The Philosophy Quiz

About this quiz

Every question here is written by hand against the Atlas, not generated when you press start. A quiz that invents its own questions is sometimes confidently wrong, and a reference site cannot teach errors on the way to teaching facts.

Questions are graded into five bands and each run climbs through them, so the first is meant to be easy and the last is meant to be hard. The set is drawn fresh every time.

Some of the questions

What does the word “philosophy” literally mean?

Love of wisdom — Love of wisdom, from the Greek philo and sophia. Pythagoras is said to have coined it, calling himself a lover of wisdom rather than a wise man. Philosophy

Who was Plato’s teacher?

Socrates, who wrote nothing himself — Socrates. Aristotle went the other way: he was Plato's student, a generation further on. Plato

What does Plato call the perfect, unchanging realities that particular things imitate?

The Forms — The Forms, or Ideas. A particular horse is a horse by participating in the Form of Horse, which does not change or decay. Plato

What is Aristotle’s word for a life going well as a whole?

Eudaimonia — Eudaimonia, usually translated happiness but closer to flourishing. It is an activity across a whole life rather than a mood. Eudaimonia

In Plato’s allegory of the cave, what do the shadows on the wall stand for?

The world as it appears to the senses — The world as it appears to the senses. The climb out of the cave is education, from appearance to the Forms. Plato

What does the Socratic elenchus actually do to the person being questioned?

Shows their own beliefs contradict each other — It draws out a contradiction between beliefs they already hold. Socrates supplies no doctrine of his own, which is why the dialogues so often end with nobody knowing anything. Socratic elenchus