The School of Athens by Raphael
Available from Thriftbooks and Amazon
Book Length: 544 pages
It is well for us to have the Faith, and it is well for us to accept the millennia-old philosophical tradition which has aided the defense of the Faith; but to leave out the history of the philosophies which preceded and influenced the development of our Catholic philosophical tradition would be highly irresponsible. As the Western philosophical tradition influenced (and has been influenced by) contact with Christianity, so too has our civilization has shaped philosophy and has been shaped by it. Therefore, to reclaim the rightful place of the Church in society and to restore our civilization, a healthy understanding of Ancient Greek philosophy, the point of origin for Western philosophy, is needed. In this effort, Fr. Fredrick Copleston’s first volume of his A History of Philosophy series is bound to reward the attentive reader.
Beginning with Thales, one of the Seven Sages of Greece, Fr. Copleston in no way neglects the rich tradition of the earliest philosophers—the Pre-Socratics. Though the writings of these men have lamentably survived only in fragments, their influence upon later thinkers was and still is substantial, and for good reason. For despite the thousands of years which have passed between their “primitive” age and our so-called “Information Age”, the attempts which these archaic thinkers gave to answer the great questions of the universe remain thought-provoking and profoundly illuminating.
Two especially noteworthy personalities from this grouping of truly unique thinkers are Heraclitus and Parmenides, who were contemporaries that lived roughly from the late sixth century to the middle of the fifth century BC. In his informative survey of the former’s philosophy (which involves a disentangling of the impression—popularized by Hegel—that Heraclitus was the philosopher of “Becoming”), the author explains the complexity of this Hellenic aphorist’s thought:
(40)
That Reality is One for Heraclitus is shown clearly enough by his saying: “It is wise to hearken, not to me, but to my Word, and to confess that all things are one.” On the other hand, that the conflict of opposites is essential to the existence of the One is also shown clearly by such statements as: “We must know that war is common to all and strife is justice, and that all things come into being and pass away through strife,” and Homer was wrong in saying: “Would that strife would perish from among men!” He did not see that he was praying for the end of the universe, for if this prayer was heard, all things would pass away. Again, Heraclitus says positively: “Men do not know how what is at variance agrees with itself. It is an attunement of opposite tensions, like that of the bow and of the lyre.”
Thus Heraclitus saw harmony in being and in the universe, but posited that this was a unity that depended upon the existence of interacting opposites. One can see great truth in his thinking, for in nature we observe the passing of seasons, cycles of growth in humans and animals, and other such phenomena which constitute distinct parts that have their own being yet are not Being itself. In other terms, identity is not subsumed by Being, but exists because of a higher principle of order and participates in it. There is therefore a profound sense of balance in his thought—a balance which according to him had been ordered by God (whom he identified with the One, or the principle of Being), or as he called this unknown god, Logos (Λόγος). As Fr. Copleston relates:
(43)
Heraclitus speaks of the One as God, and as wise: “The wise is one only. It is unwilling and willing to be called by the name of Zeus.” God is the universal Reason (Λόγος), the universal law immanent in all things, binding all things into a unity and determining the constant change in the universe according to universal law.
Logos does not only mean “reason” in the Greek language, but also “word”, and it is apparent that this thinker had both definitions in mind when describing the nature of God. For Heraclitus, then, the “Word” was not a collection of syllables, but a transcendent mind that, because it was a mind, could be called “Reason”. Despite the fact that he was a pagan, he evidently reached many truths by the light of his natural reason; and furthermore, his association with Logos to God would one day be utilized by St. John the Evangelist—”In the Beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1).
As for Parmenides, the founder of the doctrine known as Monism (a denial of Becoming; all beings are subsumed into Being, and identity is merely an illusion), his fragments of poetry defending what he terms the “Way of Truth” against the “Way of Opinion” evoke the sense of a revealed mystery. Fr. Copleston, delving into these fragments, explains the key idea that links the scattered remains of his teaching to a unified and fascinating whole:
(49)
His first great assertion is that “It is.” “It,” i.e. Reality, Being, of whatever nature it may be, is, exists, and cannot not be. It is, and it is impossible for it not to be. Being can be spoken of and it can be the object of my thought. But that which I can think about and speak of can be, “for it is the same thing that can be thought and that can be.” But if “It” can be, then it is. Why? Because if it could be and yet were not, then it would be nothing. Now, nothing cannot be the object of speech or thought, for to speak about nothing is not to speak, and to think about nothing is the same as not thinking at all. Besides, if it merely could be, then, paradoxically, it could never come to be, for it would have to come out of nothing, and out of nothing comes nothing and not something. Being, then, Reality, “It” was not first possible, i.e. nothing, and then existent: it was always existent—more accurately, “It is.”
