Essentials of Philosophy - Helle - Horvath, Nicholas PDF

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PHILOSOPHY NICHOLAS A. HORVATH
A clear and complete survey of the lives and teachings

of the major philosophers from ancient Greeks
to contemporary thinkers. With critical summaries of the
writings of Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, St. Augustine,
Boethius, Aquinas, Hobbes, Descartes, Locke,
Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Hegal, Nietzsche, and Kierkegaard.
BARRON’S EDUCATIONAL SERIES, INC.
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2018 with funding from
Kahle/Austin Foundation
https://archive.org/details/essentialsofphilOOOOhorv
?
ESSENTIALS
OF
illLOSOPIHY
HELLENES TO HEIDEGGER
by Nicholas Horvath, Ph.D. Professor of
Philosophy John Carroll University ClevelandOhio
BARRON’S EDUCATIONAL SERIES
Woodbury, New York

© Copyright 1974 by Barron's Educational Series, Inc.
All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in
any form, by photostat, microfilm, xerography,
or any other means, or incorporated into any
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of the copyright owner.
All inquiries should he addressed to:

Barron’s Educational Series, Inc.
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Library of Congress Catalog Card No. -73-18149
International Standard Book No. 0-8120-0498-1
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Horvath, Nicholas.
Essentials of philosophy: Hellens to Heidegger.
Bibliography: p.
1. Philosophy—History. 2. Philosophers.
I. Title.
B74.H67 109 73-18149

ISBN 0-8120-0498-1
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Table of Contents
PREFACE ix
LIST OF TABLES vii
PART I
A Prologue to Philosophy:
Wonder and Wisdom
Definition of Philosophy 3
Importance of Philosophy 10
The "Scandal” of Philosophy ii
PART II
A Brief History of Philosophy:
Forty Wise Men
Ancient Greek Philosophy 17

Introduction 17
Early (Pre-Socratic) Greek Philosophy 19
The Old Ionian School 20
The Pythagorean School 20
The Eleatic School 21
The New Ionian School 21
The Atomist School 22
Golden Era of Greek Philosophy 22
The Sophists 23
Socrates 23
Plato 26
Aristotle 33
Later (Post-Aristotelian) Greek Philosophy 41
A. Anthropocentric or Ethical Period 4i
Stoicism 41
Epicureanism 42
Skepticism 42
IV TABLE OF CONTENTS
Eclecticism 42
B. Theocentric or Religious Period 42
Neo-Platonism 42
2. Medieval Philosophy 47
Introduction 47
Early Christian Speculations
A. Patristic Speculations
Saint Augustine
B. Early Scholasticism 54
Boethius 54
Eriugena 55
Saint Anselm of Canterbury 56
Peter Abelard 57
Golden Age of Scholasticism 58
Roger Bacon 58
Saint Bonaventure 59
Saint Albert the Great 59
Saint Thomas Aquinas 59
John Duns Scotus 64
Era of Decline 66
William of Ockham 66
Islamic and Jewish Philosophy 67
3. Renaissance and Modern Philosophy 71
Introduction 71
Renaissance Philosophy 75
Francis Bacon 75
Modern Philosophy 77
Hobbes 77
Descartes 78
Spinoza 81
Locke 82
Leibniz 84
Berkeley 86
Hume 88
Kant
89
Hegel
99
t
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Schopenhauer 102
Comte 103
Mill 104
Kierkegaard 105
Marx 108
Spencer 113
Nietzsche 114
James 118
4. Contemporary Philosophy 127
Introduction 127
Husserl 129
Bergson 131
Dewey 132
Heidegger 134
Sartre 139
PART III
The Most Important Classics of Philosophy:
Summaries of Major Writings by Wise Men
from the Fifth Century B.c. to the Nineteenth
Century
1. Plato: Phaedo 151

2. Plato: Symposium 156
3. Plato: The Republic 162
4. Aristotle: Metaphysics 174
5. Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics 181
6. Plotinus: Enneads 188
7. Saint Augustine: The City of God 192
8. Boethius: The Consolation of Philosophy 195
9- Saint Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologiae 200
10. Hobbes: Leviathan 205
11. Descartes: Meditations on First Philosophy 223
12. Locke: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding 230
13. Berkeley: A Treatise Concerning the Principles of
Human Knowledge 240
14. Hume: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding 250
VI TABLE OF CONTENTS
15. Kant: Critique of Pure Reason 261

16. Hegel: Philosophy of History 267
17. Kierkegaard: The Sickness Unto Death 275
18. Nietzsche: Thus Spake Zarathustra 288
PART IV
An Epilogue to Philosophy:
A Discussion of Some Special Problems
1. Divisions of Philosophy 299

2. Main Problems and Principal Branches of Philosophy 308
3. Philosophy and Religion 320
APPENDIX I
A General Outline of the Periods of Philosophy 326
APPENDIX II
Outlines of the Principal Doctrines of the Most

Important Philosophers 330
APPENDIX III
Etymologies 336
A SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY 338
INDEX 34I
J
List of Tables
TABLE
I The Aristotelian Division. 299
II The Thomistic Division. 300
III Bacon’s Division . 302
IV The Wolffian Division. 303
V The Louvain (Mercier) Division. 304
VI An Eclectic Division. 305
VII A Contemporary Division. 306
VIII Early Greek Philosophy. 326
IX The Golden Era of Greek Philosophy. 327
X Later Greek Philosophy. 327
XI Early Christian Speculations . 328
XII Golden Era of Scholasticism. 328
XIII Modern Philosophy . 329
XIV Contemporary Philosophy . 329
XV Socrates. 330
XVI-A Plato . 330
XVI-B The Platonic Divided Line. 331
XVII Aristotle .... . . . 331
XVIII Saint Augustine . 331
XIX Saint Thomas Aquinas.„. 332
XX John Duns Scotus. 332
XXI Rene Descartes. 332
XXII David Hume . 333
XXIII-A Immanuel Kant . 333
XXIII-B Schematic Outline of the Kantian Elements of
Knowledge . 334
XXIII-C Kantian Categories and Judgments. 335
XXIV-A Georg Hegel. 335
XXIV-B Schematic Outline of the Hegelian Triad. 335
Advice given by Boethius
for the lovers of truth:
Tu quoque si vis (If thou, too, wouldst

lumine claro in clear light
cernere verum, behold the truth,
tramite recto and straight onward
carp ere callem: ascend the steep;
gaudia pelle, subdue joys,
pelle timorem, banish fear,
spemque fugato, put desire to flight,
nec dolor adsit. and beware of grief.
Nubila mens est Clouded is the mind
vinctaque froenis, and hemmed with restraints,
hac ubi regnant. when emotions hold sway.)
De consolatione philosophiae, I Metrum 7

1
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PREFACE
Av^ccording to G. K. Chesterton, one’s view of the universe is

/
still the most important factor for a human being. In other
words, man’s whole way of life depends on his particular phi¬
losophy. As this noted British essayist says in simple but con¬
vincing terms, when a landlady considers a prospective lodger,
it is more important for her to know the future tenant’s phi¬
losophy than his income. And for a general, claims Chesterton,
although knowledge about the enemy’s equipment and its nu¬
merical strength is necessary, it is even more vital for him to
know the enemy’s philosophy. In short, then, everybody is
interested in philosophy. Of course, there is a great difference
between "armchair philosophers’’ and professional thinkers.
Although this work is intended primarily for beginning col¬
lege students, it seeks also to help anyone else interested in de¬
veloping a habit of systematic thinking, in enlarging his philo¬
sophical knowledge, and in deepening his involvement in the
"search for wisdom.” For that reason, then, clarity is the main
object of this work; the text employs throughout a uniform
pattern of discussion, and the appendices contain a large number
of outlines, summaries, and charts. This book also presents some
novel historicophilosophical insights and the findings of the latest
research of historians in philosophy.
Finally, I wish to take this opportunity to express my appre¬
ciation to those who have been instrumental in the production
X PREFACE
of this book. My gratitude goes to Miss Anne Tamm for having

carefully read the manuscript; to my former students, Miss Jo
Anne Allen, Sister Mary Rita Crookston, H. M., and Sister Cor-
rine Nowak, S. S. Sp., for their generous technical assistance;
and especially to Mr. John E. Eles for his boundless interest and,
in particular, for his practical observations and painstaking read¬
ing of the text. I am also deeply indebted to Professor Marie L.
Waddell for her expert editorial work and valuable suggestions
about style.
Nicholas Horvath
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Page 203: St. Thomas Summa Theologia, Vol. 2, translated by
the Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Benziger
Brothers, 1947).
J
4
PART 1
A Prologue to Philosophy:
Wonder and Wisdom
Definition of Philosophy
In a sense, no intelligent person in his lifetime can entirely

escape at least some informal speculation. In the form of a
dilemma, Aristotle presented this truth in the fragment of one
of his lost treatises, Protreptikos: "You say one must philoso¬
phize. Then you must philosophize. You say one should not
philosophize. Then to prove your contention you must philoso¬
phize. In any case you must philosophize.”1 * To abandon
philosophy altogether is itself a philosophical decision. In spite
of some incurious or inept minds, the human intellect is nat¬
urally philosophical: it has a quenchless thirst for knowledge,
not merely for data but for their explorations, justifications, and
proofs; it tries to grasp its findings in an ultimate understanding
of reality. Man’s search is always for truth; he even proves truth
by truth. In a popular sense, every thinking person is philoso¬
phizing.
Philosophy in the strict, technical sense, however, is quite
different from the popular use of the term. The philosophizing
of the common man is superficial, vague, haphazard, unconscious,
uncritical, and subjective; but philosophy in the strict sense is a
conscious, precise, critical, objective, and systematic study of all
things.
Etymologically, the term "philosophy” derives from two Greek
words: philia ("love”) and sophia ("wisdom”). According to
Cicero2 and Diogenes Laertius,3 the term "philosophy” goes
back to Pythagoras, one of the Seven Wise Men of ancient
Greece, who allegedly repudiated the arrogant name of "sage”
* Superior numbers refer to notes at the end of the chapter.
3
4 A PROLOGUE TO PHILOSOPHY
(sophos) by which contemporary thinkers had designated them¬

selves. Pythagoras claimed, "No man, but only God, is wise";
since the goal of perfect wisdom is beyond the attainment of
mortal men, he wanted to be called a philosophos, a "lover of
wisdom."
Originally the term sophia designated the carpenter’s art, the
art of making pontoons, the art of navigation and guessing rid¬
dles. Later it meant talent in poetry and excellence in any art,
music in particular. In ancient Greece a wise man was a person
characterized by common sense or by great skill and outstanding
performance in any art. Not until the time of Aristotle, though,
did the term "philosophy" assume a technical meaning, distin¬
guishing it from the other branches of learning.
Wisdom 4 in the strict sense, as an intellectual virtue, is the
certain and evident knowledge of all things through the ultimate
reasons, principles, and causes. Philosophy, then, the loving quest
for wisdom, is, according to its essential definition,5 the supreme
science of all things through the ultimate reasons, principles,
and causes acquired by means of natural human reason.6
Science in general is universal, certain, evidenced, and sys¬
tematized knowledge of things through their causes. Scientific
knowledge is organized according to the intrinsic principles
proper to its subject, thus making demonstrable its conclusions.
Science does not desire a mere enumeration of facts, since the
phenomena of nature are not isolated and independent; it seeks
rather to discover the laws behind these facts in order to explain
them and arrange them into a comprehensive system of knowl¬
edge. Philosophy goes beyond this purpose; it unites the findings
of the various sciences into the highest system possible to the
human intellect. Philosophy is not to be identified with any of
the special sciences either singly or together; it is the unification
and systematization of all important knowledge within the realm
DEFINITION OF PHILOSOPHY 5
of reason. Philosophy is a universal science in the sense that it

investigates and inquires into everything: knowledge itself and
its methods, being in general, particular types of beings both
inanimate and animate, finite beings, and the Infinite Being. Its
universal character, however, must not be understood in the
sense that it is the sole science of mankind, absorbing all the
special sciences, being merely their supreme synthesis. Philosophy
is the supreme science, for it is not content with just the inter¬
mediate principles of truth, but also studies things in their ulti¬
mate aspects. It is preoccupied with the totalization of knowl¬
edge; it integrates the multiplicity of reality into a total and
fundamental unity.
The main objects of philosophy, those that best indicate its
meaning, are speculation and criticism. Concerning speculation,
philosophy looks upon things from the broadest possible per¬
spective; as for criticism, it has the twofold role of questioning
and judging everything that pertains either to the foundations
or to the superstructure of human thinking. [It is interesting to
note that the English word "speculation” comes from the Latin
verb specere ("to see”), but its immediate origin is in the noun
specula, indicating a "watch tower” or, metonymically, a "hill.”
Just as one can see the wide horizon from a tower or a hilltop,
so he obtains through philosophy a broad view of reality.] In
short, philosophy is the science of beings in search of their ul¬
timate reasons, causes, and principles.
As a science of beings, philosophy is concerned with every¬
thing that is or becomes or is known. Whereas the special sci¬
ences are looking for the proximate causes of things, philosophy
searches for the ultimate explanations and causes of being.
A reason is an explanation by means of which something can
be understood. A principle is a source from which anything
proceeds in any way. There are various kinds of principles:
principles of being, of knowledge, and so on. Principles are

starting points of being or of change or of knowledge, and there
are three ultimate ones:
The Principle of Identity.

The Principle of Contradiction.
The Principle of Sufficient Reason.
These principles are self-evident; they cannot and need not be

demonstrated. Their only evidence is that of experience and an
understanding of terms. When we become aware of these truths,
we recognize their universality and necessity; they are generaliza¬
tions descriptive of the ways in which nature acts.
Depending on his own philosophical outlook, one may define
causes in different ways or even reject the concept of causality
entirely. According to the generally accepted definition, a cause
is a principle from which anything proceeds in a dependent way;
it is whatever contributes to the being of a thing. Traditionally,
the five main types of causes are usually enumerated thus:
1. The efficient cause: an agent whose activity produces an

effect.
2. The material cause: something out of which something else
is produced.
3. The formal cause: something which actuates, determines,
perfects.
4. The exemplar cause: a form in imitation of which some¬
thing is made or done; a blueprint or a model of a thing.
5. The final cause: something on account of which something
else is made or done; the purpose, end, or goal of a being for
which something is caused—a motive.
In contemporary science, the general Law of Causation is sub¬

sumed under the even broader Principle of Determinacy, which
consists of the Genetic Principle ("Nothing springs out of noth-
(
1
ing or goes into nothing”) and the Principle of Lawfulness

("Nothing unconditional, arbitrary, lawless occurs”).
A cause, then, is a being which through its positive influence
either produces something or brings about a change in some¬
thing already existent. Every cause is a principle since it is a
starting point, but not every principle is a cause. A principle is
broader than a cause, for a principle is a kind of genus under
which causes are species.
Philosophy is not'a special science. Science in the strict sense
is an inductive study, which by means of tests, experiments, and
statistics presents a system of facts through the construction of
hypotheses. Whereas philosophy is based on the ultimate causes,
special sciences are based on proximate causes. Furthermore, the
specific viewpoint of philosophy is general in its character; the
specific viewpoint of the special sciences is particular in its
character.
There is an interrelation, though, between philosophy and the
special sciences/ On the one hand, special sciences are indispensa¬
bly based on philosophy in general and on metaphysics in par¬
ticular; on the other hand, philosophy is in need of the special
sciences—not absolutely, but only to a limited extent. It does
not need the sciences for the establishment of its own truth; yet,
(1) being based on the data of experience, it obtains important
illustrations and conclusions from the sciences; and, (2) using
scientifically demonstrated facts, it refutes objections and errors
allegedly based on or supported by scientific investigations or
results.
Philosophy is not theology. The viewpoint of philosophy is
natural; it is based on unaided human reason. The viewpoint of
theology is supernatural; it is based on Divine Revelation.
Philosophy is not an ideology.8 Philosophy is fundamental and
abstract. Wonder 9 and the pursuit of happiness are reasons for
philosophizing. Ideologies are applied and practical. Education,
temperament, circumstances, and the goals of individuals are

responsible for ideologies.
Notes
1. "Fragment 50, 1483 b 29; 1484 a 2, 8, 18.
2. Tusculan Disputations, V, 3.
3. The Lives of Philosophers, Preface.
4. According to Aristotle’s description {Met.A, I, 2), a wise per¬

son is characterized in the following way: he knows (1) everything,
though not in a detailed way, (2) the most difficult things, (3) the
most exact things, (4) the best explanation of the way things hap¬
pen, (5) things for their own sake, and (6) the ends of things.
5. Aristotle’s definition: Ten onomadzomenen sophian peri ta

prota sitia kai tas archas hypolanbanousi pantes. In English: "All
men consider philosophy as concerned with first causes and prin¬
ciples. The science of all things through their first and deepest
reasons” (Met., I, 1). Thomas Aquinas’ definition: Sapientia est
scientia quae consider at primas et universales causas; sapientia causas
primas omnium causarum consider at. In English: "Wisdom (that is,
philosophy) is the science which considers first and universal
causes; wisdom considers the first causes of all causes” (Met., I,
lect. 2).
6. A succinct yet expressive and clear definition of philosophy

comes from Jacques Maritain: "Philosophy is human wisdom.”
Consequently, a philosopher for Maritain is "a man humanly wise”
(An Introduction to Philosophy, p. 18).
7. When applied to both the philosophical sciences and the

natural sciences, the classical definition of science takes on an
analogous character for several reasons: whereas modern natural
sciences are greatly departmentalized, use the inductive method,
experiment with the individual phenomena of nature, and obtain
knowledge through hypotheses, by contrast the philosophical sciences
have a unitary character, use primarily the deductive method, employ
general principles and causes abstracted from the phenomena of
nature, and thereby obtain certitude.
8. Weltanschaung: "outlook on life.” In reality, Weltanschaung

and "philosophy” overlap and coincide, the two terms being fre¬
quently used interchangeably.
9. "Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy

begins in wonder” (Plato, Theaetetus, 155). "It is owing to their
wonder that men both now begin and at first began to philosophize”
(Aristotle, Metaphysics, I, 21).
Importance of Philosophy
The study of philosophy is important for three reasons:
1. Philosophy is the basis for the special sciences. (a) Philos¬

ophy serves the special sciences, providing them with fundamen¬
tal doctrines, principles, and axioms, (h) Philosophy protects
the special sciences inasmuch as it defends their postulates
against every possible objection. These postulates the very sci¬
ences themselves can neither explain nor vindicate. (c) Philos¬
ophy also protects the sciences from overspecification. It or¬
ganizes the multiple branches of the partial sciences into the
highest unit of human wisdom, thus saving them from total
disintegration into entirely independent and aimless small spe¬
cial fields. (The roles of protection and organization are almost
exclusively played by metaphysics.)
2. Philosophy, in spite of being mainly abstract in character,

is also practical, particularly three of its branches: logic (al¬
though not a branch in the strict sense of the word, but only an
introductory subject to philosophy), philosophical psychology,
and ethics.
3. A correct system of philosophy, one not contradictory to

Divine Revelation, serves as a basis for religious faith. Philoso¬
phy demonstrates the preambles of faith, such as the existence
of an Infinite Being; it arranges the tenets of revelation in a
systematic form; and it is an indispensable and noble instrument
for the defense of revealed doctrines and of theological specula¬
tions and constructions.
?
Philosophy uses in its investigations neither sensible experi¬

ence as such nor religious faith. For this reason, the views of
philosophers are bound to differ considerably from one another.
Whereas religious beliefs are based on the supposed infinite
knowledge and truthfulness of a Divinity Who reveals truths
coming from His own essence, philosophical tenets rely ex¬
clusively on human reason. Naturally, each individual man has
his own approaches to problems, his own answers to questions;
he differs from other thinkers even in the consideration of what
constitutes the basic problems of mankind. A survey of the his¬
tory of philosophy, therefore, reveals that there are undeniably
many conflicting systems in philosophy. Some scholars claim that
the history of philosophy is a mere parade of errors, that philoso¬
phy is a disorderly conglomeration of opinions. This, of course,
is an exaggerated view, just as it would be to claim that philoso¬
phy is the treasury of infallible doctrines and perfectly satisfactory
solutions to human problems. The presence of conflicts in
human thinking is so obvious and striking that one may even
talk about a "scandal” of philosophy. Hence some inevitable
questions arise: How does one judge these systems? Are they
of any value for anyone? Are they all false? Are at least some
of them true? What precisely constitutes the criteria of their
truth or falsity?
Before discussing the ways in which these vexing questions
may be answered, two general axioms should be constantly ob¬
served. First, the particular systems of philosophy should never
be viewed separately, but should always be considered in their
n
proper contexts, synoptically, in broad interacting relations.

These mutual connections may span long periods of time; one
philosopher may influence others over a gap of several centuries.
Second, philosophers never really die, their ideas and influences
outliving them by centuries. All great philosophers, as well as
their teachings, if only in a state of prolonged hibernation, are
still alive, occasionally causing unexpected trouble or suddenly
offering fine solutions to vexing problems. The so-called Minor
Socratic Schools provide a good example of the seeming disap¬
pearance and subsequent sudden rebirth, centuries later, of some
philosophical systems. The immediate lesser followers of Socrates
(in contrast to his greatest pupil, Plato) did not particularly
impress their contemporaries, and their tenets soon faded away
—but not forever. About a century later Stoicism revived the
moral principles of the Cynics. The ethical system of Epicurus
in the fourth century B.c. is a modification of fifth century B.c.
Hedonism. Also, Pyrrho’s third century B.c. Skepticism was
partly due to the influence of the Socratic Megarian School.
The questions raised in the second paragraph above may be
answered in the following ways:
1. From a strictly natural point of view, a system is as good as

the validity and strength of its arguments. For those who accept
Divine Revelation, the negative norm of truth is Divine Revela¬
tion.
2. If a system can be reduced to internal contradictions, it is

a false system.
3. On one hand, philosophical development is not a series of

unmitigated errors since it would be impossible for everything in
any philosophical system to be falsehood; on the other hand,
philosophy is not exclusively a sowing of the seeds of truth.
Therefore we may learn from philosophers both to avoid errors
and to receive wholesome concepts.
?
THE "SCANDAL" OF PHILOSOPHY 13
4. There is an inherent value in the thinking of even erring

philosophers. First, most of the great rival doctrines have some
truth in them, being based to a certain extent on truth. Second,
they have contributed at least indirectly to the progress of phi¬
losophy by counterbalancing or destroying other systems, or by
bringing out, unintentionally through their overemphasis, some
latent truths in similar or opposed doctrines. For instance,
Nietzsche’s concept of a real world of becoming diametrically
opposes and counterbalances, centuries later, Plato’s concept of
a "really real’’ world of "beyond,’’ which stands in contrast to
the "apparent’’ world of corporeal existence. Or, again, con¬
temporary Existentialism diminishes the claims of nineteenth
century Rationalism.
*
PA RT I
A Brief History of
Philosophy:
Forty Wise M.en
Ancient Greek Philosophy
Introduction
Greece was the cradle of Western civilization for the following

reasons:
1. Greece had a mild climate. Hence its inhabitants did not

have to fight as hard for survival as those of more northern
countries. This favorable climate gave the people a somewhat
harmonious character.
2. The country was surrounded on three sides by the sea, and
its inhabitants were seafaring people who soon came into contact
with other civilizations. Their wealth, accumulated through their
commerce, endowed them with one of the basic elements of cul¬
ture: leisure.
3. The terrain was mountainous, a circumstance which
prompted the development of several city-states. These city-states
(polis), in turn, produced independent political systems and cul¬
tures and, within their cultural framework, different philosophi¬
cal Schools.
4. Greek religion was anthropomorphic in character. The
Greeks had no dogmas or priesthood, and no fear of their gods.
In fact, their religion was more of a cult than a religion in the
strict sense of the word. This lack of religious restriction gave
the Hellenic people an environment in which they could think
more freely than those in other nations were able to do.
Whereas Western civilization had its roots in Greece, Greek

philosophical thinking had its beginning in the Hellenic cities of
Asia Minor, on the Ionian coast. The reason for this was that,
i8 A BRIEF HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
while Greece itself was in a state of comparative chaos and

barbarism because of the Dorian invasion of the eleventh cen¬
tury B.C., which submerged the old Aegean culture, Ionia pre¬
served the achievements of the older civilization. In addition, the
cities on the eastern coast of the Aegean Sea were more prosper¬
ous than those of Hellas. Hence it was in Ionia that a scientific
awakening took place and that the new Greek civilization arose.
Ionia taught the new Greece; it gave her letters, art, and poetry.
Ionian shipmen carried her new culture to foreign countries.
Specifically, it was in Miletus, the most important city in this
region at the beginning of the sixth century B.C., that Greek
philosophy had its real origin. The first known Greek philosopher
was Thales. He and his fellow thinkers were mainly interested
in the material world. Attempting to give answers to the ques¬
tion of what nature is, they searched for the substance of which
all things are composed (arche), from which they originate, and
into which they are again dissolved.
Since the Persian invasion of Asia Minor forced the transfer
of some Ionic groups to the extreme western edge of the Hel¬
lenic world, philosophical thought shifted to southern Italy and
Sicily near the end of the sixth century B.c. Here one of the most
complex and obscure systems of Greek thought developed: Py-
thagoreanism. Here not only the circle of Pythagoras and his
followers, but also the Eleatic School with Parmenides as its
major figure, originated. It was Parmenides who discovered
things as entities, as something that is; he therefore had a
decisive and lasting impact on philosophy. But so, from an op¬
posite point of view, did another thinker of the same era,
Heraclitus of Ephesus.
During its first period, the era of beginning, philosophical
speculation was largely objective. Philosophers of this early
period before Socrates are called the Pre-Socratics. The last of
them, the Atomists, did not really precede Socrates, being ap-
ANCIENT GREEK PHILOSOPHY 19
proximately contemporary with him. The two major Atomists,

Leucippus and Democritus, followed, not the teachings of Socra¬
tes, but rather the tradition of those earlier thinkers preoccupied
with nature as well as the speculations of Eleatic philosophy.
Beginning with the fifth century B.C., an important change
took place in Greek thinking. Preoccupation with nature was
turned into a concern with man. In this second period, the golden
era of Greek philosophy, the three intellectual giants—Socrates,
Plato, and Aristotle—focused their attention on the inner self
of man in a way predominantly objective, but blended with
subjective methods.
During the third and last era of Greek philosophy, which
may be designated the ethical period, the subjective method be¬
came prevalent. The three major Schools of this era—Skepti¬
cism, Epicureanism, and Stoicism—had subjectively considered
man, to the exclusion of cosmological and metaphysical prob¬
lems. The Neo-Platonism of the second and third centuries,
however, represented a return to metaphysical thinking.
Early (Pre-Socratic) Greek Philosophy
(The Cosmocentric Period or the Period of Naturalism)

Although science and philosophy were identical at the beginning
of Western civilization, and although the scientific disciplines
did not separate themselves from philosophy and evolve into
specific subjects until much later, only the Ionian thinkers in
general and the Milesians in particular could be considered as
philosophers in the strict sense of the word. True, they had been
primitive scientists also, but primarily they were philosophers,
for their activity had not merely consisted of belief or of sheer
observation, but had been a genuine intellectual activity. Theirs
was an inquiry into the basic questions of existence, into the
problems of obvious changes in the world—growth and decay,
20 A BRIEF HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
birth and death, and, beyond changes, the common essences of

things. They were interested in nature as such and tried to pene¬
trate through the appearances of things to reality itself. Further¬
more, they attempted to find the ultimate constituents of the
universe. Their solutions may have been oversimplified and
naive, but the very fact that they became intently interested in
these vexing questions of mankind, that they approached them
with an attitude which for the first time was neither mythical
nor poetical in character, was both meritorious and amazing.
One of them, Parmenides, can even be credited with an ability
for truly metaphysical, abstract thinking.
Five Schools belong to the pre-Socratic era of Greek philoso¬
phy: the Old Ionian, the Pythagorean, the Eleatic, the New
Ionian, and the Atomist.
The Old Ionian School To the members of the Old Ionian

group, the material cause of the world is one of its constituting
elements (cosmologism). They considered all matter as animated
(hylozoism). Most members of this School came from Miletus
in Asia Minor.
Thales (624-546 B.C.), "the father of philosophy” as he
had been called by Aristotle,1 thought that water was the
"world stuff” or first principle, for the world is a mixture of
solids, liquids, and gases, with water the only substance com¬
monly found in all three forms. For Anaximander of Miletus
(610-545 B.C.), the qualitatively undetermined and quantita¬
tively unlimited indeterminate (apeiron) was the first principle.
Anaximenes of Miletus (585-528 B.C.) considered air as the
principle of all things.
The Pythagorean School This School was founded by Pythag¬

oras (570-496 B.C.), who probably was born at Samos.2 He
journeyed to Italy, where at Croton he established a philosophico-
religious society, consisting of fraternities and sororities of re-
I
1
ligious character influenced by the Orphic Mysteries. It em¬

phasized the doctrine of reincarnation (metempsychosis) and
practiced rules for the purification of the souls of its members.
According to the Pythagoreans, all things—not only objects
of reality but also moral qualities as well as political and social
institutions—are numbers. They claimed that the contrast of
opposites, that is, of even and odd numbers, nullified in mathe¬
matical harmony, governs the universe.
The Eleatic School According to the basic doctrine of this

School, the world is a single, immovable, unchangeable being.
Xenophanes of Colophon 3 (570-475 B.C.), probably a pupil of
Anaximander, was the founder; Parmenides of Elea (540-470
B.c.), "the Father of Metaphysics,” was the outstanding member
of the group and, perhaps, the greatest of all the Pre-Socratic
philosophers. Parmenides held the opinion that the arche of
things is being; the attributes of being are oneness, immutability,
and eternity. Being, or one, exists; non-being, or multiplicity,
does not exist; change is an illusion.
Zeno of Elea 4 (around 460 B.c.) presented four direct dia¬
lectic arguments against change and multiplicity, respectively.
Among them, the arguments of the Hying arrow and of the race
between Achilles and a turtle are the most famous. Melissus of
Samos (around 440 B.c.) presented some indirect arguments
against multiplicity and change.
The New Ionian School Members of this School developed

the doctrines of the Old Ionian School and introduced the notion
of several ultimate elements. They accepted the Eleatic view of
the denial of any true becoming and explained all things by the
mechanical combination of atoms. They also introduced the
notion of efficient causes.
Empedocles of Akragas 5 (492-432 b.c.) claimed that being
consists of four elements: earth, water, air, and fire. They are
the primordial causes of the multiplicity of things. Anaxagoras

of Clazomenae6 (500-428 B.c.) maintained that the "world
stuff” consists of infinitely divisible, qualitatively different small
particles, governed by an immanent mind (nous).
Heraclitus of Ephesus7 was the connecting link between
earlier and later Ionian philosophy. With Parmenides he was
also one of the most important figures of this world. He adopted
a position antithetically opposed to that of the Eleatics. Ac¬
cording to the opinion of Heraclitus, the universe is a becoming:
Panta rei kai ouden menei ("Everything flows on and nothing
remains”). The "world stuff” is ever-living, animate, divine fire.
The Atomist School Allegedly Le7^cippus of Miletus (5 th

c. B.c.?) was the founder of the Atomist School. But so little is
known of Leucippus that historians are inclined to consider him
a legendary figure. Democritus of Abdera 8 (460-370 B.c.) ad¬
vocated the opinion that reality consists of an infinite number
of atoms, that is, of simple and physically indivisible, changeless
particles differing from each other solely in quantitative respects,
eternally moving in empty space, subject only to mechanical law
and not to any purposive principle.
Golden Era of Greek Philosophy
(The Era of Attic Philosophy, or the Anthropocentric

Period, or the Metaphysical Period)
Whereas the Ionians had focused their attention upon nature,

the Sophists changed philosophy into a study of man. From then
on the main concern of philosophy became partly the problem
of knowledge, partly the problem of establishing the possibility
for man to obtain universal truth, and partly the problem of
moral goodness.
ANCIENT GREEK PHILOSOPIJY 23
The Sophists The Sophists appeared on the scene of fifth

century philosophy under the leadership of two wandering
teachers, Protagoras and Gorgias. The Sophists became engaged
in the development of pragmatic skills mainly for lawyers and
politicians and in argumentations destructive of truth. They
sought knowledge for the sake of intellectual pleasure, power,
and social prominence. Their aim was to teach people, for a
price, by means of oratory—through the proper use and misuse
of words and through quibbles ("sophisms”)—the way to ob¬
tain high state offices. The Sophists advocated Relativism and
Skepticism because they thought that neither certitude nor truth
was available for man.
Protagoras of Abdera (481-411 B.C.) believed that knowl¬
edge is empirical and relative to the individual man: "Man is
the measure of all things” was his famous slogan. Gorgias of
Leontini9 (483—375 B.C.) claimed that nothing exists; if any¬
thing were to exist, it would be unknowable, and, even granting
the existence and knowableness of objects, the knowledge of
them could not be communicated to other persons. In short,
since reality is reduced to the subjective experience of man,
nothing exists, nothing can be known, nothing can be taught.
Socrates
Born: Athens, Greece, in 470 B.C.
Died: Athens, Greece, in 399 B.C.
life An ugly, satyr-like man, Socrates was of noble charac¬

ter. He was born to a stone-cutter father and a midwife mother,
in Athens during the fifth century B.C. After courageous par¬
ticipation in the Peloponnesian War, he decided to prepare his
fellow man, particularly the young, for knowledge and a mor¬
ally good life. Thus he sought to counterbalance the fantastic
doctrines of the Ionian thinkers and the evil influence of the
Sophists. His role of a "gadfly,” as he used to call himself, and
A BRIEF HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
24
his peculiar system of discussions made him a dangerous nui¬
sance for the corrupt democratic leaders of Athens. Falsely
charged with impiety and the corruption of youth, Socrates was
tried and condemned to death. Although he had an opportunity
to do so, he refused to escape from prison, and in 399 B.C., sur¬
rounded by his friends, he bravely drank the hemlock pre¬
scribed by tradition for a man condemned by the court.
teachings Socrates wrote nothing. Our knowledge of his
fascinating personality is derived only from three of his con¬
temporaries: Xenophon, the military leader and historian, who
described him; Aristophanes, the playwright, who ridiculed him;
and his disciple Plato, who exalted him.
In contrast to the Sophists, all the efforts of Socrates served
only one purpose: that of establishing concepts of truth and
goodness. According to Socrates* the surest way to attain reliable
knowledge was through a seemingly simple method called
dialectic. Devised and so named by Socrates, it was actually a
deceptive technique consisting of disciplined conversations during
which Socrates first pretended ignorance and asked apparently
naive questions. These questions, however, soon evolved into
deep and penetrating inquiries which, having been asked per¬
sistently by the Master, finally drove his conceited audience
(mostly young men) to the acknowledgment of their faulty way
of thinking and to the admission of their real ignorance and
their errors. This was the so-called ironic part of the process.
Then, by means of intellectual midwifery, named the maieutic
way, Socrates, together with his listeners, tried to establish cor¬
rect definitions in the field of ethics. Frequently his dialogues
with his friends and disciples remained inconclusive; nevertheless
they taught his followers an orderly way of thinking and clarified
more than one important moral issue.
The leading moral doctrine of Socrates was that knowledge is
virtue and ignorance is vice. He was convinced that goodness and
knowledge are not merely related, but that knowing the good is
doing the good, and vice is the absence of knowledge. Conse¬
quently, nobody ever commits an evil act knowingly, but always
and only out of ignorance.
SOCRATIC SCHOOLS Five minor thinkers among the followers
of Socrates established their own schools, which became known
as the Minor Socratic Schools. Actually, they were not schools
of thought in the traditional sense of the word, for these phi¬
losophers represented philosophical tendencies rather than
closely knit groups; nor were they very Socratic in character,
since they had combined and had tried to harmonize their
Master’s teachings with earlier philosophizing. Furthermore, they
accepted only certain aspects of Socrates’ doctrines. Two of them,
Euclid of Megara10 (c. 450-380 B.C.), the founder of the
Megarian (or Eristic) "School,” and Phoedo of Elis,11 the head of
the Elean movement, were particularly impressed by the dia¬
lectics of their Master. In contrast, Antisthenes of Athens (445-
365 B.c.) and Diogenes of Sinope12 (d. 324), leaders of the
Cynics,13 as well as Aristippus of Cyrene (c. 435-355), the
founder of the Cyrenaic School, were under the influence of
Socratic ethics. For Antisthenes, virtue was renunciation of all
earthly possessions and pleasures. Diogenes went farther than
Antisthenes; he opposed the civilization of the Hellenic world
and preferred instead the life of barbarians and even that of
animals.14 He advocated free love, yet also a puritanistic
asceticism; instead of allegiance to a single country, he favored
citizenship of the world. Aristippus and his followers, adopting
the hedonistic element of Socratic doctrine (see "Main Problems
and Principal Branches of Philosophy—Metaphysics”), claimed
that pleasure is the end of life, an idea which was never main¬
tained by Socrates himself. By pleasure, however, they meant
limited desires and the avoidance of unrestricted excess in enjoy¬
ment.
In summary, then, one may say that each of the above-

mentioned followers of Socrates accepted only some of the
teachings of the great thinker and disregarded all the rest of his
doctrines. There was only one disciple of the remarkable
Athenian philosopher who could understand and develop the
ideas of his teacher, not just in part but in their totality, and
whose School therefore can be considered as the only Major
Socratic School. This brilliant man was Plato.
Plato
Born: Athens, Greece, in 427 B.c.
Died: Athens, Greece, in 347 B.c.
life A prolific writer and one of the deepest and most in¬
fluential thinkers of the Western world, Aristocles, nicknamed
and known ever since as Platon for his broad build, was a mem¬
ber of a prominent Athenian family. Related to kings and oli¬
garchs but shocked by the inabilities of democratic leaders as
well as by the execution of his Master Socrates, Plato soon be¬
came disillusioned about politics in general and democracy, as a
form of government, in particular. He traveled extensively; his
journeys took him to southern Italy, where he acquired a
thorough knowledge of Pythagorean doctrines. He also traveled
three times to Syracuse to instruct the young tyrant of Sicily,
Dionysius II, but this undertaking was frustrated by the ad¬
verse influences on this ruler, as well as his weak character. At
about age 40, Plato founded the Academy, an institution of re¬
search and higher learning which, in the forms of the Old, Mid¬
dle, and New Academies, survived him for several centuries.
While still active at his institution, he died at the age of 80.
works Plato’s works consist of thirty-five Dialogues and
thirteen Epistles. The thirteen letters are considered as a single
unit; their authenticity is questionable. Of the Dialogues, six
works are rejected as forgeries; another six have had their
originality disputed; the remaining twenty-three are unquestion¬

ably genuine. These twenty-three genuine Dialogues are divided
into four groups.
a. Writings of the Socratic Period: the works largely re¬

flecting ideas expressed by Socrates himself. In the writings of
the three other periods, Plato’s opinions and teachings, although
presented as the spoken words of his former teacher, are Plato’s
own contentions and doctrines. Dialogues belonging to this first
group: Apology, Crito, Protagoras, Euthyphron, Charmides,
Laches, Politeia (Republic, Book I), Lysis.
h. Dialogues of the Transition Period: Gorgias, Meno, Eutych-
demus, Lesser Hippias, and Cratylus.
c. Dialogues of the Period of Maturity: Symposium (Ban¬
quet), Phaedo, Politeia (Books II-X), Phaedrus.
d. Works of Old Age: Theatetus, Parmenides, Sophist,
Politicus (Statesman), Timaeus, Critias and Laws.
doctrines Plato never published a finished and complete
system; his mind continually was developing, always facing new
problems, and detecting new difficulties. However, there is no
real evidence that he ever radically changed his theory of Eternal
Forms, even though he often tried to clarify and modify it. He
never distinguished between the different parts of philosophy,
nor did he ever make each part the subject of a separate
treatise.
His style is poetical. His works are permeated with mythical15
elements which carry significant implications, although he
probably did not mean their details to be taken seriously. He used
the dialectical method. However, Plato’s dialectic must be care¬
fully distinguished from the logic of Aristotle. For Plato, dialectic
is more of a metaphysical than of a logical character as it is
primarily concerned with the Eternal Forms. The process of
getting to know the World of Ideas, the process of ascension into
the Intelligible World of the Forms, as well as the relationship

of the Forms to one another—this is what Plato calls dialectic.
The doctrine of Forms is Plato’s most significant philosophical
contribution.16 By devising this theory, he hoped to solve the
fundamental problem of reality as a whole. Because the sensible
world is characterized by restless passage, by constant change
and becoming, it is a mere appearance, an illusion. Hence, ac¬
cording to Plato, man must seek the real and can actually find it
in an eternal world, the World of Ideas. True knowledge is at¬
tainable, but in order to attain it we must distinguish between
mere opinion (doxa) and genuine knowledge (eplsteme) .17 The
former is based on fleeting sense perceptions; hence it cannot
reveal the true reality of things, but presents u$ with mere ap¬
pearance. Even when opinion happens to be true, it cannot
justify itself. Experience, then, is not the source of genuine
knowledge. The object of true knowledge must be abiding,
fixed, and capable of being grasped in clear definition. Conse¬
quently, genuine knowledge is exclusively knowledge of the uni¬
versal; it is only the universal that fulfills the requirement of
being an object of knowledge. Whenever a plurality of in¬
dividuals have a common name, they also have a corresponding
concept. This is the universal, the common nature or quality
which is grasped in the concept. These universal concepts are not
merely subjective; in them we apprehend objective essences—if
by "essence” we do not mean something existing in things. These
objective essences are then given the name of Ideas or Forms 18
(Ideal or Eide).
Speaking metaphysically, Ideas or Forms 19 (Patterns, Proto¬
types) are separate, subsisting, eternal, unchanging realities.
They are final and independent realities, existing in themselves
and for themselves—the eternal transcendent Archetypes of
things, existing prior to things and apart from them. Their mode
of existence is unique: they are neither mental nor material, yet
t
they are real. It can hardly be said that they are spatially lo¬
cated. Since, however, they subsist, they must exist "apart” from
the things one can see; they are separate from the concrete
things of this world. In short, Eternal Forms have an independent
existence.
Since thinking about the Forms is the only kind of thinking
which attains truth, there seems to be a corresponding Form for
every universal concept which man can think of. Certainly there
are Forms of moral universals such as goodness and justice;
mathematical universals such as circle and line; Forms of
natural and manufactured bodies such as a flower or a bed. How¬
ever, since it is not likely that there is anything mean or vulgar
in the perfect World of Forms, it is hence almost certain that
there is no Form of fingernails, mud, or dirt. The number of
Forms must be limited,20 as is illustrated by the "Third Man
Argument.” 21 According to this argument, if what is predicated
truly of several things exists separately from them (for example,
"man-himself” is truly predicated of the many particular men
and is other than they are), there must be a third man. For if
"man,” which is predicated and exists independently is also
predicated both of the particular men and of the Form, then
there must be a third "man” predicated of both, and a fourth
predicated of all three objects, and a fifth, and so on without
end.
Man can have discourse only through the weaving together
of universals; thinking proceeds for the most part on a level
above particular things. Eternal Forms, corresponding to uni¬
versals, are therefore related to each other as genus and species;
in this way Forms tend to interlock even while retaining their
own unity. There is a hierarchy of Forms making a series
descending in well-ordered division and subdivision from the
highest genera to the individual. The most universal Forms are
those of Being and Non-Being, Like and Unlike, Unity and
Number, the Straight and the Crooked. The highest and most
universal Form of all is the Form of the Good, which is the Sun
of the Intelligible World, the cause of the other Forms and of
man’s knowledge of them, and the first principle and final ex¬
planation of reality. The "lower” a Form is, the closer it comes to
visible things, and consequently the "less” universal is man’s
corresponding knowledge (for example, the knowledge of a "red
apple”); hence the discourse of science is the most abstract. How¬
ever, not all Forms can be related to each other.
Because of the logical system and organic unity of Forms,
unity and plurality go together; the former includes the latter.
In the Intelligible World, there is no unity without plurality,
and no plurality without unity.
Whereas the World of Ideas or the Intelligible World—the
rational world of interrelated, connected organic unity (kos-
mos noetos)—is the true and real world, the visible world
(topos oratos) or the world of sense is merely an imperfect copy
and reflection of the Eternal Patterns; its phenomena are ectypes
of the Eternal, Subsisting Prototypes.
Sensible things exist through participation 22 in the Eternal
Forms; all particulars belonging to the same class participate in
the corresponding Form. A particular may participate simul¬
taneously in a plurality of Forms; when it undergoes change, it
participates successively in different Forms.
The relation between the Ideal World and the World of
Sense is due to a principle which is diametrically opposed to the
Ideas. This second principle is "matter”; it is the basis of the
phenomenal world, the raw material upon which the Forms
are somehow impressed. In itself, it is shapeless, indefinable,
imperceptible. This substratum, the ground of change and im¬
perfection, is an irrational, dull, and recalcitrant force. The Ideas
are the principles of law and order in the universe, the true
reality to which everything owes its form and essence. Matter,
on the other hand, is the principle of physical and moral evil.
The world was produced by the Demiurge who is god, though

he is not a personal divinity. He is the active and dynamic cause
of the world, but is not responsible for its evil. However, he is
not really a creator, for the two principles, the ideal and the
material, are already in existence. They are not created by the
Demiurge, who is solely a rearranger and who merely imposes
the forms on the pre-existent, chaotic, so-called "receptacle”
(which is a matrix or medium, the "nurse” of the universe).
The world so generated is composed of the four material ele¬
ments (earth, air, fire, water) and the animating soul, the
World-Soul, which is the intermediary between the World of
Ideas and the World of Phenomena and is the cause of life,
harmony, order, uniformity, knowledge. Besides the World-Soul,
the Demiurge provided impersonal gods for the planets; he also
generated rational human souls. He left to the lower gods the
making of the irrational part of the human soul, as well as the
production of animals.
The human soul consists of three parts. ("Part” is a meta¬
physical term and does not mean that the soul is material and
extended. The three parts of the soul should be considered not
in the material sense, but rather as principles of action.) The
rational part (to logistikon) is seated in the head; it is the most
characteristic aspect of the human soul. When this part of the
soul enters a body, an irrational part is added to it. This irrational
part is subdivided into the irrascible or spirited soul (to thy-
moeides), seated in the breast, to which belong the higher
emotions such as anger, courage, and hope, as well as the
instinctive or concupiscible soul (to epithymetikon) residing in
the bowels, in which are rooted the appetitive and sexual desires.
Besides the single rightful ruler—the reason—the tripartite
soul is united by another Form, desire (eros). Desire is the
motive force behind all human thought and deed, the drive
toward and longing after an unattained good until one is satis¬
fied. In itself eros is neutral. It can concern and drive any of the
three parts of the soul, yet only when it is used by reason does
it arrive at its true end.
Every rational soul is singular and is the principle of life and
self-motion. Each soul has been placed by the Demiurge on a
star, which is its home. There are as many souls as there are
stars. The Demiurge has granted to each soul a view of the uni¬
verse and a priori knowledge of eternal truths and values. These
souls were entrusted by the Demiurge to the lower gods, and
they became united with the body for some reason unknown to
us.23 Although in this world man is a composite of body and
soul, the union is merely accidental. There is an essential dis¬
tinction between soul and body. The soul is the true man, the
body only a shadow. The soma (body) is the sema (sepulcher)
of the psyche (soul) of man. When after death the rational soul
succeeds in overcoming the slavery to flesh, it departs to the
blissful invisible world. Impure souls which have loved the body
will enter the bodies of various animals (the doctrine of
transmigration of soul, or metempsychosis). Actually, only the
souls of true philosophers will go to "heaven,” since no one who
has not studied philosophy and who is not entirely pure is al¬
lowed to join the company of the gods.
Before entering its body, the soul forgets the Ideas it once
saw face to face. Yet the imperfect copies of Ideas in the World
of Sense suggest its own past to the soul, reminding the soul of
what it has seen before. Hence all knowledge is reminiscence
(anamnesis), and all learning is reawakening. Thus our concept
of values—such as our notions of the true, of the beautiful, and
of the good, as well as certain mathematical and logical notions,
such as those of being and non-being, identity and difference,
unity and plurality—is due to recollection.
The rational part of the soul is immortal. This is proved by
the simplicity of the soul, which renders decomposition impos¬
sible, and by the fact that the soul is the principle of life which
renders transition from being to non-being impossible. The
> / 1
immortality of the soul is also indicated by the analogy of op¬

posites; opposites generate each other: the weaker comes from
the stronger, the worse from the better, life from death.
For Plato virtue is the highest good. He regarded virtue as an
"order” of the soul. (This view, in a sense, is more aesthetic
than moral.) Since virtue is the highest good, the ideal of man
is a self-controlled soul in which the higher functions rule the
lower ones and exercise the virtues of wisdom, fortitude,
temperance, and justice.
The purpose of the state is to promote virtue and happiness.
In the ideal state, there are three classes of citizens, corresponding
to the three parts of the souls of the individual: the Philosopher-
Kings, corresponding to the rational part, the governing group,
whose virtue is wisdom; the Warriors, corresponding to the ir-
rascible part, whose virtue is courage; and the Producers, cor¬
responding to the concupiscible part, whose virtues are self-
control and obedience. Plato proposes for the upper classes of
society, commonly called the Guardians of the State, prolonged
physical and mental training as well as regimentation through¬
out their lives.24 For them, works of art25 and literature would
be censored and foreign travel discouraged.
Aristotle
Born: Stagira, Chalcidice in Thrace, in 384 B.c.
Died: Chalcis, on the Island of Euboea, in 322 B.c.
life A brilliant scientist in his own time and one of the
greatest philosophers of all ages, Aristotle (called, from his
birthplace, the Stagirite) was a native of the Macedonian sea¬
port of Stagira. His father, Nicomachus, was court physician to
the king of Macedon. At the age of 18, Aristotle went to Athens
and there stayed with Plato for 20 years. With the passing of
time, he became increasingly critical of his Master’s views, al¬
though he never rejected them entirely. Following Plato’s death,
and after having spent 3 years in Mysia and 1 year in Mytilene
on the island of Lesbos in biological research, Aristotle accepted

the tutelage of the future great conqueror, Alexander, who was
then 13 years old. For a period of 3 years, he taught Alexander
philosophy and the usual curriculum of subjects of that time.
Returning to Athens in 366 B.C., he opened a school of phi¬
losophy in a grove sacred to Apollo Lyceus and hence called his
school the Lyceum. Since he enjoyed strolling up and down in
the shaded court or peripatos of his institution, his group became
known as the "peripatetics.” Identified by the people of Athens
with the Macedonian party, Aristotle after the death of Alexander
was charged, as had been Socrates several years before him, with
impiety. In order to avoid the death sentence, he fled in 323 B.c.
from Athens and went to Chalcis in Euboea, where he died a
year later.
works Aristotle was a prolific writer. His main works can be
grouped into the following classes:
Logical Works: Six treatises under the common title of Organon
or "Instrument”
Metaphysical Work: First Philosophy commonly known as
Metaphysics
Works on Natural Philosophy and Science: Second Philosophy
or Physics, Meteorology, and so on
Psychological Work: On the Soul
Ethical and Political Works: Nicomachean Ethics,26 Politics
Poetical and Historical Works: Rhetoric, Poetics
Aristotle is considered to be one of the greatest thinkers mankind
has produced. He established the foundations for studying logic,
psychology, ethics, botany, and zoology. The greatest number of
his works fall into two groups, {a) The exoteric works (from
exo, meaning "outside,” so called because these books were meant
to be read outside of the school). Only fragments of these
works are extant. They were written in a graceful style, for the
most part in dialogue form, and were intended for the general
»
public, (b) The acroamatic or pedagogical works (from acroasis,

meaning 'school lecture”), extant in large numbers, written in a
clear but compressed and somewhat inelegant style as lectures for
the Lyceum.
doctrines According to the Stagirite, speculative and practi¬
cal knowledge are of equal importance. Theoretical science, the
end of which is knowledge of truth, is divided into the "first phi¬
losophy” (general metaphysics and natural theology), mathe¬
matics, and physics. Practical science, the end of which is action,
is divided into ethics, economics, and politics. Productive science,
the end of which is the artistic product, is the theory of art. What
we call logic, Aristotle called analytics because it is the analysis
of the forms of thought. Logic is not a philosophical science, but
a propaedeutic one; it is an instrument (organon) of philosophy.
Before anyone can rightly approach a theoretical science, he must
study the processes of human reasoning.
Though a student of Plato, Aristotle became an opponent of
his Master’s main teachings. He rejected Plato’s doctrine of the
separate existence of Ideas. Aristotle taught that Forms do not
exist apart from things, but are inherent in them. The World of
Sense is not a mere imitation or shadow of the real world; it is
the real world. Matter is not non-being; it is dynamic being.
Matter and form are separate entities, but are eternally together.
The combination of matter and form constitutes individual
things.
Aristotle’s acceptance of the individual beings in the sensory
world as real, and as therefore the objects of scientific knowledge,
presented him with a great problem. On the one hand, as a fol¬
lower of Plato, he considered the realities which are the objects
of true knowledge to be permanent and stable; on the other
hand, the world of the senses revealed itself to him as a flux of un¬
ceasing change. Thus Aristotle was confronted by two great
questions: What are the permanent and stable realities which
exist in the world of change? How can an unchanging reality

change to another, as constantly seems to happen according to the
testimony of our senses? His attempts to solve these prob¬
lems became the basic tenets of his philosophy, his doctrines con¬
cerning substance, matter and form, act and potency.
The nature of being as being or as a substance the Stagirite
investigated by the "first philosophy” (prote philosophia), that
is, by metaphysics. The basic problem concerning this science is
the discovery of ultimate principles of reality.
According to Aristotle, the individual, which is defined as that
which cannot be predicated (assorted) of another or merely as a
subjective concept or a mode of oral expression, is not a thing
in itself. The universal in the mind corresponds to the specific
essence in the object. Only singulars exist outside of the mind,
and, for a singular to exist independently in this way, it must be
a substance. Things cannot exist merely as substance, but must
have accidental forms. For instance, a horse cannot exist unless
it has color, and it cannot have color unless it has quantity or
extension. All real things, as well as all their corresponding con-
v cepts, can be classified into highest classes or categories. The ten
categories are substance, quantity, quality, relation, action, pas¬
sion, place, time, situation, and habit.
Every individual in the material world actually is something
with a tendency in it to achieve ends that pertain to its own
specific nature {entelecheia). Furthermore, every being has in
itself the possibility of becoming another thing. Actuality is both
temporally and logically prior to potentiality. The actual is prior
to the potential in principle, since the actuality is the end, or that
for the sake of which the potency exists or is acquired. A seed is
potentially a flower, but before there could be a seed with that
potentiality there had to be an actual plant.
The doctrine of actual and potential being is one of the most
fundamental teachings of philosophy and has a wide application.
i
}
A special application of the doctrine of the distinction between

potency and act lies also in the fact that it explains change in the
world.
Every individual substance is a mixture of matter (hyle) and
form (eidos or morphe). Matter and form explain the change we
observe in the objects of our experience. Substance is being in
the strict and proper sense, the unchanging and permanent object
of our thought. Yet individual substantial realities do change,
and there must be in the object undergoing change a potential
principle and a determining principle actualizing, in the process
of becoming, the potential element. The former principle is
matter, an element itself undetermined but capable of successive
determinations which make change possible.27 The latter principle
is form, the definite, delimiting reality of things. Although in¬
dividual things are the only things that exist, the form in each
individual thing is not a unique form but the form of a species,
the narrowest class which can be scientifically defined. The forms
of individuals are only numerically distinct and are otherwise
identical. The form of a concrete corporeal substance can never
actually exist in separation from its matter. The two are dis¬
tinguishable only by a process of mental analysis; they are not
two things but two principles. In the case of concrete corporeal
substances, matter is the principle of individuality. However, in
the case of eternal substances, or purely immaterial intellects
which form the highest rank in the hierarchy of realities, form
can exist without matter.
A thing is what it is, then, by reason of its own substantial
form. There is no form whatsoever in a thing prior to the form
* by which it is a substance. A thing comes to be neither from
being nor from non-being, but from qualified not-being, that is,
from privation. There are, then, not two but three factors in
change, since the product of change contains two positive ele¬
ments, form and matter, and presupposes a third element, priva-
tion (steresis). Privation is not a positive element, although it is

necessarily presupposed by change.
Natural things, or things constituted by nature—such as
animals, plants, air, and water—are those that have within
themselves their principle of motion or rest. Artificial objects
have no such principle within them. The term "nature” indicates
the intrinsic principles of motion and rest in the substantial
order. Hence matter and form alone are properly called "nature.”
Of the two constituents of composites, the form is more properly
nature than the matter, because it is the actuality, whereas the
matter is only the potency. Thus, on the one hand, the connota¬
tion of the term "nature” is restricted to the sensible world,
although, on the other hand, "nature” designates the stable
intrinsic principles of the changing objects of the universe.
Besides matter and form—called "material” and "formal”
causes, respectively—there are two extrinsic principles affecting
substances as well, namely, the efficient and final causes of
beings. In summary, then, the causes with which philosophy deals
are four in number: the substance, essence, or form of a thing
(to eidos); the matter or subject (he hyle); the source of
motion or efficient cause (to oden he kinesis); and the final
cause or good (to ou eneka).
As has been said before, every motion, every movement from
potentiality to actuality, requires as its principle something
actual. If every becoming requires an actual cause, then the
whole universe requires a mover. Logically, this mover is the
First Mover, first not in a chronological sense, but in the sense
of a Supreme Mover. Since motion is necessarily eternal, the
First Mover must also be eternal. It is God, but not a creator, for*
the world existed from all eternity without having been created
from all eternity. God did not create the world but formed it,
framing it as the final cause of the universe. God is immaterial,
Pure Actuality (Energein) without potentiality. Since God is
spiritual, He is also intellectual. Now, as knowledge is in¬
tellectual participation in the object, God’s object of knowledge
must be changeless. The best of objects, therefore, is Himself.
God, then, is Thought of Thought (Noesis Noeseos). God can¬
not have any object of thought outside Himself, for then He
would have an end outside Himself. Hence God does not take
care of the universe. Although the First Unmoved Mover (to
Proton Kinoun Akineton), according to its nature, is person, it
is not formally considered as such. God is entirely self-centered:
there can be no friendship of man toward God and there is no
need of worship.
The world is a compact universe, eternal, spherical in shape,
and having no void. It has nothing outside of it and is hierachially
ordered. In the world, every change and movement has its cause
or purpose, subordinated in its turn through higher causes and
purposes to the highest of all. In the center of the universe is the
earth. Then come the heavenly spheres, whose material becomes
the purer the farther they are from the earth. The outermost of
these spheres is the Heaven of the First Stars (Protos ouranos).
The stars are animate beings endowed with reason and are far
superior to man.
Man is a microcosmos, an ordered unity. He is also a composite
being. The soul is the substantial form of the body and is inti¬
mately united with it. The soul can be defined as the first
actuality of a natural body potentially having life. There are
three souls in man: the vegetative soul, having the activities of
nutrition, growth, and reproduction; the sensitive soul, having,
in addition, the activity of sensation; and the rational soul,
possessing also the faculty of intellection. The rational faculty,
which is proper to man, consists of the separable (or active)
and the passive intellects. The passive intellect, which is in
potency to its act, is actualized by sense images and by the
active intellect and thus knows its proper object, the "whatness”
of material objects. Whereas the active intellect is a divine prin¬

ciple coming from without, the passive intellect is attached to
sensibility and becomes and ceases with the organism. The active
intellect is eternal. It is not known whether there is only one
separable reason common to all men, or one for each individual.
Personal immortality is also questionable.
The proper function of man, as distinct from that of plants or
animals, is the reasonable activity of the soul. The fulfillment of
man’s distinctive function results in a virtuous life. Virtue is a
habit of mind. Since mind must control the lower functions of
man, namely, the passions, and since it must also develop its own
powers, there are moral virtues as well as intellectual ones. Intel¬
lectual virtues are either perfections of the scientific reason,
namely, understanding (nous), science (episteme), and wisdom
(sophia), concerned with first principles, demonstration, and the
search for ultimate reasons, respectively, or they are perfections
of the practical reason, namely, art, pertaining to external actions
(poiein), and practical wisdom, pertaining to actions that are in¬
dependent of external results (prattein). As opposed to the
limited number of intellectual virtues, there are very many moral
virtues. Will has a great number of excesses and defects, and
moral virtues depend on the will. Every moral virtue is a mean
between two extremes. Vices are either excesses or defects. Thus,
for example, courage is a mean between cowardice and boldness.
In Aristotle’s conception vices are not necessarily the desires in
themselves that must be regarded as morally evil but only the
disproportioned use of passions. The Stagirite did not advocate
renunciation; he urged the practice of temperance.28
The exercise of virtues results in happiness {eudaimonia').
Etymologically, eudaimonia implies good fortune, bestowed upon
man by a daimon, that is, a superior preternatural power.
Eudaimonia is man’s highest good. It does not consist, however,
of the exercise of only spiritual values. True, moral values form

its foundation but they are only part of the total requirement.
First of all, an active life and the absence of such material
miseries as bodily deformity, poverty, or illness form the core of
eudaimonia. Noble birth, freedom from any kind of menial labor,
handsome appearance, children, and friends are also necessary
requirements of true happiness. And all these values man must
possess throughout a lasting lifetime; consequently, children,
slaves, cripples, and people having a short life span cannot be
considered as happy persons.29
According to Aristotle, man is by nature not only a reasonable
being but also a social animal. The purpose of the state, the per¬
fect form of society, is the promotion of happiness through the
practice of virtue. Though the character and the needs of the
people determine the best form of government, in general an
aristocratic republic seems to be the superior type.
Later (Post-Aristotelian) Greek Philosophy
A. Anthropocentric or Ethical Period
Stoicism
According to Zeno of Citium 30 (3 50-258 B.c.) and the mem¬
bers of the School, the universe is a great living organism of
which God is the soul. God is fire. God is also the container of
all the germs of all things (Logos Spermatikos: Seed-Bearing
Reason).31 The worlds existence consists of an unending series
of constructions and destructions. God forms the world, after
millions of years destroys it through a universal conflagration,
and then produces it again; this process is repeated without end
(palingenesis).
The human soul is a spark of the divine fire.32 Man has to
achieve virtue; virtue means living according to reason. The

canon (rule) of human conduct is to become happy through
being untroubled. The proper motto for man is "Bear and
forebear”; sensory pleasure, as well as fear, is evil.
Epicureanism Epicurus of Samos (342-270 B.c.) and his fol¬

lowers adopted pessimism; they claimed that the best life has
to offer is the avoidance of pain. They also proposed a hedonistic
attitude, according to which happiness consists of pleasure; true
pleasure is the achievement, through great moderation, of
serenity of mind and heart.
Skepticism According to the Skeptics—Pyrrho of Elis (360-

270 B.c.), Carneades of Cyrene 33 (214-129 B.c.), and Sextus
Empiricus, a Greek of unknown birth place (around A.D. 300) —
neither certain knowledge of anything nor positive truth is avail¬
able for man. They stated that, because of general uncertainty, no
moral obligations exist for man.
Eclecticism The eclectic of the Academy, Cicero (106—43

B.c.), and the Stoic eclectics, Seneca (A.D. 4-65) and Epictetus
(A.D. 60—120), as well as the Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius
(A.D. 121—180), thought that true philosophy is scattered piece¬
meal throughout all existing theories. They said that it is the busi¬
ness of the philosopher to "choose out” {eklegein), to sift out
truth from various systems.
B. Theocentric or Religious Period
Neo-Platonism
Ammonius Saccas of Alexandria in Egypt (A.D. 175-242) was
the founder of Neo-Platonism. He was the teacher of Plotinus
of Lycopolis in Egypt (a.d. 204-269), who became the head of
the important Athenian School.34 Porphyry of Tyre in Phoenicia
I ^ '* 1
(a.d. 232-304) and the Emperor Julian the Apostate (331—

363) were also Neo-Platonists.
Neo-Platonism was an attempted reconciliation, a syncretism,
of Platonism, Aristotelianism, Neo-Pythagorianism, Stoicism, and
ancient oriental doctrines. It knew but opposed Christianity. It
advocated the absolute transcendence of God. God cannot be
known, and His essence cannot be expressed by man except by
the use of the term: The One. God is perfect Unity. Furthermore,
Neo-Platonism was characterized by the doctrines of emanations
from the Supreme Being (the Absolute One emanates the
Intelligence, Nous, and from the Nous emanates the World-Soul,
the Demiurge, which in turn produces matter, the first and es¬
sential evil); this then is also a doctrine of gradations. Neo-
Platonism believed in metempsychosis. Human souls have to re¬
turn from the material world, the world of darkness, through
asceticism to the Font of Light, God, and be united with the
Absolute One in extasis.
In A.D. 529 the Academy of Athens was closed by the
Emperor Justinian, a Christian, marking the end of ancient and
pagan Greek philosophy.
Notes
1. Met., I, 3, 983 b 20 (The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. R.

