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The Greatest Philosophers of Ancient Greece. Kondrashov N.A. History of linguistic doctrines Famous ancient philosophers in Greece

Ancient Greek Philosophy: Cynics, Skeptics, Stoics and Epicureans

When we turn to philosophy and its postulates, then, as a rule, we do not think about what path this science has traveled, where it originated and how it developed. And most importantly - what was the reason for its appearance.

A person has always been driven by curiosity, he wanted to know what was there, beyond the forest, beyond the horizon, beyond the clouds.

However, it was possible to simply observe the events taking place with curiosity and take them for granted, but it was also possible “in a different way”.

“In a different way” meant not just looking, but seeing and trying to analyze, not only stating certain events, but trying to figure out and understand why they happened, what are the causes of certain events, phenomena, actions, and what be their consequences.

Well, let's go into history, which tells us that the very word "philosophy" (φιλοσοφία), according to dictionaries, has ancient Greek roots and literally means: "love of wisdom."

Curiosity has always been a source of knowledge of the world and its laws, and it was the Greeks who succeeded in this.

However, in fairness, it is worth noting that the foundations of philosophy were laid in the so-called pre-Greek period.

As historical sources confirm, already in the VI centuries. BC. Chinese and Indian sages demonstrated to those in power the foundations of philosophical thinking, that is, knowledge of the world, but the treatises of ancient philosophers can be "counted on one hand", and they do not give a complete picture of the development of philosophical thinking in this period in the East.

As for Ancient Greece, it was here that philosophy gained its distribution and gained incredible popularity.

Among the European cultures of Ancient Greece, priority was rightfully given to the study of the laws of natural development and the political structure of society, because it was on Greek soil that outstanding philosophers laid the foundations for a democratic structure of public life, confirming its progressiveness and “public utility”, here the concepts of understanding the world were formed.

To study the structure of the world in ancient Greece, philosophical schools were created, each of which chose its own method of understanding the world and declared it the most productive and correct.

"Pre-Socratic" period of Greek philosophy

The early period of the development of philosophy in Greece (VI century BC) is usually called "pre-Socratic". As is already clear from its name, classical Greek philosophy arose, later, with the entry into the “philosophical arena” of Socrates. The most famous "pre-Socratic" philosophers were Pythagoras, Thales, Zeno and Democritus. Appearance classical philosophy- still ahead.

In the meantime, they are struggling with the question that will allow laying the foundations of classical philosophy: “What is being?”, And each one is building their own model of the world and its knowledge.

But if we are familiar with the names of Democritus (moreover, with the latter - to a greater extent as a mathematician, and not a philosopher), then the names of Thales and Zeno are hardly familiar to those who have not deeply studied philosophy.

So it is to Thales that we owe the opportunity to get acquainted with various complex phenomena, decomposing them into simple components.

It was Thales who, when studying the world around him, suggested that all complex and even difficult-to-explain phenomena would become quite understandable if you know what simple laws they exist with. This method of studying the world is called reductionism.

By the way, he used this method and, together with another “pre-Socratic”, Leucippus, became the author of the theory of atomism, proving that all complex objects of this world consist of atoms, which at that time could be considered the smallest and simplest unit, both philosophical and physical.

As for Zeno, in his philosophical treatises and discussions about the world around him, he proved that the concepts of set, movement and space contradict each other, but it is on these contradictions that it is possible to prove the principles of their existence in the world around.

Each "pre-Socratic" had his own school, headed it and gathered under his banner those who shared his point of view on the world around him and were ready to defend it in philosophical disputes and discussions with representatives of other schools.

A well-known contribution to the development of the philosophy of the pre-Socratic period was made by Diogenes of Apollon, Heraclitus and other philosophers.

Philosophical school of Socrates

The time of Socrates came in the 4th century. BC e .. It is he who owns the formation of a philosophical concept, implying the transition from consideration and study of the surrounding world to man.

During the tenure of Socrates, philosophical schools appeared, the object of study of which was a person.

The most ardent and famous adherents of Socrates were his students Xenophon and Plato. Thanks to philosophical writings Plato, who almost completely reached the researchers of our time, it became possible to judge the formation and development of classical philosophy in Ancient Greece. Peru Plato belongs to the theory of ideas developed and developed by him and his students.

Cynics

One of the students and champions of the theories being developed was Antisthenes of Athens, who later opened his own philosophical school, most famous student which was Diogenes of Sinop.

Antisthenes became the creator philosophical direction, called cynicism, and the followers of this trend began to be called cynics.

The essence of the concept of cynicism, developed by Antisthenes, directly conflicted with the generally accepted views on human life, as well as the necessary and sufficient conditions for his happy life.

According to the Cynics, a person does not need much to be happy. And he is unhappy because he surrounded himself with a mass of unnecessary things, created various types of conventions that complicate and poison his own life, therefore, in order to live well, it is necessary to get rid of these conventions and behave like a dog, which is inherent in courage and gratitude, the ability to “stand up for yourself” and be content with little.

The Cynics so passionately defended the postulates of their school that after the death of the best student of the school, Antisthenes Diogenes of Sinop, a marble sculpture of a dog was erected on his grave in the form of a monument.

The Cynics considered the main object of their concepts of man with his requests and needs, joys and sorrows. In their opinion, a person has too much superfluous, unnecessary things in his life, which only prevents him from living happily.

The closer to nature, the simpler and "more natural", the happier life will be; to be happy, one does not need to theorize: only the practical skills and habits necessary for an elementary existence - such are the philosophical conclusions of the Cynics.

Society is not able to give a person anything good, but only nature is the only source of a happy life for a person.

Another postulate of the Cynics was the dominant role of subjectivism: the subject, the individual (man) with his habits, views and attitudes, is important. The individual has the right, as the cynics believed, to reject social attitudes and demands if they suppress the personality, his will, the desire for independence.

As for Antisthenes himself, his desire for an extremely simple life, not burdened by excesses, gave rise to the image of a wandering beggar with a cloak thrown over his naked body, a staff that was used as an instrument of protection, and a beggar's bag for alms. It was this attire that distinguished the Cynics from other philosophers.

It is worth noting that the individualistic concept of cynics and their “equipment” were adopted by people who did not differ in law abidance, as well as those who, without high moral principles, embarrassed those around them with their outrageous appearance, while receiving great pleasure. Calling themselves cynics, they nevertheless had nothing in common with philosophers. It is no coincidence that over time such people acquired a new, consonant with the original, but transformed name - cynics.

It is interesting that the postulates of the Cynics were once adopted by Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, who turned the “freedom of the individual” into the “freedom of the will of the individual” - between these two concepts there was a “great distance”, and new theory spawned the "monsters of history".

Skeptics

Another philosophical direction of classical Greek philosophy was skepticism (translated from ancient Greek - “exploring”, “considering”), and those who profess the postulates of skepticism began to be called skeptics.

They considered doubt to be a peculiar method of cognition, while in philosophy it was a question of doubting the reliability of truth. What is called into question gives rise to the need to study, consider the truth from all sides and search for reliable facts that repeatedly confirm the truth.

On a wave of doubts, a mass of all kinds of directions of skepticism appeared: from philosophical to everyday; moderate to aggressive.

It was believed that moderate skepticism is a reliable weapon in the fight against dogmatists who did not bother to confirm the formulated dogmas in an empirical (practical) way.

Any versions and theories, according to skeptics, must be tested. The truth must be confirmed - nothing can be accepted on faith (as with dogmatists).

It should be noted that initially skepticism had positive value in development philosophical thought, as forced to look for options for the truth of a statement. The truth was not taken for granted, however, over time, skeptics, so to speak, moved from the practical plane of the search for truth to the theoretical one, which led to the fact that any theoretical assumption was not only questioned, but the very possibility of finding the truth was denied.

The requirement to seek truth empirically eventually turned into an empty moralization and a denial of everything that cannot be verified in practice.

The position of skeptics is a neutral observation of the course of life, a dispassionate acceptance of everything that happens in it, including suffering - this, according to the founder of skepticism Perron, a writer and philosopher, is the way to achieve happiness.

Perron and his supporters argued that skepticism is based on two postulates, the first of which formulates happiness as tranquility, and the second - life as a result of the first.

Perron formulated a number of questions that were supposed to prove that skepticism should be the basis of human happiness.

He answered the same questions himself:

1) What are the qualities of things? We don't know what those qualities are.

