Socrates and Plato
This method of questioning exposes contradictions in a person's beliefs
Socratic Elenchus
Plato's belief in eternal, unchanging realities that physical objects imitate
Plato's Forms
The Greek term for flourishing or living well.
Eudaimonia
Aristotle's theory that everything is a combination of form and matter.
Hylomorphism
Descartes' foundational claim; I think, therefore I am
Cogito Ergo Sum
Socrates's practice of pretending to be ignorant to encourage others to explain their views.
Platonic Irony
Plato's analogy for dividing level of knowledge from images to forms.
Divided Line
Aristotle's idea that virtue lives between excess and deficiency.
The Golden Mean
Aristotle's distinction between what a thing is essentially and its non-essential features.
Substance vs accident
The example shows that the mind understands substances through reason rather than the senses.
Wax example
Aporia
Where prisoners mistake shadows for reality, one escapes to determine the truth.
Allegory of the cave
The Epicurean goal of peace of mind and freedom from disturbance.
Ataraxia
The four types of explanation Aristotle uses to explain why something exists.
The Four Causes
Locke's claim that the mind begins as a blank slate
Innate Ideas rejected by Locke
Socrates' divine inner warning that prevents him from wrongdoing.
Socrates Daimon
The view that truth is relative to each individual; "Man is the measure of all things."
Protagorean Relativism
The Stoic view that external goods are neither good nor bad but can be preferred.
Preferred indifferents
Aristotle's critique that Plato's forms unnecessarily duplicates the world.
Primary vs Secondary Substances
The distinction between knowledge from experience and knowledge from reason alone.
Empiricism vs Rationalism
Plato's choice to communicate philosophy through dialouges, myths, and analogies rather than directly teaching,
Plato's Indirectness
The idea that everything is constantly changing, like a river you cannot step into twice.
Heraclitean Flux
Stoicism
The distinction between individual things and the species or kinds they belong to.
Primary vs Secondary Substances
Hume's division of all knowledge into relations of ideas and matters of fact.
Hume's fork