But he did not come forward in such matters as a
reformer
: he taught morality, and if he expounded his own faith, he left that of others untouched.
Windelband - History of Philosophy
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. 287 ft. ).
2 [ IVisse nschaftslehn: tt'issenschaft, " scientia," "science," has here both its subjective and objective sense ; knowledge as mental act, and knowledge as a body of truth. Hence Wissenschqftslehre means both'" doctrine of science," i. e. science of knowledge, and ■'scientific doctrine" i. e. philosophy. — Tr. ]
Chat. 2, § 8. ] Problem of Science : Socrates. 95
is with Socrates, as with the Sophists, the result of employment with the inner nature of man.
5. It will remain a noteworthy fact for all time that a man who so narrowed for himself the intellectual horizon of scientific research as did Socrates, should yet determine within this the essential aatere of science itself, in a manner so clear and so authoritative for all the future. This achievement was due essentially to his opposition to the relativism of the Sophists, — an opposition that was a matter both of instinct and of positive conviction. They taught that there are only opinions (&&u) which hold good for individuals
vith psycho-genetic necessity ; he, however, sought a knowledge that should be authoritative for all in like manner. In contrast with :he change and multiplicity of individual ideas he demanded the one and abiding " which all
should acknowledge. He sought the logical " Nature (^mtic ) as others had sought the cosmological
or ethical "Nature" (cf. § 7, 1), and found it in the concept or general notion. Here, too, the view propounded was rooted in the demand, the theory in the postulate.
The ancient thinkers, also, had had a feeling that the rational 'Junking to which they owed their knowledge was something essen tially other than the sensuous mode of apprehending the world in Togue in everyday life, or than traditional opinion ; but they had not been able to carry out this distinction in relative worth either psychologically or logically. Socrates succeeded in this because here, too, he defined the thing in question by the work which he expected it to perform. The idea that is to be more than opinion, that is to serve as knowledge for all, must be what is common in all the particular ideas which have forced themselves upon individuals in individual relations : subjective universal validity is to be expected only for the objectively universal. Hence, if there is to be knowledge, it is to be found only in that in which all par ticular ideas agree. This universal in the object-matter which
aakes possible the subjective community of ideas is the concept (Xrft). said science [scientific knowledge] is accordingly conceptional ■iimkiiuj. — abstract thought. The universal validity which is -L^med for knowledge is only possible on condition that the scientific concept brings out into relief the common element which n contained in all individual perceptions and opinions.
Hence the goal of all scientific work is the determination of the
tmtmtial mature of conceptions, — definition.
of an abiding nature as over against changing opinions.
The aim of investiga tion u to establish r« tmurrov urj, what each thing is, ami to come to
96 The Greeks : Anthropological Period. [Pabt i.
This doctrine was in some measure prepared for by the investigations of the Sophists concerning the meaning of words, synonyms, and etymological rela tions. In the latter respect, the hypotheses of the Sophists in the beginnings of the philosophy of language (cf. Plato's Cratylus) extended to the auestion whether a natural or only a conventional relation obtains between woraa and their meanings (0v<r«t rj eicti). l'rodicus, whom Socrates mentions with com mendation, seems to have been specially successful in fixing the meanings of words.
Among the later Sophists the Socratic demand for fixed conceptions became forthwith fused with the Kleatic metaphysics, and with its postulate of the iden tity of Being with itself. Euclid called virtue, or the good, the only Being : it remains the same, changeless in itself, and only the names by which men call it differ. Antisthenes, indeed, explained the concept by the definition that it is this which determines the timeless Being of the thing ; ' but he conceived this identity of the existent with Itself, raised above all relations, in so bold a manner that he thought of every truly existing entity as capable of being defined only through itself. Predication is impossible. There are none but analytic
judgments (cf. above, No. 1). Accordingly only the composite can have its essential elements determined in conceptions ; the simple is not to be defined. 2 There then, no possibility of understanding the simple by conceptions can only be exhibited in sensuous presentation. The Cynics came thus from the Socratic doctrine of the conception to sensualism which recognised as simple and original only that which can be grasped with the hands and seen with the eyes, and this is the ground of their opposition to Plato.
The searching out of conceptions (for his purpose, indeed, only ethical conceptions) was accordingly for Socrates the essence of science, and this determined in the first place the outer form of his philosophising. The conception was to be that which valid for all must then be found in common thinking. Socrates neither
solitary hypercritic nor an instructor who teaches ex cathedra, but a man thirsting for the truth, as anxious to instruct himself as to teach others. His philosophy philosophy of the dialogue; develops itself in conversation which he was ready to begin with every one who would talk with him. 3 To the ethical conceptions which he alone was seeking for, was indeed easy to find access from any object whatever of everyday business. The common element must be found in the mutual exchange of thoughts; the StoAoyw/tos was the way to the Ao'yos. But this " conversation " encountered many difficulties the inertia of the customary mode of thinking, the idle desire for innovation, and the paradoxical state ments which were characteristic of the Sophists, the pride belong ing to seeming knowledge and thoughtless imitation. Into such condition of things Socrates made his entrance by introducing him self as one eager to learn. By skilful questions he drew out the views of others, disclosed the defects in these views with remorse
less consistency, and finally led the Athenian, proud of his culture, into the state of mind where he recognised that insight into one's
\iyot iorlv t4 W t>¥ fort 37)Xw»: Oiog. Laert. VI.
Plat. ThecU. 202 B.
This factor united with the influence of Zeno's dialectic to stamp upon the
succeeding philosophical literature the form of the dialogue.
*»1
a
:
6
f,
3.
a
:
it
is a
a
is is it
; it
6. it
is,
a
Qmat. 2, f 8. ] Problem of Science : Socrates. 9?
Mtm ignorance, w the beginning of all knowledge. Whoever stood this test and still remained with him was taken into partnership is a serious effort to determine, in common thinking, the essential meaning of conceptions. Undertaking the direction of the conver sation, Socrates brought his companion step by step to unfold his «wn thoughts in clearer, less contradictory statements, and so caused
bun to bring to definite expression what was slumbering in him as u imperfect presentiment. He called this his art of mental mid- n/ery, and that preparation for it his irony.
