Philosophia
（
φιλοσοφία). I. Greek
Philosophy.—The beginnings of philosophy in Greece came from the Ionians of
Asia; and it is in agreement with the character of that people, naturally inclined to the
physical or sensualist view, that what the Ionian philosophers sought was the material
principle (
ἀρχή) of things, and the mode of their origin and
disappearance. Thales of Miletus (about B.C. 640) is reputed the father of Greek philosophy.
He declared water to be the basis of all things. Next came Anaximander of Miletus (about B.C.
611-547), the first writer on philosophy. He assumed as the first principle an undefined
substance (
τὸ ἄπειρον) without qualities, out of which the
primary antitheses, hot and cold, moist and dry, became differentiated. His countryman and
younger contemporary, Anaximenes, took for his principle air, conceiving it as modified, by
thickening and thinning, into fire, wind, clouds, water, and earth. Heraclitus of Ephesus
(about B.C. 535-475) assumed as the principle of substance aetherial fire. From fire all
things originate, and return to it again by a never-resting process of development. All
things, therefore, are in a perpetual flux (
πάντα ῥεῖ).
Philosophy was first brought into connection with practical life by Pythagoras of Samos
(about 582-504), from whom it received its name (“the love of wisdom”).
Regarding the world as a perfect harmony, dependent on number, he aimed at inducing mankind
likewise to lead a harmonious life. His doctrine was adopted and extended by a large
following, especially in Lower Italy.
That country was also the home of the Eleatic doctrine of the One, called after the town of
Elea, the headquarters of the school. It was founded by Xenophanes of Colophon (born about
570), the father of pantheism, who declared God to be the eternal unity, permeating the
universe, and governing it by his thought. His great disciple, Parmenides of Elea (born about
511), affirmed the one unchanging existence to be alone true and capable of being conceived,
and multitude and change to be an appearance without reality. This doctrine was maintained
dialectically by his younger countryman Zeno in a polemic against the vulgar opinion, which
sees in things multitude, becoming, and change. Empedocles of Agrigentum (born 492) appears to
have been partly in agreement with the Eleatic School, partly in opposition to it: on the one
hand, maintaining the unchangeable nature of substance; while, on the other, he supposes a
plurality of such substances—i. e. the four elements, earth, water, air, and fire.
Of these the world is built up, by the agency of two ideal principles as motive
forces—viz., love as the cause of union, hate as the cause of separation.
Anaxagoras of Clazomenae (born about B.C. 500) also maintained the existence of an ordering
principle as well as a material substance, and while regarding the latter as an infinite
multitude of imperishable primary elements, qualitatively distinguished, conceived divine
reason as ordering them. He referred all generation and disappearance to mixture and
resolution respectively. To him belongs the credit of first establishing philosophy at Athens,
in which city it reached its highest development, and continued to have its home for one
thousand years without intermission. The first explicitly materialistic system was formed by
Democritus of Abdera (born about B.C. 460). This was the doctrine of atoms—small
primary bodies infinite in number, indivisible and imperishable, qualitatively similar, but
distinguished by their shapes. Falling eternally through the infinite void, they collide and
unite, thus generating existence, and forming objects which differ in accordance with the
varieties, in number, size, shape, and arrangement, of the atoms which compose them.
The efforts of all these earlier philosophers had been directed somewhat exclusively to the
investigation of the ultimate basis and essential nature of the external world. Hence their
conceptions of human knowledge, arising out of their theories as to the constitution of
things, had been no less various. The Eleatics, for example, had been compelled to deny the
existence of any objective truth, since to the world of sense, with its multitude and change,
they allowed only a phenomenal existence. This inconsistency led to the position taken up by
the class of persons known as Sophists (see
Sophistae), that all thought rests solely on the apprehensions of the senses and on
subjective impression, and that therefore we have no other standard of action than utility for
the individual.
