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Guide to Ancient (Greek) Thought
“Study in antiquity differed from that current in modern times: it was nothing less than the thorough education of
the natural consciousness. Testing itself against every separate part of its existence, and philosophizing about
everything it encountered, it made itself into a generality that was active through and through. In modern times, on
the other hand, the individual finds the abstract form ready-made: the exertion of grasping it and appropriating it is
rather more the unmediated production of the inward and the cut-off generation of the general than the emergence of
the general out of the concrete and the multiplicity of existence.” [G. W. F. Hegel (1770-1831), Phenomenology of the
Spirit (1807), Preface, tr. Walter Kaufmann, excerpt]
“For I opine Hesiod and Homer to come to be in their prime four hundred years older than I, and not more; and these
are the ones having made the theogony for the Greeks, even giving the gods their nicknames and dividing-up their
honors and arts and signifying their looks.” [Herodotus II. 53; tr. mine]
Homer
(fl. c. 750 BC)
Iliad (the culture hero)
Odyssey (the nature hero)
the work of Homer hovers over the entire
development of ancient Greek thought
Hesiod
(fl. c. 8th-7th century BC)
Works and Days:
the five ages of humanity (golden, silver, bronze,
heroic, and iron)
strife as fundamental (the two strifes, one negative
and one positive: strife as fighting; strife as
striving)
manual of agriculture: the natural cycle as the best
human horizon
Theogony:
the genealogy of the gods
Thales of Miletus
(c. 634-c.546 BC)
made the first map of the world
astronomer: predicted a solar eclipse (585 BC)
first person to demonstrate a geometrical proposition (called the theorem of Thales by Euclid)
became the stereotype of the philosopher
first to ask the question “what is the ruling-beginning (archê) of all things?” [i.e., instead of asking, “who
made the world?” he asked “what is the world?”]
his answer to that question was “the archê of nature is water”
Anaximander of Miletus
(611-547 BC)
the archê is not water or any other corporeal
element: rather, it is what he called the unlimited
(apeiron) 1
Anaximenes of Miletus
(585-525 BC)
the archê is air, which is differentiated through the
processes of condensation and rarefaction
Pythagoras of Samos
(fl. 6th century BC)
institutionalized the distinction between esoteric (true inner) and exoteric (adjusted outer/public)
teachings
formed a community of initiates, thereby welding together the quest for knowledge and the proper mode
of living2
the archê of all things is number
every number is represented by a figure, a field; therefore, the archê is limited (finite)
the basis of this teaching was the ratios that constitute musical harmony
therefore, form, or structure, is the basis of all things
1
The Latin equivalent of this is infinitum, literally, “unlimited,” but sometimes translated as “infinite.”
Therefore, when one speaks of Pythagoras, one actually means Pythagoreans. According to Diogenes
Laertius (VIII. 2. 8), Pythagoras compared life to an athletic competition: of the three types of humans
there (the competing athletes, the vendors, and the spectators), the highest were the spectators (i.e., the
lookers or contemplators).
2
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Xenophanes of Colophon
(c. 568-c. 474 BC)
there is only one god: the first rational
monotheism3
Parmenides of Elea
(c. 512-c. 440 BC)
for him, the question
becomes “what does it
mean to be?/what is
being?/what is “is”?
in his poem, he
describes the journey
from ignorance to
knowledge as a chariot
ride to see an
unspecified goddess
who teaches him the
way of being
being is characterized
by radical homogeneity
(one of the two ultimate
competing views of the
world: see Heracleitus)
the oneness of being
being is ungenerated,
imperishable, whole,
complete, unique, and,
altogether contiguous;
in short, being is one
he asks not about the
beings but about being
qua being
what is the beingness of
beings/what is the
isness of what is?
