Transcript Socrates and the Philosophic Committment

Socrates and the Philosophic
Commitment
Questions
The Holocaust was a hoax.
Women are inferior to men
(or blacks inferior to whites,
etc.)
What does it mean to say
that something is
“dangerous?”
Can an idea be dangerous?
Global warming isn’t
happening.
Faith is more powerful than
reason (or vice versa).
Are there any ideas that
are worth dying for?
Are there ideas worth killing for?
Ideas
Where do our ideas come
from?
What is the relationship
between our ideas and our
sense of identity and self?
Do we catch ideas like we
catch colds?
Are ideas “real?”
What makes an idea our
own idea and how do we
know when we “own” an
idea—and how do we know
when an idea “owns” us?
Who are the wise people
among us?
Knowledge > Ignorance?
What does it mean to be
wise and how is it different
from being knowledgeable?
How does one attain
wisdom?
What are the obstacles to
attaining wisdom?
Wisdom
What does it mean to say
that an idea is “true?”
Is truth more valuable than
lies?
Why do we sometimes feel
irritated by rather than
grateful for those who show
us our ideas are false?
How can lies be comfortable
and truth painful?
Is Socrates right when he
says we should put the
pursuit of true and false
knowledge above all else?
Socrates claims….
That a person is not a body
but a possessor of a body.
That a good person cannot
be harmed by a bad
person.
That ideas are more real
than bodies because ideas
are eternal and unchanging
but bodies are temporary.
Socrates (469-399 BCE)
Served in military in 20’s, fought
in 3 wars, honored for valor.
Wandered marketplace and
gymnasium talking with young,
old, slaves, women, men.
Regarded as a “teacher,” but he
refused to accept money and
insisted he didn’t actually
“teach” anything (more on this
when we discuss sophists later).
Embraced poverty.
Didn’t write anything.
What we know comes from
Plato, Aristophanes, and
Xenophon.
What Happened
Oracle at Delphi tells
Chaerephon that Socrates is
the wisest of men.
Socrates sets out to find
someone wiser and fails.
Concludes that he is wiser
than others in the sense that
he knows he doesn’t know
what the others claim to
know but don’t.
Ruins of the Temple at Delphi
This is embarrassing: the guy
who says he knows nothing
demonstrates through
questioning that those with
authority (poets and politicians)
know even less.
The Trial
Charges
Failing to believe in state gods.
Corrupting the youth.
Accuser/Prosecutor: Meletus
“A beak, and long straight hair, and a
beard which is ill grown” (Plato).
Probably a religious fanatic, more
upset about impiety than corruption
(at least Plato implies this).
As a poet, probably didn’t like
Socrates’ disdain for the mythospromoting poets.
Revenge? Critias (leader of the 30
tyrants) was a student of Socrates.
Ostrakas: Greek Banishment Ballots
The Verdict & Punishment
280 guilty to 220 acquittal.
360 to 140 in favor of
death. So much for
Olympic dreams.
Socrates and Death
“Either death is a state of
nothingness and utter
unconsciousness, or, as
men say, there is a change
and migration of the soul
from this world to
another.”
Either way, I win, Socrates
says, because I did not
sacrifice myself to live the
inauthentic life the state
wants me to and there’s a
chance I may get to keep
doing what I like best:
searching out true and
false knowledge.
Where did philosophy come from?
• What is a myth or “mythos?”
• What does a myth do?
• Why is a mythos valuable?
Situates the world within a context the
provides meaning to life and events—e.g.
natural events have supernatural causes
(Zeus and thunder).
Promotes community—we’re all in the
same story.
Very stable society: “So behaved the sacred
ancestors; so must we behave.”
Provides moral code.
What is this
hurricane and why is
it happening?
Theater of Miletus
6th Century BCE (600 BCE-501 BCE); near coast of present-day
Turkey.
Collapse of social and political structures leads to collapse of
mythos.
Collapse of mythos: You’re still in the story, but it’s not clear in what
sense it’s a story with characters. The story itself is in question.
