Ancient Philosophical Influences: Aristotle and Plato Flashcards
What does Heraclitus postulate about the world and how do Plato and Aristotle react to this?
We are in a constant state of ‘flux.’ We cannot “step in the same river twice.”
Plato would say that this means no true knowledge can be gained through empiricism/sensory experience. We must look to reason alone.
Aristotle would say we can understand the cause of change, and therefore garner true knowledge through the senses.
What is Plato’s Analogy of the Cave, and what does each aspect represent?
Three prisoners (society) are chained up in a cave. They witness shadows on the wall (world of the senses) that are projected via the fire behind them (the sun.)
One day, a prisoner (the philosopher) is freed. He sees the fire and false projections and starts the difficult ascent outside of the cave (reasoning/finding true knowledge.) When he sees the real world outside the cave (the world of the forms), it is illuminated by the sun (the Form of the Good.)
When the prisoner returns, he is laughed the other prisoners and is beaten to death (episteme vs doxa, philosophers not following widespread ideas.)
What is Plato’s Theory of the Forms?
Because everything is constantly changing, there must be some immutable truth to the world. For Plato, this is the World of the Forms; Forms being the most perfect iteration of certain objects and concepts. What we witness in reality is merely a crude reflection of the Forms. When we see a beautiful sunset, we are seeing a manifestation of the Form of Beauty. These reflections are called ‘particulars.’
What is the difference between particulars and Forms?
Forms: perfect, immutable, eternal, unchanging.
Particulars: imperfect, fleeting, changeable, mixtures of many traits (impure.)
What is the Hierarchy of the Forms?
The Forms of objects are the lowest of the Forms. The Forms of positive concepts (i.e. love and justice) and mathematic and geometric Forms are the higher forms, but lower than the Form of the Good, which illuminates all other Forms.
What is the weakest argument against the Theory of the Forms?
Aristotle might say that there is no empirical evidence for the existence of Forms. However, Plato would see this as a good thing, because the senses are not reliable and are merely illusory.
What did Nietzsche say about the Form of the Good?
It is a “dangerous error” because philosophers often invent ideas that suit their emotional prejudices, and pretend to have figured it out through logic and reason.
What is the third man argument?
Aristotle argues that the Theory of the Forms is susceptible to infinite regress. If we have a form of a man, then there would be a form of a form of a man, and so on.
Plato counters this by saying forms cannot partake in anything but themselves. The form of a man wouldn’t have the same characteristics as the particular of a man because the form is perfect.
How does Plato’s argument from recollection adhere to the Theory of the Forms?
Because we have innate knowledge of ideas and concepts like love, beauty or the perfect circle, we must have found these out through a priori knowledge before we were born.
Plato goes on to say that this knowledge originated from the World of the Forms because our soul experienced it before being born. Anamnesis is the process of re-remembering the Forms through sensory experience.
What is the point of Aristotle’s Theory of the Four Causes?
To go from a cause to an effect (potentiality to actuality), something must go through four causes to reach its telos.
What is the material cause?
What a thing is made of. I.e. a chair is made of wood.
What is the formal cause?
What the essence or defining characteristic of a thing is. I.e. a chair is defined by its shape.
What is the efficient cause?
What brings the thing into existence. I.e. the efficient cause of a wooden chair might be a carpenter.
What is the final cause?
The purpose of the thing. I.e. a chair’s final cause is to be sat on.
Why would a scientific perspective reject the existence of a final cause?
Science can explain the changes experienced by things without purpose. I.e. the chair would be made out of atoms. Whilst we can give it a purpose, it has no objective purpose coded into it.
Purpose is purely a construct, meaning that it is unscientific.
