In this collection of 20 biographies of ancient Greek philosophers, we examine the thoughts and lives of some of the most important thinkers in history.

by Mark Cartwright, Joshua J. Mark, Daniel Costa, Donald L. Wasson

We look at the pre-Socratic philosophers and the titan trio of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, as well as the wizard of numbers Pythagoras, Heraclitus, whose thoughts were so deep they called him the 'dark thinker', and Zeno who posed his enigmatic paradoxes. It wasn't all heavy thinking with Democritus known as the 'laughing philosopher' for his cheerfulness, Epicurus with his emphasis on pleasure and Diogenes who wandered through the streets of Athens with a lamp looking for an honest man. These thinkers puzzled over big questions like who are we, why are we here and where are we going? and they provided some of the most interesting, influential and inspiring answers ever made anywhere.

I will go back to what we have so often spoken of, and begin with the assumption that there exists an absolute beauty, and an absolute good, and an absolute greatness, and so on. If you grant me this, and agree that they exist, I hope to be able to show you what my cause is, and to discover that the soul is immortal.

(Socrates, Plato's Phaedo, 100b)

Anaximander

Anaximander of Miletus (l. c. 610 - c. 546 BCE) was one of the early Pre-Socratic Philosophers who lay the foundation for the deveopment of Western Philosophy. He was a student of Thales of Miletus (l. c. 585 BCE), recognized as the first philosopher of ancient Greece, who holds this distinction as the first to initiate philosophical inquiry into the nature of existence in trying to define a First Cause for the creation of the world.

Thales claimed the First Cause was water which Anaximander rejected and replaced with the concept of the apeiron defined as "the unlimited, boundless, infinite, or indefinite" (Baird, 10). The apeiron was a cosmic force bringing together and dispersing matter but its precise form is unclear as all of Anaximander's work has been lost and is only known through a single sentence and references in later writer's works.

Recent scholarship argues that he, rather than Thales, should be considered the first western philosopher owing to the fact that a direct and undisputed quote from Anaximander exists (even if it is only one sentence) while not even a fragment still exists by Thales. Anaximander invented the idea of models, drew the first map of the world in Greece, and is said to have been the first to write a book of prose.

He traveled extensively and was highly regarded by his contemporaries. Among his major contributions to philosophical thought was the above-mentioned claim that the 'basic stuff' of the universe was the apeiron, a philosophical and theological claim which is still debated among scholars today and which, some argue, provided Plato with the basis for his cosmology.

The Apeiron

Nothing is known of Anaximander's life but his work was considered so significant that it was referenced at length by later writers. The Neo-Platonist philosopher Simplicius (l. c. 490-c.560 CE) writes:

Of those who say that it is one, moving, and infinite, Anaximander, son of Praxiades, a Milesian, the successor and pupil of Thales, said that the principle and element of existing things was the apeiron [indefinite or infinite] being the first to introduce this name of the material principle. He says that it is neither water nor any other of the so-called elements but some other apeiron nature, from which come into being all the heavens and the worlds in them. And the source of coming-to-be for existing things is that into which destruction, too, happens 'according to necessity; for they pay penalty and retribution to each other for their injustice according to the assessment of time,' as he describes it in these rather poetical terms. It is clear that he, seeing the changing of the four elements into each other, thought it right to make none of these the substratum, but something else besides these; and he produces coming-to-be not through the alteration of the element, but by the separation off of the opposites through the eternal motion. (Physics, 24)

This statement by Anaximander regarding elements paying penalty to each other according to the assessment of time is considered the oldest known piece of written Greek philosophy, and its precise meaning continues to be debated. It is thought that the apeiron was envisioned as a creative force, continually bringing matter together, creating new forms, destroying them, and then reforming them again. The significance of the concept is that is clearly suggested a cosmic force but not a divine entity. The apeiron was not a god; it was energy. The formulation of this concept is all the more impressive when one considers it was conceived of at a time when the existence of the Greek anthropmorphic gods was a given. Even Thales' proposal of a First Cause remained close to the accepted paradigm of the creation and operation of the world; Anaximander's departed from that completely.

Thales claimed that the First Cause of all things was water based on his observation that water took on different forms. Whatever the First Cause was, Thales reasoned, had to have attributes of all things which came later. Water was a liquid but, when heated, became air (steam) and, when cooled, became a solid (ice), and could also mix with earth to dissolve it into mud but then harden to agin become a solid. Water, therefore, partook in the qualities of all the four known elements.

Anaximander, however, recognized that water was just another of the earthly elements and suggested no more ancient origin than the other three. He concluded that the First Cause had to come from something beyond the observable world but still able to be apprehended by the operation of that world. His answer to the question of 'Where did everything come from?' was the apeiron, the boundless, but, as noted, what exactly he meant by 'the boundless' has given rise to the centuries-old debate. Does 'the boundless' refer to a spatial or temporal quality or does it refer to something inexhaustible and undefined?

While it is impossible to say with certainty what Anaximander meant, a better understanding can be gained through the so-called 'long since' argument which Aristotle phrases this way in his Physics,

Some make this [First Cause] (namely, that which is additional to the elements) the Boundless, but not air or water, lest the others should be destroyed by one of them, being boundless; for they are opposite to one another (the air, for instance, is cold, the water wet, and the fire hot). If any of them should be boundless, it would long since have destroyed the others; but now there is, they say, something other from which they are all generated. (204b 25-29)

In other words, none of the observable elements could be the First Cause because all observable elements are changeable and, were one to be more powerful than the others, it would have long since eradicated them. As observed, however, the elements of the earth seem to be in balance with each other, none of them holding the upper hand and, therefore, some other source must be looked to for a First Cause. In making this claim, Anaximander becomes the first known philosopher to work in abstract, rather than natural, philosophy and the first metaphysician even before the term 'metaphysics' was coined.

Proto-theory of Evolution & the First Map

In addition to his contributions to metaphysics, Anaximander has also been credited with a proto-theory of evolution as remarked on by later writers:

Anaximander said that the first living creatures were born in moisture, enclosed in thorny barks and that as their age increased they came forth on to the drier part and, when the bark had broken off, they lived a different kind of life for a short time. (Aetius, V, 19)

He says, further, that in the beginning man was born from creatures of a different kind because other creatures are soon self-supporting, but man alone needs prolonged nursing. For this reason he would not have survived if this had been his original form. (Plutarch, 2)

He is also credited with drawing the first map:

Anaximander the Milesian, a disciple of Thales, first dared to draw the inhabited world on a tablet; after him Hecataeus the Milesian, a much travelled man, made the map more accurate, so that it became a source of wonder. (Agathemerus, I, i)

He charted the heavens, traveled widely, was the first to claim that the earth floated in space, and the first to posit an unobservable First Cause. His apeiron is thought to have influenced the Platonic concept of a Realm of Forms, the "true reality", of which the observable world is only a reflection. Whether the apeiron inspired Plato is, like almost everyting else about Anaximander, debated but his concept of the infinite from which all else comes shares a great deal in common with Aristotle's concept of the Prime Mover, that which, unmoving itself, sets everything else in motion.

He is said to have lived to an old age and been widely respected. Diogenes Laertius writes, "Apollodorus, in his Chronicles, states that in the second year of the fifty-eighth Olympiad, [Anaximander] was sixty-four years old. And soon after he died, having flourished much about the same time as Polycrates, the tyrant, of Samos." A statue was erected at Miletus in Anaximander's honor while he lived and his legacy still lives on centuries after his death.

Thales of Miletus

Thales of Miletus (l. c. 585 BCE) is traditionally regarded as the first Western philosopher and mathematician. He was born and lived in Miletus, a Greek colony on the west coast of present day Turkey, referenced as the birthplace of Greek Philosophy because of his high standing as the First Philosopher, a title given him by later Greek writers on the subject, notably Aristotle (l. 384-322 BCE) whose pronouncements were regularly regarded as accurate. None of Thales' works have survived - what is known of his philosophy comes from passages preserved by later writers – but all are in agreement that he pioneered the intellectual movement which later would become known as Greek philosophy.

He is said to have accurately predicted the solar eclipse of 28 May 585 BCE and was known as a skilled astronomer, mathematician, statesman, engineer, and sage. Thales, it is said, was the first to ask the question, “What is the basic 'stuff' of the universe” and, according to Aristotle, claimed the First Cause was water because, among other attributes, water could change shape and move while still remaining unchanging in substance.

Thales' inquiry into the nature of reality and first causes should have posed significant challenges to the ancient Greek religion which maintained that the world was created by the gods through supernatural means. There is no evidence that he was ever persecuted for his work, however, and, on the contrary, seems to have been highly regarded.

Based on the fragments of his work which survive, he seems to have accepted, and respected, by his contemporaries because he never denied the existence of the gods, he only proposed a single, first element which could be interpreted as that which the gods would have worked with as water was already recognized in Greek cosmology as the element surrounding the earth in the form of the river Oceanus.

Thales' pragmatic and empirical approach to the subject, however, which stripped creation of its supernatural aspects to focus on the observable world, initiated the application of rational thought which was then pursued by others (known as the Pre-Socratic Philosophers) until its full development by Socrates (l. 470/469-399 BCE), Plato (l. 428/427-348/347 BCE), and Aristotle.

Early Greek Religion

According to the Greek writer Hesiod (l. 8th century BCE) in his Theogony, the world (personified as the goddess Gaia) emerged from a swirling chaos of nothingness, fertilizing herself and giving birth to the sky (the god Uranus) who then impregnated her with the entities known as the Titans, six male and six female. Afterwards, Gaia would also give birth to the Cyclops (the one-eyed ones) and the Hecatonchires (hundred-handed ones) both of which displeased Uranus and were thrown into the dark underworld prison of Tartarus.

Gaia, outraged at Uranus' actions, convinced her Titan son Cronus to kill him, which he did by castrating his father. Afterwards, concerned that the same might happen to him, Cronos swallowed each of the children born to his sister-wife Rhea until the birth of her son Zeus whom she hid, feeding Cronus a stone wrapped in the newborn's blankets. Zeus grew up in a cave on the island of Crete and, upon attaining manhood, returned to overthrow Cronus, forcing him to vomit up Zeus' older siblings, killed him, and established himself as King of the Gods. He and his brothers and sisters then ruled the world, a kind of disc encircled by the waters of Oceanus, from their home on Mount Olympus after creating humanity.

By the time Thales was born, the stories concerning the anthropomorphic gods had become a highly developed belief system in which these gods were thought to interact with humans on a daily basis, were responsible for the maintenance and preservation of the world, and were interested in the personal lives and ethical choices of their human creations. Temples were raised in the honor of various deities in the pantheon, a clergy was developed, and rituals became standardized. There was, therefore, no reason to search for an origin of the world because this was clearly explained by religious belief.

Thales, Babylon, and Egypt

One of the perennial questions regarding the development of Thales' thought has been how he was first inspired to pursue it considering the intellectual climate in which he was raised. Philosophy usually develops only when religion fails to answer people's needs and, by all accounts, the early religion of the Greeks did so. It seems, however, that Thales was inspired in his pursuits through study in Babylon. The Babylonians held to a long-standing belief that water was the first principle and underlying form of existence and Thales would have picked up this concept from them.

The scholar George G. M. James, however, claims that Thales developed his ideas from the Egyptians with whom he is also supposed to have had contact. James writes:

Both history and tradition are silent as to how Thales arrived at his conclusions, except that Aristotle attempts to offer his opinion as a reason: that is that Thales must have been influenced by the consideration of the moisture of nutriment, and based his conclusion on a rationalistic interpretation of the myth of Oceanus. This, however, is regarded as mere conjecture on the part of Aristotle. (55)

James suggests that Thales took the idea of water as the first principle directly from Egyptian religion which maintained that the earth arose from the primordial seas of chaos. The god Atum, (accompanied, in some versions of the story by the god Heka, goddess Neith, or others) stood on a small hill of earth known as the ben-ben and created the ordered world from this watery chaos. James could well be correct in that it is entirely possible that a young, affluent, and intellectual youth such as Thales may well have studied in Egypt as well as Babylon or, just as likely, acquired his knowledge of the Egyptian creation story from the Babylonians who traded regularly with Egypt.

There seems to be no subject which was not of interest to Thales but, according to Aristotle (in his Metaphysics) he was chiefly concerned with the First Cause - that from which all else came - and declared it to be water. As noted, however, how he arrived at this conclusion is not adequately explained by the culture of his time. The majority of Western scholars reject the claims of Egyptian or Babylonian influence and insist that Thales' thought was completely original and derived from the ancient Greek paradigm of the universe and this has informed the standard interpretation of the origins of Greek philosophy, but this interpretation may be wrong.

Aristotle and Others on Thales

However he arrived at his conclusions, Thales maintained a pragmatic view of the creation of the world which had nothing, necessarily, to do with the gods. He chose water as the first principle because he noted that water became steam when heated while, when compacted with earth, it became slime and, if sufficiently cooled, it became ice. Water, then, was the underlying form of observable reality.

According to Aristotle and other writers of antiquity, Thales was regarded as an original thinker as his `water theory' does not bear a close relationship with the Greek mythological assertion which holds that the gods created the earth, including the element of water. While Thales does assert, as the Greek myth does, that the earth rests on water, Thales' theory dismisses any supernatural causes for this state of being. For Thales, there were practical, provable, logical reasons for why things happened, and the gods had nothing to do with observable phenomena.

With this in mind, it is interesting to note that another of Thales' famous claims was that "All things are full of gods". In his De Anima, Aristotle writes:

Thales, too, to judge from what is recorded of his views, seems to suppose that the soul is in a sense the cause of movement, since he says that a stone [magnet, or lodestone] has a soul because it causes movement to iron. (405 a20-22)

What, exactly, Thales meant by this statement is unclear but it has been suggested, and is probable, that by `gods' he simply meant energy but that Aristotle, and others, later re-interpreted Thales' statement according to the common understanding of the Greek word theoi as meaning “gods”. Thales might have been using that term in an entirely new sense, however.

The claim that Thales' “gods” are actually “energy” is a modern interpretation, but it does seem probable in that Thales' philosophy is routinely practical and based on observable phenomena. He seems to have held office, was employed as an engineer by King Croesus of Lydia (r. 560-547 BCE), and was recognized for his skill in astronomy. Scholar Forrest E. Baird notes:

Like many other Pre-Socratics, Thales was by no means a philosopher only. He was also a statesman, an astronomer, and a sage. (8)

When he was in Croesus' service, he is said to have made it possible for the Lydian army to continue its march by redirecting a river. According to Herodotus:

When he came to the Halys river, Croesus then, as I say, put his army across by the existing bridges; but, according to the common account of the Greeks, Thales the Milesian transferred the army for him. For it is said that Croesus was at a loss how his army should cross the river, since these bridges did not yet exist at this period; and that Thales, who was present in the army, made the river, which flowed on the left hand of the army, flow on the right hand also. He did so in this way: beginning upstream of the army, he dug a deep channel, giving it a crescent shape, so that it should flow round the back of where the army was encamped, being diverted in this way from its old course by the channel, and passing the camp, should flow into its old course once more. The result was that, as soon as the river was divided, it became fordable in both of its parts. (Histories, I.75)

Aristotle tells the story of how Thales proved to his contemporaries the practical use of philosophy:

When they reproached him because of his poverty, as though philosophy were no use, it is said that, having observed through his study of the heavenly bodies that there would be a large olive crop, he raised a little capital while it was still winter, and paid deposits on all the olive presses in Miletus and Chios, hiring them cheaply because no one bid against him. When the appropriate time came there was a sudden rush of requests for the presses; he then hired them out on his own terms and so made a large profit, thus demonstrating that it is easy for philosophers to be rich, if they wish, but that it is not in this that they are interested. (Politics,1259a)

The practical application of philosophy as a tool of reason attracted the attention of young intellectual males who became Thales' students. In time, Thales founded the Milesian School which, today, would equate with a private college at which young men could pursue a course of study in debate, investigation, and exploration of the world around them. While there is no evidence that Thales was an atheist or that he taught atheism, there is ample evidence that the traditional understanding of the gods had no place in his teachings. His most famous pupil, Anaximander (l. c. 610-c.546 BCE) carried on this rational approach to inquiry, rejecting traditional Greek theological explanations, as did Anaximenes (l. c. 546 BCE) also of the Milesian School, after him.

Conclusion

Among his many achievements, Thales is said to have `discovered' Ursa Minor, studied electricity, developed geometry, contributed to the practical application of mathematics later developed by Euclid, developed a crude telescope, `discovered' the seasons and set the solstice, created what would later be known as `natural philosophy', and was recognized, along with illustrious men like Solon, as one of The Seven Sages of Ancient Greece, first mentioned in Plato's dialogue of the Protagoras.

Thales is said to have died of old age while attending a sporting event. According to the later Greek writer Diogenes Laertius (3rd century CE):

This wise Thales died while present as a spectator at a gymnastic contest, being worn out with heat and thirst and weakness, for he was very old, and the following inscription was placed on his tomb: You see this tomb is small—but recollect, the fame of Thales reaches to the skies. (Life of Thales)

While later philosophers disagreed with Thales' claim that water was the First Cause and basic substance of the universe, his work inspired those who would come to be known as the Pre-Socratic Philosophers to pursue their own paths and develop their own philosophical systems which would finally culminate in the vision of Socrates as interpreted and developed by his student Plato and resonate far beyond the world of ancient Greece to inform the totality of Western philosophy and influence philosophical systems around the world.

Pythagoras

Pythagoras (l.c. 571- c. 497 BCE) was a Greek philosopher whose teachings emphasized the immortality and transmigration of the soul (reincarnation), virtuous, humane behavior toward all living things, and the concept of “number” as truth in that mathematics not only cleared the mind but allowed for an objective comprehension of reality.

He is best known in the modern day for the Pythagorean Theorem, a mathematical formula which states that the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides. This formula has been applied to measuring distance and space as, for example, in planning and executing the construction of a building. Although attributed to Pythagoras by ancient writers, modern scholars cite evidence from Babylonian texts, written some time before Pythagoras, which discuss the same formula or, at least, one very similar.

Almost nothing is known of Pythagoras' life even though later writers (such as Diogenes Laertius, l. c.180-240 CE) attempted to put together biographies based on stories and fragments from earlier works. Laertius' biography of Pythagoras is the most complete but, unfortunately, the author never cites the sources he drew from and so it is impossible to corroborate many of his claims.

Pythagoras' influence on later philosophers, and the development of Greek philosophy generally, was enormous. Plato (l. c. 428/427-348/347 BCE) references Pythagoras in a number of his works and Pythagorean thought, as understood and relayed by other ancient writers, is the underlying form of Plato's philosophy. Plato's famous student Aristotle (l. 384-322 BCE) also incorporated Pythagorean teachings into his own thought and Aristotle's works would influence philosophers, poets, and theologians (among many others) from his time through the Middle Ages (c. 476-1500 CE) and into the modern day. Although Pythagoras remains a mysterious figure in antiquity, therefore, he also stands as one of the most significant in the development of philosophical and religious thought.

Life & Works

What is known of Pythagoras comes from later writers piecing together fragments of his life from contemporaries and students. It is known that Pythagoras was born on the island of Samos, off Asia Minor, where his ancestors had settled after leaving Phlius, a city in the northwest Peloponnese, after the civil war there in 380 BCE. He received a quality education as his father, Mnesarchus, was a wealthy merchant. He may have studied in Babylon and in Egypt and possibly had the best Greek tutors of the time. All of this is speculative, however, as the information comes from later writers who accepted, uncritically, what others wrote about him. If there was an authoritative biography of Pythagoras, or original works by the man himself, they are long lost. Scholar Forrest E. Baird comments:

Pythagoras was associated with so many legends that few scholars dare to say much about his life, his personality, or even his teachings, without adding that we cannot be sure our information is accurate. That there was a man named Pythagoras who founded the sect called the Pythagoreans, we need not doubt; among the witnesses to his historicity was his younger contemporary Heraclitus, who thought ill of him. Nevertheless, it is notoriously difficult to distinguish between the teachings of Pythagoras himself and those of his followers, the Pythagoreans. (14)

The historicity of Pythagoras has never been questioned. Heraclitus (l. c. 500 BCE), as Baird notes, considered Pythagoras highly overrated and another contemporary, the visionary Xenophanes of Colophon (l. c. 570-c. 478 BCE), mocked Pythagoras for his belief in reincarnation. The difficulty in any discussion of Pythagoras is in trying to separate the actual man and his teachings from the mythology which surrounded him even in his own lifetime.

