Editorial: 10th Issue August 29th 2018

Blog: http://michaelrdjames.org/

Journal site https://www.aletheiaeducation.eu/

https://joom.ag/cRFY

The first lecture is entitled “The Fifth Centrepiece lecture on The Philosophy of
Education” and it is the Fifth lecture given by Jude Sutton, one of the main
characters in the recently published Philosophical/educational novel “The
World Explored, the World Suffered: The Exeter lectures”.

The lecture explores epistemology,metphysics, mathematics and aresthetics

from the point of view of the philosophy of education in partly Aristotelian and
partly Wittgensteinian terms. Sutton claims that the metaphysical view of
reality our and our souls helps to construct the matrix or categorical framework
which is the foundation of our thought in many other domains.

“Epistemology, or Theory of Knowledge is one of the traditional divisions of

Philosophy along with Metaphysics, Ethics, Political Philosophy, and Logic. It has
been the area of Philosophy most susceptible to influence from Science. It may be
too soon to tell, but this century may go down in history as being the Third Major
Revolution in the History of Philosophy: the first two revolutions having been
initiated by Aristotle and Kant respectively. It is always notoriously difficult to point
to exactly when a revolution began, and by the way, as revolutions go this one
compared with the other two is a minor affair, but I would suggest that, when
Bertrand Russell tried to reduce Mathematics to Logic and then subsequently
Logicians went on to use Logic to dismantle much of what had been previously
established in Metaphysics and Ethics, this was the firing of the first shot by rebel
troops across the bows of traditional philosophy. Prior to this of course Science had
been surreptitiously undermining the above key areas of thinking and this state of
affairs culminated in the establishment of the school of the Logical Positivists.
Science allied itself with Logic and Epistemology in the positivist school, and
proceeded to colonise every area of knowledge: dismantling religion, politics, and
aesthetics on the way. The resultant philosophical landscape was as open and
barren as a desert, with cultural sand-atoms lying juxtaposed ad infinitum in all
directions and being shifted only by the winds of scientific and logical
methodologies. Almost everything erected by the architects of Aristotle and Kant
and their followers had been levelled and all that could be heard in the desert was
the wind of the talk of the existence and quantities of X. An American logician by the
name of Willard van Orman Quine, inspired by logic and the scientific project
claimed: “To be is to be the value of a variable”. In such terminology one can detect
the presence of the wraith of a Philosopher who distrusts European metaphysics.
Philosophy then responded with the work of Wittgenstein who, in his earlier work
spoke for the opposition, but was stopped in his tracks by the collective tonnage of
argument from the traditional philosophers. The later Wittgenstein subsequently
began restoring the landscape of traditional Philosophy from his base at Trinity
College Cambridge where I met him.

This revolution was of course a respnse to the counter revolution to Aristotelian

Philosophy which was begun by Descartes the mathematician, the man for
whom everything could be a quantitative variable , a reliable method and God.
Sutton attacks mathematical and scientific reductionism and rests his case on
Aristotelian epistemology and metaphysics. He discusses the metaphysics of
mathematics and arrives at the idea of unity or one-ness. Pythagoras’ harp takes
him into the realm of aesthetics and ethics…
The second lecture is a commentary and critique of the second lecture of a series
of lectures entitled “Political Philosophy” given by Professor Smith of Yale
University. Smith defines political Philosophy in terms of the analysis of what
a regime is and the search for a fully functioning regime. This critique and
commentary lecture covers lecture two, three and part of lecture 4. He begins
where all excellent political philosophy should with the example of the
examined political life of Socrates:

“Socrates is the founder of Political Philosophy because he engages in justifications

of the good life as well as illustrating the vulnerability of the political philosopher in
the state. When he is tried for impiety and the corruption of the youth of Athens–
philosophy is put on trial. The work suggests a necessary and inevitable conflict
between the freedom of the inquiring mind and the requirements of political life.
Socrates is a central historical symbol for political resistance to political power.
Some people try to defend Socrates on the grounds of freedom of speech but it is
important to know that this is not the grounds on which he defended himself. He is
rather defending the examined life, which for him alone is worth living. His quest is a
quest for self-perfection, not an argument for free speech. He is quarreling with his
accusers over who has the right to educate the citizen. This is a dialogue about
education.”

