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

• Teacher of Aristotle

• 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”

  • Founder of the “Academy” at Athens

• 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 most famous, the “Republic” embodied his influential theories on universality via these “dialogues”

• 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

• Believed that the three years which the Athenian youth devoted to music were inadequate to protect them form the boorish emotionalism of the new wave of musicians whose music shocked the older generation

• Before withdrawing to the world of pure ideas, he tried to convert Dionysius of Syracuse into his emerging philosophical tradition

• Dies at a wedding feast

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

384 BCE - 322 BCE - Aristotle (All Facts)

• Greek philosopher and scientist, physician and tutor

• Known for his lectures on logic, in which he introduced his students to the syllogism and concepts like the major premise, minor premise, and conclusion

  • It showed students what they must do in order to prove something

• Changed the way scholars in Ancient Greece thought

  • He divided knowledge into two categories: theoretical and practical

    • Theoretical knowledge sought knowledge for its own sake and included subjects like philosophy, mathematics, and “theoretical” chemistry

    • Practical knowledge dealt with such matters like buildings, politics, and economics

• Known for his writings on metaphysics, ontology (treated in his work “Categories”), the soul, and ethics (which he considered to be an extension of politics)

• Founded his college, the “Lyceum” in Athens, in which he taught his students logic, a method of reasoning which he developed

  • Was part of his innovative approach to the whole question of human knowledge

  • In every branch of learning / curriculum at the “Lyceum", he rests his teaching on the close observation of facts

  • In his study of politics, he directed his students to collect 150+ different constitutions of Greek city-states in order to discover the best system of government

• Student of Plato

  • When he was 17, he came to Athens to study under him until his death 20 years later

  • Many expected him to succeed his teacher as head of the Academy

  • When that did not happen, he left and became a tutor for Alexander the Great

    • His father was physician to King Philip II of Macedonia

334 BCE - 262 BCE - Zeno of Citium, Cyprus (All Facts)

• Was a Hellenistic philosopher

• Founder of Stoicism

  • The name comes from a painted portico in Athens from which he taught called the Stoa Poikile

  • Observing the decay of religious faith and social ties, he took to explaining his ideas in the painted stoa, or colonnade, of the market place, from which the name of his school derives

• Taught his philosophy in Athens

• Based on the moral ideas of the Cynics and the philosophy of Cynicism

279 BCE - 206 BCE - Chrysippus of Soli (All Facts)

• Considered the “Second Founder of Stoicism”

• Succeeded Cleanthes as head of the Stoic School

• Famous for having died from laughing at his own joke

Stoic School / Stoicism (All Facts)

• Founded by Zeno of Citium of Cyprus

• Taught that virtue, which is based on knowledge, is the only good

  • Laid great emphasis on goodness and peace of mind gained from living a life of virtue in accordance with nature

• Believed that men could be delivered from fears and desires that made them unhappy by accepting the world as it is and seeking happiness within themselves

  • So long as happiness depends on others, or on anything over which men have no control, they will be a prey to anxiety and disappointment

• Was one channel by which Greeks sought reassurance and happiness in new beliefs after having begun to lose their moral bearings prior

• It proved very popular, and flourished as one of the major schools of philosophy from the Hellenistic period through to the Roman era

• The name of the school is named after Athens’ painted portico, Stoa Poikile, under which Zeno of Citium taught

• Characterized by a distrust of the autocratic regimes of Hellenistic Greece

341 BCE - 270 BCE - Epicurus (All Facts)

• Greek philosopher

• Believed pleasure is the chief good

• Founds his namesake school of philosophy in Athens, which taught both men and women

Epicurean School / Epicureanism (All Facts)

• Founded by the namesake Athenian philosopher

• Believe that although people seek pleasure they must avoid excesses which lead to pain

  • Believe that one should lead a simple life and avoid

    • Public ambition

    • The pursuit of success

    • Marriage

• Argued that, to achieve maximum pleasure and cause the least possible distress, it is advisable to lead a simple life, free of ties and unencumbered by wealth

• Characterized by a distrust of the autocratic regimes of Hellenistic Greece

• Two of its philosophers were expelled in 173 BCE by Roman authorities which alleged that their moral code, which was based on the theory that pleasure is the highest good, had corrupted the young

Skeptic School / Sceptics / Skepticism (All Facts)

• Believed that whatever argument may be produced in support of a belief, just as strong arguments can be found to refute it

  • They believe that the wise man has no opinion about anything other than that which he has seen and felt

• Eventually took over Plato’s “Academy”

Cynic School / Cynics / Cynicism (All Facts)

• Believed that one should be indifferent to all worldly things (riches, honor, freedom, health), in their pursuit of virtue

• They lived without family or religion

• They made a great show out of their poverty

• Characterized by a distrust of the autocratic regimes of Hellenistic Greece

185 BCE - 109 BCE - Panaetius (All Facts)

• Greek Stoic Philosopher

• He lived in Greece but moved to Rome

• He adapted Stoicism to serve the needs of statesman and soldiers in Rome

• Through him, Stoicism spread widely among the Roman upper classes

• He and his disciples

  • discussed such questions as how a good man would act in circumstances where he faced a conflict of duties

  • believed that the philosopher should try to help people who fall below the lofty ideals espoused by “pure Stoics”

    • In other words, sinners should be offered hope of salvation

155 BCE - Main Events (All Facts)

• Year in which representatives of Athens’ three great schools of philosophy by that time: the Stoa Poikile, the Academy, and the Lyceum, were sent on a mission to Rome

  • Epicureans, who were not in favor with the Roman authorities, were excluded