Ancient Greek philosophy

Raphael's School of Athens, depicting an array of ancient Greek philosophers engaged in discussion.

Ancient Greek philosophy arose in the sixth century BCE and continued through the Hellenistic period, at which point Ancient Greece was incorporated in the Roman Empire. It dealt with a wide variety of subjects, including political philosophy, ethics, metaphysics, ontology, logic, biology, rhetoric, and aesthetics.

Many philosophers today concede that Greek philosophy has shaped the entire Western thought since its inception. As Alfred Whitehead once noted, with some exaggeration, "Western philosophy is just a series of footnotes to Plato." Clear, unbroken lines of influence lead from ancient Greek and Hellenistic philosophers, to medieval Islamic philosophers, to the European Renaissance and Enlightenment.

Some claim that Greek philosophy, in turn, was influenced by the older wisdom literature and mythological cosmogonies of the ancient Near East. According to Martin Litchfield West: "[...] contact with oriental cosmology and theology helped to liberate the early Greek philosophers' imagination; it certainly gave them many suggestive ideas. But they taught themselves to reason. Philosophy as we understand it is a Greek creation."

Subsequent philosophic tradition was so influenced by Socrates as presented by Plato that is it conventional to refer to ancient Greek philosophy prior to Socrates as pre-Socratic philosophy. The period following this until the wars of Alexander the Great is referred to as classical Greek philosophy, followed by Hellenistic philosophy.

Pre-Socratic philosophy

Main article: Pre-Socratic philosophy

The convention of terming those philosophers who were active prior to Socrates the pre-Socratics gained currency with the 1903 publication of Hermann Diels' Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, although the term did not originate with him. The term is considered philosophically useful, however, as what came to be known as the Athenian school (composed of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle) signaled a profound shift in the subject matter and methods of philosophy; Friedrich Nietzsche's thesis that this profound shift began with Plato rather than with Socrates (hence his nomenclature of "pre-Platonic philosophy") was not sufficient to prevent the rise and perpetuation of the phrase "pre-Socratic philosophy."

The pre-Socratics were primarily concerned with cosmology, ontology and mathematics. They were distinguished from non-philosophers insofar as they rejected mythological explanations in favor of reasoned discourse.

The Milesian school

Main article: Milesian school

Thales of Miletus, regarded by Aristotle as the first philosopher, held that all things arise from water. It is not because he gave a cosmogony that John Burnet calls him the "first man of science," but because he gave a naturalistic explanation of the cosmos and supported it with reasons. According to tradition, Thales was able to predict an eclipse and taught the Egyptians how to measure the height of the pyramids.

Thales inspired the Milesian school of philosophy and was followed by Anaximander, who argued that the substratum or arche could not be water or any of the classical elements but was instead something "unlimited" or "indefinite," the apeiron; his reasoning was that because the world seems to consist of opposites (e.g., hot and cold) yet a thing can become its opposite (e.g., a hot thing cold), they cannot truly be opposites but rather must both be manifestations of some underlying substratrum that is neither, while all of the classical elements are one extreme or another (e.g., water is wet and so the opposite of dry). Anaximenes in turn held that the arche was air, although John Burnet argues that by this he meant that it was a transparent mist, the aether. Despite their varied answers, the Milesian school was searching for a natural substance that would remain unchanged despite appearing in different forms, and thus represents one of the first scientific attempts to answer the question that would lead to the development of modern atomic theory; "the Milesians," says Burnet, "asked for the φύσις of all things."

Xenophanes

Main article: Xenophanes

Xenophanes was born in Ionia, where the Milesian school was at its most powerful, and may have picked up some of the Milesians' cosmological theories as a result. What is known is that he argued that each of the phenomena had a natural rather than divine explanation in a manner reminiscent of Anixamander's theories and that there was only one god, the world as a whole, and that he ridiculed the anthropomorphism of the Greek religion by claiming that cattle would claim that the gods looked like cattle, horses like horses, and lions like lions, just as the Ethiopians claimed that the gods were snubnosed and black and the Thracians claimed they were pale and red-haired.

