History of Western Philosophy

Bertrand Russell

Part I The Pre-Socratics

1. The Rise of Greek Civilization

There were two big civilizations before Greece: Egypt and

Mesopotamia:
o Agriculture was easy due to the Nile, Tigris and
Euphrates;
o Polytheism with superior God, to whom the divine King
held a special relationship;
o There was a military and a priestly aristocracy, the latter
being able to encroach on political power if they thought
the king was not abiding with custom;
o Cultivators were serfs owned by the aristocracy.
Egypt:
o Writing was invented there in 4000 B.C (and not much
later in Mesopotamia);
o Religion focused upon death: judgment by Osiris in the
underworld according to the deeds made during
lifetime;
o Soul returns to the body (hence the mummies and the
pyramids);
o 1800 B.C. they were conquered by Semites named
Hyksos.
Babylonia:
o Religion focused upon prosperity in this world;
o Magic, divination, astrology (24 hours, 360 degrees,
prediction of eclipses).
Both religions were based in fertility cults;
Political motives would transform religion, praying for both
fertility and victory in war: A rich priestly caste elaborated the
ritual and the theology, and fitted together into a pantheon
the several divinities of the component parts of the empire,
p. 68 (And this already sounds like St. Augustine);
From religion would also derive morality the oldest known
legal code is that of the Hammurabi, king of Babylon (20672025 B.C.), delivered to him by Marduk, the Babylonian God;
From 2500 1400 B.C. there was the Minoan Civilization in the
island of Crete, engaged in commerce of weapons with Egypt:
o Most indubitable goddess was the Mistress of Animals
from which the classical Artemis was probably derived;

o Belief in Egyptian after life;

o As they were protected by sea, they did not have any
military culture;
o Much more cheerful and not as superstitious as the
Egyptians.
1600 B.C. The Minoan Civilization spreads to the Greek
Mainland and gives rise to the Mycenaean Civilization (1600
900 B.C.) They were more based upon war;
Greek conquerors came in three waves:
o Ionians Adopted the Minoan Civilization
o Acheans Weakened it;
o Dorians Retained their Indo-European religion
Greeces classical religion would be a mixture of
the two.
The mainland of Greece is mountainous and infertile when
the population grew, the only option was to make colonies
Asia Minor, Sicily, Italy
General development from monarchy to aristocracy to an
alternation between tyranny and democracy:
o Monarchy Kings were not absolute advised by a
Council of Elders, they could not transgress custom;
o Tyranny Rule of a man whose claim to power was not
hereditary;
o Democracy Government by all the citizens.
The first product of the Hellenic Civilization was Homer:
o Widely held opinion that he was a series of poets (either
between 750-550 B.C. or before the 8th Century B.C.);
o His poems achieved fixed form during the 6 th Century
B.C.;
o Brought to Athens by Peisistratus (560-527 B.C.)
o The Homeric poems, like the courtly romances of the
later Middle Ages, represent the view of a civilized
aristocracy, which ignores as plebeian various
superstitions that are still rampant among the populace
p. 84
o Such genuine religious feeling as is to be found in
Homer is less concerned with the gods of the Olympus
than with more shadowy beings such as Fate or
Necessity or Destiny, to whom even Zeus is subject.
Fate exercised a great influence on all Greek thought,
and perhaps was one of the sources from which science
derived the belief in natural law p. 88
o Homer shows that the Olympian Gods were indeed
aristocratic conquerors.
In the middle of the 6th Century the Persian Empire was
established by Cyrus, and the Ionian Greek cities were
conquered, starting a big rivalry between Persia and Greece.