nullifies becoming
to intellect and to be are
the same
Heracleitus of Ephesus4
(fl. 6th-5th century BC)
the archê of all things is not a something
all things always flow: being is characterized by
radical heterogeneity (one of the two ultimate
competing views of the world: see Parmenides )
the manyness of being
one cannot go into the same river twice 5
“war is the father of all things, and king of all
things” (Fragment 53, tr. mine) [i.e., all is constant
motion and turmoil]
Zeno of Elea
(c. 492-c. 430 BC)
student of Parmenides
Zeno’s paradoxes to
demonstrate the
impossibility of motion
(what Heracleitus calls
“flow”): Achilles and
the tortoise; the
dichotomy; the arrow;
the stadium
Empedocles of Acragas
(c. 490-c. 430 BC)
the four corporeal
elements (somatika
stoicheia) are the
building blocks of all
things: fire, air, water,
earth
each element is like
beingness in
Parmenides
attempt (inadequate) to
fuse heterogeneity and
homogeneity
the motive forces (the
archai) of the cosmos are
friendship and
contention (a refinement
of Hesiod’s account)
3
Leucippus of Miletus
and
Democritus of Abdera
(fl. early 5th century BC)
unalloyed atomism: the
archai are atoms,
unlimited
(apeiron/infinite) in
number
to restore the
intelligibility of motion
that the Eleatics
(Parmenides and Zeno)
denied, they added the
presence of the empty
(which some translate
as “the void”) to their
theory of elements
“But if oxen and horses or lions had hands, or [if they had it in them] to write with hands and to
complete the very deeds/works [erga] which men [do], [then] horses would write the Looks [ideai] of
gods similar to horses and oxen similar to oxen and would make the bodies [of their gods] suchlike as
each themselves had body-builds.” (Xenophanes, Fragment 15, tr. mine)
4
In Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors, as I understand it, altering his source in Plautus by doubling the
number of twins and shifting the locale from Herculaneum to Ephesus is meant to indicate that the play
is the presentation of what it would be like to live in a Heracleitean world. As such, it is a great
epistemological comedy.
5
Cratylus, a disciple of Heracleitus, reformulated this more radically thus: “one cannot go into the same
river once.”
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Anaxagoras of Clazomenae
(c. 500-c. 428 BC)
there are two archai: the unlimited (apeiron) [the
matter of the cosmos] and intellectual-intuition
(nous) [the primal motive force]
the sun is a stone, and the moon is earth, i.e.,
neither is a god
Herodotus of Halicarnassus
(c. 484-c. 425 BC)
Inquiries6
the book is ostensibly an account of the Persian
Wars (500/499-449 BC)
as he presents that war, he provides a cultural atlas
of the known world based both on his own
sightseeing (theoria: contemplation/spectating) and
on hearsay (akoê)
in a sense, he is presenting himself as the new
prose Homer, combining in one work both the Iliad
and the Odyssey: he is the new Odysseus
recounting the new and bigger equivalent of the
Trojan War
as he says, his goal is to preserve “the big and
wondrous deeds, the ones having been shown
forth by Hellenes and by barbarians” (I. 1, tr. mine)
the tentacles of causation of the Persian Wars are
presented as reaching back to the distant past and
around the distant present
the book could be described as an account of events
supplemented by a comprehensive cultural
anthropology (in the literal sense of a rational
account of humans)
Contemporaries of Socrates: Sophists7
Protagoras of Abdera
(c. 490-c. 420 BC)
the human (anthropos) is the measure of all things,
of the things that are, how they are, and of the
things that are not, how they are not” (Fragment 1,
tr. mine): what seems to a human to be so, is so {so
that what Parmenides called the “way of opinion”
is for Protagoras, the true way [one could call this
political Heracleiteanism]
sometimes described as a thoroughgoing relativist
“about the gods, I do not have [any basis] to
envision either how they are or how they are not”
(Fragment 4, tr. mine): agnosticism
taught his students how “to make the worse speech
(logos) the better (i.e., how to win arguments by
hook or by crook)
Gorgias of Leontini
(c. 486-c. 378 BC)
persuasion is omnicompetent and omnipotent
truth always will crumble under the power of
persuasiveness
Hippias of Elis
(c. 485-c. 415 BC)
virtuoso orator
accused (not formally) of atheism
Prodicus of Ceos
(c. 465-c. 390 BC)
Heracles’s choice between the paths of virtue and
vice
6
The title of Herodotus’s work is Historiai in Greek. This has been traditionally translated Histories.
