No More Learning

only insight should be trusted. 1 The individual excellences differ entiate themselves accordingly with reference to the objects which the knowledge concerns in the individual case;1 common to all, however, is not only knowledge in general, but also self-knowledge. Hence Socrates declared it to be his principal vocation to educate himself and his fellow-citizens to earnest self-examination ; the yvu>0i (Tiavrov was the watch-word of his teaching. 3
5. These considerations, which Socrates developed out of the principles by which practical ability or excellence is determined, became transferred by the aid of the ambiguity in the word Apery* to ethical excellence also, or virtue, and so led to the fundamental doctrine that virtue consists in knowledge of the good. * So far the course of thought followed by Socrates is clear and free from doubt. The sources become less clear when we ask what the man who was so strenuous to reach clearly defined conceptions intended by the good. According to Xenophon's exposition, the good (AyaOw) must have coincided everywhere, for his master, with the profitable or useful (w<p(\tfi. ov). Virtue would then be the knowledge of what was suited to tfie end in view, or useful, in each particular instance. This interpretation is the easiest to attach to that analogy between moral virtue and the various kinds of excellence shown in daily life, which Socrates really taught, and the presentation given in the earliest Platonic dialogues, in particular the Protagoras attributes to Socrates this standpoint of individual advantage. Insight or dis cernment (here called prudence, <j>p6vrj(n<:) is a measuring art, which weighs exactly the benefit and the harm that will result from the action, and so chooses what is most to the purpose. In further agree ment with this view is the fact that in exact contrast with the Sophists, who demanded a free and uncramped development of the passions, Socrates emphasised no virtue so much, and exhibited none so fully in his own life, as that of self-control
(o-to^oo-wi;).
But according to this interpretation the Socratic conception of the good would be indefinite in its content ; decision must be made
from case to case as to what suits the end in view, or is useful, and
1 Hence, too, the anti-democratic position, so fatal for his personal destiny, taken by Socrates, who demanded expressly that the most difficult and most responsible art, that of governing, should be practised only by those of the most complete discernment, and who on this account absolutely rejected the appoint ment of state officials by lot or popular choice.
3 Socrates did not attempt a system of the individual excellences ; on the other hand, he did give by way of example definitions of courage (cf. the Platonic Laches), piety (Plat. Euthyphro, Xen. Mem. IV. 6, 3), justice {Mem. IV. 6, 6), etc.
* As defined by his theoretical philosophy; see § 8.
* The same ambiguity which has given occasion to countless difficulties lies in the Latin virtu* ; so, too, in dya$6r, bunum, good.
Cbaf. 2, § 7. ] Problem of Morality : Socratet. 79
instead of the good we should again always have what is grood for rjmething. 1 It may be regarded as certain that Socrates strove to transcend this relativism, and also that by reason of the anthropo logical basis of his thinking he did not get beyond this position in •J»e formulation of his conceptions. His doctrine that it is better to mffer wrong than to do wrong, his strict conformity to law, in accordance with which he scorned to avoid the execution of an
ttajost sentence and preserve himself by flight for further life and activity, his admonition that the true meaning of life consists in mpm&a, in continual right-doing, in man's ceaseless labour for ethical
in the participation in all that is good and beautiful imXjoKiyadia), especially, however, his erotic, i. e. his doctrine that friendship and the relation of attachment between teacher and uagbt should consist only in a mutual striving to become good or
constantly better through their life in common and their mutual furtherance of each other's aims, — all this goes far beyond the con ception presented by Xenophon. It can be united with the stand point of ntility only if we attribute to Socrates the distinction aetween the true welfare of the soul, on the one hand, and earthly tain, on the other, which Plato makes him set forth in the Phcedo,
bat of which we elsewhere find but slight traces, since the historic >orrates. even according to Plato's Apology, maintained a completely tceptical position with regard to personal immortality, and did not know the sharp Platonic separation between immateriality and cor poreality. Socrates teaches, indeed, even according to Xenophon, '. hat man's true fortune is to be sought, not in outward goods nor in . usurious life, but in virtue alone: however, this virtue to consist only in the capacity to recognise the truly useful and act accordingly, the doctrine moves in a circle as soon as maintains mat this truly useful just virtue itself. In this circle Socrates remained fast; the objective determination of the conception of the pood which he sought he did not find.
