Roger Bacon, Scholastic Philosopher

Roger Bacon (1214/1220–1292), Master of Arts, contemporary of Robert Kilwardby, Peter of Spain, and Albert the Great at the University of Paris in the 1240s, was one of the early Masters who taught Aristotle's works on natural philosophy and metaphysics. Sometime after 1248–49, he became an independent scholar with an interest in languages and experimental-scientific concerns. Between 1247 and 1267, Bacon mastered most of the Greek and Arabic texts on the science of optics. In 1256/57, either at Paris or Oxford, he joined the Franciscan Order. By 1264 in Paris, he came to believe that his university reputation for advanced learning had suffered. Because he regarded this decade as an exile from university teaching and writing, he sought the Patronage of Cardinal Guy le Gros de Foulque, Papal Ambassador to England (who later served as Pope Clement IV, 1265-68). On the instruction of the Pope on June 22, 1266, Bacon quickly wrote “an introductory work,” the Opus maius, and the related works, Opus minus and Opus tertium. He set out his own new model for a reform of the system of philosophical and theological studies, one that would incorporate language studies and science studies, then unavailable at the universities. In this project, he was partly successful. He wrote a new and provocative text on semiotics, and influenced the addition of perspectiva to mathematical studies (the Quadrivium) as a required university subject. He succeeded in setting out a model of an experimental science on the basis of his study of optics. The latter was used in his extension of experimental science to include new medicines and the general health care of the body. He did this in a new context: the application of linguistic and scientific knowledge for a better understanding of Theology and in the service of the Res publica Christiana. Heretofore, it appeared that Bacon was condemned by his own Order in 1278 “on account of certain suspected novelties.” This may have been due to his interests in astrology and alchemy. The historical accuracy of this condemnation has been questioned by some Bacon scholars, and it is now seen by some as a later retrojection. Bonaventure and John Pecham were among his first readers. It is clear that with the possible exception of the uses or astrology and alchemy, Bacon shared in Bonaventure's project seeking a “reduction” of the sciences to theology. Bacon also found a sympathetic reader and interpreter in the great secular scholar of the Sorbonne, Peter of Limoges (d. 1306). Through the latter, Bacon may have influenced Raymond Lull. Sometime in the late 1270s or early 1280s, Bacon returned to Oxford, where he completed his edition with introduction and notes of the Secretum secretorum, a Latin translation of an Arabic text on the education of the Prince, the Sirr-al-‘asrar, which he believed to be a work by Aristotle written for Alexander the Great. This work of advice to the Prince points to Bacon's close connections to the Papal Court through Pope Clement IV, the French Court through Alphonse of Poitiers, and the English Court. His contacts with the Papal Curia were mediated by William Bonecor, Ambassador of King Henry III. Bacon died at Oxford c. 1292.

Life and Works

Bacon remarks in the Opus tertium [OQHI], written c. 1267 that he had devoted forty years to study since he first learned the alphabetum and that no other scholar had worked as much in the Arts and Sciences as he. Some scholars use this text to argue that Bacon was writing about his elementary education and therefore that was born c. 1220 [Crowley (1950), Easton (1952), Lindberg (DMS, 1983)]; others hold that he was writing about his early university education -- Alphabetum philosophiae is a term Bacon uses in the chapter from which the following cited text is taken -- and thus that he was born c. 1214 [Little (RBE, 1914), Maloney (CSTM, 1988), Hackett (1984, 1992, 1997a, 2005), Molland (2004)]. The text reads:

    I have labored much in sciences and languages, and I have up to now devoted forty years [to them] after I first learned the alphabetum; and I was always studious. Apart from two of these forty years I was always [engaged] in study [or at a place of study], and I had many expenses just as others commonly have. Nevertheless, provided I had first composed a compendium, I am certain that within quarter or half a year I could directly teach a solicitous and confident person whatever I know of these sciences and languages. And it is known that no one worked in so many sciences and languages as I did, nor so much as I did. Indeed, when I was living in the other state of life [as an Arts Master], people marveled that I survived the abundance of my work. And still, I was just as involved in studies afterwards, as I had been before. But I did not work all that much, since in the pursuit of Wisdom this was not required. ([OQHI], 65)

It would seem, then, that prior to his entry to the Franciscan Order, c. 1256-57, he was very active in his studies or at a studium or school, and that he was known for his proficiency in sciences and languages. And yet, he himself tells us that around 1248 or perhaps a little later, he set aside the common scholastic ways of teaching in order to devote time to languages and experimental concerns. (We are dealing with Bacon's vague recollections from c. 1268; it could well be that in 1250–51 he was still in Paris. He was certainly there in 1251.) Thus, we can see the period from c. 1240–48 as the time during which he lectured at Paris on Aristotle, on Grammar/Logic, and especially on the mathematical subjects of the Quadrivium. And so, depending on the chosen year of birth, the chronology would be as follows: (1) Bacon was born c. 1214, educated at Oxford c. 1228–36, Master of Arts at Paris c. 1237–47/8, Private Scholar 1248–56/7, active again at Oxford c. 1248–51, back in Paris 1251, Franciscan Friar at Paris c. 1256-57 to 1279, returning to Oxford c. 1280, died c. 1292. Or: (2) Bacon was born c. 1220, educated at Oxford c. 1234–42; Master of Arts at Paris c. 1242–47/8, active again at Oxford c. 1248–51, back in Paris 1251, Franciscan Friar at Paris 1256/7 to 1279, returning to Oxford c. 1280, died c. 1292. Further precision on the chronology must await the critical edition of all the works of Roger Bacon and careful scientific study of these works in relation to other thirteenth century scholars.

The Aristotelian Quaestiones are to be found in a single manuscript, Amiens MS Bibl. Mun. 406. The materials found in this manuscript include two sets of questions on the Physics and two sets of questions on the Metaphysics of Aristotle, the questions on the Liber de causis, and the Pseudo-Aristotelian De vegetabilibus. A new version of Bacon's second set of questions on the Physics inter-textually excerpted by another thirteenth-century author has recently been identified by Silvia Donati in Philadelphia MS Free Library, Lewis Europe, ff. 77ra-85rb [Donati, in Hackett, 1997b]. This is an important discovery that has enabled scholars for the first time to carry out a critical-textual study of Bacon's works on Aristotle's Physics in the context of the development of English natural philosophy in the period 1240–1300.

The early logical works consist of the Summa grammatica, Summa de sophismatibus et distinctionibus and the Summulae dialectices [=Summulae super totam logicam]. These works show that Bacon is indebted to the teaching of logic at Oxford and Paris in the 1230s and 1240s. They have received much critical study in recent years. They reveal Bacon as a mature philosopher of logic who is representative of terminist and pre-modist grammar and logic. Bacon's writings on grammar and logic have a connection with the Oxford Logica cum sit nostra and with the works of William of Sherwood. The logical works are clearly influenced by the teaching in Paris of Robert Kilwardby. They give evidence of Bacon as a philosopher who connects the Logica modernorum with new logical and philosophical problems based on the natural philosophy and metaphysics of Aristotle as commented on by Avicenna and Averroes.

Alain de Libera has argued that the Summulae dialectices is typical of mature works in the philosophy of logic c. 1250 and a little later. Scholars have long held that Roger Bacon was a pioneer in the introduction of the study of Aristotle as interpreted by Averroes and Avicenna to the University of Paris c. 1240. During the past ten years or so, research has shown that two Erfurt manuscripts (Amplon. Q. 290 and Q. 312) ascribed to Walter Burley (1274/5–1344) by the Amplonius de Berka in the fifteenth century, actually belong to the first half of the thirteenth century. Rega Wood, the editor of the Physics from the Erfurt MS Amplon. Q 290, has attributed these questions on the Physics and most of the other works in these two Erfurt manuscripts to Richard Rufus of Cornwall, a contemporary and opponent of Roger Bacon [Wood in Hackett 1997b; Wood, IPA, 2003].

Recently, it has also been demonstrated that as Master of Arts at Paris during the period of the First Averroism (c. 1240-48), Bacon had confronted and reviewed some of the major issues concerning the Latin Averroism which eventually produced a major crisis at Paris in the period 1266–77.[2] And, as we will see below, Bacon, in his works from the 1260s, will revisit these topics. One can conclude that sometime in the late 1240s, Bacon ceased being a Master of Arts at Paris, became an independent scholar, and returned to England. Yet, there is evidence that he was back in Paris in 1251.

