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Windelband - History of Philosophy
on earth, only practical ability (<!
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1
Another positive characteristic of the "thinking" which the earlier investigators had set over against "perceiving," without closer specification, appears obscurely in the reasonings of Zeno, viz. conformity to logical laws. At the basis of all his attacks against plurality and motion lie the principle of contradiction and the presupposition that that can not be actual of which the same thing must be affirmed and also denied. This principle and presup position were applied with clearness and certainty, though not ab stractly expressed. The Eleatic theory of the world, so highly paradoxical, forced its supporters to enter into polemic more than did others, and the accounts as to Zeno's treatise, which, as seems, was also logically well arranged and divided, offer notable evi dence of the developed technique of refutation to which the school attained in consequence. To be sure, this formal training which prevailed in Eleatic circles does not seem to have led as yet to the abstract statement of logical laws. " " "
2. The setting over against each other of thinking and per ceiving" arose, then, from an estimation of their relative epistemo- logical value (erkenntniastheoretischen Werthbestimmung) [i. e. from the postulate that one of these two forms of mental activity worth more epistemologically for attaining truth]. In decided contradiction with this, however, stand the psychological principles with which these same investigators sought to apprehend the origin and process of knowing. For although their thinking was directed first and chiefly toward the outer world, man's mental activity came under their attention in so far as they were obliged to see in this activity one of the formations, or transformations, or products of motion, of the universe. The mind or soul and its action are then at this time considered scientifically only in connection with the entire course of the universe, whose product they are as truly as are all other things and since among the men of this period the general principles of explanation are everywhere as yet conceived corpore-
Stob. Bel. 488.
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62 The Greeks: Cosmological Period. [Part L
ally it follows that we meet also a thorough-going materialistic
psychology. 1
Now mind or soul is in the first place moving force. Thales
ascribed such a soul to magnets, and declared that the whole world was full of souls. The essential nature of individual souls was therefore sought at first in that which had been recognised as the moving principle in the whole. Anaximenes found it in air, Heraclitus and likewise Parmenides (in his hypothetical physics) in fire, Leucippus in the fiery atoms,' and Anaxagoras in the world- moving, rational substance, the vow. Where, as in the system of Empedocles, a corporeal moving principle was lacking, the mixed substance which streams through the living body, the blood, was regarded as soul. Diogenes of Apollonia found the essence of the soul in the air mixed with the blood. 8 With the Pythagoreans, too, the individual soul could not be considered as the same with the iv (One) which they conceived as moving principle of the world, nor regarded as a part of it ; instead, they taught that the soul was a number, and made this very vague statement more definite by say ing that it was a harmony, —an expression which we can only interpret4 as meaning a harmony of the body; that the living, harmonious activity of its parts.
If now to this moving force, which leaves the body in death, were ascribed at the same time those properties which we to-day designate as " psychical," we find clear characterisation of the specifically theoretical interest by which this oldest science was filled, in the fact that among these attributes that of ideation, of " knowing," which almost exclusively the object of attention. * Of feelings and volitions there scarcely incidental mention. * But as the
Besides those characterisations of the soul, which resulted from their gen eral scientific theory, we find in the tradition in case of several of these men
(Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, and the Pythagoreans) still other doc trines which are not only not connected witli the former, but are even in con tradiction to them. A conception of the body as prison of the soul (ri. ua = <rijjui), personal immortality, recompense after death, transmigration of souls. — all these are ideas which the philosophers took from their relations to the mysteries and retained in their priestly teaching, however little they accorded with their scientific teachings. Such expressions are not treated above.
In like manner, some of the Pythagoreans declared the motes which the sunlight discloses in the air to be souls.
Since, with reference to this, he recognised the distinction between venous ami arterial blood, he meant by his irwO/ux what the chemistry of to-day calls oxygen.
Ace. to Plato. Phmdo, 85 ff. , where the view rejected ns materialistic.
The w>Bs of Anaxagoras only knowing air with Diogenes of Apollonia great, powerful, eternal, intelligent body. Being with Parmenides at the
same time votlv, etc. Only ^iXAttjs and w«o« with Empedocles are mythically hypostasised impulses, and these, too, have nothing to do with his psychological views.
With this connected the fact that in general we cannot once speak
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Cm*». 1,§ 6. ] Conception* of Cognition: Her aclitus, Anaxagoras. 03
individual soul in so far as it is moving force was held to be a part of the force which moves the entire universe, so also the " knowing " rf the individual could be conceived only as a part of the knowing activity of the world. ' This is clearest in the systems of Heraclitus lad Anaxagoras ; each individual has so much knowledge as there a contained in him of the general World-reason, —fire with Htraelitus,* the rofc with Anaxagoras. In the case of Leucippus and of Diogenes of Apollonia the ideas are similar.
This physical conception, which with Anaxagoras especially is portly quantitative, was given a turn by Heraclitus, in which the ;;&stemological postulate again forces its way to the front, and asserts itself in the interest of a deeper insight and a profounder new. The World-reason in which the individual participates in his knowledge is everywhere the same; the Xoyot of Heraclitus3 and the io£« of Anaxagoras, as homogenous Reason, are distributed through the whole universe as moving force. Knowing, then, is that which is common to all. It is therefore the law and order to »iich every one has to unite himself. In dreams, in personal opin ion, each one has his own world; knowing is common ((wov) to tlL By means of this characteristic, viz. that of universally valid law, the conception of knowing acquires a normative significance* aad subjection to the common, to the law, appears as a duty \z the intellectual realm as well as in the political, ethical, and religious. *
i at ethical investigation in this period. For single moralising reflections ana cannot be regarded as beginnings of ethics. On the only excep-
tm ef. below, note 6.
• Th« expression " World-soul " was first used by Plato, or at the earliest by
? VVWana (in the fragment which has certainly been much questioned just for t&s reason. Mull. 21). The idea is certainly present in Anaximenes, Heraclitus, aaexagnra*. and perhaps also among the Pythagoreans.
' Heoop
■araJBg u> guard the soul from the wet (intoxication).
the paradoxical expression, the dryest soul is the wisest, and the
• CI. , for this and the following, M. Heinze, Die Lthre vom Logos in der frwraurton Philotopkie (Oldenburg, 1872).
• Fr*g. (Schust. ) 123.
• This is the only conception in the development of pre-Sophistic thought, in a» iw ot which we can speak of an attempt to propound a scientific principle «< ttkir*. If Heraclitus had in mind a universal expression for all moral duties ■i •prxkme of this subordination to law, or at least hit upon such, he attached - at once u> the fundamental thoughts of his metaphysics, which declared thin
a* u> be the abiding essence of the world. Yet attention has above ($4) been aJed to the fact that in the conception of the world-order which hovered before I^m, he did not as yet separate consciously the different motives (especially the pcTacml from the ethical), and so ethical investigation does not as yet work
uctf cU»r from the physical to an Independent position. The same is true of '■*»pTthaxoreans, who expressed the conception of order by the term "harmony " »iaj> also might be adopted from Heraclitus), and therefore designated virtue • ~eannony. " To be sure, they used the term " harmony " for the soul, for
awe*, ami for many other things.
64 The Greeks : Cosmological Period.
[Part ,
3. If now we ask how under these assumptions the fact was explained that " knowledge " comes into the individual man, i. e. into his body, we find that the only answer offered by Heraclitus and the whole company of his successors "through the door of the senses. " When man awake, the World-reason streams into his body through the opened senses (sight and hearing are of course chiefly noticed1), and, therefore, he knows. This comes about, to be sure, only there besides, in the man himself, so much reason or soul that the motion coming from without met by an inner motion but upon this interaction, effected through the senses> between the outer and the inner reason knowledge rests.
A psychological distinction, then, between perceiving and think ing, which, as regards their respective epistemological values, are so abruptly opposed, Heraclitus does not know how to state. Par- menides,* however, was just as little in position to make such distinction. 4 Rather, he expressed more sharply still the dependence upon bodily relations in which the thinking of the individual man involved, when he said that every one so thought as the conditions constituted by the mixture of substances in the members of the body permitted, and when he found in this confirmation of his general thought of the identity of corporeality and thinking in general. * Still more express the testimony6 that Empedocles declared thinking and perceiving to be the same, that he thought change in thinking as dependent upon change of the body, and that he regarded the constitution of the blood as of decisive importance for the intellectual capacity of the man.