A new period of philosophy opens with the Athenian Socrates (469-399). Like the Sophists, he
rejected entirely the physical speculations in which his predecessors had indulged, and made
the subjective thoughts and opinions of men his starting-point; but whereas it was the
thoughts and opinions of the individual that the Sophists took for the standard, Socrates
endeavoured to extract from the common intelligence of mankind an objective rule of practical
life. For this purpose he employed the two forms of philosophical inquiry of which he is the
inventor, induction and definition. Such a standard he saw in knowledge, by which term he
understood the cognition in thought of the true concept of an object, and identified it with
virtue; that is to say, such action as proceeds from clear cognition of the concept
appropriate to the circumstances. Thus, although Socrates did not himself succeed in
establishing a genuine ethical principle, he is nevertheless the founder of ethics, as he is
also of dialectic, the method of the highest speculative thought. Of Socrates' numerous
disciples many either added nothing to his doctrine, or developed it in a one-sided manner, by
confining themselves exclusively either to dialectic or to ethics. Thus while the Athenian
Xenophon contented himself, in a series of writings, with exhibiting the portrait of his
master to the best of his comprehension, and added nothing original, the Megarian School,
founded by Euclides of Megara, devoted themselves almost entirely to dialectic investigation;
whereas ethics preponderated both with the Cynics and Cyrenaics, although the position taken
up by these two schools was in direct antithesis. For Antisthenes of Athens, the founder of
the Cynics, conceived the highest good to be the virtue which spurns every enjoyment; while
Aristippus of Cyrené, the founder of the Cyrenaics, considered pleasure to be the
solo end in life, and regarded virtue as a good only in so far as it contributed to pleasure.
See
Cyrenaïci.
Both aspects of the genius of Socrates were first united in Plato of Athens (428-348), who
also combined with them all the principles established by earlier philosophers, in so far as
they had been legitimate, and developed the whole of this material into the unity of a
comprehensive system. The groundwork of Plato's scheme, though nowhere expressly stated by
him, is the threefold division of philosophy into dialectic, ethics, and physics; its central
point is the theory of ideas. This theory is a combination of the Eleatic doctrine of the One
with Heraclitus's theory of a perpetual flux and with the Socratic method of concepts.
The multitude of objects of sense, being involved in perpetual change, are thereby deprived of
all genuine existence. The only true being in them is founded upon the ideas, the eternal,
unchangeable (independent of all that is accidental, and therefore perfect) types, of which
the particular objects of sense are imperfect copies. The number of the ideas is defined by
the number of universal concepts which can be derived from the particular objects of sense.
The highest idea is that of the Good, which is the ultimate basis of the rest, and the first
cause of being and knowledge. Apprehensions derived from the impressions of sense can never
give us the knowledge of true being—i. e. of the ideas. It can only be obtained by
the soul's activity within itself, apart from the troubles and disturbances of sense; that is
to say, by the exercise of reason. Dialectic, as the instrument in this process, leading us to
knowledge of the ideas, and finally of the highest idea of the Good, is the first of sciences
(
scientia scientiarum). In physics, Plato adhered (though not without
original modifications) to the views of the Pythagoreans, making Nature a harmonic unity in
multiplicity. His ethics are founded throughout on the Socratic; with him, too, virtue is
knowledge, the cognition of the supreme idea of the Good. And since in this cognition the
three parts of the soul, cognitive, spirited, and appetitive, all have their share, we get the
three virtues, Wisdom, Courage, and Temperance or Continence. The bond which unites the other
virtues is the virtue of Justice, by which each several part of the soul is confined to the
performance of its proper function. The school founded by Plato, called “the
Academy,” from the name of the grove of the Attic hero Academus, where he used to
deliver his lectures, continued for long after. (See
Academia.) In regard to the main tendencies of its members, it was divided into the
three periods of the Old, Middle, and New Academy. The chief personages in the first of these
were Speusippus (son of Plato's sister), who succeeded him as the head of the school (till
339), and Xenocrates of Chalcedon (till 314). Both of them sought to fuse Pythagorean
speculations on number with Plato's theory of ideas. The two other Academies were still
further removed from the specific doctrines of Plato. See
Plato.
The most important among Plato's disciples is Aristotle of Stagira (384-322), who shares
with his master the title of the greatest philosopher of antiquity. But whereas Plato had
sought to elucidate and explain things from the suprasensual standpoint of the ideas, his
pupil preferred to start from the facts given us by experience. Philosophy to him meant
science, and its aim was the recognition of the “wherefore” in all things.
