INTRODUCTION: What we're doing and why
 

I. What is Philosophy?

A. Love of Wisdom.

B. Big questions.

C. Artists do that...yes, but philosophy is rigorous and systematic.

D. Scientists do that...yes, but there are questions which science is not equipped to answer.

 1. Is there a God?
 2. The presuppositions of science...e.g. we can generalize from particulars.
 3. Science is worth doing.

E. Philosophy is the most basic...it underlies all other disciplines.
 

II. Why bother to do it?

A. Most influential, practical discipline

 1. Macro level...You in the U.S. don't understand what freedom is.
 2. Personal level...Is there a God?  What do you really value?

B. Can't opt out...better do it right.
 

III.  We're doing the History of Philosophy...from Thales in the 7th century B.C. through Hegel in the 19th.  Why?

A. See how big ideas fit together.

B. See how philosophical theories come into being.

C. Our culture has been shaped by our past.  Understand the present better if you see where it came from.

D. Also gain objectivity.  If you want to be able to evaluate the common wisdom of your own day, better to be able to step outside and look from there.  That's why if you should ever become a totalitarian dictator, the first thing you should do is destroy history.

E. Old guys may be right.
 

IV. Mechanics

A. Do the reading (Primary and secondary)

B. Lecture and discussion (My plan is to put my notes on web site.)

C. Four sections...four tests...multiple choice...

D. Final grade computed by adding up and dividing by 4

 1. Scale of 100, 90's =A, 80's=B etc.
 2. Top three scores=plus, bottom three=minus
 3. One deviation is with the D-...I make the cutoff 55

V. Etiquette

A. Don't arrive late.  (If you must, be inconspicuous.)

B. Don't leave early. (If you must, tell me beforehand and be inconspicuous.)

C. Don't talk too much.

D. No use of cell phones. No use of laptops EXCEPT for note-taking.

E. Eating

F. Putting things up your nose and in your mouth....

VI. My office is on the second floor of 24 Kent Way.  My office hours are 3-4:30 M and T...I'm around a lot more.
 
 
 

Thales 624-546 B.C.

A. The first philosopher...Pre-Socratic. Before Thales...Where do things come from?  What explains their behavior?  The activities of the gods...Zeus etc. (Note that though the philosophers immediately leave behind the Homeric gods, they do not necessarily deny that there is a God.  There is no inherent contradiction between philosophy and belief in a God.)

-- Philosophy begins with the question of the relationship of the many things we see around us with an underlying unity. --

B. Change. The question: What happens when you eat a carrot? The carrot becomes flesh.  It's not that the carrot blinks out of being and the flesh blinks in.  So the idea of becoming entails that something stays the same throughout the change.  There must be some unified thing underlying the carrot and the flesh.  Now, what can change into what?  Anything can change into anything, so there must be ...

C. Thales' remarkable conclusions:

 1. There must be a unity underlying the multiplicity of things
 2. The way things seem does not adequately reflect the way they really are.
 3. Our senses alone can't tell us the whole story...we'll have to use reason on what we've perceived...
  4. ...and we'll have to analyze everyday concepts like "becoming".
 

THE PRE-SOCRATICS : Flourished in the 6th and 5th centuries B.C.

Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes (Milesians), Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Zeno, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Leucippus, Democritus.

Our Goals here:

1. Set the stage for Socrates and Plato
2. Aquaint you with some names and ideas that all educated people should know
3. See movement and progress of ideas
4. Make views plausible...these guys are sharp...though may sound bizarre at first (atomic theory and theory of evolution.)

I. Thales, the first philosopher, born in 7th c. B.C. in Miletus

A. The Question: What is everything made of?  Based on the basic insight that although experience seems to confront us with a bunch of different things there must be an underlying unity.  Relationship of multiplicity and unity, one and many first question in philosophy and still a viable one today.
 

