Midterm Flashcards
1
Q
The Sophists
A
- late 5th century
- Greece (traveling teachers)
- They were traveling teachers who went from city to city to lecture for a fee.
- They taught literary criticism and provided training in rhetoric and the techniques and devices of winning over opinion in courts of law and public assemblies.
- didn’t really have a doctrine, more of a social movement
- they taught and focuse mre on persuasion rather than the truth – sought to make weak arguments stronger– which sort of created this form of higher education.
- they taught logic and debate, not truth
2
Q
Principle
A
- (ARCHE- origin)
- a term that was first discussed among pre-socratic philosophers
- it is the source/origin of something
- because it is the origin of something, it has power/rule over the something
- for example, for thales, the principle of all things is water
3
Q
monism
A
- believing that everything derives from one source
- only one thing exists (the universe) which can be artificially and arbitrarily divided into many things
- philosophers like Parmenides believed this
4
Q
pluralism
A
- everything is derived from many things
- there are different elemtns that are the eternal, unchanging roots of things
- philosophers like Epedocles thought this
5
Q
noumena
A
- for philosophers like Parmenides, noumena is a posited object that exists without sense or preception.
- noumena and the noumenal world lay in the mind and are the objects of the highest knowledge
- for parmenides, noumena is the truest form of reality
6
Q
phenomena
A
- any object of fact that can be percieved or observed through the senses– appearances
- for philosophers like Herclitus, this is the truest form of reality
7
Q
Anaxagoras
A
- pluralist and materialist
- early 5th century
- everything sprung from many seeds
- taught in Athens, then was exiled and set up school in Meletus
- portions of opposites are not physically separable things, but are discriminable elements in things.
- there is a portion of everything in everything.
- a natural substance consists soles of parts which are the whole.
- nothing comes into being of perishes
- the Mind arranged everything that were to be; things that were and are not now and things that are now and shall be
8
Q
Heraclitus
A
- mid-6th century
- Ephesus
- all things change and nothing remains at rest
- LOGOS is the only stable thing
- LOGOS is the principle of knowledge; understanding of the world involveds understanding the structure or patterns of the world, a pattern concealed from the eye of ordinary men.
- to be a living thing is to be in the process of change
- existing things are held in tension by opposites
9
Q
Anaximenes
A
- late 6th century
- Miletus
- there is an underlying body from which other things are generated by thickening and thinning
- the primordial unity is a matter out which everything else is amde
- this matter is AIR
- everything in the world has come from and is caused by air
10
Q
Anaximander
A
- late 6th century
- Miletus
- Everything come from a matter that has no defining quality
- everything (natural forces) is caused by the wat between opposites
- one opposite enroaches on the domain of another
- the cycle of recurring injustice is held in balance by the assessment of Time
- the world mantains equilibrium through the alternation of extremes
11
Q
Democritus
A
- mid 5th century
- Adbera, Greece
- ATOMIST
- elements are the full and the void (being is full and not being is void)
- the universe consists of atoms, physically indivisible material particles that differ in size and shape and move about at random in empty space
- the characteristics of these atoms are geometrical; perceptual things are secondary qaulities, whcih arise in virtue of the interaction of certain kinds of physical objects
- everything happens according to necessity and reason
12
Q
Thales
A
- late 7th century
- Miletus
- everyting has come from one source, and that source is water.
- to be alive is to be capable of spontaneous movement
