ROMAN AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY

GREEK PHILOSOPHY

Many historians regard the birth of science in Western civilization as occurring when the Greeks became the first thinkers to shift the focus of causal explanations from god to nature, or to the environment.

Auguste Comte

·       The nineteenth-century French philosopher Auguste Comte characterized these causal explanations as a progression of intellectual stages.

·        The most primitive level was labeled “theological,” because people suggested that a god was the causal agent responsible for changes in themselves and in nature.

·       Comte viewed the Greek thinkers as a transition between a theological stage and a later stage that focused on nature, or the environment, and the generalization of principles from natural law.

Essentially, all five categories, or orientations, attempted to discover causal explanations of human activity by means of natural first principles, or at least analogies drawn from nature.

Naturalistic Orientation:

The earliest, and perhaps clearest, expression of the naturalistic orientation is found in a group called the Ionian physicists, who lived in the sixth century B.C.

These philosophers taught that life and physical matter are inseparable, so that people are intimately involved in the universe. Therefore, the determining physical principle from which all life flows had to be found in the universe.

Ionian Physicists:

1.Thales:

• Widely recognized as an early sage of ancient Greece because of his introduction of mathematics and astronomy to Greek study.

• According to Thales, water is the first element because it is intrinsic to all life. In reducing all of nature to water, Thales was stressing the unity of nature.

• Matter and life are inseparable because water is the origin of all nature as well as its final form.

• Thales expressed a monism that found the life-giving element water sufficient to explain all forms of nature, regardless of particular manifestations in time and place.

2. Anaximander:

• Suggested that the earth is a cylinder suspended in the centre of the universe with the sun, moon, and stars revolving around it.

• Anaximander argued that it is the “boundless” space of the universe that contains the basic elements of nature.

• This boundless mass develops by its own amorphous forces the varied manifestations of nature.

3. Anaximenes:

§  Speculated that the air around us, which he called pneuma, is this life-giving cause of nature.

All three Ionian physicists represented a naturalistic orientation as they searched for a first causal principle of life and found it in the physical world. Such a strategy was a radical departure from seeking explanations among the gods.

4. Democritus:

§  For Democritus, our knowledge relies on our senses, which in turn receive “atoms” from objects in the world.

§  Thus, the critical explanations of life are found in the atoms composing matter.

§  Moreover, Democritus argued that the quantity of matter is always constant, leading to proposals for both the indestructibility of matter and its conservation.

§  Atoms differ in size, weight, and configuration, but the relationships among atoms are completely governed by natural laws and not left to chance or spontaneity.

§  Humans and animals consist of atoms that are the most sophisticated and mobile.

§  Accordingly, Democritus saw in the materialism, or physical properties, of the world’s atoms the basic explanatory principle of life.

§  The explanations of sensation and percep tion offered by Empedocles and Democritus both emphasized the importance of eidola (emanations).

§  However, for Democritus, sensations and percep tions arise when atoms (not tiny replicas) emanate from the surfaces of objects and enter the body through one of the five sensory systems (not bodily pores) and are transmitted to the brain (not the heart).

§  Upon entering the brain, the emanations sent by an object cause the highly mobile fire atoms to form a copy of them.

§  This match between eidola and atoms in the brain causes perception.

§  Democritus stressed that eidola are not the object itself and that the match between the eidola and the atoms in the brain may not be exact. Therefore, there may be differences between the physical object and the perception of it.

§  Democritus placed thinking in the brain, emotion in the heart, and appetite in the liver.

§  Because he believed that all bodily atoms scattered at death, he also believed that there was no life after death. His was the first completely naturalistic view of the universe, devoid of any supernatural considerations.

5. Heraclitus:

§  He searched for a single unifying principle or substance that could explain the nature of change and permanence in the world.

§  His solution was fire, for both its physical properties and its symbolic value.

§  Heraclitus felt that change is the most obvious fact of nature, and the physical properties of fire cause noticeable changes in other physical objects.

§  Moreover, fire symbolizes the flux in nature. Thus in fire Heraclitus found a unifying substance in nature that serves as a basis for life.

§  Heraclitus believed that all things existed some where between polar opposites—for example, night-day, life-death, winter-summer, up-down, heat-cold, sleeping-waking.

§  Heraclitus’s philosophy clearly described the major problem inherent in various brands of empiricism.

§  That is, the physical world is in a constant state of flux, and even if our sense receptors could accurately detect physical objects and events, we would be aware only of objects and events that change from moment to moment.

§  It is for this reason that empiricists are said to be concerned with the process of becoming rather than with being.

§  Being implies permanence and thus at least the possibility of certain knowledge, whereas a knowledge of empirical events (because they are becoming) can be only probabilistic at best.

6. Parmenides:

§  Taking a view exactly the opposite of Heraclitus’s, Parmenides (born ca. 515 B.C.) believed that all change was an illusion.

§  There is only one reality; it is finite, uniform, motionless, and fixed and can be understood only through reason.

§  Rather, the basic fact of nature is its permanence and immobility, which bring unity and form the basis of life.

§  Thus, for Parmenides, knowledge is attained only through rational thought because sensory experience provides only illusion.

§  Accordingly, it was the unchanging character of matter that comprised the critical element.

The naturalistic orientation viewed the environment as holding the key to the basis of life. Within this orientation, two clear trends are evident.

First, there is an observational trend, represented by the Ionian physicists and Democritus, which proposed specific substances operating in our environment as the basis of life.

Second, there is the view of Heraclitus and Parmenides, who hypothesized about the character of change and then deduced (to opposite conclusions) some implications about matter based on their hypotheses.

Biological Orientation:

Philosophers with a biological orientation emphasized the internal state and physiology of humans as holding the clue to life.

1. Alcmaeon:

§  father of Greek medicine

§  Alcmaeon (perhaps a Pythagorean) equated health with a balance of such qualities as warm and cold, moist and dry, and bitter and sweet. If one or more qualities dominates a person’s system, sickness results.

§  He recognized the importance of the brain and concluded that sensation, perception, memory, thinking, and understanding occurred in the brain.

§  He wrote that the causal determinants of human activity lie within the mechanisms of the body.

§  The body seeks an equilibrium of its mechanisms, and this process explains the dynamics of human activity.

2.Hippocrates:

§  not only raised the level of medical investigation but also developed a code of ethics contained in the Hippocratic oath, followed by physicians to this day.

§  Hippocrates, like Alcmaeon, emphasized the brain in psychological processes, and he approached the problems of medicine systematically, with what could be called a precursor of the scientific

§  Relative to our concerns about psychological issues, Hippocrates contributed a theory of “humors” to account for the basis of human activity.

§  He taught that the body contains four humors: blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm.

