Category: Western Philosophy

These notes cover Aristotle’s concept of God in full: the taxonomy of substances (natural/artifact/non-sensible) and why natural science requires a sustaining principle; the four types of change (qualitative, quantitative, locomotion, substantial); why ‘First Mover’ is misleading and ‘Unmoved Mover’ is correct, with the flower/sun analogy and the domino contrast; how the Unmoved Mover causes motion…

These notes cover Aristotle’s metaphysics in full: the three preliminary points (aim = solving change, language warning on ‘form’, biological vs mathematical approach); ‘First Philosophy’ and being qua being; five critiques of Plato’s Forms plus the Third Man Argument regress; the immanent/transcendent distinction and intellectual analysis vs ontological status; reality as individual substances with whatness…

These notes cover Aristotle’s epistemology and the Organon in full: the foundational Reality–Thought–Language affinity; the painter/gardener/scientist analogy for three levels of knowledge; the Organon’s six books (Categories with 10 modes of existence; On Interpretation with statement types and non-contradiction; Prior Analytics with the syllogism and the crucial validity/truth distinction; Posterior Analytics with three requirements for…

These notes introduce Aristotle as a thinker and establish his philosophical context: a detailed chronological timeline of his life (384–322 BCE) including his years at Plato’s Academy, tutoring of Alexander, founding of the Lyceum, and final departure from Athens; the key asymmetry between Plato’s and Aristotle’s surviving texts (Plato: popular dialogues survived, technical lectures lost;…

These notes cover Plato’s physics and religion in full: two reasons physics cannot reach truth (the epistemological argument from flux; the methodological argument that physics asks conditions rather than cause); the mechanistic vs teleological distinction with its full philosophical implications; the appearance/reality problem and the interaction theory of sensory qualities; three levels of reality (Forms,…

These notes cover Plato’s political philosophy in full: the structural parallel between the tripartite soul and the three-class state (Governing/Wisdom, Protective/Courage, Producing/Temperance) with justice as their harmony; the ideal state as intellectual aristocracy governed by philosopher-kings; Plato’s critique of democracy through the Cook and Doctor analogy and the Pericles critique; the two problems of governance…

These notes cover Plato’s moral philosophy in full: arguments for ethical Forms (reductio from moral judgement; parallel with mathematical Forms; the Laches dialogue on experiential vs formal knowledge); the three categories of good as the framework for the Glaucon debate; Glaucon’s two challenges (Ring of Gyges; two persons — just-but-suffering vs unjust-but-flourishing); the tripartite soul…

These notes cover Plato’s three great metaphors from the Republic in full: the Divided Line with its four stages (Eikasia — illusion; Pistis — belief; Dianoia — discursive thinking with its two problems of indirect medium and unproven axioms; Noesis — direct intuition with backward dialectical reasoning), including the science-vs-philosophy contrast and the First Principle;…

These notes cover Plato’s Theory of Forms in full: the crucial distinction between mental concepts and objective Forms; the Seventh Letter’s five classes (name, definition, image, knowledge, the Form itself); the shift from Socrates (what) to Plato (why); five arguments for Forms (epistemological, metaphysical, semantic, imperfection, opposite predicates); the reality and non-spatiotemporal existence of Forms;…

These notes cover Plato’s epistemology as a four-stage argument: Stage One proves knowledge is possible by refuting Relativism (3 arguments: self-refutation, opposites, expert opinion) and Skepticism (2 arguments: self-refutation, mathematical certainty); Stage Two shows knowledge is neither sense perception (6 arguments) nor mere belief, and introduces the JTB definition with the anchor metaphor and blind-man…