Part I: Early Greek Philosophy

1. Everything is Full of Gods: Thales

1. Everything is made of water
2. The Earth is a disk and floats on water
3. Magnets have souls, because they can move other things

2. Infinity and Beyond: Anaximander and Anaximenes

1. Anaximander
a. Everything comes out of “The Boundless”, an indescribable element
b. Fire and mist separate out of the Boundless, and constantly oppose one another
c. The fire seen through this mist is stars
d. The first human children could not survive without humans to take care of them,
so adult humans lived in and then were birthed by fish
e. The Earth is shaped like a drum
2. Anaximenes
a. Everything is made of air
i. Example: Thinner air is fire, and thicker air is clouds, still thicker air is
water, and even thicker air is earth and rock
b. The Earth is a disk (composed of thicker air) that floats on thinner air
c. The human soul is made of air, because when we are alive we breathe

3. Created in Our Image: Xenophanes

1. From Ionia; travelled widely
2. Poetic conception of gods is too anthropomorphic
3. Rather, God is pure thought, immaterial, and singular
4. Distinguished between what we can believe, vs what we know

4. The Man with the Golden Thigh: Pythagoras

1. Not much known about Pythagoras himself
2. Started a religious cult
3. Cult split into two:
a. Those who emphasized the religious rituals
b. Those who emphasized math
4. Everything is composed of numbers
5. Music is mathematical
6. Humans reincarnate after death
5. Old Man River: Heraclitus
1. Everything is made of fire
2. Presented a Logos: an account of everything there is
3. Nature is one unified whole, a whole which includes many different things
4. Proposed the unity of opposites:
a. Example: “the road up is the same as the road down”
5. Unity depends on constant strife or opposition
6. Heavenly bodies are bowls of fire, turned with the bottom towards us
7. The soul is fire because:
a. Living things are warm
8. When we die our soul becomes water because:
a. Water is the opposite of fire

6. The Road Less Travelled: Parmenides

1. Non-being cannot be spoken of
2. Non-being cannot exist, by definition
3. Change cannot occur because then something would come to be from non-being, which
doesn’t exist
4. There is no multiplicity, because the only thing other than being is non-being, so the only
thing that can separate two beings is non-being, which cannot exist
5. Everything is really One: a spherical singular object
6. Split his writing into two: the way of truth (how things really are; unchanging, singular)
and the way of opinion (how things seem: multiple, changing, etc)

7. You Can’t Get There from Here: The Eleatics

1. Zeno
a. Motion paradox
i. before an object can reach a location, it must get halfway, but before it
can get halfway, it must get halfway to halfway, etc
b. Multiplicity paradox
i. A and B are different, so object C is between them; then between A and
C is D…etc
c. Arrow paradox
i. at any given moment the arrow is still with respect to the space it is in
2. Melissus
a. Since there is no non-being, then there isn’t any place for being to move into, so
motion is impossible
 b. The singular One that everything is is not spherical, like Parmenides said, but
rather boundless

8. The Final Cut: The Atomists

1. Atomists
a. Everything is composed of atoms, which are all different shapes and sizes
b. In addition to atoms, there is also the void: not space, but the non-being of the
Eleatics, and thus the atomists are directly replying to the Eleatics
c. There is an infinite number of atoms, because...
i. ...the atomists believed in the principle of sufficient reason, and if there
were a finite number of atoms there would be no explanation for why that
number of atoms rather than some other
d. Atoms stream off things and into our eyes, and that is how we can see
e. Atoms have always existed:
i. Thus agreeing with Parmenides’ doctrine of permanence
f. Atoms swirl and the bigger ones clump together and become earth, and the
lighter ones get flung out and become the heavens
g. Also, since there is an infinite number of atoms but we can’t see them, then there
must be an infinite number of worlds, including worlds just like ours but with
minor differences
2. Democritus
a. Like Parmenides, distinguished between appearance (colors, taste, etc) and
reality (atoms and the void)

