Ancient philosophers

Question 1

What are the Four Causes?

Answer 1

• Material (what something is made up of)
• Efficient (the process in which something is made)
• Formal (the plan or design involved in making something)
• Final (the aim of making something)

Question 2

What is potentiality and actuality? Why is Aristotle concerned with these?

Answer 2

• Potentiality = The possibility of a thing doing something
• Actuality = When something’s potential is achieved
• Aristotle was interested in the shift from potentiality to actuality

Question 3

Describe Aristotle’s Prime Mover

Answer 3

• The unmoved mover/uncaused causer
• The first thing that moved the chain of dominoes to achieve the world we see today
• Impersonal. Not actually like a God - is actually entirely unconscious of the fact that it caused the world

Question 4

What did Aristotle believe is our final cause?

Answer 4

• Eudaimonia
• Supreme good or happiness
• Basic requirements for eudaimonia include early training, a good amount of money, children and good ancestry

Question 5

What is the World of the Forms?

Answer 5

• Plato’s idea of true reality
• Another dimension which is permanent and contains perfect versions of concepts
• We can recognise concepts like justice and beauty because we’ve already seen them in the world of the forms where we used to exist before our soul was forced out into an earthly, physical body that’s always distracting us and diverting our desires
• Also a hierarchy of forms

Question 6

What’s at the top of the hierarchy of the forms? Describe it.

Answer 6

• Form of Good
• Illuminates all of the forms and allows us to recognise them
• Symbolised by the sun in the allegory of the cave
• Responsible for all the other forms and the existence of life
• Plato’s equivalent to a God

Question 7

What is the Allegory of the Cave?

Answer 7

• Some prisoners are shackled to face a cave wall their entire life
• Behind them, people walk behind a wall carrying idols and statues which (with the firelight of the cave) create shadows in front of the prisoners
• The prisoners think these shadows are reality, thinking that whenever they hear talking from the people behind them it’s the shadows
• One day, one prisoner is dragged out of the cave and shown the real world. He sees a series of things, before finally seeing the sun and realising it’s the reason for all life/existence/seasons
• The prisoner remembers his friends and goes back to tell them what he has seen
• None of them believe him
• The freed prisoner is a philosopher, the shackled ones are normal people who can’t see reality as it is

Question 8

What formed the basis of Plato’s theory of the forms?

Answer 8

• The fact the world is changing all the time which means we can’t gain true knowledge from the world
• Heraclitus saying ‘It’s not possible to step in the same river twice’