McKeon, 1948, p. 693).
2. Samos is an island off Ionia.
3. Colophon is one of the twelve Ionian cities of Asia Minor.
4. Elea is located in Southern Italy.
5. Akragas or Agrigentum is in Sicily.
6. Clazomenae is near Smyrna.
I
44
7. Ephesus is an important city near Miletus, in Ionia. For the
obscurity of his diction Heraclitus was called "The Obscure Phi¬
losopher,” and for his melancholy temperament he was dubbed
''The Weeping Philosopher.” Aristotle groups Heraclitus with the
School of Miletus.
8. Abdera is in Thrace.
9- Leontini is in Sicily.
10. Me gar a is near Athens.
11. The Phaedo of Plato’s Dialogue entitled Phaedo. Elis, or
Eleia, is in the western part of the Pelopponesus in Greece.
12. Sinope is a seaport of the Black Sea in Asia Minor.

13. They obtained the nickname of "Cynics” either from their
unusual, dog-like way of life (kyon: "dog”) or from the fact that
Antisthenes, who was not of purely Athenian origin, was allowed to
teach only in the kynosarges, a gymnasium reserved for those of
mixed blood.
14. Diogenes called himself "the Dog,” lived in a tub, and did in
public what decency requires should be done in private.
15. The Platonic Myth is a symbolic narrative in which Plato

expounds some doctrine in the truth of which he firmly believes but
which he holds can be expressed only by symbols and not by the
ordinary methods of reasoned argument. Plato’s most famous "il¬
lustrations” are the following ones:
The Simile of the Charioteer and His Two Winged Horses
(Phaedrus).
The Metaphor of the Divided Line (Republic, Bk. VI).
The Allegory of the Cave (Republic, Bk. VII).
The Third Man Argument (or The Fallacy of the Third Man)
(Parmenides).
The Myth of the Demiurge (Timaeus).
16. The other-worldliness in Plato’s philosophy is not of Socratic

origin. Rather, it is part of his Orphic-Pythagorean inheritance.
17. See the "Metaphor of the Divided Line.”
18. Ideas or Forms: the words may be used interchangeably. In

his old age, Plato came to think of the Forms as being in some way
constituted of numbers.
19. The term "idea” is a confusing one, for "idea” ordinarily

designates a concept in the mind. But for the ancient Greeks "idea”
did not designate an objective mental concept; it meant something
outside the mind, in the real world; it meant a visible form or
character and also the inner structure of the nature of things; in
medical literature it meant any kind or class of disease; for Democ¬
ritus it designated an atom. Metaphysically it is used in an entirely
new and different way.
20. The doctrine of Forms logically would imply that there is a

subsisting Idea corresponding to every universal concept which man
can think of: an Eternal Form of chair, color, health, justice—an
infinite number of them. Yet Plato never explicitly stated what the
extent of the World of Forms is. Being under Pythagorean influence
and thus having a preference for limit and definiteness, he would
not have been likely to admit indefiniteness or unlimitedness into
the World of Ideas by admitting a Form for every universal con-
/
cept.
21. The "Third Man Argument” in the Dialogue Parmenides is

used by Plato partly as a means of self-criticism and partly as a way
to ridicule his opponents for their misunderstanding and mis¬
representation of his doctrines. Aristotle utilized the same argument
in his criticism of Plato’s Ideal Theory.
22. Plato never explained exactly what he meant by "participa-

.• >>
tion.
23. Contrary to accounts given by some historians of philosophy,

Plato did not hold to the Orphic-Pythagorean doctrine of a "fall” of
the soul. He never explained clearly why the soul has to be em¬
bodied; the best solution he gives is the one in the Timaeus.
24. During his younger years Plato advocated for the Guardians
of the State the common possession of wives, children, and property.
However, in his last work, in the Laws, he mitigated these views.
25. Plato did not think highly of art. He regarded it as an imita¬

tion of the World of Sense, which is itself a mere copy of the
Eternal Forms; hence art is an imitation of an imitation and far
removed from reality.
26. A systematic ethics, published by Aristotle’s son and entitled

after him, in contrast to the Master’s Eudemian Ethics, edited by one
of his disciples, Eudemus, and the Magna Moralia or large scrolls of
Aristotelian ethical texts.
27. Aristotle never mentioned by name the "first matter” of the

Scholastics, which has no form at all and is simply an undefined and
unlimited possibility, although he frequently clearly referred to it.
28. There were two inscriptions over the temple of Delphi:

"Know yourself” and "Nothing in excess.” Moderation (sophrosyne)
was the basic and most characteristic Greek virtue.
29. Citium is in Cyprus.
30. The notion of logoi spermatikoi appears in Saint Augustine’s

teaching about the rationes seminales. Nietzsche’s doctrine of eternal
recurrence is based on the Stoic tenet of universal conflagration.
31. For that reason Stoics advocated universal brotherhood.
32. Cyrene is in North Africa.
34. There were three main varieties of Neo-Platonism: the

Athenian, the Egyptian, and the Syrian.
?
Medieval Philosophy
Introduction
In general, the Middle Ages spanned the falls of the two

Romes: ancient Rome fell to the Goths in 410, and the last
Western Emperor was deposed in A.D. 476; the "Second Rome,”
Byzantium or Constantinople, was captured by the Ottoman
Turks in 1453. The Middle Ages should always be divided into
two main periods. The first period, the Dark Ages, can be sub¬
divided into an era of stagnation, dating from the fifth to the
tenth centuries, and an era of preparation and transition, evolving
during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The second period was
the "golden era” of the thirteenth century, the greatest of all
medieval centuries, which was followed by the era of decline
during the fourteenth century.
Medieval philosophy was dominated by two basic problems:
the attempt to harmonize faith with reason, and, hand in hand
with this, the efforts to rationally prove the existence of God.
The most famous efforts in this regard were the "ontological
argument” of Saint Anselm and the "five ways” of Saint
Thomas. The most frquently debated question of medieval
philosophy, however, was the problem of the universals. Be¬
ginning with the ninth century, thinkers had considered their
controversies concerning universals of the utmost importance.
The prominence of this vexing medieval problem was due to the
fact that, without the acceptance of universals and a solution for
them, all rational knowledge would vanish since no essences
could be known, and thus all intellectual speculation would be
impossible. In addition, the reliability of the senses could be
47
questioned, according to whichever position one took toward the

universals. There were two basic positions that could be taken in
this dispute. If one were an Extreme Realist, he could have been
asked why universals, existing as such in nature, cannot be seen
or touched. If someone, on the other hand, were a Conceptualist,
he could have been asked how it was possible for one’s senses to
report to man certain common features of the different groups of
actual beings. Because of the importance of the problem of the
universals and because of the heated debates that surrounded it,
four schools of thought had gradually emerged about 500 years
after Boethius first considered the question.
The simplest solution was given by Exaggerated Realism, the
first of the schools to develop. This view asserts that mental con¬
ceptions have a real existence apart from the particular objects
of the sensory world. Particular objects possess reality only inso¬
far as they share in the independently existing Eternal Ideas.
Exaggerated Realism maintains that the universal as such exists
outside the mind. This was the position taken by William of
Champeaux during the twelfth century.
The second possible answer was that of Nominalism, which
was the opposite of Extreme Realism. According to this position,
the common names of individuals alone constitute the universal.
Nominalism maintains that there is no universality, either of
concept or of objective reality; the only universality is that of the
name. In the fourteenth century, William of Ockham was an
outstanding member of this School.
A third development was Conceptualism, according to which
universals are mere concepts. Nothing corresponds to concepts
in reality outside of the mind. This had been the view of Peter
Abelard in the twelfth century. Abelard paved the way for the
fourth school of thought: Moderate Realism. This doctrine,
developed into its fullness during the thirteenth century by
Thomas Aquinas, denied both the Ultra-Realism of Plato and
MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY 49
that of the early medievals, but it did not reject Platonism as it
had been developed by Saint Augustine. Thus Saint Thomas
claimed that universals exist partly outside of things, yet not as
subsisting things. They exist partly in things as the concrete
individual essence in all members of a species and partly in the
mind, after abstracting the universal concept from the in¬
dividual.
One cannot understand and fully appreciate the problems,
merits, and shortcomings of medieval learning if he does not
realize that this learning had two main institutional sources: the
universities and the mendicant orders of the Franciscans and
Dominicans. The universities were par excellence Western in¬
stitutions, first established in the thirteenth century by the
Catholic Church. The first three, as well as the most famous
universities, were the ones at Bologna, Paris, and Oxford. All of
the great medieval thinkers were associated with one of these
three guilds of scholars and students.
If one seeks to describe medieval philosophy in its most
characteristic terms, he will find that the most striking feature
was its intimate association with Scholasticism. It must be em¬
phasized, however, that historians who consider Scholasticism to
be the same as the philosophy of the Western Middle Ages are
not exact. Although it is true that nearly all medieval phi¬
losophies are more or less related to Scholasticism, it cannot be
unconditionally claimed that medieval philosophy as such is one
with Scholasticism. Scholasticism means both less than, and
more than, the philosophy of the Middle Ages. In concept,
Scholasticism is less than medieval philosophy; in duration, it is
more, as seems clear from what follows.
The term "Scholasticism” derives from the Latin word schola
("school”). Scholasticism was originally designed for the
schools as a teaching instrument. Its pedagogical feature consists
especially of its method, which, by the strict use of a syllogistic
form, disciplines the judgment, and, by its clear definition and

subtle distinctions, sharpens the understanding.
Although Scholasticism is not a mere recrudescence of the
philosophy of Hellas, to a great extent it owes its basic ideas
to the Peripatetic School of Aristotle. But it must be emphasized
that other thinkers of antiquity played equally important roles,
especially Plato, whose influence rivaled that of Aristotle. Even
Neo-Platonism was of considerable significance for some School¬
men.
Since the essential features of Scholasticism, as well as its
merits and deficiencies, are constantly debated among holders of
opposing views, the following seems to be the most precise de¬
scription of this system. Scholasticism as a philosophy means a
frame of different rationalistic positions, both generally complete
systems and certain individual doctrines, based on Divine Revela¬
tion as a negative criterion of truth, originating from the
Carlovingian schools and internally characterized by an en¬
deavour to reconcile human thinking with Divine Revelation,
based generally, although not exclusively, on Aristotelianism and
represented externally by a special didactic method and termi¬
nology.
Whereas the Middle Ages had known Plato through the Neo-
Platonists, and especially Augustine, much of Aristotle’s thought
was made available at this time through the thinkers of the
Arabian empire. This fact raised problems. Through Moslem
translations and interpretation, Aristotle was presented in ways
that could hardly be accepted by Christians. Therefore the
greatest of all of the Schoolmen, Thomas Aquinas, undertook to
reinterpret Aristotle’s speculations and to harmonize his non-
theistic philosophy with the Christian belief in a personal God.
The seemingly revolutionary attempts of Thomas first met with
suspicion; later, however, his great Aristotelian synthesis was
universally accepted. In addition to Aquinas, John Duns Scotus
stood out as an exceptionally brilliant man among medieval

thinkers. During the fourteenth century, Scholasticism in its
medieval form came to an end. It was dealt a death blow by the
Terminism of William of Ockham.
A. Patristic Speculations
Saint Augustine
Born: Tagaste in Numidia, Africa, in 354
Died: Hippo Regius, Africa, in 430
life Augustine, born in northern Africa, was the son of a
pagan Pun father and a Catholic Roman mother. He was edu¬
cated in his native province and then went to Carthage for
higher studies. The immorality of that corrupt metropolis made
a lasting impression on him. For more than a decade, he was
under the influence of Manichaeism and, later, of Academic
Skepticism. After having taught rhetoric at Carthage and Rome,
respectively, he became the municipal orator of Milan. There he
was shaken in his materialistic conviction by Neo-Platonism, but
through the constant prayers of his mother, Saint Monica, as
well as the example of some pious Christians, and having been
moved by the sermons of Saint Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan,
and by intense reading of the Bible, Augustine finally abandoned
his licentious way of life and renounced his intellectual errors.
He was baptized on Easter Sunday at the age of 34. Then he went
into seclusion near Milan and later returned to Africa, where he
was ordained a priest. Soon he became the Biship of Hippo
Regius. After an enormous literary activity he died, aged 76, at
his See during the siege of the city by the Vandals.
works Augustine wrote ninety-three works. Among those of
philosophical interest are the following: On the Happy Life,
Soliloquy, On the Immortality of the Soul, On the Freedom of

the Will, Thirteen Books of Confessions, On the Trinity, The
City of God, Retractions.
DOCTRINES Augustine was a deep thinker, but he was not
a systematizes The leading principle of his speculations was
that one should understand in order that one may believe, and
believe in order that one may understand. He made no sharp
distinction between philosophy and theology.
Augustine’s main doctrines can be summarized in the follow¬
ing way. He claimed that the core of everything is love, because
God is love. Corporeal beings are drawn to the center of the
earth by their weight; man is drawn to his center, God, by love.
("My love is my weight: wherever I go my love is what brings
me there.” *)
God is also truth: the existence of God can be proved from the
apprehension of necessary and eternal truths. Certitude is avail¬
able for man; Skepticism must be rejected. No one can doubt the
fact that he lives, because, when he doubts, he lives; and if he
errs, he is.2
In the beginning of time, God created the world. Some things
were created in their specific natures, others in their seminal
reasons or seminal principles (rationes seminales). The seminal
principles are a group of active principles which God put into
matter when He created it. They are formed according to
exemplar ideas which correspond to material essences, and
which in favorable circumstances develop in matter. This is the
way that living bodies as well as many non-living objects in the
world originated.
The human soul is a spiritual, immortal substance. God either
created each individual soul separately (Creationism) or created
all other souls in Adam’s, in which case the soul proceeds from
the souls of the parents (Traducianism). Augustine considered
the latter opinion to be more probable; he also maintained that
J
soul and body are two substances. Man is not a new substance
which results from the fusion of two existing substances. Man is
a spiritual soul using a mortal and earthly body.3 The body is not
a constituent part of the composite, nor is it equal to the soul in
importance.
The union of soul and body is that of vital attention. The
soul is the guardian of the body and keeps a constant vigil over
it. When other bodies act upon a person’s body and change it,
the soul notices this fact and modifies its attention according
to the modifications of the body. Hence sensation is a spiritual
act of the soul, not a merely passive reception of impressions
from the external world. Ideas are neither abstracted from sen¬
sible things, nor are they born with us. Sensory images, as well
as their corresponding intellectual actions, are caused by the
soul itself.
In the process of knowledge the intellect is illuminated by
God. God is spiritual light—the sun of the soul—and He il¬
lumines all men, although in varying degrees. Whenever one
makes a true judgment, his mind is in contact with the truths
in God’s mind, though without seeing the Divine Ideas them¬
selves. This fact accounts for the necessity and immutability of
man’s knowledge.
The will—or love—enjoys a primacy over everything else;
men are nothing more than will. Since the necessary basis of
obligation is freedom, the will is free and can turn either to God
or away from Him. Moral evil is a privation of right order in
man’s will, and the human agent is thus responsible for it.
Consequently, it is by the character of their wills, by the char¬
acter of their dominant love, that men are ultimately marked.
The history of mankind is the history of two great camps of men:
those who love God and prefer God to self, thus forming the
City of Jerusalem; and those who prefer self to God, forming
the City of Babylon. These two cities, for the present, are
mingled together in body, but in heart they are separated.

Heavenly peace is the climax of eternal life in the City of God,
for man’s last end is the beatific vision. But if man’s life is one of
love, its happiness is not primarily thought, but the fulfillment
of love in a union of the will with its final end. ("You have
made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless till they rest in
You.” 4)
B. Early Scholasticism
Boethius
Born: Rome, Italy, in 480
Died: Pavia, Italy, in 524
life Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius was a consul of the
Western Roman Empire. For an alleged conspiracy against his
ruler, he was executed in a horrible fashion, without trial, during
the reign of Theodoric the Ostrogoth. Boethius had devised a
great plan for translating into Latin all of the works of Plato and
Aristotle, in order to introduce them to his contemporaries. His
tragic and untimely death frustrated this grandiose task, al¬
though he was able to translate Porphyry’s Isagoge and the six
treatises of the Organon of Aristotle. He also wrote commentaries
on the Isagoge, as well as on the Stagirite’s Categories and on
The Interpretation. Boethius thus transmitted to the early Mid¬
dle Ages at least a knowledge of Aristotle’s logic. It was his
Commentary on the Isagoge that centuries later called the at¬
tention of the Scholastics to the problem of universal, thus
indirectly starting the famous prolonged and fervent dispute
among medieval philosophers.
works Boethius composed several original works of rhetoric,
music, and arithmetic. Some theological treatises are also at¬
tributed to him—provided that he was a Christian at all. Before
<
MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY , 55
his execution, while confined to prison, he wrote his principal

work of lasting fame, The Consolation of Philosophy.
teachings Boetius was the first Scholastic and a transmitter
of Aristotelianism to the later Middle Ages. His philosophy is
a characteristically Roman synthesis with both Neo-Platonic
and Aristotelian influences..,
In his main work Boethius advocated that the fulfillment
of God’s will is the way to happiness, even among tribulations.
He formulated the famous definitions of eternity and true hap¬
piness.5
Eriugena
Born: Ireland, 9th century
Died: France, 9th century
life John Scotus Eriugena was born somewhere around 810
in Ireland, then called "Scotia Maior.” Upon the invitation of
King Charles the Bald he accepted a teaching position at the
Palatine School in Aix-la-Chapelle. He probably died in 877. It
is questionable whether he was a monk or a layman. Eriugena
was the first systematic thinker in the Middle Ages having some
pantheistic tendencies.
major work and doctrines Eriugena in his main work,
On the Division of Nature, claimed that "Nature” denotes all
reality, both God and creatures, both that which exists and
that which does not exist. The life of Nature is divided into
four phases, (a) During its first phase it is "Nature That Creates
but Is Not Created.” It is God Himself Who is the cause of all
things, but Who is Himself without cause. (b) During its second
phase it becomes "Nature That Is Created and Creates.” It is
an emanation of God, the eternal Logos. (c) During its third
phase, it appears as "Nature That Is Created but Does Not
Create.” This division of Nature consists of creatures into which
God pours out Himself. (d) During the last phase, in the form
of "Nature That Neither Creates nor Is Created,” it signifies the
return of all creatures to God. According to Eriugena, in the
end "God will be all in all.”
Saint Anselm of Canterbury

Born: Aosta, Italy, in 1033
Died: Canterbury, England, in 1109
life Anselm was an Italian Benedictine monk. He was
chosen to be Prior of the Abbey of Bee in Normandy; later he
became Archbishop of Canterbury.
works Anselm’s main works were the Monologion, the
Proslogion, and Cur Deus Homo (On the Incarnation).
teaching Anselm’s chief concern was to harmonize reason
with faith. "For I do not seek to understand in order that I
may believe, but I believe in order that I may understand”
(Credo ut intelligam, intelligo ut creadam). "For I also believe
this, that unless I believe, I shall not understand” (Proslogion,
I). This preoccupation of his was clearly expressed by the title
he wanted to give originally to the Proslogion: Bides Quaerens
Intellectum ("Faith in Search of Understanding”), which be¬
came a motto and a condensed expression of the basic problem
of medieval thinkers. Anselm was convinced that, if a Christian
obtained a firm religious belief, he could try to find necessary
reasons for the tenets of faith. Thus, for example, for a staunch
believer it would be possible intellectually to prove the necessity
of the Incarnation.
Anselm achieved fame through the composition of an a
simultaneo argument of the existence of God, the proof of which
Anselm presented in the second chapter of the Proslogion. Al¬
though the argument is given in the form of an address to God,
it can nevertheless be rendered in a syllogistic form: God is
f
„ ,, 4
"that than which no greater can be thought.” But "that than

which no greater can be thought” must exist not only mentally
as an idea, but also extramentally as a reality. Therefore God
exists not only mentally as a concept, but also extramentally as
a reality.
Peter Abelard
Born: Le Pallet, France, in 1079
Died: Cluny, France, in 1142
life Peter Abelard, a French philosopher and theologian,
was an original thinker but an unruly person. He attended the
lectures of Roscelin and William of Champeaux in Paris, but
rejected the doctrines of both Masters. At the age of 22 he
established his own school, first at Melun, then at Corbeil. Soon,
however, he returned to Paris, where he became the most cele¬
brated teacher of his time. After his tempestuous love affair
and clandestine marriage with Heloise, whom he abandoned for
an academic career, he became a Benedictine monk. His deserted
wife, meanwhile, entered a convent. During the rest of his life
Abelard lived at several schools and monasteries (for a while
he was even a hermit) and died after decades of quarrels and
instances of insubordination to Church authority, at the great
monastery of ecclesiastical reform, the Abbey of Cluny.
works Abelard’s most important works were the History of
His Calamities, the Yes and No (Sic et Non), and Ethics.
teachings Abelard was the originator of the scholastic
method of argumentation and a clarifier of the problem of uni¬
versal; although probably a Conceptualist, he prepared the way
for the position of Moderate Realism.
According to Abelard God can be spoken of by man only
figuratively. Abelard advocated theological necessitarianism and
cosmological optimism, claiming that although no external agent
could cause God to create, in a sense He made the world from

necessity. He was compelled by His own nature to create, for
whatever He made is good, and he, the Absolute Goodness, could
not abstain from doing what is good. For this reason, the world
is the best world possible. In Abelard’s opinion, the norm of
morality is God’s will and man’s intention.
Golden Era of Scholasticism
Roger Bacon
Born: Ilchester, England, in 1214
Died: Oxford, England, in 1294
life Roger Bacon studied at Oxford and taught for a few
years at Paris, where he had little respect for most of the pro¬
fessors because of their ignorance of the sciences and languages.
In his thirties he entered the Franciscan Order and taught at
Oxford. Since he was suspected of teaching novelties, he had
to abandon public teaching. His superiors committed him to a
confinement from which he was released, after 14 years, only
shortly before his death.
works Bacon’s main works were the Opus Maius, Opus
Minus, and Opus Tertium.
doctrines Roger Bacon’s mind was of a complex nature.
On the one hand he had been a conservative of the Augustinian
tradition,6 maintaining the theories of Divine Illumination, of
germinal forms, and of the form of corporeity; on the other
hand, he had great respect for Aristotle, Seneca, and Averroes.
He united a spiritual outlook with a belief in the value of the
sciences and had a sound estimate and firm grasp of a balanced
combination of deduction and induction. Since there is no
certainty without experience, experimental science occupied the
central place in his vision of learning. Although Bacon ac¬
knowledged the importance of reasoning and of Divine Illumi-
nation, his primary concern was for personal observation. Thus
he became one of the medieval forerunners of modern science.7
Saint Bonaventure
Giovanni Fidanza, or Saint Bonaventure (1221-1274), was an
&
Italian Franciscan cardinal. He was more of a theologian and

a mystic than a philosopher. As a philosopher, he followed the
Augustinian line of thinking.
Saint Albert the Great

Albert, Count of Bollstadt, or Saint Albert the Great, "the Uni¬
versal Doctor" (1206-1280), was a German Dominican pro¬
fessor at Paris and Cologne and was for 2 years Bishop of
Ratisbon.
Albert was a purifier of Aristotelian texts. Since he observed
extensively and described in precise terms the mineral world and
the flora and fauna of Germany, he too can be considered as a
forerunner of modern science. Having been a teacher of Thomas
Aquinas, he was among the first to discover the latent genius
in that "dumb ox” (as Thomas had been referred to by his
schoolmates).
Saint Thomas Aquinas

Born: Rocca Secca, near Naples, in 1225
Died: The Cistercian Monastery of Fossa Nuova in southern
Italy, in 1274
life: Thomas was the son of the lord of the fortress of
Aquino, near Naples. On his father’s maternal side, he was the
great-nephew of Emperor Frederick I (Barbarossa). Against
the wishes of his parents he became a Dominican. He was a
student of Saint Albert the Great. Twice during his life, Thomas
was a professor of theology at the University of Paris; for a few
years he was also a teacher at the School of the Papal Court in
6o A BRIEF HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
three cities. Aquinas was a reformer of Christian philosophy; he

is also a saint, called, for the purity of his life, "the Angelic Doc¬
tor.” Known too as "a Doctor of the Church” and "the Patron of
Catholic Higher Education,” Thomas was a great systematizer;
he was also primarily an Aristotelian thinker. In the field of
philosophy, his main interest lay in metaphysics.
works The following writings are the chief philosophical
works of Aquinas: Commentary on the Sentences, On the Prin¬
ciples of Nature, On Existence and Essence, On the Truth of the
Catholic Eaith (Summa Contra Gentiles), Disputed Questions,
Quodlibets, On the Rule of Princes, Commentaries on Aristotle,
On the Unity of the Intellect, A Summary of Theology (Summa
Theologiae).
DOCTRINES The most important doctrines of Thomas Aquinas
can be summarized in the following way. There are specific
differences between philosophy and theology, between reason
and faith. But philosophy (the "handmaid” or "vassal” of theol¬
ogy) and theology also play complementary roles in man’s quest
for truth.
There is around man a world of beings of which he is a part.
He can know reality. All human knowledge has its origin in the
action of the senses on the material world around man. Bodily
objects act upon the sense organs, and sensation is an act of the
composite of soul and body, not of the soul alone using a body.
The idea of being is the first in every order: in the chronological
order, since man is born without any innate ideas and the very
first concept acquired in life is the vague concept of something,
of being in general, of being as such; in the logical order, be¬
cause all ideas represent a modification of a certain kind of
being; and, finally, in the ontological order, since anything in
reality that can be thought of is a being. Hence the concept of
being is extended to everything that exists or can exist. Con¬
sequently, it is not a generic concept, but a transcendental idea.
?
The concept of being of God and creatures, of substance and

accidents, is predicated analogously, partly in the same way,
partly in a different way.
Each being is endowed with the transcendental attributes of
oneness, truth, and goodness. These determinations of being do
not add anything new to being; they simply permit one to con¬
sider being under different aspects. There is a hierarchy of be¬
ings; in reality, one can observe an ascending order of forms;
from the forms of inorganic substance, through vegetative forms,
the irrational sensitive forms of animals, and the rational,
spiritual soul of man, up to the Infinite Spirit, God.
Every finite being is composed of potentiality and actuality.
Furthermore, all corporeal being is hylomorphically composed,
consisting of prime matter and substantial form. There is only
one substantial form present in each individual being. For every
finite being, substantial form is the principle of specification, by
which different essential kinds of substances are distinguished
from each other, as, for example, tulips from cats. Within a
species, but only concerning material substances, a being be¬
comes an individual through signate matter (materia quantitate
signata). In other words, matter signed with quantity is the
principle of individuation for corporeal beings. This means that
bodily beings of the same species (for instance, horses) become
individual substances (this horse, "Darling,” or that horse,
"Lightning”) through their compositions of matter and form,
and the presence of quantity or extension in "second matter.”
Second matter is the result of the composition of prime matter
and substantial form.
Prime matter being pure potentiality, and form being act,
the distinction between matter and form is a distinction between
potency and act. But whereas the distinction between potency
and act runs through the whole of creation, the distinction be¬
tween form and matter is found only in corporeal beings.
For each man, the human soul is the substantial form of the
living body. On account of his substantial form, his spiritual
soul, man is not simply an individual; he also enjoys the special
dignity of being a rational individual, a person.
Besides hylomorphistic composition, which is restricted to
corporeal creatures, a broader and more profound composition
of substances is extended to every finite being. This is the com¬
position of finite beings consisting of essence and existence.
Existence indicates that a being is; essence, what a being is. In
finite beings, there is a real distinction between essence and
existence, since that which receives must be distinct from that
which is received. The distinction between essence and existence,
although real, does not indicate the presence of two beings united
by a real composition into one particular being. Since they are
not identical with each other, they are distinct, yet not separate.
It should not be imagined, therefore, that essence existed before
receiving existence since this would be a contradiction in terms;
or that existences are floating around, without any particular
essences, waiting to be united with some concrete essence.
Since the esse, the act of existence, is the intrinsic perfection
of all the perfections of a being, fundamentally neither quanti¬
fied matter nor form makes a creature an individual or a person,
but rather its act of being.
In addition to the composition of essence and existence, cor¬
responding to the act and potency composition, there is in all
creatures the composition of substance and accident. The two
groups of beings—substances, on the one hand, and nine acci¬
dents on the other—are represented in the human mind by the
ten categories, or predicaments. Substances are either incomplete
or complete. The bricks in a building are incomplete substance;
the edifice itself is a complete substance. A substance, complete
in itself and uncommunicated, is a "suppositum” {hypostasis).
?
Its way of existence, having being and operation through itself

and through union with another, is called "subsistence.”
Beings can act as causes. There are four main types of causes:
material, formal, efficient, and final, to which one may add
exemplar causes, or models of things, and, as subsidiaries to ef¬
ficient causes, instrumental causes. Every cause is a principle or
source, although not every principle is a cause.
Change, that is, the turning of potentiality into act, requires
a principle which is itself act. This fact enables man to argue for
the existence of Pure Act, God. His existence can further be
argued in five "ways” (quinque viae) which, however, are
fundamentally one single proof, The five "ways” are the follow¬
ing: (a) the first or more manifest is taken from motion; (b)
the second is based on the nature of efficient causes; (c) the
third is based on the concept of contingency; (d) the fourth is
established on account of the grades of perfection; (e) the fifth
is based on the government of the world. This is the teleological
proof for the existence of God. The first three "ways” are also
based on recognition of the fact that an infinite series of causes is
impossible: if there were no first cause, there could be no mediate
and no ultimate cause.
Since God is the sum total of every perfection and the actuality
of all things, He is Subsistent Being Itself (Ipsum Esse Sub¬
sist ens). Man can express his concept of God in three ways: (a)
by affirmation, when he attributes to God all that he recognizes
in the universe as perfection; (b) by eminence or transcen¬
dence, when he attributes to God a perfection in a manner
eminently superior to that in which individual perfections are
found in creatures; (c) by negation (or denial of limitations),
when man realizes that the adequate cause of creatural perfec¬
tions must be an entirely uncaused cause and, consequently, a
Being possessing perfections in a mode not found in the data of
human experience; this concept of divine perfection removes

every imperfection or limitation, thus denying in the nature
of God any attribute of contingency, multiplicity, mutability,
and so on. This threefold way of knowing God can be combined
into one complex way. The result of this combination is man’s
analogous knowledge of God.
The world was created by God. Although we know from
Divine Revelation that the universe began in time, reason alone
cannot show that God could not have created an eternal universe.
God not only created everything; but He also concurs with crea¬
tures in their connatural activities. Every creature has a common
end: to render glory to God. Man will reach this goal through
living a virtuous life which leads him to the attainment of
beatitude.
John Duns Scotus

Born: Maxton, Scotland, in 1266
Died: Cologne, Germany, in 1308
life John Duns Scotus was born in the county of Roxburgh;
he entered the Franciscan Order at the monastery of Dumfries.
He studied at the Universities of Oxford and Paris and became
a teacher at the same schools. In 1307 he was sent to Cologne,
where he died at the age of 42.
WORKS In spite of the brevity of his life, the literary output
of Duns Scotus was considerable. His most important works
were the Opus Oxoniense and the Rep or tat a Parisiensia.
doctrines In contrast to Thomas Aquinas, John Duns
Scotus was not a notable systematizer; he was, nevertheless, a
powerful and original thinker. He developed extensively the
heritage that had been bequeathed to him; at the same time, he
presented a problematic that was perhaps richer than anything
that had preceded him. He was oriented toward Saint Augustine,
(
but was also interested in Aristotle. Because he wanted to harmo¬

nize the differences between Augustinianism and Aristotelianism,
he may be called a moderate Augustinian. For the great number
and subtle character of his distinctions he earned the appellation
"the Subtle Doctor.”
Duns Scotus’ main doctrines can be summarized in the fol¬
lowing way. He claimed that the proper object of human
knowledge is not individuals as such, but the natures existing
in them. He also maintained that the concept of being must be
predicated univocally of God and creatures, of immaterial and
material beings, and not just be restricted to material beings;
otherwise, no metaphysical knowledge of God would be pos¬
sible.
Duns Scotus was responsible for the elaboration of the doc¬
trine of the objective formal distinction (distinctio formalis a
parte ret). According to his theory, there is a distinction which
is less than the real distinction and more objective than virtual
distinction. Thus, for example, the powers of the soul are
formally distinct from each other and from the soul’s substance,
although they are really identical.
Duns Scotus rejected the Thomistic theory that prime matter
is the principle of individuation, because prime matter is of
itself indeterminate. To be correctly considered, the principle of
individuation must be a positive entity, for individuality adds
something positive to the nature as such: there is more perfec¬
tion in an individual man than in the common nature of man.
This positive entity Duns Scotus called haecceitas ("thisness”).
There is a formal distinction between haecceity and nature, in¬
dicating that there is no real distinction between them. Haeccei¬
tas does not add any further qualitative perfection to the being;
it merely makes it this being.
As an Augustinian, Duns Scotus advocated Voluntarism, that
is, the supremacy of the will over the intellect. But he rejected
the typical Augustinian doctrine of seminal reasons, although
he retained the notion of the plurality of Forms.
Duns Scotus also maintained that, of the Ten Commandments,
which represent natural law, only the first three are absolute;
God by His free will could change the other Commandments,
although in this order of salvation He is not going to do so.
Finally, Duns Scotus denied the possibility of philosophically
proving the immortality of the human soul.
Era of Decline
William of Ockham
Born: Ockham, England, in 1290
Died: Munich, Germany, in 1350
life William was born in the county of Surrey. He entered
the Franciscan Order and studied at Oxford, although he was
never able to lecture there because, under the suspicion of heresy,
he was summoned to Avignon by Pope John XXII. Although
he was merely censored, never condemned, for some of his
propositions, he was excommunicated along with his Master
General, an opponent of papal power, when they both escaped
to Germany. He died at the court of the Pope’s foe, the Emperor
Louis of Bavaria.
works William wrote commentaries on the works of
Aristotle and on the Sentences of Peter the Lombard. He also
wrote a book on logic.
doctrines Ockham claimed that every being existing out¬
side the human mind is, by its very existence, singular. Only
the singular exists, and only the singular is expressed by human
signs; no abstraction of universality is possible. In opposition
to Thomas’ opinion, Ockham held that a universal has absolutely
no reality outside the mind. Universality as such is merely the
confused remembering of a singular that is not present to the
person. This was William of Ockham’s Terminism,8 or Meta¬
physical Nominalism.9 He also established a principle of philo¬
sophic economy usually referred to as "Ockham’s razor,” ac¬
cording to which "it happens in vain through the more that can
happen through the less.10 In other words, everything superfluous
should be cut from thinking.
Islamic and Jewish Philosophy
The chief contribution of the Arabian philosophers was their

introduction of Greek philosophical text, particularly the works
of Aristotle, to the Western world. During the first seven
centuries the Islamic world was far more knowledgeable of
Greek philosophy than was the Christian world, largely be¬
cause the Moslems had access to the chief works of the Stagirite
long before the people of Western Europe received them. But
this same Moslem contribution also caused trouble for the West,
for some Christian thinkers had accepted without question the
interpretations of Aristotle by various Arabian writers, such
as Avicenna and Averroes, as the authentic doctrines of Aristotle.
Not only were these versions not authentic, but they were also
in conflict with various Christian doctrines. This conflict with
Christian doctrine to a great extent explains the fear of novelty
in, the opposition to, and the suspicion surrounding Aristote-
lianism in the thirteenth century by several representatives of
Christian tradition. It was the genius of Thomas Aquinas that
discovered the true Aristotle and started to use his ideas as
valuable instruments for the systematic exposition of Christian
truth.
Although Arabic speculations were not characterized by an
abundance of original thinking, the greatest Islamic thinkers
were more than mere commentators; unquestionably they en-
larged upon the philosophy of Aristotle in a new way through

the spirit of Neo-Platonism.
The greatest Islamic philosophers were Avicenna and Aver¬
roes. Avicenna (Ibn-Sina) (979-1037), a Persian physician-
philosopher who wrote in Arabic, tried to reconcile his Aristote-
lian/Neo-Platonic system with the theology of orthodox Islam.
A follower of Aristotle, he distinguished between the active and
the passive intellect, but made the active (or agent) intellect a
separate and unitary intelligence which illumines the human
intellect or confers on it its intellectual and abstract grasp of
essences. He coined a terminology for universals that was taken
over by Saint Thomas (universale ante rem, in re, post rem).
Averroes (Ibn Rushd, "the Commentator") (1126-1198), was
an Arabian physician-philosopher who lived in Spain. A follower
of Aristotle, his main work was the Destruction of the Destruc¬
tion of the Philosophers. With regard to the doctrine concerning
the two intellects, he went farther than Avicenna and claimed
that the individual intellect is absorbed by the separate and
unitary active intellect, so that there is no personal immortality.
He attempted to reconcile his philosophical ideas with orthodox
Islamic theology by means of the so-called Double-Truth
Theory, which holds that one and the same truth is understood
clearly in philosophy and expressed allegorically in theology; in
other words, the scientific formulation of truth is achieved only
in philosophy, although the same truth is expressed in theology
by the picture-teaching method of the Koran, in a manner in¬
telligible to the common man. Siger of Brabant (1220/1230-
1282/1284), a professor at the University of Paris, took over
the main ideas of Averroes and thus became the leader in
Western Europe of the movement called Latin Averroism.
Thomas Aquinas fought against Siger’s doctrines.
Among the Jewish philosophers who lived under Moorish rule
in Spain, Moses Maimonides (1135-1204) was the outstanding
thinker. His main work was entitled Guide of the Doubting.

Maimonides was an admirer of Aristotle, though he was not a
blind follower of the Stagirite: whenever Aristotle contradicts
the Bible, Maimonides sides with the Old Testament. He also
advocated a mere figurative speech concerning God and claimed
that the just enjoy an "acquired” immortality.
Notes
1. Pondus meum, amor meus: eo ferror, quocumque ferror (Conf.,

XIII, 9).
2. Si enim jailor, sum (De civ. Dei, XI, 26).
3. Homo anima rationalis est, mortali atque terreno utens

cor pore (De moribus eccl. Cath., XXVII, 52).
4. Fecisti nos ad Te, et irrequietum est cor nostrum donee

requiescat in Te (Conf., I, i, 1).
3. Interminabilis vitae tota simul et perfecta possessio (De cons,

phil., 5, 6) ("Eternity is the whole and perfect possession of un¬
limited life at once”). Status omnium bonorum congregatione per-
fectus (De cons, phil., 2) ("True happiness is the perfect state of
men, resulting from the gathering together of all goods”).
6. The main tenets of Augustinian tradition can be summarized

as follows: (a) the primacy of faith over intellect; (b) the claim
of the close relation between philosophy and theology; (c)
Voluntarism: a belief in the supremacy of the will over the intellect;
(d) light theory: a tenet that claims that light is the form of
corporeity; (e) the theory of the necessity of Divine Illumination;
(/) the denial of the impossibility of eternal creation; (g) the
doctrine of the plurality of Forms; (h) the concept of the soul and
body relation: the soul is merely using the body, and the two are
not essentially connected with each other; (i) the denial of a real
distinction between the soul and its faculties; (j) the theory of
universal hylomorphic composition, maintaining that angels and
7° A BRIEF HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
human souls have prime matter in them; (k) the claim that matter
is not entirely potency; (/) the doctrine of seminal reasons.
7. This interesting philosopher-scientist, a somewhat impulsive

and intolerant man, who in the thirteenth century already em¬
phasized the importance of independent judgment, compares
favorably with his namesake of the seventeenth century, Francis
Bacon, and, with regard to the understanding of scientific method,
even shows some superiority to the famous Chancellor of England.
8. Terminism is a development of twelfth century Logical

Nominalism. Logical Nominalism substituted a logic of words for a
logic of concepts.
9. In contrast to Roscelins Logical Nominalism.
10. Commentary on the Sentences, I, d. 14 ("Frustra fit per plura

quod fieri potest per pauciora” or "Entia non sunt multiplicanda
sine necessitate”).
I
Renaissance and Modern

Philosophy
Introduction
During the renaissance period of the fifteenth and six¬

teenth centuries, there was a strong attempt to restore antique
philosophy and to refute and belittle Scholasticism. Although
during this era philosophical activity was negligible and the
interpretation of the ancients grossly falsified—for example,
Cicero and Quintilian were considered as being on the same level
as Plato—Plato was now read for his own sake, and in addition
to Platonism and Aristotelianism several other Greek Schools,
such as Skepticism, Epicureanism, and especially Stoicism for its
interest in man and nature, were widely studied. The separation
of philosophy from theology was accentuated. Scholasticism,
but for a short revival in the form of the system of the Spanish
Jesuit, Francis Suarez (1548-1617), faded away into temporary
oblivion.
A free and vivid interest in nature moved to the forefront of
intellectual activities. The influence of natural philosophers, par¬
ticularly of Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo, gained prominence.
There were several important humanists of this era. In Italy, the
most influential were Niccold Machiavelli (1469-1527); the
four outstanding Platonists: Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), Pico
della Mirandola (1663-1694), Tommasso Campanella (1568-
1639), and the Greek Cardinal John (or Basil) Bessarion,
Patriarch of Constantinople (1395-1472); and the Aristotelian
Pietro Pomponazzi (1462-1530). In France, the most promi-
7i
nent humanists were Michel de Montaigne (1533—1592), Pierre

Charron (1541-1603), and the anti-Aristotelian Pierre de la
Ramee (d. 1572); in England, Thomas More (1478-1535),
the Chancellor of England martyred under Henry VIII and the
author of Utopia (The Island of Nowhere); in Germany, Philip
(Schwarzerd) Melanchton (1497-1560), the speculative mys¬
tics Heinrich Suso, Johannes Tauler, and Angelus Silesius
(Johannes Scheffler), and particularly the pantheist mystic,
Jacob Bohme (1575—1624). The two most influential per¬
sonalities who, above all others, ushered in seventeenth century
thinking were the German Neo-Platonist, Nicholas (Cardinal
Krebs) of Cusa (Kues) (1401-1464) and the Italian pantheist,
the Dominican Giordano Bruno (1548-1600).
The foundation for modern philosophy was set in the seven¬
teenth century, the era when Descartes, Malebranche, Spinoza,
and Leibniz appeared on the scene. In England, a new philo¬
sophical trend had begun in the sixteenth century with Francis
Bacon and Thomas Hobbes, thus anteceding Descartes, "the
father of modern philosophy” and Continental Idealism; this
trend became the source of English Empiricism in the following
two centuries. Descartes’ philosophy had been completed and
given a more definite form by Arnold Geulincx (1625-1699)
and Nicholas Malebranche (1638-1715). They also brought
to light the elements of Occasionalism and Ontologism latent in
Cartesianism.
The Enlightenment, that blend of Empiricism, Idealist Ra¬
tionalism, and, in the final analysis, Cartesianism, relegated
philosophy to a secondary level. Its more important representa¬
tives were, in France, Francois Voltaire (1694-1778), Charles
Montesquieu' (1689-1755), and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-
1778), and, in Germany, the popularizer of Leibnizian thought,
Christian von Wolff (1679-1754).
During the classical period of modern philosophy, extending
from Descartes to Kant, the two main Schools were Rationalism
f
RENAISSANCE AND MODERN PHILOSOPHY 73
and Empiricism. Both represented the basic tension present in

modern thought because of the constant division between reason
and experience.
Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz were Rationalists. Rationalism
regards reason as the source of all knowledge; it is opposed to
Empiricism, which derives all knowledge from experience. Fran¬
cis Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume—all were Em¬
piricists. Empiricism results in Skepticism. Despite an inherent
opposition to each other, Rationalism and Empiricism have a
common origin residing in the phenomenalist opinion that man
does not know things directly but only grasps the impressions
which these objects make upon him.
Kant’s system represents an attempt to unify Rationalism and
Empiricism into a superior kind of Phenomenalism. This phi¬
losophy is called Transcendental Criticism, that is, an examina¬
tion of knowledge for the purpose of determining its a priori
elements, which are the conditions of knowledge and which we
cannot know from mere experience.
Kant failed in his great project to combine the best features
of Rationalism and Empiricism into a system which would re¬
concile reason with experience. He opened up an ontological
gulf between essence and existence, for in his system one could
never go from essence to existence. Three Germans, Johann
Gottlieb Fichte (1762—1814), Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling
(1775-1854), and particularly Georg Hegel, tried to bridge the
ontological gulf created by Kant.
The development of philosophy after Kant led to a revival
of the old opposition between Rationalism and Empiricism, this
time under the guise of Idealism and Positivism. Hegel had
based his system on the doctrines of Fichte and Schelling; these
three men became the leaders of German Idealism and logically
developed Kant’s teaching of the "thinking ego” to the conclu¬
sion that its function is not limited to the organization of
phenomena, but involves the production of phenomena as well.
Thus the ego is conceived of as a creative power. This concept

of the ego as creative activity gave origin to Idealism, the two
main tenets of which are the following: (a) the primordial
reality is Pure Ego, variously labeled as the Spirit, Idea, or Ab¬
solute; and (b) Pure Ego has the capacity to produce phe¬
nomena, that is, the world of nature. Hegel’s Idealism was
developed into Absolute Idealism by Benedetto Groce (1866-
1952), Francis Herbert Bradley (1848-1924), and Josiah
Royce (1855-1916). Idealism is pantheistic in its character.
Rejecting the Idealism of Hegel, Karl Marx, together with
Friedrich Engels, created the systems of Dialectical and Histori¬
cal Materialism.
Another influential School of modern philosophy was Positiv¬
ism. Whereas the German Idealists supported the extreme claims
made in behalf of reason and systematic thinking, the Positivists
appealed again to man’s experiences of facts and referred to the
limits of knowledge. Auguste Comte was the founder of Positiv¬
ism, a broad movement of thought which prevailed during the
second half of the nineteenth century. The name derived from
the fact that the followers of this movement returned to the
appreciation of positive facts in order to restore the world of
nature, which the Idealists had reduced to a mere representation
of the ego. It had a French, a German, an English, and an Italian
branch. Herbert Spencer and John Stuart Mill were English
Positivists. Positivism was developed in the United States by
Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) and William James
(1842—1910). Pragmatism is the American variety as well as
a revision of Positivism. It is a theory emphasizing the results or
consequences of ideas by presenting as its guiding principle the
rule that the meaning of any conception in the mind is the
practical effect, the utility it will have in practice. Pragmatism
came to its fullness in the system of John Dewey (1859-1952),
called Instrumentalism or Experimentalism.
i

i
Around the turn of the century, the so-called "life philoso-

* phies” of Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911), Henri Bergson
(1859-1941), Maurice Blondel (1861-1969), and Jose Ortega
y Gasset (1883-1955) were established. Also around the end
of the nineteenth century, an intense intellectual movement to
revive Scholasticism was initiated by Gaetano Sanseverino,
Sigmundo Tongiorgi, and Luigi Taparelli. The movement was
officially sanctioned by Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical, Aeterni
Patris (1879), which also recommended the teaching of Tho-
mism at all Catholic universities. From then on, Neo-Thomism
remained an important School until the middle of the twentieth
century, when it started to lose its influence. Among the princi¬
pal Neo-Thomist thinkers were Denis Cardinal Mercier (1851-
1926) at the University of Louvain in Belgium and Georg von
Hertling, Victor Cathrein, and Joseph Probes in Germany, as
well as Etienne Gilson (b. 1884) and Jacques Maritain
(1882-1973) in France.
Neo-Scholasticism is a revival of Scholastic metaphysics, in
connection with the progress of modern philosophy and the mod¬
ern sciences. It opposes all forms of Subjectivism, Relativism, and
Nominalism in both metaphysics and ethics. It emphasizes the
theory of universal and the doctrine of natural law, and, in
general, it proposes a system of Value Absolutism. Its field of
interest is considerably extended to the study of the philosophy of
education, the philosophy of history, and the philosophy of
culture. It has attracted not only Catholics but thinkers outside
the Church as well, such as Mortimer J. Adler in the United
States.
Renaissance Philosophy
Francis Bacon
Born: London, England, in 1561
Died: Highgate, England, in 1626
y6 A BRIEF HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
life Francis Bacon was born into high society. He studied

the sciences and philosophy at Cambridge and law at Gray’s
Inn. He entered public service under the patronage of the ill-
fated Lord Essex, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, but
started to rise in rank only under James I. At the age of 57 he
reached the apex of his political career: he became Lord Chan¬
cellor and was created Baron Verulam. Three years later the
title of Viscount St. Albans was bestowed upon him; yet, shortly
after the reception of this honor, he was accused of accepting
bribes and, probably somewhat unjustly, condemned for this
offense. Thereupon he was stripped of all offices, fined, sentenced
to prison, and banned from the court forever. He spent the
remaining years of his life in retirement, devoting his time to
experimentation and writing.
works: Bacon’s principal works were his Essays and Of the
Proficience and Advancement of Learning, as well as the Novum
Organnum.
doctrines Bacon believed that "knowledge is power,”
that is, knowledge is useful for men; for that reason, from his
early student days at Cambridge he was discontented with the
status of learning, which had become stagnant during the Mid¬
dle Ages. In order to restore knowledge to usefulness, to give
it new development, and to secure for human minds an accurate
understanding of the universe, he assigned to himself the su¬
preme task of his life: to totally reconstruct human knowledge.
This he wanted to achieve by expurging from man’s mind the
concepts of "Idols” through a new division of the sciences and
through experiments and the extensive use of the inductive
method.
By "Idols” Bacon meant not objects of pagan worship, but
rather false notions of human minds, from which they have to
be expurgated. He reduced the many Idols or intellectual phan¬
toms to four classes. (1) Idols of the Tribe are superstitions and
i
?
erroneous beliefs arising from the limited nature of the human

mind, such as its tendency to anthropomorphize. (2) Idols of
the Den, taken from the famous Platonic allegory, are man’s
personal images of the world, believed by him in spite of and in
contrast to the objective conditions of reality and derived from
his individual talents, temperament, and education. (3) Idols
of the Market Place are words used by man as symbols of things
or substitutes for unknown objects originating in daily verbal
communications and used as figments of the mind, thereby
weakening or distorting the knowledge of their users. (4) Idols
of the Theatre are grandiose yet erroneous philosophical systems,
as well as all principles of science arising from secular or re¬
ligious traditions, authority, or negligence.
Modern Philosophy
Hobbes
Born: Westport near Malmesbury, England, in 1588
Died: Hardwick Hall, England, in 1679
life Thomas Hobbes was the son of a Wiltshire vicar. When
his mother was expecting him, the Spanish Armada was ap¬
proaching the coast of England. The terror she felt darkened
the birth and the rest of the life of her son. "Fear and I were
born twins,” said Hobbes later. This fact reflects itself through¬
out his political philosophy.
After studying at Oxford he became the private instructor of
Lord William Cavendish. Because of his tutorship he was able
to travel extensively in Europe and to make friends of some
famous people, among them Galileo in Italy. For a while he was
a secretary of Francis Bacon. In his adulthood, Hobbes had a
great interest in mathematics and physics.
Hobbes’s writings reveal the influence of Descartes, although
he opposed Cartesian Dualism. His political doctrines were af-
fected by the English Revolution. On the basis of Empiricism,

he developed a materialistic philosophy that contrasted with con¬
temporary Continental Idealism. He also advocated a "natural
religion,” for which, as well as for his Trinitarian doctrine, some
Anglican bishops wanted to burn him at the stake when he was
80 years old. He died peacefully on the estate of his life-long
friends and protectors, the Cavendish family.
WORKS In addition to the three volumes of his great project
—De Corpore, De Homine, and De Cive—which endeavor to
analyze all the principles of knowledge, the Leviathan was his
work of lasting influence.
doctrines In Hobbes’s system, matter and motion are the
components of reality. For Hobbes everything that is is body,
and everything that appears is motion. Human nature and society
are based exclusively on the mechanics of motion. Man is a
group of material particles in motion; he is not endowed with
free will; the drive for power is the basic cause of all action.
Hobbes’s whole system deals with bodies—lifeless bodies of
nature, living human bodies, and the State, considered as a
huge artificial body in which social problems are the conse¬
quences of men’s conflicting physical motions.
According to Hobbes, man is naturally unmoral. As in the
natural world, so too in the world of mankind motion and
antagonism are the original conditions, and self-aggrandizement
is the motive of human action.1 In order to protect themselves
from one another, men constituted the State; this is the "Levia¬
than,” a Commonwealth under the authority of a sovereign
power. Absolute monarchy is the best form of government.
Morality arises from the authority of the state.
Descartes
Born: La Haye, in Touraine, France, in 1596
Died: Stockholm, Sweden, in 1650
life Rene Descartes (Cartesius) was the son of a counsellor

of the Parliament of Brittany. He attended the Jesuit College of
La Fleche, where he became impressed with the precision of
mathematics. After serving as a mercenary soldier in different
armies and having journeyed throughout Europe, he settled
down in Holland. Because of his fame, Christina, Queen of
Sweden, invited him to instruct her in philosophy. Unfortunately
Descartes was used to sleeping until late hours, whereas the
Queen arranged his lectures for 5 o’clock in the morning. His
delicate health could not endure the early rising and the severity
of the Nordic winter, and he died in the Swedish capital at the
age of only 54.
works Descartes’ principal works were Discourse on Method,
Principles of Philosophy, Meditations on First Philosophy, and
The Passions of the Soul.
doctrine Descartes, considered to be the founder of mod¬
ern philosophy, sought to provide philosophy with a lively
scientific method capable of demonstrating the new doctrines of
physics, as well as some metaphysical tenets concerning God
and the world. Although it can be disputed whether he really
produced a new foundation for philosophy, he definitely thought
that he did, and he most certainly reinstated philosophy as an
autonomous discipline.
Descartes claimed that, in order to discover the true method
of attaining all the knowledge of which the mind is capable
and in order to eliminate all prejudices acquired from the past,
man has to doubt everything except the fact that he thinks and
therefore he exists: Cogito ergo sum. 2 The criterion of truth is
to have clear and distinct ideas about things. The cogito proposi¬
tion is true because it is clear and distinct.
The existence of God can be proved by means of two argu¬
ments, in an a posteriori as well as in a priori way. The a
posteriori argument (from the representative reality of the idea
8o A BRIEF HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
of God, and from man’s self, which has this idea) is as follows.
Whenever man thinks of God, he thinks of an infinite, eternal,
independent, omnipotent substance. This idea of God is innate,
or native, to the human mind. This must be so, for a finite self
is insufficient to account for the objective reality of the idea of
an Infinitely Perfect Being. Man could not even know that he is
finite unless he could compare himself with the idea of a Perfect
Being. Even if he were potentially perfect, the idea of perfection
could not come from that potentiality, for an actual effect must
proceed from a being that actually exists. Consequently, this
quality can come neither from nothing nor from a being that is
of less reality than the Infinite Being. That is why it must have
been implanted in the human mind by an Infinitely Perfect
Being, God, Who therefore must exist as the adequate cause of
man’s concept of God.
The a priori or so-called ontological (or "geometrical”) argu¬
ment (from the content itself of the idea of God) can be pre¬
sented in the following way. Because of man’s finite character,
he is exposed to the danger of erring. Nevertheless, a methodi¬
cally directed mind need have no fear of deceit whenever it can
conceive things clearly and distinctly. Now, the clearest and most
distinct idea in the mind is that of an Infinitely Perfect Being.
The essence of this Being contains existence as a property, just as
necessarily as the concept of a triangle incorporates the notions
of lines and angles. One can of course conceive of a triangle
without ascribing existence to it; this, however, is so only because
existence is not essential for the concept of a triangle. But just as
the idea of a triangle implies that the sum of its angles amounts
to two right angles, so too the concept of God implies the at¬
tributes of existence. Since existence is a perfection and since it
is clearly and distinctly known that the Divine Essence is su¬
preme perfection, one necessarily has to conceive of God as
existence.
RENAISSANCE AND MODERN PHILOSOPHY 8l
Because of God’s essential attributes of holiness and truthful¬

ness, He cannot deceive men: hence man’s intellect is capable
of knowing the truth and his senses are trustworthy.
The world exists because one has a clear, innate idea of
"extended things” that differ from the "thinking thing.”
The world is a machine; its essential attribute, extension in
which God has placed force and movement, is governed not by
purpose, but by mechanical determination; the inorganic world,
plants, and animals, as well as the human body, are machines
governed by the laws of causality and motion.
Because matter is characterized by extension and spirit is
characterized by thought, they are radically distinct substances.
The union of soul and body is not essential because they are
two complete and independent substances.
With regard to morality, all depends on the Divine Will;
God, had He so wished, could have created a world governed by
moral principles opposed to those existing today.
Spinoza
Born: Amsterdam, Holland, in 1632
Died: The Hague, Holland, in 1677
life Benedict (Baruch) Spinoza, a descendant of Portuguese
Jews who fled from persecution in Spain, studied the Old Testa¬
ment and the Talmud, as well as the writings of Moses Maimon-
ides and Descartes. For his unorthodox views, he was expelled
from the synagogue of his native city. In order to maintain his
independence, he refused to accept the chair of philosophy at the
University of Heidelberg and remained in Holland. There he led
a life of simplicity, supporting himself by grinding lenses. He
settled down in The Hague, where he died after 14 years of
residence.
works: Spinoza’s works were On the Healing of the Under¬
standing (De Intellectus Emendatione), Ethics Demonstrated
According to the Geometrical Order, Rene Descartes' Principles

of Philosophy, Metaphysical Thought, Political Treatise, and
Theological-Political Treatise.
doctrines Substance, attribute, and mode are the key con¬
cepts in his philosophy. According to Spinoza, the logical and
rational development of the Cartesian definition of substance—
that which so exists as to need nothing else for its existence 3
—can be stated thus: "Substance is that which exists by itself
and is conceived by itself”; 4 it is therefore unconditioned and
absolute; it is identical with God and embraces all reality. An
attribute is a property of a substance. The intellect consists of
the attributes of thinking and extension. Hence God is a think¬
ing and extended substance. Modes are modifications of the sub¬
stance; since they can neither exist nor be conceived without
substance, they are finite; they are the various objects in the
world; they are also man’s soul and body. Modes are the deriva¬
tions of the finite from the infinite. Man, therefore, is diminished
God.
Intellect and will are identical in man. Insofar as man’s actions
arise from his passions, he is a slave; insofar as they are products
of wisdom, he is free. Moral emancipation of man is a process of
intellectual development. The mind, arriving at the culminating
stage of intellectual development, together with all human emo¬
tions and volitions, is absorbed in the knowledge and love of
God. The intellectual love of God not only makes man free, but
also confers immortality on him.
Locke
Born: Wrington near Bristol, England, in 1632
Died: Oates, High Laver, England, in 1704
life John Locke grew up as a member of a Puritan family
in Somersetshire. He studied (and came under the influence of)
Cartesian philosophy; later, he obtained a tutorial position at the
J

