1. Greek Philosophy

2. What is Philosophy?

3. “love of wisdom”
Study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality and existence
Greeks invented philosophy as a formal, systemic way of thinking
Before, all attributed to the gods
Greeks didn’t turn to their dieties to explain the origin of everything. STILL HAD RELIGION

4. 3 Big Questions
What is the world made of? (now, natural science)
How can we know? (epistemology)
What should we do? How should we behave? (morals)

5. Wisdom vs. Knowledge Wisdom = a way of thinking (“wise person”)
Knowledge = the accumulation of information

6. Greeks built into Western civilization a tradition of CRITIQUE

7. PreSocratic Greeks
Materialists - explained all natural phenomena in terms of one or more of the earth’s elements (water, earth, air and fire)
Thales – first Western philosopher
Water alone, not the gods, responsible for all changes in nature
First time attributed events to nature, not gods
Thales started Greek free discussion of ideas in public areas such as the agora, no longer limited to an educated elite or the priests.

8. Pythagoras
- Universe is harmonious
- All things can be placed in sequence,
ordered and counted.
- Discovered musical scale’s numerical
ratio of frequencies (octaves)
- Pythagorean theorem in geometry:
ratio of sides of a right triangle

10. Protagoras – Sophist who taught reasoning
to wealthy families
- “Man is the measure of all things.”
- people see themselves as the standard of
beauty, or judge other things in relation to
themselves
- “sophists” = skilled debaters can defeat
rational arguments – PLATO DISAGREED,
SAYING THERE IS OBJECTIVE REALITY

11. The Big Three Socrates, his pupil Plato and then Aristotle Socrates
- wrote nothing
- executed for corrupting the youth
- “Socratic Dialogue” - way of questioning to
show that he and others didn’t really know
anything

12. Plato
- dedicated his life to defending his master’s
teachings
- What is the nature of knowledge & what
means do we have of obtaining it?
- What is morality & the best way to live?
- Used dialogues, like Socrates
- Allegory or Myth of the Cave: we see only
copies of reality

15. Philosopher outside Cave in Sunlight

16. “shoes”
- What is a shoe?
- “shoe-ness”
What is love?
- I love my children.
- football, a juicy hamburger, studying
Greek philosophy, justice
- Are these all the same?

17. Aristotle
- based his ideas on close observation
and thought, not on pure thought
- a rival school of philosophy to Plato
- no “shoe-ness” for Aristotle, just
concrete actual shoes that you could
see and touch.

18. Happiness is ultimate goal of human life.
Humans are political as well as rational beings.
A political community is essential for a fully human life and happiness.

19. Legacy Aristotle is a philosophical basis for Christian theology.
Thomas Aquinas based much of his doctrine on Aristotle – remains offiical philosophical poistion of Roman Catholic Church

20. Raphael “The School of Athens”

21. Plato points up, the mind
Aristotle points down and out: reality is
here, among us, not in the mind
Basis of Western intellectual tradition
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