Tag Archives: Aristotle

Some Impediments to Ancient Philosophy in the Classroom

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The talk continues on why philosophy does not appeal to more, the need for public outreach on behalf of philosophy, and there is everywhere in the profession a hue and cry about the state of academic philosophy.  That academic philosophers should have a concern is entirely understandable, for laying aside complaints of self-interest on their part, most people, if they ever get the opportunity, will only seriously engage philosophy in the college classroom.

Yet, in order to fully understand the scope of this problem, we will need to first ascertain the desired solution to our predicament.  Do we want more enrollment in philosophy courses?  Do we want people to incorporate philosophical thinking into their daily lives?  Do we want philosophy departments to have more influence and sway within universities? Do we want more philosophers with prominent public roles?  In the end, I am not sure what the goal of attempting to broaden the reach of philosophy consists in.

However, as part of my answer, I will take it as uncontroversial that if I am to constrain this concern to ancient philosophy, most encounters with ancient philosophy for the average person are limited to university classrooms.  Thus, I am prompted to answer the practical question: what hinders more students from studying and pursuing ancient philosophy in the classroom?

Without a doubt, some of these impediments will undoubtedly apply to philosophy classrooms in general, or even the university setting at large.

Obscurity is always a problem in philosophy.  And in ancient philosophy we have a difficulty probably seen in other philosophical divisions as well: The articles and books written on the subject are not, usually, the central or main ideas of a particular ancient book or author.  Now I mention this not as a complaint; after all, we have millennia of scholarship on the “big ideas” of ancient philosophy, and tenure and philosophical fortunes must be made on new ideas, not the well-trodden.  Nevertheless, what attracts students to say, The Republic, are probably concerns and interests reflective of the scope of the whole work rather than Platonic esoterica relating the Republic to the Parmenides or Sophist, or parsing the minutiae of a Platonic argument spanning scarcely three Stephanus lines.  What this minimally requires of the professor, I think, is an acknowledgement that the intellectual concerns of the student of ancient philosophy might not align with his or her research interests, as reflected in assignments and readings.  Yet, if this is not acknowledged, and I think it often is not, then a student’s further pursuit of ancient philosophy is liable to wane.

A second area of obscurity (since obscurity, as a condition of its existence, likes to dabble) is not obscurity in the subject, but in the methods of discourse.  Some of these are within the control of the professor, some not.  I have often reflected how the self-worth of many academics is anchored to knowledge of their speciality.  It then seems that in order to retain this specialized knowledge, and its requisite self-worth, the professor hesitates to disseminate this knowledge, as this might take away that share of philosophical arcana that has, to this point, been specially entrusted to reside in himself.  Of course, there are also socially accepted forms of discourse that, acceptable and even illuminating as they are among specialists, do little to advance the clarity or joy of ancient philosophy in the classroom.  I think it is often forgotten that Socrates was accosting people in the street and speaking with the everyman in the marketplace, and that Aristotle, even though perhaps exclusively interacting with upper-class youths, was engaging men who would be influential and industrial citizens, not necessarily philosophers.

As a final observation on this last point, I would also like to mention how difficult it is to initiate dialectic and dialogue in today’s classroom.  As anyone who has spent time in groups knows, the dynamics of going from around 12-15 people to more, has a limiting impact on the participation and atmosphere of the students and the teacher.  This has been worsened, in my experience, by classes spiraling as large as 75 (at UCSD, under the popular Monte Johnson), when a few years before a similar class was capped in the 30s.  If ancient philosophy is supposed to reflect either generally or occasionally the practice of Socrates with the average Athenian, then I think we can do more to reflect this in our classrooms.

 

Why Should Philosophers Care About Ancient Philosophy?

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The apologist in the humanities springs forth as a perennial, an eager advocate for this old man or that classic tome, often as not incurring the wrath of modernity at least as great as his own love for antiquity.  Even these defenses of the humanities ––classics, philosophy and literature being closest to my heart–– have become treasured chestnuts: “It enriches the individual,” “Humanities matters for its own sake,” “It is the source of X or Y.”

Instead of these appeals, which, in my understanding, would only reach those already possessed of a humanistic sympathy, I wish to offer four pragmatic reasons to be interested in ancient philosophy.  These reasons are particularly addressed to those interested in philosophy, especially modern philosophers, whether professors or students or avid amateurs.

1) Ancient Philosophy is a 2,300 year old conversion with great minds.
While there are undoubtedly many great treatises that are being written, or have been in recent memory, there are a number of benefits from focusing on a field of study which has persisted through millennia.  As opposed, to say, Wittgenstein, who has had less than 100 years worth of great minds commenting and interacting with his work, Aristotle has had a prolonged engagement with generation upon generation of thinkers.  Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, Hobbes, have all either borrowed, adapted, or explicitly confronted Aristotelean ideas.  These, fortunately, are only some of the philosophers who have gone to the mat with Aristotle; there are countless others, including commentators from late antiquity whose sole ambition was to write on Aristotle.  So two philosophical birds can be had with one stone: if you read other great philosophers on Aristotle, you get two great minds on worthwhile topics.