Pythagorean Beliefs

As noted, none of Pythagoras' writings – if he wrote anything – have survived and, owing to the secrecy he demanded of his students, the specifics of his teachings were carefully kept. The philosopher Porphyry (l. c. 234 - c. 305 CE), who wrote a later biography of Pythagoras, noted:

What he taught his disciples no one can say for certain, for they maintained a remarkable silence. All the same, the following became generally known. First, he said that the soul is immortal; second, that it migrates into other kinds of animals; third, that the same events are repeated in cycles, nothing being new in the strict sense; and finally, that all things with souls should be regarded as akin. Pythagoras seems to have been the first to introduce these beliefs to Greece. (Robinson, 58)

The Greek historian Herodotus (l.c. 484 - c. 425/413 BCE) alludes to Pythagoras (though famously refuses to name him) in his Histories:

Moreover, the Egyptians are the first to have maintained the doctrine that the soul of man is immortal and that, when the body perishes, it enters into another animal that is being born at the same time, and when it has been the complete round of the creatures of the dry land and of the sea and of the air it enters again into the body of a man at birth; and its cycle is completed in three thousand years. There are some Greeks who have adopted this doctrine, some in former times and some in later, as if it were their own invention; their names I know but refrain from writing down. (Book II.123)

Like the Pythagorean Theorem, Pythagoras' concept of the transmigration of souls may also have been borrowed. Scholar George G. M. James, in his work Stolen Legacy: The Egyptian Origins of Western Philosophy, points out that all of the great Pre-Socratic philosophers either studied in Egypt or in the Egyptian Mystery Schools of Asia Minor (James, 9). Thales (l.c. 585 BCE), considered the first Western philosopher, studied in Babylon and two other of the most significant Pre-Socratics – Anaximander (l. c. 610-c.546 BCE) and Anaximenes (l. c. 546 BCE) – both traveled extensively and had access to the Mystery Schools which focused on Egyptian religious thought.

It is more than likely, then, that Pythagoras' thought was actually Egyptian spirituality transplanted to Greece. Pythagoras' famous secrecy may have been intended to keep this fact from circulating too widely and discrediting him as an original thinker. He is said to have been quite charismatic and a powerful public speaker and it would have undermined his authority if his philosophy was revealed as simply re-packaged Egyptian belief.

Whether he concealed his teachings for this reason or some other cannot be ascertained. It is possible he simply felt the masses would not understand or appreciate his ideas. Whatever the reason, the secrecy added greatly to his mystique and reputation. His belief in the immortality of the soul and reincarnation led naturally to a vegetarian lifestyle with an emphasis on doing no harm to any other living thing and this asceticism, which he also demanded of his followers, elevated his reputation as a holy man even further. Diogenes Laertius describes his diet and habits:

Some say that he was satisfied with honey alone or a bit of honeycomb or bread (he did not touch wine during the day); or, for a treat, vegetables boiled or raw. Seafood he ate but rarely. His robe, which was white and spotless, and his bedclothes, which were also white, were of wool; for linen had not yet reached those parts. He was never observed to relieve himself, or to have intercourse, or to be drunk. He used to avoid laughter and all pandering to scurrilous jokes and vulgar stories. (VIII.19)

Laertius describes Pythagoras as a pescatarian, eating fish and sea food, but most other ancient authors maintain he was a strict vegetarian abstaining from the meat of any living thing which could be regarded as having a soul. He likewise abstained from sex and remained celibate to maintain spiritual power and clarity of thought. In disengaging from worldly pleasures such as sex and food, he freed himself from the distractions of the body to focus on the improvement of the soul.

This ascetism was thought by some to go too far. He and his followers were known to especially abstain from eating, or even touching, beans (one account of his death, in fact, claims that he would not enter a bean field to escape pursuers and so was killed). Laertius also mentions Xenophanes' satirical criticism of Pythagoras' belief in the transmigration of souls:

Once, they say, that he [Pythagoras] was passing by when a puppy was being whipped, and he took pity and said, `Stop! Do not beat it! For it is the soul of a friend that I recognized when I heard it giving tongue. (VIII.36)

To Xenophanes, who rejected reincarnation, Pythagoras' beliefs were as foolish as claiming one could recognize a departed friend's voice in the bark of a dog. To Pythagoras, however, vegetarianism, pacifism, and humane treatment of other living things were all part of the path to inner peace and, by extension, world peace in that humans could never live in harmony as long as they killed, ate, and were cruel to animals. Poor treatment of animals, and eating animal flesh, devalued all life by maintaining that some creatures (humans) were worth more in life than others. Pythagoras believed that all creatures were created equal and should be treated with respect.

He was considered by contemporaries and later writers as a mystic - not a mathematician as his is sometimes defined in the present day - and his school was associated with spiritual salvation and miraculous revelation. A central belief, which would significantly influence Plato, was that philosophic inquiry was vital to the salvation of the soul and apprehension of ultimate truth. An aspect of that truth was that nothing ever significantly changed and all was eternal and eternally recurring. According to the ancient writer, and student of Aristotle's, Eudemus of Rhodes (l. c. 370 - c. 300 BCE), Pythagoras believed in eternal recurrence as a logical, mathematical necessity. Eudemus writes:

If one were to believe the Pythagoreans, that events recur in an arithmetical cycle, and that I shall be talking to you again sitting just as you are now, with this pointer in my hand, and that everything else will be just as it is now, then it is plausible to suppose that the time, too, will be the same as now. (Baird, 16)

In this belief, Pythagoras prefigures the great German philosopher Fredrich Nietzsche (l. 1844-1900 CE) and his Theory of Eternal Recurrence in which Nietzsche claims that, in the absence of the “finish line” of a God who renders judgment after death, one's life will automatically reset and repeat itself in precisely the same way. Nietzsche's theory has often been interpreted as an encouragement to carefully consider how one spends one's time since one will have to relive every event, large or small, eternally; this may have also been suggested by Pythagoras' teachings.

Even if Pythagoras himself did not frame the concept in this way, he must have articulated it somehow for later Pythagoreans to have repeated it. The concept of the cyclical nature of life and the immortality of the soul were at the heart of Pythagorean thought and influenced many writers and thinkers of ancient Greece but none as significant as Plato.

Pythagoras & Plato

It is possible that Plato began as a student of Socrates, adhering to dialectic in establishing truth, and then only gradually moved toward embracing the idealism of Pythagoras – as some scholars have claimed – but it seems more probable that Socrates himself was aligned with Pythagorean thought. There is really no way of establishing any claim along these lines since most of what we know of Socrates comes from Plato's Dialogues which were written after Socrates' death when Plato was already of a mature philosophical mind.

However he was introduced to it, Pythagorean thought significantly influenced Plato's philosophy which included the concept of an ultimate truth not subject to opinion, of an ethical way of living in line with that truth, the soul's immortality, the necessity of salvation through philosophy, and of learning-as-recollection. Pythagorean concepts are apparent throughout Plato's work but most notably in the dialogues of the Meno and Phaedo.

In the Meno, Plato's main character Socrates shows how what one calls “learning” is actually only “remembering” lessons from a past life. He proves his claim by having a young, uneducated slave solve a geometrical problem. Plato argues that, if one dies with one's mind intact, one will 'remember' what one learned during that life when one is born into the next. What one thinks one 'learns' in this life, one is actually only 'remembering' from one's past life and what one knew in that past life was remembered from a previous one.

Plato never addresses the obvious problem with this theory: at some point, the soul must have had to actually “learn” and not just “remember”. His claim that one “remembers” what one learned in the ether in between lives – not just in mortal form - does not address the concern because the soul still would need to “learn” at some point, whether in the body or out of it.

Pythagoras' assertion that “things are numbers” and that one could understand the physical world through mathematics also features in the Meno, not only through Socrates' interaction with the slave but through his argument that virtue is a singular quality inherent in all people, regardless of their age, sex, or social status, in the same way that “number” informs and defines the known world; one recognizes reality through a distinction between unity and duality.

This claim would go toward the development of Plato's famous Theory of Forms in which he describes an objective world of Truth, above the mortal realm, which underlies and informs all human truths and gives them their value of “truthfulness”. Without this Realm of Forms, Plato argued, there could be no actual truth; only opinion about what one felt was true.

To Pythagoras, mathematics was the path toward enlightenment and understanding and, as he claimed, “Ten is the very nature of number” and by this 'number' he meant not only a unit of measurement but a means by which the world could be grasped and understood. He noted how people can count up to ten on their fingers and, having reached ten, revert back to the one-unit and begin again. In the same way, a soul entered a body, lived for a certain time, died, and reverted back to where it started from, only to then travel the same path again.

This concept is explored fully in Plato's Phaedo, the account of Socrates' last day in prison before his execution, which focuses on the immortality of the soul and the afterlife. Right from the start of the dialogue, Plato makes use of Pythagoras' link to Philius, in choosing Echecrates of Phlius as interlocutor and audience to Phaedo, the narrator. Further, the characters of Simmias and Cebes of Thebes – Socrates' central interlocutors in the account Phaedo relates - are both Pythagoreans. Plato's choice of Echecrates links the dialogue directly to Pythagorean thought from the first line but, through Simmias and Cebes, Pythagorean concepts are introduced and developed throughout.

Toward the end of the dialogue, after various proofs have been given by Socrates for the immortality of the soul, he concludes with this exchange with Cebes:

Tell me, [Socrates said], what is that which must be in the body to make it alive?

A soul, [Cebes] replied.

And is this always so?

Of course, [Cebes] said.

Then the soul always brings life to whatever contains her?

No doubt, [Cebes] answered.

And is there an opposite to life or not?

Yes.

What is it?

Death.

And we have already agreed that the soul cannot ever receive the opposite of what she brings?”

Yes, certainly we have, said Cebes.

…

What do we call that which does not admit death?

The immortal, [Cebes] said.

And the soul does not admit death?

No.

Then soul is immortal?

It is.

Good, [Socrates] said. Shall we say that this is proved? What do you think?

(Phaedo, 105c-e)

The mathematical proofs Socrates offers earlier concerning even and uneven numbers finally leads to the above proof that “even” cannot admit of the “odd” in order to remain itself (even) and so life (the soul) cannot admit of death and still remain life; therefore, the soul must be immortal. This entire argument typifies Pythagorean thought as understood by ancient writers and practiced by Pythagorean sects of Plato's time.

Conclusion

The Phaedo also establishes the geography of the afterlife which would later be used by the Church in creating the concepts of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. The concept of purgatory first appears in Phaedo 108b-d, judgment of the dead in 113d-e, Hell in 113e-114a, and heaven in 109d-110b. Plato's argument for an ultimate, undeniable, realm of truth, from which all other truths are established, is also evident in the gospel narratives of the Bible, most notably the Gospel of John, and in the epistles of St. Paul.

Even though nothing can be said for certain regarding Pythagoras' life or original teachings, enough of his thought was developed by later disciples and admirers to have influenced the greatest Greek philosopher of antiquity. Plato's work established the discipline of philosophy and has permeated every other, to greater or lesser degrees, for the past 2,000 years. The details of Pythagoras' life may never be fully known but his influence continues to be felt, world-wide, in the present day.

Xenophanes of Colophon

Xenophanes of Colophon (l. c. 570 - c. 478 BCE) was a Greek philosopher born fifty miles north of Miletus, a city famed for the birth of philosophy and home to the first Western philosopher, Thales of Miletus (l. c. 585 BCE). He is considered one of the most important of the so-called Pre-Socratic philosophers for his development and synthesis of the earlier work of Anaximander (l. c. 610-546 BCE) and Anaximenes (l. c. 546 BCE) but, chiefly, for his arguments concerning the gods.

The prevailing belief of the time was that there were many gods who looked and behaved very much like mortals. Xenophanes claimed that there was only one God, an eternal being, who shared no attributes with human beings. His thoughts on the Divine may have derived from Egyptian religion as the pharaoh Akhenaten (r. 1353-1336 BCE) had developed this monotheistic thought centuries before and, according to some scholars (and Sigmund Freud), this Egyptian model inspired the monotheism of the biblical Moses.

Early Life and Background

Xenophanes was from Colophon on the mainland of Anatolia (Asia Minor) and a contemporary of the philosopher Pythagoras (l. c. 571- c. 497 BCE) who also believed that the religious beliefs of his day were incorrect and taught the doctrine of the transmigration of souls (reincarnation) and a theology, based on that doctrine, which was available only to his disciples and so discussions or definitions of his beliefs in the present-day can only be speculative.

The earlier Ionian philosophers, Anaximander and Anaximenes, were chiefly concerned with identifying the basic substance of `being', of the reality which makes up life and the world. Anaximander identified this substance as the apeiron, the unlimited, or boundless, by which he meant something that provided the underlying form of existence. His student Anaximenes developed this theory by claiming that air was the basic substance in that air was `unlimited and boundless' but that the effects of air (wind, breath) could be observed. Instead of an invisible apeiron, then, one had an observable phenomenon for study. Anaximenes recognized that:

By rarefaction, air becomes fire, and, by condensation, air becomes, successively, wind, water, and earth. Observeable qualitative differences (fire, wind, water, earth) are the result of quantitative changes, that is, of how densely packed is the basic principle. (Baird, 12)

Xenophanes drew upon both these earlier theories but recognized in them a religious significance. The apeiron of Anaximander and the air of Anaximenes pointed, Xenophanes claimed, to a force greater than either concept as a First Cause and could, simply, be both: God - an eternal, singular, uncreated being who set all other things in motion and governed their movements since the moment of creation.

Xenophanes' God

Xenophanes writes that this God "sees all over, thinks all over, hears all over. He remains always in the same place, without moving; nor is it fitting that he should come and go, first to one place then to another. But without toil he sets all things in motion by the thought of his mind." (Robinson, 53) These claims regarding a deity were a radical departure from the anthropomorphic gods of Mount Olympus who were thought to daily interact and interfere with the lives of mortals. Xenophanes' god was transcendent, uncreated, and invisible spirit.

He dismissed the popular understanding of the gods as superstition anc claimed that the traditional understanding of the deities based on the writings of Hesiod and Homer (both l. c. 8th century BCE) was wrong, stating:

Homer and Hesiod ascribed to the gods whatever is infamy and reproach among men: theft and adultery and deceiving each other. (Baird, 17)

Xenophanes argued that the transcendent nature of God was easily apprehended in the natural world and the Supreme Deity did not need fictions to explain itself when it had already provided simpler prompts to recognizing its creation. Whereas the rainbow, in Greek belief, was considered a manifestation of the goddess Iris, Xenophanes claimed that, "She whom men call `Iris' is in reality a cloud, purple, red, and green to the sight."(Robinson, 52). He further argued:

Mortals suppose that the gods are born and have clothes and voices and shapes like their own. But if oxen, horses and lions had hands or could paint with their hands and fashion works as men do, horses would paint horse-like images of gods and oxen oxen-like ones, and each would fashion bodies like their own. The Ethiopians consider the gods flat-nosed and black; the Thracians blue-eyed and red-haired. There is one god, among gods and men the greatest, not at all like mortals in body or mind." (Diogenes Laertius, Lives)

While this may seem a familiar theological understanding in the modern day, it was by no means a common concept in Xenophanes' time. He seems to have framed his one God alongside the accepted pantheon of the many deities of Greece in order to make the concept more palatable to his audience. Though he consistently speaks of `many gods' it is clear that he does not believe they exist anywhere but in the minds of people.

He notes, for example, how "mortals suppose that the gods are born and have clothes and voices and shapes like their own" while clearly mocking and deriding this belief as childish (Baird, 17). Such claims were a serious offense at the time, however, and Xenophanes could have included his references to many gods simply as a way of avoiding trouble as he clearly thought the concept ridiculous.

Xenophanes and Plato

Later writers, perhaps influenced by two passing characterizations of Xenophanes by Plato (Sophist 242c-d) and Aristotle (Metaphysics 986b18-27) identified him as the founder of the Eleatic School of philosophy which claimed that, despite the illusion of the senses, what exists is really a changeless, motionless, and eternal One. This view has been largely rejected, however, and Xenophanes is now seen as a lone figure criticisizing the anthropomorphic deities of his time (with Parmenides, rightfully, acknowledged as the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy).

Even so, Xenophanes was said to have been Parmenides' teacher and the two philosophers share the fundamental concept that existence comes from a single, unifying force. As Xenophanes puts it:

There is one god, among gods and men the greatest, not at all like mortals in body or mind. He sees as a whole, thinks as a whole, and hears as a whole. He always remains in the same place, not moving at all, nor is it fitting for him to change his position at different times. (Baird, 18)

According to Xenophanes, recognition of this force enables one to obtain a clearer and more precisce understanding of the world and one's place in it. This line of thought would later be explored more completely in Plato's dialogues. Plato emphasizes this concept through his discussion of the "true lie" (also known as The Lie in the Soul) in Book II of his Republic. In this passage, Plato claims that what people hate the most is to believe wrongly about the most important aspects of one's life. This concept, as well as Plato's famous Theory of Forms - which claims an objective, external, higher realm of Truth which makes all things which one values on earth true - can be traced back to the work of Xenophanes.

Legacy

Xenophanes traveled widely, reciting his poetry and, in so doing, spread his beliefs. Among these was his recognition of the relativity and limitation of human understanding. He writes, "The gods have not revealed all things from the beginning to mortals but, by seeking, men find out, in time, what is better" (Robinson, 56). It is only by searching for the truth that one will find that truth. According to Xenophanes, one should not simply accept the beliefs of one's community as `truth' without questioning the validity of the concepts held.

Xenophanes' claim most certainly influenced later writers, most notably Socrates and, after him (as noted), Plato. Both of these later philosophers insisted on pursuing an individual course in pursuit of truth and wisdom. Xenophanes' concept of the one God, as noted above, influenced Parmenides' and the Eleatics' recognition of unity and their work contributed to Plato's Theory of Forms and Aristotle's Unmoved Mover, providing a philosophical basis for the development of monotheism.

Though quite different in specifics, Plato's Forms and Aristotle's Unmoved Mover both posit the existence of a `higher' realm of reality which is responsible for the observable world. Xenophanes most likely would have approved of both these theories but, in keeping with his insistence on the small scope of human understanding, would have suggested both approached truth without being actually true. Xenophanes did not even consider his own views to be objectively true, only more valid than the beliefs of those around him.

Regarding his teaching, he writes, "Let these things, then, be taken as like the truth" not as truth itself. Only the one God knows the Truth, Xenophanes claimed, and mortals can only approach, never fully grasp, what that truth is. Different people and different cultures will interpret the Ultimate Truth differently but these, in the end, are simply reflections of the Truth which is only known to itself.

Anaximenes

Anaximenes of Miletus (l. c. 546 BCE) was a younger contemporary of Anaximander and generally regarded as his student. Known as the Third Philosopher of the Milesian School after Thales (l. c. 585 BCE) and Anaximander (l. c. 610 - c. 546 BCE), Anaximenes proposed air as the First Cause from which all else comes, differing from Thales, who claimed water was the source of all things, or Anaximander, who cited 'the boundless infinite'. To the Greeks of the time, 'air' was comparable to 'soul' and, just as one's breath gave an individual life, so air, Anaximenes claimed, gave life to all observable phenomena.

Almost nothing is known of Anaximenes' life except, as noted, that he was a contemporary and a student of Anaximander. According to Diogenes Laertius (3rd century CE), Anaximenes "wrote in the pure unmixed Ionian dialect. And he lived, according to the statements of Apollodorus, in the sixty-third Olympiad, and died about the time of the taking of Sardis [in 546 BCE]" (Baird, 12). The events of his life may be unknown but the effects of his theory on air as the First Cause were wide-reaching. Although he may seem, to a modern audience, to be making a claim he cannot prove, his attempt at such a proof provided an early model for the scientific method.

Thales & Anaximander

Anaximenes today forms the third part of the triad of Milesian philosophers who sought the basic 'stuff' from which the universe is made, the 'First Cause'. Their work would influence later Greek philosophers including Plato (l. 428/427-348/347 BCE) and Aristotle (l. 384-322 BCE). The Milesian philosophers departed from the traditional cultural understanding of their time that the universe was created by the gods and operated according to their will. To Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes, there was a simpler, and more rational, explanation for how the universe operated as it did. Their efforts to discover what that explanation might be laid the groundwork for the Greek philosophers who came after them.

Thales of Miletus claimed the First Cause was water and based this on three assumptions:

• The underlying explanation of the universe must be one, a unified element

• This unified element must be a “thing” – something observable

• This unified element must possess the ability to transform.

Water seemed the obvious choice because, when heated, it becomes steam and, when cooled, becomes ice. It was a single element, observable, and could change.

Anaximander agreed with Thales on there being a First Cause but rejected the claim that it was an observable element. Instead of water, Anaximander argued, all of existence came from, and operated because of, the apeiron defined as "the unlimited, boundless, infinite, or indefinite" (Baird, 10). Exactly what this 'aperion' was is unknown because all that exists of Anaximander's work is fragments quoted by later writers. Even so, he advanced Thales' claim that the underlying explanation of the universe must be a single, unified “thing”, he simply raised that “thing” from observable to invisible and seems to have claimed that, although one could not see it, one could recognize its existence by observable phenomena.

Parmenides

Parmenides (l.c. 485 BCE) of Elea was a Greek philosopher from the colony of Elea in southern Italy. He is considered among the most important of the Pre-Socratic philosophers who initiated philosophic inquiry in Greece beginning with Thales of Miletus (l. c. 585 BCE) in the 6th century BCE. He is known as the founder of the Eleatic School of philosophy which taught a strict Monistic view of reality. Philosophical Monism is the belief that all of the sensible world is of one, basic, substance and being, un-created and indestructible.

