Chapter 3
After Aristotle: The Search for the Good Life
Updated: 2009-11-16
Chapter Outline
- Skepticism and Cynicism (p. 55)
- Epicureanism and Stoicism (p. 57)
- Neoplatonism (p. 57)
- Emphasis on Spirit (p. 62)
- Jesus
- St. Paul
- St. Augustine
- The Dark Ages (p. 67)
- The Arabic Influence (p. 67)
- Reconciliation of Faith and Reason (p. 69)
- Scholasticism (p. 70)
- Peter Abelard
- St. Albertus Magnus
- St. Thomas Aquinas
- Limitations of Scholastic Philosophy
- William of Occam: A Turning Point (p.75)
- The Spirit of the Times Before the Renaissance (p. 76)
Lecture Outlines
- Skeptics, Cynics, Epicureans, and Stoics
- Skepticism
- Pyrrho of Elis
- Attacked dogmatism
- Tranquility (apatheia or ataraxia) was
goal not truth
- Freedom from worry
- Formalization (and freezing) of Platonic thought
- Replaced by Stoicism
- Cynicism
- Antisthenes and Diogenes
- Searched for true independence (autarkia)
- Cynic means dog-like (because dog copulates and
defecates in public)
- Only works within civilization (parasitic)
- Critical of establishment, but did not provide
alternative
- Became play method of rich (i.e., like counterculture)
- Did support female equality (Crates and Hipparchia ate
together!)
- Epicureanism
- Epicurus of Samos, a kind of guru
- Cult-like and dogma, allowed little debate
- Ataraxia supreme, no need for science
- "...research is futile if does not contribute to
peace of mind."
- Epicurus's house and garden
- A real place
- Female equality
- Hedonism, but friendship highest form
- Death as end, no afterlife
- Nobody in group seemed to work (Seinfeld?)
- Popular, many converts
- Rejection of the world, introspective philosophy
- Stoicism
- Zeno of Citium
- Popular philosophy, embraced world
- The stoa or porch
- Natural law and causation
- Nothing happened without a reason
- Nothing that happened was bad
- Roman influence
- Materialistic philosophy
- Preservation of status quo
- Suicide a logical choice
- Neoplatonism
- Mystical aspects of Platonism emphasized
- Philo
- Revealed knowledge and wisdom (from God)
- Personal relationship with God
- Dualistic (sacred and profane)
- Plotinus
- Pagan
- Higher regard of sensation than Plato
- Plato's other world becomes life after death
- sensory information raised higher
- Other world of Plato to afterlife of Christians
- The Jews
- Doctrine of the one God
- Ancient religion even then
- Theocrats and conquered
- Alexander
- Seleucids
- Maccabean revolt (refusal to Hellenize)
- Diaspora and hellenized Jews
- Herod and new Temple
- Estimated 6 million Jews in Roman Empire
- World religion?
- Tribal issues
- Circumcision
- Geneological rules (Aaron--priests, Levi--temple
attendants, David--kings)
- Jerusalem Temple
- Many sects
- Jesus
- Difference of Christianity and Judaism (Johnson)
- God or Man
- Reconciliation with Christianity?
- Sticking point was the divinity of Jesus
- Judaism maintained that there was an absolute
distinction between humans and God
- Christianity was unanimous on the issue of Jesus being
BOTH God and man
- "The quarrel was all the more bitter because, while
differing on the essential, the two faiths agreed on
virtually everything else. The Christians took from Judaism
the Pentateuch (including its morals and ethics), the
prophets and the wisdom books, and far more of the apocrypha
than the Jews themselves were willing to canonize. They took
the liturgy, for even the eucharist had Jewish roots."
(Johnson, Paul, The History of the Jews, p. 145)
- The Early Christians
- St. Paul
- "Invented" Christianity (Road to Damascus)
- Primacy of revealed, divine knowledge (I Corinthians)
- The early church
- Little actual persecution in Roman Empire (as long
as...)
