Greek Philosophy

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Greek Philosophy
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The Pre-Socratics

• They were the first to investigate nature in a
  systematic way
• What is it and where did it come from?
• Of what is it made?
• Does it have a purpose and, if so, what?
• What is change?
• Use your mind and your senses

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The Ionians

• Greek in speech and culture
• Heavily engaged in commerce and colonization
• They interacted with all of the great
  civilizations
• Egyptian, Babylonian, Indian?
• They were at the crossroads of ideas
  new and old

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Why then, why there?

• Wealth allows time for leisure
• They were worldly and practical
• The Greek alphabet came into use around 800 BCE
• Widespread prose writing by 600 BCE
• The Greeks were argumentative
• Their Religion was not one of Authority

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Thales of Miletus

• One of the Seven Wise Men of ancient Greece
• An excellent mathematician
• Studied astronomy
• Predicted a solar eclipse
• Believed that water was the
• first principle

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The Four Elements

• Earth, Water, Air, and Fire
• Everything was made up of a combination of the
  elements in different proportions
• They exhibited different properties
• Hot cold, wet dry
• They had no tools to work with other than their
  minds
• Solid, liquid, gas, and catalyst

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Pythagoras (c. 570 500 BCE)

• Instrumental in the development of Geometry
• Pythagorean Theorem
• Harmony ratios
• Increase knowledge through the use of deductive
  reasoning
• Reality was number

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Democritus Leucippus

• Little of their work survives
• The Christian church opposed it
• Too materialistic
• Developed the
• Atomic Theory
• of matter atom uncuttable

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Socrates (469 399 BCE)

• His contributions to Western thought
• An insatiable search for the truth by reason
• Goodness and knowledge are one and the same
• Life must be lived in a virtuous manner to be
  happy
• The goal was to become skilled in the art of
  living

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The Gadfly of Athens

• A man of singular character and intelligence
• Felt a passion for intellectual honesty and
  moral integrity
• He questioned tirelessly in an effort to
  distinguish between opinion and truth
• The unexamined life is not worth living

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The Socratic Method

• The proper way to learn anything is through
  conversation (Dialogue)
• Socrates did not trust the written word it was
  to easy for it to be misunderstood
• The give and take of knowledge was called the
  dialectic
• The key to any useful and fruitful dialogue was
  careful listening

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The Death of Socrates
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Plato (c. 427 347 BCE)

• Member of an aristocratic family
• Student of Socrates
• Founder of the Academy
• Opposed to democracy
• Wrote in dialogue form
• Preoccupied with the role of reason

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The Academy
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The Dialogues

• Theaetetus What is knowledge?
• Protagoras Can virtue be taught?
• Laches What is courage?
• Symposium What is love?
• Crito Acceptance of the law
• Euthyphro What is piety
• Timaeus Origins of the universe
• Menos Knowledge as recollection

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Theory of the Forms

• What is the Good, the True, the Beautiful?
• This knowledge is in the soul
• It has always been there from the beginning
• What goes through change is not real
• Only what is permanent is truly real
• Every part of nature reflects the Forms
• The sum of all of the Forms is the Good
• The Good God

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The Republic
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What is Justice?

• Tell the truth and repay debts
• Help friends hurt enemies
• It is useful for business
• Might makes right
• Justice is foolishness
• The Myth of Gyges
• Justice must be good for its own sake

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The Perfect State

• Men of Gold Guardians (Intellect)
• Philosopher Kings
• Men of Silver Auxilliaries (Honor)
• Men of Bronze Populace (Appetites)

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What does it require?

• Meritocracy
• Eugenics
• Specialization
• Education
• The Three great waves
• Women Guardians
• No property for the Guardians
• Wives and children in common

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Aristotle (384 322 BCE)

• Born in Thrace
• Son of a physician
• Sent to Athens to study under Plato
• Moved to Macedonia to tutor Alexander
• Returned to Athens and founded the Lyceum

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The Philosopher

• Spent 20 years with Plato and, while heavily
  influenced by him, disagreed with much that he
  taught
• His school emphasized the natural sciences,
  biology, zoology, botany, and physiology
• It is estimated he wrote 1 ½ million words of
  which only ¼ survive
• His main contributions came in logic and biology

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The Master of those who know

• Aristotle is known to have written about
• Ethics, political science, rhetoric, poetry,
  constitutional history, theology, zoology,
  meteorology, astronomy, physics, chemistry,
  scientific method, anatomy, mathematics,
  language, formal logic, sociology, psychology,
  comparative politics, literary criticism
  (economics mechanics?)

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All men, by nature, desire to know

• The goal of life is Eudaimonia
• What is Eudaimonia?
• The possession of all of the virtues
• What are the virtues?
• All of the varieties of excellence
• What are the vices?
• The extremes of feeling or action

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Eudaimonia

• Man must combine the intellectual virtues with
  the moral ones
• Together they produce right action
• They are acquired and reinforced through
  practice. They become habits
• Apply the concept of the golden mean
• Not always the middle but the most appropriate
  under the circumstances

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Aristotelianism

• During the Middle Ages Aristotles thought will
  come to dominate in Europe
• Unfortunately much of it will be misinterpreted
• Aristotles intellectual dynamism will become
  static
• The church will use it for their own purposes