THE GREEK PHILOSOP

HY

GREEK PHILOSOPHY - Great philosophers come at the end of the “Golden Age” and the beginning of the fourth century B.C.

-The fourth century B.C. was the “Age of Doing”: building’ decorating, provider plays to entertain the doers.

-The fifth century B.C. was the “Age of Contemplation”; there was a time to then in which to think.

GREEK PHILOSOPHERS

-Socrates-

-Plato-

-Aristotle-

SOCRATES1. Socrates (c. 470-399 B.C.) was one of

the greatest teacher of all time, and wrote nothing. He was put to death in 399 B.C. accused of “Corrupting Youth”

Phaedo – Plato’s account of his last conversation with his friends and of his death in the Dialogue.

SOCRATES PHAEDO

PLATO2. Plato (c. 428-347 B.C.) – was an aristocrat, a soldier, an athlete and a musician. He became a philosopher and a passionate lover of wisdom when he met Socrates

- Dialogues- purport to be the actual words of Socrates, but the organization of each one sees to indicate that there are Plato’s application and extension of the master’s teaching

PLATODIALOGUE AND THE REPUBLIC

- The Republic- Plato’s most important legacy and results of Plato’s research. It only tells how the “Philosopher kings” should be chosen and educated to rule, but also gives Plato’s ideas on theology, ethics, psychology, and politics, and art.

- Einstein’s Theory of Relativity is Platonic because it stresses faith based on a mathematical solution rather than the evidence of the senses.

ARISTOTLE3. Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) was born in Macedonia, the son of the King’s physician.

- He went to Athens to study at Plato’s Academy.

- He was called home to become the tutor of young Alexander .

- In 2years, Aristotle went back to Athens where he started a school(School of Athens) after Alexander was on the throne.

Aristotle was interested with things and so:- He became the world’s first scientist.

- He established the first zoological garden.

- All he had was a ruler and a compass.

- The application of mathematics and physics is unknown to him; his astronomy is childish romance; his biology absurd.

- Organon – is a tool that he created a new science and logic which was explained. It is an elaborate set of formulae which govern right reasoning and tool for debating. It is also a key to his method resides in the syllogism, which consist of major premise, minor premise and conclusion.

ARISTOTLE

The Organon

THE GREEK PHILOSOPH

Y in the MEDIEVAL

PERIOD

1. BOETHIUS - a Roman philosopher who translated organon at the end of the 5th century B.C. and became the basis of Scholastic philosophy.

- There is a considerable evidence that these greek works were translated, copied and studied by the medieval monks.

2. ST. AUGUSTINE – in the 4th century B.C. , he combined Plato’s idealism with Aristotle’s organization. His city of God is Platonic.

3. ST. BENEDICT- in the 6th century A.D., he founded the Monte Cassino Library, which he included Plato and Aristotle.

4. JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA – interpreted Christian theology in Neoplatonic terms. In the 10th century, there was a Neoplatonic School at Chartes.

5. AVERROES – an important philosopher in Cordova, made Aristotle in his work. He demonstrated the superiority of reason and philosophy over knowledge founded on faith alone.

6. ABELARD - in the twelfth century, he made Aristotle’s logic the basis of his teaching at the University of Paris. But, condemned by a Church council and forced to stop teaching.

7. POPE GREGOR IX – in 1231, he became alarmed and appointed a commission to expurgate Aristotle, but 29 years later, Aristotle was taught in every Christian School.

8. THOMAS AQUINAS – the “Angelic Doctor”, has made reason a legitimate partner of faith in his “Summa Theologica”, which has endured to this day as the official Roman Catholic Philosophy.

Many people have been taught that Plato

and Aristotle were “lost” during the medieval period and had to wait until the Renaissance to be “reborn”

REALISM VS

NOMINALISM

Plato and Aristotle were on opposite sides in the debate over universals. A universal is any general concept of : goodness, justice, and beauty

Plato is a realist while Aristotle is a nominalist.

Realism is a philosophy of mind rooted in the "common sense“ philosophy of mind known as naïve realism, which has been developed as "direct" realism when distinguished from representative realism, the view that we cannot perceive the external world directly. 

Realism are terms that describe manifestations of philosophical realism, the belief that reality exists independently of observers.

Platonic realism is a philosophical term usually used to refer to the idea of realism regarding the existence of universal or abstract object after the Greek philosopher Plato (c. 427–347B.C.), a student of Socrates.

-Platonic realism- “Men come and go, but man goes on forever.”

- Plato maintained that these universals had objective existence, in fact were more lasting and substantial man individual objects or people.

Nominalism are words that can be applied to individual things having something in common—that flourished especially in late medieval times. Nominalism denied the real being of universals on the ground that the use of a general word (e.g., “humanity”) does not imply the existence of a general thing named by it. The nominalist position did not necessarily deny, however, that there must be some similarity between the particular things to which the general word is applied. 

- Aristotle as a scientist, stressed the individual man or object, and his followers called nominalists. They held that all that exists outside us is a world of specific objects, and that “universals” are merely names or terms.

- Friederich Schlegel- in 19th century, a German philosopher said that “Every man is born either Platonist or an Aristotelian ”

FRIEDERICH SCHLEGEL

THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD

• ART - Alexander the Great (356-323B.C.), son of King Philip, established a town. The most flourishing cultural centers were Alexandria in Egypt, Antioch in Syria, and Pergamum in Asia Minor.

ALEXANDER the GREAT

- Altar of Zeus in Pergamum – depicts a battle between gods and giants

- “The Dying Gaul” – also comes from Pergamum, a Roman copy of a 3rd century B.C. bronze. The old warrior with his hard, dry skin, mattered hair and gaping wounds.

- “Lacoon Group” – one of the finest example of Greek sculpture. It depicts their deaths, is an impressive groups one’s sympathy is aroused for the innocent victims, but great art seems to demand some restraint.

- “Winged Victory” placed so tragically in the Louvre, is very dramatic. And believed that the Golden age of the Greece was gone.

• PHILOSOPHY - The little city-states of Greece became insignificant in Alexander’s empire and people lost their bearings and resulting to the first “Age of Anxiety.”

- Other philosophies lived briefly, but did not satisfy.

- The Epicureans were opportunistic;

- The Stoics were cold;

- The Cynics were “beatniks” of their day; and

- The Skeptics were sure of nothing.

- The Neo-Platonism was born and furnished Christian revelation with a structure of ideas.” In the beginning of the word.”

• COSMOPOLITANISM - Hellenistic culture did not extend beyond the towns of Alexander’s conquers, but the Greek language took permanently root.

- As Hellenism lost its creative impulse, it gained a universal outlook. Alexander created a cosmopolitan spirit based on intellectual ideas and cultural standards

- Ptolemy I(c. 367-283 B.C.) and his successors in Egypt made Alexandria with its University and fine library the greatest intellectual center in the world.

THE ROMAN

CONQUEST

- While Alexander’s successors were squabbling over the division of his empire, Rome had been completing her conquest of the Italian Peninsula.

- After defeating the Hannibal and gaining Carthage, the Romans took another 30 years to subdue Macedon; then it was the turn of the Greeks to be conquered.

- In A.D. 146 Greece was made subject to the Roman governor of Macedon.

- For a hundred years well-to-do Roman parents had sent their sons to the University of Athens.

- By the middle of the 2nd century A.D., Greek ideas had permeated Roman society, and they were soon to permeated the Christian church as far as its systematic organization belief was concerned.

- Self-realization had been the gospel of Aristotle and self-sacrifice was the gospel of Christianity.

UNIVERSITY OF ATHENS