Chapter 22
In This Chapter
● Pondering existence with the early Greek philosophers
● Chatting with Socrates and Plato
● Getting scientific with Aristotle and others
At first glance, Greek philosophy can seem quite intimidating. Most books on the subject have front covers with pictures of marble busts of serious, slightly angry looking men with big bushy beards. What’s inside these books can seem just as intimidating - but a lot of the time, the ideas, insights, and explanations are actually quite simple.
In this chapter I look at how the very idea of philosophy developed in ancient Greece and share what some of the major figures thought about all manner of topics, including existence, morality, and the nature of the universe. The ancient Greek philosophers are a strange bunch with some weird and outlandish ideas - but they’re quite fun too!
Making the Case for Philosophy
In Chapters 19, 20, and 21, I look at the mythical gods and heroes and how the Greek religion dominated virtually all aspects of ancient Greek life. Their religion gave the Greeks a pretty closely defined idea of what their world was like and where it came from - but for some people unanswered questions still existed.
Greek philosophy grew out of the earliest philosophers’ desire to explain the world around them, including such major issues as:
● Where everything came from.
● What the world was made of.
● What happened when you died.
The word used to describe the philosopher’s drive is reason, a desire to understand and explain things instead of accepting religious or spiritual explanations. And as I discuss in Chapters 19, 20, and 21, ancient Greek religion was full of holes and logical gaps; the gods that filled its ranks were frequently vengeful, childish, and downright unpleasant. Some folks hungered for different - and hopefully better - answers.
Writing in the fifth century BC, the philosopher Xenophanes sums up the problem.
Both Homer and Hesiod have attributed all things to the gods, as many as shameful and a reproach amongst mankind, thieving and adultery and deceiving each other.
So if the gods weren’t the answer to everything, then what was? Philosophy came into being when some the ancient Greeks tried to work it all out.
The term philosopher means ‘lover of wisdom’ and comes from the Greek word sophia meaning wisdom. Greek philosophers were all men from varied backgrounds. Philosophers like Socrates and Plato were aristocrats and a full-time philosopher would need to be wealthy to be able to spend all day pontificating!
Other people were interested in philosophy too, though, and discussion was very fashionable amongst the educated classes.
Meeting the Early Greek Philosophers
Scholars generally refer to the earliest Greek philosophers as the pre-Socratics because they were around before Socrates, the most famous figure in Greek philosophy. See the later section ‘Creating the ‘New Philosophy’ with Socrates’ for more on this great Greek.
The pre-Socratics weren’t really philosophers in the sense that you might think of a philosopher today. Most of them didn’t write books or engage in lectures or teaching. Really, these men just asked questions and looked for answers in the world that they saw about them. They were unhappy with the explanations that mythology provided (see Chapter 19), and looked for alternatives in the natural world and its elements. Truly they were ‘lovers of wisdom’.
Although the pre-Socratics didn’t really come up with definite answers, they started the process of enquiry, encouraging others to explore different questions and challenge orthodox beliefs.
One of the problems with looking at the pre-Socratic philosophers is that very few sources are available. Some of the earliest philosophers didn’t write anything down at all, whereas the books of others are now lost. This dearth of original texts means that modern scholars must rely on later Greek writers (such as Xenophon and Aristotle) who compiled large compendiums of philosophy that include fragments of the early philosophers’ work. Happily, enough material is available to get a good idea of their theories.
This section is just a small survey of what I regard as some of the most important pre-Socratic philosophers. Loads of others - including Zeno, Anaxagoras, Melissus, Philolaus, Leucippus, Democritus, and many more - are well worth looking into if you want something interesting to think about! Using the online encylopedia Wikipedia (at www.wikipedia.co.uk) is a great place to start but if you’re looking for a book try Early Greek Philosophy edited by Jonathan Barnes and published by Penguin Classics.
Using their eyes: Thales and Anaximander
Two of the earliest notable pre-Socratic philosophers were Thales and Anaximander. They both came from the town of Miletus on the south-western coast of Asia Minor and were active around 580 BC.
