Surprise and speculation
The first sentence of Aristotle's Metaphysics is: "Everyone wants to learn." He went on to explain that seeking knowledge from nature is a speculative activity of seeking wisdom for knowledge and wisdom, which does not obey any material interests and external purposes, so it is the most free learning. Philosophical speculation was initially expressed as "surprise", and surprise is curiosity. The earliest philosophers, out of curiosity to get to the bottom of things and know what they are, were surprised by some phenomena in front of them, such as the sun, the moon and the stars, the wind and rain, and then moved forward bit by bit, putting forward philosophical questions such as the origin of the universe and the origin of everything.
Philosophers are surprised by what ordinary people take for granted and find problems that people turn a blind eye to; They put forward and solved these problems, not to achieve any practical purpose, but only to obtain spiritual satisfaction. They are often not understood and even laughed at. It is said that Thales, the first Greek philosopher, only observed the astronomical phenomena, without paying attention to his feet, and fell into the pit. A slave girl sneered. He just wanted to know what happened in the sky, but he didn't know what happened around him and on the ground. Plato used the opposite meaning, saying that this sentence applies to all philosophers. Aristotle satirized secular ridicule. He told a story: In order to resist the useless secular prejudice of philosophy, Thales predicted the weather by observing the astronomical phenomena, knowing that there would be a bumper harvest of olives in the coming year, so he rented all the olive oil squeezing workshops in advance, and then rented them at a high price when the olives were harvested, which made a lot of profits. Aristotle's conclusion is: "This incident shows that it is easy for philosophers to make money, but this is not their interest."
Greek philosophers are mostly aristocrats. They don't have to work hard for a living, so they can engage in pure speculation. Aristotle correctly regarded "leisure" as a necessary condition for philosophical speculation. Slavery in ancient Greece was more developed than in any other country, and nobles enjoyed full leisure. But leisure is only a necessary condition for all intellectual activities, not a sufficient condition. Being able to make use of leisure to engage in philosophical speculation is a major feature of the Greeks. The aristocratic activities advocated by Greek nobles are war, hunting and speculation. The last fashion created a group of professional philosophers. Etymologically, the Greek word "leisure" comes from the western "school". School is the main place where philosophers after Plato study and impart knowledge. Because philosophy is an independent and noble profession in Greece, Greek philosophers neither belong to the monk class like Indian philosophers nor to the official class like China philosophers; Greek philosophical works have obvious boundaries with religious classics and historical and literary works. The professionalization of philosophy, in turn, promoted the development of Greek national speculative spirit, and as a result, it formed the unique quiet speculative character of Greek nation. This character is not only manifested in the special aesthetic feeling of their artistic morality, but also creates a scientific theory that is higher than the surrounding national culture. Although the Egyptians first summed up the rules of geometric measurement from experience, the Greeks built a geometric deduction system on this basis; Although the Babylonians began astronomical observation a long time ago, the Greeks put forward a speculative theory of astronomy by using observation data.
Characteristics of speculative thinking in Greek philosophy
What are the characteristics of the speculative spirit of Greek philosophy? We summarize these characteristics into five parts: contemplative, dialectical, deductive, rational and practical.
Greek philosophy is contemplative. Pythagoras, who first used the word "philosophy", once had such a metaphor: at the Olympic Games, there were vendors selling goods, athletes struggling to compete, and spectators quietly watching life scenes; Philosophers are onlookers. The reason why philosophers hold a wait-and-see attitude is that the object of their speculation is the unchanging source of the changing world, the pure essence of heteropoly phenomena and the eternal reason for the passage of reciprocating things; The Greek philosophical concept is that heterogeneous, changing and temporary objects are unreal or not very real, and only simple, unified and eternal objects are real. Greek philosophers are used to unchanging principles dominating the changing world, and everything belongs to static and eternal existence. This meditative feature of Greek philosophy is not a direct reflection of real life, but an ideal beyond reality. The natural environment and social reality of the Greeks have experienced too many hardships and changes, and their lives have become unbearable. They need a quiet state to achieve peace and balance in meditation.
The basic categories of Greek philosophy, one and many, static and dynamic, essence and phenomenon, necessity and accident, eternity and change, existence and generation, cause and effect, purity and heterogeneity, reason and emotion, form and thing, are all paired. Pairing is contradiction, and the way to solve contradiction is dialectics. Dialectics originally meant dialogue, which was advocated by Socrates and Plato, and later developed into Aristotle's dialectical reasoning. No matter in the form of dialogue or reasoning, dialectics is the analysis and synthesis of two opposing opinions, and finally comes to a unified conclusion. Dialectics is an art that comprehensively considers many aspects, unifies understanding and comprehensively overcomes contradictions. The contemporary philosopher J Derrida called this tradition of Greek philosophy "Logocentrism". "logos" is reason. The rational feature of Greek philosophy is the unity of binary opposition and monism.
