The 3 most important CLASSICAL philosophers

The most important classical philosophers are Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, the three classical thinkers and first philosophers of antiquity who sought to understand the origin of the world, classical philosophy being the basis of Western philosophy. Here we tell you more about the key figures of this era.

Classical philosophy developed primarily in ancient Greece during the 7th to 5th centuries AD. c. A philosophy that marked the triumph of logos over mythos and the study of numerous disciplines, laying the foundations for subjects such as ethics, mathematics or epistemology, among others.

In this lesson from unPROFESOR.com we tell you What are the most important classical philosophers? to which schools they belong, their main ideas and their relevance throughout the centuries.

Index

1. Classical philosophy: summary
2. Socrates (470 BC) c. – 399 BC C.), the father of Western philosophy
3. Plato (427 BC) c. – 347 BC C.), the author of the theory of ideas
4. Aristotle (384 BC) c. – 322 BC C.), the first empiricist

Before getting to know the most important classical philosophers, it is important to do a historical review of the context in which we find ourselves.In the 5th century BC, the Greeks saw how the traditional worldview gave way to a scientific interpretation of the world. Contact with other peoples brought with it a critical vision of mythological religion and the revitalization of their traditions.

In this process, classical Greece experienced a intense political and social transformation, leaving behind the rural and agricultural polis and becoming a democratic political and economic power.

Hand in hand with these changes, the first thoughts about the need for a more complex education, capable of responding to that new society in which citizens participated in the affairs public. In this context, there appeared great classical thinkers of ancient Greece: Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Here we leave you a review of the main ones characteristics of classical philosophy.

The schools of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle

One of the most transcendent schools of philosophy of the entire history of Western philosophy are Plato and Aristotle, as well as the teachings of Socrates. Some schools that followed each other since Plato was a disciple of Socrates and, likewise, Aristotle was a disciple of Plato.

In ancient Greece, philosophers were considered teachers from whom to learn and with whom to consult the most important matters of daily life. A situation that materialized in the appearance of different philosophical schools with a large number of followers. among all social groups, making the Greek polis or cities achieve a rich culture civil.

• Socrates did not found a school, but he distanced himself from other schools such as the sophists because of the teaching methods he opted for. While the sophists sought to train his students in disciplines with clear practical usefulness, Socrates always sought to appeal to the spirit of his disciples and help them bring out those ideas that they had inside, analyze them and value them, keeping those that were valuable and leaving aside the falsehoods to discard. This method was called maieutics, a word that comes from mayeuta, midwife in Greek.
• Plato founded the Academy, so called because it is located in the gardens dedicated to Let's join, a hero of Greek mythology. In Plato's Academy they were dedicated to developing scientific and philosophical work, in addition to carrying out religious worship. The Academy did not have a linear and homogeneous evolution, without doctrinal continuity. It was closed by Emperor Justinian in the year 529.
• Between 347 and 345 BC. C began the pedagogical work of Aristotle, being an extension of Plato's Academy, of which he was a part. His disciples were called Peripatetics, referring to the name of the place where the Lyceum, the Peripatos or “covered walk”.

The Lyceum dedicated itself to research in very varied disciplines, giving lessons, discussing and investigating in search of knowledge, in addition to performing worship and carrying out festivities established.

Socrates He is, without a doubt, one of the most important classical philosophers. And one of the most outstanding characteristics of this thinker is that, despite the fact that he did not leave any writings due to his own interest in leaving only spoken word and dialogue. Thus, we know his thoughts thanks to his intense teaching activity. His great influence on his disciples was reflected in his memoirs and in the reproductions of his dialogues by Plato or Xenophon.

Socrates did not have a school as such either, dedicating himself to approaching people with questions and dialogues, moving those people who listened to them. internalize that questioning and deepen your beliefs. Thus, more than finding answers, Socrates tried to make the other understand what he has internalized.

For this great philosopher, concepts are not relative, but absolute and understanding what is good and right is only achieved by achieving wisdom and thanks to reasoning. An achievement that was only possible to achieve through questioning and examining life.

The philosophical landscape of the time in which Socrates reached intellectual maturity was dominated by the sophist movement. A philosophical current that Socrates criticized for its moral and political ideas and for wanting only to obtain economic benefit from his teachings. So, Socrates was concerned with distancing himself from the sophists,The differences they had with them were notable.

