Characteristics of ancient philosophy

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This lesson from a TEACHER is dedicated to characteristics of ancient philosophy, a first stage includes Greek philosophy (from the 6th century BC to the Roman invasion in the 2nd century BC) and Roman philosophy. The most prominent philosophers of Greek philosophy are Thales of Miletus, Parmenides, Heraclitus, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle or Protagoras. Of Roman philosophy, it is worth mentioning Lucretius, Cicero, Seneca or Marcus Aurelius. Contact with other cultures, due to the intense commercial activity in Greece, coupled with discontent general because of wars and government corruption, propitiates the birth of philosophy in the zone. If you want to know more, continue reading this article.

Index

1. The Ionian School, the first of ancient philosophy
2. The Pythagorean School and its characteristics
3. The Eleatic School
4. The Sophists or the artists of good government
5. Socrates, one of the great ancient philosophers
6. Plato, the most outstanding disciple of Socrates
7. Aristotle, disciple of Plato

This school, which was founded in the 6th century BC. for Thales of Miletus and it is characterized because it replaces the mythological explanation of the world with rational explanations based on observation and experience. This supposes the birth of scientific philosophy.

Main features:

• They consider that Arche or original matter can only be one (monistic materialism).
• They believe that the original matter is a non-physical principle that causes the movement of everything there is. For example, for Thales of Miletus, the beginning was the Water.

Other representatives of the Ionian school were Anaximenes Y Anaximander. These are some of the most important philosophers of ancient philosophy.

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We continue with the characteristics of ancient philosophy to talk about the Pythagorean school, considered a sect. It was an esoteric-scientific-religious-philosophical movement, which was born in the 5th century by the hand of Pythagoras of Samos and his disciples, and considered that the essence of all there is are the numbers.

Characteristics

• Primacy of soul over the body, where the soul is enclosed.
• They were looking for an explanation of the material things.
• They made many mathematical theories, being the discoverers of irrational numbers, which they kept secret until it was revealed by Hypasus of Metaponto

It is considered the second of the stages of ancient philosophyto.

The Eleatic school had its heyday between the 4th and 3rd centuries BC and its main representatives are Parmenides or Zeno of Elea. For Parmenides, movement and change are nothing more than illusions, which is supported by Zeno's paradoxes.

Characteristics

• The world and the universe constitute a unit
• They offer a complete vision of reality
• On the world changes, therefore, it is illusory.

We continue with this lesson on the characteristics of ancient philosophy to talk about the sophists. By sophist is understood one who teaches wisdom in a professional way, possessors of practical intelligence. Euripides would add the following definition to the term “practical art, good government.

Characteristics:

• Moral relativism. The human being is the measure of all things (Protagoras)
• Possibility of knowing everything there is. If it cannot be known, it does not exist. It is necessary to do checks.
• The truth is relative there are no good or bad things if it is not in relation to others.

Socrates, Plato's teacher, wrote nothing. It was his most important disciple of his, Plato, who would reflect the philosophy of his teacher in his work written in dialogue form. He was the creator of the maieutics, his method, which through induction, was capable of solving any problem.

Main features:

• He considered that only through reason it is possible to achieve a true knowledge of things.
• I used the dialectical method, starting from a proposition and asking a series of questions to analyze it.
• Used the maieutics to bring out the truth from within individuals.
• The self-knowledge it is, together with justice and love, the highest aspiration of the human being.
• Identify the well with the knowledge and evil with ignorance.
• Look up general definitions and the universal knowledge.
• Essences are universal and necessary, general, immutable and eternal.

Plato, disciple of Socrates, treats in his work in the form of dialogues, different topics, politics, metaphysics, theology or epistemology, which have put theThe foundations of the history of Western philosophyand.

Characteristics:

• He was the creator of the Theory of Ideas, according to which there are two worlds:the sensible and the intelligible, the latter being the only true one, and where the ideas are found.
• Ideas are the models of things in the physical world, created by the Demiurge imitating ideas.
• The ideasThey are outside of things, they are universal and necessary, general, immutable, eternal, in opposition to the things of the physical world, subject to change, contingent and finite.
• The sensible world is real to the extent that it participates in the world of ideas.
• The path of knowledge is a path of ascension from the opinion or doxa proper of the sensible world, to the truth, proper of the intelligible world and of the reason, by means of dialectics.

We end this lesson with the characteristics of ancient philosophy to talk about another very important ancient philosopher. Aristotle, opposes the Theory of Ideas of his teacher and defends that the essence or form of things is found in themselves and not outside of them.

Characteristics:

• The substance, or that which does not need anything else to exist, is a compound of matter and form, being the matter the body and the form the soul (hylemorphic theory)
• Essences or universal forms are found In the things themselves and not outside of them.
• Explain movement and change using the notions of power or ability to be and act, that is, the substance at a given time.
• Everything that exists has a cause. This is how he formulates his 4 cause theory: material, formal, efficient and final.

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MARIAS, Julián; (1960). "History of Philosophy". 12th edition. Editions, Castilla. Madrid Spain.