Background to Greek philosophy

KEYSKILL – MINDMAPPING (revision technique)

KEY KNOWLEDGE - Pre Socratics

SocratesPlato

BEFORE SOCRATES or the pre-Socratics

• The emergence of rational thinking

• Trying to explain the world without referring to supernatural causes.

• For example: • Thales (7th c. BC) – concluded that the basic element was water Anaximander

(c.610-540's BC) – found fossilized shells and fish in the mountains and concluded that life began in the oceans. First theory of evolution.

• Anaximenes (590's-c.525) - claimed that air was the primary element in order to explain how the spirit gets trapped in the body.

• Their discussions developed to look at basic questions such as "what is the nature of the soul"?

• For example:• Pythagoras (c. 531) – came up with the idea that the soul is an immortal

construct and that after death, souls migrated into new bodies. Pythagoras also ascribed the workings of the universe to mathematical principles, and his interest in numeric relationships led him to discover the 8-note scale.

• Heraclitus (6th century) – concluded that the human soul is made of the same elements as the universe, and we must be aware that we are a part of a higher unity.

• Sophists were teachers of the art of rhetoric and argumentation (skills that people eagerly paid to learn and use)

• Sophists pointed out that while physis (nature) is controlled by an unchanging set of laws that remain the same wherever you go, nomos (custom, or man-made law) is arbitrary and changes from state to state. This empowered men to think that they could shape the world and be masters of their own fates

• Sophists were accused of being overly relative......An example of a sophistic argument is that you can just as easily prove that a shipwreck is good as you can prove it is bad. A shipwreck is certainly bad if you are on the ship, if people die, if goods are irretrievably lost. But a shipwreck is certainly good for the shipbuilder who gets the contract to replace it! This kind of "moral relativism" left everyone confused…if something is good in this case, but bad in that case…then how can anyone ever be sure what is good and what is bad? ..... It was not which argument is the most just rather it was which argument could win.

SOPHISTS

• The founder of moral philosophy

• Responded to the issue of the sophists with “Socratic questioning” - a dialogue(sometimes might only serve to clarify the problem rather than solve it)

• “Socrates understood himself not as a teacher, but as a midwife easing the birth of critical self-reflection” (the story of philosophy, from antiquity to the present by Delius/Gatzmeier/Sertcan/Wunscher page 9)

• Great influence – Plato, Antisthenes, Aristippus.

• Socrates didn't write books; he just liked to ask probing and sometimes humiliating questions, which gave rise to the famous Socratic Method of Teaching.

• “this street-corner philosopher made a career of deflating pompous windbags.”

SOCRATES 469- 399 BC

• “The whole of western philosophy is footnotes to Plato” (the story of philosophy by Bryan Magee, page 24)

• Plato became an enthusiastic and talented student of Socrates and wrote famous dialogues featuring his teacher verbally grappling with opponents. Our wrestler believed in the pre-existence and immortality of the soul, holding that life is nothing more than the imprisonment of the soul in a body. In addition to the physical world, there is a heavenly realm of greater reality consisting in Forms, Ideals, or Ideas (such as Equality, Justice, Humanity, and so on).

• As his crowning achievement: He wrote a famous treatise (The Republic) on the ideal society, in which he expressed the thought that a philosopher, of all people, who should be king (big surprise!).

PLATO

ARISTOTLE

• Aristotle was Plato's best student. He went on to become the very well-paid tutor of Alexander the Great — probably the highest paid philosopher in history. Aristotle started his own philosophical school when he was 50 years old. Although he lived only ten more years, he produced nearly a thousand books and pamphlets, only a few of which have survived.

Tasks....

• Complete a grid on the

IMAGES FOR MINDMAP

SOCRATES

PLATO

ARISTOTLE