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I Know That I Know Nothing
"I know that I know nothing" is a saying derived from Plato's account of the Greek philosopher Socrates: ''"For I was conscious that I knew practically nothing..."'' (Plato, Apology 22d, translated by Harold North Fowler, 1966). Socrates himself was never recorded as having said this phrase, and scholars generally agree that Socrates only ever asserted that he ''believed that he knew nothing'', having never claimed that he ''knew that he knew nothing''. It is also sometimes called the Socratic paradox, although this name is often instead used to refer to other seemingly paradoxical claims made by Socrates in Plato's dialogues (most notably, Socratic intellectualism and the Socratic fallacy). This saying is also connected or conflated with the answer to a question Socrates (according to Xenophon) or Chaerephon (according to Plato) is said to have posed to the Pythia, the Oracle of Delphi, in which the oracle stated something to the effect of "Socrates is the wisest person in Athen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plato
Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution of higher learning on the European continent. Along with his teacher, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato is a central figure in the history of Ancient Greek philosophy and the Western and Middle Eastern philosophies descended from it. He has also shaped religion and spirituality. The so-called neoplatonism of his interpreter Plotinus greatly influenced both Christianity (through Church Fathers such as Augustine) and Islamic philosophy (through e.g. Al-Farabi). In modern times, Friedrich Nietzsche diagnosed Western culture as growing in the shadow of Plato (famously calling Christianity "Platonism for the masses"), while Alfred North Whitehead famously said: "the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Katharevousa Greek
Katharevousa ( el, Καθαρεύουσα, , literally "purifying anguage) is a conservative form of the Modern Greek language conceived in the late 18th century as both a literary language and a compromise between Ancient Greek and the contemporary vernacular, Demotic Greek. Originally, it was widely used for both literary and official purposes, though sparingly in daily language. In the 20th century, it was increasingly adopted for official and formal purposes, until minister of education Georgios Rallis made Demotic Greek the official language of Greece in 1976, and in 1982 Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou abolished the polytonic system of writing for both Demotic and Katharevousa. Katharevousa was conceived by the intellectual and revolutionary leader Adamantios Korais (1748–1833). A graduate of the University of Montpellier, Korais spent most of his life as an expatriate in Paris. As a classical scholar credited with both laying the foundations of Modern Greek literature a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cogito Ergo Sum
The Latin , usually translated into English as "I think, therefore I am", is the "first principle" of René Descartes's philosophy. He originally published it in French as , in his 1637 ''Discourse on the Method'', so as to reach a wider audience than Latin would have allowed. It later appeared in Latin in his ''Principles of Philosophy'', and a similar phrase also featured prominently in his ''Meditations on First Philosophy''. The dictum is also sometimes referred to as the cogito. As Descartes explained in a margin note, "we cannot doubt of our existence while we doubt." In the posthumously published ''The Search for Truth by Natural Light'', he expressed this insight as ("I doubt, therefore I am — or what is the same — I think, therefore I am").. Antoine Léonard Thomas, in a 1765 essay in honor of Descartes presented it as ("I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am"). Descartes's statement became a fundamental element of Western philosophy, as it purported to pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Apodicticity
"Apodictic", also spelled "apodeictic" ( grc, ἀποδεικτικός, "capable of demonstration"), is an adjectival expression from Aristotelean logic that refers to propositions that are demonstrably, necessarily or self-evidently true. from dictionary.com, including material from the , Random House, Inc. (2006), |
Metamemory
Metamemory or Socratic awareness, a type of metacognition, is both the introspective knowledge of one's own memory capabilities (and strategies that can aid memory) and the processes involved in memory self-monitoring. This self-awareness of memory has important implications for how people learn and use memories. When studying, for example, students make judgments of whether they have successfully learned the assigned material and use these decisions, known as "judgments of learning", to allocate study time. History Descartes, among other philosophers, marveled at the phenomenon of what we now know as metacognition.Metcalfe, J. (2000). "Metamemory: Theory and data", pp. 197–211 in E. Tulving & F.I.M. Craik (Eds.), ''The Oxford Handbook of Memory''. New York: Oxford University Press. "It was not so much thinking that was indisputable to Descartes, but rather thinking ''about'' thinking. He could not imagine that the person engaged in such self-reflective processing did not exis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Academic Skepticism
Academic skepticism refers to the skeptical period of ancient Platonism dating from around 266 BCE, when Arcesilaus became scholarch of the Platonic Academy, until around 90 BCE, when Antiochus of Ascalon rejected skepticism, although individual philosophers, such as Favorinus and his teacher Plutarch, continued to defend skepticism after this date. Unlike the existing school of skepticism, the Pyrrhonists, they maintained that knowledge of things is impossible. Ideas or notions are never true; nevertheless, there are degrees of plausibility, and hence degrees of belief, which allow one to act. The school was characterized by its attacks on the Stoics, particularly their dogma that convincing impressions led to true knowledge. The most important Academics were Arcesilaus, Carneades, and Philo of Larissa. The most extensive ancient source of information about Academic skepticism is '' Academica'', written by the Academic skeptic philosopher Cicero. Overview Greek philosophica ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Acatalepsy