9. Mind Over Mixture: Anaxagoras

1. Life
a. One of the first to be based in Athens rather than Ionia
2. Philosophy
a. Mind is an element distributed unevenly throughout the universe (man has more,
dogs have less, etc)
b. In the beginning there was substance and Mind; substance included seeds for
everything else, and only Mind is unmixed
c. Mind began causing everything to spin, and lighter stuff was flung off and
becomes the heavens and denser stuff stays down and becomes ground, dirt
rocks
d. Everything is in everything else (thus agreeing with Parmenides that real change
does not occur): food you eat becomes bone, so food must contain bits of bone
10. All You Need is Love, and Five Other Things: Empedocles
1. Life
a. Claimed to be a god
b. Believed in reincarnation
c. Was a vegetarian
d. Fascinated with medicine
2. Philosophy
a. There are four base elements, and these do not change (thus keeping in
agreement with Parmenides) but rather combine in different proportions to form
everything else
b. But why do the elements combine or come apart? Because of two controlling
forces, the balance of which keeps things from being all apart or all one:
i. Love:
● Tends towards togetherness
ii. Strife:
● Pulls things apart
c. This happens in a cosmic cycle
d. Animals form out of this by first limbs and eyes and other body parts, coming
together randomly; the unsuitable ones die out, and the suitable ones continue
e. Reincarnation: there is also a spiritual cycle, like the cosmic cycles

11. Good Humor Men: The Hippocratic Corpus

1. Hippocratic Corpus
a. Hippocrates of Kos is known as the “Father of Medicine” for his large volume of
writings
2. Relation between medicine and philosophy
a. Homer depicts the gods healing people in the Iliad
b. medicine started in the same region as philosophy: Ionia
c. medicine tried to distance itself from popular religion, like philosophy
i. nonetheless, it saw itself as even more sacred since all of nature is divine
ii. diseases are not the gods intervening in human affairs, but is caused by
nature which is caused by God: hearkens to Xenophanes
iii. cult of Asclepius: temple where sick people would sleep and receive
instructions on how to be healed
3. Pre-socratic influence
a. the four elements and Empedocles idea that everything contained everything
 b. sickness results from an imbalance of the four elements
c. advice from doctors entailed diet and exercise, aiming to get the elements back
in balance
4. Focus on “breath”
a. “pneuma” was important for Empedocles, as it is associated with life
b. Diogenes of Apollonia
i. influenced by Anaximenes
ii. air is the primary principle
iii. air is intelligent
iv. all things are made of air in different densities
v. semen is blood mixed with air
5. “On Ancient Medicine”
a. medicine is complex
b. based on experience, and is a kind of art
6. Four humors
a. four balanced principles in the body: blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile
b. “melancholy”
i. disease associated with humor imbalance: too much black bile
c. often refers to what we now know as personality traits, rather than diseases
d. bloodletting developed from this theory
e. Hippocratic authors cautioned to be sparing about bloodletting and similar
techniques
f.

12. Making the Weaker Argument the Stronger: The Sophists

1. Historical Background
a. Athens was a democracy at the time, so upward mobility in the political arena
was a valuable skill
b. The sophists taught the power of persuasion for a fee
c. Plato and Socrates opposed this type of “wisdom for hire,” since it doesn’t involve
a search for truth
2. Protagoras
a. Taught relativism: “Man is the measure of all things”
b. There is no truth; truth is subjective
c. Said he could teach virtue
3. Gorgias
a. Said that persuasive speech is like a drug
b. Wrote a parody of the Eleatics that argued that neither being nor non-being were
real
 Part II: Socrates and Plato
13. Socrates without Plato: The Portrayals of Aristophanes and Xenophon
1. Aristophanes’ Portrayal
a. Motivation was to mock Socrates
b. Socrates was portrayed as a sophist in his play Clouds
c. This directly contradicts Plato and other portrayals of Socrates
2. Xenophon’s Portrayal
a. Motivation was to defend Socrates
b. Socrates is devoted to the gods
c. Not only accepted death at his trial, but was extremely arrogant
d. Socrates taught that politics is better performed when someone has knowledge

