| Greek Philosophy |
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Our western philosophical tradition began in ancient Greece in the 6th century BCE. The first philosophers are called "Presocratics" which designates that they came before Socrates. The Presocratics were from either the eastern or western regions of the Greek world. Athens -- home of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle -- is in the central Greek region and was late in joining the philosophical game. The Presocratic's most distinguishing feature is emphasis on questions of physics; indeed, Aristotle refers to them as "Investigators of Nature". Their scientific interests included mathematics, astronomy, and biology. As the first philosophers, though, they emphasized the rational unity of things, and rejected mythological explanations of the world. Only fragments of the original writings of the presocratics survive, in some cases merely a single sentence. The knowledge we have of them derives from accounts of early philosophers, such as Aristotle's Physics and Metaphysics, The Opinions of the Physicists by Aristotle's pupil Theophratus, and Simplicius, a Neoplatonist who compiled existing quotes.
The first group of Presocratic philosophers were from Ionia. The Ionian philosophers sought the material principle (archê) of things, and the mode of their origin and disappearance. Thales of Miletus (about 640 BCE) is reputed the father of Greek philosophy. He declared water to be the basis of all things. Next came Anaximander of Miletus (about 611-547 BCE), the first writer on philosophy. He assumed as the first principle an undefined, unlimited substance (to apeiron) itself without qualities, out of which the primary opposites, hot and cold, moist and dry, became differentiated. His countryman and younger contemporary, Anaximenes, took for his principle air, conceiving it as modified, by thickening and thinning, into fire, wind, clouds, water, and earth. Heraclitus of Ephesus (about 535-475 BCE) assumed as the principle of substance aetherial fire. From fire all things originate, and return to it again by a never-resting process of development. All things, therefore, are in a perpetual flux. However, this perpetual flux is structured by logos-- which most basically means 'word,' but can also designate 'argument,' 'logic,' or 'reason' more generally. The logos which structures the human soul mirrors the logos which structures the ever-changing processes of the universe.
Philosophy was first brought into connection with practical life by Pythagoras of Samos (about 582-504 BCE), from whom it received its name: "the love of wisdom". Regarding the world as perfect harmony, dependent on number, he aimed at inducing humankind likewise to lead a harmonious life. His doctrine was adopted and extended by a large following of Pythagoreans, including Damon, especially in Lower Italy.
That country was also the home of Eleatic doctrine of the One, called after the town of Elea, the headquarters of the school. It was founded by Xenophanes of Colophon (born about 570 BCE), the father of pantheism, who declared God to be the eternal unity, permeating the universe, and governing it by his thought. His great disciple, Parmenides of Elea (born about 511), affirmed the one unchanging existence to be alone true and capable of being conceived, and multitude and change to be an appearance without reality. This doctrine was defended by his younger countryman Zeno in a polemic against the common opinion, which sees in things multitude, becoming, and change. Zeno propounded a number of celebrated paradoxes, much debated by later philosophers, which try to show that supposing that there is any change or multiplicity leads to contradictions.
Empedocles of Agrigentum (born 492 BCE) appears to have been partly in agreement with the Eleatic School, partly in opposition to it. On the one hand, he maintained the unchangeable nature of substance; on the other, he supposes a plurality of such substances -- i. e. the four elements, earth, water, air, and fire. Of these the world is built up, by the agency of two ideal principles as motive forces -- viz., love as the cause of union, strife as the cause of separation. Empedocles was also the first person to propound an evolutionary account of the development of species.
Anaxagoras of Clazomenae (born about 500 BCE) also maintained the existence of an ordering principle as well as a material substance, and while regarding the latter as an infinite multitude of imperishable primary elements, qualitatively distinguished, he conceived divine reason or Mind (nous) as ordering them. He referred all generation and disappearance to mixture and resolution respectively. To him belongs the credit of first establishing philosophy at Athens, in which city it reached its highest development, and continued to have its home for one thousand years without intermission.
