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Starting next meeting, class will start at 5:30pm and will end at 8:30pm.

PLATO:

a. Socratic method

Pretending to be ignorant in order to expose the ignorance of others

"Socratic method," a series of questions and answers that probe the issue under discussion ever more
deeply. This method is sometimes known by the term dialectic. The Socratic method is used today as
the principal instruction in numerous law schools.

Socrates as profoundly distrustful of the written word.

Plato's brilliant solution to this dilemma was to invent a new literary form in ancient Greece: the
dramatic dialogue. This form had the advantage of preserving the essence of the Socratic method of
dialectic, or question-and-answer, reasoning, but it also offered numerous opportunities for including
a broad spectrum of literary devices and techniques: for example, humor, repetition, figurative
language, and suspense.

The Republic has been read not only for its philosophical content but also for its outstanding rhetoric
and lyrically imaginative figurative language.

b. Tripartite’s soul stratification of society and classes theory of specialization

The human soul is immortal and consists of three parts. The highest part of the soul is reason. The
other two parts exist in a "spirited" division. The higher of these two parts is the soul's desire for
honor, while the lower of the two is concerned with a quest for sensual appetites: food, sex, and
material comforts.

The choices we make in this life will have momentous consequences.

c. Allegory of the cave

The enlightenment, struggle, and sacrifice of the genuine philosopher are vividly depicted in the
Allegory of the Cave.

d. Role of education in a just society

integral and vital part of a wider subject of the well-being of human society. The ultimate aim of
education is to help people know the Idea of the Good, which is to be virtuous.

Plato regards education as a means to achieve justice, both individual justice and social justice.

e. What is law?
Law is reasoned thought (logismos ) embodied in the decrees of the state. Plato rejected the view
that the authority of law rests on the mere will of the governing power.

To Plato, the law can guard against tyranny. In the Republic, he called the law an “external
authority” that functions as the “ally of the whole city.” Plato stressed the importance of law in his
other works.

f. Meaning of natural law.

According to Plato, we live in an orderly universe. The basis of this orderly universe or nature are the
forms, most fundamentally the Form of the Good, which Plato describes as "the brightest region of
Being." The Form of the Good is the cause of all things, and when it is seen it leads a person to act
wisely.

ARISTOTLE:

a. Meaning of teleological virtue

Aristotle claims that “… for all things that have a function or activity, the good and the ‘well’ is
thought to reside in the function”.

Aristotle believes human beings have a telos. Aristotle identifies what the good for a human being is
in virtue of working out what the function of a human being is, as per his Function Argument.

Function Argument
1. All objects have a telos.
2. An object is good when it properly secures its telos.
3. The telos of a human being is to reason.
4. The good for a human being is, therefore, acting in accordance with reason.

In working out our true function, Aristotle looks to that feature that separates man from other
living animals. According to Aristotle, what separates mankind from the rest of the world is
our ability not only to reason but to act on reasons.

Thus, just as the function of a chair can be derived from its uniquely differentiating
characteristic, so the function of a human being is related to our uniquely
differentiating characteristic and we achieve the good when we act in accordance
with this true function or telos.

Virtue is a matter of having the appropriate attitude toward pain and pleasure.

b. What is law?
There is thus a close connection among Aristotle’s different characterizations of law as “order,”
“reason,” and “agreement.” Laws are general rules that produce a kind of order in the actions and
desires of the citizens, which are devised in a rational manner by a legislator, and which are effective
only if the governed accept and obey them. Because legislation is a rational activity, it is the
appropriate subject for an Aristotelian science.

c. Justice

Aristotle says justice consists in what is lawful and fair, with fairness involving equitable
distributions and the correction of what is inequitable.

d. Golden mean

The golden mean focuses on the middle ground between two extremes, but as Aristotle suggests, the
middle ground is usually closer to one extreme than the other.

Virtue lies between the extremes. If one can travel the middle path of moderation and temperance in
life, goodness and beauty show up along the way.

e. Natural Law

Father of natural law—argued that what is “just by nature” is not always the same as what is “just by
law.” Aristotle believed that there is a natural justice that is valid everywhere with the same force;
that this natural justice is positive, and does not exist by "people thinking this or that."

Both, meaning of:

a. Justice
b. Best form of government

JUSTICE:

Plato:

Justice is defined as a social condition of balance and harmony, both in the state and the
individual.

