The Greek Philosophers, Vol. 1 (of 2)Benn, Alfred William
Philosophy
The Greek Philosophers, Vol. 1 (of 2)
Benn, Alfred William
Philosophy, Ancient
restrict his enquiries to human interests are rather lightly passed
over by Zeller; he seems at a loss how to reconcile the alleged reform
of scientific method with the complete abandonment of those physical
investigations which, we are told, had suffered so severely from being
cultivated on a different system.
There seem to be three principal points aimed at in the very ingenious
theory which we have endeavoured to summarise as adequately as space
would permit. Zeller apparently wishes to bring Socrates into line with
the great tradition of early Greek thought, to distinguish him markedly
from the Sophists, and to trace back to his initiative the intellectual
method of Plato and Aristotle. We cannot admit that the threefold
attempt has succeeded. It seems to us that a picture into which so
much Platonic colouring has been thrown would for that reason alone,
and without any further objection, be open to very grave suspicion.
But even accepting the historical accuracy of everything that Plato
has said, or of as much as may be required, our critic’s inferences
are not justified by his authorities. Neither the Xenophontic nor the
Platonic Socrates seeks knowledge for its own sake, nor does either
of them offer a satisfactory definition of knowledge, or, indeed, any
definition at all. Aristotle was the first to explain what science
meant, and he did so, not by developing the Socratic notion, but by
incorporating it with the other methods independently struck out
by physical philosophy. What would science be without the study of
causation? and was not this ostentatiously neglected by the founder of
conceptualism? Again, Plato, in the _Theaetêtus_, makes his Socrates
criticise various theories of knowledge, but does not even hint that
the critic had himself a better theory than any of them in reserve.
The author of the _Phaedo_ and the _Republic_ was less interested in
reforming the methods of scientific investigation than in directing
research towards that which he believed to be alone worth knowing,
the eternal ideas which underlie phenomena. The historical Socrates
had no suspicion of transcendental realities; but he thought that
a knowledge of physics was unattainable, and would be worthless if
attained. By knowledge he meant art rather than science, and his
method of defining was intended not for the latter but for the former.
Those, he said, who can clearly express what they want to do are best
secured against failure, and best able to communicate their skill to
others. He made out that the various virtues were different kinds of
knowledge, not from any extraordinary opinion of its preciousness,
but because he thought that knowledge was the variable element in
volition and that everything else was constant. Zeller dwells strongly
on the Socratic identification of cognition with conduct; but how
could anyone who fell at the first step into such a confusion of ideas
be fitted either to explain what science meant or to come forward as
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