Ancient Greek Philosophy

Ancient Greek philosophy
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"Greek philosophy" redirects here. For later (Christian) philosophy in Greek, see Byzantine
philosophy and Eastern Orthodox theology.
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Ancient Greek philosophy arose in the 6th century BC, marking the end of the Greek
Dark Ages. Greek philosophy continued throughout the Hellenistic period and the
period in which Greece and most Greek-inhabited lands were part of the Roman
Empire. Philosophy was used to make sense of the world using reason. It dealt with a
wide variety of subjects, including astronomy, epistemology, mathematics, political
philosophy, ethics, metaphysics, ontology, logic, biology, rhetoric and aesthetics.[1]
Greek philosophy has influenced much of Western culture since its inception. Alfred
North Whitehead once noted: "The safest general characterization of the European
philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato".[2] Clear,
unbroken lines of influence lead from ancient Greek and Hellenistic philosophers
to Roman philosophy, Early Islamic philosophy, Medieval Scholasticism, the
European Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment.[3]
Greek philosophy was influenced to some extent by the older wisdom literature and
mythological cosmogonies of the ancient Near East, though the extent of this influence
is widely debated. The classicist Martin Litchfield West states, "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".[4]
Subsequent philosophic tradition was so influenced by Socrates as presented
by Plato that it is conventional to refer to philosophy developed prior to Socrates as pre-
Socratic philosophy. The periods following this, up to and after the wars of Alexander
the Great, are those of "Classical Greek" and "Hellenistic philosophy", respectively.
Contents
 1Pre-Socratic philosophy
o 1.1Milesian school
o 1.2Xenophanes
o 1.3Pythagoreanism
o 1.4Heraclitus
o 1.5Eleatic philosophy
o 1.6Pluralism and atomism
o 1.7Sophism
 2Classical Greek philosophy
o 2.1Socrates
o 2.2Plato
o 2.3Aristotle
o 2.4Cynicism
o 2.5Cyrenaicism
o 2.6Megarians
 3Hellenistic philosophy
o 3.1Pyrrhonism
o 3.2Epicureanism
o 3.3Stoicism
o 3.4Platonism
 3.4.1Academic skepticism
 3.4.2Middle Platonism
 3.4.3Neoplatonism
 4Transmission of Greek philosophy in the Medieval Period
 5See also
 6Notes
 7References
 8Further reading
 9External links
Pre-Socratic philosophy[edit]
Main article: Pre-Socratic philosophy
The convention of terming those philosophers who were active prior to the death
of Socrates as the pre-Socratics gained currency with the 1903 publication of Hermann
Diels' Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, although the term did not originate with him.[5] The
term is considered useful because what came to be known as the "Athenian school"
(composed of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle) signaled the rise of a new approach to
philosophy; Friedrich Nietzsche's thesis that this shift began with Plato rather than with
Socrates (hence his nomenclature of "pre-Platonic philosophy") has not prevented the
predominance of the "pre-Socratic" distinction.[6]
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.[7]
Milesian school[edit]
Main article: Milesian school
Thales of Miletus, regarded by Aristotle as the first philosopher,[8] held that all things
arise from a single material substance, water.[9] 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.[10] According to
tradition, Thales was able to predict an eclipse and taught the Egyptians how to
measure the height of the pyramids.[11]
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" (in Greek, the apeiron).
He began from the observation that 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). Therefore, they
cannot truly be opposites but rather must both be manifestations of some underlying
unity that is neither. This underlying unity (substratum, arche) could not be any of the
classical elements, since they were one extreme or another. For example, water is wet,
the opposite of dry, while fire is dry, the opposite of wet.[12] This initial state is ageless
and imperishable, and everything returns to it according to necessity.[13] 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.[14] 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."[15]

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Ancient Greek philosophy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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