2. A Brief History of Critical Thinking, Pt. 2: The Life Examined

by · November 9, 2020

Download

The Story of Nowhere – Studies in Utopianism and Humanity

The Story of Nowhere (available as eBook, Audiobook, & Paperback): https://storyofnowhere.com/book/

The Story of Nowhere Podcast Introductory Episode—”Episode Zero”: https://storyofnowhere.com/zero/

A Brief History of Critical Thinking, Pt. 1: Shamans, Seers, and Sacred Geometry: https://storyofnowhere.com/historyofthinking1/

SOCRATES & PLATO


The Trial of Socrates

“Xenophon” – Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

“The Clouds” – Aristophanes

  • In this comedic play, Socrates is depicted by his contemporary Aristophanes as a tricky Sophist; in fact, Socrates vehemently rebuked Sophistry

“The Sophists” – Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

  • “The sophists were itinerant professional teachers and intellectuals who frequented Athens and other Greek cities in the second half of the fifth century B.C.E. In return for a fee, the sophists offered young wealthy Greek men an education in aretē (virtue or excellence), thereby attaining wealth and fame while also arousing significant antipathy.”

“The Socratic Problem” – Project Gutenberg

  • “The Socratic problem (or Socratic question) is the term for the situation in the history of scholarship with respect to the existing materia pertaining to the individual known as Socrates which scholars rely upon as the only extant sources for knowing anything at all about this individual, but when compared, show contradictions and do not agree. It is apparent to scholarship (c.2011) that this problem is now deemed a task seeming impossible to clarify and thus perhaps now classified as unsolvable.”

“The Thinker’s Guide to the Art of Socratic Questioning” (10 Page Sample) – The Foundation for Critical Thinking

“Socratic Questioning Series” – The Foundation for Critical Thinking (YouTube; 20 Part Series)
“The Socratic Method: Fostering Critical Thinking” – Colorado State University

Socratic Method Research Portal

“Developing Critical Thinking Through Socratic Questioning: An Action Research Study” – International Journal of Education & Literacy Studies

The Republic (c. 380 BC) – Plato

“What is ‘The Socratic Method’? [Illustrated]” – The Polymath’s Paradise (YouTube)

“Plato’s Egyptian Republic” – Oxford Scholarship Online

“Plato: Student of Egyptian Mystery System” – Young African Pioneer

“Initiation of Plato (Pamphlet)” – Manly P. Hall

The Secret Teachings of All Ages (1928) – Manly P. Hall

  • From Chapter 10, “The Bembine Table of Isis”: “A manuscript by Thomas Taylor contains the following remarkable paragraph: ‘Plato was initiated into the “Greater Mysteries” at the age of 49. The initiation took place in one of the subterranean halls of the Great Pyramid in Egypt. The Isiac Table formed the altar, before which the Divine Plato stood and received that which was always his, but which the ceremony of the Mysteries enkindled and brought from its dormant state. With this ascent, after three days in the Great Hall, he was received by the Hierophant of the Pyramid (the Hierophant was seen only by those who had passed the three days, the three degrees, the three dimensions) and given verbally the Highest Esoteric Teachings, each accompanied with Its appropriate Symbol. After a further three months’ sojourn in the halls of the Pyramid, the Initiate Plato was sent out into the world to do the work of the Great Order, as Pythagoras and Orpheus had been before him.'”
  • Personally, I think that any historical claims made by Manly P. Hall should be taken with a few tablespoons of salt; still, he gives an interesting account of Plato’s time in Egypt.

