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Gorgias (483375 B.C.E.

Gorgias was a Sicilian philosopher, orator, and rhetorician. He is considered by many scholars to
be one of the founders of sophism, a movement traditionally associated with philosophy, that
emphasizes the practical application of rhetoric toward civic and political life. The sophists were
itinerant teachers who accepted fees in return for instruction in oratory and rhetoric, and many
claimed they could teach anything and its opposite (thesis and antithesis). Another aspect of their
method was the ability to make the weaker argument the stronger. The term sophist in classical
Greek was a general appellation denoting a "wise man." They were important figures in Greece
in the 4th and 5th centuries, and their social success was great. Plato was the first to use the term
rhtorik, while the sophists termed their "art" logos . Nevertheless, Gorgias is commonly
associated with the development of rhetoric in classical Greece. The democratic process in
Athens supplied the need for instruction in both rhetoric and philosophy.

1. Life and Works


Gorgias (483-375 B.C.E.) came to Greece from Leontini in Sicily. Little is known of his life
before he arrived in Athens in 427 B.C.E. as a political ambassador seeking military assistance
against Syracuse, a city-state in Sicily. He delivered a series of speeches that dazzled the
Athenian audiences and won him fame and admiration. Upon completion of his mission, he
traveled throughout Greece as a teacher of rhetoric and as an orator, and according to Aristotle,
spoke at the Panhellenic festivals (Art of Rhetoric 1414b29). He was a student of Empedocles,
and according to Quintilian and others, was the teacher of Isocrates. Plato identifies Meno (Meno
76Aff) among the students of Gorgias, and he may have been one of Aspasia's instructors as
well. Many of the sophists set up schools and charged fees in return for instruction in rhetoric,

and Gorgias was no exception. Philostratus (Lives of the Sophists I 9, I) tells us that Gorgias
began the practice of extemporaneous oratory, and that he had the boldness to say "'suggest a
subject' ...he was the first to proclaim himself willing to take the chance, showing apparently that he
knew everything and would trust the moment to speak on any subject." He died at the age of 108
at Larissa in Thessaly.

Contributions
On the Non-existent or On Nature
The Apology of Palamedes
The encomium on helen and
The epithaphios or Athenian funeral oration

a. Ontology & Epistemology


On the Nonexistent or On Nature. The subject of this work is ontological (concerning nature of
being), but it also deals with language and epistemology (the study of the nature and limitations
of knowledge). In addition to this, it can be understood as an exercise in sophistical rhetoric;
Gorgias tackles an argument that is seemingly impossible to refute, namely that, after
considering our world, we must come to the conclusion that "things exist." His powerful
argument to the contrary proves his abilities as a master of oratory, and some believe the text was
used as an advertisement of his credentials.
Gorgias begins his argument by presenting a logical contradiction, "if the nonexistent exists, it
will both exist and not exist at the same time" (B3.67) (a violation of the principle of noncontradiction). He then denies that existence (to on) itself exists, for if it exists, it is either eternal
or generated. If it is eternal, it has no beginning, and is therefore without limit. If it is without
limit, it is "nowhere" (B3.69), and hence does not exist. And if existence is generated, it must
come from something, and that something is existence, which is another contradiction. Likewise,
nonexistence (to m on) cannot produce anything (B3.71). The sophist then explains that
existence can neither be "one" (hen) or "many" (polla), since if it were one, it would be divisible,
and therefore not one. If it were many, it would be a "composite of separate entities" (B3.74) and
no longer the thing known as existence.
Gorgias then turns his attention to what is knowable and comprehensible. He remarks, "if things
considered [imagined or thought] in the mind are not existent, the existent is not considered"
(B3.77), that is to say, existence is incomprehensible. This supposition is backed up by the fact
that one can imagine chariots racing in the sea, but that does not make such a thing happen. The
operation of the mind (intellection) is fundamentally distinct from what happens in the real
world; "the existent is not an object of consideration and is not apprehended" (B3.82). It is
helpful to think of apprehension here in Aristotelian terms, as simple apprehension, the first
operation of reasoning (logic) in which the intellect "grasps" or "apprehends" something. Simple
apprehension happens when the mind first forms a concept of something in the world, and is
anterior to judgment.

Finally, Gorgias proclaims that even if existence could be apprehended, "it would be incapable of
being conveyed to another" (B3.83). This is because what we reveal to another is not an external
substance, but is merely logos (from the Greek verb lego, "to say"--see below). Logos is not
"substances and existing things" (B3.84). External reality becomes the revealer of logos (B3.85);
while we can know logos, we cannot apprehend things directly. The color white, for instance,
goes from a property of a thing, to a mental representation, and the representation is different
than the thing itself. In its summation, this nihilistic argument becomes a "trilemma":
i. Nothing exists
ii. Even if existence exists, it cannot be known
iii. Even if it could be known, it cannot be communicated.

Empedocles (c. 492432 B.C.E.)

Empedocles (of Acagras in Sicily) was a philosopher and poet: one of the most important of the
philosophers working before Socrates (the Presocratics), and a poet of outstanding ability and of
great influence upon later poets such as Lucretius. His works On Nature and Purifications
(whether they are two poems or only one see below) exist in more than 150 fragments. He has
been regarded variously as a materialist physicist, a shamanic magician, a mystical theologian, a
healer, a democratic politician, a living god, and a fraud. To him is attributed the invention of the
four-element theory of matter (earth, air, fire, and water), one of the earliest theories of particle
physics, put forward seemingly to rescue the phenomenal world from the static monism of
Parmenides. Empedocles world-view is of a cosmic cycle of eternal change, growth and decay,
in which two personified cosmic forces, Love and Strife, engage in an eternal battle for
supremacy. In psychology and ethics Empedocles was a follower of Pythagoras, hence a believer

in the transmigration of souls, and hence also a vegetarian. He claims to be a daimn, a divine or
potentially divine being, who, having been banished from the immortals gods for three times
countless years for committing the sin of meat-eating and forced to suffer successive
reincarnations in an purificatory journey through the different orders of nature and elements of
the cosmos, has now achieved the most perfect of human states and will be reborn as an
immortal. He also claims seemingly magical powers including the ability to revive the dead and
to control the winds and rains.

1. Life
From more reliable sources it seems that he was born at Acragas in Sicily around 492 B.C.E. and
died at the age of sixty. He was the son of a certain Meton, and was from an important and
wealthy local aristocratic family: his grandfather, also called Empedocles, is reported to have
been victorious in horse-racing at the Olympic Games in 496 B.C.E. It is not known where or
with whom he studied philosophy, but various teachers are assigned to him by ancient sources,
among them Parmenides, Pythagoras, Xenophanes, Anaxagoras and Anaximander (from whom
he is said to have inherited his extravagant mode of dress). Whether or not he was his pupil,
Empedocles was certainly very familiar with the work of Parmenides from whom he took the
inspiration to write in hexameter verse, and whose physical system he adopts in part, and partly
seeks to rectify.

2. Works
Empedocles work survives only in fragments, but luckily in a far greater number than any of the
other Presocratics. These fragments are mostly quotations found in other authors such as
Aristotle and Plutarch. Although many works, including tragedies and a medical treatise, are
attributed to Empedocles by ancient sources no fragments of these have survived, and the extant
fragments all come from a work of hexameter poetry traditionally entitled On Nature (Peri
Phuses) or Physics (Phusika) and some from a possibly separate work called Purifications
(Katharmoi). Of these two titles On Nature is by far the better attested and nearly all the
fragments which are cited by ancient authors along with the title of the work they came from are
attributed to On Nature, while only two are attributed to the Purifications. Because the fragments
contain both material that clearly refers to physics and cosmology - the four elements, the cosmic
cycle etc. and also material concerning the fate of the soul, sin and purification, traditionally
the former were placed in reconstructions of On Nature, and the latter in the Purifications.
Indeed Empedocles' writings contain ideas and themes that may seem quite incompatible with
one another. On Natureas usually reconstructed seemed the work of a mechanist physicist which
seeks to replace the traditional gods with four lifeless impersonal elements and two cosmic
forces of attraction and repulsion, Love and Strife. The Purifications on the other hand seemed
the work of a deeply religious Pythagorean mystic: it was often thought that Empedocles either
wrote the Purifications as a move away from the mechanistic materialist position in On Nature,
or that the Purifications were an addendum to On Nature, looking at the world from quite a
different perspective.

However there have long been doubts about whether there were really two poems or only one
poem (perhaps called On Nature and Purifications or with On Nature and Purifications as
alternative titles for the same work) which contained both physical and religious material. First,
although we may think of a poem called Physics as restricting itself to physical concerns alone,
this may well be an anachronistic retrojection of modern rationalistic ideas of a gulf between
physics and religion. Further, ancient book titles tend to be generic and there is a long tradition of
works called either On Nature (Peri Phuses) or Physics (Physika) by various authors, with the
earliest attested title for such works being On the Nature of the Universe (Peri Phuses tn
Ontn 'On the Nature of Things that Exist'), and so neither title may be Empedocles' own and the
two may perhaps be interchangeable different titles for the same work. Although there is still
argument on this subject the Strasbourg fragments now suggest strongly that both physical and
religious material was originally together in On Nature.
In 1990 the first ancient papyrus fragments of Empedocles were rediscovered at the University of
Strasbourg and were published in 1999. Since these were also the first papyrus fragments of any
of the Presocratics their discovery caused considerable excitement. Among other important new
information they give about Empedocles' philosophy, with great good fortune fr. a, the longest of
the new fragments, was found to be a continuation of the longest of the previously known
fragments (fr. 17) and thus now the two together form a continuous text of 69 lines. Fr. 17 is
cited by Simplicius as being from book one of On Nature, and again very fortunately Strasbourg
fr. a(ii) contains a marginal note by the manuscript copyist identifying line 30 of fr. a(ii) as line
300 of book one of On Nature. Since the Strasbourg fragments seem to have come from a single
piece of papyrus, and they also overlap with a formerly known religious fragment usually placed
in the Purifications (fr. 1 39) it now seems very likely that Empedocles introduced the themes of
sin and purification early on in the physical poem. In fact it can now be argued that all of the
fragments of the Purifications can be accommodated in the early part of book one of On Nature.

3. Physics and Cosmology


a. Physics
The foundations of Empedocles' physics lie in the assumption that there are four 'elements of
matter, or roots as he calls them, using a botanical metaphor that stresses their creative
potential: earth, air, fire and water. These are able to create all things, including all living
creatures, by being 'mixed' in different combinations and proportions. Each of the elements
however, retains its own characteristics in the mixture, and each is eternal and unchanging.

b. Cosmology
Empedocles also posits two cosmic forces which work upon the elements in both creative and
destructive ways. These he personifies as Love (Philia) - a force of attraction and combination
and Strife (Neikos) a force of repulsion and separation. these two forces are engaged in an
eternal battle for domination of the cosmos and that they each prevail in turn in an endless
cosmic cycle.

a. Origin of Species
Empedocles presents us with the earliest extant attempt at producing a detailed rational
mechanism for the origin of species. Greek traditions include the aetiological myths of the origin
of a particular species of animal by transformation from a human being

b. Embryology
Empedocles is an exponent of the pangenetic theory of embryology. In this theory inheritance of
characteristics from both mother and father is explained by each of the two parents' limbs and
organs creating tiny copies of themselves.

c. Perception and Thought


Empedocles seems to have been the first philosopher to give a detailed explanation of the
mechanism by which we perceive things. His theory, criticised by Aristotle and Theophrastus, is
that all things give off effluences and that these enter pores in the sense organs.

5. Ethics and the Journey of the Soul


a. The Daimns and Transmigration of Souls
There is a decree of necessity, ratified long ago by gods, eternal and sealed by broad oaths, that
whenever one in error, from fear, defiles his own limbs, having by his error made false the oath
he swore - daimns to whom life long-lasting is apportioned
.

b. Meat-eating and Sin


Slaughter and meat-eating are the most terrible of sins, indeed for him animal slaughter is murder
and meat-eating is cannibalism,

c. Theology
he argues that the Olympian gods came into being as misinterpretations of the natural world: the
real 'gods' are the elements of nature and the cosmic forces that direct their endless evolutionary
cycle. His religious and ethical teachings then are of purification of the soul in an attempt to
achieve perfection and unity with perfect Love.

d. Physics and Theology


Empedocles draws a close analogy between the cycle of the soul and the cycle of the cosmos
itself. This is a hallmark of his work: frequently he uses the same language whether describing
the journey of the soul or the cycle of the elements.

Anaxagoras (c. 500428 B.C.E.)

Anaxagoras of Clazomenae was an important Presocratic natural philosopher and scientist who
lived and taught in Athens for approximately thirty years. He gained notoriety for his
materialistic views, particularly his contention that the sun was a fiery rock. This led to charges
of impiety, and he was sentenced to death by the Athenian court. He avoided this penalty by
leaving Athens, and he spent his remaining years in exile. While Anaxagoras proposed theories
on a variety of subjects, he is most noted for two theories. First, he speculated that in the physical
world everything contains a portion of everything else. His observation of how nutrition works in
animals led him to conclude that in order for the food an animal eats to turn into bone, hair, flesh,
and so forth, it must already contain all of those constituents within it. The second theory of
significance is Anaxagoras postulation of Mind (Nous) as the initiating and governing principle
of the cosmos.

1. Life and Writing


The exact chronology of Anaxagoras is unknown, but most accounts place his dates around 500428 BCE. Some have argued for dates of c. 534-467 BCE, but the 500-428 time period is the
most commonly accepted among scholars. Anaxagoras was born in Ionia in the town of
Clazomenae, a lively port city on the coast of present-day Turkey. As such, he is considered to be
both the geographical and theoretical successor to the earliest Ionian philosophers,
particularly Anaximenes. Eventually, Anaxagoras made his way to Athens and he is often
credited with making her the home of Western philosophical and physical speculation.
Anaxagoras remained in Athens for some thirty years, according to most accounts, until he was
indicted on the charge of impiety and sentenced to death. Rather than endure this penalty,
Anaxagoras, with the help of his close friend and student, Pericles, went to Lampsacus, in Asia
Minor, where he lived until his death.
In his Lives of the Philosophers, Diogenes Laertius states that Anaxagoras is among those
philosophers who wrote only one book. This work was a treatise on natural philosophy and, as
the above quote from the Apology indicates, it was probably not a very long work, since it could
be purchased for a drachma, at most. Although the book has not survived, it was available until
at least the sixth-century CE. While it is impossible to recreate the entire content and order of his
work, various ancient sources have provided scholars with enough information to fairly represent
Anaxagoras philosophy. Noteworthy among these sources are Aristotle, Theophrastus (ca. 372-

288 BCE) and Themistius (ca. 317-387 CE). We are primarily indebted, however, to Simplicius
(sixth-century CE) for most of our knowledge of, and access to, the fragments of Anaxagoras
work. Before moving on to the theories of Anaxagoras

2. The Structure of Things: A Portion of Everything in


Everything
Anaxagoras innovative theory of physical nature is encapsulated in the phrase, a portion of
everything in everything. Its primary expression is found in the following difficult fragment:
And since the portions of both the large and the small are equal in amount, in this way too all
things would be in everything; nor can they be separate, but all things have a portion of
everything. Since there cannot be a smallest, nothing can be separated or come to be by itself, but
as in the beginning now too all things are together. But in all things there are many things, equal
in amount, both in the larger and the smaller of the things being separated off.

a. The Challenge of Parmenides


According to Parmenides, whatever is, is (being) and whatever is not, is not (nonbeing). As a
result, whatever constitutes the nature of reality must always have been since nothing can
come into being from nothing. Furthermore, reality must always be since being (what is)
cannot become nonbeing (what is not).

d. The Divisibility of Stuffs


To understand how it is possible for there to be a portion of everything in everything, it is
necessary to develop Anaxagoras contention that stuff is infinitely divisible. In practical terms,
this can be explained by continuing with the example of the rice kernel. For Anaxagoras, if one
were to begin dividing it into smaller and smaller portions there would be no point at which the
rice would no longer exist. Each infinitesimally small piece could be divided into another, and
each piece would continue to contain rice, as well as hair, flesh and a portion of everything else.

3. The Origins of the Cosmos


Anaxagoras theory of the origins of the world is reminiscent of the cosmogonies that had been
previously developed in the Ionion tradition, particularly through Anaximenes and Anaximander.
The traditional theories generally depict an original unity which begins to become separated off
into a series of opposites. Anaxagoras maintained many of the key elements of these theories,
however he also updated these cosmogonies, most notably through the introduction of a causal
agent (Mind or nous) that is the initiator of the origination process.

4. Mind (nous)
a. The Role of Mind

According to Anaxagoras, the agent responsible for the rotation and separation of the primordial
mixture is Mind or nous: And when Mind began to cause motion, separating off proceeded to
occur from all that was moved, and all that Mind moved was separated apart, and as things were
being moved and separated apart, the rotation caused much more separating apart to occur

b. The Nature of Mind


Mind appears to have contradictory properties. In one small fragment, for example, Anaxagoras
claims that mind is the sole exception to the principle that there is a portion of everything in
everything,
Mind is unlimited and self-ruled and is mixed with no thing, but is alone and by itself. For if it
were not by itself but were mixed with something else, it would have a share of all things, if it
were mixed with anything. For in everything there is a portion of everything, as I have said
before. And the things mixed together with it would hinder it so that it would rule no thing in the
same way as it does being alone and by itself. For it is the finest of all things and the purest, and
it has all judgment about everything and the greatest power.

5. Other Theories
Anaxagoras theory of things and his postulation of Mind as a cosmic principle are the most
important and unique aspects of his philosophy. A few other theories are worth mentioning,
though it should be pointed out that many of them are probably not original and our primary
knowledge of these views arises from second-hand sources.
As a natural scientist and philosopher of his day, Anaxagoras would have been particularly
concerned with the subjects of astronomy and meteorology and he made some significant
contributions in these areas. It was mentioned above that his outlook on the heavenly bodies
played a part in his condemnation in Athens. His beliefs about the earth, moon and sun are
clearly articulated in the following lengthy quote from Hippolytus, a source from the late second
century CE:
The earth [according to Anaxagoras] is flat in shape. It stays up because of its size, because there
is no void, and because the air, which is very resistant, supports the earth, which rests on it. Now
we turn to the liquids on the earth: The sea existed all along, but the water in it became the way it
is because it suffered evaporation, and it is also added to from the rivers which flow into it.
Rivers originate from rains and also from subterranean water; for the earth is hollow and has
water in its hollows. The Nile rises in the summer because water is carried down into it from the
snow in the north.The sun, the moon, and all the heavenly bodies are red-hot stones which have
been snatched up by the rotation of the aether. Below the heavenly bodies there exist certain
bodies which revolve along with the sun and the moon and are invisible.The moon is below
the sun, closer to us. The sun is larger than the Peloponnesus. The moon does not shine with its

own light, but receives its light from the sun. Eclipses of the moon occur when the earth cuts
off the light, and sometimes when the bodies below the moon cut off the light. Eclipses of the
sun take place at new moon, when the moon cuts off the light. Anaxagoras was the first to
describe the circumstances under which eclipses occur and the way light is reflected by the
moon. He said that the moon is made of earth and has plains and gullies on it. The Milky Way is
the light of those stars which are not lit up by the sun. (A Refutation of All Heresies, 1, epitome,
3)
LEUCIPPUS AND DEMOCRITUS

Leucippus and Democritus were the earliest Greek atomists. The originator of the atomic theory,
Leucippus (fifth century BCE), must be considered a speculative thinker of the first order, but to
Democritus (c. 460c. 370 BCE) must go the credit for working out the detailed application of
the theory and supporting it with a subtle epistemology. Moreover, the range of Democritus's
researches surpassed that of any earlier philosopher, and he appears to have been an original and,
for his day, advanced ethical thinker.
We have very little biographical data for Leucippus. Epicurus is even reported to have said that
there was no philosopher Leucippus, but the evidence of Aristotle decisively refutes this opinion
(if, indeed, Epicurus did not merely intend to deny Leucippus's philosophical importance).
Leucippus was probably born at Miletus; reports associating him with Elea or Abdera should be
taken as reflecting views concerning his philosophical affiliations rather than as reliable evidence
for his birthplace. He was presumably older than Democritus. His book On Mind may have been
directed partly against Anaxagoras, and according to Theophrastus, Diogenes of Apollonia
derived some of his theories from Leucippus. All this suggests that Leucippus was a slightly
younger contemporary of Anaxagoras and that his main philosophical activity fell some time
within the broad limits of 450420 BCE.
Democritus was born at Abdera. He described himself in the Little World-System as a young man
in the old age of Anaxagoras; Diogenes Lartius says that he was forty years younger than
Anaxagoras. On this evidence the date given for his birth by Apollodorus (in the 80th Olympiad,
460456 BCE) is generally preferred to that suggested by Thrasylus (the third year of the 77th
Olympiad, 470469 BCE). He is variously reported to have lived between 90 and 109 years. To
judge from the number of his writings, his literary activity extended over a considerable period,
but we have no means of assigning different works to different times in his life. His statement
that he wrote the Little World-System 730 years after the fall of Troy (Diogenes Lartius, Lives
IX, 41) is of little value since we cannot tell which of several possible chronologies for the
Trojan War Democritus accepted.
Many stories, most of them apocryphal, relating to Democritus's life and character circulated in
antiquity. There are the accounts of his saving the Abderites from a plague, of his dying by
voluntarily abstaining from food, and of his reputation as the "Laughing Philosopher." The
tradition that he traveled extensively is, however, more plausible and better grounded. The
authenticity of the fragment (299) in which he claimed to be the most widely traveled of his

contemporaries is disputed, and the genuineness of the five books dealing with foreign travel
mentioned by Diogenes Lartius (for example, A Voyage round the Ocean ) has also been
doubted. But evidence concerning his travels goes back to Theophrastus (see Aelian, Varia
Historia IV, 20), and the reports that he visited such places as Egypt, Chaldea, and the Red Sea
(see Diogenes Lartius, Lives IX, 35) may well have a sound basis in fact.
All that has been preserved of the original writings of Leucippus and Democritus is a poor
selection of isolated quotations, most of which derive from the ethical works of Democritus. For
the atomic theory itself we rely on reports in Aristotle, Theophrastus, and later doxographers,
who were often unsympathetic to the views of the atomists. In most of the principal texts
referring to Leucippus, his doctrines are not clearly distinguished from those of Democritus, and
the precise contribution of each philosopher is in question. Aristotle, however, undoubtedly
treated Leucippus as the founder of atomism (De Generatione et Corruptione 325a23ff.), and we
may reasonably attribute both the principles of the physical theory and a fairly complex
cosmogony to him. Democritus evidently elaborated the atomic theory and was responsible for
the detailed account of sensible qualities, besides going far beyond Leucippus both in the range
of his scientific inquiries and in his interest in moral philosophy.
Writings

Only two works are ascribed to Leucippus, On Mind, from which our sole surviving quotation
comes, and the Great World-System, which may be attributed to Leucippus on the authority of
Theophrastus (Diogenes Lartius, Lives IX, 46), although Thrasylus later assigned it to
Democritus.
Democritus, on the other hand, wrote some sixty-odd works, the titles of which provide valuable
evidence of the scope of his interests. The main works were cataloged by Thrasylus into thirteen
tetralogies. Two tetralogies are devoted to ethics and four to physics (including Little WorldSystem, On the Planets, On Nature, On the Nature of Man, On the Senses, and On Colors ).
These were followed by nine works not arranged in tetralogiesfor example, Causes of
Celestial Phenomena, Causes concerning Seeds, Plants and Fruits, and three books of Causes
concerning Animals.
Protagoras (fl. 5th c. B.C.E.)

Protagoras of Abdera was one of several fifth century Greek thinkers (including also Gorgias,
Hippias, and Prodicus) collectively known as the Older Sophists, a group of traveling teachers or
intellectuals who were experts in rhetoric (the science of oratory) and related subjects. Protagoras
is known primarily for three claims (1) that man is the measure of all things (which is often
interpreted as a sort of radical relativism) (2) that he could make the "worse (or weaker)
argument appear the better (or stronger)" and (3) that one could not tell if the gods existed or not.
While some ancient sources claim that these positions led to his having been tried for impiety in
Athens and his books burned, these stories may well have been later legends. Protagoras' notion
that judgments and knowledge are in some way relative to the person judging or knowing has
been very influential, and is still widely discussed in contemporary philosophy. Protagoras
influence on the history of philosophy has been significant. Historically, it was in response to
Protagoras and his fellow sophists that Plato began the search for transcendent forms or
knowledge which could somehow anchor moral judgment. Along with the other Older Sophists
and Socrates, Protagoras was part of a shift in philosophical focus from the earlier Presocratic
tradition of natural philosophy to an interest in human philosophy. He emphasized how human
subjectivity determines the way we understand, or even construct, our world, a position which is
still an essential part of the modern philosophic tradition.
1. Life
1. Plato (427-347 B.C.E.): Protagoras is a leading character in Plato's dialogue
Protagoras and Protagoras' doctrines are discussed extensively in Plato's
Theaetetus. Plato's dialogues, however, are a mixture of historical account
and artistic license, much in the manner of the comic plays of the period.
Moreover, Protagoras died when Plato was quite young and Plato may have
depended on not entirely reliable second-hand evidence for his
understanding of Protagoras.
2. Diogenes Laertius (third century C.E.): Diogenes' Lives of the Philosophers is
probably our single most extensive source for many early Greek philosophers'

works and biographies. Unfortunately, his work was compiled over six
hundred years after Protagoras' death and is an uncritical compilation of
materials from a wide variety of sources, some reliable, some not, and many
hopelessly garbled.
3. Sextus Empiricus (fl. late 2nd century C.E.): Sextus Empiricus was a skeptic of
the Pyrrhonian school. Sextus wrote several books criticizing the dogmatists
(non-skeptics). His treatment of Protagoras is somewhat favorable, but since
his purpose is to prove the superiority of Pyrrhonism to all other
philosophies,we cannot trust him to be "objective" in a modern sense;
moreover, like Diogenes, he wrote several hundred years after Protagoras'
death and may not have had completely reliable sources.
3. Doctrines

Protagoras' doctrines can be divided into three groups:


1. Orthoepeia: the study of the correct use of words
2. Man-measure statement: the notion that knowledge is relative to the knower
3. Agnosticism: the claim that we cannot know anything about the gods
a. Orthoepeia

Perhaps because the practical side of his teaching was concerned with helping students learn to
speak well in the courtroom, Protagoras was interested in "orthoepeia" (the correct use of words).
b. Man-Measure Statement

Of the book titles we have attributed to Protagoras, only two, "Truth" (or "Refutations") and "On
the Gods" are probably accurate. Of Protagoras' works, homo-mensura (man-measure) statement
(DK80b1): "Of all things the measure is man, of the things that are, that [or "how"] they are, and
of things that are not, that [or "how"] they are not."
c. Agnosticism

Protagoras' prose treatise about the gods began "Concerning the gods, I have no means of
knowing whether they exist or not or of what sort they may be. Many things prevent knowledge
including the obscurity of the subject and the brevity of human life." (DK80b4)
4. Social Consequences and Immediate Followers

As a consequence of Protagoras' agnosticism and relativism, he may have considered that laws
(legislative and judicial) were things which evolved gradually by agreement (brought about by
debate in democratic assemblies) and thus could be changed by further debate. This position
would imply that there was a difference between the laws of nature and the customs of humans.
Although Protagoras himself seemed to respect, and even revere the customs of human justice

(as a great achievement), some of the younger followers of Protagoras and the other Older
Sophists concluded that the arbitrary nature of human laws and customs implies that they can be
ignored at will, a position that was held to be one of the causes of the notorious amorality of such
figures as Alcibiades.
Prodicus (fl. 5th c. B.C.E.)

Prodicus was a sophist and rhetorician from Iulis on the island of Ceos. He was contemporary
with Democritus and Gorgias, and was a disciple of Protagoras. He flourished in the 86th
Olympiad, and it is reported that his disciples included Socrates, Euripides, Theramenes, and
Isocrates. His countrymen, after giving him several public jobs, sent him as ambassador to
Athens. He was so well received there that he was induced to open a school of rhetoric. In his
lectures on literary style he laid stress on the right use of words and the accurate discrimination
between synonyms. Plato frequently satirizes him as a pedantic lecturer on the niceties of
language. Plato also insinuates that the prospect of wealth prompted Prodicus to open his school,
and indeed his lectures seem to have brought him much money. Philostratus also notes that
Prodicus was fond of money. He used to go from one city to another displaying his eloquence,
and, though he did it in a mercenary way, he nevertheless had great honors paid to him in Thebes
and Lacedaemon. His charge to a pupil was fifty drachmae. Aristophanes, however, describes
him as the most remarkable of the natural philosophers for wisdom and character. It is reported
that people flocked to hear Prodicus, although he had an unpleasant sounding voice. It also
related that Xenophon, when a prisoner in Boeotia, desiring to hear Prodicus, came up with the
required bail and went and gratified his curiosity (Philostr. l. c.). None of his lectures has come
down to us in its original form. His most famous work is The Choice of Hercules, and was
frequently cited. The original is lost, but the substance of it is in
Xenophon's Memorabilia(2:1:21). Prodicus was put to death by the Athenians on the charge of
corrupting their youth. Sextus Empiricus ranks him among the atheists, and Cicero remarks that
some of his doctrines were subversive of all religion. It is said that he explained the origin of
religion by the personification of natural objects.
Hippias (fl. 5th cn. B.C.E.)

A Greek sophist of Elis and a contemporary of Socrates. He taught in the towns of Greece,
especially at Athens. He had the advantage of a prodigious memory, and was deeply versed in all
the learning of his day. He attempted literature in every form which was then extant. He also

made the first attempt in the composition of dialogues. In the two Platonic dialogues named after
him (Hippias Major and Hippias Minor), he is represented as excessively vain and arrogant.
Hippias is chiefly memorable for his efforts in the direction of universality. He was the enemy of
all specialization, and appeared at Olympia gorgeously attired in a costume entirely of his own
making down to the ring on his finger. He was prepared to lecture to anyone on anything, from
astronomy to ancient history. Such a man had need of a good memory, and we know that he
invented a system of mnemonics. There was a more serious side to his character, however. This
was the age when people were still optimistic of squaring the circle by a geometrical
construction. The lunules of Hippocrates of Chios belong to it, and Hippias, the universal genius,
could not be left behind here. He invented the curve still known as the quadratix, which would
solve the problem if it could be mechanically described. Hippias appears to have originated the
idea of natural law as the foundation of morality, distinguishing nature from the arbitrary
conventions or fashions, differing according to the different times or regions in which they arise,
imposed by arbitrary human enactment, and often unwillingly obeyed. He held that there is an
element of right common to the laws of all countries and constituting their essential basis. He
held also that the good and wise of all countries are naturally akin and should regard one another
as citizens of a single state. This idea was subsequently developed by the Cynic and still more by
the Stoic schools, passing from the latter to the jurists, in whose hands it became the great
instrument for converting Roman law into a legislation for a people.
Thrasymachus (fl. 427 B.C.E.)