(
University of Oxford, where he spent 30 years of his life. Be¬

cause of his intensive interest in experimental science, he enrolled
in medical school and, at the age of 42, obtained a medical de¬
gree and became the private physician of the first Earl of Shaftes¬
bury until the Lord’s downfall. After having resided for several
years in France and in Holland, respectively, he returned to
England, where, aged 72, he died in the county of Essex.
works After having written several less significant books on
a variety of topics, in 1660 Locke published his main works of
lasting influence: one on his theory of knowledge, entitled An
Essay Concerning Human Understanding, and another on politi¬
cal theory, the Two Treatises of Civil Government. The latter
book had an impact on the American Constitution. Also, a fa¬
mous sentence of the book, that men are "all equal" in having
material rights to "life, health, liberty, and possession," evidently
had its effect on the Declaration of Independence. For the length
of his Essay and for the thorough investigation of its subject,
Locke can rightly be considered the pioneer of epistemological
inquiries and the founder of Empiricism.
doctrines Locke contended that the human mind does not
possess innate ideas. External and internal experience, that is,
sensation and reflection, is the only source of knowledge.
Locke also claimed that substances are unknowable. Further¬
more, there is a distinction between "primary" qualities, such as
bulk, number, figure, situation, and motion, which are objective,
and "secondary” qualities (for example, colors and sounds),
which are subjective. There is also a distinction between simple
ideas and complex concepts. In contrast to simple ideas—those
that are furnished to the mind by sensation and reflection—the
idea of substance is complex. Complex ideas are "made” by the
mind out of simple ones by comparing, relating, and abstracting.
There are three main classes of complex ideas: the ideas of sub¬
stance, of modes, and of relations. Modes are dependencies on
substances, such as figure, duration, reasoning, sacrilege, murder,

and so on. Relations arise when the mind compares one thing
with another. Relations are innumerable, the most important
type being the relation of causality. Causality, then, is not an
action, nor are causes substances. The principle of causality has
its value only in the logical, and not in the ontological, order;
causality is merely a relation.
With regard to political theory, Locke maintained that society
is the result of a contract concluded for the security of property.
In contrast to Hobbes’s political views, Locke stated three beliefs.
(1) Men were able, in "the state of nature,” to know the moral
laws. This natural moral law is not merely a selfish principle of
self-preservation; rather, it is the positive recognition of each
man’s inborn dignity as a rational creature of God. (2) The
right to private property precedes social legislation, for it is based
on and flows directly from the natural moral law. (3) Men do
not irrevocably transfer their rights to a sovereign. Even the head
of a state is under the law. He is supreme in the state, but his
power is not absolute. A definite distinction must be made be¬
tween legislative and administrative powers. The head of the
state can only govern; he cannot make laws. Furthermore, he
governs only because the majority of the people placed trust in
him. People can change legislation and even rebel whenever the
executive acts contrary to the official laws of the country. More¬
over, also contrary to Hobbes’s opinion, it is not God Who judges
the executive; it is the people who do so.
Leibniz
Born: Leipzig, Germany, in 1646
Died: Hanover, Germany, in 1716
life Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, a polyhistor, who in¬
dependently of Newton discovered the infinitesimal calculus,
studied philosophy in his native city, mathematics at Jena, and
jurisprudence at Altdorf, where he received his doctorate in law
at the age of 21. He was also versed in history and diplo¬
macy. Leibniz was a man of the world, acquainted with a great
number of the eminent people of his times. He had friendly
relations with Spinoza, although he feuded with Isaac Newton.
At the age of 30 he was employed by the House of Hanover as
court librarian. He established and was the first lifetime president
of the Prussian Academy of Sciences at Berlin. He attempted to
reconcile Protestantism with Catholicism and devised some diplo¬
matic plans for the unification of Europe. Toward the end of his
life he lost his influence on people and died in oblivion.
works Leibniz wrote the following works: Discourse on
Metaphysics, Monadology, Essays on Theodicy, and New Essays
in Human Understanding (a reply to Locke’s Essays).
doctrines Leibniz’ basic purpose was to harmonize all the
philosophical systems of the past. In order to do so, he established
the Doctrine of Monads.
The notion of substance, just as in Spinoza’s system, is the
starting point of metaphysical speculation. For Leibniz, however,
substances are not extended bodies but rather monads of individ¬
ual forces. Monads are entities deprived of all extension, yet
endowed with activity. Because of their self-activity, they are es¬
sentially individual, but at the same time they are necessarily
manifold. In short, monads are simple, indivisible, indestructible
units, partly active and partly passive, partly material and partly
spiritual. They are governed by several laws. According to the
Law of Continuity, from the lowest monad up to the highest
created monad (which is the human soul) there is absolute con¬
tinuity without interruption or unnecessary duplication. Accord¬
ing to its counterpart, the Law of Indiscernible, there is no perfect
similarity of monads; none of the monads represents the universe
in exactly the same manner. Each monad is a closed microcosmos;
it is "windowless” and has no transient activities. Yet, according
to the Law of Pre-established Harmony, each monad is so re¬

lated to all others that it reflects the whole universe of monads
in itself as in a mirror. Whenever changes occur in a monad, God
causes parallel changes in other monads. Harmony is based on
the Principle of Perfection (Lex Melioris), according to which
the universe is the best possible universe. This optimistic princi¬
ple, in turn, is based on the Law of Sufficient Reason, which holds
that things are real when there is sufficient reason for their ex¬
istence.
God is the Supreme Monad; God’s existence can be proved
by the Power of Representation—the essence, so to speak, of the
monad—which is present in monads because of the Law of Pre-
established Harmony, since the harmony of many windowless
substances having no communication with each other can come
only from a common cause. The rest of the monads, by virtue
of the pre-established harmony, arrange themselves in colonies.
Every man is an aggregate of monads ending in the central
monad, the soul. The human intellect, by virtue of innatism, finds
within itself the truths of reason.5
Berkeley
Born: Dyset, Ireland, in 1685
Died: Oxford, England, in 1753
life George Berkeley was born in County Kilkenny and
studied mathematics, languages, and philosophy at Trinity Col¬
lege in Dublin. He became an Anglican clergyman and, at the
age of 43, sailed across the Atlantic to Whitehall, near Newport,
where he stayed for 3 years. From this town in Rhode Island he
tried to establish a college in Bermuda for the preparation of
future missionaries whom he wanted to work among the Ameri¬
can Indians. Lack of funds forced him to abandon his noble plan
and to return first to London and then to Ireland, where he be¬
came Bishop of Cloyne in Cork. A year before his death, he
settled in Oxford with his wife and family. He was a personal
friend of Jonathan Swift, but he was ridiculed by Samuel John¬
son, who claimed that he had refuted Berkeley’s attempt to deny
the existence of matter by kicking a large stone.
works Berkeley’s principal works were Essay Towards a New
Theory of Vision, Treatise Concerning the Principle of Human
Knowledge, and Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous.
DOCTRINES Berkeley opposed the positions of philosophical
Materialism and religious Skepticism by denying the existence of
matter or corporeal substances. He argued that no material object
has any kind of absolute existence unless it is perceived by some¬
one because qualities of objects (such as size, shape, and motion)
are ideas in the mind produced by a thing only through the
senses. Apart from these qualities, there is no sensible reality.
One never can see any substances underlying the above-men¬
tioned qualities because by definition material substances lie be¬
yond the relation between a perceiver and his ideas; it is there¬
fore impossible to think of anything except as being related to
a mind. By claiming this, Berkeley did not deny the existence of
sensible things as conceived by ordinary men. He merely fought
against sophisticated philosophical speculations concerning mat¬
ter.
For Berkeley, then, to be is to be perceived. One cannot sepa¬
rate existence from perception. To exist and to be perceived are
correlatives in sensible reality, for there is nothing out there in
reality of which one does not have perception. Existence signifies
either the state of being perceived or the account of perceiving:
"Existence is either to be perceived or to perceive.” 6 The entire
existence of sensible things is their being-perceived, whereas the
existence of minds is characterized by active perception. Since
the cognitive operation immediately terminates in sensible things,
these are identical with ideas. Consequently, only minds and ideas
exist. But how do things external to the human mind exist when
one does not perceive them? The answer is that when one particu¬
lar individual does not perceive them another person does. And
since, occasionally, all human minds are diverted from things, in
case no one thinks of a specific thing the omnipresent and eternal
Mind of God thinks always of everything.
Hume
Born: Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1711
Died: Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1776
life David Hume attended the university of his native city
but did not graduate. For 3 years he lived in France, after which
he moved to England. There, at the age of 56, he became Under¬
secretary of State and served for 2 years. He then returned to the
Scottish capital. After some initial difficulties, Hume became an
influential philosopher and a popular person, and led a contented
life. Rousseau was one of his numerous friends.
WORKS Essays: Moral-, Political, and Literary, Enquiry Con¬
cerning Human Understanding, and Enquiry Concerning the
Principles of Morals were Hume’s principal works.
doctrines Hume claimed that only sense-knowledge based
on experience is possible. Ideas are mere copies of sense impres¬
sions. Impressions and ideas constitute the human intellect. Ideas
are not entirely unconnected; there is a bond of union between
them and one calls up another. This phenomenon is called as¬
sociation of ideas.
Neither material nor spiritual substances exist in reality; their
ideas are purely imaginative concepts, being nothing other than
a constant association of impressions. Likewise there is nothing
in man’s experience that justifies a notion of necessary connection
or causation; cause and effect designate merely a regular succes¬
sion of ideas. Since the principle of causality is mere expectation
due to custom, no facts outside consciousness are known to man.
Granted the negation of substance, the existence of God and
t
the immortality of the human soul are only hypothetical. Free¬

dom of will is an illusion; virtue is that which pleases, and vice
is that which displeases.
Kant
Born: Konigsberg, Germany, in 1724
Died: Konigsberg, Germany, in 1804
life Immanuel Kant, son of a poor saddler of Scotch origin,
was born in Prussia. A Pietistic religious atmosphere prevailed
in the home of his childhood. He never in his life went beyond
the vicinity of his native city, and his life was closely connected
with the University of Konigsberg, which he entered at the age
of 16, studying Wolff’s philosophy and Newton’s physics. Then,
after 9 years of private tutoring for distinguished East Prussian
families, he became first a Privatdozent at the university, lectur¬
ing on a great variety of subjects for 15 years, and finally, at the
age of 36, a professor of philosophy, a position he held for 27
years. Kant’s life was uneventful yet intellectually rich, morally
impeccable, well balanced, and exemplary in regard to diligence,
precision, punctuality, and orderliness. Seemingly dry and re¬
served, actually he was a man of wit and charm, whose lectures
were enjoyed by his students and whose company was sought by
his numerous friends. Once, however, he was criticized by the
Prussian King Frederick William II for his unorthodox religious
views. After retirement Kant worked on an unfinished revision
of his system for the remaining 7 years of his life.
WORKS Kant’s most important works were Critique of Pure
Reason (Kritik der reinen Vemuft), Prolegomena to Any Future
Metaphysics, Critique of Practical Reason (Kritik der praktischen
Vernunft), Critique of Judgment (Kritik der Urtheilskraft),
Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone (Religion innerhalb
der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft'), and The Only Possible Proof
for the Demonstration of the Existence of God.
DOCTRINES Kant occasionally, in a somewhat simplified man¬

ner, viewed philosophical development in three stages: Dogmatic
Rationalism, Skepticism, and Criticism. In these three phases he
also saw his own mental development. He was raised primarily
in the Leibniz-Wolffian system, but after reading Hume he
"awoke” from his "dogmatic slumbers.” The result was his Tran¬
scendental Idealism, which brought metaphysics under the critical
scrutiny (Kritik) of pure reason itself. (Although Kant at differ¬
ent times attaches different meanings to the word "transcenden¬
tal,” he always uses it, as opposed to "empirical.” Also, in Kantian
terminology, "critical” is not opposed to "dogmatic,” but rather
signifies an attempt to discover the a priori forms of knowledge.)
Kant did not simply combine the two traditions that had em¬
phasized reason or experience: he established a genuinely new
kind of speculation. He found in experience the materials of
knowledge, yet he made reason responsible for its form. He
built up his own system by rejecting the existence of innate
ideas, meanwhile disagreeing also with Locke’s contention that
all human concepts are ultimately derived from experience. He
sided with Hume, claiming with him that man cannot derive
necessity and strict universality from experience. Hume agreed
with Locke, arguing that all knowledge is derived from experi¬
ence and that consequently one cannot know anything beyond
experience, thus striking a blow at Rationalism, which advocated
the opposite view. Kant did agree, however, with the empiricist
claim that knowledge arises out of experience. He believed that
there are concepts and principles which originate within, and as
such are grounded in the mind’s own structure on the occasion
of experience. These concepts or principles are a priori, or
"pure,” in the sense that they are not derived from experience.
Hence they are of themselves empty of all empirical elements,
although they are applied to experience and to a certain extent
govern it. A priori knowledge, and only such knowledge, is in¬
dispensably characterized by necessity and universality.
Kant was preoccupied with two basic problems. His more

fundamental problem was this: How is certain and universal
truth possible, provided that scientific truth actually exists? How
does one overcome Hume’s Skepticism by vindicating the ob¬
jectivity of scientific judgments in their necessity and universal¬
ity? Kant’s solution to this problem was the introduction into
philosophy of the concept of synthetic a priori judgments. His
second main question was whether speculative metaphysics, of
the traditional type, was capable of giving man sure knowledge
concerning the questions which Kant considered to constitute the
chief problems of metaphysics: those concerning the existence
and nature of God, of human freedom, and the existence in man
of a spiritual, immortal soul. To this second basic question, Kant’s
answer wras in the negative. He labeled rationalist metaphysics
"rotten dogmatism.”
After these general remarks one can summarize Kant’s main
doctrines in the following way.
1. With regard to human knowledge, two fundamental ques¬

tions must be asked: Is a priori knowledge possible? If it is, how
is it possible?
2. In order to answer these questions, the fact has to be estab¬
lished that there are two realities, two sources of human knowl¬
edge, as well as two principal types of human knowledge.
a. There are two realities: external to the mind there exists
a world of things-in-themselves (Ding-an-sich or noumena)\ it
is non-sensual and unknowable; and there is phenomenal reality
or the world as man experiences it.
b. Basically, there are two sources of human knowledge:
sensibility and understanding. Through the former, man receives
objects; through the latter, he thinks about them.
c. There are two principal types of human knowledge: there
exists a knowledge independent of experience, called pure or a
priori, and there is empirical knowledge, which is a posteriori in
its character, originating in experience. Since the things of ex¬

perience are only individual and contingent, universal and neces¬
sary knowledge cannot be derived from experience; it can come
only from the mind itself. Hence necessity and universality are
the definite and inseparable criteria of a priori knowledge. (The
expression "a priori” indicates not a psychological, but an epis¬
temological mark; it refers to a logical, not a chronological,
priority; it means prior, or antecedent, to all experience.)
Kant solved the problem of the synthetic a priori judgments

through his "Copernican Revolution,” which completely upset
the traditional notion of knowledge. Just as the heliocentric
conception of Copernicus eliminated the geocentric views of the
scientists, so Kant denied the traditional view that it is the mind
that conforms to the objects of reality. Kant claimed the op¬
posite: that the objects of reality conform to the operations of
the mind. The real no longer informs thought; it is thought
which informs the datum. It should be noted, however, that this
"Copernican Revolution” does not imply that reality can be
reduced to the human mind and its ideas.
Human knowledge is forever limited in two ways: first, it is
limited to the world of experience; second, it is limited by the
manner in which the faculties of perception and thinking or¬
ganize the raw data of experience.
1. Knowledge is formulated in propositions. An idea taken

by itself does not constitute knowledge. A concept must be
joined to another concept in a judgment. But while all knowl¬
edge is contained in propositions, not every judgment contains
knowledge. There are two main types of judgments: analytic
and synthetic. Analytic judgments (like "A circle is round” or
"Bodies have extension”) analyze an idea, but they add nothing
to it; they do not increase one’s knowledge. The predicate is
found, by analysis, contained in the comprehension of the sub-
f
ject; hence these judgments are merely explicative. On the con¬

trary, judgments which add to the subject a note that was not
contained in it, a note which extends knowledge, are synthetic.
Although every synthetic judgment is "amplicative” or augment¬
ative, not every synthetic judgment expresses scientific knowl¬
edge. In order to do this a judgment must be true in all cases;
it must tell one not only what is but what must be. The proposi¬
tion "This circle is green” or "This is a warm day,” although syn¬
thetic, is accidental and contingent (since sometimes a circle is
not green, and often a day is not warm), and therefore it is not
scientific; it is entirely a posteriori. Consequently, it cannot be
absolutely universal and necessary, characteristics which are re¬
quired for scientific knowledge.7 But, when one states a judgment
that is true in all cases, it is necessary and scientific; it is an a
priori synthetic judgment, such as "Three and two are five” or
"A straight line is the shortest distance between two points.”
These synthetic a priori judgments alone make science possible.
In all these judgments, there is an a priori element which gives
them their universality and necessity. These judgments are the
result of the union or synthesis (synthesize: "to put together”)
of the purely mental and necessity-producing forms and concepts
of the mind with the contingent data of experience. The phe¬
nomena (Erscheinungen) 8 of the outer world are only the
matter of sensation, but that which causes the manifold matter
of the phenomena to be perceived as arranged in a certain order
is its form.
2. In order to understand properly this process of synthesis,
one has to describe and dissect man’s threefold knowing power:
sensibility (Sinnlichkeit), intellect or understanding (Verstand),
and reason (Vernunft). Things-in-themselves, which are the
causes of human sensations, are unknowable; they are not sub¬
stances; they are not in space and time. It is man’s mental equip¬
ment which orders the matter of sensation in space and time
94
and supplies the concepts by means of which man understands
experience.
3. When an unknown cause gives rise to sensation in his
consciousness, man, by sensibility, takes in the phenomena of the
world about him. The intellect or understanding then invests his
sensations with the "empiric and pure intuitions” of time and
space (they are empiric inasmuch as they are objects of sense
immediately known, and pure, that is, a priori in their character);
the intellect or understanding then evolves them into representa¬
tions of objects by means of the twelve categories (which are
divided into four sets of three), or "pure concepts of understand¬
ing,” especially those of substance and cause, and eventually
organizes these representations according to the three ideas of
reason: the Psychological Idea, the idea of the self or of the soul;
the Cosmological Idea, the idea of the material world or the
totality of phenomena; and the Theological Idea, or the idea of
God (also known as the Transcendental Ideal). The whole
process of human knowledge is based on man’s inevitable
tendency to try to unify all of his experience.
4. a. In other words, the chaotic "manifold” of impressions
made by the noumena must be arranged in a certain order. This
is done by the "empirical intuitions” of space and time. Space
and time are not ideas derived from the things man experiences.
They are the forms of the faculty of sense, and whatever sense
can perceive must take that form or shape. Since all perceptions,
or "intuitions,” appear as arranged in a spatial and temporal
order, "space” and "time” are universal and necessary conditions
of sense-perception, and as such must exist a priori in the mind.
Objects themselves are, so far as man knows them, spaceless
and timeless. Yet all phenomena appear arranged and "molded”
in "space” and "time.” In short, the material element in sense-
functions is "phenomena”; the formal element is found in two
subjective forms—"space” and "time.” These two elements, the
^ y i
material and the formal, come together to form "empirical

intuitions."
b. Although space and time are not concepts, there are also
a priori concepts; these are the twelve categories. The work of
the categories is somewhat akin to the functioning of the a priori
forms of time and space. They are innate forms which the under¬
standing does not find in, but which it imposes on, the phe¬
nomenal world. They are empty forms which must be filled by
experience if one is to have knowledge; of themselves they do
not extend human knowledge. Things-in-themselves do not have
unity, plurality, and so forth; the latter are categories which exist
in the mind alone. The synthetic judgments of science receive
their universality and necessity from the twelve categories of
understanding, each category corresponding to a form of judg¬
ment. In short, phenomena perceived in a sense-qualified man¬
ner are the material with which understanding deals. The
"shape" of understanding is determined by the categories or pure
concepts, which are twelve a priori forms, and, consequently,
they constitute the formal element of understanding. For exam¬
ple, understanding receives the empirical intuitions of "grass"
and "green.” Receiving these into itself and running them
through its forms, it produces the judgment "This grass is
green." According to the category of "quantity," the judgment
has the form of totality: one perceives the sum total of the
blades of grass as green. If another judgment were made—"This
is a blade of grass”—the judgment would have, under the
category of "quantity," the form of unity. According to "quality,”
it would be an affirmation; according to "relation," it would
be a substance-accident. According to "modality,” it would be
marked by the forms of existence and contingency.
c. Reason takes the judgments of understanding as its material
element. The formal element of reason consists in the three
transcendental ideas which condition reasoning, just as "space"
and "time” will condition sensation, and as the twelve forms of

understanding will condition judgment. These ideas are forms
less general than the categories, serving to unify the manifold
of intellectual experience, just as the categories and "space” and
"time” serve to unify the manifold of sense-representation and
impression. Consequently, they do not refer immediately to the
objects of intuition, but refer only to the understanding and its
judgments.
5. The categories alone are not able to close the gap between
sensibility and understanding. Hence another intermediate factor
of unity is required. It is imagination (Einbildungskraft) that
mediates between the manifold data of intuition and the plurality
of categories.
6. Reason can use its ideas in two ways, one of them legiti¬
mate, the other leading to contradiction and error. When the
pure concepts of reason are used as regulative ideas, that is, when
"regulating” or urging on the understanding toward an ever¬
more consistent and comprehensive synthesis of phenomena, then
they are serving a legitimate and even necessary purpose. But
when reason tries to use ideas in a constitutive way, that is, to
"constitute” or apply the categories to things that are not ex¬
perienced, it unavoidably leads to metaphysical illusions. In
other words, as long as reason operates as a transcendental
power, it uses its ideas in a regulative way; but when reason
starts to operate as a transcendent power, it tries to use ideas in
a constitutive and therefore invalid way. Reason, as a tran¬
scendent power, attempts to go beyond experience entirely and
to obtain knowledge concerning things-in-themselves in their
intelligibility. This effort results in failure, since it generates the
following transcendental illusions: the paralogisms of rational
psychology, the four pairs of cosmological antimonies, and the
Ideal of Theology.
a. The paralogisms result from the attempt to infer from the
universal form a thinking self to the soul’s nature, that is, to its
spirituality, immortality, and so forth.
b. In the form of antimonies or "apparent contradictions,"
based on the four classes of categories (quantity, quality, rela¬
tion, and modality), pure reason finds that it can prove space
finite and also infinite, matter divisible and indivisible, human
freedom existent and non-existent, and both the existence and
the non-existence of a necessary being.
c. The misuse of the third transcendental idea results in the
Theological Ideal of "natural" or "philosophical" or "transcen¬
dental” theology. This is the idea of the sum total of all possible
perfections. But it is not an abstract idea. Rather, it is the con¬
cept of a real being, the prototype of all particular perfections;
the idea of the most perfect, as well as of a "hypostatized" Most
Perfect Being. But to arrive through philosophical arguments
at the existence of God is fallacious. And since any attempted
inference about the existence of an author of the world from
the constitution, order, and unity observable in it is fruitless,
speculative theology and its resulting Ideal are worthless.
The paralogisms and the Ideal of Theology do not involve
any contradictions; they are either fallacious inferences or un¬
justified assertions. In the antimonies, however, thesis and anti¬
thesis result in contradictions; hence they are the most striking
examples of transcendental illusions.
7. Although man realizes that this is a world external to him
and existing independently of him, even though his knowledge
of it is organized by man himself, positive knowledge about
noumena is never obtainable for him. This is so because all at¬
tempts to penetrate into the essence of things result in tran¬
scendental illusions. Certain ideas therefore follow.
a. Metaphysics is possible as a natural disposition only for
man’s previously mentioned natural and basic tendency to at¬
tempt to unify the empirical cognitions of the understanding.
b. Moreover, metaphysics as a transcendental science, that is

to say, as speculative metaphysics, marked by universality, neces¬
sity, and the knowledge of noumena, is impossible.
8. An a priori or theoretical science of phenomena is possible
because of the unity of apperception, which means that all men,
having the same structure of mind, will always and everywhere
combine and arrange sense material which may vary for different
minds, in the same way and with the same results. This is the
reason, for example, why the laws of mathematics are the same
for all men.
9. Although speculative metaphysics is impossible,9 there are
certitudes outside the reach of pure reason known by mans
practical reason. Reason, then, is concerned with both theory,
acting as pure reason, and with practical behavior, performing
as practical reason. Ultimately, however, there is but one and the
same reason applied in two different ways.
10. First among these certitudes is the awareness of duty.
Ethics should be centered about the idea of duty. The good taken
purely and simply is found in a good will, and a good will is
one which acts, not from natural inclination, but from duty.
Only acts done from duty have moral worth. Will is identical
with practical reason, which is a capacity of rational beings to
have an idea of law. Everything in nature works according to
laws, but only man can consciously conform his conduct to
principles. An objective principle of law binding the will is a
command, stated as an imperative expressing the ought. There
is only one categorical (absolute) imperative (order): "Act
only according to that maxim by which you can at the same
time will that it should become a universal law.” Hence the
dignity of person, being the fundamental reason of morality,
requires the autonomy of will, according to which moral law is
imposed on man by nothing and nobody but himself. Conse-
?
quently, an act is morally wrong when one makes an exception

for oneself, thus subjecting other persons as means to an end
for himself, perverting the whole realm of ends, according to
which each person must be treated never merely as a means but
always as an end in himself. God exists 10 not as a supreme law¬
giver and judge of human conduct. His existence is merely a
postulate of practical reason, just as the freedom of will and the
immortality of the soul cannot be proved because they belong to
the noumenal world, in which there is no phenomenal percep¬
tion.
Hegel
Born: Stuttgart, Germany, in 1770
Died: Berlin, Germany, in 1831
life George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel studied at the Protes¬
tant School of Theology in the University of Tubingen, where
he came under the influence of Rousseau’s and Kant’s doctrines.
He was also deeply impressed by the writings of Plato and
Aristotle and by the plays of Sophocles. After 7 years of tutoring
the youngsters of Swiss and German families he became first a
Privatdozent, and later a professor, of the University of Jena.
Several years later, after a brief interruption of his academic
career, first as a newspaper editor at Bamberg and afterwards
as a secondary school principal at Nuremberg, he received a
chair of philosophy at Heidelberg and 10 years later, when he
was 48 years old, a chair at the University of Berlin as Fichte’s
successor. Among his friends were Holderlin the poet, and for a
while, Schelling the philosopher. Hegel died of cholera at the
age of 61.
WORKS: The following works were Hegel’s principal writings:
The Phenomenology of Spirit, Science of Logic, Encyclopedia of
the Philosophical Sciences in Outline, Outlines of the Philosophy
IOO A BRIEF HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
of Right, and (published posthumously) the lectures on Phi¬

losophy of History, Aesthetics, Philosophy of Religion, and His¬
tory of Philosophy.
doctrines Hegel considered the doctrines of his precedessors
in the field of philosophy as mere preparation for his own sys¬
tem, which he claimed to be the culmination and crown of all
philosophical speculation, emerging as a great synthesis out of
the clashes of the opposing views of the past.
In spite of his own admission on his deathbed: "Nobody un¬
derstood me but Dr. Rosenkrantz 11—and he too misunderstood
me,” Hegel’s influence on several generations was tremendous.
Hegel claimed that all development, whether in the purely
logical order or in nature, passes through three states: the in-
itself, out-of-itself, and for-itself. This is the method of the triad.
For this reason, philosophy must pursue a concept or an object
from its immediate unity into the divergence of opposites so as
to arrive at the full truth in the reconciliation of opposites. For
"all position is negation” (every concept contains its opposite)
and "all negation is position” (every opposite contains that to
which it is opposed), so that the full truth is neither in affirma¬
tion nor in negation, but in reaffirmation, which follows affirma¬
tion and negation.
Philosophy starts its speculations with the Idea or the Abso¬
lute in Itself. The Idea, following the law of development, is at
first in-itself, and the science of it is logic: 12 then it is outside-of-
itself, or in the state of otherness, the science of which is the
philosophy of nature; and finally, it is for-itself, discussed by the
philosophy of mind.
Separateness is unreal. The world is not a collection of hard
units, whether atoms or souls, each completely self-subsistent,
but a whole. However, the apparently separate things of which
the world seems to be composed are not simply an illusion; each
has a greater or lesser degree of reality. Their reality consists in
f
RENAISSANCE AND MODERN PHILOSOPHY IOI
an aspect of the whole. The whole, in all its complexity, is the

Absolute. The Absolute is essentially thought; it is truly spirit,
and it is also a subject and supreme life.
In its vital nature, the Absolute must combine the permanence
of substances with the flux of temporal becoming. Since it is a
self-reflective subject, it is entirely dialectical13 in its nature,
separating itself from itself and returning again to a more nearly
perfect kind of unity. Through this perennial activity, the Abso¬
lute becomes intrinsically differentiated, developing explicitly
what is implicitly contained in itself. The rhythm of this develop¬
ment is that of the "coincide of opposition,” the procedure of the
triad of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Thesis is the statement
of an idea; antithesis is the denial of the statement; and synthesis
is the denial of the antithesis. As every concept contains its con¬
tradictory, the mere positing 14 of an idea, the thesis, necessarily
brings into existence its antithesis; and the affirmation of the
antithesis demands its negation, which is the synthesis. In short,
then, the three stages of the trk d are being, non-being, and be¬
coming. The Idea viewed in itself is being as a dynamic concept.
The Idea evolving itself into the second state (antithesis) is the
world, and in the third stage (synthesis) it is Spirit. For Hegel
the whole of reality, the world, is identical with Spirit or Mind
or "God.” World or Nature is thus a mere manifestation of the
Absolute. Since the basic reality is Spirit, the real is rational and
the rational is real. The Absolute is all, and all is ultimately the
Absolute, and the Absolute is infinite thinking activity.
History is the progressive realization of Spirit. Spirit or Mind
continuously struggles to unfold and change itself from lower
to higher degrees of perfection. History proves that everything
works upward towards the perfect harmony of the Absolute.
This process is not sweeping, but a gradual development through
the action and reaction of thought, according to the triadic pat¬
tern. Each period is more perfectly harmonizing and purifying
than the preceding one. This development continues until the

Idea of Freedom is perfectly realized. Since this will be the end of
all conflicts, the struggle in history will cease. In the Civil State,
this drive toward Absolute Reason shows itself in the develop¬
ment from the Oriental state to the Roman state, and finally to
the last and best expression of progress, the nineteenth century
German State.
Schopenhauer
Born: Danzig, Germany, in 1788
Died: Franfort-am-Main, in i860
life Arthur Schopenhauer was the son of a wealthy mer¬
chant. He attended the Universities of Gottingen and Berlin,
first studying medicine, then philosophy. He admired Kant but
despised Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. After several unsuccessful
years, toward the end of his life he started to gain recognition
even among academic circles.
works Schopenhauer’s main works were The World as Will
and Presentation, On the Will in Nature, The Two Fundamental
Problems of Ethics, and Parerga and Paralipomena.
doctrines According to Schopenhauer, reality consists of
the world as will and the world as idea. Will, which is a force
guided not by reason but by a blind, irresistible drive, is the first
principle of everything; it is the essence of the noumenal or real
world.
With reference to the world as idea, Schopenhauer contended
that the apparent world is phenomenal: it is man’s conception of
the subjective forms of consciousness, of space, time, and causal¬
ity. The individuality of subjects is merely apparent; they are
subjective phenomena of the one universal, primal will.
Life is not worth living; one should be a pessimist. The world-
will is a source of constant suffering for man, driving him
ceaselessly toward the unobtainable: peace and enduring satis-
faction. Man cannot be happy, for all will implies action, all
action implies want, and all want implies pain, which is the
essential condition of will.
The best man can hope for is occasional relief from pain by
the negative deliverance of the disinterested contemplation of
art, which separates intellect from will, and also by practicing
the virtues of compassion and justice, which make man sensible
of the essential identity of all things, thereby destroying his in¬
dividuation. But the best solution is to renounce the very will
to live.
Comte
Born: Montpellier, France, in 1789
Died: Paris, France, in 1857
life August Comte was educated at the Ecole Polytechnique.
Originally a secretary and follower of the Socialist Saint-Simon,
Comte abandoned Utopianism, formulating his own social phi¬
losophy, which he soon called Positivism, or social physics. It
consisted of social statistics (order) and social dynamics (prog¬
ress). Being deeply affected by the tragic death of Clotilde de
Vaux, to whom he was romantically attached, in contrast to his
emphasis on the importance of the positive sciences and his
scientific understanding of human society, he made love the
central concept of his new "Religion of Humanity.” Although
critical of Comte’s religious view, John Smart Mill was one of
his admirers. Near the end of his life, apart from the modest
donations of his followers Comte had no regular income and
died in poverty in a small house close to the Sorbonne.
works His main works were the System of Positive Polity
and the Course of Positive Philosophy.
doctrines According to Comte, historical observations on
the process of human society show that man has passed through
three stages: (1) the theological stage, in which nature was
mythically conceived and man sought the explanation of natural

phenomena from supernatural beings; (2) the metaphysical
stage, in which nature was regarded as a result of obscure forces
and man sought the explanation of natural phenomena for them;
and (3) the positive stage, in which all abstract and obscure
forces are discarded and natural phenomena are explained by
their constant relationships.
The positivistic state of knowledge has seven outstanding
traits: it is real, useful, precise, certain, organic, relative, and
sympathetic. All knowledge is found in the mathematical and
experimental sciences, chief of which is sociology, the science of
humanity. Humanity, then, is the only God.
Mill
Born: London, England, in 1806
Died: Avignon, France, in 1873
life John Stuart Mill never had any formal education, but
was instructed at home by his father, James Mill, and by Jeremy

Bentham in a remarkable although eccentric fashion. At the age
of 3 years he started to study arithmetic, and by 8 he was able
to read Greek and Latin classics in the original. After 12, he was
devoted to the study of logic, history, and economic and political
theory; however, due to his exacting educational program, he
suffered a minor nervous breakdown at 20. After his recovery,
and after having spent a year in southern France studying mathe¬
matics and sciences at the University of Montpellier, he entered
the service of the East India Company. He stayed there for three
decades, succeeding his own father as head of the company until
its dissolution by the British Parliament. As he turned 60, he
was elected to the House of Commons and there fought against
passage of the Reform Bill of 1865; he also was active in behalf
of Irish nationalism, women’s suffrage, and birth control.
works In addition to his Autobiography, John Stuart Mill’s
RENAISSANCE AND MODERN PHILOSOPHY IO}
most important works were A System of Logic, The Principles

of Political Economy, Three Essays on Religion, Utilitarianism,
On Liberty, and Representative Government.
doctrines According to Mill, human knowledge is confined
to the limits of sensation; concepts and syllogisms are of no
value; induction, regulated by four canons,15 is the only valid
scientific method.
Ethics should be of utilitarian character: actions should be
considered good or evil only insofar as they preserve us from
pain or subject us to it. But utility is not to be judged selfishly;
it is to be sought in the greatest pleasure of the greatest number
of men.
Kierkegaard
Born: Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1813
Died: Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1855
life S0ren Kierkegaard is usually referred to as "the Melan¬
choly Dane” or "the Father of Modern Existentialism,” and
rightly so. Although he was the youngest of seven children of a
prosperous merchant who provided him with a comfortable life,
his home had a suppressed atmosphere. This was due partly to
the family’s strict Orthodox Lutheran observance, and partly to
the father’s unremittent feeling of guilt for the horrible act of
cursing God in his youth. Another reason for the family’s gloom
was that only two of the seven children survived. Kierkegaard
entered the University of Copenhagen at the age of 17 and re¬
mained there for 10 years, first studying Protestant theology and
then turning to literature and philosophy. He never was ordained
a minister, although he did preach some sermons. In his younger
years, he was quite hilarious in his behavior, but with the passing
of time he became increasingly secluded from society and de¬
pressed. The breaking of his engagement to a lighthearted girl
had a permanently shocking effect on him. Kierkegaard fought
io6 A BRIEF HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
almost to fatal exhaustion against the prevailing Hegelianism of

his days as well as against the hypocrisy of contemporary
Christianity. He wanted to lead men back to a genuine Christian
life. On his deathbed he refused the ministration of the
Lutheran state church. Were Kierkegaard alive today, he
probably would not call himself an Existentialist, although the
main elements of contemporary Existentialism are undeniably
present in his thinking. His thoughts are particularly reflected in
the work of Heidegger.
WORKS Kierkegaard’s chief writings (several of them pub¬
lished under pen names) were Philosophical Fragments, Works
of Love, The Gospel of Suffering, Stages on Life’s Way, Either/
Or, Fear and Trembling, Sickness Unto Death, Concluding Un¬
scientific Postscript, and The Attack Upon "Christendom
doctrines Kierkegaard’s aim was to understand man’s being
and to redeem him from the suffering inherent in his nature. In
attempting to do so, he formulated an anthropology based on the
idea of existence. In his anthropological speculations, Kierge-
gaard first of all rejected the concept of abstract thought because
it does not take into consideration existence, the very mode of
man’s being. Reality must be understood in the light of indi¬
vidual existence, never by the impersonal way of abstract
thought. Man functions as an individual, suffers as an individual,
develops as an individual, dies as a lonely being, and then faces
God all alone, rendering account of the individual details of his
life. Hence subjectivity is reality; subjectivity is truth; social
man absorbed in a crowd is inhuman; the "crowd” is the un¬
truth. Man is situated in existence by a combination of the
temporal and the eternal, by a synthesis of the infinite and the
finite. Man’s existential situation consists of a realization of his
present state, of what he now is in contrast to what he ought to
be. Man essentially is related to God, the Infinite. Hence man
realizes that it is his finitude that causes his alienation from his
essential being and from God. This alienation produces anxiety.

Anxiety may turn into despair (the "sickness unto death”) when
the individual discovers that he exists on the level of sensuous¬
ness. He can escape from despair, however, by an act of ethics,
by self-commitment through a forceful drive to retrieve his true
essential self. This dynamic movement goes through three
stages on lire s way.
Corresponding to these three stages are three main types of
men: (a) the aesthetes, who want pleasure and freedom from
boredom, and whose mode of existence is characterized by
romantic hedonism and abstract intellectualism; (b) the ethical
men, who live for the sake of duty; and (c) the religious men,
who live in order to obey God.
The aesthetic man is typified by Don Juan, the ethical man by
Socrates, who signifies the reign of the universal moral law,
and, finally, the religious man by Abraham and his predicament
of personal relation to God.
The first stage during mans recovery process is the aesthetic
stage, or way. Actually, the aesthetic way, in which man experi¬
ments but does not commit himself, leads to boredom, melan¬
choly, and despair. Only through choice is authentic selfhood
attained, since life is a matter of "either/or.” Both the sensualist
and the intellectual fail to commit themselves decisively and
hence are unable to reach selfhood and true existence.
In turning toward decision and commitment because of
despair, the self passes from the aesthetical to the ethical stage.
In the ethical stage, the self, having chosen itself, becomes
centralized, unified, and authentic.
Since neither of the two lower stages is sufficient by itself, it
follows that, just as the ethical stage transfigured the aesthetic,
so the higher religious stage, in which man’s sinfulness is
acknowledged, must transfigure the ethical. Man can achieve a
truly authentic existence only by becoming a Christian, and
io8 A BRIEF HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
one becomes a Christian through a free choice of passionate

commitment to the Incarnate Word.
The transition from one stage to another is made by choice, by
self-commitment, and through a continuous process of intel¬
lectual meditation. Since death is imminent, every moment is a
unique occasion for decision, and every choice has an infinite
value. Yet man’s progression from the aesthetic to the ethical
level brings him under the influence of reason, for the moral law
is an expression of the universal reason of man. Nevertheless,
the movement from the ethical to the religious stage is not a
mere choice; rather, it is a risk, an adventure, a leap. This leap of
faith brings man to the presence of God, Who is a Subject and
not a philosophically describable objective Truth. Man’s rela¬
tionship to God is not one that can rationally or objectively be
explained. The relationship between God and individual is sub¬
jective and unique.
i
Marx
Born: Trier, Germany, in 1818
Died: London, England, in 1883
life Karl Heinrich Marx was born in Rhenish Germany. Al¬
though descended from rabbis, his father was a lawyer who, in
order to increase his clientele, turned Lutheran with his entire
family when Karl was 6 years old. Throughout his life Marx
resented the motive for his father’s superficial conversion.
Nevertheless he admired and emulated old Heinrich’s humani¬
tarian inclinations. A neighbor, a Prussian nobleman and a state
official named Baron Ludwig of Westphalen, inspired Karl’s
reading of Greek tragedies, of Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare.
Marx married the baron’s daughter Jenny, whose mother was of
English origin. Until their demise the couple lived in mutual
devotion and perfect harmony despite their poverty, so abysmal
that three of the family’s children died young of malnutrition
and lack of sanitation and of medication. Expelled from one

city after another for revolutionary activities, the Marxes lived
successively in Berlin, Paris, Brussels, and Cologne. In 1840 they
finally settled down in the cheap Soho district of London. From
then on, Marx spent most of his time, usually 1 o hours a day, in
the reading room of the British Museum studying economic and
philosophic theories and producing his prolific writings.
Before his marriage, Marx attended the Universities of Bonn
and Berlin, where, obeying parental wishes, he studied law and
where he met a group of young radical Hegelians. Marx soon
became so interested in philosophy that he switched to the study
of this field. Having written his dissertation on the philosophy of
nature formulated by Democritus and Epicurus, he received his
doctorate at the age of 23 from the University of Jena. Since
teaching was denied him because of his extremist views, he tried
journalism. He edited three short-lived periodicals—the
Rheinische Zeitung, the Deutsch-Franzidsische Jahrbucher, and
the Neue Rheinische Zeitung—and for a while was a correspond¬
ent for the New York Daily Tribune.
In 1884 in Paris Marx first met Friedrich Engels,18 who lived
near Manchester, working in his German father’s textile plant in
England. The two men became lifelong associates. The wealthy
Engels even undertook the financial support of his impoverished
friend’s family. Another good friend of Marx was the German
poet Heinrich Heine. He also had close connections with Pierre
Joseph Proudhon but only in a negative sense, since he opposed
the theories of the famous French anarchist.
During most of his adult years Marx suffered from painful
carbuncles and from a liver ailment. He was a man of reserved
manners who lived in seclusion most of the time. Although his
writing influenced millions of people during his lifetime, he
seldom sought the limelight. He survived his dearly beloved wife
by only 2 years and died on March 14, 1883, just 2 months after
no A BRIEF HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
the death of the eldest of his three remaining daughters. He was

buried in the New Section of Highgate Cemetery in London.
WORKS Marx’s principal works were The Communist Mani¬
festo 19 and The Capital.20 His minor writings include the
Theses on Feuerbach, The Misery of Philosophy (against Proud¬
hon), and Toward a Critique of Political Economy.
doctrines I. The philosophy of Marx is Materialism. How
did this come about? As a student, Marx came under Feuerbach’s
influence. In contrast to Hegel, who claimed that the whole of
reality is Spirit, Mind, or God, Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872)
rejected Idealism. He "inverted” Hegel’s system by replacing the
primacy of Spirit with that of matter; for him matter and not
Spirit, man and not God, are the basic reality. Marx joined
Feuerbach’s reinterpretation of Hegelianism; he claimed that
reality is not the result of the reflection of ideas, but that, on the
contrary, matter existed before ideas. Hence it is man’s social
existence that determines his consciousness and not the other way
around, as had been believed by Hegel and some other
philosophers. Consequently, a fundamental distinction has to be
made: the distinction between the order of material reality and
the order of human thought. Accordingly, there is also a distinc¬
tion between the substructure and the superstructure of society.
The former consists of the material order; the latter, of the ideas
of culture, religion, morality, law, and so forth. No spiritual
reality such as God exists outside of the human mind. Conse¬
quently the material order is of a primary, and mental activity of
a secondary, character. Although there is a variety in the material
world and not just any one form of matter, human thoughts are
nothing more than the ability, due to a long process of evolu¬
tion, of the cerebral cortex for reflex action. Mental activities,
then, are merely a by-product of matter. Furthermore, all his¬
torical events, although produced by many interacting forces
such as religious beliefs, philosophical theories, or literary
I
»
RENAISSANCE AND MODERN PHILOSOPHY III
products, have developed from economic situations; hence in

history the economic factor is basic.
1. All reality is matter in self-motion.

2. The perpetual evolution of matter into newer and higher
forms makes the history of reality.
3. The evolution of matter consists not only of quantitative
but of qualitative changes as well. These changes take place in
qualitative leaps which explain the transition from one level of
being to another, from inorganic to organic, from living to
sensing to thinking.
4. The transformation of quantitative changes into qualitative
changes is due to a contradiction within the very essence of
beings. Inherent in all the objects and phenomena of nature
there are positive and negative sides; there is something old and
something new. Development is due precisely to the struggle
between these opposites.21
5. Nature is not an accidental agglomeration of unconnected,
independent, or even isolated objects and phenomena. Contrary
to such a view, nature should be considered as an integral whole
of organically connected objects and phenomena depending on
and determining each other. Things and phenomena can be
understood, therefore, only if regarded in their inseparable rela¬
tions to, and as being conditioned by, their surroundings.
II. For Marx Materialism was not enough. He extended

Dialectical Materialism into Historical Materialism, whose
doctrine applies the principles of the former theory to the
phenomena of social existence. In order to explain and demon¬
strate his class theory, while rejecting Hegel’s Idealism Marx re¬
tained Hegel’s dialectic. In Hegel’s terminology dialectic is the
continuous movement of ideas according to the triadic pattern.
Because of gradually changing conditions, for Marx, too, there
was a constant change in the methods of production and distri-
bution. Actually, Marx was concerned with only one triad, that
of Feudalism, Capitalism, and Communism. He showed that,
throughout human history, a fight has gone on between classes
of oppressed and exploited people, between the oppressors and
exploiters—as in ancient Rome between patricians and slaves, or
as in the Middle Ages between feudal lords and serfs, guild
masters and journeymen. Marx tried to prove the dialectic of his
doctrine by depicting how economic conditions constantly
change, and how, amid altered modes of production, new classes
replace old ones. Since economic production is the basis upon
which the political and cultural history of an era is built, the en¬
tire history of the human race has been fundamentally nothing
but a series of contests between ruling and oppressed classes.
Marx also showed how Capitalism emerged from the ruins
of feudal society, and how it established new conditions of new
oppressions as well as two new classes: the bourgeoisie and the
proletariat. The former class, the capitalists, are the owners of
the means of social production and employers of wage-labor;
the latter class, the proletarians, are wage-earners who have no
means of production of their own and are consequently forced to
sell their labor-power in order to survive.
Capitalism involves the inherent exploitation of one class by
another. However, since it is merely the result of change, a
phase of evolution, it need not necessarily be the end of evolu¬
tion. It is subject as much to change as were previous societies,
even more so because the centralization of the means of produc¬
tion eventually will culminate in conditions that will inevitably
destroy it. Meanwhile, the proletariat, for the sake of higher
production quotas and greater profits, is constantly more intri¬
cately organized by the capitalists and thus is unwittingly given
more internal strength by the latter. It also increases rapidly in
numbers, disciplines and organizes itself, and finally reacts in re¬
volt. This clash between capitalists and proletarians, however,
I
will be different from other class fights. It will be unique, since

it will be the ultimate class struggle, resulting in the inevitable
and irrevocable victory of the oppressed class. After this, a
dictatorship of the proletariat will be established, but this will
be of only transitory character. The reason for the transitory na¬
ture of this epoch of proletarian dictatorship will be an inade¬
quate way of distribution, a distribution from one’s talent to
another’s work.22 The period of proletarian dictatorship will of
necessity lead to the "withering away” of the state, that evil
instrument of class, and will eventually evolve into an ideal
classless society where private property will be abolished, and in
which men will receive according to need and will work accord¬
ing to ability. There will be no more exploitation and oppression;
perfect freedom will prevail.
Spencer
Born: Derby, England, in 1820
Died: London, England, in 1903
life Herbert Spencer had very little formal education. In his
youth he worked as a civil engineer for a railroad company. At

the age of 23 he moved to London and launched his literary
career. Although of poor health, he was able to compose a
monumental work of several volumes, the System of Synthetic
Philosophy. Since he felt that honors came belatedly to him, he
refused to accept social distinctions. Because he opposed the
Boer War, at the end of his life he became very unpopular in
England, although he enjoyed a high reputation in foreign
countries.
works In addition to the above-mentioned System, Spencer’s
other publications were Education and Man Versus the State.
doctrines According to Spencer, the universe is a result of
evolution; all nature is marked by steady progress from the

homogeneous to the heterogeneous. After the maximum degree
of evolution has been reached, a basic rhythm in the universe

causes a reversal of the process, and devolution occurs at its
maximum. The process goes on throughout eternity.
Reality is partly knowable and partly unknowable. The
interest of science is the realm of the knowable; the interest of
religion is that of the unknowable. Men must be agnostics be¬
cause the ultimate always eludes one’s grasp.
Morality is due to principles, those highly evolved products
of a series of modifications transmitted by heredity.
Nietzsche
Born: Rocken, in Prussian Saxony, Germany, in 1844
Died: Weimar, Germany, in 1900
life Friedrich Wilhelm Nietsche was the son of a Lutheran
pastor. After the death of his father, he was brought up at
Naumburg by his mother and other female relatives. He studied
philosophy at the Universities of Bonn and Leipzig. When he
was only 25 years old, he became professor of philosophy at the
University of Basle in Switzerland. After 10 years he resigned
his chair and, for the next decade, wandered around Switzerland
and Italy. Nietzche’s last years were marred by mental derange¬
ment.
There is hardly any other thinker whose life was in such
tragic contrast to his speculations as that of Friedrich Nietzsche.
(a) His was an altogether life-asserting philosophy; his master-
morality advocated a will to life, the love of regimentation, of
hardships, and of toughness; yet he himself was a physically
weak and sick adult, suffering first from a severe head injury
while serving with the Prussian cavalry, and then, because of
dysentery and diphtheria contracted in the Prussian War, subject
to recurring indigestion and headaches. Finally, he became hope¬
lessly insane. (h) Although his concept of Superman was a
thoroughly masculine doctrine, he had been reared and domi-
nated by five women: his mother, grandmother, sister, and two

spinster aunts, (c) He opposed anti-Semitism—Richard Wag¬
ners anti-Semitism being one reason for the termination of
Nietzche’s friendship with the composer—yet it was the anti-
Semitism of his sister Elizabeth (Mrs. Bernhard Forster) that
hindered for years the complete edition of his philosophical
heritage. When Adolph Hitler constructed his National-Social¬
istic theory, he borrowed part of Nietzsche’s doctrine of the
superiority of the blond beasts of the North for his ideology, but
twisted it to suit his purpose. (d) Above all, Nietzsche, the son
and grandson of Lutheran pastors, became an avowed atheist and
one of the archfoes of Christianity by directing the most
vitriolic attacks against Christs teachings.
works Nietzsche’s most important works were Thus Spake
Zarathustra (Also Sprach Zarathustra), Beyond Good and Evil
(,Jenseits von Gut und Bose), A Genealogy of Morals, and Ecce
Homo.
doctrines According to Nietzsche, during the nineteenth
century belief in the Christian God had so drastically declined
that one could announce "God is dead.” The "death” of God has
two consequences, one depressingly tragic and the other allevi-
atingly joyous. Its appalling consequence is that mankind, despite
nineteenth century Europe’s power, security, and scientific ad¬
vances, faces with the failure of Christianity a period of nihilism,
and, in the wake of this, horrible wars will devastate Western
society.23 But God’s "death” also has an exhilarating implication,
the ushering in of a life-affirming ideology to replace Chris¬
tianity’s life-denying ethics.
The new, free, and happy way of life for men will see a
fusion in them of two principles, represented by two gods of
Homerian epics, Dionysius and Apollo. Dionysius is the symbol
of dynamic and brutal exuberance, whereas Apollo is the symbol
of order and form, the power to create beauty through art. The
ii 6 A BRIEF HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
formula for harmonizing the Dionysian and Apollonian elements

will replace religious faith and will transform human life into
an aesthetic phenomenon. The proper blend of Dionysian and
Apollonian elements will appear in the person of Superman.
Mankind, then, will consist of the already-present large herd of
average men and an emerging small group of Ubermensch.
The theory of equality among men is nonsense. Human beings
are differentiated into ranks that, at least during earlier historical
times, were characterized by two primary types of morality:
master morality and slave morality, following the division of
classes into nobles and the plebeian masses. Basically, all morali¬
ties are class moralities. Slave morality originated as a resent¬
ment and revenge on the part of "slaves,” worthless creatures de¬
prived of the proper outlet of action. The vulgar need the
presence of aristocrats and their norms in order to have a target
for their jealous anger and counterprinciples. And since they are
powerless, they can express their desire for revenge only in the
suppressed way of resentment. The imaginary revenge of
"slaves” consists of the translation of all the aristocratic qualities
of the master race into vices, and of all the weak qualities of the
herd into virtues. Slave morality is a will to the denial of life, a
principle of dissolution and decay. This morality represents a
descending line of human development and is best expressed in
the counsels and precepts of Christianity. In contrast to slave
morality, master morality indicates an ascending line in man’s
development. The nobles lack the weakness and uncertainty of
the "slaves”; they are certain about themselves. They regard
themselves as the creators of values, as norms unto themselves.
Their most splendid exemplars were the Greek ruling class and
the blond beasts of Aryans (who are not, however, resembled by
contemporary—that is, nineteenth century—Germans).
Since slave morality originated in resentment and revenge, and
since all of the values and virtues of modern man are a disguise
of selfishness and weakness, there must occur a reappraisal of all

values, a rejecting of contemporary virtues in the name of
honesty and accuracy, a reverting to man’s original and deepest
nature.
The Superman must be autonomous, manly, conquering, and
imperious. He should reject Judeo-Christianity with its slave
morality of obedience, kindness, and resignation. The master
morality of the Superman should consist in the cultivation of the
"hard virtues beyond good and evil,” that is, rising above modern
dominant herd morality, through the love of danger and
heroism. The strife of existence due to the harsh drive of world
will is good for him, for it should be made abundantly clear that
the Ubermensch is not supposed to be a rampaging bully, but
rather a combination of Dionysian urge and Apollonian restraint.
The world is the will to power, and so too must be Superman.
Life itself is will to power. Everywhere, and in everything, one
can see the will to power expressing itself. Man’s whole in¬
stinctive life is a ramification and development of the striving
toward an increase of power. In essence, life is an instinctive
striving to power, and this instinct is the only good there is.
In addition to being characterized by the cultivation of master-
morality and by the supreme manifestation of the will to power,
Superman is also tested by his acceptance of the doctrine of the
eternal recurrence of the same state of affairs. This cyclical return
of the events of the past frightens away those who are not
genuinely fortified with the will to power, but it is accepted and
welcomed with joy by truly strong men. According to this
doctrine, in infinite time there are periodic cycles in which all
that has been is repeated over again. Every man is to come again,
eternally and exactly, to the same life in all of its details. This
whole periodic process is without purpose of culmination. The
doctrine of eternal recurrence rules out not only the idea of
personal immortality, but also the concept of Superman as the
n8 A BRIEF HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
final end of an unrepeatable creative process; it also excludes the

concept of a creative Deity.
Since this world is completely immanent and self-sufficient,
and since reality is ultimately a self-enclosed unity and nothing
else but a process of becoming, and since this process of becom¬
ing is absolute in itself, philosophy should not search beyond
this world of change for a transcendent principle to try to explain
the casual proofs of God’s existence. And because there is no
God, there are only particular truths relative to some finite in¬
quirer’s interest; there is no absolute truth which human minds
must obediently confirm.
James
Born: New York, New York, in 1842
Died: Chocopus, New Hampshire, in 1910
life William James, grandson of an Irish immigrant who
made a fortune in Albany, N.Y., was the oldest of five children;
the second son was Henry Jr., the famous novelist. James ob¬
tained his basic education in Europe. At the age of 27 he re¬
ceived a medical degree from Harvard, but he never practiced
medicine. He had also spent a semester at the University of
Berlin. From 1873 until 1907, he stayed at Harvard as a
teacher of, successively, physiology, psychology, and philosophy.
During his third year of teaching he established there the first
laboratory of experimental psychology in America. In 1890, at
the age of 48, he published his first and probably most influential
work, the Principles of Psychology, and in 1897, when he was
55, his first book in philosophy, The Will to Believe and Other
Essays in Popular Philosophy. The following year, in a lecture
given at the University of California James introduced the public
to the new philosophical movement of Pragmatism, based on the
theory of Charles Peirce, a friend of his and later an opponent
of his brand of the same theory. James delivered the Gifford
Lectures in Edinburgh, published in 1902 under the title of

Varieties of Religious Experience; the Lowell Lectures in 1906,
published in 1907 as Pragmatism (a book that firmly established
his international fame); and in 1908 the Hibbert Lectures in
Oxford, published in 1909 and entitled A Pluralistic Universe.
In addition to Peirce, Henri Bergson and John Dewey were also
friends of James. Although of delicate health throughout his life
and occasionally depressed, James was not of a particularly
sentimental character. He was not a man of abstract speculation
either, but believed in action. Basically a moralist, his philosophy
was a program of practical consequences. He claimed that life is
worth living, provided it is not a decadent life of mediocrity or
superficiality, but a brave life of hardness and valor.
works: In addition to the above-mentioned books he also
wrote The Meaning of Truth, Some Problems of Philosophy, and
Essays in Radical Empiricism.
doctrines James claimed that life is oriented toward the
attainment of the greatest satisfaction. The value of concepts is
not absolute, but relative to their practical consequences.
Reality is nothing but experience. Experience, however, is
not made up of separable, discrete data: it is not atomic in its
structure. On the contrary, it is a "stream of consciousness”; it
is a flowing, continuous affair in which things merge into one
another, both in space and in time. The content of consciousness,
then, though infinitely multiple and varied, is one, not many as
the earlier Empiricists taught.
Ordinarily, one’s stream of experience flows within the limits
of prosaic, everyday consciousness. But occasionally it fans out
to the surface of the "more”; one such contact with the "more”
is universal throughout human history: man’s religious ex¬
perience.
In spite of the fact that the ideas of God and of immortality
are of pragmatic, practical value, and that belief in God and in
immortality satisfies man’s moral and aesthetic as well as emo¬

tional demands, the existence of God and of immortality is not
clearly corroborated and is open to argument. In order to dispel
these misgivings, one has to make an effort, one has to will to
believe. To be at one’s best and to do one’s best, man must
unremittingly sustain his faith that God exists. _
Notes
1. Bellum omnium contra omnes ("The war of everyone against

everyone”) (Leviathan, Part I, Ch. 4).
2. Cogito ergo sum ("I think, therefore I am”) (Discourse, Part

IV, p. 25, and lime Meditation, p. 79).
3. lime Meditation, p. 126.
4. Ethica, Def. III.
5. Nouveaux Essais, II, 1.
6. Philosophical Commentaries, 429-4293.
7. Kant nowhere proves that universal and necessary judgments

are valid: he merely assumes that they are.
8. Kant’s terminology is inconsistent; at times he uses a word

such as "mind” (Gemiit) or "object” (Gegenstand) in a very wide
sense.
9. There are two opposing interpretations of Kant’s position con¬

cerning metaphysics. The general view of his contemporaries
(Cohen, Windelband, Cassirer, etc.) was that his was a rejection of
metaphysics; recent Neo-Kantians (Paulsen, Heidegger, and others)
claim that he moved toward the establishment of a new meta¬
physics. In any case, it is an undeniable fact that he showed con¬
siderable interest in metaphysics, as is obvious from the frequent
use of this term in his treatises, as well as from his position as a
professor of logic and metaphysics.
J
10. Kant rejected the traditional arguments for the existence of

God. According to him, all three postulates of the practical reason—
freedom of the will, immortality of the soul, and the existence of
God—proceed from the principle of morality, which is a law and
not a postulate. Man cannot know by means of speculative reason
that God exists. The ontological argument is fallacious, and the
physicotheological proof (the teleological argument of Thomas
Aquinas) is dependent, even though indirectly, on this a priori
argument. Consequently, since apart from any other considerations
God’s existence cannot be proved without the use of the ontological
argument, one cannot prove or disprove God’s existence by specula¬
tive reason. "Transcendental theology” (natural theology) is worth¬
less as an attempt to demonstrate God’s existence by means of
theoretical principles which have no application outside the field of
experience. There is, of course, a noumenal reality which one calls
God, though one does not and cannot know that this is truly so.
For, on the one hand, the arguments to show that there is a God are
fallacious; on the other hand, the idea in itself does not produce an
antimony. It is, then, morality that leads to religion, although it does
not necessarily presuppose religion. The ultimate motive of moral
action is duty for duty’s sake, not obedience to the commands of
God, since only actions which are performed for the sake of duty
have moral worth. But, in the long run, morality inevitably leads to
religion in the sense that true religion is a viewing in all of man’s
duties of God as the universal legislator Who must be reverenced
through obedience to the moral law, acting for the sake of duty. The
object and the final end of the pure practical reason is the supreme
good, that is, the highest and unconditional good identical with
virtue. Because it is only from a morally perfect and all-powerful
will and only through harmony with this will that man hopes to
attain the highest good, moral law postulates the existence of God
as the condition for a necessary connection between virtue and
happiness.
11. Rosenkratz was a former pupil of Hegel and later himself

became a professor of philosophy.
Hegel was dissatisfied with Schelling’s attempt to bridge the gap

left open by Kant between noumenal and phenomenal reality;
Schelling identified the real and the ideal in the Absolute, con¬
sidering the Absolute as indeterminate in its being. Hegel proposed
to substitute for the Absolute of indifference an Absolute of im¬
manent activity. Consequently, the concept of the Absolute is
Hegel’s starting point.
12. Logic coincides with metaphysics because logic is the science

of the Pure Idea and consequently the science of reality, for the Idea
is the sum of reality.
13. A dialectic (from the Greek diale go, "to debate”) is, prop¬
erly, a method of philosophical argumentation. For Hegel, dialectic
is the method of philosophy. The term "dialectical” basically may
be applied to any advance through opposites. In the case of Hegel,
there is a strict correlation between his methodology and ontology,
between his exposition of dialectic and his theory of Absolute Spirit.
14. "Position” and "to posit” are terms coined by Hegel.
15. Mill’s four canons or rules for inductive method are the fol-
1. The Method of Agreement: "If two or more instances of the

phenomenon under investigation have only one circumstance in
common, the circumstance in which alone all the instances agree is
the cause (or effect) of the given phenomenon.”
2. The Method of Difference: "If an instance in which the
phenomenon under investigation occurs, and an instance in which
it does not occur, have every circumstance in common save one,
that one occurring only in the former, then the circumstance in
which alone the two instances differ is the effect or the cause of an
indispensable part of the cause of the phenomenon.”
3. The Method of Residue: "Subduct from any phenomenon
such part as is known by previous induction to be the effect of
certain antecedents, and the residue of the phenomenon is the effect
of the remaining antecedents.”
4. The Method of Concomitant Variations: "Whatever phe-
nomenon varies in any manner whenever another phenomenon

varies in some particular manner is either a cause or an effect
of that phenomenon, or is connected with it through some fact of
causation.”
16. Kierkegaard’s thinking was diametrically opposed to Hegel’s

system. Though first enthusiastically receiving Schlegel’s criticism
of Hegel, Kierkegaard became disappointed with Schlegel when
he learned that the German thinker wanted to use the existential
order merely as a means to strengthen his own metaphysical
Idealism. Although Kierkegaard was particularly pleased by Schlegel’s
contention that a system like that of Hegel’s, founded mainly on
essences and concepts, is not capable of dealing with divine or
human existence, it was against Hegel’s abstract Idealism that
Kierkegaard rebelled. Whereas for Hegel existence is absorbed
into essence, the part into the whole, the individual into the
Absolute, for Kierkegaard man had a unique and individual
existence.
17. In Kierkegaard’s dialectic, his analysis of the three "stages”

is in sharp contrast to Hegel’s dialectic. In Hegel’s system, the
self moves from one stage of intellectual awareness to another
through thinking, and thus the antithesis is overcome by a con¬
ceptual act; in Kierkegaard’s theory, the self moves from one level
of existence to another through choice, which is an act of will.
Furthermore, in Hegel’s dialectic there is a movement toward the
knowledge of the universal; in Kierkegaard’s dialectic the pro¬
gression is toward the actualization of the individual.
18. Friedrich Engels was born in Barmen, Prussia, in 1820 into

a wealthy family. In his youth he was a dashing figure and a
good swordsman. In his adulthood he first worked for his father, but
after seeing the plight of the working class in England he became
a collaborator of Marx. A bachelor, he devoted his whole time to
workers’ movements, using his money, his talents, particularly his
linguistic capabilities, his excellent pen, and his ability to enliven
and to transmit colorfully dry economic information and philosophic
speculations to both his friend Marx and to the masses, for the
purpose of spreading Communist doctrines. He was particularly
active after the death of Karl Marx, whom he survived by 12 years
to become the great old man of revolutionary movements. Engels
lived in Germany, France, and Belgium; in 1850 he retired to
England, where he already had residence, and died there in 1895.
His main works were The Condition of the Working Class in
England, Anti-Diihring, The Origin of the Family, Ludwig Feuer¬
bach, Socialism, Utopian and Scientific.
19. While Marx lived in Brussels, a German Workers’ organiza¬

tion in London, the League of the Just, was transformed into the
League of the Communists. After Marx and Engels attended a con¬
ference of the movement in 1847, Marx was asked to write a
program for the unification of the workers of all countries. He
agreed and Engels collaborated with him; the result was the Mani¬
fest der Kommunisten. It was deliberately not called a Socialist
Manifesto because its author wanted to precisely distinguish his
ideology from the position of English trade unions and that of
Owens, as well as from the Socialism of the Frenchmen Fourier
and Proudhon and of the German La Salle. Trade Unionism and
Socialism were middle-class movements; Communism, a working-
class movement. Marx also wanted to distinguish his doctrines
from the Utopian Communism of the German Weitling and the
Frenchman Calver, although they too advocated total social change.
Actually theirs was a useless, abstract theory.
During the lifetime of Marx "the spectre of Communism” which
had been "haunting Europe” suddenly materialized. By an interest¬
ing coincidence, it appeared in Paris on February 24, 1848, exactly
the same day when the Manifesto was first published.
Whereas Das Kapital is verbose, dull, and obscure, the Com¬
munist Manifesto is brief—a simple, stimulating, fiery essay. After
the death of Marx more than one third of all mankind came under
the sway of this work. In particular, its conclusion—"The prole¬
tarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to
win. Workingmen of all countries, unite!”—has become the classic
battle cry of all proletarian movements. Apart from the Bible, no

other piece of writing has had such a penetrating effect on the lives
of millions of people as this slim but explosive volume by Marx and
Engels.
20. In 1859 Marx published a work under the title A Critique

of Political Economy (Zur Kritik der Politischen Okonomie). In
rewritten form this became in 1867 the first volume of The Capital.
The second and third volumes were published by Engels after Marx
died, in 1885 and 1895, respectively. The fourth and last volume
was edited after Engels’ death by the most important exponent of
orthodox Marxism, Karl Kautsky (1854-1938), under the title
Theories of Surplus Value.
Marx himself pointed out in a letter written in 1852 to his
friend, Joseph Weydemeyer, a German who became the pioneer
of American Marxism, that his original contribution to political
philosophy was three propositions: (1) that the class struggle has
been intimately connected with particular historical periods; (2)
that the struggle between classes necessarily results in the dictator¬
ship of the proletariat; and (3) that this dictatorship is of only
transitory character and will lead to a classless society. Otherwise,
Marx’s economic thoughts came from the British classical econo¬
mists Jeremy Bentham, Adam Smith, and David Ricardo; his labor
theory of value, from John Locke; and the idea of class struggle,
from Saint-Simon. His philosophy was a result of Hegel’s specula¬
tions and of their modifications by Feuerbach.
21. The study of this development is Marxist dialectic. In¬

terestingly enough, according to Bertrand Russell (A History of
Western Philosophy, p. 789) the Hegelian elements in Marx’s
philosophy are unscientific because there is no reason whatsoever
for their truth. Russell thinks that dialectic is an unnecessary
"trapping” in Marx’s system that could be eliminated without any
harm to Communist philosophy.
1
22. Since Marx believed that philosophers should not merely

interpret the world in various ways but should alter it as well,
he did not stop at theory. For this period of transition he proposed

a program of social reform, suggesting a heavy progressive income
tax, centralization of credit in the hands of the state through the
operations of a national bank, centralization of the means of
transportation and communication, combination of agriculture with
manufacturing industries, free education for all children in public
schools, and so forth.
23. Nietzsches concern about, and criticism of, contemporary

