Title: Great Philosophers — LearnCoachAssist

Q: Who was Socrates?
A: Socrates (c. 469–399 BCE) was an ancient Greek philosopher from Athens, widely regarded as one of the founders of Western philosophy.

Q: What method of inquiry is Socrates famous for?
A: The Socratic method (elenchus) — a form of cooperative dialogue using questions and answers to stimulate critical thinking and illuminate ideas.

Q: Why did Socrates never write anything down?
A: Socrates believed that written words could not adequately convey philosophical truth; he preferred live dialectical conversation where ideas could be tested in real time.

Q: What does the phrase "I know that I know nothing" mean?
A: It expresses Socratic ignorance — the idea that true wisdom begins with recognizing the limits of one's own knowledge.

Q: How did Socrates die?
A: He was sentenced to death by an Athenian jury in 399 BCE and executed by drinking hemlock, after being convicted of impiety and corrupting the youth.

Q: What is the Socratic paradox "No one errs willingly"?
A: Socrates held that all wrongdoing is the result of ignorance — if a person truly knows what is good, they will necessarily do it.

Q: What is the Apology of Socrates?
A: A text by Plato recording Socrates' defense speech at his trial, in which he argues that the examined life is the only life worth living.

Q: Who was Plato?
A: Plato (c. 428–348 BCE) was a student of Socrates and founder of the Academy in Athens, one of the first institutions of higher learning in the Western world.

Q: What is Plato's Theory of Forms?
A: The theory that non-material abstract Forms (such as Beauty, Justice, Equality) represent the most fundamental reality, and physical objects are imperfect copies of these Forms.

Q: What is the Allegory of the Cave?
A: A metaphor from Plato's Republic illustrating how most people perceive only shadows of reality, while the philosopher ascends to knowledge of the true Forms.

Q: What is the Republic about?
A: Plato's Republic explores justice, the ideal state, and the philosopher-king — arguing that the best rulers are those who understand the Form of the Good.

Q: What are the three parts of the soul according to Plato?
A: Reason (logistikon), Spirit (thumoeides), and Appetite (epithumetikon), each corresponding to a class in the ideal city.

Q: What is Platonic dualism?
A: The view that reality is divided into two realms: the intelligible world of eternal Forms and the sensible world of changing physical objects.

Q: What is the Allegory of the Divided Line?
A: A model in the Republic dividing knowledge into four levels: imagination, belief, thought, and understanding, progressing from opinion to true knowledge.

Q: Who was Aristotle?
A: Aristotle (384–322 BCE) was a student of Plato and tutor of Alexander the Great, often called the "Father of Western Philosophy" for his vast contributions to logic, science, and ethics.

Q: What is Aristotle's concept of eudaimonia?
A: Eudaimonia means flourishing or happiness — for Aristotle, the highest human good achieved by living virtuously in accordance with reason.

Q: What is the Doctrine of the Mean?
A: Aristotle's ethical principle that virtue is a mean between two extremes (excess and deficiency); e.g., courage is the mean between recklessness and cowardice.

Q: What are Aristotle's Four Causes?
A: Material cause (what something is made of), formal cause (its form or design), efficient cause (what made it), and final cause (its purpose or telos).

Q: What is Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics about?
A: It is Aristotle's major ethical work exploring virtue, character, and the good life, arguing that happiness comes from the practice of virtue.

Q: How did Aristotle differ from Plato on universals?
A: Aristotle rejected Plato's separate realm of Forms, arguing that universals exist within particular things (immanent realism), not in a transcendent world.

Q: What is Aristotle's contribution to logic?
A: Aristotle invented formal syllogistic logic — the study of valid deductive reasoning using premises and conclusions — presented in his Organon.

Q: Who was René Descartes?
A: Descartes (1596–1650) was a French philosopher and mathematician, often called the "Father of Modern Philosophy".

Q: What does Cogito, ergo sum mean?
A: "I think, therefore I am" — Descartes' foundational certainty that the act of doubting proves the existence of the thinking self.

Q: What is Cartesian doubt?
A: A method of systematic skepticism where Descartes doubts everything that can possibly be doubted in order to find indubitable truths.