Thrasymachus of Chalcedon is one of several "older sophists" (including Antiphon, Critias,


Hippias, Gorgias, and Protagoras) who became famous in Athens during the fifth century B.C.E.
We know that Thrasymachus was born in Chalcedon, a colony of Megara in Bithynia, and that he
had distinguished himself as a teacher of rhetoric and speechwriter in Athens by the year 427.
Beyond this, relatively little is known about his life and works. Thrasymachus' lasting
importance is due to his memorable place in the first book of Plato's Republic. Although it is not
quite clear whether the views Plato attributes to Thrasymachus are indeed the views the historical

person held, Thrasymachus' critique of justice has been of considerable importance, and seems to
represent moral and political views that are representative of the Sophistic Enlightenment in late
fifth century Athens.
In ethics, Thrasymachus' ideas have often been seen as the first fundamental critique of moral
values. Thrasymachus' insistence that justice is nothing but the advantage of the stronger seems
to support the view that moral values are socially constructed and are nothing but the reflection
of the interests of particular political communities. Thrasymachus can thus be read as a
foreshadowing of Nietzsche, who argues as well that moral values need to be understood as
socially constructed entities. In political theory, Thrasymachus has often been seen as a
spokesperson for a cynical realism that contends that might makes right.
1. Life and Sources

The precise years of Thrasymachus' birth and death are hard to determine. According to
Dionysius, he is younger than Lysias, who Dionysius falsely believed to be born in 459 B.C.E.
Aristotle places him between Tisias and Theodorus, but he does not list any precise dates. Cicero
mentions Thrasymachus several times in connection with Gorgias and seems to imply that
Gorgias and Thrasymachus were contemporaries. A precise reference date for Thrasymachus' life
is provided by Aristophanes, who makes fun of him in his first play Banqueters. That play was
performed in 427, and we can conclude therefore that he must have been teaching in Athens for
several years before that. One of the surviving fragments of Thrasymachus' writing (Diels-Kranz
Numbering System 85b2) contains a reference to Archelaos, who was King of Macedonia from
413-399 B.C.E. We thus can conclude that Thrasymachus was most active during the last three
decades of the fifth century.
2. Doctrines

The remaining fragments of Thrasymachus' writings provide few clues about his philosophical
ideas. They either deal with rhetorical issues or they are excerpts from speeches (DK 85b1 and
b2) that were (probably) written for others and thus can hardly be seen as the expression of
Thrasymachus' own thoughts. The most interesting fragment is DK 85b8. It contains the claim
that the gods do not care about human affairs since they do not seem to enforce justice. Scholars
have, however, been divided whether this claim is compatible with the position Plato attributes to
Thrasymachus in the first book of the Republic. Plato's account there is by far the most detailed,
though perhaps historically suspect, evidence for Thrasymachus' philosophical ideas.
In the first book of the Republic, Thrasymachus attacks Socrates' position that justice is an
important good. He claims that 'injustice, if it is on a large enough scale, is stronger, freer, and
more masterly than justice' (344c). In the course of arguing for this conclusion, Thrasymachus
makes three central claims about justice.
1. Justice is nothing but the advantage of the stronger (338c)
2. Justice is obedience to laws (339b)

3. Justice is nothing but the advantage of another (343c).

There is an obvious tension among these three claims. It is far from clear why somebody who
follows legal regulations must always do what is in the interest of the (politically) stronger, or
why these actions must serve the interests of others. Scholars have tried to resolve these tensions
by emphasizing one of the three claims at the expense of the other two.
First, there are those scholars (Wilamowitz 1920, Zeller 1889, and Strauss 1952) who take (1) as
the central element of Thrasymachus' thinking about justice. According to this view,
Thrasymachus is an advocate of natural right who claims that it is just (by nature) that the strong
rule over the weak. This interpretation stresses the similarities between Thrasymachus' arguments
and the position Plato attributes to Callicles in the Gorgias.
A second group of scholars (Hourani 1962, and Grote 1850) emphasizes the importance of (2)
and contends that Thrasymachus advocates a form of legalism. According to this interpretation,
Thrasymachus is a relativist who denies that justice is anything beyond obedience to existing
laws.
A third group (Kerferd 1947, Nicholson 1972) argues that (3) is the central element in
Thrasymachus' thinking about justice. Thrasymachus therefore turns out to be an ethical egoist
who stresses that justice is the good of another and thus incompatible with the pursuit of one's
self-interest. Scholars in this group view Thrasymachus primarily as an ethical thinker and not as
a political theorist.
Plato (427347 B.C.E.)

Plato is one of the world's best known and most widely read and studied philosophers. He was
the student of Socrates and the teacher of Aristotle, and he wrote in the middle of the fourth
century B.C.E. in ancient Greece. Though influenced primarily by Socrates, to the extent that
Socrates is usually the main character in many of Plato's writings, he was also influenced by
Heraclitus, Parmenides, and the Pythagoreans.
There are varying degrees of controversy over which of Plato's works are authentic, and in what
order they were written, due to their antiquity and the manner of their preservation through time.
Nonetheless, his earliest works are generally regarded as the most reliable of the ancient sources
on Socrates, and the character Socrates that we know through these writings is considered to be
one of the greatest of the ancient philosophers.
Plato's middle to later works, including his most famous work, the Republic, are generally
regarded as providing Plato's own philosophy, where the main character in effect speaks for Plato
himself. These works blend ethics, political philosophy, moral psychology, epistemology, and
metaphysics into an interconnected and systematic philosophy. It is most of all from Plato that
we get the theory of Forms, according to which the world we know through the senses is only an
imitation of the pure, eternal, and unchanging world of the Forms. Plato's works also contain the
origins of the familiar complaint that the arts work by inflaming the passions, and are mere
illusions. We also are introduced to the ideal of "Platonic love:" Plato saw love as motivated by a
longing for the highest Form of beautyThe Beautiful Itself, and love as the motivational power
through which the highest of achievements are possible. Because they tended to distract us into
accepting less than our highest potentials, however, Plato mistrusted and generally advised
against physical expressions of love.
1. Biography
a. Birth

It is widely accepted that Plato, the Athenian philosopher, was born in 428-7 B.C.E and died at
the age of eighty or eighty-one at 348-7 B.C.E.
Little can be known about Plato's early life. According to Diogenes, whose testimony is
notoriously unreliable, Plato's parents were Ariston and Perictione. Both sides of the family
claimed to trace their ancestry back to Poseidon Diogenes' report that Plato's birth was the result
of Ariston's rape of Perictione is a good example of the unconfirmed gossip in which Diogenes
so often indulges. We can be confident that Plato also had two older brothers, Glaucon and
Adeimantus, and a sister, Potone, by the same parents
Plato came from one of the wealthiest and most politically active families in Athens. Their
political activities, however, are not seen as laudable ones by historians. One of Plato's uncles
(Charmides) was a member of the notorious "Thirty Tyrants," who overthrew the Athenian
democracy in 404 B.C.E. Charmides' own uncle, Critias, was the leader of the Thirty. Plato's
relatives were not exclusively associated with the oligarchic faction in Athens, however. His

stepfather Pyrilampes was said to have been a close associate of Pericles, when he was the leader
of the democratic faction.
Plato's actual given name was apparently Aristocles, after his grandfather. "Plato" seems to have
started as a nickname (for platos, or "broad"), perhaps first given to him by his wrestling teacher
for his physique, or for the breadth of his style, or even the breadth of his forehead. Although the
name Aristocles was still given as Plato's name on one of the two epitaphs on his tomb (see D.L.
3.43), history knows him as Plato.
c. Early Travels and the Founding of the Academy

When Socrates died, Plato left Athens, staying first in Megara, but then going on to several other
places, including perhaps Cyrene, Italy, Sicily, and even Egypt. Strabo (17.29) claims that he was
shown where Plato lived when he visited Heliopolis in Egypt. Plato occasionally mentions Egypt
in his works, but not in ways that reveal much of any consequence (see, for examples, Phaedrus
274c-275b; Philebus 19b).
2. Influences on Plato
a. Heraclitus

Aristotle and Diogenes agree that Plato had some early association with either the philosophy of
Heraclitus of Ephesus, or with one or more of that philosopher's followers The effects of this
influence can perhaps be seen in the mature Plato's conception of the sensible world as
ceaselessly changing.
b. Parmenides and Zeno

There can be no doubt that Plato was also strongly influenced by Parmenides and Zeno
in Plato's theory of the Forms, which are plainly intended to satisfy the Parmenidean
requirement of metaphysical unity and stability in knowable reality. Parmenides and Zeno also
appear as characters in his dialogue, the Parmenides.
c. The Pythagoreans

Diogenes Laertius (3.6) claims that Plato visited several Pythagoreans in Southern Italy (gues.
d. Socrates

Nonetheless, it is plain that no influence on Plato was greater than that of Socrates. This is
evident not only in many of the doctrines and arguments we find in Plato's dialogues, but perhaps
most obviously in Plato's choice of Socrates as the main character in most of his works.
According to the Seventh Letter, Plato counted Socrates "the justest man alive".
3. Plato's Writings

a. Plato's Dialogues and the Historical Socrates

But it is one thing to claim that Plato was not the only one to write Socratic dialogues, and quite
another to hold that Plato was only following the rules of some genre of writings in his own
work. Such a claim, at any rate, is hardly established simply by the existence of these other
writers and their writings. We may still wish to ask whether Plato's own use of Socrates as his
main character has anything at all to do with the historical Socrates. The question has led to a
number of seemingly irresolvable scholarly disputes. At least one important ancient source,
Aristotle, suggests that at least some of the doctrines Plato puts into the mouth of the "Socrates"
of the "early" or "Socrates" dialogues are the very ones espoused by the historical Socrates.
Because Aristotle has no reason not to be truthful about this issue, many scholars believe that his
testimony provides a solid basis for distinguishing the "Socrates" of the "early" dialogues from
the character by that name in Plato's supposedly later works, whose views and arguments
Aristotle suggests are Plato's own.
b. Dating Plato's Dialogues

One way to approach this issue has been to find some way to arrange the dialogues into at least
relative dates. It has frequently been assumed that if we can establish a relative chronology for
when Plato wrote each of the dialogues, we can provide some objective test for the claim that
Plato represented Socrates more accurately in the earlier dialogues, and less accurately in the
later dialogues.
In antiquity, the ordering of Plato's dialogues was given entirely along thematic lines. The best
reports of these orderings (see Diogenes Laertius' discussion at 3.56-62) included many works
whose authenticity is now either disputed or unanimously rejected. The uncontroversial internal
and external historical evidence for a chronological ordering is relatively slight. Aristotle
(Politics 2.6.1264b24-27), Diogenes Laertius (3.37), and Olympiodorus (Prol. 6.24) state that
Plato wrote the Laws after the Republic. Internal references in the Sophist (217a) and the
Statesman (also known as the Politicus; 257a, 258b) show the Statesman to come after the
Sophist. The Timaeus (17b-19b) may refer to Republic as coming before it, and more clearly
mentions the Critias as following it (27a). Similarly, internal references in the Sophist (216a,
217c) and the Theaetetus (183e) may be thought to show the intended order of three dialogues:
Parmenides, Theaetetus, and Sophist. Even so, it does not follow that these dialogues were
actually written in that order. At Theaetetus 143c, Plato announces through his characters that he
will abandon the somewhat cumbersome dialogue form that is employed in his other writings.
Since the form does not appear in a number of other writings, it is reasonable to infer that those
in which it does not appear were written after the Theaetetus.
Scholars have sought to augment this fairly scant evidence by employing different methods of
ordering the remaining dialogues. One such method is that of stylometry, by which various
aspects of Plato's diction in each dialogue are measured against their uses and frequencies in
other dialogues. Originally done by laborious study by individuals, stylometry can now be done

more efficiently with assistance by computers. Another, even more popular, way to sort and
group the dialogues is what is called "content analysis," which works by finding and enumerating
apparent commonalities or differences in the philosophical style and content of the various
dialogues. Neither of these general approaches has commanded unanimous assent among
scholars, and it is unlikely that debates about this topic can ever be put entirely to rest.
Nonetheless, most recent scholarship seems to assume that Plato's dialogues can be sorted into
different groups, and it is not unusual for books and articles on the philosophy of Socrates to
state that by "Socrates" they mean to refer to the character in Plato's "early" or Socratic
dialogues, as if this Socrates was as close to the historical Socrates as we are likely to get. (We
have more to say on this subject in the next section.) Perhaps the most thorough examination of
this sort can be found in Gregory Vlastos's, Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher (Cambridge
and Cornell, 1991, chapters 2-4), where ten significant differences between the "Socrates" of
Plato's "early" dialogues and the character by that name in the later dialogues are noted. Our own
view of the probable dates and groups of dialogues, which to some extent combine the results of
stylometry and content analysis, is as follows (all lists but the last in alphabetical order):
Early
(All after the death of Socrates, but before Plato's first trip to Sicily in 387 B.C.E.):
Apology, Charmides, Crito, Euthydemus, Euthyphro, Gorgias, Hippias Major, Hippias Minor,
Ion, Laches, Lysis, Protagoras, Republic Bk. I.
Early-Transitional
(Either at the end of the early group or at the beginning of the middle group, c. 387-380 B.C.E.):
Cratylus, Menexenus, Meno
Middle
(c. 380-360 B.C.E.)
Phaedo, Republic Bks. II-X, Symposium
Late-Transitional
(Either at the end of the middle group, or the beginning of the late group, c. 360-355 B.C.E.)
Parmenides, Theaetetus, Phaedrus
Late
(c. 355-347 B.C.E.; possibly in chronological order)
Sophist, Statesman, Philebus, Timaeus, Critias, Laws
c. Transmission of Plato's Works

Except for the Timaeus, all of Plato's works were lost to the Western world until medieval times,
preserved only by Moslem scholars in the Middle East. In 1578 Henri Estienne (whose Latinized
name was Stephanus) published an edition of the dialogues in which each page of the text is
separated into five sections (labeled a, b, c, d, and e). The standard style of citation for Platonic
texts includes the name of the text, followed by Stephanus page and section numbers (e.g.
Republic 511d). Scholars sometimes also add numbers after the Stephanus section letters, which
refer to line numbers within the Stephanus sections in the standard Greek edition of the
dialogues, the Oxford Classical texts.
4. Other Works Attributed to Plato
a. Spuria

Several other works, including thirteen letters and eighteen epigrams, have been attributed to
Plato. These other works are generally called the spuria and the dubia. The spuria were collected
among the works of Plato but suspected as frauds even in antiquity. The dubia are those
presumed authentic in later antiquity, but which have more recently been doubted.
Ten of the spuria are mentioned by Diogenes Laertius at 3.62. Five of these are no longer extant:
the Midon or Horse-breeder, Phaeacians, Chelidon, Seventh Day, and Epimenides. Five others
do exist: the Halcyon, Axiochus, Demodocus, Eryxias, and Sisyphus. To the ten Diogenes
Laertius lists, we may uncontroversially add On Justice, On Virtue, and the Definitions, which
was included in the medieval manuscripts of Plato's work, but not mentioned in antiquity.
Works whose authenticity was also doubted in antiquity include the Second Alcibiades (or
Alcibiades II), Epinomis, Hipparchus, and Rival Lovers (also known as either Rivals or Lovers),
and these are sometimes defended as authentic today. If any are of these are authentic, the
Epinomis would be in the late group, and the others would go with the early or early transitional
groups.
b. Epigrams

Seventeen or eighteen epigrams (poems appropriate to funerary monuments or other dedications)


are also attributed to Plato by various ancient authors. Most of these are almost certainly not by
Plato, but some few may be authentic. Of the ones that could be authentic (Cooper 1997, 1742
names 1, 2, 7, and especially 3 as possibly authentic), one (1) is a love poem dedicated to a
student of astronomy, perhaps at the Academy, another (2) appears to be a funerary inscription
for that same student, another (3) is a funerary inscription for Plato's Syracusan friend, Dion (in
which the author confesses that Dion "maddened my heart with ers"), and the last (7) is a love
poem to a young woman or girl. None appear to provide anything of great philosophical interest.
c. Dubia

The dubia present special risks to scholars: On the one hand, any decision not to include them
among the authentic dialogues creates the risk of losing valuable evidence for Plato's (or perhaps
Socrates') philosophy; on the other hand, any decision to include them creates the risk of

obfuscating the correct view of Plato's (or Socrates') philosophy, by including non-Platonic (or
non-Socratic) elements within that philosophy. The dubia include the First Alcibiades (or
Alcibiades I), Minos, and Theages, all of which, if authentic, would probably go with the early or
early transitional groups, the Cleitophon, which might be early, early transitional, or middle, and
the letters, of which the Seventh seems the best candidate for authenticity. Some scholars have
also suggested the possibility that the Third may also be genuine. If any are authentic, the letters
would appear to be works of the late period, with the possible exception of the Thirteenth Letter,
which could be from the middle period.
Nearly all of the dialogues now accepted as genuine have been challenged as inauthentic by
some scholar or another. In the 19th Century in particular, scholars often considered arguments
for and against the authenticity of dialogues whose authenticity is now only rarely doubted. Of
those we listed as authentic, above (in the early group), only the Hippias Major continues
occasionally to be listed as inauthentic. The strongest evidence against the authenticity of the
Hippias Major is the fact that it is never mentioned in any of the ancient sources. However,
relative to how much was actually written in antiquity, so little now remains that our lack of
ancient references to this dialogue does not seem to be an adequate reason to doubt its
authenticity. In style and content, it seems to most contemporary scholars to fit well with the
other Platonic dialogues.
5. The Early Dialogues
a. Historical Accuracy

Although no one thinks that Plato simply recorded the actual words or speeches of Socrates
verbatim, the argument has been made that there is nothing in the speeches Socrates makes in the
Apology that he could have not uttered at the historical trial. At any rate, it is fairly common for
scholars to treat Plato's Apology as the most reliable of the ancient sources on the historical
Socrates. The other early dialogues are certainly Plato's own creations. But as we have said, most
scholars treat these as representing more or less accurately the philosophy and behavior of the
historical Socrateseven if they do not provide literal historical records of actual Socratic
conversations. Some of the early dialogues include anachronisms that prove their historical
inaccuracy.
It is possible, of course, that the dialogues are all wholly Plato's inventions and have nothing at
all to do with the historical Socrates. Contemporary scholars generally endorse one of the
following four views about the dialogues and their representation of Socrates:
1. The Unitarian View:
This view, more popular early in the 20th Century than it is now, holds that
there is but a single philosophy to be found in all of Plato's works (of any
period, if such periods can even be identified reliably). There is no reason,
according to the Unitarian scholar, ever to talk about "Socratic philosophy"
(at least from anything to be found in Platoeverything in Plato's dialogues is
Platonic philosophy, according to the Unitarian). One recent version of this

view has been argued by Charles H. Kahn (1996). Most later, but still ancient,
interpretations of Plato were essentially Unitarian in their approach. Aristotle,
however, was a notable exception.
2. The Literary Atomist View:
We call this approach the "literary atomist view," because those who propose
this view treat each dialogue as a complete literary whole, whose proper
interpretation must be achieved without reference to any of Plato's other
works. Those who endorse this view reject completely any relevance or
validity of sorting or grouping the dialogues into groups, on the ground that
any such sorting is of no value to the proper interpretation of any given
dialogue. In this view, too, there is no reason to make any distinction between
"Socratic philosophy" and "Platonic philosophy." According to the literary
atomist, all philosophy to be found in the works of Plato should be attributed
only to Plato.
3. The Developmentalist View:
According to this view, the most widely held of all of the interpretative
approaches, the differences between the early and later dialogues represent
developments in Plato's own philosophical and literary career. These may or
may not be related to his attempting in any of the dialogues to preserve the
memory of the historical Socrates (see approach 4); such differences may
only represent changes in Plato's own philosophical views. Developmentalists
may generally identify the earlier positions or works as "Socratic" and the
later ones "Platonic," but may be agnostic about the relationship of the
"Socratic" views and works to the actual historical Socrates.
4. The Historicist View:
Perhaps the most common of the Developmentalist positions is the view that
the "development" noticeable between the early and later dialogues may be
attributed to Plato's attempt, in the early dialogues, to represent the
historical Socrates more or less accurately. Later on, however (perhaps
because of the development of the genre of "Socratic writings," within which
other authors were making no attempt at historical fidelity), Plato began
more freely to put his own views into the mouth of the character, "Socrates,"
in his works. Plato's own student, Aristotle, seems to have understood the
dialogues in this way.

Now, some scholars who are skeptical about the entire program of dating the dialogues into
chronological groups, and who are thus strictly speaking not historicists (see, for example,
Cooper 1997, xii-xvii) nonetheless accept the view that the "early" works are "Socratic" in tone
and content. With few exceptions, however, scholars agreed that if we are unable to distinguish
any group of dialogues as early or "Socratic," or even if we can distinguish a separate set of
"Socratic" works but cannot identify a coherent philosophy within those works, it makes little
sense to talk about "the philosophy of historical Socrates" at all. There is just too little (and too
little that is at all interesting) to be found that could reliably be attributed to Socrates from any
other ancient authors. Any serious philosophical interest in Socrates, then, must be pursued
through study of Plato's early or "Socratic" dialogues.

b. Plato's Characterization of Socrates

In the dialogues generally accepted as early (or "Socratic"), the main character is always
Socrates. Socrates is represented as extremely agile in question-and-answer, which has come to
be known as "the Socratic method of teaching," or "the elenchus" (or elenchos, from the Greek
term for refutation), with Socrates nearly always playing the role as questioner, for he claimed to
have no wisdom of his own to share with others. Plato's Socrates, in this period, was adept at
reducing even the most difficult and recalcitrant interlocutors to confusion and self-contradiction.
In the Apology, Socrates explains that the embarrassment he has thus caused to so many of his
contemporaries is the result of a Delphic oracle given to Socrates' friend Chaerephon (Apology
21a-23b), according to which no one was wiser than Socrates. As a result of his attempt to
discern the true meaning of this oracle, Socrates gained a divinely ordained mission in Athens to
expose the false conceit of wisdom. The embarrassment his "investigations" have caused to so
many of his contemporarieswhich Socrates claims was the root cause of his being brought up
on charges (Apology 23c-24b)is thus no one's fault but his "victims," for having chosen to live
"the unexamined life" (see 38a).
The way that Plato's represents Socrates going about his "mission" in Athens provides a plausible
explanation both of why the Athenians would have brought him to trial and convicted him in the
troubled years after the end of the Peloponnesian War, and also of why Socrates was not really
guilty of the charges he faced. Even more importantly, however, Plato's early dialogues provide
intriguing arguments and refutations of proposed philosophical positions that interest and
challenge philosophical readers. Platonic dialogues continue to be included among the required
readings in introductory and advanced philosophy classes, not only for their ready accessibility,
but also because they raise many of the most basic problems of philosophy. Unlike most other
philosophical works, moreover, Plato frames the discussions he represents in dramatic settings
that make the content of these discussions especially compelling. So, for example, in the Crito,
we find Socrates discussing the citizen's duty to obey the laws of the state as he awaits his own
legally mandated execution in jail, condemned by what he and Crito both agree was a terribly
wrong verdict, the result of the most egregious misapplication of the very laws they are
discussing. The dramatic features of Plato's works have earned attention even from literary
scholars relatively uninterested in philosophy as such. Whatever their value for specifically
historical research, therefore, Plato's dialogues will continue to be read and debated by students
and scholars, and the Socrates we find in the early or "Socratic" dialogues will continue to be
counted among the greatest Western philosophers.
c. Ethical Positions in the Early Dialogues

The philosophical positions most scholars agree can be found directly endorsed or at least
suggested in the early or "Socratic" dialogues include the following moral or ethical views:

A rejection of retaliation, or the return of harm for harm or evil for evil (Crito
48b-c, 49c-d; Republic I.335a-e);

The claim that doing injustice harms one's soul, the thing that is most
precious to one, and, hence, that it is better to suffer injustice than to do it
(Crito 47d-48a; Gorgias 478c-e, 511c-512b; Republic I.353d-354a);

Some form of what is called "eudaimonism," that is, that goodness is to be


understood in terms of conduciveness to human happiness, well-being, or
flourishing, which may also be understood as "living well," or "doing well"
(Crito 48b; Euthydemus 278e, 282a; Republic I. 354a);

The view that only virtue is good just by itself; anything else that is good is
good only insofar as it serves or is used for or by virtue (Apology 30b;
Euthydemus 281d-e);

The view that there is some kind of unity among the virtues: In some sense,
all of the virtues are the same (Protagoras 329b-333b, 361a-b);

The view that the citizen who has agreed to live in a state must always obey
the laws of that state, or else persuade the state to change its laws, or leave
the state (Crito 51b-c, 52a-d).

d. Psychological Positions in the Early Dialogues

Socrates also appears to argue for, or directly makes a number of related psychological views:

All wrongdoing is done in ignorance, for everyone desires only what is good
(Protagoras 352a-c; Gorgias 468b; Meno 77e-78b);

In some sense, everyone actually believes certain moral principles, even


though some may think they do not have such beliefs, and may disavow
them in argument (Gorgias 472b, 475e-476a).

e. Religious Positions in the Early Dialogues

In these dialogues, we also find Socrates represented as holding certain religious beliefs, such as:

The gods are completely wise and good (Apology 28a; Euthyphro 6a, 15a;
Meno 99b-100b);

Ever since his childhood (see Apology 31d) Socrates has experienced a
certain "divine something" (Apology 31c-d; 40a; Euthyphro 3b; see also
Phaedrus 242b), which consists in a "voice" (Apology 31d; see also Phaedrus
242c), or "sign" (Apology 40c, 41d; Euthydemus 272e; see also Republic
VI.496c; Phaedrus 242b) that opposes him when he is about to do something
wrong (Apology 40a, 40c);

Various forms of divination can allow human beings to come to recognize the
will of the gods (Apology 21a-23b, 33c);

Poets and rhapsodes are able to write and do the wonderful things they write
and do, not from knowledge or expertise, but from some kind of divine
inspiration. The same canbe said of diviners and seers, although they do
seem to have some kind of expertiseperhaps only some technique by which
to put them in a state of appropriate receptivity to the divine (Apology 22b-c;
Laches 198e-199a; Ion 533d-536a, 538d-e; Meno 99c);

No one really knows what happens after death, but it is reasonable to think
that death is not an evil; there may be an afterlife, in which the souls of the
good are rewarded, and the souls of the wicked are punished (Apology 40c41c; Crito 54b-c; Gorgias 523a-527a).

f. Methodological and Epistemological Positions in the Early Dialogues

In addition, Plato's Socrates in the early dialogues may plausibly be regarded as having certain
methodological or epistemological convictions, including:

Definitional knowledge of ethical terms is at least a necessary condition of


reliable judging of specific instances of the values they name (Euthyphro 4e5d, 6e; Laches 189e-190b; Lysis 223b; Greater Hippias 304d-e; Meno 71a-b,
100b; Republic I.354b-c);

A mere list of examples of some ethical valueeven if all are authentic cases
of that valuewould never provide an adequate analysis of what the value is,
nor would it provide an adequate definition of the value term that refers to
the value. Proper definitions must state what is common to all examples of
the value (Euthyphro 6d-e; Meno 72c-d);

Those with expert knowledge or wisdom on a given subject do not err in their
judgments on that subject (Euthyphro 4e-5a; Euthydemus 279d-280b), go
about their business in their area of expertise in a rational and regular way
(Gorgias 503e-504b), and can teach and explain their subject (Gorgias 465a,
500e-501b, 514a-b; Laches 185b, 185e, 1889e-190b); Protagoras 319b-c).

6. The Middle Dialogues


a. Differences between the Early and Middle Dialogues

Scholarly attempts to provide relative chronological orderings of the early transitional and
middle dialogues are problematical because all agree that the main dialogue of the middle period,
the Republic, has several features that make dating it precisely especially difficult. As we have
already said, many scholars count the first book of the Republic as among the early group of
dialogues. But those who read the entire Republic will also see that the first book also provides a
natural and effective introduction to the remaining books of the work. A recent study by Debra
Nails ("The Dramatic Date of Plato's Republic," The Classical Journal 93.4, 1998, 383-396)
notes several anachronisms that suggest that the process of writing (and perhaps re-editing) the
work may have continued over a very long period. If this central work of the period is difficult to

place into a specific context, there can be no great assurance in positioning any other works
relative to this one.
Nonetheless, it does not take especially careful study of the transitional and middle period
dialogues to notice clear differences in style and philosophical content from the early dialogues.
The most obvious change is the way in which Plato seems to characterize Socrates: In the early
dialogues, we find Socrates simply asking questions, exposing his interlocutors' confusions, all
the while professing his own inability to shed any positive light on the subject, whereas in the
middle period dialogues, Socrates suddenly emerges as a kind of positive expert, willing to
affirm and defend his own theories about many important subjects. In the early dialogues,
moreover, Socrates discusses mainly ethical subjects with his interlocutorswith some related
religious, methodological, and epistemological views scattered within the primarily ethical
discussions. In the middle period, Plato's Socrates' interests expand outward into nearly every
area of inquiry known to humankind. The philosophical positions Socrates advances in these
dialogues are vastly more systematical, including broad theoretical inquiries into the connections
between language and reality (in the Cratylus), knowledge and explanation (in the Phaedo and
Republic, Books V-VII). Unlike the Socrates of the early period, who was the "wisest of men"
only because he recognized the full extent of his own ignorance, the Socrates of the middle
period acknowledges the possibility of infallible human knowledge (especially in the famous
similes of light, the simile of the sun and good and the simile of the divided line in Book VI and
the parable of the cave in Book VII of the Republic), and this becomes possible in virtue of a
special sort of cognitive contact with the Forms or Ideas (eid ), which exist in a supra-sensible
realm available only to thought. This theory of Forms, introduced and explained in various
contexts in each of the middle period dialogues, is perhaps the single best-known and most
definitive aspect of what has come to be known as Platonism.
b. The Theory of Forms

In many of his dialogues, Plato mentions supra-sensible entities he calls "Forms" (or "Ideas").
So, for example, in the Phaedo, we are told that particular sensible equal thingsfor example,
equal sticks or stones (see Phaedo 74a-75d)are equal because of their "participation" or
"sharing" in the character of the Form of Equality, which is absolutely, changelessly, perfectly,
and essentially equal. Plato sometimes characterizes this participation in the Form as a kind of
imaging, or approximation of the Form. The same may be said of the many things that are greater
or smaller and the Forms of Great and Small (Phaedo 75c-d), or the many tall things and the
Form of Tall (Phaedo 100e), or the many beautiful things and the Form of Beauty (Phaedo 75cd, Symposium 211e, Republic V.476c). When Plato writes about instances of Forms
"approximating" Forms, it is easy to infer that, for Plato, Forms are exemplars. If so, Plato
believes that The Form of Beauty is perfect beauty, the Form of Justice is perfect justice, and so
forth. Conceiving of Forms in this way was important to Plato because it enabled the philosopher
who grasps the entities to be best able to judge to what extent sensible instances of the Forms are
good examples of the Forms they approximate.

