Midterm - PHIL 0200

Techne

Practical knowledge, craft

Psuche

Soul, will

Elenchus

Refutation or scrutiny

Aition

Cause or explanation

Athanatos

immortal, deathless

Nous

mind

Aporia

Impass

Nomos

Law, convention

Phusis

nature

Eros

love

Socratic Definition

An answer to what something is that captures the essence or universal nature of a concept. It must be complete, exclusionary, and explanatory.

Essential property

The core quality that an object must have to retain its identity. An entity must have it, or else it will not exist as itself; for example, snow being cold.

Pastry baking

The analogy provided by Socrates in Gorgias that a pastry baking is a knack and aims to flatter rather than provide good health. In this way, medicine aims at creating good health, while pastry baking attempts to induce pleasure through sugary food.

Meno’s Paradox

The paradox that learning is impossible because you either already know what you are looking for or you do not know what it is. If you already know the subject, you do not need to find it, and if you do not know the subject, you cannot find it.

Hedonism

The philosophy that the pleasant life is the good life, or that pleasure is the highest good. In this view, unrestrained appetites aim to create the best possible life, as proposed by Callicles.

The Ascent

The soul’s journey from the lowest world of physical appearance to the highest realm of true knowledge and the Form of the Good. In the Symposium and the Cave, a human must turn away from images to achieve true knowledge in the Form of the Good.

Method of Hypothesis

A procedure of philosophical inquiry that assumes an original premise or hypothesis and then demonstrate how it rationally leads to a conclusion or could be contradicted and changed to a higher or more fundamental hypothesis.

Self-predication

The idea in Plato’s Theory of the Forms that a Form must exemplify the property that it represents, acting as the universal definition and standard of the qualities seen in its particulars.

Teaching-persuasion

The contrast to persuasion to convince an audience, where persuasion is achieved by gaining knowledge of a truth through learning rather than mere conviction, exemplified in Socrates’s differentiation of the two in Gorgias.

Euthyphro Dilemma

The problem established by Socrates asking Euthyphro what is piety that whether the gods love the pious because it is that, or if something is pious because it is loved by the gods.

Suffering Injustice

The argument that Socrates poses to Polus that suffering injustice is better than doing injustice because the soul is not harmed by suffering injustice, but by doing it.

Affinity Argument

Socrates’s argument that the soul is immortal because it is akin to the Forms. The soul is invisible, not physical, and indestructible, which are the same properties of the Forms, so its similarity to the Forms proves its immortality.

Oratory

A mere knack or form of flattery, rather than a craft, which is argued by Socrates in Gorgias. As oratory aims to convince audiences without learning, and attempts to flatter rather than provide a good output, Socrates believes it is a knack.

Hard Case

A situation that shows competing morals and is mainly formed by being difficult to resolve because of its conflicting solutions. In Euthyphro, Euthyphro’s circumstance is a hard case as he is prosecuting his father for murder, but he believes it is pious.

Touchstone

An ideal interlocuter who possesses knowledge, good-will, and honesty. Socrates sees Callicles as a touchstone because Callicles is educated, warns him of his philosophy’s consequences, and very blunt.

Cloak

The objection posited by Cebes that the soul may not be immortal because it could outlive its body but not exist forever. In the same way a weaver can wear multiple cloaks through his life, a soul can inhabit many bodies, so outliving something does not mean that a thing is immortal.

Harmony

The objection introduced by Simmias that the soul is not immortal because the body and the soul are related like a harmony. According to Simmias, as an invisible harmony cannot be produced without a physical lyre, the soul cannot exist without a physical body.

Participation

The idea in the Theory of Forms that a physical object has a property because it participates in its corresponding Form,

Tyrant

The main argument formed by Socrates that a tyrant does not have true power because they do what seems fit, but not what they truly want. As they are not getting a good from doing what they want, they do not have power.

Mixing and unmixing

The concept introduced by Anaxagoras that things are not generated or destroyed, but instead mixed and unmixed. In this way, everything has a share of something, as something cannot come from nothing.