Test #2 in Christian Philosophy.

Plato.
Dates:
427 B.C. Plato born in Athens.
387 B.C. founds an academy in Athens.
360 B.C. returns to Athens after traveling to Syracuse.
347 B.C. Plato dies.
Plato studied under Socrates. He was a VIP in the ancient world. Augustine took Plato’s thoughts
and made it into a christian mindset. ALL ABOUT METHOD!
Earlier: Method. Crito - Apology - Euthypnia ---he used dialogue form.
Middle: Philosophical Beliefs. Meno - Phaedo - Republic --- Dialogue.
Later: Individual Issues. Parmenides - Theatatus - Timaeus - Laws --- (epistemology related to
forms, knowledge, osmiology, government.)
II. Hedonism. Some pleasure is not good, so it cannot be the eternal good.
Empiricism - Senses are ultimately not reliable, though hint at some truth.
Relativism - rejected ethical and epistemological relativism.
Materialism - divine forms. We are in shadows.
Mechanism - Forms are the real objects.
Atheism - Singular god. “the good”. Things exist only in the one.
Naturalism - resisted the atomists.
Plato’s epistemology: how humans know is related to what is. The world of particular things and
the world of the Forms. Two states: opinion and knowledge.
Plato’s Ethics:
Reason - Wisdom. Spirit - Courage. Passions - Temperance. And Justice - the virtue of the entire
person when the other virtues are present.
Aristotle:
Dates: 384 B.C. Aristotle was born in Macedonia.
347 B.C. Plato dies, Aristotle was Plato’s student.
334 B.C. Aristotle establishes his university, the Lyceum, in Athens.
322 B.C. he dies.
Cosmopolitan thinker. Personal tutor to Alexander the Great. Peripatetic - “walking” school.
 Beliefs: can be understood in contrast with Plato. Study of essence was his goal. (Ousia,
Essentia). We know the universal through particular. Starts with particulars to universals.
Philosophy as an equivalent of science.
FORM+MATTER=SUBSTANCE.
Aristotle’s four causes:
1. The material cause is the stuff of which a thing is made.
2. The formal cause - is the set of essential properties without which a thing could not be the kind
of thing it is.
3. The efficient cause - is the activity that brought a thing into existence.
4. The final cause - is the purpose for which a thing exists.
Four kinds of change:
A) Locomotion - such as moving chair from one room to another.
B) Alteration - any change with regard to quality.
C) Augmentation/Diminution - change with regard to quantity.
D) Generation/Corruption - change with regard to substance.
Substances are particular things. Properties are universal things.
FORM=SOULL MATTER= BODY!
Levels of soul:
1. Vegetative soul - found in all plants.
2. Sensitive soul - animals.
3. Rational soul - only found in humans.
Aristotle’s Ethics:
The goal - to find the ultimate good.
“Eudamonia” - happiness, good spirit.
Happiness is the only existing good.
The mantra of Aristotle’s ethics is moderation. “Everything in good measure.”

Plotinus.
205 B.C. born in Upper Egypt.
233 - Plotinus begins study in Alexandria.
244 - starts his school of philosophy in Rome.
 253 - starts writing what became the enneads.
270 - dies in Rome.
Neo-platonism indicates Plotinus. Student Porphyry.
6 books published by Porphyry: Ethics, Nature, Matter/Material Universe, Soul, Mind, 1st
Principle.
Used Aristotilian method to express a Platonic idea. His philosophy was incredibly religious.
Metaphysics:
1. The One - highest form of existence, called him the “good” or the “one”. was understood as
pure existence, was holy/transcendent, argues that it is impossible to know about god.
2. Nous/Mind/Intellect. Forms are the highest good.
3. Soul/psyche.
Matter is absence of the good for Plotinus.

Augustine. Dates:
354 was born in South Africa.
373 begins his 9 year old attachment to Manicheanism .
386 - the big conversion.
391 - ordained as priest.
400 - completes his Confessions.
430 - dies in the Vandals’ siege.
God in Augustine:
-was the source for all tjings
-was transcendent
-unmoved mover
-omnipitent
personal god (intimately connected to the world he created.)
-argued that God existed as One in Three.
LOVER HS BELOVED
“filologue” -
God as love was his favorite analogy., relational not ontological,
 Epistemology: All knowledge begins with faith, some things known by faith can be proved by
logic, all truth is god’s truth, reason is the way of controlling faith.
CREATION - WORLD OF MATTER
GOD - WORLD OF SPIRITS
Ethics:
1. God as the source for physical and moral.
2. Love God, love your neighbor.
3. All non-christians are immoral
4. sin of pride
5. love serving god only
LAW - LOVE - CHARACTER/VIRTUE - WELL BEING ==ARISTOTLE’S ETHICAL
BEIEFS.
TERMS:
SHORT ANSWER:
1. Aristotle’s Understanding of Change.
Four kinds of change:
Locomotion - such as moving chair from one room to another.
Alteration - any change with regard to quality.
Augmentation/Diminution - change with regard to quantity.
Generation/Corruption - change with regard to substance.
Manicheism.
Basic to the religion's doctrine was the conflicting dualism between the realm of God,
represented by light and by spiritual enlightenment, and the realm of Satan, symbolized by
darkness and by the world of material things. To account for the existence of evil in a world
created by God, Mani posited a primal struggle in which the forces of Satan separated from God;
humanity, composed of matter, that which belongs to Satan, but infused with a modicum of godly
light, was a product of this struggle, and was a paradigm of the eternal war between the forces of
light and those of darkness. Christ, the ideal, light-clad soul, could redeem for each person that
portion of light God had allotted. Light and dark were seen to be commingled in our present age
as good and evil, but in the last days each would return to its proper, separate realm, as they were
in the beginning. The Christian notion of the Fall and of personal sin was repugnant to the
Manichees; they felt that the soul suffered not from a weak and corrupt will but from contact
with matter. Evil was a physical, not a moral, thing; a person's misfortunes were miseries, not
sins.
Essay Question. Plato’s Understanding of the Forms.
Plato believed in two worlds - physical and the other one is hard to describe, the world of the
forms. For Plato, for is an eternal, unchangeable, and universal essence. He believe that forms
would exist regardless of anything happening in the world. Truth, Beauty, Goodness, Justice
existed before there were any human beings, according to Plato.
Forms are also universal. They can be in several things at the same time. He also wrote that
sometimes there were forms for every class of objects in this world.