8/29 Introduction

● Mythic poetry of the poet Hesiod (700BC)

○ Cosmogony as theogony (origins of the gods)
○ People of this era lacked scientific technology or analytical methods of regarding
these questions
○ Hesiod claims the Muses told him how everything came to be, originating in
chaos (unknowable, dark, mysterious)
■ Chaos - the abyss
■ Gaia (Earth) Tartaros (Underworld) Eros (Sexual Love)
■ Night and Darkness came from Chaos, who mate a give birth to Air and
Day
■ Earth gives birth to Ouranos (Sky/Heaven), Mountains and Sea
■ Earth mates with Ouranos and bears the Titans, including Rheia and
Kronos
■ Ouranos forces children back into Earth
■ Earth plots with Kronos, who attacks his father
■ Kronos and Rheia bear the Olympians, including Zeus
■ Kronos fears the same fate form his children, so he starts to eat them
■ Rheia tricks Kronos and saves Zeus, then she makes Kronos vomit up
their children
■ Zeus leads them in battle against Kronos and the Titans
■ Zeus becomes supreme
○ Explains how the world and the gods came to be
9/3
● What were the Melesians doing differently?
○ Gave reasons based on evidence and argument
○ Believed the natural world can be explained without referring to anything beyond
nature
○ Took nature as a whole to be orderly and intelligible
● 500s BC
○ Century after Hesiod’s Theogony
○ From Miletus (in present day Turkey)
○ Thales preceded and taught Anaximander, who preceded and taught
Anaximenes
● Major Questions
○ What does everything come from?
○ Why is the earth at rest?
● Thales
○ Moonism - there is some fundamental thing from which everything else is formed
○ Claimed either everything is in some form water OR everything originates in
water
■ Water is “transformable”, changes states based on conditions
■ Living things depend upon water, sustains the existence of things
■ Seeds of all things are moist
○ The earth floats on water
○ Soul is the fundamental element that makes a thing alive
● Anaximander
○ The apeiron, the boundless, the infinite
■ This mist surrounds the earth, and through gaps we see stars, the Sun,
the moon
■ Something comes off of the boundless, hot and cold
■ Everything comes from the boundless, which is in motion
○ Sees earth as a cylinder, like the top of a pillar
○ Remains at rest because all objects are the same distance from it, so there’s no
tendency for it to move in any direction
● Anaximenes
○ Air is fundamental, through condensation and rarefaction it is made into
everything else
■ Air at different densities produces everything
■ Through condensation air, cloud, water, earth, stone
■ Through rarefaction air, fire
○ Earth is a disc sitting on a cushion of air
● Hesiod vs Milesians
○ Difference comes in what each account is based in/justified by
■ Hesiod - divine authority of the Muses
■ Milesians - physical observations of nature
○ Hesiod’s justification was unquestionable, not open to critique
○ These theories of the origin of everything rely on extrapolating aspects of our
observations to everything (humanity, conflict, sex, nourishment by water,
condensation and rarefaction of air)
9/5 Xenophanes
● Wrote in poetry, pulling from conventions of Hesiod and Homer, but vehemently
opposing the content of those legends
● The Milesians didn’t criticize the rationality of conventional beliefs, Xenophanes did
● Big Points
○ Taking issue with the myths and legends of the gods
○ The gods do not give knowledge to humans, it must be discovered through
inquiry
○ It’s a mistake to value athleticism and strength above wisdom
○ May have been monotheistic, rejecting conventional polytheism
■ This point is disputed based on certain quotations
○ Points out a tendency for mortals to project their form onto gods
■ If god is infinitely beyond us, we shouldn’t view him in our own image
■ Experience is inevitably somewhat framed in the context of self, so when
we inquire about the gods we may mistake that framing for reality
● Early attempt at epistemology
○ uncritical beliefs → inquiry based belief → knowledge
○ Even if knowledge is unattainable, through inquiry we can improve our view of
the world
The Sophists
● Context
○ Fundamentally moral and social thinkers
○ Peloponnesian War led to questioning of traditional values
○ Growth of democracies called for a new civic virtue: ability to speak persuasively
in assemblies
○ Sophists took on anyone who could pay
○ Whether morality is a matter of nature or convention
○ Sophistry - prioritizing persuading the reader over conveying truth
○ Rhetoric - discipline that teaches the techniques of persuasion
○ Demands for Sophistic teaching
