s own judgment and rejects all opposing judgments entirely.
Perspective & Intersubjectivity: Heraclitus & Chuang Tzu
A balance between thinking our views are completely right or wrong, truth or illusion, is the concept of perspective. The “objective” is very much the intersubjective, the similarity and difference of a group of subjective perspectives. Heraclitus and Chuang Tzu are both excellent thinkers to read to get good examples of this sort of thought. Both use perspectives of animals to show that collective human opinion is just that (pigs sleep in mud, birds sleep in trees). The concept of perspective is good for showing us that all views count, but they are also each limited and capable of progress and expansion.
Teaching Multiculturalism, Not Eurocentrism
This is a basic guide to learning and teaching from a multicultural view, not a eurocentric view. I hope that our understandings of history, science, philosophy and all areas of study progress from eurocentrism to multiculturalism.
The Eurocentric View of the Ancient World:
Ancient Greece was the birthplace of the Western mind and culture, distinct from others in critical rational inquiry and diverse individual freedom.
The Multicultural View of the Ancient World:
All ancient cultures had critical rational inquiry and diverse individual freedom. Ancient cultures, including ancient Greece, were neither exceptional nor perfect in the exercise of reason and freedom.
The Eurocentric View of the Modern World:
Modern Europe is the rise and success of the Western mind and culture, distinct from others in critical rational inquiry and diverse individual freedom.
The Multicultural View of the Modern World:
All modern cultures have critical rational inquiry and diverse individual freedom. Modern cultures, including modern Europe, are neither exceptional nor perfect in the exercise of reason and freedom.
The Eurocentric View of Trade and Cultural Influence:
Ancient cultures had little contact or trade. Thus, there was little cross-cultural influence in the ancient world. Ancient Greece, ancient Rome and modern Europe share the same culture and so influenced each other. In modern times Europeans opened the world to international trade.
The Multicultural View of Trade and Cultural Influence:
Ancient cultures had much contact and trade with each other. Thus, there was much cross-cultural influence in the ancient world. Ancient Greece, ancient Rome and modern Europe are one example of a chain of cross-cultural influences. In modern times Europeans took over trade that was already international since ancient times.
The Eurocentric View of Mathematics:
The great discoveries in mathematics were made by the ancient Greeks and modern Europeans.
The Multicultural View of Mathematics:
Much of the ancient world, including Greece and Rome, shared the Egyptian system of mathematics. Islamic Algebra, which took much from Indian mathematics, replaced the Egyptian system in modern times because it was far more useful and precise.
The Eurocentric View of Science and Technology:
The great discoveries in science and mechanics were made by the ancient Greeks and modern Europeans.
The Multicultural View of Science and Technology:
Much of ancient science and mechanics were discovered by the Babylonians, Persians and Egyptians. The Chinese and Muslims made great leaps in science and mechanics just before the great leaps of modern Europe.
The Eurocentric View of Philosophy:
Ancient Greece was a philosophical culture, and ancient Rome and modern Europe share this culture. Thus, Western culture is more critical and skeptical than other cultures.
The Multicultural View of Philosophy:
All cultures have philosophers, critics and skeptics, even though these thinkers are often counter-cultural and go against the dominant culture as they did in ancient Greece, ancient Rome and modern Europe. Western culture is not distinctly philosophical.
The Eurocentric View of Politics:
Ancient Greece was the first democratic culture, and ancient Rome and modern Europe share this culture.
The Multicultural View of Politics:
Since ancient Sumer, most societies have had a democratic body or group decision process that supported the rulers in decision making, even though this body was often composed of land-owning elites as it was in ancient Greece and Rome.
The Eurocentric View of the Ancient World:
Ancient Greece was the birthplace of the Western mind and culture, distinct from others in critical rational inquiry and diverse individual freedom.
The Multicultural View of the Ancient World:
All ancient cultures had critical rational inquiry and diverse individual freedom. Ancient cultures, including ancient Greece, were neither exceptional nor perfect in the exercise of reason and freedom.
The Eurocentric View of the Modern World:
Modern Europe is the rise and success of the Western mind and culture, distinct from others in critical rational inquiry and diverse individual freedom.
The Multicultural View of the Modern World:
All modern cultures have critical rational inquiry and diverse individual freedom. Modern cultures, including modern Europe, are neither exceptional nor perfect in the exercise of reason and freedom.
The Eurocentric View of Trade and Cultural Influence:
Ancient cultures had little contact or trade. Thus, there was little cross-cultural influence in the ancient world. Ancient Greece, ancient Rome and modern Europe share the same culture and so influenced each other. In modern times Europeans opened the world to international trade.
The Multicultural View of Trade and Cultural Influence:
Ancient cultures had much contact and trade with each other. Thus, there was much cross-cultural influence in the ancient world. Ancient Greece, ancient Rome and modern Europe are one example of a chain of cross-cultural influences. In modern times Europeans took over trade that was already international since ancient times.
The Eurocentric View of Mathematics:
The great discoveries in mathematics were made by the ancient Greeks and modern Europeans.
The Multicultural View of Mathematics:
Much of the ancient world, including Greece and Rome, shared the Egyptian system of mathematics. Islamic Algebra, which took much from Indian mathematics, replaced the Egyptian system in modern times because it was far more useful and precise.
The Eurocentric View of Science and Technology:
The great discoveries in science and mechanics were made by the ancient Greeks and modern Europeans.
The Multicultural View of Science and Technology:
Much of ancient science and mechanics were discovered by the Babylonians, Persians and Egyptians. The Chinese and Muslims made great leaps in science and mechanics just before the great leaps of modern Europe.
The Eurocentric View of Philosophy:
Ancient Greece was a philosophical culture, and ancient Rome and modern Europe share this culture. Thus, Western culture is more critical and skeptical than other cultures.
The Multicultural View of Philosophy:
All cultures have philosophers, critics and skeptics, even though these thinkers are often counter-cultural and go against the dominant culture as they did in ancient Greece, ancient Rome and modern Europe. Western culture is not distinctly philosophical.
The Eurocentric View of Politics:
Ancient Greece was the first democratic culture, and ancient Rome and modern Europe share this culture.
The Multicultural View of Politics:
Since ancient Sumer, most societies have had a democratic body or group decision process that supported the rulers in decision making, even though this body was often composed of land-owning elites as it was in ancient Greece and Rome.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Logic Lecture March 8: Greek Skepticism
BCC Logic
Eric Gerlach
3/8/2010
GREEK SKEPTICISM: HERACLITUS, PYRRHO AND SEXTUS EMPIRICUS
HERACLITUS
He gives us the concept of the LOGOS, from which we get LOGIC.
This could be influenced by Persian Zoroastrianism, though this is controversial.
Heraclitus is in the very beginning of Greek thinking, in modern day Turkey (the Eastern half of the area we denote as ancient Greece, the half that is not today called ‘Greece’ or on the European mainland). The presocratics were active before Socrates (hence ‘pre-Socratic), about 500s and 400s BCE. We have no writings of Socrates and only fragments of the pre-Socratics. It was in the 1800s, the time of Hegel that the pre-Socratics were given attention and study. Schleiermacher, the most famous protestant theologian, was a big fan of Heraclitus, a major translator of Plato, and his theology is somewhat similar to Heraclitus and Plato: all down here is watery chaos, so we must exalt above all this to realize the Great all or One, symbolized by the sun, which is eternal above all of the species of being it produces.
Heraclitus was born in Ephesus supposedly just before 500 BCE. Ephesus is quite close to Miletus, the home of most of the pre-Socratic philosopher/scientists, but there is no record of Heraclitus interacting with any of them. Both cities were satraps or provinces of the Persian empire, and so it was under the influence of Zoroastrianism (developed about 1000 BCE) and the cultures of the Persian empire. Indeed, though Heraclitus’ thought can be compared to Egyptian and Indian thought to give it a wider context, it is clear that Heraclitus closely resembles Zoroastrianism, while giving it a very Indian like skepticism about the watery impermanent nature of any particular being or perception of being. Heraclitus’ most famous idea is a memorable image: you can never step in the same river twice. Just as a river is always flowing and changing, so is reality always flowing and changing, such that nothing stays exactly the same for any two moments. You step in a river, then step out, then step back in the same river, but it is no longer ‘the same river’.
According to one source, Heraclitus was a king who abandoned the title to become a philosopher. This has been identified as a close resemblance to Indian Buddhism and the story of the Buddha. Both thinkers were ‘mythologized’ as a king who left powerful king position and became a sage, and both believe in the enlightening sun rising above the watery chaos of reality and human perception. Was Heraclitus getting Indian thought through Zoroastrian Persia?
Another reason why famous: Heraclitus vs. his predecessors. He calls the poets (Hesiod and Homer) and the Pythagoreans frauds, and says that there are no permanent truths or laws other than the constant formation of watery chaos by the sun and cosmic fire. Notice that this does not question the set up of the cosmos as we have studied it everywhere (and what the Persians gave to the Eastern Greek city states). This is a psychological skepticism that is criticizing the human ability to know particular things as permanent that are able to be separated from the One and All (the cosmic fire). Only the All is permanent. All the other things are wandering temporal forms. All that we know is that things arise from the energy of the cosmic fire, and then they fall back into the fire and disappear.