The wise man of Elea asserts the eternal primacy of Being against the impossibility of nothingness. (The only One who can create ex nihilo is the True God, which Parmenides did not know). Nothingness is absence, and absence is the deprivation of existence; but how can absence be possibly conceived on its own terms? Even a blank black void is still a thing, because blackness is a color and a void is still a space. That is what Fr. Copleston means when he conveys the Parmenidean idea that “nothing cannot be the object of speech or thought.” In our age it has become fashionable to deny the existence not only of objective moral truths, but also the objective existence of the universe; Parmenides enables us to see the folly of this “way” of opinion, though the entirety of the solution he presents to the problem of Being and Becoming is unsatisfying. After the Incarnation, no sane man could believe in the idea that his individuality is a concealed falsehood, that he is somehow connected to the principle of Being itself in such a direct manner as to annihilate his individuality (case in point—Teilhard de Chardin).
Continuing beyond these thinkers and their immediate successors, we are inevitably met with Socrates, who forever changed the fate of philosophical inquiry for the better. Fr. Copleston provides a moving treatment of his ideas and life; but his presentation all the more shines in his coverage of Plato and Aristotle. The author is balanced to both thinkers and provides a deep and elucidating coverage of the thought of these two titans of Greek philosophy. For instance, he comments on the true meaning of the Platonic sense of the ideal as follows:
(202-203)
The Platonic Idealism is a grand and sublime philosophy which contains much truth (for the purely sensible world is indeed neither the only world nor yet the highest and most “real” world); but, since Plato did not claim that the sensible world is mere illusion and not-being, his philosopher inevitably involves a χωρισμός, [separation] and it is useless to attempt to slur over the fact. After all, Plato is not the only great philosopher whose system has landed him in difficulties in regard to “particularity,” and to say that Aristotle was right in detecting the χωρισμός in the Platonic philosophy is not to say that the Aristotelian view of the universal, when taken by itself, obviates all difficulties. It is far more probable that these two great thinkers emphasised (and perhaps over-emphasised) different aspects of reality which needed to be reconciled in a more complete synthesis.
Such a clarification corrects the common caricature that Plato proposed the ideas to literally exist in a physical realm inaccessible to men, or, on the other hand, that they were fanciful products of the philosopher’s alleged desire to do away with reality. Instead, the reader is granted the more transcendent understanding that was understood in the Neoplatonist tradition and by later thinkers.
To give a simple example, the ideal or perfect horse according to Plato truly exists, and inhabits a spiritual realm more real than our sensible world, and that is only accessible through the intellect (hence the quasi-mystical air of his Doctrine of Forms). It is through the eyes of the mind, then, that we come to the truth of what we perceive by the eyes of sight. Thus, it is by detaching ourselves from the sensible world and engaging in intellectual inquiry that we can apprehend the reality of “horseness” (the essence of what a horse is). No horse we see in the world will perfectly embody the image of the horse that we possess in our minds, an image that is above our imagination. We did not create this image, we can only uncover it; and it is by contemplating that image we can come to the universal truth of what defines a horse. Perhaps one may ask: why would such a thing matter to him? Because by understanding the universals of seen and unseen things, we can come to a better understanding of the universe itself. Though the Platonic teaching had its flaws, the truths within it would be incorporated into the system of St. Thomas Aquinas, for the Angelic Doctor (as St. Augustine before him) would confirm the doctrine of the ideas, stipulating that they exist as concepts in the Mind of God—blueprints, as it were, which He possessed from all eternity and that He gave form to in the Creation.
Moreover, it is well that Fr. Copleston observes that Aristotelian system, taken in and of itself, faces its own contradictions as does the Platonic system; thus, there is the need for a “more complete synthesis” between the two systems which the good scholar mentions elsewhere in the text would eventually be achieved by St. Thomas. But in the centuries before that could happen, the Neoplatonist school attempted various syntheses on their own accord, and around this same time other schools arose, such as the Epicureans, Stoics, and Cynics.
