Philosophy of the era of empire. Neopythagoreanism, Middle Platonism, Eudorus and Plutarch, Neoplatonism, Plotinus
In the first century BC, the Roman Republic completed its conquest of the Mediterranean region and the Middle East. The Diadochi were replaced by Roman rule, and now the West and the East were welded together by the power of the Roman legions. A new era of world history began. However, the republic, which had conquered the entire world, was itself shaken by bloody slave rebellions and civil wars during the first century BC. The senatorial aristocracy of the republic was powerless to hold on to power; claimants for sole rule were constantly appearing, and the dying republic could do almost nothing to counter them. The death of thousands of citizens, the crumbling economy, and the loss of faith in the original Roman ideals changed the psychology of the Roman citizen. He tried to escape the bloody nightmare into his private life, and sought to find a replacement for the dying gods of his ancestors in new deities, which the East had been supplying him with since a certain time. The intensity of religious life, which Roman formalism had kept for a time within the strict framework of serving state interests, is growing. In this changing society, a demand arises for some new philosophy, which, however, had to appear as a well-forgotten old one.
Skepticism. Pyrrho, Timon, Arcesilaus, Carneades, Aenesidemus, Agrippa. They seek the truth, but do not find it
Skepticism is a point of view that denies the possibility of any knowledge of the world and asserts the need to refrain from any judgment about it. A skeptical attitude toward human knowledge is very characteristic of the Greek spirit. The philosophers and poets of early Greece, Homer and Heraclitus, Archilochus and Democritus, Euripides and Plato repeatedly spoke about the weakness of our feelings, the brevity of human life, the feebleness of the human mind. However, it was the Eleatic Pyrrho (360 – 270 BC) who was destined to collect the scattered grains of a skeptical attitude toward the world and melt them into a single worldview. It is to him that the definitions of skepticism as a separate philosophical trend, distinct from simple mistrust of the testimony of our feelings and mind, go back.
Philosophy of Stoa. Zeno, Chrysippus, Panetius, Posidonius, Seneca, Musonia Rufus, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius
The Stoic school was founded at the end of the 4th century BC by Zeno, a native of the Cypriot city of Kition, which had a Phoenician settlement. Some scholars believe that Zeno was of Phoenician origin. At the end of the 4th century, he came to Athens and turned to philosophy. Inspired by the image of Socrates in Xenophon’s “Memoirs”, he became a student of the Cynic Crates, and thanks to this, the influence of the Cynics colors the ethical teaching of the Stoics quite strongly. He also attended lectures by Polemon and Diodorus Cronus. After this, he founded his own school, which was located in the famous “Motley Portico” (tod ποικίλη ), painted with frescoes by Polygnotus. This is where the school got its name. Zeno was highly respected in Athens for his preaching of virtue, after his death he was awarded high awards by the Athenian citizens. Zeno’s most important students were Ariston of Chios and Cheryl. Ariston was a strong example of the Cynic streak. He completely rejected logic and physics, calling for an exclusive focus on virtue and vice. Another famous student of Zeno was Cleanthes of Assos, a former boxer who became a loyal follower of Zeno. Cleanthes’s student Chrysippus of Soli (?281 – 208 BC) played a special role in the development of the Stoic school; his all-encompassing talent allowed him to become, so to speak, the second founder of the Stoics. He was a prolific writer, producing 500 lines a day. He developed a complex system of Stoic logic and made many changes to ethics and physics. Chrysippus’s students included Diogenes of Seleucia and Antipater of Tarsus.
Epicurus. Delivering the human soul from suffering
Epicurus was born in January or February 341 BC, and lived in his youth on Samos and Teos. His father was most likely a school teacher. Epicurus turned to philosophy at the age of 14, when, as a teacher of literature, he read the works of Democritus. His teacher in philosophy was the Democritus follower Nausiphanes. Epicurus became a teacher of philosophy at the age of 32, first in Mytilene and Lampsacus, then, beginning in 307, in Athens, where he founded his own school. The school was located in Epicurus’ garden, which is why it was called “the Garden”, and Epicurus’ followers “philosophers from the gardens”.
Philosophy of the Hellenistic era. The life of a private person
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.
