Home » Lecture 3

Lecture 3

June 14, 2024

Lecture 3. ANTIQUE PHILOSOPHY

Plan

1. General characteristics of antique philosophy.

2. Pre-Socratic philosophy.

3. Classical period in development of antique philosophy (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle).

4. Philosophy of Hellenism.

1. General characteristics of antique philosophy

Hall of Philosophers

Philosophy begins with wonder, and eveow is wonder that causes philosophers to philosophize. Gazing into the heavens, contemplating the altering patterns of the stars, beholding the Sun and Moon and its effects on the land, the sea, on life itself, some people wondered how the universe had come about. They pondered structure of the world. How is it constructed, and why does nature work as it does? Is there one fundamental substance that underlies all of reality, or are there many substances? What is the really real, and not just a matter of appearance?

The first philosophers were Greeks who lived on the Ionian coast of the Aegean Sea, in Miletus, Colophon, Samos and Ephesus. Other people in other cultures had wondered about the above-mentioned questions, but usually religious authority or myth had imposed an answer. Typically, the world order was said to have arisen from the gods or God. Now a break occurred. Here for the first time a pure philosophical and scientific inquiry was allowed to flourish. Non – intentional, non-personal causation came to being as a type of explanation. Not the gods but the laws of nature caused the seasons, the movements of the Sun, Moon and stars. Discovering that Earth is spherical, that humans evolved, that the Moon shines by reflected light, and that all matter is made up of atoms, they anticipated modern science. The Greeks used argument to establish the idea. They were the first to apply reason systematically to all areas of nature and human existence. The great civilizations of Egypt, China, Assyria, Israel, India, Persia, America and Africa had produced art, artifacts and government of advanced sorts, but nowhere was anything like philosophy or science developed. Ancient India was the closest civilization to produce philosophy, but it was always connected with religion, with the quest for salvation or the escape from suffering. Ancient Chinese thought, led by Confucius, had a deep ethical dimension but no epistemology, philosophy of science or formulated logic. Greek philosophy, especially from Socrates on, also had a practical bent and was concerned with ethics, but it went deeper and further than ethics, asking for the nature of all things, aiming at knowledge and understanding for its own sake, seeking systemic understanding of metaphysics and using experiment, dialectics (use of dialogue) and logical argument, rather than religion or intuition alone, to reach its conclusion. Indeed, Socrates is the first to develop dialectical argument and Aristotle invented formal logic, the system of syllogisms.

Ancient Greek philosophy originated in the 7^th – 6^th centuries BC and existed till the 6^th century AD. This time line is called “antique philosophy” period, which established the background not only for European philosophy, but also for European culture in general. We distinguish three stages of development of antique philosophy:

1. Pre-Socrates period (7^th – 6^th c. BC) – the questions about the essence and beginning of the universe, and the origin and construction of space were considered to be of primary importance in this period.

2. Classical period (5^th – 4^th c. BC) – period of high level of development of Greek democracy, literature, philosophy, art, etc. The problem field of that time was oriented at the problem of man, one’s consciousness and thinking.

3. Hellenistic period (end of 4^th BC – 6^th AD) – period was marked with the crisis phenomena in the slave-owning society, political and economic decay of the Greek cities-states and, finally, with breakdown of the Roman Empire. The most famous philosophical trends of that period are: Stoicism, Epicureanism and Neoplatonism. Attention was paid to the problems of human personality, the sense and destination of human existence.

2. Pre–Socratic philosophy

The first philosophers are called “Presocratics” which designates that they came before Socrates. They embraced materialism and naturalism. Thus, they are sometimes called Hylicists (from the Greek hule, meaning “matter”), for they rejected spiritual and religious causes and sought naturalistic explanations of reality. The standard date for the beginning of philosophy is May 23, 585 BC, when Thales of Miletus (625 – 545 BC) predicted a solar eclipse that ended a war. Thales used mathematical and astronomic investigation to make his prediction. In this sense, he may have been the first scientist. An engineer by training, Thales asked “What is the nature of reality? What is the ultimate explanation of all that is? ” and speculated and experimented to come up with the answer. What was his answer? Water. Water is necessary for the production and sustenance of life. Water is everywhere. Heat water and it becomes a gas like air; freeze it and it becomes solid. Thales thus concluded that the earth was just especially solid water, a hard flat cork that floated in a sea of liquid of the same substance. After Thales, his fellow Ionian Anaximander of Miletus (612 – 545 BC) rejected the idea that water was the root substance and assumed as the first principle an undefined, unlimited substance (Infinite) itself without qualities, out of which the primary opposites, hot and cold, moist and dry, became differentiated. Anaximander rejected Thales’ notion of a flat Earth and suggested that Earth was a revolving, cylindrical body, whose flat top was our home. He put forth a theory of evolution based on the need of species to adapt to their environment. Anaximander’s disciple Anaximenes (585 – 528 BC) took for his principle air, conceiving it as modified, by thickening and thinning, into fire, wind, clouds, water and earth. Philosophy was first brought in connection with practical life by Pythagoras of Samos (582 – 504 BC). He rejected the Hylicists‘ materialism and opted for a refined spiritualism, a mathematical mysticism, aiming at the purification of the whole person, body and soul. Knowledge and Music would purify the soul and Gymnastics and Medicine the body. All living things (including plants life) had souls and were related to one another and involved in the transmigration of souls. The Pythagoreans were vegetarians. At the end of each day they asked themselves what wrongs they had committed, what duties had neglected, what good they had done. Nevertheless, the Pythagoreans were not egalitarians but held to a social order that resembled nature itself. Pythagoras’s fundamental doctrine was that the world is really not material but made up of numbers. Numbers are things and constitute the essence of reality.

That country was also home of Eleatic doctrine of the One, called after the town of Elea, the headquarters of the school. It was founded by Xenophantes of Colophon (b. 570 BC – ?), 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 (540 – 470 BC) affirmed the one unchanging existence to be alone true and capable of being conceived, and multitude and change to be an appearance without reality. Parmenides’ disciple Zeno of Elea (489 – 430 BC) defended the Eleatic idealism against those who claimed that there were both multiplicity and motion. Zeno is the first philosopher who consciously used the law of non-contradiction to argue against his opponents. Heracleitus of Ephesus (535 –475 BC), who was scornful of the Eleatic idealism, assumed as the principle substance fire. From fire all things originate, and return to it again by a never-resting process of development. All things, therefore, are in perpetual flux and permanence is illusion. However, this perpetual flux is structured by logos, which most basically means “word”, but also can designate “argument”, “logic” or “reason” more generally. The logos that structures the human soul mirrors the logos that structures the ever-changing process of the universe. Reality is like a stream of fire in constant motion. You cannot step into the same river twice, for other and yet another waters are ever flowing on. Heracleitus set forth the two moral principles of antiquity: “Know thyself and “Iothing too much”. Three philosophers rejected both the absolute monism of the Eleatics and the spiritual dynamism of Heracleitus. The first was Empedocles of Agrigentum (b.492 BC – ?) who argued that the world was made up of different combinations of four basic elements: water, earth, air and fire. At the center of the universe there are two forces: attraction and repulsion, called love and hate, which are in constant strife. When love prevails, all things tend towards unity. When hate prevails, all things separate, individuate. An eternal cosmological battle is waged, so that as one seems to be winning, the other experiences resurgence. Such materialists as Leucippus (b. 450) and his more famous disciple Democritus (460 – 370 BC) taught that the ultimate constituents of the world were atoms (from Greek a for “not” and tome for “cut” or “separable”).

