PHIL 105 - Intro to Western Philosophy and Culture: Exam 1

difference between genus and species

·      A genus is a broad class and a species is a more specific type within that class.

Example of genus vs species

·      In Aristophanes’ speech in the Symposium, a human being is considered the genus while the original male-female, male-male, and female-female forms are each a different species or realization of a human being.

·      In Euthyphro, justice is the genus and piety is the species within justice

what is a sophist

a so-called possessor of knowledge or wisdom who charges money for lessons about rhetoric and making anything into an argument. They would give public speeches and performances.

how does plato portray sophists vs philosophers

Sophists may present themselves as wise and teach persuasive techniques without making truth their main concern. ·      He presents the philosopher as someone who loves and seeks wisdom rather than claiming to already have it. Plato’s Socrates also doesn’t charge fees and questions people to seek truth. According to Plato, the sophist sells expertise and persuasive skill while philosophers search for truth.

Why does aristophanes group philosophers and sophists together

·      Aristophanes groups them both together because he portrays both sophists and philosophers as intellectual threats to traditional religion and civic beliefs. Expose conventional beliefs as merely conventional and challenge the authority of the conventions.

In Aristophanes’ Clouds, how are the people in Socrates’ Thinkery described? What are they like? What kinds of things are they doing?

• Aristophanes depicts the Thinkery’s students as pale, thin, hunched, and socially strange.

• They are absorbed in abstract or unusual investigations, sometimes at the expense of practical concerns.

• Their activities include:

  • Studying the heavens and the earth.

  • Measuring a flea’s jump.

  • Debating whether a gnat makes its sound through its mouth or rear.

• The comic portrait makes Socrates and his students seem detached from everyday life and fascinated by strange or useless questions.

In Aristophanes’ Clouds, why does Strepsiades burn down the Thinkery? What do you think Aristophanes is trying to say by having him do this?

• Strepsiades turns against the Thinkery after his son, Pheidippides, uses the school’s arguments to defend beating his father.

• Strepsiades blames the school for teaching his son to undermine family authority and traditional morality, then attacks the Thinkery.

• The ending suggests that clever argument without moral wisdom can have destructive consequences.

• It reflects the play’s suspicion that intellectual questioning can undermine traditional beliefs and social authority.

What charges are brought against Socrates at his trial?

corrupting the young; not recognizing the gods recognized by the city; introducing new divine beings.

how does socrates defend himself against these charges?

• Socrates rejects the image of himself as a sophist:

  • He says he does not teach for pay.

  • He does not claim to possess wisdom.

  • He explains that the Oracle at Delphi prompted him to investigate people’s claims to wisdom.

• Socrates questions Meletus and argues that the accusations are inconsistent: Meletus cannot coherently say Socrates is both an atheist and a believer in divine or spiritual beings.

• Socrates says that if he has corrupted anyone, he has done so unintentionally; he asks Meletus to instruct him instead of prosecuting him.

Explain Plato’s division between a sensible and intelligible realm. What are the distinguishing features of each?

• Sensible realm: what we encounter through the senses; physical things that change, come to be, and pass away.

• Because sensible things change, they do not provide the most stable objects of knowledge.

• Intelligible realm: what is grasped through reason; includes stable, unchanging Forms such as Justice or Beauty itself.

• The intelligible realm culminates in the Form of the Good and is more fully real and knowable than the changing sensible world.

• Correction: In the cave analogy, both the shadows and the objects that cast them belong to the sensible realm. The intelligible realm is represented by what lies beyond the cave and, ultimately, by the sun as an image of the Good.

In the Symposium, what is Pausanias’ criticism of Phaedrus’ account of the relationship between love and virtue?

• Phaedrus says Love is ancient and powerful; a lover may feel shame at acting badly before the beloved or may even die bravely for the beloved.

• Pausanias objects that love should not be treated as one undifferentiated force.

• He distinguishes:

  • Common Love: directed mainly toward bodily gratification.

  • Heavenly Love: directed toward the soul and aimed at virtue.

• The value of a relationship depends on the kind of love involved and the purpose it serves.

Reconstruct Aristophanes’ myth in the Symposium. What is this myth supposed to say about the nature of love?

• Aristophanes says humans were originally whole, round beings with two faces, four arms, and four legs.

• There were three kinds: male-male, female-female, and male-female.

• Zeus split them because of their power; each half longs to reunite with its other half.

• In Aristophanes’ account, love is a desire for lost wholeness and reunion.

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How does Socrates, through Diotima, challenge aristophanes’ view of love?

• Diotima challenges the idea that people simply want their own half or whole:

  • At 205E, she argues people do not desire something merely because it is “their own.”

  • They desire what is good.

  • A person would not want a reunited whole if that whole were harmful.

• Diotima redirects the account of love toward the desire to possess the good forever.