However indefinite the answer to the question as to what »tould properly form the content of that knowledge of the good vtueh constitutes virtue, Socrates was at all events convinced — and this proved much more important — that thin knowledge
m itattf MvjfUnent to catme one to do the good, and no bring happi- *em. This proposition, which may serve as type of a rationalis ts conception of life, contains two pregnant presuppositions, one
improvement,
viz. pronounced intellectualism, the other ethical, viz. pronounced eudcemonixm.
ptydkologieal,
Xen. Mem. IIL
»
is
8, 5.
if,
a
i»
6.
it
is
80 The Greeks: Anthropological Period. [Part L
The fundamental assumption which Socrates thus makes is indeed the expression of his own reflective, judicious nature. Every man, he says, acts in the manner that he considers best suited for his end, most beneficial and most useful ; no one does that which he knows to be unfit for the end in view, or even fit in a lesser degree. If, then, virtue is knowledge of what is to the purpose, it follows immediately that the virtuous man acts in accordance with his knowledge, therefore to the purpose, rightly, in the way that is beneficial to him. No one does wrong knowingly and purposely : he only does not act rightly who has not right insight. If it sometimes seems as if some one acted wrongly in the face of better insight — "against his better judgment" — it must be that he was not clearly and surely in possession of this better knowledge, for otherwise he would have purposely injured himself, which is absurd.
In this a fundamental difference between Socrates and the Sophists becomes evident: the latter maintained the originality of the will, and on that account its warrant from Nature ; for Socrates, to will a thing and to regard a thing as good, profitable, and useful are the same thing. Knowledge determines the will without opposition ; man does what he holds to be best. True as it may be that Socrates was in error in this opinion, and that the truth lies in the mean between him and the Sophists, this his intellectualistic conception of the will came to exercise a decisive influence over all ancient ethics.
Sin is, then, error. He who does a bad act does it from a mistaken judgment, regarding the bad, i. e. the injurious, as the good ; for every one believes that he is doing the good, i. e. the advantageous. Only because the case stands thus is there any meaning in instructing men ethically ; only for this reason is virtue capable of being taught. For all teaching addresses itself to man's knowledge. Because man can be taught what the good therefore — and by this means alone — he can be brought to the stage of right action. Were virtue not knowledge, would not be capable of being taught.
From this standpoint Socrates raised the customary
taught by the popular moralising to scientific plane. All his keenness, his subtlety, and dialectical dexterity were employed to prove against the Sophists that not only the surest, but even the only sure way of attaining to permanent happiness, lies in obeying ethical prescriptions under all circumstances, in subordination to law and morals. So he gives back to Authority her right. The prin-
Compare in Plato the refutation of Thrasymachus in the first book of the Republic, which may be regarded as Socratic in its principles, but which in part
very weakly supported, both in form and in matter.
morality
is
1
'
a
it
is,
2, § ". ] Problem of Morality : Socrates. 81
eiple of the Enlightenment tolerates no unquestioning subjection to the existing state of things and requires examination of the laws ; but these laws sustain the examination, they evince themselves to be requirements' made by- insight into what is for the best; and because it has now been recognised that it is the right course to obey them,
unconditional obedience must be rendered. 1 Far from being in con flict with the institutions of law and morals, Socrates is rather the one who undertook to prove their reasonableness and thereby their daim to universal validity. *
F. Wildauer, Socrates' Lehre torn Willen. Innsbruck, 1877.
St. Heinae, Der Eudamonismu* in der griechischen Philosophie. Leips. 1883.
7. In addition to the psychologico-ethical presuppositions that the will is always directed toward what is recognised as good, and that therefore virtue, as knowledge of the good, draws after it of itself the appropriate action, we find in the argumentations of Socrates the further opinion that this appropriate action of the virtuous man actually attains its end and makes him happy. Happi
ness or tctll-being (<v&u/jovui) is the necessary result of virtue. The intelligent man knows, and hence does, what is good for him ; he most then, through his doing, become happy also. This assump tion applies, however, only to a perfect intelligence which would be absolutely certain of the effects that an intended action would have in the connected series of the world's events.
' In detail*, as might be expected from the nature of the cane, this rehabilita- tro of the popular morals falls into trivial moralising, especially as Xenophon portrays it. But while Socrates hoped precisely by this means to render the mil arrrice to his people, it proved to be just the point where lie came to the errand between two stools : with the Sophists and their adherents, lie passed for a reactionary ; on the other hand, the men who, like Aristophanes, saw pre cisely in the questioning of the authority of law and morals in general, the dan-
iwm cancer of the time, without investigation classed hitn who wished to fiaer this authority on a basis of reason, among those who were undermining B. So it *u that it could come about that Socrates appeared in the Clouds of A»t/>phanes aa the type of Sophistic teaching which he combated.
' It ia hence quite alieji to the principles of Socrates to demand or even to *"lr,r fur every (ndiridnal art a special examination of the ground* of the polit ical or ethical command If, for example, it has once been recognised a» right to obey the ordinances of the government under all circumstances, this obedience sin then be rendered, even if the ordinance evidently commands the un reason - tS> and the unjust ; cf . Plato's Crito. If, as was true of Socrates himself, a man a ruoTtnced that bis life is under divine guidance, and that where his insight if** not suffice, a higher voice warns him through his feeling, — at least, warns \xm away from what is wrong, — then he must obey this voice. Cf. on the Imm,, a 8. The essentia! thing always is that a man give an account to him- •rff ot hat doing, but the grounds on which he acts in so doing may even consist
lima aa exclude an examination in individual cases.