§  They associated earth with black bile, air with yellow bile, fire with blood, and water with phlegm. Individuals for whom the humors are properly balanced are healthy; an imbalance among the humors results in illness.

§  The dominance of any of the humors results in characteristic indisposition.

§  Interestingly, this theory outlasted Greek antiquity, even up to the nineteenth century, and our language still contains the phrase “bad humor” to describe someone who is not feeling well.

§  Nevertheless, Hippocrates should be remembered for his positive efforts to free medicine from the superstitions that have historically plagued it.

§  About 500 years after Hippocrates, Galen associated the four humors of the body with four temperaments (the term temperament is derived from the Latin verb temperare meaning “to mix”).

§  If one of the humors dominates, the person displays the characteristics associated with that humor.

§  Galen’s extension of Hippocrates’ views created a rudimentary theory of personality, as well as a way of diagnosing illness.

§  In fact, within the realm of personality theory, Galen’s ideas continue to be influential.

3.Empedocles:

§  Empedocles suggested four elements from which everything in the world is made: earth, fire, air, and water

§  He postulated that change develops from the conflicting forces of love and strife—that is, between attraction and repulsion.

§  Love is a force that attracts and mixes the elements, and strife is a force that separates the elements.

§  Operating together, these two forces create an unending cosmic cycle consisting of four recurring phases.

§  In phase one, love dominates and there is a perfect mixture of the four elements (“one from many”).

§  In phase two, strife disrupts the perfect mixture by progressively separating them.

§  In phase three, strife has managed to completely separate the elements (“many from one”).

§  In phase four, love again becomes increasingly dominant, and the elements are gradually recombined.

§  As this cycle recurs, new worlds come into existence and then are destroyed.

§  Humans also possess the forces of love and strife. When love dominates, we have an urge to establish a union with the world and with other people; when strife dominates, we seek separation.

§  Empedocles was also perhaps the first philosopher to offer a theory of perception. He assumed that each of the four elements was found in the blood.

§  Objects in the outside environment throw off tiny copies of themselves called emanations, or eidola (singular, eidolon), which enter the blood through the pores of the body.

§  Because like attracts like, the eidola will combine with elements that are like them. The fusion of external elements with internal elements results in perception.

§  Empedocles believed that the matching of eidola with their corresponding internal elements occurred in the heart. In sum, his view was that we perceive objects by internalizing copies of them.

The biological orientation separated the uniqueness of human activity from the rest of natural relationships, in contrast to the naturalistic orientation, which emphasized human activity as a manifestation of the natural order.

Mathematical Orientation:

The mathematical orientation attempted to extrapolate from the material level to a general principle for all life. This orientation used the ordered beauty of mathematical structures to assert the unity of the world.

1.Pythagoras:

§  Pythagoras postulated that the basic explanation (the logos; as in logical structure) for everything in the universe was found in numbers and in numerical relationships (ratios; as in rationality).

§  The Pythagoreans thought illness resulted from a disruption of the body’s equilibrium, and medical treatment consisted of attempts to restore that equilibrium.

§  Pythagoras took these and several other observations and created a school of thought that glorified mathematics.

§  According to the Pythagoreans, numbers and numerical relationships, although abstract, were nonetheless real and exerted an influence on the empirical world.

§  The world of numbers existed independently of the empirical world and could be known in its pure form only through reason. When conceptualized, the Pythagorean theorem is exactly correct and applies to all right-angle triangles that ever were or ever will be.

§  As long as the theorem is applied rationally to ideal triangles, it is flaw less; when applied to actual triangles, however, the results are not absolutely correct because there are no perfect triangles in the natural world.

§  In fact, according to the Pythagoreans, nothing is perfect in the natural world.

§  Perfection is found only in the abstract mathematical world that lies beyond the senses and, therefore, can be embraced only by reason.

§  The Pythagoreans assumed a dualistic universe: one part abstract, permanent, and intellectually knowable (like that proposed by Parmenides) and the other empirical, changing, and known through the senses (like that proposed by Heraclitus).

§  Sensory experience, then, cannot provide real knowledge.

§  In fact, such experience interferes with the attainment of real knowledge and should be avoided.

§  Pythagoras also postulated a dualism in humans, claiming that, in addition to the flesh of the body, we have reasoning powers that allow us to attain an understanding of the abstract world.

§  the notion of transmigration fostered in the Pythagoreans a spirit of kinship with all living things as they viewed the body as a prison from which the soul should escape.

§  Furthermore, reasoning is a function of the soul, which the Pythagoreans believed to be immortal. Pythagoras’ philosophy provides one of the first clear cut mind-body dualisms in the history of Western thought.

2. Hippocrates the mathematician

§  He wrote the first known book on geometry in 440 B.C., and Euclid was his most famous student.

§  He is remembered as a systematist who reinforced the Pythagorean faith in the unity of numbers as the basis of life.

The mathematical orientation tended to downgrade that world, and our knowledge of it, as untrustworthy. In its place it offered a different realm of mathematical relations, one we cannot know through our senses. However, by using our ability to reason we can arrive at some knowledge of this real but elusive world.

Eclectic Orientation

HUMANISTIC ORENTATION:

Definition: A humanistic approach places humanity on a higher plane than other life and emphasizes those characteristics that are considered to make humans unique, such as reason, language, and self-reflection.

Philosophers:

1.   Anaxagoras –

·       He argued that the world was initially unordered chaos.

·       Then a world-mind, or nous, brought order to the chaos and differentiated the world into four basic elements—fire, water, air, and earth.

·       Like his Ionian predecessors, Anaxagoras taught that the world gradually evolved from these four elements.

·       Anaxagoras attributed rationality and intentionality to this systematic agent of progress. Moreover, this nous permeates all life and forms a common basis that defines life itself.

·       Anaxagoras attributed individual differences among people to biologically based variability. The essential nature of all people is commonly determined by the nous

2.   SOPHISTS:

·       Believed that anything is true if you can convince someone that it is true. Nothing, they said, is inherently right or wrong, but believing makes it so. These philosophers were called Sophists.

·       Sophists were professional teachers of rhetoric and logic who believed that truth was relative, and therefore no single “Truth” was thought to exist.

1.           Protagoras: The best known Sophist, summarized the position with his famous statement: “Man is the measure of all things—of the things that are, that they are, and of things that are not, that they are not”

·       First, truth depends on the perceiver rather than on physical reality.

·       Second, because perceptions vary with the previous experiences of the perceiver, they will vary from person to person.

·       Third, what is considered to be true will be, in part, culturally determined because one’s culture influences one’s experiences.

·       Fourth, to understand why a person believes as he or she does, one must understand the person.

·       Protagoras said, “Man never steps into the same river once,” because the river is different for each individual to begin with. Protagoras emphasized the importance of rhetorical skills in getting one’s point of view considered and, perhaps, to prevail.