This led to the philosophers being refugees, wandering

between cities and spreading civilization;
The religion in ancient times was not towards the Olympians,
but to Bacchus:
o Thracian God of fertility;
o With the discovery of beer and wine, he became more
and more associated with intoxication His functions in
promoting fertility in general became somewhat
subordinate to his functions in relation to the grape and
the divine madness produced by wine, p. 97
o His cult had barbaric elements tearing wild animals
and eating them raw and feminist elements dances
stimulating to ecstasy, in which women were mystically
intoxicated.
o In Greece it served to react against the restraints of
civilization The worshipper of Dionysius reacts against
prudence. In intoxication, physical or spiritual, he
recovers an intensity of feeling which prudence had
destroyed, he finds the world full of delight and beauty,
and his imagination is suddenly liberated from the
prison of everyday preoccupations;
o Ritual based on enthusiasm God enters into the
worshipper, and he becomes one with God.
Bacchus influenced the Greek civilization mainly through
Orpheus and the Orphics, a movement that came from Crete:
o Transmigration of souls;
o The soul achieves eternal bliss or torment according to
life on earth;
o They aim at becoming pure;
o Man is partly of Earth, partly of Heaven, and the end is
to become one with Bacchus. Through a pure life, we are
more heavenly and less earthly;
o Dionysius is the son of Zeus and Persephone, and he
was torn by the Titans, everything but the heart being
eaten this led to Dionysiuss second birth. According to
the ritual, the tearing of an animal and eating its raw
flesh re-enacts this process.
Hence, There were, in fact, two tendencies in Greece, one
passionate, religious, mystical, otherworldly, the other
cheerful, empirical, rationalistic, and interested in acquiring
knowledge of a diversity of facts, p. 118. The Bacchean
tendency is the one that will influence Pythagoras, Plato, and
Christian theology.

2. The Milesian School

The theories of the Milesian school must be interpreted as

scientific, and not philosophical hypotheses.

Philosophy and science begin with Thales, native of Miletus,

Asia Minor:
o Predicted eclipse in 585 B.C.;
o Water is the original substance.
Anaximander:
o Born about 610 B.C,;
o All things come from a single primal substance infinite,
eternal, ageless, it encompasses all the worlds
o Into that from which things take their rise they pass
away once more, as is ordained, for they make
reparation and satisfaction to one another for their
injustice to the ordering of time. Justice is balance
several elements continually walk towards equilibrium
without ever reaching it.
o The gods were subject to justice just as much as men
were, but this supreme power was not itself personal,
and was not a supreme God Hence it is not surprising
that the first liberal institutions were born in Greece.
o There was an eternal motion, in the course of which
was brought about the origin of the worlds. The worlds
were not created, as in Jewish or Christian theology, but
evolved.
Anaximenes:
o Flourished in 492 B.C.
o The fundamental substance is air, and the others
depend on the quantity of condensation thereof.

3. Pythagoras

Flourished at about 532 B.C. He was native of Samos (near

Asia Minor), but later established himself at Croton and finally
at Mentapontum, both in Southern Italy.
Founded a religion based in the transmigration of souls and
very strange dogmas eating beans is a sin.
He represented a movement of reform in Orphism only the
unseen unity of God is valuable, while what is visible is false.
There were, for him, three sorts of people:
o Low Merchants;
o Middle Those who compete (athletes);
o High Those who simply look on and practice
disinterested science
Theory meant Passionate sympathetic contemplation, which
lead to the prestige of mathematics All things are
numbers. From Pythagoras this tradition passed on to Euclid,
down to Descartes and the other rationalists (see p. 164). The
fact that they discovered mathematics and the art of
deductive reasoning led thus to the supremacy of the
rationalist deductive method and to the inevitable disbelief in
the crucial method of induction.