Hence he endeavours to attain to the ultimate grounds of things by induction—that is
to say, by
a posteriori conclusions from a number of facts to a
universal. In the series of works collected under the name of
Organon,
Aristotle sets forth, almost in a final form, the laws by which the human understanding
effects conclusions from the particular to the knowledge of the universal. Like Plato, he
recognizes the true being of things in their concepts, but denies any separate existence of
the concept apart from the particular objects of sense. They are inseparable as matter and form. In this antithesis, matter and form, Aristotle sees the fundamental
principles of being. Matter is the basis of all that exists; it comprises the potentiality of
everything, but of itself is not actually anything. A determinate thing only comes into being
when the potentiality in matter is converted into actuality. This is effected by form, the
idea existent not as one outside the many, but as one in the many, the completion of the
potentiality latent in the matter. Although it has no existence apart from the particulars,
yet, in rank and estimation, form stands first; it is of its own nature the most knowable, the
only true object of knowledge. For matter without any form cannot exist, but the essential
definitions of a common form, in which are included the particular objects, may be separated
from matter. Form and matter are relative terms, and the lower form constitutes the matter of
a higher (e. g. body, soul, reason). This series culminates in pure, immaterial form, the
Deity, the origin of all motion, and therefore of the generation of actual form out of
potential matter. All motion takes place in space and time; for space is the potentiality,
time the measure of the motion. Living beings are those which have in them a moving principle,
or soul. In plants the function of soul is nutrition (including reproduction); in animals,
nutrition and sensation; in men, nutrition, sensation, and intellectual activity. The perfect
form of the human soul is reason separated from all connection with the body, hence fulfilling
its activity without the help of any corporeal organ, and so imperishable. By reason the
apprehensions, which are formed in the soul by external sense-impressions, and may be true or
false, are converted into knowledge. For reason alone can attain to truth either in cognition
or action. Impulse towards the good is a part of human nature, and on this is founded virtue;
for Aristotle does not, with Plato, regard virtue as knowledge pure and simple, but as founded
on nature, habit, and reason. Of the particular virtnes (of which there are as many as there
are contingencies in life), each is the apprehension, by means of reason, of the proper mean
between two extremes which are not virtues—e. g. courage is the mean between
cowardice and foolhardiness. The end of human activity, or the highest good, is happiness, or
perfect and reasonable activity in a perfect life. To this, however, external goods are more
or less necessary conditions. See
Aristoteles.
The followers of Aristotle, known as Peripatetics (Theophrastus of Lesbos, Eudemus of
Rhodes, Strato of Lampsacus, etc.), to a great extent abandoned metaphysical speculation, some
in favour of natural science, others of a more popular treatment of ethics, introducing many
changes into the Aristotelian doctrine in a naturalistic direction. A return to the views of
the founder first appears among the later Peripatetics, who did good service as expositors of
Aristotle's works. The tendency of the Peripatetic School, to make philosophy the exclusive
property of the learned class, thereby depriving it of its power to benefit a wider circle,
soon produced a reaction; and philosophers returned to the practical standpoint of Socratic
ethics. The speculations of the learned were only admitted in philosophy where immediately
serviceable for ethics. The chief consideration was how to popularize doctrines, and to
provide the individual, in a time of general confusion and dissolution, with a fixed moral
basis for practical life.
Such were the aims of Stoicism, founded at Athens about 310 by Zeno of Cittium, and brought
to fuller systematic form by his successors as heads of the school, Cleanthes of Assos, and
especially Chrysippus of Soli, who died about 206. Their doctrines contained little that was
new, seeking rather to give a practical application to the dogmas which they took ready-made
from previous systems. With them philosophy is the science of the principles on which the
moral life ought to be founded. The only allowable endeavour is towards the attainment of
knowledge of things human and divine, in order to regulate life thereby. The method to lead
men to true knowledge is provided by logic; physics embraces the doctrines as to the nature
and organization of the universe; while ethics draws from them its conclusions for practical
life. All knowledge originates in the real impressions of things on the senses, which the
soul, being at birth a
tabula rasa, receives in the form of
presentations. These presentations, when confirmed by repeated experience, are syllogistically
developed by the understanding into concepts. The test of their truth is the convincing or
persuasive force with which they impress themselves upon the soul. In physics the foundation
of the Stoic doctrine was the dogma that all true being is corporeal. Within the corporeal
they recognized two principles, matter and force—i. e. the material, and the Deity
permeating and informing it. Ultimately, however, the two are identical. There is nothing in
the world with any independent existence: all is bound together by an unalterable chain of
causation. The concord of human action with the law of nature, of the human will with the
divine will, or life according to nature, is Virtue, the chief good and highest end in life.