According to the ancient writer Diogenes Laertius (l.c. 180-240 CE), Parmenides was a student of Xenophanes of Colophon (l. c. 570-c.478 BCE) - who some claim as the founder of the Eleatic School - and, having mastered Xenophanes' teaching, left to pursue his own vision. It is probable that he was Xenophanes' student as the stamp of the elder philosopher's teachings can be seen in the work of Parmenides in that both assert that the things in life which one thinks one understands may be quite different than they seem to be, especially regarding an understanding of the gods.

Xenophanes' insistence on a single deity, who in no way resembled human beings, seems to have been the basis for Parmenides' claim of a single substance comprising all of reality. Parmenides was a younger contemporary of Heraclitus (l.c. 500 BCE) who claimed that all things are constantly in motion and that the First Cause - the basic `stuff' of life - is change itself. Parmenides' thought could not be further removed from that of Heraclitus in that Parmenides claimed nothing moved, change was an impossibility, and that human sense perception could not be relied upon for an apprehension of Truth.

Parmenides' philosophy, championed by his student Zeno of Elea (l. c. 465 BCE), would contribute to the later philosophies of Plato (l. 428/427-348/347 BCE) and his student Aristotle (l. 384-322 BCE) whose works established the foundation of Western philosophy. The central vision of Parmenides' work is that change is an illusion - appearances change but not essense - which is later reflected in Plato's Theory of Forms which claims that the observable world is only a reflection of a higher, truer, reality.

The Philosopher of Changeless Being

According to Parmenides, “There is a way which is and a way which is not” (a way of fact, or truth, and a way of opinion about things) and one must come to an understanding of the way “which is” to understand the nature of life. Known as the Philosopher of Changeless Being, Parmenides' insistance on an eternal, single Truth and his repudiation of relativism and mutability would greatly influence the young philosopher Plato and, through him, Aristotle, though the latter would interpret Parmenides' Truth quite differently than his master did and reject the concept of an ethereal, unprovable, higher realm.

Plato devoted a dialogue to the elder philosopher, the Parmenides, in which Parmenides and his student, Zeno, come to Athens and instruct a young Socrates in philosophical wisdom. This is quite an homage to the thought of Parmenides in that, in most dialogues, Plato presents Socrates as the wise questioner who needs no instruction from anyone. While Parmenides was an older contemporary of Socrates, it is doubtful the two men ever met and Plato's dialogue is considered an idealized account of the philosopher though accurate in portraying his philosophy.

Defence by Zeno

Zeno of Elea was Parmenides' most famous student and wrote forty paradoxes in defense of his claim that change – and even motion – were illusions which one must disregard in order to know the nature of oneself and that of the universe. Zeno's work was intended to clarify and defend Parmenides' statements, such as:

There is not, nor will there be, anything other than what is since indeed Destiny has fettered it to remain whole and immovable. Therefore those things which mortals have established, believing them to be true, will be mere names: "'coming into being and passing away,' 'being and not being,' 'change of place'...(Robinson, 116)

In other words, Parmenides argues, one may think the world one lives in is comprised of multiples but, in reality, it is One. A person may think they change with age, for example, but that is only one's outward appearance, not one's essence. One's essence is a part of the whole of the Universe and every other living thing in it. Nothing is capable of inherently changing in any significant fashion because the very substance of reality is unchangeable and 'nothingness' cannot be comprehended.

Nothing Can Come from Nothing

It seems that Parmenides' claims were hard to comprehend for his listeners, necessitating Zeno's mathematical paradoxes. Parmenides' main point, however, was simply that nothing could come from nothing, that being must have always existed, and that reality was uniform, unbroken, and unbreakable. He writes:

There is left but this single path to tell thee of: namely, that being is. And on this path there are many proofs that being is without beginning and indestructible; it is universal, existing alone, immovable and without end; nor ever was it nor will it be, since it now is, all together, one, and continuous. For what generating of it wilt thou seek out? From what did it grow, and how? I will not permit thee to say or to think that it came from not-being; for it is impossible to think or to say that not-being is. What would then have stirred it into activity that it should arise from not-being later rather than earlier? So it is necessary that being either is absolutely or is not. Nor will the force of the argument permit that anything spring from being except being itself. Therefore justice does not slacken her fetters to permit generation or destruction, but holds being firm. (Fairbanks, 93)

Being & Not Being

Simply put, his argument is that since 'something' cannot come from 'nothing' then 'something' must have always existed in order to produce the sensible world. This world one perceives, then, is of one substance - that same substance from which it came - and those who inhabit it share in this same unity of substance. Therefore, if it should appear that a person is born from `nowhere' or that one dies and goes somewhere else, both of these perceptions must be wrong since that which is now can never have been 'not' nor can it ever 'not be'.

In this, Parmenides may be developing ideas from the earlier philosopher Pythagoras (l.c. 571-c.497 BCE) who claimed the soul is immortal and returns to the sensible world repeatedly through reincarnation. If so, however, Parmenides radically departed from Pythagorean thought which not only allows for, but depends upon, plurality. Change is not only possible in life, to Pythagoras, but necessary in order for life to be life. To Parmenides, and his disciples of the Eleatic School, such a claim would be evidence of belief in the senses which, they insisted, could never be trusted to reveal the truth.

Conclusion

The Eleatic claim that all is One and unchanging exerted considerable influence on later philosophers and schools of thought. Besides Plato (who, in addition to the dialogue Parmenides also addressed Eleatic concepts in his dialogues of the Sophist and the Statesman), the famous Sophist Gorgias (l.c. 427 BCE) employed Eleatic reasoning and principles in his work in claiming that "true knowledge" could not be known and what passed for "knowledge" in the world was only opinion. Gorgias, founder of the Skeptic school of philosophy, took Parmenides' assertions of "a way that is and a way that is not", the unreliability of the senses, and the unchangeable nature of reality to mean that what is observable is not Truth and what is Truth is not observable nor communicable.

Aristotle would also draw on Parmenides' philosophy, principally in his Metaphysics, in developing his own. Aristotle's assertion that the First Cause of all things in the universe is the Prime Mover (or the Unmoved Mover) - the force which set everything in motion but does not move itself - can be traced back directly to Parmenides' claim regarding reality as fixed and unchanging in its essence.

Heraclitus of Ephesus

Heraclitus of Ephesus (l. c. 500 BCE) was one of the early Pre-Socratic philosophers who, like the others, sought to identify the First Cause for the creation of the world. Thales of Miletus (l. c. 585 BCE) claimed this cause was water while his student Anaximander (l. c. 610-546 BCE) concluded it was a cosmic force he called the apeiron (a boundless, infinite creative energy). Heraclitus rejected these suggestions in favor of fire as both a creative and transformative element. Along with the other Pre-Socratic philosophers, Heraclitus' concept would eventually influence the works of Plato (l. 428/427-348-347 BCE) and Aristotle (l. 384-322 BCE) which lay the foundation of Western philosophy.

Heraclitus was known to his contemporaries as the 'dark' philosopher, so-called because his writings were so difficult to understand. Seeming to hold the common understanding of the nature of life and the purpose of human life in contempt (as, in fact, he seems to have regarded most of the human beings he came in contact with), Heraclitus compared most people's understanding to that of those asleep. To Heraclitus, only the philosopher, the one who pursued Truth, was fully awake and fully alive, and he seemed to consider himself the only philosopher of his time.

His central claim is summed up in the phrase Panta Rhei ("life is flux") recognizing the essential, underlying essence of life as change. Nothing in life is permanent, nor can it be, because the very nature of existence is change. Change is not just a part of life in Heraclitus' view, it is life itself. All things, he claimed, are brought into and pass out of existence through a clash of opposites which continually create and destroy. He is said to have severely criticized those who lamented strife and war because both, he claimed, were instrumental in transformation.

Heraclitus is said to have died either by suicide, because he could no longer bear living among others whom he felt were his inferiors, or in an attempt to cure himself of a disease he was suffering from. Based upon what others later wrote of him, either could be true but it is generally accepted that he died while attempting to cure himself as he placed no trust in doctors nor, it seems, in anyone but himself.

Provocation & Obscurity

His writings, which so confounded the many, seem purposefully written to force a reader toward independent thought and realization (much like the zen koans of the Zen school of Buddhism) instead of providing them with more of the same sleep-inducing 'philosophies' of life Heraclitus so despised. Scorning the fairly straight forward approach of his predeccesors, such as Anaximander, Anaximenes (l. c. 546 BCE, and Xenophanes of Colophon (l.c.570-c.478 BCE), he consistently presented his thought as vaguely as possible with the final meaning of any statement veiled, like a riddle.

While this is generally understood as an attempt to enlighten his readers it could as easily be interpreted as simply a reflection of his individual character. As noted, it is reported by ancient writers that he brought about his own death by speaking to the doctors who were trying to treat him in this same willfully confusing manner and, by the same accounts, he spoke to everyone else in the same way. These same sources suggest he may have come from an aristocratic family in or near Ephesus and had developed a disdain for the "common people" at an early age. While this may certainly be so, it is also possible that, after enough interaction with people who did not seem to pay attention to anything more important than self-interest, he dispensed with the facade of polite society and refused to interact with others as they expected him to.

Life is Flux

Following in the traditions of the earlier Pre-Socratic philosophers, Heraclitus expounded a physical theory of matter and the physical world much along the lines of Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes, but took the ideas further in his famous assertion that “Life is Flux” (Panta Rhei in Greek, meaning everything or all things change). If one understands that change is the only constant in life then one will more easily recognize what Heraclitus is saying in his 'obscure' writings when he claims such things as, “The way up and the way down are one and the same. Living and dead, waking and sleeping, young and old, are the same.” These things are the 'same' in that they are all subject to change, arise from one change to vanish into another and all things, constantly, are in flux and are, in that regard, the same.

Heraclitus was famous among his contemporaries for his undisguised contempt for all of them and, equally, those who preceeded them. Among the over 100 fragments we have of his work is this one which claims:

A knowledge of many things does not teach one to have intelligence; otherwise it would have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras or, again, Xenophanes and Hecataeus. (DK 22B40)

Commenting on this, Professor J.M. Robinson explains that Heraclitus is saying how these others wasted their time in speculation on many things - Hesiod with theories on the gods, Pythagoras with a preoccupation of the soul, Xenophanes in asserting there was only one god - while Heraclitus claimed one should focus only on the First Cause which would explain all else:

To know many things - to know the causes of thunder and lightning and earthquakes - is good; but it is better to understand the one thing which underlies all of these - the thought that steers all things through all things. This is wisdom. (Robinson, 88)

The underlying form of life, the `wisdom' Heraclitus understood, is that the human condition is chiefly characterized by strife, by the coming together and pulling away of opposing forces. While people lament this strife, equating it with suffering, Heraclitus observed that this same process informed the natural world as well writing, "All things come into being through opposition and all are in flux like a river" (DK 22A1). There is no reason, then, to fear or try to avoid strife because conflict is the essential underlying force in life.

Heraclitus' World Order - Logos

This contending of forces, which Heraclitus characterized as fire, is easily observable in nature and yet human beings resist the natural movement of life and try to cling to what is known and what is considered safe. Heracitus claimed that this `clinging' is unnatural and is what causes people to suffer. He writes, "This world order, the same for all, no god made or any man, but it always was and is and will be an ever-living fire, kindling by measure and going out by measure" (DK22B30). The world order is continual change and resistance to this change is a kind of death in that the individual is refusing to participate in that which defines life. Though it seems he would never admit to it, Heraclitus appears to have developed the concepts of Xenophanes concerning a single, eternal `God' who is behind all things and who set all in motion; he called this force the Logos.

In Greek, Logos means `the word' but also means `to speak' and can also refer to `conveying thought' and the Logos of Heraclitus may most neatly fit the latter meaning. The Logos constantly `conveys thought' to human beings but the message is missed because of the consistent refusal of people to recognize the natural order in their own lives. Heraclitus writes:

Though the logos is as I have said, men always fail to comprehend it, both before they hear it and when they hear it for the first time. For though all things come into being in accordance with this logos, they seem like men without experiences, though in fact they do have experience both of words and deeds such as I have set forth, distinguishing each thing in accordance with its nature and declaring what it is. But other men are as unaware of what they do when awake as they are when they are asleep. (DK 22B1)

The Logos is rational, natural, universal `thought' through which the universe came into being and by which it is maintained.

In this respect, Heraclitus' beliefs correspond with those of the younger philosopher Parmenides (l. c. 485 BCE), who claimed that all of existence was One, was of the same exact substance, and could never be created or destroyed. Heraclitus' Logos would correspond to Parmenides' One with the distinction that the Logos informs all things but is not those things themselves. Parmenides' disagreed with Heraclitus' claim that all was strife and the eternal clash of forces, insisting that all such observations were based upon false sensory interpretation. To Parmenides, there was no plurality in existence, only unity; claims to the contrary were caused by the illusions which one's senses interpreted as truth.

Heraclitus, however, would argue that Parmenides' argument was flawed in that the operation of the Logos is simply the natural order of life and an understanding of it is not dependent on the senses but on reason. He writes, "They do not comprehend how, though [the Logos] is at variance with itself, it agrees with itself. It is a harmony of opposed tensions, as in the bow and the lyre" (DK22B51) and, further, "In opposition there is agreement, between unlikes, the fairest harmony" (DK22B8) and, "The hidden harmony is stronger than the apparent" (DK22B54).

This `hidden harmony' is the basic `stuff' of existence which, when properly apprehended, makes life both sensible and meaningful. The later philosopher, Zeno of Citium (l. C. 336-c.265 BCE), would develop this idea into the school of thought known as Stoic Philosophy which would further be developed by the Stoic philosopher Epictetus (l. c. 50-c. 130 CE), among others, to become the dominant strain of philosophical thought in Rome.

Death

Diogenis Laertius (l. c. 180-240 CE), in the 8th book of his famous Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers relates the death of Heraclitus and how it was in keeping with his life:

When somebody asked Heraclitus to decree some rules, he showed no interest because the government of the city was already bad. Instead, he went to the temple of Artemis and played dice with children. Finally he became misanthrope, withdrew from the world and lived in the mountains feeding on grasses and plants. However, having fallen in this way into dropsy he came down to town and asked the doctors in a riddle if they could make a drought out of rainy weather. When they did not understand he buried himself in a cow-stall, expecting that the dropsy would be evaporated by the heat of the manure; but even so he failed to effect anything, and ended his life at the age of sixty.

The `dropsy' Heraclitus suffered from would, today, be known as `edema' a swelling of soft tissue due to an accumulation of fluid beneath the skin. It was typical of Heraclitus to pose his problem to the doctors in a riddle as it seemed he was always testing others in the belief that he possessed above-average intelligence. When they failed to understand his request that they `make a drought out of rainy weather' to mean he was suffering from dropsy, he, also typically, decided he knew best how to cure himself.

Scholars place his death at about 475 BCE. Besides the Stoic school, Heraclitus' thought would greatly influence others who came after him and his riddles are often quoted and alluded to in Plato's Dialogues and, later, in the works of Aristotle. Heraclitus was consistently cited as among the most brilliant, if difficult, of the Pre-Socratic philosophers by later ancient writers who recognized his importance in synthesizing the human experience with the natural world and he continues to be understood in this same way in the modern era.

Note: The `DK' citations refer to the Diels-Krantz catalogue of Fragments of the Pre-Socratic Philosophers as used in Kathleen Freeman's Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers.

Protagoras

Protagoras of Abdera (l.c.485-415 BCE) is considered the greatest of the Sophists of ancient Greece and the first philosopher in the West to promote Subjectivism, arguing that interpretation of any given experience, or anything whatsoever, is relative to the individual. This same view was earlier promoted by the Chinese philosopher Teng Shih (l.c. 500 BCE) but Protagoras was the first to teach this view in Greece through his position as a Sophist.

A Sophist was a teacher of rhetoric, politics, and logic who served as a private tutor to the youth of the upper classes and Protagoras was among the most popular and highly paid. Greece generally, but Athens especially, was extremely litigious and the courts heard countless lawsuits on a daily basis. The ability to persuade a jury to accept one's side of an argument and reject opposing claims was highly valued and this was among the skills the sophists offered to teach, for a price.

Protagoras is best known for the phrase often translated as "man is the measure of all things" by which he meant that everything is relative to individual interpretation. A room will feel cold to someone used to warmth and seem warm to someone coming in from the cold and, in Protagoras' view, both are correct. In this same way "right" and "wrong" are labels people use based on their own experience and interpretation and, finally, are only opinions. There is no ultimate "right" or final "wrong" because there is no final Truth which could give values to these definitions.

Protagoras' claims were countered by Plato (l. 428/427-348/347 BCE) who maintained that there had to be an ultimate Truth in order to inform those definitions and values which people held to be true. If there was no Truth then, as Protagoras claimed, every argument over right or wrong was simply opinion and, further, laws and social customs were rendered meaningless. Plato devoted an entire dialogue (the Protagoras) to refuting the relativist view but, it could be argued, the entire corpus of his work is essentially devoted to proving Protagoras wrong.

Protagoras the Sophist

Sophists taught people, particularly young men, the finer points of culture and how to speak well (giving rise to the English word `sophisticated'). As Greece, particularly Athens, was extremely litigious, a knowledge of the art of public speaking was greatly valued as a means of defending one's self in court or prosecuting someone else. There were no professional lawyers in ancient Greece and, therefore, it was up to the individual involved in a case of law to hire a professional speech writer and then be able to deliver that speech eloquently.

According to ancient writers, Protagoras chiefly made his living by coaching wealthy youth in the art of rhetoric for use in the courtroom. A great deal of what we know of Protagoras' life and teachings comes from two of Plato's dialogues, the Protagoras and the Theaetetus, in which he is presented unfavorably. Professors Forrest E. Baird and Walter Kaufmann comment:

Plato considered it his task to oppose these men, and since his dialogues survived and most of their writings did not, his highly polemical pictures of the Sophists have been widely accepted as fair portraits. The very name `Sophist' has become a reproach. Yet one should not uncritically accept Plato's image of the Sophists. Although many disagree with Sophist conclusions, their questioning of conventions, especially in ethics, and their critique of the limits of knowledge represent a milestone in the history of thought. (43-44)

Protagoras is best known for his claim that, "Of all things the measure is Man, of the things that are, that they are, and of the things that are not, that they are not" or, in other words, that everything is relative to individual experience, judgement, and interpretation. This thought is often phrased as "man is the measure of all things" or "everything is relative". This claim, it is thought, was of particular use in court where a prosecutor or defendant could employ relativistic reasoning to win a case.

For example, if Person A claimed that Person B had wronged them by taking a goat from their yard, and Protagoras was coaching, or even representing, Person B, he might answer the charge by stating that Person A perhaps believed that the goat belonged to him but, as Person B was making the same claim, and lacking any physical evidence, there was no way of verifying Person A's belief. If Person A called witnesses to provide such verification, they would be met with Protagoras' skepicism since they were clearly biased in favor of Person A. The case would be won by introducing enough doubt into the minds of the jurors to decide in favor of Person B. The actual truth regarding who the goat belonged to or whether Person B had, in fact, stolen it did not matter to Protagoras because there was no "truth" beyond what an individual defined that concept as being.

Protagoras' Relativism

In philosophy, `relativism' is the belief that there is no final, objective truth, and Protagoras may be regarded as the first known relativist in Western culture. Plato, of course, believed in an objective standard of truth which everyone needs to apprehend and acknowledge in order to live a fulfilling, satisfied, and productive life. He was, therefore, at great odds with the philosophy of Protagoras. Professors Baird and Kaufmann write, "Plato takes Protagoras to mean that each person, not humanity as a whole, is the measure of all things and so attacks Protagoras's relativism" (43). It may be, however, that Protagoras was simply making use of ideas first espoused by the earlier Greek philosopher Xenophanes of Colophon (l.c. 570-478 BCE) who emphasized the limitations of human knowledge.

Xenophanes writes, "No man knows or ever will know the truth about the gods and about everything I speak of; for even if one chanced to say the complete truth, yet oneself knows it not but seeming is wrought over all things" (DK21B38). Xenophanes is here saying that, owing to the subjective nature of human interpretation and understanding, even if an individual were to uncover the truth about the gods, one would not be able to realize that truth because `seeming', our subjective understanding, clouds and distorts such a possibility.

Protagoras seems to be saying something much along the same lines when he writes:

About the gods, I am not able to know whether they exist or do not exist, nor what they are like in form; for the factors preventing knowledge are many: the obscurity of the subject and the shortness of human life. (Baird & Kaufmann, 44)

This line also mirrors another of Xenophanes' thoughts concerning knowledge of the gods in which the elder philosopher claimed that one could only approach such knowledge through seeking after it and, even then, would only be able to apprehend a shadow.

