Ancient Greek Philosophy

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 686.

With the Greeks as a starting point, the initial focus is on ‘Homer', a body of texts transmitted first orally and then written down in the seventh century BCE. In what follows, the term ‘morality' will be used more frequently than ‘ethics'. Philosophers have drawn various contrasts between ‘morality' and ‘ethics' at various times (Kant for example, and Hegel, and more recently R. M. Hare and Bernard Williams). But etymologically, the term ‘moral' comes from the Latin mos, which means custom or habit, and it is a translation of the Greek ethos, which means roughly the same thing, and is the origin of the term ‘ethics'. In contemporary non-technical use, the two terms are more or less interchangeable, though ‘ethics' has slightly more flavor of theory, and has been associated with the prescribed practice of various professions (e.g., medical ethics, etc.). In any case, no distinction will be made here. Morality is regarded here as a set of customs and habits that shape how we think about how we should live. The term ‘religion' is much disputed. Again, we can learn from the etymology. The origin of the word is probably the Latin religare, to bind back. Not all uses of the term require reference to a divinity or divinities. But the term is used here so that there is such a reference, and a religion is a system of belief and practice that accepts a 'binding' relation to such a being or beings. This does not, however, give us a single essence of religion, since the conceptions of divinity discussed here are so various, and human relations with divinity are conceived so variously that no such essence is apparent even within Western thought. The ancient Greeks, for example, had many intermediate categories between full gods or goddesses and human beings. There were spirits (in Greek daimones) and spiritual beings like Socrates's mysterious voice (daimonion) (Apology, 31d1-4, 40a2-c3). There were heroes who were offspring of one divine parent. There were humans who were deified, like the kings of Sparta. This is just within the culture of ancient Greece. If we included Eastern religions in the scope of the discussion, the hope for finding a single essence of religion would recede further.

So what does the relation between morality and religion look like in Homer? The first thing to say is that the gods and goddesses of the Homeric poems behave remarkably like the noble humans described in the same poems, even though the humans are mortal and the gods and goddesses immortal. Both groups are motivated by the desire for honor and glory, and are accordingly jealous when they receive less than they think they should while others receive more, working ceaselessly against each other to rectify this. The two groups are not however symmetrical, because the noble humans have the same kind of client relation to the divinities as subordinate humans do to them. There is a complex pattern that we might call ‘an honor-loop'. The divinities have their functions (in Greek, the word is the same as ‘honors'), such as Poseidon's oversight of the sea, and humans seek their favor with ‘honor', which we might here translate as ‘worship'. This includes, for example, sanctuaries devoted to them, dedications, hymns, dances, libations, rituals, prayers, festivals and sacrifices. In all of these the gods take pleasure, and in return they give ‘honor' to mortals in the form of help or assistance, especially in the areas of their own expertise. There is a clear analogy with purely human client-relations, which are validated in the Homeric narrative, since the poems were originally sung at the courts of the princes who claimed descent from the heroes whose exploits make up the story. The gods and goddesses are not, however, completely at liberty. They too are accountable to fate or justice, as in the scene in the Iliad 22, where Zeus wants to save Hector, but he cannot because ‘his doom has long been sealed' (Iliad 22:179).

The Presocratic philosophers come out of Homer, and it is sometimes said that they do so by rejecting religion in favor of science. There is a grain of truth in this, for when Thales (who flourished around 580) is reported as saying ‘Water is the origin (or principle) of all things' this is different from saying, for example, that Tethys is mother of all the rivers, because it deletes the character of narrative or story (Aristotle's Metaphysics, 983b20-8). When Anaximenes (around 545 BCE) talks of air as the primary element, explaining all change by its compression and dilation (Diels & Kranz, 13, A 5), or Heraclitus (around 500 BCE) explains change as a pattern in the turnings of fire igniting in measures and going out in measures, they are not giving stories with plot-lines involving quasi-human intentions and frustrations (DK 13, A 5). But it is wrong to say that they have left religion behind. Heraclitus puts this enigmatically by saying that the one and only wisdom does and does not consent to be called Zeus (DK 22, B 14). He is affirming the divinity of this wisdom, but denying the anthropomorphic character of much Greek religion. ‘To god all things are beautiful and good and just but humans suppose some things to be just and others unjust' (DK 22, B 102). He ties this divine wisdom to the law of a city, ‘for all human laws are nourished by the one divine law' (DK 22, B 114), though he does not have confidence that ‘the many' are capable of making law. The sophists, to whom Socrates responded, rejected this tie between human law and divine law, and this was in part because of their expertise in rhetoric, by which they taught their students how to manipulate the deliberations of popular assemblies. The most famous case is Protagoras (c.490-21), who stated in the first sentence of his book Truth that ‘A human being is the measure of all things, of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not' (Plato's Theaetetus, 152a). Protagoras is not correctly seen here as skeptical about morality or religion. It is true that he claimed he was not in a position to know either the manner in which the gods are or are not (another translation is ‘that they are or are not') or what they are like in appearance (DK 80, B 4). But as Plato (c.430-c.347) presents him, he told the story that all humans have been given by the gods the gifts of respect and justice, so as to make possible the founding of cities; this is why each human is the measure. Even Thrasymachus, in the first book of Plato's Republic, thinks of justice as the same thing amongst gods and humans (Republic, 388c). His view of what this justice is, namely the interest of the stronger, is disputed by Plato. But the claim that justice operates at both the divine and human levels is common ground.