4. Heraclitus

Between Pythagoras and Heraclitus there was on important

philosopher: Xenophanes:
o He was Ionian and lived in southern Italy;
o He believed all things are to be made of earth and
water;
o He was extremely skeptical towards gods: The gods did
not reveal, from the beginning,/All things to us, but in
the course of time/Through seeking we may learn and
know things better./But as for certain truth, no man has
known it,/Nor shall he know it, neither of the gods/Nor
yet of all the things of which I speak./For even if by
chance he were to utter/The final truth, he would himself
not know it:/For all is but a woven web of guesses. This
was of a rationalism diametrically opposed to
Pythagoras.
Heraclitus flourished about 500 B.C., and he was an aristocrat
of Ephesus;
He was part of the mystical tradition;
Fire is the fundamental substance;
Everything is born by the death of something else: Mortals
are immortals, and immortals are mortals, the one living the
others dead and in dying the others life
There is unity in the world through the combination of
opposites;
He was anti-democratic and speaks ill of Homer;
Because he thought all men were bad, he believed only force
would compel them to act for their own good;
War is the father of all and the king of all
Heraclitus values power obtained through self-mastery, and
despises the passions that distract men from the central
ambitions FIND PAGE
This world (...) was ever, is now, and every shall be our everliving fire, with measures kindling and measures going out
The doctrine of perpetual flux;
It is the opposite which is good for us
The strife of opposites can never issue in the complete
victory of either
(Note: Even in this conception there is something permanent,
namely progress itself and its immanent goal)

5. Parmenides

Native of Elea, south of Italy (traditionally inclined towards

mysticism), flourished in the first half of the 5th Century B.C.
The senses are deceptive;
The only true being is the One (nous), infinite and
indivisible;

There are no opposites: Cold = Not Hot;

He divides his philosophy in two parts: the way of truth and
the way of opinion. As regards the way of truth:
o Thou canst not know what is not (...). How, then, can
what is be going to be in the future? Or how could it
come into being? If it came into being, it is not; nor is it
if it is going to be in the future. Thus is becoming
extinguished and passing away not to be heard of.
o Bertrand Russell says: The essence of the argument is
this: When you think, you think of something. Therefore,
both thought and language require objects outside
themselves. And since you can think of a thing or speak
of it at one time as well as at another, whatever can be
thought of or spoken of must exist at all times.
Consequently there can be no change, since chance
consists in things coming to being or ceasing to be.
o He makes thus two fallacies:
Presupposes words have a constant meaning at all
times;
Whatever the name [George Washington]
suggests to us, it must be not the man himself,
but something now present to sense or memory or
thought.
What remained of Parmenides was the concept of substance
and its indestructibility.

6. Empedocles

Citizen of Acragas, south coast of Sicily, flourished around 440

B.C.;
Democratic politician;
In science:
o Air is a separate substance;
o One example of centrifugal force;
o There is sex in plants;
o Theory of evolution and survival of the fittest;
o Moon shines by reflected light, and this is also true of
the sun;
o Light takes very little time to travel;
o Solar eclipses are caused by the interpolation of the
moon;
o Founder of the Italian school of medicine.
In philosophy:
o Earth, air, fire and water are the four everlasting
elements;
o Different proportions form complex substances;
o The substances are combined by Love and separated by
Strife, the other two primitive substances;
o Changes are governed by Chance and Necessity;

o Loves combination is complete, Strife sorts them out.

When the separation is complete, Love reunites All
compound substances are temporary;
o World is a sphere: In the Golden Age, Love is all in, and
afterwards Strife starts making its way cycle.
In religion:
o Mainly Pythagorean;
o Refers to himself as a God;
o Caves Allegory is anticipated by him.
Rejected monism and teleology.

7. Athens in Relation to Culture

The greatness of Athens begins at the time of the two Persian

wars 490 B.C. and 480-79 B.C.
Athens was victorious against Darius in the first war and
Xerxes in the second. This gave them great prestige.
Ionias liberation was effected by Athens predominant
partner against Persia.
According to this alliance, any constituent State was bound to
contribute either a specified number of ships, or the cost of
them.
The latter was more frequent, and thus Athens built the ships,
became a maritime superior to the other cities, and vastly
increased its wealth.
This was the start of the Athenian Empire, which attained its
Golden Age with Pericles (460 B.C. 430 B.C.), elected by the
free choice of the citizens.
The Age of Pericles:
o Aeschylus inaugurated Greek tragedy;
o Pericles was devoted to the reconstruction of the
temples in the Acropolis destroyed by Xerxes. Hence, he
built the Parthenon, he commission Phisias sculptures of
divinities, etc.
o Herodotus, the father of History, was encouraged by the
Athenian State;
o Before Pericles, the only notable Athenian had been
Solon Athens lagged behind Magna Graecia;
o Socrates was of this period;
o Deductive reasoning had been just discovered;
Before Pericles;
o Attica was agricultural, and Athens its capital, full of
artisans and skilled artificers.
o They discovered vines and olives was more profitable,
but it needed more capital farmers got indebted.
o Aristocracy oppressed the farmers and artisans;
o There was, in the 6th Century, a compromise towards
democracy with Solon;
o Tyranny followed with Peisistratus;

