Education Servilus and Education Liberalis

“Ancient education was divided into two categories: (1) education for slaves (education servilus), which was restricted to teaching the slaves to do a particular job, to contribute to the economic system, and to conform to the demands of the society that enslaved them; and (2) education for the free (education liberalis), which equipped students of the Greek democracy and the Roman Republic to be free citizens who could come up with the ideas, knowledge, creativity, leadership, and virtues necessary for self-governance and the pursuit of excellence.

Today’s dominant approaches to education, both in the public schools and in the universities, are essentially a revival of the education for slaves. To be sure, those with 'successful careers' may be well-paid, but they still think and act like slaves.” --Gene Edward Veith

In a society so enthralled by the economy and making money we should not be surprised by this. Echoing our preoccupation in his inaugural address, President Obama affirmed, "we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age." A new age of slavery.

HT: Redeemedreader.com

Between Heaven and Hell

The fictional dialogue is an ancient way of conveying hard topics in a reader-friendly way. Plato placed Socrates in conversation with other philosophers of ancient Greece and the literary technique of the Socratic Dialogue was born. The imitators of Plato have been holding little chats ever since. The most recent writer to come to my attention who has found the fictional Socratic Dialogue to be useful is Peter Kreeft. His book, Between Heaven and Hell, brings together John F. Kennedy, C. S. Lewis, and Aldous Huxley for what the subtitle explains is “A Dialog Somewhere Beyond Death.”

The setting for such a dialog makes use of the remarkable death of all three men on the same day in 1963. Kreeft lifts the curtain on the dialogue with one of the dead men asking: “Where the Hell are we?” This initial question may not be answered satisfactorily for each of the three men but, because it is a question that many still on earth have asked, it is a relevant starting point for a philosophical dialog of interest to both the living and (in this case) the dead. The three speakers soon move on to other questions; questions about knowledge, truth, and, ultimately, the truth of Jesus' divinity.

Proving the divinity of Jesus, the core of the Christian apologetic, is Kreeft's goal and, despite some important detours, the dialog constantly returns to this pivotal point. Once prove that Jesus is God and all other questions are answered. Kreeft has the character of Lewis call it,

“the skeleton key principle: it opens all other doctrinal doors.”

Kennedy: “You mean once you believe that, anything goes?”

Lewis: “No, anything he [Jesus] says goes” (35).

In the argument for the divinity of Jesus, Kreeft extensively develops Lewis's famous “lier, lunatic, or Lord” argument. He shows that the ubiquitous “good moral teacher” idea cannot apply to a lier or a lunatic. Because Jesus claimed to be God (and was crucified for this very reason) the only conclusion we can draw is aut deus aut homo malus: “either God or a bad man” (37-38). Clearly, those who crucified him thought he was a blasphemous bad man. Is anyone really willing to go that far today? But Kreeft and Lewis point out that the only alternative is to accept what he called himself: the Great I AM, God.

PS. Normally I spell “dialogue” with a “ue” ending but I have noticed that “dialog” is very common. Imagine the time before dictionaries when nearly every word could be spelled (spelt) at the whim of the individual author! In facsimile copies of old books published long before the time of Webster or Johnson I have seen the same word spelled two different ways on the very same page. There is a sort of horror at this lack of rules but also a certain empowering freedom in this variability. I've indulged myself in this post by using both spellings. (Actually, I heard somewhere that the variations in spelling, particularly the extra “e” on the end of some words was added by old-time typesetters so that the right-hand margin would look straight.)

Peter Kreeft, Between Heaven and Hell: A Dialog Somewhere Beyond Death With john F. Kennedy, C. S. Lewis, and Aldous Huxley. InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, Illinois. 1982.

Philosophy in the High Middle Ages

The philosophy of the High Middle Ages was a mix of Aristotle and Christianity. While the Early Middle Ages were dominated by platonic thought, Aristotle's philosophical system had a resurgence in the writings of such celebrated philosophers and university teachers from the High Middle Ages as Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham. According to Paul Vincent Spade: “This 'recovery' of Aristotle in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was a momentous event in the history of medieval philosophy.”1

To understand why a Greek philosopher who died some fifteen hundred years before should have such a great influence on the philosophy of the High Middle Ages it is necessary to understand the attitude of the period to the past. Previous philosophers and writers were looked upon with near reverence. Greek and Latin authors in particular were treasured by the philosophers of Western Europe.2 These previous writers were “authorities,” whether on history, literature, science or philosophy. Albert Ascoli explains the unchallenged influence the past had on medieval intellectuals: “In the Middle Ages an “author” (Latin auctor and autor; Italian autore) was not any old writer of literature, but was instead, and against the modern definition, a person who possessed auctoritas [authority], and who might also have produced texts that were known as auctoritates.”3 He explains further that they are almost exempt from challenge and believed to have a corner on the truth.4