B. The Answer: Water

1. Seems crazy?  Doesn't accord with senses at all?  Well, neither does the contemporary answer.

2. Why choose water?  It's everywhere, it's changeable.
 

II. Anaximander (Pupil of Thales)

A. The indeterminate boundless (If it underlies all the different things it can't be any one of them.)

B. How do you account for the many? Eternal motion.

1. A "separating off" which produces different things.

2. single explanation, mechanical principle (Law of nature)
 

III. Anaximenes

A. The one thing is Air, like the boundless it is spread everywhere, but nonetheless is a tangible, material substance that can be identified.

B. Why are there all these different things?  Changes in quality are based on changes in quantity as air expands and contracts.
 

IV. Pythagoras, 6th c. Went from island of Samos to Italy.

A. Mathematician

B. Do mathematics as a religious exercise to purify the soul.  Numbers are perfect, immutable, eternal, transcend the world of getting and spending, seeking fame.

C. World is made of numbers...numbers are physical phenomena...as evidenced by the fact that music (sensual, emotional) function of mathematical ratios.

D. Form!!! Limits, structures, harmonies.  Things are what they are, e.g. cat vs. tree, through form, and they are good through harmony...proper proportions.

E. Enormous impact on Socrates and Plato.
 

V. Heraclitus (Early 6th c) Ephesus

A. Question: How to explain change and unity.

B. Constant change, coming into being and passing out of being, ‘You cannot step into the same river twice.'

C. However there is an underlying unity...Fire...its one element whose very nature is to change and take on different forms.

D. Fire is a process of transformation, constant struggle is the nature of things (Nietzche)...but it is orderly, balanced...what you lose here you gain there.

E. Associates Fire with Reason....not dead, inanimate, mechanistic,...God, law...pantheist.

F. Opposites are really one...alive and dead, good and bad, young and old.
 

VI. Parmenides

World view exceedingly strange...everything is One, there is no change or motion...but based on powerful argument which subsequent thinkers will feel compelled to take seriously.  Leads to the atomic theory.

A. The Argument

 1. Thought and being are the same. (What is is what we can think.  What we can think is   what there can be.  If we can't think it it can't be...the round square.)
 2.  We cannot think non-being, nothing.
 3.  Non-being can't be...there is no nothing.
 4.  Conclusion: Therefore there is no change, no motion, and all is One.

B. Why no change?  To change is pass out of being or into being.  If the carrot becomes flesh, the carrot, qua carrot, ceases to exist.

C. Crazy? Radical violation of evidence of our senses? Tough!  Reason has the final word.

D. What there Is.  Just the One.

 1. not generated...everlasting
 2. motionless...to go from here to there there'd have to be empty space to move through.
 3. homogenous...it's all the same throughout, no individual things because there'd have to   be emptiness in between them, not more here and less there since more would   mean less nothingness and less would mean more nothingness and there can't be   any nothingness at all.
 4. limited...to be infinite is to lack something...it's a sphere...what there is is one great,   homogenous, spherical, plenum.

VII. Zeno

Student of Parmenides.  Goal was to defend Parmenides by showing that other ways of looking at world are equally wacky.

A. Senses deceive...the millet seed

B. Space and motion paradoxical. (Target is especially the Pythagoreans who'd said that space consists of an infinite number of points.)

 1. The Racecourse

 2. The train cars
 

VIII. Empedocles

A. Response to Parmenides.  There is change in the objects around us, but not change at the heart of things.

B. Objects are composed of material particles and these particles are eternal and unchanging.

C. Particles are of the four elements, earth, air, fire, and water.

D. It's the mingling of these elements whcih makes the different objects we see.

E. There are forces at work in nature, love and hate, coming together and decomposing (gravity and...big bang?)

F. Empedocles also believed in evolution of species through mutation and survival of the fittest.
 

IX. Anaxagoras

A. In agreement with Empedocles that everything is made of indestructible particles, but it's not the four elements.  Can't have the carrotness of the carrot ceasing to be, or the fleshness blinking in.

B. Everything is HOMOIOMEROUS: Made of parts having the same nature as the whole.  Carrot is made of little carrot bits, flesh is made of little flesh bits.

