LE 1 Notes

Date: 09/22/2019

Plato
● Biography
○ 427-347 BC
○ Veered away from politics

● The Republic
○ 3 Interpretations:
i. Treatise of Justice – conventional definitions of justice
ii. Description of a Paradogmatic Society
iii. Guide to the Salvation of the Soul - afterlife
○ Written after the Peloponnesian War
○ Types of people
i. Producers (Craftsmen, farmers) – must implement the will of the
Guardians
ii. Auxiliaries (Soldiers) – must confine themselves to their work
iii. Guardians (Rulers, the political class)
A just society depends on a harmonious relationship between these 3
types of people.
○ Plato’s Tripartite Soul – Every person has a soul of three parts, mirroring
the three classes in society.
i. Rational – Represents the truth-seeking, philosophical inclination
ii. Spirited – Yearning for honour
 2

iii. Appetitive – Combines all human lusts, primarily financial

A Producer is dominated by his appetites, the Auxiliaries by the spirited,
and the Guardians by the rational. The Guardians are therefore the most
just men.
○ Gods are human-like; driven by their desires
○ Religion > Philosophy > Science
○ Treatise of Justice
i. Setting: Piraeus (port city)
ii. Event: Cephalus’ Dinner Party
iii. Characters
1. Cephalus – justice is telling the truth and paying one’s debt;
mere compliance
a. Old person; one of the richest
2. Polemarchus – justice is reciprocity
a. Son of Cephalus
3. Thrasymachus – justice is an “advantage of the stronger”;
justice is power
a. a teacher of argument; a Sophist
4. Glaucon – justice is compromise
a. Plato's elder brother
5. Adeimantus – justice is hypocrisy
a. Plato's elder brother
○ Social classes
i. Citizens
ii. Metics – resident foreigners
iii. Slave
○ Education of the Guardians
○ Principles
i. Equality between Men and Women
ii. Abolition of Property and Family for the Guardians
iii. Philosophers should be king
○ Plato’s 5 Regimes (in order of the most desirable to least desirable)
i. Aristocracy and Monarchy– rule by law, order, and wisdom; or, as
Plato puts it, rule by the wise; like ideal traditional “benevolent”
kingdoms that aren’t tyrannical; most ideal
 3

ii. Timocracy – rule by honor and duty; or, as Plato puts it, rule by
honor; like a “benevolent” military, Sparta as an example
iii. Oligarchy – rule by wealth and market-based-ethics; or as Plato
puts it, rule by wealth and landownership; like a free-trading
capitalist state
iv. Democracy and Anarchy – rule by pure liberty and equality, where
the people vote on and make laws; or, in Aristotle’s terms, “rule by
the many;” like a free citizen
v. Tyranny – rule by fear, without just laws; like a despot
Note: Polity, the next most desirable form, is a “balanced” mixed-
government (an “ideal” mixed “Republic“) that draws from all the
forms except tyranny; practical choice
○ Plato’s Allegory of the Cave
○ Plato’s Theory of Forms
i. Reducing it to its simplest form, Plato describes the world as
composed of two realms – the visible (which we can sense) and
the intelligible (which can only be grasped intellectually).
ii. The intelligible world is comprised of Forms – immutable absolutes
such as Goodness and Beauty that exist in permanent relation to
the visible world.
iii. Only the Guardians can comprehend the Forms in any sense.
iv. Continuing with the ‘everything comes in threes’ theme, in Book IX
Plato presents a 2-part argument that it is desirable to be just.
v. Using the example of the tyrant (who lets his Appetitive impulse
govern his actions) Plato suggests that injustice tortures a man’s
psyche.
vi. Only the Guardian can claim to have experienced the 3 types of
pleasure – loving money, truth and honour.

Aristotle
● Biography
○ Plato’s protege
○ Father of Sciences
○ Aristotle’s Lyceum
 4

i. Not only a philosophical school; also has laboratories

○ Tutor to the young Alexander
i. Macedonian empire
ii. Extended rights even to the non-Helenic (Greeks)
iii. No discrimination
○ Peripatetic
i. Way of teaching
ii. Travelling; walks everywhere and students follow
● The Politics of Aristotle
○ Collection of ideas and lectures on politics
○ Chapters are disorganized
○ Possibly compiled by his students
○ Human Nature and the Polis
i. Teleology
1. “the nature of a thing is its end”
2. Telos – human nature
ii. Potency – realization
iii. Human potential cannot be realized by our own
○ Evolution of Human Associations
i. Individual
ii. Family
iii. Village
iv. State/Polis
1. 5000 people
2. 700 slaves (10% of the population)
3. 20% foreigners
○ Man is by nature a political animal “gregarious animals”
i. Not a conscious deliberate voluntary choice
○ Stiffest punishment – banishment from the polis; to be ostracized
i. Gods and beasts cannot leave in a polis
ii. The state is the highest because telos is the highest;
iii. What it pursues is the most sovereign –justice for everyone
○ Instinct vs. rational choices
○ Women are incomplete men
○ Human relationships
 5

