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PRESOCRATIC PHILOSOPHY
The story of philosophy in Western civilization begins in ancient Greece, which produced three of the
world’s greatest thinkers, namely, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. While it would be nice to start our
study with Socrates, the first prominent figure in the history of philosophy, the fact is that Socrates
did not create his views from thin air. Rather, he was the outgrowth of a remarkably fertile
philosophical environment within Greece that had been germinating for a couple centuries. We call
this early period Presocratic philosophy, that is, philosophy before Socrates, and well over 100
philosophers actively contributed to its accomplishments.
Beyond Mythology
Even before the Presocratic philosophers came on the scene, religious mythology was already setting
the conceptual stage for philosophical speculation. Religion, then as now, was a powerful social force
in shaping views of human nature and the cosmos. According to the Greeks, the gods bring about
natural disasters, make demands on human conduct, and determine our place in the afterlife. Two
Greek mythologists in particular developed an especially sophisticated religious world-life view. The
first is Homer, the famed author of the epic tales the Iliad and the Odyssey, which chronicle the
adventures of a hero named Odysseus. Throughout his journeys to the underworld and other parts of
the mythological universe, Odysseus regularly encounters gods and strange creatures, sometimes
appeasing them, other times battling them. Second is Hesiod, author of the Theogony, a work that
describes the origins of hundreds of deities from a common pair of ancestors at the beginning of the
world.
Two aspects of their mythology deserves mention for their impact on early philosophy. First,
their cosmologies do not attribute the creation of the world to the work of the gods. While Zeus is the
supreme god, he is not described as the creator. Homer takes the universe as a given, and Hesiod
describes its origins as follows:
First Chaos was created, then wide-bosomed Earth, the eternal unshaken foundation of the immortal
gods who inhabit the snowy peaks of Olympus or the gloomy Tartarus within the depths of the wide-
pathed Earth. Love then arose, most beautiful among the immortal gods, which who loosens the
limbs and overcomes the mind and wise counsels of all gods and mortal men. [Hesiod, Theogony]
According to Hesiod, first there is emptiness, then earth, and only then do the gods appear. And,
when the gods do appear on the scene, they behave in a disorderly way, and often bend the
operations of nature according to their whims. This all leaves much room for speculation about how
the physical cosmos emerged, what it was composed of, and what gives it order. The explanations
offered by the first philosophers were not only philosophical, but, by the standards of their time, they
were also scientific. Thus, the first philosophers were also the first scientists, and, in fact, many had
practical interests in mathematics, astronomy and biology. Second, Homer illustrates how the gods
watch over human activity, judge our behavior and impose their wishes on us and the natural world
as they saw fit, often in arbitrary ways. It is this aspect of mythology that the first philosophers most
resisted and instead stressed the rational unity of things. In a sense, they attempted to move beyond
mythology to offer a more scientific account of both physical nature and human nature.
Issues of the Presocratics
Over a period of 200 years, the Presocratic philosophers focused on three key issues. First is the
problem of the one and the many, that is, explaining how one basic thing can be the source of many
varied things. The world contains an enormous variety of objects, some living, others inanimate; some
solid, others liquid. It seems reasonable to suppose that all things come from a common source or
type of stuff. Identifying that common source, though, is the challenge. Second is the problem
of change and constancy, that is, explaining how things remain constant as they change over time.
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Not only are there many kinds of things in the world, but each one is subject to change. Living things
like trees grow old and die; inanimate objects like rocks weather away and change their form. As
things go through changes, there’s still something about them that enables them to retain their
identity. Third is the problem of relativism, namely, determining whether principles are absolute or
created by people. Suppose that I arrive at some reasonable explanation of how the world operates.
Is that explanation true just for me, or have I discovered something more universal that must be true
for everyone? While some truths might appear to be independent of me, identifying those truths is a
challenge.
The theories of the Presocratic philosophers were daring, sometimes to the point of being
bizarre. Being the first ones to venture into the uncharted territories of both philosophy and science,
they explored virtually any explanation of things that seemed reasonable, and because of this there is
a richness and diversity to their views that we have not since seen. This makes it all the more
unfortunate that none of the books authored by the Presocratic philosophers have survived intact. All
that we have are some summaries and scattered sentences from their works that are quoted by later
writers such as Plato and Aristotle. From these quotation fragments, we are left to reconstruct their
original views. Sometimes a clear image emerges; other times, as we will see, it’s a matter of
guesswork.
B. MILESIANS
The first known philosophers of ancient Greece were from a city-state called Miletus. Located on the
west coast of what is now the peninsula of Turkey (then called Anatolia), Miletus was a thriving
seaport, and part of a region of cities called Ionia. As a hub of sea trade, residents of Miletus were in
contact with surrounding cultures and as such were influenced by many of their views, particularly
theories of astronomy that came from civilizations to the east of Greece. The three first philosophers
from Miletus were Thales, Anaximander and Anaximines, all of whom attempted to answer the
question “What is the common stuff from which everything is composed?”
Thales: Water
The very first among the Milesian philosophers was Thales (c. 625-545 BCE) who held that water is the
basic stuff of all things. Thales himself didn’t write anything, and what we know of him comes from
later sources. He was famed for his expertise in astronomy and geometry, and, according to one
story, he successfully predicted an eclipse of the sun in the year 585 BCE. There are colorful stories
about his life, such as the following which describes how he fell into a well:
A witty maid-servant saw Thales tumbling into a well and said that he was so eager to know what was
going on in heaven that he could not see what was before his feet. This is applicable to all
philosophers. The philosopher is unacquainted with the world; he hardly knows whether his neighbor
is a man or an animal. For he is always searching into the essence of man, and enquiring what such a
nature ought to do or suffer different from any other. [Plato, Theaetetus]
The event very likely never took place, and, in fact, this story represents a common stereotype about
philosophers both then and now: they are so absorbed in their speculations that they don’t pay
attention to where they’re walking. Another common stereotype of philosophers is that their skills
have very little real world application, and such a criticism was also allegedly raised against Thales. As
the story goes, though, Thales proves them wrong by making a bundle of money investing in olive oil:
People detested Thales for his poverty, as if the study of philosophy was useless. However, it is
reported that, through his skill in astronomy, he perceived that there would be a large harvest of
olives that year. Then, while it was still winter, and having obtained a little money, he put deposits on
all the olive oil businesses that were in Miletus and Chios. He obtained them at a low price, since
there was no one to bid against him. When the season came for making oil, many people wanted the
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rights, and he sold them all at once for whatever terms he pleased. Raising a large sum of money by
that means, he convinced everyone that it was easy for philosophers to be rich if they chose it, but
that that was not what they aimed at. In this manner is Thales said to have shown his wisdom.
[Aristotle, Politics, 1.11]
The details of Thales’ philosophy are as sketchy as those of his life. The best account is from
Aristotle, who notes that all of the first philosophers attempted to discover the underlying stuff of all
things, but they disagreed about what that particular stuff was. The Greeks already held to the view
that there were four basic elements, namely, earth, air, fire and water. From these, Thales selected
water as the primary stuff of nature, and Aristotle speculates about why Thales chose water
specifically:
Thales, the founder of this type of philosophy, said the principle is water (for which reason he
declared that the earth rests on water). Perhaps he got this notion from seeing that the nutrition of all
things is moist, and that heat itself is generated from the moist and kept alive by it (and that from
which they come to be is a principle of all things). Perhaps he also got his notion from the fact that
the seeds of all things have a moist nature, and that water is the origin of the nature of moist things.
[Ibid.]
As Aristotle explains, moisture seems to be an essential element in all living things. Water also seems
like a reasonable choice since it’s at a middle state between earth and air insofar as some moist
substances can evaporate and turn into air, and others solidify and turn to slime or earth.
Even if we understand Thales’ reasoning for why he selected water as the primary substance,
there is still some haziness about what it means for water to be the source of all things. On the one
hand, it could mean that the world originated from water, a view that had been around in mythology
for a long time. On the other, it could mean that the world is still made of water, and things as they
are now are composed of water as their primary stuff. This second interpretation of Thales is the
more common one, and the one that constitutes Thales legitimate claim to fame. It seems like an easy
thing to identify a single element like water as the primary stuff of all things. But it is a very
sophisticated move to abandoned mythological foundations of the natural world in favor of physical
explanations, and this is precisely what Thales did.
Anaximenes: Air
The third of the founding philosophers from Miletus was Anaximenes (c. 585-525 BCE), who held that
condensed and expanded air is the source of everything. He was a student of Anaximander and, like
his teacher, he wrote a book with only a sentence or two surviving. The most notable fragment is this,
which stresses the central role of air in conception of reality: “Just as our soul, being air, holds us
together, so do breath and air surround the whole world.” We find a more complete account of his
view of air in the following summary from an early philosopher:
Anaximenes of Miletus, who had been an associate of Anaximander, said, like him, that the
underlying substance was one and infinite. He did not, however, say it was indeterminate, like
Anaximander, but determinate; for he said it was Air. It differs in different substances in virtue of its
rarefaction and condensation. In its thinnest state it comes to be. Being condensed it becomes wind,
then cloud, and when still further condensed it becomes water, then earth, then stones, and the rest
of things comes to be out of these. [Theophrastus]
On Anaximenes' view, then, physical objects differ only in how condensed the air is in a given space:
stuff is airy when less compressed and solid when more compressed. When air begins to be
compressed, it condenses into wind, then cloud, then water, then earth, then stones, and everything
else that we see comes from these. The importance of this is that Anaximenes was the first to suggest
that reality could be measured. We could at least in theory say that a certain amount of pressure
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exerted on an area of air will result in it attaining a specific level of solidity. This provides a more
scientific account of reality, particularly in comparison to Anaximandar’s theory which removed
ultimate reality from the realm of what we can perceive. Many philosophers after Anaximenes
adopted this compression and expansion view of how elements change.
C. IONIANS
Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes started a philosophical trend in their geographical region of
Ionia, and, from neighboring cities, they were joined by two other philosophers, namely, Heraclitus
and Pythagoras. Together, these five philosophers are sometimes seen as forming a distinct Ionian
school of philosophy.
Pythagoras: Numbers
According to tradition, famed mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras (c.570–c.497 BCE) held that
numbers and mathematical relations underlie reality. Born on the Greek island of Samos, part of the
Ionian region along the Turkish peninsula, as a young man Pythagoras spent much time studying
religious practices throughout the Mediterranean area, and in time formed a colony of followers. He
himself wrote nothing, and it is difficult to isolate the historical Pythagoras from the more glorified
account of him present by Pythagorean followers who flourished for almost 1,000 years after him.
Plato and Aristotle credit him with establishing only a way of life, whereas later Pythagoreans present
him as being the originator of ancient Greek philosophy as a whole.
The Pythagorean school itself was a remarkable institution, and the level of reverence that
Pythagoras’s followers had for him rose to a cult-like status, as we see here:
Pythagoras is said to have been a man of the most dignified appearance, and his disciples adopted an
opinion about him that he was Apollo who had come from [the mythical realm of] Hyperborea. It is
said, that once when he was stripped naked, he was seen to have a golden thigh. There were many
people who affirmed that, when he was crossing the river Nessus, the river called him by his name.
[Diogenes, Lives, “Pythagoras”]
His students also believed that his teachings were prophesies of the gods. There were two groups of
followers within the Pythagorean school. First there was the privileged inner circle of followers, called
the “mathematicians,” who could study with him in person. Second, there was an outer circle, called
the “listeners”, who couldn’t see Pythagoras directly but only received summaries of his views and
listened to him from behind a curtain. The Pythagoreans also had a list of rules to follow, and some of
the more metaphorical ones are these:
 Don't stir the fire with a knife (don't stir the passions or the pride of the powerful).
 Don't step over the beam of a balance (don't overstep the boundaries of justice).
 Don't sit down on your bushel (have the same concern for today and the future, where a
bushel is the day's ration).
 Don't eat your heart (don't waste your life over troubles and pains).
 Don’t turn around when you go abroad (when reaching death, look beyond the pleasures of
this life).
 Don't urinate facing the sun (be modest).
Other sayings were intended literally, such as "abstain from eating beans", which Pythagoras believed
were sacred. As Pythagoras’ fame spread, legend has it that no fewer than 600 scholars would try to
visit him each day, “and if any of them had ever been permitted to see him, they wrote about it to
their friends as if they had gained some great advantage.” Pythagoras died, as the story goes, while
visiting a friend’s home for dinner; the house was set fire by his enemies who feared that he would
grow in power, take control of the city, and become a tyrant. He fled into a nearby field, but, stopped

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as soon as he saw beans growing there and refused to step on them. His pursuers thus caught and
killed him.
Today Pythagoras’s name is associated with the Pythagorean theorem, and, as legend has it,
when he discovered it he sacrificed 100 cattle to the gods. Tradition also credits him with influencing
the systematic approach to geometry that was later formalized by Euclid. For Pythagoras, though,
mathematics was at the center of his philosophy insofar as he believed that mathematical relations
govern all things. In fact, he considered numbers themselves to be sacred. Everything is related to
mathematics and, through mathematics, everything can be predicted and measured in rhythmic
patterns. Two types of mathematical ratios were especially important for Pythagoras: the Tetractys
and musical harmony.
The Tetractys is a mystical symbol involving ten points arranged in four rows: one, two, three,
and four points in each row respectively:
*
**
***
****

The four rows represent earth, air, fire and water, and various combinations of the points generate
important numbers and ratios. The Tetractys is similar to the aesthetic principle of the more well-
known “Golden Ratio” that was developed later by Euclid and Renaissance artists. With both the
Tetractys and the Golden Ratio, objects that contain special proportions have a natural beauty or
balance to them such as, for example, a window opening that is three feet wide and four feet tall,
where three and four are the bottom two rows of the Tetractys. The reverence that Pythagoras had
for the Tetractys is seen in an oath uttered by his followers: "I swear by him who communicated the
Tetractys, from which all our wisdom springs, and which contains perennial nature's fountain, cause,
and root" (Iamblichus, Life of Pythagoras).
For Pythagoras, the cosmos itself is arranged in ratios connected to the Tetractys, and, as
described below, music is a perfect example of how ratio and harmonious structure are interrelated:
The tetractys is a certain number, which being composed of the four first numbers produces the most
perfect number, ten. For one and two and three and four come to ten. This number is the first
tetractys, and is called the source of ever flowing nature. This is because, according to them, the
entire cosmos is organized according to harmony, and harmony is a system of three intervals: the
fourth, the fifth, and the octave. The proportions of these three intervals are found in the
aforementioned four numbers. [Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians, 7.94-95]
Musicians, particularly players of stringed instruments, will instantly recognize the mathematical basis
of the three harmonic intervals mentioned above. More precisely they are these:
Musical 4th: interval of 4:3 (e.g., divide a string at the 1/4 mark)
Musical 5th: interval of 3:2 (e.g. divide a string at the 1/3 mark)
Musical octave: interval of 2:1 (e.g., divide a string at the 1/2 mark)
Like other Presocratic philosophers, Pythagoras also had theories about most everything,
including how the cosmos was originally formed and then developed. The following passage describes
Pythagoras’ view of the cyclical nature of the cosmos:
Pythagoras declared that the soul is immortal, then that it changes into other kinds of animals. In
addition, the things that happen recur at certain intervals, and nothing is absolutely new. Also, all

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things that come to be alive must be thought akin. Pythagoras seems to have been the first to
introduce these opinions into Greece. [Porphyry, Life of Pythagoras, 19]
There are two cyclical aspects of the cosmos alluded to in the above. The first is what we now
call reincarnation: upon the death of my body, my soul continues to lives by migrating to the body of
a newborn baby, and when that body dies I move on to another. The second is that the events in the
cosmos itself repeat after certain periods of time. Both of these are ideas found in Hindu thought,
which Pythagoras might have come in contact with during his travels.
Among his most notable pieces of wisdom is his comparison of life to what takes place at
Olympic games. There are, he argues, three types of lives that we see among people at the games.
The lowest is the merchant who seeks to make money by selling to the swarm of visitors. Next is the
athlete who participates in the games to win a prize. The highest, though, is the spectator who
observes the events, which is a metaphor for the philosopher who surveys the world and reflects on
it.
Heraclitus: Change and the Logos
Heraclitus (c. 540–c. 480 BCE) argued that an ever-changing world around us is held together through
a unifying principle that he called the logos. Heraclitus was born into an aristocratic family from the
Ionian city of Ephesus, not far from the city of Miletus where Greek philosophy first began. As he grew
in fame, he also became disliked by his fellow citizens for his superior tone and gained the nickname
"the obscure" for his use of riddles. Self-taught, he claimed that he investigated everything there was
to know and learned everything by himself. His book On Nature was supposedly composed in an
intentionally obscure style so that only those who were wise would understand it, thereby protecting
himself from ridicule by the common people. Legend has it that the great Persian king Darius
requested that Heraclitus travel to his palace to clarify the obscurities within the book. Heraclitus
refused, saying that he had no interest in receiving such a royal honor and was content to live
modestly. Progressively withdrawing from society, he spent his last hears living in the mountains,
eating grasses and plants. Becoming sick with edema, he returned to the city to find a cure. But when
he approached physicians with his problem, he presented it in the form of a riddle, which they
couldn’t understand. Attempting to cure himself, he covered his body with cow dung which brought
on his death.
The traditional understanding of Heraclitus’s obscure philosophy is that it has two main
themes, one of which is a problem that he poses, and the other is his solution to the problem. The
problem is that everything in the world is continually changing. Things grow then decay, they are
created but then disintegrate. The most permanent things we see like mountains or stone
monuments wear down with time. As things change, they exhibit opposing tendencies: “Cold things
become warm, and what is warm cools; what is wet dries, and the dry is moistened.” He famously
makes this point with the analogy of stepping into a river: “You cannot step twice into the same
rivers; for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you. It scatters and it gathers; it advances and
retires.”
Constant change, then, is the problem. What, though, is the solution? According to Heraclitus,
there is a unifying plan that underlies the coherence of all natural changes and harmonizes their
opposing tendencies. He dubbed this the logos, the Greek word meaning “plan” or “formula”. In this
passage he describes the difficulty people have in recognizing and understanding the logos:
Though this Logos is true always, yet people are as unable to understand it both when they hear it for
the first time and when they have heard it at all again. For, though all things come into being in
accordance with the Logos, people seem as if they had no experience of it. [Sextus Empiricus, Against
the Mathematicians]

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For Heraclitus, then, as things in the world go through change, exhibiting their opposing
characteristics, the logos gives them their unity. Even though the flowing river is constantly changing
by scattering and gathering, the logos gives it structure so that we can recognize it as a river, rather
than merely a series of haphazard and opposing events.
Heraclitus identified the ordering structure of the logos with one of the four elements, namely
fire. He describes the cosmic role of fire here:
The ordered universe, which is the same for all, was not made by one of the gods or by humans.
Rather, it always was, is now, and forever will be an ever-living fire, ignited in measure, and
extinguished in measure. [Clement, Miscellanies]
Fire not only gives structure to the world, but it is also the primary stuff from which everything is
made. In this way he follows in the footsteps of Thales and his fellow philosophers from Ionia who
grounded the unity of things in a specific element. Similar to Anaximenes’ theory, Heraclitus held that
things take on a different form based on how expanded or compressed fire is. When more
compressed, it becomes water, and, when even more compressed, earth.
D. ELEATICS
The most radical philosophical theory among the early Greeks was proposed by a group of
philosophers from the city of Elea, a Greek colony on the south-west coast of Italy. They are thus
referred to as Eleatic philosophers in honor of their home town. The leader among the Eleatic
philosophers was a man named Parmenides, who argued that our everyday perceptions of the world
are completely wrong, and all reality is the One, that is, a single, undifferentiated and unchanging
thing. We will look at three Eleatic philosophers who are associated with this view: Xenophanes who
first suggested it, Parmenides who developed it, and Zeno who defended it.
Parmenides: The One
Parmenides (b. 510 BCE) was born into a wealthy family in the city of Elea, and his only known writing
is a book titled On Nature that he composed in poetic verse as allegedly conveyed to him by the
goddess Persephone. In a nutshell, Parmenides argues that only one unchanging thing exists, and it is
an indivisible spherical-shaped thing, like a toy marble, which he calls “the One”. It might appear that
the world consists of countless different things—me, you, the chair I’m sitting on, the dog barking
down the street. According to Parmenides, though, this is all just an illusion, and I can’t trust my
common sense; the truth is that only the One exists.
Why would he offer an account of the world that is so contrary to common sense? The answer
is not entirely clear. While Parmenides and his followers were the only major thinkers in Western
civilization at that time to offer this view, it has close similarities with some Eastern philosophical
views, particularly within Hinduism. Within Eastern philosophical traditions the proof of “the One” is
based on mystical experience. When you enter a mystical state of enlightenment through meditation,
you will experience the oneness of everything and see that the world of multiplicity and change
around us is an illusion. Maybe Parmenides was inspired by this kind of a mystical experience, but we
know so little about his life and background that there is no way of telling.
Regardless of what inspired him, he offers a proof of his theory of “the One,” which requires
serious attention. He begins arguing that there are just two paths of inquiry: the path of assertion in
which you maintain that something is, and the path of denial in which you maintain that something is
not. If we think about these two paths, we’ll see that the path of denial is nonsense: you cannot know
what is not, and you can’t even express it. He makes this point here:
There are only two ways of inquiry that can be thought of. [Proclus, Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus]

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The first, namely, that it is (and that it is impossible for it not to be), is the way of belief, for truth is its
companion. The other way of inquiry, namely, that it is not (and cannot be), is a path that none can
learn at all. For you cannot know what is not, nor can you express it. [Simplicius, Commentary on
Aristotle’s Physics]
That leaves us with the remaining path of assertion: the only meaningful way of inquiry is to assert
that something is, as he maintains as follows:
It is the same thing that can be thought and that can be. What can be spoken and thought must be;
for it is possible for it to be, but impossible for nothing to be. . . . One path only is left for us to speak
of, namely, that it is. In this path are very many signs that “what is” is uncreated and indestructible; it
is complete, immovable, and without end. [Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics]
His point is that we can say anything that we want about reality, so long as we don’t use the word
“not”, since that would involve the path of denial. Establishing the path of assertion is only
preliminary. The next step is to draw out the implications of asserting only that something is. The
result is that we arrive at the qualities of the One, namely, that it is eternal, indivisible, unmoving, and
round.
The first implication of the path of assertion, then, is that whatever exists must be eternal, that
is, uncreated and indestructible. If we say that a thing came into existence or will go out of existence,
like a bicycle, then this would require saying that the bicycle “is not” before it was manufactured and
“is not” after it is melted down for scrap metal. But that would take us down the path of denial since
we’d be using the term “not” twice, and thus uttering nonsense. He writes,
[The One is eternal], for how can “what is” be going to be in the future? Or how could it come into
being? If it came into being, then it is not. Nor is it, if it is going to be in the future. Thus is becoming
extinguished and passing away not to be heard of. [Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics]
The second implication of the path of assertion is that whatever exists is indivisible. For, if we say that
a bicycle has parts, then we maintain one of its parts are here where the handlebar is, but not there
where the seat is. Again, we use the word "not" which takes us down the impossible path of denial.
Parmenides writes,
[The One] is not divisible, since it is all alike, and there is no more of it in one place than in another, to
hinder it from holding together, nor less of it, but everything is full of what is. For this reason it is
wholly continuous; for what is, is in contact with what is. [Ibid]
Third, whatever exists is unmoving, since movement requires us to say, for example, that the bicycle
is now in this location, but not in that location. Again this takes us down the path of denial. He writes,
It is immovable in the bonds of mighty chains, without beginning and without end; since coming into
being and passing away have been driven afar, and true belief has cast them away. It is the same, and
it rests in the self-same place, abiding in itself. And thus it remains constant in its place; for hard
necessity keeps it in the bonds of the limit that holds it fast on every side. For this reason it is not
permitted to “what is” to be infinite; for it is in need of nothing; while, if it were infinite, it would
stand in need of everything. [Ibid]
Finally, whatever exists is round. If it had any other shape, then one part would be greater, and
another part smaller, for example, the wheel of a bicycle is larger than the pedal. This, though, would
require us to say that one part is not like the other part, yet again taking us down the path of denial.
Compare that to a perfect sphere where any place you point to on it will be identical in shape to any
other. He writes, “Since it has a furthest limit, it is complete on every side, like the mass of a rounded
sphere, equally poised from the center in every direction; for it cannot be greater or smaller in one
place than in another.”

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According to Parmenides, then, what we can say about reality is that it is an eternal, single,
unmoving, and round thing, which is the One. This strangely means that no other object exists, like a
bicycle, which comes into existence, or has parts, or moves, or is non-spherical. That is, there are no
bicycles, rocks, trees or people: the entirety of the cosmos consists of the One.
Anaxagoras: Mind and the Divisibility of Material Ingredients
Anaxagoras (500–428 BCE) held that the world is comprised of infinitely divisible portions of
ingredients (seeds) that are set in motion by a cosmic Mind. Anaxagoras was born into a wealthy
family from the Ionian city Clazomenae (near Miletus), and eventually abandoned his inheritance to
devote himself to philosophy. He was a student of Anaximenes (the third of the founding
philosophers from Miletus). For around 20 years he lived and taught in the city of Athens. While
there, he stated that the sun was just a mass of burning iron, and not a divine being as mythologists
claimed. For this act of irreligion he was sentenced to death, although he was ultimately punished
with exile. When he first heard of his sentence by the Athenian court, he said “Nature has long since
condemned both them and me.” After relocating to a new city, the citizens there held him in high
regard and upon his death put the following inscription on his tomb: “Here lies Anaxagoras, who
reached for truth, the farthest bounds in heavenly speculations.”
Being a pluralist like Empedocles, Anaxagoras also held that the cosmos is composed of many
material ingredients, and not just a single one. Also like Empedocles, he held that all of the
ingredients swirl around in a cosmic blender, and create individual things like rocks and trees as they
move around. Here, though, is where his similarities with Empedocles end. There are five major
themes to Anaxagoras’s philosophy, the first of which is that the material ingredients of the cosmos
exist in a completely vacuumless environment (that is, a plenum—a term that means the opposite of
vacuum). While today we assume that material things float in empty space, Anaxagoras denied this,
maintaining that all the material stuff swirling around in the cosmic blender is packed solid, with no
empty areas. The second feature of his theory is that things are infinitely divisible. That is, if you take
a material thing and divide it in half, then that part in half, you can keep doing this on to infinity. He
makes his point here:
All things were together, infinite both in amount and in smallness, for the small, too, was infinite. And
because all things were together, nothing was distinguishable on account of its smallness; for air and
aether covered all things, both being infinite, for these are the most important [ingredients] in the
total mixture both in number and in size. [Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics]
Related to this is the third feature of his theory that there are worlds within worlds. Deep within the
tiny elements of our world, there are miniature worlds composed of even tinier elements. These
worlds are much like ours and contain animals people, farms and cities.
The fourth feature of this view is encapsulated in his statement that “A portion of everything is
in everything”. For the sake of clarity, let’s suppose that there are four main material ingredients in
the cosmic mix, namely earth, air, fire and water (Anaxagoras’ surviving writings do not contain a
clear list of elements). Let’s say that the rock in my front yard is composed of 97% earth, 1% air, 1%
fire, and 1% water. No matter how small of a piece of the rock I examine, it will contain the same
portions of these four material ingredients. In each piece I examine, earth will predominate, and thus
give it its characteristic of rock-like solidity. Similarly, a glass of wine might contain 97% water, 1%
earth, 1% air, and 1% fire, and so too with every microscopic drop of wine that I examine. Anaxagoras
describes his view of portions here:
Since the portions of the great and of the small are equal in amount, for this reason, too, all things will
be in everything. Nor is it possible for them to be apart, but all things have a portion of everything.
Since it is impossible for there to be a least thing, they cannot be separated, nor come to be by

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themselves. They must be now, just as they were in the beginning, all together. In all things many
things are contained, and an equal number both in the greater and in the smaller of the things that
are separated off. [Ibid]
Thus, within the giant cosmic blender, portions of all the material ingredients are spread throughout
the mix, and the variety of things that we see in the world around us is already contained within the
primordial mix. This, according to Anaxagoras, helps explain how things change. When a piece of
wood disintegrates into earth, the elements of earth were already embedded within it. When the
wood ignites into fire, the fire was already embedded within it. In some passages, Anaxagoras uses
the term "seeds" to express this notion of the ingredient portions that are within everything.
The fifth main feature of his theory is that Mind is the external force that accounts for all the
motion, growth and change that occurs within the material ingredients. Mind is the motor that causes
the giant blender to churn the mixture of stuff. He writes, “All things were mixed up together; then
Mind came and arranged them all in distinct order." Mind for Anaxagoras performs much the same
function that Love and Strife perform for Empedocles. He describes its function in the following:
Mind has power over all things, both greater and smaller, that have life. Mind had power over the
whole revolution, so that it began to revolve in the beginning. It began to revolve first from a small
beginning; but the revolution now extends over a larger space, and will extend over a larger still. All
the things that are mingled together and separated off and distinguished are all known by Mind. [Ibid]
In the above, Anaxagoras maintains that Mind begins by making swirls within small areas of the mix,
and this slowly passes to larger areas.
In short, the primary function of Mind is to initiate motion within the cosmic mix of material
ingredients. To that extent, it functions as a force of physics. But is it anything more than this?
Anaxagoras also seems to suggest that Mind has a partly divine function; but to the extent that it is
divine, it is not an anthropomorphized god like Zeus or some other divine being of religious devotion.
While we may like to know more about the kind of thing this Mind is, Anaxagoras does not provide
the details. In fact, Aristotle criticizes Anaxagoras for inventing the notion of Mind as an artificial
crutch to prop up his theory. Aristotle writes, “When Anaxagoras cannot explain why something is
necessarily as it is, he drags in Mind, but otherwise he will use anything rather than Mind to explain a
particular phenomenon” (Aristotle, Metaphysics, 985a18).
In any case, with his two-pronged theory of (1) material stuff and (2) Mind, Anaxagoras holds
the honor of being the first matter/spirit dualist in Western philosophy. That is, according to
Anaxagoras’s dualism, there are two radically distinct types of things in the cosmos, matter and Mind,
each of which performs its unique role in creating the universe and all that it contains.
F. ATOMISTS
The next important advance in Presocratic philosophy was a theory called Atomism. While most of
the previous theories about the universe that we’ve examined so far have been rather strange,
Atomism is different in that its essential features are the ones that we hold today. Its central thesis is
that the world is composed of indivisible particles called atoms that exist within empty space.
Everything contained in the universe, then, results from the clumping together of these atomic
particles. It is tempting to think that the originators of this theory had a special insight into the nature
of the physical world, but the reality is that it was just a lucky guess. There was no scientific
equipment at the time that could prove or disprove any proposed theory of the cosmos. The
Presocratic philosophers were all insatiably curious about the nature of things and stretched their
imaginations to the farthest limits, proposing every conceivable explanation. With such a diversity of
ideas being explored, one was bound to get it right, and it turned out to be Atomism. However, it took
over 2,000 years for civilization to realize this, and when physicists of the twentieth-century finally
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discovered what they believed was the tiniest particle of matter, they named it the atom, in honor of
this Presocratic theory.
Two Presocratic philosophers are associated with the theory of Atomism: Leucippus, who
proposed the theory, and his student Democritus who systematized it. Very little is known about
Leucippus’ life, but he is reported to have been a student of Zeno, and may have come from the city
of Elea, home of both Parmenides and Zeno. He wrote a work called The Great World System, none of
which survives in itself, although its contents may have been incorporated into the writings of
Democritus, who we do know much more about. Democritus (460-350 BCE) was from the Greek
coastal city of Abdera (now in modern-day Greece). Born into a wealthy family, he was tutored by
Persian astronomers, and, after his father’s death, traveled extensively learning what he could. At
some point he became a student of Leucippus as well as the Pythagoreans and perhaps also of
Anaxagoras. He secluded himself from the public, but nonetheless became famous for his knowledge
of natural phenomena and the ability to predict the weather. One story reports that he met with
Socrates in Athens, without revealing to Socrates who he was. A prolific writer, he composed dozens
of works in the areas of ethics, physics, astronomy, mathematics, and music, none of which,
unfortunately, survive. His lasting fame in philosophy, though, is his development of Leucippus’
atomism.
Atoms in the Void
The central notion of atomism is that the universe is composed of an infinite number of atoms that
are dispersed throughout an infinite vacuum of empty space (or “void”), with no beginning in time.
This is the exact opposite of Anaxagoras’s position in two important ways. First, Anaxagoras argued
that matter was infinitely divisible. That is, if you take a rock, break it in half, then that in half, and so
on, you will never arrive at a smallest piece. You could in theory keep splitting that thing in half
forever. Atomism denies this: if you keep breaking apart the rock, eventually you’ll arrive at a tiny
component, an atom, that cannot be broken down any further into smaller pieces. Second,
Anaxagoras argued that the cosmos is a vacuumless plenum: it contains no empty space and even the
tiniest area is jam-packed with material stuff. Atomism also denies this: atoms exist in a vacuum of
empty space. Their reasoning is that if there was no empty space, then things would be so squeezed
together they couldn’t move.
According to Leucippus and Democritus, the atoms themselves have several features. Each
atom is of the same substance, colorless, uncreated, indestructible, unalterable, homogeneous, solid,
and indivisible. Their shapes and sizes have infinite variations, and they are spread throughout the
universe. They are also continually moving, or at least vibrating, within the vacuum of empty space.
While in motion, they collide with each other, and, when they do, sometimes they rebound, other
times they join together and form compound bodies that we are able to perceive through our senses.
An early philosopher describes this view of the atomists here:
Substances are unlimited in multitude and atomic … and scattered in the void. When they approach
one another or collide or become entangled, the compounds appear as water or fire or as a plant or a
human. But all things are atoms, which he calls forms; there is nothing else. [Plutarch, Against
Colotes]
Differences in objects result from changes in the shape, arrangement, density, and position of the
atoms.
The Mind as Material
It’s one thing to account for the composition of rocks and other inanimate objects in terms of material
atoms clumped together. However, Leucippus and Democritus argue that everything in the universe is
composed of the material stuff of atoms, including conscious human beings; there are no non-
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physical spirits or souls, or gods. In philosophy this is a position called materialism, that is, only
material things exist, and the challenge of materialism is to explain how conscious thought in humans
can be a purely material thing. Throughout much of history, philosophers argued that this was
impossible, and that human thought could only take place in a non-physical soul or spirit. After all,
conscious thoughts do not seem to be the kinds of things that take up physical space. They are not
like three-dimensional rocks and trees. But the atomists argued that conscious thoughts are indeed
material, very much like rocks and trees.
While minds are material, they are rather unique material things, and the Atomists explained
them with two special kinds of atoms: fire-atoms and image-particles. First, human minds are
composed of fire-atoms that are distributed throughout the human body; think of them as a type of
perceptual tissue, sort of like the role that today we give neurons. Second, all visible objects emit tiny
image-particles which fly off in all directions. (The concept of the image-particle is often
translated “idols” from the Greek word eidola which Democritus used). With the thickness of only one
atom, the image-particles preserve the shape of the original object. A rock, for example, continually
sheds image-particles, which have the shape of the rock itself. I mentally perceive the rock, then,
when the image-particles strike my eye and excite my fire-atoms. One early philosopher describes this
aspect of the atomist theory here:
[Leucippus and Democritus] attributed sight to certain image-particles, of the same shape as the
object, which were continually streaming off from the objects of sight and impacting the eye.
[Alexander, On the Senses]
The mental act of thinking is a more focused form of perception. Some places in my body that contain
fire-atoms are so densely compressed that image-particles excite motion in them as they pass
through them; hence, thought arises.
In addition to explaining human thought, another challenge of materialism is explaining the
nature of divine beings such as God that are traditionally thought to be non-material spirits. The
atomists had a physical explanation of these too. Some image-particles are very large, and appear in
the shape of humans, which we perceive in our dreams. An early philosopher provides this summary
of Democritus’s view of the gods:
Democritus says that certain image-particles of atoms approach humans, and of them some cause
good and others evil… These are large and immense, and difficult to destroy though not
indestructible. They indicate the future in advance to people when they are seen to emit voices. As a
result people of ancient times, upon perceiving the appearances of these things, supposed that they
are a god, though there is no other god aside from these having an indestructible nature. [Sextus
Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians, 9.19]
The gods, then, are not spiritual beings that reside on Mount Olympus: they are only strange image-
particles that excite our imaginations. This essentially amounts to a denial of the existence of God,
which is a rather controversial side effect of atomism’s materialism.
Another controversial side effect of materialism is a view called determinism: all events are
determined according to the strict laws that govern the operations of material things. Since, according
to materialism, human beings are composed only of material stuff, then all human actions are also
determined, hence there is no free will. We see this in the following statements about Democritus by
two early philosophers,
[Democritus held that] everything that happens, happens of necessity. Motion is the cause of
the production of everything, and he calls this necessity. [Diogenes Laertius, Lives, “Democritus”]
Democritus, the author of the Atomic Philosophy, preferred admitting the necessity of fate to
depriving indivisible bodies of their natural motions. [Cicero, On Fate, 10]
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According to atomism, then, all human actions are determined by the laws that govern the movement
of atoms. We noted already how atomism foreshadowed the general makeup of the universe held by
modern physicists. Similarly, their commitment to materialism and determinism foreshadows views
that dominate contemporary philosophy of mind. Nevertheless, in its time it was just one of many
Presocratic theories battling with its rivals for attention.
The Ionian Philosophers
Ionia was the name given to the island realm in the Aegean Sea between Greece and Turkey. It has
the distinction of being the birthplace of Western science and philosophy. Rather than relying on
supernatural explanations for the appearance of the Sun, Moon, planets and stars, the philosophers
attempted to understand nature and looked for laws that described its behaviour.
The recorded history of Greek philosophy actually began in Miletus, on the coast of Turkey (Asia
Minor). Here, in the 6th century BC, Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes developed their ideas
about the Universe. This trio of early scientists were materialists: they believed that the Earth and
everything else in the Universe was made from a material (rather than spiritual) substance. However,
their opinions differed as to what this substance was. Thales believed it was water, Anaximander
asserted it was ‘the Infinite’ and Anaximenes proposed that it was air.
Pythagoras (560-480 BC) studied under Thales before traveling to Egypt and Mesopotamia, ultimately
establishing his own school of philosophy in Croton (southern Italy).
Following on from the Milesian school were 5th century BC philosophers such as the Eleatic School
(Xenophanes, Parmenides, Zeno), the later Ionians (Heraclitus, Empedocles and Anaxogoras) and the
Atomists (Leucippus and Democritus).
The Ionian philosophers are also refered to as pre-Socratic philosophers, as much of their work was
completed before the time of Socrates (469-399 BC).
Note: most of what we know about the Presocratics in general and so the Ionians comes from
Aristotle. Although Plato frequently mentions them, it is usually in passing. Aristotle is the first source
to attempt systematic exposition of their doctrines. One Aristotelian account is that contained in
METAPHYSICS I, Chs. 4ff. Aristotle's primary aim here was to provide a background for his own
solution to the problems the Presocratics discussed. Hence his treatment is given from a different
standpoint than that of pure historical exposition. [Are his expositions slanted?] [Many of the other
sources Kirk, Raven, and Schofield cite depend directly or indirectly on Aristotle--for example,
Theophrastus, Aristotle's nephew and disciple, and Simplicius, whose information, according to KRS,
comes from Theophrastus. The attempt to get "behind" Aristotle on the understanding of these
philosophers is a natural reaction to the sheer bulk of writings which have survived from Plato and
Aristotle compared to that of the writings of their predecessors.
General features of the Ionian philosophy:
1. Designation of a ruling element, either earth, air, fire, or water, which Aristotle
interprets as having been for them the basic substance, or (Greek) 'ousia' of everything.
There is impliedhere according to Aristotle a conservation principle: substance is
conserved--it can be neither created nor destroyed.
2. Preoccupation with the cyclic changes in nature (birth-death, day-night, summer-winter)
and how to explain them.
3. Departure from mythological patterns of explanation (i. e., by means of stories of
personal divinities and their actions) for natural occurrences, although some
mythological language remains.

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4. Seeing these cycles as changes in element- dominance (i. e., at night, light recedes and
darkness becomes dominant), interpreted by some of the Ionians as eternal warfare of
the elements (seemingly Anaximander and Heraclitus).
5. Perhaps ascribing immanent Mind or Intelligence to one or more of the elements.
Democritus
Democritus (c. 460 - 370 B.C.), sometimes known as the "Laughing Philosopher", was a Pre-
Socratic Greek philosopher from Thrace in northern Greece. Along with his teacher, Leucippus, he
was the founder of the Greek philosophical school of Atomism and developed a Materialist account of
the natural world.
Although he was a contemporary of Socrates, he usually considered Pre-Socratic in that his
philosophy and his approach were more similar to other Pre-Socratic thinkers than
to Socrates and Plato.
Life
Democritus was born in Abdera, a town in Thrace in northern Greece, which had originally been
settled by Greek colonists from the Ionian city of Teos in present-day Turkey). His date of birth is
usually given as 460 B.C., although some authorities argue for up to ten years earlier, and some for a
few years later.
His father was very wealthy, and had even received the Persian king Xerxes on his march through
Abdera. According to some accounts, Democritus studied astronomy and theology from some of
the magi (wise men) Xerxes left in Abdera in gratitude.
On his father's death, Democritus spent his inheritance on extensive travels to distant countries, to
satisfy his thirst for knowledge. He is reputed to have traveled to Persia, Babylon (modern-day
Iraq), Asia (as far as India), Ethiopia and Egypt (where he lived for five years, being particularly
impressed by the Egyptian mathematicians). He also traveled throughout Greece to acquire a
knowledge of its culture and meet Greek philosophers (he may have met the
physician Hippocrates (c. 460 B.C.) and Socrates, and possibly also Anaxagoras, whom he praises in
his own work), and his wealth enabled him to purchase their writings. He was known as one of
the most traveled scholars of his time.
On returning to his native land, (now with no means of subsistence), he settled with his
brother Damosis, and occupied himself with natural philosophy and gave public lectures in order to
pay his way. His greatest influence was certainly Leucippus, with whom he is credited as co-
founding Atomism. In around 440 B.C. or 430 B.C., Leucippus had founded a school at Abdera, and
Democritus became his star pupil. There are no existing writings which can be positively
attributed to Leucippus, and so it is virtually impossible to identify which ideas were unique to
Democritus and which are Leucippus', or any views about which they disagreed.
From anecdotal evidence, Democritus was known for his disinterestedness, modesty and simplicity,
and appeared to live solely for his studies, declining the public honors he was offered. One story has
him deliberately blinding himself in order to be less disturbed in his pursuits, although it is more likely
that he lost his sight in old age. He was always cheerful and ready to see the comical side of life, and
he was affectionately known as the "Laughing Philosopher" (although some writers maintain that he
laughed at the foolishness of other people and was also known as "The Mocker"). His knowledge
of natural phenomena (such as diagnosing illnesses and predicting the weather) gave him the
reputation of being something of a prophet or soothsayer.
It is believed that he died at the age of 90, in about 370 B.C., although some writers have him living to
over a hundred years of age.

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Work
Diogenes Laertius, the 3rd Century historian of the early Greek philosophers, lists a large number of
works by Democritus, covering Ethics, physics, mathematics, music and cosmology, including two
works called the "Great World System" and the "Little World System". However, his works have
survived only in secondhand reports, sometimes unreliable or conflicting. Much of the best
evidence comes from Aristotle, who was perhaps the chief critic of Atomism, although he
nevertheless praised Democritus for arguing from sound considerations, and considered Democrtius
an important rival in natural philosophy.
Like many other Pre-Socratic philosophies, the Atomism of Leucippus and Democritus was largely a
response to the unacceptable claim of Parmenides that change was impossible without something
coming from nothing (which is itself impossible), and thus any perceived change or movement was
merely illusory.
In the Atomist version, there are multiple unchanging material principles which
constantly rearrange themselves in order to affect what we see as changes. These principles are very
small, indivisible and indestructible building blocks known as atoms (from the Greek "atomos",
meaning "uncuttable"). All of reality and all the objects in the universe are composed of different
arrangements of these eternal atoms and an infinite void, in which they form
different combinations and shapes.
There is no room in this theory for the concept of a God, and essentially Atomism is a type
of Materialism or Physicalism, as well as being atheistic and deterministic in its outlook. However,
Democritus did allow for the existence of the human soul, which he saw as composed of a special
kind of spherical atom, in constant motion, and he explained the senses in a similar manner.
In Epistemology, Democritus distinguished two types of knowledge: "bastard" (subjective and
insufficient knowledge, obtained by perception through the senses), and "legitimate (genuine
knowledge obtained by the processing of this unreliable “bastard” knowledge using inductive
reasoning).
In the field of Ethics, Democritus pursued a type of early Hedonism or Epicureanism. He was one of
the earliest thinkers to explicit posit a supreme good or goal, which he called cheerfulness or well-
being and identified with the untroubled enjoyment of life. He saw this as achievable
through moderation in the pursuit of pleasure, through distinguishing useful pleasures
from harmful ones, and through conforming to conventional morality. He is quoted as saying, "The
brave man is he who overcomes not only his enemies but his pleasures".
Democritus was also a pioneer of mathematics and geometry, and produced works entitled "On
Numbers", "On Geometrics", "On Tangencies", "On Mapping" and "On Irrationals", although these
works have not survived. We do know that he was among the first to observe that
a cone or pyramid has one-third the volume of a cylinder or prism respectively with the same base
and height.
He was also the first philosopher we know who realized that the celestial body we call the Milky
Way is actually formed from the light of distant stars, even though many later philosophers
(including Aristotle) argued against this. He was also among the first to propose that
the universe contains many worlds, some of which may be inhabited. He devoted many of the later
years of his life to researches into the properties of minerals and plants, although we have no record
of any conclusions he may have drawn.
The Sophists

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The term sophist (sophistēs) derives from the Greek words for wisdom (sophia) and wise (sophos).
Since Homer at least, these terms had a wide range of application, extending from practical know-
how and prudence in public affairs to poetic ability and theoretical knowledge. Notably, the
term sophia could be used to describe disingenuous cleverness long before the rise of the sophistic
movement. Theognis, for example, writing in the sixth century B.C.E., counsels Cyrnos to
accommodate his discourse to different companions, because such cleverness (sophiē) is superior to
even a great excellence (Elegiac Poems, 1072, 213).
In the fifth century B.C.E. the term sophistēs was still broadly applied to ‘wise men’, including poets
such as Homer and Hesiod, the Seven Sages, the Ionian ‘physicists’ and a variety of seers and
prophets. The narrower use of the term to refer to professional teachers of virtue or excellence
(aretē) became prevalent in the second half of the fifth century B.C.E., although this should not be
taken to imply the presence of a clear distinction between philosophers, such as Socrates, and
sophists, such as Protagoras, Gorgias and Prodicus. This much is evident from Aristophanes’ play The
Clouds (423 B.C.E.), in which Socrates is depicted as a sophist and Prodicus praised for his wisdom.
Aristophanes’ play is a good starting point for understanding Athenian attitudes towards sophists.
The Clouds depicts the tribulations of Strepsiades, an elderly Athenian citizen with significant debts.
Deciding that the best way to discharge his debts is to defeat his creditors in court, he attends The
Thinkery, an institute of higher education headed up by the sophist Socrates. When he fails to learn
the art of speaking in The Thinkery, Strepsiades persuades his initially reluctant son, Pheidippides, to
accompany him. Here they encounter two associates of Socrates, the Stronger and the Weaker
Arguments, who represent lives of justice and self-discipline and injustice and self-indulgence
respectively. On the basis of a popular vote, the Weaker Argument prevails and leads Pheidippides
into The Thinkery for an education in how to make the weaker argument defeat the stronger.
Strepsiades later revisits The Thinkery and finds that Socrates has turned his son into a pale and
useless intellectual. When Pheidippides graduates, he subsequently prevails not only over
Strepsiades’ creditors, but also beats his father and offers a persuasive rhetorical justification for the
act. As Pheidippides prepares to beat his mother, Strepsiades’ indignation motivates him to lead a
violent mob attack on The Thinkery.
Aristophanes’ depiction of Socrates the sophist is revealing on at least three levels. In the first
instance, it demonstrates that the distinction between Socrates and his sophistic counterparts was far
from clear to their contemporaries. Although Socrates did not charge fees and frequently asserted
that all he knew was that he was ignorant of most matters, his association with the sophists reflects
both the indeterminacy of the term sophist and the difficulty, at least for the everyday Athenian
citizen, of distinguishing his methods from theirs. Secondly, Aristophanes’ depiction suggests that the
sophistic education reflected a decline from the heroic Athens of earlier generations. Thirdly, the
attribution to the sophists of intellectual deviousness and moral dubiousness predates Plato and
Aristotle.
Hostility towards sophists was a significant factor in the decision of the Athenian dēmos to condemn
Socrates to the death penalty for impiety. Anytus, who was one of Socrates’ accusers at his trial, was
clearly unconcerned with details such as that the man he accused did not claim to teach aretē or
extract fees for so doing. He is depicted by Plato as suggesting that sophists are the ruin of all those
who come into contact with them and as advocating their expulsion from the city (Meno, 91c-92c).
Equally as revealing, in terms of attitudes towards the sophists, is Socrates’ discussion with
Hippocrates, a wealthy young Athenian keen to become a pupil of Protagoras (Protagoras, 312a).
Hippocrates is so eager to meet Protagoras that he wakes Socrates in the early hours of the morning,
yet later concedes that he himself would be ashamed to be known as a sophist by his fellow citizens.

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Plato depicts Protagoras as well aware of the hostility and resentment engendered by his profession
(Protagoras, 316c-e). It is not surprising, Protagoras suggests, that foreigners who profess to be wise
and persuade the wealthy youth of powerful cities to forsake their family and friends and consort
with them would arouse suspicion. Indeed, Protagoras claims that the sophistic art is an ancient one,
but that sophists of old, including poets such as Homer, Hesiod and Simonides, prophets, seers and
even physical trainers, deliberately did not adopt the name for fear of persecution. Protagoras says
that while he has adopted a strategy of openly professing to be a sophist, he has taken other
precautions – perhaps including his association with the Athenian general Pericles – in order to secure
his safety.
The low standing of the sophists in Athenian public opinion does not stem from a single source. No
doubt suspicion of intellectuals among the many was a factor. New money and democratic decision-
making, however, also constituted a threat to the conservative Athenian aristocratic establishment.
This threatening social change is reflected in the attitudes towards the concept of excellence or virtue
(aretē) alluded to in the summary above. Whereas in the Homeric epics aretē generally denotes the
strength and courage of a real man, in the second half of the fifth century B.C.E. it increasingly
became associated with success in public affairs through rhetorical persuasion.
In the context of Athenian political life of the late fifth century B.C.E. the importance of skill in
persuasive speech, or rhetoric, cannot be underestimated. The development of democracy made
mastery of the spoken word not only a precondition of political success but also indispensable as a
form of self-defence in the event that one was subject to a lawsuit. The sophists accordingly answered
a growing need among the young and ambitious. Meno, an ambitious pupil of Gorgias, says that
the aretē – and hence function – of a man is to rule over people, that is, manage his public affairs so
as to benefit his friends and harm his enemies (73c-d). This is a long-standing ideal, but one best
realised in democratic Athens through rhetoric. Rhetoric was thus the core of the sophistic education
(Protagoras, 318e), even if most sophists professed to teach a broader range of subjects.
Suspicion towards the sophists was also informed by their departure from the aristocratic model of
education (paideia). Since Homeric Greece, paideia had been the preoccupation of the ruling nobles
and was based around a set of moral precepts befitting an aristocratic warrior class. The business
model of the sophists presupposed that aretē could be taught to all free citizens, a claim that
Protagoras implicitly defends in his great speech regarding the origins of justice. The sophists were
thus a threat to the status quo because they made an indiscriminate promise – assuming capacity to
pay fees – to provide the young and ambitious with the power to prevail in public life.
One could therefore loosely define sophists as paid teachers of aretē, where the latter is understood
in terms of the capacity to attain and exercise political power through persuasive speech. This is only
a starting point, however, and the broad and significant intellectual achievement of the sophists,
which we will consider in the following two sections, has led some to ask whether it is possible or
desirable to attribute them with a unique method or outlook that would serve as a unifying
characteristic while also differentiating them from philosophers.
Scholarship in the nineteenth century and beyond has often fastened on method as a way of
differentiating Socrates from the sophists. For Henry Sidgwick (1872, 288-307), for example, whereas
Socrates employed a question-and-answer method in search of the truth, the sophists gave long
epideictic or display speeches for the purposes of persuasion. It seems difficult to maintain a clear
methodical differentiation on this basis, given that Gorgias and Protagoras both claimed proficiency in
short speeches and that Socrates engages in long eloquent speeches – many in mythical form –
throughout the Platonic dialogues. It is moreover simply misleading to say that the sophists were in all
cases unconcerned with truth, as to assert the relativity of truth is itself to make a truth claim. A

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further consideration is that Socrates is guilty of fallacious reasoning in many of the Platonic
dialogues, although this point is less relevant if we assume that Socrates’ logical errors are
unintentional.
G.B. Kerferd (1981a) has proposed a more nuanced set of methodological criteria to differentiate
Socrates from the sophists. According to Kerferd, the sophists employed eristic and antilogical
methods of argument, whereas Socrates disdained the former and saw the latter as a necessary but
incomplete step on the way towards dialectic. Plato uses the term eristic to denote the practice – it is
not strictly speaking a method – of seeking victory in argument without regard for the truth. We find a
representation of eristic techniques in Plato’s dialogue Euthydemus, where the brothers Euthydemus
and Dionysiodorous deliberately use egregiously fallacious arguments for the purpose of
contradicting and prevailing over their opponent. Antilogic is the method of proceeding from a given
argument, usually that offered by an opponent, towards the establishment of a contrary or
contradictory argument in such a way that the opponent must either abandon his first position or
accept both positions. This method of argumentation was employed by most of the sophists, and
examples are found in the works of Protagoras and Antiphon.
Kerferd’s claim that we can distinguish between philosophy and sophistry by appealing to dialectic
remains problematic, however. In what are usually taken to be the “early” Platonic dialogues, we find
Socrates’ employing a dialectical method of refutation referred to as the elenchus. As Nehamas has
argued (1990), while the elenchus is distinguishable from eristic because of its concern with the truth,
it is harder to differentiate from antilogic because its success is always dependent upon the capacity
of interlocutors to defend themselves against refutation in a particular case. In Plato’s “middle” and
“later” dialogues, on the other hand, according to Nehamas’ interpretation, Plato associates dialectic
with knowledge of the forms, but this seemingly involves an epistemological and metaphysical
commitment to a transcendent ontology that most philosophers, then and now, would be reluctant to
uphold.
More recent attempts to explain what differentiates philosophy from sophistry have accordingly
tended to focus on a difference in moral purpose or in terms of choices for different ways way of life,
as Aristotle elegantly puts it (Metaphysics IV, 2, 1004b24-5). Section 4 will return to the question of
whether this is the best way to think about the distinction between philosophy and sophistry. Before
this, however, it is useful to sketch the biographies and interests of the most prominent sophists and
also consider some common themes in their thought.
2. The Sophists
a. Protagoras
Protagoras of Abdera (c. 490-420 B.C.E.) was the most prominent member of the sophistic movement
and Plato reports he was the first to charge fees using that title (Protagoras, 349a). Despite his animus
towards the sophists, Plato depicts Protagoras as quite a sympathetic and dignified figure.
One of the more intriguing aspects of Protagoras’ life and work is his association with the great
Athenian general and statesman Pericles (c. 495-429 B.C.E.). Pericles, who was the most influential
statesman in Athens for more than 30 years, including the first two years of the Peloponnesian War,
seems to have held a high regard for philosophers and sophists, and Protagoras in particular,
entrusting him with the role of drafting laws for the Athenian foundation city of Thurii in 444 B.C.E.
From a philosophical perspective, Protagoras is most famous for his relativistic account of truth – in
particular the claim that ‘man is the measure of all things’ – and his agnosticism concerning the Gods.
The first topic will be discussed in section 3b. Protagoras’ agnosticism is famously articulated in the
claim that ‘concerning the gods I am not in a position to know either that (or how) they are or that (or
how) they are not, or what they are like in appearance; for there are many things that prevent
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knowledge, the obscurity of the matter and the brevity of human life’ (DK, 80B4). This seems to
express a form of religious agnosticism not completely foreign to educated Athenian opinion. Despite
this, according to tradition, Protagoras was convicted of impiety towards the end of his life. As a
consequence, so the story goes, his books were burnt and he drowned at sea while departing Athens.
It is perhaps significant in this context that Protagoras seems to have been the source of the sophistic
claim to ‘make the weaker argument defeat the stronger’ parodied by Aristophanes.
Plato suggests that Protagoras sought to differ his educational offering from that of other sophists,
such as Hippias, by concentrating upon instruction in aretē in the sense of political virtue rather than
specialised studies such as astronomy and mathematics (Protagoras, 318e).
Apart from his works Truth and On the Gods, which deal with his relativistic account of truth and
agnosticism respectively, Diogenes Laertius says that Protagoras wrote the following
books: Antilogies, Art of Eristics, Imperative, On Ambition, On Incorrect Human Actions, On those in
Hades, On Sciences, On Virtues, On Wrestling, On the Original State of Things and Trial over a Fee.
b. Gorgias
Gorgias of Leontini (c.485 – c.390 B.C.E.) is generally considered as a member of the sophistic
movement, despite his disavowal of the capacity to teach aretē (Meno, 96c). The major focus of
Gorgias was rhetoric and given the importance of persuasive speaking to the sophistic education, and
his acceptance of fees, it is appropriate to consider him alongside other famous sophists for present
purposes.
Gorgias visited Athens in 427 B.C.E. as the leader of an embassy from Leontini with the successful
intention of persuading the Athenians to make an alliance against Syracuse. He travelled extensively
around Greece, earning large sums of money by giving lessons in rhetoric and epideictic speeches.
Plato’s Gorgias depicts the rhetorician as something of a celebrity, who either does not have well
thought out views on the implications of his expertise, or is reluctant to share them, and who denies
his responsibility for the unjust use of rhetorical skill by errant students. Although Gorgias presents
himself as moderately upstanding, the dramatic structure of Plato’s dialogue suggests that the
defence of injustice by Polus and the appeal to the natural right of the stronger by Callicles are partly
grounded in the conceptual presuppositions of Gorgianic rhetoric.
Gorgias’ original contribution to philosophy is sometimes disputed, but the fragments of his works On
Not Being or Nature and Helen – discussed in detail in section 3c – feature intriguing claims
concerning the power of rhetorical speech and a style of argumentation reminiscent of Parmenides
and Zeno. Gorgias is also credited with other orations and encomia and a technical treatise on
rhetoric titled At the Right Moment in Time.
c. Antiphon
The biographical details surrounding Antiphon the sophist (c. 470-411 B.C.) are unclear – one
unresolved issue is whether he should be identified with Antiphon of Rhamnus (a statesman and
teacher of rhetoric who was a member of the oligarchy which held power in Athens briefly in 411
B.C.E.). However, since the publication of fragments from his On Truth in the early twentieth century
he has been regarded as a major representative of the sophistic movement.
On Truth, which features a range of positions and counterpositions on the relationship between
nature and convention (see section 3a below), is sometimes considered an important text in the
history of political thought because of its alleged advocacy of egalitarianism:
Those born of illustrious fathers we respect and honour, whereas those who come from an
undistinguished house we neither respect nor honour. In this we behave like barbarians towards one
another. For by nature we all equally, both barbarians and Greeks, have an entirely similar origin: for

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it is fitting to fulfil the natural satisfactions which are necessary to all men: all have the ability to fulfil
these in the same way, and in all this none of us is different either as barbarian or as Greek; for we all
breathe into the air with mouth and nostrils and we all eat with the hands (quoted in Untersteiner,
1954).
Whether this statement should be taken as expressing the actual views of Antiphon, or rather as part
of an antilogical presentation of opposing views on justice remains an open question, as does
whether such a position rules out the identification of Antiphon the sophist with the oligarchical
Antiphon of Rhamnus.
d. Hippias
The exact dates for Hippias of Elis are unknown, but scholars generally assume that he lived during
the same period as Protagoras. Whereas Plato’s depictions of Protagoras – and to a lesser extent
Gorgias – indicate a modicum of respect, he presents Hippias as a comic figure who is obsessed with
money, pompous and confused.
Hippias is best known for his polymathy (DK 86A14). His areas of expertise seem to have included
astronomy, grammar, history, mathematics, music, poetry, prose, rhetoric, painting and sculpture.
Like Gorgias and Prodicus, he served as an ambassador for his home city. His work as a historian,
which included compiling lists of Olympic victors, was invaluable to Thucydides and subsequent
historians as it allowed for a more precise dating of past events. In mathematics he is attributed with
the discovery of a curve – the quadratrix – used to trisect an angle.
In terms of his philosophical contribution, Kerferd has suggested, on the basis of Plato’s Hippias
Major (301d-302b), that Hippias advocated a theory that classes or kinds of thing are dependent on a
being that traverses them. It is hard to make much sense of this alleged doctrine on the basis of
available evidence. As suggested above, Plato depicts Hippias as philosophically shallow and unable to
keep up with Socrates in dialectical discussion.
e. Prodicus
Prodicus of Ceos, who lived during roughly the same period as Protagoras and Hippias, is best known
for his subtle distinctions between the meanings of words. He is thought to have written a treatise
titled On the Correctness of Names.
Plato gives an amusing account of Prodicus’ method in the following passage of the Protagoras:
Prodicus spoke up next: … ‘those who attend discussions such as this ought to listen impartially, but
not equally, to both interlocutors. There is a distinction here. We ought to listen impartially but not
divide our attention equally: More should go to the wiser speaker and less to the more unlearned … In
this way our meeting would take a most attractive turn, for you, the speakers, would then most surely
earn the respect, rather than the praise, of those listening to you. For respect is guilelessly inherent in
the souls of listeners, but praise is all too often merely a deceitful verbal expression. And then, too,
we, your audience, would be most cheered, but not pleased, for to be cheered is to learn something,
to participate in some intellectual activity; but to be pleased has to do with eating or experiencing
some other pleasure in the body’ (337a-c).
Prodicus’ epideictic speech, The Choice of Heracles, was singled out for praise by Xenophon
(Memorabilia, II.1.21-34) and in addition to his private teaching he seems to have served as an
ambassador for Ceos (the birthplace of Simonides) on several occasions.
Socrates, although perhaps with some degree of irony, was fond of calling himself a pupil of Prodicus
(Protagoras, 341a; Meno, 96d).
f. Thrasymachus