o With Pericles, the rule of the aristocracy resembled 19 th

Century England. However, the aristocracy began
demanding more power, and Athens imperialistic policy
caused frictions with Sparta, which led to the
Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.). Athens was utterly
defeated.
o However, Platos academy was only closed by Justinian
in A.D. 529.

8. Anaxagoras

Native Ionian, he was born in 500 B.C., and he was in Athens

in 462-432 B.C. he was the first to bring them philosophy.
He was of the scientific and rationalist tradition.
Pericles induced him to go to Athens.
With the higher level of culture, opponents got aroused, and
Anaxagoras was prosecuted, being accused of teaching that
the sun was a red-hot stone and the moon was made of earth
(this same accusation was made to Socrates, who made fun of
the prosecutors by saying they were out of date);
Doctrine:
o Everything is infinitely divisible;
o Things appear to be that of which contains the most;
o Mind is infinite, self-ruled and is mixed with nothing. It
separately enters into living beings.
o Everything contains opposites.
o Mind is source of all motion, causes a rotation whereby
light things get into the circumference, and heavy things
are drawn to the centre.
o Mind is just as good in animals as in man, the latter
having apparent superiority due to bodily differences.
o He discovered the correct theory of eclipses the moon
is below the sun.
o He thought the sun and stars are fiery stones.

9. Atomists

Founders: Leucippus and Democritus.

Leucippus was born in Miletus and flourished around 440 B.C.
Parmenides and Zeno influenced him.
Democritus was born in Abdera, Thrace, and flourished around
420 B.C. He was a contemporary of Socrates and the Sophists,
but it is hard to disentangle him from Leucippus. He made
several journeys to Egypt.
Everything is composed of physically (not geometrically)
indivisible atoms.
Between them there is empty space.
They are indestructible.
They are eternally in motion, moving at random.
There are infinite number and kinds of atoms

With collisions, atoms formed vortices this is a mechanical

and not spiritual explanation, as in Anaxagoras.
Everything happens in accordance to natural laws they were
strict determinists.
They did not account for the initial movement, for it too must
have had another cause, which is endlessly unascertainable.
They provided the answer to the mechanistic question: What
earlier circumstances caused this event? The successors
provided the teleological explanation: What purpose did this
event serve? Both of them are only applicable within reality,
not reality as a whole.
They tried to harmonize the facts of motion and change with
Parmenides: The void is a not-being, and no part of what is is
a not-being; for what is in the strict sense of the term is an
absolute plenum. This plenum, however, is not one; on the
contrary, it is a many infinite in number and invisible owing to
the minuteness of their bulk. The many move in the void (for
there is a void): and by coming together they produce
coming-to-be, while by separating they produce passing-away.
Moreover, they act and suffer action whenever they chance to
be in contact (for there they are not one), and they generate
by being put together and become intertwined. From the
genuinely one, on the other hand, there could never have
come to be a multiplicity, nor from the genuinely many a one:
that is impossible
Subsequent history:
o Aristotle: Void is place bereft of body space is the
receptacle of matter;
o Newton: There is absolute space, and a difference
between absolute and relative motion;
o Descartes: Extension (property of occupying space) is
the essence of matter, there is not extension (adjective)
without matter (substantive), hence there is matter
everywhere, for there is nothing that can be without
matter;
o Leibniz Space is a system of relations;
o Modern physicist Matter is not unchanging substance,
but merely a way of grouping events. Everything is in
flux, space is a system of relation, and, since Einstein,
distance is between events, and implies time as well as
space (causal conception).
As regards Democritus:
o Warmth, taste, and colour are in the object (like Locke);
o Thought is a kind of motion
o First materialist:
Soul was composed of atoms;
Thought is a physical process;

There is no purpose in the Universe, only atoms

governed by mechanical laws.
o Utilitarian (like Bentham) Cheerfulness is the goal of
life.

