30 September, 2003

Plato, Boethius, & Marcus Aurelius: Happiness Through Logic & Ockham’s Razor

The following is an assigned essay which was completed for a grade. Unfortunately, some formatting has been lost in the transition to LJ.

Eric J. Herboso
ENG 243
Father Williams
30 September, 2003


Plato, Boethius, & Marcus Aurelius:
Happiness Through Logic & Ockham’s Razor


The concept of logic has consistently been used throughout history by most of the cherished thinkers of the Western world, starting with the ancients themselves. It is this ideal of logical consistency combined with the space-saver of Ockham’s Razor that has served as the foundation for the arguments toward happiness given by three of the greatest thinkers in the Western tradition: Plato, Boethius, and Marcus Aurelius. Unfortunately, whether due to biases of their time, or perhaps misunderstandings of the limits of logical thought itself, all three of these thinkers made grave errors in their logical arguments, not quite living up to the ideal that they themselves put up for themselves.

Plato wrote most of his dialogues just before and during the birth of Aristotlean logic. Because of this, one might expect his logical arguments to be the most consistently valid of all three of the writers commented upon in the previous paragraph; however, because Plato used common sense in order to go through his logic (this was, of course, the accepted form of using logic before Aristotle formalized the language), it is not always clear that his logic holds consistently. Indeed, at some points during his tougher dialogues, it becomes unclear as to exactly what he himself means in his questioning, which is not exactly the best way to go about when composing a logical argument. However, instead of focusing on such parts of his writings, which could after all be nothing more than the limitations of the understanding of Plato by the author of this paper, it seems more worthwhile to focus upon those parts of Plato’s writings that most clearly illustrate his skilled use of logic and also those few parts that most clearly illustrate his worst failures in logical thought.

In “Euthyphro”, Socrates goes into the question of where morality arises from; it is his intention to be able to define “piety” (though it must be pointed out that in the Greek use of this word, much more is meant from the word than is connotated by its English translation) – and through this definition, Socrates hopes to be able to more accurately determine in what way he may be helped in his upcoming trial. However, it can be easily seen that if this definition were truly arrived at, then it could serve Socrates in that of his explanation of happiness, and in how it may be arrived.

During Socrates’ interrogation of Euthyphro, an attempt is made by Euthyphro to define what “all the gods love [as] pious and holy, and the opposite which they all hate, impious” (9 Plato). However, Socrates questions in this further in his usual dialectic way: “The point which I should first wish to understand is whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods” (9). What Socrates is asking here is whether a thing is good because the gods deem it to be good, or whether the gods deem it good because it is already good for some other reason. Because, Socrates says, if it is good merely because the gods deem it to be good, then it does not matter what it is that the gods deem good, for whatever they so choose as the good will necessarily be the good, and there is no higher authority to which one could appeal. If a thing is neither good nor bad until the gods either deem it good or bad, then what they choose as good or bad is entirely irrelevant to the matter at hand; if the gods say that murder or stealing is good, then it is good – and there is no getting around that, because we are defining whatever they love as what happens to be good in and of itself. This viewpoint makes all the things that we consider good to be completely and utterly arbitrary, for they had no value or preference toward good or evil until the gods deemed it good or evil. This is a completely reprehensible view to take on the matter, and so it must be (by disjunctive syllogism, to use Aristotlean logic terminology) that what is good is good before the gods deem it to be good; and so the gods are not making a thing good by considering it good – rather, that thing is good by the existence of some other attribute that the gods can somehow discern, and they relay the fact of it being good in the act of deeming it good. The parallel that Plato uses is that: “a thing is not seen because it is visible, but conversely, visible because it is seen; nor is a thing led because it is in the state of being led, or carried because it is in the state of being carried, but the converse of this” (10). Therefore what is good is not good because the gods say it is; rather, those things are good in and of themselves, and the gods must observe that they are good before they are able to deem (in other words: inform others) that they are good.

Socrates’ logic here is impeccable, though difficult to comprehend at first. He used the Aristotlean logical forms of disjunctive syllogism, modus ponens, and modus tollens to systematically prove that whatever the good may in fact be is not good because of any gods’ existence. Whatever makes a thing good is some attribute of it that is not placed there by any deity saying it is so. This, of course, does not deny the idea that whatever a god may say is good may in fact be quite good; but it does deny the idea that it is good merely because the god considered it good.

