25-07-16 Theodosis Pelegrinis talks philosophy Perama school newspaper Getaway (Apo..Drasi)
UNESCO has declared 2016 as the Year of Aristotle, marking the 2,400th anniversary of the birth of the great Greek philosopher. We discussed this multi-faceted personality with Philosophy Professor and Deputy Education Minister Theodosis Pelegrinis, a man who as an author and teacher “brought philosophy from the stars down to earth” for us younger people, and initiated us into the essence and depth of philosophical thinking.
What do you see as the contribution of ancient Greek philosophy to humankind, and more specifically Aristotle’s contribution to philosophical thought?
If the ancient Greeks offered something to Western Civilisation that remained unchanged over time it is dialogue. We can speak of values and ideas that the ancient Greeks introduced to our civilization, such as democracy, liberty, or different forms of political organisation, which over time were transformed. For example, does the term "democracy" today bear any relation to Pericles’ democracy? What remained unalloyed, however, is dialogue – the ability of one to state their opinion while affording the other person the right to express theirs. Dialogue was born along with the appearance of philosophy. Thales of Miletus, the first philosopher, said, “The origin of the cosmos is water.” Anaximander countered that “it is the infinite”. We see schools of thought being created in the course of philosophy, where people meet and discuss. What is paramount in a dialogue is the type of arguments that one posits, the manner in which they support their view.
What Aristotle offered humankind and remains timely today is the description of the rules of the proper use of logic. Aristotle was the first to write a series of works which do not aim to offer knowledge, as science does, but to show how our brain must function to avoid errors. The sophists also drew on logic, but in order to deceive. Something can be used either in a correct or wrong manner. Aristotle says we create a hammer to strike nails. If you take that hammer and kill someone, it is not the fault of the hammer, but of the manner in which it is used. Hence, what Aristotle did was to teach the human being, who is equipped with a brain, to use it to effectively express arguments in order to persuade others. The works that Aristotle wrote on logic were collectively termed Organon, because in their totality they constitute the tool which when used properly can render one the victor in a dialogue with another. That is Aristotle’s offering, or legacy, today. Of course, he has also written much about the sciences. In contrast to Plato, who dealt mainly with philosophy and mathematics. Aristotle dealt with almost all the sciences of his era. Many of Aristotle’s scientific views have been surpassed. What was not transcended were his writings on logic.
Aristotle in his work deals with the end of the actions of humans, the objective of any act, so as to reach the the highest good, which is eudaimonia (happiness). Is Aristotle’s thought timely in this way? Is the cause of perpetual crises the search for the good, and if so what is the good today?
In order to explain an event, there are two ways. The one is to find the cause that triggered it. For example, it is raining and you say this is because there are clouds, because of the low barometric pressure. One finds the causes that create the event. That is one way. But there is another way, by which you explain something based on the goals of its existence. You might say it rains to produce water, so that we may drink it and irrigate plants. Aristotle said that the proper way to explain an event is not to find its causes but the end towards which it arises. There is a chain of goals with one referring to another, and so forth. For example, we build houses to protect us from the cold, and we make building materials to construct houses, etc. The chain of these goals cannot, according to Aristotle, be endless. It must end somewhere, in an ultimate objective, which is none other than eudaimonia (happiness). That is the objective of life overall. Hence, whatever serves that ultimate goal of happiness is good. But when Aristotle says happiness is the ultimate goal, he is not speaking of something in the future, that when you reach the age of 60 or 70 you will be happy. Happiness for Aristotle is a challenge, a final point of reference for correct action. Imagine the poem of Cavafy entitled Ithaca, in which Odysseus sets out from Troy to go to his island. That is his objective, but it matters not whether he arrives, but rather what he does on the way.
What were Aristotle’s views on society and the citizen?
