The Sophists

The professional teachers providing instruction and guidance fir success in practical affairs They specialized in using the tools of philosophy and Rhetoric for the purpose of teaching arete (excellence, or virtue) Rhetoric is the art and study of the use of language with persuasive effect The sophists shifted the concerns of philosophy to the study of human cognition The real world is quite different from the phenomenal world The Sophists took for the standard the opinions of the individual Absolute knowledge is impossible All understanding is subjective Truth is no more than opinion Any opinion can be judged only by its practical utility Protagoras "Man is the measure of all things, of those which are that they are and of those which are not that they are not." For man the world is what it appear to him to be, not something else There are 2 criteria for truth The opinion of the individual The practical utility of knowledge Knowledge is subjective Moral judgments are relative Everything is true The true aim of human thought is to serve human needs

Socrates a classical Greek philosopher one of the founders of Western philosophy The Apology ("defense-speech) It is Plato's account of Socrates' defense at his trial Socrates wrote nothing because he felt that knowledge was a living, interactive thing Xenophon, Plato and others wrote Socratic dialogues portraying his teaching in literary form Socrates was the first philosopher to shift the focus away from the natural world to human values Socrates was interested in the practical use of reason Socrates tried to find the basis for stable and certain knowledge The way to attain reliable knowledge is based on the practice of conversation Dialectic method of inquiry or the Socratic method It is a negative method of truth-seeking, in that truth is found by steadily identifying and eliminating that which is not true Socrates' method of philosophical inquiry consisted in questioning people on the positions they asserted and working them through questions into a contradiction, thus proving to them that their original assertion was wrong Socrates himself never takes a position This method of questioning is elenchus or "cross-examination" The Socratic elenchus gave rise to dialectic It is the idea that truth needs to be pursued by modifying one's position through questioning and conflict with opposing ideas It was designed to force one to examine one's own beliefs and the validity of such beliefs Socrates showed the value of self-knowledge The highest form of Human Excellence is to question oneself and others The instrument of clear thought is a definition Only true knowledge is knowledge of concepts What it is that makes men say that a certain thing or action is good or beautiful? What people are looking at when they make such statements? It is the Eidos, or the Idea that a person has before him when he calls something "good or beautiful. There is something into things that never varied and never passed away It is Idea of something (EIDOS) Socrates did not separate Ideas from things By the process of definition the mind can distinguish between two objects of thought The particular The general (the Idea of something) Socrates distinguished two levels of knowledge One is based upon the inspection of facts The other is based on interpretation of facts Teleology is a view that things have a function or purpose Plato regarded Socrates as the father of ethics or moral philosophy, and hence philosophy in general Knowledge is virtue The best life comes from taking the best care to make oneself as good as possible, and the happiest people are those who are most conscious they are getting better All of the virtues must be cultivated together human wisdom begins with the recognition of one's own ignorance the unexamined life is not worth living ethical virtue is the only thing that matters a good person can never be harmed, because whatever misfortune he may suffer, his virtue will remain intact