MORALITY FOR THE GREEK THINKERS: SOCRATES, PLATO, ARISTOTLE.
The Greek thinkers before these guys – the PreSocratics – were essentially interested in trying to describe the fundamental principles and elements of the world, not much in ethics and such. We do not have any writings by Socrates so we have to trust that Plato got it right when he wrote about him in the three dialogues about his end – the Apology (trial), the Crito (prison cell), and Phaedo (death). Apart from a few self-depreciating remarks here and there, the closest we get to Socrates’ “ethics” is in his final remarks in the Apology where he makes the remarkable statement against his accusers: “Wickedness runs faster than death.”
This is both an inspiring and puzzling statement. Socrates knows that his enemies will soon sentence him to death, yet he thinks there are worse things than undeserved death. By the way, I have always admired and puzzled over this image of wickedness and death running a race against each other. But clearly, the “ethic” behind this statement of Socrates focuses the belief that the opposite of “wickedness” is integrity and truth. Socrates seems not to have had anything more of a theory about “the good” than a commitment to integrity and truth. They do seem good enough as a guide to live by.
Plato, Spocrates’ prize student, wrote many volumes about what constitutes the good life, the virtuous, moral life. As I am sure many of you remember, he taught a view of life and reality based on his theory of the “Forms” or eternal Ideas in and behind everything that is “Real”. One of these, surely the most important one, was the Idea of the “Good”, which formed the basis of the entire framework of reality. This idea of the “Good” was for Plato the vortex around which all other ideas, including those pertaining to morality, revolve. In it were contained all such moral values as Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. Only when these parts or dimensions of reality are working in harmony will a person, or a nation, attain oneness with the Idea of the Good, or moral virtue.
In his Republic Plato laid out the details of both his worldview and his dream state. Along the way to describing his ideal political state, a republic, Plato interlaces his overall view of reality, knowledge, and virtue. It’s all done in the usual dialogue format with Socrates as the “mouthpiece” for Plato’s views. It’s well understood that the views expressed were those of Plato, not Socrates. I must warn any readers that because of the dialogical format, Republic is a very difficult read. It is easy to get lost in the minutia of the conversations and lose track of the main line of argument. Nonetheless, it is a great, important book.
The most impressive of Plato’s students was, to be sure, Aristotle. Indeed, many would argue that Aristotle was the most important ancient Greek thinker. On the whole he and Plato were pretty much in philosophical agreement, apart from their extremely different writing styles. In his later life Aristotle started his own school, called the “Lyceum”, before moving away from Athens altogether. In his earlier life Aristotle was a teacher of the young Alexander the Great. Unlike Plato’s, Aristotle’s works were not fully translated until Muslem scholars finally discovered and translated them into Arabic. Thus, the Western thought-world was largely based on Plato’s theories until after 1200 CE. This meant that the Western world was largely Protestant because of its dependence of Augustine, whose thought was in turn based on Plato. After 1200 CE the great Catholic scholar Thomas Aquinas based Catholic thought on the ideas of Aristotle.
By many standards one might argue that in the end Aristotle was the most influential of all Greek thinkers because of the breadth and detail of his many works. Aristotle was a scientist as well as a philosopher, and he wrote many books in various fields from biology and physics to politics and philosophical ethics. In this latter field Aristotle argued that one must always seek to find the “balance” between extremes as a way of determining rational “golden mean” between extremes when making a moral decision or deciding on a course of action.
Indeed, Aristotle thought that the goal of human behavior is to find the middle way between extremes. Morality for Aristotle was a matter of avoiding extremes and developing the proper habits that will lead to the formation of good character. So, for Aristotle, morality was not so much a matter of determining “good” from “bad”, or “right” from “wrong”, but rather it was a matter of growing into a mature adult person who can decide in any given case which course of action is the “right” one, the one that enhances human life and values. Aristotle taught that morality is a way of life, not a matter of obeying this or that rule. The “golden mean” will vary from circumstance to circumstance, as will what is moral. In a sense, for Aristotle, morality is more a matter of character than right or wrong.