Socrates (c.470-399) in one of the early dialogues debates the nature of the holy with Euthyphro, who is a religious professional. Euthyphro is taking his own father to court for murder, and though ordinary Greek morality would condemn such an action as impiety, Euthyphro defends it on the basis that the gods behave in the same sort of way, according to the traditional stories. Socrates makes it clear that he does not believe these stories, because they attribute immorality to the gods. This does not mean, however, that he does not believe in the gods. He was observant in his religious practices, and he objects to the charge of not believing in the city's gods that was one of the bases of the prosecution at his own trial. He points to the spirit who gives him commands about what not to do (Apology, 31d), and we learn later that he found it significant that this voice never told him to stop conducting his trial in the way he in fact did (Ibid., 40a-c). Socrates interpreted this as an invitation from the gods to die, thus refuting the charge that, by conducting his trial in the way he did, he was guilty of theft — i.e., depriving the gods of his life that properly belonged to them. His life in particular was a service to god, he thought, because he was carrying out Apollo's charge given by the oracle at Delphi, implicit in the startling pronouncement that he was the wisest man in Greece (Ibid., 21a-d).

Socrates's problem with the traditional stories about the gods gives rise to what is sometimes called ‘the Euthyphro dilemma'. If we try to define the holy as what is loved by the gods (and goddesses), we will be faced with the question ‘Is the holy holy because it is loved by the gods, or do they love it because it is holy?' (Euthyphro, 10a). Socrates makes it clear that his view is the second (though his argument for this conclusion is obscure). (See Hare, Plato's Euthyphro, Bryn Mawr Commentaries, Bryn Mawr: PA 1985.) But his view is not an objection to tying morality and religion together. He hints at the end of the dialogue (Euthyphro, 13de) that the right way to link them is to see that when we do good we are serving the gods as well. Plato probably does not intend for us to construe the dialogues as a single philosophical system, and we must not erase the differences between them. But it is significant that in the Theaetetus (176b), Socrates says again that our goal is to be as like god as possible, and since god is in no way and in no manner unjust (in the sense of ‘unrighteous'), but as just as it is possible to be, nothing is more like god than the one among us who becomes correspondingly as just as possible. In several dialogues this thought is connected with a belief in the immortality of the soul; we become like god by paying attention to the immortal and best part of ourselves (e.g., Symposium, 210A-212B). The doctrine of the immortality of the soul is also tied to the doctrine of the Forms, whereby things with characteristics that we experience in this life (e.g., beauty) are copies or imitations of the Forms (e.g., The Beautiful-Itself) that we see without the distraction of the body when our souls are separated at death. The Form of the Good, according to the Republic, is above all the other Forms and gives them their intelligibility (as, by analogy, the sun gives visibility), and is (in a pregnant phrase) ‘on the other side of being' (Republic, 509b). Finally, in the Laws (716b), perhaps Plato's last work, the character called ‘the Athenian' says that the god can serve for us in the highest degree as a measure of all things, and much more than any human can, whatever some people say; so people who are going to be friends with such a god must, as far as their powers allow, be like the god themselves.