Europe was based on the joint impact of Darwinian biology, which
asserted the relentless evolution of the species by claiming man’s
purely animal origin and the changing nature of reality, and of the
improper study of history, which turns men away from present
problems to dreams about the past. Above everything else, however,
in spite of his own definite atheism, Nietzsche was disturbed by
the mounting loss of a sincere belief in the Christian God as the
transcendent and eternal source of human values.
Contemporary Philosophy
Introduction
In general, the mood of contemporary philosophy is based on

man’s concern for himself. Twentieth century speculations show
a tendency to turn away from the traditional philosophic ap¬
proaches in the fields of metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics. Their
primary concern is man’s adjustment to, and survival in, his
rapidly changing world. During the first half of the emerging
century, with some simplification, one may observe the develop¬
ment of two specific philosophical methods: linguistic analysis
and phenomenalism, as well as two major trends of thought:
Logical Positivism and Existentialism. With regard to the pre¬
vailing methods, one might say, with some oversimplification,
the following.
Around the turn of the century, the British philosophers
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) and Alfred North Whitehead
(1861-1947) turned their attention to the philosophy of science.
They tried to build a system in which physical reality was based
on scientific developments. They were much concerned with
man’s ability to know and with the use of scientific method.
Also in the English-speaking world, Ludwig Wittgenstein
(1889-1951), originally associated with the Vienna Circle of
the 1930’s and a refugee in England from Nazism, drew all the
consequences of the new Logical Empircism to its ultimate con¬
clusions. This resulted in the use of philosophy exclusively as
a clarification of language. Two British philosophers, George
Edward Moore (1873-1958) and Gilbert Ryle (b. 1900), also
rejected traditional philosophic discussions about reality and
concentrated on analyzing the language used by philosophy in
127
speaking about reality. In their view, the proper function of

philosophy was simply to analyze and clarify common and
scientific expressions.
In addition to linguistic analysis, the philosophic method
established by Edmund Husserl is of importance. This phe¬
nomenology is a vigorous and purely descriptive study of what
is given us in experience without making any metaphysical
postulates.
One of the leading philosophical schools of the century was
started by Moritz Schlick (1882-1936) who, together with his
fellow philosophers, had founded Der Wiener Kreis ("The
Vienna Circle”) and was the promoter of Logical Positivism. Ac¬
cording to these Neo-Positivists, any statement that cannot be
verified in reality has to be rejected as untrue, or at least as in¬
different or insignificant. Verification is the key to truth.
The most important philosophical movement of the century,
however, is Existentialism. The foundation of this system con¬
tains ideas from Socrates, the biblical Job, Saint Paul the
Apostle, Saint Augustine, and Pascal. In its modern format, it is
indirectly grounded in the novels of Fydor Dostoevsky and Franz
Kafka, as well as in the poetry of Friedrick Holderlin and Rainer
Maria Rilke; it is directly grounded in the psychology and
theology of Kierkegaard, the thoughts of Nietzsche, and the
method and ontology of Husserl. Its mid-century popularity is
due to the timeless psychological and moral tensions of mankind
and to the human desolations wrought by two World Wars. It
is also a reaction against the extreme Rationalism of Hegelian¬
ism. In its atheistic form the outstanding spokesmen are Martin
Heidegger, Jean-Paul Satre, Albert Camus (1913-1960), and
Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961); its theistic variety is
proposed by Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973), Nicolas Berdyaev
(1874-1948), Paul Tillich (1886-1965), Karl Jaspers (b.
1883), and Martin Buber (1878-1965).
CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY 129
Existentialism is an attitude toward reality that is preoccupied

with the existence of things and, more especially, with the
existence of man. Its main pronouncement is that "existence is
prior to essence,” and it claims that the starting point for every
philosophical investigation is concrete human existence. It is
interested primarily in the human individual as such, in his sub¬
jective, irreducibly unique selfhood. According to its basic tenet
—"Things are, persons exist,”—Existentialism holds that exist¬
ence is not the objective "giveness” that things have in common
or something grasped in thought, but that it is discovered in "en¬
counter.” Man encounters existence and begins to "exist” when
he leaves the undifferentitated reality that he shares with things
and asserts himself as a free and responsible person, actively
surrendering himself to his series of crises—to his destiny. For
the whole of human existence is a succession of critical situations,
each fraught with danger and each demanding for its resolution
the inner resources of the individual. According to the atheistic
form of Existentialism, the entire series leads to ultimate ca¬
tastrophe. Hence man’s dominating emotions are anguish, love,
and guilt, combined with a sense of inner freedom. The fact that
man is necessarily free is a dreadful responsibility for him. In
this freedom he has to determine himself and his fellow man,
bearing the responsibility for his action. He is absolutely alone,
for there is no structure of set values, nor is there a God to share
his burden. But this forlornness gives man his dignity, making
him the free creator of all values.
Husserl
Born: Prossnitz, Moravia, in 1859
Died: Freiburg in Breisgau, Germany, in 1938
life Edmund Husserl was born in Moravia, which at that
time belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Originally he
wanted to become a mathematician but was drawn to philosophy
by Frederick Paulsen. He was also under the influence of two

nineteenth century Austrian thinkers, Bernhard Bolzano and
Franz Brentano. Husserl was appointed to the University of
Halle in 1887, to Gottingen in 1901, and to Freiburg in 1916.
He retired from teaching in 1928. His chair was then taken
over by the most famous of his former students, Martin Heideg¬
ger. For his merits, Husserl was made a privy counsellor by the
Weimar Republic; but during the last years of his life, he was
harrassed by the Hitler regime because of his Jewish origin.
works Husserl’s principal works were Logical Investigations,
Cartesian Meditations, Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology, Phe¬
nomenological Philosophy, Philosophy as a Strict Knowledge,
The Crisis of the European Sciences, and Transcendental Phe¬
nomenology. (In addition to these and some minor works,
the Husserl Archives in the University of Louvain in Belgium
contain about 45,000 pages of Husserl’s unpublished manu¬
scripts. )
doctrines Husserl’s aim was to synthesize Subjectivism and
Objectivism, as well as the idealistic and empiristic trends of
Western philosophy. Following the Cartesian ideal, he also
wanted to turn philosophy into an exact science. Furthermore,
he sought to return from empty, dogmatic presuppositions to the
things of reality and to their spontaneous self-offering for intui¬
tive consideration.
Husserl’s theory, called phenomenology,1 is a descriptive
analysis of subjective phenomena. It is a necessary preparatory
philosophical science prior to, and independent of, any psy¬
chological or epistemological presuppositions. Its ideal is the
achievement of philosophy as an autonomous and exact discipline
which will produce absolute knowledge and thus achieve a gen¬
eral unification of the sciences.
Although phenomenology does not deny that objects exist
independently of the thinking subject, its primary concern is
the investigation of phenomena. Phenomena are the ideal mean¬

ings and universal relations experienced by, and appearing to,
the consciousness; they are not particular facts but "ideal es¬
sences” which shine through the particulars. A phenomenon is
anything with which the subject is confronted; in any phe¬
nomenon there is an ideal essence which is perceived by the mind
and which constitutes the content of consciousness. Consciousness
is the preoccupation of a subject with an object; it is meaning
or intending an object. Preoccupation with an object is equiva¬
lent to meaning that object, and attending to it is intending it
to the exclusion of other objects; in other words, intentionality
is an intrinsic trait of the subjective processes of consciousness
whereby they refer to objects.
Phenomenology uses an a priori method, abstracting objects
from the content of experience, obtaining thereby an intuitive
grasp of pure essences rather than existences. This method em¬
ploys a twofold technique: the epoche or initial suspension of
judgment, with regard to the physical or metaphysical existence
of the presentation of consciousness; and the "bracketing” or
"elimination” of the factual dimension of our experience. The
result of the use of this double technique is the purification of
experience from its factuality and the focusing of our attention
on the essential ideal aspect of our experience. For phenome¬
nology, the important thing is not the ontological status of ideal
objects, but the fact that these ideal objects may be investigated
in their interrelation. These ideal entities, then, are described
and analyzed as the proper subject matter of philosophical in¬
quiry, their results being both communicable and coercive.2
Bergson
Born: Paris, France, in 1859
Died: Paris, France, in 1941
life Henri-Louis Bergson was the son of a Jewish father,
who migrated from Poland to France, and of an Irish Catholic

mother. After teaching at several secondary schools, he was ap¬
pointed to the College de France as a professor of philosophy;
after 19 years there, however, he resigned his chair. From 1912
to 1913 he lectured at Columbia University. He was a member
of the French Academy and the president of the League of
Nations Committee for Intellectual Cooperation. In 1928 he
was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Although he came
close to Catholicism, to show his solidarity with his persecuted
people and to avoid giving the impression of seeking personal
safety, he never formally embraced Christianity and died as a Jew
during the Nazi occupation of France. As a lecturer Bergson
was greatly admired and exercised considerable influence on his
audiences. Ironically enough, his doctrine of Vitalism influenced
Mussolini to a certain extent in his Fascist politicosocial theory.
works Bergson’s principal works were Time and Free Will,
Matter and Memory, Creative Evolution, and The Two Sources
of Morality and Religion. *
doctrines According to Bergson reality is dynamic; its
inner force (elan vital) is a continuously creative power. Such
a reality cannot be grasped by concepts which are static; one
must seek truth by intuition, by direct grasp, sympathetically
entering into things and knowing them from within. Matter is
machine-like, whereas mind or consciousness is a creative force
and is the principle present in all living matter. On account
of this duality one has to make a sharp distinction between
sciences, which use intelligence, and philosophy, which uses
intuition.
Born: Burlington, Vermont, in 1859

Died: New York, New York, in 1952
life John Dewey was educated at the University of Vermont
and received his doctorate at Johns Hopkins University. After

teaching in elementary and secondary schools for 2 years, he was
appointed to the faculty of the University of Michigan, where
he spent 10 years, interrupted only by a brief interlude at the
University of Minnesota. He then moved on to the University
of Chicago, where he organized "the Laboratory School.” In
1905, he accepted a chair of philosophy at Columbia University
and lectured there until 1930. For 9 more years, he stayed there’
as a professor emeritus. Dewey traveled extensively in England,
China, Japan, Mexico, Turkey, and the Soviet Union. In Russia,
he was first impressed by that nation’s social experiment, but'
he soon became disillusioned by the regimentation of the schools
and by Stalin’s oppression of the educational system in the
interest of his dictatorship. Dewey fought for women’s suffrage
and was one of the founders, as well as the first president, of the
American Association of University Professors.
works Among Dewey’s twenty-nine major works, the fol¬
lowing books are his most important writings: Reconstruction
in Philosophy, The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy, De¬
mocracy and Education, Human Nature and Conduct, Logic:
The Theory of Inquiry, and Art as Experience.
doctrines Dewey was remotely (and to a limited extent)
under the influence of Socrates and Aristotle; he was directly
influenced by Hegel, Mill, Peirce, James, Huxley, and Darwin.
In order to distinguish his version of Pragmatism from the posi¬
tion of James, he preferred to call his own system Instrumen¬
talism.
In general, Dewey had an unflagging interest in making
philosophy practical. Also, in his philosophy there is a funda¬
mental and intrinsic relationship between Naturalism and Hu¬
manism. As a whole, his philosophy is basically social in
character; for Dewey, social philsophy is the culmination and the
end of all philosophical speculation.
In particular, Dewey advocated that philosophy is but a

guide for action; concepts have no absolute value; their only
value depends on their practical consequences, inasmuch as
they are instruments for transforming an imperfect situation
into a new and better one. He also claimed that morality is a
tool for constructing a larger and better social life in which each
man may affirm his personality and responsibility.
Heidegger
Born: Messkirch, Baden, Germany, in 1889
life Martin Heidegger, the son of a sexton, was born in
southwest Germany. Originally he wanted to become a priest,
but after 3 years with the Jesuits he gave up his ecclesiastical
training as well as his Catholic religion and, under the guidance
of Edmund Husserl, concentrated on the study of philosophy. He
was installed as a Privatdozent at the University of Freiburg, and
10 years later, in 1922, he became a full professor at Marburg.
In 1928, after the retirement of Husserl, he succeeded his former
master in his Freiburg chair. After the ascendency of Adolf
Hitler to power, Heidegger embraced National Socialism, and as
a reward for joining this new political movement he was named
rector of the University of Freiburg. A year later, however, he
resigned the rectorship. He also twice rejected an invitation to
the University of Berlin. At the end of World War II, he with¬
drew to his ski hut in the Black Forest. He still lives there in
seclusion, seldom appearing in public except for the occasional
delivery of a lecture (which usually draws a large audience) at
the University of Freiburg. Heidegger shaped his system under
the influence of the Pre-Socratics, Socrates, Plato, Saint Au¬
gustine, Hegel, Dielthey, and Bergson in general; and that of
Aristotle, Descartes, Kierkegaard, Husserl, and Scheler in par¬
ticular. Although he is usually considered a foremost figure of
the Existentialist movement, he rejected Existentialism as a name
„ / t
i
for his own doctrines. He also claims there is a great distance

between himself and Sartre.
works The following are Heideggers most important
works: Being and Time (Sein und Zeit), Duns Scotus’ Doctrine
of Categories and Meaning, What Is Called Thinking? Discourse
on Thinking, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, Elucida¬
tions of Holderlinfs Poetry, The Principles of Causes, Forest
Paths, Introduction to Metaphysics, and Nietzche.
doctrines For Heidegger the meaning of Being is the funda¬
mental question. He considers "Being” and "to-be” the "highest
rubrics of philosophy.” According to Heidegger, the existing
totum consists of a dichotomy: Being and the essent (Sein und
Seiendes)? These two principles are not only mutually inde¬
pendent in their existence: they also oppose one another in the
same way as activity is opposed by inertia.
The essent4 (Seiendes) simply is; it is given; it is independent
of anything outside of itself; it does not depend on Being, and
it exists independently of man. It is a self-subsisting factuality.
Characterized by inertia, the Seiendes is deprived of a dynamic
condition. This inert existence has no beginning whatsoever.
The Seiendes is an inertial, uniform, and spatially expanded
existence. Because of its inertial status, the essent has no internal
relations; it consists, therefore, of self-enclosed units that have no
reference to each other. The inertial status of the Seiendes also
excludes any reference to time.
The second principle of the universal totum is Being. It, too,
just like the essent, is. And, just as the essent is underivable from
Being, so Being is underivable from the essent, as well as being
self-sufficient. Yet Being is more a principle of the existing totum
than the essent. In contrast to the essent, which is characterized
by inertia, Being’s essence is power; Being is characterized by
activity. But since power and activity necessitate expansion, by
necessity reality comes under the impact of Being whenever Be-
4*
ing makes a claim on the Seiendes. Hence, although the Seiendes

exists independently of Being (Being is not a god creating
existence) the Seiendes always appears together writh the power
of Being. Yet the essent is always shaped by Being against its
essential conditions, and it always resists. To a limited extent, it
successfully impedes the conquest of the Seiendes by Being. Be¬
ing, too, is never found in itself alone, but always expresses it¬
self in the forms of an essent that have been molded by Being.
Thus things, in their concrete existence, are attributable to Being,
and not to the Seiendes. Yet the Seiendes is an indispensable
medium of Being; without essents, Being would not be able to
project the claims of its power. Both man and nature are the
result of the conflict between Sein and Seiendes.
Nature is basically characterized by the root meaning of
its Greek name physis: "unfolding” and "growth.” But nature is
not a mere unfolding; it is also logos ("gathering”). Because of
the presence of logos, the Seiendes is not chaotic, but rather is
shaped according to an enduring order. Since the essent is un¬
folding, Being is also becoming; hence the traditional dichotomy
between Being and becoming must be rejected.
There are different kinds of Being, that of ordinary objects
(Vorhanden) as well as that of utensils (Zuhanden). Above all,
there is the being of human existence (Dasein: "being-there,”
"being-in-the-world”). The entity that man knows most in¬
trinsically is the being of his own, for the being of this entity is
always "my own” (je meine). The essence of Dasein 5 consists
in its existence. The world of man, the world of Dasein—which
is characterized by facticity, being already involved in the world,
and openness toward things—is a common world (Mitivelt);
to be means to be with others; it means coexistence. The subject
of this coexistence is not anyone in particular, nor is it everyone
together; it is the impersonal das Manf the "anyone,” the "they.”
Dasein has two modes of being: authenticity and unauthentic-
ity. There are also two modes of "being-in-the-world” (in-der-

Welt-sein): trivial everydayness, which is unauthentic, and an
authentic existence (eigentliche Existenz), the mode of which
is anguish caused by nothing. Since Dasein always refers to a
person, it indicates essentially his own possibility of choices; the
possibility to "win itself” or to "lose itself.”
Das Man is the subject of trivial existence, the one who is lost
in the world and whose existence is marked by decadence or
fallenness. Das Man, in its trivial everyday existence, tries to hide
the fact of inevitable death from itself; the "they” denies the
certainty of death. But Dasein can overcome this everyday
triviality. It is through anguish that Dasein can come into its
own. Man emerges from fallenness, from the tendency to be¬
come a mere presence in the world, when through anxiety he
encounters nothingness and becomes aware of his finitude and
the necessity of death.
"Nothing” is not an ontological nil. Nothing is related to Be¬
ing. Nothingness is not Being, yet it is just the same. It is "other-
than-Being.” Whereas one fears something—for example, an
enemy, a sickness, lightning—man is in anguish over "nothing.”
Man is the highest expression of the power of Being. Although
he shares with the Seiendes its inertia, and with nature the power
of unfolding and gathering, man nevertheless is endowed with a
special gift of Being: the power of disclosure. By means of
this gift he can understand not only the being of things, but
also Being itself. For this reason, man can be called the "Shep¬
herd of Being.”
Because truth, or aletheiaj etymologically indicates the un¬
covering of that which is concealed, man’s very essence, his gift
of disclosure, also enables him to know truth and to uncover the
being of the Seiendes. This ability of man eliminates the dichot¬
omy between Being and appearance, as well as between Being
and thinking, for appearing and thinking are the forms of truth
and uncovering, whereas unfolding and gathering are the in¬

dispensable aspects of physis and logos. Hence there is no real
disparity between subjective awareness and the object, for both
subject and object are ultimately the unfolding and gathering
powers grounded in the essence of Being.
When man confronts essents, he is rarely a neutral onlooker.
Although man in his encounter with essents is compelled to
acknowledge the unfolding and enduring features of things, he
shows, in addition to submissiveness, also aggressiveness. Man
always exercises violently what lies in his very being: power.
In his historical existence, man has always asserted himself as
the merciless master of the realm of nature and its being. Thus
every form of external being is subject, to some extent, to the
dominance of man. And since truth is the inseparable aspect of
man’s encounter with the being of essents, it is precisely in the
process of uncovering truth that the violence which man does
to the being of essents is forever reflected. In the process of
uncovering truth, man always shows his dominance over the
realm of nature. This dominance, however, is not of an oppres¬
sive character. Man’s "violence,” properly interpreted, signifies a
cooperation with, and a creative shaping rather than a destruc¬
tion of, the forces of nature. Man is supposed to use things
rather than to utilize them, that is, to exploit them. "Use” lets
a thing be what it is and how it is, and leaves the "used” thing
in its essential nature.
Man’s existence is fundamentally insecure, for he does not
have to be; he is thrown into existence (Geworfenheit)\ He
merely happens to be. That is why man’s Dasein is characterized
by a deep-rooted feeling of care (Sorge) in its primary meaning
of concern. This care, in turn, manifests itself in an apprehension
of insecurity resulting in anxiety (Angst), anguish, or dread.
Death is peculiarly, intimately, and intrinsically related to
Dasein; it is an essential characteristic of Dasein. As soon as man

is born, he is old enough to die.
In spite of its inevitable character, das Man is trying to avoid
the possibility of death—"Dasein’s ownmost possibility”—by
telling itself that "other” die but "they” themselves do not die, or,
at least, that death is not imminent for them. But since death is
the most authentic possibility of existence, men who act in the
light of the possibility of death, who realize the importance of
this possibility, and who thus also overcome everyday trivialities
act with authentic freedom toward death, and come into their
own; theirs becomes the already-mentioned authentic existence.
Dasein is essentially linked with time; it is temporal and can
never be separated from time. Philosophy’s primary task is an
explanation of time as the horizon for the understanding of being
from the aspect of temporality, as the being of Dasein.
Whereas the thrownness of man functions as past, the reso¬
luteness of Dasein is always in a present. And anguish, in the
face of death, indicates something in the future. Since death for
the Dasein is always incomplete, it is characterized by an
awaiting. No one is so old that he does not still have an open
future.
Sartre
Born: Paris, France, in 1905
life Jean-Paul Sartre, on his mother’s side the grand-nephew
of the famous musician, Protestant theologian, philosopher, and
humanitarian Albert Schweitzer, received his higher education
at the Ecole Normal Superieure in Paris and was awarded his
degree in philosophy with high honors in 1928. After teaching in
secondary schools at Laon and Le Havre, he visited Egypt,
Greece, and Germany, spending 1 year at the Institute Frangais
in Berlin. Afterwards, he taught at the Lycee Pasteur in Neully
and then successively at the Lycee Henri IV and the Lycee Con-
dorcet in Paris. During World War II he first served in the
Maginot Line as a private, then for 9 months was in German
captivity, and finally, in 1941, joined the French Resistance
Movement as a contributor to the underground paper Combat, .
edited by Albert Camus. Meanwhile, he taught school again in
Paris, but in 1944 he resigned permanently from teaching in
order to devote his talent exclusively to writing. After the war
he established increasingly closer ties with the Communists.
Sponsored by the French government, in 1946 he lectured at
Harvard, Columbia, Yale, and Princeton, but in 1964 he canceled
his lectures at Cornell University out of support for the policies
of Hanoi. In 1945 he declined the Legion of Honor, and in
1964 he rejected the Nobel Prize for Literature because he felt
that acceptance of the award would force him into ideological
compromises.
Sartre’s literary activities as director of the review Les Temps
Modernes and as playwright and novelist8 (his attractive style
is easy and clear, precise and forceful in his philosophical writ¬
ings) and his teachings—a highly praised, yet also much criti¬
cized, amalgam of the thought of Marx, Kierkegaard, Husserl,
Heidegger, and Jaspers, as well his own genuine propositions—
appeal to millions of followers on both sides of the Atlantic.
Distinct from the theories of Heidegger, Jaspers, and Marcel
(which probably should be labeled more aptly as "philosophies
of Existence” than as "Existentialism”), Sartre’s system can per¬
haps more rightly be called, in the strict sense of the word,
"Existentialism,” a term first coined by Gabriel Marcel.
works Jean-Paul Sartre’s philosophical works have appeared
under the following titles: Imagination; A Psychological Cri¬
tique, Being and Nothingness, An Essay in Phenomenological
Ontology (L’etre et le neant: Essai d’ontologie phenomenologi-
que), The Emotions, 0?uline of a Theory, Existentialism
(L’Esitentialisme est un Humanisme), Existential Psychoanalysis,

Search for a Method (Question de methode), Anti-Semite and
the Jew, Saint Genet, Author and Martyr, The Transcendence of
the Ego.
doctrines According to Sartre,9 the world is divided into
two modes of being: "being-in-itself” (etre-en-soi), all that is
not human consciousness, the being of things, and "being-for-
itself” (etre-pour-soi), the human consciousness. The being-for-
itself is not a substance or a person in the metaphysical sense of
the word; it is the individual consciousness as pure freedom.
Whereas things simply are and are complete in themselves, men
are incomplete; they are open toward an as-yet-unmade future.
Man’s existence precedes his essence. Apart from his existence,
there is nothingness. There is only the present; that which is not
present does not exist. Since man faces nothingness, human
finitude is a primary concern of his. In confronting the emptiness
of his future and the realization that everything in reality is "too
much” (nausea), in behaving as if he were determined and
presenting his choices as if they were unavoidable, man feels the
guilt of omnipresent bad faith, of loneliness and despair, as a
consequence of his own finitude.
Sartre accepts Nietzsche’s announcement that "God is dead”
and takes seriously Dostoyevsky’s statement, "If God did not
exist, everything would be permitted.” There is no God, for the
notion of God is self-contradictory; it is the notion of an im¬
possible blend of being-in-itself, that is, a thing in its fullness and
of a being-for-itself, of a person having freedom. But if there
is no God, there is no given human nature, simply because
there is no God to have an eternal concept of man. Hence human
nature cannot be defined in advance; at first man as such merely
exists. Only after he confronts himself does he emerge into the
world and defines himself. Only in action is there any reality.
(The free deed in its very execution has cognitive value too. To
act is already a way of understanding. There is no speculation

for its own sake. Understanding itself and all intellectual activity
stand in service of a cause.) Man is only the sum of his actions
and purposes; man is simply that which he makes of himself. It
is precisely man’s consciousness that differentiates him from other
beings and gives him dignity. Since there is no God, there can
be no heaven either. In a godless world, man’s condition is one
of abandonment; he is forlorn, for he cannot find anything to
rely upon, either within or outside of himself. If there is no
God, there is no built-in essence, no objective system of values,
especially no determinism. Man is free; man is freedom; man is
condemned to be free.
For Sartre, freedom is not rooted in reason; it does not mean
free acts in relation to motives; he regards voluntary delibera¬
tions as always faked; for him freedom is a "choice of self,”
anterior to every reasoning and absolutely first; it is an un¬
conditioned power of nihilation of being through which man
perpetually chooses to make himself lack, to want something.
A being which is what it is cannot be free; it is because man’s
reality is not enough that he is free. Thus human freedom is the
being of man, his nothingness of being. Human freedom pre¬
cedes the essence of man and renders it possible. Freedom is ap¬
palling, because there is nothing to force man in any given way;
man therefore must choose, that is, invent his values, because
no rule of general morality can show him what he ought to do.
All moral principles rest upon the individual’s choice; there are
no objective grounds for morality. Since man creates himself, he
is responsible for what he is. If man’s essence were already given
and fixed, he would not be responsible for what he is. And
when man chooses in the process of making himself, he chooses
not only for himself, but for all men; hence he is responsible for
all men.
Sartre rejects an amoral subjectivism; instead, he advocates a
„ y i
strict accountability based on individual responsibility. He claims

that the universal human condition is to live, choose, and decide
in a world of intersubjectivity. Hence man is always obliged to
act in a situation, that is, in relation to other persons. This is the
reason why it does matter what action he is choosing, why he
must take responsibility for all his actions. The act of choice,
then, must be accomplished with a sense of anguish; man must
always ask himself whether he would be willing for others to
choose the same action, and if his answer is that others would
not act thus, he would deceive himself. Such an answer, of
course, would be an attempt to evade his responsibility through
self-deception.
In the last analysis, man’s withdrawal from being, his nihila-
tion of it, is an aspiration with his whole being, with his whole
lack, to an absolute identification, between consciousness and
being-there, that is, between the for-itself and the in-itself, an
identification which would characterize the divine aseity, if only
God existed. However, in this way man makes himself a thing
and non-free to that very extent; this way he is caught in the
facticity of the in-itself and the being-there. (Facticity is the
absurd "being-there,” man’s existence without end and without
reason.) This bad faith, which conceals from itself its own
freedom in order to escape anguish, and the achievement of its
own freedom only by betraying it are inherent in human con¬
sciousness.
Man is rotten; his death is as vain as was his entry into being.
Yet man can escape from bad faith and from his corrupt being
by rendering himself authentic. Authenticity, the unique criterion
of morality, is achieved by a supreme movement of freedom in
which man’s choice of being God culminates in a choice of
being man and nothing but man. And Sartre thus provides us
with an explicit account both of what we are to be saved from
and of how we are to save ourselves. The one who realizes in
anguish his condition as a being thrown into a responsibility

claims a freedom which perfectly reveals itself and whose being
resides in this very revelation. If man, the "rotten being,” pulls
himself together—and this is precisely what Sartre calls
authenticity—if he is neither a "coward” who conceals his free¬
dom nor a "skunk” established in the bad faith of a self-styled
justification, then in an act of radical conversion, through a free
choice of freedom, through a kind of reduplication of freedom,
through pure freedom, man will be saved. This pure freedom
will wrest him from the perdition into which he is thrown by his
birth into the world.
Notes
1. Phenomenology is of a preparatory character, just as Aristote¬

lian logic is a propaedeutic science. Also, the following important
facts should be noted about this discipline. First, Husserl’s phe¬
nomena are not to be taken in a Kantian sense; they are not the
mere appearances of an inaccessible basic reality. Hence phenome¬
nology should not be confused with phenomenalism. Second, the
ideal objects of phenomenological inquiry are not the same as
Platonic universals; they are not hypostatized idealities. Finally, al¬
though with regard to its subject matter phenomenology is closely
related to psychology, the two sciences differ in their methods;
psychology aims at the explanation of phenomena in genetic and
causal terms, whereas phenomenology solely describes and analyzes
them in their simple presentation.
2. The phenomenological method is extended (by the followers

of Husserl) to the fields of metaphysics, mathematics, history,
sociology, art, and religion.
3. According to Heidegger, philosophy is universal phenomeno¬

logical ontology. Ontology is possible only as phenomenology. This
phenomenology begins with the interpretation (hermeneutics) of
Dasein. Phenomenology means the use of a method. It is imperative
to go to the things themselves and to dispense with all imaginary
constructions. Heidegger considers his most important task a
"repetition” of the problem of Being, in the sense of a radical
renewal of the problem as the first Greek thinkers confronted it,
for he believes that the prevailing tradition of Western philosophy
shows an exclusive preoccupation with beings, that is, things which
are. Heidegger’s aim is to study Being not as an ens but as an esse.
He feels that his mission is to consider the act of existence rather
than to analyze the abstract notion of beings as existents. He claims
that, although the concept of Being has been the central notion
of Western philosophy from its beginning in the sixth century
B.C., the very history of Western civilization began with what he
calls the "fall of Being.” This "fall” occurred at the time of the
creation of ontology by the Hellenes, that is, when the ancient
Greeks separated things from their encompassing background in
order to be able to study their abstracted essences in themselves as
fixed, remote, and empty entities. Heidegger wanted to remedy
this tragic mistake by destroying ontology and by undertaking a
thorough study of the to-be of Being as a pulsating fact represented
in our mind as the most concrete of notions and one closest to us.
In short, for Heidegger metaphysics should be dealing with the
to-be of Being. This attempt to make a radical renewal became
the central tendency of his philosophy.
4. "Why the why?” "What is the what?" "Why are there essents
rather than nothing?” According to Heidegger these are the primor¬
dial questions of metaphysics. (It is difficult to render into English
the proper meaning of Heideggers term Seiendes. Some authors
translate it as "entity”; others use "a being" or the artificial word
essent. )
5. Dasein is Heidegger’s name for man. In his description of

human existence Heidegger deliberately never uses the term "man”
because he wants to eliminate the notion that man is something
definite, a solid nature or "consciousness.” By using the term
Dasein he also seeks to avoid the Cartesian dichotomy between
subject and object. Rather, he considers man as a totally finite being
and as a field of Being—a field or region without a soul substance or

ego substance at its center.
6. Whenever the German equivalent of "man” is used as a noun

and as a synonym for der Mensch, it is capitalized, it is spelled with
two ns, and its article is der (hence, der Mann). Heidegger, how¬
ever, coined a new word for the concept of "they” by making a
noun out of the German indefinite pronoun man (spelled with a
small m and only one n), capitalizing the initial m and adding to it
the neutral article das (hence, das Man).
7. Heidegger finds the discovery of the etymology of words,

especially of Greek words, a particularly challenging, fascinating,
and rewarding task. He contends that certain truths are planted in
the language itself, truths that were very simply and naturally known
by the early Greeks, but whose meanings and whose profound
link with the language later were forgotten. It is important, there¬
fore, that during the radical renewal of metaphysics they should
be dug out and brought again to the surface of human consciousness.
8. One obvious reason for the appeal of Existentialism is its

representation in outstanding literary works. Sartre’s writings in the
field of literature are his essays Baudlaire, Literary and Philosophical
Essays, and Situations; his novels Nausea and the completed three
volumes of the four-volume (the fourth volume, La derniere chance,
has never been completed) series of The Roads to Freedom {Les
chemins de la liberte): The Age of Reason (Uage de raison),
The Reprieve (Le sursis), and Troubled Sleep {La mort dans
I’dme); a collection of short stories, called Intimacy and Other
Stories {Le mur)\ film scripts In the Mesh {Uengrenage) and The
Chips are Down {Les jeux sont faits); an autobiography, The
Words {Les mots); and numerous plays: The Flies {Les mouches),
No Exit {Huis clos), Dirty Hands {Les mains sales). The Respect¬
ful Prostitute {La putain respectueuse), The Victors {Morts sans
sepulture), The Devil and the Good Lord {Le diable et le bon
Dieu), Kean, or Disorder and Genius {Kean ou desordre et genie),
r ' ' '
Nekrassov, The Condemned of Altona (Les sequestres d’Altona),

and The Trojan Women (an adaptation of Euripides’ play).
Equally important in helping to sow seeds of existentialist
thought are some novels, plays, and/or poems by contemporaries
of Sartre: The Plague, The Fall, Caligula, and The Stranger by his
one-time friend, Albert Camus (1913-1960); The Mandarins
by Sartre’s long-time companion, Simone de Beauvoir (b. 1908);
Snow, Teresa, Abel Sanchez, Aunt Tula, The Good Saint Manuel,
Martyr, and The Tragic Sense of Life (his philosophical master¬
piece) by the great Basque poet and novelist, Miguel de Unamono
(1864-1936); Molloy, Malone Dies, Waiting for Godot, Endgame,
Echo’s Bones and Other Precipitates by the Irish Nobel Prize winner
Samuel Beckett (b. 1906).
9- Although some vague basic themes are shared by most repre¬
sentative Existentialists—and they all agree that traditional phi¬
losophy is too academic and remote from life, and that consequently
all systematic and schematic thinking should be rejected in favor
of a more spontaneous mode of expression that would capture the
authentic concerns of concrete individual man—there is no "system”
of existentialist philosophy. Heidegger and Sartre being the most
popular and most influential among Existentialists, their doctrines
have been chosen for presentation in this text.
.
i
PA RT I
The Most Important Classics

of Philosophy:
Summaries of Major Writings
by Wise Men
from the Fifth Century B.C.
to the Nineteenth Century
t
V
. I
Plato: Phaedo
The Phaedo is a Dialogue of Plato’s period of maturity. With

the Euthyphro, Apology, and Crito, it is the last of the four
Socratic Dialogues. Its central theme is the immortality of the
human soul. Its structure is curious: it contains a dialogue within
a dialogue. The major part of the work—Socrates’ discussions
with his followers, particularly with Simmias and Cebes (both
of them from Thebes)—appears within the framework of a
conversation between Echecrates, a Pythagorean, and Phaedo,
a disciple of Socrates. The former, in his native town of Phlius,
in the Peloponnesus, meets the latter and asks him to relate as
an eyewitness the happenings of the last day in the life of the
Master. Phaedo complies. He tells his friend how the death of
Socrates was delayed for a month, because during the absence
of the sacred vessel sent each year with gifts from Athens to
Delos no execution was permitted to take place. Upon the re¬
turn of the ship, the last hours of life began for Socrates. With
Phaedo we are now in his cell. The fetters of Socrates have been
removed by the Eleven, and he is free to sit on his bed or to move
around among his companions. He is engaged in a lively con¬
versation with them, and thus the main part of the Dialogue
begins.
First, a message from Socrates is sent to the philosopher-poet,
Evenus, in which the Athenian sage prompts his friend to follow
him in death as soon as possible. This bidding by the condemned
Master, claiming that the life of a philosopher is nothing but a
preparation for death or even a continuous dying, raises the
question; Is suicide legitimate? Socrates answers that, since man
152 MOST IMPORTANT CLASSICS OF PHILOSOPHY
belongs to the gods, his death is in their hands, and therefore he

is not allowed to take his own life; yet since the purpose of
philosophy, the vision of truth, becomes clearest when separation
between body and soul is greatest, and such separation is nothing
else but death itself, a true philosopher, in a sense, constantly
keeps dying.
This being the case, Cebes, expressing the common fear of
man that upon disintegration of the body the soul, too, will
disappear, asks for some explicit proof of the immortality of the
soul. In reply, Socrates presents his first proof: that from the
analogy of opposites. Opposites generate each other; the weaker
comes from the stronger, the worse from the better, and life from
death, because it is a universal law that the living die: hence
the living must emerge from the dead.
Cebes remarks that along the same lines we may argue in
behalf of immortality from Socrates’ contention that knowledge
consists of recollection. If this be the case, souls must exist before
their union with the body; otherwise they would not be able to
know the Eternal Forms. After all, man in this life through his
senses knows only particulars, and yet he is capable of forming
the concept of absolute equality which he must have known
previously, before the soul took on a body. If this were not so,
there would be no explanation of such knowledge. The soul
once saw the Idea of Equality, remembers it, and therefore knows
what Equality in Itself is. But if the soul has seen this Eternal
Idea, it must have pre-existed independently of the body; con¬
sequently, it will also survive the death of the body.
Simmias and Cebes are still not entirely convinced, so after a
short interlude Socrates presents a second proof, based on the
different natures of body and soul. Since the body is a composite
being, it is subject to change and, consequently, dissolution,
whereas the soul, a simple being, is indivisible and unchanging.
The soul in its simplicity resembles the Absolute Ideas. Since
PLATO: PHAEDO 153
Forms are indissoluble, souls too, being related to the Forms,

must be indestructible. They are so, in general, by their very
nature; in particular, individual souls become more imperishable
in proportion to their attainment of abstract, pure knowledge
and their assimilation to the Eternal Archetypes.
Everybody is impressed with the words of the Master, and a
long pause ensues. Simmias and Cebes, however, still have their
doubts. Being encouraged by Socrates to speak up, the former
expresses fear that, although the soul may survive the death of
one particular body, it is questionable whether it will persist
through the disintegration of all of its successive bodies and not
itself wear out. Cebes’ problem is that, although the soul is the
harmony of the parts of the body, it might disappear just as
harmony might leave a lyre when the intrument is smashed.
After a summary by Echecrates and Phaedo, there is a return
to Socrates’ argument for the recognition of immortality. First he
refutes Cebes. If Cebes accepts (as he explicitly does) that
knowledge is recollection, then he must reject his own contention
that the soul is a harmony because, were Simmias correct in this
opinion, he would be involved in a contradition; namely, he
would assert that a harmony, which is a thing composite, would
exist before the elements from which it is supposed to be com-
As far as Simmias’ anxiety is concerned, as a consolation

Socrates described how he arrived at the conclusion that sense
perception is deceptive and why he had to look for general
definitions and universal concepts. Behind them he discovered the
Eternal Forms. The reality of these Eternal Archetypes then gave
Socrates his third and final proof of the immortality of the soul.
Since Ideas are mutually exclusive—although two opposite Ideas
may simultaneously be present in the same individual sensory
object—the Idea of Life excludes its opposite: the Idea of Death.
But since soul is the cause of life, the body cannot exist with
death. Consequently, the soul is deathless, indestructible, im¬

mortal. This argument completely convinces Cebes, although
Simmias remains skeptical because he thinks that this third argu¬
ment depends on the validity of the Ideal Theory; if the Theory
of the Eternal Forms is not accepted, the third proof cannot be
either.
Afterwards the Master shows a very important consequence
of immortality, namely, that man’s greatest concern in this life
should be the attainment of virtues. Socrates here also describes,
in the form of a myth, the afterlife of souls. After bodily death
the souls of true philosophers, he contends, will ascend to heaven
and converse with the gods forever. The souls of obstinate sin¬
ners, though, of those who neglected the search for wisdom, will
be sent "below earth" to Tartarus; from there they will never
be able to return. Minor sinners eventually will be cleansed in
the River of Sorrow (Acheron). They will have to be reborn
into this world before they, too, will be permitted to enter into
the "real earth" of superhuman existence through learning and
the achievement of wisdom.
The Dialogue ends with one of the most powerful and
most moving passages of world literature: the simple, yet very
dramatic, description of Socrates’ death. After sunset, the Master
takes a bath to relieve his relatives of the trouble of washing his
corpse after his departure. He then says farewell to his wife,
Xanthippe, and to his sons and sends them away, together with
all the female members of the family, so that they will not
disturb him with their weeping. Afterwards the jailer brings in a
cup of hemlock and instructs Socrates about what to do after
consuming the poison. Socrates praises the guard for his courte¬
ous behavior throughout his month-long imprisonment and asks
him whether a libation honoring the gods would be permissible.
He is informed by the attendant that just enough of the deadly
liquid has been prepared. Crito now starts to bargain: although
PLATO: PHAEDO *55
executions are supposed to take place right after sundown, most

of the condemned receive permission for prolonged merry¬
making. Socrates rejects this idea, as he sees no advantage in
delaying the arrival of his much-desired death.
Instead, after having admonished his followers not to lament
aloud, he empties the cup without hesitation. He then walks
around for a while, as he was told to do by the jailer; when he
feels the poison moving up from his legs to his heart, he lies
down. He asks Crito to fulfill a small vow he made to Asclepius,
the god of health, and from then on he remains silent. After a
short while, there is a quick, faint movement, and the wisest
and most just of all men dies.
Plato: Symposium
This Dialogue, belonging to the writings of Plato’s period of

maturity, is philosophically one of his most significant works
because, among other things and paralleling the intellectual
pilgrimage described in Republic, it considers the ascent of the
mind to the Eternal Forms. Aesthetically, too, it is an almost
unsurpassable masterpiece.
The work is narrated by Apollodorus, who was not present at
the event described but heard about it from Aristodemus, a guest
at the banquet and the drinking party (symposium) which fol¬
lowed. The location is Athens, the year 416 B.C., although the
narration by Apollodorus actually takes place 15 years after the
party and thus 2 years before the death of Socrates in 399 B.c.
The scene is Agathon’s house; the occasion, a victory celebration.
The host is Agathon, a young dramatic poet who has just won a
prize for a play. Several friends have shown up for the sympo¬
sium. Since they are weary from a previous drinking bout, they
are not interested in the customary entertainment of musicians
and dancers; they prefer to carry on a conversation instead. One
of them, Eryximachus, a physician, suggests that each visitor
deliver an encomium in praise of love. His reason for suggesting
this theme is his approval of an often-repeated claim by Phaedrus
that every god, except the god of love, receives frequent homage
by mortals. Hence this time panegyrics should be delivered in
love’s honor..All present agree, and thus the eulogies and debates
get under way.
The central topic, then, is love in all of its aspects, from the
merely physical to the entirely abstract. The first orations are
156
PLATO: SYMPOSIUM 157
short and rather unimaginative, although unintentionally they

are preparatory to the later lofty speeches. First Phaedrus is in¬
vited to talk because he suggested the theme of the evening.
Phaedrus declares that love is the oldest among gods, endowed
with "sovereign power" to provide men with all the virtues. The
highest type of love is that between righteous men and youths.
A true lover, asserts Phaedrus, fears nothing so much as dishonor,
since this would disgrace him in the eyes of his partner; hence
true lovers would rather sacrifice their lives than do something
shameful. Only persons in love are willing to die for each other;
this is true not only of men like Achilles but even of women like
Alcestis, who was willing to sacrifice her life for her husband. A
state or army consisting of such lovers could hardly be destroyed;
it would almost always be victorious.
Pausanias considers Phaedrus’ remarks inadequate and thinks
that a distinction has to be made. There are two types of love,
he claims: the heavenly and the earthly. The latter desires either
women or young men and is exclusively of a physical nature.
Heavenly love, on the other hand, seeks only males for their
high intelligence and bravery. Love in itself is indifferent, neither
good nor evil; bodily love between men and youngsters becomes
noble when guided by honorable intents and refined manners.
Aristophanes would have been next to speak, but he suffers
from a hiccup, so Eryximachus takes over. By this means, through
the change of sequence of speakers, his talk unwittingly serves
as a bridge between the commonplace utterances of the previous
two guests and the high-level discussions of the three other
visitors to come later. The doctor’s eulogy supports the previous
theory, and reasserts that love is undeniably twofold in its
character; it is so not only in human beings but also on a uni¬
versal scale; it is a cosmic force affecting every living thing.
Love, however, in contrast to Pausanias’ opinion, is not indif¬
ferent; it is itself either good or evil.
Meanwhile Aristophanes, the celebrated comic poet, recovers

and delivers a grotesque fable, though with an underlying and
sublime meaning. Originally, he contends, there were three
sexes: "male, female, and hermaphrodite.” The human body was
of spherical shape, and its head had two faces; the body had
four arms and legs and two sets of genitals. Men became very
powerful and insolent toward the gods. Zeus, in order to punish
the lot (without killing them, for the gods profited by their
sacrifices), split them into two. From then on, the two halves
have been constantly seeking each other; men who now are
halves of hermaphrodites are either male persons loving women
as adulterers, or they are promiscuous females. Women who are
halves of females are lesbians, and men who are halves of male
wholes are sodomists. Nonetheless, no matter which group men
belong to, they all yearn for each other and thus indicate a basic
human desire for complete fusion and unity.
After Aristophanes’ seemingly strange but actually deep myth,
Agathon delivers a flowery panegyric of love. His style is exqui¬
site, full of rhythm and picturesque expressions praising love as
a deity tender, just, brave, and inspirational to all arts. The poet
also claims that love is the most beautiful of the gods because
it is the youngest, and the youngest because it is swift enough
to outrun old age. It is the love of the beautiful, and not the love
of any deformity. In spite of its glowing elegance, Agathon’s
speech has no convincing force or real substance.
After Agathon, and in contrast to his speech, the discussion
reaches its apex in the encomium given by Socrates. After ob¬
taining the assurance of his audience that he may speak the truth
about love in his own unsophisticated terms, the Master charac¬
teristically opens his discourse with his usual dialectic. He asks
Agathon questions, simple yet clever, rudimentary yet deceitful,
goading the conceited dramatist to the admission of his ignorance
and using his continually more confused answers to obtain
f ' ' 1
PLATO: SYMPOSIUM 159

1
proper conclusions, the first result being the definition of love.

From previous speeches, Socrates gathers that love is a desire for
something not yet obtained or not possessed safely forever. But if
love is a desire for something not yet obtained, if it is a lack of
something, love cannot possess the object of its affection. Now,
if love is the love of the beautiful, as Agathon said before, love
cannot itself be beautiful; yet since good and beautiful are
basically identical, it follows that love is seeking and not pos¬
sessing the good. Love of the beautiful means, therefore, a desire
for the everlasting possession of the good.
After having discovered what love is, Socrates proceeds to
answer three other basic questions concerning love: How does it
originate? What is its use for mankind? How is it obtained?
In order to discuss the origin of love, the Master describes his
encounter with the priestess Diotima of Mantinea. He learns
from this prophetess that love is the child of Plenty and of
Poverty, begotten on Aphrodite’s birthday. As a result of his
mixed parentage, he is neither mortal nor immortal; he flourishes
one moment and perishes the next. Because of his mother he is
coarse and rough, yet because of his father he is also clever and
resourceful. He is neither man nor god but an intermediary being,
a 'great spirit.” Love is also a philosopher; since his mother is
ignorant and his father wise, he is neither ignorant nor wise but
is a lover of wisdom. Since wisdom is one of the most beautiful
things, and love is a love for the beautiful, love necessarily has
to be a philosopher. He is neither ugly nor beautiful because (as
Socrates falsely taught) he is not the beloved, which is perfect
and blessed, but he is the lover. Such is the nature of love
because of its origin.
Socrates proposes his next question to the prophetess: What
is the use of love to mankind? Diotima replies with a counter¬
question: Since love is one of the beautiful things, he who loves
beautiful things, loves what? The answer is simple: Because
l6o MOST IMPORTANT CLASSICS OF PHILOSOPHY
"beautiful” and "good” are identical, he who loves beautiful

things loves good things, and he who loves good things obviously
wants to get them and to keep them, and the permanent posses¬
sion of good things will make him happy. In short, then, love’s
value for mankind is to make men happy through the unceasing
possession of the good.
Socrates asks a final question: What is the way to pursue love?
Through generation, replies Diotima. This is true because only
through procreation can mortal beings obtain some sort of im¬
mortality. So strong is the urge for immortality that even brute
animals desire it and are eager to beget offspring that will re¬
place their parents and thus secure the continued existence of
their species.
There is, however, a higher type of reproduction as well: the
creative activity of artists, lawmakers, and statesmen. Their
artistic or social and political creations are pictures, poems, or
the organization of families and states; the companionships out
of which these things are born are more beautiful, nobler, and
more immortal than the carnal procreation of children. More¬
over, there is an even loftier type of friendship, and a safer ascent,
to the highest degree of beauty. This rising takes place in several
stages through the process of ever-increasing abstraction upward
to the contemplation of Absolute Beauty. This progress begins
in youth through the appreciation of individual material objects
and leads to fair thought and the observation of common ele¬
ments of beauty in objects. The next step is the realization that
inner beauty has a higher character than material phenomena.
Then an even higher step follows: an insight into the beauty of
sciences. Finally, there is only one more step to be taken: the
step to the vision of the "great ocean of beauty,” and thus a way
to reach the last grade of ascent in the contemplation of the
ultimate infinite form of Absolute Beauty.
After Socrates’ profound eulogy, silence falls over the audi-
1 - ' •
PLATO: SYMPOSIUM l6l

i
ence, although not for long; just as Aristophanes is about to

comment on Socrates’ words, a disturbing noise is heard from
outside and the famous military leader, Alcibiades, breaks into
the room. Immediately he is offered a place between the host
and his most illustrious guest, Socrates. Alcibiades is intoxicated
and, when asked to laud love, uses the tipsiness which incapaci¬
tates him as an excuse and honors Socrates with a brief address
instead.
In his speech Alcibiades confesses his passion for Socrates and
reveals how for years he used to pursue Socrates as his idol, not
merely for carnal satisfaction, but even more, because of the
greatness of Socrates, for the attainment of the closest intellectual
friendship with him. Yet he must admit that he remained un¬
successful on the physical level, since Socrates never yielded to
his base desires. The general, then, turns to a description of the
admired Master. Externally, he says, Socrates looks like an ugly
satyr, but his inner values are so great that Socrates is similar to
the busts of Siienus, which, when opened, disclose statuettes of
gods inside. Likewise, in his character, Socrates contains virtues
of superhuman magnitude.
After Alcidiades has finished his praise of his idol, a great
crowd of revelers walks into the room, causing a tremendous
uproar. The ceremonial character of the party vanishes; some
guests leave, whereas others keep drinking until they fall asleep.
Socrates, however, stays sober and continues to argue with
Agathon and Aristophanes until dawn. When they too succumb,
Socrates, still alert and vigorous, rises and departs for his usual
activities of the day.
Plato: The Republic
Plato’s Politeia is one of the middle Dialogues. Consisting of

ten books, it is narrated by Socrates himself, who quotes all the
questions, remarks, and arguments of the five persons who actu¬
ally participated (five others were mere listeners) in the discus¬
sion of the work’s central theme: the problem of justice. Al¬
though the Dialogue also considers ethical, metaphysical, and
epistemological topics, it is chiefly a study in political philosophy.
The English rendition of the original Greek title—Politeia—into
the familiar Republic is a misnomer, since the work does not
advocate Republicanism in its modern sense, but Aristocratic
Communism. Perhaps a more accurate, although undeniably
less concise, translation would be A Constitutionally Governed
Balanced Commonwealth or, better yet, simply The Common¬
wealth. Preferably, the work should be read in connection with
Plato’s two other treatises which deal with political theory: The
Statesman and The Laws.
Book I. On their way down to attend a religious festival at

Piraeus, the seaport of Athens, Socrates and Glaucon are met
by Polemarchus, son of a rich Syracusan merchant called Cepha-
lus, now living in retirement in Greece, to whose house they are
invited. In the home of Cephalus they talk for awhile about old
age. Eventually an important question arises: What is justice?
Three opinions are offered, none of them satisfactory.
First the foreign businessman presents his opinion that justice
consists of paying back what one owes to others. But Socrates
wonders whether one should return weapons borrowed from a
162
PLATO: THE REPUBLIC
friend when the original owner is no longer sane. From this it

follows that justice is more than a right to property; it depends
on certain other circumstances as well. Feeling rebuffed, Cephalus
leaves for the sacred rites.
His son Polemarchus then takes over and defines justice as
rendering what is due and protecting friends and harming ene¬
mies. In reply, Socrates points out that to injure the wicked is a
graver offense than the original evil and cites an analogy: just as
a horse or dog when injured will become worse in action and
attitude, so too do injured men become more unjust. Therefore
whatever causes this cannot itself be called just.
Thrasymachus, a Sophist, having listened until now with in¬
creasing distaste, impatiently breaks in to present his own views.
He claims that might is right. Because the stronger party makes
the laws, whatever suits the ablest, stronger party must be best.
His argument is that a powerful ruler, hence, is always just.
This opinion Socrates counters with the remark that one does
not always know what is in his interest and that furthermore
even a ruler can occasionally make mistakes. To this Thrasyma¬
chus retorts that an erring ruler is not a true ruler. Socrates an¬
swers that the ruler should see that the ruled are benefited, not
the ruler, just as when the art of medicine is practiced it should
serve the recipient, not the practitioner. Thrasymachus, not con¬
vinced by the words of Socrates, declares with a sudden twist of
thought that injustice is in fact nothing but good prudence and
that hence injustice is virtuous and justice is vicious. Calling
Socrates naive, Thrasymachus then gives some historical exam¬
ples. History, he declares, amply shows that tyrants are more
successful and more respected than so-called honest people.
Socrates assails these assertions by indicating that injustice is
ignorance because the unjust are trying to get the better of all,
whereas justice is wisdom because those who are just are trying
to get the better of only those who are unjust. Hence the just
are wiser and better than the unjust, who are ignorant and bad.
Consequently, the just man is blessed and happy, the unjust
miserable; and to be miserable is not profitable. Therefore justice
is more profitable than injustice. Thus the First Book ends with
Socrates remarking that, actually, since justice has not yet been
defined, it is foolish to talk about justice without knowing what
it actually is.
Book II. Plato’s brothers, Glaucon and Adeimantus, are un¬

happy with Thrasymachus’ grand assertion and now press Socra¬
tes to demonstrate that justice is worth practicing for its own
sake, independently of fear, the expectation of rewards, or any
other outside factors. Socrates in reply suggests that they study
the matter not in the cases of individual men but in the form of
something larger: the state. One should begin with an inquiry of
the meaning of justice as it concerns the nature of the state, he
suggests, and then look for its counterpart on a smaller scale in
individuals. To do otherwise would be like a near-sighted man
trying to read a text in small letters from a distance when the
same inscription is available for him in huge letters.
Having agreed upon this method recommended by Socrates,
the participants start to analyze the origin and composition of
the state. Since no one is self-sufficient, people being of different
tastes and talents, men naturally associate themselves for mutual
aid. Society, then, is a natural organization, not an artificial and
forced union, of human beings. Proper arrangements according
to the abilities and needs of citizens provide them with the basic
ingredients of life. Hence a fundamental element of justice is a
specialization of functions and harmonious interdependent co¬
operation among people. Beginning with the fulfillment of their
simple needs, men soon will start to develop more sophisticated
economic and social desires. The more their appetite for luxuries
increases, the less satisfactory will the resources of their own
PLATO: THE REPUBLIC I65
homeland be considered, and, before long, they will seize more

and more territory from their neighbors. This will, of course,
result in wars. In order to wage a war, to attack or to defend,
armies will be needed. Thus, from among the Producers of the
young communities, a new class will suddenly emerge: the
Guardians of the State. This second class of society will soon
split into two groups; the most able will become rulers of their
fellowmen and will be called Kings or Counselors, whereas
other Guardians will continue to serve as soldiers. Eventually,
then, in the more developed stage of the state, these three classes
will constitue society: Rulers, Auxiliaries or Warriors, and Pro¬
ducers. Because the Guardians must be brave and wise, the state
should provide them with proper education. Since only a well-
balanced physical and mental training can secure reliable charac¬
ter for the future leaders of the community, their basic prepara¬
tion should consist both of gymnastics and proper training in
music. Their musical learning should include the study of
literature, music proper, and art, but all three of these subjects
should be censored.
Book III. As far as censorship is concerned, everything

should be eliminated from literature that would depict gods as
deceitful, quarrelsome, or lewd; in music, enervating soft melo¬
dies should be avoided, and the harsh, martial tunes of the
Dorian and Phrygian scales should be preferred; in art, the
young should be exposed only to harmonious things.
In addition to the proper training of its Guardians, other
fundamental conditions are indispensable for the ideal state.
One such basic condition is the careful selection of leaders
chosen for their talents and their devotion to the community.
Since there wdll be only a small number of rulers, a great gap
will exist between the two upper classes of Philosopher-Kings
and Auxiliaries, on the one hand, and the Producers—farmers,
artisans, and tradesmen—on the other. In order to prevent

jealousy and conflicts between these classes, people should be
tranquilized with a "noble lie,” consisting of the "Myth of the
Metals.” This allegory will assure men of their mutual brother¬
hood; it will indicate to them and explain the reason for natural
differences among them. The myth will tell them that they
were moulded down inside the earth, the basic training and edu¬
cation in this world having been just a dream, after which they
were delivered by Mother Earth to their present life; there they
should thank, revere, and always protect Her from attacks.
While people were being fashioned (so the lie will go), God
mingled gold in the nature of those who were chosen for ruling
roles; He infused silver into future Auxiliaries, as well as iron
and brass into the nature of predestined Producers. Those who,
because of the divine gift of gold or silver in their souls, become
Kings or Warriors, respectively, will not live like princes, how¬
ever. They should own no private property but should receive
allowances for their services from the state. Otherwise, if they
possessed material gold, silver, or land instead of spiritual wealth,
their interest would be in their worldly treasures instead of in
the safety, welfare, and moral development of the citizens. Thus
in reality they would be farmers and masters of the people in¬
stead of their guardians and allies.
Book IV. Adeimantus interrupts Socrates. He expresses doubt

about the attractiveness of the Guardians’ way of life. Socrates
replies that he does not share his worries over the unhappiness
of the ruling classes, but in any event it would not make any
difference to him since he is interested in the happiness of the
state as a whole, and not that of some individuals. Socrates then
enumerates three main factors of communal happiness: a bal¬
anced distribution of goods among citizens, proper size (neither
too small nor too large) of the state, and equal opportunity for
i
?
PLATO: THE REPUBLIC 167
all, based on merit and not on birth. A well-devised educational

system is the best safeguard for the maintenance of the above-
mentioned factors.
The purpose of a happy city is to secure the rule of virtues.
The virtues that should prevail in the ideal state are these:
courage, wisdom, temperance, and, above everything else, justice.
Whereas temperance should be the common virtue of all three
classes of citizens, but especially of the Producers, wisdom
should be the specific virtue of Rulers, and bravery that of
Soldiers. Justice would enable people to live and work in har¬
mony, since it would compel them to mind their own businesses
without interfering with the work of others for which they are
not fitted.
Since the state is a man "writ large," what pertains to the
macrocosmos, the state, should also be applied to the micro¬
cosmos, the individual: wisdom or reasoning, residing in the
spiritual soul, should rule in men, together with courage of the
spirited part of the soul over the base desires of the concupiscible
part. But, just as there is basically but one virtue, there are vices
of "infinite kind," four among them being more important than
the rest, corresponding to four bad types of constitutions of
states.
Book V. Before Socrates can enumerate and analyze all four

types of bad constitutions, he is again interrupted, this time by
Polemarchus, who wants him to discuss in detail the position of
women and children in the perfect state. Socrates obliges and
presents his views.
Although women in general are weaker than men, they are
capable of performing all tasks performed by men. Hence
women should also be rulers or soldiers, and not workers only.
Because of the equal opportunity given them, they should ob¬
tain exactly the same education and military training as do their
male counterparts. Wives and offsprings of the Guardians should

be held in common. (Property sharing and the community of
women and children should be restricted to the two upper
classes only; it should not be imposed upon Producers.) Sexual
relations should be regulated by the state. Couples should be
paired off by the elders of the community according to their
physical and mental qualities to produce the best of the race.
Children belong to the polls and are to be brought up in city
nurseries without actual knowledge of their parents or brothers
and sisters. They should be taken to watch battles and become
accustomed to the butchery so that they may grow up in the
spirit of bravery.
Cowardice in war should be punished by demotion to the
class of Producers. Courage should be rewarded in a variety of
ways: among them permission for more carnal intercourse, even
beyond the age limits of 5 5 for men and 40 for women. In war,
Greeks should never unnecessarily hurt Greeks of opposing
camps.
After this digression on women, children, and warfare, Glau-
con turns to Socrates and asks him a very important and practical
question: Can a perfect city like the one described by Socrates
ever be achieved at all? The Masters answer is no, unless power
and wisdom are properly united in leaders. This will not be
realized until reason rules, which will happen only when
philosophers will become kings, and kings, philosophers. A true
philosopher, continued Socrates, is a lover of wisdom. He has to
be distinguished from "imitation philosophers,” who are inter¬
ested only in concrete things, and who love particular beautiful
objects which are mere copies of reality. These men, therefore,
can form only relative, varying opinions about the world. They
live in, but they will never arrive at, genuine knowledge, which
consists of the love of Absolute Beauty and Absolute Truth itself.
This reliable and unchanging knowledge, reached through
l
reason, is the exclusive possession of true philosophers, whose

interest is not in the World of Sense, but in the World of Eternal
Ideas.,
Book VI. The Guardians then ought to be true philosophers.

