Students will complete 20 out of 24 short questions resembling the following questions if they want to maximize point-earning possibilities.  Students will complete them well if they want to maximize point-earning actualities. 

I.    Example short questions

• Who were the three Milesian philosophers and where were they from?
• Give at least two assumptions that the three Milesian philosophers shared in common.
• How did each answer the concern(s) prompted by their assumptions?
• Of the three philosophers, whose principle was the most abstract?
• What is meant by the terms "condensation" and "rarefaction"?
• In what ways can it be said that the earliest philosophers were natural scientists?
• Describe Xenophanes’s critique of anthropomorphism.
• Compare and contrast this critique with the Sophist Critias’s views of God.
• What was the central question of Pythagoras?
• How did he answer it?
• What is transmigration?
• How were the religious views of Pythagoras and his followers intertwined with their philosophical beliefs?
• What importance does number have for Pythagoras?
• What importance does limit have for Pythagoras?
• How do Heraclitus and Parmenides differ?
• Describe the central assumptions that each philosopher makes.
• Which assumptions do you most agree with and why?
• What is Being and Non-Being, according to the two philosophers.
• How does War and Strife act in Heraclitean philosophy?
• What is Logos?
• In what ways do Zeno’s arguments support Parmenides’s views?
• Give two examples of Zeno-arguments.
• Subsequent philosophers, the Pluralists and Atomists, sought to synthesize Parmenides and Heraclitus. How did they attempt such a synthesis?
• How does Empedocles differ from Anaxagoras?
• What is Nous?
• Why did Nous challenge popular conceptions of the gods?
• How are they similar?
• Democritus thought that non-being had to exist. Why did he think this?
• Explain the political climate and decline of values in Athens in the late 5^th century BC.
• Who was Pericles?
• Why were Sophists, in part, blamed for the decline of Athens?
• Discuss skepticism, atheism, and relativism as they pertain to Sophistic philosophy.
• What happens in Plato’s Apology?
• What are the major Platonic themes that emerge in that dialogue? (e.g. appearance vs. reality, etc.)