Lecture on Plato & Aristotle, Caste & Class
Plato (427-347 BCE) & The Republic
Plato was long assumed to be a student of Socrates simply because Plato writes as much in many of his dialogues. As Socrates is about to die, Plato has Socrates ask where the young Plato is, to which another student replies that Plato was sick and thus could not be there at the time. Scholars now are critical of this, and think that Plato had a habit of writing himself and his family into Socrates’ circle in his dialogues. Because they are our best sources on Socrates, it is difficult to tell whether or not Plato’s older cousin Critias or Plato himself were actual students of Socrates or whether they were simply influenced by this figure who became quite famous following his trial and death.
Plato’s actual name was Aristocles, but according to the story his wrestling instructor named him Platon or “Broad” because he had a wide figure. This may be merely a story, because Plato was known to have a wide “breadth” of knowledge covering all subjects of ancient thought. Plato’s father died when he was young, and his step-father became the Athenian ambassador to the Persian royal court (remember that Persia was a great source of ancient world cosmology at the time).
Long after his attempts to become an established playwright, after his dialogues about Socrates had gathered some fame, Plato founded his Academy in 385 BCE, an open area near a tree grove where he, his students and other lecturers would teach and debate matters of philosophy and cosmology. Academy in fact means “porch”, an open area in front of a building, a fact it took scholars long to understand for they believed that the Academy must have been a building itself. Scholars made a similar error looking for the famed Library of Alexandria (an Egyptian center of ancient world knowledge), when in fact the Library was a shelf that ran along a hall that connected two buildings.
In Plato’s Republic, Socrates debates with others on justice and the Good. Socrates debunks several common views, then constructs an ideal model of the city. The well ordered city is compared to the well ordered soul (3 layers in their places). Thus, the Good is proper order of the elements (perfectly in accord with ancient cosmology). The Timaeus, which is supposed to be the discussion the day after the Republic, has a student of Socrates named Timaeus lecture on the cosmos, showing Plato’s particular views on cosmology. Just as the individual is a microcosm to the city, the city is a microcosm to the cosmos, and again the elements must be separated and put in their places. The cosmos is ordered in its unfolding, producing the ideal order of the soul and the city. One should order the self and order the city the way the cosmos are ordered. Both are supposed to have been written about 360 BCE.
As the Republic opens, Socrates talks to several “interlocutors” and argues against their concepts of justice at a social gathering (read: wine party). Polemarchus argues that justice is paying debts, helping friends and harming enemies. Socrates argues that in some situations, helping friends and harming enemies are wrong. Thrasymachus argues that justice is ‘the good of the stronger’. Glaucon similarly argues that without threat of punishment, no one would do good. Socrates argues that the strong will corrupt themselves if they only act for their own interests and not for the good of the whole. Remember the politics of the time- Many tyrants came and fell, one by one.
Socrates is challenged to give a positive account of justice, not just defeat opponents. Socrates argues that first they must construct the ideal or just city, and this will show how the ideal or just individual should be. Essentially, the just city is a caste system, with a three-fold division. This division corresponds to the physical human being and the cosmic being.
Head is fire/reason/rulers,
Heart/chest is air/spirit/police,
Hands/Stomach is earth/desire/workers.
The individual, city and cosmos form a continuum, a set of Russian dolls. Notice that authority and the good come from above, evil to be ordered from below.
Socrates argues (in reading) that each person is best suited to one thing, and should be assigned this one job. He argues that we will lie to the people and tell them a Phoenician story, which is that the classes are based on metals. The police and philosophers are made of silver and gold, so they are suited to be put above the others.(Why lie? Because the common will not understand philosophy, Plato’s system…this corresponds to the cave, where most will never leave, and need puppets to see anything).
All is sacrificed for the common good: no private property or partners or children, for any of the three classes. Socrates argues that the ruler who grabs for themselves will not be happy, filled with “horrid pains and pangs”, and will physically and mentally fall apart. This tyrant will never “taste true freedom or friendship”. Because this is not the order of the cosmos, it will not stick and will fall apart.
Socrates argues (and the interlocutors naively agree as simple yes men) that if they separate out the police and educate them as best as can be, and then take the philosophers out of the police and educate them as best as can be, no injustice will be possible. There is the simple belief that the order itself will generate justice throughout the whole. The police and philosophers will thus never be greedy or unjust to the people below. Plato elsewhere argues that this is how the Egyptians in Thebes did it: elevating priests as a class- he also says to imitate Sparta as well separating out the warriors.
Plato also suggests banning all art (music, poetry and theatre) that is counterproductive, which pretty much means everything that isn’t impressing the highest good and order. The youth are to be taught that they must improve themselves for the good of the state, and that the gods never to injustice or desire.
The Allegory/Analogy/Story of the Cave describes the masses and the assent of the philosopher/king beyond opinion of the earthly realm to knowledge of the heavenly and eternal realm, showing why the philosopher alone should have authority.
Everyone is chained in a cave, watching shadows of puppets/models carried before a fire at the mouth of the cave. The people think that the shadows are reality, the real things. The one who escapes first sees that the shadows are shadows of puppets, and sees the fire that casts the shadows. Coming out of the cave and past the small fire, the seeker is at first blinded by the sunlight. The seeker first sees real things outside of the cave, and realizes that the puppet/models were just copies of the real things. Then the seeker can get adjusted and see that the sun is the cause of all these things, and that the world of the cave is a poor copy of the world outside the cave. This is the realization of the forms and then the all/light/reason/consciousness that produces the forms which are copied in the cave below. This is opinion to belief (cave) to knowledge to reason (outside). Notice that the city is a device for creating philosophers who comprehend the true forms of things for the benefit of all below, and that the body is similarly a device for creating thought in the head for the benefit of the body below.
As a final thought, note that Plato’s republic is nothing like what we consider a republic to be today. People rise based on intelligence and merit, not by voting. Plato was quite opposed to having the people aka “the mob” elect leaders based on popularity. Like Confucius, Plato believed that a system of dictatorship downwards based on merit and achievement was best.
Aristotle (384-322 BCE) & The Politics
Plato’s student and the tutor of Alexander the Great and Ptolemy, Aristotle is one of the most famous and influential of Greek philosophers. He was primarily interested in biology and speciation, but his works on the soul (mind, self), Logic, Ethics and politics became more important than his works on the animal kingdom. He was a central influence on the origins of Christianity, Islamic thought and European thought in the middle ages. While he is sometimes called the first scientist and the first logician, his views on these subjects expanded ancient world cosmology and were not the birth of these subjects. Aristotle has been claimed by the West as a founder, but the Islamic world also considers him one of their own and he is depicted in different ways depending on who does the illustrating (see the beautiful Islamic image in the Wikipedia article that portrays him as a very dark skinned holy sage for an interesting counter to Renaissance paintings).
Aristotle’s conception of virtue and human purpose is entirely in line with ancient world cosmology. He believes that everything has a single purpose for which it is intended. It is as if the cosmos, Being itself, is a big mind that creates things for particular uses, and individual beings thrive if they are serving their purposes (ergon in the Greek, or “work”, “job”). We are reasonable to the degree that we see the purposes of things, serve our own natural purpose and use things in accord with their natural purposes. This is known as the teleological view, as the study of purpose is called teleology. Notice that teleology is very big with more traditional people today (including evangelical Christians) but modern Philosophy and Science have broken from this view and find it quite antiquated.
For Aristotle, having oneself in the proper stack and order is being in accord with one’s nature, and this means putting theory and soul/intellect on top and putting each lower element of our minds and bodies in the service of the highest part of the mind, the intellect, which corresponds to the highest good of the cosmos itself. Just as the intellect should be pursued because it is the best and highest part, the good itself should be pursued simply in itself and for no other purpose. Aristotle does believe that the human individual will naturally flourish and be happy if they are stacked up right and in accord with the human purpose of intellectual activity, but this is secondary and the byproduct of serving ones purpose.
Similarly, in matters of politics, Aristotle believes that the city is not primarily a living arrangement but rather for producing the elite and the virtuous. Thus, the city is not for making people happy but having each individual do their natural job. Just like his teacher Plato argues in his Republic, Aristotle argues that each person must have one thing they do best and it is therefore best for them to do that thing and that one thing only. Unfortunately, both Plato and Aristotle argued that slaves and peasants are meant to serve the aristocracy and women are clearly meant to serve men (Mill will strongly criticize these views, one of the first and few outspoken critics of the subjugation of slaves and women).
Aristotle argues that the ruler/ruled pairing is natural to society and best for preservation. He identifies the ruler with the head and male, and the ruled with the body and female. He says that the subjugation of the woman and slave is in everyone’s best and natural interests. Because a thing is best if it serves one purpose, its natural purpose, there are some who naturally should rule and others who naturally should be ruled. The man rules the wife and children, and the king rules the country. When he says that non-Greeks are natural slaves, keep in mind he had the future Europeans to the North and West in mind far more than the Persians and Egyptians, who he openly admired. He also says that we imagine the gods to have a king and live in similar ways to human beings. Note that he is not arguing that the gods are imaginary (Aristotle was a polytheist) but he is critical, as were many of the great Greek philosophers) of the gods having human form or human passions. Later in this section he says that gods are by nature entirely self-sufficient as they are immortal and do not need to eat.
He says that several people (in ruler/ruled pairings) make up the village, and several villages make up the state. This allows people to do far more than survive. It allows people to live the good life and maximize the following of their natural purposes. They can be self-sufficient as a whole. He famously says, “man is by nature a political animal”. This does not mean that people collect into villages and cities to be happy, but rather that they collect because it is natural and best for them to do so to be what they are. Happiness is not the purpose of human life for Aristotle. Rather, truth (figuring out the way things are) is the purpose of human life and the city as a whole.
Aristotle believes that humans alone have speech and therefore are the only animal that can know truth and justice. Elsewhere he argues that this is because humans (more specifically, the males of the superior peoples) have the highest level of mind/soul and other animals (including women and slaves) do not possess this potential/faculty. The human alone can see that the whole is more than the part, and so the city matters more than the village, the village matters more than the family, and the family matters more than the individual.
In book 2, Aristotle says we must examine the constitutions of many sorts of states to see which one is the most just. Note that when Aristotle says “constitution” he is not referring to a document but to the structure or form of the state. The name of the American document follows this language, but we think of a document today when we hear the word, unlike Aristotle who did not live in a time when societies were based on rule by document. British Conservatives like Burke argued that America would fail if it did not have a king because a state could not be ruled by a piece of paper.
Aristotle criticizes his teacher Plato for arguing that property and family should be held in common. As the translator correctly points out, Plato only suggests this for the guardians and philosophers, not necessarily for the common people (though he does not proscribe it for them either). He argues that people should not share property or family in common. Very similar to the Confucians such as Mencius arguing against the Moists and universal love, Aristotle argues that if we shared everything and everyone in common people would not care about anything in particular and this would lead to the ruin of the state, and that we see people naturally caring about their own family and possessions than they do about things shared in common. This is odd, because he is also arguing that the state is superior to the village etc. precisely because it is the whole and the common.
For property, Aristotle believes that generosity and sharing should be voluntary and not forced. This means that Plato is wrong to suggest the guardians share everything by law. He argues that the present way of practice, holding property and family privately, is natural and beneficial compared to Plato’s radical and revolutionary suggestions in the republic. Note that Plato is very similar to communism in this regard as we will see with the Communist Manifesto, and Aristotle’s objections are very similar to objections to Communism today. Aristotle argues that there must be a balance of plurality and unity such that unity does not eradicate plurality.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Social & Political Philosophy: Mo Zi & Universal Love
Last time we talked about the debate on human nature between the two most central Confucians after Confucius. Mencius argues that human nature is good (love) while Xun Zi argues that human nature is evil (desire). Today we will focus on Mo Zi, Master Mo of the Moist School of Chinese Philosophy, and his arguments for universal love against the Confucians.
Not much is known about Master Mo, founder of Moism, one of the schools of the Period of the Hundred Philosophers. His disciples collected his sayings and dialogues to make the Mo Zi text, just as the disciples of Confucius and Mencius did. It is believed that Mo Zi lived sometime between the death of Confucius in 479 BCE and the birth of Mencius in 372 BCE and that the Moist school was flourishing around the year 400 BCE (the same time as Plato and Aristotle in ancient Greece).
One ancient work says that Mo Zi studied under Confucians at a Confucian school, but then became disgusted and developed his philosophy in opposition to Confucianism. We know that Confucianism and Moism were both flourishing and in competition at the same time from texts like the Zhuang Zi (one of my favorites, in which Zhuang Zi states that what the Confucians call right the Moists call wrong and vice versa). Like Confucius, Mo Zi likely traveled to schools and noble courts expounding his philosophy and seeking disciples. Nobles and other wealthy individuals would often put on banquets and debates for education and entertainment.
Because Mo Zi was a great critic of the excesses of the powerful and champion of the common people, some scholars have speculated that Mo Zi was an ex-convict and Mo meant tattoo like the sort used to brand ex-cons (thus, Mo Zi would mean Master Tattoo or Master Tat). These scholars are likely thinking of Zhuang Zi’s use of ex-con teachers countering Confucius while playing the Moists and Confucians against each other. While Mo Zi criticized the luxurious excesses of dancing girls and music of the wealthy, particularly in light of the suffering of the poor and oppressed, it is unlikely that an ex-con would have access to the noble courts and fine houses that Mo Zi frequented in seeking to expand the influence and membership of his school of thought.
How could Mo Zi get away with criticizing the powerful? Like the ancient Egyptian proverb, “Trust no one by birth, judge a person by their actions”, Mo Zi argued (as did the Confucians) that it is behavior that makes one a good person and not high birth. As in ancient Egypt and India, the top ranks of power are in constant struggle with the up and coming powers. In India, Buddha, Mahavira and other great philosophers were second class educated who were critical of the upper class and older traditions. In ancient China, Moism and Confucianism (as well as other schools) appealed to the newer and lower nobles and wealthy who did not have the finest families but surrounded themselves with the talented and new artists and thinkers. Unfortunately, it may have been the hard-lining Moist stance against the top levels of society that ultimately resulted in the downfall of Moism when the Han unified China and endorsed the Confucians and Daoists but not the Moists. Moism was neglected for 1,500 years afterwards. It was only in the times of Neoconfucianism (1100 CE), ironically, that Mo Zi was reexamined along with Buddhism and put in a Confucian context.