“Plato, Aristotle, Egypt, and the Structure of Reality” – JaysAnalysis

ARISTOTLE & DEDUCTIVE LOGIC


“Aristotle” – Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

  • “Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.) numbers among the greatest philosophers of all time. Judged solely in terms of his philosophical influence, only Plato is his peer: Aristotle’s works shaped centuries of philosophy from Late Antiquity through the Renaissance, and even today continue to be studied with keen, non-antiquarian interest. A prodigious researcher and writer, Aristotle left a great body of work, perhaps numbering as many as two-hundred treatises, from which approximately thirty-one survive.[1] His extant writings span a wide range of disciplines, from logic, metaphysics and philosophy of mind, through ethics, political theory, aesthetics and rhetoric, and into such primarily non-philosophical fields as empirical biology, where he excelled at detailed plant and animal observation and description. In all these areas, Aristotle’s theories have provided illumination, met with resistance, sparked debate, and generally stimulated the sustained interest of an abiding readership.”
  • “Among the great achievements to which Aristotle can lay claim is the first systematic treatment of the principles of correct reasoning, the first logic. Although today we recognize many forms of logic beyond Aristotle’s, it remains true that he not only developed a theory of deduction, now called syllogistic, but added to it a modal syllogistic and went a long way towards proving some meta-theorems pertinent to these systems. Of course, philosophers before Aristotle reasoned well or reasoned poorly, and the competent among them had a secure working grasp of the principles of validity and soundness in argumentation. No-one before Aristotle, however, developed a systematic treatment of the principles governing correct inference; and no-one before him attempted to codify the formal and syntactic principles at play in such inference.”

The Story of Philosophy (1926) – Will Durant

“Aristotle’s Logic” – Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

  • “Aristotle’s logic, especially his theory of the syllogism, has had an unparalleled influence on the history of Western thought. It did not always hold this position: in the Hellenistic period, Stoic logic, and in particular the work of Chrysippus, took pride of place. However, in later antiquity, following the work of Aristotelian Commentators, Aristotle’s logic became dominant, and Aristotelian logic was what was transmitted to the Arabic and the Latin medieval traditions, while the works of Chrysippus have not survived. This unique historical position has not always contributed to the understanding of Aristotle’s logical works. Kant thought that Aristotle had discovered everything there was to know about logic, and the historian of logic Prantl drew the corollary that any logician after Aristotle who said anything new was confused, stupid, or perverse. During the rise of modern formal logic following Frege and Peirce, adherents of Traditional Logic (seen as the descendant of Aristotelian Logic) and the new mathematical logic tended to see one another as rivals, with incompatible notions of logic. More recent scholarship has often applied the very techniques of mathematical logic to Aristotle’s theories, revealing (in the opinion of many) a number of similarities of approach and interest between Aristotle and modern logicians.”

“Aristotelian Logic: The Logic of Categories” – Critical Thinker Academy

“History of Logic: Aristotle” – Encyclopedia Britannica

“The Beginnings of Formal Logic: Deduction in Aristotle’s Topics vs. Prior Analytics – Marko Malink

Prior Analytics (350 BC) – Aristotle

The Organon (c. 350 BC) – Aristotle

A Rulebook for Arguments (2009) – Anthony Weston

The Craft of Research (1995) – Booth, Colomb, & Williams

Socratic Logic (2010) – Peter Kreeft

ARISTOTLE TO AUGUSTINE


“Greco-Roman Culture” – Humanities LibreTexts

“Stoicism” – Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

“What is Stoic Logic?” – Euthyphronia

“Logos” – Strong’s Concordance

“Concerning the Logos” – Oregon State University

The Gospel of St. John Chapter 1, verses 1-5:

  • “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.”

“In the Beginning was the λόγος…” – Bible Researcher

“Neoplatonism” – Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

“Plotinus” – Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Manly P. Hall on Neo-Platonism (YouTube)

“Augustine of Hippo” – Ancient History Encyclopedia

“Ancient Christianity” – The History of Philosophy (Without Any Gaps)

  • For coverage of St. Augustine specifically, see episodes 110-117

“Catholic” – Online Etymology Dictionary

  • “[M]id-14c., ‘of the doctrines of the ancient Church’ (before the East/West schism), literally ‘universally accepted,’ from French catholique, from Church Latin catholicus ‘universal, general,’ from Greek katholikos, from phrase kath’ holou ‘on the whole, in general,’ from kata ‘about’ + genitive of holos ‘whole’ (from PIE root *sol- ‘whole, well-kept’). Medieval Latin catholicus was practically synonymous with Christian and meant ‘constituting or conforming to the church, its faith and organization’ (as opposed to local sects or heresies). With capital C-, applied by Protestants to the Church in Rome c. 1554, after the Reformation began. General sense of ’embracing all, universal’ in English is from 1550s. Meaning ‘not narrow-minded or bigoted’ is from 1580s. The Latin word was rendered in Old English as eallgeleaflic.”

Tags:

You may also like...