However, that translation is misleading. The Greek word historiê means “inquiry.” The earliest
translators, who rendered it as “history,” were not wrong to do so, since one could then still refer to
science as natural history (i.e., a scientific inquiry into nature). It is only since the 19th century that the
translation has become problematic because contemporary scholars—those who refer to Herodotus as
“the father of history” (pater historiae: Cicero, De legibus, I. 5)—assume that he is a historian in the modern,
especially the post-Hegelian, sense. That is a misleading assumption. Those who have adopted Cicero’s
phrase have taken it out of the context that shows that it is not history in the modern sense.
7
Sophists were those who took money for teaching, something scorned by the Platonic Socrates. The
word sophistês (sophist) in Greek has a range of meaning from “professional wise person” to “wise guy.”
The descendants of the sophists are teachers and professors.
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Socrates of Athens
(469-399 BC)
wrote nothing: in that sense, he is the only truly pure philosopher in Western history
virtually nothing is known about him in the strictly historical sense: most of what is known about him is
inferred from the play The Clouds, by his contemporary Aristophanes, and from the dialogues of his
students, Plato and Xenophon8
the teaching of his predecessors culminated in him, and his successors were elaborators of his teaching
he was said to have shifted the focus of philosophy from the cosmos (physics/cosmology) to the human
things (anthropology, in the literal sense).9
tried by the city of Athens and put to death by poisoning (hemlock): Athens’s first crime against
philosophy
Contemporaries of Socrates: Non-Sophists
Thucydides of Athens
(c. 471/460-c. 399 BC) 10
Athenian general, banished for
failing to achieve a desired
objective
his account of the Peloponnesian
War (431-404 BC) was left
untitled at his death
sets himself against both Homer
and Herodotus (cf. I. 21)
he sets himself the task of
demonstrating that the
Peloponnesian War was the
“biggest motion” (i.e., the war of
wars, bigger in importance than
either the Trojan War or the
Persian Wars: I. 1, tr. mine)
he boldly declares to be writing
for posterity, saying that what he
writes “is set down as a
possession unto always” (I. 22, tr.
mine)
what he writes looks more like
the contemporary notion of
history, but it is equally a
significant work of political
philosophy
Aristophanes of Athens
(c. 447-c. 387 BC)
comic playwright
politically conservative
The Clouds: a satirical critique of a
younger Socrates, a Socrates still
focused on the study of physics
and caricatured as a sophist
Critias of Athens
(c. 480-c. 403 BC)
Plato’s uncle
wrote about politics and
composed plays
“the most beautiful look in males
is the female, but in turn the
contrary in females [i.e., the most
beautiful look in females is the
male]” (Fragment 48, tr. mine) 11
Hippocrates of Cos
(c. 460-c. 375 BC)
practiced what would now be
called holistic medicine
The Hippocratic Oath
8
Contemporary classics and philosophy teachers tend to denigrate Xenophon and to elevate Plato. That is
a mistake. One should keep in mind the words of the consummate classicist, John Milton, who refers to
“the divine volumes of Plato and his equal, Xenophon.” [Apology for Smectymnuus, near the end]
9
Cf. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, V. 10, tr. mine: “However, Socrates first [i.e., is the first one who] has
called down philosophy from the heaven and has placed [it] in towns and even has introduced [it] into
homes and has activated [it] to search about life and habits and good and bad things.” (Socrates autem
primus philosophiam devocavit e caelo et in urbibus conlocavit et in domus etiam introduxit et coegit de
vita et moribus rebusque bonis et malis quaerere.)
