Plato V Aristotle

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In what I have read of Plato I find some of his ideas to be quite intriguing. Why does the church support Aristotle so much over Plato?
 
It doesn’t. Aquinas does.

Augustine is essentially a Platonist, and Augustine has had probably had almost as much influence over the church as Aquinas.
 
billcu1 said:
In what I have read of Plato I find some of his ideas to be quite intriguing. Why does the church support Aristotle so much over Plato?
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I wouldn’t say the Church does. Plato was favored by Catholic thinkers and Church Fathers like St. Augustine for the first millennium of the Church’s history. Aristotle didn’t really come into the mainstream of Catholic thought until the Middle Ages with thinkers like Peter Abelard and Albert the Great and his thought wasn’t fully excepted until after St. Thomas Aquinas. I appreciate both Plato and Aristotle, as does the Church. Of course, both men also reach some conclusions which are incompatible with Catholic thought.
 
St. Bonaventure (feast day today:thumbsup:) was also a Platonist.
 
Plato believed in the primacy of spirit over matter. So does the Church. Aristotle tells us very little about the life of the spirit as opposed to the body. His ethical system, while more organized and sophisticated than Plato’s, gives less attention to love as the central virtue than Plato gives in the Symposium. Aristotle’s doctrine of the golden mean is also at variance with Catholic teaching on morals. We should not always be seeking the golden mean. Rather, as Christ taught us, we should seek to be perfect even as our heavenly Father is perfect.
 
Charlemagne_II said:
Plato believed in the primacy of spirit over matter. So does the Church. Aristotle tells us very little about the life of the spirit as opposed to the body. His ethical system, while more organized and sophisticated than Plato’s, gives less attention to love as the central virtue than Plato gives in the Symposium. Aristotle’s doctrine of the golden mean is also at variance with Catholic teaching on morals. We should not always be seeking the golden mean. Rather, as Christ taught us, we should seek to be perfect even as our heavenly Father is perfect.
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Maybe the father is like the golden mean 🤷 Are you talking about math?
 
Charlemagne_II said:
Plato believed in the primacy of spirit over matter. So does the Church. Aristotle tells us very little about the life of the spirit as opposed to the body. His ethical system, while more organized and sophisticated than Plato’s, gives less attention to love as the central virtue than Plato gives in the Symposium.
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Love is not a central virtue in the Symposium. It is merely a lack. This is erotic love Plato is talking about – not at all agape love – and though I agree that erotic love plays a role in the Christian vision, it is not the role of a virtue. Erotic love has always been understood by Platonists to be a yearning for union with the divine. So this would resonate with the mystical aspects of Christianity.

I do not think Paul was talking about agape as a desire to possess and be possessed. But I could be wrong, I suppose. 🤷
 
Of course, Thomas Aquinas as Doctor of the Church trumps these two great philosophers, perhaps a huge reason as to how Western civilization came to flourish.

Aristotle is indebted to Plato, though it does not seem to be the case that Plato was a direct teacher of his. Plato would be indebted to Socrates.

As a side comment, Symposium does talk about love – but in its various manifestations. In fact, homosexual love is honored or celebrated in this dialogue. Interesting.
 
Prodigal_Son said:
Love is not a central virtue in the Symposium. It is merely a lack. This is erotic love Plato is talking about – not at all agape love – and though I agree that erotic love plays a role in the Christian vision, it is not the role of a virtue. Erotic love has always been understood by Platonists to be a yearning for union with the divine. So this would resonate with the mystical aspects of Christianity.

I do not think Paul was talking about agape as a desire to possess and be possessed. But I could be wrong, I suppose. 🤷
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Oh my this doesn’t involve pedastry does it? There has been controversy that the teacher teaches his student and there’s homosexuality involved. Such has been said concerning Jesus and John. I don’t believe of course they were really lovers but it has been portrayed like that I think for understanding purposes in the hellenistic world by some people in their communicating.
 
