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Parallells in philosophic thought
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It is the peculiar nature of modern man to assume progress through time. That is not to say that when progress occurs it is not in time, that would be absurd since time is the mother of all change. But to assert that the particular nature of time is such that progress must occur is to demand that change itself becomes progress. This is absurd; it reduces life and birth to death and decay. It turns every past genius barren and futile merely because there will be something different after him. If there is progress it must be recognized not in opposition to past thoughts, but as a positive step that those past thoughts made possible. This is done practically in all academia: the very concept of learning through the thoughts and writings of past masters is to acknowledge them as being both contributive and authoritative. We turn to them as a method for perhaps surpassing them, but we recognize that if they are surpassed they are still included in that progress, being ones who made that progress possible. On the other hand, to assume error in the present is to regress toward something in the past that is true so that one can progress from there – a process which reduces time into progression and regression de facto.
It is this very reliance on the past for progress that allows us to connect older ideas to newer ones, to recognize our thoughts coming from past masters just as those masters recognize their thoughts in even more primal masters. It is interesting that some of the most influential philosophers of the enlightenment era, Rene Descartes, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant, hold stark similarities to the three great Greek philosophers, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. While it is true that there are often irreconcilable differences between these thinkers, it will be shown that they nevertheless share some basic assumptions and expound upon similar lines of thought. In comparing these thinkers it is hoped that growth in philosophy can be seen, not so much in terms of linear progress and regress along time, but as concurrent veins changing within time, common only in their philosophic ambition.
The first interesting pair of philosophers is Socrates and Descartes. It is known that we do not have any written philosophy handed down to us by Socrates. It is also assumed that Plato, being influenced greatly by his master accurately portrayed Socrates’ philosophy in certain dialogues, especially those concerning his trial and death. It is from these that we will extrapolate Socratic thought for this paper. First, both Socrates and Descartes show an earnest love for learning what is true. Socrates claims emphatically that, “I have never left off seeking after and learning every good thing that I could. (Xenophon, 16)” Conversely Descartes claims that, “It was always my most earnest desire to distinguish the true from the false in order to see clearly into my own actions and proceed with confidence in this life. (Descartes, Discorse on Method, 24)” In many senses both men sought truth in their own manner regardless of what contemporaries thought or believed. Just as Socrates insists, “So even now I continue this investigation as the god bade me – and I go around seeking out anyone, citizen or stranger, whom I think wise (Plato, Apology, 23b)” so Descartes claims,
“That is why, as soon as I was old enough to emerge from the control of my teachers, I entirely abandoned my literary studies. Resolving to seek no knowledge other than that which could be found in myself or else in the great book of the world. (Descartes, Discorse on Method, 24)”
The similarities are such that both Socrates and Descartes understood knowledge to exist outside of those who claim to know, and it is the job of a philosopher, of a noble mind, to somehow seek and obtain this knowledge wherever it might be.
There is also something to be said about how both philosophers believe they can understand the nature of reality, of being, just by thinking about it... Read The Rest of the Article
