THE THOMIST A SPECULATIVE QUARTERLY REVIEW OF THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY EDITORs: THE DoMINICAN FATHERS oF THE PROVINCE OF ST. JosEPH Publishers: The Thomist Press, Washington, D. C. VoL. XXXVI OCTOBER, 1972 No.4 IS PHILOSOPHY STILL POSSIBLE? P LATO'S REPUBLIC (470E, 499C-D) describes a, small Greek city implacably hostile to all non-Greeks whom it calls barbarians. Since Socrates admits the possibility of philosopher-kings among barbarians, his utopia might find itself killing some of the wise men who alone should rule it. The only regime able to avoid this waste of rare managerial talent would seem to be a communist world-state in which the wise have complete control, assigning to everybody what he deserves and what is good for him. Socrates nowhere explicitly defends his preference for a tiny Greek aristocratic utopia. The present study attempts to show that this preference arises from awareness of a theological-political problem always central to philosophy, but most apparent in Greek philosophy and, especially, in Socrates or Plato. Awareness of this problem discourages the full success of either modernity's global moral orientation or antiquity's tribal or civic piety. Thus Plato's This article was begun under a research grant from the Henry Salvatori Center for the Study of Individual Freedom in the Modern World and completed under a research grant from Ford Foundation funds administered by Scripps College. 545 546 HARRY NEUMANN philosopher-kings rule their small polity m virtue of their knowledge of a global or cosmic justice which seems more appropriate to a global regime. Would not the civic religion of Athens or Sparta fit better with the political limitations of Plato's utopia? Considerations of this sort lead modern critics to deplore Plato's inability to liberate his global or cosmic sympathies from the political prejudices of his age. This essay contends that the prejudice is with the critics and not Plato whose inability or unwillingness to wholly transcend his city's gods springs from awareness of an ignorance native to philosophy. Philosophic ignorance arises from the belief that one lacks an adequate answer to the question of how (or whether) to live. Serious entertaining of this belief was precluded in ancient tribes or cities by unquestioning reverence for the gods, the ultimate moral authorities, of one's community. Fear of the Lord (or Lords) presented itself as the beginning of wisdom. Any activity-from carpentry to science-which did not arise from this pious origin could not lead to wisdom. At best it would be foolishness; at worst, it was abhorred as a blasphemous enterprise fated to deprive the tribe or city of its most important allies, its gods (or god) . Philosophers are unlikely to refute this charge adequately, so long as they remain convinced that they lack wisdom and that its attainment probably is impossible. How can men who believe themselves ignorant of how to live seriously challenge their city's moral orthodoxies? More importantly, how can they challenge these authorities in their own soul? For they, as it were, imbibed their society's authoritative morality with their mother's milk. All important institutions and sentiments fostered in their community strengthen this overwhelming compulsion. Consequently, philosophy's case appears weak and problematic not only to its pious opponents but, especially, to itself. Since nobody is born philosophic, philosophy's emergence and survival require appeasement of the apparently omnipotent passions encouraged in the soul by the morality dominant in the philosopher's IS PHILOSOPHY STILL POSSIBLE? 547 community. Those sovereign passions vary from community to community; the gods of Lycurgus or Manu are hostile to each other and to the God of Moses. Yet all prephilosophic regimes share the conviction that fear of their gods (or god) is the sole beginning of wisdom. Thus nothing seemed more insane than the philosopher's belief that he (and his fellow citizens) lack an adequate answer to the question of the good life. Obviously, obedience to the laws revealed by the city's gods constitutes the good life. No wonder that Socrates' questions about how (or whether) to live seemed futile or perverse to pious Athenians! Socrates was not condemned for his wisdom but for the effect of his stupidity on impressionable youth. The crucial point is that Socrates, insofar as he was philosophic, shared pious Athenian inability to discern wisdom in philosophy's questionable quest. Philosophy is not sufficiently knowledgeable to refute the claims of prephilosophic religions. So long as it remains quest for wisdom and not wisdom itself, philosophy remains as dubious to itself as does the piety which it questions. Consequently it cannot dismiss that piety as mere prejudice unless it finds itself guilty on the same count. In its original form philosophy does not" debunk" prejudices. Its job is to determine whether what pious fellow-citizens hold to be knowledge of piety or justice is truly knowledge or merely belief mistaken for knowledge. Belief and opinion or prejudice and superstition reflect the difference between the way civic piety is perceived by philosophy which remains quest for wisdom and by philosophy confident in its possession of wisdom. Legitimate condemnation of civic piety as superstition or prejudice assumes a science or knowledge unavailable to philosophy, but available to wisdom. If philosophy's transformation into wisdom is humanly impossible, philosophers know too little to despise civic piety's authoritative claims. Perhaps all citizens-including philosophers-would be better and closer to the truth, if they refused to succumb to philosophic temptation. Although philosophers admit that their city's piety might be 548 HARRY NEUMANN the wisdom sought by them, their pious fellow-citizens discern nothing but impious foolishness in the philosophic enterprise. For the same reason the passions nourished by civic piety probably are far stronger within the philosopher than philosophy's self-doubting cravings. That is, they were more powerful in the small, pious cities in which philosophy first embarked on its quixotic voyage. There philosophy could never liberate itself from civic religion, since it could not adequately refute that religion's condemnation of a quest for wisdom uninformed by fear of its gods. Some philosophers or scientists took refuge (against civic piety's power) in the claim that detached, autonomous rational inquiry is a permanent possibility guaranteed by a human nature not subject to divine will. Armed with this contention, philosophers could despise their persecution by the pious as "witch-hunts" springing from mindless bigotry. Yet, if philosophy must remain quest for wisdom, this conviction is mere belief, not knowledge. If one assumes-never forgetting that it is an assumption-that a satisfactory answer to the question of the good life will forever elude men, superhuman guidance would be required to know how (or whether) to live. The revelations of divine knowers or lawgivers would be responsible for whatever wisdom men may have. Consequently, the Athenians revered the gods whose existence and worth were thrown into doubt by Socratic inquiry. Socrates questioned whether the Athenian gods, the gods governing the prephilosophic elements in his soul, were the true source of wisdom. Although he conceded that they might be, he no longer shared the pious citizen's certainty. His life, and the lives of all subsequent philosophers, is primarily a hunt for the true gods (or god). Philosophy is a search for theology. The rest of what is called philosophy or science is ancillary to this hunt or it is mere window-dressing. For only philosophy's culmination in theological wisdom could determine whether its quest is impious or the right way to live. Prior to that culmination the philosopher's philosophic craving hardly can stand its ground against powerful passions sanctified by the authority of ancestral piety. IS PHILOSOPHY STILL POSSIBLE? 549 Something resembling Socrates' philosophic demon, an unAthenian deity, was required to reinforce his philosophic aspirations against passions inspired by civic piety. Thus Socrates made himself guilty of importing un-Athenian gods in order to support his philosophizing against internal and external threats. Unlike more pious cities such as Sparta, Athens tolerated Socratic importation of new deities for seventy years before executing him. Yet even Athens, a city defective in piety, finally killed Socrates as it had killed or exiled others whose impiety corrupted its youth. Consequently Plato, Aristotle, and other devotees of new, Socratic gods realized that the world would not be safe for philosophy until civic piety lost its hold over their fellow citizens. Probably Plato first attempted a theoretical subordination of civic gods to global or cosmic gods. In his Laws (884Ahe replaces belief in civic 907B) and Epinomis gods with belief in global or cosmic gods as the main sanction for obedience to human laws. Under Plato's new order not Socrates but his Athenian accusers would be guilty of impiously importing foreign gods. Yet Plato does not go so far as to abolish civic piety. Instead he subordinates it to his global or cosmic piety. His philosophic ignorance precludes condemnation of his city's religion as superstition. The real question is whether it precludes even civic piety's devaluation to mere beliefs as distinct from divinely revealed wisdom. This devaluation is reflected in Platonic subordination of civic piety to cosmic gods, deities of an inquiry not bound by obedience to the divinely revealed laws of the inquirer's city. Nevertheless, subordination is not extermination. Plato's Laws and Republic still advocate small, exclusive Greek cities with civic gods, however subordinate. Plato never forgets the inevitable tension between philosophy's global gods and the civic religion of the city out of which, and against which, philosophy emerged. This tension is unavoidable, if philosophy is fated never to secure the wisdom permitting it to know whether the true gods are global, civic, or tribal. We noted that this tension imperils philosophy's 550 HARRY NEUMANN survival internally and externally. Consequently, philosophy's survival seems to require transformation of even comparatively tolerant cities such as Athens into larger, more cosmopolitan states in which civic piety has as little authority as possible. Perhaps this need led Socrates to the potential world conqueror Alcibiades and Aristotle to Alexander the Great. According to ancient accounts, Aristotle tried unsuccessfully to restrain Alexander's zeal to assimilate the Greek cities to a homogeneous world empire in which the distinction between Greeks and barbarians was no longer important. Like Plato, Aristotle wanted the subordination, not the destruction, of civic religion to global religion. However, when Alexander and, more decisively, Caesar destroyed the ancient city's freedom, they also undermined confidence in the civic gods whose main job was preservation of that autonomy. In Rousseau's Social Contract (IV, 8) , he rightly notes: The Jews-first as subjects of the Babylonian kings and then the Syrian kings-took it into their heads never to recognize any god but their own. This act of rebellion against the conqueror, for so it was regarded, brought down upon them persecution, but this persecution is without parallel in all pre-Christian history. It had for its purpose the punishment of sacrilege, not the subjugation of unbelievers. Every religion, then, was uniquely associated with the laws of the city in which it was prescribed. Thus the only way to convert a people was by conquering it, and only conquerors could be missionaries. Since the law that governed the vanquished imposed upon them the obligation to change religions, the thing to do-if you wanted to talk to someone about his changing religions -was to start by conquering him. This does not mean that pagans fought for their gods-far from it. The gods-as in Homer-fought for them, the custom being that each citizen besought victory from his gods and paid for it with new shrines. The Romans, before they occupied a town, always called upon its gods to abandon it. By overcoming his city's Jupiter, Caesar became a global Jupiter who " doth bestride the narrow world like a Colossus." After his destruction of republican piety, the civic gods, which Plato's Laws subordinated, lost their authoritative hold over civilized men. Caesar's victory eliminated the tension, so IS PHILOSOPHY STILL POSSIBLE? 