Generally, the ancient Greeks believed that for a society to be happy, each member, each human being must become happy. Hence, all their theories about how humans can be happy were linked to the question of what is proper for each person to do. Aristotle said that what is proper is to follow the middle road [the golden mean]. One must not be cowardly, which is one extreme, nor overly daring, which is the other extreme, but rather to be somewhere in the middle. The stoics said that one should not be guided by one’s passions, but rather to live in a state of apathy.The ancient Greeks believed that many happy and virtuous people together make for a virtuous and happy society. In more recent times, the prevailing conception is that it is society which must be happy and virtuous for the individual to be happy and virtuous. Hence, they emphasized how society will be formed and not the individual. That is the basic difference in viewpoint between the ancient Greeks and modern conceptions. Moreover, Aristotle said that the virtues (such as bravery and honourable behavior) are a matter of practice. The fact that someone at some moment engages in an act of bravery does not mean they are brave. For one to be considered truly brave they must at every opportunity display bravery, to exhibit it, to be “as one long prepared”, as the poet [Cavafy] says. That means that one must continually exercise these virtues and to never stop trying during their lives. . The 18th century German philosopher Immanuel Kant had said that a grocer who always weighs his goods accurately so as to acquire a large clientele is not virtuous, as his objective is profit, which is outside of him. But a grocer who weighs accurately so as to be honourable, is virtuous. That means that virtue, like ethics, is an end in itself, and not intended to serve other objectives. Virtue has wrongly been linked to misery. No, the virtuous person must be happy as well. Even the martyrs of Christianity, who suffered extreme torture, were happy. Their sufferings were by choice, and not imposed on them.
You mentioned Christianity. Is philosophy after all linked to religion?
Religion is dogma. You either believe or you do not. Tolstoy refers somewhere to two brothers who go to sleep, and the one turns on his side and secretly crosses himself. The other sees him and asks,” You still do that in your life?” Then he went to sleep. The next day he awoke and ceased believing. Did that simple comment from his brother made him stop believing? No, Tolstoy says. The brother himself had already begun to doubt, to lose his faith. It is like a wall ready to fall, and you touch it with your finger and it collapses. The wall was already crumbling. Hence, faith either exists within you or it does not. And faith always contains the element of danger. For example, here in Athens I say that it is raining in Thebes. It may be right or it may not be. Remember the story of Abraham? He saw in his dreams the angel of the Lord who told him to kill his son. And he decides to go to execute the will of the Lord, at the peril of becoming a child murderer. His faith was such that he decides despite all that to take the risk. Abraham’s decision was a roll of the dice, to do or not to do what his faith dictated. He would either become a child murderer or win the kingdom of heaven. He played and won. The decision, says Kierkegaard, is a moment of madness. Irrational? Tertullian [the early Christian author] said, “I believe because it is irrational.” [credo quid absurdum] . When there is certainty, there is no faith. I cannot be on the road in a torrent and say, “I believe it is raining.” If I do, I am either joking or do not know what I am saying. Religion is therefore a dogma based on faith, which by its nature is scandalous. Philosophy is the opposite. It is disputation, ambivalence, the effort to use argument to disprove what you are saying. Religion and philosophy are two different worlds.
In discussing Aristotle, we cannot but ask about his teacher, Plato. To what extent can the aristocracy of spirit and the polity envisaged by Plato be considered autarchic and elitist?
The ideal republic of Plato aimed at creating a society divided into classes, but the criterion of distinction was not economic power or social lineage. Plato said the state should take children at birth and undertake their upbringing. No child would know its lineage, and all would be equal. At the same time, Plato says that by our nature we are not all the same. One is born more intelligent, another with greater musical capabilities, another less intelligent, etc. What the republic must do is to give to boys and girls the same opportunities to become educated in accord with their natural talents. Hence, all children are offered the first level of practical knowledge – such as breeding animals and woodworking. Some children can progress no further, and they will remain at the level of technical education, constituting the class that will provide society with material goods. The rest of the children will continue their education in the sciences (geometry, history, physics, and so forth). Those who cannot advance will stay at that level of knowledge and constitute the second class. They will become civil servants and the military in the republic. The rest of the students who are capable of continuing their education will receive the highest knowledge, which is philosophy. They will become the governors, the kings of the polity. Thus, Plato structures the republic into three classes, for which the criterion is neither social nor economic. The criterion for distinguishing classes is the education [paideia] of each person. Plato’s mistake is to say that those who will rule will impose their will, because they know more. He says that whoever disagrees with that must be exiled. Plato has been criticised for that. What is his error? Certainly, I will listen to whomever knows more, but not have him impose his will and determine my goals, the way I should live. Imagine I have an enormous property that traverses a gully, and every time I must go to the other bank I have to take a long circuitous route. I can avoid doing that each time by building a bridge connecting the two banks. The decision is mine. But because I cannot build it myself, I must bring a specialist, a bridge-builder. The specialist will merely give me the means to implement my decision. The same applies in the republic. The specialist politicians or archons have no right to impose on citizens their objectives and vision, but they must rather ensure that the objectives and vision of the citizenry are realised. Plato, by assigning to the politicians the decision for both what objectives citizens must set in their lives and the means to realise their aims , confused the means with the ends. This is a devastating error!