1. A thing is whatever it's got most of...carrot is mostly carrot bits, but it's also got flesh bits.  When you eat it, the flesh bits get rearranged and added to other flesh bits to make flesh.  That's how substantial change is possible.

2.  Since everything can be changed into everything, everything has little bits of everything in it.

C. And the processes of nature are guided by mind.  Not quasi-mechanical forces.  Need knowledge.

D. Mind is something different from matter, from that which it orders and governs (v. Heraclitus).

E. Smashing and influential insight which he really doesn't develop.  Falls back on mechanical explanations.

X. The Atomists (Leucippus and Democritus)...the latter lived into the 4th c. B.C.

A. Problem is still that Parmenides' arguments have force, but there's obviously change and motion.

B. (Leucippus) The void, empty space...not material, but not just nothing.  It's a sort of receptacle which can be empty in some places anf full in others.

C. Atoms: tiny, invisible particles

 1. infinite in number

 2. They're each like Parmenides' One...eternal (don't go into or out of being), indivisible (no space or parts within...each is a homogenous plenum), indestructible. (Something with parts can "fall apart".)

 3. Differ from one another in size and shape so that they can kind of hook up together in   certain ways.

 4. They're in motion.  When they collide they can interlock to form the objects of the   sense world around us.

 5. Like and unlike 20th century atoms. Our atoms are not indivisible and indestructible.   Ultimate particle?

D.  Deny the idea of any transcendent purpose or design.  Don't need to posit a god/Mind.  All can be explained by appeal to atoms and the void. 

    1.The Principle of Parsimony: Accept the simplest explanation that fits all the facts.  Don't multiply entities beyond necessity.

    2. Theism vs. naturalism.

E. Problems? (In addition to problem of no purpose or design. Depends on how you view things...at least issues to chew on for the next two and a half millenia.)

 1. Solve Parmenides problem by making entire world of experience sort of illusory, ‘mere'   appearance.   In order to say that the carrot didn't blink out and the flesh didn't  blink in have to say that what both are really is configurations of atoms.  Change is   just the rearranging of atoms.

 2. Thought is also atoms bouncing around in the void.  Puzzling...if everybody thinks what  they think as a result of random motions of atoms how can thought be aimed at accessing truth such that one thought process is objectively ‘better' than another?  Why are Einstein's thoughts more valuable than  those of a madman?  (Epistemology.  How do we know things?)

 3. Morality?  Democritus himself promoted a strict moral code, but it's hard to square this with a mechanistic view of things.
 
 

THE SOPHISTS AND SOCRATES: Move from looking mainly at the external world to looking at the human being.

Protagoras, Gorgias, Thrasymachus
 

The Sophists: Widely travelled, different peoples have different beliefs...skepticism and relativism....truth is relative to the individual, or maybe there is no truth.

I. Protagoras

A. We cannot penetrate beyond appearance to reality.  Things appear different to each different observer, so truth is relative to the individual.  What is true for me may not be true for you.

B. Morality: order is good, so obey laws of state and traditional religion.  (What if it doesn't seem good to me?)
 

II. Gorgias

A. Just no truth at all

 1. Nothing exists
 2. If it did we couldn't comprehend it.
 3. If we could comprehend it we couldn't communicate it.  Words are mere symbols, not  things.  If I use a word I can't know you've gotten it.  E.g. ‘red'...except across the board.

B. Self-refuting position

C. Becomes a teacher of rhetoric (sort of like a lawyer)
 

III. Thrasymachus

A. Moral relativism.  No absolute morality

1.)The basic argument: Different societies have different beliefs about morality, therefore there is no absolute (objective) moral truth.

Not such a great argument: 1) Premise is dubious.  Superficial differences, but likely an underlying uniformity.  2) Even if premise is true, conclusion doesn't follow. Non sequitur.

2.) 60's and 70's attitude: Tolerance is good.  Believing in absolute morality will promote intolerance.  Therefore there is no absolute morality.

