Course Glossary

Chapter 1

• Philo-Sophia Literally ‘love of wisdom’ in Greek; the philosopher is a lover (not possessor) of wisdom
• PhiloSophy (Brad’s Stipulative Definition) PhiloSophy is a mode of discourse for the sake of cultivating a desire for Truth, Justice, Wisdom through inSpiration
• Philosophy-ology The study of philosophy, which involves memorizing facts and vocabulary and learning what other wise people said. It is different than philosophy, which is the erotic love of wisdom that compels us to engage in honest, meaningful disCourse with other people with the shared goal of attaining Truth, Wisdom, Justice, etc.
• Systematic Philosophy A structured ‘tool-bowl’ of philosophical disciplines used to clarify thinking and decision-making
• Ontology The philosophical study of being and existence — what is real?
• Epistemology The philosophical study of knowledge — how do we know what we know?
• Existentialism The philosophical tradition focused on individual existence, freedom, death, and decision-making
• Anthropology (philosophical) Philosophical inquiry into what it means to be a human person
• Cosmology Philosophical inquiry into the nature and origin of the universe
• Aesthetics The philosophical study of beauty, art, and perception
• Memento Mori Latin: ‘Remember death’ — the existentialist practice of using awareness of death to clarify one’s priorities
• The ‘Real’ In this course, the real = the unchanging. That which changes is less real than that which endures.
• Allegory of the Chariot Plato’s image of the soul as a charioteer (intellect) guiding two horses (logic and desire)
• DaSein Heidegger’s term: ‘being-there’ — the mode of existence specific to humans, always situated in time and facing death

Chapter 2a

• UnMooring The disorienting process of questioning the foundations of one’s beliefs and knowledge
• Comparative Relation Understanding something by how it stands in relation to other things — not in isolation
• Essentialism The view that categories or kinds of things have fixed essential properties that define them
• Intellectual Diversity The value of perspectives from different backgrounds and experiences; the epistemic equivalent of genetic diversity
• Faith In the philosophical sense: commitment to something that cannot be fully verified by current evidence
• Under-Standing To ‘stand under’ a claim — Dr. Bannon’s term for genuine comprehension that supports one’s worldview

Chapter 2b

• Imaginative Knowing Knowledge through images, stories, symbols, and imagination
• Sensual Knowing Knowledge derived directly from sense experience
• Rational Knowing Binary, logical knowledge — operates through arguments, proofs, and clear definitions
• Intellectual Knowing The highest mode of knowing in Plato’s scheme: direct apprehension of Forms/Ideas; non-discursive
• Spiritual Knowing This is a kind of knowing that can only be done together with others by genuinely listening and sharing and thinking together with a shared goal of trying to understand. As Nicholas of Cusa explains, spiritual knowing is distinct from debate or arguing or dictating or merely repeating what someone told you
• Plato’s Divided Line A diagram in Plato’s Republic showing four levels of reality and corresponding modes of knowing
• Ideas / Forms (Plato) Eternal, unchanging, perfect archetypes that constitute ultimate reality; objects of intellectual knowing
• Pramāṇas In Indian philosophy: valid sources of knowledge; literally ‘means of valid knowledge’
• Pratyaṣa Direct perception — immediate contact with the senses without intermediary; the most reliable pramāṇa
• Anumāna Inference — reasoning from observable signs to unseen causes or conclusions
• Śabda Word / testimony — knowledge received from authoritative sources or texts
• Upamāna Analogy / comparison — knowing the unfamiliar by relating it to the familiar
• AbhāVa Absence / nonbeing — the pramāṇa that recognizes what is not there
• De/cision Dr. Bannon’s hyphenated form: to decide is to ‘cut’ (Latin: decidere) — every real choice involves cutting off other possibilities

Chapter 3

• Phenomenology A method of philosophical investigation that begins with careful description of how things appear to a conscious perceiver
• Phenomenon The way something appears to a conscious perceiver; the experience of a thing (distinct from the thing itself)
• Thing Itself (Sache Selbst) What something actually is, apart from our projections and assumptions
• Zu den Sachen selbst! Husserl’s German rallying cry: ‘To the things themselves!’ — bracket your assumptions and attend directly to what is given in experience
• Chaturpad The Sanskrit concept of four states of consciousness: waking, dreaming, deep sleep, and the fourth (turīya) — pure awareness
• Expectation Bias The tendency to perceive what we anticipate rather than what is present
• Material Causality What something is made of — the material cause of a table is wood
• Efficient Causality What or who brought something about — the efficient cause of a table is the carpenter
• ReOrienting The process of turning one’s perspective to see things more clearly; analogous to Plato’s metanoia
• Final Causality Why something is brought about — the final cause of a house is to provide shelter

