Platos life and contributions to society essay

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For the later development of Aristotelian philosophy, see Aristotelianism.

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For treatment of Aristotelianism in the full context of Western philosophysee philosophy, Western. Like his master, Aristotle wrote initially in dialogue form, and his early ideas show a strong Platonic influence.

His dialogue Eudemusfor example, reflects the Platonic view of the soul as imprisoned in the body Platos life and contributions to society essay as capable of a happier life only when the body has been left behind. Everyone must do philosophy, Aristotle claims, because even arguing against the practice of philosophy is itself a form of philosophizing.

The best form of philosophy is the contemplation of the universe of nature; it is for this purpose that God made human beings and gave them a godlike intellect. All else—strength, beauty, power, and honour—is worthless. The former demonstrates how to construct arguments for a position one has already decided to adopt; the latter shows how to detect weaknesses in the arguments of others.

Although neither work amounts to a systematic treatise on formal logic, Aristotle can justly say, at the end of the Sophistical Refutations, that he has invented the discipline of logic—nothing at all existed when he started.

The Athenians defended their independence only half-heartedly, and, after a series of humiliating concessionsthey allowed Philip to become, bymaster of the Greek world.

It cannot have been an easy time to be a Macedonian resident in Athens. Within the Academy, however, relations seem to have remained cordial.

The word Form, when used to refer to Forms as Plato conceived them, is often capitalized in the scholarly literature; when used to refer to forms as Aristotle conceived them, it is conventionally lowercased.

Plato had held that, in addition to particular things, there exists a suprasensible realm of Forms, which are immutable and everlasting.

This realm, he maintained, makes particular things intelligible by accounting for their common natures: In his surviving works as well, Aristotle often takes issue with the theory of Forms, sometimes politely and sometimes contemptuously.

In his Metaphysics he argues that the theory fails to solve the problems it was meant to address. It does not confer intelligibility on particulars, because immutable and everlasting Forms cannot explain how particulars come into existence and undergo change.

All the theory does, according to Aristotle, is introduce new entities equal in number to the entities to be explained—as if one could solve a problem by doubling it. He migrated to Assusa city on the northwestern coast of Anatolia in present-day Turkeywhere Hermiasa graduate of the Academy, was ruler.

Aristotle became a close friend of Hermias and eventually married his ward Pythias. Aristotle helped Hermias to negotiate an alliance with Macedonia, which angered the Persian king, who had Hermias treacherously arrested and put to death about While in Assus and during the subsequent few years when he lived in the city of Mytilene on the island of LesbosAristotle carried out extensive scientific research, particularly in zoology and marine biology.

This work was summarized in a book later known, misleadingly, as The History of Animalsto which Aristotle added two short treatisesOn the Parts of Animals and On the Generation of Animals. Although Aristotle did not claim to have founded the science of zoology, his detailed observations of a wide variety of organisms were quite without precedent.

He—or one of his research assistants—must have been gifted with remarkably acute eyesight, since some of the features of insects that he accurately reports were not again observed until the invention of the microscope in the 17th century.

Much of it is concerned with the classification of animals into genus and species; more than species figure in his treatises, many of them described in detail. The myriad items of information about the anatomy, diet, habitat, modes of copulation, and reproductive systems of mammals, reptiles, fish, and insects are a melange of minute investigation and vestiges of superstition.

In some cases his unlikely stories about rare species of fish were proved accurate many centuries later. In other places he states clearly and fairly a biological problem that took millennia to solve, such as the nature of embryonic development.

His inquiries were conducted in a genuinely scientific spirit, and he was always ready to confess ignorance where evidence was insufficient.

Whenever there is a conflict between theory and observation, one must trust observation, he insisted, and theories are to be trusted only if their results conform with the observed phenomena. By Alexander had made himself master of an empire that stretched from the Danube to the Indus and included Libya and Egypt.

Ancient sources report that during his campaigns Alexander arranged for biological specimens to be sent to his tutor from all parts of Greece and Asia Minor. Page 1 of 6.Essay portfolios and dissertations submitted for the Associate and Fellowship Awards of the International Society for Philosophers.

Essay One Does Life Have a Meaning?

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Essay Two The Status of Religious Language. Essay Four The Contribution of Plato to Political Philosophy and the Search for the Common Good in Hobbes. The forthcoming Socrates by Williams should prove to be a short and lucid introduction to the life and thought of Socrates, and The Philosophy of Socrates, edited by Vlastos, offers a detailed and learned treatment of the thought of Socrates, containing a collection of critical essays by some of the foremost scholars in that field.

This, Plato would say, was a major turning point in his life, and he fled Athens to avoid a similar fate by association. He wound up in Sicily, where he joined an order of Pythagoreans (something along the line of celibate math mystics), whose fixation with numbers would inspire the cosmology Plato .

Plato: The Failure of Democracy. Plato () is often described as the greatest Western philosopher.

is the faculty best suited to make all the right and necessary decisions in a person’s life. The utopian society described in the Republic has a similar tripartite structure as the human soul. Corresponding to the bodily desires and.

Contributions of Early Western Civilization Essay Teresa Layton E. Shelton HIST 25 May Contributions of Early Western Civilization The study of Early Western Civilization reveals that there where many people, events and stories that shaped the world we live in today.

this was a pretty good essay. i liked how the ideas were presented and it helped me a lot when i studied. thank you for posting and keep up the good work. Plato's life and contributions to society.. What is known about his past, and how he enhanced the world around him.5/5(1).