It is essentially one, the particular or cardinal virtues of Plato being only different
aspects of it; it is completely sufficient for happiness, and incapable of any differences of
degree. All good actions are absolutely equal in merit, and so are all bad actions. All that
lies between virtue and vice is neither good nor bad; at most, it is distinguished as
preferable, undesirable, or absolutely indifferent. Virtue is fully possessed only by the wise
man, who is no way inferior in worth to Zeus; he is lord over his own life, and may end it by
his own free choice. In general, the prominent characteristic of Stoic philosophy is moral
heroism, often verging on asceticism. See
Zeno.
The same goal which was aimed at in Stoicism was also approached, from a diametrically
opposite position, in the system founded about the same time by Epicurus, of the deme
Gargettus in Attica (342-268), who brought it to completion himself. Epicureanism, like
Stoicism, is connected with previous systems. Like Stoicism, it is also practical in its ends,
proposing to find in reason and knowledge the secret of a happy life, and admitting abstruse
learning only where it serves the ends of practical wisdom. Hence, logic (called by Epicurus
κανονικόν, or the doctrine of canons of truth) is made
entirely subservient to physics, physics to ethics. The standards of knowledge and canons of
truth in theoretical matters are the impressions of the senses, which are
true and indisputable, together with the presentations formed from such impressions, and
opinions extending beyond those impressions, in so far as they are supported or not
contradicted by the evidence of the senses. In practical questions the feelings of pleasure
and pain are the tests. Epicurus's physics, in which he follows in essentials the
materialistic system of Democritus, are intended to refer all phenomena to a natural cause, in
order that a knowledge of nature may set men free from the bondage of disquieting
superstitions. In ethics he followed within certain limits the Cyrenaic doctrine, conceiving
the highest good to be happiness, and happiness to be found in pleasure, to which the natural
impulses of every being are directed. But the aim is not with him, as it is with the
Cyrenaics, the pleasure of the moment, but the enduring condition of pleasure, which, in its
essence, is freedom from the greatest of evils, pain. Pleasures and pains are, however,
distinguished not merely in degree, but in kind. The renunciation of a pleasure or endurance
of a pain is often a means to a greater pleasure; and since pleasures of sense are subordinate
to the pleasures of the soul, the undisturbed peace of the soul is a higher good than the
freedom of the body from pain. Virtue is desirable not for itself, but for the sake of
pleasure of soul, which it secures by freeing men from trouble and fear and moderating their
passions and appetites. The cardinal virtue is wisdom, which is shown by true insight in
calculating the consequences of our actions as regards pleasure or pain. See
Epicurus.
The practical tendency of Stoicism and Epicureanism, seen in the search for happiness, is
also apparent in the Sceptical School founded by Pyrrho of Elis (about 365-275). Pyrrho
disputes the possibility of attaining truth by sensuous apprehension, reason, or the two
combined, and thence infers the necessity of total suspension of judgment on things. Thus can
we attain release from all bondage to theories, a condition which is followed, like a shadow,
by that imperturbable state of mind which is the foundation of true happiness. Pyrrho's
doctrine was followed by the Middle and New Academies (see above), represented by
Arcesilaüs of Pitané (316-241) and Carneades of Cyrene (214-129)
respectively, in their attacks on the Stoics, for asserting a criterion of truth in our
knowledge, although they considered that what they were maintaining was a genuine tenet of
Socrates and Plato. The latest Academics, such as Antiochus of Ascalon (about B.C. 80), fused
with Platonism certain Peripatetic and many Stoic dogmas, thus making way for Eclecticism, to
which all later antiquity tended after Greek philosophy had spread itself over the Roman
world. After the Christian era Pythagoreanism, in a resuscitated form, again takes its place
among the more important systems; but the preëminence belongs to Platonism, which is
notably represented in the works of Plutarch of Chaeronea and the physician Galen, while
Scepticism is maintained by another physician, Sextus Empiricus.