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Thrasymachus was a well-known rhetorician in Athens in the latter part of the fifth century B.C.E., but
our only surviving record of his views is contained in Plato’s Cleitophon and Book One of The Republic.
He is depicted as brash and aggressive, with views on the nature of justice that will be examined in
section 3a.
3. Major Themes of Sophistic Thought
a. Nature and Convention
The distinction between physis (nature) and nomos (custom, law, convention) was a central theme
in Greek thought in the second half of the fifth century B.C.E. and is especially important for
understanding the work of the sophists. Before turning to sophistic considerations of these concepts
and the distinction between them, it is worth sketching the meaning of the Greek terms.
Aristotle defines physis as ‘the substance of things which have in themselves as such a source of
movement’ (Metaphysics, 1015a13-15). The term physis is closely connected with the Greek verb to
grow (phuō) and the dynamic aspect of physis reflects the view that the nature of things is found in
their origins and internal principles of change. Some of the Ionian thinkers now referred to as
presocratics, including Thales and Heraclitus, used the term physis for reality as a whole, or at least its
underlying material constituents, referring to the investigation of nature in this context
as historia (inquiry) rather than philosophy.
The term nomos refers to a wide range of normative concepts extending from customs and
conventions to positive law. It would be misleading to regard the term as referring only to arbitrary
human conventions, as Heraclitus’ appeal to the distinction between human nomoi and the one
divine nomos (DK 22B2 and 114) makes clear. Nonetheless, increased travel, as exemplified by the
histories of Herodotus, led to a greater understanding of the wide array of customs, conventions and
laws among communities in the ancient world. This recognition sets up the possibility of a dichotomy
between what is unchanging and according to nature and what is merely a product of arbitrary
human convention.
The dichotomy between physis and nomos seems to have been something of a commonplace of
sophistic thought and was appealed to by Protagoras and Hippias among others. Perhaps the most
instructive sophistic account of the distinction, however, is found in Antiphon’s fragment On Truth.
Antiphon applies the distinction to notions of justice and injustice, arguing that the majority of things
which are considered just according to nomos are in direct conflict with nature and hence not truly or
naturally just (DK 87 A44). The basic thrust of Antiphon’s argument is that laws and conventions are
designed as a constraint upon our natural pursuit of pleasure. In a passage suggestive of the
discussion on justice early in Plato’s Republic, Antiphon also asserts that one should employ justice to
one’s advantage by regarding the laws as important when witnesses are present, but disregarding
them when one can get away with it. Although these arguments may be construed as part of an
antilogical exercise on nature and convention rather than prescriptions for a life of prudent
immorality, they are consistent with views on the relation between human nature and justice
suggested by Plato’s depiction of Callicles and Thrasymachus in the Gorgias and Republic respectively.
Callicles, a young Athenian aristocrat who may be a real historical figure or a creation of Plato’s
imagination, was not a sophist; indeed he expresses disdain for them (Gorgias, 520a). His account of
the relation between physis and nomos nonetheless owes a debt to sophistic thought. According to
Callicles, Socrates’ arguments in favour of the claim that it is better to suffer injustice than to commit
injustice trade on a deliberate ambiguity in the term justice. Callicles argues that conventional justice
is a kind of slave morality imposed by the many to constrain the desires of the superior few. What is
just according to nature, by contrast, is seen by observing animals in nature and relations between
political communities where it can be seen that the strong prevail over the weak. Callicles himself
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takes this argument in the direction of a vulgar sensual hedonism motivated by the desire to have
more than others (pleonexia), but sensual hedonism as such does not seem to be a necessary
consequence of his account of natural justice.
Although the sophist Thrasymachus does not employ the physis/nomos distinction in Book One of
the Republic, his account of justice (338d-354c) belongs within a similar conceptual framework. Like
Callicles, Thrasymachus accuses Socrates of deliberate deception in his arguments, particularly in the
claim the art of justice consists in a ruler looking after their subjects. According to Thrasymachus, we
do better to think of the ruler/ruled relation in terms of a shepherd looking after his flock with a view
to its eventual demise. Justice in conventional terms is simply a naive concern for the advantage of
another. From another more natural perspective, justice is the rule of the stronger, insofar as rulers
establish laws which persuade the multitude that it is just for them to obey what is to the advantage
of the ruling few
An alternative, and more edifying, account of the relation between physis and nomos is found in
Protagoras’ great speech (Protagoras, 320c-328d). According to Protagoras’ myth, man was originally
set forth by the gods into a violent state of nature reminiscent of that later described by Hobbes. Our
condition improved when Zeus bestowed us with shame and justice; these enabled us to develop the
skill of politics and hence civilized communal relations and virtue. Apart from supporting his argument
that aretē can be taught, this account suggests a defence of nomos on the grounds that nature by
itself is insufficient for the flourishing of man considered as a political animal.
b. Relativism
The primary source on sophistic relativism about knowledge and/or truth is Protagoras’ famous ‘man
is the measure’ statement. Interpretation of Protagoras’ thesis has always been a matter of
controversy. Caution is needed in particular against the temptation to read modern epistemological
concerns into Protagoras’ account and sophistic teaching on the relativity of truth more generally.
Protagoras measure thesis is as follows:
A human being is the measure of all things, of those things that are, that they are, and of those things
that are not, that they are not (DK, 80B1).
There is near scholarly consensus that Protagoras is referring here to each human being as the
measure of what is rather than ‘humankind’ as such, although the Greek term for ‘human’ –
hōanthrōpos– certainly does not rule out the second interpretation. Plato’s Theaetetus (152a),
however, suggests the first reading and I will assume its correctness here. On this reading we can
regard Protagoras as asserting that if the wind, for example, feels (or seems) cold to me and feels (or
seems) warm to you, then the wind is cold for me and is warm for you.
Another interpretative issue concerns whether we should construe Protagoras’ statement as primarily
ontological or epistemological in intent. Scholarship by Kahn, Owen and Kerferd among others
suggests that, while the Greeks lacked a clear distinction between existential and predicative uses of
‘to be’, they tended to treat existential uses as short for predicative uses.
Having sketched some of the interpretative difficulties surrounding Protagoras’ statement, we are still
left with at least three possible readings (Kerferd, 1981a, 86). Protagoras could be asserting that (i)
there is no mind-independent wind at all, but merely private subjective winds (ii) there is a wind that
exists independently of my perception of it, but it is in itself neither cold nor warm as these qualities
are private (iii) there is a wind that exists independently of my perception of it and this is both cold
and warm insofar as two qualities can inhere in the same mind-independent ‘entity’.
All three interpretations are live options, with (i) perhaps the least plausible. Whatever the exact
import of Protagoras’ relativism, however, the following passage from the Theaetetus suggests that it
was also extended to the political and ethical realm:
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Whatever in any particular city is considered just and admirable is just and admirable in that city, for
so long as the convention remains in place (167c).
One difficulty this passage raises is that while Protagoras asserted that all beliefs are equally true, he
also maintained that some are superior to others because they are more subjectively fulfilling for
those who hold them. Protagoras thus seems to want it both ways, insofar as he removes an objective
criterion of truth while also asserting that some subjective states are better than others. His appeal to
better and worse beliefs could, however, be taken to refer to the persuasiveness and pleasure
induced by certain beliefs and speeches rather than their objective truth.
The other major source for sophistic relativism is the Dissoi Logoi, an undated and anonymous
example of Protagorean antilogic. In the Dissoi Logoi we find competing arguments on five theses,
including whether the good and the bad are the same or different, and a series of examples of the
relativity of different cultural practices and laws. Overall the Dissoi Logoi can be taken to uphold not
only the relativity of truth but also what Barney (2006, 89) has called the variability thesis: whatever is
good in some qualified way is also bad in another respect and the same is the case for a wide range of
contrary predicates.
c. Language and Reality
Understandably given their educational program, the sophists placed great emphasis upon the power
of speech (logos). Logos is a notoriously difficult term to translate and can refer to thought and that
about which we speak and think as well as rational speech or language. The sophists were interested
in particular with the role of human discourse in the shaping of reality. Rhetoric was the centrepiece
of the curriculum, but literary interpretation of the work of poets was also a staple of sophistic
education. Some philosophical implications of the sophistic concern with speech are considered in
section 4, but in the current section it is instructive to concentrate on Gorgias’ account of the power
of rhetorical logos.
The extant fragments attributed to the historical Gorgias indicate not only scepticism towards
essential being and our epistemic access to this putative realm, but an assertion of the omnipotence
of persuasive logos to make the natural and practical world conform to human desires. Reporting
upon Gorgias’ speech About the Nonexistent or on Nature, Sextus says that the rhetorician, while
adopting a different approach from that of Protagoras, also eliminated the criterion (DK, 82B3). The
elimination of the criterion refers to the rejection of a standard that would enable us to distinguish
clearly between knowledge and opinion about being and nature. Whereas Protagoras asserted that
man is the measure of all things, Gorgias concentrated upon the status of truth about being and
nature as a discursive construction.
About the Nonexistent or on Nature transgresses the injunction of Parmenides that one cannot say of
what is that it is not. Employing a series of conditional arguments in the manner of Zeno, Gorgias
asserts that nothing exists, that if it did exist it could not be apprehended, and if it was apprehended
it could not be articulated in logos. The elaborate parody displays the paradoxical character of
attempts to disclose the true nature of beings through logos:
For that by which we reveal is logos, but logos is not substances and existing things. Therefore we do
not reveal existing things to our comrades, but logos, which is something other than substances (DK,
82B3)
Even if knowledge of beings was possible, its transmission in logos would always be distorted by the
rift between substances and our apprehension and communication of them. Gorgias also suggests,
even more provocatively, that insofar as speech is the medium by which humans articulate their
experience of the world, logos is not evocative of the external, but rather the external is what
reveals logos. An understanding of logos about nature as constitutive rather than descriptive here
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supports the assertion of the omnipotence of rhetorical expertise. Gorgias’ account suggests there is
no knowledge of nature sub specie aeternitatis and our grasp of reality is always mediated by
discursive interpretations, which, in turn, implies that truth cannot be separated from human
interests and power claims.
In the Encomium to Helen Gorgias refers to logos as a powerful master (DK, 82B11). If humans had
knowledge of the past, present or future they would not be compelled to adopt unpredictable
opinion as their counsellor. The endless contention of astronomers, politicians and philosophers is
taken to demonstrate that no logos is definitive. Human ignorance about non-existent truth can thus
be exploited by rhetorical persuasion insofar as humans desire the illusion of certainty imparted by
the spoken word:
The effect of logos upon the condition of the soul is comparable to the power of drugs over the
nature of bodies. For just as different drugs dispel different secretions from the body, and some bring
an end to disease and others to life, so also in the case of logoi, some distress, others delight, some
cause fear, others make hearers bold, and some drug and bewitch the soul with a kind of evil
persuasion (DK, 82B11).
All who have persuaded people, Gorgias says, do so by moulding a false logos. While other forms of
power require force, logos makes all its willing slave.
This account of the relation between persuasive speech, knowledge, opinion and reality is broadly
consistent with Plato’s depiction of the rhetorician in the Gorgias. Both Protagoras’ relativism and
Gorgias’ account of the omnipotence of logos are suggestive of what we moderns might call a
deflationary epistemic anti-realism.
4. The Distinction Between Philosophy and Sophistry
The distinction between philosophy and sophistry is in itself a difficult philosophical problem. This
closing section examines the attempt of Plato to establish a clear line of demarcation between
philosophy and sophistry.
As alluded to above, the terms ‘philosopher’ and ‘sophist’ were disputed in the fifth and fourth
century B.C.E., the subject of contention between rival schools of thought. Histories of philosophy
tend to begin with the Ionian ‘physicist’ Thales, but the presocratics referred to the activity they were
engaged in as historia (inquiry) rather than philosophia and although it may have some validity as a
historical projection, the notion that philosophy begins with Thales derives from the mid nineteenth
century. It was Plato who first clearly and consistently refers to the activity of philosophia and much
of what he has to say is best understood in terms of an explicit or implicit contrast with the rival
schools of the sophists and Isocrates (who also claimed the title philosophia for his rhetorical
educational program).
The related questions as to what a sophist is and how we can distinguish the philosopher from the
sophist were taken very seriously by Plato. He also acknowledges the difficulty inherent in the pursuit
of these questions and it is perhaps revealing that the dialogue dedicated to the task, Sophist,
culminates in a discussion about the being of non-being. Socrates converses with sophists
in Euthydemus, Hippias Major, Hippias Minor, Gorgias, Protagoras and the Republic and discusses
sophists at length in the Apology, Sophist, Statesman and Theaetetus. It can thus be argued that the
search for the sophist and distinction between philosophy and sophistry are not only central themes
in the Platonic dialogues, but constitutive of the very idea and practice of philosophy, at least in its
original sense as articulated by Plato.
This point has been recognised by recent poststructuralist thinkers such as Jacques Derrida and Jean
Francois-Lyotard in the context of their project to place in question central presuppositions of the
Western philosophical tradition deriving from Plato. Derrida attacks the interminable trial prosecuted
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by Plato against the sophists with a view to exhuming ‘the conceptual monuments marking out the
battle lines between philosophy and sophistry’ (1981, 106). Lyotard views the sophists as in
possession of unique insight into the sense in which discourses about what is just cannot transcend
the realm of opinion and pragmatic language games (1985, 73-83).
The prospects for establishing a clear methodological divide between philosophy and sophistry are
poor. Apart from the considerations mentioned in section 1, it would be misleading to say that the
sophists were unconcerned with truth or genuine theoretical investigation and Socrates is clearly
guilty of fallacious reasoning in many of the Platonic dialogues. In the Sophist, in fact, Plato implies
that the Socratic technique of dialectical refutation represents a kind of ‘noble sophistry’ (Sophist,
231b).
This in large part explains why contemporary scholarship on the distinction between philosophy and
sophistry has tended to focus on a difference in moral character. Nehamas, for example, has argued
that ‘Socrates did not differ from the sophists in method but in overall purpose’ (1990, 13). Nehamas
relates this overall purpose to the Socratic elenchus, suggesting that Socrates’ disavowal of
knowledge and of the capacity to teach aretē distances him from the sophists. However, this way of
demarcating Socrates’ practice from that of his sophistic counterparts, Nehamas argues, cannot
justify the later Platonic distinction between philosophy and sophistry, insofar as Plato forfeited the
right to uphold the distinction once he developed a substantive philosophical teaching, that is, the
theory of forms.
There is no doubt much truth in the claim that Plato and Aristotle depict the philosopher as pursuing
a different way of life than the sophist, but to say that Plato defines the philosopher either through a
difference in moral purpose, as in the case of Socrates, or a metaphysical presumption regarding the
existence of transcendent forms, as in his later work, does not in itself adequately characterise Plato’s
critique of his sophistic contemporaries. Once we attend to Plato’s own treatment of the distinction
between philosophy and sophistry two themes quickly become clear: the mercenary character of the
sophists and their overestimation of the power of speech. For Plato, at least, these two aspects of the
sophistic education tell us something about the persona of the sophist as the embodiment of a
distinctive attitude towards knowledge.
The fact that the sophists taught for profit may not seem objectionable to modern readers; most
present-day university professors would be reluctant to teach pro bono. It is clearly a major issue for
Plato, however. Plato can barely mention the sophists without contemptuous reference to the
mercenary aspect of their trade: particularly revealing examples of Plato’s disdain for sophistic
money-making and avarice are found at Apology 19d, Euthydemus 304b-c, Hippias Major 282b-
e, Protagoras 312c-d and Sophist 222d-224d, and this is not an exhaustive list. Part of the issue here is
no doubt Plato’s commitment to a way of life dedicated to knowledge and contemplation. It is
significant that students in the Academy, arguably the first higher education institution, were not
required to pay fees. This is only part of the story, however.
A good starting point is to consider the etymology of the term philosophia as suggested by
the Phaedrus and Symposium. After completing his palinode in the Phaedrus, Socrates expresses the
hope that he never be deprived of his ‘erotic’ art. Whereas the speechwriter Lysias
presents erōs (desire, love) as an unseemly waste of expenditure (Phaedrus, 257a), in his later speech
Socrates demonstrates how erōs impels the soul to rise towards the forms. The followers of Zeus, or
philosophy, Socrates suggests, educate the object of their erōs to imitate and partake in the ways of
the God. Similarly, in the Symposium, Socrates refers to an exception to his ignorance. Approving of
the suggestion by Phaedrus that the drinking party eulogise erōs, Socrates states that ta erōtika (the
erotic things) are the only subject concerning which he would claim to possess rigorous knowledge

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(Symposium, 177 d-e). When it is his turn to deliver a speech, Socrates laments his incapacity to
compete with the Gorgias-influenced rhetoric of Agathon before delivering Diotima’s lessons on erōs,
represented as a daimonion or semi-divine intermediary between the mortal and the divine. Erōs is
thus presented as analogous to philosophy in its etymological sense, a striving after wisdom or
completion that can only be temporarily fulfilled in this life by contemplation of the forms of the
beautiful and the good (204a-b). The philosopher is someone who strives after wisdom – a friend or
lover of wisdom – not someone who possesses wisdom as a finished product, as the sophists claimed
to do and as their name suggests.
Plato’s emphasis upon philosophy as an ‘erotic’ activity of striving for wisdom, rather than as a
finished state of completed wisdom, largely explains his distaste for sophistic money-making. The
sophists, according to Plato, considered knowledge to be a ready-made product that could be sold
without discrimination to all comers. The Theages, a Socratic dialogue whose authorship some
scholars have disputed, but which expresses sentiments consistent with other Platonic dialogues,
makes this point with particular clarity. The farmer Demodokos has brought his son, Theages, who is
desirous of wisdom, to Socrates. As Socrates questions his potential pupil regarding what sort of
wisdom he seeks, it becomes evident that Theages seeks power in the city and influence over other
men. Since Theages is looking for political wisdom, Socrates refers him to the statesmen and the
sophists. Disavowing his ability to compete with the expertise of Gorgias and Prodicus in this respect,
Socrates nonetheless admits his knowledge of the erotic things, a subject about which he claims to
know more than any man who has come before or indeed any of those to come (Theages, 128b). In
response to the suggestion that he study with a sophist, Theages reveals his intention to become a
pupil of Socrates. Perhaps reluctant to take on an unpromising pupil, Socrates insists that he must
follow the commands of his daimonion, which will determine whether those associating with him are
capable of making any progress (Theages, 129c). The dialogue ends with an agreement that all parties
make trial of the daimonion to see whether it permits of the association.
One need only follow the suggestion of the Symposium that erōs is a daimonion to see that Socratic
education, as presented by Plato, is concomitant with a kind of ‘erotic’ concern with the beautiful and
the good, considered as natural in contrast to the purely conventional. Whereas the sophists accept
pupils indiscriminately, provided they have the money to pay, Socrates is oriented by his desire to
cultivate the beautiful and the good in promising natures. In short, the difference between Socrates
and his sophistic contemporaries, as Xenophon suggests, is the difference between a lover and a
prostitute. The sophists, for Xenophon’s Socrates, are prostitutes of wisdom because they sell their
wares to anyone with the capacity to pay (Memorabilia, I.6.13). This – somewhat paradoxically –
accounts for Socrates’ shamelessness in comparison with his sophistic contemporaries, his
preparedness to follow the argument wherever it leads. By contrast, Protagoras and Gorgias are
shown, in the dialogues that bear their names, as vulnerable to the conventional opinions of the
paying fathers of their pupils, a weakness contributing to their refutation. The sophists are thus
characterised by Plato as subordinating the pursuit of truth to worldly success, in a way that perhaps
calls to mind the activities of contemporary advertising executives or management consultants.
The overestimation of the power of human speech is the other theme that emerges clearly from
Plato’s (and Aristotle’s) critique of the sophists. In the Sophist, Plato says that dialectic – division and
collection according to kinds – is the knowledge possessed by the free man or philosopher (Sophist,
253c). Here Plato reintroduces the difference between true and false rhetoric, alluded to in
the Phaedrus, according to which the former presupposes the capacity to see the one in the many
(Phaedrus, 266b). Plato’s claim is that the capacity to divide and synthesise in accordance with one
form is required for the true expertise of logos. Whatever else one makes of Plato’s account of our

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knowledge of the forms, it clearly involves the apprehension of a higher level of being than sensory
perception and speech. The philosopher, then, considers rational speech as oriented by a genuine
understanding of being or nature. The sophist, by contrast, is said by Plato to occupy the realm of
falsity, exploiting the difficulty of dialectic by producing discursive semblances, or phantasms, of true
being (Sophist, 234c). The sophist uses the power of persuasive speech to construct or create images
of the world and is thus a kind of ‘enchanter’ and imitator.
This aspect of Plato’s critique of sophistry seems particularly apposite in regard to Gorgias’ rhetoric,
both as found in the Platonic dialogue and the extant fragments attributed to the historical Gorgias. In
response to Socratic questioning, Gorgias asserts that rhetoric is an all-comprehending power that
holds under itself all of the other activities and occupations (Gorgias, 456a). He later claims that it is
concerned with the greatest good for man, namely those speeches that allow one to attain freedom
and rule over others, especially, but not exclusively, in political settings (452d). As suggested above, in
the context of Athenian public life the capacity to persuade was a precondition of political success.
For present purposes, however, the key point is that freedom and rule over others are both forms of
power: respectively power in the sense of liberty or capacity to do something, which suggests the
absence of relevant constraints, and power in the sense of dominion over others. Gorgias is
suggesting that rhetoric, as the expertise of persuasive speech, is the source of power in a quite
comprehensive sense and that power is ‘the good’. What we have here is an assertion of the
omnipotence of speech, at the very least in relation to the determination of human affairs.
The Socratic position, as becomes clear later in the discussion with Polus (466d-e), and is also
suggested in Meno (88c-d) and Euthydemus (281d-e), is that power without knowledge of the good is
not genuinely good. Without such knowledge not only ‘external’ goods, such as wealth and health,
not only the areas of expertise that enable one to attain such so-called goods, but the very capacity to
attain them is either of no value or harmful. This in large part explains the so-called Socratic paradox
that virtue is knowledge.
Plato’s critique of the sophists’ overestimation of the power of speech should not be conflated with
his commitment to the theory of the forms. For Plato, the sophist reduces thinking to a kind of
making: by asserting the omnipotence of human speech the sophist pays insufficient regard to the
natural limits upon human knowledge and our status as seekers rather than possessors of knowledge
(Sophist, 233d). This critique of the sophists does perhaps require a minimal commitment to a
distinction between appearance and reality, but it is an oversimplification to suggest that Plato’s
distinction between philosophy and sophistry rests upon a substantive metaphysical theory, in large
part because our knowledge of the forms for Plato is itself inherently ethical. Plato, like his Socrates,
differentiates the philosopher from the sophist primarily through the virtues of the philosopher’s soul
(McKoy, 2008). Socrates is an embodiment of the moral virtues, but love of the forms also has
consequences for the philosopher’s character.
There is a further ethical and political aspect to the Platonic and Aristotelian critique of the sophists’
overestimation of the power of speech. In Book Ten of Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle suggests that
the sophists tended to reduce politics to rhetoric (1181a12-15) and overemphasised the role that
could be played by rational persuasion in the political realm. Part of Aristotle’s point is that there is an
element to living well that transcends speech. As Hadot eloquently puts it, citing Greek and Roman
sources, ‘traditionally people who developed an apparently philosophical discourse without trying to
live their lives in accordance with their discourse, and without their discourse emanating from their
life experience, were called sophists’ (2004, 174).
The testimony of Xenophon, a Greek general and man of action, is instructive here. In his treatise on
hunting, (Cynēgeticus, 13.1-9), Xenophon commends Socratic over sophistic education in aretē, not

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only on the grounds that the sophists hunt the young and rich and are deceptive, but also because
they are men of words rather than action. The importance of consistency between one’s words and
actions if one is to be truly virtuous is a commonplace of Greek thought, and this is one important
respect in which the sophists, at least from the Platonic-Aristotelian perspective, fell short.
One might think that a denial of Plato’s demarcation between philosophy and sophistry remains well-
motivated simply because the historical sophists made genuine contributions to philosophy. But this
does not entail the illegitimacy of Plato’s distinction. Once we recognise that Plato is pointing
primarily to a fundamental ethical orientation relating to the respective personas of the philosopher
and sophist, rather than a methodological or purely theoretical distinction, the tension dissolves. This
is not to deny that the ethical orientation of the sophist is likely to lead to a certain kind of
philosophising, namely one which attempts to master nature, human and external, rather than
understand it as it is.
Sophistry for Socrates, Plato and Aristotle represents a choice for a certain way of life, embodied in a
particular attitude towards knowledge which views it as a finished product to be transmitted to all
comers. Plato’s distinction between philosophy and sophistry is not simply an arbitrary viewpoint in a
dispute over naming rights, but is rather based upon a fundamental difference in ethical orientation.
Neither is this orientation reducible to concern with truth or the cogency of one’s theoretical
constructs, although it is not unrelated to these. Where the philosopher differs from the sophist is in
terms of the choice for a way of life that is oriented by the pursuit of knowledge as a good in itself
while remaining cognisant of the necessarily provisional nature of this pursuit.
Socrates
Socrates was an ancient Greek philosopher considered to be the main source of Western thought. He
was condemned to death for his Socratic method of questioning.
Socrates was a scholar, teacher and philosopher born in ancient Greece. His Socratic method laid the
groundwork for Western systems of logic and philosophy.
When the political climate of Greece turned against him, Socrates was sentenced to death by hemlock
poisoning in 399 B.C. He accepted this judgment rather than fleeing into exile.
Early Years
Born circa 470 B.C. in Athens, Greece, Socrates's life is chronicled through only a few sources: the
dialogues of Plato and Xenophon and the plays of Aristophanes.
Because these writings had other purposes than reporting his life, it is likely none present a
completely accurate picture. However, collectively, they provide a unique and vivid portrayal of
Socrates's philosophy and personality.
Socrates was the son of Sophroniscus, an Athenian stonemason and sculptor, and Phaenarete, a
midwife. Because he wasn't from a noble family, he probably received a basic Greek education and
learned his father's craft at a young age. It's believed Socrates worked as mason for many years
before he devoted his life to philosophy.
Contemporaries differ in their account of how Socrates supported himself as a philosopher. Both
Xenophon and Aristophanes state Socrates received payment for teaching, while Plato writes Socrates
explicitly denied accepting payment, citing his poverty as proof.
Socrates married Xanthippe, a younger woman, who bore him three sons: Lamprocles, Sophroniscus
and Menexenus. There is little known about her except for Xenophon's characterization of Xanthippe
as "undesirable."
He writes she was not happy with Socrates's second profession and complained that he wasn’t
supporting family as a philosopher. By his own words, Socrates had little to do with his sons'

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upbringing and expressed far more interest in the intellectual development of Athens' other young
boys.
Life in Athens
Athenian law required all able-bodied males serve as citizen soldiers, on call for duty from ages 18
until 60. According to Plato, Socrates served in the armored infantry — known as the hoplite — with
shield, long spear and face mask.
He participated in three military campaigns during the Peloponnesian War, at Delium, Amphipolis
and Potidaea, where he saved the life of Alcibiades, a popular Athenian general.
Socrates was known for his fortitude in battle and his fearlessness, a trait that stayed with him
throughout his life. After his trial, he compared his refusal to retreat from his legal troubles to a
soldier's refusal to retreat from battle when threatened with death.
Plato's Symposium provides the best details of Socrates' physical appearance. He was not the ideal of
Athenian masculinity. Short and stocky, with a snub nose and bulging eyes, Socrates always seemed
to appear to be staring.
However, Plato pointed out that in the eyes of his students, Socrates possessed a different kind of
attractiveness, not based on a physical ideal but on his brilliant debates and penetrating thought.
Socrates always emphasized the importance of the mind over the relative unimportance of the
human body. This credo inspired Plato’s philosophy of dividing reality into two separate realms, the
world of the senses and the world of ideas, declaring that the latter was the only important one.
Philosophy
Socrates believed that philosophy should achieve practical results for the greater well-being of
society. He attempted to establish an ethical system based on human reason rather than theological
doctrine.
Socrates pointed out that human choice was motivated by the desire for happiness. Ultimate wisdom
comes from knowing oneself. The more a person knows, the greater his or her ability to reason and
make choices that will bring true happiness.
Socrates believed that this translated into politics with the best form of government being neither a
tyranny nor a democracy. Instead, government worked best when ruled by individuals who had the
greatest ability, knowledge and virtue, and possessed a complete understanding of themselves.
Plato’s Life and Times
Born into an aristocratic and influential Athenian family, and raised during the Peloponnesian War,
Plato’s family expected him to go into politics, but he fell in love with philosophy. After his mentor,
Socrates, was executed in 399 bce, a disgusted Plato left Athens. He returned in 387 to found the
Academy, often considered the first university.
His Academy developed thinkers such as Aristotle. Plato spent time writing dialogues, typically divided
into stages: early, middle, and late. These reflect developments in his thinking; he extended and
effectively completed Socrates’s interest in ethics to a systematic philosophy encompassing ideas in
metaphysics and epistemology.
Plato’s Theory of Knowledge
Plato’s rationalism marks him out from other ancient thinkers such as Heraclitus in his rejection of the
ever-changing physical world as a source of knowledge. Instead, he proposed that knowledge is to be
found in a transcendent realm of the Forms. The Forms, however, do not provide a convincing theory
of knowledge. Instead, Aristotle’s account of knowledge gained through experience is more
convincing and supported by the philosophy of Locke in the 17th century and later A.J Ayer in the
20th century. While Ayer’s verificationism raises the problem of relativism, I shall argue that these

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problems must be solved by an empiricist approach, rather than Plato’s mysterious realm of the
Forms.
Heraclitus observed that ‘No man can step in the same river twice’, which acknowledged that the
physical world is constantly changing. Plato insists, however, that there exists an eternal, perfect and
immaterial form of physical objects; the properties of physical objects and values, such as justice,
beauty and truth. This can be seen as part of a convincing theory of knowledge to the extent that it
explains how a person can recognise particular things as belonging to a universal idea, even if those
particular things are imperfect reflections of their universal form; for example, one can recognise
different dogs as dogs because they have an innate memory of the form of a dog, according to Plato.
This innate memory, Plato explains, comes from before birth when the soul belonged in the realm of
the forms.
The problem with this theory of knowledge, however, is that there is no evidence that there actually
exists a realm of the forms. John Locke was an empiricist who argued that we gain knowledge from
experience. We understand the concept of a dog not because we recollect the Form of a dog that
exists independently of any particular dog, but because we are able to compare a particular dog to
other dogs that we have experienced. Using our imagination, we can then abstract the concept of a
dog from those experiences of the things that all dogs have in common. Aristotle, also an empiricist,
argued that ‘goodness’, rather than existing in a mysterious realm of the forms as the source of all
perfection and existence, is only meaningful as a judgment about whether or not something fulfils its
function in practice, e.g. a knife is ‘good’ if it cuts well.
One may argue that not all knowledge is based on experience, for example, the idea of a unicorn.
Some knowledge, therefore must be innate in a way similar to how Plato describes. John Locke,
however, in his ‘Essay concerning Human Understanding’, argues that even ideas in our imagination
are based on a combination of things drawn from experience. He suggests that if certain ideas were
innate, like the law of non-contradiction, then ‘children and idiots’ would understand them, but there
is no evidence that they do.
Iris Murdoch, in the 20th century, argued that Plato’s theory of knowledge is convincing. She argued
that there must exist a Platonic form of ‘goodness’ that guides us to become better people and rise to
an external standard of morality. This may be convincing if we consider that without this, when we
judge something as good or beautiful, we are just expressing an opinion based on popular opinion.
This would mean that values are relative and we would be unable to judge others for acts or views
that we intuitively perceive as absolutely wrong, e.g. rape or genocide. Plato was warning against
relativism in his allegory of the cave when he describes those who are bound by popular opinion as
being prisoners who merely see shadows on a wall as oppose to the real objects of knowledge, the
forms. Plato further explains this idea with the analogy of the divided line that shows that the forms
are more real than physical objects by a ratio of 2:1, an idea that was influenced by Pythagoras.
Ayer, however, would argue that Plato’s theory of knowledge is unconvincing because the Forms
cannot be verified. He denied the existence of any ‘“reality transcending the limits of all possible
sense-experience”’ and argued that any statement that cannot be directly or indirectly verified is
meaningless. This implies that statements about goodness and beauty (both of which Plato believes
to be Forms of absolute truth) are relative and simply expressions of emotion. Ayer’s approach to
knowledge is more convincing than Plato’s because it is based on what can be scientifically proven,
however, the problems of relativism that have just been raised are unavoidable on Ayer’s
understanding of knowledge.
Aristotle and Locke’s common sense empiricism more convincingly explains how we have knowledge
of concepts derived from physical things. While there may be problems with relativism on Ayer’s

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understanding of concepts like goodness and beauty, Plato’s Forms are unverifiable. There must be a
solution to the problems of relativism that are based on a scientific, verifiable view of the world.
Knowledge and Reality
Plato believed that there are truths to be discovered; that knowledge is possible. Moreover, he held
that truth is not, as the Sophists thought, relative. Instead, it is objective; it is that which our reason,
used rightly, apprehends. Through his systematic philosophy, he developed a formidable rejection of
skepticism, the view that we lack knowledge in some fundamental way.
Believing and Knowing
For Plato, there is a distinction between believing and knowing. Since there are objective truths to be
known, we may believe X, but belief alone does not guarantee we are correct. There are three
necessary and sufficient conditions, according to Plato, for one to have knowledge: (1) the proposition
must be believed; (2) the proposition must be true; and (3) the proposition must be supported by
good reasons, which is to say, you must be justified in believing it. Thus, for Plato, knowledge is
justified, true belief.
Reason and the Forms
Since truth is objective, our knowledge of true propositions must be about real things. According to
Plato, these real things are Forms. Their nature is such that the only mode by which we can know
them is rationality. Forms are the eternal and immutable blueprints or models for everything that is.
Consequently, they are more real than their particulars.
Because the Forms make particulars possible, they explain what is—we can understand what is by
understanding the Forms. We can also extrapolate from particulars to get closer to contemplating the
Forms. This extrapolation process is made possible by the way that reason works.
Unlike the senses, which can only tell us about this or that sensation, reason can think both about
particulars and general concepts. Since the Forms are the most general things there are, the only way
we can consider them is by way of our rationality. Moreover, Plato holds that our souls learned about
the Forms before we were born, so we already know them—we have innate knowledge that needs to
be elicited through the Socratic method.
Plato’s Rationalism
Following Parmenides, Plato privileges rationalism over empiricism, or reason over the senses, as the
way we know. Unaided by the senses, reason will come to contemplate the Forms.
Allegory of the Cave
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave explains, among other things, how we come to the proper use of our
reason to know the Forms.
Immortality, Morality, and the Soul
The Immortal Soul
The soul is immortal, according to Plato. In various dialogues, specifically the Phaedo, Plato articulates
the relation between philosophy and the soul, where the activity of philosophy prepares the soul for a
good death and afterlife. In this dialogue, Plato offers several arguments in support of the claim that
the soul is immortal, one of which hearkens back to the theory of recollection demonstrated in
the Meno. (See Ch. 3.) Another argument involves the idea that there are two types of being, one of
which is associated with perishable things, like human bodies, and another that is associated with
imperishable things, like the soul.
The Three-Part Soul
The soul consists of three parts: appetitive (appetites or urges), spirited (emotional), and rational.
When one of the first two is not in control, the soul is in a state of disarray. In such a condition,
individuals make poor choices and live unhappy lives.
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The Moral Soul
The moral soul is the harmonious and just soul guided by reason. This is the soul in which each of the
two lower parts, appetite and spirit, are kept in alignment by reason.
4.5 The Individual and the State
The individual is a microcosm of the state. The harmonious state is one in which each person
performs his or her role according to his or her most prominent part of the soul or our nature:
appetitive, spirited, or rational. The person driven most by his or her appetitive side is a producer,
while the auxiliary is the spirited person, and the guardian is most rational. The producers are the
laborers, carpenters, artists, and farmers of society; the auxiliaries are the soldiers, warriors, and
police; and the guardians are the leaders, rulers, or philosopher-kings.
This arrangement lends itself to an aristocracy, a society ruled by a privileged class, rather than a
democracy. This privilege is, however, practically speaking a burden. Doing what’s best for society
means thinking always and only about the right way to govern, the right way to achieve a unified
state. The society Plato envisions is one he thinks can alone ensure people get their due. This, he
thinks, is a meritocracy, or system of rule whereby people are distinguished by their abilities and
achievements.
Outline of Plato's contrast of knowledge and opinion:
1. Knowledge is a mental faculty/power that allows us to apprehend "being" (i.e., reality).
2. Ignorance is the opposite of knowledge.
3. Opinion is subject to error, but knowledge is not.
4. Opinion differs from knowledge
5. Different faculties involve different "spheres" (areas they govern).
Opinion involves a different faculty, and has a different subject-matter.
6. Particular objects are subject to "opposite names."
For example: The same house is beautiful to one person, ugly to another, and the same person
is at one time young, at another time old.
7. Particulars are in the region between being and not-being.
8. Particulars are the subject-matter of opinion
9. Particulars are the subject-matter of opinion.
10. Eternal and immutable natures are the subject-matte of knowledge.
Opinion can possibly be true, in which case it serves as a succesful guide to action (and this explains
how Athens' heroes were good, they had correct opinions). But even true opinion, because it is only
opinion, cannot be defended, and thus "like a runaway slave" flees when attacked. However,
knowledge differs from mere opinion in that it can be defended by a logos, a rational explanation of
why that opinion is true. Thus emerges the formula that knowledge is true opinion accompanied by a
logos, or as it came to be expressed in the Western tradition, as "justified true belief."
This means that the real difference between opinion and knowledge lies in the "justification" (the
logos). An opinion can become justified by showing how it can be deduced from other premises, if
those premises are true. But no matter how validily we reason, Socrates saw that we cannot justify
any opinion unless we start from premises known to be true, rather than just assumed as
"hypotheses" in the way the mathematician assumes certain axioms. The series of justifications would
seem to be infinite unless some "first" premises can be known directly and not inferred from "higher"
premises. How can we attain knowledge of such premises which are not merely possibly true, like a
mere hypothesis, but are necessarily true?

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Thus, we can assume that, there are three minimum conditions for knowledge. They are, 1. True (it
must be true) 2. Believe (we must actually believe it. Belief must be consciously held),
3. Justification is present (there must be sufficient evidence for it). Therefore, what is known has to
be fact and thus true must come from the regard of the person acknowledging it as truth. The person
must have an adequate basis for believing it, that is, have sufficient justification for believing it.
The purpose of belief is to represent the world accurately. Therefore, belief serves its role only if the
formation, retention and revision of belief are sensitive to what one takes to be one’s evidence. In the
definition of belief, “Belief is a species of propositional attitude distinguished by their having the
mind-to-world direction of fit”. Most philosophers have assumed that belief is an inner state of mind,
directly accessible to introspection and distinct from, though casually related to, the believer’s
behavior. Thus, belief play a central role in theoretical reasoning (reason about what is so) and hence
in practical reasoning (reason about what to do). We, therefore, need to know what we can do and
how we can do is related to what we want. When seeking knowledge of these things we seek true
belief about them. Thus, what we do is conditioned by what we believe. Belief issues in behavior only
in conjunction with appropriate other propositional attitudes. In support of this theory, is the fact that
not only can others check our claims to believe by considering whether we behave appropriately, but
we ourselves may also take the results of such a test to overrule claims to believe that which we have
sincerely made.Knowledge and belief are not only distinct attitudes but they also have a distinct and
proprietary objectives. Whereas, belief can be true or false, knowledge is neither. But belief is a
necessary condition for knowledge.Knowledge is acquired by deriving beliefs from other beliefs
(foundation beliefs).Therefore, we accept belief(s)as a foundational principle because;
1. They are innate,
2.they are beliefs about present conscious experience,
3. They are beliefs that belong to our sense of experience.
4. They are self-evident.
Plato Theory Of Ideas
Platonic theory of ideas is an answer to a fundamental question of metaphysics
What is the ultimate reality of the world? As per the great thinker and Philosopher Plato, Ideas are
the ultimate realities. In this world, there are lots of particular things but if we take these things in a
particular way only, nothing general can be extracted. Thus, on the basis of some common qualities of
things, Plato divides particular things into different classes. Ideas are nothing but essential features
common to all members of these classes.
As an example, there is a class man, and every member of this class possesses a quality called
manness. Thus, there exists an idea of manness. Likewise, there are several ideas including an idea of
tree, idea of horseness etc. Throwing light on the importance of ideas, Plato says that the concept is
important to understand a sentence. As an example, there is a sentence say, India is a democratic
world. To understand it properly, we should have an idea of democracy.
Here comes the necessity of ideas to plato Features of Ideas, as explained by Plato: . Ideas are
substances as they are the ultimate realities of the world . Ideas are eternal because they exist
beyond space and time . Ideas exist prior to particular things and apart from them . Ideas are many in
number. Thus, Plato is a pluralist as he considers the reality to be more than one in number. However,
bridging the gap between atomists and parameindes, plato says that ideas are unity in plurality.
There are many trees but idea of tree is one. . Ideas are perfect. For example, idea of beauty is a
perfect idea. No other thing in the world exists that carries the same level of perfection. Discussing
the origin and status of ideas, Plato says that there is a different world of ideas, also called heaven of

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ideas. It can be comprehended by our reason but this world of ideas does not depend on us for its
existence. Plato, here, lays the foundation of Rationalism by saying that in human reason , there exist
some universal principles which act as starting point of knowledge. On the other hand, by
accentuating that ideas do not depend on us for their existence, Plato advocates Objective Idealism.
Ideas have been presented in a scale as per the degree of comprehensiveness. Idea of Good is at the
top that imparts axiological dimension to Platonic theory( Zeller).
Plato considers the reality to be good and beautiful. In views of Zeller, the theory also carries
ontological dimensions because ideas are not mere mental constructions, they are the substances.
W.C. states that ideas are epistomological because they have been considered as the starting point of
knowledge. In addition, they are mystical because they have their own world ,different from our
world. Succinctly put, ideas are the realities of the world. However, this consideration has left big
questions: How this real world has been derived from the world of ideas? What is the relation
between this world and the world of ideas? In answer to these questions, Plato has come up with two
concepts:
1) Relation of appearance and reality
2) Concept of participation
According to Plato, world of ideas is a reality and our physical world is just a copy of it. In his book
Republic, Plato takes an example of allegory of caves to prove his point. In this example, a man is
considered to be fully chained, can`t move from his place. Sunlight coming from behind makes his
shadow on the wall in front of him. As the man can`t move from his place, he is only able to see the
shadow and nothing except that. Thus, he considers the shadow to be real. However, shadow is just
an appearance. Reality is the sunlight coming from behind.Same is the case with our world. As we
continuously see this world, we start considering it a reality. In actuality, reality is the ideas and this
world is a mere shadow of ideas. Plato also provides second argument and opines that things and
beings of the world participate in ideas. A particular thing may participate simultaneously in plurality
of forms and assumes new forms when it undergoes any change. Ideas exist prior to things and apart
from them. We can`t think of man without having an idea of manness but not vice versa. Thus, ideas
are necessary for this physical world to exist. Secondly, things of the physical world exist only to the
extent that they participate in the world of ideas. Thus, ideas explain the physical world. Platonic
theory draws praises from Whitehead but at the same time has been criticized on the basis of
inconsistencies.
Successor, Aristotle, makes a severe attack by saying that ideas are posterior, not prior to things. He
further says that ideas are abstract entities and they can not explain the existence of this concrete
physical world. Plato considers two worlds in his theory, world of ideas and physical world. Because of
this, he has been attacked by Aristotle of keeping this distinction between form( ideas) and matter.
He says that Plato could not reconcile between form and matter. Plato stated that world of ideas is
the only reality and this physical world a mere shadow, on the other hand he said that physical things
are real to the extent they participate in the world of ideas. This seems illogical.
Dialectic
Plato uses the term dialectic throughout his works to refer to whatever method he happens to be
recommending as the vehicle of philosophy. The term, from dialegesthai, meaning to converse or talk
through, gives insight into his core conception of the project. Yet it is also evident that he stresses
different aspects of the conversational method in different dialogues.
The form of dialectic featured in the Socratic works became the basis of subsequent practice in the
Academy—where it was taught by Aristotle—and in the teachings of the Skeptics during
the Hellenistic Age. While the conversation in a Socratic dialogue unfolds naturally, it features a
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process by which even someone who lacks knowledge of a given subject (as Socrates in these works
claims to do) may test the understanding of a putative expert. The testing consists of a series of
questions posed in connection with a position the interlocutor is trying to uphold. The method
presupposes that one cannot have knowledge of any fact in isolation; what is known must be
embedded in a larger explanatory structure. Thus, in order to know if a certain act is pious, one must
know what piety is. This requirement licenses the questioner to ask the respondent about issues
suitably related to his original claim. If, in the course of this process, a contradiction emerges, the
supposed expert is revealed not to command knowledge after all: if he did, his grasp of the truth
would have enabled him to avoid contradiction. While both Socrates and the Skeptics hoped to find
the truth (a skeptikos is after all a “seeker”), the method all too often reveals only the inadequacy of
the respondent. Since he has fallen into contradiction, it follows that he is not an expert, but this does
not automatically reveal what the truth is.
By the time of the composition of the Republic, Plato’s focus had shifted to developing positive views,
and thus “dialectic” was now thought of not as a technique of testing but as a means of “saying of
each thing what it is.” The Republic stresses that true dialectic is performed by thinking solely of the
abstract and nonsensible realm of forms; it requires that reason secure an unhypothetical first
principle (the Good) and then derive other results in light of it. Since this part of the dialogue is merely
a programmatic sketch, however, no actual examples of the activity are provided, and indeed some
readers have wondered whether it is really possible.
In the later dialogue Parmenides, dialectic is introduced as an exercise that the young Socrates must
undertake if he is to understand the forms properly. The exercise, which Parmenides demonstrates in
the second part of the work, is extremely laborious: a single instance involves the construction of
eight sections of argument; the demonstration then takes up some three-quarters of the dialogue.
The exercise challenges the reader to make a distinction associated with a sophisticated development
of the theory of Platonic forms. Even after a general understanding has been achieved, repeating the
exercise with different subjects allows one to grasp each subject’s role in the world.
This understanding of dialectic gives a central place to specifying each subject’s account in terms of
genus and differentiae (and so, relatedly, to mapping its position in a genus-species tree).
The Phaedrus calls the dialectician the person who can specify these relations—and thereby “carve
reality at the joints.” Continuity among all the kinds of dialectic in Plato comes from the fact that the
genus-species divisions of the late works are a way of providing the accounts that dialectic sought in
all the previous works.
Plato’s Theory of Soul
The intellectual world is teleological. That is to say nothing is written without purpose and each
intellectual responds to; reflects upon; provides intellectual explanation and justification or critique
and alternative to the issues and circumstances prevailing in his contemporary time-space.
Plato’s Republic is not an utopia addressed to no-one but a passionate appeal to fellow Athenians to
overthrow the existing democratic governance that is in his opinion, the government of fools, which
he “vows” to overthrow and replace it with the ideal state. Though he could not overthrow it, Roman
aggressors did, couple of centuries later.
As the state is the institution of managing the common affairs of humans, Plato, like the modern liber
political theorists, begins with the dissection of human psychology with tripartite assumption of
human soul. Plato’s assumptions and views regarding the soul constitute the foundation and basis of
his theory of Justice and thereby of Ideal State, which shall be elaborated in subsequent sections. Like
the Idea of the Good, Plato avoids defining soul in terms of empirically verifiable facts but explores
the world of desirable philosophical abstractions in the search of perfection.

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Plato’s theory of Soul not only lays the foundation of his theory of justice to be attained in Ideal State
ruled by the philosopher king/queen but is intimately related to his theory of Idea or Form. In fact
soul is the means for the acquisition and comprehension of the Idea or the Form of good.
Plato considers soul to be above and beyond the visible, bodily person, just the appearance, the
essence lies in the its immortal, eternal, infinite in the soul, not part of the visible phenomenal world
but of invisible world of Ideas or Form, which Plato uses interchangeably, in an acknowledgment of
the spiritualism and the super-naturalism. Soul and conscience, as human attributes do not exist
outside but inside human person and dies with the death of person.
Plato, like Pythagoras believed in the eternity and transcendence of soul, that is also one of the key
messages of Gita.
According to him the soul is divine and eternal that roams in the world of Ideas and not in the visible
phenomenal world. Theorists of the eternity of soul and its transcendence from one to another body
do not explain the source surplus souls required for the bodies of the increased population! To quote
him from Phaedo, “The soul is infinitely like unchangeable; even the most stupid person would not
deny that.” He further adds, “What is the definition of that which is named soul? Can we imagine any
other definition than …….. . The motion that moves by itself”. The motion of soul is first in origin and
power that moves by itself.” He reaffirms in his last work, the Laws, “Motion of the soul is the first in
origin and power.” And, “the soul is most ancient and divine of all things whose motion is an ever
flowing source of real existence.”
A detailed discussion on the theory of soul is beyond the scope of our present needs. Plato uses his
tripartite assumption of the soul as consisting of the reason; spirit and appetite and their respective
as philosophical tool for his division of society into 3 classes.
The Elements of Soul
Plato divides the soul into 3, hierarchical faculties – reason, spirit and appetite, in descending order. In
fact this trilogy of the soul provides the philosophical foundation of his hierarchal order of the Ideal
State, the abode of justice, his central concern in the Republic. The abode of the lowest faculty, the
appetite is stomach and those of spirit and the reason are chest and the mind respectively. The
appetite is identified in both theRepublic as well as Phaedo with desires; greed; economic gains;
physical comforts and sensuous pleasure. The spirit is identified with fearlessness, valor and warrior
like qualities. The highest faculty of the soul is the reason – simple and indivisible, eternal and
immortal. The reason is beyond the time and space, whereas spirit and appetite are within the time
and space. The reason is, according to him, immortal and divine whereas spirit and appetite are
mortal and mundane.
The Virtues of Soul
After defining the soul in terms of its constituent elements, delves into their respective virtues and
thence derives the virtue of soul by integrating them together. Every particular object has its
particular nature and realizing that nature is its virtue. The nature of teacher is to induce students into
critical thinking and help them in molding themselves into fearless, responsible citizen and in his/her
attempts to invent newer knowledge. If a teacher satisfactorily does that he is a virtuous teacher.
Virtue of a student is to study and discourse to acquires knowledge and expand in the same way as
the virtue of the eyes is clear vision and of mind is clear thinking and reasoning. A soul is virtuous if its
elements realize their nature, i.e. be virtuous. He first discusses the particular virtues of particular
elements and combines them to construct a new virtue, superior to them and their coordinating force
– the justice, Plato’s central concern in the Republic. The virtue of reason is wisdom, that of spirit and
appetite are courage and temperance respectively. A soul is just or virtuous that has the virtuous

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faculties and the inferior elements are regulated and directed by the superior ones. In other words,
the spirit and appetite must take directions from, and obey the dictates of, the reason.
 Wisdom or Knowledge
There corresponds a particular virtue to each faculty. The virtue corresponding to the faculty of
reason is knowledge or wisdom. Plato conceptualizes wisdom or knowledge in specific terms. The
knowledge of mundane affairs or the knowledge of particular skill falls outside its ambit. Knowledge
of varieties of soil fit for cultivation of particular crops or knowledge of medicine for particular disease
is not wisdom. Plato calls them the opinions or technical knowledge. Even the knowledge of
mathematics (arithmetic), geometry, astronomy or any other science disciplines, which Plato places in
the realm of intelligible world, too is not knowledge, as they too use assumptions based on the
objects of the visible world. He explains it through his, oft-quoted, line diagram. Wisdom does not
come from the study of the objects of the visible world, as if the ideas come from some vacuum, in
opposition to the fact that ideas are abstractions from the objects and have been historically
emanating from them. According to him wisdom comes from ability to reason and analyze; discus and
debate; deliberate and discourse. Plato’s pessimism does not allow him to accord these potentialities
to anyone but to ‘gifted’ few ‘endowed’ with immanently innate qualities of excellence in the realm of
reason. Plato’s theory of knowledge shall be discussed below as an independent subtitle.
The Courage
Courage is the cardinal virtue of the spirit. It finds frequent mentions in Republic. Traditionally, the
courage meant manliness. For early Greeks, courage meant fearlessness, even of the death; patience
in difficult situation; velour etc. For Plato courage is not just warrior like bravery but also firmly
defend correct stand.
Temperance
The third particular virtue is temperance of restrain that has been elaborately described in books III &
IV of the Republic. It simply means control of the desires. “To be stronger than one-self”; “To be
master of oneself”; doing not as one wishes but what one ought to.
Justice
Apart from the above 3 particular virtue there is 4thvirtue, a superior virtue that harmoniously
coordinates them and is the central concern of the Republic, as is evident from its
subtitle, Concerning Justice.
Plato’s Theory of God
Western Concepts of God
Western concepts of God have ranged from the detached transcendent demiurge of Aristotle to the
pantheism of Spinoza. Nevertheless, much of western thought about God has fallen within some
broad form of theism. Theism is the view that there is a God which is the creator and sustainer of the
universe and is unlimited with regard to knowledge (omniscience), power (omnipotence), extension
(omnipresence), and moral perfection. Though regarded as sexless, God has traditionally been
referred to by the masculine pronoun.
Concepts of God in philosophy are entwined with concepts of God in religion. This is most obvious in
figures like Augustine and Aquinas, who sought to bring more rigor and consistency to concepts found
in religion. Others, like Leibniz and Hegel, interacted constructively and deeply with religious
concepts. Even those like Hume and Nietzsche, who criticized the concept of God, dealt with religious
concepts. While Western philosophy has interfaced most obviously with Christianity, Judaism and
Islam have had some influence. The orthodox forms of all three religions have embraced theism,
though each religion has also yielded a wide array of other views. Philosophy has shown a similar

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variety. For example, with regard to the initiating cause of the world, Plato and Aristotle held God to
be the crafter of uncreated matter. Plotinus regarded matter as emanating from God. Spinoza,
departing from his judaistic roots, held God to be identical with the universe, while Hegel came to a
similar view by reinterpreting Christianity.
Issues related to Western concepts of God include the nature of divine attributes and how they can
be known, if or how that knowledge can be communicated, the relation between such knowledge and
logic, the nature of divine causality, and the relation between the divine and the human will.
Sources of Western Concepts of God
Sources of western concepts of the divine have been threefold: experience, revelation, and reason.
Reported experiences of God are remarkably varied and have produced equally varied concepts of the
divine being. Experiences can be occasioned by something external and universally available, such as
the starry sky, or by something external and private, such as a burning bush. Experiences can be
internal and effable, such as a vision, or internal and ineffable, as is claimed by some mystics.
Revelation can be linked to religious experience or a type of it, both for the person originally receiving
it and the one merely accepting it as authoritative. Those who accept its authority typically regard it
as a source of concepts of the divine that are more detailed and more accurate than could be
obtained by other means. Increasingly, the modern focus has been on the complexities of the process
of interpretation (philosophical hermeneutics) and the extent to which it is necessarily subjective.
Revelation can be intentionally unconnected to reason such that it is accepted on bare faith (fideism;
compare Kierkegaard), or at the other extreme, can be grounded in reason in that it is accepted
because and only insofar as it is reasonable (compare Locke). Reason has been taken as ancillary to
religious experience and revelation, or on other accounts, as independent and the sole reliable source
of concepts of God.
Each of the three sources of concepts of God has had those who regard it as the sole reliable basis of
our idea of the divine. By contrast, others have regarded two or three of the sources as
interdependent and mutually reinforcing. Regardless of these differing approaches, theism broadly
construed has been a dominant theme for much of the history of Western thought.
2. Historical Overview
a. Greeks
At the dawn of philosophy, the Ionian Greeks sought to understand the true nature of the cosmos and
its manifestations of both change and permanence. To Heraclitus, all was change and nothing
endured, whereas to Parmenides, all change was apparent. The Pythagoreans found order and
permanence in mathematics, giving it religious significance as ultimate being. The Stoics identified
order with divine reason.
To Plato, God is transcendent-the highest and most perfect being-and one who uses eternal forms, or
archetypes, to fashion a universe that is eternal and uncreated. The order and purpose he gives the
universe is limited by the imperfections inherent in material. Flaws are therefore real and exist in the
universe; they are not merely higher divine purposes misunderstood by humans. God is not the
author of everything because some things are evil. We can infer that God is the author of the
punishments of the wicked because those punishments benefit the wicked. God, being good, is also
unchangeable since any change would be for the worse. For Plato, this does not mean (as some later
Christian thought held) that God is the ground of moral goodness; rather, whatever is good is good in
an of itself. God must be a first cause and a self-moved mover otherwise there will be an infinite
regress to causes of causes. Plato is not committed to monotheism, but suggests for example that
since planetary motion is uniform and circular, and since such motion is the motion of reason, then a
planet must be driven by a rational soul. These souls that drive the planets could be called gods.
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Aristotle made God passively responsible for change in the world in the sense that all things seek
divine perfection. God imbues all things with order and purpose, both of which can be discovered and
point to his (or its) divine existence. From those contingent things we come to know universals,
whereas God knows universals prior to their existence in things. God, the highest being (though not a
loving being), engages in perfect contemplation of the most worthy object, which is himself. He is
thus unaware of the world and cares nothing for it, being an unmoved mover. God as pure form is
wholly immaterial, and as perfect he is unchanging since he cannot become more perfect. This perfect
and immutable God is therefore the apex of being and knowledge. God must be eternal. That is
because time is eternal, and since there can be no time without change, change must be eternal. And
for change to be eternal the cause of change-the unmoved mover-must also be eternal. To be eternal
God must also be immaterial since only immaterial things are immune from change. Additionally, as
an immaterial being, God is not extended in space.
The Neo-Platonic God of Plotinus (204/5-270 A.D.) is the source of the universe, which is the
inevitable overflow of divinity. In that overflow, the universe comes out of God (ex deo) in a timeless
process. It does not come by creation because that would entail consciousness and will, which
Plotinus claimed would limit God. The first emanation out of God (nous) is the highest, successive
emanations being less and less real. Finally, evil is matter with no form at all, and as such has no
positive existence. God is an impersonal It who can be described only in terms of what he is not. This
negative way of describing God (the via negativa) survived well into the middle ages. Though God is
beyond description, Plotinus (perhaps paradoxically) asserted a number of things, such as that virtue
and truth inhere in God. Because for Plotinus God cannot be reached intellectually, union with the
divine is ecstatic and mystical. His thought influenced a number of Christian mystics, such as Meister
Eckhart (1260-1327).
Aristotle – Classification of the sciences
In one of his monumental works, Physics, Aristotle sets out to investigate the appropriate divisions of
science. According to Aristotle, a science is possible if and only if there are knowable objects. There
cannot be a science of dragons, for example, because dragons do not exist and hence a ‘science’ of
dragons would lack knowable objects and thus would not be a ‘science’. Furthermore, he thought the
aim of scientific knowledge was the attainment of universal and necessary truths; that is, truths that
apply everywhere, at all times, and of necessity must apply.
The first division of science, according to Aristotle, was Theoretical science. Those who engage in
theoretical science seek knowledge for its own sake. For Aristotle theoretical science in turn was
divided into three sub-categories. The first sub-category studies natural objects which generate
movement and growth internally; that is, living objects as well as the the ‘heavenly bodies’ and
geological phenomena. The second sub-category of theoretical science studies objects in abstraction
from their motion. In other words, it studies the quantitative aspect of objects. This second division of
theoretical science is the domain of mathematics. The third and final sub-category of theoretical
science is the study of objects that are not in motion, or are immovable. This is the study of “first
causes”, so to speak, and is the domain of theology.
The second division of science for Aristotle was Productive science. Such a science aims at the
creation of a product. A science of computers, for example, aims at the production of computers. For
Aristotle only human beings, who alone have rationality, are capable of engaging in productive
science. A bird which builds a nest is merely acting according to its instincts, and not at all according
to reason and scientific knowledge. Thus, only human beings can engage in productive science, and
create a product through the utilization of theoretical knowledge.

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The third and final division of science for Aristotle was Practical science. Such a science aims at
knowledge of action, or praxis. The science of action underlies the ability to act well, or to live the
good life, which according to Aristotle was a life guided by reason.
These three divisions, according to Aristotle, encompass every conceivable object or phenomena
which science can investigate. And up until today, over 2000 years after Aristotle proposed these
three divisions of science, no one has been able to think of an object of science which does not fall
into one of these three categories.
Aristotelian logic
Aristotelian logic, after a great and early triumph, consolidated its position of influence to rule over
the philosophical world throughout the Middle Ages up until the 19th Century. All that changed in a
hurry when modern logicians embraced a new kind of mathematical logic and pushed out what they
regarded as the antiquated and clunky method of syllogisms. Although Aristotle’s very rich and
expansive account of logic differs in key ways from modern approaches, it is more than a historical
curiosity. It provides an alternative way of approaching logic and continues to provide critical insights
into contemporary issues and concerns. The main thrust of this article is to explain Aristotle’s logical
system as a whole while correcting some prominent misconceptions that persist in the popular
understanding and even in some of the specialized literature. Before getting down to business, it is
important to point out that Aristotle is a synoptic thinker with an over-arching theory that ties
together all aspects and fields of philosophy. He does not view logic as a separate, self-sufficient
subject-matter, to be considered in isolation from other aspects of disciplined inquiry. Although we
cannot consider all the details of his encyclopedic approach, we can sketch out the larger picture in a
way that illuminates the general thrust of his system. For the purposes of this entry, let us define
logic as that field of inquiry which investigates how we reason correctly (and, by extension, how we
reason incorrectly). Aristotle does not believe that the purpose of logic is to prove that human beings
can have knowledge. (He dismisses excessive scepticism.) The aim of logic is the elaboration of a
coherent system that allows us to investigate, classify, and evaluate good and bad forms of reasoning.
The Organon
To those used to the silver tones of an accomplished writer like Plato, Aristotle’s prose will seem, at
first glance, a difficult read. What we have are largely notes, written at various points in his career,
for different purposes, edited and cobbled together by later followers. The style of the resulting
collection is often rambling, repetitious, obscure, and disjointed. There are many arcane, puzzling,
and perhaps contradictory passages. This problem is compounded by the abstract, technical
vocabulary logic sometimes requires and by the wide-ranging scope and the scattered nature of
Aristotle’s observations. Some familiarity with Greek terminology is required if one hopes to capture
the nuances in his thought. Classicists and scholars do argue, of course, about the precise Greek
meaning of key words or phrases but many of these debates involve minor points of interpretation
that cannot concern us here. Aristotle’s logical vocabulary needs to be understood within the larger
context of his system as a whole. Many good translations of Aristotle are available. (Parenthetical
citations below include the approximate Bekker number (the scholarly notation for referring to
Aristotelian passages according to page, column, and line number of a standard edition), the English
title of the work, and the name of the translator.)
Ancient commentators regarded logic as a widely-applicable instrument or method for careful
thinking. They grouped Aristotle’s six logical treatises into a sort of manual they called
the Organon (Greek for “tool”). The Organon included the Categories, On Interpretation, the Prior
Analytics, the Posterior Analytics, the Topics, and On Sophistical Refutations. These books touch on
many issues: the logical structure of propositions, the proper structure of arguments (syllogisms), the

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difference between induction and deduction, the nature of scientific knowledge, basic fallacies (forms
of specious reasoning), debating techniques, and so on. But we cannot confine our present
investigations to the Organon. Aristotle comments on the principle of non-contradiction in
the Metaphysics, on less rigorous forms of argument in the Rhetoric, on the intellectual virtues in
the Nicomachean Ethics, on the difference between truth and falsity in On the Soul, and so on. We
cannot overlook such important passages if we wish to gain an adequate understanding of
Aristotelian logic.
2. Categories
The world, as Aristotle describes it in his Categories, is composed of substances—separate, individual
things—to which various characterizations or properties can be ascribed. Each substance is a unified
whole composed of interlocking parts. There are two kinds of substances. A primary substance is (in
the simplest instance) an independent (or detachable) object, composed of matter, characterized by
form. Individual living organisms—a man, a rainbow trout, an oak tree—provide the most
unambiguous examples of primary substances. Secondary substances are the larger groups, the
species or genera, to which these individual organisms belong. So man, horse, mammals, animals
(and so on) would be examples of secondary substances. As we shall see, Aristotle’s logic is about
correctly attributing specific properties to secondary substances (and therefore, indirectly, about
attributing these properties to primary substances or individual things).
Aristotle elaborates a logic that is designed to describe what exists in the world. We may well wonder
then, how many different ways can we describe something? In his Categories (4.1b25-2a4), Aristotle
enumerates ten different ways of describing something. These categories (Greek=kategoria, deriving
from the verb to indicate, signify) include (1) substance, (2) quantity, (3) quality, (4) relation, (5)
where, (6) when, (7) being-in-a-position, (8) possessing, (9) doing or (10) undergoing something or
being affected by something. In the Topics (I.9, 103b20-25), he includes the same list, replacing
“substance” (ousia) with “essence” (ti esti). We can, along with Aristotle, give an example of each
kind of description: (1) to designate something as a “horse” or a “man” is to identify it as a substance
or to attribute an essence to it; (2) to say that the wall is four feet long is to describe it in terms of
quantity; (3) to say that the roof is “white” is to ascribe a quality to it; (4) to say that your weight is
“double” mine is to describe a relation between the two; (5) to say something happened in the
market-place is to explain where; (6) to say it happened last year is to explain when; (7) to say an old
man is sitting is to describe his position; (8) to say the girl has shoes on is to describe what she
possesses; (9) to say the head chef is cutting a carrot with a knife is to describe what he is doing; and
finally, (10) to say wood is being burned in the fireplace is to describe what it means for the wood to
undergo burning or to be affected by fire. Commentators claim that these ten categories represent
either different descriptions of being or different kinds of being. (To be a substance is to be in a
certain way; to possess quantity is to be in a certain way; to possess a quality is to be in a certain way,
and so on.) There is nothing magical about the number ten. Aristotle gives shorter lists elsewhere.
(Compare Posterior Analytics, I.22.83a22-24, where he lists seven predications, for example).
Whether Aristotle intends the longer lists as a complete enumeration of all conceivable types of
descriptions is an open question. Scholars have noticed that the first category, substance or essence,
seems to be fundamentally different than the others; it is what something is in the most complete
and perfect way.
3. From Words into Propositions
Aristotle does not believe that all reasoning deals with words. (Moral decision-making is, for
Aristotle, a form of reasoning that can occur without words.) Still, words are a good place to begin
our study of his logic. Logic, as we now understand it, chiefly has to do with how we evaluate

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arguments. But arguments are made of statements, which are, in turn, made of words. In
Aristotelian logic, the most basic statement is a proposition, a complete sentence that asserts
something. (There are other kinds of sentences—prayers, questions, commands—that do not assert
anything true or false about the world and which, therefore, exist outside the purview of logic.) A
proposition is ideally composed of at least three words: a subject (a word naming a substance),
a predicate (a word naming a property), and a connecting verb, what logicians call a copula (Latin, for
“bond” or “connection”). Consider the simple statement: “Socrates is wise.” Socrates is the subject;
the property of being wise is the predicate, and the verb “is” (the copula) links Socrates and wisdom
together in a single affirmation. We can express all this symbolically as “S is P” where “S” stands for
the subject “Socrates” and “P” stands for the predicate “being wise.” The sentence “Socrates is wise”
(or symbolically, “S is P”) qualifies as a proposition; it is a statement that claims that something is true
about the world. Paradigmatically, the subject would be a (secondary) substance (a natural division of
primary substances) and the predicate would be a necessary or essential property as in: “birds are
feathered,” or “triangles have interior angles equal to two right angles,” or “fire is upward-moving.”
But any overly restrictive metaphysical idea about what terms in a proposition mean seems to
unnecessarily restrict intelligent discourse. Suppose someone were to claim that “anger is
unethical.” But anger is not a substance; it is a property of a substance (an organism). Still, it makes
perfect sense to predicate properties of anger. We can say that anger is unethical, hard to control, an
excess of passion, familiar enough, and so on. Aristotle himself exhibits some flexibility here. Still,
there is something to Aristotle’s view that the closer a proposition is to the metaphysical structure of
the world, the more it counts as knowledge. Aristotle has an all-embracing view of logic and yet
believes that, what we could call “metaphysical correctness” produces a more rigorous, scientific
form of logical expression.
Of course, it is not enough to produce propositions; what we are after is true propositions. Aristotle
believes that only propositions are true or false. Truth or falsity (at least with respect to linguistic
expression) is a matter of combining words into complete propositions that purport to assert
something about the world. Individual words or incomplete phrases, considered by themselves, are
neither true or false. To say, “Socrates,” or “jumping up and down,” or “brilliant red” is not to assert
anything true or false about the world. It is to repeat words without making any claim about the way
things are. In the Metaphysics, Aristotle provides his own definition of true and false: “to say of what
is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true”; and “to say of what is that it is not, or of what is
not that it is, is false.” (IV.7.1011b25, Ross.) In other words, a true proposition corresponds to way
things are. But Aristotle is not proposing a correspondence theory of truth as an expert would
understand it. He is operating at a more basic level. Consider the statement: “Spiders have eight
legs.” (Symbolically, “All S is P,” where S, the subject, is “spiders”; P, the predicate, is “the state of
being eight-legged,” and the verb “is” functions as the copula.) What does it mean to say that this
claim is true? If we observe spiders to discover how many legs they have, we will find that (except in
a few odd cases) spiders do have eight legs, so the proposition will be true because what it says
matches reality. As we shall see, Aristotle’s logic is designed to produce just this kind of general
statement.
4. Kinds of Propositions
Aristotle suggests that all propositions must either affirm or deny something. Every proposition must
be either an affirmation or a negation; it cannot be both. He also points out that propositions can
make claims about what necessarily is the case, about what possibly is the case, or even about what
is impossible. His modal logic, which deals with these further qualifications about possibility or
necessity, presents difficulties of interpretation. We will focus on his assertoric (or non-modal) logic

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here. Still, many of Aristotle’s points about necessity and possibility seem highly intuitive. In one
famous example about a hypothetical sea battle, he observes that the necessary truth of a mere
proposition does not trump the uncertainty of future events. Because it is necessarily true that there
will be or will not be a sea battle tomorrow, we cannot conclude that either alternative is necessarily
true. (De Interpretatione, 9.19a30ff.) So the necessity that attaches to the proposition “there will or
will not be a sea battle tomorrow” does not transfer over to the claim ‘that there will be a sea battle
tomorrow” or to the claim “there will not be a sea battle tomorrow.” Aristotle goes out of his way to
emphasize the point that our personal beliefs about what will happen in the future do not determine
whether the individual propositions are true. (Note that we must not confuse the necessary truth of a
proposition with the necessity that precipitates the conclusion of a deductively-valid argument. The
former is sometimes called “material,” “non-logical,” or “metaphysical” necessity; the later, “formal,”
“deductive,” or “logical” necessity.” We discuss these issues further below.)
Aristotle claims that all propositions can be expressed using the “Subject copula Predicate” formula
and that complex propositions are, on closer inspection, collections of simpler claims that display, in
turn, this fundamental structure. Having fixed the proper logical form of a proposition, he goes on to
classify different kinds of propositions. He begins by distinguishing between particular terms and
universal terms. (The term he uses for “universal” is the Greek “katholou.”) Particular terms refer to
individual things; universal terms refer to groups of things. The name “Socrates” is a particular term
because it refers to a single human being; the word “spiders” is a universal term for
it universally applies to all members of the group “spiders.” Aristotle realizes, of course, that
universal terms may be used to refer to parts of a group as well as to entire groups. We may claim
that all spiders have eight legs or that only some spiders have book-lungs. In the first case, a
property, eight-leggedness, is predicated of the entire group referred to by the universal term; in the
second case, the property of having book-lungs is predicated of only part of the group. So, to use
Aristotelian language, one may predicate a property universally or not universally of the group
referred to by a universal term.
This brings us to Aristotle’s classification of the four different kinds of categorical propositions (called
“categorical propositions” because they assert a relationship between two categories or kinds). Each
different categorical proposition possesses quantity insomuch as it represents a universal or a
particular predication (referring to all or only some members of the subject class). It also possesses a
definite quality (positive or negative) insomuch as it affirms or denies the specified predication. The
adjectives “all,” “no,” and “some” (which is understood as meaning “at least one”) determine the
quantity of the proposition; the quality is determined by whether the verb is in the affirmative or the
negative. Rather than going into the details of Aristotle’s original texts, suffice it to say that
contemporary logicians generally distinguish between four logical possibilities:
1. Universal Affirmation: All S are P (called A statements from the Latin, “AFFIRMO”: I affirm).
2. Universal Negation: No S are P (called E statements from “NEGO”: I deny).
3. Particular Affirmation: Some S are P (called I statements from AFFIRMO).
4. Particular Negation: Some S are not P (called O statements from NEGO).
Note that these four possibilities are not, in every instance, mutually exclusive. As mentioned above,
particular statements using the modifier “some” refer to at least one member of a group. To say that
“some S are P” is to say that “at least one S is P”; to say that “some S are not P” is to say that “at least
one S is not P.” It must follow then (at least on Aristotle’s system) that universal statements require
the corresponding particular statement. If “All S are P,” at least one S must be P; that is, the particular
statement “Some S are P” must be true. Again, if “No S are P,” at least one S must not be P; that is,
the particular statement “Some S are not P” must be true. (More on this, with qualifications, below.)