551 dangerous to philosophy, between global and civic piety. Consequently he might be interpreted, as he frequently was in medieval Christianity, as a savior of true religion and science from narrow superstition. In Dante's Hell the worst sinners are the betrayers of Julius Caesar and Jesus Christ. However sinful Brutus and Judas appear on the horizon of global religion or science, rebellions of their kind may be most philosophic after the Caesarian-Christian disestablishment of civic piety. For that disestablishment eliminates the tension between global and civic piety, although this tension is philosophically indispensable if philosophy is forever unable to secure the theological wisdom which it seeks. Seen in this light, the CaesarianChristian disestablishment is responsible for globally oriented prejudices which make philosophy infinitely easier (or more moral) than it was for the Athenian souls of a Socrates or a Plato. Indeed it was as difficult for them to be philosophic as it is for men born after the Caesarian-Christian disestablishment to be "unphilosophic." Who can fail to think globally, if his character is molded in regimes dedicated to the brotherhood of man or the rights of man? The conviction of global morality's superiority to civic piety, of Caesarian Rome to Lycurgus' Sparta, obfuscates the tension which reminds philosophy of its dubious status in the human soul. The obfuscation is reflected in the fact that utopian writings informed by this conviction usually lack the tension which makes Plato's Republic an impossible compromise between global and civic piety. In Caesarian-Christian utopias the global gods of Plato's Laws usually find themselves anchored in commensurately global political regimes guaranteeing human brotherhood in the next world (medieval Christianity) or in this world (Marxism). Currently the most Caesarian or this wordly morality, Marxism, has far more authority than its other-wordly, Christian counterpart. This is another sign of the decay of civic piety in globally oriented regimes whose " ecumenical spirit " discourages moralities which divide men into opposing camps. Consider the Catholic church since the death of Pope Pius 552 HARRY NEUMANN XII. Prior to his death it was the strongest bastion of oldfashioned religion in the modem world. Like the medieval church, if to a much lesser degree, it still fostered some of the anti-Caesarian passions native to civic piety. To be sure, it preached a unity of men, but primarily of the faithful in heaven, not of all men on earth and certainly not including those eternally damned in hell. Perhaps no traditional doctrine is less ecumenical than Platonic (Gorgias, 5'25 B-E) and medieval insistence upon eternal damnation of incurable sinners. While medieval fear of eternal damnation moved Catholics, they were understandably reluctant to compromise on crucial theological issues with Protestants or Jews, not to mention Marxists. Love of one's own family was the element of civic piety which survived longest, after the Caesarian-Christian disestablishment. Here again the Catholic church, prior to Pius's death, was particularly influential with its adamant stand on divorce, insisting that the family was a sacred institution whose main job was proper education of its children. Since all members of a family were expected to subordinate their private inclinations to this pious goal, divorce was almost impossible. Convinced that divorce was anathema, the Church urged its flock to bear inevitable marital frictions piously, compelling members of Catholic families to subordinate their secular rights as individuals to their pious duties as parents and children. Since Pius's death the pious duties are increasingly assimilated to the secular rights with a consequent secularization of marriage and divorce laws. Piety fostered by the contemporary ecumenical spirit tends to admire I van Illich and Daniel Berrigan more than Thomas Aquinas or Pius XII. Like Plato's Republic, that spirit would see no grave objections to elimination of strong ties to one's own private family or property or to anything which divides men instead of unifying them. However, the Republic's elimination of the family and private property occured only within the tiny aristocracy of a small Greek city whose civic piety would have frustrated Plato's scheme. Plato realized that IS PHILOSOPHY STILL POSSIBLE? 553 strong family loyalties and private property conflicted with the global communist sympathies of his philosopher-kings. Nevertheless, his belief in his ignorance forced him to accept an obviously unworkable compromise between global and civic piety. In his utopia, tribal or family piety, but not civic loyalty, is abandoned and only the ruling class is denied private property. In the Laws all citizens may own private property. Unhampered by Platonic ignorance and moved by pity for individual frustrations and inequities, ecumenical Catholics demand relaxation of both sacred divorce laws and the Church's opposition to political communism. Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks: The Decay of a Family demonstrates the fatal infirmity of families weakened by secularized global piety. The fate of the house of Buddenbrook is apparent on the first page when old Johann Buddenbrook demonstrates his enlightenment by amusing himself at the ex·· pense of traditional piety as his grand-daughter repeats her catechism. On the last page, after the family is virtually destroyed, that grand-daughter, now practically the only surviving Buddenbrook, is comforted by an old servant who insists upon faith in the divine justice of the next world. If no twentieth-century novel (it was published in 1901) shows greater awareness of modernity's threat to traditional family ties, Buddenbrooks is the century's most philosophic novel. Of course, Mann's Magic Mountain or Hesse's Magister Ludi (Bead Game) appear more philosophic to readers unaware that the tension between global and civic piety is indispensable, if philosophers are to remain alive to the dubious worth of their enterprise. In Mann's later novels (Magic Mountain, Doctor Faustus), he fell increasingly under the spell of modern global morality and its politics. Like the Catholic Church after Pius XII, he became less convinced of the need for strong family and property ties in regimes whose global orientation blinds them to the problematic side of their projected Tower of Babel. By contrast, Buddenbrooks presents the terrifying emptiness or homesickness inevitably accompanying decay of the family. 554 HARRY NEUMANN Naturally moralities preaching pity for all thrive as this decay progressively makes more men rootless or " alienated." That ecumenical compassion is the reverse side of homesickness, yearning to belong to the sacred community of one's own tribe or city or, at least, one's own £amily. 1 Yet modern global piety eagerly discards traditional Catholicism, the last relatively powerful reminder of the disestablished civic religions. Today it is difficult for civilized men to seriously evaluate civic piety's case against global piety. For moderns do not experience the authoritative demands of civic piety as an ancient Spartan or even an Athenian did. At most, its absence is felt as homesickness or rootlessness. 2 Consequently few se-e a problem in Socratic devaluation of Athenian piety to mere belie£. On the contrary, they share something of Plato's Protagoras's impatience with Socratic insistence on serious examination of opinions which they dismiss as prejudices or superstitions, (Protagoras, 352C-353B) . They fail to discern that Socratic unwillingness to dismiss them springs from inability to refute civic piety's authority in his own soul. Had he refuted it to his own satisfaction, it would have ceased to be a powerful element in his psychological make-up or he could have discounted its power as irrational. Then he might have considered examination of Athenian piety no more pressing than that of Spartan, Egyptian, or Persian piety. However Socrates, if he was philosophic, did not enjoy an unphilosophic liberty available only in regimes whose morality arises from the Caesarian-Christian disestablishment of civic religion. Prior to Caesar's victory, the philosopher could not persuade either his pious fellow-citizens or himself that his city's piety was mere belief and not knowledge. Nor could he discount the possibility that his belie£ in his ignorance of that piety's worth was a blindness placed on him by his civic gods to make him ridiculous. Perhaps the gods wished to use their city's philosophers to reveal the madness of subordination of civic piety to a truth, Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, IX, 39-41; Beyond Good and Evil, Heidegger, "700 Jahre Messkirch," Martin Heidegger 80. Geburtstag von Seiner Heimatstadt Messkirch (Frankfurt am Main, 1969), pp. 36-45. 1 2 IS PHILOSOPHY STILL POSSIBLE.? 55.S or a search for a truth, valid for all men. Perhaps attempts to unify all men necessarily culminate in impious Towers of Babel whose destruction in Aristophanes' Clouds is wiser than their partial or complete realization. Consideration of this possibility appears futile or frivolous, if not sinful, to moral tastes shaped by the Caesarian-Christian disestablishment. However, philosophers contemplate it seriously, if their quest is as questionable as this essay assumes it is. Philosophy emerged when Socrates or somebody else first came to believe that his civic religion was perhaps not the wisdom which it claimed to be but only a belief. Did Socrates (or anyone since) demonstrate the validity of his belief in Athenian piety's fallibility? The worth of all subsequent philosophic and scientific inquiry would seem to hinge upon the answer to this question. 3 The question of philosophy's genesis would be trivial, if subsequent philosophic or scientific investigation has shown, beyond reasonable doubt, that the pious opponents of the first philosophers wrongly perceived their piety as the highest wisdom available to men. In that case Socrates would have been justified in condemning his city's religion as superstition. Thus Socrates complains that his fellow Athenians give "particular," Athenian answers to questions which demand global, "universal" definitions of piety, justice, and wisdom. However, Socratic zeal on behalf of universally sharable goods assumes that philosophy has won its quarrel against civic piety. Before Caesar became a global Jupiter, civic religion's authority in philosophic souls prevented this assumption from being experienced as more than an opinion, and a dubious one at that. After Caesar's apotheosis, the pious accusers of Socrates came to resemble narrow-minded philistines unable to share his lofty vision of a justice or piety common to all men. 3 Cf. the beginning of Marx's Introduction to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law: " Critique of religion is the premise of all critique. The profane existence of error is compromised, after its heavenly defense of altars and hearths is disproven." Consider H. V. Jaffa, "The Case against Political Theory," Equality and Liberty (New York, 1965), pp. 209-229; V. Gourevitch, "Philosophy and Politics," The Review of Metaphysics, 22 (1968), p. 294, note 113. 