Ancient philosophers and ancient Greek philosophy projected the human as a whole personality, which should know philosophy and mathematics and the use of language. How is that linked to the piecemeal knowledge offered in high schools today?
Indeed, what the ancient Greeks tried to do was to offer a well-rounded education to the individual, and they achieved this mainly through philosophy, which has no fatherland. What philosophy does is to guide one correctly, to teach one to think correctly, to teach with which method to achieve one’s goals. If one has started on a path and finds difficulties, it encourages one to commence on the road from the start again, in case one has not tread correctly and got lost. That is what philosophy does. Hence, the ancient Greeks having philosophy as their guide, attempt to show us how one can achieve their goals. Mainly during the Renaissance, there arises a model of the well-rounded person who should know about everything. In contemporary times, after the war [WWII], and particularly in the 1960s, the ideology of specialisation prevailed, the idea that a person cannot learn everything, and so they should concentrate on something, and that what is important is to concentrate on an area of knowledge in depth. When I was a student, people said jokingly that one needs one doctor for the right eye and another for the left. That concept is passé, and what we must now seek from the youth is for them to have a comprehensive view of things, regardless of their specialisation. That is why to some extent the piecemeal approach at schools is wrong, particularly in high school, where the aim is for a student to specialise in one area. When I was sitting for university entrance exams, I sat for all subjects, regardless of the subject I would study. That is the correct approach. We have the impression that if we specialise in one subject we will gain university admission more easily, that we will find a job more readily. That may have been justified in the 1970’s when there were more jobs. Today things are different, and it does not apply. It is estimated that the youth of today will have five to seven changes of profession in their lifetime. To do that, they need a broad-based education to confront the challenges of life, and not just a specialisation. Schools must shape character, giving students a comprehensive view of reality.
Today, it is often said that philosophy is an unnecessary luxury, and it is seen as an intellectual sport that attracts only some. If that is the conception of philosophy, how can it help modern man change the world?
I will ask you a question. Is music necessary for humankind? What benefits does it offer? Something is useful in two ways. The first is material. One needs nourishment in order to live. You do not need music to survive. But without music your life is impoverished. Hence, music is useful to live a better life, in contrast to food, which is necessary simply to survive. The same applies to philosophy. We do not need it to survive. But if we want to live better and not simply survive, then we need it. Philosophy, however, has a disadvantage in comparison to music and art more generally. Music and art offer images, they are performance and one becomes acclimated more easily. In philosophy two things are required – to learn its language, because philosophy does not seek to tell you what is going on in reality. Science does that. Philosophy attempts to demonstrate how the world should be, how you can think differently about the world. Hence, philosophy speaks of a world that does not exist, but could and should exist. Consequently, because it speaks of non-existent things, it is obliged to use a peculiar language, and that is the most difficult aspect for youth, to become acquainted with that language. When one first comes into contact with the language of philosophy, they feel an aversion. It is just as when one learns a foreign language. At first one is disappointed, and hears words and says, “I don’t like them.” But one persists and forces oneself to learn, because the language will be useful. If one remains at the level of sentiment, one rejects, disavows and remains impoverished. But when you learn that language and can speak with all people and express your thoughts, you feel fantastic. Philosophy makes you see the world more broadly, not as it is but as it should be. Marx, who criticised the philosophers of his era for trying to explain the world, which is the task of science, put it well. The aim according to Marx is not to explain the world but to change it. And the world changes neither with weapons nor with force. It changes with ideas. No revolution begins without a goal. A lashing out is an uprising, not a revolution. Revolutions take place through ideas, and philosophy can offer new ideas.