Scholars disagree about the scope of what is often called "the theory of Forms," and question
whether Plato began holding that there are only Forms for a small range of properties, such as
tallness, equality, justice, beauty, and so on, and then widened the scope to include Forms
corresponding to every term that can be applied to a multiplicity of instances. In the Republic, he
writes as if there may be a great multiplicity of Formsfor example, in Book X of that work, we
find him writing about the Form of Bed (see Republic X.596b). He may have come to believe
that for any set of things that shares some property, there is a Form that gives unity to the set of
things (and univocity to the term by which we refer to members of that set of things). Knowledge
involves the recognition of the Forms (Republic V.475e-480a), and any reliable application of
this knowledge will involve the ability to compare the particular sensible instantiations of a
property to the Form.
c. Immortality and Reincarnation

In the early transitional dialogue, the Meno, Plato has Socrates introduce the Orphic and
Pythagorean idea that souls are immortal and existed before our births. All knowledge, he
explains, is actually recollected from this prior existence. In perhaps the most famous passage in
this dialogue, Socrates elicits recollection about geometry from one of Meno's slaves (Meno 81a86b). Socrates' apparent interest in, and fairly sophisticated knowledge of, mathematics appears
wholly new in this dialogue. It is an interest, however, that shows up plainly in the middle period
dialogues, especially in the middle books of the Republic.
Several arguments for the immortality of the soul, and the idea that souls are reincarnated into
different life forms, are also featured in Plato's Phaedo (which also includes the famous scene in
which Socrates drinks the hemlock and utters his last words). Stylometry has tended to count the
Phaedo among the early dialogues, whereas analysis of philosophical content has tended to place
it at the beginning of the middle period. Similar accounts of the transmigration of souls may be
found, with somewhat different details, in Book X of the Republic and in the Phaedrus, as well
as in several dialogues of the late period, including the Timaeus and the Laws. No traces of the
doctrine of recollection, or the theory of reincarnation or transmigration of souls, are to be found
in the dialogues we listed above as those of the early period.
d. Moral Psychology

The moral psychology of the middle period dialogues also seems to be quite different from what
we find in the early period. In the early dialogues, Plato's Socrates is an intellectualistthat is,
he claims that people always act in the way they believe is best for them (at the time of action, at
any rate). Hence, all wrongdoing reflects some cognitive error. But in the middle period, Plato
conceives of the soul as having (at least) three parts:
1. a rational part (the part that loves truth, which should rule over the other
parts of the soul through the use of reason),
2. a spirited part (which loves honor and victory), and

3. an appetitive part (which desires food, drink, and sex),

and justice will be that condition of the soul in which each of these three parts "does its own
work," and does not interfere in the workings of the other parts (see esp. Republic IV.435b445b). It seems clear from the way Plato describes what can go wrong in a soul, however, that in
this new picture of moral psychology, the appetitive part of the soul can simply overrule reason's
judgments. One may suffer, in this account of psychology, from what is called akrasia or "moral
weakness"in which one finds oneself doing something that one actually believes is not the
right thing to do (see especially Republic IV.439e-440b). In the early period, Socrates denied that
akrasia was possible: One might change one's mind at the last minute about what one ought to
doand could perhaps change one's mind again later to regret doing what one has donebut
one could never do what one actually believed was wrong, at the time of acting.
e. Critique of the Arts

The Republic also introduces Plato's notorious critique of the visual and imitative arts. In the
early period works, Socrates contends that the poets lack wisdom, but he also grants that they
"say many fine things." In the Republic, on the contrary, it seems that there is little that is fine in
poetry or any of the other fine arts. Most of poetry and the other fine arts are to be censored out
of existence in the "noble state" (kallipolis) Plato sketches in the Republic, as merely imitating
appearances (rather than realities), and as arousing excessive and unnatural emotions and
appetites (see esp. Republic X.595b-608b).
f. Platonic Love

In the Symposium, which is normally dated at the beginning of the middle period, and in the
Phaedrus, which is dated at the end of the middle period or later yet, Plato introduces his theory
of ers (usually translated as "love"). Several passages and images from these dialogues
continued to show up in Western culturefor example, the image of two lovers as being each
other's "other half," which Plato assigns to Aristophanes in the Symposium. Also in that dialogue,
we are told of the "ladder of love," by which the lover can ascend to direct cognitive contact with
(usually compared to a kind of vision of) Beauty Itself. In the Phaedrus, love is revealed to be
the great "divine madness" through which the wings of the lover's soul may sprout, allowing the
lover to take flight to all of the highest aspirations and achievements possible for humankind. In
both of these dialogues, Plato clearly regards actual physical or sexual contact between lovers as
degraded and wasteful forms of erotic expression. Because the true goal of ers is real beauty
and real beauty is the Form of Beauty, what Plato calls Beauty Itself, ers finds its fulfillment
only in Platonic philosophy. Unless it channels its power of love into "higher pursuits," which
culminate in the knowledge of the Form of Beauty, ers is doomed to frustration. For this reason,
Plato thinks that most people sadly squander the real power of love by limiting themselves to the
mere pleasures of physical beauty.
7. Late Transitional and Late Dialogues
a. Philosophical Methodology

One of the novelties of the dialogues after those of the middle period is the introduction of a new
philosophical method. This method was introduced probably either late in the middle period or in
the transition to the late period, but was increasingly important in the late period. In the early
period dialogues, as we have said, the mode of philosophizing was refutative question-andanswer (called elenchos or the "Socratic method"). Although the middle period dialogues
continue to show Socrates asking questions, the questioning in these dialogues becomes much
more overtly leading and didactic. The highest method of philosophizing discussed in the middle
period dialogues, called "dialectic," is never very well explained (at best, it is just barely
sketched in the divided line image at the end of Book VI of the Republic). The correct method
for doing philosophy, we are now told in the later works, is what Plato identifies as "collection
and division," which is perhaps first referred to at Phaedrus 265e. In this method, the
philosopher collects all of the instances of some generic category that seem to have common
characteristics, and then divides them into specific kinds until they cannot be further subdivided.
This method is explicitly and extensively on display in the Sophist, Statesman, and Philebus.
b. Critique of the Earlier Theory of Forms

One of the most puzzling features of the late dialogues is the strong suggestion in them that Plato
has reconsidered his theory of Forms in some way. Although there seems still in the late
dialogues to be a theory of Forms (although the theory is, quite strikingly, wholly unmentioned
in the Theaetetus, a later dialogue on the nature of knowledge), where it does appear in the later
dialogues, it seems in several ways to have been modified from its conception in the middle
period works. Perhaps the most dramatic signal of such a change in the theory appears first in the
Parmenides, which appears to subject the middle period version of the theory to a kind of
"Socratic" refutation, only this time, the main refuter is the older Eleatic philosopher Parmenides,
and the hapless victim of the refutation is a youthful Socrates. The most famous (and apparently
fatal) of the arguments provided by Parmenides in this dialogue has come to be known as the
"Third Man Argument," which suggests that the conception of participation (by which individual
objects take on the characters of the Forms) falls prey to an infinite regress: If individual male
things are male in virtue of participation in the Form of Man, and the Form of Man is itself male,
then what is common to both The Form of Man and the particular male things must be that they
all participate in some (other) Form, say, Man 2. But then, if Man 2 is male, then what it has in
common with the other male things is participation in some further Form, Man 3, and so on. That
Plato's theory is open to this problem gains support from the notion, mentioned above, that
Forms are exemplars. If the Form of Man is itself a (perfect) male, then the Form shares a
property in common with the males that participate in it. But since the Theory requires that for
any group of entities with a common property, there is a Form to explain the commonality, it
appears that the theory does indeed give rise to the vicious regress.
There has been considerable controversy for many years over whether Plato believed that the
Theory of Forms was vulnerable to the "Third Man" argument, as Aristotle believed it was, and
so uses the Parmenides to announce his rejection of the Theory of Forms, or instead believed that
the Third Man argument can be avoided by making adjustments to the Theory of Forms. Of
relevance to this discussion is the relative dating of the Timaeus and the Parmenides, since the

Theory of Forms very much as it appears in the middle period works plays a prominent role in
the Timaeus. Thus, the assignment of a later date to the Timaeus shows that Plato did not regard
the objection to the Theory of Forms raised in the Parmenides as in any way decisive. In any
event, it is agreed on all sides that Plato's interest in the Theory shifted in the Sophist and
Stateman to the exploration of the logical relations that hold between abstract entities. In the
Laws, Plato's last (and unfinished) work, the Theory of Forms appears to have dropped out
altogether. Whatever value Plato believed that knowledge of abstract entities has for the proper
conduct of philosophy, he no longer seems to have believed that such knowledge is necessary for
the proper running of a political community.
c. The "Eclipse" of Socrates

In several of the late dialogues, Socrates is even further marginalized. He is either represented as
a mostly mute bystander (in the Sophist and Statesman), or else absent altogether from the cast of
characters (in the Laws and Critias). In the Theaetetus and Philebus, however, we find Socrates
in the familiar leading role. The so-called "eclipse" of Socrates in several of the later dialogues
has been a subject of much scholarly discussion.
d. The Myth of Atlantis

Plato's famous myth of Atlantis is first given in the Timaeus, which scholars now generally a
Aristotle (384322 B.C.E.)

Aristotle is a towering figure in ancient Greek philosophy, making contributions to logic,


metaphysics, mathematics, physics, biology, botany, ethics, politics, agriculture, medicine, dance
and theatre. He was a student of Plato who in turn studied under Socrates. He was more
empirically-minded than Plato or Socrates and is famous for rejecting Plato's theory of forms.
As a prolific writer and polymath, Aristotle radically transformed most, if not all, areas of
knowledge he touched. It is no wonder that Aquinas referred to him simply as "The
Philosopher." In his lifetime, Aristotle wrote as many as 200 treatises, of which only 31 survive.
Unfortunately for us, these works are in the form of lecture notes and draft manuscripts never
intended for general readership, so they do not demonstrate his reputed polished prose style
which attracted many great followers, including the Roman Cicero. Aristotle was the first to
classify areas of human knowledge into distinct disciplines such as mathematics, biology, and
ethics. Some of these classifications are still used today.
As the father of the field of logic, he was the first to develop a formalized system for reasoning.
Aristotle observed that the validity of any argument can be determined by its structure rather than
its content. A classic example of a valid argument is his syllogism: All men are mortal; Socrates
is a man; therefore, Socrates is mortal. Given the structure of this argument, as long as the
premises are true, then the conclusion is also guaranteed to be true. Aristotles brand of logic
dominated this area of thought until the rise of modern propositional logic and predicate logic
2000 years later.
Aristotles emphasis on good reasoning combined with his belief in the scientific method forms
the backdrop for most of his work. For example, in his work in ethics and politics, Aristotle
identifies the highest good with intellectual virtue; that is, a moral person is one who cultivates
certain virtues based on reasoning. And in his work on psychology and the soul, Aristotle
distinguishes sense perception from reason, which unifies and interprets the sense perceptions
and is the source of all knowledge.
Aristotle famously rejected Platos theory of forms, which states that properties such as beauty
are abstract universal entities that exist independent of the objects themselves. Instead, he argued
that forms are intrinsic to the objects and cannot exist apart from them, and so must be studied in
relation to them. However, in discussing art, Aristotle seems to reject this, and instead argues for
idealized universal form which artists attempt to capture in their work.
Aristotle was the founder of the Lyceum, a school of learning based in Athens, Greece; and he
was an inspiration for the Peripatetics, his followers from the Lyceum.
1. Life

Aristotle was born in 384 BCE at Stagirus, a now extinct Greek colony and seaport on the coast
of Thrace. His father Nichomachus was court physician to King Amyntas of Macedonia, and
from this began Aristotle's long association with the Macedonian Court, which considerably
influenced his life. While he was still a boy his father died. At age 17 his guardian, Proxenus,

sent him to Athens, the intellectual center of the world, to complete his education. He joined the
Academy and studied under Plato, attending his lectures for a period of twenty years. In the later
years of his association with Plato and the Academy he began to lecture on his own account,
especially on the subject of rhetoric. At the death of Plato in 347, the pre-eminent ability of
Aristotle would seem to have designated him to succeed to the leadership of the Academy. But
his divergence from Plato's teaching was too great to make this possible, and Plato's nephew
Speusippus was chosen instead. At the invitation of his friend Hermeas, ruler of Atarneus and
Assos in Mysia, Aristotle left for his court. He stayed three year and, while there, married
Pythias, the niece of the King. In later life he was married a second time to a woman named
Herpyllis, who bore him a son, Nichomachus. At the end of three years Hermeas was overtaken
by the Persians, and Aristotle went to Mytilene. At the invitation of Philip of Macedonia he
became the tutor of his 13 year old son Alexander (later world conqueror); he did this for the
next five years. Both Philip and Alexander appear to have paid Aristotle high honor, and there
were stories that Aristotle was supplied by the Macedonian court, not only with funds for
teaching, but also with thousands of slaves to collect specimens for his studies in natural science.
Upon the death of Philip, Alexander succeeded to the kingship and prepared for his subsequent
conquests. Aristotle's work being finished, he returned to Athens, which he had not visited since
the death of Plato. He found the Platonic school flourishing under Xenocrates, and Platonism the
dominant philosophy of Athens. He thus set up his own school at a place called the Lyceum.
When teaching at the Lyceum, Aristotle had a habit of walking about as he discoursed. It was in
connection with this that his followers became known in later years as the peripatetics, meaning
"to walk about." For the next thirteen years he devoted his energies to his teaching and
composing his philosophical treatises. He is said to have given two kinds of lectures: the more
detailed discussions in the morning for an inner circle of advanced students, and the popular
discourses in the evening for the general body of lovers of knowledge. At the sudden death of
Alexander in 323 BCE., the pro-Macedonian government in Athens was overthrown, and a
general reaction occurred against anything Macedonian. A charge of impiety was trumped up
against him. To escape prosecution he fled to Chalcis in Euboea so that (Aristotle says) "The
Athenians might not have another opportunity of sinning against philosophy as they had already
done in the person of Socrates." In the first year of his residence at Chalcis he complained of a
stomach illness and died in 322 BCE.
2. Writings

It is reported that Aristotle's writings were held by his student Theophrastus, who had succeeded
Aristotle in leadership of the Peripatetic School. Theophrastus's library passed to his pupil
Neleus. To protect the books from theft, Neleus's heirs concealed them in a vault, where they
were damaged somewhat by dampness, moths and worms. In this hiding place they were
discovered about 100 BCE by Apellicon, a rich book lover, and brought to Athens. They were
later taken to Rome after the capture of Athens by Sulla in 86 BCE. In Rome they soon attracted
the attention of scholars, and the new edition of them gave fresh impetus to the study of Aristotle
and of philosophy in general. This collection is the basis of the works of Aristotle that we have
today. Strangely, the list of Aristotle's works given by Diogenes Laertius does not contain any of

these treatises. It is possible that Diogenes' list is that of forgeries compiled at a time when the
real works were lost to sight.
The works of Aristotle fall under three headings: (1) dialogues and other works of a popular
character; (2) collections of facts and material from scientific treatment; and (3) systematic
works. Among his writings of a popular nature the only one which we possess of any
consequence is the interesting tract On the Polity of the Athenians. The works on the second
group include 200 titles, most in fragments, collected by Aristotle's school and used as research.
Some may have been done at the time of Aristotle's successor Theophrastus. Included in this
group are constitutions of 158 Greek states. The systematic treatises of the third group are
marked by a plainness of style, with none of the golden flow of language which the ancients
praised in Aristotle. This may be due to the fact that these works were not, in most cases,
published by Aristotle himself or during his lifetime, but were edited after his death from
unfinished manuscripts. Until Werner Jaeger (1912) it was assumed that Aristotle's writings
presented a systematic account of his views. Jaeger argues for an early, middle and late period
(genetic approach), where the early period follows Plato's theory of forms and soul, the middle
rejects Plato, and the later period (which includes most of his treatises) is more empirically
oriented. Aristotle's systematic treatises may be grouped in several divisions:

Logic
1. Categories (10 classifications of terms)
2. On Interpretation (propositions, truth, modality)
3. Prior Analytics (syllogistic logic)
4. Posterior Analytics (scientific method and syllogism)
5. Topics (rules for effective arguments and debate)
6. On Sophistical Refutations (informal fallacies)

Physical works
1. Physics (explains change, motion, void, time)
2. On the Heavens (structure of heaven, earth, elements)
3. On Generation (through combining material constituents)
4. Meteorologics (origin of comets, weather, disasters)

Psychological works
1. On the Soul (explains faculties, senses, mind, imagination)

2. On Memory, Reminiscence, Dreams, and Prophesying

Works on natural history


1. History of Animals (physical/mental qualities, habits)
2. On the parts of Animals
3. On the Movement of Animals
4. On the Progression of Animals
5. On the Generation of Animals
6. Minor treatises
7. Problems

Philosophical works
1. Metaphysics (substance, cause, form, potentiality)
2. Nicomachean Ethics (soul, happiness, virtue, friendship)
3. Eudemain Ethics
4. Magna Moralia
5. Politics (best states, utopias, constitutions, revolutions)
6. Rhetoric (elements of forensic and political debate)
7. Poetics (tragedy, epic poetry)

3. Logic

Aristotle's writings on the general subject of logic were grouped by the later Peripatetics under
the name Organon, or instrument. From their perspective, logic and reasoning was the chief
preparatory instrument of scientific investigation. Aristotle himself, however, uses the term
"logic" as equivalent to verbal reasoning. The Categories of Aristotle are classifications of
individual words (as opposed to sentences or propositions), and include the following ten:
substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, situation, condition, action, passion. They seem
to be arranged according to the order of the questions we would ask in gaining knowledge of an
object. For example, we ask, first, what a thing is, then how great it is, next of what kind it is.
Substance is always regarded as the most important of these. Substances are further divided into
first and second: first substances are individual objects; second substances are the species in
which first substances or individuals inhere.

Notions when isolated do not in themselves express either truth or falsehood: it is only with the
combination of ideas in a proposition that truth and falsity are possible. The elements of such a
proposition are the noun substantive and the verb. The combination of words gives rise to
rational speech and thought, conveys a meaning both in its parts and as a whole. Such thought
may take many forms, but logic considers only demonstrative forms which express truth and
falsehood. The truth or falsity of propositions is determined by their agreement or disagreement
with the facts they represent. Thus propositions are either affirmative or negative, each of which
again may be either universal or particular or undesignated. A definition, for Aristotle is a
statement of the essential character of a subject, and involves both the genus and the difference.
To get at a true definition we must find out those qualities within the genus which taken
separately are wider than the subject to be defined, but taken together are precisely equal to it.
For example, "prime," "odd," and "number" are each wider than "triplet" (that is, a collection of
any three items, such as three rocks); but taken together they are just equal to it. The genus
definition must be formed so that no species is left out. Having determined the genus and
species, we must next find the points of similarity in the species separately and then consider the
common characteristics of different species. Definitions may be imperfect by (1) being obscure,
(2) by being too wide, or (3) by not stating the essential and fundamental attributes. Obscurity
may arise from the use of equivocal expressions, of metaphorical phrases, or of eccentric words.
The heart of Aristotle's logic is the syllogism, the classic example of which is as follows: All men
are mortal; Socrates is a man; therefore, Socrates is mortal. The syllogistic form of logical
argumentation dominated logic for 2,000 years until the rise of modern propositional and
predicate logic thanks to Frege, Russell, and others.
4. Metaphysics

Aristotle's editors gave the name "Metaphysics" to his works on first philosophy, either because
they went beyond or followed after his physical investigations. Aristotle begins by sketching the
history of philosophy. For Aristotle, philosophy arose historically after basic necessities were
secured. It grew out of a feeling of curiosity and wonder, to which religious myth gave only
provisional satisfaction. The earliest speculators (i.e. Thales, Anaximenes, Anaximander) were
philosophers of nature. The Pythagoreans succeeded these with mathematical abstractions. The
level of pure thought was reached partly in the Eleatic philosophers (such as Parmenides) and
Anaxagoras, but more completely in the work of Socrates. Socrates' contribution was the
expression of general conceptions in the form of definitions, which he arrived at by induction
and analogy. For Aristotle, the subject of metaphysics deals with the first principles of scientific
knowledge and the ultimate conditions of all existence. More specifically, it deals with existence
in its most fundamental state (i.e. being as being), and the essential attributes of existence. This
can be contrasted with mathematics which deals with existence in terms of lines or angles, and
not existence as it is in itself. In its universal character, metaphysics superficially resembles
dialectics and sophistry. However, it differs from dialectics which is tentative, and it differs from
sophistry which is a pretence of knowledge without the reality.
The axioms of science fall under the consideration of the metaphysician insofar as they are
properties ofall existence. Aristotle argues that there are a handful of universal truths. Against the

followers of Heraclitus and Protagoras, Aristotle defends both the laws of contradiction, and that
of excluded middle. He does this by showing that their denial is suicidal. Carried out to its
logical consequences, the denial of these laws would lead to the sameness of all facts and all
assertions. It would also result in an indifference in conduct. As the science of being as being, the
leading question of Aristotle's metaphysics is, What is meant by the real or true substance? Plato
tried to solve the same question by positing a universal and invariable element of knowledge and
existence -- the forms -- as the only real permanent besides the changing phenomena of the
senses. Aristotle attacks Plato's theory of the forms on three different grounds.
First, Aristotle argues, forms are powerless to explain changes of things and a thing's ultimate
extinction. Forms are not causes of movement and alteration in the physical objects of
sensation. Second, forms are equally incompetent to explain how we arrive at knowledge of
particular things. For, to have knowledge of a particular object, it must be knowledge of the
substance which is in that things. However, the forms place knowledge outside of particular
things. Further, to suppose that we know particular things better by adding on their general
conceptions of their forms, is about as absurd as to imagine that we can count numbers better by
multiplying them. Finally, if forms were needed to explain our knowledge of particular objects,
then forms must be used to explain our knowledge of objects of art; however, Platonists do not
recognize such forms. The third ground of attack is that the forms simply cannot explain
the existence of particular objects. Plato contends that forms do not exist in the particular objects
which partake in the forms. However, that substance of a particular thing cannot be separated
from the thing itself. Further, aside from the jargon of "participation," Plato does not explain the
relation between forms and particular things. In reality, it is merely metaphorical to describe the
forms as patterns of things; for, what is a genus to one object is a species to a higher class, the
same idea will have to be both a form and a particular thing at the same time. Finally, on Plato's
account of the forms, we must imagine an intermediate link between the form and the particular
object, and so on ad infinitum: there must always be a "third man" between the individual man
and the form of man.
For Aristotle, the form is not something outside the object, but rather in the varied phenomena of
sense. Real substance, or true being, is not the abstract form, but rather the concrete individual
thing. Unfortunately, Aristotle's theory of substance is not altogether consistent with itself. In
the Categories the notion of substance tends to be nominalistic (that is, substance is a concept we
apply to things). In theMetaphysics, though, it frequently inclines towards realism (that is,
substance has a real existence in itself). We are also struck by the apparent contradiction in his
claims that science deals with universal concepts, and substance is declared to be an individual.
In any case, substance is for him a merging of matter into form. The term "matter" is used by
Aristotle in four overlapping senses. First, it is the underlying structure of changes, particularly
changes of growth and of decay. Secondly, it is the potential which has implicitly the capacity to
develop into reality. Thirdly, it is a kind of stuff without specific qualities and so is indeterminate
and contingent. Fourthly, it is identical with form when it takes on a form in its actualized and
final phase.

The development of potentiality to actuality is one of the most important aspects of Aristotle's
philosophy. It was intended to solve the difficulties which earlier thinkers had raised with
reference to the beginnings of existence and the relations of the one and many. The actual vs.
potential state of things is explained in terms of the causes which act on things. There are four
causes:
1. Material cause, or the elements out of which an object is created;
2. Efficient cause, or the means by which it is created;
3. Formal cause, or the expression of what it is;
4. Final cause, or the end for which it is.

Take, for example, a bronze statue. Its material cause is the bronze itself. Its efficient cause is the
sculptor, insofar has he forces the bronze into shape. The formal cause is the idea of the
completed statue. The final cause is the idea of the statue as it prompts the sculptor to act on the
bronze. The final cause tends to be the same as the formal cause, and both of these can be
subsumed by the efficient cause. Of the four, it is the formal and final which is the most
important, and which most truly gives the explanation of an object. The final end (purpose, or
teleology) of a thing is realized in the full perfection of the object itself, not in our conception of
it. Final cause is thus internal to the nature of the object itself, and not something we subjectively
impose on it.
To Aristotle, God is the first of all substances, the necessary first source of movement who is
himself unmoved. God is a being with everlasting life, and perfect blessedness, engaged in
never-ending contemplation.
For a fuller discussion, see the article Aristotle's Metaphysics and Western Concepts of God.
5. Philosophy of Nature

Aristotle sees the universe as a scale lying between the two extremes: form without matter is on
one end, and matter without form is on the other end. The passage of matter into form must be
shown in its various stages in the world of nature. To do this is the object of Aristotle's physics,
or philosophy of nature. It is important to keep in mind that the passage from form to matter
within nature is a movement towards ends or purposes. Everything in nature has its end and
function, and nothing is without its purpose. Everywhere we find evidences of design and
rational plan. No doctrine of physics can ignore the fundamental notions of motion, space, and
time. Motion is the passage of matter into form, and it is of four kinds: (1) motion which affects
the substance of a thing, particularly its beginning and its ending; (2) motion which brings about
changes in quality; (3) motion which brings about changes in quantity, by increasing it and
decreasing it; and (4) motion which brings about locomotion, or change of place. Of these the
last is the most fundamental and important.

Aristotle rejects the definition of space as the void. Empty space is an impossibility. Hence, too,
he disagrees with the view of Plato and the Pythagoreans that the elements are composed of
geometrical figures. Space is defined as the limit of the surrounding body towards what is
surrounded. Time is defined as the measure of motion in regard to what is earlier and later. It
thus depends for its existence upon motion. If there where no change in the universe, there would
be no time. Since it is the measuring or counting of motion, it also depends for its existence on a
counting mind. If there were no mind to count, there could be no time. As to the infinite
divisibility of space and time, and the paradoxes proposed byZeno, Aristotle argues that space
and time are potentially divisible ad infinitum, but are not actually so divided.
After these preliminaries, Aristotle passes to the main subject of physics, the scale of being. The
first thing to notice about this scale is that it is a scale of values. What is higher on the scale of
being is of more worth, because the principle of form is more advanced in it. Species on this
scale are eternally fixed in their place, and cannot evolve over time. The higher items on the
scale are also more organized. Further, the lower items are inorganic and the higher are organic.
The principle which gives internal organization to the higher or organic items on the scale of
being is life, or what he calls the soul of the organism. Even the human soul is nothing but the
organization of the body. Plants are the lowest forms of life on the scale, and their souls contain a
nutritive element by which it preserves itself. Animals are above plants on the scale, and their
souls contain an appetitive feature which allows them to have sensations, desires, and thus gives
them the ability to move. The scale of being proceeds from animals to humans. The human soul
shares the nutritive element with plants, and the appetitive element with animals, but also has a
rational element which is distinctively our own. The details of the appetitive and rational aspects
of the soul are described in the following two sections.
For a fuller discussion of these topics, see the article Aristotle: Motion and its Place in Nature.
6. The Soul and Psychology

Soul is defined by Aristotle as the perfect expression or realization of a natural body. From this
definition it follows that there is a close connection between psychological states, and
physiological processes. Body and soul are unified in the same way that wax and an impression
stamped on it are unified. Metaphysicians before Aristotle discussed the soul abstractly without
any regard to the bodily environment; this, Aristotle believes, was a mistake. At the same time,
Aristotle regards the soul or mind not as the product of the physiological conditions of the body,
but as the truth of the body -- the substance in which only the bodily conditions gain their real
meaning.
The soul manifests its activity in certain "faculties" or "parts" which correspond with the stages
of biological development, and are the faculties of nutrition (peculiar to plants), that of
movement (peculiar to animals), and that of reason (peculiar to humans). These faculties
resemble mathematical figures in which the higher includes the lower, and must be understood
not as like actual physical parts, but like suchaspects as convex and concave which we
distinguish in the same line. The mind remains throughout a unity: and it is absurd to speak of it,

as Plato did, as desiring with one part and feeling anger with another. Sense perception is a
faculty of receiving the forms of outward objects independently of the matter of which they are
composed, just as the wax takes on the figure of the seal without the gold or other metal of which
the seal is composed. As the subject of impression, perception involves a movement and a kind
of qualitative change; but perception is not merely a passive or receptive affection. It in turn acts,
and,distinguishing between the qualities of outward things, becomes "a movement of the soul
through the medium of the body."
The objects of the senses may be either (1) special, (such as color is the special object of sight,
and sound of hearing), (2) common, or apprehended by several senses in combination (such as
motion or figure), or (3) incidental or inferential (such as when from the immediate sensation of
white we come to know a person or object which is white). There are five special senses. Of
these, touch is the must rudimentary, hearing the most instructive, and sight the most ennobling.
The organ in these senses never acts directly , but is affected by some medium such as air. Even
touch, which seems to act by actual contact, probably involves some vehicle of communication.
For Aristotle, the heart is the common or central sense organ. It recognizes the common qualities
which are involved in all particular objects of sensation. It is, first, the sense which brings us a
consciousness of sensation. Secondly, in one act before the mind, it holds up the objects of our
knowledge and enables us to distinguish between the reports of different senses.
Aristotle defines the imagination as "the movement which results upon an actual sensation." In
other words, it is the process by which an impression of the senses is pictured and retained before
the mind, and is accordingly the basis of memory. The representative pictures which it provides
form the materials of reason. Illusions and dreams are both alike due to an excitement in the
organ of sense similar to that which would be caused by the actual presence of the sensible
phenomenon. Memory is defined as the permanent possession of the sensuous picture as a copy
which represents the object of which it is a picture. Recollection, or the calling back to mind the
residue of memory, depends on the laws which regulate the association of our ideas. We trace the
associations by starting with the thought of the object present to us, then considering what is
similar, contrary or contiguous.
Reason is the source of the first principles of knowledge. Reason is opposed to the sense insofar
as sensations are restricted and individual, and thought is free and universal. Also, while the
senses deals with the concrete and material aspect of phenomena, reason deals with the abstract
and ideal aspects. But while reason is in itself the source of general ideas, it is so only
potentially. For, it arrives at them only by a process of development in which it gradually clothes
sense in thought, and unifies and interprets sense-presentations. This work of reason in thinking
beings suggests the question: How can immaterial thought come to receive material things? It is
only possible in virtue of some community between thought and things. Aristotle recognizes an
active reason which makes objects of thought. This is distinguished from passive reason which
receives, combines and compares the objects of thought. Active reason makes the world
intelligible, and bestows on the materials of knowledge those ideas or categories which make
them accessible to thought. This is just as the sun communicates to material objects that light,

without which color would be invisible, and sight would have no object. Hence reason is the
constant support of an intelligible world. While assigning reason to the soul of humans, Aristotle
describes it as coming from without, and almost seems to identify it with God as the eternal and
omnipresent thinker. Even in humans, in short, reason realizes something of the essential
characteristic of absolute thought -- the unity of thought as subject with thought as object.
7. Ethics

Ethics, as viewed by Aristotle, is an attempt to find out our chief end or highest good: an end
which he maintains is really final. Though many ends of life are only means to further ends, our
aspirations and desires must have some final object or pursuit. Such a chief end is universally
called happiness. But people mean such different things by the expression that he finds it
necessary to discuss the nature of it for himself. For starters, happiness must be based on human
nature, and must begin from the facts of personal experience. Thus, happiness cannot be found in
any abstract or ideal notion, like Plato's self-existing good. It must be something practical and
human. It must then be found in the work and life which is unique to humans. But this is neither
the vegetative life we share with plants nor the sensitive existence which we share with animals.
It follows therefore that true happiness lies in the active life of a rational being or in a perfect
realization and outworking of the true soul and self, continued throughout a lifetime.
Aristotle expands his notion of happiness through an analysis of the human soul which structures
and animates a living human organism. The parts of the soul are divided as follows:
The human soul has an irrational element which is shared with the animals, and a rational
element which is distinctly human. The most primitive irrational element is the vegetative faculty
which is responsible for nutrition and growth. An organism which does this well may be said to
have a nutritional virtue. The second tier of the soul is the appetitive faculty which is responsible
for our emotions and desires (such as joy, grief, hope and fear). This faculty is both rational and
irrational. It is irrational since even animals experience desires. However, it is also rational since
humans have the distinct ability to control these desires with the help of reason. The human
ability to properly control these desires is called moral virtue, and is the focus of morality.
Aristotle notes that there is a purely rational part of the soul, the calculative, which is responsible
for the human ability to contemplate, reason logically, and formulate scientific principles. The
mastery of these abilities is called intellectual virtue.
Aristotle continues by making several general points about the nature of moral virtues (i.e.
desire-regulating virtues). First, he argues that the ability to regulate our desires is not instinctive,
but learned and is the outcome of both teaching and practice. Second, he notes that if we regulate
our desires either too much or too little, then we create problems. As an analogy, Aristotle
comments that, either "excess or deficiency of gymnastic exercise is fatal to strength." Third, he
argues that desire-regulating virtues are character traits, and are not to be understood as either
emotions or mental faculties.

The core of Aristotle's account of moral virtue is his doctrine of the mean. According to this
doctrine, moral virtues are desire-regulating character traits which are at a mean between more
extreme character traits (or vices). For example, in response to the natural emotion of fear, we
should develop the virtuous character trait of courage. If we develop an excessive character trait
by curbing fear too much, then we are said to be rash, which is a vice. If, on the other extreme,
we develop a deficient character trait by curbing fear too little, then we are said to be cowardly,
which is also a vice. The virtue of courage, then, lies at the mean between the excessive extreme
of rashness, and the deficient extreme of cowardice. Aristotle is quick to point out that the
virtuous mean is not a strict mathematical mean between two extremes. For example, if eating
100 apples is too many, and eating zero apples is too little, this does not imply that we should eat
50 apples, which is the mathematical mean. Instead, the mean is rationally determined, based on
the relative merits of the situation. That is, it is "as a prudent man would determine it." He
concludes that it is difficult to live the virtuous life primarily because it is often difficult to find
the mean between the extremes.
Most moral virtues, and not just courage, are to be understood as falling at the mean between two
accompanying vices. His list may be represented by the following table:
The prominent virtue of this list is high-mindedness, which, as being a kind of ideal self-respect,
is regarded as the crown of all the other virtues, depending on them for its existence, and itself in
turn tending to intensify their force. The list seems to be more a deduction from the formula than
a statement of the facts on which the formula itself depends, and Aristotle accordingly finds
language frequently inadequate to express the states of excess or defect which his theory
involves (for example in dealing with the virtue of ambition). Throughout the list he insists on
the "autonomy of will" as indispensable to virtue: courage for instance is only really worthy of
the name when done from a love of honor and duty: munificence again becomes vulgarity when
it is not exercised from a love of what is right and beautiful, but for displaying wealth.
Justice is used both in a general and in a special sense. In its general sense it is equivalent to the
observance of law. As such it is the same thing as virtue, differing only insofar as virtue exercises
the disposition simply in the abstract, and justice applies it in dealings with people. Particular
justice displays itself in two forms. First, distributive justice hands out honors and rewards
according to the merits of the recipients. Second, corrective justice takes no account of the
position of the parties concerned, but simply secures equality between the two by taking away
from the advantage of the one and adding it to the disadvantage of the other. Strictly speaking,
distributive and corrective justice are more than mere retaliation and reciprocity. However, in
concrete situations of civil life, retaliation and reciprocity is an adequate formula since such
circumstances involve money, depending on a relation between producer and consumer. Since
absolute justice is abstract in nature, in the real world it must be supplemented with equity, which
corrects and modifies the laws of justice where it falls short. Thus, morality requires a standard
which will not only regulate the inadequacies of absolute justice but be also an idea of moral
progress.