3.   SOCRATES:

·       He took the injunction “Know thyself,” inscribed on the portals of the temple of Apollo at Delphi, to indicate the importance of knowing the contents of one’s own mind or soul.

·       He held the conviction that a general conception of life is necessary. Moreover, it is the essential uniqueness of the individual that provides the key to understanding life.

·       Using what we now call the Socratic method, he first defined a critical issue at a general level, then ceaselessly questioned the adequacy of the definition, and finally moved logically to a clearer statement of the question to approach the resolution.

·       He turned toward the individual, focusing at first on the psychological processes of sensation and perception.

·       This led him to the conclusion that the acquisition of knowledge is the ultimate good.

Opposition to Sophism:

·       In opposition to the Sophists, he taught that without transcendent principles, morals would be debased and human progress would cease.  He disagreed with the Sophists’ contention that no truth exists beyond personal opinion.

·       Contrary to the Sophists, who believed truth to be personal and no communicable, Socrates believed truth could be general and shared. Still, the essences that Socrates sought were verbal definitions, nothing more.

Essence:

·       What Socrates sought was the essence of such things as beauty, justice, and truth. The essence of something is its basic nature, its identifying, enduring characteristics.

·       To truly know something, according to Socrates, is to understand its essence. It is not enough to identify something as beautiful; one must know why it is beautiful.

·       One must know what all instances of beauty have in common; one must know the essence of beauty.

·       In this way, he sought to discover general concepts by examining specific examples. It was thought that these concepts transcend their individual manifestations and are, therefore, stable and knowable.

From Socrates we have a focus on people and their place in nature, a view that was articulated by his students and successors.

For Socrates and his successors, the study of human activity, whether through psychology or philosophy, must focus ultimately on ethics and politics. Moreover, logic must provide the method by which we gain knowledge of ourselves. Knowledge itself is inherently good because it leads to happiness, and ignorance is evil. Thus proper knowledge leads the individual to the proper action.

Although Socrates sought the essence of various concepts, he did not believe that essences had abstract existence. For him, an essence was a universally acceptable definition of a concept.

PLATO (SOCRATES’ STUDENT):

·       Plato asserted a psychophysical, mind–body dualism.

·       Human activity is composed of two entities: mind and body. Only the rational soul, or mind, can contemplate true knowledge, whereas the lesser part of the body is limited to the imperfect contributions of sensations.

·       The study of mathematics was central to Plato’s teachings. Indeed, the portal of his academy contained the admonition, “Let no one without geometry enter here.

·       He viewed the interaction between people and their environment as a critical factor in understanding human activity. According to Plato, we deal with the environment through our senses, and this body-dependent type of knowledge forms one aspect of his mind–body dualism.

·       Thus he rejected the Sophists’ doctrine of the value of sense knowledge, arguing instead that the influx of sensory data gives us a percept, which he defined as a unit of information about the environment and subject to much flux.

·       Percepts are inadequate in themselves for reliable and complete knowledge, but they give rise to “ideas.” Ideas are stable generalizations based on percepts but not reliant on them.

The Theory of Forms or Ideas:

·       The Pythagorean theorem is absolutely true when applied to ideal triangles but is never completely true when applied to a triangle that exists in the natural world (for example, one that is drawn on paper).

·       This discrepancy exists because, in the natural world, the lines making up the right angle will never be exact. Plato took an additional step. According to his theory of forms, everything in the natural world is a manifestation of a pure form (idea) that exists in the abstract.

·       Thus, chairs, chariots, cats, and Corinthians are inferior manifestations of pure forms. For example, the thousands of cats that one encounters are but inferior copies of an abstract idea or form of “catness” that exists in pure form in the abstract.

·       Plato replaced the essence that Socrates sought with the concept of form as the aspect of reality that was permanent and, therefore, knowable.

·       That is, Socrates accepted the fact that a thorough definition specified an object’s or a concept’s essence, whereas for Plato an object’s or a concept’s essence was equated with its form.

·       For Plato, essence (form) had an existence separate from its individual manifestations. Socrates and Plato did agree, however, that knowledge could be attained only through reason.

Analogy of the Divided Line:

·       According to Plato, the only true knowledge involves grasping the forms themselves, and this can be done only by rational thought. Plato summarized this viewpoint with his famous analogy of the divided line.

·       Imagining is seen as the lowest form of understanding because it is based on images—for example, a portrait of a person is once removed from the person.

·       Beliefs, however, do not constitute knowledge. Mathematical knowledge is still not the highest type because such knowledge is applied to the solution of practical (empirical) problems, and many of its relationships exist only by definition.

·       The highest form of thinking involves embracing the forms themselves, and true intelligence or knowledge results only from an understanding of the abstract forms.

·       The “good” or the “form of the good” constitutes the highest form of wisdom because it encompasses all other forms and shows their interrelatedness. The form of the good illuminates all other forms and makes them knowable. It is the highest truth. Later, in Christian theology, the form of the good is equated with God.

·       Plato’s contrast between sensory knowledge and rational knowledge reconciled the opposing conclusions of the naturalists Heraclitus and Parmenides regarding change in the world.

The Allegory of the Cave:

·       The prisoners were to escape his bondage and leave the cave. Turning toward the fire would cause his eyes to ache, and he might decide to return to his world of shadows. If not, he would eventually adjust to the flames and see the individuals and objects of which he had previously seen only shadows.

·       This represents an understanding of empirical events in the divided line. The fire is like the sun, which illuminates those events. Plato then asks us to suppose that the prisoner continues his escape and leaves the cave.

·       Once in the “upper world,” the prisoner would be blinded by true reality. Only after a period of adjustment could he see things in this world and recognize that they were more real than the shadows that he had experienced in the cave.

·       Finally, Plato asks us to imagine what might happen to the escaped prisoner if he went back into the cave to enlighten his fellow prisoners.

·       Still partially blinded by such an illuminating experience, the prisoner would find it difficult to readjust to the previous life of shadows. He would make mistakes in describing the shadows and in predicting which objects would follow which. This would be evidence enough for his fellow prisoners that no good could come from leaving the world of shadows.

·       The bound prisoners represent humans who confuse the shadowy world of sense experience with reality. The prisoner who escapes represents the individual whose actions are governed by rea son instead of sensory impressions. The escaped prisoner sees the real objects (forms) responsible for the shadows and objects in the cave (sensory information) and thus embraces true knowledge.

The Reminiscence Theory of Knowledge:

How does one come to know the forms if they cannot be known through sensory experience?

·       Plato’s answer was influenced by the Pythagorean notion of the immor tality of the soul. According to the Pythagoreans, the highest form of thought was reason, which was a function of the immortal soul.