10. Protagoras

Chief of the Sophists (meaning professor) Men who made

their living by teaching you men useful things;
Flourished in the latter half of the 5th Century;
Skeptical movement;
Athenian democracy:
o Judges and executive offices were chose by lot and
served for short periods,
o Plaintiff and defendant appeared in person, Sophists
taught them lawyer skills;
o Associated with cultural conservatism.
Protagoras was born in 500 B.C. at Abdera.
He made a code of laws for the city of Thurii in 444-3 B.C.
Man is the measure of all things, of things that are that they
are, and of things that are not that they are not Each man is
the measure of all things, and when men differ, there is not
objective truth.
The majority are hence the arbiters he was led to the
defense of law, convention, and traditional morality.
Gorgias: Nothing exists, and if it does, it is unknowable.
At the end of the Peloponnesian War, the Spartans established
in Athens an oligarchical government, known as the Thirty
Tyrants. Socrates was the teacher of their leader, Critias.

11 Socrates

Born 469 B.C., dead in 399 B.C.

Athenian citizen of moderate means (caricatured in The
Clouds, Aristophanes)
Accused of corrupting the youth and of being an evil-doer. The
real cause was, however, that he was a member of the
aristocratic party.
In the Apology:
o He exposes the pretense of knowledge of his public
enemies: He, O men, is the wisest, who, like Socrates,
knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing (the
Oracle of Delphi had said Socrates was the wisest of
men)
o He points out that good men are better to live among
than bad men, and therefore he cannot be so foolish as
to corrupt his fellow-citizens intentionally; but if
unintentionally, then Meletus should instruct him, not
persecute him (This argument does not seem to follow:

o
o
o

o
o

good is a subjective valuation; if it is not, it gives rise

to the Platonic problem)
I dare say you may feel out of temper (like a person
who is suddenly awakened from sleep), and you think
that you might easily strike me dead as Anytus advises,
and then you would sleep on for the remainder of your
lives, unless God in his care of you sent you another
gad-fly Not very fitting to the Socratic ideal of
philosophic search;
There seems hardly any doubt that the historical
Socrates claimed to be guided by an oracle or daimon.
Whether this was analogous to what a Christian would
call the voice of conscience, or whether it appeared to
him as an actual voice, it is impossible to know.
He was the perfect Orphic saint: in the dualism of
heavenly soul and earthly body, he had achieved the
complete mastery of the soul over the body
I have nothing to do with physical speculations He
was concerned with ethics, not science.
The Platonic Socrates consistently maintains that he
knows nothing, and is only wiser than others in knowing
that he knows nothing, but he does not think knowledge
unobtainable. On the contrary, he thinks the search for
knowledge of the utmost importance. He maintains that
no man sins wittingly, and therefore only knowledge is
needed to make all men perfectly virtuous
Enlightenment
Dialectics evoking knowledge already possessed
reminiscence impossible to apply to empiricism;
(Russell idea, p. 340 The answer to what is justice
only leads to a linguistic discovery, not a discovery in
ethics)

12 The influence of Sparta

Double influence on Greek thought: reality and myth.

Spartans were the ruling race in Laconia they reduced the
natives to the condition of serfs;
Serfs (helots) were attached to the land (like in medieval
times);
Spartans owned land but could not cultivate it because such
work was degrading and they had to be free for military
service;
Land was divided by lots, and could not be bought and sold
passed from father to son;
Spartans had a police to control rebellions by the helots and,
as supplement, they declared war on them once a year, so
that the young Spartans could kill any helot who seemed
insubordinate

