NationStates Jolt Archive

For our more educated members of NS: Do you agree with Plato's theory of idealism or Aristotle's theory of naturalism? Why?

Before you post, consider this: do you know what naturalism vs. idealism is? It has nothing to do directly with ethics or religion, so I don't want any fanatics on this thread. Got it?

I am educated, just not in Ancient Greek History. Could you enlighten me?

*Prepares to be enlightened*

*Clenches*

Well, essentially, Plato and Aristotle were two philosphers who held directly opposing views (though they were a generation apart, Plato being older) on various subjects, primarily politics.

Idealism is the belief that everything we can identify, such as a tree, is a reflection of it's Form. Imagine a tree in your head. What you imagine to be a tree is it's Form. Same thing with a perfect circle. No one can physically draw a perfect circle, though it's possible to imagine one. TO create a goverment politically, one must think up an IDEAL goverment

Naturalism is more along the lines of scientific observations. I would go into more detail, but I'm afraid of being unaccurate. The perfect goverment politically can only be created through observations of good things in a goverment, bad things, corrupt things, improving things, etc...and by picking out what is viewed as unbiased "good things," and using them, can a perfect goverment be created...

was one of them the one who argued the point about how atoms must exist using cheese and a very fine knife.

Plato is by far the better GB touring car driver

Thank you for that productive comment, Readistan.

http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/politics.1.one.html this site also has some information on Plato...

Here we are. You don't have to read all of it, but this may further educate the "commoners" of Nation States.

Socrates wrote nothing himself. What we know of him comes from the writings of two of his closest friends, Xenophon and Plato. Although Xenophon (c.430-c.354 B.C.) did write four short portraits of Socrates, it is almost to Plato alone that we know anything of Socrates. PLATO (c.427-347 B.C.) came from a family of aristoi, served in the Peloponnesian War, and was perhaps Socrates' most famous student. He was twenty-eight years old when Socrates was put to death. At the age of forty, Plato established a school at Athens for the education of Athenian youth. The Academy, as it was called, remained in existence from 387 B.C. to A.D. 529, when it was closed by Justinian, the Byzantine emperor.

Our knowledge of Socrates comes to us from numerous dialogues which Plato wrote after 399. In nearly every dialogue – and there are more than thirty that we know about – Socrates is the main speaker. The style of the Plato's dialogue is important – it is the Socratic style that he employs throughout. A Socratic dialogue takes the form of question-answer, question-answer, question-answer. It is a dialectical style as well. Socrates would argue both sides of a question in order to arrive at a conclusion. Then that conclusion is argued against another assumption and so on. Perhaps it is not that difficult to understand why Socrates was considered a gadfly!

There is a reason why Socrates employed this style, as well as why Plato recorded his experience with Socrates in the form of a dialogue. Socrates taught Plato a great many things, but one of the things Plato more or less discovered on his own was that mankind is born with knowledge. That is, knowledge is present in the human mind at birth. It is not so much that we "learn" things in our daily experience, but that we "recollect" them. In other words, this knowledge is already there. This may explain why Socrates did not give his students answers, but only questions. His job was not to teach truth but to show his students how they could "pull" truth out of their own minds (it is for this reason that Socrates often considered himself a midwife in the labor of knowledge). And this is the point of the dialogues. For only in conversation, only in dialogue, can truth and wisdom come to the surface.

Plato's greatest and most enduring work was his lengthy dialogue, The Republic. This dialogue has often been regarded as Plato's blueprint for a future society of perfection. I do not accept this opinion. Instead, I would like to suggest that The Republic is not a blueprint for a future society, but rather, is a dialogue which discusses the education necessary to produce such a society. It is an education of a strange sort – he called it paideia. Nearly impossible to translate into modern idiom, paideia refers to the process whereby the physical, mental and spiritual development of the individual is of paramount importance. It is the education of the total individual.

The Republic discusses a number of topics including the nature of justice, statesmanship, ethics and the nature of politics. It is in The Republic that Plato suggests that democracy was little more than a "charming form of government." And this he is writing less than one hundred years after the brilliant age of Periclean democracy. So much for democracy. After all, it was Athenian democracy that convicted Socrates. For Plato, the citizens are the least desirable participants in government. Instead, a philosopher-king or guardian should hold the reigns of power. An aristocracy if you will – an aristocracy of the very best – the best of the aristoi.

Plato's Republic also embodies one of the clearest expressions of his theory of knowledge. In The Republic, Plato asks what is knowledge? what is illusion? what is reality? how do we know? what makes a thing, a thing? what can we know? These are epistemological questions – that is, they are questions about knowledge itself. He distinguishes between the reality presented to us by our senses – sight, touch, taste, sound and smell – and the essence or Form of that reality. In other words, reality is always changing – knowledge of reality is individual, it is particular, it is knowledge only to the individual knower, it is not universal.

