A Short History of Greek Philosophy

I. THALES.--For several centuries prior to the great Persian invasions of Greece, perhaps the very greatest and wealthiest city of the Greek world was Miletus. Situate about the...

III. ANAXIMENES.--This philosopher was also a native of Miletus, and is said to have been a hearer or pupil of Anaximander. As we have said, the [19] tendency of the later membe...

The birthplace of Pythagoras is uncertain. He is generally called the Samian, and we know, at all events, that he lived for some time in that island, during or immediately befor...

I. XENOPHANES.--Xenophanes was a native of Colophon, one of the Ionian cities of Asia Minor, but having been forced at the age of twenty-five to leave his native city owing to s...

III. ZENO.--The third head of the Eleatic school was ZENO. He is described by Plato in the _Parmenides_ as accompanying his master to Athens on the visit already referred to (se...

I. ANAXAGORAS.--Anaxagoras was born at Clazomenae, a city of Ionia, about the year 500 B.C. At the age of twenty he removed to Athens, of which city Clazomenae was for some time...

II. EMPEDOCLES.--Empedocles was a native of Agrigentum, a Greek colony in Sicily. At the time when he flourished in his native city (circa 440 B.C.) it was one of the wealthiest...

III. LEUCIPPUS AND DEMOCRITUS.--Leucippus is variously called a native of Elea, of Abdera, of Melos, of Miletus. He was a pupil of Zeno the Eleatic. [144] Democritus was a nativ...

A certain analogy may perhaps be discerned between the progression of philosophic thought in Greece as we have traced it, and the political development which had its course in a...

Gorgias was perhaps even more eminent a Sophist than Protagoras. He was a native of Leontini in Sicily, and came to Athens in the year 427 B.C. on a public embassy from his nati...

The sophistic teaching having forced philosophy to descend into the practical interests and personal affairs of men, it followed that any further step in philosophy, any reactio...

It must not be imagined that anywhere in the recorded conversations of Socrates can we find thus in so many words expounded his fundamental doctrine. Socrates was not an exposit...

I. ARISTIPPUS AND THE CYRENAICS.--Aristippus was a native of Cyrene, a Greek colony on the north coast of Africa. He is said to have come to Athens because of his desire to hear...

This great master, the Shakespeare of Greek philosophy, as one may call him, for his fertility, his variety, his humour, his imagination, his poetic grace, was born at Athens in...

And now we pass to the central and crowning work of Plato, _The Republic_, or _Of Justice_--the longest with one exception, and certainly the greatest of all his works. It combi...

We now come to a series of highly important dialogues, marked as a whole by a certain diminution in the purely artistic attraction, having less of vivid characterisation, less h...

If we attempt now, by way of appendix to this very inadequate summary of the dialogues, to give in brief review some account of the main doctrines of Plato, as they may be gathe...

Plato before his death bequeathed his Academy to his nephew Speusippus, who continued its president for eight years; and on his death the office passed to Xenocrates, who held i...

If we look closely at this conception of Aristotle's we shall see that it has a nearer relation to the Platonic doctrine of Ideas, and even to the doctrine of Reminiscence, than...

Throughout Aristotle's physical philosophy the [334] same conception runs: "All animals in their fully developed state require two members above all--one whereby to take in nour...

Philosophy, equally complete, equally perfect in all its parts, had its final word in Plato and Aristotle; on the great lines of universal knowledge no further really original s...

Zeno, the founder of the Stoic school of philosophy (born _circa_ 340 B.C.), was a native of Citium in Cyprus. The city was Greek, but with a large Phoenician admixture. And it...