But when Socrates describes them as modest and steadfast men,
quick-witted and having good memories, Adeimantus remarks
that the reputation of philosophers is quite different from Soc¬
rates’ lofty description. People often consider them to be crooks
or fools or both. The Master has an answer to this: people judge
men according to their participation in political life, not accord¬
ing to their talents. Since philosophers have no time to waste on
such trivial business as politics, they cannot win the applause of
the citizens. Nevertheless it is true, he continues, that in a corrupt
world many a philosopher succumbs to the temptations of the
evil of everyday life. Those few, then, who remain faithful to
their vocations should be helped both by the ordinary faculties
of their refined education and, because philosophy is not a mere
study but a real vocation and a way to increase learning, through
extraordinary means as well. The reason why it is difficult to find
real philosophers is that they have to make an arduous journey
from the World of Sense to the World of Highest Truth, to the
all-comprehensive Eternal Form of Good, which underlies all the
other virtues. What the sun is for physical sight, the Idea of Good
is for the mind. The light of the sun enables the eyes to see
physical objects; the eternal Sun, the Archetype of Good, enables
the mental eye, the intelligence, to see its particular object:
truth.
The ascent from physical sight to intellectual vision, indis¬
pensable for any philosopher worthy of the name, can well be
illustrated by means of the "Simile of the Divided Line.” This
metaphor consists of a diagram (see Table XVI-B). In this
scheme two straight lines are crossing each other; the heavy hori-
zontal line dividing the vertical into two unequal parts separates
the objects of knowledge from the modes of thought. The lower,
smaller part represents the visible world, which is further divided
into two unequal sections. This is a realm where the physical sun
is shining upon images, shadows, and reflections, indicated in the
lowest division of the diagram. These images are perceived
through conjecture (imagination and guesswork). The physical
sun also shines on objects of nature (plants, animals, manu¬
factured things), embraced through belief. Both processes, con¬
jecture and belief, result in mere opinion. In contrast to opinion,
true knowledge can be achieved only after the ascent of the mind
to the Intelligible World, where the Idea of the Good radiates
as the Eternal Sun. The upper section of the diagram, repre¬
senting this higher world, also is divided into two parts, the lower
segment again being smaller than the upper. In the lower section
understanding is viewing abstract mathematical entities; in the
upper division thinking achieves higher knowledge through a
vision of the Ideas, particularly of the unifying Idea of the First
Principle, the Form of the Good. Thinking, then, is dialectical
thought: knowledge through the grasping of the Eternal Forms.
The unequal division indicates the very process of the ascent
from a shadowy, dark world to the world of real light. It sym¬
bolizes a progress to greater comprehension and clarity. Hence
during the four stages of that upward motion one is actually not
looking at four specifically different objects; he is seeing, rather,
the same object from four different aspects.
Book VII. Next Socrates presents a parable of education,

symbolizing the philosopher’s emergence from ignorance. He
asks his audience to imagine mankind as living in a cave. People
facing the wall of the cave sit in a row, chained by their legs and
necks so that they cannot move or turn around. Behind them is
a low wall; behind that, a bonfire is burning. At the low wall
some men moving back and forth are carrying all sorts of
figures, the shadows of which are projected behind on the
cave wall. From the cave, a rough and steep path leads up
to the entrance of the place; outside of the underground dwelling
of the chained prisoners, there is a sunlit world of a lake, trees,
flowers, and other objects. One day someone from the outside
world enters the cave, descends to the prisoners, frees one of
them, forcibly turns him around, and takes him out of the cave.
At first, the freed prisoner cannot see anything on his way out,
not even by the light of the bonfire, let alone anything in the
bright sunshine. But after a while his sight returns and becomes
adapted to the radiance of his new surroundings; soon he is able
to see not only objects around him but the sun itself. If, urged by
a feeling of mission, he returns to the cave to free the rest of the
prisoners and to tell them that what they are looking at down
there are mere shadows, whereas real things and the dazzling
brilliant sun are far above the floor of the cave and outside of it,
he will have difficulty again perceiving the projections on the
wall and will not be able to participate in the discussions and
betting games of the prisoners concerning the meaning and se¬
quence of the fleeting faint images; he will, therefore, be ridi¬
culed and may even be killed by them.
The "Allegory of the Cave” symbolizes the dialectic process of
ascension from conjectures to the view of the Form of Good. It is
also a metaphor about education. Someone, a teacher like Soc¬
rates himself, comes from the world of shining light to redeem
people, prisoners of illusions, and forcibly "turns them around”
from imagination to illumination, from illusion to reality.
In the rest of the book, Socrates describes in detail the structure
of his proposed curricula, enumerating its subjects and indicating
the phases of the education of future Philosopher-Kings: up to
age 17, "musical” education, as it was described before; from 17
to 20, military training; from 20 to 30, mathematical studies;
I72 MOST IMPORTANT CLASSICS OF PHILOSOPHY
between 30 and 35, dialectics; from 35 to 50: practical ex¬

periences in lower military ranks and minor governmental jobs.
Book VIII. After having described the character of the

ideal state and its rulers, Socrates now reverts to the point
abandoned at the end of Book IV and begins to enumerate and
analyze the types of corrupt governments.
When ambition and vainglory start to prevail among war¬
riors and they become rulers of their city, timocracy (honor-
loving) will be the form of government. In such case, the
spirited part gains predominance over the spiritual part of the
individual souls, the result being an ambitious and aggressive
nature.
When the seeking of honors turns into inordinate love of
money, and a few rich persons seize power and exploit the poor,
timocracy degenerates into oligarchy (rule of the few). In an
oligarchy the lowest, most concupiscent part of the soul prevails.
As soon as the oppressed poor start to revolt against their
rulers, democracy (the rule of the people in the fifth century
B.c. Athenian sense of the term, meaning unchecked liberty
turned into libertinism, frivolity, and near-chaos) will be estab¬
lished. This new form of constitution, as well as individuals
living under it, will cast aside all the restrictions of social life;
lawlessness will then become supreme.
Extreme democracy eventually produces tyranny. People,
dissatisfied with license, appoint a strong man to restore law and
order. This new ruler recruits an army to oppress resistance to his
will, and soon people will live under despotism (the government
of a single, absolute ruler).
Book IX. A tyrant is the unhappiest of all men; he is driven

by boundless passions that he can never satisfy and is also ob¬
sessed by fear. Hence the answer to Thrasymachus’ contention
i

that injustice is more profitable than justice is a negative one.
Moreover one can say in reply to the vexing question of
Glaucon and his brother (Is justice valuable for its own sake?)
that the three elements in the soul can be likened to a man, a
lion, and a monster; it is obvious that the soul of the just is
dominated by man, whereas the soul of the unjust is dominated
and ruled by the monster.
In the closing lines of the book, Socrates claims that, although
the perfect state may not actually exist in this world, such a
society is possible because its pattern eternally exists in the
World of Forms.
Book X. First of all, the value of art is discussed in this

last book of the Politeia. Socrates feels that the artist’s function
is on the lowest level of human preoccupations, because objects
of art are three times removed from the Eternal Archetypes: they
are imitations of the imitations of Forms. Art appeals to the
irrational element of the soul; for example, poets prefer to depict
fools instead of reasonable men. Since art is dangerous (it tends
to corrupt even the best of men), one must be on constant
guard against it.
Finally, in the closing passages of the book, Socrates discloses
the fate of souls in life hereafter. Since everything is corrupted
by its own kind of evil, and the evil of the soul is vice, which
cannot bring about any ontological destruction, the soul is
immortal. Plato ends the treatise with the "Metaphor of Er,”
which symbolically pictures the fate of souls through reincar¬
nation until their final return to the Intelligible World.
Aristotle: Metaphysics
Aristotle never gave the name Metaphysics to this work. He

referred to it as First Philosophy, Theological Science or, simply,
Wisdom. The present title was given to these fourteen books
centuries later.
The Metaphysics, Aristotle’s basic writing, is a pedagogical
work parts of which may have been compiled from students’
notes. This may explain why the most important opus of the
Stagirite is unsystematic in its composition and repetitious, vague,
even incoherent in its discussions. However, in spite of such
shortcomings, this First Philosophy should not readily be dis¬
missed as irrelevant or useless. It is (and will ever remain) one
of the truly great books of Western philosophy.
Books Capital and Small Alpha (I-II). Every human

being has a natural desire for knowledge, but there are different
degrees of knowledge. At the lowest level is knowledge based
on mere experience. On a higher level is the knowledge of men
of art, who not only use things, but also know the reason for
their use. The highest kind of knowledge, however, is wisdom,
for wisdom is interested in knowledge for its own sake.
The science which began in wonder at things and is desirable
for its own sake, not for its results, is the science of first prin¬
ciples or causes; it is wisdom. The philosopher, or lover of wis¬
dom, is a person whose interest is in ultimate causes and who
desires knowledge for its own sake. In contrast to sense per¬
ception, which is common to all and therefore easily grasped,
wisdom is the most abstract of sciences, the most difficult, as well
174
I
ARISTOTLE: METAPHYSICS 175
as the most exact, for the sciences that involve fewer principles
than the others are the most exact sciences.
The first causes, with which wisdom deals, are four in number:
the material and formal causes, and the efficient and final causes.
Theories concerning them go back to early Greek philosophy.
A critical evaluation of these theories shows that Thales, Anaxi¬
menes, Heraclitus, Empedocles, and Anaxagoras were able to dis¬
cover only two types of causes: the material cause and the effi¬
cient cause. By summarizing these doctrines, Aristotle became the
first historian of philosophy. Plato, too, knew only two kinds of
causes: the formal and the material. According to Plato, the
Eternal Forms are the causes of the essences of things. But Plato’s
doctrine of Forms has to be rejected as contradictory and as use¬
less because it merely doubles visible things. It helps in no way to
obtain a knowledge of reality, for these Ideas are not in the
things themselves.
They are not even their substances; being themselves motion¬
less, they cannot explain motion. Actually, they are "eternal
sensibles,” being replicas of real objects on the ideal level. The
doctrine of Forms is also contradictory because we may think
there are Forms of things for which we contend there are no
corresponding Forms. For example, there are no Forms of nega¬
tions or relations.
It is right to call philosophy the knowledge of the truth. But
the truth cannot be known without its cause. There can be
neither an infinite series nor an infinite variety of causes. There
must be a first principle.
Book Beta (III). Philosophy presents many problems and

asks many questions: Can one science treat all of the four causes?
Are there spiritual substances? Are the principles of perishable
and of imperishable things the same? What are the first prin¬
ciples of things? Are there any universal, or only individual
things? Are being and unity, or even the principles of mathe¬

matics, substances? Do Eternal Ideas exist? Are the first prin¬
ciples universal? These are all difficult problems. Not only is it
difficult to obtain the truth in these matters; it is not even easy
to think out the difficulties themselves.
Book Gamma (IV). The object of Metaphysics is the study

of being as such. A study such as this requires close consideration
of substances and their contraries, such as unity and plurality, as
well as their attributes. The science which studies being in itself
must be a science that is generically one, although there also
have to be specific parts of philosophy to investigate the several
species of being. But again, if there are many parts of philosophy,
there necessarily must be among them a first philosophy. Phi¬
losophy, being general in its character, also must deal with basic
axioms because these truths concern everything. Evidently, the
philosopher who deals with these principles must be able to
state the most certain principles of all, namely, that the same
attribute cannot at the same time belong and not belong to the
same subject and in the same respect.
This axiom can be proved from different angles; hence those
trying to deny its validity, like Empedocles, Democritus, or
Parmenides, are wrong. These people love to ask such questions
as these: Who is likely to judge rightly all the questions of
philosophy? Who is to be the judge of the healthy man? These
people expect a reason to be given for everything and given in
the form of a demonstration. But these men forget that there
are things for which no reason can be given, simply because the
starting point of a demonstration is not a demonstration. If there
is anything indisputable, the most indisputable belief is that con¬
tradictory statements cannot be true at the same time. Since this
is obvious, contraries also cannot pertain at the same time to the
same thing. Likewise, there cannot be an intermediate between
J
contradictories; of one subject, any one predicate must be either
affirmed or denied. This is the principle of the excluded middle.
It is just as self-evident an axiom as the law of contradiction.
Book Delta (V). The vocabulary of the philosopher in¬

cludes several technical terms, and it is difficult to speculate with¬
out clarifying them. Among the thirty terms enumerated in this
book, the most important definitions are those of "cause,” "na¬
ture,” and, above everything else, "substance.” "Cause” already
has been defined. "Nature” means (a) the genesis of growing
things, or (b) the source from which the primary movement in
each natural object is present because of its own essence. "Sub¬
stance” signifies either simple bodies or the essence of a thing.
Basically, "substance” means the ultimate substrate, or the form
or shape of each thing.
Book Epsilon (VI). There are three theoretical sciences:

mathematics, physics, and what we call theology. Just as the
theoretical sciences are more desired than other sciences, theology
is more to be desired than the other theoretical sciences because
it deals with an unmovable substance. For that reason, theology
must be prior to the other sciences. It also must be the first
philosophy, universal in its character because it is first. And it
belongs to this branch of theoretical science to consider being in
itself, being as being.
"Being” has many meanings. In regard to accidental being, we
have to notice that there can be no scientific treatment of it, for
the accidental is practically a mere name. Nevertheless, the acci¬
dental does exist, because not all things are always there, nor do
they come to existence necessarily.
Book Zeta (VII). The study of being is basically a con¬

sideration of substance. The term "substance” has at least four
main applications It can be taken for the essence, for the uni¬
versal, for the genus, or for the substrate. However, matter is not
a substance, because in itself it is neither a particular thing nor
a certain quantity.
In connection with the notion of substance, the next question
naturally follows: What is essence? A detailed analysis of this
concept yields the following simple answer: essence belongs
primarily to the what-a-thing-is, to a substance. In a secondary
way, it belongs to other categories too, though not so much in
itself, but more as the essence of a quality or of a quantity.
What about universals? Just as the substrate and the essence
or the combination of these two may be called substance, so also
the universal is thought by some to be identical with the sub¬
stance. Is this a correct view? Certainly not. If it were, then two
or more beings belonging to different species would be identical
substances, and this would be a contradiction. In this case Soc¬
rates, for example, would be simultaneously himself and
another being. The same holds true for Eternal Ideas. If they are
substances, as are the multitude of their individual replicas in this
world, then the Ideas as well as their replicas are identical. That
is a contradiction. Or again, if the Eternal Forms are different in
each species, then there is an infinite number of things sharing
the same substance. What kind of things, then, are substances?
They are principles and causes: they are the forms by reason of
which the matter is some definite thing.
Book Eta (VIII). There are several types of substances. The

most generally recognized substances are all of a material char¬
acter. Clearly, matter is substance, for in all changes that occur,
something underlies the change and something remains. But sen¬
sible things exist not merely as matter; another kind is form, or
actuality, and a third is the composition of matter and form.
Furthermore, we must distinguish between remote and proximate
} .. ' 1
matter. Yet, ultimately and generally, in sensible substances it is

matter to which all the things that change must return from their
contrary states. For example, health and disease both are due to
the presence of the body: in the first instance in its positive state,
in the second instance in the privation of its positive state.
Book Theta (IX). Beings are not only divided into in¬
dividual things; they are also distinguished with respect to
potency and actuality. Both potency and actuality extend beyond
cases of mere motion. Potency in general is possibility. Actuality
is different from motion. Whereas every movement ceases,
actuality is here. The substance or form is actuality. The
actuality existing is always produced by another actually existing
thing. There is always a First Mover that already exists actually.
Thus actuality is prior, in a strict sense, to potentiality, since
eternal things are substantially prior to perishable things, and no
eternal thing exists potentially. Whenever a thing is good and
actual, it is better than potency. When a bad thing is actual, it
is worse than the potential.
Book Iota (X). There are four kinds of units: the

naturally continuous and the whole, the individual and the uni¬
versal. The unit, or the one, derives its name from its contrary;
the indivisible, from the divisible, for divisibility is more per¬
ceptible than indivisibility. Along with the notion of the one go
the notions of the same, the like and the equal. With plurality
go the other, the unlike and the unequal. The same and the
other are opposed. But difference is not identical with otherness,
contraries are different. Since things differ in various degrees,
there is also a greatest difference called contrariety. The equal is
opposed to the great: the small and the one are opposed to the
many.
iBo MOST IMPORTANT CLASSICS OF PHILOSOPHY
Book Kappa (XI). This book contains abbreviations of

some parts of Books Beta, Gamma, and Epsilon. It also presents
extracts from Aristotle’s Physics.
Book Lambda (XII). The book begins with a re-emphasis

of the stated purpose of Metaphysics: to study substance. Sub¬
stances have a proximate and ultimate moving cause. Since move¬
ment must be eternal, there must be an Eternal Mover Whose
essence is actuality, for actuality is prior to potentiality.
The Eternal Mover, being entirely actual, cannot change or
move. Hence it originates motion by being the primary end for
finite beings. This First Mover is a living, simple, and perfect
Being. Since there are simple motions involved in the overall
motion of the planets, there must be several unmoved movers.
(Their number probably is 55.)
Book Mu (XIII). Allegedly, there are two kinds of im¬

material substances: mathematical objects and Eternal Ideas or
Forms. But mathematical objects cannot exist as individual sub¬
stances apart from sensible things. They can be separated only
in thought. The arguments of Platonists in behalf of the Eternal
Forms prove either too much or too little. And, even if they were
valid, if Forms existed, they would not explain changes in the
world of sense.
Book Nu (XIV). Eternal things cannot consist of elements,

because then they would contain matter. Platonists err when
they attempt to solve the problem of plurality in the sensory
world in this way. Number theories, the attribution of causality
to numbers, are also false.
f
V
Aristotle: Nichomachean
Ethics
The stagirite composed three works on ethics in the following

chronological order: the Eudemian Ethics and the Nichomachean
Ethics, both of them probably named after their editors, Eudemus
of Rhodes and Nichomachus, the one a pupil and the other the
son of Aristotle, respectively. His third work is entitled "The
Large Scrolls on Morality” (Ethica Me gala, usually referred to
by its Latin title Magna Moralia); perhaps so named because of
the unusually large size of the manuscript. However, the author¬
ship of this third manuscript is somewhat doubtful. In the
Nichomachean Ethics an idiosyncrasy of Greek thinking appears
throughout: the good of the individual is always—at least
covertly—identified with the good of the state; there is no
individual good outside the communal good.
Book I. All art, each inquiry, every deliberate human action,

is done for some good or some goal. Some of these actions are
subordinated to others, as bridle-making and equipment-pro¬
ducing for horses are subordinated to the good of riding. Never¬
theless, the process of aiming at goals with a view at some still
higher goods cannot go on indefinitely, because in that case no
intention or desire would have a genuine purpose; it would be
completely frustrated. Hence there must be a goal that is desired
for its own sake, and everything else is intended on account of
this supreme good. This supreme good is the subject of the
181
182 most important classics of philosophy
highest art, the art of political science. This science—covering

all the actions of men, the whole range of human life—is an
intellectual discipline for mature persons only, who know how
to control their passions; it is not supposed to be studied by
young men who are lacking the necessary experience of these
actions.
But, returning to the original subject of this treatise, let us
find out what is man’s supreme good. It is happiness, which also
involves the notion of prosperity and full contentment. But men,
being of different disposition, are seeking that highest good from
widely differing things. Most of them seek it in pleasure, but this
befits only slaves or beasts. Those who are engaged in political
activity are aiming at it in the form of honor or fame, yet these
goals, since they do not depend on their receiver as much as on
those who bestow them upon people, are superficial and too un¬
certain to be desired. Money-making cannot be the ultimate goal,
either, because it is sought not for itself but for the obtainment
of something else. The Platonic Idea of the good varies in dif¬
ferent instances; thus it cannot be identical with one single
idea; and even if an Eternal Idea did exist, it could not be at¬
tained by human beings. The supreme good must, then, be some¬
thing for the sake of which other things are done and which is
sought in every human action; hence the supreme good is self-
sufficient. That is why happiness is the supreme good: it is de¬
sired for its own sake. Every being has a function peculiar to its
nature. Man’s characteristic function is an activity in accordance
with reason. Of the three classes of good—external good, good
of the body, and good of the soul—the truest type is the last-
named; hence the real purpose of man must be the attainment of
the good of the soul.
Since the soul has two faculties—rational and irrational—
there are two kinds of virtues: intellectual and moral. A morally
virtuous life is achieved when the irrational element obeys reason.
ARISTOTLE: NICHOMACHEAN ETHICS 183
Book II. People are born neither moral nor immoral, but
amoral. Moral virtues are the result of habit, of the training of
the emotions to subordinate themselves to rationality. Since ethics
is a practical science, each concrete instance of morality must be
evaluated on its own merits. But there is a general rule to be fol¬
lowed in ethical matters: any excess or deficiency is destructive,
whereas the intermediate preserves. Moral virtues, then, are based
on the mean or moderation. Since, by necessity, pain and pleasure
are accompanying virtues, it is natural to take pleasure in evil
things and to suffer pain from the right things; therefore educa¬
tion and training are needed to achieve a correct attitude in
people so they will obtain pleasure in virtuous actions and feel
pain in sinful acts.
What, then, are virtues? They are not emotions, but are states
of character; they are man’s ability to perform his proper func¬
tion. He will act properly if he performs neither in an excessive
nor in a defective way, but rather according to a mean. However,
it should be noted that here is no absolute ethical mean for
particular acts; the mean is relative for various individuals. Vices
are due to excesses or deficiencies; the mean is virtue. Although
sometimes the excess, sometimes the deficiency, is more opposed
to the mean, extremes are always more opposed to each other
than to the mean.
Book III. Only voluntary acts are virtuous. Extrinsic compul¬

sion eliminates voluntariness. Ignorance has the same effect. But
acts proceeding from anger or concupiscence are not involuntary,
since the agent is aware of the particular circumstances. The
most important factor of virtuous acts is their general moral pur¬
pose, and moral purpose involves deliberation. Where there is
deliberation, there is choice. The end determines the choice of the
mean. The object of choice, theoretically, is the real good; in
practice, however, it is what impresses the individual as being
good for him in a concrete situation. There are some actions in¬
herently bad, such as murder, adultery, or envy. Since we are
deliberately choosing the mean, we are responsible for our actions
and the power to refrain from acting. Virtues and vices are
voluntary and therefore imputable. Socrates was wrong when he
claimed that no one does evil willingly.
Some virtues deserve specific investigation, such as courage,
temperance, and justice. Courage is a mean between cowardice
and confidence. True courage is not identical with lack of fear.
Fearlessness when dying on a battlefield for a just cause is virtue.
It is false courage to fulfill a dangerous duty merely out of fear of
punishment or for promise of reward. Courage due to ignorance
of real facts—the knowledge of which would actually frighten
the performer of the seemingly brave act—is not virtuous either.
On the other hand, the happier the courageous person was before
he sacrificed his life, the more painful death will be for him and
the greater will be his merit.
Temperance consists of the moderation of concupiscible ap¬
petites. It is a mean between self-indulgence and insensibility.
Since self-indulgence induced by delights is more voluntary a
reaction than is cowardice in the presence of danger, the former
increases responsibility and blameworthiness. Self-indulgence is
beastlike. In temperate men, appetites are under the control of
reason; such a person craves for the right things, in the right way
and at the right time.
Book IV. There are other virtues of importance: (1)

liberality, a mean with regard to wealth, whose excesses and de¬
fects are prodigality and meanness, respectively; (2) pride, the
virtue of a man who thinks himself worthy of great things, a man
good in the highest degree: it is a mean between vanity and
humility; (3) good temper, the mean controlling anger; (4)
r _
truthfulness, consisting of unselfish equity, in opposition to

boastfulness and false modesty; and (5) justice.
Book V. Justice, in a wider sense, signifies all the virtues. In
a narrower, economic sense, it regulates household transactions.
Economic justice is different from political justice, which is
determined partly by nature, partly by convention. The former
type of justice does not depend on people’s thinking but is,
rather, determined by nature, although not in the same rigid way
as a physical law. Political justice originates with law; it decides
on originally indifferent cases. But because law is universal, it
may become incorrect in some particular cases. In order to
counterbalance injustices that may develop in such instances
when the subject matter is indeterminate, people are expected to
practice equity. This may result in a temporary loss for the
equitable man, but in the long run it increases his merits. -
Book VI. In addition to moral virtues there are also intel¬

lectual virtues. Correct choice involves not only right desires but
true reasoning as well. But it is not contemplative intellect that
motivates man; rather it is the practical intellect. Practical wis¬
dom is the most important among intellectual virtues, since it is
concerned with selecting the best means for a good life. Its
operation is based on the grasping of fundamental moral prin¬
ciples as well as basic particular facts. Ultimately, practical wis¬
dom rests on philosophical wisdom, which is contemplative in its
nature; yet it is not only based on intuition, because its founda¬
tion is also scientific knowledge. It is the highest form of wisdom
and the highest human activity, because, in contrast to practical
wisdom, which is instrumental in its character, it is the actualiza¬
tion of man’s end.
Book VII. There are three kinds of moral states to be

avoided: vice, incontinence, and brutishness. Their contraries are
l86 MOST IMPORTANT CLASSICS OF PHILOSOPHY
virtue, continence, and "godlikeness.” Since the last of these is a

state higher than virtue, it is very rare among men; and since
vices and virtues have already been discussed, let us take a look
at continence and its opposite, incontinence.
Practical wisdom prevents man from being incontinent, be¬
cause he who has practical wisdom not only knows how to act,
but he is also able to act. Whenever a person does not know
that a general law applies to his particular case, or he does not
know in which way it applies, he is incontinent. Incontinence is
not habitual wickedness. It is best illustrated by an actor who on
the stage recites texts written in the first person and uttered by
him but with no conscious application to his own person. An in¬
continent man is not necessarily wicked; by the same token,
continence is not necessarily identical with virtue, either.
Since moral virtues and vices are concerned with pains and
pleasures, the study of pain and pleasure belongs to the realm
of the political philosopher. We then must ask, What is the
nature of pleasure? Is it bad or good, or is it even the supreme
good? It certainly is a necessary companion of happiness, be¬
cause happiness is not just a feeling, being first of all an activity.
Hence pleasure is good. But not every type of pleasure is good,
for some pleasures flow from vicious acts, and some of them are
obstacles to the performance of valuable activities. Therefore
discretion must be exercised in the evaluation of pleasures. And,
since they are not good in an unqualified manner, they cannot
be considered as man’s supreme good, although they undeniably
are an indispensable element of the good, which is happiness.
Books VIII—IX. Friendship is regarded as the highest type

of justice. Its motive is to wish a friend well for the friend’s
sake, although actually its ultimate source is one’s own good.
That is the real reason why a good man builds friendships.
Where there is a community of people, there is always some type
t ' ' 1
of friendship. True friendship, however, can exist only among

equals. Where the parties are unequal, love has to make up the
balance.
Book X. For the sake of education, by which the young are

steered by the rudders of pain and pleasures, and for the develop¬
ment of character, the study of pleasure is important.
Is pleasure the supreme good, or is it wholly bad? Those who
advocate either view are wrong. Pleasure is not the supreme good
because there are immoral pleasures. But it is not entirely evil
either, for it is a concomitant of activities; it completes activities
and hence it perfects life. Where there is no activity, there is no
pleasure. Yet every activity ends in pleasure. Some pleasures per¬
fect the senses; others, the mind. There is a difference among
pleasures, some of them being superior to the others. Of the
highest type are those which impress good men as being the
most fitting for them.
Since happiness, the highest human good, is desirable for its
own sake, it must consist of an activity that is not sought beyond
itself, but that terminates in itself. The highest activity is that of
man’s highest power, his intellect. Contemplation, then, is the
highest activity and the complete happiness of man. However, it
has to be supplemented by external things necessary for the
maintenance of life and strength. The man who contemplates
and practices virtues as well will be the favorite of the gods, since
he will most closely resemble them.
VI
Plotinus: Enneads
During the last 16 years of his life, Plotinus wrote fifty-four

treatises summarizing the discussions he had with his followers.
Although he was said to have had a fine oral style, his writing is
less lucid than his speech and is frequently hard to interpret. His
failing eyesight and his disinterested attitude toward his work
kept him from revising his manuscripts. His pupil and admirer,
Porphyry, who joined him when Plotinus was about 60 years old,
arranged the original materials after the death of his teacher into
six sets, each containing nine chapters or tractates—hence the
title Enneads, which signifies groups of nine. Because of his great
reverence for his master, Porphyry wanted to retain Plotinus’
original style and method of presentation. Hence the work, after
Porphyry’s arrangement, did not become any clearer than the
original scattered compositions must have been. It is still un¬
systematic, and the text is repetitious, a fact which compels a
brief summarizing to sift from it only the most characteristic
teachings of the Master. In doing so, the compiler faces a unique
problem: in Plotinus there is a complete simultaneity, or at least
a striving toward it; through the whole work, nothing is ever
really separate from anything else—one teaching is always in¬
cluded in the other. Perhaps that is the reason for the numerous
repetitions, interminglings, and overlappings in the text. No
one doctrine can be fully separated from any other. Hence, when
in this brief resume certain chapters are pointed out and others
omitted, this merely indicates a more emphatic appearance of
some important themes in the Enneads.
The general plan of Porphyry’s arrangement follows the main .
i
?
PLOTINUS: ENNEADS 189
trend of Plotinus’ thought. It sets out from the self (Part I) and
then goes over to the sensible world (Parts II and III). After¬
wards, it starts to rise gradually, first to the cause of the world,
which is The Soul (Part IV), then to the source of The Soul, to
The Intelligence, and finally to the principle of all existing
things, to The One (Parts V and VI).
The treatises of the first Ennead are predominantly of an ethi¬
cal nature. Its most important topics are virtue (Chapter 5),
beauty (Chapter 6), and evil (Chapter 8).
Virtue is the soul’s turning away from matter, from multi¬
plicity below it, and its becoming identical with what is above it.
("Below” and "above” indicate not spatial locations, but
existential situations of ontological distances from, or proximity
to, The Intelligence.) Through virtue, man becomes not simply
good; he becomes truly himself—even more, he becomes divine.
Beauty plays an important role in this conversion of the self,
since beauty, by its very nature, is present where diversity has
been turned into unity. The soul that is longing for beauty,
though, must first beautify itself through detachment, discipline,
order, and purity.
But what, then, is evil? Evil is the indirect result of the
creative process of The One. The One, which is perfect Unity
when creating lower orders, becomes increasingly multiple and
thereby less perfect, until it reaches the opposite of existence—
unadulterated, disorganized matter, the moral equivalent of
which is evil.
The second Ennead is physical; it treats of the world. For
Plotinus, the natural order is a living organism. Matter, although
responsible for evil, being the very opposite of the order, unity,
and light of The One, in a sense is good. It is not good in itself,
but indirectly, paradoxically, inasmuch as it serves as the founda¬
tion for the imprinting of forms. Without matter there would be
no order in the world, since matter is the indispensable base for
order. For its necessary character, but also because of its in¬
equality and gradations from the highest to the lowest realms, the
natural order in a sense is the best expression of The One, from
which everything emanates in hierarchically descending levels
and which is identical with The Good.
The third Ennead discusses some of the philosophical aspects
of the world, among them the problem of time. With regard to
time a distinction has to be made. The One is eternal, and so is
the Intellectual Principle (see below), although the latter "con¬
tains” time in it in a "concentrated” way. The third Primal
Hypostasis (see also below), however, The Soul, by its nature
produces things in the sensory world, and for its activity it is a
principle of motion. Where there is motion or change, there
also is time; hence time originates in the Divine Soul. If The
Soul should stop to produce the orders below it, time, too, would
cease to be.
The third Ennead also presents one of the basic themes of the
whole work, that of contemplation. In Chapter 8 of this section,
its author jokingly asserts (although he is serious about his jest)
that all beings, even irrational plants and animals, are striving for
contemplation. This is true particularly of human beings, whose
sole purpose is contemplation, because the goal of contemplation
is the soul’s mystical ascent to The One.
The fourth Ennead deals with man’s soul. Individual human
souls are related to their bodies, though they are superior to the
latter because they are not subject to division as bodies are. Sen¬
sation (Chapter 6) is due to the soul’s association with the body.
The body is under the direction of the soul; it shuns this guidance
and becomes disorganized matter, but if it obeys the soul, it can
attain the highest degree of harmony available for it. As soon as
the soul overcomes corporeal desires and abandons the search
for the multitude of physical objects, because of its immortal
character (Chapter 7) it regains its original tendency toward a
PLOTINUS: ENNEADS 191
return to existence "above,” and even to an existence "beyond.”

The last two Enneads are concerned with the "Primal Hy¬
postases”; hypostases in Plotinus’ unusual terminology does not
mean substances but connotes the ultimate sources of reality.
They are the three divinities (although not three gods); the
absolutely transcendent One and two derivatives, the Intellectual
Principle or Intelligence and The Soul.
The One is above and beyond everything; it is not numerically
one, it is beyond numbers, and it cannot be named in positive
terms. It is Unity and Perfection Itself, The Good. It is the
exlusion of all multiplicity and the denial of distinctions; indeed,
it defies the notion of identity, too. It is everything’s font and
end. From it emanates The Intelligence (Nous), which Itself
is the source of the The Soul. The Divine Soul, in turn, is the
producer of the material order. It is undivided in Itself, yet
divisible in corporeal beings. It is the repository of human souls
and is a bridge between them and The Intelligence.
Through this emerging of bodies from The Soul the cosmic
process of emanations is reversed by the final return of individual
human souls to The One. And thus Plotinus’ work ends with the
restatement of its central theme: that of ultimate reunion of
images with their Archetype, of singles with The Singular, of
men with The Divine.
Saint Augustine: The City of
God
As Augustine reached his fifties, the incredible happened: the

impregnable Roman Empire fell to Barbarian invaders. In 410,
Rome was sacked by the Goths under King Alaric; 20 years
later, when the Bishop of Hippo lay dying, the Vandals crossed
over to Africa. Three years after the disaster of the Eternal City,
Augustine took up his pen to defend Christianity against pagan
accusations. Pagans, wrote Augustine, attempted to attribute the
overthrow of Rome to the Christian religion, and they began to
blaspheme the true God with extreme bitterness. They claimed
that the Christian renunciation of the world, which turned citi¬
zens away from the state, and the desertion of the ancient gods
after Constantine gave the empire over to Christ had brought the
terrible catastrophe upon once-victorious Rome. It took Augus¬
tine 11 years (415-426) to finish this, his most monumental
work, encompassing nearly one thousand pages. But his efforts
were not wasted; the City of God became one of the most in¬
spirational writings of the Middle Ages.
The twenty-two books of the great opus are divided into two
main parts. In the first ten books, Augustine reviews and refutes
in a detailed way the pagan charges against the Church, using in
defense of his case the testimony of such outstanding pagans as
Cicero, Sallust, and Juvenal. In the remaining twelve books, he
presents what one may call his philosophy of history.
The second part of the City of God contends that mankind
192
SAINT AUGUSTINE: THE CITY 6f GOD 193
i
consists of two great "Cities,” that is, camps or societies. By

society Augustine means a "multitude of rational creatures as¬
sociated in a common agreement as to the things which it loves”
(De Civ. Dei, 19, 24). The first four books contain an account
of the origin of these two groups. The second four discuss their
development, and the last four project their destinies. One of
these societies is the City of God (Civitas Dei) or the Celestial
Jerusalem. Its origin goes back to Abel. The other camp is the
City of the World (Civitas Terrena or Societas Diabolica), the
City of Babylon, which was founded by Cain, the murderer.
Although occasionally Augustine seems to identify the City of
the World with Assyria or the Roman Empire in its decadence,
and the City of God with the Christian Church, actually he did
not consider either one as an embodiment of the terrestrial or
the celestial city. Both the heavenly and earthly cities are more
probably spiritual or moral concepts rather than representatives
of any organization. In this life, citizens of the two societies
intermingle.
Someone can be a magistrate, or even an emperor of a
country in this world, yet according to "his heart” be a faithful,
true Christian. Or, again, one may be a church official, yet if he is
actually a "son of pestilence,” spiritually he is an inhabitant of
Babylon. A State in the world is not necessarily entirely corrupt,
although true justice can never be fully realized in any pagan
society.
Members of the two societies are characterized by the
tendencies of their will. Two loves are responsible for the origin
of these camps. Men who love God above everything else are
members of the City of God, which is a spiritual society. On the
other hand, people who have a prevailing desire for the things of
this world and an inordinate self-love in contempt of God are
citizens of Babylon. Because of the sin of Adam, the majority of
mankind belongs to the City of the World. The opposition be-
tween the two camps is final, absolute, and eternal. After this life,
the two groups will be separated forever on the day of the Last
Judgment. Men (and angels) who love God will blissfully
reign eternally with Christ in heaven; the enemies of God will
suffer perpetual rejection by Him and unceasing punishment.
The meaning of universal history is that the two cities are always
at odds, and the Church suffers constant persecution throughout
its existence in this world. But no matter how the various phases
of the struggle between good and evil develop, in the end
Celestial Jerusalem will triumph because "good is imperishable
and victory must always belong to God.”
The City of God had an enormous effect on leaders and think¬
ers for centuries to come. When the emperors Charlemagne
and Otto the Great laid the foundations of the Holy Roman
Empire, they were inspired by Augustine’s work; so were such
varied persons as Roger Bacon, Hobbes, Bossuet, Leibnitz,
Campanella, More, Hegel, and Marx.
/ «
Boethius: The Consolation of

Philosophy
Alternating Prose and Verse, the author of this unpre¬

tentious yet beautiful allegory discusses his personal problems,
which are also those of all mankind. His philosophy leans
heavily on the ancient Greeks, particularly Plato, although
Boethius occasionally shows independent thinking as well. His
questions are perennial, his answers classic. Small wonder that
his book became one of the most popular readings of the Middle
Ages and continues to be a favorite of meditating men.
Book One. Boethius is imprisoned. In his loneliness, he

bewails his changed circumstances: how he was deposed from
his high office and undeservedly incarcerated. Suddenly a fair lady
appears in the dungeon, clothed in a one-piece garment on the
border of which are interwoven ''Pi” and "Theta,” the first
letters of the Greek words "practical” and "theoretical,” indi¬
cating the two main divisions of philosophy. Her stature is con¬
tinually changing: at one moment she looks small, and at
another she seems to reach the heavens. Her eyes are fiery. This
fair lady is Philosophy. No sooner does she appear over Boethius’
head than she orders the muses of poetry, also present in the cell,
to leave immediately. Then she turns to the prisoner and starts
chastising him for his lack of courage. She reminds Boethius of
the fortitude of Socrates and Plato. Boethius reacts to this
scolding by complaining about his suffering in spite of his
195
having followed a just life. He wonders why he is penalized for

defending innocent senators against false accusations and desiring
the safety of the Senate. For his kindness he is now being perse¬
cuted, deprived of all of his possessions, stripped of his honors.
His reputation has been stained forever. And this dishonor befell
him while evildoers prosper. So Boethius raises the crucial ques¬
tion: If God exists, where does evil come from; if there is no
God, what is the source of good? Lady Philosophy reassures him
by reminding him of the font of all things, God, and gently
chides him for not knowing his true self. But she also notices that
Boethius has not yet forgotten the doctrine of Divine Providence.
His noble knowledge of the divine guidance of the universe can
serve now as an initial remedy against his grief.
Book Two. Philosophy reminds Boethius of the true char¬

acter of Fortune: she is a deceiver. Paradoxically, her incessant
changing is her specific way of constancy. She did not treat
Boethius differently from other people; she was just as treach¬
erous when she smiled on him as on anyone else. Nevertheless,
Boethius should balance accounts with Fortune, remembering the
days when she favored him more than she did any other citizen.
The prisoner retorts by saying that, although he cannot deny his
former successes and prosperity, his is the greatest of all suffer¬
ings, since the unhappiest misfortune is to have known a happy
fortune. Mortal men should not seek happiness from without;
they should be content with that which lies within themselves,
answers Philosophy. When Boethius becomes his own master, he
will possess that kind of happiness which Fortune will never be
able to take away from him. For, asserts Philosophy, such things
as riches, power, or fame, all highly prized by men, are actually
of little value. Good fortune leads men away from the straight
path of true good: ill fortune draws most of them to the true
good.
BOETHIUS: THE CONSOLATION OF PHILOSOPHY 197
Book Three. Philosophy continues her discussion. There is

implanted by nature in the minds of men, she says, a desire for
true good, but error leads them astray. All men have a desire for
happiness, which is a state made perfect by the union of all good
things; it is the highest good. But some men have a false idea
about the highest good. They are seeking it in abundant riches or
in high honors or in fame or in the lusts of the flesh, all of which
are in vain; more than that: they are actually harmful.
From whence, then, does true happiness come? In order to be
able to answer this question, Boethius asks Philosophy to invoke
God’s guidance. She obliges. Afterwards, she reveals to her
listener that the highest good consists of the unity of things. God,
Who is Absolute Good, arranges all things for the highest good
which rests in Him. All creatures of free will obey this divine
guidance; hence evil is nothing because God cannot do evil.
Happy, then, is the man who can shake off the chains of matter
and reach the Font of Good.
Book Four. Boethius reiterates his problem: if there exists

a good Governor of the world, how can evil exist and go un¬
punished? Even more vexing for Boethius is the question as to
why evil-doing flourishes, while virtue remains unrewarded and is
even trampled underfoot. In reply, Lady Philosophy assures
Boethius that, if her former pronouncements are unshaken, God
Himself will teach the prisoner the truth: that the good are al¬
ways powerful, whereas the wicked, notwithstanding contrary im¬
pressions, are uncertain and weak. For good and bad are op¬
posites: consequently, if good is powerful, the weakness of evil
must be manifest and plain. In a sense, bad men do not even
"exist.” Just as one may say that a corpse is a dead man, one
really should not call a corpse a man. Likewise, though we may
say that evil men are wicked, they are not men at all as far as
absolute existence is concerned. And, just as a good man’s crown
shall never fail or wither, the evil man will receive his punish¬
ment unfailingly. Happiness is man’s supreme goal. It is the ob-
tainment of the Absolute Good the obtainment of which will be
the reward of the good and wise. Moreover, all good men become
good by virtue of the very fact that they are good.
On the other hand, since everything that exists is one, and
thus the good itself is one, and all that falls away from the good
ceases to exist, evil men cease to be what they originally were.
Their bodies remain human in their forms, indicating that once
they were men, yet in reality and corresponding to their vices
they become brutes. Their vices are the very punishment of the
wicked, while virtue is a reward in itself. The person who loses
his goodness ceases to be a man and turns into a beast, whereas
good men become divine. Boethius confesses to his Fair Visitor
that he is struck with great wonder as to why punishments fall
upon the good, while bad citizens obtain the rewards of virtue.
Philosophy answers with an explanation of the workings of
Divine Providence. The development of the temporal order,
she says, unified in the intelligence of God, is Providence, which
embraces all things equally. The operations of this intelligent
development in time are called Fate. Hence virtuous men should
feel secure, for even among adversities their fortune is good.
Wise men should never complain, because all fortune which
seems difficult either promotes virtue or punishes vices. Once
man overcomes the earth, the stars are his.
Book Five. Boethius expresses his appreciation for Lady

Philosophy’s encouragement and instructions, but he wonders
whether the doctrine of Providence is not bound up with others
like that of chance. Is there not chance in the world? If by
chance we mean a result of random influence produced without
a cause, then the reply is no, says Philosophy. Since God con¬
trols everything, there just is no place for any random happen-
BOETHIUS: THE CONSOLATION OF PHILOSOPHY 199
ing. The universe is guided by Providence; there is no such

thing as chance. The world is governed for the best; meanwhile,
rational beings are endowed with freedom of their will. This
once more raises questions in Boethius’ mind. How can one rec¬
oncile God’s foreknowledge with man’s free will? Philosophy
then explains to him that foreknowledge does not make future
events inevitable. The trouble is that, in the knowledge of all
things, the subject uses its own standard of capability, not that
of the object in question. This is exactly the case here. Human
intellect, being infinitely lower than Divine Intelligence, cannot
grasp the guidance of God’s foreknowledge. That is why men
like Boethius are tormented by doubts. One should realize that,
whereas human reason can see things only from a restricted and
temporal point of view, Divine Intelligence can view everything
from the aspect of ever-present eternity. Things are present to
God even though they are future under the condition of time. He
also knows that they will not occur of necessity.
God can guide beings without disturbing their own natures.
This difference between the human ways of looking at things
and divine foreknowledge is similar to the difference between
the perception of objects by the senses and their perception by
reason. If seen through reason, things become generalized; if
viewed by themselves, they remain particular. Things regarded
from the view of Divine Knowledge are necessary, yet con¬
sidered in themselves they are free. Hence mortal men’s freedom
of judgment remains intact, and laws do not punish or reward
them unjustly since their wills are not bound by necessity. God
eternally watches men’s actions in harmony with their future
natures. Consequently, prayers are never offered up in vain.
Boethius, therefore, should raise his hopes high and pray with
confidence. If he will be honest, his goodness will have an en¬
joining power, for his actions are performed before the eyes of
an omniscient Judge.-
Saint Thomas Aquinas:
Summa Theologiae
Disgusted by the prolification, sterility, and obscurity of con¬

temporary theological treatises, Aquinas decided to produce one
simple, cohesive, substantial, and complete system of Christian
theology based on philosophy. The result of his decision was the
Summa Theologiae. Although Thomas was primarily a theo¬
logian and in his text there is a constant mingling of theology
with philosophy (notwithstanding his own separation of the two
disciplines), the mainly philosophical elements of the work can
be sifted from the context and construed into a system of phi¬
losophy.
The work consists of three parts: Aquinas first considers God
as existing in Himself, then as the beginning and the end of all
things, especially of man, and, finally, as in a Man (Christ)
Who is the Way whereby rational beings approach God.
Part I {Pars Prima), which was written in Paris, discusses

the existence, nature, and attributes of God and of His angels,
together with Gods creation and government of the universe.
In this Part I of the Summa Thomas offers his famous "five
ways" of proving the existence of God: (i) the argument from
motion, (2) * the proof from efficient causes, (3) the argument
from possibility and necessity, (4) the argument from the de¬
grees of perfection, and (5) the proof from order and finality in
the world. These quinque viae (in themselves, none of them an
200
- ' 1
SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS: SUMMA THEOLOGIAE 201
i
entirely genuine idea of Thomas himself) were, from their first

appearance and throughout the centuries following, one of the
most celebrated but also repeatedly criticized propositions of the
Summa Theologiae.
Aquinas wrote Parts I and II between 1266 and 1272; he
composed Part II {Pars Secunda) in Rome. This part is further
divided into two sections. The First Section {Prima Secundae)
analyzes man’s nature and describes morality in general, and
then the Second Section {Secunda Secundae) discusses it in
particular. Famous among its dissertations is Aquinas’ presenta¬
tion of the concept of moral law: eternal law in the form of the
rule of reason implanted in all human beings to enable them to
reach meritoriously their final end, beatitude.
Part III {Pars Tenia), composed in Paris between 1272

and 1273, is, to a great extent, of purely theological character.
It examines the plan of Redemption and Christ’s role in it and
then expounds a theory of the sacraments. On December 6,
1273, after having had a mystic vision at the fourth sacrament,
penance (Question 90), Thomas abandoned writing.
In this monumental opus Aquinas’ plan was to show that the
universe is a revelation of God and, as such, is rational. This
he wanted to do systematically in the form of a great synthesis.
That is why the scholastic method (started by Gerbert of
Aurillac, developed by Peter Abelard through his sic et non
device, and perfected by Alexander of Hales into a tripartite
division of arguments and counteropinion) culminated in the
Summa Theologiae. In Thomas’ great opus, scholastic systemati¬
zation and the intricate method of disputation reached their
zenith. Throughout the more than 3000 questions of his work
Aquinas first proposes a problem in the form of an article. He
then enumerates objections (altogether about 10,000 of them)
against the stated question, next offers proofs from Scripture,
from tradition, and from reasoning, and finally presents the

refutation of the rejected arguments. Part I, which is primarily of
epistemological and metaphysical character, contains 119 ques¬
tions. The First Section of Part II, mostly on matters of ethics,
discusses 114 questions, and the Second Section, preoccupied with
the problem of moral virtues, considers 189 questions. The
Third Part, mainly a Christology, presents 90 questions.
To illustrate the systematic and uniform plan of the Summa,
here is a short excerpt from the First Section of the Second Fart:
Treatise on Habits (Question 49: Of Habits in General, as
to their Substance) (in Four Articles):
"After treating of human acts and passions, we now pass on to

the consideration of the principles of human acts, and firstly of
intrinsic principles, secondly of extrinsic principles, etc. Concern¬
ing habits in general there are four points to be considered:
First, the substance of habits; Second, etc.
Under the first head, there are four points of inquiry: (1)
whether habit is a quality? (2) whether it is a distinct species
of quality? etc.
First Article: Whether Habit Is a Quality?

We proceed thus to the First Article:
Objection 1. It would seem that habit is not a quality. For

Augustine says (qq. 1 xxxiii, qu. 73) this word "habit” is derived
from the verb "to have.” But to have belongs not only to quality,
but also to the other categories: for we speak of ourselves as
having quantity and money and other like things. Therefore
habit is not a quality.
Objection 2. Further, habit is reckoned as one of the pre¬

dicaments. . . .
SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS: SUMMA THEOLOGIAE 203
On the contrary. The Philosopher says in the "Book on the

Predicament” (Categor. vi) that habit is a quality which it is
difficult to change.
I answer that. This word habitus (habit) is derived from

habere (to have). Now habit is taken from this word in two
ways. . . .
Concerning the first, we must observe that to have, as said

in regard to anything that is had, is common to the various
predicaments. And so the Philosopher puts "to have” among the
post-predicaments. . . .
Reply Obj. 1. This argument takes "to have” in the general

sense: for thus it is common to many predicaments, as we have
said.
Reply Obj. 2. This argument takes habit in the sense in which

we understand it to be a medium between the haver and that
which is had: and in this sense it is a predicament, as we have
said.
Second Article: Whether Habit Is a Distinct Species of

Quality?
We thus proceed to the Second Article:

It would seem that habit is not a distinct species of quality,
etc., etc.”
Because of the objective tone and massive character of the

Summa, its style at first glance may seem to be monotonous and
dull. But the author of the magnificent hymn "Adoro te devote,”
a man who on his deathbed analyzed the lyrical Canticle of
Canticles, could not really write in an entirely uninspiring vein.
St. Thomas: Summa Theologia, Vol. 2 translated by the Fathers of the

English Dominican Province (Benziger Brothers 194-/).
Though his style is succinct and precise, bestowing clarity on

difficult and obscure problems embedded in the text, it also shows
strength, pathos, and solid beauty. It is not the individual separate
sentence that plays the important role in the Summa, but rather
the larger unit of the articles. The whole work, in its size, insight,
and concentration, is a philosophical star of first magnitude,
written by a scholar whose sole concern and supreme purpose
was stating, elucidating, and defending the truth itself.
Hobbes: Leviathan
or
the Matter, Form, and Power
of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil
The Name Leviathan was taken from the forty-first Chapter of

the Book of Job. Characteristically, the title page of the original
edition depicts a crowned giant whose body is composed of lesser
human bodies, indicating that Hobbes, in his speculations, turned
the political corpus almost literally into a huge physical body.
When first published in 1651, the book was received with
hostility; it was even burned at Oxford, and Cambridge forced
at least one of its Fellows to recant his "Hobbism.” Before long,
though, Leviathan became one of the great books of political
philosophy.
Introduction. Nature is imitated by man; he can make

an artificial animal. For life is nothing else but a motion of limbs,
the beginning of which is located within one of the principal
parts. After all, the heart is nothing more than a spring, the
nerves are strings, and the joints are so many wheels. But man’s
art can do more, for it can even imitate the most excellent work
of nature, man. It is human art that creates that great artificial
man, the Leviathan, called a Commonwealth or State (in Latin,
Civitas). It is larger and stronger than a natural person because
it was produced for the protection of real men. In this artificial
giant, sovereignty is the soul giving life to the whole body;
officials are its joints; reward and punishment, which attach
every joint to the center of sovereignty, are the nerves; the
205
wealth of its members is its strength; the safety of the citizens

is its business; counselors directing its affairs through their ad¬
vice are the giant’s memory; equity and laws are its artificial
reason and will; cooperation among its members is health;
sedition is sickness; civil war is death. God’s word in creation,
"Let us make man,” is echoed in the production by men of the
Leviathan and is expressed by citizens through covenants. It is
by means of these pacts that this huge body politic is put together
and kept united.
This book (says Hobbes) aims at the description of this
artificial man. To achieve its purpose, it will first consider the
matter and the maker of it, both of which are men; then it
will analyze Commonwealths in general. Part III will present the
idea of a Christian Commonwealth and, finally, will show the
reader what the Kingdom of Darkness is.
Throughout the work our guiding principle will be self-
knowledge, for from the similitudes of our own thoughts and
passions we will be able to learn the thoughts and passions of
other men, and thus the nature of all mankind. This knowledge
is indispensable for one who wants to learn about the govern¬
ment of whole nations.
Part i: Of Man—Chapters 1-2. Man’s thoughts, considered

separately through the operations of his sensory powers, are
representatives of the qualities of objects. After an object is re¬
moved or the eyes are shut, we still retain an image of the thing
seen, though more obscure than the original. This is imagina¬
tion, which, then, is nothing else but decaying sense. The decay¬
ing in imagination, that is, the sense fading, is called memory.
Hence imagination and memory are the same, considered from
different points of view. Memory of many things is called ex¬
perience. The imagination of those who are asleep is referred to
as dreams. While awake but under the influence of fearful
HOBBES: LEVIATHAN 207
1
thoughts, men may see visions. Thoughts caused in man through

words or other signs and connected into affirmations, negations,
or other forms of speech constitute his understanding.
Chapters 3-5. The train of thoughts, or consequence, results
in a mental discourse. Our mental discourse is transferred into
verbal discourse through speech. To the regular uses of speech
also correspond abuses. That is why any person who wants to
obtain true knowledge should examine definitions of former
authors and should either correct them or create new ones. For
words are counters for wise men, who do but reckon by them;
they are the money of fools, who value them as the authority of
an Aristotle or a Cicero or a Thomas.
Speech is man’s most noble invention. Men did not construct
speech because they are rational animals; it was the other way
around: men became rational beings because they invented
speech. Understanding, then, is nothing else but conception
caused by speech. When men are reckoning, that is, adding and
substracting the consequences of generally agreed upon names,
they are reasoning.
Chapters 6-7. There are internal voluntary notions in men,
commonly called the passions; they are either appetites or
aversions.
Every discourse has an end—the forming of a judgment which
is either true or false or doubtful.
Chapter 8. Virtue in general is something that is valued for
eminence. Intellectual virtues naturally consist of one’s swift
wit, or wit acquired through instruction. Contrary to virtues
are their defects, such as pride, fury, and melancholy.
Chapter 9. Knowledge is of two main kinds: it is either
knowledge of facts, based on sense impressions and memory, or it
is science, dependent on inferences.
Chapters 10—11. Man’s power consists of his means for the
attainment of some apparent good. The price given for the use
of his power is his value. The manifestation of the value of a

person is his honoring or dishonoring. There are many types,
insignia, and titles of honor.
The qualities of men which affect their peaceful living to¬
gether we call manners. Unfortunately, mankind’s longing for
peace and unity is disturbed by a restless desire for power in all
men and by competition for wealth and honor. Ignorance in its
diverse forms is also a source of human troubles. A particular
type of fear is that of things invisible; in turn, this fear becomes
the natural seed of religion.
Chapter 12. Religion belongs exclusively to man. Religion
is due to the inquisitive nature of man, for he is always looking
for the causes and the consequences of phenomena. Anxiety over
the future and fear of an invisible Power and its effect on things
are also responsible for the origin of religion. There are two
main types of religions; those of the Gentiles with all of their
absurdities, and those of divine origin, promulgated by Abraham,
Moses, and our Blessed Saviour presenting to us the Kingdom of
God.
From the seed of religion, several entirely different religious
beliefs can originate. Also, if there is a lack of wisdom, sincerity,
or love in the leaders of religions, if they cannot produce mira¬
cles, or if they act in a scandalous way, their religions will be
rejected.
Chapter 13. All men were made equal by nature; there are
only accidental differences among them in regard to their
corporeal abilities or their mental faculties. With regard to their
intellectual powers, they are even more equal than with regard
to physical strength because prudence is but experience which,
given the same length of time, can be acquired by everybody.
But this equality begets hope for the equal attainment of certain
goals. And, if any two men desire a single thing which cannot be
obtained by both of them, envy and hostility will be the result.
f
Thus such equality will lead to division, and division to war.

In society, men expect to be valued by their fellows to the same
extent that they value themselves, and, if they do not receive this
measure of esteem, they will try to destroy the offender unless
there is a higher power watching over them. Thus three factors—
competition, division, and glory—are inducive to war. This ex¬
plains why, in civil states without a supreme power, there is a
war of every man against every other man. This condition of men
does not necessarily imply incessant combat; rather, it is similar
to foul weather, which means not constant showers, but an
unceasing threat of rain or storm. So the nature of war consists
not of actual fighting, but a disposition toward it. The conse¬
quences of war are numerous, among them the impossibility of
industry or of arts or of knowledge; instead of these, constant
fear and danger of violent death dominate human existence.
If anyone objects to these remarks, saying that such a condi¬
tion of mankind never actually existed, we may ask him why
people travel armed, why they lock their doors and their treasure
chests—the presence of police notwithstanding. We may also re¬
fer to the present life of the savages of America. States, because
of their independence, live in a condition of constant jealousy,
as if they were gladiators with weapons pointed at one another.
In a war of every man against every other man, there is nothing
unjust, since where there is no supreme power, there is no law;
where no law, no injustice. There are also, however, passions in
men that incline them to peace as do the Laws of Nature.
Chapter 14. The Right of Nature is each man’s freedom to
protect his own life. A Law of Nature is a precept or general
rule, discovered by reason, by which a man is forbidden to do
anything that will endanger his life or to omit anything by means
of which he can best preserve it. The Fundamental Law of Na¬
ture is to seek peace and follow it. From this follows the Second
Law: that man should lay down his right to all things and be
contented with as much liberty for himself as he would allow for

his fellow man. One can lay aside his rights either by simply
renouncing them or by transferring them to a particular person.
Not all rights, however, are alienable; for example, nobody can
give up his right to self-protection.
The mutual conferring of rights is called a contract. If one of
the contractors satisfies his obligation but permits the other to
perform his part at a determinable later time, then the contract
on his part is called a covenant. No covenant can be made with
God unless God so wishes it through special revelation. Cove¬
nants made out of fear in the mere natural state of man are valid.
An earlier covenant with one person makes void a later covenant
with another. A covenant to accuse oneself, without assurance of
pardon, is also invalid. In order to confirm a covenant, the best
thing to do is to swear by God.
Chapter 15. There are altogether nineteen Laws of Nature,
one of the most important being that men should honor their
covenants; otherwise covenants are in vain. This law is the font
of justice. Injustice is the nonhonoring of a covenant. But before
we can use the terms ''just” and "unjust” some coercive power
must be established that will compel men to keep their cove¬
nants. This power will be represented through the establishment
of a Commonwealth. Two other important laws are the follow¬
ing: When inflicting punishment for injustice, one should not
consider the greatness of the past evil but only the greatness of
the future good; no man is his own judge.
These, then, are the Laws of Nature dictating peace. All of
them can be reduced to a single rule: Do not do that to another
which you do not want to be done to yourself. The Laws of
Nature bind in conscience; they are eternal. The science dealing
with them is the true moral philosophy.
Chapter 16. A person is one whose words or actions are
considered either as his own or as representing the words or
actions of another. When they are considered as his own, he is

called a natural person; when they represent those of another, he
is an artificial person. In the latter case, the man who uses
another’s words or actions is the actor; the owner of the words or
actions is the author. The actor acts by authority. Authority
means a right to perform an act. When an actor makes a cove¬
nant by authority, it binds the author and not the actor himself.
When an actor violates a Law of Nature, being commanded by
an author on account of a former covenant to do so, not he but
the author is the guilty person; yet, if the actor were to disobey
such a command, he would be sinning against the Law of Nature
which forbids this breach of covenant.
A multitude is constituted into one person when, with the
consent of each member of the multitude, it is represented by a
single person. If the representative unit consists of many men,
the voice of the majority must be considered as the voice of them
all. Hence a considerable number of representatives are desirable
in assemblies; otherwise a plurality of voices often cannot be
obtained.
Part 2: Of Commonwealth—Chapter 17. The final cause

or end of a Commonwealth is the security of men. This cannot
be obtained through the Laws of Nature, for they are contrary to
our natural passions, nor can it be obtained from the association
of a small number of men, either individuals or families, nor
even from a great multitude, unless governed by a sufficiently
great power and by that power continuously.
The way to establish a Commonwealth is through the con¬
ferring by men of all their strength and power upon one man or
upon an assembly of men, which may reduce all their wills by a
plurality of voices to one single will. Hence the essence of a
Commonwealth can be defined in the following way: "It is one
person, of whose acts a great multitude, by mutual covenants one
with another, have made themselves every one the author, to the
end that he may use the strength and means of them all, as he
shall think expedient, for their peace and common defense.”
The multitude so united is the great Leviathan, that mortal god
to which we owe under the immortal God our peace and de¬
fense. The one person who has sovereign power is called the
Sovereign, and the rest of the people are his subjects. Sovereign
power can be attained in two ways: either by natural force, called
a Commonwealth of Acquisition and similar to the power used
by a father when he forces his children to submit themselves to
his will, or through the agreement of men, called a Common¬
wealth by Institution, which is a political Commonwealth. We
shall discuss first this political type of Commonwealth.
Chapters 18-20. A Commonwealth is said to be instituted
when everyone in a multitude votes for the authorization of all
the actions and judgments of a single man (or assembly) for
the achievement of a peaceful life amongst themselves and the
protection against enemies. From this institution of a Common¬
wealth are derived all the rights and faculties of the Sovereign.
His powers are absolute. He cannot be accused of injustice by
any subject, since every subject by this institution is the author
of all the actions and judgments of the Sovereign. Among other
things, the Sovereign has dominion over the private property of
the citizens; he also is the Supreme Judge in all controversies.
The Sovereign decides which doctrines are conducive to peace
and which are contrary to it. He leads in wars and negotiates in
peace. He can reward and punish, and he is authorized to estab¬
lish the proper place of men in society.
These, then, are the essential rights of the Sovereign. All of
them are incommunicable and inseparable. This being the nature
of the authority of the Sovereign, men are wrong who claim that
the Sovereign Kings are singulis maiores, that is, of greater power
than any one of their subjects, for they are universis minores, of
less power than all of them together, since "all together”

signifies the person of the Sovereign. Thus this kind of argument
is contradictory in terms.
One may object to the great power of the Sovereign, saying
that it may produce miserable conditions for his subjects. These
adversaries of the Commonwealth should be reminded that
human life can never be without some inconvenience and that
the calamities of a civil war are far more unpleasant than re¬
strictions imposed by laws. Furthermore, they should also keep
in mind that most of the time their troubles originate from their
own restiveness and disobedience.
Depending on the type of sovereignty, there can be but three
kinds of Commonwealths by Institution. Monarchy is the Com¬
monwealth when sovereignty is vested in one man; democracy
is the result when sovereignty is held by an assembly of all
subjects; and, when only some men represent sovereignty, we
speak of an aristocracy. "Tyranny” and "oligarchy” are nothing
but different names for "monarchy” and "aristocracy,” re¬
spectively.
Of these three, monarchy seems to be the best form of govern¬
ment for several reasons. Let us consider two of these reasons.
In a monarchy, the private interest is identical with that of the
public, for the riches, power, and glory of a king arise solely from
the wealth, strength, and reputation of his subjects. Hence, even
if there is a conflict between the private interest of the monarch
and the public interest, the latter does not suffer. On the contrary,
in a democracy or aristocracy, perfidious advice, a treacherous
act, or a civil war can facilitate the accumulation of private
fortunes more than would public prosperity.
Furthermore, a monarch can obtain the best counsel available
in his realm, whereas in an assembly members are chosen mostly
on the basis of wealth rather than for their knowledge; also,
their deliberations are unduly prolonged, and their great number
will prevent discussions in secrecy. Moreover, the resolutions of a

monarch are subject to no one else, whereas the decisions of
assemblies can be revised after the appearance of a few who
were absent at the time of the debate.
In Commonwealth by Acquisition, the other main type,
power is acquired by force. This form of government differs
from Sovereignty by Institution in only one aspect, namely, that
the men who choose their Sovereign do so from fear of one
another, and not from fear of him whom they institute. But the
rights and consequences of Sovereignty are the same in both
instances.
Chapter 21. Let us consider now the liberty of subjects.
Liberty signifies the absence of opposition or external impedi¬
ments to motion. A free man is he who, in the things he is able
to do by his strength and wit, is not hindered from doing as he
wishes.
For the attainment of peace men not only made an artificial
man, which we call a Commonwealth, but they also have made
artificial chains, called Civil Laws, which they fastened to the
lips of their Sovereign as well as to their own ears. With regard
to these bonds, the only liberty that subjects can enjoy is the
freedom granted to them by their Sovereign, in view of the
latter’s unlimited power. Citizens have liberty consisting of the
choice of abode, of diet, and of trades. Hence the liberty so
frequently mentioned in the writings of historians or political
philosophers is not the liberty of the individual but the liberty
of the Commonwealth.
But what are the particulars of the liberty of a subject?
Keeping in mind that Sovereignty by Institution is by covenant
of every one to every one, and Sovereignty by Acquisition is by
covenant of the vanquished to the victor or the child to the
parent, we may declare in general that every subject has liberty
in all things the right to which cannot be transferred by cove-
nant. This, first of all, means the subject’s right to the defense
of his own body. He cannot be bound to hurt himself upon
orders by the Sovereign, and he can resist those who justly want
to kill him if so commanded by the Sovereign. Furthermore, a
subject does not have to fight in a war, provided that he sub¬
stitutes for himself a mercenary. But the greatest opportunity for
the liberty of subjects is granted by the silence of the law.
Whenever the Sovereign has prescribed no rule, the subject can
act or refrain from action according to his own discretion. If a
subject has a controversy with his Sovereign concerning any of
his rights, he may sue.
Since the purpose of citizen obedience is protection, the obli¬
gation of subjects to their Sovereign lasts only as long as, and
no longer than, the power by which the Sovereign is able to
protect his subjects. For the natural right of men to defend
themselves cannot be given up by covenant. In particular, this
means that subjects are absolved of their obedience when taken
prisoners of war, since the victim may subject himself to his
captor by covenant, this being for him the only way to protect
himself.
Obligation to obey also ceases when the Sovereign resigns his
mandate both for himself and for his heirs, or when the subject
is banished and is in exile, or finally, when in war the Sovereign
renders himself subject to the victor; then the subject’s obliga¬
tion is transferred to the victor.
Chapters 22-24. There are different kinds of systems of
people. These systems resemble the different parts of the human
body, and they indicate a number of men joined together by a
common interest.
Systems are regular when one man or an assembly of men is
constituted to be the representative of the whole. All others are
irregular. An irregular system has no representative; it consists
only of a gathering of people without a particular plan, ac-
cidentally united by their similar inclinations. Such are Leagues

of Subjects, which in a Commonwealth are usually unnecessary.
Systems are governed by public ministers who are appointed
by the Sovereign in any affairs with authority to represent the
Commonwealth. Commonwealths are physically maintained by
the commodities of the sea and of the land, properly distributed
and prepared for the public.
Chapters 25-28. There is a difference between command
and counsel. A command is based exclusively on the will of the
one who gives it, and it is for his benefit. Counsel is based on
reasoning presented to show the benefits of it, and it is given
for the benefit of other men.
Laws are commands. Civil Laws are laws that men are bound
to observe because they are members of a Commonwealth. The
legislator in all Commonwealths is exclusively the Sovereign,
be he a monarch or an assembly of men. The Law of Nature
and Civil Law mutually encompass each other; they are not
different kinds, but different parts of law. Since a law is a com¬
mand and since a command consists of a written declaration or of
some other adequate manifestation of the will of the commander,
a counsel of the Commonwealth can become law only when it is
made public. An unwritten law that binds all the subjects with¬
out exception is a Law of Nature; these laws need no proclama¬
tion since they are contained in this fine sentence: "Do not that
to another which you think is unreasonable to be done by another
to yourself.”
A sin is not only a transgression of a law, but also any con¬
tempt of the legislator. It may consist not only of commission,
but of omission as well. Even an intention can be sinful. On the
other hand, a crime is a sin extrinsically committed through a
word or deed. A mere intention is not a crime, although it is a
sin. A sin can be judged by God alone, Who can see the thoughts
of men, but a crime is discernible by men also and may be judged
by them. Where there is no Civil Law, there can be no crime.

The source of a crime is some defect of the understanding, some
error in reasoning or the force of passions. With regard to the
Law of Nature, ignorance is no excuse, whereas ignorance of the
Civil Law may sometimes excuse men from responsibility.
A punishment is an evil inflicted upon a person by public
authority in order to improve his obedience after an unlawful
transgression. Hence private injuries, such as being hurt while
murdering someone else, are not punishments either. There are
five main types of punishments: corporeal and pecuniary punish¬
ments, ignominy, imprisonment, and exile. Rewards are due
either to contracts or to an act of grace. Benefits bestowed by a
Sovereign upon a subject to placate him are not rewards.
Chapters 29-30. History shows that Commonwealths can
perish. This being the case, let us examine what can cause their
dissolution from within, for Commonwealths can disintegrate
not only through external violence but also through faults in
their manner of establishment. Infirmities of a Commonwealth
arise if it was imperfectly instituted. Such imperfections are,
first, the lack of absolute power, which is an indispensable neces¬
sity for the maintenance of peace and the defense of the Com¬
monwealth; and, second, the opinion that private persons are
entitled to judge what is good or evil for them and are allowed
to rely upon the dictates of their conscience. This is a false
doctrine because, in a Commonwealth, Civil Law is the public
conscience by which a subject is supposed to be guided, not his
private conscience. Equally detrimental for the survival of a
Commonwealth is the thesis that the Sovereign Power is subject
to Civil Laws. This is a contradiction in terms, for to be subject
to Civil Laws means to be subject to the Commonwealth, which
is represented by the Sovereign himself. Furthermore, it is false
to claim that men have an absolute right to their private
property. Certainly the property of every man should be pro-
tected against his fellow citizens, but the Sovereign’s right to the
property of every subject must be absolutely maintained. Mo¬
nopolies and the overpopularity of some citizens are also diseases
of the state. Total dissolution of a Commonwealth comes, how¬
ever, through a final victory by the enemy.
It is the office of the Sovereign to secure the safety of his
people; he is obliged by the Law of Nature to perform this duty
and to render an account to God concerning his performance.
Chapter 31. In order to know civil duties in their entirety,
we have first to know the Laws of God. Without such knowl¬
edge, we may either transgress the commandments of the Com¬
monwealth through our fear of offending God, or, in case of too
much civil obedience, we may offend the Divine Majesty. Before
answering the question of what the Laws of God are, though, we
need to state that, strictly speaking, the only subjects of the
Kingdom of God are rational things. God reigns over them; He
is their Ultimate Sovereign, not because He created them but be¬
cause of His omnipotence.
What, then, are the Divine Laws, or the dictates of natural
reason, for men? In general, they are identical with the Laws of
Nature. In particular, they are justice, equity, mercy, and hu¬
mility. They are also laws requiring the worship of God.
Transgression of these Divine Laws is punished in a natural
way by the consequences; thus, for example, intemperance is
punished with disease, cowardice with oppression, negligent
government with rebellion, and rebellion with slaughter.
Part 3: Of a Christian Commonwealth—Chapters 32-33.

