Ancient

Philosophy

Ancient
Philosophy
Arose in the 5th and 6th century B.C.E. and
continued throughout the Hellenistic period and
the period in which Ancient Greece was part of the
Roman Empire.
Ancient Philosophy opened the doors to a
particular way of thinking that provided the roots
for the Western intellectual tradition.

Pre-Socratic
Philosopy
The earliest Western philosophy.
Fifth and Sixth centuries B.C.E.
Tried to discover principles that could uniformly,

consistently, and comprehensively explain all

natural phenomena and the events in human life
without resorting to Mythology.

Pre-Socratic
Philosopy
Presocratic philosophers were called physiologoi.
Aristotle called them physikoi ("physicists",

after physics, "nature")

Because they sought natural explanations for
phenomena.
They emphasized the rational unity of things and

rejected mythological explanations of the world.

Pre-Socratic
Philosopy

The Presocratic thinkers present a discourse

concerned with key areas of philosophical inquiry
such as being and the cosmos, the primary stuff of
the universe, the structure and function of the
human soul, and the underlying principles
governing
perceptible
phenomena,
human
knowledge and morality.

Famous
Philosophers

Thales Of Miletus

 He was a pre-Socratic Greek/Phonecian philosopher,

mathematician and astronomer from Miletus in Asia
Minor, current day Milet in Turkey and one of the
Seven Sages of Greece.
Traditionally regarded as the 1st Western
philosopher and mathematician, Thales of Miletus
lived c. 585 BCE.
He accurately predicted the solar eclipse of May 28,
585 BCE and was known as a skilled astronomer,
geometer, statesman and sage.
He claimed that water was the origin of all things,
that from which all things emerge and to which they
return, and moreover that all things ultimately are
water.

Anaximander

 Born 610 BCE, Miletus (Now in Turkey)

died 546 BCE) Greek philosopher who was the

first to develop a cosmology, or systematic
philosophical view of the world.
Anaximander is sometimes called the "Father
of Cosmology" and the founder of
astronomy for his bold use of nonmythological explanations of physical processes.
He was the first to conceive a mechanical
model of the world, in which the Earth floats very
still in the centre of the infinite, not supported by
anything.

Anaximenes

 Anaximenes flourished in the mid 6th century

B.C.E. and died about 528. He is the third

philosopher of the Milesian School of philosophy,
Anaximenes was an inhabitant of Miletus, in
Ionia (ancient Greece).
Anaximenes is best known for his doctrine that
air is the source of all things. In this way, he
differed with his predecessors like Thales, who
held that water is the source of all things, and
Anaximander, who thought that all things came
from an unspecified boundless stuff.

3 Important
Philosophers

SOCRATES

SOCRATES

Socrates was born in Alopeke, and belonged to the tribe Antiochis.

His father was Sophroniscus, a sculptor, or stonemason. His mother
was a midwife named Phaenarete. Socrates married Xanthippe, who
is especially remembered for having an undesirable temperament. She
bore for him three sons, Lamprocles, Sophroniscus and
Menexenus.

Socrates first worked as a stonemason, and there was a tradition in

antiquity, not credited by modern scholarship, that Socrates crafted the
statues of the Three Graces, which stood near the Acropolis until the 2nd
century AD.

SOCRATES

His most important contribution to Western thought is his dialectic

method of inquiry, known as the Socratic method or method of
"elenchus", which he largely applied to the examination of key moral
concepts such as the Good and Justice.

To solve a problem, it would be broken down into a series of

questions, the answers to which gradually distill the answer a person
would seek. The influence of this approach is most strongly felt today in
the use of the scientific method, in which hypothesis is the first stage.

Socrates claimed to have knowledge of was "the art of love". This

assertion seems to be associated with the word ertan, which means
to ask questions. Therefore, Socrates is claiming to know about the
art of love, insofar as he knows how to ask questions.

PLATO

PLATO

It is widely accepted that Plato, the Athenian philosopher,

was born in 428-7 B.C.E and died at the age of eighty or eightyone at 348-7 B.C.E.

Plato's middle to later works, including his most famous

work, the Republic, are generally regarded as providing Plato's
own philosophy, where the main character in effect speaks for
Plato himself. These works blend ethics, political philosophy,
moral psychology, epistemology, and metaphysics into an
interconnected and systematic philosophy.

ARISTOTLE

ARISTOTLE
Aristotle was born in 384 BCE at Stagirus, a now extinct Greek
colony and seaport on the coast of Thrace.

Aristotle is a towering figure in ancient Greek philosophy, making

contributions to logic, metaphysics, mathematics, physics, biology,
botany, ethics, politics, agriculture, medicine, dance and theatre. He was
a student of Plato who in turn studied under Socrates. He was more
empirically-minded than Plato or Socrates and is famous for rejecting
Plato's theory of forms.

As the father of the field of logic, he was the first to develop a

formalized system for reasoning. Aristotle observed that the validity of
any argument can be determined by its structure rather than its content.