■ Need to defend oneself in the courts
■ Gave students the ability to verbally manipulate others
○ Greek “Democracy”
■ Women and slaves are excluded from citizenship
■ Direct Democracy - all citizens (non-slave males) directly influenced
government
○ Origins
■ “sophia” - wisdom
■ “anthropos” - human being
● Protagoras
○ Context
■ Born in Abdera around 490
■ Part of circle around Pericles
■ Claimed no knowledge of the gods
○ “A human being is the measure of all things”
■ Suggests that absolute truth independent of human perception and belief
doesn’t exist
● Disagreement doesn’t have a true and false claim, but a range of
diverse perspectives
● Truth is relative to human belief
○ “If one believes something is so, than it is so” falls apart
pretty quickly
○ Perhaps this relativism is mainly applied to morality and
value judgements rather than facts and reality
● Relativism vs Skepticism
○ Relativism - truth is relative to how it seems
○ Skepticism - whether something’s true or not, cannot be
known
■ Prioritizes social “practical” considerations above those that are beyond
us, such as the origins of the cosmos
● Human-centric view vs a god-centric view
○ Ignorance of the gods’ existence and nature
○ Two opposing arguments can be found on any issue
 ○ Through persuasive rhetoric “make the weaker argument the stronger”
● Gorgias
○ Context
■ Born around 483 BC
■ Student of Epedocles
○ On Not-Being
○ In Praise of Helen
■ Helen of Troy left king Menelaos for prince Paris, starting the Trojan War,
leading many to blame her for the conflict
■ “logos” - speech, account, argument, reason
■ Removes blame from Helen, who was persuaded and misled by Paris’
“false logos”
● As people do not accurately perceive reality, persuasion is a
powerful force used to manipulate one another
● Speech is like a drug
■ Gorgias’ also inherently weaves a false logos
Euthyphro
● Historical Context
○ 400s BC, Sophists and Socrates (died 399) active
○ Wars Involving Athens
■ Persian War
● Victory strengthened faith in the Greek identity
● Athens headed an alliance of Greek city-states
■ Peloponnesian War
● Athens fights Sparta, another city-state, Athens defeated
● Defeat led to the period of the Thirty, who attempted to rule
authoritatively
○ Plato invited to join them
○ Tried to force Socrates to seize someone, he refused
○ Greek Democracy
○ Emergence of great artistic expression
● Socrates
○ Never wrote what he believed, only recorded through Plato, who’s representation
of Socrates is inconsistent
○ Plato’s first 3 writings are believed to be an accurate depiction of historical
Socrates
○ Xenophon and Aristophanes (comic playwright) also wrote Socratic works
○ Xenophon
■ More favorable depiction, hard to understand why he bothered so many
○ Aristophanes
■ Socrates is a character in “The Clouds”
■ Parody of Sophists and natural philosophers
● Euthyphro
○ Context
■ Socrates accused of impiety, created new gods and not honoring old
gods, corrupting the youth
■ Euthyphro is accusing his father of murder of a man who killed a slave, he
believes this is pious
● Euthyphro claims superior knowledge of the gods, special
authority
■ S professes to become E’s student
● S speaks to many people who claim great wisdom, then poke
holes and question that wisdom
● Socratic irony
○ E - piousness is accusing the murder regardless of some relation to them
■ Cites Zeus imprisoning his father Kronos
■ S doesn’t believe these stories, and rejects this single example for a
model by which to judge piety
● Since E claims a superior level of expertise on piety, he should be
able to provide the standard by which he determines piety
 ● Anti-Socratic wisdom: ethical wisdom consists in having good
judgment and being sensitive to context
○ E - what is loved by the gods is pious
■ S - what kind of disagreements lead to fighting?
● Disagreements in which there isn’t some way of measuring an
exact answer by some agreed upon metric
● Gods fighting reveals disagreement on justice, goodness
■ As gods fight and disagree, some things will be both pious and impious
● Could piety be a relative concept?
○ If so, piety can’t really be used to guide our actions or
morals
Euthyphro 2
● Plato’s dialogues featuring Socrates and the “what is it?” question seek to define
different fundamental ideas (courage, justice, piety), never actually reaching a
satisfactory definition
● S and E assume that something that is pious is good or just to do
○ A more general moral issue beyond piety
● The Euthyphro Question
○ Is something pious because the gods love it, or do gods love something because
it is pious?