This idea of morality is given by the faculty of moral insight. The truly good person is at the
same time a person of perfect insight, and a person of perfect insight is also perfectly good. Our
idea of the ultimate end of moral action is developed through habitual experience, and this
gradually frames itself out of particular perceptions. It is the job of reason to apprehend and
organize these particular perceptions. However, moral action is never the result of a mere act of
the understanding, nor is it the result of a simple desire which views objects merely as things
which produce pain or pleasure. We start with a rational conception of what is advantageous, but
this conception is in itself powerless without the natural impulse which will give it strength. The
will or purpose implied by morality is thus either reason stimulated to act by desire, or desire
guided and controlled by understanding. These factors then motivate the willful action. Freedom
of the will is a factor with both virtuous choices and vicious choices. Actions are involuntary
only when another person forces our action, or if we are ignorant of important details in actions.
Actions are voluntary when the originating cause of action (either virtuous or vicious) lies in
ourselves.
Moral weakness of the will results in someone does what is wrong, knowing that it is right, and
yet follows his desire against reason. For Aristotle, this condition is not a myth, as Socrates
supposed it was. The problem is a matter of conflicting moral principles. Moral action may be
represented as a syllogism in which a general principle of morality forms the first (i.e. major)
premise, while the particular application is the second (i.e. minor) premise. The conclusion,
though, which is arrived at through speculation, is not always carried out in practice. The moral
syllogism is not simply a matter of logic, but involves psychological drives and desires. Desires
can lead to a minor premise being applied to one rather than another of two major premises
existing in the agent's mind. Animals, on the other hand, cannot be called weak willed or
incontinent since such a conflict of principles is not possible with them.
Pleasure is not to be identified with Good. Pleasure is found in the consciousness of free
spontaneous action. It is an invisible experience, like vision, and is always present when a perfect
organ acts upon a perfect object. Pleasures accordingly differ in kind, varying along with the
different value of the functions of which they are the expression. They are determined ultimately
by the judgment of "the good person." Our chief end is the perfect development of our true
nature; it thus must be particularly found in the realization of our highest faculty, that is, reason.
It is this in fact which constitutes our personality, and we would not be pursuing our own life, but
the life of some lower being, if we followed any other aim. Self-love accordingly may be said to
be the highest law of morals, because while such self-love may be understood as the selfishness
which gratifies a person's lower nature, it may also be, and is rightly, the love of that higher and
rational nature which constitutes each person's true self. Such a life of thought is further
recommended as that which is most pleasant, most self-sufficient, most continuous, and most
consonant with our purpose. It is also that which is most akin to the life of God: for God cannot
be conceived as practising the ordinary moral virtues and must therefore find his happiness in
contemplation.

Friendship is an indispensable aid in framing for ourselves the higher moral life; if not itself a
virtue, it is at least associated with virtue, and it proves itself of service in almost all conditions
of our existence. Such results, however, are to be derived not from the worldly friendships of
utility or pleasure, but only from those which are founded on virtue. The true friend is in fact a
second self, and the true moral value of friendship lies in the fact that the friend presents to us a
mirror of good actions, and so intensifies our consciousness and our appreciation of life.
For a fuller discussion of these topics, see the article Aristotle's Ethics.
8. Politics

Aristotle does not regard politics as a separate science from ethics, but as the completion, and
almost a verification of it. The moral ideal in political administration is only a different aspect of
that which also applies to individual happiness. Humans are by nature social beings, and the
possession of rational speech (logos) in itself leads us to social union. The state is a development
from the family through the village community, an offshoot of the family. Formed originally for
the satisfaction of natural wants, it exists afterwards for moral ends and for the promotion of the
higher life. The state in fact is no mere local union for the prevention of wrong doing, and the
convenience of exchange. It is also no mere institution for the protection of goods and property.
It is a genuine moral organization for advancing the development of humans.
The family, which is chronologically prior to the state, involves a series of relations between
husband and wife, parent and child, master and slave. Aristotle regards the slave as a piece of
live property having no existence except in relation to his master. Slavery is a natural institution
because there is a ruling and a subject class among people related to each other as soul to body;
however, we must distinguish between those who are slaves by nature, and those who have
become slaves merely by war and conquest. Household management involves the acquisition of
riches, but must be distinguished from money-making for its own sake. Wealth is everything
whose value can be measured by money; but it is the use rather than the possession of
commodities which constitutes riches.
Financial exchange first involved bartering. However, with the difficulties of transmission
between countries widely separated from each other, money as a currency arose. At first it was
merely a specific amount of weighted or measured metal. Afterwards it received a stamp to mark
the amount. Demand is the real standard of value. Currency, therefore, is merely a convention
which represents the demand; it stands between the producer and the recipient and secures
fairness. Usury is an unnatural and reprehensible use of money.
The communal ownership of wives and property as sketched by Plato in the Republic rests on a
false conception of political society. For, the state is not a homogeneous unity, as Plato believed,
but rather is made up of dissimilar elements. The classification of constitutions is based on the
fact that government may be exercised either for the good of the governed or of the governing,
and may be either concentrated in one person or shared by a few or by the many. There are thus
three true forms of government: monarchy, aristocracy, and constitutional republic. The

perverted forms of these are tyranny, oligarchy and democracy. The difference between the last
two is not that democracy is a government of the many, and oligarchy of the few; instead,
democracy is the state of the poor, and oligarchy of the rich. Considered in the abstract, these six
states stand in the following order of preference: monarchy, aristocracy, constitutional republic,
democracy, oligarchy, tyranny. But though with a perfect person monarchy would be the highest
form of government, the absence of such people puts it practically out of consideration.
Similarly, true aristocracy is hardly ever found in its uncorrupted form. It is in the constitution
that the good person and the good citizen coincide. Ideal preferences aside, then, the
constitutional republic is regarded as the best attainable form of government, especially as it
secures that predominance of a large middle class, which is the chief basis of permanence in any
state. With the spread of population, democracy is likely to become the general form of
government.
Which is the best state is a question that cannot be directly answered. Different races are suited
for different forms of government, and the question which meets the politician is not so much
what is abstractly the best state, but what is the best state under existing circumstances.
Generally, however, the best state will enable anyone to act in the best and live in the happiest
manner. To serve this end the ideal state should be neither too great nor too small, but simply
self-sufficient. It should occupy a favorable position towards land and sea and consist of citizens
gifted with the spirit of the northern nations, and the intelligence of the Asiatic nations. It should
further take particular care to exclude from government all those engaged in trade and
commerce; "the best state will not make the "working man" a citizen; it should provide support
religious worship; it should secure morality through the educational influences of law and early
training. Law, for Aristotle, is the outward expression of the moral ideal without the bias of
human feeling. It is thus no mere agreement or convention, but a moral force coextensive with all
virtue. Since it is universal in its character, it requires modification and adaptation to particular
circumstances through equity.
Education should be guided by legislation to make it correspond with the results of psychological
analysis, and follow the gradual development of the bodily and mental faculties. Children should
during their earliest years be carefully protected from all injurious associations, and be
introduced to such amusements as will prepare them for the serious duties of life. Their literary
education should begin in their seventh year, and continue to their twenty-first year. This period
is divided into two courses of training, one from age seven to puberty, and the other from puberty
to age twenty-one. Such education should not be left to private enterprise, but should be
undertaken by the state. There are four main branches of education: reading and writing,
Gymnastics, music, and painting. They should not be studied to achieve a specific aim, but in the
liberal spirit which creates true freemen. Thus, for example, gymnastics should not be pursued by
itself exclusively, or it will result in a harsh savage type of character. Painting must not be
studied merely to prevent people from being cheated in pictures, but to make them attend to
physical beauty. Music must not be studied merely for amusement, but for the moral influence
which it exerts on the feelings. Indeed all true education is, as Plato saw, a training of our
sympathies so that we may love and hate in a right manner.

For a fuller discussion of these topics, see the article Aristotle's Politics.
9. Art and Poetics

Art is defined by Aristotle as the realization in external form of a true idea, and is traced back to
that natural love of imitation which characterizes humans, and to the pleasure which we feel in
recognizing likenesses. Art however is not limited to mere copying. It idealizes nature and
completes its deficiencies: it seeks to grasp the universal type in the individual phenomenon. The
distinction therefore between poetic art and history is not that the one uses meter, and the other
does not. The distinction is that while history is limited to what has actually happened, poetry
depicts things in their universal character. And, therefore, "poetry is more philosophical and
more elevated than history." Such imitation may represent people either as better or as worse
than people usually are, or it may neither go beyond nor fall below the average standard.
Comedy is the imitation of the worse examples of humanity, understood however not in the sense
of absolute badness, but only in so far as what is low and ignoble enters into what is laughable
and comic.
Tragedy, on the other hand, is the representation of a serious or meaningful, rounded or finished,
and more or less extended or far-reaching action -- a representation which is effected by action
and not mere narration. It is fitted by portraying events which excite fear and pity in the mind of
the observer to purify or purge these feelings and extend and regulate their sympathy. It is thus a
homeopathic curing of the passions. Insofar as art in general universalizes particular events,
tragedy, in depicting passionate and critical situations, takes the observer outside the selfish and
individual standpoint, and views them in connection with the general lot of human beings. This is
similar to Aristotle's explanation of the use of orgiastic music in the worship of Bacchas and
other deities: it affords an outlet for religious fervor and thus steadies one's religious sentiments.

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Epicurus (341271 B.C.E.)

Epicurus is one of the major philosophers in the Hellenistic period, the three centuries following
the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C.E. (and of Aristotle in 322 B.C.E.). Epicurus
developed an unsparingly materialistic metaphysics, empiricist epistemology, and hedonistic
ethics. Epicurus taught that the basic constituents of the world are atoms, uncuttable bits of
matter, flying through empty space, and he tried to explain all natural phenomena in atomic
terms. Epicurus rejected the existence of Platonic forms and an immaterial soul, and he said that
the gods have no influence on our lives. Epicurus also thought skepticism was untenable, and
that we could gain knowledge of the world relying upon the senses. He taught that the point of
all one's actions was to attain pleasure (conceived of as tranquility) for oneself, and that this
could be done by limiting one's desires and by banishing the fear of the gods and of death.
Epicurus' gospel of freedom from fear proved to be quite popular, and communities of
Epicureans flourished for centuries after his death.
1. Life

Epicurus was born around 341 B.C.E., seven years after Plato's death, and grew up in the
Athenian colony of Samos, an island in the Mediterranean Sea. He was about 19 when Aristotle
died, and he studied philosophy under followers of Democritus and Plato. Epicurus founded his
first philosophical schools in Mytilene and Lampsacus, before moving to Athens around 306
B.C.E. There Epicurus founded the Garden, a combination of philosophical community and
school. The residents of the Garden put Epicurus' teachings into practice. Epicurus died from
kidney stones around 271 or 270 B.C.E.
3. Metaphysics

Epicurus believes that the basic constituents of the world are atoms (which are uncuttable,
microscopic bits of matter) moving in the void (which is simply empty space). Ordinary objects
are conglomerations of atoms. Furthermore, the properties of macroscopic bodies and all of the
events we see occurring can be explained in terms of the collisions, reboundings, and
entanglements of atoms.

a. Arguments for the Existence of Atoms and Void

Epicurus' metaphysics starts from two simple points: (1) we see that there are bodies in motion,
and (2) nothing comes into existence from what does not exist. Epicurus takes the first point to
be simply a datum of experience. The second point is a commonplace of ancient Greek
philosophy, derived from the Principle of Sufficient Reason (the principle that for everything
which occurs there is a reason or explanation for why it occurs, and why this way rather than
that).
c. Differences from Democritus

Up to this point, Epicurus is largely following the thought of Democritus, a pre-Socratic


philosopher and one of the inventors of atomism. However, he modifies Democritus' atomism in
at least three important ways.
i. Weight

The first is that Epicurus thinks that atoms have weight. Like Democritus, Epicurus believes that
atoms have the properties of size, shape, and resistance. Democritus explains all atomic motion
as the result of previous atomic collisions, plus the inertia of atoms. Aristotle, however, criticizes
Democritus on this point, saying that Democritus has not explained why it is that atoms move at
all, rather than simply standing still. Epicurus seems to be answering this criticism when he says
that atoms do have a natural motion of direction--'downward'--even though there is no bottom to
the universe. This natural motion is supposed to give an explanation for why atoms move in the
first place. Also, Epicurus thinks that it is evident that bodies do tend to travel down, all else
being equal, and he thinks that positing weight as an atomic property accounts for this better than
thinking all atomic motion is the result of past collisions and inertia.
ii. The Swerve

The second modification of Democritus' views is the addition of the 'swerve.' In addition to the
regular tendency of atoms to move downward, Epicurus thinks that occasionally, and at random
times, the atoms swerve to the side. One reason for this swerve is that it is needed to explain why
there are atomic collisions. The natural tendency of atoms is to fall straight downward, at
uniform velocity. If this were the only natural atomic motion, the atoms never would have
collided with one another, forming macroscopic bodies. As Lucretius puts it, they would 'fall
downward, like drops of rain, through the deep void.' The second reason for thinking that atoms
swerve is that a random atomic motion is needed to preserve human freedom and 'break the
bonds of fate,' as Lucretius says. If the laws of atomic motion are deterministic, then the past
positions of the atoms in the universe, plus these laws, determine everything that will occur,
including human action. Cicero reports that Epicurus worries that, if it has been true from
eternity that, e.g., "Milo will wrestle tomorrow," then presently deliberating about whether to
make it true or false would be idle.
iii. Sensible Qualities

The third difference between Epicurus and Democritus has to do with their attitudes toward the
reality of sensible properties. Democritus thinks that, in reality, only atoms and the void exist,
and that sensible qualities such as sweetness, whiteness, and the like exist only 'by convention.' It
is controversial exactly how to understand Democritus' position, but most likely he is asserting
that atoms themselves have no sensible qualities--they are simply extended bits of stuff. The
sensible qualities that we think bodies have, like sweetness, are not really in the object at all, but
are simply subjective states of the percipient's awareness produced by the interaction of bodies
with our sense-organs. This is shown, thinks Democritus, by the fact that the same body appears
differently to different percipients depending on their bodily constitution, e.g., that a 'white' body
appears yellow to somebody with jaundice, or that honey tastes bitter to an ill person. From this,
Democritus derives skeptical conclusions. He is pessimistic about our ability to gain any

knowledge about the world on the basis of our senses, since they systematically deceive us about
the way the world is.
Epicurus wants to resist these pessimistic conclusions. He argues that properties like sweetness,
whiteness, and such do not exist at the atomic level--individual atoms are not sweet or white--but
that these properties are nonetheless real. These are properties of macroscopic bodies, but the
possession of these properties by macroscopic bodies are explicable in terms of the properties of
and relations amongst the individual atoms that make up bodies. Epicurus thinks that bodies have
the capability to cause us to have certain types of experiences because of their atomic structure,
and that such capabilities are real properties of the bodies. Similar considerations apply for
properties like "being healthy," "being deadly," and "being enslaved." They are real, but can only
apply to groups of atoms (like people), not individual atoms. And these sorts of properties are
also relational properties, not intrinsic ones. For example, cyanide is deadly--not deadly per se,
but deadly for human beings (and perhaps for other types of organisms). Nonetheless, its
deadliness for us is still a real property of the cyanide, albeit a relational one.
d. Mechanistic Explanations of Natural Phenomena

One important aspect of Epicurus' philosophy is his desire to replace teleological (goal-based)
explanations of natural phenomena with mechanistic ones. His main target is mythological
explanations of meteorological occurrences and the like in terms of the will of the gods. Because
Epicurus wishes to banish the fear of the gods, he insists that occurrences like earthquakes and
lightning can be explained entirely in atomic terms and are not due to the will of the gods.
Epicurus is also against the intrinsic teleology of philosophers like Aristotle. Teeth appear to be
well-designed for the purpose of chewing. Aristotle thinks that this apparent purposiveness in
nature cannot be eliminated, and that the functioning of the parts of organisms must be explained
by appealing to how they contribute to the functioning of the organism as a whole. Other
philosophers, such as the Stoics, took this apparent design as evidence for the intelligence and
benevolence of God. Epicurus, however, following Empedocles, tries to explain away this
apparent purposiveness in nature in a proto-Darwinian way, as the result of a process of natural
selection.
e. The Gods

Because of its denial of divine providence, Epicureanism was often charged in antiquity with
being a godless philosophy, although Epicurus and his followers denied the charge. The main
upshot of Epicurean theology is certainly negative, however. Epicurus' mechanistic explanations
of natural phenomena are supposed to displace explanations that appeal to the will of the gods.
In addition, Epicurus is one of the earliest philosophers we know of to have raised the Problem
of Evil, arguing against the notion that the world is under the providential care of a loving deity
by pointing out the manifold suffering in the world.
Despite this, Epicurus says that there are gods, but these gods are quite different from the popular
conception of gods. We have a conception of the gods, says Epicurus, as supremely blessed and
happy beings. Troubling oneself about the miseries of the world, or trying to administer the

world, would be inconsistent with a life of tranquility, says Epicurus, so the gods have no
concern for us. In fact, they are unaware of our existence, and live eternally in the intermundia,
the space between the cosmoi. For Epicurus, the gods function mainly as ethical ideals, whose
lives we can strive to emulate, but whose wrath we need not fear.
Ancient critics thought the Epicurean gods were a thin smoke-screen to hide Epicurus' atheism,
and difficulties with a literal interpretation of Epicurus' sayings on the nature of the gods (for
instance, it appears inconsistent with Epicurus' atomic theory to hold that any compound body,
even a god, could be immortal) have led some scholars to conjecture that Epicurus' 'gods' are
thought-constructs, and exist only in human minds as idealizations, i.e., the gods exist, but only
as projections of what the most blessed life would be.
f. Philosophy of Mind

Epicurus is one of the first philosophers to put forward an Identity Theory of Mind. In modern
versions of the identity theory, the mind is identified with the brain, and mental processes are
identified with neural processes. Epicurus' physiology is quite different; the mind is identified as
an organ that resides in the chest, since the common Greek view was that the chest, not the head,
is the seat of the emotions. However, the underlying idea is quite similar. (Note: not all
commentators accept that Epicurus' theory is actually an Identity Theory.)
. Perception

Epicurus explains perception in terms of the interaction of atoms with the sense-organs. Objects
continually throw off one-atom-thick layers, like the skin peeling off of an onion. These images,
or "eidola," fly through the air and bang into one's eyes, from which one learns about the
properties of the objects that threw off these eidola. This explains vision. Other senses are
analyzed in similar terms
4. Epistemology

Epicurus says that there are three criteria of truth: sensations, 'preconceptions,' and feelings.
Sensations give us information about the external world, and we can test the judgments based
upon sensations against further sensations; e.g., a provisional judgment that a tower is round,
based upon sensation, can be tested against later sensations to be corroborated or disproved.
Epicurus says that all sensations give us information about the world, but that sensation itself is
never in error, since sensation is a purely passive, mechanical reception of images and the like by
sense-organs, and the senses themselves do not make judgments 'that' the world is this way or
that. Instead, error enters in when we make judgments about the world based upon the
information received through the senses.
Epicurus thinks that, in order to make judgments about the world, or even to start any inquiry
whatsoever, we must already be in possession of certain basic concepts,
.

b. Anti-skeptical Arguments

Epicurus is concerned to refute the skeptical tendencies of Democritus, whose metaphysics and
theory of perception were similar to Epicurus'. At least three separate anti-skeptical arguments
are given by Epicureans:
i. The "Lazy Argument"

Epicurus says that it is impossible to live as a skeptic. If a person really were to believe that he
knows nothing, then he would have no reason to engage in one course of action instead of
another. Thus, the consistent skeptic would engage in no action whatsoever, and would die.
ii. The Self-refutation Argument

If a skeptic claims that nothing can be known, then one should ask whether he knows that
nothing can be known. If he says 'yes,' then he is contradicting himself. If he doesn't say yes,
then he isn't making a claim, and we don't need to listen to him.
iii. The Argument from Concept-formation

If the skeptic says that nothing can be known, or that we cannot know the truth, we can ask him
where he gets his knowledge of concepts such as 'knowledge' and 'truth.' If the senses cannot be
relied on, as the skeptic claims, then he is not entitled to use concepts such as 'knowledge' and
'truth' in formulating his thesis, since such concepts derive from the senses.
5. Ethics

Epicurus' ethics is a form of egoistic hedonism; i.e., he says that the only thing that is
intrinsically valuable is one's own pleasure; anything else that has value is valuable merely as a
means to securing pleasure for oneself. However,

a. Hedonism, Psychological and Ethical

Epicurus' ethics starts from the Aristotelian commonplace that the highest good is what is valued
for its own sake, and not for the sake of anything else, and Epicurus agrees with Aristotle that
happiness is the highest good. However, he disagrees with Aristotle by identifying happiness
with pleasure. Epicurus gives two reasons for this. The main reason is that pleasure is the only
thing that people do, as a matter of fact, value for its own sake; that is, Epicurus' ethical
hedonism is based upon his psychological hedonism. Everything we do, claims Epicurus, we do
for the sake ultimately of gaining pleasure for ourselves. This is supposedly confirmed by
observing the behavior of infants, who, it is claimed, instinctively pursue pleasure and shun pain.
This is also true of adults, thinks Epicurus, but in adults it is more difficult to see that this is true,
since adults have much more complicated beliefs about what will bring them pleasure.

b. Types of Pleasure

For Epicurus, pleasure is tied closely to satisfying one's desires. He distinguishes between two
different types of pleasure: 'moving' pleasures and 'static' pleasures. 'Moving' pleasures occur
when one is in the process of satisfying a desire, e.g., eating a hamburger when one is hungry.
These pleasures involve an active titillation of the senses, and these feelings are what most
people call 'pleasure.' However, Epicurus says that after one's desires have been satisfied, (e.g.,
when one is full after eating), the state of satiety, of no longer being in need or want, is itself
pleasurable. Epicurus calls this a 'static' pleasure, and says that these static pleasures are the best
pleasures.
Because of this, Epicurus denies that there is any intermediate state between pleasure and pain.
When one has unfulfilled desires, this is painful, and when one no longer has unfulfilled desires,
this steady state is the most pleasurable of all, not merely some intermediate state between
pleasure and pain.
Epicurus also distinguishes between physical and mental pleasures and pains. Physical pleasures
and pains concern only the present, whereas mental pleasures and pains also encompass the past
(fond memories of past pleasure or regret over past pain or mistakes) and the future (confidence
or fear about what will occur). The greatest destroyer of happiness, thinks Epicurus, is anxiety
about the future, especially fear of the gods and fear of death. If one can banish fear about the
future, and face the future with confidence that one's desires will be satisfied, then one will attain
tranquility (ataraxia), the most exalted state. In fact, given Epicurus' conception of pleasure, it
might be less misleading to call him a 'tranquillist' instead of a 'hedonist.'
c. Types of Desire

Because of the close connection of pleasure with desire-satisfaction, Epicurus devotes a


considerable part of his ethics to analyzing different kinds of desires. If pleasure results from
getting what you want (desire-satisfaction) and pain from not getting what you want (desirefrustration), then there are two strategies you can pursue with respect to any given desire: you
can either strive to fulfill the desire, or you can try to eliminate the desire. For the most part
Epicurus advocates the second strategy, that of paring your desires down to a minimum core,
which are then easily satisfied.
Epicurus distinguishes between three types of desires: natural and necessary desires, natural but
non-necessary desires, and "vain and empty" desires. Examples of natural and necessary desires
include the desires for food, shelter, and the like. Epicurus thinks that these desires are easy to
satisfy, difficult to eliminate (they are 'hard-wired' into human beings naturally), and bring great
pleasure when satisfied. Furthermore, they are necessary for life, and they are naturally limited:
that is, if one is hungry, it only takes a limited amount of food to fill the stomach, after which the
desire is satisfied. Epicurus says that one should try to fulfill these desires.

Vain desires include desires for power, wealth, fame, and the like. They are difficult to satisfy, in
part because they have no natural limit. If one desires wealth or power, no matter how much one
gets, it is always possible to get more, and the more one gets, the more one wants. These desires
are not natural to human beings, but inculcated by society and by false beliefs about what we
need; e.g., believing that having power will bring us security from others. Epicurus thinks that
these desires should be eliminated.
An example of a natural but non-necessary desire is the desire for luxury food. Although food is
needed for survival, one does not need a particular type of food to survive. Thus, despite his
hedonism, Epicurus advocates a surprisingly ascetic way of life. Although one shouldn't spurn
extravagant foods if they happen to be available, becoming dependent on such goods ultimately
leads to unhappiness. As Epicurus puts it, "If you wish to make Pythocles wealthy, don't give him
more money; rather, reduce his desires." By eliminating the pain caused by unfulfilled desires,
and the anxiety that occurs because of the fear that one's desires will not be fulfilled in the future,
the wise Epicurean attains tranquility, and thus happiness.
d. The Virtues

Epicurus' hedonism was widely denounced in the ancient world as undermining traditional
morality. Epicurus, however, insists that courage, moderation, and the other virtues are needed in
order to attain happiness. However, the virtues for Epicurus are all purely instrumental goods-that is, they are valuable solely for the sake of the happiness that they can bring oneself, not for
their own sake. Epicurus says that all of the virtues are ultimately forms of prudence, of
calculating what is in one's own best interest. In this, Epicurus goes against the majority of Greek
ethical theorists, such as the Stoics, who identify happiness with virtue, and Aristotle, who
identifies happiness with a life of virtuous activity. Epicurus thinks that natural science and
philosophy itself also are instrumental goods. Natural science is needed in order to give
mechanistic explanations of natural phenomena and thus dispel the fear of the gods, while
philosophy helps to show us the natural limits of our desires and to dispel the fear of death.
e. Justice

Epicurus is one of the first philosophers to give a well-developed contractarian theory of justice.
Epicurus says that justice is an agreement "neither to harm nor be harmed," and that we have a
preconception of justice as "what is useful in mutual associations." People enter into
communities in order to gain protection from the dangers of the wild, and agreements concerning
the behavior of the members of the community are needed in order for these communities to
function, e.g., prohibitions of murder, regulations concerning the killing and eating of animals,
and so on. Justice exists only where there are such agreements.
Like the virtues, justice is valued entirely on instrumental grounds, because of its utility for each
of the members of society. Epicurus says that the main reason not to be unjust is that one will be
punished if one gets caught, and that even if one does not get caught, the fear of being caught
will still cause pain. However, he adds that the fear of punishment is needed mainly to keep fools

in line, who otherwise would kill, steal, etc. The Epicurean wise man recognizes the usefulness
of the laws, and since he does not desire great wealth, luxury goods, political power, or the like,
he sees that he has no reason to engage in the conduct prohibited by the laws in any case.
Although justice only exists where there is an agreement about how to behave, that does not
make justice entirely 'conventional,' if by 'conventional' we mean that any behavior dictated by
the laws of a particular society is thereby just, and that the laws of a particular society are just for
that society. Since the 'justice contract' is entered into for the purpose of securing what is useful
for the members of the society, only laws that are actually useful are just. Thus, a prohibition of
murder would be just, but antimiscegenation laws would not. Since what is useful can vary from
place to place and time to time, what laws are just can likewise vary.
f. Friendship

Epicurus values friendship highly and praises it in quite extravagant terms. He says that
friendship "dances around the world" telling us that we must "wake to blessedness." He also says
that the wise man is sometimes willing to die for a friend. Because of this, some scholars have
thought that in this area, at least, Epicurus abandons his egoistic hedonism and advocates
altruism toward friends. This is not clear, however. Epicurus consistently maintains that
friendship is valuable because it is one of the greatest means of attaining pleasure. Friends, he
says, are able to provide one another the greatest security, whereas a life without friends is
solitary and beset with perils. In order for there to be friendship, Epicurus says, there must be
trust between friends, and friends have to treat each other as well as they treat themselves. The
communities of Epicureans can be seen as embodying these ideals, and these are ideals that
ultimately promote ataraxia.
g. Death

One of the greatest fears that Epicurus tries to combat is the fear of death. Epicurus thinks that
this fear is often based upon anxiety about having an unpleasant afterlife; this anxiety, he thinks,
should be dispelled once one realizes that death is annihilation, because the mind is a group of
atoms that disperses upon death.
i. The No Subject of Harm Argument

If death is annihilation, says Epicurus, then it is 'nothing to us.' Epicurus' main argument for why
death is not bad is contained in the Letter to Menoeceus and can be dubbed the 'no subject of
harm' argument. If death is bad, for whom is it bad? Not for the living, since they're not dead, and
not for the dead, since they don't exist. His argument can be set out as follows:
1. Death is annihilation.
2. The living have not yet been annihilated (otherwise they wouldn't be alive).
3. Death does not affect the living. (from 1 and 2)

4. So, death is not bad for the living. (from 3)


5. For something to be bad for somebody, that person has to exist, at least.
6. The dead do not exist. (from 1)
7. Therefore, death is not bad for the dead. (from 5 and 6)
8. Therefore death is bad for neither the living nor the dead. (from 4 and 7)

Epicurus adds that if death causes you no pain when you're dead, it's foolish to allow the fear of
it to cause you pain now.
ii. The Symmetry Argument

A second Epicurean argument against the fear of death, the so-called 'symmetry argument,' is
recorded by the Epicurean poet Lucretius. He says that anyone who fears death should consider
the time before he was born. The past infinity of pre-natal non-existence is like the future infinity
of post-mortem non-existence; it is as though nature has put up a mirror to let us see what our
future non-existence will be like. But we do not consider not having existed for an eternity
before our births to be a terrible thing; therefore, neither should we think not existing for an
eternity after our deaths to be evil.

Plotinus (204270 C.E.)

