Chapter 5 Intermezzo classical feelings are still there

Scholars and writers of the Renaissance thought that they might have produced art, literature, and scholarship that could rival ancient Greece and Rome, but could never surpass them.They therefore call it classical, which means classic, the best. The merits of the ancients and the moderns have been debated for two hundred years, until the 17th century, when the Greek scientific view of the sun, the earth, the planets and the stars was proved to be wrong, and the debate ceased.Since then, everyone has less respect for the classics, and instead puts more hope on the possible achievements of modern people.In some areas, however, our starting point is still the Greco-Roman writers.When we look at these giants, we may still feel "classical feelings".

The three great philosophers of Athens, Greece: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle played an important role in philosophy.It has been said that the entire Western intellectual tradition is nothing but Plato's footnotes.There is a close relationship between these three people. Socrates promotes philosophical views through "speculation", Plato is his disciple, and records the teacher's thoughts and dialogues, and Aristotle is Plato's student. Socrates didn't say that what he taught was the truth, he just established the method to move towards the truth, basically questioning everything and anything, not just looking at the surface, he believed that the opinions of ordinary people do not have a rational basis.He would ask such seemingly simple questions as: What does it mean to be a good person?After the disciple answered, he told the other party that there was a big loophole in this answer.The other party may rebut again, but this time more cautiously; more inquiries follow, more corrections follow.Socrates believed that if your mind is clear and quick, you will eventually grasp the truth.There is no need to go to Qiongbi and drop to Huangquan, or do any research.Truth exists, but you must work on your mind to grasp it.

To this day, this method still bears his name: the Socratic question and answer method.Logically speaking, this should be a teaching guide for university teachers-the role of teachers is not to make rules, but to help students think clearly and get fruitful results from discussions.So, a teacher-student conversation might look something like this: This question is a trap.A smart person doesn't need to know much to be able to master this set. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were people from the 4th to 5th centuries BC and lived in Athens, which was practicing democracy at that time.They were all critics of the democratic system, so Socrates offended the ruler of Athens, and was brought to court for contempt of the gods and corruption of young people's morals.His defense was that he didn't force anyone to accept his ideas, he just questioned them so that they could believe their beliefs on a rational basis.A jury of 501 citizens found him guilty, but the pros and cons were fairly close together.

Next, the jury has to decide what sentence he should be sentenced to.Prosecutors have called for the death penalty.At this time, most of the defendants would express their regrets quickly, and even move out their wives and children, begging for a lighter punishment, but Socrates refused to kneel and beg for mercy. What, he asks, is an appropriate punishment for a man who encourages you to pursue spiritual and moral gain?Maybe you should support him for the rest of his life!You may choose to exile me as punishment, but if you drive me out of this city, I will do the same in other cities.Socrates said: "No matter where I am, I can't live without questioning. A life without reflection is not worth living. You can also impose a fine on me, but I can't give you anything. I am not rich. ’” His disciple, distraught by his attitude, jumped out and offered to pay a high fine for him, but, not surprisingly, the jury sentenced him to death.

In Athens, executions are usually carried out immediately, but this time it was postponed because of religious celebrations.Socrates could have taken the opportunity to abscond, and perhaps the officials secretly hoped that he would escape, but he refused to do so.He asked: "Since I can't live forever, why bother to live? Living is not the purpose, but living well is. I once lived a good life under the rule of law in Athens, and now I am ready to accept punishment." Until the end For a moment, he was still full of philosophical speculation.Till his shackles were removed, he was still declaring that there was a thin line between pain and pleasure.

Sentenced to take hemlock juice to kill himself, he had to take the poison at the end of the day, and his disciples begged him to drink it later, and the sun had not yet set!Socrates replied that if he stole his life like this, he would think it was absurd. He calmly took the poison and drank it without any trauma, and soon died of the effect of the medicine. I have just described the death of Socrates in a tone of sympathy for the philosopher.Is it possible for me to tell this story in a different way so that you turn to sympathize with the prosecution?The prosecutor's son had joined Socrates in a philosophical forum and turned out to be a drunkard.The prosecutor therefore said that Socrates was a dangerous man, and who could say otherwise?If we are full of doubts about everything, people will lose their way; we cannot live by reason alone, we must rely on customs, habits and religion to guide individuals in the maze, so that we can achieve a society.

It's just that the above argument is hard to win.Our culture is largely on the side of Socrates, because Plato recorded and preserved this death process, and ended up holding him up as the highest model. To this day, Plato remains the starting point for a central philosophical question: Do our sensory experiences really guide us toward reality?Plato believed that what we see and feel in this world is only a shadow of a perfect form existing in another lofty spirit world.There are ordinary tables in the world, but there is a perfectly formed table that has always existed somewhere else.Even abstract ideas, such as justice and goodness, exist somewhere else in perfect form.Humans come from that spirit world, and must rediscover this perfection through mental and spiritual discipline.