14. Method Man: Plato’s Socrates

1. Trial described in Apology, plea to escape described in Crito, and execution described in
Phaedo
2. Used the Socratic Method: teach by asking questions; because Socrates doesn’t know
the answer himself
3. Socratic ignorance: knowing that one does not know
4. Socratic irony: asking someone to define a topic even while knowing that they probably
won’t be able to

15. In Dialogue: The Life and Writings of Plato

1. Socrates turned philosophy toward ethics and away from examination of what the world
is made of
2. Made three failed attempts to depose the Syracuse tyrant Dionysius and his son
3. After foreign travel, Plato came back to Athens to set up his school, the Academy
4. Dialogues divided into three periods:
a. Early period: Socratic dialogues, generally unresolved questions
b. Middle period: less Socratic, more Plato’s actual thoughts; longer and more
ambitious works
c. Late period: longer works like Laws, generally one speaker who dominates the
conversation

16. Know Thyself: Two Unloved Platonic Dialogues

1. “Charmides”
 a. Charmides has a headache, but needs to cure his soul before his body
b. Socrates asks Charmides to define “temperance”
i. Charmides: “Temperance” is doing what one should do
ii. But one should know what one should do, so “temperance” is actually
self-knowledge, or knowing that you know
iii. Ends in stalemate
c. Implication: virtue is knowledge, so the distinction between epistemology and
ethics is a false one
2. “Euthydemus”
a. Two sophists: Euthydemus and Dionysodorus
b. Socrates challenges them to convert a young man, Clinias, to become a
philosopher
i. The two sophists proceed to give bad arguments, demonstrating that one
can prove anything one wants

17. Virtue Meets Its Match: Plato’s Gorgias

1. Socrates wants to know from Gorgias what the art of rhetoric is
a. Gorgias responds that it is the art of persuasion
b. Gorgias also says that it can teach people to be good
2. Socrates suggests that persuasive speech without actually knowing what one is talking
about looks more like the art of making mistakes
3. Socrates thinks rhetoric is more like a knack, or skill, and not a case of genuine
knowledge
a. Polus responds that rhetoric is so powerful that it gives power to kings, tyrants.
4. Socrates retorts that true power lies in doing what is good for you.
a. Polus agrees that justice is admirable and injustice is shameful
5. Socrates responds that justice is admirable because it is pleasurable, beneficial, or both:
a. It is not pleasurable (paying back debts sucks)
b. Therefore it is beneficial
6. And injustice is shameful because they are unpleasant, harmful, or both
a. It is not unpleasant (food, sex, etc)
b. Therefore it is harmful
7. Callicles retorts that justice is bad and injustice is good because the strongest person
should get the greatest rewards
a. Socrates responds that the hedonist is like a leaky jar; pleasures just bring desire
for more pleasure
18. We Don’t Need no Education: Plato’s Meno
1. Meno asks if virtue can be taught
a. Socrates responds that first he needs to know what virtue is
2. Meno responds that each person has their own virtue (a woman’s virtue is to look after
the house, a man’s is to protect, etc)
a. Socrates retorts that these are a list of virtues but not a definition of virtue
b. Side track: what is entailed by a good definition?
3. Meno brings up knowledge paradox:
a. Either you know something, or you don’t
b. If you don’t, then you won’t know you’ve found it
c. If you know it, then you don’t need find it
4. Socrates responds that souls are immortal and we are merely being reminded of things
we already knew
a. Example of a slave boy who can do math when prompted, even though he
doesn’t know math
b. But the slave boy has only true beliefs, not knowledge
c. True belief requires justification (an “account”) in order to be knowledge

