Poyan Keynejad

Group I: Ethics (#2)

According to Aristotle, humans’ highest good involves the pursuit of deriving happiness from living and thinking well. To this end, Aristotle justifies this particular claim through explaining: “the chief good is evidently something final. Now we call that which is in itself worthy of pursuit more final than that which is worthy of pursuit for the sake of something else. Now such a thing is happiness, for this we choose always for itself” (Aristotle 570R/571L). In this light, Aristotle’s argument here is that the highest good can only be that which is achieved through actualizing something which is worthy of actualizing in and of itself, and for Aristotle nothing fits this description better than that of happiness, whether such happiness be derived from theoretical or practical pursuits.

On the other hand, the Socrates of Plato’s Crito takes a slightly different approach to the highest goodness. Toward the beginning of Crito, Socrates remarks that “the good life, the beautiful life, and the just life are the same” (Plato 42R). To this end, the highest good for Socrates involves living responsibly and thoughtfully at all times and regardless of the context of one’s circumstances. Socrates puts this idea of the highest goodness into action by refusing to flee his death sentence in Athens. Socrates makes the argument that in being an Athenian citizen, he has taken an oath to follow the rulings of Athenian law, regardless if such a law is used to condemn him to death. In defense of his responsibility to the rule of law, Socrates bemoans us to “not value either your children or your life or anything else more than goodness,” (Plato 46L) or, other words, living thoughtfully and responsibly.

In weighing both of these arguments for the highest good against one another, I must say that while I do not inherently disagree with Socrates’s argument, I find Aristotle’s account of the highest good to be more compelling. This is because in Plato’s Crito Socrates only vaguely lays out a general philosophical conception of what it means to live a good life, whereas in Aristotle’s own conception of the highest good he lays out a structured argument for what such goodness entails, namely that the highest good must be something which is worthy of pursuing for the sake of itself, which for Aristotle is embodied in the actualization of happiness. In this light, I find Aristotle’s account of goodness more compelling than Socrates’s account because it is structured in a clear and logical manner. Though I will also qualify my remarks by saying that I do generally sympathize with Socrates’s conception of goodness; I just find it less compelling than Aristotle’s competing conception.

Group II: Metaphysics (#4)

Saint Anselm argues for the existence of god on the basis that god is “something … [of] which nothing greater can be conceived,” and thus according to this line of thought such a god “cannot exist just in the understanding, [because] we could conceive it to exist in reality too, in which case it would be greater” (Anselm 40R/41L). To this end, Anselm is maintaining that if one accepts the premise that god is “something … [of] which nothing greater can be conceived,” then it logically follows that such a god must exist, in that the only thing greater than having the concept of such a god in one’s mind is the reality that that god exists outside of the mind, therefore fulfilling Anselm’s premise of god being “something … [of] which nothing greater can be conceived” (Anselm 40R).

On the other hand, Saint Aquinas argues for the existence of god on the basis that every cause must have an action and thus that there must have been a first cause that was caused by god, seeing as how, at least in Aquinas’s eyes, the universe is finite and as such it must have originated from a first cause. To this end, Aquinas maintains that everything has been changed by something else, “But this cannot go back to infinity. If it did, there would be no first cause of change and, consequently, no other causes of change,” (Aquinas 43L) meaning that without a first cause there would be no universe in the first place. In this light, Aquinas posits that the only thing capable of causing the first cause is god, and thus he bases his argument for god’s existence on the idea that such a god would have been necessary to “cause” a finite universe.

From my own amateur perspective, I find Aquinas’s aforementioned argument for the existence of god to be stronger than Anselm’s argument. This is because Anselm’s argument for god’s existence seems grounded purely in rhetoric and semantics, as if his argument were just a word game. On the other hand, Aquinas’s argument for god’s existence is grounded in a problem of physics that, short of modern science, only the existence of a god could reasonably resolve. The premise that a finite universe must have had a first cause is a premise that virtually any person could easily accept. Thus on the basis of its premise and its logical conclusion, Aquinas’s argument for god seems stronger than Anselm’s argument.

With regard to persuasiveness, Aquinas’s argument for god’s existence is certainly persuasive in the sense that one cannot rationally conceive of a finite universe that did not bear a first cause, in that such a universe’s very finiteness requires an originary causation. Thus, short of having any knowledge of the Big Bag, Aquinas’s contention that god must have caused the first cause is a reasonable one, as it would be difficult to come up with an idea of any other entity that could be capable of causing the first cause.

Group III: Epistemology (#6)

Descartes imagines an “evil demon” at the end of Meditation because he uses this concept to illustrate that most knowledge is dubious and that one must start from a position of skepticism if they are to be able to truly find a trustworthy foundation for verifiable knowledge. To this end, Descartes remarks how, in realizing that he would need to start his pursuit of knowledge from scratch, “I would need to tear down everything and begin anew from the foundations if I wanted to establish any firm and lasting knowledge” (Descartes 157L). Thus, in devising a theoretical “evil demon” that can mislead humans into positions of false knowledge, Descartes is beginning to “tear down everything and begin anew” in his pursuit of “firm and lasting knowledge” (Descartes 157L).

Zhuangzi makes similar arguments in pursuit of establishing skepticism in his own scholarship. For one, Zhuangzi makes the skeptical argument that knowledge is ultimately impossible because, for him, the divide between subjectivity and objectivity cannot be overcome. He argues such because he maintains that “Everything is merely subjective; there is no such thing as objectivity. So there is no such thing as knowledge” (Zhuangzi 322). In this sense, he views knowledge as impossible because humans are only capable of having imperfect subjective perspectives. Building off of this contention of ultimate subjectivity, Zhuangzi makes another skeptical argument on the basis of “universal variability,” with universal variability being the notion that since everyone perceives things differently, “There is no way to decide which perceptions ought to be trusted,” (Zhuangzi 322) which again provides us with the implication that objective knowledge is impossible.

The main similarity between Descartes’s skepticism and Zhuangzi’s skepticism is that both philosophers make certain theoretical arguments in order to illustrate how, in many cases (or in all cases for Zhuangzi), what we take to be knowledge is in fact quite untrustworthy. On the other hand, the main difference between Descartes’s skepticism and Zhuangzi’s skepticism lies in what both are trying to achieve through their skeptical arguments. Descartes’s only endeavors in skepticism so that he can weed out all false knowledge from his perspective and thereafter establish a firm foundation for real knowledge. On the flip side, Zhuangzi does not have a constructive end to his skepticism, in that he maintains his skeptical arguments solely for the purpose of illustrating how there can be no firm foundation for real knowledge. In this sense, Descartes’s goals and Zhuangzi’s goals are quite different when it comes to skepticism.