·       Plato expanded this idea and said that before the soul was implanted in the body, it dwelled in pure and complete knowl edge; that is, it dwelled in the realm of the forms.

·       After the soul entered the body, sensory informa tion began to contaminate this knowledge. The only way to arrive at true knowledge is to ignore sensory experience and focus one’s thoughts on the contents of the mind.

·       According to Plato’s reminiscence theory of knowledge, all knowledge is innate and can be attained only through introspection, which is the searching of one’s inner understanding.

·       Therefore, for Plato, all knowl edge comes from reminiscence, from remembering the experiences the soul had before entering the body.

Plato’s theory with respect modern approaches:

·       Plato was a nativist as well as a rationalist because he stressed mental operations as a means of arriving at the truth (rationalism), and that the truth ultimately arrived at was inborn (nativ ism). He was also an idealist because he believed that ultimate reality consisted of ideas or forms.

Nature of the Soul:

·       The agent that forms and stores ideas is the soul. Plato described the soul as a spiritual substance consisting of reason and appetite.

·       Plato distinguished among a hierarchy of types of souls: nutritive, sensitive, and rational.

·       According to Plato, the body has appetites (needs such as hunger, thirst, and sex) that must be met and that play a major motivational role in everyday life. Humans also have varied emotions such as fear, love, and rage.

·       How ever, if true knowledge is to be attained, the person must suppress the needs of the body and concentrate on rational pursuits, such as introspection.

·       But, because bodily needs do not go away, the person must spend considerable energy keeping them under control. It is the job of the rational component of the soul to postpone or inhibit immediate gratifications when it is to a person’s long-term benefit to do so.

·       The person whose rational soul dominates is not impulsive. His or her life is governed by moral principles and future goals, not the immediate satisfaction of biological or emotional needs.

·       The supreme goal in life, according to Plato, should be to free the soul as much as possible from the adulterations of the flesh. In this he agreed with the Pythagoreans.

·       In his Republic, he discussed a utopian society in which the three types of individuals would have special functions.

Those in whom the appetitive aspect dominated would be workers and slaves, those in whom courage (emotion) dominated would be soldiers, and those in whom reason dominated would be philosopher-kings.

Three types of souls: 1. Appetitive (Hunger) – For labourers

                               2. Courageous Soul (Emotional) – Warriors

                               3.  Rational Soul- Kings

Plato’s contribution to Psychology:

·       Plato was a nativist not only where knowledge was concerned but also where character or intelligence was concerned. He felt that education was of limited value for children of low aptitude.

·       With his discussion of the three character types, Plato created a rudimentary theory of personality.

·       The good life, according to Plato, is the appropriate mixture of reason and pleasure, and the supreme good is derived from pure knowledge of eternal forms of universal laws.

·       Plato’s contrast between sensory knowledge and rational knowledge reconciled the opposing conclusions of the naturalists Heraclitus and Parmenides regarding change in the world.

·       Plato’s view of sense knowledge accommodates Heraclitus’ position on flux, whereas Parmenides’ assertion about changeless unity also found support in Plato’s notion of rational knowledge.

·       Several important implications for psychology may be drawn from Plato’s description of soul and body.

·       First, he relegated bodily functions to the negative state of unreliability and base functions. In this sense, the body is like a prison that interferes with the higher, more truly human functions of the soul.

·       Second, Plato continued the tradition of Socrates with his view of the soul as containing all activities that separate humans from the rest of nature.

·       Plato distinguished among a hierarchy of types of souls: nutritive, sensitive, and rational. At its highest level the processes of the human soul permit the formation of ideas in the intellect, leading to rational thought. Thus, the soul provides the order, symmetry, and beauty of human existence.

·       Plato’s conception of human beings presents a clear statement of mind–body dualism. At a physical level, there is motion in the world, eliciting sensations.

·       Then, at an intellectual level, there is the formation of ideas that parallel, but go beyond, physical motion and allow abstractions from nature. Ideas do not rely on the physical level, and they become intellectually autonomous.

ARISTOTLE:

In 343 B.C., Aristotle returned to Macedon and tutored the son of King Philip II, the future Alexander the Great, for about four years. After a few more journeys, Aristotle returned to Athens where, at the age of 48, he took over the Lyceum, a famed public school.

He also began his book De Anima (On the Soul ) with what is considered to be the first history of psychology.

Aristotle’s was more in the Hippocratic, biological tradition.

The Basic Difference between Plato and Aristotle:

·       For Plato, essences corresponded to the forms that existed independently of nature and that could be arrived at only by ignoring sensory experience and turning one’s thoughts inward.

·       For Aristotle, essences existed but could best become known by studying nature.

·       Aristotle embraced both rationalism and empiricism. He believed that the mind must be employed before knowledge can be attained (rationalism) but that the object of rational thought is the information furnished by the senses (empiricism).

Aristotle’s contribution:

The scope of Aristotle’s treatises may be appreciated by categorizing his books under six general headings. The actual names of the books are those commonly titled in collected works or anthologies of Aristotle’s writings:

1. Logic: Categories, Interpretation, Prior Analytics, Posterior Analytics, Topics, Sophist Reasonings

2. Science

a. Natural Science: Physics, Mechanics, Meteorology, On the Heavens

b. Biology: History of Animals, Parts of Animals, Locomotion of Animals, Reproduction of Animals

c. Psychology: De Anima (On the Soul), Little Essays on Nature

3. Metaphysics

4. Esthetics: Rhetoric, Poetics

5. Ethics: Nicomachean Ethics, Eudemian Ethics

6. Politics: Politics, The Constitution of Athens

History of psychology:

·       The core of Aristotle’s methodological approach is found in his discourses on logic, which attempted to analyze the thought inherent in language.

·       Aristotle’s use of logic consisted of defining an object, constructing a proposition about the object, and then testing the proposition by an act of reasoning called a syllogism.

·       The two processes in logic are deductions and inductions.

·       Deductions begin with a general proposition and proceed to a particular truth; inductions start with a particular and conclude with a general statement.

·       Aristotle’s use of logic provided a systematic, common structure to his goal of accumulating all knowledge, and logic has provided an essential criterion for valid methodologies in science ever since.

·       Specifically, the essential procedure in empirical science involves both deductive and inductive elements.

·       The process of sampling a particular group or individual that is representative of a population involves a deduction from general characteristics of the population to specific expressions of those characteristics in individual or group samples.

·       After describing samples, the process of inferring the descriptions back to the population from which the samples were drawn constitutes an inductive process.

·       Finally, generalizing the conclusions about populations to all members of the population again involves deduction.

·       Aristotle’s specification of the rules of deduction and induction remains the guideline for strategies of empirical science.

·       Aristotle had a wide-ranging appreciation of the natural world.

