PLATO V AQUINAS[ round 3]

Plato has reeled from the Aquinas onslaught, taking severe blows, to his previously un-argued doctrines.
Aquinas, sensing argumentative victory, has eased off the pressure, citing, 'Justification', which is embraced by the church of the day.
'Justification', has re-emerged in orthodox thought, brought to the forefront by Martin Luther.
[the referee steps in here; Luther was 'projecting' unconsciously, his fears!]
Plato is not finished, he cites his famous 'cave', doctrine.
we re-join the debate;

The Allegory of the Cave

1. In the allegory, Plato likens people untutored in the Theory of Forms to prisoners chained in a cave, unable to turn their heads. All they can see is the wall of the cave. Behind them burns a fire.  Between the fire and the prisoners there is a parapet, along which puppeteers can walk. The puppeteers, who are behind the prisoners, hold up puppets that cast shadows on the wall of the cave. The prisoners are unable to see these puppets, the real objects, that pass behind them. What the prisoners see and hear are shadows and echoes cast by objects that they do not see. Here is an illustration of Plato’s Cave: 
2. Such prisoners would mistake appearance for reality. They would think the things they see on the wall (the shadows) were real; they would know nothing of the real causes of the shadows.
3. So when the prisoners talk, what are they talking about? If an object (a book, let us say) is carried past behind them, and it casts a shadow on the wall, and a prisoner says “I see a book,” what is he talking about? He thinks he is talking about a book, but he is really talking about a shadow. But he uses the word “book.” What does that refer to?
   
4. Plato gives his answer at line (515b2). The text here has puzzled many editors, and it has been frequently emended. The translation in Grube/Reeve gets the point correctly:

   “And if they could talk to one another, don’t you think they’d suppose that the names they used applied to the things they see passing before them?”

5. Plato’s point is that the prisoners would be mistaken. For they would be taking the terms in their language to refer to the shadows that pass before their eyes, rather than (as is correct, in Plato’s view) to the real things that cast the shadows. If a prisoner says “That’s a book” he thinks that the word “book” refers to the very thing he is looking at. But he would be wrong. He’s only looking at a shadow. The real referent of the word “book” he cannot see. To see it, he would have to turn his head around.
   
6. Plato’s point: the general terms of our language are not “names” of the physical objects that we can see. They are actually names of things that we cannot see, things that we can only grasp with the mind.
7. When the prisoners are released, they can turn their heads and see the real objects. Then they realize their error. What can we do that is analogous to turning our heads and seeing the causes of the shadows? We can come to grasp the Forms with our minds.
8. Plato’s aim in the Republic is to describe what is necessary for us to achieve this reflective understanding. But even without it, it remains true that our very ability to think and to speak depends on the Forms. For the terms of the language we use get their meaning by “naming” the Forms that the objects we perceive participate in.
9. The prisoners may learn what a book is by their experience with shadows of books. But they would be mistaken if they thought that the word “book” refers to something that any of them has ever seen. Likewise, we may acquire concepts by our perceptual experience of physical objects. But we would be mistaken if we thought that the concepts that we grasp were on the same level as the things we perceive.
10. Plato’s aim in the Republic is to describe what is necessary for us to achieve this reflective understanding. But even without it, it remains true that our very ability to think and to speak depends on the Forms. For the terms of the language we use get their meaning by “naming” the Forms that the objects we perceive participate in.
11. The prisoners may learn what a book is by their experience with shadows of books. But they would be mistaken if they thought that the word “book” refers to something that any of them has ever seen. Likewise, we may acquire concepts by our perceptual experience of physical objects. But we would be mistaken if we thought that the concepts that we grasp were on the same level as the things we perceive.
    
    Aquinas counter-attacks;
    
    
    METAPHYSICS AND HUMANIST PHILOSOPHY
    Aquinas represents a wide conception of the scope of philosophy. Philosophical reflection derives from a spontaneous tendency of the human mind to understand the data given by experience, to explain ourselves and the world in which we live, in the most complete possible way. Thus such an attempt leads to the exercise of the human mind we traditionally call philosophy and metaphysics. This desire requires an attempt to reach a unifying interpretation of reality as known to us, and to obtain a clarity about the general situation which makes all particular situations possible. This represents an imperative tendency of the human mind to reduce multiplicity to unity. It operates in all intellectual endeavors. Aquinas as a metaphysician was concerned with the understanding of finite things and relating them to the metafinite ultimate reality in which he believed. His finite view of nature itself was derived from the anthropocentric and analogous orientation. He, together with other medieval metaphysicians, believed that he was able to construct empirical hypotheses and attain final knowledge by means of metaphysical reflection.
    The development of a particular science, however, has wrested from philosophy the field it regarded as its own. Cosmology is today part of physics, the philosophy of life is now scientific biology, and speculative psychology became scientific psychology. The sciences do not treat theological problems, or "ultimate" metaphysical questions, which are nothing but analogous anthropomorphic projections. Metaphysicians did not show that they have a method whereby these questions can be answered. They attempted to explain the world, but they do not have any recognizable way of verifying or testing their speculations. We realize today that the only understanding of the world which we can attain is that provided by the sciences, interpreted in a very broad sense, as a factual, rational, and empirical approach to realities known to man. It does not mean that we should abandon an attempt at developing a unifying system of philosophy, a "new metaphysics". On the contrary, we observe in the modern world development of the Humanist philosophy, a new unifying system, a "new metaphysics" with wider generality than scientific constructs, which is, at least in some way, testable. Also, no appeal to the authority of the philosopher can be made. Thomas Aquinas himself considered such an argument the weakest.
    THOMIST THEORY OF MORALS
    Aquinas did not attempt to develop a moral philosophy without Christian doctrines, since he considered that the knowledge of the purpose of human life, of the human supreme good, cannot be fully understood without revelation. To his credit it should be emphasized that he believed that such a system can exist and he had a great respect for Aristotle who epitomized this line of thought. His starting point is the Aristotelian conception of happiness or moral wellbeing [eudaimonia] as the last end of human living. He supplements this concept by the assumption of the religious doctrine, common to all mythological religions, of beatification in heaven: "If we speak of the ultimate end with respect to the thing itself, then human and all other beings share it together, for God is the ultimate end for all things without exception"; "There can be no complete and final happiness [beatitudo] for us save in the vision of God"; "the human mind's final perfection is by coming to union with God". Obviously, Aquinas's artificial assumption, which he does not prove, poses a restriction on the value of his doctrine and leads to a peculiar speculation, namely, that the ultimate criterion for the moral value of human actions will be in relation to this hypothetical end. For Aquinas, reality is hierarchical, and human beings fit in above the physical objects because they have a double nature - spiritual and material. He shared with Aristotle the view that the possession of reason distinguishes man from the animals. Our actions as human actions are rational and voluntary, and depend on our choice.
    Aquinas correctly states that only such free acts based on the will in view of an end and apprehended by reason can be classified as moral actions, good or bad ("acts are called human inasmuch as they proceed from deliberate will" and "moral acts and human acts are the same"). For a human act to be morally good, a number of factors have to be present. Absence of any one of them is sufficient to prevent calling it good. Moreover, an act is morally obligatory only when not to do it or to do something else would be morally bad. Aquinas differentiates between interior and exterior acts. But there cannot be an exterior act without an interior act of the will. He then develops a finalistic, teleological conception of the will striving to achieve an ultimate, presumed good of man. All particular ends or goods such as riches, honors, fame and glory, power, pleasure, or speculative knowledge are only a means to the attainment of this ultimate good. Since he believed in the creation by God of human nature with its innate tendencies, he presupposed a common supreme good, that is union with God, for all people. This is the fundamental flaw in Thomas's system of ethics. Note that it is not the moral behavior of human beings in relation to each other in a society that is the basis of morality, but the unspecified glorification of God. Though Thomas did not neglect personal morals, they became dependent on our relation to the institution, and were not measured by our relation to other human beings. Morality and moral justifications became a legalistic system based on the acceptance or not of the Church orthodoxy, the theoretical, unverifiable Church speculations about the supernatural, and whatever the Church ordered mankind to believe. Morals are put on a secondary and tertiary plane in the system of Aquinas's ethics. The primary precepts dealt with are the recognition of the cult, speculations about religious supernatural reality (that is, religious dogmas), ritual veneration of the sacred, and the unquestioned, submissive, servile, total subordination to the institution, the "party." This institution usurped its supernatural origin, supernatural power in ordaining what is good, and what is bad, what is wrong and what is right.
    The power of the Church was formally extended to the domination over the secular state by Pope Boniface VIII in his bull "Unam Sanctam" (1302). Using the then current metaphor the Pope declared that there are two "swords" (i.e., powers) under the control of the Church - the spiritual sword is wielded in the Church by the hand of the clergy, and the secular sword is employed for the Church by the hand of the civil authority, under the direction of the spiritual power. The Church has then the right to establish, to judge, and to dismiss the secular power. Whoever opposes its power, opposes the law of God. Moreover, every human being must be the subject of the authority of the Roman Pontiff: "Now, therefore, we declare, say, determine and pronounce that for every human creature it is necessary for salvation to be subject to the authority of the Roman Pontiff." The same was declared by the Fifth Council of Lateran in 1516 and this doctrine was eventually formulated by the theologians as the fundamental principle of Catholicism in a dogma "Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus."
    Clearly, the Church usurps the totalitarian domination over the entire world, over the mind, feelings, and morals of every individual. It is, needless to say, that it is the "moral" obligation according to such a doctrine to spread the faith (however faith may be defined by the Church) by force or any other means. In modern times the doctrine was upheld by Popes Gregory XVI and Pius IX, by Leo XIII in his encyclical "Immortale Dei" (1885), and by Pius X in his "Vehementer Nos" (1906) in which he declared null and void the law of the French Republic separating Church and state. In 1911 the encyclical "Jamdudum in Luisitania" repeated the same stand for Portugal
    The round ends.
    
    The Judges are undecided, we eavesdrop on their debate........
    Judith,' Oh, My God! do these schmucks ever give up with the morality ? we all know it was MOSES,
    who received the laws! what does a pershoin have to do here? I can't believe this nonsense...LISTEN TO ME! I'M TALKING! HELLO!.....
    
    Lennon-Ono,'Well you know, they both have a point....'
    Studs,'Judy Baby, can you give me a light here, I appear to have forgotten my lighter'
    [Studs lights his cigar, a Montecristo, and draws deeply]
    'Thanks Judy, now can you do us all a favour and SHUT UP!'
    
    Dodd, 'You really should not be smoking, old chap! it's bad for your health!
    [Studs smiles, says nothing]
    
    Ra, 'This argument is irrelevant'.
    
    Stallone, 'This is developing nicely, Like, I can't decide, know what I mean? come on a freakin' CAVE? I MEAN derrrrr, does Plato think we are all cavemen or sumptin?'
    [the referee advises the Judges, one of the philosophers is an 'extrovert', one is 'introvert', their personality, and 'projections', are influencing the debate]
    
    Round 3 is tied.