History of Philosophy (Ancient, Medieval, Modern)
History of Philosophy tests your grasp of major doctrines and their arguments across ancient, medieval and modern periods. Questions often ask you to explain a position, compare two thinkers, or assess a criticism.
Ancient
The Pre-Socratics sought an archē (fundamental principle): Thales proposed water, Heraclitus flux and logos, Parmenides being and the denial of change. Plato's theory of Forms posits eternal, intelligible paradigms; the cave allegory contrasts opinion about shadows with knowledge of Forms. Aristotle criticises separate Forms and offers hylomorphism, the four causes (material, efficient, formal, final), and virtue ethics.
Medieval
Augustine reconciles Platonism with Christianity: evil is a privation of good, and free will explains sin. Aquinas reconciles Aristotle with faith: reason can prove some truths, revelation supplies others; the Five Ways argue for God from motion, causation, contingency, degrees and design; natural law is grasped by synderesis and applied by prudence.
Modern
Descartes uses methodical doubt to reach the cogito, then argues for dualism and God. Spinoza's monism identifies God and Nature; Leibniz's monads are simple, windowless substances with pre-established harmony. Locke defends empiricism, the tabula rasa, and primary versus secondary qualities; Berkeley reduces bodies to ideas (esse est percipi); Hume develops empiricism into scepticism about causation and the substantial self. Kant's Copernican revolution makes the mind contribute categories to experience, yielding synthetic a priori knowledge and a distinction between phenomena and noumena.
Worked example
Descartes' cogito: doubt everything that can be doubted. The senses sometimes deceive; a dream or evil demon could deceive me about the external world and my body. But even if I am deceived, there must be a thinker who is being deceived. Doubting is a mode of thinking; the act of doubt presupposes an existing doubter. Hence 'I think, therefore I am' is indubitable whenever I think it. The argument establishes only the existence of a thinking self, not the body or external world.
Traps
The cogito does not prove the external world or personal immortality. Hume is an empiricist, not a rationalist; Kant is neither a simple empiricist nor a dogmatic rationalist. Plato's Forms are not physical objects, and Aristotle's universals are not separate Forms. Augustine does not say evil is a substance; Aquinas is not a fideist who rejects reason. Do not attribute pre-established harmony to Descartes or the tabula rasa to Kant.