They are simple, indestructive, internally solid, homogeneous particles that are perpetually in motion in the void of empty space. On the one hand they maintained the unchangeable nature of substance; on the other, they supposed a plurality of such substances. The materialists were hedonists who believed that the only thing that is good is pleasure and the only thing bad is pain. They did not believe in the gods or in immorality. Anaxagoras of Klazomenae (500 – 428 BC) 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. Mind is the cause of all motion. Nous is a material (airy) substance, but it is the purest and most rarefied of things, having power over all else. Mind is godlike, homogeneous, omnipotent and omniscient and orders all phenomena. This last phrase turned Socrates away from speculations about the physical world towards the study of human existence.

To summarize, we can state the following. The first philosophers were Greeks, living in the 6^th century BC off the coast of Asia Minor. They sought a naturalistic and unified answer to cosmological questions: What is reality? What is the explanation of the world? Is there one fundamental substance that underlies reality or many? Pythagoras rejected the materialism of the early Hylicists and set forth a theory of number mysticism in which mathematics took on spiritual and cosmic import. The Eleatics, Parmenides and Zeno argued for an underlying monism, that reality was one and that change, including time, was unreal, a mere appearance. Heracleitus rejected the notion of their being one or many underlying substances and said all was in process, fire. The pluralist Atomists rejected both the Eleatic monism and Heracleitus‘ process theory for an atomistic materialism, the precursor to contemporary atomic theory of physics. Anaxagoras attempted to synthesize the work of his predecessors, claiming that there was a unity of being, in which everything was part of everything else. A godlike Mind, Nous, ruled the universe.

Pre-Socratic philosophy is Greek philosophy before Socrates (but includes schools contemporary with Socrates which were not influenced by him). In Classical antiquity, the Presocratic philosophers were called physiologoi (Greek: φυσιολόγοι; in English, physical or natural philosophers). Diogenes Laërtius divides the physiologoi into two groups, Ionian and Italiote, led by Anaximander and Pythagoras, respectively.

Hermann Diels popularized the term pre-socratic in Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (The Fragments of the Pre-Socratics) in 1903. However, the term pre-Sokratic was in use as early as George Grote‘s Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates in 1865. Major analyses of pre-Socratic thought have been made by Gregory Vlastos, Jonathan Barnes, and Friedrich Nietzsche in his Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks.

It may sometimes be difficult to determine the actual line of argument some Presocratics used in supporting their particular views. While most of them produced significant texts, none of the texts has survived in complete form. All that is available are quotations by later philosophers (often biased) and historians, and the occasional textual fragment.

The Presocratic philosophers rejected traditional mythological explanations of the phenomena they saw around them in favor of more rational explanations. These philosophers asked questions about “the essence of things“:

· From where does everything come?

· From what is everything created?

· How do we explain the plurality of things found iature?

· How might we describe nature mathematically?

Others concentrated on defining problems and paradoxes that became the basis for later mathematical, scientific and philosophic study.

Later philosophers rejected many of the answers the early Greek philosophers provided, but continued to place importance on their questions. Furthermore, the cosmologies proposed by them have been updated by later developments in science.

Western philosophy began in ancient Greece in the 6th century BCE. The Presocratics were mostly from the eastern or western fringes of the Greek world. Their efforts were directed to the investigation of the ultimate basis and essential nature of the external world.They sought the material principle (archê) of things, and the method of their origin and disappearance. As the first philosophers, they emphasized the rational unity of things, and rejected mythological explanations of the world. Only fragments of the original writings of the presocratics survive. The knowledge we have of them derives from accounts of later philosophical writers (especially Aristotle, Plutarch, Diogenes Laërtius, Stobaeus and Simplicius), and some early theologians, (especially Clement of Alexandria and Hippolytus of Rome). The Presocratic thinkers present a discourse concerned with key-areas of philosophical inquiry such as being and the cosmos, the primary stuff of the universe, the structure and function of the human soul, and the underlying principles governing perceptible phenomena, human knowledge and morality.

Milesian school

The first Presocratic philosophers were from Miletus on the western coast of Anatolia. Thales (624-546 BCE) is reputedly the father of Greek philosophy; he declared water to be the basis of all things. Next came Anaximander (610-546 BCE), the first writer on philosophy. He assumed as the first principle an undefined, unlimited substance without qualities, out of which the primary opposites, hot and cold, moist and dry, became differentiated. His younger contemporary, Anaximenes (585-525 BCE), took for his principle air, conceiving it as modified, by thickening and thinning, into fire, wind, clouds, water, and earth.

Pythagoreanism

The practical side of philosophy was introduced by Pythagoras of Samos (582-496 BCE). Regarding the world as perfect harmony, dependent oumber, he aimed at inducing humankind likewise to lead a harmonious life. His doctrine was adopted and extended by a large following of Pythagoreans who gathered at his school in south Italy in the town of Croton. His followers included Philolaus (470-380 BCE), Alcmaeon of Croton, and Archytas (428-347 BCE).

Ephesian school

Heraclitus of Ephesus on the western coast of Anatolia in modern Turkey (535-475 BCE) posited that all things iature are in a state of perpetual flux, connected by logical structure or pattern, which he termed Logos. To Heraclitus, fire, one of the four classical elements, motivates and substantiates this eternal pattern. From fire all things originate, and return to it again in a process of eternal cycles.

Eleatic school

The Eleatic School, called after the town of Elea (moderame Velia in south Italy), emphasized the doctrine of the One. Xenophanes of Colophon (570-470 BCE), declared God to be the eternal unity, permeating the universe, and governing it by his thought. Parmenides of Elea (510-440 BCE), 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 of Elea (490-430 BCE) 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.Melissus of Samos (born c. 470 BCE) was another eminent member of this school.