Unfortunately, since they considered a wide range of authors to all be right they ran into a problem. C.S. Lewis explains: “they find it hard to believe that anything an old auctor has said is simply untrue. And they inherit a very heterogeneous collection of books; Judaic, pagan, Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoical, Primitive Christian, Patristic... Obviously their auctors will contradict one another.”5 Trying to remedy the blatant contradictions between the pagan philosophers and the Christian Patriarchs became the overarching goal of the philosophers in the High Middle Ages. This attempt came to be called scholasticism.

Scholasticism was not so much a philosophy itself as a framework in which to look at and compare different philosophies. The medieval mind loved to organize things so when the jumbled mass of Greek and Roman philosophy tumbled into the Christian edifice, the scholastics picked up the pieces and constructed a new building that recycled elements from both. On the one hand, points out Paul Vincent Spade, classical pagan philosophy—particularly Aristotle—was “crucial for the development of medieval philosophy.” On the other hand, Spade reveals that the early Christian philosopher Augustine from the fifth century who had such a crucial role in orthodox church doctrine was “an authority who simply had to be accommodated. He shaped medieval thought as no one else did.”6 The self-appointed task of the scholastics was to synthesize these two philosophical systems.

At this point it should be clear that philosophy during the middle ages cannot be separated from theology. The philosophers of that time were theologians and vise versa. St. Thomas Aquinas is indisputably the greatest of these philosopher churchmen. He called philosophy the handmaiden of theology. His book written in Latin called the Summa Theologiae was “the first completed attempt to establish Christian theology as a scientific discipline.”7 Aquinas's life and work was the high point of philosophy in the High Middle Ages. He embodied the thinking of the scholastics when he wrote: “it is impossible that those things which are of philosophy can be contrary to those things which are of faith.”8

Some other distinctive philosophical questions from the High Middle Ages include the problem of evil and the possibility of freewill. In addition, the High Middle Ages were famous for the development of logic that took place at this time. I. M. Bocheński, in his study on the history of logic classified this period as one of the three greatest periods in the development of logic throughout history.9

The philosophical contribution of the High Middle Ages should not be underestimated. It was one of the most sophisticated mental climates in history. Thomas Aquinas, the leading philosopher of the period, is considered one of the greatest philosophers of all time. Gorge Gracia asserts that, “In intensity, sophistication, and achievement, the philosophical flowering in the thirteenth century could be rightly said to rival the golden age of Greek philosophy in the fourth century B.C.”10

1. Paul Vincent Spade: The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: “Medieval Philosophy.” http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/medieval-philosophy/

2. Jackson J. Spielvogel Western Civilization: A Brief History, 3^rd ed. (Thomson-Wadsworth, 2005). 164

3. Albert Russel Ascoli. Dante and the Making of a Modern Author. http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780511380464&ss=exc

4. Ibid.

5. C. S. Lewis. The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature. (Canto Books, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1995). 11

6. Paul Vincent Spade: The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: “Medieval Philosophy.” http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/medieval-philosophy/

7. Thomas Gilby, editor. Summa Theologiae, Volume 1: The Existence of God. (Image Books, Doubleday and Company, 1969). 12

8. As quoted in Jackson J. Spielvogel. Western Civilization: A Brief History, 3^rd ed. (Thomson-Wadsworth, 2005) 166

9. As cited in Paul Vincent Spade: The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: “Medieval Philosophy.” http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/medieval-philosophy/).

10. Gorge Gracia and T.B. Noone. A Companion to Philosophy in the Middle Ages, London 2003 pg. 1

The Life of Lucretius and His Lawless Outlook

Lucretius was a philosopher and poet from the first century B.C. He died around 55 B.C. still in his 40's—some say through suicide. He was a writer who, contrary to the custom of the time, withdrew from public life in Roman society and instead devoted himself to a pastoral pursuit of philosophy. Lucretius modeled much of his own philosophy on the Epicurean philosophical system. Its founder, Epicurus, was a Greek philosopher from the third century B.C. who posited that pleasure and the absence of pain are the highest good.

