PHIL 4 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Nicomachean Ethics, Ancient Greek, Cash Crop
10/4/17
●Aristotle (384-322 BCE) Nicomachean Ethics
○ Olives being grown in Greece
■ Cash crop (exported to other countries)
● For oil
● Cities grow and lots of free time.
○ Men would hang out and talk
○ Stories
■ Greek gods
● Zeus
● Hera
● Apollo
● Athena
● Poseidon
● People stop telling stories and started to ask questions and offer different analyses of
the world around 600 BCE
● Thales
○ Remarkably talented person in many areas of life
○ First person on record to assert that nature is unified by a single principle, the
principle of water
■ The first person on record to attempt to explain natural phenomena
without reference to the supernatural or mythology, and to offer an
argument for his view.
● Beginning of science and philosophy
● Pythagoras
○ Mathematician, mystic, scientist
○ A mythical worship of numbers
○ Discovered mathematical relations in musical harmony
○ A^2 + b^2 = c^2
■ First proof of mathematics;reasoning with numbers instead of merely
counting
○ Vegetarian (no beans)
■ All animate beings are of the same family
○ Pythagoreanism was equal to women
Greek Philosophy
● Philosophy, the love of wisdom (philo=love;sophia=wisdom) was quite clearly an
ancient greek phenomenon.
● Instead of stories and myths, the greeks began to demand answers and reasons
for claims, leading to broader theoretical explanations for the phenomena in the
world
Document Summary
Cities grow and lots of free time. People stop telling stories and started to ask questions and offer different analyses of the world around 600 bce. Remarkably talented person in many areas of life. First person on record to assert that nature is unified by a single principle, the principle of water. The first person on record to attempt to explain natural phenomena without reference to the supernatural or mythology, and to offer an argument for his view. First proof of mathematics;reasoning with numbers instead of merely counting. All animate beings are of the same family. Philosophy, the love of wisdom (philo=love;sophia=wisdom) was quite clearly an ancient greek phenomenon. Instead of stories and myths, the greeks began to demand answers and reasons for claims, leading to broader theoretical explanations for the phenomena in the world. This lead to an explosion of inquiry in math, social, and ethical theory and science.