556 HARRY NEUMANN Ancient thought's so-called rebirth (renaissance) in the sixteenth and seventeenth century was, in reality, the result of a long transformation in which the Caesarian-Christian disestablishment encouraged philosophy to take its value for granted. However much modern philosophy's founders (Galileo, Machiavelli, Descartes) took issue with Greek and medieval philosophy, they never questioned the worth of philosophy as quest for wisdom. However, they contended that Greek and medieval philosophy's failure to liberate itself from prephilosophic prejudice prevented it from becoming truly scientific. As understood by its partisans from Bacon and Galileo to Husserl and Dewey, modern science is ancient philosophy, but rigorously and methodically purged of its dependence on prephilosophic prejudice. 4 As the main intellectual spokesman of the Caesarian-Christian disestablishment, modern science is philosophy which believes it has won its fight for survival against civic piety. This modern philosophy frequently is divided into two " cultures," humanistic and scientific, which are sometimes said to have little in common. Actually science needs the humanities to divest men of the prescientific prejudice and supersition which prevent scientific thought. For science will be in the service of prescientific bigotry, if the scientist is not purged of his prejudices prior to entering his laboratory. Just as Plato's Republic was a monstrous combination of global thought and civic piety, so science's global thought is enslaved to superstition, if scientists are not humanistically educated. Only then can one rightly use a science which consists of mathematically rigorous, exact methods of inquiry resulting in experiments able, in principle, to be performed by all men regardless of family, race, religion, or nationality. In this sense, science is the way of thinking proper to the Caesarian-Christian disestablishment of civic or tribal piety. Humanistic schools and educators strive to exterminate the • J. Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra (Cambridge, Mass., 1966), pp. 117-lfl5; cf. V. Gourevitch, op. cit., p. fl85. IS PHILOSOPHY STILL POSSIBLE? 557 remaining vestiges of civic piety in the hearts of potential scientists. Thus they oppose everything which divides men, making them competitors or enemies, instead of unifying them into a global community in which all men are created equal. In this ecumenical spirit, humanists weed out trivial (war toys,. academic standards or "grading") and serious (religious orthodoxies, firm attachment to one's own country, family, and property) unscientific prejudices. In short, they mean to eradicate everything conducive to strong differences and, therefore, to a strong sense of individuality. Thus the differences between Spartans and Athenians were far greater than those separating any two men in modem regimes dedicated to the present (United States) or future (Russia) freedom and equality of all men. These modern opponents can, in principle, be reconciled, while citizens with opposed civic religions were, in principle, opposed on the most important matters. Insofar as individualism implies crucial ultimate differences, it was deprived of its raison d'etre among civilized men bythe CaesarianChristian disestablishment. Thus, when humanists and scientists speak of inalienable rights to liberty or privacy, they mean rights equally shared by all men in virtue of a common human dignity. Far from distinguishing men from each other, such global rights discourage any significant differences. Humanists rid scientists and scientific schools of narrow un-· scientific prejudices which often are not as visible to scientists as to humanists. For example, scientific schools frequently fail to note temptations to competitiveness inherent in traditional "grades" (A, B, C, D, E, F), unless such dangers are brought to their attention by avant-garde humanities schools ever on the alert against relapses into a discredited past blinded by civic piety's divisive superstitions. Thus, defenses of scientific method from Descartes's Discourse on the Method of Conducting One's Reason Well and Seeking Truth in the Sciences to Dewey's Reconstr1.wtion in Philosophy have seconded Bacon's (New Organum, I, 61) contention that scientific method " leaves but little to the acuteness and strength of wits but places all wits and understandings nearly on a level. For as in 558 HARRY NEUMANN the drawing of a straight line or a perfect circle, much depends on the steadiness and practice of the hand, if it be done by aim of hand only, but if with the aid of rule or compass, little or nothing; so it is exactly with [scientific method]." Nietzsche noted the egalitarian morality responsible for modem scientific methods of thinking. 5 If scientific method is inherently global and egalitarian, humanists eager to establish equality and cooperation through elimination of "grades" and other incentives to competition are more scientific than scientists burning to excel the achievements of an Einstein or a Heisenberg. Yet, perhaps the best scientists have been spurred by the passion to excel, the craving for excellence. If that passion is molded by prescientific prejudice, perhaps the whole scientific enterprise is informed by a prejudice which global piety condemns as pride, the impious drive to be exceptional, to except oneself from the common lot of mankind. 6 Since pride makes men enemies, humanists from Bacon and Kant to Skinner and Mao have urged its eradication in the name of world peace and brotherhood. Far from opposing science, the humanities strive to make all men scientific by eradicating prejudices which make global application of science's globally applicable methods difficult or impossible. The humanities are science's loyal watch-dogs. So long as philosophers found adequate refutation of civic piety impossible, that is, so long as they had not become humanists or scientists, they had to create a morality capable of competing with civic piety's martial virtue which, in Macaulay's words, knew no "better way to die than facing fearful odds for the ashes of one's fathers and the temples of one's gods." Its monuments are Plutarch's heroes whose unquenchable thirst for civic honors shaped all noble competition prior to the Caesarian-Christian disestablishment. In order to compete, philosophy needed to demonstrate that its heroism was more worthy of honor than Homeric greatness. Thus • Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 22, 30, 204, 213, 264, 269; cf. Gourevitch, op. cit., p. 306, note 156 and p. 296, note US; Jaffa, op. cit., pp. 220-229. 6 Nietzsche, "On Science" and "The Leech," Thus Spake 7arathustra, IV. IS PHILOSOPHY STILL POSSIBLE? 559 Achilles, the model of Plutarch's heroes, fails to pass an examination graded by Socratic standards of excellence. If philosophy was to be prized in regimes dominated by civic religion, Plato's hero, Socrates, had to supplant Homer's Achilles as the model for gifted youth to imitate. 7 Seen in this light, Plato's campaign against Homer, the Republic's (607B) "old quarrel between philosophy and poetry," constitutes a decisive la,ndmark in philosophy's ambigtipus conflict with civic piety. In Plato's Apology (28A-31C), Socrates presents himself to his fellow Athenians as a philosophic Achilles summoned by their god, Apollo, to make them as philosophic as possible. Refusing to desist from philosophy no matter what the consequences, he compares himself to Achilles who preferred death to a cowardly life devoid of heroic virtue. Socrates is the new Achilles whose victory over the old Achilles must wait until the apotheosis of Caesar as the new Jupiter. The humanistic or post-Caesarian Socrates fights for global, cosmic causes such as the medieval city of God or the modern rights of man, disdaining honors arising from excellence in defense of his city's sacred laws. Like modern secular crusaders, medieval heroes fought for a brotherhood of man which, however, existed in the next world. God's last judgment will join all the saved in a heavenly fraternity, while condemning incorrigible sinners to eternal damnation. Since the medieval brotherhood of man occurs in the life after death, medieval chivalry could still share some of the martial virtues of Plutarch's heroes in this life. For enemies of the Church required chastisement by a Roland or a Charlemagne and, in peaoe, knights won glory in tournaments or in combat with dragons or evil knights. Medieval Christianity's most characteristic deeds were crusades undertaken to destroy the Church's enemies and to capture Jerusalem from them. After the death of Pius XII the last powerful traces of • A. Bloom, The Republic of Plato (New York, 1968), pp. 353-361, 426-436; Nietzsche, "The Problem of Socrates," Twilight of the Idols, II; Will to Power 4&0, 457. 560 HARRY NEUMANN medieval heroism are rapidly assimilated to modern rejection of other-worldly salvation and damnation. Purged of prescientific " prejudice " by humanists, contemporary scientific thought demands this-worldly salvation for everybody through democratic (United States) or dictatorial (Russia) implementation of human rights on a global scale. Medieval chivalry is a half-way house between the civic piety inspiring Plutarch's heroes (and, to some extent, their Socratic opponents) and the humanistic or scientific morality responsible for the heroes of modern democracy and communism. Medieval heroism found opportunities for glory so long as this world endured. However, modern heroes strive to end all this-worldly conflicts in this world. The victory of scientists, purged of prejudice by humanists, culminates in a world with no place for Achilles or Roland. There will be no war, competition, or even serious arguments, since science, protected by the humanities, will resolve all discords with a globally applicable precision and exactitude whose technology favors all men equally. If scientific enlightenment can settle all human differences, men presumably will spend their time consummating the brotherhood of man in mutual love (quite literally and physically according to Marcuse and other champions of the " sexual revolution ") . Will these efforts at universal love be more than pitiful attempts to drown modern homesickness 8 or "alienation" in a sea of bestial passion? Once America, and then the rest of the world, undergo their "greening," the passions of Plutarch's heroes will seem absurd or immoral. Nietzsche predicts that anyone still harboring them will go voluntarily to the insane asylum. On the horizon of Nietzsche's last men, Homeric striving for excellence seems more foreign than Gulliver in Lilliput. 9 Obviously, the egali8 Above, note Cf. also my "Eros and the Maternal Instinct: A Note on Civilization and its Discontents," The Psychoanalytic Review (to be published). 9 Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Prologue, 5) : " The earth has become small and on it hops the last man who makes everything small . . . They have left the regions where it was hard to live, for one needs warmth. One still loves one's neighbor and rubs against him, for one needs warmth ... One no longer becomes poor or rich: both are too burdensome. Who still wants to rule or to IS PHILOSOPHY STILL POSSIBLE? 