Building upon the wisdom of Socrates and Parmenides, Plato argued that reality is known only through the mind. There is a higher world, independent of the world we may experience through our senses. Because the senses may deceive us, it is necessary that this higher world exist, a world of Ideas or Forms -- of what is unchanging, absolute and universal. In other words, although there may be something from the phenomenal world which we consider beautiful or good or just, Plato postulates that there is a higher unchanging reality of the beautiful, goodness or justice. To live in accordance with these universal standards is the good life -- to grasp the Forms is to grasp ultimate truth.

The unphilosophical man – that is, all of us – is at the mercy of sense impressions and unfortunately, our sense impressions oftentimes fail us. Our senses deceive us. But because we trust our senses, we are like prisoners in a cave – we mistake shadows on a wall for reality. This is the central argument of Plato's ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE which appears in Book VII of The Republic.

Plato realized that the Athenian state, and along with it, Athenian direct democracy, had failed to realize its lofty ideals. Instead, the citizens sent Socrates to his death and direct democracy had failed. The purpose of The Republic was something of a warning to all Athenians that without respect for law, leadership and a sound education for the young, their city would continue to decay. Plato wanted to rescue Athens from degeneration by reviving that sense of community that had at one time made the polis great. The only way to do this, Plato argued, was to give control over to the Philosopher-Kings, men who had philosophical knowledge, and to give little more than "noble lies" to everyone else. The problem as Plato saw it was that power and wisdom had traveled divergent paths -- his solution was to unite them in the guise of the Philosopher-King.

Aristotle
Plato's most famous student was ARISTOTLE (384-322 B.C.). His father was the personal physician to Philip of Macedon and Aristotle was, for a time at least, the personal tutor of Alexander the Great. Aristotle styled himself a biologist – he is said to have spent his honeymoon collecting specimens at the seashore. He too was charged with impiety, but fled rather than face the charges – I suppose that tells you something about Aristotle.

At the age of eighteen, Aristotle became the student at the Academy of Plato (who was then sixty years of age). Aristotle also started his own school, the Lyceum in 335 B.C. It too was closed by Justinian in A.D. 529. Aristotle was a "polymath" – he knew a great deal about nearly everything. Very little of Aristotle's writings remain extant. But his students recorded nearly everything he discussed at the Lyceum. In fact, the books to which Aristotle's name is attributed are really little more than student notebooks. This may account for the fact that Aristotle's philosophy is one of the more difficult to digest. Regardless, Aristotle lectured on astronomy, physics, logic, aesthetics, music, drama, tragedy, poetry, zoology, ethics and politics. The one field in which he did not excel was mathematics. Plato, on the other hand, was a master of geometry.

As a scientist, Aristotle's epistemology is perhaps closer to our own. For Aristotle did not agree with Plato that there is an essence or Form or Absolute behind every object in the phenomenal world. I suppose you could argue that Aristotle came from the Jack Webb school of epistemology – "nothing but the facts, Mam." Or, as one historian has put it: "The point is, that an elephant, when present, is noticed." In other words, whereas Plato suggested that man was born with knowledge, Aristotle argued that knowledge comes from experience. And there, in the space of just a few decades, we have the essence of those two philosophical traditions which have occupied the western intellectual tradition for the past 2500 years. Rationalism – knowledge is a priori (comes before experience) and Empiricism – knowledge is a posteriori (comes after experience).

It is almost fitting that one of Plato's greatest students ought to have also been his greatest critics. Like Democritus, Aristotle had confidence in sense perception. As a result, he had little patience with Plato's higher world of the Forms. However, Aristotle argued that there were universal principles but that they are derived from experience. He could not accept, as had Plato, that there was a world of Forms beyond space and time. Aristotle argued that that there were Forms and Absolutes, but that they resided in the thing itself. From our experience with horses, for instance, we can deduce the essence of "horseness." This universal, as it had been for Plato, was the true object of human knowledge.

It perhaps goes without saying that the western intellectual tradition, as well as the history of western philosophy, must begin with an investigation of ancient Greek thought. From Thales and the matter philosophers to the empiricism of Aristotle, the Greeks passed on to the west a spirit of rational inquiry that is very much our own intellectual property. And while we may never think of Plato or Aristotle as we carry on in our daily lives, it was their inquiry into knowledge that has served as the foundation for all subsequent inquiries. Indeed, many have argued with W. H. Auden that "had Greek civilization never existed we would never have become fully conscious, which is to say that we would never have become, for better or worse, fully human."

I don't like Plato's idealism - it's a bit too extreme and due to human nature I don't think we will ever discover "the good" or "the bad" or "the ugly" according to idealism

I like Aristotle's naturalism on the basis that it's grounded a bit more in facts than Plato's idealism.