82 The Greeks : Anthropological Period. [Part L
The transmitted expressions of Socrates, in fact, make the impres sion that he was convinced that man could possess that insight which by its operation upon his action and its consequences is adapted to bring about happiness, and that he might gain this insight through philosophy : that is, through unremitting earnest examination of himself, of others, and of the relations of human life. Investigations as to how far the world's course, which man cannot foresee, may cross and destroy the operation even of the best planned and most intelligent conduct of life, are not to be pointed out in the teaching of Socrates. When we consider the slight degree of confidence which he otherwise had in human knowledge, as soon as this attempted to venture beyond establishing ethical conceptions and practical requirements, we can explain the above conviction only on the following basis — he did not fear that the
providential guidance, which was for him indeed an object not of knowledge, but of faith, would frustrate the beneficial consequences of right action.
8. Socrates had defined virtue, the fundamental ethical concep tion, as insight, and this in turn as knowledge of the good, but had given to the concept of the good no universal content, and in a cer tain respect had left it open. This made it possible for the most diverse conceptions of life to introduce their views of the ultimate end (rtXof) of human existence into this open place in the Socratic concept ; and so this first incomplete work in the formation of ethi cal conceptions at once afforded the material for a number of partic ular structures. 1 The most important of these are the Cynic and the Cyrenaic. Both present the attempt to define the true intrinsic worth of the life of the individual in a universal manner. Both wish to show in what man's true happiness consists, how man must be constituted and how he must act in order to attain this with cer tainty ; both call this constitution or disposition through which participation in happiness is gained, virtue. The eudaemonistic side of the Socratic ethics is here developed in an entirely one-sided manner, and though universal validity is vindicated for the concep tion proposed, the point of view of the individuafs happiness forms so exclusively the standard that the worth of all relations of public life even is estimated by it. In Cynicism, as in Hedonism, the Greek spirit is proceeding to appropriate the fruit which the conditions
1 So indeed in the case of Xenophon and Machines ; the philosophising cob bler Simon, loo, seems to have have been thus dependent on Socrates. What the Megarian and the Elean-Eretrian schools accomplished in this respect is too indefinitely transmitted to us, and is too closely in contact with Cynicism, to deserve separate mention.
Chat. 2, § 7. ] Problem of Morality : Antisthenes. 88
of life brought about by civilisation yield for the fortune of the individual. The criticism of the social conditions and authorities, begun by the Sophists, has won a fixed standard through the medi ating aid of the Socratic conception of virtue.
The doctrine of virtue taught by Antisthenes ' takes at the begin ning a high and specious turn at the point where the doctrine finds itself hopelessly entangled in the Socratic circle. He declines to define more closely the contents of the concept of the good, and declares virtue itself to be not only the highest, but the only good, understanding, however, by virtue essentially only the intelligent con- d»ci of life. This alone makes happy, not indeed through the conse quences which it brings about, but through itself. The contentment that dwells within the right life itself is accordingly completely
independent of the world's course : virtue is itself sufficient for happiness ; the wise man stands free in the presence of fate and fortune.
But this Cynic conception of virtue as sufficient in itself is, as is shown by its further development, in nowise to be interpreted as meaning that the virtuous man should find his fortune in doing good for its own sake amid all the whims of fate. Cynicism did not rise to this height, however much it may sound like it when
nrtue is celebrated as the only sure possession in the vicissitudes of life, when it is designated as the only thing to be striven for, and baseness, on the contrary, as the only thing to be avoided. This doctrine is a postulate derived with great logical consistency from the Socratic principle that virtue necessarily makes happy (cf.
above, 7), and from this postulate Antisthenes sought in turn to define the real contents of the concept of virtue.
If, namely, virtue is to make happy with certainty and under all rirrumstances, it must be that conduct of life which makes man as imiUpendent as possible of the course of events. Now every want and every desire is a bond which makes man dependent upon fortune, is to far as his happiness or unhappiness is made to consist in
whether a given wish is fulfilled or not by the course of life. We have no power over the outer world, but we have power over our desires. We expose ourselves the more to alien powers, the more »> desire, hope, or fear from them ; every desire makes us slaves of the outer world. Virtue, then, which makes man independent, can consist only in suppression of desires, and restriction of wants to the smallest conceivable measure. Virtue is freedom from
— from the standpoint of eudsemonism certainly the most Principally preserved in Ding. Laert. VI. Xen. Symp. 34 fl.
1
i,'
*
4.
84 The Greeks : Anthropological Period. [Part L
consistent conclusion, and one that must have appealed especially to men of a humble position in life such as we find the Cynics to be in
part.