561 tarian global society of the last men is in harmony with the ecumenical sympathies of modern humanists and scientists. However, that does not necessarily make its acceptance wiser than civic piety. Is it wiser to be last men or Plutarch's heroes? To be sure, the question makes sense only in globally oriented regimes whose morality culminates in something akin to the last men. For questions about what is good for all men are unimportant to tribal or civic piety, since its concern does not extend beyond the small community protected by its gods. The rest is either forbidden fruit or unimportant. Consciences molded by civic piety cannot seriously ask whether it is superior to global piety. Nor can convinced modern humanists and scientists. The question is at home only in a Socrates whose passion for global or cosmic justice is seriously challenged by his civic piety. For only the satisfactory conclusion of philosophy's quest for wisdom would reveal whether Plutarch's heroes are morally superior to the last men. Plato's inability to reach a satisfactory conclusion compelled him to keep the question open in his Republic and Laws. Consequently the apparent inconsistency of anchoring his global justice in a Greek city is philosophically consistent. If the above interpretation is right, those deploring the Greek prejudices which made Plato's utopia a Greek city are the ones guilty of prejudice. As humanists or scientists they assume the moral superiority of global to civic piety, prejudging the issue which, for philosophers, remains an open question. Philosophic belief in one's ignorance makes problematic the devaluation of civic piety to a belief, not to speak of its further reduction to a prejudice or superstition. Plato's political philosophy reflects this problem which has haunted philosophy since its dubious birth in Socrates or some other Greek. To enjoy Socrates' philosophic openness in modern, postCaesarian regimes, philosophers must struggle against moral obey? Both are too burdensome. No shepherd and one herd. Everybody wants the same; everybody is the same [or equal]. Whoever feels otherwise goes voluntarily to the insane asylum. ' Formerly the whole world was insane,' say the most sophisticated among the last men." HARRY NEUMANN forces in their soul fostered by humanistic or scientific education. Consequently modern philosophers strive to secure a fair hearing for civic piety within their society and, most importantly, within themselves. Socratic openness questions the dominant orthodoxy in the name of moralities despised or ridiculed by it. In regimes whose authoritative morality demands contempt for Plutarch's heroes, philosophers champion Homeric virtue for the same reason that Socrates condemned it in regimes which bred Plutarch's heroes. Thus, Nietzsche's defense of pre-philosophic civic morality against Socrates actually is philosophic in modern, globally oriented regimes. The same modern version of Socratic openness probably is responsible for Rousseau's defense of Sparta or Geneva and Heidegger's philosophic solicitude for his home town, Messkirch. 10 Men struggling to be philosophic today will support traditional religious orthodoxy's effort to save threatened institutions such as the family. With the virtual disappearance of civic piety, strong sanctified family ties are among the few obstacles to the victory of the last men. Another obstruction is the relatively strong constitutional safeguard for private property and competitive free enterprise still available in liberal democracies as distinct from international (communist) and national (nazi) socialist regimes. Consequently a contemporary Republio would support liberal democracy against communism or fascism for the same reason that it would condemn elimination of the family or the hegemony of humanists or scientists, those modern philosopher-kings. A contemporary Socrates would champion government by moderate, old-fashioned pious democrats for the same reason that the Athenian Socrates challenged their authority in the name of an impious, avant-garde socialist elite. Alive to their need to re-enforce the embattled remnants of civic piety in liberal democracies, modern philosophers prefer a Pericles, a Lincoln, or a Churchill to an Alcibiades, a Lenin, or a Hitler. 11 10 Above, note 2; cf. R. Masters (ed.), Rousseau's First and Second Discourse$ (New York, 1964), p. 11, note 14. 11 Gourevitch, op. cit., p. 818, note 190. IS PHILOSOPHY STILL POSSIBLE? 563 However, Nietzschean fears about the emergence of the last men probably are groundless. For the more liberated cosmopolitan regimes become, the more they seem to arouse passions destined to destroy them. Dostoyevsky, Kafka, and other perceptive psychologists have noted that the hallmark of modern cosmopolitan communities is the experience of rootlessness. The scientific jargon for the same experience is " alienation." Heidegger uses the lovely word H eimweh which literally means the pain of home or " home-pain" and might be translated as homesickness. I suggest that this all-pervasive homesickness is the voice of tribal or civic piety in globally oriented regimes. Put differently, it is the lament of what was traditionally called the soul in regimes fostering soullessness. Traditionally the soul's fundamental experience was of dependence on gods or moral authorities outside of itself. Psychology was dependent upon theology. To be sure, philosophers worship gods unknown to them, until they receive a revelation . Yet, their souls also of piety's true nature (Acts 17: experience moral enslavement, although, in the absence of divine revelation, they do not know their real master (or masters). Citizens in modern global regimes have increasingly less awareness of the moral dependence traditionally native to the soul. As a result, the word "soul" has been replaced by" self.'' For the modern self, as distinct from the traditional soul, is essentially rootless and homeless, until it creates its own roots and home-and even its own Gods (or God). The self's characteristic experience is freedom and independence, not slavery or dependence. It insists that its own creativity is responsible for all truth, goodness, and meaning in life. Its morality of freedom opposes the soul's morality of obedience. In more " liberated " cosmopolitan regimes, even college catalogues and other popular magazines trumpet the need to abandon dependence on moral authorities which restrict the self's freedom. Yet, in the same regimes, more and more young (and sometimes old) people who have the wealth and leisure for this unrestricted freedom escape to drugs and violence. For 564 HARRY NEUMANN they suffer from the homesickness or " identity crisis " which is the hallmark of the self's essentially uprooted existence. This suffering is responsible for violent rage in modern regimes which permit relative freedom for self-expression. Fury and violence is the soul's answer to regimes which attempt to compel its transformation into a liberated and liberating self. Autonomous selfhood is fundamentally cosmopolitan while the soul is tribal or civic at heart. Consequently souls will fight to the death to avoid the universal orientation of Nietzsche's last men or his supermen. 12 In his defense of Sparta against more cosmopolitan communities, Rousseau clarified the reason for this determination. He preferred Sparta's civic piety as more in harmony with the natural limits of man's capacity to know and love others. By nature, nobody can know or care for ten thousand or a billion men. Only supernatural grace could make all men brothers. From a natural point of view-the point of view of the soul without such grace-any man who claims that all men can be brothers or even friends does not know what it means to have a brother or a friend. Thus Aristotle naturally preferred to be the real cousin of someone in Athens to being the brother of everyone in Plato's communist utopia. Demands for a brotherhood of all men are unnatural or supernatural. When men live in regimes which make unnatural demands upon them, their nature rebels. This rebellion informs the frustration and violence which is becoming the hallmark of youth in regimes permitting them to express themselves freely. Their rebellion proves that those regimes suffer from the same discord afflicting Plato's utopia, an impossible compromise between civic and global piety. Similarly, contemporary cosmopolitan regimes inevitably foster the wrath burning to destroy them. Perhaps that wrath is the most philo10 See my "Plato's Defense of Socrates," Liberal Education, 56 (1970), 470-472. While writing that article I still believed that Nietzsche's last men (above, note 9) were possible. In other words, I failed to grasp the violent consequences of contemporary and future rootlessness. On this point Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Conrad's Heart of Darkness are more prophetic than Nietzsche's last men or supermen. IS PHILOSOPHY STILL POSSIBLE? 565 sophie passion possible in regimes dominated by global piety's ecumenical spirit. If it is, must not contemporary philosophers curb their philosophic passion if they wish to continue investigation of philosophy's problematic status today? Otherwise they might hasten the catastrophe against which the Pirlce A both (Ill, 2) warned: "But for the fear of the government, men would swallow each other alive." Under such circumstances, can anyone but the unphilosophic be philosophic? Is philosophy still possible? HARRY NEUMANN Scripps College Claremont, California ANOTHER LOOK AT THE FIRST PRINCIPLES OF KNOWLEDGE I N THE PHILOSOPHY of mind of Aristotle and Aquinas a very important role is given to the so-called " first principles." These are the mental laws or rules according to which the mind must function. Such principles would be, for example, the principle of non-contradiction ("For the same thing to hold good and not to hold good simultaneously of the same thing and in the same respect is impossible ") ,t the principle of excluded middle (" It is not possible that there should be anything in the middle of a contradiction, but it is necessary to assert or to deny any one thing of one thing ") ,2 and so on. In this essay the investigation into the principles of knowledge is to be a psychological one, not a logical one. In other words, it is to be an inquiry into the actual workings of our mind, not an inquiry seeking to devise a logical system, perfectly consistent and coherent, along the lines of a mathematical system. In such a system principles would have the role of axioms. But in the "psychological " inquiry we are pursuing we are seeking to detect the basic drives, forces, and activities which characterize our mental make-up and which form the foundation underlying all our thinking, determining the kind of activity that human thought is. These basic features of our conceptual system do have some characteristics in common with logical axioms, but they should not be equated with, nor reduced to, such axioms. Many philosophers of late have considered the principles exclusively in terms of verbal formulations or logical formulae. However, a philosopher must also investigate the basis for the validity of such formulations. Such a basis must lie within 1 Aristotle, Met. r, c. 3, l005bi9-!i!O, translated by C. Kirwan, Oxford, 1971. All quotations from Aristotle will be taken from this version. • Aristotle, Met. r, c. 7, 10llb23-24. 