Ancient Philosophy

 

Pre-Socratic Philosophers (c. 600-400 BC)

Pre-Socratic philosophers are scientist-philosophers interested in the constitution of the universe and the first principles of physics.

• Ionians: Interested in fundamental components of the universe.

  1. Thales: Water is the fundamental element

  2. Heraclitus: Fire is the fundamental element; everything is in flux

• Pythagoras: Numbers are the fundamental element of reality; doctrine of transmigration, i.e., reincarnation.

• Eleatics: All being is homogeneous and static; changes over space and time are an illusion

  1. Parmenides: Used a philosophical poem to present rigorous arguments against change and contingency.

  2. Zeno of Elea: Argued against the possibility of change using famous paradoxes.

• Pluralists: Reality is made up of many substances

  1. Empedocles: There are four elements: earth, air, fire, water

• Atomists: Matter is made up of tiny, indivisible atoms (Leucippus, Democritus).

• Sophists: Advance a moral relativism according to the principle that “man is the measure of all things”

 

Socrates (c. 469-399 BC)

• Dialectic or Socratic method: Makes no positive claims, but questions others to reveal their ignorance.

  1. Inquires into the definitions of words like “virtue,” “piety,” etc.

  2. Wisdom comes through acknowledgment of one’s ignorance: “One thing only I know and that is that I know nothing”

• Objects to the Sophists, who use superficial rhetoric for financial gain

• Defends the idea of virtue, which comes with wisdom

  1. All wrongdoing is a result of ignorance.

  2. Virtue can refer both to individual traits like courage or generosity, or to the general virtue of a given person; sometimes used interchangeably with “the good.”

 

Plato (c. 427-c. 347 BC)

• Student of Socrates, who recorded Socrates’ dialogues

  • Later in his career, Plato used the dialectic method in the form of dialogues to advance ideas of his own, with Socrates as his mouthpiece.

• Theory of Forms: Reality consists fundamentally of unchanging, immaterial abstract Forms (or Ideas). Physical reality is based on these ideal Forms. Example: All beautiful things are beautiful only because they participate in the Form of Beauty.

  • ”Myth of the Cave” (in The Republic): The world of appearances consists of false shadows cast upon the wall of a cave. By leaving the cave and stepping into the light, we perceive the true world of Forms.

• Anamnesis: Knowledge is recollection; the immortal soul remembers its prior familiarity with the Forms.

 

Aristotle (384-322 BC)

• Metaphysics: Emphasizes change as natural and necessary.

  1. Criticizes Plato’s Forms, arguing that form and matter are inseparable

  2. Change results in an actual thing realizing its final essence

  3. Four causes explain processes of change: material (what an object is made of), formal (design), efficient (maker), final (end goal).

     • Only the efficient cause is recognized by modern science.

• Epistemology

  1. Emphasizes importance of observation and sense experience.

  2. Invents the syllogism; Aristotle’s logic was not improved upon until the 19th century.

  3. Ten categories of statements we can make about a thing: substance (or kind), quality (or traits), quantity, relation (to other things), place (location), time (age), position, state, action (what it does), and reception (what is done to it).

• Ethics: Nicomachean Ethics

  1. “Man is a rational animal”: virtue comes with proper exercise of reason.

  2. Morality based on the golden mean between two extremes.

 

Hellenistic Philosophy

• Skepticism (c. 3rd century BC): Doubts all claims to knowledge; happiness found in suspension of judgment

• Epicurus (341–c. 270 BC): Focus on happiness and avoidance of pain

• Stoicism: Zeno (c. 334–c. 262 BC): Detachment from material world; focus on reason and virtue

 

Neoplatonism

• Plotinus (204–270 AD): Founder of Neoplatonism: argues that all existence emanates from the “One” down through intellectual forms and finally into material beings; adds religious dimension to the Platonic search for truth.

• Porphyry (c. 233–309 AD): Refines Plotinus’s writings into the Enneads and revives interest in Aristotelian logic.

• St. Augustine (354–430 AD): Uses aspects of Neoplatonism to understand, explain Christianity.