PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES
SOCRATES
• Father of Western Philosophy
• Wisest Man (Oracle of Delphi)
• Executed – Hemlock
Socratic Method – most famous, least used,
least understood teaching and conversation
practices.
Socratic Dialogue – the primary focus is to try
to answer questions. Socrates wants short
answers that address specific points before
moving on to more advanced or complicated
topics until an adequate understanding of basic
principles is achieved.
HOW ONE OUGHT TO LIVE
• It is through striving for answers to it that
one can hope to improve their life.
Socrates’ most famous statement:
“The unexamined life is not worth
living.” (Apology)
• Examining one’s self is the most
important task one can undertake, for it
alone will give us the knowledge
necessary to answer the question ‘how
should I live my life’. As Socrates
explained:
• “…once we know ourselves, we may
learn how to care for ourselves, but
otherwise we never shall.” (First
Alcibiades)
CARE FOR SOUL
• one’s true self, according to Socrates, is
not to be identified with what we own,
with our social status, our reputation, or
even with our body. Instead, Socrates
famously maintained that our true self is
our soul.
• According to Socrates it is the state of our
soul, or our inner being, which
determines the quality of our life. Thus it
is paramount that we devote considerable
amounts of our attention, energy, and
resources to making our soul as good and
beautiful as possible.
WHAT IS GOOD AND WHAT IS EVIL?
GOOD
wealth, status, pleasure, and social
acceptance
EVIL
poverty, death, pain, and social rejection
All human beings naturally strive after
happiness, for happiness is the final end in life
and everything we do we do because we think
it will make us happy. We therefore label what
we think will bring us happiness as ‘good’, and
those things we think will bring us suffering and
pain as ‘evil’.
VIRTUE
• supreme good
• Virtue is defined as moral excellence
• An individual is considered virtuous if
their character is made up of the moral
qualities that are accepted as virtues.
– Justice
– Courage
– Wisdom
– Piety
• To summarize this idea it is useful to
express it in a simple formula:
• KNOWLEDGE=VIRTUE=HAPPINE
SS.
IGNORANCE AS ROOT OF EVIL
Most people are ignorant. If one truly
knew what they were doing was evil, they would
refrain from such an action. But because all evil
acts are committed out of ignorance, Socrates
held that all evil acts are committed
involuntarily. Socrates did not mean that when
one committed an evil act they did so in some
sort of state of complete unawareness, but rather
that such an individual was unaware that their
action was evil.
When we commit an injustice we are
harming our own soul, which is our true self.
Yet on the other hand, when we suffer an
injustice it is not our soul which is harmed, but
instead what is harmed is merely something
we possess: be it our wealth, reputation, or even
our body. Since the state of our soul is of the
utmost importance in the attainment of
happiness, we should ensure that we take care of
our soul even at the expense of our possessions
and body. And if the choice confronts us, we
should choose to suffer harm rather than inflict
it.
PLATO
• Born into a prominent and wealthy family
in the city, Plato devoted his life to one
goal: helping people to reach a state of
what he termed:
• Eudaimonia: Greek word: it means
‘happiness’ but is really closer to
‘fulfilment’ - more compatible with
periods of great pain and suffering –
which seem to be an unavoidable part
even of a good life.
PLATO: FOUR CENTRAL IDEAS
1. Think Harder - He observed how many
of our ideas are derived from what the
 crowd thinks, from what the Greeks
called ‘doxa’, and we’d call ‘common-
sense’.
Plato proposed that our lives go wrong in
large part because we almost never give
ourselves time to think carefully and logically
enough about our plans. And so we end up with
the wrong values, careers and relationships. Plato
wanted to bring order and clarity to our minds.
2. Love More Wisely - In Plato’s eyes, love is in
essence a kind of education: you couldn’t really
love someone if you didn’t want to be improved
by them.
Love should be two people trying to grow
together – and helping each other to do so. Which
means you need to get together with the person
who contains a key missing bit of your evolution:
the virtues you don’t have.
A good relationship has to mean we
won’t love the other person exactly as they are.
It means committing to helping them become
a better version of themselves – and to endure
the stormy passages this inevitably involves –
while also not resisting their attempts to
improve us.
bad for us, so he wanted to limit the activities of
public orators and dangerous preachers. He
would – nowadays – have been very skeptical
about the power of mass media.
c) Better Education
Plato believed passionately in education,
but wanted to refocus the curriculum. The
primary thing we need to learn is not just math
or spelling, but how to be good: we need to
learn about courage, self-control,
reasonableness, independence and calm.
d) Better Childhood
Families try their best. And sometimes
children strike lucky. Their parents are well
balanced, good teachers, reliably mature and
wise. But pretty often parents transmit their
confusions and failings to their children.
ST. AUGUSTINE
TWO CITIES
1. The City of Men – Earthly Happiness

3. The Importance of beauty 2. The City of God

Why do we like beautiful things? ORIGINAL SIN - All individuals were
• We recognize in them a part of ‘the good’.
crooked because all of us are unwitting heirs to
• Beautiful objects therefore have a really
the sins of Adam which leads to our desire to
important function. They invite us to
evolve in their direction, to become as dominate.
they are. We cannot properly love, for we are constantly
• Beauty can educate our souls. undermined by our egoism and our pride.
4. Changing society
• How could a society get better at
producing not military power but
Eudaimonia? How could it reliably help
people towards fulfilment?
a. We need new heroes
Plato therefore wanted to give Athens
new celebrities, replacing the current crop with
ideally wise and good people he called
Guardians: models for everyone’s good
development. These people would be
distinguished by their record of public service,
their modesty and simple habits, their dislike of
the limelight and their wide and deep
experience. They would be the most honored
and admired people in society.
b) We need censorship
Continuous exposure to a storm of
confused voices was – Plato thought – seriously