1. Comment on any THREE of the following:

a) What is not, cannot ever come to be,
From this vain way of search hold back your mind,
Nor let experience force along this way ,
Your sightless eye, or ringing ear, or tongue,
But judge by reason the contentious proof
That what is, is. The signposts on this way
Are many, showing that it has no birth
Or death; entire, unmoved, and infinite
It was not, nor will be, but always is,
One whole continuum.

Explain this passage of Parmenides. What is the relevance of this argument to the philosophers who preceded him, and those who followed?

b) 'Well, here is another point' I continued. 'All actions aimed at this end, namely a pleasant and painless life, must be fine actions, that is, good and beneficial.'
They agreed.
'Then if the pleasant is the good, no one who either knows or believes that there is another possible course of action, better than the one he is following, will ever continue on his present course when he might choose the better. To 'act beneath yourself' is the result of pure ignorance, to 'be your own master' is wisdom.'
All agreed.
'And may we define ignorance as having a false opinion and being mistaken on matters of great moment?'
They approved this too.
'Then it must follow that no one willingly goes to meet evil or what he thinks to be evil. To make for what one believes to be evil, instead of making for the good, is not, it seems, in human nature; and when faced with the choice of two evils no one will choose the greater when he might choose the less.'

Evaluate the doctrine that Socrates is putting forward here. Does it seem valid only if the pleasant is identified with the good?

c) EUTHYPHRO: Well, I should certainly say that what's holy is whatever all the gods approve of, and that its opposite, what all the gods disapprove of, is unholy.
SOCRATES: Are we to investigate further, Euthyphro, and see if it's well stated, or are we to let it be and to accept something from ourselves or from another, agreeing that it is so if somebody merely states that this is the position? Or should we examine what the speaker means?
EUTHYPHRO: Examine it. But I myself think that this has now been excellently stated.
SOCRATES: We'll soon be in a better position to judge, my good chap. Consider the following point: is the holy approved by the gods because it's holy, or is it holy because it's approved?

Explain the dilemma on the horns of which Socrates is trying to impale Euthyphro. What are the logical consequence of each alternative?

d) The tailor makes and wears out any number of cloaks, but although he outlives all the others, presumably he perishes before the last one; and this does not mean that a man is lowlier or more frail than a cloak. I believe that this analogy could apply to the relation of soul to body; and I think that it would be reasonable to say of them in the same way that soul is a long-lived thing, whereas body is relatively feeble and short-lived. But while one might admit that each soul wears out a number of bodies, especially if it lives a great many years - because although the body is continually changing and disintegrating all through life, the soul never stops patching up what is worn away - even so, when the soul dies, it would still have to be in possession of its final garment, and must perish before it in this case only; and it's when the soul has perished that the body at last reveals its natural frailty and quickly rots away. If you accept this view there is no justification yet for any confidence that after death our souls still exist somewhere.

Explain the relevance of Cebes' illustration to the arguments by which 'Socrates' is trying to prove the immortality of the soul. How does 'Socrates' answer him?

e) 'Well, I'm particularly anxious myself to hear what these four kinds of society are.' 'There's no difficulty about that,' I replied. 'The ones I mean have names in common use. There is your much admired Cretan or Spartan type; secondly, and second in common estimation, though it's burdened with many evils, there is the type called oligarchy; thirdly, and by contrast, follows democracy; and finally comes tyranny, often thought the finest and most outstanding of all, but really the most diseased.'

Do you think that Plato's 'ideal state' is a useful concept for criticising existing states?

f) Hence it is actuality rather than potentiality that is held to be the divine possession of rational thought, and its active contemplation is that which is most pleasant and best. If, then, the happiness which God always enjoys is as great as that which we enjoy sometimes, it is marvellous. Nevertheless it is so. Moreover, life belongs to God. For the actuality of thought is life, and God is that actuality; and the essential actuality of God is life most good and eternal. We hold, then, that God is a living being, eternal, most good; and therefore life and a continuous eternal existence belong to God for that is what God is.

What is God (according to Aristotle), and how does he/she/it relate to the Aristotelian universe?

g) A difficulty, however, may be raised as to how we can say that people must perform just actions if they are to become just, and temperate ones if they are to become temperate; because if they do what is just and temperate, they are just and temperate already, in the same way that if they use words or play music correctly they are already literate or musical.

