UNIT ONE STUDY GUIDE
I. INTRODUCTION
A. The word
philosophy means--"love of wisdom."
B. Philosophy
asks ultimate questions.
1. What is truth? How is Truth arrived at?
2. What is knowledge? Epistemology
3. What is the essential nature of things (God, people,
universe)? Metaphysics
4. What is the good life? Ethics
C. Philosophy seeks understanding.
1. Clarity of understanding--defining terms.
2. Help society and culture to be self-critical.
3. Develop an ideology to guide people and society.
II PRESOCRATIC PHILOSOPHY
A. Philosophy began with the greeks who had great
intellectual curiosity.
1. The philosophers rejected religious explanations
of the universe.
2. The early philosophers spent their time seeking to
discover the basic element,
(basic
stuff), out of which the world was made.
B. The first philosopher was THALES (625-546).
1. He was from Miletus and his philosophy is often
called Milesian.
2. He said the basic stuff of the universe was water.
3. He was also known for his practical wisdom.
C. Anaximander (611-547): All things rise out of the
indefinite (indeterminate) bondless.
D. Anaximenes (585-552): The basic element is air.
E. Parmenides (515-450).
1. Change is an impossibility.
2. Reality is unchanging and unitary.
3. His pupil Zeno (495-430), used a series of
paradoxes to back up the theory.
4. To Zeno, even motion, a flying arrow, was an
illusion.
F. Heraclitus d. 480.
1. He said there is nothing permanent, everything is
in a state of change.
2. "You cannot step twice into the same river."
3. He said the basic element of the universe is fire.
4.He also advanced the concept of the Logos-- the
intelligence behind the universe.
G. Leucippus (490-430).
1. Athens and atomism--the word meant indivisible or
uncut.
2. This helped to explain reality.
3. Parmendies was right--reality does not change.
4. But Heraclitus was also right because the
arrangement of atoms can change.
H. Pythagirms (fl.525-500)
1. "numbers are things, things are
numbers."
2. Transmigration of souls.
3. He organized his followers into communities with
some strange rules about food and conduct.
4. He influenced many later people including Plato
and the physician Hippocrates.
III. SOCRATES (469-399)
A. With Socrates is change from cosmology to issues of ethics.
B. Sophists.
1. These were itinerant teachers who came to Athens
in the 5th century B. C.
2. They taught skills necessary for success in public
life.
3. At first they were highly regarded but became
hated because they charged money for their teaching and taught relativistic
ethics.
C. The life of Socrates.
1. Born in Athens, worked as a stone mason.
2. He served in the army during the Peloponnesian War
(4310404).
3. Married Xanthippe.
4. Taught by asking questions.
5. He was accessed of corrupting the young and of
impiety toward the gods.
6. There was a lot of hysteria because Athens lost
the war.
7. Socrates was tried, condemned, and executed by
drinking poison.
D. Engel says Socrates' greatest discovery was that
humans posses a soul.
1. To Socrates the soul was something like what we
call the personality.
2. Intelligence and character were in the soul.
3. People need to take care of their souls.
4. The soul existed previously and has knowledge
which can be brought out by questions.
5. He sought to be an intellectual midwife, helping
ideas be born.
6. He also wanted to be a "gadfly" claiming
that the unexamined life was not worth living.
E. The last days of Socrates.
1. Euthyphro: discussion of constitutes piety.
2. The Apology: Socrates' defense before the court of
Athens, where he is convicted and sentenced to death.
3. Crito: Socrates refuses to run away. Stands by his
principles. (teleological v. denotological ethics).
4. Phaedo: Death and the immortality of the soul.
F. Socrates was the favorite pagan hero of early
Christianity because he died for his principles.
IV. PLATO (428-348).
A. The life and times of Plato.
1. He was born in Athens to a prominent family and
intended to have career in politics.
2. He studied under Socrates and became a
philosopher.
3. When Socrates died he left Athens (399-#87).
4. In 387 he returned and established the Academy.
5. He wrote a number of dialogues (these are the
principle source of what is known about Socrates).