Socrates: Justice, he declares, is essentially a social condition involving the balance and harmony
among the three classes in the state (guardians, auxiliaries, and workers), and the balance and
harmony within the individual of the three parts of the soul (rational, spirited, and appetitive). Justice
holds sway when no conflict disturbs this balance.

Justice is both virtuous and profitable, while injustice is always injurious and unprofitable.
it is only the leadership of the truly wise and virtuous that will make possible an orderly, harmonious
society.
Justice means excellence. For the Greeks and Plato, excellence is virtue.

Aristotle:

Aristotle says justice consists in what is lawful and fair, with fairness involving equitable
distributions and the correction of what is inequitable.

BEST FORM OF GOVERNMENT:

Plato:

Socrates discusses four flawed constitutions: timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny. Each
form of government is paired with a corresponding type of individual. All these political frameworks
are flawed, in Socrates's view, because they emphasize false or detrimental priorities. Timocracy and
oligarchy, for example, prioritize egoism, selfishness, and greed. Democracy runs the danger of
anarchy and chaos. Tyranny, the worst governmental framework of all, allows a ruler to exercise
despotic power.

Socrates discusses in detail four forms of government he considers flawed. Each system of
government is matched with a corresponding individual, whose temperament and character Socrates
describes in detail. The four types of government are:

timocracy—government offices are held by people of property

oligarchy—government by the few
democracy—government by the people
tyranny—government by a single ruler with absolute power

Aristotle:

He thought that the best regime in the end depends on the circumstances, on the human material at
hand, namely on the quality of the citizens available to the lawgiver and the statesman.

The best form of government enables human beings to fully develop their typically human
potentialities, to become virtuous and therefore to flourish.

In an instance where a king possesses a HEROIC VIRTUE, superior in virtue and knowledge, in this
instance, kingship is the best form of government.

ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS:

Q1 Why should there be rather than not be?

Because nothingness is impossible.

Everything must at least be something.
If we start from nothing, we lack the bearings needed to navigate forward.
An explanation for why there is something rather than nothing generally seem to work
with a conception of explanation according to which we can only explain why something
exists by citing something else which exists.

Q2 Is there anything outside of consciousness?

Yes. There is something outside consciousness; that something is without personal presence but
embodies presence. That something is a necessary being exists insofar as that being “carries the
reason for its existence within itself.” This is pursuant to the notion that “there is something rather
than nothing”.

Q3 Does freewill really exist?

Freewill exists. Although others argue that God already knows what is our destiny and what will
happen in the future, though may be true; it does not hide the fact that we still have free will.

As defined, Free will, in humans, is the power or capacity to choose among alternatives or to act in
certain situations independently of natural, social, or divine restraints. Verily, a person who commits
murder is said to have free will when he decides to kill a person. It is his/her own choice without
considering the judgment and conscience of others. It is his/her own choice. Provided that he or she
is not impelled by anybody.

Hence, there is free will.

Q4 Who are you?

It is the ultimate truth that one can see or hold while being in this world.
"I am an individual who thinks for myself." Let him who would move the world first
move himself.
I am a unified being essentially connected to consciousness, awareness, and agency.
Hence, I am an individual present at this point in time. A person currently living with
uncertainty but still with a purposeful life.

Q5 What gives life meaning?

What gives life meaning is to be able to understand what it takes to be a good person towards all. As
per Browning, to find that meaning is our meat and drink.

Knowing how and why is it necessary to be a good person in the society that we live in, is what gives
life meaning.

Q6 Do human rights really exist? Derogate

It does exist. Human rights are not only sourced from a positive law, but also from customs that the
society has practiced repetitively through time. This is in accordance with the charters of the United
Nations. Even in the absence of an international police forces and specific international legislation,
coercive measures are to be applied by the Security Council when there is threat to peace; a showing
that there is way to fulfill the duty to protect human dignity as a matter of religious obligation and a
custom.

Q7 What is a just society

A just society is a society with justice, and a society with no oppression. A just society admits neither
tyranny nor slavery.

(Write in yellow paper)

Watch Documentary: GREAT BOOKS PLATO S REPUBLIC (it’s in YouTube)

ANSWER THE FOLLOWING:

Who are the characters?