The Word of God delivered by prophets is the main principle
of a Christian Commonwealth. This does not mean, however,
that we should discard our natural reason because Divine Revela¬
tion does not contain anything contrary to human thought.
Chapters 34-36. Terms used in the books of Holy Scripture

have to be clarified so that they may convey to our minds their
proper meanings. A most important term, the correct connota¬
tion of which we must discover, is the expression "the Kingdom
of God.” Ecclesiastical writers use it to signify eternal happiness,
but the Scripture uses it to indicate a kingdom properly named.
In other words, the Kingdom of God is a civil kingdom. By the
"Word of God” we mean, using the term in a strict sense, not a
grammatical part of speech, not a vocabulum, but a sermo (or in
Greek, logos) or a discourse. Metaphorically, the term indicates
the power and the decrees of God, as well as the effect of His
power. But it also indicates both the dictates of God and the
dictates of reason. The name "prophet” designates either a
prolocutor (that is, a man speaking for God to men or on behalf
of men to God) or a foreteller of things to come.
Chapter 37. Miracles are signs indicating what the Almighty
is about to perform, or a confirmation of His Commandments, or
a procurement of credit for God’s messenger. No creature, not
even an angel, can perform a miracle—only the Creator Him¬
self. One must beware of false miracles.
Chapters 38-42. The terms "eternal life” and "hell” are also
important, for they signify the reward and punishment of God’s
Kingdom, as well as the concepts of redemption and salvation.
The term "Church” is the synonym for a Christian Common¬
wealth. Since the civil Commonwealth consists of Christian men,
temporal and spiritual governments should coincide. Therefore
there should be no other government in this life but temporal,
and the Governor for both civil and ecclesiastical matters must
be one person; otherwise, there will be friction and civil war
between the Church and the State, between the Sword of Justice
and the Shield of Faith.
According to the Law of Nature, this Supreme Pastor is the
Civil Sovereign. But who is he according to the Scripture? In

order to answer this question we should first look at the Old
Testament. There we can see that Abraham, Moses, the High
Priests, and Kings (whosoever had Sovereignty of the Common¬
wealth among the Jews) also had the Supreme Authority in
matters pertaining to divine worship and represented God’s
person. After the coming of Christ into this world, He revealed
Himself (as we find in the New Testament) as an Eternal King,
although His Kingdom is not of this world and His authority is
subordinate to that of His Heavenly Father. Thus one and the
same God is one Person as represented by Moses, but another
Person as represented by His Son, the Christ. The Saviour left
the Power Ecclesiastical to the Apostles; this power consists of
teaching, to make men brothers and to have faith in Christ, but
it does not mean power to command. Christ has left all lawful
authority to Princes, Christian as well as infidel. The Pastoral
Authority of Sovereigns is based on Divine Right, that of other
pastors merely on civil right. Hence Christian Kings have the
right to preach, baptize, administer the Sacrament of the Lord’s
Supper, consecrate temples, and ordain pastors in their do¬
minions. And these rights belong to all Sovereigns, whether
monarchs or assemblies, for they are representatives of the
Church because a Church and a Commonwealth of Christian
people are the same. This opinion is challenged by the Popes
of Rome, who claim universal power over all Christendom for
themselves. Their claim is defended in Cardinal Bellarmine’s
work, entitled De Summo Pontifice, but the five books of this
treatise can be refuted from reason and Scripture.
Chapter 43. A special problem in a Christian Common¬
wealth is the question of obedience whenever there is a conflict
between the commandments of God and men. But this difficulty
can easily be solved for those who can distinguish between what
i
9
is necessary and what is unimportant for our salvation. All that

is necessary for reception into the Kingdom of God is obedience
to the Law of God and faith as expressed in one article: Jesus
is the Christ that is King. In case the Sovereign is an infidel, his
Christian subjects must still obey him because that is the Law of
God. Seeing their subjugation to his will, the infidel King will be
reasonable enough not to persecute his Christian subjects.
Part 4: Of the Kingdom of Darkness—Chapters 44-45. Be¬

sides Divine and human Sovereign Powers, the Scripture re¬
peatedly mentions the Kingdom of Satan, the Principality of
Beelzebub over demons. The darkest part of the Kingdom of
Satan is among those who do not believe in Christ. There are
four causes for spiritual darkness: ignorance of the Scriptures,
acceptance of heathen demons and idols, Greek philosophy, and
the mingling of heathen tenets with uncertain traditions. The
main errors, following abuse of the Scriptures, are the beliefs
that the Pope is the Vicar of Christ in the present Church and
that pastors form the clergy in contrast to the rest of the people,
the laity. Other errors in the Roman Church are the belief in
transsubstantiation and the doctrine of purgatory. In addition,
the Church is full of relics of the Gentile religion. They appear
in the form of holy pictures, canonization of saints, the designa¬
tion of the Popes as Pontifices, and so forth.
Chapter 46. The trouble with Greek philosophy, particularly
with Aristotelian metaphysics, is that the various Schools take
it for supernatural philosophy and mingle it with theology. In
his political theory, Aristotle falsely teaches that all forms of
Commonwealths, except those of a popular character, are
tyrannies and that in a well-ordered Commonwealth, not men,
but laws, are supposed to govern.
Chapter 47. Who benefits from these errors? Because he who
benefits is the true author and because we know their false

doctrines of infallibility and of the exemption of the clergy, be¬
cause we see all of their dark practices, such as clerical celibacy,
mouth-to-ear confession, and canonization of saints, we may
declare that the authors of all spiritual darkness are the Pope and
the Roman clergy.
Descartes: Meditations on
First Philosophy
Ever since Descartes published his most important work,

Meditations on First Philosophy, first in Latin and then in
French, philosophy has not been the same. He presented these
treatises as meditations on six consecutive days, followed by a
lengthy appendix containing objections by groups of theologians
and philosophers, as well as noted individual thinkers including
Grassendi and Hobbes, and with them changed the course of
Western philosophy. From then on, reality was usually ap¬
proached from the standpoint of self-consciousness, as we see
reflected in the systems of Berkeley, Malebranche, Kant, Fichte,
Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre. This is why the work is
of tremendous importance.
In the First Meditation, Descartes enumerates the reasons
why everything, especially material things, should be doubted.
The basic reason is that a universal doubt delivers man from all
kinds of prejudices and secures for the mind a detachment from
the senses. It also excludes unnecessary further doubts concern¬
ing certain things, the truth of which has already been proved.
Specifically, beliefs have to be rejected that depend on one’s
sense-reports, among them one’s belief in the existence of his
own body. Here, precisely, he has to question the validity of his
ideas representing something outside of themselves, that is,
representing "objective reality.” These ideas cannot be absolutely
reliable; nothing testifies with absolute certainty to the truth of
223
their representations—otherwise one would not be mistaken

with regard to sense impressions. Likewise, imagination and
memory frequently can mislead man. Concepts not originated
outside of one’s mind but born with him, such as mathematical
concepts, also have to be questioned since it is possible to err in
mathematical matters too. The only reason for one’s belief in his
concepts is a supposition that a benign Deity would not let him
be deceived. But if this is not the case, he might just as well sup¬
pose that he is repeatedly deceived by a malevolent demon who
can penetrate man’s thinking.
In the Second Meditation, the mind recognizes that, no matter
how universally it has to reject the existence of everything else,
it must acknowledge the fact of its own existence. This fact is of
great importance. The mind arrives at this conclusion by becom¬
ing aware of the fact that the self is something. And if the mind
is deceived by a malicious spirit, then it still exists; otherwise it
could not have been deceived. One cannot be nothing as long as
he thinks that he is something. The proposition "I am” must
necessarily be true each time it is pronounced, or at least mentally
conceived.
But what is man? A thinking thing. And what is a thinking
thing? A something which doubts, denies, affirms, feels, and
wills. This is so because the self is a being which doubts every¬
thing, which affirms its own existence and denies that of others,
which hates to be deceived yet wishes to know more. Despite
this much knowledge about the self, one might think that
corporeal objects are more distinctly known than the mind
itself. But is this really the case? It is not. For example, let us
take a piece of wax. It is known through its taste, color, odor,
and so on. Yet, when it melts near fire, all the qualities enu¬
merated above are altered. Whatever remains unchanged, an
extended flexible being, is known by one’s mind and is known
DESCARTES: MEDITATIONS ON FIRST PHILOSOPHY 225
only because there is someone to know. But if it is man’s under¬

standing that knows objects outside of the self, and if it is not his
senses or his imagination that knows these things, then nothing
can be easier for man to know than his own mind.
In the Third Meditation, the question is raised again whether
any of the objects of which one has an idea within himself exists
outside of himself. It is rediscovered that, until this moment,
it was due to a mere blind impulse that things existed outside of
man. But now another method of inquiry will be introduced.
It is based on the assumption that there must be at least as much
reality in the efficient and total cause as there is in its effect.
Consequently, something cannot proceed from nothing; like¬
wise, that which is more perfect cannot proceed from the less
perfect. Now, if the objective reality in any of man’s ideas is
clearly given the impression that it is not in man’s self and,
consequently, that one cannot be the cause of it, then it follows
that one is not alone in the world; there is another being which
is the cause of this concept. And, indeed, there are ideas in the
mind that represent corporeal and inanimate things. Neverthe¬
less, because they are merely certain modes of substances and
because man himself is a substance, they might be contained in
one’s self eminently. But this is not true with regard to yet one
more idea—the idea of God, the idea of a Perfect Being, which
could not come from one’s self since it contains more "objective
reality” than any other idea and the less perfect cannot generate
the more perfect. Hence the idea of God in the human mind
must have been infused into the mind by God Himself.
Furthermore, man’s existence is a contingent one and there¬
fore has to be conserved each moment of its existence. After all,
the distinction between creation and conversation is merely a
mental distinction; in reality, they are the same. Consequently,
there must be a God to conserve man at each moment of his
existence. And since there is a God, a Being possessing all the

supreme perfections, He cannot be a deceiver because deception
would proceed from a defect.
The Fourth Meditation is devoted mainly to an investigation
of truth and falsity. It is an inquiry into the reliability of man’s
faculties, which were implanted into him by a benevolent Su¬
preme Being. But if this Supreme Being cannot deceive man,
and yet man is capable of erring, how can his shortcoming in
going astray be explained in view of the fact that he has received
these faculties from an All Perfect Being to Whom any fraud is
alien? The answer is that one should never consider creatures
separately but should view all of God’s creation together. From
this it follows that a thing, when regarded in itself, in separation
from others, may look imperfect; considered in coherence with
the rest of the universe, however, it can be found to be perfect.
This separate view of things, then, might be one source of error.
The unified view of the universe might also be an assurance of
one’s own existence, just as much as that of other things. Since
God, because of His infinite power, may have produced a multi¬
tude of things, even if one knows with certitude his own ex¬
istence and that of God, he is not necessarily mistaken when he
thinks of other beings as well.
But the chief source of errors is the fact that mistakes depend
on a combination of two causes: namely, on the faculty of rea¬
son and free will. Since the formation of judgments is not only
a matter of the operation of our finite intellect, but also an
operation of the will (inasmuch as it is man’s power of choice
to give assent whenever convincing evidence is present or to
dissent when such evidence is absent), whenever the will agrees
to the acceptance of seeming or feeble evidence, man is erring.
Since one’s free will is an unlimited power, there is great danger
of forming false judgments. We should, therefore, through re¬
peated meditations, impress upon our memory that we should
always restrain our will from forming judgments unless the mat¬
ter is clearly and distinctly represented by the understanding.
The conclusion, then, of the fourth day’s Meditation is that one
should separate things which he understands only confusedly
from matters that he conceives with clarity, for every distinct
conception is not nothing but something; hence it has God as
its Author, and God—let it be repeated over and over—is
supremely perfect and hence can never deceive man. Therefore,
whenever one’s attention is devoted to things perfectly under¬
stood, man has an assurance that they are true.
In the Fifth Meditation, an attempt is made to remove the
general doubt concerning material existence that was assessed
during the previous meditations. But in order to do so, God’s
existence has to be reaffirmed. In addition to the two proofs
previously presented, this is done by means of a third argument.
We can arrive at this third proof by first investigating the essence
of material things.
A scrutiny into the concepts of material things—independently
of the question of whether they exist outside of us or not—will
reveal that we can discover in ourselves a multitude of ideas
about certain things which cannot be fancied as being pure
negations even though they may have no existence outside of
our mind. This investigation will also reveal that these ideas are
endowed with necessary and immutable natures. A good example
of the case in question is the concept of a triangle. Although we
may never have experienced such a figure of our mind, its idea,
nevertheless, possesses a determinate and eternal essence which,
for instance, can be demonstrated by an analysis of the properties
of a triangle: that its three angles are equal to two right angles
and the like. These essential characteristics of the concepts of
things are not invented by us but by necessity pertain to them.
And this is more true since one cannot legitimately object that
the idea of a triangle was conceived by us on account of a sense
impression; after all, we can form in our mind a great number

of figures of which there are no equivalents in the world.
Now, since all that we know as clearly and distinctly belong¬
ing to things really do pertain to them, we can similarly claim
that we know clearly and distinctly that an eternal existence
pertains to the nature of God—hence God does exist. How does
this consequence follow from the previous statement? It follows
if we realize that in God existence can no more be separated
from His essence than the characteristics of a triangle can be
separated from its essence, or the idea of a mountain from the
concept of a valley. Of course, it might be objected that we could
imagine a winged horse, yet such an animal does not really exist,
or that we cannot conceive of a mountain without a valley, yet
there is not necessarily any mountain or valley in existence al¬
though their concepts are inseparable from each other. Hence,
just because we cannot conceive of a God without existence, it
does not follow that God actually exists. But this objection can be
refuted by making a distinction. Whereas it is in our power to
think of horses either with wings or without wings, this is not the
case in thinking about God. Having presupposed that God pos¬
sesses all possible perfections, existence is not merely inseparable
from the concept of God; He really must exist; otherwise He
would be an absolute Perfect Being lacking its supreme perfec¬
tion—real existence—and this certainly would be a contradiction
in terms. In the case of God, we do not merely conceptually draw
an attribute—existence—out of the essence of a being, but the
very existence of God, by necessity and from without, determines
the way of thinking in us. And now that we know that God
really exists, we can obtain the knowledge of an unlimited num¬
ber of things as well.
The Sixth Meditation goes on to inquire into the existence of
material things that at least exist, such as the objects of pure
mathematics, because of their clear and distinct perception. We
can also obtain knowledge of things as being real. Nevertheless,

we must be careful in doing so, for we must realize that such
knowledge is obtained through imagination and through the
operation of the senses. Now, imagination has to be differentiated
from pure intellection and not be considered as a necessary ele¬
ment of our nature, because even without imagination we would
ever remain the same as we are now while endowed with it.
With regard to the senses, they are the indispensable and natural
apparatus of our body. Now, nature teaches us that we are not
only dwelling in our body, but also are very closely united to it
and seemingly composed with it into a single unit. But in fact
there is a considerable difference between mind and body; the
body is by nature always divisible, whereas the mind is al¬
together indivisible. Because man, then, is composed of mind
and body, his composite nature must be, at least sometimes, a
source of deception, for a great number of errors inevitably
succeed from the senses. Fortunately, though, our nature is
properly equipped with the means for avoiding such mistakes.
This being true, we may say in conclusion that we should
consider everything that has been said before about the existence
of God and His goodness, about the existence of self and about
the existence of our body and the bodies surrounding us, about
the character of our faculties. Such a consideration may lead us
to declare, on the one hand, that we should not doubt all the
matters which the senses seem to teach us, and, on the other
hand, that we should always be aware that our life is frequently
affected by errors regarding individual objects. Consequently, we
should admit the frailty of our nature, acknowledging and keep¬
ing in mind the basic purpose of these Meditations: that the
most certain and most evident facts for us are the knowledge of
our mind and of God.
Locke: An Essay Concerning
Human Understanding
Locke composed his Essay while a political refugee in Holland.

The work was first published in 1690, 2 years after his return
to England. It has been considered ever since as the first ap¬
pearance of a major epistemological theory of Empiricism.
Book One: Of Innate Notions—Chapter 1. Since it is under¬

standing that places man above other sensible beings, understand¬
ing itself should be a subject for inquiry. Hence it is the purpose
of this book to study the origin, extent, and certainty of human
knowledge, together with the foundations and degrees of belief,
opinion, and assent. This inquiry will use the following method.
First, it will analyze the origin of notions of which man is
aware.
Second, the book will examine the validity of our ideas.
Third, our inquiry will penetrate into the grounds and nature
of faith and opinion. It will also study the reasons and the degrees
of assent.
The resulting knowledge of our mental capacity will serve as
a useful cure, on the one hand, against intellectual laziness, and,
on the other hand, against skepticism.
As a word of caution and as an apology for its frequent use,
we may call our reader’s attention to the term "idea.” In this
treatise, it will signify phantasm, notion, species, or anything
else which can concern our thinking.
Chapters 2-4. Innatism is wrong. Those who cite a universal
230
LOCKE: AN ESSAY 231
agreement of mankind regarding certain principles as being nec¬

essarily born with us are in error. Such alleged universal agree¬
ment is insufficient evidence about the origin of the concepts in
question. Moreover, there just are no universally agreed upon
principles, since children and mentally retarded people do not
know the principles which are usually cited as an indication of
the presence from birth of ideas in our mind. The very learning
process of children refutes the existence of inborn concepts in
the human intellect. Furthermore, if our mind were to possess
such ideas, they would be the most forceful and clearest im¬
pressions, whereas actually they are the least known.
With regard to moral maxims, the following considerations
can be offered against their inborn character: first, faith and
justice are not recognized as principles by all men; second, the
validity of moral rules has to be proved, and hence moral rules
are not innate; third, virtue is generally practiced simply be¬
cause it is profitable; fourth, whole nations reject several moral
rules. And, finally, those who advocate innatism do not tell us
what these allegedly inborn principles are.
Of course, it is beyond any doubt that we have ideas; an idea,
while we think, is the object of our understanding. The question
remains, however: Where do our concepts come from?
If any idea can be supposed to be innate, the idea of God
would certainly be one, since it is hard to imagine the existence
of inborn moral principles without an innate idea of a Supreme
Lawmaker. Yet history tells us a contrary story; whole nations,
both primitive and civilized, have been found without a clear
concept of a personal God. Furthermore, were the idea of a God
found to be imprinted on our minds, how could we explain that,
even in the same country under one and the same name, men
have quite different and often quite contrary conceptions of their
Maker? The fact is that no idea of the Divinity is born with us;
the concept slowly develops in our minds.
Whence, then, comes the opinion of innate principles? The
answer is simple; it is due to intellectual laziness. Whenever men

have found some general propositions that could not be doubted
as soon as they were understood, as an easy solution they had
simply declared these ideas to be inborn.
Book Two: Of Ideas—Chapter i. In order to solve the

problem of the origin of human knowledge, let us first suppose
that the mind initially is nothing but a white paper, void of all
characters. Whence do "inscriptions,” that is, ideas, start to ap¬
pear on it? They come from experience. In experience there are
two sources of concepts: sensation and reflection. There are no
other principles of our knowledge. Either our ideas are received
when our sense organs convey to us the impressions of outside
objects, or they are due to reflection, which consists of the per¬
ception of the operation of our mind on already received ideas.
Sensation gives us ideas of qualities; it furnishes us with concepts
of color, size, temperature, and so on. Reflection endows us with
ideas of thinking, willing, comparing, and the like. A simple ob¬
servation of the development of our knowledge testifies to the
truth of the above statement, that our ideas enter into our minds
through the two ways of sensation and reflection, exclusively.
Children’s mental development corroborates the findings of our
own introspection; the more a child becomes familiar with, his
environment, the more objects he has access to and the more he
seems to wonder and reflect about them, the more his knowledge
increases.
Chapters 2-4. But what kinds of ideas do we possess? All of
our concepts are either simple or complex. A simple idea is one
that cannot be separated into several ideas because it is "un¬
compounded”; it contains but one uniform appearance. Such an
idea is, for example, the coldness of a piece of ice or the white¬
ness of a lily. Several simple ideas—for example, those of taste,
smell, sound, color, and touch—are affected by one sense. Among
LOCKE: AN ESSAY 233
these ideas, the solidity received by touch is of a basic corporeal

quality. It is identical neither with the space occupied by bodies
nor with the hardness of objects. On solidity depend impulses,
resistance, and protrusion.
Chapters 5-7. Certain concepts result from the operations of
two or more senses, such as the ideas of extension, rest, and mo¬
tion. Again, some ideas originate in reflection, but several notions
are born out of the combined activities of both sensation and
reflection. Among others, these are the ideas of pleasure and
pain, of existence, unity, and power.
Chapters 8-9. With regard to the qualities of objects, we
have to distinguish between primary and secondary ones. Primary
qualities are those which are completely inseparable from ob¬
jects, such as extension, figure, solidity, nobility, and motion. In
contrast, secondary qualities, as such, are not in the objects them¬
selves, but in the observer; they are the powers of the primary
qualities which cause us to perceive characteristics such as colors,
tastes, and smells. Hence primary qualities resemble the features
of objects of reality, whereas our concepts of secondary qualities
do not. The world as we perceive it is not the actual world, but
the world as it is presented to us by our senses.
Chapters 10-11. The faculty of the mind further enabling
it to gain knowledge is retention. It operates in two ways:
through contemplation, which keeps the idea in actual view for
a while, and through memory, which revives ideas that have
been temporarily laid aside. Remembering, the mind does not
merely recall passively the ideas it has known before; it is active
during the process. Memory in intellectual creatures is an in¬
dispensable power. It has two defects, though—oblivion and
slowness. Since it is not enough to have a confused idea of things
in general, we are also endowed with the power of discerning.
This faculty of distinguishing enables us to perceive two con¬
cepts as being the same or different. The evidence and the certi-
tilde of several basic propositions depend, then, on this particular

faculty of ours. Our mind is also able to compare and to com-
pound simple ideas into complex ones.
Chapter 12. When two or more simple ideas are composed,
a complex idea is the result. Such are the concepts of beauty, a
man, an army, the universe. Whereas the mind is wholly passive
in the reception of all its simple ideas, it plays an active role both
in the formation of complex ideas and in viewing two ideas
simultaneously without uniting them, thus forming the ideas of
relation. The mind, through abstraction, can also actually con¬
struct general ideas. The intellect can separate or unite, repeat
or compare, simple ideas, thus producing new complex con¬
cepts; yet it cannot invent or destroy single ideas. The mind can
never have any ideas unless it first experiences them.
Complex ideas,, although their variety is endless, can all be
reduced to three main types: modes, substances, and relations.
Modes are complex ideas which do not subsist in themselves but
are considered as dependencies of substances. There are two kinds
of modes: simple and mixed. Substances are combinations of
simple ideas which represent distinct particular things subsisting
in themselves. Finally, the last type of complex ideas is relations,
consisting of the comparison of one idea with another.
Chapters 13-20. A closer look at simple modes reveals to us
that, although they are modifications of complex ideas, they are
actually different from them and constitute a distinct type. They
are the ideas of space, figure, place, and vacuum. The idea of
duration has its own simple modes; they are hours, days, months,
and years. The simplest and most universal idea is that of num¬
ber. Its simple modes are the most distinct of modes: every
variation, even the slightest one, which is a unit, is entirely
distinct from the next one. Through numbers we measure every¬
thing which is measurable by us, especially expansion and dura¬
tion. In addition to the simple modes of infinity and some less
significant ones, the modes of thinking are of importance. They
t
LOCKE: AN ESSAY 235
are remembrance, recollection, reverie, attention, study, and

dreaming. Among the most significant simple modes are pleasure
and pain. For just as the bodily sensations practically never occur
in themselves, so too perceptions of the mind are always ac¬
companied by pleasure and pain; being simple ideas, they can¬
not be defined or described. It is with reference to pain or
pleasure that things are good or evil. Furthermore, our passions
turn on pleasure and pain as well as on good and evil, as doors
turn on their hinges.
Chapters 21-22. The change of ideas constantly observed by
the mind leads it to that idea which we call power. Power is
twofold; it is able either to make or to receive any changes. The
former is called active power; the latter, passive power. The
concept of active power can best be obtained, not from bodies,
but from reflection on the operation of our minds. From con¬
sideration of the extent of this power of the mind over our
actions, we arrive at the ideas of liberty and necessity. Will is a
power, and so is liberty; hence liberty belongs not to the will, as
some people claim, but rather to the agent. Freedom consists in
our ability to act or not to act according to our choice.
In contrast to simple modes, which consist only of simple
ideas of the same kind, there are also mixed modes. They are
complex ideas consisting of several combinations of simple ideas
of different kinds. Such are the ideas of obligation, prevarication,
and, in general, most of the concepts of ethics, law, theology, and
the sciences. These mixed modes are produced by means of ob¬
servation, invention, and explanation of names.
Chapters 23-24. Among our complex ideas the most im¬
portant is the concept of substance. We form this concept be¬
cause, in our experience, many simple ideas constantly occur
simultaneously. Since it is hard to imagine that these simple
ideas can exist in themselves, we assume that they subsist in
some substrate, and it is this alleged substrate which we call
substance. We have only a vague idea of these substances; actu-
ally, we do not know what substances are. For us, a substance is

something spiritual or material, supporting simple ideas and the
mental or physical qualities we perceive concerning them. This
handicap of ours results in our uncertitude about the true nature
of reality. All our simple ideas are real because they are received
from experience, for our mind cannot produce them, and thus
they have a foundation in reality conforming with the nature of
things. However, not all ideas are proper representations of na¬
ture. Consequently, we must admit that, whereas some of our
concepts inform us correctly about the outside world, other ideas,
due either to sensations or to reflection, are improper representa¬
tions of reality.
Chapters 25-28. In addition to perceiving the simple or com¬
plex character of ideas, the mind can also see that ideas are re¬
lated to each other. All things are capable of relations. Relations
terminate in simple ideas. Interestingly enough, the ideas of
relations often are clearer than those of the subjects related. The
most comprehensive among relations are cause and effect. An¬
other common type of relations is identity and diversity. It is
personal identity in which are founded all the rights of reward
and punishment. In addition to these, obviously there exist an
almost infinite number of relations.
Chapters 29-33. Besides modes, substances, and relations,
complex ideas are also divided into clear and obscure, distinct
versus confused, concepts. Moreover, ideas in general may be
classified as real or phantastic and adequate or inadequate, as well
as true or false. Finally, one more characteristic of ideas must be
mentioned: their mutual association. This can be natural, and oc¬
casionally it can then cause trouble in distorting people s think¬
ing, even to the degree of madness.
Book Three: Of Words—Chapters 1—5. There is a close

connection between ideas and words. Hence words deserve care-
LOCKE: AN ESSAY 237
ful study. Man, because of his social nature, was so created by

God that he is able to use language for communication with his
own kind, to use words not only as signs of ideas, but also as
general signs comprising several particular things. Now, all
things that exist in reality are particulars. Yet through abstrac¬
tion, after eliminating details of objects, we can form general
ideas and express them in words.
Chapters 6-11. One of these abstract ideas is that of sub¬
stance. Analysis shows that, actually, this idea has a double
reference; it refers either to the nominal essence or to the real
essence of a substance. The former indicates the group of those
qualities of an object that constantly go together. The latter con¬
notes the very nature of the thing, because of which the object
possesses its specific properties. The nominal essence expresses
the properties of a substance; the real essence explains the reason
for the presence of these properties within the thing. Unfortu¬
nately, human intellects have no capacity to know the real es¬
sences of beings; they can perceive qualities offered by experi¬
ence, but they cannot penetrate to the basic causes of properties.
This shortcoming sadly limits our knowledge of things in reality.
Book Four: Of Knowledge and Opinion—Chapter 1.

Knowledge is constituted by perception of the agreement or
disagreement of two ideas. Ideas may agree or disagree in four
ways. They may be identical or diverse, they are related, they may
always coexist in the same substance, or, finally, they may exist
in reality independently of our minds.
Chapter 2. These four ways of the agreement or disagreement
of ideas are perceived through three sources of knowledge. One
of them is intuition, the immediate perception of the above-
mentioned agreement or disagreement. This is the clearest and
most certain kind of knowledge.
Demonstration is another source of knowledge, consisting of
the connection of each of two ideas with others, until finally

they can be connected with each other. Through demonstration,
we can see mediately the agreement or disagreement of ideas.
But since each step during this process contains intuitions, then
demonstration, too, can lead us to certain knowledge, although
not as unerringly as do intuitions themselves. A chance for error
is always present when we connect one pair of ideas with the
next one. Forgetfully we may either skip a previous step or make
a wrong connection. Nevertheless, intuitions and demonstrations
are the only two sources of certitude.
Certitude cannot be claimed for the third source of knowledge,
which might be labeled as sensitive knowledge, because of the
recurrence of sense impressions. Since it would be unreasonable
to believe that all of our sense impressions are imaginary, we
have some assurance about the existence of extrinsic objects
causing these sensations. In this way, we can obtain some degree
of certainty, which, on the one hand, goes beyond mere prob¬
ability, but, on the other hand, does not provide us with positive
certitude. The importance of sensitive knowledge appears mainly
in the field of specific experience.
Chapters 3-8. Having discovered this much about the mutual
connection of ideas, as well as about the sources of our knowl¬
edge, we may now establish the extension, and the limitations,
of human knowledge. Since in most cases we cannot, with as¬
surance, determine the identity or difference of the relations of
ideas to each other, and especially since we face great problems
concerning the coexistence and real existence of ideas, our
knowledge seems to be restricted to a rather small area of
information and speculation.
Chapters 9—10. The limited character of human knowledge
is further indicated by our ignorance of the effect of certain
secondary qualities upon the particular arrangement of primary
qualities. With regard to reality, we are intuitively certain of
LOCKE: AN ESSAY ‘ 239
our own existence and can demonstrate with certitude the

existence of God. However, we can be certain about the existence
of objects only insofar as, and as long as, they actually affect us.
The moment our immediate experience with an object ceases,
we cannot be at all certain that the object still exists. Our knowl¬
edge being so limited, we will never be able to construct any
authentic science of physical entities or of spirits. Yet we should
not despair because of this. We still can secure enough knowl¬
edge to render our lives bearable.
Chapter 11. The whole range of human knowledge can be
divided into three main sections, forming the three main
branches of sciences: first, the knowledge of things as they are
in their own proper beings—their constitutions, properties, and
operations—composing the field of physics or natural philosophy;
second, the science of practica, dealing with man’s powers and
actions, whose most important subdivision is ethics; third,
semeiotika or the doctrine of signs, consisting of consideration
of the nature of signs used by us for the understanding of
things and for composing the science aptly termed logic.
Berkeley: A Treatise Concerning
The Principles of Human
Knowledge
Bishop Berkeley first published his book, one of the basic

works of Empiricism, in 1740. His aim was to refute Materialism
and thus to deal a deadly blow to the "impious schemes of
Atheism” (Paragraph 92). The book begins with the title
"First Part,” which, strangely enough, is not followed by any
other parts. It is a one-chapter book. Berkeley did indeed work
on some projected other parts but lost the manuscript during a
journey to Italy. This is the reason for the curious title and setup
of the work.
Paragraphs 1—4. The objects of human knowledge are either
sensations, that is, ideas imprinted upon the senses, or they are
perceptions resulting from the awareness of mental operations
and passions, or they are ideas resulting from imagination and
memory through the compounding or dividing of the above-
mentioned two intellectual objects. Where there are ideas, there
also is an active being which perceives them, called mind, spirit,
soul, or myself. Neither ideas nor passions can exist without the
mind. This is especially true of sensations. Sensible things can¬
not exist except in a mind perceiving them. Their esse is percipi.
The only way for an unthinking object to exist is by being per¬
ceived. It is, therefore, a strange opinion prevailing among com¬
mon men that houses, mountains, or a world of sensible objects
240
BERKELEY: PRINCIPLES OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE 241
in general have existences distinct from their being perceived by

an intellect. All these objects are, after all, the things observed
by our senses; besides them our senses do not perceive anything
else, and hence it is contradictory to assume that any of these
things should exist unperceived.
Paragraphs 5-8. There is, though, a reason why the tenet
described above is so widely held by people. This popular
opinion is based on the doctrine of abstract ideas. And what
could be a nicer abstraction than that between the existence of
sensible objects and their being perceived, indicating their un¬
perceived existing? But is this mental operation between a
thing and its perception valid? Hardly. For, just as it is im¬
possible to feel anything without an actual sensation of a thing,
so too it is impossible to conceive of any sensible object without
a sensation of it. So long as objects are not actually perceived by
one created spirit or another, either they do not exist at all, or
they subsist in the mind of an Eternal Spirit.
From this also follows that there is no other substance but
that which perceives. This is shown by the fact that for an idea
such as the sensible qualities of motion or color to exist as an
unperceiving thing is an obvious contradiction. Hence there can
be no unthinking substrate or substance for such ideas. Someone
might object to this, saying that these ideas may be copies of
things, similar to them, which copies exist in an unthinking
subject. This would be a false assumption, however, because a
figure or a color cannot resemble anything but another figure or
color; likewise, an idea can resemble nothing else except an idea.
Paragraphs 9-17. What about the opinion of those who
distinguish between primary and secondary qualities? They are
willing to admit that secondary qualities, such as colors and
sounds, do not exist without the mind, but they also claim that
the primary qualities of figure, motion, rest, and so on are pat¬
terns of things which actually subsist without the mind in the
unthinking, inert, senseless substance of matter. But since we

have already shown that these so-called primary qualities are
nothing but ideas existing in the mind, the notion of a material
substance involves a contradiction in terms. Why should this be
the case? It is so because, if primary qualities are entirely (even
mentally) inseparable from secondary qualities, as this doctrine
advocates, and if primary qualities exist in unthinking substances
whereas secondary qualities do not, then, where these secondary
qualities are, there must be the primary qualities as well, that is,
both of them must exist in the mind of a thinking substance.
Paragraphs 18-25. There is another argument against the
assumption of the existence of matter. Suppose that solid, mova¬
ble substances may exist without the mind: how can we know
that? The answer is: either by our senses or by reason. By our
senses we know only ideas, or things that are directly perceived
by the senses, but they do not inform us about the existence of
anything existing without the mind. We must therefore sup¬
pose that if we have any knowledge at all of external objects, it
must have a reason; but what can induce us to believe in the
existence of bodies outside the mind, since even the advocates of
the reality of corporeal substances admit that there is no neces¬
sary connection between them and our ideas? We may venture
to say that we could have all the ideas we now possess, even if
there were no outside bodies whatsoever around. Hence the as¬
sumption of the reality of bodies is not necessary at all.
Paragraph 26. Since, on the one hand, there are no corporeal
substances around to explain the perception of our ideas, and,
on the other hand, we do perceive a continuous succession of
ideas, we must be looking for a cause for our ideas and for their
changes. Obviously this cannot be any quality or the combina¬
tion of ideas. Consequently it must be an active incorporeal
substance or spirit.
Paragraphs 27-33. Insofar as a spirit perceives ideas it is

called the understanding, and insofar as it produces them it is
called the will. Although we have some notion of soul or
spirit, no idea can be formed of it. No spirit can be perceived of
itself, only by the effects it produces. A little reflection can
make this fact clear to anybody who doubts it.
Paragraphs 34-37. Before proceeding any farther in our dis¬
cussion on spirits, however, let us face and refute some objec¬
tions.
First, it might be objected that by the foregoing discussions
everything real and substantial in nature is banished from the
world and only a chimerical scheme of ideas is retained. Then
what about things like the sun, stones, our own bodies?
To this we can reply that, according to our philosophy, the
reality of objects perceived by our senses is not in the least
denied; they are distinguished from chimeras or ideas formed by
our imagination, although it is true, according to us, that both
of them (real things and chimeras) exist equally in the mind
and in that respect are similarly ideas. The only thing whose
existence we deny is material substance. There are spiritual sub¬
stances, that is, human souls which will generate ideas in them¬
selves as they wish, although these will be transient and faint in
comparison to others perceived by our senses. The latter ones
are impressed upon us by an Infinite Mind. Thus they are not
fictions of the intellect perceiving them. They are more orderly
and distinct and have more reality than the ideas produced by
the human mind. It is in this sense, then, that the sun seen by
our eyes is real and the sun imagined at night is only an idea of
the former. Other philosophers might mean something else by
the term "reality” than we do, but that is their problem. And the
same goes for the term "substance” as well. If it is used to signify
a combination of extension, weight, and other sensible qualities,
we too can accept it; but if it is supposed to support qualities or

accidents without the mind, then indeed we do eliminate the
notion of substances from philosophy.
Paragraphs 38-40. Do not we then claim that we eat ideas
and are dressed in them? It depends in what sense we are using
the term "idea.” If the word is used according to its everyday
connotation of indicating things, our tenets may indeed sound
ridiculous. But if it means, as it should mean according to our
terminology, the immediate objects of sense which cannot exist
unperceived by the mind, it is more proper to say that we are
clad in, and are consuming, things rather than ideas. Yet we pre¬
fer the term "ideas” to the word "thing,” because "thing” usually
denotes beings existing without the mind, the validity of which
connotation we deny. This word is also more comprehensive in
its signification than "idea,” since it can indicate both objects of
the sense inactively existing only in the mind and active think¬
ing things. For clarity’s sake, instead of using "things” in general,
we like to call objects of the sense "ideas” and thinking things
"spirits.” In short, however, our dispute concerns not the pro¬
priety, but the truth, of these expressions.
Paragraphs 41-44. Further objections (such as a reference to
the great difference between real and imaginary fire and/or
seeing things actually outside of or at a distance from us) can
be answered in the following way. If real fire is greatly different
from the idea of it, so also is real pain caused by fire different
from the idea of pain; yet nobody will deny that there can be
no real pain without a perceiving mind, any more than he will
deny the feeling of pain. Concerning distances, we have to note
that they are not immediately perceived by sight but are sug¬
gested to our thought only by sensations pertaining to vision,
yet in themselves having no relation to distance. Actually we
learn about distances only through experience, just as a man
born blind and later gaining eyesight would not note at first
that objects are located at a distance from him until experience

taught him so.
Paragraphs 45-46. After the above discussions, one may also
object that, since the objects of sense exist only when they are
perceived, things are each moment annihilated and created anew.
Thus, if we shut our eyes all the furniture in the room is reduced
to nothing; upon opening them, it is again created. Two answers
can be given to this. First, if in all honesty one can imagine his
ideas or archetypes to exist without being perceived, then our
cause must be abandoned; but if not, our adversary should
acknowledge that his position is unreasonable. Second, it may
seem absurd to some that things should be created every moment
of their existence, yet this is the very position taken by scholastic
philosophers, who claim that things cannot subsist without divine
conservation, by which they mean a continuous creation.
Paragraph 47-49. Granted that corporeal substances exist,
we have to go by the opinion of the "matter philosophers.” They
themselves claim that each particle of matter is infinite and
shapeless. But then it is the mind that frames all the variety of
bodies which compose the visible world. Hence none of them
exists without being perceived.
Paragraphs 50-67. Furthermore, if the "matter philosophers”
claim that, without supposing the existence of corporeal sub¬
stances, no advances would have been made by ancient or
modern philosophers, we can reply that there is no one phe¬
nomenon which could not be explained without it. Moreover,
no philosopher will pretend to explain how matter can operate
on spirit or produce any idea in it. Therefore there is no use of
matter in natural philosophy.
Paragraphs 68-84. But let us examine again what precisely
is meant by "matter.” It is described as an inert, senseless, un¬
known substance. This is an entirely negative description coming
close to that of a nonentity. The question then must be raised
how anything can be present to us which is neither perceptible

by sense or reflection nor productive of any idea in our minds.
But one may say that, even though it be not perceived by us, it
still is perceived by God, to Whom it is the occasion of pro¬
ducing ideas in our mind; parcels of matter are there to remind
God when and what ideas should be imprinted on our minds in
a constant and regular manner. This notion of matter is so
extravagant that it does not deserve refutation. Moreover, it
really is not an objection against our contention, namely, that
there are no senseless unperceived substances.
Paragraphs 85-91. Having surveyed and eliminated objec¬
tions against our theory, let us now take a closer look at two
main topics that concern human knowledge: ideas and spirits.
With regard to ideas or unthinking things, some people are
easily led into dangerous errors by supposing a twofold existence
of the objects of sense: the one in the mind, the other in reality.
This leads to Skepticism. For if sensory qualities are considered
as images referred to things, as archetypes existing without the
mind, then, when we see only appearances and do not know
what the extension (or figure) of anything absolutely or in itself
is, we may justifiably think that everything perceived by our
senses is only phantom. Skepticism then necessarily follows from
an alleged difference between things and ideas. Hence it must
be emphasized that ours must be the correct view according to
which the very existence of an unthinking being consists in be¬
ing perceived. Two remarks have to be appended to this state¬
ment. First, the terms "thing,” "reality,” and "existence” can be
used as synonyms; they are the most general names of all, and
they comprise two entirely distinct and heterogeneous notions,
spirits and ideas, which, as previously noted, have nothing in
common but the comprehensive term "thing.” Second, we do
not deny that ideas imprinted on the senses really exist. What we
deny is that they can subsist without the minds which perceive
them or that they are copies of any archetypes existing without

the mind.
Paragraphs 92-101. Let us also make clear that, just as the
doctrine of corporeal substances is the main support of Skepti¬
cism, upon the same foundation have been built the devastating
tenets of Atheism. Of course it is small wonder that impious and
profane persons should readily embrace Skepticism, Fatalism,
Idolatrism, and Atheism, since these systems allow such persons
to ridicule doctrines concerning immaterial substances and a
Superior Mind; they substantiate these theories with assertions of
the divisibility and corruptibility of a Divine Providence, and
they make a self-existent, stupid, unthinking substance the source
of all beings.
Paragraphs 102-117. Equally false are the attitudes of those
who claim that there is in each object an inward essence acting
as the principle of its discernible qualities, and of those who try
to explain appearances by mechanical causes, especially by the
phenomenon of attraction. They are all wrong, since actually
there are no other agents or efficient causes except spirits.
Paragraphs 118-134. We must refute not only those who ar¬
rive at false conclusions by means of natural philosophy, but also
philosophers who like to base their inquiries upon mathematical
speculations. Since they are preoccupied with abstract ideas of
numbers, all that we have already stated in previous paragraphs
of this work can merely be repeated here, namely, that there are
no such ideas. Concerning geometry we have to note that its
theorems deal with infinitely divisible, that is, infinitely great,
lines. This principle, however, necessarily leads to repugnancies
and absurdities.
No matter how false the above principles may be, they have
a salutary effect: their diverse tenets all converge to inexplicable
difficulties.
Paragraphs 135-145. With regard to the other basic mean-
ing of "thing,” we hold the following tenets about spirits. We

claim that we may know more about spirits than the average
thinker might suppose. Furthermore, our knowledge of spirits
is not derived through ideas. As has been shown before, a spirit
is the only substance in which unthinking beings or ideas can
exist, but this substance which perceives or supports ideas evi¬
dently cannot be an idea itself. Nonetheless the term "spirit,”
"substance,” or "soul” does signify a real thing, as is attested to
by our own existence. It is our own "self” that we mean by
spirit, and of course it would be ludicrous to say that we are
nothing. In a broad sense, however, we may say that we do
have an idea of spirit in the sense of a notion of it; also, since we
know other spirits by means of our own soul, we may claim that
our own soul is the image or idea of theirs.
We know the existence of other spirits merely by their opera¬
tions. Hence we know them only immediately and directly as
perceived by our own ideas. We also maintain that from the
incorporeal, indivisible, and incorruptible character of the soul
follows its natural immortality.
Paragraphs 146-156. We hold that the so-called works of
nature are not produced by nor are they dependent on the wills
of men. Since it is repugnant that they should subsist by them¬
selves, there must be some other spirit which causes them. If we
observe carefully the harmony, beauty, and perfection of the
whole of natural things, we know that that spirit is God. Hence
God is known as immediately and certainly as any spirit distinct
from ourselves. We may venture to say that God’s existence is
even more evident than that of men because the effects of nature
are more numerous than those of human agents. God, then, is
the Author of nature and its sole Creator without any cooperation
from visible agents. Somebody might object, of course, to an
infinitely good and wise Divine Authorship of a world in which
there are catastrophes in nature and tragedies in human lives.
This we may rebut by pointing out that disasters necessarily flow

from the steady and consistent operations of simple and general
rules of nature. Furthermore, the very defects of nature contribute
to its variety and enhance the beauty of the rest of creation, as
shades in a picture give emphasis to its brighter parts. This goes
for human suffering as well. Pain is indispensably necessary to
our finite, imperfect well-being. Hence any sort of Atheism and
the Manichean heresy must be rejected, and all of us should
constantly think of God and of our duties and develop in our¬
selves a holy fear of vice which then becomes the strongest
incentive to virtue.
XIV
Hume: An Enquiry Concerning
Human Understanding
Hume’s main work appeared originally under the title A

Treatise of Human Nature. Since it was not received very en¬
thusiastically by the public, Hume rewrote it; he polished its
style, improved its structure, and added three new chapters. This
new version of the Treatise was then published as An Enquiry
Concerning Human Understanding. From its first printing in
1748, it was considered Hume’s most comprehensive writing.
The work certainly presents all the basic tenets of its author.
Moreover, it is a clever book; its clarity, spiced with sarcasms
and tongue-in-cheek remarks, is somewhat deceitful: it conceals
cunning perplexities. The book also occasionally shows some
vacillation on its author’s part. For example, Hume, who was a
skeptic and agnostic, in Section XII of the Enquiry unexpectedly
turns into a dogmatist critical of Skepticism.
Section I: Of the Different Species of Philosophy. Human

nature can be considered in two ways. It can be viewed either as
a nature meant for action and the pursuit of virtue, or it can be
considered as a nature inclined toward intellectual enlighten¬
ment. Philosophers interested in the first type of men have an
easy task; those, though, who are concerned with scrutinizing
human speculations and principles which regulate men’s under¬
standing face difficulties. Nevertheless, despite problems, phi¬
losophers should not desist from profound research and leave
250
HUME: AN ENQUIRY 251
human minds in the captivity of superstition. The only method

of freeing learning from "abstruse questions" is to inquire into
the nature of human understanding. Although such inquiry will
be tiresome, it will show that our understanding is by no means
adequate to study the remote and obscure subjects of our in¬
tellectual powers. The inquiry, therefore, in spite of its burden¬
some character will be rewarding. It will at last make clear that
abstract metaphysical speculations lead nowhere. Happy, then,
will be the philosopher who is able to undermine the founda¬
tions of an "abstruse philosophy" which hitherto has sheltered
superstition, absurdity, and error.
Section II: On the Origin of Ideas. All the perceptions of

the mind can be divided into two classes: "ideas" and "impres¬
sions,” the latter term being coined for lack of a more apt ex¬
pression and being used in this text in a sense different from its
original meaning, connoting both outward and inward sensa¬
tions. Ideas, particularly abstract thoughts, are faint and obscure.
Contrariwise, all impressions are strong and lively. This is due
to the fact that all of our ideas are copies of our impressions.
This fact also limits the scope of our thoughts. Ideas seem to be
of unlimited liberty, being able to penetrate into the most distant
regions, whereas actually they are limited to the materials of¬
fered us by sense experience. Yet, through augmenting and di¬
minishing, transposing and compounding, the mind can perform
in a creative way and can produce complex ideas, such as the
idea of a "golden mountain” or of God, which is derived from
the augmentation of our concepts of wisdom and goodness.
Section III: Of the Association of Ideas. A simple observa¬

tion reveals that there is a connection between the different ideas
of the mind. It seems to us that there are only three ways of con¬
nections among thoughts: resemblance, contiguity in place and
time, and cause and effect. A picture obviously resembles the

original and brings it to mind. A historian, for example, writing
the history of Europe, is influenced by the connections of chrono¬
logical and spatial contiguity. But the most interesting principle
of connection is cause and effect. It is this principle which not
only is used by historians, but also secures unity of action in epic
poems and in tragedies.
Section IV: Of Skeptical Doubts Concerning the Operations

of the Understanding. Objects of human reason are either
relations of ideas or matters of fact. To the former belongs, in
general, anything that can be affirmed with certitude and, in par¬
ticular, the sciences of geometry, algebra, and arithmetic. In con¬
trast to the relations of ideas, matters of fact cannot be stated
with absolute certainty, since their contraries are always possible.
That the "sun will not rise tomorrow” is just as intelligible and
valid a proposition as its opposite. It is, therefore, a worthy task
to find out whether any reality exists at all, and whether we
can obtain any assurance of matters of fact beyond the testimony
of our senses or the records of our memory. All reasoning seems
to rely on the relation of cause and effect. In order to become
assured concerning matters of fact, we must first analyze our
way of gaining knowledge of causes and effects. Doing so, we
can assert a universal fact that admits of no exception and is
supported by hundreds of cases which prove that our knowledge
of the relation of cause and effect is never attained by a priori
reasoning. How, then, is this relation discovered? By experience
—all of the laws of nature and all of the operations of objects
are known exclusively by experience. Now, all arguments from
experience are founded on similarity. From causes which appear
to be similar, we expect similar effects. But is this expectation
justifiable? Not really, since it is not reasoning, but something
else, which induces us to suppose that the past resembles the
J
future and that similar effects should be expected from seemingly

similar causes. However, this statement has to be proved.
Section V: Of a Skeptical Solution of These Doubts. Sup¬

pose that a person of sharp mind was suddenly brought into this
world. He would discover at once a continuation of objects and
the following of one event from another; but he would not be
able to observe anything beyond this, let alone be able to reason
to causality. Yet, if he were to stay in this world for a long period
of time, he would see a sequence of objects and events, and soon
he would arrive at the conclusion that one object or event pro¬
duces the other. Since none of his experiences led him to the dis¬
covery of a secret power which would produce this apparently
inner connection of objects or events, a true philosopher would
then inquire as to the principle which forced him to do so. The
answer is simple: the principle of custom or habit—a universally
acknowledged characteristic of human nature. We may claim,
then, that after the constant conjunction of two objects (heat and
flame, for example) men are induced by habit alone to expect
one thing to happen upon the appearance of another. And this,
incidentally, explains why only the observation of thousands of
instances will yield such expectation and why it could never be
drawn from a single instance. All conclusions obtained from ex¬
perience, therefore, are the result of habit, and not of reasoning.
The mind is led by custom to expect heat upon repeated ex¬
perience of fire, or weight upon repeated experience of a big
stone, and to believe that such qualities as heat or weight do
exist. All of these operations flow from natural instincts, the
mind having no capacity for their production or prevention.
Resemblance, contiguity, and causation are products of an in¬
stinct implanted into men by nature in order to extend their
knowledge beyond the narrow sphere of their memories and
senses.
Section VI: Of 'Probability. Although there is no such thing

as chance in the universe, we must say that the probability of
causes is similar to chance. This can be shown by a reference to
some causes, which, in contrast to a great number of causes
operating in a uniform way and constantly producing correspond¬
ing effects, function in an uncertain and irregular way. In case
of such irregularity, we must take a look at all the effects that
might exist and give them consideration, to a greater or lesser
degree, in proportion to their more or less frequent appearance.
In this case, the object of sentiment, called belief, will be pre¬
ferred to an event less well supported by experiments.
Section VII: Of the Idea of Necessary Connections. The

most obscure ideas of metaphysics are those of power and neces¬
sary connection. In order to remove at least some of the
obscurity surrounding metaphysics, let us determine the precise
meaning of the terms in question. In doing so, we have to
examine the impressions of these ideas. A close scrutiny will then
reveal this to us: all that our senses can report is that one object
or event actually follows another. The impulse of one billiard
ball results in motion in other balls. But the fact of the matter is
that, whenever we consider the operation of causes, we are
never able, not in a single instance, to see anything that binds the
effect to the cause and makes the one the unfailing consequence
of the other. The mind receives no inward impression from the
succession of objects or events. In reality, no part of matter
through its sensible qualities, be they solidity, extension, or
motion, gives us any reason to believe that it would produce or be
followed by any object that could be labeled as its effect.
The same can be said about the operations of our intellect and
will. A close examination of them, of their structure and opera¬
tions, yields no consciousness of any energy by which the will
commands the motions of the body. First of all, we have to
realize that the union of soul and body is one of nature’s most
mysterious unions. Second, we should also be aware of our
inability to move all of our bodily organs. We know that we can
move our tongue or eyeballs, but we do not know why we lack
authority over our lungs or heart. Were there a power operating
in the former case and none in the latter, we would have no
trouble explaining these facts; but this just is not the case.
Third, anatomy teaches us that, in voluntary motion, corporeal
members are moved, not directly by our will, but through the
functions of muscles and nerves beyond which operates a remote,
mysterious power. This power, then, is unknown to us. In short,
whereas it is a matter of universal experience that our motions
follow the command of will, the energy responsible for it is
inconceivable to us. Common people accept without hesitation,
as an everyday fact, the connection between food and the
nourishment of bodies, between weather and the growth of
plants, and when they experience unusual and unexpected
events, such as floods or earthquakes, they readily attribute them
to some supernatural being. But philosophers, who look for more
penetrating explanations, are able to see that the power of
causes is as unintelligible in ordinary as in extraordinary cases,
and that from experience we can learn merely the repeated con¬
junction of objects, but by no means can we learn any connec¬
tions between them.
It is also interesting to note that, in single instances of the
operation of bodies or minds, there is nothing to suggest any
idea or power or necessary connection. In the case of a multi¬
plicity of uniform instances, however, when the same event al¬
ways follows the same object, we can feel a connection between
the object and its concomitant, and this feeling must be the result
of the multiplicity of instances because this increase in number
is the only circumstance in which our new impressions differ from
the previous sentiment.
Section VIII: Of Liberty and Necessity. One would expect

that, during long history, man was able to arrive at definite and
^uniform meanings of terms by debaters; yet, unfortunately, this
is not the case. Notwithstanding this sad phenomenon, let us
suppose that there is agreement among men concerning the
doctrine of both necessity and liberty. With that supposition in
mind, we can find out the following facts about necessity. First,
with regard to matter, it is a universally accepted opinion that
matter, in all of its functions, is moved by a necessary force, and
that every natural phenomenon is precisely determined in its
character and course by the laws of nature. Yet, if objects and
events of nature were to be constantly rearranged, without ever
permitting the sightest resemblance of things to each other, we
would never be able to see any necessity in the makeup or
sequence of these things. Our impression, therefore, of necessary
causation originates solely in the constant conjunction of similar
beings and in our concomitant inference from their sequences.
Otherwise, we would have no idea of any necessary connection.
But what about the voluntary actions of men? Are they
necessarily connected with each other? Undeniably, there is a
great uniformity among the actions of men all over the world
and in all ages, and even exceptions to this universal observation
appear to have their proper explanations. Thus men seem to show
in their behavior the same regularity and uniformity as appear
to prevail anywhere in nature. Without this causal connection of
men and events, morality, politics, and history would be frus¬
trated. These, at least, are the common convictions of average
persons. But what is the truth in this regard? The truth is that,
upon close examination of objects, all we can detect is that "they
are constantly joined together or that their actions are reactions
and follow each other with regularity; therefore our mind is led
by a customary reaction to infer from the appearance of the one
a belief in the other. When observing their own mental and

volitional operations, men occasionally do not feel any connec¬
tion between their motives and their reactions. They claim that,
after all, the effects of material forces are different from those of
the operations of intelligence. Whether this be the case or not,
part of the truth is that people usually begin their investigations
concerning freedom and necessity at the wrong end. They first
scrutinize their intellectual and volitional operations, instead of
turning their attention to the operations of bodies. There they
would discover the two circumstances of necessity and causation
mentioned above: first, the regular conjunction of objects, and,
second, the concomitant inference of the mind from one thing or
event to another. This doctrine, then, applied to the actions of the
will, makes it evident that, because of a constant connection be¬
tween motives, circumstances, and personalities, there is a neces¬
sity in every human deliberation. The only type of liberty avail¬
able to man is to act or not to act, yet this type of freedom is
opposed to mere constraint, not to necessity.
Section IX: On the Reason of Animals. Animals learn

from experience and infer that the same events will always fol¬
low from the same causes. Yet animals are not guided in these
inferences by reasoning, since such processes lie far beyond their
imperfect understanding. Brutes are not capable of concluding
that like events must follow like objects. Animals gain their
knowledge partly from custom, which in the form of past ex¬
periences induces them to infer from every object that appeals to
their senses its usual concomitant, and partly by their innate
instinct. But what is true about brute animals is also true about
rational animals, that is, men; our observations concerning ani¬
mals corroborate what we have said before about men in regard
to their observation of alleged causal connections.
Section X: Of Miracles. Let us now analyze the problem of

miracles. What are miracles? They are violations of the laws of
nature. Proofs against them are as firm and unalterable as any
argument resulting from experience which we can possibly
imagine. That there are no miracles can be proved in the follow¬
ing ways.
First: There is not in all of history a number of men of such

unquestioned integrity and proper learning as to eliminate the
possibility of deceit or delusion.
Second: A strong feature of human nature is that, in the face
of the unusual or incredible, it turns away from the safety devices
of normal reasoning and is inclined to accept things as authoria-
tive upon the basis of the very same circumstances that ought to
destroy their authority. The surprise and wonder produced by
miracles often has such an effect on the human mind.
Third: Miracles are usually found among barbarous and
ignorant nations.
Fourth: Religions are trying to prove their tenets by a number
of miracles. Rival religions in turn are seeking to destroy their
opponents by endeavoring to discredit the miracles on which
the contrary systems were founded. In this way, contrary
miracles are destroying the very value of their own testimony.
In summary, we may quote the opinion of Cardinal De Retz,

who was himself a witness to an alleged "prodigy.” He claimed
that the bigotry, ignorance, and cunning of a great part of man¬
kind provide the explanation of miraculous events. Miracles sup¬
ported by human testimony should be considered as matters for
ridicule rather than as reasonable proofs. In conclusion, then, we
may say that, since Christian religion is based on miracles, it
cannot be accepted by a reasonable person. It can be assented by
faith alone. Through believing its followers accept what is con¬
trary to reason themselves. Through believing they accept what
is contrary to experience, and thus they subvert the foundation of

sane understanding in their minds.
Section XI: Of a Particular Providence and of a Future

State. Hume asked a friend who loved "skeptical paradoxes” to
deliver a speech for Epicurus in defense of that Greek’s tenets,
which deny Divine Providence and any future state of men. He
agreed to do this and spoke in front of Hume as if the latter were
the people of Athens. The gist of his "harangue” was to claim
that all those who believe in Divine Providence and a supreme
distributive justice are advocating a fallacy. They assert the
existence of God and then argue from the attributes which they
attach to their deities. But to argue from cause to effect, as is
done in this case, is a "gross sophism,” for it is impossible to
know anything of a cause which has not first been argued from
its effect. We can never refer to any Divine Attributes except
from experience, but present phenomena never point to anything
further.
As far as those are concerned who contend that this life is but
a porch which leads to a greater and entirely different edifice, we
must say that it is impossible for our limited understanding to
break through the boundaries of our imagination. We must also
remind them that their endeavor is useless, since the whole sub¬
ject lies beyond the reach of human experience, and no correct
reasoning can return from an attempted breakthrough with new
and valid inference.
Section XII: On the Academical or Skeptical Philosophy.

