400 - 300 BCE Flashcards
Antisthenes
c. 446 - 366 BCE
Ardent disciple of Socrates.
Adopted and developed the ethical side of Socrates’ teachings, advocating an ascetic life lived in accordance with virtue.
Many regard him as the founder of Cynic philosophy.
Atistippus of Cyrene
c. 435 - 356 BCE
Hedonistic Greek philosopher and the founder of the Cyrenaic school of philosophy.
He was pupil of Socrates but adopted a very different outlook. He taught that the goal of life was to seek pleasure by adapting circumstances to oneself and by maintaining proper control over both adversity and prosperity.
His view that pleasure is the only good came to be called “ethical hedonism”
Xenophon
c. 430 - 355 BCE
Commander of a major military unit.
Historian and talents writer.
A student and friend of Socrates. Many of his works are how we know about Socrates today.
Plato
c- 428 - 348 BCE
Student of Socrates. Also influenced by Pythagoras, Heraclitus and Parmenides. His writings about these figures inform our knowledge today.
Founded the Academy and taught doctrines that would later be known as Platonism.
Innovated the written dialogue and dialectic forms in philosophy.
Raised problems for what later became the major areas in theoretical philosophy and practical philosophy.
Most famous contribution is the theory of forms where he presents a solution to the problem of universals.
Unlike most of is contemporaries, his entire body of work is said to have remained intact for 2,400 years.
Aristotle was his student.
Alfred North Whitehead famously said “the safest general characterisation of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”
Plato
c- 428 - 348 BCE
Student of Socrates. Also influenced by Pythagoras, Heraclitus and Parmenides. His writings about these figures inform our knowledge today.
Founded the Academy and taught doctrines that would later be known as Platonism.
Innovated the written dialogue and dialectic forms in philosophy.
Raised problems for what later became the major areas in theoretical philosophy and practical philosophy.
Most famous contribution is the theory of forms where he presents a solution to the problem of universals.
Unlike most of is contemporaries, his entire body of work is said to have remained intact for 2,400 years.
Aristotle was his student.
Alfred North Whitehead famously said “the safest general characterisation of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”
Diogenes of Sinope
c 412 - 323 BCE
One of the founders of cynicism.
He made a virtue of poverty, begged for a living and often slept in a large ceramic jar in the marketplace.
He declared himself a cosmopolitan and a citizen of the world rather than claiming allegiance to just one place.
Disrupted Plato’s lectures and mocked Alexander the Great.
Xenocrates
c. 396 - 314 BCE
Taught in the Academy and extended Plato’s works.
He believed that there were three types of forms: the sensible, the intelligible and a third which was compounded of the two -> sense, intellect and opinion.
Considered unity and duality to be Gods which rule the universe. And that the soul was a self-moving number?
God pervades all things and there are daemonical powers, intermediate between the divine and the mortal, which consist in conditions of the soul.
Unlike Plato he held that mathematical objects and Platonic ideas are identical.
In ethics he taught that virtue produces happiness, but external goods can minister to it and enable it to effect its purpose.
Aristotle
c. 384 - 322 BCE
Wrote extensively about a broad range of topics including physics, biology, zoology, metaphysics, logic, ethics, aesthetics, poetry, drama, music, rhetoric, psychology, lingusitics, economics, politics, meteorology, geology and government.
Founder of the peripatetic school of philosophy in the Lyceum in Athens, he began the wider Aristotelian tradition that followed, which set the groundwork for modern science.
Joined Plato’s academy from the age of 18-37.
Tutored Alexander the Great.
Provided a complex synthesis of the various philosophies existing prior to him. Above all it was from his writings that the west inherited its intellectual lexicon, as well as problems and methods of inquiry. As a result his philosophy has exerted a unique influence on almost every form of knowledge in the west and it remains relevant today.
Profoundly shaped medieval scholarship all the way up until the enlightenment such as when classical mechanics was released.
Influenced Judeo-Islamic philosophies during the middle ages. Especially the neoplatonism of the early church.
The earliest known formal study of logic.
His ethics, though always influential, gained renewed interest with the modern advent of virtue ethics.
