 |
| The word "philosophy" comes from the Greek φιλοσοφία (philosophia) which literally means 'love of wisdom'. |
For a small measure of the powerful, enduring and all-pervasive influence of ancient Greek philosophy, try taking a peek inside the front and back covers ofBettany Hughes’ new book The Hemlock Cup, a biography of Socrates. It bears quotes from an array of famous figures in the spheres of politics, business, art and technology throughout the ages all professing their gratitude and admiration for the greatest ancient Greek thinker of them all.
“Humility: imitate Jesus and Socrates,” wrote Founding Father of the United States Benjamin Franklin in his biography. “Academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience,” mused civil rights campaigner Martin Luther King from Birmingham Jail in 1963. “I would trade all of my technology for an afternoon with Socrates,” Apple boss Steve Jobs told Newsweek in 2001.
Socrates was of course but one among many agile and enlightened minds in ancient Athens and beyond who theorized, debated and generally stroked their beards on the matter of subjects ranging from political philosophy to aesthetics, ethics, metaphysics, rhetoric and the best way to get grass stains out of a toga (possibly). Together they shaped a belief system widely acknowledged to constitute the building blocks of modern western thought itself no less. Here we salute the ten greatest ancient Greek philosophers of them all.
1. Socrates (470 BC-399 BC)
Who? Who else but the mack daddy of philosophy, the father of democracy, the papa of pedagogy. Socrates was a soldier in the Greek army, an avid party-goer, drinker and carouser, and a man of the people, who philosophised not in the palaces and royal courts of Athens, but on the streets. He met a sticky end aged 71 when he was accused of being a corrupter of youth (probably there was a political motive) and forced to commit suicide by drinking hemlock. Such a watershed was Socrates life in the course of Greek philosophy, that all who came before him are known as “pre-Socratic”.
Key theory: So many to choose from! But we’ll opt for his overarching idea that we, as individuals, have to question the world around us, and find the right way to live – the founding principals of ethics, in other words.
Copy of the portrait made by Silanion around 370 BC. Original photo by Marie-Lan Nguyen.
Key quote: “The unexamined life is not worth living for a human being.”
2. Plato (428 BC-347 BC)
Who? A student of Socrates, who in turn taught Aristotle, Plato was born of a rich and influential Athenian family. Shaken by Socrates’ execution in 399 BC, he fled Athens and travelled the Mediterranean, before returning to found the Academy of Athens – the first higher learning institute in the Western world.
We rely on Plato for documentation of Socratic theories, because Socrates never wrote any of them down – and the Atlantis myth.
Key theory: Plato was an avid believer in justice (Socrates’ death probably had something to do with this) and the idea that humans are mutually dependent on each other for survival. For a state to be just, he proposed that people must first be just in their souls.
Key quote: “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”
3. Aristotle (384 BC-322 BC)
Plato’s star pupil, who in turn taught Alexander the Great. The son of a famous physician, Aristotle spent 20 years at Plato’s Academy of Athens, where he eventually became a teacher himself. He left to travel, mentored one particularly famous pupil in Macedonian king Alexander – who went on to capture nearly all of the known world – then came back to Athens to found his own educational establishment, the Lyceum.
Bust of Aristotle. Marble, Roman copy after a Greek bronze original by Lysippos from 330 BC
Key theory: Aristotle was the first Greek thinker to establish a formal system of logic, which he called syllogistic. Many of his theories about the physical sciences were only surpassed by Isaac Newton in the 18th century.
Key quote: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”
4. Pythagoras (570 BC-c. 500 BC)
Pythagoras will give people everywhere horrible flashbacks to high school maths classes and his Pythagorean geometric theory – a² + b² = c², remember the one? There’s some debate as to whether the mathematician and philosopher – who founded a community with a mystical view of numbers in southern Italy in the 6th century BC – was really all that, as very little information about him was written down. But he was apparently a big influence on Plato and Aristotle.
Key theory: Probably his belief in the immortality and reincarnation of the soul and in the liberating power of abstinence and asceticism, both of which fed through Plato and Aristotle into the development of mathematics and Western rational philosophy. Oh, and a² + b² = c².
Key quote: “Do not say a little in many words but a great deal in a few.”
Roman bust of Pythagoras, after a Greek original.
5. Thales (c. 636 BC-c.546 BC)
Who? The reputed founder of the Milesian school of philosophy, Thales is credited as the first ever Western philosopher, and the so-called “first man of science”. He’s said to have introduced geometry to Greece, and been a capable in astronomer who even predicted a solar eclipse in 585 BC – although most of what we know about him derives from folklore.
