1. The Arete Project YEAR 10 Learning to think, thinking to learn.

2. What is Arete? The state of excellence which comes from living at one’s full potential. 1000 months to get it right! You need to weigh up the options.

3. What is Philosophy? Means ‘love of wisdom.’ A 2500 year-old attempt to understand what it means to be human. What does that mean?

4. Areas of Philosophy Epistemology – what do we know and how do we know we know it? Metaphysics – what is reality? Ethics – what is the best way to act? Political philosophy – how should society be organised? Philosophy of religion – does God exist and, if he does, what then? Philosophy of science – what are the wider implications of scientific developments?

5. It’s not easy….

6. Why bother? Socrates c. 470-399 BCE ‘ I say that to talk every day about virtue and the other things about which you hear me talking and examining myself and others is the greatest good to man, and that the unexamined life is not worth living.’

7. What do you think? What is Socrates saying? Do you agree? How might this approach help us to attain arete? How might asking questions lead to conflict?