ALLEN, SPRINGSTED. Primary Readings
in Philosophy for Understanding
Theology
PLATO
Sun, Line,
Cave
The good is not pleasure [sense?].
Sun
is not sight, but the author of sight
(p.5)
[As the sun is necessary for sight, so is good for
knowledge]
The line
SHADOWS | BEINGS ||| OPINION | KOWNLEDGE
Perceptions | Fath ||| Unerstanding | Reason
Cave
We see shadows, not the real Things
One must go out of the cave to see the true (The Ideas)
Nota:
One would sound crazy to people in the Cave
Creation
(Timaeus)
What is that which is and has no becoming?"
"Always becoming and never
is?"
God in the begininngin of creation made the body of
the universe to consist of fire and earth. Waterand air is
the mean between fire and eartg [metaux
The World in a form of Globe, the perfect
figure.
The Universe is a circle moving in a
circle.
The body in Heaven is visible, the soul is
invisible and partakes of reason and harmony.
When reason is concerned with the rational, and
the circle os the same moving declares it, then
INTELLIGENCE and KNOWLEDGE are necessarily
perfected.
God created the planets and made them move.
Time was created.
Animals were
created
Man were created. After death: he tries to reach the
Star of origin. If one fails, one reincarnate.
In the Second Birth could be as a woman
[woman was inferior?]
"The mother of all created and visible
is not ... earth, air, fire, water, but is a invisile and
formless being which receives all
things and in some mysterious way
partakes of the intelligiable,and is
most incomprehensible". (p. 36)
"We must acknowledge that there is one kind of being which is always
the same, increated and indestructible, never receibin anything into itself
from without, nor itself going out to any other, but invisible and
imperceptible by any sense, and of which the contemplation is granted to
intelligence only." (p. 37)
ARISTOTLE
Substance and Its
Predicates
Intro
Paranonymus
Homonymus: Grammar > Grammarly
Synonyms and
Homonymus
Substance
Secondary Substances:
species (man, animal, etc)
Sec. Substs are universal.
They can predicated
"...does not admit a more and a less" (p.
45)
Primary Substance
SUBSTANTIAL FORM, i.e., the
form (or essence, or nature) of
particular substances such as
Socrates. INDIVIDUAL.
Predicates
Categories
Substance, Quantity, Quality,
Relation, Place, Time, Position,
State, Activity and Passivity.
Nature and Four
Causes
Some say substance could
a natural object: the
wood. A bed is made with
wood.
Material Cause
"That nature is the shape or
fomr which is specified in the
defitition of the thing".(p.61)
Formal cause
Motion
"Nature is a principle of motion an change" (p. 67)
Potential and Actual
Ex.: A object is potentially hot
and actually cold. - MOTION
"It is the buildable that is
being built" (p. 69)
The Unmoved Mover
"There is a eternal unmovable substance" (p. 72)
"It´s clear that there is a substance which is
eternal and unmovable and separte from
sensible things" (p. 75)
The nature of divine thought: it
thinks that which is most divine
and precious, and it does not
change" (p. 79).
Now, the only continuous
change is that of place, and
the only continuous change
of place is circular motion.
Therefore, there must be an
eternal circular motion and
this is confirmed by the fixed
stars which are moved by the
eternal actual substance...