2) How should one behave in relation to things? - It is best to refrain from reasoning on this topic.

3) What could be the consequences of our behavior in relation to things? - Happiness can only give abstinence. It also gives peace.

Despite the positive aspects of the theory, skepticism in a fairly short time passed into the category of destructive philosophical trends.

Skeptics brought up their postulates of criticism and negativism, which, in turn, gave rise to disbelief and denial of the obvious and positive.

Stoics

In their perception of the world and understanding of happiness in a number of positions, the Stoics turned out to be quite close to the skeptics.

The founder of the philosophical school of the Stoics, Zenon of Kitia, held meetings of the students of his school near the portico "picturesque Stoa", from which its name came.

The Stoics believed that all people are children of the Cosmos, which means that they are all equal and have equal opportunities for self-knowledge. In addition, each person is a receptacle of virtue.

However, the fate of people, "children of the Cosmos", is completely in his power. Therefore, the main task is to live in harmony with nature and with oneself, since a person himself cannot change anything in this life.

Harmonious, according to the Stoics, can be considered a society where ALL people live in perfect harmony, remembering that good ennobles, and evil leads to death. However, any person should act in accordance with his own perception of the world and his desires.

The path to inner freedom is the renunciation of pleasures and the suppression of passions.

Interesting understanding of death, from the point of view of the Stoics. They did not consider it evil, but on the contrary, they believed that it was the most appropriate way out for those who could not leave a worthy mark in this life. In this case, death is a kind of atonement for the evil that man did on earth.

epicureans

More than 70 years after the death of the great ancient philosopher Plato, the philosopher Epicurus opened his school.

Epicurus himself and his followers and students called themselves "philosophers of the garden": everything was simple - the Epicureans gathered for their meetings in the garden bought by their teacher. It was a philosophical school, the doors of which were open to both women and slaves.

The inscription on the gates of the school, which said that everyone who enters its doors will be fine, because it is pleasure that is the greatest good, tuned in to the search for happiness and getting rid of suffering.

According to the Epicureans, it is possible to achieve harmony and happiness by getting rid of fears, whether it be fear of the gods or death. They believed that happiness could be achieved and evil could be overcome. To achieve harmony, a person must limit needs, be prudent and balanced.

Epicurean philosophers did not consider a person a hostage of fate (fate) and believed that for happiness he needed friends, peace of mind and absence physical suffering, and the main pleasure of this world they considered life itself.

Philosophy and tourism in Greece

Herodotus and his role as a historian

He is called the "Father of History". Herodotus was engaged in the collection of historical data, traveled a lot, and was considered an excellent geographer. But the most famous thinker became after writing the book "History". It gave a description of ideas about the world. Of course, in such a presentation that was relevant at the time when Herodotus lived.

Marrying a Greek: does it make sense and what to prepare for?

Good, decent, loving. Every woman dreams of finding such a husband. Is it possible to find him among the Greeks? Marrying any man, no matter what nationality he is, the girl hopes to live happily ever after. But often you have to put up with some features of the spouse or his shortcomings. And he, in turn, has to yield. It is in all cultures. Features of Greek life quite strongly influence the family way of life. You need to get used to it.

Eleusinian mysteries

The classical period of ancient aesthetics includes the activities of one of the greatest theorists of music - Aristoxenus of Tarentum. He lived in the first half of the 4th c. BC. According to his views, he belonged to the school of Aristotle and, as the legend testifies, was one of his students.

He wrote about music and philosophy, history, pedagogy - is mentioned as the author of a total of approx. 450 books (almost all lost). Among them are “Elements of Harmonica” (preserved in fragments), “On the Beginnings”, “On Melopee” (at least 4 books), “On Modes”, “On the Perception of Music”, “On Music” (at least 4 books). ), “Elements of rhythm” (preserved in fragments), “About the first time”, “About instruments”, “About aulos and [other musical] instruments”, “About the manufacture of aulos”, “About aulets”, “About round dances”, "On the Tragedians", "On the Dance in Tragedy", "Praxidamant", "On Pythagoras and His Disciples", "On the Pythagorean Life", "Pythagorean Sayings", "The Life of Pythagoras", "The Life of Archytas", "The Life of Socrates", “The Life of Telest”, “Civil Laws” (at least 8 books), “Laws of Education” (at least 10 books), “On Arithmetic”, “Table Talk”, “Historical Notes”, “Various Memories”, “ Scattered notes”, “Comparisons”. None of these works have come down to us. The only thing we have at our disposal is the treatise "Elements of Harmony" and a fragment of the musical treatise "Elements of Rhythm". In addition, information about the musical theory of Aristoxenus is contained in Plutarch's "Table Talks", which outlines the content of the treatise of the same name by Aristoxenus, and in "Introduction to the Harmonica" by Cleonides. Interest in the musical theory of Aristoxenus is not at all accidental. The fact is that in his musical treatises he substantiated a fundamentally different approach to music than the one developed in line with the Pythagorean school.

Ancient Greek musician (painted on a red-figure vase, 5th century BC)

The book of Aristoxenus "The Elements of the Harmonica" is the first that has come down to us. Scientific research music. Here we consider the types of melos (diatonic, chromatic, enarmonic), intervals (fused in speech and discrete in singing), sounds, systems (interval structures within a quart, fifth, octave, up to a two-octave Complete system), modes, metabols (changes in genus, system, fret), melopeya (musical composition). Aristoxenus (as opposed to the Pythagoreans) deliberately abandoned the mathematical interpretation of intervals, believing them to be obvious to the musician and not in need of any additional justification. The “musical” arithmetic of Aristoxenus (for example, his division of a whole tone into two equal semitones, which is impossible due to the impossibility of dividing the epimoral numerical ratio equally into two parts) was subsequently sharply criticized by the followers of Pythagorean science. For the scientist-musician (μουσικός), according to Aristoxenus, direct perception is the first and most important prerequisite for further (rational) study of music:

Aristoxenus names the music "practical" science, opposing it with the so-called "apotelestic" arts, to which he refers architecture, painting and sculpture. He substantiates the principles of a practical approach to music and its study. Those who think that "having listened to the harmonica, they will not only become musicians, but also improve their character - from the verbal presentation they misunderstand that we are trying to prove, both in relation to each individual melody, and in relation to all music as a whole, that such and such of them spoils the character, while the other brings benefits. Aristoxenus believes that theoretical knowledge of the laws of harmony alone is not enough to become a musician. This also requires practical training in the musical arts.

Aristoxenus believes that any melody is the subject of the study of harmony, and the main criterion in this area should not be laws, but real human feeling. It is obvious that Aristoxenus opposes the reduction of music to numerical laws, when the nature of auditory perception remains completely aside. But it is the ear that is the first judge in music. Without it, one cannot even distinguish a single interval. In this sense, music is the direct opposite of geometry, which is based on abstract ideas, on abstraction from the particular properties of objects. Aristoxenus says the following about this: "By hearing, we distinguish between the magnitudes of the intervals, and by reason we set the sounds that make them up. So you need to get used to distinguishing each interval. After all, this is not at all the way it is usually said in geometric constructions:" Let it be a straight line. "From the one who says this about intervals for the geometer sense perception is of no importance, for he does not in the least train the eye to distinguish between a straight line, a curve, or anything like that, and to judge good or bad is rather the work of a carpenter, carver, turner, or some another craftsman; and for a musician, the accuracy of sensory perception is almost the main quality, because one who has poor perception cannot well express what he does not perceive at all.

Here, therefore, Aristoxenus comes surprisingly close to characterizing the concrete-sensual nature of musical perception. Perhaps nowhere else in ancient literature do we find such a convinced insistence on the sensual, auditory nature of musical art.

Raphael. Parnassus

This appeal to sensory perception, the main element of music, was not accidental for Aristoxenus. Elsewhere in his treatise he repeats again: "Obviously, the understanding of each melody performed is reduced to the perception by ear and mind of all the differences that are born in sounds - after all, the melody consists in constant occurrence, like other parts of music - and so, the understanding of music is made up of these two parts, of perception and memory. It is necessary to perceive what arises, and by memory to retain what has arisen, since it is impossible to follow the music in any other way.

IN "Elements of harmony" Aristoxenus defines harmony as the doctrine of the elements of music, to which he refers musical genres, modes, modulation and composition, that is, the doctrine of practical ways constructing a melody. In his interpretation, "harmonica" includes not only elements of musical theory, but also deals with issues of musical practice, the actual composition and performance of music.

