Philosophy

Socrates – Ethics

How should I live?

The unexamined life is not worth living.

Clever – Acquiring knowledge

Wisdom – How to use the knowledge according to your needs.

Socrates did not believe in the written word.

Spoken word vs. written word

Spoken word – Dialogue

Written word – Repetitive, misinterpretation, No possibility of defending one self
against misinterpretation of text.

Philosophy was meant to be done through dialogue. Whatever we know about

Socrates is through his student, Plato.

Symposium (love) – One of Plato’s Dialogues

Socrates Plato
Dialogues Early Dialogues Later Dialogues

Reasons why Plato wrote about Socrates in his Dialogues:

1. Rebellion – Plato kept Socrates alive by means of his dialogues
2. Plato fulfilled Socrates request – His ideas in writing will remain alive forever

Socrates was faithful to his belief.

Socrates considered dialogue as the most appropriate medium for doing philosophy. It
is not an ordinary dialogue but it is a dialogue which is in a form of question and
answer. The person who is asking the question knows were the dialogue is leading to.

Dialogues of Plato
• Laches
• Euthypho

Laches Euthypho
What is courage? What is holiness?
Universal Definition

For Socrates certain truths such as what is courage and what is holiness, can be known
with certainty.

This method adopted by Socrates is known as Elenchus (examination). To be able to a

define something.

The Dialogue between Socrates and the General.

There was a good relation between Socrates and the General.

1. Question – What is courage?

2. Answer is taken as a starting point for another question and so on...
3. When a definition is found, it acquires universal status.
4. Universal status – It is knowledge that can be applied to all individuals any
time or place.

Socrates will help the General discover within himself what true courage is. This is
known as the theory of Innatism.

For Socrates knowledge of these three definitions should be found within us. These
prejudices do not allow us to express these true definitions.

Socrates insists that definitions should tell us what is essential or unique about the
thing being defined. To explain his theory, Socrates enters in a dialogue with a slave.
The slave discovered that he had knowledge of geometry even though we never learnt
geometry.

Moral Optimism

What is courage?

For Socrates the importance of a definition lies in the fact that once we succeed in
finding the definition of something, the definition requires the status of knowledge.

The correct definition becomes a universal standard that is over and above the
speakers’ personal preferences or particular set of cultural preferences/conditions.

For Socrates there is only one true definition of justice.

Absolute Knowledge – Universal Knowledge

Absolute Knowledge – Relative Truth

For Socrates if you knew what courage is you simply couldn’t not be courageous? If
you knew what justice is you simply couldn’t not be just.

Knowledge → Virtue
Socrates overrates the role of reason in our decision making. A person can know what
the right thing to do is and that person can still choose to do the opposite.

I. Speech and Writing

II. Truth
III. Moral Optimism

Sophists

 Protagoras – Man is the measure of all things.

 Thrasymachus
 Gorsins

These were Itinerant Teachers

(Itinerant – Travel)

There is no universal value.

Universal value – Equal important by all countries

Truth is relative to a culture.

Relativism – Values are relative to a culture that is one culture can give importance to
certain values and another country can give importance to other values.

Plato didn’t like this:

o They denied that there are universal truths.
o They asked to be paid for their teaching.
o They offered their skill of persuasive speaking.

The Art of persuasive speaking – Rhetorical

Protagoras - Man is the measure of all things

For the Sophists – Man is the measure of all things.

For Socrates – Universal Reason is the measure of all things.

The Sophists offered an education and expected to be paid.

The art of persuasive speaking (manipulation) requires intelligence.

The Sophists used to practise Anti-Logic

For anything one could persuade others to accept both sides of an argument.

Colour of Box

Blue Not Blue

Dialogue between Socrates and Thrasymachus (Sophist).

The Sophists encouraged people to be corrupt (the truth was to be used at their own
convenience).

The Sophists made a distinction between

Phusis (Physis) – Nomos

Another word for Phusis – Physics or Nature

Another word for Nomos – Customs

This distinction was applied to laws. Which means that rules of behaviour which were
to be found in a particular society.

Gorgias – Negative Sophist (extreme)

He questioned the idea that usually if you want to acquire something you have to wait
until it’s your turn. He questioned whether it might be the case that an importance
should be given to “Might is right”.

The strongest should be served first.

For the sophists

“Wearing a helmet”

This is a law for which you will be fired.

Rules made up by man – Can be undone by other man

Law related to property

Nature vs. Nurture

Reality Culture

Plato

For Plato, Women and Men are equal.

Plato opened the first institute of learning – The Academy

Compete Philosophical Programme

Metaphysics (early Philosophers)
Ethics (Socrates and Others)
Politics, Education, Aesthetics (Plato)

From an artistic perspective most of Plato’s writings institute works of art combining
use of metaphors and myth with the analysis of concept.
Metaphysical Theory

A distinction between two worlds, world of ideas/forms – concepts/mind and world of

illusion.

For Plato there is only one circle.

Ideas – Understood (reason)

Copies of Ideas (ordinary world) – Perceived (senses)

Description of the ANALOGY OF THE CAVE

The analogy of a cave

There are Prisoners, chained in a cave. They can only look in front of them. Behind
them there is a wall. Behind the wall there is a race passage. The prisoners can only
see the shadows of the things and people behind the wall.

Somehow, the prisoners get unchained and are able to move around in the cave. One
of the prisoners decided to leave the cave and he started to explore around him. Once
he gets out of the cave, he gets blinded by the sunlight. The other prisoners didn’t like
the idea of change. They were afraid of what could happen to them if they went
outside, so they stayed inside the cave. The prisoner which went outside was
gradually getting used to the sunlight. Once he did, he was able to see the
surroundings. He started to admire nature,

After some time he decided to go back inside the cave and he tried to persuade the
other prisoners to get out of the cave and explore for themselves. The prisoners didn’t
want to listen to him. They got fed up of him trying to convince them about
something that they were 100% sure about. As a result, the prisoners killed him.

Interpretation

1. The cave represents the world of illusion or the visible world.

2. The Prisoner who leaves the cave represents the philosopher.
3. The other Prisoners represent the majority of man kind who unfortunately
remain in the world of illusion.
4. Outside the cave – The world of ideas/hopes.
5. The Sun – The idea of GOOD
6. The Journey from inside of the cave to the outside of the cave represents a
person’s search for the truth (optional). The journey from ignorance →
Knowledge, Illusion → Reality.

An Analogy is a means of explaining something which appears to be complex in a

way that can be understood.
Simile of the sun

Visible World – The Sun Intelligible World – The Good

Source of growth and light Source of reality and truth

Visibility to objects of sense Intelligibility to objects of thought

The power of seeing to the eye The power of knowing to the mind

The perfect idea/form – The good

Just as the sun makes objects of sense visible for me too see them, the form of the
good makes all the other forms available for me to understand.

The form of good gives me the power to understand the forms.

Just as it is right to think of light and sight as being like the sun but not the sun itself,
so it is right to think of knowledge and truth as being like the good but not the good
itself.

THE ANALOGY OF THE DIVIDED LINE.

Objects Modes of Thought

The Good (forms) Knowledge (knowledge)
(Intelligible world – Understanding)

Mathematical Objects Thinking (knowledge)

(Intelligible world – Understanding)

Things Belief (opinion)

(Visible world – Perception senses)
Images Imaginings (opinion)
(Visible world – Perception senses)

The bigger the separation is, the more one is directed to the truth.

For Plato, mathematical thinking is good mental training to understand the forms. In
this he was strongly influenced by Pythagoras.
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