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Philosophy 1A03 (philosophical texts)
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When was pre-socratic philosophy - ✔✔600-500BCE
What did Anaximander believe? - ✔✔The arche is the aperion, it is unbounded, limitless. Because it is unbounded, there is no beginning. arrives at the idea of first causes, first cause must be boundless.
what is the arche-anaximander - ✔✔the force through all nature
What did Xenophanes believe? - ✔✔That history could teach people to live moral lives. First to attack anthropomorphic gods and poets. believed god was omnipresent. Had a singular idea of god, but it was different because his idea wasn't childish.
"mortals deem that the gods are begotten as they are, and have clothes the same as theirs" - ✔✔Xenophanes
What did Heraclitus believe? - ✔✔Logos: 1.) language. 2.) definition. 3.) systematic knowledge. told people not to listen to him but the argument. all things come to pass in accordance to logos. logos makes humans profound, our soul is at best when it's logical. no one is born wise, we acquire wisdom only through strenuous effort.
"you will not find boundaries of soul by travelling" - ✔✔Heraclitus.
What did Pythagoras believe? - ✔✔Pythagoras believed in the transmigration of the soul and that the secret of understanding nature lies in mathematics. Perfecting knowledge and you will live happily. focused on the soul new concept of independent soul removes barrier that Olympian religion had places between gods and souls. new idea of soul provides new idea of kinship and gods/ soul is vitality to your body
what is Psuche - ✔✔Soul - Pythagoras.
What did Parmenides believe? - ✔✔Believed that if one can talk sensibly about something then it must exist. Believed that there must be a stagnant unchanging reality or else things wouldn't make sense to us and therefore not exist. it is impossible for anything not to be. people believe in change because of our senses. it is a mistake to enrol the senses in pursuit of truth. knowledge won't start till we turn away from sense. explicit conflict between ration and senses.
what is being according to Parmenides? - ✔✔being is changeless, indivisible (one-monism), belongs together without thought.
What did Empedocles believe? - ✔✔Turned to the elements (earth, fire, wind, water) because he believed everything in the world was made up of some kind of combination of these with the forces of love being what brought them together and the forces of strife being what tore them apart. First corpuscular theory of nature nature teams with multiplicity, real differences
-forms/ideas are not materialistic -ideas are eternal -human soul is not just life of human body, it is a being in its own light. -cannot be wise without self knowledge -sense perception is worthless. -wisdom always leads to good -democracy is childish
What was Socrates charged with? - ✔✔-corrupting the youth
Ancient views of faults of democracy - ✔✔1.) masses are childish 2.) democracy is unnatural, a tyranny of the weak over the strong. 3.) inefficient 4.) bad at financial management
"we decided that, if as a result of statesmanship the citizen body was to be benefited and happy, it was crucial to make them wise and knowledgeable" - ✔✔Plato
Trial of Socrates Key Ideas - ✔✔-a good person cannot be harmed -the unexamined life is not worth living -doing wrong is worse than suffering wrong -riches and power contribute nothing to happiness.
Plato, Euthyphro - ✔✔-Socrates urges Euth to teach him about piety -knowledge overcomes all evil -evil is caused by ignorance
Socratic Irony - ✔✔-a pose of ignorance assumed in order to entice others into making statements that can then be challenged.
Socratic Method - ✔✔the method of teaching used by the Greek philosopher Socrates; it employs a question-and-answer format to lead pupils to see things for themselves by using their own reason
Plato, Apology - ✔✔-democracy is tyranny -virtue is self knowledge -wisdom is knowing what is good -conduct research not to nature but to self -wisdom is the knowledge that makes all other goods good for us. -doing Wrong is worse than suffering wrong. -not fully virtuous until you are wise.
Plato, Phaedo - ✔✔-Supports Mind/Body Dualism. -Nature of soul is immortal -Body is a jail/disease. -life comes from death and death comes from life. -no one does evil knowingly, it is the product of ignorance.
Phaedo Arguments for Survival - ✔✔1.) opposite argument 2.) theory of recollection 3.) infinity argument 4.) world of forms
opposite argument - ✔✔soul is immortal, one thing is derived from another, can't know happiness unless you've been sad, all things come from opposite, soul must exist despite being dead.
Theory of Recollection - ✔✔-asserts that learning is essentially an act of recollecting things we knew before we were born but then forgot. -soul existed before body, anything you are learning, you already know.
Pausanias - ✔✔-2 Eros; common and heavenly: 1.) common: makes no discrimination of partners, only interested in sex, love of body, not soul. 2.) Heavenly: lover voluntarily subjects to the will of beloved for the sake of beloved's virtue. boys loved in this way learn to care about their virtue. -knowledge of gods makes them masters of seduction, proof of their wisdom of eros is to have the most affairs with the prettiest boys.