Bacon joined the Franciscan Order about 1256/7; whether he did so at Oxford or Paris is not known. At any rate, he was probably in Paris in the late 1250s and was definitely there in the early 1260s. He had been attracted to the Order by the philosophical, theological, and scientific example of Grosseteste, Adam Marsh, and other English Franciscans. He had personally known Adam Marsh at Oxford c. 1248-51. Because of their over-emphasis of a purported condemnation of Bacon c. 1278, scholars had tended to ignore or tone down Bacon's very real commitment to his Franciscan way of life. The past ten years have seen new work by Amanda Power (2013) and Timothy J. Johnson (2009, 2010, 2013) placing significant emphasis on the compatibility of Bacon's concerns c. 1266 with the mission of the Franciscan Order as presented by Bonaventure and the Franciscan School at Paris. By 1266, however, Bacon had come to regard the previous ten years as one of enforced absence from scholarly work. He had done little new intellectual work apart from some small pieces for his friends.

In answer to the Papal Mandate received in July 1266, Bacon produced some very significant works. The Opus maius, Opus minus, and the related foundational work in natural philosophy, De multiplicatione specierum, the work on burning mirrors, De speculis comburentibus, together with an optical lens, were sent to the Pope c. 1267-68. They were seen as a preamble to a proposed major work on Philosophy. It remains a question as to whether the Opus tertium was sent. Together with these works in the 1260s, Bacon produced the Preface to the Works for the Pope, Communia naturalium, Communia mathematica, Epistola de secretis operibus naturae et de nullitate magiae.

Amanda Power (2013) has provided a masterful interpretation of the new context of Bacon's post-1266 works for Pope Clement IV. She places Bacon in a Franciscan context within the wider mission of Christendom in its relations with other cultures and religions. The Compendium studii philosophiae can be dated to about 1271. This latter is a largely polemical work on the state of studies at Paris and an apology for his scholarly situation. It does, however, contain an important section on his theory of language and translation. He completed the edition of the important work on medieval politics and statecraft, the Secretum secretorum, at Oxford some time after 1280. It used to be the view of scholars [Easton, 1952] that Bacon had composed this work in the 1240s and that it was the main influence in his search for a "universal science". But even if Easton's position on the dating of the publication of the Secretum secretorum does not hold, it is clear that by 1266 and later, this work played a major role in Bacon's understanding of the political uses of the experimental sciences. He also produced an important work on the calendar, the Computus. The Compendium studii theologiae is usually dated c. 1292.

One must bear in mind that Roger Bacon in the 1260s is writing as an individual author for a patron, Cardinal Guy le Gros de Foulque (Pope Clement IV, 1265–68). A onetime Master of Arts, he was no longer a teaching Master at the University of Paris. This gave Bacon the freedom to address both philosophical (Aristotle) and theological (Augustine) issues in a manner denied to teachers in the Faculty of Arts, who were limited for the most part to disputations on the texts of Aristotle. He writes self-consciously as a representative of the text-based practices of Robert Grosseteste and in opposition to the new “sentence-methods” of the schools of theology. His polemical writings ca. 1267-68 are centered on the struggles in the Arts and Theology at Paris. The Pope instructed Bacon in 1266 to ignore the rules of his Order and to send him his remedies about matters of some importance. It would appear from the context of Bacon's works for the Pope that the remedies had to do with educational matters at Paris, which at this time was the foremost university of the Christian commonwealth. The remedies sought must also have concerned geo-political matters as well as the exigencies of Christian missions. Because of this instruction, Bacon's later works, written in haste, consist of short treatises united by a self-conscious rhetoric for the reformation of education in the early universities of the Latin West. They are fundamentally important for an understanding of the “struggle of the faculties” in the mid-thirteenth century. The Compendium studii theologiae c. 1292 reflects the concerns of the 1260s. It does not add new information.

The reception of the life and works of Roger Bacon is complex. Each generation has, as it were, found its own Roger Bacon. Another study by Amanda Power (2006) has provided a thoughtful account of the complex reception of Roger Bacon in England and of the extent to which the image of the Doctor Mirabilis is often colored by the changing controversies of the present down through history.

Letters of the Younger Pliny -Stoic

Some slight memoir and critical estimate of the author of this collection of Letters may perhaps be acceptable to those who are unfamiliar with the circumstances of the times in which he lived.

Moreover, few have studied the Letters themselves without feeling a warm affection for the writer of them. He discloses his character therein so completely, and, in spite of his glaring fault of vanity and his endless love of adulation, that character is in the main so charming, that one can easily understand the high esteem in which Pliny was held by the wide circle of his friends, by the Emperor Trajan, and by the public at large.

The correspondence of Pliny the Younger depicts for us the everyday life of a Roman gentleman in the best sense of the term. We see him practising at the Bar; we see him engaged in the civil magistracies at Rome, and in the governorship of the important province of Bithynia; we see him consulted by the Emperor on affairs of state, and occupying a definite place among the "Amici Caesaris." Best of all, perhaps, we see him in his daily life, a devoted scholar, never so happy as when he is in his study, laboriously seeking to perfect his style, whether in verse or prose, by the models of the great writers of the past and the criticisms of the friends whom he has summoned, in a friendly way, to hear his compositions read or recited.

Or again we find him at one of his country villas, enjoying a well-earned leisure after the courts have risen at Rome and all the best society has betaken itself into the country to escape the heats and fevers of the capital. We see him managing his estates, listening to the complaints of his tenants, making abatements of rent, and grumbling at the agricultural depression and the havoc that the bad seasons have made with his crops.

Or he spends a day in the open air hunting, yet never omits to take with him a book to read or tablets on which to write, in case the scent is cold and game is not plentiful. In short, the Letters of Pliny the Younger give us a picture of social life as it was in the closing years of the first, and the opening years of the second century of the Christian era, which is as fascinating as it is absolutely unique.

Pliny was born either in 61 or 62 A.D. at Comum on Lake Larius. His father, Lucius Caecilius Cilo, had been aedile of the colony, and, dying young, left a widow, who with her two sons, sought protection with her brother, Caius Plinius Secundus, the famous author of the Natural History. The elder Pliny in his will adopted the younger of the two boys, and so Publius Caecilius Secundus -- as he was originally called -- took thenceforth the name of Caius Plinius, L.F. Caecilius Secundus. Though later usage has assigned him the name of Pliny the Younger, he was known to his contemporaries and usually addressed as Secundus. But in his early years Pliny was placed under the guardianship of Virginius Rufus, one of the most distinguished Romans of his day, a successful and brilliant general who had twice refused the purple, when offered to him by his legionaries, and who lived to a ripe old age -- the Wellington of his generation. So it was at Comum that he spent his early boyhood, and his affection for his birthplace led him in later years to provide for the educational needs of the youth of the district, who had previously been obliged to go to Mediolanum (Milan) to obtain their schooling. What can be better, he asks, than for children to be educated where they are born, so that they may grow to love their native place by residing in it? Pliny was fortunate in having so distinguished an uncle. On the accession of Vespasian, the elder Pliny was called to Rome by the Emperor, and when his nephew -- vixdum adolescentus -- joined him in the capital, he took charge of his studies. At the age of fourteen the young student had composed a Greek tragedy, to which he playfully refers in one of his letters, and in Rome he had the benefit of attending the lectures of the great Quintilian and Nicetes Sacerdos, and of making literary friendships which were to prove of the utmost value to him in after years. Pliny tells us that his uncle looked to him for assistance in his literary work, and he was thus engaged when his uncle lost his life in the eruption of Vesuvius in 79, so graphically described in the two famous letters to Tacitus. That Pliny deeply felt the loss of his relative and patron is shown by the eloquent tribute he paid to his memory, and doubtless, as his death occurred just at his own entry into public life, he was deprived of an influence which might have helped him greatly in his career. Domitian was on the throne, when, in 82, Pliny joined the 3rd Gallic legion, stationed in Syria, as military tribune. Service in the field, however, was not to his liking, and, as soon as his period of soldiering was over, he hurried back to Rome to win his spurs at the Bar and climb the ladder of civic distinction. He became Quaestor in 89 on the recommendation of the Emperor, Tribune in 91, and Praetor in 93.