Pluralist school

Empedocles of Agrigentum (490-430 BCE) was from the ancient Greek city of Akragas (Ἀκράγας), Agrigentum in Latin, modern Agrigento, in Sicily. He 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. four classical elements, earth, water, air, and fire. Of these the world is built up, by the agency of two ideal motive forces – love as the cause of union, strife as the cause of separation. Anaxagoras of Clazomenae (500-428 BCE) in Asia Minor, 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; 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.

Atomist school

The first explicitly materialistic system was formed by Leucippus (5th century BCE) and his pupil Democritus of Abdera (460-370 BCE) from Thrace. This was the doctrine of atoms – small primary bodies infinite iumber, 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.

Others

The last of the Presocratic natural philosophers was Diogenes of Apollonia from Thrace (born c. 460 BCE). He was an eclectic philosopher who adopted many principles of the Milesian school, especially the single material principle, which he identified as air. He explained natural processes in reference to the rarefactions and condensations of this primary substance. He also adopted Anaxagoras’ cosmic thought.

Sophism

The Sophists held that all thought rests solely on the apprehensions of the 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 at that time for Greek education. Prominent Sophists include Protagoras (490-420 BCE) from Abdera in Thrace, Gorgias (487-376 BCE) from Leontini in Sicily, Hippias (485-415 BCE) from Elis in the Peloponnesos, and Prodicus (465-390 BCE) from the island of Ceos.

3. Classical period in development of antique philosophy (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle)

A new profession arose in the 5^th century in Athens, one bent on teaching citizens how to win cases in courts. It was called sophistry, and its practitioners the Sophists. The Sophists were secular relativists, cynical about religious and idealistic pretensions, aiming at material and political success in a democratic society by using rhetoric and oratory in persuading people. They rejected the quest of the pre-Socratic philosophers as useless speculations. Among the general features of sophists we can point the following:

1. The Sophists were secularists-agnostic or atheist on religion, cynical of religion as a mechanism for social control. The gods are invented to function as invisible, all-seeing police force;

2. The Sophists developed the art of rhetoric, the process of using language to persuade. Their chief tool was eristics, argument used in order to win debates, not pursue truth; aiming at defeat rather than at enlightenment. Aristotle called eristics “dirty fighting in argument”;

3. The Sophists made education into business. They were the first teachers to receive pay for their services, charging fees for teaching “wisdom” and “virtue”;

4. The Sophists were pragmatists. Truth is what works for you. They were not speculative, systematic or concerned with cosmology as the pre Socratic philosophers were. However, they took the joint, mutually exclusive conclusions of the pre-Socratics to show that not even the best minds could know the nature of ultimate reality;

5. The Sophists believed that egoism was both natural and right – “Might makes right”;

6. The Sophists were relativists, often of a subjectivist cast, contending that each person is his own measure of truth, thus abandoning the idea of an independent reality apart from our consciousness. Truth is whatever you take it to be, and, similarly, morality is whatever you believe to be good;

The Sophists challenged the traditional values and opinions of Greek society. They undermined its religion and myths. They asserted that the state is founded on power, custom and conventions, not eternal truth. They argued that there was no objective truth or right or wrong, unless it is the realistic adage that might makes right.

A dramatic turn occurs in philosophical inquiry under the influence of Socrates (470 – 399 BC). He rejected both the cynicism and pragmatism of the Sophists and speculations of the Cosmologists. As Cicero said, he was the first to call “philosophy down from the sky, set it in the cities and even introduce it into homes, and compelled it to consider life and morals, good and evil”. Socrates was born I Athens. His father was a stonecutter and his mother a midwife. He spent his youth studying the philosophy of nature under the tutelage of Archelaus, the disciple of Anaxagoras. He abandoned the pursuit, however, for a more pressing concern, a philosophy of humaature, especially a concern for how we ought to live. Perhaps he was spurred on to this study by the Sophists who claimed to make people wise or virtuous through their instructions. Perhaps Socrates saw that the problems that the Sophists were concerned with were the important issues, only they misunderstood them. They asked the right questions – How should I live? What is virtue? How can I succeed in life? – but lacked the passionate and disinterested love of truth, which was necessary in order to answer these questions. What makes Socrates especially interesting with regard to ethics is that he was an extraordinarily good person, one who was modest, wise, self-controlled, courageous, honest and concerned about the true well-being others. Speaking about Socrates’ ethics or moral philosophy we can point out its following distinguishing features:

1. Care for the soul is all that matters – What good would it do to me to gain the whole world and lose my own soul? What good is it to live in a perfect society if I see no value in life itself or in my life?

2. Self-knowledge is a prerequisite for the good life – The unexamined life is not worth living.

3. Virtue is knowledge – No such thing as weakness of will. Evil is ignorance. To know the Good is to do the good.

4. You cannot harm the good person, but in trying to harm the other you harm yourself. The Good is good for you, and the Bad is bad for you.

5. The autonomy of ethics: Is the God good because God chooses it, or does God choose the Good because it is good? Socrates answers that God chooses it because it is good.

Socratic ethics lack a transcendental dimension. If there is an afterlife, well and good, it’s icing on the cake, but it is not necessary for the justification of morality. Goodness has to do with the proper functioning of the soul and can be discovered through reason alone. There is no need for revelation, and if there are gods, they too must obey the moral law and keep their souls pure through following virtuous living. There is not even a hint that religion helps motivate people to virtuous living. Goodness is the only reward, and it is obvious so to anyone who knows what virtue is and hoe the soul functions.