19. I Know, Because the Caged Bird Sings: Plato’s Theaetetus

1. Theaetetus says that knowledge is perception
d. Socrates answers that if this is true, then whatever seems to me to be the case
must actually be the case for me
e. Why pay for the doctor when you are just as good a measure of what is true as
the doctor?
5. Relativism is self-refuting
a. the theory of relativism itself is said to be true
6. Knowledge as true belief?
7. Knowledge like wax tablet?
8. Knowledge like caged birds?
9. True belief is best starting point

20. Famous Last Words: Plato’s Phaedo

1. Socrates on death row
2. Immortality of the soul: recollection
3. Immortality of the soul: affinity with Forms
4. Theory of Forms
5. Immortality of the soul: soul as principle of life
6. Description of afterlife
7. Further advantages of Theory of Forms
21. Soul and the City: Justice in Plato’s Republic
1. Thrasymachus and justice as power
2. Glaucon and the invisible ring
3. Socrates and the ideal city
4. Classes in the city: guardians, auxiliaries, and craftsmen
5. Aspects of the soul: reason, spirit, and appetite
6. Increasingly worse governments: timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, tyranny

22. Ain't No Sunshine: The Cave Allegory in Plato’s Republic

1. Philosophers as guardians
2. Knowledge vs belief
3. Rules should have knowledge of the Forms
4. Form of the Good
5. Line segments
6. The cave
7. Misconceptions: radical separation
8. Misconceptions: mysticism

23. Second Thoughts: Plato’s Parmenides and the Forms

1. Statement of the Theory of Forms by Socrates
2. Forms of lesser things like fire, dirt, or man-made things?
3. The concept of participation like a sail?
4. Third man argument
5. Third man argument regarding Form of Similarity
6. Separation between Forms and singulars is too great
7. Socrates unable to answer objections

24. Untying the Not: Plato’s Sophist

1. Philosopher, sophist, and statesman
2. The Philosopher categorizes things at its “natural joints”
3. Sophist as hunter
4. Noble sophist
5. Sophist speaking of non-being?
6. Materialists: being is causal influence
7. Platonists: being is unchanging
8. Five top level Forms
9. Sameness and difference key to collection and division and language

25: What’s in a Name? Plato’s Cratylus

1. Conventionalist vs naturalist view of words
2. Onomapoteia
3. Socrates with middle-ground theory
4. Language can be conventional but also reveal essences
26. A Likely Story: Plato’s Timaeus
1. Demiurge
2. World as spherical living being of four elements
3. Greek gods as creators of humans
4. Receptacle
5. Platonic solids

27. Wings of Desire: Plato’s Erotic Dialogues

1. Symposium
1. Love as a god
2. Aristophanes: male and female halves
3. Socrates: love is desire for Form of Beauty
2. Phaedrus
. Is a lover a friend?
Soul as charioteer
1. Lysis
. friends admire goodness

28. Last Judgements: Plato, Poetry, and Myth

1. Plato criticizes the “imitation” of poetry, drama, and music
2. Plato engages in imitation himself
3. Plato’s myths: virtue to avoid punishment?

Part III: Aristotle

32. The Philosopher’s Toolkit: Aristotle’s logical works
1. Organon: the logical works
a. Categories
b. On Interpretation
c. Prior Analytics
d. Posterior Analytics
e. Topics
2. Categories
a. Essential and accidental predicates
i. essential predicate: said of something
ii. accidental predicate: present in something
b. Categories of predicates
i. Substance
ii. Quantity
 iii. Quality
iv. Relation
v. Place
vi. Time
vii. Position
viii. State
ix. Action
x. Being acted-upon
3. On Interpretation
a. Conventionalist view of language is correct
i. A written word represents a spoken word which represents a thought
b. Study of sentences that assert or deny something
i. ...of a universal (“all cats are mammals”)
ii. ...of an individual (“Socrates is a mammal”)
c. Statements have contradictories
i. Of two contradictories, only one can be correct
ii. This is a problem for statements of future events, since one has to be true
1. “There will be a sea battle tomorrow”
2. “There will not be a sea battle tomorrow”
3. Possible solution: this is an exception to the rule
4. Prior Analytics
a. Examines categorical syllogisms
b. A syllogism is “complete” when the premise yield a conclusion
c. First figure: predicate of first premise becomes subject of second premise
i. A is true of every B
ii. B is true of every C
iii. Therefore A is true of every C
d. There is also Second figure and third figure which are valid but incomplete
e. Aristotle’s logic was the paradigm until Frege in the late nineteenth century