So far his advancement had been rapid, but evil times succeeded. Domitian went from bad to worse. Always moody, suspicious, and revengeful, he began to imitate the worst vices of his predecessors of the line of Augustus. His hand fell heavily upon the Senatorial order, and another era of proscription began, in which the dreaded delatores again became the "terror" of Rome. It was a time of spoliation and murder, and Pliny writes of it with a shudder. Contrasting with the happy regime of Trajan that which prevailed in his youth and early manhood, he declares that virtue was regarded with suspicion and a premium set upon idleness, that in the camps the generals lacked authority and the soldiers had no sense of obedience, while, when he entered the Senate, he found it a craven and tongueless assembly (Curiam trepidam et elinguem), only convened to perpetrate some piece of villainy for the Emperor, or to humiliate the Senators by the sense of their own impotence. Pliny was not the man to make a bold stand against tyranny, and, during those perilous years, one can well believe that he did his best to avoid compromising himself, though his sympathies were wholly on the side of his proscribed friends. He was a typical official, suave and polished in manner, yet without that perilous enthusiasm which would simply have marked him for destruction. For two years he was Prefect of the Military Treasury, an office directly in the gift of the Emperor, and it would seem, therefore, that his character for uprightness stood him in good stead with the tyrant even in his worst years. He did not, like so many of the Roman nobles, retire from public life and enter into the sullen opposition which enraged the Emperors even more than active and declared antagonism.

In one passage, indeed, Pliny declares that he, too, was on the black list of the Emperor, but the words must not be taken too literally. He was given to boasting, and he may easily have represented, when the danger was past, that the peril in which he had stood was greater than it really was. No doubt he felt keenly the judicial murder of his friends Senecio, Rusticus, and Helvidius, and the banishment of Mauricus, Gratilla, Arria, and Fannia -- for women were not spared in the general proscription; but, after all, the fact that he held office during the closing years of Domitian's life is ample proof that he knew how to walk circumspectly, and did not allow his detestation of the informers to compromise his safety. When at length, in 96, the Emperor was assassinated in the palace, and the Senate raised Nerva to the purple, Pliny stepped forward as the champion of the oppressed, and impeached Publicius Certus for compassing the death of Helvidius Priscus, though he was only so far successful that he prevented Certus from enjoying the consulship which had been promised him. Pliny revised the speech and published it in book form, and Certus died a few days after it appeared, haunted, so Pliny tells us, by the vision of his prosecutor pursuing him, sword in hand. Nerva's reign was short, but he was succeeded by one of the best of the Roman Emperors, Trajan, a prince under whose just, impartial and strong rule, a man of Pliny's character was bound to thrive and pass from office to office. In 98 he had been appointed by Nerva Prefect of the Treasury of Saturn, and in 100 he held the Consulship for two months, while still retaining his post at the Treasury, and delivered his well-known Panegyric on the 1st of September in that year. Either in 103 or 104 he was advanced to the Augurate, and two years later was appointed Curator of the Tiber. Then in 111 or 112 -- according to Mommsen's Chronology -- Trajan bestowed upon him a signal mark of his esteem by selecting him for the Governorship of the province of Pontus and Bithynia, which he had transferred from the list of senatorial to that of imperial provinces. Pliny was given the special title of Legate Propraetor with full Consular powers, and he remained in his province for at least fifteen months. After that the curtain falls. Whether he died in Bithynia, or shortly after his return to Rome, or whether he lived on to enjoy the ripe old age of which he writes so pleasantly in his letters, we do not know. Certainly the probabilities are that, if he had lived, he would have continued to correspond with his friends, and the absence of further letters makes for the probability that he died in about his fiftieth year.

In judging these letters for their literary value, the first thing which strikes the reader is that Pliny did not write for his friends alone. Whatever the subject of the epistle, whether it was an invitation to dinner, a description of the charms of the country, an account of a visit to a friend, or an expression of condolence with some one in his or her bereavement, he never allowed his pen to run on carelessly. He scarcely ever prattles in his letters or lets himself go. One always sees in the writer the literary man, who knows that his correspondence is being passed round from hand to hand, and who hopes that it will find readers among posterity. Consequently there is an air of studied artificiality about many of the letters, which was more to the taste of the eighteenth than the nineteenth century. They remind one in many ways of Richardson and Mackenzie, and Pliny would have been recognised by those two writers, and by the latter in particular, as a thorough "man of sentiment." Herein they differ greatly from the other important collection which has come down to us from classical times, the Letters of Cicero. Pliny, indeed, -- and in this he was a true disciple of his old teacher Quintilian, -- took the great Roman orator as his model. Nothing pleased him more than for his friends to tell him that he was the Cicero of his time. Like Marcus Tullius, he was the foremost pleader of his day; like him again he dabbled in poetry, and his verses, so far as we know them, were sorry stuff. Yet again like his master, he fondly believed that he enjoyed the special inspiration of the Muses. Pliny, unfortunately for his reputation, gives us a few samples, which are quite as lame and jingling as the famous "O fortunatam natam, me Consule, Romam!" which had made generations of Romans smile. And so, as Cicero was in all things his master, Pliny too wrote letters, excellent in their way, but lacking the vivacity and directness of his model, and, of course, wholly deficient in the political interest which makes Cicero's correspondence one of the most important authorities for the history of his troublous time. Pliny's Letters cover the period from the accession of Nerva down to 113 A.D. None precede the death of Domitian in September 96. That is to say, they were written in an era of profound political peace, and most of them in the reign of Trajan, whose rule Pliny accepted with enthusiastic admiration. One certainly could have wished that he had written freely to his friends during the last years of Domitian's tyranny, for the value of such contemporary documents would have been enormous. But he would only have risked his life by so doing, and that he had no desire to do. It was not until the tyrant had fallen under the sword of Stephanus that he felt it safe to trust his thoughts to paper. The new era which was inaugurated loosened his tongue and made him breathe more freely. He exulted that at last an honest man could venture to hold his head high without drawing down upon himself the vengeance of the vile informers who throve upon the misfortunes of the State.

Two of Pliny's correspondents and friends were Cornelius Tacitus and Suetonius Tranquillus. Yet no one can read either the Histories and Annals of Tacitus or the Lives of the Caesars and then pass to a reading of Pliny's Letters without being struck by the enormous difference in their tone and spirit. It is almost impossible to believe that their respective authors were contemporaries. When turning over the pages of Tacitus one feels that the vices and despotism of the Emperors and the Empire had crushed all spirit out of the world, had made quiet family life impossible, and had stamped out every trace of justice and clean living. It is a remarkable fact that the great writers of the first century, as soon as the Augustan era had closed, should have been masters of a merciless satire, which has rarely been equaled in the history of the world, and never excelled. When we think of Roman society, as it was in the early Empire, our thoughts recur to the lurid canvases which have been painted for us by Juvenal, by Tacitus, by Lucan, by Seneca, and by Petronius -- pictures which have made the world shudder, and have led even careful historians astray. Pliny supplies the needful corrective and gives us the reverse side of the medal. Like the authors we have mentioned, he too writes of the evil days which he himself has passed through, as of a horrid nightmare from which he has just awakened; but from his letters, artificial and stilted as they are in some respects, we learn that there were still to be found those who had not bowed the knee to Baal.