Plotinus is considered to be the founder of Neoplatonism. Taking his lead from his reading of
Plato, Plotinus developed a complex spiritual cosmology involving three foundational elements:
the One, the Intelligence, and the Soul. It is from the productive unity of these three Beings that
all existence emanates, according to Plotinus. The principal of emanation is not simply causal,
but also contemplative. In his system, Plotinus raises intellectual contemplation to the status of a
productive principle; and it is by virtue of contemplation that all existents are said to be united as
a single, all-pervasive reality. In this sense, Plotinus is not a strict pantheist, yet his system does
not permit the notion of creatio ex nihilo (creation out of nothingness). In addition to his
cosmology, Plotinus also developed a unique theory of sense-perception and knowledge, based
on the idea that the mind plays an active role in shaping or ordering the objects of its perception,
rather than passively receiving the data of sense experience (in this sense, Plotinus may be said
to have anticipated the phenomenological theories of Husserl). Plotinus' doctrine that the soul is
composed of a higher and a lower part -- the higher part being unchangeable and divine (and
aloof from the lower part, yet providing the lower part with life), while the lower part is the seat
of the personality (and hence the passions and vices) -- led him to neglect an ethics of the
individual human being in favor of a mystical or soteric doctrine of the soul's ascent to union
with its higher part. The philosophy of Plotinus is represented in the complete collection of his
treatises, collected and edited by his student Porphyry into six books of nine treatises each. For
this reason they have come down to us under the title of the Enneads.
1. Life and Work

Plotinus was born in 204 C.E. in Egypt, the exact location of which is unknown. In his midtwenties Plotinus gravitated to Alexandria, where he attended the lectures of various
philosophers, not finding satisfaction with any until he discovered the teacher Ammonius Saccas.
He remained with Ammonius until 242, at which time he joined up with the Emperor Gordian on

an expedition to Persia, for the purpose, it seems, of engaging the famed philosophers of that
country in the pursuit of wisdom. The expedition never met its destination, for the Emperor was
assassinated in Mesopotamia, and Plotinus returned to Rome to set up a school of philosophy. By
this time, Plotinus had reached his fortieth year. He taught in Rome for twenty years before the
arrival of Porphyry, who was destined to become his most famous pupil, as well as his
biographer and editor. It was at this time that Plotinus, urged by Porphyry, began to collect his
treatises into systematic form, and to compose new ones. These treatises were most likely
composed from the material gathered from Plotinus' lectures and debates with his students. The
students and attendants of Plotinus' lectures must have varied greatly in philosophical outlook
and doctrine, for the Enneads are filled with refutations and corrections of the positions of
Peripatetics, Stoics, Epicureans, Gnostics, and Astrologers. Although Plotinus appealed to Plato
as the ultimate authority on all things philosophical, he was known to have criticized the master
himself (cf. Ennead IV.8.1). We should not make the mistake of interpreting Plotinus as nothing
more than a commentator on Plato, albeit a brilliant one. He was an original and profound
thinker in his own right, who borrowed and re-worked all that he found useful from earlier
thinkers, and even from his opponents, in order to construct the grand dialectical system
presented (although in not quite systematic form) in his treatises. The great thinker died in
solitude at Campania in 270 C.E.
2. Metaphysics and Cosmology

Plotinus is not a metaphysical thinker in the strict sense of the term. He is often referred to as a
'mystical' thinker, but even this designation fails to express the philosophical rigor of his thought.
Jacques Derrida has remarked that the system of Plotinus represents the "closure of metaphysics"
as well as the "transgression" of metaphysical thought itself (1973: p. 128 note). The cause for
such a remark is that, in order to maintain the strict unity of his cosmology (which must be
understood in the 'spiritual' or noetic sense, in addition to the traditional physical sense of
'cosmos') Plotinus emphasizes the displacement or deferral of presence, refusing to locate either
the beginning (arkhe) or the end (telos) of existents at any determinate point in the 'chain of
emanations' -- the One, the Intelligence, and the Soul -- that is the expression of his cosmological
theory; for to predicate presence of his highest principle would imply, for Plotinus, that this
principle is but another being among beings, even if it is superior to all beings by virtue of its
status as their 'begetter'. Plotinus demands that the highest principle or existent be supremely
self-sufficient, disinterested, impassive, etc. However, this highest principle must still, somehow,
have a part in the generation of the Cosmos. It is this tension between Plotinus' somewhat
religious demand that pure unity and self-presence be the highest form of existence in his
cosmology, and the philosophical necessity of accounting for the multiplicity among existents,
that animates and lends an excessive complexity and determined rigor to his thought.
Since Being and Life itself, for Plotinus, is characterized by a dialectical return to origins, a
process of overcoming the 'strictures' of multiplicity, a theory of the primacy of contemplation
(theoria) over against any traditional theories of physically causal beginnings, like what is found
in the Pre-Socratic thinkers, and especially in Aristotle's notion of the 'prime mover,' becomes
necessary. Plotinus proceeds by setting himself in opposition to these earlier thinkers, and comes

to align himself, more or less, with the thought of Plato. However, Plotinus employs allegory in
his interpretation of Plato's Dialogues; and this leads him to a highly personal reading of the
creation myth in the Timaeus (27c ff.), which serves to bolster his often excessively introspective
philosophizing. Plotinus maintains that the power of the Demiurge ('craftsman' of the cosmos), in
Plato's myth, is derived not from any inherent creative capacity, but rather from the power of
contemplation, and the creative insight it provides (see Enneads IV.8.1-2; III.8.7-8). According to
Plotinus, the Demiurge does not actually create anything; what he does is govern the purely
passive nature of matter, which is pure passivity itself, by imposing a sensible form (an image of
the intelligible forms contained as thoughts within the mind of the Demiurge) upon it. The form
(eidos) which is the arkhe or generative or productive principle of all beings, establishes its
presence in the physical or sensible realm not through any act, but by virtue of the expressive
contemplation of the Demiurge, who is to be identified with the Intelligence or Mind (Nous) in
Plotinus' system. Yet this Intelligence cannot be referred to as the primordial source of all
existents (although it does hold the place, in Plotinus' cosmology, of first principle), for it, itself,
subsists only insofar as it contemplates a prior -- this supreme prior is, according to Plotinus, the
One, which is neither being nor essence, but the source, or rather, the possibility of all existence
(see Ennead V.2.1). In this capacity, the One is not even a beginning, nor even an end, for it is
simply the disinterested orientational 'stanchion' that permits all beings to recognize themselves
as somehow other than a supreme 'I'. Indeed, for Plotinus, the Soul is the 'We' (Ennead I.1.7),
that is, the separated yet communicable likeness (homoiotai) of existents to the Mind or
Intelligence that contemplates the One. This highest level of contemplation -- the Intelligence
contemplating the One -- gives birth to the forms (eide), which serve as the referential,
contemplative basis of all further existents. The simultaneous inexhaustibility of the One as a
generative power, coupled with its elusive and disinterested transcendence, makes the positing of
any determinate source or point of origin of existence, in the context of Plotinus' thought,
impossible. So the transgression of metaphysical thought, in Plotinus' system, owes its
achievement to his grand concept of the One.
a. The One

The 'concept' of the One is not, properly speaking, a concept at all, since it is never explicitly
defined by Plotinus, yet it is nevertheless the foundation and grandest expression of his
philosophy. Plotinus does make it clear that no words can do justice to the power of the One;
even the name, 'the One,' is inadequate, for naming already implies discursive knowledge, and
since discursive knowledge divides or separates its objects in order to make them intelligible, the
One cannot be known through the process of discursive reasoning (Ennead VI.9.4). Knowledge
of the One is achieved through the experience of its 'power' (dunamis) and its nature, which is to
provide a 'foundation' (arkhe) and location (topos) for all existents (VI.9.6). The 'power' of the
One is not a power in the sense of physical or even mental action; the power of the One, as
Plotinus speaks of it, is to be understood as the only adequate description of the 'manifestation' of
a supreme principle that, by its very nature, transcends all predication and discursive
understanding. This 'power,' then, is capable of being experienced, or known, only through
contemplation (theoria), or the purely intellectual 'vision' of the source of all things. The One
transcends all beings, and is not itself a being, precisely because all beings owe their existence

and subsistence to their eternal contemplation of the dynamic manifestation(s) of the One. The
One can be said to be the 'source' of all existents only insofar as every existent naturally and
(therefore) imperfectly contemplates the various aspects of the One, as they are extended
throughout the cosmos, in the form of either sensible or intelligible objects or existents. The
perfect contemplation of the One, however, must not be understood as a return to a primal
source; for the One is not, strictly speaking, a source or a cause, but rather the eternally present
possibility -- or active making-possible -- of all existence, of Being (V.2.1). According to
Plotinus, the unmediated vision of the 'generative power' of the One, to which existents are led
by the Intelligence (V.9.2), results in an ecstatic dance of inspiration, not in a satiated torpor
(VI.9.8); for it is the nature of the One to impart fecundity to existents -- that is to say: the One,
in its regal, indifferent capacity as undiminishable potentiality of Being, permits both rapt
contemplation and ecstatic, creative extension. These twin poles, this 'stanchion,' is the
manifested framework of existence which the One produces, effortlessly (V.1.6). The One, itself,
is best understood as the center about which the 'stanchion,' the framework of the cosmos, is
erected (VI.9.8). This 'stanchion' or framework is the result of the contemplative activity of the
Intelligence.
i. Emanation and Multiplicity

The One cannot, strictly speaking, be referred to as a source or a cause, since these terms imply
movement or activity, and the One, being totally self-sufficient, has no need of acting in a
creative capacity (VI.9.8). Yet Plotinus still maintains that the One somehow 'emanates' or
'radiates' existents. This is accomplished because the One effortlessly "'overflows' and its excess
begets an other than itself" (V.2.1, tr. O'Brien 1964) -- this 'other' is the Intelligence (Nous), the
source of the realm of multiplicity, of Being. However, the question immediately arises as to why
the One, being so perfect and self-sufficient, should have any need or even any 'ability' to
emanate or generate anything other than itself. In attempting to answer this question, Plotinus
finds it necessary to appeal, not to reason, but to the non-discursive, intuitive faculty of the soul;
this he does by calling for a sort of prayer, an invocation of the deity, that will permit the soul to
lift itself up to the unmediated, direct, and intimate contemplation of that which exceeds it
(V.1.6). When the soul is thus prepared for the acceptance of the revelation of the One, a very
simple truth manifests itself: that what, from our vantage-point, may appear as an act of
emanation on the part of the One, is really the effect, the necessary life-giving supplement, of the
disinterested self-sufficiency that both belongs to and is the One. "In turning toward itself The
One sees. It is this seeing that constitutes The Intelligence" (V.1.7, tr. O'Brien). Therefore, since
the One accomplishes the generation or emanation of multiplicity, or Being, by simply persisting
in its state of eternal self-presence and impassivity, it cannot be properly called a 'first principle,'
since it is at once beyond number, and that which makes possible all number or order (cf. V.1.5).
ii. Presence

Since the One is self-sufficient, isolated by virtue of its pure self-presence, and completely
impassive, it cannot properly be referred to as an 'object' of contemplation -- not even for the
Intelligence. What the Intelligence contemplates is not, properly speaking, the One Itself, but
rather the generative power that emanates, effortlessly, from the One, which is beyond all Being

and Essence (epikeina tes ousias) (cf. V.2.1). It has been stated above that the One cannot
properly be referred to as a first principle, since it has no need to divide itself or produce a
multiplicity in any manner whatsoever, since the One is purely self-contained. This leads
Plotinus to posit a secondary existent or emanation of the One, the Intelligence or Mind (Nous)
which is the result of the One's direct 'vision' of itself (V.1.7). This allows Plotinus to maintain,
within his cosmological schema, a power of pure unity or presence -- the One -- that is
nevertheless never purely present, except as a trace in the form of the power it manifests, which
is known through contemplation. Pure power and self-presence, for Plotinus, cannot reside in a
being capable of generative action, for it is a main tenet of Plotinus' system that the truly perfect
existent cannot create or generate anything, since this would imply a lack on the part of that
existent. Therefore, in order to account for the generation of the cosmos, Plotinus had to locate
his first principle at some indeterminate point outside of the One and yet firmly united with it;
this first principle, of course, is the Intelligence, which contains both unity and multiplicity,
identity and difference -- in other words, a self-presence that is capable of being divided into
manifestable and productive forms or 'intelligences' (logoi spermatikoi) without, thereby, losing
its unity. The reason that the Intelligence, which is the truly productive 'first principle' (proton
arkhon) in Plotinus' system, can generate existents and yet remain fully present to itself and at
rest, is because the self-presence and nature of the Intelligence is derived from the One, which
gives of itself infinitely, and without diminishing itself in any way. Furthermore, since every
being or existent within Plotinus' Cosmos owes its nature as existent to a power that is prior to it,
and which it contemplates, every existent owes its being to that which stands over it, in the
capacity of life-giving power. Keeping this in mind, it is difficult, if not impossible, to speak of
presence in the context of Plotinus' philosophy; rather, we must speak of varying degrees or
grades of contemplation, all of which refer back to the pure trace of infinite power that is the
One.
b. The Intelligence

The Intelligence (Nous) is the true first principle -- the determinate, referential 'foundation'
(arkhe) -- of all existents; for it is not a self-sufficient entity like the One, but rather possesses the
ability or capacity to contemplate both the One, as its prior, as well as its own thoughts, which
Plotinus identifies with the Platonic Ideas or Forms (eide). The purpose or act of the Intelligence
is twofold: to contemplate the 'power' (dunamis) of the One, which the Intelligence recognizes as
its source, and to meditate upon the thoughts that are eternally present to it, and which constitute
its very being. The Intelligence is distinct from the One insofar as its act is not strictly its own (or
an expression of self-sufficiency as the 'act' of self-reflection is for the One) but rather results in
the principle of order and relation that is Being -- for the Intelligence and Being are identical
(V.9.8). The Intelligence may be understood as the storehouse of potential being(s), but only if
every potential being is also recognized as an eternal and unchangeable thought in the Divine
Mind (Nous). As Plotinus maintains, the Intelligence is an independent existent, requiring
nothing outside of itself for subsistence; invoking Parmenides, Plotinus states that "to think and
to be are one and the same" (V.9.5; Parmenides, fragment 3). The being of the Intelligence is its
thought, and the thought of the Intelligence is Being. It is no accident that Plotinus also refers to
the Intelligence as God (theos) or the Demiurge (I.1.8), for the Intelligence, by virtue of its

primal duality -- contemplating both the One and its own thought -- is capable of acting as a
determinate source and point of contemplative reference for all beings. In this sense, the
Intelligence may be said to produce creative or constitutive action, which is the provenance of
the Soul.
i. The Ideas and the 'Seminal Reasons'

Since the purpose or act of the Intelligence is twofold (as described above), that which comprises
the being or essence of the Intelligence must be of a similar nature. That which the Intelligence
contemplates, and by virtue of which it maintains its existence, is the One in the capacity of
overflowing power or impassive source. This power or effortless expression of the One, which is,
in the strictest sense, the Intelligence itself, is manifested as a coherency of thoughts or perfect
intellectual objects that the Intelligence contemplates eternally and fully, and by virtue of which
it persists in Being -- these are the Ideas (eide). The Ideas reside in the Intelligence as objects of
contemplation. Plotinus states that: "No Idea is different from The Intelligence but is itself an
intelligence" (V.9.8, tr. O'Brien). Without in any way impairing the unity of his concept of the
Intelligence, Plotinus is able to locate both permanence and eternality, and the necessary
fecundity of Being, at the level of Divinity. He accomplishes this by introducing the notion that
the self-identity of each Idea, its indistinguishability from Intelligence itself, makes of each Idea
at once a pure and complete existent, as well as a potentiality or 'seed' capable of further
extending itself into actualization as an entity distinct from the Intelligence (cf. V.9.14).
Borrowing the Stoic term logos spermatikos or 'seminal reason,' Plotinus elaborates his theory
that every determinate existent is produced or generated through the contemplation by its prior of
a higher source, as we have seen that the One, in viewing itself, produces the Intelligence; and
so, through the contemplation of the One via the Ideas, the Intelligence produces the logoi
spermatikoi ('seminal reasons') that will serve as the productive power or essence of the Soul,
which is the active or generative principle within Being (cf. V.9.6-7).
ii. Being and Life

Being, for Plotinus, is not some abstract, amorphous pseudo-concept that is somehow presupposed by all thinking. In the context of Plotinus' cosmological schema, Being is given a
determined and prominent place, even if it is not given, explicitly, a definition; though he does
relate it to the One, by saying that the One is not Being, but "being's begetter" (V.2.1). Although
Being does not, for Plotinus, pre-suppose thought, it does pre-suppose and make possible all 'reactive' or causal generation. Being is necessarily fecund -- that is to say, it generates or actualizes
all beings, insofar as all beings are contained, as potentialities, in the 'rational seeds' which are
the results of the thought or contemplation of the Intelligence. Being differentiates the unified
thought of the Intelligence -- that is, makes it repeatable and meaningful for those existents
which must proceed from the Intelligence as the Intelligence proceeds from the One. Being is the
principle of relation and distinguishability amongst the Ideas, or rather, it is that rational
principle which makes them logoi spermatikoi. However, Being is not simply the productive
capacity of Difference; it is also the source of independence and self-sameness of all existents
proceeding from the Intelligence; the productive unity accomplished through the rational or
dialectical synthesis of the Dyad -- of the Same (tauton) and the Different (heteron) (cf. V.1.4-5).

We may best understand Being, in the context of Plotinus' thought, by saying that it differentiates
and makes indeterminate the Ideas belonging to the Intelligence, only in order to return these
divided or differentiated ideas, now logoi spermatikoi, to Sameness or Unity. It is the process of
returning the divided and differentiated ideas to their original place in the chain of emanation that
constitutes Life or temporal existence. The existence thus produced by or through Being, and
called Life, is a mode of intellectual existence characterized by discursive thought, or that
manner of thinking which divides the objects of thought in order to categorize them and make
them knowable through the relational process of categorization or 'orderly differentiation'. The
existents that owe their life to the process of Being are capable of knowing individual existents
only as they relate to one another, and not as they relate to themselves (in the capacity of 'selfsameness'). This is discursive knowledge, and is an imperfect image of the pure knowledge of
the Intelligence, which knows all beings in their essence or 'self-sameness' -- that is, as they are
purely present to the Mind, without the articulative mediation of Difference.
c. The Soul

The power of the One, as explained above, is to provide a foundation (arkhe) and location
(topos) for all existents (VI.9.6). The foundation provided by the One is the Intelligence. The
location in which the cosmos takes objective shape and determinate, physical form, is the Soul
(cf. IV.3.9). Since the Intelligence, through its contemplation of the One and reflection on its own
contents, the Ideas (eide), is both one and many, the Soul is both contemplative and active: it
contemplates the Intelligence, its prior in the 'chain of existents,' and also extends itself, through
acting upon or actualizing its own thoughts (the logoi spermatikoi), into the darkness or
indeterminacy of multiplicity or Difference (which is to be identified in this sense with Matter);
and by so doing, the Soul comes to generate a separate, material cosmos that is the living image
of the spiritual or noetic Cosmos contained as a unified thought within the Intelligence (cp. Plato,
Timaeus 37d). The Soul, like the Intelligence, is a unified existent, in spite of its dual capacity as
contemplator and actor. The purely contemplative part of the Soul, which remains in constant
contact with the Intelligence, is referred to by Plotinus as the 'higher part' of the Soul, while that
part which actively descends into the changeable (or sensible) realm in order to govern and
directly craft the Cosmos, is the 'lower part,' which assumes a state of division as it enters, out of
necessity, material bodies. It is at the level of the Soul that the drama of existence unfolds; the
Soul, through coming into contact with its inferior, that is, matter or pure passivity, is temporarily
corrupted, and forgets the fact that it is one of the Intelligibles, owing its existence to the
Intelligence, as its prior, and ultimately, to the power of the One. It may be said that the Soul is
the 'shepherd' or 'cultivator' of the logoi spermatikoi, insofar as the Soul's task is to conduct the
differentiated ideas from the state of fecund multiplicity that is Being, through the drama of Life,
and at last, to return these ideas to their primal state or divine status as thoughts within the
Intelligence. Plotinus, holding to his principle that one cannot act without being affected by that
which one acts upon, declares that the Soul, in its lower part, undergoes the drama of existence,
suffers, forgets, falls into vice, etc., while the higher part remains unaffected, and persists in
governing, without flaw, the Cosmos, while ensuring that all individual, embodied souls return,
eventually, to their divine and true state within the Intelligible Realm. Moreover, since every
embodied soul forgets, to some extent, its origin in the Divine Realm, the drama of return

consists of three distinct steps: the cultivation of Virtue, which reminds the soul of the divine
Beauty; the practice of Dialectic, which instructs or informs the soul concerning its priors and the
true nature of existence; and finally, Contemplation, which is the proper act and mode of
existence of the soul.
i. Virtue

The Soul, in its highest part, remains essentially and eternally a being in the Divine, Intelligible
Realm. Yet the lower (or active), governing part of the Soul, while remaining, in its essence, a
divine being and identical to the Highest Soul, nevertheless, through its act, falls into
forgetfulness of its prior, and comes to attach itself to the phenomena of the realm of change, that
is, of Matter. This level at which the Soul becomes fragmented into individual, embodied souls,
is Nature (phusis). Since the purpose of the soul is to maintain order in the material realm, and
since the essence of the soul is one with the Highest Soul, there will necessarily persist in the
material realm a type of order (doxa) that is a pale reflection of the Order (logos) persisting in the
Intelligible Realm. It is this secondary or derived order (doxa) that gives rise to what Plotinus
calls the "civic virtues" (aretas politikas) (I.2.1). The "civic virtues" may also be called the
'natural virtues' (aretas phusikas) (I.3.6), since they are attainable and recognizable by reflection
upon human nature, without any explicit reference to the Divine. These 'lesser' virtues are
possible, and attainable, even by the soul that has forgotten its origin within the Divine, for they
are merely the result of the imitation of virtuous men -- that is, the imitation of the Nature of the
Divine Soul, as it is actualized in living existents, yet not realizing that it is such. There is
nothing wrong, Plotinus tells us, with imitating noble men, but only if this imitation is
understood for what it is: a preparation for the attainment of the true Virtue that is "likeness to
God as far as possible" (cf. I.1.2; and Plato, Theaetetus 176b). Plotinus makes it clear that the
one who possesses the civic virtues does not necessarily possess the Divine Virtue, but the one
who possesses the latter will necessarily possess the former (I.2.7). Those who imitate virtuous
men, for example, the heroes of old, like Achilles, and take pride in this virtue, run the risk of
mistaking the merely human for the Divine, and therefore committing the sin of hubris.
Furthermore, the one who mistakes the human for the Divine virtue remains firmly fixed in the
realm of opinion (doxa), and is unable to rise to true knowledge of the Intelligible Realm, which
is also knowledge of one's true self. The exercise of the civic virtues makes one just, courageous,
well-tempered, etc. -- that is, the civic virtues result in sophrosune, or a well-ordered and
cultivated mind. It is easy to see, however, that this virtue is simply the ability to remain, to an
extent, unaffected by the negative intrusions upon the soul of the affections of material existence.
The highest Virtue consists, on the other hand, not in a rearguard defense, as it were, against the
attack of violent emotions and disruptive desires, but rather in a positively active and engaged
effort to regain one's forgotten divinity (I.2.6). The highest virtue, then, is the preparation for the
exercise of Dialectic, which is the tool of divine ordering wielded by the individual soul.
ii. Dialectic

Dialectic is the tool wielded by the individual soul as it seeks to attain the unifying knowledge of
the Divinity; but dialectic is not, for that matter, simply a tool. It is also the most valuable part of
philosophy (I.3.5), for it places all things in an intelligible order, by and through which they may

be known as they are, without the contaminating diversity characteristic of the sensible realm,
which is the result of the necessary manifestation of discursive knowledge -- language. We may
best understand dialectic, as Plotinus conceives it, as the process of gradual extraction, from the
ordered multiplicity of language, of a unifying principle conducive to contemplation. The soul
accomplishes this by alternating "between synthesis and analysis until it has gone through the
entire domain of the intelligible and has arrived at the principle" (I.3.4, tr. O'Brien). This is to
say, on the one hand, that dialectic dissolves the tension of differentiation that makes each
existent a separate entity, and therefore something existing apart from the Intelligence; and, on
the other hand, that dialectic is the final flourish of discursive reasoning, which, by 'analyzing the
synthesis,' comes to a full realization of itself as the principle of order among all that exists -that is, a recognition of the essential unity of the Soul (cf. IV.1). The individual soul
accomplishes this ultimate act by placing itself in the space of thinking that is "beyond being"
(epekeina tou ontos) (I.3.5). At this point, the soul is truly capable of living a life as a being that
is "at one and the same time ... debtor to what is above and ... benefactor to what is below"
(IV.8.7, tr. O'Brien). This the soul accomplishes through the purely intellectual 'act' of
Contemplation.
iii. Contemplation

Once the individual soul has, through its own act of will -- externalized through dialectic -- freed
itself from the influence of Being, and has arrived at a knowledge of itself as the ordering
principle of the cosmos, it has united its act and its thought in one supreme ordering principle
(logos) which derives its power from Contemplation (theoria). In one sense, contemplation is
simply a vision of the things that are -- a viewing of existence. However, for Plotinus,
contemplation is the single 'thread' uniting all existents, for contemplation, on the part of any
given individual existent, is at the same time knowledge of self, of subordinate, and of prior.
Contemplation is the 'power' uniting the One, the Intelligence, and the Soul in a single allproductive intellectual force to which all existents owe their life. 'Vision' (theoria), for Plotinus,
whether intellectual or physical, implies not simply possession of the viewed object in or by the
mind, but also an empowerment, given by the object of vision to the one who has viewed it.
Therefore, through the 'act' of contemplation the soul becomes capable of simultaneously
knowing its prior (the source of its power, the Intelligence) and, of course, of ordering or
imparting life to that which falls below the soul in the order of existence. The extent to which
Plotinus identifies contemplation with a creative or vivifying act is expressed most forcefully in
his comment that: "since the supreme realities devote themselves to contemplation, all other
beings must aspire to it, too, because the origin of all things is their end as well" (III.8.7, tr.
O'Brien). This means that even brute action is a form of contemplation, for even the most vulgar
or base act has, at its base and as its cause, the impulse to contemplate the greater. Since Plotinus
recognizes no strict principle of cause and effect in his cosmology, he is forced, as it were, to
posit a strictly intellectual process -- contemplation -- as a force capable of producing the
necessary tension amongst beings in order for there to be at once a sort of hierarchy and, also, a
unity within the cosmos. The tension, of course, is always between knower and known, and
manifests itself in the form of a 'fall' that is also a forgetting of source, which requires remedy.
The remedy is, as we have seen, the exercise of virtue and dialectic (also, see above). For once

the soul has walked the ways of discursive knowledge, and accomplished, via dialectic, the
necessary unification, it (the soul) becomes the sole principle of order within the realm of
changeable entities, and, through the fragile synthesis of differentiation and unity accomplished
by dialectic, and actualized in contemplation, holds the cosmos together in a bond of purely
intellectual dependence, as of thinker to thought. The tension that makes all of this possible is the
simple presence of the pure passivity that is Matter.
d. Matter

Matter, for Plotinus, may be understood as an eternally receptive substratum (hupokeimenon), in


and by which all determinate existents receive their form (cf. II.4.4). Since Matter is completely
passive, it is capable of receiving any and all forms, and is therefore the principle of
differentiation among existents. According to Plotinus, there are two types of Matter -- the
intelligible and the sensible. The intelligible type is identified as the palette upon which the
various colors and hues of intelligible Being are made visible or presented, while the sensible
type is the 'space of the possible,' the excessively fecund 'darkness' or depth of indeterminacy
into which the soul shines its vivifying light. Matter, then, is the ground or fundament of Being,
insofar as the entities within the Intelligence (the logoi spermatikoi) depend upon this defining or
delimiting principle for their articulation or actualization into determinate and independent
intelligences; and even in the sensible realm, where the soul achieves its ultimate end in the
'exhaustion' that is brute activity -- the final and lowest form of contemplation (cf. III.8.2) -Matter is that which receives and, in a passive sense, 'gives form to' the act. Since every existent,
as Plotinus tells us, must produce another, in a succession of dependence and derivation (IV.8.6)
which finally ends, simultaneously, in the passivity and formlessness of Matter, and the
desperation of the physical act, as opposed to purely intellectual contemplation (although, it must
be noted, even brute activity is a form of contemplation, as described above), Matter, and the
result of its reception of action, is not inherently evil, but is only so in relation to the soul, and
the extent to which the soul becomes bound to Matter through its act (I.8.14). Plotinus also
maintains, in keeping with Platonic doctrine, that any sensible thing is an image of its true and
eternal counterpart in the Intelligible Realm. Therefore, the sensible matter in the cosmos is but
an image of the purely intellectual Matter existing or persisting, as noetic substratum, within the
Intelligence (nous). Since this is the case, the confusion into which the soul is thrown by its
contact with pure passivity is not eternal or irremediable, but rather a necessary and final step in
the drama of Life, for once the soul has experienced the 'chaotic passivity' of material existence,
it will yearn ever more intensely for union with its prior, and the pure contemplation that
constitutes its true existence (IV.8.5).
i. Evil

The Soul's act, as we have seen (above), is dual -- it both contemplates its prior, and acts, in a
generative or, more properly, a governing capacity. For the soul that remains in contact with its
prior, that is, with the highest part of the Soul, the ordering of material existence is accomplished
through an effortless governing of indeterminacy, which Plotinus likens to a light shining into
and illuminating a dark space (cf. I.8.14); however, for the soul that becomes sundered, through
forgetfulness, from its prior, there is no longer an ordering act, but a generative or productive act

-- this is the beginning of physical existence, which Plotinus recognizes as nothing more than a
misplaced desire for the Good (cf. III.5.1). The soul that finds its fulfillment in physical
generation is the soul that has lost its power to govern its inferior while remaining in touch with
the source of its power, through the act of contemplation. But that is not all: the soul that seeks
its end in the means of generation and production is also the soul that becomes affected by what
it has produced -- this is the source of unhappiness, of hatred, indeed, of Evil (kakon). For when
the soul is devoid of any referential or orientational source -- any claim to rulership over matter
-- it becomes the slave to that over which it should rule, by divine right, as it were. And since
Matter is pure impassivity, the depth or darkness capable of receiving all form and of being
illuminated by the light of the soul, of reason (logos), when the soul comes under the sway of
Matter, through its tragic forgetting of its source, it becomes like this substratum -- it is affected
by any and every emotion or event that comes its way, and all but loses its divinity. Evil, then, is
at once a subjective or 'psychic' event, and an ontological condition, insofar as the soul is the
only existent capable of experiencing evil, and is also, in its highest form, the ruler or ordering
principle of the material cosmos. In spite of all this, however, Evil is not, for Plotinus, a
meaningless plague upon the soul. He makes it clear that the soul, insofar as it must rule over
Matter, must also take on certain characteristics of that Matter in order to subdue it (I.8.8). The
onto-theological problem of the source of Evil, and any theodicy required by placing the source
of Evil within the godhead, is avoided by Plotinus, for he makes it clear that Evil affects only the
soul, as it carries out its ordering activity within the realm of change and decay that is the
countenance of Matter. Since the soul is, necessarily, both contemplative and active, it is also
capable of falling, through weakness or the 'contradiction' of its dual functions, into entrapment
or confusion amidst the chaos of pure passivity that is Matter. Evil, however, is not irremediable,
since it is merely the result of privation (the soul's privation, through forgetfulness, of its prior);
and so Evil is remedied by the soul's experience of Love.
ii. Love and Happiness

Plotinus speaks of Love in a manner that is more 'cosmic' than what we normally associate with
that term. Love (eros), for Plotinus, is an ontological condition, experienced by the soul that has
forgotten its true status as divine governor of the material realm and now longs for its true
condition. Drawing on Plato, Plotinus reminds us that Love (Eros) is the child of Poverty (Penia)
and Possession (Poros) (cf. Plato, Symposium 203b-c), since the soul that has become too
intimately engaged with the material realm, and has forgotten its source, is experiencing a sort of
'poverty of being,' and longs to possess that which it has 'lost'. This amounts to a spiritual desire,
an 'existential longing,' although the result of this desire is not always the 'instant salvation' or
turnabout that Plotinus recognizes as the ideal (the epistrophe described in Ennead IV.8.4, for
example); oftentimes the soul expresses its desire through physical generation or reproduction.
This is, for Plotinus, but a pale and inadequate reflection or imitation of the generative power
available to the soul through contemplation. Now Plotinus does not state that human affection or
even carnal love is an evil in itself -- it is only an evil when the soul recognizes it as the only
expression or end (telos) of its desire (III.5.1). The true or noble desire or love is for pure beauty,
i.e., the intelligible Beauty (noetos kalon) made known by contemplation (theoria). Since this
Beauty is unchangeable, and the source of all earthly or material, i.e., mutable, beauty, the soul

will find true happiness (eudaimonia) when it attains an unmediated vision (theoria) of Beauty.
Once the soul attains not only perception of this beauty (which comes to it only through the
senses) but true knowledge of the source of Beauty, it will recognize itself as identical with the
highest Soul, and will discover that its embodiment and contact with matter was a necessary
expression of the Being of the Intelligence, since, as Plotinus clearly states, as long as there is a
possibility for the existence and engendering of further beings, the Soul must continue to act and
bring forth existents (cf. IV.8.3-4) -- even if this means a temporary lapse into evil on the part of
the individual or 'fragmented' souls that actively shape and govern matter. However, it must be
kept in mind that even the soul's return to recognition of its true state, and the resultant happiness
it experiences, are not merely episodes in the inner life of an individual existent, but rather
cosmic events in themselves, insofar as the activities and experiences of the souls in the material
realm contribute directly to the maintenance of the cosmos. It is the individual soul's capacity to
align itself with material existence, and through its experiences to shape and provide an image of
eternity for this purely passive substance, that constitutes Nature (phusis). The soul's turnabout or
epistrophe, while being the occasion of its happiness, reached through the desire that is Love, is
not to be understood as an apokatastasis or 'restoration' of a fragmented cosmos. Rather, we must
understand this process of the Soul's fragmentation into individual souls, its resultant experiences
of evil and love, and its eventual attainment of happiness, as a necessary and eternal movement
taking place at the final point of emanation of the power that is the One, manifested in the
Intelligence, and activated, generatively, at the level of Soul.
iii. A Note on Nature (phusis)