7. The maieutic method has, however, still
meaning. In the process of conversation the common rational quality comes to light, to which all parts are subject in spite of their diverging opinions. The conception is not to be made, it is to be found ; it is already there, it requires only to be delivered from the envelopes of individual experiences and opinions in which it Lies hidden. The procedure of the Socratic formation of conceptions
epagogic or inductive : it leads to the generic concep
a, therefore,
tion by the comparison of particular views and individual sensuous
presentations; it decides every individual question by seeking to press forward to determine a general conception. This is accom plished by bringing together analogous cases, and by searching oat allied relations. The general conception thus gained is then employed to decide the special problem proposed, and this subordi nation of the particular under the general is thus worked out as the fundamental relation of scientific knowledge.
The inductive method of procedure as employed by Socrates, according to Xenophon and Plato, is, to be sure, still marked by a childlike simplicity and imperfection. It lacks as yet caution in generalisation and methodical circumspection in the formation of conceptions. The need for the general is so lively that it satisfies itself at once with hastily gathered material, and the conviction of the determining validity of the conception is so strong that the individual questions proposed are decided forthwith in accordance
*ith it. But however great the gaps may be in the arguments of Socrates, the significance of these arguments is by no means lessened Hii doctrine of induction has its value not for methodology, but for 1*7*. and for the theory of knmoledge. It fixes in a way that is deriiive for all the future that it is the task of science to strive to **aW*h general conceptions from comparison of facts.
8. While Socrates thus defined the essential nature of science as wneeptional thought, — thinking in conceptions, — he also fixed the l**»d» within which science can be employed: this task is, in his opinion, to be fulfilled only within the domain of practical life.
another essential
98 The Greeks: Anthropological Period. [Part 1.
Science is, as regards its form, the formation of conceptions, and as regards its content ethics.
Meanwhile the whole mass of ideas concerning Nature and all the connected questions and problems still persist, and though for the most part they are a matter of indifference for the moral life, neverthe less they cannot be entirely put aside. But after Socrates renounced the task of attaining insight into such questions through conceptions, it was all the more possible for him to form an idea of the universe that should satisfy his scientifically grounded ethical needs.
So it comes that Socrates puts aside, indeed, all natural science, but at the same time professes a teleological view of Nature, which admires the wisdom in the arrangement of the world, the adaptation in things,1 and which, where understanding ceases, trusts Providence in faith. With this faith Socrates kept himself as near as possible to the religious ideas of his people, and even spoke of a plurality of gods, although he indeed inclined to the ethical monotheism which
was preparing in his time.
But he did not come forward in such matters as a reformer : he taught morality, and if he expounded his own faith, he left that of others untouched.
Out of this faith, however, grew the conviction with which he limited the rationalism of his ethics, — his confidence in the S<u/x6Viov. The more he pressed toward clearness of conceptions and complete knowledge of ethical relations, and the more true to himself he was in this, the less could he hide from himself that man in his limita tion does not completely succeed in this task, that there are condi tions in which knowledge is not sufficient for certain decision, and where feeling enters upon its rights. Under such conditions Soc rates believed that he heard within himself the daimonion, a coun selling and for the most part warning voice. He thought that in this way the gods warned from evil in difficult cases, where his knowledge ceased, the man who otherwise served them.
So the wise man of Athens set faith and feeling beside ethical science.
1 It is not probable that Socrates experienced any strong influence from Anaxagoraa in this respect, for the latter's teleology relates to the harmony of the stellar universe, not to human life, while the considerations which are ascribed to Socrates, especially by Xenophon, make utility for man the standard for admiration of the world. Much more closely related to Socratic faith are the religious views of the great poets of Athens, especially the tragedians.
CHAPTER III. THE SYSTEMATIC PERIOD.
The third, completing period of Greek science harvested the fruit of the two preceding developments. It appears essentially as a rrriprocal inter -penetration ofcosmological and anthropological bodies of bought. This union appears in but a very slight degree as a neces sity found in the nature of the case, still less as a demand of the tute ; rather, it is in its essentials the work of great personalities tad of the peculiar direction taken by their knowledge.
The tendency of the time was rather toward a practical utilisa tion of science : it was in accord with this tendency when research wjcrated into special investigations on mechanical, physiological, rhetorical, and political problems, and when scientific instruction accommodated itself to the ideas of the ordinary man. Not only for the mass of the people, but for scholars as well, general questions of ^jamology had lost the interest which in the beginning was directed toward them, and the fact that they were sceptically abandoned
because of the Sophistic theory of knowledge is nowhere presented in the form of renunciation or lamentation.
If. therefore, Greek philosophy turned with renewed force from ii*» investigation of human thinking and willing — researches with which it had busied itself during the time of the Enlightenment — back to the great problems of metaphysics, and reached its greatest height along this path, it owes this achievement to the personal thirst for knowledge on the part of the three great men who
Yooght in this most valuable development of ancient thought, and ttaad as its representatives, — Democritus, Plato, and Aristotle.
The creations of these three heroes of Greek thought differ from the doctrines of all their predecessors by reason of their systematic char acter. Each of the three gave to the world an all-embracing system of science complete in itself. Their teachings gained this character, eo the one hand, through the all-sidedness of their problems, and on *<hr other, through the conscious unity in their treatment of them.
While each of the earlier thinkers had seized upon but a limited 00
100 The Philosophy of the Greeks. [Part I.
circle of questions, and in like manner had shown himself informed only in certain departments of actual reality, while especially no one had as yet shown interest in both physical and psychological investigation, these three men directed their work in like measure to the entire compass of scientific problems. They brought together what experience and observation had won ; they examined and com pared the conceptions which had been formed from these, and they brought that which up to this time had been isolated, into fruitful union and relation. This all-sidedness of their scientific interest appears in the compass and varied character of their literary activ ity, and the great amount of material elaborated is in part explained only through the vigorous co-operation of their extended schools, in which a division of labour in accordance with inclination and endow ment was allowed.