Like Xun Zi, Mo Zi was exceptional at examining the validity of beliefs. He had a system of three tests. First, asking the origin of the belief (remember, the ways of the sage kings were highly valued and used by most schools of ancient Chinese thought). Second, the empirical validity of the belief (how well the belief corresponds to what we have discovered to be true). Third, the practicality and applicability of the belief (identical to the Utilitarianism of John Stuart Mill).
The Moists are famous for their doctrine of universal love. Mo Zi had the hard task of trying to convince rulers and common people alike that they should not only love others as themselves, which the Confucians also teach, but that they should love other families as they love their own families and love people of other countries as they love the people of their own country. The Moists believed in both debate and warfare, and they excelled in both logic and military science, but only for the purpose of self defense and defending the weak against the strong. Remember that the period of the Hundred Schools was also the warring states period, a time of instability when many who were weak were being abused and killed by local wars and bandits. Today, the Swiss embody this stance on war the best as they spend a decent amount on defense and bases from which they launch jets out of mountains but they never go on the offensive.
Mo Zi says that universal love is practical and could be put into practice if enough rulers are convinced that it is in their own interest as well as in the interest of their people. Mencius seems terrified by Moism, his major rival in Northeast China at the time, writing that the ideas of Mo Zi and other thinkers are found across the countryside (Mencius 3B:9). Mencius argues that loving everyone as one loves one’s own father means that one has no father. Considering the emphasis that Confucians such as Mencius put on following one’s father, this would be a great evil. This is strikingly similar to philosophers who believe in absolute truth and fact saying that if there is no absolute truth but only relative truth then there is no truth whatsoever.
In the section Universal Love of the Mo Zi, he begins by stating that the good person seeks to promote what is good and reduce what is harmful (identical, again, to the Utilitarianism of John Stuart Mill). He argues that the greatest harm is powerful states and families attacking the weak states and families and the strong oppressing the weak. All this comes about not by love but by hate, not by universality (caring about the whole) but by partiality (caring about part of the whole as opposed to another part). Partiality must be, therefore, replaced with universality. Note that all of this is very similar to the Communism of both Marx and Mao.
Mo Zi argues that this can be put into practice or even he would be critical. We naturally trust the universal person with our family and possessions more than the partial person. Therefore, we naturally love and trust the universal ruler more than the particular ruler. There is, however, a problem with this view that Mencius mentions: we do in fact see people naturally loving their own more than their neighbor, just as we do see people trusting partial rulers rather than universal ones. Mo Zi says there are no fools in the world like this, but experience does show us otherwise. However, he argues that if the people saw rulers that fed and clothed everyone equally, there could be radical change in society within a single generation.
In the section Against Offensive Warfare, Mo Zi says that everyone knows that it is wrong to steal from one’s neighbors, but that when it is called warfare it is praised. If it is true that killing one person is a crime, then killing a hundred is far more of a crime. People are truly confused about right and wrong if they consider warfare to be justice.
In the section Against Confucians, Mo Zi argues that the Confucians are wrong about degrees and gradations of love based on one’s relationship to one’s other. Mo Zi argues that it is wrong to love one’s family and state more than other families and states. He argues that both Confucius and Confucians are hypocritical and often pay more attention to matters of ritual than to the deeper underlying problems of society. He attacks Confucian practices of mourning, weddings, and fatalism and says they produce contradictions and hypocrisy. He argues that the ancient ways were once new ways, so why should we honor the ancient heroes and sage kings for invention, innovation and change by sticking to the old ways? Mo Zi believes that the Confucians are drawn into caring about the trivial while at other times supporting the substantial revolution that society requires. At times, they believe in silence and deference to authority even when it is wrong, but at other times they endorse rebellion.
Not much is known about Master Mo, founder of Moism, one of the schools of the Period of the Hundred Philosophers. His disciples collected his sayings and dialogues to make the Mo Zi text, just as the disciples of Confucius and Mencius did. It is believed that Mo Zi lived sometime between the death of Confucius in 479 BCE and the birth of Mencius in 372 BCE and that the Moist school was flourishing around the year 400 BCE (the same time as Plato and Aristotle in ancient Greece).
One ancient work says that Mo Zi studied under Confucians at a Confucian school, but then became disgusted and developed his philosophy in opposition to Confucianism. We know that Confucianism and Moism were both flourishing and in competition at the same time from texts like the Zhuang Zi (one of my favorites, in which Zhuang Zi states that what the Confucians call right the Moists call wrong and vice versa). Like Confucius, Mo Zi likely traveled to schools and noble courts expounding his philosophy and seeking disciples. Nobles and other wealthy individuals would often put on banquets and debates for education and entertainment.
Because Mo Zi was a great critic of the excesses of the powerful and champion of the common people, some scholars have speculated that Mo Zi was an ex-convict and Mo meant tattoo like the sort used to brand ex-cons (thus, Mo Zi would mean Master Tattoo or Master Tat). These scholars are likely thinking of Zhuang Zi’s use of ex-con teachers countering Confucius while playing the Moists and Confucians against each other. While Mo Zi criticized the luxurious excesses of dancing girls and music of the wealthy, particularly in light of the suffering of the poor and oppressed, it is unlikely that an ex-con would have access to the noble courts and fine houses that Mo Zi frequented in seeking to expand the influence and membership of his school of thought.
How could Mo Zi get away with criticizing the powerful? Like the ancient Egyptian proverb, “Trust no one by birth, judge a person by their actions”, Mo Zi argued (as did the Confucians) that it is behavior that makes one a good person and not high birth. As in ancient Egypt and India, the top ranks of power are in constant struggle with the up and coming powers. In India, Buddha, Mahavira and other great philosophers were second class educated who were critical of the upper class and older traditions. In ancient China, Moism and Confucianism (as well as other schools) appealed to the newer and lower nobles and wealthy who did not have the finest families but surrounded themselves with the talented and new artists and thinkers. Unfortunately, it may have been the hard-lining Moist stance against the top levels of society that ultimately resulted in the downfall of Moism when the Han unified China and endorsed the Confucians and Daoists but not the Moists. Moism was neglected for 1,500 years afterwards. It was only in the times of Neoconfucianism (1100 CE), ironically, that Mo Zi was reexamined along with Buddhism and put in a Confucian context.
Like Xun Zi, Mo Zi was exceptional at examining the validity of beliefs. He had a system of three tests. First, asking the origin of the belief (remember, the ways of the sage kings were highly valued and used by most schools of ancient Chinese thought). Second, the empirical validity of the belief (how well the belief corresponds to what we have discovered to be true). Third, the practicality and applicability of the belief (identical to the Utilitarianism of John Stuart Mill).
The Moists are famous for their doctrine of universal love. Mo Zi had the hard task of trying to convince rulers and common people alike that they should not only love others as themselves, which the Confucians also teach, but that they should love other families as they love their own families and love people of other countries as they love the people of their own country. The Moists believed in both debate and warfare, and they excelled in both logic and military science, but only for the purpose of self defense and defending the weak against the strong. Remember that the period of the Hundred Schools was also the warring states period, a time of instability when many who were weak were being abused and killed by local wars and bandits. Today, the Swiss embody this stance on war the best as they spend a decent amount on defense and bases from which they launch jets out of mountains but they never go on the offensive.
Mo Zi says that universal love is practical and could be put into practice if enough rulers are convinced that it is in their own interest as well as in the interest of their people. Mencius seems terrified by Moism, his major rival in Northeast China at the time, writing that the ideas of Mo Zi and other thinkers are found across the countryside (Mencius 3B:9). Mencius argues that loving everyone as one loves one’s own father means that one has no father. Considering the emphasis that Confucians such as Mencius put on following one’s father, this would be a great evil. This is strikingly similar to philosophers who believe in absolute truth and fact saying that if there is no absolute truth but only relative truth then there is no truth whatsoever.
In the section Universal Love of the Mo Zi, he begins by stating that the good person seeks to promote what is good and reduce what is harmful (identical, again, to the Utilitarianism of John Stuart Mill). He argues that the greatest harm is powerful states and families attacking the weak states and families and the strong oppressing the weak. All this comes about not by love but by hate, not by universality (caring about the whole) but by partiality (caring about part of the whole as opposed to another part). Partiality must be, therefore, replaced with universality. Note that all of this is very similar to the Communism of both Marx and Mao.
Mo Zi argues that this can be put into practice or even he would be critical. We naturally trust the universal person with our family and possessions more than the partial person. Therefore, we naturally love and trust the universal ruler more than the particular ruler. There is, however, a problem with this view that Mencius mentions: we do in fact see people naturally loving their own more than their neighbor, just as we do see people trusting partial rulers rather than universal ones. Mo Zi says there are no fools in the world like this, but experience does show us otherwise. However, he argues that if the people saw rulers that fed and clothed everyone equally, there could be radical change in society within a single generation.
In the section Against Offensive Warfare, Mo Zi says that everyone knows that it is wrong to steal from one’s neighbors, but that when it is called warfare it is praised. If it is true that killing one person is a crime, then killing a hundred is far more of a crime. People are truly confused about right and wrong if they consider warfare to be justice.
In the section Against Confucians, Mo Zi argues that the Confucians are wrong about degrees and gradations of love based on one’s relationship to one’s other. Mo Zi argues that it is wrong to love one’s family and state more than other families and states. He argues that both Confucius and Confucians are hypocritical and often pay more attention to matters of ritual than to the deeper underlying problems of society. He attacks Confucian practices of mourning, weddings, and fatalism and says they produce contradictions and hypocrisy. He argues that the ancient ways were once new ways, so why should we honor the ancient heroes and sage kings for invention, innovation and change by sticking to the old ways? Mo Zi believes that the Confucians are drawn into caring about the trivial while at other times supporting the substantial revolution that society requires. At times, they believe in silence and deference to authority even when it is wrong, but at other times they endorse rebellion.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Ethics: Aristotle & Virtue, Kant & Morals
Basics of Ancient World Cosmology:
Before getting into Aristotle and his understanding of the virtuous person, it is important to understand the world view of the ancient world. 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 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). 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.
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. This framework is important for understanding each individual system of ancient thought as well as their overall similarities and differences.
Aristotle (384-322 BCE)
Plato’s student and the tutor of Alexander the Great and Ptolemy, Aristotle is one of the most famous and influential of Greek philosophers. He was primarily interested in biology and speciation, but his works on the soul (mind, self), Logic, Ethics and politics became more important than his works on the animal kingdom. He was a central influence on the origins of Christianity, Islamic thought and European thought in the middle ages. While he is sometimes called the first scientist and the first logician, his views on these subjects expanded ancient world cosmology and were not the birth of these subjects. Aristotle has been claimed by the West as a founder, but the Islamic world also considers him one of their own and he is depicted in different ways depending on who does the illustrating (see the beautiful Islamic image in the Wikipedia article that portrays him as a very dark skinned holy sage for an interesting counter to Renaissance paintings).
Aristotle’s conception of virtue and human purpose is entirely in line with ancient world cosmology. He believes that everything has a single purpose for which it is intended. It is as if the cosmos, Being itself, is a big mind that creates things for particular uses, and individual beings thrive if they are serving their purposes (ergon in the Greek, or “work”, “job”). We are reasonable to the degree that we see the purposes of things, serve our own natural purpose and use things in accord with their natural purposes. This is known as the teleological view, as the study of purpose is called teleology. Notice that teleology is very big with more traditional people today (including evangelical Christians) but modern Philosophy and Science have broken from this view and find it quite antiquated.
For Aristotle, having oneself in the proper stack and order is being in accord with one’s nature, and this means putting theory and soul/intellect on top and putting each lower element of our minds and bodies in the service of the highest part of the mind, the intellect, which corresponds to the highest good of the cosmos itself. Just as the intellect should be pursued because it is the best and highest part, the good itself should be pursued simply in itself and for no other purpose. This is similar to Kant and Moral theory, but absolutely at odds with Mill and consequentialism which believe that good is the end of things but would not say that intellect should be pursued in itself without regards to the consequences and practical ends. Aristotle does believe that the human individual will naturally flourish and be happy if they are stacked up right and in accord with the human purpose of intellectual activity, but this is secondary and the byproduct of serving ones purpose.
Similarly, in matters of politics, Aristotle believes that the city is not primarily a living arrangement but rather for producing the elite and the virtuous. Thus, the city is not for making people happy but having each individual do their natural job. Just like his teacher Plato argues in his Republic, Aristotle argues that each person must have one thing they do best and it is therefore best for them to do that thing and that one thing only. Unfortunately, both Plato and Aristotle argued that slaves and peasants are meant to serve the aristocracy and women are clearly meant to serve men (Mill will strongly criticize these views, one of the first and few outspoken critics of the subjugation of slaves and women).
Modern Virtue Theory
While Aristotle’s virtue ethics and teleological theory were popular in the middle ages in Europe, there was a decline during the 1700s and 1800s as science rose to prominence and questioned teleology. Kant’s laws and Mill’s consequences became the dueling positions of ethics. Recently, however, there has been a revival of virtue theory that rose along with increasing individualism and criticism of positivistic conceptions of science. If we become critical of the idea that there are simple laws that can be known, it opens a space for a return to the idea of the virtuous person beyond airtight moral laws or the complete calculation of consequences.
However, if we do not believe that things have simple and singular purposes just as we have grown critical of laws and calculation, virtue ethics has a problem: what virtues should the virtuous person have? Often these virtues are mental: intellect, wisdom, reason, and understanding. This has been neglectful of the physical body (the home of the physical brain, of course). Another issue that has come to light is the interpersonal aspect of virtue. Virtue has typically been described as personal, but the individual is naturally social (curiously Aristotle argues this when justifying his political views of the city and its proper organization). Confucius, one of the great moral geniuses of the world, has a very interpersonal view of ethics and thus we will consider his views next under the concept of balance (such as the balance of self and other).
As a final note, consider Jain (the ancient Indian forerunner of Buddhism) anti-merit theory:
In Hinduism and Buddhism, karma can be positive (merit and blessing) or negative (demerit and sin). Thus, karma can either help you up or drag you down. For Jains, karma is ALWAYS NEGATIVE, always weight that keeps you down, always division or blockage between you and the ALL. Thus, one tries best to avoid accumulating karma and to destroy the karma one has already accumulated. Jains are famous for their doctrine of the negativity of karma and the radical nonviolence that follows from this principle. Jains wear masks to prevent insects from flying in their mouths, sweep the ground to avoid killing insects (even though the killing would be unintentional, it would still be an accumulation of karma), influenced other Indian thought in promoting vegetarianism, and even don’t eat root vegetables as it kills (up-roots) the whole plant rather than that plucked from the plant. Thus, any accumulation of virtue or merit is distinguishing and distancing oneself from the whole. Sharing much with ancient cosmology and Aristotle, Jains would argue that the purpose of the individual is to join the whole without distinction and therefore we should work to LOSE merit and karma, not gain it. Kant, Principles and
Morals
Kant (1724-1804) was the European philosopher who argued for always following morals and laws universally. His position is opposed by Mill, who believed that morals are only in the service of getting good consequences. This is one of the biggest oppositions of perspectives in ethics. Should we create morals and laws and always stick to them, or should we do whatever results in the best consequences?
