Essays from my University of London BA Philosophy Studies

Ancient Greek Philosophy – [235P085]

1. “The ordering, the same for all, no god or man has made, but it was, is and will be: fire ever-living, being kindled in measures and going out in measures.’ (Heraclitus fr. 30.) Discuss.
2. What is the Heraclitean logos that people do not comprehend?
3. In what sense or senses does Heraclitus believe in “The unity of opposites’?
4. In what sense, if any, does Heraclitus hold that everything is always changing?
5. What, if anything, can Zeno’s paradoxes teach us about motion?
6. ‘One excellent argument [for the recollection theory] is that when people are questioned, they state the truth about everything for themselves – and yet unless knowledge and a correct account were present within them, they would be unable to do this.’ (Plato Phaedo 73a.) Discuss.
7. Is the tripartite soul of the Republic an advance over the immortal soul of the Phaedo’?
8. Does Plato have a satisfactory account of the difference between knowledge and belief?
9. Discuss whichever you take to be the best of the many arguments that Plato offers for the immortality of the soul.
10. Would you call Plato’s philosophy of mind ‘dualist’? If so, in what sense?
11. What is the paradox of inquiry in the Meno? Does Plato have a good solution to it?
12. ‘Plato’s ideal of love not only downgrades bodies, but persons also.’ Discuss.
13. Does the Third Man Argument refute the theory of forms?
14. What is Plato’s concept of knowledge?
15. Does Plato offer a satisfactory account of naming in the Cratylus?
16. How should we understand Heraclitus’s claim that opposites are one? Does this claim commit him to inconsistency?
17. Socrates says of the allegory of the cave in the Republic that ‘it fits what we were talking about earlier in its entirety’. Discuss how well this allegory fits with the analogy of the divided line.
18. Can the difficulties raised for the Theory of Forms in Plato’s Parmenides be overcome?

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