Q: What is Cartesian dualism?
A: The view that mind and body are two fundamentally different substances — the mind is non-physical (res cogitans) and the body is physical (res extensa).

Q: What is the Evil Demon hypothesis?
A: A thought experiment in Descartes' Meditations positing that a powerful deceiver could be causing all our sensory experiences to be false.

Q: What are Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy?
A: A foundational work in which Descartes systematically doubts all beliefs and rebuilds knowledge from the certainty of the cogito, including arguments for God's existence.

Q: Who was Immanuel Kant?
A: Kant (1724–1804) was a German philosopher whose critical philosophy revolutionized epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics.

Q: What is the Categorical Imperative?
A: Kant's supreme moral law: "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law."

Q: What is the difference between phenomena and noumena in Kant?
A: Phenomena are things as they appear to us through sensory experience; noumena are things-in-themselves, which we can never directly know.

Q: What is Kant's Critique of Pure Reason about?
A: It examines the limits and scope of human knowledge, arguing that while knowledge begins with experience, its structure is shaped by the mind's a priori categories.

Q: What are synthetic a priori judgments?
A: Judgments that are both informative (synthetic) and knowable independent of experience (a priori) — e.g., "7 + 5 = 12" — central to Kant's epistemology.

Q: What is Kant's notion of duty (Pflicht)?
A: For Kant, moral actions must be done from duty alone, not from inclination or self-interest — only actions motivated by respect for the moral law have moral worth.

Q: What is the Kingdom of Ends?
A: A Kantian ideal in which all rational beings treat each other as ends in themselves, never merely as means, forming a moral community.

Q: Who was Friedrich Nietzsche?
A: Nietzsche (1844–1900) was a German philosopher known for radical critiques of morality, religion, and conventional philosophy.

Q: What did Nietzsche mean by "God is dead"?
A: He meant that belief in the Christian God has lost its power as the foundation of Western morality and meaning, creating a crisis of values.

Q: What is the Übermensch?
A: The Overman or Superman — Nietzsche's ideal of a person who creates their own values and meaning in a world without inherent purpose.

Q: What is the Will to Power?
A: Nietzsche's concept that the fundamental drive of all living beings is not survival but the expansion and expression of power and creative force.

Q: What is eternal recurrence?
A: The thought experiment asking: could you affirm your life if you had to live it over and over identically for eternity? A test of life-affirmation.

Q: What is Nietzsche's master-slave morality?
A: A distinction between master morality (valuing strength, pride, nobility) and slave morality (valuing humility, pity, resentment) — Nietzsche saw Christianity as embodying slave morality.

Q: What is Thus Spoke Zarathustra?
A: Nietzsche's philosophical novel in which the prophet Zarathustra teaches concepts like the Übermensch, eternal recurrence, and the death of God.

Q: Who was David Hume?
A: Hume (1711–1776) was a Scottish empiricist philosopher known for his radical skepticism about causation, induction, and the self.

Q: What is Hume's problem of induction?
A: The argument that we have no rational justification for believing the future will resemble the past — inductive reasoning rests on habit, not logic.

Q: What is Hume's Fork?
A: The distinction between relations of ideas (analytic, certain — e.g., math) and matters of fact (synthetic, probable — e.g., empirical claims).

Q: What did Hume say about causation?
A: Hume argued that we never observe necessary connection between events; causation is just constant conjunction — one event regularly following another.

Q: What is Hume's Bundle Theory of the self?
A: The view that there is no enduring self — the mind is just a bundle of perceptions (impressions and ideas) in constant flux.

Q: What is Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature?
A: Hume's major work arguing that all knowledge derives from sense experience and applying empiricism to moral philosophy, causation, and personal identity.

Q: Who was John Locke?
A: Locke (1632–1704) was an English philosopher considered the "Father of Liberalism" and a founder of British empiricism.

Q: What is Locke's tabula rasa?
A: The idea that the mind at birth is a blank slate — all knowledge comes from sensory experience, not innate ideas.

Q: What is Locke's theory of personal identity?
A: Locke argued that personal identity depends on continuity of consciousness (memory), not the soul or body.

