(Aristotle 10) Worldly and Other-Worldly Ethics; Aristotle vs. Plato

                                                                   Plato (327-428 BCE)

 

Plato and Aristotle are not fundamentally at odds in many respects. But there is a fault line that separates them. It is a fault line that ran through European culture for centuries, though things are relatively quiet along that fault these days. That fault line is the love of the world versus contempt for the world – this “fallen” world we live in and it was no less “fallen” during the lifetimes of Plato and his student Aristotle. It may take a few entries for me to make sense of this fault line.  

    This fault line runs through their respective thinking, starting with their thinking about Being or reality as a whole (seen as a limited whole, sub specie aeternitatis – from the perspective of eternity, as Spinoza and then Wittgenstein put it). Plato's other-worldliness leads to a view of forms as transcendent, abstract ideas - the so-called form, that intelligible aspect of beings that a clear, ego-less mind can apprehend in a limited way - accessible only through purely intellectual contemplation. Aristotle's worldliness results in a conception of forms as immanent, intrinsic to the physical world, and unknowable without our senses. For Plato and Aristotle, the reality of, say, a tree or a circle makes it intelligible, knowable to us – that which makes it what it is, what kind of a thing it is. The reality of the tree imprints our mind when we understand that the word “tree” (or Baum, Boom, Arbor, δένδρον, дерево, Treow, etc. – words expressing the same “idea” or concept): that is, understand that the particular tree we perceive and perhaps find beautiful is intelligible and that other beings are essentially like it. If we are fortunate enough to be in a position to do so, we can refine and deepen this initial imprinting of reality (e.g. of trees) as long as we are fully alive.

   But the difference is where reality-as-intelligibility – as that which discloses or reveals itself – is located, ontologically, for the two fathers of philosophy (as I understand it): for Aristotle, it is in our world, in the things themselves, in trees themselves; for Plato, our world is at best a pale reflection of reality and at worst a bad copy. Aristotelian impetus is to immerse ourselves in the trees we see with our eyes; for Plato, we cannot trust our eyes and must turn inward to the intellect instead, which is the part of us able (with appropriate education and training) to intellectually “see” the real world of ideas that exists in another dimension. Reality imagined in the world suggests a love of the world; reality imaged outside the world implies a devaluing and demeaning of the world.

 

. . .

 

   We observe this Faultline and Plato’s side of it in the famous “Allegory of the Cave.” The allegory begins with prisoners who have lived their entire lives chained inside a cave. Behind the prisoners is a fire, and between the fire and the prisoners are people carrying puppets or other objects. These cast shadows on the opposite wall. Plato would have used the screen for his allegory were he alive today. The prisoners watch these shadows, believing this to be their reality as they've known nothing else. These prisoners do not understand that they are prisoners. They do not understand that the shadows that they take for real are social constructs. These social constructs appear on the cave wall (the screen) only because it is in the interest of the constructors – those with the power to construct – that the prisoners internalize their particular constructs as real. For example, the prisoner’s idea of “trees” are social constructs that mask the reality of real “treeness” i.e. the true and complete idea that only the intellect (nous) can apprehend.

     The idea is that the power holders construct images of the things we experience, including deep concepts like ‘soul’, ‘self,’ ‘human nature’ ‘nature,’ ‘beauty’, ‘pleasure,’ ‘valuable’, and ‘justice.’ The constructions project all the varying particular shadow-images we perceive, and which form our minds and our ideas of things. We take these shadows of constructs for reality, mostly unaware that they are constructs and that these constructs are projections of power and will, desire and fantasy. 

That is a picture of the world for Plato. (Or one way he pictured it, to be precise. He explored and perhaps never settled for a definitive understanding.)

Plato’s philosophy can be understood as an attempt to understand how the wisest, most pious, and most virtuous of human beings – Socrates – could be so misunderstood by his political community (polis) that his peers had him executed for impiety and corrupting the youth. He often understood the political community as the false world as seen from inside the cave of individual fantasy and group ideology. The Republic – the dialog where he presents the Cave allegory – turns from initially exploring the idea of justice to a radical elimination of politics and the political community from human life. What Aristotle argued was the precondition of the possibility of realizing our full humanity – a polis-like community – Plato believed was the Cave we must turn our backs on to have any hope of salvation.

 

. . .

 

   This other-worldliness shows itself in an ethical idea that goes deep for Plato: “a good man can’t be harmed” he has Socrates inform his judges and jurors in the Apology, denying their power to harm him in any way. Plato's Socrates believes a good man cannot be harmed because true harm affects only the soul, not the body, and a virtuous soul remains untainted by external misfortunes. This belief stems from Plato's dualistic view that the soul belongs to an eternal, unchanging realm of forms, and true well-being is achieved through moral integrity, which external circumstances cannot corrupt. Blessedness is the harmony of the soul with this truly real dimension from which human beings are mostly cut off by the physical and political world. External goods are meaningless. In contrast, Aristotle rejects this dualism, seeing the soul and body as inseparable (as the idea of a tree is inseparable from physically existing trees) and acknowledging that external goods and conditions contribute to eudaimonia (flourishing, becoming fully human in the normative sense). For Aristotle, while moral virtue is central, a good life partly depends on favorable external circumstances, making a person vulnerable to harm from misfortunes.

 

. . .

