Philosophical Reflection

loving wisdom

• Herarchy and order  = having laws and having an organised judicial system
• The change of the seasons = why there was more food in some periods of the year than others - important for survival
• Suffering and death = "why is there suffering" "what happens after death" - important for understanding humanity
• Disastrous occurrences = had an effect on agriculture 

They would explained everything through myths (passed by oral tradition)

They would combine:

• aesthetics (making it pleasurable to read)
• ethics (morals in the story)
• truth (explanations)

 He mainly wrote about political and ancestor history 

e.g. How the cities were formed and hwere all the people came from

He mainly wrote about theogony (the birth of the gods)

They went against tradition

They said they have a more direct insight into the world 

Their reasoning went through empirical, material and rational explanations 

- reason after causality rather than looking at anthropomorphic reasoning

e.g. Thales thought everything is water

Being able to make people believe what you wanted them to believe

Is not a part of nature

Is contingent = has the possibility to be different than to what it became

One who was good at rethoric 

One who could teach rethoric

Their opinion

• there was no inherent truth, it all depends on the capacities of the speaker
• just because you won the debate doesn;t mean you were also telling the truth, you were just more convincing 

there is no assumed standard for truth

not one statement is in its nature true

coming close to the truth as you can with fewer amount of counterarguments

- the only way to win a debate

everyone has their own truth

 e.g. opinions on climate change

the distinction between good and bad

 e.g. in a fight the attacher might feel like they did a "nice thing", whereas the victim will not agree

people might admit to something being the truth because the actual truth ends up being bad for them or they lie because their lies are profitable

 e.g. "scientists say climate change is real so they keep getting employed"

never wrote anything 

 He went around Athens to find the truth by coming up with lots of arguments

 e.g. he would go to a judge and ask him what is justice; he would continue to to keep needling them until they didn;t agree with their previous statement anymore and thus there was no "truth"

mostly wrote dialogues

• he belives you can't just say "you're wrong" and end up with unsatisfactory disagreement
• you need to start with a definition

e.g. first define what abortion is, before one starts discussing it

• he believed no one is an expert in everything, so you should not be able to convince people of things you are not an expert on. It is deceiving.

no conclusion, we only learn that we don't know

In a dialogue we can let others change our opinions and we are open to change after receiving information. In a debate you might have to defend an opinion that is not your own. Plato does not like this. Dialogue is responding to others and accessing if their opinion is true. You can change your opinions, based on what is true. According to Plato, language is the medium with which we can discover all kinds of truths. 

characterisation of Socrates as the person who gets out of the cave and is not understood when he comes back. 

At first the prisoner does not believe that the other objects are more real than the shadows, because he is blinded by the lights. Humans are not capable of understanding the truth. So, they are forced to go outside of the cave. 

With our senses we can only see the shadow, the surface of reality. We don’t see the true being, only the appearance of it in our world. 

it consists of 3 parts

1. reason =  should be in charge and rule over the emotions and desires. -> the task of philosophers is to speak to reason
2. emotions = Poetry addresses the emotions and can evoke emotions/ desires, because it is not governed by reason. 

   If we let ourselves be guided by emotions, we might do something we will regret later.

3. bodily desires