Although historians aren’t fully certain, Thales’s work seems to have come first, and Anaximander appears to have been a pupil or follower of Thales.
It’s probably no coincidence that these earliest philosophers came from Miletus because the town received visitors from all over the Mediterranean and the east. The mixture of ideas and theories that must have been present among the population makes the location a natural place for enquiring minds.
Both of these men’s investigations were based on looking at the world around them and drawing conclusions from what they saw in nature. Modern scholars call this process observational philosophy.
Water, water everywhere
Both Thales and Anaximander were concerned with the idea of the four key elements, earth, air, fire, and water. Their idea was that everything in the world was in some way made up of these four things.
Thales’s big concern was water. He seems to have looked at the world around him and decided that just as the land he stood on was surrounded by water, the whole of the earth must be too. This notion was in line with the old Greek view that the earth was an island entirely surrounded by water, rather like the yolk in a fried egg (see Chapter 19).
Thales took his speculation further though. He thought that water was the essential element of all things. Humans, plants, and animals all need water to survive; therefore, according to Thales, water was the essential stuff of life and what everything was made from. The Greeks referred to this concept as the arche meaning ‘first principle’ or ‘beginning’.
Thales also came up with interesting theories about other things, among them the idea that a magnet must have a soul. He based this idea on the fact that a magnet can make things move; therefore, it must have intelligence and, accordingly, a soul.
Getting cosmic
As a pupil or follower of Thales, Anaximander went on to investigate further and and more widely than Thales. Anaximander was alleged to have been one of the first people to draw a map of the inhabited world and to come up with a theory as to how the universe and the heavens were formed. This subject was known as cosmology, and many argue that Anaximander invented it.
The cosmology that Anaximander came up with is a bit trippy and mad! It involves all four key elements working together to produce large flat discs (of which the earth is one) that make up the universe. All natural things like humans, animals, and the weather are created when the elements stop working together and separate.
Thales and Anaximander were interesting, if misguided. Still, they were celebrated by subsequent ancient Greeks for being the two men who first thought differently and encouraged other people to theorise about big important questions. You may say that their biggest discovery was the process of philosophy itself.
Pondering existence: Parmenides, Heraclitus, Pythagoras, and others
After Thales and Anaximander opened the philosophical floodgates, many other people began to ask difficult questions about the world around them.
Some of the later pre-Socratics took huge steps forward by trying to ask questions about the nature of existence itself. What did it mean to live and die; to exist and then to stop existing?
A bit of a show-off
One of the first philosophers to ask about existence itself in detail was Parmenides, who came from Elea, a Greek town in southern Italy. Like many of the other pre-Socratics, precise birth and death dates aren’t available, but he was alive and probably visited Athens in about 450 BC.
Parmenides’s big concern was to answer the question of how something comes into existence and then later ceases to be. He discussed this question in a long poem called the ‘Way of Truth’, which seems a little like showing off:
How, whence, did it grow? That it came from what is not I shall not allow you to say or think - for it is not sayable or thinkable that it is not. And what need would have impelled it, later or earlier, to grow - if it began from nothing?
In the end Parmenides decided that everything exists and that anything that you can imagine comes into existence after you imagine it. So, for example, while you’re reading this book, if you imagine me, the author, riding a giant dragon, then that dragon exists because you imagined it. Blimey! A handy trick, indeed!
Further to this notion, Parmenides believed that everything that exists always has done and always will do in some form or other. This theory was known to the Greeks as the Immutable One.
Constant change
Across the other side of the Mediterranean in Ephesus was another philosopher called Heraclitus (circa 525-475 BC). His theory about existence was very different to Parmenides. In fact, it was the absolute opposite.
Heraclitus’s major theory was that everything is in a constant state of change, or flux. Everything needs to move or change in order to progress and grow. Heraclitus’s view was also the opposite of Anaximander’s idea that the four elements had to be in order for the universe to work (see the preceding section ‘Using their eyes: Thales and Anaximander’).
