BPY 003: Ancient and Western Medieval Philosophy

For July 2018 and January 2019 Sessions

Note:
i) Answer all five questions
ii) All questions carry equal marks
iii) Answer to question no. 1 and 2 should be in about 400 words each.

1. Critically analyze the scope and importance of philosophy. 20

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How did Augustine explain the relation between reason and faith? Discuss. 20
2. Explain and interpret the notion of being in Parmenides. 20
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Explain the intellectual and social context of sophist thought. Discuss the significance of
sophist method of enquiry and thought in general. 20
3. Answer any two of the following questions in about 200 words each:
a. What is special about the aim and modus operandi of the Socratic method? Explain. 10
b. What is metaphysics and why is it called the foundational science of all other sciences? 10
c. Discuss the atom theory of Democritus & Leucippus. 10
d. Explain the theory of the ‗union of the opposites in the philosophy of Heraclitus. 10
4. Answer any four of the following in about 150 words each:
a) Briefly discuss - ―To be ethical is to live a rational life‖. 5
b) How does Empiricism differ from Rationalism? 5
c) How do you explain ‗Ockham‘s Razor‘? 5
d) Briefly explain the ethics of Epicureanism. 5
e) Discuss Objectivism and Subjectivism. 5
f) Explain the Pythagorean concept of soul. 5
5. Write short notes on any five of the following in about 100 words each:
a) Materialism 4
b) Philosophy of Life 4
c) Apeiron 4
d) Agnosticism 4
e) Al-ghazali 4
f) Dogmatism 4
g) Aesthetics 4
h) Cynicism 4
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 Answers
1. Critically analyze the scope and importance of philosophy.
Ans.: The word philosophy is difficult to define. The word originally comes from the Greek
word philosophia which is a combination of two words viz., philo i.e., love or pursuit and
sophia i.e., wisdom or knowledge. Hence, the etymological meaning of the word
‗philosophy‘ is love of wisdom or pursuit of knowledge. Any intellectual pursuit may be
called philosophy when it aims at attaining wisdom or knowledge of some kind. But within
the area of philosophy, all knowledge has never been counted as philosophic. The knowledge
sought by a philosopher is concerned with the nature of life and the universe. In the word of
Maish, ‗philosophy is a resolute and persistent attempt to understand and appreciate the
universe as a whole.‖ Philosophy, according to Fuller, in its widest and broadest sense, has
meant a reflective and reasoned attempt to infer the character and content of the universe,
taken in its entirety and as a single whole, from an observation and study of the data

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presented by all its aspects.2 As such, a sophos or a philosopher may be called an expert, an
artist or someone who is, above all a ‗wise man‘. This is why the word philosophy is

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interpreted mostly as love of wisdom. Thus, as per western view point philosophy is the
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comprehensive study of life and the universe as a wholea study of the world as it appears as
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well as of the world as it really is.
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Scope of philosophy whether Indian or Western refers to its applicability to various fields of
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study. In the Sarvadarśana Saṁgraha of Mādhavācārya, the scope of darśana has been
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extended to the field of grammatical studies by recognizing a Pāṇiniān system of philosophy.
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In ancient India almost every branch of enquiry aimed at some higher realization of truth and
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the field of grammatical studies was no exception to this. The ancient grammarians succeeded
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in discovering a path of philosophical discipline even in their grammatical ideals.
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In Sanskrit, a letter is called akṣara- a term which is often applied to denote Brahman and
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Vāk i.e., speech which has been recognized as an entity which transcends limits of time and

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space.14 This philosophical side of grammatical enquiry has been elucidated by Patanjali,
Bhartṛhari and Nāgeśa.
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The scope of philosophy is very wide because it is applicable to almost all intellectual
endeavors. There is hardly any branch of study which is not related to philosophy because it
deals with the fundamentals of life which is intimately related with all areas of human
interest. It takes a comprehensive view of the entire universe. Thus, within the scope of
philosophical investigation comes the study of space, time, mind, matter, future life and god
or the absolute. The scope of darśana has been extended to Sanskrit poetics also. Bharata‘s
theory on rasa has been explained by several rhetoricians like Bhaṭṭa Lollaṭa, ŚriŚaṅkuka,
Bhaṭṭanāyaka and Abhinavagupta. Of these, ŚriŚaṅkuka‘s view known as anumitivāda is
based on Nyāya philosophy, whereas Abhinavagupta has taken recourse to Vedānta
philosophy. These views have further been discussed in detail by Mammaṭa. 18 While
dealing with Vākyārthabodha rhetoricians have made use of the tenets of Pūrvamīmāṁsā.
The word ‗philosophy‘ is derived from two Greek (Greek is the language of Greece, the land
of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle….) words philos and sophia. Philos stands for love and sophia