 

The attempt to understand Socrates as a victim of life in the world finds its pinnacle in Plato’s account of his mentor’s death. Facing imminent death in the Phaedo, Socrates delves into arguments concerning the immortality of the soul, but without much sense of urgency and not overly invested in the outcome. It’s like he knows the answer – perhaps he has had a vision of the Good, as portrayed in the myth he concludes the chain of arguments with. It is like he is just curious to see how close human reasoning can get to it. And then the scene that disturbs me. Socrates indicates that he should take the poison. Crito objects, telling Socrates that there is still time and that many prisoners don't take the poison until well into the night. Socrates replies that men cling too desperately to life, whereas he has no reason to fear death. Socrates is brought the cup of hemlock, which he receives quite cheerfully. Socrates offers a prayer to the gods that his journey from this world to the next may be prosperous – a prayer that suggests that life is a disease and death its cure. Then he downs the cup in one gulp. At this point, Phaedo and all the others break down in tears of grief. Socrates chastises them, saying he sent the women away to avoid such a show of tears and urges his friends to be brave. Ashamed by his rebuke, Socrates' friends fall silent. His last words were: “Crito, I owe the sacrifice of a rooster to Asklepios; will you pay that debt and not neglect to do so?” Asklepios is the God of healing. The sacrifice expresses gratitude for being healed. The disease he was cured of? Life in this world.

     This scene, as I respond to it, embodies the following view of the meaning of death:

·        It is a good thing because life is a misfortune, at least to the extent it is not lived in search of the wisdom of its own unimportance.

·        Grieving over the death of a beloved friend is like an irrational superstition, based on a mistake of sorts – the belief that life is good and death is bad. 

·        Facing death does not really involve courage, not in the sense most people understand courage – as the overcoming of the fear of death (or harm) to do the good thing. The fear itself is irrational. It is a matter of knowledge and acting on that knowledge. The knowledge that death is not an evil takes away the fear, a fear that arises only in our ignorance.

What is the consequence of this for me? That I have brought three children, three souls into this prison house, and that the best I can do for them is to teach them to learn contempt for the world and live to escape it for the true world, which is purely spiritual and transcendent. That’s a downer.

    I can fully understand those who embrace Aristotle precisely because he shows us how meaning belongs to this world. I think of a passage from Rilke’s Duino Elegies. Why human? the poet asks.

…because just being here matters, because

the things of this world, these passing things,

seem to need us, to put themselves in our care

somehow. Us, the most passing of all.

Once for each, just once. Once and no more.

And for us too, once. Never again. And yet

it seems that this—to have once existed,

even if only once, to have been a part

of this earth—can never be taken back.

 

Homer, Aristotle, and most of the free Greek world would agree, even if for them “never be taken back” was connected with the idea of being remembered.

    Aristotle’s admirers and Plato’s detractors divide precisely over the question of the value and meaning of this life in only world we immediately know. Martha Nussbaum, for example, criticizes Plato's way of thinking by arguing that his focus on the soul's invulnerability and the devaluation of the physical world and external circumstances leads to an unrealistic and incomplete understanding of human life and morality. She contends that Plato's dismissal of the importance of external goods and physical well-being ignores the complexities and vulnerabilities inherent in human existence. Nussbaum asserts that true ethical and philosophical inquiry must account for the tangible, lived experiences of people, including their bodily needs, emotions, and the impact of external factors on their ability to live a flourishing life. To love anything makes us vulnerable. To love Socrates as an individual man of flesh and blood, doomed to die; to love the Athenian world that was during Plato’s lifetime in its death throes – such loves made Plato vulnerable. On a psychological level, he dealt with the losses by demeaning them.

 

This is an interpretation of Socrates’ life (one that I cannot reconcile with other aspects of Plato’s Socrates). It tells us why as a soldier he retreated before the Spartans while perfectly calm, inspiring the wonder of his fellows. Death was a matter of indifference; life not something to cling to. It tells us why a good man can’t be harmed: because nothing done to him, not even killing him, touches the soul devoted to goodness. This life doesn’t matter once the philosopher has arrived at that insight. It tells us why it is better to suffer rather than do injustice: doing injustice damns your soul; suffering injustice doesn’t. This death scene ties all the fundamental Socratic thoughts together.

. . .

The parallel between the Christian story of Jesus’ execution and Socrates is obvious. Despite the very different worlds and beliefs, the same inability of the world to recognize goodness is there: “And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” Darkness. The Cave. The Christian picture is even more extreme. God become human, pure Goodness and Love took on a human face – and was nailed to a cross by the Cave dwellers.

 Christianity was more radically anti-Aristotelian. And “whoever makes himself high will be made low, and whoever makes himself low will be made high.” That people Aristotle embodied the human essence were now the chaff to be burned. All those deprived of human flourishing – the poor, oppressed, children, women, handicapped, etc. – they are the true human beings; they have value and are loved by God.

    The question is: does the ability to keep those of us who fall through the cracks of the world with us – to imagine the least fortunate of us and the evil-doers among us (the “sinners”) as morally our equals – require this devaluation of the world? Once we define a good human life in a way that make a certain kind of community and individual character & achievements - as well as a bit of good fortune - necessary conditions, then we inevitably create a hierarchy of dignity, a "natural aristocracy" as Jefferson put it. (e.g. Lebron James belongs to the natural aristocracy of basketball; Magnus Carlson of chess, etc. - apply the analogy to life as such). As soon as we equate dignity (morality) with equality, such that every member of the species is equal in dignity just by being a member of the species, and is owed equal respect, then experiencing humanity as a hierarchy of worth is immoral - or sinful in religious terms. Which then sets up another kind of hierarchy (heaven and hell) unless God does love all his creatures and it is unthinkable that He would ever shut the door on any (e.g. the parable of the Prodigal Son). Thus in chess or basketball - limited fragments of life - we might accept a hierarchy, but morally and legally the ideal is not to. We just can't live up to that ideal - evidence that it is not "natural" or "worldly" but other-worldly. It is a fantasy, or a leak from another dimension, accessible at times to "the human heart" (through compassionate love). It not a fantasy, it relativizes ethical life.