GREAT WESTERN PHILOSOPHERS
II
MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY
The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy
I. Synthesis of Greek philosophy with scriptural religion (Bible, Koran).
A. Faith is not irrational
1. Many truths of religion can be proved by reason
2. Many important truths cannot be proven and must be accepted on faith...your folks are your folks.
a. Accepting some beliefs on faith does increase risk of believing something false.
b. But it is equally an epistemic problem when you fail to commit yourself to belief in the truth.
B. Religion needs philosophy
1. A simple faith is in danger of being destroyed when it is challenged intellectually, e.g. There's a conflict between science and religion, or Science has answered all the questions so we don't need religion.
2. You can't love what you don't know.
II. Augustine (Platonic) and Aquinas (Aristotelian)
Introduction to God: Traditional
(Philosophically informed Augustine and Aquinas. Jews and Muslims will say much the same, although on some issues signficant debate.)
I. Overarching idea: God is absolutely perfect and unlimited.
A. Religious adequacy
B. What the proofs prove.
II. Only 1.
III. Omnipotent
A. Can't do the logically impossible.
1.Is He limited by logic then? No.
2. Does He create or invent the laws of logic? No. If He had, then He'd transcend them and we couldn't think or talk meaningfully about Him at all.
3. Logic is a reflection of the nature of God.
B. Can't forget or make a mistake or stub His toe. Nothing for which limitation is a prerequisite.
C. Can't sin. Sin=to will what God wills you not to will.
-- God can do anything which is not logically impossible FOR A PERFECT AND UNLIMITED BEING --
IV. Omnibenevolent, perfectly Good, perfectly Just.
--The Euthyphro problem--
1. Is there an external moral order to which God conforms. No!
2. Does God create or invent the laws of morality? No!
a. If He had, then Moral order would be arbitrary.
b. "God is good" would be empty of positive meaning.
3. The moral law (like logic) is a reflection of God's nature. God is the standard for all good...neither circumscribed by moral order, nor inventing it.
V. Omniscient. Knows past, present, and future.
VI. Eternal. Outside of time. Timeless -- but there are two possible meanings for these terms -- everlasting or REALLY outside of time.
VII. Omnipresent (Ubiquitous)
VIII. Necessary -- by His very nature He cannot possibly fail to exist.
IX. Creator -- of everything
A. Why? Love
B. How?
1. Out of what? Ex nihilo
2. How? by thinking.
3. When? Always...God is sustaining everything in being.
-- N.B. This is not to deny natural causation. The fire really does burn the cotton. The whole system is immediately sustained in being by God, so God can be said to be the Primary Cause, but natural things really do have causal powers, Secondary Causation.
a.)You have to say this, otherwise you can't do science. 1.) Science talks in terms of causal connections. 2.) Observation IS a causal connections. 3.) The natures of things are largely constituted by their causal connections.
b.)And it's actually more respectful of divine power to say that God
made things with powers of their own.
VIII. Personal
A. A person
B. Providential, interested in us
A few words on biblical interpretation
A. Bible is all true. It's the inerrant word of God. Augustine: It's all literally true, however....
B. That doesn't mean that it can or should always be taken in its prima facie sense. (e.g. the physics text book)
C. Great deal of care and education and working within Church tradition and Church community.
D. So, for example, Genesis. 6 Days? Can't take it in its prima facie sense for a couple of reasons.
1. Conflicts with other parts of Bible -- God is working up to the present time
2. Terms obviously require interpretation. The Sun isn't created until the 4th day.
3. Comes up with an interpretation which squares very nicely with some
versions of evolution.
The problem of evil.
Folks will say that this God we've described certainly (His non-existence can be proven) or at least probably (there is good evidence against His existence) does not exist, since His existence is inconsistent with the fact of evil.
-- If God is perfectly good He'd want to get rid of evil. If He's all-powerful He'd be able to. And yet there's evil.
-- If God is the absolute source of everything, then He must be the source of evil. But we said He's perfectly good, so He can't be the source of evil. Therefore there cannot be a God such as we've described.
St. Augustine of Hippo 354-430
(First to offer a well-developed synthesis. Laid the foundation for much of western thought. Addressed fundamental issues...among them this problem of evil. First task is to trace through this problem. A lot of important issues will be raised in the process.)
--Moral evil (wrong choices and the bad consequences of those wrong
choices) vs. Natural evil (pain, suffering, harm in general NOT the result
of wrong choices) -- (Manicheans run them together)
I. Manicheanism: Augustine believed it for a long time, eventually rejects it and becomes a major opponent. It's a perennial ideology which never quite dies out. We've seen versions of it in our own day. Malignant.