The first explicitly materialistic system was formed by Leucippus (fifth century BCE) and his pupil Democritus of Abdera (born about 460 BCE). This was the doctrine of atoms -- literally 'uncuttables' -- small primary bodies infinite in number, indivisible and imperishable, qualitatively similar, but distinguished by their shapes. Moving eternally through the infinite void, they collide and unite, thus generating objects which differ in accordance with the varieties, in number, size, shape, and arrangement, of the atoms which compose them.
The efforts of all these earlier philosophers had been directed somewhat exclusively to the investigation of the ultimate basis and essential nature of the external world. Hence their conceptions of human knowledge, arising out of their theories as to the constitution of things, had been no less various. The Eleatics, for example, had been compelled to deny that senses give one any access to the truth, since to the world of sense, with its multitude and change, they allowed only a phenomenal existence. However, reason can give one knowledge of what the One is like--or, more accurately, what it is not like.
Retaining the skepticism of the Eleatics about the senses, while
rejecting their doctrines about the ability of reason to reach truth
apart from the senses, the Sophists held that all thought
rests solely on
the apprehensions of these senses and on subjective impression, and that
therefore we have no other standards of action than convention for the
individual. Specializing in rhetoric, the Sophists were more
professional educators than philosophers. They flourished as a result
of a special need for at that time for
Greek education.
Prominent Sophists include Protagoras,
Gorgias,
Hippias, and Prodicus.
Socrates
and his Followers
A new period of philosophy opens with the Athenian Socrates (469-399 BCE).
Like the Sophists, he rejected entirely the physical speculations in
which his predecessors had indulged, and made the thoughts and
opinions of people his starting-point; but whereas it was the thoughts of and
opinions of the individual that the Sophists took for the standard,
Socrates questioned people relentlessly about their beliefs. He tried
to find the definitions of the virtues, such as courage and justice,
by cross-examining people who professed to have knowledge of them.
His method of cross-examining people, the elenchus, did not
succeed in establishing what the virtues really were, however; they
simply exposed the ignorance of his interlocutors.
Socrates was an enormously magnetic figure, who attracted many
followers, but he also made many enemies. Socrates was executed for
corrupting the young of Athens and for disbelieving in the gods of
the city. This philosophical martyrdom, however, simply made Socrates
an even more iconic figure than would have been otherwise, and many
later philosophical schools took Socrates as their hero.
Of Socrates' numerous disciples many either added nothing to
his doctrine, or developed
it in a one-sided manner, by confining themselves exclusively either to
dialectic or to ethics. Thus the Athenian Xenophon contented himself, in
a series of writings, with exhibiting the portrait of his
master to the best of his comprehension, and added nothing original.
The Megarian School, founded by Euclides of Megara, devoted
themselves
almost entirely to dialectic investigation of the one Good. Stilpo of Megara became the most
distinguished member of the school. Ethics predominated
both with the Cynics and Cyrenaics, although their
positions were
in direct opposition. Antisthenes of Athens,
the founder of the Cynics,
conceived the highest good to be the virtue which spurns every
enjoyment. Cynicism continued in Greece with
Plato
Both aspects of the genius of Socrates
were first united in Plato of
Athens (428-348 BCE), who also combined with them many the principles
established by earlier philosophers,
and developed the whole of this material into the unity of a comprehensive
system. The groundwork of Plato's scheme, though nowhere expressly stated
by him, is the threefold division of philosophy into dialectic, ethics,
and physics; its central point is the theory of forms. This theory is a
combination of the Eleatic doctrine of the One with Heraclitus's theory of
a perpetual flux and with the Socratic method of concepts. The multitude
of objects of sense, being involved in perpetual change, are thereby
deprived of all genuine existence. The only true being in them is founded
upon the forms, the eternal, unchangeable (independent of all that is
accidental, and therefore perfect) types, of which the particular objects
of sense are imperfect copies. The quantity of the forms is defined by the
number of universal concepts which can be derived from the particular
objects of sense.
The highest form is that of the Good, which is the
ultimate basis of the rest, and the first cause of being and knowledge.
Apprehensions derived from the impression of sense can never give us the
knowledge of true being -- i.e. of the forms. It can only be obtained by
the soul's activity within itself, apart from the troubles and
disturbances of sense; that is to say, by the exercise of reason.
