The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius

Listing to the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius this morning. According to the introductory notes, he wrote these for himself while on campaign. If this is true, it puts an ironic spin on some of this advice. If written for someone else, the advice not to spend too much time in books sounds like advice to be a man of action, not a scholar. As advice to the self it suggests that he as a lover of books and was afraid he was overdoing it. More ironic is the prevalence of advice not to fear death, that it is natural and of little consequence. As advice for someone else there is a Stoic quality to that advice, and in fact, Marcus Aurelius is often referred to as the last Stoic. As advice for the self, it suggests he was inordinately obsessed with his own death.



This is only one of many passages he writes to himself about death: "To observe too who these are whose opinions and voices give reputation; what death is, and the fact that, if a man looks at it in itself, and by the abstractive power of reflection resolves into their parts all the things which present themselves to the imagination in it, he will then consider it to be nothing else than an operation of nature; and if any one is afraid of an operation of nature, he is a child."

Zeus? I think not. Aristotle on Deity in Metaphysics

In Book Twelve, Aristotle writes:

“In this way, however, is the Deity disposed to existence, and the principle of life is, at any rate, inherent in the Deity; for the energy or active exercise of Mind constitutes life, and God—as above delineated—constitutes this energy; and essential energy belongs to God as his best and everlasting life. Now, our statement is this,--that the Deity is an animal that is everlasting and most excellent in nature; so that with the Deity life and duration is uninterrupted and eternal; for this constitutes the very essence of God.”

This doesn't sound like a description of Zeus; it has more the feel of Spinoza than it does the Greek pantheon, or for that matter, scholasticism. 

True Dialectic in Philebus

I'm not sure about the method Socrates says is a "gift from heaven." He often mythologizes ideas, perhaps to give them more weight, or simply to draw attention to them. What I find interesting is that, just as the differentiates between philosophy and sophism, he differentiates between disputation and dialectic. In both distinctions, the difference isn't in method, but in motive.


Soc. The sciences are a numerous class, and will be found to present great differences. But even admitting that, like the pleasures, they are opposite as well as different, should I be worthy of the name of dialectician if, in order to avoid this difficulty, I were to say (as you are saying of pleasure) that there is no difference between one science and another;-would not the argument founder and disappear like an idle tale, although we might ourselves escape drowning by clinging to a fallacy?

Soc. A gift of heaven, which, as I conceive, the gods tossed among men by the hands of a new Prometheus, and therewith a blaze of light; and the ancients, who were our betters and nearer the gods than we are, handed down the tradition, that whatever things are said to be are composed of one and many, and have the finite, and infinite implanted in them: seeing, then, that such is the order of the world, we too ought in every enquiry to begin by laying down one idea of that which is the subject of enquiry; this unity we shall find in everything. Having found it, we may next proceed to look for two, if there be two, or, if not, then for three or some other number, subdividing each of these units, until at last the unity with which we began is seen not only to be one and many and infinite, but also a definite number; the infinite must not be suffered to approach the many until the entire number of the species intermediate between unity and infinity has been discovered-then, and not till then, we may, rest from division, and without further troubling ourselves about the endless individuals may allow them to drop into infinity. This, as I was saying, is the way of considering and learning and teaching one another, which the gods have handed down to us. But the wise men of our time are either too quick or too slow, in conceiving plurality in unity. Having no method, they make their one and many anyhow, and from unity pass at once to infinity; the intermediate steps never occur to them. And this, I repeat, is what makes the difference between the mere art of disputation and true dialectic.
 ..

Aristotle Metaphysics Reversed

Listening to Book Eight, particularly Aristotle's distinction between potentiality and capability, two terms whose clear differences still escape me, I am struck by Alasdair MacIntyre's argument in After Virtue that the Post-Structuralist critique of Western Thought is actually a critique of Medieval interpretations of the Greeks, not the Greeks themselves. As I read Aristotle, it appears to me that he is making an effort to develop a metaphysics that is explanatory, that actually tells us what the sensory and virtual worlds are like. Later, Scholasticism reverses that polarity. Instead of using what we know to explain what we don't know, they use what we don't know, in this case, the divine, to explain what we do know. Thus, in their interpretation of Aristotle, the sensory and virtual world must be arranged to "fit" the metaphysical.

Aristotle Differentiates between Dialectician, Sophist, and Philosopher

Metaphysics Book 4 Ch 2

"[D]ialecticians and sophists assume, indeed, the same figure as the philosopher, (for sophistical is only apparent wisdom, and dialecticians dispute about all things;) to all, however, is entity common. But they dispute concerning these, evidently, from the cause of these being proper subjects of inquiry for philosophy. For, Indeed, sophistry and dialectics are employed about the same genus as philosophy is; but philosophy differs from the one in the mode of power, and from the other in the choice of life. And again, dialectic science is merely tentative of the knowledge of those things that philosophy has already actually reached; but sophistic science is only apparent, and not real. And the same is further proved by the fact that a different co-ordination of contraries is privation, and all things are referred to entity and non-entity." 

In this passage, philosophy is superior to dialectic in the "mode of power." We might take this as the superiority of "analytics" as a method and dialectic method of exploration through questioning. In a later passage, Aristotle will add that "Dialectic is merely critical where philosophy claims to know." In other words, dialectic is still struggling to understand what philosophy has already discovered.

Philosophy is superior to sophism, not because of differences in method, but because of the "choice of life," which we might take in several ways, the the exorbitant fees sophists charge, the "lifestyle" that enables, and perhaps even the tendency of sophists to move from polis to polis. Sophists have no commitment to the community, one of Plato's charges against them. This is enough for Aristotle to claim that "sophistic science is only apparent, and not real."

A final critique of both is that they claim to speak about all things. Aristotle, however, has limited philosophy to the study of essence and substance, which doesn't mean he ignores other avenues of study, only that he has characterized them, placing them in other areas of study. Dialecticians and sophists seem to be suspect because they do not recognize his categories. 

"[D]ialecticians and sophists assume the same guise as the philosopher, for sophistic is Wisdom which exists only in semblance, and dialecticians embrace all things in their dialectic, and being is common to all things, but evidently their dialectic embraces these subjects because these are proper to philosophy. For sophistic and dialectic turn on the same class of things as philosophy, but this differs from dialectic in the nature of the faculty required and from sophistic in respect of the purpose of the philosophic life. Dialectic is merely critical where philosophy claims to know, and sophistic is what appears to be philosophy but is not."