Music of Ancient Greece

In his treatise, Aristoxenus pays much attention to the issues of inventing and maintaining a melody. In this regard, he again criticizes his predecessors, who, in his opinion, did not pay enough attention to this issue. "Our predecessors simply ignored the concept of melodiousness or non-melodiousness; they either did not try to establish the number of different systems at all, or, when they started doing this, did not bring it to the end - this is exactly what happened in the schools of Pythagoras from Zakynthos and Agenor from Mitylene. With melodic and the non-melodious beginning is the same as with the connection of sounds in speech; the whole syllable is formed not by an arbitrary combination of the sounds themselves, but only in strictly defined cases.

In his treatise, Aristoxenus also spoke out against the formalistic approach to music, against reducing musical theory to instrumentalism or the interpretation of sign systems with which music is recorded. "Some see the goal of the science called harmonics in the representation of melodies by means of signs, thus arguing that this is the limit of understanding of every sounding melody.<...>But such statements can only come from complete ignoramuses. After all, the symbolic image of the melody is neither the goal nor the part of the harmonica, just as the graphic image of the poetic meter is not such for the metric.

Musical culture of ancient Greece

Aesthetics of Aristoxenus was characterized by an educational trend. According to ancient authors, he paid much attention to the upbringing and education of a musician. It is no coincidence that Quintilian calls him "an excellent music teacher."

Aristoxenus played a huge role in the history of ancient musical aesthetics. Cicero compares his merits with what Archimedes did for mathematics.

Aristoxenus created a new direction in musical aesthetics, which was able to resist the Pythagorean line. Therefore, starting from Aristoxenus, we can talk about the existence of two opposite directions in the ancient theory and aesthetics of music: Pythagorean and Aristoxenian. The opposite of these two directions in the approach to music was already realized in ancient times. It is no coincidence that the followers of Aristoxenus were called "harmonics" , and representatives of the Pythagorean direction - "canons" . The struggle between "canons" and "harmonics" determined the development of the musical aesthetics of late antiquity.

Lit.: V.P. Shestakov. History of musical aesthetics

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Introduction

1. Philosophy of the Sophists and Socrates

2. Philosophy of Plato

3. Philosophy of Aristotle

Conclusion

Bibliography

Introduction

Philosophy is one of ancient spheres spiritual life. The whole multifaceted culture, which determines the various civilizations that existed in the past and exist today, includes one or another amount of philosophical knowledge as the most important component.

Greek culture VII - V centuries. BC. - this is the culture of a society in which the leading role belongs to slave labor, although free labor was widely used in certain industries that required high qualifications of producers, such as arts and crafts.

During antiquity, great importance was attached to education in the educational process.

Considering upbringing as a peculiar fact of human existence, the essence of a person was determined in a certain way, which was tempered in the ability to educate oneself and educate others.

The Athenian education system left a mark in the history of the philosophy of education as a predictor of a high spiritual culture, the formation of a harmonious person, the main tasks of which were spiritual wealth, moral purity and physical perfection.

It was in Athens that the idea of the harmonious development of the individual as the goal of education arose.

In the development of the philosophy of ancient Greece, there are four main stages:

I VII-V centuries BC - pre-Socratic philosophy

II V-IV centuries BC - classic stage

III IV-II centuries BC - Hellenistic stage.

(The decline of the Greek cities and the establishment of Macedonian dominance)

IV 1st century BC - V, VI centuries AD - Roman philosophy.

The most significant phenomena of the classical period of Greek philosophy were sophistry and the teachings of the three greatest philosophers of Ancient Greece: Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.

1. Philosophy of the Sophists and Socrates

Sophists are the first professional teachers of "wisdom" and eloquence, the center of philosophical research of which was a person and his attitude to the world.

As a philosophical trend, the sophists do not represent a completely homogeneous phenomenon. Most feature, common to all sophistry, is the assertion of the relativity of all human concepts, ethical norms and assessments.

The Sophists appeared when the development of Greek democracy had already greatly blurred the boundaries that existed between the estates. It thus washed away the former channels of everyday life and values. The individual no longer felt himself to be just a member of his "shop", but an independent person and realized that everything that he had previously taken for granted should be subjected to criticism. He considered himself the subject of criticism. In the second half of the 5th c. BC. in Greece there was an intellectual trend called sophistry. The word comes from two words: love and wisdom.

The Sophists were rightly called representatives of the Greek Enlightenment. They not only deepened the philosophical teachings of the past, but also popularized knowledge, spreading in wide circles of their numerous students what had already been acquired by that time by philosophy and science. The Sophists created in Greece an unprecedented cult of the word and thus the exaltation of rhetoric. Language was a tool for influencing consciousness. To defeat the enemy with any argument is the strategy of the sophists. But on the other hand, sophistry is a dishonest way of conducting disputes, with the help of which tricks are used to discourage others, any argument, just to achieve the goal. The Sophists laid the foundation for such a science as argumentation. The sophists did not pay attention to the study of nature, but they were the first to distinguish between the laws of nature, as something unshakable, and the laws of society, arising from human establishment. Many sophists doubted the existence of the Gods or even denied it, considering it a human invention. Sophists are usually divided into those belonging to the older and younger generations.

Senior group of sophists. It includes Protagoras, Gorgias, Grippius and Prodicus. Protagoras was a materialist and taught about the fluidity of matter and about the relativity of all perceptions. Protagoras argued that every statement can be countered with equal reason by a statement that contradicts it. The materialism of Protagoras is connected with atheism. The treatise attributed to him "On the Gods" begins with the thought: "I can not know anything about the gods: neither that they exist, nor that they do not exist, nor what kind they have likeness." According to the surviving information, Protagoras was accused of godlessness and forced to leave Athens. Most of Protagoras' thoughts refer directly to a person, his life, to practical and cognitive activities.

Developed on the basis of the Eleatic criticism of the concepts of non-existence, movement and the many teachings of Gorgias, it became very famous. He developed an argument in which he argued:

1) nothing exists;

2) if there is something that exists, then it is not knowable;

3) even if it is knowable, its knowledge is inexpressible and inexplicable.

Gorgias distinguishes the meanings of words quite accurately and uses meaning changes in different contexts. Manipulation with speech, its logical and grammatical structure, is also characteristic of other sophists. He paid much attention to rhetoric and its theory, to the influence of verbal influence on listeners. He considered speech to be the best and most perfect instrument of man.

Gorgias' contribution to philosophy is not limited to rhetoric, his relativism and skepticism, awareness of the difference between the knowable and the knower, between thought and its presentation played a positive role in the confrontation with Eleatic philosophy.

Grippius attracted attention not only with geometric studies of curves, but also with reflections on the nature of legislation.

Finally, Prodicus developed the relativistic view to the view that "as the people who use things, such are the things themselves." Sophists of the older group were major thinkers in matters of law and socio-political. Protagoras wrote the laws that determined the democratic form of government in the Athenian colony of Thurii in southern Italy, and substantiated the idea of the equality of free people. Grippius, in his definition of the law, pointed to violent coercion as a condition for the possibility of legislation. The same sophists of the older group tried to critically examine religious beliefs. The writings of Protagoras on the gods were publicly burned and became the reason for the expulsion of the philosopher from Athens, despite the extremely cautious wording religious skepticism. Prodik, developing the views of Anaxagoras and Democritus, began to interpret religious myths as the personification of the forces of nature.

Junior group of sophists . The most prominent representatives of the junior sophists include Lycofro, Alkidamant, Trassimachus. So, Lycofro and Alkidamant opposed the partitions between social classes: Likofro argued that nobility is fiction, and Alkidamant - that nature did not create slaves and that people are born free. Trassimachus extended the doctrine of relativity to social and ethical norms and reduced justice to what is useful for the strong, argued that each power establishes laws that are useful to itself; democracy - democratic, and tyranny - tyrannical, etc.

Sophists are characterized by:

critical attitude to the surrounding reality;

the desire to check everything in practice, to logically prove the correctness or incorrectness of a particular thought;

rejection of the foundations of the old, traditional civilization;

· denial of old traditions, habits, rules based on unproven knowledge;

the desire to prove the conditionality of the state and law, their imperfection;

perception of moral norms not as an absolute given, but as a subject of criticism;

· subjectivism in assessments and judgments, denial of objective existence and attempts to prove that reality exists only in human thoughts.

