2.  Socrates (470-399 BC)  Plato (427-347 BC)  Aristotle (384-322 BC)

3.  Plato is a nickname for Aristocles  He came from a distinguished Athenian family  Became a student of Socrates at age 28  At age 40 he founded The Academy  Died at age 80

4.  Approximately 30 of his known writings survive.  Early dialogues  Ethical investigations but few answers  Middle dialogues  Socrates is a spokesman for Plato’s ideas  Later dialogues  Socrates doesn’t appear

5.  Socrates  Displeasure with the Sophists  Important more for influence and method than for content.  Pythagoreans  Pre-Socratic philosophers mediated through Socrates (Armstrong, p. 20)

6.  Teachers of Rhetoric  A well-spoken man could make lots of money in Athens  Not primarily interested in truth  Relativists  Protagoras  “Man is the measure.”

7.  Socrates “you believe that everyman is the authority on what is true.”  Protagoras “true”  “Well, I just took a survey and …”

8.  Every man’s idea is equally true  Plato counters with - -  1. Self-refuting  2. The Test of Future Experience

9.  Socrates executed when Plato was 28  Recorded in Apology, Crito, Phaedo  Plato was nominally a follower, but it was the death of Socrates that most greatly influenced him.

10.  Human beings participate in two different worlds 1. Physical world (the lower world)  The world of particular things  Everything in the world changes  Everything in this world is known by sense experience 2. World of Forms (the higher world)  The world of universals  Unchanging  Know by

12.  There is a form in the world for every class of object  Universals – properties shared by objects  Eternal entities – numbers or propositions that can only exist in the mind

13.  Appear in book 7 of The Republic  Prisoners bound in the back of a cave and only able to see the back wall of the cave.  Behind them there is a fire producing light for the back of the cave.  Behind them men walk carrying statues which cast shadows on the back wall of the cave.  One prisoner frees himself

14.  He discovers that the shadows are not the real world.  Finds the path out of the cave and after an arduous journey arrives in bright sunlight.  Amazed by the wonder of the world  Goes back to tell the other prisoners – kill him.  You are the prisoners!

15.  Metaphysical Dualism  World of Forms  World of Particular Things  Anthropological Dualism  Body (bad)  Soul (good)  Epistemological Dualism  Know the world of particular things with body  Know the world of forms with soul

16. 1. Philosophical systems find their way into pop culture.  Postmodernism  Music, Emergent Church, etc. 2. Historical – Stand on the Shoulders of Giants  Ethics, Politics, Epistemology, Metaphysics, etc.  Ex. Four Virtues (Courage, Moderation, Wisdom, Justice)

17. 3. Historical - Counter Errors by understanding the past  Syncretism - “Early Christianity combination of Hebrew expectation and Greek metaphysical ideas.” NO!  How do you deal with similarity? 4. Many modern Errors have been countered by the ancients.  C.S. Lewis on the value of reading old books  No need to recreate the arguments

18.  Hedonism  Empiricism  Relativism  Materialism  Mechanism  Atheism  Naturalism.

19.  Hedonism = Pleasure is the greatest good  Plato counters with the question, “Can there be such a thing as an evil pleasure?”  If yes, then there is a higher standard

20.  “Kill them all and let God sort them out.”  Probably not our best response  Shows how seriously Plato took it.  Atheism is a danger to the state (Republic)  C.S. Lewis said that the greatest thing we could do for both God and man was to convert our neighbor.

21.  Empiricism - All human knowledge has its source in sense experience.  Plato calls all lower world understanding “opinion”  Only in the upper story do you have “knowledge”  Know the world of the forms via “reason”

22.  Sophists “man is the measure of all things”  Plato argued for objective truths and values that are the same for all

23.  What is really, real? Matter.  Argues that there must me a reality that is non- material – spiritual.

24.  Naturalism – the world can be explained without reference to any supernatural reality

25.  The world is just an elaborate machine  Plato was a teleologist.

26.  Read Armstrong pages 64-65