Lots were for the common Spartans; the aristocracy had

estates of their own, whereas the lots were portions of
common land assigned by the State
The sole business of a Spartan citizen was war, to which he
was trained from birth (...). There was no nonsense about
cultural or scientific education; the sole aim was to produce
good soldiers, wholly devoted to the State
It was the theory of the State that no Spartan citizen should
be destitute, and none should be rich. Each was expected to
live on the produce of his lot, which he could not alienate
except by free gift. None were allowed to own gold or silver,
and the money was made of iron
Girls went through the same physical training as was given to
boys; what is more remarkable, boys and girls did their
gymnastics together, all being naked.
Lycurgus is the supposed legislator of Sparta, 885 B.C.
One reason for the admiration of Sparta was its stability, and
its indestructibility in war.
Aristotle is a voracious critic of the Spartan constitution.
Bury: A stranger from Athens or Miletus in the fifth century
visiting the straggling villages which formed her unwalled
unpretentious city must have had a feeling of being
transported into an age long past, when men were braver,
better and simpler, undisturbed by ideas. To a philosopher,
like Plato, speculating in political science, the Spartan State
seemed the nearest approach to the ideal. The ordinary Greek
looked upon it as a structure of severe and simple beauty, a
Dorian city stately as a Dorian temple, far nobler than his own
abode but not so confortable to dwell in
Sparta came as myth through Plutarch

13 The Sources of Platos opinions

Plato was born in 428-7 B.C., the early years of the

Peloponnesian War.
He was a young man when Athens was defeated, and he
could attribute the defeat to democracy, which his social
position and his family connections were likely to make him
despise.
Furthermore, Socrates had been killed by democracy Plato
turned to Sparta.
p. 378 Plato possessed the art to dress up illiberal
suggestions in such a way that they deceived future ages,
which admired the Republic without ever becoming aware of
what was involved in its proposals
Philosophical influences:
o Pythagoras: Orphic elements the belief in immortality,
the otherworldliness, the priestly tone, and all that is
involved in the simile of the cave; the respect for

mathematics, and his intimate intermingling of intellect

and mysticism.
o Parmenides: Reality is eternal and timeless, and, on
logical grounds, all change must be illusory;
o Heraclitus: There is nothing permanent in the sensory
world + Parmenides knowledge is only to be achieved
by the intellect fits with Pythagoras
o Socrates: Ethical problems; search for teleological rather
than mechanical explanations.
Connection with authoritarianism:
o Goodness and Reality as timeless Best State is the one
that most copies the ideal models. Leaders should be
those who best understand the Good
o Core of certainty incommunicable except by way of life
the statesmen can only achieve the good through
intellectual and moral discipline
o Education Without mathematics no true wisdom is
possible oligarchy
o Leisure is essential to wisdom Wisdom will not be
found among those who have to work for a living
aristocratic
Two questions arise:
o Is there such a thing as wisdom? Plato knowledge of
the good no man sins wittingly that who knows the
good must do it
o Granted that there is such a thing, can any constitution
be devised that will give it political power?

14 Platos Utopia

The Republic consists of three parts:

o Books I V The construction of the ideal
commonwealth
o Books VI -VII Definition of philosopher
o Third section Discussion of actual constitutions
The Utopia:
o Citizens are to be divided into the common people, the
soldiers, and the guardians.
o The guardians alone are to have political power, and
they are made fewer than the others. The first are
chosen by the legislator, afterwards by heredity.
o Problem: To insure the guardians carry out the intentions
of the legislator. Solution:
Education:
Music (culture) + Gymnastics (athletics)
Gravity, decorum and courage are the
qualities to be cultivated
Strong censorship over literature Homer
and Hesiod (their Gods behave badly, and