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for wisdom. It stood for serious cultivation of the intellect and understanding. It was a
searching inquiry into the deeper values of life. But simply stating that philosophy is love of
wisdom does not carry any sense any more. For in the past, philosophy was the only
sustained search for knowledge. But these days you have a lot of other branches of study. For
instance, science. When you say ‗philosophy is a love of wisdom‘ –does it mean that there is
no love of wisdom in science? You may try to bypass this difficulty by differentiating
between knowledge and wisdom. That knowledge is empirical and wisdom is valuational.
That knowledge is theoretical and wisdom is practical. And while science strives for
knowledge, philosophy strives for wisdom. But such a line of argument many philosophers
do not like. For them, love of wisdom is too old, too vague and too wide a concept. Being
imprecise, it cannot be accepted as a concept of philosophy.
Then there is another difficulty which we have to encounter: the random and reckless use of
the term philosophy. It seems as if philosophy has no fixed meaning at all. For anybody and
everybody attaches it to any and every concept. There is philosophy of life, philosophy of

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business, philosophy of science, philosophy of history and philosophy of what not. While
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being so used - this term stands for the basic nature, aim, purpose of the thing qualified. Or it
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may stand for the rationale - the logic of its being: why a thing is such and such and not
otherwise. ‗The philosophy of your joining Krishna Kanta Handique State Open University
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may be that you want more knowledge, better job, higher achievement and satisfaction in life.
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Now, though this seems to be fairly sensible, but it does not give the essential quality of the

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discipline or subject philosophy that is taught in the universities.

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2. Explain and interpret the notion of being in Parmenides.
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Ans.: Parmenides of Elea was a Presocratic Greek philosopher. As the first philosopher to
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inquire into the nature of existence itself, he is incontrovertibly credited as the ―Father of
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Metaphysics.‖ As the first to employ deductive, a priori arguments to justify his claims, he
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competes with Aristotle for the title ―Father of Logic.‖ He is also commonly thought of as the
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founder of the ―Eleatic School‖ of thought—a philosophical label ascribed to Presocratics

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who purportedly argued that reality is in some sense a unified and unchanging singular entity.

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This has often been understood to mean there is just one thing in all of existence. In light of

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this questionable interpretation, Parmenides has traditionally been viewed as a pivotal figure
in the history of philosophy: one who challenged the physical systems of his predecessors and
set forth for his successors the metaphysical criteria any successful system must meet. Other
thinkers, also commonly thought of as Eleatics, include: Zeno of Elea, Melissus of Samos,
and (more controversially) Xenophanes of Colophon.
Parmenides‘ only written work is a poem entitled, supposedly, but likely erroneously, On
Nature. Only a limited number of ―fragments‖ (more precisely, quotations by later authors) of
his poem are still in existence, which have traditionally been assigned to three main
sections—Proem, Reality (Alétheia), and Opinion (Doxa). The Proem (prelude) features a
young man on a cosmic (perhaps spiritual) journey in search of enlightenment, expressed in
traditional Greek religious motifs and geography. This is followed by the central, most
philosophically-oriented section (Reality). Here, Parmenides positively endorses certain
epistemic guidelines for inquiry, which he then uses to argue for his famous metaphysical

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claims—that ―what is‖ (whatever is referred to by the word ―this‖) cannot be in motion,
change, come-to-be, perish, lack uniformity, and so forth. The final section (Opinion)
concludes the poem with a theogonical and cosmogonical account of the world, which
paradoxically employs the very phenomena (motion, change, and so forth) that Reality seems
to have denied. Furthermore, despite making apparently true claims (for example, the moon
gets its light from the sun), the account offered in Opinion is supposed to be representative of
the mistaken ―opinions of mortals,‖ and thus is to be rejected on some level.
According to Parmenides, existing cosmic space is not unlimited but is an enormous sphere.
It is entirely filled by ―Being‖. ―Being‖ is the only and homogeneous substance that,
permeating all things (including human beings and the air) that our senses perceive in the
cosmos, constitutes the cosmos itself. In fact, in the ―vision‖ of the eleatic philosopher the
cosmos is not composed of numerous entities – planets, stars, people, animals, trees, flowers,
houses, mountains, clouds, etc., of different appearance and color, capable of transformation,
movement, birth and death – that appear daily before our eyes, but consists of Being, which is
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an eternal, not generated, one, huge, limited, spherical, motionless substance, not becoming