And so, with this volume in our hands, we obtain a personal introduction to a number of distinguished Romans and Roman matrons, whose names have been preserved for all time by the Younger Pliny. His circle of friends was a large one. Let us mention a few of them. We have already spoken of Virginius Rufus, the grand old soldier and patriot, who, dying at the age of eighty-four, was awarded a public funeral, while Cornelius Tacitus, then Consul, delivered the panegyric in his honour. Vestricius Spurinna was another distinguished general of the old school, and Pliny relates with enthusiasm how he paid a visit to him in his country-house when Spurinna was seventy-seven years of age and had retired from public office. He tells us how his friend spent his day, how he drove and walked and played tennis to keep himself in health, wrote Greek and Latin lyrics, and maintained a keen interest in all that went on in the capital. Corellius Rufus is another of the older men of whom Pliny writes with sincere affection, and he helped to pay the debt of gratitude he owed him by numerous acts of kindness to his daughter Crellia. Voconius Romanus is another of his closest friends, and Pliny tells us that he wrote such admirable letters that you would think the Muses themselves must speak in Latin. His literary associates numbered among them Caius Cornelius Tacitus, Silius Italicus the poet -- whose veneration for Virgil was so great that he kept his master's birthday with more solemnity than his own, and visited his tomb on the Bay of Naples with as much respect as worshippers pay to a temple, -- Martial the epigrammatist, Suetonius Tranquillus the historian, and others such as Passennus Paullus, Caninius Rufus, Virgilius Romanus, and Caius Fannius, whose works have not survived the wreck of time, though Pliny showers upon all of them enthusiastic and indiscriminate praise. Again, he enjoyed the friendship of a number of distinguished foreigners, professional rhetoricians and philosophers, who came back to Rome after their sentence of banishment, passed by Domitian, had been revoked by Nerva and Trajan. Euphrates, Artemidorus, and Isaeus were the three most famous, and their respective styles are carefully described by Pliny. Even more interesting perhaps is the gallery of Roman ladies, whose portraits are limned with so fine and discriminating a touch. Juvenal again is responsible for much misconception as to the part the women of Rome played in Roman society. The appalling Sixth Satire, in which he unhesitatingly declares that most women -- if not all -- are bad, and that virtue and chastity are so rare as to be almost unknown, in which he roundly accuses them of all the vices known to human depravity, reads like a monstrous and disgraceful libel on the sex when one turns to Pliny and makes the acquaintance of Arria, Fannia, Corellia, and Calpurnia. The characters of Arria and Fannia are well known; they are among the heroines of history. But in Pliny there are numerous references to women whose names are not even known to us, but the terms in which they are referred to prove what sweet, womanly lives they led. For example, he writes to Geminus: "Our friend Macrinus has suffered a grievous wound. He has lost his wife, who would have been regarded as a model of all the virtues even if she had lived in the good old days. He lived with her for thirty-nine years, without so much as a single quarrel or disagreement." "Vixit cum hac triginta novem annis sine jurgio, sine offensa. One is reminded of the fine line of Propertius, in which Cornelia boasts of the blameless union of herself and her husband, Paullus --

"Viximus insignes inter utramque facem."

This is no isolated example. One of the most pathetic letters is that in which Pliny writes of the death of the younger daughter of his friend Fundanus, a girl in her fifteenth year, who had already "the prudence of age, the gravity of a matron, and all the maidenly modesty and sweetness of a girl." Pliny tells us how it cut him to the quick to hear her father give directions that the money he had meant to lay out on dresses and pearls and jewels for her betrothal should be spent on incense, unguents, and spices for her bier. What a different picture from anything we find in Juvenal, who would fain have us believe that Messalina was the type of the average Roman matron of his day!

Consciousness

Explaining the nature of consciousness is one of the most important and perplexing areas of philosophy, but the concept is notoriously ambiguous. The abstract noun “consciousness” is not frequently used by itself in the contemporary literature, but is originally derived from the Latin con (with) and scire (to know). Perhaps the most commonly used contemporary notion of a conscious mental state is captured by Thomas Nagel’s famous “what it is like” sense (Nagel 1974). When I am in a conscious mental state, there is something it is like for me to be in that state from the subjective or first-person point of view. But how are we to understand this? For instance, how is the conscious mental state related to the body? Can consciousness be explained in terms of brain activity? What makes a mental state be a conscious mental state? The problem of consciousness is arguably the most central issue in current philosophy of mind and is also importantly related to major traditional topics in metaphysics, such as the possibility of immortality and the belief in free will. This article focuses on Western theories and conceptions of consciousness, especially as found in contemporary analytic philosophy of mind.

The two broad, traditional and competing theories of mind are dualism and materialism (or physicalism). While there are many versions of each, the former generally holds that the conscious mind or a conscious mental state is non-physical in some sense, whereas the latter holds that, to put it crudely, the mind is the brain, or is caused by neural activity. It is against this general backdrop that many answers to the above questions are formulated and developed. There are also many familiar objections to both materialism and dualism. For example, it is often said that materialism cannot truly explain just how or why some brain states are conscious, and that there is an important “explanatory gap” between mind and matter. On the other hand, dualism faces the problem of explaining how a non-physical substance or mental state can causally interact with the physical body.

Some philosophers attempt to explain consciousness directly in neurophysiological or physical terms, while others offer cognitive theories of consciousness whereby conscious mental states are reduced to some kind of representational relation between mental states and the world. There are a number of such representational theories of consciousness currently on the market, including higher-order theories which hold that what makes a mental state conscious is that the subject is aware of it in some sense. The relationship between consciousness and science is also central in much current theorizing on this topic: How does the brain “bind together” various sensory inputs to produce a unified subjective experience? What are the neural correlates of consciousness? What can be learned from abnormal psychology which might help us to understand normal consciousness? To what extent are animal minds different from human minds? Could an appropriately programmed machine be conscious?

The Metaphysics of Consciousness: Materialism vs. Dualism

Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy concerned with the ultimate nature of reality. There are two broad traditional and competing metaphysical views concerning the nature of the mind and conscious mental states: dualism and materialism. While there are many versions of each, the former generally holds that the conscious mind or a conscious mental state is non-physical in some sense. On the other hand, materialists hold that the mind is the brain, or, more accurately, that conscious mental activity is identical with neural activity. It is important to recognize that by non-physical, dualists do not merely mean “not visible to the naked eye.” Many physical things fit this description, such as the atoms which make up the air in a typical room. For something to be non-physical, it must literally be outside the realm of physics; that is, not in space at all and undetectable in principle by the instruments of physics. It is equally important to recognize that the category “physical” is broader than the category “material.” Materialists are called such because there is the tendency to view the brain, a material thing, as the most likely physical candidate to identify with the mind. However, something might be physical but not material in this sense, such as an electromagnetic or energy field. One might therefore instead be a “physicalist” in some broader sense and still not a dualist. Thus, to say that the mind is non-physical is to say something much stronger than that it is non-material. Dualists, then, tend to believe that conscious mental states or minds are radically different from anything in the physical world at all.

Cultural Relativism:

All Truth Is Local

Cultural Relativism is the view that moral or ethical systems, which vary from culture to culture, are all equally valid and no one system is really “better” than any other. This is based on the idea that there is no ultimate standard of good or evil, so every judgment about right and wrong is a product of society. Therefore, any opinion on morality or ethics is subject to the cultural perspective of each person. Ultimately, this means that no moral or ethical system can be considered the “best,” or “worst,” and no particular moral or ethical position can actually be considered “right” or “wrong.”

Cultural relativism is a widely held position in the modern world. Words like “pluralism,” “tolerance,” and “acceptance” have taken on new meanings, as the boundaries of “culture” have expanded. The loose way in which modern society defines these ideas has made it possible for almost anything to be justified on the grounds of “relativism.” The umbrella of “relativism” includes a fairly wide range of ideas, all of which introduce instability and uncertainty into areas that were previously considered settled.

Stepping up to the edge of a cliff gives you a good perspective of the terrain below. Taking one step too far, as cultural relativism does, is simply a disaster.

Obviously, perspective is important to our understanding of history, psychology, and politics. Cultural perspective can help us understand why certain actions are considered right or wrong by a particular culture. For example, an ancient society might have considered dyeing one’s hair green to be a punishable offense. Most modern societies would find that strange, if not oppressive. Yet, good cultural perspective might tell us more. If we were to find out that green hair was a sign of a prostitute, we would understand that it wasn’t the hair color itself, but the prostitution that was truly considered “wrong.”

However, the problem with moving from cultural perspective to cultural relativism is the erosion of reason that it causes. Rather than simply saying, “we need to understand the morals of other cultures,” it says, “we cannot judge the morals of other cultures,” regardless of the reasons for their actions. There is no longer any perspective, and it becomes literally impossible to argue that anything a culture does is right or wrong.  Holding to strict cultural relativism, it is not possible to say that human sacrifice is “wrong,” or that respect for the elderly is “right.” After all, those are products of the culture. This takes any talk of morality right over the cliff, and into meaningless gibberish.