Who are the authors and philosophers and what did they say in the documentary?
At least 10 lessons
Quotable quotes
Handwritten in a yellow pad. I’ll post the class email address when I’m done making it. Thank you!

The Republic has the power to intrigue and infuriate.

Intellectual adventures of Socrates = the republic

William Bennett – former secretary of education of the US. It Encouraged him to go into politics

Mike savage – radio talk show host, builds himself as “the compassionate conservative. Read few
pages. Way of ordering his mind and all of his mental faculties. It is an internal chess game the he
plays.

Nobel Prized winning poet Joseph Brodsky – dismisses it. There people in people you see and this
is what plato couldn’t understand, he thought that all people should be like himself.

Plato has been hailed as the father of philosophy, first feminist, a dangerously naïve idealist and
fascist

Born in a place where beauty and knowledge are worshipped. Athens 428 years before the birth of
christ.
Parthenon towered over the city – one of the crowning achievements of the world’s first democracy.

Golden age – where first plays were performed and the first histories of the world were written, a
time when Athenians produced art and ideas that we still marvel at. Time of devastating human loss.
First 23 years of plato’s life, the Peloponnesian war raged between Athens and its neighbor Sparta

Plato watched as Athenian democracywas overthrown by Aristocrats, then replaced by dictators

before democracy seized control once again.

In plato’s view, the one that is constant are corruption, brutality, and blind amition.

He probably ended up to be a politician like the members of his family were it not for a sidewalk
philosopher that he met, named Socrates.

Socrates stands out to everything. He said that he was to Athens as when a gadfly is to a large lazy
horse. Gods sent him there to prick Athens and to irritate it to make it think seriously about the kind
of life that its citizens were leading. He was there to make people uncomfortable. Socrates wrote
nothing himself. We know him through writers like the general Xenophon and the comic poet
Aristophanes who lampoon Socrates as the proprietor of a thinking shop

Infamous socratic method was captured most vividly by Plato in a series of imaginary conversations
known as THE DIALOGUES.

He made his mentor the main character in more than 20 books including the republic.

The action begins at the port of Piraeus just outside Athens. Socrates bumps into old friend invites
him home to party. Conversations occurred all night.

If anybody knows what it means to be a Good and just person it is you

Book like Johnny Carson show here we are gathered talking let’s…

They talked about the notion of justice.

Man has lent you a weapon and now wants to have it back but in the meanwhile he believes that his
wife is having an affair with someone else, desperate to kill himself, would it be right to give him
what is rightfully his? If no, hindi babalik, so doing the right thing would in fact be doing the wrong
thing. otherwise

Everyone is just doing what is in their best interests. Reality is, justice in this day and age is what is
in the interest of the stronger party. The advantage goes to the unjust person every single time.
MIGHT MAKES RIGHT

Socrates smashes the theory that might makes right. Back in Athens, MIGHT SMASHED RIGHT.
Leader of the shaky democracy had only recently lost the Peloponnesian war; they were tired of
being stung by the sharp tongue of Socrates

In 399 BC, the 69 year old philosopher was brought to trial for undermining the system

Charge: He did not believe in the gods of the city corrupted the young.

Socrates showed you how to find holes in what other people believed but never substitute something
positive in its place and that was seen as a very dangerous thing which in fact it was.

Trial was attended by half of Athens including plato.

Socrates is offered freedom if he would just stop questioning people. He REFUSED. Reason:
Unexamined life is not worth living. FOUND GUILTY.

Sentenced to free meals, at city halls by 500 juries, for the rest of his life.

He was condemned to die by drinking a poison made from the hemlock plant

Debate in the table:

Honesty and morality and justice are qualities that are worth having even if they never bring fame
glory or power.

Compare lives of two men, one poor rather than boring innocent citizen, wrongfully accused of theft
and thrown into jail with the mayor of the city who’s renowned as a dynamic charismatic leader but
who in reality is robbing from the public trust cheating on his wife and getting away all of it.

Socrates answer: VIRTUE IS ITS OWN REWARD

B!: But you have to prove that a good and honest person who goes unrewarded and unrecognized
comes ahead in the end.

S: We’re on.

Begins to fantasize the first utopia in western literature. They can find that good person with the best
life HERE. After all, SOCIETY IS JUST THE SOUL WRIT LARGE. Reason and honor will rule the
republic just like the well-ordered soul.