This train of thought sees the god or gods as like a magnet, drawing us to be like them by the power of their goodness or excellence. In Plato's Ion (533d), the divine is compared to a magnet to which is attached a chain of rings, through which the attraction is passed. This conception is also pervasive in Aristotle (384-22), Plato's student for twenty years. In the Nicomachean Ethics, for example, the words ‘god' and ‘divine' occur roughly twice as often as the words ‘happiness' and ‘happy'. This is significant, given that Aristotle's ethical theory is (like Plato's) ‘eudaimonist' (meaning that our morality aims at our happiness). Mention of the divine is not merely conventional, for Aristotle, but does important philosophical work. In the Eudemian Ethics (1249b5-22) he tells us that the goal of our lives is service and contemplation of the god. He thinks that we become like what we contemplate, and so we become most like the god by contemplating the god. Incidentally, this is why the god does not contemplate us; for this would mean becoming less than the god, which is impossible. As in Plato, the well-being of the city takes precedence over the individual, and this, too, is justified theologically. It is more divine to achieve an end for a city than for an individual. In the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle draws a distinction between what we honor and what we merely commend (NE, 1101b10-35). There are six states for a human life, on a normative scale from best to worst: divine (which exceeds merely human on the one extreme), virtuous (without wrongful desire), strong-willed (able to overcome wrongful desire), weak-willed (unable to do so), vicious and bestial (which exceeds the merely human on the other extreme, and which Aristotle says is mostly found among barbarians) (NE, 1145a15-22). The highest form of happiness, which he calls blessedness, is something we honor as we honor gods, whereas virtue we merely commend. It would be as wrong to commend blessedness as it would be to commend gods (NE, 1096a10-1097a15). Sometimes Aristotle uses the phrase ‘God or understanding' (in Greek, nous) (e.g., Politics, 1287a27-32). The activity of the god, he says in the Metaphysics, is nous thinking itself (1074b34). The best human activity is the most god-like, namely thinking about the god and about things that do not change. Aristotle's virtue ethics, then, needs to be understood against the background of these theological premises. He is thinking of the divine, to use Plato's metaphor, as magnetic, drawing us, by its attractive power, to live the best kind of life possible for us. This gives him a defense against the charge sometimes made against virtue theories that they simply embed the prevailing social consensus into an account of human nature. Aristotle defines virtue as lying in a mean between excess and defect, and the mean is determined by the person of practical wisdom (actually the male, since Aristotle is sexist on this point). He then gives a conventional account of the virtues such a person displays (such as courage, literally manliness, which requires the right amount of fear, between cowardice and rashness). But the virtuous person in each case acts ‘for the sake of the noble (or beautiful)', and Aristotle continually associates the noble with the divine (e.g., NE, 1115b12).

There are tensions in Aristotle's account of virtue and happiness. It is not clear what his final view is of the relation between the activity of contemplation and the other activities of a virtuous life. But the connection of the highest human state with the divine is pervasive in the text. One result of this connection is the eudaimonism mentioned earlier. God does not care about what is not god, for this would be a diminution. In the same way, the highest and most god-like human does not care about other human beings except to the degree they contribute to his own best state. This degree is not negligible, since humans are social animals, and their well-being depends on the well-being of the families and cities of which they are members. Aristotle is not preaching self-sufficiency in any sense that implies we could be happy on our own, isolated from other human beings. But our concern for the well-being of other people is always, for him, contingent on our special relation to them. Within the highest kind of friendship ‘a friend is another self', he says, and within such friendship we care about friends for their own sake, but if the friend becomes divine and we do not, then the friendship is over (NE, 1159a7). Aristotle does not say that we have obligations to other human beings just because they are human beings. Finally, he ties our happiness to our end (in Greek, telos); for humans, as for all living things, the best state is activity in accordance with the natural function that is unique to each species. For humans the best state is happiness, and the best activity within this state is contemplation (NE, 1178b17-23).

The Epicureans and Stoics who followed Aristotle differed with each other and with him in many ways, but they agreed in tying morality and religion together. For the Epicureans (as for Aristotle in the Metaphysics), the gods do not care about us, though they are entertained by looking at our tragicomic lives (rather as we look at soap operas on television). We can be released from a good deal of anxiety, the Epicureans thought, by realizing that the gods are not going to punish us. Our goal should be to be as like the gods as we can, enjoying ourselves without interruption, but for us this means limiting our desires to what we can obtain without frustration. The Stoics likewise tied the best kind of human life, for them the life of the sage, to being like god. The sage follows nature in all his desires and actions, and is thus the closest to the divine. One of the virtues he will have is ‘apathy' (in Greek apatheia), which does not mean listlessness, but detachment from wanting anything other than what nature, or the god, is already providing.