five-mark questions

Question 1

(10 mark Q)
#14: explain Aristotle’s doctrine of the four causes. can chance be a cause? where does luck or chance factor in Aristotle’s thinking?

Answer 1

Aristotle believes that every physical event, person, place, and thing has four causes:

1. material cause: what is it made of?
2. efficient cause: what changed it?
3. formal cause: what is it? (category/pattern)
4. final cause: what was its purpose?

Question 2

2. Briefly compare and contrast the ‘Two views of Athens’ by the ancient historian, Thucydides.

Answer 2

• Pericles funeral oration: beauty, generous, virtuous, honoring view of Athens
• Melian conference: “might makes right” you better listen to us! what’s right can only be discussed by equals!
• Thucydides the diplomatic and good historian

Question 3

3. What general comparisons and contrasts can be made about the Presocratics and the Sophists? Discuss in terms of the social roles each played.

Answer 3

• presocratics attention was on physis “what is stuff made of?” and scientific explanations
• sophists attention was on nomos and how language can be used to manipulate and persuade
• presocratics taught people how to think while sophists (polymaths) taught people how and what to think, selling their skills for profit.
• they both used language cleverly, but sophists put no skin in the game and loved aporia (contradictions) while the presocratics genuinely wanted to seek truth.
• sophists used language for their own advantage while presocratics used it to search for truth, paving the way for philosophers.
• disclaimer! not all sophists subscribed to the same values

Question 4

4. Compare and contrast Xenophanes and Critias on the issue of or religious belief. How do they agree? But in what way do they disagree? Explain.

Answer 4

• Xenophanes was a presocratic, OG critic of religion, interested in the PHYSIS of religion while Critias was a sophist, interested in the NOMOS function of religion
• Xenophanes was not an atheist. He had suspicions about the gods in Illyiad and Homer, and concluded that we should have modesty regarding what we claim to know about God. Concluded also about the ‘god of the philosophers’
• Critias, was suspicious about the gods/religion too, but he was not modest in what he claimed to know about God: Thus first did some man, as I deem, persuade men that a race of gods exists. Critias was an atheist, but saw the NOMOS function of religion and believing in the gods.

Question 5

5. What is Glaucon’s thought experiment related to the Ring of Gyges? What challenge did he think it could pose to Socrates about the nature of morality? Does (Plato’s) Socrates agree?

Answer 5

• Intrinsic value of justice vs justice valued only because of consequence
• Gyges Ring Tale: materializing a world where the consequences of justice and the benefits of justice no longer apply
• Glaucon’s thought experiment: just man and unjust man will both pursue self-interest with gyges ring
• continued: just man has unjust reputation and vice versa. Thus justice is stripped naked of external effects. Is justice still intrinsically valuable?
• Socrates response: justice is the best thing for the soul and it is better to suffer injustice than to commit injustice. In order to live the good life, one must pursue justice

Question 6

6. What famous aphorism is attributed to Protagoras? What implications might this aphorism have for a central Parmenidean doctrine?

Answer 6

Protagoras: man is the measure of all things. Implications: we interpret reality, there is no objective reality (hot cold water example)

has fatal strong implications against rationalism: platonism and paramedian doctrine b/c it means there’s no objective truth you can arrive to rationally.

Parmenides: what is the arche? it is only one thing. What is, is. Change isn’t real, it’s just perception. Nothing can come into being and nothing can go out of being. Philosopher of being.

Man is the measure of all things = rationalistic truth is opinion and reality is whatever we perceive/think/ “know”

Question 7

7. How does Plato in the Phaedo radically reorient what Philosophy is and what Philosophy is good for? What ‘natural’ worry expressed by Cebes is remedied by this new approach to Philosophy?

Answer 7

• natural worry: doubt that the soul will survive death

Phaedo: salvationistic account of philosophy, promise that: philosophy can save you. the love of wisdom will keep the soul together from vanishing and dying

In the Phaedo death is: purging, purifier, and separates the particularity of the person to the abstract, just like what philosophy does.

Philosophers are half-dead because philosophy is the practice for death

Cebes worries can be hushed by embracing the purging and purification of philosophy as a preparation for death, and the promise of salvation and the immortality of the soul in death

Question 8

9. Did the cynics care about virtue? In what sense? Identify some Cynic virtues and give some evidence from the Gospels that Jesus might have had some familiarity with this philosophical tradition.

Answer 8

• Cynics cared about virtue and thought that it was sufficient for Eudaimonia (happiness).
• for them virtue wasn’t nomos, in fact they defaced and mocked nomos. Rather it is physis, functioning harmoniously with physis from observation of animals in their natural state.

virtues: free and untethered speech, self-sufficiency, discipline, and endurance.

Jesus life resembled cynic virtues and he also defaced nomos, by throwing over tables

Question 9

10. What is the Tetrapharmakos and to what tradition is it owed? How is ‘scientific knowledge’ related? How might the historical Socrates think about the Tetrapharmakos?

Answer 9

Epicurean summary of his principal doctrines:

1. nothing to fear in God
2. nothing to feel in death
3. pleasure is easy to secure
4. pain is easy to endure

epicurean ethical principles stems from his materialist, physicalisit, and scientific understanding of the world.

Socrates wasn’t concerned about these things and was too busy talking about justice, morality, and living the good life. Would’ve agreed more than Plato though (immortality of the soul, and the body shouldn’t be weighed down by bodily desires) Historical Socrates seems to follow the tetrapharmakos