Not even really an argument, and self-contradictory!

B. Thrasymachus is logical about it. Moral relativism is not a benign philosophy... = stupid to be ‘just' (no real justice)  ‘Right' just=whatever those in power say it does.  Consequences...smart person will be as ruthless as he wants, trample whoever he wants.

C.) "In your heart" can you accept moral relativism? (A practical, Socratic point)
 

Socrates 470-399 B.C. (Socrates or Plato)

A. Seeking a response to the Sophists (One of the great divides among philosophers is between those who think your words should be consistent with your deeds and those who don't. If philosophy is about leading the good and happy life, you'll be in the former camp, with Socrates.)

B. The wisest man in Athens

C. Method (Epistemology)

 1. (Turning Gorgias on his head) Human mind is capable of knowledge...we are able to  communicate...we're not just talking jibberish.  We do have some understanding, perhaps  murky and vague, of reality. What we need is to take what we've already got and clarify  it.  The philosopher is a mid-wife.

 2. We need to examine the concepts of things, and especially we need to seek the   definition or general essence of a thing and not just settle for knowing the particular.

D. Morality

 1. Knowledge = virtue.  You wouldn't knowingly do something wrong.

 2. Goal of human activity = happiness (Socrates up through the so-called Renaissance.)

 3. Happiness = fullfilling your function, your nature (importance of understanding essences  of things.)  We're all human so morality is universal...no relativism.

 4. Some sorts of activities will make you happy and some won't. We all want to be happy.   When we pursue the merely apparent good we do so out of ignorance.
 

PLATO 429/27 - 348 B.C.

I. Epistemology

A. Some knowledge is possible 2+2=4, It's wrong to torture small children for fun, Fluffy is a cat. How? (Basic idea and then elaborate.)

1. You know things you didn't learn through your senses.

2.  The World of the Forms: Eternal, immutable, perfect ‘blueprints' of things (e.g. mathematical principles, natures)

---to see that we need forms for all knowledge, and to get a better appreciation of how it works, lets look at...

3. How is knowledge possible...how can we know the form?

1. Not through your senses... but through Recollection: you preexisted as a disembodied soul in the world of the forms.  Innatism.

2. Sense experience is important in that it ‘jogs' your memory.

3.. What does this say about human nature? Dualist -- you are soul and body; Platonic Dualist -- soul being the real you and good, and body being a prison.

B. The Forms

1. Participation a. blueprint, b. mirror image, c. "sharing in..."

2. Note that we've solved Parmenides' problem;. Change without any real coming into or passing out of being. Takes account of the issues raised by Heraclitus and Parmenides...change, multiplicity  and immutability and unity. The individual carrot and the individual human being may come and go, but the material particles AND THE ESSENCES (carrotness, humanness) are everlasting.

3. Let's review the business about Forms by looking at the Divided Line
 

1. Images: e.g. T.V. bears only the remotes relationship to reality  ---> mere imagining

2. Things: the different individuals  ---> mere belief

 a. Senses only give us the particular

 b. Need to move to what things have in common -- although we'll see that isn't quite enough.

3. Mathematical Principles --->thinking

4.  Need to grasp essence, ideal standard, the Forms ---> intelligence

Note that observation of things, even if we achieve some universal claims, does not do the job. 

a. featherless biped not really important vs. rational and social

 b. value judgment, good vs. bad, immature vs. fully developed

--ultimate form, the Form of the Good---gives being and knowledge

II. The Parable of the Cave: The Republic

Shadows > Images

Statues > corporeal objects

Above ground > Reality: The World of the Forms

The Sun > The Form of the Good...gives knowledge and being...best thing there is, eternal and  immutable

The Life of the Philosopher
 

III. The Timeaus: How does the world come to be?

A. 3 things; Forms, receptacle, Demiurge (craftsman)

B. Demiurge creates out of love -- wants world to be the best possible > looks to the Forms and ‘impresses' them on the receptacle.