But this work thus shared in common did not result in a mass of unrelated material. This was guarded against by the fact that each of these three men undertook and conducted the working over of the entire material of knowledge with a unity of purpose and method derived from the principle which formed his fundamental thought. This, indeed, led at more than one point to a one-sided conception, and to a kind of violation of individual domains, and thereby to the inter-weaving of problems in ways which do not stand criticism. But on the other hand, just by means of the adjustment which must take place in this process between the forms of cognition in differ ent departments of knowledge, the formation of metaphysical concep tions was so furthered, abstract thought was so refined and deepened, that in the short time of scarcely two generations the typical out
lines of three different conceptions of the world were worked out. Thus the advantages and the disadvantages of philosophical system- building appear in like measure in the case of these men of genius who were the first founders of systems.
The systematising of knowledge so that it should become an all-in- clusive philosophical doctrine was achieved with increasing success by Democritus, Plato, and Aristotle, and with the last first found the form of an organic articulation of science into the individual disciplines. With this Aristotle concluded the development of Greek philosophy and inaugurated the age of the special sciences.
The course of this development was more particularly this : the two opposing systems of Democritus and Plato arose from the application to cosmological and metaphysical problems, of the prin ciples gained through the doctrines of the Sophists and of Socrates ; from the attempt to reconcile these opposites proceeded the conclud ing doctrine of Aristotle.
The Systematic Period. 101
Cmjlp. 3. ]
The essential feature in the work of Democritus and Plato was that they used the insight into the theory of knowledge, gained by the philosophy of the Enlightenment, to ground metaphysics anew. Their common dependence upon the doctrines of the cosinological period and upon the Sophistic teaching, in particular upon the the ory of Protagoras, stamps upon the two doctrines a certain parallel ism and a partial relationship, — a relationship the more interesting, the deeper the contrast between the two in other respects. This contrast, however, is due to the fact that the Socratic teacliing had no effect upon Democritus, while its influence on Plato was decisive ; hence the ethical factor is as preponderant in the system of the latter as it is unimportant in that of the former. Thus in parallel lines from the same source developed the materialism of Democritus and the idealism of Plato.
From this contrast is explained, too, the difference in their work ing. The purely theoretical conception of science which prevails with Democritus did not suit the age ; his school soon disappeared. Plato, on the contrary, whose scientific teaching furnished at the same time the basis for a principle of life, had the pleasure of form ing in the Academy An extensive and lasting school. Hut this school, the so-called Older Academy, following the general tendency of the time, *oon ran out partly into special investigation, partly into pop ular moralising.
Out of it rose then the great form of Aristotle, the most influential thinker that history has seen. The powerful concentration with which he caused the entire content of thought in Greek science to crystallise about the conception of development (ivrtXi^ua) in order to adjust the opposition discovered between his two great predeces sors, made him the philosophical teacher of the future, and his system the most perfect expression of Greek thought.
DwWBOCiitaa of Abdera (about 460-360) was educated in the scientific asso ciation of his home and by journeys lasting many years, led the life of a quiet, ■n—uming investigator in his native city during the turmoil of the Sophistic ptiod. and remained far from the noisy activity of Athens. He did not impart aoT special ability, political or otherwise, by his teaching, but was essentially 4Mfrjm-d to theoretical thought, and particularly inclined to the investigation of Sature. With gigantic learning and comprehensive information he united great rlranvaa of abstract thought and apparently a strong inclination to simplify prob- tnns schematically. The number of his works proves that he stood at the head tit an extended school, of which some unimportant names are preserved, yet
fcxtuns; u m>'re characteristic of the way in which his age turned aside from rwjia that was not interesting to it than the indifference with which his sya- wm of the mechanical explanation of Nature was met. His doctrine was forced ■to ib* background for two thousand years by the teleological systems, and prniuoged its existence only in the Kpicurean school, while even there it was not wsAamoodL
Antiquity honoured Democritus as a great writer also, and for this reason the Imni complete loss of his works is all the more to be lamented, as aside from
102 The Philosophy of the Greeks. [Part L
the numerous titles only very unimportant and in part doubtful fragments are extant. The most important writings seem to have been, theoretically, the M*ya. - and Miicpdj StdmatuH, xepl rod and rcpl iStwv ; practically, re/>i ev6vfil-r]s and irro&ij- Ktu. W. Kahl (Diedenhofen, 1889) has begun to work through the sources which had been collected by \V. Burchard (Minden, 1830 and 1834) and Lort- zing (Berlin, 1873). P. Natorp has edited the Ethics (Leips. 1893).
Cf. P. Natorp, Forschungen zur Qeschicht? des Erkenntnissproblems im Alter- thum (Berlin, 1884); G. Hart, Zur tieelen- und Erkenntnisslehre des Demokrit (Leips. 1886).
Plato of Athens (427-347), of distinguished family, had most successfully assimilated the artistic and scientific culture of his time when the personality of Socrates made so decisive an impression upon him that he abandoned his at tempts at poetry and devoted himself entirely to the society of the master. He was his truest and most intelligent, and yet at the same time his most indepen dent disciple. The execution of Socrates occasioned his acceptance of Euclid's invitation to Megara ; then he journeyed to Cyrene and Egypt, returned for a time to Athens, and here began to teach through his writings, and perhaps also orally. About 390 we find him in Magna Gracia and Sicily, where he became connected with the Pythagoreans and took part also in political action. This brought him into serious danger at the court of the ruler of Syracuse, the elder Dionysius, whom he sought to influence with the help of his friend Dion ; he was delivered as prisoner of war to the Spartans and ransomed only by the help of a friend. This attempt at practical politics in Sicily was twice repeated later (367 and 361), but always with unfortunate results.
After the first Sicilian journey, he founded his school in the grove Akademos, and soon united about him a great number of prominent men for the purpose of common scientific work. Yet the bond of this society was to be sought still more in a friendship based upon community of ethical ideals. His teaching activity at the beginning had, like that of Socrates, that character of a common search for truth which finds expression in the dialogue. It was not until his old age that it took on more the form of the didactic lecture.
