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Great Minds > Classical Origins > Flashcards

Classical Origins Flashcards

1
Q

What is philosophy?

A

Philosophy can be defined as the rational pursuit of truths conceived as answers to perennial questions.

Philosophy can be described as a historical discipline subject to change over time.

Philosophy is also what its name implies, the “love of wisdom.”

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2
Q

What area of philosophy concerns the study of being or the ultimate nature and structure of the universe?

A

metaphysics (or ontology)

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3
Q

What area of philosophy concerns the study of the nature of the good life and good itself?

A

ethics

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4
Q

What area of philosophy examines the nature of the beautiful and its embodiment in art and nature?

A

aesthetics

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5
Q

What area of philosophy examines the question of knowledge?

A

epistemology

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6
Q

What area of philosophy examines the workings of the soul or mind, analyzing its functions and mechanisms?

A

philosophy of mind

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7
Q

What area of philosophy offers a rational account of the natural world (both organic and inorganic) with an eye to rational explanation?

A

natural philosophy

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8
Q

Why can philosophy be described as a historical discipline subject to change over time?

A

Different epochs are concerned with different issues. In addition, philosophic questions that prove tractable often cease to remain philosophical. (The philosophy of Galileo and Newton later become the foundation of physics.)

Different epochs frame issues differently.

Philosophy and its practitioners occupy different cultural and social roles in different epochs: ancient, medieval, and modern.

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9
Q

Which epoch represents the birth of Western philosophical speculation in the greater Greek diaspora?

A

the pre-Socratic epoch

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10
Q

What was the first phase of pre-Socratic thought devoted to understanding?

A

The first phase of pre-Socratic thought was devoted to understanding the natural world, or the world of objects.

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11
Q

Which thinkers sought to understand the natural world by reducing its multiplicity to a finite number of entities: earth, air, fire, water.

A

The Ionians

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12
Q

Which thinkers sought to reduce material realities to mathematical objects, highlighting the ways in which mathematics helps us model our experience?

A

The Pythagoreans

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13
Q

Which two pre-Socratic philosophers addressed the problem of change and continuity. (In approaching these questions in an abstract and logical way, they helped give rise to metaphysics as a logical discipline.)

A

Heraclitus and Parmenides

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14
Q

What was the second phase of pre-Socratic thought?

A

The second phase of pre-Socratic thought turned to an analysis of the human world, or the world of subjects.

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15
Q

Who represent the first full-blown engagement with the problems of politics, ethics, and human sociability. (Their analysis was empirical and realistic, the basis for subsequent philosophy.)

A

The Sophists

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16
Q

Which classical Greek philosophers drew on the pre-Socratic traditions (as well as one another’s teachings) to construct the first full-blown philosophical systems?

A

Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle

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17
Q

What was the great breakthrough of Socrates?

A

The great breakthrough of Socrates was the development of ethical rationalism.

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18
Q

What is Socrates’ ethical rationalism?

A

Socrates argued that ethical truth was absolute and demonstrable, much like the truths of geometry.

Socrates taught that ethical truths were not only rational but also teachable.

Socrates also taught that all people act on the basis of their beliefs: “To know the good is to do the good.”

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19
Q

What problem did Plato’s metaphysics address?

A

Plato’s metaphysics addressed the problem of change raised by Heraclitus and the Eleatics.

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20
Q

What did Plato’s doctrine of forms divide natural objects into?

A

His doctrine of forms divided natural objects into their structures or essential natures (forms) and material contents.

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21
Q

What is Plato’s dualist ontology?

A

The view that there is another realm beyond that of sense and appearance.

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22
Q

What are Plato’s ethical and political doctrines informed by?

A

Plato’s ethical and political doctrines are informed by his adoption of the ethical rationalism of Socrates

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23
Q

How does Plato’s psychology draws on his metaphysics?

A

Plato’s psychology draws on his metaphysics, in that it is based on a dualism of soul (form) and body (material content).

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24
Q

What are the three distinct faculties or functions that Plato analyzes the psyche or soul/mind into?

A

the rational, the spirited, and the appetitive

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25
Q

How did Aristotle reject Plato’s metaphysical separation of form and content?

A

Aristotle rejected the metaphysical separation of form and content, arguing that forms exist only in their “participation” in actual things.

