Homeric Virtues and Socratic Wisdom: Shaping Western Thought
Homeric Virtues and Community
The practice of Western thought, born in Greece, is not found in a philosophical way in the Homeric poems (8th-7th century BC), but in a literary way. It presents a reflection on the moral edge:
- Good (doing what serves the community)
- Virtue (ability to excel)
The goal is to excel in good, paying the community the best services.
Socratic Attitude
Socrates is considered the creator of the Western practice. While philosophers dealt with the research of the principle of the universe, Socrates focused his interest on the realization of the human in society. He reflected on the following possibilities:
- The attitude of truth for humans rests on the truth
- Opposing dogmatism
- Discovering the truth through reflection and dialogue
- Method: Maieutics, the art of giving birth to the truth
- Moral concepts are valid for all
- Wisdom is necessary for virtue and happiness
- Moral intellectualism
Three Models of Happiness
Aristotle says, “All want to be happy.” There are three models of happiness:
- Being happy is to self-realize, reaching one’s own goals (Eudaemonism)
- Being happy is to be self-sufficient, to value oneself, and not depend on anyone
- Being happy is to experience pleasure and manage to avoid pain (Hedonism)
Aristotle believed “Being happy is to be human.” Epicurus asked, “What moves men to act?” He believed that pleasure is what moves us. The hedonists believe that happiness involves pleasure, and the eudaemonists believe that it provides pleasure and self-realization.
Happiness as Self-Realization: Eudaemonism
Aristotle believed that happiness is the ultimate nature. All activities are done for an end, and happiness is the ultimate end. It will:
- Be perfect (it is sought for itself)
- Be sufficient by itself (he who possesses it no longer wants anything else)
- Be achieved through the good performance of the activity most typical of the human being (under excellence)
- Be achieved through a theoretical life of wisdom and practices
Some deeds are so perfect that they represent different effects. For example, a walk with friends is performed for its own sake, while going to a specific place is done to reach it. Aristotle believed that happiness consists of the exercise of theoretical activity. He who lives according to the intellect, its dominant practice, will reach happiness. This is helped by two virtues:
- Dianoetic virtue: Prudence is practical wisdom, to deliberate well, proposing what is appropriate in all of our lives.
- Ethical virtue: To make individual decisions to live in society requires the practice of politics.
Happiness as Self-Sufficiency
The Cynics
“Cynic” is an adjective applied to a group of people who formed a philosophy. They believed that happiness is the radical freedom of the individual against all social norms and institutions. The wise human, according to the Cynics, is one who lives according to nature.
Stoicism
There are three periods in Stoicism:
- Primitive Stoicism (3rd century BC), represented by Zeno of Citium, Cleanthes, and Chrysippus, is a materialist doctrine that combines the basic outlines of Heraclitus and the Cynics, especially about physics and logic. It is characterized by dogmatism, mainly represented by Chrysippus.
- Middle Stoicism (2nd-1st century BC), represented by Panaetius and Posidonius, incorporates Platonic elements, gradually abandoning materialism and preferably covering moral topics.
- New Stoicism (1st century AD), represented by Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, focuses on ethical and socio-political topics, influencing the Roman world.
The Stoics divided philosophy into logic, physics, and ethics. The ideal of the Stoic is the exercise of virtue, achieved through the acceptance of fate and the struggle against passions.
Happiness as Pleasure: Hedonism
Hedonism is a philosophical doctrine that identifies good with pleasure. Aristippus and Epicurus of Samos are considered hedonists. According to hedonism, only ethical rules of thumb are used to defend against feelings of disgust and to open fully to the joys of life.
Epicureanism
Epicureanism is the doctrine of Epicurus of Samos and his disciples. It follows the Cyrenaic school and focuses, like it, on the supreme human end in pleasure, which can be achieved through autonomy and ataraxia. The wise man must cultivate everything that contributes to increased happiness and delete everything that opposes it, essentially the fear of the gods and death. To do this, one must develop a physical theory and a doctrine on this knowledge. Thus, the system includes:
- The canon of Epicurus, or doctrine of knowledge
- Physics, or doctrine of nature, inspired by atomist materialism
- Ethics, or doctrine of the soul and its behavior
Epicureanism remained unchanged until the 4th century AD. It was revived in the 17th century by Gassendi and later, through him, with modern materialism.
Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism is a philosophical doctrine that bases its moral system on the principle of utility, individual or universal. While traditionally we have often referred to the hedonism of Aristippus, the eudaemonism of old, and even the theory of Hobbes as utilitarianism, we should restrict the application of the term to the date it appeared in England in the late 18th century and developed in the 19th century. Its top representatives are J. Bentham, J.S. Mill, and H. Spencer.
- Bentham based his moral arithmetic on pleasures: the object of all morality is happiness, understood as simply increasing pleasure and decreasing pain in their quantitative aspects (intensity, duration, etc.), with no qualitative difference.
- Stuart Mill, in his book Utilitarianism (1861), distinguished qualitatively superior pleasures and specific intellectual and emotional pleasures against sensitive ones, breaking both hedonism and all social and psychological atomism.
- H. Spencer pointed out that the same law of evolution is a progressive harmony that is finally complete, the fulfillment of which will be met as the utmost happiness of each and all.