○ E - gods love something because it is pious
■ S points out that the sequence of claims is inconsistent
■ Pious = god-loved
■ God-loved is god-loved bc the gods love it
■ Piety is NOT pious bc the gods love it
○ Opposing position
■ Can piety be as transient as a product of a god’s will?
● Can God, beyond time and of a certain consistent quality, change
his mind one day and reshape morality or piety?
■ If morality is only up to a god, isn’t that pretty arbitrary?
● What part of justice is piety?
○ E - tending to the gods
■ S - do we make the gods better by our offerings?
● Perhaps a difference between a need or reliance upon and a
desire for happiness?
○ E - service to the gods
■ S - to accomplish what?
● Improve humanity
■ Why would the gods want to use us?
○ Perhaps piety is not done for the gods, but defined by the gods in their
knowledge to be the best way to behave?
The Apology
● Athenian court
○ 100s of jurors (citizens)
○ No judge or lawyers
○ No appeal
○ Accusers and accused both propose a penalty, jury decides
■ Accusers ask for the death penalty
■ S asks for free meals, as heroes of the Olympics would receive
● Defense
○ Earlier accusers
■ The charges that bring S to court are against the backdrop of years of
slander and misrepresentation of his character
■ Blames comic playwright Aristophanes
■ S portrayed as a caricature of a nature philosopher and a Sophist
● Teaches anyone who pays a fee
● “Making the weaker argument the stronger”
■ S claims no knowledge of the origin of nature or how to make the weaker
argument the stronger
● No one can testify otherwise
■ The Oracle
● Says that no one is wiser than S
● S goes around trying to prove someone else is wiser, finds by
examination that no one actually has the wisdom they claim
○ Politicians, poets, craftsmen
● Many follow him around as he does this, entertained by his
arguments with the high-and-mighty
● While some have wisdom S lacks, he says no one has wisdom
regarding how to live a good life, “the most important things”
○ Wisdom, truth, best possible condition of the soul
○ S says most people put wealth, reputation above virtue
○ An excellent person is pious, just, courageous, and has
moderation
○ Later accusers
■ Charges
● Corrupting the young
● Not acknowledging the gods
● New daimonic activities
○ Something like an angel/demon speaks to him internally
■ Contradiction of listening to daimon but not believing in gods
● Guided by an internal voice
● Devotes his life to fulfilling a mission from Apollo
■ Socrates is the only one in Athens who corrupts, everyone else improves
the youth
● Miletus says S willingly corrupts
 ● Would S do something to bring harm to himself?
■ S concludes that Miletus had not thought through his accusation
■ By cross-examining Miletus, S demonstrates his methods to the jury
○ Criticism of Socrates
■ S doesn’t directly claim he doesn’t corrupt, but that he either doesn’t, or
he does unwillingly
● By examination, S undermines a person’s confidence in their
ability to tell right from wrong, etc.
● They become selfish and cynical, perhaps corrupted
○ Could S quit?
■ He would disobey Apollo
■ S
The Crito
● Injustice of S’s conviction is a given between S and Crito
● Large Issues
○ What reasons do we have to comply with political authority?
○ What makes political authority or government legitimate?
● “listens to nothing within me but the argument that on reflection seems best to me”
○ Doesn’t maintain that self-interest and justice are at odds
○ Injustice makes your soul inferior, hurting your body
● Crito’s Case
○ Not right to give up your life when you can save it
○ Shouldn’t abandon his sons
○ Don’t give his enemies what they want
○ Majority will think his friends failed him
● S - justice of the decision at hand is all that matters
● On Opinion of Majority
○ Should trust the opinions of the wise, not the majority
○ Doctor or physical trainer example
● Political Philosophy
○ Socrates has no faith in majority opinion, and yet he gives up his life to uphold
democracy
● Civil Disobedience
○ Is S’s ideology incompatible with civil disobedience?
○ If S escapes prison, he evades the enforcement of the law
○ In civil disobedience, a law is broken but the penalty is enforced, upholding the
authority of the law while questioning the justice of it
● Would S’s escape undermine the law?
○ Prove his accusers right and actually corrupt the youth
○ Should we ever return injustice?
■ S says never
○ Is S obligated to uphold the law since he’s always lived in Athens?
○ Are there no conditions in which political upheaval would be just?
■ Maybe because he would only be rebelling now that he was subjected to
unjust punishment
■ Perhaps given the freedoms provided to Athenian citizens
● Ability to leave freely
● Option to persuade the system of its injustice
● When did S make this agreement with Athens?
