Philosophy Flashcards
We have no writings from this man’s own hand, and know about him largely from the dialogues of his student Plato.
Socrates
Proclaiming his own ignorance of all things, this man went around Athens engaging in question-and-answer sessions to search for truths or draw out contradictions.
Socrates
The Athenian state disapproved of his conduct; he was put on trial for corrupting the city’s youth, and sentenced to death by drinking hemlock.
Socrates
This man’s trial, imprisonment, and death are recounted in Plato’s Apology, Crito, and Phaedo, respectively.
Socrates
This man’s Socratic dialogues are our main source both for Socrates’s philosophy and his own.
Plato
This man often put his own thoughts in Socrates’ mouth.
Plato
This man’s dialogues include the Republic (about justice and the ideal city-state), the Symposium (about the nature of love), and the Meno (about whether virtue can be taught).
Plato
This man believed in a world of “forms”—or ideal versions of real things that lie beyond the human senses—which he discussed in such works as the Phaedo.
Plato
This man founded a school called the Academy, from which we get the common word.
Plato
This man was a student of Plato
Aristotle
This man was a tutor to Alexander the Great.
Aristotle
Many of this man’s works come from the lectures called Lyceum that he gave.
Aristotle
This man’s philosophical output includes the Nicomachean Ethics, which argues that virtues consist in a “golden mean” between two extremes; the Physics, which describes motion and change in terms of “four causes” that make a given thing what it is; and the Metaphysics, which describes the structure of reality.
Aristotle
This man’s Poetics discusses the types of drama and considers an effect of tragedies known as catharsis, or the purging of bad feelings.
Aristotle
This man was a pivotal thinker from China’s Spring and Autumn period,
Confucius (Kong Fu Zi)
This man’s views on proper conduct and filial piety influence China to this day.
Confucius (Kong Fu Zi)
Many sayings attributed to this man were compiled by his disciples following his death in a text known as the Analects.
Confucius (Kong Fu Zi)
This man put much importance on ren, the inner state which allows one to behave compassionately toward others, and on a concept called li, which can help individuals attain ren.
Confucius (Kong Fu Zi)
This man is a quasi-mythical thinker of the Taoist tradition, to whom the pivotal Tao te Ching is attributed.
Lao Tzu
Concepts associated with him include that of the Tao, or “the way,” and wu wei, or a life of non-action in accordance with the Tao.
Lao Tzu
In later centuries, this man was accorded godlike status as one of the Three Pure Ones of Taoism, and is frequently depicted as an old man with a donkey.
Lao Tzu
To this man is attributed the quote “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
Lao Tzu
This man was of Sinope was a student of Antisthenes, who founded the ancient school of philosophy known as Cynicism.
Diogenes
The Cynics rejected conventional social norms in search of a truly virtuous life. This man himself was something of an eccentric—according to legend, he lived in a tub or a barrel on the street, and wandered Athens holding a lamp in his futile search for an honest man.
Diogenes
This man’s namesake school, Epicureanism, believed that pleasure was the highest (or only) good, and that the absence of pain (aponia) was the highest pleasure. They also believed that human happiness consisted of a kind of tranquillity known as ataraxia.
Epicurus
Critics of Epicureanism accused his school of promoting hedonism and making selfishness into a good, though Epicureans did not believe themselves to be hedonists.
Epicurus
This person was a student of Parmenides, who founded the Eleatic school in a Greek colony of the Italian peninsula.
Zeno of Elea
He is most famous today for “Zeno’s paradoxes,” the best-known of which involve an arrow in flight and a race between Achilles and a tortoise.
Zeno of Elea
This person’s paradoxes purport to show that physical movement is impossible, since any attempt to travel a distance must be preceded by moving half that distance, which must be preceded by moving half of half that distance, and so on. (This person is not to be confused with Zeno of Citium, who founded the philosophical school of Stoicism two centuries later.)
Zeno of Elea
This man was a pre-Socratic thinker from the Greek colony of Miletus who many consider to be the “first philosopher.”
Thales
Rejecting mythical explanations of the universe’s nature, this man believed that the first principle of all existence, the natural element from which all things emerged, was water.
Thales
This man was also a civil engineer and mathematician, and is credited with discovering that if a circle goes through all three vertices of a triangle and one side of the triangle is a diameter of the circle, then the triangle is a right triangle.
Thales
This man is sometimes thought of as the founder of a “Milesian school” of philosophy, whose other members include Anaximander and Anaximenes.
Thales
Though he is better remembered today for his role in the political life of the Roman Republic, This man (sometimes known as “Tully”) was also a significant philosopher.
Marcus Tullius “Cicero”
This man described the ideal state in such dialogues as On the Republic and On the Laws, while he discussed Epicurean and Stoic views on religion in On the Nature of the Gods.
Marcus Tullius “Cicero”
Through the Middle Ages and Renaissance, this man was considered one of the most important of ancient philosophers. Indeed, Saint Augustine asserted that he turned to philosophy as a result of reading a now-lost work by this man known as the Hortensius.
Marcus Tullius “Cicero”
Is an ancient Greek school that idealized freedom from emotions.
Stoicism
It was founded by Zeno of Citium, who taught at the “painted porch” in Athens. (The name of the movement derives from the Greek word “stoa,” which means “porch.”)
Stoicism
