HIST 1001 Test 2 CHAPTER 4 7 Socrates The Philosopher PLATO The Allegory of the Cave from It has a ton of significance in itself but it tells us about the historical context of why philosophy came the way it did It is a philosophical image of what education was like in the life of this day The Republic Plato s illustrates his metaphysics and epistemology in The Allegory of the Cave which shows the obstacles philosophers face in the search for truth and emphasizes the obligations philosophers are under to use their knowledge for the good of the state The Allegory of the Cave also known as Simile of the Cave is in dialogue form The narrator who is seen as Socrates asks a series of questions to his student describing the allegory Men are chained in the cave and all they see are shadows cast on the wall of the cave by a fire These men are forced to look in one direction but all chained to the wall These men have only seen for their entire life the shadows that appear on the wall The shadows are being casted by figures being carried by people back in forth The people chained do here the noise of the puppeteers The prisoners chained talk to each other they have prizes of who can make up the best story o One guy tries to figure out who is behind the puppet thing This one prisoner succeeds he realizes that there is more to this 2D world He gets to leave through a long passage to the opening of the cave where he sees real light real images and he sees the sun He can t stand the blinding images and light He tries to seek refuge back in the cave but he realizes the true reality of the 3D world is so much beautiful and enjoyable that he doesn t want to go back to his old life to experience o He eventually goes back to the cave He finds out what truth really was and he feels he has a duty to bring the other prisoners Socrates asks the Athenian how the prisoners will treat the person who left Not really well The prisoners laugh and mock him when he returns to tell them of the true reality The prisoners believe that his sight was ruined and they don t want to know of this knew world The prisoners turned on the person who returned and wanted to kill him Greeks always do stuff in form of a contest This image written by Plato is trying to teach us This represents the world that you and I all know We believe that we live in a real world with honor religion books To us these are real solid things and we value them Plato is trying to tell us that these are just world of images and reflections of the world of ideas which are the true things that we should value Plato s experience of seeing his mentor executed motivated his philosophical ideas The culture of Athens could allow ideas to thrive but he also saw this world as dangerous if you have the wrong side Socrates Fate He is eventually executed by charges of impiety and corrupting the Youth of the Athenian Socrates accepts his death even though he had the chance to leave because that was his fate and he should respect it Thrived in the Marketplace of Ideas Then was killed by the democracy 399 BCE Athenian imperialism wealth and democracy It is the wealth and disposable income that allowed Athens to be the center of this intellectual activity The democratic institution went hand in hand with the debates of intellect Socrates Criticisms of Democracy People believed that the commoners couldn t be trusted because of their lack of education This led to the idea that Athens had endangered itself especially during the war because they had gotten too rash greedy He believed that it could be dangerous to put too much power in the hands of the commoners The Great Panathenaia Festival every four years it was celebrated on a larger scale Annual Religious festival for their patron god Athena This was a huge festival Each year it would provide Athena with a new clock It was also a political debate Artistic splendor wealth and imperial power all on display Demonstrates the greatness of Athens Parthenon Symbolism of Athena the patron goddess of Athens and of the empire Temple and statue show the political significance of religious ideas The statue is one of the greatest artistic It s not art for art sake but it is political art CHAPTER 4 Hellenistic Civilization Greece after the Peloponnesian War 404 BCE end Legacy of Disunity the Age of Hegemonies The empire was replaced with a period of Sparta Hegemony They took away the democratic constitutions and changed them in to new limited oligarchy political systems This happened in Athens before the end of the war This led to a period of civil war End of Golden Age End of the Peloponnesian War and Socrates time of great cultural achievement and war and struggle Sparta as the overlord but never firmly in control The empire was dissolved Greek warfare continued and Sparta s position as leader was never really secured It had other cities like Corinth Thebes to worry about They didn t want to do away with Athenian power completely because they were afraid of Sparta being the only strong power o Characteristic of Greeks Never were the cities at peace with one another except for when there was outside attempts at conquest This only time when there was Greek unity Persians continue to take an interest in Greek affairs So Why do the Persians even care They didn t want them to allow them to grow unified enough to unite against them This would keep them from having any problems on Western border King s Peace 386 B C E This is a treaty they had all Greek city states to sign which had terms that the Greek cities would not try to create anymore empires within the Greek Persia s King becomes the Enforcer o Respecting the freedom and autonomy o They would no longer try to liberate the Persian King s control over some Western Greek city states o If anyone tries to conquer a Greek city state he would help them overcome this What ever happened to unity against the barbarian Greeks seem to have forgotten this especially Sparta because they helped make this treaty occur and would enforce it within the Greek city states Sparta traded this all away for a leading role within the Greek word Freedom autonomy preserved because the King said so This is always repeated in all treaties These become the buzzwords for all city states during the several decades after the Peloponnesian war Battle of Leuctra This is where Thebes had overcome Sparta They redesigned their army and Hooplike tactics contain dominance over the enemy They found out if you