Unit 1: The Classical and Medieval World

Week 2: The Classical

Worldview
Kitto, H.D.F. Chapter 10:
The Greek Mind. The Greeks.
169-193.

Week 3: The Medieval

Worldview
Lewis, C. S. Chapter V: The
Heavens. The Discarded
Image. 92-121.

Your Instructor for Wks 2-3

A/P Loy Hui Chieh (loyhc@nus.edu.sg)
Department of Philosophy (mainly
Classical Chinese Philosophy / Greek
Philosophy modules
Joint-appointment with USP
(UHB2204: Virtue and Leadership)
RF, Cinnamon College (Levels 10-13)

The Agenda Of Unit 1

This Week:
The Background to the Background (or just So
why do we have a Unit 1?)
A Snapshot of the Greek Mind

Next Week:
A Tourist Guide to the Medieval Synthesis
The Dawn of the (Early) Modern World

Remember This?
Module
ModuleDescription:
Description:

Whatmoves
moves
nature?
andam
What
amdrives
I? What
drives
What
nature?
WhoWho
and What
I? What
society?These
are
three
foundational
questions
that havequestions
shaped, that
and have
continue
to shape,
the
society?
These are
three foundational
shaped,
and continue

pursuit
intellectual
thought. This
module
the different
attempts at
to shape,ofthe
pursuit of intellectual
thought.
Thissurveys
module surveys
the different
answering
and them
tracksand
thetracks
controversies
and challenges
confronting
each
attempts
at them
answering
the controversies
and challenges
confronting
each
attempted
answer.
attempted
answer.
Organized
semester
lecture
series,
students
will bewill
introduced
to key ideas,
Organizedasasa atwo
two
semester
lecture
series,
students
be introduced
to key
thinkers,
and paradigm
shifts overshifts
the course
of five
intellectual
Preideas,
thinkers,
and paradigm
over the
course
of fiveperiods:
intellectual

periods:
Pre-Enlightenment,
the Enlightenment,
Post-Enlightenment,
Enlightenment,
the Enlightenment,
Post-Enlightenment,
Modernity,
andand
Post-modernity.
Each period
maps the
social,
political,
Modernity,
Post-modernity
. Each period
mapsshifting
the shifting
social,
and
material
contexts
in which
thesethese
questions
have
been
raised,
political,
and material
contexts
in which
questions
have
been
raised,challenged,
challenged,
and raised
raisedagain.
again.The
The
aim
is introduce
to introduce
students
to a history
of intellectual
and
aim
is to
students
to a history
of intellectual
enquiry
enquiry
that
is neither
that is
singular
neither
norsingular
complete
nor
butcomplete
contestingbut
andcontesting
contestable.
and contestable.

Paths: Taken and Not Taken

Q: Why a unit on the Classical and Medieval World?
The main narrative of the seminar = The (European)
Enlightenment and its long aftermath
Q: But surely the foundational questions had been (are
being) answered in other traditions? (Chinese, Indian,
Islamic, etc.)
Q: Surely there is more to European (or broadly
Western) intellectual history?

Background to the Background

A snapshot of the intellectual history that predated the
Enlightenment, and that formed its background
Not so much the detailed pre-Enlightenment answers
to the foundational questions, as much as key ideas
that continued as the legacy of the pre-Enlightenment
A Prologue, or Previously, on
(Encouragement to continuing your own researches)

Athens and Jerusalem

The main streams that feed into the European
Enlightenment and the Rise of Modernity
Greco-Roman Classical Antiquity
Medieval Christianity (next week)

(Islam)
(Ideas from the East)
(The New World, Colonialism)
(Renaissance, Reformation, Wars of Religion)

A Bit of Historical Context

The Classical Greek world (ca. 5th-4th C.
BC) as a patchwork of independent
poleis (plural of polis, city)
Broadly similar language and culture;
but diverse political forms
The prominence of Athens and Sparta

Macedonian control (323 BC)

Annexation by Rome (146 BC)
Greco-Roman culture of the Empire
Dominance of Greek culture in the
Eastern Mediterranean

