Chapter Four
Two Differing Hellenistic Approaches to Society


(a) A Platonic Approach

Answers Questions
082 In Plato’s Republic he talks about the ideas of Socrates. Can you recall what the attitude of Socrates was towards Law and Order?
083 Could you name three great needs that Socrates (and Plato) said a society has?
084 What did Plato mean by “Guardians of the State”?
085 What view did Plato have about families?
086 There was one discipline in particular that Plato favoured. Do you recall what it was?
087 What did Plato say about artists?
088 What did St Augustine say about the City of God and the city of the world?
089 Did Augustine connect the city of God with Christ?
090 What was Machiavelli’s view of Christianity?
091 Do you know the name of the influential book that Machiavelli wrote?
092 Do you know anything of Calvin and Institutes of Christian Religion?
093 What did Rousseau say about the true Sovereign in a republic?
094 Did Hegel say that in a way God relies on creation?
095 In the latter part of last century a huge amount of poetry written by Karl Marx was found. What was the significance of this?
096 Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s book The Gulag Archipelago signalled the end of Marxism in Russia. Why?
097 Could you name some of the parallels between the Guardians of Plato’s Republic and Religious Orders of the last centuries?
098 Do you know anything about “Liberation Theology?”
099 What did liberation theologians criticise the church of the earlier C20th for?
100 It could be argued there are close parallels between Plato’s Republic and the world of work? Can you think of one of them?

(b) The Approach of Aristotle


101 Aristotle set up arguably the first museum. Why would this be so?
102 How did Aristotle judge people as being good or bad citizens?
103 Did Aristotle view constitutions as providing a society with a “common purpose”?
104 What do you know of Thomas Aquinas (born towards the end of the Middle Ages)?
105 Did Aquinas believe people could use their reason to work out good and bad?
106 How did Aquinas work out people have the authority to make good laws?
107 Did Aquinas think the church could provide insights for the making of laws?
108 Did Locke (b.1632) share views similar to that of Aristotle and Aquinas?
109 Did Locke have an influential view about natural law?
110 Did Locke have an influence on the writing of modern constitutions?
111 How did Durkheim (arguably the first sociologist) view society?
112 Who was the early sociologist who showed the connection between religion and the capitalist work ethic?
113 What did Weber see as the basis of society?
114 Talcott Parsons (a controversial sociologist) saw Judaism and Greek society as both contributing to modern society. How?
115 At the time of the Catholic church’s Vatican 11 a writer who had been ostracised was recalled to write for the council. Any ideas who this was?


Workshops - one gospel at a time, on Mark. Matthew, Luke, Luke's Acts of the Apostles and the Gospel of John

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