Protagoras' famous relativism, then, could have originally been a simple empirical observation concerning the human condition and not `relativism' at all in that he may never have claimed `truth' or the `gods' did not exist, merely that there is no way of objectively defining what those things might be. Everyone, according to Protagoras, will interpret the truth individually, and this has been understood to mean that if someone claims there is no God, then there is no God for that person. While Plato asserts that this is what Protagoras believed and taught, it cannot be stated with certainty as only fragments of Protagoras' work have survived. His tutelage of the youth of Athens and skill at litigation is understood as probable based on what has been written of him and the behavior of sophists generally but, still, amounts to hearsay.

Protagoras & Plato's Objectivism

Whatever motivation or inspiration Protagoras may have been working from, his ideas were antithetical to Plato's Objectivism, and the latter has done much to make him appear foolish. In his dialogue of the Theaetetus, Plato has the character of Socrates say,

[Protagoras] says, doesn't he, that what is believed by each person is so for him who believes it?...Well, gratifying as it is to be told that what each of us believes is true, I am surprised that he does not begin his Truth by saying that of all things the measure is the pig, or the dog-faced baboon...If what each man believes to be true through sensation is true for him - then how, my friend, was Protagoras so wise that he should consider himself worthy to teach others and for huge fees? And how are we so ignorant that we should go to school to him if each of us is the measure of his own wisdom?(161B)

While it seems clear that Protagoras did hold to this relativistic philosophy, it is not known whether he made his money teaching these concepts as philosophical truths. It is likely, again, that he used his paradigm of an individual alone being able to apprehend separate truths and realities to teach his students how to win court cases by "making the worse appear to be the better cause", as Plato phrases it in his dialogue of the Apology.

The First Greek Free Thinker

Protagoras was considered at least an agnostic and, perhaps, an atheist based upon his teachings and his claim concerning the existence of the gods. His departure from the standard way of viewing religious and ethical subjects was only one aspect of his overall shift away from the earlier Greek Pre-Socratic philosophers and their focus on natural philosophy to one which questioned the basics of perception and what it meant to be a human being.

His 'Man is the Measure' claim has been cited by many through the ages as the first and best statement of human relativism and he has also been hailed as an early 'humanist' and 'free thinker'. His influence on later philosophers has been vast in that any great thinker who followed him has had to at some point grapple with his simple assertion that nothing is true which is not true to an individual and an Objective Truth, able to be apprehended the same way by all, does not exist.

This relativism so bothered Plato that the latter devoted an enormous amount of time and effort in his writings to refuting the idea that anything can be true as long as it is believed to be true by the individual. Plato's theory of Forms (that what we see and call 'true' is but a reflection of a higher Truth) is a direct response to Protagoras' earlier relativistic claim, in that Plato was trying to prove there had to be some standard of truth by which one could objectively recognize what was right and what was wrong, true or false. Plato's body of work may, in fact, be read as one long refutation of Protagoras' famous assertion.

Death & Legacy

Protagoras was accused of impiety when he was seventy years old in c. 415 BCE; a charge in ancient Greece which carried a penalty of death. This was the same charge, which amounted to denying the traditional gods of Greece and promoting atheism, later leveled against Socrates in 399 BCE and which led to his execution. Many people were routinely charged with impiety and were able to pay a fine or otherwise escape prosecution but Protagoras chose, instead, to leave Athens before he could be brought to trial. He drowned at sea while trying to reach the Greek colony at Sicily.

Although his relativism was repeatedly, and brilliantly, refuted by Plato and those who followed him, Protagoras' thought continues to resonate and intrigue people in the present day. In spite of all the rational, objective, critiques of Protagoras' central claim, the concept of everything as relative to individual interpretation is impossible to completely refute. Protagoras lay the foundation in the West for questioning the most fundamental ideas about reality and perception in suggesting that the world one person sees may be radically different from the one their neighbor is experiencing.

Socrates

Socrates of Athens (l. c. 470/469-399 BCE) is among the most famous figures in world history for his contributions to the development of ancient Greek philosophy which provided the foundation for all of Western Philosophy. He is, in fact, known as the "Father of Western Philosophy" for this reason. He was originally a sculptor who seems to have also had a number of other occupations, including soldier, before he was told by the Oracle at Delphi that he was the wisest man in the world. In an effort to prove the oracle wrong, he embarked on a new career of questioning those who were said to be wise and, in doing so, proved the oracle correct: Socrates was the wisest man in the world because he did not claim to know anything of importance.

His most famous student was Plato (l. c. 428/427-348347 BCE) who would honor his name through the establishment of a school in Athens (Plato's Academy) and, more so, through the philosophical dialogues he wrote featuring Socrates as the central character. Whether Plato's dialogues accurately represent Socrates' teachings continues to be debated but a definitive answer is unlikely to be reached. Plato's best known student was Aristotle of Stagira (l. 384-322 BCE) who would then tutor Alexander the Great (l. 356-323 BCE) and establish his own school. By this progression, Greek philosophy, as first developed by Socrates, was spread throughout the known world during, and after, Alexander's conquests.

Socrates' historicity has never been challenged but what, precisely, he taught is as elusive as the philophical tenets of Pythagoras or the later teachings of Jesus in that none of these figures wrote anything themselves. Although Socrates is generally regarded as initiating the discipline of philosophy in the West, most of what we know of him comes from Plato and, less so, from another of his students, Xenophon (l. 430-c.354 BCE). There have also been efforts made to reconstruct his philosophic vision based on the many other schools, besides Plato's, which his students founded but these are too varied to define the original teachings which inspired them.

The "Socrates" who has come down to the present day from antiquity could largely be a philosophical construct of Plato and, according to the historian Diogenes Laertius (3rd century CE), many of Plato's contemporaries accused him of re-imagining Socrates in his own image in order to further Plato's own interpretation of his master's message. However that may be, Socrates' influence would establish the schools which led to the formulation of Western Philosophy and the underlying cultural understanding of Western civilization.

Early Life and Career

Socrates was born c. 469/470 BCE to the sculptor Sophronicus and the mid-wife Phaenarete. He studied music, gymnastics, and grammar in his youth (the common subjects of study for a young Greek) and followed his father's profession as a sculptor. Tradition holds that he was an exceptional artist and his statue of the Graces, on the road to the Acropolis, is said to have been admired into the 2nd century CE. Socrates served with distinction in the army and, at the Battle of Potidaea, saved the life of the General Alcibiades.

He married Xanthippe, an upper-class woman, around the age of fifty and had three sons by her. According to contemporary writers such as Xenophon, these boys were incredibly dull and nothing like their father. Socrates seems to have lived a fairly normal life until he was challenged to reecaluate himself by the Oracle at Delphi which claimed he was special.

The Oracle and Socrates

When he was middle-aged, Socrates' friend Chaerephon asked the famous Oracle at Delphi if there was anyone wiser than Socrates, to which the Oracle answered, "None." Bewildered by this answer and hoping to prove the Oracle wrong, Socrates went about questioning people who were held to be 'wise' in their own estimation and that of others. He found, to his dismay, "that the men whose reputation for wisdom stood highest were nearly the most lacking in it, while others who were looked down on as common people were much more intelligent" (Plato, Apology, 22).

The youth of Athens delighted in watching Socrates question their elders in the market and, soon, he had a following of young men who, because of his example and his teachings, would go on to abandon their early aspirations and devote themselves to philosophy (from the Greek 'Philo', love, and 'Sophia', wisdom - literally 'the love of wisdom'). Among these were Antisthenes of Athens (l. c. 445-365 BCE), founder of the Cynic school, Aristippus of Cyrene (l. c. 435-356 BCE), founder of the Cyrenaic school), Xenophon, whose writings would influence Zeno of Citium, (l.c. 336-265 BCE) founder of the Stoic school, and, most famously, Plato (the main source of our information of Socrates in his Dialogues) among many others. Every major philosophical school mentioned by ancient writers following Socrates' death was founded by one of his followers.

Socratic Schools

The diversity of these schools is testimony to Socrates' wide ranging influence and, more importantly, the diversity of interpretations of his teachings. The philosophical concepts taught by Antisthenes and Aristippus could not be more different, in that the former taught that the good life was only realized by self-control and self-abnegation, while the latter claimed a life of pleasure was the only path worth pursuing.

It has been said that Socrates' greatest contribution to philosophy was to move intellectual pursuits away from the focus on `physical science' (as pursued by the so-called Pre-Socratic Philosophers such as Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, and others) and into the abstract realm of ethics and morality. No matter the diversity of the schools which claimed to carry on his teachings, they all emphasized some form of morality as their foundational tenet. That the `morality' espoused by one school was often condemned by another, again bears witness to the very different interpretations of Socrates' central message.

While scholars have traditionally relied upon Plato's Dialogues as a source of information on the historical Socrates, Plato's contemporaries claimed he used a character he called `Socrates' as a mouth-piece for his own philosophical views. Notable among these critics was, allegedly, Phaedo, a fellow student of Plato whose name is famous from one of Plato's most influential dialogues (and whose writings are now lost) and Xenophon, whose Memorablia presents a different view of Socrates than that presented by Plato.

Socrates and his Vision

However his teachings were interpreted, it seems clear that Socrates' main focus was on how to live a good and virtuous life. The claim atrributed to him by Plato that "an unexamined life is not worth living" (Apology, 38b) seems historically accurate, in that it is clear he inspired his followers to think for themselves instead of following the dictates of society and the accepted superstitions concerning the gods and how one should behave.

While there are differences between Plato's and Xenophon's depictions of Socrates, both present a man who cared nothing for class distinctions or `proper behavior' and who spoke as easily with women, servants, and slaves as with those of the higher classes.

In ancient Athens, individual behavior was maintained by a concept known as `Eusebia' which is often translated into English as `piety' but more closely resembles `duty' or `loyalty to a course'. In refusing to conform to the social propieties proscribed by Eusebia, Socrates angered many of the more important men of the city who could, rightly, accuse him of breaking the law by violating these customs.

Socrates' Trial

In 399 BCE Socrates was charged with impiety by Meletus the poet, Anytus the tanner, and Lycon the orator who sought the death penalty in the case. The accusation read: “Socrates is guilty, firstly, of denying the gods recognized by the state and introducing new divinities, and, secondly, of corrupting the young.” It has been suggested that this charge was both personally and politically motivated as Athens was trying to purge itself of those associated with the scourge of the Thirty Tyrants of Athens who had only recently been overthrown.

Socrates' relationship to this regime was through his former student, Critias, who was considered the worst of the tyrants and was thought to have been corrupted by Socrates. It has also been suggested, based in part on interpretations of Plato's dialogue of the Meno, that Anytus blamed Socrates for corrupting his son. Anytus, it seems, had been grooming his son for a life in politics until the boy became interested in Socrates' teachings and abandoned political pursuits. As Socrates' accusers had Critias as an example of how the philosopher corrupted youth, even if they never used that evidence in court, the precedent appears to have been known to the jury.

Ignoring the counsel of his friends and refusing the help of the gifted speechwriter Lysias, Socrates chose to defend himself in court. There were no lawyers in ancient Athens and, instead of a solicitor, one would hire a speechwriter. Lysias was among the most highly paid but, as he admired Socrates, he offered his services free of charge.

The speechwriter usually presented the defendant as a good man who had been wronged by a false accusation, and this is the sort of defense the court would have expected from Socrates. Instead of the defense filled with self-justification and pleas for his life, however, Socrates defied the Athenian court, proclaiming his innocence and casting himself in the role of Athens' 'gadfly' - a benefactor to them all who, at his own expense, kept them awake and aware. In his Apology, Plato has Socrates say:

If you put me to death, you will not easily find another who, if I may use a ludicrous comparison, clings to the state as a sort of gadfly to a horse that is large and well-bred but rather sluggish because of its size, so that it needs to be aroused. It seems to me that the god has attached me like that to the state, for I am constantly alighting upon you at every point to arouse, persuade, and reporach each of you all day long. (Apology 30e)

Plato makes it clear in his work that the charges against Socrates hold little weight but also emphasizes Socrates' disregard for the feelings of the jury and court protocol. Socrates is presented as refusing professional counsel in the form of a speech-writer and, further, refusing to conform to the expected behavior of a defendant on trial for a capital crime. Socrates, according to Plato, had no fear of death, proclaiming to the court:

To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise without really being wise, for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For no one knows whether death may not be the greatest good tha can happen to man. But men fear it as if they knew quite well that it was the greatest of evils. (Apology 29a)

Following this passage, Plato gives Socrates' famous philosophical stand in which the old master defiantly states that he must choose service to the divine over conformity to his society and its expectations. Socrates famously confronts his fellow citizens with honesty, saying:

Men of Athens, I honor and love you; but I shall obey God rather than you and, while I have life and strength, I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy, exhorting anyone whom I meet after my manner, and convincing him saying: O my friend, why do you who are a citizen of the great and mighty and wise city of Athens care so much about laying up the greatest amount of money and honor and reputation and so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul, which you never regard or heed at all? Are you not Ashamed of this? And if the person with whom I am arguing says: Yes, but I do care; I do not depart or let him go at once; I interrogate and examine and cross-examine him, and if I think that he has no virtue, but only says that he has, I reproach him with undervaluing the greater, and overvaluing the less. And this I should say to everyone whom I meet, young and old, citizen and alien, but especially to the citizens, inasmuch as they are my brethren. For this is the command of God, as I would have you know: and I believe that to this day no greater good has ever happened in the state than my service to the God. For I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons and your properties, but first and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul. I tell you that virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue come money and every other good of man, public as well as private. This is my teaching, and if this is the doctrine which corrupts the youth, my influence is ruinous indeed. But if anyone says that this is not my teaching, he is speaking an untruth. Wherefore, O men of Athens, I say to you, do as Anytus bids or not as Anytus bids, and either acquit me or not; but whatever you do, know that I shall never alter my ways, not even if I have to die many times. (29d-30c)

When it came time for Socrates to suggest a penalty to be imposed rather than death, he suggested he should be maintained in honor with free meals in the Prytaneum, a place reserved for heroes of the Olympic games. This would have been considered a serious insult to the honor of the Prytaneum and that of the city of Athens. Accused criminals on trial for their life were expected to beg for the mercy of the court, not presume to heroic accolades.

Conviction and Aftermath

Socrates was convicted and sentenced to death (Xenophon tells us that he wished for such an outcome and Plato's account of the trial in his Apology would seem to confirm this). The last days of Socrates are chronicled in Plato's Euthyphro, Apology, Crito and Phaedo, the last dialogue depicting the day of his death (by drinking hemlock) surrounded by his friends in his jail cell in Athens and, as Plato puts it, "Such was the end of our friend, a man, I think, who was the wisest and justest, and the best man I have ever known" (Phaedo, 118).

Socrates' influence was felt immediately in the actions of his disciples as they formed their own interpretations of his life, teachings, and death, and set about forming their own philosophical schools and writing about their experiences with their teacher. Of all these writings we have only the works of Plato, Xenophon, a comic image by Aristophanes, and later works by Aristotle to tell us anything about Socrates' life. He, himself, wrote nothing, but his words and actions in the search for and defense of Truth changed the world and his example still inspires people today.

Zeno of Elea

Zeno of Elea (l. c.465 BCE) was a Greek philosopher of the Eleatic School and a student of the elder philosopher Parmenides (l.c. 485 BCE), an older contemporary of Socrates (l. c. 470/469-399 BCE). Zeno and Parmenides are both defined by modern-day scholarship as Pre-Socratic philosophers in that their work pre-dates, and influenced, Socrates' philosophy which would then be developed by Socrates' students, most famously by Plato (l. 428/427-348/347 BCE) who would then influence his student Aristotle (l. 384-322 BCE). The works of Plato and Aristotle would later form the basis of Western philosophy and influence the development of the philosophical underpinnings of the three great monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Little is known of Zeno's life outside of his association with the Eleatic School founded by Parmenides. Parmenides argued against the validity of the senses and the supposed truth they reveal about the world. As with all of the extant writings of the Pre-Socratic philosophers, Parmenides' work seeks to establish the underlying form of being - the Firsr Cause - that essential 'stuff' from which all of life and the sensible world comes.

Parmenides claimed that the previous definitions for this 'stuff' were wrong in that they posited individual elements like water (according to Thales of Miletus, l. c. 585 BCE) or Air (according to Anaximenes, l. c. 546 BCE) when, actually, neither of these could be the First Cause because they were a part of observable, experiential, reality. The First Cause had to be the underlying form behind reality, Parmenides said, and he claimed that this underlying form was actually reality itself; all of reality and observable existence was One.

Parmenides' Monism

Parmenides is known as the founder of the Monist School which held that reality was uniform, whole, unbroken, and unbreakable and that change was therefore illusory. What one perceives as change in life is only an alteration in appearance, not in essence. If one were to travel from Athens to Eleusis, for example, one would understand the different streets, buildings, and people one encountered in Eleusis as meaning that this city was different from Athens and that one had changed one's location. In reality, Parmenides said, Athens and Eleusis both share in the uniformity of reality and are, in essence, the same exact place; it is only sense perception which leads one to wrongly conclude that the two are different.

Parmenides would argue that if a person were to place a board and a hammer and a nail on a table, sense perception would indicate three separate objects on that table. Parmenides, however, would claim that this perception would be wrong as the board, hammer, and nail are all composed of the same basic material and participate in the unity of existence and so, in spite of what one might conclude through the senses, the three objects are really one. As Parmenides had many critics who claimed that it was obvious a board, hammer, and nail were different and that Athens and Eleusis were as well, Zeno, in his famous Paradoxes, sought to prove the truth of his master's claim logically and silence them.

Zeno's Paradoxes

Zeno set about to prove the unity of existence mathematically. Arguing against motion, the senses, and plurality, he wrote 40 paradoxes showing how, logically, change and motion cannot exist (of these 40, contained in one volume, less than ten exist today). His best known are The Race Course, The Achilles, The Arrow, and The Stadium, all of which prove the logical impossibility of plurality and motion. Zeno's paradoxes have fascinated mathematicians and logicians for hundreds of years and have yet to be satisfactorily solved.

The paradox of The Race Course shows how motion is a lie of the senses and cannot logically exist. This paradox claims that, if a runner is to sprint 100 metres, she must first travel half that distance. In order to travel half that distance, she must first travel half that distance and, to do that, she must first travel half that distance. By this progression, Zeno showed that, no matter how small a distance was left, it was still impossible, logically, for the runner to ever meet her goal. No matter how far or near, there would always be a distance which separated the runner from the goal. In this same way, Zeno argued, all of perceived reality is One, unchanging and eternal, and the perception that human beings live in a world of plurality, of `the many' (many things, people, places) is an illusion created by the senses.

The Achilles presents the same argument but uses two figures, a fast runner (a powerful man such as Achilles), pursuing a slow one. Zeno argues that the slow runner will never be overtaken by the fast runner because, at any given time, the fast runner must first reach the point where the slow runner began to run and must then reach the halfway point between that spot and where the slow runner is up ahead and since, as with The Race Course, there are multiple halfway points, the fast runner cannot catch the slow one and so motion, and change, are illusory.

In The Arrow, Zeno again argues against the possibility of motion by first establishing that any material object, by its nature, occupies space. When an arrow is fired from a bow it appears to move through space but, because it is a material object, it must occupy the space it is in. The arrow, therefore, may appear to move through the air but, logically, must occupy whatever space it is in and so is not actually moving at all. His paradox of The Stadium follows this same line of thought against the possibilty of plurality and motion.

Although the paradoxes, and Parmenides' claims, may sound absurd, it must be remembered that he was claiming the essence of reality was uniform, that all was One, and recognized that appearances would suggest otherwise. The appearance of the arrow flying through the air or the fast runner overtaking the slower one had nothing to do with the reality of uniformity. That which appeared to change could not, in any way, affect unchangeable reality.

Plato's Criticism

Plato's philosophy was significantly influenced by Parmenides in the development of his Theory of Forms, a higher realm of Truth of which the observable world was only a reflection. Like Parmenides' unchanging essence, Plato's Forms were perfect, eternal, and informed the world of the senses which was largely illusory. At the same time, however, Plato criticized Zeno's paradoxes as establishing confusing paradigms and missing the fundamental truth of Oneness.

In his dialogue of the Parmenides, Plato sets down the fundamental criticism of the claims of Parmenides and Zeno when he has Socrates say,

If a person could prove the absolute like to become unlike, or the absolute unlike to become like, that, in my opinion, would indeed be a wonder; but there is nothing extraordinary, Zeno, in showing that the things which only partake of likeness and unlikeness experience both. Nor, again, if a person were to show that all is one by partaking of one, and at the same time many by partaking of many, would that be very astonishing. But if he were to show me that the absolute one was many, or the absolute many one, I should be truly amazed. And so of all the rest: I should be surprised to hear that the natures or ideas themselves had these opposite qualities; but not if a person wanted to prove of me that I was many and also one. When he wanted to show that I was many he would say that I have a right and a left side, and a front and a back, and an upper and a lower half, for I cannot deny that I partake of multitude; when, on the other hand, he wants to prove that I am one, he will say, that we who are here assembled are seven, and that I am one and partake of the one. In both instances he proves his case. So again, if a person shows that such things as wood, stones, and the like, being many are also one, we admit that he shows the coexistence the one and many, but he does not show that the many are one or the one many; he is uttering not a paradox but a truism. If however, as I just now suggested, some one were to abstract simple notions of like, unlike, one, many, rest, motion, and similar ideas, and then to show that these admit of admixture and separation in themselves, I should be very much astonished. This part of the argument appears to be treated by you, Zeno, in a very spirited manner; but, as I was saying, I should be far more amazed if any one found in the ideas themselves which are apprehended by reason, the same puzzle and entanglement which you have shown to exist in visible objects. (127E)

In this passage, Socrates is asking how the `many' can be `one' in the physical, not just the abstract, world. The board, hammer, and nail placed on the table are, clearly, three objects which do not partake in the properties of each other. The board is made of wood, the hammer of wood and metal, the nail of metal alone. These objects cannot possibly be categorized as `one' but must, of necessity, be considered `many'. Since, according to Socrates' argument here, Zeno never moves beyond observable phenomena to make his point, the truth of the uniformity of reality remains unproven.