This life finds its aesthetic and literary embodiment in Plato's works, ' in which the process itself of philosophising is set forth with dramatic vividness and plastic portraiture of personalities and their views of life. As works of art, the Symposium and the Phatdo are most successful ; the grandest impression of the system, as a whole, is afforded by the Republic. With the exception of the Apology of Socrates, the form is everywhere that of the dialogue. Yet the artistic treatment suffers in Plato's old age, and the dialogue remains only as the sphematic setting of a lecture, as in the Timatus and the Laws. For the most part, Socrates leads the conversation, and it is into his mouth that Plato puts his own decision when he comes to one. Exceptions to this are not found until in the latest writings.
The mode of presentation is also on the whole more artistic than scientific. It exhibits extreme vividness and plasticity of imagination in perfect language, but no strictness in separating problems or in methodical investigation. The con tents of any individual dialogue is to be designated only by the prominent sub ject of inquiry. Where abstract presentation is not possible or not in place Plato takes to his aid the so-called myths, allegorical presentations which utilise motives from fables and tales of the gods in free, poetic form.
The transmission of his works is only in part certain, and it is just as doubtful in what order they originated and what relation they bear to one another.
gave an impulse in that direction :
* Translated into German by Hier. Mflller, with introductions by K. Steinhart. 8 vols. Leips. 1850-1860. As ninth volume of the series Platan's Leben, by K. Steinhart. Leips. 1873. [English by Jowett, third ed. 6 vols. Oxford,
Among more recent editions, in which the paging of that of Stephanus (Paris, 1578), employed in citations, is always repeated, are to be noted those of J. Bekker (Berlin, 1816 f. ), Stallbaum (Leips. 1850), Schneider and Hirschig (Paris: Didot, 1846 ff. ), M. Schanz (Leips. 1875 ff. ).
The following are among the most important names of those who have worked over these questions since Schleiermacher in his translation (Berlin, 1804 ff. )
1893. ]
J. Socher (Munich, 1820), C. Fr. Hermann
Chat. 3. ] The Systematic Period. 103
Heidelberg, 1839), E. Zeller (Tubingen, 1830), Fr. Suckow (Berlin, 1866), Fr. Susemihl (Berlin, 1866-58), E. Munk (Berlin, 1886), Fr. Ueberweg (Vienna, 1*«1), K. Schaarschmidt (Bonn, 1866), H. Bonitz (Berlin, 1876), G. Teich- afiller (Gotha, 1876 ; Leipsic, 1879; Breslau, 1881), A. Krohn (Halle, 1878), W. Lhuenberger (in Hermes, 1881), H. Siebeck (Freiburg i. B. 1889). [H. Jack- no in Jour. Phil. , X. , XL, and XIII. ; Archer-Hind's editions of Phcedo and
Timatms; reviewed critically by P. Shorey in Am. Jour. Phttol, IX. and X. ] [On Plato's philosophy, in addition to the above, W. Pater, Plato and Platon-'
us (Lond. and N. Y. 189;! ) ; J. Martineau, in Types of Ethical Theory (Lond. ud N. Y. 1886), also in Essays; Art. Plato in Enc. Brit. , by L. Campbell ; R. L. Neoleship, The Theory of Education in P. '» Pep. , in Hellenic a ; J. S. Mill in Essays and Discussions. ]
The writings which are considered genuinely Platonic are (a) youthful works, wtuch scarcely go beyond the Socratic standpoint : Apology, Crito, Euthyphro, Lftis, Laches (perhaps also Charmides, Hippias Minor, and Alcibiudes, I. ) ;
*) writings to establish his position with regard to the Sophistic doctrines: Prvtaooras, Gorgias, Euthydemus, Cratylus, Meno, Theattetus ; (c) main works . aieaded to present his own doctrine : Pha-drus, Symposium, Phado, Philebus, ud the Republic, whose working out, begun early and completed in successive strata, as it were, extended into the last years of the Philosopher's life ; (</) the vritinxs of his old age : Timaeus, the Laws, and the fragment of Critias. Among ih« doubtful writings the most important are the Sophist, Politicus, and Par- m*mides. These probably did not originate with Plato, but with men of his « ti"~>l who were closely related with the Eleatic dialectic and eristic. The first two are by the same author.
Cf. H. v. Stein, Siehen Biicher zur Geschiehte des Platonismus (Gottingen, 1961 fl. 1; G. Grote, Plato and the Other Companions of Socrates (Lond. 1866); A. E. Chaignet. La vie et lesecrits de Platon (Paris, 1873); E. Heitz, <0. Midler's Htsek. der griech. Lit. , 2. Aufl. , II. 2, 148-236).
Plato's school is called the Academy, and the time of its development, which -rarhr* to the end of ancient thought, and which was aided by the continued ;>«w»ion of the academic grove and the gymnasium existing there, is usually 'itrxied into three or five periods : (1) the Older Academy, Plato's most inime- datle circle of scholars and the succeeding generations, extending to about 260 u. r ; (2) the Middle Academy, which took a sceptical direction, and in which aa older school of Arcesilaus and a younger school of Carneades (about 160) are 4i»ururaished ; (3) the New Academy, which with Philo of Larissa (about 100) mrned back to the old dogmatUui, and with Antiochus of Ascalon (about twenty- bt? rears later) turned into the paths of Eclecticism. Concerning the two (or fcwxr i later forms cf. Part II. ch. 1. Later the Neo- Platonic school took posses-
u<ti of the Academy. Cf. Part II. ch. 2.
To the Older Academy belonged men of great erudition and honourable per-
•naatity. The heart* of the school were Speualppna, the nephew of Plato, Tawx utile of Chalcedon, Polemo and Crate* of Athens ; beside these, Philip of i >pus and Heracleldes from Pontic Heraclea are to be mentioned fnns; the older, and Crantor among the younger members. Less closely frhued with the school were the astronomers Eudoxus of Cnidos and the Pythagorean Archytaa of Tarentum. R. Heinze, Xenoerates (Leips.