By carrying out this thought in a radical manner the Oynics came
to occupy a purely negative attitude toward civilisation. By aiming to reduce the measure of the virtuous wise man's wants to what was absolutely inevitable, and to regard all other strivings as pernicious or indifferent, they rejected all the goods of civilisation and attained the ideal of a state of Xature, — an ideal stripped of all higher worth. Taking up earlier Sophisti; theories and developing them farther, they taught that the wise man accommodates himself only to what
Nature peremptorily demands, but despises all that appears desir able or worthy of obedience merely as the result of human opinion or institution. Wealth and refinement, fame ar. d honour, seemed to them just as superfluous as those enjoyments of the senses which went beyond the satisfaction of the most elementary wants of hunger and love. Art and science, family and native land, were to them indifferent, and Diogenes owed his paradoxical popularity to the ostentatious jest of attempting to live in civilised Greece as if in a state of Nature, solely <£iW.
In this way the philosophising proletarian forced himself to despise all the good things of civilisation, from the enjoyment of which he found himself more or less excluded. On the other hand, he recog nised none of the laws to which civilised society subjected itself, as binding in themselves, and if there is any truth at all in the coarse anecdotes which antiquity relates on the subject, this class took
in scoffing openly at the most elementary demands of morals and decency. This forced and, in part, openly affected nat uralism knows nothing any longer of 86cij and aiSwt (justice and rev- erence), which the older Sophistic teaching had allowed to remain as natural impulses, and elicits a conception of virtue which sup poses that greed and lust complete the essential qualities of the natural man.
Yet the Cynics were not so bad as they made themselves. Diogenes even preserved a remnant of respect for mental training, as the only thing which could free man from the prejudices of con ventional institutions and lead to freedom from wants by insight into the nothingness of the pretended goods of civilisation. He also conducted the education of the sons of Xeniades, a Corinthian Sophist, according to the principles of the Cynic naturalism, and not without success.
On the whole, this philosophy is a characteristic sign of the time, the mark of a disposition which, if not hostile, was yet indifferent
pleasure
C«Ai. 2, § 7. ] Problem of Morality : Aristippus. 85
to society and had lost all comprehension of its ideal goods ; it ena bles us to see from within how at that time Greek society was dis integrating into individuals. When Diogenes called himself a
there was in this no trace of the ideal thought of a community of all men, but only the denial of his adherence to any civilised community ; and if Crates taught that the plurality of gods 'lists only in the opinion of men, and that, " according to Nature," there is but one God, there is in the Cynic doctrine no trace to war- rut the conclusion that this monotheism was for them an especially dear idea or even an especially deep feeling.
9. In complete contrast with this system stands Hedonism, the philosophy of regardless enjoyment. Starting as did the Cynics from the incompleteness of the Socratic doctrine, Aristippus struck out in the opposite direction. He was quick to give to the concept of the good, a clear and simple content, — that of pleasure (^Sonj). This latter conception at first does duty under the general psycholo gical meaning of the feeling of contentment which grows out of the fulfilment of every striving and wish. 1 Happiness is then the
•tate of pleasure which springs from the satisfied will. If this is the only thing to be considered, it is a matter of indifference what the object of will and of gratification is; all depends on the degree of pleasure, on the strength of the feeling of satisfaction. ' This, however, in the opinion of Aristippus, is present in the highest degree in the case of sensuous, bodily enjoyment which relates to the immediate present, to the satisfaction of the moment. If, then, virtue is knowledge directed toward happiness, it must enable man to enjoy as much and as vigorously as possible. Virtue is ability far enjoyment.
Erery one, to be sure, may and can enjoy ; but only the man of education, of intelligence, of insight — the wise man — understands how to enjoy rightly. In this we must consider not only the nselligent appraisal (^poVipnc), which knows how to select, among the various enjoyments that present themselves in the course of
'. i(e. those which will afford the pleasure that is highest, purest, least mixed with pain; we must consider also the inner self-posses- »»on of the man who is not blindly to follow every rising appetite, sad who, when he enjoys, is never to give himself entirely up to the enjoyment, but is to stand above it and control it. The enjoy- meat which makes man the slave of things is, indeed, as the Cynics
i this, also, Xenopbon not infrequently pats the 1)i6 into the mouth ■ASnctstes.
1 This, too, is s completely correct consequence from the eudsemonistic prior
cosmopolitan,
gg The Greek* : Anthropological Period. [Part L
but to delight in pleasure and yet not give one's self up to it is harder than to renounce as they do. Of this,
however, man becomes capable through right insight only. 1
On this ground the Cyrenaics, in particular the younger Aristippus
(called iirjTfx&SaKTos, " mother-taught," because his grandfather's
wisdom was transmitted to him through his mother Arete), set on
foot systematic investigations as to the origin of the raBrj, the feelings and impulses. In a physiological psychology which was connected with that of Protagoras (cf. below, 8), they traced the varieties in feeling back to states of motion in the body: to rest corresponded indifference, to violent motion pain, to gentle motion pleasure. Besides such explanatory theories, however, this philos ophy of bonvivants extended to an unprejudiced general theory of things. For them, too, as Theodorus taught, all ethical and legal
were ultimately merely institutions that were valid for the mass of men; the educated man of enjoyment gives himself no trouble about them, and enjoys things when they come into his possession. Theodorus, who bears the surname " the Atheist," put aside also all religious scruples which are opposed to devotion to sensuous enjoyment, and the school also exerted itself in this interest to strip the halo from religious faith, so far as possible, as
proved by the well-known theory of Euemerus, who in his Upa avaypatfrri undertook to trace belief in the gods back to the worship of ancestors and veneration of heroes.
