Socrates 469-399 BC

·  Father was a stone carver; mother was a midwife

·  Father claimed to be descendent of the god Poseidon

·  Father died when Socrates was a boy

·  Mother remarried her uncle; they raised Socrates

·  Tried his hand as a stone sculptor and was very bad by all accounts

·  Known for teaching through discussion of ideas, using questions to challenge students' assumptions about the world – Socratic Method

·  Learning by reason and thinking is how we learn – Socratic Method

·  Never wrote anything down, so we have no written works by him; also no pictures (although they say he was quite ugly)

·  At about 70 years old he was sentenced to death by hemlock for not recounting going against established traditions and for corrupting the young men he taught

·  Plato’s Teacher

Plato 428-348 or 347 BC

·  Socrates student

·  Wealthy family

·  Started out with career in politics, but left when he realized that politicians weren't truthful -- didn't think clearly - Left for 10 years after Socrates’ death.

·  Started his own university, "The Academy," in 387 BC

·  Was all about ideas as truth = “FORMS” –universal and invariable ideas exist in perfect truthful state in our minds

·  Physical world is misleading “the particulars” or “SHADOWS”, poor imitations of the truth and therefore not what you should base truth upon

·  “Ideal Plane” – The world of ideas.

·  Constant struggle for humans is discovering the reality of the world while balancing what you know to be true, and what the physical world is showing you to be true

·  Point of education is to draw out the knowledge that's already in your head; use dialogues and questioning to do this

·  Prolific writer - approximately 24 books; wrote in dialogues so it's easy to read.

·  Sought after discovering through reason the ideal government and society

·  Believed in absolute truths

·  Was a mathmatician

·  How did Plato classify governments? (Reason) Which was the best? (The Ideal government – Philosopher King)


Aristotle

·  Plato’s most famous student

·  Age seventeen was sent to Athens

·  Joined the Academy and studied under Plato for 20 years

·  Divergence from Plato makes it so that in 347 when Plato dies, Aristotle cannot take over the Academy.

·  Became the tutor for Alexander the Great by his father Phillip of Macedonia

·  Returned to find Platonism flourishing

·  Started his own school to compete with the Academy – the Lyceum

·  Alexander dies and the governor of Athens is overthrown. Charged with impiety and flees so that “The Athenians might not have another opportunity of sinning against philosophy as they had already done in the person of Socrates.”

·  Three reasons Aristotle opposed Plato’s theory of the “forms”

·  Set up his own school – the Lyceum

·  Father was a doctor and scientist which influenced Aristotle’s scientific background (Some consider him the father of the scientific method)

·  Not from a wealthy family

·  How did he classify governments? (by observing them) Which is best? (He wouldn’t say there was a best, but he would find the best given a situation.)

Aristotle’s 3 Arguments Against the “Forms”:

Argument 1 – “Forms” are powerless to explain changes and even things ultimate extinction. Forms are not causes of movement and alteration in the physical objects of sensation.

Argument 2 – “Forms” are incompetent to explain how we arrive at knowledge of things. To have knowledge of the substance it must be IN the particular thing.

Argument 3 – Forms cannot explain the existence of particular objects. It is too hard to explain a “Form” for something like art or music. Aristotle believes the form cannot be separated from the thing itself. Truth must be concrete not abstract. How can something be two things at once? – For example, a horse – is it a beast of burden to pull a cart, or a race horse to ride to victory. How could the “forms” explain this.

For Aristotle the form is not something outside of the object, but is IN the particular object itself. Reality is concrete not abstract.

Vocabulary:

3 types of philosophy:

Stoics - a group of philosophers who first began teaching their ideas in the Hellenistic period (After the Peloponnesian War 431 B.C.). Philosophy was taught on the porch of a public building. The word for porch in Greek is STOA, and so people called these philosophers Stoics, "people who hang out on the porch." Stoicism – be free from passion – acting very serious and indifferent.

Skeptics – 300 – 100 B.C. – We cannot know anything for certain about the world around us - someone who questions the validity or truth of something.

Epicureans – ca. 300 B.C. – Named after Epicurus – Control your desire for “things” because that is what brings sadness. Don’t love or have friends or want for anything and then you will be happy.

Dialectic – A formal system of reasoning or thought (Related to Dialogue – speech or argument between two people)

Rhetoric – The art of skillful speaking – no real substance, but sounds good

Sophists – Paid teachers who were more worried about winning an argument than discovering truth – really did not believe anything – relied on Rhetoric not sound arguments.

Nihilism – An extreme form of skepticism – believing in nothing – there is no reality or truth

Absolute Truth – There is unchangeable invariable universal truth.

Relative Truth – The truth depends. . .changing, variable, not universal

Logic / Reason – Using your mind to understand reality and truth – thinking – not based on emotion or feeling.

Metaphysics – What is being? What is meant by the real or true substance?