But Socrates’ logic is not always impeccably valid. Consider Plato’s “Phaedo”, for example. In it, Socrates is awaiting the end to come, and is talking with his friends before he is to end his life. During the conversation, Socrates considers the question: “Are not all things which have opposites generated out of their opposites” (68)? Socrates wants “to show that this [generation from opposites] holds universally of all opposites” (68). He goes on, giving specific examples from which to compound his data, asking whether what is greater must have once been lesser, and whether what is worse must have once been better, and whether what is swifter must have once been slower. In each of these examples, his criterion holds true; however, he then goes on to ask: “is this true of all opposites? And are we convinced that all of them are generated out of opposites” (68)? His implication here and the answer which is given to him is that of all things coming from their opposites, regardless of what they are. He is employing the method of Ockham’s (also known as Occam’s) Razor here, taking numerous examples from thought-experiment data, and constructing a general rule about everything from these numerous examples. There is no facet of logic which necessitates Ockham’s Razor to be true; instead, it is a maxim that is generally accepted to be true without any actual logical necessity of it, and this is a concept that Socrates himself either did not entirely grasp, or else ignored during his last day of life, perhaps to help himself feel better. It seems more likely that he was just unaware of Ockham’s Razor not being a necessary condition, since Aristotlean logic does not go into detail on the subject, and Aristotle was Plato’s greatest disciple.

The reason why it is clear that Socrates did not understand this point is because he misuses Ockham’s Razor: “is there not an opposite of life, [death,]… [a]nd these then are generated, if they are opposites, the one from the other, and have there their two intermediate processes also” (69)? He continues, further down: “What is generated from life? / Death. / And what from death? / I can only say in answer—life” (69). It is clear here that Socrates is taking the specific principle illustrated in his earlier examples with what is stronger, swifter, or better; and he is now applying that same precept to a basic generality which does not necessarily have to hold true. In “Phaedo”, then, Socrates uses logic only up to a certain point, and then veers off into speculation – educated speculation, of course – but still just speculation. (In Plato’s defense, it must be mentioned here that this same misuse of Ockham’s Razor is prevalent even in scientific circles, whenever a finding is made that bases its presuppositions upon ideas which do not necessarily have to be true. Euclidean geometry and Newtonian physics are two of the biggest examples of this.)

Boethius, too, uses logic to arrive at the route to happiness. In his book, The Consolation of Philosophy, Lady Philosophy helps Boethius to understand as to how happiness may be achieved. One of the best examples of Lady Philosophy’s use of logical argument is when she reminds Boethius of the nature of the goddess Fortune: “You are wrong if you think that Fortune has changed toward you. This is…the way she always behaves. She is changeable, and so in her relations with you she has merely done what she always does” (21 Boethius). Lady Philosophy continues on, explaining why Boethius should not be saddened by his new position: “[T]he misfortunes which are now such a cause of grief ought to be reasons for tranquility. For now she has deserted you, and no man can ever be secure until he has been forsaken by Fortune” (22). She then attacks the same argument from another perspective: “If you cannot keep [the goddess Fortune], and if it makes you miserable to lose her, what is fickle Fortune but a promise of future distress” (22)? Her attitude toward logic here is as impeccable as Socrates’ logic was in his argument for the causation of the good being separate from the gods deeming it so, though it must be noted that Lady Philosophy tends to use many more rhetorical and psychological ploys than Socrates did. Still, even if you strip away the emotional rhetoric, repetition, and psychological arguments, Lady Philosophy’s logic remains intact and immovable (though sparse).

