Chapter 3 Flashcards
After Aristotle died the Romans invaded Greece. How did the Roman approach to philosophy differ from that of the Greeks in terms of the major questions asked?
It was more pragmatic.
Greeks: Abstract questions about the nature of reality and epistemology
Romans: How is it best to live?
Who conquered the Greeks?
Who conquered their conquerors? What happened to them after they got taken out?
Greeks got taken over by the Romans. Who got their asses kicked by the visigoths and the western part of the empire fell.
The eastern part, byzantium, remained as orthodox Xstianity’s head. Byzantium lasted 4th to 15th century. Fucking long.
Then, the Catholic crusaders came to fuck shit up. They sacked Constantinople and the smart people and greek academics fled. Where? To Italy. And the Italian Renaissance kicked off!
When were the middle ages? What characterized them?
Why did they end?
When were the crusades?
400-1400AD (Begins 395AD, fall of Rome)
- A period where, IN EUROPE, the knowledge of the ancient greeks were lost. Political instability meant that academic endeavors were left to the church and folks just tried to get by.
- Alexander the Great had spread Greek phil and science across the middle east, areas that the muslims would eventually conquer starting in 570 (birth of Mohammed). This meant the Muslim world had medicine, math, and science up the asshole. They were not having a “dark age”
- Multiple crusades from 1000-1300 led to the rediscovery of Aristotle and all of this dope shit. Fall of Constantinople led to immigration of scholars to the West.
When was Mohammed born? What was accomplished within 100 years of his death?
570.
Muslims built an empire larger than the original Roman empire.
Who was Avicenna as in, what was his dayjob? Whose work did he explore? 980-1037
What did he disagree with about what he studied?
Why was he so influential?
What Aristotelean concept did Avicenna expand upon?
Muslim physician, heavily influenced by Aristotle. He kept Aristotle alive and recent.
For Aristotle the highest intellectual expression of man is to understand abstract concepts. For Avicenna it was to have a relationship with god.
He was so influential because he and his Muslim colleagues kept Aristotle around in the 11th century. This was a big deal because the 12th and 13th century European Phil used Aristotle as a foundation!
He expanded on Aristotle’s concept of the senses- five external senses and three internal senses.
What were Avicenna’s contributions to the senses?
page 78 if you decide you’re into this. (flag)
Expanded Aristotle’s ideas to include internal and external senses, and added more senses
5 external: sight, hearing, touch, smell
7 internal senses in an hierarchy proceeding from:
- common sense: synthesizes info from external senses
- retentive imagination: ability to remember the synthesis from common sense
- Compositive animal imagination
- Compositive human imagination
- learn what to approach and avoid in the environment. For animals this is just based on association. (pain/pleasure associations)
- For humans: creative imagination. ex. imagine a unicorn. Imagine threats. - Estimative power: ability to make judgments about objects
- Remember the the info processing that happens lower on the hierarchy
- Rationality: ability to rationally evaluate that information
Who was Averreos? 1126-1198
What were his philosophical contributions?
What contributions to science did he make?
Another Muslim Aristotelean, focusing on the senses, memory, and sleep.
He believed the personality did not survive death, this was dubbed Averoism and was not popular among Christian thinkers.
Discovered the retina, not the lens, is the light-sensitive part of the eye.
- Innoculation: first to notice that those who had smallpox already became immune
Who was Maimonides? 1135-1204
- what famous book did he write?
What was his contribution to the science of psychology, as in, what did he observe?
What was his philosophical contribution?
How did he influence later Christian thought?
Jewish physician.
- Observed a relationship between ethical living and mental health.
- He wrote (Guide for the Perplexed) about the conflict between religion vs. science and philosophy. Worked to reconcile Judaism and Aristotelean philosophy by interpreting the Talmaud rationally and allegorically in parts.
- His arguments were used by later Christians when they sought to reconcile faith and reason.
Who invented the ontological argument for the existence of God? Describe this argument.
St. Anselm 1033–1109
God is the best thing that we can possibly imagine. This means that God must exist. why?
There are 2 ways that things can exist.
- In our minds, like Unicorns.
- Things that we can imagine and are also real in the world. Like a horse.
- Things that can exist in the real are better than those that exist only in our heads. If god only existed in our imaginations then he wouldn’t be the greatest thing we could think of. Because God in reality would be better. Therefore, God must exist in reality.
- Another monk immediately: I am imagining the best island ever where I could ski and surf on the same day.
St Anselm: Well, it only works for necessary beings.
So- if you assume that God exists already then this argument makes sense.
What two 11th century Christian thinkers were among the first to reconcile Christianity and reason? Explain their positions
What did these guys’ influence set the stage for?
St Anselm 1033–1109
- The ontological argument for God.
Lombard 1095-1160
- God could be known by empirically studying his works in the empirical world
- 3 ways to know God: faith, reason, and the study of the empirical world
This idea of reconciling faith and reason set the stage for Scholasticism- a philosophy that married the classics, mostly Aristotle, with Christianity
Give me a timeline of periods starting with the ancient Greeks and ending at the modern period
Classical Era: 600BC to 400AD
- Greek and Roman empires with resources dedicated to pure knowledge and philosophy
Middle Ages: 400 to 1400 (395 fall of Rome)
- Fall of Roman empire, European instability, everyone is too busy trying to stay alive. No large empires with the resources or dedication for pure knowledge.
- The Catholic church is the main repository of knowledge and academics. It isn’t interested in pure knowledge or innovation.
Renaissance: 1400 to 1700
- Rediscovery of classical philosophy, literature, art.
- Fall of Constantinople in 1453 led to a migration of
Greek scholars to Italy which brought the classics back in a big way and helped kick off the renaissance. Also, Christian crusades from 1000-1300 brought Aristotle from the Muslim world to Europe
Modern era: 1700 to present.
- Industrial revolution starts the modern era
What is scholasticism?
What does it represent?
What was the good part of scholasticism in terms of “free thinking”, and what was the bad?
Synthesis of Aristotelean philosophy and christian teachings, and the ramifications for living one’s life well.
- The good is that Aristotle’s work was reintroduced 1,000 years after his death. The bad? His writing became Christian dogma that could not be questioned.
Still, at least it pushed things in a classical Greek direction and that caused growth. It made people exercise rationalism, even if under the limited paradigm of Christianity.
What method of study would characterize the scholastic period? What does the method involve?
Who popularized this method at the time?
The dialectic method
- popularized by Peter Abelard.
- Involves examining arguments for and against a proposition in order to determine its validity.
- In “for and against”, Abelard listed theological questions that were answered in contradictory ways.
What is the nominalism vs realism debate? Explain both positions
Which scholastic thinker contributed to it and what was the contribution?
It’s the debate between whether universals exist, which was hot in the medieval era.
Realism: universals do exist, pure essences and we see the material versions.
Nominalism: verbal labels used to define similar experiences. Just because you name a universal “beauty” does not mean that thing exists beyond the name. (reification: treating an abstract as if its a real object)
Peter Abelard
- contributed a compromise: conceptualism: Universals don’t exists but similarities among experiences do. ex. All things we call beautiful have something in common, the concept of beauty.
These concepts summarize individual experiences (nominalism) but the concept DOES EXIST apart from the experience they’re based in (realism)
Who was Peter Abelard as in, what did he do?
- What method did he make popular?
- What debate was he involved in?
A scholastic and teacher of theology
- Popularized the dialectic method for analyzing Christian teachings, thus proposing logic and reason as a way to know God vs. leap of faith.
- Proposed “conceptualism” as a compromise between nominalism vs. realism.
- Got himself castrated