Alexander Nehamas – professor of philosophy, Princeton university. There is incredible love of

learning, of understanding, of trying to fit all the various pieces of our lives and of the world together
in such a way that makes sense to us. Even if the price is the other, it might be worth paying.
Plato does not want the rulers fighting over money or personal relationships so he does not give the
any.

Every good thing has its downside.

Those who have cannot rule, and those who rule cannot have.

Children are only allowed to hear heroic and uplifting tale to preserve THE REPUBLIC.

Homer’s stories about the gods temper tantrums and carousing with humans are out, so is rowdy
music.
Socrates decrees that any poet who refuses to produce politically correct fairy tales will be banished
from the kingdom.

Joyce Carol Oates , author - The first thing will be to establish a censorship of the writers of fiction
and let the census receive any tale of fiction which is good and reject the bad and we will desire
mothers and nurses to tell their children the authorized ones only. This is just a spirit of the dictator.

Censoring storytelling in ancient in ancient Athens would be like censoring tv in our own culture.

Thomas Pangle, Professor of Political Science, University of Toronto - Socrates’ insistence is the
poets need finally to bow to reason = would be one of the great costs of a perfectly just society

We’re not worker ants.

Allegory of the cave – imagine that this is the only world you have ever known for as long as you can
remember you have been chained here in this cave watching the shadows dance on the wall in front
of you, unknown to you that they are merely reflections cast by the outside world. You believe that
they are all there is to life; this is your reality.

One day, a prisoner breaks loose, drawn to the light he is almost blinded by his first sight of the sun
but little by little he was able to open his eyes and see the world beyond the cave.

We are prisoners right now we are now in the middle of a cave. The freest moments that we have for
plato are moments of imprisonment, slavery.

We all begin in some sense as prisoners of our culture or our religion or our civilization. We’re given
answers to the most fundamental questions what is love, what is a good family, who is god?

Pragmatism – modern philosophy taugh in our schools

- We just simply cant really transcend our own time and culture, that we have to just deal with
the world that’s given to us.
 Now, plato would say that means just rearranging the shadows on the walls of our cave.

One of the tasks with the republic is to bring people out of the cave where theyre not so theyre not
looking at shadows but looking at the real thing out into the sun.

If there’s a cave today, and shadows that people are looking at is the sort of darkened living room at
four in the afternoon with those images flickering across the screen miseducating the young.

Are his fellow prisoners thrilled to learn that the real world is out there, not exactly. Plato ends the
story that theey would tear the enlightened one limb from limb, if they could break their chains. He
has challenged everything they believe in.

I1: Once you have seen the light it is hard to go back.

Socrates discovered that it is a LONELY JOB being the BEARER of NEW IDEAS. So, si Socrates
yung prisoner na tinutukoy. And by his discovery of the life and light outside the cave, the same is a
lonely job bearing the same.

Did the founders of the American republic ever consider the arguments in plato’s republic?

Thomas Jefferson – wrote john adams to complain while wading through whimsies and
unintelligible jargon of this work, I laid it down often to ask myself: How it could have been that the
world should have so long consented to give reputation to such nonsense. This was after all the man
who wrote the declaration of independence.

I2: We too have myths, our noble lies, the declaration of independence prior to a probing
philosophical analysis which very few people undertake. It really comes to us and is taught to us
when we’re young as a kind of myth a kind of poetry a kind of a beautiful belief; and what the
philosopher in our society if he was a socratic would have to do is question it doubt it ask what do we
mean by human rights do exist?

The republic was plato’s ultimate attempt to vindicate Socrates way of life.

In the allegory of the cave, he says that the escaped prisoner cannot sit alone forever under the sky of
ideas. It is the philosopher’s job (s) to return to the cave and to try gradually to turn others away from
the shadows.
In the 24th century since it was written (TR) – TR sired hundreds of imaginary worlds in
1516 = Thomas Moore – named the mythical kingdom he modeled on plato, utopia. In Greek, means
BOTH NO PLACE and GOOD PLACE.

Plato may have also inspired the wizard of OZ, whose four characters seem to symbolize his for
cardinal virtues: Courage, wisdom, compassion, and moderation.

Like S, they journey over the rainbow in search of SELF-KNOWLEDGE.

