Philosophy of ancient greece

1. PHILOSOPHY OF ANCIENT GREECE

Pre-Socratics Philosophy
Socratic Philosophy
Plato
Aristotle
Roman-Hellenistic Philosophy
by Spitsa N.V.

2.

3. Influence of social processes on origin of Philosophy

• Economy:
▫ Trade and commerce
Exchange of information
Independence of wealthy colonies
▫ Slave-owning system
Division of physical end intellectual labor
• Policy:
▫ Oligarchic democracy

4. General characteristics of Philosophy of Ancient Greece

• Rational system of philosophical knowledge
• Attempt to create naturalistic picture of
Universe
• A lot of intuitive assumptions proposed by
Greeks were proved by science lately in
history

5. Pre-Socratics

• Problem of primary substance and changes
• “Investigators of Nature” (accord. to Aristotle)
• “Archae” - primary substance – fundamental
principle of Universe –
Greek: “αρχή”, Latin: “principium”

6.

Heraclitus
Fire – the principle of substance
Heat produces changes
Everything is flux, world is in constant changes
Perpetual flux structures by LOGOS – logic of
reason
• “You can`t step twice in to the same
river”

7. Pythagorean School (VI century B.C.)

• Pythagoras
• World is a perfect harmony of numbers
• Soul is a prisoner of body and can be
reincarnated
• The highest purpose of soul – to purify itself by
cultivating intellectual virtues, refraining
from sensual pleasures and practicing religious
rituals

8. ATOMISTS (Leucippus & Democritus) (V century B.C.)

ATOMISTS
(Leucippus &
Democritus)
(V century B.C.)
• Atoms – small primary bodies, uncuttuble
(indivisible), imperishable , distinguished by
size, shape & weight.
• Atoms = existence
• Emptiness =non-existence

9. SOCRATES (469-399 B.C.)

• Left no writings (his students wrote about him)
• Ethical philosophy (justice, love, virtue,
self-cognition)
• Knowledge – virtue, ignorance – vice
• Philosopher`s duty is to provoke people into
thinking for themselves “Percept yourself”
• Dialectic method - the highest method of the
speculative thought for analytical examination
for clear definition of basic concepts

10. PLATO (428-348 B.C.)

• Teaching about Ideas (or Doctrine
of Forms)
• True knowledge can be obtained by
soul activity – “recalling of soul” by
dialectical principle
• “Republic” – Myth of the Cave –
humanity imprisoned in cave and
mistaking shadows on the wall for
reality. Philosopher penetrates the
world outside the “cave of ignorance”
and achieves a vision of true reality

11.

Good
Idea of
ideas
World of
Ideas
World of
shadows (reality
of sensual
perception)

12. ARISTOTLE (384-322 B.C.)

• Plato`s disciple
• Tutor of Alexander Macedonsky the
Great
• - denies separate existence of the
concept apart from particular
objects of sense: knowledge must be
grounded on sense experience

13. Formal logic (theory of causality)

• Acting cause (efficient)the source of motion
• Material cause – matter
out of which thing made
• Formal cause – spicies,
kind or type
• Final cause – the goal

14. HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN PHILOSOPHY

Epicureanism
Stoicism
Skepticism

15. Stoicism (III century B.C.)

• “Stoa” – a kind of open building near Athenian
marketplace where Zeno established school
• Seneca – statesman & orator
• Epictetus - slave
• Marcus Aurelius – Roman emperor
• “Follow where Reason leads” (don’t submit
passion of love, hate, fear, pleasure)
• Virtues:
▫ wisdom, courage, justice, temperance

16. Epicureanism (IV century B.C.)

• Epicurus
• - followed materialistic teaching of Democritus
(knowledge about nature may set man free from
fear of gods & death)
• Hedonism – the philosophy of pleasure.
▫ Highest good is to be happy and free from pain
▫ Aim of life – to achieve maximum pleasure,
pleasure of soul – freeing man from trouble
and fair and moderating his passions and
appetites

17. Cynic school (Diogenes) (IV century B.C.)

• The Greek word kunikos, from which cynic
comes, was originally an adjective meaning
"doglike" from “kun” - "dog.“
• Diogenes lived the life of a homeless man,
wearing tattered robes, begging for food,
sleeping on the street, and occasionally in a
pithos(a large tub/ barrel).

18.

• The goal of Cynicism was to attain arete (Greek)
or virtus (Roman), a quality we imperfectly
translate "virtue“ - strength to overcome one's
thoughts, feelings, and the circumstances of
one's life
• Cynics disregarded social conventions and
appearance, making them pariahs: What would
have shamed their contemporaries did not
shame the Cynics.

19. Thank you!

by Natalya
Spitsa