Lucretius was in a minority of Romans who held this view. His writings had an uphill battle to convince people that a life away from public service and any other thing that could cause worry leading to pain was to be avoided. His book De Rerum Natura (On The Nature of Things), therefore, was an apology or defense of his views to a largely skeptical audience of first century B.C. Romans. Yet the quest for happiness, so important to the Greeks and Romans, was reason enough to propel Lucretius to write. He believed that Epicureanism had a corner on happiness and he wished to proclaim this to the world. In fact, “Lucretius gave himself with missionary fervor to proclaiming Epicurus' 'liberating' gospel.”1

The mode of writing that Lucretius used to present his materialist “gospel” in the De Rerum Natura, was a long poem. It seems a strange vehicle to discuss deep matters of philosophy, but the Romans liked poetry. Just as their liberal arts schooling demanded that young Romans learn rhetoric to speak with eloquence, so they expected writers to argue eloquently and persuasively. The way it was said was just as important as what was said. This long treatise poem set forth Lucretius's views on, among other things, the physical universe, the soul, and death.

Perhaps most interesting to many today are his views on the natural world. He believed that all things were made up of tiny particles called “atoms.” The size, order, and arrangement of these atoms determined the shape and properties of all visible things. Water for instance is formed:

Of tiny round motes, adaptable
Most easily for rolling. Honey, though,
Is more cohesive, less disposed to flow,
More sluggish, for its whole supply of matter
Is more condensed; its motes are not as smooth,
As round, as delicate.2

Empty spaces or “voids” between atoms account for differences in weight and texture. His views on the elemental properties of objects, although imprecise and simplistic, do resemble modern discoveries in Chemistry in some ways.

The insights into society raised by Lucretius are not unique to Roman society in the first century B.C. Religion was a big part of their culture as it has been in all cultures. Lucretius tries to use Dawkinesque examples of how, “religion mothers crime and wickedness”3 to prove that religion is bad. He also admits that all people, “seem to feel some burden on their souls, some heavy weariness.”4 The insights into Roman society are interesting because of the insights they give us into our own society and human society in general. It is man's preoccupation with God and immortality; his attempts through studying the visible universe to explain (or explain away) the invisible parts like the soul, or God. Lucretius tries to show that humanity's inner restlessness that leaves “each one ignorant of what he wants, except a change, some other place to lay his burden down...hat[ing] himself because he does not know the reason for his sickness,” is a foolish waste of time because the sickness is imaginary and the soul will not live on after death.5 An opposing view on humanity's restlessness presented 400 years later by Augustine is that the soul is an immortal creation of God seeking its meaning from that Creator. Augustine cries out: “you have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds rest in you.”6

What makes Lucretius so relevant today is his early advocacy of Darwinian evolution 1900 years before Darwin. His position is essentially that of evolutionary atheists like Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens. He imagines a world that came about purely by chance. If it is by chance then there is no need for an intelligent designer, who might go about by the name “God.” Without a god there could be no immortality of the soul, an idea that was fundamental to both previous Greco/Roman philosophy and most religions. With no immortality of the soul, upon death the particles of the body separated and that was indeed the end. This left Lucretius free of worry about what was “beyond.” There was nothing beyond. Therefore life on earth had no meaning and the best one could do was avoid pain and enjoy pleasure during the short time one was alive. One did not have to be constrained by a platonic doctrine of immortality whereby, “as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another... [and] when the pilgrim arrives in the world below, he is delivered from our earthly professors of justice, and finds the true judges who are said to give judgment there.”7 Without the fear of judgment after death restraining his actions as it did in part for Plato, Lucretius could do away with the idea of morality. Virtue, instead of being a universal reality that transcended nature, as it was for Plato, became merely whatever brought pleasure and safety to the temporary swarm of atoms called Lucretius. In other words: “since the universe is ultimately material, Lucretius believed, pleasure and pain are the only real guides of conduct.”8

While in naiveté one could fail to see a problem with this, a closer inspection will show that the whole basis of law, an essential component of civil society, is compromised. Criminal law could no longer be universally applied. One's actions could always be defended on the principle that “it brought me pleasure:” “Stealing brought me pleasure;” or “murdering brought me pleasure.” Further, to abandon one's duty at the first hint of pain or danger, could not be reprimanded, because that too is perfectly natural and acceptable. In a civil society, however, it is necessary to think of others. One person's pleasure may be in the way of another person's; by Darwinian standards one will eliminate the other in a process of “survival of the fittest.” Without an objective law code outside of nature, such as Plato and other philosophers of the Western tradition have recognized, society will crumble into chaos and arbitrary force.