·       His Physics defined the science of nature, and he provided an intricate system for cataloguing and categorizing the physical world.

·       In so doing, he established general principles that govern and characterize the animate and inanimate parts of our environment. The structure of botanical and zoological classifications into genus and species have essentially been retained in the form taught by Aristotle.

Empirical nature of knowledge:

·       For Plato, all knowledge exists independently of nature; but for Aristotle, nature and knowledge are inseparable.

·       In Aristotle’s view, therefore, the body is not a hindrance in the search for knowledge, as it is for Plato and the Pythagoreans.

·       Also, Aristotle disagreed with Plato on the importance of mathematics. For Aristotle, logical analysis (such as the syllogism) is a powerful tool, but often his emphasis was instead on the careful examination of nature by observation and classification.

·       In Aristotle’s Lyceum, he made an incredibly large number of observations of physical and biological phenomena, all of which he then categorized.

·       Through this method of observation, definition, and classification, Aristotle compiled what has been called an encyclopedia of nature.

·       He was chiefly interested in studying the things in the empirical world and learning their functions.

·       Because Aristotle sought to explain several psychological phenomena in biological terms, we recognize him as one of the first physiological psychologists (D. N. Robinson, 1986).

To know any thing, according to Aristotle, we must understand four aspects of it. That is, everything in nature follows from these four causes:

■ Material cause is the kind of matter of which a thing is made. For example, a statue is made of marble

■ Formal cause is the particular form, or pattern, of a thing. For example, a given piece of marble may be in the form of Aphrodite.

■ Efficient cause is the force that transforms the material thing into a certain form—for example, the energy of a sculptor.

■ Final cause is the purpose for which a thing exists. In the case of a statue of Aphrodite, the purpose may be to arouse pleasure in those who view it. The final cause is that for the sake of which something exists.

Aristotle’s philosophy exemplifies teleology because, for him, everything in nature exists for a purpose.

By purpose, however, Aristotle did not mean conscious intention. Rather, he meant that everything in nature has a function built into it. This built-in purpose, or function, is called entelechy.

Entelechy keeps an object moving or developing in its prescribed direction until its full potential is reached.

Aristotle investigated the nature of being to find explanations of reality. He taught that all beings have two basic entities: primary matter and substantial form.

The former is the basic material that composes all objects in the world; it is the essence of all things. The latter gives primary matter its existence.

The direction of development is determined by the form or structure of each

·       The final cause of living things is part of their nature; it exists as a potentiality from the organism’s very inception.

·       Nature is characterized by the change and motion that occurs as objects are slowly transformed from their potentialities to their actualities—that is, as objects move toward their final causes or purposes, such as when an acorn becomes an oak tree.

·       Aristotle also saw the final cause, or purpose, of something as its essence.

The Hierarchy of Souls:

• In addition to explaining the physical world, Aristotle’s metaphysical teachings construct a picture of the nonphysical, spiritual part of the universe—the soul.

• Aristotle’s treatise on the soul, De Anima, contains the major pronouncements of his psychology, which defined the subject matter of psychology until the Renaissance study of science.

• Aristotle postulated a dualism of body and soul. The body receives information at a primitive sensory level through touch, taste, smell, hearing, and vision. The body gives existence to the essence of each person—the soul.

• According to Aristotle, there are three types of souls, and a living thing’s potential (purpose) is determined by what type of a soul it possesses.

• A vegetative (or nutritive) soul is possessed by plants. It allows only growth, the assimilation of food, and reproduction.

• A sensitive soul is possessed by animals but not plants. In addition to the vegetative functions, organisms that possess a sensitive soul sense and respond to the environment, experience pleasure and pain, and have a memory.

• A rational soul is possessed only by humans. It provides all the functions of the other two souls but also allows thinking or rational thought.

Sensation and Reason:

• Aristotle said that the senses provide information about the environment: sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell.

• Unlike earlier philosophers (such as Empedocles and Democritus), Aristotle did not believe objects sent off tiny copies of themselves (eidola). Rather, he thought that perception was explained by the motion of objects that stimulate one of the senses.

• The movement of environmental objects creates movements through different media, and each of the senses is maximally sensitive to movements in a certain medium.

• For example, seeing results from the movement of light caused by an object in relation to the sensory abilities of the eye. In this way, Aristotle explained how we could actually sense environmental objects without those objects sending off physical copies of themselves.

• Unlike Plato, Aristotle believed we could generally trust our senses to yield an accurate representation of the environment

Common Sense and Reason:

• Aristotle postulated common sense as the mechanism that coordinated the information from all the senses.

• The common sense, like all other mental functions, was assumed to be located in the heart. The job of common sense is to integrate and synthesize sensory experience, thereby making it more meaningful.

• However, sensory information, even after synthesized by common sense, could provide information only about particular instances of things.

He, therefore, delineated levels of knowing or understanding much like Plato’s divided line:

• Active reason: The abstraction of principles, or essences, from synthesized experience

• Passive reason: Utilization of synthesized experience

• Common sense: Synthesized experience

• Sensory information: Isolated experience

Example: To see how these levels of understanding relate, consider how we experience electricity through the various senses: sight (seeing an electrical dis charge), pain (being shocked), and hearing (hearing the electrical discharge). These experiences correspond to the level of sense reception. The common sense would indicate that all these experiences had a common source—electricity. Passive reason would suggest how electricity could be used in a variety of practical ways, whereas active reason would seek the general laws governing electricity and an understanding of its essence.

• The active reason part of the soul provides humans with their highest purpose. That is, it provides their entelechy. The ultimate goal of humans is to engage in active reason.

• Aristotle also believed that acting in accordance with one’s nature causes pleasure and that acting otherwise brings pain.

• In the case of humans, engaging in active reason is the source of greatest pleasure. On this matter, Aristotle is essentially in agreement with Socrates and Plato.

• Also, because Aristotle postulated an inner potential in humans that they may or may not reach, his theory represents psychology’s first self-actualization theory.

• The self-actualization theories of Jung, Maslow, and Rogers all reflect Aristotle’s thoughts on the human entelechy. With his concept of active reason, Aristotle inserted a more metaphysical component into what was otherwise mostly a naturalistic psychology.

Aristotle considered it a mechanism for pure thought and believed it to be identical for all humans; it did not retain the moral character of its prior possessor, and there was no union or reunion with God. The active reason part of the soul went neither to heaven nor to hell.

• Aristotle justified a physiological psychology. Moreover, he viewed ideas as formed through a mechanism of association.

• Specifically, sensations elicit motion in the soul, and motion grows in strength with increasing repetition.

• Accordingly, reliable repetitions of sensations establish internal patterns of events, and memory is the recall of series of these patterns.

