August 22nd, 2021
I finished reading A Short History of Greek Philosophy by John Marshall recently and overall, I didn’t like it very much. Apparently, it was published in 1891 (I didn’t know this while I was reading it), which might explain why I wasn’t a fan of the work. The language that was used was very fanciful and I’d very much describe it as verbose prose aka pretentious. I was hoping to get a brief overview of Greek Philosophy which this book certainly provided, but it was more fanciful than I would have liked. I think I prefer much more straightforward ways of writing. Also, he wove in Christian philosophy as well, which draws somewhat from Greek philosophy, but I was looking to explore Greek philosophy on its own without mixing in later philosophies. That’s an issue I’ve noticed with writers of the modern era comparing things to Christianity when talking about things that happened before Christianity started. I don’t always want that comparison. There were also a lot of what appeared to be spelling and grammar errors which decreased my desire to read the book. Maybe I like the more authoritative and technical works I read. Maybe I’m not familiar enough with the Greek Philosophers to understand what he’s talking about. I ended up watching a couple of Crash Course videos and that greatly increased my understanding of the topic: The Presocratics: Crash Course History of Science #2 & Plato and Aristotle: Crash Course History of Science #3. The first video mentions Thales, Anaximander, Empedocles, Pythagoras, and Democritus. Pythagoras introduced idealism which generates abstract models of perfect “stuff”. The Milesians (Thales and Anaximander, among others) were materialists who theorized about actual “stuff”. The second video focused on Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, the big three of Greek philosophy. Socrates wasn’t concerned with “stuff”, but rather politics and nature. He prided himself on not claiming to know things and asked a lot of questions which is why this form of inquiry is called the Socratic method. Plato was Socrates student and Aristotle was Plato’s student and they ended up having contrary philosophies with regards to the nature of things Plato was an idealist and Aristotle was an empiricist. Plato thought up neat rules to describe the universe and then tried to fit the data into his ideas whereas Aristotle observed the world and drew conclusions from what he saw? Plato is thought of more as a philosopher than a scientist whereas Aristotle used more common sense and observed the natural world much more. From these videos and John Marshall’s book what I understand about Greek philosophy is that there were a bunch of philosophers before Socrates (Hence the term pre-socratics) that asked the question “what is stuff?” and approached the world from a proto-scientific and idealistic point of view. This was called natural philosophy and was a self-conscious inquiry into nature. They didn’t make detailed, accurate knowledge of nature based on observation, but they did come up with ideas that tried to account for why stuff is the way it is. They were on a quest for abstract knowledge. These pre-Socratics didn’t really interest me all that much while I was reading the book and I think that’s because they were asking the question “what is stuff?”, for which I don’t really care about at the moment. They were speculating about how the world operated and most of the conclusions don’t exactly line up with what I understand about current scientific discoveries. Democritus was the only one who stuck out. I remember learning about him when learning about atomic theory as he was pretty spot on with his hypothesis. I would like to list out the philosophers that were discussed in the book though: There was the School of Miletus which included Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, and Heraclitus; Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans; the Eleatics which included Xenophanes, Parmenides, Zeno, and Melissus; The Atomists which included Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Leucippus, and Democritus; and The Sophists which included Protagoras and Gorgias. These were the pre-Socratics mentioned earlier. With Socrates came the incomplete socratics of Aristippus and the Cyrenaics, Antisthenes and the Cynics, and Euclides and the Megarics. The apex of Greek philosophy was of course Plato and Aristotle and then following them were the Sceptics and Epicureans, and finally the Stoics. Stoicism is an interesting school and I should like to study it later. The following diagram shows roughly when they lived and does a good job showing how they overlapped.
The Golden Age of Greece is considered to be around 500 BCE to 300 BCE. Like I said earlier I wasn’t as interested in the proto-scientific pre-socratics, but rather the philosophies that form the bedrock of western civilization. Plato and Aristotle come to mind while thinking about this and while they delved into some of the proto-scientific adventures of earlier philosophers, their main contribution was in the realm of ethics. They also influenced Christianity significantly. Taking from the Wikipedia page for Plato:
‘He is widely considered one of the most important and influential individuals in human history, and the pivotal figure in the history of Ancient Greek and Western philosophy, along with his teacher, Socrates, and his most famous student, Aristotle. Plato has also often been cited as one of the founders of Western religion and spirituality. The so-called neoplatonism of philosophers such as Plotinus and Porphyry greatly influenced Christianity through Church Fathers such as Augustine. Alfred North Whitehead once noted: “the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”‘
From Aristotle’s Wikipedia page:
‘Aristotle’s views profoundly shaped medieval scholarship. The influence of physical science extended from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages into the Renaissance, and were not replaced systematically until the Enlightenment and theories such as classical mechanics were developed. Some of Aristotle’s zoological observations found in his biology, such as on the hectocotyl (reproductive) arm of the octopus, were disbelieved until the 19th century. He also influenced Judeo-Islamic philosophies (800–1400) during the Middle Ages, as well as Christian theology, especially the Neoplatonism of the Early Church and the scholastic tradition of the Catholic Church. Aristotle was revered among medieval Muslim scholars as “The First Teacher” and among medieval Christians like Thomas Aquinas as simply “The Philosopher”, while Dante (one of the most important poets of the Middle Ages) called him “the master of those who know”. His works contain the earliest known formal study of logic, studied by medieval scholars such as Peter Abelard and John Buridan.’
Obviously, Plato and Aristotle are crucial for understanding how the Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian worldviews intertwined. I wasn’t thinking about studying Greek philosophy in detail (which is why I only wanted to read A Short History of Greek Philosophy), but I think it will be worthwhile to study Plato and Aristotle in detail. This will likely be a tremendous undertaking, but a deeply satisfying one as well. I’ve decided also, that I am going to read the 2nd chapter of A History of the Jews by Paul Johnson which covers the post-exilic period to the time of Christ as well as reading through the Old Testament prophets. I didn’t fully absorb the prophets and I would like to take some detailed notes.