These two last-named thinkers did not hesitate, moreover, to make their conception more plain to the imagination by means of physio logical hypotheses. Parmenides taught in his hypothetical physics
Also smell (Empedocles) and taste (Anaxagoras). Only the Atomists, and in particular Democritus, seem to have given value to the sense of touch.
Arist. De An. 405 a 27.
Theophr. De Sens.
So, too, reported (Theophr. De Sens. 26) of Alcmseon, the Pythago-
reanising physician, that he declared thought or consciousness (Jh-i jiAwj \vrijpi) to be the characteristic which distinguishes man from the other animals. But a more precise determination lacking here also unless, in accordance with the expression, we think of something similar to the Aristotelian Kotviv al<rSrrr-^pu>w With this would agree the circumstance that the first attempts to localise the particular psychical activities in particular parts of the body seem to have been made in the circles of the Pythagoreans and of the physicians who stood in near relations to them localising, e. g. , thought in the brain, perception in the indi vidual organs and in the heart, and the emotions also in the latter organ. From them Diogenes of Apollonia, and after him Democritus, seem to have taken these beginnings of physiological psychology.
Frag. (Karst. ) vv. 146-149.
Arist. De An. 404 Theophr. De Sens. 10
III. 427 21 Met. III. 1009 17
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Caar. 1, | •. ] Conception* of Cognition : Parmenides, Empedocles. 65
a*t like is always perceived by like, warmth without by the warmth
:a man, the cold without by the cold even in the dead body.
jclea, with the aid of his theory of effluxes and pores, carried out
tae thought that every element in our body perceives the same ele ment in the outer world, so as to teach that each organ is accessible w the impress of those substances only whose effluxes fit into its pores ; i. e. he derived the specific energy of the sense organs from relations of similarity between their outer form and their objects, lad carried this out for sight, hearing, and smell, with observations vhich in part are very acute. 1
This view, that like is apprehended by like, was opposed by Anaxagoras, —on what ground it is not certain. ' He taught that perception is only of opposite by opposite, warmth without by the eoU in man, etc. * At all events, his doctrine also is a proof that '. iiese metaphysical rationalists maintained all of them in their
fyckology a crass sensationalism.
1 Tbeopbr. De Sens. 7.
Emped-
* ftrfeapa we have here a remembrance of Heraclitus, who also explained pneeptioo from the iparrurrpoxla, — motion against motion, — and with whom jppcaitioD was the principle of all motion.
• Tbeopbr. De Sens. 27 ft. It U interesting that Anaxagoras inferred from •±m that every perception is joined with pain (XAri)).
CHAPTER II.
THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERIOD.
O. Grote, History of Greece, VIII. (London, 1850), pp. 474-644.
C. F. Hermann, Geschichte und System der platonischen Philosophie, I. (Heidel
berg, 1839), pp. 179-231.
Blass, Die attische Beredsamkeit von Gorgias"bis zu Lysias. Leips. 1808. " H. Kochly, Sokrates und sein Volk, 1855, in Akad. Vortragen und Reden, I.
(ZUrich, 1859), pp. 219 fl. "
H. Siebeck, Ueber Sokrates' Verhaltniss zur Sophistik, in Untersuchungen
zur PhiloBophie der Griechen," 1873, 2 Aufl. (Freiburg i. B. 1888).
W. Windelband, Sokrates in " Prseludien " (Freiburg i. B. 1884), pp. 64 ft*. [H. Jackson, Art. Sophists, in Enc. Brit. ]
The farther development of Greek science was determined by the circumstance that in the powerful, universal upward movement of the mental and spiritual life which the nation achieved after the victorious result of the Persian wars, science was torn away from the restraints of close schools in which it had been quietly pursued, and brought out upon the stage of publicity, where all was in vehe ment agitation.
The circles in which scientific research was fostered had widened from generation to generation, and the doctrines which at first had been presented in smaller societies and spread abroad in writings that were hard to understand, had begun to filter through into the general consciousness. The poets, as Euripides and Epicharmus, began already to translate into their language scientific conceptions and views ; the knowledge gained by investigation of Nature had already been made practically effective, as by Hippodaraus in his architecture. Even medicine, which had formerly been only an art practised according to traditions, became so permeated with the general conceptions of natural philosophy, and with the special doc trines, information, and hypotheses of physiological research which in the course of time had occupied an ever-broader space in the
systems of science, that it became encumbered with an excessive 06
Cnar. 2. ] The Anthropological Period. 67
growth of etiological theories,1 and first found in Hippocrates the reformer who reduced this tendency to its proper measure and gave hack, to the physician's art its old character in contrast to scientific
Moreover, the Greek nation, matured by the stern experience viueh had been its lot within and without, had entered upon the age of manhood. It had lost its naive faith in old tradition, and :nd learned the value of knowledge and ability for practical life. Of science, which up to this time had followed in quiet the pure impulse of investigation — the noble curiosity which seeks knowledge for its own sake — the state now demanded light on the questions
counsel and help in the doubt into which the jixnnance of its own development in culture had plunged it. In tie feverish emulation of intellectual forces which this greatest
[mod in the world's history brought with the thought everywhere zuned recognition that in every walk in life the man of knowledge . » the most capable, the most useful, and the most successful. In every department of practical activity, the fruitful innovation of independent reflection, of individual judgment, took the place of the
•iii life controlled by custom. The mass of the people was seized with
ke K« ruing desire to make the results of science its otcn. It was espe- rially true, however, that at this time family tradition, habituation, personal excellence of character and address were no longer suffi- 'teot. im formerly, for the man who wished to play political part. Tbe variety of transactions and the attendant difficulties, as well as the intellectual status of those with whom and upon whom he would
work, made a theoretical schooling for the political career indispen sable. Nowhere was this movement so powerful as in Athens, then •ie capital of Greece, and here also these desires found their fullest •aexfaction.
For the supply followed the demand. The men of science, the Stfkkts (vo+urrm), stepped forth out of the schools into public life, tad taught the people what they themselves had learned or discov- -rwi. They did this, indeed, partly out of the noble impulse to >*rh their fellow-citizens,3 but was none the less true that this Earning became their business. From all parts of Greece men of •J* different schools flocked toward Athens to expound their doc-
•hieh disturbed
■This innovation in medicine began among the physicians who stood in near r*iuti<a to Pythagoreanism, especially with Alcmseon. As literary instance ■ ft. the writing which goes falsely under the name of Hippocrates, rtpl tialr^t, ■rua. Ct. H. Siebeck, Ot$eh. d. Ptyrh. 04 ff.
(T principally his writings wtpl dpxa'Siairiii
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CT- Protnjoras in Plato, Prot.
316 d.
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68 The Philosophy of the Greeks. [Part I.
trines, and from so expounding them in the capital as well as in the smaller cities, to gain honour and wealth.
In this way it happened that in a short time not only the social position of science, but its own inner nature, its tendency and the questions for its solution, were fundamentally changed. It became a social power, a determining factor in political life, as in the case of Pericles ; but just by this means it came into a state of dependence upon the demands of practical, and in particular, of political life.
These demands showed themselves principally in the facts that the democratic polity demanded of politicians first of all the capac ity for public speaking, and that in consequence the instruction of the Sophists was especially sought as a preparation for public life, and converged more and more upon this object. Men of science became teachers of eloquence.
As such, however, they lost sight of the goal of nature-knowledge, the vision of which had formerly hovered before the eyes of science. At the most they presented transmitted doctrines in the most grace ful and pleasing form possible. But their own investigations, if they were not confined to a formal routine, were necessarily directed toward man's thinking and willing, — the activities which public speaking was designed to determine and control, — toward the manner in which ideas and volitions arise, and the way in which they contend with one another and maintain their mutual rights. In this way Greek science took an essentially anthropological or subjective direction, studying the inner activities of man, his ideation and volition, and at the same time lost its purely theoretical character and acquired a preponderantly practical significance. 1
But while the activity of the Sophists found itself brought face to face with the manifold character of human thought and will, while the teachers of eloquence were presenting the art of persua sion and pursuing the path upon which every opinion could be helped to victory, every purpose to its achievement, the question rose before them whether above and beyond these individual opin ions and purposes which each one feels within himself as a necessity and can defend against others, there is anything whatever that is right and true in itself. The question whether there is anyUting universally valid, is the problem of the anthropological period of Greek philosophy, or of the Greek Enlightenment.
