Τίτλος Μαθήματος:Αγγλική Γλώσσα ΙΙΙ

Ενότητα: Αρχαία Ελληνική Φιλοσοφία Μέρος 2ο - Σωκράτης, Πλάτων, Αριστοτέλης (Ancient Greek philosophy (continued) - Socrates, Plato, Aristotle)

Διδάσκουσα: Δρ. Θ.Τσελίγκα-Γκαζιάνη

Τμήμα:Φιλολογίας

English language III, Dept. of Philology: Lesson 4

Socrates and his Followers

(adapted from:

Exercise 1

The following sentences have been removed from the text. Read carefully and try to understand where they have been taken from.

1) A new period of philosophy opens with the Athenian Socrates (469-399 BCE).

2) Of Socrates’ numerous disciples many either added nothing to his doctrine, or developed it in a one-sided manner, by confining themselves exclusively either to dialectic or to ethics.

3) He was executed for corrupting the youth of Athens and for disbelieving in the gods of the city.

1. Socrates

a) ______

Like the Sophists, he rejected entirely the physical speculations in which his predecessors had indulged, and made the thoughts and opinions of people his starting-point; but whereas it was the thoughts of and opinions of the individual that the Sophists took for the standard, Socrates questioned people relentlessly about their beliefs. He tried to find the definitions of the virtues, such as courage and justice, by cross-examining people who professed to have knowledge of them. His method of cross-examining people, the elenchus, did not succeed in establishing what the virtues really were, but rather it exposed the ignorance of his interlocutors.

Socrates was an enormously magnetic figure, who attracted many followers, but he also made many enemies. b) ______

______This philosophical martyrdom, however, simply made Socrates an even more iconic figure than would have been otherwise, and many later philosophical schools took Socrates as their hero.

c) ______

______. Thus the Athenian Xenophon contented himself, in a series of writings, with exhibiting the portrait of his master to the best of his comprehension, and added nothing original. The MegarianSchool, founded by Euclides of Megara, devoted themselves almost entirely to dialectic investigation of the one Good. Stilpo of Megara became the most distinguished member of the school. Ethics predominated both with the Cynics and Cyrenaics, although their positions were in direct opposition. Antisthenes of Athens, the founder of the Cynics, conceived the highest good to be the virtue which spurns every enjoyment. Cynicism continued in Greece with Menippus and on to Roman times through the efforts of Demonax and others. Aristippus of Cyrene, the founder of the Cyrenaics,considered pleasure to be the sole end in life, and regarded virtue as a good only in so far as it contributed to pleasure.

2. Plato

Exercise 2

Try to guess the missing words.

Both aspects of the g______of Socrates were first united in Plato of Athens (428-348 BCE), who also c______with them many the principles established by earlier philosophers, and developed the whole of this material into the unity of a comprehensive s______. The groundwork of Plato’s scheme, though nowhere expressly stated by him, is the threefold division of philosophy into dialectic, ethics, and physics; its c______point is the theory of forms. This theory is a combination of the Eleatic doctrine of the One with Heraclitus’ theory of a perpetual f______and with the Socratic method of concepts. The multitude of objects of sense, being involved in perpetual change, are thereby deprived of all genuine existence. The only true being in them is founded upon the forms, the e______, unchangeable (independent of all that is accidental, and therefore perfect) archetypes, of which the particular objects of sense are imperfect copies. The quantity of the forms is defined by the number of universal concepts which can be d______from the particular objects of sense.

The highest form is that of the Good, which is the u______basis of the rest, and the first cause of being and knowledge. Apprehensions derived from the impression of sense can never give us the knowledge of true being — i.e. of the forms. It can only be obtained by the soul’s activity within itself, apart from the troubles and disturbances of sense; that is to say, by the exercise of r______. Dialectic, as the instrument in this process, leading us to knowledge of the ideas, and finally of the highest idea of the Good, is the first of s______(scientiascientiarum). In physics, Plato adhered (though not without original modifications) to the views of the Pythagoreans, making Nature a harmonic unity in multiplicity. His ethics are founded throughout on the Socratic; with him, too, v______is knowledge, the cognition of the supreme form of the Good. And since in this cognition the three parts of the soul — cognitive, spirited, and appetitive — all have their share, we get the three virtues: Wisdom, Courage, and Temperance or Continence. The b______which unites the other virtues is the virtue of Justice, by which each several part of the soul is confined to the performance of its proper function.

The school founded by Plato, called the Academy (from the name of the grove of the Attic hero Academus where he used to deliver his lectures) continued for long after. In regard to the main tendencies of its members, it was divided into the three periods of the Old, Middle, and NewAcademy. The chief personages in the first of these were Speusippus (son of Plato’s sister), who succeeded him as the head of the school (till 339 BCE), and Xenocrates of Chalcedon (till 314 BCE). Both of them sought to fuse Pythagorean speculations on number with Plato’s theory of ideas. The two other Academies were still further removed from the specific doctrines of Plato, and advocated skepticism.

3. Aristotle

The most important among Plato’s disciples is Aristotle of Stagira (384-322 BCE), who shares with his master the title of the greatest philosopher of antiquity. But whereas Plato had sought to elucidate and explain things from the supra-sensual standpoint of the forms, his pupil preferred to start from the facts given us by experience. Philosophy to him meant science, and its aim was the recognition of the purpose in all things. Hence he establishes the ultimate grounds of things inductively — that is to say, by a posteriori conclusions from a number of facts to a universal. In the series of works collected under the name of Organon, Aristotle sets forth the laws by which the human understanding effects conclusions from the particular to the knowledge of the universal.

S

Like Plato, he recognizes the true being of things in their concepts, but denies any separate existence of the concept apart from the particular objects of sense. They are inseparable as matter and form. In matter and form, Aristotle sees the fundamental principles of being. Matter is the basis of all that exists; it comprises the potentiality of everything, but of itself is not actually anything. A determinate thing only comes into being when the potentiality in matter is converted into actuality. This is effected by form, inherent in the unified object and the completion of the potentiality latent in the matter. Although it has no existence apart form the particulars, yet, in rank and estimation, form stands first; it is of its own nature the most knowable, the only true object of knowledge. For matter without any form cannot exist, but the essential definitions of a common form, in which are included the particular objects may be separated from matter. Form and matter are relative terms, and the lower form constitutes the matter of a higher (e.g. body, soul, reason). This series culminates in pure, immaterial form, the Deity, the origin of all motion, and therefore of the generation of actual form out of potential matter.

All motion takes place in space and time; for space is the potentiality, time the measure of the motion. Living beings are those which have in them a moving principle, or soul. In plants the function of soul is nutrition (including reproduction); in animals, nutrition and sensation; in humans, nutrition, sensation, and intellectual activity. The perfect form of the human soul is reason separated from all connection with the body, hence fulfilling its activity without the help of any corporeal organ, and so imperishable. By reason the apprehensions, which are formed in the soul by external sense-impressions, and may be true or false, are converted into knowledge. For reason alone can attain to truth either in cognition or action. Impulse towards the good is a part of human nature, and on this is founded virtue; for Aristotle does not, with Plato, regard virtue as knowledge pure and simple, but as founded on nature, habit, and reason. Of the particular virtues (of which there are as many as there are contingencies in life), each is the apprehension, by means of reason, of the proper mean between two extremes which are not virtues — e.g. courage is the mean between cowardice and foolhardiness. The end of human activity, or the highest good, is happiness, or perfect and reasonable activity in a perfect life. To this, however, external goods are more of less necessary conditions.

The followers of Aristotle, known as Peripatetics (Theophrastus of Lesbos, Eudemus of Rhodes, Strato of Lampsacus, etc.), to a great extent abandoned metaphysical speculation, some in favor of natural science, others of a more popular treatment of ethics, introducing many changes into the Aristotelian doctrine in a naturalistic direction. A return to the views of the founder first appears among the later Peripatetics, who did good service as expositors of Aristotle’s works, such as Avicenna and Averroes.

The PeripateticSchool tended to make philosophy the exclusive property of the learned class, thereby depriving it of its power to benefit a wider circle. This soon produced a negative reaction, and philosophers returned to the practical standpoint of Socratic ethics. The speculations of the learned were only admitted in philosophy where serviceable for ethics. The chief consideration was how to popularize doctrines, and to provide the individual, in a time of general confusion and dissolution, with a fixed moral basis for practical life.

Exercise 3

Write sentences using the underlined words.

Ανοικτά Ακαδημαϊκά Μαθήματα
Πανεπιστήμιο Ιωαννίνων
ΤέλοςΕνότητας
Χρηματοδότηση
•Το παρόν εκπαιδευτικό υλικό έχει αναπτυχθεί στα πλαίσια του εκπαιδευτικού έργου του διδάσκοντα.
•Το έργο «Ανοικτά Ακαδημαϊκά Μαθήματα στο Πανεπιστήμιο Ιωαννίνων» έχει χρηματοδοτήσει μόνο τη αναδιαμόρφωση του εκπαιδευτικού υλικού.
•Το έργο υλοποιείται στο πλαίσιο του Επιχειρησιακού Προγράμματος «Εκπαίδευση και Δια Βίου Μάθηση» και συγχρηματοδοτείται από την Ευρωπαϊκή Ένωση (Ευρωπαϊκό Κοινωνικό Ταμείο) και από εθνικούς πόρους.

Σημειώματα

Σημείωμα Αναφοράς

Copyright Πανεπιστήμιο Ιωαννίνων, Διδάσκουσα: Δρ. Θ.Τσελίγκα-Γκαζιάνη. «Αγγλική Γλώσσα ΙΙΙ.Αρχαία Ελληνική Φιλοσοφία Μέρος 2ο - Σωκράτης, Πλάτων, Αριστοτέλης (Ancient Greek philosophy (continued) - Socrates, Plato, Aristotle)». Έκδοση: 1.0. Ιωάννινα 2014. Διαθέσιμο από τη δικτυακή διεύθυνση:

Σημείωμα Αδειοδότησης

•Το παρόν υλικό διατίθεται με τους όρους της άδειας χρήσης CreativeCommons Αναφορά Δημιουργού - Παρόμοια Διανομή, Διεθνής Έκδοση 4.0 [1] ή μεταγενέστερη.

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