A great example of Heraclitus’s state of change theory is that, if you put your foot in a river, by the time you take it out again the water has flowed over it and the river has changed. If you put your foot in again, the river is no longer the river that you put your foot into originally. The constantly changing experience of a river is, in essence, what Heraclitus thought about the whole nature of existence.
Reincarnation: ‘I think I’ve been here before’
Parmenides and Heraclitus tackled the question of existence and came up with some answers. In both cases, they were really motivated by a desire to explain what happened before birth and after death.
Other pre-Socratic philosophers looked at this question from another perspective. If what Parmenides said was true about all matter always existing now and in the future, then what happened to the soul, or psyche, after the body died? One idea that was very fashionable was the idea of reincarnation.
Reincarnation was not a purely Greek idea, having first been discussed in places as far away as Egypt and Mesopotamia. Still, several pre-Socratic philosophers promoted this concept. This quote from Empedocles (circa 450 BC) sums up reincarnation nicely.
For already I have been born as a boy and a girl and a bush and a bird and a dumb fish leaping out of the sea.
The man who popularised the notion of reincarnation was Pythagoras, probably the most famous of all the pre-Socratic philosophers and a hugely controversial figure. Active in the sixth century BC, Pythagoras originally came from Samos but spent a large part of his life in southern Italy. He was also rumoured to have magically appeared in many other cities in both southern Italy and Greece.
Pythagoras is credited with a huge number of discoveries and theories, including a particularly famous geometric principle (see the nearby sidebar ‘The Pythagorean Theorem: Maths and stuff’). However, because he wrote nothing down, historians know very little about him. Scholars have pieced together the following:
● Pythagoras’s big theory was based around the idea of metempsychosis, which means the movement of the soul between physical bodies, a particular kind of reincarnation. One story suggests that Pythagoras stopped a man beating a puppy because he recognised the dog as one of his old friends by its bark!
● Pythagoras was famed for his wide knowledge, and some people attributed him with magical powers. He was rumoured to have had a thigh made of gold and to have killed a poisonous snake by biting it first.
Whatever the actualities behind these stories, Pythagoras built up a huge following. His followers became a kind of cult and closely guarded the details of their lifestyle. They built their lives around his teaching, on principles based on music, harmony, and a very proscriptive diet - such as eating beans to keep you regular! These individuals continued to work on Pythagoras’s principles long after his death (or reincarnation?).
Perhaps Pythagoras’s biggest achievement was to boost the interest in philosophy in those that followed him.
Jumping into the flames
One of Pythagoras’s most famous followers was Empedocles (circa 490-460 BC). Indeed, Empedocles’s writings preserved many of Pythagoras’s ideas.
The Pythagorean Theorem: Maths and stuff
You're probably familiar with Pythagoras because you were taught his famous theorem at school:
The square on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides.
Many of the pre-Socratics (as well as later philosophers) were intensely interested in mathematics and used it to work out many of their theories. The study of mathematics and particularly geometry was a very important concern in ancient Greece, and the work of people such as Euclid was responsible for real discoveries.
I don't delve into ancient Greek mathematics in this chapter because I think philosophy is very different from maths. What's interesting to me are the tremendous leaps of imagination that these various philosophers took in thinking about the world and nature of existence. Another reason is that I'm rubbish at maths!
Like Parmenides (see the preceding section ‘A bit of a show-off’), Empedocles wrote in verse form. His long poem called The Purifications was one of the first attempts to align philosophy and Greek religion. In it, he introduced an element of moral philosophy that was very important to later thinkers (see the following section ‘Creating the ‘New Philosophy’ with Socrates’).
Empedocles was convinced of the idea of metempsychosis (see the preceding ‘Reincarnation: ‘I think I’ve been here before’); particularly that the soul was immortal (and thus like a god). According to a long-held tradition, Empedocles set out to prove this idea by throwing himself into the volcano of Mount Etna in Sicily, telling his followers that he would return in another form. As far as I know, the world is still waiting for his reappearance!