33. A Principled Stand: Aristotle’s epistemology

1. Knowledge is demonstration
a. Prior Analytics explores valid argument form (syllogism)
b. Posterior Analytics explores what is required for knowledge
2. Conditions required for demonstration
a. Valid argument
b. Explanatory
 i. The middle term in a syllogism (shared term) is the part that must be
explanatory
c. Universal (essential features)
d. Necessary
e. Eternal
f. About something that exists
g. Premises must be demonstrated as well
i. Regress grounded in first principles
h. First principles grounded in sensation
i. Sensation reliable - no Humean skepticism

32. Down to Earth: Aristotle on Substance

1. Definition of “substance”
a. that which is
2. Theory of Forms is wrong
a. there are no Forms
b. the physical things we see are the best candidates for reality
3. Individuals are substances
a. individuals are substances because they are the bearers of predication
b. in Categories, the first and most important predication of an individual is what it
is: “Socrates is a man”
i. before you can predicate whiteness or tallness of something, it first has to
be a man, etc before you can do so
c. individual objects do all the metaphysical work: e.g. without beautiful objects
there would be no such thing as beauty
4. Primary and secondary substances
a. the physical objects we see are primary substances
b. secondary substances are species: they can be predicated of individuals
5. Criticism of the Forms
a. if Forms are separate from individuals, then they can’t causally influence them
b. Forms are an uneasy compromise between being universal and particular
c. in Ethics he argues that the Form of the Good is incoherent because things can
be good in many ways
6. “Being” can be said in many ways
a. individuals are more fundamental than species
b. an individual is more fundamental than her accidental properties
7. Primary substance further subdivided
 a. change occurs because some substrate (matter) takes on new properties (form)
b. so an individual (what was assumed to be primary substance) is now seen to be
a further composite of form and matter
i. form is predicated of matter, so perhaps matter is fundamental
ii. however, being is intelligible (per Plato), so perhaps form is fundamental
iii. perhaps essence (the composite) is more fundamental

33. Form and Function: Aristotle’s Four Causes

1. The causes are meant to answer “Why?” questions:
a. Efficient cause: what brings something into existence
b. Material cause: what the thing is made of
c. Formal cause: the structure and properties it has
d. Final cause: it’s function or purpose
i. Empedocles argued that animals arose by chance
ii. But chance is a case where something happened as if there was a
purpose but was not actually purposeful, and therefore only makes sense
against a backdrop of final causes

34. Let's Get Physical: Aristotle’s natural philosophy

1. Investigation of pre-Socratic reduction
a. Predecessors reduced the complex to the simple
2. Minimum of three principles necessary to explain change
a. The lack of a form, the presence of a form, substrate (matter)
3. Change
a. Change involves something potential becoming actual
b. This answers Parmenides’ denial of change, who only postulated being
(actuality) and non-being
4. Nature: self-movement
a. Greek “phusis”
b. Natural objects are those with an innate power of motion
c. Artifacts have their form imposed from without
d. Non-living things also have an innate principle of activity: earth and water move
down, and air and fire move up
e. The heavens are spheres made of a fifth element: ether
5. Telos inherent in change
a. A change involves a degree of incompleteness before the change is done
b. A change also entails an end state toward which the change is directed
 6. Time
a. Time is simply the measure of change and motion
i. Therefore it is dependent on primary substance, since these are the
things that change
b. This answers Zeno: the distance a runner must cross is infinitely divisible, but so
is the time which it takes him, which is finite
7. Space
a. Space is also dependent on primary