--- Two images of the source of our universe (Judeo-Christian Philosophy of Religion will try to synthesize)---

1. The Good: Perfect, immutable, eternal, not a creator, not personal.

2.  The Demiurge: A creating mind, an agent...not the source of all.
 

Ethics and Political Philosophy

---The questions are, What is justice, and why should I bother to be just?---

I. The Ring of Gyges
 

A. Thrasymachus...Run wild!

            Plato...No.  Being good is good for you.

B. Justice = having things in the right order

III. The tripartite soul

A. Reason, Spirit and Appetite

B. Justice = having the reason rule...and this is what will make you happy.

---Think not?  Well let's look at the state as ‘man writ large' and see what makes a good and happy state---
 

III. The Ideal State

A. Key is that everybody occupies the place for which his nature has suited him.  Society is stratified, not by birth, family, or wealth, by the objective standard of who's best at what.  Aristocracy in the literal sense.

B. The ordering

1. Artisans, farmers etc. correspond to appetitie

2. Guardians (essentially soldiers)...spirit

3. Rulers (upper level Guardians) ...reason...extensive education especially in mathematics

4. Best of the rulers will the one who most clearly understands the form of the Good and he will be our Philosopher-King!

C. Children go into whatever class they're best suited for

D. Philosopher-King and rulers decide what's to be done...totalitarian...not democratic! (Who should be the captain of the ship?)

E. The Life of the Guardians/Rulers (standard themes in totalitarian utopias)
1. No private property

2. Women pretty much equal to men

3. No families

a. Want guardians to care about the state, not their own families
b. Eugenics program (the lottery -- Philosopher-King lies to the people.  Does this worry you?)

IV. The Decline of the Ideal State

A. Aristocracy to timocracy...state which values honor most...soldiers start to run things.

B. ...to oligarchy (power leads to riches)

1. Poorly run because just having money isn't any kind of a qualification for running a state.
2. Discord between rich and poor.

C. ...to democracy...rich get richer and impoverish who they can until poor who are stronger and more numerous overthrow them and take what they have.

------What the democracy will be like-----read The Republic------- A

------Sounds great, but must inevitably degenerate into tyranny!  The very thing which the democracy prizes most, freedom, will be its downfall----read B. State becomes lawless.  Mob rule.

D....to tyranny.

1. Still some who make money and amass wealth.  Lawless mass of people see them as enemies.  Raise up a popular leader to "protect" the masses from the wealthy, "protect" the democracy from returning to oligarchy.  (In a lawless society it will be the most ruthless who rises to this position)

2. People's hero needs a body guard...to protect him from the wealthy...and anybody who goes against him gets crushed.

3. Has to keep fomenting war so state will feel like they need this very strong leader.

4. Has to destroy anyone who's willing to go against him...that will be the better and braver people.

5. State is now in a miserable condition!  Total lack of any freedom. And who is the most miserable person in it?  The tyrant! Can he go out in public?  Does he have any friends?  No freedom and the tyrant is the least free of all!

V. The disordered soul

1. Reason not guiding, but rather appetite tyrannizing...

e.g. drug addict, sex, power whatever

Are you happy?  No, all you can think about is where your next fix is coming from, fear you won't get it.  Satisfied?  No.  There's never enough.  Free?  No you are a slave to the habit!
Dummy!
 

--- Review key ideas---

A. Forms...allows two different spins on how we view the world...

1. It's just a copy of reality...poor, pathetic image

2. The mirror of the divine

B. Epistemology: Innatism.  We have knowledge that we could not have learned.  Our senses could not have given it to us.

C.  Human nature: Soul separate from body.  Body is a hindrance, a prison.

D.  Goal of ethics is happiness, to be happy must be good (for Plato it's getting things in order).
 

ARISTOTLE (384-322 BC)

I. Rejects Plato's doctrine of the Forms: positing this perfect, immutable world doesn't help explain our world at all

A. It's a copy...multiplying entities beyond necessity

B. "Participation" a meaningless term

C. Doesn't explain CHANGE!

(All of which is not to say that Form isn't important.)