Thus the Cyrenaics ultimately agreed with the Cynics in this, that they, too, regarded all that fixed vofua, i. e. by the social convention of morals and law, as a limitation of that right to enjoy ment which man has by nature (<£iW), and which the wise man exercises without troubling himself about historical institutions. The Hedonists gladly shared the refinement of enjoyment which civilisation brought with they found convenient and per missible that the intelligent man should enjoy the honey which others prepared; but no feeling of duty or thankfulness bound them to the civilisation whose fruits they enjoyed. This same con dition of recognising no native land, this same turning aside from the feeling of political responsibility, which among the Cynics grew out of despising the enjoyments of civilisation, resulted for the Cyrenaics from the egoism of their enjoyment. Sacrifice for others, patriotism, and devotion to general object, Theodorus
declared to be form of foolishness which did not become the wise man to share, and even Aristippus rejoiced in the freedom from
say, to be rejected;
prescriptions
Cf. Diog. Laert. II. 65 ff.
a 1
it
§
a
it ;
it
it,
is
is
C ur. 2, f 8. ] Problem of Science : the Sophists. 87
connection with any state, which his wandering life afforded him. ' The philosophy of the parasites, who feasted at the full table of Grecian beauty, was as far removed from the ideal meaning of that beauty as was the philosophy of the beggars who lay at the threshold.
In the meantime, the principle of the expert weighing of enjoy ments contains an element which necessarily leads beyond that doctrine of enjoyment for the moment which Aristippus preached, and this advance was made in two directions. Aristippus himself had already admitted that in the act of weighing, the pleasure
sad pain which would in future result from the
most be taken into account ; Theodorus found that the highest good *u to be sought rather in the cheerful frame of mind (\apo) than m the enjoyment of the moment, and Anniceris came to see that this could be attained in a higher degree through the spiritual joys of human intercourse, of friendship, of the family, and of civil society than through bodily enjoyments. This knowledge that the enjoy ments afforded by the intellectual and spiritual aspects of civilisa- Uoo are ultimately finer, richer, and more gratifying than those of bodily existence, leads directly over into the doctrine of the
Epicureans. But, on the other hand, the Hedonistic school could not fail ultimately to see that the painless enjoyment to which it umed to educate the man of culture is but a rare lot. In general, found Hegesicu, he is to be accounted as already happy who attains the painless state, is free from actual discomfort. With the great dim of men discomfort, the pain of unsatisfied desires, pre ponderates : for them it would be better, therefore, not to live. The impressiveness with which he presented this brought him the surname rtun&uaro? , —he persuaded to death. He is the first representative of eudvemonistic pessimimn ; with this doctrine, how ever, eudaemonism refutes itself.
He shows that if happiness, satisfaction of wishes, and enjoyment are to be the meaning and end of human life, it misses this end, and is to be rejected as worthless. Pessimism is the last but also the annihilating con- tcqueoce of eudsemonism, — its immanent criticism.
§ 8. The Problem of Science. '
P. Xatorp, Forirhungen zur Oenrhichte de* Erkenutnittprobltmt bei den Atu». Berlin, 1884.
The Sophists were teachers of political eloquence. They were oUsg^d in the first instance to give instruction on the nature and
' Xen. Mem. II. 1. 8 ff.
* [ Wimtrnxkaft. Science, as used in this section, is nearly equivalent to "•tkaufle knowledge. " Sometimes the subjective aspect of the term is promi-
enjoyment
aod sometimes the objective. ]
88 The Greeks: Anthropological Period. [Part L
right use of language. And while they were transforming rhetoric from a traditional art to a science, they applied themselves in the first place to linguistic researches, and became creators of grammar and syntax. They instituted investigations as to the parts of the sentence, the use of words, synonyms, and etymology. Prodicus, Hippias, and Protagoras distinguished themselves in this respect ; as to the fruit of their investigations, we are only imperfectly informed.