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Note also that Aristotle treats propositions with an individual subject such as “Socrates is wise” as
universal propositions (as if the proposition was saying something like “all instances of Socrates” are
wise.) One caveat: Although we cannot linger on further complications here, keep in mind that this is
not the only way to divide up logical possibility.
5. Square of Opposition
Aristotle examines the way in which these four different categorical propositions are related to one
another. His views have come down to us as “the square of opposition,” a mnemonic diagram that
captures, systematizes, and slightly extends what Aristotle says in De Interpretatione. (Cf. 6.17a25ff.)

Figure 1
The Traditional Square of Opposition

As it turns out, we can use a square with crossed interior diagonals (Fig. 1 above) to identify four kinds
of relationships that hold between different pairs of categorical propositions. Consider each
relationship in turn.
1) Contradictory propositions possess opposite truth-values. In the diagram, they are linked by a
diagonal line. If one of two contradictories is true, the other must be false, and vice versa. So the A
proposition (All S are P) and the O proposition (Some S are not P) are contradictories. Clearly, if it is
true that “all S are P,” then the O statement that “some S are not P” must be false. And if it is true
that “some S are not P,” then the A statement that “all S are P” must be false. The same relationship
holds between E (No S are P) and I (Some S are P) propositions. To use a simple example: If it is true
that “all birds lay eggs,” then it must be false that “some birds do not lay eggs.” And if it is true that
“some birds do not fly,” then it must be false that “all birds fly.”

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2) Contrary propositions cannot both be true. The top horizontal line in the square joining the A
proposition (All S are P) to the E proposition (No S are P) represents this logical relationship. Clearly, it
cannot be true that “all S are P” and that “no S are P.” The truth of one of these contrary propositions
excludes the truth of the other. It is possible, however, that both statements are false as in the case
where some S are P and some (other) S are not P. So, for example, the statements “all politicians tell
lies” and “no politicians tell lies” cannot both be true. They will, however, both be false if it is indeed
the case that some politicians tell lies whereas some do not.
3) The relationship of subalternation results when the truth of a universal proposition, “the
superaltern,” requires the truth of a second particular proposition, “the subaltern.” The vertical lines
moving downward from the top to the bottom of the square in the diagram represent this condition.
Clearly, if all members of an existent group possess (or do not possess) a specific characteristic, it
must follow that any smaller subset of that group must possess (or not possess) that specific
characteristic. If the A proposition (All S are P) is true, it must follow that the I proposition (“Some S
are P”) must be true. Again, if the E proposition (No S are P) is true, it must follow that the O
proposition (Some S are not P) must be true. Consider, for example, the statement, “all cheetahs are
fast.” If every member of the whole group of cheetahs is fast, then it must be the case that at least
one member of the group of cheetahs is fast; that is, the statement “some cheetahs are fast” must be
true. And, to reformulate the same example as a negation, if it is true that “no cheetahs are slow,”
then it must be the case that at least one member of the group of cheetahs is not slow; that is, the
statement “some cheetahs are not slow” must be true.
Note that subalternation does not work in the opposite direction. If “Some S are P,” it need not
follow that “All S are P.” And if “Some S are not P,” it need not follow that “No S are P.” We should
also point out that if the subaltern is false, it must follow that the superaltern is false. If it is false to
say that “Some S are P,” it must be false to say that “All S are P.” And if it is false to say that “Some S
are not P,” it must be false to say that “No S are P.”
4) Subcontrary propositions cannot both be false. The bottom horizontal line in the square joining
the I proposition (Some S are P) to the O proposition (Some S are not P) represents this kind of
subcontrary relationship. Keeping to the assumptions implicit in Aristotle’s system, there are only
three possibilities: (1) All S have property P; in which case, it must also be true (by subalternation)
that “some S are P.” (2) No S have property P; in which case it must also be true (by subalternation)
that “some S are not P.” (3) Some S have and some S do not have property P; in which case it will be
true that “some S are P” and that “some S are not P.” It follows that at least one of a pair of
subcontrary propositions must be true and that both will be true in cases where P
is partially predicated of S. So, for example, both members of the subcontrary pair “some men have
beards” and “some men do not have beards” are true. They are both true because having a beard is a
contingent or variable male attribute. In contrast, only one member of the subcontrary pair “some
snakes are legless” and “some snakes are not legless” is true. As all snakes are legless, the
proposition “some snakes are not legless” must be false.
Traditional logicians, inspired by Aristotle’s wide-ranging comments, identified a series of “immediate
inferences” as a way of deriving new propositions through a routine rearrangement of terms.
Subalternation is an obvious example of immediate inference. From “All S are P” we can immediately
infer—that is, without argument—that “some S are P.” They also recognized conversion, obversion,
and contraposition as immediate inferences.
In conversion, one interchanges the S and P terms. If, for example, we know that “No S is P,” we can
immediately infer that “No P is S.” (Once we know that “no circles are triangles,” we know right away
that “no triangles are circles.”)

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In obversion, one negates the predicate term while replacing it with the predicate term of opposite
quality. If, for example, we know that “Some S are P,” we can immediately infer the obverse, “Some S
are not non-P.” (Once we know that “some students are happy,” we know right away that “some
students are not unhappy.”)
Finally, in contraposition, one negates both terms and reverses their order. If, for example, we know
that “All S are P,” we can infer the contrapositive “All non-P are non-S.” (Once we know that “all
voters are adults,” we know right away that “all children are unable to vote.”) More specific rules,
restrictions, and details are readily available elsewhere.
6. Laws of Thought
During the 18th, 19th, and early 20th Century, scholars who saw themselves as carrying on the
Aristotelian and Medieval tradition in logic, often pointed to the “laws of thought” as the basis of all
logic. One still encounters this approach in textbook accounts of informal logic. The usual list of
logical laws (or logical first principles) includes three axioms: the law of identity, the law of non-
contradiction, and the law of excluded middle. (Some authors include a law of sufficient reason, that
every event or claim must have a sufficient reason or explanation, and so forth.) It would be a gross
simplification to argue that these ideas derive exclusively from Aristotle or to suggest (as some
authors seem to imply) that he self-consciously presented a theory uniquely derived from these three
laws. The idea is rather that Aristotle’s theory presupposes these principles and/or that he discusses
or alludes to them somewhere in his work. Traditional logicians did not regard them as abstruse or
esoteric doctrines but as manifestly obvious principles that require assent for logical discourse to be
possible.
The law of identity could be summarized as the patently unremarkable but seemingly inescapable
notion that things must be, of course, identical with themselves. Expressed symbolically: “A is A,”
where A is an individual, a species, or a genus. Although Aristotle never explicitly enunciates this law,
he does observe, in the Metaphysics, that “the fact that a thing is itself is [the only] answer to all such
questions as why the man is man, or the musician musical.” (VII.17.1041a16-18, Ross.) This suggests
that he does accept, unsurprisingly, the perfectly obvious idea that things are themselves. If,
however, identical things must possess identical attributes, this opens the door to various logical
maneuvers. One can, for example, substitute equivalent terms for one another and, even more
portentously, one can arrive at some conception of analogy and induction. Aristotle writes, “all water
is said to be . . . the same as all water . . . because of a certain likeness.” (Topics, I.7.103a19-20,
Pickard-Cambridge.) If water is water, then by the law of identity, anything we discover to be water
must possess the same water-properties.
Aristotle provides several formulations of the law of non-contradiction, the idea that logically correct
propositions cannot affirm and deny the same thing:
“It is impossible for anyone to believe the same thing to be and not be.” (Metaphysics, IV.3.1005b23-
24, Ross.)
“The same attribute cannot at the same time belong and not belong to the same subject in the same
respect.” (Ibid., IV.3.1005b19-20.)
“The most indisputable of all beliefs is that contradictory statements are not at the same time true.”
(Ibid., IV.6.1011b13-14.)
Symbolically, the law of non-contradiction is sometimes represented as “not (A and not A).”
The law of excluded middle can be summarized as the idea that every proposition must be either true
or false, not both and not neither. In Aristotle’s words, “It is necessary for the affirmation or the
negation to be true or false.” (De Interpretatione, 9.18a28-29, Ackrill.) Symbolically, we can
represent the law of excluded middle as an exclusive disjunction: “A is true or A is false,” where only
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one alternative holds. Because every proposition must be true or false, it does not follow, of course,
that we can know if a particular proposition is true or false.
Despite perennial challenges to these so-called laws (by intuitionists, dialetheists, and others),
Aristotelians inevitably claim that such counterarguments hinge on some unresolved ambiguity
(equivocation), on a conflation of what we know with what is actually the case, on a false or static
account of identity, or on some other failure to fully grasp the implications of what one is saying.
7. Existential Assumptions
Before we move on to consider Aristotle’s account of the syllogism, we need to clear up some
widespread misconceptions and explain a few things about Aristotle’s project as a whole. Criticisms
of Aristotle’s logic often assume that what Aristotle was trying to do coincides with the basic project
of modern logic. Begin with the usual criticism brought against the traditional square of opposition.
For reasons we will not explore, modern logicians assume that universal claims about non-existent
objects (or empty sets) are true but that particular claims about them are false.
On this reading, the claim that “all fairy-god mothers are beautiful” is true, whereas the claim that
“some fairy-god mothers are beautiful” is false. Clearly, this clashes with the traditional square of
opposition. By simple subalternation, the truth of the proposition “all fairy-god mothers are
beautiful” requires the truth of the proposition “some fairy-god mothers are beautiful.” If the first
claim is true, the second claim must also be true. For this and similar reasons, some modern logicians
dismiss the traditional square as inadequate, claiming that Aristotle made a mistake or overlooked
relevant issues. Aristotle, however, is involved in a specialized project. He elaborates an alternative
logic, specifically adapted to the problems he is trying to solve.
Aristotle devises a companion-logic for science. He relegates fictions like fairy godmothers and
mermaids and unicorns to the realms of poetry and literature. In his mind, they exist outside the
ambit of science. This is why he leaves no room for such non-existent entities in his logic. This is a
thoughtful choice, not an inadvertent omission. Technically, Aristotelian science is a search for
definitions, where a definition is “a phrase signifying a thing’s essence.” (Topics, I.5.102a37, Pickard-
Cambridge.) To possess an essence—is literally to possess a “what-it-is-to-be” something (to ti ēn
einai). Because non-existent entities cannot be anything, they do not, in Aristotle’s mind, possess an
essence. They cannot be defined. Aristotle makes this point explicitly in the Posterior Analytics. He
points out that a definition of a goat-stag, a cross between a goat and a deer (the ancient equivalent
of a unicorn), is impossible.
He writes, “no one knows the nature of what does not exist—[we] can know the meaning of the
phrase or name ‘goat-stag’ but not what the essential nature of a goat-stag is.” (II.7.92b6-8, Mure.)
Because we cannot know what the essential nature of a goat-stag is—indeed, it has no essential
nature—we cannot provide a proper definition of a goat-stag. So the study of goat-stags (or unicorns)
is not open to scientific investigation. Aristotle sets about designing a logic that is intended to display
relations between scientific propositions, where science is understood as a search for essential
definitions. This is why he leaves no place for fictional entities like goat-stags (or unicorns). Hence,
the assumed validity of a logical maneuver like subalternation.
8. Form versus Content
However, this is not the only way Aristotle’s approach parts ways with more modern assumptions.
Some modern logicians might define logic as that philosophical inquiry which considers the form not
the content of propositions. Aristotle’s logic is unapologetically metaphysical. We cannot properly
understand what Aristotle is about by separating form from content. Suppose, for example, I was to
claim that (1) all birds have feathers and (2) that everyone in the Tremblay family wears a red hat.
These two claims possess the same very same propositional form, A.
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We can represent the first claim as: “All S are P,” where S=birds, and P=being feathered. And we can
also represent the second claim as “All S are P,” where S=members of the Tremblay family, and
P=wearing a red hat. Considered from an Aristotelian point of view, however, these two “All S are P”
propositions possess a very different logical status. Aristotle would view the relationship between
birds and feathers expressed in the first proposition as a necessary link, for it is of the essence of birds
to be feathered.
Something cannot be a bird and lack feathers. The link between membership in the Tremblay family
and the practice of wearing a red hat described in the second proposition is, in sharp contrast, a
contingent fact about the world. A member of the Tremblay family who wore a green hat would still
be a member of the Tremblay family. The fact that the Tremblays only wear red hats (because it is
presently the fashion in Quebec) is an accidental (or surface) feature of what a Tremblay is. So this
second relationship holds in a much weaker sense. In Aristotle’s mind, this has important
consequences not just for metaphysics, but for logic.
It is hard to capture in modern English the underlying metaphysical force in Aristotle’s categorical
statements. In the Prior Analytics Aristotle renders the phrase “S is P” as “P belongs to S.” The sense
of belonging here is crucial. Aristotle wants a logic that tells us what belongs to what.
But there are different levels of belonging. My billfold belongs to me but this is a very tenuous sort of
belonging. The way my billfold belongs to me pales in significance to, say, the way a bill belongs to a
duck-billed platypus. It is not simply that the bill is physically attached to the platypus. Even if you
were to cut off the bill of a platypus, this would just create a deformed platypus; it would not change
the sense of necessary belonging that connects platypuses and bills. The deep nature of a platypus
requires—it necessitates—a bill. In so much as logic is about discovering necessary relationships, it is
not the mere arrangement of terms and symbols but their substantive meaning that is at issue.
As only one consequence of this “metaphysical attitude,” consider Aristotle’s attitude towards
inductive generalizations. Aristotle would have no patience for the modern penchant for purely
statistical interpretations of inductive generalizations. It is not the number of times something
happens that matters. It is the deep nature of the thing that counts. If the wicked boy (or girl) next
door pulls three legs off a spider, this is just happenstance. This five-legged spider does not (for
Aristotle) present a serious counterexample to the claim that “all spiders are eight-legged.” The fact
that someone can pull legs off a spider does not change the fact that there is a necessary connection
between spiders and having eight legs.
Aristotle is too keen a biologist not to recognize that there are accidents and monstrosities in the
world, but the existence of these individual imperfections does not change the deep nature of things.
Aristotle recognizes then that some types of belonging are more substantial—that is, more real—than
others. But this has repercussions for the ways in which we evaluate arguments. In Aristotle’s mind,
the strength of the logical connection that ties a conclusion to the premises in an argument depends,
decisively, on the metaphysical status of the claims we are making.
Another example may help. Suppose I were to argue, first: “Ostriches are birds; all birds have
feathers, therefore, ostriches have feathers.” Then, second, “Hélène is the youngest daughter of the
Tremblay family; all members of the Tremblay family wear red hats; therefore, Hélène wears a red
hat.” These arguments possess the same form. (We will worry about formal details later.) But, to
Aristotle’s way of thinking, the first argument is, logically, more rigorous than the second. Its
conclusion follows from the essential and therefore necessary features of birds. In the second
argument, the conclusion only follows from the contingent state of fashion in Quebec. In Aristotelian
logic, the strength of an argument depends, in some important way, on metaphysical issues. We
can’t simply say “All S are P; and so forth” and be done with it. We have to know what “S” and “P”

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stand for. This is very different than modern symbolic logic. Although Aristotle does use letters to
take the place of variable terms in a logical relation, we should not be misled into thinking that the
substantive content of what is being discussed does not matter.
9. The Syllogism
We are now in a position to consider Aristotle’s theory of the syllogism. Although one senses that
Aristotle took great pride in these accomplishments, we could complain that the persistent focus on
the mechanics of the valid syllogism has obscured his larger project. We will only cover the most
basic points here, largely ignoring hypothetical syllogisms, modal syllogisms, extended syllogisms
(sorites), inter alia. The syllogistic now taught in undergraduate philosophy departments represents a
later development of Aristotle’s ideas, after they were reworked at the hands of Medieval and
modern logicians. We will begin with a brief account of the way syllogisms are presented in modern
logic and then move on to discussion of Aristotle’s somewhat different account.
We can define a syllogism, in relation to its logical form, as an argument made up of three categorical
propositions, two premises (which set out the evidence), and a conclusion (that follows logically from
the premises). In the standard account, the propositions are composed of three terms, a subject
term, a predicate term, and a middle term: the subject term is the (grammatical) subject of the
conclusion; the predicate term modifies the subject in the conclusion, and the middle term links the
subject and predicate terms in the premises. The subject and predicate terms appear in different
premises; the middle term appears once in each premise. The premise with the predicate term and
the middle term is called the major premise; the premise with the subject term and the middle term
is called the minor premise.
Because syllogisms depend on the precise arrangement of terms, syllogistic logic is sometimes
referred to as term logic. Most readers of this piece are already familiar with some version of a
proverbial (non-Aristotelian) example: “All men are mortal; (all) Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle are
men; therefore, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle are mortal.” If we symbolize the three terms in this
syllogism such that Middle Term, M=man; Subject Term, S=Socrates, Plato, Aristotle; Predicate Term,
P=mortal; we can represent the argument as: Major Premise: All M is P; Minor Premise: All S is
M; Conclusion: So, All S is P. In the Middle Ages, scholars came up with Latin names for valid
syllogisms, using vowels to represent the position of each categorical proposition. (Their list is readily
available elsewhere.) The precise arrangement of propositions in this syllogism goes by the Latin
moniker “Barbara” because the syllogism is composed of three A propositions: hence, BArbArA: A
syllogism in Barbara is clearly valid where validity can be understood (in modern terms) as the
requirement that if the premises of the argument are true, then the conclusion must be true.
Modern textbook authors generally prove the validity of syllogisms in two ways. First, they use a
number of different rules.
For example: “when major and minor terms are universal in the conclusion they must be universal in
the premises”; “if one premise is negative, the conclusion must be negative”; “the middle term in the
premises must be distributed (include every member of a class) at least once,” and so on. Second,
they use Venn diagrams, intersecting circles marked to indicate the extension (or range) of different
terms, to determine if the information contained in the conclusion is also included in the premises.
Modern logicians, who still hold to traditional conventions, classify syllogisms according to figure and
mood. The four figure classification derives from Aristotle; the mood classification, from Medieval
logicians. One determines the figure of a syllogism by recording the positions the middle term takes
in the two premises. So, for Barbara above, the figure is MP-SM, generally referred to as Figure 1.
One determines the mood of a syllogism by recording the precise arrangement of categorical
propositions.

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So, for Barbara, the mood is AAA. By tabulating figures and moods, we can make an inventory of valid
syllogisms. (Medieval philosophers devised a mnemonic poem for such purposes that begins with the
line “Barbara, Celarent, Darii, Ferioque priorisis.” ) Although traditional classroom treatments prefer
to stick to this time-honoured approach, Fred Sommers and George Englebretsen have devised a
more up-to-date term logic that uses equations with “+” and “−” operators and is more attuned to
natural language reasoning than the usual predicate logic. Turn then to a brief discussion of
Aristotle’s own account of the syllogism.
As already mentioned, we need to distinguish between two kinds of necessity. Aristotle believes in
metaphysical or natural necessity. Birds must have feathers because that is their nature. So the
proposition “All birds have feathers” is necessarily true.” But Aristotle identifies the syllogistic form
with the logical necessity that obtains when two separate propositions necessitate a third.
He defines a sullogismos as “a discourse [logos] in which, certain things being stated, something other
than what is stated follows of necessity from them.” (Prior Analytics, I.1.24b18-20, Jenkinson.) The
emphasis here is on the sense of inevitable consequence that precipitates a conclusion when certain
forms of propositions are added together. Indeed, the original Greek term for syllogism is more
rigorously translated as “deduction.” In the Prior Analytics, Aristotle’s method is exploratory. He
searches for pairs of propositions that combine to produce a necessary conclusion. He begins by
accepting that a few syllogisms are self-evidently (or transparently) true. Barbara, AAA-Fig.1,
discussed above, is the best example of this kind of “perfect syllogism.” Another example of a perfect
syllogism is Celarent: EAE-Fig.1. On seeing the arrangement of terms in such cases, one immediately
understands that the conclusion follows necessarily from the premises. In the case of imperfect
syllogisms Aristotle relies on a method of proof that translates them, step-by-step, into perfect
syllogisms through a careful rearrangement of terms. He does this directly, through conversion, or
indirectly, through the relationships of contradiction and contrariety outlined in the square of
opposition. To cite only one very simple example, consider a brief passage in the Prior
Analytics (I.5.27a5ff) where Aristotle demonstrates that the propositions “No P are M,” and “All S are
M” can be combined to produce a syllogism with the conclusion, “No S are P.” If “No P are M,” it
must follow that “No M are P” (conversion); but “No M are P” combined with the second premise,
“All S are M” proves that “No S are P.” (This is to reduce the imperfect syllogism Cesare to the perfect
syllogism Celarent.) This conversion of an imperfect syllogism into a perfect syllogism demonstrates
that the original arrangement of terms is a genuine deduction. In other cases, Aristotle proves that
particular arrangements of terms cannot yield proper syllogisms by showing that, in these instances,
true premises lead to obviously false or contradictory conclusions. Alongside these proofs of logical
necessity, Aristotle derives general rules for syllogisms, classifies them according to figure, and so on.
It is important to reiterate that Aristotelian syllogisms are not (primarily) about hypothetical sets,
imaginary classes, or purely abstract mathematical entities. Aristotle believes there are natural
groups in the world—species and genera—made up of individual members that share a similar
nature, and hence similar properties. It is this sharing of individual things in a similar nature that
makes universal statements possible. Once we have universal terms, we can make over-arching
statements that, when combined, lead inescapably to specific results. In the most rigorous syllogistic,
metaphysical necessity is added to logical necessity to produce an unassailable inference. Seen in this
Aristotelian light, syllogisms can be construed as a vehicle for identifying the deep, immutable natures
that make things what they are.
Medieval logicians summarized their understanding of the rationale underlying the syllogism in the
so-called dictum de omni et nullo (the maxim of all and none), the principle that whatever is affirmed
or denied of a whole must be affirmed or denied of a part (which they alleged derived from a reading

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of Prior Analytics I.1.24b27-30). Some contemporary authors have claimed that Aristotelian syllogistic
is at least compatible with a deflationary theory of truth, the modern idea that truth-claims about
propositions amount to little more than an assertion of the statement itself. (To say that “S is P” is
true, is just to assert “S is P.”) Perhaps it would be better to say that one can trace the modern
preoccupation with validity in formal logic to the distinction between issues of logical necessity and
propositional truth implicit in Aristotle. In Aristotle’s logic, arguments do not take the form: “this
state of affairs is true/false,” “this state of affairs is true/false,” therefore this state of affairs is
true/false.” We do not argue “All S is M is true” but merely, “All S is M.” When it comes to
determining validity—that is, when it comes to determining whether we have discovered a true
syllogism—the question of the truth or falsity of propositions is pushed aside and attention is focused
on an evaluation of the logical connection between premises and conclusion. Obviously, Aristotle
recognizes that ascertaining the material truth of premises is an important part of argument
evaluation, but he does not present a “truth-functional” logic. The concept of a “truth value” does
not play any explicit role in his formal analysis the way it does, for example, with modern truth
tables. Mostly, Aristotle wants to know what we can confidently conclude from two presumably true
premises; that is, what kind of knowledge can be produced or demonstrated if two given premises are
true.
10. Inductive Syllogism
Understanding what Aristotle means by inductive syllogism is a matter of serious scholarly dispute.
Although there is only abbreviated textual evidence to go by, his account of inductive argument can
be supplemented by his ampler account of its rhetorical analogues, argument from analogy and
argument from example. What is clear is that Aristotle thinks of induction (epagoge) as a form of
reasoning that begins in the sense perception of particulars and ends in a understanding that can be
expressed in a universal proposition (or even a concept). We pick up mental momentum through a
familiarity with particular cases that allows us to arrive at a general understanding of an entire species
or genus. As we discuss below, there are indications that Aristotle views induction, in the first
instance, as a manifestation of immediate understanding and not as an argument form. Nonetheless,
in the Prior Analytics II.23 (and 24), he casts inductive reasoning in syllogistic form, illustrating the
“syllogism that springs out of induction” (ho ex epagoges sullogismos) by an argument about the
longevity of bileless animals.
Relying on old biological ideas, Aristotle argues that we can move from observations about the
longevity of individual species of bileless animals (that is, animals with clean-blood) to the universal
conclusion that bilelessness is a cause of longevity. His argument can be paraphrased in modern
English: All men, horses, mules, and so forth, are long-lived; all men, horses, mules, and so forth, are
bileless animals; therefore, all bileless animals are long-lived. Although this argument seems, by
modern standards, invalid, Aristotle apparently claims that it is a valid deduction. (Remember that
the word “syllogism” means “deduction,” so an “inductive syllogism” is, literally, an “inductive
deduction.”) He uses a technical notion of “convertibility” to formally secure the validity of the
argument. According to this logical rule, terms that cover the same range of cases (because they refer
to the same nature) are interchangeable (antistrepho). They can be substituted for one another.
Aristotle believes that because the logical terms “men, horses, mules, etc” and “bileless animals”
refer to the same genus, they are convertible. If, however, we invert the terms in the proposition “all
men, horses, mules, and so forth, are bileless animals” to “all bileless animals are men, horses, mules,
and so forth,” we can then rephrase the original argument: All men, horses, mules, and so forth, are
long-lived; all bileless animals are men, horses, mules, and so forth; therefore, all bileless animals are
long-lived. This revised induction possesses an obviously valid form (Barbara, discussed above). Note

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that Aristotle does not view this inversion of terms as a formal gimmick or trick; he believes that it
reflects something metaphysically true about shared natures in the world. (One could argue that
inductive syllogism operates by means of the quantification of the predicate term as well as the
subject term of a categorical proposition, but we will not investigate that issue here.)
These passages pose multiple problems of interpretation. We can only advance a general overview of
the most important disagreements here. We might identify four different interpretations of
Aristotle’s account of the inductive syllogism.
(1) The fact that Aristotle seems to view this as a valid syllogism has led many commentators (such as
Ross, McKirahan, Peters) to assume that he is referring to what is known as “perfect induction,” a
generalization that is built up from a complete enumeration of particular cases. The main problem
here is that it seems to involve a physical impossibility. No one could empirically inspect every
bileless animal (and/or species) to ascertain that the connection between bilelessness and longevity
obtains in every case.
(2) Some commentators combine this first explanation with the further suggestion that the bileless
example is a rare case and that Aristotle believes, in line with modern accounts, that most inductions
only produce probable belief. (Cf. Govier’s claim that there is a “tradition going back to Aristotle,
which maintains that there are . . . only two broad types of argument: deductive arguments which
are conclusive, and inductive arguments, which are not.” (Problems in Argument Analysis, 52.)) One
problem with such claims is that they overlook the clear distinction that Aristotle makes between
rigorous inductions and rhetorical inductions (which we discuss below).
(3) Some commentators claim that Aristotle (and the ancients generally) overlooked the inherent
tenuousness of the inductive reasoning. On this account, Empiricists such as Locke and Hume
discovered something seriously wrong about induction that escaped the notice of an ancient author
like Aristotle. Philosophers in the modern Anglo-American tradition largely favor this interpretation.
(Cf. Garrett’s and Barbanell’s insistence that “Hume was the first to raise skeptical doubts about
inductive reasoning, leaving a puzzle as to why the concerns he highlighted had earlier been so
completely overlooked.” (“Induction,” 172.) Such allegations do not depend, however, on any close
reading of a wealth of relevant passages in the Aristotelian corpus and in ancient philosophy
generally.
(4) Finally, a minority contemporary view, growing in prominence, has argued that Aristotle did not
conceive of induction as an enumerative process but as a matter of intelligent insight into natures.
(Cf. McCaskey, Biondi, Rijk , Groarke.) On this account, Aristotle does not mean to suggest that
inductive syllogism depends on an empirical inspection of every member of a group but on a universal
act of understanding that operates through sense perception. Aristotelian induction can best be
compared to modern notions of abduction or inference to the best explanation. This non-
mathematical account has historical precedents in neo-Platonism, Thomism, Idealism, and in the
textbook literature of traditionalist modern logicians that opposed the new formal logic. This view
has been criticized, however, as a form of mere intuitionism dependent on an antiquated
metaphysics.
The basic idea that induction is valid will raise eyebrows, no doubt. It is important to stave off some
inevitable criticism before continuing. Modern accounts of induction, deriving, in large part, from
Hume and Locke, display a mania for prediction. (Hence Hume’s question: how can we know that the
future bread we eat will nourish us based on past experience of eating bread?) But this is not
primarily how Aristotle views the problem. For Aristotle, induction is about understanding natural
kinds. Once we comprehend the nature of something, we will, of course, be able to make predictions
about its future properties, but understanding its nature is the key. In Aristotle’s mind, rigorous

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induction is valid because it picks out those necessary and essential traits that make something what
it is. To use a very simple example, understanding that all spiders have eight legs—that is, that all
undamaged spiders have eight legs—is a matter of knowing something deep about the biological
nature that constitutes a spider. Something that does not have eight legs is not a spider. (Fruitful
analogies might be drawn here to the notion of “a posteriori necessity” countenanced by
contemporary logicians such as Hilary Putnam and Saul Kripke or to the “revised” concept of a
“natural kind” advanced by authors such as Hilary Kornblith or Brian Ellis.)
It is commonly said that Aristotle sees syllogisms as a device for explaining relationships between
groups. This is, in the main, true. Still, there has to be some room for a consideration of individuals in
logic if we hope to include induction as an essential aspect of reasoning. As Aristotle explains,
induction begins in sense perception and sense perception only has individuals as its object. Some
commentators would limit inductive syllogism to a movement from smaller groups (what Aristotle
calls “primitive universals”) to larger groups, but one can only induce a generalization about a smaller
group on the basis of a prior observation of individuals that compose that group. A close reading
reveals that Aristotle himself mentions syllogisms dealing with individuals (about the moon, Topics;
about the wall; about the eclipse, Posterior Analytics, and so on.) If we treat individuals as universal
terms or as representative of universal classes, this poses no problem for formal analysis. Collecting
observations about one individual or about individuals who belong to a larger group can lead to an
accurate generalization.
11. Deduction versus Induction
We cannot fully understand the nature or role of inductive syllogism in Aristotle without situating it
with respect to ordinary, “deductive” syllogism. Aristotle’s distinction between deductive and
inductive argument is not precisely equivalent to the modern distinction. Contemporary authors
differentiate between deduction and induction in terms of validity. (A small group of informal
logicians called “Deductivists” dispute this account.) According a well-worn formula, deductive
arguments are valid; inductive arguments are invalid. The premises in a deductive argument
guarantee the truth of the conclusion: if the premises are true, the conclusion must be true. The
premises in an inductive argument provide some degree of support for the conclusion, but it is
possible to have true premises and a false conclusion. Although some commentators attribute such
views to Aristotle, this distinction between strict logical necessity and merely probable or plausible
reasoning more easily maps onto the distinction Aristotle makes between scientific and rhetorical
reasoning (both of which we discuss below). Aristotle views inductive syllogism as scientific (as
opposed to rhetorical) induction and therefore as a more rigorous form of inductive argument.
We can best understand what this amounts to by a careful comparison of a deductive and an
inductive syllogism on the same topic. If we reconstruct, along Aristotelian lines, a deduction on the
longevity of bileless animals, the argument would presumably run: All bileless animals are long-lived;
all men, horses, mules, and so forth, are bileless animals; therefore, all men, horses, mules, and so
forth, are long-lived. Defining the terms in this syllogism as:
Subject Term, S=men, horses, mules, and so forth; Predicate Term, P=long-lived animals; Middle
Term, M=bileless animals, we can represent this metaphysically correct inference as:
Major Premise: All M are P. Minor Premise: All S are M.
Conclusion: Therefore all S are P. (Barbara.) As we already have seen, the corresponding induction
runs: All men, horses, mules, and so forth, are long-lived; all men, horses, mules, and so forth, are
bileless animals; therefore, all bileless animals are long-lived. Using the same definition of terms, we
are left with: Major Premise: All S are P.
Minor Premise: All S are M (convertible to All M are S).
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Conclusion: Therefore, all M are P. (Converted to Barbara.) The difference between these two
inferences is the difference between deductive and inductive argument in Aristotle.
Clearly, Aristotelian and modern treatments of these issues diverge. As we have already indicated, in
the modern formalism, one automatically defines subject, predicate, and middle terms of a syllogism
according to their placement in the argument. For Aristotle, the terms in a rigorous syllogism have a
metaphysical significance as well. In our correctly formulated deductive-inductive pair, S represents
individual species and/or the individuals that make up those species (men, horses, mules, and so
forth); M represents the deep nature of these things (bilelessness), and P represents the property that
necessarily attaches to that nature (longevity). Here then is the fundamental difference between
Aristotelian deduction and induction in a nutshell. In deduction, we prove that a property (P) belongs
to individual species (S) because it possesses a certain nature (M); in induction, we prove that a
property (P) belongs to a nature (M) because it belongs to individual species (S). Expressed formally,
deduction proves that the subject term (S) is associated with a predicate term (P) by means of the
middle term (M); induction proves that the middle term (M) is associated with the predicate term (P)
by means of the subject term (S). (Cf. Prior Analytics, II.23.68b31-35.) Aristotle does not claim that
inductive syllogism is invalid but that the terms in an induction have been rearranged. In deduction,
the middle term joins the two extremes (the subject and predicate terms); in induction, one extreme,
the subject term, acts as the middle term, joining the true middle term with the other extreme. This
is what Aristotle means when he maintains that in induction one uses a subject term to argue to a
middle term. Formally, with respect to the arrangement of terms, the subject term becomes the
“middle term” in the argument.
Aristotle distinguishes then between induction and deduction in three different ways. First, induction
moves from particulars to a universal, whereas deduction moves from a universal to particulars. The
bileless induction moves from particular species to a universal nature; the bileless deduction moves
from a universal nature to particular species. Second, induction moves from observation to
language (that is, from sense perception to propositions), whereas deduction moves from language to
language (from propositions to a new proposition). The bileless induction is really a way of
demonstrating how observations of bileless animals lead to (propositional) knowledge about
longevity; the bileless deduction demonstrates how (propositional) knowledge of a universal nature
leads (propositional) knowledge about particular species. Third, induction identifies or explains a
nature, whereas deduction applies or demonstrates a nature. The bileless induction provides an
explanation of the nature of particular species: it is of the nature of bileless organisms to possess a
long life. The bileless deduction applies that finding to particular species; once we know that it is of
the nature of bileless organisms to possess a long life, we can demonstrate or put on display the
property of longevity as it pertains to particular species.
One final point needs clarification. The logical form of the inductive syllogism, after the convertibility
maneuver, is the same as the deductive syllogism. In this sense, induction and deduction possess the
same (final) logical form. But, of course, in order to successfully perform an induction, one has to
know that convertibility is possible, and this requires an act of intelligence which is able to discern the
metaphysical realities between things out in the world. We discuss this issue under non-discursive
reasoning below.
12. Science
Aristotle wants to construct a logic that provides a working language for rigorous science as he
understands it. Whereas we have been talking of syllogisms as arguments, Aristotelian science is
about explanation. Admittedly, informal logicians generally distinguish between explanation and
argument. An argument is intended to persuade about a debatable point; an explanation is not

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intended to persuade so much as to promote understanding. Aristotle views science as involving
logical inferences that move beyond what is disputable to a consideration of what is the case. Still,
the “explanatory” syllogisms used in science possess precisely the same formal structures as
“argumentative” syllogisms. So we might consider them arguments in a wider sense. For his part,
Aristotle relegates eristic reason to the broad field of rhetoric. He views science, perhaps naively, as a
domain of established fact. The syllogisms used in science are about establishing an explanation from
specific cases (induction) and then applying or illustrating this explanation to specific cases
(deduction).
The ancient Greek term for science, “episteme,” is not precisely equivalent to its modern
counterpart. In Aristotle’s worldview, science, as the most rigorous sort of discursive knowledge, is
opposed to mere opinion (doxa); it is about what is universal and necessary as opposed to what is
particular and contingent, and it is theoretical as opposed to practical. Aristotle believes that
knowledge, understood as justified true belief, is most perfectly expressed in a scientific
demonstration (apodeixis), also known as an apodeitic or scientific syllogism. He posits a number of
specific requirements for this most rigorous of all deductions. In order to qualify as a scientific
demonstration, a syllogism must possess premises that are “true, primary, immediate, better known
than, prior to, and causative of the conclusion.” (Posterior Analytics, I.2.71b20ff, Tredennick.) It must
yield information about a natural kind or a group of individual things. And it must produce universal
knowledge (episteme). Specialists have disputed the meaning of these individual requirements, but
the main message is clear. Aristotle accepts, as a general rule, that a conclusion in an argument
cannot be more authoritative than the premises that led to that conclusion. We cannot derive better
(or more reliable) knowledge from worse (or less reliable) knowledge. Given that a scientific
demonstration is the most rigorous form of knowledge possible, we must start with premises that are
utterly basic and as certain as possible, which are “immediately” induced from observation, and which
confirm to the necessary structure of the world in a way that is authoritative and absolutely
incontrovertible. This requires a reliance on first principles which we discuss below.
In the best case scenario, Aristotelian science is about finding definitions of species that, according to
a somewhat bald formula, identify the genus (the larger natural group) and the differentia (that
unique feature that sets the species apart from the larger group). As Aristotle’s focus on definitions is
a bit cramped and less than consistent (he himself spends a great deal of time talking about necessary
rather than essential properties), let us broaden his approach to science to focus on ostensible
definitions, where an ostensible definition is either a rigorous definition or, more broadly, any
properly-formulated phrase that identifies the unique properties of something. On this looser
approach, which is more consistent with Aristotle’s actual practice, to define an entity is to identify
the nature, the essential and necessary properties, that make it uniquely what it is. Suffice it to say
that Aristotle’s idealized account of what science entails needs to be expanded to cover a wide range
of activities and that fall under what is now known as scientific practice. What follows is a general
sketch of his overall orientation. (We should point out that Aristotle himself resorts to whatever
informal methods seem appropriate when reporting on his own biological investigations without too
much concern for any fixed ideal of formal correctness. He makes no attempt to cast his own
scientific conclusions in metaphysically-correct syllogisms. One could perhaps insist that he uses
enthymemes (syllogisms with unstated premises), but mostly, he just seems to record what seems
appropriate without any deliberate attempt at correct formalization. Note that most of Aristotle’s
scientific work is “historia,” an earlier stage of observing, fact-collecting, and opinion-reporting that
proceeds the principled theorizing of advanced science.)

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For Aristotle, even theology is a science insomuch as it deals with universal and necessary principles.
Still, in line with modern attitudes (and in opposition to Plato), Aristotle views sense-perception as the
proper route to scientific knowledge. Our empirical experience of the world yields knowledge
through induction. Aristotle elaborates then an inductive-deductive model of science. Through
careful observation of particular species, the scientist induces an ostensible definition to explain a
nature and then demonstrates the consequences of that nature for particular species. Consider a
specific case. In the Posterior Analytics (II.16-17.98b32ff, 99a24ff), Aristotle mentions an explanation
about why deciduous plants lose their leaves in the winter. The ancients apparently believed this
happens because sap coagulates at the base of the leaf (which is not entirely off the mark). We can
use this ancient example of a botanical explanation to illustrate how the business of Aristotelian
science is supposed to operate. Suppose we are a group of ancient botanists who discover, through
empirical inspection, why deciduous plants such as vines and figs lose their leaves. Following
Aristotle’s lead, we can cast our discovery in the form of the following inductive syllogism: “Vine, fig,
and so forth, are deciduous. Vine, fig, and so forth, coagulate sap. Therefore, all sap-coagulators are
deciduous.” This induction produces the definition of “deciduous.” (“Deciduous” is the definiendum;
sap-coagulation, the definiens; the point being that everything that is a sap-coagulator is deciduous,
which might not be the case if we turned it around and said “All deciduous plants are sap-
coagulators.”) But once we have a definition of “deciduous,” we can use it as the first premise in a
deduction to demonstrate something about say, the genus “broad-leaved trees.” We can apply, in
other words, what we have learned about deciduous plants in general to the more specific genus of
broad-leaved trees. Our deduction will read: “All sap-coagulators are deciduous. All broad-leaved
trees are sap-coagulators. Therefore, all broad-leaved trees are deciduous.” We can express all this
symbolically. For the induction, where S=vine, fig, and so forth, P=deciduous, M= being a sap-
coagulator, the argument is: “All S is P; all S is M (convertible to all M is S); therefore, all M are P
(converted to Barbara). For the deduction, where S=broad-leafed trees, M=being a sap-coagulator,
P=deciduous, the argument can be represented: “All M are P; all S is M; therefore, all S is P”
(Barbara). This is then the basic logic of Aristotelian science.
A simple diagram of how science operates follows (Figure 2).

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Figure 2
The Inductive-Deductive Method of Aristotelian Science
Aristotle views science as a search for causes (aitia). In a well-known example about planets not
twinkling because they are close to the earth (Posterior Analytics, I.13), he makes an important
distinction between knowledge of the fact and knowledge of the reasoned fact. The rigorous scientist
aims at knowledge of the reasoned fact which explains why something is the way it is. In our
example, sap-coagulation is the cause of deciduous; deciduous is not the cause of sap-coagulation.
That is why “sap-coagulation” is featured here as the middle term, because it is the cause of the
phenomenon being investigated. The deduction “All sap-coagulators are deciduous; all broad-leaved
trees are sap-coagulators; therefore, all broad-leaved trees are deciduous” counts as knowledge of
the reasoned fact because it reveals the cause of broad-leafed deciduousness.
Aristotle makes a further distinction between what is more knowable relative to us and what is
more knowable by nature (or in itself). He remarks in the Physics, “The natural way of [inquiry] is to
start from the things which are more knowable and obvious to us and proceed towards those which
are clearer and more knowable by nature; for the same things are not ‘knowable relatively to us’ and
‘knowable’ without qualification.” (I.184a15, Hardie, Gaye.) In science we generally move from the
effect to the cause, from what we see and observe around us to the hidden origins of things. The
outward manifestation of the phenomenon of “deciduousness” is more accessible to us because we
can see the trees shedding their leaves, but sap-coagulation as an explanatory principle is more
knowable in itself because it embodies the cause. To know about sap-coagulation counts as an
advance in knowledge; someone who knows this knows more than someone who only knows that
trees shed their leaves in the fall. Aristotle believes that the job of science is to put on display what
best counts as knowledge, even if the resulting theory strays from our immediate perceptions and
first concerns.
Jan Lukasiewicz, a modern-day pioneer in term logic, comments that “some queer philosophical
prejudices which cannot be explained rationally” made early commentators claim that the major
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premise in a syllogism (the one with the middle and predicate terms) must be first. (Aristotle’s
Syllogistic, 32.) But once we view the syllogism within the larger context of Aristotelian logic, it
becomes perfectly obvious why these early commentators put the major premise first: because it
constitutes the (ostensible) definition; because it contains an explanation of the nature of the thing
upon which everything else depends. The major premise in a scientific deduction is the most
important part of the syllogism; it is scientifically prior in that it reveals the cause that motivates the
phenomenon. So it makes sense to place it first. This was not an irrational prejudice.
13. Non-Discursive Reasoning
The distinction Aristotle draws between discursive knowledge (that is, knowledge through argument)
and non-discursive knowledge (that is, knowledge through nous) is akin to the medieval distinction
between ratio (argument) and intellectus (direct intellection). In Aristotelian logic, non-discursive
knowledge comes first and provides the starting points upon which discursive or argumentative
knowledge depends. It is hard to know what to call the mental power that gives rise to this type of
knowledge in English. The traditional term “intuition” invites misunderstanding. When Aristotle
claims that there is an immediate sort of knowledge that comes directly from the mind (nous) without
discursive argument, he is not suggesting that knowledge can be accessed through vague feelings or
hunches. He is referring to a capacity for intelligent appraisal that might be better described as
discernment, comprehension, or insight. Like his later medieval followers, he views “intuition” as a
species of reason; it is not prior to reason or outside of reason, it is—in the highest degree—the
activity of reason itself. (Cf. Posterior Analytics, II. 19; Nicomachean Ethics, IV.6.)
For Aristotle, science is only one manifestation of human intelligence. He includes, for example,
intuition, craft, philosophical wisdom, and moral decision-making along with science in his account of
the five intellectual virtues. (Nicomachean Ethics, VI.3-8.) When it comes to knowledge-acquisition,
however, intuition is primary. It includes the most basic operations of intelligence, providing the
ultimate ground of understanding and inference upon which everything else depends. Aristotle is a
firm empiricist. He believes that knowledge begins in perception, but he also believes that we need
intuition to make sense of perception. In the Posterior Analytics (II.19.100a3-10), Aristotle posits a
sequence of steps in mental development: sense perception produces memory which (in combination
with intuition) produces human experience (empeiria), which produces art and science. Through a
widening movement of understanding (really, a non-discursive form of induction), intuition
transforms observation and memory so as to produce knowledge (without argument). This intuitive
knowledge is even more reliable than science. As Aristotle writes in key passages at the end of
the Posterior Analytics, “no other kind of thought except intuition is more accurate than scientific
knowledge,” and “nothing except intuition can be truer than scientific knowledge.” (100b8ff, Mure,
slightly emended.)
Aristotelian intuition supplies the first principles (archai) of human knowledge: concepts, universal
propositions, definitions, the laws of logic, the primary principles of the specialized science, and even
moral concepts such as the various virtues. This is why, according to Aristotle, intuition must be
viewed as infallible. We cannot claim that the first principles of human intelligence are dubious and
then turn around and use those principles to make authoritative claims about the possibility (or
impossibility) of knowledge. If we begin to doubt intuition, that is, human intelligence at its most
fundamental level of operation, we will have to doubt everything else that is built upon this universal
foundation: science, philosophy, knowledge, logic, inference, and so forth. Aristotle never tries to
prove first principles. He acknowledges that when it comes to the origins of human thought, there is
a point when one must simply stop asking questions. As he points out, any attempt at absolute proof
would lead to an infinite regress. In his own words: “It is impossible that there should be

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demonstration of absolutely everything; there would be an infinite regress, so that there would still
be no demonstration.” (Metaphysics, 1006a6ff, Ross.) Aristotle does make arguments, for example,
that meaningful speech presupposes a logical axiom like the principle of non-contradiction, but that is
not, strictly speaking, a proof of the principle.
Needless to say, Aristotle’s reliance on intuition has provoked a good deal of scholarly disagreement.
Contemporary commentators such as Joseph Owens, G. L. Owen, and Terrence Irwin have argued that
Aristotelian first principles begin in dialectic. On their influential account, we arrive at first principles
through a weaker form of argument that revolves around a consideration of “endoxa,” the proverbial
opinions of the many and/or the wise. Robin Smith (and others) severely criticize their account. The
idea that mere opinion could somehow give rise to rigorous scientific knowledge conflicts with
Aristotle’s settled view that less reliable knowledge cannot provide sufficient logical support for the
more reliable knowledge. As we discuss below, endoxa do provide a starting point for dialectical (and
ethical) arguments in Aristotle’s system. They are, in his mind, a potent intellectual resource, a library
of stored wisdom and right opinion. They may include potent expressions of first principles already
discovered by other thinkers and previous generations. But as Aristotle makes clear at the end of
the Posterior Analytics and elsewhere, the recognition that something is a first principle depends
directly on intuition. As he reaffirms in the Nicomachean Ethics, “it is intuitive reason that grasps the
first principles.” (VI.6.1141a7, Ross.)
If Irwin and his colleagues seek to limit the role of intuition in Aristotle, authors such as Lambertus
Marie de Rijk and D. W. Hamlyn go to an opposite extreme, denying the importance of the inductive
syllogism and identifying induction (epagoge) exclusively with intuition. De Rijk claims that
Aristotelian induction is “a pre-argumentation procedure consisting in . . . [a] disclosure [that] does
not take place by a formal, discursive inference, but is, as it were, jumped upon by an intuitive act of
knowledge.” (Semantics and Ontology, I.2.53, 141-2.) Although this position seems extreme, it seems
indisputable that inductive syllogism depends on intuition, for without intuition (understood as
intelligent discernment), one could not recognize the convertibility of subject and middle terms
(discussed above). Aristotle also points out that one needs intuition to recognize the (ostensible)
definitions so crucial to the practice of Aristotelian science. We must be able to discern the difference
between accidental and necessary or essential properties before coming up with a definition. This
can only come about through some kind of direct (non-discursive) discernment. Aristotle proposes a
method for discovering definitions called division—we are to divide things into smaller and smaller
sub-groups—but this method depends wholly on nous. (Cf. Posterior Analytics, II.13.) Some modern
Empiricist commentators, embarrassed by such mystical-sounding doctrines, warn that this emphasis
on non-discursive reasoning collapses into pure rationalism (or Platonism), but this is a caricature.
What Aristotle means by rational “intuition” is not a matter of pure, disembodied thought. One does
not arrive at first principles by closing one’s eyes and retreating from the world (as with Cartesian
introspection). For Aristotle, first principles arise through a vigorous interaction of the empirical with
the rational; a combination of rationality and sense experience produces the first seeds of human
understanding.
Note that Aristotle believes that there are first principles (koinai archai) that are common to all fields
of inquiry, such as the principle of non-contradiction or the law of excluded middle, and that each
specialized science has its own first principles. We may recover these first principles second-hand by
a (dialectical) review of authorities. Or, we can derive them first hand by analysis, by dividing the
subject matter we are concerned with into its constituent parts. At the beginning of the Physics,
Aristotle explains, “What is to us plain and obvious at first is rather confused masses, the elements
and principles of which become known to us later by analysis. Thus we must advance from

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generalities to particulars; for it is a whole that is best known to sense-perception, and a generality is
a kind of whole, comprehending many things within it, like parts. . . . Similarly a child begins by
calling all men ‘father,’ and all women ‘mother,’ but later on distinguishes each of them.”
(I.1.184a22-184b14, Hardie, Gaye.) Just as children learn to distinguish their parents from other
human beings, those who successfully study a science learn to distinguish the different natural kinds
that make up the whole of a scientific phenomenon. This precedes the work of induction and
deduction already discussed. Once we have the parts (or the aspects), we can reason about them
scientifically.
14. Rhetoric
Argumentation theorists (less aptly characterized as informal logicians) have critiqued the ascendancy
of formal logic, complaining that the contemporary penchant for symbolic logic leaves one with an
abstract mathematics of empty signs that cannot be applied in any useful way to larger issues.
Proponents of formal logic counter that their specialized formalism allows for a degree of precision
otherwise not available and that any focus on the substantive meaning or truth of propositions is a
distraction from logical issues per se. We cannot readily fit Aristotle into one camp or the other.
Although he does provide a formal analysis of the syllogism, he intends logic primarily as a means of
acquiring true statements about the world. He also engages in an enthusiastic investigation of less
rigorous forms of reasoning included in the study of dialectic and rhetoric.
Understanding precisely what Aristotle means by the term “dialectics” (dialektike) is no easy task. He
seems to view it as the technical study of argument in general or perhaps as a more specialized
investigation into argumentative dialogue. He intends his rhetoric (rhetorike), which he describes as
the counterpart to dialectic, as an expansive study of the art of persuasion, particularly as it is
directed towards a non-academic public. Suffice it to say, for our purposes, that Aristotle reserves a
place in his logic for a general examination of all arguments, for scientific reasoning, for rhetoric, for
debating techniques of various sorts, for jurisprudential pleading, for cross-examination, for moral
reasoning, for analysis, and for non-discursive intuition.
Aristotle distinguishes between what I will call, for convenience, rigorous logic and persuasive
logic. Rigorous logic aims at epistēmē, true belief about what is eternal, necessary, universal, and
unchanging. (Aristotle sometimes qualifies this to include “for the most part” scientific
knowledge.) Persuasive logic aims at acceptable, probable, or convincing belief (what we might call
“opinion” instead of knowledge.) It deals with approximate truth, with endoxa (popular or proverbial
opinions), with reasoning that is acceptable to a particular audience, or with claims about accidental
properties and contingent events. Persuasive syllogisms have the same form as rigorous syllogisms
but are understood as establishing their conclusions in a weaker manner. As we have already seen,
rigorous logic produces deductive and inductive syllogisms; Aristotle indicates that persuasive logic
produces, in a parallel manner, enthymemes, analogies, and examples. He defines an enthymeme as
a deduction “concerned with things which may, generally speaking, be other than they are,” with
matters that are “for the most part only generally true,” or with “probabilities and signs” (Rhetoric,
I.2.1357a, Roberts). He also mentions that the term “enthymeme” may refer to arguments with
missing premises. (Rhetoric, 1.2.1357a16-22.) When it comes to induction, Aristotle’s presentation is
more complicated, but we can reconstruct what he means in a more straightforward manner.
The persuasive counterpart to the inductive syllogism is the analogy and the example, but the
example is really a composite argument formed from first, an analogy and second, an enthymeme.
Some initial confusion is to be expected as Aristotle’s understanding of analogies differs somewhat
from contemporary accounts. In contemporary treatments, analogies depend on a direct object(s)-
to-object(s) comparison. Aristotelian analogy, on the other hand, involves reasoning up to a general

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principle. We are to conclude (1) that because individual things of a certain nature X have property z,
everything that possesses nature X has property z. But once we know that every X possesses property
z, we can make a deduction (2) that some new example of nature X will also have property z.
Aristotle calls (1), the inductive movement up to the generalization, an analogy (literally, an argument
from likeness=ton homoion); he calls (2), the deductive movement down to a new case, an
enthymeme; and he considers (1) + (2), the combination of the analogy and the enthymeme together,
an example (paradeigma). He presents the following argument from example in
the Rhetoric (I.2.1357b31-1358a1). Suppose we wish to argue that Dionysus, the ruler, is asking for a
bodyguard in order to set himself up as despot. We can establish this by a two-step process. First, we
can draw a damning analogy between previous cases where rulers asked for a bodyguard and induce
a general rule about such practices. We can insist that Peisistratus, Theagenes, and other known
tyrants, were scheming to make themselves despots, that Peisistratus, Theagenes, and other known
tyrants also asked for a bodyguard, and that therefore, everyone who asks for a bodyguard is
scheming to make themselves dictators. But once we have established this general rule, we can move
on to the second step in our argument, using this conclusion as a premise in an enthymeme. We can
argue that all people asking for a bodyguard are scheming to make themselves despots, that
Dionysius is someone asking for a bodyguard, and that therefore, Dionysius must be scheming to
make himself despot. This is not, in Aristotle’s mind, rigorous reasoning. Nonetheless, we can, in this
way, induce probable conclusions and then use them to deduce probable consequences. Although
these arguments are intended to be persuasive or plausible rather than scientific, but the reasoning
strategy mimics the inductive-deductive movement of science (without compelling, of course, the
same degree of belief).
We should point out that Aristotle does not restrict himself to a consideration of purely formal issues
in his discussion of rhetoric. He famously distinguishes, for example, between three means of
persuasion: ethos, pathos, and logos. As we read, at the beginning of his Rhetoric: “Of the modes of
persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are three kinds. . . . [Firstly,] persuasion is achieved by
the speaker’s personal character when the speech is so spoken as to make us think him credible. . . .
Secondly, persuasion may come through the hearers, when the speech stirs their emotions. . . .
Thirdly, persuasion is effected through the speech itself when we have proved [the point] by means of
the persuasive arguments suitable to the case in question.” (Rhetoric, I.2.1356a2-21, Roberts.)
Aristotle concludes that effective arguers must (1) understand morality and be able to convince an
audience that they themselves are good, trustworthy people worth listening to (ethos); (2) know the
general causes of emotion and be able to elicit them from specific audience (pathos); and (3) be able
to use logical techniques to make convincing (not necessarily sound) arguments (logos). Aristotle
broaches many other issues we cannot enter into here. He acknowledges that the goal of rhetoric is
persuasion, not truth. Such techniques may be bent to immoral or dishonest ends. Nonetheless, he
insists that it is in the public interest to provide a comprehensive and systematic survey of the field.
We might mention two other logical devices that have a place in Aristotle’s work: the topos and
the aporia. Unfortunately, Aristotle never explicitly explains what a topos is. The English word
“topic” does not do justice to the original notion, for although Aristotelian topoi may be organized
around subject matter, they focus more precisely on recommended strategies for successful arguing.
(The technical term derives from a Greek word referring to a physical location. Some scholars suggest
a link to ancient mnemonic techniques that superimposed lists on familiar physical locations as a
memory aid.) In relevant discussions (in the Topics and the Rhetoric) Aristotle offers helpful advice
about finding (or remembering) suitable premises, about verbally out-manoeuvring an opponent,
about finding forceful analogies, and so on. Examples of specific topoi would include discussions
about how to argue which is the better of two alternatives, how to substitute terms effectively, how
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to address issues about genus and property, how to argue about cause and effect, how to conceive of
sameness and difference, and so on. Some commentators suggest that different topoi may have been
used in a classroom situation in conjunction with student exercises and standardized texts, or with
written lists of endoxa, or even with ready-made arguments that students were expected to
memorize.
An aporia is a common device in Greek philosophy. The Greek word aporia (plural, aporiai) refers to a
physical location blocked off by obstacles where there is no way out; by extension, it means, in
philosophy, a mental perplexity, an impasse, a paradox or puzzle that stoutly resists solution.
Aristotle famously suggests that philosophers begin with aporiai and complete their task by resolving
the apparent paradoxes. An attentive reader will uncover many aporiai in Aristotle who begins many
of his treatises with a diaporia, a survey of the puzzles that occupied previous thinkers. Note
that aporiai cannot be solved through some mechanical rearrangement of symbolic terms. Solving
puzzles requires intelligence and discernment; it requires some creative insight into what is at stake.
15. Fallacies
In a short work entitled Sophistical Refutations, Aristotle introduces a theory of logical fallacies that
has been remarkably influential. His treatment is abbreviated and somewhat obscure, and there is
inevitably scholarly disagreement about precise exegesis. Aristotle thinks of fallacies as instances
of specious reasoning; they are not merely errors but hidden errors. A fallacy is an incorrect
reasoning strategy that gives the illusion of being sound or somehow conceals the underlying
problem. Aristotle divides fallacies into two broad categories: those which depend on language
(sometimes called verbal fallacies) and those that are independent of language (sometimes called
material fallacies). There is some scholarly disagreement about particular fallacies, but traditional
English names and familiar descriptions follow. Linguistic fallacies include: homonymy (verbal
equivocation), ambiguity (amphiboly or grammatical equivocation), composition (confusing parts with
a whole), division (confusing a whole with parts), accent (equivocation that arises out of
mispronunciation or misplaced emphasis) and figure of speech (ambiguity resulting from the form of
an expression). Independent fallacies include accident (overlooking exceptions), converse accident
(hasty generalization or improper qualification), irrelevant conclusion, affirming the consequent
(assuming an effect guarantees the presence of one possible cause), begging the question (assuming
the point), false cause, and complex question (disguising two or more questions as one). Logicians,
influenced by scholastic logic, often gave these characteristic mistakes Latin names: compositio for
composition, divisio for division, secundum quid et simpliciter for converse accident, ignoranti
enlenchi for nonrelevant conclusion, and petitio principii for begging the question.
Consider three brief examples of fallacies from Aristotle’s original text. Aristotle formulates the
following amphiboly (which admittedly sounds awkward in English): “I wish that you the enemy may
capture.” (Sophistical Refutations, 4.166a7-8, Pickard-Cambridge.) Clearly, the grammatical structure
of the statement leaves it ambiguous as to whether the speaker is hoping that the enemy or “you” be
captured. In discussing complex question, he supplies the following perplexing example: “Ought one
to obey the wise or one’s father?” (Ibid., 12.173a21.) Obviously, from a Greek perspective, one
ought to obey both. The problem is that the question has been worded in such a way that anyone
who answers will be forced to reject one moral duty in order to embrace the other. In fact, there are
two separate questions here—Should one obey the wise? Should one obey one’s father?—that have
been illegitimately combined to produce a single question with a single answer. Finally, Aristotle
provides the following time-honoured example of affirming the consequent: “Since after the rain the
ground is wet, we suppose that if the ground is wet, it has been raining; whereas that does not
necessarily follow” (Ibid., 5.167b5-8.) Aristotle’s point is that assuming that the same effect never

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has more than one cause misconstrues the true nature of the world. The same effect may have
several causes. Many of Aristotle’s examples have to do with verbal tricks which are entirely
unconvincing—for example, the person who commits the fallacy of division by arguing that the
number “5” is both even and odd because it can be divided into an even and an odd number: “2” and
“3.” (Ibid., 4.166a32-33.) But the interest here is theoretical: figuring out where an obviously-
incorrect argument or proposition went wrong. We should note that much of this text, which deals
with natural language argumentation, does not presuppose the syllogistic form. Aristotle does spend
a good bit of time considering how fallacies are related to one another. Fallacy theory, it is worth
adding, is a thriving area of research in contemporary argumentation theory. Some of these issues
are hotly debated.
16. Moral Reasoning
In the modern world, many philosophers have argued that morality is a matter of feelings, not
reason. Although Aristotle recognizes the connative (or emotional) side of morality, he takes a
decidedly different tack. As a virtue ethicis, he does not focus on moral law but views morality
through the lens of character. An ethical person develops a capacity for habitual decision-making that
aims at good, reliable traits such as honesty, generosity, high-mindedness, and courage. To modern
ears, this may not sound like reason-at-work, but Aristotle argues that only human beings—that
is, rational animals—are able to tell the difference between right and wrong. He widens his account
of rationality to include a notion of practical wisdom (phronesis), which he defines as “a true and
reasoned state of capacity to act with regard to the things that are good or bad for man.”
(Nicomachean Ethics, VI.5.1140b4-5, Ross, Urmson). The operation of practical wisdom, which is
more about doing than thinking, displays an inductive-deductive pattern similar to science as
represented in Figure 3. It depends crucially on intuition or nous. One induces the idea of specific
virtues (largely, through an exercise of non-discursive reason) and then deduces how to apply these
ideas to particular circumstances. (Some scholars make a strict distinction between “virtue” (areté)
understood as the mental capacity which induces moral ideas and “phronesis” understood as the
mental capacity which applies these ideas, but the basic structure of moral thinking remains the same
however strictly or loosely we define these two terms.)