For it is likewise the problem of the time, — of a time in which religious faith and the old morality were wavering, a time when the
1 Cicero's well-known expression (Tusc V. 4, 10) with regard to Socrates holds good for the entire philosophy of this period.
Caar. 2. J The Anthropological Period. 69
respect which authority had commanded sank more and more, and ill tended towards an anarchy of individuals who had become self- governing. Very soon this internal disintegration of the Greek spirit became clearly evident in the disorders of the Peloponnesian nr, and with the fall of Athenian supremacy the flower of Grecian -slture withered.
The dangers of this condition were at first decidedly increased by
For while the Sophists were perfecting the scientific ierelopment of the formal art of presentation, verification, and refu- uaoo which they had to teach, they indeed created with this rheto- rx, on the one hand, the beginnings of an independent psychology, ud raised this branch of investigation from the inferior position which it had taken in the cosmological systems to the importance of t fundamental science, and developed, on the other hand, the prelim inaries for a systematic consideration of the logical and ethical norms. Bat as they considered what they practised and taught, — viz. the >kill to carry through any proposition whatever,1 — the relativity of aoBan ideas and purposes presented itself to their consciousness so
clearly and with such overwhelming force that they disowned in quiry as to the existence of a universally valid truth in the theoreti cal, at well as in the practical sphere, and so fell into a scepticism •hich at first was a genuine scientific theory, but soon became a fnrolous play. With their self-complacent, pettifogging advocacy, tie Sophists made themselves the mouth-piece of all the unbridled tendencies which were undermining the order of public life.
The intellectual head of the Sophists was Protagoras; at least, he m the only one who was the author of any conceptions philosophi cally fruitful and significant. Contrasted with him, Gorgias, who is anally placed at his side, appears only as a rhetorician who occa- woally attempted the domain of philosophy and surpassed the *rnfices of the Eleatic dialectic. IJippias and Prodicus are only to
» mentioned, the one as the type of a popularising polyhistor, and ia* other as an example of superficial moralising.
To the disordered activity and lack of conviction of the younger Sophists, Socrates opposed faith in reason and a conviction of the esttence of a universally valid truth. This conviction was with fea of an essentially practical sort; it was his moral disposition, but
led him to an investigation of knowledge, which he anew set over gainst opinions, and whose essence he found in conceptianul thought.
Socrates and the Sophists stand, accordingly, on the ground of
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70 The Philosophy of the Greeks. [Part I.
the same common consciousness of the time, and discuss the same problems ; but where the Sophists with their skill and learning re main caught in the confusion of the opinions of the day and end with a negative result, there the plain, sound sense, and the pure and noble personality of Socrates find again the ideals of morality and science.
The strong impression which the teaching of Socrates made forced the Sophistic activity into new lines. It followed him in the at tempt to gain, through scientific insight, sure principles for the ethical conduct of life. While the old schools had for the most part become disintegrated, and had diverted their activity to the teaching of rhetoric, men who had enjoyed intercourse with the Athenian sage now founded new schools, in whose scientific work Socratic and Sophistic principles were often strangely intermingled, while the exclusively anthropological direction of their investigation remained the same.
Among these schools, called for the most part " Socratic," though not quite accurately, the Megarian, founded by Euclid, fell most deeply into the unfruitful subtleties of the later Sophists. Con nected with this is the Elean-Eretrian School, the most unimportant. The fundamental contrast, however, in the conception of life which prevailed in the Greek life of that day, found its scientific expression in the teachings of those two schools whose opposition permeates all ancient literature from that time on: namely, the Cynic and the Cyrenaic, the precursors of the Stoic and Epicurean. The first of these schools numbers among its adherents, besides its founder Antisthenes, the popular figure of Diogenes. In the latter, which is also called the Hedonistic School, the founder, Aristippus, was suc ceeded by a grandson of the same name, and later by Theodoras, Anniceris, Hegesias, and Euemerus.
The wandering teachers known as the Sophists came in part from the earlier scholastic societies. In the second half of the fifth century these had for the most part disappeared, and had given place to a freer announcement of opinions attained, which was not unfavourable to special research, particularly physiologi cal research, as in the case of Hippo, Cleidemus, and Diogenes of Apollonia, but which was attended by a crippling of general speculation. Only the school of Abdera and the Pythagorean School survived this time of dissolution. A society of Heracliteans which maintained itself in Ephesus appears soon to have fallen away into the pursuits of the Sophists, as in the case of Cratylus. '
From the Atomistic School came Protagoras of Abdera (about 480-410). He was one of the first, and rightly the most renowned, of these wandering teachers. Active at various times in Athens, he is said to have been convicted of impiety in that city, to have fled because of this, and to have met his death in flight. Of his numerous treatises, grammatical, logical, ethical, political, and religious in their character, very little has been preserved.
1 In Plato ( TheaX. 181 A) they are called ol friorrti : cf. Arist. Met. IV. 5. 1010 a 13.
'■at. 2. 1 The Anthropological Period. 71
n~|t" of Leontini (483-375) was in Athens in 427 as an envoy from his zMtire city, and there gained great literary influence. In old age he lived in ;. u-Ma in Thessaly. He came from the Sicilian school of orators, with which Laprdorles also had been connected. 1
■ooo-ming Hippiaa of Klin, with the exception of some opinions (among T*uch are those criticised in the Platonic dialogue Hippias Major), it is known s! \ that he made great parade of his "much knowledge. " Of Prodicus of
-». a town on the island of Ceos, the familiar allegory " Hercules at the Cross- -•U" U preserved by Xenophon, Mtmor. II. 1,21. The remaining Sophists, i» n for the most part through Plato, are without intrinsic importance. We kaow only that this or that characteristic affirmation is put in the mouth of one Tio-jther.
la forming a conception of the Sophistic doctrine we have to contend with the cnVahy that we are made acquainted with them almost exclusively through •act victorious opponents, Plato and Aristotle. The first has given in the Pro- ■•rrroM a graceful, lively delineation of a Sophist congress, redolent with line
ret. in the Gorgia* a more earnest, in the Theaetetvs a sharper criticism, and r the Cratylua and Euthydemus supercilious satire of the Sophists' methods of nsrsisis; I" the dialogue the Sophist, to which Plato's name is attached, an 'in—wily malicious definition of the theories of the Sophists is attempted, and Aristotle reaches the same result in the book on the fallacies of the Sophists
<V L 106 a 21).
The history of philosophy for a long time repeated the depreciatory judg-
r«-nt of opponents of the Sophists, and allowed the word ao4>utriit (which irant only a '• learned man," or, if you will, a "professor") to bear the dis- :«raring meaning which they had given it. Hegel rehabilitated the Sophists, and then-upon it followed, as often happens, that they were for a time over- •*simau-d. a* by Grote.
X. Schanz. Die Sophisten (Gottingen, 1867).
Bocratast of Athens (469-390) makes an epoch in the history of philosophy, «r*n by hi* external characteristics, by his original personality, and his new «yle of philosophising. He was neither savant nor wandering teacher, be-
«irr<l 10 no school and adhered to none. He was a simple man of the people, ta* wm of a sculptor, and at first busied himself with the chisel. In his ardent for knowledge he absorbed the new doctrines with which the streets of 1 mauve city re-echoed, but did not allow himself to be dazzled by these brill- is', rbetoriral efforts, nor did he find himself much advanced by them. His
1thought took note of their contradictions, and his moral earnestness was -te-jArd by the superficiality and frivolity of this constant effort after culture. H* t»ld it to be his duty to enlighten himself and his fellow-citizens concerning --k» emptiness of this pretended knowledge, and, through earnest investigation, ta follow after truth. So, a philosopher of this opportunity and of daily life, he » rfc*"i unremittingly among his fellow-citizens, until misunderstanding and per- • -ea: intrigue brought him before the court which condemned him to the death •-as: was to become his greatest glory.