The model of Greek philosophy is Euclidean geometry. On the lintel of the academy founded by Plato, there is a warning that "scholars who don't know geometry should not enter this door". Aristotle believes that all science is proof science, and the highest achievement of proof science is geometry. Although the formal logic founded by Aristotle contains inductive elements, its basic form is deduction. Deductive logic is the formalization of geometric axiom system. There are many arguments in Greek philosophy, but all kinds of arguments are logical reasoning. Even some sophistry can be summarized into three stages. Plato, for example, recorded how the wise men Utmus and Dionysus Sodru used sophistry to defeat those who thought that "learners are smarter than non-learners". The following is their conversation with a child:
"Is there a difference between the situation where you are studying and the situation where you don't know you are studying?"
"No."
"Do you have wisdom when you don't know what you are learning?"
"Not at all."
"If you have no wisdom, are you ignorant?"
"Of course."
"Therefore, when learning what you don't know, you are in a state of ignorance."
The child nodded in agreement.
This sophistry has the following syllogism forms:
Major premise: what you learn is what you don't know.
Minor premise: What you don't know is not wisdom.
Conclusion: Learners have no wisdom.
Strictly speaking, this syllogism is definitely untenable. We take this as an example to illustrate that syllogism deduction is the main form of Greek philosophical debate, which is sometimes obvious and strict, and sometimes implicit and vague.
"Reason" is a basic category of Greek philosophy. "Reason" means "nous" in Greek, which is also translated as "mind". Like other peoples in the world, the Greek nation also believes in religious concepts such as animism and immortality of the soul, and these traditional concepts have been preserved in Greek philosophy. But the concept of "rationality" is unique to philosophy. Anaxagoras, the first Athenian philosopher, proposed for the first time that the mind is the origin of the movement of all things, which Socrates appreciated very much. After Plato and Aristotle, rational concern is the most prominent and obvious embodiment of the rational spirit of Greek philosophy. Compared with the concept of "soul" in traditional religion, reason is purer, more speculative and has no personality. Greek philosophers believe that reason is an invisible and pure entity, which pushes everything without being pushed by anything, permeates the world and can maintain its own unity. When reason is connected with human soul, it constitutes a pure part of the soul and controls all activities of the soul. Not only cognitive activities, but also will and desire should be dominated by reason. The traditional view of soul holds that the soul only has formal dynamic power, and the soul is not separated from and opposed to the body. The rational concern of philosophy makes the relationship between body and soul, feeling and reason binary opposition. This leads to a series of questions, such as how rationality outside the soul acts on the human soul? How does reason dominate the body of aliens? What is the relationship between pure intellectual activities and soul activities related to feeling, will and desire being equal to the body? How does invisible reason know tangible things? Wait a minute. When Greek philosophers think about these problems happily, they seem to touch the deepest part of their hearts, the mystery of the world. Their pure speculative activities created this pure spiritual object, which in turn attracted and promoted the deepening of pure speculative activities.
Although Greek philosophers advocate pure speculation, they are not indifferent to practice. The word "practice" also means "practical". Greek philosophers all take goodness as their value orientation, and goodness is an interest, which of course has practical effects. Greek philosophers only denied the practicality of personal material interests and official enjoyment when explaining the non-practicality of philosophy. They neither deny the practicality of philosophy for personal spiritual life nor the utility of philosophy for public material life. Another special meaning of "practice" refers to religious, moral and political activities.
Greek philosophers regard the speculative pursuit of wisdom as a sacred activity, which enables people to acquire God's knowledge and get close to God. Socrates declared that he was a "gadfly" full of God and conveyed God's will. Plato said that the highest state that philosophy can reach is the "ecstasy" of the unity of god and man; Aristotle said that the first philosophy is theology, philosophical speculation expresses the divinity in human nature, and the life of a philosopher is the culmination of happiness that human beings can achieve. These words express a rational religious view or a deified philosophical view.
The practical spirit of philosophy is also reflected in rational ethics. Except for a few people such as cynics and Cyrenarians, Greek philosophers all believe that human nature is rationality, that living by nature means obeying rationality, that will and desire should obey rationality, that true happiness is spiritual happiness, and that the stipulation of virtue comes from rationality. Socrates' famous saying "Virtue is knowledge" expresses the practical spirit of rational concern.
Philosophy is particularly important for Greek city-state politics and later Roman politics. Since Socrates called on philosophers to care about personnel, all philosophers have taken it as their responsibility to improve public affairs. Plato's ideal of "philosopher king", Aristotle's Politics and the Stoic concept of "world citizen" not only summarize the real politics, but also point out the direction for political practice.
It should be admitted that the political utility of Greek philosophy is not the first. The thinking of Greek philosophy has such an order: personal speculation-personal practice-public practice. Practice is the result and utility of speculation, and its exact meaning is practical reason. Personal practice is sometimes the basis and premise of public practice. Therefore, the political function of philosophy is only the indirect result and utility of personal speculation. China's philosophy is different. It puts the second or third thing in Greek philosophy in the first place, and personal cultivation is always carried out in a certain political framework. Some people say that China's philosophy emphasizes practice, while Greek philosophy emphasizes speculation, which makes sense. What needs to be added is that both China's philosophy and Greek philosophy have both speculation and practice, but they have different positions in different theoretical frameworks.