Zeno Responds

Zeno countered this argument by showing that the `many' have to be `one' because, for plurality to exist, logic could not. Since logical sequence and understanding does exist, there can be no plurality. Professor J. M. Robinson comments on this, writing:

As we can see from the first hypothesis of the first argument of Zeno's treatise, the thesis that things are a many give rise to consequences that are inconsistent even with one another; for if things are a many they must be `both like and unlike' and this is impossible not because it violates sense perception (which is, after all, fallible), but because it violates the law of contradiction, which lies at the basis of all thought. (128)

One cannot, then, claim that the board, hammer, and nail are `many' in that the three objects partake of the same basic substance of the One. A person may look at the three objects and claim there are `many' objects on the table but that would only be an expression of trust in sense perception, not a valid apprehension of the truth.

Conclusion

Zeno maintained that trust in the senses leads to contradictory conclusions, in that something which exists and 'is' cannot not exist and not be, and yet one's senses tell one that everything is always changing from what it 'is' to something it 'is not'. Sense perception supports the claim of the Pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus (l. c. 500 BCE) - with whom both Parmenides and Zeno disagreed - that "Life is Flux" and everything is in constant motion and transformation. To Heraclitus, the First Cause was fire - a transformative element - and this reflected the actual nature of life which was, in fact, constant change itself.

To Zeno, this was a faulty conclusion based upon unreliable sense perception. That which is cannot not be because it would then contain within itself the contradiction of having the qualities of `being' and `not being' and, as this defies logic, it cannot be held as true. In this, both Parmenides and Zeno were at complete odds with the philosophy of Heraclitus but, at the same time, seemed to share his belief that the majority of human beings could not, or would not, seek to understand the truth behind the apparent reality which the senses provide.

That concession would be as far as they would go, however, in that the philosophies were completely opposed to each other. Parmenides' Monism and Zeno's paradoxes could admit no truth of plurality and remain cohesive. In their view, they did not have to because one could admit to the appearance of change without acknowleging the reality of change in the essence of fundamental reality.

Melissus

Melissus of Samos (5th century BCE) was a Greek philosopher from the island of Samos near the modern-day coast of Turkey. He advocated the philosophical doctrine known as monism, suggesting that reality is single and unchanging. While very little is known about Melissus, he took part in a major battle in 441 BCE and penned one philosophical work called On Nature or On What Is, echoing the naturalistic and monistic stance that pervaded earlier philosophers' output. Due to his views, he is often considered a member of the so-called Eleatic school of Greek philosophy. As James Warren asserts, the fact that Parmenides’ ideas reached the opposite end of the Greek world underlines the circulation of ideas that pervaded the Mediterranean in that historical period.

The Eleatics

The term Eleatic school of philosophy is used nowadays to refer to the thoughts of philosophers from modern-day Velia in southern Italy, namely Parmenides (l. c. 485 BCE) and Zeno of Elea (l. c. 465 BCE). They challenged a reliance on the senses as a path to truth, trusting logic instead. Parmenides wrote the poem On Nature, where he describes his visit to a goddess who shows him the Way of Truth and the Way of Opinion. The former is grounded in reality and is eternal, motionless, and changeless, while the latter ought to be avoided as it is based on the senses. Similarly, Zeno wrote several paradoxes, such as the well-known Achilles and the Tortoise, to prove that motion is impossible. The school exerted a significant influence on the thought of Athenian philosopher Plato (428/427 - 348/347 BCE) and his theory of forms, which distinguished between the world of the senses and the world of ideas, or forms.

Historical Background

At the time, Samos belonged to the symmachei (alliance), nowadays referred to as the Delian League, led by Athens in response to Persian invasions. According to Plutarch, Melissus was the son of Ithagenes, a philosopher in command on the island of Samos. Like Parmenides, Melissus was politically active and fought as an admiral against the Athenians in 441 BCE, which is the only reliable date we have for the Samian philosopher. When Athens declared war against the island, Melissus reportedly prompted his fellow islanders to counterattack, despite their relative inexperience and reduced number of ships. They won, seizing war supplies and gaining control of the sea. Eventually, however, Athens triumphed and overtook the island.

Philosophy

Eternity & Infinity

According to the 6th-century CE Neoplatonist philosopher Simplicius, Melissus composed only one work. As opposed to Parmenides, he wrote in an archaic yet clear, direct manner and in Ionic prose rather than in poetic form. This has led scholars to question whether Parmenides considered 'what is' everlasting or timeless. Melissus, on the other hand, clearly argued that 'what is' must have everlasting existence, since nothing can come out of nothing, as opposed to what our misleading perceptions may suggest. To support his views, he developed the following argument:

Whatever existed always existed and always will exist. For if it came into being, then necessarily before coming into being it was nothing. Now if it was nothing it will in no way have come to be anything from being nothing. (Fragment B1)

In a similar vein, while doubts persist regarding Parmenides’ approach to the size of 'what is', Melissus clearly suggests that it is spatially infinite in extent, from which he infers that there is only one. If there were more than one, there would be boundaries, so it is not enough for 'what is' to be boundless in at least one direction. It must be absolutely boundless. While in Parmenides, the limits and bonds underlined the stability and completeness of 'what is', preventing it from losing anything, in Melissus, it is the unlimited, or apeiron that prevents change.

Motion & Void

Melissus also argues against motion and the void. He states that what is empty is nothing and is thus 'what is not'. As a result, 'what is' cannot move and is therefore full, as it has nowhere to yield to. If we compare this to a bottle, for instance, it goes without saying that we can only fill it if it is empty. Similarly, we can only empty it if it is full. Melissus does not suggest, however, that it can be half full or half empty, since he considers the existence of only one thing, and it is either full or not full, he claims, since if it yields at all it is not full anymore. In doing so, Melissus underlines the impossibility of both internal change and motion per se, since if it is full it cannot move. In fact, he claims that density and rarity cannot exist in 'what is' and is, as a result, incorporeal:

It could not be dense and rare. For it is not possible that the rare should be full, like the dense: the rare thereby at once becomes emptier than the dense. (Fragment 7)

Changeless Reality

Melissus echoes Parmenides by objecting to a pluralistic view of reality essentially based on perception. He emphasises the inconsistency inherent in the changes between opposites such as hot and cold, hard and soft, and life and death. He also alludes to eternal forms and powers, which seemingly convey the omnipresence of change. Nothing is stronger than truth, he claims, and such superficial changes prevent us from seeing it correctly. He, therefore, believes that should plurality exist, each and everything must be like 'what is', which would, in his view, be inconsistent. In other words, on what grounds would one object be small and another one big? Why would one be soft and another one hard?

Reactions to Melissus

On some accounts, his thoughts eventually paved the way for the development of atomism in the 5th century BCE, advocated by Leucippus and Democritus. They would introduce a very small, indivisible, changeless, and eternal 'what is', the essence of all things, which they called 'atom', a term that would become the cornerstone of modern science. Others, however, suggest that Melissus' contention regarding the impossibility of void can be seen as a response to the atomists, rather than a precursor. Melissus is also mentioned in the Hippocratic On the Nature of the Human Being, in response to the apparently incoherent theories of natural philosophers who sought different first causes of the nature of things.

Despite the quality of his arguments, in De Generatione et Corruptione, Aristotle criticizes philosophers who defy the evidence provided by the senses. Aristotle attacks Melissus' defence of spatial infinity, which he considered based on faulty logic and a false premise. Melissus is also mentioned by Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) in his Divine Comedy as fulfilling the characteristics of what a philosopher should not be like. On the whole, however, the clarity of his arguments have shed a light on the nature of the Eleatic response to pluralistic views of existence, thereby playing an important role in the emergence of metaphysics and ontology.

Democritus

Democritus (c. 460 - c. 370 BCE) was a Greek philosopher and younger contemporary of Socrates, born in Abdera (though other sources cite Miletus) who, with his teacher Leucippus, was the first to propose an atomic universe. Very little is known of Leucippus and none of his work has survived but he is known by ancient writers as Democritus' teacher, and apparently wrote on many subjects besides atomism.

Known as the 'laughing philosopher' because of the importance he placed on 'cheerfulness', Democritus was the first philosopher to posit that what we refer to as the 'Milky Way' was the light of stars reaching our perception and that the universe may in fact be a multi-verse with other planets sustaining life (a theory which Physicists today are increasingly recognizing as mathematically probable).

In response to Parmenides' claim that change is impossible and all is One, Democritus, among others, tried to find a way to show how change and motion can be while still maintaining the unity of the physical world. With Leucippus, Democritus argued that the world, including human beings, is composed of very small particles which he called 'atomos' (“un-cutables” in Greek) and that these atoms make up everything we see and are. When we are born, our atoms are held together by a body-shape with a soul inside, also composed of atoms and, while we live, we perceive all that we do by an apprehension of atoms outside of the body being received and interpreted by the soul inside of the body. So when atoms have been combined into one certain form we look at that form and say “That is a book” and when they have been combined in another we say, “That is a tree” but, however these atoms combine, they are all One, 'un-cutable', and indestructible. When we die our body-shape loses energy and our atoms disperse as there is no longer a soul inside the corpse to generate the heat which holds the body-shape atoms together.

According to Aristotle, Democritus claimed the soul was composed of fire-atoms while the body was of earth-atoms and the earth-atoms needed the energy of the fire for cohesion. Still, Aristotle also asserts, this did not mean these atoms were different atoms, rather that they were like letters of the alphabet which, though they are all letters, stand for different sounds and, combined in various ways, spell different words. To use a very simple example, the letters 'N', 'D' 'A' can be combined to spell the word 'and' or, with a different combination, spell the name 'Dan' which, while it has a different and distinct meaning from 'and' is still made up of the same letters.

Though there have been some claims made by materialists that Democritus' atomic view of human life denies the possibility of an afterlife, this is not necessarily true. As Democritus seems to have viewed the soul as the causing motion and 'life' and that 'thought' was the physical movement of indestructible, 'un-cutable' atoms, it is possible such a soul would survive bodily death.

The famous line by Leucippus that “Nothing happens at random; everything happens out of reason and by necessity” is a thought which informs a great deal of Democritus' own writing especially his claim that “Everything happens according to necessity” in that atoms operate in one certain way and so, of course, that which happens in life does so out of the necessity of this operation. While this claim would seem to deny the possibility of human free-will, Democritus wrote extensively on Ethics and clearly believed one could make free-will choices within the parameters of atomic determinism.

Critias

Critias (c. 460-403 BCE) was an Athenian politician, poet, and playwright who was one of Socrates' followers, Plato's second cousin, a leading member of the Thirty Tyrants of Athens, and leader of the oligarchy they established. Although he is referenced by other writers as a gifted poet and philosopher, he is, unfortunately, best known for his ruthlessness and cruelty as an oligarch of Athens. His central role in the many abuses of power perpetrated by the Thirty Tyrants overshadowed his earlier achievements as a creative and philosophical influence in Athenian society.

Although, as noted, he is best known for his infamy as one of the Thirty Tyrants, he is also frequently cited as an early atheist who defied the religious conventions of his time. He claimed that the concept of divinity was invented by men who wished to have power over others and so concocted a fable of supernatural beings who would reward or punish behavior in keeping with the agenda of the elite. Professor Thomas Mautner notes that “his is the earliest statement on record that religion is invented by politicians in order to control the people” (116). To Critias there are no gods or a single God; religion is simply a means whereby the strong and entitled control the weak.

Even so, this charge of atheism is based on a single fragment from one of his plays, placed in the mouth of a character, and since none of the rest of the work remains, it is impossible to know whether this character spoke for the author. Later writers, following the paradigm of Xenophon who knew Critias, repeated the claim that he was immoral and an atheist but this cannot finally be ascertained completely. It would certainly seem, however, that people's low opinion of him was justified by his actions during the rule of the Thirty Tyrants. This association with the oligarchy would eventually lead to his death as he was killed in battle in 403 BCE at Piraeus in the conflict which ended their rule.

Early Life & Rise to Power

Critias was born in Athens, the son of Callaeschrus, a philosopher, poet, and politician. Nothing is known of his early life, but it seems that he followed his father's pursuits and achieved a significant level of success. He first enters the historical record in 415 BCE in an incident related to charges of desecrating the statues of Hermes in Athens, but this is a slight reference which provides little information on why the charges were brought or what Critias was doing at that time. All that is known about the incident is that Critias was cleared of the charges on the testimony of one Andocines.

By 411 BCE, he may have been involved in the political oligarchy known as the Council of the Four Hundred (or, simply, The Four Hundred), an anti-democratic faction that briefly held power in Athens. His participation in this group's efforts is questioned as it is known that he prosecuted one of its leaders, Phrynicus, posthumously in 410 BCE. Although his prosecution of Phyrnicus is often interpreted to mean he opposed the Four Hundred, it is just as likely that, after they fell out of favor, Critias sided with the pro-democracy faction when it was clear they were gaining power.

He was a friend and supporter of the general and statesman Alcibiades (c. 451-c.403 BCE) who played a significant, and controversial, role in the Second Peloponnesian War (431-404 BCE). When Alcibiades was charged with desecrating the statues of Hermes, and also profaning the Eleusinian Mysteries by drinking the sacred Kykeon at a party, Critias followed him into exile in c. 406 BCE. Critias returned to Athens in 404 BCE to again take up a political position as one of the Five Ephors (magistrates) who led the political factions of the emerging oligarchy which came to be known as the Thirty Tyrants.

The Thirty Tyrants & Socrates

The Thirty Tyrants (or The Council of Thirty) were a pro-Spartan oligarchy who were installed in power by the Spartan General Lysander following Athens' defeat by Sparta in the Second Peloponnesian War in 404 BCE. The Thirty Tyrants severely limited the rights and freedoms of the citizens of Athens and, most notably, their right to vote as well as showing little scruple in having their opponents executed or exiled on the slightest whim. Of the thirty men who comprised this council, Critias was the most ruthless. He was held in especially low esteem for his practice of confiscating citizen's property by misusing his power and executing those who disagreed with or challenged him.

Among his first victims was his former friend Alcibiades who was still living in exile. Critias gave the order for his assassination, and he was murdered at his home in 403 BCE. Alcibiades and Critias had both been associates and onetime students of Socrates. Critias' association with Socrates did little to help the latter's case in court in 399 BCE when the Athenian citizens Meletus, Anytus, and Lycon charged him with impiety and corrupting the youth of the city.

Prior to his dark history as a politician, as noted, Critias was a writer of tragedies and elegies and was highly praised for his prose works. Professor William Morison writes:

Critias produced a broad range of works and was a noted poet and teacher in his own time. The fragments of three tragedies and a satyr play, a collection of elegies, books of homilies and aphorisms, a collection of epideictic speeches, and a number of constitutions of the city-states both in poetry and prose all have been passed down in the works of later authors. (IEP: Critias, 1)

That he should descend from the role of artist to tyrant no doubt furthered the suspicion among the Athenians that some corrupting force must have exerted itself on the young man to drive him to such excess in cruelty and villainy, and that 'force' seemed to them to be Socrates. Professor Forrest E. Baird notes how “Socrates' accusers at his trial made much of the connection. The implication was that Socrates' teaching had led Critias to his excesses” (46). Since Meletus, Anytus, and Lycon were trying to persuade the jury that Socrates was a corrupter of youth, they naturally needed an example to support their claims and they found – or invented – one in Critias who, by that time had been dead for four years.

Whether Socrates really had anything to do with Critias' shift from poet-philosopher to brutal politician hardly mattered to his accusers because, in the aftermath of the fall of the Thirty Tyrants, anyone who had been associated with them was suspect and it was known that Critias had protected Socrates from the Thirty Tyrants when he was in power. Further, Critias' atheism could be blamed on Socrates who encouraged people to question the accepted version of Greek religion. An example of how he went about this and its effects on a typical Athenian youth can be seen in Plato's dialogue of the Euthyphro in which haughty, young Euthyphro, who claims to know all about the gods and their will, encounters Socrates and is drawn into a conversation which forces him to question all he claimed to know.

There is no mention of Socrates' accusers specifically citing Critias in their prosecution but it could have been argued that Socrates had the same effect on Critias and that, in encouraging young people to question accepted authority, Socrates undermined the establishment and allowed for the possibility of the kind of chaos which ensued during the reign of the Thirty. However Critias' atheism developed, whether inspired by Socrates or simply by his own observation, it was unapologetic and stark.

The Sisyphus Fragment & Atheism

Unlike the philosopher Protagoras, who claimed the subject of whether gods existed could not properly be known by a human being, Critias claimed there were no gods and that, further, the gods were merely a construct created by men to control other men. It is interesting to note that Protagoras' more modest claim resulted in a charge of blasphemy and a death sentence which drove the philosopher into exile (he actually drowned while trying to flee the sentence) while Critias' atheism, far more blatant, is never mentioned in any court cases. It is also curious that, as far as one can tell, Critias would have written his works expressing doubt in the divine when he was younger and far less powerful than in the time of the Thirty.

In Critias' view, “A time there was when anarchy did rule / the lives of men” and the laws which were created by men to control society simply were ineffective. So “some shrewd man first, a man in counsel wise / Discovered unto men the fear of the Gods / Thereby to frighten sinners should they sin” and so the gods came to be the higher authority which would reward or punish people for what they did “secretly in deed, or word, or thought” (Baird, 47). There is no God to Critias, no divine will, no universal plan; there are only the strong who control the weak, and religion is the most effective tool the ruling class can use to maintain power and drive their agenda.

The following fragment comes from Critias' play Sisyphus, one of the few pieces of his works to have survived. If it were a letter from the man himself or an essay it would easy to conclude that he was an atheist, but the piece seems to be a speech of one of the characters in the play, and so it is less clear what Critias' actual views were. The charge that he was an atheist comes from later writers who still had access to his writings or contemporaries (like Xenophon, another of Socrates' students) who wrote about him. The following translation comes from Kathleen Freeman's Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers:

There was a time when the life of men was unordered, bestial and the slave of force, when there was no reward for the virtuous and no punishment for the wicked. Then, I think, men devised retributory laws, in order that Justice might be dictator and have arrogance as its slave, and if anyone sinned, he was punished.

Then, when the laws forbade them to commit open crimes of violence, and they began to do them in secret, a wise and clever man invented fear of the gods for mortals, that there might be some means of frightening the wicked, even if they do anything or say or think it in secret. Hence, he introduced the Divine, saying that there is a God flourishing with immortal life, hearing and seeing with his mind, and thinking of everything and caring about these things, and having divine nature, who will hear everything said among mortals, and will be able to see all that is done. And even if you plan anything evil in secret, you will not escape the gods in this; for they have surpassing intelligence.

In saying these words, he introduced the pleasantest of teachings, covering up the truth with a false theory; and he said that the gods dwelt there where he could most frighten men by saying it, whence he knew that fears exist for mortals and rewards for the hard life: in the upper periphery, where they saw lightnings and heard the dread rumblings of thunder, and the starry-faced body of heaven, the beautiful embroidery of Time the skilled craftsman, whence come forth the bright mass of the sun, and the wet shower upon the earth.

With such fears did he surround mankind, through which he well established the deity with his argument, and in a fitting place, and quenched lawlessness among men. Thus, I think, for the first time did someone persuade mortals to believe in a race of deities. (165)

Since no higher power exists, human beings must assert themselves as that power and, without any universal control or ultimate meaning to life, humans must find a way to provide that as well and this is the sole purpose of religion. Religion is not to be controlled, or even understood, by the masses, however; control belongs to the upper class and powerful who manipulate the lower classes for their own benefit.

Professor Baird notes that, in making these claims, Critias was “anticipating the work of Thomas Hobbes some 2,000 years later. Critias posited a primordial 'state of nature' where everyone is at war with everyone else. Penal laws are not adequate to control this anarchy; hence the need for the invention of the gods” (47). As no human power can hope to control all other human impulses at all times, religion was invented to serve this purpose. This view was completely at odds with the understanding of religious practices and the gods at this time (just as it is in the present) and added to Critias' reputation as a selfish, self-centered, and evil man.