Dialectic, as the instrument in this process, leading us to knowledge of
the ideas, and finally of the highest idea of the Good, is the first of
sciences (scientia scientiarum). In physics, Plato adhered (though
not without original modifications) to the views of the Pythagoreans,
making Nature a harmonic unity in multiplicity. His ethics are founded
throughout on the Socratic; with him, too, virtue is knowledge, the
cognition of the supreme form of the Good. And since in this cognition
the three parts of the soul -- cognitive, spirited, and appetitive -- all have
their share, we get the three virtues: Wisdom, Courage, and Temperance or
Continence. The bond which unites the other virtues is the virtue of
Justice, by which each several part of the soul is confined to the
performance of its proper function.
The school founded by Plato, called
the Academy (from the name of
the grove of the Attic hero Academus
where he used to deliver his lectures) continued for long after. In
regard to the main
tendencies of its members, it was
divided into the three periods of the Old, Middle, and New Academy. The
chief personages in the first of these were Speusippus (son of Plato's
sister), who succeeded him as the head of the school (till 339 BCE), and
Xenocrates of Chalcedon (till 314 BCE). Both of them sought to fuse
Pythagorean speculations on number with Plato's theory of ideas. The two
other Academies were still further removed from the specific doctrines of
Plato, and advocated skepticism.
Aristotle
The most important among Plato's disciples is
Aristotle of Stagira
(384-322 BCE), who shares with his master the title of the greatest
philosopher of antiquity. But whereas Plato had sought to elucidate and
explain things from the supra-sensual standpoint of the forms, his pupil
preferred to start from the facts given us by experience. Philosophy to
him meant science, and its aim was the recognition of the purpose in
all things. Hence he establishes the ultimate grounds of
things inductively -- that is to say, by a posteriori conclusions
from a number of facts to a universal. In the series of works collected
under the name of Organon, Aristotle sets forth
the laws by which the human understanding effects conclusions from
the particular to the knowledge of the universal.
Like Plato, he
recognizes the true being of things in their concepts, but denies any
separate existence of the concept apart from the particular objects of
sense. They are inseparable as matter and form. In
matter and form, Aristotle
sees the fundamental principles of being.
Matter is the basis of all that exists; it comprises the potentiality of
everything, but of itself is not actually anything. A determinate thing
only comes into being when the potentiality in matter is converted into
actuality. This is effected by form, inherent in the unified object
and the completion of the potentiality
latent in the matter. Although it has no existence apart form the
particulars, yet, in rank and estimation, form stands first; it is of its
own nature the most knowable, the only true object of knowledge. For
matter without any form cannot exist, but the essential definitions of a
common form, in which are included the particular objects may be separated
from matter. Form and matter are relative terms, and the lower form
constitutes the matter of a higher (e.g. body, soul, reason). This series
culminates in pure, immaterial form, the Deity, the origin of all motion,
and therefore of the generation of actual form out of potential matter.
All motion takes place in space and time; for space is the
potentiality,
time the measure of the motion. Living beings are those which have in
them a moving principle, or soul. In plants the function of soul is
nutrition (including reproduction); in animals, nutrition and sensation;
in humans, nutrition, sensation, and intellectual activity. The perfect form
of the human soul is reason separated from all connection with the body,
hence fulfilling its activity without the help of any corporeal organ, and
so imperishable. By reason the apprehensions, which are formed in the
soul by external sense-impressions, and may be true or false, are
converted into knowledge. For reason alone can attain to truth either in
cognition or action. Impulse towards the good is a part of human nature,
and on this is founded virtue; for Aristotle does not, with Plato,
regard
virtue as knowledge pure and simple, but as founded on nature, habit, and
reason. Of the particular virtues (of which there are as many as there
are contingencies in life), each is the apprehension, by means of reason,
of the proper mean between two extremes which are not virtues -- e.g.
courage is the mean between cowardice and foolhardiness. The end of human
activity, or the highest good, is happiness, or perfect and reasonable
activity in a perfect life. To this, however, external goods are more of
less necessary conditions.