Representatives of this philosophical school proved their correctness with the help of sophisms - logical tricks, tricks, thanks to which the conclusion that was correct at first glance turned out to be false in the end, and the interlocutor became confused in his own thoughts.

An example of this conclusion is the "horned" sophism:

“What you have not lost, you have, you have not lost the horns; so you have them."

This result is achieved not as a result of paradoxicality, the logical difficulty of sophism, but as a result of the incorrect use of logical semantic operations. In the indicated sophism, the first premise is false, but it is presented as correct, hence the result.

Despite the fact that the activities of the sophists caused disapproval, both of the authorities and representatives of other philosophical schools, the sophists made a great contribution to Greek philosophy and culture. Their main merits include the fact that they:

critically looked at the surrounding reality;

· spread a large amount of philosophical and other knowledge among the citizens of the Greek city-states (for which they were later called ancient Greek enlighteners).

Currently sophistry called logically incorrect reasoning, imaginary evidence, passing off as correct.

The most respected of the philosophers related to sophistry was Socrates.

Socrates was born in 469 BC. e. He was the son of a stonemason and a midwife. Received a varied education. He studied the sciences of his time (in particular, mathematics, astronomy and meteorology), and in his younger years he was fond of the sciences of nature. In terms of property, Socrates was rather poor than rich; he received a small inheritance and led an unpretentious life and did not complain about his fate.

During the Peloponnesian War, Socrates took part in three military operations as a hoplite (heavily armed infantryman) and proved to be a courageous and hardy warrior who did not lose his presence of mind during the retreat of the army and was faithful to his combat comrades-in-arms. A year before the start of the Peloponnesian War, Socrates participated in the siege of Potidea, which announced its withdrawal from the Athenian Union.

Socrates showed not only military prowess on the battlefields, but also civil courage in the difficult ups and downs of the social and political life of his homeland. True, on the issue of participation in the politics of the state, in the activities of its institutions, Socrates chose a very peculiar position. He deliberately avoided participating in public life, motivating this by the fundamental discrepancy between his inner conviction regarding justice and legality and the observed multitude of injustices and lawlessness that are committed in the state. At the same time, he did not consider himself entitled to evade the fulfillment of civic obligations (attendance at a people's assembly, participation in a jury trial, etc.) imposed on him by the laws of the state.

By nature, he was a very kind person. Walking in a patched cloak around the square, he liked to start conversations with passers-by. And when they asked him why you, Socrates, walk barefoot and in such a dress, he answered: "You live in order to eat, but I eat in order to live." It would seem, what a simple answer, but how much wisdom in these words.

Socrates did not leave significant philosophical works, but went down in history as an outstanding polemicist, sage, philosopher-teacher.

Socrates taught that there are unwritten moral laws that are obligatory for everyone, but only a few manage to master morality, who were able to learn this and follow the knowledge gained. Virtue, the highest and absolute good, which is the goal of human life, for only it gives happiness.

Socrates - man, ancient Greek philosophy which marks the turn from materialistic naturalism to idealism. He is a representative of an idealistic religious and moral worldview openly hostile to materialism. For the first time, it was Socrates who consciously set himself the task of substantiating idealism and opposed the ancient materialistic worldview, natural science and godlessness. Socrates was historically the initiator of Plato's line in ancient philosophy.

Socrates considered his most important vocation to be “education of a person”, the meaning that he saw in discussions and conversations, and not in a systematic presentation of some area of knowledge. He never considered himself "wise" (sophos), but a philosopher "loving wisdom" (philosophy). The title of sage, in his opinion, befits a god. If a person self-satisfiedly believes that he knows ready-made answers to everything, then such a person is dead for philosophy, there is no need for him to rack his brains in search of the most correct concepts, there is no need to move on in search of new solutions to a particular problem. As a result, the sage turns out to be a “parrot” who has memorized a few phrases and throws them into the crowd.

At the center of Socratic thought is the theme of man, the problems of life and death, good and evil, virtues and vices, right and duty, freedom and responsibility of society. And the Socratic discourses are an instructive and authoritative example of how one can navigate through the thicket of these eternally topical questions. The appeal to Socrates at all times was an attempt to understand oneself and one's time. Socrates considered the main task of his life to teach a person to think, the ability to find a deep spiritual beginning in himself.

The method he chose to solve this difficult task - irony liberating a person from self-confidence, from uncritical acceptance of someone else's opinion.

The purpose of irony is not the destruction of common moral principles, on the contrary, as a result of an ironic attitude to everything external, to preconceived opinions, a person develops general idea about the spiritual beginning that lies in every person. Reason and morality are basically identical, Socrates believed. Happiness is a conscious virtue. Philosophy should become the doctrine of how a person should live. Philosophy develops a general concept of things, reveals a single basis of the existing, which for the human mind turns out to be good - the highest goal. A single basis of human life does not exist in isolation from the spiritual efforts of the person himself, it is not an indifferent natural principle. Only when the one becomes the goal of a person, is presented in the form of a concept, will it constitute his happiness.

In his research, Socrates concentrates on the problems of man, while understanding man not as a natural being with the autonomy of existence, but referring to a person who knows, who is in a state of knowledge. Socrates changes the very direction of intellectual searches.

He poses and resolves the question: "What is the nature and ultimate reality of man, what is the essence of man?" At the same time, Socrates comes to the answer: a person is his soul, but from the moment the soul becomes truly human, mature, capable of being the difference between a person and other creatures. "Soul" is the mind, the thinking activity, moral conduct. The soul in this sense is the philosophical discovery of Socrates.

Philosophy, from the point of view of Socrates, is the true way of knowing good and evil. Socrates realizes this knowledge in the process of his conversations. In them, Socrates proceeds from the facts of private life, from the specific phenomena of the surrounding reality. He compares individual moral actions, singles out common elements in them, analyzes them in order to discover contradictory moments that precede their explanation, and, ultimately, reduces them to a higher unity on the basis of isolating some essential features. In this way he reaches general concept about good, evil, justice, beauty, etc. The goal of the critical work of the mind, according to Socrates, should be to obtain a concept based on a strictly scientific definition of the subject.

Socrates taught that philosophy - the love of wisdom, the love of knowledge - can be regarded as a moral activity if knowledge in itself is good. And this position is driving force all of his activities. Socrates believed that if a person knows what is good and what is bad, then he will never act badly. Moral evil comes from ignorance, which means that knowledge is the source of moral perfection.

Truth and morality, for Socrates - coinciding concepts. It can be argued that there is a true morality. According to Socrates, the knowledge of what is good, and at the same time what is useful to a person, contributes to his bliss, his happiness in life. Socrates named three basic human virtues:

moderation (knowing how to curb passion);

courage (knowing how to overcome danger);

justice (knowledge of how to keep the laws of God and man).

Thus, Socrates tried to find in consciousness, thinking a solid support on which the building of morality and all social life, including the state, could stand.

The main method developed and applied by Socrates was called "maieutics". The essence of maieutics is not to teach the truth, but to bring the interlocutor to the independent finding of the truth, thanks to logical techniques, leading questions.

Socrates conducted his philosophy and educational work in the midst of the people, in the squares, markets in the form of an open conversation (dialogue, dispute), the topics of which were the topical problems of that time, which are still relevant today: good; evil; Love; happiness; honesty, etc. The philosopher was a supporter of ethical realism, according to which:

any knowledge is good;

Any evil, vice is committed from ignorance.

The historical significance of Socrates is that he

promoted the dissemination of knowledge, enlightenment of citizens;

· looking for answers to the eternal problems of mankind - good and evil, love, honor, etc.;

discovered the method of maieutics, widely used in modern education;

· introduced a dialogical method of finding the truth - by proving it in a free dispute, and not declared, as a number of previous philosophers did;

· brought up many students, successors of his work (for example, Plato), stood at the origins of a number of so-called "Socratic schools".

Socrates was not understood by the official authorities and was perceived by them as an ordinary sophist, undermining the foundations of society, confusing the youth. For this he was in 399 BC. sentenced to death. According to the surviving testimonies, the accusers did not "thirst for blood", it would have been enough for them if Socrates, not subjected to arrest, voluntarily retired from Athens and did not appear in court. But despite the warning, he appeared at the court, fully aware of the danger that threatened him. The court decision was not in favor of Socrates, he was found guilty. Socrates' friends prepared everything for his successful escape from prison, but he refused, because he believed that escape could mean giving up his ideas, from the moral principles that he professed and taught other people. According to the verdict of the court, Socrates drank a deadly poison, thereby he wanted to prove that a true philosopher must live and die in accordance with his teachings.

