The Greeks An Introduction to Their Culture, 3rd edition

from which everything came into being and of which all is ultimately made is water. Other Ionian philosophers came to different ...

the skies to the common problems of mankind (Tusculan Disputations, 5, 4, 10). This may be taken to mean that philosophy moved f ...

order to draw out and refute an opponent. The Greek word for this kind of pretence is eironeia and this questioning method is ca ...

me from having any offspring myself. I myself therefore am quite devoid of wisdom; my mind has never produced any idea that coul ...

with the famous saying ‘man is the measure of all things’, often understood to imply a doctrine of relativity in relation to kno ...

of the gods recognised by the city. Plato makes Socrates refer to the Aristophanic caricature in the defence he gave at his tria ...

party at the house of the tragic poet Agathon in which the participants each give a speech in praise of love (eros), Alcibiades ...

the ideal set out elsewhere in the Symposium,in which male love (assumed by all the speakers to be alone capable of fulfilling t ...

Plato (c. 427–347) Born of aristocratic parents in around 427 in Athens, Plato wrote poetry in his youth before turning to philo ...

much they may ascend to the ideal, the discussions all start in the real world of practical human concerns. It is not only the s ...

to figurative language for further illustration, comparing the form of the good to the sun which gives visibility to the objects ...

PHILOSOPHY 199 The Divided Line The Allegory of the Cave Anoesis(understanding) The Sun (the form of the good) Intelligence of t ...

moral. Nothing short of a radical turn-around of our mental and moral nature is needed. Enlightenment is a slow and painful proc ...

the order of the state by all three classes. Justice, dikaiosyne, is the principle that makes this temperance possible; it is th ...

presentation of ideas through picturesque analogies, developed allegories like that of the cave or the use of myth to push philo ...

so that poetry belongs to the lower realm of eikasia (usually translated as ‘illusion’) in which shadows and reflections are mis ...

of small treatises on various philosophical problems, put together and given its title because it was to be read after the Physi ...

of a state. He argues that Plato does not take into account the facts of human nature; present evils and abuses in society sprin ...

Later he calls the soul the cause (aitia, ‘the reason for’) or first principle of the living body, its final cause. We believe t ...

Aristotle’s word for goodness and virtue here is arete, which may better be translated asexcellence: Virtue, then, is of two kin ...