There are two main types of unacceptable Skepticism. One of
them is antecedent to all speculations promulgated by Descartes.
It recommends a universal doubt, not only concerning our former
opinions but also with regard to our very faculties; it claims that
their veracity must be ascertained from some original principle
which cannot in itself be fallacious. But there is just no such

principle above and beyond self-evident principles; and even if
there were, we could not make any progress beyond it without
the use of our suspected faculties. If the Cartesian doubt were
seriously accepted by anyone, the radical character of this doubt
would guarantee that he could never arrive through reasoning at
any state of certitude.
Another species of Skepticism is consequent upon an alleged
discovery of the absolute incapability of men to reach truth
through their mental faculties. The reliability even of our .senses
is to be questioned. To support their opinion, those who advocate
these tenets employ both common proofs and profound argu¬
ments. To counter these proofs, one can appeal to the fact that
the perceptions of the senses are produced by external objects.
But how do we know that there are objects outside of our mind?
We do not know this, since the mind has nothing present to it
but the perceptions. Yet it can never reach any experience of
their connection with objects.
There is also another objection which claims that all sensible
qualities are in the mind, not in the objects of reality.
The validity of Skepticism can be questioned. One of the
points that can be made against it is that the skeptic’s attempt
to destroy reason by argument is contradictory. Against excessive
Skepticism, we can argue that no durable good can ever result
from its Pyrrhonian attitude, that the most trivial event of life
will erase itst doubts. Nevertheless, a mitigated type of Skepti¬
cism might be of advantage to mankind, since it might be able
to show the very limited capacity of human understanding.
Kant: Critique of Pure Reason
Among three Critiques by Kant, the first is the most im¬

portant treatise; this book, entitled Critique of Pure Reason
(Kritik der reinen Vernunft), is also Kant’s most famous work.
It appeared in 1781. Seemingly in order to dispel some of the
alleged obscurities in Pure Reason but actually to serve as a kind
of introduction to it, 2 years later Kant wrote the Prolegomena
to Any Future Metaphysics (Prolegomenon zu einer jeden
kunftigen Metaphysik). In 1787 a second, amended edition of the
first Critique was published, containing in its Preface Kant’s
"Copernican Revolution,” according to which objects must con¬
form to the mind rather than the other way around. The basic
problem dealt with by the Critique of Pure Reason is the pos¬
sibility of a priori knowledge. By a priori cognition, Kant meant
knowledge antecedent to all experience, knowledge which is the
result of the functioning of pure reason. In Kant’s terminology,
the word "reason” includes sensibility (Sinnlichkeit), under¬
standing (Verstand), and reason in the narrower sense (Ver¬
nunft). The term "reason” denotes the human intellect, inasmuch
as it seeks to unify the manifold of experience under the three
ideas, which transcend the subjective conditions of sensibility
and understanding. These "transcendental ideas” are those of the
world, of the soul, and of God.
In the Critique, within the general framework of the basic
question of the possibility of a priori knowledge, the Sage of
Konigsberg presented, analyzed, and answered another problem
of primary interest: the question of the possibility of meta¬
physics as a true science. Since he rejected traditional "dogmatic”
261
metaphysics, Kant wanted to find out whether metaphysics, as a

speculative science transcending all experiences and attaining a
knowledge of purely intellectual (nonsensible) reality, would
be possible. For him, this would be the only valid type of
metaphysics, and the main topics of such a metaphysics would be
God, freedom, and immortality. His inquiry into the pure (non-
empirical) conditions for the obtaining of knowledge Kant
labeled "transcendental.” This transcendental method of investi¬
gation he employed in the whole range of the Critique of Pure
Reason. He considered the main task of his book to be a
thoroughly systematic presentation of these pure conditions of
reason. In order to secure a consistently systematic discussion of
his topics, Kant revised a somewhat complex yet lucid plan for
his book (see Table XXII-B). Reduced to its fundamental
components, the work consists of an Introduction and two broad
sections.
In the Introduction, a fundamental distinction is made be¬
tween empirical and pure reason, as well as between analytic and
synthetic judgments. Kant claims that, although all human
knowledge begins with experience, it does not arise from ex¬
perience. This fact indicates that there exists a knowledge in¬
dependent of experience; this knowledge should be called a
priori in contrast to empirical knowledge, which originates in
experience and consequently should be labeled a posteriori.
One should also make a distinction between analytic and
synthetic judgments. Analytic judgments are those in which the
predicate is contained in the concept of the subject. The predi¬
cate does not add anything to the concept of the subject which
is not already present in it. Synthetic judgments, on the other
hand, are propositions in which the predicate is not contained in
the concept of the subject. These judgments, then, add something
to the concept of the subject. The Introduction also presents the
above-mentioned two main problems of pure reason.
KANT: CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 263
The two broad sections of the first Critique are entitled

"Transcendental Doctrine of Elements” and "Transcendental
Doctrine of Method.” The first large section, as the term "tran¬
scendental” indicates, deals with the a priori elements, that is,
conditions or forms of knowledge. This section is broken down
into two main divisions, the "Transcendental Analytic” and the
"Transcendental Logic.” The former discusses time and space,
that is, the a priori forms of sensibility. The latter is further sub¬
divided into two parts, the "Transcendental Analytic” and
"Transcendental Dialectic.”
"Transcendental Analytic” consists of an "Analytic of Con¬
cepts,” as well as an "Analytic of Principles.” The former deals
with the pure conditions of understanding, with "pure concepts”
or "categories,” with the method of their discovery, their deduc¬
tion from the main types of syllogisms; it also indicates how
synthetic a priori propositions are possible in natural sciences;
finally, it discusses the principle of unity of apperception.
The "Analytic of Principles” discusses the necessity for, and
explains the character of, the so-called Schemata of Pure Con¬
cepts. It also analyzes the principles of understanding and
presents the division of all subjects into phenomena and
noumena.
(a) Since knowledge of the world of experience is the result
of the subsumption of empirical intuitions under the Pure Con¬
cepts of Understanding, which thus brings them under one unify¬
ing apperception, the following questions arise: How can the
manifold data of intuition and the heterogeneous categories be
brought together? How can some homogeneity be achieved be¬
tween the former and the latter? What determines which cate¬
gory applies to which of the manifold sense data? The problem
is solved by Kant’s assumption of a mediating power existing be¬
tween sensibility and understanding. This faculty consists of the
Schema. Schemata are the products of imagination. They, in turn,
constitute images, delimiting or applying categories to appear¬

ances. Consequently, because Schemata, on the one hand (being
general), are related to concepts, and images, on the other hand
(being particular), have an affinity with the manifold of in¬
tuitions, imagination is enabled to mediate between the manifold
of intuitions and the Pure Concepts of Understanding.
(b) In order to use its categories objectively, the Under¬
standing produces certain principles. These a priori principles
secure objective use of categories. There are four such principles,
their number thus corresponding to the number of categories.
Kant calls them the "Axioms of Intuition,” corresponding to the
Categories of Quantity; the "Anticipations of Perception,” corre¬
sponding to the Categories of Quality; the "Analogies of Ex¬
perience,” corresponding to the Categories of Relation; and,
finally, the "Postulates of Empirical Thought in General,”
corresponding to the Categories of Modality.
(c) After refuting Descartes’ problematic Idealism and
Berkeley’s dogmatic Idealism, for the purpose of re-emphasizing
his own belief in the empirical reality of the world of experience,
Kant also reasserts his belief that the use of categories is limited
to the objects of sense; they cannot give man scientific knowledge
of things which transcend the sphere of sense. Man can know
only phenomena, the appearances of things; he cannot have
nonsensuous perceptions, and he cannot know noumena, the so-
called things-in-themselves (Ding-an-sich), that is, reality which
exists independently of the human mind.
The second subdivision of "Transcendental Logic” is "Tran¬
scendental Dialectic.” By this term, the validity of which de¬
pends to a great extent on the validity of "Transcendental Aes¬
thetics” and "Transcental Analytic,” Kant meant sophistical
or false reasoning. Dialectic is chiefly a criticism of under¬
standing and reason inasmuch as they are trying to provide man
with knowledge of things-in-themselves and supersensible reali-
KANT: CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 265
ties. Since one of Kant’s strongest and most fundamental con¬

tentions is that human knowledge is phenomenal (that is, con¬
fined to knowing anything, except appearances), pure concepts,
when considered independently of sensuous intuitions, are hope¬
lessly empty.
In his "Transcendental Dialectic” Kant discusses two main
topics. One of them is the question of man’s natural disposition
to metaphysics. He answers this question affirmatively by as¬
serting that metaphysics as a natural disposition is possible since
there exists a legitimate and irradicable impulse in man toward
metaphysics. But concerning the second problem of "Dialectic,”
Kant takes a negative position; he contends that traditional
speculative metaphysics cannot be considered a true science since
the theoretical knowledge it pretends to give is illusory. Kant
proves his claims by reasoning thus. The products of pure
reason, the three "transcendental ideas,” although they have a
valuable "regulative” function to perform by urging the Under¬
standing toward a comprehensive synthesis of phenomena, can¬
not have a "constitutive” function, cannot ascertain or "con¬
stitute” real objects and cannot provide man with the knowledge
of purely intelligible reality. A critical examination of speculative
psychology, of speculative cosmology, and of philosophical
theology will indicate that these disciplines necessarily end up
with paralogisms, that is, formally erroneous syllogisms, with
antimonies, which contain contradictory propositions with both
thesis and antithesis that can be proved equally true; and with the
Ideal of Pure Reason, the idea of an utterly improbable Most
Perfect and Most Real Being.
Finally, in the second and broad closing section of his work,
the part entitled "Transcendental Doctrine of Method,” having
previously discarded "transcendent” metaphysics, a science of
realities which transcend experiences, Kant proposes a "tran¬
scendental” metaphysics which would embrace the totality of
a priori cognition, extending its field from philosophical con¬

siderations to the metaphysical foundations of natural sciences.
The great Prussian thinker intended the Critique of Pure Reason
to be the cornerstone and foundation for this proposed mag-
nificient structure of speculations.
Hegel: Philosophy of History
Actually Hegel did not write this book, posthumously pub¬

lished (for the first time) in 1837. The original German publica¬
tions were edited texts, based primarily on Hegel’s own lecture
notes and supplemented by students’ notes. There are several edi¬
tions of the work, sometimes at considerable variance with each
other. The one by Hegel’s son, Karl, seems to be the most
authentic version.
Introduction.* I. There are three methods for the treating

of history: (1) as original history, (2) as reflective history, and
(3) as philosophical history.
1. Original histories, such as those by Herodotus, Thucydides,
and others, are not concerned with reflections about events; they
merely describe what their authors heard or experienced, and
then transform these situations and events into works of repre¬
sentative thought. Usually such texts are relatively short.
2. Reflective history transcends the narrow scope of original
history; it becomes either (a) universal history, that is, a survey
of the entire history of a large unit, such as a nation or mankind;
or (h) pragmatic history, which is moralizing writing. (c) Re¬
flective history can also take the form of a critical study: actually,
then, it is historiography, an examination or evaluation of the
truths of historical narratives. Finally, (d) reflective history may
present itself as fragmentary. By this we mean an objective type
* The division of this Introduction into points I, II, III, etc., for the sake
of greater clarity, has been done by the summarizer, not Hegel.
267
of history which forms a transition to the philosophical world.

Such history is not merely external in its character, but also in¬
ternal, because it studies the guiding role of the Spirit in the
course of world events.
3. Philosophy allegedly speculates on its own without regard
to given facts. On the other hand, thinking in history is based on
the data of reality; hence the very nature of history excludes a
priori considerations.
How, then, can there be a philosophy of history? The two
terms "philosophical” and "history” seem to be contradictory.
This work intends to discuss and solve this problem by elimi¬
nating the seeming contradiction.
II. Philosophy’s only contribution to history is the simple
notion of Reason. Philosophy demonstrates that Reason is both
substance and Infinite Power, the content of all essence and truth.
It is also the infinite material of physical and spiritual life, as well
as the infinite form, its own actualization as content in whose
image and by whose decision phenomena appear and begin to
live. This Reason or Idea is, then, the True, the Eternal, the
*
Absolute Power, whose glory and majesty are manifested by the

universe. Thus Reason is the basic law of the world, and there¬
fore in the history of the world events happen in a rational way.
This philosophical insight then becomes a presupposition to
history.
III. Although it is a general conviction that world history
represents the rationally necessary course of the World Spirit, for
brevity’s sake we can give only two aspects of the fact. First,
Anaxagoras was the first to present the epoch-making thought
that the world is ruled by nous, Reason, by understanding in
general. Unfortunately, the ancient scholar did not realize this
power to be an intelligence in the sense of an individual con¬
sciousness, a spirit as such. Socrates adopted this doctrine of
Anaxagoras’, as Plato’s Phaedo records. This tenet soon became
HEGEL: PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY 269
the ruling idea of philosophy except in the School of Epicurus,

who attributed all events to chance. Yet Socrates himself also
discovered the great shortcoming, mentioned above, of Anaxag¬
oras’ teaching. For it makes a fundamental difference whether
this truth, this concept of Reason, remains abstract, as in Anaxag¬
oras’ thinking, or is considered, as it correctly should be, as a
determining principle of the development of concrete nature.
The second aspect that we will mention is the historical con¬
nection between the rule of Reason in the world and another
form of this notion, a religious truth, that of Providence. But this
aspect seems to present a problem, a contradiction between the
ideas of Providence as offered by faith (we may call it Provi¬
dence in general) and by its definite application to the whole
course of world history. This definiteness of Providence is gen¬
erally called its plan. Curiously, this very plan is supposed to be
hidden from human minds. We cannot accept this view. We have
to attempt to eliminate the alleged contradiction between the
popular notion of Providence and our conception of it; we must
undertake the discovery of the means and manifestations of
Providence in history and its relation to the operations of our
general principle of Reason.
IV. The recognition of the plan of Providence necessarily
touches upon the question of the possibility of knowing God.
According to Christianity, God revealed Himself and imposed
upon us the obligation to know Him. Recent speculation, how¬
ever, claims that it is impossible to know God. We are going to
take a third position. We will deliberately, even categorically,
place the Divine Being beyond our cognition and indulge in our
own fancies. By doing so, however, our intention will be to show
that the development of the thinking spirit merely began with
God’s above-stated command; it now must advance from feel¬
ings, which are the lowest forms of mental contents, to intel-
lectual comprehension of God’s existence and nature. Thus our

arbitrary striving will result in a seeming negation, though it
will actually represent an advance.
V. The determination of Reason itself and its relation to the
world automatically raises a fundamental question: What is the
ultimate purpose of the world? In order to find the proper
answer to this question we must note first of all that, although
"world” indicates physical nature too (which also plays a role in
history), above all else the term represents psychical nature.
Spirit, together with the course of its development, is the sub¬
stance of history. The ultimate purpose of the world, then, must
be what is willed in the world itself.
We must also note that God is most perfect, and therefore He
and the nature of His will are one and the same; these are called,
philosophically, the Idea. Consequently, God can will only Him¬
self and what is like Him. From this it follows that the Idea in its
manifestation as human spirit or, more precisely, the idea of
human freedom is what we have to contemplate. Whereas the
purest form in which the Idea manifests itself is Thought and
another form is physical Nature, its most concrete reality is on
the stage of world history. That is the place we are now going to
investigate, but not through philosophical speculations. Here we
will merely assume its truth and verify it by the science of history
itself.
VI. The nature of Spirit can best be grasped through its op¬
posite, matter. The essence of matter is gravity; the essence of
Spirit is Freedom. Our philosophical speculations tell us that be¬
cause Spirit has self-contained existence, or is Being-in-itself,
Freedom is the sole truth of Spirit. Anything that is dependent is
referred to something else and cannot exist independently of .
something external, whereas whatever is within itself is free.
Orientals did not know that Spirit (man as such) was free. They
merely knew that one among them (a despot) was free. Thus
they themselves were not free. The consciousness of freedom

arose first among the Greeks; consequently they were free. Yet
they, and the Romans as well, knew only that some were free,
not man as such. Only the Germanic people were able to realize,
through Christianity, that all men, absolutely, as men, are free
and that freedom of Spirit is the true essence of human nature.
In summary, then, translating the language of religion into that
of philosophy, and discussing it on the plane of history, we may
say that Spirit is conscious of its Freedom, and the actualization
of this Freedom is the final purpose of the world.
VII. Our next question now arises: What means are used by
the Idea for its realization? These means are external phenomena
which in history are directly visible to us. A glance at history
shows us that the actions of men spring from their characters,
interests, needs, and, above all, passions. Passions dominate the
human scence to such an extent that anything else, particularly
virtue, becomes insignificant. Two elements, therefore, are
present in our analysis: first, the Idea; second, human passions.
By the latter we mean individual volitions acting as an impelling
force beyond particular interests for the performance of deeds of
universal scope. We may say, then, that the Idea is the warp
and passions are the woof of the huge tapestry of human history.
All interests, needs, and passions constitute the tools of the
World Spirit for realizing its purpose, which is none other
than finding itself and contemplating itself in concrete actuality.
Human activity stimulated by passions and desires implicitly con¬
tains higher principles, resulting in the State. In the State these
universal principles are harmonized with subjective and particular
aims, and with the passions of individuals, resulting in the
limitation of political order and social law. The concrete union
of these two, of the Idea and of passions, provides the third and
final element of world history embodied in the State. Spirit em¬
ploys the passions of men to attain its final self-consciousness,
and the cunning of Reason weaves together all the expressions of

passion. The individual in himself is historically insignificant; he
stands outside of history and has significance only within the
framework of culture which is identical with the State. In the
sweep of history, individuals are sacrified and abandoned.
The State is its own end; it exists for its own sake, not for its
subjects. The State unites in itself freedom and passion, the
universal and the particular. In contrast to individuals, it em¬
bodies universal freedom. The individual freedom originating in
subjective passions is capricious, whereas universal liberty actual¬
ized in and structured by the State is organized freedom. The
State is not a political organization; rather it represents a natural
complex integrating the politics, technology, art, and religion of
people into a unified self-consciousness. Political government,
personal morality, and personal religion should be subordinated
to the State. The State is the Idea existing on earth.
Part I: The Oriental World. History travels from East to

West, China and India being the main representatives of ancient
Oriental civilization. In these realms there are only faint signs
of historical consciousness. In these civilizations no indications of
the determinants of the Spirit exist. In ancient China, morality
consisted of mere legislative decisions, and individuals were
denied their personalities; the highest authority was constituted
by the will and passions of the emperor. He was both the politi¬
cal head of the State and the high priest of the country’s religious
cult. Ancient China, then, was the very negation of the State as a
cultural organization. In India’s caste system the individual was
bound by his inherited position. In both of these societies, then,
Idea emerges into Nature but does not reach the self-conscious¬
ness of Spirit.
History begins with the Persians. They considered history as a
struggle between Ormazd and Ahriman, between Good and Evil,
*
between Light and Darkness. Since Light enables choice, and it is

precisely choice or free activity that constitutes the material of
history, the Persian view was more highly developed than the
Oriental position. Nevertheless the Persions failed to grasp the
higher synthesis of the antithesis of Good and Evil.
Judaism represents an even more advanced stage in the
development of the consciousness of freedom than the Persian
attitude. In Judaism, Spirit is freed from and goes beyond Nature.
Nature is considered as a creature and plays a subordinate role.
The concept of Light is advanced into the idea of the Creative
Spirit, or Yahweh, the Absolute. Thus, in the West, Spirit be¬
comes the Absolute Cause of all nature and is turned into
Spiritual Nature. This is the insight that forms the line of
demarcation between the East and the West.
Part II: The Greek World. Whereas Oriental civilizations

mark the childhood of history, Greek civilization represents the
historical adolescence. In Greece a further advance was made; the
notion of individual freedom was introduced. Despotism was
characteristic of the Orient, but democracy was the Greek way of
life. The subjective morality of Socrates and the Athenian style
of government are particular examples of this new moral liberty.
Spirit now posits itself, and through introspection it leads from
particularity to the understanding of universality. But the Greek
conception of universality was embedded in external circum¬
stances and was thus still limited by Nature. This is well
exemplified by the practice of slavery in the city-states; in
Greece many were free but not everybody.
Part III: The Roman World. It was in Rome that history

reached manhood; there the stride was made from democracy to
aristocracy. Subjectivity, first propounded in Greece, reached un¬
limited proportions in the supreme will of the Roman emperor.
But the Roman state was also an inferior organization because it

sacrified art, morality, and religion for the sake of universalized
subjectivity.
Part IV: The German World. The fourth phase of history,

in a sense its old age, appears in the Germanic civilization. The
German national spirit not only comprehended the concept of
subjectivity but also, under the influence of Christianity, de¬
veloped this notion to its highest form, to the ideal of universal
freedom. After much struggle, German civilization succeeded in
unifying the objective Idea of Freedom with the subjective pas¬
sions of men within the framework of a cultural unit. Freedom
without objective organization leads to extreme subjectivism,
manifesting itself in the form of tyranny, or it may even result in
chaotic anarchy. Therefore subjective freedom must be restrained
and structured within the framework of the State. Subjective
freedom is realized only when it corresponds to Reason, when
contingent will becomes subjected to, and regulated by, the
laws of real liberty, which is objective Freedom. It was the
German state, then, in which unification of the subjective and the
objective Freedom came to full realization. Thus the Germanic
state represented the highest phase in historical development,
"for the history of the world is nothing but the development of
the Idea of Freedom.”
Kierkegaard: The Sickness Unto
Death
The "melancholy Dane” wrote this, probably his most

significant work, in 1848. He subtitled it A Christian Psychologi¬
cal Exposition. The Sickness Unto Death in a sense is a "repeti¬
tion” of Pear and Trembling, although the earlier work, con¬
ceived by its author simultaneously with his Repetition in 1843,
is also important in itself, if for no other reason than that it
presents one of Kierkegaard’s favorite doctrines in the chapter
entitled A Panegyric Upon Abraham. As an afterthought Kierke¬
gaard signed The Sickness Unto Death with the pseudonym Anti-
Climacus.
Introduction. "This sickness is not unto death” (John

11:4), yet Lazarus died. His sickness, however, was not unto
death, not because he was "awakened” by Christ but because He
Who resurrected him lives. Christianity views death not as the
last thing of all, but only as a small event within that which is
all, an eternal life. The natural man shudders at death, which is
not dreadful; he is ignorant of what is really horrible and there¬
fore does not shudder at the truly dreadful.
Only Christians know what is meant by "the sickness unto
death.” Acquiring a courage not possessed by the natural man,
they face with fortitude the fear of the still more dreadful,
which is "the sickness unto death.”
275
Part First: "The Sickness Unto Death Is Despair.”
I. "That Despair Is the Sickness Unto Death.”
A. Despair is a sickness in the self. It may appear in the fol¬

lowing two main forms: it may be despair improperly so called
and despair properly so called which itself has two aspects. The
former type of despair is present when the spirit is not conscious
of having a self. The latter is either dispair at not willing to be
oneself or despair at willing to be oneself. Let us consider the
second aspect of the second main form of despair.
Man is a spirit. A spirit is the self. Either the self is a relation
which relates itself to its own self, or it is that factor in the
relation because of which the relation relates itself to its own
self. The self is this latter type of relation. Now the self, that is,
a relation which relates itself to its own self, must either con¬
stitute itself or be constituted by another. In the latter case,
the relation itself is a third term, and this third term is in
turn a relation relating itself to that which constituted the
whole relation. This formula—that the self is constituted by
another—-is the perfect expression of the total dependence of
the relation on the Power which constituted the whole relation.
If a man, therefore, believes himself to be conscious of his
despair and tries to abolish his despair all by himself, he is
actually working himself deeper into a more abysmal despair.
Thus he constitutes a disrelationship in a relation which is con¬
stituted and grounded in another, in the Power which posited it.
B. Despair is both an advantage and a drawback. It is man’s

advantage over the beast, distinguishing him far more essentially
than his erect posture, for it indicates his loftiness of being spirit.
It is also the Christian’s advantage over the natural man, since he
can be healed of this sickness. Yet despair is also the most
miserable misfortune; it is perdition. Man’s being is an ability
to ascend, yet despair implies man’s ability to fall. Where does
I
KIERKEGAARD: THE SICKNESS UNTO DEATH 277
despair originate? It arises in God’s permission to let the relation

relate itself to itself. And precisely in this fact lies the re¬
sponsibility of man: that the relation is spirit; it is the self.
Does despair, this relationship, once it has set in, continue to
exist by its own nature? No, this does not follow as a matter of
course. Despair is not like a sickness. Once an illness sets in, it
affirms itself as an actuality, and its origin fades away more and
more. On the contrary, despair has to be actualized each moment
from possibility; it is constantly in the present tense, and con¬
sequently the despairer is responsible for each instant of his
despair. This is a consequence of despair’s relation to the eternal
in man. It is utterly impossible for man to get rid of despair
throughout eternity, because the self is the relationship to oneself,
and man cannot get rid of himself.
C. Literally, "sickness unto death” means a sickness the end of

which is death. For Christians, there is no corporeal sickness unto
death, since death itself is a transition into life.
In the strictest sense of the word, despair is just the opposite
of bodily death, for it means not to be able to die. Yet it does not
mean hope of life, either. Sickness unto death implies total hope¬
lessness, since it involves the absence of final hope, of death. It
means to die everlastingly, and yet not to die; to die the death,
to live to experience death. Death cannot consume the eternal
self. Despair is a self-consumption, an impotent one in which the
despairer is not able to do what he wishes, namely, to consume
himself. This is the torment of the despairer. Seemingly he is
despairing of something; actually, he is despairing of himself.
He can neither get rid of himself nor possess himself. To despair
over oneself is the formula of all despair; consequently, the
second aspect of the second main form of despair—despair at
choosing to be oneself—can be traced back to the first: despair
at not willing to be oneself.
Seemingly, the despairer wants to be himself, but then he
does not want to get rid of himself. In truth, however, that self
which he despairingly wants to be is a self which is not. What he
really wants is to break away from the Power which constituted
it. This Power, however, is stronger than he, and it compels him
to be the self he does not want to be. And that again is the
torment of the despairer. Death is not the last phase for him,
yet it is eternally the last. He can never be delivered from this
sickness, for he can never be delivered from death. It then be¬
comes evident that he was deluded into thinking that he would
get rid of himself. To be a self is the greatest concession granted
to man, yet it is also eternity’s claim upon him.
II. "The Universality of This Sickness {Sin).” Just as there is

perhaps not a single man who enjoys perfect bodily health, there
is not a single person outside of Christendom who is not in
despair, as well as in Christendom unless he is a true Christian.
This, however, is not a gloomy view, since it shows man in the
frame of the greatest demand made upon him, that of being a
spirit.
This view, of course, is contrary to the common opinion of
people concerning despair, which gives the impression that most
men are not in despair. Thus despair is considered as a rare
phenomenon among men, whereas in fact the person who is not
in despair is a rare exception indeed. This common view over¬
looks the important fact that precisely one form of despair is not
to be aware of it.
A physician of the body has to know whether an allegedly
sick man is really sick and whether a supposedly healthy man is
not actually sick. The same holds true for the physicians of souls;
they, too, have to know that sometimes not even those who claim
to be in despair really are. They also have to know that other
emotional states of man, like grief, which do not mean much,
are despair precisely because they do not mean much.
i
The vulgar view usually is not aware of the fact that despair
is much more dialectical than bodily sickness. Although a physi¬
cally sick person may be well one moment and sick at a later
moment, a man in despair must have been in this state even be¬
fore any outward symptoms of it appeared because despair, being
a phenomenon of the spirit, is related to the eternal and con¬
sequently has something of the eternal in its dialectic.
Furthermore, not only is despair dialectical, but also all of its
symptoms are dialectical. Thus for everyone not to be in despair
may indicate their being in despair but it may also mean the
opposite. In contrast to physical sickness, where indisposition is
the sickness, never to feel indisposition is precisely to be in
despair. Also, when it comes to man’s bodily condition, we can
talk about a crisis only with regard to sickness but not to
health, whereas spiritually both health and sickness are critical.
In general we may say, then, that most people never become
aware of being spirits, and that is why the majority of men live in
despair; in this consists their tragedy.
III. "The Forms of This Sickness, That Is, of DespairAb¬

stractly, despair should be viewed under the component factors of
the self, for the self is a synthesis of infinity and finiteness.
Mainly, however, despair should be considered under the cate¬
gory of consciousness. Qualitatively, the types of despair are
distinguished from each other according to the consciousness of
the self. The more consciousness, the more will there is; and the
more will, the more self.
A. "Despair Regarded Exclusively Under the Factors of the

Synthesis.”
a. "Despair Viewed Under the Aspects of Finitude (Infini¬
tude).” The self does not actually exist; at each moment of its
existence, it is in the process of becoming. If the self does not
become itself, it is in despair. The process by which the self ful-
28o MOST IMPORTANT CLASSICS OF PHILOSOPHY
fills its task, which is to become itself, consists in moving away

from oneself infinitely by the process of infinitizing oneself, and
in returning to onself infinitely by the process of finitizing.
1. "The Despair of Infinitude Is Due to the Lack of Finitude.”
Since the self is a synthesis, it is possible to describe despair only
by means of its composite. In the self, the finite is the limiting
factor, and the infinite is the expanding factor. Infinitude’s de¬
spair is then the fantastical, the limitless. The fantastical is that
which carries a person out into the infinite, carrying him away
from himself and thus preventing him from returning to himself.
Accordingly, either the self lives a fantastic existence, making
efforts to reach infinity, or it lives in abstract isolation, constantly
lacking itself and getting further and further away from itself.
Yet a man, in spite of becoming a fantastic, may lead a per¬
fectly normal life; he may marry, beget children, find jobs, ac¬
cept honors, and so forth. This he can do because trivial things
are readily observed by people, but the greatest danger, losing
one’s own self, usually goes unnoticed.
2. "The Despair of Finitude Is Due to the Lack of Infinitude.’’
The lack of infinitude results in narrow-mindedness and ethical
meanness. Thus one plunges into this world and does not dare to
believe in himself, thereby becoming like the others, a mere
number among the masses. Because of the despair of finitude,
one stops venturing and therefore loses himself. This, then, is
exactly the result of the despair of finitude.
b. "Despair Viewed Under the Aspects of Possibility/Neces-
sity.” Not only are infinitude and finitude both determining
factors of the self, but possibility and necessity also belong to
man. A self without either possibility or necessity is in despair.
i. "The Despair of Possibility Is Due to the Lack of Necessity.”
The self is both possible and necessary. Yet, just as finitude
checks infinitude, so is necessity the limiting factor for possibility.
During the process of becoming, possibility appears greater and
greater; more and more seems to be possible, yet nothing be¬

comes actual. Everything becomes possible and thus more and
more instantaneous. Finally, the intensity of possibility increases
to the point that the person becomes a mere delusion. What went
wrong? Obedience—the individual lost his power to obey the
necessary in himself and to submit to his own limit.
Although, in regard to possibility, man can go astray in any
direction, this is particularly true of two ways: through wishful
hope and through fear. In the way of the wish, man pursues pos¬
sibility to such an extent that finally he cannot call possibility
back into necessity. In the way of melancholy love, the person
pursues a possibility of aquired dread which finally leads him
away from himself, and he perishes in the dread.
2. "The Despair of Necessity Is Due to the Lack of Pos¬
sibility." For man, in addition to necessity there must also be
possibility; if he lacks possibility, he is in despair. When some
horror befalls a man, a horror which he has made the greatest
efforts to avoid, when, humanly speaking, no possibility exists for
him and his destruction seems the most certain thing of all, then
he can be saved only through faith, believing that, for God, all
things are possible. A foolhardy man may plunge into different
sorts of possibilities, yet he will despair and succumb. The be¬
liever, on the other hand, will leave it to God as to how he will
be helped, and he will not succumb. Faith is capable of re¬
solving contradictions. The contradiction which faith resolves for
the believer is that, although, humanly speaking, destruction is
inevitable, nevertheless there is possibility. The believer possesses
the certain antidote to despair: the knowledge that, with God,
all things are possible every instant.
c. "Despair Viewed Under the Aspect of Consciousness.” In¬
crease in the degree of consciousness increases the intensity of
despair. The devil’s despair is the most intense despair, because
the devil, being pure spirit, has absolute consciousness; for his
transparent mind there is no mitigating obscurity, and hence his

is the epitome of despair. The minimum despair is ignorance of
the existence of any despair.
1. "Despair Which Is Not Conscious That It Is Despair, or
the Despairing Unconsciousness of Having a Self and an Eternal
Self.” The least despair is, nevertheless, real despair; not to
think of it as despair is merely a delusion. Despair is a
negativity; unawareness of it is an added negativity. Unawareness
not only does not remove despair but may even be the most
dangerous form of despair because the person, through his un¬
consciousness of it, has lost his chance of finding out about his
state, and thus he is fastened in the grip of despair.
Historical paganism and paganism within Christendom are
precisely this unconscious type of despair. For any human
existence which is not conscious of itself as a spirit, which is not
transparently grounded in God but reposes obscurely in some
abstract concepts or is a consideration of its own inexplicable
being, is filled with despair, after all. And paganism within
Christendom is even worse than paganism in the narrowest sense
because it amounts to apostasy.
2. "The Despair Which Is Conscious of Being Despair, as Also
It Is Conscious of Being a Self Wherein There Is After All
Something Eternal, and Then Is in Despair at Not Willing to Be
Itself, or in Despair at Willing to Be Itself.” For conscious
despair, a true conception of what constitutes despair is needed.
The degree of consciousness intensifies despair. Analyzing the
two forms of conscious despair in the context of heightening the
consciousness of the concept of despair, we arrive at the follow¬
ing conclusions:
(1) The first form of conscious despair—despair at not will¬
ing to be onself—is the despair of weakness, which has two
aspects.
(a) Despair Over the Earthly. It affects the immediate man.
KIERKEGAARD: THE SICKNESS UNTO DEATH 283.
He is desperate because something to which he especially clings

is suddenly lost. His despair can take the lowest form: the
despair that comes from willing to be another than himself. The
immediate man tries to help himself by wishing to be another.
Meanwhile, he realizes that it is ridiculous to be another;
hence he maintains the relationship to his self. It is comical that
he will talk about having been in despair; it is also dreadful that,
after assuming he has overcome despair, he is precisely in
despair. Despair over the earthly is the commonest type of
despair.
(b) Despair Over the Eternal or Over Oneself. The fact that
the despairer ascribes great value to something earthly is actually
despair about the eternal. Whereas the person described above
has despair of weakness, this is despair over his weakness. In this
case, the despairer becomes more deeply absorbed in despair,
fearing that he has lost the eternal and himself.
Since this despair is more intense, salvation is in a certain sense
nearer. This despair is the result of not being willing to be one¬
self. Man cannot forget his weakness; yet he will not humble
himself in faith in order to recuperate, and in a sense he will hate
himself. In this case, the self is not willing to be itself, and yet
it is sufficiently a self to love itself. This state of man is called
introversion; it is the direct opposite of, and a contempt for,
immediacy.
(2) In contrast to the despair of weakness, there is also a
despair of manliness. This sets in when despair becomes conscious
of the reason why it does not want to be itself. Then defiance
takes over. Precisely because of this, a man becomes despairingly
determined to be himself. This, then, is an abuse of the eternal
in the self. Also, in this kind of despair, there is a great increase
of consciousness. The self now wants to detach itself from the
Power which posited it, or even from the very concept that such
a Power exists. The person in such despair does not want to ac-
cept any help, either from God, for Whom all things are pos¬
sible, or from any fellow man; he prefers to be himself, even if
this means all the tortures of hell. Such despair may even become
demoniac.
Part Second: "Despair Is Sin.”
I. "Despair Is Sin" Sin is despair before God or with the

conception of God. The border line between despair and sin is
what we might call a poet-existence. Such an existence is sin. The
poet would gladly be himself before God; he loves God, and
God is his only comfort in his torment. Yet he loves the torment;
he will not let it go.
Chapter 1: "Gradations in the Consciousness of the Self (the
Qualification Before God.)” The foregoing discussions indi¬
cated a steady gradation in the consciousness of the self; this
gradation now reaches its peak in the definition of sin, with the
thought that it is despair before God that makes sin particularly
frightful. That sin is before God infinitely increases its malice.
In the case of sin, the self has the concept of God; then it does
not will as God wills, thus becoming disobedient. Not only
some sins are before God: all of them are; it is this universal
fact which makes human guilt a sin. As has been said before,
potentiality increases in proportion to the consciousness of self,
but the self is infinitely increased when measured by God. The
clearer is the concept of God, the more self; the more self, the
clearer the concept of God.
These considerations lead to some obvious definitions. First,
the definition of sin given above is adequate, since it covers all
possible and actual forms of sin. Second, sin is not the wildness
of the flesh but is the spirit’s consent to it; sin is conscious dis¬
obedience and is therefore of a spiritual character. Third, the
opposite of sin is not virtue (a false view held by the pagans)
but faith. This doctrine—that faith, not virtue, is the opposite
of sin—is one of the most important definitions in Christianity

and has far-reaching consequences.
Appendix to Chapter 1: "That the Definition of Sin Contains

the Possibility of the Offense." At the bottom of the dichotomy
sin/faith lies the concept "before God,” which, in turn, is a
decisive criterion of Christianity: the possibility of offense. The
Christian is an individual who can live on intimate terms with
God and for whose sake God came to this world and died. Yet
this very fact, the possibility of intimacy with God, is an offense
for the natural man. For what is an offense? It is an unhappy
admiration. It is an envy turned against oneself. The natural
man, in his narrow-mindedness, cannot accept the extraordinary
relation intended for him by God, and so he is offended. The less
prosaic a man is, the more imagination he has. The more pas¬
sionate he is, the closer he comes to being a believer and the
more intensely he feels the offense until finally he feels an¬
nihilated and trodden into the dust.
Chapter 2: "The Socratic Definition of Sin.” According to
Socrates, sin is ignorance. This definition leaves open the ques¬
tion of the origin and the very character of this ignorance. Just
precisely of what does this ignorance consist? Is it an original
ignorance, a man having had it always, or is it a superinduced
one? If it is a subsequent ignorance, then, when a man began to
obscure his intelligence, he was aware of doing it, and con¬
sequently the sin lay not in the intelligence, but in the will. Since
Socrates never progressed beyond this definition and certainly
never went deeper, we must reconsider his defective definition,
extend it, and correct it.
First of all, we must say that, if sin were ignorance, it would
not exist, since sin is definitely consciousness. Christianity is
fundamentally distinguished from the position of the natural
man and from paganism by its concept of sin. According to
Christianity, the pagan Socratic definition lacks an important
determinant, that of defiant will. Socrates’ definition stopped

short of the essential element in defining sin because Greek
intellectualism was too aesthetic and too ironical to grasp the
concept that a person could know what the right is and yet do
what was wrong.
Missing from the Socratic definition is the dialectical de¬
terminant for the transition from understanding to action. This
transition is given by the Christian doctrine of sin, sinning being
a matter not only of understanding but also (and especially)
of will. Strictly speaking, for the Christian, sin lies in the will
and not in the intellect. And therein lies the guilt of many mod¬
ern Christians and the irony of their behavior: that they under¬
stand but do not act accordingly, for there is a difference between
different types of understandings. Understanding without acting,
morally speaking, is not proper understanding. The Christian
motto is firm: To belive is to be.
Christianity goes even further. Through Revelation, it intro¬
duces the idea of original sin; it claims that the corruption of the
will, which is sin, goes beyond the consciousness of the in¬
dividual.
Chapter 3: ''Sin Is Not a Negation but a Position.” Contrary
to the belief of some thinkers, sin is not a negation but a position.
The determination of sin as a position also involves the pos¬
sibility of offense, the paradox. The paradox consists in the
following. First, the concept of sin as a position is so firmly
established by Christianity that it goes beyond human compre¬
hension. After this, however, through the doctrine of atonement,
paradoxically the same Christianity does away with sin so
thoroughly that human understanding can never comprehend it.
Appendix to I: "But Then in a Certain Sense Does Not Sin

Become a Great Reality?” In spite of all that has been said so
far about sin, we may claim that there are relatively few sinners
in the world because most men are so indifferent toward good

that they are practically too spiritless to be able to sin.
II. "Continuation of Sin.” For those, however, who are sinners,

the state of remaining in sin is a new sin. The sinner is so
thoroughly in the power of sin that he does not realize its
totalitarian character. Particular sins are not the continuation of
sin, but an expression for the continuation of sin. The state of
being in sin is a worse sin than the particular sins, for it is sin
emphatically.
Chapter 1: "The Sin of Despairing over One’s Sin.” Whereas
sin is despair, the more malicious type of this is the new sin of
despairing over one’s sin. Perhaps the best way to characterize
this worsening of sin—despair over sin—is to say that sin is the
breach with the good, and despair over one’s sin is the breach
with repentance. There is nothing more miserable than a devil
who despairs, for despair is a rejection of repentance and grace.
Chapter 2: "The Sin of Despairing of the Forgiveness of Sin
(Offense).” In addition to despairing over one’s sin, there is
also despairing of the forgiveness of sins. Is this a despair of
weakness or of defiance? Here these concepts are reversed.
Whereas weakness usually is being in despair over not willing
to be oneself, here this becomes defiance, for the sinner does not
will to be what he is, but wills to dispense with the forgiveness of
sins. Usually defiance is being in despair to will to be oneself.
Here this is weakness and a despair to will to be oneself, a
sinner, in such way that there will be no forgiveness.
Chapter 3: "The Sin of Abandoning Christianity modo
ponendo, of Declaring It Falsehood.” Despair of the forgive¬
ness of sins is offense. Greater yet is the offense when the sinner
abandons Christianity. He does this in a positive way; he declares
that Christianity is a lie, and thus he affirms the falsehood of
Christ. This form of offense is sin against the Holy Ghost and is
the highest peak of sin.
Nietzsche: Thus Spake
Zarathustra
Nietzsche’s most personal work, according to his sister’s

testimony, was Zarathustra; in it he expressed his most individual
experiences, ideals, ecstasies, and disappointments. Throughout
his life Nietzsche was particularly fascinated by the people of
two nations: the Greeks for their individualism, and the Persians
because they had the broadest view , of history. This interest was
probably what led him to choose as his mouthpiece Zarathustra,
founder of the gnostic religious system of Zoroastrianism. The
character of this Persian mystic had captured Nietzsche’s imagi¬
nation in his early youth, so it must have seemed natural to use
the voice of Zarathustra to sing about what Nietzsche conceived
as his new morality; the Will to Power and the Transvaluation
of All Values; the new god, the Superman; and his new,
terrifying doctrine of Eternal Recurrence. It is a provocative,
perplexing, poetic, and prophetic writing, a song of vision. Its
bizarre character did not catch the fancy of the public im¬
mediately; the first edition (1883—1885) sold only forty copies.
It looked odd even to Nietzsche’s closest friends. Soon, however,
it came to be considered one of the great books of the nineteenth
century.
Prologue. At the age of 30, Zarathustra went up to a

mountain to live and meditate. After spending 10 years at the
summit, he decided to return to the world of men and teach them
288
NIETZSCHE: THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA 289
wisdom. On his way down the mountain, he met a saint who

advised him to go back to the forest, saying that the only way to
help people is to give them alms, not to go to them. Zarathustra
disagreed, and they parted. Zarathustra was surprised to hear the
hermit refer to God; apparently the old anchorite did not know
that God was dead.
Zarathustra reached a town where he found a crowd waiting
for the performance of a tightrope walker. He started to address
the gathering, but they mistook him for the acrobat whose act
they had come to watch. Nevertheless, Zarathustra announced
to them his message: human beings should overcome their
present ape-like character and should develop into Supermen.
The Overman shall be the meaning of the earth! Human beings
should remain true to the earth. They should not believe those
who speak of a superterrestrial hope. Despisers of life and
decaying characters are they. Poisoners they are, whether or not
they know it. Once the greatest sin was to blaspheme God, but
the gods now are dead. The most dreadful sin now is to blas¬
pheme the earth. One should abandon the cruelties of the soul:
justice, reason, virtue, and pity. Man should justify existence
itself.
While he talked to them, the people started to shout for the
performance of the rope dancer. Zarathustra then decided to ap¬
peal to their pride and to teach them the most contemptible
thing: the last man! Yet, when he began to reveal his thoughts
to the crowd, they reciprocated by ridiculing him and laughing at
him. Suddenly, he realized that his prospective audience was not
yet ready to understand him.
Meanwhile, the rope dancer came out from a tower; halfway
through the spectacle, however, a clown-like fellow started to
follow him up in the air and all of a sudden jumped on him and
tossed him down from the rope. The acrobat fell to the pave¬
ment, mortally wounded, but before he died, Zarathustra was
able to console him by telling him not to worry about death;

since there was no devil or hell, his soul would die before his
body. He should not despise himself as he had before, since he
had lived courageously; and then Zarathustra promised to bury
him with his own hands.
After the townsfolk disappeared from the square and night
had fallen, the buffoon reappeared on the scene. This time he
urged Zarathustra to leave quickly because Zarathustra had
provoked the wrath of the people with his new ideas.
So Zarathustra picked up the corpse and carried it to a forest,
where he spent the night with it. Awakening next morning,
he felt a new light dawn upon him. He now became aware of
his true wisdom: he should talk not to the people but to real
companions. Instead of teaching the multitude, he should select
a few gifted disciples who would follow him because they wanted
to follow themselves and wanted to live by going under, for
they would be the chosen ones who cross over.
Zarathustra heard a sudden noise and, looking up at the sky,
detected his favorite animals, the eagle and the snake, proudest
and wisest of animals, respectively, which, instead of being
enemies, lived together as friends in his company. He now de¬
cided always to follow the dangerous path. He wanted to be wise
as his serpent. If wisdom should ever leave him, so should his
pride. With this fervent wish in his heart, Zarathustra began
his going-down.
* * *
From here on the work becomes a loosely knit chain of
hundreds of aphorisms. The essentials of these mostly incoherent
paragraphs are summarized below in such a fashion that a read¬
ing of these parables and maxims should not only clearly bring
out Nietzsche’s leading ideas, but also authentically reflect the
whole of the work.
First Part. During his stay in a cave or in his town, called

"Pied Cow,” and during his repeated wanderings in the moun¬
tains and in the wilderness, Zarathustra reached many conclu¬
sions. He often spoke about them to his disciples. Here, in sum¬
mary, are some of his ideas.
The Despisers of the Body. Since the world seems to be a
place of suffering, some people despise the body and advocate
its denial. No matter, though, how full life is of suffering, the
Superman should not be a sufferer. He should love war, since
war elicits some of the best qualities in man. One may love peace
but only as a means to new wars. The shorter is the period of
peace, the better. Wars sanctify any cause.
The New Idol. Some people have found a new idol in the
state. Yet the state is one of the greatest enemies of man: by its
regulations, it replaces his individuality with its own.
Old and Young Women. Denial of the lust of the flesh is
equal to denial of life. Since all creation is a result of passion,
great is the passion of love between men and women. Of course,
for woman man is simply a means; the purpose is always the
child. Let a woman’s hope be to bear the Superman! And what
is woman for man? Two things are wanted by the true man: dan¬
ger and diversion. Therefore he wants a woman, the most
dangerous plaything.
Warriors do not like excessively sweet fruits; hence they like
women because bitter is even the sweetest woman. Man in his
innermost soul is merely evil; woman, however, is mean. Men
shall be trained for war, women for the recreation of warriors.
Man’s soul is deep; woman’s, superficial.
The Bite of the Adder. Zarathustra said this:
When you have an enemy, return him not good for evil.
Prove that he has done something good to you. When you are
cursed, you should curse also. A small revenge is more human
than no revenge at all. Yet one should never injure an anchorite;

rather, one should kill him.
Voluntary Death. How shall man die? Voluntarily. Many die
too late; some die too early. One should die at the right time.
Consummating death is the best; the next best is to die in battle.
One’s dying should not be a reproach to man and the earth; in
dying, one’s spirit and virtue should still shine like an evening
afterglow around the earth.
The Bestowing Virtue. It is the great noontide when man is
in the middle of his course between animal and Superman. It
will be at noontide, then, that the downgoer will be transformed
into an overgoer and will say, "Dead are all the gods; long live
the Superman!”
Second Part. The Pitiful. Beware of the pitiful! The follies

of the pitiful cause more suffering in the world than anything
else. God is dead; He died of his pity for man.
The Priests. Beware of priests also. Nothing is more revenge¬
ful than their meekness. One can have some sympathy for them,
however, since they are prisoners; their Saviour has put them
into fetters.
For people there were several saviors; and there were also men
greater and more highborn than these saviors. Yet none of them
was Superman—they were human, all-too-human. A Superman
was not yet born!
The Rabble. After these words, Zarathustra asked a question
that bothered him often: Is the rabble also necessary for life?
For although life is a well of delight, where the rabble drinks,
there all fountains are poisoned. Flames become indignant and
start to smoke when the rabble approaches the fire. In their hands
the fruit turns mawkish and overripe. Theirs are filthy dreams;
they are maggots in the bread of life. To ice caves should the
bodies of these impure be taken! And one day I, Zarathustra, as

a strong wind, will blow them away!
The Tarantulas. Man should not be like tarantulas. Their
venom is revenge. Among men, hypocrites have venom. Their
poison is an idea: "Will to equality,” but men are not equal.
Scholars. Beware of scholars. They sit cool in the shade; they
are clever but malicious. They prepare their poison with precau¬
tion. That is the reason Zarathustra broke his relations with
them.
Poets. Beware of poets, too, for they are superficial and
shallow.
The Stillest Hour. Thus spake Zarathustra, and then at the
stillest hour he was urged by a voiceless sound to return to his
solitude. And therefore he temporarily departed from his friend.
Third Part. The Wanderer and The Vision and the

Enigma. For a while, Zarathustra sailed over to the Happy Isles.
During his sea voyage, he remembered the enigmatic vision he
once had when he ascended a barren mountain path—the vision
of the Spirit of Gravity which settled on his shoulders, a being
half-dwarf, half-mole. After having spent a few days away, he
returned to the continent and thus spoke to his followers.
Before Sunrise. Blessed is he who properly blesses. Here is
my blessing: it is not a blasphemy when I say that above all
things stands the heaven of hazard, of chance, the heaven of
wantonness. Although a little wisdom is possible, because for
folly’s sake wisdom is mixed into all things, rationality in any¬
thing is impossible. Thus spake Zarathustra.
The Apostates. And he also said: Gods are dead.. They came
to an end a long time ago. But how did they die? Not in a
tragic way. They did not die lingering in the twilight. They did
not disappear through a majestic act. Theirs was a good and
joyful end: they laughed themselves to death. How did this

come about? It happened because a god in his jealousy uttered
the most ungodly word, saying that there was but one God; one
should have no other gods before him. Whereupon the other
gods rocked in their chairs and died of violent laughter. Thus
spake Zarathustra.
The Spirit of Gravity. And he also said: The man who wants
to discover himself must say as I did, "This is my good and
evil.” Thus he can silence the mole and the dwarf who say,
"Good for all, evil for all.”
And he must also say as I did, "This is my taste, whether
good or bad, but my taste! This is my way.” For there is no
single way for all men.
Old and New Tablets. "Thou shall not steal! Thou shall not
kill!” Such precepts were called holy. But through their holiness
truth itself was slain. And the sermon that contradicted life and
dissuaded from it was a veritable sermon of death. Let us, there¬
fore, break up the old tablets!
A new nobility is needed, the opponents of all the people and
of oppressing rule. Outward, not backward, should this new
nobility look!
"Life is in vain!” Such burbling used to pass for "wisdom”;
and since it was ancient belief, it was even more honored. But
merriment is no vain act. Let us break up the tablets of the never-
joyous ones. Let us enjoy life!
Let the world be as it is! Do not do anything against it!
These are the maxims of the world-maligners. Shatter the old
tablets of the pious!
The Convalescent. It so happened that Zarathustra, after a
period of ecstasy, fell exhausted on the couch in his cave and
remained there for seven days. Finally, he came to himself. His
two animals then thought the time had arrived to speak thus to
their Master: "Everything goes, everything will blossom again,
though; eternally runs the year of existence. The center is

everywhere. Crooked is the line of eternity.”
"If you would now die, Zarathustra,” continued the animals,
"we would know how you could talk to yourself. You would
then speak the following way. 'People are inclined to say: Now
I die and vanish and become nothing. Mortal are bodies, souls
as well! But this is not so. The chain of causes into which I am
woven is eternal. I will be created again. I belong to the causes
of eternal recurrence. I will eternally return, not to a new life or
a similar one or a better life. I will simply return to life, and so
will everything else: the same sun, the same earth, my eagle and
my snake.’ ” Thus spake the animals, and Zarathustra smiled at
them. When the animals had finished talking, they waited for
the comments of their Master, but Zarathustra did not notice
their silence, for he had turned inward to communicate with his
soul.
Fourth Part. The Awakening and The Ass-Festival. One

day, after listening to a song by a wanderer and watching his
friends frolic in his cave, Zarathustra suddenly noticed some¬
thing strange: the odor of incense touched his nostrils, and a
great stillness fell upon the place. What did the Master see with
his own eyes? He saw that his followers, the higher men (the
two kings, the pope out of service, the evil magician, the sooth¬
sayer, the wanderer, and the ugliest man), had offered incense
to a donkey and had begun to adore him. This upset Zarathustra,
and he was angered because his disciples had returned to
practices of piety. He started to scorn them, but they quietly ex¬
plained to him that it was better to adore God in this form than
in no form at all. But why precisely did they choose a jackass
for the object of their cult? Because, they said, he carries our
burdens; he takes upon him the form of a servant and is patient
of heart. A donkey does not speak; hence he is seldom wrong.
He merely says a yea to the world which he created. Gray is his

color; he is uncomely. Also it is a sign of hidden wisdom to wear
long ears and never to say nay but only yea. Finally, he created
the world in his own image, namely, as stupid as possible.
Having been calmed by these explanations and by the warn¬
ing that he himself could become a jackas through a super¬
abundance of wisdom, Zarathustra gave a short exhortation to
his disciples. He asked them to be calm, to leave the cave, and to
act like children, for children would enter the kingdom of
heaven, whereas Zarathustra and his followers wanted to possess
the kingdom of earth!
The Sign. Following the night of the ass-festival, Zarathustra
left his cave glowing and strong. He then noticed that the sign
had arrived indicating the beginning of his great hour, his going-
down again to men, the hour of his last descent. Indeed, he knew
his hour finally had come when at his feet, at long last, he dis¬
covered a powerful yellow animal—the laughing lion—and
around his head also a flock of doves; this was his expected
sign. Zarathustra thereupon jumped to his feet and called out
loudly and happily, "Mine hour has come; this is my morning,
my day; my work now begins—arise great noontide, now
arise!
Thus spake Zarathustra for the last time at the cave and left
his abode of many years, radiating like a dawning sun that lifts
itself above bleak mountains.
PART IV
An Epilogue to Philosophy:
A Discussion of Some Special
Problems
Divisions of Philosophy
There are several ways of dividing philosophy into branches

or departments. Each of these classifications or divisions has its
own historical backgrounds, merits, and shortcomings. The best-
known divisions of philosophy are those of Aristotle, Thomas
Aquinas, Francis Bacon, Wolff, Mercier, and contemporary phi¬
losophers.
TABLE I
The Aristotelian Division
Propaedeutic science:1 Logic

First philosophy
Theoretical sciences: Physics
.Second philosophy" Mathematics
Psychology and biology
Ethics
Practical sciences:
Politics
Productive science: Poetics
Aristotle’s division of sciences is characterized by his realistic

outlook and by his convictions of the necessity of an alliance
between sense observation and rational speculation in order to
secure the continuity of human knowledge. This opinion of the
Stagirite is evident in his conception of the close relation exist¬
ing between the subject he called physics and the subjects we
300 AN EPILOGUE TO PHILOSOPHY
today call natural sciences. By physics, Aristotle did not mean

the same subject as modern scientists mean. For him physics was
a subject now designated as philosophy of nature and as psy¬
chology. He extended the investigations of his physics to the
most prominent and most universal characteristic of all natural
phenomena, to change. By mathematics, he did not mean the
special branches like algebra or geometry, but investigations
of the nature of quantity or extension, of the axioms and postu¬
lates of mathematics, and of the problems of unity, multitude,
plurality, and so on. By first philosophy, he meant a combined
study of being and knowledge, a subject modern philosophers
call ontology and epistemology.
The Stagirite’s system, considered in general, divides sciences
into theoretical (concerned with pure, abstract knowledge),
practical (concerned with knowledge as a means to conduct
rather than as an end in itself), and productive (concerned with
subordinating knowledge to the production of beauty).
TABLE II
The Thomistic Division 2
Propaedeutic subject: Logic
[" Physics3
Theoretical philosophy: j Mathematics4
(Natural philosophy) [Metaphysics and natural theology

f
Ethics
Practical philosophy:5 j Economics
(Moral philosophy) Politics
.The division of philosophy by Saint Thomas justifies the

Aristotelian division through an analysis of the different orders
of the world. According to Thomas Aquinas, man discovers two
kinds of orders in the world. One was not made by man, al-
DIVISIONS OF PHILOSOPHY 301
though he can study it or speculate about it; this is the natural

or speculative order. The other is produced by the actions of the
human intellect and will; hence it is the practical order. Ac¬
cordingly, there are two distinct fields of philosophy: theoretical
and practical. Logic, the introduction to philosophy in the strict
sense, studies the conceptual being {ens rationis) or the second
intentions of the mind that direct the intellect to truth. Theoreti¬
cal philosophy studies the real being (ens reale), or the objects
of direct thought, of the first intentions of the mind. Practical
philosophy, in the form of ethics, studies the actions of rational
real beings, of man, and, in the form of aesthetics, the produc¬
tions of man.
It should be noted, however, that the division of philosophy
into theoretical and practical does not depend on the object,
which in itself is always necessarily theoretical and concerned
with the various departments of philosophy, but relates to the
end of the individual philosophical science. Notwithstanding,
philosophy can also be divided according to the formal objects
of its branches, its classification thus being based on the degrees
of abstraction. In this case, theoretical philosophy studies being
according to the most fundamental facts in the universe, either
as "being in motion” (physics), as "quantitative being” (mathe¬
matics), or as "being as such,” considered apart from motion and
quantity (metaphysics). The practical branches of philosophy
are inferior to its theoretical departments for the same reason
that practical sciences in general are subordinate to theoretical
ones. The reason for the superiority of the theoretical sciences
or of the theoretical branches of philosophy is their dignity. The
theoretical, being based on principles and frequently being of an
abstract character, is on a more intellectual level than is the
practical, which is usually connected with the material order.
Also, the theoretical stands by itself; it is studied in itself and for
its own sake, whereas the practical presupposes the doctrines of
the theoretical. Hence it is studied in relation to the theoretical

and for the benefit of applied conclusions.
TABLE III
Bacon’s Division of the Sciences
1. History
2. Poetry
3. Philosophy
Philosophy of God: Natural theology
Man as an individual
Philosophy of man: <
Man in society
Speculative philosophy of nature:
Physics (mutable causes)
Metaphysics (immutable causes)

Philosophy of nature:
Practical philosophy of nature:
Mechanical arts
•Natural magic
4. Philosophia Prima. Mathematics. Sacred theology.
Francis Bacon considered himself as the reformer of con¬

temporary knowledge. His ambitious project, which he himself
called the "great instauration of human control in the universe,”
was intended to consist of four major parts, the first being a new
division of the sciences. He completed this part of his grand
undertaking by classifying all departments of human knowledge
into three major branches. Each of these branches he based on
the faculties of the rational soul: history on memory, poetry on
imagination, and philosophy on reasoning. He further classified
philosophy into three main divisions, the first being concerned
1

with God, the second with nature, and the third with man. In
addition, Bacon wanted to base all three divisions of philosophy
on "one universal science,” called Philosophia Prima. According
to him his "first philosophy”—which is to be placed outside of
the realm of philosophy itself—should consist of fundamental
notions like "being” and "not-being” and "like” and "diversity,”
as well as of basic axioms, such as "things that are equal to the
same are equal to each other.”
TABLE IV
The Wolffian Division
Introductory science: Logic
I General metaphysics (ontology)

Theoretical sciences:
[Special metaphysics:
Transcendental cosmology6
Rational psychology7
Natural theology (theodicy)
Ethics
Practical sciences: * Politics
Economics
The first famous modern classification of philosophy was con¬

ceived by Christian von Wolff (18th c.), a professor at the Uni¬
versity of Halle and the outstanding commentator on, and the
systematizer of, the doctrines of Gottfried von Leibniz. He was
also a forerunner of Immanuel Kant. Having been influenced
by the excessively deductive method of Leibniz, he visualized the
metaphysical study of reality as entirely separated from the
special sciences. Metaphysics for him consisted of the study of
the most fundamental principles of being considered in them¬
selves, and of the deductive application of these most essential
principles to the three great realities: the material universe, the

human soul, and God.
Despite its basic fault, its shifting basis of classification,
Wolff’s division has one great merit: clarity. According to the
two faculties of the soul, cognition and appetition, Wolff divides
the sciences into two groups, theoretical and practical. The
sciences are also classified as rational and empirical, the former
being based on reason and the latter on experience.
TABLE V
The Louvian (Mercier) Division
I" General metaphysics (ontology)

Cosmology
Speculative philosophy:
Rational psychology
Special metaphysics: < Criteriology
Natural theology
(theodicy)
Logic
Practical philosophy: ■ Ethics
Aesthetics
The division proposed by Desire Cardinal Mercier (1851-

1926), leader of the Neo-Thomistic revival of the nineteenth
century, and recommended by the Higher Institute of Philosophy
at the University of Louvain is based on the Thomistic classifica¬
tion but with three changes. First, it does not consider logic as
merely an introductory subject to philosophy, but rather as a
subdivision of practical philosophy. Second, it introduces as a new
subject criteriology, considering it, on the one hand, as a sequence

and a part of psychology and, on the other hand, as a separate
discipline and a sequence to psychology. Lastly, following Wolff’s
division, it separates natural theology from general metaphysics.
No doubt the Louvain classification lacks some of the logical
design based on the formalities (specific viewpoints) of the
Thomists; nevertheless, it has its merits, especially in keeping
itself open to modern developments.
TABLE VI
An Eclectic Division
Minor logic (dialectics)

Epistemological8 philosophy: Logic
Major logic (epistemology)
General metaphysics (ontology)
Cosmology
Metaphysical philosophy: <-
Philosophical
Special metaphysics: < anthropology
Natural theology
(theodicy)
Ethics
Axiological philosophy:
Aesthetics
The eclectic division is based on the preceding classifications of

Aristotle, of Thomas Aquinas, and especially of Wolff. It is also
influenced by Mercier’s division of philosophy, although it at¬
tempts to eliminate the shortcomings in the system of the Lou¬
vain thinkers. Undeniably, it has some weak points, but it also
has the advantages of wide scope and great clarity.
30 6 AN EPILOGUE TO PHILOSOPHY
TABLE VII
A Contemporary Division
Epistemology
Critical philosophy:
[Logic
Cosmology
Metaphysics: Philosophical anthropology
Ontology
Ethics
Speculative philosophy: Aesthetics
Special philosophies:
The philosophy of science
Value philosophy: The philosophy of law
The philosophy of history
The philosophy of religion
The phliosophy of education
and so on.
In accordance with twentieth century trends, conventional

philosophical inquiry is broken into two main parts. Depending
on the emphasis given to its subjects, the first part is either
analytic or critical in character. If its interest is focused primarily
on logic and language, it is an analytic approach; if it con¬
centrates more on the theories of knowledge, the first part bears
the label of critical philosophy, since primarily it critically
examines and investigates knowledge. The second part is unani¬
mously called speculative philosophy, being based on the postula¬
tion of first principles and the recognition of values, and
consequently consisting of two subdivisions, metaphysics and
value philosophy. Metaphysics, the proper study of first principles
and ultimate problems, in turn is subdivided into three subjects:

ontology (the validity of which is denied by analysts), the most
general theory of being, which due to its specific subject is the
most abstract of all intellectual disciplines: cosmology, or the
philosophy of the material universe as an orderly systematic
whole; and philosophical anthropology, a study of human nature
from the point of view of fundamental principles and causes.
The second subdivision of speculative philosophy, the philosophy
of values, either directs its attention to moral values in the form
of ethics or is concerned with problems of art and beauty in the
form of aesthetics. The third department of axiological investiga¬
tions, consisting of social philosophies, comprises a broad variety
of topics, ranging from basic speculations on law, through the
philosophies of religion and of culture, to the philosophical dis¬
cussion of the main problems in science.
In presenting such a contemporary division of philosophy,
it is interesting to note how philosophy undergoes a process of
development during its history. Problems appear and receive
careful analysis; then, having been either solved or superseded
by other problems, they lose their importance or fade away into
oblivion. To exemplify one such instance, during past centuries
the validity of human knowledge was considered a minor issue,
whereas in modern times it has assumed a major position and
has grown into a separate branch of philosophy, namely,
epistemology.
Main Problems and Principal
Branches of Philosophy
Since the aim of philosophy is the unification of all human

knowledge, philosophical investigations extend through the
whole realm of existence. Because philosophy is the systematiza¬
tion of all important knowledge within the grasp of reason,
nothing pertaining to the quest for truth escapes the attention
of philosophy or is foreign to it. For practical purposes, how¬
ever, and for the sake of simplicity and clarity, the most im¬
portant problems of philosophy can be reduced to the following:
The problem of existence.