Creating the 'New Philosophy' with Socrates
Socrates is one of the most famous of the ancient Greeks, partly because of his terrible execution by Athens in 399 BC (see Chapter 9), but mostly because he was responsible for creating the new kind of philosophy that was developed in Athens in the fifth century BC.
Like Pythagoras (see the preceding section ‘Reincarnation: ‘I think I’ve been here before’), Socrates never wrote anything down. Modern readers are reliant on his followers (mostly Plato and Xenophon) for what survives about Socrates’s philosophy today.
Socrates’s major interest was different from that of the pre-Socratics. He wasn’t really interested in cosmology and questions of reincarnation. Instead, he was far more concerned with why people acted the way they did. His theory was that people should always try to do well and do the right thing. This stance is why he’s credited with being the person who invented moral philosophy.
Talking with Socrates: Socratic dialogue
In addition to his focus on moral philosophy, Socrates’s method of enquiry was also quite different. The process basically involved asking questions of people and challenging their assumptions. Socrates always did this questioning in the spirit of finding out an answer, because he didn’t think he knew everything. Indeed, he’s famously attributed for saying, ‘All that I know is that I know nothing.’
These conversations between Socrates and his educated friends - Socratic dialogues - began with Socrates asking a question of the person who he was talking to and then interrogating (and eventually overturning) that person’s answer.
Usually, the question was about some kind of moral quality such as bravery or friendship, although Socrates seemingly discussed absolutely everything.
In this dialogue called Charmides (recorded by Plato), Socrates talks about the issue of keeping to doing one’s own job and whether doing so shows selfcontrol. Have a look at the way the conversation goes - the process of the discussion is more important than the subject.
‘Well then,’ I [Socrates] said, ‘do you think a state would be well run by a law like this, which commands each person to weave his own coat and wash it, and make his own sandals and oil-flask and scraper and everything else on the same principle of each person keeping his hands off what is not his own, and working at and doing his own job?’
‘No, I don't,’ he replied.
‘Nevertheless,’ I said, ‘a state run on the principle of self-control would be run well.’
‘Certainly,’ he said.
‘Then,’ I said, ‘self-control would not be doing one’s own job when it’s of that sort and done in that way.’
This is a typical piece of Socratic dialogue. Socrates asks an opinion and then fleshes it out with examples, each of which chip away at the original opinion until the idea is shown to be worthless or affirmed in some way. The whole conversation is presented very nicely and he isn’t antagonistic, but if you saw Socrates in the street, you’d probably cross the road to avoid him!
Getting better at being good
Many of Socrates’s dialogues argue about moral qualities: courage, selfcontrol, reason, knowledge, and so on. These are all qualities that you can improve by practice. Socrates argues that by getting a better understanding of what bravery is, you can act in a braver fashion. It’s an interesting point of view.
It’s difficult to know what Socrates actually believed himself. All the outcomes of the dialogues are exactly that - the conclusion of a conversation. Scholars and modern readers can’t accept the resolution of Socratic dialogues as being Socrates’s beliefs. The only real belief that becomes consistent is a true desire for knowledge and to find answers. Like the pre-Socratics before him, Socrates was a true ‘lover of wisdom’.
Eventually, asking too many questions made Socrates unpopular and led to his death (see Chapter 9). He died a martyr and was responsible for fundamentally changing ancient Greece’s - and indeed the world’s - ideas of philosophy.
Setting philosophy: The sophists
Socrates also influenced the development of the sophists. Sophists were essentially philosophers for hire, although many of them had no real interest in philosophy.
Sophists took the principles of Socratic dialogue (for instance, disproving an idea) and turned them to profit. They sold their services to people who were about to go to court and needed coaching in how to represent themselves. Some people alleged that sophists had no interest in the truth, merely in winning arguments.
Some sophists also provided training in speaking and argument to the sons of rich men who wanted to enter politics. These skills were tremendously useful in the boule and elsewhere to gain the votes of the demos.
