KENNY. An illustrated brief history of WESTERN PHILOSOPHY. Chapters 1-7

Chap. 1: Philosophy in its infancy
1. Pythagoras
  1. Founder of Geometry.
  2. Transmigration of souls
2. Thales
  1. First to ask "question about the structure and nture of the cosmos as a whole" (p. 2)
    1. The World rests on water
    2. He was a physicist (physis) not a materialist: "everything is full of gods"
  2. Anaximander (Thales´s disciple)
    1. A proponent of evolution (p. 4)
    2. FIRE: everything came from a great ball of flame. Everything shall return to the original fire.
3. Xenophanes
  1. "Nobody has ever had a clear vision of God"
    1. "God is a living thing that sees - think - hears as a whole" (p. 6)
  2. Monotheism based in REASON
    1. Different from a REVEALED Monotheism
4. Heraclitus
  1. He spoke of LOGOS which holds forever and with which all things come about (p. 7)
  2. "Everyhting moves, nothing remains"
5. Parmenides
  1. "To on" BEING
    1. ONTOLOGY begins
    2. BEING and UNBEING
      1. "Unbeing cannot be thought of"
      2. No Thing can change to Unbeing. There is only movement.
        Heraclitus: therei is only movement. Parmenides: BEING is STATIC
      3. Being cannot come from Unbeing
6. Empedocles
  1. Philosophy of nature regarded as a synthesis of the thought os the Ionian Philosophers.
  2. Love and Strife intermingle element
    1. The Human soul was a material compound (fire, water, earth, air)
  3. He accepts Transmigration!
7. The atomists
  1. Democritus
    1. Matter is not infinitely divisible
      1. The atom is the undividable matter
        Atoms exist eternally
        Atoms and Void are the only two realities
    2. Morals
      1. Not Utilitarian
        It is better to suffer wrong than to inflict it
        "The good person not only refrain from wrongdoing but does not even desire it." (p. 20)
Chapter 2: The Athens of Socrates
1. Anaxagoras
  1. World´s origin: Motion
    1. Motion caused by Mind
2. The sofists
  1. Protagoras
    1. Agnostic
      1. Humanist
        "Man is the Scale of all thins"
    2. Relativism
      1. "Nothing can be true absolutely. but only relative to an individual". (p. 25)
3. Socrates
  1. Maieutica
    1. Teaching by asking questions
  2. Dialogue with Eutyphro
    1. before trial
    2. Religion and Morality
      1. The godly is loved by the gods because it is godly or The godly is godly because is loved by the gods?'
        Holiness
      2. Socrates: "What the gods gain form our gifts?"
  3. Dialogue with Crito
    1. in prison
    2. Socrates decides no to undergo a flight form death and to follow the City´s Law.
  4. Dialogue with Phaedo
    1. Socrates criticizes the idea that a human being as a soul imprisoned in a body.
    2. Arguments
      1. Oposites
        Life could come from Death?
      2. Recollection
        Soul is eternal: Recollection indicates it
        Knowledge comes from Recollection that indicates pre-existence od the soul
    3. Soul is imortal
      1. Soul does not perish
Chapter 3: The Philosophy of Plato
1. The theory of Ideas
  1. 1- Concrete Universals
  2. 2- Paradigms
    1. They are in Idea´s Realm
  3. 3- Attributes and Properties
    1. Ex.: "All men are human by virtue of sharing a common humanity"
  4. 4- Classes
    1. Attributes serve to settle classes
  5. Ex.: The West (there is not such a place)
    1. There is always a place wester to wherever place
2. The Republic
  1. Justice: the health of the soul
    1. Justice is doing one´s own thing, os miding one´s own business:it is harmony between the classes.
    2. Three parts of a soul
      1. Temper
      2. Apettite
      3. Reason
        Reason has to dominate
    3. 1- Why be just?
      1. Everyone wants to be health.
        So, Vice is ignorance
    4. 2- If injustice is disease
      1. It could be cured be medical.
    5. 3- Injust one is madman
      1. Madman can have no right
3. Theaetetus and the Sofist
  1. 1- Knowledge is perception?
