A Critical History of Greek Philosophy by W. T. Stace (short story to read txt) 📖

to reduce the universe to a madhouse. It means that there is no purpose, no reason, in anything that happens. The universe, in this case, is irrational. No explanation of it is possible. Philosophy is futile, and not only philosophy, but morality and everything else. If there is really no higher and lower, there is no better and no worse. It is just as good to be a murderer as to be a saint. Evil is the same as good. Instead of striving to be saints, statesmen, philosophers, we may as well go and play marbles, because all these values of higher and lower are mere delusions, "the human way of looking at things."

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Spencer then has no answer to the question why it is better to be more organized. So we turn at last to Aristotle. He has an answer. He sees that it is meaningless to talk of development, advance, higher and lower, except in relation to an end. There is no such thing as advance unless it is an advance towards something. A body moving purposelessly in a straight line through infinite space does not advance. It might as well be here as a mile hence. In either case it is no nearer to anything. But if it is moving towards a definite point, we can call this advance. Every mile it moves it gets nearer to its end. So, if we are to have a philosophy of evolution, it must be teleological. If nature is not advancing towards an end, there is no nearer and further, no higher and lower, no development. What then is the end? It is the actualization of reason, says Aristotle. The primal being is eternal reason, but this is not existent. It must come to exist. It first enunciates itself vaguely as gravitation. But this is far off from its end, which is the existence of reason, as such, in the world. It comes nearer in plants and animals. It is proximately reached in man, for man is the existent reason. But there is no question of the universe coming to a stop, when it reaches its end--(the usual objection to teleology). For the absolute end, absolute form, can never be reached. The higher is thus the more rational, the lower the less rational. Now if we try to go on asking, "why is it better to be more rational?" we find we cannot ask such a question. The word "why" means that we want a reason. And our question is absurd because we are asking a reason for reason. Why is it better to be rational means simply, "how is reason rational." To {312} doubt it is a self-contradiction. Or, to put the same thing in another way, reason is the Absolute. And to ask why it is better to be rational is to demand that the ultimate should be expressed in terms of something beyond it. Hence modern science has no philosophy of evolution, whereas Aristotle has. [Footnote 16]

[Footnote 16: See H. S. Macran's Hegel's Doctrine of Formal Logic (Clarendon Press), Introduction, section on the Conception of Evolution, to which I am much indebted in the above paragraphs.]

The main idea of pantheism is that everything is God. The clod of earth is divine because it is a manifestation of Deity. Now this idea is all very well, and is in fact essential to philosophy. We find it in Aristotle himself, since the entire world is, for him, the actualization of reason, and reason is God. But this is also a very dangerous idea, if not supplemented by a rationally grounded scale of values. No doubt everything is, in a sense, God. But if we leave it at this, it would follow that, since everything is equally divine, there is no higher and lower. If the clod of earth, like the saintliest man, is God, and there is no more to say of the matter, then how is the saint higher than the clod of earth? Why should one ever struggle towards higher things, when in reality all are equally high? Why avoid evil, when evil is as much a manifestation of God as good? Mere pantheism must necessarily end in this calamitous view. And these deplorable effects explain the fact that Hinduism, with all its high thinking, finds room for the worship of cows and snakes, and, with all its undoubted moral elevation, yet allows into its fold the grossest abominations. Both these features are due to the pantheistic placing of all things on a par as equally {313} divine. Not of course that Hinduism has not a sort of doctrine of evolution, a belief in a higher and lower. As everyone knows, it admits the belief that in successive incarnations the soul may mount higher and higher till it perhaps rejoins the common source of all things. There is probably no race of man so savage that it does not instinctively feel that there is a higher and lower, a better and worse, in things. But the point is that, although Hinduism has its scale of values, and its doctrine of development, it has no rational foundation for these, and though it has the idea of higher and lower, yet, because this is without foundation, it lets it slip, it never grips the idea, and so easily slides into the view that all is equally divine. The thought that all is God, and the thought that there are higher and lower beings, are, on the surface, opposed and inconsistent theories. Yet both are necessary, and it is the business of philosophy to find a reconciliation. This Aristotle does, but Hinduism fails to do. It asserts both, but fails to bring them to unity. Now it asserts one view, and again at another time it asserts the other. And this, of course, is connected with the general defect of oriental thinking, its vagueness. Everything is seen, but seen in a haze, in which all things appear one, in which shapes flow into another, in which nothing has an outline, in which even vital distinctions are obliterated. Hence it is that, though oriental thought contains, in one way or another, practically all philosophical ideas, it grips none, and can hold nothing fast. It seizes its object, but its flabby grasp relaxes and slips off. Hinduism, like modern science, has its doctrine of evolution. But it has no philosophy of evolution.