However, Boethius did not always write with complete logical clarity. Like Plato before him, he neglected the limitations of Ockham’s Razor. Consider Lady Philosophy’s treatise upon the Good as being what she maintains it to be: “[N]othing which can be lost can be a supreme good…because it is obviously less good than that which cannot be lost” (29). She asserts here that the supreme good must not have anything better than it; this, of course, holds perfectly true. But then she states that that which can be lost can never be considered a supreme good, since that which cannot be lost is necessarily better than that which can. However, this only holds true if you presuppose that there will always be a thing that is wholly identical to a thing that can be lost, except in that it cannot be lost. In other words, the logic only holds if for every instance of a thing that can be lost, there exists a thing which is just as good in every detail, plus it has the additional attribute of not being able to be lost. Now, it could be the case that for every instance of a thing that can be lost, there really does exist a thing which is just as good, but cannot be lost. If so, then Lady Philosophy is correct by concurrence; but the method by which she reaches this true conclusion is still just as invalid as before. The reason why it is necessarily invalid is because it is not necessarily the case that for every instance, there exists its counterpart. The assumption that it is the case is an assumption by Ockham’s Razor. Again, it must be stressed that this says nothing against Ockham’s Razor per se; after all, Ockham’s Razor is not an actual logical principle, but rather a useful device for cutting away what is generally considered to be unnecessary information. This is fine when one is constructing general forms of rules for the physical laws of the universe or for predicting whether the stock market will rise or fall on the long term – but because Ockham’s Razor is not a purely logical instance of modus ponens, the laws of the universe are still not distinct in their entirety with each individual interaction, and the particular ups and downs of the stock market on any given day are not accurately predicted using the methods of Ockham’s Razor. It is not wise to rely on Ockham’s Razor in rigorous mathematical proofs, and it is this lack of rigor that Lady Philosophy suffers from in her attempt to define the supreme good as that which cannot be lost. Again, it may be true that the supreme good is that which cannot be lost; but it is not necessarily true that this is the case.

In Marcus Aurelius’ “Stoicism and Self-Discipline”, a similar search for the path to happiness is attempted. He, too, tries to use logic to arrive at his conclusions, but generally relies more upon reason and common sense to clarify his approach to the ideal of happiness. Aurelius observes the world around him, and uses that observation to influence his outlook upon life: “Nobody is surprised when a fig-tree brings forth figs. Similarly, we ought to be ashamed of our surprise when the world produces its normal crop of happenings” (537 Aurelius). He also goes into logical thought later in his Meditations, when he says that: “No event can happen to a man but what is properly incidental to man’s condition…. Then if all things experience only what is customary and natural to them, why complain? The same nature which is yours as well as theirs brings you nothing you canot bear” (542).

However, in each of these instances, his logic is not that of sound or unsound valid forms, but rather of strong or weak invalid forms. This type of logic is not conducive to complete proof, but rather to merely an attempt at convincing others of what proof (or lack thereof) there is. It is clear that he fails in the category of absolutely proving what he has to say; but it is not clear that he has the intention of doing so, anyway. After all, he does not have the same amount of time to write a well-polished essay as the previous authors mentioned did.

With each of the above examples, logic was used in the pursuit of happiness; but in no such case was that logic used one-hundred percent effectively. But the question remains: does an argument have to be completely necessarily true in order to be worthwhile to write or even to read? Certainly not, for each of these authors has done extremely well in their pursuit of the true way of approaching happiness, and that is all that truly matters.

Aurelius, Marcus. “Stoicism and Self-Discipline”, Meditations. Maxwell Staniforth, trans.
Class Handout; unknown citation.

Boethius. The Consolation of Philosophy. Richard Green, trans.
Library of Liberal Arts: New York, 1962.

Plato. “The Apology”. Weller, Shane, trans.
Dover Thrift: Toronto, 1992.

18 September, 2003

Capital, Volume One: “Production of Relative Surplus Value”

The following is an assigned essay which was completed for a grade. Unfortunately, some formatting has been lost in the transition to LJ.

Eric J. Herboso
18 September, 2003


Capital, Volume One: “Production of Relative Surplus Value”


In Karl Marx’s Capital, Volume One, Marx explores many different ideas, all of which argue against one basic concept: capitalism. In Part VI, Chapter XV, Section 3 of the text, Marx talks of what he terms as “Production of Relative Surplus-Value”, which can be loosely described as that principle effect of the development of machinery upon workers – in other words, exploitation. His argument is basically a response to Mill, of whom tacitly assumes in his “Principles of Political Economy” that the goal of mechanical inventions is to lighten the workload of society in general. Marx says that the goal is not as not Mill would purport, but rather to increase production. By the emergence of machinery, what used to require hard labor can now be done by workers with less strength and endurance, and thus the door opens for women and children to work whereas only men worked before. This additional workforce may be more expensive to hire and pay for initially, but the relative increase in production is a far higher gain than the loss accrued in the extra cost.

