Lakhasly

Theme 3.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.Hence, logic (called by Epicurus (kanonikon), or the doctrine of canons of truth) is made entirely subservient to physics, physics to ethics The standards of knowledge and canons of truth in theoretical matters are the impressions of the senses, which are true and indisputable, together with the presentations formed from such impressions, and opinions extending beyond those impressions, as far as they are supported or not contradicted by the evidence of the senses.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.Epicurus's physics, in which he follows in essentials the materialistic system of Democritus, is intended to refer all phenomena to a natural cause, so 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 everything are directed.The atomism of such presocratic philosophers as Leucippus and Democritus partly anticipated the corpuscularianism of the seventeenth century and modern physics

Agnosticism is the belief that human beings do not have sufficient evidence to warrant either the affirmation or the denial of a proposition.Stoicism

Such were the aims of Stoicism, founded by Athens around 310 by Zeno of Citium (in Cyprus), and brought to fuller systematic form by his successors, the heads of the school, Cleanthes of Assos, and especially Chrysippus of Soli, who died around 206.Ethics predominated both with the Cynics and Cyrenaics, although their positions were in direct opposition Antisthenes of Athens, the founder of the Cynics, conceived the highest good to be the virtue which spurns every enjoyment.Philosophy of Classical Greek Philosophy: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle.Philosophy of Ancient Greece

1.2.3.

Theme 3. Philosophy of Ancient Greece

1. 
   

   Pre-Socratics philosophy.

   
   


2. 
   

   Philosophy of Classical Greek Philosophy: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle.

   
   


3. 
   

   Hellinistic Philosophy.

   
   

Basic concepts:

Atomism is the belief that matter is composed of simple, indivisible, physical particles that are too tiny to be observed by human beings. The atomism of such presocratic philosophers as Leucippus and Democritus partly anticipated the corpuscularianism of the seventeenth century and modern physics

Agnosticism is the belief that human beings do not have sufficient evidence to warrant either the affirmation or the denial of a proposition. The term is used especially in reference to our lack of knowledge of the existence of God. In this, the agnostic, who holds that we cannot know whether or not God exists, differs from the atheist, who denies that God exists.

Being: that which is regarded as the most fundamental reality. Being was thought by the early Greek philosopher Parmenides to be that which is eternal, one, all-inclusive, and unchanging. Parmenides' famous passage from which this was inferred: "That which is, is; and that which is not, is not and can never be."

Catharsis: cleansing from guilt or defilement; hence, in Aristotle, the elimination of destructive emotions through appreciation of an aesthetic experience. The notion here is that vicariously experiencing strong feelings renders us less likely to be overcome by them in our own lives.

Cosmology: the study of the universe as a rational and orderly system

Dialectic 1. The art of asking and answering the proper questions in a discussion at the proper time and in the proper way so as to bring knowledge out into the open. 2. The method of arriving

at a definition for a concept by means of examining the common characteristics found in a number of particular examples of that concept. Essence: That which makes a thing what it is (and without which it would not be what it is).

Form: An image of the shape or structure of a thing, the essence of a thing.

Form (Aristotle): That which is in matter and makes (forms) it into the object it is

Hedonism: The belief that pleasure (Gk. 'hdonh [hêdone]) is the highest or only source of intrinsic value. Although commonly defended as a moral theory about the proper aim of human conduct, hedonism is usually grounded on the psychological claim that human beings simply do act in such ways as to maximize their own happiness. Aristotle argued against any attempt to identify pleasure as the highest good, but Epicurus held that physical pleasure and freedom from pain are significant goals for human life. The utilitarianism of Bentham proposes a practical method for calculating hedonic value.

Idea: 1. Anything that is a content (object, item) of consciousness. 2. A mental image or picture of something.

Knowledge: 1. Recognition of something. 2. Familiarity or acquaintance with something from actual experience. 3. That which is learned.

Logic: The study of the rules of exact reasoning, of the forms of sound or valid thought patterns

Logos in Greek referred to the divine word of a God or gods that provided spiritual inspiration, wisdom, and guidance.

Matter: The physical or material constituent of something. That of which any physical object is composed.

Naturphilosophy - philosophy of nature.