Heraclitus even ascribed to the Fire-air-earth-water cosmology, but believed that the particular forms, the species of being that are produced by the cosmos, are chaotic and thus simply forms of life that cannot be boiled down to knowable essences or types. The doctrine can be stated famously, though these are not Heraclitus’ words, “Everything is in flux”.
The cosmos resembles the chaos yet order of the human community centered on authority by spoken word. The LOGOS, the word/plan/order/command, is the formative force in the cosmos, the force of fire and light in the watery chaotic world. The cosmic fire speaks with its ever-present Logos (fire over air) and this brings about the firmament in the chaos (the earth rising out of the water). This process, however, does not bring about eternal or stable beings, but chains of beings that are in flux and interdependent. The whole and the operation of the cosmos has an eternal shape to it, but the shapes that arise out of the cosmos are only temporary. This goes for laws, which Heraclitus have to be defended as if they were city laws. This is sometimes read that Heraclitus thought human law was important and had to be defended, but in fact he is showing that human laws are impermanent like city walls. They may seem eternal and permanent, but as any satrap of the Persian empire knows, empires fall and impressive city states are overthrown and change hands. The eternal word of the fire forever forms the cosmos, but human speech and walls are temporary, and therefore take force and effort to maintain.
Heraclitus is important to the Christian tradition. If a primal speaking of Logos sounds familiar, Heraclitus was a central influence on the Greek and Roman stoics, and the author of the Gospel of John was almost certainly a Greek stoic writing in Roman times. John reads: and the Logos/word was with God (Fire/Cosmos), and God spoke and light was separated from darkness. Speech and intention here are dividing or burning the cosmos into opposites by fire. Our minds do this on a smaller level in an imperfect way, explaining how the cosmos created our minds.
PYRRHO AND SEXTUS EMPIRICUS
Sextus is a mystery. He is supposed to have lived towards 200 CE, 700 years after Heraclitus. He is thought by scholars to have been from Alexandria Egypt. He might be Libyan, thus African, but it has been assumed that he was Greek living in Egypt or Rome. It is thought that he is a doctor because he mentions medical cases to show how sometimes things are good but then surprisingly bad in other cases or vice versa, but there is nothing that proves this.
Sextus is the first Pyrrhoian Skeptic, quite similar to the Jains. Agnosticism of all judgment and plurality of perspective and truth are staples for both. When Alexander fought his way to the border of India, to try to conquer the rich and fertile area, he brought the philosopher Pyrrho with him around 300 BCE. Pyrrho met with some ‘gymnosophists’ in the historian’s texts, and scholars argue whether these were Buddhists, Jains or if either existed yet at the time. Pyrrho witnessed the yoga and extreme penances of the sages, had discussions, then came home and refused to write anything or live in society. People would come to visit him on the edges of town, where he would argue that everything is true and not true, that every perspective is true but also false. His thinking sprouted a school in Alexandria Egypt, a great center of Greek, early Christian and later Muslim thought. We know of this exclusively through the writings of Sextus.
For ex: Sextus calls upon the ‘where there is smoke, there is fire’ example used by Gautama and Aristotle, and then brings up many cases where one would be mistaken to draw the inference. The point is not that it can’t be drawn, but it can never be certain in a particular situation.
The Issue: IS has a temporary and eternal meaning, back and forth, like IS has a whole-part back and forth meaning. (Clinton, Rumsfeld vs. dealing with the real issue)
Pyrrho and Sextus, just like Heraclitus, DO believe in saying things (maybe not writing for Pyrrho), but they do not like saying or judging in the long run, just for short term situations.
Thus, they all believe in a ONE LOGOS, but are skeptical of judgment to FINALLY and COMPLETELY judge the actions and parts of the One.
Eric Gerlach
3/8/2010
GREEK SKEPTICISM: HERACLITUS, PYRRHO AND SEXTUS EMPIRICUS
HERACLITUS
He gives us the concept of the LOGOS, from which we get LOGIC.
This could be influenced by Persian Zoroastrianism, though this is controversial.
Heraclitus is in the very beginning of Greek thinking, in modern day Turkey (the Eastern half of the area we denote as ancient Greece, the half that is not today called ‘Greece’ or on the European mainland). The presocratics were active before Socrates (hence ‘pre-Socratic), about 500s and 400s BCE. We have no writings of Socrates and only fragments of the pre-Socratics. It was in the 1800s, the time of Hegel that the pre-Socratics were given attention and study. Schleiermacher, the most famous protestant theologian, was a big fan of Heraclitus, a major translator of Plato, and his theology is somewhat similar to Heraclitus and Plato: all down here is watery chaos, so we must exalt above all this to realize the Great all or One, symbolized by the sun, which is eternal above all of the species of being it produces.
Heraclitus was born in Ephesus supposedly just before 500 BCE. Ephesus is quite close to Miletus, the home of most of the pre-Socratic philosopher/scientists, but there is no record of Heraclitus interacting with any of them. Both cities were satraps or provinces of the Persian empire, and so it was under the influence of Zoroastrianism (developed about 1000 BCE) and the cultures of the Persian empire. Indeed, though Heraclitus’ thought can be compared to Egyptian and Indian thought to give it a wider context, it is clear that Heraclitus closely resembles Zoroastrianism, while giving it a very Indian like skepticism about the watery impermanent nature of any particular being or perception of being. Heraclitus’ most famous idea is a memorable image: you can never step in the same river twice. Just as a river is always flowing and changing, so is reality always flowing and changing, such that nothing stays exactly the same for any two moments. You step in a river, then step out, then step back in the same river, but it is no longer ‘the same river’.
According to one source, Heraclitus was a king who abandoned the title to become a philosopher. This has been identified as a close resemblance to Indian Buddhism and the story of the Buddha. Both thinkers were ‘mythologized’ as a king who left powerful king position and became a sage, and both believe in the enlightening sun rising above the watery chaos of reality and human perception. Was Heraclitus getting Indian thought through Zoroastrian Persia?
Another reason why famous: Heraclitus vs. his predecessors. He calls the poets (Hesiod and Homer) and the Pythagoreans frauds, and says that there are no permanent truths or laws other than the constant formation of watery chaos by the sun and cosmic fire. Notice that this does not question the set up of the cosmos as we have studied it everywhere (and what the Persians gave to the Eastern Greek city states). This is a psychological skepticism that is criticizing the human ability to know particular things as permanent that are able to be separated from the One and All (the cosmic fire). Only the All is permanent. All the other things are wandering temporal forms. All that we know is that things arise from the energy of the cosmic fire, and then they fall back into the fire and disappear.
Heraclitus even ascribed to the Fire-air-earth-water cosmology, but believed that the particular forms, the species of being that are produced by the cosmos, are chaotic and thus simply forms of life that cannot be boiled down to knowable essences or types. The doctrine can be stated famously, though these are not Heraclitus’ words, “Everything is in flux”.
The cosmos resembles the chaos yet order of the human community centered on authority by spoken word. The LOGOS, the word/plan/order/command, is the formative force in the cosmos, the force of fire and light in the watery chaotic world. The cosmic fire speaks with its ever-present Logos (fire over air) and this brings about the firmament in the chaos (the earth rising out of the water). This process, however, does not bring about eternal or stable beings, but chains of beings that are in flux and interdependent. The whole and the operation of the cosmos has an eternal shape to it, but the shapes that arise out of the cosmos are only temporary. This goes for laws, which Heraclitus have to be defended as if they were city laws. This is sometimes read that Heraclitus thought human law was important and had to be defended, but in fact he is showing that human laws are impermanent like city walls. They may seem eternal and permanent, but as any satrap of the Persian empire knows, empires fall and impressive city states are overthrown and change hands. The eternal word of the fire forever forms the cosmos, but human speech and walls are temporary, and therefore take force and effort to maintain.
Heraclitus is important to the Christian tradition. If a primal speaking of Logos sounds familiar, Heraclitus was a central influence on the Greek and Roman stoics, and the author of the Gospel of John was almost certainly a Greek stoic writing in Roman times. John reads: and the Logos/word was with God (Fire/Cosmos), and God spoke and light was separated from darkness. Speech and intention here are dividing or burning the cosmos into opposites by fire. Our minds do this on a smaller level in an imperfect way, explaining how the cosmos created our minds.
PYRRHO AND SEXTUS EMPIRICUS
Sextus is a mystery. He is supposed to have lived towards 200 CE, 700 years after Heraclitus. He is thought by scholars to have been from Alexandria Egypt. He might be Libyan, thus African, but it has been assumed that he was Greek living in Egypt or Rome. It is thought that he is a doctor because he mentions medical cases to show how sometimes things are good but then surprisingly bad in other cases or vice versa, but there is nothing that proves this.