Th* accounts concerning him give a clear and trustworthy picture of his per- ■r«a>:tr. In these accounts Plato's finer and Xenophon'* coarser portrayal •c7f^~mn>t each other most happily. The first in almost all his writings brings
~zz \i»r honoured teacher with dramatic vividness. Of the second we have to i«»4*r the Memorabilia CAroM<"H>o**tf/**Ta XunpArevi) and the Symposium. A* retards his teaching, the case is more difficult, for here the presentations of v Oi X»nophon and Plato are partisan writings, each laying claim to the famous
for his own doctrine (in the case of Xenophon a mild Cynicism). The rats of Aristotle are authoritative on all essential points, because of the ■historical separation and the freer point of view.
E. Alberti. Sokratet (Gottingen, 1869) ; A. Labriola, La Dottrina di Socrate v»tcr*. 1871) : A. Foulllee, La Philosophic de Socrate (Paris, 1873).
*t-rrtt of Megara founded his school soon after the death of Socrates. The two Eristics (see below), Eubulides of Miletus, Alexinus of Kli*. Diodonu CrassM of Carta (died 307), and Stilpo (380-300), are to be mentioned as
1 In regard to these relationships cf. H. Diets, Berichte der Bert Akademi*. :•*. pp 343 ff.
T2 The Greek* : Anthropological Period. [Part L
belonging to this school, which had only a brief existence, and later became incorporated with the Cynics and Stoics. The same is true of the society which Pheedo, the favourite pupil of Socrates, founded in his home at Elis, and which Menedemus soon after transplanted to Eretria. Cf. E. Mailet, Histoire de Vieole de Megare et des icoles d'Elis et d'ErHrie (Paris, 1845).
The founder of the Cynic School (named after the gymnasium Cynosar- ges) was Antisthenes of Athens, who, like Euclid, was an older friend of Socrates. The singular Diogenes of Sinope is rather a characteristic by- figure in the history of civilisation than a man of science. In this connection Crates of Thebes may also be mentioned. Later this school was blended with that of the Stoics.
F. DUmmler, Antisthenica (Halle, 1882) ; K. W. Gottling, Diogenes der Kyniker, oder die Philosophie des griechischen Proletariats (Ges. Abhandl.
I. 261 ff. ).
Arlatippua of Cyrene, a Sophist and wandering teacher, somewhat younger
than Euclid and Antisthenes, and united only for a little time with the Socratic circle, founded his school in old age, and seems to have left to his grandson the systematic development of thoughts, which, for himself, were rather a practical principle of lift. The above-named successors (Theodoras, etc. ) extend into the third century, and form the transition to the Epicurean School, which took up the remnants of the Hedonistic into itself.
A. Wendt, De Philosophia Cyrenaica (Gottingen, 1841).
§ 7. The Problem of Morality.
The reflections of the Gnomic poets and the sentences of the so-called seven wise men had already, as their central point, the admonition to observe moderation. In like manner the pessimistic complaints which we meet among poets, philosophers, and moralists of the fifth century are directed for the most part against the unbridled license of men, their lack of discipline and of obedience to law. The more serious minds discerned the danger which the passionate seething and foaming of public life brought with and the political experience that party strife was ethically endurable only where left the order of the laws untouched, made subjection to law appear as the supreme duty. Heraclitus and the Pythagoreans expressed this with complete clearness, and knew how to attach
to the fundamental conceptions of their metaphysical theories. 1
We meet here with two assumptions which even among these thinkers appear as self-evident presuppositions. The first the
validity of laws. The naive consciousness obeys the command without asking whence com^s or by what justified. Laws have actual existence, those of morals as well as those of the courts they are here once for all, and the individual has to follow them. No one in the pre-Sophistic period thought of examining the law and asking in what its claim to valid authority consists. The sec ond assumption conviction which fundamental in the moralis ing of all peoples and all times viz. that obedience to the law brings advantage, disregard of disadvantage. As the result
Cf. above, p. 63, note
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Cmat. 2, i 7. ] Problem of Morality : the Sophist*. 73
this thought admonition takes on the character of persuasive coun sel,1 which is directed to the shrewdness of the one admonished as well as to the desires slumbering within him.
With the Greek Enlightenment confidence in both of these pre suppositions began to waver, and accordingly morality became for it a problem.
1. The impulse to this came from the experiences of public life. The frequent and sudden change of constitutions was indeed adapted to undermine the authority of law. It not only took away the halo of unconditional, unquestioned validity from the individual law, act it accustomed the citizen of the democratic republic especially to reflect and decide upon the ground and validity of laws as he "umulted and voted. Political law became a subject for discussion, ud the individual set himself with his judgment above it. If, now, besides noting this mutation in time, attention is also given to the variety exhibited not only in the political laws, but also in the usages prescribed by customary morality in the different states tad among different peoples, the consequence is that the worth of
universal validity for all men can no longer be attributed to laws*. At least this holds good in the first place for all laws made by man; in any case, therefore, for political laws.
In the face of these experiences the question arose whether there a anything whatever that is valid everywhere and always, any law that is independent of the difference between peoples, states, and tunes, and therefore authoritative for all. Greek ethics began thus nth a problem tchich was completely parallel to the initial problem of fAjnes. The essence of things which, remains ever the same and
Kirrives all changes, the philosophers of the first period had called Xatore (+i*n) : * it is now asked whether there is also determined Ly this unchanging Nature (<f>vou) a law that is exalted above all change and all differences, and in contrast with this it is pointed u>t that all existing prescriptions valid only for a time, and within i hunted territory, are given and established by human institution or
statute (6*au. or ro/up).
This contrast between Nature and institution or statute is the
characteristic work of the Greek Enlightenment in the forma-
1 A typical example of this is the allegory of Prodicus, in which the choosing Htreoles ia promised golden mountains by Virtue as well as by Vice, in case he »ii intrust himself to her guidance.
1 Hipptas In Xen. Mem. IV. 4, 14 ff.
1 IW> #*#<«« is the title borne by the writings of all the older philosophers. 1: » u> be emphasised that the constitutive mark of the concept 4>Aen was ryallj that of remaining ever like itself. The contrary of this is then the
, that which occurs a single time.
74 The Greek* : Anthropological Period. [Part I.
tion of conceptious. It dominates the entire philosophy of the period, and has from the beginning not only the meaning of a prin
ciple of genetic explanation, but the significance of a norm, or stan dard for the estimation of woHh. If there is anything universally valid, it is that which is valid " by Nature " for all men without distinction of people and time ; what has been established by man in the course of history has only historical worth, worth for a single occasion. That only is justly authorised which Nature determines, but human institution goes beyond this. The " law " (vo/xo«) tyr annises over man and forces him to much that is contrary to Nature. 1 Philosophy formulated in its conceptions that opposition between a natural, " divine " law and the written law, which formed the theme of the Antigone of Sophocles.
Out of this antithesis came the problems, on the one hand, to establish in what this law of Nature, everywhere the same, consists ; on the other, to understand how, in addition to this, the institutions of historical law arise.
The first problem Protagoras did not avoid. In the mythical presentation of his thought which Plato has preserved,* he taught that the gods gave to all men in equal measure a sense ofjustice, and of ethical respect or reverence (Six*; and atSuJs), in order that in the struggle of life they might be able to form permanent unions for mutual preservation. He found, therefore, the <£«ris of practical life in primary ethical feelings which impel man to union in society and in the state. The carrying out of this thought in its details and the definition of the boundary between this which is valid by Nature
(4>v(ru) and the positive determinations of historical institution are unfortunately not preserved to us.
There are, however, many indications that the theory of the Sophists proceeded from such fundamental conceptions to a wide- reaching criticism of existing conditions, and to the demand for pro found revolutions in social and political life. The thought was already at that time forcing its way forward, that all distinctions between men before the law rest only upon institution, and that Nature demands equal right for all. Lycophron desired to do away with the nobility. Alcidamas* and others4 combated slavery from this point of view. Phaleas demanded equality of property as well as of education for all citizens, and Hippodamus was the first to
» Hippiaa in Plat. Prot. 337 C.
» Plat.