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26
Q

How did Aristotle resolve the problem of change?

A

Aristotle resolved the problem of change with his doctrine of entelechy. (This doctrine held that natural objects have natural ends or “potentials” toward which they tend.)

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27
Q

What is Aristotle’s doctrine of entlechy?

A

This doctrine held that natural objects have natural ends or “potentials” toward which they tend.

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28
Q

For Aristotle, what is the final cause of motion in organic matter?

A

the soul

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29
Q

How many forms of souls does Aristotle identify?

A

He identifies four forms of souls.

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30
Q

For Aristotle, what is the ultimate form of soul?

A

The ultimate form is the Pure Actuality of God, the prime mover who sits atop the chain of being.

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31
Q

On what grounds did Aristotle criticize the conclusions of Plato’s political and ethical philosophy?

A

Aristotle criticized the conclusions of Plato’s political and ethical philosophy on realistic grounds

32
Q

Who inherited the classical doctrines of Plato and Aristotle?

A

The Hellenic and Roman worlds inherited these classical doctrines and incorporated them into their own philosophic perspectives.

33
Q

Which thinkers tried to give meaning and direction to ethical and spiritual life without recourse to traditional mythologies

A

The Stoics and Epicureans

34
Q

Who practiced a philosophical eclecticism, whereby he selectively drew on different elements of different philosophies to construct his own worldview?

A

Cicero

35
Q

What school of thought emerged as a result of the profusion of metaphysical and philosophical doctrines in the late Hellenic era?

A

skepticism

36
Q

Why were the pre-Socratics so named?

A

The pre-Socratics are so named because they precede Socrates chronologically and because they laid down a philosophical framework that Socrates (and later, Plato and Aristotle) both developed and countered

37
Q

When did the pre-Socratics flourish?

A

The pre-Socratics flourished from the late sixth to the mid-fifth centuries BCE.

38
Q

Where were did the pre-Socratics call home?

A

They hailed, first, from the Ionian coast (Asia Minor) and, later, from the coasts of Italy and Sicily.

39
Q

Why was it vital that the pre-Socratics lived by the coast?

A

It places the pre-Socratics along major trade routes, thus exposing them to a plethora of foreign ideas and cults.

40
Q

Greek poets, such as Hesiod, attempted to account for the present state of man and nature by tracing the origins and actions of whom?

A

the gods

41
Q

In Theogony, Hesiod presents himself as called by the muses to do what?

A

In Theogony, Hesiod presents himself as called by the muses to explain why things are as they are and by what divine agency they came into being.

42
Q

The Milesian “physicists” (from phusis, the Greek word for nature) rejected this supernatural, religious orientation with its questions of “why” and “who” in favor what kind of approach?

A

The Milesian “physicists” (from phusis, the Greek word for nature) rejected this supernatural, religious orientation with its questions of “why” and “who” in favor of a more naturalistic and scientific approach.

43
Q

The Milesian interest was not in who created the world but __________ the universe was made of, not why but __________ things came into being and passed away in terms of physical processes.

A

what; how

44
Q

Who/what plays no significant role in the pre-Socratics materialistic systems?

A

Although the pre-Socratics were not necessarily anti-religious, God or the gods play no significant role in their materialistic systems.

45
Q

What did the Milesians posit as the origin of all life?

A

These philosophers posited that the origin of all life is “stuff” (matter); even if the gods do exist, they are as much outgrowths of this primal stuff as is man, nature, or the universe itself.

46
Q

What common belief did the pre-Socratics share regarding what the material building blocks of life are composed of and/or expressed through?

A

the four elements

47
Q

What are the four elements?

A

earth, water, air, and fire

48
Q

The Greeks posited a long series of qualitative pairs regarding the four elements. What are they?

A

hot and cold, dry and moist, rare and dense, light and dark,

49
Q

What did the Milesians and the Pythagoreans seek to posit as a first principle?

A

a single, originary substance that could account for the cosmos

50
Q

With whom do all ancient accounts of the history of science and philosophy begin?

A

Thales

51
Q

Who accurately foretold an eclipse in 585 BCE, measured the pyramids, and cornered the market on olive presses by predicting a large olive crop?

A

Thales

52
Q

Although he learned the techniques for these deeds from Egypt, what is unique about Thales’ contribution?