Key theory: Thales’ defining idea was that everything is made from water – hardly a full-proof notion, but highly significant nevertheless. It represents the first known instance of someone attempting to use a natural rather than mythological explanation for physical phenomena.
Key quote: “Everything is water.”
6. Xenophanes (570 BC-c. 475 BC)
Who? As the reputed teacher of Parmenides, Xenophanes is credited with being the major influence on the Eleatic school of philosophical thought – it’s founder, even, say some. He expressed his views in satirical poetry, which he used to ridicule theories such as polytheism and anthropomorphic representation of the gods, which was common in the works of Homer and Hesiod. His radical monotheism and rationalism was pretty revolutionary in Greek thought.
Men create the gods in their own image.
Key theory: The only eternal deity in Xenophanes mind was the world itself. If at one point there was nothing, he figured, then how did anything ever come into being?
Key quote: “Men create the gods in their own image.”
7. Parmenides (c. early 5th century BC)
Who? A student of Xenophanes, generally considered to be the founder of the Eleatic tradition, which rejected the epistemological validity of sense experience, and instead took logical standards of clarity and necessity to be the criteria of truth. Parmenides best known work is a poem – which survives only in fragmentary form – in which he describes two views of reality in two sections, The Way of Truth and The Way of Opinion. He is said to have travelled to Athens and met Socrates, and been a strong influence onPlato.
Bust of the ancient Greek philosopher Parmenides of Elea - Original image by Bjorn F
Key theory: Existence, Parmenides believed, is timeless – despite what the senses might suggest, what is cannot have come into being from nothing, so it must always have been.
Key quote: “It is necessary to speak and to think what is; for being is, but nothing is not.”
8. Empedocles (c. 490 BC-430 BC)
Who? A poet, statesman, physician and philosopher from the town of Agrigento, Empedocles is best known for two things. Firstly, for being the originator of the cosmogenic theory of the four Classical elements – namely earth, air, fire and water. Secondly, he was one of the world’s first ethical vegetarians, since he believed in the transmigration of the soul, and that eating an animal was as good as cannibalism.
Key theory: Earth, air, fire and water are eternal, Empedocles reckoned. Therefore, nothing new could come into being in his opinion – things could only change, by a different juxtaposition of element with element. This theory became standard dogma for about 2,000 years.
Key quote: “The nature of God is a circle of which the centre is everywhere and the circumference is nowhere.”
9. Leucippus (c. early 5th century BC)
Who? A shadowy figure – born in Miletus, Abdera or Elea – who is credited as being one of the earliest people in history to develop the theory of atomism. Democritus, Leucippus’s pupil and successor, is the name with whom the theory is much more closely associated, since he elaborated on it in much more detail. But credit must go first to his mentor.
Key theory: The not insignificant notion that everything in the universe is made up of tiny, indestructible particles known as atoms – a theory that has proven pretty persuasive in the intervening centuries!
Key quote: “Nothing happens at random, but everything from reason and by necessity.”
10. Plotinus (205 AD-270 AD)
Who? The last of the great ancient Greek philosophers, Plotinus was born in Egypt of mixed Greek and Roman descent, and studied atAlexandria. From 244 AD, he lived in Rome where he founded the school of philosophy known as Neoplatonism – a movement heavily influenced by Plato, but laced with new and unique interpretations. Although Plotinus was opposed to Christianity, his theories became a major influence on Christian thinkers.
Key theory: Pre-empting the plot of The Matrix by a couple of millennia, Plotinus believed in the “One” – a supreme, transcendent, unknowable object of worship and desire. Union with the “One” – an ecstatic experience Plotinus claimed to have experienced – he described as equivalent to a mystical union with God.
Key quote: “God is not external to anyone, but is present with all things, though they are ignorant that he is so.”
'The Hemlock Cup' hits the stores (and Amazon) October 7th. It is not 'merely' a Socrates biography; using a unique combination of archaeological, geological and historical clues, the historian recreates for the reader the world of Socrates with a vivacity not before achieved.
Bettany Hughes visited every spot were the philosopher was said to have walked, loved, fought and philosophised and investigated the many digs that are uncovering the world of 'Golden Age' Athens. She brings this fresh evidence to bear on the life of the man whose idea 'the unexamined life is not worth living' is thought to be at the root of what it is to live in the 21st century.