Consider the example of lying. The moralist would say that lying is wrong in and of itself, like Kant argues that lying goes against our reason by categorical necessity. The consequentialist would say that lying has bad consequences and results in pain and unhappiness. The virtue theorist, however, would argue that the purpose of the mind and human being is truth in and of itself and so lying is not in accord with human nature (or rather, righteous and proper human nature).
As Europe rose in the 1600s and 1700s, science had begun discovering many new truths about the world. This created an opposition between rationalists who believed that the world has absolute laws that we can know certainly by reason and empiricists who believed that we can only assume what we know and that the rules our reason finds could be wrong. One of the most famous empiricists was Hume, who argued that one can only assume that one billiard ball causes the other billiard ball to move.
Kant was "awoken from his dogmatic slumbers" by Hume. Kant wanted to balance empiricism with rationalism, but he comes down on the rationalist side. In all knowledge, including ethics, Kant believed we must use our reason to figure out the universal laws of our rational and ordered universe. Notice that Kant, as a rationalist, trusts that the world and the mind are reasonable and that there are universal laws out there for us to grasp.
The central example we will consider is the moral "Do Not Lie". Kant believed that one should never lie, and our reason can show us this with certainty. He argued that one is seeking unconditional and universal laws in ethics (as well as every area of human knowledge), which Kant also calls categorical imperatives, and so one should only act in a way that one could expect everyone to always act everywhere at any time. If everyone lied all the time, then society would collapse. Therefore, Kant argued, it is one's duty to not lie and hold to this moral and law.
Consider the "guy with the butcher knife" thought experiment. Let us say you are at home, and the doorbell rings. You answer it, and your friend runs in looking afraid. A minute later the doorbell rings again, you answer it, and a scary guy with a butcher knife asks you where your friend is. Kant would allow one to shut the door and say nothing, but Kant would argue that it is wrong to lie to the scary guy and say you don't know or that your friend took off down the street the other way. Even though we can assume that if you lie it would improve your friend's chances of living, Kant would argue that this would be wrong. We can contrast this with the position of Mill and utilitarianism, which would argue that in some circumstances the lie is the lesser of two evils and one should behave in accord with the ends of ones actions rather than stick rigidly to morals and laws.
An interesting issue here is that rationalists and positivists like Kant believe that one should anchor ethics in good beginnings while empiricists and skeptics believe one should anchor ethics in good ends. Kant believes that one must start with good intentions and principles no matter the consequences, while Mill believes that one should aim at the best consequences no matter the principles or intentions one has. As usual, both sides agree that one should have good intentions, principles and consequences, but they come down on opposite sides when arguing for what is really the essence or importance of the matter.
We will come to Mill's position in the coming weeks. Another contrary position to both Kant and Mill is Nietzsche, who we will also hear from soon. Nietzsche does not trust human reason, so he trusts neither Kant nor Mill. Nietzsche argues that people who believe they know the true morals and people who say they know what led to the best consequences for everyone are capable of deceiving themselves and thinking they know what is best for everyone.
Before getting into Aristotle and his understanding of the virtuous person, it is important to understand the world view of the ancient world. 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 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). 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.
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. This framework is important for understanding each individual system of ancient thought as well as their overall similarities and differences.
Aristotle (384-322 BCE)
Plato’s student and the tutor of Alexander the Great and Ptolemy, Aristotle is one of the most famous and influential of Greek philosophers. He was primarily interested in biology and speciation, but his works on the soul (mind, self), Logic, Ethics and politics became more important than his works on the animal kingdom. He was a central influence on the origins of Christianity, Islamic thought and European thought in the middle ages. While he is sometimes called the first scientist and the first logician, his views on these subjects expanded ancient world cosmology and were not the birth of these subjects. Aristotle has been claimed by the West as a founder, but the Islamic world also considers him one of their own and he is depicted in different ways depending on who does the illustrating (see the beautiful Islamic image in the Wikipedia article that portrays him as a very dark skinned holy sage for an interesting counter to Renaissance paintings).
Aristotle’s conception of virtue and human purpose is entirely in line with ancient world cosmology. He believes that everything has a single purpose for which it is intended. It is as if the cosmos, Being itself, is a big mind that creates things for particular uses, and individual beings thrive if they are serving their purposes (ergon in the Greek, or “work”, “job”). We are reasonable to the degree that we see the purposes of things, serve our own natural purpose and use things in accord with their natural purposes. This is known as the teleological view, as the study of purpose is called teleology. Notice that teleology is very big with more traditional people today (including evangelical Christians) but modern Philosophy and Science have broken from this view and find it quite antiquated.
For Aristotle, having oneself in the proper stack and order is being in accord with one’s nature, and this means putting theory and soul/intellect on top and putting each lower element of our minds and bodies in the service of the highest part of the mind, the intellect, which corresponds to the highest good of the cosmos itself. Just as the intellect should be pursued because it is the best and highest part, the good itself should be pursued simply in itself and for no other purpose. This is similar to Kant and Moral theory, but absolutely at odds with Mill and consequentialism which believe that good is the end of things but would not say that intellect should be pursued in itself without regards to the consequences and practical ends. Aristotle does believe that the human individual will naturally flourish and be happy if they are stacked up right and in accord with the human purpose of intellectual activity, but this is secondary and the byproduct of serving ones purpose.
Similarly, in matters of politics, Aristotle believes that the city is not primarily a living arrangement but rather for producing the elite and the virtuous. Thus, the city is not for making people happy but having each individual do their natural job. Just like his teacher Plato argues in his Republic, Aristotle argues that each person must have one thing they do best and it is therefore best for them to do that thing and that one thing only. Unfortunately, both Plato and Aristotle argued that slaves and peasants are meant to serve the aristocracy and women are clearly meant to serve men (Mill will strongly criticize these views, one of the first and few outspoken critics of the subjugation of slaves and women).
Modern Virtue Theory
While Aristotle’s virtue ethics and teleological theory were popular in the middle ages in Europe, there was a decline during the 1700s and 1800s as science rose to prominence and questioned teleology. Kant’s laws and Mill’s consequences became the dueling positions of ethics. Recently, however, there has been a revival of virtue theory that rose along with increasing individualism and criticism of positivistic conceptions of science. If we become critical of the idea that there are simple laws that can be known, it opens a space for a return to the idea of the virtuous person beyond airtight moral laws or the complete calculation of consequences.
However, if we do not believe that things have simple and singular purposes just as we have grown critical of laws and calculation, virtue ethics has a problem: what virtues should the virtuous person have? Often these virtues are mental: intellect, wisdom, reason, and understanding. This has been neglectful of the physical body (the home of the physical brain, of course). Another issue that has come to light is the interpersonal aspect of virtue. Virtue has typically been described as personal, but the individual is naturally social (curiously Aristotle argues this when justifying his political views of the city and its proper organization). Confucius, one of the great moral geniuses of the world, has a very interpersonal view of ethics and thus we will consider his views next under the concept of balance (such as the balance of self and other).
As a final note, consider Jain (the ancient Indian forerunner of Buddhism) anti-merit theory:
In Hinduism and Buddhism, karma can be positive (merit and blessing) or negative (demerit and sin). Thus, karma can either help you up or drag you down. For Jains, karma is ALWAYS NEGATIVE, always weight that keeps you down, always division or blockage between you and the ALL. Thus, one tries best to avoid accumulating karma and to destroy the karma one has already accumulated. Jains are famous for their doctrine of the negativity of karma and the radical nonviolence that follows from this principle. Jains wear masks to prevent insects from flying in their mouths, sweep the ground to avoid killing insects (even though the killing would be unintentional, it would still be an accumulation of karma), influenced other Indian thought in promoting vegetarianism, and even don’t eat root vegetables as it kills (up-roots) the whole plant rather than that plucked from the plant. Thus, any accumulation of virtue or merit is distinguishing and distancing oneself from the whole. Sharing much with ancient cosmology and Aristotle, Jains would argue that the purpose of the individual is to join the whole without distinction and therefore we should work to LOSE merit and karma, not gain it. Kant, Principles and
Morals
Kant (1724-1804) was the European philosopher who argued for always following morals and laws universally. His position is opposed by Mill, who believed that morals are only in the service of getting good consequences. This is one of the biggest oppositions of perspectives in ethics. Should we create morals and laws and always stick to them, or should we do whatever results in the best consequences?
Consider the example of lying. The moralist would say that lying is wrong in and of itself, like Kant argues that lying goes against our reason by categorical necessity. The consequentialist would say that lying has bad consequences and results in pain and unhappiness. The virtue theorist, however, would argue that the purpose of the mind and human being is truth in and of itself and so lying is not in accord with human nature (or rather, righteous and proper human nature).
As Europe rose in the 1600s and 1700s, science had begun discovering many new truths about the world. This created an opposition between rationalists who believed that the world has absolute laws that we can know certainly by reason and empiricists who believed that we can only assume what we know and that the rules our reason finds could be wrong. One of the most famous empiricists was Hume, who argued that one can only assume that one billiard ball causes the other billiard ball to move.
Kant was "awoken from his dogmatic slumbers" by Hume. Kant wanted to balance empiricism with rationalism, but he comes down on the rationalist side. In all knowledge, including ethics, Kant believed we must use our reason to figure out the universal laws of our rational and ordered universe. Notice that Kant, as a rationalist, trusts that the world and the mind are reasonable and that there are universal laws out there for us to grasp.
The central example we will consider is the moral "Do Not Lie". Kant believed that one should never lie, and our reason can show us this with certainty. He argued that one is seeking unconditional and universal laws in ethics (as well as every area of human knowledge), which Kant also calls categorical imperatives, and so one should only act in a way that one could expect everyone to always act everywhere at any time. If everyone lied all the time, then society would collapse. Therefore, Kant argued, it is one's duty to not lie and hold to this moral and law.
Consider the "guy with the butcher knife" thought experiment. Let us say you are at home, and the doorbell rings. You answer it, and your friend runs in looking afraid. A minute later the doorbell rings again, you answer it, and a scary guy with a butcher knife asks you where your friend is. Kant would allow one to shut the door and say nothing, but Kant would argue that it is wrong to lie to the scary guy and say you don't know or that your friend took off down the street the other way. Even though we can assume that if you lie it would improve your friend's chances of living, Kant would argue that this would be wrong. We can contrast this with the position of Mill and utilitarianism, which would argue that in some circumstances the lie is the lesser of two evils and one should behave in accord with the ends of ones actions rather than stick rigidly to morals and laws.
An interesting issue here is that rationalists and positivists like Kant believe that one should anchor ethics in good beginnings while empiricists and skeptics believe one should anchor ethics in good ends. Kant believes that one must start with good intentions and principles no matter the consequences, while Mill believes that one should aim at the best consequences no matter the principles or intentions one has. As usual, both sides agree that one should have good intentions, principles and consequences, but they come down on opposite sides when arguing for what is really the essence or importance of the matter.
We will come to Mill's position in the coming weeks. Another contrary position to both Kant and Mill is Nietzsche, who we will also hear from soon. Nietzsche does not trust human reason, so he trusts neither Kant nor Mill. Nietzsche argues that people who believe they know the true morals and people who say they know what led to the best consequences for everyone are capable of deceiving themselves and thinking they know what is best for everyone.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Intro Philosophy: Tribal Shamanism & Ancient World Cosmology
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 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.
Human thought has its own special pairs of opposites. The most basic is belief (positive) and doubt (negative). Doubt is a question or questioning, while belief is an answer or answering. In politics, conservatives lean towards believing and affirming the institution (often looking to the stability of the past) while progressives lean towards doubting and questioning the institution (often looking to the openness of the future). In systems of thought, positivists 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 positivism 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 positivism 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.
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 and Plato, who we will study later) questioned their traditions 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?
Hegel tells us that there are dueling parts of our individual mind that fight and cooperate on the individual level just as positivism 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 everywhere else. No society would survive without pushing in both directions.
In the rest of this lecture we will look at shamans as the original keepers of knowledge and seekers of wisdom. In the next lecture, we will look at the development of early city-states and the wisdom of the ancient Egyptians. This will give us the frame we need to study the great philosophers of ancient India, Greece and China.
Tribal Shamans and Ecstatic Quests
“Shaman” is a word from an old Turkish-Siberian dialect that means “one who knows”. Consider that a “scientist” is “one who sees” 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.
It is quite amazing to consider that 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.
In tribal culture, traditional knowledge is often kept and passed on in the form of stories or narratives. These stories explain the world and help people with their problems. There are, however, times when an answer must be sought for a problem. 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 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.
To quest for knowledge, the shaman employs techniques of ecstasy known to produce an ecstatic experience. “Ecstasy” comes from the Greek and means “standing outside”. 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. One gains perspective and is capable of abstraction when one removes oneself to contemplate reality. In fact, thought 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.
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).
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 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). 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.
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. This framework is important for understanding each individual system of ancient thought as well as their overall similarities and differences.
One early philosophical puzzle was the problem of the One and the Many: this reality is one thing, but also 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. 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.
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.
Human thought has its own special pairs of opposites. The most basic is belief (positive) and doubt (negative). Doubt is a question or questioning, while belief is an answer or answering. In politics, conservatives lean towards believing and affirming the institution (often looking to the stability of the past) while progressives lean towards doubting and questioning the institution (often looking to the openness of the future). In systems of thought, positivists 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 positivism 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 positivism 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.
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 and Plato, who we will study later) questioned their traditions 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?
Hegel tells us that there are dueling parts of our individual mind that fight and cooperate on the individual level just as positivism 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 everywhere else. No society would survive without pushing in both directions.
In the rest of this lecture we will look at shamans as the original keepers of knowledge and seekers of wisdom. In the next lecture, we will look at the development of early city-states and the wisdom of the ancient Egyptians. This will give us the frame we need to study the great philosophers of ancient India, Greece and China.
Tribal Shamans and Ecstatic Quests
“Shaman” is a word from an old Turkish-Siberian dialect that means “one who knows”. Consider that a “scientist” is “one who sees” 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.
It is quite amazing to consider that 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.
In tribal culture, traditional knowledge is often kept and passed on in the form of stories or narratives. These stories explain the world and help people with their problems. There are, however, times when an answer must be sought for a problem. 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 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.