...Also, notice, that in our time, especially America and Europe, we favor naturalism over idealism perhaps because we trust science....Thank you for posting, by the way...

Well, you have a real problem here.

Your problem is that, like so many people who fail to give Plato a careful reading, you interpret him through the lens of the Enlightenment, and then again through the lens of his neo-Platonist interpreters.

Fortunately (for Plato) his view is much more subtle than any of them have bothered to notice. Of course, it is true that he is an idealist, and this label alone will cause many people today to reject his theory out-of-hand. But this is only because so many people are content with the misperception that all idealism posits "another world" of Ideas that precede and/or generate material objects.

Plato, on a careful reading, suggests an idealism closer to Hegel than to the medieval Christians. The metaphor of the line is especially helpful in clearing this up, as it shows how close Plato and Aristotle are when it comes to the construction of categories. Plato makes a critical move past the Aristotelian position, however, in offering the possibility that we might criticize our own assumed/learned categories once we have them. Plato assumes a "real world" that causes our perceptions, but realizes that our perceptions are only approximations of the Truth--but these approximations can get better.

Consider how you would answer if a three-year-old asked what shape is the Earth. Are you likely to respond, "an oblique spheroid"? Probably not, unless you have a very advanced child! Your answer will probably be "a sphere" or "a ball." You know this is a lie... but it is an appropriate approximation of the truth, so that your child knows better than he or she did before. In the same way, Plato knows that the descriptions we have of our world never perfectly match the truth--note that no one ever achieves true knowledge of the Forms in his analogies, since this amounts to looking into the Sun. But Plato believes that, with reason, we can test our assumed or learned understanding, and thereby improve it.

Critics of this view will probably cite the Meno as evidence of "other-worldly" Forms... To them, I suggest a re-reading of the Meno, keeping the audience and particular characters in mind. Plato has an important point here, but it is NOT that we "know" things before we are born!

Aristotle, unfortunately, was not as bright as his teacher, and utterly failed to understand him.

I would also take issue with another point made in the article posted above.

Plato was a democrat. He was strongly critical of the Athenian democracy, and thought that his fellow citizens misunderstood the principles of democracy, but he would not have lived in any other regime.

Anyone else familiar with the Gorgias? There Plato has Socrates demonstrate what a real democratic stateman looks like.

I never annouced which candidate I prefered, but I assume you were talking to Superpower.

I would also take issue with another point made in the article posted above.

Plato was a democrat. He was strongly critical of the Athenian democracy, and thought that his fellow citizens misunderstood the principles of democracy, but he would not have lived in any other regime.

Anyone else familiar with the Gorgias? There Plato has Socrates demonstrate what a real democratic stateman looks like.

Wolrd History, Pattens of Interaction says (in general) "Plato's perfect goverment was not a democracy. It was divided into three gorups; the farmers, the warriors, and the philosphers. The supposed one of greatest insight and intellect would be the chosen Philospher-king."

First of all, I belive that Aristotle felt that the best from of government, at least in theory, was a monarchy. I beg to differ. In addition, if a society does not reach towards utopian heights in their structure, how can they truly make progress? Ok, I admit it, I'm a romantic idealist...I love Plato.

In all my books, in all of the lectures I've attended within this past week about Aristotle vs. Plato, none of them mention what goverment Aristotle prefered. Unless I'm mistaken, he never established which goverment he prefered over another, perhaps because functioning goverments had an equal amount of advantages and disadvantages. And if this is an exact equal amount between each goverment, neither can be chosen without having a biased argument. Interesting...

Wolrd History, Pattens of Interaction says (in general) "Plato's perfect goverment was not a democracy. It was divided into three gorups; the farmers, the warriors, and the philosphers. The supposed one of greatest insight and intellect would be the chosen Philospher-king."

Yes, that's true. If the "callipolis" was really his ideal city. It pretty clearly was not.

In all my books, in all of the lectures I've attended within this past week about Aristotle vs. Plato, none of them mention what goverment Aristotle prefered. Unless I'm mistaken, he never established which goverment he prefered over another, perhaps because functioning goverments had an equal amount of advantages and disadvantages. ... I wish I could rememebr where I read this so I could give you the source. It was only a few days ago that I read it, and it was in a legit thing. Actually, I think it was some sort of practive AP question that gave the information that one of the following people prefered monarchy and you had to choose. Aristotle was the correct answer given.

In all my books, in all of the lectures I've attended within this past week about Aristotle vs. Plato, none of them mention what goverment Aristotle prefered. Unless I'm mistaken, he never established which goverment he prefered over another, perhaps because functioning goverments had an equal amount of advantages and disadvantages. And if this is an exact equal amount between each goverment, neither can be chosen without having a biased argument. Interesting...