Furthermore, this mechanical “revolution” has become the “most powerful means…for lengthening the working-day beyond all bounds set by human nature” (Marx 404). This seeming paradox is an idea that, according to Marx, even the ancients knew nothing about. He says of them: “to preach slavery of the masses, in order that a few crude and half-educated parvenus, might become ‘eminent spinners,’ ‘extensive sausage-makers,’ and ‘influential shoe-back dealers,’ to do this, they lacked the bump [referencing the pseudo-science of phrenology] of Christianity” (407).

Marx makes a very compelling argument of capitalism using the emergence of technology to further “enslave” mankind. It will be very interesting to see what else he says in Capital.

Tucker, Robert C. Capital, Volume One, The Marx-Engels Reader. Au. Karl Marx.
W. W. Norton & Company.: New York/London, 1978

11 September, 2003

On The Jewish Question: But What Exactly Is The Jewish Question?

The following is an assigned essay which was completed for a grade. Unfortunately, some formatting has been lost in the transition to LJ.

Eric J. Herboso
11 September, 2003


On The Jewish Question: But What Exactly Is The Jewish Question?


In Karl Marx’s essay entitled On The Jewish Question, Marx explores the question of how to emancipate the Jew. But he doesn’t accept the idea that for the Jew to have religious freedom in a Christian state is true emancipation, since having that religion legally established by the state would not allow the emancipation to be of a “true” kind. Nor does he accept that the Jew may be politically emancipated, since no one in Germany is politically free. (Why this is so is not made clear by Marx, though Marx probably presupposed that anyone reading his essay would at least understand the state of the state at the time.) In fact, Marx refuses to admit of any kind of emancipation as truly being free, unlike the person to whom he is responding, Bruno Bauer (Die Judenfrage, “Die Fähigkeit der heutigen Juden und Christen frei zu werden”).

So what exactly is it that the Jewish question of emancipation is in regard to? Marx restates Bauer’s idea that religious opposition is made impossible by “abolishing religion” (Marx 28). Marx’s wording isn’t always quite clear (probably due to the translation from German), but what is clear is the idea that “the state which presupposes religion is not yet a true or actual state” (29). Therefore, the Jewish question becomes: “what kind of emancipation is involved” (30)? Having reached the appropriate question, however, still has yet to resolve the answer. Marx continues on, attempting to determine how to answer this “Die Judenfrage”.

Marx denies the idea of political emancipation being anything more than a tool with which to ultimately give individual emancipation. He says that “[i]t is not…the final form of human emancipation, but it is the final form…within the framework of the…social order” (35). He even shows why this is so: “it is because [the Jew] can be emancipated politically, without renouncing Judaism completely and absolutely, that political emancipation itself is not human emancipation.” It would help if Marx defined some of his terms a bit better, but the logic here is good enough to show the main distinction between that of Marx’s “species-life” and “species-being”. The existence of the “species-being” requires that “the privilege of faith is a universal right of man” (41). Unfortunately, this distinction becomes much more blurry when Marx quotes the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen on liberty, security, and property. Is Marx saying that a “species-being” requires these rights in order to exist? One would think so, especially when Marx observes that the rights of man should always come before the state: “the citizen is declared to be the servant of egoistic ‘man’ ” (43); this observation is most obvious in Marx’s criticism of the Constitution of 1793, which states that “ ‘the freedom of the Press should not be permitted when it endangers public liberty’ ” (44): since we are giving the public liberty in order to achieve individual liberty (apart from the state, or citizen, or species-life, depending upon your choice of jargon), then that same individual liberty (of which freedom of the press is a part) must trump over the public liberty whenever they happen to clash. But does Marx say that the constitution should be better worded? On this, he is unclear; he calls the situation an optical illusion and a problem, but in what way exactly is it an illusion?

But despite the ambiguity here, Marx makes it clear that political emancipation is not the emancipation that the Jewish question is asking about. Rather, it must be human emancipation. At least, that’s what Marx seems to be saying. But then he goes into section two.

Marx begins the second section with quoting Bauer’s views on the very capacity of Jews to be free. But Marx does not stop with Bauer’s ideas of the Jew requiring Christianity in order to be truly free; no, rather he goes on to talk about the so-called “real Jew”, of whose religion is supposedly nothing more than that of money itself.