566 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF KNOWLEDGE 567 the mind itself as it actually functions in real situations. Hence in a "psychological " inquiry it would be wrong to think of the principles as propositions already explicitly formed in our mind as it were innately or a priori. Still less are they logical formulae. Rather they should be thought of as forces within the mind itself guiding it to act in a certain way. Just as the law of gravity is not a proposition floating in the air but a force pulling all solid objects towards the center of the earth, so is, for example, the principle of non-contradiction (from now on abbreviated to PNC) a force guiding the mind to conceive things as being one thing and not at the same time not that thing. These principles can be described or expressed in propositions, just as physical laws can be captured in mathematical formulae, but this does not mean that the propositions are explicitly formulated and lodged in our minds. The formulations are merely abstractions, expressing perhaps the most important and salient aspects of that far greater reality-an energy or force of many diverse effects-which is the ground of the formulation. Just as a description of a man is not the reality that is the man himself, neither is a formulation of a principle the mental reality which the formulation seeks to express or describe. Aristotle and Aquinas called the principles first principles, because they lie at the base of our knowledge. They are ultimates, not because we first (temporally) know the principles and then consequently (temporally) come to know other things but because the whole structure of our conceptual system is built on them as on foundations. (This will become clearer as we proceed further.) The origin of the principles is puzzling. We do not seem to acquire knowledge of them the way we usually come to know things. We do not sense them. We do not seem to reason to them, though we may have to reason to explicit formulations of them. Normally they can be detected only through careful reflection on our knowing and thinking processes. We are not usually explicitly aware of them. Many people never have them explicitly as objects of thought. Yet they are present 568 PATRICK J, BEARSLEY, S.M. and effective whenever anything is known, 3 even in our first acts of knowledge, for they are the principles of that knowledge too. They are not primarily things we come to know, i.e., objects of knowledge. Rather they are parts of our mental equipment, laws and forces regulating our thinking. Hence when Aristotle and Aquinas call them the " best known " (" yvwptp.wr&:r7Jv, notissimum ") parts of our knowing faculties, these terms must be carefully and rightly understood. Aristotle says that PNC is part of what is necessary for knowing anything; 4 it is part of our mental equipment. It and the other principles are natural to us, just as the law of gravity is natural to our physical world. Since it is part of our human nature to have faculties for knowing and thinking, the laws according to which these faculties function must also be natural. It would be unnatural to deny these laws or to attempt to think without them or in variance with them, just as it would be unnatural for a fire to ignore the laws of combustion and chill rather than heat a room, or just as it would be unnatural for a ball thrown into the air not to fall to the ground again (presuming there was no interference in its flight). The cognitive laws we are considering include the laws according to which we particularize what we know, the laws according to which we form universal concepts, and the laws governing identification. Also laws such as PNC a.nd the principle of excluded middle (henceforward PEM) are natural to us and pertain to our intellectual equipment. Apart from these laws, however, there is another kind of law such as the law of sufficient reason (henceforward PSR) or the principle of causality, and also what Kant calls the principles of Natural Philosophy (such as "in all changes of the material world, the quantity of matter remains unchanged," and " in all communication of motion, action and re-action must always be equal") ,5 which, although in a certain sense natural to man and his reason, pertain nevertheless more to the kind of object 8 See e. g., Aquinas: De Verit., q. 1, a. • Met. r, 1005b15-18. • "Critique of Pure Reason," Introd. V, FIRST PRINCIPLES OF KNOWLEDGE 569 he knows rather than to the nature of the mind itself. However, such a distinction must not be pushed too far for, of course, all the former kinds of principle are related to objects of knowledge also, and the latter kinds of principle are related to the mind inasmuch as we must conceive things (i. e., our objects of knowledge) as conformed to such principles. But the emphasis in the former principles is more on the workings of the mind, and the emphasis in the latter is more on the kinds of object attained by such mental operations. Aquinas often maintained that the principles are also known naturally. 6 Not only are they natural to our mental powers and their function a natural part of the operation of knowing but we also know them naturally. In other words, they are known whenever the mind functions properly and according to its nature. There is a problem here with regard to the use of the word "know." How do we know the principles? In what sense of "know" do we know them? Wittgenstein questioned Moore's use of "know" when he (Moore) declared that he knew for certain that this was his hand, that the world had existed for many years before his birth, that at no time had he been far from the surface of the earth, and so on. 7 The sense of puzzlement experienced by Wittgenstein 8 also arises when Aquinas maintains that we naturally know the principles. Certainly it cannot be in the same sense of "know " as when I declare that I know 8 x 3 come to or that trees are green, or that the motorcar is going down the road. However, knowing that the car is going down the road is not merely a matter of knowing the relation of the car to the road, but such knowledge includes at least implicitly knowledge of the environment in which this event is occurring. The knowledge contained in that statement is not limited to the car and the road. Much more is involved: the relative positions of the car and the road See e. g., In Ill de Anima, lect. 11, n. 372. G. E. Moore: "Defense of Common Sense" in Philosophical Papers (London; George Allen & Unwin, 1959). 8 See L. Wittgenstein: "Notes on Certainty," edited by G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright, translated by G. E. M. Anscombe and D. Paul (Blackwell, 1969), n. 6, 136-137, and elsewhere. 6 7 570 PATRICK J. BEARSLEY, S.M. during the time of my observation, giving me knowledge of the speed; the awareness of a road as something solid, supported by a solid stable world; the awareness of time-all these and more are included in what we would call our knowledge of the car travelling down the road. Knowledge of the principles is a knowledge something like these implicit features of the explicit knowledge expressed in our observation statement. Aquinas gives the example of the principles being known in the same way as light is known when we see colors. For someone uninitiated in theories of the physics of light this is a helpful illustration. Our awareness of light usually comes from seeing something colored. (By " colored " I include not merely chromatic colors, but also black and white and their variants). Our attention is directed to what we see, e. g., the motorcar going down the road, but at the same time we cannot help but apprehend light as well. We do not perceive light by itself but things illustrated by the light. Even when we say we saw a ray of light pierce the darkness of a room, it seems that what we really saw was something (e. g., dust particles) of some area suddenly illumined by the light, whereas previously all was in darkness. Light is a means whereby we can perceive colors and colored things: without light we cannot perceive the colors. Hence in the direct apprehension of colors we also perceive the means whereby this apprehension is possible, viz., the light. Light is thus an important factor contributing to our perception of colors; it actually influences our perception. It is in some way a cause, and more than a conditio sine qua non. If the light were not a " white " light but a red or a blue one, our perception of colors would also be tainted red or blue as the case may be. At midday in bright sunshine a ripe wheat field looks golden; as the sun goes down in the evening, it looks rosy pink. Thus light is perceived as a contributing cause or influence at the same time and in the same act as we directly and explicitly apprehend colors or colored objects. We do not as it were first see the colors and then see the light, though we may have our attention exclusively fixed on the colored objects and only by a subsequent change of attention FIRST PRINCIPLES OF KNOWLEDGE 571 advert to the light. But this is a switch of attention in the one cognitive act which is apprehending both colors and light at the same time. Our knowledge of the first principles is something like our apprehension of light in the perception of colors. In an ordinary act of judging not only do we have in mind that which we are judging about but the very principles influencing that judgment are present in our act of thinking also. They are present not merely on a mechanical, extra-consciousness level but also at the cognitive level so that they are known together with the direct object of the judgment. Aquinas says that immediately (" statim") something is known the first principles are known too. 9 Just as light influences and contributes to our perception, so do the principles influence and contribute to our judgments, which must be made in accordance with the principles. Our judgment is explicitly directed to the object or situation we are judging about, but indirectly and implicitly that judgment includes the principles which regulate and guide its formation. A judgment, for example, must follow the principle of non-contradiction, for if that principle is violated, nothing is said and there is no judgment. As Strawson says, when a person contradicts himself or is inconsistent, he says nothing. 10 Violation of PNC leads automatically to inconsistency. Also every judgment must conform to PEM: there is no judgment, if we neither affirm nor deny but seek some middle path. In judging properly we are implicitly aware of these principles: they are " known " by us. The principles may be in an empirical proposition and known in such a proposition; nevertheless my knowledge as expressed in the proposition (" the cat is on the mat ") is direct, whereas my knowledge of the principles can be only indirect, i. e., through and by means of the direct lmowledge. We do not first know the principles and then know (in the same sense) that the cat is on the mat. Part of our knowledge of the eat's position consists of the first principles-not in the sense that such • See e. g., De Verit., q. 1, a. 12. 10 Introduction to Logical Theory (Methuen, 1952). 572 PATRICK J. BEARSLEY, S.M. knowledge is made up of a complex of principles but in the sense that the principles are exerting an influence on that knowledge, so that the proposition expressing our perception is formed according to the principles-in such a way that once we are directly aware of the cat and its position on the mat, and express that awareness in a judgment, we cannot but help know of the influence of these principles too. However, this "knowing" of the principles rarely expresses itself in an explicit statement to which we have assented. Usually we are not explicitly aware of them, as we are explicitly aware of the car going down the road. However, if someone were to propose a statement of a principle for our assent, and if we understood the statement, we would have no difficulty in agreeing with him. This is what Aquinas means by saying that the principles are self-evident from their very terms: once the terms are understood, assent to the statement of the principle is given. 