A. Basically accepting the Judeo-Christian God, but...
B. There is an equal and opposite force...a bad divinity.
1. Good = light and spirit
2. Evil = darkness and matter
3. Physical world is made by the bad god.
4. Eternal struggle between the two...we are the battleground.
C. So we can explain evil...there's just always been this bad god. People do evil because they're dragged down by their bodies.
D. Implications
1. Worst thing is to procreate.
2. Death is neat.
E. 20th century. George Lucas, Heaven's Gate
F. Augustine rejects it eventually. What if he hadn't?
G. Manicheanism fundamentally contradictory. You can't believe
in anything like the Judeo-Christian God and accept that there's an equal
and opposite.
II. God is the omnipotent creator, and He made all things good.
-- This includes the human body. He's a dualist, but not a Platonic
dualist. You are a unity of body and soul. Death is a bad thing because
it is a wrenching apart of what ought to be together. Eventually you get
your body back after death.
III. So where does evil come from?
A. It's not a thing, but rather a lack or corruption or perversion of the good. Time Bandits. Read from Confessions VII, 12.
B. Free will.
1. Wouldn't it have been better if God had made us so we'd just do the good necessarily?
2. No. Then we'd be automata.
IV. Natural Evil
A. Much can be traced to moral evil.
B. The actual universe with its causal system and its creatures is a
very good thing, and the suffering is an intrinsic part.
IV. Why is there so much moral evil?
A. Original Sin
1.. The one Christian doctrine which is empirically provable. Do the experiment...
2. That implausible?
3. Not a pessimistic view of human nature.
V. How do we get out of this terrible situation?
A. Grace. Goal is salvation. Can't possibly dig your way out on your own.
B. Pelagians. You don't need grace. If you try really, really
hard you can be good enough to merit heaven on your own.
--Semi-Pelagianism: You
DO need grace, but you can MERIT it.
VI. Augustine rejects Pelagianism.
A. Makes the Christian story nonsense.
B. Limits divine sovereignty
VII. The Impact on the Protestant Reformers like Luther and Calvin
A. Catholics and Protestants agree that Grace is...
1. necessary
2. unmerited
B. Disagreement over whether or not it is irresistible, Catholic Church
leaves room open for free cooperation with grace, whereas Luther and Calvin,
following Augustine, put all the causal power into the hands of God.
VIII.. Defense of Augustine's view from politics. (I suspect there's a streak of Augustinianism in you.)
1. Pelagianism in the political arena is Utopianism.
2. E.g. The Republic...let's give the philosopher-king absolute power. It's okay because he's the best and the brightest. Sure!
3. 20th century...Fascism or Marxism...throw off the old morality, put the right race or class in the saddle and we can save ourselves. And what you get is Auschwitz and the Gulag.
4. Our founding fathers much more Augustinian. Three branches
of government for checks and balances.
IX. Augustine's political views -- extremely anti-Utopian. No theocracy. No divine right of kings.
--note that Augustine sees the state as basically the guys with the guns--
A. The state is not a natural institution. Something deeply disordered about one bunch of folks authorized to use force against another, given that we're all fundamentally equal. Society and Family, on the other hand, are natural institutions.
B. There has to be a state...because of original sin.
C So state is important and does have its own role to play in the world. D. Can't trust it any farther than you can throw it.
D. System unimportant...just so it
1. keeps order enough to enable people to meet their physical needs
2. allows you to worship God.
E. Church is more important as its role is more important, but Church
should not try to mess with the business of the state. But note that
this does not mean that Christians shouldn't participate in government.
Augustine's Ethics
I. The goal of human existence is happiness
II. "...the happy life exists when that which is man's chief good is both loved and possessed."
III. God (The only thing that can make you perfectly happy.)
A. Everything else can be lost against your will
B. (?) Hunger for the absolute? Ultimate meaning and value?
V. Does this mean we all have to be theologians? No. Just keep God at the top.
VI. What is it to choose evil?
A. No evil per se.
B. When you choose a lesser good. When you put things out of order. Disordered love.
C. Consistently choose evil you are tending towards nothingness...you
destroy yourself, become less human, less social, less rational.
Epistemology
I. We don't learn from the words of the teacher. (Remember Gorgias? Words are mere symbols.)
A. ingens cuniculus albus, viridis struthocamelus
B. You wouldn't know ‘huge white rabbit' if you hadn't had the things pointed out to you. (Note that Augustine gives a little more credit to the senses than Plato in that the idea of the natural species may be accessible from the individual itself.)
Real KNOWLEDGE is true belief acquired through direct acquaintance. (Remember that it is reasonable to commit to "mere" beliefs. We can't navigate the world if we don't believe lots of stuff on the testimony of others.)
II. What about the things you know that we can't point to?
A. Necessary truths like: 2+2=4, math; -(A&-A), logic; It's better to be smart than stupid, value.
B. These truths are ...
1. objective
2. immutable and eternal
C. Plato: recollection
D. Augustine: illumination
1. no preexistence of soul.