• 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. 287 ft. ).
2 [ IVisse nschaftslehn: tt'issenschaft, " scientia," "science," has here both its subjective and objective sense ; knowledge as mental act, and knowledge as a body of truth. Hence Wissenschqftslehre means both'" doctrine of science," i. e. science of knowledge, and ■'scientific doctrine" i. e. philosophy. — Tr. ]
Chat. 2, § 8. ] Problem of Science : Socrates. 95
is with Socrates, as with the Sophists, the result of employment with the inner nature of man.
5. It will remain a noteworthy fact for all time that a man who so narrowed for himself the intellectual horizon of scientific research as did Socrates, should yet determine within this the essential aatere of science itself, in a manner so clear and so authoritative for all the future. This achievement was due essentially to his opposition to the relativism of the Sophists, — an opposition that was a matter both of instinct and of positive conviction. They taught that there are only opinions (&&u) which hold good for individuals
vith psycho-genetic necessity ; he, however, sought a knowledge that should be authoritative for all in like manner. In contrast with :he change and multiplicity of individual ideas he demanded the one and abiding " which all
should acknowledge. He sought the logical " Nature (^mtic ) as others had sought the cosmological
or ethical "Nature" (cf. § 7, 1), and found it in the concept or general notion. Here, too, the view propounded was rooted in the demand, the theory in the postulate.
The ancient thinkers, also, had had a feeling that the rational 'Junking to which they owed their knowledge was something essen tially other than the sensuous mode of apprehending the world in Togue in everyday life, or than traditional opinion ; but they had not been able to carry out this distinction in relative worth either psychologically or logically. Socrates succeeded in this because here, too, he defined the thing in question by the work which he expected it to perform. The idea that is to be more than opinion, that is to serve as knowledge for all, must be what is common in all the particular ideas which have forced themselves upon individuals in individual relations : subjective universal validity is to be expected only for the objectively universal. Hence, if there is to be knowledge, it is to be found only in that in which all par ticular ideas agree. This universal in the object-matter which
aakes possible the subjective community of ideas is the concept (Xrft). said science [scientific knowledge] is accordingly conceptional ■iimkiiuj. — abstract thought. The universal validity which is -L^med for knowledge is only possible on condition that the scientific concept brings out into relief the common element which n contained in all individual perceptions and opinions.
Hence the goal of all scientific work is the determination of the
tmtmtial mature of conceptions, — definition.
of an abiding nature as over against changing opinions.
The aim of investiga tion u to establish r« tmurrov urj, what each thing is, ami to come to
96 The Greeks : Anthropological Period. [Pabt i.
This doctrine was in some measure prepared for by the investigations of the Sophists concerning the meaning of words, synonyms, and etymological rela tions. In the latter respect, the hypotheses of the Sophists in the beginnings of the philosophy of language (cf. Plato's Cratylus) extended to the auestion whether a natural or only a conventional relation obtains between woraa and their meanings (0v<r«t rj eicti). l'rodicus, whom Socrates mentions with com mendation, seems to have been specially successful in fixing the meanings of words.
Among the later Sophists the Socratic demand for fixed conceptions became forthwith fused with the Kleatic metaphysics, and with its postulate of the iden tity of Being with itself. Euclid called virtue, or the good, the only Being : it remains the same, changeless in itself, and only the names by which men call it differ. Antisthenes, indeed, explained the concept by the definition that it is this which determines the timeless Being of the thing ; ' but he conceived this identity of the existent with Itself, raised above all relations, in so bold a manner that he thought of every truly existing entity as capable of being defined only through itself. Predication is impossible. There are none but analytic
judgments (cf. above, No. 1). Accordingly only the composite can have its essential elements determined in conceptions ; the simple is not to be defined. 2 There then, no possibility of understanding the simple by conceptions can only be exhibited in sensuous presentation. The Cynics came thus from the Socratic doctrine of the conception to sensualism which recognised as simple and original only that which can be grasped with the hands and seen with the eyes, and this is the ground of their opposition to Plato.
The searching out of conceptions (for his purpose, indeed, only ethical conceptions) was accordingly for Socrates the essence of science, and this determined in the first place the outer form of his philosophising. The conception was to be that which valid for all must then be found in common thinking. Socrates neither
solitary hypercritic nor an instructor who teaches ex cathedra, but a man thirsting for the truth, as anxious to instruct himself as to teach others. His philosophy philosophy of the dialogue; develops itself in conversation which he was ready to begin with every one who would talk with him. 3 To the ethical conceptions which he alone was seeking for, was indeed easy to find access from any object whatever of everyday business. The common element must be found in the mutual exchange of thoughts; the StoAoyw/tos was the way to the Ao'yos. But this " conversation " encountered many difficulties the inertia of the customary mode of thinking, the idle desire for innovation, and the paradoxical state ments which were characteristic of the Sophists, the pride belong ing to seeming knowledge and thoughtless imitation. Into such condition of things Socrates made his entrance by introducing him self as one eager to learn. By skilful questions he drew out the views of others, disclosed the defects in these views with remorse
less consistency, and finally led the Athenian, proud of his culture, into the state of mind where he recognised that insight into one's
\iyot iorlv t4 W t>¥ fort 37)Xw»: Oiog. Laert. VI.
Plat. ThecU. 202 B.
This factor united with the influence of Zeno's dialectic to stamp upon the
succeeding philosophical literature the form of the dialogue.
*»1
a
:
6
f,
3.
a
:
it
is a
a
is is it
; it
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is,
a
Qmat. 2, f 8. ] Problem of Science : Socrates. 9?
Mtm ignorance, w the beginning of all knowledge. Whoever stood this test and still remained with him was taken into partnership is a serious effort to determine, in common thinking, the essential meaning of conceptions. Undertaking the direction of the conver sation, Socrates brought his companion step by step to unfold his «wn thoughts in clearer, less contradictory statements, and so caused
bun to bring to definite expression what was slumbering in him as u imperfect presentiment. He called this his art of mental mid- n/ery, and that preparation for it his irony.
