May 29 Philosophy Notes

May 29 Φ ➡Plato’s view of the Psyché ➡Soul = principle of activity ➡“Allegory of the Chariot” described the view of the soul ➡Imagine that you have chariot tht is pulled by two horses; one of them is a rebellious horse and the other is a pure-bred horse and the chariot is being steered by a charrioteer ➡The two horses are very different hey are pulling the chariot in different directions , the task of steering that chariot becomes difficult and troublesome , the horses in this allegory have wingsand the purpose of the wings is to lift the soul ➡And there are things that May help those wings to become stronger like wisdom, beauty -or they can weaken and die by bad habbits, by vice, by evil , ignorance ➡The unruly horse represents one of three aspects of the soul: desires ➡This is the appetitive component of the soul, whose nature it is to obey ➡The purebred horse represents our passions, our emotions and our feelings ➡The spirited component, whose nature it is to obey ➡And the Charioteer represents our ability to judge, reason, make choices ➡The rational component, whose nature it is to govern ➡So he is telling us that the natural condition of ourself is conflict and struggle between our desires, our reasons and our emotions ➡The charioteer wants to keep the chariot going on the right path ➡The self as the dynamic interaction f three components ➡Steering the chario in a certain way means you want to live your life in a certain way, we must strugge to maintain control ➡There s peace in the soul -->”being one instead of many” each component mus perform its proper function ➡We have justice, peace in the soul and we hve harmony instead of ar between the components of the soul ➡An when wehave harmony in the soul, that is a goosoul it is a beautiful soul

May 29 Φ ➡Thus there are three types of fundamental people in the world: the competitive, the avaricious and the Φical ➡Justice in society is derived from justice in the soul ➡Concerning morality, he is convinced that we can ensure the same certainty that we have in mathematics about what is righ and what’s wrong ➡If there were no consequences then there woul be no morality- being moral is to our advantage ➡Being moral is useful “if being moral is worthwhile only because of its consequences would diminish the meaning of morality, you might as well be unjust and satisfy your desires” ➡Being good is what is really going to make you happy ➡Morality is also ultimately profitable ➡Aristotle ➡384 bce socrates has been dead for 15 yers, plato has started the academy three years earlier, in northern thrace, Aristtle, the second father of western φ was borne ➡When he was 18 years old he went to athens to go to the academy and stayed there for 20 years as a student, teacher and researcher until the death of plato in 343 bce where then he leaves ➡Aristotle did research on marine biology and in 335 Alexander the great as under the tutelage of aristotle ➡And in te same year starts the Lyceum where he taught, researched and wrote his works and remained until 323 ➡There was an anti-macedonian backlash in athens and so Aristotle left to avoid being captured and killed ➡He died in 322 at the age of 63 ➡How aristotle and plato differed ➡In terms of background ➡Plato comes from an aristocratic family that has a long tradition of involvement in athenian politics.

May 29 Φ ➡Aristotle, on the othe rhand, was the sun of a physician- the influence of his background, in this sense was scientific- he was raised in a tradition of observing things analyzing things, finding evidence, solving problems ➡In terms of Other-worldliness ➡Plato believed in the world of the forms n that there was as profound dissatisfaction to the sensible world on the part of Plato~to do Φ for plao was to die away from desires and sense ➡Aristotle, in comparison, has no dissatisfaction with this world -aristotle develops a profound sense of what god is and what divine is and its relation to thi world and human beings. Does not believe that life in this world is something to be looked down upon-something to escape from ➡Aristotle believed that although this worldis not perfect, that it is the best that we can reasonably expect ➡Aristotle believed that φ was not an escape or this world but rather a tool to try and comprehend things in this world ➡In terms of objects of knowledge ➡Plato, in this regard is the combination of a rationalist and a mystic plato is committed to the idea that reality is ultimately rational, and that reasoning is the way to discover truth and that mathematics is an ideal- but ultimately reason is not good enough when it comes to the form of the good ➡For Aristotle his φ is much more down to earth: he is convinced that language is quite capable of explaining the truth of things.he is saying language is linked to reality. In contemporary logic it is divorced from reality, it is completely mathematical What aristotle did I logic remained practiclly unchanged for until a hundred years ago ➡For Aristotle, our knowledge of this sensile world begins with us actually sensing things-there is no other starting point for knowledge