How can we transmit all that to the youth? How can schools form thinking people?
First of all one needs the motivation, an interest. Because if someone is not interested in Beethoven or in classical music at all, you cannot discuss it with them. An osmosis must be created between youth so they can start talking, because the beauty of philosophy is not in teaching it, but in living it, in feeling the journey that one goes on to discover something new. Philosophy, even in a narrow environment can prove useful. Remember Sisyphus, who was condemned to pushing a rock from a valley up a mountain. He was a crook and the gods condemned him to that. That is a martyrdom that can become a gift. How? By becoming a source of new experiences. If every time Sisyphus pushes the rock he thinks of something different and does something different, his life takes on meaning. That is what philosophy does. We know that we are born, grow up, and die. That is our fate. That lifespan depends on what you do with it, what innovation you might make. Nietzsche said that there were two great achievements of the ancient Greeks: philosophy and theatre. Science existed before. Philosophy and theatre are based on dialogue, and therein lies their beauty. If you view the theatre coldly, you will wonder what these people are doing on stage. But that is not the way it is. On stage all we experience is transformed, acquiring a content that does not exist in life. If you are on the street and see someone knifing another person and killing them, you will feel an aversion and not want to think about it. You can see the same thing on a theatre stage and not feel aversion, and instead it will help you see things from another viewpoint. Life is a bunch of events, with one unrelated to the other. But in the theatre the author lurks behind, putting things in order to reach a conclusion, to achieve catharsis, to make you better. That is the charm of theatre. It does not simply replay something, but rather relates stories that we can see in life, for some purpose. And in philosophy, all that is reproduced has an objective, to give each of us the opportunity to see the world differently. There is a phrase of the French poet Paul Valery: Our mind is wider, greater, and broader that the universe. The universe is infinite. Our mind is even greater. The universe is everything that exists in the world. Our mind can think of anything that exists in the world and even things that do not exist, like mermaids for example. Hence, we humans have something that was given to us by God or nature – our mind, and we must utilise that. And we use it through philosophy, which gives you other images that do not exist in reality, but could and should have existed, such as theatre, which depicts life by giving it a meaning that life itself does not have.
How did you personally become involved in theatre?
I became involved in the 1990s when I returned from a sabbatical and wanted to organise a conference on the links between philosophy, magic and science in the Renaissance, and to conclude the conference with a relate performance, Goethe’s Faust. That was the beginning, and more performances followed in the same manner. I was purely a producer, bringing together actors and directors and organizing performances. When in 2006 I got an offer from Athens’ Megaron Mousikis to deliver some lectures, I decided to present my ideas through theatre. That is how I began to write plays about philosophers – Thales, Heraclitus, Plato – a total of 14 plays, with a certain original element. When I wrote a play about Schopenhauer, I did not put the philosopher on stage to relate his life and ideas. I presented a junk collector who returns home at dawn and as he goes to open the door realises that he has lost the key. He falls into a delirium, through which we see the ideas and events in the life of Schopenhauer unfold. That way, through the performance the role of the philosopher is imperceptibly transmitted to the audience. I like being involved in theatre and I continue with it. What is important in theatre is not the performance, but the process that takes you there. You attempt to re-enact life and that is difficult. Theatre comes to show you life as it really is, giving it added meaning, which life itself does not have. And that is marvelous.
Perama is a neighborhood with many problems that has been hit hard by the economic crisis. Yet, the youth want to go forward in their lives. How could they help? In the final analysis, what would you advise young people today?
