A deeper look at Presocratic thinkers through Plato and Aristotle, beyond the survey-level Great Thinkers deck.
39 cards · basic cards · AI-written, checked twice. Edit anything.
- What did Thales of Miletus identify as the fundamental substance underlying all reality?
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Water- Which Presocratic philosopher argued that reality is in constant flux and that 'all things flow'?
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Heraclitus- What is Parmenides' central claim about being and change?
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Being is eternal, unchanging, and indivisible; change and multiplicity are illusory.- What was the Pythagorean view of the ultimate nature of reality?
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Mathematical relationships and ratios; numbers are the fundamental reality.- How did Empedocles attempt to reconcile Parmenides' unchanging being with observable change?
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He proposed four eternal elements (earth, air, fire, water) that combine and separate.- What did Democritus and Leucippus propose as the ultimate constituents of reality?
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Atoms and the void; indivisible particles moving through empty space.- What method of philosophical inquiry did Socrates pioneer?
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The elenchus or Socratic method: questioning people about their beliefs to expose contradictions and lead them toward truth.- According to Socrates, what is the relationship between virtue and knowledge?
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Virtue is knowledge; wrongdoing comes from ignorance, and no one willingly does evil.- What were the main charges against Socrates in his trial, and what was his sentence?
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Corrupting the youth and impiety toward the gods; sentenced to death by drinking hemlock.- What is Plato's Theory of Forms (or Ideas)?
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Immaterial, eternal, unchanging abstract objects exist beyond the physical world; physical particulars are imperfect copies or instances of these universal Forms.- Describe Plato's Allegory of the Cave.
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Prisoners chained in a cave see only shadows on a wall cast by firelight; the shadows represent sensory experience, and ascending to sunlight represents the journey to knowledge of reality.- What did Plato believe about the immortality of the soul?
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The soul is immortal and existed before birth in a state of knowledge of the Forms; learning is recollection (anamnesis) of what the soul already knows.- How did Aristotle differ from Plato regarding the nature of reality?
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Aristotle rejected the existence of a separate realm of Forms; he argued that universals exist only in individual substances, which are the primary reality.- What are Aristotle's four causes, and what does each explain?
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Material (what something is made of), formal (its shape or essence), efficient (what brought it into being), and final (its purpose or end).- What is Aristotle's concept of entelechia (actuality), and how does it relate to potentiality?
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Entelechia is the realization or fulfillment of potential; an entity's form or essence. Actualization is the process of moving from potentiality (what something can be) to actuality (what it is).
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