INTRODUCTION TO ANCIENT GREEK THOUGHT

Something unusual happened in Greece and the Greek colonies of the Aegean Sea some 2,500 years ago. Whereas the previous great cultures of the Mediterranean had used mythological stories of the gods to explain the operations of the world and of the self, some of the Greeks began to discover new ways of explaining things. Instead of reading their ideas into, or out of, ancient scriptures or poems, they began to use reason, contemplation, and sensory observation to make sense of reality.

The story as we know it began with the Greeks living on the coast of Asia Minor (present-day Turkey). Colonists such as Thales tried to find the one common element in the diversity of nature. Subsequent thinkers such as Anaximenes sought not only to find this one common element, but also to find the process by which one form changes into another. Other thinkers, such as Pythagoras, turned to the nature of form itself rather than the basic stuff that takes on a particular form.

School of Athens
Detail of Plato and Aristotle from The School of Athens by Raphael. (Click here for the full painting, or Click here to go to the Vatican Museum for detailed pictures.)
With Socrates the pursuit of knowledge turned inward as he sought not to understand the world, but himself. His call to "know thyself," together with his uncompromising search for truth, inspired generations of thinkers. With the writings of Plato and Aristotle Ancient Greek thought reached its zenith. These giants of human thought developed all-embracing systems that explained both the nature of the universe and the humans who inhabit it.

These lovers of wisdom, or philosophers, came to very different conclusions and often spoke disrespectfully of one another. Some held the universe to be one, while others insisted that it must be many. Some believed that human knowledge was capable of understanding virtually everything about the world and the self, while others thought that it was not possible to have any knowledge at all. But despite all their differences, there is a thread of continuity, a continuing focus: the human attempt to understand the world and the self, using human reason. This fact distinguishes these philosophers from the great minds that preceded them.

The philosophers of ancient Greece have fascinated thinking persons for centuries, and their writings have been one of the key influences on the development of Western civilization. The work of Plato and Aristotle, especially, has defined the questions and suggested many of the answers for subsequent generations. As the great Greek statesman, Pericles, sagely predicted, "Future ages will wonder at us, as the present age wonders at us now."

By Forrest Baird © 2000 by Prentice Hall from Philosophic Classics, Volume I

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By Forrest Baird © 2000 by Prentice Hall from Philosophic Classics, Volume I