A

Thales is unique in that he borrowed knowledge that, in Egypt, was practical in nature and put it in new terms that were abstract and scientific.

53
Q

Who converted practical knowledge from Egypt (such as using the ratio of 3:4:5 to determine if an angle was 90 degrees) into abstract-scientific-philosophical theorems?

A

Pythagoras

54
Q

What did Thales propose as the first principle?

A

water

55
Q

Why is Thales considered the first philosopher?

A

Thales is the first philosopher, not because he chose water as the origin of all things, but because, in so doing, he asserted both that an origin exists and that that origin could be determined through observation.

56
Q

Who gave this argument: If one of the elements (say, water) and its physical qualities (cold and moist) were to dominate, it would eliminate both the other elements (earth, air, and fire) and their corresponding and opposing qualities (hot and dry).

A

Anaximander

57
Q

What does Anaximander posit as the first principle?

A

the unlimited (or boundless)

58
Q

What does Anaximenes posit as the first principle?

A

air

59
Q

The real contribution of Anaximenes was to offer an explanation, not for __________ the source was, but for __________ all the elements could be generated out of it.

A

what; how

60
Q

Anaximenes calculated that, by an upward process known as __________, air became fire and that, by the opposing process of __________, it transformed downward from wind to cloud to water to earth to stone.

A

rarefaction; condensation

61
Q

Why might hindsight suggests that Anaximenes would have done better to stick with water as his first principle?

A

Water not only shifts between three “elements” (ice, water, steam) but also exists as three substances (solid, liquid, gas).

62
Q

What is Pythagoras’ quasi-religious solution to the problem of origin?

A

all is number

63
Q

What did Pythagoras reason when noting that a direct relationship exists between numerical ratios and the harmonies of music?

A

Pythagoras reasoned that just as numbers undergird music, so are they the very stuff and pattern of the universe.

64
Q

Who believed that the soul was immortal and that, until the soul achieved an inner harmony or attunement to the greater harmonies of the cosmos, it would return to earth in a series of incarnations?

A

Pythagoras

65
Q

How has Pythagoreanism had a profound impact on philosophy, religion, and science?

A

It paved the way for Plato’s theories of the transmigration of the soul, the Middle-Age obsession with numerology, and Galileo’s claim that math is the “language of the universe.”

66
Q

Why did Heraclitus ascribe to the position that the true nature of reality is plural and changing?

A

He believed that all nature is in constant flux

67
Q

Heraclitus’ basic theory is clear and is best expressed in which of his well-known sayings?

A

you can never step in the same river twice

68
Q

For Heraclitus, the only constant in the universe is __________ itself. A perpetual yet creative __________ exists between the elements and their qualitative pairs.

A

change; strife

69
Q

Heraclitus used the twin images of the bow and the lyre to express what?

A

How harmony can arise out of opposing (seemingly destructive) forces

70
Q

What did Parmenides of Elea posit about reality?

A

He held that reality is one and unchanging.

71
Q

In what may be a parody of Hesiod, Parmenides presents himself as called by the goddess of truth to discern between what?

A

knowledge and mere opinion

72
Q

How does Parmenides characterize true knowledge?

A

It rests on nature (phusis) and is apprehended by speculative reason.

73
Q

How does Parmenides characterize mere opinion?

A

It rests on custom (nomos) and is perceived by the senses

74
Q

Who gives this argument: Being is perfect and complete and, therefore, cannot change; non-being does not exist and, therefore, there can be no empty space for being to move around in

A

Parmenides of Elea

75
Q

Who gives this argument: being is eternal. If, at a certain point, being came into existence, then it could only have sprung out of not-being and not-being does not exist.

A

Parmenides of Elea

76
Q

How did Zeno defend monism from ridicule?

A

Zeno defended monism from ridicule by demonstrating (in a series of paradoxes) that a belief in change, when taken to its logical end point, yields results that are more ridiculous

77
Q

What does Zeno expose in his most well-known paradox?

A

Zeno exposes the selfcontradictory nature of movement by “proving” that Achilles, though twice as swift, could never catch an opponent that was given even a ten-foot head start. (When Achilles had run ten feet, his opponent would have moved forward by five; when Achilles runs the five, the opponent is still ahead by two-and-a-half; and so forth, reductio ad absurdum.)

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