II. What's really real, all there is, are individuals...substances.

III. All corporeal individuals are composed of form and matter.  Can't have either without the other.

A. Form: nature, structure, behaviour, function...the catness of the cat

B. Matter: The material ‘stuff' that something is made out of...the flesh and bones etc. of the cat.

1. matter individuates

2. there can be a ‘matter' underlying matter, e.g. four elements underlying flesh and bone

3. underlying all is ‘prime matter'

a. not any kind of stuff.  No qualities at all.
b. pure potentiality.
c. can't exist apart from form, can't be sensed or even conceptualized
d. Why should we thing it's there?
 1. qualities have to be in something
 2. Substantial change

4. And now we can solve Parmenides' problem.  The prime matter never changes, and the form always exists as well...because there are always carrots!

IV. The four causes ...contrast with purely mechanistic explanations of atomists

A. Matter
B. Form
C. Agent (efficient)
D. End (final)

V. Note that form, agent, and final cause all have to do with form.

VI. Teleological approach (all complete explanations will involve goals, purposes, moving from potential to actual...very important when we get to Aristotle's ethics.)

VII. Epistemology

A. The problem: As Plato said, to understand the individual you have to grasp the form.  But for Aristotle the form only exists in the individuals.

B. Empiricism: All knowledge starts with the senses

C. But...all knowledge doesn't end with just raw sense data.  Rational mind capable of operating on the data that comes in (kind of like a computer) and picking out what's essential, i.e. the form. Abstraction. Catness and even 2+2=4. Some suggestion that in order for the human being to acheive this we must all share a sort of transcendent mind (the Active Intellect) which acts upon our individual minds.

VIII.  The human being

A. At first glance looks like he'd absolutely deny dualism...you are an organic unity of soul (form) and body (matter).

B. But it's not perfectly clear. Afterlife? Maybe the part of you that does the scientific thinking survives, but, if so, it probably isn't YOU, the individual, it is the Active Intellect.
 

......WHY DO THINGS CHANGE?.....

I. Change = going from potential to actual

II. Aristotle's universe...everything is always in motion and always has been and always will be...It's kept going by God, the Unmoved Mover.
 

III. The proof:

 1. Things are in motion.
 2. Nothing can cause its own motion.
 3. Motion must be caused by something already actual.
 4. Can't have an infinite series. (Mirror analogy)
 5. There must be something which moves others but which is itself unmoved...something   in a state of perfect actuality so it can generate motion.
 6.  An Unmoved Mover.

IV. The Unmoved Mover

[Note that your book says that the Unmoved Mover becomes and efficient (agent) cause, thinks the forms, and is to be identified with the Active Intellect. We're not going to say that.]

A. ‘First' but not in time...in order of dependence.

B. Moves as a final cause, as being desired, pure actuality which all things want to imitate so move from potential to actual.

C. Best activity...Thinking, and thinking the best, i.e. itself.
 

ETHICS

I. Final Causes, Teleological...what do we desire?  Happiness! (selfish? No!)

II. Happiness = fulfilling ourselves as human, engaging in characteristically human behavior.

III. Rational, social, animals...innate desires e.g.

A. survival
B. sex
C. society
D. knowledge

....Rational means we have to satisfy our desires in the right way.......

IV. The Golden Mean

A. Examples

1. Courage
2. Eating
3. Knowledge

B. Not literally moderation in all things...some things are already immoderate by nature...can't have just the right amount of adultery.

C. Relative to the individual...not moral relativism!...different people are objectively different and in objectively different situations.

V. Difficult to practise...we become good

A. Not by theory (Contemporary Moral Problems)

B. By doing...learn the habit.

C. Vital to understand why we're doing what we're doing.

VI. Universal

VII. Best activity is contemplation.
 

POLITICS

I. The State is a natural institution

A. We're social by nature

B. Not fully human...and animal or a god...if you can function without society

C. VS. Most modern political theory...contract theories of Hobbes and Locke

 1.  We're discrete individuals who can choose to be social if it suits our purposes
 2.  Family not an issue at all...whereas for Aristotle, family is a natural institution

D. State is prior to the family and individual as whole is prior to the part...meaning that individuals and families inevitably function within states...but...

