PHILOSOPHY EXAM Flashcards
What does the word philosophy mean?
1) Loosely translated from the ancient interpretation means “love of wisdom”
2) At it’s core, is a passionate commitment to pursuing and embracing the most fundamental truths and insightful perspectives about life.
Where did Western philosophy originate from?
Ancient Greece
Who were the three great Philosophers of Ancient Greece?
Socrates, Plato, Aristotle
What are the main divisions of philosophy?
Epistemology, Value Theory, Metaphysics
What is Epistemology?
The study of knowledge and how we know what we know
What is Value Theory?
Both Ethics and Aesthetics.
- Ethics is the study of how people should act and what is good and valuable
- Aesthetics is the study of basic philosophical questions about art and beauty
What is the definition of knowledge?
Justified (evidence), True (not inferenced), Belief (you believe it)
What is Sophistry?
The use of fallacious arguments, especially with the intent of deceiving
What is a Gettier problem
When something is justified true and you believe it yet is still not knowledge.
Who said “Being proceeds essence”?
Jean Paul Sartre
What is existentialism?
A movement that believes that life has no meaning besides the one we give it.
Who was the first moral philosopher?
Socrates
Socrates devised the _______ method.
Socratic Method
Who taught Plato?
Socrates
What were Plato’s Basic Premises?
1) Think instead of going with the crowd
2) Let your lover change you
3) Decode the message of beauty
4) Reform Society
5) We only have our senses or reason to tell us the truth
Was Plato a good wrestler?
Yes
What were Socrates’ 6 basic principles?
1) The care of the soul
2) Knowledge is necessary to become virtuous. and being virtuous is needed to achieve happiness
3) Good things (wealth, statue, pleasure and social acceptance) do not always make you happy
4) Evil deeds are done out of ignorance and are therefore involuntary
5) Committing an injustice is worse than suffering one
6) Democracy doesn’t work, as determined in a conversation with Ademantus
What did the Oracle at Delphi tell Socrates’ friend?
That Socrates was the wisest man in Athens
What kind of philosopher was Aristotle?
Peripatetic (walking around)
What did it mean to be a stoic vs peripatetic?
Stoics sat down and preached whereas peripatetic philosophers walked around
What was the school Aristotle built called?
The Lyceum
Who did Aristotle teach?
Alexander the great
How did Socrates die?
He died to a majority vote (52%) to kill him
What was the Socratic Method?
Socrates would seek out a response he wanted by asking a series of simple questions to direct answers to yes responses
Plato - his real name or a nickname?
Plato was a nickname
Where did Plato likely travel? How old was he when he returned to Athens?
The Mediterrian and North Africa
He would have likely been 40
Where was Plato’s university built?
The Grove of Academus, outside Athens
How many books did Plato write? What were some (name at least 3)?
1) 36
2) Republic, Symposium, Laws, Meno, and The Apology of Socrates
What was Plato’s Allegory of the Cave?
He said humans were seeing the world as though we were chained in a cave, our eyes unable to look at anything except a back wall in the cave. On the wall are shadows cast from a fire in the cave, everything we know and see is actually a shadow as the thing passes by the fire behind us
What did Aristotle believe made a good life?
Virtue
What were Aristotle’s 11 virtues? What book were they in?
- His Nicomachean Ethics was the book
1) Courage
2) Temperance
3) Liberality
4) Magnanimity
5) Pride
6) Patient
7) Truthful
8) Wittiness
9) Friendly
10) Modest
11) Justice
What is the Acronym for Aristotle’s 11 virtues?
Can
The
Lil
Men
Prove
Parents
That
Win
Football
Make
Jokes
What was one of Aristotle’s best known concept?
The Golden Mean
What were Aristotle’s main points?
1) His virtues
2) The use of Art
3) 3 Friends, 3 Kinds
4) Rhetoric
What was Aristoles ‘Use of Art’?
He thought that watching tragedies was good because it cleansed your emotions. It reminded you life can be unfair and to pity those less fortunate
What were the three kinds of friends according to Aristotle?
1) Just for fun friends
2) Strategic Acquaintances
3) True friends
What did Aristotle invent?
Rhetoric, three ways to use persuasion to win an argument.
What did Epicurus believe?
He believed that people were in charge of their own destiny an therefore should strive to find happiness.
What did Epicurus say about attaining happiness?
There are 3 simple guidelines
1) Make good friends and associate with them often
2) Stop working excessively, especially just to make money
3) Look after your body, exercise and meditate
What does the yin/yang show?
The duality of life and our world
What color is yin?
The dark swirl
What is yin?
The receptive, feminine, trough of a wave
What color is yang?
The light swirl
What is yang?
The active principle, passion and growth
Who was the founder of Taosim?