Unfortunately, all the surviving sources on sophists are very biased. People like Plato (see the following section ‘Leaving Philosophy to the Professionals: Plato’) wrote about the sophists but hated them for what they did with Socrates’s form of philosophy. Still, some ancient Greeks must have used the services of sophists for truly philosophical purposes.
One particularly big piece of anti-sophist and anti-philosophy propaganda is Aristophanes’s play The Clouds. In it, Socrates is portrayed as running a ‘School for Sophists’ in which he teaches young men not to believe in the gods. None of this was true! Socrates was no sophist and he also never ran a school. Then again, Aristophanes never let the truth get in the way of a good joke!
Leaving Philosophy to the Professionals: Plato
After Socrates died in 399 BC, Greek philosophy went from strength to strength. The next great figure was Plato (circa 428-347 BC).
Historians know very little about Plato’s life, and many of the facts about him are highly disputed. However, scholars agree that:
● Plato was originally a follower of Socrates.
● After Socrates’s death, Plato left Athens and travelled around the Mediterranean, returning when he was about 40 and founding the famous school of philosophy known as the Academy.
● Plato’s Academy flourished for the best part of a thousand years until it was finally closed by the Byzantine emperor Justinian in AD 529.
Aside from establishing the Academy, another reason that Plato became so famous was the huge number of philosophical works that he wrote and published, many of which still survive. Nearly all of them are written in dialogue form with Socrates as the main character. They explore a wide range of subjects, although Plato’s favourite themes were justice, epistemology (the theory of knowledge), and theories about art.
Living in an ideal world: The Republic
Probably Plato’s most famous work was The Republic, a very long dialogue based around the idea of creating an ideal state. The dialogue starts with a discussion about the true nature of justice. In Greek the word for justice is dike and it has a rather wider meaning; something along the lines of rightness or correctness is one version. To try to define what justice actually is , Socrates sets out what he sees as a potential ideal society.
The model he comes up with is one with a very regulated class system. People are born into the system and do jobs according to their classes. A group known as the Philosopher Rulers govern the state, because only they possess the wisdom and self-control to make objective decisions for the good of the whole community.
This model was a fairly controversial set of ideas because it rejected the democratic system that Athens had at the time in favour of rule by the few - an oligarchy (see Chapter 4).
But why did Plato only trust the rule of philosophers?
Exploring the Theory of the Forms
The main reason Plato advocated a group of Philosopher Rulers comes from his big theory of existence known as the Theory of the Forms. In this theory Plato argues that everything you see around you isn’t actually the real world but only a shadowy copy of it. The Forms are the one true version of everything. Only a philosopher is able to comprehend and understand the Forms, so only a philosopher is fit to make decisions for a whole city or state.
Plato illustrates his Theory of the Forms in The Republic by using the simile of the cave. He describes a group of people held in a cave who see only the shadows made by reflections on a wall; this is their whole world. These reflections are of real life going on outside the cave. Eventually, a few break free and go outside into the light while the rest remain in the cave. Those who go outside are the philosophers searching for truth. The rest are inside, still watching the shadows and believing them to be real.
If this all sounds a bit like The Matrix film trilogy where the character of Neo suddenly becomes aware that his whole life has been a fabrication and another, ‘real’ world exists, you’re right. Fortunately, not even Plato is as complicated as The Matrix movies!
Plato was so keen on philosophers because he regarded them as the only people who were totally objective and focused on discovering the truth. Thus, only philosophers were able to make decisions that weren’t corrupted by their own vice or prejudice. This quote from The Republic sums up the idea:
The society we have described can never grow into a reality or see the light of day, and there will be no end to the troubles of states, or indeed my dear Glaucon, of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers. ...
At least Plato was true to his word. His whole life was spent searching for the truth and helping teach others to do so. Later in his life he spent some time in Sicily and when he died he was buried in his academy.