Sextus is the first Pyrrhoian Skeptic, quite similar to the Jains. Agnosticism of all judgment and plurality of perspective and truth are staples for both. When Alexander fought his way to the border of India, to try to conquer the rich and fertile area, he brought the philosopher Pyrrho with him around 300 BCE. Pyrrho met with some ‘gymnosophists’ in the historian’s texts, and scholars argue whether these were Buddhists, Jains or if either existed yet at the time. Pyrrho witnessed the yoga and extreme penances of the sages, had discussions, then came home and refused to write anything or live in society. People would come to visit him on the edges of town, where he would argue that everything is true and not true, that every perspective is true but also false. His thinking sprouted a school in Alexandria Egypt, a great center of Greek, early Christian and later Muslim thought. We know of this exclusively through the writings of Sextus.
For ex: Sextus calls upon the ‘where there is smoke, there is fire’ example used by Gautama and Aristotle, and then brings up many cases where one would be mistaken to draw the inference. The point is not that it can’t be drawn, but it can never be certain in a particular situation.
The Issue: IS has a temporary and eternal meaning, back and forth, like IS has a whole-part back and forth meaning. (Clinton, Rumsfeld vs. dealing with the real issue)
Pyrrho and Sextus, just like Heraclitus, DO believe in saying things (maybe not writing for Pyrrho), but they do not like saying or judging in the long run, just for short term situations.
Thus, they all believe in a ONE LOGOS, but are skeptical of judgment to FINALLY and COMPLETELY judge the actions and parts of the One.
Intro Philosophy Midterm Review
BCC Introduction to Philosophy
Instructor: Eric Gerlach
10/13/2009
Review for Midterm
Shamanism: “One who knows”, common world culture of early tribal society, forms that appear in world religions, ecstatic experience as ‘standing outside’, initiation rites and ‘rebirth’, investigating problems and seeking visions of solutions, the All-Tree, the problem of the One and the Many, the problem of destiny after death, stories as transmission of knowledge
City State Priests & Egypt: Societies gather into larger societies and settle, authorities become traditional, specialization of experts and scholars, eternal stars of fire as order above, water as chaos below, air as ordering breath or communication, Egyptian wisdom texts show criticism of society and human behaviors, heart centered individual, warring state periods good for thought, polytheism to monotheism to abstract solar monotheism
Hinduism, Jainism & Buddhism: Three paths of worship (Bhakti devotion, Raja asceticism, Jnana scholarship), trinity of Brahma, Vishnu (salvation) and Shiva (destruction), multitude of gods who are yet are not these three, two types of afterlife (reincarnation and release of Nirvana), Vedas as multiple origin stories, Upanishads as philosophical ‘that is you’ inner meaning, Jain influence on Buddhism and Hinduism, Mahavira and the Tirthankaras, two principles of skepticism (non-one-endedness and postulation), practice of asceticism and austerities (fasting, postures, meditation), Jain all karma as negative and total release as joining the order of the cosmos, the Jain metaphor of the leaky boat (plugging and bailing), Buddhism concepts of Four Noble Truths, Doctrine of the Mean, Codependent Arising
Heraclitus: All is One/Fire/Cosmic Mind, all particular things are impermanent (even gods/planets), experts do not know much more than the common people, we are all apes to the gods, can’t step in the same river twice, perspective changing how things are
Plato: Parmenides over Heraclitus, Forms/Ideas as eternal models of things, the three parts of the soul (appetite, spirit and reason) corresponding to the three classes of the city (workers, police and philosophers), allegory of the cave
Confucianism: Mandate of Heaven as abstract monotheism, social order and rites (Li) as strength of society, study and civil service over meditation and nature of Daoism, criticism of the individual and equating others with oneself, right mind/intention over right body/action, love (Ren) as center of human and system, recognition of the lowest as oneself and self criticism, Neo-Confucianism as blend with Daoism and Buddhism
Daoism: Return to nature and stillness, seeing both sides of judgment, Yin and Yang symbol, influence on Chinese Buddhism and Zen, the great One/Way as nameless above all named 10,000 things, water-like in fluidity and getting everywhere, the wheel as both solid and empty together, Zhuan Zi and perspective, Cook Ting, all humans are ugly to minnows and deer, the Peng bird vs. dove and cicada
Instructor: Eric Gerlach
10/13/2009
Review for Midterm
Shamanism: “One who knows”, common world culture of early tribal society, forms that appear in world religions, ecstatic experience as ‘standing outside’, initiation rites and ‘rebirth’, investigating problems and seeking visions of solutions, the All-Tree, the problem of the One and the Many, the problem of destiny after death, stories as transmission of knowledge
City State Priests & Egypt: Societies gather into larger societies and settle, authorities become traditional, specialization of experts and scholars, eternal stars of fire as order above, water as chaos below, air as ordering breath or communication, Egyptian wisdom texts show criticism of society and human behaviors, heart centered individual, warring state periods good for thought, polytheism to monotheism to abstract solar monotheism
Hinduism, Jainism & Buddhism: Three paths of worship (Bhakti devotion, Raja asceticism, Jnana scholarship), trinity of Brahma, Vishnu (salvation) and Shiva (destruction), multitude of gods who are yet are not these three, two types of afterlife (reincarnation and release of Nirvana), Vedas as multiple origin stories, Upanishads as philosophical ‘that is you’ inner meaning, Jain influence on Buddhism and Hinduism, Mahavira and the Tirthankaras, two principles of skepticism (non-one-endedness and postulation), practice of asceticism and austerities (fasting, postures, meditation), Jain all karma as negative and total release as joining the order of the cosmos, the Jain metaphor of the leaky boat (plugging and bailing), Buddhism concepts of Four Noble Truths, Doctrine of the Mean, Codependent Arising
Heraclitus: All is One/Fire/Cosmic Mind, all particular things are impermanent (even gods/planets), experts do not know much more than the common people, we are all apes to the gods, can’t step in the same river twice, perspective changing how things are
Plato: Parmenides over Heraclitus, Forms/Ideas as eternal models of things, the three parts of the soul (appetite, spirit and reason) corresponding to the three classes of the city (workers, police and philosophers), allegory of the cave
Confucianism: Mandate of Heaven as abstract monotheism, social order and rites (Li) as strength of society, study and civil service over meditation and nature of Daoism, criticism of the individual and equating others with oneself, right mind/intention over right body/action, love (Ren) as center of human and system, recognition of the lowest as oneself and self criticism, Neo-Confucianism as blend with Daoism and Buddhism
Daoism: Return to nature and stillness, seeing both sides of judgment, Yin and Yang symbol, influence on Chinese Buddhism and Zen, the great One/Way as nameless above all named 10,000 things, water-like in fluidity and getting everywhere, the wheel as both solid and empty together, Zhuan Zi and perspective, Cook Ting, all humans are ugly to minnows and deer, the Peng bird vs. dove and cicada
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Ethics Lecture March 5: Drive & Desire, Nietzsche & Rand
BCC Ethics
Eric Gerlach
3/5/2010
LECTURE ON DRIVE AND DESIRE: NIETZSCHE VS RAND
Last time talked about Mill, Utilitarianism and looking at the Ends of acts rather than beginnings.
So far, we have been concerned with collectivist, not individualist ethical concepts. This time we talk about drive, desire and self interest, reading Nietzsche but also looking at a thinker important in American thought who takes this sort of thinking in an entirely different direction, Ayn Rand. With modern times and increasing technology that enables the individual comes new individualistic thinking and criticism of more collectivist traditional thought.
While Nietzsche and Rand both believe the individual should try to create something in the name of the self, Nietzsche says this is because no one is simply right while Rand says that she and her school of thought, Objectivism, are simply right. Myself, love Nietzsche, hate Rand. Both are critical for looking at modernized society.
There are many positive and negative things about individualism over collectivism. When individualism is a problem we call it ‘selfish’ to label it bad, but our society sees more than just evils in individualism and self-centeredness. As society has become modernized, it is up to the individual to regulate themselves and keep themselves in line. Foucault is the big thinker on this point (who was very influenced by Nietzsche). This means that individualism is just as much praised, as ‘self-starting’, ‘self-reliant’, that one should have ‘self-esteem’ (this is the repackaged ideas of Rand by Brandon, as it is scorned as ‘selfish’. There are many ways today that individuals are more enabled to be individuals than ever before, and it is very bound up with America being both the best and the worst so far in many things that civilizations have been doing from the beginning.
While America is very individualistic as a culture, with positive and negative aspects, it is important to recognize that ‘Western’ white European people are not individualistic by culture starting with the Greeks. This is unfortunately how it is often presented, that Greece was a very ‘human’ and ‘individualist’ place, and that’s why the West is so the West vs. all other cultures. As you know, I am a big fan of saying that the West is a bunch of enabled, wealthy HUMAN BEINGS, and so when they get ‘humanist’ they are actually getting stuff and culture.
When we look at Japanese teenagers in Tokyo and Kyoto, we can see profound individualism (like in the rising ‘Street Culture’ and Art that is shared the world over today beyond cultural differences).
Good evidence for this can be seen in a recent experiment where rural African children were given laptops and the researchers were surprised when the results showed that there was no lag time of any length in the learning compared to American urban children. The researchers all assumed that individualistic-culture raised children would be able to master laptops faster.