35. Soul Power: Aristotle’s On the Soul

1. Examination of previous theories on soul
a. Why postulate a soul?
i. Soul is meant to explain life
2. Two extremes to avoid
a. Dualism dissolves the unity between soul and body
b. Materialism can’t explain how the soul has influence over the body
c. Aristotle opts for a middle-ground between the two extremes
3. Refinement of actuality and potentiality
a. First potentiality: the ability to gain an ability or capacity (e.g. the ability to learn
Greek)
b. Second potentiality/first actuality: possession of the ability or capacity, but not
that ability is not currently being used (e.g. knowing how to speak Greek but not
currently speaking it)
c. Second actuality: the ability being used (e.g. currently speaking Greek)
4. The soul is the second potentiality/first actuality: a range of abilities or capacities
a. Plant souls: capacity to take in nutrients, grow, etc
b. Animal souls: capacity to sense and move around
c. Human souls: capacity to think
5. Pre-socratic disagreement on how two objects interact
a. Objects must be dissimilar: for a hot object can only make a cold object hot
b. Objects must be similar: sense organs must contain all four elements in order to
detect them
6. Actuality and potentiality resolve these two extremes
a. An object is both similar and dissimilar to what is affecting it:
i. Object is in a way both similar and dissimilar:
1. A cold object is potentially hot
a. Becomes actually hot when something causes it to be hot
 2. When you are not seeing color you are potentially seeing
a. When you see something that potentiality is actualized

36. Classified Information: Aristotle’s biology

1. Objective classification of animals
a. the final cause of an animal’s features contributes to its classification
2. Writings on biology
a. History of Animals
b. Parts of Animals
c. Generation of Animals
d. Aristotle travelled extensively and dissected many animals to examine organs
3. History of Animals
a. large collection of random tidbits
b. paves the way for classification in Parts of Animals
4. Parts of Animals
a. describes the various functions of organs; organs can only be understood in the
context of their function
b. got the functions of many organs very wrong: heart pumps “vital heat,” the brain
regulates the temperature of “vital heat”
c. per Aristotle’s epistemology, since knowledge is only of eternal truths then the
organs of animals must eternally have their function
i. the heavens are made of indestructible material, but earthly bodies are
not
ii. species are kept in existence by reproduction
5. Generation of Animals
a. Matter is provided by the woman’s menstrual blood, and form is provided by he
male’s seed
b. Genetic variations can be caused by the seed, or different potentialities in the
menstrual blood
c. Some species are spontaneously generated when heat applies to matter
d. Even though nature does nothing in vain, matter is imperfect and sometimes
things fail