7. The maieutic method has, however, still
meaning. In the process of conversation the common rational quality comes to light, to which all parts are subject in spite of their diverging opinions. The conception is not to be made, it is to be found ; it is already there, it requires only to be delivered from the envelopes of individual experiences and opinions in which it Lies hidden. The procedure of the Socratic formation of conceptions
epagogic or inductive : it leads to the generic concep
a, therefore,
tion by the comparison of particular views and individual sensuous
presentations; it decides every individual question by seeking to press forward to determine a general conception. This is accom plished by bringing together analogous cases, and by searching oat allied relations. The general conception thus gained is then employed to decide the special problem proposed, and this subordi nation of the particular under the general is thus worked out as the fundamental relation of scientific knowledge.
The inductive method of procedure as employed by Socrates, according to Xenophon and Plato, is, to be sure, still marked by a childlike simplicity and imperfection. It lacks as yet caution in generalisation and methodical circumspection in the formation of conceptions. The need for the general is so lively that it satisfies itself at once with hastily gathered material, and the conviction of the determining validity of the conception is so strong that the individual questions proposed are decided forthwith in accordance
*ith it. But however great the gaps may be in the arguments of Socrates, the significance of these arguments is by no means lessened Hii doctrine of induction has its value not for methodology, but for 1*7*. and for the theory of knmoledge. It fixes in a way that is deriiive for all the future that it is the task of science to strive to **aW*h general conceptions from comparison of facts.
8. While Socrates thus defined the essential nature of science as wneeptional thought, — thinking in conceptions, — he also fixed the l**»d» within which science can be employed: this task is, in his opinion, to be fulfilled only within the domain of practical life.
another essential
98 The Greeks: Anthropological Period. [Part 1.
Science is, as regards its form, the formation of conceptions, and as regards its content ethics.
Meanwhile the whole mass of ideas concerning Nature and all the connected questions and problems still persist, and though for the most part they are a matter of indifference for the moral life, neverthe less they cannot be entirely put aside. But after Socrates renounced the task of attaining insight into such questions through conceptions, it was all the more possible for him to form an idea of the universe that should satisfy his scientifically grounded ethical needs.
So it comes that Socrates puts aside, indeed, all natural science, but at the same time professes a teleological view of Nature, which admires the wisdom in the arrangement of the world, the adaptation in things,1 and which, where understanding ceases, trusts Providence in faith. With this faith Socrates kept himself as near as possible to the religious ideas of his people, and even spoke of a plurality of gods, although he indeed inclined to the ethical monotheism which
was preparing in his time.
But he did not come forward in such matters as a reformer : he taught morality, and if he expounded his own faith, he left that of others untouched.
Out of this faith, however, grew the conviction with which he limited the rationalism of his ethics, — his confidence in the S<u/x6Viov. The more he pressed toward clearness of conceptions and complete knowledge of ethical relations, and the more true to himself he was in this, the less could he hide from himself that man in his limita tion does not completely succeed in this task, that there are condi tions in which knowledge is not sufficient for certain decision, and where feeling enters upon its rights. Under such conditions Soc rates believed that he heard within himself the daimonion, a coun selling and for the most part warning voice. He thought that in this way the gods warned from evil in difficult cases, where his knowledge ceased, the man who otherwise served them.
So the wise man of Athens set faith and feeling beside ethical science.
1 It is not probable that Socrates experienced any strong influence from Anaxagoraa in this respect, for the latter's teleology relates to the harmony of the stellar universe, not to human life, while the considerations which are ascribed to Socrates, especially by Xenophon, make utility for man the standard for admiration of the world. Much more closely related to Socratic faith are the religious views of the great poets of Athens, especially the tragedians.
CHAPTER III. THE SYSTEMATIC PERIOD.
The third, completing period of Greek science harvested the fruit of the two preceding developments. It appears essentially as a rrriprocal inter -penetration ofcosmological and anthropological bodies of bought. This union appears in but a very slight degree as a neces sity found in the nature of the case, still less as a demand of the tute ; rather, it is in its essentials the work of great personalities tad of the peculiar direction taken by their knowledge.
The tendency of the time was rather toward a practical utilisa tion of science : it was in accord with this tendency when research wjcrated into special investigations on mechanical, physiological, rhetorical, and political problems, and when scientific instruction accommodated itself to the ideas of the ordinary man. Not only for the mass of the people, but for scholars as well, general questions of ^jamology had lost the interest which in the beginning was directed toward them, and the fact that they were sceptically abandoned
because of the Sophistic theory of knowledge is nowhere presented in the form of renunciation or lamentation.
If. therefore, Greek philosophy turned with renewed force from ii*» investigation of human thinking and willing — researches with which it had busied itself during the time of the Enlightenment — back to the great problems of metaphysics, and reached its greatest height along this path, it owes this achievement to the personal thirst for knowledge on the part of the three great men who
Yooght in this most valuable development of ancient thought, and ttaad as its representatives, — Democritus, Plato, and Aristotle.
The creations of these three heroes of Greek thought differ from the doctrines of all their predecessors by reason of their systematic char acter. Each of the three gave to the world an all-embracing system of science complete in itself. Their teachings gained this character, eo the one hand, through the all-sidedness of their problems, and on *<hr other, through the conscious unity in their treatment of them.
While each of the earlier thinkers had seized upon but a limited 00
100 The Philosophy of the Greeks. [Part I.
circle of questions, and in like manner had shown himself informed only in certain departments of actual reality, while especially no one had as yet shown interest in both physical and psychological investigation, these three men directed their work in like measure to the entire compass of scientific problems. They brought together what experience and observation had won ; they examined and com pared the conceptions which had been formed from these, and they brought that which up to this time had been isolated, into fruitful union and relation. This all-sidedness of their scientific interest appears in the compass and varied character of their literary activ ity, and the great amount of material elaborated is in part explained only through the vigorous co-operation of their extended schools, in which a division of labour in accordance with inclination and endow ment was allowed.
