Philosophy and the Art of Living Aristotle, Spinoza, Hegel Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre

58 Pages·2010·0.34 MB·English

Philosophy and the Art of Living

Osher Life-Long Learning Institute (UC Irvine) 2010

The Masters of Reason and the Masters of Suspicion:

Aristotle, Spinoza, Hegel

Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre

When: Mondays for six weeks: November 1 ,8, 15, 22, 29, and Dec. 6.
Where: Woodbridge Center, 4628 Barranca Pkwy. Irvine CA 92604

NOTES AND QUOTES:

Aristotle: 384 BCE- 322 BCE (62 years):
Reference:
http://www.jcu.edu/philosophy/gensler/ms/arist-00.htm

Theoretical Reason contemplates the nature of Reality.
Practical Reason arranges the best means to accomplish one's ends in life, of which the final end is
happiness.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-ethics/#IntVir
Aristotle distinguishes two kinds of virtue (1103a1-10): those that pertain to the part of the soul that
engages in reasoning (virtues of mind or intellect), and those that pertain to the part of the soul that
cannot itself reason but is nonetheless capable of following reason (ethical virtues, virtues of character).
Intellectual virtues are in turn divided into two sorts: those that pertain to theoretical reasoning, and
those that pertain to practical thinking 1139a3-8). He organizes his material by first studying ethical
virtue in general, then moving to a discussion of particular ethical virtues (temperance, courage, and so
on), and finally completing his survey by considering the intellectual virtues (practical wisdom,
theoretical wisdom, etc.).
Life:
Aristotle was born in northern Greece in 384 B.C. He was raised by a guardian after the death
of his father, Nicomachus, who had been court physician to the king of Macedonia. Aristotle
entered Plato's Academy at age 17. After Plato's death, he supervised the education of the young
Alexander the Great. He started his own school, the Lyceum, at age 49. He fled Athens after the
death of Alexander the Great, fearing an attack from the anti-Macedonians. He died in 322 B.C.,
at age 62.

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_virtue
Aristotle analyzed virtues into moral and intellectual virtues (or dianoetic virtues, from the Greek aretai
dianoetikai). He... identified five intellectual virtues as the five ways the soul arrives at truth. He
grouped them into three classes:
• Theoretical
• Sophia - wisdom.
• Episteme- scientific knowledge, empirical knowledge.
• Nous- mind.
• Practical
• Phronesis- practical wisdom/prudence.
•
• Productive
• Techne-craft knowledge, art, skill.

Intellectual virtues are displayed in
• Euboulia-deliberating well, deliberative excellence; thinking properly about the right end.
• Sunesis- understanding, sagacity, astuteness, consciousness of why something is as it is.
• Gnome-judgment and consideration; allowing us to make equitable or fair decisions.
• Deinotes-cleverness; the ability to carry out actions so as to achieve a goal.

plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-ethics/#IntVir
Happiness
The Greek "eudaimonia," which we translate as "happiness," more precisely means
"excellence" or "living well." Happiness is our highest good.
Happiness is virtuous activity that fulfills our proper function. Such activity is satisfying
and brings pleasure. But our ultimate end isn't pleasure; if it were, we'd be no better than
the beasts. Physical pleasures, indeed, can tempt us with excesses and lead us away from
virtue and happiness.
Reason
The distinct human function that separates us from other beings is reason. Thus our highest
good (happiness) must involve reason.
The harpist's function is to play the harp and to play it well, and the heart's function is to
pump blood and to pump it well. So also our function is to use reason and to use it well. As
we do this, we fulfill the natural end to which we are oriented.
Our happiness consists in the excellent use of reason -- in virtue.
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Virtue
The virtue of a thing is its proper excellence. Our virtue consists in excellent rational
activity. Virtue is a habitual way of acting -- not an emotion or a capacity. There are
intellectual virtues (about thinking) and moral virtues (about character).
Virtue is a mean between excess and deficiency. For example, courage is a mean between
recklessness and cowardice. We judge the mean by perception -- not by mathematical
calculation.
A virtuous act requires that we do the right thing knowingly and willingly, that we act in
character, and that we do the act for its own sake (and not from an ulterior motive or
reward).
Moral Development
Virtue doesn't arise naturally; it requires training and habitual action -- that we keep doing
the right thing with the right motivation. We become what we do; we form our moral
character through our choices and actions. For example, your marriage commitment (a
virtue) can be formed and nourished by daily actions that express your commitment and
love.
A virtue is a habit -- but not one that is mechanical or automatic; rather, it is voluntary and
purposeful. We are responsible for what we do and who we are. We cannot excuse
ourselves from ignorance, weakness, or even addiction.
Practical Wisdom
A person of practical wisdom deliberates well about the proper means to the goal of
happiness. This presumes a good upbringing in virtue, a wide experience of life, and an
intelligent calculation of how to achieve the highest good in the concrete situation.
Socrates thought that virtue consisted in knowledge; once we know virtue, we will be
virtuous. But virtue isn't knowledge, it's an habitual activity. We become virtuous by doing
virtuous acts.
Contemplation
The highest form of happiness is contemplation (philosophical wisdom). This involves
scientific understanding -- the intuitive grasp of eternal first principles combined with
demonstration.
Of all the pleasures in life, contemplation is the most continuous and self-sufficient. It aims
at nothing outside of itself. It realizes a divine element in us. It directs our highest activity
toward the highest objects. Philosophical wisdom combined with a virtuous character is
complete happiness.
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Virtue Ethics: www/drury.edu/ess/reason/Aristotle. Dr. Charles Ess, Druty U
Aristotle observes that each "science" such as mathematics, ethics, politics, psychology, biology,
physics, etc. admits of different degrees of certainty and demonstration. The same degree of certainty
and demonstration is not possible in ethics that is possible in mathematics.
Moral excellence is to become moderate in one's habits, hitting the mean between extremes in feeling,
action and emotion. Aristotle notes that “...to experience fear, courage, desire, anger, pity, and pleasure
at the right times and on the right occasions and toward the right persons and for the right causes and in
the right manner is the mean or the supreme good, which is characteristic of virtue.”
And in another passage:
“By the mean considered relatively to ourselves I understand that which is neither too much
nor too little; but this is not one thing, nor is it the same for everybody. Thus if 10 be too
much and 2 too little we take 6 as a mean in respect of the thing itself; for 6 is as much
greater than 2 as it is less than 10, and this is a mean in arithemtical proportion. But the
mean considered relatively to ourselves must not be ascertained in this way. It does not
follow that if 10 pounds of meat be too much and 2 be too little for a man to eat, a trainer
will order him 6 pounds, as this may itself be too much or too little for the person who is to
take it....the right amount will vary with the individual. This being so, everybody who
understands his business avoids alike excess and deficiency; he seeks and chooses the
mean, not the absolute mean, but the mean considered relatively to ourselves.”
"the good of man is activity of soul [psyche] in accordance with virtue [excellence], or, if
there are more virtues than one, in accordance with the best and most complete virtue."
[A "happy" man is] one who is active in accord with perfect virtue and adequately
furnished with external goods, not for some chance period of time, but for his whole
lifetime. ( - because achieving virtue requires a moderate amount of material foundation)
Our present study is not, like other studies, purely theoretical in intention; for the object of
our inquiry is not to know what virtue is but how to become good, and that is the sole
benefit of it. We must, therefore, consider the right way of performing actions, for it is acts
that determine the character of the resulting moral states.
The virtue or excellence of man will be such a moral state as makes a man good and able to
perform his proper function well.
Finally, consider the following from the last book in the Nichomachean Ethics:
In fact, however, arguments seem to have enough influence to stimulate and encourage the
civilized ones among the young people, and perhaps to make virtue [excellence] take
possession of a well-born character that truly loves what is fine; but they seem unable to
stimulate the many towards being fine and good.
For the many naturally obey fear, not shame; they avoid what is base because of the
penalties, not because it is disgraceful. For since they live by their feelings, they pursue
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their proper pleasures and the sources of them, and avoid the opposed pains, and have not
even a notion of what is fine and truly pleasant, since they have had no taste of it.
What argument could reform people like these? For it is impossible, or not easy, to alter by
argument what has long been absorbed by habit [_ethos_]....
Arguments and teaching surely do not influence everyone, but the soul of the student needs
to have been prepared by habits for enjoying and hating finely, like ground that is to
nourish seed. For someone whose life follows his feelings would not even listen to an
argument turning him away, or comprehend it; and in that state how could he be persuaded
to change?
From: http://tab.faculty.asu.edu/chapter102.html
Aristotle: "Well suppose that the gods are alive and in work, since surely they are not asleep like
Endymion. And if someone is alive, and action is excluded, and production even more, nothing is left
but contemplation. Hence the actuality of the gods that is superior in blessedness is contemplation. The
human actuality most akin to this is the nature of happiness. An indication is that other animals have no
happiness, being completely deprived of contemplation. The whole life of the gods is blessed, and
human life is blessed to the extent that it resembles this sort of actuality, but none of the other animals
is happy because none shares in contemplation at all. Happiness extends just so far as contemplation,
and those to whom contemplation more fully belongs are more truly happy, not accidentally, but
according to contemplation. Contemplation is valuable according to itself. Happiness, therefore, must
be some form of contemplation." (Nichomachean Ethics X.8.1178b18-32.)