To quest for knowledge, the shaman employs techniques of ecstasy known to produce an ecstatic experience. “Ecstasy” comes from the Greek and means “standing outside”. 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. One gains perspective and is capable of abstraction when one removes oneself to contemplate reality. In fact, thought 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.
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).
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 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). 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.
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. This framework is important for understanding each individual system of ancient thought as well as their overall similarities and differences.
One early philosophical puzzle was the problem of the One and the Many: this reality is one thing, but also 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. 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.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Social & Political Philosophy: Mencius, Xun Zi and Human Nature
Chinese Philosophy and The Period of the Hundred Philosophers/Schools:
One would like to think that times of peace and prosperity are good for systems of thought, but in fact we find that times of war and disintegration of empires is best for thinkers and systems of thought. Human beings only rethink problems when they are faced with them, and so in Confucius’ China there were great problems in the ‘Warring States period’ as many kings came and went, each calling themselves ‘mandated by heaven’. If heaven speaks for a king, it was thought the king would prosper. If the king does not follow the way of heaven, heaven or the All Lord stops speaking for the king, and someone else comes along. Each new king then claims that the old king was ‘no longer spoken for’, so the populations of Greece, India etc. find themselves wondering: who exactly does Heaven (the heavens) speak for, and why?
The Period of the Hundred Philosophers or Hundred Schools, as it is called, came with the Warring States Period and ended during the Han dynasty (about 220 BCE) which supported the studies of many of the schools that had their origins during the Warring States Period. This included the teachings of Confucius and the early Confucians such as Mencius and Xun Zi.
Confucius and his System of Thought
Confucius (550-480 BCE) believed that the heart is the center of the human being. Notice that this ‘center’ is both mental and physical, fitting with cosmology, psychology and medical practices (these, of course, not being separated in ancient times and cultures). Confucius is often understood as a champion of order and ritual, as he is a proponent of society against the Daoists. However, it is clear from the Analects that Confucius believed it was more important to have right intentions than right actions, i.e. ‘one’s heart is in the right place’.
Confucius believed that ritual was the strength of a society and so one should perform the rituals to the ancestors, but he also believed that the worst thing was not to simply avoid ritual but to do ritual without the proper intention. We could say that Confucius would say to a churchgoer today: it is more important to enjoy your church than to attend your church, for if you do not enjoy it whole heartedly you should not go. Empty ritual, ritual simply for the motions rather than authentic love for and continuity with one’s society, is the worst thing, and thus it would be better in such a case to avoid false ritual and simply not perform the ritual at all. This point is often lost when people focus on Confucius’ great love of ritual and city culture. The best example is clearly 3.26, “Authority without generosity, ceremony without reverence, mourning without grief, these things I cannot bear to contemplate”.
Confucius is credited as the father of China’s civil service system, a system in which anyone who tested well, regardless of their position in society, was given a government position. This is similar to the development of types of scribes in Egypt. It is just such a development that we call ‘the middle class’, the individuals who through study and work can rise or fall in position to fit the many niches required to run large cities and systems. In combination with the last point, this means that Confucius hates scholarship for show without genuine love of learning and discovery of human nature. A good example is 4.9, ‘if a scholar is ashamed of his shabby clothes or poor food, he is not worth listening to’.
Confucius was a genius at seeing himself as equal to everyone, and he encouraged this attitude as the path to goodness itself. Most of us have likely heard the ‘Golden Rule’, which is paraphrased from Confucius: ‘treat others the way you want to be treated’. My favorite example is 7.22: Confucius says that if you put him with any two people at random, he can take their strengths as a model to follow and their faults as a warning. Clearly, Confucius believed that we all share the same set of strengths and faults, no matter how talented (or horrible) we happen to individually be or where our talents are. Confucius teaches us that NO ONE is perfect, not even himself, but there is good in everyone and everything, and we had best remember that we will never lose any of our connection to our fellow human beings if we only remember to look hard enough for it. Another excellent example from the Analects is, “When you see a worthy man, seek to emulate him…When you see an unworthy man, examine yourself”.
Mencius, Xun Zi and the Debate on Human Nature
Confucius had two followers who became the famous two poles of interpretation of the Analects. Mencius (370-290 BCE) or Men Zi, the second in command of Confucianism by popular consent in the tradition, believed that Confucius taught that the human being is basically good and develops the heart, growing and developing the virtues through love. He argued that because the human individual is essentially good, we need ritual to guide our growth but love is the true essence. Xun Zi, the third in command of Confucianism, a cynic and conservative, argued that the human being is essentially evil and without the rituals and tradition to hold our nature back we would be selfish and uncivilized. This remains the major split in Confucian thought. We can see that there are various views and contradicting opinions within the system, and that individuals can draw on Mencius, Xun Zi or both to back up their own interpretations of Confucius.
Mencius and Human Nature as Good
In 2A:6, Mencius states a major thesis of his work: No one is devoid of compassion for others. Mencius argues at several points in the book that we naturally feel for others and their wellbeing as we do for ourselves, and that when we fail to care for others there are other factors involved that block or reverse our natural compassion. Xun Zi, as we will see, is very opposed to this interpretation of Confucius’ thought and argues that compassion must be planted in the human being by society and study because it is alien and opposite to human nature. In coming weeks, we will see similar sides taken between Rousseau and Hobbes.
Mencius is famous for using the young child falling into a well example to back up his argument. He argues that anyone would feel panic and fear if they saw a child in danger, regardless of how evil that individual is or how twisted they have become. This point is excellent for debate.
Mencius believes that there are four parts of the human heart that are developed and cultivated by society and study such that four virtues are grown like plants/germs/sprouts. The heart is a root system which grows the virtues of humanity when properly cultivated.
The four parts of the heart are compassion (ren) which sprouts benevolence, shame which sprouts duty (yi), courtesy/modesty which sprouts observance of ritual (li), and a sense of right and wrong which sprouts wisdom.
In 3A:5, we see Mencius getting into a battle with a Moist over whether one should love one’s own family more than others. While compassion is central to Confucianism, whether or not it is innate like Mencius says or has to be transplanted like Xun Zi says, Confucians believe that one should have more love for one’s parents, children, family, and country and that this is the natural and proper way of things. Moists, who are radical egalitarians, argued against the Confucians that we should love everyone without distinction, as much as we love ourselves, our parents, our children, and our country. Confucians argue that the Moists are breaking with the natural way of the human heart and society, and that proportion in love is proper and best.
Mencius argues that we all do naturally love infants and young children and that this is good. He returns to his well example, and argues that Yi Zi, a Moist, is taking this one case and applying it improperly to everyone. Mencius says that the Moist wants us to deny our natural gradations of love which grow in society while affirming that love is the true nature of humanity, setting love in opposition to itself and making love both natural and unnatural at the same time.
Mencius goes on to presume that love and care for others possibly began with early humans, living before civilization, seeing the decaying bodies of their parents being attacked by animals and because humans naturally care for others, and particularly their parents, they were moved to bury the bodies. Note that this makes proper burial, the topic of the debate with Yi Zi. In the text, Yi Zi concedes the point and accepts that love starts with the love one has for one’s parents and develops from there. In Chinese philosophical texts, often there are instances of a member (sometimes quite famous) of an opposing school conceding in argument (Confucius is made to accept defeat and concede superiority to the Daoists in the great text of Zhuang Zi).
In 4A:12, Mencius elaborates and says that goodness starts with working on the self and love for one’s parents, and moves outward from there to one’s friends and the whole of one’s society.
In 4A:16, Mencius considers another example famous in Confucian scholarship for its implications. A scholar (school unknown) poses a problem to Mencius: it says in the laws that it is improper for men and women to touch hands if they are not married, but if your brother’s sister is drowning, shouldn’t you reach out to save her? Mencius replies that it is proper to save her, and that one must not blindly follow the law but use discretion given the situation. This passage is famous, because Confucians are big on observing law and ritual but sometimes one must break the law. Confucius said in the Analects that even though the rites say to use a silk hat, it is ok to use a hemp hat instead because it is more modest. The scholar debating Mencius says the empire is now drowning, implying that one needs to radically break with the laws and traditions to save society. Mencius replies that upholding law and ritual is the way to save society and so the example of the drowning sister-in-law does not justify a radical break from tradition.
In 4B:12, Mencius says the great person retains the heart of a child. A Moist might point out the previous battle with Yi Zi and say Mencius is going against what he has said before if a child is all loving and completely open. Mencius might counter that retaining the child heart will naturally grow into its arrangements while being pure and absolute.
In 4B:13, Mencius says that following one’s parents when they are alive is good, but following them after they are dead is greater. Xun Zi might be cynical here, because if you applied this to society he would argue that without society one would tend not to be good at all and that the one who follows the ways of one’s parents after they are dead does so only because society still surrounds them.
In 6A:2, as in several other places, Mencius likens love and human nature (which he believes to be identical) to water and argues that just as water naturally moves downward love naturally moves outward. If water does not move downward, it is blocked by something. In the same way, if a human being is not loving towards others and compassionate, it is blocked by something.
In 6A:7, Mencius speaks of sowing barley on various ground (strikingly similar to the parable of Jesus). Just as when barley does not grow, the seeds have fallen on bad soil, when humans are bad it is not because they do not have love and goodness in their nature but because they are put in a bad situation. Reason and goodness are common to all. The sage or great person simply recognizes this and grows what all have to become great.
Xun Zi and Human Nature as Evil
Xun Zi, the third most important Confucian after Confucius and Mencius, argued that human nature is evil because human nature is desire. Without society and laws, people would grab for themselves and do nothing for others. Hobbes, we will see, argues the same thing and believes that this justifies the king acting any way the king sees fit, including killing his subjects.
In Improving Yourself (Section 2 of the Xun Zi), he argues that if we stick to the rituals and laws our behavior will be good and if we abandon the rituals and laws it will be bad. He draws openly on the behavior of civilized gentlemen vs. the behavior of poor country folk to back this up.
He argues that one’s temperament and intelligence need to be in balance and if they get overgrown they will cause ruin. Human abilities need to be reined in by society and customs, or they will cause problems. He argues that only by following laws can one be liberal and compassionate. Compassion is the goal that is possible, but it cannot be achieved without laws and principles. Following one’s parents and teachers is necessary for human development. Confucius says in the Analects that learning without thinking is bad, but thinking without learning is dangerous.
In Man’s Nature is Evil (Section 23 of the Xun Zi), he opens with this thesis and states that all goodness is the result of growth and effort. People naturally desire. They must work and change to understand that they only get what they desire when they put their desires in check, and they only learn this through involvement with society and its laws. Freud argued very similarly about sexual impulse, and that all technology is sexuality denied and deferred into work. The first paragraph lays this out succinctly.
Xun Zi openly refers to Mencius by name and his theory that human nature is good and says that Mencius is wrong. Xun Zi argues that Mencius is confusing human nature with the results of conscious human activity and development. Xun Zi believes that the early legendary sage kings created society because they realized that human nature is corrupt and they created a method for us to grow from our nature and become excellent in spite of it. He argues that the example of child-like love is misleading. Children do not know enough, are not developed enough, to refrain from grabbing for themselves. Good people restrain their own desires to be good to others, unlike the child. Note that we tell people to be like a little child (when happy & loving) and we also tell people to NOT be like a little child (when angry & upset).
Xun Zi argues that greatness IS an object of desire, and the great person realizes/desires to overcome desire and discipline desire to truly fulfill desire. This is very similar to Nietzsche and his conceptions of morality and power which we will touch on in the second half of the class.
He says: “Those who are good at discussing antiquity must demonstrate the validity of what they say in modern times; those who are good at discussing Heaven (the way of things) must show proofs from the human world. In discussions of all kinds, men value what is in accord with the facts and what can be proved to be valid. Hence if a man sits on his mat propounding some theory, he should be able to stand right up and put it into practice, and show that it can be extended over a wide area with equal validity. Now Mencius states that man’s nature is good, but this is neither in accord with the facts, nor can it be proved to be valid.”
If Mencius is right, Xun Zi argues, we could dispense with society and be good in the state of nature. Both the Daoists and Rousseau hold this to be true. Xun Zi is arguing that, if we believe Mencius, we may as well all become Daoists. If we honor the sages and the good over the stupid and the evil, we do so because of how much each has developed and not because of their universal nature. Xun Zi is arguing that, if we believe Mencius, we may as well all become Moists.
Xun Zi argues that all human beings are equal in their capacity to become good and develop, but they do not start out good. The sage is one who has developed, not the one who remains the same as they were in the beginning. Xun Zi argues that because one has two feet, one can theoretically walk to the ends of the earth but no one has so far managed to do so. The famous bows (for arrows), leaders and horses all became famous for how they were cultivated and developed and were not excellent without conscious effort and process.
He ends by saying twice: “Environment is the important thing!” Remember Mencius agrees in speaking of sowing barley. For Confucians, society is essential. The debate is on whether the environment compliments or contradicts human nature.
One would like to think that times of peace and prosperity are good for systems of thought, but in fact we find that times of war and disintegration of empires is best for thinkers and systems of thought. Human beings only rethink problems when they are faced with them, and so in Confucius’ China there were great problems in the ‘Warring States period’ as many kings came and went, each calling themselves ‘mandated by heaven’. If heaven speaks for a king, it was thought the king would prosper. If the king does not follow the way of heaven, heaven or the All Lord stops speaking for the king, and someone else comes along. Each new king then claims that the old king was ‘no longer spoken for’, so the populations of Greece, India etc. find themselves wondering: who exactly does Heaven (the heavens) speak for, and why?
The Period of the Hundred Philosophers or Hundred Schools, as it is called, came with the Warring States Period and ended during the Han dynasty (about 220 BCE) which supported the studies of many of the schools that had their origins during the Warring States Period. This included the teachings of Confucius and the early Confucians such as Mencius and Xun Zi.
Confucius and his System of Thought
Confucius (550-480 BCE) believed that the heart is the center of the human being. Notice that this ‘center’ is both mental and physical, fitting with cosmology, psychology and medical practices (these, of course, not being separated in ancient times and cultures). Confucius is often understood as a champion of order and ritual, as he is a proponent of society against the Daoists. However, it is clear from the Analects that Confucius believed it was more important to have right intentions than right actions, i.e. ‘one’s heart is in the right place’.
