THE NEED FOR PHILOSOPHY

I was reading a commentary on Herodotus by Professor Vandiver, and she pointed out that for the Greek audience who listened to his histories, Herodotus digressed to write about the cultural difference between the Greek norm and the nations he visited.  The further out from the center of the earth, which was at Delphi, the stranger the cultures.  My culture is academic, my schooling philosophy and science, and thus by inclination and studies I am out of time, for I am a Greek philosopher in a modern world.  Thus many things are strange, the center of my world is at the University of Manitoba (the geographic center of North America).  It is not just pierced, painted, and dyed flesh, but also religious practices, clothing worn for ornamentation, recreational shopping, and hobbies which consume much and return little.  Everything has an alternative, and to me hobbies which promote health, mental sharpness, and a knowledge of practical things is better than violin and chess playing, knitting and vacuous tube watching.    

For each person there is an historical analysis which accounts for their choices.  And for society social Darwinism provides the explanation for cultural diversity.  Birds develop varied courting practices, dogs too, and humans also.  As we go up the ladder of brain size in proportion to body weight, there is an increase in variation within the species.  But are we more complex dog?  Are we a product of a complex history of reinfocements?

The Greek philosophers had an answer.  Aristotle said (following a tradition of analysis over 2-centuries old) that man was a rational animal.  The degree of each depends on the training which the rational portion received--in philosophy, of course.  In those days philosophy included our current logic, epistemology, ontology, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics, but also political science, psychology, science, life sciences, and mathematics--what today is called a liberal arts education.    

Some concepts are not easily stated in our language.  And rather than say Greek philosopher, I had elsewhere coined the rinkers (rational thinkers).  Concerning this goal and the advantages of obtaining it, these ancient philosophers were in agreement—with of course endless squabbling over details.  They justified the need for philosophical education through the advantages a rinker would have, and also a society made up of rinkers. 

Their chain of arguments compelling; principle topics:

1).  What good is (what ought we as rinkers and in the political state trying to maximize)?  

2).  Good life:

     a).  Pleasure and pain

b).  Freedom from poverty

          c).  Education and the examined life     

d).  Freedom from fears

     e).  Gods

     f).  Honorable behavior

     g).  Doing things in the right proportion

h).  Political/social obligations

i).  Friendship and security

The most common answer for the philosophers was that pleasure is good. Plato argued this in but one of his dialogues, Aristotle in Niocehean Ethics, Epititus the stoic in Discourses, and Epicurus in the letters and maxims preserved by Diogenes Leartius.  If they didn’t write directly on what was the highest good, they wrote indirectly by concerning themselves with the question of what one should do to live the good life.  The goal was to develop habits of character so that one would pursue activities that yielded the purer pleasures, those whose price tag of expenses and pains were lowest in comparison to their enjoyment.  

Epicurus gives the most satisfying explanation,[i] and it him that I shall rely upon.  He holds that pleasure is the highest good, and all things of value or valued because of their relation to or perceived relation to pleasure.  And of the pleasures he advises that we should seek the purest, those with the least expense and associated discomforts.  His maxims paint the picture of what sorts of qualities of character maximize the good life.  What follows is his words (The first “#)” is that assigned to the maxim and the end “(#)” is the page in Strodach):

A).  Pleasures and pains

8).  No pleasure is bad in itself.  But the things that make for pleasure in certain cases entail disturbances many times greater than the pleasures themselves (197).

29).  Some desires are (1) natural and necessary, others (2) natural but not necessary, still others (3) neither natural nor necessary but generated by senseless whims (201).  

9).  If all pleasures could be compressed in time and intensity, and were characteristic of the whole man or his more important aspects, the various pleasures would not differ from each other (197)[ii].

12).  The wise man will marry and beget children (109).

3).  The quantitative limit of pleasure is the elimination of all feelings of pain.  Wherever the pleasurable state exists, there is neither bodily pain nor mental pain nor both together, so long as state continues (196).

6).  Any means by which it is possible to procure freedom from fearing other men is natural good (197).

21).  One who understands the limits of the good life knows that what eliminates the pains brought on by need and what makes the whole of life perfect is easily obtained, so that there is no need for enterprises that entail the struggle for success (200). 

B).  Freedom from poverty

19).  He will be prudent about his property and provide for the future (109).

C).  Education and the examined life

4).  A man cannot become wise in any and every bodily condition or in every nationality (108).

11).  We would have no need for natural science unless we were worried by apprehensiveness regarding the heavenly bodies, by anxiety about the meaning of death, and also by our failure to understand the limitations of pain desire (198).

12).  It is impossible to get rid of our anxieties about essentials if we do not understand the nature of the universe and are apprehensive about some of the theological accounts.  Hence it is impossible to enjoy our pleasures unadulterated without natural science (198). 

D).  Freedom from fears

2).  Death means nothing to us, because that which has been broken down into atoms has no sensations and that which has no sensation is no concern of ours (196).

E).  Gods

9).  Love is not divinely sent (108).

1).  The blessed and indestructible being of the divine has no concerns of its own, nor does it make trouble for others.  It is not affected by feelings of anger or benevolence, because these are found where there is lack of strength (196)

24).  Dreams have neither divine character nor prophetic power but are generated by influx of atomic images.

123).  The irreligious man is not the person who destroys the gods of the masses but the person who imposes the ideas of the masses on the gods (179).

F).  Honorable behavior

17).  The just man is least disturbed by passions, the unjust man the most highly disturbed (199).

1.  Men inflict injuries from hatred, jealousy or contempt, but the wise man maters all these passions by means of reason (108). 

5).  It is impossible to live the pleasant life without also living sensibly, nobly, and justly, and conversely it is impossible to live sensible, nobly, and justly without living pleasantly.  A person who does not have a pleasant life is not living sensibly, nobly, and justly, and conversely the person who does not have these virtues cannot live pleasantly (197).

31).  The justice that seeks nature’s goal is utilitarian pledge to men not to harm each other or be harmed (201).

G).  Doing things in the right proportion

68).  Nothing is sufficient for the person who finds sufficiency too little (207).[iii]

44).  The wise man, after adjusting himself to the bare necessities of life, understands better how to share than to take—so large is the fund of self-sufficiency that he has discovered (206).

20).  He will love country life (109).

15).  Nature’s wealth is restricted and easily won, while that of empty convention runs on to infinity (198).

11).  For most people leisure is a stupor, and activity is a frenzy.

H).  Political/social obligations

10).  The wise man will not make high-flown speeches in public (109).

14).  Nor will he meddle in politics (109).

I).  Friendship and security

14).  The simplest means of procuring protection from the other men (which is gained to a certain extent by deterrent force) is the security of quiet solitude and withdrawal from the mass of people (198).

27).  Of all the things that wisdom provides for the happiness of the who man, by far the most important is the acquisition of friendship (201)[iv]. 

      Central to an understanding of the good life is the concepts of Ataraxia & Eudemonia

52).  Friendship {good cheer} dances round the world, summoning every one of us to awaken to the gospel of the happy life (206).

79).  The impassive soul disturbs neither itself or others (207).

129).  And so we speak of pleasure as the starting point and the goal of the happy life because we realize that it is our primary native good, because every act of choice and aversion originates with it, and because we come back to it when we judge every good by using the pleasure feeling as our criterion (182).