Meet the Philosophers of Ancient Greece

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Ancient Greek Philosophy but didn't Know Who to Ask

Patricia F. O'Grady

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351918404
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ancient History

Ancient Greece was the cradle of philosophy in the Western tradition. Meet the Philosophers of Ancient Greece brings the thoughts and lives of the pioneers of Western philosophy down from their sometimes remote heights and introduces them to a modern audience. Comprising seventy essays, written by internationally distinguished scholars in a lively and accessible style, this book presents the values, ideas, wisdom and arguments of the most significant thinkers from the world of ancient Greece. Commencing with Thales of Miletus and continuing to the end of the Ancient Period of philosophy by way of Heraclitus, Parmenides, Protagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Archimedes, Epictetus this book explores the major contributions of each philosopher as well as looking at archaeological and historical sites where they lived, worked and thought. This book is an outstanding introduction to the world of the philosophers of Ancient Greece.

PART I

INTRODUCTORY ESSAYS

Chapter 1

Introduction

Alan Chalmers

What is the nature of being? Is change possible? These seem extraordinary questions, the first because the degree of abstraction involved makes it difficult to get a grip on what is being asked, the second because the answer seems so obviously to be ‘yes’. Extraordinary as these questions may seem to be, it was precisely the formulation and attempts to answer these and others like them that were the preoccupation of those who first introduced philosophy into the world, in Ionia in Greece in the sixth century before the Christian era. Thales answered the first question by asserting that everything is made of water, and answered the second by understanding change as the transition from one form of water to another. Anaximander proposed ‘the unlimited’ as the foundation of all being, a substance with no analogues in the world of our experience. He understood change as the constant conflict of opposites, the hot and the cold, the wet and the dry, which separate out from the unlimited. Heraclitus chose fire as the foundation of being to capture the idea that everything is forever in flux, as illustrated in his famous declaration that one cannot step into the same river twice.

If these views do not seem strange enough, consider how Italian philosophers responded to such attempts to capture the fundamental nature of being in the late sixth and early fifth centuries. Pythagoras insisted that it is number that lies at the basis of all things, whilst Parmenides had arguments to the effect that change is impossible, concluding that the universe is a homogeneous unchanging sphere. The apparent strangeness and degree of abstraction of these deliberations should not lead us to dismiss them as unreasonable because it is precisely reason that led these first philosophers to pose the questions that they did and propose the kinds of answers that they came up with. Imagine a particular green leaf turning brown in autumn. The appearance of the leaf changes, but it is still the same leaf, is it not? But does that not mean that the nature of the leaf, what it is that makes that one leaf what it is, is something other than its appearances? By pushing this kind of reasoning to its limits we soon find ourselves in the kind of deliberation that preoccupied the first philosophers. My example of the leaf also raises a fundamental issue about the respective roles of reason and the evidence of the senses in answering questions about the nature of the world. That is a fundamental issue that the Greek philosophers grappled with and to which they offered various answers, and it remains a central issue in philosophy today.

In the previous paragraph I talk of reason, that is, reasoned, logical thought, a notion that we take for granted. But it was Thales and the early Greek and Italian philosophers who first introduced such a notion and made it a key tool in philosophy. Previously, the nature of the world was understood in anthropomorphic terms involving myths about the actions of gods of various kinds, as evidenced in the writings of Homer, and especially Hesiod. The early philosophers struggled to give a rational account of the world that did not resort to myths involving personal gods possessing super-human powers. The sophistication of the logical machinery that the philosophers developed is very evident in their mathematics. Thales proved that a diagonal bisects a circle and developed a geometry that enabled him to estimate the height of a pyramid from the length of its shadow, whilst Pythagoras not only proved the theorem that bears his name but used it to prove that if the side of a square can be represented as made up of a whole number of units, however small, then its diagonal cannot. That is, he discovered what we now call irrational numbers. Anyone that has struggled to find a definitive answer to Zeno’s paradoxes (how can you overtake the tortoise if as soon as you get to where it was it has moved further ahead) should begin to get the feel for the kind of enterprise that the first philosophy involved.

Part 3 of this collection gives an account of the pioneers of philosophy over a couple of centuries up to and including Socrates. Part 2 gives a taste of the Greek writings that preceded their work by way of contrast.

A major problem with a reconstruction of the work of many of the philosophers of Ancient Greece is the lack of access to their writings, most of which have not come down to us. Deducing what their philosophy involved from various fragments attributed to them can be little more than guesswork. It is typically the case that to interpret a quotation from the writings of a philosopher we need to put that quotation in the context that gives meaning to it. Descartes (born in France in 1596 AD, a mathematician, natural scientist and philosopher of the modern era, who brought about the rebirth of ancient philosophy and is often considered to be the father of modern philosophy) once ridiculed Aristotle for defining motion as ‘the functioning of potential as potential’, claiming the phrase to be unintelligible. On the face of it, Aristotle’s definition gives some substance to the famous caricature of philosophers as those who discuss what everyone understands using language that no-one understands. But once we understand the context in which that definition occurs, it is not unintelligible at all. Aristotle was tackling the problem that some of the earlier philosophers had had with change by proposing that there are two kinds of being, actual being and potential being. So, for example, an important part of what makes an olive seed what it is, in addition to its state as a seed, its actual being, is its capacity to grow into an olive tree, its potential being. In the process of growing, the seed has not yet fulfilled its capacity to become an olive tree but is in the process of doing so. So the growing is the functioning of potential, the capacity to become an oak tree, as potential, because it has not yet fulfilled that potential.