2. Philosophy of Plato

Plato (427 - 347 BC;) - the greatest ancient Greek philosopher. Plato's real name is Aristocles, "Plato" is a nickname meaning "broad-shouldered". He was the son of an Athenian citizen. According to his social position, he came from the Athenian slave-owning aristocracy. In his youth, he was a student of the circle of a supporter of the teachings of Heraclitus - Cratyl, where he got acquainted with the principles of objective dialectics, he was also influenced by Cratyl's tendency towards absolute relativism. At the age of 20, he was preparing to enter the competition as an author of a tragedy, and by chance overheard a discussion in which Socrates was participating. She fascinated him so much that he burned his poems and became a student of Socrates.

Plato - the great student of Socrates, the founder of his own school - the Academy, which has existed for almost a thousand years, develops an image of the world worthy of the emerging human personality; sets before man goals worthy of the harmony of the Cosmos. Existence and non-existence in his system are not two equal explanatory principles of the world order, indifferent to man, his goals and hopes. The world is “centered” around a person, formless matter swirls at his feet - non-existence, his gaze is turned to the sky - beautiful, good, eternal - being.

Philosophy for Plato is a kind of contemplation of truth. It is purely intellectual, it is not just wisdom, but the love of wisdom. Everyone who is engaged in any kind of creative work is in such a state of mind when truth or beauty is presented in a sudden illumination.

Plato is the founder of objective idealism. Central to Plato's philosophy is the doctrine of ideas. Thus, ideas are the essence of things, that which makes each thing exactly "this", given, and not another. Otherwise, ideas are what makes each thing what it is. Plato uses the term "paradigm", thereby indicating that ideas form a timeless (permanent) model of every thing. Plato understands supersensible reality as a hierarchy of ideas: the lower ideas are subordinate to the upper ones.

At the top of the hierarchy is the idea of the Good in itself - it is not conditioned by anything, therefore, it is absolute. In the dialogue "State", Plato writes about it as generating the very being. The sensually perceived world (cosmos) is structured by ideas. The physical world comes from ideas. The sensory world in Plato is a perfect order (cosmos), which is an expression of the triumph of logos over the blind necessity of matter. Matter is the rookery of the sensual, in Plato's definition, it is "hora" (spatiality). She is in the grip of a formless and chaotic movement.

The main question of Plato's cosmology: how is the cosmos born out of the chaos of matter? Plato answers as follows: there is a Demiurge (God the creator, having will, thinking, personal), who, taking the world of ideas as a model, created the physical cosmos from matter. At the same time, the reason for the creation of the universe lies in the pure desire of the Demiurge. Plato defines the main motive for creation in the Timaeus dialogue as follows: “He was good, and he who is good never feels envy in any way. Being a stranger to envy, he wished that all things become as similar as possible to him himself ... God, took care of all visible things, which were not at rest, but in disordered and chaotic movement, he brought them out of disorder into order, believing that the second is certainly better than the first.sophist idealism Aristotle morality

It is impossible now, and it was impossible of old, that the one who is the highest good should produce something that would not be the most beautiful; meanwhile, reflection showed him that of all things that are by nature visible, not one creature devoid of mind can be more beautiful than one endowed with mind, if compared, both as a whole; and the mind cannot dwell in anyone apart from the soul. Guided by this reasoning, he arranged the mind in the soul, and the soul in the body, and thus built the Universe, meaning to create the most beautiful and by its nature the best creation.

In outer space there is a world soul (spirit). The human soul is independent of the body and is immortal. The longer the soul stays in the realm of ideas, the more knowledge it will bring to a person. The soul enters the body. It consists of 3 parts:

· Passion.

· Sensual desires.

The victory of reason over passion and desires is possible with proper education. Man himself cannot cultivate. Personal efforts are not enough for self-education. The state and laws help a person in this. He wrote the book "State, Politics, Law".

The state is an organization of politicians who have an apparatus of coercion, territory, sovereignty, giving their decrees a generally binding character. He divided states into positive and negative and identified 4 types of negative states.

· Timocracy - the state, which reflects the interests of the owners, creates material values. “Power is based on the rule of the ambitious. First, the features of a perfect state, then luxury (luxury as a way of life).

· Oligarchy - the domination of the few over the majority, these are the few squanderers, the rich and the drones that generate evil, crime and theft.

· Democracy - it develops from an oligarchy into the worst state form. Democracy is rule and majority rule, where contradictions arise between the poor and the rich. They escalate and escalate into an uprising. The victory of the poor, they expel the old rulers, then they share power, but they cannot govern and give power to dictators, tyrants.

Tyranny - the power of one over all,

He proposes a new type of state - perfect. Perfect State - the best government where a few gifted, professional people lead. The main principle of which is justice.

· Perfection of the state in its own organization and means of protection.

Ability to systematically supply the country material goods to guide and direct the creativity and spiritual activity of the country.

Plato points out that citizens live in a perfect state. According to the moral inclinations and properties of a person, their professions, they are divided into categories:

· Workers in various industries (potters, peasants, merchants, etc.) producing food and products - the lowest class of citizens.

· Warriors - guards over the first category.

· Rulers-philosophers, morally they are higher than warriors, and warriors are higher than producers. Rulers must be guided by the principles that form the basis of the state: wisdom, courage, restraint, justice, unanimity.

The perfect state according to Plato has four virtues:

the wisdom

courage,

prudence,

justice.

By "wisdom" Plato means higher knowledge. Only philosophers should rule the state, and only under their rule will the state prosper.

“Courage” is also the privilege of a few (“A state is courageous only thanks to some one of its parts”). "Courage I consider a kind of preservation ... that preserves a certain opinion about the danger - what it is and what it is."

The third virtue - prudence, unlike the two previous ones, belongs to all members of the state. "Something like order - that's what prudence is."

The existence of "justice" in the state is prepared and conditioned by "prudence". Thanks to justice itself, each category of society and each individual person receives his own special task for the performance. "This doing one's own is probably justice."

It is interesting that Plato, who lived during the time of the general slave system, does not give slaves special attention. All production concerns are assigned to artisans and farmers. Here Plato writes that only "barbarians", non-Hellenes, can be turned into slavery during the war. However, he also says that war is an evil that arises in vicious states for enrichment, and in an ideal state, war should be avoided, therefore there will be no slaves. In his opinion, the highest ranks (castes) should not have private property in order to maintain unity.

However, in the dialogue "Laws", which also discusses the problems of the state system, Plato shifts the main economic concerns to slaves and strangers, but condemns the warriors. Philosophers, on the basis of reason, govern the rest of the classes, limiting their freedom, and the warriors play the role of "dogs" holding the lower "herd" in obedience. This aggravates the already cruel division into categories. Plato wants to achieve the same result by "socializing" not only human property, but also wives and children.

According to Plato, men and women should not marry on their own whim. It turns out that marriage is secretly controlled by philosophers, mating the best with the best, and the worst with the worst. After childbirth, the children are selected and given to their mothers after some time, and no one knows whose child he got, and all men (within the caste) are considered the fathers of all children, and all women are the common wives of all men.

In Athens, Plato opened a school - Academy. Plato's school got its name from the fact that classes were held in the halls of the gymnasium in the vicinity of Athens, called the Academy (after the Greek hero Academ). Near this gymnasium, Plato acquired a small plot of land where the members of his school could gather and live.

Access to the school was open to everyone. While studying at the Academy, Plato combined the teachings of Socrates and the teachings of the Pythagoreans, whom he met during his first trip to Sicily. From Socrates, he took the dialectical method, irony, interest in ethical problems; from Pythagoras - inherited the ideal of the common life of philosophers and the idea of education with the help of symbols based on mathematics, as well as the possibility of applying this science to the knowledge of nature.

Plato died in 348 or 347 BC. at the age of eighty years, until the end of his life, retaining the fullness of his mighty mind. His body is buried in Keramika, not far from the Academy.

3. Philosophy of Aristotle

Aristotle was born in Stagira, a Greek colony in Halkidiki, near Mount Athos, in 384 BC. Aristotle's father's name was Nicomachus, he was a doctor at the court of Amyntas III, king of Macedon. Nicomachus came from a family of hereditary doctors, in which the medical art was passed down from generation to generation. The father was the first mentor of Aristotle. Already in childhood, Aristotle met Philip, the future father of Alexander the Great, which did not play last role in his future appointment as Alexander's tutor.