Nonbeing 1. The nonexistent. Nonexistence reined. 2. The lack (privation, absence) of

existence or of an existent.

Physis: In general, physis means nature, or whatever exists outside of humankind. Reason: The intellect, the capacity to abstract, comprehend, relate, reflect, notice similarities and differences, etc.

Society: A relatively independent, self-perpetuating group of people who occupy the same territory and participate in a common culture.

Sophism: A plausible argument that is actually fallacious, especially when someone dishonestly presents it as if it were legitimate reasoning

Soul: The following characteristics, or combinations of them, have been ascribed to the soul: 1. Eternality. 2. An immaterial or spiritual entity (substance, being, agent). 3. Something separable and entirely different from the body and matter which persists throughout the changes of the body. 4. The activating cause of life and consciousness (although in creationism it is held that God creates the soul as He does matter at an instant in eternal time). 5. Immortality. 6. The ability to enter the body at birth and leave the body at death (and in some cases during life). 7.

The ability to transmigrate or reincarnate (metempsychosis), or to pass on to heaven or hell, or into nirvana. 8. Inexplicability. The soul is not in any way subject to materialistic or mechanistic explanation, not even in terms of very fine material particles believed in by the Greek atomists and by the Stoics

Wisdom - Prudent judgment as to how to use knowledge in the everyday affairs of life.Study material

Our western philosophical tradition began in ancient Greece in the 6th century BC. The first philosophers are called "Presocratics," which designates that they came before Socrates. The Presocratics were from either the eastern or western regions of the Greek world. Athens, the home of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, is in the central Greek region. The Presocratic's most distinguishing feature is its emphasis on questions of physics; indeed, Aristotle refers to them as "Investigators of Nature." Their scientific interests included mathematics, astronomy, and biology. As the first philosophers, though, they emphasized the rational unity of things and rejected mythologicalExplanations of the world. Only fragments of the original writings of the presocratics survive, in some cases merely a single sentence. The knowledge we have of them derives from accounts of early philosophers.

The first group of Presocratic philosophers were from Ionia. The Ionian philosophers sought the material principle (arche) of things, and the mode of their origin and disappearance. Thales of Miletus (about 640 BC) is reputed the father of Greek philosophy. He declared water to be the basis of all things. Next came Anaximander of Miletus (about 611–547 BC), the first writer on philosophy. He assumed as the first principle an undefined, unlimited substance (to apeiron) itself without qualities, out of which the primary opposites, hot and cold, moist and dry, became differentiated. His countryman and younger contemporary Anaximenes took air for his principle, conceiving it as modified, by thickening and thinning, into fire, wind, clouds, water, and earth. Heraclitus of Ephesus (c. 535–475 BC) assumed as the principle of substance aetherial fire. From fire all things originate, and return to it again by a never-resting process of development. All things, therefore, are in a perpetual flux. However, this perpetual flux is structured by logos, which most basically means 'word', but can also designate 'argument', 'logic', or 'reason' more generally. The logos which structures the human soul mirrors the logos which structures the ever-changing processes of the universe.

That country was also the home of the Eleatic doctrine of the One, called after the town of Elea, the headquarters of the school. It was founded by Xenophanes of Colophon (born about 570 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 (born about 511), affirmed the one unchanging existence to be alone true and capable of being conceived, and multitude and change to be an appearance without reality. This doctrine was defended by his younger countryman Zeno in a polemic against the common opinion, which sees in things multitude, becoming, and change. Zeno propounded a number of celebrated paradoxes, much debated by later philosophers, which attempt to show that supposing that there is any change or multiplicity leads to contradictions

The first explicitly materialistic system was formed by Leucippus (fifth century BC) and his pupil Democritus of Abdera (born about 460 BC). This was the doctrine of atoms: literally 'uncuttables,' small primary bodies infinite in number, indivisible and imperishable, qualitatively similar, but distinguished by their shapes. Moving eternally through the infinite void, they collide and unite, thus generating objects which differ in accordance with the varieties, in number, size, shape, and arrangement, of the atoms which compose them.