Meeting the Man Who Knew Everything: Aristotle
One of the most famous graduates from Plato’s Academy was Aristotle (384-322 BC), the final great figure in Greek philosophy. (Aristotle also pops up briefly in Chapter 10, working as tutor to Alexander the Great.)
Aristotle originally came from Stageira in the north of Greece. Although he spent a great deal of his life in Athens, he was never granted citizen status and lived there as a metoikos or resident alien (see Chapter 14).
He established his own school - known as the Lyceum - outside the city of Athens.
Thinking scientifically
Two things made Aristotle very different from the other philosophers that came before him:
Aristotle was much more interested in knowledge gained by the five senses than by intellectual reason.
Aristotle was interested in absolutely everything - all areas of human endeavour including politics, botany, medicine, ethical philosophy, literary criticism, and more.
In many ways, Aristotle’s method was like a combination of the pre-Socratics (see the earlier section ‘Meeting the Early Greek Philosophers’) and the philosophers who followed. Whatever the topic, Aristotle took the same method of scientific enquiry. He became known as an empiricist (meaning someone having an interest in studying all aspects of human endeavour), and his methods formed the basis of scientific study that followed for centuries.
Checking out some of Aristotle's greatest hits
The sheer volume of work that Aristotle produced in his lifetime is difficult to calculate. His major works include:
● Physics: On nature, life, and how the mind works.
● Metaphysics: On logic and reason.
● Ethics: On ethical dilemmas and doing the right thing.
● Politics: A survey of all political systems and their problems.
● Poetics: On plays on poetry and their themes (see Chapter 16).
Aristotle also wrote books on plant and animal life, medicine, the true nature of the soul, and rhetoric. Talk about a busy guy!
Venturing into Aristotle's Ethics
With so many different books by Aristotle, choosing just one is difficult. That said, Ethics is a really good introduction to Aristotle’s style of enquiry. Like Socrates, Aristotle believed that virtues are skills that you can improve with practice; so if you make a constant effort to be generous to others, eventually you do it without thinking, as a matter of course.
Generally speaking, Aristotle decided that good behaviour takes place when you avoid extremes and exercise moderation. Take this example of the dangers of being either vulgar or, at the other end of the scale, boorish and sour.
Those who go too far in being funny are regarded as buffoons and vulgar persons who exert themselves to be funny at all costs and who are set upon raising a laugh than upon decency of expression and consideration for their victim's feelings. Those who both refuse to say anything funny themselves and take exception to the jokes of other people are regarded as boorish and sour.
In the end Aristotle decides that the best course is to take the middle path, exhibit good taste, and be ‘nimble-witted’. He comes to similar conclusions with almost all ethical issues. Later writers refer to this idea as the Doctrine of the Golden Mean (‘mean’ meaning average, or the middle path), although Aristotle never called it that.
Moving On: Hellenistic Science and Beyond
One of the impacts of both Aristotle and the conquests of Alexander the Great (see Chapter 11) was a huge upsurge of interest in the sciences during the Hellenistic period. The rich kings who succeeded Alexander spent huge amounts of money on scientific development and sponsoring the foundation of academies and libraries.
● Geometry and mathematics were areas of interest to such notable men as Euclid (325-265 BC) and Archimedes (circa 287-212 BC; see Chapter 24). Some principles that the two men defined last until this day.
● Astronomy was another area of interest, particularly the study of the position of the earth in relation to the stars. The father of astronomy was Hipparchus (circa 190-120 BC), who constructed the first celestial globe, a model of the universe as he understood it.
The discoveries of these scientists and others were very influential. Although much of their work was lost during the medieval period, Renaissance scientists like Galileo rediscovered and expanded upon significant portions.
And Greek philosophy didn’t stop with Aristotle - far from it. During the Hellenistic and early Roman periods, philosophy expanded and definite schools emerged - in particular, a rivalry developed between the Epicureans and Stoics. Throughout the Mediterranean, figures of learning tended to classify themselves into one of these two groups, despite the fact that they believed in very similar things. But that’s a story to check out in The Romans For Dummies by Guy de la Bedoyere (Wiley).