Greek philosophy

Characteristics of Greek Philosophy

1. Preference for non personal, universal things
2. Try to find a reason for the existence of things - learn to know, and tap the essence behind the phenomenon

Greek philosophical time

From the 6th century BC to the 6th century AD, it was marked by the closure of Plato's college
First Pericles, then Socrates

Pre Socratic philosophy – > Athenian philosophy – > Late Greek Philosophy

Pre-Socratic philosophy

Discuss cosmogenesis
It forms the first philosophical probability - arche, which contains the meaning of beginning and domination

• Thales
  The first Western philosopher, the founder of Miletus school

• Heraclitus
  Fire is the origin of all things
  People can't step into the same river twice - pay attention to the change of everything, and change is caused by law
  Put forward the concept of logos - calculation, rationality and law

• Pythagoras
  Number is the origin of all things

• Parmenid

1. Emphasize that what you know is immutable
   2 . The road of opinion VS the road of truth
2. It establishes the identity of thinking and existence, and people grasp existence through thought
3. Meneide turned western philosophy from cosmogenesis to ontology, and determined the research object of metaphysics
4. He began reasoning and argumentation in philosophy

• Democrit
  Founder of Atomism

Limitations of early philosophy

1. Lack of support from Natural Science
2. Based on empirical observation
3. There are different opinions
4. Infinite retreat is impossible

Athenian Philosophy

• wise man
  To discuss Athenian philosophy, we need to first discuss the wise. In the 5th century BC, the wise specifically referred to professional teachers who paid apprentices and focused on teaching rhetoric and argumentation.
  The rise of the wise is the product of Athenian democracy, but also marks the decline of Athenian democracy. Athenian democracy made it easier for people with argumentative ability to obtain social resources, so it promoted the prosperity of the group of wise people. The wise man thinks that there is no right or wrong, only different ways of argument.
  ”Man is the yardstick of all things. "This famous saying of the wise Protagoras does not indicate anthropocentrism. The" man "in this sentence is not a conceptual person, not a whole human being, but a specific person. This sentence can be added as" everyone has his own yardstick for all things ". It means that the public says the public is reasonable and the woman says the woman is reasonable. Everyone judges everything according to his own feeling and experience, and then thinks that things are polymorphic, different from person to person and inconsistent.
  "All theories have opposite views". This is another sentence of protagora. This sentence well explains that wise people think that there is no right or wrong, only different ways of argument.
  The wise man denied the possibility of knowledge (knowledge should be universal), but it played an important role in shaking the traditional concept of natural philosophy (studying cosmogenesis).

• Socrates

  historical background
  Facing the wise men and the decline of Athenian democracy, Socrates tried to restore the important position of knowledge and save Athenian civilization by carrying forward knowledge.
  Main ideas
  Socrates believes that the real domination and cause of all things in nature is not the material origin, but its internal purpose, that is, the good. The research object of philosophy is not nature, the twenty people themselves, that is, to know the "good" in people themselves. The "good" in man himself is virtue - making things the nature of things. Good and virtue have no ethical meaning in Socrates.
  People's virtue is potential. People need to tap their virtue by learning knowledge. So Socrates put forward "virtue is knowledge, ignorance is sin". Socrates was the first person to establish a relationship between knowledge and ethics.
  Socrates thinks he is ignorant, but he has the ability to let others explore his inner virtue. This ability is called "midwifery". Midwifery is mainly to find the virtue of things by discussing "what" with others through dialogue
  Life
  Socrates did not leave any works, but they were recorded through Plato
  First Pericles, then Socrates

• Plato (427-347 BC)
  Main ideas
  Cave metaphor is used to distinguish the sensible world from the conceptual world. The sensible world is composed of things and the conceptual world is composed of ideas. Two explanations of the relationship between things and ideas
  *The reason why things exist is that they have their own ideas
  *Imitation: the creator creates concrete things according to ideas, and things exist because of imitation ideas
  Plato advocated that the general (conceptual world) and the individual (Perceptible World) are two completely separated worlds. The perceptible world is formed by dividing or imitating the model of the conceptual world. According to this proposition, Plato advocated that there were three tables, the painter's table, the concrete table and the idea table. The painter's table imitates a specific table, which is divided into or imitates a table of ideas.
  Idea is the common phase of things, idea is the basis of things' existence, idea is the prototype of things' imitation, and idea is the purpose of things' pursuit.
  The sensible world is sensible and unknowable, and the idea world is sensible and unknowable, so it leads to a question: how to understand the idea?