11 Similarly any person with normal understanding would reject a statement violating PNC; for example, if someone were to declare that something could both be and not be at the same time and under the same respect. When a person spots a contradiction in another person's or his own discourse, he is displaying his knowledge of PNC. Similarly, when a person points out the invalidity of an argument, he is showing that he knows the logical laws concerned. Thus our knowledge of principles is usually revealed in these negative ways, which do not bring us to new knowledge but make explicit knowledge we already have implicitly in our direct judgment and thinking. Another example illustrating the way we " know " the first principles would be the way we know the law of gravity in watching a stone fall from a height or even the rain pouring down from the sky. Most people would not know the mathematical formulation for the law of gravity; many possibly have never heard of such a law. Yet they would know that heavy objects tend to fall if support is withdrawn from under 11 In VI Ethic., lect. 7, n. 1214. FIRST PRINCIPLES OF KNOWLEDGE 573 them, and they know of this tendency, this law, in the perceiving of the fall of any solid object. Their surprise would indeed be great if an elephant suddenly floated before their eyes. Another example of this kind of indirect knowledge would be our perception of time in the direct perception of something moving or changing. It is precisely this peculiar sense of "know," this indirect implicit way of knowing, which prompted Augustine to cry that, if no-one asked him what time was, he knew, but once he was asked he was at a loss.12 To make this implicit knowledge explicit and clearly expressed is extremely difficult and takes a great deal of sharp, careful, and analytic inspection. It is a sign of the genius of the early Greek philosophers that they were able to detect, isolate and express the principle of non-contradiction, a principle lying at the foundation of human knowledge, that holds the key to any satisfactory theory of knowledge. Because of its very universality and its indispensability in thought, it is all the more difficult to detect and very often taken for granted. Other examples of implicit knowledge which one might at first think would illustrate the kind of knowledge that we have of the principles would in fact be misleading. I am thinking of examples such as the observation of a car speeding down a road, which would include a presumption that a person was driving the car; one could say that knowledge that there was a driver was included in the original statement-a justified presumption, if in our original observation we took in (perhaps almost unconsciously) that the car was travelling in a controlled way. Or perhaps the use of the term "my mother-inlaw " implies that the speaker is or was married-such would count as presumed or implicit knowledge. But these kinds of knowledge do not illustrate what is meant by " knowledge of the principles," for the facts that the car has a driver or that the speaker is married can be expressed in statements of the same order as the original statements: all are empirical statements of observation or description. Yet knowledge of the 12 Confessions, XI, 14. 574 PATRICK J. BEARSLEY, S.M. principles is different. Although the principles can be expressed in propositions, these propositions are of a different order, of a different kind, from the original statements in which they are implicit. For example, PNC can be detected in any empirical statement, but itself it is not empirical but logical. Similarly for PEM. The principle of causality might indeed be a general empirical law, but its very generality puts it in a different order from the statement expressing an observation of a particular exercise of causality. Knowledge of these principles is indeed had in our ordinary everyday statements but it is an indirect knowledge, an implicit knowledge had through the understanding of the explicit content of the statement (though not actually contained in it) , whereas the other examples were of implicit knowledge contained in the explicit content of the statement. Knowledge of the principles is knowledge of the structure, grounds, and causes of the statement which are present to the mind as making the statement possible, whereas the other kind of implicit knowledge is really what is contained in a fuller understanding of the explicit meaning of the statement. The latter is revealed in a direct analysis of the statement: the former (the principles) are detected by a more complicated procedure-as in depth analysis-which seeks to determine what is necessary for the statement to be possible. It must be remembered that these principles which permeate our knowledge are not starting points for knowledge, such that we first know them, then build up our knowledge as from a base. Moreover, to say that the principles support our knowledge or that they are the foundations of knowledge does not mean that all our empirical propositions can be reductively analysed into the first principles; just as a house cannot be reduced to merely its foundations and joists and supports, or a human body to its skeleton. Rather (in the words of Wittgenstein with reference to Moore's common sense propositions) they" lie apart from the route travelled by enquiry." 13 They form the structure or " scaffolding " 14 within which our 18 "Notes on Certainty," n. 88; see also n. 210. "Ibid., n. 211. FIRST PRINCIPLES OF KNOWLEDGE 575 direct knowledge finds itself: they are " adjustments of the human mind." 15 As Wittgenstein says: " The system is not so much the point of departure, as the element in which arguments have their life." 16 Without the principles our knowledge would be dead, because it would be nonsense, unintelligible. Just as a skeleton makes it possible for us to recognize or learn to know a person by giving support and shape to the body, even though we do not explicitly advert to the skeleton, so do the principles give support and shape to a proposition. Take away the skeleton and the body collapses, becoming unrecognizable; remove the principles, or contradict them, and the proposition collapses, becoming meaningless. This explicit detection of the principles is done through reflection on our actual thinking and leads to a knowledge that. But the kind of implicit knowledge we have of the principles in our actual direct thinking or perceiving of a fact or object is more a knowledge how (to use Ryle's distinction) .17 It is implicit, because in order to know, for example, that the cat is sitting on the mat, we must know how to come to such knowledge and how to form the judgment. Whenever we know anything it is obvious that we know how to know, just as when a man walks he obviously knows how to walk. The principles determine the way we know. This distinction between knowledge how and knowledge that helps us to understand how it can be that we know the principles immediately 18 we know anything, i.e., how we can know the principles in the one and the same direct act of grasping something else. The answer must be that in knowing that the cat is on the mat we must know how to know that fact. There must be some sort of awareness of how to set about knowing this fact, otherwise we just would not be able to know it. And it is the principles that determine how we set about knowing it. Our language owes a great deal of its meaningfulness to the principles, as can easily be seen from the nonsense we fall into Ibid., n. 89. Ibid., n. 105. 17 G. Ryle: The Concept of Mind (Penguin, 1963), c. 18 De Verit., q. 1, a. 16 16 576 PATRICK J. BEARSLEY, S.M. if we deny them. Aristotle in his attempts to show the validity of PNC 19 resorts to pointing out the undesirable consequences of any attempts to ignore or deny the principle in our thinking. Chaos in our thought would result. Our speech, reasoning, and thought are limited by the principles; we must think, speak, and reason in accordance with the principles under pain of otherwise talking nonsense. Words must have a definite meaning; if they do not mean one thing but an indefinite number of things, then in effect they would mean nothing. If through denial of PNC all contradictories are compatible, then everything would be one, for we would be able indifferently to assert or deny a predicate of any subject. The collapse of PNC would automatically bring about the collapse of other principles, especially that of excluded middle. 20 Denial of the other principles, or hindrance of their operation, would have similar, though perhaps not so far-reaching, effects as does denial of PNC, which enjoys a certain primacy even among the principles.21 In fact, however, consistent and sincere denial of the principles is impossible in our actual mental life, for they govern all our thinking and hence even the thinking that goes into denying them. The meaning of a word is to be determined by the way it is used (according to Wittgenstein) .22 Our words are used to express our thoughts, to make known what we are thinking; they may indeed be our thoughts as it were made visible or audible; our speech can be our thought. 23 Nevertheless the rules determining the use of the word must also determine its meaning. Words must be used in accordance with the principles: otherwise they are meaningless. If the word "horse " is not used according to PNC, for example, if it could stand for what is both a horse and is not a horse, it does not mean anything-neither a horse nor not-a-horse. Similarly if our statements sought to express something between affirmation and For points made in this paragraph, see Met. r, c. 3-6. Ibid., c. 4. 21 Aquinas, Comm. in IV Met., lect. 6, n. 605. 22 Wittgenstein: Philosophical Investigations, I, n. 139. •• Ibid., n. 329-332. 19 20 FIRST PRINCIPLES OF KNOWLEDGE 577 negation in violation of PEM, what sense could we make of them? What meaning could they have? Nor could we make sense of a world which did not abide by the law of sufficient reason. The question" why?", so important in our mental life, would have no purpose. Consistent with his teaching that PNC is part of what is necessary in order to know anything, Aristotle maintained that it is not arrived at through demonstration. 24 We can extend this to apply to all the first principles: we do not reason to them, they are given and we take them for granted. Our principle are part of the mechanics of our thinking and knowing processes, just as physical laws are part of the mechanics of the universe. We must accept them as such, take them as given, just as the physicist and astronomer accept the universe's laws as given in the world that is. The physicist may reason and use hypotheses to discover the laws, but the laws are not produced by his reason. Similarly, the philosopher may have to reason to detect the principles of reason, but this does not make them products of reason. Demonstration in Aristotle's view is always made through other principles, the certainty of which guarantees the certainty of the conclusion (the principle demonstrated). Yet obviously not all principles can be demonstrated in this way. Otherwise we would have to demonstrate within a vicious circle or by means of a regress to infinity; in neither case would there be demonstration nor ground for certainty. 25 The only kind of " demonstration " that Aristotle would allow is ro 8'EAEJIKTLKW'> or what Aquinas calls " syllogismus ad contradicendum," which depends on showing the nonsensical consequences of the opponent's position. For example, with regard to PNC, once Aristotle has got his opponent to admit something which has a definite meaning, he can show that PNC is already presumed to be valid, at least in that case. 26 The principles are certain and provide a ground for certainty. Met. r, 1006•6-27. Aristotle, loc. cit., 5-10; Aquinas, lac. cit., nn. 607-608. 