Chapter 4a

• Oblivion The state of non-being; the philosophical problem of what precedes birth and follows death
• DisCourse Meaningful, structured conversation aimed at truth — the medium through which philosophy lives. Whereas InterCourse produces new babies, DisCourse produces new ideas
• Utmost Possibility Heidegger: death is the most extreme possibility, because it is the possibility of having no more possibilities
• ImPossibility Death is the ‘possibility of impossibility’ — the one event that eliminates all further possibilities

Chapter 4b

• Buddhi Sanskrit: the intellect or awakening faculty; the capacity for discernment and wisdom
• Pratītyasamutpāda Doctrine of Mutual / Dependent Arising: all phenomena arise in dependence on other phenomena; nothing is self-sufficient
• AnAtman Buddhist doctrine of No-Self: there is no unchanging, independent personal essence or soul
• Atman The Hindu / Vedic concept of the true self — the eternal, unchanging soul within each person
• Nirvana Literally ‘blowing out’; liberation from suffering through the extinguishing of craving and ignorance
• Names and Forms (Nāmarūpa) The cognitive act of categorizing experience through language and perception — the constructed ‘self’ arises through naming
• Cognition The mental act of knowing; in Buddhist thought, cognition always involves a subject and an object arising together

Chapter 5a

• First Principles Foundational assumptions about the nature of Individual Self (“I”), the World around me (“not-I”), and the transcendent source of Meaning, Truth, or Purpose (“Wholly Other” or “God” or “Truth”). Because these first principles precede both knower and knowledge, they are, by definition, unknowable
• Radical Skepticism Descartes’ method: systematically doubt everything that can be doubted to find what cannot be doubted
• Cogito, ergo sum Descartes’ Latin: ‘I think, therefore I am’ — the one indubitable certainty even in maximal doubt
• MetaNarrative A grand, overarching story that claims to explain everything — postmodernism critiques the claim that any metanarrative is neutral or universal
• Modernism The worldview that reason can achieve universal, objective knowledge independent of perspective
• Hume’s Bundle Theory Hume’s view that the self is not a fixed substance but merely a ‘bundle’ of perceptions — there is no enduring ‘I’ beneath experience
• Kant’s ‘Ding an Sich’ German: ‘thing in itself’ — the thing as it really is, independent of any human perception; Kant argues we can never know it directly
• Kantian Stipulation Kant’s argument that the categories of human understanding structure experience — we can only know phenomena, not noumena (things in themselves)
• UnKnowAbility of First Principles Kant’s insight: the very foundations of knowledge cannot themselves be known by the same knowledge they ground

Chapter 5b

• (No glossary entries for this chapter)

Chapter 6

• Rule of Identity The first rule of logic: A = A. A thing is what it is, and not something else. Therefore: clearly define your terms.
• Rule of Non-Contradiction Second rule of logic: nothing can be both A and not-A at the same time and in the same respect
• Excluded Middle Third rule of logic: everything is either A or not-A; there is no third option
• Peripatetic From Greek peripatein (to walk around); Aristotle’s philosophical school, named for his practice of teaching while walking
• Signifier A word, symbol, or label that represents something else; linguistic / semiotic term
• Zero The signifier that signifies NoThing — a conceptual invention (Brahmagupta) that makes arithmetic and philosophy of absence possible
• Paradox of Signification Signifiers exist independently of what they signify; the word ‘human’ is more eternal than any individual human
• Sex (biological) The biological characteristics (chromosomes, anatomy, hormones) associated with reproduction — not strictly binary
• Gender The socially constructed roles, behaviors, and identities associated with sex — not determined by biology alone