Confucius believed that ritual was the strength of a society and so one should perform the rituals to the ancestors, but he also believed that the worst thing was not to simply avoid ritual but to do ritual without the proper intention. We could say that Confucius would say to a churchgoer today: it is more important to enjoy your church than to attend your church, for if you do not enjoy it whole heartedly you should not go. Empty ritual, ritual simply for the motions rather than authentic love for and continuity with one’s society, is the worst thing, and thus it would be better in such a case to avoid false ritual and simply not perform the ritual at all. This point is often lost when people focus on Confucius’ great love of ritual and city culture. The best example is clearly 3.26, “Authority without generosity, ceremony without reverence, mourning without grief, these things I cannot bear to contemplate”.
Confucius is credited as the father of China’s civil service system, a system in which anyone who tested well, regardless of their position in society, was given a government position. This is similar to the development of types of scribes in Egypt. It is just such a development that we call ‘the middle class’, the individuals who through study and work can rise or fall in position to fit the many niches required to run large cities and systems. In combination with the last point, this means that Confucius hates scholarship for show without genuine love of learning and discovery of human nature. A good example is 4.9, ‘if a scholar is ashamed of his shabby clothes or poor food, he is not worth listening to’.
Confucius was a genius at seeing himself as equal to everyone, and he encouraged this attitude as the path to goodness itself. Most of us have likely heard the ‘Golden Rule’, which is paraphrased from Confucius: ‘treat others the way you want to be treated’. My favorite example is 7.22: Confucius says that if you put him with any two people at random, he can take their strengths as a model to follow and their faults as a warning. Clearly, Confucius believed that we all share the same set of strengths and faults, no matter how talented (or horrible) we happen to individually be or where our talents are. Confucius teaches us that NO ONE is perfect, not even himself, but there is good in everyone and everything, and we had best remember that we will never lose any of our connection to our fellow human beings if we only remember to look hard enough for it. Another excellent example from the Analects is, “When you see a worthy man, seek to emulate him…When you see an unworthy man, examine yourself”.
Mencius, Xun Zi and the Debate on Human Nature
Confucius had two followers who became the famous two poles of interpretation of the Analects. Mencius (370-290 BCE) or Men Zi, the second in command of Confucianism by popular consent in the tradition, believed that Confucius taught that the human being is basically good and develops the heart, growing and developing the virtues through love. He argued that because the human individual is essentially good, we need ritual to guide our growth but love is the true essence. Xun Zi, the third in command of Confucianism, a cynic and conservative, argued that the human being is essentially evil and without the rituals and tradition to hold our nature back we would be selfish and uncivilized. This remains the major split in Confucian thought. We can see that there are various views and contradicting opinions within the system, and that individuals can draw on Mencius, Xun Zi or both to back up their own interpretations of Confucius.
Mencius and Human Nature as Good
In 2A:6, Mencius states a major thesis of his work: No one is devoid of compassion for others. Mencius argues at several points in the book that we naturally feel for others and their wellbeing as we do for ourselves, and that when we fail to care for others there are other factors involved that block or reverse our natural compassion. Xun Zi, as we will see, is very opposed to this interpretation of Confucius’ thought and argues that compassion must be planted in the human being by society and study because it is alien and opposite to human nature. In coming weeks, we will see similar sides taken between Rousseau and Hobbes.
Mencius is famous for using the young child falling into a well example to back up his argument. He argues that anyone would feel panic and fear if they saw a child in danger, regardless of how evil that individual is or how twisted they have become. This point is excellent for debate.
Mencius believes that there are four parts of the human heart that are developed and cultivated by society and study such that four virtues are grown like plants/germs/sprouts. The heart is a root system which grows the virtues of humanity when properly cultivated.
The four parts of the heart are compassion (ren) which sprouts benevolence, shame which sprouts duty (yi), courtesy/modesty which sprouts observance of ritual (li), and a sense of right and wrong which sprouts wisdom.
In 3A:5, we see Mencius getting into a battle with a Moist over whether one should love one’s own family more than others. While compassion is central to Confucianism, whether or not it is innate like Mencius says or has to be transplanted like Xun Zi says, Confucians believe that one should have more love for one’s parents, children, family, and country and that this is the natural and proper way of things. Moists, who are radical egalitarians, argued against the Confucians that we should love everyone without distinction, as much as we love ourselves, our parents, our children, and our country. Confucians argue that the Moists are breaking with the natural way of the human heart and society, and that proportion in love is proper and best.
Mencius argues that we all do naturally love infants and young children and that this is good. He returns to his well example, and argues that Yi Zi, a Moist, is taking this one case and applying it improperly to everyone. Mencius says that the Moist wants us to deny our natural gradations of love which grow in society while affirming that love is the true nature of humanity, setting love in opposition to itself and making love both natural and unnatural at the same time.
Mencius goes on to presume that love and care for others possibly began with early humans, living before civilization, seeing the decaying bodies of their parents being attacked by animals and because humans naturally care for others, and particularly their parents, they were moved to bury the bodies. Note that this makes proper burial, the topic of the debate with Yi Zi. In the text, Yi Zi concedes the point and accepts that love starts with the love one has for one’s parents and develops from there. In Chinese philosophical texts, often there are instances of a member (sometimes quite famous) of an opposing school conceding in argument (Confucius is made to accept defeat and concede superiority to the Daoists in the great text of Zhuang Zi).
In 4A:12, Mencius elaborates and says that goodness starts with working on the self and love for one’s parents, and moves outward from there to one’s friends and the whole of one’s society.
In 4A:16, Mencius considers another example famous in Confucian scholarship for its implications. A scholar (school unknown) poses a problem to Mencius: it says in the laws that it is improper for men and women to touch hands if they are not married, but if your brother’s sister is drowning, shouldn’t you reach out to save her? Mencius replies that it is proper to save her, and that one must not blindly follow the law but use discretion given the situation. This passage is famous, because Confucians are big on observing law and ritual but sometimes one must break the law. Confucius said in the Analects that even though the rites say to use a silk hat, it is ok to use a hemp hat instead because it is more modest. The scholar debating Mencius says the empire is now drowning, implying that one needs to radically break with the laws and traditions to save society. Mencius replies that upholding law and ritual is the way to save society and so the example of the drowning sister-in-law does not justify a radical break from tradition.
In 4B:12, Mencius says the great person retains the heart of a child. A Moist might point out the previous battle with Yi Zi and say Mencius is going against what he has said before if a child is all loving and completely open. Mencius might counter that retaining the child heart will naturally grow into its arrangements while being pure and absolute.
In 4B:13, Mencius says that following one’s parents when they are alive is good, but following them after they are dead is greater. Xun Zi might be cynical here, because if you applied this to society he would argue that without society one would tend not to be good at all and that the one who follows the ways of one’s parents after they are dead does so only because society still surrounds them.
In 6A:2, as in several other places, Mencius likens love and human nature (which he believes to be identical) to water and argues that just as water naturally moves downward love naturally moves outward. If water does not move downward, it is blocked by something. In the same way, if a human being is not loving towards others and compassionate, it is blocked by something.
In 6A:7, Mencius speaks of sowing barley on various ground (strikingly similar to the parable of Jesus). Just as when barley does not grow, the seeds have fallen on bad soil, when humans are bad it is not because they do not have love and goodness in their nature but because they are put in a bad situation. Reason and goodness are common to all. The sage or great person simply recognizes this and grows what all have to become great.
Xun Zi and Human Nature as Evil
Xun Zi, the third most important Confucian after Confucius and Mencius, argued that human nature is evil because human nature is desire. Without society and laws, people would grab for themselves and do nothing for others. Hobbes, we will see, argues the same thing and believes that this justifies the king acting any way the king sees fit, including killing his subjects.
In Improving Yourself (Section 2 of the Xun Zi), he argues that if we stick to the rituals and laws our behavior will be good and if we abandon the rituals and laws it will be bad. He draws openly on the behavior of civilized gentlemen vs. the behavior of poor country folk to back this up.
He argues that one’s temperament and intelligence need to be in balance and if they get overgrown they will cause ruin. Human abilities need to be reined in by society and customs, or they will cause problems. He argues that only by following laws can one be liberal and compassionate. Compassion is the goal that is possible, but it cannot be achieved without laws and principles. Following one’s parents and teachers is necessary for human development. Confucius says in the Analects that learning without thinking is bad, but thinking without learning is dangerous.
In Man’s Nature is Evil (Section 23 of the Xun Zi), he opens with this thesis and states that all goodness is the result of growth and effort. People naturally desire. They must work and change to understand that they only get what they desire when they put their desires in check, and they only learn this through involvement with society and its laws. Freud argued very similarly about sexual impulse, and that all technology is sexuality denied and deferred into work. The first paragraph lays this out succinctly.
Xun Zi openly refers to Mencius by name and his theory that human nature is good and says that Mencius is wrong. Xun Zi argues that Mencius is confusing human nature with the results of conscious human activity and development. Xun Zi believes that the early legendary sage kings created society because they realized that human nature is corrupt and they created a method for us to grow from our nature and become excellent in spite of it. He argues that the example of child-like love is misleading. Children do not know enough, are not developed enough, to refrain from grabbing for themselves. Good people restrain their own desires to be good to others, unlike the child. Note that we tell people to be like a little child (when happy & loving) and we also tell people to NOT be like a little child (when angry & upset).
Xun Zi argues that greatness IS an object of desire, and the great person realizes/desires to overcome desire and discipline desire to truly fulfill desire. This is very similar to Nietzsche and his conceptions of morality and power which we will touch on in the second half of the class.
He says: “Those who are good at discussing antiquity must demonstrate the validity of what they say in modern times; those who are good at discussing Heaven (the way of things) must show proofs from the human world. In discussions of all kinds, men value what is in accord with the facts and what can be proved to be valid. Hence if a man sits on his mat propounding some theory, he should be able to stand right up and put it into practice, and show that it can be extended over a wide area with equal validity. Now Mencius states that man’s nature is good, but this is neither in accord with the facts, nor can it be proved to be valid.”
If Mencius is right, Xun Zi argues, we could dispense with society and be good in the state of nature. Both the Daoists and Rousseau hold this to be true. Xun Zi is arguing that, if we believe Mencius, we may as well all become Daoists. If we honor the sages and the good over the stupid and the evil, we do so because of how much each has developed and not because of their universal nature. Xun Zi is arguing that, if we believe Mencius, we may as well all become Moists.
Xun Zi argues that all human beings are equal in their capacity to become good and develop, but they do not start out good. The sage is one who has developed, not the one who remains the same as they were in the beginning. Xun Zi argues that because one has two feet, one can theoretically walk to the ends of the earth but no one has so far managed to do so. The famous bows (for arrows), leaders and horses all became famous for how they were cultivated and developed and were not excellent without conscious effort and process.
He ends by saying twice: “Environment is the important thing!” Remember Mencius agrees in speaking of sowing barley. For Confucians, society is essential. The debate is on whether the environment compliments or contradicts human nature.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Social & Political Philosophy: Tribal Society & City State Politics
PRIMITIVE MAN AS PHILOSOPHER by Paul Radin
Modern Historians are supposed to look at societies other than their own free from bias and prejudice. However, historians have so far been prejudiced and assumed that aboriginal/tribal societies are innately inferior. This is due to the profound differences of social customs and because the tribes people could not stick up for themselves against the modern historian. Romanticism also played a part in sustaining the assumption that tribes people are simple children and savages, unintelligent and lacking individuality. The rise of the theory of evolution convinced many that tribes people are pre-logical and pre-individualistic because they have not reached required stages of social development, and this view has gained academic and scientific credibility.
Because of this, the most pressing need in history, sociology, psychology and other fields is to examine and question this prejudice, particularly the convictions that tribal people have a dead level of intelligence, that the individual is always submerged in the group, and that there are no thinkers or philosophers. This book particularly examines the role of intellectuals in the earliest societies.
Every human group has members who are different in their individuality and who examine life and its problems with what we can call philosophy. Languages of tribal peoples are sometimes more complex than our own and their vocabularies are sometimes just as large. Their vocabularies have words with the same abstract connotations as our own, but in spite of this there are many theorists who do not believe tribal people to be capable of abstract thought. They point out the concrete nature of words and expressions while ignoring that our own modern languages use similar concrete terms to express abstract thought.
The complexity of a society has little to do with the existence of philosophy or individual thought. Indeed, complex civilizations can often stifle or even prohibit philosophizing and the asking of deep and abstract questions.
Often, academics has held to the view that the ancient Greeks and their cultural descendents have a special kind of mentality that allowed and still allows them to think individually, critically, and philosophically, but it is not clear what the nature of this special mentality is. The best way to critically examine and correct this error is to provide examples of tribal people indulging in philosophical speculation.
Aristotle and the Greeks are called special for thinking systematically, even though all cultures transmit their thought in whole, unified systems.
Philosophical speculation flourishes most in times of crisis and change, as it did in the greatest periods of Greek and Chinese philosophy.
Throughout this book it is assumed that tribal people have the same distribution of intelligence and ability as do modern societies. This has grown from a hypothesis to a conviction through the direct experience of tribal societies by the author. The object of the book is to describe tribal society from the viewpoint of the intellectuals and thinkers of the tribe.
The intellectual often looks down on the practices of the ordinary people, but the ordinary person also looks with amusement on the distance between the real and practical world and the behavior of the scholar. It is, however, the scholar who writes the history books and so it is this perspective that we often encounter when reading about the past of this and other civilizations.
When looking at isolated practices of “magic” ritual, such as the Winnebago Native American shooting an arrow at a trail to ensure good deer hunting, it is often forgotten that this act does not guarantee success and is interwoven with many practical behaviors. If one asks the tribal individual if magic alone will bring home a deer or grow crops, they are quite amused at the lack of understanding.
Tribal people are in direct contact with their reality, while modern people are removed from many aspects of their own lives. Magic was not a world apart from physical reality, but interwoven with it such that practical and physical situations were recognized while interpreted in traditional ways. One does not ask for rain from a cloudless sky, nor seek protection for actions that are impractical or dangerously stupid. The traditional systems of thought are an aid for dealing with physical and practical reality, not a substitute for reality.
Tribal people, like advanced modern people, do and do not understand reality and the forces behind it, so they work in accord with systems that sometimes do and sometimes do not work so that generally the society and individual will be well and overcome obstacles.
Individuals have relative freedom and individuality in tribal societies. It is possible that we view the tribal individual as an automata, with no freedom or individuality, because modern life saturated with technologies has turned human individuals into automata.
It is a mistake to believe that tribal people do not have variation in ritual and belief but modern people do. There is always variations in ritual and belief amongst any people, and modern life has in fact standardized beliefs more than they ever have been.