Q: What is Locke's social contract theory?
A: The idea that governments derive their authority from the consent of the governed and must protect natural rights to life, liberty, and property.

Q: What is Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding?
A: A foundational empiricist work arguing that all ideas come from experience (sensation and reflection) and rejecting innate knowledge.

Q: What are Locke's natural rights?
A: The rights to life, liberty, and property — rights that exist prior to government and which the state is created to protect.

Q: Who was Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel?
A: Hegel (1770–1831) was a German idealist philosopher known for his dialectical method and philosophy of history.

Q: What is Hegel's dialectic?
A: A process of development through thesis, antithesis, and synthesis — contradictions drive progress toward higher levels of understanding.

Q: What does Hegel mean by Geist (Spirit)?
A: Geist is the collective rational spirit or mind that develops through history, reaching self-awareness through human culture, art, religion, and philosophy.

Q: What is the master-slave dialectic in Hegel?
A: A passage in the Phenomenology of Spirit showing how self-consciousness develops through a struggle for recognition between two beings.

Q: What is Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit?
A: A work tracing the development of consciousness from immediate sense-certainty to absolute knowledge, through dialectical stages.

Q: What is Hegel's philosophy of history?
A: Hegel argued that history is the rational progress of Spirit toward freedom, unfolding through dialectical conflict among nations and ideas.

Q: Who was John Stuart Mill?
A: Mill (1806–1873) was a British philosopher and political economist, the most influential utilitarian thinker of the 19th century.

Q: What is Mill's Utilitarianism?
A: The ethical theory that actions are right in proportion as they promote happiness (pleasure and absence of pain) for the greatest number.

Q: What is the difference between higher and lower pleasures in Mill?
A: Mill argued that intellectual and moral pleasures (higher) are superior in quality to bodily pleasures (lower) — "better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied."

Q: What is Mill's Harm Principle?
A: The principle that the only justification for restricting individual liberty is to prevent harm to others, stated in On Liberty.

Q: What is Mill's On Liberty about?
A: A defense of individual freedom of thought, speech, and action against the tyranny of the majority and governmental overreach.

Q: What did Mill contribute to women's rights?
A: Mill wrote The Subjection of Women (1869), arguing that the legal subordination of women is wrong and a barrier to human progress.

Q: Who was Ludwig Wittgenstein?
A: Wittgenstein (1889–1951) was an Austrian-British philosopher who made groundbreaking contributions to logic, language, and the philosophy of mind.

Q: What is the picture theory of meaning?
A: In the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Wittgenstein argued that propositions are logical pictures of facts — language mirrors the structure of reality.

Q: What are language games?
A: A concept from Wittgenstein's later work, the Philosophical Investigations, suggesting that meaning arises from the use of words within specific social activities (games).

Q: What does Wittgenstein mean by "The limits of my language mean the limits of my world"?
A: That what we can think and experience is bounded by what we can express in language — from the Tractatus (proposition 5.6).

Q: What is the private language argument?
A: Wittgenstein's argument that a language understandable only to a single individual is impossible because language requires public, shared rules for meaning.

Q: How did Wittgenstein's philosophy change between early and late periods?
A: Early Wittgenstein (Tractatus) sought a perfect logical language; later Wittgenstein (Investigations) emphasized ordinary language use and rejected his earlier rigid framework.

Q: What is a "form of life" in Wittgenstein?
A: The broader cultural and social context in which language games are embedded — understanding language requires understanding the form of life it belongs to.

Q: Who was Jean-Paul Sartre?
A: Sartre (1905–1980) was a French existentialist philosopher, novelist, and playwright known for his idea that existence precedes essence.

Q: What does "existence precedes essence" mean?
A: Sartre's claim that humans have no predetermined nature — we exist first, then define ourselves through our choices and actions.

Q: What is radical freedom in Sartre?
A: The idea that humans are always free to choose, even in extreme circumstances — and that we are "condemned to be free."

Q: What is bad faith (mauvaise foi)?
A: Sartre's term for self-deception — denying one's own freedom and responsibility by pretending to be determined by external forces or fixed identities.