It need not be said that this view is either totally and completely wrong, or else the Jew of the German world must be completely and utterly different from the Jew of today. But despite this, Marx goes on to say things that seem to make little to no sense at all, and the reason for these statements to be included in his argument is equally unclear:

“The Jews have emancipated themselves in so far as the Christians have become Jews” (49). Is he saying that Christians have become more interested in money? If so, what does this have to do with Jews at all?
“The monotheism of the Jews is…, in reality, a polytheism of the numerous needs of man…. The god of practical need and self-interest is money” (50). Is Marx seriously saying that the God of the Jews is money? Literally?
“Judaism attains its apogee with the perfection of civil society; but civil society only reaches perfection in the Christian world” (51). One wonders as to whether this quote of Marx’s should even be commented upon or not.

But truly, the most strange statement of all is that of Marx’s concluding sentence: “The social emancipation of the Jew is the emancipation of society from Judaism” (52). What Marx is saying right here may be construed from his earlier stated sentiments, but the logical conclusion of this point is still very far from clear.

Tucker, Robert C. “On The Jewish Question”, The Marx-Engels Reader. Au. Karl Marx.
W. W. Norton & Company.: New York/London, 1978

02 September, 2003

On Liberty: Chapter III: “Of Individuality”

The following is an assigned essay which was completed for a grade. Unfortunately, some formatting has been lost in the transition to LJ.

Eric J. Herboso
02 September, 2003


On Liberty: Chapter III: “Of Individuality”


In Chapter III of John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, Mill argues that the individual actions of human beings should be considered one of the “elements of well-being” (53), assuming, of course, the limitation of disallowing hindrance upon other individuals. His main argument here rests upon the grounds that liberty of action is a necessary requirement for development, and that “it is only the cultivation of individuality which produces…well-developed human beings” (61). Thereby, any proponent of development must necessarily also promote individuality. This follows from the idea that it is only through a good mix of ideas, influences, and (especially) actions that any new ideas may be sought; for if stagnation is the rule, then development is completely impossible.

Having said this, he attempts to go on to argue against those who would still be against individuality and yet admit “that originality is a valuable element in human affairs” (61). (He ignores, of course, those who would argue that the world is already perfect, assuming that such people do not exist.) However, the remainder of this chapter at least fails in this attempt. Though he says that he plans “to point out to those who do not desire liberty, and would not avail themselves of it, that they might be in some intelligible manner rewarded for allowing other people to make use of it without hindrance”, he finishes the remainder of the chapter without accomplishing this goal. Instead, he continues the argument that the presence of liberty of action in a society helps that society to improve itself developmentally. While Mill’s argument is indeed strong, it remains weak enough to be resisted by those who either care little for progress or those who view liberty of action as inherently negative, regardless of it being a necessary requirement for progress.

However, this minor point aside, it is likely that Mill’s argument for liberty will be accepted by a great majority of the people. However, Mill takes this argument to the very extreme, seemingly daring the reader to respond negatively against it. (A justification for this view can be made from Mill’s earlier statement in Chapter II: “Strange it is that men should admit the validity of the arguments for free discussion, but to object to their being ‘pushed to an extreme,’ not seeing that unless the reasons are good for an extreme case, they are not good for any case” (20, emphasis added).) Mill talks of government by the one or few as more conducive to freedom than by the masses themselves, and on the ‘good’ being best achieved by “the more and more pronounced individuality of those who stand on the higher eminences of thought” (64). Mill even goes so far as to almost jokingly call into question the idea of public education, saying that it causes an assimilation of the masses’ thoughts and actions to such a high degree that it may well be a hindrance to progress itself.

However, Mill takes this game of extremities a bit too far when he reaches to China as an example of a state without advances or progress of any kind. In Mill’s day, this euro-centric viewpoint was very much accepted, but any competent arguer would now stay far away from such generalities, even if it turns out to be a valid criticism of that culture.

It will be interesting to see how Mill’s overall argument will continue in the remainder of On Liberty. So far, he has been very persuasive – though, like most arguments, there still remains a limited number of gaps in the logic which preclude a definitive understanding of the topic of Liberty. It remains to be seen if these gaps will be filled in by the end of his essay.


Rapaport, Elizabeth. “On Liberty”. Au. John Stuart Mill.
Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.: Indianapolis/Cambridge, 1978