In 369 BC. e. Aristotle lost his parents. Proxenus became the guardian of the young philosopher (later Aristotle spoke warmly of him, and when Proxenus died, he adopted his son Nicanor). Aristotle inherited significant funds from his father, this gave him the opportunity to continue his education under the guidance of Proxenus. Books were very expensive then, but Proxen bought him even the rarest ones. Thus, Aristotle in his youth became addicted to reading. Under the guidance of his guardian, Aristotle studied plants and animals, which in the future developed into a separate work, On the Origin of Animals.

The youthful years of Aristotle fell at the time of the beginning of the heyday of Macedonia. Aristotle received a Greek education and was a native speaker of this language, he sympathized with the democratic form of government, but at the same time he was a subject of the Macedonian ruler. This contradiction will play a certain role in his fate.

Aristotle is the greatest ancient Greek philosopher. Aristotle was deservedly called the encyclopedist of ancient Greece. Aristotle is the founder of a number of sciences: philosophy, logic, psychology, biology, political science, economics, history, etc., the founder of dualism, the "father" of logic, a student and resolute opponent of Plato.

Educated in Athens, in the school of Plato. Criticized the Platonic concept of being. Aristotle saw Plato's mistake in that he attributed independent existence to ideas, isolating and separating them from the sensual world, which is characterized by movement, change. Aristotle considered being as an objective world, the actual principle of a thing, inseparable from it, as an immovable engine, a divine mind or an intangible form of all forms. Being is a living substance, characterized by special principles or four principles (conditions) of being:

· Matter is “that from which”. The variety of things that exist objectively; matter is eternal, uncreated and indestructible; it cannot arise from nothing, increase or decrease in its quantity; it is inert and passive. Formless matter is nothingness. Primarily formed matter is expressed in the form of five primary elements (elements): air, water, earth, fire and ether (heavenly substance).

The form is "what". Essence, stimulus, purpose, and also the reason for the formation of diverse things from monotonous matter. God (or mind-prime mover) creates forms of various things from matter. Aristotle approaches the idea of a single being of a thing, a phenomenon: it is a fusion of matter and form.

· The effective cause (beginning) is “that from where”. The beginning of all beginnings is God. There is a causal dependence of the phenomenon of existence: there is an active cause - this is an energy force that generates something at rest of the universal interaction of the phenomena of existence, not only matter and form, act and potency, but also the generating energy-cause, which, along with the active principle, also has a target meaning, that is

Purpose - “what for”. The highest goal is the Good.

Aristotle developed a hierarchical system of categories, in which the main one was "essence", or "substance", and the rest were considered its features.

From Aristotle, the basic concepts of space and time begin to take shape:

· substantial - considers space and time as independent entities, the beginning of the world.

· relational -- considers the existence of material objects.

The categories of space and time act as a "method" and a number of motion, that is, as a sequence of real and mental events and states, and therefore are organically linked with the principle of development.

Aristotle saw the concrete embodiment of Beauty as the principle of the world order in the Idea or Mind.

Aristotle created a hierarchy of levels of everything that exists (from matter as an opportunity to the formation of individual forms of being and beyond):

Inorganic formations (inorganic world).

world of plants and living beings.

The world of various kinds of animals.

· Human.

According to Aristotle, world movement there is an integral process: all its moments are mutually conditioned, which implies the presence of a single engine. Further, starting from the concept of causality, he comes to the concept of the first cause. And this is the so-called. cosmological proof of the existence of God. God is the first cause of motion, the beginning of all beginnings, since there cannot be an infinite series of causes or without beginning. There is a self-causing cause: the cause of all causes.

The absolute beginning of any movement is the deity as a global supersensible substance. Aristotle substantiated the existence of a deity by considering the principle of the beautification of the Cosmos. According to Aristotle, the deity serves as the subject of the highest and most perfect knowledge, since all knowledge is directed to form and essence, and God is pure form and the first essence.

Aristotle's ethics is closely connected with his doctrine of the soul. The soul, in his opinion, belongs only to living beings. The soul is an entelechy. Entelechy is the implementation of a goal-directed process, conditionality through a goal. The soul is closely connected with the body, it contributes to the deployment of all the possibilities hidden in a living being. There are three kinds of soul. The vegetative soul (the ability to feed), the animal soul (the ability to feel). These two kinds of soul are inseparable from the body and are also inherent in man. The rational soul is inherent only in man, it is not an entelechy, it is separable from the body, not innate to him, immortal.

The main goal of man is the pursuit of good. The highest good is happiness, bliss. Since man is endowed with an intelligent soul, his benefit is the perfect performance of intelligent activity. The condition for achieving goodness is the possession of virtues. Virtue is the achievement of perfection in every kind of activity, it is skill, the ability to find the only right solution for yourself. Aristotle identifies 11 ethical virtues: courage, moderation, generosity, splendor, generosity, ambition, evenness, truthfulness, courtesy, friendliness, justice. The latter is the most necessary for living together.

Reasonable (virtues of the mind) - develop in a person through training - wisdom, quick wits, prudence.

moral (virtues of character) - are born from habits-morals: a person acts, gains experience and on the basis of this, his character traits are formed.

Virtue is a measure, a golden mean between two extremes: excess and deficiency.

Virtue - it is "the ability to do the best in everything that concerns pleasures and pains, and depravity is its opposite."

Virtue is the inner order or constitution of the soul; order is acquired by man in a conscious and purposeful effort.

In explaining his teaching, Aristotle gives a short essay, presenting a "table" of virtues and vices in their correlation with various types of activity:

Courage is the middle between reckless courage and cowardice (in relation to danger).

prudence is the middle ground between licentiousness and what might be called "insensitivity" (in relation to the pleasures associated with the sense of touch and taste).

Generosity is the middle between extravagance and stinginess (in relation to material goods).

· grandeur is the middle between arrogance and humiliation (in relation to honor and dishonor).

· evenness - the middle between anger and "non-anger".

Truthfulness is the middle between boasting and pretense.

wit is the middle between buffoonery and uncouthness.

· Friendliness is the middle between absurdity and servility.

Shame is the middle between shamelessness and timidity.

A moral person, according to Aristotle, is one who leads the mind, coupled with virtue. Aristotle accepts the Platonic ideal of contemplation, but leads to it activity, since a person is born not only for intellect, but also for action.

For Aristotle, man is primarily a social or political entity(“political animal”), gifted with speech and capable of understanding such concepts as good and evil, justice and injustice, that is, possessing moral qualities. There are two principles in man: biological and social. Already from the moment of his birth, a person is not left alone with himself; he joins in all the accomplishments of the past and present, in the thoughts and feelings of all mankind. Human life outside of society is impossible.

Aristotle criticized Plato's doctrine of a perfect state, and preferred to talk about such a political system that most states can have. He believed that the community of property, wives and children proposed by Plato would lead to the destruction of the state. Aristotle was a staunch defender of the rights of the individual, private property and the monogamous family, as well as a supporter of slavery. About Aristotle, man is a political being, that is, a social one, and he carries within himself an instinctive desire for "cohabitation together."

Aristotle considered the formation of a family as the first result of social life - husband and wife, parents and children ... The need for mutual exchange led to communication between families and villages. This is how the state was born. The state is created not in order to live in general, but to live, mostly, happily.

Having identified society with the state, Aristotle was forced to search for the goals, interests and nature of people's activities from their property status and used this criterion when characterizing various strata of society. He singled out three main layers of citizens: the very wealthy, the middle, and the extremely poor. According to Aristotle, the poor and the rich “turn out to be elements in the state that are diametrically opposed to each other, that, depending on the preponderance of one or another of the elements, the corresponding form of the state system is also established.”

Being a supporter of the slave system, Aristotle closely connected slavery with the issue of property: in the very essence of things, an order is rooted, by virtue of which, from the moment of birth, some creatures are destined for submission, while others for domination. This is a general law of nature and animated beings are also subject to it. According to Aristotle, who by nature does not belong to himself, but to another, and at the same time is still a man, is by nature a slave.

