Lucien's satire, "Sale of Philosophies," gives us good examples of the various philosophical schools in the second century CE.

    I would venture to think that this play is a parady on the vices that people fall into and the states of mind they develop to maintain their pleasure in such vices. These are the philosophies taught in the second century that allowed and helped the respective cities and states substantiate what they held dear (ideas) to them whether or not their endeared devices were just or astray.

    The true irony in this play is the setting of the slave market.  It shows to the wise that people browse through different philosophies for slaves when the reality is that they themselves become slaves to the philosophy they choose.  All the philosophies represented in the play represent the justification of behavior or the art of useless argument except for maybe Socrates (who does exhibit a useless argument).

    These are the people (philosophers) that are referred to by Aristotle as "the many do not understand these actions but take refuge in arguments, thinking that they are doing philosophy, and that this is the way to become excellent people.  In this way they are like a sick person who listens attentively to the doctor, but acts on none of his instructions.  Such a course of treatment will not improve the state of his body;  anymore than will the manys way of doing philosophy improve the state of their souls."  (Nicomachean pg 40)

    These same quote, unquote, philosophers in "Sale of Philosophies" are referred to in "Origin, Philocalia" when it says "...what the pupils of philosophers say about geometry, and music, grammar, rhetoric, and astronomy, viz. that they are handmaidens of philosophy..." (Origin, Philocalia, p 57.)

    Lucian's  "Sale of Philosophies" not only depicts the  'slave philosophies'  in this light, but also proves the many buyers in the view of what was meant in Plato's  "Republic VI"   when it was written that, "...They praise and celebrate as navigator, a pilot, a master of shipcraft, the man who is most cunning to lend a hand in persuading the shipmaster to let him rule, while the man who lacks this craft  (cunning)  they censure as useless."  In this play, the buyers are overwhelmed  by the philosophers' cunning, and buying them, instead of seeking out one who would really be useful. The buyers become the "they" that praise the man who is cunning in his persuasion.

    Lucian's parody provides his readers (or watchers) with the opportunity to not only observe the narrow paremeters of the selected philosophies, but also the futility of the buyers that opt to buy these fictitious philosophers and the vices that go hand and hand with their calumnious reasoning.  There is no doubt that the irony in this play is profoundly amusing and enlightening.

    It seems that every noteworthy philosopher has taken note of these particular schools of philosophy and the buffoonery of their rhetoric.  These schools and their teachings are available  to be exposed by true philosophers because they (true philosophers)  bare witness to truth and reality with virtuous intent.  True Philosophers do not adopt logical fallacies for trickery or persuasion or for any other reason.  Such methods do not lean to the good of the people.  The Buddhists say that any wisdom which does not come full circle with humanity is no wisdom at all.

    Spiritual literature and philosophies also take notice of these schools and the philosophy taught.  Since spiritual philosophies are geared towards what is good behaviour and bad behaviour, right and wrong, etc, their doctrine and sayings reflect the reasoning between what is right and wrong and the truth pertaining to the situations.

    Now this is the point that can prove that all philosophy is spiritual.  This does not include the types of Philosophies for sale in Lucian's play.  These are the philosophies that are the practices of those referred to in Plato's Republic VI (p722) as "Sham Philosophers".  This can be proven, that all philosophy is spiritual in the literary sense of  "PHILO SOPHIA"; lover of wisdom.  Wisdom also deals with what is "good" in the moral sense.

    This is why Plato and Aristotle had to include virtue as a fundamental trait that needed to be developed in individuals' aspiring philosophy.  It is of people (individually) and cultural societies that develop sham philosophies because they have not developed the quality of moral virtue needed to keep their reasoning just and set upon true logic.

    So having understood this, the wise one can truly see that there is some irony in Lucian's play as philosophies are being sold for slaves, when it is the people who adopt such phony philosophies that become a slave to vice, this is what Plotinus meant when he said, "They conceived a pleasure in this freedom (of thinking and philosophies) and largely indulged their own emotion;  thus they were hurried down the wrong path, and in the end, drifting further and further, they come to lose even the thought of their origin in the Divine."  He had already recognized that philosophy is spiritual and those bent on actions unbecoming of virtue and their unsound philosophies to dignify their view.