The efforts of all these earlier philosophers had been directed somewhat exclusively to the investigation of the ultimate basis and essential nature of the external world. Hence their conceptions of human knowledge, arising out of their theories as to the constitution of things, had been no less diverse. Protagoras of Abdera

We have it from Plato that Protagoras was a native of Abdera. He lived in the latter half of the fifth century B.C., although his precise dates are difficult to determine. Protagoras is said to have begun his own traveling-teaching career when he was thirty, and, in Plato's Protagoras, he is made to say that he was the first openly to declare that he taught for money.

The famous sentence of Protagoras is "Man is the measure of all things, of the things that are, that they are, and of the things that are not, that they are not." What does Protagoras mean by this statement? It could mean that whatever seems to me to be at any given moment is and what seems to me not to be, is not. That it may seem otherwise to me later, or to another now, indicates that no truth is possible, and that every judgment is opinion at best. The subjectivity implied may seem to apply only to sensible objects, so that a breeze will seem warm or cool tome depending on my condition, and may seem different to different individuals at the same time. There is no point in arguing whether it is really one or the other; we can only know how it appears to us. There is no need, however, to restrict the scope of the remark to sensible objects. The word Protagoras uses for things can mean moral judgments as well and, indeed, statements about the gods. As applied to physical things, the proposition can be taken to mean that things are when we perceive them and cease to be when we cease to perceive them. The doctrine of Protagoras, since Plato, has been taken to be a sceptical one, or nearly so

A new period of philosophy opens with the Athenian Socrates (469–399 BC). Like the Sophists, he rejected entirely the physical speculations in which his predecessors had indulged and made the thoughts and opinions of people his starting point. But whereas it was the thoughts and opinions of the individual that the Sophists took for the standard, Socrates questioned people relentlessly about their beliefs. He tried to find the definitions of the virtues, such as courage and justice, by cross-examining people who professed to have knowledge of them. However, his method of cross-examining people, the elenchus, did not succeed in establishing what the virtues really were; they simply exposed the ignorance of his interlocutors

Socrates was an enormously magnetic figure, who attracted many followers, but he also made many enemies. Socrates was executed for corrupting the young of Athens and for disbelieving in the gods of the city. This philosophical martyrdom, however, simply made Socrates an even more iconic figure than would have been otherwise, and many later philosophical schools took Socrates as their hero.

Of Socrates' numerous disciples, many either added nothing to his doctrine or developed it in a one-sided manner, by confining themselves exclusively to dialectics or to ethics. Thus, the Athenian Xenophon contented himself, in a series of writings, with exhibiting the portrait of his master to the best of his comprehension, and added nothing original. The Megarian School, founded by Euclides of Megara, devoted themselves almost entirely to the dialectic investigation of the One Good. Stilpo of Megara became the most distinguished member of the school. Ethics predominated both with the Cynics and Cyrenaics, although their positions were in direct opposition Antisthenes of Athens, the founder of the Cynics, conceived the highest good to be the virtue which spurns every enjoyment. Cynicism continued in Greece with Menippus and on into Roman times through the efforts of Demonax and others. Aristippus of Cyrene, the founder of the Cyrenaics, considered pleasure to be the sole end in life, and regarded virtue as a good only in so far as it contributed to pleasure. Plato

Both aspects of the genius of Socrates were first united in Plato of Athens (428–348 BC), who also combined with them many of the principles established by earlier philosophers and developed the whole of this material into the unity of a comprehensive system. The groundwork of Plato's scheme, though nowhere expressly stated by him, is the threefold division of philosophy into dialectic, ethics, and physics; its central point is the theory of forms. This theory is a combination of the Eleatic doctrine of the One with Heraclitus's theory of aperpetual flux and with the Socratic method of concepts. The multitudes of objects of sense, being involved in perpetual change, are thereby deprived of all genuine existence. The only true being in them is founded upon the forms, the eternal, unchangeable (independent of all that is accidental, and therefore perfect) types, of which the particular objects of sense are imperfect copies. The quantity of the forms is defined by the number of universal concepts which can be derived from the particular objects of sense.

