Week 3 - The Castle of the Maidens (From Plato to Aristotle
and the Dawn of Metaphysics)
Guiding Question: How is what we think of as "real" affected by our
values?
Throughout the Quest we find, through the
sage advice of an overwhelming number of hermits and priests, that nothing
is ever what it seems. We are told that Galahad was actually fighting the
Seven Deadly Sins at the Castle of the Maidens. Every person, animal and
even objects are merely symbols for other ideas (which Jung would later
call archetypes). All experiences are lessons by which we learn "higher
truths." Plato describes in the Symposium an ascension from the objects
of the senses to the notion of absolute beauty as follows:
He who ascends under the influence of true love
begins to perceive that beauty is not far from the end. And the true order
of going, or being led by another, to the things of love is to begin with
the beauties of earth and mount upward for the sake of that other beauty,
using these as steps only, and from one going on to two, and from two to
all fair forms, and from fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices
to fair notions, until from fair notions s/he arrives at the notion of
absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is.
One of the most famous, and enduring, explications of
reason, has been preserved in what is often referred to as the Platonic
Doctrine of Forms. One could make the case that this Doctrine alone, wedded
to Aristotleís application of it by breaking down inquiry into specialized
categories, forms the foundation of all of Occidental science and scholarship.
Making this claim is even more startling, however, in that the Doctrine
itself is never fully worked out in any one Dialogue of Plato, nor is it
named a "Doctrine of Forms" by Plato himself. This "Doctrine" rather describes
a thematic, and consistent, way of looking and determining "reality" which
shows up in one expression or another in nearly all of Platoís Dialogues,
and is, in many ways, a final explication of many of the Greek schools
of thought that preceded Plato.
This Ancient Greek view of the world is often referred
to as "Idealism," and its presupposition were to have an overwhelming
impact on the Occident. Its founding premises is that all that we can truly
know of reality can only be accessed by the application of pure reason
to the contemplation of ideas that underlie all of the perceivable, and
non-perceivable, universe. It is perhaps through this Doctrine that the
Greek homage to reason is most fully expressed.
Idealism holds that before anything physical exists,
it is preceded by an idea. That which exists is therefore somewhat an approximation,
or an imperfect copy, of its idea, or essence. To illustrate this point,
we can take any object that exists and is manufactured by humanity, and
admit that before this object existed it was based upon some idea that
its creator had in mind. For example, it is clear, if one looks at a house,
that before there was a house there was an idea of the house. The house
is constructed in the image of the idea of the house. In the world that
surrounds human beings, the same can be said of most of the artifacts we
see before us. Manufactured articles are uniformly based on some idea which
preceded their physical existence. The house, after all, is based on the
abstraction of a blueprint, or plan. The idea of the house came before
its existence, even if the form of the house evolves over many manifestations.
Can the same be said of the sun, the oceans, all that we did not bring
into existence in the image of our own ideas?
For Plato, the answer is yes. In fact, the only
reason we have ideas is because we ourselves are the product of an idea,
a principle, just as is all of the cosmos. Natural phenomena reflect ideas,
are in the form of ideas, just as much as are houses, tools, furniture,
computers, space shuttles, what have you. This presupposition does not
mean that there is an ideal mountain in the very image of a mountain after
which all other mountains are roughly based and are imperfect copies (as
many popular interpretations of Plato might have it), but rather that a
mountain expresses a principle in form, which itself is as well expressed
in the tectonic movement of continents, the inner constructs of the expansion
and reduction of matter due to heat, the formation of matter out of gravity,
strong and weak nuclear forces, etc. all of which manifest phenomena that
we can grasp and express symbolically as a form-ula: which is itself
a symbolic representation of an idea. The mountain is thus merely the physical
form, the image, the manifestation of these principles. Thus within Platonic
idealism lies much of the roots of science as we know it: that the phenomenal
world is in fact constructed out of principles, which, when grasped symbolically
and understood, can, to some degree, predict, as well as witness, events
in time. If the conditions are right, the principle or idea will show itself
as a particular manifestation of a universal principle, or idea. The principle
forms into a physical manifestation. Anything in a form is obviously formed
after something other than itself; is the shadow of something more real
than the fleeting pattern of the shadow. That which follows the pattern
of the form, con-forms, or per-forms, its principle,
and potentially can be expressed as a formula, which more closely
represents the true reality that the shadow merely projects. Thus each
individual form is merely a unique variation on a pure principle. Through
contemplation of the shadows, I can grasp its principle, and through this
have a better understanding of the world. I can, for example, understand
the general principles that form volcanoes, and although each instance
of a volcanic eruption may be different and unique—still, by understanding
the universal principles of the volcano, I can better understand a unique
occurrence of this phenomenon.