Sigmund Freud - studied plato. The inventor of psychiatry, divided the human psyche into the id,
the ego, and the superego. An intriguing resemblance to plato’s balance of reaon, honor, and passion
in the well-ordered human soul.

I3: Plato tells us that VIRTUE IS INTERNAL to a person. That it is the harmony of the soul.

Morality is like health.

Morality is the health of the soul, it is essential to a happy and meaningful life regardless of the
consequences.

COMPARE: Sane, well-balanced person or just appearing to be one? Would live it or act the part?
Even if no one ever notices or applauds?

I4: Usually when we are in trouble, we easily think to get out of trouble. Plato: THINKING CAN BE
A FEAST and a FRENZY and that PHILOSOPHY IS that THINKING AS A FEAST.

The WONDER, plato says is the beginning of philosophy.

We are still wondering about all of the question he set down all those centuries ago, searching for
WISDOM and JUSTICE and finding an imperfect approximation. Struggling between reality and
illusion, reason and passion, politics and philosophy, public and private, body and soul. And
probably we always will be.

Ideal society vs today’s society

SUMMARY:

The work is considered a formative influence on the development of political theory and the role of
philosophy in society
CASE DIGESTS: After final exam – check syllabus

NOTES:

Premium datur
Plato - syllabi

I to II

Bernanrdo - philosophy

Natural law
Aristotle

Nicole Mc ethics

ETIMOLOGY -
Origin

Sophia

Feeling - to love

Sophia - wisdom

Study of man
Philanthropy
Philadelphia

Sophia
Sophia

Philosophy
Greeks belief multiplicity
Son God
Depart

Val

convention of people

legalvpostivism
Natural law

Status quo - philosophizing

Wonder
Why should there be rather than not be?

Contingent

Question:

Why should there be rather than not be?

Is there anything outside of consciousness
Does freewill really exist
Who are you?
What gives life meaning?
Do human rights really exist?
What is a just society?

Yellow papers -

The answers are the questions

What is the end and beginning of the universe

Opened ended
Who am I

Acquired of all things reasons and pribcipkes

Acquired by human and alone

Science
Organized body of knowledge
Gather over the long period of time

Philosophy - science of all things

Quinn quivy
Scentia is serum percausas remas
⁃ Dealing with their ultimate causes and principles.
Quo - but through the aid of human reason alone

Theology -Through revelation

Theodecy - From natural reason

Cosmology study of universe

Epistomology understand understanding knowing knowing.

What is truth knowledge what is doubt

Metaphysics

Being vs capital being

Existence and essence
Substance v accident
Life world
Beyond physics

Aristotle
ethics
logic - correct reasoning; right thinking

Philosophy of language, science, and law.

⁃ Rule of reason just and obligatory

Constitutional law - matter of police water (law)

Survey of the classics

Meet the greatest mind in human civilization

De Leon
PLATO - watch documentary

1. Be mindful of the characters of the republic

Character
2. Who are the authors
3. What did they say
4. 10 lessons
5. Suitable quotes

The Republic - Donald sutherland

Great books plato a republic

All of mankind's are sold

Father of philosophy

Socrates
Plato
Worship beauty and athens
Democracy
Golden age

Philipenwsian wars

Athenian democracy to dictators

He was there to make people uncomfortable

Socratic method - dialogue

Good and just person - plato

William bennett
Secretary - right thing

Stronger part - Socrates strikes the notion that

Unexamined life - socrates

Poison
Justice and equality - fame and glory
Simple society
First euthopia

Good person with the best life

Alexander Nehams - Princeton University Philo prof

Socrates - politically correct fairytales, vanish

Thames Langley Toronto, polsci

Allegory of the cave - middle of the cave. Moments of slaveey. Civilization

Out of the cave, to the son -

Plato's Republic v American republic

⁃ philo job to return to the cave and reserve others
⁃ Wizard of Oz

Socrates

SF studied platonic,

Virtue is internal to a person

Morality for a happy and meaningful life
Thinking is a feast

Harry

Plato - aocratuc tripartite's soul stratification of society and classes theory of

specialization, allegory of the cave, role of education in a just society, and what is law.
What is natural law?

Aristotle - theological, virtue, golden mean, and justice? Law?

Ideal form of government