E. Purpose of state is to promote the good life of the individual.
 

II. The Good State (Aristotle is not a utopian and makes fun of the Republic.)

A. Three good forms (i.e. three forms which promote the good of its citizens)

monarchy (one)
aristocracy (few)
polity (many...law-abiding democracy)

B. Three corresponding bad forms

tyranny
oligarchy
democracy (mob rule)

Likes the idea of a strong and numerous middle class.
 
 

PLOTINUS 204-270 CE 

--Neoplatonism --

I. Attempt to synthesize Plato and Aristotle. Enormously influential -- on Augustine, and so on all the Euroean Medieval Philosophers through Augustine. More directly on some of the European Medieval Philosophers who were influenced by the Eastern (Greek Speaking) theologians. On the Medieval Muslims (The Theology of Aristotle),and through these Muslim thinkers, on the later Medieval Philosophers again! And then on Hegel!

II. The One (also called, The Good): The source of all must transcend every possible limitation. 

A. Absolutely Simple

B. It is not thinking because thinking requires an object, so no simple.

C. Above form, so there is nothing we can say or think about it.

D. Better to say it is Not-Being than that it is Being.

E. It "pours forth" -- emanation. A necessary process. Image is the sun, pouring forth light, but itself undiminished.

III. Nous : The next best thing

A. Thought thinking itself.

B. Contemplates the One -- the Neoplatonic return.

C.  Contains the forms in a perfectly unified way.

D. Emanates.

IV. The World Soul

A. Contemplates the Nous and so thinks all the forms, but now as diverse. (The World of the Forms in a mind.)

B. Looks down to matter and finds it ugly. Wants to fix it.

C. Pours down forms onto the matter to produce our world.

V. Matter -- Ambivalence. The last and least from the One, just the boundary of what there is...a sort of nothing. But not quite. The principle of evil. 

VI. The Human being

A. Knowledge 

1. Plato was right. To know you must know the forms.

2. You know them because your soul, RIGHT NOW, lives in the World Soul.

3. "Know thyself"" means turn within, shut out the extraneous, physical influences, and behold the forms.

B. Platonic dualism. 

1. Soul is immortal. Can go from body to body.

2. Goal -- which can be attained here and now -- is to behold the forms in the World Soul, but World Soul contemplates Nous, which contemplates the One. Want to rise to a trans-rational vision of the One -- A flight of the alone to the alone.

SAMPLE QUESTIONS FOR TEST #1

1. One of Anaxagoras' major contributions to the history of philosophy was the idea of

a. defining "nothing" as merely "the absence of something".
b. a God which is incorporeal and transcends the physical world.
c. sin.
d. appearance being different from reality.

--answer is b --

2. Ancient atomism seems to raise a problem for a moral way of life in that

a. it is difficult to see how a universe consisting only of atoms and the void could give rise to objective values.
b. it treats scientific investigation as the only objectively valuable pursuit,and that seems too narrow.
c. it holds that only those who share the atomist's view of the universe could be sufficiently knowledgeable to be good.
d. none of the above.  The ancient atomists said to obey the laws of the state in the interests of order.

-- answer is a --

3. Plato solves the problem of what happens to the nature of a thing when it turns into something else, e.g.what happens to the "carrotness" of the eaten carrot, by holding that

a. the Form of Carrot is somehow transformed into the Form of Flesh.
b. the nature is a way of thinking about how the thing appears to us, but in itself there is no "carrotness" in the carrot to begin with.
c. the carrot is a carrot because it "participates" in the Form of Carrot, and that form is eternal and immutable.
d. none of the above.  By the time of Plato everyone accepted the atomist's answer to the question, so Plato did not address it.

-- answer is c --