Plato on justice (4)

Art and Music, History of Philosophy, Moral theory, On Art and Music, Poetry, Politics, Soul

October 7, 2018/By Darrell Arnold

While Socrates embodied virtue in his life and came to be seen in the Antique world as an archetype for the philosophical sage, he in fact did not put forward a concrete view of...

Plato on Gyges’ Ring (3)

History of Philosophy, Moral theory, Philosophy, Uncategorized

October 6, 2018/By Darrell Arnold

Plato has a multifaceted study of justice, taking up the topic in numerous dialogues throughout his career. Here I will only explore his views as expressed in The Republic, a middle period dialogue written...

Plato (1)

History of Philosophy, Philosophy, Uncategorized

October 6, 2018/By Darrell Arnold

Socrates' student and literary creator, Plato (428/27 - 348/47), stands in stark contrast to his Athenian teacher, the philosophic martyr. If, as Cicero said, Socrates brought philosophy down from the heavens into the city streets,...

Socrates (2): The Trial and Death

History of Philosophy, Moral theory, Philosophy, Politics

September 25, 2018/By Darrell Arnold

Socrates is philosophy's most famous martyr. Yet he wasn't the first tried in the courts of Athens. The Decree of Diopeithes allowed for the persecution of "those who fail to respect (nomizein) things divine or...

Socrates (1)

History of Philosophy, Moral theory, Philosophy, Politics

September 21, 2018/By Darrell Arnold

Cicero said that Socrates bought philosophy down from the skies and into the city streets. What a different view he had from Aristophanes in The Clouds. Aristophanes depicted Socrates as a natural philosopher, challenging the...

The Sophists

Courses, History of Philosophy, Philosophy

September 19, 2018/By Darrell Arnold

The predominant view of the sophists comes to us from Plato's dialogues, many of which are named after the most famous of the sophists: Protagoras, Gorgia, Hippias. It is not a complimentary depiction. The sophists...

Presocratics

Heraclitus, History of Philosophy, Philosophy

September 18, 2018/By Darrell Arnold

The earliest Greek philosophers are typically known as “Presocratic” philosophers. Yet this designation as "Presocratic" first was explicitly used in the 18th century as historians of philosophy attempted to re-catalog the discipline's past. As a...

Laozi (a general overview)

Eastern Philosophy, History of Philosophy, Metaphysics, Politics, Uncategorized

September 11, 2018/By Darrell Arnold

This is a variation of an earlier posting on this blog on Taoism, but this has been slightly altered to the purposes of my Introduction to Philosophy course. Laozi Along with Confucius, Laozi is one of the two...

Confucius and Confucianism — A Basic Introduction

Eastern Philosophy, History of Philosophy, Moral theory, Philosophy

September 7, 2018/By Darrell Arnold

Confucius' Life Confucius, or "Master Kung" as he became known, was born in the city of Lu (now known as Qufu) in the Northeast of China in 551 BCE and he died in 479 BCE. According...

What is Philosophy?

History of Philosophy, On Reason, Philosophy

September 4, 2018/By Darrell Arnold

The roots of Western philosophy in Ancient Greece Philosophy, as Ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle, noted, begins with wonder. While the discipline, as it began in Ancient Greece, first had a focus on questions of the...

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