Pilosopo said:
Aristotle is indebted to Plato, though it does not seem to be the case that Plato was a direct teacher of his.
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It’s the established view that Plato and Aristotle were friends, and Plato was the leader of the Academy where Aristotle studied. What evidence do we have that Plato didn’t teach Aristotle? :confused:
As a side comment, Symposium does talk about love – but in its various manifestations. In fact, homosexual love is honored or celebrated in this dialogue. Interesting.
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Celebrated and criticized. It’s a dialogue.
 
billcu1 said:
Oh my this doesn’t involve pedastry does it? There has been controversy that the teacher teaches his student and there’s homosexuality involved.
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I don’t follow you. Yes, the Symposium is about partially about pedastery, which was common practice among the Greeks.
 
Saint Augustine made no secret of his reverence for Plato. He was actually heavily influenced by Neoplatonism (ie Plotinus, Proclus). In his work entitled The City of God (Book 8), Augustine wrote:
**Among the disciples of Socrates, Plato was the one who shone with a glory which far excelled that of the others, and who not unjustly eclipsed them all. … For those who are praised as having most closely followed Plato, who is justly preferred to all the other philosophers of the Gentiles **… Of which three things, the first is understood to pertain to the natural, the second to the rational, and the third to the moral part of philosophy. For if man has been so created as to attain, through that which is most excellent in him, to that which excels all things,—that is, to the one true and absolutely good God, without whom no nature exists, no doctrine instructs, no exercise profits,—let Him be sought in whom all things are secure to us, let Him be discovered in whom all truth becomes certain to us, let Him be loved in whom all becomes right to us. …
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… It is evident that none come nearer to us than the Platonists. … The Platonic philosophers … have recognized the true God as the author of all things, the source of the light of truth, and the bountiful bestower of all blessedness. And not these only, but to these great acknowledgers of so great a God, those philosophers must yield who, having their mind enslaved to their body, supposed the principles of all things to be material; as Thales, who held that the first principle of all things was water; Anaximenes, that it was air; the Stoics, that it was fire; Epicurus, who affirmed that it consisted of atoms, that is to say, of minute corpuscles; and many others whom it is needless to enumerate, but who believed that bodies, simple or compound, animate or inanimate, but nevertheless bodies, were the cause and principle of all things. …
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… Whatever philosophers, therefore, thought concerning the supreme God, that He is both the maker of all created things, the light by which things are known, and the good in reference to which things are to be done; that we have in Him the first principle of nature, the truth of doctrine, and the happiness of life,—whether these philosophers may be more suitably called Platonists, or whether they may give some other name to their sect; whether, we say, that only the chief men of the Ionic school, such as Plato himself, and they who have well understood him, have thought thus; or whether we also include the Italic school, on account of Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, and all who may have held like opinions; and, lastly, whether also we include all who have been held wise men and philosophers among all nations who are discovered to have seen and taught this, be they Atlantics, Libyans, Egyptians, Indians, Persians, Chaldeans, Scythians, Gauls, Spaniards, or of other nations,—we prefer these to all other philosophers, and confess that they approach nearest to us. …
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… Certain partakers with us in the grace of Christ, wonder when they hear and read that Plato had conceptions concerning God, in which they recognize considerable agreement with the truth of our religion. … What warrants this supposition are the opening verses of Genesis: “In the beginning God made the heaven and earth. And the earth was invisible, and without order; and darkness was over the abyss: and the Spirit of God moved over the waters.” [Genesis 1:1-2 ] For in the Timæus, when writing on the formation of the world, he says that God first united earth and fire; from which it is evident that he assigns to fire a place in heaven. This opinion bears a certain resemblance to the statement, “In the beginning God made heaven and earth.” Plato next speaks of those two intermediary elements, water and air, by which the other two extremes, namely, earth and fire, were mutually united; from which circumstance he is thought to have so understood the words, “The Spirit of God moved over the waters.” For, not paying sufficient attention to the designations given by those scriptures to the Spirit of God, he may have thought that the four elements are spoken of in that place, because the air also is called spirit. ** Then, as to Plato’s saying that the philosopher is a lover of God, nothing shines forth more conspicuously in those sacred writings**.
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Really, I don’t even think Aquinas was as in love with Aristotle as St. Augustine was with Plato 😃
 
**bill

Maybe the father is like the golden mean **

I don’t think so. We can hardly be virtuous enough.

