1. History of Philosophy

2. Truth vs. opinion. Controversies among philosophers and sophists
Truth vs. opinion. Controversies among philosophers and sophists. The role of Socrates. Parmenides claimed: a/ thinking of Being is true, because there is a relation of identity between the thinking (the intellect) and Being, i.e. the thinking fits its object, and because the object – Being is unchangeable, the thinking does not have to change to fit it: ‘knowledge’ (Greek: episteme ) deserves its name, because it’s true, and it is true because it does not change: What you can call and think must Being be For Being can, and nothing cannot, be. Truth – aletheia (knowledge (episteme) – certainty, necessity) - Being

3. b/ thinking of Unbeing (non-being) is false or even impossible, because one cannot make thinking fit Unbeing, which changes constantly. One can only have ‘opinion’ (Greek: doxa) based on sensory perception: Unbeing you won’t grasp –it can’t be done – Nor utter; being thought and being are one. Never shall this prevail, that Unbeing is; Rein in your mind from any thought like this. Opinion – doxa (contingency) - Unbeing

4. Sophists and philosophers In the 5th c
Sophists and philosophers In the 5th c. BC an important role played sophists (from Greek sophizo – to make wise, instruct, teach; sophos (pl. sophoi) – skilled in any handicraft or art, cunning in his craft (Perseus-Tafts)), itinerating teachers of rhetoric skills. They taught rhetoric and logic (through discussion and debate with young people) as they were the most important for pleading in the assembly and before the courts to make the presentation of a case successful. Rhetoric was the art of putting forward a convincing philosophical argument in favour of any statement true or false, backed up by knowledge in history, literature, strategy, politics and morals.

5. Protagoras of Abdera (c. 490 – c. 420 BC) Gorgias of Leontini (c
Protagoras of Abdera (c. 490 – c. 420 BC) Gorgias of Leontini (c c. 376 BC)
The sophists (Protagoras of Abdera (c. 490 – c. 420 BC) and Gorgias of Leontini (c c. 376 BC)) claimed that virtue is not a matter of aristocratic descent and that everybody can learn it, if properly taught, namely by the sophists. Moral instruction of the sophists not only equalled virtue with knowledge, but was also based on the idea of a multiple and relativist nature of moral virtue.

6. There were many incommensurable virtues depending on sex, social role, age, and polis (city- state) people lived in. As the sophists used say: “in various poleis there are different virtues to be taught.” Contrary to the early Ionian philosophers, sophists were no longer interested in cosmology, but rather in human affairs, in morals and politics. They were experts and advisers.

7. Philosophers like Socrates and Plato were against sophists’ relativism and abuse of logic, which was not used by them in the search for truth, but first of all to convince others and gain their support. Socrates (c BC), although in many ways influenced by the sophists, particularly by their logic and rhetoric, did not instruct but rather questioned or cross-questioned to educate his pupils and followers. He was convinced that virtue was equal with moral knowledge of right and wrong: if someone knew what was right to do he could not do wrong. According to Socrates no one goes wrong on purpose/does wrong on purpose. To know what to do meant for him to know an explicit definition of a moral concept or term like ‘justice’ or ‘piety’, to be just or pious.

8. Socrates taught that to be virtuous one has to hold in check one’s passions and senses by reason (Greek, enkratein, to control oneself), which tells one what to do. Man was for him a composition of the rational soul and body, and the soul was the centre of human moral personality. Socrates’ demon – the divine voice or internal oracle telling Socrates what should be avoided. The Socratic Paradox: When asked, how to explain that people, while knowing what they should do, frequently do the opposite, Socrates would answer that they do not know yet the exact definition of a virtue. In other words, Socrates would not have accepted (if he had lived later in Rome) Ovid’s (Roman poet, c.43 BC-17A.D.) saying: video meliora, proboque; deteriora sequor (Latin: I see the right way, approve it and do the opposite), if he had known it. He could not recognise the problem of the weak will of man – akrasia (Greek: incontinence, weakness of will).

9. The search for truth. Cross-questioning as a method of truth seeking: elenchus, protreptics, maieutics (Socrates as a midwife helping to give birth to true thoughts). Socrates on trial. Capital charges of impiety, the introduction of strange gods, the corruption of Athenian youth. The problem of the individual vs. public opinion. Freedom of expression and its limitations. The Euthyphro dilemma. Socrates asked in the Euthyphro: “Are morally good acts willed by God because they are morally good, or are they morally good because they are willed by God?” What then is the nature of ethics?