                         JAMES ROBINSON ,  for W. Philosophy class

A PIECE ON AUGUSTINE'S  "CONFESSIONS"
 

    In Augustine's "Confessions Book XI" he describes as three divisions, but really as one because the other two do not exist.  The three divisions are past, present, and future.  Only the present really exists however.

    His discussion of this is somewhat out of order because he does not immediately establish the fundamental nature and measurement of time.  By establishing the fundamental nature and measurement of time first, he could better examine his ideas and minimize the attention he spends on this issue.  The fundamental measurement of time is by day and night or by the movement of the two bodies called the sun and the earth.

    Now he does pose a question to this that lays the principle for elaboration.  That question is  "If the sun travelled around the earth equal to twelve hours, we should say that it completed its course in half the usual time. "  It is by this type of examination that he says that he cannot accept the suggestion that time is constituted by the movement of heavenly bodies but as an extension of some sort.

    After having realized this it is more acceptable to consider Augustine's three divisions of time, which are past, present and future.   Of these three, Augustine says that past and future do not exist.   He says that they do not exist because if wherever they are, "the future does not yet exist and the past no longer exists." (Confessions p 267).  Therefore, only the present exists, and that is existant through our sense perception.

    Now the relationship of past, present, and future is all done in the mind, which, as he says, performs all three functions; expectations, attention, and memory.  The future which the mind expects passes through the present, to which the mind attends into the past which is remembered.  Having understood this, he establishes that the past and future do not exist because of thir not being the present.

    Augustine advances further by saying that it may be correct to say that there are three times, a present of past things, a present of present things, and a present of future things.  Now the past can exist through the function of the mind that presents  "a present of past " through memory.  With this reasoning, a similar function in the mind brings the future into existance by "a present of future things."

    All of this is proven by defining that the past is facts drawn out of our memories  but only words based on our memory of pictures of the facts.  This is done with the past because when we experience those facts happening, they let an impression on our minds by means of sense perception.  He uses his childhood as an example of something which no longer exists but when he remembers those days and describes them, it is in the present that he can picture them because their picture is still present in his memory.

    Augustine examines the proof of the future as the present of future things.  No, this does not mean to see what does not exist, because whatever exists is not future but present.  What this means is to see the signs and causes of what is future because the signs and causes are already in being.  He says that in this way "they are not future but present to the eye of the beholder, and by means of them the mind can form a concept of things which are still future and thus predict them."  He concludes that by seeing these concepts that already exist, and by seeing them present in one's mind, people are able to foretell the actual facts that they represent.   He uses a prediction of sunrise as an example by seeing the dawn, the dawn and the picture of sunrise in his mind is the present of future things because neither the dawn or the picture in his mind is the present.

    So it is by all of these arguments that Augustine came to believe time is an extension of the mind itself.  These are truly more rationalizations that they are arguments.  So it is better said that by these rationalizations that Augustine comes to believe that time is merely an extension of the mind more than the movement of two heavenly bodies.

    I find this to be accurate because I have long ago concluded that time and God are concepts to the mind than they are things in mere physicalities.

    I discerned this long ago when I heard an atheist refusing to conceive God or Divinity as real.  His argument was that he only believed  in what was real and concrete, things that can be seen under a microscope and through the telescope.

    No one had the depth or skill to bring this animal to his realization of mans eternal image.  In a matter of seconds my mind conceived that time and numbers are believed and accepted (generally speaking) and these things are only concepts of the mind that exceed the reality of "what is".

    After awhile I chimed in to ask him if he believed in time and numbers.  Once he replied yes I had him.  I told him to "bring to me a minute, hour or day that I may hold in my hand, see it by microscope or telescope, smell it, or taste it.  Bring me a twelve or a million so I can test it by sight, sound, or some other physial existence.  You can't, but yet you know that these things exist.  They exist in our minds, and so does good and evil, right and wrong.   And these things give proof to God and Divine order to one that is able to see the benefit to the appropriate one over the other.  These are the marks of the human spirit and its relationship to God.  All three of these exist and yet, supercedes  existance in materiality.

    I pondered time in a fraction of Augustine's elaborate illustrations and thought his examples to be better and more sensibly ordered as done in this work of four pages.  All of the things I explained to the atheist were extensions of the mind.