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 ironic figure than would have been otherwise, and many later philosophical schools took Socrates as their hero. All the aspects of the genius Socrates were first united in Plato of Athens (428 – 348 BC), who also combined with them many the principle established by earlier philosophers. Plato is recognized as the father of philosophy, the first systematic metaphysician and epistemologist, the first philosopher to set forth a comprehensive treatment of the entire domain of philosophy from ontology to ethics and aesthetics. He was born into an Athenian aristocratic family during the Persian Golden age of Greek democracy. During most of his life Athens was in war with Sparta, the Greek city-state to the south. He was Socrates’ disciple and founder of the first university and school of philosophy, and was Aristotle’s teacher and an advisor to emperors. The groundwork of Plato’s scheme is the threefold division of philosophy into dialectics, ethics and physics; its central point is the theory of form. This theory is a combination of the Eleatic doctrine of the One with Heracleitus‘ theory of a perpetual flux and with the Socratic method of concepts. The multitude of objects of sense, being involved in perpetual change, is thereby deprived of all genuine existence. The only true being in them is found 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 object 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 caever give us 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 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 science. In Physics, Plato adhered to the views of the Pythagoreans, making Nature a harmonic unity in multiplicity. His ethics are founded on the Socratic; with him, too, virtue is knowledge, the cognition of the supreme form of the Good. And science 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. His goal was to found an ideal state, which was aristocracy, where clear differentiation of duties was observed and where philosophers ruled with justice. Among his important books are the Republic, Phaedo, Meno and Phaedus. In Republic Plato distinguished two possible approaches to knowledge: sense perception and reason. We may call these the empirical and the rational way. Sense perception has as its object the fleeting world of particular objects, which appear differently at different times. Hence, it is an unstable relationship and not knowledge. Reason, however, grasps that which is absolute, unchanging and universal – the Forms (or Ideas). Sense perception causes us to see specific triangles, horses, chairs, people but reason gives us understanding of the universal triangle, horse, chair and person. Sense perception may be a starting point for knowledge, but it caever itself bring us to the realm of reality, the world of being. By itself it leaves us in the realm of appearance, in the world of becoming. The role of the philosopher is to use the world of sense perception in order to lead the soul out of the dreamlike state of becoming and into the real world of being.

Plato’s study of man is established on the idea about unity of man (microcosm) and the universe (macrocosm). For him man consists of physical body and soul, which in its turn has the following parts: intellect, will and sense. To conclude, we can say that Plato sought to find the One in the Many, a unifying idea (the Form) that existed independently of objects in the world of appearances (the world of space and time) and in which those objects participated. All beautiful things are beautiful through the Form of the Beautiful. The Forms are divine, eternal, simple, immutable and self-subsisting. The highest form is the Good. Plato held that we had innate ideas of the Forms, and through suitable education (recollections). The way of the philosopher was to make his or her way out of the world of appearance (the caves) to the world of reality (the world of sunlight), wherein one participates in the Good.

The most important among Plato’s disciples is Aristotle of Stagira (384 – 322 BC), who shares with his master the title of the greater 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 established the ultimate grounds of things inductively – this is to say, by a posteriori conclusions from a number of facts to a universal. In the series of works collected under the name 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 recognized the true being of things in their concept, but denied any separate existence of the concepts 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. 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 is 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; in animals, nutrition and sensation; in humans, nutrition, sensation and intellectual activity. The perfect form of a human soul is reason separated from all connections 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-impression, 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 humaature, and on this is founded virtue; for Aristotle does not, with Plato, regard virtue as knowledge pure and simple, but as founded oature, habit and reason. 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 or less necessary conditions.

Aristotle was the first to make attempts to systemize all the scientific achievements of his time. He divided all sciences into three groups: theoretical – Metaphysics, Physics and Mathematics; practical – Ethics, Politics, Economics; artistic – Poetics, Rhetoric, Craft art.

In his study about state Aristotle faced the dilemma “Either the power of law or the power of people”. He underlined that the power of law is much better that the power of a separate personality. 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 appeared among the later Peripatetics, who did good service as expositors of Aristotle’s works. Both Plato and Aristotle did not think that Greece, which consisted of separate cities-states would decay. Occupation of Greece by Rome resulted not only into social-political changes but also in profound transformations of the outlook principles.

4. Philosophy of Hellenism

Epoch oh Hellenism is a period of despair out of the surrounding world. Pessimism turns to be a constituent of people’s outlook and world perception, so that it gradually becomes more subjective and individualistic. The problem of personality or individual turns to be a dominant one. The main questions of that time are: What is the essence of happiness? and How is it possible to be happy? Two philosophical schools – stoicism and Epicureanism tried t find answers for these questions.

Stoicism was founded by Zeno of Citium (in Cyprus) about 310 BC. It was brought to fuller systematic form by his successors Cleanthes of Assos and Chrysippus of Soli who died about 206.

Important stoic writers of the Roman period include Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. Their doctrine 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 man 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 according to them 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 will with the divine will, or life according to nature, is virtue, the chief good and highest end of life. 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 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.

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 and Gargettus in Africa (342 – 286), who brought it to completion himself. Epicureanism, like Stoicism is connected with previous systems. 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) 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 presentation formed from such impressions, and opinions extending beyond those impressions, in so far as they are supported or nit contradicted by the evidence of the senses. In practical questions the feelings of pleasure and pain are the tests. Epicurus’ 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 t a greater pleasure; and since pleasures of sense are subordinated 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 passion 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 (365 –275 BC). 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, represented by Arcesilaus of Pitane (316 – 241 BC) and Carneades of Cyrene (214 – 128 BC) 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 BC), 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.

The closing period of Greek philosophy is marked in the third century AD 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 existence stands the One or the God, 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 God, or God, is the true function of humans, to whom the external world should be absolutely indifferent.

Plotinus’ most important disciple, the Syrian Porphyry, contented himself with popularizing his master’s doctrine. But the school of 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 opponents 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, the teaching of philosophy at Athens was forbidden by Justinian.

The era of Hellenism was the period of exhaustion, decay and breakdown. Aristotle was the last philosopher whose outlook position preserved its optimistic character. After him all the philosophers to this or that extent spread the idea of escape from life. Gradually, alongside with the philosophical ideas of antiquity new philosophy was growing. A new era – era of Christianity originated.

Greek Philosophy

I. INTRODUCTION

Greek Philosophy, body of philosophical concepts developed by the Greeks, particularly during the flowering of Greek civilization between 600 and 200 bc. Greek philosophy formed the basis of all later philosophical speculation in the Western world. The intuitive hypotheses of the ancient Greeks foreshadowed many theories of modern science, and many of the moral ideas of pagan Greek philosophers have been incorporated into Christian moral doctrine. The political ideas set forth by Greek thinkers influenced political leaders as different as the framers of the U.S. Constitution and the founders of various 20th-century totalitarian states.

II. THE IONIAN SCHOOL

Greek philosophy may be divided between those philosophers who sought an explanation of the world in physical terms and those who stressed the importance of nonmaterial forms or ideas. The first important school of Greek philosophy, the Ionian or Milesian, was largely materialistic. Founded by Thales of Miletus in the 6th century bc, it began with Thales’ belief that water is the basic substance out of which all matter is created. A more elaborate view was offered by Anaximander, who held that the raw material of all matter is an eternal substance that changes into the commonly experienced forms of matter. These forms in turn change and merge into one another according to the rule of justice, that is, balance and proportion. Heraclitus taught that fire is the primordial source of matter, but he believed that the entire world is in a constant state of change or flux and that most objects and substances are produced by a union of opposite principles. He regarded the soul, for example, as a mixture of fire and water. The concept of nous (“mind”), an infinite and unchanging substance that enters into and controls every living object, was developed by Anaxagoras, who also believed that matter consisted of infinitesimally small particles, or atoms. He epitomized the philosophy of the Ionian school by suggesting a nonphysical governing principle and a materialistic basis of existence.

