Philosophy Midterm Study Guide PDF

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Study guide for midterm of PHIL 1000 taught by Carolyn Colsant...

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Terms eros and logos logos as a pharmakon good or bad logos depending on intent (bullshit) why Socrates questioned everything people say he feigned ignorance (Socratic irony) and led ironic existence to educate allegory of cave, education redirects sight to good What is love? review Symposium Immortality of soul, separation of soul and body seeking truth, good, and discovering how to live staircase and divided line Must know names of characters in dialogues Phaedrus ● Phaedrus hears Lysias’ (mutual friend of Socrates and Phaedrus) speech about love, and is blown away ○ A boy should give his favors to an old man who is not in love rather than one who is ○ Lovers are mad and have unhealthy tendencies like mood swings, which won’t benefit the boy ○ Non-lovers would offer the boy a stable friendship ● Socrates believes the speech excels in style, but not substance. He claims he can make a better speech on the same subject. He makes his first speech with a cloak over his head, wanting to dissociate his words with himself. He makes this speech to show how a shitty argument is easy to make. 1. “Negative influences of lovers” a. Love is a form of madness in which inborn desire for beauty overwhelms one’s morality and control b. Love destroys both soul and body of boy, and brings no benefits c. Love twists people’s intentions to make them benefit themselves somehow instead of their lover. 2. “Great Speech” (overarching importance of eros in life) a. If a soul in love is able to control itself, it will be granted an early return to heaven (as philosophers can see the truth) b. The soul is like a chariot with two horses. The greatest good for the soul is to grow wings and fly through the heavens with the gods. If the soul is strong and controls its horses, it catches sight of such true Ideas as Beauty and Self-Knowledge beyond the heavens. The souls of men, however, all have a bad horse and will eventually fall back down to earth.

c. When the soul catches glimpse of a beautiful boy on earth, it is reminded of the vision of Beauty that it saw beyond the heavens. The resulting yearning is eros. The soul that can control such yearning will be granted the philosopher's boon (an early return to heaven) d. He indicates that love pushes us to seek beauty, and in turn, truth 3. Rhetoric and writing (as a technology) a. Socrates favors speaking over writing: writing cannot ask questions, cannot answer questions, and cannot defend itself when the need arises. When speaking, you can direct and tailor your message to your audience. b. Socrates believes purpose of rhetoric is to direct the soul, while Phaedrus believes it is to persuade c. Views rhetoric as a pursuit of truth d. Legend of Egyptian god Thoth, who invented writing. Writing is an “elixir” or “potion.” Thoth offers King Thamus writing as a “remedy” (“pharmakon”) that can help memory. Thamus refuses the gift because it will only create forgetfulness: for him, it is not a remedy for memory itself, but merely a way of reminding. Writing is thus a “poison” (“pharmakon”). Socrates defends rhetoric as a pursuit of truth, while also acknowledging the strategies it employs to persuade an audience. Good rhetoric is used propagate truth through persuasion while bad rhetoric is used to manipulate. There are good and bad pharmakons as well. Republic & The Cave ● Your philosophical journey may sometimes lead your thinking in directions that society does not support ● The allegory does not fundamentally say that we should put knowledge into people—it says we should turn their eyes

Divided Line Analogy Epistemic States of Mind

Intelligible realm (seen by the mind)

Visible realm (seen by the eye)

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Objects

Intelligence/knowledge

Fundamental principles

Hypotheses/thinking

Mathematical principles/abstract ideas

Belief

Visible things

Imaginings/opinions

Images

Acquiring knowledge means turning away from the world of the senses

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The intelligible realm allows for sense of personal agency to form opinions The Divided Line informs us of the different types of epistemic state we can have, and what they relate to Meanwhile, the allegory of the cave gives us a story about moving up from the most basic forms of human observation

