Plato/Aristotle Quiz

What are Plato’s ideas? What is the original Greek term for them?

The most intelligible in Plato’s metaphysics. They are in the noetic realm and are at the highest level of the divided line. They are necessary to make sense of things; you cannot have cats without the form of cat.

Eidos: idea, originally from the word to see (to see something) shape or configuration

Plato invented the word idea and the phrase intellectual (or someone concerned with idea)

What are the four levels of Plato’s divided line?

Intelligible realm

1.      Forms

2.      Mathematical ideas

Sensible realm

1.       Material objects

2.      Images

 

What is the difference between rationalism and empiricism?

Rationalism knows things according to pure reason, empiricists know things according to sense-perception

What is nominalism?

Only individuals exist; they do not believe that’s ideas or definitions, are real and universal.

What does Plato mean by dialectic?

1.      Formal dialectic (classifying things according to their universality or particularity)

2.      Real dialectics (knowledge of the most real and highest beings)

What does the sun symbolize in the allegory of the cave?

The form of the good

What is the form of the good?

The source of all intelligibility, it does create anything

What is the anhypotheton?

The thing without assumption, the forms/the form of the good. This is what’s accessed by real dialectics

What is the demiurge?

Divine craftsmen that mine together the realms of the same and the different to create the Cronos. The demiurge does not create anything out of nothing but acts like an artisan, using row materials of the intelligible and sensible realms.

What are Plato’s unwritten doctrines according to Aristotle?

Principle of the one and the indeterminate Dyed.

Why does Plato think mathematics is so important?

Because it gives us intelligible ideas that are accessed through the mind and not primarily through the senses

Why does Plato think philosophy is more fundamental than mathematics?

Mathematical ideas are presupposed while philosophical ideas are without assumptions.

What does metaphysics literally mean? What does it mean in reference to Aristotle’s writings?

What comes after the physics (Me Tu Physics)

14 books that deal with the most general ideas/first principles

What are the four different ways Aristotle means by First Philosophy?

1.      Ontology

2.      Causality

3.      Theology

4.      Substance

What are the four different causes of Aristotle?

1.      Material Cause (Milesian)

2.      Efficient cause (Aristotle main cause that explains physics)

3.      Formal cause (platos eidos)

4.      Final cause (telos, Anaxagoras)

 

What are Parmenides and Plato missing according to Aristotle?

Efficient causality they cannot explain the different meanings of being

Who is Aristotle’s favorite presocratic philosopher and why?

Anaxagoras: he likes nous and nous resembles the prime mover