Greek philosophy - Pre-Socratic philosophers, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, Schools of thought in the Hellenistic period

Western philosophy began with the Greeks, though ‘philosophy’ originally embraced much of natural science too. Four main periods span over 1000 years. The Presocratics (c.600–400 BC) speculated (often very imaginatively) about the natural world - its origins, dynamics, and ultimate constituents. The 5th-c and 4th-c are dominated by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, who continue to be hugely influential today and made fundamental contributions to all the main branches of philosophy. Hellenistic philosophy (c.323–30 BC) developed more practically-oriented philosophies of life, such as Stoicism and Epicureanism, and survived in the Roman world well into the Christian era. Neoplatonism was a revival of Platonism in the 1st-c BC, often synthesized with other traditions, and most fully developed by Plotinus; it remained influential philosophically for over 1000 years, and links ancient to mediaeval philosophy.

Classical (or "early") Greek philosophy focused on the role of reason and inquiry. Clear unbroken lines of influence lead from early Greek philosophers to the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the secular sciences of the modern day.

Pre-Socratic philosophers

The history of philosophy in the West begins with the Greeks, and particularly with a group of philosophers commonly called the pre-Socratics. Certainly great thinkers and writers existed in each of these cultures, and we have evidence that some of the earliest Greek philosophers may have had contact with at least some of the products of Egyptian and Babylonian thought. For the first time in history, we discover in their writings something more than dogmatic assertions about the ordering of the world -- we find reasoned arguments for various beliefs about the world.

It is now believed that decision making through oral debate in the polis would have developed rational thought to carefully construct arguments for and against an action, and these debates would have required calling on abstract principles such as justice, without invoking the notion of a god.

As it turns out, nearly all of the various cosmologies proposed by the early Greek philosophers are profoundly and demonstrably false, and this was often due to their speculations running far ahead of what their senses could cope with, but this does not diminish their importance. For even if later philosophers summarily rejected the answers they provided, they could not escape their questions:

What is life?

And the method the Greek philosophers followed in forming and transmitting their answers became just as important as the questions they asked. The pre-Socratic philosophers rejected traditional mythological explanations for the phenomena they saw around them in favor of more rational explanations. And though philosophers have argued at length about the relative weights that reason and observation should have, for two and a half millennia they have basically united in the use of the very method first used by the pre-Socratics.

Difficulties often arise in pinning down the ideas of the Pre-Socratic philosophers, and in determining the actual line of argument they used in supporting their particular views.

Thales

Anaximander

Pythagoras

Heraclitus of Ephesus

Heraclitus is an excellent example of the Pre-Socratic philosopher.

Heraclitus had a unique view of the world. The changes in the culture, the figures of speech, the chasm between the background of the contemporary reader and that of a Greek of twenty-five hundred years ago as relates to our understanding of the world, and so forth, makes literal translation pointless and freer translation subject to question. Heraclitus also illustrates the point that these early philosophers do have important things to tell us about the world.

Xenophanes

Parmenides and the other Eleatic philosophers

Leucippus, Democritus and the other Atomists

Protagoras and the Sophists

Empedocles

Socrates

Socrates, an Athenian philosopher, believed that a person should always try to do well. In addition, he also taught many famous Greek philosophers.

Plato and Aristotle

Aristotle, known as Aristoteles in most languages other than English (Aristotele in Italian), (384 BC - March 7, 322 BC) has, along with Plato, the reputation of one of the two most influential philosophers in Western thought.

Their works, although connected in many fundamental ways, differ considerably in both style and substance. Plato wrote several dozen philosophical dialogues—arguments in the form of conversations, usually with Socrates as a participant—and a few letters. Though the early dialogues deal mainly with methods of acquiring knowledge, and most of the last ones with justice and practical ethics, his most famous works expressed a synoptic view of ethics, metaphysics, reason, knowledge, and human life. Predominant ideas include the notion that knowledge gained through the senses always remains confused and impure, and that the contemplative soul that turns away from the world can acquire "true" knowledge.

Aristotle was one of Plato's students, but placed much more value on knowledge gained from the senses, and would correspondingly better earn the modern label of empiricist.

Aristotle was a great thinker and philosopher, and was called 'the master' by Avicenna in the following centuries. Pirsig, the author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, makes the observation that Aristotle both helped create the analytic approach which forms the backbone of the scientific method and much of philosophy, but that against this, he also took great pride in categorizing nature into lists and taxonomic schemes, which in some cases led to subjects such as rhetoric evolving over time from rich art forms, into recipe-like rules.

Schools of thought in the Hellenistic period

In the Hellenistic period, many different schools of thought developed in the Greek world and often attracted Romans who were responsible for the development of these Greek philosophies. 170 BCE), Seneca (Roman), Epictetus (Roman), Marcus Aurelius (Roman) Epicureanism: Epicurus and Lucretius (Roman) Eclecticism: Cicero (Roman)

The spread of Christianity through the Roman world ushered in the end of the Hellenistic philosophy and the beginnings of Medieval Philosophy.