Ch.17 Flashcards
Greek philosophy arose in the ______ century BCE among the _____ who settled on the Asian cost of the Aegean sea, as a thinking about nature.
sixth, Ionians
Early Greek philosophers were traditionally called ______, also known as _______ in modern times.
phusikoi (natural philosophers), presocratics
How may have their thinking originated?
May have originated in rationalizing the mythic cosmogony of the epic poets
Aristotles traces the history of Greek philosophy back to _________.
An enigmatic declaration made by Thales, something like, “all is water”.
What is Arkhe?
Arkhe (principle, source, or origin) of everything was the apeiron (that which is boundless, endless)
When did Aristotle think that things first began to become clear?
In mid-5th century BCE when the Athenian phusikos Anaxagoras declared the arkhe to be divine mind which he firmly set apart from the natural elements of earth, air, water and fire that the divine nous had organized into an ordered whole of kosmos.
What was the more radical declaration of humanism Protagoras made?
First to make his living in Athens as a self-professed sophistes, a professional lecturer who travelled about the Greek world charging tuition for instruction.
The fame of Protagoras was rivalled by who?
By Gorgias, who was a celebrated stylist and master of rhetoric
Favorite topics at Athenian symposia for a sohpistic agonlogon (contest of speeches)
Nomos (law, custom and tradition) and phusis(nature)
Unlike Heraclitus, who claimed that various human nomoi were all a manifestation of “the one divine nomos”, Protagoras argued what?
Nomoi were human conventions necessary to sustain order in the polis
Some sophists believes that religion and morality originated as _______
necessary fictions concocted by early lawmakers to secure the good of the city;
Callicles argued that laws, religions and morality were _______.
doctrinal chains by which the naturally “weak” were able to protect themselves by oppressing the natural strong
When did Protagoras get exiled?
When Athens was suffering hardship in her war with Sparta, the tide of popularity turned
What does Plato’s Apology of Socrates say?
Socrates tried to prove the delphic oracle wrongwhen it cryptically declared him the wisest of men. Ironically, he proved the oracle right, demonstrating the alone knew that he did not know. Socrates concludes with “Only Gods are wise”
What does Socrates seek by way of definition?
To know the good of something, its function or purpose-what answers the question of why
What is Plato’s philosophy?
Seeks to convert us to the enlightened perspective that reality belongs to the idea itself and that what is abstract is the thing we see.
After Plato died, what did Aristotle do?
He left the academy to establish his own school, the Lyceum, based on a profound revision of Plato’s teachings about the nature of the good, the universal ideas or forms and their relation to sensible reality
What are the basic principles of the Aristotelian philosophy?
Substance (ousia) as the actualization of form (the Platonic eidos) and matter (hule), where matter is conceived not as a physical stuff but as potentiality.
What are the four causes that form Aristotle’s philosophy?
Formal, material, efficient, and final
What are the differences between Plato and Aristotle?
Aristotle agrees with Plato that we cannot hope to unite with the divine principle in itself but he maintains that the manner in which the good and ideas are related to the world is not only as transcendent but also as immanent, that is, manifest in the world itself. Aristotle sees nature as the actualization of the ideal
What were the two extreme individualisms?
Alexander the “god” and Diogenes the “dog”. Basically if an individual like Alexander could boast that he ruled the world, an individual like Diogenes could reply that he couldn’t care less-he had no need of the world, he had himself
How did world change in Alexander’s wake?
Greek women were no longer confined to the oikos, excluded from politics and most of public life
What are the four later schools?
Cynicism (after Diogenes), Stoicism (founded by Zeno), Skepticism ( a movement founded by Pyrrho) and Epicureanism (only school not inspired by socrates)
What did Heraclitus and Empedocles view the soul as?
Self-moving and thus as animating physical bodies, they thought of soul as possessing something of a corporeal nature