Endnotes

1. Donald S. Gochberg. Classics of Western Thought: The Ancient World. (Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, Fourth ed. 1988) 450

2. Lucretius. On the Nature of Things. Classics of Western Thought: The Ancient World. ed. Donald S. Gochberg (Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, Fourth ed. 1988) 463

3. Ibid. 452

4. Ibid. 465

5. Ibid 465-6

6. Augustine. The Confessions of St. Augustine. (Garden City, New York. Doubleday and Company, Image books, 1960) Book 1, ch. 1. pg. 43

7. Plato. Apology. Classics of Western Thought: The Ancient World. ed. Donald S. Gochberg (Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, Fourth ed. 1988) 312

8. Donald S. Gochberg. Classics of Western Thought: The Ancient World. (Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, Fourth ed. 1988) 451

Mere Christianity I: The Moral Law

I've been reading with interest, lately, the arguments for the existence of right and wrong. Actually some of what I have read could not technically be called arguments. For instance, I was interested that Plato in his Gorgias assumes without question that right and wrong exist and that doing the good is the most important thing possible. Just because Plato and Socrates said it does not mean it is true; however, it casts serious doubt on the occasional letter-to-the-editor-writer and average skeptic who say everyone can just do what they want and make up their own morality myths. Usually these types are terribly inconsistent by throwing in a clause like: “so long as they don't hurt anybody else,” thus showing that, aaah-ha, there really is some general guideline to be followed. But while I get a good chuckle (really I shouldn't) out of this illogical position, there are also the scary few who actually appear to believe what they say.

C.S.Lewis also addresses this issue of right and wrong or “The Rule of Decent Behavior” in Mere Christianity. The book opens with the chapter heading: “Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe.” His general premise is that “the human idea of decent behavior [is] obvious to everyone” (5). And the funny thing is that what Lewis and all the ancient philosophers and your parents and grandparents all the way back to Adam have been saying is much more believable than a sprinkling of university professors in Europe and the United States who claim it is not so. I mean, come on, if I slapped them in the face would they really not consider that unjust? Lewis very cogently makes his conclusion about the human race: “they know the Law of Nature [Moral Law] ;they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in” (8).

Lewis goes on and ruthlessly slays the further objections of some about multiple moralities and so on. A few quotes to sum up should finish this post very well but stay tuned for some more excerpts from Mere Christianity coming up.

“We are forced to believe in a real Right and Wrong. People may be sometimes mistaken about them, just as people sometimes get their sums wrong; but they are not a matter of taste and opinion any more than the multiplication table” (7).

“If no set of moral ideas were truer or better than any other, there would be no sense in preferring civilized morality to savage morality, or Christian morality to Nazi morality. In fact, of course, we all do believe that some moralities are better than others” (13).

“In the same way, if the Rule of Decent Behavior meant simply 'whatever each nation happens to approve,' there would be no sense in saying that any one nation had ever been more correct in its approval than any other” (14).

“We do not merely observe men, we are men. In this case we have, so to speak, inside information; we are in the know. And because of that, we know that men find themselves under a moral law, which they did not make, and cannot quite forget even when they try, and which they know they ought to obey” (23).

Lewis, C.S. Mere Christianity. HarperSanFrancisco, HarperCollins Publishers, 2001

Gorgias (No, Not Georgia)

My first tentative reconnoiter into the field of Greek literature after reading Who Killed Homer, was with the playwright Aeschylus. While all went well, I did not learn much, and subsequently, have nothing to report. But though my first foray was unfruitful, the adventure I am currently in the middle of has already yielded a wealth of interesting things. I am, as it were, still on the front lines, in that I have not yet finished exploring Plato's Gorgias. I only have a partial picture of Socrates' dialogue (did the spelling change to dialog recently and I missed it? Spell check isn't happy with me and I'm not happy with it.) with Gorgias and Callicles on the purpose of oratory.

Even though I started with the intent to learn what Plato thought about public speaking because I am enrolled in a public speaking class, my interest has been taken captive by the discussion of good and evil that he creates. Basically, Plato, speaking through Socrates, claims that the evil man who inflicts harm is more miserable than the good man who unjustly receives it. Also, the wrongdoer who escapes harm is more miserable than the wrongdoer brought to justice.

Even if, like Callicles, we disagree with what Plato says about a disciplined and upright life being a happier state to live in than unrestrained immorality, where does the differentiation between good and evil come from? In other words, why does Plato (a pre-christian) even recognize the existence of good and evil, right and wrong? And further, see the two alternatives as the most important choice a person can make?

O.k. I want to read a few more pages of this dialogue (or dialog) before bed.