The Greek Intellectual Tradition

Epic Poetry: Homer, Hesiod

Lyric Poetry: Sappho, Pindar
Drama: Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes
Rhetoric: Gorgias, Isocrates, Demosthenes
History: Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Polybius
Mathematics/Astronomy: Euclid, Ptolemy
Science/Medicine/Geography: Archimedes, Galen,
Strabo, Eratosthenes
Philosophy: Pythagoras, Parmenides, Zeno of Elea,
Democritus, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Pyrrho

The School of Athens (Raphael 1509-1510)

The Legacy of Greece (in Words)

Philosophy (philo-sophos), History (historia), Poetry
(poesis), Geometry (geo-metron), Politics (from polis),
Physics (phusis), Logic (from logos), etc
All the -logys, e.g., Biology (bios-logos), Psychology
(psyche-logos)
Television?
Greek (tle; far) + Latin (visio; sight)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Greek_words_with_English_derivatives
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VL9whwwTK6I

Kitto, H.D.F. Chapter 10:

The Greek Mind. The
Greeks. 169-193.

Slightly dated in some

details, but the whole
book is still worth reading

Taking a Leaf from Kitto

The wholeness of things (169-176)
Greek words (kalos, hamartia, sphrosyn, aret, etc.); refusing to sharply
compartmentalize their applications
Body & Soul equally important; the games is part of their religion (rather than
the other way round)

Firm belief in Reason (176-183)

Passion for asking useless questions; purely disinterested inquiry
Despite appearances, there is an explanation for everything, and it is simple;
the universe is not capricious

Sense of Form, Love of Symmetry, Creative/Constructive Bent (183-194)

Man is part of Nature; Nature too, will be symmetrical
Tended to impose pattern where it is not to be found
Mathematics as the most characteristic of Greek discoveries

What Moves Nature Wait, It Moves?

Zeno (b. ca. 490 BC); Paradoxes of Motion
(1) Something that moves must arrive at the half-way stage before it
arrives at the goal, ad infinitum.

(2) Achilles is attempting to overtake the tortoise. By the time he

reaches where the tortoise was a moment ago, the tortoise would
have moved on, ad infinitum.
(3) Since an arrow that is apparently flying is not moving at a slice of
time, adding time slices ad infinitum wont give us an actually flying
arrow.

Zenos General Conclusion: Motion is impossible

The arguments are framed in terms of locomotion (movement in
respect of space) but can be generalized to change in general

Smart Alexes of the Ancient World

At this point in the lecture, Diogenes the Cynic (ca. 412-323 BC) got
up quietly, and started walking around
Challenge: It is manifestly the case that things move. Just open your
eyes and see for yourselves.
Z: Im not denying that thats how it appears. But is motion real?
Z: If motion is real, then whats wrong with my arguments?
A: Suppose motion is real and theres nothing wrong with my
arguments, then we have to conclude that reality is unintelligible
(not subject to logic). Since I dont accept that, the only conclusion
is that motion is not real.

Historically Speaking
Many attempts to refute Zeno (beginning with Aristotle)
Wide-ranging influence on the history of Western philosophy
Whether Zenos reasoning is right is one thing
The fact that his reasoning was taken seriously by many smart
people is another thing
The paradox of motion remains one of the considerations cited in
favor of modern non-classical logics that rejects the principle of
non-contradiction
Zenos paradox and the reactions to it as an indication of the Greek
Legacy to European intellectual history
(China and India)
(The role of abstract math in modern physics)

Some Lessons

Appearance vs. Reality

The intelligibility of the universe
Logic as the benchmark of intelligibility
A Priori reasoning as a way to gain knowledge
about the nature of the world
Metaphysics

Side Note on Reason and Observation

There are writers on Medicine who take, as the basis of their
discussion, some hypothesis that they have arbitrarily chosenThe
Hot and the Cold, the Wet and the Dry, whatever they think fit. Thus
they reduce the number of the causes of diseases and death among
men, making them the same in all cases. These writers are mistaken in
many of their actual statements, but their worst mistake is that it is a
craft, and a most important one, that they are dealing with.
(Hippocrates of Cos (ca. 460-370 BC), On Ancient Medicine; Kitto 188)
Hs point is that medicine is a practice that depends upon
observation, its principles cannot be discovered by deduction from
first principles
There were Greek scientists who cared about observation
Experimentation (for deciding between theories) is another thing

Postscript and Akan Datang

The End of the Classical World in the West

Its continuation in the (Greek) East
Its legacy in the Islamic world
Its legacy in Medieval Christianity