In philosophy, acatalepsy (from the Greek ἀκαταληψία "inability to comprehend" from alpha privative and καταλαμβάνειν, "to seize") is incomprehensibleness, or the impossibility of comprehending or conceiving a thing. It is the antithesis of the Stoic doctrine of katalepsis (i.e., the ability to apprehend).George Henry Lewes, 1863, ''The biographical history of philosophy'', Volume 1, page 297 According to the Stoics, katalepsis was true perception, but to the Pyrrhonists and Academic Skeptics, no perception could be known to be true. All perceptions were thus acataleptic, i.e. what, if any, conformity between the object and the perception of that object was unknown and, for the Academic Skeptics, could never be known. For the Academic Skeptics, acatalepsy meant that human knowledge never amounts to certainty, but only to plausibility. For the Pyrrhonists it meant that knowledge was limited to the ''phantasiai'' (typically translated as "appearances," m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Terence Irwin
Terence Henry Irwin FBA (; born 21 April 1947), usually cited as T. H. Irwin, is a scholar and philosopher specializing in ancient Greek philosophy and the history of ethics (i.e., the history of Western moral philosophy in ancient, medieval, and modern times). He was the Professor of the History of Philosophy at the University of Oxford, and Fellow of Keble College, Oxford, from 2007 until 2017. Education and career Irwin was an undergraduate at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he graduated with a BA (first-class honours) in Literae Humaniores (Classics, Philosophy and Ancient History) in 1969. He then studied at Princeton University with Gregory Vlastos, and graduated with a PhD in Philosophy in 1973. He was Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University (1972–1975) and then, from 1975 until 2007, he was at Cornell University, where he served as Susan Linn Sage Professor of Philosophy and Humane Letters (from 1995), Professor of Classics (from 1992), and Professor of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lives And Opinions Of Eminent Philosophers
Diogenes Laërtius ( ; grc-gre, Διογένης Λαέρτιος, ; ) was a biographer of the Greek philosophers. Nothing is definitively known about his life, but his surviving ''Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers'' is a principal source for the history of ancient Greek philosophy. His reputation is controversial among scholars because he often repeats information from his sources without critically evaluating it. He also frequently focuses on trivial or insignificant details of his subjects' lives while ignoring important details of their philosophical teachings and he sometimes fails to distinguish between earlier and later teachings of specific philosophical schools. However, unlike many other ancient secondary sources, Diogenes Laërtius generally reports philosophical teachings without attempting to reinterpret or expand on them, which means his accounts are often closer to the primary sources. Due to the loss of so many of the primary sources on which Diogenes relie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Diogenes Laërtius
Diogenes Laërtius ( ; grc-gre, Διογένης Λαέρτιος, ; ) was a biographer of the Ancient Greece, Greek philosophers. Nothing is definitively known about his life, but his surviving ''Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers'' is a principal source for the history of ancient Greek philosophy. His reputation is controversial among scholars because he often repeats information from his sources without critically evaluating it. He also frequently focuses on trivial or insignificant details of his subjects' lives while ignoring important details of their philosophical teachings and he sometimes fails to distinguish between earlier and later teachings of specific philosophical schools. However, unlike many other ancient secondary sources, Diogenes Laërtius generally reports philosophical teachings without attempting to reinterpret or expand on them, which means his accounts are often closer to the primary sources. Due to the loss of so many of the primary sources on whic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pre-Socratic
Pre-Socratic philosophy, also known as early Greek philosophy, is ancient Greek philosophy before Socrates. Pre-Socratic philosophers were mostly interested in cosmology, the beginning and the substance of the universe, but the inquiries of these early philosophers spanned the workings of the natural world as well as human society, ethics, and religion. They sought explanations based on natural law rather than the actions of gods. Their work and writing has been almost entirely lost. Knowledge of their views comes from ''testimonia'', i.e. later authors' discussions of the work of pre-Socratics. Philosophy found fertile ground in the ancient Greek world because of the close ties with neighboring civilizations and the rise of autonomous civil entities, ''poleis''. Pre-Socratic philosophy began in the 6th century BCE with the three Milesians: Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes. They all attributed the ''arche'' (a word that could take the meaning of "origin," "substance" or "p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Grube
Georges Maximilien Antoine Grube (2 August 1899 – 13 December 1982) was a Canadian scholar, university professor and democratic socialist political activist. Grube was a classicist and translator of Plato, Aristotle, Longinus and Marcus Aurelius. He was one of the founders of the New Democratic Party of Canada and ran unsuccessfully for election as an NDP candidate in Canadian federal elections. He was born in Antwerp, Belgium, on 2 August 1899, and was educated in the United Kingdom.Horn (1980), p. 56 He served as a translator for the Belgium Army, attached to the British Expeditionary Force during the First World War. He attended Cambridge University's Emmanuel College, where he received his master's degree in 1925.Podlecki (1994), pp. 236-238 He moved to Canada in 1928, to begin his career as a professor of classics at the University of Trinity College in the University of Toronto. He became the head of the classics department in 1931. Grube was a socialist, and serving in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
