Ancient Greek Philosophy:An Introduction

What is Philosophy?

“Philen” is Greek for love“Sophia” is Greek for

wisdomInvestigate fundamental

problems Why study philosophy?

Ionian Enlightenment 1st philosophers, from Ionia

survive only in quotations; heavily influenced by Eastern religion (w/innovation)

structure and development of the physical universe, not ethics (Socrates)

Early scientists or astronomers/cosmologists

Not 1st thinkers to abandon supernatural or religious explanations

1st to claim that the universe is comprehensible (‘sought to enthrone human reason’)

*Xenophanes (c. 550 ): multiple suns, moons; gods are invented by humans

• The history of Greek philosophy stretches from the 6th century BCE until Ancient Greece was annexed into the Roman Empire

• While Greek mythology sought to explain the material existence of reality, some Greeks pursued alternate answers

Topics of Interest• Metaphysics (the study of existence)

• Ontology (what it means to exist)

• Logic

• Rhetoric

• Biology

• Mathematics

• Political Philosophy

• Aesthetics

Historic Division of Greek Philosophy

• Pre-Socratic Philosophers

• Sophists

• Classical Philosophers

• Hellenistic Philosophers

Central Questions

• The nature of the universe

• Man’s place in the universe

• What is good and what is evil?

• The nature of the supernatural

Two Philosophical Ideas the Greeks Gave to Western Civilization

These are unique to the Greeks and were not present to any great degree in the other ancient civilizations

• Rationality -- Reason through to conclusions rather than simply yielding to tradition and pagan religion

• Observation -- Don’t rely on blind tradition. Check it out, weight it, measure it, observe in again and again

Central Question Cont’d

• Man and the state

• Fate and Free Will

• The Soul and Immortality

• Mind and Matter

The Rest is History

• The fall of Rome surges Europe into the Dark Ages

• Religious superstition sweeps the continent and Greek philosophy is forgotten by most (Thomas Aquinas)

• Resurgence of classical literature and philosophy in the Renaissance

PreSocratics (7th - 5th century B.C.)

Marks the beginning of science, as well as the development of literature, arts, politics, and philosophy.

Man is the measure of all things There is not absolute Everything is relative

All philosophers - scientists up to Democritus are considered to be PreSocratics.

Pre-Socratics

There were approximately 30 philosophers-scientists before good ol’ Socrates. Thales of Miletus (624-560 B.C.). Astronomer,

mathematician and philosopher. Learned astronomy from the Babylonians. Founder of the Ionian school of natural philosophy. Predicted the solar eclipse on May 28, 585. Proved general geometric propositions on angles and triangles. Considered water to be the basis of all matter. He believed that the Earth floated in water. Used the laws of prospectives to calculate the height of the pyramids.

Pythagoras of Samos (569-500 B.C.).

Mathematician and philosopher. Was to first to believe that the Earth was a sphere rotating around a central fire. He believed that the natural order could be expressed in numbers. Known for the Pythagorean theorem which was however known much earlier (From the Babylonians and perhaps earlier from the Chinese).

Anaxagoras of Clazomenae (480-430

B.C.). Greek philosopher. Believed that a large

number of seeds make up the properties of materials, that heavenly bodies are made up of the same materials as Earth and that the sun is a large, hot, glowing rock. Discovered that the moon reflected light and formulated the correct theory for the eclipses. Erroneously believed that the Earth was flat.

Gettin’ closer to Socrates

Hippocrates of Cos (460-377 B.C.). Considered as the father of Medicine. He and his followers considered that diseases had a rational explanation and cause, hence could be treated.

Protagoras (Abdera, 480-420 B.C.). Greek philosopher and the earliest known Sophist. Believed that sense perceptions are all that existed, thus reality differs from one person to another.

Democritus (Abdera, Thrace, 470-380 B.C.). Greek philosopher. Expanded the concept of atoms that was introduced by his teacher Leucippus and showed that atoms are the basis of all form of matter. He recognizes that the Milky Way consists of a number of stars and that the moon is similar to Earth.

The Sophists traveling teachers The Sophists were a motley bunch – some hailed from the Athenian

polis or other city-states, but the majority came from Ionia, in Asia Minor.

The Sophists were men whose responsibility it was to train and educate the sons of Athenian citizens.

No formal school--Instead, peripatetic schools, meaning that the instructor would walk with students and talk with them – for a fee, of course.

The Sophists taught the skills (sophia) of rhetoric and oratory. Both of these arts were essential for the education of the Athenian citizenry.

After all, it was the sons of the citizens who would eventually find themselves debating important issues in the Assembly and the Council of Five Hundred. Rhetoric can be described as the art of composition, while oratory was the art of public speaking.

The Sophists abandoned science, philosophy, mathematics and ethics.

The Sophistic movement of the fifth century B.C. has been the subject of much discussion and there is no single view about their significance. Plato's treatment of the Sophists in his late dialogue, the Sophist, is hardly flattering. He does not treat them as real seekers after truth but as men whose only concern was making money and teaching their students success in argument by whatever means. Aristotle said that a Sophist was "one who made money by sham wisdom."

Socrates(469-399 BCE)

Like the Sophists, he rejected entirely the physical speculations in which his predecessors had indulged

made the thoughts and opinions of people his starting-point;

The Sophists took for the standard: thoughts of and opinions of the individual

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 true champion if justice, if he intends to survive even for a short time, must necessarily confine himself to private life and leave politics alone.