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Figure 3
The Inductive-Deductive Method of Aristotelian Ethics
We can distinguish then between moral induction and moral deduction. In moral induction, we
induce an idea of courage, honesty, loyalty, and so on. We do this over time, beginning in our
childhood, through habit and upbringing. Aristotle writes that the successful moral agent “must be
born with an eye, as it were, by which to judge rightly and choose what is truly good.” (Ibid.,
VI.7.1114b6ff.) Once this intuitive capacity for moral discernment has been sufficiently developed—
once the moral eye is able to see the difference between right and wrong,—we can apply moral
norms to the concrete circumstances of our own lives. In moral deduction, we go on to apply the idea
of a specific virtue to a particular situation. We do not do this by formulating moral arguments inside
our heads, but by making reasonable decisions, by doing what is morally required given the
circumstances. Aristotle refers, in this connection, to the practical syllogism which results “in a
conclusion which is an action.” (Movement of Animals, 701a10ff, Farquharson.) Consider a
(somewhat simplified) example. Suppose I induce the idea of promise-keeping as a virtue and then
apply it to question of whether I should pay back the money I borrowed from my brother. The
corresponding theoretical syllogism would be: Promise-keeping is good; giving back the money I owe
my brother is an instance of promise-keeping; so giving the back the money I owe my brother is
good.” In the corresponding practical syllogism, I do not conclude with a statement: “this act is
good.” I go out and pay back the money I owe my brother. The physical exchange of money counts
as the conclusion. In Aristotle’s moral system, general moral principles play the role of an ostensible
definition in science. One induces a general principle and deduces a corresponding action. Aristotle
does believe that moral reasoning is a less rigorous form of reasoning than science, but chiefly
because scientific demonstrations deal with universals whereas the practical syllogism ends a single
act that must be fitted to contingent circumstances. There is never any suggestion that morality is
somehow arbitrary or subjective. One could set out the moral reasoning process using the moral
equivalent of an inductive syllogism and a scientific demonstration.
Although Aristotle provides a logical blueprint for the kind of reasoning that is going on in ethical
decision-making, he obviously does not view moral decision-making as any kind of mechanical or
algorithmic procedure. Moral induction and deduction represent, in simplified form, what is going
on. Throughout his ethics, Aristotle emphasizes the importance of context. The practice of morality
depends then on a faculty of keen discernment that notices, distinguishes, analyzes, appreciates,
generalizes, evaluates, and ultimately decides. In the Nicomachean Ethics, he includes practical
wisdom in his list of five intellectual virtues. (Scholarly commentators variously explicate the
relationship between the moral and the intellectual virtues.) Aristotle also discusses minor moral
virtues such as good deliberation (eubulia), theoretical moral understanding (sunesis), and
experienced moral judgement (gnome). And he equates moral failure with chronic ignorance or, in
the case of weakness of will (akrasia), with intermittent ignorance.
Aristotle Critique of Plato’s theory of Ideas
Plato (c. 428–c. 348 BCE) and Aristotle (384–322 BCE) are generally regarded as the two greatest
figures of Western philosophy. For some 20 years Aristotle was Plato’s student and colleague at
the Academy in Athens, an institution for philosophical, scientific, and mathematical research and
teaching founded by Plato in the 380s. Although Aristotle revered his teacher, his philosophy
eventually departed from Plato’s in important respects. Aristotle also investigated areas of philosophy
and fields of science that Plato did not seriously consider. According to a conventional view, Plato’s
philosophy is abstract and utopian, whereas Aristotle’s is empirical, practical, and commonsensical.
Such contrasts are famously suggested in the fresco School of Athens (1510–11) by the Italian

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Renaissance painter Raphael, which depicts Plato and Aristotle together in conversation, surrounded
by philosophers, scientists, and artists of earlier and later ages. Plato, holding a copy of his
dialogue Timeo (Timaeus), points upward to the heavens; Aristotle, holding his Etica (Ethics), points
outward to the world.
Although this view is generally accurate, it is not very illuminating, and it obscures what Plato and
Aristotle have in common and the continuities between them, suggesting wrongly that their
philosophies are polar opposites.
So how exactly does Plato’s philosophy differ from Aristotle’s? Here are three main differences.
Forms. The most fundamental difference between Plato and Aristotle concerns their theories
of forms. (When used to refer to forms as Plato conceived them, the term “Form” is conventionally
capitalized, as are the names of individual Platonic Forms. The term is lowercased when used to refer
to forms as Aristotle conceived them.) For Plato, the Forms are perfect exemplars, or ideal types, of
the properties and kinds that are found in the world. Corresponding to every such property or kind is
a Form that is its perfect exemplar or ideal type. Thus the properties “beautiful” and “black”
correspond to the Forms the Beautiful and the Black; the kinds “horse” and “triangle” correspond to
the Forms the Horse and the Triangle; and so on.
A thing has the properties it has, or belongs to the kind it belongs to, because it “participates” in the
Forms that correspond to those properties or kinds. A thing is a beautiful black horse because it
participates in the Beautiful, the Black, and the Horse; a thing is a large red triangle because it
participates in the Large, the Red, and the Triangle; a person is courageous and generous because he
or she participates in the Forms of Courage and Generosity; and so on.
For Plato, Forms are abstract objects, existing completely outside space and time. Thus they are
knowable only through the mind, not through sense experience. Moreover, because they are
changeless, the Forms possess a higher degree of reality than do things in the world, which are
changeable and always coming into or going out of existence. The task of philosophy, for Plato, is to
discover through reason (“dialectic”) the nature of the Forms, the only true reality, and their
interrelations, culminating in an understanding of the most fundamental Form, the Good or the One.
Aristotle rejected Plato’s theory of Forms but not the notion of form itself. For Aristotle, forms do not
exist independently of things—every form is the form of some thing. A “substantial” form is a kind
that is attributed to a thing, without which that thing would be of a different kind or would cease to
exist altogether. “Black Beauty is a horse” attributes a substantial form, horse, to a certain thing, the
animal Black Beauty, and without that form Black Beauty would not exist. Unlike substantial forms,
“accidental” forms may be lost or gained by a thing without changing its essential nature. “Black
Beauty is black” attributes an accidental form, blackness, to a certain animal, who could change color
(someone might paint him) without ceasing to be himself.
Substantial and accidental forms are not created, but neither are they eternal. They are introduced
into a thing when it is made, or they may be acquired later, as in the case of some accidental forms.
Ethics. For both Plato and Aristotle, as for most ancient ethicists, the central problem of ethics was
the achievement of happiness. By “happiness” (the usual English translation of the Greek
term eudaimonia), they did not mean a pleasant state of mind but rather a good human life, or a life
of human flourishing. The means by which happiness was acquired was through virtue. Thus ancient
ethicists typically addressed themselves to three related questions: (1) What does a good or
flourishing human life consist of?, (2) What virtues are necessary to achieve it?, and (3) How does one
acquire those virtues?
Plato’s early dialogues encompass explorations of the nature of various conventional virtues, such as
courage, piety, and temperance, as well as more general questions, such as whether virtue can be
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taught. Socrates (Plato’s teacher) is portrayed in conversation with presumed experts and the
occasional celebrity; invariably, Socrates exposes their definitions as inadequate. Although Socrates
does not offer his own definitions, claiming to be ignorant, he suggests that virtue is a kind of
knowledge, and that virtuous action (or the desire to act virtuously) follows necessarily from having
such knowledge—a view held by the historical Socrates, according to Aristotle.
In Plato’s later dialogue Republic, which is understood to convey his own views, the character
Socrates develops a theory of “justice” as a condition of the soul. As described in that work, the just
or completely virtuous person is the one whose soul is in harmony, because each of its three parts—
Reason, Spirit, and Appetite—desires what is good and proper for it and acts within proper limits. In
particular, Reason understands and desires the good of the individual (the human good) and the Good
in general. Such understanding of the Form of the Good, however, can be acquired only through years
of training in dialectic and other disciplines, an educational program that the Republic also describes.
Ultimately, only philosophers can be completely virtuous.
Characteristically, for Aristotle, happiness is not merely a condition of the soul but a kind of right
activity. The good human life, he held, must consist primarily of whatever activity is characteristically
human, and that is reasoning. The good life is therefore the rational activity of the soul, as guided by
the virtues. Aristotle recognized both intellectual virtues, chiefly wisdom and understanding, and
practical or moral virtues, including courage and temperance. The latter kinds of virtue typically can
be conceived as a mean between two extremes (a temperate person avoids eating or drinking too
much but also eating or drinking too little). In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle held that happiness is
the practice of philosophical contemplation in a person who has cultivated all of the intellectual and
moral virtues over much of a lifetime. In the Eudemian Ethics, happiness is the exercise of the moral
virtues specifically in the political realm, though again the other intellectual and moral virtues are
presupposed.
Politics. The account of justice presented in Plato’s Republic is not only a theory of virtue but also a
theory of politics. Indeed, the character Socrates there develops a theory of political justice as a
means of advancing the ethical discussion, drawing an analogy between the three parts of the soul—
Reason, Spirit, and Appetite—and the three classes of an ideal state (i.e., city-state)—Rulers, Soldiers,
and Producers (e.g., artisans and farmers). In the just state as in the just individual, the three parts
perform the functions proper to them and in harmony with the other parts. In particular, the Rulers
understand not only the good of the state but, necessarily, the Good itself, the result of years of
rigorous training to prepare them for their leadership role. Plato envisioned that the Rulers would live
simply and communally, having no private property and even sharing sexual partners (notably, the
rulers would include women). All children born from the Rulers and the other classes would be tested,
those showing the most ability and virtue being admitted to training for rulership.
The political theory of Plato’s Republic is notorious for its assertion that only philosophers should rule
and for its hostility toward democracy, or rule by the many. In the latter respect it broadly reflects the
views of the historical Socrates, whose criticisms of the democracy of Athens may have played a role
in his trial and execution for impiety and other crimes in 399. In one of his last works, the Laws, Plato
outlined in great detail a mixed constitution incorporating elements of
both monarchy and democracy. Scholars are divided over the question of whether the Laws indicates
that Plato changed his mind about the value of democracy or was simply making practical concessions
in light of the limitations of human nature. According to the latter view, the state of
the Republic remained Plato’s ideal, or utopia, while that of the Laws represented the best that could
be achieved in realistic circumstances, according to him.

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In political theory, Aristotle is famous for observing that “man is a political animal,” meaning that
human beings naturally form political communities. Indeed, it is impossible for human beings to thrive
outside a community, and the basic purpose of communities is to promote human flourishing.
Aristotle is also known for having devised a classification of forms of government and for introducing
an unusual definition of democracy that was never widely accepted.
According to Aristotle, states may be classified according to the number of their rulers and the
interests in which they govern. Rule by one person in the interest of all is monarchy; rule by one
person in his own interest is tyranny. Rule by a minority in the interest of all is aristocracy; rule by a
minority in the interest of itself is oligarchy. Rule by a majority in the interest of all is “polity”; rule by
a majority in its own interest—i.e., mob rule—is “democracy.” In theory, the best form of government
is monarchy, and the next best is aristocracy. However, because monarchy and aristocracy frequently
devolve into tyranny and oligarchy, respectively, in practice the best form is polity.
Aristotle’s Criticism
Aristotle’s Criticism of Plato Aristotle has stated that, “Wisdom will never die with Plato”, and on
another occasion he said, Plato is dear, but truth is dearer. As mentioned above, while Academy was
dedicated to speculative and political philosophy, Lyceum took biology and natural sciences seriously.
But metaphysics or first philosophy occupies a central role in his scheme of things as well. According
to him, mathematical and physical sciences treat of the quantity, quality, and relations of things.
On the other hand, the first philosophy deals with the category of substance and also studies the
causes of things. It enquires into the nature of being without considering the conditions imposed by
space and time. The absolute and necessary being, as understood by Aristotle, is the eternal essence
of things as opposed to the relative, contingent, and accidental. In this regard he agrees with Plato to
a great deal.
Aristotle’s major criticism of Plato’s philosophy targeted the latter’s idea of universal essences. For
Plato they are universal and objective realities and they exist independent of objects. They are eternal
and imperishable and the objects in the world are fundamentally unreal and are mere copies of these
eternal essences.
Aristotle agrees with Plato on many counts. But he opposes the latter’s transcendentalism, which
maintains that the essences are apart from the things. According to Aristotle, essences or forms are
immanent to things.
As Russell says, Aristotle considered them as common nouns and not as objective realities and things.
Any name capable of universal application to the members of a class represents a universal. Opposing
Plato’s theory, which posits them as abstract original forms to which objects “participate”, Aristotle
initiates the third man argument.
Third Man Argument
This argument aims at criticizing Plato’s theory of ideas, which according to Aristotle states that, “a
man is a man because he resembles or participates in the idea of man in the world of essences.”
Aristotle states that, if a man is a man because he resembles the ideal man, there must be a still more
ideal man to whom both ordinary men and the ideal man are similar.
Aristotle intends to demonstrate that the notion of imitation or copying used in the theory of forms
runs into logical difficulties. In order to explain the similarity between a man and the form of man,
one needs to construe a third form of man, and this always requires another form and hence the
theory of ideas leads to ad infinitum.
Aristotle further asks whether the ideal man is an ideal animal. If he is, there must be as many ideal
animals as there are species of animals. Again, how does the perfect and the eternal world be held

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responsible for the imperfect and perishable world of material objects? Plato’s transcendentalism
conceived Ideas as real beings existing apart from the individuals, which express them. Aristotle finds
this position objectionable. He asks, if the general Idea is the substance of the particulars or the
essence of the things, how can it exist apart from that of which it is the substance and the essence?
He affirms that the general cannot exist outside of and along side of the particular.
According to him ideas considered as such and apart from the things, are not real beings or
substances. Opposing Plato he maintains that the phenomenal world is not unreal and argues that
both form and matter coexist in the world of objects. Their coexistence is responsible for the
existence of the world we live. Since he considers this world as real he finds it worthwhile in pursuing
knowledge about it. This makes natural scientific investigations meaningful and important. He
maintains that genuine scientific knowledge is not a mere acquaintance with facts as knowledge
consists in knowing the reasons and causes of things and it should explain why they cannot be other
than what they are. The theory of form-matter coexistence answers these fundamental questions.
Aristotle asserts that ideas do not and cannot exist apart from things. On the other hand, they are
inherent or immanent in things. The idea is the form of the thing, and cannot be separated from it
except by abstraction. It is the essence of the particular and with it constitutes an indivisible whole.
For example, Aristotle would hold that there is manness because there are actual men in this world.
There is parenthood, because there are parents. Russell elucidates Aristotle’s argument of
immanence with an interesting simile. He says that, when we say "there is such a thing as the game of
football," it will be nonsensical to assume that football could exist without football-players. Russell in
his usual style of language analysis explains Aristotle’s position in the following way.
And this dependence is thought to be not reciprocal: the men who play football would still
exist even if they never played football; things which are usually sweet may turn sour; and my
face, which is usually red, may turn pale without ceasing to be my face. In this way we are led
to conclude that what is meant by an adjective is dependent for its being on what is meant by a
proper name, but not vice versa. This is, I think, what Aristotle means. His doctrine on this
point, as on many others, is a common-sense prejudice pedantically expressed.
Aristotle’s concept of matter is unique. According to him matter is coexistent with form and different
forms design matter differently in the process of evolution of objects. It is something that changes
and Aristotle believed that each concrete instance of matter has an inner purpose. It is destined to
become something. But Aristotle also maintains that matter has no reality apart from the form, as
matter without the Idea is also an abstraction like Idea apart from particular object. We shall take a
concrete example of a pen in order to understand the concept of matter and matter-form
relationship.
Consider the form and matter of a ball pen. The form of the ball point pen is constituted by the
properties of the pen, it has a ball point, it has ink in it, it can be used to write and can be held by the
hand. Matter on the other hand is the material stuff to which these properties are attached to, the
material by which the pen is made up of etc.
The form of the pen, he affirms, is inherent in the material stuff. The former does not have an
existence apart from and independent of the latter or many such pens. But in a unique manner, the
form is independent, as it does not depend on any particular pen in this world. At the same time,
Aristotle is not prepared to separate the form completely from the actual pens in the world.
Aristotle’s philosophical perspective advocates avoiding the extremes and adopting a middle path. His
metaphysical theory thus adopts a position, which avoids the extremes of Platonism and Atomism. He
rejects Plato’s view, which considers essences alone as real and the material world as illusion. As a
consequence of his idealism, Plato also affirmed that all change is an illusion. The Atomists, on the

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other hand, advocated a unique form of materialism, which holds that everything is made up of
atoms.
According to them, the ultimate reality is constitutive of atoms and they try to explain the nature of
reality and world in quantitative terms. They hold that atoms have no natural properties and all
qualities and nature of objects result from a combination of atoms. Atoms themselves have no
natural qualities. To this Aristotle responds by arguing that, if qualities and properties are not actually
there but are only illusions, then the sensible world cannot be trusted. Aristotle holds that everything
that exists has a definite nature and hence is potential to become something. Aristotle explains
matter in terms of substantial material elements:
1) earth,
2) water,
3) fire,
4) air and
5) ether.
These five basic elements have qualities and each is distinguished from the other in terms of their
unique quality and hence things have definite nature. Hence the Atomists’ doctrine is unacceptable
for him. Aristotle says that these qualities can transfer through matter. One important aspect of
Aristotle’s metaphysics is his conception that all change is evolution. He maintains that all change is
evolution. Form and matter, according to him, eternally coexist as they cannot be separated from one
another. The form of an object changes when it evolves into another thing. For example, seed into
tree. Here matter remains more or less the same and different forms design the matter differently. In
this process of evolution, the seed becomes a tree; it realizes its purpose.
Aristotle here provides a teleological explanation of the universe in terms of the matter-form
relationship. Though the forms are eternal and non-perishable—and here Aristotle subscribes to the
Platonic view—he maintains that they are nevertheless not transcendent. It is often stated that
Aristotle has brought forms from heaven to earth. According to him, they are not apart from things
but in them. They are not transcendent, but immanent.
On the other hand, matter too is equally real and eternal. It is not non-being, but dynamic and is in
the process of change. Matter realizes the form or idea of the thing in the process of evolution.
Aristotle explains the problem of change in the world with this dualism of form and matter and their
constant coexistence. Here Aristotle significantly deviates from Plato’s position, which held that all
change is illusion.
According to Plato the material world is a copy and hence no knowledge is possible about it. We can
form only opinions about it. Aristotle, on the other hand considers the material world as real and
explains it in terms of the above described form-matter coexistence. His conception of change
becomes relevant in this context. His theory of change is different from most of his predecessors.
Unlike Plato and Parmanedes, he never treated change as unreal and an illusion. But he does not
agree with Heraclitus and others who find nothing but blind change as real. Aristotle adopts a middle
path and affirms that all change is not illusion. Change is not blind, but purposeful and meaningful.
Every entity in nature is actually something and has to potential to become something else. For
example, the seed is actually a seed but it has the potential to become a tree. According to Aristotle,
in the seed state, the form of seed fashions or shapes in order to make it an actual seed. But as the
seed progresses to the tree, it gets shaped and designed by different other forms. Finally the seed
actualizes its potentials and becomes a tree.
Aristotle thus considers both change and permanence are real. In change it is the form that changes
while the matter remains the same. Change occurs when the arrangement of the matter changes.
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Even though the form of an object can change, it is form, not matter, that provides the order and
permanence in the world. The matter of all things is ultimately the same. Underlying this conception
of change is his idea that all change is purposeful, because, according to him all change is evolution.
He further explains this theory with a teleological explanation. He contends that the essential form of
a thing determines what an object is and it guides the changes and development of that thing. Hence
changes are not blind or illusory, but are intelligible. During evolution an organism realizes its
purpose. Hence, there is no concept of complete change.
Only some aspects of the form of a thing changes and as long as a thing remains in existence, its
essential form remains the same. An apple seed will evolve into an apple tree and not to anything
else. The form of the matter changes in those ways that are necessary for it to become an apple tree.
Again, while Plato rejected the world as illusion, for Aristotle it is real. The world is not just an
imitation or a shadow, but a reality and hence it is possible to have knowledge about it. Consequently,
Aristotle believes that studying the processes of the natural world is not worthless. This approach to
the physical world and knowledge about it had encouraged the growth of natural sciences. We can
see that the systematic study of natural sciences began with Aristotle’s systematic approach to the
knowledge about the natural world. It was he who initiated the classification of the living universe as
species and genera, which even today lies at the foundation of elementary scientific enquiries.
Aristotle’s Ethical Theory
As mentioned above, Aristotle adopts a teleological approach and attempts to explain everything,
including human reality with the assumption that the nature of reality, including the human world,
can be explained teleologically; as the actualization of a purpose. According to him, the purpose of
human life is eudemonia. Before we explain what this constitutes, let us examine his conception of
human reality.
Aristotle conceived ethics as a very important science and according to him it deals with actual human
behavior. Unlike Plato, he affirmed that the empirical world and life in it are valuable. But unlike the
materialists, he adopts a teleological conception of human life and hence conceived that there is a
higher purpose to life, which needs to be realized in our present life in this world. Russell comments
that, Aristotle's metaphysics, roughly speaking, may be described as Plato diluted by common sense.
He is difficult because Plato and common sense do not mix easily.
Theory of causation
Each Aristotelian science consists in the causal investigation of a specific department of reality. If
successful, such an investigation results in causal knowledge; that is, knowledge of the relevant or
appropriate causes. The emphasis on the concept of cause explains why Aristotle developed a theory
of causality which is commonly known as the doctrine of the four causes. For Aristotle, a firm grasp of
what a cause is, and how many kinds of causes there are, is essential for a successful investigation of
the world around us.
As will become clear in due course, Aristotle is committed to a form of causal pluralism. For Aristotle,
there are four distinct and irreducible kinds of causes. The focus of this entry is on the systematic
interrelations among these four kinds of causes.
The Four Causes
In the Posterior Analytics, Aristotle places the following crucial condition on proper knowledge: we
think we have knowledge of a thing only when we have grasped its cause. That proper knowledge is
knowledge of the cause is repeated in the Physics: we think we do not have knowledge of a thing until
we have grasped its why, that is to say, its cause. Since Aristotle obviously conceives of a causal
investigation as the search for an answer to the question “why?”, and a why-question is a request for
an explanation, it can be useful to think of a cause as a certain type of explanation.
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Needless to say, not all why-questions are requests for an explanation that identifies a cause, let
alone a cause in the particular sense envisioned by Aristotle. Still, Aristotle is clearly committed to the
view that giving the relevant cause (or causes) is necessary and sufficient for offering a scientific
explanation. His conception of a cause has both a metaphysical and an epistemological component.
Part of the challenge for us is to do justice to both components. Following a recent suggestion, we
may say that “causes are not ways in which we explain things, except derivatively, in virtue of the fact
that they are ways in which some elements of the natural world explain others”.
In Physics II 3 and Metaphysics V 2, Aristotle offers his general account of the four causes. This
account is general in the sense that it applies to everything that requires an explanation, including
artistic production and human action. Here Aristotle recognizes four kinds of things that can be given
in answer to a why-question:
 The material cause: “that out of which”, e.g., the bronze of a statue.
 The formal cause: “the form”, “the account of what-it-is-to-be”, e.g., the shape of a statue.
 The efficient cause: “the primary source of the change or rest”, e.g., the artisan, the art of
bronze-casting the statue, the man who gives advice, the father of the child.
 The final cause: “the end, that for the sake of which a thing is done”, e.g., health is the end of
walking, losing weight, purging, drugs, and surgical tools.
All the four (kinds of) causes may enter in the explanation of something. Consider the production of
an artifact like a bronze statue. The bronze enters in the explanation of the production of the statue
as the material cause. Note that the bronze is not only the material out of which the statue is made; it
is also the subject of change, that is, the thing that undergoes the change and results in a statue. The
bronze is melted and poured in order to acquire a new shape, the shape of the statue. This shape
enters in the explanation of the production of the statue as the formal cause. However, an adequate
explanation of the production of a statue requires also a reference to the efficient cause or the
principle that produces the statue.
This result is mildly surprising and requires a few words of elaboration. There is no doubt that the art
of bronze-casting resides in an individual artisan who is responsible for the production of the statue.
According to Aristotle, however, all the artisan does in the production of the statue is the
manifestation of specific knowledge. This knowledge, not the artisan who has mastered it, is the
salient explanatory factor that one should pick as the most accurate specification of the efficient
cause. By picking the art, not the artisan, Aristotle is not just trying to provide an explanation of the
production of the statue that is not dependent upon the desires, beliefs and intentions of the
individual artisan; he is trying to offer an entirely different type of explanation–namely, an
explanation that does not make a reference (implicit or explicit) to these desires, beliefs and
intentions. More directly, the art of bronze-casting the statue enters in the explanation as the
efficient cause because it helps us to understand what it takes to produce the statue; that is to say,
what steps are required to produce the statue. But can an explanation of this type be given without a
reference to the final outcome of the production, the statue? The answer is emphatically “no”. A
model is made for producing the statue. A mold is prepared for producing the statue. The bronze is
melted and poured for producing the statue. Both the prior and the subsequent stage are for the sake
of a certain end, the production of the statue. Clearly, the statue enters in the explanation of each
step of the artistic production as the final cause or that for the sake of which everything in the
production process is done.
In thinking about the four causes, we have come to understand that Aristotle offers a teleological
explanation of the production of a bronze statue; that is to say, an explanation that makes a reference
to the telos or end of the process. Moreover, a teleological explanation of the type sketched above
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does not crucially depend upon the application of psychological concepts such as desires, beliefs and
intentions. This is important because artistic production provides Aristotle with a teleological model
for the study of natural processes, whose explanation does not involve beliefs, desires, intentions or
anything of this sort. Some have objected that Aristotle explains natural process on the basis of an
inappropriately psychological teleological model; that is to say, a teleological model that involves a
purposive agent who is somehow sensitive to the end. This objection can be met if the artistic model
is understood in non-psychological terms. In other words, Aristotle does not psychologize nature
because his study of the natural world is based on a teleological model that is consciously free from
psychological factors.
One final clarification is in order. By insisting on the art of bronze-casting as the most accurate
efficient cause of the production of the statue, Aristotle does not mean to preclude an appeal to the
beliefs and desires of the individual artisan. On the contrary, there are cases where the individual
realization of the art obviously enters in the explanation of the bronze statue. For example, one may
be interested in a particular bronze statue because that statue is the great achievement of an artisan
who has not only mastered the art but has also applied it with a distinctive style. In this case it is
perfectly appropriate to make reference to the beliefs and desires of the artisan. Aristotle seems to
make room for this case when he says that we should look “for general causes of general things and
for particular causes of particular things”. Note, however, that the idiosyncrasies that may be
important in studying a particular bronze statue as the great achievement of an individual artisan may
be extraneous to a more central (and more interesting) case. To understand why let us focus on the
study of nature. When the student of nature is concerned with the explanation of a natural
phenomenon like the formation of sharp teeth in the front and broad molars in the back of the
mouth, the student of nature is concerned with what is typical about that phenomenon. In other
words, the student of nature is expected to provide an explanation of why certain
animals typically have a certain dental arrangement. We shall return to this example in due course.
For the time being, it is important to emphasize this important feature of the explanatory project
attempted by Aristotle; a feature that we must keep in mind in trying to understand his theory of
causality. This theory has in fact been developed primarily (but not exclusively) for the study of
nature.
3. The Four Causes and the Science of Nature
In the Physics, Aristotle builds on his general account of the four causes by developing explanatory
principles that are specific to the study of nature. Here Aristotle insists that all four causes are
involved in the explanation of natural phenomena, and that the job of “the student of nature is to
bring the why-question back to them all in the way appropriate to the science of nature”. The best
way to understand this methodological recommendation is the following: the science of nature is
concerned with natural bodies insofar as they are subject to change, and the job of the student of
nature is to provide the explanation of their natural change. The factors that are involved in the
explanation of natural change turn out to be matter, form, that which produces the change, and the
end of this change. Note that Aristotle does not say that all four explanatory factors are involved in
the explanation of each and every instance of natural change. Rather, he says that an adequate
explanation of natural change may involve a reference to all of them.
Aristotle goes on by adding a specification on his doctrine of the four causes: the form and the end
often coincide, and they are formally the same as that which produces the change. This is one of the
several times where Aristotle offers the slogan “it takes a human being to generate a human being”.
This slogan is designed to point at the fundamental fact that the generation of a human being can be
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The question thus arises as to what it takes for a human being to be fully developed. Aristotle frames
his answer in terms of the human form, maintaining that a human form is fully realized at the end of
generation. But this does not explain why it takes a human being to generate a human being. Note,
however, that a fully developed human being is not only the end of generation; it is also what initiates
the entire process. For Aristotle, the ultimate moving principle responsible for the generation of a
human being is a fully developed living creature of the same kind; that is, a human being who is
formally the same as the end of generation. (A final clarification is in order here: Aristotle is
committed to a hylomorphic explanation of animal generation. His considered view is that the father
supplies the form whereas the mother provides the matter.)
Thus, the student of nature is often left with three types of causes: the formal/final cause, the
efficient cause, and the material cause. However, the view that there are in nature causes besides
material and efficient causes was controversial in antiquity. According to Aristotle, most of his
predecessors recognized only the material and the efficient cause. This explains why Aristotle cannot
be content with saying that formal and final causes often coincide, but he also has to defend his thesis
against an opponent who denies that final causality is a genuine mode of causality.
4. Final Causes Defended
Physics II 8 contains Aristotle’s most general defense of final causality. Here Aristotle establishes that
explaining nature requires final causality by discussing a difficulty that may be advanced by an
opponent who denies that there are final causes in nature. Aristotle shows that an opponent who
claims that material and efficient causes alone suffice to explain natural change fails to account for
their characteristic regularity. Before considering how the defense is attempted, however, it is
important to clarify that this defense does not perform the function of a proof. By showing that an
approach to the study of nature that ignores final causality cannot account for a crucial aspect of
nature, Aristotle does not thereby prove that there are final causes in nature. Strictly speaking, the
only way to prove that nature exhibits final causality is to establish it on independent grounds. But
this is not what Aristotle does in Physics II 8. Final causality is here introduced as the best explanation
for an aspect of nature which otherwise would remain unexplained.
The difficulty that Aristotle discusses is introduced by considering the way in which rain works. It rains
because of material processes which can be specified as follows: when the warm air that has been
drawn up is cooled off and becomes water, then this water comes down as rain. It may happen that
the corn in the field is nourished or the harvest is spoiled as a result of the rain, but it does not rain
for the sake of any good or bad result. The good or bad result is just a coincidence. So, why cannot all
natural change work in the same way? For example, why cannot it be merely a coincidence that the
front teeth grow sharp and suitable for tearing the food and the molars grow broad and useful for
grinding the food? When the teeth grow in just this way, then the animal survives. When they do not,
then the animal dies. More directly, and more explicitly, the way the teeth grow is not for the sake of
the animal, and its survival or its death is just a coincidence.
Aristotle’s reply is that the opponent is expected to explain why the teeth regularly grow in the way
they do: sharp teeth in the front and broad molars in the back of the mouth. Moreover, since this
dental arrangement is suitable for biting and chewing the food that the animal takes in, the opponent
is expected to explain the regular connection between the needs of the animal and the formation of
its teeth. Either there is a real causal connection between the formation of the teeth and the needs of
the animal, or there is no real causal connection and it just so happens that the way the teeth grow is
good for the animal. In this second case it is just a coincidence that the teeth grow in a way that it is
good for the animal. But this does not explain the regularity of the connection. Where there is
regularity there is also a call for an explanation, and coincidence is no explanation at all. In other

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words, to say that the teeth grow as they do by material necessity and this is good for the animal by
coincidence is to leave unexplained the regular connection between the growth of the teeth and the
needs of the animal. Aristotle offers final causality as his explanation for this regular connection: the
teeth grow in the way they do for biting and chewing food and this is good for the animal.
One thing to be appreciated about Aristotle’s reply is that the final cause enters in the explanation of
the formation of the parts of an organism like an animal as something that is good either for the
existence or the flourishing of the animal. In the first case, something is good for the animal because
the animal cannot survive without it; in the second case, something is good for the animal because
the animal is better off with it. This helps us to understand why in introducing the concept of end
(telos) that is relevant to the study of natural processes Aristotle insists on its goodness: “not
everything that is last claims to be an end (telos), but only that which is best”.
Once his defense of the use of final causes is firmly in place, Aristotle can make a step further by
focusing on the role that matter plays in his explanatory project. Let us return to the example chosen
by Aristotle, the regular growth of sharp teeth in the front and broad molars in the back of the mouth.
What explanatory role is left for the material processes involved in the natural process? Aristotle does
not seem to be able to specify what material processes are involved in the growth of the teeth, but he
is willing to recognize that certain material processes have to take place for the teeth to grow in the
particular way they do. In other words, there is more to the formation of the teeth than these
material processes, but this formation does not occur unless the relevant material processes take
place. For Aristotle, these material processes are that which is necessary to the realization of a
specific goal; that which is necessary on the hypothesis that the end is to be obtained.
Hypothetical necessity is often equated to conditional necessity. But this equation can be a first
approximation at best. Stating the conditions under which something is the case is not yet giving a
successful explanation. In other words, conditional necessity is a wider, and indeed weaker, notion
than hypothetical necessity.
Physics II 9 is entirely devoted to the introduction of the concept of hypothetical necessity and its
relevance for the explanatory ambition of Aristotle’s science of nature. In this chapter, matter is
reconfigured as hypothetical necessity. By so doing Aristotle acknowledges the explanatory relevance
of the material processes, while at the same time he emphasizes their dependency upon a specific
end.
5. The Explanatory Priority of Final Causes
In the Physics, Aristotle builds on his general account of the four causes in order to provide the
student of nature with the explanatory resources indispensable for a successful investigation of the
natural world. However, the Physics does not provide all the explanatory resources for all natural
investigations. Aristotle returns to the topic of causality in the first book of the Parts of Animals. This
is a relatively independent and self-contained treatise entirely devoted to developing the explanatory
resources required for a successful study of animals and animal life. Here Aristotle completes his
theory of causality by arguing for the explanatory priority of the final cause over the efficient cause.
Significantly enough, there is no attempt to argue for the existence of four fundamental modes of
causality in the first book of the Parts of Animals. Evidently, Aristotle expects his reader to be already
familiar with his general account of the four causes as well as his defense of final causality. The
problem that here concerns Aristotle is presented in the following way: since both the final and the
efficient cause are involved in the explanation of natural generation, we have to establish what is first
and what is second. Aristotle argues that there is no other way to explain natural generation than by
reference to what lies at the end of the process. This has explanatory priority over the principle that is
responsible for initiating the process of generation. Aristotle relies on the analogy between artistic

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production and natural generation, and the teleological model that he has developed for the
explanation of artistic production. Consider, for example, house-building. There is no other way to
explain how a house is built, or is being built, than by reference to the final result of the process, the
house. More directly, the bricks and the beams are put together in the particular way they are for the
sake of achieving a certain end: the production of the house. This is true also in the case of natural
generation. In this context Aristotle’ slogan is “generation is for the sake of substance, not substance
for the sake of generation”. This means that the proper way to explain the generation of an organism
like an animal, or the formation of its parts, is by reference to the product that lies at the end of the
process; that is to say, a substance of a certain type.
From Aristotle we learn that Empedocles explained the articulation of the human spine into vertebrae
as the result of the twisting and turning that takes place when the fetus is in the womb of the mother.
Aristotle finds this explanation unacceptable. To begin with, the fetus must have the power to twist
and turn in the way it does, and Empedocles does not have an explanation for this fact. Secondly, and
more importantly, Empedocles overlooks the fact that it takes a human being to generate a human
being. That is to say, the originating principle of the generation is a fully developed human being
which is formally the same as the final outcome of the process of generation. It is only by looking at
the fully developed human being that we can understand why our spine is articulated into vertebrae
and why the vertebrae are arranged in the particular way they are. This amounts to finding the role
that the spine has in the life of a fully developed human being. Moreover, it is only by looking at the
fully developed human being that we can explain why the formation of the vertebrae takes place in
the particular way it does.
Perhaps we are now in the position to understand how Aristotle argues that there are four kinds of
causes and at the same time says that proper knowledge is knowledge of the cause or knowledge
of the why. Admittedly, at least at first sight, this is a bit confusing. Confusion dissolves when we
realize that Aristotle recognizes the explanatory primacy of the final/formal cause over the efficient
and material cause. Of course this does not mean that the other causes can be eliminated. Quite the
contrary: Aristotle is adamant that, for a full range of cases, all four causes must be given in order to
give an explanation. More explicitly, for a full range of cases, an explanation which fails to invoke all
four causes is no explanation at all. At the same time, however, the final/formal cause is the primary
cause and knowledge of this cause amounts to knowledge of the why.
6. The Explanation of a Lunar Eclipse
We have already seen that Aristotle is not committed to the view that everything has all four kinds of
causes, Rather, his view is that a scientific explanation requires up to four kinds of causes. We may
illustrate this point with the help of an example. Consider, in particular, the case of a lunar eclipse. In
the Metaphysics, Aristotle says that an eclipse of the moon does not have a final cause. He also says
that, strictly speaking, a lunar eclipse does not have matter. Rather, it has a cause that plays a
role analogous to matter. This second claim can be inferred from what Aristotle says about the things
that exist by nature but are not substances. With respect to these things, Aristotle says that they do
not have matter but rather something that underlies. In the case of a lunar eclipse, that which
underlies is the subject affected by the eclipse, that is, the moon. The moon is not strictly speaking
the matter of the eclipse but rather the subject that undergoes an eclipse when the earth comes in
the middle between the moon and the sun. Should we give the earth as the efficient cause of a lunar
eclipse? We have to be careful here. By saying that the moon is a deprivation of light caused by the
earth, we distinguish this particular deprivation of light from other kinds of deprivation of light. Still,
by citing the earth as the efficient cause of a lunar eclipse, we are not yet giving the most precise
description of the efficient cause. More directly, we are not yet saying what the earth is doing to

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cause a lunar eclipse. A lunar eclipse is a deprivation of light caused by the interposition of the earth
between the sun and the moon. By coming in the middle of the moon and the sun the earth blocks
the light and causes the moon to suffer an eclipse. Hence, it is the interposition of the earth between
the sun and the moon is the proximate efficient cause of a lunar eclipse. Citing the proximate efficient
cause is also giving the most accurate description, and indeed the full explanation, of a lunar eclipse.
This brief discussion of the explanation of eclipse of the moon brings us back to a point that was
already made in connection with Aristotle’s explanation of the production of an artifact such as a
bronze statue. There too we are required to look for the most accurate description of the efficient
cause, which is to be identified with the art of bronze-casting a statue rather than the artisan. It is
possible to build on both examples to conclude that Aristotle is concerned not only with finding the
relevant kinds of causes but also with giving the most accurate description of those causes. By his
lights, it is only the most accurate description of all the relevant causes that gives us the full
explanation, and thereby scientific knowledge, of something.
Aristotle: the body and soul
According to Aristotle a living creature is ‘substance’.
Body = matter
Soul = form
The soul (psyche) is the structure of the body - its function and organization. This was the word
Greeks gave to the animator, the living force in a living being. For Aristotle the psyche controlled
reproduction, movement and perception.
In contrast Aristotle regarded reason (nous) as the highest form of rationality. He believed that the
‘unmoved mover’ of the universe was a cosmic nous.
Aristotle thought that the soul is the Form of the body. The soul is simply the sum total of the
operations of a human being.
Aristotle believed that there exists a hierarchy of living things – plants only have a vegetative soul,
animals are above plants because they have appetites, humans are above animals because it has the
power of reason.
Aristotle tries to explain his understanding of the distinction between the body and the soul using the
analogy of an axe. If an axe were a living thing then its body would be made of wood and metal.
However, its soul would be the thing which made it an axe i.e. its capacity to chop. If it lost its ability
to chop it would cease to be an axe – it would simply be wood and metal.
Another illustration he uses is the eye. If the eye were an animal, sight would have to be its soul.
When the eye no longer sees then it is an eye in name only.
Likewise, a dead animal is only an animal in name only – it has the same body but it has lost its soul.
What is important for Aristotle is the end purpose of something – an axe chops, an eye sees, an
animal is animated…etc. This is what is meant by ‘teleology’ from the Greek teleoV meaning end.
For Aristotle, the body and soul are not two separate elements but are one thing. The body and the
soul are not, as Plato would have it, two distinct entities, but are different parts or aspects of the
same thing.
Aristotle does not allow for the possibility of the immortality of the soul. The soul is simply the Form
of the body, and is not capable of existing without the body. The soul is that which makes a person a
person rather than just a lump of meat! Without the body the soul cannot exist. The soul dies along
with the body.
Aristotle appears to make one exception – reason (nous). However, he is not clear about how this
reason survives death or whether or not it is personal.

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Criticisms of Aristotle
Aristotle dismisses Plato’s Realms saying there is no clear evidence for them. Instead he appeals to
our senses, claiming that it through them that we experience reality. However, we are still left with
the problem that there is no clear evidence that our senses are reliable. A religious person might
argue that we know the world through faith and revelation.
There is no clear evidence that everything does have a final cause. Some philosophers deny that there
is any purpose to the universe. Such philosophers claim that the universe has no intrinsic purpose
other than existing.
The concept of the an Unmoved Mover - or Prime Mover depends upon the argument that everything
must have a cause. The argument then contradicts itself by claiming that God does exactly what it
claims is impossible.
Aristotle does not adequately explain how God as a thinking force could be responsible for causing
movement. On the one hand he stresses that real knowledge beings with the senses but the concept
of something being moved just through thought is not what most of us experience.
Aristotle's Influence on Christian Thought
Aristotle’s philosophy found new found interest in the writings of Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth
century. Just like Plato, theologians tend to pick and choose the bits that they like. Christian
theologians have adopted:
 God is eternal, beyond space and time, immutable
 The universe has a purpose
 God is the Final Cause – the Unmoved Mover – the Christian cosmological argument for the
existence of God
 Aristotle’s teleology supports Aquinas’ Natural Law
Aristotle’s Concept of Matter and Form
Aristotle was interested in the material world which he saw about him. He was interested in the
nature of things and their substance. However, Aristotle was still interested in questions such as ‘what
is it about a table that gives it its tableness?’ However, unlike his teacher Plato, Aristotle believed that
the form of an object was not some kind of abstract ideal. He believed that the form of an object was
contained within the object itself. To put it another way, its form was within the structure itself. This
meant that the form of an object could be perceived using ones senses.
Aristotle uses the word substance in many ways which often makes it difficult to grasp his concept.
Let us look at the example of a table. The substance of a table is the wood and the nails and the glue.
However, the form of the table is that it has four legs…etc.
To confuse things further, Aristotle also used the word matter to mean the stuff of which something
was made. A chair’s matter is wood! Its form is the structure of the chair itself – i.e. that particular
chair NOT some abstract universal.
This allowed Aristotle to also wondered whether it was possible that something could have matter
but no form. He concluded that there could be prime matter or stuff that has no particular form and
not arranged in any particular structure. Likewise, Aristotle wondered whether something could have
form and structure without having matter. He proposed that something that has form and structure
without matter is God.
Aristotle’s Four Causes
Aristotle wanted to ask ‘what causes something to be what it is, to have the characteristics that it has,
or to change in the way that it does?’ This sort of questioning is often found in small children.

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Sometimes they go through a phase of asking ‘why?’ about anything and everything. Perhaps small
children are the best philosophers!
For each answer they are given, they want to know the reason for this answer, and the cause of
something can be traced back, showing not just one reason but a whole chain, going from the
immediate to a final ‘because it just is’, or ‘because I say so’ or ‘because it’s just made that way’.
Someone once commented that this is the reason we send children to school – to make them stop
asking annoying questions. By the time children enter into the sixth form they think they know it all
and have definitely stopped asking questions.
Aristotle thought about this; he concluded that the explanation of things could be seen in the four
different ways, at four different levels: the four causes. ‘Causes’ is the best translation we have of the
word he used – ‘aition’ (Gk - aition - meaning cause or fault) , which is a responsible, explanatory
factor.
Aristotle’s four causes can be summarised:
1. Material cause – what is something made of?
2. Efficient cause – what brings something about?
3. Formal cause – what characteristics does an object have?
4. Final cause – what is the reason for something’s existence?
For Aristotle the essence of an object was not just its material component parts, or its particular
shape or characteristics; it also had a purpose, a function to perform.
When Aristotle looked at the world about him he not only asked questions such as what is such and
such made of, or how can it be classified but also what is its purpose.
The fourth, final cause is the most important, and which in Aristotle’s view gives the best explanation
of an object. The final end, or purpose, or ‘teleology’ of a thing, when realised, gives that thing its full
perfection and reality.
When something is doing what it was meant to do, or has developed into whatever it was supposed
to develop into, it has achieved goodness. The purpose of an object, for Aristotle, is part if the object
itself, and not something which we might choose to impose on it – it is intrinsic.
All the different elements of nature have a purpose, according to Aristotle, and nothing is
superfluous. We might not know what a slug is for but nevertheless it still has its own intrinsic
purpose. But that is not all; the universe as a whole has a purpose too.
St. Augustine: Problem of Evil.
The Theodicy of Augustine of Hippo
Augustine of Hippo (354-430) based his theodicy on his reading of key Biblical passages: Genesis 3 and
Romans Genesis 3 is the story of Adam and Eve and their ‘Fall’ in the Garden of Eden. In it the snake
convinces the woman to eat the forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The
woman picks the fruit, and passes some to Adam. Because of their disobedience God has them
evicted from the garden. In Romans 5 Paul describes the Christian belief that Jesus’ sacrifice on the
cross cancels out the disobedience of Adam and Eve. In his self-sacrifice Jesus has made available the
gift of righteousness.
Augustine’s theodicy can be summarised:
 God is perfect. The world he created reflects that perfection.
 Humans were created with free will.
 Sin and death entered the world through Adam and Eve, and their disobedience.
 Adam and Eve’s disobedience brought about ‘disharmony’ in both humanity and Creation.

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 The whole of humanity experiences this disharmony because we were all ‘seminally’ present in
the loins of Adam.
 Natural evil is consequence of this disharmony of nature brought about by the Fall.
 God is justified in not intervening because the suffering is a consequence of human action.
Central to Augustine’s theory is that of ‘privation’ – evil is not a substance it is a deprivation i.e. an
absence of something. Augustine uses the analogy of blindness – blindness is not an entity but the
absence of sight. For Augustine, evil came about as a direct result of the misuse of free will.
All suffering is therefore a consequence of this abuse of free will. This includes natural evil as well as
moral evil. Natural evil has come about through an imbalance in nature brought about by the Fall.
God’s love for the world is demonstrated through the reconciliation made possible through Jesus
Christ.
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not
perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to
save the world through him.
A modern advocate of Augustine's view can be found in Alvin Plantinga (God, Freedom and Evil, 1974)
who claimed that for God to have created a being who could only have performed good actions would
have been logically impossible. This view was later criticised by Anthony Flew and J.L.Mackie, who
both argue that God could have chosen to create "good robots" who still possessed free-will.
Criticism of Augustine’s Theodicy
Augustine held that there was a state of ignorant bliss in the Garden of Eden which was unbalanced
by the Fall. This is at odds with Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. If God can be held
responsible for the system by which the natural world works, he should be held responsible for the
suffering that his system causes. Augustine’s theodicy puts all the blame on the first humans yet all
suffer. Why should people suffer for the misdemeanours of past generations. Augustine makes much
of the idea of hell – as part of Creation. Therefore God must be directly responsible for its creation,
and therefore must have foreseen the need for punishment.
The Ontological Argument for the Existence of God
Anselm of Canterbury
The ontological argument for the existence of God, as it is found in its classical form, was first
formulated by the eleventh century Benedictine monk, Archbishop and theologian, St Anselm of
Canterbury (1033-1109). Anselm had prayed for a single, short argument by which to prove almost
everything about God. The result was a simple deductive argument.
Deductive Arguments
A deductive argument is one where the conclusion necessarily follows from the premises – if the
premises are true then the conclusion must follow. For example we could put forward the premise
that:
1. A bachelor is an unmarried man
2. George is an unmarried man
3. Therefore, it can be deduced that George is a bachelor
Providing premises (1) and (2) are correct then the conclusion (3) must necessarily follow. The validity
of a deductive argument depends upon its internal logic – i.e. the very definition of words determines
whether or not the argument can hold to be true.
Inductive Arguments

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The opposite of a deductive argument is an inductive argument. Inductive arguments are based on
observation.
1. Jo, Charmaine, Kate, Lauren and Sarah wear skirts
2. Jo, Charmaine, Kate, Lauren and Sarah are women
3. Therefore, all women wear skirts
The validity of inductive arguments can vary from 0% to 100% as they are based on empirical
observation and not internal logic. Premise (1) and (2) may well be true but the conclusion (3) may
well be a massive assumption.
A priori vs. a posteriori
A deductive argument can be said to be ‘a priori’ as it does not depend upon external validation. The
validity of a deductive argument can be ascertained before empirical validation. Because of their
internal logic deductive arguments appeal to many philosophers c.f. Immanuel Kant’s ‘Categorical
Imperative’.
Ontological
The term ‘ontological’ is derived from the Greek ‘onto’ meaning ‘being’ and ‘logos’ meaning ‘the
study of’. In philosophy ontology is a branch of metaphysics. The ontological argument is so called
because it deals with the very being of God.
Anselm’s Argument
Anselm’s first form of his argument follows:
1. God is the greatest possible being (nothing greater can be conceived)
2. If God exists in the mind alone (only as an idea), then a greater being could be imagined to
exist both in the mind and in reality
3. This being would then be greater than God
4. Thus God cannot exist only as an idea in the mind
5. Therefore, God exists both in the mind (as an idea) and in reality.
The first premise (1) that God is the greatest possible being stems from the classical attributes of God
i.e. omnipotence, omnipresent, omniscience…etc. It naturally follows that there cannot be two rival
omnipotent beings…etc. For Anselm (and most theistic thinkers) this understanding of God goes
without saying. It is axiomatic to say that God is omnipotent…etc. Any other definition of God would
not be God.
The second and third premises (2 and 3) argue that something that exists in reality is better than
something that exists only in ones imagination. For example, which is better imagining that you have
£1 million, or actually having £1 million in your bank account?
The conclusion (4) follows from the first three premises (1,2 and 3). Anselm’s final conclusion (5) is
that if all the previous premises are true (1,2,3 and 4) then God must exist.
Gaunilo of Marmoutiers’ objection to Anselm’s Argument
One problem with Anselm’s ontological argument for the existence of God is that it invites parody.
Parallel arguments purporting to prove the existence of any perfect thing at all can be constructed.
This objection was first raised by one of Anselm’s contemporaries, the monk Gaunilo of Marmoutiers,
who constructed an ontological argument for the existence of the perfect island in his On Behalf of
the Fool.
1. Gaunilo invited his readers to think of the greatest, or most perfect, conceivable island.
2. As a matter of fact, it is likely that no such island actually exists.

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3. However, his argument would then say that we aren't thinking of the greatest conceivable
island, because the greatest conceivable island would exist, as well as having all those other
desirable properties.
4. Since we can conceive of this greatest or most perfect conceivable island, then it must exist.
Gaunilo argued that this line of argument was no less absurd than Anselm’s orginal argument.
Similar arguments for the existence of the perfect baseball pitcher, or the perfect husband or dragons
or even unicorns —for the existence of any perfect thing at all—can be constructed. If any of these
arguments is sound, it seems, then they must all be sound.
Clearly, though, these arguments are not all sound; the perfect baseball pitcher does not exist, and
neither does the perfect husband. There is something wrong with the logic of these arguments. Each
of these ontological arguments, though, uses the same logic. They must therefore all be unsound.
The fact that there is no perfect island, and no perfect baseball pitcher, then, shows that the logic of
the ontological argument for God’s existence is flawed.
Such objections are known as "Overload Objections"; they don't claim to show where or how the
ontological argument goes wrong, they simply argue that if it is sound, then so are many other
arguments of the same logical form which we don't want to accept, arguments which would overload
the world with an indefinitely large number of things like perfect islands, perfect pizzas, perfect
pencils, etc.
Such objections always depend upon the accuracy of the analogy. That is, we must be able to show
that the objector's argument is sufficiently like the ontological argument for us to be able to conclude
that if one works so must the other.
Criticisms of Gaunilo’s Objection – Anselm’s Reply
The main problem with Gaunilo’s objection is the definition of ‘perfect’. There will be disagreements
as to what makes an island perfect i.e. tropical, deserted, inhabited…etc. When we analyse it any
definition here of ‘perfect’ in the case of an island would be subjective. Your idea of a perfect island
might not be my idea of a perfect island.
Another problem is the use of the term ‘perfect’ in the case of islands. By definition any piece of land
surrounded by water is an island. Any piece of land perfectly (i.e. – completely) surrounded by water
is a ‘perfect island’. In this case all islands are perfect islands.
Anselm would argue that this line of argument does not work for everyday objects. Anselm is
concerned with a being and a necessary being at that – the greatest being one can conceive.
Anselm argued that he was not talking about temporal contingent things such as islands which are
rooted in time and space. Such things are dependent upon other things for their existence. Anselm is
talking about the greatest thing that can be thought. God is not contingent or temporal. God’s
existence is necessary i.e. not dependent upon other things for his existence.
Definitions
Necessary – inevitably resulting from or produced by the nature of things…etc., so that the contrary is
impossible.
Contingent – that which need not be, that which could have been different; something that has
dependency.
Anselm’s second ontological argument
Anselm’s first argument left himself open to criticism from Gaulino and his perfect island. Anselm only
real reply to Gaulino was to point him to chapter 3 of his Proslogion.
Gaulino’s main objection to Anselm was that he thought no mere mortal could conceive (or
understand) God’s nature.
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Anselm would have agreed with Gaulino – it is impossible to understand God in the same way one
might understand geometry. However, this does not rule out the possibility to understand the
concept that God is ‘that which nothing greater can be conceived’.
At the heart of Anselm’s argument is the philosophical understanding of ‘necessary existence’:
 necessary – cannot not be
 contingent – can cease to exist
Anselm’s second argument follows:
1. Either God exists or He does not exist
2. If God exists, God’s existence must be necessary
3. If God does not exist, then his existence is logically impossible
4. God is not a logically impossible thing
5. Therefore, God’s existence is necessary
6. Therefore, God exists
Either God exists or He does not exist
Anselm is on solid ground here with a black and white statement
If God exists, God’s existence must be necessary
It would be inconceivable to thing of God in terms of Him being contingent – i.e. dependent upon
something else. If we are going to think of God in terms of Him being omnipotent…etc. then by
definition God must be necessary.
If God does not exist, then his existence is logically impossible
There are two kinds of things which cannot exist:
 contingent things e.g. Superman, unicorns or Queen Victoria
 logically impossible things e.g. square circles, male sisters
God cannot be contingent. If we are going to reject the notion of God then it must be because he is
illogical.
God is not a logically impossible thing
There is no logical contradiction in the notion of God. It is logically possible for him to exist.
Therefore, God’s existence is necessary and therefore, God exists
As God is not logically impossible and also is not a contingent non-existence thing, then there is only
one possible state left: that of a necessary being. It, therefore, follows that God’s existence is
necessary and God does exist.
Anselm is arguing God’s existence as a process of eliminations:
 God cannot be an existing contingent being (e.g. like you and me!)
 God cannot be a non-existent contingent being (e.g. a unicorn)
 God cannot be a logically impossible being (e.g. an omnipotent God who is impotent)
 God cannot be a necessary non-existent being (it is logically impossible)
 God must be a necessary existent being.
Anselm’s second argument unlike his first is not dependent upon existence as being a perfection of a
matter of greatness. Rather than saying that God must exist because existence is a perfection, Anselm
is arguing that God must exist because God is a necessary being.
Non-existent Existent
God cannot be an existent
Contingent God cannot be a non-existent contingent being e.g.
contingent being e.g. like me
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unicorns, dragons…etc. and you!
It would be logically impossible for God to be a non- Only available option! God
Necessary existent necessary being i.e. how can something which must be a necessary existent
cannot not be not exist! being.

Descartes’ Support for the Ontological Argument

Rene Descartes (1596-1650) is generally regarded the founder of modern western philosophy.
Descartes was instrumental in bringing about the Age of the Enlightenment in Western Europe. His
writings challenged conventional beliefs which were still based upon Church teachings.
Descartes imagines the entire universe to be the work of a malevolent demon who creates the illusion
that things exist. This is known as Cartesian Doubt. Descartes asked the question, ‘How can I be sure
that what I am experiencing through my senses is true?’ After speculating that he is being deceived by
a demon he concludes that the only thing he can be sure of is the fact that he is thinking. This gives
rise to probably the most famous quote in western philosophy, “I think, therefore I am.” >p> Having
established that at least he exists, Descartes begins to look at things in the universe which can be
established independently of empirical investigation i.e. a priori things e.g. mathematics. Anselm’s
deductive ontological argument became a powerful tool in Descartes hands.
Like Anselm, Descartes thought of God in terms of a perfect being. Following Anselm’s first argument,
Descartes was in agreement that existence was more perfect than non-existence. For Descartes,
God’s existence was part of His essence. For Descartes, there are some qualities that an object
necessarily has or else it would not be that object. To illustrate this Descartes argued that the essence
of a triangle is a ‘three sided plane figure’. To say that God does not exist is rather like saying ‘a
triangle does not have three sides’ or that the internal angels don’t add up to 180o. In the same way,
existence cannot be separated from the concept of God.
Descartes took on board Gaulino’s criticism of Anselm’s first argument. Like Anselm before him,
Descartes points to the distinction between a necessary being and a contingent being. The argument
applies only to an absolutely perfect and necessary being. The argument cannot be applied to islands,
dragons, unicorns or even pizzas! For Descartes, God alone is the being whose essence entails His
existence. There cannot be more than one such being.
God then becomes the guarantor of the certainty that the external world exists. There is no longer the
fear that there might be a malevolent demon out to deceive you. God is both omnipotent and
omnibenevolent, He would not permit such a thing. God becomes the basis of Descartes’
epistemology.
Criticism of Descartes’ Ontological Argument
A priest called Caterus responded to Descartes’ argument. Caterus argued that the statement ‘If God
exists then he is highest being’ was a tautology (the truth of the statement is self evident). But
Caterus emphasised the word ‘if’. It was not illogical to say, ‘God does not exist therefore there is no
highest being’. To use Descartes’ analogy of a triangle it is possible to say, ‘If a triangle exists it has
three sides’. However, all this really tells us is something about triangles. It is equally coherent to say,
‘triangles do not exist therefore three sided things do not exist.’ Likewise, we might say, ‘unicorns
have one horn’ but this does not prove there are any unicorns.
Kant’s Objection to the Ontological Argument
Kant’s Background to the Ontological Argument

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Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) does not seem to show familiarity with Anselm's version of the
ontological argument, and it appears that he is responding to its less impressive forms found in the
writings of René Descartes (1596-1650) and Christian Wolff (1679-1754). Nonetheless, his objection
has historical significance and is often cited by contemporary philosophers as good reason to reject
the ontological argument.
Kant thought the ontological argument was flawed. Any argument for the existence of God based on
the proposition that a God that exists in reality is greater than a God that only in the imagination is
based on a confusion.
Predicates
According to Kant the confusion lies in the fact that existence is not a predicate. The predicate is that
part of a sentence which is not the subject but which gives information about the subject. A predicate
might be a single word like ‘John laughed’ where John is the subject and ‘laughed’ is the predicate. Or
a string of words as in the sentence Clare went to school, 'Clare' is the subject and 'went to school' is
the predicate. A predicate is a property that a thing can either possess or lack.
Predicates and the Existence of God
When people assert that God exists they are not saying that there is a God and he possesses the
property of existence. If that were the case, then when people assert that God does not exist they
would be saying that there is a God and he lacks the property of existence, i.e. they would be both
affirming and denying God’s existence at the same time. Kant suggests that to say that something
exists is to say that the concept of that thing is exemplified in the world. For Kant, existence is not a
matter of a thing possessing a property i.e. existence. Existence is a concept corresponding to
something in the world.
Kant's objection to the ontological argument is that existence is not a property that can be attributed
to beings like we can attribute other properties such as being blue, hard, or round. When we talk
about entities existing, Kant contends that we do not mean to add existence as a property to their
beings. In other words, the objection seems to be that one cannot go around adding existence as a
property to God (or anything else for that matter) in order to define God (or anything else) into
existence. Unfortunately, defining my bank account as such a place that contains millions of pounds
would not mean that a careful understanding of that definition of ‘my bank account’ would really
make it so. In order to see if that definition were true, we would have to go to an ATM and check the
balance of my account and see if it is accurate. Similarly, a definition of God must be checked with
reality to see if it is correct.
Kant’s Objection to Descartes’ Ontological Argument
Descartes had argued that God had existence in the same way as a triangle has three sides. Kant
would agree, if you had a triangle then you did indeed have an object with three sides. But if you do
not have the triangle, you have neither its three angles or its three sides. If you accept that there is a
God, it is logical to accept also that His existence is necessary. But you don’t have to accept that there
is a God.
Contemporary Views of the Ontological Argument
Kant's objection has been very influential in the ontological argument debate. Philosopher are still
divided as to whether or not existence is a predicate. Some thinkers controversially believe that
existence can be thought of as a unique property. A modern advocate of the ontological argument is
Alvin Plantinga (b.1932) Professor of Philosophy at Notre Dame University, USA. He has forcefully
argued that Kant's objection does not conflict with anything in Anselm's argument. For Anselm does
not contingently add existence as a property to God and define him into existence. Naturally these
objections are contentious, which adds to the intrigue of the ontological argument.
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Aquinas’ Cosmological Argument for the Existence of God
St. Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274) was a Dominican priest, theologian, and philosopher. Called the
Doctor Angelicus (the Angelic Doctor,) Aquinas is considered one the greatest Christian philosophers
to have ever lived. Two of his most famous works, the Summa Theologiae and the Summa Contra
Gentiles, are the finest examples of his work on Christian philosophy.
In his Summa Theologiae Aquinas put forward five proofs (or five ways) for the existence of God:
First Way – Argument from Motion Second Way – Causation of Existence Third Way – Contingent and
Necessary Objects Fourth Way – The Argument from Degrees and Perfection Fifth Way – The
Argument from Intelligent Design
First Way - The Argument From Motion
St. Thomas Aquinas, studying the works of the Greek philosopher Aristotle, concluded from common
observation that an object that is in motion (e.g. the planets, a rolling stone) is put in motion by some
other object or force. From this, Aquinas believes that ultimately there must have been an UNMOVED
MOVER (GOD) who first put things in motion. Follow the argument this way:
1. Nothing can move itself.
2. If every object in motion had a mover, then the first object in motion needed a mover.
3. Movement cannot go on for infinity.
4. This first mover is the Unmoved Mover, called God.
Aquinas is starting from an a posteriori position. For Aquinas motion includes any kind of change e.g.
growth. Aquinas argues that the natural condition is for things to be at rest. Something which is
moving is therefore unnatural and must have been put into that state by some external supernatural
power.
Second Way - Causation of Existence
This Way deals with the issue of existence. Aquinas concluded that common sense observation tells
us that no object creates itself. In other words, some previous object had to create it. Aquinas
believed that ultimately there must have been an UNCAUSED FIRST CAUSE (GOD) who began the
chain of existence for all things. Follow the agrument this way:
1. There exists things that are caused (created) by other things.
2. Nothing can be the cause of itself (nothing can create itself.)
3. There cannot be an endless string of objects causing other objects to exist.
4. Therefore, there must be an uncaused first cause called God.
Third Way - Contingent and Necessary Objects
This Way is sometimes referred to as the modal cosmological argument. Modal is a reference to
contingency and necessary. This Way defines two types of objects in the universe: contingent beings
and necessary beings. A contingent being is an object that cannot exist without a necessary being
causing its existence. Aquinas believed that the existence of contingent beings would ultimately
necessitate a being which must exist for all of the contingent beings to exist. This being, called a
necessary being, is what we call God. Follow the argument this way:
1. Contingent beings are caused.
2. Not every being can be contingent.
3. There must exist a being which is necessary to cause contingent beings.
4. This necessary being is God.
Fourth Way - The Argument From Degrees And Perfection

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St. Thomas formulated this Way from a very interesting observation about the qualities of things. For
example one may say that of two marble sculptures one is more beautiful than the other. So for these
two objects, one has a greater degree of beauty than the next. This is referred to as degrees or
gradation of a quality. From this fact Aquinas concluded that for any given quality (e.g. goodness,
beauty, knowledge) there must be a perfect standard by which all such qualities are measured. These
perfections are contained in God.
Fifth Way - The Argument From Intelligent Design
The final Way that St. Thomas Aquinas speaks of has to do with the observable universe and the order
of nature. Aquinas states that common sense tells us that the universe works in such a way, that one
can conclude that is was designed by an intelligent designer, God. In other words, all physical laws
and the order of nature and life were designed and ordered by God, the intelligent designer.
Faith and Reason
Aquinas sees reason and faith as two ways of knowing. "Reason" covers what we can know by
experience and logic alone. From reason, we can know that there is a God and that there is only one
God; these truths about God are accessible to anyone by experience and logic alone, apart from any
special revelation from God.
"Faith" covers what we can know by God's special revelation to us (which comes through the Bible
and Christian Tradition). By faith, we can know that God came into the world through Jesus Christ and
that God is triune (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). These truths about God cannot be known by reason
alone.
Faith builds on reason. Since faith and reason are both ways of arriving at truth -- and since all truths
are harmonious with each other -- faith is consistent with reason. If we understand faith and reason
correctly, there will be no conflict between what faith tells us and what reason tells us.
St. Thomas Aquinas:Essence and Existence
Metaphysics is the study of the basic structure of reality. It is, in Aristotle’s words, the study of
being as being, rather than the study of any particular being per se. Metaphysics is the framework by
which we understand reality. We can’t avoid metaphysics — every act of understanding entails a
metaphysical framework, a perspective. One might say that our metaphysical perspective is that by
which we understand, contrasted to nature itself, which is that which we understand.
Our own metaphysical framework is often opaque to us. We use it, like we might use an intuitive
political bias, without really examining the framework we are using. We each have a metaphysical
bias — it’s unavoidable, and the important question is: does our bias lead us toward or away from the
truth? Gaining metaphysical insight is not easy, but it pays big dividends. It helps us to know the truth
— indeed, it is that by which we know the truth.
A Rigorous and Consistent System
St. Thomas Aquinas developed a rigorous and consistent system of metaphysics. He was the first
Christian philosopher to insist that faith and reason, properly understood, are never in conflict. Belief
in God is not contrary to knowledge of the natural world. St. Thomas’ doctrine was controversial in his
day, but it was accepted by the Church in the centuries after his death, and it became the intellectual
foundation of the modern world, including the cornerstone of modern science.
Ironically, the correspondence of faith and reason is controversial today, especially in the atheist
community. The denial of the compatibility between faith and reason is a lynchpin of atheist
arguments for naturalism: atheists insist that science tells us the real truth about the world, and faith
in God is superstition. The Thomistic reply is that genuine faith and reason both point to the same
truth. The Thomistic understanding of reason and its correspondence with faith offer a powerful reply

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to atheistic naturalism. For readers who are interested in metaphysics and in these modernist
controversies (which readers of Evolution News are likely to be), it’s worthwhile taking a closer look at
the principle that is the cornerstone of Thomistic metaphysics.
Essence and Existence
The cornerstone of Thomistic metaphysics is the doctrine of essence and existence. It is this: essence
is absolutely distinct from existence. This doctrine, which St. Thomas was the first philosopher to
assert unequivocally and demonstrate with rigor, has profound implications for our understanding of
reality, of nature, of science and of God. What does St. Thomas mean in saying “essence is absolutely
distinct from existence”?
First, definitions. Essence is that which makes something the sort of thing it is. It is, succinctly, all
the characteristics that are knowable about something. The essence of a cat is everything about the
cat that makes it a cat. Its cat-shape, it’s furriness, its meow, its animality, etc. Some things about the
cat — the fact, for instance, that at (unfortunate) times it can be a projectile launcher or a meal — are
not parts of the essence of a cat. They are extraneous to it, although in rare circumstances, they may
be true of it. You can see here where that modern notion of “essence” comes from. Essence is what’s
important about something, what tells us what something really is.
And Now for Existence
Existence is that a thing is, rather than what a thing is. The existence of a thing is different from the
essence of a thing. I can know the essence of a rock, but it is the rock’s existence by which I stub my
toe. I can’t stub my toe on essence, no matter how hard it is.
Prior to St. Thomas, many philosophers considered existence to be a property of something, part of
its essence. We might say that my cat Fluffy’s essence is that she is shaped like a cat, purrs and
meows, likes to play with yarn, and exists.
Descartes
The first great philosopher of the modern era was René Descartes, whose new approach won him
recognition as the progenitor of modern philosophy. Descartes's pursuit of mathematical and
scientific truth soon led to a profound rejection of the scholastic tradition in which he had been
educated. Much of his work was concerned with the provision of a secure foundation for the
advancement of human knowledge through the natural sciences. Fearing the condemnation of the
church, however, Descartes was rightly cautious about publicly expressing the full measure of his
radical views. The philosophical writings for which he is remembered are therefore extremely
circumspect in their treatment of controversial issues.
After years of work in private, Descartes finally published a preliminary statement of his views in
the Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason (1637). Since mathematics has
genuinely achieved the certainty for which human thinkers yearn, he argued, we rightly turn to
mathematical reasoning as a model for progress in human knowledge more generally. Expressing
perfect confidence in the capacity of human reason to achieve knowledge, Descartes proposed an
intellectual process no less unsettling than the architectural destruction and rebuilding of an entire
town. In order to be absolutely sure that we accept only what is genuinely certain, we must first
deliberately renounce all of the firmly held but questionable beliefs we have previously acquired by
experience and education.
The progress and certainty of mathematical knowledge, Descartes supposed, provide an emulable
model for a similarly productive philosophical method, characterized by four simple rules:
1. Accept as true only what is indubitable.
2. Divide every question into manageable parts.