2. truths are in God, in fact God's nature is the absolute standard for logic, math and value. So Plato's World of the Forms is now the mind of God. God=Truth (with a capital T...primal Truth).
3. Divine Illumination
4. Need illumination to know anything because to make sense out of sense data need a preexisting cognitive framework.
III. Proof for God
A. If I can show you something which is 1.) immutable and eternal, 2.) superior to the human mind (which is the best thing we know in this world) and 3.) the source of the entire observable world, wouldn't that be God?
1. Math, logic, morality, ...all facets of Truth...immutable and eternal
2. Superior to the human mind because it's the standard against which the mind is judged.
3. Source of all because everything in order to be must have form, form
is a function of mathematical equations.
B. Ultimate goal of knowledge is to get closer to God, acheive a mystical vision of God.
-------n.b.-------For Augustine can't really talk about any aspect of
the human condition without talking about God. Knowledge. Ethics.
God is the goal.
THOMAS AQUINAS 1225-1274
I. Importance
A. Catholic Church
B. Philosophy of Religion
C. Aristotelian ethics and politics
II. Background
A. Augustine -- There's an interesting difference, though. Aquinas will give the system a more Aristotelian spin. Means that, whereas for Augustine you just can't answer any philosophical question properly without involving God. So, e.g. ethics and epistemology. Aquinas will say that you can't answer any question fully without involving God, but you can get a correct, if limited, answer without bringing God into the picture. See this clearly in his epistemology and in his ethics. "Humanism".
B. Aristotle...Texts preserved in monasteries in Middle East. Rediscovered, translated, and commented upon by Islamic thinkers. Reach Europe by the end of the 12th century.
1. Big problem -- Some of what Aristotle says is just not consistent with Judaism, Christianity, or Islam. For example, the nature and role of Aristotle's god, the Unmoved Mover, is radically different from what Muslims (and Jews and Christians) are going to attribute to God.
a. Averroes. So what do we do when Aristotle seems to conflict with the Quran? The Quran has to give.
b. Is the world everlasting?
1. Yes, and that does seem to conflict with the Quran, but it's not big deal. Not that important how many days there are in the past.
2. But WHY say the world is everlasting? Because an immutable cause must produce an immutable effect. God does not act as an agent in the world. He does not even know us as individuals.
3. Puts philosophy in a bad oder among Muslims.
2. Christians in Europe in 13th century.
a. Latin Averroists
b. Aristotle is bad and shouldn't be taught!
c. Aquinas.
Epistemology (very different from Augustine)
I. Empiricist. All (natural) knowledge starts with the senses. (God could work a miracle on you -- supernatural knowledge -- but don't hold your breath.)
A. Rational mind abstracts universal from sense data
B. Even the truths of mathematics and logic can be abstracted.
II. There are important truths that reason alone will not deliver. We also need revelation (i.e. Scripture...the Church).
A. Careful to distinguish appropriate spheres of faith and reason (what you can absolutely prove to any rational person, vs. what you accept on the basis of testimony)...mindful of the unhappy experience of the Muslims, e.g. Averroes (Ibn Rushd)
B. Reason can get you pretty far...we can prove that there's a God and various things about Him.
C. Need revelation...
1. Not everybody has the time or the talent to do philosophy.
2. There are important truths, necessary for salvation, which you can't get from reason alone, e.g. Trinity, Incarnation.
D. Reason and Revelation will never be in conflict. Truth is truth.
Proving God: The Five Ways
I. Is the world eternal (i.e. everlasting)?
A. Aristotle: Yes. An immutable cause must produce an immutable effect.
B. Conflicts with religions of the Book. No first day. No agent God who acts and interacts with our world.
C. Some of Aquinas' predecessors had argued that you can prove it one way or the other.
D. Aquinas:
1. You can't prove it either way philosophically.
2. So it's reasonable to go with revelation as a matter of faith.
3. When doing philosophy just leave it an open question.
4. None of the Five Ways depends on their being a temporal beginning
to the world. None of the Five Ways purports to show that there was a temporal
beginning to the world.
II. Empiricist...all proofs start with an observable fact about the
world. Note the effect and argue back to a cause.
III. The proofs.
A. The First Way
1. Aristotle's proof for an Unmoved Mover
2. Might ask whether or not we're really proving God, then. Need all five.
B. The Second Way
1. Proof for a first cause for the being of things.
("Contingent" being...the sort of thing which might or might not exist. We can conceive of its not existing. Its existence requires a cause.)