Logos
The force of thought leads to
wisdom (Sophia) & those who
have love (Philo) for wisdom and
Source of English “logic”—
devote themselves to its pursuit
psychology, biology, sociology, are engaged in “philosophia”—
etc.
the love of wisdom.
Greek for “word.”
Logos refers to speaking or
setting forth ideas in words,
which implies a certain kind of
thinking about, reflection upon,
and evaluation of those
words—LOGICAL ANALYSIS.
The “Pre-Socratics”
The challenge: Find a way to
create order and harmony
without the myths.
“Inquirers” who used reason
and senses (and not just
gods and myths) to
determine the nature of the
universe & its phenomena.
Began the Western tradition
of “philosophy.”
Idea: “I can create
explanations of what
happens by observing
phenomena and using
reason/logic to draw
inferences.”
Empedocles fragment
Thales of Miletus (@580c. BCE)
Things change—bodies decay, plants
grow, etc.
If there is change, there must be
something that changes AND
something that doesn’t change—
otherwise, chaos.
Therefore, unity (Oneness)
underneath the plurality of the
world.
So what is the unifying, unchanging
substance that is hidden by the
appearance of constant change?
It changes without
changing.
“The first principle and basic
nature of all things is water,”
says Thales.
Hogwash? How far is the
leap from the claim that
water is the building block
of everything and the claim
that atoms are?
Key insight? Plurality of the
world must be reducible to
Rivers turn into deltas….waters turns
one category.
into ice and then back into
water….which turns into
steam…which becomes air….which
becomes wind….which fans fire, etc.
Anaximander (@610-546 BCE)
Student of Thales.
How can water become its opposite,
fire?
The source of all things has to be
greater than any of the things.
In fact, it has to be greater than any
“thing”—it has to be a non-thing or
beyond-thing.
The “Boundless” or
“Unlimited” (apeiron).
The Boundless is opposed to
nothing because everything
is it.
Boundless originally in
vortex, disrupted,
fragmented into elements
(Big Bang?).
World will end and return
elements to unified
Boundless.
Anaximenes (@545 BCE)
Criticism of Anaximander: An
unspecific, indeterminate,
“something-or-other” is no
better than nothing at all.
Besides, “Nihilo nihil” (from
nothing comes nothing).
Air is it. Less dense=fire.
Condensed=cloud and water.
More condensed=earth and
rock.
Key idea: Differences in
quality are really differences
in quantity.
Some Pre-Socratics Focused Not on Explanations of
the Material World but on Nature of Ideas
Xenophanes of Elea
(@570 BCE)
“But mortals suppose
that the gods are born
(as they themselves
are), and that they
wear man’s clothing
and have a human
voice and body.”
(fragment 5)
(fragment 6)
Parmenides (@515-440 BCE)
Shows that the nature of
reality can be demonstrated
through logic without
observation.
Follow this:
• “It is” is a truth of
reason that does not
depend on observation.
• “It is” cannot be denied
without selfcontradiction: “It is
not” is “It is nothing,”
but if “nothing” exists,
then it is not nothing; it
is something. “It is.”
So…..
indestructible (if destroyed, it
Since “nothing” cannot be would turn into non-Being,
thought without thinking of but there is no nothing);
it as “something,” there is
no nothing, only Being.
eternal (if it were not eternal it
would eventually become nonBeing must, therefore, be Being);
uncreated (if it were
created it would have been
created from nothing, and indivisible (if it could be
divided, there would be
there is no nothing);
spaces of non-Being between
it parts, but there is no nonBeing).
And, therefore, Parmenides says….
Motion is impossible.
For Being to move, it
would have to go from
where Being is to where
Being isn’t (but there can’t
be any such place where
Being isn’t!)
Zeno of Elea (@490 BCE)
Defended Parmenides.
Even given the possibility
of motion, it is impossible
to ever get anywhere.
Parmenides and Zeno
Force a choice between
sensory observation and
mathematics and logic.
The senses deceive, so
reason/logic should reign.
This later becomes the
tension between empiricism
and rationalism.