Elenchus: Socrates's way of questioning

Plato 429-347 B.C.; a pupil of Socrates

385 B.C. Plato founds his Academy.

Plato's Two Questions:

1. What is the nature of knowledge and what means do we have of obtaining it?
2. What is morality and the best form of human life?

Platonic Controversies:

1. How much of Plato is Socrates?
2. Did Plato use the Socratic elenchus or did he formulate positive doctrine of his own?
3. Was Plato a Platonic? (Did he originally have the known systematic Approach to knowledge and ideas? Or was it merely a rehash by those who commented on Plato's treatises?)

"We are accustomed to posit some one form concerning each set of things to which we Apply the same name."

Charakter: an image imprinted on the surface of a coin by a die

"Myth of the Cave" From Republic

Plato's "Immortal Soul"

• Eternal; has knowledge of the eternal/transcendent world; and somehow it communicates that hint of knowledge to each person

Plato on the Soul, three basic characteristics

• Mind; intelligence, knowledge (nous)
• Courage; the capacity to look out for one's interests
• Appetites; desire

An Ideal Polity

1. Farmers: Persons marked fundamentally by Appetites
2. Soldiers: People endowed with courage
3. Philosophers

Aristotle 384-322 B.C.

335 B.C. Aristotle founds his Lyceum.

• He based his ideas on close observation and study, not on pure thought (Notice the famous fresco named School of Athens in the background with Plato pointing upwards and Aristotle turning his palm downwards)
• Aristotle did not see change as illusory.
• Forms have no existence separate from the things by which they are named (ten categories to describe things that exist)
• Branches of knowledge; Theoretical: those that aim at knowledge; Practical: those aim to improve conduct; Productive: those that aim at making beautiful and useful things
• Laid down the rules for syllogism, the most elementary tools of logic.
• Aristotelian Causation Theory: Material, Formal, Efficient, Final