It is commonly accepted that the Greek
philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, made essential contributions to the foundations
of Western civilization. Less recognized is how the diametrically opposed
ideologies of Platonism and Aristotelianism influenced the formative centuries
of Christian thought, creating theological fault-lines whose tensions reverberate
to the present day.
For the purposes of compass theory, the
original philosophical positions held by Plato and Aristotle assume importance
for psychotheological reasons. Their philosophies, we propose, are foundational
to the development of two opposing mind-sets that profoundly impact
Christianity and the Western world. Here is a summary of each
position.
Plato’s Transcendent Realm of “Eternal
Being”
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| Plato |
Both a brilliant philosopher and
mathematician, Plato (428-348 BC) favors the use of abstract reason in
theorizing about the nature of God and humanity. It is interesting to note that
Plato draws many of his examples to support such propositions from the field of
mathematics, an area of study that reflects upon perfect but lifeless entities.
Beyond this spatiotemporal world, Plato
hypothesizes, there exists a noncorporeal and perfect world, one of eternal
being, that is nonphysical, nonspatial, and nontemporal. This is Plato’s world
of Ideal Forms. A world that is in stark contrast to the imperfect shadow of
this physical world in which human beings live.
Here is Plato on the subject:
This, then, which gives to the objects of knowledge their truth and to him who knows them his power of knowing, is the Form or essential nature of Goodness...And so with the objects of knowledge: these derive from the Good not only their power of being known, but their very being and reality.
At a practical level, Plato implies
that the world ordinary people experience as being real—the world of changing,
growing, living things—is not real at all. It is but an illusory and inferior
representation of the eternal and changeless realm of Ideal Forms.
The highest and most noble aspect of
the self is the mind, with its ability to contemplate abstract ideals and apply
them to the disciplined life of human reason. The lowest and most ignoble
aspects of the self are the emotions and bodily senses, because of their
inherent “irrational” qualities.
Since reason possesses greater
stability and most accurately corresponds to the noncorporeal world of ideal
being, it therefore follows that abstract thinking is superior to emotion,
sensation, and intuition.
Such reliance upon reason is applied to
natural theology as well. Plato attributes intelligence to God and a reasoned
order to the universe. Like the Christian God, Plato’s deity is good. Indeed,
God is termed the Form of the Good, positioned at the summit of the pyramid of
knowledge, the perfect expression of eternal being.
But the Form of the Good is an impersonal
creator, and while the created universe is ordered and ordained for a purposive
human destiny, this is a mechanistic rather than personalistic universe.
“The emphasis (is) most decidedly placed by Plato on the sphere of perfect Being, of true Reality,” notes philosopher of history Frederick Copleston: “On Being, rather than on Becoming.”
Such mental preoccupation with absolute
ideals, based on the otherworldly perfection of God’s eternal being, defines
the essence of Plato’s mind-set.
The sense world of human experience is
entirely separate from the world of Ideal Forms. This separation results in dualism:
an unbridgeable chasm between eternal Being and spatiotemporal Becoming—in
theological terms, between the transcendence and immanence of God.
Aristotle’s Immanent World of Change
and “Becoming”
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| Aristotle |
Aristotle (384-322 BC) investigates
this present world for the purpose of organizing data and discovering the principles
of change that govern the world of sense perception. In his fascination for earthly
creation, Aristotle shows considerable gifts for practical, empirical, and
intuitive investigation. He favors biology as the model science, developing a
curriculum for the study of imperfect but living organisms.
For Aristotle there is no dualistic
separation of eternal Being from spatiotemporal Becoming, as Plato would have
it. There is only one world, the world of actual things that are moving
dynamically toward fulfillment. Although he accepts the concept of Plato’s
eternal forms, Aristotle sees such forms as embedded in the concrete
particulars of this world, as inner forces of growth and change. These forms
are self-actualizing trends of the spatiotemporal world, a concept that he
terms “entelechy.”
God is seen as pure and complete
actuality. There is no sense of god as a person who cares about or provides for
humanity. Instead, God is a metaphysical necessity, the force behind entelechy
that drives all things toward fulfillment in the here and now world of
becoming.
In clear contrast to his mentor, Plato,
“Aristotle was possessed by the concept of Becoming,” Copleston notes. Aristotle’s
interest in this-worldly concreteness characterizes the subsequent mind-set of
Aristotelianism, derived from Aristotle’s search to describe and understand the
sensible world, a passion absent in the philosophy of Plato.
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