6. He was active in the Academy up until his death.
B. Epistemology.
1. Allegory of the Cave: People are like prisoners in
a cave. We see only flickering shadows of reality. The reality is something
other than what we see. It is necessary to get free, experience reality, and
share it with others, but it will be a painful process.
2. Dived Line: There are varying degrees of reality.
The lowest reality is the visible world. The highest reality is the
intelligible world.
3. The Doctrine of Forms: The true reality is someone
out in space with the Forms. Visible objects are only poor copies of the Forms.
He used these mostly in regard to ideas and concepts, but also with some
material things.
C Ethics.
1. Knowledge is virtue.
2. In order to be good you must have knowledge; moral
evil is the result of ignorance.
3. The soul influences ethic and the soul has three
parts:
A.
Reason-sets goals-needs the virtue of wisdom.
B. Spirit-
provides the drive- needs courage.
C.
Appetites-the body- needs temperance.
4. When the reason is in control and guided by wisdom
a person is able to live a well balanced life and be happy.
5. Happiness is the ultimate gaol and the ultimate
happiness is philosophy.
E. Cosmology.
1. There is order and purpose in the cosmos.
2. Therefore had to be an intelligence (Drive
Craftsmen) behind it.
3. Plato's creator had a sense of justice (he could
not be bribe).
4. He/they had some feeling for humanity, but not do
things to help people.
5. Plato is credited with introducing to the Greeks a
benevolent but not omnipont god.
6. People owned the gods, respect, but not
necessarily worship.
7. There was also a world soul which gave life to the
universe.
V. ARISTOTLE (384-322).
A. Life and times.
1. Born at Stragira in Thrace.
2. He went to Athens to study under Plato.
3. When Plato died he left Athens, traveling to
different places to study and teach.
4. It was during this time (343-336) he served as
tutor to the future Alexander the great.
5. In 335 he returned to Athens where he established
the Lyceum.
6. He was called a peripatetic philosopher because he
walked around as he taught.
7. When Alexander died (323) there was an
anti-Macedonian sentiment in Athens which focused on him.
8. He left town and went to Chalcis where he died the
next year.
B. Metaphysics_ first Philosophy.
1. He was concerned with the nature of being.
2. He divided everything into a number of categories
(e.g. quantity, quality, relation, place, date, position, acting, et. al.)
3. All existence fits into one or more the various
categories.
4. That to which all categories apply to substance.
5. Substance has to do with the very nature of a
thing.
6. It is what makes a man a man, a woman a woman, a
table a table.
7. It is what makes you you.
8. Substance can change its shape and form, but it
retains its essence.
9. Since changes do take place there has to be
motion. He also came up with some explanations of cause and effect.
A. Formal Cause: The shape or pattern of something.
B. Material Cause: What is it made out of?
C. Efficient Cause: Who made it? Immediate origin.
D. Final Cause: For what purpose was it made.
10. Behind all this is the FIRST CAUSE or First
Mover.
11. This being has been called "Aristotle's
God," but he is more like the external principle of motion.
12. Others say Aristotle's God is a thinker who
thinks only about thinking.
C. Ethics (Ethos-habit or custom).
1. Morality--what is to be done.
2. Ethics--formal theories.
3. Meteethics--nature of the theories.
4. Aristotle said ethics was a practical study and
involved acquiring the right habits.
5. Everything has a purpose, the good person is one
who fulfills his/her purpose.
6. Aristotle differentiated between INSTRUMENTAL
ends, which we seek as a means to something else, and INTRINSIC ends, which are
sought for their own sake.
7. The ultimate end is HAPPINESS because it alone is
sought as an end in itself.
8. Happiness is not a virtue, but only a good person
can really be happy.
8. Also a person must have good health, not be ugly
or lowly born.
10. Moral Virtues: Those which have to do with our
ability to control our appetites.
11. Intellectual Virtues: Our ability to discover and
recognize the rules we sought to follow.
12. The GOLDEN MEAN: Virtue is a mean between two
excesses.
13. Supreme happiness is the development of reason
i.e. contemplation/ being a philosopher.
D. Politics.
1. Political Science is the controlling science in
ethics.