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but always equal to itself, homogeneous, of the same density everywhere, not divided into
multiple ―things‖ but continuous.
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3. Answer any two of the following questions in about 200 words each:
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a. What is special about the aim and modus operandi of the Socratic method? Explain.

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Ans.: Socrates insisted that personal investigations and reasoned arguments alone could
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constitute a proper basis for answering questions about the universality of knowledge as well
as the universality of moral and political laws. In Socrates‘ case this personal investigations
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and reasoned arguments assume a conversational form i.e., a form of dialogue. This dialogue,
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however, was limited to ethical subject-matter alone, therefore it included the justice, virtue,
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knowledge, temperance etc. The principal aim of such a dialogue was to know his own self.
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He called it the method of ―elenchus,‖ the Greek for ‗putting to the test‘ or ‗refutation.‘ This

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dialogue consisted in skillfully questioning others who claim to be wise men and drawing out
their views with regards to virtue, justice, and so on. The objective of such dialogue was to
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show the inadequacies of their views which would in turn reveal that those who claimed to
know really did not know. Thus, Socrates believed that by such a method he could show that
he was wiser than others inasmuch as he knew that he did not know. Socratic method has two
particular dimensions. First, regarding its modus operandi, it is dialectical; second, regarding
its aim, it is maieutiké or midwifery method.
b. What is metaphysics and why is it called the foundational science of all other sciences?
Ans.: Metaphysics can be called the foundational science of all other sciences because:
The formal object of all other particular sciences must be something existing with a particular
nature, e.g. beauty for aesthetics; b) the scope of particular sciences limited to things
pertaining to that science; and c) since the human mind has a natural desire to know the
ultimate reality, the why of things, there must be a science which studies BEING AS BEING.
Metaphysics is the study of being as such. It studies being as being, its properties and its
causes. Nothing escapes from the concept of being i.e., something which is. The term being

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(ens in Latin) denotes everything ‗that is‘ A tree is a being, and so is a bird, a man, or a
diamond.
The Greek philosophers began from the nature of things; they studied particular types of
beings. But in metaphysics, we study things not just as particular types of beings – moving
things, living things – instead, in so far as they are simply being (or being things), in so far as
they exist. We are not concerned with what they are but that they are. Metaphysics studies the
whole of reality by focusing on the most common aspect of everything; that everything ―is‖,
that it is ―real‖. The material object of metaphysics is all being, God, angels, substance,
accidents, real being, possible being and rational being. Since metaphysics studies reality
from the point of its being, the formal object of metaphysics is the being of reality, that is,
what it seeks first and per se is being itself, or being in common, being as being. Metaphysics
is also concerned with such problems as the relation of mind to matter, the nature of change,
the meaning of freedom, etc.
4. Answer any four of the following in about 150 words each:
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b) How does Empiricism differ from Rationalism?
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Ans.: The dispute between rationalism and empiricism concerns the extent to which we are
dependent upon sense experience in our effort to gain knowledge. Rationalists claim that
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there are significant ways in which our concepts and knowledge are gained independently of
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sense experience. Empiricists claim that sense experience is the ultimate source of all our

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concepts and knowledge. Rationalists generally develop their view in two ways. First, they
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argue that there are cases where the content of our concepts or knowledge outstrips the
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information that sense experience can provide. Second, they construct accounts of how
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reason in some form or other provides that additional information about the world.
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Empiricists present complementary lines of thought. First, they develop accounts of how
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experience provides the information that rationalists cite, insofar as we have it in the first

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place. (Empiricists will at times opt for skepticism as an alternative to rationalism: if
experience cannot provide the concepts or knowledge the rationalists cite, then we don‘t have

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them.) Second, empiricists attack the rationalists‘ accounts of how reason is a source of
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concepts or knowledge.