When one draws the community together and asks about the reasons behind an aspect of culture, one will find not only variation but contradictions and arguments. This is as true of tribal beliefs as it is of modern academics and science. A community is always an agreement and disagreement of beliefs and perspectives.
All societies, tribal or modern, believe that there are immutable and permanent truths, but there is no complete agreement as to what these truths are or how they are structured or caused. Even if there is a great deal of consensus, this does not prevent radical variation in belief among individuals and minority groups. If this variation is sometimes concealed, this is due to fear of ridicule or rejection by the majority. Individuality that contrasts with the beliefs or behavior of the majority is in danger of being labeled a mistake or deviancy. It is always safer to either conform to the majority or remain silent.
Individual members of any society have to balance and integrate their individuality with society.
Sometimes it is even asserted that tribal people are so varied in belief that they cannot form coherent systems. It is often asserted that the Greeks and Europeans are “systematic thinkers” relative to others, but also that they are also free and various in thinking relative to others.
With the development of writing, a welcome oasis given the dynamic and ever-changing world, beliefs and systems of thought were able to be highly standardized. The written word was deified and identified with the unchanging way of the cosmos.
HISTORY BEGINS AT SUMER by Kramer
Sumer is the birthplace of the written word, one of the earliest city state societies. Sumer was a city state at the mouth of the Tigris Euphrates which was then taken over and incorporated into Babylon, which then was taken over by Assyria, which was then taken over by Persia. These were multicultural societies in which citizenship did not belong exclusively to one ethnicity. The primary way that cultures were dominated was, as it is today, not with war but with trade. War typically means efforts to dominate through economic means have failed.
Sumer had some of the first schools, textbooks (in science and the liberal arts), medical texts, tax reduction, wisdom proverbs, and laments. One excellent proverb is, “You go and carry off the enemy’s land, the enemy comes and carries off your land”. My favorite Sumerian lament is recorded about 3000 BCE, in which an elderly Sumerian complains that teenagers are running around and breaking laws and having sex, concluding that the world will certainly end soon.
Very important for this class, in Sumer we find the first democratic bicameral congress. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the first recorded myths in human history, we read that Gilgamesh wants to go to war so he appeals to the elders of the senate. The elders do not want war because they have fragile investments in the situation, so Gilgamesh appeals to the larger and lower house and they enthusiastically accept his proposal. Gilgamesh, the king, must seek approval from the community as a whole and needs the house to override the smaller but higher senate.
MYTH TODAY by Roland Barthes
Barthes, a French thinker and literary critic, argues that any speech can be mythologized and through any medium. He uses the example of roses being given as a gesture of passion to illustrate his concept of a sign, and then describes how signs can serve myths which then become larger signs that signify other things.
At the barbershop one day, he is upset by the cover of Paris-Match (a magazine much like Newsweek & Time in America). On the cover is a young African boy in French military dress saluting. Barthes writes that the boy is clearly being depicted saluting the French flag, and the cover is meant to signify that France is a great empire in which all are equal and love the empire. Barthes writes that this boy is being made to serve his colonialist oppressors and that the image is a sign that serves a modern myth: France stands for freedom. It is a game of hide and seek with meaning. It is an open association or coherence that does not demand what it means but highly suggests what it means. In doing this, it is a deformation and distortion of the realities of French colonial Africa. It is a gesture that is deliberately misleading, alienating the meaning from the situation. It is an alibi for French colonialism.
Consider that, coupled with Radin, we may wonder whether we live in times of less or greater mythology considering the forms of media and the dislocation of modern society.
Modern Historians are supposed to look at societies other than their own free from bias and prejudice. However, historians have so far been prejudiced and assumed that aboriginal/tribal societies are innately inferior. This is due to the profound differences of social customs and because the tribes people could not stick up for themselves against the modern historian. Romanticism also played a part in sustaining the assumption that tribes people are simple children and savages, unintelligent and lacking individuality. The rise of the theory of evolution convinced many that tribes people are pre-logical and pre-individualistic because they have not reached required stages of social development, and this view has gained academic and scientific credibility.
Because of this, the most pressing need in history, sociology, psychology and other fields is to examine and question this prejudice, particularly the convictions that tribal people have a dead level of intelligence, that the individual is always submerged in the group, and that there are no thinkers or philosophers. This book particularly examines the role of intellectuals in the earliest societies.
Every human group has members who are different in their individuality and who examine life and its problems with what we can call philosophy. Languages of tribal peoples are sometimes more complex than our own and their vocabularies are sometimes just as large. Their vocabularies have words with the same abstract connotations as our own, but in spite of this there are many theorists who do not believe tribal people to be capable of abstract thought. They point out the concrete nature of words and expressions while ignoring that our own modern languages use similar concrete terms to express abstract thought.
The complexity of a society has little to do with the existence of philosophy or individual thought. Indeed, complex civilizations can often stifle or even prohibit philosophizing and the asking of deep and abstract questions.
Often, academics has held to the view that the ancient Greeks and their cultural descendents have a special kind of mentality that allowed and still allows them to think individually, critically, and philosophically, but it is not clear what the nature of this special mentality is. The best way to critically examine and correct this error is to provide examples of tribal people indulging in philosophical speculation.
Aristotle and the Greeks are called special for thinking systematically, even though all cultures transmit their thought in whole, unified systems.
Philosophical speculation flourishes most in times of crisis and change, as it did in the greatest periods of Greek and Chinese philosophy.
Throughout this book it is assumed that tribal people have the same distribution of intelligence and ability as do modern societies. This has grown from a hypothesis to a conviction through the direct experience of tribal societies by the author. The object of the book is to describe tribal society from the viewpoint of the intellectuals and thinkers of the tribe.
The intellectual often looks down on the practices of the ordinary people, but the ordinary person also looks with amusement on the distance between the real and practical world and the behavior of the scholar. It is, however, the scholar who writes the history books and so it is this perspective that we often encounter when reading about the past of this and other civilizations.
When looking at isolated practices of “magic” ritual, such as the Winnebago Native American shooting an arrow at a trail to ensure good deer hunting, it is often forgotten that this act does not guarantee success and is interwoven with many practical behaviors. If one asks the tribal individual if magic alone will bring home a deer or grow crops, they are quite amused at the lack of understanding.
Tribal people are in direct contact with their reality, while modern people are removed from many aspects of their own lives. Magic was not a world apart from physical reality, but interwoven with it such that practical and physical situations were recognized while interpreted in traditional ways. One does not ask for rain from a cloudless sky, nor seek protection for actions that are impractical or dangerously stupid. The traditional systems of thought are an aid for dealing with physical and practical reality, not a substitute for reality.
Tribal people, like advanced modern people, do and do not understand reality and the forces behind it, so they work in accord with systems that sometimes do and sometimes do not work so that generally the society and individual will be well and overcome obstacles.
Individuals have relative freedom and individuality in tribal societies. It is possible that we view the tribal individual as an automata, with no freedom or individuality, because modern life saturated with technologies has turned human individuals into automata.
It is a mistake to believe that tribal people do not have variation in ritual and belief but modern people do. There is always variations in ritual and belief amongst any people, and modern life has in fact standardized beliefs more than they ever have been.
When one draws the community together and asks about the reasons behind an aspect of culture, one will find not only variation but contradictions and arguments. This is as true of tribal beliefs as it is of modern academics and science. A community is always an agreement and disagreement of beliefs and perspectives.
All societies, tribal or modern, believe that there are immutable and permanent truths, but there is no complete agreement as to what these truths are or how they are structured or caused. Even if there is a great deal of consensus, this does not prevent radical variation in belief among individuals and minority groups. If this variation is sometimes concealed, this is due to fear of ridicule or rejection by the majority. Individuality that contrasts with the beliefs or behavior of the majority is in danger of being labeled a mistake or deviancy. It is always safer to either conform to the majority or remain silent.
Individual members of any society have to balance and integrate their individuality with society.
Sometimes it is even asserted that tribal people are so varied in belief that they cannot form coherent systems. It is often asserted that the Greeks and Europeans are “systematic thinkers” relative to others, but also that they are also free and various in thinking relative to others.
With the development of writing, a welcome oasis given the dynamic and ever-changing world, beliefs and systems of thought were able to be highly standardized. The written word was deified and identified with the unchanging way of the cosmos.
HISTORY BEGINS AT SUMER by Kramer
Sumer is the birthplace of the written word, one of the earliest city state societies. Sumer was a city state at the mouth of the Tigris Euphrates which was then taken over and incorporated into Babylon, which then was taken over by Assyria, which was then taken over by Persia. These were multicultural societies in which citizenship did not belong exclusively to one ethnicity. The primary way that cultures were dominated was, as it is today, not with war but with trade. War typically means efforts to dominate through economic means have failed.
Sumer had some of the first schools, textbooks (in science and the liberal arts), medical texts, tax reduction, wisdom proverbs, and laments. One excellent proverb is, “You go and carry off the enemy’s land, the enemy comes and carries off your land”. My favorite Sumerian lament is recorded about 3000 BCE, in which an elderly Sumerian complains that teenagers are running around and breaking laws and having sex, concluding that the world will certainly end soon.
Very important for this class, in Sumer we find the first democratic bicameral congress. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the first recorded myths in human history, we read that Gilgamesh wants to go to war so he appeals to the elders of the senate. The elders do not want war because they have fragile investments in the situation, so Gilgamesh appeals to the larger and lower house and they enthusiastically accept his proposal. Gilgamesh, the king, must seek approval from the community as a whole and needs the house to override the smaller but higher senate.
MYTH TODAY by Roland Barthes
Barthes, a French thinker and literary critic, argues that any speech can be mythologized and through any medium. He uses the example of roses being given as a gesture of passion to illustrate his concept of a sign, and then describes how signs can serve myths which then become larger signs that signify other things.
At the barbershop one day, he is upset by the cover of Paris-Match (a magazine much like Newsweek & Time in America). On the cover is a young African boy in French military dress saluting. Barthes writes that the boy is clearly being depicted saluting the French flag, and the cover is meant to signify that France is a great empire in which all are equal and love the empire. Barthes writes that this boy is being made to serve his colonialist oppressors and that the image is a sign that serves a modern myth: France stands for freedom. It is a game of hide and seek with meaning. It is an open association or coherence that does not demand what it means but highly suggests what it means. In doing this, it is a deformation and distortion of the realities of French colonial Africa. It is a gesture that is deliberately misleading, alienating the meaning from the situation. It is an alibi for French colonialism.
Consider that, coupled with Radin, we may wonder whether we live in times of less or greater mythology considering the forms of media and the dislocation of modern society.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Social & Political Philosophy: Politics in Apes and Early Humanity
Politics Among the Apes:
Apes have hierarchy, with a tension between authority and individuality. Apes are capable of understanding basic forms of owning. Consider the case (from an old Anthropology class of mine) of the female chimpanzee ignoring another male chimpanzee trying to give her a banana for sex, and how the female only snatches the banana for herself when the male ape gets bored and goes out of sight so that there is no expected reciprocity. Apes are also capable of lying, which is important for politics, of course. In one of the most fascinating stories of ape behavior I have heard, researchers documented that a young male baboon made the mistake of trying to force himself sexually on a high ranking female baboon of his tribe. When the female screeched, the rest of the tribe began chasing the young male along the ground floor. Suddenly, the young male turned and gave the call for leopard. The chasers dashed up into the trees and out of sight, while the young male stood, watching them leave, on the ground in no danger from any leopard. The researchers concluded that they had witnessed and documented an ape lying to save his own skin. Thus, we can assume, humans have been lying since before they were human.
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.
Human thought has its own special pairs of opposites. The most basic is belief (positive) and doubt (negative). Doubt is a question or questioning, while belief is an answer or answering. In politics, conservatives lean towards believing and affirming the institution (often looking to the stability of the past) while progressives lean towards doubting and questioning the institution (often looking to the openness of the future). In systems of thought, dogmatists or positivists 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 positivism 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 positivism 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.
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 Plato and Aristotle, who we will study later) questioned their traditions 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?
German Philosophers such as Kant and Hegel tell us that there are dueling parts of our individual mind that fight and cooperate on the individual level just as positivism 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 Radin’s book, Primitive Man as Philosopher, he argues that all societies (paying particular attention to North American tribes and African tribes) have a small number of individuals who are radical questioners and pioneers in innovation and individual thought. 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 everywhere else. No society would survive without pushing in both directions.
“Shaman” is a word from an old Turkish-Siberian dialect that means “one who knows”. Consider that a “scientist” is “one who sees” 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.
It is quite amazing to consider that 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.
In tribal culture, traditional knowledge is often kept and passed on in the form of stories or narratives. These stories explain the world and help people with their problems. There are, however, times when an answer must be sought for a problem. 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 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.
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 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). 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.
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. This framework is important for understanding each individual system of ancient thought as well as their overall similarities and differences.
The Problem of the One and the Many
One early philosophical puzzle was the problem of the One and the Many: this reality is one thing, but also 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. 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.
Notice that the problem of the one and the many has political implications. Unity and sameness is privileged over diversity and difference. Early cultures did appreciate, sometimes reluctantly, individual thought and innovation, but it was and still often is subordinated to the good of the whole or unity of a culture. Native American, African, and Celtic European tribes came together for meetings of many individuals and sometimes many tribes in order to come to agreements, and consensus was sought that balanced diverse wants and opinions. When Native Americans took and held Alcatraz in the 60s, and there were differences of opinions among the tribes and individuals, they told the stubborn to be democratic and “stop being like white people”. This shows us that all cultures value heroes and individual achievement, but they also seek to unify the whole of society and come to common agreement and consensus.
Next time, more on Radin’s Primitive Man as Philosopher, History Begins at Summer and Barthes’ criticism of modern day mythology and how as an expression of culture it serves the state just as mythology has always done.
Apes have hierarchy, with a tension between authority and individuality. Apes are capable of understanding basic forms of owning. Consider the case (from an old Anthropology class of mine) of the female chimpanzee ignoring another male chimpanzee trying to give her a banana for sex, and how the female only snatches the banana for herself when the male ape gets bored and goes out of sight so that there is no expected reciprocity. Apes are also capable of lying, which is important for politics, of course. In one of the most fascinating stories of ape behavior I have heard, researchers documented that a young male baboon made the mistake of trying to force himself sexually on a high ranking female baboon of his tribe. When the female screeched, the rest of the tribe began chasing the young male along the ground floor. Suddenly, the young male turned and gave the call for leopard. The chasers dashed up into the trees and out of sight, while the young male stood, watching them leave, on the ground in no danger from any leopard. The researchers concluded that they had witnessed and documented an ape lying to save his own skin. Thus, we can assume, humans have been lying since before they were human.