Because of the need to understand the context, in order to make sense of the utterances of philosophers, our understanding of the early philosophers will always be speculative to a considerable degree because the texts that would give us that context have been lost. This, fortunately, is not the case with the major philosophers of the classical period, Plato and Aristotle. Abundant textual material on their systems of philosophy has come down to us either directly or indirectly, and our task is to try to make consistent and coherent sense of it. Accounts of the Platonic and Aristotelian frameworks, as well as of some of the contemporaries of Plato and Aristotle are given in Part 4.

Part 5 contains accounts of philosophers writing in the Hellenistic period, that is the period that stretches for about three hundred years from the date of the death of Alexander the Great, himself a pupil of Aristotle, in 323 BC, to the foundation of the Roman Empire. Three new philosophical systems emerged in that time, namely, Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Skepticism. All of these systems tended to focus on individual human beings as such and to ask how they might best fulfill themselves, this perhaps being a response to the uncertainty of the times that was experiencing the disintegration of the Alexandrian empire. The three systems gave quite different answers to the question. The Epicureans focused on providing an account of the nature of the Universe that focused on our use of reason to eliminate fears based on falsehoods, such as fear of an afterlife or attributing thunderstorms to the wrath of a God. The Stoics stressed the need to understand nature in order that we reconcile ourselves to things over which we have no control, whilst the Skeptics sought solace in the idea that we do not have the means to definitively understand anything, recommending that we become reconciled to this and stop worrying and arguing. The philosophers of the Hellenistic era still tended to congregate in Athens. However, in other centers during this period, such as Alexandria, there were developments in more specific areas of knowledge such as science, geography and astronomy as opposed to the construction of philosophical systems. Archimedes’ work on the balance and flotation, and the astronomy of Aristarchus are examples.

The philosophy of the Roman period, the concern of Part 6, was eclectic, no one system gaining dominance. Stoicism had some notable Roman followers, such as Marcus Aurelius, and Platonism also had an impact in the period, especially in religious contexts. But, in general, intellectual activity was diverse. There were, nevertheless, extensive commentaries on Greek philosophy by such as Cicero and Simplicius whilst Sextus Empiricus was an able expositor of Skepticism.

With the collapse of the Roman Empire it was in the Byzantine world that the development of Greek philosophy was continued. It was not until the eleventh or twelfth centuries of the modern era that interest was resumed in the western world.

Part 7 contains descriptions of Greek Archeological sites. It helps to remind us that the Greek philosophers were real people living in specific material and social conditions. Thales made a fortune by cornering the market in olive oil, Aristotle lived in the city-state of Athens and took slavery for granted, although he himself did not qualify as a citizen of Athens because he was not born there. Epicurus lived in an Athenian house with a large garden frequented by a group of individuals, including women and even slaves, who practised as well as discussed the Epicurean philosophy.

The achievements of the Greek philosophers stand in various relations to knowledge of today. Their achievements in logic and mathematics can be recognized as such and find a place in contemporary knowledge. Pythagoras’s theorem still forms a part of Euclidean geometry and the Pythagorian proof of it remains a proof, whilst it appears that Archimedes anticipated the infinitesimal calculus. The syllogism as formulated by Aristotle remains a valid form of logical deduction, whilst logicians still struggle to give the definitive answer to Zeno’s paradoxes. Some of Greek science that was linked fairly directly with observation, such as Archimedes’ account of the lever and of floating bodies, lives on in contemporary physics whilst the detail recorded in Aristotle’s biology, such as his perceptive observations on the behavior of bees, served as a valuable basis for future work. Ancient Greek philosophy stands up least from a modern point of view in those areas where they clearly lacked the resources to answer the questions they posed but which are now available through the advances of science. Debates about whether matter is atomic or continuous come into this category. The underlying mechanisms conjured up by the early philosophers as attempts to explain such things as the operation of the senses or the origins of the earth come across as implausible and wild guesses to a modern eye. By contrast, the attempts by the Greeks to grapple with ethics and basic issues about how our lives should be organized still speak to us, perhaps because this is an area that has not been taken over by science.

Chapter 2

What is Philosophy?

Trevor Curnow

Let us accept that world of mist as the material out of which to make a life that is more Complete. (José Ortega y Gasset, What is Philosophy?)