26 Met. r, 1006•19 seq; cf. also Aquinas, lac cit., nn. 608-610. 2• 25 578 PATRICK J. BEARSLEY, S.M. Aristotle cites this as another characteristic of PNC, 27 and we can extend it to the other first principles as well. PNC must be taken as the " most firm " (" firmissimum ") of principles. Aquinas commenting on this passage of Aristotle 28 calls the principles most certain and most firm (" certissima et firmissima principia") . But earlier he maintains that the certitude of our knowledge depends on the certitude of the principles: " certitudo cognitionis ex certitudine principiorum dependet." 29 However, if the certainty of our ordinary knowledge depends on the principles, the principles themselves must have a different kind of certainty. Certainty is something derived from, and reducible to, the stability of the principles. The principles themselves are not dependent in this way. The principles are not reasoned to and hence are not " certain " in the way a conclusion is certain from the firmness of its premisses. Moreover, they are not "certain" in the way we are certain of the evidence of our senses: when I see a motorcar approaching, my whole behavior in getting out of its way and letting it pass shows my certainty that a motorcar is truly approaching. Rather the "certainty" of the principlesor better, our reliance on the principles or our confidence in the pinciples-is not a reasoned one nor one based on evidence. Nor is it really based on the self-evidence of the terms of the principle, as Aquinas maintained. 3 ° For usually we have taken the principles as certain before we are aware of any explicit formulation of them, and hence before we can see their self-evidence from the terms. Of course, once a principle is formulated and presented to us, we can see from the terms that it is indeed valid and certain. But such an explicit presentation is not usually available to us, and in fact our acceptance of it is based on the fact that we have already been taking the principles implicitly for granted ever since we began our conscious life. The principles are the solid grounds of our mental activity and their stability is taken for granted. They are given along 27 28 Met. r, l005b22. Comm. in IV Met., lect. 6. 29 Ibid., n. 596. 30 De Verit., q. l, a. 12. FIRST PRINCIPLES OF KNOWLEDGE 579 with our mental faculties, for they are part of our mental equipment. They cannot reasonably be questioned or doubted, for any reasoning automatically presupposes their validity. As Aristotle remarked, only an untrained person would think it possible to question them or demand that their validity be demonstrated. 31 In feeling certain that we know how to know or how to reason, we at the saine time feel certain of the principles. Just as in speaking intelligently we are implicitly certain of the meaning of our words, so must we be certain, for example, of PNC which determines and guarantees the meaning of our words. Right from the beginning of our mental life the firmness and stability of the principles are taken as the solid and stable foundation of our thinking and knowing. All our conceptual system is built on them as on a solid foundation. However, they are not actually present in our conceptual system until we actually do know something. We should not conceive of them as a scaffolding which first (temporally) is there and on which we later hang our knowledge. No, they are a scaffolding which appears together with our first acts of knowing (whenever they might be), for they are there as an integral part of that knowledge. Just as there would be no law of gravity before there were objects to be attracted to the center of the earth (or indeed before there was an earth) , similarly there would be no principles before there was actual knowing or thinking. Logically they are prior to knowing, but temporally they enter our mental life simultaneously with knowledge. Aquinas many times insisted that the principles entered our cognitive life through knowledge from the senses, i. e., sense perception. 32 Another characteristic that Aristotle especially noted with regard to PNC was that it was not hypothetical. 33 This, with regard to the other first principles as well, stems from what has been said already about the principles not being demonstrated, 31 'YaP d:rratOevula rO ft'YW()Ketv rlvwv DeL S1Jre'iv oei-Met. r, 1006•6-7. 32 See e. g., II Cont. Gent., c. 83; IV Cont. Gent., c. 78. 38 Met. r, I005bi4. Kat rlvwv oV 580 PATRICK J. BEARSLEY, S.M. reasoned to, nor dependent upon other principles, but being taken for granted as stable and solid. If the principles are indeed like this, they cannot be hypothetical, they cannot depend upon conditions for their validity. If the principles are at the basis of the conceptual system, they themselves can condition subsequent knowledge but cannot be conditioned themselves. They have to be taken unconditionally as unconditioned grounds of knowledge. However, this independence of the principles must not be exaggerated. The principles are not so independent that they stand isolated and in possible conflict one with the other. Rather they form a compatible network of principles at the base of our system and behind any act of knowing. In fact, some principles are in a certain sense dependent on others. For example, all the principles obey PNC and operate in accordance with it: if meanings of words were not definite according to PNC, PEM and PSR could not operate. PNC operates in a special way on the most basic level of formation of concepts. The other principles, for example PEM, operate rather on the level of judgment, logically presupposing already the formation of the relevant concepts. However, not even this is to be pushed too far, for a full grasp of a concept, such that we know when and how to use it properly, demands an awareness oi why it is such and not otherwise, and here on this level PSR is already in play. And so this dependence of some principles on PN C is not such that other principles are deduced from PNC as lower principles from a higher. The other principles cannot be reduced to, or analysed away into, PNC. But neither are they entirely independent of it nor does each one operate in splendid isolation from the rest. Rather they all work together, influencing each other as they govern and guide our knowledge. Having looked at the first principles in general, let us now turn to two of them in particular. We shall develop some of the details of PNC already mentioned and then explain the psychological foundation of PSR. FIRST PRINCIPLES PRINCIPLE OF KNOWLEDGE 581 oF NoN-CoNTRADICTION Aristotle has given a formulation of PNC which we will use here: " For the same thing to hold good and not to hold good simultaneously of the same thing and in the same respect is impossible." 34 There has long been discussion among philosophers as to whether this principle is primarily a law of being or a law of thought. According to Ross this formulation shows that for Aristotle PNC was primarily a law of being. 35 But Aristotle himself, from his treatment of the principle in Met. r, seems quite clearly to have thought of it as both a principle of thought and of being. These two aspects of the one principle do not seem to be considered separately in his treatment but he seems indiscriminately to emphasize one aspect and then the other. However, while admitting both aspects of the principle, it could be argued that they are both on the side of thought. Although at first sight PNC seems to be a law of being governing the beings in the world, it applies only to beings in the world as we know it, in our world. It is only in our world, in the world that we know or can know, that the same thing cannot hold good and not hold good simultaneously of the same thing and in the same respect. Our concept of the world does not admit of things not in conformity with PNC. The various objects, their various aspects, relationships and so on, which go to make up our world view-the components of our concept of the world-are all governed by PNC. Because all these objects fall under (or within) our concept of the world, PNC is thus a law of thought. But to call PNC a law of thought in this way is really very trivial, for every law of science and human life can have prefixed to it" in the world as we know it," or " in our world." The chemist, the biologist, the physicist, the lawyer can all add this prefix to their laws. To call such laws "laws of thought " is tantamount to denying the possi•• Ibid., 85 Aristotle's Metaphysics, a revised text with introduction and commentary by W. D. Ross (O.U.P. p. 582 PATRICK J. BEARSLEY, S.M. bility of laws of being. All laws have elements of human thought in their formulation. But these elements should not be sufficient to call them in a special way "laws of thought." However, there is another sense in which PNC could be called a law of thought, and it is one I think Aristotle recognized. It is a fact of human thinking that we do not think of the same thing holding good and not holding good simultaneously of the same thing and in the same respect. Everything we think of does in fact conform to PNC; we think according to PNC. And even more, we cannot think rationally and sensibly unless governed by PNC. The mind can make no sense of a thought which violates the principle. In fact it could be argued that there is no thought there at all. Although we can formulate in words a proposition violating PNC, it does not make sense, for it is not a thought. It is nonsense. The mind boggles at such a sentence and rejects it. Thus PNC is a law of thought inasmuch as it governs all our thinking, so that we cannot think at all in opposition to the principle but alway'S must think in conformity with it. In this respect PNC differs from, for example, the law of gravity; we could perhaps imagine a world without gravity, but not a world ungoverned by PNC. Aristotle did not make such a clear distinction between PNC (being) and PNC (thought). Although I think such a distinction is valid, it must not be pressed too hard or forced into :t separation. Each is closely entwined with the other and they cannot be adequately separated, as if PNC (being) could be considered in isolation from PNC (thought). They are really complementary aspects of the one principle. Aristotle constantly mixes them up, and in his defense of the principle he often switches from thought to being and back again, without apparently considering that this in any way damages his argument. 