Classics Unit II - The Genesis of Self-Understanding (8)

Capax Dei

"Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?" (1 Cor. 3:16).

Imago Dei

"God created man in his image" (Gen. 1:27)

Christian anthropology

"God looked at everything he had made, and he found it very good" (Gen. 1:31)

The biblical creation of humankind

"The Lord God formed man out of the clay of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and so man became a living being" (Gen. 2:7)

The Christian concept of the soul

"The Lord God...blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and so man became a living being" (Gen. 2:7)

A philosophical argument

"every soul is immortal"

The spirited, or hot-blooded, part, i.e., the part that gets angry when it perceives ____

(for example) an injustice being done

Plato: The Three Souls

- Intellectual soul whose virtue is wisdom, the most important virtue. Intellectual soul should rule over the other parts of the souls. - The will-soul whose virtue is courage which is the second most important virtue. - Desire-soul whose virtue is moderation which is the third most important virtue

Phaedrus - Opening Scene

- Phaedrus has just come from a friend's house where he hears Lysias, a famous speaker, talk on the subject of love - He leaves the city of Athens for a stroll in the country. - Socrates meets Phaedrus who is eager to tell Socrates all he has heard. - Socrates and Phaedrus walk together along the Ilisus River, looking for a spot to sit where they can talk.

The Tripartite Soul

- Reason (charioteer, lover of wisdom) should govern the unruly desires of the mind and body - Spirited Part (the white horse, lover of nobility and honor) The spirited part of the soul contains the noble emotions - Concupiscible or Appetitive Part (the black horse, lover of lust and carnal appetites) - The concupiscible part are the lower or base desires

The Two Horses

1) The White Horse (Spirited) - his coat is white; his eyes are black; and he is a lover of honor with modesty and self-control. Companion to true glory, he needs no whip, and is guided by verbal commands alone 2) The Black Horse (Appetitive) - a crooked great jumble of limbs with a short bull-neck, a pug nose, black skin, and bloodshot white eyes, companion to wild boasts and indecency, he is shaggy around the ears, deaf as a post, and just barely yields to horsewhip and goad combined

A medallion representing ______, whom Aristotle tutored, hangs from the heavy gold chain

Alexander the Great

______ defined the human person as a "rational animal."

Aristotle

______ fully recognizes the corporal dimension as a part of human nature

Aristotle

______ plainly states then a spiritual dimension to humanity; but this spiritual reality is intimately connected to matter

Aristotle

______ said that the would and the body were linked and you could not have one without the other. Therefore, he did not believe the soul to be eternal

Aristotle

______ was trained first in medicine, and then in 367, he was sent to Athens to study philosophy with Plato

Aristotle

Christian anthropology also believes that every human person is endowed with the capacity to contain the fullness of God within the soul. This is called the ______.

Divine Indwelling

Socrates' Belief on What Strengthens or Weakens the Soul

Doing good things and thinking good thoughts strengthens the soul. Doing bad things and thinking bad thoughts weakens the soul.

Aristotle rests his hand reflectively on a bust of ______, the blind epic poet of the Iliad and the Odyssey

Homer

______ share corporeal nature with the animals, but due to the intrinsic union of the rational element with that of matter, they transcend the biological limitations of the animals

Humans

In his treatise On The Soul, Aristotle says ______

Knowledge is valuable

Just as God is a community of ______, each human is invited to a personal relationship with God

Persons

There are so many of these appetites that ______ does not bother to enumerate them, but he does note that they can often be in conflict even with each other. This element of the soul is represented by the ugly black horse on the left

Plato

______ does not fully recognize the corporal dimension as a part of human nature

Plato

Aristotle stayed at ______ until about 347

Plato's Academy

Those thinkers who based their anthropologies on the Bible also employed reason, observation, and experience; but their starting point was ______

Revelation

Direct Teaching Lineage

Socrates --> Plato --> Aristotle --> Alexander

Socrates' Analogy of the Soul

The soul is like a team of winged horses and their charioteer. The driver is in cargo of the horses. One more is beautiful and good, while the opposite and has the opposite sort of bloodline. Chariot-driving in our case is inevitably a painfully difficult business.

Aristotle's Challenge

What is the relation between the spiritual and the material? The incorporeal and the corporeal?