Chapter 7

• Identity (ontological use) The use of ‘is’ to assert perfect equivalence: ‘A is B’ is reversible because A = B (e.g., ‘2 + 2 is 4’)
• Quality (ontological use) The use of ‘is’ to attribute a property: ‘The lotus is blue’ — blue is a quality the lotus has, not what it is; NOT reversible
• Form (ontological use) The use of ‘is’ to assert a biological or structural relation: Darth Vader is Luke’s father in terms of genetic / biological form
• Function (ontological use) The use of ‘is’ to assert a relational role: Mr. Ping is Po’s father because he fulfills all paternal functions (without the biological form)
• Temporality (ontological use) The use of ‘is’ for a time-bound truth: ‘My dad is running’ — only true in this exact moment

Chapter 8

• Paideia Greek: education, upbringing, culture — the formation of the whole person, not just the mind
• Apaideusia The absence of education; lack of formation — and the suffering (pathos) that results
• Pathos Greek: emotion, feeling, state of mind; what one cares about and is affected by; education shapes pathos
• Metanoia Greek: ‘change of mind’ or ‘conversion’ — a radical reorientation of attention and desire; the Cave has two metanoias
• Aletheia Greek: truth, understood as un-concealment or un-covering; what is revealed when assumptions are stripped away
• The Cave (Plato’s Allegory) Prisoners chained underground, seeing only shadows on a wall, mistake these shadows for reality — an image of ordinary human existence shaped by unexamined belief
• The Good (ta agathon) Plato’s highest Form; in the allegory, the sun outside the cave — the ultimate source of light, being, and truth
• Psycherion Greek: ‘little soul’ — one who uses skill (aretē) cleverly and selfishly rather than for the good of others
• ReOrientation of Desire The goal of true education: not filling the mind with content but turning desire away from shadows toward the real

Chapter 9

• Eros Greek: erotic desire; in Diotima’s teaching, a Great Spirit mediating between human ignorance and divine wisdom — neither a god nor a mortal
• Metaxy Greek: ‘in-between’; Eros inhabits the space between mortal and immortal, ignorance and wisdom
• Ladder of Desire / Ascent (Diotima’s) Diotima’s progression: love of a beautiful body → souls → activities → knowledge → Beauty Itself (the Form)
• Erotic Conception The desire to create and give birth to beautiful things — in bodies (children) and in souls (ideas)
• Symposium Greek: ‘drinking together’; a formal dinner-party with structured speeches; Plato’s Symposium dramatizes a philosophical discussion about Eros
• Whole Soul Justice Justice understood not as mere procedural fairness but as the right ordering of the whole soul — and the whole polis — toward the Good

Chapter 10

• Atopōtatos Greek: ‘most out of place’ — the word Phaedrus uses to describe Socrates; to be truly philosophical is always to be a little out of place
• Pharmakon Greek: drug, medicine, or poison — the same word covers all three; rhetoric is a pharmakon for the soul: it can heal or poison depending on how it is used
• Palinode An ode of retraction; Socrates recants his first (shameful) speech about Eros and offers a palinode — the Great Speech
• The Great Speech Socrates’ palinode in the Phaedrus: defines the Whole Soul, gives the Chariot Allegory, and explains how to inspire a soul with desire for wisdom
• Hermai Rectangular stone statues of Hermes, placed throughout Athens; their vandalization on the eve of the Sicilian Expedition (415 BCE) was a major political crisis
• InSpire / InCite Dr. Bannon’s contrast: good rhetoric inSpires (puts Spirit into) the soul; bad rhetoric inCites (provokes to violence and destruction)
• Aretē (Excellence / Virtue) Greek: excellence, virtue, skill — used both for athletic excellence and moral / intellectual virtue; virtue is using skill for the Good
• Divine Madness (Theia Mania) The four forms of sacred madness — prophecy, healing, art, and Eros — gifts from the gods that lift us above mere rationality
• Ilissus The small stream outside Athens beside which the Phaedrus dialogue takes place; its natural setting is philosophically significant

Chapter 11

• Whole Soul (Hole Psyche) The soul in which intellect, logic, and desire are rightly ordered — all three moving together toward Justice, Beauty, and Truth
• Tripartite Soul Plato’s model: the soul has three parts — intellect (charioteer), logic (white horse), desire (black horse)
• Embodied Philosophy The only philosophy that matters is the one you embody — not the one you know about or merely claim to hold
• SvaDharma Sanskrit: one’s own duty or proper function — doing what one is truly called to do

Primary Source Reading

See Chapter 8 for full glossary of Cave terms (Paideia, Apaideusia, Metanoia, Aletheia, The Good).

