With the death of Alexander the Great, a new era of Greek history begins, the Hellenistic era, which significantly changes the face of the social and spiritual life of Greece. Its main cultural centers, the policies, lose their political independence and become subordinate elements within the huge monarchies of the Diadochi. A citizen of a policy, who previously, according to Aristotle, “decided and judged” all issues of the policy structure, becomes simply a private person. This political fact changes the self-awareness of the Greek, and the philosophy of this era expresses this changed self-awareness.
The Greeks, together with Alexander, traveled almost the entire oikumene of that time, coming into massive contact with the eastern way of life and culture. The empires founded by the Diadochi stood on eastern soil, and their state structure resembled eastern despotisms rather than independent Greek city-states. Greece, having conquered the East, very soon became its cultural victim. Coexistence with the Persians, Egyptians and other eastern peoples from this time on makes itself felt in many spheres of culture, not excluding, of course, philosophy. It ceases to be an exclusively Greek affair, it includes an eastern element, which made much lower demands on the rational justification of a worldview, but was more experienced in the wisdom of life. In this era, the separation of private sciences from philosophy continues.
If in Plato’s time such sciences as mathematics, astronomy, optics were developed within philosophy, the great representatives of these sciences were Plato’s students and followers, now they begin to develop independently, rejecting philosophical justification and leaving philosophical spheres. In connection with the entry of many barbarian peoples into the circle of Greek culture and the partial loss of national self-identity by the Greeks, there is a need to comment on early Greek authors, and this is how philology arises. The Diadochi also organize large research centers, the most famous of which was the Alexandrian Museion with its huge library.
Science partially leaves philosophy, and philosophy partially loses its science and scientific nature. Its main interest becomes the life of an individual. We will not find in the Hellenistic era either the grandiose theoretical systems of Democritus, Plato, Aristotle, or large-scale projects for the complete transformation of society and the state. Ethics, not politics, occupies the thought of the great schools of this period. It is no coincidence that it was ethics that made the two most significant schools of this era famous, Stoicism and Epicureanism. Since the basic attitude was practical, theoretical questions, logic and physics were developed only as the basis for a correct way of life, and not as something valuable in itself. Hence the desire of the schools of this period to borrow, albeit in a revised form, the theories of earlier thinkers.
In its foundations, Epicurus’s physics is borrowed from Democritus, and his ethics from the Cyrenaics. The Stoics take Heraclitus’s teaching on nature, and moral philosophy from the Cynics. The phenomenon of eclecticism arises, i.e., borrowing different theories from different thinkers for their own worldview. Does the philosophy of this era represent a phenomenon of decline, a loss of the achievements of previous times? Partly yes. Hellenistic philosophy is inferior to the classical era in its theoretical achievements. The teachings of the Hellenistic schools are not comparable with the fundamental developments of the problems of knowledge and being that Plato and Aristotle were engaged in, or with the natural philosophy of Democritus. For theoretical consciousness, little of interest can be found in Hellenism, except perhaps the analysis of knowledge among skeptics. Dogmatism and division into schools, desperately arguing with each other, sometimes over trifles, become good form. The spirit of free and uncompromising investigation of the ultimate foundations of being, the true gift of Hellenism, speaking in the works of Plato and Aristotle, almost leaves philosophy.
The philosophy teacher becomes an indisputable authority for his school. It is no longer possible to imagine that the very foundations of the teaching are examined in school and doubts are expressed about them, as was the case in Plato’s Academy, when the young Aristotle, being Plato’s student and hardly without his approval, could develop a critique of Plato’s main theory. Philosophy loses its connection with the sciences, ceases to be their foundation, loses its guiding and directing role. Moreover, philosophy at this time loses its spirit of elitism, ceases to be the business of a narrow circle of experts, and becomes mass. It is no longer led by hereditary aristocrats or even the children of court physicians. School teachers, water carriers, not to mention people of “barbarian nationality”, now become the rulers of thoughts.
Philosophy goes to the people, becomes popular, which does not suit its nature. However, all this had its positive features. Hellenistic philosophy was more attentive to the individual with his sorrows, sufferings, hopes, illusions. It studies them and wants to help him. In the conditions of growing disunity, it connects people with new social ties, be it the ties of friendship of the Epicureans or the consciousness of a common duty to the universal human community of the Stoics. It does not teach to know the world in all its complexity, it teaches to resist this world and somehow cope with it. It addresses not the chosen ones, but the many, civilizes them and develops them. It becomes primarily practical and ethical, and not theoretical and logical, as in Plato and Aristotle. And finally, it, like any philosophy, is a mirror of its era, its expression and reflection. As is the era, such is the philosophy – such is the law of historical existence.