37. The Goldilocks Theory: Aristotle’s ethics

1. Writings on ethics
a. Magna Moralia
b. Nicomachean Ethics
 c. Eudemian Ethics
2. Ethics is politics
a. the goal of a community is to strive for communal happiness, so the happiness of
an individual must first be understood
b. Nicomachean Ethics is thus linked explicitly with Politics
3. Eudaimonia
a. eudaimonia, the Greek version of happiness, means something more like
blessedness than cheerfulness
b. happiness cannot
4. Wealth and fame are not happiness
a. money is a means to an end, a desire to buy something
b. fame is also a means to an end: being famous for something we didn’t do, or for
something bad, is not desirable
c. but happiness is an end in itself, not a means to an end, so wealth and fame
cannot be happiness
5. The final cause of humans
a. happiness consists in doing whatever function humans do, and doing it well
b. humans are distinguished from other animals by being rational
i. so “being rational” is the final cause of humans
6. The is/ought problem
a. for Aristotle the is/ought problem never even arises, since saying what something
is entails its final cause and therefore what it ought to strive for
7. Human happiness
a. from the foregoing, human happiness consists of being the best rational being
one can be, not by having a subjective feeling of pleasure
i. later, Aristotle will show how a life of pure thought is actually the best life:
knowledge for its own sake, instead of practical knowledge, is the best
kind of knowledge
b. virtue consists in using reason in each situation that arises; there is no hard and
fast universal rule
c. virtue also consists in choosing the happy medium between two extremes:
i. between cowardice and bravery
ii. between generosity and stinginess
d. a virtuous person is also prideful of being virtuous, because he has earned that
pride
e. virtues must be taught and are learned by habituation when we are children; a
person who is not taught virtue has very little chance of achieving it: hence Ethics
flows into Politics
8. Socrates vs Aristotle
a. Socrates held that virtue is knowledge
b. by contrast, Aristotle held that virtue does consist of knowledge, but since it also
involve habituation and training, it also consists of feelings and actions
38. The Second Self: Aristotle on Friendship
1. Pleasure still an ingredient of happiness
a. someone who is virtuous but whose family is killed, is tortured, etc, is admittedly
not happy, so happiness still does include some measure of physical external
goods
b. also, someone with material goods would be better able to exercise his virtue
2. Virtue is pleasurable
a. the virtuous person enjoys being virtuous since it is an ingrained habit
i. this contrasts with Kant, who argued that doing something because you
find it pleasurable is not moral, since it should be your duty, pleasurable
or not
b. a criticism of Aristotle’s ethics is that it depends on being taught the correct
virtues, so being virtuous is an accident of what society you were born into
c. Aristotle replies that someone can still be virtuous by forcing themselves to
behave virtuously, as opposed to the truly virtuous person who enjoys being
virtuous: this is the “self-controlled” man
3. Virtue is pleasurable

39. God Only Knows: Aristotle on Mind and God

1. Mind as intellect
a. Aristotle offers an account of thought in the sense of “intellect” in Book III of On
The Soul
b. intellect is what distinguishes humans from other animals
2. Intellect as a capacity
a. similar to sensation, the intellect is a capacity that can be actualized:
i. “intellect” means the grasping of a form or essence
ii. so intellect relates to forms the way vision relates to colors
3. Distinction between sensation and intellect
a. sensation is always true, as in whatever you sense is always something you
sense
b. falseness happens at the level of judgement and thus in the intellect
4. Imagination
a. distinct from intellect and sensation
b. imagination is recall of sensed images
c. different from intellect since you can imagine something without accepting it as
true
5. Intellect occurs without a bodily organ
a. since intellect can think of anything, it cannot have its own nature otherwise it
would always be stuck thinking about that
b. as a result of its immateriality, the intellect is also divine
6. The unmoved mover (God)
a. the outer spheres indirectly cause motion here on Earth, so what is the cause of
the motion of the outer spheres?
 i. since the universe is infinitely old, the cause of the motion of the spheres
must be something infinite
ii. but the spheres themselves are finite
iii. so there must be something causing them to turn which is itself infinite
and unmoved
b. since the unmoved mover is infinite, it cannot be material since matter is a
limiting factor
7. How the unmoved mover causes motion
a. the type of motion in which an object causes another to move without itself
moving is attraction
b. so the unmoved mover must cause everything else to move by attraction: by
being an object of desire
8. The unmoved mover as thinking
a. since the unmoved mover is immaterial, and intellectual activity is immaterial, the
unmoved mover must be thinking
b. what does it think about? the best thing there is: itself
i. some later interpreters argued that he thinks about other things indirectly:
as reflections of himself

