PreSocratics and Plato

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Pre-Socratics and Plato
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The Earliest Philosophers Pre-Socratics

• Empiricists (Ionians)
• Thales (580 BC) water
• Rationalists
• Pythagoras (572-500 BC) geometry, numbers
• Heraclitus (470 BC) fire, flux, strife,
  opposition

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Pre-Socratics (cont.)

• Pluralists
• Empedoclesearth, air, fire, water, strife/love
• Materialists
• Democritus (460-370 BC) atoms, indivisible,
  deterministic

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Platos Teacher - Socrates

• Know thyself
• The wisest and the most ignorant
• Midwife to knowledge
• Dualism Soul and Body
• A famous non-author

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Plato

• Platos relationship to Socrates
• Dialogues
• Dialectic
• Works
• Apology
• Republic

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Allegory of the Cave

• Metaphysics What is reality?
• Epistemology What do we know?
• Ontology What is being?
• Aesthetics What is beauty?

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The polis in Platos Republic

• What is justice?
• Why be just? The Ring of Gyges

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The Trouble With . . .

• Poets -
• mislead the citizens
• create falsehoods
• corrupt morals
• Yet
• Plato uses allegory, simile, and myth
• Philosophers are the best poets

• Art
• Thrice removed from reality
• Poor imitations of what is real
• Mere illusions