• Nuance: Socrates’ account of love as concerned with lack is related, but the key challenge at 205E is that reunion is not the final object of desire; the good is.

According to Socrates, why is love not beautiful?

• Diotima says Love desires beautiful and good things.

• Since Love desires beauty, Love does not already possess beauty in the relevant sense.

• Love is not therefore simply ugly or wholly deprived of beauty; it occupies an intermediate condition.

• Love lacks what it desires yet reaches toward it.

• This intermediate status helps explain why Love is a philosopher: neither fully wise nor completely ignorant, Love seeks wisdom and beauty.

• Correction: Love’s dying and being reborn is not Diotima’s reason for saying Love is not beautiful. The argument concerns desire and lack.

• Correction: Lacking beauty does not mean Love is simply ugly.

Diotima tells Socrates that love is a daimon. What does this mean? How might Socrates himself be described, figuratively, as daimonic? What does this tell us about philosophy?

• Daimon: an intermediary being between gods and mortals.

• In Diotima’s account, Love carries things between gods and mortals and occupies an intermediate condition:

  • Love is neither fully wise and divine nor wholly ignorant.

  • Love desires the good and beautiful it lacks

• Figuratively, Socrates is daimonic because he also occupies an in-between position:

  • He does not claim to possess wisdom.

  • His questioning draws people toward it. exposes false confidence and can lead people to examine their beliefs

• Philosophy is the love and pursuit of wisdom, not the possession of wisdom.

According to Diotima, how should one proceed in the art of love? (The “ladder of love.”)

• Begin by loving one beautiful body.

• Recognize bodily beauty in many bodies.

• Come to value the beauty of souls more than physical beauty alone.

• Move on to beautiful practices and laws.

• Turn toward kinds of knowledge.

• At the summit, contemplate Beauty itself:

  • Eternal and unchanging.

  • Not dependent on any particular body or beautiful object.

• The ascent broadens attention from particular instances toward what is more universal and enduring.

• Correction: The summit is not “the purest form of love”; it is the vision of Beauty itself, the ultimate object of the ascent.

What does Arendt mean by the “two-in-one”? What is morally significant about this phenomenon?

• two-in-one: the inner dialogue that occurs when we think.

• Although a person is one, the thinker becomes both the one who asks questions and the one who answers.

• Thinking is a way of silently keeping company with oneself.

• It matters morally because we must live with ourselves after acting.

• Thinking can prompt the question: could I bear to live with myself after doing this?

• Thinking may help prevent wrongdoing even when external rules or pressures do not.

• Nuance: Arendt does not claim that thinking guarantees virtue. She argues that thoughtlessness can make people more vulnerable to participating in evil.

• Arendt draws on Socrates’ claim that it is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong: one may have to live at odds with others, but should avoid becoming someone with whom one cannot live.

What parallel does Martin Luther King Jr. draw between himself and the nonviolent protest movement, and Socrates?

• King compares nonviolent direct action to Socrates’ practice of questioning.

• Socrates created intellectual tension that encouraged people to examine accepted beliefs and move toward clearer understanding.

• King argues nonviolent protest creates constructive social tension, forcing a community to confront injustice and making genuine negotiation possible.

• Both challenge the status quo to prompt moral reflection.

• The discomfort caused by protest is purposeful and directed toward justice rather than violence.

How does Martin Luther King Jr. challenge the clergy members’ understanding of place and time in “Letter from Birmingham Jail”?

• The clergy criticize King for coming to Birmingham as an outsider and for acting at the wrong time.

• King responds that injustice in Birmingham concerns people beyond the city: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

• He also explains that his organization has ties to Birmingham and that he was invited to help.

• King rejects the advice to “wait” while rights are denied:

  • Black Americans have repeatedly been told to wait.

  • Delay has often meant denial.

• Nonviolent direct action creates crisis and constructive tension that can make negotiation unavoidable.

• Nuance: King’s point is not simply that there is never a “perfect time.” He explains why he is morally and practically connected to Birmingham, and why direct action is needed when negotiations and promises have failed.

Explain the two distinct conceptions of peace discussed in “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” How does King use these conceptions to explain the situation in Alabama and justify his political actions?

• Negative peace: the absence of visible tension.

• Positive peace: the presence of justice and brotherhood.

• The clergy favor quiet and order, but King argues Birmingham’s apparent calm rests on segregation and coercion.

• Quiet without justice is not genuine or adequate peace; it can preserve injustice.

• Nonviolent direct action introduces constructive tension to expose injustice and make honest negotiation possible.

• King rejects demands for quiet as a reason to delay: disciplined protest is needed to move from negative peace toward positive peace.

• Correction: King does not say negative peace is “no peace at all.” He distinguishes it from the fuller and more just positive peace.