2. Mirror analogy again. Something which is an uncaused source of being.
C. The Third Way
1. A necessary being...i.e. a being which could not possibly fail to exist...whose very nature it is to be.
D. The Fourth Way
1. Gradation in value an objective fact about the world.
2. Thus...
a. Mother Theresa is better than Adolf Hitler. (An objective fact)
b. We couldn't recognize this if we did not perceive a standard. (Better or worse in relationship to what?)
c. Standard must be the source of good...goodness is an objective quality that things have, some more, some less.
d. So for all perfections.
Alternate version focusing on moral value very popular in 19th-20th
centuries, widely accepted by intellectuals. -God > -moral order.
Logical truth, modus tollens, negating the consequent (A > B) > (-B
> -A)
3. A version: Law requires a law giver. If there is an objective moral order, it must be the case that there is an objective standard for moral value.
4. This really begins to sound like God.
E. The Fifth Way (The Teleological Argument, Argument from Design)
In the news a lot lately through version of argument fall under "Intelligent Design"
1. Is there any contradiction between belief in evolution of species as a scientific theory (science: studying empirical facts to construct theories and discover what's the case about the physical world) and belief in Judea-Christian God?
a. No! Secondary Causation
b. Suppose we say, naturalism including evolution is sufficient to explain everything, therefore there is no God. Does that conflict with belief in God? Is it science?
2. Intelligent Design: There is some specific aspect of the universe that cannot be explained naturalistically.
E.g. (for example) Irreducibly complex systems -- whole system must
be in place for survival trait to exist, therefore it could not have evolved
gradually.
Standard Criticism:
[ Re teaching it in science class, Intelligent Design if it's saying we can show there's a God, really isn't science. It's philosophy.]
God of the gaps, i.e. invoking God to explain something that science
can't explain yet, but no reason to suppose science won't be able to in
future.
3. Aquinas' version is different. It's not some particular aspect of the universe that points to God. It's the fact that there's order at all. Every physical phenomenon in the universe, All these non-rational things, behave in this repetitious way .
So the proof goes like this:
A. There is universal order.
B. Universal order is a contingent phenomenon. (Even more clear for us with Big Bang)
C. Must be a cause which bring universal order into being.
D. Only a rational designer could produce order.
And this all men call God.
ETHICS
I. Eternal Law > Natural Law
II. The Goal is happiness...here and now through fullfilling your nature
...just like Aristotle..ultimately eternal happiness with God.
III. What are we?
A. Rational, Social animals
B. Innate desires e.g....
1. Self-preservation
2. Procreation
3. Society (so it's not selfish)
4. Knowledge
C. Universal...though doesn't mean everybody is going to act just the same.
IV. "Unnatural"
A. Not...1.) Nobody wants to do it, 2.) Animals don't do it, or 3.) Artificial.
B. But rather....It's bad for you. (Eating dirt)
V. Can the Natural Law be changed, even by God? Yes and no.
A. Can't ‘subtract' from it. I.e. if something is good can't make it bad, if it's bad can't make it good, since the criterion is just what is objectively helpful or harmful to the human animal.
B. Have to add to it.
1. The Divine Law
a. Pertains to our eternal destiny
b. Couldn't be learned through reason
c. e.g. faith, hope and charity
2. Specifications for a particular society...i.e....
VI. Human Law
A. Comes from Natural Law
1. E.g. speed limits...not necessary in all societies, but is in ours...
2. May differ
a. different situations. 80MPH
b. need a rule, not important exactly what rule. Driving
on the left.
B. If not from Natural Law, then not really ‘binding in conscience.' Assumptions which undergird our own system...
1. moral order above the rule of the state...there can be bad laws
2. moral status just in virtue of being a human being (not money, intelligence etc.)
C. Even a good law can't cover all cases.
D. Required to disobey law when it goes against God...e.g. Mossitism.
E. However (of course!) usually you should obey even a bad law in the
interests of civil order.
POLITICS
I. Remember Augustine's dim view.
A. State is a result of original sin...a ‘necessary evil.'
B. Best we can hope for is order and freedom to worship.
II. Aquinas is much more positive.
A. The state is a natural institution (i.e. it grows out of human nature)
1. We are naturally social and...
2. Need a group to do the job of organizing things.
B. Point is to help people lead good and happy lives...that's what justifies authority.
C. The Best State
1. In theory a monarchy...assuming we've got a really good monarch. Advantage is the monarch will be more efficienct since there's only one of him. Unity. Problem is it's hard to get a great monarch, and even if you manage to get one, he won't last and it's really hard to get two in a row.
2. In practice...a constitutional monarchy with a mixture of forms of government
a. monarch
b. advisors (aristocracy)
c. officials elected by the people (democracy)
D. What if you get a tyrant. Rules for himself and not the good of the people? Throw the bastard out! If...
1. Things are so bad that it's really worth the cost of instability...maybe war.
2. You're reasonably sure you can win. No point in just making things worse.
3. You're reasonably sure you'll be able to replace him with something better (!).
E. No Divine Right of Kings!
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