Explain how it is possible to become virtuous according to Aristotle's Ethics.

h) What use is it to me to be able to divide a piece of land into equal areas if I am unable to divide it with a brother? What use is the ability to measure out portion of an acre with an accuracy extending even to the bits which elude the measuring rod if I'm upset when some high-handed neighbour encroaches slightly on my property? The geometrician teaches me how I may avoid losing any fraction of my estates, but what I really want to learn is how to lose the lot and still keep smiling.

Discuss Seneca's attitude to literary and scientific studies. Is there likely to have been any particular reason for his attack on geometry?

i) In this connection there is another fact that I want you to grasp. When the atoms are travelling straight down through empty space by their own weight, at quite indeterminate times and places they swerve ever so little from their course, just so much that you can call it a change of direction. If it were not for this swerve, everything would fall downwards like raindrops through the abyss of space. No collision would take place and no impact of atom on atom would be created. Thus nature would never have created anything.

Explain the function of the doctrine of the 'atomic swerve' in Epicurean physics and ethics.

2. Outline the main doctrines of the early Ionian philosophers (Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes). Could they, or any of them, be reasonably described as 'scientific'.?

3. What, in your opinion, were the principal contributions made by Socrates to philosophical thought? (Confine yourself to the Protagoras, Euthyphro, Apology, and Crito).

4. Discuss the importance of the analogy of the cave to Plato's metaphysical, educational, and political views.

5. Comment critically on Plato's views on the role of women and the family in his ideal state.

6. Compare and contrast Plato's and Aristotle's discussions of justice (dikaiosyne).

7. Aristotle says that the object of life in society is eudaimonia, conventionally translated 'happiness'. What, in your opinion, does he mean by the term, and how does it differ from hedone (pleasure)?

8. Compare and contrast the Stoic and Epicurean doctrines on what happens to the psyche (animus) upon the death of the body.

9. Cornford calls the Stoic and Epicurean philosophies the 'philosophies of old age', produced by disillusionment and resignation. Do you agree?

10. Which type of ethical philosophy do you find most relevant to your own life; relativist systems such as those of the Sophists, or idealist systems such as those of Plato and the Stoics?

1. Comment on any THREE of the following:

a) Most of the first philosophers thought that principles in the form of matter were the only principles of all things: for the original source of all existing things, that from which a thing first comes-into-being and into which it is finally destroyed, the substance persisting but changing in its qualities, this they declare is the element and first principle of existing things.

How did the Milesians (Thales, Anaxamander, Anaximenes) account for the existence of the physical world?

b) Justice consists in not transgressing the laws and usages of one's state. Therefore the most profitable means way of manipulating justice is to respect the laws when witnesses are present but otherwise to follow the precepts of nature. Laws are artificial compacts, they lack the inevitability of natural growth. Hence to break the laws without detection does one no harm, whereas any attempt to violate the inborn dictates of nature is harmful irrespective of discovery by others, for the hurt is not merely, as with the law-breaker, a matter of appearance or reputation but of reality. Justice in the legal sense is for the most part at odds with nature.

Explain the antithesis of 'artificial' and 'natural' put forward by Antiphon. Is this the same doctrine as that put forward by Thrasymachus in the Republic?

c) SOCRATES: Look at it in this way. Suppose that while we were preparing to run away from here (or however one should describe it) the Laws and communal interest of Athens were to come and confront us with this question: 'Now Socrates, what are you proposing to do? Can you deny that by this act which you are contemplating you intend, so far as you have the power, to destroy us, the Laws, and the whole State as well? Do you imagine that a city can continue to exist and not be turned upside down, if the legal judgements which are pronounced in it have no force but are nullified and destroyed by private persons?' How shall we answer this question, Crito, and others of the same kind?

Explain this argument put forward by the 'Laws'. Do you consider it a valid one?

d) MENO. But how will you look for something when you don't in the least know what it is? How on earth are you going to set up something you don't know as the object of your search? To put it another way, even if you come right up against it, how will you know that what you have found is the thing you didn't know?

SOCRATES. I know what you mean. Do you realise that what you are bringing up is the trick argument that a man cannot try to discover either what he knows or what he does not know? He would not seek what he knows, for since he knows it there is no need of the inquiry, nor what he does not know, for in that case he does not even know what he is to look for.