● Disobeying the 30 Tyrants?
● The Laws Personified
○ “Striking Back”
■ Requires a relationship is based on equality, not the case with the law
■ Citizens benefit in many ways from the system of the laws in a one-sided
way, “parent-child relationship”
○ “Agreement Breaking”
 ■ Breaks his just agreement to live under the laws
● Supposedly an agreement made without coercion
■ Is the law not upholding their side of this agreement (“abusive parent”),
and would S not be free to revoke the agreement?
● Maybe the law’s “breach of agreement” is not new, and to take
issue with it when he was subjected to its punishment would be
unjust
○ Escape would be unjust
● How does this extend to cases beyond S?
Parmenides
● Senses vs Theoretical Reason, Appearance and Reality
● How can something both change and be the same?
● The Poem
○ A goddess welcomes the hero
■ Meeting people where they are, before he says a bunch of weird stuff
■ Maybe asserting that the perspective he’s about to share is the divine
perspective, usually beyond human grasp
■ Doesn’t claim divine authority, goddess invites him to discern her points
with reason, but avoid sensory illusions
○ Possible destinations of an inquiry
■ That “it is”
● Only real conclusion
■ That “it is not”
● Can you think or declare what is not? If you declare what is not,
which is nothing, then you really aren’t declaring anything
■ That “it is” and “is not”
● It’s impossible for something to be and not be
○ Can we really not think of what is not?
■ If we are thinking of something, that thought “is”, whether or not there’s a
physical form of this thought
○ If what is is generated, then at one time it isn’t, then later it is
■ To generate something that is, then it must come into being from nothing
■ What is cannot be generated
○ What is is not perishable
○ If what is changes or moves, then it would be created or destroyed
■ An interpretation of Parmenides can be fitted to our understanding of
matter and energy, rearranging to form different objects of our senses
■ Though these objects are created and destroyed, matter and energy are
conserved, never really changing with respect to themselves
Empedocles and Democritus
● Represent an effort to renew the project of natural philosophy after Parmenides
● Empedocles: Four Roots, Two Motive Forces
○ All things are formed of earth, air, fire, and water
■ These things cannot be broken down any further
○ The roots are brought together by Love and separated by Strife
■ These “forces” are responsible for natural physical separation and union,
as well as connection and division among people
○ Nothing comes into being or passes away, rather elements separate and are
brought back together in different forms
○ The mixing and separation of roots occurs according to an all-encompassing
eternal cycle
■ Love is fully ascendent when all roots are equally mixed, forming a single
homogenous sphere
■ Strife is dominate when the roots are each fully separated from one
another, forming concentric spheres
○ Darwin cites Aristotle, and thus Empedocles, for foreshadowing natural selection
■ He says that by chance, certain human features and characteristics came
together over time
■ The human being form persists
○ He puts forward a version of reincarnation linked to how we conduct ourselves
■ Vegetarian, chooses not to eat flesh of other living things
■ What part of us persists through rearrangement of the elements so that
the same person may be reincarnated in many forms?
● Democritus: Atomic Theory
○ “What is, has within it no division, is ungenerated, and imperishable”
○ Unlimited number of such beings, moving through the “void”
■ Says atoms vary in shape, size, position, are colorless, odorless,
tasteless
● Things are sweet, bitter, hot, cold, colored only by convention
● In reality, there are only atoms and the void
■ The “void”, what is not, allows for change through the motion of atoms
Phaedo
● “psuche” - soul
○ Does the soul decay with our physical bodies?
● Continues themes from Parmenides, Empedocles, Democritus
○ “theory of Forms”
○ “Platonic idea” of a thing
○ Understanding of an immortal soul
○ What is distinctive about philosophy as way of life
○ Attitudes toward bodily desires, the senses, reason, and death
● “eidos” - idea
○ Something beyond any single mind, a concept to be grasped beyond the physical
● “To practice philosophy in the right way is to practice for dying and death.”
○ Philosophical life as “self-purification”
○ Work to minimize the influence of bodily pleasure and desires in order to increase
philosophical understanding
○ Bodily pleasure and pain bind you to your physical body and blind you to true
reality
○ asceticism - denial of bodily comfort to become closer to the divine
● Parallels
○ Empedocles “purification” by avoiding bloodshed to achieve desirable
reincarnation
○ Oppose to Socrates’ thoughts on death in the Apology, perspective on philosophy
as a practice of self-examination
■ On death: dreamlessly sleeping forever or joining those who have already
died
● How does bodily desire hinder pursuit of knowledge?