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c) How do you explain ‗Ockham‘s Razor‘?
Ans.: Occam‘s razor, also spelled Ockham‘s razor, also called law of economy or law of
parsimony, principle stated by the Scholastic philosopher William of Ockham (1285–
1347/49) that pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate, ―plurality should not be posited
without necessity.‖ The principle gives precedence to simplicity: of two competing theories,
the simpler explanation of an entity is to be preferred. The principle is also expressed as
―Entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity.‖
The principle was, in fact, invoked before Ockham by Durandus of Saint-Pourçain, a French
Dominican theologian and philosopher of dubious orthodoxy, who used it to explain that
abstraction is the apprehension of some real entity, such as an Aristotelian cognitive species,
an active intellect, or a disposition, all of which he spurned as unnecessary. Likewise, in
science, Nicole d‘Oresme, a 14th-century French physicist, invoked the law of economy, as

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did Galileo later, in defending the simplest hypothesis of the heavens. Other later scientists
stated similar simplifying laws and principles.
d) Briefly explain the ethics of Epicureanism.
Ans.: Epicureanism, in a strict sense, the philosophy taught by Epicurus (341–270 BCE). In a
broad sense, it is a system of ethics embracing every conception or form of life that can be
traced to the principles of his philosophy. In ancient polemics, as often since, the term was
employed with an even more generic (and clearly erroneous) meaning as the equivalent of
hedonism, the doctrine that pleasure or happiness is the chief good. In popular parlance,
Epicureanism thus means devotion to pleasure, comfort, and high living, with a certain nicety
of style.
Epicureanism does not deny the existence of the gods; rather it denies their involvement in
the world. According to Epicureanism, the gods do not interfere with human lives or the rest
of the universe in any way. The manner in which the Epicurean gods exist is still disputed.

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Some scholars say that Epicureanism believes that the gods exist outside the mind as material

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objects (the realist position), while others assert that the gods only exist in our minds as ideals
(the idealist position). The realist position holds that Epicureans understand the gods as
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existing as physical and immortal beings made of atoms that reside somewhere in reality.
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However, the gods are completely separate from the rest of reality; they are uninterested in it,
play no role in it, and remain completely undisturbed by it. Instead, the gods live in what is

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called the metakosmia, or the space between worlds. Contrarily, the idealist position holds
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that Epicurus did not actually conceive of the gods as existing in reality. Rather, Epicurus is
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said to have viewed the gods as just idealized forms of the best human life, and it is thought
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that the gods were emblematic of the life one should aspire towards.
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e) Discuss Objectivism and Subjectivism.
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Ans.: At root, subjectivism, intrinsicism and Objectivism are theories of the nature of
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concepts or ―universals.‖ Here, I summarize them in regard to their view of the nature of truth

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and knowledge. Since truth is an attribute of statements composed of concepts, each school‘s
view of truth is a direct outgrowth of its view of concepts.
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Subjectivism holds that truth, in effect, resides only in the mind. For a subjectivist, a
particular statement can be true for one person and false for another, based solely on one‘s
mental choices, subjective processing, or emotions. (Kant (by implication), Wittgenstein,
James, Sartre, etc.) ―Truth‖ amounts to whatever one believes, and there is no such thing as
―knowledge‖ of reality; only some sort of ―experience‖ inside one‘s own mind.Objectivism
holds that the world is full of facts, that each thing is itself; a chair is a chair, a rock is a rock.
This is a regardless of what we think about them or each person's experience with them. If I
call a rock a cat that does not change its fundamental nature. It is still, for example, a grey
lump of planet earth. I can only consider it in terms of its attributes. I cannot make up any
more than a normal person can perceive such as the rock being the female saviour of the
human race -- there's no evidence is ever did or ever will do such a thing. Further I cannot

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ignore its nature such as to reject that it is hard even though it just effortlessly broke my
window.
Subjectivism holds that our existence does not have identity until I perceive it, e.g., that the
rock you see isn't necessarily the same fundamental rock that I see. In the extreme, it does not
exist until we perceive it. You can see how this might have some appeal when one person
says, "Oh, look at that ugly rock." and another says, "Look at that wonderful specimen of
sedimentary geology!" Subjectivists would argue they are effectively looking at two different
rocks.
5. Write short notes on any five of the following in about 100 words each:
a) Materialism
Ans.: Materialism, also called physicalism, in philosophy, the view that all facts (including
facts about the human mind and will and the course of human history) are causally dependent
upon physical processes, or even reducible to them. The word materialism has been used in