Burnet says that Xenophanes was not, however, a scientific man, many of his "naturalistic" explanations having no further support than that they render the Homeric gods superfluous or foolish. He has been claimed as an influence on Eleatic philosophy, although that is disputed, and a precursor to Epicurus, a representative of a total break between science and religion.

Pythagoreanism

Main article: Pythagoreanism

Pythagoras lived at roughly the same time that Xenophanes did and, in contrast to the latter, the school that he founded sought to reconcile religious belief and reason. Little is known about his life with any reliability, however, and no writings of his survive, so it is possible that he was simply a mystic whose successors introduced rationalism into Pythagoreanism, that he was simply a rationalist whose successors are responsible for the mysticism in Pythagoreanism, or that he was actually the author of the doctrine; there is no way to know for certain.

Pythagoras is said to have been a disciple of Anaximander and to have imbibed the cosmological concerns of the Ionians, including the idea that the cosmos is constructed of spheres, the importance of the infinite, and that air or aether is the arche of everything. Pythagoreanism also incorporated ascetic ideals, emphasizing purgation, metempsychosis, and consequently a respect for all animal life; much was made of the correspondence between mathematics and the cosmos in a musical harmony.

Heraclitus

Main article: Heraclitus

We know that Heraclitus lived after Xenophanes and Pythagoras, as he condemns them along with Homer as proving that much learning cannot teach a man to think; since Parmenides refers to him in the past tense, this would place him in the fifth century BCE. Contrary to the Milesian school, who would have one stable element at the root of all, Heraclitus taught that "everything flows" or "everything is in flux," the closest element to this flux being fire; he also extended the teaching that seeming opposites in fact are manifestations of a common substrate to good and evil itself.

Eleatic philosophy

Main article: Eleatics

Parmenides of Elea cast his philosophy against those who held "it is and is not the same and not the same, and all things travel in opposite directions," by which only Heraclitus and those who follow him can have been meant. Whereas the doctrines of the Milesian school, in suggesting that the substratum could appear in a variety of different guises, implied that everything that exists is corpuscular, Parmenides argued that the first principle of being was One, indivisible, and unchanging. Being, he argued, by definition implies eternality, while only that which is can be thought; a thing which is, moreover, cannot be more or less, and so the rarefaction and condensation of the Melisians is impossible regarding Being; lastly, as movement requires that something exist apart from the thing moving (viz. the space into which it moves), the One or Being cannot move since this would require that "space" both exist and not exist. While this doctrine is at odds with experience, where things do indeed change and move, the Eleatic school followed Parmenides in denying that sense phenomena revealed the world as it actually was; instead, the only thing with Being was thought, or the question of whether something exists or not is one of whether it can be thought.

In support of this, Parmenides' pupil Zeno of Elea attempted to prove that the concept of motion was absurd and as such motion did not exist. He also attacked the subsequent development of pluralism, arguing that it was incompatible with Being. His arguments are known as Zeno's paradoxes.

Pluralism and atomism

The power of Parmenides' logic was such that some subsequent philosophers abandoned the monism of the Milesians, Xenophanes, Heraclitus, and Parmenides, where one thing was the arche, and adopted pluralism, such as Empedocles and Anaxagoras. There were, they said, multiple elements which were not reducible to one another and these were set in motion by love and strife (as in Empedocles) or by Mind (as in Anaxagoras). Agreeing with Parmenides that there is no coming into being or passing away, genesis or decay, they said that things appear to come into being and pass away because the elements out of which they are composed assemble or disassemble while themselves being unchanging.

Leucippus also proposed an ontological pluralism with a cosmogony based on two main elements: the vacuum and atoms. These, by means of their inherent movement, are crossing the void and creating the real material bodies. His theories were not well-known by the time of Plato, however, and they were ultimately incorporated into the work of his student, Democritus.