Thus, the Greeks and the Renaissance were ‘humanism’ rising, but only because there were surges of wealth and culture, just like in Baghdad 1000 years ago and in China before that. One should expect to see rises, not simple ‘achievements’ of freedom of thought, diversity of opinions, inventions and innovations, etc whenever a city or area becomes enabled. Americans, because of the last 150 years and due to geographic positioning, have become far more enabled and innovating than other areas of the world but we should not fool ourselves in thinking that we are the good culture that owns this, either genetically (by ethnicity) or socially (by form of politics, religion, or science).
In the context of ancient cosmology, individualism and self interest are typically BAD.
Consider that the big ONE is more important and ranks all of the little branches. Many has been characterized as bad and One as good on both an individual and social level. With modern individualist thinking and development, diversity becomes a good thing, both for the individual (post modern conceptions and novels, movies etc) and for the social (multiculturalism, in America called “the melting pot”).
Consider a tree. The more the branches, the larger the trunk has to be to support them, and the larger the trunk, the more branches are needed to feed the tree. Individuality and community are mutually supportive. While traditional society favors the collective and modern society prizes the individual, both can help each other in balance.
While individualism can be too extreme (for me, Rand is just this in particular ways, such as calling her group ‘Objective’ with a capital ‘O’ for praising selfishness) we are now waking to new levels of seeing how the individual can support the group and the group support the individual. This makes individualism and emphasis on drive, the self, and survival forces of GOOD (regardless of what one thinks of Nietzsche or Rand) and thus important for our Ethics even though Ethics has largely ignored individualism to concentrate on the collectivists dueling back and forth (most famously Kant and Mill, both of whom Nietzsche hated).
NIETZSCHE (1844-1900)
Nietzsche is often called the first modern thinker. In fact, depending on whether you say we live in modern or post-modern times, he is called the first modern OR post-modern thinker. He is without doubt one of the most influential philosophers of modern Europe, and most skeptical thought is now deeply in his debt.
Nietzsche came from a long line of protestant Lutheran preachers. Unfortunately, Nietzsche’s father died when he was very little, and though his family sent the boy to school to become a preacher and theologian (like Hegel, Heidegger and many other German thinkers) Nietzsche rebelled and turned to philosophy.
German Pessimism and Schopenhauer:
Just before Nietzsche’s birth, Germany had been going through a great period of pessimism. Just like in China, Egypt, Greece and everywhere, human thought flourishes in the period after tragedy and warring states because people are forced to turn against old conceptions and institutions and ask hard questions that become very popular in these sorts of times.
German princes came together to crush the popular people’s movements for individual rights, and there was a great turning away from the German reason of Kant towards the German will of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Since reason failed in the world, the world is not a reasonable place but a tough place in which it is hard to push for what one sees as beautiful and true.
Marx wrote in this time, for this crowd.
Schopenhauer is deeply influenced by Buddhism and Indian thought, in a very pessimistic way.
He uses the image of a ship bobbing on the water, just hanging on in a watery, stormy ocean of a world. Rather than believe in a reason beyond, having the stomach to see the harsh reality of the situation became a value, a value that skeptical thought has retained.
German pessimism, including its famous thinkers Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, flourished in two more recent periods of pessimism: WWI for Europe and Vietnam for America. In fact, Nietzsche was the original guy who said ‘my home country is stupid and think they are awesome’, bashing Germany and all things German quite openly, for which he has been honored as not only individualistic but incredibly courageous. Thus European thought following WWI and American culture following the 60’s (Berkeley a key player in this) found deep meaning in calling their society and ‘the system’ a bunch of chumps.
Nietzsche vs. Morality:
The text I gave you to read is ‘Beyond Good and Evil’, in which Nietzsche asks us to look at humanity critically and see that following the rules (like Kant) or ‘the greater good’ (like Mill) is for sheep. The individual rises above the masses and sees things in a new way. Nietzsche came up with these ideas reading Kant and Mill, reacting against their overall goods for everyone evenly. For Nietzsche, inequality are the beautiful mountain ranges to climb and conquer.
Nietzsche was a staunch individualist, believing that ANY group morality is a slave morality, and he called Christianity, Scientific ‘Objectivity’, German Nationalism and German Racism (very much centered in Anti-Semitism) out on this vocally. Again, he is seen as a hero by many for this. Consider: “When we create the master race, we will have to mix in a lot of Jews to get their good qualities”, a joke considering that Nietzsche would never advise creating a master race of equals but rather loves the individual who stands above the race as a herd.
It was a shame that Nietzsche was censored and used by the Nazis to support their ideas of the beautiful rising German will of the master race, taking Nietzsche’s individualism and twisting it into a racial and social doctrine. Nietzsche intended his words for individualists, as he says over and over again. In this, they famously used his concept of the Superman (and yes, Nietzsche is the first person on record to use this phrase, the UBERMENCH) to mean not the artist or visionary who creates but the German race.
Nietzsche vs. Nihilism:
While many would say ‘Nietzsche believes in nothing, then”, this would not be true. Nietzsche was just as vocal about believing in something as he was about not believing the herd mentality. Nietzsche saw himself as a new sort of thinker who would be followed and imitated by many. Because of this, he warns over and over again NOT to make his thought into a school or a system. However, he did not believe like Schopenhauer that one could believe or not and it makes little difference. Nietzsche believed that the whole worth of the individual is that, in the face of nothing being absolutely true, staring into the void of being, you create something and stand for something in a beautiful way, creating your own meaning in life. He was very critical of ‘Nihilism’, believing in nothing, thought this is just what his critics, religious and not, have called him.
Nietzsche believes in Heraclitus and Hegel’s Becoming between Being and Nothing. He avoids believing in eternal positives, but also believing in nothing whatsoever. It is the overturning of the old into the new by the true individual who wills something created beyond themselves and the world that stands in the face of Nihilism that Nietzsche sees as modernity’s greatest threat. He sees a world where everyone sits on their couch, believes in nothing but is afraid to contradict the state or church and do SOMETHING other than sit there.
Thus, Nietzsche relentlessly bashes reason and judgment in himself and in others, but he believes that you must have the courage to create as a contradictory and mortal being.
Nietzsche’s bashing of women: An Interesting Example of Nietzsche’s Skeptical Individualism
One of the most beautiful and deep parts of Nietzsche’s writings is his turn in Human, All Too Human from bashing Kant and others for believing in objective truth to say ‘here are some of my truths’ and without warning start bashing women repeatedly including the famous “When you go to woman, do not forget your whip”. The beauty of this philosophical performance, what inspires Bataille and Derrida, is that Nietzsche here is showing you both sides of himself at once. Unlike Kant or Mill who are writing like they can be consistent and not contradict themselves in the building or seeing of the truth, Nietzsche knows the truth is psychological and complex, and that beauty comes from tension and pain. Thus, even in his bashing he knows he is a human being and flawed. This has had an amazing impact on Art and Literature (particularly since Bataille and his open obscenity in following Nietzsche).
Passages of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil:
N starts off with asking, why do we want or suppose we can simply get truth? Philosophy seems like it has barely even gotten started. Asking this question is perhaps the greatest risk: nihilism can result from q of ‘truth’.
Read BGE (2)
Faith in opposite values: categorical Ts and Fs, such that we can fully know.
Notice ‘frog perspective’, maybe same as frog in well of CT.
Read (3), selection. Instinct to simplify things in ‘truth’ but complex
Read (4), ending. “philosophy beyond good & evil”, this is first time title in the book.
Read (5) start and selection. Philosophers as naïve, trusting so far, critique of Kant. Why?
Read (6), middle. Naïve, because ALL DRIVES can pose as ‘truth’ or ‘good’.
Read (16) start: Notice beyond even Schopenhauer here. Thinking conceals itself such that we cannot be simply certain of it any way. (Notice lead to Freud here)
In 17, speaks more of the deceptive power of language to simplify things for us and shape our world. He mentions resemblance of Indian, Greek and German philosophy, says it is clearly explained by language- fits with growing German- our picture.
Why is language deceptive? How does grammar lie? Read (24), start and end.
Language, and science, have to simplify the world by making strict oppositions out of what is actually subtleties of gradation. Language, philosophy and science make things black and white, but things are actually shades of grey between ideals and extremes.
Nietzsche says that truth is alive, and doesn’t need such simple and artificial scaffolding as our beliefs or our knowing we are right. We should enjoy being wrong.
Read (25) start: Truth needs no protectors- or categorical certainties.
Says falsehood is the surest fact, continually in all truth and discovery.
Read (34), middle to end. Philosophers need to suspect the certainties they have taken for granted, and grammar plays a serious part in the simplifying deception, he says even poison against life. (Note: Hegel’s judgment is the one sided acid).
Also Great: (78), (94) (126)
AYN RAND (1905-1982)
As said, I like Nietzsche’s individualism much more than Rand. I believe Nietzsche takes his individualism too far, to the point that he values it above collective truth where I would rather have a balance of individual and collective goods, both being equally enjoyable and profitable for human beings. Ayn Rand, however, takes what is beautiful in Nietzsche and rams it straight into the ground like the head of an ostrich.
