Philosophy 304

Introduction

I expect much of this to serve as reminder to you, and I take my cues for this discussion from Weinberg, chapter one.

• Plato
• • The Forms: (cf. Timaeus and Republic)
  • • impermanent world of sight and sound
    • the need for ideal patterns
    • allegory of the sun
    • allegory of the cave
    • soul as Form
  • The doctrine of Reminiscence: (cf. Meno and Phaedo)
  • • sense experience cannot provide knowledge
    • knowledge, then, must be due to remembering (for we can have certain knowledge)
  • The divine Architect: (cf. Timaeus)
  • • created things according to the Forms
    • selfless benevolence
    • need for preexisting stuff (the notion of change)
• Aristotle
• • rejection of independently existing forms
  • causes resemble their effects
  • actuality and potentiality
  • 4 notions of cause:
  • • material
    • formal
    • efficient
    • final
  • no infinite regress, so there must be a first cause, which must act through final causation
  • need for substratum (again; think Plato's doctrine that there must be preexisting stuff)
  • science is possible, thus Reminiscence can be done away with (with immortal soul)
• Neo-Platonists
• • emanation of all that is
  • (The Good/One → Mind (unity of the Forms) → World-Soul → individual souls & physical world)
  • yearning to rejoin the One
  • individual souls rejoin through love and knowledge

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Last updated: January 22, 2002
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