Methods of Socrates: maieutics and the Socratic method

As we have pointed out, the teaching methods They were one of the main differences with the sophists. Socrates sought to stimulate the spirit of his disciples, while the sophists imparted teachings that were practical for his students.

His teaching method, maieutics, was based on the dialogue in small groups of disciples, the short question and answer speeches between two. A reasoning that led to an agreement between Socrates and his interlocutor. The agreements reached in the dialogue must be coherent, discarding any that are considered incompatible.

One of his great contributions was socratic method, a method that can be divided into two parts: Socratic irony and maieutics. Irony could be divided into irony and refutation, two tools that allowed the philosopher to listen and help his interlocutor, while the refutation showed the ignorance of the person.

Furthermore, Socrates was key to the development of Western thought by break with philosophical tradition focused on the origin of things and the cosmos to move on to reflect on human beings and ethics. His philosophy focused on virtue, wisdom and happiness as keys to philosophy.

Socrates was condemned to die from hemlock poisoning for his bad influence on youth. A sentence from which he did not defend himself, respecting the laws of Athens.

Here we leave you a review of the main ones characteristics of the philosophy of Socrates.

Plato He is another of the great and important classical philosophers and one of the most outstanding in the entire history of Western philosophy. Born in Athens, Plato he was a disciple of Socrates and he dedicated himself to reflecting on the nature of the Cosmos, the real world and the political and social organization of the city-state.

Plato's main ideas

• Plato was the author of Theory of Ideas that proposes the existence of the real World and Ideas. The real world was the imitation of the world of Ideas, a space in which perfect and correct forms are found. A truth that we can know thanks to reason and not to the senses.
• Plato established a figure with an intelligence that orders everything, a demiurge, not a god or creative principle, but an ordering principle. Goodness, justice, virtue and the human being itself derive from immaterial, immutable, universal and absolute entities, independent of the physical world. Furthermore, the senses do not reflect reality or allow us to know it, they only allow us to access a changing world. Only reason and intelligence allow us to know the episteme, that is, the world of knowledge and science.
• These same ideas are captured in his famous cave myth. A myth that shows how there is only one God, which he identifies with knowledge, and one evil that he identifies with ignorance or lack of education. For Plato, the human being is a prisoner in a cave, chained to look only at the bottom of it. A wall in which the shadows that arise from a fire lit inside that cavern are reflected. Reality is just shadows for the caveman. Only freeing oneself and being able to turn around to look at the fire and the shadows makes man free himself and see a new reality. A more complete and profound one in which the first cause, the intelligible world, can be found. Once outside the cave, and after discovering the light, the idea of ​​Good, man has the moral duty to rescue all those people imprisoned in the cave.
• Finally, Plato defended the dialectics as the ideal scientific method, understanding dialectics as a reasoned discussion. A method that allows us to recognize a base idea from which we can start to identify and structure all knowledge.

Aristotle is part of the best classical philosophers of ancient Greece, being a reference for Western philosophy and culture. Aristotle was a disciple of Plato and created his own philosophical system, being critical and distancing himself from some of the main theories of Platonism.

Thus, while Plato considered that there were two dimensions of reality, the sensible world and the world of ideas, Aristotle opted for the theory that the world is only one, criticizing the theory of ideas.

Ideas of Aristotle

One of the most famous theories about him is that of hylemorphism, a theory that he states within the field of metaphysics or “first philosophy.” Hylemorphism establishes that substance is composed of matter and form, something that Aristotle will apply to anthropology, pointing out how everything The body is made up of matter and form and the human being is made up of a soul in the form of a body and with reason as the main characteristic.

Aristotle also speaks of a motor in the beginning, a “immobile engine””That he relates to a divine being who is responsible for the unity of the world and the order and all the rules that regulate it.

When it comes to knowledge, Aristotle has his own theory of it. Sensitive experience and the information we receive through our senses constitute the basis for all knowledge. Learning is inductive and, by observing particular rules, a universal premise can be arrived at. This approach leads Aristotle to be considered the first empiricist, subjecting sensitive knowledge to reason.

Here we leave you a summary of the main Aristotle's contributions to philosophy.

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