2. In order to live the proper moral life you need to
do so in an orderly society, ("Man is a political animal.")
3. The state exists to keep law and order, and to
make the best life possible.
4. Ethics was a combination of oligarchy and
democracy which he called POLITY, (This too was a mean between tyranny and
democracy.
E. Logic
Logic has to be with words and language.
2. Aristotle did not consider it a science, but a
tool to establish proof.
3. We organism our thoughts into declarative
sentences a.k.a. Categorical Propositions.
4. An argument composed of such sentences is called a
SYLLOGISM.
5. Arguments are statements designed to persuade.
A. Major
Premise: All men are mortal
B. Minor
Premise: Socrates is a man.
C.
Conclusion: Therefore Socrates is mortal.
6. Deductive Argument: The conclusion follows from
the premises of necessity. It also reasons from the general to at the
particular.
7. Inductive Argument: The conclusion follows from
the premises with high degree of probability. Also it reasons from the
particular to the general/
8. In a valid argument the conclusion follows the
premises.
9. In order for an argument to be sound the premises
must be true as well as the conclusion valid.
F. Fallacies-- Arguments which appear sound but are
not.
1. They appeal to us by short-circuiting our
reasoning powers and appealing to our emotions.
2. AMBIGUITY: Unclear statement.
A. Amphiboly: Faulty sentence structure.
B. Accent: Confusion in emphasis.
C. Equivocation: Using a word with two or more
meanings but acting like they were the
same.
3. PRESUMPTION.
A. Sweeping Generalization: What is true under some
conditions is true under all conditions.
B. Hasty Generalization: A single incident is treated
as if it were the norm.
C. Bifurcation: Either or, no other alternative.
D. Begging the Question: Arguing in a circle.
E. Complex Question: (not in the book) a form of
question begging, assumes the answer in the question.
F. False Analogy: Only a slight similarity.
G. False Cause: After this therefore because of this.
5. Relevance.
A. Genetic Fallacy: He was born that way.
B. Ad Hominem: Attack the person.
C. Tu Quoque: "You're another one."
Well Poisoning: Attacking source or the general background.
5. Some fallacies not in the book.
A. Guilt by Association: "A man is know by the
company he keep."
B. Slippery Slope: Where will this lead?
C. Time Sequence: When did a person say or write
that.
VI PHILOSOPHY AFTER ARISTOTLE.
A. In the Hellenstic Period (after 323 B.C.)
philosophy turned to questions of personal contentnebt.
B. EPICUREANISH
1. The name came from Epicurus (340-270).
2. He denied the gods and immortality, this people
free to enjoy themselves.
3. The secret of contentment was to be found in a
life of moderate self-indulgence.
4. This has been summed up as the "intelligent
pursuit of pleasure>'
C. Stoicism.
a. The founder of this philosopy was Zeno (350-258).
2. The name came from a porch (stoa) where he taught.
3. He taught divine Providence ruled the universe and
people should live in harmony with it and to their duty.
4. Contenment (the good life) is to be achiveed by
the mastery of the passions through reason.
D. Skepticism.
1. This school was founded by Pyrrho (360-270) who
wrote nothing.
2. Most of what is known of this philosophy comes
from Sextus Empircus (c.200 A.D.)
3. The skeptics said it was impossible to achive real
knowledge (you can't know anything for sure).
4. Therefore contentment is found in suspending jugement
on all controversal questions.
E. Cynicism.
1. The name was drawn from kynos, the Greek word for
dog.
2. They traced their orgins to Antisthenes (450-366).
3. The best known cycnis rejected all rules and all
values of socciety and sought instead to live in harmony with nature.
5. This meant living like dogs, scaanengering for
food, and eliminating in public.
F. Neo-Platonism.
1. The last major scchool of pagen philosophy.
2. It began with Plotinus (205-270 A.D.).
3. Neo-platonism talked of "The One" who
was the intelligence behind the intelligible world.
4. The purpose of life and philosophy was to achive
unity with "The One."
5. Some see this as a
challenge to Christianity, but for others it opened the way to acceptance of
Christianity.
