Socrates, Plato and Aristotle- seminar 1

So, the first seminar is out the way for philosophy and I am feeling a little more involved in the subject as I began to understand the main points for each philosopher as well as getting involved in the general conversation. Surprisingly I did have points to contribute to the rest of the group which sort of gave me a mini confidence boost as I obviously had understood small parts of the tons of pages I had been racking my brain over for the past week.

Socrates
Socrates we summarised as an overally dedicated philosopher who was sentenced to death at the age of 70 by drinking a hemlock- based liquid because he failed to acknowledge the gods that the city recognised and he also brought in new supernatural religious ideas that he taught to the young for free. When he was sentenced to death he sent his wife away and was put on trial in which he had a chance to choose his sentence. Being Socrates he chose the lowest sentence which went down badly and ended up with him having to face the death sentence of which he obviously died.
He believed that all humans were good people and that if you maintain and live being a good citizen, nothing bad will happen to you (there must have been some bad things that Socrates did he he was sentenced to death then!) This also followed into your after life where if you are good throughout life your afterlife will be as good if not better than the one you already had (so id hate to think what Socrace after life was like as he died as being seen as bad person) He also encouraged the idea of 'thinking' and that you need to think of an answer to a question in depth otherwise you may never find it.
 'Those of us who think death is an evil are in error'
'In another world they do not put a man to death for asking questions'

Plato

Plato was a classical greek philosopher, mathematician and also a student of Socrates and defended him and the ideas he taught along with Aristotle. Plato kept documented diaries of what he learnt of Socrates to allow scholars to extract parts of his writing. He was also influenced by the death of Socrates meaning as much as we know now has come via Plato from what he learnt by being a student of his. The main idea that Plato put across was the idea that philosophers can see behind the world and do not believe what we are already told to be true, they try to see it from other perspectives. A story that he tells links with this idea, there was a cave with prisoners inside of it facing the cold dark gloomy walls which is all that they knew of. There was a ledge with a fire and keepers who walked up and down with pots on their heads. These cast shadows onto the cave wall that the prisoners were facing (similarily to when you were younger and you used to put a sock on your hand to cast an animal onto the wall) these shadows were what the prisoners believed and were told was 'the world'. It was only when one prisoner was allowed to go outside into 'the real real world' that he experienced birds and the sun in which he much rather fancied compared to the cold, brick wall. He rushed back to tell the other prisoners what they were missing out on and was killed. (which is such a shame as he never really got to experience what he had discovered and much much more) The message that Plato passed on from the story was to think behind daily life and the world, and to think for yourself as those in power try to manipulate you and your ways of thinking, a bit like the media I suppose which we all are victims of falling for. He also had an idea of mathmatics and seeing the world and its objects as symbols. This is the idea to distinguish between what something is and what we recognise something to be as a symbol.
'death must generate life as much as life generates death'
'knowlege is of what becomes, not of what is'

Aristotle
Was also a student of Socrace but also a teacher of Alexander the great. His writing covers many subjects such as logic, physics, poetry and politics. He was a believer in the senses and the fact that if you cant see or touch something it must not exist. Linked with this was the idea of proper names and adjectives and the fact that by giving something a name such as the sun, it can be seen which he believed to be correct. Whereas a name such as a cat, has many different categories inside of it as all cats are different in colour shape and manner so it cannot be defined. Aristotle preserved his work  In metaphysics, Aristotelianism had a profound influence on philosophical and theological thinki in the Islamic and Jewish traditions in the Middle Ages and it continues to influence Christian theology, especially the scholastic tradition of the Catholic Church. In terms of equality he didnt believe there was such thing as he thought that people needed a monarchy (rule of a King or a Queen), aristocracy (rule of men) or oligarchy (rule of the rich) in order for their to be some ruling and order in society. He also invented the 'golden mean' which was the path to happniess as it was the inbetween of rejecting the extremes however was balanced with the view of how people should be following the aim of humans to be happiness.
His main theory was in order to examine something, beforehand you need to write down everything you know about it first fullfilling all categories such as senses, beliefs and languages. It also has to be a precise fact it is either one way or another with most things and he found it important to be confident in the way that you think. A fact that we may find horrific today was that he also believed in killing children if they were ill or disabled as he saw them as being pointless as they cant survive in the best way. He also believed it right to abort children if a family or society appeared over populated as he thought that this would dimish people's living standards.