The problem of reality.
The problem of matter.
The problem of space and time.
The problem of spiritual being.
The problem of body-mind relations.
The problem of knowledge.
The problem of language.
The problem of truth and error.
The problem of good and evil.
The problem of beauty.
The problem of Infinite Being.
Concerning these twelve major problems, the most fundamen¬

tal questions among them are discussed in detail by three
branches of philosophy: metaphysics, philosophical anthropol-
308
MAIN PROBLEMS AND PRINCIPAL BRANCHES 309
ogy, and ethics. The essential features and a brief history of each
of these branches of philosophy are given below.
Metaphysics
Metaphysics, or speculative philosophy, is a study of the most

general conditions of things, over and above those investigated
by the special sciences. In its more limited form, as ontology, it
is a philosophical study of being in general, of being in the
abstract, of being as such. It is an inquiry into the modes of
being: permanence and change, an analysis of the fundamental
principles of being, a scrutiny of existence and essence.
Parmenides of Elea (6th c. B.c.), the father of metaphysics,
was the first to ask himself the meaning of existence. In the
conflict between the sensory report, which proclaims the multi¬
plicity of beings in reality, and the intellectual report, which sees
being as one (the problem of the one and many), he assumed
the position of formal Monism. He rejected the sensory report
and accepted as valid only the intellectual report.
A contemporary of Parmenides, Heraclitus of Ephesus, de¬
veloped a School of Empiricism based solely on the sensory re¬
port. The followers of this movement claimed that reality is a
single process of constant change, this change being reported
by the senses.
Plato (5 th c. B.c.), a pupil of Socrates, revived the dilemma
of Parmenides and Heraclitus, but he was unable to bridge the
gap between the two opposing positions. Nevertheless, meta¬
physics held an important position in his philosophical thinking,
and his original doctrine of the Eternal Forms has enriched the
subject. It laid the foundation for the Essentialist School of meta¬
physics.
It was Plato’s most brilliant pupil, Aristotle (4th c. B.C.), who
presented the first theory which reconciled the two views con-
3io AN EPILOGUE TO PHILOSOPHY
cerning permanence and change. He claimed that the sensory

and intellectual reports are not contradictory; rather, they are
complementary, because they present different aspects of the
same thing, both of which are founded in reality. However, the
Stagirite did more than this; he was the first to systematize a
comprehensive theory of being.
The essential part of the work of Aristotle, which is of the
greatest importance for an understanding of his philosophy and
which is now known as his Metaphysica, was called by the
Stagirite himself Prote Philosophia, Theologike Sophia, or
merely Sophia. Aristotle called metaphysics sophia ("wisdom”),
which he considered one of the five intellectual virtues, because
metaphysics is both an intuitive and a necessary being through
the principles and causes of things. This, then, indicates a love of
knowledge for its own sake, a disinterested love of knowledge.
Since such knowledge is more suited for God than for mankind,
it is divine knowledge. And it is divine in two ways: first, be¬
cause God is the first principle and the cause of everything; and,
second, because God above everybody else is capable of such
knowledge. Hence Aristotle also called metaphysics theologike
sophia or, simply, theology. Finally, the philosopher called meta¬
physics by the name "first philosophy” because it is a universal
science of being in general, as a whole, inquiring into essence
and reality.
According to a belief universally accepted until very recently,
it was Andronicus of Rhodes, a peripatetic philosopher of the
first century B.C., who gave the title Metaphysica to Aristotle’s
work. This belief also included the supposition that originally
Metaphysica was not a continuous, single work but rather a
series of loosely connected lectures to which Aristotle had given
no definite title.
It may have been Andronicus, the publisher of the complete
works of Aristotle, who, having been surprised at the lack of a
proper title for the most influential work of the founder of the
Peripatetic School, placed these books after the physical treatises
and called them ta biblia meta ta physica, "the books after the
works on physics.” Or perhaps it was Eudemos, the immediate
disciple of the Stagirite and the first editor of his works. This
explanation, commonly believed for a long time, has recently
been rejected as a misinterpretation; according to some con¬
temporary philosophers, the term metaphysica could not have
come from a mere accidental bibliographical arrangement. It is
now believed by important scholars that, since in Greek meta
means not only "after” but also "beyond,” metaphysica might
have indicated the study of transcendental reality (the object be¬
yond the palpable reality). At any rate, the name "metyphysics”
is consistent with the original Aristotelian name of "first phi¬
losophy” and indicates a science "prior” in the order of being
but "posterior” to the physical sciences in the order in which
one learns things. All of this simply means that the originator of
the name metaphysica, whether he was Andronicus or Eudemos,
followed in his editing the original and educational order of
Aristotle’s works.
Metaphysics gained its greatest impetus during the Middle
Ages, chiefly as a result of the work of the Schoolmen. Their
efforts to centralize all branches of philosophy around meta¬
physics achieved for it a leading position in philosophy. Probably
the most noteworthy contribution that advanced the metaphysics
of Aristotle at this time was the existentialistic interpretation by
Thomas Aquinas of the Stagirite’s ideas. But from the sixteenth
century on, there was a decline in the study of metaphysics for
two reasons: the emphasis placed on the physical sciences by
men like Francis Bacon, and the contempt for the culture of the
Middle Ages and for Scholasticism shown by the Renaissance
thinkers in general.
In the modern era, two new Schools of Philosophy came into
existence: the Subjectivism of Rene Descartes and the Empiri¬

cism espoused by John Locke, George Berkeley, and David
Hume. The progress made by these two Schools was detrimental
to metaphysical speculation. Subjectivism, the doctrine which
Descartes popularized, led to a denial of objective reality as
knowable. Skepticism and Agnosticism are results of this
doctrine.
Two systems that followed this trend, espoused by Benedict
Spinoza and Gottfried von Leibniz, then appeared on the scene.
These systems, partly influenced by the "rotten dogmatism” of
Leibniz, rejected in part both the Subjectivism of Descartes and
the Empiricism of Hume.
Immanuel Kant combined the best features of Rationalism
and Empiricism in order to reconcile reason with experience, but
he merely succeeded in developing an "idealistic” or "transcen¬
dental” philosophy that rejected the validity of traditional or
dogmatic metaphysics.
The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries saw the develop¬
ment of Empiricism, especially in England. Empiricism over¬
emphasized sense knowledge and eventually led to denial of the
human intellect, or at least of an intellect distinct from sense
knowledge. Locke, Berkeley, and Hume accepted this theory.
Empiricism was further developed in the nineteenth century
by the Positivism of Auguste Comte and John Stuart Mill, who
claimed that human knowledge is restricted to the facts of ex¬
perience, with their conditions of concomitance and succession.
They claimed, too, that it is impossible for human beings to
know anything beyond this. Hence—and also because the na¬
ture, causes, and ends of beings are unknowable through the
senses—metaphysics does not have an object. They were con¬
temptuous of its position in relation to positive sciences, calling
it "metaphysical conceptions” or "mere speculation.” The Ameri¬
can believers in Positivism, the Pragmatists following the leader-
ship of John Dewey, also rejected the claims made by traditional

metaphysics concerning an objective knowledge of reality. On
the other hand, the modern Idealists of the nineteenth century,
following the teachings of Georg Hegel and drawing upon the
logical conclusions of Immanuel Kant, simply rejected all reality
beyond the thinking subject.
Contemporary philosophies both reject and revive realistic
philosophy. The Existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre claims that
reality can be met not on intellectual grounds, but only through
the risk involved in some agonizing crisis in the life of the in¬
dividual. Ludwig Wittgenstein’s disciples, the Logical Positivists
or Neo-Positivists, consider metaphysics little more than a
dialectical game. Its characteristically peculiar problems offer no
real hope of solution, either, because they are basically meaning¬
less. Their method of linguistic analysis really leads to a complete
rejection of metaphysics, because, according to them, the tradi¬
tional problems of philosophers cannot even be stated in properly
clarified language. Needless to say, the most influential of the
all-materialistic philosophies, Marxism, abhors any sort of tran¬
scendental considerations.
Philosophical Anthropology
The philosophy of man, also called philosophical anthropology

or philosophical psychology, is a metaphysical study of the nature
of corporeal living beings in general and of the acts, powers,
habits, and nature of man in particular.
Since his first appearance on earth, man has been speculating
about himself. For this reason psychology has a long past, if
only a short history. The beginnings of psychological problems
appear clearly in Greek speculation. Aristotle’s Treatise on the
Soul is the first complete discussion of the philosophy of the soul
among the writings of the ancients. For this reason Aristotle is
3i4 AN EPILOGUE TO PHILOSOPHY
called "the Father of Psychology." The psychology of Thomas

Aquinas is based on the teachings of Aristotle. The psychology of
John Duns Scotus, through its Augustinian tradition, goes back
to the speculations of Plato.
Modern psychology is said to have been begun with the work
of Descartes. The rigid separation of physical and mental func¬
tions postulated by the Cartesian system still affects modern
psychology. Locke and Hume, also of the seventeenth century,
influenced a number of contemporary psychological theories
through their rigorous analysis of thinking and imagining. Lead¬
ership in philosophical psychology passed during the eighteenth
century to Germany, where the most notable philosopher-
psychologist was Leibniz. Until the nineteenth century, psy¬
chology was mainly a branch of philosophy. Gradually it became
a science as a result of empirical research and the application
of the scientific method to man’s actions. Wilhelm Wundt is
credited with establishing the first laboratory of experimental
psychology at Leipzig in 1879. The nineteenth century also saw
the beginnings of American psychology through the efforts of
William James.
Both the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries have produced
some major theories that still influence modern man’s thought.
The Phenomenalism of Taine, the Behaviorism of Watson, and
psychoanalysis as developed by Freud, Jung, and Adler, as well
as the Gestalt School of Wertheimer, Kohler, and Kofka—all
these developments have had a great impact on our thinking
today. The most important exponent of Neo-Scholastic psy¬
chology was Cardinal Mercier of the University of Louvain. In
contemporary philosophical anthropology, important innovations
were introduced by the analytic thoughts of Wittgenstein and
Ayer, the phenomenological doctrines of Husserl, and the ex¬
istentialist doctrines of Sartre, Heidegger, and Marcel. Finally,
Teilhard de Chardin established a unique philosophical an¬

thropology.
Ethics
Ethics is a study of the morality, that is, of the good and evil
character, of deliberate human acts.
Just as men had tried to think constructively and without er¬
rors long before Aristotle composed his works on logic, and just
as men had shown a keen interest in human nature long before
any formal treatise on psychology was written, so, too, there
were moral convictions long before any scholar started to think
consciously and systematically about correct human behavior.
The Western world must give credit to the ancient Greeks for
the establishment of ethics as a science. Apart from some lines in
the gnomic poems of the sixth century B.c. and the somewhat
cynical sayings attributed to the Seven Wise Men, Socrates was
the first major contributor to moral philosophy. According to his
famous pupil, Plato, Socrates declared, "The unexamined life
is not worth living,” and "While I have life and strength I shall
never cease exhorting everyone whom I meet”; he also attempted
to define the key terms of morality, such as the "good” and the
"just” as well as the different "virtues.” Actually, all his specula¬
tions led to ethical considerations. He claimed that the supreme
good of man is happiness, which should be built not on the
transient things of the external world, but on man’s intrinsic
values. This happiness must be developed through the acquisi¬
tion of intellectual knowledge. Hence all the philosophy of
Socrates culminated in his ethical doctrine that knowledge is
virtue and ignorance is vice.
Plato, the most important pupil of Socrates, also contributed
considerably to the development of moral science, particularly
in three of his Dialogues: the Republic, Laws, and Gorgias. But

the most brilliant work on the morals of Greek antiquity, the
Nicomachean Ethics, was produced by Aristotle. It proclaimed
that happiness is the goal of human life and that it can be
achieved only by the use of reason.
Interestingly enough, in the hands of his minor followers the
moral doctrine of Socrates developed into two opposite extremes.
According to Aristippus of Cyrene, happiness consists of pleasure.
In contrast to this hedonism of the Cyrenaic School, the Stoicism
of Anthistenes and of the Cynics claimed that virtue not only is
the chief means to happiness, but also is happiness itself. This
doctrine of the Cynics corresponded adequately to a central
theme of ancient Greek philosophy: from Socrates through
Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and the Epicureans, the basic ethical
conviction among thinkers of Hellas was that the moral life is
the life of well-being or happiness (eudaimonia). With Plato
and Aristotle, however, this fundamental tenet had been modified
in the sense that both of them considered man as a social and
political being, and consequently, in their view, all moral justifi¬
cation can be realized only in the social and political relations of
men. For the Epicureans, whose system in its main tenets was
identical with the speculations of the Cyrenaics, the good life is
a life with a minimum of pain and a maximum of pleasure in the
form of intellectual enjoyment. For the Stoics, who adopted
substantially the moral teachings of the Cynics, the highest
purpose of human life is not contemplation, but action in ac¬
cordance with the laws of universal nature. The Stoics claimed
that action in accordance with the laws of nature is virtue.
Virtue in turn is not merely a good; it is the only good, produc¬
ing in man an indifference toward the external goods of life
such as riches or health.
The basic contention of antique Greek philosophers—that the
moral life is the rational life—runs also through the Christian
Middle Ages. Thus Thomas Aquinas was convinced, as is evident

in his lengthy and brilliant Commentary on the Nicomachean
Ethics and Summary on Theology, that reason can arrive at solid
conclusions in the field of morality. But Thomas went further
than the Greeks; he harmonized the Greek rational ideal with
the Christian commitment, notably by adding, among other
things, to Aristotle’s ethical theory the concept of Divine Provi¬
dence (for the doctrine of the Stagirite understandably lacked
this basic assumption of Christian morality) and by presenting
to his readers the seemingly bold conception of the need for
self-love.
In sharp contrast to the Eudaimonism of ancient Greek
philosophy, Immanuel Kant’s ethics is a stern Deontologism, a
theory that man’s last end is the fulfillment of duty. On the con¬
cept of duty for duty’s sake he based the whole structure of his
moral philosophy.
Kant advocated a revolution in philosophy comparable to the
one achieved by Copernicus in the field of astronomy. Just as the
heliocentric theory reversed the relationship between the sun and
the earth, so the Sage of Konigsberg reversed the traditional re¬
lation between knowledge and the subject known. Whereas in
the past cognition was considered as a conformity of the mind to
the external object, Kant claimed that it was the object that
must conform to the mind. Thus, according to him, the object
depends on the subject and not vice versa. Similarly, in the
ethical world, as he asserted in his Critique of Practical Reason,
the morality of an act is determined not by the object, but by
good will alone, considered by Kant as a part of reason, that is,
by the pure intention of the acting subject.
Kant’s autonomous morality logically developed into Fichte’s
philosophy, which makes the object the source of all reality. It
also resulted in Georg Hegel’s system, which reduced reality to
Spirit. Certain trends in Hegel’s system led logically, on the one
hand, to the dialectical thought of Marx and to his social ob¬

jectivism, which broke with Hegel’s idealistic presupposition
that objective reality is a creature of the Spirit. On the other
hand, Hegelian trends of thinking led also to Kierkegaard's
Existentialism. Although some of the ideas advocated by the
existentialist philosophers can be traced back to Saint Augustine,
who emphasized the value of the self, and to Blaise Pascal, who
refused to consider reason as the exclusive source of knowledge,
Existentialism indirectly and in general goes back to Rene
Descartes, who stressed the importance of the subject. In particu¬
lar, Existentialism has its immediate origin in the writings of
S0ren Kierkegaard, whose nineteenth century moral philosophy
was a reaction against the importance attributed by Hegelianism
to the objective and the systematic. With Existentialism the idea
of individual freedom stepped into the forefront of moral specu¬
lations, and in Sartre’s philosophy it grew from a mere possibility
of human choices into a creative ability of man. By advocating
the total freedom of the individual, Jean-Paul Sartre also pro¬
poses the idea of an appallingly great responsibility of persons.
For a theistic Existentialist like Gabriel Marcel such a responsi¬
bility merely results in a recourse to God, but for an atheist like
Sartre himself it presents the gloomy picture of an all-engulfing,
meaningless existence of final despair.
Just as Kierkegaard’s Existentialism represented a reaction to
Hegelianism, so Bertrand Russell's and George Edward Moore's
search, by analytic philosophy, for conceptual clarity was a
reaction against the lack of exactness in Hegel’s system in general
and in Francis Herbert Bradley's British Hegelianism in particu¬
lar. After its publication in 1903, Moore’s Principia Ethic a
stirred up considerable controversy. Ludwig Wittgenstein's
analytic philosophy and, to a lesser degree, the Logical Positivism
of Moritz Schlick and of his Vienna Circle have also had their
impact on twentieth century moral philosophy. For ethics, the
main feature of analytic philosophy is not an interest in establish¬

ing a set of norms regulating moral conduct (as earlier moral
philosophies had done), but rather in clarifying such ethical
terms as "good,” "bad,” and "ought,” and in analyzing the rela¬
tions between such terms and the contexts in which they appear,
as well as in understanding and interpreting properly some often
ambiguous statements.
Philosophy and Religion
Similar to the general problem concerning conflicting

philosophical systems is another problem of lesser importance,
yet one having a real impact on philosophical speculations and
raising a minor "scandal”; this is the question of combining
philosophy and Divine Revelation. The problem lies in the ques¬
tion of whether a Christian philosophy, or for that matter any
philosophy based on religious revelation, for example, Jewish or
Moslem, is valid. If the definition of philosophy is considered in
the abstract and is taken in its strict sense, the above problem is
resolved since, according to this definition, there can be no
religious philosophy. But if philosophy is considered in terms of
the concrete conditions under which it is realized, then it is pos¬
sible to talk about a Christian or a Jewish or a Moslem phi¬
losophy.
Christian philosophy uses Divine Revelation as an indispensa¬
ble auxiliary to reason and as a negative criterion of truth, which
means that (i) revelation may warn the philosopher of errors he
may make in his speculations; (2) it presents new problems to
thinkers and inspires them to go deeper into some problem than
otherwise they would go; 9 and (3) it helps indirectly in the
solution of some philosophical problems.10 But it must be em¬
phatically stated that revelation is merely a negative norm, and
its use by no means implies a formal dependence of philosophy
on it. The very definition of philosophy claims that it is based
on unaided human reason.
Christian or, more precisely, Catholic philosophy and Scho¬
lasticism should not be equated, because non-Scholastic philo-
320
PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION 321
sophical systems that are Christian in their character are also

possible and valid, such as the Catholic philosophy of Maurice
Blondel or of Bela von Brandenstein or the theistic Existentialism
of Gabriel Marcel. Scholasticism,11 particularly in its Thomistic
form, is commonly considered as the traditional and probably the
safest representative of Christian philosophy. The essential
characteristics of Scholasticism, particularly of its Thomistic
variety, are the following: (a) the use of Divine Revelation
as a negative criterion of truth; (b) the exclusive use of Greek
philosophy in a purified form that is brought into harmony with
Divine Revelation (in popular terms, Scholasticism is ''baptized”
Greek thought); (c) its Moderate Realism as opposed to Exag¬
gerated Realism, Conceptualism, and Nominalism; (d) its in-
tellectualism as opposed to rationalism, anti-intellectualism,
nominalism, mysticism, and skepticism; (e) its belief in the ab¬
solute validity of first principles; and (/) its belief in a hierarchy
of beings based on the essential differences of beings. The non-
essential characteristic of Scholasticism is its method of argumen¬
tation.
Both its old and its new adversaries have raised the following
objections to Scholasticism.
1. Scholasticism is not philosophy. Schoolmen are merely

theologians disqualified to do rational investigations of funda¬
mental problems by their supernatural attitude toward thinking
and by their prefabricated religious notions.
2. Scholasticism destroys freedom because it is one-sided,
being a single, closed system, meticulously regulated, restricting
the interest of its thinkers to relatively few selected problems. It
is authoritarian because it is based on the authority of some
Greek philosophers, on the authority of the Church Fathers, or,
above all, on Divine Revelation and is thus discouraging, if not
outright forbidding, to any independent pursuit of truth by the
individual.
These accusations are refuted by the defenders of Scholasticism

in the following ways.
1. Scholasticism definitely is philosophy. Divine Revelation

is used by the Schoolmen only as a negative criterion of truth.
The speculations of the Scholastics, especially those of Thomas
Aquinas, are the work of natural reason demonstrating its con¬
clusions by intrinsic evidence. Thomas always begins his discus¬
sions with the skeptical expression, Videtur quod non; that is,
his starting point is always argumentative doubt.
2. Scholasticism is many-sided; it admits of different and
even contradictory systems. There are three main systems in
Scholasticism: (a) Thomism, (b) Scotism, and (c) Suarenian-
ism. On several points these systems sharply contradict each
other. For example, Thomism is existentialistic, whereas Scotism
is more essentialistic in its basic character. Thomism maintains a
real distinction between essence and existence; the other systems
do not. According to Saint Thomas, the predication of being is
analogous, whereas Duns Scotus claims that the predication is
univocal. According to Thomism, all Ten Commandments of the
Decalogue are intrinsically unchangeable; according to Duns
Scotus, this is true of only the first three precepts.
3. Furthermore, the very Greco-Arabian sources of the
Schoolmen’s theories were writings of non-Christians or of non¬
believers, ignorant of supernatural revelation or rejecting it. They
were never blinded by the brilliance of a Plato or Aristotle or
awed by Neo-Platonic, Jewish, or Arabian mysticism. They kept
their vigilance against the errors of their intellectual ancestors.
4. In addition to harmonizing Greco-Arabian teachings with
Divine Revelation, and making evaluations, interpretations, and
alterations of sources, Schoolmen presented some original doc¬
trines of their own as well. One example is the doctrine of
distinction of the thirteenth century Franciscan, Peter John Olivi,
an anticipation of the intriguing distinctio formalis a parte rei
of John Duns Scorns. Also new was the synthesis offered by
Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Contra Gentiles for the explana¬
tion of both the metaphysical structure of the mutable and the
multiplication of perfection by limitation. This synthesis, the
result of the ingenious identification of act with perfection and of
potency with the principle of limitation, has broadened the scope
of the theory of act and potency beyond any speculation of
Aristotle. Those who decry the authoritarian character of Scho¬
lasticism are themselves guilty of frequent and sometimes even
excessive references to "great thinkers” and their "great books.”
The constant and emphatic attention to Francis Bacon, Hume,
Hegel, and particularly Kant are clear indications of this fact,
and even more striking are the references to Descartes as the
"Father of Modern Philosophy” and the lasting influence of
Cartesian speculation.
Just as the terms "Catholic philosophy” and "Scholasticism”
should not be equated, neither should the terms "medieval” and
"scholastic.” First, although from the beginning of the fourteenth
century Scholasticism temporarily lost its impulse and vigor and
its interest was narrowed to futile disputations on unimportant
problems, it saw a revival in the sixteenth century in the form
of Suarenianism and had a fabulous rebirth at the end of the
nineteenth century. Undeniably, it was one of the leading systems
of the first half of the twentieth century. Since the proclamation
of the inspirational encyclical of Pope Leo XIII, Aeterni Patris,
which initiated the movement of Neo-Scholasticism, great minds
have joined ranks to show that the tremendous progress of
modern science and its important discoveries can well be har¬
monized with classic Scholastic doctrines. Second, it should be
remembered that in addition to Scholasticism there existed down
through the Middle Ages some non-Scholastic systems as well,
the principal representatives being Eriguenian Pantheism and
Latin Averroism. These trends were more than non-Scholastic in
their doctrines; they were anti-Scholastic *and came into un¬

avoidable conflict with the Schoolmen. Hence "Scholasticism”
and "medieval philosophy” are by no means synonyms.
Notes
1. Introductory subject: for it is only an instrument of acquiring

knowledge; logic, strictly speaking, is not a department of phi¬
losophy.
2. Commentary on Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics (X, i, lect.

i)-
3. 4. Physics, or the philosophy of nature, is empirical (perino-

etic) in its character, in contrast to mathematics, which is intellectual.
The philosophy of nature considers being as the principle from which
proceed the characteristic questions of sensible matter, and in that
respect it has the same subject matter as the natural sciences. On
the other hand, the objects of mathematics are not given in empiri¬
cal perception but are conceptual beings, mental constructs result¬
ing from the synthetic activity of the intellect: quantity considered
under the aspects of number and figure.
5. Although aesthetics as such does not show up in the Thomistic

classification of philosophy, nevertheless in the writings of Thomas
Aquinas one can definitely find doctrines concerning beauty and
problems connected with it.
6. As distinguished from experimental physics.
7. As distinguished from the sciences of anatomy and physiology.
8. Ex legein: to select (and use what is best).
9- This is one reason why scholastic philosophers are particularly

interested in the problem of substantial change with regard to the
Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation or in the nature of person in
view of the problems raised by the Blessed Trinity.
10. For instance, the revealed Divine Name, "I am who am”
(Exod. 3, 13), helped Thomism to solve the question of the meta¬
physical essence of God (God is Subsisting Being in Himself).
11. The term is derived from the Latin word schola, signifying
medieval schools.
APPENDIX
A General Outline of the Periods

of Philosophy
I Ancient Greek Philosophy

6th c. b.c-6th c. A.D.
TABLE VIII
Early Greek Philosophy
The Cosmocentric Period or the Period of Naturalism
The Old Ionian School

' \
Thales
Anaximander f of Miletus
> 6th c. B.C.
Anaximenes
Heraclitus of Ephesus
The Pythagorean School
Pythagoras of Samos 6th c. B.C.
3. The Eleatic School
Xenophanes of Colophon 6th c. B.C.
Parmenides
of Elea
Zeno 5th c. B.C.
Melissus of Samos
4. The New Ionian School
Empedocles of Akragas
5th c. B.C.
Anaxagoras of Clazomenae
5. The Atomist School
Leucippus ) Qf Ab(jera
5th c. B.C.
Democritus J
326
i
OUTLINE OF THE PERIODS OF PHILOSOPHY 327

TABLE IX
The Golden Era of Greek Philosophy
The Anthropocentric or Metaphysical Period
1. The Sophists
Protagoras of Abdera 1
5th c. B.C.
Gorgias of Leontini J
2. Socrates)
> of Athens 5th c. B.C.
3, Plato J
4. Aristotle of Stagira 4th c. B.C.
TABLE X
Later Greek Philosophy
1. The Anthropocentric or Ethical Period

1. Stoicism
Zeno of Citium 3rd c. B.C.
2. Epicureanism
Epicurus of Samos 4th c. B.C.
3. Skepticism
Pyrrho of Elis 4th c. B.C.
Carneades of Cyrene 3rd c. B.C.
Sextus Empiricus 4th c. A.D.
4. Eclecticism
Cicero 1 st c. B.C.
Seneca 1 st c.
Epictetus 2nd c.
Marcus Aurelius 2nd c.
II. The Theocentric or Religious Period

The Neo-Platonic School
Ammonius Saccas of Alexandria 3rd c.
Plotinus of Lycopolis 3rd c.
Porphyry of Tyre 3rd c.
lamblichus 4th c.
Julian the Apostate 4th c.
II Medieval Philosophy
5 th c.-15th c.
328 APPENDIX I
TABLE XI
7. Patristic Speculations
St. Augustine of Hippo 5th c.
2. Early Scholasticism
Boethius of Pavia 5 th c.
John Scotus Eriugena 9th c.
St. Anselm of Canterbury, O.S.B. 11 th c.
Peter Abelard 12th c.
TABLE XII
1. Golden Era of Scholasticism

Roger Bacon, O.F.M.
St. Bonaventure, O.F.M.
St. Albert the Great, O.P. \ 13th c.
St. Thomas Aquinas, O.P.
John Duns Scotus, O.F.M.
Avicenna 11th c.
Averroes 12th c.
Siger of Brabant 13th c.
Moses Maimonides 12th c.
2. Era of Decline
William of Ockam, O.F.M. 14th c.
III Modern Philosophy

16th c.-19th c
OUTLINE OF THE PERIODS OF PHILOSOPHY 329
TABLE XIII
Modern Philosophy
St. Thomas More

Francis Suarez, S.J. 16th c.
Francis Bacon
Thomas Hobbes
Rene Descartes
Baruch Spinoza 17th c.
John Locke
Gottfried von Leibniz
\ 7
George Berkeley
David Hume 18th c.
Immanuel Kant' J
Georg Hegel
Karl Ma rx
Arthur Schopenhauer
Auguste Comte
John Stuart Mill > 19th c.
S0ren Kierkegaard
Herbert Spencer
Frederick Nietzsche
William James
IV Contemporary Philosophy
TABLE XIV
Contemporary Philosophy
Edmund Husserl
Henri Bergson
John Dewey
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Bertrand Russell
Martin Heidegger
Jean-Paul Sartre
APPENDIX
Outlines of the Principal

Doctrines of the M.ost
Important Philosophers
TABLE XV
Socrates
1. The search for moral concepts.

2. The ironic and maieutic ways.
3. Knowledge as virtue.
TABLE XVI—A
Plato
'■ E*,reme reaiism- \ The Ideal Theory

2. Excessive dualism.J
3. Sensory existence through participation.
4. Creation by the Demiurge.
5. Matter as the principle of evil.
6. The threefold construction of the human soul.
7. Accidental union of the soul and body.
8. Knowledge as reminiscence; innatism.
9. The immortality of the soul.
10. Aristocratic communism.
330
DOCTRINES OF IMPORTANT PHILOSOPHERS 331
TABLE XVI—B
The Platonic Divided Line
Objects Modes of Thought
The Form of Good

Archetypes ,
i True knowledge
-Knowledge
Understanding
Mathematical entities
Things Belief
Opinion
Images Imagining
TABLE XVII
Aristotle
1. Moderate realism.
2. Potentiality and actuality.
The threefold composition of finite corporeal being.
3. Hylomorphism.
4. The ten categories.
5. The four causes.
6. God, the Thought of Thought.
7. The unity and composition of man; the passive and active intellect.
8. Eudaimonia.
9. The state as an aristocratic republic.
TABLE XVIII
Saint Augustine
1. The lack of sharp distinction between philosophy and theology.

2. Understanding as a requirement fbr belief.
3. Love as the core of everything.
4. God as truth: proof of God’s existence from truth.
5. Rejection of skepticism.
6. Seminal reasons (rationes seminales).
7. The essence of man as a soul using a body.
8. Vital attention.
9. Traducianism.
10. The two cities of history (the City of Jerusalem and the City of Babylon).
332 APPENDIX II
TABLE XIX
Saint Thomas Aquinas
1. Intellectualism.
2. Moderate realism.
3. The analogous predication of the concept of being.
4. The composition of finite being as explained by the principles of limitation and
participation.
5. The substantial unity of man.
6. The five ways of proving the existence of God.
7. Beatitude as the end of man.
TABLE XX
John Duns Scotus
1. Formal distinctions.
2. Plurality of Forms.
3. The univocal predication of the concept of being.
4. "Thisness" as the principle of individuation.
5. Voluntarism.
6. The relative character of the secondary principles of natural law.
7. The impossibility of the philosophical demonstration of the soul’s immortality.
TABLE XXI
Rene Descartes
1. Cogito ergo sum (“I think, therefore I am"), universal methodic doubt.
2. Clear and distinct ideas as the criteria of truth.
3. Two proofs for the existence of God.
4. The intellect’s capability of knowing the truth and the trustworthiness of the senses.
5. The world as a machine.
6. Matter characterized by extension, spirit characterized by thought.
7. Divine Will as the norm of morality.
TABLE XXII
David Hume
1. Sense-knowledge based on experience as the only valid kind of knowledge.

2. Ideas as copies of sense impressions.
3. Denial of the reality of substances.
4. Denial of the validity of the principle of causality.
5. Denial of the freedom of will, the subjective norm of morality.
6. God’s existence a mere supposition.
7. The immortality of the soul a hypothesis.
TABLE XXIII—A
Immanuel Kant
1. Phenomena and noumena.

2. The synthetic a priori judgment.
3. Man's threefold knowing power (see Table XXIII—B).
4. The a priori Sensuous Intuitions of time and space.
5. The twelve Categories (see Table XXI—C).
6. The three Ideas of Reason.
7. The impossibility of metaphysics as a transcendent science; regulative ideas;
paralogisms, antimonies, and the Theological Ideal.
8. The unity of apperception.
9. The categorical imperative and the supreme principle of morality.
10. The postulates of practical reason.
334 APPENDIX II
TABLE XXIII—B
Schematic Outline of the Kantian Elements of Knowledge
Faculty Material Element Formal Element Resulting Function

*
1. Sense Phenomena Two Forms of Sensuous Intuitions

Sensibility
(Outer) (Inner)
Space Time
2. Understanding Sensuous Twelve pure con- Judgments
Intuitions cepts of under¬
standing: The
Categories
(see Table Xll-C)
United Element
Imagination The Sense Manifold The Categories Schemata

(as a principle (grouping together
of unity) of sense presenta¬
tions and applica¬
tion of the
categories to
definite sense
contents)
3. Reason Judgments Three Ideas: God, Inferences

World, Soul
TABLE XXIII-C
Kantian Categories and Judgments
Categories Judgments Examples

a) . Quantity a) . Quantity
1. Unity 1. Singular This S is P.
2. Plurality 2. Particular Some S is P.
3. Totality 3. Universal All S is P.
b) . Quality b) . Quality
1. Affirmation 1. Affirmative S is P.
2. Negation 2. Negative S is not P.
3. Limitation 3. Infinite S is non-P.
c) . Relation c) . Relation
1. Substantiality 1. Categorical S is P.
2. Causality 2. Hypothetical If A is B, S is P.
3. Community or 3. Disjunctive S is either P or Q.
reciprocity
d) . Modality d) . Modality
1. Possibility and 1. Problematic S may be P.
impossibility
2. Existence and 2. Assertoric S is P.
nonexistence
3. Necessity and 3. Apodictic S must be P.
contingency
TABLE XXIV—A
Georg Hegel
1. The whole as the Absolute.

2. The Absolute as dialectical in nature; the triad (see Table XXII—B).
3. Human history as the drive toward Absolute Reason.
TABLE XXIV—B
Schematic Outline of the Hegelian Triad
Thesis Antithesis Synthesis
Being Nothing Becoming

Being-in-itself Being-out-of-itself Being-for-itself
God World Spirit
APPENDIX
Since the best understanding of the meaning of a word comes

from a study of its etymology, the list below will help the student
to understand better the essence of philosophy, its main features
and classifications, and some terms used in discussing it.
La philia love
Zo\f/La sophia wisdom
$tXos philos a friend; affectionate
Xoxf/os sophos wise, sage
$L\oao\J/e CO philosopheo to be devoted to wisdom
Aoyos logos a word; speech; discourse
Aoyoi logoi study
AiaXeyojucu dialogemai to speak
’E7narrijur] episteme knowledge
Mera ra \pvuiKa meta ta physica after physics;
after the books dealing
with material reality;
beyond palpable reality
<&VOLS physis nature
Ov on being
Kocr/xos kosmos universe
'f'vxV psyche mind; soul
Av6 pOJTTOS anthropos man
Alktj dike custom; justice; vindication
Geos Theos God
Ai;La axia value
Edos ethos custom, habit; ceremony;
336
ETYMOLOGIES 337
practice; institution
A Ladavo/Jica aisthanomai to be affected; to feel;
to see; to perceive
0 ecopeu theoreo investigate
A lcl d/'lCl through
II epL peri around; about
Noetu noein think
E/cXe7€tu ex legein to select (and use what
best)
The following scholars named some of the branches of

philosophy:
Andronicus of Rhodes (1st c. B.C.): metaphysics.

Philip (Melanchton) Schwarzerd (16 c.): psychology.
Gottfried von Leibniz (17th c.): theodicy.
Christian Wolff (18th c.): ontology.
Alexander Baumgarten (18th c.): aesthetics.
Eduard Hartmann (19th c.): axiology.
A Short Bibliography
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BECK, LEWIS W., Philosophic Inquiry. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:
Prentice-Hall, 1952.
BOCHENSKI, INNOCENTIUS M., Contemporary European Philosophy.
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BRADY, IGNATIUS, A History of Ancient Philosophy. Milwaukee:
Bruce, 1959.
BREHIER, EMILE, The History of Philosophy. Chicago: University
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COLLINS, JAMES D., A History of Modern European Philosophy.
Milwaukee: Bruce, 1954.
COPLESTON, FREDERICK, A History of Philosophy. Westminster:
The Newman Bookshop, 1946.
CURTIS, STANLEY j., A Short History of Western Philosophy in the
Middle Ages. London: Macdonald, 1950.
DE RAEYMAEKER, LOUIS, Introduction to Philosophy. New York:
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DE WULF, MAURICE M., History of Medieval Philosophy. London:
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DELHAYE, PHILIPPE, Medieval Christian Philosophy. New York:
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FERM, vergilius T. A., A History of Philosophical Systems. New
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FULLER, BENJAMIN A. G., and MCMURRIN, STERLING N., A History
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GILSON, ETIENNE, History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle
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338
A SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY 339
-, Modern Philosophy: Descartes to Kant. New York:

Random House, 1963.
-, The Philosophy of St. Thomas Acquinas. St. Louis: B.
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-, The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy. New York: C. Scrib¬
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GLENN, PAUL j., An Introduction to Philosophy. St. Louis: B.
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GUTHRIES, WILLIAM K. C., A History of Greek Philosophy. Cam¬
bridge: University Press, 1962.
HAMPSCH, GEORGE H., Theory of Communism. New York: Citadel
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HAWKINS, denis J. B., Approach to Philosophy. London: Paladin
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KLOCKER, harry R., Thomism and Modern Thought. New York:
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maritain, JACQUES, The Angelic Doctor; The Life and Thought
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340 APPENDIX III
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w
Index
A Analytic judgments, 263

Abandonment, 129 Analytic philosophy, 127
Abelard, Peter, 57 Anamnesis, 32
Abraham, 107, 220 Anatomy, 324
Absolute, The, 100 Anaxagoras, 21, 175, 268
Absolute Idealism, 99 Anaximander, 21
Absolute monarchy, 7 5 Anaximenes, 21, 175
Abstraction, 251 Andronicus of Rhodes, 310, 337
Abstruse questions, 251 Angel, 69, 219
Academy, Platonic, 26, 43 Angelic Doctor (Aquinas), 60
Accident, 36, 62 Anguish, 129
Actuality, 35 Animal, 32, 80
Act and potency, 36, 61 Anselm, Saint, 56, 99, 284
Acroamatic works, Aristotle’s 35 Anti-Climacus (Kierkegaard),
Adam, 52, 193 275
Adler, Alfred, 314 Anti-Diihring (Engels), 124
Adler, Mortimer, 75, 314 Anti-Semite and the Jew (Sartre),
Adventure, according to Kierke¬ 141
gaard, 106 Antisthenes, 25, 316
Aeterni Patris, 323 Antithesis, 101
Aesthetes, 107 Anthropology, philosophical, 305
Aesthetics, 286, 305 Antimony, 97
Agent (active) intellect, 68 Anxiety, 138
Agnosticism, 114, 312 Apeiron, 20
Agressiveness, 138 Apology (Plato), 27
Albert, the Great, Saint, 34, 59 Apollo, 115
Aletheia, 137 A posteriori argument, 80
A priori and a posteriori judg¬
Alexander, the Great, 33
ments, 91
Alienation, 106
A priori knowledge, 91, 261
Allegories, Platonic, 44
Apparent contradiction, 97
Also Sprach Zarathrustra (Nietz¬ Arabic philosophy, 67, 322
sche), 115 Arche, 18
Ambrose, Saint, 57 Archetype, Platonic, 28, 45, 48,
American Constitution, 83 153, 191, 309
Ammonius Saccas, 42 Aristippus, 25, 316
341
342 INDEX
Aristocracy, 41, 213 Being-in-itself and being-for-

Aristophanes, 24 itself, 141
Aristotle, 18, 33, 50, 67, 174, Bellarmine, Robert, Saint, 226
299, 309 Bellum omnium contra omnes, 78
Art, 33, 158, 302 Berdyaev, Nicolas, 128
Art as Experience (Dewey), 133 Bergson, Henri, 131
A simultaneo argument, 56 Berkeley, George, 223, 240, 312
Association of ideas, 251 Bessarion, John (or Basil), 71
Atheism, 240 Beyond Good and Evil (Nietz¬
Athens, 172 sche), 115
Atomist philosophers, r9 Biology, 299
Attack Upon Christianity, The Blondel, Maurice, 75, 321
(Kierkegaard), 106 Body, 60, 69, 78, 132, 255
Attribute, 61 Boethius, 54, 195
Augustine, Saint, 46, 51, 134, 192 Bolzano, Bernhard, 130
Augustinianism, 9 Bonaventure, Saint (Giovanni
Authenticity, 131 Fidanza), 59
Averroes, 68 Bossuet, Jacques Benigne, 94
Averroism, Latin, 68, 323 Botany, 59, 134
Avicenna, 68 Bohme, Jacob, 72
Axiology, 337 Bracketing, 131
Auxiliary, 165 Bradley, Francis Herbert, 318
Brandenstein, Bela von, 321
B Brentano, Franz, 130
Babylon, 53, 193 Bruno, Giordano, 72
Bacon, Francis, 70, 302, 311 Buber, Martin, 128
Bacon, Roger, 58, 194 Byzantium, 45
Bad faith, 141
Banquet, The (Plato), 27, 156 C
Barbarians, 25 Campanella, Tommasso, 71
Baumgarten, Alexander, 337 Camus, Albert, 147
Beatific Vision, 64 Canticle of Canticles (Bible), 203
"Bear and forebear,” 42 Canon, 42, 105
Beauty, 115, 131, 160, 189, 306 Capital, The (Marx), no
Beauvoir, Simone de, 147 Capitalism, 33, 112
Beckett, Samuel, 147 Care, 138
Becoming, 28 Carmeades, 42
Behaviorism, 314 Cartesian doubt, 259
Being, 5, 60, 65, 145, 179, 321 Cartesian Meditations (Husserl),
Being and Nothingness (Sartre), 130
140 Caste system, 273
Being and Time (Heidegger), Categories, Aristotelian, 54, 174
135 Categories, Kantian 93, 264
INDEX 343
Categorical imperative, 98 Confessions of Saint Augustine,
Catholicism, 43
52
Catholic philosophy, 323 Condition of the Working Class
Cathrein, Victor, 75 in England (Engels), 124
Cause, 6, 38, 63, 83 Conflagration, universal, 46
Cave, Allegory of the, 44, 170 Concupiscible soul, 33
Censorship, 165 Consciousness, 282
Certitude, 238 Consolation of Philo sop, The
Champeaux, William, 57 (Boethius), 2 5 5
Change, 21, 28, 35, ill Contemplation, 190
Charioteer, Simile of the, 44 Contradiction, Principle of, 6
Charmides (Plato), 27 Copernicus, Nicolaus, 317
Charron, Pierre, 72 Copernican Revolution, 92, 261
Chimera, 243 Continuity, The Law of, 15
Choice, 108, 142, 183 Cosmology, 305
Christianity, 43, 107, 220, 286 Cosmologism, 20
Christian Psychological Exposi¬ Courage, 275
tion, A (Kierkegaard), 275 Course of Positivistic Philosophy
Cicero, 3, 48, 207 (Comte), 103
Citizen, 216 Cratylus (Plato), 27
City of God (Saint Augustine), Creation, 31, 61, 69, 291
52, 192 Creative Evolution (Bergson),
Civil law, 214 138
Civil war, 213 Criteriology, 304
Civilization, 25 Critias (Plato), 27
Cogito, ergo sum, 79, 224 Crito (Plato), 27
Coincide of opposition, 101 Critique of Judgment, Critique of
Commandments, 66, 322 Practical Reason, Critique of
Commentary on the Nichomaen Pure Reason (Kant), 89, 261
Ethics (Aquinas), 60 Crowd, 106
Commentary on the Sentences Cur Deus Homo (Saint Anselm),
(Aquinas), 60 56
Cusanus (Nikolaus Krebs), 73
Commentator, The (Averroes),
Cynics, 11, 25, 316
68
Cyrenaic School, 316
Communism, 112
Commonwealth, 78, 205, 211 D
Communist Manifesto (Marx and Danger, 291
Engels), 124 Darwin, Charles, 102
Comte, August, 103, 312 Dasein, 136
Conceptualism, 48, 57, 321 De Intellectu Emendatione
Concluding Unscientific Postscript (Spinoza), 81
(Kierkegaard), 106 Death, 139, 275
344 INDEX
"Death of God,” 114 Dualism, Platonic, 76; Cartesian,

Declaration of Independence, 83 135
Demiurge, 31, 44 Duns Scotus, John, 64, 314
Democracy, 172, 273 Duns Scotus’ Doctrine of Cate¬
Democracy and Education gories and Meaning (Heideg¬
(Dewey), 133 ger), 135
Democritus, 19 Duty, 98
Deontologism, 317
Descartes, Rene (Cartesius), 79, E
134, 223, 312, 323 Ecce Homo (Nietzsche), 115
Desire, 40 Eclecticism, 302
Despair, 276 Economics, 300
Despot, 270 Ectype, 30
Determinacy, Principle of, 6 Eidos, 28
Dewey, John, 132, 313 Einhildungskraft, 96
Dialectic, 101, 122, 264 Either/Or (Kierkegaard), 106
Dialectical materialism, 111 Eklegein, 42
Dialogues, Platonic, 26; Aristote¬ Elan vital, 132
lian, 34 Eleatics, 18
Dianoetic ethics, 299 Elements, 21,31
Dilthey, Wilhelm, 75 Elucidation of Holderlin’s Poetry
Ding-an-sich, 91, 264 (Heidegger), 135
Diogenes Laertius, 3 Emanations, 42, 188
Diogenes of Sinope, 25 Empedocles, 21, 174
Dionysius, 115 Empiricism, 72, 83, 119, 309,
Discourse on Metaphysics (Leib¬ 312
niz), 85 Energein, 39
Discourse on Method (Des¬ Engels, Friedrich, 122
cartes ), 7 9 Enlightenment, 74
Discourse on Thinking (Hei¬ Enneads (Plotinus), 188
degger), 135 Enquiry Concerning Human Un¬
Distinction, formal, 65 derstanding, An (Hume), 250
Divided line, Metaphore of, 44 Enquiry Concerning the Principles
Divisions of Nature (Eriugena), of Morals (Hume), 88
55 Ens rationis and ens reale, 301
Divisions of philosophy, 299 Entelecheia, 36
Epicurus, 269
Division of sciences, 311
Epicureanism, 19, 42, 316
Dogmatism, 91, 264
Epinomis (Plato), 27
Don Juan, 107
Episteme, 28, 40
Double-Truth theory, 68 Epistemology, 302
Doubt, 253 Epithymetikon, to, 31
Doxa, 28 Epoche, 131
*
INDEX 345
Epistles (Plato), 26 Eudemian Ethics (Aristotle), 46
Equality, 293 Euthyphron (Plato), 27
Eristic School, 25 Eutychdemus (Plato), 27
Eriugena, John Scotus, 55, 323
Eros, 51 F
Error, 221 Facticity, 143
Erscheinungen, 30 Faith, 47, 69, 284
Essays (F. Bacon) ,76 "Father of Modern Philosophy”
Essay Concerning Human Under¬ (Descartes), 79
standing, An (Locke), 83, 230 "Father of Philosophy” (Thales),
Essay in Phenomenological Ontol¬ 20
ogy (Satre), 140 Fear, 78
Essays, Moral, Political, and Lit¬ Fear and Trembling (Kierkega¬
erary (Hume), 250 ard), 106,275
Essays in Radical Empiricism Feuerbach, Ludwig, no
(James), 118 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 73, 223,
Essays on Theodicy (Leibniz), 317
85 Fidanza, Giovanni (Saint Bona-
Esse, 62 venture), 58
Esse est per dpi, 87 Fides quaerens intellectum, 56
Essence, 28, 178 Fire, Divine, 22
Essent, 135 First Unmoved Mover, 38, 179
Essentialist School, 147, 309 First Philos ophy (Metaphysics )
Eternity, 2, 69 (Aristotle), 34, 174
Ethics, 24, 105, 299, 314 "Five ways” of Aquinas, 47
Ethics (Abelard), 57 Formal Distinction, 65
Ethics Demonstrated According Forms, Paltonic, Eternal, 28, 45,
to the Geometrical Order (Spi¬ 153, 191, 309
noza), 22 Freedom, 41, 82, 90, 129, 142,
Etre- en-soi and etre-pour-soi, 141 257, 274, 321
Evil, 30, 53, 242, 315 Freedom of the Will, On the
Evolution, 13 (Saint Augustine), 52
Eudemus, 311 Freud, Sigmund, 314
Exaggerated Realism, 321 Friendship, 180
Existence and Essence, On Frobes, Joseph, 75
(Aquinas), 60
Existentialism, 12, 105, 129, 313, G
318 Galilei, Galileo, 71
Existential Psychoanalysis (Sar¬ Gassendi, Pierre, 223
tre), 141 Genealogy of Morals (Nietz¬
Exoteric works of Aristotle, 34 sche), 115
Experimentalism, 74 Genetic Principle, The, 6
Eudaimonia, 40, 316 Geometrical argument, 80
346 INDEX
Germans, 116, 274 Hippias Major and Minor

German Idealism, 73 (Plato), 27
Gestalt psychology, 314 Historia Calamitatum (Abelard),
Geulincx, Arnold, 72 57
Geworfenheit, 138 History, 101, 217, 267, 302
Gilson, Etienne, 7 5 History of Philosophy (Hegel),
God, 31, 38, 41, 80, 86, 106, 100
118, 142, 199, 216, 225, 246, Hobbes, Thomas, 77, 194, 205,
284, 292, 325 223
Goodness, 24, 115, 159, 287, 315 Homo homini lupus, 78
Gorgias, 23 Human Nature and Conduct
Gorgias, The (Plato), 316 (Dewey), 133
Gospel of Suffering, The (Kier¬ Human reality (Dasein), 136
kegaard), 106 Hume, David, 88, 250, 314
Government, 41, 102, 219 Husserl, Edmund, 129, 223
Gradations, 284 Hylemorphism, 36, 62
Greeks, 4, 46, 221, 288 Hylozoism, 20
Growth, 136 Hypostasis, 62
Guide of the Doubting (Maimo-
nides), 69 I
Guilt, 129, 286 Ibn Rushd (Averroes), 68
Ibn Sina (Avicenna), 68
H Ideal theory, 154
Habit, 203 Idealism, 78
Haecceitas, 6 5 Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology
Happiness, 40, 53, 69, 187, 316 (Husserl), 130
Happy Life, On the (Saint Au¬ Identity, Principle of, 6
gustine), 51 Ideology, 7
Harmony, Preestablished, Law of, "Idols” of Francis Bacon, 221,
86 291
Hartmann, Eduard, 337 Ignorance, 24, 285
Healing of the Understanding, Illumination, Divine 53, 69
On the (Spinoza), 81 Imagination, 206, 244, 264
Hedonism, 12, 42 Imagination (Sartre), 140
Hegel, Georg, 99, 123, 194, 223, Immortality, 66, 119, 183
267,313,317 Immortality of the Soul, On the
Heidegger, Martin, 134, 223 (Saint Augustine), 52
Heraclitus, 22,. 175, 300 Indeterminate, the, 20
Herding, Georg von, 76 Indiscernible, Law of, 85, 93
Heredity, 114 Individuation, Principle of, 65
Herodotus, 267 Indivisibility, 179, 288
Hierarchy of beings, 321 Induction, 23, 70, 105, 122
INDEX 347
Influence of Darwinism on Phi¬ Kohler, Wolfgang, 314
losophy (Dewey), 133 Koran, The, 68
Inquiry Concerning Human Un¬ Kosmos Noetos, 30
derstanding (Hume), 88 Kritik der reinen Vernunft
Inquiry Concerning the Principles (Kant), 261
of Morals (Hume), 88
Innatism, 86, 230 L
Instrumentalism, 74 Laches, The (Plato), 27
Intellect, 69, 85 Latin Averroism, 68, 323
Intellectualism, 286 Law of Preestablished Harmony,
Intelligible World, 30 The, 86
Interpretation, On the (Aris¬ Laws, The (Plato), 27, 160, 316
totle), 54 Leap, 108
Intersubjectivity, 143 Learning, 251
Intuition, 264 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 84,
lpsum Esse Suhsistens, 60 194, 303, 313, 337
Ironic way, 24 Leo XIII, Pope, 323
Irrascible soul, 24, 33 Leviathan, The (Hobbes), 78,
Isagoge (Porphyry), 54 205
Islamic philosophy, 67 Leucippus, 22
L’etre et le neant (Sartre), 140
J L’Existentialism est un Human¬
James, William, 118, 314 ism (Sartre), 141
Jaspers, Karl, 128 Lex Melioris, 86
Jenseits von Gut und Bose Life, 25, 60, 229
(Nietzsche), 115 Light, 43, 53
Jerusalem, Celestial, 53, 193 Linguistic analysis, 127
Jewish philosophy, 220, 322 Lives of Philosophers, The (Laer¬
Judgment, 92, 261 tius ), 8
Jung, Carl Gustave, 314 Locke, John, 82, 89, 230, 314
Justice, 164, 185 Logic, 122, 239, 299, 324
Justinian, Emperor, 43 Logic: The Theory of Inquiry
(Dewey), 133
K
Logical Investigations (Husserl),
Kant, Immanuel, 73, 89, 102,
130
120, 223, 261, 313, 363
Logical Positivism, 128
Kant and the Problem of Meta¬
Logisticon, to, 31
physics (Heidegger), 134
Loneliness, 141
Kierkegaard, S0ren, 5, 105, 123,
Logos, 55, 136, 219
275, 318
Knowledge, 24, 28, 36, 47, 60, Love, 25, 53, 82, 129, 158, 285
76, 90, 199, 207, 237 Louvain Classification, 304
Koffka, Kurt, 314 Ludwig Feuerbach (Engels), 124
348 INDEX
Lyceum, 34 Metaphysical Thought (Spinoza),

Lysis, The (Plato), 27 82
Metempsychosis, 32
M Method, Mill’s, 122
Machiavelli, Niccolo, 71 Method, Scholasticism’s, 57
Magic, 302 Middle Ages, the, 192, 311, 323
Magna Moralia (Aristotle), 46 Minor Socratic Schools, 25
Maieutic way, 24 Mill, John Stuart, 104, 312
Maimonides, Moses, 68 Misery of Philosophy, The
Malebranche, Nicholas, 72, 223 (Marx), no
Man, 23, 32, 41, 52, 78, 108, Mitwelt, 136
143, 206, 224 Modality, 264
Manicheanism, 249 Moderate Realism, 32, 198
Marcel, Gabriel, 314 Moderation, 46
Marcus Aurelius, Emperor, 42 Monadology, The (Leibniz), 85
Maritain, Jacques, 8, 75 Monarchy, 78, 213
Marsilio, Ficino, 71 Monism, 309
Marx, Karl, 194 Monologion, The (Saint Anselm),
Marxism, 313 56
Master morality, 116 Montaigne, Michelle, 72
Materia quantitate signata, 61 Montesquieu, Charles, 72
Mathematics, 300 Morality, 24, 58, 114, 183, 273,
Matter, 36, 70, 132, 228 300
Matter and form, 38 Moore, George Edward, 127, 318
Matter and Memory (Bergson), More, Thomas, 72, 194
132 Morphe, 36
Meaning of Truth, The (James), Moslem philosophy, 67
Motion, 21, 63, 175
119
Meditations on First Philosophy Mover, First Unmoved, 38
(Descartes), 79, 223 Myth, Platonic, 42
Megarian School, 25 Mystery, Orphic, 20
Melanchton (Schwarzerd) Philip, Mysticism, 59
72,337
N
Melissus, 21
Natural theology, 302
Mendicant Orders, 49
Nature, 19, 38, 65, 176
Menexenus (Plato), 27
Negation, 68, 286
Meno (Plato), 27
Neo-Kantianism, 120
Mercier, Desire, 304
Neo-Platonism, 18, 42
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 128 Neo-Positivism, 128, 313
Metaphysics, 90, 265 Neo-Thomism, 304
Metaphysics (Aristotle), 9, 174, New Essays on Human Under¬
310 standing (Leibniz), 85
INDEX 349
Nichomachean Ethics (Aristotle) P
5, 34, 3i5 Paganism, 285
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 13, 46, 114, Pain, 113
141, 288 Palingenesis, 41
Nietzsche (Heidegger), 135 Panegric Upon Abraham, A
Noes is Noeseos, 39 (Kierkegaard), 275
Nominalism, 70, 321 Panta rei, 22
Noumenon, 91 Pantheism, 55, 323
Nous, 22, 43, 191, 268 Paralogism, 96
Parerga and Paralipomena
Nouveaux Essais (Leibniz), 120
(Schopenhauer), 102
Novum Organum (F. Bacon), 70
Parmenides, 18, 21, 309
O Parmenides, The (Plato), 27
Participation, 30
Obedience, 33, 215
Pascal, Blaise, 318
Objectivism, 130
Passions of the Soul (Descartes),
Objects of philosophy, 5
79
Obligation, 215 Passive intellect, 68
Occasionalism, 72 Paulsen, Frederick, 130
Ockham, William, 48 Peirce, Charles Sanders, 118, 314
Oligarchy, 213 Perionetic science, 324
Olivi, Peter John, 322 Peripatetic School, 34
Persians, 18, 288
On the Soul (Aristotle), 34
Person, 62
One, The Absolute, 43, 189
Pessimism, 103
Oneness, 21 Phaedo, 25, 268
Ontological argument, 56 Phaedo,The (Plato), 151
Ontologism, 72 Phaedrus, The (Plato), 27
Ontology, 144, 300, 337 Phenomenological Philosophy
Opus Maim, Minus, Tertium (F. (Husserl), 130
Bacon), 58 Phenomenology of the Spirit, The
Opus Oxoniense (Duns Scotus), (Hegel), 99
64 Phenomenalism, 73, 314
Organon, The (Aristotle), 34 Phenomenology, 130, 145
Orient, the, 102, 272 Phenomenon, 30, 94
Origin of the Family (Engels), Philia, 3
124 Philosophy as a Strict Knowledge
Orphic cult, 21, 44 (Husserl), 130
Ortega y Gasset, Jose, 75 Philosophical Fragments (Kierke¬
Ought, the, 319 gaard), 106
Outlines of the Philosophy of Philosopher-Kings, 33, 165
Right (Hegel), 99 Philosophy, 3, 69, 195
350 INDEX
Philosophy of History, The Psychology, 34, 299

(Hegel), ioo, 267 Pure Act, 63
Philosophy of Religion (Hegel), Pure Concepts, 263
100 Puritanism, 25
Pico della Mirandola, 71 Pyrrho, 12, 42, 260
Plato, 12, 26, 71, 151, 195) 309
Pleasure, 25, 105 Q
Plotinus, 42, 188 Qualities, primary and secondary,
Poetics, The (Aristotle), 34 21, 83, 241
Politeia, The (Plato), 27, 173 Quantity, 36
Political Treatise (Spinoza), 82 Quinque Viae, 6 3
Politicus, The (Plato), 27 Quintilian, 70
Pomponazzi, Pietro, 71
Porphyry, 54 R
Positivism, 103, 312 Ramee, Pierre de la, 72
Potentiality, 35 Rationalism, 72, 90, 113, 320
Power, 76, 135, 255, 268, 276 Rationes seminales, 52
Pragmatism, 312 Reality, 28, 100, 223, 243, 309
Primary matter, 46 Reason, 31, 241
Principia Ethica (Moore), 318 Reawakening, 32
Principles, 6, 32 Receptacle, 31
Principles of Causes, The (Hei¬ Recollection, 32
degger), 135 Recurrence, eternal, 46, 117, 288
Principles of Nature, On the Regulative ideas, 265
(Aquinas), 60 Relations, 264, 276
Principles of Philosophy (Des¬ Relativism, 75
cartes ), 7 9 Religion, 208, 258, 320
Principles of Political Economy, Religion Within the Limits of
The {Mill), 105 Reason Alone (Kant), 89
Producers, 33, 165 Reminiscence, 32
Prolegomena to any Future Meta¬ Renaissance, 71
physics (Kant), 26, 89 Reportata Parisiensia (Duns
Proletariat, 112 Scotus), 64
Property, 113 Republicanism, 41
Proslogion, The (Saint Anselm), Repetition (Kierkegaard), 275
56 Republic, The (Plato) 27, 160,
Protagoras, 23 316
Protagoras, The (Plato), 27 Retractions (Saint Augustine),
Prote Philosophia (Aristotle), 36 52
Proton Kinoun Akineton, to, 39 Revolution, 214
Protreptikos (Aristotle), 3 Romans, 102, 192, 273
Proudhon, Joseph, 109 Roscelin, 70
Psyche, 32 Royce, Josiah, 318
INDEX 351
Russell, Bertrand, 125, 318 Sophia, 3, 40
Ryle, Gilbert, 127 Sophists, 22
Sophist, The (Plato), 27
S Sophrosyne, 46
Saint-Simon, Claude Henri, 103 Sorge, 138
Sanseverino, Gustavo, 75 Sovereignty, 205
Sartre, Jean-Paul, 139, 223, 313 Soul, 31, 43, 52, 66, 248
Scandal of philosophy, the, 11 Speculation, 5, 106
Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm, 73 Spencer, Herbert, 113
Schema, 264 Specula, 5
Schlick, Moritz, 318 Spinoza, Baruch, 81
Scholasticism, 46, 311, 321 Stages on Life’s Way (Kierke¬
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 102 gaard), 106
Science, 5, 174, 299 Stagirite, The, (Aristotle), 3 3
Science of Logic (Hegel), 99 State, the 33, 78, 167, 205, 272,
Scotism, 322 291
Search for a Method (Sartre), Statesman, The (Plato), 27
141 Stoicism, 12, 19, 42
Second philosophy, 34, 299 Suarez, Francis, 71, 322
Sein and Seiendes, 135 Subjectivism, 75
Self, 107, 276 Substance, 37, 88
Semeiotica, 239 Substantial form, 61
Senses, the 26, 46, 229 Suffering, 103, 249, 291
Situation, existential, 143 Sufficient Reason, Principle of, 6
Sema, 32 Summa Contra Gentiles (Aqui¬
Seneca, 42, 57 nas ), 60
Sermo, 219 Summa Theologiae (Aquinas),
Sextus Empiricus, 42 60, 200
Sic et Non (Abelard), 57 Superman, 116, 288
Sickness Unto Death, The Suppositum, 62
(Kierkegaard), 106, 275 Syllogism, 56
Siger of Brabant, 68 Symposium, The (Plato), 27, 156
Signate matter, 61 System of Logic, A (Mill), 105
Sinnlichkeit, 93, 261 System of Positive Polity
Skepticism, 19, 90, 247, 253, 259, (Comte), 103
321 System of Synthetic Philosophy
Slave morality, 116 (Spencer), 113
Society, 33, 78, 112
Socrates, 23, 268, 285 T
Soliloquy (Saint Augustine), 52 Taine, Hyppolite, 314
Soma, 32 Teilard de Chardin, 315
Some Problems of Philosophy Teleological Proof, 63, 121
(James), 119 Temperance, 40
352 INDEX
Terminism, 67 Transcendence of the Ego

Terminology, Kantian, 261 (Sartre), 41
Thales, 20, 175 Transmigration of souls, 32
Taparelli, Luigi, 75 Transvaluation of all values, 288
Theaetus, The (Plato), 9, 27 Treatise on the Soul (Aristotle),
Theodicy, 304 3i3
Theologike Sophia, 174 Triad, Hegelian, 101
Theology, 7, 66 Tripartite soul, Platonic, 31
Theology, natural, 121, 304 Truth, 35, 86, 137
Theological Ideal, 97 Tusculan Disputations (Cicero),
Theological-?olitical Treatise, 8
(Spinoza), 82 Two Fundamental Problems of
Theological Science (Aristotle), Ethics, The (Schopenhauer),
. 174
Theses on Feuerbach (Marx),
102
Two Sources of Morality and
110 Religion, The (Bergson), 232
Thesis, Hegelian, 101 Two Treatises on Civil Govern¬
"They,” the, 36 ment (Locke), 8 3
Thing-in-themselves, 264 Tyranny^ 172, 213
Third Man Argument, the, 29
Thomas Aquinas, Saint, 8, 200, U
207, 300, 311 Ultrarealism, 49
Thucydides, 267 Unamuno, Miguel de, 147
"Thought of Thought,” 39 Understanding, 225, 286
Thus Spake Zarathrustra (Nietz¬ Unfolding, the, 136
sche), 115, 288 Universal, 24, 28, 36, 47, 67,
Three Essays on Religion (Mill), 175
Universe, 19, 30, 114
, 105
Three Dialogues Between Hylas Universities, 49
and Philonous (Berkeley ), 2 2 3 Unity of apperception, 98
Thymoeides, to, 31 Utilitarianism, 105
Tillich, Paul, 128 Utopia (More), 72
Timaeus, The (Plato), 27, 44 U bermensch, 117
Time, 21, 35
V
Time and Free Will (Bergson),
Value, 32
132
Verification, 318
Tongiorgio, Sigmundo, 175
Vernunft and Verstand, Kantian,
Topos oratos, 30
93, 261
Torment, 284 Vice, 24, 40, 249
Toward a Critique of Political Vienna Circle, 127, 318
Economy (Marx), no Virtue, 24, 33, 40, 183, 316
Traducianism, 52 Vital attention, 53
INDEX 353
Voltaire, Francois, 72 William of Ockham, 66
Vocabulum, 219 Wisdom, 3, 33, 86
Voluntarism, 69 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 127
Vorhanden, 136 Wolff, Christian, 72, 303
Woman, 291
W Wonder and World as Will Pres¬
War, 291 entation, The (Schopenhauer),
Warriors, 33, 165 102
W eltanschaung, 9 World, 19, 60, 100
Wertheimer, Max, 314 World Spirit, 268
Whitehead, Alfred North, 127 Works of Love (Kierkegaard),
Will, 53, 58, 103, 288 106
William of Champeaux, 57 Wundt, Wilhelm, 314
.
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> •
BARRON’S ESSENTIALS/THE EFFICIENT STUDY GUIDES
PHILOSOPHY NICHOLAS A. HORVATH
This book provides a readable introduction to a difficult subject. Philoso¬

phy is defined, its importance is discussed, and the development of philo¬
sophic thought is traced from its earliest beginnings in Greece, even before
the Golden Age of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, to modern times The
eluded from such clas C,
Hobbes’ Leviathan, L»
Kant’s Critique of Pure
0812004981 22 ’s
Thus Spake Zarathustrc^ _ l-
tion, the periods of ph :^/27/20l7 12.58-3 Jt

important philosophers .uuine iorm along
with etymologies of some mC mam philosophic terms.

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ISBN 0-8120-0498-1 BARRON’S ESSENTIALS/THE EFFICIENT STUDY GUIDES $2.

PHILOSOPHY NICHOLAS A. HORVATH

A clear and complete survey of the lives and teachings

by Nicholas Horvath, Ph.D. Professor of

Philosophy John Carroll University ClevelandOhio

BARRON’S EDUCATIONAL SERIES

Woodbury, New York

All rights reserved.

All inquiries should he addressed to:

Library of Congress Catalog Card No. -73-18149

International Standard Book No. 0-8120-0498-1

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Essentials of philosophy: Hellens to Heidegger.

B74.H67 109 73-18149

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

LIST OF TABLES vii

Ancient Greek Philosophy 17

1. Plato: Phaedo 151

15. Kant: Critique of Pure Reason 261

1. Divisions of Philosophy 299

A General Outline of the Periods of Philosophy 326

Outlines of the Principal Doctrines of the Most

A SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY 338

Tu quoque si vis (If thou, too, wouldst

De consolatione philosophiae, I Metrum 7

Av^ccording to G. K. Chesterton, one’s view of the universe is

of this book. My gratitude goes to Miss Anne Tamm for having

In a sense, no intelligent person in his lifetime can entirely

(sophos) by which contemporary thinkers had designated them¬

of reason. Philosophy is a universal science in the sense that it

principles of being, of knowledge, and so on. Principles are

The Principle of Identity.

These principles are self-evident; they cannot and need not be

1. The efficient cause: an agent whose activity produces an

In contemporary science, the general Law of Causation is sub¬

ing or goes into nothing”) and the Principle of Lawfulness

temperament, circumstances, and the goals of individuals are

1. "Fragment 50, 1483 b 29; 1484 a 2, 8, 18.

3. The Lives of Philosophers, Preface.

4. According to Aristotle’s description {Met.A, I, 2), a wise per¬

5. Aristotle’s definition: Ten onomadzomenen sophian peri ta

6. A succinct yet expressive and clear definition of philosophy

7. When applied to both the philosophical sciences and the

8. Weltanschaung: "outlook on life.” In reality, Weltanschaung

9. "Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy

1. Philosophy is the basis for the special sciences. (a) Philos¬

2. Philosophy, in spite of being mainly abstract in character,

3. A correct system of philosophy, one not contradictory to

Philosophy uses in its investigations neither sensible experi¬

proper contexts, synoptically, in broad interacting relations.

1. From a strictly natural point of view, a system is as good as

2. If a system can be reduced to internal contradictions, it is

3. On one hand, philosophical development is not a series of

THE "SCANDAL" OF PHILOSOPHY 13

4. There is an inherent value in the thinking of even erring

Greece was the cradle of Western civilization for the following

1. Greece had a mild climate. Hence its inhabitants did not

Whereas Western civilization had its roots in Greece, Greek

while Greece itself was in a state of comparative chaos and

proximately contemporary with him. The two major Atomists,

Early (Pre-Socratic) Greek Philosophy

(The Cosmocentric Period or the Period of Naturalism)

birth and death, and, beyond changes, the common essences of