Aristotle's best regime: Democracy restrained by law.

Where are you getting these ridiculous lectures, anyway?

Aristotle's best regime: Democracy restrained by law.

Where are you getting these ridiculous lectures, anyway?

I am mistaken. A democracy restrained by law makes sense.

These lectures are take place at school. I think what goverment Aristotle wanted was probably mentioned, but it apparently didn't have enough emphasis for me to listen :D ...

I am mistaken. A democracy restrained by law makes sense.

These lectures are take place at school. I think what goverment Aristotle wanted was probably mentioned, but it apparently didn't have enough emphasis for me to listen :D ...


Well... Aristotle can be a little difficult to listen to... or read, for that matter.

Imagine that someone saved your class notebook, and that was the only thing upon which people would understand your teacher's ideas. Now imagine someone reading your notebook 2,000 years from now... Yikes!!!

Well... Aristotle can be a little difficult to listen to... or read, for that matter.

Imagine that someone saved your class notebook, and that was the only thing upon which people would understand your teacher's ideas. Now imagine someone reading your notebook 2,000 years from now... Yikes!!!

I'd probably laugh. Then again, I don't expect the human race to be alive even 300 years from the future :rolleyes: ...

...Bump. Come on, Nation Staters. You don't really need to know very much about either Aristotle or Plato, just read a little information from my other posts and decided which one you prefer and explain why...

Forms... it makes sense in a fashion, but its a bit overly mystical for me. I'm not as familiar with Aristotle, although I think the idea of virtue ethics beats out most competition.

Bump...

i don't agree with most of Plato's teachings, i happen to like Aristotle's ideas more than his. also, i rather like Socrates better than Plato's teaching.

Perhaps this is my stupidity talking, but Aristotle's ideas seem a bit more..chaotic? Leaving the ideals of a good government to people's image through Form? A bit peculiar if you ask me.

Plato seems a bit more reasonable in his ideas that men must revamp the government through observations. I am sure society is capable of this much.

You have it the wrong way around Kay Chou. It's Aristotle who is the scientist and Plato who is the idealist...

I haven't studied Aristotle much, but I read some of Plato's work, primarily the Republic, and I admit I do kind of like it. God knows that the Socratic method is pretty good, which Plato obviously agreed with. And, I didn't see anyone else put this, Plato thought the ideal form of government was an oligarchy, ruled by the intellectuals. He disliked democracy, at least in part it is suspected, because of what the Athenians did to Socrates, his supposed mentor.

For our more educated members of NS: Do you agree with Plato's theory of idealism or Aristotle's theory of naturalism? Why?

Before you post, consider this: do you know what naturalism vs. idealism is? It has nothing to do directly with ethics or religion, so I don't want any fanatics on this thread. Got it?

Plato's concept of forms always seemed a bit contrived and well..., hokey, to me. For Plato there is a perfect "Form" of everything and our appreciation of something is in direct proportion to its nearness to or distance from that perfect form. So, for instance, the reason we might find one woman more beautiful than another is because the former more closely fits the characteristics of the perfect form of the ideal woman, whereas the latter is less like this perfect form.

I always imagined a Platonic heavenly museum of endless forms.

I do appreciate Robert Pirsig's solution to the subject/objective dilemma. You'll recall the question hinges on whether our perception of things is subjective, entirely within us and in a sense created by each of us, or objective (as Plato would argue), with characteristics such as beauty existing within the object itself. For Pirsig, borrowing heavily from the Sophists, "Man is the measure of all things" (Protagoras):

"Man is not the source of all things, as the subjective idealists would say. Nor is he the passive observer of all things, as the objective idealists and materialists would say....He is a participant in the creation of all things. He is the measure of all things...." (Pirsig - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance).

* The quote by Coleridge applies to the thread, but I don't agree with it. My dad always said there are two kinds of people in the world: those who divide the world into two kinds of people and those who don't. I don't.

Plato always seemed to me to be a little too idealistic. He didn't seem to have a good grasp on actual human nature, at least from his writings. I prefer his ideas, in principle, but they seem alot harder to implement in real life than Aristotle's. Aristotle had a better understanding of human nature than Plato did, in my opinion.

In the Republic, Plato does create a system as to who should rule the state based on his theory of reality, but i thought that what stood out was not the idea of the workers, warriors and philosopher-kings, but rather that happiness is leading a fully functioning life and depends on our function as active beings. Plato can be called an idealist but his idealism rests in the ultimate point that you will never reach the ideal, so the best you can do is to strive for it. He is saying to do your best and be as functional as you can be in order to be virtuous. I'll admit I like Aristotle a lot but Plato has his shit together.

Plato's Allegory of the Cave is a great mind bender, which is why I imagine the Wachowski brothers ripped it off for their script of The Matrix.