Aristotle taught that the Earth, which is the center of the universe, is spherical. Aristotle saw proof of the sphericity of the Earth in the nature of lunar eclipses, in which the shadow cast by the Earth on the Moon has a rounded shape at the edges, which can only be if the Earth is spherical. The stars, according to Aristotle, are motionless fixed in the sky and circulate with it, and the "wandering luminaries" (planets) move in seven concentric circles. Cause celestial movement is God.

The enduring merit of Aristotle is the creation of science, which he called ethics. For the first time among Greek thinkers he made the will the basis of morality. Aristotle considered thinking free from matter as the supreme principle in the world - a deity. Though man will never reach the level divine life, but, as far as it is in his power, he should strive for it as an ideal. The approval of this ideal allowed Aristotle to create, on the one hand, a realistic ethics based on being, i.e. on the norms and principles taken from life itself, what it is in reality, and on the other hand, ethics, not devoid of an ideal.

According to the spirit of the ethical teaching of Aristotle, the well-being of a person depends on his mind of prudence, foresight. Aristotle placed science (reason) above morality, thus making the contemplative life the moral ideal.

The humanism of Aristotle is different from Christian humanism, according to which “all people are brothers”, i.e. everyone is equal before God. Aristotelian ethics proceeds from the fact that people are not the same in their abilities, forms of activity and degree of activity, therefore the level of happiness or bliss is different, and for some, life may turn out to be generally unhappy. So, Aristotle believes that a slave cannot be happy. He put forward the theory of the "natural" superiority of the Hellenes ("free by nature") over the "barbarians" ("slaves by nature"). For Aristotle, a person outside of society is either a god or an animal, but since slaves were a foreign, alien element deprived of civil rights, it turned out that slaves were, as it were, not people, and a slave becomes a man only after gaining freedom.

The ethics and politics of Aristotle study the same question - the question of cultivating the virtues and forming the habits of living virtuously in order to achieve happiness that is available to man in different aspects: the first is in the aspects of nature individual person, the second - in terms of the socio-political life of citizens. To cultivate a virtuous lifestyle and behavior, morality alone is not enough; laws that have coercive force are also needed. Therefore, Aristotle states that “public attention (to education) arises due to laws, and good attention due to respectable laws”

Conclusion

The specificity of ancient Greek philosophy is the desire to understand the essence of nature, the world as a whole, and the cosmos. It is no coincidence that the first Greek philosophers were called "physicists" (from the Greek phisis - nature). The main question in ancient Greek philosophy was the question of the beginning of the world. In this sense, philosophy has something in common with mythology, inherits its worldview problems. But if mythology seeks to resolve this issue according to the principle - who gave birth to things, then philosophers are looking for a substantial beginning - from which everything happened.

The first Greek philosophers strive to construct a picture of the world, to reveal the universal foundations of the existence of this world. The accumulation of a body of knowledge by philosophy, the development of tools for thinking about changing social life, under the influence of which the human personality is formed, the formation of new social needs led to a further step in development. philosophical problems. There is a transition from the predominant study of nature to the consideration of man, his life in all its diverse manifestations, a subjectivist-anthropological tendency arises in philosophy.

Beginning with the Sophists and Socrates, philosophy for the first time formulates the main worldview question as the question of the relation of the subject to the object, the spirit to nature, thinking to being. What is specific for philosophy is not a separate consideration of man and the world, but their constant correlation. Philosophical perception of the world is always subjective, personally colored, it is impossible to abstract from the presence of a knowing, evaluating and emotionally experiencing person. Philosophy is self-conscious thinking.

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Famous and world philosophers of Ancient Greece

When talking about ancient Greek philosophy, Socrates comes to mind, one of the first thinkers who used philosophy as a way of knowing the truth. His main principle was that in order to know the world, a person needs to truly know himself true. In other words, he was sure that with the help of self-knowledge, anyone can achieve real bliss in life. The teaching said that human mind pushes people to good deeds, because a thinker will never do bad deeds. Socrates presented his own teaching orally, and his students wrote down his knowledge in their writings. And because of this, we will be able to read his words in our time.

The “Socratic” way of conducting disputes made it clear that the truth is known only in a dispute. After all, it is with the help of leading questions that one can force both opponents to admit their defeat, and then notice the justice of the words of their opponent. Socrates also believed that a person who does not deal with political affairs has no right to condemn the active work of politics.

The philosopher Plato introduced the first classical form of objective idealism into his teaching. Such ideas, among which was the highest (the idea of the good), were eternal and unchanging models of things, everything. Things, in turn, played the role of reflecting ideas. These thoughts can be found in the writings of Plato, such as "Feast", "State", "Phaedrus" and others. Conducting dialogues with his students, Plato often spoke about beauty. Answering the question “What is beautiful”, the philosopher gave a description of the very essence of beauty. As a result, Plato came to the conclusion that a peculiar idea plays the role of everything beautiful. A person can know this only at the time of inspiration.

The first philosophers of ancient Greece

Aristotle, who was a student of Plato and a pupil of Alexander the Great, also belongs to the philosophers of Ancient Greece. It was he who became the founder scientific philosophy, leading the teachings of the possibilities and implementation of human abilities, matter and the form of thoughts and ideas. He was mainly interested in people, politics, art, ethnic views. Unlike his teacher, Aristotle saw beauty not in the general idea, but in the objective quality of things. For him, true beauty was magnitude, symmetry, proportions, order, in other words, mathematical quantities. Therefore, Aristotle believed that in order to achieve the beautiful, a person must study mathematics.

Speaking of mathematics, one cannot but recall Pythagoras, who created the multiplication table and his own theorem with his name. This philosopher was sure that the truth lies in the study of whole numbers and proportions. Even the doctrine of the “harmony of the spheres” was developed, in which it was indicated that the whole world is a separate cosmos. Pythagoras and his students asked questions of musical acoustics, which were solved by the ratio of tones. As a result, it was concluded that beauty is a harmonious figure.

Another philosopher who looked for beauty in science was Democritus. He discovered the existence of atoms and devoted his life to finding the answer to the question "What is beauty?". The thinker argued that true purpose existence of man is his desire for bliss and complacency. He believed that you should not strive for any pleasure, and you need to know only that which keeps beauty in itself. Defining beauty, Democritus pointed out that beauty has its own measure. If you cross it, then even the most real pleasure will turn into torment.

Heraclitus saw beauty impregnated with dialectics. The thinker saw harmony not as a static balance, like Pythagoras, but as a constantly moving state. Heraclitus argued that beauty is possible only with contradiction, which is the creator of harmony and the condition for the existence of all that is beautiful. It was in the struggle between agreement and dispute that Heraclitus saw examples of the true harmony of beauty.

Hippocrates is a philosopher whose writings have become famous in the fields of medicine and ethics. It was he who became the founder of scientific medicine, wrote essays on the integrity of the human body. He taught his students an individual approach to a sick person, to keep a history of diseases, and medical ethics. The students learned from the thinker to pay attention to the high moral character of doctors. It was Hippocrates who became the author of the famous oath that everyone who becomes a doctor takes: do no harm to the patient.

Periodization of ancient Greek philosophy

As ancient Greek philosophers succeeded each other and became representatives of new teachings, in each century scientists find striking differences in the study of science. That is why the periodization of the development of the philosophy of ancient Greece is usually divided into four main stages:

pre-Socratic philosophy (4-5 centuries BC);
classical stage (5-6 centuries BC);
Hellenic stage (6th century BC-2nd century AD);
Roman philosophy (6th century BC-6th century AD).

The pre-Socratic period is the time that was designated in the 20th century. During this period, there were philosophical schools that were led by philosophers before Socrates. One of them was the thinker Heraclitus.

The classical period is a conventional concept that denoted the flowering of philosophy in Ancient Greece. It was at this time that the teachings of Socrates, the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle appeared.

The Hellenic period is the time when Alexander the Great formed states in Asia and Africa. It is characterized by the birth of the Stoic philosophical direction, the working activity of the schools of the students of Socrates, the philosophy of the thinker Epicurus.

The Roman period is the time when such famous philosophers as Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Tut Lucretius Carus appeared.

Philosophy in ancient Greece appeared and improved during the period of the emergence of a slave-owning society. Then such people were divided into groups of slaves who were engaged in physical labor, and into a society of people who were engaged in mental labor. Philosophy would not have appeared if the development of natural science, mathematics and astronomy had not taken place in a timely manner. In ancient times, no one singled out natural science as a separate area for human knowledge. Every knowledge about the world or about people was included in philosophy. Therefore, ancient Greek philosophy was called the science of sciences.