1. Our knowledge of their logical acquisitions, which with the exception of a few allusions are lost, is in a still more unfortunate condition. For, as a matter of course, the teachers of rhetoric treated also the train of thought in discourse. This train of thought, however, consists in proof and refutation. It was then inevitable that the Sophists should project a theory of proof and refutation, and there is explicit testimony to this in the case of Protagoras. 1 Unfortunately, there is no more precise information as to how far the Sophists proceeded with this, and as to whether they attempted to separate out the logical Forms from those elements which belong to the content of thought. It is characteristic that the little information which we have concerning the logic of the Sophists relates almost without exception to their emphasising of the principle of contradiction. To the essential nature of the advo cate's task, refutation was more closely related than proof. Protag oras left a special treatise * concerning Grounds of Refutation, perhaps his most important writing, and formulated the law of the contradictory opposite, so far, at least, as to say that there are with reference to every object two mutually opposing propositions, and to draw consequences from this. He thus formulated, in fact, the procedure which Zeno had practically employed, and which also played a great part in the disciplinary exercises of the Sophists, indeed the greatest part. " "
For it was one of the main arts of these Enlighteners to per plex men as to the ideas previously regarded as valid, to involve them in contradictions, and when the victims were thus confused, to force them if possible, by logical consequences, real or manufac tured, to such absurd answers as to make them become ridiculous to themselves and others. From the examples which Plato 'and Aristotle s have preserved, it is evident that this procedure was not
1 Diog. Laert. IX. 61 ff.
* It is probable that Kara/SdXXorrcT («■. X6701) and 'Arri\o7(ai are only two different titles of this work, the first chapter of which treated truth.
' Plato in the Evthydemut and in the Cratylus, Aristotle in the book '• Un (h- SopMstic Fallacies. "
Caar. 2, § 8. ] Problem of Science : the Megariant. 89
always any too purely logical, but was thoroughly sophistical in the present sense of the word. The examples show that these people let slip no ambiguity in speech, no awkwardness in popular expres- lion, if out of it they might weave a snare of absurdity. The witticisms which result are often based merely upon language, grammar, and etymology ; more rarely they are properly logical ; quite often, however, coarse and dull. Characteristic here, too, are the catch-questions, where either an affirmative or negative answer, according to the customs and presuppositions of the ordinary mean, mgs of the words, gives rise to nonsensical consequences, unforeseen by the one answering. 1
Plato has portrayed two brothers, Euthydemus and Dionysidorus, who practised this art of logomachy or eristic, which had great success among the Athenians who were great talkers and accus tomed to word-quibbling. Aside from them, it was prosecuted principally by the Megarians, among whom the head of the school, EvduL, busied himself with the theory of refutation. ' His adhe rents, Evbulides and Alexinus, were famous for a series of such catches, which made a great seusation and called forth a whole lit erature. 1 Among these there are two, the " Heap " and the " Bald-
bead. "' the fundamental thought in which is to be traced back to Zrao, and was introduced by him into the arguments by which he wished to show that the composition of magnitudes out of small parts is impossible. In like manner, Zeno's arguments against notion were amplified, even if not deepened or strengthened,* by another Megarian, Diodorus Cronos. Unwearied in finding out such mporiee, difficulties, and contradictions, this same Diodorus invented also the famous argument (xvpMiW) which was designed to destroy the conception of possibility: only the actual is possible; for a possible which does not become actual evinces itself thereby to be
impossible. * *
In another manner, also, the Sophists who were affiliated with the
Eteaties, show an extreme application of the principle of contradic tion, and a corresponding exaggeration of the principle of identity. Even Gorgias seems to have supported his opinion that all state-
are false, upon the assumption that it is incorrect to predicate
* As a typical example, " Have yon left off beating your father ? " or " Have joa ihed your horn* ? "
> Dioc- Laert. II. 107.
* Cf. PraoU, Ouch, der Log, I. 33 ff.
* WkJefa kernel of grain by being added make* the heap r Which hair falling
•at make* the bald head ?
* 8m. Emp. Adv. Math. X. 86 ff. ' CV. De Fato, 7, 13.
90 The Greeks : Anthropological Period. [Part I.
of any subject anything else than just this subject itself; and the Cynics, as well as Stilpo the Megarian, made this thought their own There remain, accordingly, only such purely identical judgments as, good is good, man is man, etc' As a logical consequence of this, judging and talking are made as impossible as were plurality and motion according to the Eleatic principle. As in the metaphysics of Parmenides, the ghost of which appears occasionally both among the Megarians and the Cynics (cf. below, No. 5), the lack of concep tions of relation permitted no combination of unity with plurality and led to a denial of plurality, so here the lack of conceptions of logical relation made it appear impossible to assert of the subject a variety of predicates.
2. In all these devious windings taken by the researches of the Sophists concerning the knowing activity, the sceptical direction is manifesting itself. If on such grounds the logical impossibility of all formation of synthetic propositions was maintained, this showed that knowledge itself was irreconcilable with the abstract principle of identity, as it had been formulated in the Eleatics' doctrine of Being. The doctrine of Parmenides had itself become ensnared past help in the dichotomies of Zeno. This came to most open expression in the treatise of Oorgias,* which declared Being, Knowl edge, and Communication of Knowledge to be impossible. There is nothing; for both Being, which can be thought neither as eternal nor as transitory, neither as one nor as manifold, and Non-being are conceptions that are in themselves contradictory. If, however, there were anything, it would not be knowable ; for that which is thougM is always something else than that which actually is, other wise they could not be distinguished. Finally, if there were knowl edge, it could not be taught ; for every one has only his own ideas, and in view of the difference between the thoughts and the signs which must be employed in their communication, there is no guar anty of mutual understanding.
