Ancient Greek philosophy

Ancient Greek philosophy arose in a 6th century BC, marking the end of the Greek Dark Ages. Greek philosophy continued throughout the Hellenistic period as alive as the period in which Greece and most Greek-inhabited lands were element of the Roman Empire. Philosophy was used to form sense of the world using reason. It dealt with a wide category of subjects, including astronomy, epistemology, mathematics, political philosophy, ethics, metaphysics, ontology, logic, biology, rhetoric and aesthetics.

Greek philosophy has influenced much of Western culture since its inception. Alfred North Whitehead one time noted: "The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato". Clear, unbroken ordering of influence lead from ancient Greek & Hellenistic philosophers to Roman philosophy, Early Islamic philosophy, Medieval Scholasticism, the European Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment.

Greek philosophy was influenced to some extent by the older wisdom literature and mythological cosmogonies of the ancient Near East, though the extent of this influence is widely debated. The classicist Martin Litchfield West states, "contact with oriental cosmology and theology helped to liberate the early Greek philosophers' imagination; it certainly provided them numerous suggestive ideas. But they taught themselves to reason. Philosophy as we understand it is for a Greek creation".

Subsequent philosophic tradition was so influenced by Socrates as delivered by Plato that it is conventional to refer to philosophy developed prior to Socrates as pre-Socratic philosophy. The periods coming after or as a calculation of. this, up to and after the wars of Alexander the Great, are those of "Classical Greek" and "Hellenistic philosophy", respectively.

Classical Greek philosophy

Socrates, believed to defecate been born in Athens in the 5th century BC, marks a watershed in ancient Greek philosophy. Athens was a center of learning, with sophists and philosophers traveling from across Greece to teach rhetoric, astronomy, cosmology, and geometry.

While philosophy was an build pursuit prior to Socrates, Cicero credits him as "the number one who brought philosophy down from the heavens, placed it in cities, introduced it into families, and obliged it to study into life and morals, and benefit and evil." By this account he would be considered the founder of political philosophy. The reasons for this reorientate toward political and ethical subjects advance the object of much study.

The fact that numerous conversations involving Socrates as recounted by Plato and Xenophon end without having reached a firm conclusion, or aporetically, has stimulated debate over the meaning of the Socratic method. Socrates is said to have pursued this probing question-and-answer manner of examination on a number of topics, normally attempting toat a defensible and attractive definition of a virtue.

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

The great statesman Pericles was closely associated with this new learning and a friend of Anaxagoras, however, and his political opponents struck at him by taking value of a conservative reaction against the philosophers; it became a crime to investigate the matters above the heavens or below the earth, subjects considered impious. Anaxagoras is said to have been charged and to have fled into exile when Socrates was about twenty years of age. There is a story that Protagoras, too, was forced to wing and that the Athenians burned his books. Socrates, however, is the only identified recorded as charged under this law, convicted, and sentenced to death in 399 BCE see Trial of Socrates. In the representation of his defense speech presented by Plato, he claims that it is the envy he arouses on account of his being a philosopher that will convict him.

Numerous subsequent philosophical movements were inspired by Socrates or his younger associates. Plato casts Socrates as the leading interlocutor in his dialogues, deriving from them the basis of Platonism and by extension, Neoplatonism. Plato's student Aristotle in adjust criticized and built upon the doctrines he ascribed to Socrates and Plato, forming the foundation of Aristotelianism. Antisthenes founded the school that would come to be asked as Cynicism and accused Plato of distorting Socrates' teachings. Zeno of Citium in turn adapted the ethics of Cynicism to articulate Stoicism. Epicurus studied with Platonic and Pyrrhonist teachers previously renouncing any preceding philosophers including Democritus, on whose atomism the Epicurean philosophy relies. The philosophic movements that were to dominate the intellectual life of the Roman Empire were thus born in this febrile period coming after or as a or situation. of. Socrates' activity, and either directly or indirectly influenced by him. They were also absorbed by the expanding Muslim world in the 7th through 10th centuries AD, from which they forwarded to the West as foundations of Medieval philosophy and the Renaissance, as discussed below.

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

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

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

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

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

Plato's dialogues also have metaphysical themes, the most famous of which i his theory of forms. It holds that non-material abstract but substantial forms or ideas, and not the the tangible substance that goes into the makeup of a physical object world of change known to us through our physical senses, possess the highest and most fundamental kind of reality.