Primary Source Reading

• Blasphemy (in the Phaedrus) Speaking falsely about the divine; Socrates considers his first speech about Eros blasphemous and immediately recants it

• Socrates (470–399 BCE) Athenian philosopher; the protagonist of Plato’s dialogues and the model of the philosophical life. Socrates wrote nothing himself — all we know of him is filtered through Plato’s reconstructions. He was executed by Athens on charges of impiety and corrupting the youth. His method is the elenchus: relentless questioning that exposes false beliefs. In the Phaedrus, Socrates models how to liberate another person’s soul through inSpiring discourse — following them into the cave, listening, and cultivating their desire for wisdom. Chapters 8, 9, 10, 11 — Readings: Cave, Phaedrus 1–3
• Plato (c. 428–348 BCE) Student of Socrates and one of the most influential philosophers in Western history. His dialogues use Socrates as a dramatic character to explore questions of knowledge, reality, justice, love, and the soul. Three dialogues anchor Part Two of this course: the Republic (Cave Allegory), the Symposium (Diotima on Eros), and the Phaedrus (the Whole Soul and the nature of rhetoric). Plato’s core metaphysical commitment: only the eternal, unchanging Forms are fully real; the physical world is a shadow. Chapters 2b, 5b, 8, 9, 10, 11 — All Reading pages
• Aristotle (384–322 BCE) Student of Plato and founder of formal logic. His three rules of logic — Identity, Non-Contradiction, and Excluded Middle — remain the foundation of all deductive reasoning. Aristotle founded the Peripatetic school, named for his habit of teaching while walking. Unlike Plato, Aristotle believed that universals are not separate Forms but exist within particular things. Chapter 6 (Logic)
• Plotinus (c. 204–270 CE) Egyptian-Roman philosopher; the founder of Neoplatonism. Plotinus argued that all reality emanates from a single transcendent source, “The One,” which overflows into Intellect (Nous), then Soul (Psyche), then Matter. His Enneads represent the fullest systematic development of Platonic philosophy. Dr. Bannon discusses Plotinus in the context of first principles and the need for anchoring texts. Chapter 5b (First Principles & Anchoring)
• Proclus (412–485 CE) Late Neoplatonic philosopher who wrote the Elements of Theology — a systematic summary of Neoplatonic metaphysics. Proclus, alongside Plotinus, argued for a canonical philosophical curriculum anchored in Plato’s dialogues, which influenced how philosophy was taught for centuries. Chapter 5b
• Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464) German cardinal and philosopher of the Renaissance. His central epistemological insight: human knowledge approximates truth the way a polygon approximates a circle — more sides get closer, but no polygon ever equals the circle. This image appears in Chapter 2b (epistemology) and is recalled in Chapter 7 (ontology of “to be”). Cusa embraced docta ignorantia — “learned ignorance” — as the honest stance of the philosopher. Chapters 2b, 7
• René Descartes (1596–1650) French philosopher and mathematician; the founder of modern rationalism. Shaken by the collapse of Aristotelian science (Galileo’s discoveries), Descartes resolved to rebuild all knowledge from an absolutely certain foundation. His method: doubt everything that can possibly be doubted. What survives? The Cogito: “I think, therefore I am.” Even a deceiving demon cannot make you doubt your own thinking existence. The Matrix is the modern cinematic equivalent of Descartes’ evil demon hypothesis. Chapter 5a (First Principles)
• David Hume (1711–1776) Scottish philosopher and the most rigorous empiricist in the Western tradition. Hume argued that the self is not a fixed, enduring substance but merely a “bundle of perceptions” — a flowing stream of impressions with no permanent “I” beneath it. His skepticism about causality and the self anticipates Buddhist philosophy’s doctrine of No-Self (AnAtman). Hume’s challenge: if everything changes, on what do you anchor your claims to knowledge? Chapter 5a (First Principles)
• Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher who attempted to reconcile rationalism and empiricism. Kant’s critical insight: the mind does not passively receive experience — it actively structures it through built-in categories (space, time, causality). Therefore, we can only ever know the world as it appears to us (phenomena), never the “thing in itself” (Ding an sich, noumena). This sets the limit of what philosophy can claim to know — and why first principles themselves cannot be known by the faculties they ground. Chapter 5a (First Principles)
• Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) German philosopher and the founder of phenomenology. Husserl’s rallying cry — Zu den Sachen selbst! (“To the things themselves!”) — calls us to bracket our prior assumptions and attend directly to what is given in conscious experience. His method provides the framework for Chapter 3 and the entire phenomenological approach Dr. Bannon uses throughout the course. Heidegger was Husserl’s student. Chapter 3 (Phenomenology)
• Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) German philosopher and student of Husserl; one of the founders of existential phenomenology. Heidegger’s central concept is DaSein (“being-there”) — the kind of being that humans are: finite, situated in a world, and always already facing death. For Heidegger, death is the “utmost possibility” because it is the one possibility that is certain, non-transferable, and that — once realized — eliminates all further possibilities. Awareness of death is not morbid but clarifying: it reveals which possibilities genuinely matter. Chapters 1, 4a (Existentialism)
• Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) French-Algerian philosopher and the founder of deconstruction. Derrida argued that language is fundamentally unstable — meaning is always deferred, never fully present. In Chapter 4a, Dr. Bannon draws on Derrida in the context of communication and DisCourse: even our best attempts at philosophical discourse are imperfect vehicles for meaning, yet they are all we have. Ideas outlast their authors, but not unchanged. Chapter 4a (InterCourse, DisCourse, and Death)
• Siddhartha Gautama (The Buddha) (c. 5th–4th century BCE) The historical founder of Buddhism. Born into wealth and sheltered from suffering, Siddhartha’s encounter with old age, sickness, and death catalyzed a profound existential crisis — and his response was philosophical: he sat with the question until he achieved awakening (bodhi). His central doctrines — Mutual Arising (Pratītyasamutpāda) and No-Self (AnAtman) — challenge both the Hindu concept of a permanent soul and the Western idea of a fixed self. Dr. Bannon treats the Buddha as a model of phenomenological investigation and existential response. Chapters 4a, 4b (Existentialism & Buddha’s Philosophy)
• Aśvaghoṣa (c. 1st–2nd century CE) Buddhist poet and philosopher; author of the Buddhacarita (“Acts of the Buddha”), the first complete Sanskrit biography of Siddhartha Gautama. The Buddhacarita serves as the primary source text for Chapter 4b’s treatment of the Buddha’s existential crisis and path to enlightenment. Chapter 4b (Buddha’s Philosophy)
• Brahmagupta (598–668 CE) Indian mathematician and astronomer who formalized the rules of arithmetic for zero — the first to treat zero as a number in its own right. In Chapter 6, Dr. Bannon uses Brahmagupta’s invention of zero as a philosophical case study in signification: zero is the signifier that signifies NoThing, yet it is one of the most powerful tools in mathematics and philosophy. The paradox: a symbol for nothing enables everything. Chapter 6 (Logic & Signification)
• Diotima of Mantinea (dates unknown; 5th century BCE, possibly legendary) A woman philosopher and priestess from Mantinea who, according to Socrates in Plato’s Symposium, taught him everything he knows about Eros. Whether historical or literary, Diotima is the source of the most sophisticated account of desire in all of Plato’s writing. Her “Ladder of Ascent” traces how rightly ordered Eros ascends from physical beauty to beauty in souls, activities, and knowledge, culminating in direct apprehension of Beauty Itself. She characterizes Eros not as a god but as a Great Spirit (daimon) inhabiting the in-between (metaxy). Chapter 9 (Symposium)
• Lysias (c. 445–380 BCE) An influential Athenian speech-writer and rhetorician who appears as an off-stage character in Plato’s Phaedrus. His speech — which argues that you should give your sexual favors to someone who does not love you, because a lover is irrational — serves as the foil for Socrates’ Great Speech. For Dr. Bannon, Lysias represents the “little soul”: technically brilliant, rhetorically skilled, but using those skills to serve power and self-interest rather than the Good. Chapters 10, 11 — Phaedrus Readings
• Pindar (c. 518–438 BCE) The greatest lyric poet of ancient Greece, from Thebes. Pindar wrote odes (epinicia) celebrating victors at the Panhellenic games. He is quoted at the opening of the Phaedrus and again in Dr. Bannon’s lecture in the context of the charioteer who also trained his own horses — a model for the philosopher who does the inner work of training both logic and desire, and then guides them from the driver’s seat. Chapter 10 (Phaedrus)