III. PYTHAGORAS, THE ELEATIC SCOOL AND THE SOPHISTS

The division between idealism and materialism became more distinct. Pythagoras stressed the importance of form rather than matter in explaining material structure. The Pythagorean school also laid great stress on the importance of the soul, regarding the body only as the soul’s “tomb.” According to Parmenides, the leader of the Eleatic school, the appearance of movement and the existence of separate objects in the world are mere illusions; they only seem to exist. The beliefs of Pythagoras and Parmenides formed the basis of the idealism that was to characterize later Greek philosophy.

A more materialistic interpretation was made by Empedocles, who accepted the belief that reality is eternal but declared that it is composed of chance combinations of the four primal substances: fire, air, earth, and water. Such materialistic explanations reached their climax in the doctrines of Democritus, who believed that the various forms of matter are caused by differences in the shape, size, position, and arrangement of component atoms. Materialism applied to daily life inspired the philosophy of a group known as the Sophists, who were active in the 5th century bc. With their stress on the importance of human perception, such Sophists as Protagoras doubted that humanity would ever be able to reach objective truth through reason and taught that material success rather than truth should be the purpose of life.

IV. SOCRATES

In contrast were the ideas of Socrates, with whom Greek philosophy attained its highest level. His avowed purpose was “to fulfil the philosopher’s mission of searching into myself and other men.” After a proposition had been stated, the philosopher asked a series of questions designed to test and refine the proposition by examining its consequences and discovering whether it was consistent with the known facts. Socrates described the soul not in terms of mysticism but as “that in virtue of which we are called wise or foolish, good or bad.” In other words, Socrates considered the soul a combination of an individual’s intelligence and character.

V. PLATO AND ARISTOTLE

The idealism of Socrates was organized by Plato into a systematic philosophy. In his theory of Ideas, Plato regarded the objects of the real world as being merely shadows of eternal Forms or Ideas. Only these changeless, eternal Forms can be the object of true knowledge; the perception of their shadows, that is, the real world as heard, seen, and felt, is merely opinion. The goal of the philosopher, he said, is to know the eternal Forms and to instruct others in that knowledge.

Plato’s theory of knowledge is implicit in his theory of Ideas. He argued that both the material objects perceived and the individual perceiving them are constantly changing; but, since knowledge must be concerned only with unchangeable and universal objects, knowledge and perception are fundamentally different.

In place of Plato’s doctrine of Ideas with a separate and eternal existence of their own, Aristotle proposed a group of universals that represent the common properties of any group of real objects. The universals, unlike Plato’s Ideas, have no existence outside of the objects they represent. Closer to Plato’s thought was Aristotle’s definition of form as a distinguishing property of objects, but with an independent existence apart from the objects in which it is found. Describing the material universe, Aristotle stated it consists of the four elements, fire, air, earth, and water, plus a fifth element that exists everywhere and is the sole constituent of the heavenly bodies “above” the moon.

In the writings of Plato and Aristotle the dominant strains of idealism and materialism in Greek philosophy reached, respectively, their highest expression, producing a body of thought that continues to influence philosophical inquiry. Subsequent Greek philosophy, reflecting a historical period of civil unrest and individual insecurity, was less concerned with the nature of the world than with the problems in the individual. During this period four major schools of largely materialistic, individualistic philosophy arose: that of the Cynics, and those espousing Epicureanism, Skepticism, and Stoicism. For a detailed history of these and earlier schools, see Philosophy.

Summary of philosophers

Socrates (469-399 B.C.E.)

In his use of critical reasoning, by his unwavering commitment to truth, and through the vivid example of his own life, fifth-century Athenian Socrates set the standard for all subsequent Western philosophy. Since he left no literary legacy of his own, we are dependent upon contemporary writers like Aristophanes and Xenophon for our information about his life and work. As a pupil of Archelaus during his youth, Socrates showed a great deal of interest in the scientific theories of Anaxagoras, but he later abandoned inquiries into the physical world for a dedicated investigation of the development of moral character. Having served with some distinction as a soldier at Delium and Amphipolis during the Peloponnesian War, Socrates dabbled in the political turmoil that consumed Athens after the War, then retired from active life to work as a stonemason and to raise his children with his wife, Xanthippe. After inheriting a modest fortune from his father, the sculptor Sophroniscus, Socrates used his marginal financial independence as an opportunity to give full-time attention to inventing the practice of philosophical dialogue.

For the rest of his life, Socrates devoted himself to free-wheeling discussion with the aristocratic young citizens of Athens, insistently questioning their unwarranted confidence in the truth of popular opinions, even though he often offered them no clear alternative teaching. Unlike the professional Sophists of the time, Socrates pointedly declined to accept payment for his work with students, but despite (or, perhaps, because) of this lofty disdain for material success, many of them were fanatically loyal to him. Their parents, however, were often displeased with his influence on their offspring, and his earlier association with opponents of the democratic regime had already made him a controversial political figure. Although the amnesty of 405 forestalled direct prosecution for his political activities, an Athenian jury found other charges—corrupting the youth and interfering with the religion of the city—upon which to convict Socrates, and they sentenced him to death in 399 B.C.E. Accepting this outcome with remarkable grace, Socrates drank hemlock and died in the company of his friends and disciples.

Our best sources of information about Socrates’s philosophical views are the early dialogues of his student Plato, who attempted there to provide a faithful picture of the methods and teachings of the master. (Although Socrates also appears as a character in the later dialogues of Plato, these writings more often express philosophical positions Plato himself developed long after Socrates’s death.) In the Socratic dialogues, his extended conversations with students, statesmen, and friends invariably aim at understanding and achieving virtue {Gk. αρετη [aretê]} through the careful application of a dialectical method that employs critical inquiry to undermine the plausibility of widely-held doctrines. Destroying the illusion that we already comprehend the world perfectly and honestly accepting the fact of our own ignorance, Socrates believed, are vital steps toward our acquisition of genuine knowledge, by discovering universal definitions of the key concepts governing human life.