I haven't studied Aristotle much, but I read some of Plato's work, primarily the Republic, and I admit I do kind of like it. God knows that the Socratic method is pretty good, which Plato obviously agreed with. And, I didn't see anyone else put this, Plato thought the ideal form of government was an oligarchy, ruled by the intellectuals. He disliked democracy, at least in part it is suspected, because of what the Athenians did to Socrates, his supposed mentor.


Well, how do you know Plato thought the ideal form of government was an aristocracy? Plato never comes right out and says, "This is what I, Plato, think." Rather, he presents a dialogue in which various characters present different arguments. We suspect that much of the time Socrates states Plato's opinion, but there are good reasons to doubt this. Socrates rarely suggests ideas of his own; instead he poses questions to the proposals of others. Even in the Republic, the conversation is captive to the young men. At the end of Book IV, when Socrates is prepared to move from the discussion of justice to the enumeration of the four degenerate regimes... but what happens? The boys want to talk about sex and children, leading us into the digression into the communism of women and children, and ultimately the reign of the philosopher king.

If the audience were different, Plato may have taken a different route. As he has Socrates tell Adeimantus that they are constructing "tales within a tale." Here Socrates calls into question the necessity of their arguments about censorship. (One also notes that the types of things Socrates censors, like tales of moaning and grief amongst great warriors, are exactly the censorships the Athenians already make, in the sense that they remember Achilles as if his grief at the loss of Patroclus is not a part of the Iliad. Censorship, Plato suggests, does not require a law--cultures actively engage in selective memory with respect to their own mythology. Taken as an ironic "tale within a tale," Plato's own exercise in censorship both satirically mimic what the city already practices, and suggests that, if memory is selective, there may nevertheless be a responsible act of censorship--a way of training the ear to "hear" that justice is good and injustice bad.

But only in a democracy can you really change the political landscape by convincing people to value different things, or to treat their inherited values in a different way. Every other form of rule can be exerted by the command of one class upon another; in the democracy alone does the majority, at least, have to be convinced. And when that act of convincing is used responsibly--directed toward the common good--it amounts to learning.

Finally, the Republic as a whole relates more to keeping moderation and virtue in the soul more than the city. Why, after all, does Socrates stay? Because Thrasymachus never leaves... and Socrates, above all, does not want to lose these powerful aristocratic young men to the temptations of tyranny.

The democracy is the only regime that includes the philosopher. Read Book VIII and find him elsewhere.

Plato always seemed to me to be a little too idealistic. He didn't seem to have a good grasp on actual human nature, at least from his writings. I prefer his ideas, in principle, but they seem alot harder to implement in real life than Aristotle's. Aristotle had a better understanding of human nature than Plato did, in my opinion.

No way. Plato understood human nature unbelievably well. There are good reasons that Freud found Plato so interesting.

When you read Plato, keep his audience in mind. Young men, about 20 years old, who had the whole world at their feet. Then think about why Socrates might be telling them the particular stories he does. What part of their souls is he trying to tame?

I don't like Plato's idealism - it's a bit too extreme and due to human nature I don't think we will ever discover "the good" or "the bad" or "the ugly" according to idealism

I like Aristotle's naturalism on the basis that it's grounded a bit more in facts than Plato's idealism.
I'm begging you, pal: Rephrase that last sentence. It made me laugh out loud, considering that Plato's Rationalism (or Idealism, if you please. They are related) and Aristotle's Empiricism (Naturalism) are about discovering facts. Aristotle is no more grounded in facts, but he is more grounded in what you understand to be facts: things you see, feel, taste, smell, and hear. The problem is, Aristotle's "facts" are based on senses, and Plato's are based on reason. Which is more reliable? Is it really a "fact" that you feel something, or see something? If you and I are looking at the same thing, but from different angles, are we even going to see the same thing? If we don't see the same thing, are we going to draw the same conclusions? This is a serious limitation of our senses. Reason is more trusted by some thinkers, like Heraclitus and Plato, because it is something we share. Example 2x7=14. "Facts" are what both Plato and Aristotle concluded using their methods. Example: Aristotle concluded the "fact" that women are failed men, and that in procreation men provide offspring with their form, their souls, while women only contain raw material. Now that is based on senses.. limitations apparent?

Aristotle's best regime: Democracy restrained by law.

Where are you getting these ridiculous lectures, anyway?
Nope. Monarchy was the best possible system, according to Aristotle's Politics. However, being a pragmatic fellow, Aristotle realized that while Monarchy was the best system, Tyranny was by far the worse. To prevent a Monarchy from turning into a Tyranny, he said a Democracy with a strong middle class (to prevent abuse of the virtuous rich folk by the untrustworthy but numerous poor) was the most practical, balanced system. Most practical, not best.