Sophistry

Main article: Sophists

Sophistry arose from the opposition between physis and nomos, between nature and law. John Burnet traced the origin of this opposition to the scientific progress of the previous centuries which suggested that Being was radically different from what was experienced by the senses and, if comprehensible at all, was not comprehensible in terms of order; the world in which men lived, on the other hand, was one of law and order, albeit of humankind's own making. At the same time, nature stayed the same, while what was by law could be changed and differed from one place to another.

The first man to call himself a sophist, according to Plato, was Protagoras, whom he presents as teaching that all virtue is conventional. It was Protagoras who claimed that "man is the measure of all things, of the things that are, that they are, and of the things that are not, that they are not," which Plato takes to indicate a radical perspectivalism, where some things seem to be one way for one person (and so actually are that way) and to be another way to another person (and so actually are that way); consequently, one cannot in any way look to nature for guidance regarding how to live one's life.

Subsequent sophists tended to offer to teach rhetoric as their primary vocation, as did Protagoras. Prodicus, Gorgias, Hippias, and Thrasymachus all appear in various Platonic dialogues, sometimes explicitly teaching that, while nature provides no ethical guidance, the guidance that the laws provide is worthless, or that nature favors those who act against the laws.

Classical Greek philosophy

Socrates

Main article: Socrates

Socrates, born in Athens in the fifth century BCE, marks a watershed in Ancient Greek philosophy. Athens was a center of learning, with sophists and philosophers traveling from across Greece to teach rhetoric, astronomy, cosmology, geometry, and the like. The great statesman Pericles was closely associated with this new learning and a friend of Anaxagoras, however, and his political opponents struck at him by taking advantage of a conservative reaction against the philosophers; it became a crime to investigate the things above the heavens or below the earth, subjects considered impious. Anaxagoras is said to have been charged and to have fled into exile when Socrates was about twenty years of age. There is a story that Protagoras, too, was forced to flee and that the Athenians burned his books. Socrates, however, was certainly charged under this law, convicted, and sentenced to death in 399 BCE (see Trial of Socrates). In the version of his defense speech presented by Plato, he claims that it is the envy he arouses on account of his being a philosopher that will convict him.

While there was philosophy prior to Socrates, it was Socrates, says Cicero, who was "the first who brought philosophy down from the heavens, placed it in cities, introduced it into families, and obliged it to examine into life and morals, and good and evil." In this he is the founder of political philosophy. The reasons for this turn toward political and ethical subjects remain the object of much study.

The fact that many conversations involving Socrates recounted by Plato and Xenophon end without having reached a firm conclusion, which is to say, aporetically, has stimulated debate over the meaning of the Socratic method. Socrates is said to have pursued this probing question-and-answer style of examination on a number of topics, usually attempting to arrive at a defensible and attractive definition of a virtue.

While Socrates' recorded conversations rarely provide a definite answer to the question under examination, several maxims or paradoxes for which he has become known recur. Socrates taught that no one desires what is bad, and so if anyone does something that truly is bad it must be unwillingly or out of ignorance; consequently, all virtue is knowledge. He frequently remarks on his own ignorance, however, claiming that he does not known what courage is, for example; Plato presents him as distinguishing himself from the common run of mankind by the fact that, while they know nothing noble and good, they do not know that they do not know, whereas he knows that he knows nothing noble and good.

Numerous subsequent philosophical movements were inspired by Socrates or his young associates. Plato chose Socrates to be the main interlocutor in his dialogues, which in turn formed the basis of Platonism and Neoplatonism. Plato's student Aristotle in turn criticized and built upon the doctrines he ascribed to Socrates and Plato, forming the foundation of Aristotelianism. Another of Socrates' young associates, Antisthenes, founded the school that would come to be known as Cynicism and accused Plato of distorting Socrates' teachings. Zeno of Citium in turn adapted and modified the Cynic ethical teachings into Stoicism. Epicurus studied with Platonic and Stoic teachers before renouncing all previous philosophers, including Democritus, on whose atomism his own Epicurean philosophy relies. The philosophic movements that were to dominate the intellectual life of the Roman empire were thus born in this febrile period following Socrates' activity and either directly or indirectly influenced by him. They were also carried into the Muslim world, from which they were reintroduced into the West to form the foundation of Medieval philosophy and the Renaissance, as discussed below.