10
According to scholars in late antiquity, Thucydides was born in 471 BC. Modern scholars have
conjectured the later date of 460 BC. No one knows with certainty which it is.
11
This is a little known, but extremely important, principle for understanding visual representation in the
history of art.
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Students of Socrates:
Plato of Athens
Xenophon of Athens
(c. 428-c. 347 BC)
(c. 430-c. 355 BC)
wrote 35 dialogues12 and 13 letters13
soldier, chronicler, and philosopher
dialogues are plays and should be read as such14
wrote dialogues and accounts of contemporary and
in all but two of the dialogues (Laws, Epinomis),
near contemporary events
Socrates is an interlocutor (major or minor)
Socratic dialogues: Recollections (= Memorabilia),
tried to fuse Heracleitean sensory (aisthetic)
Oikonomikos,17 Symposium, Apology
heterogeneity with Parmenidean intellective
Non-Socratic dialogue: Hiero or Tyrannikos18
(noetic) homogeneity
Representative other works: Anabasis,19 Cyropaedia20
the dramatic character of the dialogues makes it
impossible to read off from them in a direct way
any so-called Platonic teaching15
exoteric teaching vs. esoteric teaching (cf.
Pythagoras) 16
the dialogues are meant to be a prompt: the reader
must be a silent interlocutor in a conversation that
the conversation in the dialogue inspires.
With respect to the dialogues of Plato and Xenophon, it is almost as if the two thinkers came to an
agreement that Plato would do the bulk of the work of presenting the fictionalized Socrates, while
Xenophon would address the rest. This would have left Xenophon free to write his chronicle, his
Cyropaedia (a manual of politics and pedagogy), among other things (e.g., hunting, equestrianism).
Student of Plato:
Aristotle of Stagirus
(384-322 BC)
studied with Plato for twenty years
his teaching has the form of expositions and lecture
notes that are comprehensive in scope: he wrote on
ethics, politics, biology, poetics, physics,
psychology, logic and language, and rhetoric
tutored Alexander the Big (356-323 BC) 21
four causes: material, formal, efficient, final
matter and form
differences between Aristotle and Plato are only
apparent, not genuine
fled Athens to prevent, as he said, Athens from
committing a second crime against philosophy
Student of Aristotle:
Alexander the Big of Macedon (326-323 BC)
his conquest ends the Greek period and ushers in
the Hellenistic period, a period marked by
cosmopolitanism and syncretism
Euclid of Alexandria (fl. 300 BC): Elements
Archimedes of Syracuse (c. 287-c. 212 BC)
12
Nothing is known with historical certainty about when each of the dialogues was written. Therefore,
any scholar who orders them chronologically (rather than internally dramatically) is creating an arbitrary
framework based on prejudgments and presuppositions for which there is no genuine justification.
13
Of these, the two most important are the second and the seventh.
14
In Aristotle’s Poetics, they are listed as dramatic works.
15
The dialogues must be read as one would read a Shakespearean play. One should no more simply
attribute the statements of Socrates (or Timaeus, or Parmenides) to Plato than one would attribute the
statements of Macbeth (or Othello) to Shakespeare.
16
There is no way to capsulize the content of the dialogues of either Plato or Xenophon. I simply will say
that most of what one finds in standard textbooks, histories of philosophy, and professorial lectures is
incomplete or misleading at best, totally erroneous at worst.
17
This means literally “a person skilled in (or knowledgeable about) the law of the household.” It is the
source of the word “economics.”
18
Hiero is a name. “Tyrannikos” means literally “a person skilled in (or knowledgeable about) tyranny.”
19
This is Xenophon’s account of his military service in the Persian expedition.
20
This means The Education of Cyrus.
21
His name is ı ÉAl°jandrοw µ°ga˚, which literally means “Alexander the Big.” In Greek and Latin, the
adjective “big” (megas [Gk.], magnus, [Lat.]) can mean “big in size,” “big in age,” “big in importance,” etc.
I prefer to render it always the same way.
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