One final statement must be made, before we exit this section on Plotinus' Metaphysics and
Cosmology, concerning the status of Nature in this schema. Nature, for Plotinus, is not a separate
power or principle of Life that may be understood independently of the Soul and its relation to
Matter. Also, since the reader of this article may find it odd that I would choose to discuss 'Love
and Happiness' in the context of a general metaphysics, let it be stated clearly that the Highest
Soul, and all the individual souls, form a single, indivisible entity, The Soul (psuche) (IV.1.1),
and that all which affects the individual souls in the material realm is a direct and necessary
outgrowth of the Being of the Intelligible Cosmos (I.1.8). Therefore, it follows that Nature, in
Plotinus' system, is only correctly understood when it is viewed as the result of the collective
experience of each and every individual soul, which Plotinus refers to as the 'We' (emeis) (I.1.7)
-- an experience, moreover, which is the direct result of the souls fragmentation into bodies in
order to govern and shape Matter. For Matter, as Plotinus tells us, is such that the divine Soul
cannot enter into contact with it without taking on certain of its qualities; and since it is of the
nature of the Highest Soul to remain in contemplative contact with the Intelligence, it cannot
descend, as a whole, into the depths of material differentiation. So the Soul divides itself, as it
were, between pure contemplation and generative or governing act -- it is the movement or
moment of the soul's act that results in the differentiation of the active part of Soul into bodies. It
must be understood, however, that this differentiation does not constitute a separate Soul, for as
we have already seen, the nature and essence of all intelligible beings deriving from the One is
twofold -- for the Intelligence, it is the ability to know or contemplate the power of the One, and
to reflect upon that knowledge; for the Soul it is to contemplate the Intelligence, and to give

active form to the ideas derived from that contemplation. The second part of the Soul's nature or
essence involves governing Matter, and therefore becoming an entity at once contemplative and
unified, and active and divided. So when Plotinus speaks of the 'lower soul,' he is not speaking of
Nature, but rather of that ability or capacity of the Soul to be affected by its actions. Since
contemplation, for Plotinus, can be both purely noetic and accomplished in repose, and 'physical'
and carried out in a state of external effort, so reflection can be both noetic and physical or
affective. Nature, then, is to be understood as the Soul reflecting upon the active or physical part
of its eternal contemplation. The discussion of Plotinus' psychological and epistemological
theories, which now follows, must be read as a reflection upon the experiences of the Soul, in its
capacity or state as fragmented and active unity.
3. Psychology and Epistemology

Plotinus' contributions to the philosophical understanding of the individual psyche, of personality


and sense-perception, and the essential question of how we come to know what we know, cannot
be properly understood or appreciated apart from his cosmological and metaphysical theories.
However, the Enneads do contain more than a few treatises and passages that deal explicitly with
what we today would refer to as psychology and epistemology. Plotinus is usually spurred on in
such investigations by three over-arching questions and difficulties: (1) how the immaterial soul
comes to be united with a material body, (2) whether all souls are one, and (3) whether the higher
part of the soul is to be held responsible for the misdeeds of the lower part. Plotinus responds to
the first difficulty by employing a metaphor. The Soul, he tells us, is like an eternal and pure light
whose single ray comes to be refracted through a prism; this prism is matter. The result of this
refraction is that the single ray is 'fragmented' into various and multi-colored rays, which give the
appearance of being unique and separate rays of light, but yet owe their source to the single pure
ray of light that has come to illumine the formerly dark 'prism' of matter.
If the single ray of light were to remain the same, or rather, if it were to refuse to illuminate
matter, its power would be limited. Although Plotinus insists that all souls are one by virtue of
owing their being to a single source, they do become divided amongst bodies out of necessity -for that which is pure and perfectly impassive cannot unite with pure passivity (matter) and still
remain itself. Therefore, the Higher Soul agrees, as it were, to illuminate matter, which has
everything to gain and nothing to lose by the union, being wholly incapable of engendering
anything on its own. Yet it must be remembered that for Plotinus the Higher Soul is capable of
giving its light to matter without in any way becoming diminished, since the Soul owes its own
being to the Intelligence which it contemplates eternally and effortlessly. The individual souls -the 'fragmented rays of light' -- though their source is purely impassive, and hence not
responsible for any misdeeds they may perform, or any misfortunes that may befalls them in
their incarnation, must, themselves, take on certain characteristics of matter in order to illuminate
it, or as Plotinus also says, to govern it. One of these characteristics is a certain level of passivity,
or the ability to be affected by the turbulence of matter as it groans and labors under the vivifying
power of the soul, as though in the pangs of childbirth (cf. Plato, Letter II. 313a). This is the
beginning of the individual soul's personality, for it is at this point that the soul is capable of
experiencing such emotions like anger, fear, passion, love, etc. This individual soul now comes

to be spoken of by Plotinus as if it were a separate entity by. However, it must be remembered


that even the individual and unique soul, in its community (koinon) with a material body, never
becomes fully divided from its eternal and unchanging source. This union of a unique,
individual soul (which owes its being to its eternal source) with a material body is called by
Plotinus the living being (zoon). The living being remains, always, a contemplative being, for it
owes its existence to a prior, intelligible principle; but the mode of contemplation on the part of
the living being is divided into three distinct stages, rising from a lesser to a greater level of
intelligible ordering. These stages are: (1) pathos, or the immediate disturbance undergone by the
soul through the vicissitudes of its union with matter, (2) the moment at which the disturbance
becomes an object of intelligible apprehension (antilepsis), and (3) the moment at which the
intelligible object (tupon) becomes perceived through the reasoning faculty (dianoia) of the soul,
and duly ordered or judged (krinein). Plotinus call this three-fold structure, in its unity, senseperception (aisthesis).
We may best understand Plotinus' theory of perception by describing it as a 'creation' of
intelligible objects, or forms, from the raw material (hule) provided by the corporeal realm of
sensation. The individual souls then use these created objects as tools by which to order or
govern the turbulent realm of vivified matter. The problem arises when the soul is forced to think
'through' or with the aid of these constructed images of the forms (eide), these 'types' (tupoi).
This is the manner of discursive reasoning that Plotinus calls dianoia, and which consists in an
act of understanding that owes its knowledge (episteme) to objects external to the mind, which
the mind, through sense-perception, has come to 'grasp' (lepsis). Now since the objects which the
mind comes to 'grasp' are the product of a soul that has mingled, to a certain extent, with matter,
or passivity, the knowledge gained by dianoia can only be opinion (doxa). The opinion may
indeed be a correct one, but if it is not subject to the judgment of the higher part of the soul, it
cannot properly be called true knowledge (alethes gnosis). Furthermore, the reliance on the
products of sense-perception and on dianoia may lead the soul to error and to forgetfulness of its
true status as one with its source, the Higher Soul. And although even the soul that falls the
furthest into error and forgetfulness is still, potentially, one with the Higher Soul, it will be
subject to judgment and punishment after death, which takes the form, for Plotinus, of
reincarnation. The soul's salvation consists of bringing its mind back into line with the reasoning
power (logos) of its source, which it also is -- the Soul. All order in the physical cosmos proceeds
from the power of the Soul, and the existence of individual souls is simply the manner in which
the Soul exercises its governing power over the realm of passive nature. When the individual
soul forgets this primal reality or truth -- that it is the principle of order and reason in the cosmos
-- it will look to the products of sense-perception for its knowledge, and will ultimately allow
itself to be shaped by its experiences, instead of using its experiences as tools for shaping the
cosmos.
a. The Living Being

What Plotinus calls the "living being" (zoon) is what we would refer to, roughly, as the humanbeing, or the individual possessed of a distinct personality. This being is the product of the union
of the lower or active part of the soul with a corporeal body, which is in turn presided over by the

Higher Soul, in its capacity as reasoning power, imparted to all individual souls through their
ceaseless contemplation of their source (I.1.5-7). The "living being," then, may be understood as
a dual nature comprising a lower or physically receptive part, which is responsible for
transferring to the perceptive faculty the sensations produced in the lower or 'irrational' part of
the soul through its contact with matter (the body), and a higher or 'rational' part which perceives
these sensations and passes judgment on them, as it were, thereby producing that lower form of
knowledge called episteme in Greek, that is contrasted with the higher knowledge, gnosis, which
is the sole possession of the Higher Soul. Plotinus also refers to this dual nature as the 'We'
(emeis), for although the individual souls are in a sense divided and differentiated through their
prismatic fragmentation (cf. I.1.8, IV.3.4, and IV.9.5), they remain in contact by virtue of their
communal contemplation of their prior -- this is the source of their unity. One must keep in mind,
however, that the individual souls and the Higher Soul are not two separate orders or types of
soul, nor is the "living being" a third entity derived from them. These terms are employed by
Plotinus for the sole purpose of making clear the various aspects of the Soul's governing action,
which is the final stage of emanation proceeding from the Intelligence's contemplation of the
power of the One. The "living being" occupies the lowest level of rational, contemplative
existence. It is the purpose of the "living being" to govern the fluctuating nature of matter by
receiving its impressions, and turning them into intelligible forms for the mind of the soul to
contemplate, and make use of, in its ordering of the cosmos. Now in order to receive the
impressions or sensations from material existence, the soul must take on certain characteristics of
matter (I.8.8-9) -- the foremost characteristic being that of passivity, or the ability to undergo
disruptions in one's being, and remain affected by these disturbances. Therefore, a part of the
"living being" will, of necessity, descend too far into the material or changeable realm, and will
come to unite with its opposite (that is, pure passivity) to the point that it falls away from the
vivifying power of the Soul, or the reasoning principle of the 'We.' In order to understand how
this occurs, how it is remedied, and what are the consequences for the Soul and the cosmos that it
governs, a few words must be said concerning sense-perception and memory.
b. Sense-Perception and Memory

Sense-perception, as Plotinus conceives it, may be described as the production and cultivation of
images (of the forms residing in the Intelligence, and contemplated by the Soul). These images
aid the soul in its act of governing the passive, and for that reason disorderly, realm of matter.
The soul's experience of bodily sensation (pathos) is an experience of something alien to it, for
the soul remains always what it is: an intellectual being. However, as has already been stated, in
order for the soul to govern matter, it must take on certain of matter's characteristics. The soul
accomplishes this by 'translating' the immediate disturbances of the body -- i.e., physical pain,
emotional disturbances, even physical love or lust -- into intelligible realties (noeta) (cf. I.1.7).
These intelligible realities are then contemplated by the soul as 'types' (tupoi) of the true images
(eidolon) 'produced' through the Soul's eternal contemplation of the Intelligence, by virtue of
which the cosmos persists and subsists as a living image of the eternal Cosmos that is the
Intelligible Realm. The individual souls order or govern the material realm by bringing these
'types' before the Higher Soul in an act of judgment (krinein), which completes the movement or
moment of sense-perception (aisthesis). This perception, then, is not a passive imprinting or

'stamping' of a sensible image upon a receptive soul; rather, it is an action of the soul, indicative
of the soul's natural, productive power (cf. IV.6.3). This 'power' is indistinguishable from
memory (mnemes), for it involves, as it were, a recollection, on the part of the lower soul, of
certain 'innate' ideas, by which it is able to perceive what it perceives -- and most importantly, by
virtue of which it is able to know what it knows. The soul falls into error only when it 'falls in
love' with the 'types' of the true images it already contains, in its higher part, and mistakes these
'types' for realities. When this occurs, the soul will make judgments independently of its higher
part, and will fall into 'sin' (hamartia), that is, it will 'miss the mark' of right governance, which is
its proper nature. Since such a 'fallen' soul is almost a separate being (for it has ceased to fully
contemplate its 'prior,' or higher part), it will be subject to the 'judgment' of the Higher Soul, and
will be forced to endure a chain of incarnations in various bodies, until it finally remembers its
'true self,' and turns its mind back to the contemplation of its higher part, and returns to its
natural state (cf. IV.8.4). This movement is necessary for the maintenance of the cosmos, since,
as Plotinus tells us, "the totality of things cannot continue limited to the intelligible so long as a
succession of further existents is possible; although less perfect, they necessarily are because the
prior existent necessarily is" (IV.8.3, tr. O'Brien). No soul can govern matter and remain
unaffected by the contact. However, Plotinus assures us that the Highest Soul remains unaffected
by the fluctuations and chaotic affections of matter, for it never ceases to productively
contemplate its prior -- which is to say: it never leaves its proper place. It is for this reason that
even the souls that 'fall' remain part of the unity of the 'We,' for despite any forgetfulness that
may occur on their part, they continue to owe their persistence in being to the presence of their
higher part -- the Soul (cf. IV.1 and IV.2, "On the Essence of the Soul").
c. Individuality and Personality

The individual souls that are disseminated throughout the cosmos, and the Soul that presides
over the cosmos, are, according to Plotinus, an essential unity. This is not to say that he denies
the unique existence of the individual soul, nor what we would call a personality. However,
personality, for Plotinus, is something accrued, an addition of alien elements that come to be
attached to the pure soul through its assimilative contact with matter (cf. IV.7.10, and cp. Plato,
Republic 611b-612a). In other words, we may say that the personality is, for Plotinus, a byproduct of the soul's governance of matter -- a governance that requires a certain degree of
affectivity between the vivifying soul and its receptive substratum (hupokeimenon). The soul is
not really 'acted upon' by matter, but rather receives from the matter it animates, certain
unavoidable impulses (horme) which come to limit or bind (horos) the soul in such a way as to
make of it a "particular being," possessing the illusory quality of being distinct from its source,
the Soul. Plotinus does, however, maintain that each "particular being" is the product, as it were,
of an intelligence (a logos spermatikos), and that the essential quality of each 'psychic
manifestation' is already inscribed as a thought with the cosmic Mind (Nous); yet he makes it
clear that it is only the essence (ousia) of the individual soul that is of Intelligible origin (V.7.13). The peculiar qualities of each individual, derived from contact with matter, are discardable
accruements that only serve to distort the true nature of the soul. It is for this reason that the
notion of the 'autonomy of the individual' plays no part in the dialectical onto-theology of
Plotinus. The sole purpose of the individual soul is to order the fluctuating representations of the

material realm, through the proper exercise of sense-perception, and to remain, as far as is
possible, in imperturbable contact with its prior. The lower part of the soul, the seat of the
personality, is an unfortunate but necessary supplement to the Soul's actualization of the ideas it
contemplates. Through the soul's 'gift' of determinate order to the pure passivity that is matter,
this matter comes to 'exist' in a state of ever-changing receptivity, of chaotic malleability. This
malleability is mirrored in and by the accrued 'personality' of the soul. When this personality is
experienced as something more than a conduit between pure sense-perception and the act of
judgment that makes the perception(s) intelligible, then the soul has fallen into forgetfulness. At
this stage, the personality serves as a surrogate to the authentic existence provided by and
through contemplation of the Soul.
4. Ethics

The highest attainment of the individual soul is, for Plotinus, "likeness to God as far as is
possible" (I.2.1; cf. Plato, Theaetetus 176b). This likeness is achieved through the soul's intimate
state of contemplation of its prior -- the Higher Soul -- which is, in fact, the individual soul in its
own purified state. Now since the Soul does not come into direct contact with matter like the
'fragmented,' individual souls do, the purified soul will remain aloof from the disturbances of the
realm of sense (pathos) and will no longer directly govern the cosmos, but leave the direct
governance to those souls that still remain enmeshed in matter (cf. VI.9.7). The lower souls that
descend too far into matter are those souls which experience most forcefully the dissimilative,
negative affectivity of vivified matter. It is to these souls that the experience of Evil falls. For this
reason, Plotinus was unable to develop a rigorous ethical system that would account for the
responsibilities and moral codes of an individual living a life amidst the fluctuating realm of the
senses. According to Plotinus, the soul that has descended too far into matter needs to "merely
think on essential being" in order to become reunited with its higher part (IV.8.4). This seems to
constitute Plotinus' answer to any ethical questions that may have been posed to him. In fact,
Plotinus develops a radical stance vis-a-vis ethics, and the problem of human suffering. In
keeping with his doctrine that the higher part of the soul remains wholly unaffected by the
disturbances of the sense-realm, Plotinus declares that only the lower part of the soul suffers, is
subject to passions, and vices, etc. In order to drive the point home, Plotinus makes use of a
striking illustration. Invoking the ancient torture device known as the Bull of Phalaris (a hollow
bronze bull in which a victim was placed; the bull was then heated until it became red hot), he
tells us that only the lower part of the soul will feel the torture, while the higher part remains in
repose, in contemplation (I.4.13). Although Plotinus does not explicitly say so, we may assume
that the soul that has reunited with its higher part will not feel the torture at all. Since the higher
part of the soul is (1) the source and true state of existence of all souls, (2) cannot be affected in
any way by sensible affections, and (3) since the lower soul possesses of itself the ability to free
itself from the bonds of matter, all particular questions concerning ethics and morality are
subsumed, in Plotinus' system, by the single grand doctrine of the soul's essential
imperturbability. The problems plaguing the lower soul are not, for Plotinus, serious issues for
philosophy. His general attitude may be summed up by a remark made in the course of one of his
discussions of 'Providence':

"A gang of lads, morally neglected, and in that respect inferior to the intermediate class, but in
good physical training, attack and overthrow another set, trained neither physically nor morally,
and make off with their food and their dainty clothes. What more is called for than a laugh?"
(III.2.8, tr. MacKenna).
Of course, Plotinus was no anarchist, nor was he an advocate of violence or lawlessness. Rather,
he was so concerned with the welfare and the ultimate salvation of each individual soul, that he
elevated philosophy -- the highest pursuit of the soul -- to the level of a divine act, capable of
purifying each and every soul of the tainting accruements of sensual existence. Plotinus' last
words, recorded by Porphyry, more than adequately summarize the goal of his philosophy:
"Strive to bring back the god in yourselves to the God in the All" (Life of Plotinus 2).

Augustine (354430 C.E.)

St. Augustine is a fourth century philosopher whose groundbreaking philosophy infused


Christian doctrine with Neoplatonism. He is famous for being an inimitable Catholic theologian
and for his agnostic contributions to Western philosophy. He argues that skeptics have no basis
for claiming to know that there is no knowledge. In a proof for existence similar to one later

made famous by Ren Descartes, Augustine says, [Even] If I am mistaken, I am. He is the first
Western philosopher to promote what has come to be called "the argument by analogy" against
solipsism: there are bodies external to mine that behave as I behave and that appear to be
nourished as mine is nourished; so, by analogy, I am justified in believing that these bodies have
a similar mental life to mine. Augustine believes reason to be a uniquely human cognitive
capacity that comprehends deductive truths and logical necessity. Additionally, Augustine adopts
a subjective view of time and says that time is nothing in reality but exists only in the human
minds apprehension of reality. He believes that time is not infinite because God created it.
Augustine tries to reconcile his beliefs about freewill, especially the belief that humans are
morally responsible for their actions, with his belief that ones life is predestined. Though
initially optimistic about the ability of humans to behave morally, at the end he is pessimistic,
and thinks that original sin makes human moral behavior nearly impossible: if it were not for the
rare appearance of an accidental and undeserved Grace of God, humans could not be moral.
Augustines theological discussion of freewill is relevant to a non-religious discussion regardless
of the religious-specific language he uses; one can switch Augustines omnipotent being and
original sin explanation of predestination for the present day biology explanation of
predestination; the latter tendency is apparent in modern slogans such as biology is destiny.
Table of Contents
1. Early Years

Augustine is the first ecclesiastical author the whole course of whose development can be clearly
traced, as well as the first in whose case we are able to determine the exact period covered by his
career, to the very day. He informs us himself that he was born at Thagaste (Tagaste; now Suk
Arras), in proconsular Numidia, Nov. 13, 354; he died at Hippo Regius (just south of the modern
Bona) Aug. 28, 430. [Both Suk Arras and Bona are in the present Algeria, the first 60 m. W. by s.
and the second 65 m. w. of Tunis, the ancient Carthage.] His father Patricius, as a member of the
council, belonged to the influential classes of the place; he was, however, in straitened
circumstances, and seems to have had nothing remarkable either in mental equipment or in
character, but to have been a lively, sensual, hot-tempered person, entirely taken up with his
worldly concerns, and unfriendly to Christianity until the close of his life; he became a
catechumen shortly before Augustine reached his sixteenth year (369-370). To his mother
Monnica (so the manuscripts write her name, not Monica; b. 331, d. 387) Augustine later
believed that he owed what lie became. But though she was evidently an honorable, loving, selfsacrificing, and able woman, she was not always the ideal of a Christian mother that tradition has
made her appear. Her religion in earlier life has traces of formality and worldliness about it; her
ambition for her son seems at first to have had little moral earnestness and she regretted his
Manicheanism more than she did his early sensuality. It seems to have been through Ambrose
and Augustine that she attained the mature personal piety with which she left the world. Of
Augustine as a boy his parents were intensely proud. He received his first education at Thagaste,
learning, to read and write, as well as the rudiments of Greek and Latin literature, from teachers
who followed the old traditional pagan methods. He seems to have had no systematic instruction

in the Christian faith at this period, and though enrolled among the catechumens, apparently was
near baptism only when an illness and his own boyish desire made it temporarily probable.
His father, delighted with his son's progress in his studies, sent him first to the neighboring
Madaura, and then to Carthage, some two days' journey away. A year's enforced idleness, while
the means for this more expensive schooling were being accumulated, proved a time of moral
deterioration; but we must be on our guard against forming our conception of Augustine's vicious
living from the Confessiones alone. To speak, as Mommsen does, of " frantic dissipation " is to
attach too much weight to his own penitent expressions of self-reproach. Looking back as a
bishop, he naturally regarded his whole life up to the " conversion " which led to his baptism as a
period of wandering from the right way; but not long after this conversion, he judged differently,
and found, from one point of view, the turning point of his career in his taking up philosophy -in
his nineteenth year. This view of his early life, which may be traced also in the Confessiones, is
probably nearer the truth than the popular conception of a youth sunk in all kinds of immorality.
When he began the study of rhetoric at Carthage, it is true that (in company with comrades
whose ideas of pleasure were probably much more gross than his) he drank of the cup of sensual
pleasure. But his ambition prevented him from allowing his dissipations to interfere with his
studies. His son Adeodatus was born in the summer of 372, and it was probably the mother of
this child whose charms enthralled him soon after his arrival at Carthage about the end of 370.
But he remained faithful to her until about 385, and the grief which he felt at parting from her
shows what the relation had been. In the view of the civilization of that period, such a
monogamous union was distinguished from a formal marriage only by certain legal restrictions,
in addition to the informality of its beginning and the possibility of a voluntary dissolution. Even
the Church was slow to condemn such unions absolutely, and Monnica seems to have received
the child and his mother publicly at Thagaste. In any case Augustine was known to Carthage not
as a roysterer but as a quiet honorable student. He was, however, internally dissatisfied with his
life. The Hortensius of Cicero, now lost with the exception of a few fragments, made a deep
impression on him. To know the truth was henceforth his deepest wish. About the time when the
contrast between his ideals and his actual life became intolerable, he learned to conceive of
Christianity as the one religion which could lead him to the attainment of his ideal. But his pride
of intellect held him back from embracing it earnestly; the Scriptures could not bear comparison
with Cicero; he sought for wisdom, not for humble submission to authority.
2. Manichean and Neoplatonist Period

In this frame of mind he was ready to be affected by the so-called "Manichean propaganda"
which was then actively carried on in Africa, without apparently being much hindered by the
imperial edict against assemblies of the sect. Two things especially attracted him to the
Manicheans: they felt at liberty to criticize the Scriptures, particularly the Old Testament, with
perfect freedom; and they held chastity and self-denial in honor. The former fitted in with the
impression which the Bible had made on Augustine himself; the latter corresponded closely to
his mood at the time. The prayer which he tells us he had in his heart then, " Lord, give me
chastity and temperance, but not now," may be taken as the formula which represents the attitude
of many of the Manichean auditores. Among these Augustine was classed during his nineteenth

year; but he went no further, though he held firmly to Manicheanism for nine years, during
which he endeavored to convert all his friends, scorned the sacraments of the Church, and held
frequent disputations with catholic believers.
Having finished his studies, he returned to Thagaste and began to teach grammar, living in the
house of Romanianus, a prominent citizen who had been of much service to him since his
father's death, and whom he converted to Manicheanism. Monnica deeply grieved at her son's
heresy, forbade him her house, until reassured by a vision that promised his restoration. She
comforted herself also by the word of a certain bishop (probably of Thagaste) that "the child of
so many tears could not be lost." He seems to have spent little more than a year in Thagaste,
when the desire for a wider field, together with the death of a dear friend, moved him to return to
Carthage as a teacher of rhetoric.
The next period was a time of diligent study, and produced (about the end of 380) the treatise,
long since lost, De pulchro et apto. Meanwhile the hold of Manicheanism on him was loosening.
Its feeble cosmology and metaphysics had long since failed to satisfy him, and the astrological
superstitions springing from the credulity of its disciples offended his reason. The members of
the sect, unwilling to lose him, had great hopes from a meeting with their leader Faustus of
Mileve; but when he came to Carthage in the autumn of 382, he too proved disappointing, and
Augustine ceased to be at heart a Manichean. He was not yet, however, prepared to put anything
in the place of the doctrine he had held, and remained in outward communion with his former
associates while he pursued his search for truth. Soon after his Manichean convictions had
broken down, he left Carthage for Rome, partly, it would seem, to escape the preponderating
influence of his mother on a mind which craved perfect freedom of investigation. Here he was
brought more than ever, by obligations of friendship and gratitude, into close association with
Manicheans, of whom there were many in Rome, not merely auditores but perfecti or fully
initiated members. This did not last long, however, for the prefect Symmachus sent him to Milan,
certainly before the beginning of 385, in answer to a request for a professor of rhetoric.
The change of residence completed Augustine's separation from Manicheanism. He listened to
the preaching of Ambrose and by it was made acquainted with the allegorical interpretation of
the Scriptures and the weakness of the Manichean Biblical criticism, but he was not yet ready to
accept catholic Christianity. His mind was still under the influence of the skeptical philosophy of
the later Academy. This was the least satisfactory stage in his mental development, though his
external circumstances were increasingly favorable. He had his mother again with him now, and
shared a house and garden with her and his devoted friends Alypius and Nebridius, who had
followed him to Milan; his assured social position is shown also by the fact that, in deference to
his mother's entreaties, he was formally betrothed to a woman of suitable station. As a
catechumen of the Church, he listened regularly to the sermons of Ambrose. The bishop, though
as yet he knew nothing of Augustine's internal struggles, had welcomed him in the friendliest
manner both for his own and for Monnica's sake. Yet Augustine was attracted only by Ambrose's
eloquence, not by his faith; now he agreed, and now he questioned. Morally his life was perhaps
at its lowest point. On his betrothal, he had put away the mother of his son; but neither the grief

which he felt at this parting nor regard for his future wife, who was as yet too young for
marriage, prevented him from taking a new concubine for the two intervening years. Sensuality,
however, began to pall upon him, little as he cared to struggle against it. His idealism was by no
means dead; he told Romanian, who came to Milan at this time on business, that he wished he
could live altogether in accordance with the dictates of philosophy; and a plan was even made for
the foundation of a community retired from the world, which should live entirely for the pursuit
of truth. With this project his intention of marriage and his ambition interfered, and Augustine
was further off than ever from peace of mind.
In his thirty-first year he was strongly attracted to Neoplatonism by the logic of his development.
The idealistic character of this philosophy awoke unbounded enthusiasm, and he was attracted to
it also by its exposition of pure intellectual being and of the origin of evil. These doctrines
brought him closer to the Church, though he did not yet grasp the full significance of its central
doctrine of the personality of Jesus Christ. In his earlier writings he names this acquaintance with
the Neoplatonic teaching and its relation to Christianity as the turning-point of his life. The truth,
as it may be established by a careful comparison of his earlier and later writings, is that his
idealism had been distinctly strengthened by Neoplatonism, which had at the same time revealed
his own will, and not a natura altera in him, as the subject of his baser desires. This made the
conflict between ideal and actual in his life more unbearable than ever. Yet his sensual desires
were still so strong that it seemed impossible for him to break away from them.
3. Conversion and Ordination

Help came in a curious way. A countryman of his, Pontitianus, visited him and told him things
which he had never heard about the monastic life and the wonderful conquests over self which
had been won under its inspiration. Augustine's pride was touched; that the unlearned should take
the kingdom of heaven by violence, while he with all his learning was still held captive by the
flesh, seemed unworthy of him. When Pontitianus had gone, with a few vehement words to
Alypius, he went hastily with him into the garden to fight out this new problem. Then followed
the scene so often described. Overcome by his conflicting emotions he left Alypius and threw
himself down under a fig-tree in tears. From a neighboring house came a child's voice repeating
again and again the simple words Tolle, lege, " Take up and read." It seemed to him a heavenly
indication; he picked up the copy of St. Paul's epistles which he had left where he and Alypius
had been sitting, and opened at Romans xiii. When he came to the words, " Let us walk honestly
as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness," it seemed to
him that a decisive message had been sent to his own soul, and his resolve was taken. Alypius
found a word for himself a few lines further, " Him that is weak in the faith receive ye;" and
together they went into the house to bring the good news to Monnica. This was at the end of the
summer of 386.
Augustine, intent on breaking wholly with his old life, gave up his position, and wrote to
Ambrose to ask for baptism. The months which intervened between that summer and the Easter
of the following year, at which, according to the early custom, he intended to receive the
sacrament, were spent in delightful calm at a country-house, put at his disposal by one of his

friends, at Cassisiacum (Casciago, 47 m. n. by w. of Alilan). Here Monnica, Alypius, Adeodatus,


and some of his pupils kept him company, and he still lectured on Vergil to them and held
philosophic discussions. The whole party returned to Milan before Easter (387), and Augustine,
with Alypius and Adeodatus, was baptized. Plans were then made for returning to Africa; but
these were upset by the death of Monnica, which took place at Ostia as they were preparing to
cross the sea, and has been described by her devoted son in one of the most tender and beautiful
passages of the Confessiones. Augustine remained at least another year in Italy, apparently in
Rome, living the same quiet life which he had led at Cassisiacum, studying and writing, in
company with his countryman Evodius, later bishop of Uzalis. Here, where he had been most
closely associated with the Manicheans, his literary warfare with them naturally began; and he
was also writing on free will, though this book was only finished at Hippo in 391. In the autumn
of 388, passing through Carthage, he returned to Thagaste, a far different man from the
Augustine who had left it five years before. Alypius was still with him, and also Adeodatus, who
died young, we do not know when or where. Here Augustine and his friends again took up a
quiet, though not yet in any sense a monastic, life in common, and pursued their favorite studies.
About the beginning of 391, having found a friend in Hippo to help in the foundation of what he
calls a monastery, he sold his inheritance, and was ordained presbyter in response to a general
demand, though not without misgivings on his own part.
The years which he spent in the presbyterate (391-395) are the last of his formative period. The
very earliest works which fall within the time of his episcopate show us the fully developed
theologian of whose special teaching we think when we speak of Augustinianism. There is little
externally noteworthy in these four years. He took up active work not later than the Easter of
391, when we find him preaching to the candidates for baptism. The plans for a monastic
community which had brought him to Hippo were now realized. In a garden given for the
purpose by the bishop, Valerius, he founded his monastery, which seems to have been the first in
Africa, and is of especial significance because it maintained a clerical school and thus made a
connecting link between monastics and the secular clergy. Other details of this period are that he
appealed to Aurelius, bishop of Carthage, to suppress the custom of holding banquets and
entertainments in the churches, and by 395 had succeeded, through his courageous eloquence, in
abolishing it in Hippo; that in 392 a public disputation took place between him and a Manichean
presbyter of Hippo, Fortunatus; that his treatise De fide et symbols was prepared to be read
before the council held at Hippo October 8, 393; and that after that he was in Carthage for a
while, perhaps in connection with the synod held there in 394.
4. Later Years

The intellectual interests of these four years are more easily determined, principally concerned as
they are with the Manichean controversy, and producing the treatises De utilitate credendi (391),
De duabus animabus contra Manichaos (first half of 392), and Contra Adimantum (394 or 395).
His activity against the Donatists also begins in this period, but he is still more occupied with the
Manicheans, both from the recollections of his own past and from his increasing knowledge of
Scripture, which appears, together with a stronger hold on the Church's teaching, in the works
just named, and even more in others of this period, such as his expositions of the Sermon on the

Mount and of the Epistles to the Romans and the Galatians. Full as the writings of this epoch are,
however, of Biblical phrases and terms,-grace and the law, predestination, vocation, justification,
regeneration-a reader who is thoroughly acquainted with Neoplatonism will detect Augustine's
avid love of it in a Christian dress in not a few places. He has entered so far into St. Paul's
teaching that humanity as a whole appears to him a massa peccati or peccatorum, which, if left
to itself, that is, without the grace of God, must inevitably perish. However much we are here
reminded of the later Augustine, it is clear that he still held the belief that the free will of man
could decide his own destiny. He knew some who saw in Romans ix an unconditional
predestination which took away the freedom of the will; but he was still convinced that this was
not the Church's teaching. His opinion on this point did not change till after he was a bishop.
The more widely known Augustine became, the more Valerius, the bishop of Hippo, was afraid
of losing him on the first vacancy of some neighboring see, and desired to fix him permanently
in Hippo by making him coadjutor-bishop,-a desire in which the people ardently concurred.
Augustine was strongly opposed to the project, though possibly neither he nor Valerius knew that
it might be held to be a violation of the eighth canon of Niema, which forbade in its last clause "
two bishops in one city "; and the primate of Numidia, Megalius of Calama, seems to have raised
difficulties which sprang at least partly from a personal lack of confidence. But Valerius carried
his plan through, and not long before Christmas, 395, Augustine was consecrated by Megalius. It
is not known when Valerius died; but it makes little difference, since for the rest of his life he left
the administration more and more in the hands of his assistant. Space forbids any attempt to trace
events of his later life; and in what remains to be said, biographical interest must be largely our
guide. We know a considerable number of events in Augustine's episcopal life which can be
surely placed-the so-called third and eighth synods of Carthage in 397 and 403, at which, as at
those still to be mentioned, he was certainly present; the disputation with the Manichean Felix at
Hippo in 404; the eleventh synod of Carthage in 407; the conference with the Donatists in
Carthage, 411; the synod of Mileve, 416; the African general council at Carthage, 418; the
journey to Caesarea in Mauretania and the disputation with the Donatist bishop there, 418;
another general council in Carthage, 419; and finally the consecration of Eraclius as his assistant
in 426.
5. Anti-Manicheanism and Pelagian Writings

His special and direct opposition to Manicheanism did not last a great while after his
consecration. About 397 he wrote a tractate Contra epistolam [Manichcet] quam vocant
fundamenti; in the De agone christiano, written about the same time, and in the Confessiones, a
little later, numerous anti-Manichean expressions occur. After this, however, he only attacked the
Manicheans on some special occasion, as when, about 400, on the request of his "brethren," he
wrote a detailed rejoinder to Faustus, a Manichean bishop, or made the treatise De natura boni
out of his discussions with Felix; a little later, also, the letter of the Manichean Secundinus gave
him occasion to write Contra Secundinum, which, in spite of its comparative brevity, he regarded
as the best of his writings on this subject. In the succeeding period, he was much more occupied
with anti-Donatist polemics, which in their turn were forced to take second place by the
emergence of the Pelagian controversy.