According to the Meno, how is it possible to learn anything?

e) 'So you can see how right we were to guess just now that self-discipline was like a kind of concord.'

'Why?'

'Because, unlike courage and wisdom, which made our state brave and wise by being present in a particular part of it, self-discipline stretches across the whole scale. It produces a harmony between its strongest and weakest and middle elements.' '

Explain the relationship between self-discipline and the other virtues (courage, wisdom, justice) present in Plato's ideal state.

f) Since man stands upright, he has no need of legs in front; instead of them nature has given him arms and hands. Anaxagoras indeed asserts that it is in his possession of hands that makes man the most intelligent of animals. But surely it is reasonable that it is because he is the most intelligent animal that he has got hands. Hands are an instrument; and nature, like an intelligent man, always assigns an instrument to the animal that can use it; as it is more in keeping to give flutes to a man who is already a flute-player than to provide a man who possesses flutes with the skill to play them.

Explain the point which is here being disputed, and its importance for the philosophy of Aristotle.

g) Since liberality is an immediate disposition with regard to the giving and receiving of money, the liberal man will not only give and spend the right amount on the right objects, in great and small matters alike, and do it with pleasure; he will also accept the right amounts from the right sources. For since his virtue is an intermediate condition in respect of both giving and receiving, he will do both in the right way, because right giving implies right receiving, whereas wrong receiving is incompatible with it.

Explain how liberality conforms to Aristotle's doctrine that a virtue is a mean. What are the extremes to be avoided?

h) How, I ask you, can you consistently admire both Daedalus and Diogenes? Tell me which of these two you would say was a wise man, the one who hit on the saw, or the one who on seeing a boy drinking water from the how of his hand, immediately took the Cup out of his knapsack and smashed it, telling himself off for his stupidity in having superfluous luggage about him all that time, and curled himself up in a jar and went to sleep.

Comment on the two kinds of wisdom that Seneca is discussing, and explain his preference for the Cynic Diogenes over the inventor Daedalus.

i) And since pleasure is the first good and natural to us, for this very reason we do not choose every pleasure, but sometimes we pass over many pleasures, when greater discomfort accrues to us as the result of them: and similarly we think many pains better than pleasures, since a greater pleasure comes to us when we have endured pains for a long time. Every pleasure then because of its natural kinship to us is good, yet not every pleasure is to be chosen: even as every pain also is an evil, yet not all are always of a nature to be avoided. Yet by a scale of comparison and by the consideration of advantages and disadvantages we must form our judgement on all these matters. For the good on certain occasions we treat as bad, and conversely the bad as good.

Explain the Epicurean doctrine of pains and pleasures.

2. Explain the cosmological system of Empedocles. Why does he operate with six original elements when the early Ionians required only one?

3. Socrates has been called 'the wisest of the Sophists'. What were the principal differences between him and them?

4. What, according to Plato, are the rewards of right behaviour in this world and the next?

5. Discuss the importance of the analogy of the cave to Plato's metaphysical, educational, and political views.

6. Explain and illustrate Aristotle's doctrine of the four 'causes'.

7. Aristotle's ethical system has been described as 'enlightened self-interest'. Do you agree?

8. In your opinion, is the Stoic philosophy useful in catering both for those who have prestige and power and those who have not?

9. What parts of conventional religion did the Epicureans accept, and what parts did thy reject? Why?

10. In the light of your study of Ancient Philosophy, do you think that there is an absolute standard of right and wrong behaviour, which we must try to discover, or are questions o right and wrong essentially practical questions, to be resolved by studying which actions are acceptable or not acceptable to a particular society?

Ancient Philosophy Exam Papers

1. Comment on any THREE of the following:

a) What is not, cannot ever come to be,
From this vain way of search hold back your mind,
Nor let experience force along this way ,
Your sightless eye, or ringing ear, or tongue,
But judge by reason the contentious proof
That what is, is. The signposts on this way
Are many, showing that it has no birth
Or death; entire, unmoved, and infinite
It was not, nor will be, but always is,
One whole continuum.

