Recompense, tension and the mean : some studies in the notion of conflict or opposition and its resolution, with regard to ancient Greek philosophy

The notion of opposition or conflict is one which is fundamental to philosophy. In politics it takes the form of conflict between citizen and state, or citizen and group of citizens; in ethics it is connected with the concept of choice and free will, and also with the notion of the perpetual striving between powers of good and evil for mastery, the one over the other. In this thesis, I shall concentrate on the Greek philosophers, not because they show this notion of opposition in its clearest light, nor even because they deal with it the most fully of any other philosophers, but because I must limit my field of study, and the three solutions of the strife of opposites which I have chosen have been dealt with in some detail by philosophers closely connected by ties of race, period, and influence. By concentrating on one period of history I have made easier a study of political and social pressures, and have thus been aided in studying the soil from which the philosophical growths have sprung. The study of the resolution of opposing forces, and there are diverse means of resolution and many degrees of harmony, is in itself an interesting, research into problems of logic and methodology and psychology. Moreover - and I consider this more important from a philosophical point of view - the implications of these concepts of resolution should be examined. The harmony notion of Pythagoras has the social implication of conservatism - an insistence that people continue to obey laws, and that rulers continue to be divinely inspired by the insight their studies in mathematics give them. Lack of harmony in the soul is destructive; in the state lack of harmony means the disintegration of the good state, giving rise to oligarchic or tyrannical governments. Plato, by his insistence on harmony in the state coming as the result, of personal performance by each citizen of specialised natural function, showed Gore psychological insight than Pythagoras, but by mentioning the myth of the metallic soul shows his lack of science, although he reveals a talent for plausible propaganda, which Archytas at least of the Pythagoreans failed to possess. The implications of the resolution of conflict by a tension as in Heraclitus, are not so easy to find. It is suggested that the notion of tension is linked up with a less deterministic morality, appealing not so much to nature as to human activity. The tension causes people to regard their lot in life as being made by their own actions and fortune, rather than to accept it as final. There is no emphasis on "community" in Plato's sense, and no talk of fulfilling your real nature, although Heraclitus knows what kind of soul is best. "The people must fight for its laws as for its walls" gives one a different feeling to the fragment of Archytas: "Law must be engrained in the characters and practices of the citizens''. Heraclitus' citizens fight for what they want. Archytas' sentence is cryptic. One does not know who is to engrain the law in the practices of the citizens. To speak of such conception as Heraclitus'as "dynamic", as Cornford does, (although he is referring to Anaximander's resolution of conflict specifically), and of the Pythagorean one as static, may be prejudicial to good study and seem unduly to intrude one's own ethical feelings into the matter, if the usage of these words is not qualified. For this reason, when these words are used by me it is simply to facilitate recognition o the trends of outlook indicated in the philosophers I shall deal with. In discussing the resolutions and their implications my own predispositions towards humanism and influences of a Christian and middle class background will be seen. While these may be prevented from intruding into my discussion of the various forms of resolution, it is impossible to keep them out wholly when I am criticising (i.e. making an evaluation of) their implications. It would seem that philosophers do not champion either strife or harmony, or both, but that they attempt to resolve the strife which confronts them in the universe, the state and human life in different ways, and obtain a resolution or harmony. The important point is that these harmonies are of different kinds, and have different implications both logically and politically, What some of these methods and types of resolution are, and what implications and views of human life are involved in each I shall attempt to make clear