Those who think they are virtuous enough should take a second look.
 
The Symposium explores homoerotic love. It does not glorify it. As Socrates points out, Alcibiades invited him to lie die with him, but Socrates declined.

Later in in his life in The Laws Plato condemns homosexuality as shameful. That would certainly be consistent with both Old and New Testament views toward homosexuality.
 
billcu1 said:
In what I have read of Plato I find some of his ideas to be quite intriguing. Why does the church support Aristotle so much over Plato?
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Well the Church does not prefer or support per se a philosopher over another.

Simply Plato’s and Aristotle’s logic and ideas were used to ‘order theology’ into a systematic and coherent ‘science’ (intended as ‘organized field of knowledge and learning’).

Most fathers were neoplatonists.

Aquinas based most of his work on Aristotle’s methaphysics (but also Plato’s and Averroe and Avicenna and others).

The Church actuyally condemned several ideas of Aristotle! Including some of Aristotelian physics.

Yet Aristotle logic is the base for all western logic, even the logic that departs from classical aristotelian logic (of course we progressed since Aristotle 🙂 ).

So it’s no wonder Aristotle has such a profound effect on the Scholastics and the Church.

Yet the Church itself does not found itself on a particular philosopher and even today there are both aristotelians, platonists and others.
 
Charlemagne_II said:
**bill

Maybe the father is like the golden mean **

I don’t think so. We can hardly be virtuous enough.

Those who think they are virtuous enough should take a second look.
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I don’t understand. Is this the golden mean of math?
 
Prodigal_Son said:
It’s the established view that Plato and Aristotle were friends, and Plato was the leader of the Academy where Aristotle studied. What evidence do we have that Plato didn’t teach Aristotle? :confused:

Celebrated and criticized. It’s a dialogue.
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Thanks, Prodigal_Son. Yes, Aristotle was a direct student of Plato. I guess I allowed my speculation to overcome the facts. It’s just that Plato and Aristotle seem to have quite divergent views, whereas Socrates and Plato seem quite indistinguishable. Sorry for the confusion.

A lot to learn from the Dialogues… not to mention CAF 🙂
 
billcu1 said:
I don’t understand. Is this the golden mean of math?
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Just to give you some idea of what was meant by the mean.
If it takes on any mathematical sense, it is only in terms of avoiding excess and deficiency. Even with that, it is understood in terms of feelings.

A quick illustration:

Fear… Cowardice (excess) …. Courage (mean)
Confidence… Rashness (excess)… Courage (mean)…Cowardice (defect)
[Ross, David. Aristotle. Routledge: London & New York. 1995]

Quoting from Nicomachean Ethics:

That moral virtue is a mean, then, and in what sense it is so, and that it is a mean between two vices, the one involving excess, the other deficiency, and that it is such because its character is to aim at what is intermediate in passions and in actions, has been sufficiently stated. Hence also it is no easy task to be good.
[Nicomachean Ethics Book II, Chapter 9. (http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/ari/nico/nico022.htm )]
 
Charlemagne_II said:
Aristotle’s doctrine of the golden mean is also at variance with Catholic teaching on morals. We should not always be seeking the golden mean. Rather, as Christ taught us, we should seek to be perfect even as our heavenly Father is perfect.
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Hi Charlemagne;

This is not accurate. The Catholic Church does not reject Aristotle’s description of virtue as being the mean between excess and deficiency. In fact, it is precisely the attainment of this mean which constitutes perfection: perfection is not something other than finding the mean in moral action. St Thomas explains why virtue is a mean in ST 1a2ae, q.64. Even the Catechism uses the language of the mean in describing the virtues (see for example, #2469).
 
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