The followers of Aristotle, known as Peripatetics (Theophrastus of
Lesbos, Eudemus of Rhodes, Strato of Lampsacus, etc.), to a great extent
abandoned metaphysical speculation, some in favor of natural science,
others of a more popular treatment of ethics, introducing many changes
into the Aristotelian doctrine in a naturalistic direction. A return to
the views of the founder first appears among the later Peripatetics, who
did good service as expositors of Aristotle's works.
The Peripatetic School tended to make philosophy the exclusive property of the
learned class, thereby depriving it of its power to benefit a wider
circle. This soon produced a negative reaction, and philosophers
returned to the
practical standpoint of Socratic ethics. The speculations of the learned
were only admitted in philosophy where serviceable for ethics.
The chief consideration was how to popularize doctrines, and to provide
the individual, in a time of general confusion and dissolution, with a
fixed moral basis for practical life.
Stoicism
Such were the aims of Stoicism, founded by
Athens about 310 by Zeno of
Citium (in Cyprus), and brought to fuller systematic form by his successors
a heads
of the school, Cleanthes of
Assos, and especially Chrysippus of Soli, who
died about 206. Important Stoic writers of the Roman
period include
Epictetus and Marcus
Aurelius. Their doctrines contained little that was new, seeking
rather to give a practical application to the dogmas which they took
ready-made from previous systems. With them philosophy is the science of
the principles on which the moral life ought to be founded. The only
allowable effort is towards the attainment of knowledge of human
and divine things, in order to thereby regulate life. The method to
lead men to
true knowledge is provided by logic; physics embraces the doctrines as to
the nature and organization of the universe; ethics draws from them
its conclusions for practical life. Regarding Stoic logic, all knowledge
originates
in the real impressions of things on the senses, which the soul,
being at birth a
blank slate, receives in the form of presentations. These
presentations, when confirmed by repeated experience, are syllogistically
developed by the understanding into concepts. The test of their truth is
the convincing or persuasive force with which they impress themselves upon
the soul.
In physics the foundation of the Stoic doctrine was the dogma
that all true being is corporeal. Within the corporeal they recognized
two principles, matter and force -- that is, the material, and the Deity
(logos, order, fate)
permeating and informing it. Ultimately, however, the two are identical.
There is nothing in the world with any independent existence: all is
bound together by an unalterable chain of causation. The agreement of human
action with the law of nature, of the human will with the divine will, or
life according to nature, is virtue, the chief good and highest end in
life. It is essentially one, the particular or cardinal virtues of Plato
being only different aspects of it; it is completely sufficient for
happiness, and incapable of any differences of degree. All good actions
are absolutely equal in merit, and so are all bad actions. All that lies
between virtue and vice is neither good nor bad; at most, it is
distinguished as preferable, undesirable, or absolutely indifferent.
Virtue is fully possessed only by the wise person, who is no way inferior in
worth to Zeus; he is lord over his own life, and may end it by his own
free choice. In general, the prominent characteristic of Stoic philosophy
is moral heroism, often verging on asceticism.
Epicureanism
The same goal which was aimed at
in Stoicism was also approached, from a diametrically opposite
position, in the system founded about the same
time by Epicurus, of the deme
Gargettus in Attica (342-268), who brought
it to completion himself. Epicureanism, like Stoicism, is connected with
previous systems. Like Stoicism, it is also practical in its ends,
proposing to find in reason and knowledge the secret of a happy life, and
admitting abstruse learning only where it serves the ends of practical
wisdom. Hence, logic (called by Epicurus (kanonikon), or the
doctrine of canons of truth) is made entirely subservient to physics,
physics to ethics. The standards of knowledge and canons of truth in
theoretical matters are the impressions of the senses, which are true and
indisputable, together with the presentations formed from such impressions,
and opinions extending beyond those impressions, in so far as they are
supported or not contradicted by the evidence of the senses. In practical
questions the feelings of pleasure and pain are the tests. Epicurus's
physics, in which he follows in essentials the materialistic system of
Democritus, are intended to
refer all phenomena to a natural cause, in
order that a knowledge of nature may set men free from the bondage of
disquieting superstitions.