40. Constitutional Conventions: Aristotle’s Political Philosophy

1. Largest political entity is the city-state
a. humans have a natural tendency to gather together into families, communities,
and ultimately cities, the largest political unit (in Aristotle’s time)
2. What a city is for
a. this ties in with Aristotle’s ethics: the goal of the city is related to the proper goal
of the individual
i. to promote the good life for all citizens
3. Three types of government
a. kingship: rule by one
b. aristocracy: rule by small group
c. constitutional government: rule by the many
4. Three types become perverted when they look for their own interests
a. kingship: becomes tyranny
b. aristocracy: becomes oligarchy
c. constitutional government: becomes democracy
i. by “democracy” Aristotle means that one group has taken control and
seeks only its self interests
5. Who counts as a citizen
a. only those who engage in politics counts as a citizen, and this can only be men
b. women are inferior
c. some people are natural slaves (living tools)
i. one should not enslave those who are not naturally slaves
ii. those who live in Asia are all natural slaves
d. these unattractive views are based on his more attractive teleological view:
 i. women and slaves are not naturally endowed with reason so it is up to
someone with reason to guide them
6. Practical tips on setting up a city
a. in Book Seven of Politics, Aristotle discusses actual practical advice
i. e.g. a city should be on a port and have walls
ii. there should be a group of excellent men as citizens that govern
iii. the group of men will depend on laborers, slaves, women, etc
7. Realism vs utopianism
a. Aristotle understands that the ideal city will probably not be made
b. looks to already-existing city governments for practical solutions
8. Class struggle
a. in a kingship or aristocracy the rich rule, and in a democracy the poor rule
i. these are each to the detriment of the other
b. balance can only be achieved by empowering the middle class
i. but what about middle class tyranny? the middle class will impose a
compromise position between rich and poor
9. Submission to great leadership
a. despite the above discussion, if a superhuman leader were to appear it would be
best to submit to him
i. the point: political power is naturally apportioned to those whose gifts
make them fit to wield it
ii. this is in line with the other forms of government: leadership ought to be in
the hands of those with political ability, whether a large group or a single
person
10. Final goal of cities
a. to produce excellent citizens

41. Stage Directions: Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Poetics

1. Rhetoric
a. examines previous thinkers ideas about rhetoric
b. criticizes them for focusing only on the emotions in persuasive speech rather
than persuasive arguments
i. Aristotle labelled persuasive arguments “enthymemes”
2. Enthymemes
a. not based on premises ultimately grounded in first principles
b. based rather on premises that the audience will find appealing, regardless of
whether if true or not
c. unlike dialectical arguments, which are similar, enthymemes focus on practical
matters
d. enthymemes also are at the level of case-by-case basis, so there are no “eternal
truths” in enthymemes
 3. Rhetorical strategies
a. since rhetoric is based in specific cases, only general guidelines called “topoi”
can be offered:
i. appealing to base natures of audience
ii. invoking precedent
iii. showing all results of an argument are unwelcome
iv. wordplay
b. three types of rhetoric:
i. forensic: court
ii. deliberative: political
iii. epideictic: praise or blame for someone (e.g. a funeral)
4. Goal is to sow doubt
a. the goal is not to prove your case necessarily, but simply to show that your case
is more likely
b. two tools to do this:
i. show that you are a virtuous person and show be believed
ii. whip up the emotions of your audience
5. Induce emotions in the audience
a. anger can be induced by an insult, especially from one’s friends
6. Poetics
a. the book Poetics examines tragedy, primarily
b. good tragedy should cause the audience to have pity and fear, which will then
purge them of it and they will be happy
c. a play has many components that must work together towards the goal

42. Anything You Can Do: Women and Ancient Philosophy

1. Theano
a. student and/or wife of Pythagoras
b. explained the Pythagorean position on math: things come in a sequence and
hence according to number
c. also viewed that religious services should be attended after sex with someone
who is not one’s husband
d. this illustrates the typical view of women in ancient philosophy: usually cited for
their views on sex, domestic duties, etc
2. Perictione
a. mother of Plato
 b. agreed with Plato and Socrates that wealth and luxury are not necessities, but
was more moderate in stating that they are welcome if they come
c. place of women philosophers is the home
3. Arete of Cyrene
a. ran the Cyrenaic school, a Socratic school
4. Aspasia
a. before Aristotle
b. disputed Platonic dialogue Menexus is a speech supposedly written by Aspasia
for Pericles
c. Plato saw her as one of the sophists