No way. Plato understood human nature unbelievably well. There are good reasons that Freud found Plato so interesting.

I don't think Freud understood human nature all that well. I think he understood the nature of a select group of 19th century Austrian men and women, but his ideas about human nature in general have had less success in standing the test of time.

Plato's Allegory of the Cave is a great mind bender, which is why I imagine the Wachowski brothers ripped it off for their script of The Matrix.
Yes, though The Matrix Is quite over-rated. I'm STILL waiting for an action movie rip off of Thus Spake Zarathustra. ;)

No way. Plato understood human nature unbelievably well. There are good reasons that Freud found Plato so interesting.

When you read Plato, keep his audience in mind. Young men, about 20 years old, who had the whole world at their feet. Then think about why Socrates might be telling them the particular stories he does. What part of their souls is he trying to tame?

No offense, but what does Socrates have to do with Plato vs. Aristotle?

I don't think Freud understood human nature all that well. I think he understood the nature of a select group of 19th century Austrian men and women, but his ideas about human nature in general have had less success in standing the test of time.
Well, if the nature of a certain group doesn't apply to the world at large, wouldn't one question if "Human Nature" exists at all? After all, "human nature" would be universal; it wouldn't differ between groups.

No offense, but what does Socrates have to do with Plato vs. Aristotle?
PLato's Republic (and other writings by Plato) was a dialogue in which the main character was Socrates. So "Socrates" is telling stories in it, but he is really expressing Plato's ideas. Got it?

Well, if the nature of a certain group doesn't apply to the world at large, wouldn't one question if "Human Nature" exists at all? After all, "human nature" would be universal; it wouldn't differ between groups.

Ah, but the psychological idiosyncrasies of Victorian era, sexually repressed Eastern Europeans are not necessarily universal traits shared by all people of all eras.

I don't think Freud understood human nature all that well. I think he understood the nature of a select group of 19th century Austrian men and women, but his ideas about human nature in general have had less success in standing the test of time.

Perhaps you should read Freud and decide for yourself, instead of basing your opinion on his American interpreters. Better yet, read Bruno Bettelheim's Freud and the Soul of Man first, then read some Freud.

No offense, but what does Socrates have to do with Plato vs. Aristotle?

By the context, I thought it was clear. I mean the Socrates "of" Plato, the character in his dialogues.

Perhaps you should read Freud and decide for yourself, instead of basing your opinion on his American interpreters. Better yet, read Bruno Bettelheim's Freud and the Soul of Man first, then read some Freud.


What makes you think I would offer my opinions without first having read Freud?

Ah, but the psychological idiosyncrasies of Victorian era, sexually repressed Eastern Europeans are not necessarily universal traits shared by all people of all eras.
Psychological idiosyncrasies are not nature. Nature is innate, but the qualities you are referring to are obviously affected by one's environment. Therefore, they are not nature. I guess we're talking about different things when we use the term "Nature", eh? Damned semantics of the language.

By the context, I thought it was clear. I mean the Socrates "of" Plato, the character in his dialogues.
Especially considering the fact that Socrates never wrote anything down, eh?

Perhaps you should read Freud and decide for yourself, instead of basing your opinion on his American interpreters. Better yet, read Bruno Bettelheim's Freud and the Soul of Man first, then read some Freud.

I'm surprised anyone still reads Bettelheim. The charges of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse he inflicted upon the children he treated may not affect his academic work, but certainly the fact that the man engaged in sloppy and fraudulent research, as well as outright plagiarism makes it difficult to take anything he has written at face value.

Nope. Monarchy was the best possible system, according to Aristotle's Politics. However, being a pragmatic fellow, Aristotle realized that while Monarchy was the best system, Tyranny was by far the worse. To prevent a Monarchy from turning into a Tyranny, he said a Democracy with a strong middle class (to prevent abuse of the virtuous rich folk by the untrustworthy but numerous poor) was the most practical, balanced system. Most practical, not best.


No. You are not reading the Politics very carefully. Because aristocracy is reduced to meaning the best rule, it loses its specificity as a regime. So any regime that rules best can legitimately be called an aristocracy. And if aristocracy can encompass many regime possibilities, it is no longer useful as a regime type.

He calls the "polity" best, which he describes as a combination between oligarchy and democracy, or a kind of democracy ruled by law. If you think he likes monarchy, you are probably thinking of the aristrocracy in Book VII. But since this is based in slavery, which Aristotle has already told us is wrong, we know that he means this state to show that "rule by the best" is not the same as "the best rule."

What makes you think I would offer my opinions without first having read Freud?

Sorry. You just so clearly aped the mainstream American interpretation, I couldn't help but see you as its unwitting mouthpiece, since you would have had no way to see through it. I guess I gave you too much credit.