In ethics he followed within certain limits
the Cyrenaic doctrine,
conceiving the highest good to be happiness, and
happiness to be found in pleasure, to which the natural impulses of every
being are directed. But the aim is not with him, as it is with the
Cyrenaics, the pleasure of the
moment, but the enduring condition of
pleasure, which, in its essence, is freedom from the greatest of evils,
pain. Pleasures and pains are, however, distinguished not merely in
degree, but in kind. The renunciation of a pleasure or endurance of a
pain is often a means to a greater pleasure; and since pleasures of sense
are subordinate to the pleasures of the mind, the undisturbed peace of the
mind is a higher good than the freedom of the body from pain. Virtue is
desirable not for itself, but for the sake of pleasure of mind, which it
secures by freeing people from trouble and fear and moderating their passions
and appetites. The cardinal virtue is prudence, which is shown by true
insight in calculation the consequences of our actions as regards pleasure
or pain.
The practical tendency of Stoicism and
Epicureanism, seen in the
search for happiness, is also apparent in the Skeptical School founded by
Pyrrho of Elis (about 365-275 BCE).
Pyrrho disputes the possibility of
attaining truth by sensory apprehension, reason, or the two combined, and
thence infers the necessity of total suspension of judgment on things.
Thus can we attain release from all bondage to theories, a condition which
is followed, like a shadow, by that imperturbable state of mind which is
the foundation of true happiness. Pyrrho's immediate disciple was Timon. Pyrrho's doctrine was
adopted
by the Middle and New Academies (see above), represented by
Arcesilaus of Pitane
(316-241 BCE) and Carneades
of Cyrene (214-129 BCE) respectively. Both attacked the Stoics for
asserting a criterion of truth in our knowledge; although their views
were indeed skeptical, they seem to have considered that
what they were maintaining was a genuine
tenet of Socrates and Plato.
The latest Academics, such as Antiochus of
Ascalon (about 80 BCE), fused with Platonism certain Peripatetic and many
Stoic dogmas, thus making way for Eclecticism, to which all later
antiquity tended after Greek philosophy had spread itself over the
Roman
world. Roman philosophy,
thus, becomes an extension of the Greek tradition.
After the Christian era Pythagoreanism, in a resuscitated form,
again takes its place among the more important systems. Pyrrhonian
skepticism was also re-introduced by
Aenesidemus, and developed further by
Sextus Empiricus. But the
preeminence of this period belongs to Platonism, which is notably
represented in the
works of Plutarch of Chaeronea and the physician Galen.
Neoplatonism
The closing period of Greek philosophy is marked in the third
century CE. by the establishment of Neoplatonism in Rome. Its
founder was
Plotinus of Lycopolis in Egypt (205-270) and its emphasis is a
scientific philosophy of religion, in which
the doctrine of Plato is fused with the most important elements in the
Aristotelian and Stoic systems and with Eastern
speculations. At the
summit of existences stands the One or the Good, as the source of all
things. It emanates from itself, as if from the reflection of its own
being, reason, wherein is contained the infinite store of ideas. Soul,
the copy of the reason, is emanated by and contained in it, as reason is
in the One, and, by informing matter in itself non-existence, constitutes
bodies whose existence is contained in soul. Nature, therefore, is a
whole, endowed with life and soul. Soul, being chained to matter, longs
to escape from the bondage of the body and return to its original source.
In virtue and philosophic thought soul had the power to elevate itself above
the reason into a state of ecstasy, where it can behold, or ascend up to,
that one good primary Being whom reason cannot know. To attain this union
with the Good, or God, is the true function of humans, to whom the external
world should be absolutely indifferent.
Plotinus's most important
disciple, the Syrian Porphyry, contented himself with popularizing his
master's doctrine. But the school if Iamblichus, a disciple of
Porphyry, effected a change in the position of Neoplatonism, which now
took up the cause of polytheism against Christianity, and adopted for this
purpose every conceivable form of superstition, especially those of the
East. Foiled in the attempt to resuscitate the old beliefs, its
supporters then turned with fresh ardor to scientific work, and
especially to the study of Plato and Aristotle, in the
interpretation of
whose works they rendered great services. The last home of philosophy was
at Athens, where Proclus (411-485) sought to reduce to a kind of system
the whole mass of philosophic tradition, until in 529 CE, the teaching of
philosophy at Athens was forbidden by Justinian.