The closing period of Greek philosophy is marked in the third century A.D. by the
establishment in Rome, under Plotinus of Lycopolis in Egypt (205-270), of Neoplatonism, a
scientific philosophy of religion, in which the doctrine of Plato is fused with the most
important elements in the Aristotelian and Stoic systems and with Oriental speculations. At
the summit of existences stands the One or the Good, as the source of all things. It generates
from itself, as if from the reflection of its own being, reason, wherein is contained the
infinite store of ideas. Soul, the copy of the reason, is generated by and contained in it, as
reason is in the One, and, by informing matter in itself non-existent, constitutes bodies
whose existence is contained in soul. Nature, therefore, is a whole, endowed with life and
soul. Soul, being chained to matter, longs to escape from the bondage of the body and return
to its original source. In virtue and philosophic thought it has the power to elevate itself
above the reason into a state of ecstasy, where it can behold, or ascend up to, that one good
primary Being whom reason cannot know. To attain this union with the Good, or God, is the true
function of man, to whom the external world should be absolutely indifferent. Plotinus's most
important disciple, the Syrian Porphyrius, contented himself with popularizing his master's
doctrine. But the school of Iamblichus, a disciple of Porphyrius, effected a change in the
position of Neoplatonism, which now took up the cause of polytheism against Christianity, and
adopted for this purpose every conceivable form of superstition, especially those of the East.
Foiled in the attempt to resuscitate the old beliefs, its supporters then turned with fresh
ardour to scientific work, and especially to the study of Plato and Aristotle, in the
interpretation of whose works they rendered great services. The last home of philosophy was at
Athens, where Proclus (411- 485) sought to reduce to a kind of system the whole mass of
philosophic tradition, till in A.D. 529 the teaching of philosophy at Athens was forbidden by
Justinian.
II. Roman Philosophy is throughout founded on the Greek. Interest
in the subject was first excited at Rome in B.C. 155 by an Athenian embassy, consisting of the
Academic Carneades, the Stoic Diogenes, and the Peripatetic Critolaüs. Of more
permanent influence was the work of the Stoic Panaetius, the friend of the younger Scipio and
of Laelius; but a thorough study of Greek philosophy was first introduced in the time of
Cicero and Varro. In a number of works they endeavoured to make it accessible even to those of
their countrymen who were outside the learned circles. Cicero chiefly took it up in a spirit
of Eclecticism; but among his contemporaries Epicureanism is represented in the poetical
treatise of Lucretius (q. v.) on the nature of things, and Pythagoreanism by Nigidius Figulus.
In imperial times Epicureanism and Stoicism were most popular, especially the latter, as
represented by the writings of Seneca, Cornutus, and the emperor Marcus Aurelius; while
Eclectic Platonism was taken up by Apuleius of Madaura. One of the latest philosophical
writers of antiquity is Boëthius, whose writings were the chief source of information
as to Greek philosophy during the first centuries of the Middle Ages. See
Boëthius.
Useful works on the general history of the philosophy of Greece and Rome are the following:
Ueberweg,
A History of Philosophy, vol. i.
(Eng. trans., N. Y.
1875), valuable for its bibliography;
Ritter and Preller, Historia
Philosophiae Graecae et Romanae ex Fontium Locis Contexta (Berlin, 1878; ed.
Schultess, Gotha, 1887); Schwegler,
History of
Philosophy (Eng. trans., N. Y. 1882); J. B. Mayor,
A Sketch of
Ancient Philosophy from Thales to Cicero (Cambridge, 1881); Burner,
Early Greek Philosophy (London, 1892). Zeller's
Die
Philosophie der Griechen in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung dargestellt is the
fullest of all works yet published, 5 vols. with index
(Berlin, 1874-79). A short
syllabus is Scott's
Simple History of Greek Philosophy, in 91 pp.
(London, 1894).
For special periods, the following portions of Zeller's great work, in English translation,
may be recommended:
Pre-Socratic Schools (London, 1880);
Socrates and the Socratic Schools (2d ed., London, 1877);
Stoics, Epicureans, and Skeptics (London, 1870);
Plato and the Older Academy (London, 1877);
Aristotle and the Elder Peripatetics (London, 1882);
History of Eclecticism in Greek Philosophy (London, 1883); also
Teichmüller, Xenophon und Platon (1884); Lange,
History of Materialism, 2 vols.
(Eng. trans., London, 1878-81);
Denis,
Histoire des Idées Morales dans l'Antiquité
(2d ed., Paris, 1879); Martha,
Les Moralistes sous l'Empire
Romain (Paris, 1872); Herbart,
Die Philosophie des Cicero
(Leipzig, 1842); Burmeister,
Cicero als Neuakademiker (Oldenburg,
1860); Levin,
Lectures on the Philosophy of Cicero (London,
1871); Holzherr,
De Philosophia Senecae (Rastatt, 1858);
Binde,
Seneca de Rerum Natura et Vita Humana (Glogau, 1883); and
Havet,
Le Christianisme et ses Origines (Paris, 1873).