Critias in Plato & Later Reputation

In Plato's work, Critias is represented quite differently. Plato's dialogues of the Protagoras, Charmides, Timaeus, and Critias, present a sophisticated and well-educated philosophical historian, who is articulate and thoughtful. It is from Plato's Timaeus and Critias that people became acquainted with the story of Atlantis – a tale told nowhere else and corroborated by no other ancient texts – and the speaker who tells that tale is Critias. The myth of Atlantis was clearly intended by Plato to serve as a cautionary tale but, unfortunately, has been interpreted by later generations as a literal history deserving of countless books and exhaustive expeditions to find a civilization which never existed save in Plato's imagination. That aside, the fact that he chose Critias as the character to tell the story which highlights Atlantis and its fall from grace suggests that Plato saw another side to his cousin which was either ignored or unknown in the works of other writers of the time.

Xenophon consistently depicts Critias as an unscrupulous and vile politician whose association with Socrates condemned the latter to death. Other writers of the time and those later repeat Xenophon's opinion without qualification. Even so, it appears that the man was far more complex than the one-dimensional Athenian villain these works present. Professor William Morison writes:

The breadth of Critias' work in philosophy, drama, poetry, historical writing, rhetoric, and politics is impressive. He was not a particularly original thinker, but generalists seldom are. His leadership of the Thirty - one of Athens' darkest, bloodiest moments - has tended to overshadow his literary and philosophical work, but Critias was no ordinary despotic thug. A scion of one of Athens most noble families, highly-educated, cultured, a writer of poetry and prose, a powerful speaker, and brave, Critias was perhaps the greatest tragedy the city ever produced. (IEP Critias, 9-10)

Critias' well-attested reputation as an atheist, tyrant, and murderer is how he is best remembered, but it should be noted that this image of him was furthered by later writers and that the fragment upon which the charge of his atheism rests was part of a dramatic work and intended to be spoken by a fictional character. Whether Critias himself believed in the lines he wrote is a topic open for debate and has been challenged by scholars a number of times over the years. In the end, all one can finally conclude is that Critias was a man of many talents who seems to have allowed power to corrupt his better nature and whose name has ever after suffered for it.

Antisthenes of Athens

Antisthenes of Athens (c. 445-365 BCE) was a Greek philosopher who founded the Cynic School. He was a follower of Socrates and appears in Plato's Phaedo as one of those present at Socrates' death. He is one of the primary interlocutors in Xenophon's works Memorabilia and Symposium. Antisthenes, like Crito, was among the older students of Socrates' and Charles Kahn writes that he was regarded as Socrates' most important follower (Kahn, 4-5). He believed that virtue could be taught and that only the virtuous were truly noble. It should be noted, however, that 'Virtue' here is a translation from the Greek word arete which meant something closer to 'personal excellence' than the English word 'virtue'. In Plato's Meno it was argued that arete could not be taught (else noble fathers would have produced noble sons and such was not, empirically, the case) but Antisthenes argued otherwise in that he had learned arete from Socrates and, therefore, arete could be taught.

Influence of Socrates

Socrates' students all founded schools of Greek philosophy one kind or another, and all of them were so diverse that it is a testimony to the expansive quality of Socrates' philosophy that so many men could interpret his teachings in such different ways. The hedonistic philosopher Aristippus, for example, claimed to be following Socrates' example in living a life in pursuit of pleasure while Plato claimed he was carrying on Socrates' vision through an ascetic discipline of the mind. Antisthenes, also, asserted that his philosophy was grounded in Socrates' original vision. It seems almost impossible, at first, that Aristippus, Plato, and Antisthenes could have had the same teacher, so different are their philosophies at first glance. Underlying all three, however, is that very same virtue which Socrates held so dear: the importance of being free to be true to oneself and one's own convictions in life. The Cynic School Antisthenes founded stressed the importance of prevailing over adversity by acceptance of it, that arete is the same for women as it is for men, and that this personal excellence is displayed in deed more so than in word. These same values, expressed differently, were taught by both Plato and Aristippus.

Early Life

Regarding his early life, the biographer Diogenes Laertius (3rd century CE) writes:

Antisthenes was an Athenian, the son of Antisthenes. And he was said not to be a legitimate Athenian; in reference to which he said to someone who was reproaching him with the circumstance, "The mother of the Gods too is a Phrygian;" for he was thought to have had a Thracian mother. On which account, as he had borne himself bravely in the battle of Tanagra, he gave occasion to Socrates to say that the son of two Athenians could not have been so brave. And he himself, when disparaging the Athenians who gave themselves great airs as having been born out of the earth itself, said that they were not more noble as far as that went than snails and locusts.

Originally he was a pupil of Gorgias the rhetorician; owing to which circumstance he employs the rhetorical style of language in his Dialogues, especially in his Truth and in his Exhortations. And Hermippus says, that he had originally intended in his address at the assembly, on account of the Isthmian games, to attack and also to praise the Athenians, and Thebans, and Lacedaemonians; but that he afterwards abandoned the design, when he saw that there were a great many spectators come from those cities. Afterwards, he attached himself to Socrates, and made such progress in philosophy while with him, that he advised all his own pupils to become his fellow pupils in the school of Socrates. And as he lived in the Piraeus, he went up forty furlongs to the city every day, in order to hear Socrates, from whom he learnt the art of enduring, and of being indifferent to external circumstances, and so became the original founder of the Cynic school (I, II).

Antisthenes the Cynic

The focus of Antisthenes' work was ethics (although he also wrote on physics, logic, and literature) and he seems to have devoted himself extensively to that subject. He also wrote literary criticism on the Odyssey, an essay on dying, and works dealing with every subject from music to `the uses of wine'. Diogenes Laertius claims there “are ten volumes of his writings extant” though, today, only his Ajax and his Odysseus remain. He is considered the first Cynic philosopher ('cynic' from the Greek for 'dog', kynos, or kynikos which means dog-like) and, by example, taught Diogenes of Sinope and others, like Crates, how to live truly and shamelessly. Regarding the origin of the name 'cynic' Diogenes Laertius writes:

He used to lecture in the Gymnasium, called Cynosarges [meaning place of the white dog] not far from the gates; and some people say that it is from that place that the sect got the name of Cynics. And he himself was called Haplocyon (downright dog).

The word 'cynic' did not have the same meaning at the time as it does in the modern day and did not mean 'skeptical' or refer to someone who believes human beings are only motivated by self-interest and personal desires, but meant 'dog-like' in that the Cynics were thought to live like dogs. Antisthenes and his followers had few possessions beyond their cloaks and bags, lived where they could find shelter, and did not seem to engage in any kind of work. The evolution of the word 'cynic' to its present meaning may come from the Cynics' lack of regard for accepted theories on ethics, morality, the gods, and the proper way to live one's life.

Antisthenes or Diogenes?

Whether Antisthenes was, in fact, the founder of the Cynic school or whether that honor belongs to Diogenes of Sinope has long been disputed. It is argued that Antisthenes could not have taught both Diogenes of Sinope and Crates of Thebes and impossible that Crates went on to teach Zeno of Citium as he lived long after the deaths of these men. This argument further claims that the disputed chronology was created by the Stoics later in order to link Zeno of Citium's teachings directly back to Socrates. The other side argues that Antisthenes did, in fact, have Diogenes of Sinope and Crates of Thebes as pupils and Crates certainly could have taught and influenced Zeno of Citium. This claim is further disputed by scholars who claim that Diogenes came to Athens after Antisthenes had died and point out that Aristotle refers to the followers of Antisthenes as 'Antistheneans' and not as 'Cynics'. There is no resolution to this debate in scholarly circles thus far but the majority contend that Antisthenes founded the Cynic School and taught Diogenes of Sinope the Cynic philosophy which found full expression later through Zeno of Citium.

The Cynic School

The Cynic School was characterized by the discipline of self-denial which rejected luxuries, social status, and the acquisition of wealth and unnecessary material objects. It was thought that, by freeing oneself from those social conventions associated with `being someone' that one would be free to become oneself. Since virtue could be taught, and virtue (or, specifically, personal excellence), led to contentment, one could lead the happiest life by placing the pursuit of one's own virtue before all else. Since material gain was seen to often interfere with such a pursuit, it was rejected in favor of the ascetic life. Further, concerns about the future and one's fate were considered superfluous and a needless distraction. Adherents of Antisthenes' philosophy were encouraged to focus on the present and be content with what they had and what they were doing in the present day rather than waste time worrying about what they might be doing or where they might be tomorrow. Regarding Antisthenes' philosophy, Diogenes Laertius writes:

And the doctrines he adopted were these. He used to insist that virtue was a thing which might be taught; also, that the nobly born and virtuously disposed, were the same people; for that virtue was of itself sufficient for happiness. And was in need of nothing, except the strength of Socrates. He also looked upon virtue as a species of work, not wanting many arguments, or much instruction; and he taught that the wise man was sufficient for himself; for that everything that belonged to any one else belonged to him. He considered obscurity of fame a good thing, and equally good with labour. And he used to say that the wise man would regulate his conduct as a citizen, not according to the established laws of the state, but according to the law of virtue. And that he would marry for the sake of having children, selecting the most beautiful woman for his wife. And that he would love her; for that the wise man alone knew what objects deserved love (V).

Antisthenes died in Athens of a disease which may have been consumption. He is said to have borne his illness and impending death with calm and acceptance as simply another part of the life he had so enjoyed and so saw no reason to complain.

Aristippus of Cyrene

Aristippus of Cyrene (c. 435-356 BCE) was a hedonistic Greek philosopher who was one of Socrates' students along with other pupils such as Plato, Xenophon, Antisthenes, and Phaedo. He was the first of Socrates' students to charge a fee for teaching and, since Socrates had charged nothing, this, and the accusation he had betrayed Socrates' philosophy, created a life-long friction between Aristippus and Socrates' other disciples. He believed and taught that the meaning of life was pleasure and that the pursuit of pleasure, therefore, was the noblest path one could dedicate oneself to. It is hard to understand, at first, how Aristippus could have been a student of Socrates, so different seem their philosophies. However, Aristippus' most famous phrase, “I possess, I am not possessed”, is quite in line with Socrates' own view of life as presented by Plato and Xenophon, the two primary sources on Socrates' life.

Aristippus' Philosophy

Plato presents Socrates as a man who often enjoyed drinking wine but who never got drunk, who attended parties but never had the money to host one himself, and who seems to have lived primarily - in his later years at least - on monetary gifts from friends and admirers. Xenophon does not contradict Plato on any of the above points. Although Socrates could in no way be considered a hedonist, it is fairly easy to see how a young disciple of his could come to the conclusion that enjoying those things money can buy, without becoming a slave to the money with which to buy such things, would seem a worthwhile philosophy. Further, Socrates' habit of drinking heavily, but never appearing drunk or trying to acquire more wine, would be in line with Aristippus' philosophy of possessing, or enjoying, something without being possessed by that thing.

While Socrates pursued truth and sought understanding, Aristippus simplified the teaching of his master by claiming the highest truth one could attain was the recognition that pleasure was the purpose of human existence and the pursuit of pleasure was the meaning of life. In this, and in his scorn for those who complicated matters by thinking too precisely on them, he would be a kindred spirit of the Chinese hedonist philosopher Yang Zhu (440-360 BCE) who claimed that concerns about "right" and "wrong" were a waste of time because there is no god, no afterlife, and no reward for suffering needlessly by denying oneself when one could as easily, and more sensibly, enjoy life in the present.

Plato's dialogue of the Phaedo describes the last day of Socrates' life when his disciples came to visit him in his prison cell in Athens and they had their final philosophical discussion. The dialogue begins with the Pythagorean philosopher Echecrates meeting Socrates' student Phaedo (who was there at the prison and present at Socrates' death) and asking him to tell of the experience in the jail on the last day. Phaedo lists those who were present and Echecrates asks, “But Aristippus and Cleombrotus, were they present?” To which Phaedo replies, “No. they were not. They were said to be in Aegina” (59c). As the island of Aegina was known as a pleasure resort, Plato certainly knew what he was doing in placing the hedonistic philosopher there instead of in attendance in Socrates' last hours.

Whether the Cleombrotus mentioned in Phaedo is the same man whom Callimachus says leaped to his death after reading Plato's description of the afterlife and the journey of the soul in the dialogue of the Phaedo is not known, but if Cleombrotus was with Aristippus on Aegina, it may safely be assumed they were not there engaged in philosophical discourse, as Plato would have defined it, but would have been pursuing pleasure. As Plato did not approve of Aristippus (as, it seems, he did not approve of most of Socrates' other disciples nor they of him) the line referencing Aristippus' preference of pleasure on Aegina to philosophical conversation in an Athenian jail cell would have been intended by Plato to show how shallow Aristippus and his philosophy was. The ancient writer Diogenes Laertius (3rd century CE) mentions Plato's jab against Aristippus in Plato's Book on the Soul, as the Phaedo was called.

Even so, Aristippus, like Socrates, focused his attention on practical ethics; the question "What is the Good?" was in the forefront of his belief system. The values humans term "good" or "evil" are reducible to pleasure and pain; self-gratification, then, is a great good while self-restraint, in the face of certain pleasure, would be bad. Still, Aristippus maintained that one should not allow oneself to be possessed by those things which bring pleasure. According to Diogenes Laertius, when Aristippus was criticized for keeping a very expensive mistress named Lais, he replied, “I have Lais, not she me.” There was nothing at all wrong, then, with enjoying whatever it was one wanted to enjoy, as long as one knew the ultimate value of that thing or person and did not confuse that value with one's own personal freedom. In Aristippus' view, one should never trade one's freedom for anything. Self-restraint and self-gratification, then, were of equal value in maintaining one's personal liberty while pursuing the Good in life: pleasure.

Aristippus at Court

Aristippus lived at the court of the tyrant Dionysius I of Syracuse (432-367 BCE) or, perhaps, of his son Dionysius the Younger (397-343 BCE) where he was highly paid for his teaching and writing. When he first arrived at the palace, Dionysius asked him what he was doing there and, allegedly, he said, "When I wanted wisdom I went to Socrates; but now that I want money I have come to you." The uncertainty of which king Aristippus lived with is due to the primary sources referencing "Dionysius" without clarifying whether the father or the son, and as their personalities were similar, it could be either. Plato had attempted to turn Dionysius the Younger into his Philosopher King and failed and so, if Aristippus served that king, it would further explain Plato's enmity toward Aristippus (even though no further explanation is required than Aristippus' philosophy of pleasure). Diogenes Laertius tells us that

[Aristippus] was a man very quick at adapting himself to every kind of place, and time, and person, and he easily supported every change of fortune. For which reason he was in greater favour with Dionysius than any of the others, as he always made the best of existing circumstances. For he enjoyed what was before him pleasantly, and he did not toil to procure himself the enjoyment of what was not present. (III)

His position at the court was essentially "wise man"' or "counselor" but, according to the ancient reports, he seems to have spent much of his time simply enjoying himself at the expense of Dionysius. Diogenes Laertius illustrates this, writing, "One day he asked Dionysius for some money, who said, "'But you told me that a wise man would never be in want,' 'Give me some,' Aristippus rejoined, 'and then we will discuss that point;' Dionysius gave him some, 'Now then,' said he, 'you see that I do not want money.'" (IV). He apparently lived very luxuriously at the court where, among his students, he taught his daughter Arete about philosophical hedonism. She, in turn, passed his teaching down to her son, Aristippus-the-Younger (also known as Aristippus-the-mother-taught because he was raised by his mother alone), who formalized the teachings in his own writings. The teachings of Aristippus and his Cyrenaic School would later influence the thought of Epicurus and his philosophy regarding the primacy of pleasure in understanding the ultimate meaning in one's life.

Aristippus' Writing & Later Life

According to some ancient sources, Aristippus wrote many books while, according to others, none. The primary source of anecdotes concerning his life is Diogenes Laertius who has been criticized for not citing his sources but mentions Aristippus' written works in the same passage where he says he wrote nothing. One of the works attributed to him was On Ancient Luxury, no longer extant, which seems to have been a kind of scandal sheet detailing the less philosophical affairs and dalliances of Greek philosophers with young boys (and with particular attention paid to Plato). While it is entirely possible Aristippus could have written such a work, it does not seem consistent with his character. He routinely seems to have regarded himself superior to his contemporaries, especially to Socrates' other students, and it seems unlikely he would have expended the effort to write anything about them at all.

Aristippus lived into old age after a life of luxury and pleasure and retired to his hometown of Cyrene where he died. His daughter and grandson systematized his philosophy, and Aristippus the Younger is thought to have formally founded the Cyrenaic School of Philosophy (one of the earliest so-called Socratic schools originally founded by Aristippus himself) based on his grandfather's teachings.

Plato

Plato (l. 428/427 - 348/347 BCE) is considered the pre-eminent Greek philosopher, known for his Dialogues and for founding his Academy north of Athens, traditionally considered the first university in the western world. Born Aristocles, son of Ariston of the deme Colytus, Plato had two older brothers (Adeimantus and Glaucon), who both feature famously in Plato's dialogue Republic, and a sister Potone.

He is known by the nickname 'Plato' which, according to Diogenes Laertius (3rd century CE), was given him by his wrestling coach because of his broad shoulders (in Greek 'Platon' means broad). His family was aristocratic and well-connected politically and it seems Plato was expected to pursue a career in politics. His interests, however, tended more toward the arts and, in his youth, he wrote plays and, perhaps, poetry.

After abandoning his literary pursuits and devoting himself to Socrates, even throughout his trial and execution, Plato wrote the foundational philosophic works of the ancient world which would go on to influence world culture. The three great monotheistic religions of the world owe much to Platonic thought whether directly or through the works of his student and friend Aristotle (l. 384-322 BCE), whose teachings remained consistent with Plato's vision of the importance of caring for one's soul and maintaining a virtuous lifestyle even though Aristotle would depart from some of the specifics of Plato's philosophy.

Socrates and Plato

When he was in his late teens or early twenties, Plato heard Socrates teaching in the market and abandoned his plans to pursue a literary career as a playwright; he burned his early work and devoted himself to philosophy.

It is likely that Plato had known Socrates, at least by reputation, since youth. The Athenian politician, Critias (l. c. 460-40 BCE), was Plato's mother's cousin and studied with Socrates as a young man. It has been suggested, therefore, that Socrates was a regular visitor to Plato's family home. However this may be, nothing is suggested by the ancient writers to indicate Socrates' influence over Plato until the latter was about 20 years old.

Diogenes Laertius writes that Plato was about to compete for the prize in tragedies in the theatre of Bacchus when "he heard the discourse of Socrates and burnt his poems saying, 'Vulcan, come here; for Plato wants your aid' and from henceforth, as they say, being now twenty years old, he became a pupil of Socrates." Nothing is clearly known of Plato's activities for the next eight years save that he studied under the elder philosopher until the latter's trial and execution on the charge of impiety in 399 BCE.

Socrates' execution had a great impact on the then 28-year-old and he left Athens to travel, visiting Egypt and Italy among other places, before returning to his homeland to write his dialogues and set up the Academy. His Dialogues almost all feature Socrates as the main character, but whether this is an accurate portrayal of Socrates' actions and beliefs has long been contested.

Plato's contemporary, Phaedo, also one of Socrates' students (and best known for Plato's dialogue named after him) contended that Plato placed his own ideas in Socrates' mouth and made up the dramatic situations of his dialogues. Other philosophers and writers of the time have also questioned the accuracy of Plato's depiction of Socrates but seem in agreement that Plato was a very serious man with lofty ideas which were difficult for many to grasp.

Critics of Plato

Though he was respected as a philosopher of enormous talent in his lifetime (he was at least twice kidnapped and ransomed for a high price), he was by no means universally acclaimed. The value of Plato's philosophy was questioned most strenuously by the Cynic philosopher Diogenes of Sinope who considered Plato an 'elitist snob' and a 'phony'.

When Plato defined a human being as a bi-ped without feathers, Diogenes is said to have plucked a chicken and presented it in Plato's classroom, crying, "Behold, Plato's human being." Plato allegedly replied that his definition would now need to be revised, but this concession to a critic seems to have been an exception rather than the rule. Criticisms aside, however, Plato's work exerted an enormous impact on his contemporaries and those who followed.

Plato's Dialogues

Plato's Dialogues of the Euthyphro, Apology, Crito and Phaedo are commonly collected under the title The Last Days of Socrates and this four-act drama shows Socrates before, during, and after his trial in the Athenian court. I.F. Stone praises Plato's Apology as “a masterpiece of world literature, a model of courtroom pleading; and the greatest single piece of Greek prose that has come down to us. It rises to a climax which never fails to touch one deeply”, and Stone is certainly not alone in his estimation of the work.

The Apology is considered universally as the beginning of western philosophy. Plato's Euthyphro, however often overlooked, sets the stage for Apology while also providing the reader with another glimpse into the values Socrates may have held and the way in which he went about teaching these values. Perhaps it was Plato's intention to show why Socrates would have been put on trial in the first place, since the young fundamentalist, Euthyphro, is hardly hurting anyone with his beliefs and, no doubt, the case he brings against his own father would have been thrown out of court. As Euthyphro clearly and ardently believes in the gods of Greece, and as Socrates soundly shows him that his beliefs are inconsistent and incomplete, the dialogue illustrates what could have been meant by the charge of “corrupting the youth”.