• Aristotle distinguished between memory and recollection in a manner that parallels the contemporary distinction between short- and long-term memory. He also related the properties of physical events to the structure of human knowing by postulating 10 categories that allow their classification, comparison, location, and judgment.

• Aristotle’s 10 categories are basically derived from the rational powers of the soul to classify our knowledge of ourselves and the environment. The categories may be summarized briefly as follows:

1. Substance is the universal category that essentially distinguishes an object to be what it is—for example, a man, woman, cat, flower, chemical, mineral.

2. Quantity is the category of order of the parts of a substance and may be discrete or continuous. Discrete quantities are numerical, such as 5, 20, or 40; continuous quantities may be parts of a surface or a solid, such as line, square or circle.

3. Quality is an important psychological category because it portrays the abilities or functions of a substance. Aristotle discussed habit and disposition as qualities of the mind. A habit is a firmly established mental disposition that may be positive—such as justice, virtue, or scientific knowledge—or negative—such as erroneous knowledge or the vice of dishonesty. Quality in the human sub stance also refers to the capacity to operate or function—such as thinking, willing, or hearing—and may also describe an incapacity—such as mental retardation, poor vision, or indecision. In addition, Aristotle used the category of quality for sense qualities to describe colors, flavors, odors, and sounds.

Finally, he referred to the qualities of figure or shape, which may have degrees of completion or perfection.

4. Relation is the category that gives the reference of one thing to another—

motherhood, superiority, equality, or greatness, for example.

5. Activity is the category of action coming from one agent or substance to

another—running, jumping, or fighting, for example.

6. Passivity is the category of receiving action from something else or being

acted on, such as being hit, being kicked, or receiving warmth.

7. When is a category that places a substance in time—now, last week, or in the twenty-second century.

8. Where is a reference to place—in school, in the room, here or there.

9. Position refers to the assumption of a specific posture, such as sitting,

sprawled out, or standing.

10. Dress is a uniquely human category because it refers to attire or garb, such as wearing a suit, wearing makeup, or being armed.

Aristotle’s 10 categories are listed to illustrate the detail of his comprehensive

approach.

The use of the categories is a psychological process, and Aristotle taught that the powers of the rational soul to know and to understand constitute the highest level of existence.

ROMAN PHILOSOPHY

GLORY OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE:

• Rome existed as a republic for 500 years under a constitution that vested authority in a senate of wise men.

• The republic survived wars and internal dissent until the rise of Julius Caesar (100–44 B.C.).

•  The republic ended with Caesar and his successors and was replaced by the empire. At the height of its influence, the Roman Empire covered the entire Western world, from the Near East to the British Isles.

• The Roman civilization absorbed the cultural influences of the ancient societies of Mesopotamia,Egypt, Israel, and Greece.

• Moreover, the Romans assimilated new peoples into the mainstream of Western civilization. From the East, the Armenians and Assyrians were brought under Roman rule; in the West, the Romans conquered vast areas of North Africa, Spain, France, and Britain (Map 1).

• Along the frontiers of the empire,Roman culture touched German, Slavic, Nordic, and Celtic tribes. From the time of Augustus (63 B.C.–A.D. 14) until the barbarians began sacking the Western Empire around the year 400, the entire Mediterranean world enjoyed relative peace and orderly administration under the Pax Romana.

• During the period of their ascendancy, the Romans achieved successful rule by effective government. Through a system of laws and civil administration , the Romans were able to develop commerce and spread a common language and culture over diverse populations.

• As administrators and builders, the Romans did not share the love of natural science that formed the basis of the philosophical systems of their Greek forebears.

• The Romans valued application and use over abstract studies. For example, the Romans did not dramatically advance the study of pure mathematics, but they used mathematical relationships in their architecture when they built the aqueducts.

•  They used the abacus for calculations and teaching mathematics, and devised an accounting of time that produced the Julian calendar, which was universally accepted until Pope Gregory XIII introduced an improved version in 1582.

CONTRIBUTIONS OF PHILOSOPHERS:

1. Lucretius:

proposed a theory of natural order that recognized a hierarchy in nature from lower organisms to comparatively sophisticated mammals and human beings.

2. Varro:

developed an early version of an encyclopedia , dividing all knowledge into nine disciplinary studies: grammar, logical argumentation (or dialectics), rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, music, medicine, and architecture.

3. Polybius: (historian of Greek origin)

attempted a systematic description of the geography of the known world.

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ROMAN AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY:

• The Greek emphasis on the unity of knowledge had produced the universal philosophers.

• In contrast, the Roman appreciation of technical knowledge and detailed applications required specialists.

• Even the great teaching and scholarly centers of Alexandria agreed that human knowledge is best examined under three separate departments: science, ethics, and religion.

ROMAN PHILOSOPHY

The Stoic and Epicurean philosophies of Rome contributed to the development of psychology in ways that paralleled the fate of the natural sciences in Rome.

They did not follow the Greek attempts to devise a comprehensive system of human knowledge, for which the role of psychology was central. Rather, the Roman philosophies were specialized and limited to rather general attitudes toward life.

The psychological implications of these views, in turn, were limited to guidelines of deportment and moral values.

Likewise, the revival of Plato’s teachings known as Neoplatonism enjoyed major influence in Roman intellectual spheres just as Christianity was expanding to include significant numbers of followers within the empire.

Stoicism:

• The Stoic period of Rome (roughly 500–200 B.C.) was characterized by a system of beliefs contained in the religion of ancient Rome, which greatly affected the moral and social values of Romans.

• The Stoics derived their views from the teachings of the Greek philosopher Zeno (ca. 336–264 B.C.), who believed in two basic types of matter—passive and active; that is, matter that is acted upon and matter that acts.

• The human soul’s ability to act through intellectual capacities leads to the conclusion that human reason is intimately bound up in the universe of matter.

• Human freedom was simply described as the capability of cooperating with the causality of the universe.

• In the Roman Empire, Stoicism won out over Epicureanism, because Stoicism was compatible with the Roman emphasis on law and order.

• This latter view of freedom held the key to Stoic belief. It is the universe that determines life.

• Fate, derived from the laws of nature or whims of the gods, was the critical thesis of Stoicism. The Romans developed an elaborate religion to accommodate and cooperate with fate.

• Thus, in retreating from Aristotle’s notion of the soul, the Stoics shifted the emphasis from inner determinism to universal determinism governed by the forces of fate. Within this perspective humans were once again viewed as a part of the environmental order.

• Stoicism led to a personal resignation of the individual to the dictates of fate.

• Stoicism as a philosophy accepted the view that the individual is a reactive, not an active, organism.

• This theme of contrasting active and passive assumptions about the essential nature of human existence recurs consistently throughout the development of psychology.