Tolerance, acceptance of differences, respect for all cultures are absolutely right and our world lives by those standards. Problems begin to arise when someone gets “hurt.” Perhaps the starting point maybe to put again into use Kant’s moral categorical imperative. First formulation: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law without contradiction.” Second formulation:“Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end.” Third formulation: “Therefore, every rational being must so act as if he were through his maxim always a legislating member in the universal kingdom of ends.” The first formulation of the Categorical Imperative appears similar to “The Golden Rule.” Kant himself did not think so in “Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals “ Rather, the categorical imperative is an attempt to identify a purely formal and necessarily universally binding rule on all rational agents. The Golden Rule, on the other hand, is neither purely formal nor necessarily universally binding. It is "empirical" in the sense that applying it depends on providing content, like "If you don't want others to hit you, then don't hit them." Also, it is a hypothetical imperative in the sense that it can be formulated, "If you want X done to you, then do X to others." Kant feared that the hypothetical clause, "if you want X done to you," remains open to dispute. He wanted an imperative that was categorical: "Do X to others." And this he thinks he discovered and formulated. Kant thought, therefore, that the Golden Rule (insofar as it is accurate) is derived from the categorical imperative

Absolutely Impossible

The contradiction of cultural relativism becomes immediately apparent. A society that embraces the notion that there is no ultimate “right” or “wrong” loses the ability to make any judgments at all. The way in which relativism, including cultural relativism, has permeated modern society is demonstrated in the bizarre ways in which we try to deal with this contradiction. “Tolerance” has mutated to imply unconditional support and agreement for all opinions or lifestyles. However, those who choose to be “intolerant” are not to be supported or agreed with. Tolerance, therefore, becomes an “ultimate good” in and of itself, which is contradictory to the entire idea of relativism. In the same way, heinous crimes such as rape and murder demand a moral judgment -- but strict cultural relativism cannot say that such things are always wrong.

Relativism in general breaks down when examined from a purely logical perspective. The basic premise is that “truth is relative.” If every truth statement is valid, then the statement “some truths are absolute” must be valid. The statement “there are no absolute truths” is accurate, according to relativism -- but it is an absolute truth itself. These contradict the very concept of relativism, meaning that absolute relativism is self-contradictory and impossible.

Crumbling Away

In practice, cultural relativism cannot overcome the boundaries of logic, nor can it override the sense of morality inherent to mankind. We instinctively know that some things are wrong, so cultural relativists attempt to tweak their philosophy to fit that need. Declaring certain actions “mostly” wrong, or “mostly” right is nothing more than making up the rules as one goes. Saying that some morals are “better,” even if they aren’t “the best,” still implies some ultimate standard that’s being used to make that judgment. How do you know which cloud is higher unless you know which way “up” is? To firmly state that anything at all is always wrong is to reject relativism itself. In the end, those who insist on clinging to cultural relativism must jettison logic, because there isn’t room for both. It is literally impossible for a person to rationally believe that there are no moral absolutes, or at least to live out that belief in any meaningful way.

 Since this philosophy is nonsensical, there must be some fundamental absolutes of right and wrong, regardless of the opinions of any given society. Since there are disagreements among different cultures, we cannot assume that these truths are developed by one particular group of people. In fact, the only logical place for these concepts to originate from is something more universal, or at least more fundamental, than culture.  What may be?  I am not sure, but we must work on it. Something akin to the resurrection of Universals from the ashes of post-modernism, very easy said but very, very complex to realize. Kant help us !

Lucius Annaeus Seneca, The Younger

(c.3 BCE-AD 65)

“We learn not in the school, but in life.”

Lucius Annaeus Seneca the younger was born in Corduba (present-day Córdoba), Spain, around 3 BCE. He was the second son of three in a wealthy family. His father was a famous teacher of Rhetoric in Rome. Early in life, Seneca went to Rome with his Aunt, who was wife to the prefect Gaius Galerius, and there he was educated in philosophy in the school of the Sextii. His schooling was a blend of Stoicism and ascetic neo-Pythagoreanism. While in school he earned the reputation for being an excellent orator. Seneca experienced some ill health and followed his aunt to Egypt to recover. He returned to Rome in 31 AD, and began his career in law and politics.

He gained prestige in Rome in the courts while he was also known as a writer of tragedies and essays. However, he fell out of favor with the emperor Caligula in 39 AD, and the emperor Claudius finally exiled Seneca to Corsica in 41 AD, charging him with committing adultery with Claudius' niece, the princess Julia Livilla. In Corsica he pursued his studies of philosophy and natural sciences, writing the three treatises titled Consolationes. In 49 AD he was invited back to Rome on the recommendation of the Emperor's wife, Agrippina. In 50 AD he married an influential and well-connected woman named Pompeia Paulina, and became praetor. His new friends included the prefect of the guard, Sextus Afranius Burrus, and Seneca was appointed tutor to the future emperor Nero. Upon Nero's succession, this lead to his unofficial appointment as chief minister.

Seneca has been credited with influencing a period of sound government during the first part of Nero's reign. However, Seneca's enemies gradually turned Nero against him, suggesting that his popularity and wealth made him a threat. In 62 AD he retired from public life to devote himself to writing and philosophy. It was during this time that he wrote the Letters to Lucilius. In 65 AD Seneca was accused of playing a part in a plot against Nero. As a noble gesture, Seneca complied with the emperor's wish that he commit suicide.

Seneca considered himself to be a Stoic, although his personal life seems to contradict the noble attitude of his texts. His philosophical works are influenced by "Middle Stoicism", an adaptation in response to the Roman market by Panaetius of Rhodes 200 years earlier, and developed by Poseidonius in the first century BC. The work of Poseidonius is the main influence behind Naturales Quaestiones, Seneca's books on natural science. The three texts of the Consolations are consolatory exercises for the loss of three sons: Ad Marciam consoles a woman on her son's death, Ad Helviam matrem Seneca's mother on his exile, and Ad Polybium, Polybium on his lost son. Seneca's work De ira is a study in the consequences and control of anger. His work De clementia is addressed to Nero, and argues that mercy is the great sovereign quality of an emperor. His studies on the life and qualities of a wise stoic include De tranquillitate animi, De constantia sapientis, De vita beata, and De otio. De beneficiis examines the benefits of both giver and receiver in an exchange, and De brevitate vitae is an argument that humans have a long enough life span only if time is used properly. Seneca's 124 essays entitled the Epistulae morales address a number of moral problems. Dedicated to his friend Lucilius Junior, these essays are considered among Seneca's best philosophical works.

Seneca's tragedies are perhaps his most influential works for Western literature. His stoicism and rhetoric, his use of gloomy atmosphere and horror, can all be seen as influential to Renaissance tragedy in particular. His plays are considered written for recitation, rather than stage performance. There are nine plays attributed to him, including Hercules Furens, Medea, Troades, Phaedra, Agamemnon, Oedipus, Hercules Oetaeus, Phoenissae, and Thyestes.

When Stoicism was seen to have affinities with Christianity it gained new life, which has kept Seneca's work from falling into obscurity. There are letters that substantiate the theory that Seneca knew St. Paul, indeed his older brother Gallio was said to have met Paul in Achaea in 52 AD. Seneca's works were studied by Augustin, Jerome, and Boethius, and were included in anthologies used in the Middle Ages. Dante, Chaucer and Petrarch were all familiar with his writings. The first English translation of his moral treatises appeared in 1614, edited by Erasmus. We can see his influence on writers of the 16th to 18th centuries in the work of Calvin, Montaigne, and Rousseau. His work was harshly critiqued in the 19th century, but since his 2000th year celebration in Spain, where he is included among the first "Spanish" thinkers, his work has been enjoying a revival. His 40 surviving books pay tribute to a unique writer of considerable versatility.

Epicurus and Epicureanism

The Pleasant Life

Epicureanism was one of the philosophies that arose during the decline of ancient Greece as a source of relief from the increasing social disorganization. Of these "salvation philosophies," which flourished until the Greco-Roman culture was superseded by the Christian, Epicureanism was distinguished for the constancy of its doctrine. Epicurus teaches us that happiness involves serenity and is achieved through the simple pleasures that preserve bodily health and peace of mind. To realize their ideal, the members of the Epicurean community refrained, insofar as possible, from participation in the affairs of the troubled world, spending their time in philosophical conversation.

Epicurus, inheriting Athenian citizenship from his parents, was born and educated on the island of Samos, in the Aegean Sea, where he spent the first two decades of his life. When, following the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C.E., the Athenians were driven out of Samos, Epicurus went to Asia Minor. After teaching there for several years, he moved to Athens (306 B.C.E.) and until his death taught in his famous garden. The Garden of Epicurus served as a sanctuary from the turmoil of the outer world for a select group of men who applied in their daily lives the precepts of their mentor. Epicurus’ Garden ranked as one of the great schools of antiquity, along with Plato’s Academy, Aristotle’s Lyceum, and Zeno’s Stoa.