Explain this passage of Parmenides. What is the relevance of this argument to the philosophers who preceded him, and those who followed?

b) 'Well, here is another point' I continued. 'All actions aimed at this end, namely a pleasant and painless life, must be fine actions, that is, good and beneficial.'
They agreed.
'Then if the pleasant is the good, no one who either knows or believes that there is another possible course of action, better than the one he is following, will ever continue on his present course when he might choose the better. To 'act beneath yourself' is the result of pure ignorance, to 'be your own master' is wisdom.'
All agreed.
'And may we define ignorance as having a false opinion and being mistaken on matters of great moment?'
They approved this too.
'Then it must follow that no one willingly goes to meet evil or what he thinks to be evil. To make for what one believes to be evil, instead of making for the good, is not, it seems, in human nature; and when faced with the choice of two evils no one will choose the greater when he might choose the less.'

Evaluate the doctrine that Socrates is putting forward here. Does it seem valid only if the pleasant is identified with the good?

c) EUTHYPHRO: Well, I should certainly say that what's holy is whatever all the gods approve of, and that its opposite, what all the gods disapprove of, is unholy.
SOCRATES: Are we to investigate further, Euthyphro, and see if it's well stated, or are we to let it be and to accept something from ourselves or from another, agreeing that it is so if somebody merely states that this is the position? Or should we examine what the speaker means?
EUTHYPHRO: Examine it. But I myself think that this has now been excellently stated.
SOCRATES: We'll soon be in a better position to judge, my good chap. Consider the following point: is the holy approved by the gods because it's holy, or is it holy because it's approved?

Explain the dilemma on the horns of which Socrates is trying to impale Euthyphro. What are the logical consequence of each alternative?

d) The tailor makes and wears out any number of cloaks, but although he outlives all the others, presumably he perishes before the last one; and this does not mean that a man is lowlier or more frail than a cloak. I believe that this analogy could apply to the relation of soul to body; and I think that it would be reasonable to say of them in the same way that soul is a long-lived thing, whereas body is relatively feeble and short-lived. But while one might admit that each soul wears out a number of bodies, especially if it lives a great many years - because although the body is continually changing and disintegrating all through life, the soul never stops patching up what is worn away - even so, when the soul dies, it would still have to be in possession of its final garment, and must perish before it in this case only; and it's when the soul has perished that the body at last reveals its natural frailty and quickly rots away. If you accept this view there is no justification yet for any confidence that after death our souls still exist somewhere.

Explain the relevance of Cebes' illustration to the arguments by which 'Socrates' is trying to prove the immortality of the soul. How does 'Socrates' answer him?

e) 'Well, I'm particularly anxious myself to hear what these four kinds of society are.' 'There's no difficulty about that,' I replied. 'The ones I mean have names in common use. There is your much admired Cretan or Spartan type; secondly, and second in common estimation, though it's burdened with many evils, there is the type called oligarchy; thirdly, and by contrast, follows democracy; and finally comes tyranny, often thought the finest and most outstanding of all, but really the most diseased.'

Do you think that Plato's 'ideal state' is a useful concept for criticising existing states?

f) Hence it is actuality rather than potentiality that is held to be the divine possession of rational thought, and its active contemplation is that which is most pleasant and best. If, then, the happiness which God always enjoys is as great as that which we enjoy sometimes, it is marvellous. Nevertheless it is so. Moreover, life belongs to God. For the actuality of thought is life, and God is that actuality; and the essential actuality of God is life most good and eternal. We hold, then, that God is a living being, eternal, most good; and therefore life and a continuous eternal existence belong to God for that is what God is.

What is God (according to Aristotle), and how does he/she/it relate to the Aristotelian universe?

g) A difficulty, however, may be raised as to how we can say that people must perform just actions if they are to become just, and temperate ones if they are to become temperate; because if they do what is just and temperate, they are just and temperate already, in the same way that if they use words or play music correctly they are already literate or musical.

Explain how it is possible to become virtuous according to Aristotle's Ethics.

h) What use is it to me to be able to divide a piece of land into equal areas if I am unable to divide it with a brother? What use is the ability to measure out portion of an acre with an accuracy extending even to the bits which elude the measuring rod if I'm upset when some high-handed neighbour encroaches slightly on my property? The geometrician teaches me how I may avoid losing any fraction of my estates, but what I really want to learn is how to lose the lot and still keep smiling.