This nihilism, to be sure, scarcely claimed to be taken in earnest ; even the title of the book, ircpl <t>\xrt<o<; i} mpl tov fir/ oWos {Concern ing Nature, or concerning that which is not), appears like a grotesque farce. The Rhetorician, trained to formal dexterity, who despised all earnest science and pursued only his art of speaking,1 indulged in the jest of satirising as empty the entire labour of philos-
1 Plat. Theat. 201 E. Cf. Soph. 251 B.
* Extracts are found partly in the third chapter of the pseudo-Aristotelian treatise De Xenophane, Zenone, Gorgia (cf. p. 30), in part in Sext. Emp. VII. 66-88.
• Plat. Meno. 95 C.
Caar. 2, $ 8. ] Problem of Science : Protagoras. 91
ophy, and doing this ironically in the style of Zeno's pinching-mill of contradictions. But just the facts that he did this, and that his work found applause, show how among the men who occupied them selves in instructing the people, and in the circles of scientific culture itself, faith in science was becoming lost at just the time when the mass of the people was seeking its welfare in it. This despair of truth is the more comprehensible, as we see how the serious scientific investigation of Protagoras attained the same result.
E. Laas, Idealitmut und Potitivismus. I. Berlin, 1880.
W. Halbfass. Die Beriehte des Platon und Aristotelet fiber Protagoras, itztmb. 1882.
S»Uig. Dtr Protagoreische Sensualismus (Zeitachrift flir Pbilosopbie, vols. 96-e«).
3. The germ of the doctrine of Protagoras is found in his effort to explain the ideas of the human mind psyclio-genetically. Insight into the origin and development of ideas was absolutely necessary for the practical aspect of a system of ethics, and particularly for the cultivation of rhetoric. The statements, however, which the metaphysicians had occasionally uttered, were in nowise sufficient for the purpose, constructed as they were from general presupposi tions and permeated by them ; on the contrary, the observations in physiological psychology which had been made in the more recent circles of investigators who were more given to natural science, offered themselves as fit for the purpose. Thinking and perceiving bad been set over against each other from the point of view of their relative worth ; this determining element now disappeared for
Protagoras, and so there remained for him only the view of the iMvcbological identity of thinking and perceiving, — a view to which *reo those metaphysicians had committed themselves as soon as they attempted to explain ideation from the world-process (cf. § 8).
Is consequence of this he declared that the entire psychical life con- nMj only in perceptions} This sensualism was then illustrated by the great mass of facts which physiological psychology had assembled in connection with the teaching of the physicians that were scien tific investigators, and by the numerous theories which had been brought forward with special reference to the process of the action of the senses.
All these, however, had in common the idea that i>erception rests :a the last instance upon motion, as does every process by which come to be or occur in the world. In this even Anaxagoras
Diog. Laert. IX. 61.
92 The Greeks : Anthropological Period. [Pakt i.
and Empedocles were at one with the Atomists, from whose school Protagoras, as a native of Abdera, had probably gone out. This agreement extended still farther to the assumption, made on all sides, that in perception there was not only a condition of motion in the thing to be perceived, but also a like condition in the percip ient organ. Whatever view might be taken as to the metaphysical essence of that which was there in motion, it seemed to be acknowl edged as undoubted that every perception presupposed this double motion. Empedocles had already anticipated the doctrine that the inner organic motion advances to meet the outer. 1
On this foundation * the Protagorean theory of knowledge is built up. If, that is to say, perception is the product of these two motions directed toward one another, it is obviously something else than the perceiving subject, but just as obviously it is something else than the object which calls forth the perception. Conditioned by both, it is yet different from both. This pregnant discovery is designated as the doctrine of the subjectivity of sense-perception.
Nevertheless, in the case of Protagoras this appears with a peculiar restriction. Since, like all earlier thinkers, he evidently could not assume a consciousness without a corresponding existent content of consciousness, he taught that from this double motion there was a two fold result : viz. perception (<uo-<fyo-is) in the man, and content ofper ception (to oio-6Srrdv) in the thing. Perception is therefore indeed the completely adequate knowledge of what is perceived, but no knowl edge of the thing. Every perception is then in so far true as, at the instant when it arises, there arises also in connection with the thing the represented content, as aladTjrw, but no perception knows the thing itself. Consequently every one knows things not as they are, but as they are in the moment of perception for him, and for him only ; and they are in this moment with reference to him such as he represents them to himself. This is the meaning of the Protagorean relativism, according to which things are for every individual such as they appear to him ; and this he expressed in the famous prof>osition that man is the measure of all thitigs.