It is a prank of history that the word epicure is frequently used to denote a gourmet of a fastidious voluptuary. Epicurus’ enemies in fact accused him of sensualism, but his philosophical teachings and the frugality and simplicity of his life effectively refuted their charge. It was the nobility of his character that accounted for his great popularity. Indeed, the biographer of ancient philosophers, Diogenes Laertius (third century C.E.), eulogized him in the following manner:

Epicurus has witnesses enough and to spare of his unsurpassed kindness to all men. There is his country which honored him with bronze statues, his friends so numerous they could not even be reckoned by entire cities, and his disciples who all remained bound for ever by the charm of his teaching, except Metrodorus . . . overweighted perhaps by Epicurus’s excessive goodness. There is also the permanent continuance of the school after almost all the others had come to an end, and that through it had a countless succession of heads from among the disciples. There is again his grateful devotion to his parents, his generosity to his brothers, And his gentleness towards his servants . . . in short there is his benevolence to all.

Although Epicurus was a very prolific writer, only a few letters and fragments of his writings are extant. They give little more than a summary of his theories of physics and astronomy, his theory of knowledge, and his ethics. However, a fuller view of his doctrines is provided by the works of his disciples, of whom the most distinguished is the Roman Lucretius Carus (94-55? B.C.E.). Lucreetius’ De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things) is both fine poetry and an excellent statement of Epicureanism; in it, he says of Epicurus,

When human life to view lay foully prostrate upon earth crushed down under the weight of religion . . . a man of Greece ventured first to lift up his mortal eyes to her face and first to withstand her to her face. Him neither story of gods nor thunderbolts nor heaven with threatening roar could quell: they only chafed the more the eager courage of his soul, filling with desire to be the first to burst the fast bars of nature’s portals.

The ethical theory of Epicurus stems from the Cyrenaic doctrine formulated by Aristippus (435-356 B.C.E.) who, even though he was a student of Socrates, advocates the hedonistic principle that pleasure is the supreme good. Epicurus and the Cyrenaics have widely different conceptions of the pleasant life, the former stressing peace of mind and the latter sensual pleasures, but they concur with respect to general principles. Both maintain that human nature is so constituted that people always seek what they believe will give them pleasure and avoid what they believe will give them pain and that pleasure is the only intrinsic good and pain is the only intrinsic evil. Again, both are agreed that "no pleasure is a bad thing in itself." Yet they enjoin us to choose our pleasures judiciously, for "the means which produce some pleasures bring with them disturbances many times greater than the pleasures." Aristippus and Epicurus teach that the person who wishes to be happy must cultivate an ability to choose the right pleasures; and , they assert, only those actions that further individuals’ enjoyment can have moral significance for them. Beyond this point, however, Epicureanism and Cyrenaicism diverge.

In opposition to Aristippus, Epicurus maintains that the duration of pleasures is more important than their intensity in achieving happiness. Consequently, he argues that the mental pleasures are in general superior to the physical pleasures, because they are longer-lasting, albeit less intense. Although he finds the physical pleasures unobjectionable in themselves, he contends that the pursuit of them for their own sake leads not to happiness but to its opposite. Experience shows us that the desire for a life filled with intense pleasures will be frustrated, because there are not enough of them in the ordinary course of events. What is more, the pleasures derived from such objectives as fame, wealth, and the like are usually outweighed by the pains necessary to procure them, and the pains consequent upon such activities as feasting, drinking, and merrymaking either cancel the pleasures or leave a balance of pain. From these considerations, Epicurus can only conclude that Aristippus’ standard of judging what is good—that is, "the most intense, sensual pleasure of the moment" - is entirely self-defeating.

The chief difference between Cyrenaicism and Epicureanism lies in their divergent conception of the nature of true pleasure. Fundamental to their disagreement is the distinction between active or positive pleasure, which comes from the gratification of specific wants and desires, and passive or negative pleasure, which is the absence of pain. Aristippus sets as the goal of life a constant round of active pleasures, whereas Epicurus maintains that the active pleasures are important only insofar as they terminate the pain of unfulfilled desires. For Epicurus, the passive pleasures are more fundamental than the active, because it is through them that happiness is gained. A human being’s ultimate goal is not a constant succession of intense sensual pleasures, but is rather the state of serenity, ataraxia, characterized by "freedom from trouble in the mind and pain in the body."

Epicurus assures us that the calm and repose of the good life are within the reach of all. It is necessary that we keep our desires at a minimum, however, and distinguish the natural and necessary desires from those that are artificial - for example, longings for wealth, excitement, fame, and power. The latter are not merely unnecessary to health and tranquility but are in fact destructive of them. By contrast, the satisfaction of the natural desires (the desires that must be fulfilled to preserve bodily health and mental peace) and the freedom from pain that accompanies such satisfaction lead to happiness.

Epicurus tells us that our good can be realized through philosophy, the quest for knowledge. It must be understood, however, that the function of philosophy is preeminently practical:

Vain is the world of a philosopher which does not heal any suffering of man. For justas there is no profit in medicine if it does not expel the diseases of the body, so there is no profit in philosophy either, if it does not expel the suffering of the mind.

By nature men seek pleasure, but by knowledge they are guided to the choice of the true pleasures. Without deliberation, we cannot hope either to forestall needless and artificial desires or to secure the pleasures required for happiness. In addition, without knowledge of the nature of things, we cannot rid ourselves of the fears and superstitions that destroy tranquility.

Epicurus undertakes to demonstrate the groundlessness of the two overwhelming fears that troubled his contemporaries: the fear of death and the fear of divine retribution. The philosophy of nature that he finds best suited to the task of destroying these terrifying chimeras is the "atomism" of Democritus (Fifth Century B.C.E.) in which the universe is explained wholly in terms of "atoms in motion in the void." Arguing that Democritus’ mechanistic account of the universe is adequate to explain all that occurs, Epicurus holds that it is superfluous to postulate the interference of the gods in human affairs. Epicurus does not deny that there are gods. However, he argues that it does not follow logically from the experience of gods, nor does experience testify, that "the greatest misfortunes befall the wicked and the greatest blessings of the good by the gift of the gods." He also says on the subject: "if god listened to the prayers of men, all men would quickly have perished: for they are forever praying for evil against one another." A further argument against divine causation of human good or evil is presented in a paradox attributed to Epicurus by Lactantius, in which the logical difficulties of the conception of an all-powerful and all-good deity are treated. Moreover, the Democritean theory of the soul supports his arguments against the fear of death: the soul is no more than a collection of small atoms within the body, and death is only the dispersal of the soul-atoms. In any case, we need not fear death, "since as long as we exist, death is not with us, but when death comes, then we do not exist."

Despite the general suitability of Democritean atomism as an account of nature, its theory of motion is said by Epicurus to be incomplete in a way that has serious consequences for ethics. In dealing with the motion of atoms, he observes that if their original motion is only a uniform downward fall, it is impossible to account for the collisions of atoms necessary to form complex bodies. Hence he assumes that atoms deviate spontaneously, or "swerve," in their course. But this kind of motion, being irregular and unpredictable, introduces an element of freedom or indeterminacy into the universe that is excluded by the absolute determinism of Democritus. The advantage of the Epicurean interpretation for ethics becomes evident when it is realized that men fear, more the hand of the gods, the control of an inexorable fate or necessity to the kind implied by Democritus’ deterministic atomism. However, because his theory of motion leaves a margin of indeterminacy, Epicurus believes it admits of the possibility that men can to some extent influence and control the course of their lives. He therefore exhorts us to realize that although "necessity is an evil . . . there is no necessity to live under the control of necessity."

Through the true philosophy, Epicurus tells us, we can see that the fear of death, of the interference of the gods, and of the hard grip of necessity are without foundation in reality. Philosophy serves us well - it is not only an indispensable tool for the good life but also the most pleasant of activities: "in all other occupations the fruit comes painfully after completion, but in philosophy pleasure goes hand in hand with knowledge. . . ." Wherefore, Epicurus admonishes: "Let no one when young delay to study philosophy, nor when he is old, grow weary of his study. For no one can come too early or too late to secure the health of his soul."

