Quiz 3

Question 1

‘Poetics’ by Aristotle

Answer 1

Tragedies: cause catharsis (purging of audience), and elicit pity (eleos) and fear (phobos)

Tragic Heroes: better than average BUT has a flaw (hamartia) that leads to a reversal of fortune (peripeteia) → best of tragedies have peripeteia coincide with recognition/insight (anagnorisis)

Question 2

Aristotle responding to Plato

Answer 2

‘Republic’ by Plato: no tragedies in the ideal city bc tragedies stirred up emotions and brought disorder to the soul

‘Poetics’ by Aristotle: tragedies purge emotions through catharsis; the rehabilitation of tragedy teaches the audience important lessons about life

Question 3

“Hubris”: English vs. Greek

Answer 3

English: pride; arrogance; behavior that offends the gods → based on old-fashioned, outdated interpretations of Greek tragedy

Greek: intentionally dishonoring behavior; infliction of violence by a superior to shame the victim; insolence of an ‘inferior’ (woman, slave, child) who acts independently or disobeys

Question 4

Pre-Socratic Philosophers (8 schools)

Answer 4

Traditional View: world composed of 4 elements (fire, air, water, earth)

Ionian Philosophers: one element is the origin of all things

Pluralists: more than one element in the beginning of the material world

Atomists: brainchild of Leucippus (pupil of Anaxagoras) and Democritus (pupil of Leucippus); indivisible (atomos) particles; moving through the void

Pythagoreanism: religious sect that believes in reincarnation (metempsychosis); thought that the first element was a number, supporting theory of harmony and ratio

Ephesian: proposed by Heraclitus (believed that fire was first element; possibly a metaphor for changeability); panta rhei (everything is in motion)

Eleatic: proposed by Parmenides of Elea; belief that “being is one”; no end or beginning; “change is an illusion”

Sophism: no common doctrines; shifted from study of the physical world to study of man

Question 5

Ionian Philosophers

Answer 5

Thales: predicted an eclipse in 585 BC; water

Anaximander: pupil of Thales; the limitless, undefined (to apeiron); chose none of the four elements

Anaximenes: pupil of Anaximander; chose air bc of condensation and rarefraction

Question 6

Eleatic

Answer 6

Xenophanes: criticizes Homer and Hesiod for representing the gods like humans

Zeno: proposed 4 problems about motion (1. Absolute motion is impossible; 2. Relative motion is impossible; 3. Absolute motions is impossible, part 2; 4. Relative finite movement impossible.)

Question 7

Pluralists

Answer 7

Empedocles: four elements, love, and strife

Anaxagoras (teacher of Pericles): infinite number of elements; mind casese whirling motion; particles form separate objects

Question 8

Sophists

Answer 8

GORGIAS –
Skepticism: nothing exists; if anything exists, it is incomprehensible; if it is comprehensible, it is incommunicable
Rhetoric: encomium of Helen (defense of the indefensible); funeral oration (power of antitheses)

PROTAGORAS –
“Man is the measure of all things”; critical scrutiny of traditional morality

Question 9

Charges against Socrates

Answer 9

1. Corruption of the young: teaching sophism
2. Not believing in the gods: explained the world in non-traditional ways
3. Introducing New Gods: Aristophanes and Clouds; Vortex; Tongue
4. Investigating things in the sky and below the earth

Question 10

Socrates’ Trial

Answer 10

‘Apology of Socrates’ by Plato: cited that ‘Clouds’ (performed in 423 BC) by Aristophaes gave a large part in the condemnation of death to Socrates in 399 BC