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3. Begin with the simplest issues and ascend to the more complex.
4. Review frequently enough to retain the whole argument at once.
This quasi-mathematical procedure for the achievement of knowledge is typical of a rationalistic
approach to epistemology.
While engaged in such a comprehensive revision of our beliefs, Descartes supposed it prudent to
adhere to a modest, conventional way of life that provides a secure and comfortable environment in
which to pursue serious study. The stoic underpinnings of this "provisional morality" are evident in
the emphasis on changing oneself to fit the world. Its general importance as an avenue to the
contemplative life, however, is more general. Great intellectual upheavals can best be undertaken
during relatively calm and stable periods of life.
Anticipated Results
In this context, Descartes offered a brief description of his own experience with the proper approach
to knowledge. Begin by renouncing any belief that can be doubted, including especially the testimony
of the senses; then use the perfect certainty of one's own existence, which survives this doubt, as the
foundation for a demonstration of the providential reliability of one's faculties generally. Significant
knowledge of the world, Descartes supposed, can be achieved only by following this epistemological
method, the rationalism of relying on a mathematical model and eliminating the distraction of
sensory information in order to pursue the demonstrations of pure reason.
Later sections of the Discourse (along with the supplementary scientific essays with which it was
published) trace some of the more significant consequences of following the Cartesian method in
philosophy. His mechanistic inclinations emerge clearly in these sections, with frequent reminders of
the success of physical explanations of complex phenomena. Non-human animals, on Descartes's
view, are complex organic machines, all of whose actions can be fully explained without any reference
to the operation of mind in thinking.
In fact, Descartes declared, most of human behavior, like that of animals, is susceptible to simple
mechanistic explanation. Cleverly designed automata could successfully mimic nearly all of what we
do. Thus, Descartes argued, it is only the general ability to adapt to widely varying circumstances—
and, in particular, the capacity to respond creatively in the use of language—that provides a sure test
for the presence of an immaterial soul associated with the normal human body.
But Descartes supposed that no matter how human-like an animal or machine could be made to
appear in its form or operations, it would always be possible to distinguish it from a real human being
by two functional criteria. Although an animal or machine may be capable of performing any one
activity as well as (or even better than) we can, he argued, each human being is capable of a greater
variety of different activities than could be performed by anything lacking a soul. In a special instance
of this general point, Descartes held that although an animal or machine might be made to utter
sounds resembling human speech in response to specific stimuli, only an immaterial thinking
substance could engage in the creative use of language required for responding appropriately to any
unexpected circumstances. My puppy is a loyal companion, and my computer is a powerful
instrument, but neither of them can engage in a decent conversation. (This criterion anticipated the
more formal requirements of the Turing test.)
The Method of Doubt
The basic strategy of Descartes's method of doubt is to defeat skepticism on its own ground. Begin by
doubting the truth of everything—not only the evidence of the senses and the more extravagant
cultural presuppositions, but even the fundamental process of reasoning itself. If any particular truth
about the world can survive this extreme skeptical challenge, then it must be truly indubitable and

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therefore a perfectly certain foundation for knowledge. The First Meditation, then, is an extended
exercise in learning to doubt everything that I believe, considered at three distinct levels:
1. Perceptual Illusion
First, Descartes noted that the testimony of the senses with respect to any particular judgment about
the external world may turn out to be mistaken. Things are not always just as they seem at first
glance (or at first hearing, etc.) to be. But then, Descartes argues, it is prudent never wholly to trust in
the truth of what we perceive. In ordinary life, of course, we adjust for mistaken perceptions by
reference to correct perceptions. But since we cannot be sure at first which cases are veridical and
which are not, it is possible (if not always feasible) to doubt any particular bit of apparent sensory
knowledge.
2. The Dream Problem
Second, Descartes raised a more systematic method for doubting the legitimacy of all sensory
perception. Since my most vivid dreams are internally indistinguishible from waking experience, he
argued, it is possible that everything I now "perceive" to be part of the physical world outside me is in
fact nothing more than a fanciful fabrication of my own imagination. On this supposition, it is possible
to doubt that any physical thing really exists, that there is an external world at all.
Severe as it is, this level of doubt is not utterly comprehensive, since the truths of mathematics and
the content of simple natures remain unaffected. Even if there is no material world (and thus, even in
my dreams) two plus three makes five and red looks red to me. In order to doubt the veracity of such
fundamental beliefs, I must extend the method of doubting even more hyperbolically.
3. A Deceiving God
Finally, then, Descartes raises even more comprehensive doubts by inviting us to consider a radical
hypothesis derived from one of our most treasured traditional beliefs. What if (as religion teaches)
there is an omnipotent god, but that deity devotes its full attention to deceiving me? The problem
here is not merely that I might be forced by god to believe what something which is in fact false.
Descartes means to raise the far more devastating possibility that whenever I believe anything, even if
it has always been true up until now, a truly omnipotent deceiver could at that very moment choose
to change the world so as to render my belief false. On this supposition, it seems possible to doubt
the truth of absolutely anything I might come to believe.
Although the hypothesis of a deceiving god best serves the logical structure of the Meditations as a
whole, Descartes offered two alternative versions of the hypothetical doubt for the benefit of those
who might take offense at even a counter-factual suggestion of impiety. It may seem more palatable
to the devout to consider the possibility that I systematically deceive myself or that there is some evil
demon who perpetually tortures me with my own error. The point in each case is that it is possible for
every belief I entertain to be false.
Remember that the point of the entire exercise is to out-do the skeptics at their own game, to raise
the broadest possible grounds for doubt, so that whatever we come to believe in the face of such
challenges will indeed be that which cannot be doubted. It is worthwhile to pause here, wallowing in
the depths of Cartesian doubt at the end of the First Meditation, the better to appreciate the escape
he offers at the outset of Meditation Two.
I Am, I Exist
The Second Meditation begins with a review of the First. Remember that I am committed to
suspending judgment with respect to anything about which I can conceive any doubt, and my doubts
are extensive. I mistrust every report of my senses, I regard the material world as nothing more than a
dream, and I suppose that an omnipotent god renders false each proposition that I am even inclined

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to believe. Since everything therefore seems to be dubitable, does it follow that I can be certain of
nothing at all?
It does not. Descartes claimed that one thing emerges as true even under the strict conditions
imposed by the otherwise universal doubt: "I am, I exist" is necessarily true whenever the thought
occurs to me. This truth neither derives from sensory information nor depends upon the reality of an
external world, and I would have to exist even if I were systematically deceived. For even an
omnipotent god could not cause it to be true, at one and the same time, both that I am
deceived and that I do not exist. If I am deceived, then at least I am.
Although Descartes's reasoning here is best known in the Latin translation of its expression in
the Discourse, "cogito, ergo sum" ("I think, therefore I am"), it is not merely an inference from the
activity of thinking to the existence of an agent which performs that activity. It is intended rather as
an intuition of one's own reality, an expression of the indubitability of first-person experience, the
logical self-certification of self-conscious awareness in any form.
Skepticism is thereby defeated, according to Descartes. No matter how many skeptical challenges are
raised—indeed, even if things are much worse than the most extravagant skeptic ever claimed—there
is at least one fragment of genuine human knowledge: my perfect certainty of my own existence.
From this starting-point, Descartes supposed, it is possible to achieve indubitable knowledge of many
other propositions as well.
I Am a Thinking Thing
An initial consequence may be drawn directly from the intuitive certainty of the cogito itself. If I know
that I am, Descartes argued, I must also know what I am; an understanding of my true nature must be
contained implicitly in the content of my awareness.
What then, is this "I" that doubts, that may be deceived, that thinks? Since I became certain of my
existence while entertaining serious doubts about sensory information and the existence of a material
world, none of the apparent features of my human body can have been crucial for my understanding
of myself. But all that is left is my thought itself, so Descartes concluded that "sum res cogitans" ("I
am a thing that thinks"). In Descartes's terms, I am a substance whose inseparable attribute (or
entire essence) is thought, with all its modes: doubting, willing, conceiving, believing, etc. What I
really am is a mind or soul.So completely am I identified with my conscious awareness, Descartes
claimed, that if I were to stop thinking altogether, it would follow that I no longer existed at all. At this
point, nothing else about human nature can be determined with such perfect certainty.
Descartes: God and Human Nature
Clear and Distinct Ideas
At the outset of the Third Meditation, Descartes tried to use this first truth as the paradigm for his
general account of the possibilities for achieving human knowledge. In the cogito, awareness of
myself, of thinking, and of existence are somehow combined in such a way as to result in an intuitive
grasp of a truth that cannot be doubted. Perhaps we can find in other cases the same grounds
for indubitable truth. But what is it?
The answer lies in Descartes's theory of ideas. Considered formally, as the content of my thinking
activity, the ideas involved in the cogito are unusually clear and distinct. But ideas may also be
considered objectively, as the mental representatives of things that really exist. According to
a representative realist like Descartes, then, the connections among our ideas yield truth only when
they correspond to the way the world really is. But it is not obvious that our clear and distinct ideas
do correspond to the reality of things, since we suppose that there may be an omnipotent deceiver.

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In some measure, the reliability of our ideas may depend on the source from which they are derived.
Descartes held that there are only three possibilities: all of our ideas are either adventitious (entering
the mind from the outside world) or factitious (manufactured by the mind itself) or innate (inscribed
on the mind by god). But I don't yet know that there is an outside world, and I can imagine almost
anything, so everything depends on whether god exists and deceives me.
God Exists
The next step in the pursuit of knowledge, then, is to prove that god does indeed exist. Descartes's
starting point for such a proof is the principle that the cause of any idea must have at least as much
reality as the content of the idea itself. But since my idea of god has an absolutely unlimited content,
the cause of this idea must itself be infinite, and only the truly existing god is that. In other words, my
idea of god cannot be either adventitious or factitious (since I could neither experience god directly
nor discover the concept of perfection in myself), so it must be innately provided by god. Therefore,
god exists.
As a backup to this argument, Descartes offered a traditional version of the cosmological
argument for god's existence. From the cogito I know that I exist, and since I am not perfect in every
way, I cannot have caused myself. So something else must have caused my existence, and no matter
what that something is (my parents?), we could ask what caused it to exist. The chain of causes must
end eventually, and that will be with the ultimate, perfect, self-caused being, or god.
As Antoine Arnauld pointed out in an Objection published along with the Meditations themselves,
there is a problem with this reasoning. Since Descartes will use the existence (and veracity) of god to
prove the reliability of clear and distinct ideas in Meditation Four, his use of clear and distinct ideas to
prove the existence of god in Meditation Three is an example of circular reasoning. Descartes replied
that his argument is not circular because intuitive reasoning—in the proof of god as in the cogito—
requires no further support in the moment of its conception. We must rely on a non-deceiving god
only as the guarantor of veridical memory, when a demonstrative argument involves too many steps
to be held in the mind at once. But this response is not entirely convincing.
The problem is a significant one, since the proof of god's existence is not only the first attempt to
establish the reality of something outside the self but also the foundation for every further attempt to
do so. If this proof fails, then Descartes's hopes for human knowledge are severely curtailed, and I am
stuck in solipsism, unable to be perfectly certain of anything more than my own existence as a
thinking thing. With this reservation in mind, we'll continue through the Meditations, seeing how
Descartes tried to dismantle his own reasons for doubt.
Deception and Error
The proof of god's existence actually makes the hypothetical doubt of the First Meditation a little
worse: I now know that there really is a being powerful enough to deceive me at every turn.
But Descartes argued that since all perfections naturally go together, and since deception is invariably
the product of imperfection, it follows that the truly omnipotent being has no reason or motive for
deception. God does not deceive, and doubt of the deepest sort may be abandoned forever. It follows
that the simple natures and the truths of mathematics are now secure. In fact, Descartes maintained,
I can now live in perfect confidence that my intellectual faculties, bestowed on me by a veracious god,
are properly designed for the apprehension of truth.
But this seems to imply too much: if I have a divinely-endowed capacity for discovering the truth, then
why don't I always achieve it? The problem is not that I lack knowledge of some things; that only
means that I am limited. Rather, the question is why I so often make mistakes, believing what is false
despite my possession of god-given mental abilities. Descartes's answer derives from an analysis of
the nature of human cognition generally.
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Every mental act of judgment, Descartes held, is the product of two distinct faculties:
the understanding, which merely observes or perceives, and the will, which assents to the belief in
question. Considered separately, the understanding (although limited in scope) is adequate for
human needs, since it comprehends completely everything for which it has clear and distinct ideas.
Similarly, the will as an independent faculty is perfect, since it (like the will of god) is perfectly free in
every respect. Thus, god has benevolently provided me with two faculties, neither of which is
designed to produce error instead of true belief. Yet I do make mistakes, by misusing my free will to
assent on occasions for which my understanding does not have clear and distinct ideas. For Descartes,
error is virtually a moral failing, the willful exercise of my powers of believing in excess of my ability to
perceive the truth.
The Essence of Matter
Since the truths of reason have been restored by the demonstration of god's
veracity, Descartes employed mathematical reasoning to discover the essence of bodies in the Fifth
Meditation. We do not yet know whether there are any material objects, because the dream
problem remains in force, but Descartes supposed that we can determine what they would be like if
there were any by relying upon reason alone, since mathematics achieves certainty without
supposing the reality of its objects.
According to Descartes, the essence of material substance is simply extension, the property of filling
up space. So solid geometry, which describes the possibility of dividing an otherwise uniform space
into distinct parts, is a complete guide to the essence of body. It follows that there can be in reality
only one extended substance, comprising all matter in a single spatial whole. From this, Descartes
concluded that individual bodies are merely modes of the one extended being, that there can be no
space void of extension, and that all motion must proceed by circular vortex. Thus, again, the true
nature of bodies is understood by pure thought, without any information from the senses.
By the way, this explanation of essences suggested to Descartes another proof of god's existence, a
modern variation on the Ontological Argument. Just as the essence of a triangle includes its having
interior angles that add up to a straight line, Descartes argued, so the essence of god, understood as a
being in whom all perfections are united, includes necessary existence in reality. As Descartes himself
noted, this argument is no more certain than the truths of mathematics, so it also rests on the
reliability of clear and distinct ideas, secured in turn by the proofs of god's existence and veracity in
the Third and Fourth Meditations.
The Existence of Bodies
In the Sixth Meditation, Descartes finally tried to eliminate the dream problem by proving that there
is a material world and that bodies do really exist. His argument derives from the supposition that
divinely-bestowed human faculties of cognition must always be regarded as adequately designed for
some specific purpose. Since three of our faculties involve representation of physical things, the
argument proceeds in three distinct stages.
First, since the understanding conceives of extended things through its comprehension of geometrical
form, it must at least be possible for things of this sort to exist. Second, since the imagination is
directed exclusively toward the ideas of bodies and of the ways in which they might be purposefully
altered, it is probable that there really are such things. Finally, since the faculty of sense perception is
an entirely passive ability to receive ideas of physical objects produced in me by some external source
outside my control, it is certain that such objects must truly exist.
The only alternative explanation for perception, Descartes noted, is that god directly puts the ideas of
bodies into my mind without there acutally being anything real that corresponds to them. (This is
precisely the possibility that Malebranche would later accept as the correct account of the material
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world.) But Descartes supposed that a non-deceiving god would never maliciously give me so
complete a set of ideas without also causing their natural objects to exist in fact. Hence, the bodies I
perceive do really exist.
Mind-Body Dualism
Among the physical objects I perceive are the organic bodies of animals, other human beings, and
myself. So it is finally appropriate to consider human nature as a whole: how am I, considered as a
thinking thing, concerned with the organism I see in the mirror? What is the true relation between
the mind and the body of any human being? According to Descartes, the two are utterly distinct.
The Sixth Meditation contains two arguments in defence of Cartesian dualism: First, since the mind
and the body can each be conceived clearly and distinctly apart from each other, it follows that god
could cause either to exist independently of the other, and this satisfies the traditional criteria for a
metaphysical real distinction. Second, the essence of body as a geometrically defined region of space
includes the possibility of its infinite divisibility, but the mind, despite the variety of its many faculties
and operations, must be conceived as a single, unitary, indivisible being; since incompatible
properties cannot inhere in any one substance, the mind and body are perfectly distinct.
This radical separation of mind and body makes it difficult to account for the apparent interaction of
the two in my own case. In ordinary experience, it surely seems that the volitions of my mind can
cause physical movements in my body and that the physical states of my body can produce effects on
my mental operations. But on Descartes's view, there can be no substantial connection between the
two, nor did he believe it appropriate to think of the mind as residing in the body as a pilot resides
within a ship. Although he offered several tenatative suggestions in his correspondence with Princess
Elizabeth, Descartes largely left for future generations the task of developing some reasonable
account of volition and sensation, either by securing the possibility of mind-body interaction or by
proposing some alternative explanation of the appearances.
On the other hand, Cartesian dualism offers some clear advantages: For one thing, it provides an easy
proof of the natural immortality of the human mind or soul, which cannot be substantially affected by
death, understood as an alteration of the states of the physical organism. In addition, the distinction
of mind from body establishes the absolute independence of the material realm from the spiritual,
securing the freedom of scientists to rely exclusively on observation for their development
of mechanistic explanations of physical events.
Cartesian Philosophy
Consequences of Dualism
Descartes worked out his own detailed theories about the physical operation of the material world
in Le Monde (The World), but uncertainty about ecclesiastical reactions prevented him from
publishing it. The final sections of the Discourse, however, include several significant hints about the
positions he was prepared to defend. Their explanations of the activities of living organisms make
the mechanistic implications of the Cartesian view more evident.
Since, as everyone acknowledges, non-human animals do not have souls, Descartes concluded
that animals must be merely complex machines. Since they lack any immaterial thinking substance,
animals cannot think, and all of the movements of their bodies can, in principle, be explained in
purely mechanical terms. (Descartes himself incorrectly supposed that the nervous system functions
as a complex hydraulic machine.) But since the structure of the human body and the behavior of
human beings are similar to the structure and behavior of some animals, it is obvious that many
human actions can also be given a mechanistic explanation. La Mettrie later followed this line of
reasoning to its ultimate conclusion, supposing human beings to be nothing more than Cartesian
machines.
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Cartesianism
The philosophy of Descartes won ready acceptance in the second half of the seventeenth century,
expecially in France and Holland. Although few of his followers, known collectively as Cartesians,
employed his methods, they showed great diligence and ingenuity in their efforts to explain, defend,
and advance his central doctrines.
In the physical sciences, for example, Cavendish, Rohault, and Régis were happy to abandon all efforts
to employ final causes in their pursuit of mechanistic accounts of physical phenomena and animal
behavior. On this basis, however, such philosophers were able to progress beyond a simple
affirmation of the mysterious reality of mind-body interaction.
Metaphysicians like Cordemoy and Geulincx fared little better in their efforts to deal with this crucial
problem with dualism. If there is no genuine causal interaction between independent substances, we
seem driven to suppose that the actions of mind and body are merely parallel or divinely
synchronized.
Not everyone was entirely satisfied by the epistemological foundations of the Cartesian scheme,
either. Critics like Arnauld, Nicole, and Foucher drew attention to the inherent difficulty of explaining
in representationalist terms how our ideas of things can be known to resemble the things themselves
and the implausibility of reliance upon innate ideas. Conway went even further, rejecting the dualistic
foundations of Descartes's substance-ontology along with his approach to human knowledge.
Pascal: The Religious Mathematician
One seventeenth-century thinker of greater independent significance was Blaise Pascal, with his
unusual blend of religious piety, scientific curiosity, and mathematical genius. Led by his deep
religious feelings to participate fully in the pietistic Jansenism of the Port-Royal community, Pascal
maintained that formal reasoning about god can never provide an adequate substitute for genuine
personal concern for the faith: "The heart has its reasons that reason cannot know."
Pascal's mathematical acumen was no less remarkable than that of Descartes; his work anticipated
the development of game theory and the modern methods of calculating probability. In fact, his
famous "Wager" applies these mathematical techniques to the prudence of religious conviction in the
absence of adequate evidence: since the consequences of believing are infinitely beneficial if there is
a god and only slightly inconvenient if there is not, while the outcome of atheism is only somewhat
more pleasant if there is no god and eternally costly if there is, the expected value of theism is much
greater than that of atheism, and it is reasonable to stake one's life on the possibility that god does
exist.
Malebranche: Seeing All Things in God
The most original and influential philosopher of the Cartesian tradition was Nicolas Malebranche.
Noting the steady progress of efforts to provide mechanistic accounts of the behavior of the human
body, Malebranche concluded that the mind and body are not only substantially distinct but causally
independent of each other. The appearance of genuine interaction arises from what is in fact merely
the perfect parallelism of events in the mental and physical realms.
According to Malebranche, then, our ideas of bodies do not result from any causal influence that
physical objects have on our senses; rather, they are produced in our minds directly by god. Thus, he
supposed, in sense perception what literally happens is that we "see all things in god." Similarly, our
wills have no causal influence on the material world, but god provides for the coordination of our
volitions with the movement of bodies. In general, since there is no causal interaction, it is the power
of god alone that secures a perpetual, happy coincidence of the states and operations of minds and
bodies.

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Since only god's activity is efficacious in either mental or physical things, apparent causes in either
realm are merely the occasions for the appearance of their supposed effects in the other. Thus, the
views of Malebranche are often referred to collectively as occasionalism. Although the entire theory
found few enthusiastic adherents, Malebranche's analysis of the regularities exhibited in nature by
causally independent beings and events was greatly influential on later philosophers,
including Berkeley and Hume.
Spinoza: God, Nature, and Freedom
Descartes regarded mathematical reasoning as the paradigm for progress in human knowledge,
but Baruch Spinoza took this rationalistic appreciation even further, developing and expressing his
mature philosophical views "in the geometrical manner." Thus, in the posthumously-published Ethica
Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata (Ethics) (1677), Spinoza claimed to deduce the entire system of
thought from a restricted set of definitions and self-evident axioms.
Drawing specific doctrines from Cartesian thought, medieval scholasticism, and the Jewish tradition,
Spinoza blended everything together into a comprehensive vision of the universe as a coherent whole
governed solely by the immutable laws of logical necessity. Rigorous thought reveals that there can
be only a single substance, of which we (and everything else) are merely insignificant parts. Although
we may find it difficult to take any comfort in Spinoza's account of our place in the world, we are
bound to admire the logical consistency with which he works out all the details.
The Unity of Substance
The definitions and axioms with which Book I of the Ethics begins are critical to Spinoza's enterprise,
since they are intended to carry his central doctrines as deductive consequences. Although they
generally follow the usages of the scholastic tradition, many of them also include special features of
great significance to the thought of Spinoza.
Substance, for example, he defined not only as existing in itself but also as "conceived through itself."
This places a severe limit on the possibility of interaction between things, since Spinoza delared that
causation is a relation of logical necessity, such that knowledge of the effect requires knowledge of its
cause. Few will disagree that god is a substance with infinite attributes, but this definition carries
some surprising implications in Spinoza's view of the world; notice also that freedom, according to
Spinoza, just means that a thing exists and acts by its own nature rather than by external compulsion.
The numbered propositions that follow make it clear what Spinoza is getting at. Since causal
interaction is impossible between two substances that differ essentially, and no two substances can
share a common attribute or essence, it follows that no substance can produce genuine change in any
another substance. Each must be the cause of its own existence and, since it cannot be subject to
limitations imposed from outside itself, must also be absolutely infinite. Things that appear to be
finite individuals interacting with each other, then, cannot themselves be substances; in reality, they
can be nothing more than the modifications of a self-caused, infinite substance. And that, of course, is
god.
"Deus sive Natura"
Spinoza supposed it easy to demonstrate that such a being does really exist. As the ontological
argument makes clear, god's very essence includes existence. Moreover, nothing else could possibly
prevent the existence of that substance which has infinite attributes in itself. Finally, although it
depends on a posteriori grounds to which Spinoza would rather not appeal, the cosmological
argument helps us to understand that since we ourselves exist, so must an infinite cause of the
universe. Thus, god exists.
What is more, god is a being with infinitely many attributes, each of which is itself infinite, upon which
no limits of any kind can be imposed. So Spinoza argued that infinite substance must be indivisible,
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eternal, and unitary. There can be only one such substance, "god or nature," in which everything else
is wholly contained. Thus, Spinoza is an extreme monist, for whom "Whatever is, is in god." Every
mind and every body, every thought and every movement, all are nothing more than aspects of the
one true being. Thus, god is an extended as well as a thinking substance.
Finally, god is perfectly free on Spinoza's definition. Of course it would be incorrect to suppose that
god has any choices about what to do. Everything that happens is not only causally determined but
actually flows by logical necessity from immutable laws. But since everything is merely a part of god,
those laws themselves, and cause and effect alike, are simply aspects of the divine essence, which is
wholly self-contained and therefore free. Because there is no other substance, god's actions can
never be influenced by anything else.
The Natural Order
God is the only genuine cause. From the essence of god, Spinoza held, infinitely many things flow in
infinitely many different ways. The entire universe emanates inexorably from the immutable core of
infinite substance. Though we often find it natural to think of the world from the outside looking in,
as natura naturata (nature natured), its internal structure can be more accurately conceived from the
inside looking out, as natura naturans (nature naturing).
Since all that happens radiates from the common core, everything hangs together as part of the
coherent whole which just is god or nature in itself.
The infinite substance and each of its infinitely many distinct attributes (among which only thought
and extension are familiar to us) are eternal expressions of the immutable essence of god. From each
attribute flow the infinite immediate modes (infinite intellect and motion or rest), and out of these in
turn come the infinite mediate modes (truth and the face of the universe). Thus, every mode of
substance (each individual mind or body) is determined to be as it is because of the divine essence.
Even the finite modes (particular thoughts and actions) are inevitably and wholly determined by the
nature of god. Hence, everything in the world is as it must be; nothing could be other than it is.
Thought and Extension
In the same deductive geometrical form, Book II of the Ethics offers an extensive account of human
beings: our existence, our nature, and our activities. Remember that we are aware of only two of the
infinitely many attributes of god, extension and thought, and that each of them independently
expresses the entire essence of the one infinite substance.
That is, in the natural world (god's body), the attribute of extension, modified by varying degrees of
motion and rest, produces the face of the universe, which includes all of the particular physical events
which are the modes of extension. (This is almost exactly like Descartes's account of the material
world.) Similarly, in the mental realm (god's idea), the attribute of thought—modified by infinite
intellect—produces the truth, which includes all of the particular mental events which are the modes
of thought. Since they arise from distinct attributes, each of these realms is causally independent of
the other and wholly self-contained: the natural world and the mental realm are separate closed
systems.
Despite the impossibility of any causal interaction between the two, Spinoza supposed that the
inevitable unfolding of each these two independent attributes must proceed in perfect parallel with
that of the other. "The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of
things." (And so, of course, must be the order and connection of each of the infinitely many other
attributes of god.) Since the development of each aspect of the divine nature follows with logical
necessity from its own fundamental attribute, and since all of the attributes, in turn, derive from the
central essential being of one and the same infinite substance, each exhibits the same characteristic
pattern of organization even though they have no influence on each other.
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Thus, for every object of the natural world that exists as a mode of the attribute of extension, there is
a corresponding idea in the mind of god that exists as a mode of the attribute of thought. For every
physical event that takes place in the material realm as the result of exclusively physical causes, a
corresponding mental event must occur in the infinite intellect as a result of purely mental causes.
Since everything flows from the same infinite being, we may suppose that the structure of thought in
infinite intellect comprises an accurate representation of the structure of every other attribute.
Mind and Body
Consider what all of this implies for each of us as a living human being. We are not substances,
according to Spinoza, for only god or Nature is truly substantial; we can exist only as modes,
depending for our existence upon the reality of the one real being. Since the one infinite substance is
the cause of everything, each of us can only be regarded as a tiny cross-section of the whole.
Of course, that cross-section does include elements from each of the infinitely many attributes of that
substance. In particular, we know that in each case it involves both a human body, the movements of
whose organic parts are all physical events that flow from god via the attribute of extension, and a
human mind, the formation of whose ideas are all mental events that flow from god via the attribute
of thought. Although there can be no causal interaction between the mind and the body, the order
and connection of their internal elements are perfectly correlated.
Thus, in principle, the human mind contains ideas that perfectly represent the parts of the human
body. But since many of these ideas are inadequate in the sense that they do not carry with them
internal signs of their accuracy, we do not necessarily know our own bodies. If, for example, there
must be in my mind an idea that corresponds to each particular organic state of my spleen; but since I
am unaware of its bodily correlate, it provides me with no clear awareness of that representational
object.
Human Knowledge
Spinoza maintained that human beings do have particular faculties whose functions are to provide
some degree of knowledge. I typically assume, for example, that there may be some correlation
between thought and extension with regard to sensations produced by the action of other bodies
upon my eyes, ears, and fingertips. Even my memory may occasionally harbor some evidence of the
order and connection common to things and ideas. And in self-conscious awareness, I seem to
achieve genuine knowledge of myself by representing my mind to itself, using ideas to signify other
ideas.
Near the end of Book II, then, Spinoza distinguished three kinds of knowledge of which we may be
capable: First, opinion, derived either from vague sensory experience or from the signification of
words in the memory or imagination, provides only inadequate ideas and cannot be relied upon as a
source of truth. Second, reason, which begins with simple adequate ideas and by analyzing causal or
logical necessity proceeds toward awareness of their more general causes, does provide us with truth.
But intuition, in which the mind deduces the structure of reality from the very essence or idea of god,
is the great source of adequate ideas, the highest form of knowledge, and the ultimate guarantor of
truth.
Spinoza therefore recommends a three-step process for the achievement of human knowledge: First,
disregard the misleading testimony of the senses and conventional learning. Second, starting from the
adequate idea of any one existing thing, reason back to the eternal attribute of god from which it
derives. Finally, use this knowledge of the divine essence to intuit everything else that ever was, is,
and will be. Indeed, he supposed that the Ethics itself is an exercise in this ultimate pursuit
of indubitable knowledge.
Action, Goodness, and Freedom
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The last three Books of the Ethics collectively describe how to live consistently on Spinozistic
principles. All human behavior results from desire or the perception of pain, so (like events of any
sort) it flows necessarily from the eternal attributes of thought and extension. But Spinoza pointed
out a crucial distinction between two kinds of cases: Sometimes I am wholly unaware of the causes
that underlie what I do and am simply overwhelmed by the strength of my momentary passions. But
at other times I have adequate knowledge of the motives for what I do and can engage in deliberate
action because I recognize my place within the grander scheme of reality as a whole.
It is in this fashion that moral value enters Spinoza's system. Good (or evil) just is what serves (or
hinders) the long-term interests of life. Since my actions invariably follow from emotion or desire, I
always do what I believe to be the good, which will truly be so if I have adequate ideas of everything
involved. The greatest good of human life, then, is to understand one's place in the structure of the
universe as a natural expression of the essence of god.
But how can we speak of moral responsibility when every human action is determined with rigid
necessity? Remember that, for Spinoza, freedom is self-determination, so when I acquire adequate
knowledge of the emotions and desires that are the internal causes of all my actions, when I
understand why I do what I do, then I am truly free. Although I can neither change the way things are
nor hope that I will be rewarded, I must continue to live and act with the calm confidence that I am a
necessary component of an infinitely greater and more important whole. This way of life may not be
easy, Spinoza declared, "But all noble things are as difficult as they are rare."
Leibniz’s Monadology
G.W. Leibniz’s Monadology (1714) is a very concise and condensed presentation of his theory that the
universe consists of an infinite number of substances called monads. Leibniz discusses the nature of
monadic perception and consciousness, the principles which govern truth and reason, and the
relation of the monadic universe to God.
Leibniz defines a monad as a simple substance which cannot be divided into parts. A compound
substance may be formed by an aggregation of monads. Thus, a compound substance may be divided
into simple parts.
According to Leibniz, monads differ in quality, and no two monads are exactly alike. Each monad has
its own individual identity. Each monad has its own internal principle of being. A monad may undergo
change, but this change is internally determined. Changes in the properties of any monad are not
externally determined by other monads.
Each monad has a plurality of properties and relations, which constitutes its perception. Each monad
has its own perceptions which differ from the perceptions of other monads. Perceptual changes are
constituted by the internal actions of monads. Leibniz describes three levels of monads, which may be
differentiated by their modes of perception A simple or bare monad has unconscious perception, but
does not have memory. A simple or ordinary soul is a more highly developed monad, which has
distinct perceptions, and which has conscious awareness and memory. A rational soul or spirit is an
even more highly developed monad, which has self-consciousness and reason (both of which
constitute "apperception").
Leibniz says that necessary and eternal truths may be known by reason. A rational soul may know
necessary and permanent truths, in contrast to an ordinary soul which can only connect perceptions
by means of memory. A rational soul can know eternal truths about the universe and about the
relation of the universe to God. A rational soul thinks of itself as limited, but thinks of God as
unlimited.
Leibniz explains that reason is governed by two main principles: the principle of contradiction, and the
principle of sufficient reason. According to the principle of contradiction, a proposition must be either
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true or false. If two propositions are contradictory to each other, then one of the propositions must
be true, and the other must be false. According to the principle of sufficient reason, nothing happens
without a reason. No proposition can be true without a sufficient reason for its being true and not
false.
Leibniz declares that there are two kinds of truth: truths of reason, and truths of fact. Truths of reason
are a priori, while truths of fact are a posteriori. Truths of reason are necessary, permanent truths.
Truths of fact are contingent, empirical truths. Both kinds of truth must have a sufficient reason.
Truths of reason have their sufficient reason in being opposed to the contradictoriness and logical
inconsistency of propositions which deny them. Truths of fact have their sufficient reason in being
more perfect than propositions which deny them.
Leibniz also claims, however, that the ultimate reason of all things must be found in a necessary and
universal substance, which is God. A primary substance is not material, according to Leibniz, because
matter is infinitely divisible. Every monad is produced from a primary unity, which is God. Every
monad is eternal, and contributes to the unity of all the other monads in the universe.
Leibniz says that there is only one necessary substance, and that this is God. A necessary substance is
one whose existence is logically necessary. The existence of a necessary substance cannot be denied
without causing some form of self-contradiction. Thus, God’s existence is logically necessary. God is
absolutely real, infinite, and perfect. All perfection and all reality comes from God. God, as the
supreme monad, is an absolute unity.
Leibniz explains that the perfection of a monad is revealed by its activity. The imperfection of a
monad is revealed by its passivity. A monad is perfect insofar as it is active, and is imperfect insofar as
it is passive. Actions and reactions are reciprocal relations between monads, and are constantly
changing. The actions of some monads are a sufficient reason for the reactions of other monads. The
reactions of some monads are given sufficient reason by the actions of other monads. All of the
actions and reactions of monads are governed by a principle of harmony, which is established by God.
Leibniz argues that, insofar as the rational soul or spirit can know eternal truths and can act according
to reason, it can reflect God. The spiritual world is a moral world, which can guide the natural world.
The goodness of God ensures that there is harmony between the spiritual world and the natural
world, and establishes harmony between moral laws and natural laws. A perfect harmony of moral
and natural law is found in the spiritual world, which Leibniz calls the City of God.
Leibniz also says that there are an infinite number of possible universes in the mind of God, but that
God has chosen a single universe whose sufficient reason is that it is the best possible universe (i.e.
having the highest possible degree of perfection). This claim may be disputed, however, because it
may be misused as an argument for an excessive and unjustifiable form of optimism.
Leibniz argues that God is supremely perfect, and that therefore God has chosen the best possible
plan for the universe. God’s plan for the universe necessarily produces the greatest amount of
happiness and goodness, because it reflects God’s absolute perfection. But Leibniz’s argument may be
disputed by the opposing argument that the best of all possible worlds may not necessarily contain
both good and evil. The best of all possible worlds may not necessaily contain both happiness and
unhappiness. The universe may not necessarily be governed by harmony, but may be governed by
disharmony. The universe may not necessarily reveal unity, but may reveal disunity.
The Uses of Logic
The last of the great Continental Rationalists was Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Known in his own time as
a legal advisor to the Court of Hanover and as a practicing mathematician who co-invented the
calculus, Leibniz applied the rigorous standards of formal reasoning in an effort to comprehend

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everything. A suitably sophisticated logical scheme, he believed, can serve as a reliable guide to the
ultimate structure of reality.
But Leibniz published little of his philosophical work during his own lifetime. For an understanding of
the technical logical foundations of his system, we must rely upon letters and notebooks which
became available only centuries later and upon the aphoristic summary of its results in La
Monadologie (Monadology) (1714). His Discours de Metaphysique (Discourse on Metaphysics) (1686)
and Théodicée (Theodicy) (1710) present to the general public more popular expositions of Leibniz's
central themes. Our strategy will be to begin with the logical theories and work outward to the more
accessible doctrines.
Truths of reason and fact
The basis for Leibniz's philosophy is pure logical analysis. Every proposition, he believed, can be
expressed in subject-predicate form. What is more, every true proposition is a statement of identity
whose predicate is wholly contained in its subject, like "2 + 3 = 5." In this sense, all propositions
are analytic for Leibniz. But since the required analysis may be difficult, he distinguished two kinds of
true propositions:
Truths of Reason are explicit statements of identity, or reducible to explicit identities by a
substitution of the definitions of their terms. Since a finite analysis always reveals the identity-
structure of such truths, they cannot be denied without contradiction and are perfectly necessary.
Truths of Fact, on the other hand, are implicit statements of identity, the grounds for whose truth
may not be evident to us. These truths are merely contingent and may be subject to dispute, since
only an infinite analysis could show them to be identities.
Anything that human beings can believe or know, Leibniz held, must be expressed in one or the other
of these two basic forms. The central insight of Leibniz's system is that all existential propositions are
truths of fact, not truths of reason. This simple doctrine has many significant consequences.
Complete Individual Substances
Consider next how this logic of propositions applies to the structure of reality itself for Leibniz. The
subject of any proposition signifies a complete individual substance, a simple, indivisible,
dimensionless being or monad, while the predicate signifies some quality, property, or power. Thus,
each true proposition represents the fact that some feature is actually contained in this substance.
Each monad is a complete individual substance in the sense that it contains all of its features—past,
present, and future. Because statements of identity are timeless, the facts they express perpetually
obtain. (Thus, for example, I am the person whose daughter was born in 1982 and the person who
now develops this web site and the person who will vacation in Manitoba next summer; since each of
these predicates can be truly affirmed of me, each of these features is contained in me.) Everything
that was, is, or will ever be true of any substance is already contained in it.
Moreover, each monad is a complete individual substance in the sense that its being is utterly
independent of everything else. Because statements of identity are self-contained, any apparent
relation between substances must actually be a matching pair of features that each possesses alone.
(Thus, for example, I happen to have the property of being Aaron's father, and Aaron happens to have
the property of being my son, but these are two facts, not one.) Hence, on Leibniz's view, there can
be no interaction between substances, each of which is purely active. Monads are "windowless."
Where Spinoza saw the world as a single comprehensive substance like Descartes's extended matter,
then, Leibniz supposed that the world is composed of many discrete particles, each of which is simple,
active, and independent of every other, like Descartes's minds or souls. The rationalists' common

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reliance upon mathematical models of reasoning led to startlingly different conceptions of the
universe. Yet the rationality, consistency, and necessity within each system is clear.
Sufficient reason and identity of indiscernibles
Another way of summing up the structure of the universe on Leibniz's view is by reviewing the great
logical principles from which all truths are said to flow:
The Principle of Contradiction generates the truths of reason, each of which states the connection
between an individual substance and one of its finite number of essential features. It would be a
contradiction to deny any of these propositions, since the substance would not be what it is unless it
had all of these features. Truths of reason, then, are not influenced by any contingent fact about the
world; they are true "in all possible worlds." Thus, for example, "Garth Kemerling is a human being"
would be necessarily true even if my parents had been childless.
The Principle of Sufficient Reason generates the truths of fact, each of which states the connection
between an existing individual substance and one of its infinitely many accidental features or
relations. The sufficient reason for the truth of each of these propositions is that this substance does
exist as a member of the consistent set of monads which constitutes the actual world. Truths of fact,
then, depend upon the reciprocal mirroring of each existing substance by every other. Thus, for
example, "Garth Kemerling is an oldest child" is contingently true only because my parents had no
children before I was born.
The Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles establishes the fact that, within the set of monads that
constitutes any possible world, no two can be exactly alike. If, on the contrary, there were two
distinct but perfectly identical substances, Leibniz argued, then there could be no sufficient reason for
each to occupy its own location rather than that of the other. More positively, since each monad
mirrors the entire structure of the world, each must reflect a unique set of relations to every other.
Finally, the Principle of the Plenum (or principle of plenitude) affirms that the actual world,
considered as a set of monads, is as full as it can possibly be. Since there is no genuine interaction
among distinct substances, there would be no sufficient reason for the non-existence of any monad
that would be consistent with the others within a possible world. Hence, anything that can happen
will; every possibility within this world must be actualized. The world in which we live, then, is but one
among the infinitely many possible worlds that might have existed. What makes this one special?
Space and Time
Since we experience the actual world as full of physical objects, Leibniz provided a detailed account of
the nature of bodies. As Descartes had correctly noted, the essence of matter is that it is spatially
extended. But since every extended thing, no matter how small, is in principle divisible into even
smaller parts, it is apparent that all material objects are compound beings made up of simple
elements. But from this Leibniz concluded that the ultimate constitutents of the world must be
simple, indivisible, and therefore unextended, particles—dimensionless mathematical points. So the
entire world of extended matter is in reality constructed from simple immaterial substances, monads,
or entelechies.
In fact, Leibniz held that neither space nor time is a fundamental feature of reality. Of course
individual substances stand in spatial relation to each other, but relations of this sort are reducible in
logic to the non-relational features of windowless monads. In exactly the same way, temporal
relations can be logically analyzed as the timeless properties of individual monads. Space and time are
unreal, but references to spatial location and temporal duration provide a convenient short-hand for
keeping track of the relations among the consistent set of monads which is the actual world.
What is at work here again is Leibniz's notion of complete individual substances, each of which
mirrors every other. A monad not only contains all of its own past, present, and future features but
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also, by virtue of a complex web of spatio-temporal references, some representation of every other
monad, each of which in turn contains . . . . In a universe of windowless mirrors, each reflects any
other, along with its reflections of every other, and so on ad infinitum. It is for this reason that an
infinite analysis would be required to reveal the otherwise implicit identity at the heart of every truth
of fact. In order fully to understand the simple fact that my eyes are brown, one would have to
consider the eye-color of all of my ancestors, the anatomical structure of the iris, my personal
opthalmological history, the culturally-defined concept of color, the poetical associations of dark eyes,
etc., etc., etc.; the slightest difference in any one of these things would undermine the truth of this
matter of fact. Existential assertions presuppose the reality of just this one among all possible worlds
as the actual world.
The Best of All Possible Worlds
Both in the Monadology and at the more popular level of presentation that characterizes
the Discourse on Metaphysics, Leibniz (like Descartes) resolved some of the most thorny philosophical
problems by reference to god. God (alone) exists necessarily, and everything else flows from the
divine nature. Limited only by contradiction, god first conceives of every possible world—the world
with just one monad; the worlds with exactly two monads; those with three, with seventeen, with five
billion, etc. Then god simply chooses which of them to create.
Of course even god must have a sufficient reason for actualizing this world rather than any other. The
most direct advantage of this world is that (as the plenum principle requires) it is the fullest. That is,
more things exist and/or more events actually take place in this world than in any other consistent set
of interrelated monads. In a more lofty tone, Leibniz declared that a benevolent god would choose to
create whatever possible world contained the smallest amount of evil; hence (in a phrase that would
later be mocked by Voltaire) this is "the best of all possible worlds," according to Leibniz. Nothing
about it could be changed without making things worse rather than better on the whole.
Similarly, the existence of a benevolent god can be used to account for the smooth operation of a
universe that consists of indefinitely many distinct individual substances, none of which have any
causal influence over any other. A crucial element of god's creative activity, Leibniz held, is the
establishment of a "pre-established harmony" among all existing things. Like well-made clocks that
have been synchronized, wound, and set in motion together, the monads that make up our world are
independent, self-contained, purely active beings whose features coincide without any genuine
interaction among them.
One special case of this pre-established harmony, of course, accounts for the apparent interaction of
mind and body in a human being as nothing more than the perfect parallelism of thier functions. In
fact, the human mind is just the dominant member of a local cluster of monads which collectively
constitute the associated human body. Neither has any real effect on the other, but these monads are
most clearly reflected in each others' foreground. Thus, in both sensation and volition, the divinely-
ordained coincidence of bodily movements and mental thoughts creates an illusion of genuine causal
influence.
Problem of freedom
The possibility human knowledge emerges more clearly from a slightly more technical account
of Leibniz's position. All monads have the capacity for perception of the external world in the sense
that, as complete individual substances, each of them contains as properties unconscious images of
its spatio-temporal relations to everything else.These innate ideas constitute the unique point of view
from which any monad may be said to represent the world as a whole.
But Leibniz held that some monads—namely, the souls of animals and human beings—also have
conscious apperception in the sense that they are capable of employing sensory ideas as
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representations of physical things outside themselves. And a very few monads—namely, spirits such
as ourselves and god—possess the even greater capacity of self-consciousness, of which genuine
knowledge is the finest example. Although Leibniz himself did not draw the inference directly, notice
that if a cluster of dimensionless monads can make up an extended body, it might be equally possible
for a cluster of unconscious monads to constitute a thinking thing.
What Leibniz did claim is that we have the free will required for moral responsibility even though all
of our future actions are already contained in us (along with the future of the entire actual world).
Any awareness of those contingent future actions would follow from the principle of sufficient reason
only upon an infinite analysis of my nature. Hence, since I lack knowledge of what I will do tomorrow,
it will seem to me as if I act freely when I do it. Like space and time, freedom is a benevolent illusion
that adequately provides for life in an uncertain world.
Concluding note on the Rationalists
Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz illustrate well the range of diverse outcomes that may result from an
effort to understand the world through a priori knowledge. If their systems of thought seem
implausibly remote from the world of ordinary experience, it may help to remember that modern
science leads to a similar result. Once we grant that the reality of things may be quite different from
the way they appear to us, only the internal coherence of the scheme of thought makes much
difference.
Proofs for the existence of God
The core idea of the ontological proof is to show that the concept of existence is somehow contained
in the concept of God, and that therefore God’s existence can be logically derived – without any
further assumptions about the external world – from the very idea, or definition, of God. Now, G.W.
Leibniz has argued repeatedly that the traditional versions of the ontological proof are not fully
conclusive, because they rest on the tacit assumption that the concept of God is possible, i.e. free
from contradiction. A complete proof will rather have to consist of two parts. First, a proof of premise
(1) God is possible. Second, a demonstration of the “remarkable proposition”
(2) If God is possible, then God exists. The present contribution investigates an interesting paper in
which Leibniz tries to prove proposition
(2). It will be argued that the underlying idea of God as a necessary being has to be interpreted with
the help of a distinguished predicate letter ‘E’ (denoting the concept of existence) as follows:
(3) g =df ιxE(x). Principle (2) which Leibniz considered as “the best fruit of the entire logic” can then be
formalized as follows:
(4) ◊E(ιxE(x)) → E(ιxE(x)).
At first sight, Leibniz’s proof appears to be formally correct; but a closer examination reveals an
ambiguity in his use of the modal notions. According to (4), the possibility of the necessary being has
to be understood in the sense of something which possibly exists. However, in other places of his
proof, Leibniz interprets the assumption that the necessary being is impossible in the diverging sense
of something which involves a contradiction. Furthermore, Leibniz believes that an »impossible
thing«, y, is such that contradictory propositions like F(y) and ¬F(y) might both be true of y.
It will be argued that the latter assumption is incompatible with Leibniz’s general views about logic
and that the crucial proof is better reinterpreted as dealing with the necessity, possibility, and
impossibility of concepts rather than of objects. In this case, the counterpart of (2) turns out to be a
theorem of Leibniz’s second order logic of concepts; but in order to obtain a full demonstration of the
existence of God, the counterpart of (1), i.e. the self-consistency of the concept of a necessary being,
remains to be prove

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In several papers dating from 1676 onwards, Leibniz explained why he considered the traditional
proof of the existence of God (as invented by St. Anselm and modified by Descartes and Spinoza) as
insufficient. Thus in the “Meditations on knowledge, truth, and ideas” of 1684 (which contains an
extensive discussion of the basic principles of Descartes’ theory of knowledge), Leibniz analyzes the
“old argument for the existence of God” as follows:
The argument goes like this: Whatever follows from the idea or definition of a thing can be
predicated of the thing. God is by definition the most perfect being, or the being nothing
greater than which can be thought. Now, the idea of the most perfect being includes·ideas of
all perfections, and amongst these perfections is existence. So existence follows from the idea
of God. Therefore [...]
God exists. But this argument shows only that if God is possible then it follows that he exists.
For we can’t safely draw conclusions from definitions unless we know first that they are real
definitions, that is, that they don’t include any contradictions. If a definition does harbour a
contradiction, we can infer contradictory conclusions from it, which is absurd.
Hence, according to Leibniz, the traditional proof establishes the truth of the conditional statement ‘If
God is possible, then God exists’.
But since the possibility, i.e. the self-consistency, of an arbitrary concept C may not generally be taken
for granted, a complete demonstration requires in addition a proof of the antecedent ‘God is
possible’.2 In this connection two different conceptions of God have to be distinguished:
(A) God as the most perfect being (“ens perfectissimum”), and
(B) God as the necessary being (“ens necessarium”). Accordingly, a complete proof of the existence of
God will either consist of the two propositions
(1A) The most perfect being is possible
(2A) If the most perfect being is possible, then it exists or of the two propositions
(1B) The necessary being is possible
(2B) If the necessary being is possible, then it exists.
Leibniz used to illustrate the necessity of the requirement of self-consistency of a concept by means
of the example of »the fastest motion« which, allegedly, “entails an absurdity”:
Suppose there is a wheel turning with the fastest motion. Anyone can see that if a spoke of the wheel
came to poke out beyond the rim, the end of it would then be moving faster than a nail on the rim of
the wheel. So the nail’s motion is not the fastest, which is contrary to the hypothesis.
Unfortunately, this famous example is quite inapt to illustrate the point in question, because –
according to modern physics – the concept of the fastest motion doesn’t contain a contradiction at
all; it rather forms a cornerstone of Einstein’s theory of relativity. However, in other papers Leibniz
put forward more convincing examples of (implicitly) contradictory concepts such as »the greatest
number« or »the greatest figure«.
Moreover, Leibniz pointed out that without the requirement of the self-consistency of the definition,
the basic idea of the ontological proof might be misused to show not only the existence of a most
perfect and necessary God, but similarly also the existence of a »most perfect man« or the existence
of a »necessary beast«:
For example, let an entity A be defined as the absolutely necessary beast. Then one can argue
that A has to exist as follows: Whatever is absolutely necessary will exist (by an indubitable
axiom); now A is absolutely necessary (by definition), therefore A exists. But this is absurd, and
one has to object that this definition or idea is impossible [...].

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The variant of the ontological proof which makes use of the conception of the most perfect being has
been investigated above all in the paper “Quod Ens Perfectissimum existit” which Leibniz composed in
1676 after having visited Spinoza in The Hague.
Leibniz’s ideas about the »most perfect being« turned out to be very influential for the philosophical
discussions of the 18th century, and, indeed, even for the revival of the ontological proof in the 20th
century, notably by Kurt Gödel7. The present paper, however, concentrates on the second version of
the proof which relies of the conception of a »necessary being«. Leibniz dealt with this topic mainly in
the paper
“Probatio existentiae DEI ex eius essentia”
where he provided not only a short argument in favour of
(1B) The necessary being is possible, but also an interesting, detailed proof of the conditional
proposition
(2B) If the necessary being is possible, then it exists. This proposition, which was praised by Leibniz as
“one of the best fruits of the entire logic”8, will be examined in the subsequent section 2.
“Probatio existentiae DEI ex eius essentia” During his correspondence with Henning Huthmann,
probably in January 1678, Leibniz devised three different versions of a “Derivation of the Existence of
God from his Essence”. One version was published already in 1926, while the other two variants
appeared only in 2006. 9 The most interesting variant runs as follows: Si Ens necessarium est
possibile, actu existet. Nam ponamus non existere, inde ratiocinabor hoc modo:
(i)10 Ens Necessarium non existit, ex hypothesi.
(ii) Quicquid non existit, illud possibile est non existere
(iii) Quicquid possibile est non-existere illud falso dicitur non posse nonexistere
(iv) Quicquid falso dicitur non posse non existere, illud falso dicitur esse necessarium. Nam
necessarium est quod non potest non existere.
(v) Ergo Ens necessarium falso dicitur esse necessarium.
(vi) Quae conclusio est vel vera vel falsa.
(vii) Si est vera, sequitur quod Ens necessarium implicet contradictionem, seu sit impossibile,
quia de eo demonstrantur contradictoria, scilicet quod non sit necessarium. Conclusio enim
contradictoria non nisi de re contradictionem implicante ostendi potest.
(viii) Si est falsa, necesse est aliquam ex praemissis esse falsam. Sola autem ex praemissis falsa
esse potest hypothesis, quod scilicet Ens necessarium non existat.
(ix) Ergo concludimus Ens necessarium vel esse impossibile, vel existere.
x) Si ergo DEUM definiamus Ens a se, seu Ens ex cuius essentia sequitur existentia, seu Ens
necessarium, sequitur DEUM si possibilis sit actu esse.
This is translated this as follows:
If the necessary being is possible, then it actually exists. For if we assume that it doesn‘t exist,
one may reason as follows:
(i) By hypothesis, the necessary being doesn‘t exist.
(ii) Whenever something doesn’t exist, it possibly doesn’t exist.
(iii) Whenever something possibly doesn’t exist, it is falsely maintained to be impossible not to
exist.
(iv) Whenever something is falsely maintained to be impossible not to exist, then it is falsely
maintained to be necessary. (For necessary is what is impossible not to exist.)
(v) Therefore the necessary being is falsely maintained to be necessary.