Plato and Aristotle on Beauty and Art

Plato and Aristotle’s vision of beauty reflects their individual philosophy of life and is summed up well by Rafael’s classic fresco painting of the Platonic academy in the Vatican. While Plato points upward to the heavens and the realm of the eternal Good, Aristotle, and his pupil gestures downward to the earth, the realm of man.

 It is essential to the understanding of Plato’s ideas on Beauty to understand that he put forward first and foremost a hierarchy of Being. The Good being the ultimate cause, from which all things have their being,

"knowable things do not derive from the Good only their knowability, but also their existence and their essence, although the Good is not essence, but in dignity and power is even above Essence."

Republic. VI. 509

"... But I believe it to be thus: that in the intelligible world the Idea of the Good is the highest and the most difficult to discern; but once it is discerned it is necessary to conclude that it is for all the cause of everything good and beautiful because in the visible world it has generated the light and the Lord of the light, and in the intelligible world, where it equally rules, it has produced truth and intelligence... "

Republic, VII, 51

Being the ultimate, Plato saw this as the highest state to which a human could aspire. In the Republic Plato describes the famous analogy of the cave. Like Malevich’s paintings, in which, "all reference to ordinary objective life has been left behind and nothing is real except... the feeling of non-objectivity." Malevich

Plato’s ascent from the shadows of imagination also leaves behind "the visible world" until all forms, including the individual, dissolve in the sun itself, the Good. Much like the square merging in the expanse of white in Malevich’s White on white.

 Around and from Plato’s absolute Good, are arranged and proceed forth its qualities, its "ideal forms": "... the equal in itself, the beautiful in itself... that is, Being... is not each of these absolute realities, being uniform in itself, always identical to itself.."

Phaedo 79a

Plato states the purest and closest to "the Good", infact the closest defining characteristics to it, as the Good is inexpressible and beyond definition, is firstly moderation then beauty, proportion and truth.

"Therefore if we are unable to net the good in a single concept, we must use three to capture it, namely beauty, proportion and truth.

... . goodness has somehow been caught above all in moderation and what is moderate, ordered and so on... .Then again its second domain is proportion, beauty, perfection, sufficiency and everything of this kind." Philebus 65a-66a

 Beyond these are the essences of all created forms or Ideas as Plato puts them. It is important to note though that they are not ideas as in mental constructs, but self-existent realities:

"it is clear that things themselves must contain in themselves their own permanent essence. They do not depend upon us, nor are they pulled up or down by our imagination, but they exist by themselves, according to their own essence, as they are by nature." Cratylus 386e

 These eternal essences, are the causal forms of all mental and physical forms. This realm of Ideas is the realm of Being, here things are causal and eternal, below this is the realm of Becoming. Here dwell all mortal forms, mental and physical. Being created they always die, and constantly move between the two. "the old worn out mortality leaving another new and similar existence behind-unlike the divine, which is always the same and not another? And in this way, Socrates, the mortal body, or mortal anything, partakes of immortality". Thus they are always Becoming. Becoming participates in the reality of Being, but it is not pure Being. Beyond both of these is the Good, cause of both the intelligible world and the visible.

 To Plato it is the Good, which is essentially beautiful. "Beauty absolute, separate, simple, and everlasting", is the radiance of this Good or as the sculptor Leonard McComb stated "the celebration of God’s radiance". This Beauty, "in every form, is one and the same", unaltered by human perception or opinion.

 In the Symposium Plato elaborates on Beauty, describing it is the goddess of creation, Aristotle on the other hand places reason as the cause of creation, with no mention of beauty.

"Beauty then, is the destiny or goddess of parturition who presides at birth, and therefore, when approaching beauty, the conceiving power is propitious, and diffusive and benign, and begets and bears fruit: at the sight of ugliness she frowns and contracts and has a sense of pain and turns away." Symposium

 For Aristotle "Reason forms the starting point, alike in the works of art and in works of nature." Parts of Animals Book

It is the basis upon which anything can be created. In Aristotle’s thought we see a negation of the divine creative power and the need for man to rely on this and instead the power of creation being put in man’s mind.

"Art is identical with a capacity to make, involving a true course of reasoning. All art is concerned with coming into being, i.e., with contriving and considering how something may come into being which is capable of either being or not being, and whose origin is in the maker and not in the thing made... .. Art, then as has been said, is a state concerned with making, involving a true course of reasoning, and lack of art on the contrary is a state concerned with making, involving a false course of reasoning; both are concerned with the variable." Nicomachean Ethics Book 7.10&20

 A similar difference can be seen in the work of Chuck Close and Vija Celmins. Close’s work speaks of the conquering of vision by reason. His large scale, systematic techniques and human focused subject matter, form a closed circuit for the vision. One is inundated by the immensity of the human mind and its total control of vision. Man being the prime mover and shaker throughout the image. Celmins on the other hand, speaks of the infinity of vision and nature. The vision being lost in the vast depth of space, desert or water. Throughout all her images one is aware of the immanent sense of infinity unconquered by thought.

 As Plato’s seeker dissolves into beauty itself, so to does the viewer become absorbed in Celmin’s formless vastness. This ascension towards a pure contemplation of "beauty everywhere" is described later in the Symposium;

 "These are the lesser mysteries of love, ... ..For he who would proceed aright in this matter should begin in youth to visit beautiful forms; and first... .to love one such form only... . soon he will of himself perceive... ..that the beauty in every form is one and the same ... ..and will become a lover of all beautiful forms; in the next stage he will consider that the beauty of the mind is more honourable than the beauty of the outward form. ... . until he is compelled to contemplate and see the beauty of institutions and laws, and to understand that the beauty of them all is of one family, and that personal beauty is a trifle; and after laws and institutions he will go on to the sciences, that he may see their beauty,... .. and at last the vision is revealed to him of a single science, which is the science of beauty everywhere... ... He who has been instructed thus far in the things of love, and who has learned to see the beautiful in due order and succession, when he comes towards the end will suddenly perceive a nature of wondrous beauty... a nature which in the first place is everlasting, not growing and decaying... ..secondly, not fair in one point of view and foul in another... ..as if fair to some and foul to others, or in the likeness of a face or hands or any other part of the bodily frame, or in any form of speech or knowledge, or existing in any other being... .. but beauty absolute, separate, simple, and everlasting, which without diminution and without increase, or any change, is imparted to the ever-growing and perishing beauties of all other things... ... beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may... ... I try to persuade others, that in the attainment of this end human nature will not easily find a helper better than love."

 The paintings of Mark Rothko also create a sense of luminous grandeur and emptiness akin to Plato’s vision of beauty, a vision that demands ones complete absorption within it. The austere simplicity of form and brilliance of colour reflect the gradual stripping away of diversity at each successive stage, until one goes beyond the formal qualities entirely.

"I am not interested in relationships of colour or form or anything else.. I am interested only in expressing the basic human emotions - tragedy, ecstasy, doom and so on-and the fact that lots of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I communicate with those basic human emotions. The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them. And if you, as you say, are moved only by their colour relationships, then you miss the point."

(S.Rodman, Conversations with Artists. New York. 1957)

 It is important to note that throughout the ascension to beauty itself, Socrates states; "human nature will not easily find a helper better than love." Love, for Plato, is the key to an understanding of true beauty. Diotima was an "instructress in the art of love" and their discussion begins with questions on the nature of Love. Love is described as a "great God", "like all spirits he is intermediate between the divine and the mortal", interpreting "between gods and men".

But the Love "is not, as you imagine, the love of the beautiful only. "

But; "The love of generation and of birth in beauty... . to the mortal creature, generation is a sort of eternity and immortality... . love is of the everlasting possession of the good, all men will necessarily desire immortality together with good: Wherefore love is of immortality. "

 To Plato all humankind desire’s for immortality and this is satisfied in a sense by creation, which is seen as a continuing of oneself. Whether it be the creation of children or art, "for there certainly are men who are more creative in their souls than in their bodies". For this creative act human’s search for the beautiful, "that he may beget offspring-for in deformity he will beget nothing". This act is a desire to participate in immortality.

However, to truly create eternal beauty Plato puts forward that the soul must ascend to beauty itself. There partaking of beauty itself; "he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal".

 Thus for Plato the contemplation of beauty enables man to exist in the eternity of the cosmos. The practice of beauty, a religious experience, a prayer or meditation on ones infinite nature. As Sister Wendy Beckett states on the artistic practice of the photographer Garry Fabian Miller.

"Miller makes no secret of the fact that his art is a spiritual activity.