Who closed the Ruins of Plato's Academy?

a Christian emperor Justinian

Socrates

a classical Greek philosopher and a founder of Western philosophy

The Phaedrus

a dialogue between Plato's protagonist, Socrates, and Phaedrus, an interlocutor in several dialogues

Plato (428-348 BCE)

a philosopher in Classical Greece and the founder of the Academy in Athens, student of Socrates and teacher of Aristotle

The spirited is the part that can steel itself to ______

adversity

In his treatise On The Soul, Aristotle believes ____ knowledge is valuable, although some is more important than others

all

The Allegory of the Chariot

appears in the Phaedrus, is a very important part of the Western — and World — spiritual and philosophical tradition. It presents a rich metaphor for the soul and its journey toward all that is true, good, and beautiful

When was the Phaedrus composed?

around 370 BCE

Is the appetitive or concupiscible part good or bad?

bad

Each soul is unique and specific to its own personal ______

body

Plato almost despises the material body and exaggerates the separation between ______

body and soul

Aristotle and Plato were the first philosophers to debate the ______ relationship.

body/soul

Aristotle

born in Stagira in north Greece in 384 BCE, the son of Nicomachus

The mind (nous), our conscious awareness, is represented by the ______ who is guiding (or who at least should be guiding) the horses and chariot.

charioteer

The discussion of the Phaedrus deals with diverse topics, the centerpiece being ____

conception of the human soul

The will-soul whose virtue is ______ which is the second most important virtue.

courage

Just as God rules the universe, humans have lordship of ______

creation

The black horse pulls ____

down

Aristotle criticized Plato's radical ______

dualism

Aristotle believed the human spirit and the human body are ______ to each other

extrinsic (do not go together)

For Plato, humans are essentially spirit in ______ with matter

extrinsic union

One of the speakers of the Phaedreus is the ____

facilitator and guides the discussion

Just as God is absolutely free, so too humans possess ______ that cannot be coerced

free will

Is the spirited part good or bad?

good

Since God created matter, all material creation is ______

good

Though a brilliant pupil, Aristotle opposed some of Plato's teachings, and when Plato died, Aristotle was not appointed ______.

head of the Academy

Socrates was sentenced to death by ____

hemlock poisoning

Aristotle's views differed significantly from Plato in his own view of the ______

human individual

Plato believed the ______ and the ______ are two juxtaposed realities

human spirit; human body

Those thinkers who based their anthropologies on the Bible, based themselves on God's revealed truth about ______

humankind

Greek philosophers asked questions about ____

humans

appetites

includes all our myriad desires for various pleasures, comforts, physical satisfactions, and bodily ease

When this exploration had run its course, the next line of thinkers turned from the study of the external world to the ____ of the human person

inner world

The material human body is good and an _____ component of every man and woman

intrinsic

For Aristotle, the human person is a substantial ______ unity

intrinsic (go together)

For Aristotle, humans are an ______ between spirit and matter

intrinsic union

Why was the Ruins of Plato's Academy closed?

it was claimed to be pagan

Socratic Method

laid the groundwork for Western systems of logic and philosophy

Just as God is Love, humans are fulfilled by ______

loving

Desire-soul whose virtue is _______ which is the third most important virtue

moderation

The people God created in his image have ______

multiple dimensions

In order to instruct Phaedrus on the true nature of love, Socrates must first establish something about the ____

nature of the soul

Plato's use of the term 'spirited' does not mean 'spiritual'. He means "spirited" in the same sense that we speak of a high-spirited horse, for example, one with lots of energy and power.) This element of the soul is represented by the ______ on the right

noble white horse

The spirited is the part of us that loves to face and ______

overcome great challenges

The Phaedrus is a literary genre in which ____

people discuss a certain issue and reach a certain resolution and attain a new understanding and knowledge on the topic under discussion

Philosophers started investigating the nature of the human person, which came to be called ____

philosophical anthropology

According to Plato, the human person is primarily spirit and the body is something like the ______ of the spirit

prison

The soul works best when ______ is in charge

reason

The philosophers who devised an anthropology with no knowledge of Scripture did so solely through ______

reason, observation, and experience

A good person is one whose ______ is in balance with reason at the helm

soul

In his treatise On The Soul, Aristotle believes knowledge about the ______ is very important

soul

Reason must control both the ______ and ______ of the will and the unruly bodily passions

spirited; bold impulses

Nicomachus

the court physician to the Macedonian royal family

Academy of Athens

the first institution of higher learning in the Western world

Ruins of Plato's Academy (387 BC to 521 AD)

the longest existing university in the world

reasons for the philosophical argument

the soul moves itself, nothing moves it from the outside. It has no source, and it cannot be created nor destroyed

The mind (nous) is the part of us that _________

thinks, analyzes, looks ahead, rationally weighs options, and tries to gauge what is best and truest overall.

Since the human soul possesses the spiritual faculties of intellect and will, humans enjoy ______ from the merely biological sphere

transcendence

Reason must steer them ______ in the right direction.

united

The white horse pulls ____

up

The spirited is the part that loves ______

victory, winning, challenge, and honor

When the ancient Greek philosophers recognized the inadequacy of the mythological stories to explain the natural workings of the world, they turned to empirical observation and investigation of the ____

visible environment

Intellectual soul whose virtue is ______, the most important virtue. Intellectual soul should rule over the other parts of the souls.

wisdom

Biblical anthropology claims that God creates each human soul and infuses it into the ______ at the moment of conception

zygote