It has been thought that Augustine's anti-Pelagian teaching grew out of his conception of the
Church and its sacraments as a means of salvation; and attention was called to the fact that
before the Pelagian controversy this aspect of the Church had, through the struggle with the
Donatists, assumed special importance in his mind. But this conception should be denied. It is
quite true that in 395 Augustine's views on sin and grace, freedom and predestination, were not
what they afterward came to be. But the new trend was given to them before the time of his antiDonatist activity, and so before he could have heard anything of Pelagius. What we call
Augustinianism was not a reaction against Pelagianism; it would be much truer to say that the
latter was a reaction against Augustine's views. He himself names the beginning of his episcopate
as the turning-point. Accordingly, in the first thing which he wrote after his consecration, the De
diversis gucestionibus ad Simplicianum (396 or 397), we come already upon the new conception.
In no other of his writings do we see as plainly the gradual attainment of conviction on any point;
as he himself says in the Retractationes, he was laboring for the free choice of the will of man,
but the grace of God won the day. So completely was it won, that we might set forth the
specifically Augustinian teaching on grace, as against the Pelagians and the Massilians, by a
series of quotations taken wholly from this treatise. It is true that much of his later teaching is
still undeveloped here; the question of predestination (though the word is used) does not really
come up; he is not clear as to the term " election"; and nothing is said of the " gift of
perseverance." But what we get on these points later is nothing but the logical consequence of
that which is expressed here, and so we have the actual genesis of Augustine's predestinarian
teaching under our eyes. It is determined by no reference to the question of infant baptism -- still
less by any considerations connected with the conception of the Church. The impulse comes
directly from Scripture, with the help, it is true, of those exegetical thoughts which he mentioned
earlier as those of others and not his own. To be sure, Paul alone can not explain this doctrine of
grace; this is evident from the fact that the very definition of grace is non-Pauline. Grace is for
Augustine, both now and later, not the misericordia peccata condonans of the Reformers, as
justification is not the alteration of the relation to God accomplished by means of the accipere
remissionem. Grace is rather the misericordia which displays itself in the divine inspiratio and
justification is justum or pium fieri as a result of this. We may even say that this grace is an
interne illuminatio such as a study of Augustine's Neoplatonism enables us easily to understand,
which restores the connection with the divine bonum esse. He had long been convinced that " not
only the greatest but also the smallest good things can not be, except from him from whom are
all good things, that is, from God;" and it might well seem to him to follow from this that faith,
which is certainly a good thing, could proceed from the operation of God alone. This explains the
idea that grace works like a law of nature, drawing the human will to God with a divine
omnipotence. Of course this Neoplatonic coloring must not be exaggerated; it is more consistent
with itself in his earlier writings than in the later, and he would never have arrived at his
predestinarian teaching without the New Testament. With this knowledge, we are in a position to
estimate the force of a difficulty which now confronted Augustine for the first time, but never
afterward left him, and which has been present in the Roman Catholic teaching even down to the
Councils of Trent and the Vatican. If faith depends upon an action of our own, solicited but not
caused by vocation, it can only save a man when, per fidem gratiam accipiens, he becomes one
who not merely believes in God but loves him also. But if faith has been already inspired by

grace, and if, while the Scripture speaks of justification by faith, it is held (in accordance with the
definition of grace) that justification follows upon the infitsio caritatis, -then either the
conception of the faith which is God-inspired must pass its fluctuating boundaries and, approach
nearer to that of caritas, or the conception of faith which is unconnected with caritas will render
the fact of its inspiration unintelligible and justification by faith impossible. Augustine's antiPelagian writings set forth this doctrine of grace more clearly in some points, such as the terms "
election," " predestination," " the gift of perseverance," and also more logically; but space forbids
us to show this here, as the part taken in this controversy by Augustine is so fully detailed
elsewhere.
6. Activity Against Donatism

In order to arrive at a decision as to what influence the Donatist controversy had upon
Augustine's intellectual development, it is necessary to see how long and how intensely he was
concerned with it. We have seen that even before he was a bishop he was defending the catholic
Church against the Donatists; and after his consecration he took part directly or indirectly in all
the important discussions of the matter, some of which have been already mentioned, and
defended the cause of the Church in letters and sermons as well as in his more formal polemical
writings. The first of these which belongs to the period of his episcopate, Contra partem Donati,
has been lost; about 400 he wrote the two cognate treatises Contra epistulam Parmeniani (the
Donatist bishop of Carthage) and De baptismo contra Donatistas. He was considered by the
schismatics as their chief antagonist, and was obliged to defend himself against a libelous attack
on their part in a rejoinder now lost. From the years 401 and 402 we have the reply to the
Donatist bishop of Cirta, Contra epistulam Petiliani, and also the Epistula ad catholicos de
unitate ecclesioe. The conflict was now reaching its most acute stage. After the Carthaginian
synod of 403 had made preparations for a decisive debate with the Donatists, and the latter had
declined to fall in with the plan, the bitterness on both sides increased. Another synod at
Carthage the following year decided that the emperor should be asked for penal laws against the
Donatists. Honorius granted the request; but the employment of force in matters of belief brought
up a new point of discord between the two sides. When these laws were abrogated (409), the plan
of a joint conference was tried once more in June, 411, under imperial authority, nearly 300
bishops being present from each side, with Augustine and Aurelius of Carthage as the chief
representatives of the Catholic cause. In the following year, the Donatists proving insubordinate,
Honorius issued a new and severer edict against them, which proved the beginning of the end for
the schism. For these years from 405 to 412 we have twenty-one extant letters of Augustine's
bearing on the controversy, and there were eight formal treatises, but four of these are lost. Those
which we still have are: Contra Cresconium grammaticum (about 406); De unico baptismio
(about 410 or 411), in answer to a work of the same name by Petilian; the brief report of the
conference (end of 411); and the Liber contra Donatistas post collationem (probably 412).
7. Development of His Views

The earliest of the extant works against the Donatists present the same views of the Church and
its sacraments which Augustine developed later. The principles which he represented in this

conflict are merely those which, in a simpler form, had either appeared in the anti-Donatist
polemics before his time or had been part of his own earlier belief. What he did was to formulate
them with more dogmatic precision,. and to permeate the ordinary controversial theses with his
own deep thoughts on unitas, caritas, and inspiratio gratice in the Church, thoughts which again
trace their origin back to his Neoplatonic foundations. In the course of the conflict he changed
his opinion about the methods to be employed; he had at first been opposed to the employment
of force, but later came to the " Compel them to come in " point of view. It may well be doubted,
however, if the practical struggle with the schismatics had as much to do with Augustine's
development as has been supposed. Far more weight must be attached to the fact that Augustine
had become a presbyter and a bishop of the catholic Church, and as such worked continually
deeper into the ecclesiastical habit of thought. This was not hard for the son of Monnica and the
reverent admirer of Ambrose. His position as a bishop may fairly be said to be the only
determining factor in his later views besides his Neoplatonist foundation, his earnest study of the
Scripture, and the predestinarian conception of grace which he got from this. Everything else is
merely secondary. Thus we find Augustine practically complete by the beginning of his
episcopate-about the time when he wrote the Confessiones. It would be too much to say that his
development stood still after that; the Biblical and ecclesiastical coloring of his thoughts
becomes more and more visible and even vivid; but such development as this is no more
significant than the effect of the years seen upon a strong face; in fact, it is even less observable
here-for while the characteristic features of his spiritual mind stand out more sharply as time
goes on with Augustine, his mental force shows scarcely a sign of age at seventy. His health was
uncertain after 386, and his body aged before the time; on Sept. 26, 426, he solemnly designated
Eraclius (or Heraclius) as his successor, though without consecrating him bishop, and transferred
to him such a portion of his duties as was possible. But his intellectual vigor remained unabated
to the end. We see him, as Prosper depicts him in his chronicle, " answering the books of Julian
in the very end of his days, while the on-rushing Vandals were at the gates, and gloriously
persevering in the defense of Christian grace." In the third month of the siege of Hippo by the
barbarian invaders, he fell ill of a fever and, after lingering more than ten days, died Aug. 28,
430. He was able to read on his sick-bed; he had the Penitential Psalms placed upon the wall of
his room where he could see them. Meditating upon them, he fulfilled what he had often said
before, that even Christians revered for the sanctity of their lives, even presbyters, ought not to
leave the world without fitting thoughts of penitence.

Thomas Aquinas (12251274)

Saint Thomas Aquinas was a Catholic Priest in the Dominican Order and one of the most
important Medieval philosophers and theologians. He was immensely influenced by
scholasticism and Aristotle and known for his synthesis of the two aforementioned traditions.
Although he wrote many works of philosophy and theology throughout his life, his most
influential work is the Summa Theologica which consists of three parts.
The first part is on God. In it, he gives five proofs for God's existence as well as an explication of
His attributes. He argues for the actuality and incorporeality of God as the unmoved mover and
describes how God moves through His thinking and willing.
The second part is on Ethics. Thomas argues for a variation of the Aristotelian Virtue Ethics.
However, unlike Aristotle, he argues for a connection between the virtuous man and God by
explaining how the virtuous act is one towards the blessedness of the Beatific Vision (beata
visio).
The last part of the Summa is on Christ and was unfinished when Thomas died. In it, he shows
how Christ not only offers salvation, but represents and protects humanity on Earth and in
Heaven. This part also briefly discusses the sacraments and eschatology. The Summa remains the
most influential of Thomass works and is mostly what will be discussed in this overview of his
philosophy.
1. Life

The birth-year of Thomas Aquinas is commonly given as 1227, but he was probably born early in
1225 at his father's castle of Roccasecea (75 m. e.s.e. of Rome) in Neapolitan territory. He died at
the monastery of Fossanova, one mile from Sonnino (64 m. s.e. of Rome), Mar. 7, 1274. His
father was Count Landulf of an old high-born south Italian family, and his mother was Countess

Theodora of Theate, of noble Norman descent. In his fifth year he was sent for his early
education to the monastery of Monte Cassino, where his father's brother Sinibald was abbot.
Later he studied in Naples. By about 1243 he determined to enter the Dominican order; but on
the way to Rome he was seized by his brothers and brought back to his parents at the castle of S.
Giovanni, where he was held a captive for a year or two and besieged with prayers, threats, and
even sensual temptation to make him relinquish his purpose. Finally the family yielded and the
order sent Thomas to Cologne to study under Albertus Magnus, where he arrived probably
toward the end of 1244. He accompanied Albertus to Paris in 1245, remained there with his
teacher, continuing his studies for three years, and followed Albertus at the latter's return to
Cologne in 1248. For several years longer he remained with the famous philosopher of
scholasticism, presumably teaching. This long association of Thomas with the great polyhistor
was the most important influence in his development; it made him a comprehensive scholar and
won him permanently for the Aristotelian method. Around 1252 Thomas went to Paris for the
master's degree, which he found some difficulty in attaining owing to attacks, at that time on the
mendicant orders. Ultimately, however, he received the degree and entered ceremoniously upon
his office of teaching in 1257; he taught in Paris for several years and there wrote certain of his
works and began others. In 1259 he was present at an important chapter of his order at
Valenciennes at the solicitation of Pope Urban IV. Therefore not before the latter part of 1261, he
took up residence in Rome. In 1269-71 he was again active in Paris. In 1272 the provincial
chapter at Florence empowered him to found a new studium generale at any place he should
choose, and he selected Naples. Early in 1274 the pope directed him to attend the Council of
Lyons and he undertook the journey, although he was far from well. On the way he stopped at the
castle of a niece and became seriously ill. He wished to end his days in a monastery and not
being able to reach a house of the Dominicans he was carried to the Cistercian Fossanova. There
he died and his remains were preserved.
a. The Summa Part I: God

The greatest work of Thomas was the Summa, and it is the fullest presentation of his views. He
worked on it from the time of Clement IV (after 1265) until the end of his life. When he died he
had reached question ninety of part III, on the subject of penance. What was lacking was
afterward added from the fourth book of his commentary on the "Sentences" of Peter Lombard as
a supplementum, which is not found in manuscripts of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
The Summa consists of three parts. Part I treats of God, who is the "first cause, himself
uncaused" (primum movens immobile) and as such existent only in act (actu), that is pure
actuality without potentiality and, therefore, without corporeality. His essence is actus purus et
perfectus. This follows from the fivefold proof for the existence of God; namely, there must be a
first mover himself unmoved, a first cause in the chain of causes, an absolutely necessary being,
an absolutely perfect being, and a rational designer. In this connection the thoughts of the unity,
infinity, unchangeableness, and goodness of the highest being are deduced. The spiritual being of
God is further defined as thinking and willing. His knowledge is absolutely perfect since he
knows himself and all things as appointed by him. Since every knowing being strives after the
thing known as end, will is implied in knowing. Inasmuch as God knows himself as the perfect
good, he wills himself as end. But in that everything is willed by God, everything is brought by

the divine will to himself in the relation of means to end. Therein God wills good to every being
which exists, that is he loves it; and, therefore, love is the fundamental relation of God to the
world. If the divine love be thought of simply as act of will, it exists for every creature in like
measure: but if the good assured by love to the individual be thought of, it exists for different
beings in various degrees. In so far as the loving God gives to every being what it needs in
relation practical reason, affording the idea of the moral law of nature, so important in medieval
ethics.
b. The Summa Part II: Ethics

The first part of the Summa is summed up in the thought that God governs the world as the
universal first cause. God sways the intellect in that he gives the power to know aid impresses
the species intelligibileson the mind; and he ways the will in that he holds the good before it as
aim, and creates the virtus volendi. To will is nothing else than a certain inclination toward the
object of the volition which is the universal good. God works all in all, but so that things also
themselves exert their proper efficiency. Here the Areopagitic ideas of the graduated effects of
created things play their part in Thomas's thought. The second part of the Summa (consisting of
two parts, namely, prima secundae and secundae, secunda) follows this complex of ideas. Its
theme is man's striving after the highest end, which is the blessedness of the visio beata. Here
Thomas develops his system of ethics, which has its root in Aristotle. In a chain of acts of will
man strives for the highest end. They are free acts in so far as man has in himself the knowledge
of their end and therein the principle of action. In that the will wills the end, it wills also the
appropriate means, chooses freely and completes the consensus. Whether the act be good or evil
depends on the end. The "human reason" pronounces judgment concerning the character of the
end, it is, therefore, the law for action. Human acts, however, are meritorious in so far as they
promote the purpose of God and his honor. By repeating a good action man acquires a moral
habit or a quality which enables him to do the good gladly and easily. This is true, however, only
of the intellectual and moral virtues, which Thomas treats after the mariner of Aristotle; the
theological virtues are imparted by God to man as a "disposition" from which the acts here
proceed, but while they strengthen, they do not form it. The "disposition" of evil is the opposite
alternative. An act becomes evil through deviation from the reason and the divine moral law.
Therefore, sin involves two factors: its substance or matter is lust; in form, however, it is
deviation from the divine law. Sin has its origin in the will, which decides, against the reason, for
a changeable good. Since, however, the will also moves the other powers of man, sin has its seat
in these too. By choosing such a lower good as end, the will is misled by self-love, so that this
works as cause in every sin. God is not the cause of sin, since, on the contrary, he draws all
things to himself. But from another side God is the cause of all things, so he is efficacious also in
sin as *-ctio but not as ens. The devil is not directly the cause of sin, but he incites by working on
the imagination and the sensuous impulse of man, as men or things may also do. Sin is original.
Adam's first sin passes upon himself and all the succeeding race; because he is the head of the
human race and "by virtue of procreation human nature is transmitted and along with nature its
infection." The powers of generation are, therefore, designated especially as "infected."

In every work of God both justice and mercy are united, and his justice always presupposes his
mercy since he owes no one anything and gives more bountifully than is due. As God rules in the
world, the "plan of the order of things" preexists in him; i.e., his providence and the exercise of it
in his government are what condition as cause everything which comes to pass in the world.
Hence follows predestination: from eternity, some are destined to eternal life; while others "he
permits some to fall short of that end." Reprobation, however, is more than mere foreknowledge;
it is the "will of permitting anyone to fall into sin and incur the penalty of condemnation for sin."
The effect of predestination is grace. Since God is the first cause of everything, he is the cause of
even the free acts of men through predestination. Determinism is deeply grounded in the system
of Thomas; things with their source of becoming in God are ordered from eternity as means for
the realization of his end in himself. On moral grounds Thomas advocates freedom energetically;
but, with his premises, he can have in mind only the psychological form of self-motivation.
Nothing in the world is accidental or free, although it may appear so in reference to the
proximate cause. From this point of view miracles become necessary in themselves and are to be
considered merely as inexplicable to man. From the point of view of the first cause all is
unchangeable; although from the limited point of view of the secondary cause miracles may be
spoken of. In his doctrine of the Trinity, Thomas starts from the Augustinian system. Since God
has only the functions of thinking and willing, only twoprocessiones can be asserted from the
Father. However, these establish definite relations of the persons of the Trinity to each other. The
relations must be conceived as real and not as merely ideal; for, as with creatures relations arise
through certain accidents, since in God there is no accident but all is substance, it follows that
"the relation really existing in God is the same as the essence according to the thing." From
another side, however, the relations as real must be really distinguished one from another.
Therefore, three persons are to be affirmed in God. Man stands opposite to God; he consists of
soul and body. The "intellectual soul" consists of intellect and will. Furthermore the soul is the
absolutely indivisible form of man; it is immaterial substance, but not one and the same in all
men (as the Averrhoists assumed). The soul's power of knowing has two sides; a passive
(the intellectus possibilis) and an active (theintellectus agens). It is the capacity to form concepts
and to abstract the mind's images (species) from the objects perceived by sense. However, since
the abstractions of the intellect from individual things is a universal, the mind knows the
universal primarily and directly, and knows the singular only indirectly by virtue of a certain
reflection. As certain principles are immanent in the mind for its speculative activity, so also a
"special disposition of works," or the synderesis (rudiment of conscience), is inborn in the
scholastics. Held to creationism, they therefore taught that the souls are created by God. Two
things according to Thomas constituted man's righteousness in paradise-the justitia originalis or
the harmony of all man's powers before they were blighted by desire, and the possession of
the gratia gratum faciens(the continuous indwelling power of good). Both are lost through
original sin, which in form is the "loss of original righteousness." The consequence of this loss is
the disorder and maiming of man's nature, which shows itself in "ignorance, malice, moral
weakness, and especially in concupiscentia, which is the material principle of original sin." The
course of thought here is as follows: when the first man transgressed the order of his nature
appointed by nature and grace, he, and with him the human race, lost this order. This negative
state is the essence of original sin. From it follow an impairment and perversion of human nature

in which thenceforth lower aims rule contrary to nature and release the lower element in man.
Since sin is contrary to the divine order, it is guilt, and subject to punishment. Guilt and
punishment correspond to each other; and since the "apostasy from the invariable good which is
infinite," fulfilled by man, is unending, it merits everlasting punishment.
c. The Summa Part III: Christ

The way which leads to God is Christ: and Christ is the theme of part III. It can not be asserted
that the incarnation was absolutely necessary, "since God in his omnipotent power could have
repaired human nature in many other ways": but it was the most suitable way both for the
purpose of instruction and of satisfaction. The unio between the logos and the human nature is a
"relation" between the divine and the human nature which comes about by both natures being
brought together in the one person of the logos. An incarnation can be spoken of only in the
sense that the human nature began to be in the eternal hypostasis of the divine nature. So Christ
is unum since his human nature lacks the hypostasis. The person of the logos, accordingly, has
assumed the impersonal human nature, and in such way that the assumption of the soul became
the means for the assumption of the body. This union with the human soul is the gratia unionis
which leads to the impartation of the gratia habitualis from the logos to the human nature.
Thereby all human potentialities are made perfect in Jesus. Besides the perfections given by the
vision of God, which Jesus enjoyed from the beginning, he receives all others by the gratia
habitualis. In so far, however, as it is the limited human nature which receives these perfections,
they are finite. This holds both of the knowledge and the will of Christ. The logos impresses
the species intelligibiles of all created things on the soul, but the intellectus agens transforms
them gradually into the impressions of sense. On another side, the soul of Christ works miracles
only as instrument of the logos, since omnipotence in no way appertains to this human soul in
itself. Furthermore, Christ's human nature partook of imperfections, on the one side to make his
true humanity evident, on another side because he would bear the general consequences of sin
for humanity. Christ experienced suffering, but blessedness reigned in his soul, which, however,
did not extend to his body. Concerning redemption, Thomas teaches that Christ is to be regarded
as redeemer after his human nature but in such way that the human nature produces divine
effects as organ of divinity. The one side of the work of redemption consists herein, that Christ as
head of humanity imparts perfection and virtue to his members. He is the teacher and example of
humanity; his whole life and suffering as well as his work after he is exalted serve this end.
This is the first course of thought. Then follows a second complex of thoughts which has the idea
of satisfaction as its center. To be sure, God as the highest being could forgive sins without
satisfaction; but because his justice and mercy could be best revealed through satisfaction he
chose this way. As little, however, as satisfaction is necessary in itself, so little does it offer an
equivalent, in a correct sense, for guilt; it is rather a "super-abundant satisfaction," since on
account of the divine subject in Christ in a certain sense his suffering and activity are infinite.
With this thought the strict logical deduction of Anselm's theory is given up. Christ's suffering
bore personal character in that it proceeded out of love and obedience. It was an offering brought
to God, which as personal act had the character of merit. Thereby Christ "merited" salvation for
men. As Christ still influences men, so does he still work in their behalf continually in heaven

through the intercession (interpellatio). In this way Christ as head of humanity effects the
forgiveness of their sins, their reconciliation with God, their immunity from punishment,
deliverance from the devil, and the opening of heaven's gate. But inasmuch as all these benefits
are already offered through the inner operation of the love of Christ, Thomas has combined the
theories of Anselm and Abelard by joining the one to the other.
3. The Sacraments

The doctrine of the sacraments follows the Christology; for the sacraments "have efficacy from
the incarnate Word himself." The sacraments are signs which not only signify sanctification, but
also effect it. That they bring spiritual gifts in sensuous form, moreover, is inevitable because of
the sensuous nature of man. The res sensibles are the matter, the words of institution are the form
of the sacranieits. Contrary to the Franciscan view that the sacraments are mere symbol, whose
efficacy God accompanies with a directly following creative act in the soul, Thomas holds it not
unfit to say with Hugo of St. Victor that "a sacrament contains grace," or to teach of the
sacraments that they "cause grace." Thomas attempts to remove the difficulty of a sensuous thing
producing a creative effect by a distinction between the causa principalis et instrumentalism.
God as the principal cause works through the sensuous thing as the means ordained by him for
his end. "Just as instrumental power is acquired by the instrument from this, that it is moved by
the principal agent, so also the sacrament obtains spiritual power from the benediction of Christ
and the application of the minister to the use of the sacrament. There is spiritual power in the
sacraments in so far as they have been ordained by God for a spiritual effect." This spiritual
power remains in the sensuous thing until it has attained its purpose. Thomas distinguished
the gratia sacramentalis from the gratia virtutum et donorum in that the former in general
perfects the essence and the powers of the soul, and the latter in particular brings to pass
necessary spiritual effects for the Christian life. Although, later this distinction was ignored.
In a single statement the effect of the sacraments is to infuse justifying grace into men. Christ's
humanity was the instrument for the operation of his divinity; the sacraments are the instruments
through which this operation of Christ's humanity passes over to men. Christ's humanity served
his divinity as instrumentum conjuncture, like the hand; the sacraments are instruments separate,
like a staff; the former can use the latter, as the hand can use a staff.
Of Thomas' eschatology, according to the commentary on the "Sentences," only a brief account
can here be given. Everlasting blessedness consists for Thomas in the vision of God; and this
vision consists not in an abstraction or in a mental image supernaturally produced, but the divine
substance itself is beheld. In such a manner, God himself becomes immediately the form of the
beholding intellect; that is, God is the object of the vision and at the same time causes the vision.
The perfection of the blessed also demands that the body be restored to the soul as something to
be made perfect by it. Since blessedness consist in operation, it is made more perfect in that the
soul has a definite opcralio with the body. Although, the peculiar act of blessedness (that is, the
vision of God) has nothing to do with the body.

Niccol Machiavelli

Niccol di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (Italian: [nikkol mmakjavlli]; 3 May 1469 21 June
1527) was an Italian Renaissance historian, politician, diplomat, philosopher, humanist, and
writer.[1] [2] He has often been called the founder of modern political science.[3] He was for many
years a senior official in the Florentine Republic, with responsibilities in diplomatic and military
affairs. He also wrote comedies, carnival songs, and poetry. His personal correspondence is
renowned in the Italian language. He was secretary to the Second Chancery of the Republic of
Florence from 1498 to 1512, when the Medici were out of power. He wrote his most renowned
work The Prince (Il Principe) in 1513.
"Machiavellianism" is a widely used negative term to characterize unscrupulous politicians of
the sort Machiavelli described most famously in The Prince. Machiavelli described immoral
behavior, such as dishonesty and killing innocents, as being normal and effective in politics. He
even seemed to endorse it in some situations. The book itself gained notoriety when some
readers claimed that the author was teaching evil, and providing "evil recommendations to
tyrants to help them maintain their power."[4] The term "Machiavellian" is often associated with
political deceit, deviousness, and realpolitik. On the other hand, many commentators, such as
Baruch Spinoza, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Denis Diderot, have argued that Machiavelli was
actually a republican, even when writing The Prince, and his writings were an inspiration to
Enlightenment proponents of modern democratic political philosophy.[5][6][7]

Life

Machiavelli was born in Florence, Italy, the third child and first son of attorney Bernardo di
Niccol Machiavelli and his wife, Bartolomea di Stefano Nelli.[8] The Machiavelli family is
believed to be descended from the old marquesses of Tuscany and to have produced thirteen
Florentine Gonfalonieres of Justice,[9] one of the offices of a group of nine citizens selected by
drawing lots every two months and who formed the government, or Signoria; but he was never a
full citizen of Florence because of the nature of Florentine citizenship in that time even under the
republican regime. Machiavelli married Marietta Corsini in 1502.[10]

Machiavelli was born in a tumultuous era in which popes waged acquisitive wars against Italian
city-states, and people and cities often fell from power as France, Spain, the Holy Roman
Empire, and Switzerland battled for regional influence and control. Political-military alliances
continually changed, featuring condottieri (mercenary leaders), who changed sides without
warning, and the rise and fall of many short-lived governments.[11]
Machiavelli was taught grammar, rhetoric, and Latin. It is thought that he did not learn Greek
even though Florence was at the time one of the centers of Greek scholarship in Europe. In 1494
Florence restored the republic, expelling the Medici family that had ruled Florence for some
sixty years. Shortly after the execution of Savonarola, Machiavelli was appointed to an office of
the second chancery, a medieval writing office that put Machiavelli in charge of the production
of official Florentine government documents. Shortly thereafter, he was also made the secretary
of the Dieci di Libert e Pace.
In the first decade of the sixteenth century, he carried out several diplomatic missions: most
notably to the Papacy in Rome. Moreover, from 1502 to 1503, he witnessed the brutal reality of
the state-building methods of Cesare Borgia (14751507) and his father, Pope Alexander VI,
who were then engaged in the process of trying to bring a large part of Central Italy under their
possession. The pretext of defending Church interests was used as a partial justification by the
Borgias. Other excursions to the court of Louis XII and the Spanish court influenced his writings
such as The Prince.
Between 1503 and 1506, Machiavelli was responsible for the Florentine militia. He distrusted
mercenaries (a distrust that he explained in his official reports and then later in his theoretical
works for to their unpatriotic and uninvested nature in war that makes their allegiance fickle and
often too unreliable when most needed) and instead staffed his army with citizens, a policy that
was to be repeatedly successful. Under his command, Florentine citizen-soldiers defeated Pisa in
1509.
However, Machiavelli's success did not last. In August 1512 the Medici, backed by Pope Julius II
used Spanish troops to defeat the Florentines at Prato, but many historians have argued that it
was due to Piero Soderini's unwillingness to compromise with the Medici, who were holding

Prato under siege. In the wake of the siege, Soderini resigned as Florentine head of state and left
in exile. The experience would, like Machiavelli's time in foreign courts and with the Borgia,
heavily influence his political writings.
After the Medici victory, the Florentine city-state and the republic were dissolved, and
Machiavelli was deprived of office in 1512. In 1513 the Medici accused him of conspiracy
against them and had him imprisoned. Despite having been subjected to torture ("with the rope"
in which the prisoner is hanged from his bound wrists, from the back, forcing the arms to bear
the body's weight and dislocating the shoulders), he denied involvement and was released after
three weeks.

Machiavelli then retired to his estate at Sant'Andrea in Percussina, near San Casciano in Val di
Pesa, and devoted himself to studying and writing of the political treatises that earned his place
in the intellectual development of political philosophy and political conduct.[12]
Despairing of the opportunity to remain directly involved in political matters, after a time, he
began to participate in intellectual groups in Florence and wrote several plays that (unlike his
works on political theory) were both popular and widely known in his lifetime. Still, politics
remained his main passion and, to satisfy this interest, he maintained a well-known
correspondence with more politically connected friends, attempting to become involved once
again in political life.[13]
In a letter to Francesco Vettori, he described his exile:
When evening comes, I go back home, and go to my study. On the threshold, I take off my work
clothes, covered in mud and filth, and I put on the clothes an ambassador would wear. Decently
dressed, I enter the ancient courts of rulers who have long since died. There, I am warmly
welcomed, and I feed on the only food I find nourishing and was born to savor. I am not ashamed
to talk to them and ask them to explain their actions and they, out of kindness, answer me. Four
hours go by without my feeling any anxiety. I forget every worry. I am no longer afraid of
poverty or frightened of death. I live entirely through them.[14]
Machiavelli died in 1527 at 58 after receiving his last rites.[15] He was buried at the Church of
Santa Croce in Florence. An epitaph honoring him is inscribed on his monument. The Latin
legend reads: TANTO NOMINI NULLUM PAR ELOGIUM ("So great a name (has) no adequate praise"
or "No eulogy (would be) a match for such a great name").