But this work thus shared in common did not result in a mass of unrelated material. This was guarded against by the fact that each of these three men undertook and conducted the working over of the entire material of knowledge with a unity of purpose and method derived from the principle which formed his fundamental thought. This, indeed, led at more than one point to a one-sided conception, and to a kind of violation of individual domains, and thereby to the inter-weaving of problems in ways which do not stand criticism. But on the other hand, just by means of the adjustment which must take place in this process between the forms of cognition in differ ent departments of knowledge, the formation of metaphysical concep tions was so furthered, abstract thought was so refined and deepened, that in the short time of scarcely two generations the typical out
lines of three different conceptions of the world were worked out. Thus the advantages and the disadvantages of philosophical system- building appear in like measure in the case of these men of genius who were the first founders of systems.
The systematising of knowledge so that it should become an all-in- clusive philosophical doctrine was achieved with increasing success by Democritus, Plato, and Aristotle, and with the last first found the form of an organic articulation of science into the individual disciplines. With this Aristotle concluded the development of Greek philosophy and inaugurated the age of the special sciences.
The course of this development was more particularly this : the two opposing systems of Democritus and Plato arose from the application to cosmological and metaphysical problems, of the prin ciples gained through the doctrines of the Sophists and of Socrates ; from the attempt to reconcile these opposites proceeded the conclud ing doctrine of Aristotle.
The Systematic Period. 101
Cmjlp. 3. ]
The essential feature in the work of Democritus and Plato was that they used the insight into the theory of knowledge, gained by the philosophy of the Enlightenment, to ground metaphysics anew. Their common dependence upon the doctrines of the cosinological period and upon the Sophistic teaching, in particular upon the the ory of Protagoras, stamps upon the two doctrines a certain parallel ism and a partial relationship, — a relationship the more interesting, the deeper the contrast between the two in other respects. This contrast, however, is due to the fact that the Socratic teacliing had no effect upon Democritus, while its influence on Plato was decisive ; hence the ethical factor is as preponderant in the system of the latter as it is unimportant in that of the former. Thus in parallel lines from the same source developed the materialism of Democritus and the idealism of Plato.
From this contrast is explained, too, the difference in their work ing. The purely theoretical conception of science which prevails with Democritus did not suit the age ; his school soon disappeared. Plato, on the contrary, whose scientific teaching furnished at the same time the basis for a principle of life, had the pleasure of form ing in the Academy An extensive and lasting school. Hut this school, the so-called Older Academy, following the general tendency of the time, *oon ran out partly into special investigation, partly into pop ular moralising.
Out of it rose then the great form of Aristotle, the most influential thinker that history has seen. The powerful concentration with which he caused the entire content of thought in Greek science to crystallise about the conception of development (ivrtXi^ua) in order to adjust the opposition discovered between his two great predeces sors, made him the philosophical teacher of the future, and his system the most perfect expression of Greek thought.
DwWBOCiitaa of Abdera (about 460-360) was educated in the scientific asso ciation of his home and by journeys lasting many years, led the life of a quiet, ■n—uming investigator in his native city during the turmoil of the Sophistic ptiod. and remained far from the noisy activity of Athens. He did not impart aoT special ability, political or otherwise, by his teaching, but was essentially 4Mfrjm-d to theoretical thought, and particularly inclined to the investigation of Sature. With gigantic learning and comprehensive information he united great rlranvaa of abstract thought and apparently a strong inclination to simplify prob- tnns schematically. The number of his works proves that he stood at the head tit an extended school, of which some unimportant names are preserved, yet
fcxtuns; u m>'re characteristic of the way in which his age turned aside from rwjia that was not interesting to it than the indifference with which his sya- wm of the mechanical explanation of Nature was met. His doctrine was forced ■to ib* background for two thousand years by the teleological systems, and prniuoged its existence only in the Kpicurean school, while even there it was not wsAamoodL
Antiquity honoured Democritus as a great writer also, and for this reason the Imni complete loss of his works is all the more to be lamented, as aside from
102 The Philosophy of the Greeks. [Part L
the numerous titles only very unimportant and in part doubtful fragments are extant. The most important writings seem to have been, theoretically, the M*ya. - and Miicpdj StdmatuH, xepl rod and rcpl iStwv ; practically, re/>i ev6vfil-r]s and irro&ij- Ktu. W. Kahl (Diedenhofen, 1889) has begun to work through the sources which had been collected by \V. Burchard (Minden, 1830 and 1834) and Lort- zing (Berlin, 1873). P. Natorp has edited the Ethics (Leips. 1893).
Cf. P. Natorp, Forschungen zur Qeschicht? des Erkenntnissproblems im Alter- thum (Berlin, 1884); G. Hart, Zur tieelen- und Erkenntnisslehre des Demokrit (Leips. 1886).
Plato of Athens (427-347), of distinguished family, had most successfully assimilated the artistic and scientific culture of his time when the personality of Socrates made so decisive an impression upon him that he abandoned his at tempts at poetry and devoted himself entirely to the society of the master. He was his truest and most intelligent, and yet at the same time his most indepen dent disciple. The execution of Socrates occasioned his acceptance of Euclid's invitation to Megara ; then he journeyed to Cyrene and Egypt, returned for a time to Athens, and here began to teach through his writings, and perhaps also orally. About 390 we find him in Magna Gracia and Sicily, where he became connected with the Pythagoreans and took part also in political action. This brought him into serious danger at the court of the ruler of Syracuse, the elder Dionysius, whom he sought to influence with the help of his friend Dion ; he was delivered as prisoner of war to the Spartans and ransomed only by the help of a friend. This attempt at practical politics in Sicily was twice repeated later (367 and 361), but always with unfortunate results.
After the first Sicilian journey, he founded his school in the grove Akademos, and soon united about him a great number of prominent men for the purpose of common scientific work. Yet the bond of this society was to be sought still more in a friendship based upon community of ethical ideals. His teaching activity at the beginning had, like that of Socrates, that character of a common search for truth which finds expression in the dialogue. It was not until his old age that it took on more the form of the didactic lecture.