    1. But, Life is not all sensation
    2. Perception and Universal Flux
      1. Flux: Knowing is non-knowing
  2. 2- Knowledge is Judgement?
    1. But, there is false judgement
      1. False Judgement comes from mismatch of perception and thought
  3. Knowledge is articulate true belief
  4. Plato refutes Heraclitus (Flux) and Parmenides (Unbeing)
    1. Heraclitus´s Flux is self-refutating
    2. Talking about what Being does by necessity implies in talking about Parmenides´s Unbeing
      1. Sometimes what Being "is not" refers to simply to non-being, not to Unbeing
        There is a non-being, so there could well be a false belief (diferent form unbelief)
Chapter 4: The system of Aristotle
1. The Foundation of Logic
  1. Silogism: (1) All Greek are Europeans; (2) Some Greeks are male; (3)Therefore, some Europeans are male
  2. Three kinds of Science
    1. 1- Productive
      1. Engenharia, Arquitetura
    2. 2- Practical
      1. Ethics, Politics
    3. 3- Theoretical
      1. Physics, Mathematics
2. Theory of Drama
  1. Poetic
    1. Katastrophe
    2. Piety or Fear
    3. Plot: Início - Meio e Fim
    4. Peripetia
3. MORAL PHILOSOPHY
  1. Moral: Virtue and Happines
    1. Moral and Ethics does not rely on "IDEAS" of Plato
    2. Morality comes from Virtue
      1. Virtue leads to Happiness
      2. Virtue is a state of character which makes a person choose well and act well
        It is Balance
        Middle Ground between Excess and Defect
      3. A virtuous person must enjoy being virtuous
  2. Moral: Wisdom and Understanding
    1. Wisdom is connected to What is good to human beings
    2. Wisdom (phronesis) is a virtue of the lower part of the soul (deliberating part); the virtue of superior or scientific part of the soul is understanding (sophia)
    3. Happiness
      1. It is identified with the enjoyment of the fruits of philosophical inquiry, mas ist not exactly the same as the pursuit of science and philosophy.
      2. eudaimonia = worthwhile life - an exercise of wisdom and virtues.
Chapter V-VII
1. Chapter V - Greek Philosophy after Aristotle
  1. Hellenistic Era
    1. Greeks came into contact with different
    2. Epicureanism
      1. Make Happiness possible by removing the fear of death
      2. Humans have free will
      3. Pleasure is the "alpha" and "omega"
      4. Senses are reliable
    3. Stoicism
      1. Accepted the distinctions bt. matter and form
      2. Cultivate the Social Virtues
  2. Scepticism
    1. Pyrrho - soldier of Alexander
      1. Nothing could be known
    2. Empirists
    3. Debate Stocs and Sceptic: Stoics say that knowledge must be based on any old appearance - cognitive appearance. Sceptic counters by asking how we can tell which appearances are cognitive
  3. Rome
    1. Helped Hellenistic philosophy
    2. Cicero
  4. Jesus
    1. Hebrew worldview
    2. Paul poins to Eternal Life, not in Platonic way, but through ressurrection
    3. Christianity and Gnosticism
      1. Gnosticism
        Didn't believe that God created the material world.
        It was a demiurgo
      2. Christianity
        Clement of Alexadria
        Pedagogy of God
        Greek Philosophy - childhood and teens
        Christian Revelation = adulthood
        Origen
        incorporated Plato' ideas
        Soul existed before bein born
        teached Universalism
  5. Neoplatonism
    1. Plotinus (205-20)0
      1. "The One"
        Parmenides: Oneness is the property of Being
        The One
        Soul
        does not operate in Time
        Mind
        operates in Time
        To see how he attempted to do so, we must retrace our steps and follow the upward path from base matter to the supreme One. Plotinus takes as his starting point Platonic and Aristotelian arguments which we have already met. (p. 98)
2. Chapter VI - Early Christian Philosophy
  1. Arianism and Orthodoxy
    1. Diocletian’s reforms had divided the Empire into two halves, a Latin-speaking West and a Greek-speaking East.
