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SPEUSIPPUS (4th century B.C.)
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See also:SPEUSIPPUS (4th See also:century B.C.) , See also:Greek philosopher, son of See also:Eurymedon and Potone, See also:sister of See also:Plato, is supposed to have been See also:born about 407 B.C. He was bred in the school of Isocrates; The Sperm-See also:Whale (Physeter macrocephalus). in See also:appearance and structure. The See also:head is about one-third of the length of the See also:body, very massive, high and truncated in front; and owing its See also:size and See also:form mainly to the See also:accumulation of a peculiarly modified form of fatty See also:tissue in the large hollow on the upper See also:surface of the See also:skull. The oil contained in cells in this cavity, when refined, yields See also:spermaceti, and the thick See also:cover- See also:ing of blubber, which everywhere envelopes the body, produces the valuable sperm-oil of See also:commerce. The single blowhole is a See also:longitudinal slit, placed at the upper and anterior extremity of the head to the See also:left See also:side of the See also:middle See also:line. The opening of the mouth is on the under side of the head, considerably behind the end of the snout. The See also:lower See also:jaw is extremely narrow, and • See Schiemann, op. cit., i. 81. but, when Plato returned to See also:Athens about 387, yielded to his See also:influence and became a member of the See also:Academy. In 361, when Plato undertook his third and last See also:journey to See also:Sicily, Speusippus accompanied him. In 347 the dying philosopher nominated his See also:nephew to succeed him as scholarch, and the choice was ratified by the school. Speusippus held the See also:office for eight years, and died in 339 after a paralytic seizure. According to some authorities he committed See also:suicide. There is a See also:story that his youth was riotous, until Plato's example led him to reform his ways. In later See also:life he was conspicuously temperate and amiable. He was succeeded by See also:Xenocrates. Of Speusippus's many philosophical writings nothing survives except a fragment of a See also:treatise On See also:Pythagorean See also:Numbers. Nor have secondary authorities preserved to us any See also:general statement or conspectus of his See also:system. Incidentally, however, we learn the following details. (A) In regard to his theory of being: (r) whereas Plato postulated as the basis of his system a cause which should be at once Unity, See also:Good, and Mind, Speusippus distinguished Unity, the origin of things, from Good, their end, and both Unity and Good from controlling Mind or See also:Reason; (2) whereas Plato recognized three kinds of numbers—firstly, ideal numbers, i.e, the " determinants " or ideas; secondly, mathematical numbers, the abstractions of See also:mathematics; and thirdly sensible numbers, numbers embodied in things—Speusippus rejected the ideal numbers, and consequently the ideas; (3) Speusippus traced number, magnitude and soul each to a distinct principle of its own. (B) In regard to his theory of knowledge : (4) he held that a thing cannot be known apart from the know-ledge of all things besides; for, that we may know what a thing is, we must know how it differs from other things, which other things must therefore be known; (5) accordingly,' in the ten books of a See also:work called "See also:Nola, he attempted a See also:classification of See also:plants and animals; (6) the results thus obtained he distinguished at once from " knowledge" (frwi-ifµn) and from " sensation" (alu6noas), holding that " scientific observation" (isrco-rnuovtKT' airBnuis), though it cannot attain to truth, may, nevertheless, in virtue of a certain acquired tact, See also:frame "See also:definitions" (Xbyoi), !c) In regard to his theory of See also:ethics: (7) he denied that See also:pleasure was a good, but seemingly was not prepared to See also:account it an evil. In See also:default of See also:direct See also:evidence, it remains for us to compare these scattered notices of Speusippus's teaching with what we know of its See also:original, the teaching of Plato, in the See also:hope of obtaining at least a general notion, firstly, of Speusippus's system, and, secondly, of its relations to the systems of Plato, of contemporary Platonists, such as See also:Aristotle, and of the later Academy. It has been suggested elsewhere (see See also:SOCRATES) that the crude and unqualified " See also:realism " of Plato's See also:early manhood gave See also:place in his later years to a theory of natural kinds founded upon a " thoroughgoing See also:idealism," and that in this way he was led to recognize and to value the classificatory sciences of See also:zoology and See also:botany. More exactly, it may be said that the See also:Platonism of Plato's maturity included the following See also:principal doctrines: (i.) the supreme cause of all existence is the One, the Good, Mind, which evolves itself as the universe under certain eternal immutable forms called " ideas" ; (ii.) the ideas are apprehended by finite minds as particulars in space and See also:time, and are then called " things" ; (iii.) consequently the particulars which have in a given See also:idea at once their origin, their, being, and their perfection may be regarded, for the purposes of scientific study, as members of a natural See also:kind; (iv.) the finite mind, though it cannot directly apprehend the idea, may, by the study of the particulars in which the idea is revealed, attain to an approximate notion of it. Now when Speusippus (I) discriminated the One, the Good, and Mind, (2) denied the ideas, and (3) abandoned the See also:attempt to unify the See also:plurality of things, he explicitly rejected the theory of being expressed in (i.) and (ii.); and the rejection of the theory of being, i.e. of the conception of the One evolving itself as a plurality of ideas, entailed