Before
diving into the philosophers of ancient India, Greece and China, we
must look at the early stages of human knowledge, wisdom and
civilization to understand what philosophy is and where it comes from.
First, we will consider the positives and negatives of human thought as a
general frame for understanding philosophy and all systems/cultures of
thought. Second, we will look at shamanism as the basic worldwide
culture out of which all cultures emerged. Third, we will look at early
city states (focusing on ancient Egypt and its wisdom) to see how
cultures developed as they grouped together in the first empires. This
lecture covers our general frame and shamanism.
The Positives and Negatives of Human Thought
Human
thought, and thus the human world, is dominated by pairs of opposites.
It is often useful to think of these opposites in terms of positive and
negative. Good is positive, while bad is negative. Happy is positive,
while sad is negative. Being is positive, while non-being is negative.
Full is positive, while empty is negative.
Notice
that "positive" does not always mean happy or good and "negative" does
not always mean sad or bad. When we say "order" and "chaos", closure
(stability) sounds good and openness (instability) sounds bad. However,
when we say "freedom" and "restraint", openness (unconstrained) sounds
good and closure (constrained) sounds bad. When we want stability or
order, openness is bad ("chaos"). When we want to be free and
unconstrained, openness is good ("freedom"). A person, place or thing
can be positive in some ways and negative in others. It depends on
context, position and location. In many ways, places and times,
happiness and solidity are good and in others they are bad. Also, no
particular thing is perfectly good or completely solid. We judge the
table (and the wheel, as Lao Zi the Daoist will explain soon) to be
simply solid and the space around it to be simply empty, but no table is
immortal or unbreakable, and no space is a perfect vacuum. Even outer
space is full of dust, light and everything else in the universe. In
the same way, particular things that are good or make us happy do not
always make us happy and do not make everyone happy. Often, things that
make one person happy continue to make another unhappy because they
make the first person happy.
Human
belief/judgment has its own special pairs of opposites. The most basic
is belief (positive) and doubt (negative). Belief is an answer or
answering, and doubt is a question or questioning. In politics,
conservatives lean towards believing and affirming the institution
(often looking to the stability and consistency of the past) while
progressives lean towards doubting and questioning the institution
(often looking to the openness and change of the future). In systems of
thought, dogmatists (also called positivists today) lean towards answers
and affirming the truths of the system ("There are certain facts,
morals and truths.") while skeptics lean towards questions and doubting
the truths of the system ("Are there certain facts, morals and
truths?"). According to Hegel, one of my favorite philosophers, human
thought is an endless battle between dogmatism and skepticism. This
battle is also a symbiotic evolution requiring both sides.
When
we look at the history of human thought, from its origins in shamanism
to its evolution and specialization with religion, philosophy, art and
science, we can see that both dogmatism and skepticism play necessary
roles. Without a base that is assumed and unquestioned, nothing new can
be produced. However, without reaching for the new and questioning the
old there is no growth to improve and fit new circumstances. The great
thinkers in human thought, across all systems, incorporate the old while
bringing us the new. Often they are called heretics in their time and
only canonized after they are safely dead because they have to question
the very system that they stand for.
Many
unfortunately believe that philosophy was born in ancient Greece, when
in fact wisdom is universal to human kind even though it is difficult to
achieve. The wise, though rarer than we would like, have been
celebrated in all cultures, and their wisdom has similarity across all
cultures even though their beliefs can differ widely. While the word
‘philosophy’ is an ancient Greek word, great thinkers and questioners
can be called philosophers and sages in any culture.
It
should also be mentioned that philosophers were not welcome in ancient
Greece as they questioned the ways of things (traditional polytheism)
and as such Socrates was put to death for “inciting the youth to riot”,
Aristotle was chased out of Athens after the death of his student
Alexander (a foreign Macedonian who conquered Athens by the sword,
Aristotle being an unwelcome foreigner from Strageira in Athens
himself), and Heraclitus, my favorite Greek philosopher, complains that
his city state Ephesus exiled their best thinker for questioning things
and it would be best if all Ephesians went and hanged themselves to
leave the city in the abler hands of children.