God is only the creator of good things; they

teach to fear death, and young must be
willing to die in battle, they laugh loudly,
they are luxurious)
Economics:
Thoroughgoing communism for the
guardians (and possibly for the soldiers)
Spartan constitution
Communal family
Procreation through eugenic principles
Children of inferior parents will be put away in
some mysterious unknown place, as they ought to
be
All children will be taken away from their parents
of birth, and no parents shall know who are their
children
p. 401 The advantage sough is, of course, to
minimize private possessive emotions, and so
remove obstacles to th
e domination of public spirit, as well as to
acquiescence in the absence of private property
Lying is to be a prerogative of the government.
Furthermore, there is a royal lie: God has created
men of three kinds, the best made of gold, the
second best of silver, and the common herd of
brass and iron.
Justice: the city is just when trader, auxiliary, and
guardian, each does his own job without
interfering with that of other classes (contrasting
with Anaximanders justice)
This makes it possibly to have inequalities of
power and privilege without justice
It presupposes a States organized either on
traditional lines, or, like his own, so as to
realize, in its totality, some ethical ideal.
According to tradition, the job is hereditary,
but in Platos Utopia he is to decide who
does what.
(Russells discussion of ideals something desired, not
egocentric, and such that the person desiring it wishes that
every one else also desired it (...). In this way, I can build up
what looks like an impersonal ethic, although in fact it rests
upon the personal basis of my own desires.)

15 The Theory of Ideas

Republic, Books V VII;

The philosopher is a man who loves the vision of truth
The philosopher loves beauty in itself

The man who only loves beautiful things is dreaming,

whereas the man who knows absolute beauty is wide awake.
The former has only opinion; the latter has knowledge
The man who has knowledge has knowledge of something,
that is to say, of something that exists, for what does not exist
is nothing (...). Thus knowledge is infallible, since it is logically
impossible for it to be mistaken
Opinion cannot be of what is not, for that is impossible; nor of
what is, for then in would be knowledge
Particular things always partake of opposite characters (...).
All particular sensible objects (...) are thus intermediate
between being and not-being, and are suitable as objects of
opinion, but not of knowledge Opinion must be of what
both is and is not
Conclusion: Opinion is of the world presented to the sense,
whereas knowledge is of a super-sensible eternal world
The argument amounts to this: A and not-A is a paradox, but
particular things seem to follow it. Therefore, particular things
are not real.
Theory of forms or ideas:
o Logical part: If the word cat means anything, it
means (...) some kind of universal cattiness. This is not
born when a particular cat is born, and does not die
when it dies. In fact, it has no position in space or time;
it is eternal
o Metaphysical part: Cat is the ideal cat, the cat,
created by God. Particular cats have its nature, but are
imperfect The cat is real; particular cats are apparent.
o Intellect is divided in reason (pure ideas, dialectic
method) and understanding (hypothetical reasoning)
o Allegory of the cave
Reality, as opposed to appearance, is completely and perfectly
good; to perceive the good, therefore, is to perceive reality
Mysticism;
Problem of ideals in the last chapter his ideas are just other
particulars
Universals are adjectives beauty is beautiful amounts to
human is human self-criticism in Parmenides

Platos Theory of Immortality

Phaedo: Last moments in the life of Socrates Platos ideal of

a man who is both wise and good in the highest degree, and
who is totally without fear of death. This was for pagan or
free-thinking philosophers what the Passion was for Christians.
Phaedo sets forth many doctrines which were afterwards
Christian.
Crito: Laws are inescapable. Justice is bigger than life.

Phaedo: Suicide is unlawful There is a doctrine whispered in

secret that man is a prisoner who has no right to open the
door and run away; this is a great mistery which I do not
understand. He furthermore draws the pastor/cattle analogy
Typical Christian and Orphic answers
Death is the separation of soul and body Platonic dualism
which leads to an ascetic morality, partly adopted by
Christians. Obstacles for them: the visible world is an evil
deed, hence the Creator could not be good; Christians could
never condemn marriage.
Mind vs. Matter Religious origion Orphism from Heaven
the soul, from Earth the body
Philosopher must not be a slave to ordinary pleasures
(Quote: Liberation from the tyranny of the body contributes
to greatness, but just as much to greatness in sin as to
greatness in virtue)
We are told that the body is a hindrance in the acquisition of
knowledge, and that sight and hearing and inaccurate
witnesses: true existence, if revealed to the soul at all, is
revealed in thought, not in sense (Cartesian rationalism)
Philosophers concern is the good = world of ideas = real
(Hegelian Absolute)
The only two activities that can be so performed are
mathematics and mystic insight. Hence the connection
between Plato and Pythagoras
To the empiricist, the body is what brings us into touch with
the world of external reality, but to Plato it is doubly evil, as a
distorting medium, causing us to see as through a glass
darkly, and as a source of lusts which distract us from the
pursuit of knowledge and the vision of truth Hence,
we shall attain the wisdom which we desire, and of which we
say we are lovers; not while we live, but after death; for if
while in company with the body the soul cannot have pure
knowledge, knowledge must be attained after death, it at all
Arguments for immortality:
o All things which have opposites are generated from their
opposites: life death life death souls must exists
somewhere if they are to return
o Knowledge is recollection Soul exists before the body.
Russell: We have a priori ideas we do not always have
the idea of absolutes (i.e., childhood), and their idea is
elicited by experience
o What is not complex cannot be dissolved absolute
beauty is eternal, beautiful things continually change
things seen are temporal, but things unseen are eternal
body is seen, soul is unseen soul is eternal.
Only the soul of the true philosopher goes to live in bliss in the
company of the Gods, after death of the body.

