Some
questions and beliefs of the classic Greek philosophers:
Does
natural modesty exist?
Wisest is one who knows that they
don’t know.
He who knows right will do so.
True insight comes from within.
Sophists
– skeptics; they accept that man can’t know the truth about the universe.
Protagoras(410 BC) – “Man is the measure”,
said that right or wrong must be considered in relation to a person’s needs.
Wondered about what was natural and what was socially induced.
Socrates(470-399BC) – Plato wrote about him so
it’s difficult to distinguish between his philosophy and Plato’s. Socratic method – ask questions until they
see the weaknesses in their own justifications and views, which leads to true
insight. He was killed because he introduced new gods and corrupted youth,
according to the Greeks. There’s an allusion in the book for a parallel between
JC and Socrates. He knew he didn’t know everything and had an unshakable faith
in human reason(rationalist). Felt that because people want happiness and can’t
handle guilt, if they know what’s right, they’d do right.
Plato(428-347BC) – Concerned with what is
eternal and immutable versus what flows. Felt that all substances could change.
The “form” of a horse is immutable. (In essence, he noticed that atoms don’t
form randomly into a eladile or a crocophant.) The “form” idea is that a perfect
copy or “idea” of all objects resides in god so to speak & that we are born
with these “ideas” already in our head so we can identify objects into
categories. He felt that you can only have true knowledge through reason since
physical things are always in a state of change, unlike the “ideas” they are
based upon. So, reality has two regions – the sensory and the ideas. We DO have
an immortal soul because we have the realm of reason to explore ideas. The
sensory world is dark and dreary compared to the clarity of ideas. His
political ideas are based on rationalism.
Questions
posed: Are all horses the same?
Is there an
immortal soul?
Are men and
women the same?
Aristotle(384 – 322BC) – Europe’s first great
biologist; interested in the changes in nature. He didn’t believe in ideas. He
thought that humans saw a whole bunch of things and then categorized
them(taxonomy). Man has the innate ability to classify. Man has reason, but no
innate ideas. There are four causes in nature: material, efficient, formal and
final cause. All matter has the potential to achieve form (like a chicken)
through the causes. Split things into living and non-living entities. Man can
only live a good life by using all of his abilities. Man is political – should
have monarcy, aristrocrasy and polity. Thought that women were incomplete men.
Women are substance while the man is form.
Assumed
that god started all movement.