Machiavelli's best-known book Il Principe contains several maxims concerning politics. Instead
of the more traditional target audience of a hereditary prince, it concentrates on the possibility of
a "new prince". To retain power, the hereditary prince must carefully balance the interests of a
variety of institutions to which the people are accustomed. By contrast a new prince has the more

difficult task in ruling: He must first stabilize his newfound power in order to build an enduring
political structure. Machiavelli suggests that the social benefits of stability and security can be
achieved in the face of moral corruption. Machiavelli believed that public and private morality
had to be understood as two different things in order to rule well. As a result, a ruler must be
concerned not only with reputation, but also must be positively willing to act immorally at the
right times. As a political theorist, Machiavelli emphasized the occasional need for the
methodical exercise of brute force or deceit including extermination of entire noble families to
head off any chance of a challenge to the prince's authority.

Engraved portrait of Machiavelli, from the Peace Palace Library's Il Principe,


published in 1769

Scholars often note that Machiavelli glorifies instrumentality in statebuilding, an approach


embodied by the saying "The ends justify the means." It should be noted that this quote has been
disputed and may not come from Niccol Machiavelli or his writings. Violence may be necessary
for the successful stabilization of power and introduction of new legal institutions. Force may be
used to eliminate political rivals, to coerce resistant populations, and to purge the community of
other men strong enough of character to rule, who will inevitably attempt to replace the ruler.
Machiavelli has become infamous for such political advice, ensuring that he would be
remembered in history through the adjective, "Machiavellian".
Notwithstanding some mitigating themes, the Catholic Church banned The Prince, putting it on
the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. Humanists also viewed the book negatively, including
Erasmus of Rotterdam. As a treatise, its primary intellectual contribution to the history of
political thought is the fundamental break between political realism and political idealism, due to
it being a manual on acquiring and keeping political power. In contrast with Plato and Aristotle,
Machiavelli insisted that an imaginary ideal society is not a model by which a prince should
orient himself.
Concerning the differences and similarities in Machiavelli's advice to ruthless and tyrannical
princes in The Prince and his more republican exhortations in Discourses on Livy, many have
concluded that The Prince, although written as advice for a monarchical prince, contains
arguments for the superiority of republican regimes, similar to those found in the Discourses. In
the 18th century, the work was even called a satire, for example by Jean-Jacques Rousseau.[16][17]
More recently, commentators such as Leo Strauss and Harvey Mansfield have agreed that The
Prince can be read as having a deliberate comical irony.[18]
Other interpretations include for example that of Antonio Gramsci, who argued that
Machiavelli's audience for this work was not even the ruling class but the common people
because the rulers already knew these methods through their education.
The Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy, published in 1531, written 1517, often
referred to simply as the "Discourses" or Discorsi, is nominally a discussion regarding the

classical history of early Ancient Rome although it strays very far from this subject matter and
also uses contemporary political examples to illustrate points. Machiavelli presents it as a series
of lessons on how a republic should be started and structured. It is a larger work than The Prince,
and while it more openly explains the advantages of republics, it also contains many similar
themes. Commentators disagree about how much the two works agree with each other,
frequently referring to leaders of democracies as "princes". It includes early versions of the
concept of checks and balances, and asserts the superiority of a republic over a principality. It
became one of the central texts of republicanism, and has often been argued to be a superior
work to The Prince.[19]
From The Discourses:

"In fact, when there is combined under the same constitution a prince, a
nobility, and the power of the people, then these three powers will watch and
keep each other reciprocally in check." Book I, Chapter II

"Doubtless these means [of attaining power] are cruel and destructive of all
civilized life, and neither Christian, nor even human, and should be avoided
by every one. In fact, the life of a private citizen would be preferable to that
of a king at the expense of the ruin of so many human beings." Bk I, Ch XXVI

"Now, in a well-ordered republic, it should never be necessary to resort to


extra-constitutional measures. ..." Bk I, Ch XXXIV

"... the governments of the people are better than those of princes." Book I,
Chapter LVIII

"... if we compare the faults of a people with those of princes, as well as their
respective good qualities, we shall find the people vastly superior in all that is
good and glorious". Book I, Chapter LVIII

"For government consists mainly in so keeping your subjects that they shall
be neither able, nor disposed to injure you. ..." Bk II, Ch XXIII

"... no prince is ever benefited by making himself hated." Book III, Chapter
XIX

"Let not princes complain of the faults committed by the people subjected to
their authority, for they result entirely from their own negligence or bad
example." Bk III, Ch XXIX [20]

Other political and historical works[edit]

Peter Withorne's 1573 translation of The Art of War

Discorso sopra le cose di Pisa (1499)

Del modo di trattare i popoli della Valdichiana ribellati (1502)

Descrizione del modo tenuto dal Duca Valentino nello ammazzare Vitellozzo
Vitelli, Oliverotto da Fermo, il Signor Pagolo e il duca di Gravina Orsini (1502)
A Description of the Methods Adopted by the Duke Valentino when
Murdering Vitellozzo Vitelli, Oliverotto da Fermo, the Signor Pagolo, and the
Duke di Gravina Orsini

Discorso sopra la provisione del danaro (1502) A discourse about the


provision of money.

Ritratti delle cose di Francia (1510) Portrait of the affairs of France.

Ritracto delle cose della Magna (15081512) Portrait of the affairs of


Germany.

Dell'Arte della Guerra (15191520) The Art of War, high military science.

Discorso sopra il riformare lo stato di Firenze (1520) A discourse about the


reforming of Florence.

Sommario delle cose della citta di Lucca (1520) A summary of the affairs of
the city of Lucca.

The Life of Castruccio Castracani of Lucca (1520) Vita di Castruccio


Castracani da Lucca, a short biography.

Istorie Florentine (15201525) Florentine Histories, an eight-volume history


of the city-state Florence, commissioned by Giulio de' Medici, later Pope
Clement VII.

Fictional works[edit]

Besides being a statesman and political scientist, Machiavelli also translated classical works, and
was a playwright (Clizia, Mandragola), a poet (Sonetti, Canzoni, Ottave, Canti carnascialeschi),
and a novelist (Belfagor arcidiavolo).
Some of his other work:

Decennale primo (1506) a poem in terza rima.

Decennale secondo (1509) a poem.

Andria or The Girl From Andros (1517) a semi-autobiographical comedy,


adapted from Terence.[21]

Mandragola (1518) The Mandrake a five-act prose comedy, with a verse


prologue.

Clizia (1525) a prose comedy.

Belfagor arcidiavolo (1515), a novella.

Asino d'oro (1517) The Golden Ass is a terza rima poem, a new version of
the classic work by Apuleius.

Frammenti storici (1525) Fragments of stories.

Other works[edit]

Della Lingua (Italian for "Of the Language") (1514), a dialogue about Italy's language is
normally attributed to Machiavelli.
Machiavelli's literary executor, Giuliano de' Ricci, also reported having seen that Machiavelli, his
grandfather, made a comedy in the style of Aristophanes which included living Florentines as
characters, and to be titled Le Maschere. It has been suggested that due to such things as this and
his style of writing to his superiors generally, there was very likely some animosity to
Machiavelli even before the return of the Medici.[22]
Originality[edit]

Commentators have taken very different approaches to Machiavelli and not always agreed.
Major discussion has tended to be about two issues: first, how unified and philosophical his work
is, and second, concerning how innovative or traditional it is.[23]
Coherence[edit]

There is some disagreement concerning how best to describe the unifying themes, if there are
any, that can be found in Machiavelli's works, especially in the two major political works, The
Prince and Discourses. Some commentators have described him as inconsistent, and perhaps as
not even putting a high priority in consistency.[23] Others such as Hans Baron have argued that his
ideas must have changed dramatically over time. Some have argued that his conclusions are best
understood as a product of his times, experiences and education. Others, such as Leo Strauss and
Harvey Mansfield, have argued strongly that there is a very strong and deliberate consistency and
distinctness, even arguing that this extends to all of Machiavelli's works including his comedies
and letters.[23]
Influences[edit]

Commentators such as Leo Strauss have gone so far as to name Machiavelli as the deliberate
originator of modernity itself. Others have argued that Machiavelli is only a particularly
interesting example of trends which were happening around him. In any case Machiavelli
presented himself at various times as someone reminding Italians of the old virtues of the
Romans and Greeks, and other times as someone promoting a completely new approach to
politics.[23]

That Machiavelli had a wide range of influences is in itself not controversial. Their relative
importance is however a subject of on-going discussion. It is possible to summarize some of the
main influences emphasized by different commentators.
1. The Mirror of Princes genre. Gilbert (1938) summarized the similarities between The Prince
and the genre it obviously imitates, the so-called "Mirror of Princes" style. This was a classically
influenced genre, with models at least as far back as Xenophon and Isocrates, that was still quite
popular during Machiavelli's life. While Gilbert emphasizes the similarities however, he agrees
with all other commentators that Machiavelli was particularly novel in the way he used this
genre, even when compared to his contemporaries such as Baldassare Castiglione and Erasmus.
One of the major innovations Gilbert noted was that Machiavelli focused upon the "deliberate
purpose of dealing with a new ruler who will need to establish himself in defiance of custom".
Normally, these types of works were addressed only to hereditary princes. (Xenophon is also an
exception in this regard.)
2. Classical republicanism. Commentators such as Quentin Skinner and J.G.A. Pocock, in the
so-called "Cambridge School" of interpretation have been able to show that some of the
republican themes in Machiavelli's political works, particularly the Discourses on Livy, can be
found in medieval Italian literature which was influenced by classical authors such as Sallust.

Xenophon, author of the Cyropedia.

1. Classical political philosophy: Xenophon, Plato and Aristotle. The Socratic school of
classical political philosophy, especially Aristotle, had become a major influence upon
European political thinking in the late Middle Ages. It existed both in the catholicised
form presented by Thomas Aquinas, and in the more controversial "Averroist" form of
authors like Marsilius of Padua. Machiavelli was critical of catholic political thinking and
may have been influenced by Averroism
Martin Luther

Martin Luther

Martin Luther (/lur/ or /lur/;[1] German: [matin lt] ( listen); 10 November 1483 18
February 1546) was a German professor of theology, composer, priest, monk[2] and a seminal
figure in the Protestant Reformation. Luther came to reject several teachings and practices of the
Roman Catholic Church. He strongly disputed the claim that freedom from God's punishment for
sin could be purchased with money, proposing an academic discussion of the practice and
efficacy of indulgences in his Ninety-five Theses of 1517. His refusal to renounce all of his
writings at the demand of Pope Leo X in 1520 and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V at the
Diet of Worms in 1521 resulted in his excommunication by the Pope and condemnation as an
outlaw by the Emperor.
Luther taught that salvation and, subsequently, eternal life are not earned by good deeds but are
received only as the free gift of God's grace through the believer's faith in Jesus Christ as
redeemer from sin. His theology challenged the authority and office of the Pope by teaching that
the Bible is the only source of divinely revealed knowledge from God[3] and opposed
sacerdotalism by considering all baptized Christians to be a holy priesthood.[4] Those who
identify with these, and all of Luther's wider teachings, are called Lutherans, though Luther
insisted on Christian or Evangelical as the only acceptable names for individuals who professed
Christ.
His translation of the Bible into the vernacular (instead of Latin) made it more accessible to the
laity, an event that had a tremendous impact on both the church and German culture. It fostered
the development of a standard version of the German language, added several principles to the
art of translation,[5] and influenced the writing of an English translation, the Tyndale Bible.[6] His
hymns influenced the development of singing in Protestant churches.[7] His marriage to Katharina
von Bora, a former nun, set a model for the practice of clerical marriage, allowing Protestant
clergy to marry.[8]

In two of his later works, Luther expressed antagonistic views toward Jews, writing that Jewish
homes and synagogues should be destroyed, their money confiscated, and liberty curtailed.
Condemned by virtually every Lutheran denomination, these statements and their influence on
antisemitism have contributed to his controversial status.[9]
Birth and education

Martin Luther was born to Hans Luder (or Ludher, later Luther)[10] and his wife Margarethe (ne
Lindemann) on 10 November 1483 in Eisleben, Saxony, then part of the Holy Roman Empire.
He was baptized as a Catholic the next morning on the feast day of St. Martin of Tours. His
family moved to Mansfeld in 1484, where his father was a leaseholder of copper mines and
smelters[11] and served as one of four citizen representatives on the local council.[10] The religious
scholar Martin Marty describes Luther's mother as a hard-working woman of "trading-class stock
and middling means" and notes that Luther's enemies later wrongly described her as a whore and
bath attendant.[10] He had several brothers and sisters, and is known to have been close to one of
them, Jacob.[12] Hans Luther was ambitious for himself and his family, and he was determined to
see Martin, his eldest son, become a lawyer. He sent Martin to Latin schools in Mansfeld, then
Magdeburg in 1497, where he attended a school operated by a lay group called the Brethren of
the Common Life, and Eisenach in 1498.[13] The three schools focused on the so-called "trivium":
grammar, rhetoric, and logic. Luther later compared his education there to purgatory and hell.[14]
In 1501, at the age of 19, he entered the University of Erfurt, which he later described as a
beerhouse and whorehouse.[15] He was made to wake at four every morning for what has been
described as "a day of rote learning and often wearying spiritual exercises."[15] He received his
master's degree in 1505.[16]

In accordance with his father's wishes, Luther enrolled in law school at the same university that
year but dropped out almost immediately, believing that law represented uncertainty.[16] Luther
sought assurances about life and was drawn to theology and philosophy, expressing particular
interest in Aristotle, William of Ockham, and Gabriel Biel.[16] He was deeply influenced by two
tutors, Bartholomaeus Arnoldi von Usingen and Jodocus Trutfetter, who taught him to be
suspicious of even the greatest thinkers[16] and to test everything himself by experience.[17]
Philosophy proved to be unsatisfying, offering assurance about the use of reason but none about
loving God, which to Luther was more important. Reason could not lead men to God, he felt, and
he thereafter developed a love-hate relationship with Aristotle over the latter's emphasis on
reason.[17] For Luther, reason could be used to question men and institutions, but not God. Human
beings could learn about God only through divine revelation, he believed, and Scripture therefore
became increasingly important to him.[17]

He later attributed his decision to an event: on 2 July 1505, he was returning to university on
horseback after a trip home. During a thunderstorm, a lightning bolt struck near him. Later
telling his father he was terrified of death and divine judgment, he cried out, "Help! Saint Anna, I
will become a monk!"[18][19] He came to view his cry for help as a vow he could never break. He
left law school, sold his books, and entered a closed Augustinian cloister in Erfurt on 17 July
1505.[20] One friend blamed the decision on Luther's sadness over the deaths of two friends.
Luther himself seemed saddened by the move. Those who attended a farewell supper walked him
to the door of the Black Cloister. "This day you see me, and then, not ever again," he said.[17] His
father was furious over what he saw as a waste of Luther's education.[21]
Early and academic life

Luther dedicated himself to the Augustinian order, devoting himself to fasting, long hours in
prayer, pilgrimage, and frequent confession.[22] Luther described this period of his life as one of
deep spiritual despair. He said, "I lost touch with Christ the Savior and Comforter, and made of
him the jailer and hangman of my poor soul."[23] Johann von Staupitz, his superior, pointed
Luther's mind away from continual reflection upon his sins toward the merits of Christ. He
taught that true repentance does not involve self-inflicted penances and punishments but rather a
change of heart.[24]
In 1507, he was ordained to the priesthood, and in 1508, von Staupitz, first dean of the newly
founded University of Wittenberg, sent for Luther, to teach theology.[25][26] He received a
bachelor's degree in Biblical studies on 9 March 1508, and another bachelor's degree in the
Sentences by Peter Lombard in 1509.[27]
On 19 October 1512, he was awarded his Doctor of Theology and, on 21 October 1512, was
received into the senate of the theological faculty of the University of Wittenberg,[28] having
succeeded Staupitz as chair of theology.[29] He spent the rest of his career in this position at the
University of Wittenberg.
He was made provincial vicar of Saxony and Thuringia by his religious order in 1515. This
meant he was to visit and oversee each of eleven monasteries in his province.[30]
Start of the Reformation
Luther's theses are engraved into the door of All Saints' Church, Wittenberg. The
Latin inscription above informs the reader that the original door was destroyed by a
fire, and that in 1857, King Frederick William IV of Prussia ordered a replacement be
made.

In 1516, Johann Tetzel, a Dominican friar and papal commissioner for indulgences, was sent to
Germany by the Roman Catholic Church to sell indulgences to raise money to rebuild St. Peter's
Basilica in Rome.[31] Roman Catholic theology stated that faith alone, whether fiduciary or
dogmatic, cannot justify man;[32] justification rather depends only on such faith as is active in

charity and good works (fides caritate formata).[33] The benefits of good works could be obtained
by donating money to the church.
On 31 October 1517, Luther wrote to his bishop, Albert of Mainz, protesting the sale of
indulgences. He enclosed in his letter a copy of his "Disputation of Martin Luther on the Power
and Efficacy of Indulgences", which came to be known as the Ninety-five Theses. Hans
Hillerbrand writes that Luther had no intention of confronting the church, but saw his disputation
as a scholarly objection to church practices, and the tone of the writing is accordingly "searching,
rather than doctrinaire."[34] Hillerbrand writes that there is nevertheless an undercurrent of
challenge in several of the theses, particularly in Thesis 86, which asks: "Why does the pope,
whose wealth today is greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus, build the basilica of St.
Peter with the money of poor believers rather than with his own money?"[34]
Luther objected to a saying attributed to Johann Tetzel that "As soon as the coin in the coffer
rings, the soul from purgatory (also attested as 'into heaven') springs."[35] He insisted that, since
forgiveness was God's alone to grant, those who claimed that indulgences absolved buyers from
all punishments and granted them salvation were in error. Christians, he said, must not slacken in
following Christ on account of such false assurances.
However, this oft-quoted saying of Tetzel was by no means representative of contemporary
Catholic teaching on indulgences, but rather a reflection of his capacity to exaggerate. Yet if
Tetzel overstated the matter in regard to indulgences for the dead, his teaching on indulgences
for the living was in line with Catholic dogma of the time.[36]
According to one account, Luther nailed his Ninety-five Theses to the door of All Saints' Church
in Wittenberg on 31 October 1517. Scholars Walter Krmer, Gtz Trenkler, Gerhard Ritter, and
Gerhard Prause contend that the story of the posting on the door, even though it has settled as
one of the pillars of history, has little foundation in truth.[37][38][39] The story is based on comments
made by Philipp Melanchthon, though it is thought that he was not in Wittenberg at the time.[40]
It was not until January 1518 that friends of Luther translated the Ninety-five Theses from Latin
into German and printed and widely copied them, making the controversy one of the first to be
aided by the printing press.[41] Within two weeks, copies of the theses had spread throughout
Germany; within two months, they had spread throughout Europe.
Luther's writings circulated widely, reaching France, England, and Italy as early as 1519.
Students thronged to Wittenberg to hear Luther speak. He published a short commentary on
Galatians and his Work on the Psalms. This early part of Luther's career was one of his most
creative and productive.[42] Three of his best-known works were published in 1520: To the
Christian Nobility of the German Nation, On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, and On the
Freedom of a Christian.
Justification by faith alone

Main article: Sola fide

"Luther at Erfurt", which depicts Martin Luther discovering the doctrine of sola fide.
Painting by Joseph Noel Paton, 1861.

From 1510 to 1520, Luther lectured on the Psalms, the books of Hebrews, Romans, and
Galatians. As he studied these portions of the Bible, he came to view the use of terms such as
penance and righteousness by the Catholic Church in new ways. He became convinced that the
church was corrupt in its ways and had lost sight of what he saw as several of the central truths
of Christianity. The most important for Luther was the doctrine of justification God's act of
declaring a sinner righteous by faith alone through God's grace. He began to teach that
salvation or redemption is a gift of God's grace, attainable only through faith in Jesus as the
Messiah.[43] "This one and firm rock, which we call the doctrine of justification," he wrote, "is the
chief article of the whole Christian doctrine, which comprehends the understanding of all
godliness."[44]
Luther came to understand justification as entirely the work of God. This teaching by Luther was
clearly expressed in his 1525 publication On the Bondage of the Will, which was written in
response to On Free Will by Desiderius Erasmus (1524). Luther based his position on
predestination on St. Paul's epistle to the Ephesians 2:810. Against the teaching of his day that
the righteous acts of believers are performed in cooperation with God, Luther wrote that
Christians receive such righteousness entirely from outside themselves; that righteousness not
only comes from Christ but actually is the righteousness of Christ, imputed to Christians (rather
than infused into them) through faith.[45] "That is why faith alone makes someone just and fulfills
the law," he wrote. "Faith is that which brings the Holy Spirit through the merits of Christ."[46]
Faith, for Luther, was a gift from God; the experience of being justified by faith was "as though I
had been born again." His entry into Paradise, no less, was a discovery about "the righteousness
of God" a discovery that "the just person" of whom the Bible speaks (as in Romans 1:17) lives
by faith.[47] He explained his concept of "justification" in the Smalcald Articles:
The first and chief article is this: Jesus Christ, our God and Lord, died for our sins and was raised
again for our justification (Romans 3:2425). He alone is the Lamb of God who takes away the

sins of the world (John 1:29), and God has laid on Him the iniquity of us all (Isaiah 53:6). All
have sinned and are justified freely, without their own works and merits, by His grace, through
the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, in His blood (Romans 3:2325). This is necessary to
believe. This cannot be otherwise acquired or grasped by any work, law or merit. Therefore, it is
clear and certain that this faith alone justifies us ... Nothing of this article can be yielded or
surrendered, even though heaven and earth and everything else falls (Mark 13:31).[48]
Luther's rediscovery of "Christ and His salvation" was the first of two points that became the
foundation for the Reformation. His railing against the sale of indulgences was based on it.[49]
Breach with the papacy

Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz and Magdeburg did not reply to Luther's letter containing the
Ninety-five Theses. He had the theses checked for heresy and in December 1517 forwarded them
to Rome.[50] He needed the revenue from the indulgences to pay off a papal dispensation for his
tenure of more than one bishopric. As Luther later noted, "the pope had a finger in the pie as
well, because one half was to go to the building of St Peter's Church in Rome".[51]
Pope Leo X was used to reformers and heretics,[52] and he responded slowly, "with great care as
is proper."[53] Over the next three years he deployed a series of papal theologians and envoys
against Luther, which served only to harden the reformer's anti-papal theology. First, the
Dominican theologian Sylvester Mazzolini drafted a heresy case against Luther, whom Leo then
summoned to Rome. The Elector Frederick persuaded the pope to have Luther examined at
Augsburg, where the Imperial Diet was held.[54] There, over a three-day period in October 1518,
Luther defended himself under questioning by papal legate Cardinal Cajetan. The Pope's right to
issue indulgences was at the centre of the dispute between the two men.[55][56] The hearings
degenerated into a shouting match. More than writing his theses, Luther's confrontation with the
church cast him as an enemy of the pope.[57] Cajetan's original instructions had been to arrest
Luther if he failed to recant, but the legate desisted from doing so.[58] Luther slipped out of the
city at night, unbeknownst to Cajetan.
In January 1519, at Altenburg in Saxony, the papal nuncio Karl von Miltitz adopted a more
conciliatory approach. Luther made certain concessions to the Saxon, who was a relative of the
Elector, and promised to remain silent if his opponents did.[60] The theologian Johann Eck,
however, was determined to expose Luther's doctrine in a public forum. In June and July 1519,
he staged a disputation with Luther's colleague Andreas Karlstadt at Leipzig and invited Luther
to speak.[61] Luther's boldest assertion in the debate was that Matthew 16:18 does not confer on
popes the exclusive right to interpret scripture, and that therefore neither popes nor church
councils were infallible.[62] For this, Eck branded Luther a new Jan Hus, referring to the Czech
reformer and heretic burned at the stake in 1415. From that moment, he devoted himself to
Luther's defeat.[63]
Excommunication

On 15 June 1520, the Pope warned Luther with the papal bull (edict) Exsurge Domine that he
risked excommunication unless he recanted 41 sentences drawn from his writings, including the
Ninety-five Theses, within 60 days. That autumn, Johann Eck proclaimed the bull in Meissen and
other towns. Karl von Miltitz, a papal nuncio, attempted to broker a solution, but Luther, who
had sent the Pope a copy of On the Freedom of a Christian in October, publicly set fire to the
bull and decretals at Wittenberg on 10 December 1520,[64] an act he defended in Why the Pope
and his Recent Book are Burned and Assertions Concerning All Articles. As a consequence,
Luther was excommunicated by Pope Leo X on 3 January 1521, in the bull Decet Romanum
Pontificem.
Diet of Worms
Luther Before the Diet of Worms by Anton von Werner (18431915)

The enforcement of the ban on the Ninety-five Theses fell to the secular authorities. On 18 April
1521, Luther appeared as ordered before the Diet of Worms. This was a general assembly of the
estates of the Holy Roman Empire that took place in Worms, a town on the Rhine. It was
conducted from 28 January to 25 May 1521, with Emperor Charles V presiding. Prince Frederick
III, Elector of Saxony, obtained a safe conduct for Luther to and from the meeting.
Johann Eck, speaking on behalf of the Empire as assistant of the Archbishop of Trier, presented
Luther with copies of his writings laid out on a table and asked him if the books were his, and
whether he stood by their contents. Luther confirmed he was their author, but requested time to
think about the answer to the second question. He prayed, consulted friends, and gave his
response the next day:
Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust
either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and
contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is
captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right
to go against conscience. May God help me. Amen.[65]
At the end of this speech, Luther raised his arm "in the traditional salute of a knight winning a
bout." Michael Mullett considers this speech as a "world classic of epoch-making oratory."[66]

Martin Luther Memorial in Worms. His statue is surrounded by the figures of his lay
protectors and earlier Church reformers including John Wycliffe, Jan Hus and
Girolamo Savonarola.

Eck informed Luther that he was acting like a heretic:


"'Martin,' said he, 'there is no one of the heresies which have torn the bosom of the church, which
has not derived its origin from the various interpretation of the Scripture. The Bible itself is the
arsenal whence each innovator has drawn his deceptive arguments. It was with Biblical texts that
Pelagius and Arius maintained their doctrines. Arius, for instance, found the negation of the
eternity of the Wordan eternity which you admit, in this verse of the New TestamentJoseph
knew not his wife till she had brought forth her first-born son; and he said, in the same way that
you say, that this passage enchained him. When the fathers of the council of Constance
condemned this proposition of John HussThe church of Jesus Christ is only the community of
the elect, they condemned an error; for the church, like a good mother, embraces within her arms
all who bear the name of Christian, all who are called to enjoy the celestial beatitude.'"[67]
Luther refused to recant his writings. He is sometimes also quoted as saying: "Here I stand. I can
do no other". Recent scholars consider the evidence for these words to be unreliable, since they
were inserted before "May God help me" only in later versions of the speech and not recorded in
witness accounts of the proceedings.[68] However, Mullett suggests that given his nature, "we are
free to believe that Luther would tend to select the more dramatic form of words."[66]
Over the next five days, private conferences were held to determine Luther's fate. The Emperor
presented the final draft of the Edict of Worms on 25 May 1521, declaring Luther an outlaw,
banning his literature, and requiring his arrest: "We want him to be apprehended and punished as
a notorious heretic."[69] It also made it a crime for anyone in Germany to give Luther food or
shelter. It permitted anyone to kill Luther without legal consequence.
At Wartburg Castle

Wartburg Castle, Eisenach


The Wartburg room where Luther translated the New Testament into German. An
original first edition is kept in the case on the desk

Luther's disappearance during his return trip back to Wittenberg was planned. Frederick III had
him intercepted on his way home in the forest near Wittenberg by masked horsemen who were
made to appear as armed highwaymen. They escorted Luther to the security of the Wartburg
Castle at Eisenach.[70] During his stay at Wartburg, which he referred to as "my Patmos",[71]
Luther translated the New Testament from Greek into German and poured out doctrinal and
polemical writings. These included a renewed attack on Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz, whom he
shamed into halting the sale of indulgences in his episcopates,[72] and a "Refutation of the

Argument of Latomus," in which he expounded the principle of justification to Jacobus Latomus,


an orthodox theologian from Louvain.[73]
In this work, one of his most emphatic statements on faith, he argued that every good work
designed to attract God's favor is a sin.[74] All humans are sinners by nature, he explained, and
God's grace (which cannot be earned) alone can make them just. On 1 August 1521, Luther
wrote to Melanchthon on the same theme: "Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong, but let your
trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world.
We will commit sins while we are here, for this life is not a place where justice resides."[75]
In the summer of 1521, Luther widened his target from individual pieties like indulgences and
pilgrimages to doctrines at the heart of Church practices. In On the Abrogation of the Private
Mass, he condemned as idolatry the idea that the mass is a sacrifice, asserting instead that it is a
gift, to be received with thanksgiving by the whole congregation.[76] His essay On Confession,
Whether the Pope has the Power to Require It rejected compulsory confession and encouraged
private confession and absolution, since "every Christian is a confessor."[77] In November, Luther
wrote The Judgement of Martin Luther on Monastic Vows. He assured monks and nuns that they
could break their vows without sin, because vows were an illegitimate and vain attempt to win
salvation.

Erasmus Biography
Early Life

Erasmus rose from obscure beginnings to become one of the leading intellectual figures of the
early Northern Renaissance. Most historians believe that he was born Gerard Gerardson in 1466
(with many noting his probable birthdate as October 27) in Rotterdam, Holland. His father,
believed to be Roger Gerard, was a priest, and his mother was named Margaret, the daughter of a
physician. He was christened with the name "Erasmus," meaning "beloved."

Erasmus began his education at the age of 4, attending a school in Gouda, a town near
Rotterdam. When he was 9 years old, his father sent him to a prestigious Latin grammar school,
where his natural academic ability blossomed. After his parents died in 1483 from the plague,
Erasmus was put into the care of guardians, who were adamant about him becoming a monk.
While he gained a personal relationship with God, he rejected the harsh rules and strict methods
of the religious teachers of the time.
A Brief Stint in the Priesthood

In 1492, poverty forced Erasmus into monastery life and he was ordained a Catholic priest, but it
seems that he never actively worked as a cleric. There is some evidence, during this time, of a
relationship with a fellow male student, but scholars are not in agreement as to its extent.
Erasmus's life changed dramatically when he became secretary for Henry de Bergen, bishop of
Chambray, who was impressed with his skill in Latin. The bishop enabled Erasmus to travel to
Paris, France, to study classical literature and Latin, and it was there that he was introduced to
Renaissance humanism.
Life as a Professional Scholar

While in Paris, Erasmus became known as an excellent scholar and lecturer. One of his pupils,
William Blunt, Lord Montjoy, established a pension for Erasmus, allowing him to adopt a life of
an independent scholar moving from city to city tutoring, lecturing and corresponding with some
of the most brilliant thinkers of Europe. In 1499, he traveled to England and met Thomas More
and John Colet, both of whom would have a great influence on him. Over the next 10 years,
Erasmus divided his time between France, the Netherlands and England, writing some of his best
works.
In the early 1500s, Erasmus was persuaded to teach at Cambridge and lecture in theology. It was
during this time that he wrote The Praise of Folly, a satirical examination of society in general
and the various abuses of the Church. Another influential publication was his translation of the
New Testament into Greek in 1516. This was a turning point in theology and the interpretation of
scripture, and posed a serious challenge to theological thinking that had dominated universities
since the 13th century. In these writings, Erasmus promoted the spread of Classical knowledge to
encourage a better morality and greater understanding between people.
Later Life

The Protestant Reformation erupted with the publication of Martin Luther's Ninety-five Theses in
1517. For the next 10 years, Erasmus would be embroiled in an intellectual debate over human
nature, free will and religion. Though Erasmus supported Protestant ideals, he was against the
radicalism of some of its leaders, and, in 1523, he condemned Luther's methods in his work De
libero arbitrio.
On July 12, 1536, during preparations for a move to the Netherlands, Erasmus fell ill and died
from an attack of dysentery. Though he remained loyal to the Church of Rome, he did not receive

last rites, and there is no evidence that he asked for a priest. This seems to reflect his view that
what mattered most was a believer's direct relationship with God.

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