Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates, 3rd ed. Volume 3Grote, George
Philosophy
Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates, 3rd ed. Volume 3
Grote, George
Philosophy, Ancient; Plato; Socrates, 470 BC-399 BC
The implication of Subject and Object is expressed in a peculiar
manner (though still clearly) by Aristotle in the treatise De
Animâ, iii. 8, 1, 431, b. 21. [Greek: ê( psuchê\ ta\ o)/nta _pô/s_
e)sti pa/nta; ê)\ ga\r ai)sthêta\ ta\ o)/nta ê)\ noêta/. e)sti\ d'
ê( e)pistê/mê me\n ta\ e)pistêta/ _pôs_, ê( d' ai)/sthêsis ta\
ai)sthêta/.] The adverb [Greek: pôs] ([Greek: tro/pon tina/], as
Simplikius explains it, fol. 78, b. 1) here deserves attention.
"The soul is all existing things _in a certain way_ (or looked at
under a certain aspect). All things are either Percepta or
Cogitata: now Cognition is in a certain sense the
Cognita--Perception is the Percepta." He goes on to say that the
Percipient Mind is the Form of Percepta, while the matter of Percepta
is without: but that the Cogitant Mind is identical with Cogitata,
for they have no matter (iii. 4, 12, p. 430, a. 3, with the
commentary of Simplikius p. 78, b. 17, f. 19, a. 12). This is in
other words the Protagorean doctrine--That the mind is the measure
of all existences; and that this is even more true about [Greek:
noêta\] than about [Greek: ai)sthêta/]. That doctrine is
completely independent of the theory, that [Greek: e)pistê/mê] is
[Greek: ai)/sthêsis].
It is in conformity with this affirmation of Aristotle (partially
approved even by Cudworth--see Mosheim's Transl. of Intell. Syst.
Vol. II. ch. viii. pp. 27-28)--[Greek: ê( psuchê\ ta\ o)/nta pô/s
e)sti pa/nta]--that Mr. John Stuart Mill makes the following
striking remark about the number of ultimate Laws of Nature:--
"It is useful to remark, that the ultimate Laws of Nature cannot
possibly be less numerous than the distinguishable sensations or
other feelings of our nature: those, I mean, which are
distinguishable from one another in quality, and not merely in
quantity or degree. For example, since there is a phenomenon _sui
generis_ called colour, which our consciousness testifies to be
not a particular degree of some other phenomenon, as heat, or
odour, or motion, but intrinsically unlike all others, it follows
that there are ultimate laws of colour . . The ideal limit
therefore of the explanation of natural phenomena would be to show
that each distinguishable variety of our sensations or other
states of consciousness has only one sort of cause." (System of
Logic, Book iii. ch. 14, s. 2.)]
[Side-note: Plato's attempt to get behind the phenomena. Reference
to a double potentiality--Subjective and Objective.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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