Interacting with an arrogantly confident young man in Ευθυφρων (Euthyphro), for example, Socrates systematically refutes the superficial notion of piety (moral rectitude) as doing whatever is pleasing to the gods. Efforts to define morality by reference to any external authority, he argued, inevitably founder in a significant logical dilemma about the origin of the good. Plato’s Απολογημα (Apology) is an account of Socrates’s (unsuccessful) speech in his own defense before the Athenian jury; it includes a detailed description of the motives and goals of philosophical activity as he practiced it, together with a passionate declaration of its value for life. The Κριτων (Crito) reports that during Socrates’s imprisonment he responded to friendly efforts to secure his escape by seriously debating whether or not it would be right for him to do so. He concludes to the contrary that an individual citizen—even when the victim of unjust treatment—caever be justified in refusing to obey the laws of the state.

The Socrates of the Μενων (Meno) tries to determine whether or not virtue can be taught, and this naturally leads to a careful investigation of the nature of virtue itself. Although his direct answer is that virtue is unteachable, Socrates does propose the doctrine of recollection to explain why we nevertheless are in possession of significant knowledge about such matters. Most remarkably, Socrates argues here that knowledge and virtue are so closely related that no human agent ever knowingly does evil: we all invariably do what we believe to be best. Improper conduct, then, can only be a product of our ignorance rather than a symptom of weakness of the will {Gk. ακρασια [akrásia]}. The same view is also defended in the Πρωταγορας (Protagoras), along with the belief that all of the virtues must be cultivated together.

Plato (c. 427-c. 347 BC)

Biographical note

Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the foundations of natural philosophy, science, and Western philosophy. Plato was originally a student of Socrates, and was as much influenced by his thinking as by what he saw as his teacher’s unjust death.

Plato’s sophistication as a writer is evident in his Socratic dialogues; thirty-five dialogues and thirteen letters have been ascribed to him. Plato’s writings have been published in several fashions; this has led to several conventions regarding the naming and referencing of Plato’s texts.

Works

The works presented here are taken from The Dialogues of Plato, translated by Bejamin Jowett

The exact order in which Plato’s dialogues were written is not known, nor is the extent to which some might have been later revised and rewritten. However, there is enough information internal to the dialogues to form a rough chronology. The dialogues are normally grouped into three fairly distinct periods, with a few of them considered transitional works. The generally agreed upon modern ordering is as follows.

Early Dialogues

Socrates figures in all of these, and they are considered the most faithful representations of the historical Socrates; hence they are also called the Socratic dialogues. Most of them consist of Socrates discussing a subject, often an ethical one (friendship, piety) with a friend or with someone presumed to be an expert on it. Through a series of questions he will show that apparently they don’t understand it at all. It is left to the reader to figure out if “he” really understands “it”. This makes these dialogues “indirect” teachings. This period also includes several pieces surrounding the trial and execution of Socrates.

· The Apology

· Crito

· Charmides, or Temperance

· Laches; or Courage

· Lysis; or Friendship

· Euthyphro

· Menexenus

· Lesser Hippias

· Ion

The following are variously considered transitional or middle period dialogues:

· Gorgias

· Protagoras

· Meno

Middle Dialogues

Late in the early dialogues Plato’s Socrates actually begins supplying answers to some of the questions he asks, or putting forth positive doctrines. This is generally seen as the first appearance of Plato’s own views. The first of these, that goodness is wisdom and that no one does evil willingly, was perhaps Socrates’ own view. What becomes most prominent in the middle dialogues is the idea that knowledge comes of grasping unchanging forms or essences, paired with the attempts to investigate such essences. The immortality of the soul, and specific doctrines about justice, truth, and beauty, begin appearing here. The Symposium and the Republic are considered the centrepieces of Plato’s middle period.

· Euthydemus

· Cratylus

· Phaedo

· Phaedrus

· Symposium

· The Republic

· Theaetetus

· Parmenides

Late Dialogues

The Parmenides presents a series of criticisms of the theory of Forms which are widely taken to indicate Plato’s abandonment of the doctrine. Some recent publications (e.g., Meinwald [1991]) have challenged this characterisation. In most of the remaining dialogues the theory is either absent or at least appears under a different guise in discussions about kinds or classes of things (the Timaeus may be an important, and hence controversially placed, exception). Socrates is either absent or a minor figure in the discussion. An apparently new method for doing dialectic known as “collection and division” is also featured, most notably in the Sophist and Statesman, explicitly for the first time in the Phaedrus, and possibly in the Philebus. A basic description of collection and division would go as follows: interlocutors attempt to discern the similarities and differences among things in order to get clear idea about what they in fact are. One understanding, suggested in some passages of the Sophist, is that this is what philosophy is always in the business of doing, and is doing even in the early dialogues.

The late dialogues are also an important place to look for Plato’s mature thought on most of the issues dealt with in the earlier dialogues. There is much work still to be done by scholars on the working out of what these views are. The later works are agreed to be difficult and challenging pieces of philosophy. On the whole they are more sober and logical than earlier works, but may hold out the promise of steps towards a solution to problems which were systematically laid out in prior works.

· Sophist

· Statesman

· Philebus

· Timaeus

· Critias

· Laws

The following works are generally agreed to be doubtful works of Plato:

· The First Alcibiades

· The Second Alcibiades

· Epinomis

· Eryxias

· The Seventh Letter

Democritus

(460-370)

Democritus and his teacher Leucippus replaced theological and supernatural explanations of phenomena with natural materialist explanations. They assumed the world was completely made of matter, which they postulated to consist of just a few types of invisible particles that could be combined to make all of the visible objects, their properties, and their behaviors.

The fundamental elements of their time – earth, water, air, and fire – were in turn simply compounds of sub-elementary particles they called atoms (indivisibles) in a void or vacuum between the atoms.

“By convention hot, by convention cold, but in reality atoms and void.” (Fragment 117, Diogenes Laertius IX, 72)

Parmenides had denied the possibility of the void with the simple logical argument that if nothing was between two bodies, it follows that they are in contact with one another. Plato and Aristotle generally preferred Parmenides’ idea of a continuous filled plenum and opposed the atomists’ ideas of discrete particulate objects separated by nothing.

Democritus denied the arbitrariness of phenomena that was implied if they were the free actions of the gods. He replaced that explanation with the idea of deterministic laws governing the behavior of the atoms, and as a consequence explaining all phenomena made of atoms, including human beings and their actions. Leucippus had denied that anything happened at random (μάτην),

“Nothing occurs at random, but everything for a reason and by necessity.” (Leucippus, Fragment 569 – from Fr. 2 Actius I, 25, 4)

All the events in the world would now be connected in an eternal deterministic causal chain with a single possible future, possibly one that would loop back and repeat itself in a cosmic “great cycle.”

In denying the gods and their freedom, Democritus was no doubt aware of the negative implications for human freedom and moral responsibility. Would causal material explanations reduce all events to mere happenings, with no room for intentions, purposes, and human wills?