Discuss Seneca's attitude to literary and scientific studies. Is there likely to have been any particular reason for his attack on geometry?

i) In this connection there is another fact that I want you to grasp. When the atoms are travelling straight down through empty space by their own weight, at quite indeterminate times and places they swerve ever so little from their course, just so much that you can call it a change of direction. If it were not for this swerve, everything would fall downwards like raindrops through the abyss of space. No collision would take place and no impact of atom on atom would be created. Thus nature would never have created anything.

Explain the function of the doctrine of the 'atomic swerve' in Epicurean physics and ethics.

2. Outline the main doctrines of the early Ionian philosophers (Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes). Could they, or any of them, be reasonably described as 'scientific'.?

3. What, in your opinion, were the principal contributions made by Socrates to philosophical thought? (Confine yourself to the Protagoras, Euthyphro, Apology, and Crito).

4. Discuss the importance of the analogy of the cave to Plato's metaphysical, educational, and political views.

5. Comment critically on Plato's views on the role of women and the family in his ideal state.

6. Compare and contrast Plato's and Aristotle's discussions of justice (dikaiosyne).

7. Aristotle says that the object of life in society is eudaimonia, conventionally translated 'happiness'. What, in your opinion, does he mean by the term, and how does it differ from hedone (pleasure)?

8. Compare and contrast the Stoic and Epicurean doctrines on what happens to the psyche (animus) upon the death of the body.

9. Cornford calls the Stoic and Epicurean philosophies the 'philosophies of old age', produced by disillusionment and resignation. Do you agree?

10. Which type of ethical philosophy do you find most relevant to your own life; relativist systems such as those of the Sophists, or idealist systems such as those of Plato and the Stoics?

1. Comment on any THREE of the following:

a) Most of the first philosophers thought that principles in the form of matter were the only principles of all things: for the original source of all existing things, that from which a thing first comes-into-being and into which it is finally destroyed, the substance persisting but changing in its qualities, this they declare is the element and first principle of existing things.

How did the Milesians (Thales, Anaxamander, Anaximenes) account for the existence of the physical world?

b) Justice consists in not transgressing the laws and usages of one's state. Therefore the most profitable means way of manipulating justice is to respect the laws when witnesses are present but otherwise to follow the precepts of nature. Laws are artificial compacts, they lack the inevitability of natural growth. Hence to break the laws without detection does one no harm, whereas any attempt to violate the inborn dictates of nature is harmful irrespective of discovery by others, for the hurt is not merely, as with the law-breaker, a matter of appearance or reputation but of reality. Justice in the legal sense is for the most part at odds with nature.

Explain the antithesis of 'artificial' and 'natural' put forward by Antiphon. Is this the same doctrine as that put forward by Thrasymachus in the Republic?

c) SOCRATES: Look at it in this way. Suppose that while we were preparing to run away from here (or however one should describe it) the Laws and communal interest of Athens were to come and confront us with this question: 'Now Socrates, what are you proposing to do? Can you deny that by this act which you are contemplating you intend, so far as you have the power, to destroy us, the Laws, and the whole State as well? Do you imagine that a city can continue to exist and not be turned upside down, if the legal judgements which are pronounced in it have no force but are nullified and destroyed by private persons?' How shall we answer this question, Crito, and others of the same kind?

Explain this argument put forward by the 'Laws'. Do you consider it a valid one?

d) MENO. But how will you look for something when you don't in the least know what it is? How on earth are you going to set up something you don't know as the object of your search? To put it another way, even if you come right up against it, how will you know that what you have found is the thing you didn't know?

SOCRATES. I know what you mean. Do you realise that what you are bringing up is the trick argument that a man cannot try to discover either what he knows or what he does not know? He would not seek what he knows, for since he knows it there is no need of the inquiry, nor what he does not know, for in that case he does not even know what he is to look for.

According to the Meno, how is it possible to learn anything?

e) 'So you can see how right we were to guess just now that self-discipline was like a kind of concord.'

'Why?'