How to understand the concept?
1. Recall that
  Our soul originally lives in the conceptual world in heaven. Learning is to recall what we know in this way. Plato's above view shows the original transcendental thought in the history of western philosophy.
2. The turn of the soul
 The turning of the soul is the need to turn from the sensible world to the conceptual world. This is only a metaphor of cave theory, without specific practice

The most important thing of Plato's theory of idea is to provide basis for knowledge. People contact the idea world through knowledge.

Defects of idealism

1. Universality of ideas
 Plato believed that ideas were good, and ugly things had no ideas. This conflicts with the statement that everything has a corresponding idea
2. There is a problem with the division of ideas
 Whether things are divided into parts or whole with ideas, if they are divided into parts with ideas, the integrity of ideas will be destroyed. A thing has a part of the "big idea", because the part is smaller than the whole, so what it has is small rather than big. If there is a whole of ideas, a large number of things with the same nature need different ideas and the basic principles of idea theory--Most similar things can only have one idea, which conflicts with each other.
3. third party
 If things of the same kind have the same idea A，So these things and ideas A They are also of the same kind, so they have another same idea B. One analogy to infinity
 4. ""Separation" problem
 The idea is a reality that exists independently outside things, so the world where the idea is located and the sensible world are two separate worlds. How the idea world affects the sensible world and how it affects us is a difficult problem that Plato did not give a conclusion

Because of the defects of the above idealism, the center of Plato's later thinking shifted from the relationship between ideas and things to the relationship between ideas, forming Plato's "general seed theory".

work
The Republic

• Aristotle
  Encyclopedic philosophers handed down a lot of Athenian knowledge
  Main ideas
  Scientific classification of knowledge

Scientific classification of knowledge
1. Theoretical knowledge
2. Practical knowledge
3. Creative knowledge

Cause theory

This paper discusses the reasons for the formation and existence of things, and puts forward the theory of four causes
1. Material factor( hule),Things are generated by materials, and materials continue to exist in things, and materials act as carriers in the existence and generation of things
2. Form is divided into internal form and external form. Internal form is the essence of things. The external form is the external shape of things
3. Dynamic cause, the cause that enables things to start moving and puts the chronological order first.
4. The cause of purpose is not only the purpose of the generation and existence of things, but also the reason of the generation and existence of things. The cause of purpose is the good said by Socrates and Plato. The purpose of things is to pursue their own good

The theory of four causes is further summarized as material (material cause) and form (form cause, power cause and purpose cause)

Plato believed that in addition to the sensible world, there is also an essential world. Aristotle believes that there are two differences between form and material in the things that exist in the sensible world.

Potential and reality and Realization

The theory of four causes is a static structural analysis of the formation and existence of things, but things make dynamic changes, so Aristotle supplemented the concepts of potential and reality.
Potential means that things have the potential power to realize their essence and purpose, but it has not been realized yet, which needs to be realized through external forces.
In activities, it is relative to potential. Focus on the process of activities
 Reality is literally translated as complete reality, or transliterated as hidden Reich entelekheia，Relative to potential, focus on the results of completion

Material exists in a potential state, and form is realization. Once material obtains its own form, it will be realized and become a real existence

metaphysics

metaphysics Metaphusika，It is the study of existence. Aristotle's metaphysical manuscript because in the manuscript physics( Phusike)It was sorted out by andronico Meta Phusika Metaphysics is the first philosophy
 Aristotle's Metaphysics:
1. Ontology
 Existence is undefined. We can't study what existence is. We can only study the way of existence. The way of existence includes accidental storage and inevitable way of existence. The inevitable way of existence is the category.
Category is the largest, most common and most general description of things. As many categories as there are, there are as many ways of existence.
Aristotle provides ten categories: entity, quantity, nature, relationship, place, time, state, action, ownership and acceptance
2. Entity theory
 entity ousia It is one of the ten categories and the most important category. It is that things become the essence of their things, which is neither real nor corporeal.
There are three main types of Aristotle's entities
a. Individual concrete things are the first entity. If a thing is both individual and separable, it is an entity. "Socrates is a person", the subject is Socrates, and the object is a person. The subject is described by an object, and the subject Socrates cannot act as an object, so Socrates is an entity.
b. Form is the first entity
c. reason-God is the supreme entity
 Discussed later
3. theology
 How to prove the existence of an eternal entity? Aristotle proved it through movement and time.
Birth and death change belongs to movement, and the movement itself has no birth and death change. If the movement itself has birth and death change, the movement will disappear, and the birth and death change is impossible. We find that the birth and death of things always exist, so the movement will not disappear. That is, if motion is eternal, there must be an eternal entity.
Similarly, time itself has no birth and death changes. If time has birth and death changes, time will not exist and there will be no concept of sequence. Therefore, time is immortal and eternal, so there must be an eternal entity.
The eternal entity has no material. If there is material, the eternal entity will have the potential to realize reality, and it itself is moving. If the eternal entity is moving, there will be an external force to promote the movement of the eternal entity. If we continue to infer, we will fall into the road of infinite retreat, and we must set a "first mover", Its own immobility can cause the movement of all things. The first mover is the eternal entity, which has no material itself.
This eternal entity is God or Nuss( nous)，It is not only the motive cause of the movement of all things, but also the purpose cause of the movement of all things