      1. The clash between Christianity and paganism was first of all a clash between monotheism and polytheism:
    2. The Council of Nicaea did not end the disputes about the person and nature of Christ.
      1. homoousios!
  2. Theology of Incarnation
    1. Two Natures
    2. Hypostasis
    3. The definitions of the first Council of Ephesus and the Council of Chalcedon henceforth provided the test of orthodoxy.
  3. Augstine
    1. "Confessions"
    2. before heaven and earth were created, there was no time.
      1. Augustine’s solution to these perplexities is to say that time is really only in the mind. The past is not, but I behold it in the present because it is, at this moment, in my memory.
    3. City of God
      1. double predestination
        Pelagius condemned in Carthage in 418
        If we take two babies, equally in the bonds of original sin, and ask why one is taken and the other left; if we take two sinful adults, and ask why one is called and the other not; in each case the judgements of God are inscrutable.
      2. original sin
  4. Boethius and Philoponus
    1. Barbarians attack Roman Empire
    2. Boethius
      1. Talks about God that forsees the future, not Augustine's predestination
    3. Philoponus
      1. First, Philoponus attacked Aristotle’s doctrine that the world had always existed.
      2. Secondly, Philoponus attacked Aristotle’s dynamics.
        The notion of natural motion in Aristotle is tied to the notion of natural place,
      3. Philoponus rejected Aristotle’s thesis that the heavenly bodies were made out of a non-terrestrial element, the imperishable quintessence.
      4. his treatment of the Trinity laid him open to charges of tritheism
      5. his treatment of the Incarnation explicitly defended the monophysite heresy
3. hapter VIII
4. Chapter VII: Early Medieval Philosophy
  1. John the Scot
    1. Eriugena´s Refutation on Predestination
      1. It was worse than Gottschalk´s Predestination these
        God is undivided: could not be a double P.
        God is eternal: could no be a Pre-destination.
    2. Four Natures
      1. 1- Creating + uncreated
        2- created + creating
        3- created + uncreating
        4- uncreated + uncreating
        Ultimante Destiny
        GOD
  2. Avicena
    1. Body: form of corporeality
    2. Soul
      1. 1- Vegetative
      2. 2- Animal (precetion)
      3. 3- Rational
        Unique enlightenment from the Ative Intelect.
    3. God
      1. Necessarily Existent
  3. Anselm
    1. Monologion
      1. Existence of God
        God is not conceivable
        He necessarily exists, because existence is part of perfection.
    2. Cur Deus Homo
      1. Why Dit God became man?
        Adam´s offense was infinite.
        Any man can not pay it.
        Son had to be incarnated in order to pay it.
        Satisfaction can only be adequate if it is made by one who is human (heir of Adam) and one who is God (infinite recompense)
  4. Abelard (1079 - Britain)
    1. Logics
      1. Middle way between Nomialists (noun) x Realists (res)
        There is no universal man disctinct from the universal noun 'man'; but the sound man is turned to a universal noun by understanding
      2. A father is = A father exists
        verb is simply part of the predicate
    2. Ethics
      1. Only Intentions matters
      2. God only can act as he has in fact acted
  5. Averroes
    1. Not individuals
      1. Neither the active intellec nor the passive one is a faculty of individual human beings. Bu a single eternal substance
      2. After death, individuals are united to God, like a drop into the Ocean.
  6. Maimonides
    1. Negative Theology
      1. We cannot say anything positive about God. only wha he doesn´t is.
      2. God´s providence concerns only to humans. Not to NAture.

Next up

KENNY. An illustrated brief history of WESTERN PHILOSOPHY. Chapters 1-7

Description

Resource summary

Similar

	Created by Mário Rafael Fukue over 5 years ago