Moral responsibility was very important to Democritus. It was a large part of his reason for eliminating the gods and the idea of fate. Unfortunately, eliminating the gods was impolitic and Democritus’ work was shunned by many philosophers, starting with Socrates and Plato.

Nevertheless, his view of atoms and a void working by natural causal laws was such a gain over the traditional view of arbitrary fate and capricious gods, that Democritus simply insisted that determinism provided enough responsibility. In this respect, Democritus seems to anticipate the idea of the semi-compatibilism of determinism and moral responsibilty.

A couple of centuries later, the atomist Epicurus added an element of chance to break the causal chain and provide still more control and moral responsibility than physical determinism could provide, because in his opinion, the strict causal determinism of Democritus was worse that the arbitrary fate of the gods. At least one might appeal to the gods for some mercy.

Epicurus said, in his Letter to Menoeceus, 134,

It is better to follow the myth about the gods than to be a slave of the “fate” of the physicists: for the former suggests a hope of forgiveness, in return for honor, but the latter has an ineluctable necessity.

Aristotle ( 384-322 BCE )

Greek philosopher and scientist, who shares with Plato and Socrates the distinction of being the most famous of ancient philosophers. Aristotle was born at Stagira, in Macedonia, the son of a physician to the royal court. At the age of 17, he went to Athens to study at Plato’s Academy. He remained there for about 20 years, as a student and then as a teacher. When Plato died in 347 BC, Aristotle moved to Assos, a city in Asia Minor, where a friend of his, Hermias, was ruler. There he counseled Hermias and married his niece and adopted daughter, Pythias. After Hermias was captured and executed by the Persians in 345 BC, Aristotle went to Pella, the Macedonian capital, where he became the tutor of the king’s young son Alexander, later known as Alexander the Great. In 335, when Alexander became king, Aristotle returned to Athens and established his own school, the Lyceum. Because much of the discussion in his school took place while teachers and students were walking about the Lyceum grounds, Aristotle’s school came to be known as the Peripatetic (“walking” or “strolling”) school. Upon the death of Alexander in 323 BC, strong anti-Macedonian feeling developed in Athens, and Aristotle retired to a family estate in Euboea. He died there the following year.

Works

Aristotle, like Plato, made regular use of the dialogue in his earliest years at the Academy, but lacking Plato’s imaginative gifts, he probably never found the form congenial. Apart from a few fragments in the works of later writers, his dialogues have been wholly lost. Aristotle also wrote some short technical notes, such as a dictionary of philosophic terms and a summary of the doctrines of Pythagoras. Of these, only a few brief excerpts have survived. Still extant, however, are Aristotle’s lecture notes for carefully outlined courses treating almost every branch of knowledge and art. The texts on which Aristotle’s reputation rests are largely based on these lecture notes, which were collected and arranged by later editors.

Among the texts are treatises on logic, called Organon (“instrument”), because they provide the means by which positive knowledge is to be attained. His works oatural science include Physics, which gives a vast amount of information on astronomy, meteorology, plants, and animals. His writings on the nature, scope, and properties of being, which Aristotle called First Philosophy (Prote philosophia), were given the title Metaphysics in the first published edition of his works (60? BC), because in that edition they followed Physics. His treatment of the Prime Mover, or first cause, as pure intellect, perfect in unity, immutable, and, as he said, “the thought of thought,” is given in the Metaphysics. To his son Nicomachus he dedicated his work on ethics, called the Nicomachean Ethics. Other essential works include his Rhetoric, his Poetics (which survives in incomplete form), and his Politics (also incomplete).

Methods

Perhaps because of the influence of his father’s medical profession, Aristotle’s philosophy laid its principal stress on biology, in contrast to Plato’s emphasis on mathematics. Aristotle regarded the world as made up of individuals (substances) occurring in fixed natural kinds (species). Each individual has its built-in specific pattern of development and grows toward proper self-realization as a specimen of its type. Growth, purpose, and direction are thus built into nature. Although science studies general kinds, according to Aristotle, these kinds find their existence in particular individuals. Science and philosophy must therefore balance, not simply choose between, the claims of empiricism (observation and sense experience) and formalism (rational deduction).

One of the most distinctive of Aristotle’s philosophic contributions was a new notion of causality. Each thing or event, he thought, has more than one “reason” that helps to explain what, why, and where it is. Earlier Greek thinkers had tended to assume that only one sort of cause can be really explanatory; Aristotle proposed four. (The word Aristotle uses, aition, “a responsible, explanatory factor” is not synonymous with the word cause in its modern sense.) These four causes are the material cause, the matter out of which a thing is made; the efficient cause, the source of motion, generation, or change; the formal cause, which is the species, kind, or type; and the final cause, the goal, or full development, of an individual, or the intended function of a construction or invention. Thus, a young lion is made up of tissues and organs, its material cause; the efficient cause is its parents, who generated it; the formal cause is its species, lion; and its final cause is its built-in drive toward becoming a mature specimen. In different contexts, while the causes are the same four, they apply analogically. Thus, the material cause of a statue is the marble from which it was carved; the efficient cause is the sculptor; the formal cause is the shape the sculptor realized-Hermes, perhaps, or Aphrodite; and the final cause is its function, to be a work of fine art. In each context, Aristotle insists that something can be better understood when its causes can be stated in specific terms rather than in general terms. Thus, it is more informative to know that a sculptor made the statue than to know that an artist made it; and even more informative to know that Polycleitus chiseled it rather than simply that a sculptor did so. Aristotle thought his causal pattern was the ideal key for organizing knowledge. His lecture notes present impressive evidence of the power of this scheme.

Doctrines

Some of the principal aspects of Aristotle’s thought can be seen in the following summary of his doctrines, or theories.

Physics, or Natural Philosophy

In astronomy, Aristotle proposed a finite, spherical universe, with the earth at its center. The central region is made up of four elements: earth, air, fire, and water. In Aristotle’s physics, each of these four elements has a proper place, determined by its relative heaviness, its “specific gravity.” Each moves naturally in a straight line-earth down, fire up-toward its proper place, where it will be at rest. Thus, terrestrial motion is always linear and always comes to a halt. The heavens, however, move naturally and endlessly in a complex circular motion. The heavens, therefore, must be made of a fifth, and different element, which he called aither. A superior element, aither is incapable of any change other than change of place in a circular movement. Aristotle’s theory that linear motion always takes place through a resisting medium is in fact valid for all observable terrestrial motions. He also held that heavier bodies of a given material fall faster than lighter ones when their shapes are the same, a mistaken view that was accepted as fact until the Italian physicist and astronomer Galileo conducted his experiment with weights dropped from the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Biology

In zoology, Aristotle proposed a fixed set of natural kinds (“species”), each reproducing true to type. An exception occurs, Aristotle thought, when some “very low” worms and flies come from rotting fruit or manure by “spontaneous generation.” The typical life cycles are epicycles: The same pattern repeats, but through a linear succession of individuals. These processes are therefore intermediate between the changeless circles of the heavens and the simple linear movements of the terrestrial elements. The species form a scale from simple (worms and flies at the bottom) to complex (human beings at the top), but evolution is not possible.

