GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

26 ETHICS AND POLITICS: THE GREEKS
Among the mott important is the tendency ofGreek drinkers
to interpret happenings in terms of their final causes, and
to explain people and things Ideologically. In order that
the significance of this tendency may be realized, it is
necessary that I shotold give some account of the early
thought of Socrates. (470-399 B.C.)
In a celebrated passage in the Dialogue called the
Phaedo, Socrates describes die course of his early philosophical
speculations; Originally, he says, he turned his attention
to the outside world and endeavoured to find there an
explanation of the things that puzzled him. His concern
was, in fact, with what we should now call physics and
astronomy. Pursuing his enquiries, he studied the works
of the leading philosophers of the time. To his surprise
he found that they threw no light on the questions that
interested him. They only explained haw things happened,
while he was interested in why they happened as they did. For
there must, he felt, be some reason why they happened as
they did, and a reason implied a mind that reasoned.
Hence, when Socrates heard that a philosopher, Anaxagoras,
had said that the world was ordered by a Mind or
Intelligence, he was exceedingly interested and looked
forward to receiving further light on this fruitful suggestion.
His hope was, however, disappointed, for it turned out that
the only order in the universe that Anaxagoras postulated
was the kind of order appropriate to a machine in which
every part was determined by every other. As for the action
of Intelligence, it was limited, apparently, to giving the
initial impulsion to the machine; this done, it withdrew from
the scene. Anaxagoras's Intelligence, in other words,
started motion in space and thereafter mechanism reigned
supreme.
Now whether this was or was not the way in which the
universe worked, it threw no light at all upon the question
why it worked as it did. If, Socrates argued, the reason
why things happened as they did was that an Intelligence
was ordering them, it would surely order them for the best
The reason why things are as they are must, in fact,