ethics

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Late Greek Philosophy

Late Greek philosophy includes the philosophical thoughts of Hellenization period and Roman period
It generally refers to the death of Alexander the great in 323 BC and the Roman conquest of Egypt in 31 BC
There are two remarkable characteristics of Late Greek philosophy: first, philosophers did not put forward new theories, which are usually transformed or developed based on the ideological achievements of previous people, and most of them have a strong perceptual color; Second, because of years of war and social unrest, people fell into the thinking of life and death, so the philosophy of this period has the tendency of ethics.
There are four schools: Epicureanism, Stoic school, skepticism and Neo Platonism

• Epicureanism

Epicurus' philosophical system is divided into three parts: the principle of studying the standard of truth; Physics of nature and its birth and death; Ethics that studies life and its purpose. Principles and physics are the means, ethics is the end. To enjoy the happiness of life, human demons must understand the nature of the universe.
Epicurus' thought is based on democrit's atomism and Cyrene's hedonism.
Nature is composed of atomic changes, and man is also composed of different atomic changes. Everything happens naturally. Therefore, Epicurus believes that man should not be confused with reality, because what should come will always come, so it's better to seize the time to have fun.

wiki: 
He believes that everything that exists must be composed of eternal atoms, which are small, indestructible and hard material particles. Support Democritus' theory. He did not accept determinism and put forward the principle of deviation, opposing superstition and denying God's intervention. Epicurus continued Cyrene's argument that the greatest good is to expel fear and pursue happiness in order to achieve a kind of peace( ataraxia)And free, and free from physical pain through knowledge( aponia)，Reduce desire. Therefore, all the disciples of Epicurus have the same basic knowledge and believe that philosophy must contribute to peace and tranquility.

• Stoic school

The founder is Zeno, who adheres to the position of sensory experience in epistemology and advocates that living according to the nature of nature is the greatest virtue, the nature of nature is rationality, and man should live according to rationality.
It is contradictory to adhere to sensationalism in epistemology and rationalism in ethics. One explanation is that feeling is real, and rationality is the induction and arrangement of sensory experience, but the content of everyone's induction and arrangement is different. Only through the acquired study of nature can we acquire the virtue of nature and be a rational person.

Different from the epicurean view that nature is mechanical, the Stoic school believes that nature is organic and coordinated by rationality. Human life should follow the virtue of nature and be a rational person.
Later stoic figures, such as Seneca, emphasized the dualism of body and soul, advocated that the body is the body and the prison of the soul, which strengthened the asceticism tendency of Stoic school.

• Skepticism

The basic concept of skepticism is that it is impossible for us to understand the nature of things. Because we know things through feeling experience, and we can't go beyond feeling. We can never know whether the real appearance of things is the same as what we feel, because people lack a scale other than feeling to judge the authenticity of things.

• Neo Platonism

Neo Platonism is the most important philosophical school in the third to fifth centuries. The most important reason is that it is the inevitable result of the development of Greek philosophy according to its own logic, and it is also the main ideological source of Christian theology. Through Neo Platonism, we can see the decline of the rational spirit of Greek philosophy and the inevitability of its transformation to theology. The representative is protano

In 529, Justinian, the emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire, ordered the closure of all philosophy schools in Athens, symbolizing the end of Greek philosophy.

Miscellaneous notes

The existence of Chinese is too spatial, but the corresponding English being is different. Being expresses the reason why an object becomes an object, not an entity
Be an epicurean in life and a stoic in thought