Socrates

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.

First to determine the secularization of gods and individual. He believed the individual had more power.

Oh, Socrates

Took no feeWalked (like the Sophists) around the agora

and ppl clung to his every wordHe was not a Sophist but a philosopher or

Lover of WisdomDidn’t really teach anything in terms of

science etc, but rather HOW to think.

Yikes! In 399 B.C., Socrates was charged with impiety by a jury of five

hundred of his fellow citizens. His most famous student, Plato, tells us, that he was charged "as

an evil-doer and curious person, searching into things under the earth and above the heavens; and making the worse appear the better cause, and teaching all this to others."

He was convicted to death by a margin of six votes. Oddly enough, the jury offered Socrates the chance to pay a small fine for his impiety. He rejected it. He also rejected the pleas of Plato and other students who had a boat waiting for him at Piraeus that would take him to freedom.

But Socrates refused to break the law. What kind of citizen would he be if he refused to accept the judgment of the jury? No citizen at all. He spent his last days with his friends before he drank the fatal dose of hemlock.

Plato’s Best( c.427-347 B.C.)

came from a family of aristoi, served in the Peloponnesian War, and was

perhaps Socrates' most famous student.At the age of forty, Plato established a school

at Athens for the education of Athenian youth. The Academy, as it was called, remained in existence from 387 B.C. to A.D. 529, when it was closed by Justinian, the Byzantine emperor.

Plato? Socrates? Which one?

Socrates taught Plato a great many things, but one of the things Plato more or less discovered on his own was that mankind is born with knowledge.

That is, knowledge is present in the human mind at birth. It is not so much that we "learn" things in our daily experience, but that we "recollect" them. In other words, this knowledge is already there.

This may explain why Socrates did not give his students answers, but only questions. His job was not to teach truth but to show his students how they could "pull" truth out of their own minds (it is for this reason that Socrates often considered himself a midwife in the labor of knowledge).

And this is the point of the dialogues. For only in conversation, only in dialogue, can truth and wisdom come to the surface

The Republic

regarded as Plato's blueprint for a future society of perfection

Instead, I would like to suggest that The Republic is not a blueprint for a future society, but rather, is a dialogue which discusses the education necessary to produce such a society.

It is an education of a strange sort – he called it paideia. Nearly impossible to translate into modern idiom, paideia refers to the process whereby the physical, mental and spiritual development of the individual is of paramount importance. It is the education of the total individual.

Republic

The Republic discusses a number of topics including the nature of justice, statesmanship, ethics and the nature of politics

3 Kinds of citizens: (1) workers (work) (2) soldiers (protect) (3) philosophers (rule)

For Plato, the citizens are the least desirable participants in government. Instead, a philosopher-king or guardian should hold the reigns of power. An aristocracy if you will – an aristocracy of the very best – the best of the aristoi.

Democracy sucksOligarch Rules

Allegory of the CavePlato argued that reality is known only through the

mind. There is a higher world, independent of the world we may experience through our senses.

Because the senses may deceive us, it is necessary that this higher world exist, a world of Ideas or Forms -- of what is unchanging, absolute and universal. In other words, although there may be something from the phenomenal world which we consider beautiful or good or just, Plato argues that there is a higher unchanging reality of the beautiful, goodness or justice.

To live in accordance with these universal standards is the good life -- to grasp the Forms is to grasp ultimate truth.

The unphilosophical man is at the mercy of sense impressions and unfortunately, our sense impressions oftentimes fail us.

Our senses deceive us. But because we trust our senses, we are like prisoners in a cave – we mistake shadows on a wall for reality.

This is the central argument of Plato's ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE which appears in Book VII of The Republic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQfRdl3GTw4

Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) Plato’s student Teacher to Alexander the Great “a biologist” A know it all-He knew a lot of Everything! This may account for the fact that Aristotle's philosophy

is one of the more difficult to digest. Regardless, Aristotle lectured on astronomy, physics, logic, aesthetics, music, drama, tragedy, poetry, zoology, ethics and politics. The one field in which he did not excel was mathematics. Plato, on the other hand, was a master of geometry

Tsk tsk student

Plato suggested that man was born with knowledge, Aristotle argued that knowledge comes from experience.

Rationalism – knowledge is a priori (comes before experience) and Empiricism – knowledge is a posteriori (comes after experience).

Aristotle’s Lyceum (research intensive) vs Plato’s Academy (philosophical)

4 causes

For complete understanding of a thing, it required 4 causes

Material Cause: what it is made ofFormal Cause: Form that it takesEfficient Cause: The triggering motion that

begins itFinal Cause: Telos; the ultimate purpose for

which the thing exists

A Table according to Aristotle

) Material cause: wood for a table. The material gives rise to or causes the form. 2) Formal cause : the table is legs, wood, etc.3) Efficient cause : the table was created by the one who put the parts together.4) Final cause - The table exists so food can rest on it.

Summary

Sophists: Man is the center to everythingSocrates: Innate Knowledge (is the center of

all)Plato: Don’t trust your senses (senses and

knowledge)Aristotle: Observe, measure, weigh (only

knowledge through experience)

Philosopher’s Manual

Select from the following Philosophers for tomorrows mini “How to” assignment

CynicismStoicism Epicureanism SkepticismHedonism