According to this, therefore, every opinion which grows out of per ception is true, and yet in a certain sense, just for this reason, it is
1 Whether these two motions were already designated by Protagoras as active and passive (rotoir and rdc-gor), as is the case in Plato's presentation (Thecet. 156 A), may remain undecided. At all events, such anthropological categories in the mouth of the Sophist are not surprising.
1 With regard to such preparatory ideas, there is no ground to trace this theory of the motions which advance to meet one another, to direct connection with Heraclitu*. Its Heraclitean element, which Plato very correctly saw, was sufficiently maintained by those direct predecessors who reduced all Becoming and change to relations of motion.
Cbat. 2, § 8. ] Problem of Science : Protagoras. 93
also false. It is valid only for the one perceiving, and for him even only at the moment when it arises. All universal validity forsakes :x. And since, according to the view of Protagoras, there is no other kind of ideas, and therefore no other knowledge than percep tion, there is for human knowledge nothing whatever that is univer- ally vaiid. This view is phenomenalism in so far as it teaches in this entirely definite sense a knowledge of the phenomenon, limited to the individual and to the moment ; it however, scepticism in so far as it rejects all knowledge which transcends that.
How far Protagoras himself drew practical consequences from this principle that every one's opinion true for himself, we do not know. Later Sophists concluded that, according to this, error would
everything, and again nothing, belongs to everything In particular they concluded that no actual contradic
aot be possible
as attribute.
tion is possible
perception, different assertions can never have the same object. At all events, Protagoras refused to make any positive statement con cerning what is; he spoke not of the actual reality that moves, bat only of motion, and of the phenomena which it produces for
perception.
Moreover, the attempt was now made, whether by Protagoras him-
•elf, or by the Sophistic activity dependent upon him, to trace dif ferences in perception, and so also in the phenomenon, back to differences in this motion. It was principally the velocity of the motion which was considered in this connection, though the form also was probably regarded. 1 It interesting to note further that under the concept of perception not only sensations and perceptions, but also the sensuous feelings and desires, were subsumed note worthy especially because to these states also an cuV^toV, a momen tary qualification of the thing which produced the perception, was held to correspond. The predicates of agreeableness and desir ability receive in this way the same valuation epistemologically a« do the predicates of sensuous qualification. What appears agreeable, useful, and desirable to any one agreeable, useful, and desirable for him. The individual state of consciousness here, too, the measure of things, and no other universally valid determination of the worth of things exists. In this direction the Hedonism of Aristippus was developed out of the Protagorean doctrine we know, teaches Aristippus, not things, but only their
Doabtleas we have here asserting itself the development of the Pythagorean tarnrr nt knowledge oat of the Atomistic school, to which this reduction of the 7ia^-iatJTi> to the quantitative was essential (cf. above, 51, even though the 8o- paut declined from principle to enter into such metaphysical theories as Atomism.
for since every one talks about the content of his
§
is
1
;
is
; it is
is
;
;
is
is,
94 The Greek* : Anthropological Period. [Part I.
worth for us, and the states (n&rf) into which they put us. These, however, are rest and indifference, violent motion and pain, or gentle motion and pleasure. Of these only the last is worth striving for
(cL above, 5 7,9).
4. Thus all courses of Sophistic thought issued in giving up truth
as unattainable. Socrates, however, needed truth, and on this account he believed that it was to be attained if it were honestly sought for. Virtue is knowledge ; and since there must be virtue, there must be knowledge also. Here for the first time in history the moral con sciousness appears with complete clearness as an epistemological postulate. Because morality is not possible without knowledge, there must be knowledge ; and if knowledge is not here and now existent, it must be striven for as the lover seeks for the possession of the loved object Science is the yearning, struggling love for
knowledge, — ^mAoo-o^ko, philosophy (cf. Plat. Symp. 203 £). ' Out of this conviction grow all the peculiarities of the Socratic
doctrine of science. 1 and in the first place the bounds within which he held knowledge to be necessary and therefore possible. It is only a knowledge of the relations of human life that is necessary for the ethical life ; only for these is a knowing necessary, and only for these is man's knowing faculty adequate. Hypotheses as to metaphysics and the philosophy of Nature have nothing to do with man's ethical task, and they are left unconsidered by Socrates, so much the rather as he shared the view of the Sophists that it was impossible to gain a sure knowledge concerning them. Science is possible only as practical insight, as knowledge of the ethical life.
This view was formulated still more sharply by the Sophistic successors of Socrates under the influence of his eudaemonistic principle. For both Cynics and Cyrenaics science had worth only so far as it affords to man the right insight which serves to make him happy. With Antdsthenes and Diogenes science was prized not in itself, but as a means for controlling the desires and for knowing man's natural needs; the Cyrenaics said the causes of perception (to irartujjKora to raBr/) are for us as much matters of indifference as they are unknowable; knowledge which leads to happiness has to do only with our states, which we know with certainty. Indifference toward metaphysics and natural science
1 Cf. Ft. Schleiennacher, Veber den Werth des Sokrates als Philosophen (Gea. W. III. , Bd. 2, pp.