2) Ancient philosophy provides a common framework for philosophy.
If the definition of philosophy is frustratingly difficult to come by, perhaps we can at least have (or preserve) the canonical philosophy that the Greeks have given to us.  The questions about what is, how we ought to live, how we can know, are central to ancient philosophy, to be sure, but these inquiries continue to guide philosophy in modern intellectual contexts as well.  It is hard to imagine a philosophical question worth pursuing that does not first show up in the pages of Plato, even if it shows up in the philosophical master’s periphery and was not his whole landscape.

3) Ancient Philosophy offers a helping hand.
It is uncontroversial, I hope, to say that every age has its moral or intellectual blindspots.  There are problems we face and cannot solve precisely because we are the responsible party for the undetected arrival of the original difficulty. A benefit of ancient philosophy, however, is that, at the very least, these thinkers do not share the same handicaps that we do.  For their faults, whatever they are, they will not count among them either consumerism, political correctness, or technological worship.  What this means is that when it comes to overlapping philosophical interests, the ancients will have different perspectives and concerns than us, which in turn can provide us novel and insightful answers to the issues we think we have discovered for the first time.

4) Ancient Philosophy explains the ancient origins of modern philosophy.
Did you know that Aristotle gives philosophical reasons to adopt a systematics, that is, a system of animal classification, hundreds of years before Carl Linnaeus? [1] And that this system of classification was in direct response to competing Platonist classifications?  Although surprising, a seemingly “modern” area of philosophy such as the philosophy of biology was already blooming in ancient literature.  Similarly, although outdated in many parts, Aristotle’s Physics and Plato’s Timaeus offer compelling reasoning in such areas as the philosophy of time [2] and various elements of the cosmological argument.  Of course, metaphysics and ethics are plentiful in the Platonic and Aristotelean corpus, and never go out of style.  There are few, if any, books on ethics which can surpass the Nicomachean Ethics.  Even in logic [3] or philosophy of language [4] there is a robust fount of philosophy that began well before those influential modern disciplines, and still have much to offer for those willing to put in the time.

REFERENCES:

[1] See Parts of Animals, Book 1
[2] See Aristotle, Physics, Book 4, Ch. 1-14
[3] see Aristotle’s Organon
[4] The Organon once again, and Plato’s Cratylus)

Aristotle: Measuring Virtue by Pleasure

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Aristotle’s Rhetoric is thought by many to be among his most polished works, yet it still can be a dry read for the technical jargon and lengthy list-like discussions found within it.  It also has, at least in part because of the poor, sophistical reputation that rhetoric, as a field, has acquired for itself, suffered a philosophical fate worse than it probably should have.

Nevertheless, because of the daunting enormity of the task in becoming virtuous according to Aristotelian rigor, in that one must possess all of the virtues and be virtuous in such a way that a given action is expressed spontaneously as a reflection of a developed character, I have begun to wonder if there is way to measure progress toward that goal.

One possibility occurred to me as I was reading the Rhetoric on the topic of pleasure.  Aristotle says, in enumerating the things that are pleasurable, that:

For the habitual [is pleasurable] as if it has already become to be by nature.  And a habit of a certain kind is like nature, for often is similar to always, and nature pertains to the always, while the habitual pertains to the often.  Furthermore the non-compulsory [is pleasurable] (Rhetoric, 1370a6-10). [1]

One notion that is assumed in this discussion is that the natural is pleasurable,[2] as can be inferred from this passage, but also from Aristotle’s remark that the non-compulsory is pleasurable.  Presumably then, the compulsory is not-pleasurable, nor natural, while the non-compulsory is natural, or can approach being natural (which always happens) by occurring “often” even if not “always.”

Thus for one practicing the Aristotelian virtues, a very pertinent question to ask oneself in  making ethical progress is whether or not you are experiencing pleasure while doing it.  If, during given instances of practicing character or intellectual virtues, you feel no pleasure, you have probably not achieved the ideal of virtue in that sphere.  Do you feel no spark of joy while performing what you know to be a just action?  Do you have no pleasure when an act of courage is called for?  Are you not pleased when acting prudently, and in general, avoiding the extremes of ethical endeavors, as opposed to the mean? Then it is perhaps necessary to re-evaluate the status of your ethical condition in general and in particulars.

 

REFERENCES:
[1] καὶ γὰρ τὸ εἰθισμένον ὥσπερ πεφυκὸς ἤδη γίγνεται·
ὅμοιον γάρ τι τὸ ἔθος τῇ φύσει· ἐγγὺς γὰρ καὶ τὸ πολλάκις
τῷ ἀεί, ἔστιν δ’ ἡ μὲν φύσις τοῦ ἀεί, τὸ δὲ ἔθος τοῦ πολ-
λάκις καὶ τὸ μὴ βίαιον (παρὰ φύσιν γὰρ ἡ βία, διὸ τὸ
ἀναγκαῖον λυπηρόν…

[2] Perhaps a contentious notion.  Also worth noting here is that although Aristotle will later deny that pleasure is a motion (NE 10.4.2), as he takes it to be here, I think this not relevant to the point I am making .