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5. Ethics.

(a) The Individual.

A strong note of practical moderation pervades the ethics of Aristotle. While Plato's ethical teaching transcended the ordinary limits of human life, and so lost itself in ideal Utopias, Aristotle, on the other hand, sits down to make practical suggestions: He wishes to enquire what the good is, but by this he means, not some ideal good impossible of attainment upon this earth, but rather that good which, in all the circumstances in which men find themselves, ought to be realizable. The ethical theories of Plato and Aristotle are thus characteristic of the two men. Plato despised the world of sense, and sought to soar altogether beyond the common life of the senses. Aristotle, with his love of facts and of the concrete, keeps close within the bounds of actual human experience.

The first question for ethics is the nature of the summum bonum. We desire one thing for the sake of a second, we desire that for the sake of a third. But if this series of means and ends goes on ad infinitum, then all desire and all action are futile and purposeless. There must be some one thing which we desire, not for the sake of anything else, but on its own account. What is this end in itself, this summum bonum, at which all human activity ultimately aims. Everybody, says Aristotle, is agreed about the name of this end. It is happiness. What all men seek, what is the motive of all their actions, that which they desire for the sake of itself and nothing beyond, is happiness. But though all agree as to the name, beyond that there is no agreement. Philosophers, {315} no less than the vulgar, differ as to what this word happiness means. Some say it is a life of pleasure. Others say it consists in the renunciation of pleasures. Some recommend one life, some another.

We must repeat here the warning which was found necessary in the case of Plato, who also called the summum bonum happiness. Aristotle's doctrine is no more to be confused with modern utilitarianism than is Plato's. Moral activity is usually accompanied by a subjective feeling of enjoyment. In modern times the word happiness connotes the feeling of enjoyment. But for the Greeks it was the moral activity which the word signified. For Aristotle an action is not good because it yields enjoyment. On the contrary, it yields enjoyment because it is good. The utilitarian doctrine is that the enjoyment is the ground of the moral value. But, for Aristotle, the enjoyment is the consequence of the moral value. Hence when he tells us that the highest good is happiness, he is giving us no information regarding its nature, but merely applying a new name to it. We have still to enquire what the nature of the good is. As he himself says, everyone agrees upon the name, but the real question is what this name connotes.

Aristotle's solution of this problem follows from the general principles of his philosophy. We have seen that, throughout nature, every being has its proper end, and the attainment of this end is its special function. Hence the good for each being must be the adequate performance of its special function. The good for man will not consist in the pleasure of the senses. Sensation is the special function of animals, but not of man. Man's special function is reason. Hence the proper {316} activity of reason is the summum bonum, the good for man. Morality consists in the life of reason. But what precisely that means we have still to see.

Man is not only a reasoning animal. As the higher being, he contains within himself the faculties of the lower beings also. Like plants he is appetitive, like animals, sensitive. The passions and appetites are an organic part of his nature. Hence virtue will be of two kinds. The highest virtues will be found in the life of reason, and the life of thought, philosophy. These intellectual virtues are called by Aristotle dianoetic. Secondly, the ethical virtues proper will consist in the submission of the passions and appetites to the control of reason. The dianoetic virtues are the higher, because in them man's special function alone is in operation, and also because the thinking man most resembles God, whose life is a life of pure thought.

Happiness, therefore, consists in the combination of dianoetic and ethical virtues. They alone are of absolute value to man. Yet, though he places happiness in virtue, Aristotle, in his broad and practical way, does not overlook the fact that external goods and circumstances have a profound influence upon happiness, and cannot be ignored, as the Cynics attempted to ignore them. Not that Aristotle regards externals as having any value in themselves. What alone is good in itself, is an end in itself, is virtue. But external goods help a man in his quest of virtue. Poverty, sickness, and misfortune, on the other hand, hinder his efforts. Therefore, though externals are not goods in themselves, they may be a means towards the good. Hence they are not to be despised and rejected. Riches, friends, health, {317} good fortune, are not happiness. But they are negative conditions of it. With them happiness is within our grasp. Without them its attainment is difficult. They will be valued accordingly.

Aristotle says little in detail of the dianoetic virtues. And we may turn at once to the main subject of his moral system, the ethical virtues. These consist in the governance of the