36 Proponents of PNC as a law of being sometimes claim that it governs all things in the world independently of anyone knowing them, i.e., whether or not they are known. PNC as •• Met. r, 10llbl5-18; 1006•9!9! & I006b33; l005b9!6-33 & I005b35-1006•I. FIRST PRINCIPLES OF KNOWLEDGE 583 a law of thought claims that everything we know is in conformity with the principle; it lays no claims beyond what is known or can be known. It merely says: if it is known, it is known according to PNC. I£ there is anything beyond our ken, PNC (thought) has nothing to say about it; for if it did, it would immediately bring it within our knowledge. PNC as a law of thought, however, is not limited to what is actually known but includes in its scope what can be known, what is conceivable. It governs all possible objects of knowledge, all the beings of our world. Because we know them as governed by PNC, we believe they are really like that; we could not imagine them really being otherwise. I am interested here in the aspect of PNC as a law of thought, i.e., in its influence on our cognitive life. PNC, considered exclusively as a law of being, seems to me to be so utterly universal as to be trivial. Nothing would escape from it, and hence it would say nothing informative about anything. However, as a law of thought it has great influence on our thinking, and although it is not informative, what it does to our thinking is most interesting. Its role is not to inform but to support and govern. Although we have expressed PNC in the above formulation, the principle must not be thought of crudely as a proposition lodged in our mind, which we hold up as a sort of standard according to which we think and against which we judge the results of our efforts. As mentioned before, we do not have any consciousness of any such explicit proposition affecting our mental life in this way and I do not believe there is one. PNC is detected and explicitly formulated only after intensive effort and concentrated reflection on our thinking and judging. The formulation is the result of this intensive inquiry and is formulated precisely as a conclusion to the inquiry. Although we have talked about detecting PNC in our conceptual system, this " detection " or " discovery " should not be thought of as the uncovering of something already lying there waiting to be discovered but hidden by the more complex and explicit aspects of the process of our everyday thinking and speaking. Rather 584 PATRICK J. BEARSLEY, S.M. it is the discovery of something already operating and brought to light in explicit formulation: just as a rule in a game can be detected in the successful performance of a manoeuvre guided by that rule and then expressed in a proposition. PN C is thus brought to light clothed in a formulation, which we can all see, study and recognise as indeed making explicit the principle lying behind, and operating in, all our thought. Aristotle argues for his principle not by means of strict logical demonstration-he considers this to be impossible--but through a certain "reduction." PNC is indemonstrable in a broad sense, because it is without grounds; it does not rest on any prior principles and cannot be argued for on the grounds of any other proposition or knowledge. Its only justification can come from the collapse of our whole conceptual system, if it were taken away or denied. In his argument he tries to show how inconvenient and how inconsistent this would be. Many of the points he brings forward, beside their main aim of justifying PNC, also throw much light on what PNC does as a law of thought. They show how PNC functions in supporting and governing much of our mental activity, not only in the contemplation of ideas or thoughts but also in reasoning, attainment of truth, certainty, and so on. Aistotle makes it clear that PNC demands clarity in our thought. He considers that, if he could get his opponent to say one word and signify something definite by that word, then he will have vindicated the principle and shown his opponent to be inconsistent in denying it. 37 Thus the principle enforces clarity in thought, for it ensures that whenever we know anything it is always something more or less definite and determinate. Although we may indeed know something that is not as precise as it might be, precision and clarification of that knowledge come about in part through the influence of PNC. However, PNC is not the only mental force involved in such a clarification, nor is it even the most important one. The twin mental abilities of affirmation and negation play the central role in 37 Ibid., 1006•19 fl'. FIRST PRINCIPLES OF KNOWLEDGE 585 clarification of knowledge, and of concepts in particular. We clarify a concept by eliminating all that the object is not, and thus what the object is will eventually emerge in a clearer light. At the same time the mind grasps more firmly and surely the object, this is merely the reverse side of the same process. This is done through our affirming-negating powers, not primarily though PNC. PNC for its part ensures that if a thing is X, it is not at the same time and according to the same respect not X; it does not ensure that it is not Y or Z. PNC ensures that if something is a horse, it is not not-a-horse; it does not ensure that it is not a pig, a cow, or a rabbit, etc. Nevertheless, if we know already that X is an animal, in order to clarify our notion of X, we must exclude pig, cow, rabbit, etc. so that we can arrive at a clearer notion of X as a horse. Our negating powers do this, not PNC. What PNC does do, however, is to give us :firm assurance as to what X is as far as we know it to begin with. We are certain, for example, that X is an animal and not not-an-animal. The significant thing about this is that this :firm knowledge shows us which category of concepts we are to work in. Thus with regard to our example, PNC by giving sure knowledge of X as an animal ensures that we work in the category of animal concepts in our attempt to clarify X, not in any non-animal category, such as those of minerals or vegetables. And so we see here a twofold function of PNC: it contributes to definite knowledge of a determinate thing; and it contributes towards clarifying our knowledge by determining us in one category of possibilities within which to exclude alternatives and positively to identify the object. PNC is also the force that regulates our judgments and statements. It helps to ensure that predicates are not linked to incompatible subjects. We may form a sentence linking an incompatible predicate to a subject, but PNC would prevent us from uttering it meaningfully as a statement. For example, PNC helps us to avoid saying such things as "the widow married the postman's daughter." Understanding the concept of " widow " involves understanding that anyone meriting that 586 PATRICK J. BEARSLEY, S.M. description must be a woman and " being a woman " is not compatible with the predicate "married the postman's daughter." 0£ course, we may mistakenly say such a sentence as this, but once our attention is drawn to the meaning o£ "widow," our innate familiarity with PNC would ensure that we corrected the sentence to the " widower " or withdrew the statement as inconsistent (unless through special circumstances compatible meanings of subject and predicate are agreed upon). PNC may also prevent us understanding a statement made to us by another person. I£ our understanding o£ the subject was such that the predicate the other person attached to it was incompatible with it, we could be puzzled and think that either he did not know properly what he was talking about or meaning by those words, or that he was talking nonsense, or that he had attached a meaning to the words that was unknown to us. In the latter case we would have to ask £or an explanation. PNC has an important role to play also in all the various kinds o£ reasoning (taken broadly) that we are capable o£. In formal logic a familiar method o£ proving the invalidity of a propositional £unction is to show how it contradicts PNC; it also plays an important role in other testing procedures. These are just formal procedures reflecting the many and varied ways this principle influences the reasonings and inferences that form such a great part o£ our everyday mental life. Whenever someone objects to another's argument, protesting" You can't say that, you're contradicting yourself," he is judging according to PNC. Or when someone argues carefully avoiding contradiction, he is reasoning according to PNC. In £act, any logical inconsistency in our speech, whether in strict reasoning or in inference or even in such non-reasoning transitions £rom one statement to another as introduced by the words " in other words," " that is to say," and so on, any such logical inconsistency violates PNC and can be judged as wrong or invalid on that score alone (although other principles may also be involved). An inconsistency which violates PNC does not have to be the strong FIRST PRINCIPLES OF KNOWLEDGE 58'7 contradiction defined by formal logicians. A broader notion of contradiction is here meant, such as that implied by such everyday sayings as " You are contradicting yourself," " this contradicts what you said before," which can be applied to many different kinds of logical situation. Thus PNC serves to guard against all forms of inconsistency in our speech and reasoning and also to act as a standard against which inconsistencies can be judged and appraised. However, we must note that there are usually other logical laws also violated in many cases of inconsistency: PNC is not the only principle involved (except possibly in cases of strict contradiction in the formal logical sense). For example, if I were to say: "He is an only child, but his sister says ... ," someone could interject that I had contradicted myself, protesting: " An only child is one who does not have a sister, yet you have said that he has one"; or he might protest: " Either he is an only child or he has a sister-not both"; or possibly: "If he is an only child, he does not have a sister." 38 It may be misleading to think of PNC merely as a force or rule regulating our thinking and reasoning processes. This would be too narrow a view. It can also be seen as a dynamic driving force urging the mind to further inquiry and never allowing it to rest until full knowledge and satisfaction are achieved. For example, although PNC may have helped to bring us to knowledge of X as an animal, the mind is still not satisfied as to the question whether X is a horse or not a horse. PNC assures us that X cannot be both, and there is a tension in the mind until the question can be settled one way or the other. PNC ensures that the mind cannot rest so long as this possibility of entertaining both alternatives remains. PNC cannot tolerate the conjunction of contradictories and forces the mind to settle for one side of the contradiction or the other. PNC is a principle of knowledge. As such it is a foundation of knowledge and does not claim to be knowledge itself. It does not carry information itself: it is tautologous. But this 38 For a discussion of points raised in the last three paragraphs, see P. Strawson, p. 178 ff. Introduction to Logical Theory (Methuen, 588 PATRICK J. BEARSLEY, S.M. does not mean that it has no cognitive content, no meaning; for we do understand what it means. We cannot be said to know PNC in any of the more usual senses of "know." Nor does it have any claim to truth in the way any ordinary empirical statement can claim truth. Rather it is a ground for truth: because PNC stands firm in our conceptual system, other statements can be true. Since PNC has such a privileged and radical position in our conceptual system, it is something beyond doubt: it is " a principle about which it is impossible to be in error." 39 If it is to be one of the criteria for truth and falsity, it cannot be measured or judged by itsel£.' 0 Hence, it should not properly be said to be true or false. Aristotle says we cannot be mistaken about it; he does not refer to truth or falsity in his introductory treatment of PNC. 41 First he says that it is the philosopher'<; task, whose " subject is the things-that-are qua things-thatare," to state the firmest principles of everything. The firmest principle of all is the one " about which it is impossible to be in error." We cannot make a mistake about it, and because of this it is the best known of all principles. Note that Aristotle does not say that PNC is the best known of all principles, therefore we cannot be mistaken about it. Rather he puts it the other way: we cannot be mistaken about it, therefore it must be best known, (for error can arise only when something is not understood or is inadequately understood) .42 Aristotle, Met. r, I005bJf2. See Wittgenstein: "Philosophical Investigations," I, n. 50, where he discusses why it would be inappropriate to say that the metre standard in Paris is one metre long. 39 40 41 Met. r, l005hS fl'. Kirwan (see above note 1) translates -yvwp