Plato was a great idealistic philosopher who refused to explain the world from a material point of view.Knowing that ordinary people would reject his ideas, Plato responded with an analogy that is still vivid and powerful. Imagine a group of people, imprisoned in a dark cave, and all chained hands and feet.They sat all day long with their backs to the high wall, they couldn't see their backs, they could only face the cave wall on the other side.There is a road outside the cave, and at the end of the road there is a big torch. If other people, animals, and vehicles pass by on the road, the torch will cast the shadows of these things on the cave wall they are facing.The only things these cavemen saw were these images; they named shadows, they commented; they reasoned and debated them; they believed that these shadows were real in the world.

Later, one of them was accidentally unchained and walked from the cave to the open air.At first, the strong light blinded him, but when he saw the colorful and beautiful three-dimensional world under the sun, he couldn't help being surprised and suspicious.But, he said, in the cave, we thought... Yes, when you're in a hole, you can't see the truth. Aristotle, a student of Plato, did an excellent job of organizing knowledge of the natural world and the universe—not just the earth, but also the realm of astronomy.His cosmology, which held that the earth was the center of the universe, was overthrown in the scientific revolution of the 17th century, but his theory of clear thinking survives today.He proposed syllogism, that is, a narrative is divided into three paragraphs, starting from two premises (one is an overview, the other is a definite narrative) and draws a conclusion.for example:

Is this conclusion correct?For a syllogism to have a correct conclusion, the two premises must be true and the logic must be tenable.In the above example, cats do have four legs, and Milligan, has been said to be a cat, so both premises are true.And does its logic stand up?The answer is yes - if Milligan is a cat, and all cats have four legs, then Milligan must have four legs too. Here's an untenable argument: Although both premises are true, this conclusion is not true because there is no connection between Milligan and the cat (Milligan could also be a dog).And if one of the premises is not true, then even if the logic holds, the conclusion may not be true, for example:

The logic holds, but the conclusion is incorrect because the first premise is not true. Syllogisms can lead to all kinds of erroneous reasoning, but if you follow the rules step by step, you can find loopholes.From this we can see why people say that the Greeks taught us how to think rationally. Modern Western medicine can also be traced back to ancient Greece, especially Hippocrates, a citizen of Athens in its glory days who was born in the 5th century BC.His treatises still exist, but they must have been compiled by several authors who practiced his methods and principles. Hippocrates upholds rationality to explain diseases, and believes that diseases have their own reasons, and have nothing to do with magic, witchcraft or divine punishment.He was the first epidemiologist in history to look carefully at the development of diseases and the environments in which they caught them, trying to see patterns in their progression.He has strict requirements on the responsibilities of doctors: be cautious, have medical ethics, and always consider the well-being of patients.In fact, his writings defined what the profession of "pharmaceuticals" meant. Students entering medical school are now required to take an oath to abide by the oath he announced and named after him: the Hippocrates Oath.This set of oaths inadvertently revealed the medical environment of his day: However, Hippocrates also made a big mistake by pursuing the simplicity advocated by the Greeks, which has burdened Western medicine for a long time.According to his physiological view, the human body contains four main fluids: blood, mucus, yellow bile and black bile, and the health of the body depends on the balance of these four humors.Before the 19th century, if a doctor judged that a patient was suffering from excess blood, he would administer leech blood-sucking therapy, based on his authoritative statement.In this regard, Hippocrates has indeed been regarded as a classic for too long. The Greeks were superior to the Romans in almost everything except law.The Romans expanded the law step by step, including the rulings of judges and the opinions of judicial experts as constituent elements of the law.Although the national character of the Romans was much more pragmatic than that of the Greeks, their jurisprudence thinking had a strong color of Greek idealism.After they conquered other peoples, they would study the laws of each other carefully, trying to find out what they had in common. What is everyone's consensus on the law?This question gave rise to the concept of natural law—a set of ultimate norms derived from nature that all societies committed to justice should follow to revise their laws. The Eastern Roman Empire was not invaded by the Germans.In the 6th century AD, the ruler of the empire, Emperor Justinian, ordered the compilation of the Justinian's Code, recognized as the most complete Roman legal code.This set of legal codes reappeared in the 11th century and had a profound impact.It has less influence on England, which already has a comprehensive common law, but English contract law is still influenced by this code.Two issues concerning contracts are discussed below. Let's look at the employment contract first.If a rented horse is stolen, what is the responsibility of the renter?The answer is: he must compensate the owner for the price of the horse, because he should take good care of the horse. (We now leave it to insurance companies, not the Romans.) However, if the horse is taken violently, the renter is not responsible; he does not have to protect someone else's horse. Put yourself in danger.However, if the person who rented the horse did not return it after the agreed time and lost the horse, even if the horse was forcibly taken away, he would be liable for compensation. Consider this example again: Someone hires a goldsmith to make a ring.Is this a contract for the sale of a ring or a contract for the employment of a goldsmith?Different contract natures apply to different regulations.The answer is: it depends on the supplier of the gold material.If the customer provides the gold, it is a contract of employment; if the goldsmith himself provides the gold, it is a contract of sale. You can see the breadth and detail of this set of codes, and the determination of the editors to lay down fair and just principles for all kinds of human transactions.Our current treatment methods may be different, but no matter what intractable diseases we face, we know that predecessors have already thought of them. In the face of this great treasure house of knowledge - the crystallization of many painstaking efforts over the centuries, we will feel small.This is the classic feeling.