Greek+Philosophy

Which begs the question, “What is wisdom?” What do you think?
 * //What is philosophy?//**
 * live your life according to ideas and assumptions about what the world is like -- that's your philosophy
 * the word means, "love of wisdom"

Why do you think we study philosophy? Below are a few ideas: This webpabe is about Ancient Greek philosophy. Three famous men in Ancient Greek philosophy were Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. All three lived in Athens most of their lives, and they knew one another.
 * The unexamined life is not worth living. (Socrates 400 BC)
 * Free men need liberal education to prepare them to make a good use of their freedom. (John Dewey, 1916 AD)
 * Know yourself. (Plato, 387 BC)

//**Socrates 469-399 BC**// Click on the videos below for more information. You may need to wait for it to load for a munute depending on your internet connection. media type="youtube" key="RaCsKrfCGmA" height="344" width="425"
 * Father was a stone carver; mother was a midwife
 * Father claimed to be descendent of the god Poseidon
 * Father died when Socrates was a boy
 * Mother remarried her uncle; they raised Socrates
 * Tried his hand as a stone sculptor and was very bad by all accounts
 * Known for teaching through discussion of ideas, using questions to challenge students' assumptions about the world
 * Learning how little we know is how we learn
 * Never wrote anything down, so we have no written works by him; also no pictures (although they say he was quite ugly)
 * Sentenced to death by hemlock for not recounting his atheist beliefs and for corrupting the young men he taught

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Plato 428-348 or 347 BC**// media type="youtube" key="WgPJUTltITk" height="344" width="425"
 * Socrates student
 * Wealthy family
 * Started out with career in politics, but left when he realized that politicians weren't truthful -- didn't think clearly
 * Started his own university, "The Academy," in 387 BC
 * Was all about "ideas" as truth -- ideas exist in perfect truthful state in our minds
 * Physical world is misleading, and therefore not what you should base truth upon
 * Constant struggle for humans is discovering the reality of the world while balancing what you know to be true, and what the physical world is showing you to be true
 * People born with knowledge in their heads; knowledge gathered as moved from life to life
 * Recalling knowledge from previous life called anamnesis -- it's how you can know something without having first hand experience of it
 * Point of education is to draw out the knowledge that's already in your head; use dialogues to do this
 * Prolific writer - approximately 24 books; wrote in dialogues so it's easy to read, and he had a sense of humor, too


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What is an allegory?//** A story where the things in the story represent other things (also think parable, metaphor). Can you think of an allegory you know? Plato’s allegory is about a cave


 * //Aristotle//**
 * Plato's student -- we will be discussing Aristotle in a future class (see this web site for introductory information about Aristotle: [] ).