Exotic Journeys: A Tourist's Guide to Philosophy

brought to you by Ron Yezzi

Emeritus Professor of Philosophy

Minnesota State University, Mankato

(Author's Note: The account below, with slight modifications, is taken from Ron Yezzi, Philosophical Problems: The Good Life (Mankato: G. Bruno & Co., 1994), pp. 148-150.)

Topics

Kant and Aristotle

Plato and The Divided Line

Controversies: Some Objections and Possible Replies

Creative Excursions

Sources

Positive Answer:

Reason

The life of reason described under Rationalism with respect to the good life includes accounts of reason as a method of acquiring ethical knowledge. Those accounts will not be repeated here. Since they are presupposed in what follows however, readers are encouraged to cover that section again before proceeding. Here we concentrate on a single, specific issue, namely, the relation of reason to experience—dealing with Aristotle and Kant very briefly and then Plato in a bit more detail.

Kant and Aristotle

For Immanuel Kant, moral judgments must be based upon the moral law arrived at and analyzed according to reason itself, independently of practical experience in the world. Although experience may be relevant in making us aware of a situation that calls for a moral judgment, experience should not have any role in making the moral judgment. For example, we would never invoke the categorical imperative to reject lying unless our experience presented us with situations where lying is a possibility; in making the moral judgment not to lie however, we use reason itself without reference to experience. This denial of a role to experience results, we recall, from Kant's insistence that morality must be based upon principles that are universal and necessary—and affected not at all by the varying conditions of experience. Lying is wrong to a rational person simply because it contradicts the meaning of communication itself. That ends the matter. For Kant, those experiential situations where persons often try to justify lying—such as saving a life, preventing depression, or avoiding embarrassment and humiliation—have nothing to do with making a moral judgment.

Aristotle interprets the moral situation quite differently. While he regards reason as being essential to making sound moral judgments about proposed actions, he means reason tempered by the practical experiences of life. Thus, determining the mean for moral virtue requires a person of practical wisdom, and young people are not likely to make sound moral judgments because of their inexperience with the actions of life. Since experience is fundamental to sound moral judgments, Aristotle makes some allowance for moral judgments changing to meet changed circumstances—an approach adamantly rejected by Kant who wants moral rules to hold without exception and without allowances for particular circumstances.

Plato and The Divided Line

Near the end of Book VI of The Republic, Plato lays out The Divided Line to chart the process of transcending experience to arrive at ethical truth: For Plato, we all grow up in a world of experience that we must transcend through pure reason to arrive at true ethical knowledge, represented at its highest stage by the Form of the Good.

The lowest level of The Divided Line deals with our simplest, least considered speculations or hunches about our experience. It may also include teachings and sayings (that is, what are to us mere reflections of what someone else said) passed on to us and accepted without any thought about their meanings or truth. For example, “Honesty is the best policy.”

On the next level, we encounter beliefs based upon much clearer, direct perceptions in our experience. For example, persons observe directly that they do not like pain and then regard it as bad.

On these two lower levels, experience in the sensory world is the basis for awareness; on the two higher levels, however, reason is the foundation.

On the third level, we encounter the rational implications of various hypotheses. (Plato prefers to discuss this level in terms of mathematics, for example, where we study the rational implications of the definitions, axioms, and postulates of geometry—taking them as hypotheses without certifying their truth. In an ethical context, some of the creative excursions on this website exemplify the third level of The Divided Line. Readers are directed to start from a given position (say, John Stuart Mill's) and then to determine rationally its implications in various situations. The excursions provides training in the ability to understand implications of a position clearly and rationally.

On the fourth level, reason goes beyond hypotheses to the certified truth of the Forms, culminating ultimately in an apprehension of the Form of The Good. Rationally analyzing concepts such as courage, temperance, pleasure, and pain—trying out possible definitions, clarifying meanings, considering various possible objections—leads us to the Forms. Of the highest type of thinking, Plato says,

And so with dialectic [emphasis added]; when a person starts on the discovery of the absolute, by the light of reason only, and without any assistance of sense, and perseveres until by pure intelligence he arrives at perception of the absolute good, he at last finds himself at the end of the intellectual world, as in the case of sight at the end of the visible.¹

Dialectical reasoning, very briefly stated, is a method of question-and-answer discourse by which we rationally clarify concepts until we reach first principles that are certified truths.

Although we must transcend experience to arrive at truth, according to Plato, we do not remain within this realm of pure reason however. Having attained an awareness of The Good, we must gain practical experience in applying It in the world, so as to make sound moral judgments. Thus, in the training of philosopher-rulers, the fifteen years of rigorous training in the use of reason (culminating in an awareness of The Good) is followed by fifteen years of experience in various governmental offices before individuals are allowed to assume leadership of the state. Although he agrees with Kant that pure reason is the source of ethical truth, Plato also disagrees by finding a place for experience in the application of The Good to everyday life.

Controversies: Some Objections and Possible Replies

See the treatment of Rationalism as a view of the good life.

Thought Excursions

4.80 Reconsider the differences among Plato, Aristotle, and Kant with respect to the relation of reason to experience in ethics. With whom do you most agree?

4.81 How would you analyze your own thought in terms of The Divided Line? For example, what portions of your awareness belong on the lowest level, etc.? How useful is The Divided Line as a tool to understand different levels of awareness?

Sources

Footnotes

1. Benjamin Jowett, tr., The Dialogues of Plato (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1892), 532b.

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