• The Stoic solution left the person as part of the environment and subject to the governing pressures of environmental determinants.

Epicureanism:

• In dramatic contrast to the conservative Stoics, Roman followers of the Greek philosopher Epicurus held the sole principle that the end or goal of life is happiness.

• This value was reflected in the festivals and games of imperial Rome as well as in the religion that eventually asserted the deification of the emperor.

• The Epicureans denied the spiritual and immortal soul of the Stoics, suggesting instead that the soul is a material part of the body.

• The soul has knowledgeable functions of sensation and anticipation and an activity function of passion. However, the soul operates through the mechanical physiology of the body.

• The senses assumed a critical importance for Epicurean psychology, as thought processes are established through atoms of the environment striking the atoms of the soul.

• The concepts of reason and freedom, although acknowledged, exist only as individual expressions not connected to any universal, metaphysical principles.

• Rather, the guiding determination of human activity is the seeking of pleasure and avoidance of pain. Thus, we can see some similarities between the Roman Epicureans and Greek Sophists.

• The Epicureans reduced the concept of the soul to an emphasis on sensation. Moreover, this explanation of life affirmed the view that the mechanisms of bodily functions were central to understanding life.

• The social and moral implications of this view are a rather mundane, self-seeking direction of individual behavior.

• Both Stoicism and Epicureanism remained influential after the zenith of their respective teachings.

Neoplatonism:

• The last great pagan philosopher, Plotinus, was of Egyptian origin but spent most of his life in Rome, where he revived interest in the classic Greek philosophers, especially Plato.

• Plotinus argued that matter exists only as a formless potential to acquire form.

• Plotinus arranged all things into a hierarchy, at the top of which was the One, or God.

• The One was supreme and unknowable.

• Next in the hierarchy was the Spirit, which was the image of the One. It was the Spirit that was part of every human soul, and it was by reflecting on it that we could come-close to knowing the One.

• The third and lowest member of the hierarchy was the Soul. Although the Soul was inferior to the One and to the Spirit, it was the cause of all things that existed in the physical world.

•  From the One emanated the Spirit, and from the Spirit emanated the Soul, and from the Soul emanated nature.

• Every form that matter assumes is made possible by the energy and direction of the soul.

• Nature itself is the total energy and universal soul, articulated into varying forms of life.

• Every form of life has a soul that determines the direction of growth.

• In human beings the vital principle within the soul molds individual progress toward maturity.

• The soul provides our knowledge of the environment through the generation of ideas, derived from sensations, perceptions, and thoughts.

• Ideas themselves transcend matter and provide the uniquely human experience of communication with the universal soul of nature.

• Reason is our ability to use ideas. It provides the highest form of life, allowing the individual ultimately to be conscious or aware of the creative direction of the soul.

• Plotinus taught that the body is both the agent and the prison of the soul. The soul is capable of the highest form of activity—reason—which depends on sensory information but transcends the sensory level by the creative use of ideas.

• God is universal unity, reason, and soul. The human soul desires to seek God, but this attraction is the only certainty we have about God.

• Thus, life is a process whereby the soul seeks dominance over the body by rejecting the material world and finding universal truth in nature and God.

The importance of Roman Neoplatonism lies in its reception by Christianity.

Greek philosophy entered Christianity in its Neoplatonist expression, so that Plato’s teaching on body and soul were “Christianized” and dominated early Christian views on psychology. Christianity, in turn, dominated western Europe on the demise of the Roman order.

CHRISTIANITY:

• The story of Jesus has had a tremendous impact on the evolving importance of the soul in psychology’s history.

• Specifically, his birth and life of poverty and his admonition to avoid worldly goods placed great emphasis on the spiritual.

• Moreover, his promise of love and salvation filled ordinary people with hope of deliverance from earthly problems of loneliness, poverty, and hunger.

• The story of Jesus offered a message of universal appeal. The political tranquility of the Pax Romana provided an opportunity for that message to reach the millions of people under Roman rule.

• However, like his immediate predecessor, John the Baptist, Jesus was preaching a renewal of religious commitment. Further, Jesus declared himself to be the fulfillment of the Hebrew prophesies of the Messiah.

• Jesus made clear that he was not challenging  Roman or any other secular authority. His kingdom was not of this world; rather, his domain consisted of the peace and love of the spiritual life in God.

• Whereas his teachings were consistent with the Jewish tradition, they were also amenable to the Greek concept of the body–soul dualism.

• Indeed, Jesus’ message supported a dualistic view by enhancing the dignity and ultimate value of the spiritual, immaterial existence of the soul.

• Moreover, Jesus preached that human beings are distinct from the rest of nature because God has favored people by offering them the chance for immortality and salvation.

• If Christian teachings were to encompass more than a cult of Judaism, it would be necessary to appeal to cultural traditions beyond the Hebrew structure of the Torah.

• Such a movement was especially compelling in light of the loss of the Jewish foundation of Christianity after the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 by the Roman general Titus and subsequent dispersion of Jews from Palestine.

• Accordingly, during the first few centuries of Christianity, missionaries wandered clandestinely throughout the empire, and the center of Christian thought evolved to Rome, although important leaders of Christianity were also found elsewhere, principally in Antioch and Alexandria.

ST. PAUL:

• Called the first Christian theologian.

• There is a definite Stoic influence in his writings on the strict morality of Christian society.

• Paul championed the separation of the new religion from Judaism and successfully fought against enforcing the practice of circumcision, a strict and basic requirement of Judaism.

• More importantly, his teaching identified the message of Jesus with the culture founded on Greek philosophy.

• Like the Stoics and Neoplantists, Paul viewed the physical body as evil and inadequate and preached about the spiritual wisdom and perfection acquired through Jesus.

• He taught that Jesus is more than the Messiah fulfilling the Jewish prophecies. Rather, Jesus is God who came to the world to redeem all people, who had been condemned by the evil of original sin.

• As such, Jesus was the universal savior. By sacrificing himself, Jesus allowed all people to participate in the glory of perfect wisdom and knowledge.

• Thus, Paul radically transformed early Christianity by preaching the hopeful message of Jesus in a form that could be understood by the vast majority of the Roman Empire.

TRINITY:

·       Two Christian teachers, Clement (ca. 150–220) and Origen (185–254), both reconciled the Hebrew origins of Christianity with pagan Greek philosophy.

·       The prolific Origen managed a Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament and provided comments and interpretations amenable to Greek understanding.

·       The Hebrew doctrine of monotheism and the Greek tradition of polytheism were resolved by the concept of the Trinity.

·       Employing the Aristotelian distinction between essence and existence, God was perceived as pure essence, capable of three expressions of existence: as the creative Father, the redeeming Son, and the Spirit that gives knowledge.