- Church acted against heretics out of self interest
(heretics more likely objects of persecution)
- Love and charity were new to pagan world (expanded
Jewish charities)
- Eventually the church mirrored the Roman Empire
- Edict of Milan (313 AD) legalized church
- Trinitarians vs. monophysites
- Orthodox church from trinitarians
- Monophysite sects (Jerusalem West along Southern
Mediterranean)
- Islam swept through the monophysites
- St. Augustine and the Church
- Total Christian society by force if necessary
- Church's official status helped
- Church's influence in all areas of life
- Seeds of the Inquisition
- Beginning of Medieval period
- Faith dominates reason
- Humans as infants, God as father
- Human stampedes (Constantinople 398)
- Free will
- Ability to choose between good and evil
- Forces introspective mentality
- Explains evil in the world
- Reason minimized
- Dark Ages
- Final decline of Roman Empire (410-529 i.e., Fall of Rome
to closing of Academy)
- Loss of contact with past
- Monks and Monasteries
- Ascetic individual model at first (Egypt, Gaul, Ireland)
- Learned
- Counterpoint to Augustinian model
- Spreaders of Christianity
- Benedictine model (circa 515)
- First church sponsored order
- Simple but common sense rules
- Became dominant model
- Monks cleared the European wildernesses (esp.
Cistercians)
- Founded towns
- Developed agriculture
- Revived learning (scriptoria)
- Education
- Trivium
- logic, grammar, and rhetoric
- Quadrivium
- geometry, astronomy, arithmetic, and music
- Dependent Arts
- medicine, law, and chronology
- Universities
- Founded by religious orders
- Bologna--1088, Paris--1119, Oxford--1167-1185,
Cambridge--1209
- Islam
- Mohammed (570-632)
- Islam grew rapidly
- Used Aristotle's philosophy to their advantage
- Islam allowed scholars to continue to work
- Muslim scholars were usually physicians
- Avicenna
- Physician
- Aristotelian, but expanded "interior senses" to 7 (from
3)
- Averroes
- Philosopher
- Primacy of God, but also Aristotelean
- Discovered retina and immunity to small pox
- The Crusades
- Pilgrimages prior to Crusades common
- Pilgrims often armed for protection, but allowed to visit
Jerusalem and Holy Land
- 1st Crusade and sack of Jerusalem
- Other Crusades to Outremer
- "Internal" Crusades
- Use of word "Christendom"
- The Black Plague (beginning in 1347)
- one third of Europe dies
- off and on for 200 years
- Medieval "Philosophy"
- Faith alone begins to give way to faith, reason, and the
study of the world
- Rediscovery of Aristotle
- Bending and codifying Aristotle
- Aristotle's works used to justify dogma
- Peter Abelard
- Realism vs. nominalism (Abelard a nominalist)
- Dialectical method
- Heloise
- Albertus Magnus
- First to review both Aristotle and Arabic scholars'
works
- One of first in Middle Ages to collect new data
- Thomas Aquinas
- From rich family, became a Dominican friar (a begging
order)
- Doctorate in theology from U. of Paris
- Responsible for codifying Aristotle in into Church dogma
- Cracked open the door to philosophy without faith
- William of Occam
- Occam's razor
- Nominalist
- Primacy of empiricism, again
- Test Review
- True or False
- Preparadigmatic (Staats, 1981)
- Percy and his modes dealing with daily existence
- Modernism vs. Postmodernism
- Thomas Kuhn
- Jews and their place in history
- zeitgeist
- Karl Popper
- Matching
- adjetival science (e.g., pure science)
- isms
- Multiple Choice
- Why study history of psychology?
- Questions for psychology
- Issues and people in Greek civilization
- "Pagan" philosophies
- Middle Ages/Midieval philosophy
- Short Answer
- Mind-Body
- Example response for short answer question: Why is Aristotle such an important figure in philosophy and psychology?
- Aristotle is important because he changed Plato's focus on introspective methods that searched for ideal forms to a method that went out into the world and attempted to describe his observations as well. Aristotle, while still a rationalist, emphasized the role of empiricism as well. Many of Aristotle's observations would today be considered psychological.
Graphics
URLs
Back to History of Psychology