Ancient Philosophy. Daniel W. Graham

He advocated a life of moderation, which precluded an active involvement in politics. He modified atomic theory by saying that sometimes atoms make a random swerve, which provides the possibility of free will by avoiding determinism. About the same time Zeno of Citium came to Athens. After studying with the Cynics, who were followers of a student of Socrates, he founded the Stoic school. This school was almost the polar opposite of the Epicurean school. While the Epicureans believed in free will, the Stoics believed in determinism, the view that all events were determined by earlier events. Whereas the Epicureans believed that matter consisted of atoms and the void, the Stoics believed that matter was continuous, with no void. While the Epicureans followed the physical theory of the atomists, the Stoics followed Heraclitus, and claimed that everything was fire. They also held up Socrates in particular as a model of the life of virtue and reason. They had an ideal of the Stoic sage, who would possess all possible knowledge.

      At about the same time as the Epicurean and Stoic schools were founded, a movement of skepticism arose. Plato’s Academy, surprisingly, became a hotbed of skeptical ideas, as Academics read Plato’s Socratic dialogues as showing that there were no adequate answers to philosophical questions. Pyrrho of Elis taught a skeptical philosophy at about the same time. He did not leave any writings, so, as with Socrates, he can be known only through reactions of his followers. Both versions of skepticism challenged the possibility of having knowledge of philosophical truths. They tended to find tranquility not in philosophy, but in rejecting philosophical speculations.

During the Hellenistic period, Plato’s idealistic philosophy was eclipsed by skeptical interpretations. But from the first century BC, it was revived as Middle Platonism, which borrowed features from Aristotelian and Stoic theories and emphasized religious aspects of Plato’s philosophy. In the third century AD, the philosopher Plotinus from Alexandria, Egypt, moved to Rome and began to teach his own version of Platonism which has come to be known as Neoplatonism (Chapter 7). He interpreted Plato as believing in four levels of reality, or hypostases: the One, which was a transcendent god; a cosmic Mind, in which the Platonic Forms were located; a World Soul; and matter. Each higher reality overflowed or radiated to create a lower level of reality below it. Plotinus, like Plato, believed in reincarnation. He saw the individual soul as falling through a kind of original sin of self‐assertion so as to come into a physical body. By a process of purification through dialectic, the soul might eventually free itself from the cycle of rebirths. Neoplatonism became popular among intellectuals and eventually replaced most of the other philosophies – with the exception of Aristotelianism, which Neoplatonists saw as compatible with their brand of Platonism.

      Middle Platonism found adherents not only among pagans, but among Jews such as Philo of Alexandria and Christian “Church Fathers” such as Clement of Alexandria and Origen (Chapter 8). With the growth of Christianity, Christian thinkers found common ground with pagan intellectuals in certain kinds of philosophy. Eventually, Christians created their own theology on the model of philosophical theologies, and Augustine of Hippo (who would become St. Augustine) finally constructed a system in which philosophy was Christianized, and Christianity supplied the theology. Augustine rethought some classical philosophical problems in light of Christian revelation, and provided the beginnings of a philosophical tradition for the Middle Ages.

      In what follows, we will trace the growth of philosophy from its beginnings to the end of the ancient world, observing the introduction of new concepts, theories, and methods that will take us to increasingly sophisticated conceptualizations of the world. We will observe anticipations of many contemporary philosophical and even scientific theories.

      Notes

      1 1 Herodotus, Histories 2.19–26.

      2 2 Seneca, Natural Questions 4a.2.22.

      3 3 E.g. Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto, ch. 2: “Does it require any deep intuition to comprehend that man’s ideas, views, and conception, in one word, man’s consciousness, changes with every change in the condition of his material existence …?” See Skinner (1969), who comes to a subtler and less dogmatic, but still similar, conclusion.

      4 4 See Kragh (1987: 89–107), who uses the more precise terms ‘diachronical’ and ‘anachronical’ (in place of ‘anachronistic,’ a pejorative term).

      5 5 Aristotle Metaphysics I, chs. 3–10.