'Because, unlike courage and wisdom, which made our state brave and wise by being present in a particular part of it, self-discipline stretches across the whole scale. It produces a harmony between its strongest and weakest and middle elements.' '

Explain the relationship between self-discipline and the other virtues (courage, wisdom, justice) present in Plato's ideal state.

f) Since man stands upright, he has no need of legs in front; instead of them nature has given him arms and hands. Anaxagoras indeed asserts that it is in his possession of hands that makes man the most intelligent of animals. But surely it is reasonable that it is because he is the most intelligent animal that he has got hands. Hands are an instrument; and nature, like an intelligent man, always assigns an instrument to the animal that can use it; as it is more in keeping to give flutes to a man who is already a flute-player than to provide a man who possesses flutes with the skill to play them.

Explain the point which is here being disputed, and its importance for the philosophy of Aristotle.

g) Since liberality is an immediate disposition with regard to the giving and receiving of money, the liberal man will not only give and spend the right amount on the right objects, in great and small matters alike, and do it with pleasure; he will also accept the right amounts from the right sources. For since his virtue is an intermediate condition in respect of both giving and receiving, he will do both in the right way, because right giving implies right receiving, whereas wrong receiving is incompatible with it.

Explain how liberality conforms to Aristotle's doctrine that a virtue is a mean. What are the extremes to be avoided?

h) How, I ask you, can you consistently admire both Daedalus and Diogenes? Tell me which of these two you would say was a wise man, the one who hit on the saw, or the one who on seeing a boy drinking water from the how of his hand, immediately took the Cup out of his knapsack and smashed it, telling himself off for his stupidity in having superfluous luggage about him all that time, and curled himself up in a jar and went to sleep.

Comment on the two kinds of wisdom that Seneca is discussing, and explain his preference for the Cynic Diogenes over the inventor Daedalus.

i) And since pleasure is the first good and natural to us, for this very reason we do not choose every pleasure, but sometimes we pass over many pleasures, when greater discomfort accrues to us as the result of them: and similarly we think many pains better than pleasures, since a greater pleasure comes to us when we have endured pains for a long time. Every pleasure then because of its natural kinship to us is good, yet not every pleasure is to be chosen: even as every pain also is an evil, yet not all are always of a nature to be avoided. Yet by a scale of comparison and by the consideration of advantages and disadvantages we must form our judgement on all these matters. For the good on certain occasions we treat as bad, and conversely the bad as good.

Explain the Epicurean doctrine of pains and pleasures.

2. Explain the cosmological system of Empedocles. Why does he operate with six original elements when the early Ionians required only one?

3. Socrates has been called 'the wisest of the Sophists'. What were the principal differences between him and them?

4. What, according to Plato, are the rewards of right behaviour in this world and the next?

5. Discuss the importance of the analogy of the cave to Plato's metaphysical, educational, and political views.

6. Explain and illustrate Aristotle's doctrine of the four 'causes'.

7. Aristotle's ethical system has been described as 'enlightened self-interest'. Do you agree?

8. In your opinion, is the Stoic philosophy useful in catering both for those who have prestige and power and those who have not?

9. What parts of conventional religion did the Epicureans accept, and what parts did thy reject? Why?

10. In the light of your study of Ancient Philosophy, do you think that there is an absolute standard of right and wrong behaviour, which we must try to discover, or are questions o right and wrong essentially practical questions, to be resolved by studying which actions are acceptable or not acceptable to a particular society?

1. Comment on any THREE of the following:

a) Of those who say that it is one, moving and infinite, Anaximander, son of Praxiades, a Milesian, the successor and pupil of Thales, said the principle and element of existing things was the apeiron, being the first to introduce this name of the material principle.

He says that it is neither water nor any other of the so-called elements, but some other apeiron nature,from which come into being all the heavens and the world in them

What does Anaximander seem to have meant by his doctrine of the apeiron ('boundless')? What is the relationship between his doctrine of the original basic substance (arche) and the views of the other Milesian philosophers and of Empedocles?

b) Justice consists of not transgressing the laws and usages of one's state. Therefore the most profitable way of manipulating justice is to respect the laws when witnesses are present but otherwise to follow the precepts of nature. Laws are artificial compacts, they lack the inevitability of natural growth. Hence to break the laws without detection does one no harm, whereas any attempt to violate the inborn dictates of nature is harmful irrespective of discovery by others, for the hurt is not merely,as with the law-breaker, a matter of appearance or reputation but of reality. Justice in the legal sense is for the most part at odds with nature. The laws prescribe what we should see, hear or do, where we should go, even what we should desire, but so far as conforming to nature is concerned what they forbid is as good as what they enjoin.