I would say the following, since I also have children, though older than you. What one must achieved in life is to learn how to become happy – that is the goal of our life. And one becomes happy when they do something that suits their skills, their vision. It is not necessary to become a doctor, or more generally a scientist [academic], because you may become unhappy. So each person must think about what they want in their lives and see how they can best achieve it. My eldest son went to university to study psychology. In his first year he told me, “I don’t like it. I want to be a cook.” I told him that if he wanted that, I would not object, but I advised that it would be better to graduate from university, because I believe that the more one learns, the better for him. Then he could do whatever he wants. He graduated from university and became a cook. And he is happy. If he were a psychologist, I fear that he would have been unhappy. What I always say is that we should pursue what attracts our soul. In Greek society, there is the perception that one becomes distinguished if they attend university. That is not the way it is. In Geremany, 75 percent of young people opt for technical education. Only 25 percent choose general education. Are the Germans worse than us Greeks?
Based on your education and position, one would expect an entirely different reaction to your son’s decision. Might it be that we should shake off the “shoulds of society?
“Should” should exist in our lives. But there is a distinction between the should that society imposes on you and the should you impose upon yourself, when you commit yourself to something. You say I want to do that because it suits me and will distinguish me. Egotism is in the nature of man. As a rule each person wants to become better. This is a “should” that arises from inside you, which makes you not be a feather in the wind and not wander here and there, so that you can be the one who determines your life. Socrates is considered the greatest philosopher, but he never wrote a single line. He did that consciously, It is not that his works were lost, he did it out of conviction. Socrates said we should take nothing others tell us at face value. He maintained that the wisest man could err, because we are born into a world shaped by theories and conceptions. Some of these may be inaccurate, and others may be correct. When we begin our live, we do not know which are correct and which wrong. So Socrates says we should put things in a parenthesis, as if nothing were right, because if we accept without examining that something is right and it proves wrong, that may be fateful. A bad enzyme ruins the whole lot. Everything is put in a parenthesis then. You say I begin from the start, as if nothing is a given. Socrates wrote nothing , because if he had it would be like saying “Do what I say”, whereas throughout his life he proclaimed do not do what others tell you. Not in the sense that you do not take them into account, but in the sense that you leave nothing unexamined. Disputation is not a negative element in our lives. The teacher is obliged to respect that, and not to dissuade his students from disputing, even if the teacher himself is disputed. Nietzsche always wanted a student that would dispute him, who would betray him. He considered Christ a privileged teacher because he had Judas, who betrayed him. If a student disputes his teacher, it means the teacher has achieved his aim. Disputation should be in the mentality of youth because that is what will lead them to new paths. Woe unto you young people if you faithfully follow the path of your predecessors. The aim is for you to continue in a different manner than our path, so that you may not be led to our impasses.
It is widely known that the ancient Greek spirit and especially that of Aristotle shaped values, concepts and ideals that honour us and make us proud as Greeks. Yet outsiders say that we as Greeks have underestimated these things and left them behind, and that we do not try to perpetuate them. What is your view?
Firstly, I do not believe that there are diachronic values. They change. I spoke previously about democracy, which is a value we all accept but which through the evolution of time changed in accordance with the conditions. Whatever is determined by the conditions of life is transformed. I do not believe that we Greeks disavow our past. Simply, if you experience something from a very close distance, you do not attach especial importance to it. I will say something, but don’t get me wrong. The Acropolis is perhaps the paramount creation of civilization. Because I see it every day, it does not particularly impress me. On the contrary, if I visit a monastery I have never seen and there is a mediaeval atmosphere, it may attract me more. That does not mean it is better. I want to say that we give the impression that we harbour a disdain for our past because we are interwoven with it. In contrast, a German or Briton who comes from far away may see our past as something new, and hence feels an attraction to our past which we may not feel. I do not think we have neglected our past. Indeed, 2016 has been proclaimed by UNESCO “The year of Aristotle” because it is the 2,400th anniversary of the birth of the ancient Greek philosopher. Our education ministry has undertaken important events, culminating in the one that will take place in Paris on 18 November, at UNESCO, on the world day of philosophy.
