- •Philosophy for International Business: examination issues / questions
- •1) Define the difference between philosophy and common sense
- •2) Define the difference between philosophy and humanities/science
- •3) Define the difference between philosophy and ideology
- •4) What are the three general branches of philosophy/what are the basic philosophical questions?
- •5) Explain the meaning and significance of “the arché question”
- •6)The being and becoming dilemma in early Greek philosophy
- •7)Explain Zeno’s paradoxes
- •8)Is total flux chaotic? Explain the nature of change in the system of Heraclitus
- •9)Define dialectic
- •10)Virtue in Greek philosophy. Explain the meaning of knowledge in Socrate’s ethics
- •11) Explain “Eutyfro dilemma”
- •13)Plato’s theory of ideas: the conception of participation
- •14)Plato’s theory of ideas: the allegory of the cave
- •15)Plato’s theory of ideas: the ideal state
- •16)Aristotle: syllogisms
- •19)Aristotle: the theory of virtue (Golden Mean)
- •20)Aristotle: what does it mean to be a political animal?
- •21)The existence of God: ontological argument as formulated by St. Anselm
- •23)The existence of God: Pascal’s wager
- •25)Descartes: the Cartesian method – its main assumptions and functions
- •26)Descartes: cogito and the mind/body problem
- •27)The theory of substance: monism and monistic theories
- •28)The theory of substance: pluralism and pluralistic theories
- •30)Locke’s tabula rasa and the critique of nativism.
- •31)Locke: primary and secondary qualities
- •34)Hume: the critique of necessary connection between cause and effect
- •35)Kant: a prori /a posteriori and analytic / synthetic judgments
- •36)Kant: forms of sensible intuition and categories and “the second Copernican revolution”
- •37)Kant: is metaphysics a science?
- •38)Kant ethics: categorical imperative
13)Plato’s theory of ideas: the conception of participation
This illusion (which according to Plato is only a reflection of the real thing, that is the idea) “participates” only partially in its ideal form. Hence there are thousands and thousnads of roses which are different but somehow alike, yet there is only one ideal that is the ideal rose and all the roses in the world (past, present and future) participate in the one ideal
individual objects take on the characters of the Forms (Ideas)
14)Plato’s theory of ideas: the allegory of the cave
Plato's theory of knowledge, is exemplified by the allegory of the cave describes by Socrates. We are asked to imagine a group of people chained from birth inside the cave. All they call see is the wall in front of them and the flickering shadows are reality, even though they are merely illusions or imperfect copies of the real objects that exist outside the cave.
Our world is like this cave. We humans are shackled by our ignorance of the true nature of reality, which for Plato consists in his ideal forms. If we wish to see the world aright we must struggle out of the cave into the sunligh. IT will at first dazzle and blind us but if we are strong enough we will begin to see the real world instead of shadows. only the philosopher who is carefully educated as well as thoughtful and persistent will be able to attain anything close to this true knowledge. the rest will be content to stay in the cave and watch the shadows dance.
15)Plato’s theory of ideas: the ideal state
The Republic shows disillusionment not only with democratic Athens, but with political human nature; Plato believes there is a right science of human government, “a kingly science” which includes the whole art of living. Plato as well as his disciple Aristotle, believed that it is possible to avoid the conflict between individual and community. He was also convinced that there is no such conflict in a state which is designed and ruled in the right way.
Plato assume that the full development of personality coincides with the common good.
In other words: what’s good for me is good for the state but at the same time what’s good for the state is good for me.
Plato was convinced that the kingly science could be known and he was determined to construct a right science of politics of geometrical precision. The authority which he gives to his “guardians” and which he would assign to his philosopher king is given because they are experts; they stand in relation to the rest of the citizens as the physician to a patient; they know, and have a right to power. Hence the ruthlessness of Plato’s thought.
A very small band, he writes, is left of those who worthily associate with philosophy… those who have become members of it and can taste the blessedness of this prize can all discern the madness of the many and the almost universal rottenness of all political action. The philosopher is like a man in a den of wild beasts” (VI, 496)”
Only a small minority have any insight into government, and Plato compares the philosophic ruler to an artist. “A city will never know happiness unless its draftsmen who have the pattern of the divine. They must paint on a ‘clean canvas’. They will look at natural justice and beauty and temperance (self-control) and produce a human copy after their likeness of true manhood” (VI, 501)