PHILO MIDTERMS

• Myths aim to explain the incomprehensible world.
• Myths teach meaning as it explains, empowers, stabilizes, and elevates the life of a believer from a mundane existence to one imbued with external meaning.
• According to Joseph Campbell, myths explain a phenomenon, tradition, place name, or geological formation. It can elevate to a past event to epic or supernatural significance, and most importantly, provide a role model for one's journey through life.
• Homer is the author of the Iliad and Odyssey, two epic poems which are the central works of ancient Greek literature.

  Iliad and Odyssey heavily influenced ancient Greek society and also laid the groundwork for the birth of philosophy.
• Homer hinted in his writing that "there is some order in nature, some power called "fate" to which even the gods and basically everything and everyone in the world is influenced." 
• Hesiod modified this relationship between the gods and fate.

  In Hesiod's Work and Days, he wrote about the agricultural arts and morality. Agreeing with Homer, Hesiod said that there is a moral order in the universe, produced by Zeus' commands.
• The Milesian school of thought flourished in the ancient port city of Miletus on the western coast of Asia Minor.
• The first among the Milesians is Thales.

  Thales' inquiry concerned mainly the nature of all things, arche, or the originating principle.
• Thales is considered the first philosopher in the Western world. Since the world floats and rests on water, and moisture is present and needed by almost every matter and organism, he concluded that everything came from water.
• Anaximander was Thales' pupil who agreed with his teacher that there is some basic stuff where everything came from.

  He argued that water and all other definite things would come from a primary substance that is an indefinite or boundless realm, which he calls the Apeiron.

  Aristotle explains the idea of Anaximander's philosophy about Apeiron, "Everything has an origin or is an origin. The Apeiron has no origin. For then it would have a limit. Moreover, it is both unborn and immortal, being a kind of origin."
• The inquiry about which stuff makes up everything continued as the thinker Pythagoras was influenced by the ideas of the Milesians, particularly Anaximander and Anaximenes. He argued that all things consist of numbers since there is form, pattern, and harmony everywhere.
• In the eastern region of Macedonia in Greece flourished the Atomist school of thought. The Atomist school and its central ideas were founded by Leucippus and further elaborated by his disciple Democritus. Democritus argued that the world is made of spaces and indivisible things called atoms.
• Anaximenes was the last of the Milesian thinkers who believed that a wide variety of finite things cannot simply come from some stuff as limited as water. For him, the stuff has to be definite, but at the same time unlimited and boundless. He concluded that at one point, everything was air.
• The conflicting ideas about the origin of the cosmos eventually led to the emergence of a new breed of intellectuals in Athens, the Sophists.

  These thinkers argued that there is no such thing as absolute truth. They believed that everything is relative to the person or to the culture that perceives it, a tradition called relativism.
• Sophists' Relativism had three main proponents

  • Protagoras - "Knowledge is limited to one's perception" He argued that there is no standard for testing whether one person's perception is right or wrong.
  • Gorgias - "There is no truth at all" He asserted that nothing exists, that if anything exists, it is incomprehensible. But, whatever is comprehensible cannot be communicated.
  • Thrasymachus - "Might is right" He explained that the ruling party always makes laws for their own interest, which defines what is right in a state.
• The Sophists trained people to become skilled speakers to aid them during debates at public assemblies. They trained and produced great lawyers and public speakers.

  Given their assertion that truth depends on the person or people who perceive it and their excellent skill in persuasive speech, any relative truth can prove more believable.
• Socrates was one of the Sophists' greatest critics.

  He argued that the most reliable way to attain such knowledge is through the practice of disciplined conversation, a method he called dialectic. This conversation, he said, acts as an intellectual midwife. Socrates states that people are then forced to abandon their misdirected opinions. This technique in dialectic is called elenchus.
• Socrates is not content with someone merely pointing at something or giving an example to determine what a term is or means. He argued that it is by rigorously defining a term that the mind can distinguish two objects of thought, namely, the particular (an impious act) and the general or universal (the concept of the impiety of which this act partakes so as to make an impious act) innate to the particular.
• Plato was born in Athens


  When Socrates was about 42 years old
• Academy


  Founded by Plato in Athens
• The Republic


  Plato's work describing the Allegory of the Cave and the Metaphor of the Divided Line
• Truth


  Is far beyond what we are accustomed to seeing, and can only be found outside the cave
• Dying


  Is how we can reach the truth in heaven, which lies outside the cave
• World of Forms


  For Plato, truth lies in this world represented by the world outside the cave. The world inside the cave is a world of illusions which is the life we live today.
• Forms outside the cave


  Can only be completely seen with our souls because we cannot possibly escape this life with our bodies
• Plato influenced many religious thinkers later on, including Christians
• Plato's Stage of Development of Thoughts

  • Imagining
  • Belief
  • Thinking
  • Perfect Antelligence
• For Aristotle, each thing has a matter or what it is made of and a form, its essence, or what it is made into. Aristotle concluded that matter and form are always united in each thing, and their unity is what makes things change or transform into different things.
• Aristotle founded his own school called Lyceum. For him, things never simply exist. He agreed with Plato that certain universals or essences are common among specific things, such as humanness, triangularity, and tableness. He stated that it was simply absurd to separate these Forms from things themselves. He argued that these are not separate from things; rather, they have always been in them.
• Four Causes - According to Aristotle, there are Four Causes for a thing to undergo the process of.

  • The formal cause - "What is it"
  • The material cause - "What is it made of?"
  • The efficient cause - "By what is it made?"
  • The final cause - "For what end is it made?"
• Aristotle explained that things caused by nature do not change because there is a reason for them; rather, they have "ends," i.e., natural or "built-in" ways of behaving to undergo change. Aristotle called this inherent purpose or end of a certain thing or creature as telos. Aristotle distinguishes potentiality and actuality. For him, everything has the potential to become actual.
• THE SOUL

  According to Socrates, the chief function of the soul is to know. The soul, then, is in a good state only if it does its function properly. This is why he said that to know the good is to do the good and that knowledge is a virtue. Good life or virtuous life, therefore, is only possible if we do so.
• "The Soul is Simply Trapped in a Human Body"

  Plato expounded on Socrates' idea of knowledge as a virtue by emphasizing the concepts of the soul and virtue as a function He argued that before the soul became part of the body, it had a previous existence where it directly interacted with the Forms Plato described that the soul us composed of a rational part and an irrational part.
• For Plato, the soul has three hierarchical parts:

  1. The first is the rational faculty of the soul;
  2. The second is the spirited section, which responds to the direction set by reason and drives the body toward action;
  3. Lastly, the appetitive section, which responds to bodily desires.
• Body and soul


  In harmony if in their ideal set-up
• Ideal set-up


  • Rational faculty governs the spirit and the appetite
  • Can be broken due to the varied pleasures of each part
• Rational part


  Desires the Forms, where all truth is found
• Irrational part


  Tends toward bodily and material desires
• Ignoring and forgetting reason


  Causes our evil actions
• Soul's journey


  1. Recollect what it has forgotten

  2. Rational part regains its rule