Why does Antiphon oppose justice to nature? What have his arguments in common with those of Thrasymachus in Republic I?

c) EUTHYPHRO: Well, Socrates, it seems to me that reverence or piety is that kind of rectitude which is concerned with tendance of the gods, and the remaining kind of rectitude is that which is concerned with the tendance of human beings.

What leads Euthyphro to this definition? In what respect(s) does it seem to be inadequate?

d)All nature is akin, and the soul has learned everything, so that when a man has recalled a single piece of knowledge - learned it, in ordinary language - there is no reason why he should not find out all the rest, if he keeps a stout heart and does not grow weary of the search; for seeking and learning are in fact nothing but recollection.

How does 'Socrates' attempt, in the Meno, to prove that all learning is recollection? How important is this doctrine for Plato's philosophy?

e) So we see that the prime origin of motion is what moves itself, and this can neither be destroyed nor come into being: otherwise the whole universe and the whole creation would collapse and come to a stop, and there would be nothing by which it could again be set in motion and come into existence. Now, since it has been proved that what moves itself is immortal, a man need feel no hesitation in identifying it with the essence and definition of soul. For all body which has its source of motion outside itself is soul-less; but a body which moves itself from within is endowed with soul. If then it is established that what moves itself is identical with soul, it inevitably follows that soul is uncreated and immortal.

Explain this attempt to prove the immortality of the soul. Does it have any possible application for the whole universe, and not just for individual people?

f) "There is therefore no administrative occupation which is peculiar to woman as woman or man as man; natural capacities are similarly distributed in each sex, and it is natural for women to take part in all occupations as well as men, though, in all, women will be the weaker partners'. ('Socrates')

Discuss the attitude towards women found in the Republic.

g) If all this is so, the conclusion is that the good for man is an activity of soul in accordance with virtue, or if there are more kinds of virtue than one, in accordance with the best and most perfect kind.

How does Aristotle arrive at this definition?

h) How, I ask you, can you consistently admire both Daedalus and Diogenes? Tell me which of these two you would say was a wise man, the one who hit on the saw, or the one who on seeing a boy drinking water from the hollow of his hand immediately took the cup out of his knapsack and smashed it, telling himself off for his stupidity in having superfluous luggage about him all that time, and curled himself up in a jar and went to sleep.

Explain the controversy in which Seneca is involved on the relationship between philosophy and technology. What is his own attitude?

i) Furthermore, you must not suppose that the holy dwelling-places of the gods are anywhere within the limits of the world. For the flimsy nature of the gods, far removed from our senses, is scarcely visible even to the perception of the mind. Since it eludes the touch and pressure of our hands, it can have no contact with anything that is tangible to us. For what cannot be touched cannot touch. Therefore their dwelling-places must also be unlike ours, of the same flimsy texture as their bodies

Explain the nature of the Epicurean gods. Why does the system have gods at all?

2. Why did the teachings of the Eleatics have such a destructive effect on natural philosophy? How did later philosophers attempt to reconstruct natural philosophy?

3. Aristophanes (and others) described Socrates as a 'sophist'. What were the major similarities and differences between him and them?

4. What are the major similarities and differences between the 'theory of forms' (the idea of 'piety', 'piety itself') put forward in the Euthyphro and that presented in the Republic?

5. Prove to us therefore, not only that justice is superior to injustice, but that irrespective of whether gods or men know it or not, one is good and the other evil because of its inherent effects on its possessors'. (Adeimantus)

Does the Republic seem to you to contain the proof which is here demanded?

6. To what extent is the general philosophy of Aristotle a continuation of that of Plato, to what extent a reaction against Plato? (You may, if you wish, specialise in one area, e.g. ethics or metaphysics).

7. Aristotle's ethical system has been described as 'enlightened self- interest'. Do you agree?

8. The Stoics tried to trace their philosophy back to Socrates. Do you think that they are right in regarding themselves as his natural successors?

9. Horace once described himself as 'a fat pig from Epicurus' sty'. Is this a distortion of Epicurean philosophy?

10. Discuss the attitudes of some of the philosophers you have studied towards conventional religion. Can the ancient philosophers, in general, be viewed as anti-religious?

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