We began our discussion in class on January 21 by going over what was mentioned in the previous class. During this time we made a correction to the analogy of the cheesecake (I’m hoping that I’m saying this right but if I’m not feel free to correct me). Imagine that there is a cheesecake sitting in front of you. If you want that cheesecake and it eat, then you are not temperate or virtuous. If you want that cheesecake and but don’t eat it, you’re not temperate or virtuous either. An example of the true virtue of temperance is when you have that cheesecake in front of you and don’t want it at all because you know that it is important to eat the right foods. This review led into a discussion on virtue ethics. We mainly talked about Plato and Aristotle saying that they were both concerned with human rationality. Plato judged ethics on the way that your heart and mind reasoned which was different from the way Aristotle judged ethics in one respect: Aristotle considered not only the reasoning of the mind and heart but the actions that you performed. We established that in accordance with the philosophy of Socrates, as written by Plato, that the most virtuous man could also be the most unvirtuous man because in order to know what true virtue is, you must also know what true evil is. Therefore being truly virtuous entails both knowing about virtue and applying it to your everyday life. We also touched a bit on Kantianism. All we really said was that in Kant’s view the only thing that is good is the will; the outcome doesn’t matter as long as you had good intentions. After our discussion on ethics we transitioned into talking about the Pre-Socratic philosophers.
There is a lot of Pre-Socratic dialogue in the Phaedo. One example of this is the argument presented by Cebes that just because the soul exists after the body doesn’t mean that it lives forever; it can wear out and become tired. This is what I understand from Cebes’ defense that precedes the analogy of the weaver. Socrates then makes a defense to the argument by stating that he started his philosophical career by dabbling in natural philosophy (Pre-Socratic Philosophy) but found it to be less than he expected; they were, like all others, concerned with material things. Because of Cebes’ argument and Socrates’ defense it is important to know a little about the Pre-Socratics. Thales, the first philosopher, believed that everything was made up of water; this was an analogy attempting to strengthen the metaphysical statement that all is one, or that everything is united. This statement seemed to be the theme of Pre-Socratic philosophy because Anaximenes, Pythagoras, and Heraclitus all claimed that everything is united though, in different forms. Anaximenes claimed that all is air and that quantifiable measures of air make things different. Pythagoras claimed that everything is united in mathematics and that this unity is immortal; everything, even the soul, was made up of an infinite number of parts. (It is important to note that in the Phaedo, Socrates is speaking to Pythagoreans.) Heraclitus believed that the origin of all things was in flux; that everything is constantly changing and that the change is what allowed everything to exist. Anaximander, another one of the Pre-Socratics had a slightly different philosophy. He believed that we can’t know the origins of all things and that any attempt to know is an injustice. The thing itself is always escaping and all that is definite will pass away. Anaximander’s big theory was that the origin of all things was in the material indefinite. Parmenides, also a Pre-Socratic he believed that the origin of all things was in ‘the being’. He more specifically stated that the intelligible is real and therefore it is. The grounds of being make the world what is it so if you think about it, of natural philosophers or if you don’t, it exists. Empedocles believed that being is heterogeneous in number and kind. He believed in four concrete elements: water, fire, air, and earth, which mixed together and formed all other things in existence. As previously stated, Socrates doubted the practices because he didn’t find their reasoning stimulating. He then began to explore the work of Anaxagoras, who believed that everything is in everything; more directly he believed that all things that come into being are made up of the same substances which things already in existence are made up of. Socrates was disappointed by this because he believed that Anaxagoras believed differently. He left the natural philosophical movement in an attempt to find reason. The break he had from this movement is explained in the Phaedo and known as the Second Sailing. The other movement which we talk about before we were dismissed was that of the Atomists. The other Atomists, such as Democritus, believed that things were made up of atoms that were all qualitatively the homogenous and quantitatively different. They also believed that everything was chance, random, binary; made up of chance combinations of atoms. Because of this no gods or minds arrange the universe, we can only figure pleasure to be good, there is no teleology, and there is a relativism of values: what is good for me might not be good for you. After going over the philosophers we moved on into a review of the previous slides presented in class.
The review consisted of going over the slides on Platonism 101 where we talked about various aspects of the reading. One thing we talked about in great detail is how Plato assumes that you believe in the forms and how no discussion that he has can take place if you don’t: you will first have to be convinced of the forms. We also talked about this quite some time before we realized that we only had seven minutes of class lefts and we were shown how long the Phaedo text was and encouraged to read the rest when we ever got a chance. I hope that these notes are as accurate as possible. I did my best to interpret what was going on but if it seems that I might be wrong on something feel free to correct me.
DISCLAMIER: I hope that these notes are as accurate as possible. I did my best to interpret what was going on but if it seems that I might be wrong on something feel free to correct me.
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