The highest form is that of the Good, which is the ultimate basis of the rest, and the first cause of being and knowledge. Apprehensions derived from the impression of sense can never give us the knowledge of true being, i.e., of the forms. It can only be obtained by the soul's activity within itself, apart from the troubles and disturbances of sense; That is to say, by the exercise of reason, Dialectic, as the instrument in this process, leading us to knowledge of the Ideas, and finally of the highest idea of the Good, is the first of sciences (scientia scientiarum). In physics, Plato adhered (though not without original modifications) to the views of the Pythagoreans, making Nature a harmonic unity in multiplicity. His ethics are founded throughout on the Socratic; with him, too, virtue is knowledge, the cognition of the supreme form of the Good. And since in this cognition the three parts of the soul—cognitive, spirited, and appetitive—all have their share, we get the three virtues: Wisdom, Courage, and Temperance or Continence. The bond which unites the other virtues is the virtue of Justice, by which each several part of the soul is confined to the performance of its proper function.

The school founded by Plato, called the Academy (from the name of the grove of the Attic hero Academus where he used to deliver his lectures), continued for long after.

Aristotle

The most important among Plato's disciples is Aristotle of Stagira (384–322 BC), who shares with his master the title of the greatest philosopher of antiquity. But whereas Plato had sought to elucidate and explain things from the supra-sensual standpoint of the forms, his pupil preferred to start from the facts given us by experience. Philosophy to him meant science, and its aim was the recognition of the purpose in all things. Hence he establishes the ultimate grounds of things inductively—that is to say, by a posteriori conclusions from a number of facts to a universal. In the series of works collected under the name of Organon, Aristotle sets forth the laws by which the human understanding effects conclusions from the particular to the knowledge of the universal

Like Plato, he recognizes the true being of things in their concepts, but denies any separate existence of the concept apart from the particular objects of sense. They are inseparable as matter and form. In matter and form, Aristotle sees the fundamental principles of being. Matter is the basis of all that exists; it comprises the potentiality of everything, but of itself is not actually anything. A determinate thing only comes into being when the potentiality in matter is converted into actuality. This is effected by form, inherent in the unified object and the completion of the potentiality latent in matter. Although it has no existenceApart from the particulars, yet, in rank and estimation, form stands first; it is of its own nature the most knowable, the only true object of knowledge. For matter without any form cannot exist, but the essential definitions of a common form, in which the particular objects are included, may be separated from matter. Form and matter are relative terms, and the lower form constitutes the matter of a higher order (e.g., body, soul, reason). This series culminates in pure, immaterial form, the Deity, the origin of all motion, and therefore the generation of actual form out of potential matter.

All motion takes place in space and time; for space is the potentiality, time the measure of the motion. Living beings are those which have in them a moving principle, or soul. In plants, the function of soul is nutrition (including reproduction); in animals, nutrition and sensation; In humans, reason is separated from all connection with the body, hence fulfilling its activity without the help of any corporeal organ, and so imperishable. By reason the apprehensions, which are formed in the soul by external sense-impressions, and may be true or false, are converted into knowledge. For reason alone can attain to truth either in cognition or action. Impulse towards the good is a part of human nature, and on this is founded virtue; for Aristotle does not, with Plato, regard virtue as knowledge pure and simple, but as founded on nature, habit, and reason. Of the particular virtues (of which there are as many as there are contingencies in life), each is the apprehension, by means of reason, of the proper mean between two extremes which are not virtues e.g., courage is the mean between cowardice and foolhardiness. The end of human activity, or the highest good, is happiness, or perfect and reasonable activity in a perfect life. To this, however, external goods are more of less necessary conditions.

The followers of Aristotle, known as Peripatetics (Theophrastus of Lesbos, Eudemus of Rhodes, Strato of Lampsacus, etc.), to a great extent abandoned metaphysical speculation, some in favor of natural science, others of a more popular treatment of ethics, introducing many changes into the Aristotelian doctrine in a naturalistic direction.

Hellenistic philosophy

The dominant philosophical creeds of the Hellenistic age (officially 323–31 BC) were Stoicism (founded by Zeno of Citium) and Epicureanism (founded by Epicurus). Scepticism was also a powerful force, largely through the Academy (Arcesilaus; Carneades), which in this period functioned as a critical rather than a doctrinal school, and also, starting from the last decades of the era, through Pyrrhonism.