In the Apology, Plato recounts the foundational speech of Socrates (whether factual or his own creation) in defending the importance of the philosopher's - or anyone's - right to stand up for their personal convictions against the opinion of society. In defending himself against the unjust charges of hisa accusers, Socrates says:

Men of Athens, I honor and love you; but I shall obey God rather than you and, while I have life and strength, I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy, exhorting anyone whom I meet after my manner, and convincing him saying: O my friend, why do you who are a citizen of the great and mighty and wise city of Athens care so much about laying up the greatest amount of money and honor and reputation and so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul, which you never regard or heed at all? Are you not Ashamed of this? And if the person with whom I am arguing says: Yes, but I do care; I do not depart or let him go at once; I interrogate and examine and cross-examine him, and if I think that he has no virtue, but only says that he has, I reproach him with undervaluing the greater, and overvaluing the less. And this I should say to everyone whom I meet, young and old, citizen and alien, but especially to the citizens, inasmuch as they are my brethren. For this is the command of God, as I would have you know: and I believe that to this day no greater good has ever happened in the state than my service to the God. For I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons and your properties, but first and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul. I tell you that virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue come money and every other good of man, public as well as private. This is my teaching, and if this is the doctrine which corrupts the youth, my influence is ruinous indeed. But if anyone says that this is not my teaching, he is speaking an untruth. Wherefore, O men of Athens, I say to you, do as Anytus bids or not as Anytus bids, and either acquit me or not; but whatever you do, know that I shall never alter my ways, not even if I have to die many times. (29d-30c)

This speech has continued to inspire activists, revolutionaries, and many others for the past two thousand years but would be meaningless if Socrates had not chosen to place his life on the line to stand behind his words. The dialogue of the Crito shows Socrates doing just that as it is a discussion of the law and how, as a citizen of the state, one should obey the law even if one disagrees with it.

Socrates' friend Crito suggests he escape, and offers him the means to do so, but Socrates rejects the offer, pointing out that his life's work would mean nothing were he to attempt dodging the consequences of his words and actions. This dialogue, set in Socrates' prison cell as he awaits execution, prepares a reader for the final act of the drama, Plato's Phaedo, in which Socrates attempts to prove the immortality of the soul.

Plato very purposefully states in the dialogue that he himself was not present that day and leaves it to his main character, the narrator Phaedo, to relate the events of Socrates' last hours which were devoted entirely to philosophical discourse with his students. Plato has the character of Socrates say, at one point:

I will go back to what we have so often spoken of, and begin with the assumption that there exists an absolute beauty, and an absolute good, and an absolute greatness, and so on. If you grant me this, and agree that they exist, I hope to be able to show you what my cause is, and to discover that the soul is immortal. (100b)

If the reader does grant this to Socrates then, indeed, the soul is proven immortal; if one does not grant the assumption, however, it is not. The `assumption' that there exists “an absolute good and an absolute greatness” is quite a large one, and Plato's dialogues, no matter the subject they treat, may be read as a life's work to prove the truth of what Socrates asks an audience to grant him.

The Quest for Truth

The Dialogues of Plato universally concern themselves with the quest for Truth and the understanding of what is Good. Plato contended that there was one universal truth which a human being needed to recognize and strive to live in accordance with. This truth, he claimed, was embodied in the realm of Forms. Plato's Theory of Forms states, simply put, that there exists a higher realm of truth and that our perceived world of the senses is merely a reflection of the greater one.

When one looks at a horse, then, and values that horse as 'beautiful', one is responding to how closely that particular horse on earth corresponds to the 'Form of Beauty' in the realm of Forms. In order to recognize the 'Form of Beauty', one needs first be able to recognize that this perceived world is merely an illusion or a reflection, and that what one calls `beautiful' on earth is not beautiful in itself but is only 'beautiful' in as much as it participates in the `Form of Beauty' (a concept further explored in Plato's famous 'Allegory of the Cave' in Book VII of Republic). This central concept of Platonic thought is a refutation of the Sophist Protagoras' claim that "Of all things, a man is the measure", meaning that reality is subject to individual interpretation. Plato completely rejected this claim and spent his life trying to refute it through his work.

The old saying, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” would be completely unacceptable to Plato. If Person A claims a horse is beautiful and Person B claims that the horse is not, one of them needs to be right and one wrong in their claim; they cannot both be correct. According to Plato, the one who is right will be the one who understands and recognizes the Form of Beauty as it is expressed in that particular horse. This claim, of course, stands in direct opposition to Protagoras' assertion that “Man is the measure of all things” and, it seems, it was supposed to. Plato devoted most of his life to trying to prove the reality of the realm of Forms and to disprove Protagoras' relativism, even to the last dialogue he wrote, the Laws.

In all of Plato's work, the one constant is that there is a Truth which it is the duty of a human being to recognize and strive for, and that one cannot just believe whatever one wants to (again, a direct challenge to Protagoras). Even though he never conclusively proved the existence of the Forms, his standard inspired later philosophers and writers, notably Plotinus, who is credited with founding the Neo-Platonic school which exerted significant influence on early Christianity.

Plato's Influence

The enormity of Plato's influence was recorded by Diogenes Laertius who wrote:

He was the first author who wrote treatises in the form of dialogues, as Favorinus tells us in the eighth book of his Universal History. And he was also the first person who introduced the analytical method of investigation, which he taught to Leodamus of Thasos. He was also the first person in philosophy who spoke of antipodes, and elements, and dialectics, and actions (poiêmata) and oblong numbers, and plane surfaces, and the providence of God. He was likewise the first of the philosophers who contradicted the assertion of Lysias, the son of Cephalus, setting it out word for word in his Phaedrus. And he was also the first person who examined the subject of grammatical knowledge scientifically. And as he argued against almost every one who had lived before his time, it is often asked why he has never mentioned Democritus. (Lives, XIX)

In this passage, Laertius is essentially claiming that Plato contradicted or significantly improved upon all of the accepted theories which came before him, and an important recognition of his influence on the world to the present day is summed up by the 20th century CE philosopher Alfred North Whitehead who stated, "The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato".

This influence is perhaps best represented by Plato's most famous dialogue, Republic. Professor Forrest E. Baird writes, "There are few books in Western civilization that have had the impact of Plato's Republic - aside from the Bible, perhaps none" (Ancient Philosophy, 68). Republic has been denounced as a treatise on fascism (by Karl Popper, among others) and praised as an eloquent and elevating work by scholars such as Bloom and Cornford. The dialogue begins with a consideration of what Justice means and goes on to develop the ideal, perfect State. Throughout the piece, Plato's ideas of Truth, Beauty, Goodness, and Justice are developed as they are explored by Socrates and his interlocutors.

While the work has traditionally been understood as Plato's attempt to outline his model for the perfectly just and efficient society, an important point is often overlooked: The character of Socrates very clearly states in Book II. 369 that they are creating this `city' as a means to better understand the function of the perfect `soul'. The society which the men discuss, then, is not intended to reflect an actual physical political-social entity but rather to serve symbolically as a means by which a reader may recognize strengths and weaknesses in his or her own constitution.

The young poet and playwright Aristocles was always present in crafting the mature works of the philosopher Plato and, in all the dialogues, a reader is expected to consider the work as carefully as one would a poem. Unlike his famous student Aristotle, Plato never clearly spells out the meaning of a dialogue for a reader. The reader is supposed to confront the truths which the dialogue presents individually. It is this combination of artistic talent with philosophical abstractions which has assured Plato's enduring value as philosopher and artist.

Aristotle & Plato's Legacy

While Aristotle disagreed with Plato's Theory of Forms and many other aspects of his philosophy, he was profoundly affected by his teacher; most notably in his insistence on a right way of living and a proper way to pursue one's path in life (as outlined most clearly in Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics). Aristotle would go on to tutor Alexander the Great and, in so doing, would help spread the brand of philosophy Plato had established to the known world.

Plato died at the age of 80 in 348/7 BCE, and leadership of the Academy passed to his nephew Speusippus. Tradition holds that the Academy endured for nearly 1,000 years as a beacon of higher learning until it was closed by the Christian Emperor Justinian in 529 CE in an effort to suppress the heresy of pagan thought. Ancient sources, however, claim that the Academy was severely damaged in the First Mithridatic War in 88 BCE and almost completely destroyed in the Roman Emperor Sulla's sack of Athens in 86 BCE. Even so, some version of the Academy seems to have survived until it was closed by the zealous adherents of the new religion of Christianity.

Plato's Academy was a wooded garden located near to one of his homes and not a 'university' as one would picture such an institution today, and so the area underwent many changes both before and after Plato's school was established there and seems to have been a center of learning for centuries.

The Roman writer Cicero claims that Plato was not even the first to have a school in the gardens of Academia, but that Democritus (c. 460 BCE) was the original founder and leader of a philosophical school in the locale. It is also established that Simplicius was the head of a school in the gardens, which was still known as the Academy, as late as 560 CE. Even so, in the present day the site is known, and honored, as that of Plato's Academy, reflecting the importance of the philosopher's influence and respect for his legacy.

Diogenes of Sinope

Diogenes of Sinope (c. 404-323 BCE) was a Greek Cynic philosopher best known for holding a lantern (or candle) to the faces of the citizens of Athens claiming he was searching for an honest man. He was most likely a student of the philosopher Antisthenes (445-365 BCE) and, in the words of Plato (allegedly), was “A Socrates gone mad.” He was driven into exile from his native city of Sinope for defacing currency (though some sources say it was his father who committed the crime and Diogenes simply followed him into exile).

Diogenes' Beliefs

Diogenes came to Athens where he met Antisthenes who at first refused him as a student but, eventually, was worn down by his persistence and accepted him. Like Antisthenes, Diogenes believed in self-control, the importance of personal excellence in one's behavior (in Greek, arete, usually translated as `virtue'), and the rejection of all which was considered unnecessary in life such as personal possessions and social status. He was so ardent in his beliefs that he lived them very publicly in the market place of Athens. He took up residence in a large wine cask (some sources claim it was an abandoned bathtub), owned nothing, and seems to have lived off the charity of others. He owned a cup which served also has a bowl for food but threw it away when he saw a boy drinking water from his hands and realized one did not even need a cup to sustain oneself.

This much can be said with more or less assurance but any other details become increasingly uncertain owing to the many fables which grew up around Diogenes and his time in Athens. Even the claim that he was Antisthenes' student has been challenged as a fable. It seems clear, however, that Diogenes believed what people called `manners' were simply lies used to hide the true nature of the individual. He was known for brutal honesty in conversation, paid no attention to any kind of etiquette regarding social class, and seems to have had no problem urinating or even masturbating in public and, when criticized, pointed out that such activities were normal and that everyone engaged in them but hid in private what he did openly.

According to Diogenes society was an artificial contrivance set up by human beings which did not accord well with truth or virtue and could not in any way make someone a good and decent human being; and so follows the famous story of Diogenes holding the light up to the faces of passers-by in the market place looking for an honest man or a true human being. Everyone, he claimed, was trapped in this make-believe world which they believed was reality and, because of this, people were living in a kind of dream state. He was not the first philosopher to make this claim; Heraclitus, Xenophanes, and, most famously, Socrates all pointed out the need for human beings to wake from their dream state to full awareness of themselves and the world. Plato's famous Allegory of the Cave is devoted to this very theme. Diogenes, however, confronted the citizens of Athens daily with their lifelessness and shallow values, emulating his hero Socrates whom he never met but would have learned of from Antisthenes. Although it seems many people thought he was simply mentally ill, Diogenes would have claimed he was living a completely honest life and others should have the courage to do the same.

Plato & Alexander the Great

This behavior of Diogenes was informed in part by the belief that if an act is not shameful in private then it should not be shameful in public. The rules by which people lived, then, were non-sensical in that they forced people to behave in a way different from how they would naturally have behaved. Manners and etiquette were both regarded by him as staples of the false life in the dream world and should not be indulged in. Accordingly, he insulted his social superiors regularly, including Plato and Alexander the Great. When Plato defined a human being as "a featherless biped", and was praised for the cleverness of the definition, Diogenes plucked a chicken, brought it to Plato's Academy, and declared, "Behold - Plato's human being." Plato then added "with broad, flat, nails" to his definition. This is not the only time Diogenes insulted Plato publicly but is the best known incident.

In the case of Alexander the Great, both Diogenes Laertius and Plutarch relate how, when Diogenes was living in Corinth, Alexander came to the city and was very interested in meeting the philosopher. He found Diogenes resting in the sunlight, introduced himself, and asked if there was anything he could do for him. Diogenes replied, "Yes. Get out of my sunlight." Alexander admired his spirit and said, "If I were not Alexander, I would wish to be Diogenes" to which Diogenes replied, "If I were not Diogenes, I would also wish to be Diogenes." On another occasion, when some people were discussing a man named Callisthenes and the fine treatment he received from Alexander, Diogenes said, "The man then is wretched, for he is forced to breakfast and dine whenever Alexander chooses." Another time, at a banquet for some Athenian elites, some of the guests threw Diogenes some bones and referred to him as a dog; so he lifted his leg and urinated on them. In spite of, or because of, his outrageous behavior, the Athenians loved him and, Laertius relates, when a boy broke Diogenes' cask, the people had the boy beaten and replaced the broken cask. It is unlikely, however, that Diogenes cared very much for the cask or what state it was in; to him, possessions were a trap.

To be truly free, and live a virtuous life of complete awareness, was the ultimate meaning of one's existence. As Diogenes Laertius writes,

On one occasion he was asked, what was the most excellent thing among men; and he said, `Freedom of speech.' He was in the habit of doing everything in public, whether in respect of Venus or Ceres; and he used to put his conclusions in this way to people: `If there is nothing absurd in dining, then it is not absurd to dine in the market-place. But it is not absurd to dine, therefore it is not absurd to dine in the market-place'.

This was in reference to the prohibition on eating in the Agora (the public market) which, like all such prohibitions, Diogenes ignored.

Slavery & Death

For Diogenes, a reasonable life is one lived in accordance with nature and with one's natural inclinations. To be true to oneself, then, no matter how `mad' one may appear, was to pursue a life worth living. Whether true or another fable, the tale of Diogenes' capture by pirates and his being sold into slavery in Corinth bears testimony to the strength of his convictions. When asked what talent he had he replied, “That of governing men” and then demanded to be sold to Xeniades saying, “Sell me to that man; for he wants a master.” Even though he was a slave at this point, and in no position to demand anything, he believed so completely in himself that others felt compelled to listen to him and do what he said. Xeniades, for example, placed Diogenes in charge of tutoring his young sons and, in time, the philosopher became part of the family. He lived in Corinth with Xeniades' family for the rest of his life and died there at the age of ninety. His cause of death has been given as either severe food poisoning from eating a raw ox's foot, rabies from a dog bite, or suicide by holding his breath. The citizens of Corinth, like those of Athens, had come to greatly admire the philosopher and buried him in honor by the city gate, erecting a monument over his grave. This would have amused Diogenes who, when asked what he wished done with his body after his death, replied that it should be thrown outside the city for the dogs to feed on. A statue of him stands in modern-day Sinop, Turkey, depicting him holding out his lantern with a dog sitting by his side.

Aristotle

Aristotle of Stagira (l. 384-322 BCE) was a Greek philosopher who pioneered systematic, scientific examination in literally every area of human knowledge and was known, in his time, as "the man who knew everything" and later simply as "The Philosopher”, needing no further qualification as his fame was so widespread. He literally invented the concept of metaphysics single-handedly when he (or one of his scribes) placed his book on abstract philosophical speculation after his book on physics (metaphysics literally means “after physics”) and standardized in learning – how information is collected, assimilated and interpreted, and then communicated – across numerous disciplines.

During the later Middle Ages (c. 1300-1500 CE), he was referred to as "The Master", most notably in Dante's Inferno where the author did not need to even identify Aristotle by name for him to be recognized. This particular epithet is apt in that Aristotle wrote on, and was considered a master in, disciplines as diverse as biology, politics, metaphysics, agriculture, literature, botany, medicine, mathematics, physics, ethics, logic, and the theatre. He is traditionally linked in sequence with Socrates and Plato in the triad of the three greatest Greek philosophers.

Plato (l. c. 428-348 BCE) was a student of Socrates (l. c. 469/470-399 BCE) and Aristotle studied under Plato. The student and teacher disagreed on a fundamental aspect of Plato's philosophy – the insistence on a higher realm of Forms which made objective reality possible on the earthly plane – although, contrary to the claims of some scholars this did not cause any rift between them. Aristotle would build upon Plato's theories to advance his own original thought and, although he rejected Plato's Theory of Forms, he never disparaged his former master's basic philosophy.

He was hired by Philip II, King of Macedon (r. 359-336 BCE) as tutor for his son Alexander the Great (l. 356-323 BCE) and made such an impression on the youth that Alexander carried Aristotle's works with him on campaign and introduced his philosophy to the east when he conquered the Persian Empire. Through Alexander, Aristotle's works were spread throughout the known world of the time, influencing other philosophies and providing a foundation for the development of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim theology.

Early Life

Aristotle was born in 384 BCE in Stagira, Greece, on the border of Macedonia. His father, Nichomachus, was the court physician to the Macedonian king and died when Aristotle was ten years old. His uncle assumed guardianship of the boy and saw to his education. Aristotle probably spent time with the tutors at the Macedonian court, as the son and nephew of palace staff, but this not known with certainty. When he was 18, Aristotle was sent to Athens to study at Plato's Academy where he remained for the next 20 years.

He was an exceptional student, graduated early, and was awarded a position on the faculty teaching rhetoric and dialogue. It appears that Aristotle thought he would take over the Academy after Plato's death and, when that position was given to Plato's nephew Speusippus, Aristotle left Athens to conduct experiments and study on his own in the islands of the Greek Archipelago.

Aristotle & Alexander the Great

In 343 BCE Aristotle was summoned by King Philip II of Macedon to tutor his son Alexander and held this post for the next seven years, until Alexander ascended to the throne in 336 BCE and began his famous conquests. By 335 BCE, Aristotle had returned to Athens but the two men remained in contact through letters, and Aristotle's influence on the conqueror can be seen in the latter's skillful and diplomatic handling of difficult political problems throughout his career. Alexander's habit of carrying books with him on campaign and his wide reading have been attributed to Aristotle's influence as has Alexander's appreciation for art and culture.

Aristotle, who held a low opinion of non-Greek “barbarians” generally and Persians specifically, encouraged Alexander's conquest of their empire. As with most – if not all - Greeks, Aristotle would have been brought up hearing stories of the Battle of Marathon of 490 BCE, the Persian Invasion of 480 BCE, and the Greek triumph over the Persian forces at Salamis and Plataea. His advocacy of conquest, then, is hardly surprising considering the cultural atmosphere he grew up in which had remained largely anti-Persian.

Even without this consideration, Aristotle was philosophically pro-war on the grounds that it provided opportunity for greatness and the application of one's personal excellence to practical, difficult, situations. Aristotle believed that the final purpose for human existence was happiness (eudaimonia – literally, “to be possessed of a good spirit”) and this happiness could be realized by maintaining a virtuous life which developed one's arete (“personal excellence”).

A person's arete would enable them to see what had to be done in any given situation and be able to do it. Further, by associating with virtuous comrades who sought the same end, the soul was enriched and one's excellence sharpened and honed, and warfare provided many opportunities for an individual to expand upon and prove not only self-worth but greatness. He would have encouraged Alexander with thoughts along these lines prior to the launch of the campaign in 336 BCE.

Beliefs & Differences with Plato

Once Aristotle returned to Athens in 335 BCE, he set up his own school, The Lyceum, a rival to Plato's Academy. Aristotle was a Teleologist, an individual who believes in `end causes' and final purposes in life, and believed that everything and everyone in the world had a purpose for existing and, further, these final purposes could be ascertained from observation of the known world.

Plato, who also dealt with first causes and final purposes, considered them more idealistically and believed they could be known through apprehension of a higher, invisible, plane of truth he called the `Realm of Forms'. Plato's philosophy was deeply rooted in the mysticism of the Pythagorean School, founded by the Pre-Socratic philosopher and mystic Pythagoras (l. c. 571-c.497 BCE). Pythagoras emphasized the immortality of the soul and the importance of virtuous living, recognizing there are essential, indisputable truths in life which one must recognize and adhere to in order to live a good life.

Plato was also significantly influenced by another Pre-Socratic philosopher, the sophist Protagoras (l. c. 485-415 BCE), considered the first relativist thinker. Protagoras famously maintained that “Of all things, a man is the measure”, meaning that individual perception determines truth. There can be no objective truth in any given situation, Protagoras argued, because all observable phenomenon or emotional or psychological experiences are subject to an individual's interpretation.