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Spinoza: 1632-1677 (44 years)
www.philosophypages.com/ph/spin.htm
Life:
Baruch Spinoza was born to Portuguese Jews living in exile in Holland. Despite an early rabbinical
education, he was expelled from the synagogue at Amsterdam for defending heretical opinions in 1656.
While engaging privately in serious study of medieval Jewish thought, Cartesian philosophy, and the
new science at Rijnburg and the Hague, Spinoza supported himself by grinding optical lenses, an
occupation that probably contributed to the consumption that killed him. Private circulation of his
philosophical treatises soon earned him a significant reputation throughout Europe, but Spinoza so
treasured his intellectual independence that in 1673 he declined the opportunity to teach at Heidelberg,
preferring to continue his endeavors alone.
Spinoza begins by describing what can be known about God. God is infinite substance, consisting of
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infinite attributes, each of which expresses God’s eternal and infinite essence (I, Prop. XI).
God necessarily exists, argues Spinoza, because God’s essence is existence. God’s essence and
existence are the same (I, Prop. XX).
Infinite substance is indivisible (I, Prop. XIII). If infinite substance were divisible, it could either be
divided into two finite parts, which is impossible, or it could be divided into two equally infinite parts,
which is also impossible. Thus, there is only one infinite substance.
Every being has its being in God. Nothing can come into being or exist without God.
In God, intellect is fully actualized. This means that things must necessarily occur in the manner in
which they occur.
Thought and extension are attributes of God.
Spinoza argues that the human mind is a part of the infinite intellect of God (II, Prop. XI, Corollary).
Ideas are true and adequate insofar as they refer to God. Ideas that logically follow from adequate ideas
are also adequate. Ideas are false and inadequate insofar as they do not express the essence of God.
An idea is adequate and perfect insofar as it represents knowledge of the eternal and infinite essence of
God.
For Spinoza, the will cannot be separated from the intellect. There is no such thing as free will.
The human mind may have both adequate and inadequate ideas. The mind is active insofar as it has
adequate ideas, and is passive insofar as it has inadequate ideas. The mind may have more or less
adequate ideas, according to whether it is more or less subject to reason. The mind may have more or
less inadequate ideas, according to whether it is more or less subject to emotion.
Desire may arise from either pleasure or pain. Pleasure is produced by a transition from a lesser to a
greater state of perfection. Pain is produced by a transition from a greater to a lesser state of perfection.
Spinoza claims that the more perfect a thing is, the more active and less passive it is.
Spinoza argues that knowledge of good and evil arises from the awareness of what causes pleasure and
pain. The greatest good of the mind, and its greatest virtue, is to know God (IV, Prop. XXVIII).
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To act with virtue is to act according to reason (IV, Prop. XXXVI). If we act according to reason, then
we desire only what is good. If we act according to reason, then we try to promote what is good not
only for ourselves but for others. Freedom is the ability to act according to reason. Freedom is not the
ability to make free, undetermined choices but the ability to act rationally and to control the emotions.
Servitude is the inability to act rationally or to control the emotions.
Emotions which agree with reason cause pleasure, while emotions which do not agree with reason
cause pain. Inability to control the emotions causes pain.
Pain arises from inadequate ideas, i.e. ideas which do not adequately express the essence of God.
Knowledge of evil is thus inadequate knowledge (IV, Prop. XIV). Pleasure arises from adequate ideas,
i.e. ideas which adequately express the essence of God.
Spinoza argues that to live according to reason is to live freely, and is not to live in servitude to the
emotions. If we act according to reason, then we are guided by love and good-will and not by fear or
hatred.
www.nytimes.com/2006/07/30/opinion/30iht-edgoldstein.2335157.html
Spinoza's life and thought have the power to illuminate the kind of events that at the moment seem so
intractable.
Spinoza argued that no group or religion could rightly claim infallible knowledge of the creator's
partiality to its beliefs and ways.
He spent the rest of his life studying the varieties of religious intolerance. The conclusions he drew are
still of dismaying relevance.
Spinoza's reaction to the religious intolerance he saw around him was to try to think his way out of all
sectarian thinking. He understood the powerful tendency in each of us toward developing a view of the
truth that favors the circumstances into which we happened to have been born. Self-aggrandizement
can be the invisible scaffolding of religion, politics or ideology.
Against this tendency we have no defense but the relentless application of reason. Reason must stand
guard against the self-serving false conclusions that creep into our thinking, inducing us to believe that
we are more cosmically important than we truly are, that we have had bestowed upon us - whether Jew
or Christian or Muslim - a privileged position in the narrative of the world's unfolding. Spinoza's
system is a long argument for a conclusion as radical in our day as it was in his: that to the extent that
we are rational, we each partake in exactly the same identity.
Spinoza's faith in reason as our only hope and redemption is the core of his system, and its
consequences reach out in many directions, including the political. Each of us has been endowed with
reason, and it is our right, as well as our responsibility, to exercise it. Ceding this faculty to others, to
the authorities of either the church or the state, is neither a rational nor an ethical option.
He argued that a government that impedes the development of the sciences subverts the grounds for
state legitimacy, which is to provide us physical safety so that we can realize our full potential. And
this, too, is why he argued against the influence of clerics in government. Statecraft infused with
religion is intrinsically unstable, since it must insist on its version of the truth against all others.
Spinoza's universalist religion, which makes no reference to revelation, but rather to ethical truths that
can be discovered through human reason.