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(vi) This conclusion is either true or false.
(vii) If it is true, it follows that the necessary being contains a contradiction, or is impossible,
because contradictory assertions have been proved about it, namely that it is not necessary.
For a contradictory conclusion can only be shown about a thing which implies a contradiction.
(viii) If it is false, necessarily one of the premises must be false. But the only premise that might
be false is the hypothesis saying that the necessary being doesn’t exist.
(ix) Hence we conclude that the necessary being either is impossible, or it exists.
(x) So if we define GOD as an “Ens a se”, i.e. a being from whose essence its existence follows,
i.e. a necessary being, it follows that GOD, if he is possible, actually exists.
Formalization and Logical Analysis of the “Probatio”
In order to analyze the validity of Leibniz’s proof, it must first be clarified how the idea of the
possibility of God and the idea of a necessary being may be represented within the framework of
modern logic. The modal operators of necessity, , and possibility, ◊, are usually applicable only to
propositions, but not to objects. Now, as Leibniz explained at the beginning of the Probatio, the
possibility of an object, x, shall be understood as the possibility of x’s existence which in turn may also
be equated with x’s essence.
Since, moreover, Leibniz considers ‘existence’ as a normal property, it may be represented by a
distinguished predicate letter, say ‘E’. If the name ‘God’ is abbreviated by an individual constant, say
‘g’, then the proposition ‘God exists’ takes the form ‘E(g)’, while the proposition ‘God is possible’, i.e.
‘God possibly exists’, can be formalized by ‘◊E(g)’. In sum, then, Leibniz’s “remarkable proposition” ‘If
God is possible, then he exists’ may be transformed into formula
(2) ◊E(g) → E(g).
Now just like a possible object is interpreted as an object which possibly exists, the traditional idea of
God as a »necessary being« has to be interpreted as a being which necessarily exists. Thus in a
marginal note to the Probatio, Leibniz paraphrased the “Ens necessarium” as an “Ens necessario
existens”. Therefore one may define
(3) g =df ιxE(x).
The crucial variant of (2), which Leibniz considered as the “best fruit of the entire logic”, can hence be
formalized as follows:
(4) ◊E(ιxE(x)) → E(ιxE(x)).
This formula is in full accordance with Leibniz’s paraphrase „Si Ens necessario existens est possibile,
utique actu existet“ (A II, 1, 588, fn. 1). Anyway, we are now in a position to formalize Leibniz’s proof
as follows:
(i) ¬E(ιxE(x)) “By hypothesis, the necessary being doesn‘t exist.”
(ii) Λx(¬E(x) → ◊¬E(x)) “Whenever something doesn’t exist, it possibly doesn’t exist.”
(iii) Λx(◊¬E(x) → ¬(¬◊¬E(x))) “Whenever something possibly doesn’t exist, it is falsely
maintained to be impossible not to exist.”
(iv) Λx(¬(¬◊¬E(x)) → ¬E(x))
“Whenever something is falsely maintained to be impossible not to exist, then it is
falsely maintained to be necessary.”
(v) ¬E(ιxE(x))
“Therefore the necessary being is falsely maintained to be necessary.” This first part of the Probatio is
logically impeccable. It starts with the assumption (i), from which (ii) may be derived according to the
well-known principle that, what is a fact, or is true, also must be possible (“ab esse ad posse valet
consequentia”). (iii) contains an application of the principle of double negation (“duplex negatio

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affirmat”), while (iv) is based on the equivalence between ‘necessarily p’ and ‘not possibly not-p’.
Hence (α) (i) logically entail (v)
However,
(α) doesn’t yet represent the desired proof of (4), for (α) only says (by logical contraposition) that the
negation of (v), i.e. E(ιxE(x)), entails the negation of (i), i.e. E(ιxE(x)). This inference constitutes an
instance of the well-known schema p → p, i.e. the traditional principle “ab necesse ad esse valet
consequentia”. What has, however, to be shown is that the same conclusion, E(ιxE(x)), already follows
from the much weaker premise ◊E(ιxE(x)), or (again by logical contraposition):
(β) (i) logically entails ¬◊E(ιxE(x)).
Leibniz attempted to justify the stronger inference (β) as follows. According to the well-known
principle “tertium non datur”, one has:
(vi) ¬E(ιxE(x)) ∨ ¬¬E(ιxE(x))
“This conclusion [(v)] is either true or false.” Next it is argued:
¬E(ιxE(x)) → (ιxE(x) is impossible)13
“If it [(v)] is true, it follows that the necessary being contains a contradiction, or is
impossible”.
¬¬E(ιxE(x)) → E(ιxE(x))
“If it [(v)] is false, necessarily one of the premises must be false. But the only premise
that might be false is hypothesis [i] saying that the necessary being doesn’t exist.” In
view of
(vi), the two results (vii) and (viii) taken together yield:
(ix) (ιxE(x) is impossible) ∨ E(ιxE(x)) “Hence we conclude that the necessary being
either is impossible, or it exists.” Finally, Leibniz rounds off his proof by paraphrasing
(ix) as follows:
(x) (ιxE(x) is possible) → E(ιxE(x))
“So if we define GOD as […] a necessary being, it follows that GOD, if he is possible,
actually exists.”
At first sight, also the second part of the Probatio appears to be logically correct, but upon closer
inspection two problems become visible. First, step (vii) of the proof has not yet been sufficiently
justified. It remains to be shown in which sense the assumption that the necessary being doesn’t
necessarily exist, ¬E(ιxE(x)), entails a contradiction. This point will be scrutinized in section 5.
Second, within the Probatio Leibniz uses the notion of possibility in an ambiguous way. According to
the explanation given at the beginning of this section, the possibility of an entity x has to be
understood in the sense of something which possibly exists, ◊E(x).
However, in connection with steps (vii)-(x), Leibniz interprets the assumption that the necessary being
is impossible in the diverging sense of an entity which involves a contradiction; and it is far from
evident whether these two notions coincide with one another. The following section it devoted to the
question whether the latter notion of an »impossible object« does make sense at all.
The Problem of »Impossible objects« In step (vii) of the above proof, Leibniz maintained that “a
contradictory conclusion can only be shown about a thing which implies a contradiction”.
Towards the end of the Probatio, he explains more exactly that an entity, y, is impossible if and only if
“contradictory propositions” are true about y, and he argues that some such »impossible objects« do
really exist: It is worthwhile noting here that a conclusion which entails a contradiction can
nevertheless be true, namely if it is about an impossible thing. E.g., ‘A square circle is not a circle’. This

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proposition, although contradictory, is true, for it can be correctly derived from true premises as
follows:
A square is not a circle
A square circle is square
Hence,
A square circle is not a circle.14
take a closer look at this inference which admits of at least two different interpretations! It appears
quite natural to understand both the premises and the conclusion as universal propositions. In this
case the syllogism (or better: quasi-syllogism)15 amounts to the following inference:
P1 Whatever is a square is not a circle
P2 Whatever is a square circle is a square
K Whatever is a square circle is not a circle
Letting ‘S’ and ‘C’ abbreviate the predicates ‘is a square’ and ‘is a circle’, respectively, the inference
can be formalized as follows:
P1 ∀x(S(x) → ¬C(x))
P2 ∀x(S(x) ∧ C(x) → S(x))
K1 ∀x(S(x) ∧ C(x) → ¬C(x))
This inference is logically valid and all its premises are true, for P1 is an analytic truth while P2 is a
tautology. Furthermore, the conclusion K1 is somehow contradictory where its contradictoriness
becomes more explicit if one considers the tautology ∀x(S(x) ∧ C(x) → C(x)) which, in addition to K1,
yields the strengthened formula:
K2 = ∀x(S(x) ∧ C(x) → C(x) ∧ ¬C(x)).
So Leibniz’s claim, that one may derive a contradictory conclusion from true premises, turns out to be,
at least somehow, correct. However, proposition K2 is not strictly contradictory, because it only
maintains that if there were a square circle, y, then y would possess the contradictory properties of
both being a circle and not being a circle. But since K2 is only a conditional, it doesn’t entail the
existence an »impossible object« y such that C(y) ∧ ¬C(y). In order to obtain a genuine inconsistency,
one might resort to an alternative interpretation of the syllogism where the second premise “circulus
quadratus est quadratus” is now taken in the sense of the particular proposition ‘Some square circles
are squares’. In terms of first order logic, this inference (of type “Ferio”) would have to be formalized
as follows:
P1 ∀x(S(x) → ¬C(x)) P3 ∃x(S(x) ∧ C(x) ∧ S(x)) K3 ∃x(S(x) ∧ C(x) ∧ ¬C(x))
In this case, K3 represents an outright inconsistency, but this conclusion has no longer been inferred,
as Leibniz maintained, entirely from “true propositions”. Unlike P2, premise P3 is no longer a
tautology. As a matter of fact, it is not true at all, for it entails the existence of an object, x, which
would be both a square and a circle:
∃x(S(x) ∧ C(x)).
But this existential proposition directly negates the content of the other premise P1, namely, that
whatever is a square can’t (also) be a circle! Hence the above syllogism turns out to contain two
logically incompatible premises, and it is small wonder that from this inconsistent pair of propositions
another inconsistency, namely K3, can be logically derived. So Leibniz’ argument fails to show that
there exists an »impossible object« y such that contradictory propositions would be true about y.
Let it be mentioned in passing that the assumption of »impossible objects« would also be in conflict
with the basic principles of classical, two-valued logic which Leibniz adheres to in all his later writings.

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Thus, e.g., in a paper of around 1686, he defended the principle of non-contradiction as follows:
Above all I assume all propositions (both the affirmative and the negative ones) to be either true or
false. If an affirmation is true, then the negation is false, and if the negation is true, then the
affirmation is false [...] All this is usually understood by the Principle of Contradiction (Cf. GP 7, 299).
Hence the assumption of a proposition which would be both true (‘Square y is round’) and false
(‘Square y is not round’) contradicts this highest principle of reason. Furthermore, for Leibniz the
principle of non-contradiction is an indispensable basis for his construction of logical proofs. Thus in
the fragment “De Principiis” he concisely emphasized: Identica sunt vera, et contradictionem
implicantia sunt falsa, i.e. identical propositions are logically true, while propositions which entail a
contradiction are logically false (Cf. C, 183). 5 Reconsideration of the “Probatio” (without Recourse to
»Impossible Objects«) As has already been stressed in section 3, assumption (i), i.e. ¬E(ιxE(x)),
logically entails (v), i.e. ¬E(ιxE(x)), which Leibniz considers as contradictory. The (alleged) inconsistency
of this proposition is then used by Leibniz to conclude that its subject, i.e. the necessary being, must
be an »impossible object«. But in view of the discussion of the foregoing section, such a detour (from
an impossible proposition to an »impossible object«) is extremely problematic and should better be
avoided. Why shouldn’t we just stop at the inconsistency of proposition (v) and infer – by “reductio ad
absurdum” – that the hypothesis (i), from which (v) was derived, therefore must be false? Briefly
speaking, one might be tempted to simplify the Probatio as follows: (α) (i) logically entails (v) (γ) (v) is
contradictory because it attributes to the necessary being the property of not being necessary. Hence
(δ) Assumption (i), saying that the necessary being does not exist, must be false, i.e. the necessary
being exists: E(ιxE(x). Alas, this argument – if valid – would not only constitute a proof of Leibniz’s
conditional thesis (2B) If the necessary being is possible, then it exists;
but even a proof of the categorical proposition that the necessary being exists. So what about
Leibniz’s notorious claim that the usual versions of the ontological proof are incomplete and have to
be supplemented by a proof of premise
(1B) ‘The necessary being is possible’? Well, the point is that our shortened »proof« contains the
same grave mistake that is also hidden in step (vii) of the Probatio, namely the claim that (v) is a
contradictory proposition. As a matter of fact, (v) »only« maintains that the necessarily existing being
does not necessarily exist, formally ¬E(ιxE(x)).
Although this proposition is rather strange, it is not strictly self-contradictory. In order to obtain a
genuine contradiction, one would need an additional premise which Leibniz evidently took for
granted, namely the assumption that the necessarily existing being (so-to-speak »by definition«)
exists necessarily:
(xi) E(ιxE(x)).
Now there are basically two strategies to cope with this situation. First, one might try to find an
additional proof for this formula; or, second, one might treat (xi) as an additional premise. In the
latter case, however, Leibniz’s entire proof would become severely circular. After all, the aim of the
Probatio was to show that if the necessary being is possible, then it exists. If one now introduces (xi)
as an additional premise, this would mean that one presupposes that the necessary being exists
necessarily. From this assumption, of course, one may trivially infer16 that the necessary being exists
simpliciter, E(ιxE(x)); and a fortiori one may derive Leibniz’s conditional thesis
(2B), ◊E(ιxE(x)) → E(ιxE(x))!
Such an argument really doesn’t deserve the name of a proof. So let us see whether one may perhaps
prove formula
(xi)! After all, in modern calculi of first order logic with identity and definite descriptions, one usually
has an axiom like
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(DD) Φ(ιxΦ(x)),
which guarantees that (under a certain presupposition not spelled out in DD) the Φ, i.e. the one and
only thing with property Φ, trivially does have property Φ. So if we substitute for Φ the condition of
necessary existence, E(x), we obtain the desired result
(xi), E(ιxE(x)).
However, the crucial presupposition for the validity of DD says that the respective definite description
term ιxΦ(x) satisfies the normal condition which means that there exists exactly one object x with
property Φ! In the case of E(x), this normal condition amounts to the existence and uniqueness of an
x
necessarily exists. Notwithstanding the question how the uniqueness of a necessary being, i.e.
∀x∀y(E(x) ∧ E(y) → x = y)), might ever be proved, it seems clear that the requirement of the existence
of a necessary being,
(xii) ∃x(E(x)),
again renders Leibniz’s proof circular. However, this charge of circularity may perhaps turn out to be
premature because there is a subtle ambiguity between the notion of existence as used in the
consequent of (x), on the one hand, and in the additional premise (xiii), needed to validate the
application of DD, on the other hand. In the former case, God’s existence, i.e. the existence of the
“Ens necessarium”, is formalized by means of the predicate of existence as E((ιxE(x)), while in the
latter case an existential quantifier is used to express the existence of (at least one) entity x which
falls under the predicate of necessary existence, ∃x(E(x)). In order to investigate this point a bit
further, we now introduce an entirely different interpretation of the Probatio as based on Leibniz’s
own logic.
Interpretation of the “Probatio” within the Framework of Leibniz’s Logic
The text of the Probatio dates from 1676, while Leibniz’s ripe logic of concepts was developed only
between 1679 and 1690. The essentials of the algebra of concepts (L1) plus its quantifier extension
(L2) before reconsidering Leibniz’s main ideas about the ontological proof.
The Algebra of Concepts L1
The algebra of concepts grows out of the framework of 17th century syllogistic by three
achievements. First, Leibniz drops the quantifier expression ‘every’ and formulates the universal
affirmative proposition ‘Every A is B’ simply as ‘A is B’ or, equivalently, as ‘A contains B’.
This fundamental proposition shall here be symbolized as A∈B while its negation will be abbreviated
as A∉B. Second, Leibniz introduces an operator of conceptual conjunction which combines two
concepts A and B into AB (sometimes also written as “A+B”). Third, Leibniz allows the unrestricted use
of conceptual negation (“Not-A”) which shall here be symbolized as ~A
Hence, in particular, one can form the inconsistent concept A~A and its tautological counterpart
~(A~A). Identity or coincidence of concepts may be defined as mutual containment:
DEF 1 (A = B) =df (A∈B) ∧ (B∈A).
Alternatively, the algebra of concepts might be built up with ‘=’ as a primitive operator while ‘∈’ is
defined by
DEF 2 (A∈B) =df (A = AB).
Another important operator may be introduced by definition. Concept B is possible if B does not
contain a contradiction like A~A:
DEF 3 P(B) =df (B∉A~A).
Leibniz uses many different locutions to express the self-consistency of a concept. Instead of ‘A is
possible’ (“A est possibile”) he often says ‘A is a thing’ (“A est res”), or ‘A is a being’ (“A est ens”). In
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the opposite case of an impossible concept he sometimes calls A a »false term« (“terminus falsus”).
Identity can be axiomatized by the law of reflexivity in conjunction with the rule of substitutivity:
IDEN 1 A = A
IDEN 2 If A = B,
then α[A] ↔ α[B].
The containment relation is characterized by the following laws of reflexivity and transitivity:
CONT 1 A∈A
CONT 2 A∈B ∧ B∈C → A∈C.
The most fundamental principle for the operator of conceptual conjunction says: “That A contains B
and A contains C is the same as that A contains BC” (cf. LLP, 58, fn. 4), i.e.:
CONJ 1 A∈BC ↔ A∈B ∧ A∈C.
Conjunction then satisfies the following laws:
CONJ 2 AA = A
CONJ 3 AB = BA
CONJ 4 AB∈A
CONJ 5 AB∈B.
The next operator is conceptual negation. Leibniz had serious problems with finding the proper laws
governing this operator. From the tradition, he knew little more than the “law of double negation”:
NEG 1 ~~A = A.
One important step towards a complete theory of conceptual negation was to transform the informal
principle of contraposition, ‘Every A is B, therefore Every Not-B is Not-A’ into the following axiom of
L1:
NEG 2 A∈B ↔ ~B∈~A.
Furthermore Leibniz discovered various variants of a “law of consistency”:
NEG 3 A ≠ ~A
NEG 4 A = B → A ≠ ~B.
NEG 5* A∉~A
NEG 6* A∈B → A∉~B.18
Principles NEG 5* and NEG 6* have been marked with a ‘*’ in order to indicate that the laws as
stated by Leibniz are not absolutely valid but have to be restricted to self-consistent terms:
NEG 5 P(A) → A∉~A
NEG 6 P(A) → (A∈B → A∉~B).
The following two laws describe some characteristic relations between the possibility-operator P and
the other operators of L1:
POSS 1 A∈B ∧ P(A) → P(B)
POSS 2 A∈B ↔ ¬P(A~B).
All these principles have been discovered by Leibniz himself who thus provided an almost complete
axiomatization of L1. As a matter of fact, the »intensional« algebra of concept can be proven to be
equivalent to Boole’s extensional algebra of sets provided that one adds the following counterpart of
the “ex contradictorio quotlibet”:
NEG 7 (A~A)∈B.
As regards the fundamental relation A∈B, it is important to observe that Leibniz’s standard
formulation ‘A contains B’ expresses the so-called »intensional« view, while we here want to develop

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an extensional interpretation in terms of the sets of individuals that fall under the concepts. Leibniz
explained the mutual relationship between these two points of view in the following passage from
the “New Essays on Human understanding”:
The common manner of statement concerns individuals, whereas Aristotle’s refers rather to ideas or
universals. For when I say ‘Every man is an animal’ I mean that all the men are included among all the
animals; but at the same time I mean that the idea of animal is included in the idea of man. ‘Animal’
comprises more individuals than ‘man’ does, but ‘man’ comprises more ideas or more attributes: one
has more instances, the other more degrees of reality; one has the greater extension, the other the
greater intension. If ‚Int(A)’ and ‚Ext(A)’ abbreviate the »intension« and the extension of a concept A,
respectively, then the so-called law of reciprocity can be formalized as follows:
RECI Int(A) ⊆ Int (B) ↔ Ext(A) ⊇ Ext(B).
From this it immediately follows that two concepts A, B have the same »intension« iff they have the
same extension. This somewhat surprising result might seem to unveil an inadequacy of Leibniz’s
conception. However, »intensionality« in the sense of traditional logic must not be mixed up with
intensionality in the modern sense. Furthermore, in Leibniz’s view, the extension of a concept A is not
just the set of actually existing individuals, but rather the set of all possible individuals that fall under
concept A. Therefore one may define the concept of an extensional interpretation of L1 as follows:
DEF 4 Let U be a non-empty set (the domain of all possible individuals); let φ be a function such that
φ(A) ⊆ U for each concept-letter A; and let V be a valuation function which assigns to each
proposition α of L1 a truth-value V(α). Then is an extensional interpretation of L1 if and only if:
(1) φ(AB) = φ(A)∩φ(B);
(2) φ(~A) = (�);
(3) V(A∈B) = true iff φ(A) ⊆ φ(B);
(4) V(P(A)) = true iff φ(A) ≠ ∅.
According to (1), an individual x belongs to the extension of the conjunctive concept AB just in case x
belongs to the extension of both concepts (and hence to their intersection). According to (2), the
extension of the negative concept ~A is the set of all individuals which do not fall under concept A.
Condition (3) is a straightforward formalization of the law of reciprocity, while (4) says that a concept
A is possible if and only if it has a non-empty extension.
At first sight, the latter requirement might appear to be somewhat inadequate, since there are certain
concepts – such as that of a unicorn – which happen to be empty but which may nevertheless be
regarded as possible, i.e. not involving a contradiction. However, the universe of discourse underlying
the extensional interpretation of L1 does not consist of actually existing objects only, but instead
comprises all possible individuals.
Therefore the non-emptiness of the extension of A is both necessary and sufficient for the self-
consistency of A. Clearly, if A is possible, then there must be at least one possible individual x that falls
under concept A. It has often been noted that Leibniz’s logic of concepts lacks the operator of
disjunction. Although this is by and large correct, it doesn’t imply any defect of the system L1 because
the operator A∨B may be introduced by definition: DEF 5 A∨B =df ~(~A ~B). On the background of the
above axioms of negation and conjunction, the following standard laws become provable:
DISJ 1 A∈(A∨B)
DISJ 2 B∈(A∨B)
DISJ 3 A∈C ∧ B∈C → (A∨B)∈C.
The Quantificational System L2

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The quantifier logic L2 emerges from L1 by the introduction of so-called »indefinite concepts«.
These concepts are symbolized by letters from the end of the alphabet X, Y, Z ..., and they
function as quantifiers ranging over concepts. Thus in § 16 of the “General Inquiries” Leibniz
explained: An affirmative proposition is ‘A is B’ or ‘A contains B’ [...].
That is, if we substitute the value for A, one obtains ‘A coincides with BY’. For example, ‘Man is an
animal’, i.e. ‘Man’ is the same as ‘a ... animal’ (namely, ‘Man’ is ‘rational animal’). For by the sign ‘Y’ I
mean something undetermined, so that ‘BY’ is the same as ‘Some B’, or ‘A ... animal’ [...], or ‘A certain
animal’. So ‘A is B’ is the same as ‘A coincides with some B’, i.e. ‘A = BY’. With the help of the modern
symbol for the existential quantifier, the latter law can be expressed more precisely as follows:
CONT 3 A∈B ↔ ∃Y(A = BY).
As Leibniz himself noted, the formalization of the UA according to CONT 3 is provably equivalent to
the simpler representation according to DEF 2.20 On the one hand, according to the rule of existential
generalization,
EXIST 1 If α[A], then ∃Yα[Y],
A = AB immediately entails ∃Y(A = YB). On the other hand, if there exists some Y such that A = YB,
then trivially also AB = YBB, i.e. AB = YB and hence (because of the premise A = YB) AB = A.21 Next
observe that Leibniz often used to formalize the PA ‘Some A is B’ by means of the indefinite concept Y
as ‘YA∈B’. In view of CONT 3, this representation may be transformed into the (elliptic) equation YA =
ZB. However, both formalizations are somewhat inadequate because they are easily seen to be
theorems of L2! According to CONJ 4, BA∈B, hence by
EXIST 1:
CONJ 6 ∃Y(YA∈B).
Similarly, since, according to
CONJ 3, AB = BA, a twofold application of
EXIST 1 yields: CONJ 7 ∃Y∃Z(YA = BZ).
These tautologies, of course, cannot adequately represent the PA which for an appropriate choice of
concepts A and B may become false! In order to resolve these difficulties, consider a draft of a
calculus probably written between 1686 and 1690, where Leibniz proved principle:
NEG 8* A∉B ↔ ∃Y(YA∈~B).
On the one hand, it is interesting to see that after first formulating the right hand side of the
equivalence, »as usual«, in the elliptic way ‘YA is Not-B’, Leibniz later paraphrased it by means of the
explicit quantifier expression “there exists a Y such that YA is Not-B”22. On the other hand, Leibniz
discovered that NEG 8* has to be improved by requiring more exactly that YA is possible, i.e. Y must
be compatible with A:
NEG 8 A∉B ↔ ∃Y(P(YA) ∧ YA∈~B).
In Leibniz’s logical fragments there are only a few passages where indefinite concepts function as
universal quantifiers. E.g., in C, 260 Leibniz put forward principle “(15) ‘A is B’ is the same as ‘If Y is A,
it follows that Y is B’” which clearly has to be understood as:
CONT 4 A∈B ↔ ∀Y(Y∈A → Y∈B).
Furthermore, in § 32 GI, Leibniz at least vaguely recognized that just as A∈B (according to CONJ 6) is
equivalent to ∃Y(A = YB), so the negation A∉B means that, for any indefinite concept Y, A ≠ BY:
CONT 5 A∉B ↔ ∀Y(A ≠ YB).
Anyway, with the help of the universal quantifier ‘∀’ one can formalize Leibniz’s conception of
individual concepts as maximally-consistent concepts in the following way:

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DEF 6 Ind(A) ↔df P(A) ∧ ∀Y(P(AY) → A∈Y).
Hence A is an individual concept iff A is self-consistent and A contains every concept Y which is
compatible with A. The underlying idea of the completeness of individual concepts had been
formulated in § 72 GI as follows: “So if BY is [»being«], and the indefinite term Y is superfluous, i.e., in
the way that ‘a certain Alexander the Great’ and ‘Alexander the Great’ are the same, then B is an
individual. If the term BA is [»being«] and if B is an individual, then A will be superfluous; or if BA=C,
then B=C”.25 It should be noted that DEF 6 can be simplified by requiring that, for each concept Y, A
either contains Y or contains ~Y:
IND 1 Ind(A) ↔ ∀Y(A∈~Y ↔ A∉Y).
As a corollary it follows that the invalid principle
NEG 9* A∉B → A∈~B,
which Leibniz again and again had considered as valid, in fact holds only for individual concepts:
NEG 9 Ind(A) → (A∉B → A∈~B).
The definition of individual concepts, DEF 6, is semantically correct. If the idea of an extensional
interpretation of L1 according to DEF 4 is duly extended to the quantifier logic L2, then the following
condition becomes provable:
V(Ind(A)) = true iff there exists a xεU such that Φ(A) = {x}. Hence the extension of an individual-
concept A is just a unit-set containing the corresponding (possible) individual aεU. With the help of
the operator ‘Ind’, a second sort of quantifiers ranging over »individuals« (i.e., more exactly, over
individual-concepts) may be introduced as follows:
DEF 7 VXα =df ∃X(Ind(X) ∧ α) ΛXα =df ∀X(Ind(X) → α).
E.g., the proposition VX(X∈B) now says that there is at least one individual concept X such that X
contains B. This condition holds whenever concept B is self-consistent:
POSS 3 P(B) ↔ VX(X∈B).
Principle POSS 3 syntactically mirrors the semantic postulate (4) of DEF 4 according to which concept
B is possible if and only if there is at least one possible individual x which belongs to the extension of
B. Note that whenever A is an individual concept, then formula A∈C is so-tospeak the »intensional
counterpart« of the »extensional« formula of first order logic, C(a), which attributes property C to the
individual a. Furthermore, the universal affirmative proposition B∈C may not only be paraphrased by
∀X(X∈B → X∈C) (see principle CONT 4 above), but also by means of the new »object« quantifier ‘Λ’ as
follows:
CONT 5 B∈C ↔ ΛX(X∈B → X∈C).
Again, the formula on the right hand side, ΛX(X∈B → X∈C), represents the »intensional counterpart«
of the corresponding »extensional« formula of first order logic, Λx(B(x) → C(x)).
the ontological proof, however, such an assumption may not simply be taken for granted! As was
stressed at the beginning of this paper, Leibniz had repeatedly pointed out that a complete proof of
the existence of God requires a demonstration of the premise that God is possible:
GOD 1 P(G).
Since, according to POSS 3, this premise is equivalent to the formula VX(X∈G), it might seem that a
proof of GOD 1 is already sufficient for the demonstration of the existence of God. After all, this
formula is normally understood as saying that there »exists« an individual-concept X such that X is
God. However, the range of the quantifier ‘VX’ is the universe of all possible individuals and not just
the domain of all existing objects! Therefore ‘VX(X∈G)’ only means that there is some possible object
X which has the property of a God while the issue of the ontological proof is whether such a possible
God actually exists! Within the framework of L2, the real existence of God will rather have to be
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expressed by means of the »predicate« (or concept) of existence, E, in the form ‘G∈E’. The second
part of the ontological proof can then be formalized as follows:
GOD 2 P(G) → G∈E.
It turned out, somewhat surprisingly, that GOD 2 is indeed a theorem of L2, provided that the concept
of God is more specifically interpreted as an “Ens necessarium”, i.e. as a being which necessarily
exists. This traditional conception of God can be captured within L2 by the following definition:
GOD 3 ΛX(X∈G ↔df (X∈E)).
We must abstain from reproducing the proof of GOD 2 here because it rests on some further logical
constructions (such as the idea of possible worlds as maximal collections of compossible individuals)
which clearly exceed the scope of this paper.27 Suffice it to say that the other part of the proof, GOD
1, turns out not to be a theorem of L2! So in the end, Leibniz’s sophisticated ontological proof suffers
the same fate as its various predecessors (and followers): There is no logical guarantee that God –
whether conceived of as a “Ens necessarium” or as a “Ens perfectissimum – actually exists!
Locke: Ideas and their classification
An extended look at philosophy in Great Britain during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Here the favored model for achieving human knowledge was not the abstract mathematical reasoning
so admired by the rationalists but the more concrete observations of natural science. Heeding the call
of Francis Bacon, British scientists had pursued a vigorous program of observation and experiment
with great success. Isaac Newton showed that both celestial and terrestial motion could be explained
by reference to a simple set of laws of motion and gravitation; Robert Boyle investigated the behavior
of gasses and proposed a general theory of matter as a collection of corpuscles; and Thomas
Sydenham began to use observational methods for the diagnosis and treatment of disease.
Philosopher John Locke greatly admired the achievements that these scientists (his friends in the
Royal Society) had made in physics, chemistry, and medicine, and he sought to clear the ground for
future developments by providing a theory of knowledge compatible with such carefully-conducted
study of nature.
The goal of Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), then, is to establish
epistemological foundations for the new science by examining the reliability, scope, and limitations of
human knowledge in contrast with with the pretensions of uncritical belief, borrowed opinion, and
mere superstition. Since the sciences had already demonstrated their practical success, Locke tried to
apply their Baconian methods to the pursuit of his own philosophical aims. In order to discover how
the human understanding achieves knowledge, we must trace that knowledge to its origins in our
experience.
Locke's investigation into human knowledge began by asking how we acquire the basic materials out
of which that knowledge is composed, our ideas. For Locke, an idea is Essay I i 8) (Note that this is an
extremely broad definition: it includes concrete sensory images, abstract intellectual concepts, and
everything in between. The colors and shapes I see before me right now are ideas, and so are my
hunger, my memories of the ocean, my hopes for my children, the multiplication tables, and the
principles of democratic government.) Ideas, then, are the immediate objects of all thought, the
meaning or signification of all words, and the mental representatives of all things. Locke's question
was, where do we get all of these ideas which are the content of our knowedge?
Refutation of innate ideas
First, Locke eliminated one bad answer to the question. Most of Book I of the Essay is devoted to a
detailed refutation of the belief that any of our knowledge is innate. Against the claims of
the Cambridge Platonists and Herbert of Cherbury, Locke insisted that neither the speculative

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principles of logic and metaphysics nor the practical principles of morality are inscribed on our minds
from birth. Such propositions do not in fact have the universal consent of all human beings, Locke
argued, since children and the mentally defective do not assent to them. Moreover, even if everyone
did accept these principles, their universality could be better explained in terms of self-evidence or
shared experience than by reference to a presumed innate origin. Innatism is the refuge of lazy
intellectual dictators who wish thereby to impose their provincial notions upon others. Besides, Locke
held, our knowledge cannot be innate because none of the ideas of which it is composed are innate.
As the correct answer to the question, Locke proposed the fundamental principle of empiricism: all of
our knowledge and ideas arise from experience. The initially empty room of the mind is furnished
with ideas of two sorts: first, by sensation we obtain ideas of things we suppose to exist outside us in
the physical world; second, by reflection we come to have ideas of our own mental operations. Thus,
for example, "hard," "red," "loud," "cold," "sweet," and "aromatic" are all ideas of sensation, while
"perceiving," "remembering," "abstracting," and "thinking" are all ideas of reflection. ("Pleasure,"
"unity," and "existence," Locke held, are ideas that come to us from both sensation and reflection.)
Everything we know, everything we believe, every thought we can entertain is made up of ideas of
sensation and reflection and nothing else.
But wait. It isn't true that I can think only about what I myself have experienced; I can certainly think
about dinosaurs (or unicorns) even though I have never seen one for myself. So Locke's claim must be
about the ultimate origin of our ideas, the source of their content. He distinguished between simple
and complex ideas and acknowledged that we often employ our mental capacities in order
manufacture complex ideas by conjoining simpler components. My idea of "unicorn," for example,
may be compounded from the ideas of "horse" and "single spiral horn," and these ideas in turn are
compounded from less complex elements. What Locke held was that every complex idea can be
analyzed into component parts and that the final elements of any complete analysis must be simple
ideas, each of which is derived directly from experience. Even so, the empiricist program is an
ambitious one, and Locke devoted Book II of the Essay to a lengthy effort to show that every idea
could, in principle, be derived from experience.
Complex Ideas
Even if the simple ideas of sensation provide us with ample material for thinking, what we make of
them is largely up to us. In his survey of ideas of reflection, Locke listed a variety of mental operations
that we perform upon our ideas.
Notice that in each of these sections (Essay II ix-xii), Locke defined the relevant mental operations as
we experience them in ourselves, but then went on to consider carefully the extent to which
other animals seem capable of performing the same activities. This procedure has different results
from Descartes's doctrinal rejection of animal thinking: according to Locke, only abstraction (the
operation most crucial in forming the ideas of mixed modes, on which morality depends) is utterly
beyond the capacity of any animal.
Perception of ideas through the senses and retention of ideas in memory, Locke held, are passive
powers of the mind, beyond our direct voluntary control and heavily dependent on the material
conditions of the human body. The active powers of the mind include distinguishing, comparing,
compounding, and abstracting. It is by employing these powers, Locke supposed, that we
manufacture new, complex ideas from the simple elements provided by experience. The resulting
complex ideas are of three sorts:
Modes are complex ideas that combine simpler elements to form a new whole that is assumed to be
incapable of existing except as a part or feature of something else. The ideas of "three," "seventy-
five," and even "infinity," for example, are all modes derived from the simple idea of "unity." We can

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understand these ideas and know their mathematical functions, whether or not there actually exist
numbers of things to which they would apply in reality. "Mixed modes" similarly combine simple
components without any presumption about their conformity to existing patterns, yielding all of our
complex ideas of human actions and their value.
Substances are the complex ideas of real particular things that are supposed to exist on their own and
to account for the unity and persistence of the features they exhibit. The ideas of "my only son," "the
largest planet in the solar system," and "tulips," for example, are compounded from simpler ideas of
sensation and reflection. Each is the idea of a thing (or kind of thing) that could really exist on its own.
Since we don't understand all of the inner workings of natural objects, Locke supposed, our complex
ideas of substances usually rely heavily on their secondary qualities and powers—the effects they are
observed to have on ourselves and other things.
Relation are complex ideas of the ways in which other ideas may be connected with each other, in
fact or in thought. The ideas of "younger," "stronger," and "cause and effect," for example, all involve
some reference to the comparison of two or more other ideas.
Locke obviously could not analyze the content of every particular idea that any individual has ever
had. But his defence of the empiricist principle did require him to show in principle that any complex
idea can be derived from the simple ideas of sensation and reflection. The clarity, reality, adequacy,
and truth of all of our ideas, Locke supposed, depend upon the success with which they fulfill their
representative function. Here, we'll consider one of the most significant and difficult examples from
each category:
Free Action
Among our modal ideas, Locke believed that those of mixed modes, which combine both sensory and
reflective elements, are especially important, since they include the ideas of human actions and
provide for their moral evaluation. Among the mixed modes, the ideas of power, volition, and liberty
are the most crucial and difficult. To them Locke devoted a chapter (II xxi) that grew, with alterations
in later editions, to become the longest in the Essay.
The idea of power is illustrated every time we do something. Whether we think or move, the feeling
that our mental preference leads to action provides a simple instance of power. The exercise of that
power is volition or will, and the action taken as a result is a voluntary one. Liberty or freedom, on
Locke's view, is the power to act on our volition, whatever it may be, without any external compulsion
or restraint.
Under these definitions, the question of whether we have free will does not arise for Locke, since it
involves what would later come to be called a category mistake. In particular, it does not matter
whether we have control over our own preferences, whether we are free to will whatever we wish. In
fact, Locke offered a strictly hedonistic account of human motivation, according to which our
preferences are invariably determined by the desire to seek pleasure and avoid pain. What does
matter for freedom and moral responsibility is that we can act on our preferences, whatever their
source, without any outside interference. If I could have done otherwise (given a different
preference), then I act freely and am responsible for my action.
Distinction between primary and secondary qualities
Locke began his survey of our mental contents with the simple ideas of sensation, including those of
colors, sounds, tastes, smells, shapes, size, and solidity. With just a little thought about specific
examples of such ideas, we notice a significant difference among them: the color of the wall in front
of me seems to vary widely from time to time, depending on the light in the room and the condition
of my eyes, while its solidity persists independently of such factors. Following the lead

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of Galileo and Boyle, Locke explained this difference in corpuscularian fashion, by reference to the
different ways in which the qualities of things produce our ideas of them.
The primary qualities of an object are its intrinsic features, those it really has, including the "Bulk,
Figure, Texture, and Motion" of its parts. Since these features are inseparable from the thing even
when it is divided into parts too small for us to perceive, the primary qualities are independent of our
perception of them. When we do perceive the primary qualities of larger objects, Locke believed, our
ideas exactly resemble the qualities as they are in things.
The secondary qualities of an object, on the other hand, are nothing in the thing itself but the power
to produce in us the ideas of "Colors, Sounds, Smells, Tastes, etc." In these cases, our ideas do not
resemble their causes, which are in fact nothing other than the primary qualities of the insensible
parts of things. The powers, or tertiary qualities, of an object are just its capacities to cause
perceptible changes in other things.
Thus, for example, the primary qualities of this rose include all of its quantifiable features, its mass
and momentum, its chemical composition and microscopic structure; these are the features of the
thing itself. The secondary qualities of the rose, on the other hand, include the ideas it produces in
me, its yellow color, its delicate fragrance; these are the merely the effects of the primary qualities of
its corpuscles on my eyes and nose. Like the pain I feel when I stick my finger on a thorn, the color
and smell are not features of the rose itself.
Some distinction of this sort is important for any representative realist. Many instances of perceptual
illusion can be explained by reference to the way secondary qualities depend upon our sensory
organs, but the possibility of accurate information about the primary qualities is preserved, at least in
principle. The botanical expert may be able to achieve detailed knowledge of the nature of roses, but
that knowledge is not necessary for my appreciation of their beauty.
Theory of Substance
The idea of a particular substance is the complex idea of a set of coexisting qualities and powers,
together with the supposition that there is some unknown substrate upon which they all
depend. Locke is derisive about the confused idea of this something, "we know not what," that is
supposed by scholastic philosophers. But he cannot eliminate the concept of substance altogether,
since he, too, must account for the existence and coherence of just this group of features.
About species or kinds of substances, Locke offers a more sophisticated explanation. Our complex
idea of a specific kind of substance—"gold" or "horse," for example—is the collection of features by
reference to which we classify individual substances as belonging to that kind. These nominal
essences, developed for our convenience in sorting things into kinds, rely heavily upon the secondary
qualities and powers that are the most obvious features of such things in our experience—the color,
weight, and malleability of gold, for example, and the shape, noises, and movements of horses.
As a corpuscularian, Locke supposed that individual substances must also have real essences, the
primary qualities of their insensible parts, which cause all of their qualities. But since we cannot
observe the "real inner constitutions" of things, we cannot use them for purposes of classification, nor
can we even understand their causal influence on our perception. Since Locke doubted that real
essences could ever be discovered, he was thrown back on the supposition of an underlying reality
which we cannot know.
This account imposes a severe limitation on the possibilities of our knowledge of substances.
According to Locke, the mechanical operations of nature remain hidden to us. Careful observation
and experimentation may support a reliable set of generalizations about the appearances of the kinds
of things we commonly encounter, but we cannot even conceive of their true natures.
Personal Identity
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Among our ideas of relations, the strongest is that of identity. Locke held that the criteria for identity
depend upon the kind of thing we are considering. Substantial identity requires the unique spatio-
temporal history that is just the existence of each substance, but this is not the only consideration in
all cases.
The identity of the tree outside my window, for example, does not depend on the substantial identity
of its parts (in fact, they change from day to day and season to season); what matters in this case is
the organization of those parts into a common life. A similar explanation, Locke held, accounts for the
identity of animals and human beings. We recognize living bodies at different times by the
organization of their material parts rather than by their substantial composition.
In analogous fashion, Locke explained personal identity independently of identity of substance. The
idea of the person is that of a moral agent who can be held responsible for his or her actions. But
Locke used a series of hypothetical examples to show that the identity of an underlying immaterial
substance or soul is neither necessary nor sufficient for personal identity in this sense. Even the
identity of the same human body (though we may rely upon that for third-person attributions of
identity) is not truly relevant. The only thing that does matter, on Locke's view, is that the person self-
consciously appropriates actions as its own.
This is, as Locke says, a "forensic" notion of personal identity; its aim is to secure the justice and
effectiveness of moral sanctions. If, and only if, I now remember having committed a particular act in
the past can I be justly punished for having done so. If, and only if, I project myself into the future can
the prospect of punishment or reward influence my deliberations about how to act now. Locke's way
of thinking about personal identity has shaped discussions of the issue ever since.
Words
Locke devoted Book III of the Essay to a discussion of language. His basic notion is clear: words signify
ideas. Thus, the meaning of a word is always the idea it signifies in the minds of those who use it. Of
course, those ideas are presumed in turn to represent things, but the accuracy of that representation
does not directly affect the meaning of the word. The names of substances, for example, signify the
complex ideas Locke called their nominal essences, not the real nature of the substances themselves.
Thus, common names for substances are general terms by means of which we classify things as we
observe them to be; we can agree upon the meaning of such terms even though we remain ignorant
of the real essences of the things themselves.
The chief point of Locke's theory of language was to eliminate the verbal disputes that arise when
words are used without clear signification. It is always reasonable to ask for the meaning of a word,
that is, to know what idea it signifies. If a speaker cannot supply the idea behind the word, then it has
no meaning. Many of the academic squabbles that obstruct advancemen in human knowledge, Locke
believed, could be dissolved by careful attention to the meaning of words.
Theory of Knowledge and three grades of knowledge
Having provided a thorough account of the origins of our ideas in experience, Locke opens Book IV of
the Essay with a deceptively simple definition of knowledge. Knowledge is just perception of the
agreement or disagreement of our ideas. We know the truth of a proposition when we become aware
of the relation between the ideas it conjoins. This can occur in any of three distinct ways, each with its
characteristic degree of certainty.
Intuitive knowledge involves direct and immediate recognition of the agreement or disagreement of
two ideas. It yields perfect certainty, but is only rarely available to us. I know intuitively that three is
not the same as seven.
In demonstrative knowledge we perceive the agreement or disagreement only indirectly, by means
of a series of intermediate ideas. Since demonstration is a chain of reasoning, its certainty is no
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greater than its weakest link; only if each step is itself intuitively known will the demonstration as a
whole be certain. If I know that A is greater than B and that B is greater than C, then I know
demonstratively that A is greater than C.
Although intuition and demonstration alone satisfy the definition of knowledge, Locke held that the
belief that our sensory ideas are caused by existing things deserves the name of sensitive knowledge.
In the presence of a powerful, present idea of sensation, we cannot doubt that it has some real cause
outside us, even though we do not know what that cause may be or how it produces the idea in us. I
have only sensitive knowledge that there is something producing the odor I now smell.
Types of Knowledge
Locke distinguished four sorts of agreement or disagreement between ideas, perception of which
gives us four distinct types of knowledge:
Since knowledge of identity and diversity requires only a direct comparison of the ideas involved, it is
intuitive whenever the ideas being compared are clear.
Knowledge of coexistence would provide detailed information about features of the natural world
that occur together in our experience, but this scientific knowledge is restricted by our ignorance of
the real essences of substances; the best we can do is to rely upon careful observations of the
coincidental appearance of their secondary qualities and powers.
Mathematics and morality rest upon knowledge of relation, which Locke held to be demonstrative
whenever we form clear ideas and discover the links between them.
The degree of certainty in our knowledge of real existence depends wholly upon the content of our
ideas in each case. Locke agreed with Descartes that we have intuitive knowledge of our own
existence, and he supposed it possible to achieve demonstrative knowledge of god as the thinking
creator of everything. But we have only sensitive knowledge of the existence of other things presently
before our senses.
The Extent of Knowledge
The result of all of this is that our knowledge is severely limited in its extent. On Locke's definition, we
can achieve genuine knowledge only when we have clear ideas and can trace the connection between
them enough to perceive their agreement or disagreement. That doesn't happen very often,
especially where substances are at issue. The truths of mathematics are demonstrable precisely
because they are abstract: since my ideas of lines, angles, and triangles are formed without any
necessary reference to existing things, I can prove that the interior angles of any triangle add up to a
straight line.
But any effort to achieve genuine knowledge of the natural world must founder on our ignorance of
substances. We have "sensitive knowledge" of the existence of something that causes our present
sensory ideas. But we do not have adequate ideas of the real essence of any substance, and even if
we did, we would be unable to discover any demonstrative link between that real essence and the
ideas it produces in us. The most careful observation can establish at best only the secondary qualities
and powers that appear to coexist in our experience often enough to warrant our use of them as the
nominal essence of a kind of substance.
Locke's efforts have therefore led to a sobering conclusion. Certainty is rarely within our reach; we
must often be content with probable knowledge or mere opinion. Locke ultimately recommends that
we adopt significantly reduced epistemological expectations.
The Great Concernments

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Despite all of these limitations, Locke believed that human knowledge is well-suited for the conduct
of human life. We have all the knowledge we need to secure our "great concernments:" convenience
in this life and the means for attaining a better life hereafter.
Survival and comfort in daily life are attainable in spite of our ignorance of the hidden operations of
nature. We don't need to know the real essences of substances in order to make use of them
productively. (Indeed, Locke suggests, additional information might actually make daily life more
difficult.) Surely demonstrative knowledge of the true nature of fire or food is unnecessary for my
survival; my natural aversion to the pain of being burned and desire for the pleasures of eating
provide ample practical guidance.
Doing the right thing is also possible, since our action is properly guided by a demonstrable morality.
The truths of morality are demonstrable for the same reason that the truths of mathematics are: the
mixed modes that describe possible human actions, of the moral rules that govern them, and even of
the possible agents that might perform them, are all complex ideas manufactured by the mind
without reference to the real existence of substantial beings, so I can prove that murder is wrong.
Finally, we have all the knowledge we need to enter into a proper relation to our creator. God's
existence is demonstrable on rational grounds, and the scriptures provide us with detailed
information about the divine will for our lives. (The precise boundary between reason and revelation,
Locke held, is itself known only as a matter of probable knowledge or opinion.)
In the end, then, Locke believed that we have no reason to complain. Although restricted in extent,
our knowledge is sufficient for our needs.
Respecting its limits will prevent us from wasting effort on pointless wrangling. Since our experience is
itself limited, an empiricist epistemology can only advise caution and modesty in our claims to know.
Berkeley: Immaterialism
As the self-proclaimed defender of common sense, Berkeley held that what we perceive really is as
we perceive it to be. But what we perceive are just sensible objects, collections of sensible qualities,
which are themselves nothing other than ideas in the minds of their perceivers. In
the Dialogues Berkeley used Lockean arguments about the unreliability of secondary qualities in
support of his own, more radical view.
Take heat, for example: does it exist independently of our perception of it? When exposed to great
heat I feel a pain that everyone acknowledges to be in me, not in the fire, Berkeley argued, so the
warmth I feel when exposed to lesser heat must surely be the same. What is more, if dip both of my
hands into a bowl of tepid water after chilling one and warming the other, the water will feel both
warm and cold at the same time. Clearly, then, heat as I perceive it is nothing other than an idea in my
mind.
Similar arguments and experiments establish that other sensible qualities—colors that vary with
changes in ambient light, tastes and smells that change perceptibly when I have a cold, and sounds
that depend for their quality on the position of my ears and conditions in the air—are, like heat,
nothing but ideas in my mind. But the same considerations apply to primary qualities as well, Berkeley
pointed out, since my perception of shape and size depend upon the position of my eyes, my
experience of solidity depends upon my sense of touch, and my idea of motion is always relative to
my own situation. Locke was correct in his view of secondary qualities but mistaken about primary
qualities: all sensible qualities are just ideas.
But sensible objects are nothing more than collections of sensible qualities, so they are merely
complex ideas in the minds of those who perceive them. For such ideas, Berkeley held, to be just is to
be perceived (in Latin, esse est percipi). There is no need to refer to the supposition of anything

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existing outside our minds, which could never be shown to resemble our ideas, since "nothing can be
like an idea but an idea." Hence, there are no material objects.
Material Substance is Inconceivable
Locke's reference to an "unknown substratum" in which the features of material substances inhere is
a pointless assumption, according to Berkeley. Since it is the very nature of sensible objects to be
perceived, on his view, it would be absurd to suppose that their reality depends in any way upon an
imperceptible core. This gives rise to a perfectly general argument against even the possibility of
material substance.
Putting aside all of the forgoing lines of argument, Berkeley declared, the whole issue can be allowed
to rest on a single question: is it possible to conceive of a sensible object existing independently of
any perceiver? The challenge seems easy enough at first. All I have to do is think of something so
remote—a tree in the middle of the forest, perhaps—that no one presently has it in mind. But if I
conceive of this thing, then it is present in my mind as I think of it, so it is not truly independent of all
perception.
According to Berkeley (and such later idealists as Fichte and Bradley) this argument shows irrefutably
that the very concept of material substance as a sensible object existing independently of any
perception is incoherent. No wonder the representationalist philosophy leads to skepticism: it
introduces as a necessary element in our knowledge of the natural world a concept that is literally
inconceivable!
Spirits
Although he maintained that there can be no material substances, Berkeley did not reject the notion
of substance altogether. The most crucial feature of substance is activity, he supposed, and in our
experience the most obvioius example activity is that of perceiving itself. So thinking substances do
exist, and for these spirits (or souls or minds) to be is just to perceive (in Latin, esse est percipere).
Like Descartes and Leibniz, Berkeley held that each spirit is a simple, undivided, active being whose
sole function is to think—that is, to have ideas such as those of sensible objects. Although each spirit
is directly aware of its own existence and nature, it cannot be perceived. Since ideas are always of
sensible qualities or objects for Berkeley, we have no ideas (but only notions) of spirits. This is a
complete enumeration of what is real: active thinking substances and their passive ideas.
Strange though Berkeley's immaterialism may seem, it offers many clear advantages. It is a genuinely
empiricist philosophy, since it begins with what we actually experience and claims to account for
everything without making extravagant suppositions about unknowable entities. Next, we will
consider how well this doctrine provides for common sense, science, and religion.
Common Sense
Is Berkeley's immaterialism a reasonable view? He claimed to defend common sense against skeptical
challenges, yet he maintained that sensible objects exist only in the minds of those who perceive
them. Surely common sense includes the belief that ordinary things continue to exist when I am not
perceiving them. Although all of my visual ideas disappear and reappear every time I blink my eyes, I
do not suppose that the everything I see pops out of existence and then back in. While a
strict phenomenalist might point out that there is no practical consequence even if it does, Berkeley
disagreed.
The existence of what I see does not depend exclusively on my seeing it. Berkeley's central claim is
that sensible objects cannot exist without being perceived, but he did not suppose that I am the only
perceiver. So long as some sentient being, some thinking substance or spirit, has in mind the sensible

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qualities or objects at issue, they do truly exist. Thus, even when I close my eyes, the tree I now see
will continue to exist, provided that someone else is seeing it.
This difference, Berkeley held, precisely marks the distinction between real and imaginary things.
What I merely imagine exists in my mind alone and continues to exist only so long as I think of it. But
what is real exists in many minds, so it can continue to exist whether I perceive it or not. (That's why,
unsure of the reality of what I seem to see, I may ask someone else, "Did you see that?")
The existence of sensible objects requires that they be perceived, but it is not dependent exclusively
on my perception of them.
In fact, the persistence and regularity of the sensible objects that constitute the natural world is
independent of all human perception, according to Berkeley. Even when none of us is perceiving this
tree, god is. The mind of god serves as a permanent repository of the sensible objects that we
perceive at some times and not at others. (Although Berkeley took great pains to deny it, this view of
the divine role in perception is very similar to Malebranche's notion of "seeing all things in god.")
So Berkeley's philosophy can claim to defend common sense. It emphasizes that bodies or sensible
objects really are just the ideas we have of them, yet can also explain their apparent independence of
our perception. All he rejects is the mysterious philosophical notion of the material object as an
extended substance capable of existing independently of any perception. That suppostion, he argued,
is both unnecessary and untenable.
Science without Matter
Even if we accept it as common sense, is Berkeley's immaterialism compatible with modern science?
Certainly Galileo's astronomy, Newtonian mechanics, and the chemistry of Boyle all took for granted
the existence and operation of physical objects. But Berkeley maintained that natural science, if
properly conceived, could proceed and even thrive without assuming that bodies are material
substances existing outside the mind.
Astronomy and optics seem to suppose that what we see exists at some distance from us. But
Berkeley argued in his New Theory of Vision that our apparent perception of distance itself is a mental
invention, easily explained in terms of the content of visual ideas, without any reference to existing
material objects. In fact, Berkeley held, our visual and tactile perceptions are entirely independent.
What we see and what we touch have nothing to do with each other; we have merely learned by
experience to associate each with the other, just as we have learned to associate the appearance, the
taste, and the smell of an apple. There is no reason to suppose that all of these qualities inhere in a
common material substratum.
It follows that Locke was mistaken in supposing that our ideas of primary qualities have a special
status because they arise from more than one of our senses. Although the corpuscularian hypothesis
has yielded interesting results so far, Berkeley believed that science will soon enough outgrow it,
learning to rely more directly on what we perceive for its hypotheses about what new experiences we
rightly anticipate.
As we've already seen, Berkeley accounted for the persistence of bodies in terms of god's continuing
perception of them. The causal regularities we observe in the natural world rely upon the same
source. God's mind is an orderly one, and the apparent structures of space, time, and causality are
nothing more than our awareness of the divine provision for our welfare. Natural science has plenty
to do even in the absence of material objects, then: it is nothing less than a systematic exploration of
the mind of god. (Here Berkeley came very close to the philosophy of Malebranche.
More significantly for us, he also correctly anticipated much of the physical science of the twentieth
century. Like Berkeley, we believe that the solidity of bodies is merely apparent, that a proper
cosmology depends upon our capacity to conceive it, and that the role of science is to gather and
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correlate the independent observations of human perceivers. It is not surprising that physicists
like Mach expressed an appreciation for the thought of Berkeley.
Religion
The affinity between immaterialism and traditional religion is somewhat easier to
understand. Materialism leads to atheism no less than to skepticism, Berkeley believed, since its
belief that bodies exist outside the mind encourages the notion that the physical realm may always
have existed independently of any spiritual influence. Immaterialism, by contrast, restores god to a
role of central importance, not only as the chief among active thinking substances but also as the
source of all sensible objects.
God's existence is made evident by everyday instances of perception, according to Berkeley. Since
sensible objects are mind-dependent yet exhibit a persistence and regularity that transcends our
perception of them, it follows that there must be a master-perceiver, god, in whose mind they always
are. Thus, in the Dialogues, Philonous extols the beauty and majesty of the natural world, attributing
them to the power and elegance of the divine mind. This leads to the traditional conception of god as
deserving of worship because of the benevolent creation of all that we observe.

All in all, Berkeley developed a philosophical system worthy of no little respect. Immaterialism rests
on the simple premise that there are no physical objects. Berkeley defended this notion with many
clever arguments and worked out its implications consistently. Allthough counter-intuitive,
immaterialism is difficult to refute.
Primary / Secondary qualities
Distinction between perceived aspects of things. The primary qualities are intrinsic features of the
thing itself (its size, shape, internal structure, mass, and momentum, for example), while the
secondary qualities are merely its powers to produce sensations in us (its color, odor, sound, and
taste, for example). This distinction was carefully drawn by Galileo, Descartes, Boyle, and Locke,
whose statement of the distinction set the tone for future scientific inquiry. But Foucher, Bayle,
and Berkeley argued that the distinction is groundless, so that all sensible qualities exist only in the
mind of the perceiver.
Critique of abstract ideas
Developing the basis for an empiricist immaterialism requires unlearning significant portions of what
Locke taught us. Berkeley devoted the lengthy "Introduction" of his Principles of Human Knowledge to
a detailed refutation of what he supposed to be one of Locke's most harmful mistakes, the belief
that general terms signify abstract ideas.
As Berkeley correctly noticed, our experience is always of concrete particulars. When I contemplate
the idea of "triangle," the image that comes to mind is that of some determinate shape; having the
abstract image of a three-sided figure that is neither equilateral nor isoceles nor scalene is simply
impossible. It is unnecessary, too: for purposes of geometrical reasoning, any particular image can be
used as a representative for all. (It is not at all clear that even Locke would have disagreed with this
position.)
But the consequence of Berkeley's criticism is a theory of meaning entirely different from Locke's.
General terms (or words of any sort) need not signify ideas of their own, on Berkeley's view. Instead,
they acquire meaning by a process of association with particular experiences, which are in turn
associated with each other. But of course mere association (as Locke himself had noted with respect
to ideas) is not a reliable guide to reality.
In the Introduction to the Principles of Human Knowledge, Berkeley laments the doubt and
uncertainty found in philosophical discussions, and he attempts to find those principles that drew
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philosophy away from common sense and intuition. He finds the source of skepticism in the theory of
abstract ideas, which he criticizes.
Berkeley begins by giving a general overview of the doctrine:
It is agreed on all hands, that the qualities or modes of things do never really exist each of them apart
by it self, and separated from all others, but are mixed, as it were, and blended together, several in
the same object. But we are told, the mind being able to consider each quality singly, or abstracted
from those other qualities with which it is united, does by that means frame to it self abstract ideas. …
Not that it is possible for colour or motion to exist without extension: but only that the mind can
frame to it self by abstraction the idea of colour exclusive of extension, and of motion exclusive of
both colour and extension.
In §§8-9 he details the doctrine in terms of Locke’s account in the Essay concerning Human
Understanding. Although theories of abstraction date back at least to Aristotle (Metaphysics, Book K,
Chapter 3, 1061a29-1069b4), were prevalent among the medievals, and are found in the Cartesians,
there seem to be two reasons why Berkeley focused on Locke. First, Locke’s work was recent and
familiar. Second, Berkeley seems to have considered Locke’s account the best available. As he wrote
in his notebooks, “Wonderful in Locke that he could wn advanc’d in years see at all thro a mist yt had
been so long a gathering & was consequently thick. This more to be admir’d than yt he didn’t see
farther”.
According to Locke, the doctrine of abstract ideas explains how knowledge can be communicated and
how it can be increased. It explains how general terms obtain meaning . A general term, such as ‘cat’
refers to an abstract general idea, which contains all and only those properties that one deems
common to all cats, or, more properly, the ways in which all cats resemble each other. The connection
between a general term and an abstract idea is arbitrary and conventional, and the relation between
an abstract idea and the individual objects falling under it is a natural relation (resemblance). If
Locke’s theory is sound, it provides a means by which one can account for the meaning of general
terms without invoking general objects (universals).
Berkeley’s attack on the doctrine of abstract ideas follows three tracks. There is the “I can’t do it”
argument in Intro. There is the “We don’t need it” argument in Intro. And there is the “The theory
leads to inconsistencies” argument in Intro. which Berkeley deemed the “killing blow”. As we shall
see, Berkeley uses a similar tripartite attack on doctrine of material substance.
Having outlined Locke’s account of abstraction in Introduction, which allegedly results in the idea of a
human which is colored but has no determinate color – that the idea includes a general idea of color,
but not a specific color such as black or white or brown or yellow – which has a size but has no
determinate size, and so forth, Berkeley argues in §10 that he can form no such idea. On the face of it,
his argument is weak. At most it shows that insofar as he cannot form the idea, and assuming that all
humans have similar psychological abilities, there is some evidence that no humans can form abstract
ideas of the sort Locke described.
But there is a remark made in passing that suggests there is a much stronger argument implicit in the
section. Berkeley writes:
To be plain, I own my self able to abstract in one sense, as when I consider some particular parts or
qualities separated from others, with which though they are united in some object, yet, it is possible
they may really exist without them. But I deny that I can abstract one from another, or conceive
separately, those qualities which it is impossible should exist so separated; or that I can frame a
general notion by abstracting from particulars in the manner aforesaid. Which two last are the proper
acceptations of abstraction.