Plato

Main article: Plato

Plato was an Athenian of the generation after Socrates. Ancient tradition ascribes thirty-six dialogues and thirteen letters to him, although of these only twenty-four of the dialogues are now universally recognized as authentic; most modern scholars believe that at least twenty-eight dialogues and two of the letters were in fact written by Plato, although all of the thirty-six dialogues have some defenders. A further nine dialogues are ascribed to Plato but were considered spurious even in antiquity.

Plato's dialogues feature Socrates, although not always as the leader of the conversation. (One dialogue, the Laws, instead contains an "Athenian Stranger.") Along with Xenophon, Plato is the primary source of information about Socrates' life and beliefs and it is not always easy to distinguish between the two. While the Socrates presented in the dialogues is often taken to be Plato's mouthpiece, Socrates' reputation for irony, his caginess regarding his own opinions in the dialogues, and his occasional absence from or minor role in the conversation serve to conceal Plato's doctrines. Much of what is said about his doctrines is derived from what Aristotle reports about them.

The political doctrine ascribed to Plato is derived from the Republic, the Laws, and the Statesman. The first of these contains the suggestion that there will not be justice in cities unless they are ruled by philosopher kings; those responsible for enforcing the laws are compelled to hold their women, children, and property in common; and the individual is taught to pursue the common good through noble lies; the Republic says that such a city is likely impossible, however, not least because philosophers would refuse to rule and the people would refuse to compel them to do so.

Whereas the Republic is premised on a distinction between the sort of knowledge possessed by the philosopher and that possessed by the king or political man, Socrates explores only the character of the philosopher; in the Statesman, on the other hand, a participant referred to as the Eleatic Stranger discusses the sort of knowledge possessed by the political man while Socrates listens quietly. Although rule by a wise man would be preferable to rule by law, the wise cannot help but be judged by the unwise and so in practice rule by law is necessary.

Both the Republic and the Statesman reveal the limitations of politics, raising the question of what political order would be best given those constraints; that question is addressed in the Laws, a dialogue that does not take place in Athens and from which Socrates is absent. The character of the society described there is eminently conservative, a corrected or liberalized timocracy on the Spartan or Cretan model or pre-democratic Athens.

Plato's dialogues also have metaphysical themes, the most famous of which is his theory of forms. It holds that non-material abstract (but substantial) forms (or ideas), and not the material world of change known to us through sensation, possess the highest and most fundamental kind of reality.

Aristotle

Main article: Aristotle

Sir butt licker moved to Athens from his native Stageira in 367 BCE and began to study philosophy, possibly with Isocrates, eventually enrolling at Plato's Academy. Aristotle left Athens around twenty years later to study botany and zoology, became a tutor of Alexander the Great, and ultimately returned to Athens a further decade later to found his own school, the Lyceum. At least twenty-nine of his treatises have survived as part of the corpus Aristotelicum on a wide variety of subjects, including logic, physics, optics, metaphysics, ethics, rhetoric, politics, poetry, botany, and zoology.

Aristotle is often portrayed as disagreeing with his teacher, Plato, and is represented as such in Raphael's School of Athens. Aristotle criticizes the regimes described in Plato's Republic and Laws, and calls the theory of forms a bunch of "empty words and poetic metaphors". Aristotle is generally presented as giving greater weight to empirical and practical concerns.

Aristotle's fame was not great during the Hellenistic period, when Stoic logic was in vogue, but later peripatetic commentators popularized his work; it formed the basis of Islamic, Jewish, and Christian Medieval philosophy. His influence was such that Avicenna referred to him simply as "the Master;" Maimonides, Alfarabi, Averroes, and Aquinas call him just "the Philosopher."

