The Platonic Background to Avicenna: Lecture 1

It was taken for granted by the Medieval Scholastics and neo-Scholastics alike that Aristotle developed this idea of episteme or scientia as the paradigm of knowledge, and then employed it by its proper mode of discursive reasoning, namely, scientific demonstration, in all his sciences, practical and theoretical. It was for this reason that the majority of medieval Aristotelians found it more than appropriate to comprehend and apply this infinitely subtle but foundational work on the highest order of knowledge. For this reason do we find such a large body of fastidious medieval "commentaries" on the Posterior Analytics.

However, recent scholarship has attempted to develop a counter thesis to this traditional understanding of the Posterior Analytics by showing that it was not the case that many medievalists were developing foundationalist epistemologies rooted in Aristotle's theory of scientific demonstration. Or if they were, they rarely held to it in their own theoretical treatments and explications. This thesis finds various representations for 20th century commentators of Aquinas, most notably, in Eleanore Stump's Aquinas and John Jenkins Faith and Reason in Thomas Aquinas.

Against this view, among others, is the late Dominican Father James Weisheipl (Aristotelian Methodology), Scott MacDonald (who has an excellent essay in the Cambridge Companion to Aquinas), and my professor R.E. Houser.

But in order to understand the roots of Aristotle's own theory of scientific demonstration and its influence upon Avicenna and the Scholastic Aristotelians like Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, and Duns Scotus one must first look back into Plato. Most especially the Meno (80d - 86d) and the Republic books 6-7, in particular the "Divided Line." Only in light of these problems can one truly understand and appreciate Aristotle's own solution to these Platonic problems. Solutions he is at pains to produce in his Posterior Analytics.

Because of time constraints in the semester we were only able to spend one lecture on Plato. For this reason the following reflections will be rather brief, as well as the following posts on Aristotle. The primary focus was "The Divided Line." Of the images of this that I could find online, the following was the best.( http://www.psichi.org/images/site_pages/1_2_analogy.jpg)

The "Divided Line" comes at the very end of The Republic book 6, 509d-511e. Various aspects of it are mentioned in passim at 476c, 517c, 524d, and 534a. It also offers interesting correlations in to the famous "Allegory of the Cave" in book 7. As the diagram on the left shows there are two columns dividing objects and their correlative cognitive/mental states. Unfortunately this diagram is missing one very essential element. There are supposed to be two more lines! Below "Forms" and above "Mathematical Objects" there should be a line. And likewise below "Visible Things" and above "Images".

What is especially interesting is the manner in which Plato describes how we come to have these various kinds of "mental states" or degrees of knowledge. "[I]n [the lower] part of [the intelligible half of the divided line] a soul, using as images the things that were previously imitated, is compelled to investigate on the basis of hypotheses and makes its way not to a beginning [or principle] but to an end [or conclusion]; while in the other [higher] part it makes its way to a beginning [principle] that is free from hypotheses; starting out from hypothesis and without the images used in the other part, by means of forms themselves it makes its inquiry through them." (trans. Bloom, 510b) A similar discussion is held by Socrates at 511b where the former part is referred to as "dialectic." What is also of note is Plato's use of induction and then deduction in these accounts on the degrees of knowledge ordered like "steppingstones and springboards" towards that highest of ends, knowledge of the Good. The highest part in the latter account no longer reasons by images but by the "forms themselves" grasped in light of dialectic. This account will be re-formulated and ordered within Aristotle's Posterior Analytics with his own nuances and greater clarity than is given to us in Plato's own presentation.

Finally, the most important overall position held by Plato is his understanding of a universal science. This will be contrasted strongly to Aristotle's division of the sciences into a multitude of subject-genus determined by their specific object. For Plato there is one science towards the Good. All the orders of cognition are intellectual steps taking the soul closer and closer to the knowledge of the Good. It is only one episteme after one has seen the Good. The Good is the highest object for Plato, the order of intelligence may be knowing deductively, "form by form" without the use of hypothesis, but it still much reach the highest form, which is the cause of all the forms. The Good is "even beyond Being" for Plato, and it is for this reason that knowledge of the Good, illuminates all. Like its parallel, the Sun, in the "Allegory of the Cave" to see the Good-in-itself, is to have episteme of all that it is the source of, which is everything. All other cognitive orders are simply stages towards the Good.

A great deal more could be said, but the foregoing is a sufficient indication of the problems to be taken up by Aristotle. I'll end this post with a quote from the Republic book 7 that is distantly related to the topic at hand, but provincial to the popular obsessions of my peers. The Presidential election of 2008, a matter that I know less about than Parmenides short little metaphysical poem.

Socrates responds to an objection about the injustice done to the Guardians by having them return from intellectual sublimity to order the lives of the masses.
"My friend, you have again forgotten," I said, "that it's not the concern of the law that any one class fare exceptionally well, but it contrives to bring about in the city as a whole, harmonizing the citizens by persuasion and compulsion, making them share with one another the benefit that each is able to bring to the commonwealth. And it produces such men in the city not in order to let them turn whichever way each wants, but in order that it may use them in binding the city together." (52oa)

Such sacrifice to the common good, is essential to the flourishing of mankind, and Christ calls us to no less.