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This three-fold distinction among types of abstraction is found in Arnauld and Nicole’s Logic or the Art
of Thinking. The first type of abstraction concerns integral parts. The head, arms, torso, and legs are
integral parts of a body: each can exist in separation from the body of which it is a part (Arnauld and
Nicole, p. 37). The second kind of abstraction “arises when we consider a mode without paying
attention to its substance, or two modes which are joined together in the same substance, taking
each one separately” (Arnauld and Nicole, p. 37). The third concerns distinctions of reason, for
example, conceiving of a triangle as equilateral without conceiving of it as equiangular (Arnauld and
Nicole, p. 38). Berkeley grants that he can abstract in the first sense – “I can consider the hand, the
eye, the nose, each by it self abstracted or separated from the rest of the body” – but he denies that
he can abstract in the latter two senses. The latter two cases represent impossible states of affairs. In
§7 Berkeley noted that the abstractionists held that it is impossible for a mode to exist apart from a
substance. Many abstractionists also accepted a conceivability criterion of possibility: If one can
(clearly and distinctly) conceive of a state of affairs, then it is possible for that state of affairs to exist
as conceived. This principle entails that impossible states of affairs are inconceivable. So, granting it is
impossible for a mode to exist apart from a substance, it follows that it is impossible to conceive of a
mode apart from a substance, that the second form abstraction is impossible. And if the second falls,
the third falls as well, since the third requires that alternative descriptions of an object pick out no
differences in reality. So, a traditional theory of modes and substances, the conceivability criterion of
possibility, and abstraction are an inconsistent triad. The inconsistency can be resolved by dropping
the doctrine of abstract ideas. Berkeley made this point explicitly in the first draft of the Introduction:
It is, I think, a receiv’d axiom that an impossibility cannot be conceiv’d. For what created intelligence
will pretend to conceive, that which God cannot cause to be? Now it is on all hands agreed, that
nothing abstract or general can be made really to exist, whence it should seem to follow, that it
cannot have so much as an ideal existence in the understanding.
One of the marks of the modern period is an adherence to the principle of parsimony (Ockham’s
Razor). The principle holds that the theoretically simpler of two explanations is more probably true. In
the seventeenth and eighteen centuries, this was sometimes expressed as “God does nothing in vain”
So, if it is possible to construct a theory of meaning that does not introduce abstract ideas as a distinct
kind of idea, that theory would be simpler and deemed more probably true. This is the strategy
Berkeley adopts in Introduction.
Granting Locke that all existents are particulars (Locke 3.3.6, p. 410), Berkeley remarks, “But it seems
that a word becomes general by being made the sign, not of an abstract general idea but, of several
particular ideas, any one of which it indifferently suggests to the mind” (Intro. §11). Ideas remain
particular, although a particular idea can function as a general idea. For example, when a geometer
draws a line on a blackboard, it is taken to represent all lines, even though the line itself is particular
and has determinate qualities. Similarly, a particular idea can represent all similar ideas. So, whether
one takes Berkeley to mean that words apply immediately to objects or that meaning is mediated by
paradigmatic ideas, the theory is simpler than the abstractionists’ insofar as all ideas are particular
and determinate.
In Introduction §13, Berkeley turns to Locke’s abstract general idea of a triangle, an idea which “must
be neither oblique nor rectangle, neither equilateral, equicrural, nor scalenon, but all and none of
these at once. In effect, it is something imperfect that cannot exist, an idea wherein some parts of
several different and inconsistent ideas are put together”. Upon quoting the passage, Berkeley merely
asks his reader whether he or she can form the idea, but his point seems to be much stronger. The
described idea is inconsistent, and therefore represents an impossible state of affairs, and it is
therefore inconceivable, since whatever is impossible is inconceivable. This is explicit in a parallel

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passage in the New Theory of Vision. After quoting the triangle passage, Berkeley remarks, “But had
he called to mind what he says in another place, to wit, ‘That ideas of mixed modes wherein any
inconsistent ideas are put together cannot so much as exist in the mind, i.e. be conceived.’ vid. B. iii.
C. 10. S. 33. ibid. I say, had this occurred to his thoughts, it is not improbable he would have owned it
above all the pains and skill he was master of, to form the above-mentioned idea of a triangle, which
is made up of manifest, staring contradictions”.
If abstract ideas are not needed for communication – Berkeley takes the fact that infants and poorly
educated people communicate, while the formation of abstract ideas is said to be difficult, as a basis
for doubting the difficulty thesis (Intro. §14) – he is able to give short shrift to the contention that
abstract ideas are necessary for knowledge. The abstractionists maintain that abstract ideas are
needed for geometrical proofs. Berkeley argues that only properties concerning, for example, a
triangle as such are germane to a geometric proof. So, even if one’s idea of a triangle is wholly
determinate (consider a diagram on a blackboard), none of the differentiating properties prevent one
from constructing a proof, since a proof is not concerned solely with the idea (or drawing) with which
one begins. He maintains that it is consistent with his theory of meaning to selectively attend to a
single aspect of a complex, determinate idea.
Berkeley concludes his discussion of abstraction by noting that not all general words are used to
denote objects or kinds of objects. His discussion of the nondenotative uses of language is often taken
to anticipate Ludwig Wittgenstein’s interest in meaning-as-use.
esse est percipi
Latin phrase meaning "to be is to be perceived." According to Berkeley, this is the most basic feature
of all sensible objects; for spirits, on the other hand, esse est percipere ("to be is to perceive").
Granting this to be the most fundamental principle of idealistic philosophy, Moore argued that it is
indefensible.
Berkeley’s famous principle is esse is percipi, to be is to be perceived. Berkeley was an idealist. He
held that ordinary objects are only collections of ideas, which are mind-dependent. Berkeley was an
immaterialist. He held that there are no material substances. There are only finite mental substances
and an infinite mental substance, namely, God. On these points there is general agreement. There is
less agreement on Berkeley’s argumentative approach to idealism and immaterialism and on the role
of some of his specific arguments. His central arguments are often deemed weak.
The account developed here is based primarily on the opening thirty-three sections of the Principles
of Human Knowledge. It assumes, contrary to some commentators, that Berkeley’s metaphysics rests
on epistemological foundations. This approach is prima facie plausible insofar as it explains the appeal
to knowledge in the title of the Principles (cf. Intro. §4), it is consistent with Berkeley’s epistemic
concerns in other writings (cf. TVV §18), and it provides an explanatory role for abstract ideas. There
will be occasional digressions concerning the problems perceived by those who claim that Berkeley’s
approach was more straightforwardly metaphysical.
Berkeley begins his discussion as follows:
It is evident to any one who takes a survey of the objects of human knowledge, that they are
either ideas actually imprinted on the senses, or else such as are perceived by attending to the
passions and operations of the mind, or lastly ideas formed by help of memory and
imagination, either compounding, dividing, or barely representing those originally perceived in
the aforesaid ways..
This seems to say that ideas are the immediate objects of knowledge in a fundamental sense
(acquaintance). Following Locke, there are ideas of sense, reflection, and imagination. So, ordinary
objects, as known, are collections of ideas marked by a single name. Berkeley’s example is an apple.
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If ideas are construed as objects of knowledge, then there must also be something that “knows or
perceives them, and exercises divers operations, as willing, imagining, remembering about them”.
This Berkeley calls this ‘mind’ or ‘spirit’. Minds (as knowers) are distinct from ideas (as things known).
For an idea, to be is to be perceived (known). Since this holds for ideas in general, it holds for
“sensations or ideas imprinted on the sense” in particular.
Berkeley contends that the “opinion strangely prevailing amongst men, that houses, mountains,
rivers, and in a world all sensible objects have an existence natural or real, distinct from being
perceived” is inconsistent, “a manifest contradiction”. If one construes ‘sensible objects’ as ideas of
sense, and ideas are objects of knowledge, then having a real existence distinct from being perceived
would require that an object be known (as an idea) and unknown (as a thing distinct from being
perceived), which is inconsistent. He explains the source of the error on the basis of the doctrine of
abstract ideas, a discussion which parallels the discussion in Introduction.
Ordinary objects, as known, are nothing but collections of ideas. If, like Descartes, Berkeley holds that
claims of existence are justified if and only if the existent can be known, then ordinary objects must
be at least collections of ideas. As Berkeley put it, “all the choir of heaven and furniture of the earth,
in a word all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world, have not any subsistence
without a mind, that their being is to be perceived or known”. The only substance that can be known
is a spirit or thinking substance. But notice what has not yet been shown. It has not been shown that
ordinary objects are only collections of ideas, nor has it be shown that thinking substances are
immaterial. Berkeley’s next move is to ask whether there are grounds for claiming ordinary objects
are something more than ideas.
The above account is not the only interpretation of the first seven sections of the Principles. Many
commentators take a more directly metaphysical approach. They assume that ideas are mental
images, or objects of thought (Winker, p.6), or modes of a mental substance (Bracken, pp. 76ff), or
immediate objects of perception (Pappas, pp. 21-22), or any of Berkeley’s other occasional
characterizations of ideas, and proceed to show that, on the chosen account of ideas, Berkeley’s
arguments fail. A. A. Luce tells us that Berkeley’s characterization of an apple in terms of ideas is
concerned with the apple itself, rather than a known apple, which suggests that Berkeley begs the
question of the analysis of body. Many commentators tell us that what seems to be an allusion to
ideas of reflection in the first sentence of §1 cannot be such, since Berkeley claims one has no ideas of
minds or mental states. They ignore his allusions to ideas of reflection and the presumption that if
there are such ideas, they are the effects of an active mind. Many commentators suggest that the
argument for esse is percipi is in §3 – ignoring the concluding words in §2 – and find the “manifest
contradiction” in §4 puzzling at best. Most commentators assume that the case for idealism – the
position that there are only minds and mind-dependent entities – is complete by §7 and lament that
Berkeley has not established the ‘only’. The epistemic interpretation we have been developing seems
to avoid these problems.
Berkeley holds that ordinary objects are at least collections of ideas. Are they something more? In
§§8-24 Berkeley examines the prime contenders for this “something more,” namely, theories of
material substance. He prefaces his discussion with his likeness principle, the principle that nothing
but an idea can resemble an idea. “If we look but ever so little into our thoughts, we shall find it
impossible for us to conceive a likeness except only between our ideas” (PHK §8). Why is this? A claim
that two objects resemble each other can be justified only by a comparison of the objects. So, if only
ideas are immediately perceived, only ideas can be compared. So, there can be no justification for a
claim that an idea resembles anything but an idea. If claims of existence rest on epistemically justified

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principles, the likeness principle blocks both grounds for claiming that there are mediately perceived
material objects and Locke’s claim that the primary qualities of objects resemble one’s ideas of them.
One of the marks of the modern period is the doctrine of primary and secondary qualities. Although it
was anticipated by Descartes, Malebranche, and others, the terms themselves were introduced in
Robert Boyle’s “Of the Origins of Forms and Qualities” (1666) and Locke’s Essay. Primary qualities are
the properties of objects as such. The primary qualities are solidity, extension, figure, number, and
mobility. Secondary qualities are either the those arrangements of corpuscles containing only primary
qualities that cause one to have ideas of color, sound, taste, heat, cold, and smell or, on some
accounts, the ideas themselves. If the distinction can be maintained, there would be grounds for
claiming that ordinary objects are something more than ideas. It is this theory of matter Berkeley
considers first.
After giving a sketch of Locke’s account of the primary/secondary quality distinction , his initial salvo
focuses on his previous conclusions and the likeness principle. “By matter therefore we are to
understand an inert, senseless substance, in which extension, figure, and motion, do actually subsist”
(PHK §9). Such a view is inconsistent with his earlier conclusions that extension, figure, and motion
are ideas. The likeness principle blocks any attempt to go beyond ideas on the basis of resemblance.
Combining the previous conclusions with the standard account of primary qualities requires that
primary qualities both exist apart from the mind and only in the mind. So, Berkeley concludes that
“what is called matter or corporeal substance, involves a contradiction in it”. He then turns to the
individual qualities.
If there is a distinction between primary and secondary qualities, there must be a ground for the
distinction. Indeed, given the common contention that an efficient cause must be numerically distinct
from its effect, if one cannot show that primary and secondary qualities are distinct, there are
grounds for questioning the causal hypothesis. Berkeley argues that there is no ground for the
distinction. Appealing to what one knows – ideas as they are conceived – Berkeley argues that one
cannot conceive of a primary quality such as extension without some secondary quality as well: one
cannot “frame an idea of a body extended and moved, but I must withal give it some colour or other
sensible quality which is acknowledged to exist only in the mind”. If such sensible qualities as color
exist only in the mind, and extension and motion cannot be known without some sensible quality,
there is no ground for claiming extension exists apart from the mind. The primary/secondary quality
distinction collapses. The source of the philosophical error is cited as the doctrine of abstract ideas.
His arguments in Principles show that no evidence can be found that any of the other so-called
primary qualities can exist apart from the mind.
After disposing of the primary/secondary quality distinction, Berkeley turns to an older theory of
material substance, a substratum theory. At least since Aristotle, philosophers had held that qualities
of material objects depend on and exist in a substance which has those qualities. This supposed
substance allegedly remains the same through change. But if one claims there are material
substances, one must have reasons to support that claim. In Principles §§16-24 Berkeley develops a
series of arguments to the effect that
(1) one cannot form an idea of a substratum,
(2) the theory of material substance plays no explanatory role, and
(3) it is impossible to produce evidence for the mere possibility of such an entity.
Can one form an idea a substratum? No. At least one cannot form a positive idea of a material
substratum itself – something like an image of the thing itself – a point that was granted by its most
fervent supporters. The most one can do is form “An obscure and relative Idea of Substance in
general”, “though you know not what it is, yet you must be supposed to know what relation it bears
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to accidents, and what is meant by its supporting them”. Berkeley argues that one cannot make good
on the notion of ‘support’ – “It is evident support cannot here be taken in its usual or literal sense, as
when we say that pillars support a building: in what sense therefore must it be taken?” (PHK §16) – so
one does not even have a relative idea of material substratum. Without a clear notion of the alleged
relation, one cannot single out a material substance on the basis of a relation to something perceived.
If an idea of a material substratum cannot be derived from sense experience, claims of its existence
might be justified if it is necessary to provide an explanation of a phenomenon. But no such
explanation is forthcoming. As Berkeley notes: “But what reason can induce us to believe the
existence of bodies without the mind, from what we perceive, since the very patrons of matter
themselves do not pretend, there is any necessary connexion betwixt them and our ideas? I say it is
granted on all hands (and what happens in dreams, phrensies, and the like, puts it beyond dispute)
that it is possible we might be affected with all the ideas we have now, though no bodies existed
without, resembling them”. Since material substance is not necessary to provide an explanation of
mental phenomena, reason cannot provide grounds for claiming the existence of a material
substance.
Berkeley’s final move against material substance is sometimes called the “Master Argument.” It takes
the form of a challenge, one on which Berkeley is willing to rest his entire case. “It is but looking into
your own thoughts, and so trying whether you can conceive it possible for a sound, or figure, or
motion, or colour, to exist without the mind, or unperceived. This easy trial may make you see, that
what you contend for, is a downright contradiction” (PHK §22). Berkeley seems to argue that in any
case one might consider – books in the back of a closet, plants deep in a wood with no one about,
footprints on the far side of the moon – the objects are related to the mind conceiving of them. So, it
is contradictory to claim that those objects have no relation to a mind. This is generally not
considered Berkeley at his best, since many commentators argue that it is possible to distinguish
between the object conceived and the conceiving of it. George Pappas has provided a more
sympathetic interpretation of the passage. He contends that Berkeley is calling for an “impossible
performance”. Conceivability is the ground for claiming that an object is possible. If one conceives of
an object, then that object is related to some mind, namely, the mind that conceives it. So, the
problem is that it is not possible to fulfill the conditions necessary to show that it would be possible
for an object to exist apart from a relation to a mind.
Thus, Berkeley concludes, there are no grounds for claiming that an ordinary object is more than a
collection of ideas. The arguments in §§1-7 showed that ordinary objects are at least collections of
ideas of sense. The arguments in §§8-24 provide grounds for claiming that ordinary objects are
nothing more than ideas. So, Berkeley is justified in claiming that they are only ideas of sense.
Berkeley’s argument for immaterialism is complete, although he has not yet provided criteria for
distinguishing ideas of sense from ideas of memory and imagination. This is his task in §§29-33.
Before turning to this, Berkeley introduces several remarks on mind.
Berkeley claims that an inspection of our ideas shows that they are causally inert. Since there is a
continual succession of ideas in our minds, there must be some cause of it. Since this cause can be
neither an idea nor a material substance, it must be a spiritual substance. This sets the stage for
Berkeley’s argument for the existence of God and the distinction between real things and imaginary
things.
One knows that one causes some of one’s own ideas . Since the mind is passive in perception, there
are ideas which one’s own mind does not cause. Only a mind or spirit can be a cause. “There is
therefore some other will or spirit that produces them” . As such, this is not an argument for the

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existence of God, although Berkeley’s further discussion assumes that at least one mind is the divine
mind.
He is now in a position to distinguish ideas of sense from ideas of the imagination: “The ideas of sense
are more strong, lively, and distinct than those of the imagination; they have likewise a steadiness,
order, and coherence, and are not excited at random, as those which are the effects of human wills
often are”. This provides the basis for both the distinction between ideas of sense and ideas of
imagination and for the distinction between real things and imaginary thing. Real things are
composed solely of ideas of sense. Ideas of sense occur with predictable regularity; they form
coherent wholes that themselves can be expected to “behave” in predictable ways. Ideas of sense
follow (divinely established) laws of nature.
So, Berkeley has given an account of ordinary objects without matter. Ordinary objects are nothing
but lawfully arranged collections of ideas of sense.
Solipsism
Solipsism, in philosophy, an extreme form of subjective idealism that denies that the human mind has
any valid ground for believing in the existence of anything but itself. The British idealist F.H. Bradley,
in Appearance and Reality (1893), characterized the solipsistic view as follows:
Presented as a solution of the problem of explaining human knowledge of the external world, it is
generally regarded as a reductio ad absurdum. The only scholar who seems to have been
a coherent radical solipsist is Claude Brunet, a 17th-century French physician.
Solipsism and the Problem of Other Minds
Solipsism is sometimes expressed as the view that “I am the only mind which exists,” or “My mental
states are the only mental states.” However, the sole survivor of a nuclear holocaust might truly come
to believe in either of these propositions without thereby being a solipsist. Solipsism is therefore
more properly regarded as the doctrine that, in principle, “existence” means for me my existence and
that of my mental states. Existence is everything that I experience — physical objects, other people,
events and processes — anything that would commonly be regarded as a constituent of the space and
time in which I coexist with others and is necessarily construed by me as part of the content
of my consciousness.
For the solipsist, it is not merely the case that he believes that his thoughts, experiences, and
emotions are, as a matter of contingent fact, the only thoughts, experiences, and emotions. Rather,
the solipsist can attach no meaning to the supposition that there could be thoughts, experiences, and
emotions other than his own. In short, the true solipsist understands the word “pain,” for example, to
mean “my pain.” He cannot accordingly conceive how this word is to be applied in any sense other
than this exclusively egocentric one.
The Importance of the Problem
No great philosopher has espoused solipsism. As a theory, if indeed it can be termed such, it is clearly
very far removed from common sense. In view of this, it might reasonably be asked why the problem
of solipsism should receive any philosophical attention. There are two answers to this question. First,
while no great philosopher has explicitly espoused solipsism, this can be attributed to the
inconsistency of much philosophical reasoning. Many philosophers have failed to accept the logical
consequences of their own most fundamental commitments and preconceptions. The foundations of
solipsism lie at the heart of the view that the individual gets his own psychological concepts (thinking,
willing, perceiving, and so forth.) from “his own cases,” that is by abstraction from “inner experience.”

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This view, or some variant of it, has been held by a great many, if not the majority of philosophers
since Descartes made the egocentric search for truth the primary goal of the critical study of the
nature and limits of knowledge.
In this sense, solipsism is implicit in many philosophies of knowledge and mind since Descartes and
any theory of knowledge that adopts the Cartesian egocentric approach as its basic frame of
reference is inherently solipsistic.
Second, solipsism merits close examination because it is based upon three widely entertained
philosophical presuppositions, which are themselves of fundamental and wide-ranging importance.
These are:
(a) What I know most certainly are the contents of my own mind – my thoughts, experiences,
affective states, and so forth.;
(b) There is no conceptual or logically necessary link between the mental and the physical. For
example, there is no necessary link between the occurrence of certain conscious experiences or
mental states and the “possession” and behavioral dispositions of a body of a particular kind; and
(c) The experiences of a given person are necessarily private to that person.
These presuppositions are of unmistakable Cartesian origin, and are widely accepted by philosophers
and non-philosophers alike. In tackling the problem of solipsism, one immediately grapples with
fundamental issues in the philosophy of mind. However spurious the problem of solipsism per se may
strike one, these latter issues are unquestionably important. Indeed, one of the merits of the entire
enterprise is the extent that it reveals a direct connection between apparently unexceptionable and
certainly widely-held common sense beliefs and the acceptance of solipsistic conclusions. If this
connection exists and we wish to avoid those solipsistic conclusions, we shall have no option but to
revise, or at least to critically review, the beliefs from which they derive logical sustenance.
Historical Origins of the Problem
In introducing “methodic doubt” into philosophy, René Descartes created the backdrop against which
solipsism subsequently developed and was made to seem, if not plausible, at least irrefutable. For
the ego that is revealed by the cogito is a solitary consciousness, a res cogitans that is not spatially
extended, is not necessarily located in any body, and can be assured of its own existence exclusively
as a conscious mind. (Discourse on Method and the Meditations).
This view of the self is intrinsically solipsistic and Descartes evades the solipsistic consequences of his
method of doubt by the desperate expedient of appealing to the benevolence of God. Since God is no
deceiver, he argues, and since He has created man with an innate disposition to assume the existence
of an external, public world corresponding to the private world of the “ideas” that are the only
immediate objects of consciousness, it follows that such a public world actually exists. (Sixth
Meditation). Thus does God bridge the chasm between the solitary consciousness revealed by
methodic doubt and the intersubjective world of public objects and other human beings?
A modern philosopher cannot evade solipsism under the Cartesian picture of consciousness without
accepting the function attributed to God by Descartes (something few modern philosophers are
willing to do). In view of this it is scarcely surprising that we should find the specter of solipsism
looming ever more threateningly in the works of Descartes’ successors in the modern world,
particularly in those of the British empiricist tradition.
Descartes’ account of the nature of mind implies that the individual acquires the psychological
concepts that he possesses “from his own case,” that is that each individual has a unique and
privileged access to his own mind, which is denied to everyone else. Although this view utilizes
language and employs conceptual categories (“the individual,” “other minds,” and so forth.) that are

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inimical to solipsism, it is nonetheless fundamentally conducive historically to the development of
solipsistic patterns of thought.
On this view, what I know immediately and with greatest certainty are the events that occur in my
own mind – my thoughts, my emotions, my perceptions, my desires, and so forth. – and these are not
known in this way by anyone else. By the same token, it follows that I do not know other minds in the
way that I know my own; indeed, if I am to be said to know other minds at all – that they exist and
have a particular nature – it can only be on the basis of certain inferences that I have made from what
is directly accessible to me, the behavior of other human beings.
The essentials of the Cartesian view were accepted by John Locke, the father of modern British
empiricism. Rejecting Descartes’ theory that the mind possesses ideas innately at birth, Locke argued
that all ideas have their origins in experience. “Reflection” (that is introspection or “inner
experience”) is the sole source of psychological concepts. Without exception, such concepts have
their genesis in the experience of the corresponding mental processes.
If I acquire my psychological concepts by introspecting upon my own mental operations, then it
follows that I do so independently of my knowledge of my bodily states. Any correlation that I make
between the two will be effected subsequent to my acquisition of my psychological concepts. Thus,
the correlation between bodily and mental stated is not a logically necessary one. I may discover, for
example, that whenever I feel pain my body is injured in some way, but I can discover this factual
correlation only after I have acquired the concept “pain.” It cannot therefore be part of what I mean
by the word “pain” that my body should behave in a particular way.
The Argument from Analogy
What then of my knowledge of the minds of others? On Locke’s view there can be only one answer:
since what I know directly is the existence and contents of my own mind, it follows that my
knowledge of the minds of others, if I am to be said to possess such knowledge at all, has to be
indirect and analogical, an inference from my own case. This is the so-called “argument from analogy”
for other minds, which empiricist philosophers in particular who accept the Cartesian account of
consciousness generally assume as a mechanism for avoiding solipsism.
Observing that the bodies of other human beings behave as my body does in similar circumstances, I
can infer that the mental life and series of mental events that accompany my bodily behavior are also
present in the case of others. Thus, for example, when I see a problem that I am trying unsuccessfully
to solve, I feel myself becoming frustrated and observe myself acting in a particular way. In the case
of another, I observe only the first and last terms of this three-term sequence and, on this basis, I
infer that the “hidden” middle term, the feeling of frustration, has also occurred.
There are, however, fundamental difficulties with the argument from analogy. First, if one accepts the
Cartesian account of consciousness, one must, in all consistency, accept its implications. One of these
implications, as we have seen above, is that there is no logically necessary connection between the
concepts of “mind” and “body;” my mind may be lodged in my body now, but this is a matter of sheer
contingency. Mind need not become located in body. Its nature will not be affected in any way by the
death of this body and there is no reason in principle why it should not have been located in a body
radically different from a human one.
By exactly the same token, any correlation that exists between bodily behavior and mental states
must also be entirely contingent; there can be no conceptual connections between the contents of a
mind at a given time and the nature and/or behavior of the body in which it is located at that time.
This raises the question as to how my supposed analogical inferences to other minds are to take place
at all. How can I apply psychological concepts to others, if I know only that they apply to me? To take
a concrete example again, if I learn what “pain” means by reference to my own case, then I will
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understand “pain” to mean “my pain” and the supposition that pain can be ascribed to anything other
than myself will be unintelligible to me.
If the relationship between having a human body and a certain kind of mental life is as contingent as
the Cartesian account of mind implies, it should be equally easy – or equally difficult – for me to
conceive of a table as being in pain as it is for me to conceive of another person as being in pain. The
point, of course, is that this is not so. The supposition that a table might experience pain is a totally
meaningless one, whereas the ascription of pain to other human beings and animals that, in their
physical characteristics and/or behavioral capabilities, resemble human beings is something which
even very young children find unproblematic.
How is this to be accounted for? It will not do, in this context, to simply respond that a table does not
have the same complex set of physical characteristics as a human body or that it is not capable of the
same patterns of behavior as a human body. Because the Cartesian position implies that there is no
logical connection between the mental and the physical, between the possession of a body of a
particular kind and the capability for consciousness. Physical differentiation can and must be
acknowledged, but it can play no role in any explanation of what it is to have a mental life.
I am surrounded by other bodies, some of which are similar to mine, and some of which are different.
On Cartesian principles such similarities and such differences are irrelevant. The question as to
whether it is legitimate for me to ascribe psychological predicates to entities other than myself, which
the argument from analogy is designed to address, cannot hinge on the kind of body that I am
confronted at a given time.
Assuming the validity of the Cartesian position, we have to infer that it makes as much or a little
sense, on these premises, to attribute any psychological predicate to another human being as it does
to attribute it to a table or a rock.
On these premises, it makes no sense to attribute consciousness to another human being at all. Thus
on strict Cartesian principles, the argument from analogy will not do the work that is required of it to
bridge the gulf between my conscious states and putative conscious states that are not mine.
Ultimately, it must be confessed that on these principles I know only my own mental states and the
supposition that there are mental states other than my own ceases to be intelligible to me. It is thus
that solipsism comes to seem inescapable.
If the above argument is valid, it demonstrates that the acceptance of the Cartesian account of
consciousness and the view that my understanding of psychological concepts derives, as do the
concepts themselves, from my own case leads inexorably to solipsism. However, it may fairly be said
that the argument accomplishes more than just this. It can, and should, be understood as a reductio
ad absurdum refutation of these Cartesian principles. Viewed from this perspective, the argument
may be paraphrased as follows:
If there is no logical connection between the physical and the mental, if the physical forms no part of
the criteria that govern my ascription of psychological predicates, then I would be able to conceive of
an inanimate object such as a table as having a soul and being conscious. But I cannot attach any
intelligibility to the notion of an inanimate object being conscious. It follows therefore that there is a
logical connection between the physical and the mental: the physical does form part of the criteria
that govern my ascription of psychological words.
The Physical and the Mental
What then is this logical connection between the physical and the mental? This question can best be
answered by reflecting, for example, on how a cartoonist might show that a particular table was angry
or in pain. As indicated above, it is impossible to attach literal meaning to the assertion that a given
inanimate object is angry or in pain, but clearly a certain imaginative latitude may be allowed for
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specific purposes and a cartoonist might conceivably want to picture a table as being angry for
humorous reasons.
What is significant in this connection, however, is that to achieve this effect, the cartoonist must
picture the table as having human features – the pictured table will appear angry to us only to the
extent to that it possesses the natural human expression of anger.
The concept of anger can find purchase in relation to the table only if it is represented as possessing
something like a human form. This example demonstrates a point of quite fundamental importance:
so far from being acquired by abstraction from my own case, from my own “inner” mental life, my
psychological concepts are acquired in a specifically intersubjective, social, linguistic context and part
of their meaning is their primary application to living human beings.
To put this slightly differently, a person is a living human being and the human person in this sense
functions as our paradigm of that which has a mental life; it is precisely in relation to their application
to persons that we learn such concepts as “consciousness,” “pain,” “anger,” and so forth. As such, it is
a necessary and antecedent condition for the ascription of psychological predicates such as these to
an object that it should “possess” a body of a particular kind.
Wittgenstein articulated this point in one of the centrally important methodological tenets of
the Investigations:
Only of a living human being and what resembles (behaves like) a living human being can one say: it
has sensations; it sees; is blind; hears; is deaf; is conscious or unconscious.
Consequently, the belief that there is something problematic about the application of psychological
words to other human beings and that such applications are necessarily the products of highly fallible
inferences to the “inner” mental lives of others, which require something like the argument from
analogy for their justification, turns out to be fundamentally confused. The intersubjective world that
we live with other human beings and the public language-system that we must master if we are to
think at all are the primary data, the “proto-phenomena,” in Wittgenstein’s phrase.
Our psychological and non-psychological concepts alike are derived from a single linguistic
fountainhead. It is precisely because the living human being functions as our paradigm of that which
is conscious and has a mental life that we find the solipsistic notion that other human beings could be
“automatons,” machines devoid of any conscious thought or experience, bizarre and bewildering. The
idea that other persons might all in reality be “automatons” is not one which we can seriously
entertain.
Knowing Other Minds
We are now in a position to see the essential redundancy of the argument from analogy. First, it is a
misconception to think that we need any inferential argument to assure us of the existence of other
minds. Such an assurance seems necessary only so long as it is assumed that each of us has to work
“outwards” from the interiority of his/her own consciousness, to abstract from our own cases to the
“internal” world of others.
As indicated above, this assumption is fundamentally wrong – our knowledge that other human
beings are conscious and our knowledge of their mental states at a given time is not inferential in
nature at all, but is rather determined by the public criteria that govern the application of
psychological concepts. I know that a person who behaves in a particular way – who, for example,
gets red in the face, shouts, gesticulates, speaks vehemently, and so forth – is angry precisely because
I have learned the concept “anger” by reference to such behavioral criteria. There is no inference
involved here. I do not reason “he behaves in this way, therefore he is angry” – rather “behaving in
this way” is part of what it is to be angry and it does not occur to any sane person to question
whether the individual who acts in this way is conscious or has a mental life.
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Second, because the argument from analogy treats the existence of the mental lives of other living
human beings as problematic, it seeks to establish that it is legitimate to infer that other living human
beings do indeed have mental lives, that each one of us may be said to be justified
in his confidence that he is surrounded by other persons rather than “automatons.” The difficulty
here, however, is that the argument presupposes that I can draw an analogy between two things,
myself as a person and other living human beings, that are sufficiently similar to permit the analogous
comparison and sufficiently different to require it.
The question must be faced, however, is how or in what respects am I different from or similar to
other human beings? The answer is that I am neither. I am a living human being, as are these others. I
see about me living human beings and the argument from analogy is supposed to allow me to infer
that these are persons like myself. However, the truth is that I have no criterion for discriminating
living human beings from persons, for the very good reason that persons are living human beings –
there is no conceptual difference between the two. Since the argument acknowledges that I know
living human beings directly, it thereby implicitly acknowledges that I know other persons directly,
thus making itself functionally redundant.
A final, frequently-encountered objection to the argument from analogy derives from the work of
Strawson and Malcolm: the argument attempts to move inferentially from my supposed direct
knowledge of my own mental life and “inner” states to my indirect knowledge of the mental states of
others. It thus presupposes that I know what it means to assign mental states to myself without
necessarily knowing what it means to ascribe them to others.
This is incoherent. To speak of certain mental states as being mine in the first place is to discriminate
them from mental states that are not mine and these, by definition, are the mental states of others. It
follows, therefore, that in a fundamental sense the argument from analogy cannot get off the ground:
one cannot know how to ascribe mental states to oneself unless one also knows what it means to
ascribe mental states to others.
Plausible as this objection seems at first sight, it is (ironically, on Wittgensteinian criteria) quite
mistaken. For it is not the case that when I am in pain I first identify the pain and subsequently come
to recognize that it is one that I, as distinct from someone else, have. The personal pronoun “I” in the
locution “I am in pain” is not the “I” of personal individuation – it does not refer to me or discriminate
me as a publicly situated person as distinct from others.
The exponent of the argument from analogy is not guilty of the charge of presupposing the very thing
that he is endeavoring to demonstrate, as both Strawson and Malcolm suggest. Wittgenstein in fact
considered that there is a genuine asymmetry here, in relation to the ascription of psychological
predicates to oneself and to others, which is dimly perceived but misrepresented by those who feel
the need of the argument from analogy. Whereas one ascribes psychological states to others by
reference to bodily and behavioral criteria, one has and requires no criteria at all to self-ascribe or
self-avow them.
Thus the exponent of the argument from analogy sees, quite correctly, that present-tense, first-
person psychological assertions such as “I am in pain” differ radically from third-person psychological
predicate ascriptions, but thinks of the former as descriptions of “inner” mental states to which he
alone has a privileged access. This is crucially wrong. Such uses of the word “I” as occur in present-
tense, first-person psychological assertions do not identify a possessor; they do not discriminate one
person from amongst a group. As Wittgenstein puts it,
To say “I have pain” is no more a statement about a particular person than moaning is.
To ascribe pain to a third party, on the other hand, is to identify a concrete individual as the possessor
of the pain. On this point alone Wittgenstein concurs with the exponent of the argument from
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analogy. However, Wittgenstein here calls attention to the fact that the asymmetry is not one that
exists between the supposedly direct and certain knowledge that I have of my own mental states as
distinct from the wholly inferential knowledge which, allegedly, I have of the mental states of others.
Rather, the asymmetry is that the ascriptions of psychological predicates to others require criterial
justificatory grounds, whereas the self-avowals or self-ascriptions of such predicates are criterionless.
It thus transpires that the argument from analogy appears possible and necessary only to those who
misapprehend the asymmetry between the criterial bases for third-person psychological predicate
ascription and the non-criterial right for their self-ascription or self-avowal for a cognitive asymmetry
between direct and indirect knowledge of mental states.
The Cartesian egocentric view of the mind and of mental events that gives rise both to the specter of
solipsism and attempts to evade it by means of the argument from analogy has its origins in this very
misapprehension.
The Privacy of Experience
What then of solipsism? To what extent does the foregoing undermine it as a coherent philosophical
hypothesis, albeit one in which no-one really believes? Solipsism rests upon certain presuppositions
about the mind and our knowledge of mental events and processes. Two of these, the thesis that I
have a privileged form of access to and knowledge of my own mind and the thesis that there is no
conceptual or logically necessary link between the mental and the physical, have been dealt with
above. If the foregoing is correct, both theses are false.
This leaves us with the final presupposition underlying solipsism, that all experiences are necessarily
(that is logically) private to the individual whose experiences they are. This thesis – which, it is fair to
say, is very widely accepted – also derives from the Cartesian account of mind and generates
solipsistic conclusions by suggesting that experience is something that, because of its “occult” or
ephemeral nature, can never literally be shared. No two people can ever be said to have the same
experience. This again introduces the problem of how one person can know the experiences of
another or, more radically, how one can know that another person has experiences at all.
Wittgenstein offers a comprehensive critique of this view. He attacks the notion that experience is
necessarily private. His arguments against this are complex, if highly compressed and rather oracular.
Wittgenstein distinguishes two senses of the word “private” as it is normally used: privacy of
knowledge and privacy of possession. Something is private to me in the first sense if only I can know
it; it is private to me in the second sense if only I can have it. Thus the thesis that experience is
necessarily private can mean one of two things, which are not always discriminated from each other
with sufficient care: (a) only I can know my experiences or (b) only I can have my experiences.
Wittgenstein argues that the first of these is false and the second is true in a sense that does not
make experience necessarily private, as follows:
Under (a), if we take pain as an experiential exemplar, we find that the assertion “Only I can know my
pains” is a conjunction of two separate theses: (i) I (can) know that I am in pain when I am in pain and
(ii) other people cannot know that I am in pain when I am in pain. Thesis (i) is, literally, nonsense: it
cannot be meaningfully asserted of me that I know that I am in pain. Wittgenstein’s point here is not
that I do not know that I am in pain when I am in pain, but rather that the word “know” cannot be
significantly employed in this way. This is because the verbal locution “I am in pain” is usually (though
not invariably) an expression of pain – as part of acquired pain-behavior it is a linguistic substitute for
such natural expressions of pain as groaning.
For this reason it cannot be governed by an epistemic operator. The prepositional function “I know
that x” does not yield a meaningful proposition if the variable is replaced by an expression of pain,

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linguistic or otherwise. Thus to say that others learn of my pains only from my behavior is misleading,
because it suggests that I learn of them otherwise, whereas I don’t learn of them at all – I have them.
Thesis (ii) – other people cannot know that I am in pain when I am in pain – is false. If we take the
word “know” is as it is normally used, then it is true to say that other people can and very frequently
do know when I am in pain. Indeed, in cases where the pain is extreme, it is often impossible to
prevent others from knowing this even when one wishes to do so. Thus, in certain circumstances, it
would not be unusual to hear it remarked of someone, for example, that “a moan of pain escaped
him” – indicating that despite his efforts, he could not but manifest his pain to others. It thus
transpires that neither thesis (i) nor (ii) is true.
If we turn to (b), we find that “Only I can have my pains” expresses a truth, but it is a truth that is
grammatical rather than ontological. It draws our attention to the grammatical connection between
the personal pronoun “I” and the possessive “my.” However, it tells us nothing specifically about
pains or other experiences, for it remains true if we replace the word “pains” with many other plural
nouns (e.g. “Only I can have my blushes”).
Another person can have the same pain as me. If our pains have the same phenomenal characteristics
and corresponding locations, we will quite correctly be said to have “the same pain.” This is what the
expression “the same pain” means.
Another person, however, cannot have my pains. My pains are the ones that, if they are expressed at
all, are expressed by me. But by exactly the same (grammatical) token, another person cannot have
my blushes, sneezes, frowns, fears, and so forth., and none of this can be taken as adding to our
stockpile of metaphysical truths. It is true that I may deliberately and successfully keep an experience
to myself, in which case that particular experience might be said to be private to me.
But I might do this by articulating it in a language that those with whom I was conversing do not
understand. There is clearly nothing occult or mysterious about this kind of privacy. (Investigations, II.
xi, p. 222). Similarly, experience that I do not or cannot keep to myself is not private. In short, some
experiences are private and some are not. Even though some experiences are private in this sense, it
does not follow that all experiences could be private. As Wittgenstein points out, “What sometimes
happens could always happen” is a fallacy. It does not follow from the fact that some orders are not
obeyed that all orders might never be obeyed. For in that case the concept “order” would become
incapable of instantiation and would lose its significance. (I. § 345).
The Incoherence of Solipsism
With the belief in the essential privacy of experience eliminated as false, the last presupposition
underlying solipsism is removed and solipsism is shown as foundationless, in theory and in fact. One
might even say, solipsism is necessarily foundationless, for to make an appeal to logical rules or
empirical evidence the solipsist would implicitly have to affirm the very thing that he purportedly
refuses to believe: the reality of intersubjectively valid criteria and a public, extra-mental world. There
is a temptation to say that solipsism is a false philosophical theory, but this is not quite strong or
accurate enough.
As a theory, it is incoherent. What makes it incoherent, above all else, is that the solipsist requires a
language (that is a sign-system) to think or to affirm his solipsistic thoughts at all. Given this, it is
scarcely surprising that those philosophers who accept the Cartesian premises that make solipsism
apparently plausible, if not inescapable, have also invariably assumed that language-usage is itself
essentially private. The cluster of arguments – generally referred to as “the private language
argument” – that we find in the Investigations against this assumption effectively administers
the coup de grâce to both Cartesian dualism and solipsism.

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Language is an irreducibly public form of life that is encountered in specifically social contexts. Each
natural language-system contains an indefinitely large number of “language-games,” governed by
rules that, though conventional, are not arbitrary personal fiats. The meaning of a word is its (publicly
accessible) use in a language. To question, argue, or doubt is to utilize language in a particular way. It
is to play a particular kind of public language-game.
The proposition “I am the only mind that exists” makes sense only to the extent that it is expressed in
a public language, and the existence of such language itself implies the existence of a social context.
Such a context exists for the hypothetical last survivor of a nuclear holocaust, but not for the solipsist.
A non-linguistic solipsism is unthinkable and a thinkable solipsism is necessarily linguistic. Solipsism
therefore presupposes the very thing that it seeks to deny. That solipsistic thoughts are thinkable in
the first instance implies the existence of the public, shared, intersubjective world that they purport
to call into question.
God's existence
The last major item in Berkeley's ontology is God, himself a spirit, but an infinite one. Berkeley
believes that once he has established idealism, he has a novel and convincing argument for God's
existence as the cause of our sensory ideas. He argues by elimination: What could cause my sensory
ideas? Candidate causes, supposing that Berkeley has already established that matter doesn't exist,
are (1) other ideas, (2) myself, or (3) some other spirit. Berkeley eliminates the first option with the
following argument (PHK 25):
(1) Ideas are manifestly passive—no power or activity is perceived in them.
(2) But because of the mind-dependent status of ideas, they cannot have any characteristics which
they are not perceived to have.
Therefore,
(3) Ideas are passive, that is, they possess no causal power.
It should be noted that premise (2) is rather strong; Phillip Cummins (1990) identifies it as Berkeley's
“manifest qualities thesis” and argues that it commits Berkeley to the view that ideas are radically and
completely dependent on perceivers in the way that sensations of pleasure and pain are typically
taken to be.
The second option is eliminated with the observation that although I clearly can cause some ideas at
will (e.g. ideas of imagination), sensory ideas are involuntary; they present themselves whether I wish
to perceive them or not and I cannot control their content. The hidden assumption here is that any
causing the mind does must be done by willing and such willing must be accessible to consciousness.
Berkeley is hardly alone in presupposing this model of the mental; Descartes, for example, makes a
similar set of assumptions.
This leaves us, then, with the third option: my sensory ideas must be caused by some other spirit.
Berkeley thinks that when we consider the stunning complexity and systematicity of our sensory
ideas, we must conclude that the spirit in question is wise and benevolent beyond measure, that, in
short, he is God.
Hume's Ideas
Hume's analysis of human belief begins with a careful distinction among our mental
contents: impressions are the direct, vivid, and forceful products of immediate experience; ideas are
merely feeble copies of these original impressions. Thus, for example, the background color of the
screen at which I am now looking is an impression, while my memory of the color of my mother's hair
is merely an idea. Since every idea must be derived from an antecedent impression, Hume supposed,

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it always makes sense to inquire into the origins of our ideas by asking from which impressions they
are derived.
To this beginning, add the fact that each of our ideas and impressions is entirely separable from every
other, on Hume's view. The apparent connection of one idea to another is invariably the result of an
association that we manufacture ourselves. We use our mental operations to link ideas to each other
in one of three ways: resemblance, contiguity, or cause and effect. (This animal looks like that animal;
this book is on that table; moving this switch turns off the light, for example.) Experience provides us
with both the ideas themselves and our awareness of their association. All human beliefs (including
those we regard as cases of knowledge) result from repeated applications of these simple
associations.
Hume further distinguished between two sorts of belief. Relations of ideas are beliefs grounded
wholly on associations formed within the mind; they are capable of demonstration because they have
no external referent. Matters of fact are beliefs that claim to report the nature of existing things; they
are always contingent. (This is Hume's version of the a priori / a posteriori distinction.) Mathematical
and logical knowledge relies upon relations of ideas; it is uncontroversial but uninformative. The
interesting but problematic propositions of natural science depend upon matters of fact. Abstract
metaphysics mistakenly (and fruitlessly) tries to achieve the certainty of the former with the content
of the latter.
Concerning Matters of Fact
Since genuine information rests upon our belief in matters of fact, Hume was particularly concerned
to explain their origin. Such beliefs can reach beyond the content of present sense-impressions and
memory, Hume held, only by appealing to presumed connections of cause and effect. But since each
idea is distinct and separable from every other, there is no self-evident relation; these connections
can only be derived from our experience of similar cases. So the crucial question in epistemology is to
ask exactly how it is possible for us to learn from experience.
Here, Hume supposed, the most obvious point is a negative one: causal reasoning can never be
justified rationally. In order to learn, we must suppose that our past experiences bear some relevance
to present and future cases. But although we do indeed believe that the future will be like the past,
the truth of that belief is not self-evident. In fact, it is always possible for nature to change, so
inferences from past to future are never rationally certain. Thus, on Hume's view, all beliefs in matters
of fact are fundamentally non-rational.
Consider Hume's favorite example: our belief that the sun will rise tomorrow. Clearly, this is a matter
of fact; it rests on our conviction that each sunrise is an effect caused by the rotation of the earth. But
our belief in that causal relation is based on past observations, and our confidence that it will
continue tomorrow cannot be justified by reference to the past. So we have no rational basis for
believing that the sun will rise tomorrow. Yet we do believe it!
Belief as a Habit
Skepticism quite properly forbids us to speculate beyond the content of our present experience and
memory, yet we find it entirely natural to believe much more than that. Hume held that these
unjustifiable beliefs can be explained by reference to custom or habit. That's how we learn from
experience. When I observe the constant conjunction of events in my experience, I grow accustomed
to associating them with each other. Although many past cases of sunrise do not guarantee the future
of nature, my experience of them does get me used to the idea and produces in me an expectation
that the sun will rise again tomorrow. I cannot prove that it will, but I feel that it must.
Remember that the association of ideas is a powerful natural process in which separate ideas come to
be joined together in the mind. Of course they can be associated with each other by rational means,
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as they are in the relations of ideas that constitute mathematical knowledge. But even where this is
possible, Hume argued, reason is a slow and inefficient guide, while the habits acquired by much
repetition can produce a powerful conviction independently of reason. Although the truth of "9 × 12 =
108" can be established rationally in principle, most of us actually learned it by reciting our
multiplication tables. In fact, what we call relative probability is, on Hume's view, nothing more than a
measure of the strength of conviction produced in us by our experience of regularity.
Our beliefs in matters of fact, then, arise from sentiment or feeling rather than from reason. For
Hume, imagination and belief differ only in the degree of conviction with which their objects are
anticipated. Although this positive answer may seem disappointing, Hume maintained that custom or
habit is the great guide of life and the foundation of all natural science.
Necessary Connection
According to Hume, our belief that events are causally related is a custom or habit acquired by
experience: having observed the regularity with which events of particular sorts occur together, we
form the association of ideas that produces the habit of expecting the effect whenever we experience
the cause. But something is missing from this account: we also believe that the cause
somehow produces the effect. Even if this belief is unjustifiable, Hume must offer some explanation
for the fact that we do hold it. His technique was to search for the original impression from which our
idea of the necessary connection between cause and effect is copied.
The idea does not arise from our objective experience of the events themselves. All we observe is that
events of the "cause" type occur nearby and shortly before events of the "effect" type, and that this
recurs with a regularity that can be described as a "constant conjunction." Although this pattern of
experience does encourage the formation of our habit of expecting the effect to follow the cause, it
includes no impression of a necessary connection.
Nor do we acquire this impression (as Locke had supposed) from our own capacity for voluntary
motion. Here the objective element of constant conjunction is rarely experienced, since the actions of
our minds and bodies do not invariably submit to our voluntary control. And even if volition did
always produce the intended movement, Hume argued, that would yield no notion of the connection
between them. So there is no impression of causal power here, either.
Still, we do have the idea of a necessary connection, and it must come from somewhere. For a (non-
justificatory) explanation, Hume refers us back to the formation of a custom or habit. Our (non-
rational) expectation that the effect will follow the cause is accompanied by a strong feeling of
conviction, and it is the impression of this feeling that is copied by our concept of a necessary
connection between cause and effect. The force of causal necessity is just the strength of our
sentiment in anticipating efficacious outcomes.
The Self
In a notorious passage of the Treatise, Hume offered a similar account of the belief in the reality of
the self. Here there is the ordinary human supposition that lies behind our use of first-personal
pronouns. Upon this relatively simple foundation, philosophers have erected the notion of an
immaterial substance, a mind or soul that persists through time on its own. Hume's question is, "From
what antecedent impression does the idea of the self arise?"
Hume pointed out that we do not have an impression of the self. No matter how closely I attend to
my own experience, no matter how fully I notice the mental operations presently occurring "in my
mind," I am never directly aware of "I." What I do experience is a succession of separate and
individual ideas, associated with each other by relations of resemblance and causality. Although these
relations may be extended through time by memory, there is no evidence of any substantial ground
for their coherence. The persistent self and the immortal soul are philosophical fictions.
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To suppose otherwise, Hume held, is to commit a category mistake: the self is just a bundle of
perceptions, like the railroad cars in a train; to look for a self beyond the ideas would be like looking
for a train beyond the cars. Our idea of a persistent self is simply a result of the human habit of
attributing continued existence to any collection of associated parts. Like our idea of the necessary
connection of cause with effect, belief in our own reality as substantial selves is natural, but
unjustifiable.
External World
Another perfectly ordinary feature of human cognition is our belief in the reality of the external
world. As I write this lesson, I readily suppose that my fingers are touching a keyboard, that the sun is
shining outside and that the radio is playing a Clapton song. In Hume's skeptical philosophy, what is
the status of these beliefs?
The primitive human belief, Hume noted, is that we actually see (and hear, etc.) the physical objects
themselves. But modern philosophy and science have persuaded us that this is not literally true.
According to representationalists, we are directly aware of ideas, which must in turn be causally
produced in our minds by external objects. The problem is that on this view we can never know that
there really are physical objects that produce our sensory ideas.
We cannot rely on causal reasoning to convince us that there are external objects, Hume argued,
since (as we have just seen) such reasoning arises from our observation of a constant conjunction
between causes and effects. But according to the representationalist philosophy, we have no direct
experience of the presumed cause! If we know objects only by means of ideas, then we cannot use
those ideas to establish a causal connection between the things and the objects they are supposed to
represent.
In fact, Hume supposed, our belief in the reality of an external world is entirely non-rational. It cannot
be supported either as a relation of ideas or even as a matter of fact. Although it is utterly
unjustifiable, however, belief in the external world is natural and unavoidable. We are in the habit of
supposing that our ideas have external referents, even though we can have no real evidence for doing
so. Representationalism thusly implodes: the ideas, originally introduced as intermediaries between
perceivers and things, end up absorbing both, rendering everything but themselves superfluous.
Skepticism
Where does this leave us? Hume believed himself to be carrying out the empiricist program with
rigorous consistency. Locke honestly proposed the possibility of deriving knowledge from experience,
but did not carry it far enough. Bayle and Berkeley noticed further implications. Now Hume has shown
that empiricism inevitably leads to an utter and total skepticism.
According to Hume, knowledge of pure mathematics is secure because it rests only on the relations of
ideas, without presuming anything about the world. Experimental observations (conducted without
any assumption of the existence of material objects) permit us to use our experience in forming useful
habits. Any other epistemological effort, especially if it involves the pretense of achieving useful
abstract knowledge, is meaningless and unreliable.
The most reasonable position, Hume held, is a "mitigated" skepticism that humbly accepts the
limitations of human knowledge while pursuing the legitimate aims of math and science. In our non-
philosophical moments, of course, we will be thrown back upon the natural beliefs of everyday life,
no matter how lacking in rational justification we know them to be.
Personal Identity
Later in eighteenth century, Scottish philosopher David Hume sought to develop more fully the
consequences of Locke's cautious empiricism by applying the scientific methods of observation to a

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study of human nature itself. We cannot rely on the common-sense pronouncements of popular
superstition, which illustrate human conduct without offering any illumination, Hume held, nor can
we achieve any genuine progress by means of abstract metaphysical speculation, which imposes a
spurious clarity upon profound issues. The alternative is to reject all easy answers, employing the
negative results of philosophical skepticism as a legitimate place to start.
Stated more positively, Hume's position is that since human beings do in fact live and function in the
world, we should try to observe how they do so. The key principle to be applied to any investigation
of our cognitive capacities is, then, an attempt to discover the causes of human belief. This attempt is
neither the popular project of noticing and cataloging human beliefs nor the metaphysical effort to
provide them with an infallible rational justification. According to Hume, the proper goal of
philosophy is simply to explain why we believe what we do. His own attempt to achieve that goal was
the focus of Book I of the Treatise of Human Nature and all
Reason
Grounds for Morality
Having examined the epistemological basis for Hume's naturalism, we are ready to consider its
application to human conduct. In morality as in all else, Hume supposed, our beliefs and actions are
the products of custom or habit. Since all of our most scientific beliefs have exactly the same
foundation, this account preserves the natural dignity of moral judgments.
Hume devoted the second book of the Treatise to an account of the human passions and a discussion
of their role in the operation of the human will. It is our feelings or sentiments, Hume claimed, that
exert practical influence over human volition and action. Observation does reveal a constant
conjunction between having a motive (not a reason) for acting and performing the action in question.
Hence, with the same reliability that characterizes our belief in any causal relation, on Hume's view,
we further believe that our feelings have the power to result in actions.
At one level, of course, this entails that we are determined to act as we do. Our feelings or sentiments
produce our actions with the same degree of causal necessity, the same habitual expectation that the
future will resemble the past, as that by which the rotation of the earth causes the sun to rise. (Like
Locke, Hume denied that determination of this sort is relevant to our moral freedom; only when my
actions are observed to be the effects of some cause outside myself could I decline to accept my own
responsibility for them.) So a proper science of human nature will account for human actions, as well
as for human beliefs, by reference to the natural formation of habitual associations with human
feelings.
Clearly, rationality had no place in this account of morality. Although reason may judge relations of
ideas and matters of fact, its most vivid outcomes never compel us to act as even the weakest of
feelings may do. No compilation of facts, however complete or reliable, ever entails a moral
obligation or results in action. "Reason is, and ought to be, only the slave of the passions," Hume held.
All human actions flow naturally from human feelings, without any interference from human reason.
Moral Sentiment
It does not follow that all actions are of equal value. On Hume's view, the judgments and
recommendations of traditional morality arise not from reason, but from a moral sense. As a
straightforward matter of fact (discoverable by experience), virtue is always accompanied by a feeling
of pleasure, and vice by a feeling of pain. Thus, we praise an instance of virtuous action precisely
because it arouses in us a pleasant feeling, and we avoid committing a vicious action because we
anticipate that doing so would produce pain. Our feelings provide a natural guide for moral conduct.
Hume worked out the details of this account in Book III of the Treatise. The ideas of benevolence,
utility, and justice arouse our deepest and most pervasive feelings, he maintained, and these feelings
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in turn motivate us toward actions of moral worth. I offer assistance to those in need because it
makes me feel good to do so, and I am fair in my dealings with others because it would make me feel
bad if I were not. All of morality rests firmly upon the natural human inclination to seek pleasure and
avoid pain.
This noncognitive derivation of morality from emotion rather than from reason may seem hopelessly
subjective at first glance, but remember that on Hume's view our confidence in causal efficacy has a
similar source. I do what is morally right in the same way that I believe there is an external world—by
following my natural inclinations in the absence of rational evidence. Thus, Hume regarded himself as
having provided morality with a status no less significant in human life than that of natural science.
God's Existence
Finally, we pause for a quick look at Hume's views on religion. In his own time, he was often regarded
as a great enemy of organized religion. The posthumously published Dialogues offer an extended
treatment of the intellectual interchanges among facile orthodoxy, natural theology, and
philosophical skepticism. There Hume took great care to expose what he believed to be the great
mistake of trying to prove that god exists.
The newly-popular argument from design supposes that the order and beauty of the universe reflect
the greatness and demonstrate the reality of its ultimate cause. Hume noted that since this analogical
argument claims to infer a cause from presumed effects, it must be grounded as a matter of fact on
the experience of a constant conjunction. But since in fact we have not observed repeated instances
of gods creating universes, we cannot have formed the habit of associating our experience of the one
with our inferences about the other. No causal relationship can ever be established from the
observation of a unique example.
What is more, Hume argued that even if it were possible to engage in causal reasoning in this case, it
could not warrant the intended conclusion. The presumed cause must always be supposed to be
proportional to the observed effect, so the manifest imperfections of this world could never support
belief in the perfection of its creator. The argument from design is a two-edged sword, as likely to
persuade us of the frailty or malevolence as of the power and benevolence of the presumed cause of
the world as we know it.
Miracles
Nor did Hume suppose that references to the miraculous would provide a rational basis for religion. In
this case, we do have the experience of constant conjunction to establish the "laws of nature" of
which any purported miracle is a violation, and we have only the testimony of witnesses to establish
the fact of the miracle itself. Since this testimony and the motives of the witnesses who offer it are
always open to question, Hume argued, we will believe that the miracle occurred only when the
possibility of false testimony seems an even greater violation of the natural order.
Some scholars suppose that the final paragraph of the essay "On Miracles" (Inquiry Section X) and the
closing words of the Dialogues reflect Hume's acceptance of religious fideism, the notion that religion
is properly a matter of faith, not reason. On this view, a fideistic Hume could hold that belief in the
existence of god or the immortality of the soul is no less natural than belief in the existence of bodies
or the persistence of the self. An alternative interpretation, however, accepts the lengthy rejection of
religious orthodoxy as sincere while attributing the brief, moderate endings as a half-hearted effort to
take the edge off. Certainly Hume's influence on the philosophy of religion has been primarily of the
latter sort.
The Passions and the Will
According to Hume’s theory of the mind, the passions (what we today would call emotions, feelings,
and desires) are impressions rather than ideas (original, vivid and lively perceptions that are not
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copied from other perceptions). The direct passions, which include desire, aversion, hope, fear, grief,
and joy, are those that “arise immediately from good or evil, from pain or pleasure” that we
experience or think about in prospect; however he also groups with them some instincts of unknown
origin, such as the bodily appetites and the desires that good come to those we love and harm to
those we hate, which do not proceed from pain and pleasure but produce them. The indirect
passions, primarily pride, humility (shame), love and hatred, are generated in a more complex way,
but still one involving either the thought or experience of pain or pleasure. Intentional actions are
caused by the direct passions (including the instincts). Of the indirect passions Hume says that pride,
humility, love and hatred do not directly cause action; it is not clear whether he thinks this true of all
the indirect passions.
Hume is traditionally regarded as a compatibilist about freedom and determinism, because in his
discussion in the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding he argues that if we understand the
doctrines of liberty and necessity properly, all mankind consistently believe both that human actions
are the products of causal necessity and that they are free. In the Treatise, however, he explicitly
repudiates the doctrine of liberty as “absurd... in one sense, and unintelligible in any other”. The two
treatments, however, surprisingly enough, are entirely consistent.
Hume construes causal necessity to mean the same as causal connection (or rather, intelligible causal
connection), as he himself analyzes this notion in his own theory of causation: either the “constant
union and conjunction of like objects,” or that together with “the inference of the mind from the one
to the other”. In both works he argues that just as we discover necessity (in this sense) to hold
between the movements of material bodies, we discover just as much necessity to hold between
human motives, character traits, and circumstances of action, on the one hand, and human behavior
on the other. He says in the Treatise that the liberty of indifference is the negation of necessity in this
sense; this is the notion of liberty that he there labels absurd, and identifies with chance or
randomness (which can be no real power in nature) both in the Treatise and the first
(epistemological) Enquiry.
Human actions are not free in this sense. However, Hume allows in the Treatise that they are
sometimes free in the sense of ‘liberty’ which is opposed to violence or constraint. This is the sense
on which Hume focuses in EcHU: “a power of acting or not acting, according to the determinations of
the will;” which everyone has “who is not a prisoner and in chains”. It is this that is entirely
compatible with necessity in Hume’s sense. So the positions in the two works are the same, although
the polemical emphasis is so different — iconoclastic toward the libertarian view in the Treatise, and
conciliatory toward “all mankind” in the first Enquiry.
Hume argues, as well, that the causal necessity of human actions is not only compatible with moral
responsibility but requisite to it. To hold an agent morally responsible for a bad action, it is not
enough that the action be morally reprehensible; we must impute the badness of the fleeting act to
the enduring agent. Not all harmful or forbidden actions incur blame for the agent; those done by
accident, for example, do not. It is only when, and because, the action’s cause is some enduring
passion or trait of character in the agent that she is to blame for it.
The Critical Philosophy
Next we turn to the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, a watershed figure who forever altered the course
of philosophical thinking in the Western tradition. Long after his thorough indoctrination into the
quasi-scholastic German appreciation of the metaphysical systems of Leibniz and Wolff, Kant said, it
was a careful reading of David Hume that "interrupted my dogmatic slumbers and gave my
investigations in the field of speculative philosophy a quite new direction." Having appreciated the full
force of such skeptical arguments, Kant supposed that the only adequate response would be a

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"Copernican Revolution" in philosophy, a recognition that the appearance of the external world
depends in some measure upon the position and movement of its observers. This central idea
became the basis for his life-long project of developing a critical philosophy that could withstand
them.
Kant's aim was to move beyond the traditional dichotomy between rationalism and empiricism.
The rationalists had tried to show that we can understand the world by careful use of reason; this
guarantees the indubitability of our knowledge but leaves serious questions about its practical
content. The empiricists, on the other hand, had argued that all of our knowledge must be firmly
grounded in experience; practical content is thus secured, but it turns out that we can be certain of
very little. Both approaches have failed, Kant supposed, because both are premised on the same
mistaken assumption.
Progress in philosophy, according to Kant, requires that we frame the epistemological problem in an
entirely different way. The crucial question is not how we can bring ourselves to understand the
world, but how the world comes to be understood by us. Instead of trying, by reason or experience,
to make our concepts match the nature of objects, Kant held, we must allow the structure of our
concepts shape our experience of objects. This is the purpose of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (1781,
1787): to show how reason determines the conditions under which experience and knowledge are
possible.
Classification of judgements, possibility of synthetic a priori judgements
In the Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysic (1783) Kant presented the central themes of the
first Critique in a somewhat different manner, starting from instances in which we do appear to have
achieved knowledge and asking under what conditions each case becomes possible. So he began by
carefully drawing a pair of crucial distinctions among the judgments we do actually make.
The first distinction separates a priori from a posteriori judgments by reference to the origin of our
knowledge of them. A priori judgments are based upon reason alone, independently of all sensory
experience, and therefore apply with strict universality. A posteriori judgments, on the other hand,
must be grounded upon experience and are consequently limited and uncertain in their application to
specific cases. Thus, this distinction also marks the difference traditionally noted in logic
between necessary and contingent truths.
But Kant also made a less familiar distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments, according to
the information conveyed as their content. Analytic judgments are those whose predicates are wholly
contained in their subjects; since they add nothing to our concept of the subject, such judgments are
purely explicative and can be deduced from the principle of non-contradiction. Synthetic judgments,
on the other hand, are those whose predicates are wholly distinct from their subjects, to which they
must be shown to relate because of some real connection external to the concepts themselves.
Hence, synthetic judgments are genuinely informative but require justification by reference to some
outside principle.
Kant supposed that previous philosophers had failed to differentiate properly between these two
distinctions. Both Leibniz and Hume had made just one distinction, between matters of fact based on
sensory experience and the uninformative truths of pure reason. In fact, Kant held, the two
distinctions are not entirely coextensive; we need at least to consider all four of their logically possible
combinations:
 Analytic a posteriori judgments cannot arise, since there is never any need to appeal to
experience in support of a purely explicative assertion.

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 Synthetic a posteriori judgments are the relatively uncontroversial matters of fact we come to
know by means of our sensory experience (though Wolff had tried to derive even these from
the principle of contradiction).
 Analytic a priori judgments, everyone agrees, include all merely logical truths and
straightforward matters of definition; they are necessarily true.
 Synthetic a priori judgments are the crucial case, since only they could provide new
information that is necessarily true. But neither Leibniz nor Hume considered the possibility of
any such case.
Unlike his predecessors, Kant maintained that synthetic a priori judgments not only are possible but
actually provide the basis for significant portions of human knowledge. In fact, he supposed
(pace Hume) that arithmetic and geometry comprise such judgments and that natural science
depends on them for its power to explain and predict events. What is more, metaphysics—if it turns
out to be possible at all—must rest upon synthetic a priori judgments, since anything else would be
either uninformative or unjustifiable. But how are synthetic a priori judgments possible at all? This is
the central question Kant sought to answer.
Mathematics
Consider, for example, our knowledge that two plus three is equal to five and that the interior angles
of any triangle add up to a straight line. These (and similar) truths of mathematics are synthetic
judgments, Kant held, since they contribute significantly to our knowledge of the world; the sum of
the interior angles is not contained in the concept of a triangle. Yet, clearly, such truths are known a
priori, since they apply with strict and universal necessity to all of the objects of our experience,
without having been derived from that experience itself. In these instances, Kant supposed, no one
will ask whether or not we have synthetic a priori knowledge; plainly, we do. The question is, how do
we come to have such knowledge? If experience does not supply the required connection between
the concepts involved, what does?
Kant's answer is that we do it ourselves. Conformity with the truths of mathematics is a precondition
that we impose upon every possible object of our experience. Just as Descartes had noted in the Fifth
Meditation, the essence of bodies is manifested to us in Euclidean solid geometry, which
determines a priori the structure of the spatial world we experience. In order to be perceived by us,
any object must be regarded as being uniquely located in space and time, so it is the spatio-temporal
framework itself that provides the missing connection between the concept of the triangle and that of
the sum of its angles. Space and time, Kant argued in the "Transcendental Aesthetic" of the
first Critique, are the "pure forms of sensible intuition" under which we perceive what we do.
Understanding mathematics in this way makes it possible to rise above an old controversy between
rationalists and empiricists regarding the very nature of space and time. Leibniz had maintained that
space and time are not intrinsic features of the world itself, but merely a product of our
minds. Newton, on the other hand, had insisted that space and time are absolute, not merely a set of
spatial and temporal relations. Kant now declares that both of them were correct! Space and time are
absolute, and they do derive from our minds. As synthetic a priori judgments, the truths of
mathematics are both informative and necessary.
This is our first instance of a transcendental argument, Kant's method of reasoning from the fact that
we have knowledge of a particular sort to the conclusion that all of the logical presuppositions of such
knowledge must be satisfied. We will see additional examples in later lessons, and can defer our
assessment of them until then. But notice that there is a price to be paid for the certainty we achieve
in this manner. Since mathematics derives from our own sensible intuition, we can be absolutely sure
that it must apply to everything we perceive, but for the same reason we can have no assurance that
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it has anything to do with the way things are apart from our perception of them. Next time, we'll look
at Kant's very similar treatment of the synthetic a priori principles upon which our knowledge of
natural science depends.
Preconditions for Natural Science
In natural science no less than in mathematics, Kant held, synthetic a priori judgments provide the
necessary foundations for human knowledge. The most general laws of nature, like the truths of
mathematics, cannot be justified by experience, yet must apply to it universally. In this case, the
negative portion of Hume's analysis—his demonstration that matters of fact rest upon an
unjustifiable belief that there is a necessary connection between causes and their effects—was
entirely correct. But of course Kant's more constructive approach is to offer a transcendental
argument from the fact that we do have knowledge of the natural world to the truth of synthetic a
priori propositions about the structure of our experience of it.
As we saw last time, applying the concepts of space and time as forms of sensible intuition is
necessary condition for any perception. But the possibility of scientific knowledge requires that our
experience of the world be not only perceivable but thinkable as well, and Kant held that the general
intelligibility of experience entails the satisfaction of two further conditions:
First, it must be possible in principle to arrange and organize the chaos of our many individual sensory
images by tracing the connections that hold among them. This Kant called the synthetic unity of the
sensory manifold.
Second, it must be possible in principle for a single subject to perform this organization by discovering
the connections among perceived images. This is satisfied by what Kant called the transcendental
unity of apperception.
Experiential knowledge is thinkable only if there is some regularity in what is known and there is some
knower in whom that regularity can be represented. Since we do actually have knowledge of the
world as we experience it, Kant held, both of these conditions must in fact obtain.
The metaphysical and the transcendental Deduction of the Categories
Since (as Hume had noted) individual images are perfectly separable as they occur within the sensory
manifold, connections between them can be drawn only by the knowing subject, in which the
principles of connection are to be found. As in mathematics, so in science the synthetic a
priori judgments must derive from the structure of the understanding itself.
Consider, then, the sorts of judgments distinguished by logicians (in Kant's day): each of them has
some quantity (applying to all things, some, or only one); some quality (affirmative, negative, or
complementary); some relation (absolute, conditional, or alternative); and some modality
(problematic, assertoric, or apodeictic). Kant supposed that any intelligible thought can be expressed
in judgments of these sorts. But then it follows that any thinkable experience must be understood in
these ways, and we are justified in projecting this entire way of thinking outside ourselves, as the
inevitable structure of any possible experience.
The result of this "Transcendental Logic" is the schematized table of categories, Kant's summary of
the central concepts we employ in thinking about the world, each of which is discussed in a separate
section of the Critique:
Quantity Quality
Unity Reality
Plurality Negation
Totality Limitation

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Axioms of Intuition Anticipations of Perception

Relation Modality
Substance Possibility
Cause Existence
Community Necessity
Analogies of Experience Postulates of Empirical Thought

Our most fundamental convictions about the natural world derive from these concepts, according to
Kant. The most general principles of natural science are not empirical generalizations from what we
have experienced, but synthetic a priori judgments about what we could experience, in which these
concepts provide the crucial connectives.
Phenomena and Noumena
Having seen Kant's transcendental deduction of the categories as pure concepts of the understanding
applicable a priori to every possible experience, we might naturally wish to ask the further question
whether these regulative principles are really true. Are there substances? Does every event have a
cause? Do all things interact? Given that we must suppose them in order to have any experience, do
they obtain in the world itself? To these further questions, Kant firmly refused to offer any answer.
According to Kant, it is vital always to distinguish between the distinct realms of phenomena and
noumena. Phenomena are the appearances, which constitute the our experience; noumena are the
(presumed) things themselves, which constitute reality. All of our synthetic a priori judgments apply
only to the phenomenal realm, not the noumenal. (It is only at this level, with respect to what we can
experience, that we are justified in imposing the structure of our concepts onto the objects of our
knowledge.) Since the thing in itself (Ding an sich) would by definition be entirely independent of our
experience of it, we are utterly ignorant of the noumenal realm.
Thus, on Kant's view, the most fundamental laws of nature, like the truths of mathematics, are
knowable precisely because they make no effort to describe the world as it really is but rather
prescribe the structure of the world as we experience it. By applying the pure forms of sensible
intuition and the pure concepts of the understanding, we achieve a systematic view of the
phenomenal realm but learn nothing of the noumenal realm. Math and science are certainly true of
the phenomena; only metaphysics claims to instruct us about the noumena.
Rejection of speculative metaphysics
Although our knowledge of mathematics and natural science yield easily to a Kantian analysis, the
synthetic a priori judgments of metaphysics are much more difficult to explain. Here the forms of
intuition and concepts of understanding are useless, since they find application only in the realm of
our experience, while metaphysics seeks to transcend experience completely, in order to discover the
nature of reality itself as comprehended under pure reason.
Metaphysical speculation properly begins with the same method as the "Aesthetic" and "Analytic,"
Kant supposed, but it invariably ends up in a "Dialectic." The transcendental arguments we employ in
metaphysics need not restrict their determination to the phenomenal realm alone, since their aim is
genuine knowledge of the noumena. Synthetic a priori judgments in metaphysics must be grounded
upon truly transcendental ideas, which are regarded as applicable to things in themselves
independently of our experience of them.