Another positive characteristic of the "thinking" which the earlier investigators had set over against "perceiving," without closer specification, appears obscurely in the reasonings of Zeno, viz. conformity to logical laws. At the basis of all his attacks against plurality and motion lie the principle of contradiction and the presupposition that that can not be actual of which the same thing must be affirmed and also denied. This principle and presup position were applied with clearness and certainty, though not ab stractly expressed. The Eleatic theory of the world, so highly paradoxical, forced its supporters to enter into polemic more than did others, and the accounts as to Zeno's treatise, which, as seems, was also logically well arranged and divided, offer notable evi dence of the developed technique of refutation to which the school attained in consequence. To be sure, this formal training which prevailed in Eleatic circles does not seem to have led as yet to the abstract statement of logical laws. " " "
2. The setting over against each other of thinking and per ceiving" arose, then, from an estimation of their relative epistemo- logical value (erkenntniastheoretischen Werthbestimmung) [i. e. from the postulate that one of these two forms of mental activity worth more epistemologically for attaining truth]. In decided contradiction with this, however, stand the psychological principles with which these same investigators sought to apprehend the origin and process of knowing. For although their thinking was directed first and chiefly toward the outer world, man's mental activity came under their attention in so far as they were obliged to see in this activity one of the formations, or transformations, or products of motion, of the universe. The mind or soul and its action are then at this time considered scientifically only in connection with the entire course of the universe, whose product they are as truly as are all other things and since among the men of this period the general principles of explanation are everywhere as yet conceived corpore-
Stob. Bel. 488.
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62 The Greeks: Cosmological Period. [Part L
ally it follows that we meet also a thorough-going materialistic
psychology. 1
Now mind or soul is in the first place moving force. Thales
ascribed such a soul to magnets, and declared that the whole world was full of souls. The essential nature of individual souls was therefore sought at first in that which had been recognised as the moving principle in the whole. Anaximenes found it in air, Heraclitus and likewise Parmenides (in his hypothetical physics) in fire, Leucippus in the fiery atoms,' and Anaxagoras in the world- moving, rational substance, the vow. Where, as in the system of Empedocles, a corporeal moving principle was lacking, the mixed substance which streams through the living body, the blood, was regarded as soul. Diogenes of Apollonia found the essence of the soul in the air mixed with the blood. 8 With the Pythagoreans, too, the individual soul could not be considered as the same with the iv (One) which they conceived as moving principle of the world, nor regarded as a part of it ; instead, they taught that the soul was a number, and made this very vague statement more definite by say ing that it was a harmony, —an expression which we can only interpret4 as meaning a harmony of the body; that the living, harmonious activity of its parts.
If now to this moving force, which leaves the body in death, were ascribed at the same time those properties which we to-day designate as " psychical," we find clear characterisation of the specifically theoretical interest by which this oldest science was filled, in the fact that among these attributes that of ideation, of " knowing," which almost exclusively the object of attention. * Of feelings and volitions there scarcely incidental mention. * But as the
Besides those characterisations of the soul, which resulted from their gen eral scientific theory, we find in the tradition in case of several of these men
(Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, and the Pythagoreans) still other doc trines which are not only not connected witli the former, but are even in con tradiction to them. A conception of the body as prison of the soul (ri. ua = <rijjui), personal immortality, recompense after death, transmigration of souls. — all these are ideas which the philosophers took from their relations to the mysteries and retained in their priestly teaching, however little they accorded with their scientific teachings. Such expressions are not treated above.
In like manner, some of the Pythagoreans declared the motes which the sunlight discloses in the air to be souls.
Since, with reference to this, he recognised the distinction between venous ami arterial blood, he meant by his irwO/ux what the chemistry of to-day calls oxygen.
Ace. to Plato. Phmdo, 85 ff. , where the view rejected ns materialistic.
The w>Bs of Anaxagoras only knowing air with Diogenes of Apollonia great, powerful, eternal, intelligent body. Being with Parmenides at the
same time votlv, etc. Only ^iXAttjs and w«o« with Empedocles are mythically hypostasised impulses, and these, too, have nothing to do with his psychological views.
With this connected the fact that in general we cannot once speak
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Cm*». 1,§ 6. ] Conception* of Cognition: Her aclitus, Anaxagoras. 03
individual soul in so far as it is moving force was held to be a part of the force which moves the entire universe, so also the " knowing " rf the individual could be conceived only as a part of the knowing activity of the world. ' This is clearest in the systems of Heraclitus lad Anaxagoras ; each individual has so much knowledge as there a contained in him of the general World-reason, —fire with Htraelitus,* the rofc with Anaxagoras. In the case of Leucippus and of Diogenes of Apollonia the ideas are similar.
This physical conception, which with Anaxagoras especially is portly quantitative, was given a turn by Heraclitus, in which the ;;&stemological postulate again forces its way to the front, and asserts itself in the interest of a deeper insight and a profounder new. The World-reason in which the individual participates in his knowledge is everywhere the same; the Xoyot of Heraclitus3 and the io£« of Anaxagoras, as homogenous Reason, are distributed through the whole universe as moving force. Knowing, then, is that which is common to all. It is therefore the law and order to »iich every one has to unite himself. In dreams, in personal opin ion, each one has his own world; knowing is common ((wov) to tlL By means of this characteristic, viz. that of universally valid law, the conception of knowing acquires a normative significance* aad subjection to the common, to the law, appears as a duty \z the intellectual realm as well as in the political, ethical, and religious. *
i at ethical investigation in this period. For single moralising reflections ana cannot be regarded as beginnings of ethics. On the only excep-
tm ef. below, note 6.
• Th« expression " World-soul " was first used by Plato, or at the earliest by
? VVWana (in the fragment which has certainly been much questioned just for t&s reason. Mull. 21). The idea is certainly present in Anaximenes, Heraclitus, aaexagnra*. and perhaps also among the Pythagoreans.
' Heoop
■araJBg u> guard the soul from the wet (intoxication).
the paradoxical expression, the dryest soul is the wisest, and the
• CI. , for this and the following, M. Heinze, Die Lthre vom Logos in der frwraurton Philotopkie (Oldenburg, 1872).
• Fr*g. (Schust. ) 123.
• This is the only conception in the development of pre-Sophistic thought, in a» iw ot which we can speak of an attempt to propound a scientific principle «< ttkir*. If Heraclitus had in mind a universal expression for all moral duties ■i •prxkme of this subordination to law, or at least hit upon such, he attached - at once u> the fundamental thoughts of his metaphysics, which declared thin
a* u> be the abiding essence of the world. Yet attention has above ($4) been aJed to the fact that in the conception of the world-order which hovered before I^m, he did not as yet separate consciously the different motives (especially the pcTacml from the ethical), and so ethical investigation does not as yet work
uctf cU»r from the physical to an Independent position. The same is true of '■*»pTthaxoreans, who expressed the conception of order by the term "harmony " »iaj> also might be adopted from Heraclitus), and therefore designated virtue • ~eannony. " To be sure, they used the term " harmony " for the soul, for
awe*, ami for many other things.
64 The Greeks : Cosmological Period.
[Part ,
3. If now we ask how under these assumptions the fact was explained that " knowledge " comes into the individual man, i. e. into his body, we find that the only answer offered by Heraclitus and the whole company of his successors "through the door of the senses. " When man awake, the World-reason streams into his body through the opened senses (sight and hearing are of course chiefly noticed1), and, therefore, he knows. This comes about, to be sure, only there besides, in the man himself, so much reason or soul that the motion coming from without met by an inner motion but upon this interaction, effected through the senses> between the outer and the inner reason knowledge rests.
A psychological distinction, then, between perceiving and think ing, which, as regards their respective epistemological values, are so abruptly opposed, Heraclitus does not know how to state. Par- menides,* however, was just as little in position to make such distinction. 4 Rather, he expressed more sharply still the dependence upon bodily relations in which the thinking of the individual man involved, when he said that every one so thought as the conditions constituted by the mixture of substances in the members of the body permitted, and when he found in this confirmation of his general thought of the identity of corporeality and thinking in general. * Still more express the testimony6 that Empedocles declared thinking and perceiving to be the same, that he thought change in thinking as dependent upon change of the body, and that he regarded the constitution of the blood as of decisive importance for the intellectual capacity of the man.