Some ancient schools of philosophy divided their subject into three areas, which they called physics, logic and ethics. Each addressed a fundamental question. What is the world like? How is knowledge possible? How should we live? While this particular way of structuring the subject was never universal, these three questions seem to me to go to the heart of what philosophy is. They are questions that never go away.

Of course, over the centuries philosophers have come up with different answers to them, and had different views concerning their relative importance. Some have constructed blueprints for the cosmos. Some have doubted whether knowledge is possible. Some have denied that it is the business of philosophy to deal with practical matters. Times have their fashions and individuals have their idiosyncrasies.

Some would argue that it is for science to tell us what the world is like, or for religion to tell us how to live. But how do we judge whether science or religion has got things right? Philosophy is critical as well as creative, and for this reason there are such subjects as the philosophy of science and the philosophy of religion. And we should not be too distracted by labels. Much of theoretical physics and theology, for example, is simply philosophy by another name. Both deal with the fundamental questions.

Unfortunately, those who deal with fundamental questions are likely to have fundamental disagreements, and this is certainly true of philosophy. Students are often surprised to find that different ‘introductions’ to philosophy can appear to be introductions to quite different subjects! In philosophy, nothing is beyond dispute, not even the nature of the subject itself.

Naturally, this can be very confusing. However, as I have been trying to reassure students for years, confusion is an important part of the philosophical experience. In order to see the point of tackling a problem, it is necessary to see that there really is a problem. In this context, confusion is positive rather than negative. Confusion motivates us to try and discover what the problem is, and then to try and find a solution to it.

However, finding a solution is easier said than done. For a subject that has been systematically practised for well over two thousand years, philosophy is surprisingly short on solutions to the problems it identifies. While it would be wrong to say there has been no progress, it is hard to say exactly what that progress consists in. Certainly advances have been made in areas such as logic, but it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the history of philosophy seems to be characterized more by failure than by success. Yet failure can be valuable and instructive. Closing off a blind alley may not tell us which way to go, but it can at least reduce our chances of going the wrong way.

Philosophy is often associated with the use of argument. While argument is scarcely unique to philosophy, it is a key element of it. We want to know not only that a particular direction is a blind alley, but also why. If the reasons are not convincing, then we may rightly doubt whether it is a blind alley at all.

But argument has to end somewhere, or, to look at it another way, begin somewhere. If I agree that something is true, then I may agree that a whole range of other things are also true. The problem is with that original something. If I can prove it, then it rests on something else. If I cannot prove it, and cannot disprove it, then I have to choose whether to assume it or not. One of the strengths of philosophy is that by persistent questioning it leads us to fundamental assumptions, and duly reveals them to be assumptions. And assumptions are always precarious. This is why many people find philosophy uncomfortable. The search for certainty tends to lead to its opposite.

If that is the case, what is the gain? The gain is a deepening of understanding and an increase in awareness, no small achievements. (And some do claim to find certainty, although their claims are rarely left undisputed.) To ask the fundamental questions and to come up with the best answers to them that we can, that, to my mind, is philosophy.

Chapter 3

What Greek Philosophy Means to Us Today

Ian Hunt

Reflection on childhood can be both charming and troubling: while we might enjoy looking back on its promise and hope, we are also capable of sorrow for its lost freshness. These same feelings are evoked by the childhood of our intellectual civilization, born with such great wealth of insight and promise in Ancient Greek Science and Philosophy. But reflection on beginnings is more than a form of nostalgia: we can learn from it—even gain some renewal from it.

Ancient Greek Philosophy began with natural philosophy. From Thales to Parmenides and Zeno, early Greek Philosophers debated the ultimate nature of the world, striving for general principles by which to account for nature similar to those developed by mathematicians to explain geometrical relationships. The first philosopher, Thales, claimed that transformations from solid to liquid states held the key to natural change, and speculated that liquids were the ultimate substance of all things. Although we now see this as a first step of child-like simplicity toward natural science, Thales’ ingenious use of general principles to solve practical problems can prompt a gasp of awe even today. Thus he is justly still celebrated for proposing that he could measure the height of the great pyramid at Giza by measuring the length of its shadow at the time of day when the length of his own shadow equalled his height.

Early Greek Philosophy developed into the great achievements of the Classical period, dominated by two schools of thought: the school of Plato, who thought that things could be explained by their relationship to ideas; and the school of Aristotle, who thought that nature could be explained by the four principles that we can use to account for the nature of artifacts, although natural things are self-made rather than made by another (see essay, Aristotle). Plato and Aristotle also introduced important ideas concerning the nature of the good life. In later Greek Philosophy, Stoics and Epicureans debated the use of Philosophy as a guide to life.

From these periods, two achievements stand out as highly significant. The Philosophers of Anc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• List of Maps and Photographs
• List of Figures
• Part I: Introductory Essays
• Part II: The Precursors of Philosophy
• Part III: The Pre-Socratics and Socrates
• Part IV: The Classical Period
• Part V: The Hellenistic Philosophers
• Part VI: The Roman Period
• Part VII: Archaeological Sites
• Glossary
• Time Line of ancient authors