For starters, to give fair warning, Ayn Rand believes that all Philosophers have simply been too stupid to see that reality is right in front of our eyes, that we see real objects, and there are times (MOST of the time for her and her Objectivist followers) when we are just right and others are just wrong and we should simply say so. While this can come in a good form as ‘self esteem’, it is easy to see why philosophy people bash her writings, say that she has never read any philosophy and since she now proposes to simply answer all of the deepest questions correctly with simple and obvious answers she has no idea what philosophy actually is. It is pointed out that she is very popular with individualist people who have never studied philosophy but not with philosophy students. This charge can be quite elitist, but in my opinion it is somewhat justified. What would Nietzsche think of common American people who have not studied great works but come together as ‘Objectivists’ in groups to say over and over again that they are objectively right and everyone who disagrees is simply wrong? He would say that they are hardly enabled individuals, but rather a herd suffering herd delusions of objectivity, like Kant but far less educated.
On the other hand, Ayn Rand is very much a popular, common person’s American Realist philosopher. American Realists, who actually come from Scottish realism, believe in the positivist position (reality is real, self is real, we perceive real objects for real, and one can simply judge things to be true or false, for real) and believe that philosophy, even the positivists like Kant and Aristotle, have been led astray by skepticism and compromised their positions. The problem for philosophy professionals is that, unlike the realists, Rand believes that she is simply right and there are no problems and the rest of philosophy is meaningless, which is a position that even hardcore American realists cannot support.
Rand’s life and Pro-Capitalism, Objectivism Stance:
Ayn Rand is big in America because she defected from Soviet Russia and embraced America as Objectively right. This is why she has reading rooms dedicated to her in Marine academies and other hard core pro-American institutions. She is anti-collectivist like Nietzsche, but thinks that the Soviet Union is simply wrong and collectivist while America is simply right and individualist.
Ayn Rand believes in the value of Selfishness, termed better by Brandon as ‘self esteem’.
You may remember it: it has become a Neo-Con staple and artifact of the 80s.
Argue against Freedman’s (free market) argument that selflessness is an ideal never obtained, so we are based in the self and selfishness as anchor. Each is an extreme, and balance is best.
Think of how Nietzsche would weep at the end of Atlas Shrugged, after the collectivists have ruined society, Rand has her hero trace a dollar sign over the ruins. Praise of selfishness and the all-mighty dollar in a neo-con fashion are the truth that will lift society back up for Rand.
For Nietzsche, belief in the dollar or America is a sheep-like fiction for killing your individuality, not supporting it or lifting society up as a whole.
My Three Moments of Hating Ayn Rand:
End of her speech to Marine graduating class of 1975: ‘and that’s why my philosophy is the only true philosophy’…
Her ejection of Nathaniel Brandon, the ‘King of Self Esteem’, from her Objectivist school after she found out he was two timing her with a model (thought this seems selfish, just not for Rand).
Her attempted cover-up of her lung cancer (from which she died) because she had been very vocal about how doctors who said cigarettes cause cancer are simply wrong and she ‘knew it objectively’.
The Moral of the Story:
You should stand for yourself, and have self esteem, but do not let it blind you into going on and on about how you are right such that you are not critical of your views or the views of those who agree with you (in a school or otherwise). As Hegel says, it is fine that each individual believes themselves at first to be simply the positive truth, but it is important to be critical of oneself in order to develop the self. Doing things for the self and others should be mutually supportive, in balance.
There is decent evidence from biology that human beings are designed to balance self and other interest, and that selfishness kills the individual and isolates them from the supports of society. Angry and judgmental people naturally isolate themselves and have shorter life spans. Having a pet increases your life span, so caring for others is good for your individual self.
As we will see in Violence week, Lt. Grossman tells us that people will stand up in fire for random strangers in particular situations entirely independent of personality.
Thus, self interest is important for ethics and balance, but not as the sole anchor in the way that Kant and Mill try to make principle or ends the sole point of action.
Eric Gerlach
3/5/2010
LECTURE ON DRIVE AND DESIRE: NIETZSCHE VS RAND
Last time talked about Mill, Utilitarianism and looking at the Ends of acts rather than beginnings.
So far, we have been concerned with collectivist, not individualist ethical concepts. This time we talk about drive, desire and self interest, reading Nietzsche but also looking at a thinker important in American thought who takes this sort of thinking in an entirely different direction, Ayn Rand. With modern times and increasing technology that enables the individual comes new individualistic thinking and criticism of more collectivist traditional thought.
While Nietzsche and Rand both believe the individual should try to create something in the name of the self, Nietzsche says this is because no one is simply right while Rand says that she and her school of thought, Objectivism, are simply right. Myself, love Nietzsche, hate Rand. Both are critical for looking at modernized society.
There are many positive and negative things about individualism over collectivism. When individualism is a problem we call it ‘selfish’ to label it bad, but our society sees more than just evils in individualism and self-centeredness. As society has become modernized, it is up to the individual to regulate themselves and keep themselves in line. Foucault is the big thinker on this point (who was very influenced by Nietzsche). This means that individualism is just as much praised, as ‘self-starting’, ‘self-reliant’, that one should have ‘self-esteem’ (this is the repackaged ideas of Rand by Brandon, as it is scorned as ‘selfish’. There are many ways today that individuals are more enabled to be individuals than ever before, and it is very bound up with America being both the best and the worst so far in many things that civilizations have been doing from the beginning.
While America is very individualistic as a culture, with positive and negative aspects, it is important to recognize that ‘Western’ white European people are not individualistic by culture starting with the Greeks. This is unfortunately how it is often presented, that Greece was a very ‘human’ and ‘individualist’ place, and that’s why the West is so the West vs. all other cultures. As you know, I am a big fan of saying that the West is a bunch of enabled, wealthy HUMAN BEINGS, and so when they get ‘humanist’ they are actually getting stuff and culture.
When we look at Japanese teenagers in Tokyo and Kyoto, we can see profound individualism (like in the rising ‘Street Culture’ and Art that is shared the world over today beyond cultural differences).
Good evidence for this can be seen in a recent experiment where rural African children were given laptops and the researchers were surprised when the results showed that there was no lag time of any length in the learning compared to American urban children. The researchers all assumed that individualistic-culture raised children would be able to master laptops faster.
Thus, the Greeks and the Renaissance were ‘humanism’ rising, but only because there were surges of wealth and culture, just like in Baghdad 1000 years ago and in China before that. One should expect to see rises, not simple ‘achievements’ of freedom of thought, diversity of opinions, inventions and innovations, etc whenever a city or area becomes enabled. Americans, because of the last 150 years and due to geographic positioning, have become far more enabled and innovating than other areas of the world but we should not fool ourselves in thinking that we are the good culture that owns this, either genetically (by ethnicity) or socially (by form of politics, religion, or science).
In the context of ancient cosmology, individualism and self interest are typically BAD.
Consider that the big ONE is more important and ranks all of the little branches. Many has been characterized as bad and One as good on both an individual and social level. With modern individualist thinking and development, diversity becomes a good thing, both for the individual (post modern conceptions and novels, movies etc) and for the social (multiculturalism, in America called “the melting pot”).
Consider a tree. The more the branches, the larger the trunk has to be to support them, and the larger the trunk, the more branches are needed to feed the tree. Individuality and community are mutually supportive. While traditional society favors the collective and modern society prizes the individual, both can help each other in balance.
While individualism can be too extreme (for me, Rand is just this in particular ways, such as calling her group ‘Objective’ with a capital ‘O’ for praising selfishness) we are now waking to new levels of seeing how the individual can support the group and the group support the individual. This makes individualism and emphasis on drive, the self, and survival forces of GOOD (regardless of what one thinks of Nietzsche or Rand) and thus important for our Ethics even though Ethics has largely ignored individualism to concentrate on the collectivists dueling back and forth (most famously Kant and Mill, both of whom Nietzsche hated).
NIETZSCHE (1844-1900)
Nietzsche is often called the first modern thinker. In fact, depending on whether you say we live in modern or post-modern times, he is called the first modern OR post-modern thinker. He is without doubt one of the most influential philosophers of modern Europe, and most skeptical thought is now deeply in his debt.
Nietzsche came from a long line of protestant Lutheran preachers. Unfortunately, Nietzsche’s father died when he was very little, and though his family sent the boy to school to become a preacher and theologian (like Hegel, Heidegger and many other German thinkers) Nietzsche rebelled and turned to philosophy.
German Pessimism and Schopenhauer:
Just before Nietzsche’s birth, Germany had been going through a great period of pessimism. Just like in China, Egypt, Greece and everywhere, human thought flourishes in the period after tragedy and warring states because people are forced to turn against old conceptions and institutions and ask hard questions that become very popular in these sorts of times.
German princes came together to crush the popular people’s movements for individual rights, and there was a great turning away from the German reason of Kant towards the German will of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Since reason failed in the world, the world is not a reasonable place but a tough place in which it is hard to push for what one sees as beautiful and true.
Marx wrote in this time, for this crowd.
Schopenhauer is deeply influenced by Buddhism and Indian thought, in a very pessimistic way.
He uses the image of a ship bobbing on the water, just hanging on in a watery, stormy ocean of a world. Rather than believe in a reason beyond, having the stomach to see the harsh reality of the situation became a value, a value that skeptical thought has retained.