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The Ideas of Reason – soul, God and world as a whole
Kant's exposition of the transcendental ideas begins once again from the logical distinction among
categorical, hypothetical, and disjunctive syllogisms. From this distinction, as we have seen, the
understanding derives the concepts of substance, cause, and community, which provide the basis for
rules that obtain as natural laws within our experience. Now, from the same distinction, the reason
must carry things further in order derive the transcendental ideas of the complete subject, the
complete series of conditions, and the complete complex of what is possible. Thus, the "completion"
of metaphysical reasoning requires transcendental ideas of three sorts, but Kant argued that each
leads to its characteristic irresolvable difficulty.
The Psychological Idea is the concept of the soul as a permanent substance which lives forever. It is
entirely natural to reason (as in Descartes's cogito) from knowledge that "I think" to my real existence
as one and the same thinking thing through all time, but Kant held that our efforts to reach such
conclusions are "Paralogisms," with only illusory validity. It is true that thought presupposes the unity
of apperception and that every change presupposes an underlying substance, but these rules apply
only to the phenomena we experience. Since substantial unity and immortality are supposed to be
noumenal features of the soul as a thing in itself, Kant held, legitimate a priori judgments can never
prove them, and the effort to transcend in this case fails.
The Cosmological Idea is the concept of a complete determination of the nature of the world as it
must be constituted in itself. In this case, Kant held, the difficulty is not that we can conclude too little
but rather that we can prove too much. From the structure of our experience of the world, it is easy
to deduce contradictory particular claims about reality: finitude vs. infinity; simplicity vs. complexity;
freedom vs. determinism; necessity vs. contingency. These "Antinomies" of Pure Reason can be
avoided only when we recognize that one or both of the contradictory proofs in each antinomy holds
only for the phenomenal realm. Once again, it is the effort to achieve transcendental knowledge of
noumena that necessarily fails.
The Theological Idea is the concept of an absolutely perfect and most real being (or god). Again it is
natural to move from our recognition of dependence within the phenomenal realm to the notion of a
perfectly independent noumenal being, the "Transcendental Ideal." But traditional attempts to prove
that god really exists, founded as they are on what we experience, cannot establish the reality of a
being necessarily beyond all experience.
The general point of the Transcendental Dialectic should by now be clear: metaphysical speculation
about the ultimate nature of reality invariably fails. The synthetic a priori judgments which properly
serve as regulative principles governing our experience can never be shown to have any force as
constitutive of the real nature of the world. Pure reason inevitably reaches for what it cannot grasp.
The Limits of Reason
Now that we've seen Kant's answers to all three parts of the Prolegomena's "Main Transcendental
Question" and have traced their sources in the Critique of Pure Reason, we are in a position to
appreciate his careful delineation of what is possible in metaphysical thought and what is not.
What most clearly is not possible is any legitimate synthetic a priori judgment about things in
themselves. The only thing that justifies the application of regulative principles in mathematics and
natural science is their limitation to phenomena. Both sensible intuition and the understanding deal
with the conditions under which experience is possible. But the whole point of speculative
metaphysics is to transcend experience entirely in order to achieve knowledge of the noumenal
realm. Here, only the faculty of reason is relevant, but its most crucial speculative conclusions, its
deepest convictions about the self, the world, and god, are all drawn illegitimately.

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What is possible—indeed, according to Kant what we are bound by our very nature as rational beings
to do—is to think of the noumenal realm as if the speculative principles were true (whether or not
they are). By the nature of reason itself, we are required to suppose our own existence as substantial
beings, the possibility of our free action in a world of causal regularity, and the existence of god. The
absence of any formal justification for these notions makes it impossible for us to claim that we know
them to be true, but it can in no way diminish the depth fo our belief that they are.
According to Kant, then, the rational human faculties lead us to the very boundaries of what can be
known, by clarifying the conditions under which experience of the world as we know it is possible. But
beyond those boundaries our faculties are useless. The shape of the boundary itself, as evidenced in
the Paralogisms and Antinomies, naturally impels us to postulate that the unknown does indeed have
certain features, but these further speculations are inherently unjustifiable.
The only legitimate, "scientific" metaphysics that the future may hold, Kant therefore held, would be
a thoroughly critical, non-speculative examination of the bounds of pure reason, a careful description
of what we can know accompanied by a clear recognition that our transcendental concepts (however
useful they may seem) are entirely unreliable as guides to the nature of reality. It is this task, of
course, that Kant himself had pursued in the First Critique.
Hegel and Absolute Idealism
The greatest of all the German idealists was Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, who methodically
constructed a comprehensive system of thought about the world. Focussed like Kant on the goal of
showing how some fundamental unity underlies the confusing multiplicity of experiental contents,
Hegel took a much more sytematic approach by making absolute consciousness the key source of
ultimate connections among all other things. Above all else, Hegel held that reality must be rational,
so that its ultimate structure is revealed in the structure of our thought. Everything that is thinkable,
especially apparent contradictions, must be resolvable under some common concept of the reason.
Even more than Aristotle and the Stoics, Hegel believed that the study of logic is an investigation into
the fundamental structure of reality itself. According to Hegel, all logic (and, hence, all of reality)
is dialectical in character. As Kant had noted in the Antinomies, serious thought about one general
description of the world commonly leads us into a contemplation of its opposite. But Hegel did not
suppose this to be the end of the matter; he made the further supposition that the two concepts so
held in opposition can always be united by a shift to some higher level of thought. Thus, the human
mind invariably moves from thesis to antithesis to synthesis, employing each synthesis as the thesis
for a new opposition to be transcended by yet a higher level, continuing in a perpetual waltz of
intellectual achievement.
Being, for example, is a basic concept that serves as a clear starting-point for any serious thinker, but
serious contemplation of its nature reveals it to be so utterly devoid of specific content that the mind
is naturally led to the thought of Nothing as its opposite; but these two are not really contradictory,
since both may be unified under the more sophisticated and comprehensive notion of Becoming. If,
on the other hand, our thesis is the concept of Being as a naive immediate presentation of
experience, then its natural antithesis is the idea of Essence as knowledge mediated by classification;
and the synthesis that unites these concepts is that of the Notion as a self-mediating interpretation of
thought and reality combined.
On the grandest scale of conceivability, all of thought (including the dialectical logic itself) is
comprised by the thesis Idea, whose natural antithesis is Nature, the otherness of the known
considered independently of its relation to the knower; and the grand synthesis of the two is Spirit,
the self-knowing, self-actualizing totality of all that is—namely, the Absolute itself. This embodies
Hegel's fundamental convicions that reality is wholly rational and that whatever is rational must be

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real. Human thought is merely one portion of the Becoming of Absolute Spirit, which is (through us)
thinking and creating itself as it goes. Even this development, as Hegel described it in
the Phenomenology of Spirit, is best understood as the triadic transition
from subjective to objective to absolute Spirit.
The conception of Geist (spirit)
Subjective Spirit
Considered as subjective, Spirit may be observed, through truths about human nature described by
the discipline of psychology, in the structure of thought exhibited by each individual human being. In
every concrete instantiation, consciousness strives to reach perfect knowledge, and the path of its
struggle can, of course, be described as the movement from thesis through antithesis to synthesis:
The first level of consciousness is that of sensory awareness of objects. Despite the fact that sensory
images invariably appear to us as concrete particulars, wholly unrelated to each other, we naturally
universalize the apparent regularities of their appearance, imposing upon them the forms of space
and time and the generalized laws of nature.
Recognition of the role we ourselves play in the origination of these Kantian regulative
principles, Hegel supposed, leads us directly to the antithesis of sensory experience, the self-
conscious awareness of the individual thinker, who acknowledges self as individual ego. Although this
ultimately implies the existence of other selves as well, its immediate consequence is a tendency
toward skepticism about the world of objects.
But Hegel held that these levels are transcended by their synthesis in universal consciousness, an
abstract awareness of one's own place within the greater scheme of absolute spirit. The objects of my
experience and my awareness of myself are unified by the recognition that each is wholly contained
in the fundamental reality of a common whole. Here the faculty of reason is crucial, since it most
clearly draws upon what is common to us all.
Objective Spirit
Considered objectively, Spirit involves the interaction among many selves that are the proper subject
of ethics and social or political theory. Once again, of course, Hegel maintained that a correct
understanding of these fields is to be derived not by generalizing from what we observe, but rather by
tracing the dialectic through new triads.
Ethics, on Hegel's view, begins with the concept of freedom understood as the right of each individual
human being to act independently in pursuit of its own self-interest. The antithesis to this is the
emergence of moral rules, which require the imposition of duty as a constraint upon the natural
liberty of human desire. The synthesis of the two for Hegel is "the ethical life," which emerges from a
sincere recognition of the significance of one's own stake in the greater good of the whole.
Political order has its origins in family life, in which the basic needs of all individuals are served by
mutual feeling, without any formal principle of organization. The antithesis to this is civil life, in which
the incorporation of so many more individual units often leads to a system of purely formal regulation
of conduct, demanded by law without any emotional bond. The synthesis of the two, then, is the
State, which Hegel believed to unite society into a sort of civil family, organized in legal fashion but
bound together by a profound emotional sense of devotion.
According to Hegel, then, the modern nation must serve as an actualization of the self-conscioius
ethical will of a people {Ger. Völk}. Although this sounds something like Rousseau's general will,
Hegel's version puts all of the emphasis on the collective expression of what is best for the people
rather than on each individual's capacity to discover it for herself or himself. This view of the state fits
well with the rise of modern nationalism in Europe during the nineteenth century, where the national
spirit {Ger. Völkergeist} of each group emerges distinctively from every other.
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Absolute Spirit
Finally, when considered most purely, as absolute in itself, Spirit is just the historical process of
human thought toward ever-greater awareness of the fundamental unity of all reality. In order to see
how the Absolute gradually discovers and expresses its own nature, Hegel proposed, we need only
observe the way in which the Spirit of the World (Weltgeist) develops dialectically in three
distinguishable arenas, a triad of triads through which human culture achieves its transcendental aim.
Since it appreciates and evaluates the Absolute entirely through its presentations among the
senses, Art is first to be considered. Effective artistic expression, Hegel supposed, must allways
transcend the subject/object dichotomy by leading us to awareness of some underlying unity.
Historically, human art has embodied the dialectical development of the Absolute's sensory being,
starting with the thesis of symbolic representation of natural objects and proceeding to its antithesis
in highly stylized classical art before rising to the synthesis of Romantic expression.
The antithesis of Art as a whole is the abstract notion of the Absolute as an objectified other, the
divine being contemplated by Religion. Although traditional religion often speaks of god in personal
terms, its theological exposition usually emphasizes the radical differentness of the deity and its
incomprehensibility to us. Again, the historical development of religion displays a dialectical structure:
the thesis is worship of nature, which gives rise to a religion of individuality tempered by revealed
law, and both are transcended in the synthesis of Protestant Christianity, which unifies them under
the notion of god in human form.
This leaves room for the grand culminating synthesis of human culture, which is (of
course!) Philosophy, in which the Absolute learns to cognize itself in perfectly literal terms. As the
self-conscious awareness of the Absolute, Hegel's philosophy unifies the sensibility of art and the
objectivication of religion by regarding the dialectical logic of reason as the ultimate structure of
reality. Here, too, there has been historical development, most recently the emergence of absolute
idealism as a synthesis transcending the dispute between empiricism and rationalism.
The Inexorability of History
As we have already seen, Hegel's view of the world is determinedly historical; he believed that history
itself (involving another triad, of original/reflective/philosophical history) exhibits the growth of self-
consciousness in the Absolute, the process of development by means of which the Weltgeist comes to
know itself. But since history inevitably follows the pattern of logical necessity through the dialectical
movement from thesis to antithesis to synthesis, the present age must be the highest stage of
development. Certainly Hegel regarded the cultural achievements of his own time—nationalism,
romanticism, protestantism, and idealism—as the culmination of all that had gone before, with his
own philosophical work as its highest expression. Here is nineteenth-century optimism at its peak, full
of self-confidence in the possibilities of rationality and enlightenment. Many thinkers of the nearly
two centuries since Hegel's time have raised serious questions about the reliability of this modernist
promise.
Hegel’s Dialectics
“Dialectics” is a term used to describe a method of philosophical argument that involves some sort of
contradictory process between opposing sides. In what is perhaps the most classic version of
“dialectics”, the ancient Greek philosopher, Plato, for instance, presented his philosophical argument
as a back-and-forth dialogue or debate, generally between the character of Socrates, on one side, and
some person or group of people to whom Socrates was talking (his interlocutors), on the other. In the
course of the dialogues, Socrates’ interlocutors propose definitions of philosophical concepts or
express views that Socrates challenges or opposes. The back-and-forth debate between opposing
sides produces a kind of linear progression or evolution in philosophical views or positions: as the
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dialogues go along, Socrates’ interlocutors change or refine their views in response to Socrates’
challenges and come to adopt more sophisticated views. The back-and-forth dialectic between
Socrates and his interlocutors thus becomes Plato’s way of arguing against the earlier, less
sophisticated views or positions and for the more sophisticated ones later.
“Hegel’s dialectics” refers to the particular dialectical method of argument employed by the 19th
Century German philosopher, G.W.F. Hegel, which, like other “dialectical” methods, relies on a
contradictory process between opposing sides. Whereas Plato’s “opposing sides” were people
(Socrates and his interlocutors), however, what the “opposing sides” are in Hegel’s work depends on
the subject matter he discusses. In his work on logic, for instance, the “opposing sides” are different
definitions of logical concepts that are opposed to one another. In the Phenomenology of Spirit,
which presents Hegel’s epistemology or philosophy of knowledge, the “opposing sides” are different
definitions of consciousness and of the object that consciousness is aware of or claims to know. As in
Plato’s dialogues, a contradictory process between “opposing sides” in Hegel’s dialectics leads to a
linear evolution or development from less sophisticated definitions or views to more sophisticated
ones later. The dialectical process thus constitutes Hegel’s method for arguing against the earlier, less
sophisticated definitions or views and for the more sophisticated ones later. Hegel regarded this
dialectical method or “speculative mode of cognition” as the hallmark of his philosophy, and used the
same method in the Phenomenology of Spirit, as well as in all of the mature works he published
later—the entire Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences (including, as its first part, the “Lesser Logic”
or the Encyclopaedia Logic [EL]), the Science of Logic [SL], and the Philosophy of Right [PR].
Note that, although Hegel acknowledged that his dialectical method was part of a philosophical
tradition stretching back to Plato, he criticized Plato’s version of dialectics. He argued that Plato’s
dialectics deals only with limited philosophical claims and is unable to get beyond skepticism or
nothingness. According to the logic of a traditional reductio ad absurdum argument, if the premises of
an argument lead to a contradiction, we must conclude that the premises are false—which leaves us
with no premises or with nothing. We must then wait around for new premises to spring up arbitrarily
from somewhere else, and then see whether those new premises put us back into nothingness or
emptiness once again, if they, too, lead to a contradiction. Because Hegel believed that reason
necessarily generates contradictions, as we will see, he thought new premises will indeed produce
further contradictions. As he puts the argument, then,
the scepticism that ends up with the bare abstraction of nothingness or emptiness cannot get any
further from there, but must wait to see whether something new comes along and what it is, in order
to throw it too into the same empty abyss.
Hegel argues that, because Plato’s dialectics cannot get beyond arbitrariness and skepticism, it
generates only approximate truths, and falls short of being a genuine science
Hegel’s description of his dialectical method
Hegel provides the most extensive, general account of his dialectical method in Part I of
his Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences, which is often called the Encyclopaedia Logic [EL]. The
form or presentation of logic, he says, has three sides or moments. These sides are not parts of logic,
but, rather, moments of “every logical concept”, as well as “of everything true in general” (EL Remark
to §79; we will see why Hegel thought dialectics is in everything in section 4). The first moment—the
moment of the understanding—is the moment of fixity, in which concepts or forms have a seemingly
stable definition or determination.
The second moment—the “dialectical” or “negatively rational” moment—is the moment of instability.
In this moment, a one-sidedness or restrictedness in the determination from the moment of
understanding comes to the fore, and the determination that was fixed in the first moment passes

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into its opposite. Hegel describes this process as a process of “self-sublation”. The English verb “to
sublate” translates Hegel’s technical use of the German verb aufheben, which is a crucial concept in
his dialectical method. Hegel says that aufheben has a doubled meaning: it means both to cancel (or
negate) and to preserve at the same time.
The moment of understanding sublates itself because its own character or nature—its one-sidedness
or restrictedness—destabilizes its definition and leads it to pass into its opposite. The dialectical
moment thus involves a process of self-sublation, or a process in which the determination from the
moment of understanding sublates itself, or both cancels and preserves itself, as it pushes on to or
passes into its opposite.
The third moment—the “speculative” or “positively rational” moment—grasps the unity of the
opposition between the first two determinations, or is the positive result of the dissolution or
transition of those determinations. Here, Hegel rejects the traditional, reductio ad
absurdum argument, which says that when the premises of an argument lead to a contradiction, then
the premises must be discarded altogether, leaving nothing. As Hegel suggests in the Phenomenology,
such an argument
is just the skepticism which only ever sees pure nothingness in its result and abstracts from the fact
that this nothingness is specifically the nothingness of that from which it results.
Although the speculative moment negates the contradiction, it is a determinate or defined
nothingness because it is the result of a specific process. There is something particular about the
determination in the moment of understanding—a specific weakness, or some specific aspect that
was ignored in its one-sidedness or restrictedness—that leads it to fall apart in the dialectical
moment. The speculative moment has a definition, determination or content because it grows out of
and unifies the particular character of those earlier determinations, or is “a unity of distinct
determinations”. The speculative moment is thus “truly not empty, abstract nothing, but the negation
of certain determinations” (EL §82). When the result “is taken as the result of that from which it
emerges”, Hegel says, then it is “in fact, the true result; in that case it is itself
a determinate nothingness, one which has a content”. As he also puts it, “the result is conceived as it
is in truth, namely, as a determinate negation [bestimmte Negation]; a new form has thereby
immediately arisen”. Or, as he says, “[b]ecause the result, the negation, is a determinate negation
[bestimmte Negation], it has a content”.
Hegel’s claim in both the Phenomenology and the Science of Logic that his philosophy relies on a
process of “determinate negation [bestimmte Negation]” has sometimes led scholars to describe his
dialectics as a method or doctrine of “determinate negation”.
There are several features of this account that Hegel thinks raise his dialectical method above the
arbitrariness of Plato’s dialectics to the level of a genuine science. First, because the determinations in
the moment of understanding sublate themselves, Hegel’s dialectics does not require some new idea
to show up arbitrarily. Instead, the movement to new determinations is driven by the nature of the
earlier determinations. Indeed, for Hegel, the movement is driven by necessity. The nature of the
determinations themselves drives or forces them to pass into their opposites. This sense
of necessity—the idea that the method involves being forced from earlier moments to later ones—
leads Hegel to regard his dialectics as a kind of logic. As he says in the Phenomenology, the method’s
“proper exposition belongs to logic”. Necessity—the sense of being driven or forced to conclusions—
is the hallmark of “logic” in Western philosophy.
Second, because the form or determination that arises is the result of the self-sublation of the
determination from the moment of understanding, there is no need for some new idea to show up
from the outside. Instead, the new determination or form is necessitated by earlier moments and

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hence grows out of the process itself. Unlike in Plato’s arbitrary dialectics, then—which must wait
around until some other idea comes in from the outside—in Hegel’s dialectics “nothing extraneous is
introduced”, as he says. His dialectics is driven by the nature, immanence or “inwardness” of its own
content. As he puts it, dialectics is “the principle through which alone immanent coherence and
necessity enter into the content of science”.
Third, because later determinations “sublate” earlier determinations, the earlier determinations are
not completely cancelled or negated. On the contrary, the earlier determinations are preserved in the
sense that they remain in effect within the later determinations. When Being-for-itself, for instance, is
introduced in the logic as the first concept of ideality or universality and is defined by embracing a set
of “something-others”, Being-for-itself replaces the something-others as the new concept, but those
something-others remain active within the definition of the concept of Being-for-itself. The
something-others must continue to do the work of picking out individual somethings before the
concept of Being-for-itself can have its own definition as the concept that gathers them up. Being-for-
itself replaces the something-others, but it also preserves them, because its definition still requires
them to do their work of picking out individual somethings.
The concept of “apple”, for example, as a Being-for-itself, would be defined by gathering up individual
“somethings” that are the same as one another (as apples). Each individual apple can be what it is (as
an apple) only in relation to an “other” that is the same “something” that it is (i.e., an apple). That is
the one-sidedness or restrictedness that leads each “something” to pass into its “other” or opposite.
The “somethings” are thus both “something-others”. Moreover, their defining processes lead to an
endless process of passing back and forth into one another: one “something” can be what it is (as an
apple) only in relation to another “something” that is the same as it is, which, in turn, can be what it is
(an apple) only in relation to the other “something” that is the same as it is, and so on, back and forth,
endlessly. The concept of “apple”, as a Being-for-itself, stops that endless, passing-over process by
embracing or including the individual something-others (the apples) in its content. It grasps or
captures their character or quality as apples. But the “something-others” must do their work of
picking out and separating those individual items (the apples) before the concept of “apple”—as the
Being-for-itself—can gather them up for its own definition. We can picture the concept of Being-for-
itself like this:
Applying Hegel’s dialectical method to his arguments
Scholars often use the first three stages of the logic as the “textbook example” to illustrate how
Hegel’s dialectical method should be applied to his arguments. The logic begins with the simple and
immediate concept of pure Being, which is said to illustrate the moment of the understanding. We
can think of Being here as a concept of pure presence. It is not mediated by any other concept—or is
not defined in relation to any other concept—and so is undetermined or has no further
determination. It asserts bare presence, but what that presence is like has no further determination.
Because the thought of pure Being is undetermined and so is a pure abstraction, however, it is really
no different from the assertion of pure negation or the absolutely negative. It is therefore equally a
Nothing. Being’s lack of determination thus leads it to sublate itself and pass into the concept of
Nothin, which illustrates the dialectical moment.
But if we focus for a moment on the definitions of Being and Nothing themselves, their definitions
have the same content. Indeed, both are undetermined, so they have the same kind of undefined
content. The only difference between them is “something merely meant”, namely, that Being is an
undefined content, taken as or meant to be presence, while Nothing is an undefined content, taken as
or meant to be absence. The third concept of the logic—which is used to illustrate the speculative
moment—unifies the first two moments by capturing the positive result of—or the conclusion that

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we can draw from—the opposition between the first two moments. The concept of Becoming is the
thought of an undefined content, taken as presence (Being) and then taken as absence (Nothing), or
taken as absence (Nothing) and then taken as presence (Being). To Become is to go from Being to
Nothing or from Nothing to Being, or is, as Hegel puts it, “the immediate vanishing of the one in the
other”. The contradiction between Being and Nothing thus is not a reductio ad absurdum, or does not
lead to the rejection of both concepts and hence to nothingness—as Hegel had said Plato’s dialectics
does—but leads to a positive result, namely, to the introduction of a new concept—the synthesis—
which unifies the two, earlier, opposed concepts.
We can also use the textbook Being-Nothing-Becoming example to illustrate Hegel’s concept
of aufheben (to sublate), which, as we saw, means to cancel (or negate) and to preserve at the same
time. Hegel says that the concept of Becoming sublates the concepts of Being and Nothing (SL-M 105;
cf. SL-dG 80). Becoming cancels or negates Being and Nothing because it is a new concept that
replaces the earlier concepts; but it also preserves Being and Nothing because it relies on those
earlier concepts for its own definition. Indeed, it is the first concrete concept in the logic. Unlike Being
and Nothing, which had no definition or determination as concepts themselves and so were merely
abstract, Becoming is a “determinate unity in which there is both Being and Nothing”. Becoming
succeeds in having a definition or determination because it is defined by, or piggy-backs on, the
concepts of Being and Nothing.
This “textbook” Being-Nothing-Becoming example is closely connected to the traditional idea that
Hegel’s dialectics follows a thesis-antithesis-synthesis pattern, which, when applied to the logic,
means that one concept is introduced as a “thesis” or positive concept, which then develops into a
second concept that negates or is opposed to the first or is its “antithesis”, which in turn leads to a
third concept, the “synthesis”, that unifies the first two. Versions of this interpretation of Hegel’s
dialectics continue to have currency. On this reading, Being is the positive moment or thesis, Nothing
is the negative moment or antithesis, and Becoming is the moment of aufheben or synthesis—the
concept that cancels and preserves, or unifies and combines, Being and Nothing.
We must be careful, however, not to apply this textbook example too dogmatically to the rest of
Hegel’s logic or to his dialectical method more generally (for a classic criticism of the thesis-antithesis-
synthesis reading of Hegel’s dialectics, see Mueller 1958). There are other places where this general
pattern might describe some of the transitions from stage to stage, but there are many more places
where the development does not seem to fit this pattern very well. One place where the pattern
seems to hold, for instance, is where the Measure—as the combination of Quality and Quantity—
transitions into the Measureless, which is opposed to it, which then in turn transitions into Essence,
which is the unity or combination of the two earlier sides. This series of transitions could be said to
follow the general pattern captured by the “textbook example”: Measure would be the moment of
the understanding or thesis, the Measureless would be the dialectical moment or antithesis, and
Essence would be the speculative moment or synthesis that unifies the two earlier moments.
However, before the transition to Essence takes place, the Measureless itself is redefined as a
Measure—undercutting a precise parallel with the textbook Being-Nothing-Becoming example, since
the transition from Measure to Essence would not follow a Measure-Measureless-Essence pattern,
but rather a Measure-(Measureless?)-Measure-Essence pattern.
Other sections of Hegel’s philosophy do not fit the triadic, textbook example of Being-Nothing-
Becoming at all, as even interpreters who have supported the traditional reading of Hegel’s dialectics
have noted. After using the Being-Nothing-Becoming example to argue that Hegel’s dialectical
method consists of “triads” whose members “are called the thesis, antithesis, synthesis”, W.T. Stace,
for instance, goes on to warn us that Hegel does not succeed in applying this pattern throughout the

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philosophical system. It is hard to see, Stace says, how the middle term of some of Hegel’s triads are
the opposites or antitheses of the first term, “and there are even ‘triads’ which contain four terms!”.
As a matter of fact, one section of Hegel’s logic—the section on Cognition—violates the thesis-
antithesis-synthesis pattern because it has only two sub-divisions, rather than three. “The triad is
incomplete”, Stace complains. “There is no third. Hegel here abandons the triadic method. Nor is any
explanation of his having done so forthcoming”.
Interpreters have offered various solutions to the complaint that Hegel’s dialectics sometimes seems
to violate the triadic form. Some scholars apply the triadic form fairly loosely across several stage.
Others have applied Hegel’s triadic method to whole sections of his philosophy, rather than to
individual stages. For G.R.G. Mure, for instance, the section on Cognition fits neatly into a triadic,
thesis-antithesis-synthesis account of dialectics because the whole section is itself the antithesis of
the previous section of Hegel’s logic, the section on Life. Mure argues that Hegel’s triadic form is
easier to discern the more broadly we apply it. “The triadic form appears on many scales”, he says,
“and the larger the scale we consider the more obvious it is”.
Scholars who interpret Hegel’s description of dialectics on a smaller scale—as an account of how to
get from stage to stage—have also tried to explain why some sections seem to violate the triadic
form. J.N. Findlay, for instance—who, like Stace, associates dialectics “with the triad, or
with triplicity”—argues that stages can fit into that form in “more than one sense”. The first sense of
triplicity echoes the textbook, Being-Nothing-Becoming example. In a second sense, however, Findlay
says, the dialectical moment or “contradictory breakdown” is not itself a separate stage, or “does not
count as one of the stages”, but is a transition between opposed, “but complementary”, abstract
stages that “are developed more or less concurrently”. This second sort of triplicity could involve any
number of stages: it “could readily have been expanded into a quadruplicity, a quintuplicity and so
forth”. Still, like Stace, he goes on to complain that many of the transitions in Hegel’s philosophy do
not seem to fit the triadic pattern very well. In some triads, the second term is “the direct and obvious
contrary of the first”—as in the case of Being and Nothing. In other cases, however, the opposition is,
as Findlay puts it, “of a much less extreme character” (Findlay 1962: 69). In some triads, the third
term obviously mediates between the first two terms. In other cases, however, he says, the third term
is just one possible mediator or unity among other possible ones; and, in yet other cases, “the
reconciling functions of the third member are not at all obvious”.
Let us look more closely at one place where the “textbook example” of Being-Nothing-Becoming does
not seem to describe the dialectical development of Hegel’s logic very well. In a later stage of the
logic, the concept of Purpose goes through several iterations, from Abstract Purpose, to Finite or
Immediate Purpose, and then through several stages of a syllogism to Realized Purpose. Abstract
Purpose is the thought of any kind of purposiveness, where the purpose has not been further
determined or defined. It includes not just the kinds of purposes that occur in consciousness, such as
needs or drives, but also the “internal purposiveness” or teleological view proposed by the ancient
Greek philosopher, Aristotle, according to which things in the world have essences and aim to achieve
(or have the purpose of living up to) their essences. Finite Purpose is the moment in which an
Abstract Purpose begins to have a determination by fixing on some particular material or content
through which it will be realized. The Finite Purpose then goes through a process in which it, as the
Universality, comes to realize itself as the Purpose over the particular material or content (and hence
becomes Realized Purpose) by pushing out into Particularity, then into Singularity (the syllogism U-P-
S), and ultimately into ‘out-thereness,’ or into individual objects out there in the world.
Hegel’s description of the development of Purpose does not seem to fit the textbook Being-Nothing-
Becoming example or the thesis-antithesis-synthesis model. According to the example and model,

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Abstract Purpose would be the moment of understanding or thesis, Finite Purpose would be the
dialectical moment or antithesis, and Realized Purpose would be the speculative moment or
synthesis. Although Finite Purpose has a different determination from Abstract Purpose (it refines the
definition of Abstract Purpose), it is hard to see how it would qualify as strictly “opposed” to or as the
“antithesis” of Abstract Purpose in the way that Nothing is opposed to or is the antithesis of Being.
There is an answer, however, to the criticism that many of the determinations are not “opposites” in
a strict sense. The German term that is translated as “opposite” in Hegel’s description of the moments
of dialectics—entgegensetzen—has three root words: setzen (“to posit or set”), gegen, (“against”),
and the prefix ent-, which indicates that something has entered into a new state. The
verb entgegensetzen can therefore literally be translated as “to set over against”. The
“engegengesetzte” into which determinations pass, then, do not need to be the strict “opposites” of
the first, but can be determinations that are merely “set against” or are different from the first ones.
And the prefix ent-, which suggests that the first determinations are put into a new state, can be
explained by Hegel’s claim that the finite determinations from the moment of understanding sublate
(cancel but also preserve) themselves: later determinations put earlier determinations into a new
state by preserving them.
At the same time, there is a technical sense in which a later determination would still be the
“opposite” of the earlier determination. Since the second determination is different from the first
one, it is the logical negation of the first one, or is not-the-first-determination. If the first
determination is “e”, for instance, because the new determination is different from that one, the new
one is “not-e”. Since Finite Purpose, for instance, has a definition or determination that is different
from the definition that Abstract Purpose has, it is not-Abstract-Purpose, or is the negation or
opposite of Abstract Purpose in that sense. There is therefore a technical, logical sense in which the
second concept or form is the “opposite” or negation of—or is “not”—the first one—though, again, it
need not be the “opposite” of the first one in a strict sense.
Other problems remain, however. Because the concept of Realized Purpose is defined through a
syllogistic process, it is itself the product of several stages of development (at least four, by my count,
if Realized Purpose counts as a separate determination), which would seem to violate a triadic model.
Moreover, the concept of Realized Purpose does not, strictly speaking, seem to be the unity or
combination of Abstract Purpose and Finite Purpose. Realized Purpose is the result of (and so unifies)
the syllogistic process of Finite Purpose, through which Finite Purpose focuses on and is realized in a
particular material or content. Realized Purpose thus seems to be a development of Finite Purpose,
rather than a unity or combination of Abstract Purpose and Finite Purpose, in the way that Becoming
can be said to be the unity or combination of Being and Nothing.
These sorts of considerations have led some scholars to interpret Hegel’s dialectics in a way that is
implied by a more literal reading of his claim, in the Encyclopaedia Logic, that the three “sides” of the
form of logic—namely, the moment of understanding, the dialectical moment, and the speculative
moment—“are moments of each [or every; jedes] logically-real, that is each [or every; jedes]
concept”. The quotation suggests that each concept goes through all three moments of the dialectical
process—a suggestion reinforced by Hegel’s claim, in the Phenomenology, that the result of the
process of determinate negation is that “a new form has thereby immediately arisen”. According to
this interpretation, the three “sides” are not three different concepts or forms that are related to one
another in a triad—as the textbook Being-Nothing-Becoming example suggests—but rather different
momentary sides or “determinations” in the life, so to speak, of each concept or form as it transitions
to the next one. The three moments thus involve only two concepts or forms: the one that comes
first, and the one that comes next.

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For the concept of Being, for example, its moment of understanding is its moment of stability, in
which it is asserted to be pure presence. This determination is one-sided or restricted however,
because, as we saw, it ignores another aspect of Being’s definition, namely, that Being has no content
or determination, which is how Being is defined in its dialectical moment. Being thus
sublates itself because the one-sidedness of its moment of understanding undermines that
determination and leads to the definition it has in the dialectical moment. The speculative moment
draws out the implications of these moments: it asserts that Being (as pure presence) implies nothing.
It is also the “unity of the determinations in their comparison [Entgegensetzung]”: since it captures a
process from one to the other, it includes Being’s moment of understanding (as pure presence) and
dialectical moment (as nothing or undetermined), but also compares those two determinations, or
sets (-setzen) them up against (-gegen) each other. It even puts Being into a new state (as the
prefix ent- suggests) because the next concept, Nothing, will sublate (cancel and preserve) Being.
The concept of Nothing also has all three moments. When it is asserted to be the speculative result of
the concept of Being, it has its moment of understanding or stability: it is Nothing, defined as pure
absence, as the absence of determination. But Nothing’s moment of understanding is also one-sided
or restricted: like Being, Nothing is also an undefined content, which is its determination in its
dialectical moment. Nothing thus sublates itself: since it is an undefined content, it is not pure
absence after all, but has the same presence that Being did. It is present as an undefined content.
Nothing thus sublates Being: it replaces (cancels) Being, but also preserves Being insofar as it has the
same definition (as an undefined content) and presence that Being had. We can picture Being and
Nothing like this (the circles have dashed outlines to indicate that, as concepts, they are each
undefined;

Figure 4
In its speculative moment, then, Nothing implies presence or Being, which is the “unity of the
determinations in their comparison [Entgegensetzung]”; alternative translation), since it
both includes but—as a process from one to the other—also compares the two earlier determinations
of Nothing, first, as pure absence and, second, as just as much presence.
The dialectical process is driven to the next concept or form—Becoming—not by a triadic, thesis-
antithesis-synthesis pattern, but by the one-sidedness of Nothing—which leads Nothing to sublate
itself—and by the implications of the process so far. Since Being and Nothing have each been
exhaustively analyzed as separate concepts, and since they are the only concepts in play, there is only
one way for the dialectical process to move forward: whatever concept comes next will have to take
account of both Being and Nothing at the same time. Moreover, the process revealed that an
undefined content taken to be presence (i.e., Being) implies Nothing (or absence), and that an
undefined content taken to be absence (i.e., Nothing) implies presence (i.e., Being). The next concept,
then, takes Being and Nothing together and draws out those implications—namely, that Being implies
Nothing, and that Nothing implies Being. It is therefore Becoming, defined as two separate processes:
one in which Being becomes Nothing, and one in which Nothing becomes Being. We can picture
Becoming this way:

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Figure 5
In a similar way, a one-sidedness or restrictedness in the determination of Finite Purpose together
with the implications of earlier stages leads to Realized Purpose. In its moment of understanding,
Finite Purpose particularizes into (or presents) its content as “something-presupposed” or as a pre-
given object. I go to a restaurant for the purpose of having dinner, for instance, and order a salad. My
purpose of having dinner particularizes as a pre-given object—the salad. But this object or
particularity—e.g. the salad—is “inwardly reflected”: it has its own content—developed in earlier
stages—which the definition of Finite Purpose ignores. We can picture Finite Purpose this way:

Figure 6
In the dialectical moment, Finite Purpose is determined by the previously ignored content, or by that
other content. The one-sidedness of Finite Purpose requires the dialectical process to continue
through a series of syllogisms that determines Finite Purpose in relation to the ignored content. The
first syllogism links the Finite Purpose to the first layer of content in the object: the Purpose or
universality goes through the particularity (e.g., the salad) to its content, the singularity (e.g., lettuce
as a type of thing)—the syllogism U-P-S. But the particularity is itself a universality or purpose, “which
at the same time is a syllogism within itself [in sich]” (EL Remark to §208; alternative translation), in
relation to its own content. The salad is a universality/purpose that particularizes as lettuce (as a type
of thing) and has its singularity in this lettuce here—a second syllogism, U-P-S. Thus, the first
singularity (e.g., “lettuce” as a type of thing)—which, in this second syllogism, is the particularity
or P—“judges” (EL §207) or asserts that “U is S”: it says that “lettuce” as a universality (U) or type of
thing is a singularity (S), or is “this lettuce here”, for instance. This new singularity (e.g. “this lettuce
here”) is itself a combination of subjectivity and objectivity: it is an Inner or identifying concept
(“lettuce”) that is in a mutually-defining relationship (the circular arrow) with an Outer or out-
thereness (“this here”) as its content. In the speculative moment, Finite Purpose is determined by the
whole process of development from the moment of understanding—when it is defined by

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particularizing into a pre-given object with a content that it ignores—to its dialectical moment—when
it is also defined by the previously ignored content. We can picture the speculative moment of Finite
Purpose this way:

Figure 7
Finite Purpose’s speculative moment leads to Realized Purpose. As soon as Finite Purpose presents all
the content, there is a return process (a series of return arrows) that establishes each layer and
redefines Finite Purpose as Realized Purpose. The presence of “this lettuce here” establishes the
actuality of “lettuce” as a type of thing (an Actuality is a concept that captures a mutually-defining
relationship between an Inner and an Outer), which establishes the “salad”, which establishes
“dinner” as the Realized Purpose over the whole process. We can picture Realized Purpose this way:

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Figure 8
If Hegel’s account of dialectics is a general description of the life of each concept or form, then any
section can include as many or as few stages as the development requires. Instead of trying to
squeeze the stages into a triadic form—a technique Hegel himself rejects—we can see the process as
driven by each determination on its own account: what it succeeds in grasping (which allows it to be
stable, for a moment of understanding), what it fails to grasp or capture (in its dialectical moment),
and how it leads (in its speculative moment) to a new concept or form that tries to correct for the
one-sidedness of the moment of understanding. This sort of process might reveal a kind of argument
that, as Hegel had promised, might produce a comprehensive and exhaustive exploration of every
concept, form or determination in each subject matter, as well as raise dialectics above a haphazard
analysis of various philosophical views to the level of a genuine science.
HEGEL'S CONCEPT OF FREEDOM
Hegel's conception of freedom might perhaps be called 'contextual', though this is a term which to my
knowledge has not been applied to his or any other idea of freedom. I mean by this that Hegel
conceives freedom always in a social context, or more accurately in the context of human interaction.
The structure of such interaction constitutes the context of freedom in which it becomes something
concrete and definite, an actuality rather than a mere idea. In pursuing Hegel's line of inquiry it is
possible to distinguish four major kinds of freedom and four corresponding contexts or models of
human interaction. These are: natural, ethical, civil and political, and I propose to look at them in this
order.
Natural Freedom
The foundation of the Hegelian theory of freedom rests on his concept of the will. Will is not a
separate faculty, distinct from reason; thought and will are simply two aspects or modes of reason:
'the will is ... a special way of thinking, thinking translating itself into existence, thinking as the urge to
give itself existence' (PhR, § 4 A). In choosing, deciding and acting a man thinks, reflects and uses
concepts; he manifests or expresses his rationality, which is his essential characteristic. The way a
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man views himself, the image he has of himself or, more adequately, the conception he has of himself
as a human being determines what kind of will he has and therefore what kind of interaction with
other men is possible for him. Freedom is therefore bound up with self-consciousness and true
freedom presupposes true self-consciousness.
The self-consciousness which purifies its object, content, and aim, and raises them to the
universality effects this as thinking getting its own way in the will. Here is the point at which it
becomes clear that it is only as thinking intelligence that the will is genuinely a will and free.
The slave does not know his essence, his infinity, his freedom; he does not know himself as
human in essence; and he lacks this knowledge of himself because he does not think himself.
This self-consciousness which apprehends itself through thinking as essentially human, and
thereby frees itself from the contingent and the false, is the principle of right, morality, and all
ethical life.
The will itself, at its most basic, is a complex idea; in the simplest act of willing Hegel distinguishes
three elements or 'moments'. According to Hegel's theory of 'subjective spirit' will is foreshadowed in
impulse and sentiment, which largely determine our conduct in childhood. At the level of
development at which will and thought can be clearly distinguished from desire and feeling an act of
will contains according to Hegel:
(1) 'the element of pure indeterminacy or that pure reflection of the ego into itself which involves the
dissipation of every restriction and every content'. This is the element of withdrawal from, or
rejection of, all external determinators, an assertion of the will's independence vis-á-vis the external
world.
When the will's self-determination consists in this alone, or when representative thinking
regards this side by itself as freedom and clings to it, then we have negative freedom or
freedom as the Understanding conceives it.
(2) The second moment, 'the particularisation of the ego', consists in the ego giving itself
'differentiation, determination and positing a determinacy as a content and object'. This content may
be something natural a need or desire - or something rational - some thought or principle of action.
The determination or focusing of the ego on something definite or particular, the self-identification of
the ego with it, constitutes the second, 'positive' element involved in willing, the second partial but
essential aspect of the will.
(3) 'The will is the unity of both these moments.... It is the selfdetermination of the ego, which means
that at one and the same time the ego posits itself as its own negative, i.e. as restricted and
determinate, and yet remains by itself, i.e. in its self-identity and universality' (i.e. as a source of all
determinations). 'This is the freedom of the will and it constitutes the concept or substantiality of the
will, its weight so to speak, just as weight constitutes the substantiality of a body'. Differently put, an
act of will implies an agent capable of rejecting all courses of action except the one that he really
chooses to follow.
When a man is so self-determined but the only content of his will the only source of his
determinations - are his impulses, appetites and desires, he has what Hegel calls an 'immediate or
natural' will (§ ll). Such a will does not act according to its rational nature, although it is capable of
utilitarian rationality; Hegel admits that impulses can be compared and evaluated in the light of
experience and selected on grounds of satisfaction or happiness (§ 20). The indeterminacy of the will
in the absence of a truly rational criterion of choice constitutes 'arbitrariness' (Willkiir). Such
indeterminate, arbitrary will has sometimes been considered a paradigm of free will, but this is a
serious mistake in Hegel's view.

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The choice which I have is grounded in the universality of the will, in the fact that I can make
this or that mine. This thing that is mine is particular in content and therefore not adequate to
me and so is separate from me; it is only potentially mine, while I am the potentiality of linking
myself to it. Choice, therefore, is grounded in the indeterminacy of the ego and the
determinancy of a content. Thus the will, on account of this content, is not free, although it has
an infinite aspect in virtue of its form. No single content is adequate to it and in no single
content is it really at grips with itself. Arbitrariness implies that the content is made mine not
by the nature of my will but by chance. Thus I am dependent on this content, and this is the
contradiction lying in arbitrariness. The man in the street thinks he is free if it is open to him to
act as he pleases, but his very arbitrariness implies that he is not free. When I will what is
rational, then I am acting not as a particular individual but in accordance with the concept of
ethics in general. In an ethical action, what I vindicate is not myself but the thing.
In other words, true freedom is ethical freedom and can only be reached in an ethical community.
Because the arbitrary wills of men do not coincide when they act capriciously, an orderly, structured
society of natural men is impossible. It can only be conceived as an abstraction, 'a state of nature', in
which impulse and violence reign unchecked, a Hobbesian state of 'war of all against all' in which life
is 'nasty, brutish and short' and from which man should seek to escape by all means. Hegel regards
'natural freedom' as the freedom peculiar to such a state of nature; it is the only freedom which
independent, egocentric and impulse-driven individuals can possibly have when they find themselves
in a shared physical space. However, arbitrary choice has a place in a rational normative order, as
Hegel admits in his account of civil society; in fact it is one of its fundamental constituents.
Ethical Freedom
In order to have a minimum kind of stable interaction possible it is necessary that all men should
recognise certain rules or principles of action, and follow them in practice. The minimum amount of
rules that a rational agent will recognise and accept as rational will obviously be those which
safeguard his life, limb and possessions, and which guarantee to him an area of activity free from the
invasion and interference of others. Within this area each man can do what he pleases and can
exercise his natural, immediate or arbitrary will to the fullest extent compatible with an equal
opportunity of everybody else in society to do the same. The system of such rational rules, based on
reciprocity and a necessary minimum of restriction, Hegel calls 'abstract right'. It is really the natural
law of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which was based on the revival of Roman law; in his
discussions of the Roman Empire Hegel makes it clear that the idea of law as defining and protecting
private rights of individuals was discovered precisely in that epoch of world history.
Hegel's analysis of abstract right and its component elements of personality (capacity for rights),
property, contract and wrongdoing in the Philosophy of Right add much to our understanding of his
conception of freedom. Hegel bases the system of personal rights on man's appropriation of natural
objects and the recognition of possessions as rightful property by other men. By appropriating things
man rises above nature and asserts his independence as a free agent: 'a person is a unit of freedom
aware of its sheer independence'.However, the principles of abstract right are 'actualised' in the
positive legal system of civil society and thus become a part of the broader normative order
of Sittlichkeit. They need not be discussed separately.
The same applies to the sphere of morality which in Hegel's view forms another element of ethical
life. By morality Hegel means conduct determined by one's conscience, noble intentions or subjective
judgement of what is absolutely good. Abstract right (and the positive law based upon it) is indifferent
to motives and merely requires external conformity to objective rules of conduct. The

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question about the self-determination and motive of the will now enters . . . in connection with
morality. Since man wishes to be judged in accordance with his own self-determined choices,
he is free in this relation to himself whatever the external situation may impose upon him ...
Man's worth is estimated by reference to his inward action and hence the standpoint of
morality is that of freedom aware of itself.
As we have already seen this is the conception of freedom Hegel ascribes to Rousseau and Kant and
criticizes as inadequate - false in theory and disastrous in practice. However, as an element
of Sittlichkeit it has an essential place in modern social and political life. It is a necessary corrective to
all normative structures based on positive law, conventional morality and traditional institutions.
Sittlichkeit is the real context in which men achieve freedom or selfdetermination. It is a structure of
human interaction based on established laws and institutions which have survived the test of
experience but also theoretical scrutiny. It is the actual, social mechanism through which men are
shaped into ethical agents - creatures in practice acting according to laws, recognising and fulfilling
obligations, sometimes sharing aims and purposes with other men, and pursuing them through their
joint endeavours. When Hegel speaks of ethical life as a 'substance' and men as its accidents' he
wishes to draw our attention to the thoroughgoing way in which ethical life moulds man's nature or
'socialises' individuals." Sittlichkeit comprises the existing normative world, the historical world of
human relations and ideals, and is so to speak the soil in which abstract right and morality grow.
Without it the other two are meaningful only as hypothetical conditions or abstract models of human
interaction.
The right and the moral cannot exist independently; they must have the ethical as their support and
foundation, for the right lacks the moment of subjectivity, while morality in turn possesses that
moment alone, and consequently both the right and the moral lack actuality by themselves.
In concrete historical terms the right and the moral are simply 'moments' or aspects
of Sittlichkeit, which develop within the matrix of man's traditional social life in the course of world
history, in the modern era, and enrich the primitive, simple, undifferentiated customary ethics with
new and important elements: self-interest and conscience or, in Hegelian terminology, 'particularity'
and 'subjectivity'. In terms of European culture Sittlichkeit is the ethical existence of the modern
European man when he has become aware of his individuality, asserted its rights in theory and
practice, and at the same time has accepted the necessity of an objectively existing ethical order in
which his individuality is realised.
Looked at from another angle ethical life is the sum total of the determinants of the will - the ethical
norms, rules or principles of actions which provide the substance of human decisions in so far as they
are the acts of concrete thinking, choosing and willing agents. The key normative idea of Sittlichkeit is
duty.
In Sittlichkeit the agent is faced with clusters of duties arising out of his concrete social position, for
example as husband or father, employer or employee, teacher or student, member of an estate,
profession or corporation, a voter, a parliamentary representative or a civil servant. These duties are
not abstract or general as Kantian categorical imperatives are; they are contextual, particularised, tied
to our special social roles, dependent on the sphere of activity in which we are engaged. The more
complex, articulated and developed a structure society or community forms, the wider is the range of
roles available to its individual members, but also the more elaborate the system of duties which
ethically bind them. In other words duties are the content of laws, institutions, organisations and
communities which together make up the structure of an ethical community. And in so far as they
have been internalised as habits and dispositions, they are the content of volitions.

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Hegel defines the freedom peculiar to Sittlichkeit ('ethical freedom') in terms of duty. This is
paradoxical only if we accept the Hobbesian view that duties bind us and restrict our freedom of
movement. But for Hegel there is no paradox.
The bond of duty can appear as a restriction only on indeterminate subjectivity or abstract
freedom, and on the impulses either of the natural will or of the moral will which determines
its indeterminate good arbitrarily. The truth is, however, that in duty the individual finds his
liberation; first, liberation from dependence on mere natural impulse and from the depression
which as a particular subject he cannot escape in his moral reflections on what ought to be and
what might be; secondly, liberation from the indeterminate subjectivity which, never reaching
reality or the objective determinacy of action, remains self-enclosed and devoid of actuality. In
duty the individual acquires his substantive freedom.
In the Addition to this paragraph he concludes:
Thus duty is not a restriction on freedom, but only on freedom in the abstract, i.e. on
unfreedom. Duty is the attainment of our essence, the winning of positive freedom.
This conception of freedom as the conscientious acceptance and fulfilment of one's ethical obligations
(in Bradley's famous phrase 'my station and its duties') may at first sight appear somewhat
unattractive. Even if Hegel's perfect freedom was not simply the obedience to the Prussian state that
it has sometimes been alleged to be, this kind of 'substantial' or 'positive' freedom appears
compatible with all sorts of situations in which there is very little liberty as it is generally understood
by liberals or democrats. A traditional patriarchal society, a feudal monarchy or a modern collectivise,
highly regulated state would all seem happily to fit Hegel's conception of an ethical order. But to think
that would be to ignore the peculiar modern dimensions of Sittlichkeit represented by abstract right
and morality, which have just been mentioned. To count as true Sittlichkeit the ethical order in our
own epoch must be shot through with personal rights and spheres of autonomy, and be acceptable to
individual conscience. It must (in other words) incorporate the principles of particularity and
subjectivity.
Hegel develops this point at great length in the Philosophy of Right in the sections of ethical life
dealing with civil society and the state, but a word must be said about his concept of family which is,
in fact, the basic form of ethical life. The family (i.e. the modern family) also has a subjective
dimension - for example in the free choice of partners in marriage or the decision to beget children. It
may also satisfy particular needs and desires of individuals for companionship, affection, emotional
security and sexual gratification; to some extent it still has an economic function. Yet the dominant
elements even in the modern family are 'universality' and 'objectivity'. It is a community which,
despite love and affection, often faces its members as something burdensome, something which
essentially restricts their arbitrary will. It requires of everybody frequent acts of self-sacrifice and the
submersion of particularity in a common life. It is also, for the children at least, a necessity they
cannot easily escape. The family is the only community in the modem world where Sittlichkeit in its
primordial sense operates in a more or less pure form through precept, habit, unconscious imitation
and other devices; these shape the individual's natural will and teach him the elements of ethical life -
the recognition and acceptance of multifarious duties and moral discipline over desires and appetites,
a discipline which is external to start with, but gradually becomes internalised as self-discipline.
In one sense Sittlichkeit pervades all aspects of social life, all relations, institutions, organisations and
communities; it is, so to speak, their ethical substratum. But in the modern world it takes on the
shape of two distinct ethical systems - complex and interdependent ('organic') social wholes the civil
and the political order. In the latter, as in the family, the universal and the substantial elements
predominate.

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Civil Freedom
By contrast with the family and the political community the elements of particularly and subjectivity
(self-interest and personal choice) come to the fore in, and are the dominant characteristics of, civil
society. In civil society men interact with the minimum of ethical or legal constraints. In § 206 of
the Philosophy of Right Hegel observes that in modern society, in the choice of a career or trade (and
therefore class or estate membership), 'the essential and final and determining factors are subjective
opinions and the individual arbitrary will, which win in this sphere their right, their merit and their
dignity'. In Plato's Republic and in the ancient world generally (as Hegel points out in PhR, § 206R)
one's social status was largely determined by the accident of birth or by the fiat of a despotic
authority; free choice of one's role in society was not recognized or secured by appropriate law and
institutions as it is in the modern civil society.
when subjective particularity is upheld by the objective order in conformity with it and is at the same
time allowed its rights, then it becomes the animating principle of the entire civil society, of the
development alike of mental activity, merit and dignity. The recognition and the right that what is
brought about by reason of necessity in civil society and the state shall at the same time be effected
by the mediation of the arbitrary will is the more precise definition of what is primarily meant by
freedom in common parlance.
'Freedom in common parlance', or what one might call 'civil freedom' in the context of civil society,
implies for Hegel the presence of various civil and economic rights, the right of association, the right
to a trial by jury, the right to promote group interests through corporations, and the right to public
assistance and protection against misfortune or the vagaries of the market. Many of them represent
the enactment and institutionalisation of the sphere of abstract right - the realm of legal prohibitions
which make it possible for men to act without getting into each other's way. In § 230 he seems to
anticipate the rise of the so-called social or welfare state rights because he argues that 'the right
actually present in the particular requires . . . that the securing of every single person's livelihood and
welfare be treated and actualised as a right, i.e. that particular welfare as such be treated'. 'The
police' in his special sense of the word and the corporation are concerned with the security of such
social rights.
If we consider the question of duties, we can see that civil society with its complex and increasingly
articulated structure provides individuals with a host of new social roles and ethical duties. They are
not left to custom or convention alone. They are formulated in clear and unambiguous laws. Positive
law, when rationally reformed, ensures that our actual social obligations do not contradict the
principles of abstract right and morality, for example do not involve slavery, serfdom, arbitrary
restrictions on property, compulsory religious attendance or membership of a religious sect. As a self-
conscious ethical agent the modern man accepts his obligations gladly and performs them willingly.
But he does nevertheless make a sacrifice of a part of his individuality in so doing. Modern
community, so to speak, compensates the individual for this sacrifice by furthering his self-interest, by
protecting his private rights and welfare, by caring for him as an individual. And this care is extended
to him equally and universally as a man, irrespective of religion or nationality, as his basic human
right.
Political Freedom
The culminating point of the development of individual will towards freedom in the Philosophy of
Right is the political realm, the sphere o' the supreme public authority of 'the strictly political state'. it
would seem to follow that 'political freedom' - the ethical freedom corresponding to this sphere of
interaction - is the highest form of human freedom. We find, however, that 'political freedom' is an
elusive concept in the Philosophy of Right, and Hegel has rather more to say about it in his minor

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political works, especially those which he wrote before he took up residence in Berlin. The most likely
explanation is that the completion of the Philosophy of Right coincided with the onset of reaction in
Prussia, after a period of considerable liberalism, and it is more than likely that prudence (or political
expediency) tempered Hegel's theoretical zeal in this area of his political philosophy. In fact the
clearest acknowledgment of the importance of public freedom occurs in the Philosophy of Right not
in the section on the constitution of the state, but in the context of Hegel's discussion of the
corporation, which is an institution of civil society. The primary work of the corporation is to achieve
security and other sectional benefits for its members, to promote group interests; but it incidentally
fosters various ethical characteristics in its members - a sense of honesty, group pride, a sense of
belonging and the consciousness of a common end for which they are united. 'As family was the first,
so the Corporation is the second ethical root of the state, the one planted in civil society'.
Under modern political conditions, the citizens have only a restricted share in the public
business of the state, yet it is essential to provide men - ethical entities - with work of a public
character over and above their private business. This work of a public character, which the
modern state does not always provide, is found in the Corporation. . . . It is in the Corporation
that unconscious compulsion first changes into a known and ethical mode of life.
In the strictly political section of the Philosophy of Right we get only a vague idea what political
freedom means and why it is the culminating moment in the development of the will to complete
self-determination. Although Hegel purports to offer a dialectical argument, it is clear that for
pragmatic reasons he does not think that the opportunity to exercise political freedom need be as
wide as the scope to enjoy civil freedom, and makes political freedom a universal right of all citizens
only in a very attenuated form. Effectively political participation is a privilege of an elite.
There are a number of reasons why Hegel nevertheless thinks the state to be vitally important for
freedom and why it is in the state, a politically organised and governed community, that human
freedom reaches it fullest embodiment. Let us imagine that we are members of a Hegelian civil
society which appears to be fully rational and developed, in that it genuinely respects and promotes
our particular interests and subjective choices through an appropriate system of laws and institutions.
We fully enjoy what Hegel calls 'freedom in the common parlance', or civil freedom. Are we
then completely self-conscious and self-determined, or is there still some extra element or dimension
of freedom which is lacking? Hegel would probably answer this question along the following lines.
(1) Civil society, although autonomous, is ultimately subject to the political state and its governmental
authority ('state power'). Rights may be abrogated, as they are in times of war or civil disturbance;
property may be taxed for public purposes; corporate rights may be curtailed or independent social
activities taken over by public bodies.
In contrast with the spheres of private rights and private welfare (the family and civil society),
the state is from one point of view an external necessity and their higher authority; its nature is
such that their laws and interests are subordinate to it and dependent on it.
When the need for the state's intervention arises there is no machinery within civil society to explain
and justify the need, and without it the intervention has the appearance of an arbitrary, high-handed
activity. The certainty that sacrifices for the sake of the common good or some other higher ethical
principles are justified requires an exchange of views, an expression of opinions, an institutional
channel for the debate of public issues. Although Hegel in the Philosophy of Right goes out of his way
to stress the capricious and often trivial character of public opinion, and wishes to curb its 'excesses',
he regards it as a necessary element of political life and the chief manifestation of 'subjective
freedom' in the public realm.

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The formal subjective freedom of individuals consists in their having and expressing their own
private judgments, opinions and recommendations on affairs of state. This freedom is
collectively manifested as what is called 'public opinion'.
The operation of public opinion presupposes the freedom of the press, publication and association, all
of which can exist in civil society and indeed constitute essential civic freedoms. Hegel, however,
argues - quite correctly - that such public opinion is either impotent or dangerous as long as it is not
related to governmental authority. It is the function of a representative body to remedy this defect.
This body, which Hegel call, 'the Assembly of Estates', forms part of the governmental authority or
state power', and is a specifically political, not civil, institution.
The Estates have the function of bringing public affairs into existence not only implicitly, but
also actually, i.e., of bringing into existence the moment of subjective formal freedom, the
public consciousness as an empirical universal, of which the thoughts and opinions of the Many
are particulars.
in them [the Estates] the subjective moment in universal freedom - the private judgement and private
will of the sphere called 'civil society' in this book - comes into existence integrally related to the
state.
It is well known that in the Philosophy of Right Hegel is extremely vague about the power of the
Estates' Assembly, and in all his political writings he insists that rational suffrage is not universal,
direct and individual, but limited, indirect and based on communities or organised interests. It should
reflect the social articulation of the national and ethical community. Nevertheless, even in
the Philosophy of Right, he treats the principle of representation as a rational feature of the modern
state.
(2) Hegel makes the further point that the representative assembly, like the rest of the supreme
public authority, is concerned with laws and policies which are necessarily general and must be
discussed in universal, rational terms.
The state, therefore knows what it wills and knows it in its universality, i.e. as something thought.
Hence it works and acts by reference to consciously adopted ends, known principles, and laws which
are not merely implicit but are actually present to consciousness.
In the final analysis such ends and principles are part of the general culture of a particular country and
express its 'national spirit'. Public opinion and representative institutions are the means through
which the principles are related to the practical concerns of the community, where fundamental
issues of public life are raised and thrashed out in debate. This makes deputies and the country at
large conscious of the principles underlying the actual ethical order, reveals possible inadequacies and
contradictions, and generates demands for reform. As for J. S. Mill, so for Hegel, representative
government is an essential agency of national education. Political institutions promote the kind of
national and political self-consciousness which men do not acquire by being mere members of civil
society, and they contribute to freedom because they clarify the principles on which the ethical, social
and political life of their community is based.
(3) Another reason for Hegel's dissatisfaction with civil freedom as an adequate form of ethical
freedom stems from the form of human interaction peculiar to civil society. Although 'burghers' come
to depend closely on each other and form a relatively integrated society, their social interdependence
is brought about to some extent by the external forces of needs, labour, the division of labour and the
market, and not merely through inner individual commitment or personal choice. Also, while
performing their duties to each other and cooperating closely, men remain primarily their own private
ends - they (or as Hegel would say, their wills) do not consciously pursue their 'substantial' end, which
is the existence of an ethical community making complete freedom possible, They promote the
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interest of such community only implicitly, indirectly, unconsciously. To this extent they remain within
the realm of necessity more akin to nature than to the spiritual realm of freedom. The unity of
particularity and universality in civil society is achieved without the knowledge and will of its
members and so
is not the identity which the ethical order requires, because at this level, that of division, both
principles are self-subsistent. It follows that this unity is present here not as freedom but as
necessity, since it is by compulsion that the particular rises to the form of universality and
seeks and gains its stability in that form.
By contrast in the political community or the state
the universal does not prevail or achieve completion except along with particular interests and
through the co-operation of particular knowing and willing and individuals likewise do not live
as private persons for their own ends alone, but in the very act of willing these they will the
universal in the light of the universal, and their activity is consciously aimed at none but the
universal end.
Man as potentially free, self-determined agent, once he has become conscious of his nature, cannot
allow himself to be determined by social forces operating on him externally, like natural forces, all the
more so as those forces are in the last resort the product of his thought and will and so are potentially
under his control. His proper end - the membership of a rational ethical community - must be his own
conscious aim, otherwise he is not fully free. By participating in political activities, the public affairs of
his state, the individual makes a direct contribution to the life and development of the community
and thereby increases his selfdetermination. As we have seen, a start towards this kind of freedom is
made already in civil society through the corporation, which changes the unconscious compulsion' of
working for others in the market economy into 'a known and thoughtful ethical mode of life'. The
modern state creates further opportunities for participation to its citizens, although it allocates
different shares according to education, property and status.
(4) Hegel's final line of argument that political freedom is distinct from civil freedom, and represents
the highest stage in the development of freedom, is his version of Rousseau's idea of the General Will.
Rousseau insisted that the General Will had to express or manifest itself in the actions of individual
citizens performing public functions, especially voting on laws. The General Will is the rational or
moral will of citizens acting for the common good (the general interest of the body politic) rather than
for their own personal good or private interest. For Hegel the common good or public interest is
identical with the totality of rational laws and institutions of a community and constitutes the
'objective will' of the community.
Confronted with the claims made for the individual will, we must remember the fundamental
conception that the objective will is rationality simplicity or in conception, whether it be
recognised or not by individuals, whether their whims be deliberately for it or not.
But although Hegel differs from Rousseau by postulating a transcendent General Will which, as the
'objective will' of a rationally structured community, is more than the sum of individual wills, he
agrees with him that such will must express or manifest itself in the actual thinking and willing of
individual citizens, consciously identifying their subjective will with the 'objective will' and its needs.
This union of subjective and objective will constitutes 'concrete freedom', which is higher than the
abstract subjective and objective freedoms taken by themselves. It is through the political institutions
of the ethical community that the reconciliation of the subjective and objective aspects of the will is
effected.
In the Philosophy of Right the necessity of the subjective will assenting to laws and other
requirements of the common good is argued by Hegel only with the reference to the monarch, as the
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official head of the political community, but in his Philosophy of Mind, the third part of the
Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1830), this necessity is explicitly stated also with
reference to the mass of citizens. In paragraph 544 of this work Hegel raises the question 'in what
sense are we to understand the participation of private persons in state affairs?', and after ruling out
superior intelligence or good will of the people as an adequate reason he answers his question as
follows:
The desirability of private persons taking part in public affairs is partly to be
put in their concrete, and therefore more urgent, sense of general wants.
But the true motive is the right of the community (collective) spirit to
appear as an externally universal will, acting with orderly and express
efficacy for the public concerns. By such satisfaction of this right it gets its
own life quickened, and at the same time breathes fresh life in the
administrative officials; who thus have it brought home to them that not
merely have they to enforce duties but also to have regard to rights. Private
citizens are in the state the incomparably greater number and form the
multitude of such as are recognised as persons. Hence the rational will (will-
reason) exhibits its existence in them as a preponderating majority of
freemen, or in its 'reflectional universality' which has its actuality
vouchsafed it as a participation in the sovereignty.
The meaning of this somewhat poorly translated passage is fairly clear: the rational will of the ethical
community, public, affairs must be mediated through the wills of the multitude and must take the
form of an externally universal (general) will', i.e. one embodied in the particular wills of the citizens
exercising political rights or participating in sovereignty. Only then does the general will become fully
alive and acquire universal existence.
We may therefore conclude that Hegel has largely justified his claim that 'the [modern] state is the
actuality of concrete freedom'. Freedom defined as the self-determination of a rational, moral and
ethical agent reaches its fullest development only in a politically organised modern community, in
which he interacts with other citizens and the government through free public debate, suffrage and
representation. Political liberty, involved in these activities, is distinct from civil liberty. The raison
d'étre of civil society and the justification of civil freedom is the private interest and subjective choice
of the individual bourgeois which, mediated through a system of economic and social relations as well
as laws, institutions and authorities, promotes the interest of the ethical community only indirectly
and in the last resort. The raison d'étre of political community and the justification of political liberty
are the good of the ethical community itself, the common good or the public interest, which the fully
self-conscious and self-determined citizen promotes for its own sake. In so doing he actualises his
own deepest freedom and realises his nature not simply as a particular but as a universal, communal
being. Political freedom, although roughly hewn, is the indispensable coping stone of Hegel's theory
of freedom which (so to speak) is the obverse of his theory of political community. And the two
theories taken as a whole represent Hegel's adaptation of Plato's idea of 'ethical substance' to the
modern world and the solution of Rousseau's problems of political association how to live in
community with others and yet remain a free individual.

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