Lao Tzu
What book did Lao Tzu write?
The Tao Te Ching
What is the Tao?
An imaginary force that controls, influences and drives all things that people must become in tuned with to attain oneness with the surrounding universe
How is Harmony with Nature Achieved (Taoism)?
Using the Wu Wee, or the Way
Who said “Nature does not hurry and yet everything is accomplished”?
Lao Tzu
What is one of the worlds oldest religions?
Buddhism
Who was the first Buddha?
Siddhartha Gautama
Why did Gautama leave his lavish life behind?
To try and find inner peace
What did Gautama realize in his meditation?
The path to inner peace was actually a quest for enlightenment
What was true enlightenment also called (Buddhism)?
Nirvana
How is true enlightenment attained?
By giving up all your personal desires
Gautama came to realize that life was _____ for us all
Suffering
Gautama came to realize there are four _______ _______
Noble Truths
What were the four Noble Truths?
1) Truth of suffering
2) Suffering is caused by desires
3) Cessation of suffering is easy if you live virtuously
4) Move beyond the path of suffering by following the Eight Fold path to virtue
What is the Eight Fold Path to virtue?
1) Right view
2) Right intention
3) Right speech
4) Right action
5) Right livelihood
6) Right effort
7) Right mindfulness
8) Right concentration
What is the acronym for the eight fold path to virute?
Viviane
Invites
Sarah
Again
Like
Everybody
Mothers
Cats
What did Confucius write?
His Analects and some theorize the Five Classics
What were the five classics?
Spring and Autumn Annals
Classic of Poetry
Classic of Changes
Classics of Rites
Classic of history
What did Confucius promote?
Ancestorial worship
Strong filial bonds
considerate living
What did some of Confucius’s writings espouse?
humanistic ideologies
Placing the well being of the all over the needs of the few
What did Rumi’s poetry and philosophies regarding Sufi mysticism led to the establishment of?
The Mewlewi Sufi Order, or known in the western world as the Whirling Dervishes
Who said “we go hunting for deer and find ourselves chased by a hog”?
Rumi
Sun Tzu and the ___ ___ ___
Art of War
What did Sun Tzu’s advice mainly stay planted in?
Terra Firma
What philosophies did Mao synthesize? What was his career when he did this?
1) Marxist and Leninist
2) Librarian
What did Mao initiate in 1949?
The Chinese Revolution
What books did Mao use to sway the public to communist ideals?
On Guerilla Warfare
On New Democracy
What did Mao do that proved a dismal failure?
He tried to instigate the Great Leap Forward
What did Mao do after he failed?
He launched the Cultural Revolution (1000 Flowers Campaign)
What were the three distinct levels of moral reasoning?
Pre-conventional
Conventional
Post-conventional
What did Thomas Aquinas develop?
Natural Theology, or Thomism
What is Theology?
This system believes that the existence of God is verified through reason and rational explanation, as opposed to scripture or religious experience
What were Aquinas’s big ideas?
1) Adhered to the Platonic/Aristotelian principle of realism, which means the absolutes exist in the universe, like that the universe exists
2) Focused much of his work on reconciling Aristotelian and Christian Principles, but also expressed openness to Jewish and Roman Philosophers
3) His works, Summa Theologica
What is Machiavellian philosophy seen as?
A template for tyranny and dictatorship, even in the present day
What were Machiavelli’s Big Ideas?
1) Famously asserted that while it is ideal to be both loved and feared, there’s greater security in being feared
2) Identified as a humanist, and believed it needed to establish a new kind of state in defiance of law, tradition and particularly, the preemience of the church
3) Viewed ambition , competition and war as inevitable parts of human nature, even seeming to embrace all of these tendencies
What were Machiavelli’s Key works?
Discourse on Livy
The Prince
The Art of War
What were Rene Descartes big ideas?
1) Discards belief in all things that are no absolutely certain, emphasizing the understanding of what can be known for sure.
2) Is recognized as the father of analytical geometry
Regarded as one of the leading influences in the Scientific Revolution
John Locke is sometimes referred to as the father of ______
liberalism
Who coined the term ‘tabula rasa’ (blank slate)?
John Locke
Who said “What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger”?
Friedrich Nietzsche
Who said “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you”?
Friedrich Nietzsche
Who said “I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you”?
Friedrich Nietzsche
Who said “Man is the cruelest animal”?
Friedrich Nietzsche
What were Nietzsche’s three beliefs?
- Own up to Envy
- Don’t be a christian
- Never drink alcohol
Nietzsche is considered a forerunner of what movement?
Existentialism
Who stated that “God is dead”?
Friedrich Nietzsche
What is existentialism?
Existentialism is a movement in philosophy and literature that emphasizes individual existence, freedom and choice.