German pessimism, including its famous thinkers Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, flourished in two more recent periods of pessimism: WWI for Europe and Vietnam for America. In fact, Nietzsche was the original guy who said ‘my home country is stupid and think they are awesome’, bashing Germany and all things German quite openly, for which he has been honored as not only individualistic but incredibly courageous. Thus European thought following WWI and American culture following the 60’s (Berkeley a key player in this) found deep meaning in calling their society and ‘the system’ a bunch of chumps.
Nietzsche vs. Morality:
The text I gave you to read is ‘Beyond Good and Evil’, in which Nietzsche asks us to look at humanity critically and see that following the rules (like Kant) or ‘the greater good’ (like Mill) is for sheep. The individual rises above the masses and sees things in a new way. Nietzsche came up with these ideas reading Kant and Mill, reacting against their overall goods for everyone evenly. For Nietzsche, inequality are the beautiful mountain ranges to climb and conquer.
Nietzsche was a staunch individualist, believing that ANY group morality is a slave morality, and he called Christianity, Scientific ‘Objectivity’, German Nationalism and German Racism (very much centered in Anti-Semitism) out on this vocally. Again, he is seen as a hero by many for this. Consider: “When we create the master race, we will have to mix in a lot of Jews to get their good qualities”, a joke considering that Nietzsche would never advise creating a master race of equals but rather loves the individual who stands above the race as a herd.
It was a shame that Nietzsche was censored and used by the Nazis to support their ideas of the beautiful rising German will of the master race, taking Nietzsche’s individualism and twisting it into a racial and social doctrine. Nietzsche intended his words for individualists, as he says over and over again. In this, they famously used his concept of the Superman (and yes, Nietzsche is the first person on record to use this phrase, the UBERMENCH) to mean not the artist or visionary who creates but the German race.
Nietzsche vs. Nihilism:
While many would say ‘Nietzsche believes in nothing, then”, this would not be true. Nietzsche was just as vocal about believing in something as he was about not believing the herd mentality. Nietzsche saw himself as a new sort of thinker who would be followed and imitated by many. Because of this, he warns over and over again NOT to make his thought into a school or a system. However, he did not believe like Schopenhauer that one could believe or not and it makes little difference. Nietzsche believed that the whole worth of the individual is that, in the face of nothing being absolutely true, staring into the void of being, you create something and stand for something in a beautiful way, creating your own meaning in life. He was very critical of ‘Nihilism’, believing in nothing, thought this is just what his critics, religious and not, have called him.
Nietzsche believes in Heraclitus and Hegel’s Becoming between Being and Nothing. He avoids believing in eternal positives, but also believing in nothing whatsoever. It is the overturning of the old into the new by the true individual who wills something created beyond themselves and the world that stands in the face of Nihilism that Nietzsche sees as modernity’s greatest threat. He sees a world where everyone sits on their couch, believes in nothing but is afraid to contradict the state or church and do SOMETHING other than sit there.
Thus, Nietzsche relentlessly bashes reason and judgment in himself and in others, but he believes that you must have the courage to create as a contradictory and mortal being.
Nietzsche’s bashing of women: An Interesting Example of Nietzsche’s Skeptical Individualism
One of the most beautiful and deep parts of Nietzsche’s writings is his turn in Human, All Too Human from bashing Kant and others for believing in objective truth to say ‘here are some of my truths’ and without warning start bashing women repeatedly including the famous “When you go to woman, do not forget your whip”. The beauty of this philosophical performance, what inspires Bataille and Derrida, is that Nietzsche here is showing you both sides of himself at once. Unlike Kant or Mill who are writing like they can be consistent and not contradict themselves in the building or seeing of the truth, Nietzsche knows the truth is psychological and complex, and that beauty comes from tension and pain. Thus, even in his bashing he knows he is a human being and flawed. This has had an amazing impact on Art and Literature (particularly since Bataille and his open obscenity in following Nietzsche).
Passages of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil:
N starts off with asking, why do we want or suppose we can simply get truth? Philosophy seems like it has barely even gotten started. Asking this question is perhaps the greatest risk: nihilism can result from q of ‘truth’.
Read BGE (2)
Faith in opposite values: categorical Ts and Fs, such that we can fully know.
Notice ‘frog perspective’, maybe same as frog in well of CT.
Read (3), selection. Instinct to simplify things in ‘truth’ but complex
Read (4), ending. “philosophy beyond good & evil”, this is first time title in the book.
Read (5) start and selection. Philosophers as naïve, trusting so far, critique of Kant. Why?
Read (6), middle. Naïve, because ALL DRIVES can pose as ‘truth’ or ‘good’.
Read (16) start: Notice beyond even Schopenhauer here. Thinking conceals itself such that we cannot be simply certain of it any way. (Notice lead to Freud here)
In 17, speaks more of the deceptive power of language to simplify things for us and shape our world. He mentions resemblance of Indian, Greek and German philosophy, says it is clearly explained by language- fits with growing German- our picture.
Why is language deceptive? How does grammar lie? Read (24), start and end.
Language, and science, have to simplify the world by making strict oppositions out of what is actually subtleties of gradation. Language, philosophy and science make things black and white, but things are actually shades of grey between ideals and extremes.
Nietzsche says that truth is alive, and doesn’t need such simple and artificial scaffolding as our beliefs or our knowing we are right. We should enjoy being wrong.
Read (25) start: Truth needs no protectors- or categorical certainties.
Says falsehood is the surest fact, continually in all truth and discovery.
Read (34), middle to end. Philosophers need to suspect the certainties they have taken for granted, and grammar plays a serious part in the simplifying deception, he says even poison against life. (Note: Hegel’s judgment is the one sided acid).
Also Great: (78), (94) (126)
AYN RAND (1905-1982)
As said, I like Nietzsche’s individualism much more than Rand. I believe Nietzsche takes his individualism too far, to the point that he values it above collective truth where I would rather have a balance of individual and collective goods, both being equally enjoyable and profitable for human beings. Ayn Rand, however, takes what is beautiful in Nietzsche and rams it straight into the ground like the head of an ostrich.
For starters, to give fair warning, Ayn Rand believes that all Philosophers have simply been too stupid to see that reality is right in front of our eyes, that we see real objects, and there are times (MOST of the time for her and her Objectivist followers) when we are just right and others are just wrong and we should simply say so. While this can come in a good form as ‘self esteem’, it is easy to see why philosophy people bash her writings, say that she has never read any philosophy and since she now proposes to simply answer all of the deepest questions correctly with simple and obvious answers she has no idea what philosophy actually is. It is pointed out that she is very popular with individualist people who have never studied philosophy but not with philosophy students. This charge can be quite elitist, but in my opinion it is somewhat justified. What would Nietzsche think of common American people who have not studied great works but come together as ‘Objectivists’ in groups to say over and over again that they are objectively right and everyone who disagrees is simply wrong? He would say that they are hardly enabled individuals, but rather a herd suffering herd delusions of objectivity, like Kant but far less educated.
On the other hand, Ayn Rand is very much a popular, common person’s American Realist philosopher. American Realists, who actually come from Scottish realism, believe in the positivist position (reality is real, self is real, we perceive real objects for real, and one can simply judge things to be true or false, for real) and believe that philosophy, even the positivists like Kant and Aristotle, have been led astray by skepticism and compromised their positions. The problem for philosophy professionals is that, unlike the realists, Rand believes that she is simply right and there are no problems and the rest of philosophy is meaningless, which is a position that even hardcore American realists cannot support.
Rand’s life and Pro-Capitalism, Objectivism Stance:
Ayn Rand is big in America because she defected from Soviet Russia and embraced America as Objectively right. This is why she has reading rooms dedicated to her in Marine academies and other hard core pro-American institutions. She is anti-collectivist like Nietzsche, but thinks that the Soviet Union is simply wrong and collectivist while America is simply right and individualist.
Ayn Rand believes in the value of Selfishness, termed better by Brandon as ‘self esteem’.
You may remember it: it has become a Neo-Con staple and artifact of the 80s.
Argue against Freedman’s (free market) argument that selflessness is an ideal never obtained, so we are based in the self and selfishness as anchor. Each is an extreme, and balance is best.
Think of how Nietzsche would weep at the end of Atlas Shrugged, after the collectivists have ruined society, Rand has her hero trace a dollar sign over the ruins. Praise of selfishness and the all-mighty dollar in a neo-con fashion are the truth that will lift society back up for Rand.
For Nietzsche, belief in the dollar or America is a sheep-like fiction for killing your individuality, not supporting it or lifting society up as a whole.
My Three Moments of Hating Ayn Rand:
End of her speech to Marine graduating class of 1975: ‘and that’s why my philosophy is the only true philosophy’…
Her ejection of Nathaniel Brandon, the ‘King of Self Esteem’, from her Objectivist school after she found out he was two timing her with a model (thought this seems selfish, just not for Rand).
Her attempted cover-up of her lung cancer (from which she died) because she had been very vocal about how doctors who said cigarettes cause cancer are simply wrong and she ‘knew it objectively’.