i. Parent and child

ii. Husband and wife
iii. Master and slave
1. Natural slavery – born slaves
2. Conventional slavery – prisoners of war
iv. Ruler and ruled
○ Slavery and the Role of Leisure in Ancient Greece
○ Aristotle’s criticisms of Plato’s Republic
i. Society is complex
ii. Nature will reveal itself
1. “Guardians cannot nurture all baby guardians”
iii. Tragedy of Commons
1. People care about something when they own it
2. Public property – people don’t care
○ Types of Constitutions
Single person Few (?) Many
True Monarchy Aristocracy Polity
Corrupt Tyranny Oligarchy Democracy
○

● Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy
nibh euismod.
○ Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam.
○ Quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper.

St. Augustine
● Biography
○ Pre-medieval philosopher
○ Roman thinker
○ Classical and medieval thought
○ Patristic Fathers
i. How to reconcile faith with philosophy
○ Church father, centered on defending orthodoxy
○ Manichean prior to conversion
○ Converted upon realizing the intellectual indefensibly of Manichaeism
 6

● City of God
○ Theodicy
i. Attempt to answer the problem of evil
ii. Conceiving evil as a part of a Neo-platonic doctrine
○ God
i. The thinking of immutable truths prove that immutable ground also
exist
ii. Changeless grounding
iii. This immutable ground also exists
iv. God’s eternity constitutes of an eternal present
○ Love
i. Much like Aristotle, asserts that human beings seek happiness
ii. This happiness can only be anchored in the eternal good, i.e. God
iii. Love is a natural inclination
iv. Pondus meum, amor meus –my love is my weight
v. Our heart is restless until it rests in you
○ The State
i. The history of humanity is constituted by the dialectic between two
cities, i.e. City of God and City of Man
ii. These two cities are distinguished by their love, i.e. love of God,
self-love
iii. The state, as the city of man, can never be truly just
iv. The Christian Church is the earthly manifestation of the City of God
v. It is only when the state becomes Christian that it can truly be just
vi. Church membership is not a sufficient condition for being a citizen
of the city of God
vii. God and goodness are the same
○ Conclusion
i. Main problem –make sense of man’s spiritual connection to God
ii. Classical philosopher and revealed theology
iii. Assumed unity between philosophy and theology
○ Key Notes
i. Nature of Man –social being
ii. Origin of the State
1. fulfill spiritual needs of man
 7

2. provide order in society

iii. Ends of the State
1. Secure and maintain peace
2. Expand God’s kingdom on earth through Christianity

St. Thomas Aquinas

● Biography
○ Childhood spent with the Benedictines
○ Joined the Dominicans (against his family’s will)
○ Prolific writer
○ Averroes scandal
○ Views departed from the dominant thinking of early Christianity
○ Contributed to the emergence of Scholasticism
i. Reason
ii. Faith
Faith rules over reason
○ Patron saint of teachers
○ Nature of Man
i. Man is a social and political being
ii. Independent
iii. Subordinate to divine revelation
○ Types of Order
i. Natural order –realm of unaided reason
ii. Supernatural order –realm of revelation
○ Nature and the Origin of the State
i. Deviated from the views of the Greeks
ii. Part of the natural order
iii. Organic entity
iv. Created for common good
v. “the good life consists of a virtuous life”
vi. State is natural
● Summa Theologica (Law)
 8

○ Law
i. Habituation of reason and virtue
ii. Exists to perfect man
○ Promulgation
i. Making something public
ii. Element in the proper implementation of the law
○ Types of Law
i. Eternal
1. God’s will
2. We can’t comprehend
3. Governs all creatures
ii. Divine
1. 10 commandments, bible
2. Expression of God’s will
iii. Natural
1. Only applicable to rational creatures
iv. Human
1. Governs practical matter
○ Theory of Government
i. ideal – monarchy
● On Kingship (Duty of king government)

Machiavelli
● Biography
○ Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam.
○ Quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper.
○ Suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.
i. Characters
1. Cephalus – justice is telling the truth and paying one’s debt;
mere compliance
a. Old person; one of the richest
2. Polemarchus – justice is reciprocity
a. Son of Cephalus
● The Prince and the Discourses
9