Plato developed his Theory of Forms in an effort to refute Protagoras and provide his Pythagorean-infused idealism with a rational basis by which he could establish the existence of objective truth. The Realm of Forms contained the perfect expressions of what was Good, True, and Beautiful; all that was perceived by humans on the earthly plane and defined as good or true or beautiful were only so in so far as they participated in the higher, more perfect Form of Good or True or Beautiful. For example, a horse was not beautiful just because one admired how it looked; it was beautiful objectively through participation in the Form of Beauty.

Aristotle could never accept Plato's Theory of Forms nor did he believe in positing the unseen as an explanation for the observable world when one could work from what one could see backwards toward a First Cause. In his Physics and Metaphysics, Aristotle claims the First Cause in the universe is the Prime Mover – that which moves all else but is itself unmoved. To Aristotle, this made more sense than the realm of Forms.

To Aristotle, a horse is beautiful because of certain characteristics humans associate with the concept of beauty: the horse's coat is a pleasing color, it is in good health, it has good form in the ring. To claim that a horse is beautiful because of some unseen and unproveable realm of Perfect Beauty was untenable to Aristotle because any claim should require proof in order to be accepted.

The existence of the Prime Mover could be proven, at least theoretically, because some force had to have set life in motion at some point in the past and this force – whatever it consisted of – he designated the Unmoved Mover or Prime Mover. His reasoning in this would later be adopted by Jewish, Christian, and Muslim theologians and contributed to these religions' concept of God.

In rejecting the Theory of Forms, Aristotle mentions Plato and how he hates to argue against his former teacher, a man who remains dear to him. He feels he must address the impracticality of Plato's theory, however, and encourages Platonists to abandon it, writing:

In the interest of truth, one should perhaps think a man, especially if he is a philosopher, had better give up even theories that once were his own, and in fact must do so…it is our sacred duty to honor truth more highly than friends [i.e. Plato]. (Nichomachean Ethics I.1096a.15)

Plato claimed that intellectual concepts of the Truth could not be gained from experience and nothing could actually be learned. He most notably demonstrates this in his dialogue of the Meno where he argues that all learning is actually “remembering” from a past life. Aristotle rejected this claim, arguing that knowledge was obviously learned because people could be taught and this was evident in changes in their perception of life and behavior.

A good man was good, Aristotle argued, because he had been taught the value of living a good, virtuous life. If an individual could not actually “learn”, but only “remember” essential truths from a past life in which they were “good”, then that person could not be considered “good” themselves. The virtue a human exhibited in life was the result of that person deciding to behave a certain way and practicing virtuous habits for their own sake, not for reputation or praise from others. Aristotle writes:

Honor seems to depend on those who confer it rather than on him who receives it, whereas our guess is that the good is a man's own possession which cannot easily be taken away from him. (Nichomachean Ethics I.1095b.25)

Aristotle advocated moderation in all things in order to attain this “good” in life which, ultimately, was a happiness no person or set of circumstances could take or diminish. Aristotle maintained that “a man becomes just by performing just acts and self-controlled by performing acts of self-control” (Nichomachean Ethics I.1105b.10). This self-control was exemplified by his concept of the Golden Mean. Aristotle writes:

In regard to pleasures and pains…the mean is self-control and the excess is self-indulgence. In taking and giving money, the mean is generosity, the excess and deficiency are extravagance and stinginess. In these vices excess and deficiency work in opposite ways: an extravagant man exceeds in spending and is deficient in taking, while a stingy man exceeds in taking and is deficient in spending. (Nichomachean Ethics I.1107b.5-10)

The Golden Mean provides a control which acts to correct one's behavior. If one knows that one is prone to the excess of extravagance, one should revert to the extreme opposite of stinginess. Since one's natural inclination will be to spend freely, making a conscious attempt to spend nothing will result in one drifting to the moderate ground between the extremes.

The Golden Mean was among the many precepts Aristotle taught to his students at the Lyceum. His habit of walking back and forth as he taught earned the Lyceum the name of the Peripatetic School (from the Greek word for walking around, peripatetikos). Aristotle's favorite student at the school was Theophrastus who would succeed him as leader of the school and who collected and published his works. Some scholars have claimed, in fact, that what exists today of Aristotle's work was never written to be published but was only lecture notes for classes which Theophrastus and others admired a great deal and so had copied and distributed.

Famous Contributions & Works

The Golden Mean is one of Aristotle's best-known contributions to philosophical thought (after the Prime Mover) but it should be noted that this was only in the realm of ethics and Aristotle contributed to every branch of knowledge available in his time. In ethics, he also famously explored the difference between voluntary actions and involuntary actions, encouraging people to try to fill their lives with as many voluntary actions as possible in order to achieve the greatest happiness. He understood that there were many chores and responsibilities one would meet in a day which one would rather not do but suggested one consider these apparent annoyances as opportunities and avenues to happiness.

For example, one might not want to do the dishes and would consider having to perform this chore and involuntary action. Aristotle would suggest one look at cleaning the dishes as a means to the desirable end of having a clean kitchen and clean plates to use at the next meal. The same would apply to a job one does not like. Instead of seeing the job as an obstacle to happiness, one should look at it as the means by which one is able to buy groceries, clothes, take trips, and enjoy hobbies. The value of positive thinking and the importance of gratitude have been highlighted by a number of authors in different disciplines in the 20th and 21st centuries CE but Aristotle was a much earlier proponent of the same view.

In his work On the Soul, Aristotle addresses the issue of memory-as-fact, claiming that one's memories are impressions but not reliable records of what really happened. A memory assumes a different value as one undergoes new experiences and so one's memory of an unpleasant event (say a car accident) will change if, because of that car accident, one met the love of one's life. People pick and choose what they will remember, and how they will remember it, based on the emotional narrative they are telling themselves and others. This concept has been explored since Freud and Jung in the mid-20th century CE but was not an original thought of either of them.

His Politics addresses the concerns of the state which Aristotle sees as an organic development natural to any community of human beings. The state is not a static structure imposed on people but a dynamic, living entity created by those who then live under its rules. Long before Thomas Hobbes wrote his Leviathan concerning the burden of government or Jean-Jacque Rousseau developed his Social Contract, Aristotle had already addressed their same concerns.

Aristotle's Poetics introduced concepts such as mimesis (imitation of reality in art) and catharsis (a purging of strong emotion) to literary criticism as well as the creative arts. His observations on poetic and rhetorical form would continue to be taught as objective truths on the subject up through the period of the European Renaissance. Aristotle was naturally curious about all aspects of the human condition and natural world and systematically studied whatever subject came to his attention, learned it to his satisfaction, and then tried to make it comprehensible and meaningful through philosophical interpretation. Through this process, he developed the Scientific Method in an early form by forming a hypothesis and then testing it through an experiment which could be repeated for the same results.

Conclusion

After the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE, when the tide of Athenian popular opinion turned against Macedon, Aristotle was charged with impiety owing to his earlier association with Alexander and the Macedonian Court. With the unjust execution of Socrates in mind, Aristotle chose to flee Athens, "lest the Athenians sin twice against philosophy", as he said. He died of natural causes a year later in 322 BCE.

Aristotle's writings, like Plato's, have influenced virtually every avenue of human knowledge for the past two thousand years. Although he was not widely read in the west after the fall of Rome, his works were appreciated in the east where Muslim scholars drew inspiration and understanding from his works. His Nichomachean Ethics (written for his son, Nichomachus, as a guide to good living) is still consulted as a philosophical touchstone in the study of ethics. He contributed to the understanding of physics, created the field and the study of what is known as metaphysics, wrote extensively on natural science and politics, and his Poetics remains a classic of literary criticism.

In all this, he proved himself to be in fact The Master recognized by Dante. As with Plato, Aristotle's work infuses the entire spectrum of human knowledge as it is apprehended in the present day. Many scholars, philosophers, and thinkers over the past two thousand years have argued with, dismissed, ignored, questioned, and even debunked Aristotle's theories but none have argued that his influence was not vast and deeply penetrating, establishing schools of thought and creating disciplines taken for granted in the present as having always just existed.

Epicurus

Epicurus (341 BCE – 270 BCE) was an ancient Greek philosopher, the founder of the Epicurean school in Athens, who taught that "Pleasure is the principle and end to a happy life." He was a prolific writer, amassing 37 volumes, but unfortunately, only fragments and four letters remain. His teachings would influence many who followed such as Lucretius of Rome and his On the Nature of Things, and the Utilitarians Jeremy Bentham and J.S. Mill.

Early Life

Most of what historians know of Epicurus has been gathered from the writings of others. In 341 BCE Epicurus was born, according to most sources, on the small island of Samos located off the coast of Asia Minor in the Aegean Sea. His father Neocles was a schoolteacher. Neocles and his wife Chaerestrate were members of the Athenian poor – the Klirouchi – who emigrated to Samos from Athens after they had been offered land there. Initially, Epicurus was taught at home by his father but later was schooled by Amphilus (also known as Pamphilus), a Platonist, and Nausephanes, a follower of Democritus, the Atomist. While Epicurus was serving his mandatory two years in the Athenian army, his family was relocated by force to the small Ionian city of Colophon when Perdiccas the old Macedonian commander under Alexander had ordered the removal of all Athenians from Samos.

It was then that Epicurus began to develop his own, unique philosophy. According to sources, at the tender age of 14, he had become disillusioned with his teachers. Like Aristotle, he was an empiricist and believed that all knowledge comes from one's senses. His new philosophy centered primarily on the idea of seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. Although his name and philosophy have been misconstrued and linked to hedonism, his initial teachings were anything but. Obviously, because of his early education, Epicurus's thinking was heavily influenced by the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, and most of all Democritus. Slowly, his teachings drew a number of dedicated followers, even appealing to both women and slaves. The fact that his schools welcomed everyone brought considerable opposition from others in and around Athens. At the age of 32, he moved to the city of Mytilene on the island of Lesbos, and later, not by choice, he relocated to Lampsacus on the eastern side of the Hellespont, establishing schools at both locations.

Philosophy

In 307/306 CE he bought a home in Athens and founded a new school, calling it 'The Garden,' where he remained for the rest of his life. On the gate of his school was the inscription: "Stranger, here you will do well to tarry; here our highest goal is pleasure." Unfortunately, his concept of pleasure has been horribly misinterpreted; to him, pleasure meant one must lead a life of restful contemplation, eating and drinking moderately. One must live without anxiety, forgoing the wants and worries of life and enjoying the "bliss of the gods." He would later write, "Do not spoil what you have desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for." Happiness could be realized through attaining ataraxia, freedom from fear, and aponia, the absence of pain. "Live unknown" was a personal adage of the Epicureans, a belief that rivaled the old Greek idea of seeking fame, glory, and honor.

The Epicureans believed that all desires were derived from three main sources: those natural desires that are essential for life such as food and shelter; those natural desires that one can live without, primarily ones that cause jealousy and boredom; and lastly, narcissistic desires such as wealth and fame. He wrote, "He who is not satisfied with a little is satisfied with nothing." However, one of the most important things to Epicurus was friendship; although he never married, he actually believed in marriage and the family. Friends provide both an important defense against insecurity as well as a source of strength. Personally, Epicurus was considered by many to be humble, quiet and retiring. Some critics were not so kind, for instance, the Stoic philosopher Epictetus called him a "preacher of effeminacy."

Epicurean teachings

Aside from his acceptance of women and slaves into his schools, many attacked his stance on religion and death. One of Epicurus' most important aims was to liberate people from fearing the eventual end of one's life thereby enabling them to seek both happiness and fulfillment in their personal lives. To Epicurus, one ceases to exist when one chooses to fear death. The Epicureans believed in the maxim "Death is nothing to us." There were four fundamental truths in Epicureanism:

1. There are no divine beings that can threaten us.

2. There is no afterlife.

3. What we actually need is easy to obtain.

4. What makes us suffer is easy to endure.

Of course, there were also simple cures for these ills, among which were not fearing god and not worrying about death. As a follower of Democritus teachings, he taught that upon one's passing the body is reduced to nothing but decomposing atoms; in fact, all that exists in the entire universe is composed of atoms and space. Life – the body and mind – is a combining and dispersing of these atoms. Even one's soul is composed of atoms. These atoms are not only indestructible and eternal but unpredictable.

Unlike other religions that spoke of an afterlife, this meant that the eventuality of death should not be feared. To Epicurus, there was nothing to hope for and nothing to fear from the gods. While he rejected Plato's divine creation of the world, believing that the cosmos was the result of an accident, he tried to avoid saying that the gods did not exist, for it would have been dangerous to deny their existence; he did not consider himself to be an atheist. It was good for people to pay respect to the gods but one shouldn't expect anything from them. The gods existed, they were both happy and immortal, but were far away and took no interest in people's lives. Later, this denial of immortality and the existence of a benevolent god would bring the Epicureans into direct conflict with the rise of Christianity. Epicurus and his followers lived peacefully in their small communities and did not get involved in the politics of an ever-changing Athens, avoiding all social activism. And, concerning the Athenian emphasis on the importance of virtue, Epicurus held that those who were wise would avoid injustice. He once wrote, "To practice living well and to practice dying well are one and the same.” He died in 270 BCE in pain from kidney stones. His schools and philosophy would survive long after his death.

Zeno of Citium

Zeno of Citium (l.c. 336 – 265 BCE) was the founder of the Stoic School of philosophy in Athens which taught that the Logos (Universal Reason) was the greatest good in life and living in accordance with reason was the purpose of human life. If one lived according to the instinct of impulse and passion, one was no more than an animal; if one lived in accordance with universal reason, one was truly a human being living a worthwhile existence. This philosophy would later be developed by Epictetus (l.c.50-130 CE) and others and would have a great impact on the people of Rome, most notably the emperor Marcus Aurelius (r.161-180 CE). Stoicism would eventually become one of the most popular and influential philosophies in the Roman world.

He was a merchant until he was exposed to the teachings of Socrates (l.c. 470/469-399 BCE), the iconic Greek philosopher through a book by one of Socrates' students, Xenophon (l. 430-c.354 BCE), known as the Memorabilia. This book contained conversations with Socrates, his philosophy, and Xenophon's memories of the time spent as his student. Zeno was so completely captivated by the work that he left his former profession and dedicated himself to the study of philosophy, eventually becoming a teacher himself. His school would eventually influence the development of Roman philosophy when one of its students, Diogenes of Babylon (l.c.230-c.140 BCE), brought Stoicism to Rome in 155 BCE.

Early Life

Zeno was born in the Phonecian-Greek city of Citium on Cyprus in the same year that Alexander the Great ascended to the throne of Macedonia. His father was a merchant who traveled often to Athens and Zeno, naturally, took up his father's profession. It is unclear whether Zeno studied philosophy in his youth but, around the age of 22, while stranded in Athens after a shipwreck, he picked up a copy of Xenophon's Memorabilia and was so impressed by the figure of Socrates that he abandoned his former life and made the study of philosophy his only interest.

Zeno studied under Crates of Thebes (l.c.360-280 BCE) and then under Stilpo the Megarian and then became the pupil of Polemo. From each of these men he learned some different aspect and nuance of the life of a philosopher. From Stilpo, for example, it is said he learned that the greatest fault in life lay in saying `yes' too quickly to any request and one should avoid doing so in order to live a tranquil life. In this, he pre-dates Sartre's assertion that saying `no' is an assertion of one's personal identity while agreeing to another's request diminishes the individual personality. After many years of study, Zeno set up his own school and began to teach on the porches (the `stoa') of the arcade in the market place in Athens and so his school took the name of the place of learning, Stoic.

Student and Teacher

It is traditionally held that Zeno said, more than once, “I made a prosperous voyage when I was shipwrecked” and by this he meant that, prior to his coming to Athens, his life had no meaning. The discipline of philosophy gave Zeno a focus he seems to have lacked as a merchant and he devoted himself to study and, more importantly, to living the values he absorbed from his teachers and the books he read.

Professor Forrest E. Baird writes that Zeno "argued that virtue, not pleasure, was the only good and that natural law, not the random swerving of atoms, was the key principle of the universe" (505). He was praised highly by the Athenians for his temperance, his consistency in living what he taught, and his good effect on the youth of the city.

Zeno never seems to have been one to hold his tongue when he saw what he perceived as foolishness in the youths around him and many of his remarks sound similar in tone to statements Diogenes of Sinope (l.c.404-323 BCE) would have made. Unlike the "mad Socrates" of the Agora (as Diogenes was known), Zeno lived a life of traditional, Athenian, respectability while refusing to compromise his principles for what society valued.

Zeno's Philosophy

It was clear to Zeno that most of the people of Athens suffered because they desired what they did not have or feared losing what they loved. The pursuit of pleasure, as espoused by the Epicurean's philosophy (which sprang from the Cyrenaic School of Aristippus, l. c. 435-356 BCE, another of Socrates' students) could never possibly satisfy a human being because one would always be chasing after what one desired or trying to hold on to what one had already obtained. Instead of pleasure, one should court reason and recognize that all things are impermanent and without lasting value.

Once one understood this, one would achieve a state of enlightened apathy in which one would be set free from "enslavement to one's passions" (Mautner, 607). This belief is what made the stoic school so popular to the Greeks of the time and, later, to the Romans: Zeno's teachings cleared the mind and allowed one to see beyond what one thinks one wants to recognize all that one actually needs - which is simply the self. If one is self-aware, one is also aware of others and, further, recognizes that it is in simplicity that true contentment may be found. These teachings, of course, are more well known today as the basic tenets of Buddhism but were also advocated by a number of the Pre-Socratic philosophers of Greece.

The ancient writer Diogenes Laertius (l.c. 180-240 CE) preserved some of Zeno's teachings in his work Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers. He writes that Zeno claimed:

As for the assertion made by some people that pleasure is the object to which the first impulse of animals is directed, it is shown by the Stoics to be false. For pleasure, if it is really felt, they declare to be a by-product, which never comes until nature by itself has sought and found the means suitable to the animal's existence or constitution; it is an aftermath comparable to the condition of animals thriving and plants in full bloom. And nature, they say, made no difference originally between plants and animals, for she regulates the life of plants too, in their case without impulse and sensation, just as also certain processes go on of a vegetative kind in us. But when in the case of animals impulse has been superadded, whereby they are enabled to go in quest of their proper aliment, for them, say the stoics, Nature's rule is to follow the direction of impulse. But when reason by way of a more perfect leadership has been bestowed on the beings we call rational, for them life according to reason rightly becomes the natural life. For reason supervenes to shape impulse scientifically (Baird, 507).

In this, Zeno is simply saying that animals pursue pleasure because they are governed by instinct which drives them to impulse; but human beings, since they have been given reason, ought to be governed by rational thought and live reasonably. To pursue pleasure as the meaning of life, and think that one is living well, is to be no more than an animal or, as Shakespeare later phrases it in Hamlet:

What is a man, if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more. Sure he that made us with such large discourse, looking before and after, gave us not that capability and god-like reason to fust in us unused. (Act IV.iv.33-39)

To be a true human being, one needed to behave like a true human being: rationally.

Zeno's Republic

When he studied under Crates of Thebes, Zeno wrote his Republic which is quite a different vision of the perfect soceity than the ideal city state as imagined by Plato in his work of the same name. Zeno's Republic is a utopia whose citizens claim the universe as their home and where everyone lives in accordance with natural laws and rational understanding. Men and women were completely equal in society's eyes and there was no injustice because all actions proceeded from reason.

There were no laws necessary because there was no crime and, because everyone's needs were taken care of in the same way that animals are in nature, there was no greed, nor covetousness nor hatred of any kind. Love governed all things and everyone living in this cosmopolis understood they had what they needed and wanted for nothing more.

It is thought that this vision was largely inspired by Crates' life and that of his wife Hipparchia of Marneia who lived on completely equal terms with him, wore men's clothes, and taught philosophy to men. Crates and Hipparchia lived their lives in accordance with the simplicity of reason and Zeno's vision in his Republic reflects that view. Of Zeno's work, Plutarch later wrote:

It is true indeed that the so much admired Republic of Zeno, first author of the Stoic sect, aims singly at this, that neither in cities nor in towns we should live under laws distinct one from another, but that we should look upon all people in general to be our fellow-countryfolk and citizens, observing one manner of living and one kind of order, like a flock feeding together with equal right in one common pasture. This Zeno wrote, fancying to himself, as in a dream, a certain scheme of civil order, and the image of a philosophical commonwealth.

Conclusion

Zeno lived and taught in Athens from the time he arrived there following his shipwreck until his death. He died, apparently from suicide, after he tripped coming out of school and broke his toe. Lying on the ground, he quoted a line from the Niobe of Timotheus, “I come of my own accord; why call me thus?” and then, interpreting the accident as a sign he should depart, strangled himself.

While this may seem a strange end to the life of a man who preached the primacy of reason, it would not have seemed so to him. When some happy period of one's life ends, it is irrational to cling to the past and wish it would return; nothing can make that time come again and longing for an impossible past only robs one of the present. Zeno was an old man when he is said to have broken his toe and, realizing that he had lived a good and meaningful life in Athens, he may have simply concluded that it was time for him to move on to something, and somewhere, else.

Source: World History Encyclopedia