Ancient Greece: Notable Philosophers (and their Philosophies and Concepts, Most Famous Works, and Notable Biographical Information) and Notable Movements/Branches/Schools of Philosophy (& their Associative Philosophers and Characteristics) | Set #3: Worse Set (HISTORICAL Set)

Ionian School (All Facts)

• Group of Greek intellectuals in the namesake cities in Anatolia that radically changed the way men thought about the world around them and the universe beyond challenging traditional myths and legends

• Reject the notion of the gods meddling with the natural world

  • For them, thunder is not a loud noise made by an angry Zeus but can be explained in natural terms

  • For them, Iris may be goddess of the rainbow, but a rainbow is simply a multicolored cloud of moisture

• Develop the “Cosmos” meaning “the universe” idea, in which they posit that the universe, including our own world, are arranged in an orderly fashion and can be studied and explained by reasoning

• They do not just make assertions but support their opinions with reasoned argument

700’s BCE - 600’s BCE - Heraclitus of Ephesus (All Facts)

• Greek Philosopher

• Nicknamed “The Riddler”

• The Greeks were baffled by his theories

• Argued that the universe is governed by the conflict of opposites and that everything is achieved by discord

• Believed that the elements were caught up in an endless cycle of transformation which starts from fire, the primordial element or “Principal Substance”

700’s BCE - 600’s BCE - Parmenides of Elea (All Facts)

• Greek Philosopher

• Proponent of monism

700’s BCE - 600’s BCE - Parmenides of Elea: On Nature (All Facts)

• Work in which the author argues that nothing changes

• It begins with a revelation: his chariot is carried towards daylight by the daughters of the sun and arrives at the palace of Dike, goddess of justice, who proclaims that his destiny is to know everything

  • He learns that all one is entitled to do is affirm existence

490 BCE - 430 BCE - Zeno of Elea (All Facts)

• Greek Philosopher

• Student of Parmenides

  'Argued that, by running, Achilles will never catch up with a tortoise if it sets off before him because, in theory, the distance between them is infinitely divisible

• Tried to demonstrate that unity is self-contained

• Tortured for his part in a conspiracy against a Greek tyrant

• Opposed the Pythagoreans

494 BCE - 434 BCE - Empedocles of Acragas (All Facts)

• Greek Philosopher

• Regarded as a magician

494 BCE - 434 BCE - Empedocles of Acragas: On Nature (All Facts)

• Didactic poem in which the author maintains that the four elements that compose the world - air, fire, earth, and water - are governed by the opposing forces of love and strife (discord)

490 BCE - 420 BCE - Protagoras of Abdera (All Facts)

• Considered by some to be the leader of the Sophists

• Believed in the doctrine that “man is the measure of all things”

• Wrote about the art of dialectic

• Wrote about eristic, a rhetorical technique enabling one to get the better of an opponent in an argument

• Threated with a charge of impiety, he fled Athens

The Sophists (All Facts)

• Essentially, they promoted knowledge, wisdom, and debate for knowledge, wisdom, and debate’s sake

• Group of intellectuals who traveled throughout Greece and made their living by showing off their knowledge

• For a fee, they would argue, conjecture, and pontificate for hours in the marketplace with anyone who was willing to pay them to do so; and took enormous pleasure in doing so - creating puzzles and debating them for hours on end

• Offered exclusive seminars to the rich

• Happily set up a public debate with each other on any subject - mathematics, astronomy, genealogy, politics, insoluble chickens, etc.

• Characterized by their gargantuan philosophical arrogance

• Plato dismissed them as pretentious

• Socrates likened them to prostitutes because they sold wisdom for money

• Whenever one of their adherents appeared in a city, they attracted a large audience

• They taught the art of rhetoric - argument that appears convincing regardless of the subject matter; which was a valuable skill to have in a country where almost all decisions made were done so on the grounds of much discussion concerning them

• Some of its most famous adherents are Protagoras, Prodicus, and Hippias

470 BCE - 399 BCE - Socrates (All Facts)

• Considered the “Father of Western Philosophy”

• Known for having devised and practiced his namesake method, in which one got at the truth by repeated questioning

  • This gained him a high reputation among young Athenians, who flocked to his side to study his methods (such as Alcibiades)

  • They would then go off and make people contradict themselves as they struggled to answer question after question

• Was condemned by his fellow citizens after a trial in which many believe he had been framed

  • He was accused of corrupting the youth of the city and failing to worship the proper gods

  • He denied the charges, but devoted most of his long speech to the court to defending his lifestyle

    • He said that he preferred to live in poverty and go barefoot rather to seek honors and riches

    • He cheekily suggested his sentence should be a pension for life as a reward for helping Athenians to find virtue and wisdom

  • The court promptly voted for the death sentence despite his rhetoric in defense

  • In prison, he was handed the statutory cup of hemlock which he raised to his lips; having refused to take the opportunity to escape

• The Oracle at Delphi had claimed to him that no man was wiser than him, but he could not believe it himself

  • So he called on some of the politicians who had a reputation for wisdom and questioned them

    • The effect of his questioning was to bring out the fact that though they thought they were wise they were in fact ignorant

    • He acknowledged his ignorance, so he had the advantage; whereas the politicians, who did not, were humiliated and thus nursed their grievances

• Served in the Peloponnesian War

• Served briefly as a city councilor

428 BCE - 347 BCE - Plato (All Facts)

• Greek philosopher

• Student of Socrates

• Spent his youth travelling to many foreign places

• Opened his own school just outside the city of Athens in a garden dedicated to the mythical hero Academus called the “Academy”

• Expressed his philosophical views in lectures that took the form of conversations or “dialogues,” in which he does not take part but rather others do, such as his teacher Socrates

• His wide-ranging dialogues discuss such questions concerning

  • Theories of knowledge

  • Acquisition of wisdom

  • The difference between right and wrong

  • Whether democracy or autocracy is better

• Argued that ideas have an independent existence and are the archetypes of all concrete things

• Pondered on the relationship between the human soul, the state (government), and the universe

• After he left Athens after Socrates’s death, he spent some time at the court of Dionysius in Sicily, an experience which led him to argue that a just state will only come into existence when

  • Its philosophers become its rulers

  • Its philosopher-rulers

    • abolish

      • Private Property

      • The Family

    • introduce

      • Eugenic mating

      • an educational system to train each citizen for its place in society

• In his “Academy", he brought together like-minded scholars to talk about this idea of the “ideal Republic” among other issues

428 BCE - 347 BCE - Plato: The Symposium (All Facts)

• Philosophical dialogue and comedy about manners

• Its characters include Socrates, Aristophanes, and Alcibiades (in the role of an inebriated reveler)

• At the namesake location, drinking its interspersed with philosophical conversation

• In it, each participant must give a eulogy to love