Q: What is Sartre's Being and Nothingness?
A: Sartre's major philosophical work exploring consciousness, freedom, and the nature of being through a phenomenological-existentialist lens.

Q: What is "the Look" (le regard) in Sartre?
A: The experience of being seen by another consciousness, which transforms us into an object — revealing the fundamental conflict in human relationships.

Q: What is Sartre's concept of anguish?
A: The awareness of one's radical freedom and total responsibility for one's choices, with no excuses or external guarantees of meaning.

Q: Who was Simone de Beauvoir?
A: De Beauvoir (1908–1986) was a French existentialist philosopher and feminist, best known for The Second Sex, a foundational text of modern feminism.

Q: What is the key thesis of The Second Sex?
A: "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman" — arguing that femininity is a social construction, not a biological destiny.

Q: What does de Beauvoir mean by woman as "the Other"?
A: That throughout history, man has been defined as the Subject and norm, while woman is defined as the Other — secondary and subordinate.

Q: How does de Beauvoir apply existentialism to feminism?
A: She argues that women must claim their freedom and transcendence rather than accept the passive, immanent roles imposed on them by patriarchal society.

Q: What is de Beauvoir's The Ethics of Ambiguity?
A: A work arguing that human freedom is ambiguous — we are both free and situated, and genuine ethics requires embracing this ambiguity and willing freedom for all.

Q: What was the relationship between Sartre and de Beauvoir?
A: They were lifelong intellectual and romantic partners who influenced each other's work while maintaining an unconventional open relationship.

Q: Who was Confucius?
A: Confucius (551–479 BCE) was a Chinese philosopher whose teachings on ethics, family, and governance profoundly shaped East Asian culture.

Q: What is Ren (仁) in Confucianism?
A: Benevolence or humaneness — the central Confucian virtue of compassion and love for others, considered the foundation of all moral behavior.

Q: What is Li (禮) in Confucianism?
A: Ritual propriety — the norms of proper conduct, etiquette, and social ceremonies that maintain harmony and express respect in relationships.

Q: What is the Confucian concept of the Junzi (君子)?
A: The exemplary person or gentleman — an ideal of moral cultivation who embodies virtue, learning, and propriety.

Q: What are the Five Key Relationships in Confucianism?
A: Ruler-subject, parent-child, husband-wife, elder-younger sibling, and friend-friend — each with reciprocal duties and responsibilities.

Q: What is the Analerta (Lunyu)?
A: The Analects — a collection of sayings and ideas attributed to Confucius, compiled by his disciples, and the most important Confucian text.

Q: What is filial piety (Xiao) in Confucianism?
A: Devotion and respect toward one's parents and ancestors — a cornerstone of Confucian ethics and social order.

Q: Who was Lao Tzu?
A: Lao Tzu (6th century BCE, traditional dating) was a legendary Chinese philosopher credited as the founder of Taoism and author of the Tao Te Ching.

Q: What is the Tao (道)?
A: The Way — the fundamental, nameless principle underlying all of reality; it cannot be fully expressed in words and is the source of everything.

Q: What is Wu Wei (無為)?
A: Non-action or effortless action — acting in harmony with the natural flow of the Tao rather than forcing outcomes through willful striving.

Q: What is the Tao Te Ching?
A: A short, poetic text of about 81 chapters attributed to Lao Tzu, presenting the core teachings of Taoism on the Tao, virtue, and naturalness.

Q: How does Taoism view simplicity and nature?
A: Taoism values returning to simplicity (Pu), spontaneity, and harmony with nature — rejecting artificial complexity and excessive desire.

Q: How do Confucianism and Taoism differ?
A: Confucianism emphasizes social order, ritual, and active moral cultivation, while Taoism emphasizes naturalness, spontaneity, and harmony with the Tao.

Q: What is Te (德) in Taoism?
A: Virtue or power — the natural expression of the Tao in individual beings; living in accordance with Te means embodying the Tao effortlessly.

Q: What is Aristotle's concept of telos?
A: Telos means purpose or end goal — Aristotle held that everything in nature has a final cause, and the telos of humans is eudaimonia.