·       Accordingly, the Trinity readily accommodates the essential tenet of Christianity that God sent his Son as the embodiment of supreme reason who organized and saved the world.

·       Similarly, the view of the individual was Christianized within a basically dualistic context. Each person is composed of an essence, the soul, which takes on an existence through the body.

·       The immortal soul passes through stages to eventual attachment with the body.

·       After death, the soul continues in stages until it is eventually united in the perfect wisdom of God. All life and the sequence of the soul’s development fall within the grand design of God.

·       Thus, the Alexandrian teachers succeeded in giving Christianity a Greek foundation by incorporating the influences of Plato and Aristotle, and they added to that foundation the determinism of the Stoics.

CHURCH AUTHORITY AND INFLUENCE IN THE EMPIRE

·       A final problem resolved by early Christianity concerned the related issues of the gradual disintegration of the Western empire and authority from within the Church.

·       Both issues paved the way for the emergence of papal supremacy, which had powerful implications for the European intellectual climate in succeeding centuries.

·       The early Church had recognized the bishop of Rome as first among equals with respect to other bishops. Christianity in Rome took on many forms of Roman pagan worship in terms of liturgical dress and ritual.

·       Indeed, the bishop of Rome assumed the title of Pontifex Maximus used by the pagan high priest. With the weakness of a series of emperors and eventual movement of the center of the empire to the East, the people of Rome began to call upon their bishop to assume the responsibilities of civil government.

·       The evolution of papal authority was gradual and did not reach a culmination within the church until the split between Eastern and Western Christianity in 1054.

The Church Fathers

·       With the concurrent deterioration of civil authority in the Western empire, Western society began a restructuring of its values along Christian directions.

·       A popular theology arose that contained many of the rituals of the earlier cults. The use of incense, candles, and processions as well as the veneration of saints were all adapted to Christian liturgy and served a need that was understood by the masses.

·       As the cities declined and society assumed an increasingly agrarian character, the liturgical year was adapted to the agricultural cycle.

·       The Church became the source of order and organization for both individual and social behavior.

·       In the vacuum created by the breakdown of civil government, the Church assumed a position of the sole institution of social structure, but the Church was presiding over a decaying society with an eroding intellectual level. Accordingly, the customs and traditions of the practice of Christianity were used to preserve some semblance of moral order in the people.

Church Defenders.

·       A group of churchmen of the fourth and fifth centuries left Christianity with the basic formulations that prevail today.

Saint Jerome (340–420):

·       chastised the people and clergy of Rome for their worldliness, and then retired to the Palestinian desert to live a crusty existence.

·       However, he used his classical education in the monumental task of translating the Bible into Latin, the universally understood language.

Saint Ambrose (340–397):

·       as bishop of Milan, defended the basic doctrine of the Church and served as a model of charity to the poor.

Saint Anthony (ca. 251–356) in Egypt and Saint Basil (330–379) in Palestine:

·       founded the monastic movement in the Eastern empire, which stressed the value of the hermit’s solitude to achieve human perfection.

·       When monasticism spread to the western areas of the empire, it gradually acquired more community organization and became an important movement to preserve learning in feudal Europe.

·       The teachings of the Church scholars were integrated with the scriptural sources of Christianity in a series of Church councils that standardized Christian teachings.

·       The first Council of Nicea (325) produced a common creed accepted by all Christians.

·       The bishops were charged with insuring that the practice of religion conformed to the defined doctrines, and increasingly the bishop of Rome assumed a precedence over the other bishops.

·       Emperor Valentinian III issued an edict declaring that Pope Leo I (ca. 400–461) and his successors, as bishops of Rome, had authority over all Christian churches.

Saint Augustine.

The writings of Saint Augustine (354–430) are critical to the history of psychology because of his reliance on Platonic thought.

After receiving a sound background in classic Greek philosophy, he wandered from his native North Africa to Italy, taking various teaching posts.

He led a rather Epicurean existence. While in Milan, he became infatuated with Neoplatonism and the writings of Plotinus.

Finally, at age 33, he experienced a revelation from Christ and was baptized by Saint Ambrose.

He returned to North Africa, founded a monastic group, and lived in poverty. In 396 he was elected bishop of the city of Hippo and remained there preaching and writing for the last 34 years of his life.

Two of Augustine’s works are important to the historical evolution of psychology.

·       His Confessions, written about 400, is perhaps the most famous autobiography in history.

·       With keen introspection and masterly detail, he described how one person found peace through faith in God and resolved the conflict between the passions and reason.

·       For Augustine, the mind is the receptor for divine wisdom and shares in the glory of God.

·       Moreover, this interior sense of the soul or mind allows us a level of consciousness that transcends, yet completely explains, physical reality.

·       Thus, Augustine played down the rationality of the mind, which is dependent on unreliable sensory information.

·       Rather, he proposed a more psychological view of the mind insofar as consciousness, or the self of the individual, endowed with the grace of divine wisdom, determines the direction of activity.

·       According to Augustine, only by removing the faulty impressions of sensory knowledge can we reach this level of consciousness.

·       He wrote City of God in installments from 413 to 426 as a response to the outcry over the barbarian Alaric’s sacking of Rome.

·       Specifically, many people argued that this shocking event was the fault of Christianity, which had undermined the glories and power of imperial Rome.

·       Augustine countered by asserting that Rome fell to invasion because of the inherent decay in the pagan society, which antedated the Christian era.

·       Borrowing from Plato’s notion of an ideal republic and Christian teachings on good and evil, Augustine suggested that humanity could be divided into two cities, or societies.

·       The earthly city is concerned with worldliness and dominated by the evils of materialism. The city of God is everlasting with God and is identified for us by the Church. This city is spiritual and embodies goodness.

·       Historically, people may vacillate between the cities and only at the last judgment will membership in each city be finally separated into those condemned to the sin and evil of Hell, and those who win happiness and perfection in God.

Augustine may be remembered for two great accomplishments.

1.   First, he completed the “Christianization” of Greek philosophy by affirming the Platonic relationship between body and soul.

·       By relegating sensory information to a primitive level and positing a transcendent con sciousness,

·       Augustine taught the ideal of the mind reflecting upon itself as the key to ultimate beauty and love in God.

·       This view dominated Christian thought until the end of the Middle Ages, so that all intellectual endeavors that studied life, including psy chology, were done in a Platonic context.

2.           Second, he established a justification for a special relationship between the Church and the State. Augustine related the Church to the city of God.

·       Worldly government would always be faulty and inferior to Church rule. Augustine was far more influential in the West than in the East.

·       Because the Eastern empire was stronger there, the Church was subordinate to the State.

·       However, in the West, with the deteriorating civil government of Rome, Augustine’s arguments justified the Church’s filling the void in civil as well as spiritual administration.