○ Time-management, only so much time can be split between these pursuits
○ According to Plato, to engage and give into bodily desire is to bound your soul to
it, after death it will become a donkey or a bee or something
● Following senses or following reason frames perspective on reality
○ If senses are prioritized:
■ Focuses on sense perceptible things
○ If reason:
■ Focuses on pure and absolute ideas beyond the physical world
○ Plato claims that some things are “more real” than others
■ Things perceived by the senses are deficient, as they are transient and
temporary
■ Those absolutes discerned with reason are completely real and eternal
● Platonic Forms
○ There is something by which the many F things are all F
■ F = equal, good, just, large, small, pious, beautiful, etc.
○ This thing is beyond and separable from the many F
○ The many F are deficiently not fully F, but the idea of F is absolute and complete
● Recollection Argument
 ○ Learning isn’t to take something in, but to draw something out of yourself from
what is already there
● Connection to Empedocles
○ A just action is not entirely just without qualification, but only the pure form of
justice is entirely and always just
○ An action, or anything in this world, is either composed of or reflects many
different absolute forms, and thus is not entirely any one of them
■ Empedocles: all things are formed by different mixtures of the purest
things united by Love
○ The composite is more likely to decay rather
Republic Books VI and VII Excerpt: Forms, Education, and Philosophy
● Conceptions of the Philosophical Life
○ Euthyphro/Apology/Crito
■ Ethical self-examination
■ Bring to one clarity one’s basic beliefs about how to live in order to live a
better, more just life
■ Agnostic about afterlife
■ Elusiveness of genuine wisdom
○ Phaedo
■ “Purifying the soul” through intellectual inquiry, minimal concern for bodily
desires
■ Satisfy one’s desire to understand through a grasp of the forms
■ “Preparation for death” at which point the soul is set free from the body
■ Bodily desires impede one’s pursuit of understanding, only can be
achieved after death
○ Republic
■ Forms are models of perfection, ultimate source of intelligibility
■ They are changeless, imperceptible by senses, intelligible only to reason
■ What is it to be ruled by reason?
■ 3 Sources of Motivation
● Reason: want to understand, grasp the truth
● Appetite: hunger, thirst, lust
● Thumos (Spirit): anger, pride, shame
■ To be ruled by reason is to be a genuine philosopher
○ Departures
■ Seems to suggest that the Forms can be discerned in this life, as
opposed to the Phaedo
● What is it to love learning?
○ Wants to understand what is in an unqualified, full, non-deficient way
○ The Forms
■ There are many beautiful things, but also a beautiful itself
■ Intelligible but not visible, those things in our world are visible but not
intelligible, only approximating the Forms
● Plato’s Suggestions
○ Women are no different than men in their capacity
○ Philosophers should rule the state, as they understand the Form of the Good and
see ruling as a duty rather than a position of power
● The Sun and the Form of the Good
○ As the Sun enables those with vision to see objects, the Form of the Good makes
the Forms intelligible to reason
○ The Form of the Good is also responsible for all the Forms and what they are
■ Maybe to grasp a Form is to grasp some standard of goodness and
perfection of that kind
● The Line
 ○ Divide line between the Visible and the Intelligible
■ Divide Visible into imagination and belief or opinion
■ Divide Intelligible into thought and understanding (achieves a grasp of first
principles)
● Thought - mathematics lacks an account of its assumptions, takes
basis for granted
● Understanding - by “dialectic” achieve a grasp of first principles,
account of what thought takes for granted
● Effect of Education and its Lack
○ Complete lack → prisoners chained in a cave looking at shadows
■ Truth is nothing but shadows they see
○ Being released and compelled to look at themselves, the fire, the objects and the
light is uncomfortable and arduous
○ After adjusting to the light, they conclude that the sun causes all of the things
they used to see
Aristotle
● “in all natural things there is something admirable”
○ Nature “provides amazing pleasures for those who are capable of recognizing the
causes”
○ To understand an octopus is to understand its parts, functions and structure
○ Study of natural, perceptible, changeable things
■ Aristotle pursued biological structure in hopes of understanding causes
and fundamental principles
■ Departure from atomism, instead focused at the macro-scale and
functional structures
● Teleological
○ “telos” - goal, end, purpose
● “All human beings by nature desire to know”
○ It is natural for us to pursue knowledge for its own sake
○ This is indicated by our favoring of perception and our senses