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baruch_Spinoza
Spinoza's philosophy has much in common with Stoicism inasmuch as both philosophies sought to
fulfill a therapeutic role by instructing people how to attain happiness. However, Spinoza differed
sharply from the Stoics in one important respect: he utterly rejected their contention that reason could
defeat emotion. On the contrary, he contended, an emotion can only be displaced or overcome by a
stronger emotion. For him, the crucial distinction was between active and passive emotions, the former
being those that are rationally understood and the latter those that are not. He also held that knowledge
of true causes of passive emotion can transform it to an active emotion, thus anticipating one of the key
ideas of psychoanalysis.
That humans presume themselves to have free will, he argues, is a result of their awareness of appetites
while being unable to understand the reasons why they want and act as they do.

Spinoza quotes:

We shall bear with equal mind all that happens to us contrary to our private advantage so long as we are
conscious that we have done our duty and lack the power to protect ourselves.

Remember that we are all part of universal nature and follow her order. If we have a clear and distinct
understanding of this, we will more readily acquiesce in what befalls us.

The mind feels pleasure when it reflects on its own power and activity.

When the mind conceives things that make it unhappy, it endeavors to remember things that excludes
those things.

The wise man will shrink from talking of men's faults, and will speak sparingly about human infirmity.
He will dwell on human virtue and how it may be perfected.

The intellectual love of God is that very love of God whereby God loves Himself, explained through
the essence of the human mind regarded sub species aeternitatis. The love that God shows man is
identical with the intellectual love of God in man.

Desire is appetite with consciousness thereof.

Everyone desires his fellow-men to live after his own fashion.

Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or deformed, ordered or confused.

Blessedness consists in our knowledge of God as the One Substance. It teach us to value the gifts of
fortune. We should await and endure fortunes' smiles or frowns with an equal mind, seeing that all
things follow from the eternal decree of God by the same necessity that a triangle has three angles that
are equal to two right angles.

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This wisdom teaches us to hate no man, neither despise, to deride, to envy, or to be angry with any. It
tells us to be content with our own and to be helpful to our neighbors, through the guidance of reason.