Plato emphasises that moving from being a prisoner to eventually being able to look directly at the sun (the purest form of the Good) itself will be a difficult and painful process. This fact also explains why philosophers, having achieved knowledge of the Forms, will not want to be rulers; and why people (the prisoners) would not welcome philosophers or recognize that what they say is true. Philosophers, having finally got used to sunlight, will not want to go back into the cave, and will (at least at first) find it very difficult to see properly in the darkness. Meanwhile, people who can only see the images cast on the wall by the fire will believe that those images are reality, and dismiss claims about a “world outside the cave” as madness. Since the philosopher has difficult seeing, they will also argue that “the visit to the upper world had ruined his sight, and that the ascent was not even worth attempting.” Symposium Phaedrus

Love is one of the oldest of the gods, capable of giving the best gifts, which are lovers. All love is good because it makes us virtuous (he envisions an “army of lovers”)

Pausanias

Common love is mindless desire while heavenly love is pure love relating to strength and intelligence Aphrodite brought two offspring of Eros. “No action in and of itself is good or bad.” Rather, it is the manner of doing that determines the quality of love, such as doing or loving nobly.

Eryximachus

Love is a balance (dynamic approach to previous theories). It is not good or bad but a complete balance of the two. Love is a first principle underlying everything. It can be find in harmony in music, seasons, and other things.

Aristophanes

Cosmological tale: Humans used to have four legs, four arms, and were spherical, but Zeus felt threatened by their strength and used his power to split them in half. Love is

completion, as we are looking for someone just like us. Or, love is the desire to heal an original wound Socrates

Story from wise woman named Diotima. Love is not a god, but a spirit mediating people and objects. It is not wise nor beautiful—it is the desire for wisdom and beauty. The greatest knowledge of all is knowledge of the form of beauty.

Staircase Metaphor Love is a driving force behind all humanity The desire for beautiful and good things is universal Immortality can be achieved by producing offspring or ideas Love is the desire to move further up the staircase in pursuit of truth Each step is founded from the step before it A beautiful body is the first thing we notice Staircase ● beauty itself  (truth) ● the beauty of knowledge  (the lover turns his attention to all kinds of knowledge, but particularly, in the end to philosophical understanding) ● beautiful laws and institutions ( created by good people, or beautiful souls, and are the institutions that foster beauty) ● beautiful souls  (we come to realize that spiritual and moral beauty is more important than physical beauty) ● all bodies are beautiful ( all beautiful bodies share something in common, something the lover eventually comes to recognize; when he does recognize this, he moves beyond a passion for any particular body) ● a beautiful body

Apology ACCUSATION: Socrates is charged with impiety, not believing in the city’s gods, and corrupting the city’s youth. DEFENSE: “I am living in accord with the divine mission and leading people towards truth. I am doing everyone a favor.” - Socrates ● He is living in life according to a statement made by the Oracle of Delphi, saying that he is the wisest man in the world

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Socrates concluded that he must be wiser than other men only in that he knows that he knows nothing. m Thus, he considered it his duty to question supposed "wise" men and to expose their false wisdom as ignorance These activities earned him much admiration amongst the youth of Athens, but much hatred and anger from the people he embarrassed (which is why he was put on trial).

Phaedo Recounts Socrates’ last day. ● ● ● ●

Even when Socrates’ is convicted, he does not stop philosophizing He holds that philosophers prepare for death, so in a sense, they are immortal To philosophize is to learn how to die HIs life’s work was to prepare himself for death

Plato’s primary purpose is to answer the question: “How ought we to live?” ● It is worse to commit an injustice than to suffer one ● To commit one is like messing with the soul As guards take shackles off Socrates, he remarks that you cannot have pleasure and pain at the same time. Experiencing one inevitably leads to the other. ● Without experiencing pleasure you will never know pain, and vice versa. ● The absence of pleasure results in the minimization of pain. ● “The chariot of the mind is driven by wild horses, and those horses must be tamed.” Death is a separation of the soul from the body. ● Soul is made to engage in ideas ● Body is linked to physical pleasures such as sex, washing body, etc. and he abstains intentionally...