What is philosophy?
Philosophy
has been called "thinking about thinking", questioning and answering
the very process of questioning and answering itself. The ancient Greek
philosophers (such as Heraclitus, Socrates and Plato, who we will study)
critically examined their own thinking and their traditions of thought
and brought new answers by questioning the human mind and society. While
these Greek thinkers should be read and admired, they were not the
first or only ancient thinkers to ask abstract questions about thought
itself.
The Greek word "philosophy" means "love of wisdom". What is wisdom?
The
German philosophers Kant and Hegel tell us that there are dueling parts
of our individual mind that fight and cooperate on the individual level
just as dogmatism and skepticism fight and cooperate on the social
level. These two parts are understanding and reason, and these
correspond to knowledge and wisdom. Understanding tries to hold things
set and steady (the conservative force) while reason tries to challenge
and rearrange things (the progressive force). Knowledge is a set
understanding, while wisdom is the ability to reason. All systems of
thought use both understanding and reason to produce both knowledge and
wisdom.
The
Greek philosophers were known for wisdom, for questioning the ways that
individuals and societies can have knowledge, beliefs and answers. Were
the Greeks the first or only ancient people to have philosophers? In
Miguel Leon-Pontilla's book Aztec Thought and Culture, he argues that
the Aztec and Mayan poets questioned their societies and systems of
knowledge, asking open ended questions such as "Do we know the gods
exist?", "Is there an afterlife, like the ancestors said there is?", and
"Can we ever know these things?". Indeed, when we look at ancient
cultures we find both questioning and answering, knowledge as well as
wisdom, in ancient Greece and ancient everywhere else. No society would
survive without pushing in both directions. Systems of thought are
always sites of disagreement as much as they are of agreement.
Recently,
the Attorney General of Arizona crafted legislation against teachers
who provide programs celebrating Latino culture as they are dangerously
“anti-Western”, and pointed specifically to teaching that Aztecs and
Mayans had philosophers as Leon-Pontilla argues. Apparently, it is
biased and thus un-Western to teach that concepts such as “you are my
other self” (much like Confucius, who we will study) and “continue to
investigate things endlessly” (much like Heraclitus, who we will study)
is evidence that the Aztecs and Mayans had philosophy. It is perceived
as a threat to American culture to equate the ancient Mayans with the
ancient Greeks. It is not just the Attorney General who thinks this,
but academics with PhDs who continue to provide the ground for this
belief in their publications.
The
most primitive societies value individual achievement, which often
becomes the subject of legend. It is difficult and frightening to
oppose common opinion, but worth it. While many think that Western
thought is more individual and free than other traditions, arguments
over the meaning of common knowledge and traditions are found
everywhere. In the logic class, we read a text by anthropologist
Malinowski who studied the tribes of Papua, New Guinea in the 1940s. He
asks, “Are primitive people logical?”, and he argues that they are.
Human language typically has words for ‘and’, ‘or’, ‘if-then’, and all
the operations of ancient Greek, ancient Indian, and modern European
logic. He gives an excellent example of a tribesman tripping and
falling, accusing an evil spirit of causing it, and his fellow
tribespeople rebuking him and saying that he is merely clumsy.
I
continue to read books that casually state that the ancient Greeks were
the first to understand things in terms of cause and effect, which is
ludicrous. Demons and spirits were thought to cause things by the
ancient Greeks and many ancient cultures long before them. It is also
commonly held that the ancient Greeks such as Aristotle invented logic.
Not only did ancient India have talented logicians in many schools of
thought, but as Malinowski argues you can see people in the most
primitive cultures arguing rationally, systematically and hypothetically
(“If that were true…”).
Consider
the following argument: “Because all elevators play jazz music, jazz is
the Devil’s playground, and one should avoid the Devil, elevators are
to be avoided.” You can follow this argument because it is logical. As
we learn early on in any modern logic course, an argument is logically
valid if the conclusion follows from the premises, and it does not
matter whether or not the premises are true. You can construct logical
arguments that include the premise, “all puppies are green”, which is
useful to show how logic works. The elevator argument is Aristotle’s
first syllogism, and it does not appear that he invented the form but
rather examined it critically.