■ Natural curiosity, desire to look out the window
■ This perceptual knowledge is universal to humanity, lowest level
● Levels to Wisdom
○ Sense-perception
○ Memory → Experience: recognize that a number of particulars are all of a certain
kind
○ These generalizations → Art or Craft: need to form a universal view about similar
things
○ Wisdom increases as we achieve greater generality
● Wisdom Answers Why
○ Those with knowledge of a craft are wiser than those with mere experience
■ Possess a rational account of why things generally are a certain way
■ In a better position to teach
○ Eventually Why reaches the depth of “first principles”
● The Wiser Person’s Knowledge
○ is as broad as possible without requiring knowledge of all particulars
○ is more difficult to know
○ is more exact
○ better enables to teach
○ is worthy of pursuit for its own sake
○ superior to other, subordinate knowledge
○ Theoretical Wisdom
■ Assumes that such knowledge and fundamental wisdom exists and is
within human grasp
● Pursuit of sciences for their own sake emerged when people were allowed leisure
○ Since our drive toward knowledge and why persists once our needs are met, its
utility is exhausted, this compulsion must be inherent to human nature
Aristotle Metaphysics
● “archai” - starting points, first principles
● Physics - study of changeable things
○ “phusis” - nature
● Cause - explanatory factor
● To find first principles
○ Start with what is better known to us, progress to that better known by nature
○ “endoxa” - common or reputable beliefs, common sense
○ “aporiai” - problems or puzzles raised against endoxa
■ Resolving these problems gains a deeper understanding
● A raises an aporia in the form of Parmenides’ claim that change is impossible
○ “The man becomes literate”
○ “The illiterate man becomes a literate man”
○ Something that comes to be F, remains when it comes to be F
○ “The literate comes from the illiterate”
○ F comes to be from (or out of) G
● “Can something come to be from what is not?”
○ Without any qualification, no
○ Yes if: something F can come to be from what is not, insofar as it is not F,
provided that what is not F is something else, G, which remains
● Matter and Form
○ What comes to be is a composite of matter and form
○ A accepts Empedocles’ notion of the elements, saying that at some level these
elements emerge as pure that cannot be decomposed further
● A digests and critiques the thoughts of his predecessors
● What is a thing’s “nature”?
○ Source of change and stability
○ A certain starting-point and cause of changing and resting in that to which it
belongs primarily, not coincidentally
● Potentiality and Actuality
○ Form of natural composites is nature more than matter
○ What makes something actually F is the nature of F
○ Actuality
○ Reproduction
○ Maturation
● The Four Causes
○ Matter - that out of which something is constituted
○ Form - makes something the kind of thing it is
○ Efficient - primary source of change or remaining unchanged
○ Final - for the sake of which something is
● A explains biology by appealing to “final causes”
Republic, Book I
● Socrates talks with Cephalus
○ C says that justice is always speaking the truth and paying one’s debts
○ S brings up counterexample of returning weapons to a person who has gone
mad
● Polemarchus takes over
○ P says justice is to give to each what is owed, to benefit your friends and harm
your enemies
○ S argues that it cannot be just to harm one’s enemies, as then a good person
would be someone who, by being good, makes others worse
● Thrasymachus enters
○ T says justice is the advantage of the stronger in reference to government
■ Justice is determined by the laws created by governing powers, which will
create laws that are advantageous for the established rule
■ Certain relativism of justice to those who are in power
○ S counters by suggesting citizens must obey laws set by fallible rulers who
inadvertently work to their disadvantage
■ T says a true ruler never makes mistakes in his ruling
○ S asks if every craft seeks the advantage of that at which it is directed
■ T: the shepherd doesn’t seek the advantage of the sheep
■ S differentiates between a shepherd acting as a caretaker and a
money-maker
○ T claims that it is much more advantageous to be completely unjust than to be
just
■ The “tyrrant” appropriates the possessions of citizens, kidnaps, kills, and
yet is called blessed
■ You lie cheat and steal until you rise to a very high position of power
○ Socrates’ “function” argument
■ Argues that justice is the proper virtue of the soul, thus we cannot live well
without justice
■
● Themes
○ What does one gain by living a good and virtuous life?
Ethics
● One can aim at a goal both for its own sake and for the sake of some further goal
● Though we can pursue the happy and best life, we cannot insure our happiness against
misfortune
Ethics III
●