Stoicism

Such were the aims of Stoicism, founded by Athens around 310 by Zeno of Citium (in Cyprus), and brought to fuller systematic form by his successors, the heads of the school, Cleanthes of Assos, and especially Chrysippus of Soli, who died around 206. Important Stoic writers of the Roman period include Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. Their doctrines contained little that was new, seeking rather to give a practical application to the dogmas which they took ready-made fromprevious systems. With them, philosophy is the science of the principles on which the moral life ought to be founded. The only permissible effort is towards the attainment of knowledge of human and divine things, in order thereby to regulate life. The method to lead men to true knowledge is provided by logic; physics embraces the doctrines as to the nature and organization of the universe; ethics draws from them its conclusions for practical life. Regarding Stoic logic, all knowledge originates in the real impressions of things on the senses, which the soul, being at birth a blank slate, receives in the form of presentations. These presentations, when confirmed by repeated experience, are syllogistically developed by the understanding into concepts. The test of their truth is the convincing or persuasive force with which they impress themselves upon the soul.

In physics, the foundation of the Stoic doctrine was the dogma that all true being is corporeal Within the corporeal they recognized two principles: matter and force, the material, and the Deity (logos, order, fate) permeating and informing it. Ultimately, however, the two are identical. There is nothing in the world with any independent existence: all is bound together by an unalterable chain of causation. The agreement of human action with the law of nature, of the human will with the divine will, or life according to nature, is virtue, the chief, good, and highest end in life. It is essentially one, the particular or cardinal virtues. The virtues of Plato being only different aspects of it; it is completely sufficient for happiness, and incapable of any differences of degree. All good actions are absolutely equal in merit, and so are all bad actions. All that lies between virtue and vice is neither good nor bad; at most, it is distinguished as preferable, undesirable, or absolutely indifferent. Virtue is fully possessed only by the wise person, who is in no way inferior in worth to Zeus; He is lord over his own life and may end it by his own free choice. In general, the prominent characteristic of Stoic philosophy is moral

heroism, often verging on asceticism. Epicureanism

The same goal which was aimed at in Stoicism was also approached, from a diametrically opposite position, in the system founded about the same time by Epicurus, of the deme Gargettus in Attica (342–268), who brought it to completion himself. Epicureanism, like Stoicism, is connected with previous systems. Like Stoicism, it is also practical in its ends, proposing to find in reason and knowledge the secret of a happy life, and admitting abstruse learning only where it serves the ends of practical wisdom. Hence, logic (called by Epicurus (kanonikon), or the doctrine of canons of truth) is made entirely subservient to physics, physics to ethics The standards of knowledge and canons of truth in theoretical matters are the impressions of the senses, which are true and indisputable, together with the presentations formed from such impressions, and opinions extending beyond those impressions, as far as they are supported or not contradicted by the evidence of the senses. In practical questions, the feelings of pleasure and pain are the tests. Epicurus's physics, in which he follows in essentials the materialistic system of Democritus, is intended to refer all phenomena to a natural cause, so 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 everything are directed. But the aim is not with him, as it is with the Cyrenaics, the pleasure of the moment, but the enduring condition of pleasure, which, in its essence, is freedom from the greatest of evils, pain. Pleasures and pains are, however, distinguished not merely in degree, but in kind. The renunciation of a pleasure or endurance of a pain is often a means to a greater pleasure; Since the pleasures of the senses are subordinate to the pleasures of the mind, the undisturbed peace of the mind is a higher good than the freedom of the body from pain. Virtue is desirable not for its own sake, but for the sake of the pleasure of the mind, which it secures by freeing people from trouble and fear and moderating their passions and appetites. The cardinal virtue is prudence, which is shown by true insight in calculating the consequences of our actions as regards pleasure or pain. Skepticism

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 (c. 365–275 BC). Pyrrho disputes the possibility of attaining truth by sensory apprehension, reason, or the two combined, and then infers the necessity of total suspension of judgment on things. Thus, we can attain release from all bondage to theories, a condition which is followed, like a shadow, by that imperturbable state of mind which is the foundation of true happiness Pyrrho's immediate disciple was Timon. Pyrrho's doctrine was adopted by the Middle and New Academies (see above), represented by Arcesilaus of Pitane (316-241 BC) and Carneades of Cyrene (214-129 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.

Control questions: