Recently studying philosophy, I have become very interested in various European philosophical schools. I found a textbook on the history of European philosophy published in 1976, and I feel that it is really well written, solving many of the doubts that have been bothering me. More details below.
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This book is quite detailed, basically clarifying the struggle between the two main ideological lines of idealism and materialism in the history of philosophy, and strongly refuting idealist philosophers like Socrates and Plato, who are well-known among many petty-bourgeois intellectuals and full-time students.
Let’s talk about the struggle between Plato and Democritus. But before discussing him, we can start with Socrates. Some people only know that Plato was Socrates’ student, but they don’t really understand what kind of ideas he and Socrates held. In fact, Socrates represented the interests of the clan slave owners (the aristocratic slave owners) at the time, and his teachings strongly promoted idealist apriorism, claiming that everything was created by gods, and that all events were arranged by divine will (which essentially means that the rule of the clan slave owners was divinely ordained, and the struggles between industrial and commercial slave owners, small and medium slave owners, and slaves were considered wrong).【Note: Heraclitus, Democritus, and others held opposite views—they represented the interests of industrial and commercial slave owners and the democratic faction of slave owners. Overall, they believed in naive materialism in philosophy, which was relatively progressive.】
He boasted that he was “the buffoon bestowed upon Athens by the gods” and the smartest person in the world (later Plato, and even Confucius and Mencius from the East, all said similar things, which is amusing). He also boasted that aristocratic slave owners were perfect beings, despised the democratic faction of slave owners, and believed that the virtues of slave-owning aristocrats could produce money and all good things. When facing the judgment of the democratic faction, he gritted his teeth and said, “Even if I have to die many times, I will not change,” aiming to restore the most oppressive period of aristocratic rule——from this point, he is very similar to Confucius, who believed that the slave-owning class was heaven, and that the rise of the landlord class was “the breakdown of rites and music,” only by retreating and defending reactionary Zhou rites could peace be maintained. If the restoration of slavery was impossible, he would simply say “the Way cannot proceed, floating on the sea”—exactly like Confucius (it seems that reactionaries are all of the same kind, sharing high similarities in thought due to common class interests).
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Plato largely inherited and developed Socrates’ reactionary teachings, but due to space limitations, I won’t elaborate much here. Interested comrades can personally read this book, as its discussion is very accurate. Below, I mainly talk about Democritus. Democritus is indeed a great materialist philosopher from ancient Greece. He proposed many highly advanced theories, engaging in direct opposition to idealist presuppositional schools like Plato at the time.
He pointed out that the world is composed of atoms, and even the human soul is made up of extremely subtle atoms. Although at this point he was still within the scope of naive materialism, his ideas already had some scientific basis and dealt a precise blow to the idealist Plato.
Intellectually, because Democritus belonged to the slave-owning class, his advocacy of universal love was limited only within the slave-owning class. Such ideas, although superior to those of Plato, still cannot compare to the Mohist School in China (regarding the nature of the Mohist School, Legalists, Confucians, etc., I might share more when discussing Chinese philosophy later). This also reflects a historical limitation of Democritus as a representative of the industrial and commercial slave-owning class. 【Note: Plato, like Confucius, was an extremely reactionary idealist philosopher. He promoted presuppositionalism, claiming that what a person is destined to do in life is decided subconsciously early on. He believed that a person’s talents are learned from the realm of true soul, which he called the real domain, and that these talents are forgotten and gradually remembered in real life, thus enabling talent. In this regard, he denied the decisive role of practice in cognition. He also advocated that the most suitable person to be king is a philosopher, which is similar to Mencius’ idea that a king will emerge every 500 years. The so-called king refers to himself; Plato’s so-called philosopher-king also refers to himself. Plato also believed that humans are made of different metals, divided into three classes (slaves are not considered human in his view). He vigorously argued for this hierarchy, claiming it is necessary for social division of labor, and only by assigning specific tasks to specific people can it be done well. As for who does what, it depends on the amount of knowledge and talent a person possesses. He also said that a person belongs to a certain class, and his children will also belong to that class, passing down through generations and never changing. Clearly, this is extremely reactionary.
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However, limitations are limitations (besides the defects in materialism mentioned above, such as the mistaken belief that color, taste, sound, cold, heat, etc., are not attributes of things but are inherent in concepts during the sensation process, etc.), he is still like a mountain compared to a ditch in relation to Plato. He insists on the materialist philosophical route in epistemology, emphasizing that we should understand the world according to its actual appearance. He believes that only rational understanding is more precise, but he opposes detaching from or despising sensory rationality, mocking this rationality as an “ingratitude” to the sensory (Plato: “You report my ID card” is a pun).
Because Democritus’s teachings sharply attacked Plato, he hated Democritus to death and even wanted to gather all of Democritus’s works and burn them. This shows that the struggle between two philosophical routes has always been very fierce and continues to this day. Philosophy is by no means a book of romantic poetry or peaceful years, but a weapon in the fierce life-and-death struggle between the progressive and the backward classes, the advanced and the reactionary elements!!
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After Plato, it was Aristotle. When reading, the sense of déjà vu is quite strong, feeling that this person has a somewhat similar historical status to Napoleon, still belonging to a person who embodies two roles in one body. His Aristotelian philosophy wavers between materialism and idealism, never breaking out of the circle of idealism, still belonging to the Platonic idealist line. Therefore, although he is relatively more progressive compared to Plato, overall he remains reactionary.
Aristotle regarded slavery as completely in accordance with human nature and natural law. He said: “Living beings are first composed of soul and body, among which one is naturally the ruler, and the other is naturally the subordinate.” In this regard, Aristotle’s argument is almost identical to Confucius’s, a typical version of “those who labor with their minds govern others, those who labor physically are governed by others.” [Note: I used to think this person was dualistic, but today I understand that one side of the contradiction must be dominant. Overall, Aristotle is reactionary, and a three-dimensional figure does not exist.]
Additionally, Aristotle is a typical “moderationist” or “Doctrine of the Mean” advocate. He urged people to be moderate and cautious in their practical actions. At that time, slavery was constantly challenged by rebellious slaves. Aristotle, on one hand, vigorously defended slavery, and on the other hand, tried to appear to reconcile different classes. He stated that Greeks should not enslave Greeks, and even said that slaves and masters are mutually dependent, sharing common interests. Slaves cannot be friends with their masters, but as human beings, they can be. From this, it is clear that Aristotle’s philosophy was entirely in service of slave owners, aimed at reconciling social contradictions to maintain the dominance of the slave-owning class. It was to reconcile internal contradictions among slave owners and consolidate their rule.
Regarding the fundamental questions of philosophy, Aristotle called individual existing concrete things “primary substances.” Based on this premise, he criticized Plato’s theory of ideas; he also raised issues concerning the relationship between universals and particulars, generality and specificity, and the relationship between general and individual. From these aspects, he exposed the common epistemological roots of idealism (which is also his progressive point).
However, as a member of the slave-owning class, he still had significant historical limitations. Just as Lenin said, Aristotle’s dialectic “is accidental, incomplete, undeveloped, and fleeting.” Although he had the above progressive aspects, he later summarized and generalized the ideas of previous schools in a syncretic form, summing up the so-called “Four Causes”. When he regarded purpose as a cause of things, he became a form of idealism. He separated form from matter, believed that form precedes matter, and thought that matter itself does not possess the causes of motion and change. Aristotle concluded that ultimately there exists a “pure form”—a perfect, non-material, non-purposeful entity, which he called “God,” providing the “first mover” for the world (similar to Newton). In this way, he circled back to metaphysics and idealist fideism. For materialists, the approach is to extract the essence and develop materialist ideas, while reactionaries exploit the reactionary side of Aristotle’s thought to promote idealism. Lenin pointed out: “Monasticism strangled the living parts of Aristotle’s doctrine, making its dead parts immortal.”
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After Aristotle (from ancient Greece to post-Roman times), the most impressive was the struggle between Epicureanism and early Stoicism, which inherited the route struggles of Democritus and Plato from the ancient Greek period.
Generally speaking, Epicureanism is quite progressive; it further advanced materialism. Starting from the desires of small and medium slave owners, it advocated a life of tranquility and apathy, regarded as the greatest happiness in life. It opposed determinism and teleology, believing that all things in the world are not arranged by gods nor reflect divine purposes. It rejected the idea of an immortal soul, believing that the soul can only exist attached to the body, and once the body is destroyed, the soul loses its attachment and dissipates. From this point, it strongly countered the idealist determinism of ancient Greece. Although it did not deny the existence of gods, it believed they do not interfere with human fate (this point is less than Democritus, who denied the existence of gods).
It inherited and developed Democritus’s atomism, pointing out that atoms differ not only in shape and volume but also in weight. Epicureanism proposed that the difference in weight among atoms explains their internal cause of motion, making a significant step forward from Democritus. It also proposed the idea of atoms deviating from their motion, allowing for the existence of chance within the atomistic materialism system, blocking the path to fatalism that might arise from Democritus’s emphasis on necessity and denial of chance. This idea is a major component of his entire philosophy, providing a theoretical basis for inspiring the Greek struggle against the Macedonian slave owners and for the fight for democracy against aristocratic tyranny.
As for Stoicism, their ethics were opposed to Epicurean happiness, being a form of fatalism and asceticism. They believed resistance was useless; only submission and acceptance of one’s ‘fate’ were proper, accepting poverty and oppression without rebellion. These ideas reflected the pessimistic disappointment of the declining slave-owning aristocracy. (This school also had a somewhat reactionary aspect, distorting Heraclitus’s thought by twisting materialism into a tool to serve idealist ideas. However, my understanding of this school is limited, and I need to study more about it later.)
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I supplemented my lacking knowledge of history and philosophy by browsing through the “Small Dictionary of Philosophy” and discovered that its founder was Zeno (the one who argued that a flying arrow cannot move and cannot catch up with a turtle), which was quite enlightening! The Greek word Stoikos (Στοῖχος) means ‘the painted,’ and this school often gathered and lectured in the Western Gallery, hence the name Stoicism.
In ethics, they advocated blind obedience to fate and promoted determinism. Zeno considered virtue to be the most important and the only good, and believed that the goodness or badness of virtue depended entirely on oneself, unrelated to others. In his view, only living according to fate was a virtuous life.
However, the Stoic school was not entirely reactionary at the beginning. They had certain materialist tendencies and dialectical elements in epistemology, considering fire and air as the basis of all natural phenomena, and even believed that the natural state could be transformed. Marx and Engels described the early Stoic view of nature as “Heraclitean, dynamic, developing, and vibrant.” (However, considering their later turn towards reactionism, it can be seen that their materialism was incomplete and dualistic, ultimately leading to idealism and their own opposite.)
The second picture from the original poster is broken.
Network issue, I’ll see if I can change it later
The original poster, please update quickly, I haven’t seen anyone recently
Recently translating literature, too busy, and also due to previous mental laxity, so reading notes have not been continuously updated. Once the current work is finished, I will start a new post to update.
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