These two last-named thinkers did not hesitate, moreover, to make their conception more plain to the imagination by means of physio logical hypotheses. Parmenides taught in his hypothetical physics
Also smell (Empedocles) and taste (Anaxagoras). Only the Atomists, and in particular Democritus, seem to have given value to the sense of touch.
Arist. De An. 405 a 27.
Theophr. De Sens.
So, too, reported (Theophr. De Sens. 26) of Alcmseon, the Pythago-
reanising physician, that he declared thought or consciousness (Jh-i jiAwj \vrijpi) to be the characteristic which distinguishes man from the other animals. But a more precise determination lacking here also unless, in accordance with the expression, we think of something similar to the Aristotelian Kotviv al<rSrrr-^pu>w With this would agree the circumstance that the first attempts to localise the particular psychical activities in particular parts of the body seem to have been made in the circles of the Pythagoreans and of the physicians who stood in near relations to them localising, e. g. , thought in the brain, perception in the indi vidual organs and in the heart, and the emotions also in the latter organ. From them Diogenes of Apollonia, and after him Democritus, seem to have taken these beginnings of physiological psychology.
Frag. (Karst. ) vv. 146-149.
Arist. De An. 404 Theophr. De Sens. 10
III. 427 21 Met. III. 1009 17
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Caar. 1, | •. ] Conception* of Cognition : Parmenides, Empedocles. 65
a*t like is always perceived by like, warmth without by the warmth
:a man, the cold without by the cold even in the dead body.
jclea, with the aid of his theory of effluxes and pores, carried out
tae thought that every element in our body perceives the same ele ment in the outer world, so as to teach that each organ is accessible w the impress of those substances only whose effluxes fit into its pores ; i. e. he derived the specific energy of the sense organs from relations of similarity between their outer form and their objects, lad carried this out for sight, hearing, and smell, with observations vhich in part are very acute. 1
This view, that like is apprehended by like, was opposed by Anaxagoras, —on what ground it is not certain. ' He taught that perception is only of opposite by opposite, warmth without by the eoU in man, etc. * At all events, his doctrine also is a proof that '. iiese metaphysical rationalists maintained all of them in their
fyckology a crass sensationalism.
1 Tbeopbr. De Sens. 7.
Emped-
* ftrfeapa we have here a remembrance of Heraclitus, who also explained pneeptioo from the iparrurrpoxla, — motion against motion, — and with whom jppcaitioD was the principle of all motion.
• Tbeopbr. De Sens. 27 ft. It U interesting that Anaxagoras inferred from •±m that every perception is joined with pain (XAri)).
CHAPTER II.
THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERIOD.
O. Grote, History of Greece, VIII. (London, 1850), pp. 474-644.
C. F. Hermann, Geschichte und System der platonischen Philosophie, I. (Heidel
berg, 1839), pp. 179-231.
Blass, Die attische Beredsamkeit von Gorgias"bis zu Lysias. Leips. 1808. " H. Kochly, Sokrates und sein Volk, 1855, in Akad. Vortragen und Reden, I.
(ZUrich, 1859), pp. 219 fl. "
H. Siebeck, Ueber Sokrates' Verhaltniss zur Sophistik, in Untersuchungen
zur PhiloBophie der Griechen," 1873, 2 Aufl. (Freiburg i. B. 1888).
W. Windelband, Sokrates in " Prseludien " (Freiburg i. B. 1884), pp. 64 ft*. [H. Jackson, Art. Sophists, in Enc. Brit. ]
The farther development of Greek science was determined by the circumstance that in the powerful, universal upward movement of the mental and spiritual life which the nation achieved after the victorious result of the Persian wars, science was torn away from the restraints of close schools in which it had been quietly pursued, and brought out upon the stage of publicity, where all was in vehe ment agitation.
The circles in which scientific research was fostered had widened from generation to generation, and the doctrines which at first had been presented in smaller societies and spread abroad in writings that were hard to understand, had begun to filter through into the general consciousness. The poets, as Euripides and Epicharmus, began already to translate into their language scientific conceptions and views ; the knowledge gained by investigation of Nature had already been made practically effective, as by Hippodaraus in his architecture. Even medicine, which had formerly been only an art practised according to traditions, became so permeated with the general conceptions of natural philosophy, and with the special doc trines, information, and hypotheses of physiological research which in the course of time had occupied an ever-broader space in the
systems of science, that it became encumbered with an excessive 06
Cnar. 2. ] The Anthropological Period. 67
growth of etiological theories,1 and first found in Hippocrates the reformer who reduced this tendency to its proper measure and gave hack, to the physician's art its old character in contrast to scientific
Moreover, the Greek nation, matured by the stern experience viueh had been its lot within and without, had entered upon the age of manhood. It had lost its naive faith in old tradition, and :nd learned the value of knowledge and ability for practical life. Of science, which up to this time had followed in quiet the pure impulse of investigation — the noble curiosity which seeks knowledge for its own sake — the state now demanded light on the questions
counsel and help in the doubt into which the jixnnance of its own development in culture had plunged it. In tie feverish emulation of intellectual forces which this greatest
[mod in the world's history brought with the thought everywhere zuned recognition that in every walk in life the man of knowledge . » the most capable, the most useful, and the most successful. In every department of practical activity, the fruitful innovation of independent reflection, of individual judgment, took the place of the
•iii life controlled by custom. The mass of the people was seized with
ke K« ruing desire to make the results of science its otcn. It was espe- rially true, however, that at this time family tradition, habituation, personal excellence of character and address were no longer suffi- 'teot. im formerly, for the man who wished to play political part. Tbe variety of transactions and the attendant difficulties, as well as the intellectual status of those with whom and upon whom he would
work, made a theoretical schooling for the political career indispen sable. Nowhere was this movement so powerful as in Athens, then •ie capital of Greece, and here also these desires found their fullest •aexfaction.
For the supply followed the demand. The men of science, the Stfkkts (vo+urrm), stepped forth out of the schools into public life, tad taught the people what they themselves had learned or discov- -rwi. They did this, indeed, partly out of the noble impulse to >*rh their fellow-citizens,3 but was none the less true that this Earning became their business. From all parts of Greece men of •J* different schools flocked toward Athens to expound their doc-
•hieh disturbed
■This innovation in medicine began among the physicians who stood in near r*iuti<a to Pythagoreanism, especially with Alcmseon. As literary instance ■ ft. the writing which goes falsely under the name of Hippocrates, rtpl tialr^t, ■rua. Ct. H. Siebeck, Ot$eh. d. Ptyrh. 04 ff.
(T principally his writings wtpl dpxa'
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68 The Philosophy of the Greeks. [Part I.
trines, and from so expounding them in the capital as well as in the smaller cities, to gain honour and wealth.
In this way it happened that in a short time not only the social position of science, but its own inner nature, its tendency and the questions for its solution, were fundamentally changed. It became a social power, a determining factor in political life, as in the case of Pericles ; but just by this means it came into a state of dependence upon the demands of practical, and in particular, of political life.
These demands showed themselves principally in the facts that the democratic polity demanded of politicians first of all the capac ity for public speaking, and that in consequence the instruction of the Sophists was especially sought as a preparation for public life, and converged more and more upon this object. Men of science became teachers of eloquence.
As such, however, they lost sight of the goal of nature-knowledge, the vision of which had formerly hovered before the eyes of science. At the most they presented transmitted doctrines in the most grace ful and pleasing form possible. But their own investigations, if they were not confined to a formal routine, were necessarily directed toward man's thinking and willing, — the activities which public speaking was designed to determine and control, — toward the manner in which ideas and volitions arise, and the way in which they contend with one another and maintain their mutual rights. In this way Greek science took an essentially anthropological or subjective direction, studying the inner activities of man, his ideation and volition, and at the same time lost its purely theoretical character and acquired a preponderantly practical significance. 1
But while the activity of the Sophists found itself brought face to face with the manifold character of human thought and will, while the teachers of eloquence were presenting the art of persua sion and pursuing the path upon which every opinion could be helped to victory, every purpose to its achievement, the question rose before them whether above and beyond these individual opin ions and purposes which each one feels within himself as a necessity and can defend against others, there is anything whatever that is right and true in itself. The question whether there is anyUting universally valid, is the problem of the anthropological period of Greek philosophy, or of the Greek Enlightenment.
