Abstract
Chapter 2 traces the developments in philosophy from the pre-Socratic thinkers to the end of the Middle Ages, that is, from ca. 600 BC to ca. 1500 AD. It presents the philosophies of the pre-Socratics, the Sophists, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoa, Thomas Aquinas, William of Ockham and Marsilius of Padua. In doing so, it sets out the worldview of the classical period and the Middle Ages, which presupposed a coherent unity and purpose in the universe. In the Greek-Roman period and in the Middle Ages people took for granted that behind the phenomenal world within which man leads his everyday life, a higher spiritual order is concealed. This spiritual world gives unity and meaning to empirical reality. Since the empirical world is viewed as an imperfect materialisation of the spiritual world, the latter serves as the standard by which to perfect the former. According to this idealistic worldview, the good is thus objectively present in (the higher sphere of) nature. This implies a broad, perfectionist concept of ethics, which commands man to align himself fully with an ideal of perfection. (Natural) Law, in this view, serves to enforce compliance with this perfectionist morality, and thus to ensure that man lives in accordance with his essential nature. Such a perfectionist ethics does not make provision for any individual freedom to arrange one’s life according to one’s own convictions. How one must live as man is after all objectively determined in nature, and is not left to individual choice. In this conception there is, therefore, no place for liberal freedom rights. The chapter furthermore shows the development towards the end of the Middle Ages which prepared the ground for the Modern Age, characterised by increasing fragmentation, individualisation and relativisation.
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Notes
- 1.
Greek life also knows an explicit irrational counter-movement. Many Greeks were followers of an animistic religion which was associated with sacrifice. In particular, their worship of Dionysus or Bacchus stands in opposition to rationalism. This Bacchian religion was all but serene, virtuous and rational. It was thought that through excessive drinking and ecstatic rites it was possible to become one with the god. Perhaps the emphasis in Greek philosophy on reasonableness and a harmonious order was so great in order to serve as a counterweight to these passionate, irrational features of Greek culture: in ethics it is specifically emphasized that the passions need to be controlled through reason. Nietzsche (Section 7.5) emphasized strongly this counter-side of Greek culture.
- 2.
Greek: aristoi = the best.
- 3.
Greek: telos = purpose.
- 4.
Greek: hèdonè = enjoyment; a hedonist is someone who regards enjoyment as the highest goal. This Aristotle does not do: enjoyment is a natural consequence of the achievement of virtuous perfection.
- 5.
Such an outcome is, viewed from a greater moral distance, only just when the preceding distribution was just: in the case of a very unjust distribution of wealth, theft can, on the other hand, be legitimate.
- 6.
Extrinsic good = good, but exclusively as a means to achieve another good; as opposed to an intrinsic good that is good as such.
- 7.
Isaiah Berlin in his Two concepts of liberty (1958) calls this the ‘withdrawal to the inner citadel’. When a country has long and unsafe boundaries, the ruler must concentrate on a smaller area which he can keep in his grip; ultimately he digs himself into an impregnable fortress.
- 8.
Alexander the Great, in the meantime, established a world empire; one can view the Stoic philosophy as a reaction to this.
- 9.
Latin: voluntas = will.
- 10.
This is an example of a ‘mirror for princes’, which were popular in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. A comparison with Machiavelli’s Il Principe is obvious here. When the prince of Machiavelli rules on behalf of the community, this is simply because he serves his own interest best in the maintenance of his dominion; in most instances repression is an appropriate means. See with regard to Machiavelli Section 3.3.
- 11.
Compare this with the above passage on Aquinas’s sexual morality.
- 12.
In comparison with Locke, who will be discussed in Section 4.2, the Pope allows little space for individual conscience. In his encyclic he contends in some places that the authority of the church does not affect the freedom of conscience of Christians: after all, the doctrinal authority points to the truths which the Christian conscience ‘should already possess by developing them out of the original act of faith’. The word italicised by us raises suspicion. The Pope says that he does not infringe upon the freedom of conscience, because right-thinking Christians would agree with the Papal view thereof. But if they do not? Then every form of force can be justified: a variant of: ‘forcing them to be free’. The Pope was not an adherent of political liberalism (Section 10.4), although the traditional catholic doctrine of the erring conscience which deserves consideration, could in principle be developed in this direction.
- 13.
William of Baskerville, the main actor in The Name of the Rose of Umberto Eco, is the alter ego of William of Ockham; the novel is set in 1327.
- 14.
‘Realism’ is here an answer to the question regarding the reality value of our concepts (Plato is a conceptual realist). This is something different from ‘Scandinavian realism’, which is discussed in Sections 8.1 and 8.3: law is reduced to the empirical conduct of judges in social reality.
References
Aquinas, Thomas. 2008. Summa theologica. http://www.newadvent.org/summa/. Accessed 28 May 2010.
Aristotle. 2004. The Nicomachean ethics, transl. J.A.K Thomson. London: Penguin.
Aurelius, Marcus. 2006. Meditations, transl. Martin Hammond. London: Penguin.
Epictetus. 1955. Enchiridion, transl. George Long. New York, NY: Prometheus Books.
Epicurus. 1994–2009. The internet classics archive. Letter to Menoeceus, transl. Robert Drew Hicks. http://classics.mit.edu/Epicurus/menoec.html. Accessed 27 Feb 2010.
Gaius. ca. 170 AD. The Institutes of Gaius. http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/law/. Accessed 27 Feb 2010.
McKirahan, Richard D. 1994. Philosophy before Socrates: an introduction with texts and commentary. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Co.
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Maris, C., Jacobs, F. (2011). Antiquity and the Middle Ages. In: Maris, C., Jacobs, F. (eds) Law, Order and Freedom. Law and Philosophy Library, vol 94. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1457-1_2
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