Eryximachus - ✔✔-scientists that gives dry and boring speech, love is not only in human interaction, science of love, farming, music, nature, goodness of love in general, showing affection, trying to get lover to flourish (much like a gardener does with plants) -healthy and sick eros; some desires are characteristic of unhealthiness, others to a healthy organism. -to be knowledgeable about eros is to know how to use if for human betterment. -sexual desire occurs everywhere in life.
Aristophanes (Symposium) - ✔✔-comedian -private world of view is depressing -soulmates, erotic desire is our best friend among the gods. -Zeus split the one body down the middle and that's how we became one man, one woman. -each of us is filled with a profound longing for something that we lost. -old body threatened rebellion, nothing but trouble to the gods. -this longing is the source of our desire for loving each other -we desire what we cannot have and what would not make us happy even if we got it. -nothing noble/beautiful about erotic love. -beauty has nothing to do with eros.
Agathon's Speech - ✔✔-Host, poet of tragedies -private view of world is optimistic -eros is happiest of all gods. -most youthful and beautiful of all gods
-eros is a skilled poet
Socrates' Speech in "Symposium" - ✔✔-Doesn't make a speech but refutes Agathon's claims -Eros is not happy and beautiful -recounts speech he heard from Diotima. -Explains ancestry of Eros.
Ancestry of Eros - ✔✔Poros: father, Resource Penia: mother, poverty Metis: grandmother, cunning
Diotima/Socrates - ✔✔-just because something is ugly does not mean it is not beautiful. -to be spiritual is to occupy this middle realm, not a god but not an animal, not wise but not ignorant, not good but not bad -eros lives in this realm -eros is a product of heterosexual desire. -nothing philosophical about gods, they don't love wisdom, they're already wise.
Plato, Republic - ✔✔-define justice, and to define it in such a way as to show that justice is worthwhile -meets these two challenges with a single solution:
- a definition of justice that appeals to human psychology, rather than to perceived behaviours. -have light in order to see things -the good is all forms, all ideas -to understand is to focus on one idea, to understand that is to fully understand philosophy. -knowledge is not an opinion, it does not change -explored sense perception and the idea of the good. -sight doesn't tell the truth, doesn't allow us to understand things.
Metaphysics - ✔✔philosophical theory of being or reality
Idea of the Good - Plato - ✔✔-how to live good life -for him it causes things to be --good is underlying element to everything. -to understand something means to know it in its philosophical sense. -Knowledge maintains throughout time
What kind of science is wise knowledge - ✔✔general, difficult, purely theoretical.
Superscience - Aristotle - ✔✔-Science of being QUA being -being just so far as it is -that is the objective of this ultimate science -what is it to merely be? (beginning of metaphysics)
Aristotle against Plato - ✔✔-How do ideas cause particulars? Plato has no answer, how does idea explain apple's being? -how do ideas cause motion or change? Plato has no answer. ----ideas are timeless, changeless, immaterial ----but the material particular of the environment never stops changing. ----there must be connection between things, ideas can't change
to find out being Qua being, Aristotle uses language - ✔✔-not always one of the same things that we are saying when we say "is" or "being" -one thing we mean from "is" is that something is a substance. ----to be a horse is to be a substance ----to say a colour is, is to say that white is a quality of a substance ----if there are no substances, then an object (such as 5) wouldn't enjoy independent existence of its own. ----not everything that has being is a substance
Substance (Aristotle) - ✔✔-something that exists in itself, not in another things ----when a hand is severed it becomes a substance because it's not a hand. -substance may be: material/immaterial, simple/compound, perceptible/imperceptible -exists simply because of what it is, no external cause that makes it exist. -bunny holds white, but white cannot hold anything. -all substances have form in common, form stays the same even though there's accidents. -more to substance than what it is, there's all the things it could be.
Accident (Aristotle) - ✔✔-opposite of substance, exists in another, not in itself. -accidents include: relation (being a father), quality (colour), quantity, location. -hints at potential for change, all matter, every change occurs from potential to actual, accidents occur because of essence. -potential by itself does not cause change
Reason for accident - ✔✔essence
What primarily is being? - ✔✔substance
what primarily is substance? - ✔✔form: causes the reality of everything else-unmoved.
Form - ✔✔a things organization or disposition to behave. for Aristotle substance is ultimately form. -how it behaves separate from an individual -how it's put together, form's have no existence. -form is the essence of a substance. -where there's form there will always be a particular substance.
Essence: - ✔✔-principle or being of reality, essence=form. -role/function, just because we don't know the role or function doesn't mean it doesn't exist. -that about a being that is most true/