Aristotle. Division of Sciences, Logic and the Doctrine of Knowledge
Aristotle was born in 384/383 BC in the city of Stagira in Thrace, in the family of the court physician of the Macedonian king Amyntas I. The mentality of the future philosopher was undoubtedly influenced by the traditions of his family, a family of hereditary doctors. Having received his initial education, Aristotle came to Athens in 367 and became a member of Plato’s Academy. Aristotle remained in the Academy until Plato’s death in 347. Probably, already during Plato’s lifetime, disagreements between the great student and his teacher began to emerge; nevertheless, Aristotle’s Platonic training remained with him throughout his life, and in his later works, Aristotle would sometimes write “we, Platonists.”
Plato. Academy, philosophical school
Plato was born in 428/427 BC in Athens. He belonged to an ancient aristocratic family, dating back to the first Athenian king Codrus and the great reformer of the 6th century BC Solon. In his youth, Plato devoted himself to poetry and wrote tragedies. His literary talent is evident on many pages of his works that have come down to us. However, Plato, with his aristocratic background, felt himself primarily destined for political activity. Like many young Athenians of that time, he sought a solution to the question of a just and correct structure of the state and the arrangement of the lives of citizens. In search of an answer, he came across the strange figure of Socrates, who became his mentor in life and teacher in philosophy. The unjust sentence, conviction and execution of the Athenian sage finally turned Plato away from a political career. Plato ceased to believe in the possibility of achieving justice in the Greek states of that time. After Socrates’ death, he had to leave Athens for a while; ancient tradition tells of his numerous travels, but these reports are not always reliable. In the mid-90s of the 4th century, Plato, returning to Athens, organized his own philosophical school, which was called the Academy, since it was located in the place where the hero Academ was worshiped.
Sophists and Socrates. Protagoras, Gorgias, Hippias and Thrasymachus. Dialectics
Around the middle of the 5th century BC, conditions arose in Greece for a cultural revolution that, over the course of several decades, affected all spheres of public and political life and produced a radical change in the way of thinking of a significant part of the civilian population, as well as in the direction of philosophical studies. The main reason for the cataclysm that occurred was the development of Greek political life. In the period that began after the Persian Wars, the center of gravity of the political and cultural life of Hellas shifted from the territory of Asia Minor and the islands of the Aegean Sea to continental Greece, the importance of Athens, the largest city in Attica, a region in the southeast of the Balkan Peninsula, increased, which is why this period of the history of the Ancient World is often called “Attic”. The hundreds of Greek poleis (city-states) that existed by this time had had different structures for a long time, occupied different positions in the hierarchy of military and economic alliances, and constantly competed with each other in many different spheres of activity. Numerous economic and political contradictions were compounded by ethnic contradictions – between the Dorian, Achaean and Ionian cities. With the establishment of the political hegemony of Athens, the interests of numerous Greek city-states for the first time in the history of Greece acquired a common direction – due to the growth of civil self-awareness and the relevance of substantiating their own political identity. The development of all these contradictions resulted in a sharp complication of the internal situation in Greek cities, the activation of all political and human life in general.
Pre-Socratics. Organized and orderly integrity of things
“Pre-Socratics” is a term in the historical and philosophical science of the New Age, denoting a heterogeneous group of philosophers of archaic Greece of the 6th-5th centuries BC, as well as the immediate successors of these philosophers, who belonged to the 4th century BC and were not affected by the action of the new, classical (“Socratic”) philosophical tradition.
The formation of philosophy in Ancient Greece. The emergence of philosophical and scientific knowledge
The emergence of philosophical and scientific knowledge in Ancient Greece was preceded by “mythological” knowledge — rooted in the life of the clan community and expressed in numerous forms of ritual practice and in the sacred legends of the Greek people — myths. Myth (Greek μύθος — “legend”, “story”) is a multi-layered and polyfunctional formation. Its main purpose is to present the experience of the interconnection of things as immediately given and “obvious”. From this follow its two fundamental characteristics: 1) the inseparability in the mythological representation of the material and the social, man and thing, thing and word, object and sign, the inseparability of the “subjective” and the “objective” in general — for which reason in ancient societies the explanation of the essence of a thing and the world was traditionally reduced to a “story” (legend) about creation or “natural” origin; 2) the content of the myth always seemed to ancient man to be “authentic” and “undoubted” (due to the “reliability” of understanding the world in the experience of many generations) and for this reason was usually the subject of stable faith and never of abstract criticism.