Philosophy

Question 1

We have no writings from this man’s own hand, and know about him largely from the dialogues of his student Plato.

Answer 1

Socrates

Question 2

Proclaiming his own ignorance of all things, this man went around Athens engaging in question-and-answer sessions to search for truths or draw out contradictions.

Answer 2

Socrates

Question 3

The Athenian state disapproved of his conduct; he was put on trial for corrupting the city’s youth, and sentenced to death by drinking hemlock.

Answer 3

Socrates

Question 4

This man’s trial, imprisonment, and death are recounted in Plato’s Apology, Crito, and Phaedo, respectively.

Answer 4

Socrates

Question 5

This man’s Socratic dialogues are our main source both for Socrates’s philosophy and his own.

Answer 5

Plato

Question 6

This man often put his own thoughts in Socrates’ mouth.

Answer 6

Plato

Question 7

This man’s dialogues include the Republic (about justice and the ideal city-state), the Symposium (about the nature of love), and the Meno (about whether virtue can be taught).

Answer 7

Plato

Question 8

This man believed in a world of “forms”—or ideal versions of real things that lie beyond the human senses—which he discussed in such works as the Phaedo.

Answer 8

Plato

Question 9

This man founded a school called the Academy, from which we get the common word.

Answer 9

Plato

Question 10

This man was a student of Plato

Answer 10

Aristotle

Question 11

This man was a tutor to Alexander the Great.

Answer 11

Aristotle

Question 12

Many of this man’s works come from the lectures called Lyceum that he gave.

Answer 12

Aristotle

Question 13

This man’s philosophical output includes the Nicomachean Ethics, which argues that virtues consist in a “golden mean” between two extremes; the Physics, which describes motion and change in terms of “four causes” that make a given thing what it is; and the Metaphysics, which describes the structure of reality.

Answer 13

Aristotle

Question 14

This man’s Poetics discusses the types of drama and considers an effect of tragedies known as catharsis, or the purging of bad feelings.

Answer 14

Aristotle

Question 15

This man was a pivotal thinker from China’s Spring and Autumn period,

Answer 15

Confucius (Kong Fu Zi)

Question 16

This man’s views on proper conduct and filial piety influence China to this day.

Answer 16

Confucius (Kong Fu Zi)

Question 17

Many sayings attributed to this man were compiled by his disciples following his death in a text known as the Analects.

Answer 17

Confucius (Kong Fu Zi)

Question 18

This man put much importance on ren, the inner state which allows one to behave compassionately toward others, and on a concept called li, which can help individuals attain ren.

Answer 18

Confucius (Kong Fu Zi)

Question 19

This man is a quasi-mythical thinker of the Taoist tradition, to whom the pivotal Tao te Ching is attributed.

Answer 19

Lao Tzu

Question 20

Concepts associated with him include that of the Tao, or “the way,” and wu wei, or a life of non-action in accordance with the Tao.

Answer 20

Lao Tzu

Question 21

In later centuries, this man was accorded godlike status as one of the Three Pure Ones of Taoism, and is frequently depicted as an old man with a donkey.

Answer 21

Lao Tzu

Question 22

To this man is attributed the quote “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

Answer 22

Lao Tzu

Question 23

This man was of Sinope was a student of Antisthenes, who founded the ancient school of philosophy known as Cynicism.

Answer 23

Diogenes

Question 24

The Cynics rejected conventional social norms in search of a truly virtuous life. This man himself was something of an eccentric—according to legend, he lived in a tub or a barrel on the street, and wandered Athens holding a lamp in his futile search for an honest man.

Answer 24

Diogenes

Question 25

This man's namesake school, Epicureanism, believed that pleasure was the highest (or only) good, and that the absence of pain (aponia) was the highest pleasure. They also believed that human happiness consisted of a kind of tranquillity known as ataraxia.

Answer 25

Epicurus

Question 26

Critics of Epicureanism accused his school of promoting hedonism and making selfishness into a good, though Epicureans did not believe themselves to be hedonists.

Answer 26

Epicurus

Question 27

This person was a student of Parmenides, who founded the Eleatic school in a Greek colony of the Italian peninsula.

Answer 27

Zeno of Elea

Question 28

He is most famous today for “Zeno’s paradoxes,” the best-known of which involve an arrow in flight and a race between Achilles and a tortoise.

Answer 28

Zeno of Elea

Question 29

This person's paradoxes purport to show that physical movement is impossible, since any attempt to travel a distance must be preceded by moving half that distance, which must be preceded by moving half of half that distance, and so on. (This person is not to be confused with Zeno of Citium, who founded the philosophical school of Stoicism two centuries later.)

Answer 29

Zeno of Elea

Question 30

This man was a pre-Socratic thinker from the Greek colony of Miletus who many consider to be the “first philosopher.”

Answer 30

Thales

Question 31

Rejecting mythical explanations of the universe’s nature, this man believed that the first principle of all existence, the natural element from which all things emerged, was water.

Answer 31

Thales

Question 32

This man was also a civil engineer and mathematician, and is credited with discovering that if a circle goes through all three vertices of a triangle and one side of the triangle is a diameter of the circle, then the triangle is a right triangle.

Answer 32

Thales

Question 33

This man is sometimes thought of as the founder of a “Milesian school” of philosophy, whose other members include Anaximander and Anaximenes.

Answer 33

Thales

Question 34

Though he is better remembered today for his role in the political life of the Roman Republic, This man (sometimes known as “Tully”) was also a significant philosopher.

Answer 34

Marcus Tullius "Cicero"

Question 35

This man described the ideal state in such dialogues as On the Republic and On the Laws, while he discussed Epicurean and Stoic views on religion in On the Nature of the Gods.

Answer 35

Marcus Tullius "Cicero"

Question 36

Through the Middle Ages and Renaissance, this man was considered one of the most important of ancient philosophers. Indeed, Saint Augustine asserted that he turned to philosophy as a result of reading a now-lost work by this man known as the Hortensius.

Answer 36

Marcus Tullius "Cicero"

Question 37

Is an ancient Greek school that idealized freedom from emotions.

Answer 37

Stoicism

Question 38

It was founded by Zeno of Citium, who taught at the “painted porch” in Athens. (The name of the movement derives from the Greek word “stoa,” which means “porch.”)

Answer 38

Stoicism