I might have been a bit premature in my earlier assumptions that the main paths of philosophy in the West are Plato and Aristotle. There is another: Socrates. But I think a lot of people don’t really recognize what his true function is. To me, he seems to play the role formerly reserved to trickster gods. In other words, we have this big division between the Real & Ideal, Matter & Mind, Sense & Spirit. While we might point towards Jesus or mythical systems like gnosticism as trying to unite these two realms, it seems that Socrates’ function is rather to seek unity through dissolving the boundaries. The Socratic Method seems to continually tear down certainty, and dispel innaccuracy until you’re left in a position where you realize the divisions you thought were important weren’t really at all. They were arbitrary assertions that don’t hold up under scrutiny. The truth recedes as you approach it, until at all times you are equidistant from it, which means that you’ve been right in the middle of it all along. There is no division - the joke’s on you. Interesting that one of Socrates’ most famous techniques was irony: he played dumb to draw people out, and to prove how dumb they really are. Socrates was declared by the Delphic Oracle to be the wisest of all men, because he alone knew how little he really knew. It’s interesting philosophically and not surprising that Plato was his student and successor, and that Plato’s philosophy focused on the absolute knowledge available to the soul of the realm of ideal forms. And then Aristotle is his student and his successor who believes that knowledge only comes from the senses. One reacts against the other who reacts against the other, creating the succession of philosophical themes in the West, and somehow the power of their reactions propel us through the ages.
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Along similiar lines, I wrote a little “Reflections” article for my college newspaper a few years ago on provoking your beliefs and the significance of Socrates:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/quantanephilim/2003/09/23/
The Trickster motif is significant and I think you are right to link Socrates with it but one should also include another stream - Diogenes and the Cynics (forgive me if you have mentioned this, I haven’t read all your posts on this subject yet).
Diogenes is important for numerous reasons. Firstly he IS the embodiment of the Trickster himself but, more significantly, he is a precursor of Christ and the Cynic School influenced Christianity to a very large and unacknowledged degree. The Byzantine concept of the ‘Holy Fool’ for example is pure Cynicism and it survives intact as a tradition incorporating magical elements right up to the time of Rasputin who is also of this lineage.
But the Cynics are important for another reason - they are a link in a chain which passes directly to Christianity and on to Islam/Sufism. The Greek tradition you mention would not have the significance to us it has were it not for it being salvaged by Jewish/Christian/Muslim scholars working in medieval Spain. These schools of philosophy and mysticism translated the Greek works we later inherited and which would otherwise be lost.
Having passed through a filter which was itself in essence a synthesis of Jewish/Christian/Islamic (mystical) belief, Greek thought became the bedrock of western civilization but in a form which was an amalgam of the highest of the three other traditions which nurtured it. I think this synthesis is important and evidence of it can be found everywhere in the west today - I won’t bore anyone with examples!
Thanks, I haven’t really looked into Diogenes, but I definitely will…
Yes, he’s very interesting and of course firmly in the Socratic tradition. Unfortunately I cannot recommend any links on him - the Wiki is not the full picture imo.
The ‘trickster’ element of Diogenes teaching (which wasn’t really a teaching or philosophy but more a mode of behaviour) is very likely preserved in the motifs of Mulla Nasrudin - the Middle Eastern mystical fool - whose tales are very similar to those told of Diogenes.
Yeah I checked out Wikipedia on this, and it was altogether unhelpful.
Here’s a good resource on the cynic stream that sprang from Socrates’ practical training in body:
http://www.geocities.com/avisolo4/Cynics.pdf
From the great compedium:
‘The history of philosophy: containing the lives, opinions, actions and discourses of the philosophers of every sect. Illustrated with the effigies of divers of them’ By Thomas Stanley, London, 1701.
Also have the Socrates section in PDF(6 MB) so email me and I’ll send it to whoever requests.