Bondage is caused by our inability to moderate or check our emotions. For when a man is a prey to his
emotions, he is not his own master, but lies at the mercy of fortune: so much so, that he is often
compelled, while seeing that which is better for him, to follow that which is worse.

Churches: I have often wondered, that people who make boast of their Christian piety, love, joy, peace,
temperance, and charity to all men, should quarrel with such rancorous animosity, and display daily
towards one another such bitter hatred, that this, rather than the virtues they claim, is the readiest
criterion of their faith.

Faith: As to what God may be, whether fire, or spirit, or light, or what not, this, I say, has nothing to do
with faith. The best faith is possessed by him who displays the best fruits of justice and charity.

Anyone who seeks for the true causes of natural phenomena as an intelligent being, and not to gaze at
them like a fool, is set down and denounced as an impious heretic by those, whom the masses adore as
the interpreters of nature and the gods. Such persons know that, with the removal of ignorance, the
wonder which forms their only available means for proving and preserving their authority would vanish
also.

God: In the language of philosophy, it cannot be said that God desires anything of any man, or that
anything is displeasing to Him: all these human qualities have no place in God.

God has no right hand nor left. He is not moved or at rest, nor in a particular place, but that He is
absolutely infinite and contains in Himself all perfections.

He who loves God, cannot endeavor that God should love him in return.
Death: A free man thinks of death least of all things; and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of
life.

The love of God is man's highest happiness and good.

Philosophy: Scripture does not teach philosophy, but merely obedience. Therefore, those who wish to
adapt religion to philosophy must ascribe to the prophets many ideas which they never dreamed of, and
give an extremely force interpretation to their world.

We fear death less in proportion as the mind's clear and distinct knowledge is greater, and,
consequently, in proportion as the mind loves God more.

Desire that springs from reason cannot be excessive.

One man may love what another hates, and does not fear what another man fears. Also, the same
person can be differently affected by the same object at different times.

An emotion can only be controlled or destroyed by another emotion contrary thereto, and with more
power for controlling emotion.
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The primary emotions are pleasure, pain and desire. All emotions arise from these three.

Enjoyment: To make use of what comes our way, and to enjoy it as much as possible (not to the point
of satiety, for that would not be enjoyment) is the part of a wise man.

He who is led by fear and does good in order to escape evil, is not led by reason.

The free man has ever first in his thoughts, that all things follow from the necessity of the Divine naure,
wherefore he strives to remove hatred, anger, derision, pride and similar emotions. Thus he endeavors
to do good and to go on his way rejoicing.

Men are mistaken in thinking they have free will. What they have is consciousness of their own actions
and ignorance of the causes by which they are conditioned.

Good: We do not desire a thing because we deem it good, but deem it good because we desire it.
Everyone judges things according to his particular emotions. Thus a miser thinks that money is best,
and poverty the worst thing, while the ambitious man desires glory and fears nothing so much as public
shame.

Good and Bad have no positive quality in themselves, but are merely modes of thinking, or notions
which we form from the comparison of things one with another. Thus one and the same thing can be
good, bad and indifferent. For instance, music is good for him that is melancholy, bad for him that
mourns; for him that is deaf, it is neither good nor bad.

Harmony: It is impossible that man should not be part of nature.
Human Nature: I have labored carefully, not to mock,lament, or execrate but to understand human
actions. I have looked at passions such as love, hatred, anger, envy, ambition, pity, and other
perturbations of the mind as properties of the mind, as are heat, cold, storm, thunder, etc. are
perturbations of the weather.

Intellectual Perfection is our highest good and happiness, since the intellect is the best part of our
being.

If men were so constituted by nature that they desired nothing but what is designated by true reason,
society would obviously have no need of laws. But human nature is such that everyone seeks his own
interest, and most people in ignorance, out of emotions, desires and irrational passions.

Men who are governed by reason – that is, who seek what is useful to them in accordance with reason,
- desire for themselves nothing, which they do not also desire for the rest of mankind, and,
consequently, are just, faithful, and honorable in their conduct.

A man's true happiness consists only in wisdom, and the knowledge of the truth, not at all in the fact
that he is wiser than others, or that others lack such knowledge: such considerations do not increase his
wisdom or true happiness.

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