I'm surprised anyone still reads Bettelheim. The charges of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse he inflicted upon the children he treated may not affect his academic work, but certainly the fact that the man engaged in sloppy and fraudulent research, as well as outright plagiarism makes it difficult to take anything he has written at face value.

Yes, I know all that. But none of it applies to Freud and the Soul of Man, which is just a very straightforward explanation of the American mistranslations of Freud.

Yes, I know all that. But none of it applies to Freud and the Soul of Man, which is just a very straightforward explanation of the American mistranslations of Freud.

How could it not apply? Bettelheim claimed to have an acquaintance with Freud, as well as Freud's personal blessing on his analytic training, yet there is no evidence he ever even met Freud. He claimed membership in professional organizations he never had, claimed PhD's he never earned, claimed to have published books he never did, as well as claims for psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic training which he never had.

I don't think I could ever take anything Bettelheim has written as "straightforward."

No. You are not reading the Politics very carefully. Because aristocracy is reduced to meaning the best rule, it loses its specificity as a regime. So any regime that rules best can legitimately be called an aristocracy. And if aristocracy can encompass many regime possibilities, it is no longer useful as a regime type.

He calls the "polity" best, which he describes as a combination between oligarchy and democracy, or a kind of democracy ruled by law. If you think he likes monarchy, you are probably thinking of the aristrocracy in Book VII. But since this is based in slavery, which Aristotle has already told us is wrong, we know that he means this state to show that "rule by the best" is not the same as "the best rule."
Touche

I don't think I could ever take anything Bettelheim has written as "straightforward."

Still, I know all that. And, for those reasons and more, I don't recommend any of his other work! But seriously, why don't you give The Soul of Man a look? It's remarkably short. The work stands on its own merits.

Still, I know all that. And, for those reasons and more, I don't recommend any of his other work! But seriously, why don't you give The Soul of Man a look? It's remarkably short. The work stands on its own merits.

Why not give The Creation of Dr. B: A Biography of Bruno Bettelheim by Richard Pollak a look yourself. My reading list is long enough that I don't have to include academics who are demonstrated plagiarists with a reputation for fabricating research.

For our more educated members of NS: Do you agree with Plato's theory of idealism or Aristotle's theory of naturalism? Why?

Before you post, consider this: do you know what naturalism vs. idealism is? It has nothing to do directly with ethics or religion, so I don't want any fanatics on this thread. Got it?


Sorry for taking this thread off course.

Bump, sorry, just want to keep this thread up before it dies :rolleyes: ....

Alright, a lot of you have some misconceptions about Aristotle's and Plato's epistemology, so I'll try and do what I can to help make it somewhat more explicit. In reality, however, Aristotle and Plato really aren't nearly as different as pop culture and your average Phil. 101 class makes them out to be.

Plato's Forms are more or less the result of trying to solve one of the greatest philosophical problems of the day: how is the world made, and how do we understand it. At that time, there were two competing camps. On one side, there were the Heraclitians (Heraclitus)/Protagorans (Protagoras). Their take on the nature of reality was that the only constant element within the universe, and the manner within which the universe worked, was change (hence Heraclitus' famous maxim: You never step in the same river twice). All things were constantly in flux, adding and losing parts at any point, and any notion of permanency in an object is merely an illusion. In one sense, this kind of philosophy makes a lot of sense, because it's pretty true to reality. Things do change, and even contiguous objects from moment to moment are constantly adding and losing different parts. On the flip side, however, the big problem is one of language and thought: how in the Nine Hells do you refer to a river that is now not the same as the one that you just picked out by pointing at it and naming it? If you can't, then how is language even possible?

On the other side of the divide was Parmenides. His idea was a quasi-mystical notion that the universe was one, and that all instances of change were really just an illusion. Before you think of this guy as the Greek equivalent of an Eastern flake, however, remember that Plato only portrayed Socrates as losing an argument in the Dialogues once, and that was in, you guessed it, The Parmenides. That's how much respect everyone had for him and his talent for logic. Now, the advantage of this is that you can explain how objects are the same thing over time, and it also solves the problem of reference. On the other hand, it's also counterintuitive, because we do seem to want to say that change is a part of the world as we know it.