This life finds its aesthetic and literary embodiment in Plato's works, ' in which the process itself of philosophising is set forth with dramatic vividness and plastic portraiture of personalities and their views of life. As works of art, the Symposium and the Phatdo are most successful ; the grandest impression of the system, as a whole, is afforded by the Republic. With the exception of the Apology of Socrates, the form is everywhere that of the dialogue. Yet the artistic treatment suffers in Plato's old age, and the dialogue remains only as the sphematic setting of a lecture, as in the Timatus and the Laws. For the most part, Socrates leads the conversation, and it is into his mouth that Plato puts his own decision when he comes to one. Exceptions to this are not found until in the latest writings.
The mode of presentation is also on the whole more artistic than scientific. It exhibits extreme vividness and plasticity of imagination in perfect language, but no strictness in separating problems or in methodical investigation. The con tents of any individual dialogue is to be designated only by the prominent sub ject of inquiry. Where abstract presentation is not possible or not in place Plato takes to his aid the so-called myths, allegorical presentations which utilise motives from fables and tales of the gods in free, poetic form.
The transmission of his works is only in part certain, and it is just as doubtful in what order they originated and what relation they bear to one another.
gave an impulse in that direction :
* Translated into German by Hier. Mflller, with introductions by K. Steinhart. 8 vols. Leips. 1850-1860. As ninth volume of the series Platan's Leben, by K. Steinhart. Leips. 1873. [English by Jowett, third ed. 6 vols. Oxford,
Among more recent editions, in which the paging of that of Stephanus (Paris, 1578), employed in citations, is always repeated, are to be noted those of J. Bekker (Berlin, 1816 f. ), Stallbaum (Leips. 1850), Schneider and Hirschig (Paris: Didot, 1846 ff. ), M. Schanz (Leips. 1875 ff. ).
The following are among the most important names of those who have worked over these questions since Schleiermacher in his translation (Berlin, 1804 ff. )
1893. ]
J. Socher (Munich, 1820), C. Fr. Hermann
Chat. 3. ] The Systematic Period. 103
Heidelberg, 1839), E. Zeller (Tubingen, 1830), Fr. Suckow (Berlin, 1866), Fr. Susemihl (Berlin, 1866-58), E. Munk (Berlin, 1886), Fr. Ueberweg (Vienna, 1*«1), K. Schaarschmidt (Bonn, 1866), H. Bonitz (Berlin, 1876), G. Teich- afiller (Gotha, 1876 ; Leipsic, 1879; Breslau, 1881), A. Krohn (Halle, 1878), W. Lhuenberger (in Hermes, 1881), H. Siebeck (Freiburg i. B. 1889). [H. Jack- no in Jour. Phil. , X. , XL, and XIII. ; Archer-Hind's editions of Phcedo and
Timatms; reviewed critically by P. Shorey in Am. Jour. Phttol, IX. and X. ] [On Plato's philosophy, in addition to the above, W. Pater, Plato and Platon-'
us (Lond. and N. Y. 189;! ) ; J. Martineau, in Types of Ethical Theory (Lond. ud N. Y. 1886), also in Essays; Art. Plato in Enc. Brit. , by L. Campbell ; R. L. Neoleship, The Theory of Education in P. '» Pep. , in Hellenic a ; J. S. Mill in Essays and Discussions. ]
The writings which are considered genuinely Platonic are (a) youthful works, wtuch scarcely go beyond the Socratic standpoint : Apology, Crito, Euthyphro, Lftis, Laches (perhaps also Charmides, Hippias Minor, and Alcibiudes, I. ) ;
*) writings to establish his position with regard to the Sophistic doctrines: Prvtaooras, Gorgias, Euthydemus, Cratylus, Meno, Theattetus ; (c) main works . aieaded to present his own doctrine : Pha-drus, Symposium, Phado, Philebus, ud the Republic, whose working out, begun early and completed in successive strata, as it were, extended into the last years of the Philosopher's life ; (</) the vritinxs of his old age : Timaeus, the Laws, and the fragment of Critias. Among ih« doubtful writings the most important are the Sophist, Politicus, and Par- m*mides. These probably did not originate with Plato, but with men of his « ti"~>l who were closely related with the Eleatic dialectic and eristic. The first two are by the same author.
Cf. H. v. Stein, Siehen Biicher zur Geschiehte des Platonismus (Gottingen, 1961 fl. 1; G. Grote, Plato and the Other Companions of Socrates (Lond. 1866); A. E. Chaignet. La vie et lesecrits de Platon (Paris, 1873); E. Heitz, <0. Midler's Htsek. der griech. Lit. , 2. Aufl. , II. 2, 148-236).
Plato's school is called the Academy, and the time of its development, which -rarhr* to the end of ancient thought, and which was aided by the continued ;>«w»ion of the academic grove and the gymnasium existing there, is usually 'itrxied into three or five periods : (1) the Older Academy, Plato's most inime- datle circle of scholars and the succeeding generations, extending to about 260 u. r ; (2) the Middle Academy, which took a sceptical direction, and in which aa older school of Arcesilaus and a younger school of Carneades (about 160) are 4i»ururaished ; (3) the New Academy, which with Philo of Larissa (about 100) mrned back to the old dogmatUui, and with Antiochus of Ascalon (about twenty- bt? rears later) turned into the paths of Eclecticism. Concerning the two (or fcwxr i later forms cf. Part II. ch. 1. Later the Neo- Platonic school took posses-
u<ti of the Academy. Cf. Part II. ch. 2.
To the Older Academy belonged men of great erudition and honourable per-
•naatity. The heart* of the school were Speualppna, the nephew of Plato, Tawx utile of Chalcedon, Polemo and Crate* of Athens ; beside these, Philip of i >pus and Heracleldes from Pontic Heraclea are to be mentioned fnns; the older, and Crantor among the younger members. Less closely frhued with the school were the astronomers Eudoxus of Cnidos and the Pythagorean Archytaa of Tarentum. R. Heinze, Xenoerates (Leips.