The impure soul will become a ghost or will enter into the
body of an animal.
Fate of souls: good go to heave, the bad to hell, the
intermediate to purgatory.

17 Platos Cosmogony

Set forth in the Timaeus, translated by Cicero only dialogue

known in the West in the Middle Ages.
Timaeus, Pythagorean astronomer, tells the history of the
world:
o The world is sensible changing created by God God
is good made it out of the pattern of the eternal He
wanted everything as like Himself as possible
o He found the visible sphere not at rest, brought order to
it.
o The world is one visible animal. It is a globe, because
like is fairer than unlike, and only a globe is alike
everywhere;
o The soul is compounded of the indivisible-unchangeable
and the divisible-changeable; it is a third and
intermediate kind of essence
o Time is the moving image of eternity
o The soul will transmigrate until reason conquers
o There are two kinds of causes:
Intelligent Mind
Moved by others necessity (not subject to Gods
power) things not brought about by a purpose

18 Knowledge and Perception in Plato

First part of the Theaetetus criticism of the view that

knowledge is the same thing as perception
Criticism of Protagoras If Protagoras is right, one man
knows no more than another: not only is Protagoras as wise as
the gods, but, what is more serious, he is no wiser than a fool
answer: while one judgment cannot be truer than another,
it can be better, in the sense of having better consequences.
This suggests pragmatism
Criticism of Heraclitus:
o Theory: A thing may change in two ways, by
locomotion, and by a change of quality, and the doctrine
of flux is held to state that everything is always
changing in both respects. And not only is everything
always undergoing some qualitative change, but
everything is always changing all its qualities
o Argument: Whatever else may be in perpetual flux, the
meanings of words must be fixed, at least for a time,
since otherwise no assertion is definite, and no assertion

is true rather false. There must be something more or

less constant
Praise of Parmenides Plato prefers the eternal to the everchanging Universe.
Final argument there is no special organ for existence,
likeness, etc, and yet we make such valuations. Hence,
perception has no part in apprehending truth, since it has
none in apprehending existence
Russells analysis:
o Knowledge is perception
The core of crude occurrence [of a perception] is
merely certain patches of colour
The percept as filled out with images of touch
becomes one object, which is supposed
physical
The percept is just an occurrence, and neither
true nor false; the percept as filled out with words
is a judgment, and capable of truth and falsehood
Judgment of perception.
p. 532 ANALYZE Likeness and Unlikeness It
is a fact perceptive data
Existence There are lions = x is a lion is
true for a suitable x we can only apply the verb
exist to a description unsuitable for names like
this existence is one of the things the mind is
aware of in objects.
Numbers: Ex two hands: There is an a such
that there is a b such that a and b are not identical
and whatever x may be, x is a hand of mine is
true when, and only when, x is a or x is b
numbers are logical fictions; The moon is one is
wrong one is not applicable to things but only to
unit-classes.
o Each man is the measure of all things: The Protagorean
position, rightly interpreted, does not involve the view
that I never make mistakes, but only that the evidence
of my mistakes must appear to me
o Everything is in perpetual flux: Red applies to many
shades of colour I see red remains true throughout
the time it takes to say it Plato does not use
quantitative approaches.