The Moral of the Story:
You should stand for yourself, and have self esteem, but do not let it blind you into going on and on about how you are right such that you are not critical of your views or the views of those who agree with you (in a school or otherwise). As Hegel says, it is fine that each individual believes themselves at first to be simply the positive truth, but it is important to be critical of oneself in order to develop the self. Doing things for the self and others should be mutually supportive, in balance.
There is decent evidence from biology that human beings are designed to balance self and other interest, and that selfishness kills the individual and isolates them from the supports of society. Angry and judgmental people naturally isolate themselves and have shorter life spans. Having a pet increases your life span, so caring for others is good for your individual self.
As we will see in Violence week, Lt. Grossman tells us that people will stand up in fire for random strangers in particular situations entirely independent of personality.
Thus, self interest is important for ethics and balance, but not as the sole anchor in the way that Kant and Mill try to make principle or ends the sole point of action.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Intro Philosophy Lecture March 4: Daoism
BCC Intro-Philosophy
Eric Gerlach
3/2/2010
Lecture on Daoism
This week, we will be studying the two most central texts of Chinese Daoism: the Dao De Jing (also ‘Tao’) of Lao Zi, and the book of the ‘second patriarch’ of Daoism, Zhuang Zi. “Zi” used to be “Tzu” until recently. It means “master”, the title added to most Chinese philosophers, and it is pronounced like a cross between “zih” and “tzuh”. Give “zih” a bit of a “t” on the front and change the “ih” a bit to an “uh”.
Daoism has always been dear to my heart, as I have an old printing of the Dao (on the book, the ‘Tao Te Ching’, now typically and more accurately written ‘Dao De Jing’) which I loved when I was a kid. It was only, however, later in my studies that I was able to have a real love of the text, which at first seemed simply mysterious poetry.
Daoism is often opposed to Confucianism as a skeptical school of thought vs. Confucianism which is more a traditionalist or rationalist school. Indeed, Daoism is one of the most powerful skeptical schools of thought in history, and we continue to look to it as a champion of opening the mind. However it is also clear that Confucius was a skeptic of individual judgments and Daoism also became an orthodox religious system.
While Confucianism stands for city life, study, and the structure of the family and state, Daoism advocates returning to nature, meditation, and questioning relationships of power. Whereas Confucianism argues that we should cultivate and civilize ourselves, Daoism believes that we should return to our natural state and let nature run its course, thus reaching a state of completion.
The most important concept for Daoism (and, interestingly, the mystics of most religions) is the Great One, the All. Essentially, Daoism argues that one should remove one-sided judgments and desires from the mind such that harmony with the whole, with the One, is achieved. ‘Dao’ means ‘Way’, and thus ‘Daoism’ is the study of the Way of the All, the source of everything.
It is believed that Lao Zi lived sometime after 600 BCE, and Zhuang Zi, the second patriarch of Daoism, lived sometime about 370-300 BCE. Not much is known about either patriarch, but we do know that Chuang Tzu worked in a lacquer house (a place for mass-producing bento boxes and plates with glazes). The things said of Lao Tzu are considered entirely of legend. The most famous of these is the legend that Master Lao rode off on a water buffalo into the West (the direction of the setting sun, sacred and associated with death and the afterlife in many cultures including Egypt and China) at the end of his life, never heard from again. One tradition holds that he went to India to teach the Buddha, but this is clearly a tale told by Daoists to explain how Daoism is quite close to Buddhism in many ways. Daoism was blended with Buddhism in China, so Chinese Daoists would say this to trump the Chinese Buddhists.
The Dao De Jing of Lao Zi:
The first chapter, opening verse, of the Dao De Jing, famously reads: “The Dao can be talked about, but not the Eternal Dao. Names can be named, but not the Eternal Name. As the origin of heaven and earth, it is nameless.” The All, or the One, includes everything. Thus, there is no proper or particular name. The BIG ALL does not need a particular name, because there is nothing in particular that one can judge about the ALL. It is the source of all things, so it could be called ‘green’, ‘not green’, ‘both’ or ‘neither’, with equal meaning. The same, of course, goes for any adjective. Just as any particular thing has its opposite (hot and cold, good and evil), the One is the source of all opposites, and thus is in fact neither and both of each particular thing. Notice the duality of heaven and earth, of open sky and closed ground. Sometimes we think being solid is good, other times we feel that being free is good. In fact, the All is all solidity (order) and freedom (chaos), so the All is above and the source of all closure and openness. In the first three lines, we have much of Daoist thought already.
In chapter 8 of the Dao, we learn that the Dao is like water. This is a common metaphor that Daoism employs to describe how the way (Dao) of things is fluid, like water, getting down into the lowest and tightest cracks of things. Daoists are quick to point out: the Dao has no status or pride, and so like the Daoist sage the Way is down amongst the poor and the common, together as one with the things people despise as well as the things people desire.
Chapter 9 of the Dao is a classic example of Daoist reasoning by contradiction. All things have contradictory properties, but this is hard for our one sided judgments and views to see. Thus, we are told that if we continue to sharpen a sword it goes dull, and if we store up enough valuables they will surely attract thieves. ‘When you have done your work, retire’ here means: judge and do just enough for the present situation, but do not try to build up merit or riches, for it will only bring you trouble.
Chapter 11 of the Dao is my favorite. I find it very important for understanding the duality of positive and negative, the solid and empty we saw in heaven-and-earth of chapter 1. We are told that a wheel is only useful because of the emptiness at the center. When you first look at a wheel, you see it as a simply solid thing. Then, if you look again with a more skeptical mind, you will see that the emptiness, not just the substance, is important too. Imagine if a house was not mostly empty, but was solid through and through. You would not be able to get inside it! May as well build the house in outer space. Solid and empty get their meanings, their uses, from a mutual relationship, not from one being the only thing and the other merely false. I love this verse, as it is very close to Hegel’s idea of positive, negative, and synthesis. The synthesis here would be seeing not just the solid wheel, nor simply the emptiness, but both working together.
There is a Zen Buddhist Koan which says something very similar: “First practicing (Zen), I saw a rock as a rock…then, I saw it as not a rock…finally, I saw it as truly a rock.” This, like Hegel, refers to seeing the thing and the conception of the thing as one and two at the same time.
Chapter 13 tells us that getting a lowly state, a common position, is a gift, and so is losing it! How can both getting something and loosing something be good? Because there is good and bad in everything. If the sage finds the good in anything, turning the good to their advantage, then the sage can find the good in getting a thing, and then find the good in loosing that thing. Don’t assume that nothing else has changed in the mean time.
Chapter 22 has an ethical ring to it. The sage does not boast, and is admired by everyone. Clearly, this is because there is no end to boasting in human beings! Most people assume that they know what is simply good, and what is simply bad, and they are not afraid to tell you so. Only the sage, the wise person, knows not to boast about anything, and thus the sage is much less annoying than the average person. This takes practice and patience, something the average person does not have time for before making a certain judgment. The idea is that if you desire nothing, ‘everything will flock to you’, and you have whatever you need right at hand in any situation. This is opposite the common understanding, which says that you must want something to have it.
Notice at the end of chapter 42, ‘A man of violence will come to a violent end’. This is quite similar to Jesus saying, ‘those who live by the sword die by the sword’. Try to gain for yourself, and the great balance of all things will cut you down, doing to you what you do to others.
Chapter 71 reads ‘to realize that our knowledge is ignorance, this is a noble insight. To regard our ignorance as knowledge, this is mental sickness’. I love this wisdom. A good example of this is racism. Knowledge is always focusing on one thing. When you focus on one thing, you ignore everything else. This is crucial to seeing how our knowledge is always human perspective, and how it can always be improved.
The Book of Zhuang Zi:
In several places, we see the idea of perspective which we encountered in Heraclitus. Mao Quiang and Lady Li were famous beautiful women, but fish, birds and deer were frightened by them. Heraclitus said that all human beauty and achievement is nothing but apes to the gods as apes are only apes to us. Who knows what is beautiful, humans, birds, fish, or deer? Which of them knows what tastes good? Another great passage is the Peng bird who migrates for the Winter, an act which the dove and the cicada (a large insect) find ridiculous. They have no frame of reference to understand such an act. This suggests that the wisdom of Daoism will sound ridiculous and foolish to those who are not experienced and wise. We read in the text "Truth sounds like its opposite!", just as Heraclitus said "The way forward is the way back".
In the Chapter, The Secret of Caring for Life, we meet Cook Ting and his famous butcher’s knife. Cook Ting tells his master that his blade never goes dull, for he can always find the hidden spaces in things, and then his blade goes right through. This is very much like the reasoning of the wise mind, that can use reason to chop anything up easily and naturally, without striking up against anything in opposition.
Notice that Confucius appears many times in the Zhuang Zi, used to argue AGAINST his own position and in favor of a Daoist position. Many times Confucius says that his own way is inferior to the Daoist way. Clearly, these are texts written by Daoists who appreciate the good in Confucianism but think their own school to be superior. For example, page 65, in the chapter ‘The Sign of Virtue Complete’, Confucius says of Wang T’ai, “If you look at them from the point of view of their differences, then there is liver and gall, Ch’u and Yueh (two warring kingdoms in China). But if you look at them from the point of view of their sameness, then the ten thousand things are all one.” I still use this contradiction of one and many to this day. It shows you much about how people make judgments and arguments.
