Ancient Philosophy

History of Western philosophy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Western philosophy has a long history. Conventionally divided into three large 
eras - the Ancient, Medieval and Modern. The Ancient era runs through the fall 
of Rome and includes the Greek philosophers such as Plato. The Medieval period 
runs until roughly the late 1400s and the Renaissance. The "Modern" is a word 
with more varied use, which includes everything from Post-Medieval through the 
specific period of the early 20th century. 

Brief timeline

Ancient philosophy

Western Philosophy is generally said to begin in the Greek cities of western 
Asia Minor (Ionia) with Thales of Miletus, who was active around 585 B.C. and 
left us the opaque dictum, "All is water." His most noted students were 
Anaximenes of Miletus and Anaximander ("All is air").

Other thinkers and schools appeared throughout Greece over the next couple of 
centuries. Among the most important were:

    * Heraclitus, who stressed the transitory and chaotic nature of all things 
    ("All is fire"; "We cannot step into the same river twice"). 

    * Anaxagoras, who asserted that reality was so ordered that it must be in 
    all respects governed by Mind. 

    * The Pluralists and Atomists (Empedocles, Democritus) who tried to 
    understand the world as composite of innumerable interacting parts; and 
    the Eleatics Parmenides and Zeno who both insisted that All is One and 
    change is impossible. Parmenides and his school emphasized the enduring, 
    peduring, and absolute character of the world and of truth. ("To be is, 
    to not be is not.") 

    * The Sophists, traveling professional teachers of varied philosophical 
    affinity, became known (perhaps unjustly) for claiming that truth was 
    no more than opinion and for teaching people to argue fallaciously to 
    prove whatever conclusions they wished. 

This whole movement gradually became more concentrated in Athens, which had 
become the dominant city-state in Greece.

There is considerable discussion about why Athenian culture encouraged 
philosophy, but one popular theory says that it occurred because Athens had 
a direct democracy. It's known from Plato's writings that many sophists 
maintained schools of debate, were respected members of society, and were 
well paid by their students. It's also well known that orators had tremendous 
influence on Athenian history, possibly even causing its failure (See 
Battle of Miletus). One other theory for the popularity of philosophical 
debate in Athens was due to the use of slavery there - the workforce, 
mainly slaves, performed the labour that otherwise would have been taken up 
by the male population of the city. Freed from working in the fields or in 
productive activity, they were then free to engage in the assemblies of 
Athens, and spend long hours discussing popular philosophical questions. 
The theory fills in the blanks by saying that the Sophists' students wanted 
to acquire the skills of an orator in order to influence the Athenian 
Assembly, and thereby grow wealthy and respected. Since winning debates led 
to wealth, the subjects and methods of debate became highly developed.

The key figure in transforming Greek philosophy into a unified and 
continuous project - the one still being pursued today - is Socrates, who 
studied under several Sophists. He then spent much of his life, we are 
told, engaging everyone in Athens in discussion trying to determine whether 
anyone had a very good idea what they were talking about, especially when 
they talked about important matters like justice, beauty and truth. He 
wrote nothing, but inspired many disciples. In his old age he became the 
focus of the hostility of many in the city who saw philosophy and sophistry, 
interchangeably, as destroying the piety and moral fiber of the city; he 
was executed in 399 B.C. 

His most important student was Plato, who wrote a number of philosophical 
dialogues using his master's methods of inquiry to examine problems. The 
early dialogues demonstrate something like Socrates' own fairly inconclusive 
style of inquiry. The "middle" ones develop a substantive metaphysical and 
ethical system to resolve these problems. Central ideas are the Theory of 
Forms, that the mind is imbued with an innate capacity to understand and 
apply concepts to the world, and that these concepts are in a significant 
way more real, or more basically real, than the things of the world around 
us; the immortality of the soul, and the idea that it too is more important 
than the body; the idea that evil is a kind of ignorance, that only 
knowledge can lead to virtue, that art should be subordinate to moral 
purposes, and that society should be ruled by a class of philosopher 
kings. In the later dialogues Socrates figures less prominently, and the 
Theory of Forms is cast in doubt; more directly ethical questions become 
the focus. Interestingly, in his most famous work, The Republic Plato 
attacks the system of democracy, blaming it for the defeat of Athens in 
the Peloponnesian War - he attributes the indecision of the masses (who 
voted on everything, including military strategy) as the reason for military 
defeat. He proposed instead a three tiered structure of society, with 
workers, guardians and philosophers, in ascending order of importance 
(convenient for him and his disciples, clearly), citing the philosophers 
greater knowledge of the forms as the reason for them being more 
appropiate in running society.

Plato founded the Academy of Athens, and his most outstanding student 
there was Aristotle. Possibly Aristotle's most important and long-lasting 
work was his formalization of logic. It appears that Aristotle was the 
first philosopher to categorize every valid syllogism. A syllogism is a 
form of argument that is guaranteed to be accepted, because it is known 
(by all educated persons) to be valid. A crucial assumption in 
Aristotelian logic is that it has to be about real objects. Two of 
Aristotle's syllogisms are invalid to modern eyes. For example, "All 
A are B. All A are C. Therefore, some B are C." This syllogism fails 
if set A is empty. 











Bibliography

Introductions and anthologies

    * Classics of Western Philosophy by Steven M. Cahn Available from Amazon.com
    * Philosophic Classics: From Plato to Derrida (4th Edition) by Forrest E. Baird Available from Amazon.com
    * The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers by Will Durant Available from Amazon.com
    * From Socrates to Sartre: The Philosophic Quest by T. Z. Lavine Available from Amazon.com
    * Basic Teachings of the Great Philosophers by S. E. Frost Available from Amazon.com
    * The History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell Available from Amazon.com 
    * The Great Philosophers (4 vols.) by Karl Jaspers Available from Amazon.com
    * A History of Philosophy in the Twentieth Century by Christian Delacampagne Available from Amazon.com


Reference

    * A History of Western Philosophy (5 vols.) by W. T. Jones Available from Amazon.com
    * History of Philosophy (9 vols.) by Frederick Copleston Available from Amazon.com
    * History of Philosophy Quarterly (magazine) Available from Amazon.com