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.
Human thought has its own special pairs of opposites. The most basic is belief (positive) and doubt (negative). Doubt is a question or questioning, while belief is an answer or answering. In politics, conservatives lean towards believing and affirming the institution (often looking to the stability of the past) while progressives lean towards doubting and questioning the institution (often looking to the openness of the future). In systems of thought, dogmatists or positivists 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 positivism 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 positivism 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.
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 Plato and Aristotle, who we will study later) questioned their traditions 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?
German Philosophers such as Kant and Hegel tell us that there are dueling parts of our individual mind that fight and cooperate on the individual level just as positivism 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 Radin’s book, Primitive Man as Philosopher, he argues that all societies (paying particular attention to North American tribes and African tribes) have a small number of individuals who are radical questioners and pioneers in innovation and individual thought. 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 everywhere else. No society would survive without pushing in both directions.
“Shaman” is a word from an old Turkish-Siberian dialect that means “one who knows”. Consider that a “scientist” is “one who sees” 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.
It is quite amazing to consider that 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.
In tribal culture, traditional knowledge is often kept and passed on in the form of stories or narratives. These stories explain the world and help people with their problems. There are, however, times when an answer must be sought for a problem. 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 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.
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 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). 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.
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. This framework is important for understanding each individual system of ancient thought as well as their overall similarities and differences.
The Problem of the One and the Many
One early philosophical puzzle was the problem of the One and the Many: this reality is one thing, but also 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. 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.
Notice that the problem of the one and the many has political implications. Unity and sameness is privileged over diversity and difference. Early cultures did appreciate, sometimes reluctantly, individual thought and innovation, but it was and still often is subordinated to the good of the whole or unity of a culture. Native American, African, and Celtic European tribes came together for meetings of many individuals and sometimes many tribes in order to come to agreements, and consensus was sought that balanced diverse wants and opinions. When Native Americans took and held Alcatraz in the 60s, and there were differences of opinions among the tribes and individuals, they told the stubborn to be democratic and “stop being like white people”. This shows us that all cultures value heroes and individual achievement, but they also seek to unify the whole of society and come to common agreement and consensus.
Next time, more on Radin’s Primitive Man as Philosopher, History Begins at Summer and Barthes’ criticism of modern day mythology and how as an expression of culture it serves the state just as mythology has always done.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Ethics Syllabus & Schedule Spring 2011
HUMAN 30A – ETHICS Spring 2011 Instructor: Eric Gerlach
FRI 9:00 – 11:50 AM Office Hours: Mon 11-12 @ K’s Coffee
Class Code 20740 Email: ericgerlach@gmail.com
Room: BCC 53 Blog: ericgerlach.blogspot.com
Ethics: Syllabus and Schedule
Course Description
This course introduces students to central concepts and issues of Ethics and systems of human values. We will first study concepts such as principle, virtue, balance, utility, drive, and perspective. We will then study issues such as theft, lies, violence, environment, class, gender and race from an individual and social perspective.
Required Texts:
The text for the class is the Course Reader, available at Lazer Image, 61 Shattuck Square, Berkeley, (510) 644-3339. A copy of the reader will be held on reserve in the BCC Library.
Required Assignments:
- Four In-class Responses 40%
- Midterm Exam 30%
- Final Exam 30%
Class Schedule
Readings (in bold) are to be completed by the class date for discussion
Jan 28 Introduction: What is Ethics?
Feb 4 Morals & Virtue: Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals & Aristotle’s Ethics
Feb 11 Use & Consequence: Mill’s Utilitarianism (1st Response)
Feb 25 Balance: Egyptian Wisdom & Confucius’ Analects
Mar 4 Drive & Desire: Nietzsche’s Beyond Good & Evil
Mar 11 Perspective: Heraclitus’ Fragments & Chuang Tzu (2nd Response)
Mar 18 Midterm Exam
Mar 25 Theft: Zinn’s People’s History of Am. Empire & Andreas’ Addicted to War
Apr 1 Lies: Herman & Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent
Apr 8 Violence: Lt. Col. Grossman’s On Killing
Apr 15 Life & World: Carson’s Silent Spring & BCEP (3rd Response)
Apr 29 Class & Power: Karp’s Indispensable Enemies & essays from RC&G
May 6 Gender & Sex: De Beauvoir’s The Second Sex
May 13 Race & Culture: Hannaford’s Race & more essays from RC&G
May 20 Review for Final Exam (4th Response)
May 27 Final Exam (all work must be in by this day)
Student Learning Outcomes:
Information Competency: understand philosophical concepts and systems
Critical Thinking: evaluate philosophical concepts and argue for and against viewpoints
Global Awareness & Valuing Diversity: understand and appreciate diverse cultures of thought
General Student Requirements
Students are expected to come to class prepared to ask questions and participate in discussions. All readings and assignments should be completed by the beginning of class on the day they are listed here. This class is run as a lecture/discussion course. Students are responsible for all class material (even if they miss class). If you miss class, it is strongly advised that you ask a classmate for notes. It is your responsibility to ask if you missed something; it is not the instructor’s responsibility to remind you. Please read through the syllabus and plan ahead.
Late assignments will only be excused in cases of well-documented emergencies; in addition, students must have evidence that substantial progress has been made on the assignment before the emergency took place. Otherwise, late assignments will be downgraded a letter grade for each class day they are late. If a student has any extenuating circumstances which may affect full participation in the class, the student must speak to the instructor as far ahead of any due date as possible. Keep back-up copies of your work; never hand in the only copy of your work. All assignments must be completed and all requirements must be met in order to pass the class. You must turn in all assignments (even if they are late) in order to be eligible to receive a “C” grade or higher. There are no exceptions, under any circumstance.
Plagiarism—“[t]o use another person’s ideas or expressions in your writing without acknowledging the source” (MLA Handbook, 5th ed., §1.8)—will not be tolerated. Plagiarists, intentional or inadvertent, will receive a zero on the assignment in question; repeat offenders will get an F for the course and will be subject to college disciplinary action. Students are encouraged to review plagiarism policies in the current Vista College catalog. All out-of-class assignments must be word processed or typewritten—more information will be given out later in the semester.
Attendance is mandatory. If you miss more than five classes, you will receive an F in the course. (Note: I do not distinguish between “excused” and “unexcused” absences; if you miss more than five classes, for any reason, you cannot pass the class.) You must be on time and stay the length of class to be given credit for attending.
A Note on Disabled Student Program and Services (DSP&S): DSP&S services are provided for any enrolled student who has a verified disability that creates an educational limitation that prevents the student from fully benefiting from classes without additional support services or instruction. Please let the instructor know if you require any support services or would like more information about DSP&S.
The syllabus is subject to change at the discretion of the instructor. Any changes will be announced in class. Additional handouts of required readings may also be added.
FRI 9:00 – 11:50 AM Office Hours: Mon 11-12 @ K’s Coffee
Class Code 20740 Email: ericgerlach@gmail.com
Room: BCC 53 Blog: ericgerlach.blogspot.com
Ethics: Syllabus and Schedule
Course Description
This course introduces students to central concepts and issues of Ethics and systems of human values. We will first study concepts such as principle, virtue, balance, utility, drive, and perspective. We will then study issues such as theft, lies, violence, environment, class, gender and race from an individual and social perspective.
Required Texts:
The text for the class is the Course Reader, available at Lazer Image, 61 Shattuck Square, Berkeley, (510) 644-3339. A copy of the reader will be held on reserve in the BCC Library.
Required Assignments:
- Four In-class Responses 40%
- Midterm Exam 30%
- Final Exam 30%
Class Schedule
Readings (in bold) are to be completed by the class date for discussion
Jan 28 Introduction: What is Ethics?
Feb 4 Morals & Virtue: Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals & Aristotle’s Ethics
Feb 11 Use & Consequence: Mill’s Utilitarianism (1st Response)
Feb 25 Balance: Egyptian Wisdom & Confucius’ Analects
Mar 4 Drive & Desire: Nietzsche’s Beyond Good & Evil
Mar 11 Perspective: Heraclitus’ Fragments & Chuang Tzu (2nd Response)
Mar 18 Midterm Exam
Mar 25 Theft: Zinn’s People’s History of Am. Empire & Andreas’ Addicted to War
Apr 1 Lies: Herman & Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent
Apr 8 Violence: Lt. Col. Grossman’s On Killing
Apr 15 Life & World: Carson’s Silent Spring & BCEP (3rd Response)
Apr 29 Class & Power: Karp’s Indispensable Enemies & essays from RC&G
May 6 Gender & Sex: De Beauvoir’s The Second Sex
May 13 Race & Culture: Hannaford’s Race & more essays from RC&G
May 20 Review for Final Exam (4th Response)
May 27 Final Exam (all work must be in by this day)
Student Learning Outcomes:
Information Competency: understand philosophical concepts and systems
Critical Thinking: evaluate philosophical concepts and argue for and against viewpoints
Global Awareness & Valuing Diversity: understand and appreciate diverse cultures of thought
General Student Requirements
Students are expected to come to class prepared to ask questions and participate in discussions. All readings and assignments should be completed by the beginning of class on the day they are listed here. This class is run as a lecture/discussion course. Students are responsible for all class material (even if they miss class). If you miss class, it is strongly advised that you ask a classmate for notes. It is your responsibility to ask if you missed something; it is not the instructor’s responsibility to remind you. Please read through the syllabus and plan ahead.
Late assignments will only be excused in cases of well-documented emergencies; in addition, students must have evidence that substantial progress has been made on the assignment before the emergency took place. Otherwise, late assignments will be downgraded a letter grade for each class day they are late. If a student has any extenuating circumstances which may affect full participation in the class, the student must speak to the instructor as far ahead of any due date as possible. Keep back-up copies of your work; never hand in the only copy of your work. All assignments must be completed and all requirements must be met in order to pass the class. You must turn in all assignments (even if they are late) in order to be eligible to receive a “C” grade or higher. There are no exceptions, under any circumstance.
Plagiarism—“[t]o use another person’s ideas or expressions in your writing without acknowledging the source” (MLA Handbook, 5th ed., §1.8)—will not be tolerated. Plagiarists, intentional or inadvertent, will receive a zero on the assignment in question; repeat offenders will get an F for the course and will be subject to college disciplinary action. Students are encouraged to review plagiarism policies in the current Vista College catalog. All out-of-class assignments must be word processed or typewritten—more information will be given out later in the semester.
Attendance is mandatory. If you miss more than five classes, you will receive an F in the course. (Note: I do not distinguish between “excused” and “unexcused” absences; if you miss more than five classes, for any reason, you cannot pass the class.) You must be on time and stay the length of class to be given credit for attending.
A Note on Disabled Student Program and Services (DSP&S): DSP&S services are provided for any enrolled student who has a verified disability that creates an educational limitation that prevents the student from fully benefiting from classes without additional support services or instruction. Please let the instructor know if you require any support services or would like more information about DSP&S.
The syllabus is subject to change at the discretion of the instructor. Any changes will be announced in class. Additional handouts of required readings may also be added.
Intro Philosophy Syllabus & Schedule Spring 2011
PHIL 1 – Intro Philosophy, Spring 2011 Instructor: Eric Gerlach
Thursday 6:30 - 9:20 pm Office Hours: Mondays 11-12 @ K’s Coffee
Class Code: 20934 Email: ericgerlach@gmail.com
Room: BCC 14 Blog: ericgerlach.blogspot.com
Introduction to Philosophy Syllabus & Class Schedule
Course Description
This course introduces students to the history of Philosophy and world thought. We will study ancient Egyptian, Indian, Greek, Chinese and modern European philosophers.
Required Texts:
-The only text for the class is the Course Reader, available at Lazer Image, 61 Shattuck Square, Berkeley, (510) 644-3339. A copy of the reader will be put on reserve in the BCC Library.
Required Assignments:
- Four In-class Responses 40%
- MIDTERM Exam 30%
- FINAL Exam 30%
CLASS SCHEDULE
Jan 27 Introduction: What is Philosophy?
Feb 3 Tribal Shamanism & Ancient Cosmology
Feb 10 Early City State Priests & Egyptian Thought
Feb 17 Indian Thought (1st In-Class Response)
Feb 24 Greek Thought: Heraclitus
Mar 3 Greek Thought: Plato
Mar 10 Chinese Thought: Confucianism
Mar 17 Chinese Thought: Daoism (2nd In-Class Response & Review)
Mar 24 MIDTERM EXAM
Mar 31 Islamic & Medieval European Thought
Apr 7 Descartes & Hume(3rd In-Class Response)
Apr 14 Kant & Hegel
Apr 21 NO CLASS – SPRING BREAK
Apr 28 Schopenhauer & Nietzsche
May 5 Wittgenstein
May 12 Lewis Carroll, Art, Humor(4th In-Class Response & Review)
May 26 FINAL EXAM
Student Learning Outcomes:
Information Competency: understand philosophical concepts and systems
Critical Thinking: evaluate philosophical concepts and argue for and against viewpoints
Global Awareness & Valuing Diversity: understand and appreciate diverse cultures of thought
General Student Requirements
Students are expected to come to class prepared to ask questions and participate in discussions. All readings and assignments should be completed by the beginning of class on the day they are listed here. This class is run as a lecture/discussion course.
Students are responsible for all class material (even if they miss class). If you miss class, it is strongly advised that you ask a classmate for notes. It is your responsibility to ask if you missed something; it is not the instructor’s responsibility to remind you. Please read through the syllabus and plan ahead.
Late assignments will only be excused in cases of well-documented emergencies; in addition, students must have evidence that substantial progress has been made on the assignment before the emergency took place. If a student has any extenuating circumstances which may affect full participation in the class, the student must speak to the instructor as far ahead of any due date as possible. All assignments must be completed and all requirements must be met in order to pass the class. You must turn in all assignments (even if they are late) in order to be eligible to receive a “C” grade or higher. There are no exceptions, under any circumstance.
Plagiarism—“[t]o use another person’s ideas or expressions in your writing without acknowledging the source” (MLA Handbook, 5th ed., §1.8)—will not be tolerated. Plagiarists, intentional or inadvertent, will receive a zero on the assignment in question; repeat offenders will get an F for the course and will be subject to college disciplinary action. Students are encouraged to review plagiarism policies in the current Vista College catalog.
Attendance is mandatory. If you miss more than five classes, you will receive an F in the course. (Note: I do not distinguish between “excused” and “unexcused” absences; if you miss more than five classes, for any reason, you cannot pass the class.)