For it is likewise the problem of the time, — of a time in which religious faith and the old morality were wavering, a time when the
1 Cicero's well-known expression (Tusc V. 4, 10) with regard to Socrates holds good for the entire philosophy of this period.
Caar. 2. J The Anthropological Period. 69
respect which authority had commanded sank more and more, and ill tended towards an anarchy of individuals who had become self- governing. Very soon this internal disintegration of the Greek spirit became clearly evident in the disorders of the Peloponnesian nr, and with the fall of Athenian supremacy the flower of Grecian -slture withered.
The dangers of this condition were at first decidedly increased by
For while the Sophists were perfecting the scientific ierelopment of the formal art of presentation, verification, and refu- uaoo which they had to teach, they indeed created with this rheto- rx, on the one hand, the beginnings of an independent psychology, ud raised this branch of investigation from the inferior position which it had taken in the cosmological systems to the importance of t fundamental science, and developed, on the other hand, the prelim inaries for a systematic consideration of the logical and ethical norms. Bat as they considered what they practised and taught, — viz. the >kill to carry through any proposition whatever,1 — the relativity of aoBan ideas and purposes presented itself to their consciousness so
clearly and with such overwhelming force that they disowned in quiry as to the existence of a universally valid truth in the theoreti cal, at well as in the practical sphere, and so fell into a scepticism •hich at first was a genuine scientific theory, but soon became a fnrolous play. With their self-complacent, pettifogging advocacy, tie Sophists made themselves the mouth-piece of all the unbridled tendencies which were undermining the order of public life.
The intellectual head of the Sophists was Protagoras; at least, he m the only one who was the author of any conceptions philosophi cally fruitful and significant. Contrasted with him, Gorgias, who is anally placed at his side, appears only as a rhetorician who occa- woally attempted the domain of philosophy and surpassed the *rnfices of the Eleatic dialectic. IJippias and Prodicus are only to
» mentioned, the one as the type of a popularising polyhistor, and ia* other as an example of superficial moralising.
To the disordered activity and lack of conviction of the younger Sophists, Socrates opposed faith in reason and a conviction of the esttence of a universally valid truth. This conviction was with fea of an essentially practical sort; it was his moral disposition, but
led him to an investigation of knowledge, which he anew set over gainst opinions, and whose essence he found in conceptianul thought.
Socrates and the Sophists stand, accordingly, on the ground of
'CI the well-known fir {rrw \tyor xptirrm wjuir. ri»li . Vn/i 112 II. , •»t Ariat. RhH. II. 24, 1408 23.
philosophy.
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70 The Philosophy of the Greeks. [Part I.
the same common consciousness of the time, and discuss the same problems ; but where the Sophists with their skill and learning re main caught in the confusion of the opinions of the day and end with a negative result, there the plain, sound sense, and the pure and noble personality of Socrates find again the ideals of morality and science.
The strong impression which the teaching of Socrates made forced the Sophistic activity into new lines. It followed him in the at tempt to gain, through scientific insight, sure principles for the ethical conduct of life. While the old schools had for the most part become disintegrated, and had diverted their activity to the teaching of rhetoric, men who had enjoyed intercourse with the Athenian sage now founded new schools, in whose scientific work Socratic and Sophistic principles were often strangely intermingled, while the exclusively anthropological direction of their investigation remained the same.
Among these schools, called for the most part " Socratic," though not quite accurately, the Megarian, founded by Euclid, fell most deeply into the unfruitful subtleties of the later Sophists. Con nected with this is the Elean-Eretrian School, the most unimportant. The fundamental contrast, however, in the conception of life which prevailed in the Greek life of that day, found its scientific expression in the teachings of those two schools whose opposition permeates all ancient literature from that time on: namely, the Cynic and the Cyrenaic, the precursors of the Stoic and Epicurean. The first of these schools numbers among its adherents, besides its founder Antisthenes, the popular figure of Diogenes. In the latter, which is also called the Hedonistic School, the founder, Aristippus, was suc ceeded by a grandson of the same name, and later by Theodoras, Anniceris, Hegesias, and Euemerus.
The wandering teachers known as the Sophists came in part from the earlier scholastic societies. In the second half of the fifth century these had for the most part disappeared, and had given place to a freer announcement of opinions attained, which was not unfavourable to special research, particularly physiologi cal research, as in the case of Hippo, Cleidemus, and Diogenes of Apollonia, but which was attended by a crippling of general speculation. Only the school of Abdera and the Pythagorean School survived this time of dissolution. A society of Heracliteans which maintained itself in Ephesus appears soon to have fallen away into the pursuits of the Sophists, as in the case of Cratylus. '
From the Atomistic School came Protagoras of Abdera (about 480-410). He was one of the first, and rightly the most renowned, of these wandering teachers. Active at various times in Athens, he is said to have been convicted of impiety in that city, to have fled because of this, and to have met his death in flight. Of his numerous treatises, grammatical, logical, ethical, political, and religious in their character, very little has been preserved.
1 In Plato ( TheaX. 181 A) they are called ol friorrti : cf. Arist. Met. IV. 5. 1010 a 13.
'■at. 2. 1 The Anthropological Period. 71
n~|t" of Leontini (483-375) was in Athens in 427 as an envoy from his zMtire city, and there gained great literary influence. In old age he lived in ;. u-Ma in Thessaly. He came from the Sicilian school of orators, with which Laprdorles also had been connected. 1
■ooo-ming Hippiaa of Klin, with the exception of some opinions (among T*uch are those criticised in the Platonic dialogue Hippias Major), it is known s! \ that he made great parade of his "much knowledge. " Of Prodicus of
-». a town on the island of Ceos, the familiar allegory " Hercules at the Cross- -•U" U preserved by Xenophon, Mtmor. II. 1,21. The remaining Sophists, i» n for the most part through Plato, are without intrinsic importance. We kaow only that this or that characteristic affirmation is put in the mouth of one Tio-jther.
la forming a conception of the Sophistic doctrine we have to contend with the cnVahy that we are made acquainted with them almost exclusively through •act victorious opponents, Plato and Aristotle. The first has given in the Pro- ■•rrroM a graceful, lively delineation of a Sophist congress, redolent with line
ret. in the Gorgia* a more earnest, in the Theaetetvs a sharper criticism, and r the Cratylua and Euthydemus supercilious satire of the Sophists' methods of nsrsisis; I" the dialogue the Sophist, to which Plato's name is attached, an 'in—wily malicious definition of the theories of the Sophists is attempted, and Aristotle reaches the same result in the book on the fallacies of the Sophists
<V L 106 a 21).
The history of philosophy for a long time repeated the depreciatory judg-
r«-nt of opponents of the Sophists, and allowed the word ao4>utriit (which irant only a '• learned man," or, if you will, a "professor") to bear the dis- :«raring meaning which they had given it. Hegel rehabilitated the Sophists, and then-upon it followed, as often happens, that they were for a time over- •*simau-d. a* by Grote.
X. Schanz. Die Sophisten (Gottingen, 1867).
Bocratast of Athens (469-390) makes an epoch in the history of philosophy, «r*n by hi* external characteristics, by his original personality, and his new «yle of philosophising. He was neither savant nor wandering teacher, be-
«irr<l 10 no school and adhered to none. He was a simple man of the people, ta* wm of a sculptor, and at first busied himself with the chisel. In his ardent for knowledge he absorbed the new doctrines with which the streets of 1 mauve city re-echoed, but did not allow himself to be dazzled by these brill- is', rbetoriral efforts, nor did he find himself much advanced by them. His
1thought took note of their contradictions, and his moral earnestness was -te-jArd by the superficiality and frivolity of this constant effort after culture. H* t»ld it to be his duty to enlighten himself and his fellow-citizens concerning --k» emptiness of this pretended knowledge, and, through earnest investigation, ta follow after truth. So, a philosopher of this opportunity and of daily life, he » rfc*"i unremittingly among his fellow-citizens, until misunderstanding and per- • -ea: intrigue brought him before the court which condemned him to the death •-as: was to become his greatest glory.
