Introduction to Plato, Socrates, and the Body-Soul Dualism

Vocabulary flashcards reviewing core concepts from the lecture on Plato, Socrates, the body-soul distinction, and epistemology.

Death (Socratic definition)

The separation of the soul from the body.

Philosophy (Socrates)

Preparation for death, understood as the practice of separating one's soul from the body and bodily desires.

Squareness (Platonic square)

The abstract, objective concept from which all individual, imperfectly drawn whiteboard squares get their identity.

Esthesis

A root word meaning the senses, which relates to aesthetics, beauty, and various elements of taste such as disgust and revulsion.

Sublimity

A sensory experience characterized by a grandeur that throws the senses off, exemplified by viewing a vast canyon, a massive mountain, or an immense forest.

Purification

The full relinquishment or release from the body, enabling the soul to access pure truth without the corruption of material wants and desires.

John Locke

The thinker identified as the foundation of empiricism, which arose alongside the Scientific Revolution to champion observational science.

Platonic dualism

A dualistic framework distinguishing the mind or soul from the body that predates Cartesian dualism.

Hades

The Greek underworld described in the lecture as a place where individuals go to forget who they were and wander around.

Beauty in itself

The singular, objective Form or reality that Socrates argues all individual beautiful things participate in.

Bodily senses

Physical faculties that interfere with knowledge by placing material wants and physical conditions above the soul's focus on truth.