This basic principle is fundamentally important
because, in seeking to identify the world, and ourselves in it, we subdivide
the world into particular categories related by their forms, or foundational
principles. There is the form of a tree, a mountain, rocks, minerals, mammals,
amphibians, whatever--all related to a category of one sort or another
based on their conformity to the general principle that underlies that
phenomenon, and belonging more closely to one category or another because
they share more or less of the same characteristics of a particular principle
in their structure. All these categories simply express principles. Thus
to grasp the particular essence of a phenomenon, I must look to the idea
which underlies it and relate it to similar instances of that phenomenon.
In this concept alone, we move very close to the methodologies of modern
science.
The "idea" then is essentially what is ultimately
real, and the manifestation of the idea merely evidence of the idea which
the form expresses. Our consciousness translates this form symbolically
into a formula, and we attempt to read and associate formulae through reason
to grasp these principles. We literally attempt to read the patterns and
forms of the phenomenal world in order to add to our knowledge. This conception
is at the heart of the basic Platonic position: physicality is merely a
reflection of principles, and to perceive the physical as an isolated phenomenon
is to be blind to the essences, the ideas, which the physical expresses.
The principle therefore precedes, or comes before,
its manifestation in the physical universe. The most famous illustration
of this is in Platoís Republic in which those who see only
the physical universe are likened to seeing shadows on a cave wall. Increasingly,
the Philosopher breaks free of such perceptual bonds, sees that real objects
exist behind what we see and are illuminated by fire (often interpreted
as the mind), and even further, the ultimate reality of the sun which exists
outside the cave itself. That which is ultimately real comes before the
reflections, and even the thoughts, that we have during our lives.
Yet when we say ultimate reality comes "before"
a physical event we have entered into a subtle paradox. When we say something
came before us, we imply it was in the past. For example, the city
of ancient Athens came before the contemporary city of Los Angeles. Thus
ancient Athens existed in the past. But when we say the future of Los Angeles
remains before us, we are saying that this unknown state of the city is
in the future. In this example, when something is "before" us, it is also
in front, ahead of us in time, just as the future stands eternally "before"
us, or in front of us. Thus what is before us can be both what preceded
us, and therefore in the past, and what is in front of us and yet to be,
and therefore in the future. That which is before us is both in
front of us and behind us simultaneously, and because it lies outside of
time as we normally understand it, must be truer than that which we see
in time.
This concept in philosophy addresses the issue of
what is ultimately real, and such an inquiry is termed "metaphysics." It
is metaphysics in philosophy which also deals with religious questions
such as what is of ultimate value, what is ultimately important, and what
is eternal; and thus metaphysics also engages questions of faith. So once
again, faith and reason, are not as separate in their concentration as
is often supposed.
Metaphysics, as a formal study, had its antecedence
with Aristotle, who was in general agreement with Plato on the concept
that what we perceive in the world is founded in ideas. If we were to consider
what was ultimately real, then Aristotle believed we could investigate
"metaphysics," or that which comes after (before) physics. But if we were
to study physical aspects of the cosmos, then we could also study structures
by creating categories which described the basic principles to which particular
phenomenon belong.
In this sense, Aristotle was far more specific in
his search for knowledge than Plato. Aristotle conceded that there may
be ultimate principles upon which the cosmos was based, but that
in detail, there were particular phenomenon that conformed to subcategories
which shared in common specific ideal structures. He, in turn, subdivided
inquiry into subcategories. Thus the word "Geo" (earth in Greek)
could be wedded to logos, and studies of principles (ideas) pertaining
to the earth could become Geology, etc. Physis, or, in Greek, that
which has matter and energy and shines forth, was to become Physics. In
fact, most of the areas of inquiry in modern science were broken down into
subcategories for study under Aristotle, just as the principle of the logos
itself was to become "logic." Thus it is to Aristotle that we owe the departmentalization
of knowledge in the West.
Required Reading: "Week 3" in the Study Guide;
The Quest of the Holy Grail, pp. 71-80; Plato: Phaedrus;
Plato: "The Analogy of the Cave" in the Republic;
Aristotle: Logic.
Homework:
Write your thoughts in your online journal concerning the differences
and similarities between Plato's ideal forms and literary metaphors.
(Note: Sections of the Study Guide for Week 3 are paraphrases or excerpts from a manuscript by Laurence L. Murphy and Dominick A. Iorio, both of whom are amongst the Authors of the general MAPS Curriculum.)
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Course Syllabus