Notice on page 92 and 93 that Hu Zi trumps a shaman, who tries to read him but Hu Zi can change how he is read seemingly at will. This seems to suggest that the true sage can identify with everything and everybody, so there is no need to avoid any particular thing or to judge the presence or absence of anything for any situation. Anything desired is always immediately at hand when you have a fluid nature that is the source of all things.
Eric Gerlach
3/2/2010
Lecture on Daoism
This week, we will be studying the two most central texts of Chinese Daoism: the Dao De Jing (also ‘Tao’) of Lao Zi, and the book of the ‘second patriarch’ of Daoism, Zhuang Zi. “Zi” used to be “Tzu” until recently. It means “master”, the title added to most Chinese philosophers, and it is pronounced like a cross between “zih” and “tzuh”. Give “zih” a bit of a “t” on the front and change the “ih” a bit to an “uh”.
Daoism has always been dear to my heart, as I have an old printing of the Dao (on the book, the ‘Tao Te Ching’, now typically and more accurately written ‘Dao De Jing’) which I loved when I was a kid. It was only, however, later in my studies that I was able to have a real love of the text, which at first seemed simply mysterious poetry.
Daoism is often opposed to Confucianism as a skeptical school of thought vs. Confucianism which is more a traditionalist or rationalist school. Indeed, Daoism is one of the most powerful skeptical schools of thought in history, and we continue to look to it as a champion of opening the mind. However it is also clear that Confucius was a skeptic of individual judgments and Daoism also became an orthodox religious system.
While Confucianism stands for city life, study, and the structure of the family and state, Daoism advocates returning to nature, meditation, and questioning relationships of power. Whereas Confucianism argues that we should cultivate and civilize ourselves, Daoism believes that we should return to our natural state and let nature run its course, thus reaching a state of completion.
The most important concept for Daoism (and, interestingly, the mystics of most religions) is the Great One, the All. Essentially, Daoism argues that one should remove one-sided judgments and desires from the mind such that harmony with the whole, with the One, is achieved. ‘Dao’ means ‘Way’, and thus ‘Daoism’ is the study of the Way of the All, the source of everything.
It is believed that Lao Zi lived sometime after 600 BCE, and Zhuang Zi, the second patriarch of Daoism, lived sometime about 370-300 BCE. Not much is known about either patriarch, but we do know that Chuang Tzu worked in a lacquer house (a place for mass-producing bento boxes and plates with glazes). The things said of Lao Tzu are considered entirely of legend. The most famous of these is the legend that Master Lao rode off on a water buffalo into the West (the direction of the setting sun, sacred and associated with death and the afterlife in many cultures including Egypt and China) at the end of his life, never heard from again. One tradition holds that he went to India to teach the Buddha, but this is clearly a tale told by Daoists to explain how Daoism is quite close to Buddhism in many ways. Daoism was blended with Buddhism in China, so Chinese Daoists would say this to trump the Chinese Buddhists.
The Dao De Jing of Lao Zi:
The first chapter, opening verse, of the Dao De Jing, famously reads: “The Dao can be talked about, but not the Eternal Dao. Names can be named, but not the Eternal Name. As the origin of heaven and earth, it is nameless.” The All, or the One, includes everything. Thus, there is no proper or particular name. The BIG ALL does not need a particular name, because there is nothing in particular that one can judge about the ALL. It is the source of all things, so it could be called ‘green’, ‘not green’, ‘both’ or ‘neither’, with equal meaning. The same, of course, goes for any adjective. Just as any particular thing has its opposite (hot and cold, good and evil), the One is the source of all opposites, and thus is in fact neither and both of each particular thing. Notice the duality of heaven and earth, of open sky and closed ground. Sometimes we think being solid is good, other times we feel that being free is good. In fact, the All is all solidity (order) and freedom (chaos), so the All is above and the source of all closure and openness. In the first three lines, we have much of Daoist thought already.
In chapter 8 of the Dao, we learn that the Dao is like water. This is a common metaphor that Daoism employs to describe how the way (Dao) of things is fluid, like water, getting down into the lowest and tightest cracks of things. Daoists are quick to point out: the Dao has no status or pride, and so like the Daoist sage the Way is down amongst the poor and the common, together as one with the things people despise as well as the things people desire.
Chapter 9 of the Dao is a classic example of Daoist reasoning by contradiction. All things have contradictory properties, but this is hard for our one sided judgments and views to see. Thus, we are told that if we continue to sharpen a sword it goes dull, and if we store up enough valuables they will surely attract thieves. ‘When you have done your work, retire’ here means: judge and do just enough for the present situation, but do not try to build up merit or riches, for it will only bring you trouble.
Chapter 11 of the Dao is my favorite. I find it very important for understanding the duality of positive and negative, the solid and empty we saw in heaven-and-earth of chapter 1. We are told that a wheel is only useful because of the emptiness at the center. When you first look at a wheel, you see it as a simply solid thing. Then, if you look again with a more skeptical mind, you will see that the emptiness, not just the substance, is important too. Imagine if a house was not mostly empty, but was solid through and through. You would not be able to get inside it! May as well build the house in outer space. Solid and empty get their meanings, their uses, from a mutual relationship, not from one being the only thing and the other merely false. I love this verse, as it is very close to Hegel’s idea of positive, negative, and synthesis. The synthesis here would be seeing not just the solid wheel, nor simply the emptiness, but both working together.
There is a Zen Buddhist Koan which says something very similar: “First practicing (Zen), I saw a rock as a rock…then, I saw it as not a rock…finally, I saw it as truly a rock.” This, like Hegel, refers to seeing the thing and the conception of the thing as one and two at the same time.
Chapter 13 tells us that getting a lowly state, a common position, is a gift, and so is losing it! How can both getting something and loosing something be good? Because there is good and bad in everything. If the sage finds the good in anything, turning the good to their advantage, then the sage can find the good in getting a thing, and then find the good in loosing that thing. Don’t assume that nothing else has changed in the mean time.
Chapter 22 has an ethical ring to it. The sage does not boast, and is admired by everyone. Clearly, this is because there is no end to boasting in human beings! Most people assume that they know what is simply good, and what is simply bad, and they are not afraid to tell you so. Only the sage, the wise person, knows not to boast about anything, and thus the sage is much less annoying than the average person. This takes practice and patience, something the average person does not have time for before making a certain judgment. The idea is that if you desire nothing, ‘everything will flock to you’, and you have whatever you need right at hand in any situation. This is opposite the common understanding, which says that you must want something to have it.
Notice at the end of chapter 42, ‘A man of violence will come to a violent end’. This is quite similar to Jesus saying, ‘those who live by the sword die by the sword’. Try to gain for yourself, and the great balance of all things will cut you down, doing to you what you do to others.
Chapter 71 reads ‘to realize that our knowledge is ignorance, this is a noble insight. To regard our ignorance as knowledge, this is mental sickness’. I love this wisdom. A good example of this is racism. Knowledge is always focusing on one thing. When you focus on one thing, you ignore everything else. This is crucial to seeing how our knowledge is always human perspective, and how it can always be improved.
The Book of Zhuang Zi:
In several places, we see the idea of perspective which we encountered in Heraclitus. Mao Quiang and Lady Li were famous beautiful women, but fish, birds and deer were frightened by them. Heraclitus said that all human beauty and achievement is nothing but apes to the gods as apes are only apes to us. Who knows what is beautiful, humans, birds, fish, or deer? Which of them knows what tastes good? Another great passage is the Peng bird who migrates for the Winter, an act which the dove and the cicada (a large insect) find ridiculous. They have no frame of reference to understand such an act. This suggests that the wisdom of Daoism will sound ridiculous and foolish to those who are not experienced and wise. We read in the text "Truth sounds like its opposite!", just as Heraclitus said "The way forward is the way back".
In the Chapter, The Secret of Caring for Life, we meet Cook Ting and his famous butcher’s knife. Cook Ting tells his master that his blade never goes dull, for he can always find the hidden spaces in things, and then his blade goes right through. This is very much like the reasoning of the wise mind, that can use reason to chop anything up easily and naturally, without striking up against anything in opposition.
Notice that Confucius appears many times in the Zhuang Zi, used to argue AGAINST his own position and in favor of a Daoist position. Many times Confucius says that his own way is inferior to the Daoist way. Clearly, these are texts written by Daoists who appreciate the good in Confucianism but think their own school to be superior. For example, page 65, in the chapter ‘The Sign of Virtue Complete’, Confucius says of Wang T’ai, “If you look at them from the point of view of their differences, then there is liver and gall, Ch’u and Yueh (two warring kingdoms in China). But if you look at them from the point of view of their sameness, then the ten thousand things are all one.” I still use this contradiction of one and many to this day. It shows you much about how people make judgments and arguments.
Notice on page 92 and 93 that Hu Zi trumps a shaman, who tries to read him but Hu Zi can change how he is read seemingly at will. This seems to suggest that the true sage can identify with everything and everybody, so there is no need to avoid any particular thing or to judge the presence or absence of anything for any situation. Anything desired is always immediately at hand when you have a fluid nature that is the source of all things.
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