It is a form of prayer, and equally, paradoxically, a form of proclamation"

Contrasting with Plato, Aristotle believed beauty to be something rooted in an object, unlike Plato’s Beauty in the realm of Ideas. Aristotle considered beauty a function of form, grounded in an object or context, without an object it could not exist.

"Now since the good and the beautiful are different (for the former always implies conduct as its subject, while the beautiful is found also in motionless things)... The chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness." Metaphysics Book 13. (107a.34 & 107b.1)

 The object while being the platform for beauty was also the cause of itself. Creation does not happen for the sake of immortality or the Good.

"the process of evolution is for the sake of the thing finally evolved, and not this for the sake of the process ... since ‘nature’ means two things, the matter and the form, of which the latter is the end, and since all the rest is for the sake of the end, the form must be the cause in the sense of ‘that for the sake of which’... . The necessary in nature, then, is plainly what we call by the name of matter, and the changes in it." Physics Book 2. (198b.16. 199a.6,15&31.. 200a.30)

 Too both Aristotle and Plato, like most of the ancient world, order or a proportion of parts was a key factor in beauty. "Soc: In every case, however, moderation and proportion seem, in effect, to be beauty and excellence." Philebus 64e

And Aristotle; ‘the main qualities of beauty are orderly arrangement, proportion, and definiteness,’ However, for Aristotle this "order in its arrangement of parts" exists in a relationship between several parts, one to another, i.e. in complex objects only. In contrast to Plato where beautiful objects, "are not relatively beautiful, but are so in their own right." Not to mention the fact that Plato’s ultimate understanding of beauty is of a "beauty absolute, separate, simple, and everlasting," not reliant in any way upon the arrangement of matter, but on the contrary bringing forth matter and bestowing upon it order. In Aristotle’s thought, the quality of beauty arises out the relationship of matter, one part to another, it is intertwined with form.

 Jon Groom’s discussion on the geometry in his paintings, would have appealed to Plato’s sensibilities for order and proportion:

"The geometry is the vehicle that carries the message, its simplicity and directness embrace another value; getting beyond the physical to reach a higher plane."

In the "visible world Plato too looks towards geometry as a means for reaching a "higher plane", these "pure" forms, are not "relatively" beautiful, but "beautiful in any situation". In essence forms which partake of the Ideas, the realm of Being.

" Protarchus: Well, which pleasures would it be right to consider as true, Socrates?

Socrates: Those which have to do with the colours we call beautiful, with figures, with most scents, with musical sounds: in short, with anything which, since it involves imperceptible, painless lack, provides perceptible, pleasant replenishment which is uncontaminated by pain... .. By ‘beauty of figures’ I mean... not what most people would consider beautiful... the figures of creatures in real life or in pictures... . I mean a straight line, a curve and the plane and solid figures that lathes, ruler and squares can make from them... I mean that unlike other things, they are not relatively beautiful: their nature is to be beautiful in any situation, just as they are, and to have their own special pleasantness... . And I mean that there are colours, which are analogously beautiful and pleasant... . Well by musical sounds I mean unwavering, clear ones which produce a single pure phrase: they are not relatively beautiful, but are so in their own right, and they have innately attendant pleasures... .. whiteness: that even if slight in quantity, provided it is pure, it surpasses a large amount which is not pure, because it is the truest instance." Philebus 51a-58d

 The use of geometry with its unchanging mathematical perfection can be seen most obviously in the art of Piet Mondrian. His work encapsulates many of the forms Plato talks about, especially so-called sacred geometry like golden rectangles and proportions aswell as the pure, clear colours Plato affirms. More importantly his intention for using these forms, "the expression of pure reality," is entirely appropriate to Plato’s aims.

"I felt that this reality can only be established through pure plastics. In its essential expression, pure plastics is unconditioned by subjective feeling and conception. It took me a long time to discover that particularities of form and natural colour evoke subjective feeling, which obscure pure reality. The appearance of natural forms changes but reality remains constant. To create pure reality plastically, it is necessary to reduce natural forms to the constant elements of form and natural colour to primary colour. The aim is not to create other particular forms and colours with all their limitations, but to work toward abolishing them in the interest of a larger unity."

For Mondrian and Plato the value of geometry is its proximity to Ideal forms. The reduction Mondrian speaks of is an ascent to the Beautiful it’s excellence corresponding to its nearness to this Idea. However, for Plato, these physical geometric forms, i.e., a circle, will always fall short of the perfect reality of the Idea of Circle. This Idea, "Circle" or "circle-ness" itself is then subject to a higher order of Truth, Proportion and Beauty, then again to Moderation and finally to its ultimate cause the Good.

 Formalism along with its children Minimalism and Colour Field painting, also strove towards a priori form. Stripping away traditional religious, social, and representative subject matter, in a reductive quest for the elusive source of beauty, "significant form" as it was called. For some (i.e.: Newman and Rothko ) "significant form", was as Clive Bell described, the "expression of that emotion which is the vital force in every religion", for others plastic form in its purity held "significant form" in itself, without any reference to a transcendent source.Plato and Mondrian’s emphasis on a "constant reality" is quite different from Aristotle’s description of the everchanging nature of beauty of a man. Where Plato and Mondrian reject the beauty of natural forms Aristotle elaborates on man’s varying beauty, a beauty in constant flux.

"Beauty varies with the time of life. In a young man beauty is the possession of a body fit to endure the exertion of running and of contests of strength; which means that he is pleasant to look at; and therefore all-round athletes are the most beautiful... For a man in his prime, beauty is fitness for the exertion of warfare, together with a pleasant but formidable appearance. For an old man, it is to be strong enough for such exertion as is necessary, and to be free from all those deformities of old age which cause pain to others." Rhetoric Book 1. 1361b.8

Beauty in this sense is brilliantly captured by the fleeting creations of Andy Goldsworthy. His intricate creations convey the clarity and purity much loved by both Aristotle and Plato, but much of their beauty lies in their ephemerality and constantly changing relationships. This is most definitely a beauty intertwined with form.

 Beauty here stands on a different ground to Plato. It is not based on a "constant reality" but on its relevance and desirability. Later in the Rhetoric Aristotle declares anything as beautiful;

"which, being desirable in itself, is at the same time worthy of praise, or which, being good, is pleasant because it is good." Rhetoric

This begins to push beauty into the realm of "subjective feeling", there being no eternal basis for what is "desirable in itself".

In effect Aristotle does with these ideas what Pollock did with the action paintings. Where Formalism had eschewed subjective content as a means for "significant form", Pollocks paintings forced recognition that process and semiotic structure, as well as the aesthetic response and significant form, were subjects of aesthetic inquiry. A push back to the individuals subjective judgement.

Beauty, being reliant on form for Aristotle and subject to human desire necessarily demands that it is perceivable by humans, to exist.

"to be beautiful, a living creature, and every whole made up of parts, must not only present a certain order in its arrangement of parts, but also be of a certain definite magnitude. Beauty is a matter of size and order, and therefore impossible either in a very minute creature, since our perception becomes indistinct as it approaches instantaneity; or in a creature of vast size - one, say, 1,000 miles long - as in that case, instead of the object being seen all at once, the unity and wholeness of it is lost to the beholder.’ Poetics 1450b.35

Not only is a "definite magnitude’ necessary in order that something can be regarded as ‘beautiful’, beauty is infact "impossible" if it exceeds the bounds of our senses, or understanding. Beauty while being an objective quality based upon certain natural and lawful arrangements is nevertheless dependent on a human viewer to exist, one could even say it only exist in the human mind.

 This notion of the comprehensibility of beauty, and its finite nature bound to form is perhaps where Plato and Aristotle differ the most. While Aristotle places it in human hands, Plato’s Idea of Beauty constantly points at its infinite nature, its formlessness and mans inability to fully grasp it. While man and nature create Aristotle’s beauty, Plato’s Beauty creates man and nature.

"drawing towards and contemplating the vast sea of beauty... at last the vision is revealed to him of a single science, which is the science of beauty everywhere... ... when he comes towards the end will suddenly perceive a nature of wondrous beauty... a nature which in the first place is everlasting, not ... .in any form of speech or knowledge, or existing in any other being... .. or in heaven, or in earth... . but beauty absolute, separate, simple, and everlasting, which without diminution and without increase, or any change, is imparted to the ever-growing and perishing beauties of all other things " The Symposium.