Reference no: EM132517147

1. Aristotle says in NE I.7 that "the beginning is more than  half the whole," but since we do not begin at the beginning already knowing the highest and most important questions, we need to work toward them. To discover fundamental problems in philosophical texts we attempt to answer to what problem does this text respond? What are the most basic questions it can answer? This is perhaps the most important of all philosophical tasks, even more so than understanding concepts and arguments, since their meaning and persuasive power depends on the basic problem(s) they answer.

2. There are many paths to the discovery and articulation of fundamental questions, including, for example, generalizing to principles, articulating what is at stake in an argument, comparing arguments (contrasting them, and working out their agreement and thereby working out the subject they are both talking about), but each is governed by the guiding question.

Drawing in detail on 3 thinkers, each from different units, answer one of the following questions:

1. What is being? Why do we ask the question of being, and what are the primary ontological problems? What even more fundamental questions do the answers of the ancients raise? Consider, e.g. Thales, Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle.

2. What is knowledge? Why do we want to know what knowledge is, and what are the fundamental epistemological problems? What fundamental questions are raised by the answers we have examined? Consider, e.g. Xenophanes, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle.

3. What is the good? Why do we want to know it, and what are the most basic questions about it? What fundamental questions do we discover through the answers we have studied in this course? Consider, e.g. Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Epictetus