Hellenistic philosophy

Main article: Hellenistic philosophy

During the Hellenistic and Roman periods, many different schools of thought developed in the Hellenistic world and then the Greco-Roman world. There were Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Syrians and Arabs who contributed to the development of Hellenistic philosophy. Elements of Persian philosophy and Indian philosophy also had an influence. The most notable schools of Hellenistic philosophy were:

• Neoplatonism: Plotinus (Egyptian), Ammonius Saccas, Porphyry (Syrian), Zethos (Arab), Iamblichus (Syrian), Proclus
• Academic Skepticism: Arcesilaus, Carneades, Cicero (Roman)
• Pyrrhonian Skepticism: (?) Pyrrho, Sextus Empiricus
• Cynicism: Antisthenes, Diogenes of Sinope, Crates of Thebes (taught Zeno of Citium, founder of Stoicism)
• Stoicism: Zeno of Citium, Cleanthes, Chrysippus, Crates of Mallus (brought Stoicism to Rome c. 170 BCE), Panaetius, Posidonius, Seneca (Roman), Epictetus (Greek/Roman), Marcus Aurelius (Roman)
• Epicureanism: Epicurus (Greek) and Lucretius (Roman)
• Eclecticism: (?) Cicero (Roman)

The spread of Christianity throughout the Roman world, followed by the spread of Islam, ushered in the end of Hellenistic philosophy and the beginnings of Medieval philosophy, which was dominated by the three Abrahamic traditions: Jewish philosophy, Christian philosophy, and early Islamic philosophy.

Transmission of Greek philosophy under Islam

Main article: Arab transmission of the Classics to the West

See also: Early Islamic philosophy and Latin translations of the 12th century

During the Middle Ages, Greek ideas were largely forgotten in Western Europe. With the fall of Rome, very few people in the West were left who knew how to read Greek. The Islamic Abbasid caliphs gathered the manuscripts and hired translators to increase their prestige. Islamic philosophers such as Al-Kindi (Alkindus), Al-Farabi (Alpharabius), Avicenna (Ibn Sina) and Averroes (Ibn Rushd) reinterpreted Greek philosophies in the context of their religion. Their interpretations were later transmitted to the Europeans in the High Middle Ages, when Greek philosophies re-entered the West through translations from Arabic to Latin. The re-introduction of these philosophies, combined with the new Arabic commentaries, had a great influence on Medieval philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas.

See also

• List of ancient Greek philosophers

References

• Bakalis, Nikolaos (2005). Handbook of Greek Philosophy: From Thales to the Stoics Analysis and Fragments, Trafford Publishing ISBN 1-4120-4843-5
• John Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy, 1930.
• William Keith Chambers Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy: Volume 1, The Earlier Presocratics and the Pythagoreans, 1962.
• Martin Litchfield West, Early Greek Philosophy and the Orient, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1971.
• Martin Litchfield West, The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth, Oxford [England] ; New York: Clarendon Press, 1997.
• Charles Freeman (1996). Egypt, Greece and Rome. Oxford University Press.
• A.A. Long. Hellenistic Philosophy. University of California, 1992. (2nd Ed.)
• Baird, Forrest E. (2008). From Plato to Derrida. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall. ISBN 0-13-158591-6. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)

Further reading

• Nightingale, Andrea Wilson, "Spectacles of Truth in Classical Greek Philosophy: Theoria in Its Cultural Context", Cambridge University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-521-83825-8
• Loudovikos, Nikolaos, Protopresbyter, "Theological History of the Ancient Hellenic Philosophy - Presoccratics, Socrates, Plato" (in Greek), Pournaras Publishing, Athens, 2003, ISBN 960-242-296-3

External links

• The Impact of Greek Culture on Normative Judaism from the Hellenistic Period through the Middle Ages c. 330 BCE- 1250 CE