Tribal Shamans and Ecstatic Quests
Shamanism
is the original human culture, found from Africa to Europe to the
Americas to small islands in the pacific. While it is always different
in each place, the similarities are quite profound. “Shaman” is a word
from an old Turkish-Siberian dialect that means “one who knows”.
Consider that a “scientist” is “one who sees” and “one who divides” from
the Latin root. The Shaman is the expert of the tribe, the one who not
only holds the traditions of knowledge but who seeks new answers to
problems. The shaman is both the preserver of the old and the seeker of
the new. When new situations and things are encountered, we look to the
experts to figure things out. Considering that most people in the
ancient world were dead by 30, the old wise woman or man of the tribe
who lived long enough to have grey hair was wiser and much more
experienced than the rest of the community.
In
tribal culture, traditional knowledge and wisdom is often kept and
passed on in the form of stories or narratives. These stories explain
the world and help people with their problems. The wise elder can even
tell a story they know to be fiction as if it were true to help others
and be passed on to future generations as an answer to a common problem.
There are, however, times when the stories do not help and a new
answer must be sought for a problem. Guided by the traditions but
seeking beyond it, experts and leaders must broaden their horizons and
then often become celebrated by new legends. To do this, the shaman
goes on a quest (both physical and mental) for the solution and new
knowledge needed to solve the problem. Often the shaman is selected by
another shaman or shamans as a youth who has gone through a near death
experience (sickness, struck by lightning, attacked but survives). The
shaman is thought to have an affinity for seeking into the unknown
because they are already experienced in the unknown. Near death
experiences give new perspective.
To
quest for knowledge, the shaman employs techniques of ecstasy known to
produce an ecstatic experience. “Ecstasy” comes from ancient Greek and
means “standing outside” (ex-stasis) or “outstanding”. It is both a
going beyond and going within, beyond common reality by getting deeper
into reality. When one is in an ecstatic trance or having an ecstatic
vision, one is standing outside normal reality and seeing it from a
different place and context. Consider that shamans often go down into a
cave or up on a mountain to go to the lower or upper “other world”. Some
shamans have been known to climb trees. Consider the common image in
cartoons of the sage meditating on a mountaintop, with the climber seek
wisdom at the sage’s feet by asking deep questions. In a cave, one is
removed from reality and in a way returns to the womb. On a mountain or
in a tree, one can look down on the world and see the larger patterns
of what is going on. One gains perspective and is capable of
abstraction when one removes oneself to contemplate reality.
Methods
of ecstasy include not only thought itself, but drugs, pain, rhythms
(chanting, drumming, rattles) fasting, sleep deprivation, removing
oneself from society and meditation (including contemplation and
prayer). However, the most basic method of ecstasy is in fact thought.
Contemplation is itself a form of standing outside reality, so it makes
sense that the shaman is regarded as the original thinker, expert and
seeker, as well as the doctor, therapist, biologist, physicist, etc.
This is why we are considering shamans as the first philosophers. They
not only seek and keep knowledge, but pass on wisdom about the limits
of human perception, knowledge and thought to future generations of
their tribes.
Ancient World Cosmology
Many
ancient cultures (including the Babylonians, the Persians, the
Egyptians, the Indians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Chinese, and even
the Hawaiians) have a very similar cosmology. Cosmology is the term used
to cover the ancient study of the world, which included physics,
psychology, biology, medicine, philosophy, religion and most areas of
study all together as a single study by the educated and the wise.
The
world was thought to be shaped like a big person (making the individual
person a microcosm or mini-cosmos within the larger cosmos or world).
The elements, including fire, air, earth and water stacked from lightest
on the top (fire and air) to heaviest on the bottom (earth and water).