Aristotelian Psychology

For Aristotle, psychology was a study of the soul. Insisting that form (the essence, or unchanging characteristic element in an object) and matter (the common undifferentiated substratum of things) always exist together, Aristotle defined a soul as a “kind of functioning of a body organized so that it can support vital functions.” In considering the soul as essentially associated with the body, he challenged the Pythagorean doctrine that the soul is a spiritual entity imprisoned in the body. Aristotle’s doctrine is a synthesis of the earlier notion that the soul does not exist apart from the body and of the Platonic notion of a soul as a separate, nonphysical entity. Whether any part of the human soul is immortal, and, if so, whether its immortality is personal, are not entirely clear in his treatise On the Soul.

Through the functioning of the soul, the moral and intellectual aspects of humanity are developed. Aristotle argued that human insight in its highest form (nous poetikos, “active mind”) is not reducible to a mechanical physical process. Such insight, however, presupposes an individual “passive mind” that does not appear to transcend physical nature. Aristotle clearly stated the relationship between human insight and the senses in what has become a slogan of empiricism-the view that knowledge is grounded in sense experience. “There is nothing in the intellect,” he wrote, “that was not first in the senses.”

Ethics

It seemed to Aristotle that the individual’s freedom of choice made an absolutely accurate analysis of human affairs impossible. “Practical science,” then, such as politics or ethics, was called science only by courtesy and analogy. The inherent limitations on practical science are made clear in Aristotle’s concepts of humaature and self-realization. Humaature certainly involves, for everyone, a capacity for forming habits; but the habits that a particular individual forms depend on that individual’s culture and repeated personal choices. All human beings want “happiness,” an active, engaged realization of their innate capacities, but this goal can be achieved in a multiplicity of ways. Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics is an analysis of character and intelligence as they relate to happiness. Aristotle distinguished two kinds of “virtue,” or human excellence: moral and intellectual. Moral virtue is an expression of character, formed by habits reflecting repeated choices. A moral virtue is always a mean between two less desirable extremes. Courage, for example, is a mean between cowardice and thoughtless rashness; generosity, between extravagance and parsimony. Intellectual virtues are not subject to this doctrine of the mean. Aristotle argued for an elitist ethics: Full excellence can be realized only by the mature male adult of the upper class, not by women, or children, or barbarians (non-Greeks), or salaried “mechanics” (manual workers) for whom, indeed, Aristotle did not want to allow voting rights. In politics, many forms of human association can obviously be found; which one is suitable depends on circumstances, such as the natural resources, cultural traditions, industry, and literacy of each community. Aristotle did not regard politics as a study of ideal states in some abstract form, but rather as an examination of the way in which ideals, laws, customs, and property interrelate in actual cases. He thus approved the contemporary institution of slavery but tempered his acceptance by insisting that masters should not abuse their authority, since the interests of master and slave are the same. The Lyceum library contained a collection of 158 constitutions of the Greek and other states. Aristotle himself wrote the Constitution of Athens as part of the collection, and after being lost, this description was rediscovered in a papyrus copy in 1890. Historians have found the work of great value in reconstructing many phases of the history of Athens.

Logic

In logic, Aristotle developed rules for chains of reasoning that would, if followed, never lead from true premises to false conclusions (validity rules). In reasoning, the basic links are syllogisms: pairs of propositions that, taken together, give a new conclusion. For example, “All humans are mortal” and “All Greeks are humans” yield the valid conclusion “All Greeks are mortal.” Science results from constructing more complex systems of reasoning. In his logic, Aristotle distinguished between dialectic and analytic. Dialectic, he held, only tests opinions for their logical consistency; analytic works deductively from principles resting on experience and precise observation. This is clearly an intended break with Plato’s Academy, where dialectic was supposed to be the only proper method for science and philosophy alike.

Metaphysics

In his metaphysics, Aristotle argued for the existence of a divine being, described as the Prime Mover, who is responsible for the unity and purposefulness of nature. God is perfect and therefore the aspiration of all things in the world, because all things desire to share perfection. Other movers exist as well-the intelligent movers of the planets and stars (Aristotle suggested that the number of these is “either 55 or 47”). The Prime Mover, or God, described by Aristotle is not very suitable for religious purposes, as many later philosophers and theologians have observed. Aristotle limited his “theology,” however, to what he believed science requires and can establish.

Influence

Aristotle’s works were lost in the West after the decline of Rome. During the 9th century AD, Arab scholars introduced Aristotle, in Arabic translation, to the Islamic world. The 12th-century Spanish-Arab philosopher Averroës is the best known of the Arabic scholars who studied and commented on Aristotle. In the 13th century, the Latin West renewed its interest in Aristotle’s work, and Saint Thomas Aquinas found in it a philosophical foundation for Christian thought. Church officials at first questioned Aquinas’s use of Aristotle; in the early stages of its rediscovery, Aristotle’s philosophy was regarded with some suspicion, largely because his teachings were thought to lead to a materialistic view of the world. Nevertheless, the work of Aquinas was accepted, and the later philosophy of scholasticism continued the philosophical tradition based on Aquinas’s adaptation of Aristotelian thought. The influence of Aristotle’s philosophy has been pervasive; it has even helped to shape modern language and common sense. His doctrine of the Prime Mover as final cause played an important role in theology. Until the 20th century, logic meant Aristotle’s logic. Until the Renaissance, and even later, astronomers and poets alike admired his concept of the universe. Zoology rested on Aristotle’s work until British scientist Charles Darwin modified the doctrine of the changelessness of species in the 19th century. In the 20th century a new appreciation has developed of Aristotle’s method and its relevance to education, literary criticism, the analysis of human action, and political analysis. Not only the discipline of zoology, but also the world of learning as a whole, seems to amply justify Darwin‘s remark that the intellectual heroes of his own time “were mere schoolboys compared to old Aristotle.”

References

1. http://www.answers.com/topic/philosophy#ixzz2ggPxbwQP

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

3. Hartman, Robert S. (1967). The Structure of Value. USI Press. 384 pages.

4. Findlay, J. N. (1970). Axiological Ethics. New York: Macmillan. ISBN 0-333-00269-5. 100 pages.