plato

Question 1

what is the tripartite soul?

Answer 1

plato believed a person’s soul could be dominated by any of: appetite (food,drink and sex), spirit (honour), reason

Question 2

what main athenian ideas does plato attack in the republic?

Answer 2

plato attacks the idea of athenian democracy, the family in the broad sense of the oikos (household unit)

Question 3

what would plato’s main solution to an athenian oikos look like?

Answer 3

separating society into producers, guardians and philosophers

Question 4

what are plato’s views on a woman in the republic

Answer 4

“if women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things”

Question 5

what does plato say about women in the Timaios

Answer 5

“all those creatures generated as men who proved themselves cowardly and spent their lives in wrong doing were transformed in their second incarnation into women

Question 6

why is the household unit seen as unjust in plato’s eyes?

Answer 6

household unit -> private family loyalties -> families in competition with other families -> conflict in society both in and outside of the city -> socioeconomic inequality -> unjust

Question 7

what is agathon’s role?

Answer 7

tragic poet and Pausanius’ eromenos

Question 8

what is aristophanes’ role?

Answer 8

comic poet

Question 9

what is eryximachus’ role?

Answer 9

doctor

Question 10

what is Pausanius’ role?

Answer 10

erastes of Agathon and a legal expert

Question 11

what is Phaedrus’ role?

Answer 11

eromenos

Question 12

what is Alcibiades’ role?

Answer 12

Military general

Question 13

what is Aristophanes idea about love?

Answer 13

originally two people merged into one and then gods split them in half -> always looking for other half

Question 14

what are Agathon’s two main ideas about love?

Answer 14

object of love is beauty
love creates jutice, moderation, courage and wisdom

Question 15

what are Phaedrus’ idea about love?

Answer 15

if you love a virtuous man it encourages you to behave as you will fear to dissapoint the man

Question 16

what is Pausanius’ main ideas about love?

Answer 16

splits love into two types, Pandemian (common) and Uranian (celestial). Uranian is preferred as it leads to mental enrichment. love blossoms into friendship and shared virtue and knowledge» bodily desires

Question 17

what is Eryximachus’ main ideas about love?

Answer 17

love affects everything in universe & should be protected but there are 2 types of love (healthy and unhealthy). Capavle of curing disease and refers to theory of humours

Question 18

what is Diotima’s ladder of love from bottom to top?

Answer 18

lust -> physical beauty -> beauty of people’s activities -> beauty of intellectual -> endeavour of insitution and morality -> true form of beauty

Question 19

who follows Diotima ladder?

Answer 19

Socrates when he sleeps next to Alcibiades but does not advance on him. S. chases beauty but also refrains from sexual desires

Question 20

how does Plato use language similar to male arousal to describe the soul’s reaction to desire in Phaedrus?

Answer 20

‘shudders at first’ ‘ sweat and unwonted heat’ ‘effluence moistens the germ of the feathers’ ‘swell and begin to grow’ ‘soul throbs and palpitates’

Question 21

how does Plato convey love does not need overbearing physical desire?

Answer 21

‘holding in subjection that which causes evil in the soul’

Question 22

how does Plato suggest society should run families in the republic?

Answer 22

all these women are to belong in common to all the men, that none are to live privately with any man

Question 23

in Phaedrus how does Plato make it aware that total abstinence is not possible for society

Answer 23

‘but shall live a happy life in the light as they journey together’

Question 24

how does Aristophanes view homoerotic relationships in the story of spheres

Answer 24

gives a speech on how homoerotic relationships are unnatural and immoral. relationships should be long lasting but pederastic relationships are not everlasting