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modern times to refer to a family of metaphysical theories (i.e., theories of the nature of
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reality) that can best be defined by saying that a theory tends to be called materialist if it is
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felt sufficiently to resemble a paradigmatic theory that will here be called mechanical
materialism. This article covers the various types of materialism and the ways by which they
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are distinguished and traces the history of materialism from the Greeks and Romans to
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modern forms of materialism.

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b) Philosophy of Life

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Ans.: Philosophy of Life started in France and Germany. For materialists reality = matter, for
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idealists reality = idea and for life philosophers reality = life. The main exponents of this
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school are Henri Bergson, Fredrich Nietzsche, Maurice Blondel, Teilhard de Chardin, and
Victor Frankl. According to this school, the secret of the world is in movement rather than in
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the material things. For Henri Bergson dynamism of life is movement moving from past to
present which advances into the future, for Nietzsche living out values and will to become

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make life dynamic, for Teilhard dynamism of life is immersing the human self in the process

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of evolution and become Christ realized being and Victor Frankl dynamism of life is making

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and producing meaningfulness in human life.
c) Apeiron
Ans.: Apeiron like abstraction was also introduced in order to describe nature in an abstract
way. It is the Pythagoreans who introduced the revolutionary concept that mathematics as the
key to unlock the mysteries of the universe in terms of patters, forms, ratios and regularities.
Thus music was reduced into a ratio; octave as 2:1, fifth as 3:2, and fourth as 4:3. A pattern is
also generated from the addition of successive odd numbers generating square numbers. As
an example 1+3 = 4 +5 = 9+7 = 16+9 = 25 . .etc. Thus philosophy is the highest form of
music that itself reducible to numbers. The celestial bodies are considered as spheres each
having its own musical rhythm, depending on the ratios of their respective orbits giving rise
to a musical harmony.
d) Agnosticism

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Ans.: Agnosticism could be seen as an attitude of the mind towards human‘s knowledge of
God; namely, that God is humanly unknowable. The word ‗Agnosticism‘ comes from the
Greek word ‗Agnostos‘ which means ‗unknowing‘ or ‗a profession of ignorance.‘ The word
was first used by T.H. Huxley in 1869 to designate anyone who denies human being
knowledge of immaterial reality, and especially of the existence and nature of God. An
agnostic is not an atheist. An atheist denies the existence of God; an agnostic professes
ignorance about His existence.
Thinkers who belong to both atheistic and agnostic traditions hold that though we might not
be able to prove the existence of God, we might be able to disprove it. Many philosophers
hold that the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient and good God can be empirically refuted
by the existence of evil and suffering. Of course, the existence of a creator God would not be
so refutable, and both atheism and agnosticism would have to depend on arguments other
than that of the mere existence of evil.
e) Al-ghazali
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Ans.: Al-Gazel (Al-Ghazali), considered to be the greatest Moslem after Mohammed, enjoys
a great place and authority among the Sunni (orthodox) Moslems. Al-Gazel was born in Tus,
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in northeastern Iran, but most of his studies were conducted elsewhere: Giugian (near the
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Caspian Sea) and Nishapur. He was appointed to a professorship of the Nizamihah university
in Baghdad; but, in 1099, after a period of severe spiritual crisis leading to his rejection of

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philosophy and rationalistic theology, he abandoned his position as a university professor. He
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devoted himself to the wandering life of the ascetic and Sufi religious practices. There are
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mainly four major works from Al-Gazel, two written before his ―conversion‖ and two after.
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The works from the period before his conversion are Maqasid al-falasifa (Intentiones
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philosophorum) which is a methodological exposition of the principle doctrines of Islamic
philosophers, especially of Avicenna, and Tahafut al-falsifa (Incoherentia philosophorum)
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which is a very severe critique of the errors of philosophers and philosophy. The other two
works are Ilhya ulum ad-din (Revivification of the Religious Sciences) which gives a review

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of all theological questions, and Al-Munqidh min addadal, which is his autobiography.

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