Stoicism, one of the aforementioned schools, has seen a recent revival of sorts. Incidentally, in describing how philosophy began to take on more overtly religious tones in the time of the Roman Empire, Fr. Copleston has unwittingly provided the modern reader with several clues as to why this has occurred. He writes:
(380)
The old Romans had insisted upon character—speculation was quite foreign to them—and in the Roman Empire, when the former ideals and traditions of the Republic had been swamped, it was precisely the philosopher’s task to provide the individual with a code of conduct which would enable him to pilot his way through the sea of life, maintaining a consistency of principle and action based on a certain spiritual and moral independence. Hence the phenomenon of philosopher-directors, who performed a task somewhat analogous to that of the spiritual director as known to the Christian world.
Such cultural conditions were complicated by an increasing spiritual vacuum, for as the author adds:
(381)
Indeed, one may say that philosophy, to a certain extent at least, offered to satisfy the religious needs and aspirations of man. Disbelief in the popular mythology was common, and where this disbelief reigned—among the educated classes—those who were not content to live without religion at all had either to attach themselves to one of the many cults that were introduced into the Empire from the East which were definitely more calculated to satisfy man’s spiritual aspirations than the official State religion with its businesslike attitude, or to turn to philosophy for the satisfaction of those needs. And so it is that we can discern religious elements in such a predominately ethical system as Stoicism, while in Neo-Platonism, the last flower of Ancient Philosophy, the syncretism of religion and philosophy reaches its culmination.
Just as in the time of the nascent Roman Empire, in the modern world disbelief in Christian religious beliefs and Christian morality has become commonplace. This not to argue that Christianity has failed the West as the popular mythology failed the spiritual needs of the Romans; rather, this decline has been the result of secularization and the acceptance of modernist theology by liberal clergymen which does not challenge, but only reinforces the exclusion of Christianity from the once predominant space it held in culture, government, and public life. As Christ said: “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt lose its savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is good for nothing any more but to be cast out, and to be trodden on by men” (Matthew 5:13). Many self-professed Catholics have chosen to lose their savor in order to please the empty and worthless social order of this age. This abandonment has led to a spiritual vacuum in which many competing philosophies and sects are struggling for the minds and souls of the youth. Amid this combat and aided by the capabilities of the Internet, self-appointed philosopher-directors dust off the ancient Stoic texts and preach to audiences from one screen to many others.
They may attempt to reiterate well the approaches of the Stoics to controlling one’s emotions and their ascetic formation of habits—but it would seem that these revivalists shy away from the spiritual aspects of that school, preferring to hand down only the most practical pieces of advice to their would-be students. Such a strategy points to a deeper weakness in their movement, because without the more sublime teachings the surface level teachings lose their value, because the end for which they were proposed has been eliminated by modern innovators. As Fr. Copleston points out, however, the original Stoics also had contradictions of their own, for their belief in man’s ability to reform his personal ethics clashed with their deterministic view of the universe:
(396-397)
…[T]he determinism of the Stoics was greatly modified in practice, since the doctrine of the wise man who is he who consciously follows the path of Destiny…when coupled with their exhortatory ethic, implies liberty to a certain extent…
Thus even this decidedly deterministic doctrine had to cede to the reality of man’s possession of free will. But that was not the greatest fault of Stoicism; Pascal made that apparent when he wrote:1
Even if Epictetus did see the way clearly, he only told men: ‘You are on the wrong track.’ He shows us that there is another, but he does not lead us there. The right way is to want what God wants. Christ alone leads to it. Via veritas…
(Pensées, fragment 466)
All that was good in pagan philosophy ultimately pointed to the existence of God and the truth that man should order his life according to reason and virtue. But all that was bad in it, however, led him to proclaim that he was lord and master of himself for blindly fighting his passions or, on the other extreme, to disparage himself as a product of a cruel and uncaring Fate.
As with Fr. Copleston’s superb volume on Medieval philosophy, this volume will prove an excellent resource to students of philosophy and seminarians. The author’s interpretations of the philosophers are thoughtful and well-founded; moreover, he likewise skillfully explains the social and historical conditions surrounding the emergence of the Classical schools when relevant, all from a faithful Catholic perspective. May those who wish to preserve the Faith and heritage of Christendom read this work, and find within it a bridge to that Antiquity that saw St. Paul preach Christ crucified to a crowd that included Epicureans and Stoics at the Areopagus and St. Augustine profit from his reading of the pagan Plotinus’ propositions about the relationship between the soul and God.
The subsequent volume in this series has been reviewed elsewhere on this website, and can be found at the following:
“Book Review of A History of Philosophy, Vol. II: Medieval Philosophy, from Augustine to Duns Scotus by Fr. Fredrick Copleston, S.J.”