Th* accounts concerning him give a clear and trustworthy picture of his per- ■r«a>:tr. In these accounts Plato's finer and Xenophon'* coarser portrayal •c7f^~mn>t each other most happily. The first in almost all his writings brings
~zz \i»r honoured teacher with dramatic vividness. Of the second we have to i«»4*r the Memorabilia CAroM<"H>o**tf/**Ta XunpArevi) and the Symposium. A* retards his teaching, the case is more difficult, for here the presentations of v Oi X»nophon and Plato are partisan writings, each laying claim to the famous
for his own doctrine (in the case of Xenophon a mild Cynicism). The rats of Aristotle are authoritative on all essential points, because of the ■historical separation and the freer point of view.
E. Alberti. Sokratet (Gottingen, 1869) ; A. Labriola, La Dottrina di Socrate v»tcr*. 1871) : A. Foulllee, La Philosophic de Socrate (Paris, 1873).
*t-rrtt of Megara founded his school soon after the death of Socrates. The two Eristics (see below), Eubulides of Miletus, Alexinus of Kli*. Diodonu CrassM of Carta (died 307), and Stilpo (380-300), are to be mentioned as
1 In regard to these relationships cf. H. Diets, Berichte der Bert Akademi*. :•*. pp 343 ff.
T2 The Greek* : Anthropological Period. [Part L
belonging to this school, which had only a brief existence, and later became incorporated with the Cynics and Stoics. The same is true of the society which Pheedo, the favourite pupil of Socrates, founded in his home at Elis, and which Menedemus soon after transplanted to Eretria. Cf. E. Mailet, Histoire de Vieole de Megare et des icoles d'Elis et d'ErHrie (Paris, 1845).
The founder of the Cynic School (named after the gymnasium Cynosar- ges) was Antisthenes of Athens, who, like Euclid, was an older friend of Socrates. The singular Diogenes of Sinope is rather a characteristic by- figure in the history of civilisation than a man of science. In this connection Crates of Thebes may also be mentioned. Later this school was blended with that of the Stoics.
F. DUmmler, Antisthenica (Halle, 1882) ; K. W. Gottling, Diogenes der Kyniker, oder die Philosophie des griechischen Proletariats (Ges. Abhandl.
I. 261 ff. ).
Arlatippua of Cyrene, a Sophist and wandering teacher, somewhat younger
than Euclid and Antisthenes, and united only for a little time with the Socratic circle, founded his school in old age, and seems to have left to his grandson the systematic development of thoughts, which, for himself, were rather a practical principle of lift. The above-named successors (Theodoras, etc. ) extend into the third century, and form the transition to the Epicurean School, which took up the remnants of the Hedonistic into itself.
A. Wendt, De Philosophia Cyrenaica (Gottingen, 1841).
§ 7. The Problem of Morality.
The reflections of the Gnomic poets and the sentences of the so-called seven wise men had already, as their central point, the admonition to observe moderation. In like manner the pessimistic complaints which we meet among poets, philosophers, and moralists of the fifth century are directed for the most part against the unbridled license of men, their lack of discipline and of obedience to law. The more serious minds discerned the danger which the passionate seething and foaming of public life brought with and the political experience that party strife was ethically endurable only where left the order of the laws untouched, made subjection to law appear as the supreme duty. Heraclitus and the Pythagoreans expressed this with complete clearness, and knew how to attach
to the fundamental conceptions of their metaphysical theories. 1
We meet here with two assumptions which even among these thinkers appear as self-evident presuppositions. The first the
validity of laws. The naive consciousness obeys the command without asking whence com^s or by what justified. Laws have actual existence, those of morals as well as those of the courts they are here once for all, and the individual has to follow them. No one in the pre-Sophistic period thought of examining the law and asking in what its claim to valid authority consists. The sec ond assumption conviction which fundamental in the moralis ing of all peoples and all times viz. that obedience to the law brings advantage, disregard of disadvantage. As the result
Cf. above, p. 63, note
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Cmat. 2, i 7. ] Problem of Morality : the Sophist*. 73
this thought admonition takes on the character of persuasive coun sel,1 which is directed to the shrewdness of the one admonished as well as to the desires slumbering within him.
With the Greek Enlightenment confidence in both of these pre suppositions began to waver, and accordingly morality became for it a problem.
1. The impulse to this came from the experiences of public life. The frequent and sudden change of constitutions was indeed adapted to undermine the authority of law. It not only took away the halo of unconditional, unquestioned validity from the individual law, act it accustomed the citizen of the democratic republic especially to reflect and decide upon the ground and validity of laws as he "umulted and voted. Political law became a subject for discussion, ud the individual set himself with his judgment above it. If, now, besides noting this mutation in time, attention is also given to the variety exhibited not only in the political laws, but also in the usages prescribed by customary morality in the different states tad among different peoples, the consequence is that the worth of
universal validity for all men can no longer be attributed to laws*. At least this holds good in the first place for all laws made by man; in any case, therefore, for political laws.
In the face of these experiences the question arose whether there a anything whatever that is valid everywhere and always, any law that is independent of the difference between peoples, states, and tunes, and therefore authoritative for all. Greek ethics began thus nth a problem tchich was completely parallel to the initial problem of fAjnes. The essence of things which, remains ever the same and
Kirrives all changes, the philosophers of the first period had called Xatore (+i*n) : * it is now asked whether there is also determined Ly this unchanging Nature (<f>vou) a law that is exalted above all change and all differences, and in contrast with this it is pointed u>t that all existing prescriptions valid only for a time, and within i hunted territory, are given and established by human institution or
statute (6*au. or ro/up).
This contrast between Nature and institution or statute is the
characteristic work of the Greek Enlightenment in the forma-
1 A typical example of this is the allegory of Prodicus, in which the choosing Htreoles ia promised golden mountains by Virtue as well as by Vice, in case he »ii intrust himself to her guidance.
1 Hipptas In Xen. Mem. IV. 4, 14 ff.
1 IW> #*#<«« is the title borne by the writings of all the older philosophers. 1: » u> be emphasised that the constitutive mark of the concept 4>Aen was ryallj that of remaining ever like itself. The contrary of this is then the
, that which occurs a single time.
74 The Greek* : Anthropological Period. [Part I.
tion of conceptious. It dominates the entire philosophy of the period, and has from the beginning not only the meaning of a prin
ciple of genetic explanation, but the significance of a norm, or stan dard for the estimation of woHh. If there is anything universally valid, it is that which is valid " by Nature " for all men without distinction of people and time ; what has been established by man in the course of history has only historical worth, worth for a single occasion. That only is justly authorised which Nature determines, but human institution goes beyond this. The " law " (vo/xo«) tyr annises over man and forces him to much that is contrary to Nature. 1 Philosophy formulated in its conceptions that opposition between a natural, " divine " law and the written law, which formed the theme of the Antigone of Sophocles.
Out of this antithesis came the problems, on the one hand, to establish in what this law of Nature, everywhere the same, consists ; on the other, to understand how, in addition to this, the institutions of historical law arise.
The first problem Protagoras did not avoid. In the mythical presentation of his thought which Plato has preserved,* he taught that the gods gave to all men in equal measure a sense ofjustice, and of ethical respect or reverence (Six*; and atSuJs), in order that in the struggle of life they might be able to form permanent unions for mutual preservation. He found, therefore, the <£«ris of practical life in primary ethical feelings which impel man to union in society and in the state. The carrying out of this thought in its details and the definition of the boundary between this which is valid by Nature
(4>v(ru) and the positive determinations of historical institution are unfortunately not preserved to us.
There are, however, many indications that the theory of the Sophists proceeded from such fundamental conceptions to a wide- reaching criticism of existing conditions, and to the demand for pro found revolutions in social and political life. The thought was already at that time forcing its way forward, that all distinctions between men before the law rest only upon institution, and that Nature demands equal right for all. Lycophron desired to do away with the nobility. Alcidamas* and others4 combated slavery from this point of view. Phaleas demanded equality of property as well as of education for all citizens, and Hippodamus was the first to
» Hippiaa in Plat. Prot. 337 C.
» Plat.