Socrates was perhaps the first pioneer of an ethical categorical view of a

meaningful life over a hypothetical instrumental political view of justice. He
was certainly a proponent of educating his fellow citizens on all manner of
questions. Yet he also indicates in his last stand a respect for the laws of Athens
which transcends any individualistic reading of his “ethical” actions. The
commentary resolves the tension between the individualistic and institutional
level in the following manner:

The Socratic sign within suggests that we move forward to the role of the moral law
within and Kant’s emphasis upon the goodwill of the individual. From this
perspective, there is certainly no paradox or contradiction. The society is not yet
ready to provide the conditions necessary for justice to reign universally, This Kant
can clearly see. Even though one might wish to argue that it ought to be able to
administer itself justly. This would seem to imply that acts of civil disobedience
directed at the law and the deepest beliefs of the society should be avoided, the
possible exception being a state of affairs in which the laws make leading an
examined Socratic life difficult or impossible. Aristotle would also consent to the
exception. He felt that states should not interfere with peoples choices: objecting to
the Republic and its forcing Philosophers to force the citizens to lead a life in
accordance with the idea of the common good.

Lecture number 4 of Smiths series then considers the accusation of fascism

levelled at Plato’s Republic. He has this to say:

“We are all heirs of Plato. The institutional and educational requirements of Plato’s
Academy share many characteristics of universities today. In Plato’s Callipolis and in
Yale today, men and women are selected at a relatively early age because of their
capacities for leadership, courage, self-discipline, and responsibility. They leave
their parents and sleep together, exercise together, study together. the best go on
to further study. If Plato is a fascist then so are we.”

The third lecture is part four of Aristotle in the Introduction to Philosophy

series. The issues discussed are “ethical”. Reference is made to Jonathan Lear
and his rather surprising and interesting claim that Freedom is an important
concept which we should use to evaluate the Ethics of Aristotle. This obviously
raises the spectre of the later figure of Kant which the Commentary resolves by
reference to practical reasoning an area of Philosophy that Aristole and Kant
share many interests.

The following is the famous beginning of the Nichomachean ethics:

“Every art and every enquiry, every action and choice, seems to aim at some
good:whence the good has rightly been defined as that at which all things aim.”

Good has many meanings, Aristotle has famously argued but this does not
demand a relapse into a relativistic view of ethics. On the contrary it leads us
back to the Kantian comparison made earlier:

For Aristotle, we should recall, the good has many meanings depending upon
whether it is aiming in discourse at peoples character, their actions, the place or
time they live in etc. But all have in common the essence of the good for man or
eudaimonia, which for Kant was a part of his ethical religious idea of the summum
bonum. It is especially difficult given this rather strong resemblance in their positions
to imagine the ethical Kantian agent being detached from his own happiness or
flourishing life. There is moreover a hylomorphic element to Kants theorizing which
is unmistakeable. In much of his reasoning there is specific reference to matter and
form and if we analyse the two formulations of the categorical imperative it would be
difficult not to see the formal aspect of the ethical law in the first formulation and the
material aspect in the second formulation. Were there to be only one formulation,
namely, the first, one might be able to argue more forcefully for if not the
detachment thesis Lear proposes, perhaps an accusation of formalism or
“emptiness”. The first formulation asks us to “will” that the maxim of ones action be
regarded as a universal law and if there is no such universal law then the logical
consequence is surely at the very least “emptiness” and more seriously perhaps the
impossibility of ethical action. The second formulation however fills the first
formulation with content by insisting that we should act so that we treat everyone
including ourselves as ends in themselves. This latter formulation is moreover,
reminiscent of the kind of respect embedded in the Aristotelian account of
friendship in the Nichomachean Ethics