consequential modifications in the theory of knowledge conveyed in (iii.) and (iv.). For, if the members of a natural kind had no See also:common idea to, unite them,scientific See also:research, having nothing See also:objective in view, could at best afford a Xbyos or See also:definition of the appropriate particulars; and, as the discrimination of the One and the Good implied the progression of particulars towards perfection, such a Aoyos or definition could have only a temporary value. Hence, though, like Plato, Speusippus (4) studied the See also:differences of natural products (5) with a view to classification, he did not agree with Plato in his conception of the significance of the results thus obtained; that is to say, while to Plato the definition derived from the study of the particulars included in a natural kind was an approximate definition of the idea in which the natural kind originated, to Speusippus the definition was a definition of the particulars studied, and, strictly speaking, of nothing else. Thus while Plato hoped to ascend through classificatory See also:science to the knowledge of eternal and immutable See also:laws of thought and being, Speusippus, abandoning ontological See also:speculation, was content to regard classificatory science not as a means but as an end, and (6) to See also:rest in the results of scientific observation. In a word, Speusippus turned from See also:philosophy to science. It may seem See also:strange that, differing thus widely from his See also:master, Speusippus should have regarded himself and should have been regarded by, others as a Platonist, and still more strange that Plato should have chosen him to be his successor. It is to be observed, however, firstly, that the scientific See also:element occupied a larger place in Plato's later system than is generally supposed,' and, secondly, that other Academics who came into competition with Speusippus agreed with him in his rejection of the theory of ideas. Hence Plato, finding in the school no capable representative of his ontological theory, might well choose to succeed him a favourite See also:pupil whose scientific See also:enthusiasm and attainment were beyond question; and Speusippus's rivals, having themselves abandoned the theory of ideas, would not be in a position to tax him with his philosophical See also:apostasy. In abandoning the theory of ideas—that is to say, the theory of figures and numbers, the possessions of universal mind, eternally existent out of space and time, which figures and numbers when they pass into space and time as the heritage of finite minds are regarded as things—Speusippus had the approval, as of the Platonists generally, so also of Aristotle. But, whereas the new scholarch, confining himself to the detailed examination of natural kinds, attempted no comprehensive explanation of the universe, Aristotle held that a theory of its origin, its motions, and its See also:order was a necessary See also:adjunct to the classificatory sciences; and in nearly all his references to Speusippus he insists upon this fundamental difference of See also:procedure. Conceiving that the motions of the universe and its parts are due to the See also:desire which it and they feel towards the supreme See also:external mind and its several thoughts, so that the cosmical order planned by the diyine mind is realized in the phenomenal universe, Aristotle thus secures the requisite unification, not indeed of mind and See also:matter, for mind and matter are distinct, but of the governing mind, the See also:prime unmoved movent, since it and its thoughts are one. Contrariwise, when Speusippus distinguishes One, Good, and Mind, so that Mind, not as yet endowed with an orderly See also:scheme, adapts the initial One to particular Goods or ends, his theory of nature appears to his See also:rival " episodical," i.e. to consist of a See also:series of tableaux wanting in dramatic unity, so that it reminds him of See also:Homer's line—obi ayaObv sroXueoipavin . eis Koipavos Eo•rce. Speusippus and his contemporaries in the school exercised an important and far-reaching influence upon See also:Academic See also:doctrine. When they, the immediate successors of Plato, rejected their master's See also:ontology and proposed to themselves as ends See also:mere classificatory sciences which with him had been means, they bartered their hope of philosophic certainty for the tentative and provisional results of scientific experience. Xenocrates indeed, identifying ideal, and mathematical numbers, sought to ' That Plato did not neglect, but rather encouraged, classificatory science is shown, not only by a well-known fragment of the comic poet Epicrates, which describes a party of Academics engaged in investigating, under the See also:eye of Plato, the See also:affinities of the common See also:pumpkin, but also by the See also:Timaeus, which, while it carefully discriminates science from ontology, plainly recognizes the importance of the study of natural kinds. shelter himself under the authority of Plato; but, as the Xenocratean numbers, though professedly ideal as well as mathematical, were in fact mathematical only, this return to the Platonic terminology was no more than an empty form. It would seem, then, that Academic See also:scepticism began with those who had been reared by Plato himself, having its origin in their See also:acceptance of the scientific element of his teaching apart from the ontology which had been its basis. In this way, and, so far as the See also:present writer can see, in this way only, it is possible to understand the extraordinary revolution which converted Platonism, philosophical and dogmatic, into Academicism, scientific and sceptical. It is as the See also:official representative of this scientific and sceptical departure that Speusippus is entitled to a place in the See also:history of philosophy. Additional information and CommentsThere are no comments yet for this article.
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