This was not only observed in nature (star fire above, winds next, then
earth above water) but also in humans (the mind is fire and visions of
light, which heats and activates the breath in speech like orders and
commands, and the water in the lower regions and functions of the body
which often was identified with chaos). Order and reason were identified
with the higher elements (fire and air, mind and breath) and chaos and
desire were identified with the lower elements (earth and water, flesh
and fluid). Fire moves upward, both as flames and smoke, and water moves
downwards, each element seeking its proper place in the cosmos.
When
the stack of elements is in order the cosmos and the individual are in
order, and when the stack of elements are out of order the cosmos and
individual are out of order. The higher elements were believed to be
eternal just as the cosmos itself and Being are eternal, and the lower
elements were believed to be temporary like the individuals and beings
are temporary. Consider that harmonious elements lead to peaceful and
productive seasons of agriculture, and storms and disasters are
disorders that can be deadly. Consider also that shamans and sages sit
and think about things in contemplation for long periods of time until
they uncover underlying truths within things that outlive the individual
things themselves.
Fire
was often considered the top and most important element, and it was
identified both with energy and thought. In ancient Greece, energy
(energon, “in-work”) was thought to be the fire within things such as
human beings that makes them live, just as in ancient China chi and in
ancient India karma were identified with life, energy, and fire. Just
as the shaman goes on a quest to have a new vision in the head, and this
vision is visible in the mind like fire, prophets, scientists,
politicians and everyday people have visions of the past (memory) and
future (imagination), and if they are knowledgeable and wise their
predictions are more true than the foolish. Some say that our
scientists have real visions as opposed to superstitions now, but no one
has seen something come from nothing before (a belief found in ancient
legends of many people, the Book of Genesis and modern Big Bang
theory), and computers failed to predict reality (including the weather
two weeks from now) as it was first thought they would before Chaos
Theory arrived, aided much by computers. Dogmatists tend to believe
that there are eternal truths in the world, while skeptics tend to
believe that there are only temporary truths in the mind. At the
moment, most physicists believe that gravity is an eternal unchanging
being that existed before and as the world was born, much like in
ancient legends and in Genesis there is a sea of water, even though no
one has seen an unchanging being and it is strange to consider things
existing before things exist.
One
can find in religion and philosophy in ancient cultures (including
Christianity, Buddhism, Indian Philosophy, Greek Philosophy and Chinese
Philosophy) the same message repeated again and again: reason and the
mind must be placed above and in charge of desire and the body. The
eternal way of things is to be placed above the temporary ways and
wants. This gains the individual wisdom, reason and insight into the
workings of the cosmos. When the lower elements are in charge, there is
ignorance and destruction as things are pulled apart. This framework is
important for understanding each individual system of ancient thought as
well as their overall similarities and differences. It not only
reflects the individual who wants many things but can become
disciplined, but the community that wants many things but can be ruled
and maintained.
One
early philosophical puzzle was the problem of the One and the Many:
this reality is one thing, but also many things. Your left hand is also
one thing, and many things. Shamans in many different cultures had
visions of an All Tree or Tree of Life, the one yet many of all things.
All or Being itself is the trunk, and the many things and species of the
world are the branches or the fruit. The trunk and branches of a tree
outlive the fruit, which returns cyclically each season, just as
humanity and reality outlive individual humans, rocks, and trees, just
as consciousness outlives particular thoughts and perceptions. The
stars rotate overhead, outliving your grandparents who told you about
them and your children.
Not
only is the brain shaped like a tree, as well as the nervous system and
circulation systems, the human body is shaped like a tree with the head
and chest as the trunk, the human species and evolution of all species
is shaped like a tree. If we remove ourselves from reality, either
staring down from a mountain top or sitting in a quiet laboratory, it is
easier to see this and the many ways it continues to work. One of the
recurrent philosophical insights we will see in India, Greece and China
is that it takes wisdom to see that the many things are all one reality
and the one reality is seen from many perspectives. This applies to the
cosmos, the community, the self, and each passing thought. It
continues today to be a simple idea but worth dwelling upon to gain
wisdom, and so it is worthwhile studying ancient thought of the world to
learn more about our own lives.