Philosophical reflections appeared already in the first works of the ancient Greek historians Thucydides, Herodotus and Homer. In the VI century BC. the philosophy of ancient Greece was born. Around the same time, philosophical currents appeared in India and Egypt.

The formation of ancient Greek philosophy in the VI-V century BC. e.

First philosophical school in ancient Greece, it is customary to consider the school of the thinker Thales in the city of Miletskut. Hence the name of this school, Milesian. The first school of philosophers was distinguished by the fact that they understood the world as a whole, without separating living substances from non-living ones.

Thales . This philosopher was the first to discover the Constellation Ursa Major and determined that the light of the moon falling on the earth is its reflection. According to the teachings of Thales, everything that surrounds us consists of water. His thesis is “everything from water and everything into water”. Water is an animated substance, which, like the cosmos, is endowed with animated forces. Thales laid the idea of \u200b\u200bthe unity of command of nature, that is, born from a single whole. Contemporaries call it natural philosophy.
Anaximander . The earth, according to his teaching, is a weightless body that floats in the air. Modern world formed from marine sediments on the border between water and shore. According to Anaximander, the universe dies in order to be reborn again.
Another representative Milesian school Anaximenes introduced the concept of appeiron - an indefinite beginning. He understands air as filling everything living and non-living. The human soul also consists of air. If you discharge the air, it will disintegrate into flame and ether, according to the philosopher, while condensing, the air turns first into clouds, then into wind and stones.
Of the philosophers of Ancient Greece of the early period of formation, he stood out from Ephos. He came from an aristocratic family, but left his home and went with his students to the mountains. Heraclitus considered fire to be the foundation of all things. The human soul, eternally burning, also consists of fire. The fate of the sage is to be eternally filled with the fire of the search for truth, the philosopher argued. One of the most famous theses of Heraclitus: “everything flows, everything changes.” Like the philosophers of the Milesian school, Heraclitus believed that the universe dies in order to be reborn again. The main difference of his philosophy is that all living material is born in fire and goes into fire.

Rice. 1. Heraclitus.

Heraclitus created a new concept in philosophy - "Logos" is a kind of code of laws created by divine forces. The Logos, in other words, is the voice of the cosmos, but even having heard it, people do not understand and do not accept it. All living things can change, but the essence of the Logos always remains the same.

Pythagoras . This ancient Greek philosopher and mathematician founded his school in Croton. The Pythagoreans believed that a person with a noble heart should rule the state. At the heart of all things, the thinker believed, are numbers. The scientist is also known for proving his geometric and mathematical theorems. The Pythagorean table has been used since ancient times to this day.

Elat School

The Elatian school focused on explaining the nature of the world and the existence of man in this world. The main philosophers of this school are Zeno, Xenophanes and Parmenides.

Xenophanes , philosopher and poet, one of the first to talk about the mobility of the universe. He also criticized the religion of the ancient Greeks. He also ridiculed soothsayers with soothsayers, calling them swindlers.
Adopted son of Parmenides Zeno developed the theory of the “world of opinion”, in which the main role belongs to movement and number. This thinker tries to cut off everything incomprehensible by the method of elimination.
Parmenides argued that there is nothing in the world but being. The criterion of everything, the philosopher believed, is the mind, and everything sensual has blurred boundaries and is not subject to deep understanding.

Democritus

One of the most prominent ideologists of natural philosophy was the thinker Democritus.

Democritus it was argued that at the foot of the universe lies many worlds. Each such world consists of atoms and emptiness, emptiness fills the space between atoms and the world. Atoms themselves are indivisible, they do not change and are immortal, their number is infinite. The philosopher argued that everything that happens in the world has its own reason, and knowledge of the reasons is the basis of action.

At the first stage of the formation of ancient Greek philosophy, a generalization of knowledge appears. The first philosophers are trying to understand the structure of the world, there are concepts of space and atoms filling space.

The Rise of Ancient Greek Philosophy

In the period of the V-IV centuries BC. Exact sciences and natural sciences developed in ancient Greece. It is noteworthy that this development takes place against the background of mythology and religion.

sophist school

The school of sophists was known for its critical attitude to the polytheistic religion of Ancient Hellas; Protagoras became the founder of this school.

Protagoras was a philosopher-traveler who traveled all over Greece and was abroad. He met with prominent political figures of Hellas: Pericles and Euripides, who sought his advice. The basis of the ideology of Protagoras was his thesis: “man is the measure of everything” and “man understands everything as he understands”. His words should be understood as what a person sees and feels, and is in fact. The teachings of the philosopher led to the fact that he was accused of atheism and expelled from Athens.
Antiphon - one of the younger generation of the sophist school. The thinker believed that man himself must take care of himself, while the essence of nature is inseparable from man. Antiphon, as well as Protagoras, was persecuted by the authorities for marrying a slave and setting all his slaves free.

Socrates

This philosopher, born in 469 BC, loved to walk the streets of the city and have conversations with people. Being a sculptor by profession, Socrates managed to take part in the Peloponnesian War.

Philosophy Socrates completely different from the ideology of his predecessors. Unlike them, Socrates does not offer to reflect and contemplate, he offers to act in the name of noble goals. To live in the name of good is the main thesis of Socrates. The thinker considers knowledge as a common foundation for self-development of the individual. “Know thyself” is the main thesis of the philosopher. In 399 BC. e. Socrates was accused of blasphemy and corruption of youth. He was sentenced to death. As a free citizen of Hellas, Socrates had to take poison, which he did.

Rice. 2. Socrates. The work of Lysippos.

Plato

After the death of Socrates, Plato became one of the most prominent figures among the philosophers of ancient Greece. In 387 B.C. e. this philosopher formed his own circle of students, which later became his school called the Academy. So it was named after the area in which it was located.

In general, philosophy Plato incorporated the main theses of Socrates and Pythagoras. The thinker became the founder of the theory of idealism. The highest something, according to his theory, is the Good. Human desires are fickle and resemble a chariot drawn by two horses. Knowledge of the world, according to Plato, is the desire to see the beauty of the soul in every person. And only Love can bring a person closer to the Good.

Aristotle

The culmination of ancient Greek philosophy, its most remarkable milestone, is considered to be the works of the philosopher Aristotle. Aristotle studied at Plato's Academy and created a single complex of science, logic, politics and natural science.

Matter, according to Aristotle , what our world is made of, by itself it can neither disappear nor be reborn, since it is inert. Aristotle created the concepts of time and space. He substantiated philosophy as a system of knowledge of science. Like Socrates, this thinker was accused of godlessness and forced to leave Athens. Died great philosopher in a foreign land, in the city of Khalkis.

Rice. 3. Bust of Aristotle. The work of Lysippos.

Decline of Ancient Greek Philosophy

The classical period of philosophical thought in ancient Greece ended with the death of Aristotle. By the III century BC. e. the decline of philosophy came, since Hellas fell under the blows of Rome. During this period, the spiritual and moral life of the ancient Greeks declined.

The main ideologies during this period are considered to be Epicureanism, skepticism and stoicism.

Epicurus - a prominent philosopher, was born in 372 BC. e. He argued that the world cannot be changed. According to the thinker's teaching, atoms move in empty space. Epicurus considered pleasure to be the highest principle of man. At the same time, the thinker argued that an immoral person cannot be happy.
Cleanf - one of the founders of Stoicism argued that the world is a living substance controlled by the law of the divine forces of the Logos. A person must hear the will of the gods and obey their every command.
Philosopher Pyrrho introduced the concept of skepticism. Skeptics rejected the accumulated knowledge of people, arguing that a person cannot know a little about the world around him. Therefore, a person cannot judge the nature of things and even more so give it any assessment.

Despite the decline of the philosophical thought of ancient Greece, it laid the fundamental foundation of the human personality, the formation of moral and moral principles.

What have we learned?

gradual transition ancient Greek philosophers from mere contemplation natural phenomena to the very essence of man, created the foundation for modern moral qualities with the synthesis of science. Briefly, the most important philosophers of Ancient Greece are Aristotle, Plato, Socrates and Democritus: they and some other philosophers and philosophical movements are described in this article.

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The Greatest Philosophers of Ancient Greece. Kondrashov N.A. History of linguistic doctrines Famous ancient philosophers in Greece

Ancient Greek Philosophy: Cynics, Skeptics, Stoics and Epicureans

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