Plato's great stride was to systematize and integrate both of these systems with the notions of the Forms. In his system, the real world exists, but only as a world of shadows. Each object in this world is fleeting, but while it does exist it carries (it might be better to say it instantiates) an instance of an essential attribute, which is what makes it what it is. That might seem hard to wrap your mind around, but consider for example: what makes a dog a dog? Today we might say a certain set threshold of genetic markers, but remember, the Greeks had no concept of genes, and even if they did, they'd probably reply that you could probably make something with that set of genes that also had additional features that made it not a dog. So leaving genetics out of it, you have a hard time picking out any distinguishing feature of a dog. Hair? Some dogs are bald, and some cats have hair, so that can't be it. Lack of retractable claws? Okay, that seperates it from a cat, but it doesn't seperate it from a human. So, in the end, you can't really find any trait that seperates a dog from anything else, except for what Plato came up with: an essential trait of The Form of Dog, or dogness in the coloquial. A dog is a dog only because it instantiates an instance of that particular Form of Dog. These Forms were permanent, and existed in some secondary world that (because again, things are permanent there and fleeting here) is therefore more real than our world. Our souls partake of the Form of Man, and part of the nature of our souls is that gradually, through reason, we can recollect some notion of how the Forms work, and to the extent that we do, we have knowledge (I don't draw this from The Meno so much as I do The Phaedrus--he explicitly states the immortal soul's relation to the Form of Love in that work and how we recollect it).

The advantages to this system are really pretty obvious: on the one hand, we can explain how it is that things change over time (it's the way our world works), while at the same time, it also explains knowledge (we know things to the extent that our reason is able to extrapolate the nature of the Form of the thing we are talking about), reference (it explains, for instance, how we are able to talk about non-existent entities like Pegasus), metaphysics, religion (the Christian conceptions of heaven and the soul were extremely influenced by Plato, to the point that had Plato's work never been read, we might very well have never had such notions, and might not have even had Christianity of any kind at all), justice (we can now know how two different actions at different times in different circumstances can both be referred to as 'just acts'), etc.

Aristotle, on the other hand, came up with a much different conception of metaphysics than Plato did, but nonetheless, the relation is much, much closer than everyone tends to think, primarily because Aristotle never disagreed with the notion of the Forms--only how Forms work.

In Aristotle's understanding, there was no secondary world in which the Forms existed, but only one: this one. Forms existed still, but only in the sense that they instantiated differing objects, and not in themselves. I realize that's not quite clear, but try to think of it like this: we have a category called Dog, which might seem similar to Plato's Form of Dog. The difference, however, is that the concept of Aristotle's Dog exists only insofar as it picks out some set of existing, individual Dogs. It's not the case that the concept of Dog would exist in some other world if in fact there were no Dogs to pick it out, which is what Plato's account explicitly says.

Now, the soul in Aristotle's account differed greatly as well. An Aristotelian soul is similar to the Platonic soul in that in both cases, they come with notions of the Forms, and the natural function of rational thought. How they differ is that firstly that Plato thought only humans had a soul (the other animals simply partaking in their form without being able to understand it), while Aristotle thought that animals and plants had souls, but simply lacked as many parts of it as we did (for example, an asparagus only has a vegetative part of the soul, while an aardvark has a vegetative and an appetative part of the soul, while a human has a vegetative, appetative, and rational part of the soul). Additionally, Aristotle thought that the soul's conception of the Forms would only work in conjunction with experiential data, which was required in order for the soul to organize it's thoughts in any coherent way (namely through syllogistic logic). To give an example of how this works, as I realize it's quite hazy, consider the following:

We have already preexisting in our heads several notions given to us by the Forms. Some of them are things like Cat, retractable claw, and stealthy. Now, the natural function of the rational soul is to organize these concepts into syllogisms, but how does it do this? It does it by observing the connections between them through observation. In this case, through observations of cats, retractable claws, and stealthiness, our soul comes to understand the relationship between retractable claws and stealthiness, and also that cats have retractable claws. Thus, our soul is able to naturally organize the following syllogism:

1) Retractable claws are stealthy.
2) Cats have retractable claws.
C) Cats are stealthy.

Aristotle's system has the advantage over Plato in that it's simpler and allows for a better account of how reason works. It's disadvantage is that (to the best of my knowledge--my understanding of the Metaphysics is a bit sketchy, as I've focused primarily on the Nicomachean Ethics and the Posterior Analytics) it still has a problem with dealing with uninstantiated possibles. For example, Aristotle's system would have a hard time providing a syllogism for an non-existent entity like Pegasus, because it's impossible to observe it. And yet it's undisputable that we do talk about, and ascribe attributes to, Pegasus. Before you knock either one, however, remember that this is a recurrent problem in metaphysics, and even in the 20th century, people like Quine and Bertrand Russell still couldn't really solve it.

As for who do I like more, I can't really say. I'm more familiar with Plato than Aristotle, but from what I've read, both systems are incredibly elegant and systematic. I generally marvel at the both of them rather than pick one than the other. As a final note, however, Idealist is the absolute wrong term to ascribe to Plato's system. Berkeley was an idealist, and his idea was that there were no minds, only random ideas. As Plato believed in minds, he couldn't have been an idealist. Rationalist, yes, but these are not synonymous terms.