Plato

Plato fell in with a wandering philosopher by the name of Socrates, of whom you may have heard, who encouraged
his students to challenge conventional wisdom to the point that he was finally executed in 399 BC for corrupting the
youth. This, Plato would say, was a major turning point in his life, and he fled Athens to avoid a similar fate by
association.
Truth with a capital T was abstract and eternal like numbers, which is to say it is immaterial and thus does not
experience degeneration, and everything in the world was an expression of this abstract Truth. Plato effectively
invented the word “perfection” as it is used today.
Plato also explains human existence in these terms, as humans are Good beings “fallen” from “the heavens” and
trapped in the lowest, most imperfect level of the Universe, which is the world he and you and I and all of us live in.
Plato believed that when a human being deduces or learns something they are in fact remembering something they
already know by virtue of our eternal, divine nature, which is why we are attracted to certain things in this world; we
recognize the Idea of “Goodness” in it from our time in the ether.
Thus, by denying our Passions with our Courage, which is governed by our Thinking (these three Plato believed to
be the three levels of human nature), we could dust off all our Divine knowledge and return to the heavens upon
death, avoiding another birth in the material world..

Aristotle
Aristotle was a scientist in the truest sense of his day and when good, scientific information was unavailable, he
insisted on strict logic. Relativism, or the belief that the Truth is whatever most people believe it to be, had created a
huge market for professional bullshit artists in Athens who instructed their students on how to effectively convince
crowds with sneaky and faulty arguments, a practice called Sophistry (now an insult of the first degree).
So unforgiving was Aristotle’s nose for BS that he invented the first formal system of logic in the West, still in use to
this day, which allows philosophical arguments to be written out as semi-mathematical formulas that can be easily
examined, evaluated, then accepted or dismissed, and boy did he dismiss.
Aristotle’s perfect man, consequently, does not deny his humanity the way Plato recommended; he perfects it.
In order for a man to perfect his humanity, he must be the best man he can be. To be his manly best, a man not only
needed to cultivate proper intentions and an appropriate disposition, but put those intentions into real virtuous action.
Aristotle called his hands-on form of constructive self-perfection eudaimonia, a word defined and redefined by
virtually every Greek thinker, coming from the Greek words for “good” or “well” (eu) and “spirit” or “soul”
(daimon).

Aristotle believed that all knowledge was accumulated memories, collected through a long series of observations and
connected by the mind into a single experience, like many pictures forming a single movie. Each picture leads into
the next, following a progression we make sense of in our minds, until we reach a logical conclusion. Having seen
certain actions lead to certain consequences before, an experienced man can see a particular picture and conclude
what will happen next. A man who can explain why one thing precedes the next thing and can invent an appropriate
conclusion, on the other hand, is wise according to Aristotle.
For example, an apprentice who knows that stacking blocks that were given to him in a specific order will produce
an arch is skilled and has experience. The master mason who knows that cutting blocks of that type stacked in that
order will always produce an arch and understands how the whole device works is virtuous, because he is artistic and
he possesses wisdom.
The pursuit of knowledge being a desirable and justified end in itself to Aristotle and the ancient Athenians in
general, the highest calling of men was therefore to amass wisdom, becoming greater and greater artists in their own
right through their ability to understand the universal application of knowledge (the “Why” and “How” of things)
over the simple, practical function of actions (the inglorious “What”).
In another in-your-face contradiction of Plato, Aristotle insisted this knowledge had to be learned through firsthand
experience – through observation with the senses and physical participation in the naturally perfect and good world –
and not by denying the physical world. Where Plato would say that one could uncover their innate knowledge of
how to play baseball by carefully reading a well-written book on the subject, Aristotle would reject the idea that
anyone was born knowing how to play baseball and that there is any other way to learn other than to get out on the
diamond, play the game, and create the new knowledge in your mind.
Why all this preoccupation with the kinesthetic nature of learning and knowledge? Because where Plato draws sharp
lines between the physical man and the rational, spiritual man, Aristotle sees no such distinction. Ever the scientist,
Aristotle saw the obvious leap of faith in Plato’s theories, in which a duality – or inherent double-nature – is
accepted on Plato’s word alone. Aristotle asserts that the physical and the rational are not two parts of men but two
dimensions of men. Thus, the exercise in good actions is as essential to the virtuous life as exercise in strength is to
the physically healthy life.