A Note on Disabled Student Program and Services (DSP&S): DSP&S services are provided for any enrolled student who has a verified disability that creates an educational limitation that prevents the student from fully benefiting from classes without additional support services or instruction. Please let the instructor know if you require any support services or would like more information about DSP&S.
The syllabus is subject to change at the discretion of the instructor. Any changes will be announced in class. Additional handouts of required readings may also be added.
Thursday 6:30 - 9:20 pm Office Hours: Mondays 11-12 @ K’s Coffee
Class Code: 20934 Email: ericgerlach@gmail.com
Room: BCC 14 Blog: ericgerlach.blogspot.com
Introduction to Philosophy Syllabus & Class Schedule
Course Description
This course introduces students to the history of Philosophy and world thought. We will study ancient Egyptian, Indian, Greek, Chinese and modern European philosophers.
Required Texts:
-The only text for the class is the Course Reader, available at Lazer Image, 61 Shattuck Square, Berkeley, (510) 644-3339. A copy of the reader will be put on reserve in the BCC Library.
Required Assignments:
- Four In-class Responses 40%
- MIDTERM Exam 30%
- FINAL Exam 30%
CLASS SCHEDULE
Jan 27 Introduction: What is Philosophy?
Feb 3 Tribal Shamanism & Ancient Cosmology
Feb 10 Early City State Priests & Egyptian Thought
Feb 17 Indian Thought (1st In-Class Response)
Feb 24 Greek Thought: Heraclitus
Mar 3 Greek Thought: Plato
Mar 10 Chinese Thought: Confucianism
Mar 17 Chinese Thought: Daoism (2nd In-Class Response & Review)
Mar 24 MIDTERM EXAM
Mar 31 Islamic & Medieval European Thought
Apr 7 Descartes & Hume(3rd In-Class Response)
Apr 14 Kant & Hegel
Apr 21 NO CLASS – SPRING BREAK
Apr 28 Schopenhauer & Nietzsche
May 5 Wittgenstein
May 12 Lewis Carroll, Art, Humor(4th In-Class Response & Review)
May 26 FINAL EXAM
Student Learning Outcomes:
Information Competency: understand philosophical concepts and systems
Critical Thinking: evaluate philosophical concepts and argue for and against viewpoints
Global Awareness & Valuing Diversity: understand and appreciate diverse cultures of thought
General Student Requirements
Students are expected to come to class prepared to ask questions and participate in discussions. All readings and assignments should be completed by the beginning of class on the day they are listed here. This class is run as a lecture/discussion course.
Students are responsible for all class material (even if they miss class). If you miss class, it is strongly advised that you ask a classmate for notes. It is your responsibility to ask if you missed something; it is not the instructor’s responsibility to remind you. Please read through the syllabus and plan ahead.
Late assignments will only be excused in cases of well-documented emergencies; in addition, students must have evidence that substantial progress has been made on the assignment before the emergency took place. If a student has any extenuating circumstances which may affect full participation in the class, the student must speak to the instructor as far ahead of any due date as possible. All assignments must be completed and all requirements must be met in order to pass the class. You must turn in all assignments (even if they are late) in order to be eligible to receive a “C” grade or higher. There are no exceptions, under any circumstance.
Plagiarism—“[t]o use another person’s ideas or expressions in your writing without acknowledging the source” (MLA Handbook, 5th ed., §1.8)—will not be tolerated. Plagiarists, intentional or inadvertent, will receive a zero on the assignment in question; repeat offenders will get an F for the course and will be subject to college disciplinary action. Students are encouraged to review plagiarism policies in the current Vista College catalog.
Attendance is mandatory. If you miss more than five classes, you will receive an F in the course. (Note: I do not distinguish between “excused” and “unexcused” absences; if you miss more than five classes, for any reason, you cannot pass the class.)
A Note on Disabled Student Program and Services (DSP&S): DSP&S services are provided for any enrolled student who has a verified disability that creates an educational limitation that prevents the student from fully benefiting from classes without additional support services or instruction. Please let the instructor know if you require any support services or would like more information about DSP&S.
The syllabus is subject to change at the discretion of the instructor. Any changes will be announced in class. Additional handouts of required readings may also be added.
Social & Political Philosophy Syllabus & Schedule Spring 2011
PHIL 2 – Soc/Pol Phil, Spring 2011 Instructor: Eric Gerlach
Mon/Wed 9:30-10:45 am Office Hours: Mondays 11-12 @ K’s Coffee
Class Code: 24260 Email: ericgerlach@gmail.com
Room: BCC 52 Blog: ericgerlach.blogspot.com
Social & Political Philosophy Syllabus & Class Schedule
Course Description
This course introduces students to the history of Social and Political Philosophy. We will study ancient and modern thinkers on the subjects of human nature, social class, authority, liberty, capitalism, socialism, communism, anarchism, fascism, post-colonialism, and feminism.
Required Texts:
-The only text for the class is the Course Reader, available at Lazer Image, 61 Shattuck Square, Berkeley, (510) 644-3339. A copy of the reader will be put on reserve in the BCC Library.
Required Assignments:
- Four In-class Responses 40%
- MIDTERM Exam 30%
- FINAL Exam 30%
CLASS SCHEDULE
Jan 24 Introduction to the class
Jan 26 & 31 Early Civilization (Radin, Kramer, Barthes)
Feb 2 & 7 Human Nature (Mencius, Xun Zi, Mo Zi)
Feb 9 & 14 Social Class/Caste (Plato & Aristotle) (1st Response)
Feb 16 & 23 Authority & Sovereignty (Machiavelli & Hobbes)
Feb 28 & Mar 2 Rights & Liberty (Locke, Rousseau, Mill, Thoreau)
Mar 7 & 9 French & US Revolutions (Paine, US Constitution) (2nd Response)
Mar 14 & 16 Capitalism (Smith, Long)
Mar 21 Review for Midterm Exam
Mar 23 MIDTERM EXAM
Mar 28 & 30 Hegel, Opposition & Revolution (Marcuse, McLellan)
Apr 4 & 6 Socialism (Engels, Marcuse)
Apr 11 & 13 Communism (Marx, Trotsky, Gramsci, Mao) (3rd Response)
Apr 18 & 20 NO CLASSES - SPRING BREAK
Apr 25 & 27 Anarchism (Mayer, Chomsky, Foucault)
May 2 & 4 Fascism (Hitler, Heidegger, Sluga)
May 9 & 11 Post-Colonialism (Fanon, Ayers/Dohrn, West, hooks) (4th Response)
May 16 & 18 Feminism (hooks, Humm, Butler)
May 23 Review for Final Exam
May 25 FINAL EXAM (all work must be turned in by this day)
Student Learning Outcomes:
Information Competency: understand philosophical concepts and systems
Critical Thinking: evaluate philosophical concepts and argue for and against viewpoints
Global Awareness & Valuing Diversity: understand and appreciate diverse cultures of thought
General Student Requirements
Students are expected to come to class prepared to ask questions and participate in discussions. All readings and assignments should be completed by the beginning of class on the day they are listed here. This class is run as a lecture/discussion course.
Students are responsible for all class material (even if they miss class). If you miss class, it is strongly advised that you ask a classmate for notes. It is your responsibility to ask if you missed something; it is not the instructor’s responsibility to remind you. Please read through the syllabus and plan ahead.
Late assignments will only be excused in cases of well-documented emergencies; in addition, students must have evidence that substantial progress has been made on the assignment before the emergency took place. If a student has any extenuating circumstances which may affect full participation in the class, the student must speak to the instructor as far ahead of any due date as possible. All assignments must be completed and all requirements must be met in order to pass the class. You must turn in all assignments (even if they are late) in order to be eligible to receive a “C” grade or higher. There are no exceptions, under any circumstance.
Plagiarism—“[t]o use another person’s ideas or expressions in your writing without acknowledging the source” (MLA Handbook, 5th ed., §1.8)—will not be tolerated. Plagiarists, intentional or inadvertent, will receive a zero on the assignment in question; repeat offenders will get an F for the course and will be subject to college disciplinary action. Students are encouraged to review plagiarism policies in the current Vista College catalog.
Attendance is mandatory. If you miss more than five classes, you will receive an F in the course. (Note: I do not distinguish between “excused” and “unexcused” absences; if you miss more than five classes, for any reason, you cannot pass the class.)
A Note on Disabled Student Program and Services (DSP&S): DSP&S services are provided for any enrolled student who has a verified disability that creates an educational limitation that prevents the student from fully benefiting from classes without additional support services or instruction. Please let the instructor know if you require any support services or would like more information about DSP&S.
The syllabus is subject to change at the discretion of the instructor. Any changes will be announced in class. Additional handouts of required readings may also be added.
Mon/Wed 9:30-10:45 am Office Hours: Mondays 11-12 @ K’s Coffee
Class Code: 24260 Email: ericgerlach@gmail.com
Room: BCC 52 Blog: ericgerlach.blogspot.com
Social & Political Philosophy Syllabus & Class Schedule
Course Description
This course introduces students to the history of Social and Political Philosophy. We will study ancient and modern thinkers on the subjects of human nature, social class, authority, liberty, capitalism, socialism, communism, anarchism, fascism, post-colonialism, and feminism.
Required Texts:
-The only text for the class is the Course Reader, available at Lazer Image, 61 Shattuck Square, Berkeley, (510) 644-3339. A copy of the reader will be put on reserve in the BCC Library.
Required Assignments:
- Four In-class Responses 40%
- MIDTERM Exam 30%
- FINAL Exam 30%
CLASS SCHEDULE
Jan 24 Introduction to the class
Jan 26 & 31 Early Civilization (Radin, Kramer, Barthes)
Feb 2 & 7 Human Nature (Mencius, Xun Zi, Mo Zi)
Feb 9 & 14 Social Class/Caste (Plato & Aristotle) (1st Response)
Feb 16 & 23 Authority & Sovereignty (Machiavelli & Hobbes)
Feb 28 & Mar 2 Rights & Liberty (Locke, Rousseau, Mill, Thoreau)
Mar 7 & 9 French & US Revolutions (Paine, US Constitution) (2nd Response)
Mar 14 & 16 Capitalism (Smith, Long)
Mar 21 Review for Midterm Exam
Mar 23 MIDTERM EXAM
Mar 28 & 30 Hegel, Opposition & Revolution (Marcuse, McLellan)
Apr 4 & 6 Socialism (Engels, Marcuse)
Apr 11 & 13 Communism (Marx, Trotsky, Gramsci, Mao) (3rd Response)
Apr 18 & 20 NO CLASSES - SPRING BREAK
Apr 25 & 27 Anarchism (Mayer, Chomsky, Foucault)
May 2 & 4 Fascism (Hitler, Heidegger, Sluga)
May 9 & 11 Post-Colonialism (Fanon, Ayers/Dohrn, West, hooks) (4th Response)
May 16 & 18 Feminism (hooks, Humm, Butler)
May 23 Review for Final Exam
May 25 FINAL EXAM (all work must be turned in by this day)
Student Learning Outcomes:
Information Competency: understand philosophical concepts and systems
Critical Thinking: evaluate philosophical concepts and argue for and against viewpoints
Global Awareness & Valuing Diversity: understand and appreciate diverse cultures of thought
General Student Requirements
Students are expected to come to class prepared to ask questions and participate in discussions. All readings and assignments should be completed by the beginning of class on the day they are listed here. This class is run as a lecture/discussion course.
Students are responsible for all class material (even if they miss class). If you miss class, it is strongly advised that you ask a classmate for notes. It is your responsibility to ask if you missed something; it is not the instructor’s responsibility to remind you. Please read through the syllabus and plan ahead.
Late assignments will only be excused in cases of well-documented emergencies; in addition, students must have evidence that substantial progress has been made on the assignment before the emergency took place. If a student has any extenuating circumstances which may affect full participation in the class, the student must speak to the instructor as far ahead of any due date as possible. All assignments must be completed and all requirements must be met in order to pass the class. You must turn in all assignments (even if they are late) in order to be eligible to receive a “C” grade or higher. There are no exceptions, under any circumstance.
Plagiarism—“[t]o use another person’s ideas or expressions in your writing without acknowledging the source” (MLA Handbook, 5th ed., §1.8)—will not be tolerated. Plagiarists, intentional or inadvertent, will receive a zero on the assignment in question; repeat offenders will get an F for the course and will be subject to college disciplinary action. Students are encouraged to review plagiarism policies in the current Vista College catalog.
Attendance is mandatory. If you miss more than five classes, you will receive an F in the course. (Note: I do not distinguish between “excused” and “unexcused” absences; if you miss more than five classes, for any reason, you cannot pass the class.)
A Note on Disabled Student Program and Services (DSP&S): DSP&S services are provided for any enrolled student who has a verified disability that creates an educational limitation that prevents the student from fully benefiting from classes without additional support services or instruction. Please let the instructor know if you require any support services or would like more information about DSP&S.
The syllabus is subject to change at the discretion of the instructor. Any changes will be announced in class. Additional handouts of required readings may also be added.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Great Moments in Fallacies Fall 2010
Hey everyone,
I have always enjoyed the student answers to the fallacies assignment because they are often brilliant and funny. I have decided to post some of my favorites (the tasteful ones, anyway) on the blog. Each statement is followed by the fallacy type it falls under.
We should all hop on one foot, because the president says so. (Appeal to Authority)
You are a man, so how can you possibly understand feminism? (Personal Attack)
Because we are at war with Japan, all Japanese Americans must be interned in concentration camps. (Fallacy of Division)
Kittens will cry tears of blood if you do not shop at Walmart. (Appeal to Pity)
The biologist says that all trees are evil. (Appeal to Authority)
If hair is made of dead cells, then you are dead! (Fallacy of Composition)
You must agree that you like my art, or I'll cut off my ear! (Appeal to Pity)
There could be anything behind that door, so it could be a wall of snakes! (Appeal to Ignorance)
I have always enjoyed the student answers to the fallacies assignment because they are often brilliant and funny. I have decided to post some of my favorites (the tasteful ones, anyway) on the blog. Each statement is followed by the fallacy type it falls under.
We should all hop on one foot, because the president says so. (Appeal to Authority)
You are a man, so how can you possibly understand feminism? (Personal Attack)
Because we are at war with Japan, all Japanese Americans must be interned in concentration camps. (Fallacy of Division)
Kittens will cry tears of blood if you do not shop at Walmart. (Appeal to Pity)
The biologist says that all trees are evil. (Appeal to Authority)
If hair is made of dead cells, then you are dead! (Fallacy of Composition)
You must agree that you like my art, or I'll cut off my ear! (Appeal to Pity)
There could be anything behind that door, so it could be a wall of snakes! (Appeal to Ignorance)
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