Kazakh Abylai Khan university of International Relations

and World Languages

ISSW 3

Theme: The Ancient Western Philosophy.

Done by : Nugiman Kundiz

Checked by : Kalieva A. A

Almaty 2014

1. The Ancient Western philosophy.

2. Philosophy within the culture of Antiquity.

1. Western Philosophy began in 585 BC with the first philosopher: Thales of Miletus in Greece. From there it continued to spread throughout Greece. The great thinkers Plato and Aristotle created an entire system to explain all that existed in the world. Later on, Greek culture and ideas were spread by the conquests of Alexander the Great and adopted by the Roman empire. From the Roman empire, Christianity absorbed Greek philosophy as a way of explaining and defending its own ideas. It follows that we can divide Ancient Western Philosophy into four periods: Presocratic, Classical, Hellenistic and Roman.

Presocratic philosophy begins with Thales and continues until Socrates. It included such thinkers as the early atomists who believed that everything was made out of indivisible solids, sophists who believed that argument was pointless, a whole school that believed that change did not ever happen (nor could it) and another individual who believed that absolutely everything changed. Practically every possible opinion you could start with begin in this period. The Milesians were the first philosophical school. Other major schools include the Pythagoreans, the Eleatics, the Sophists and the Pluralists. Important individuals include Heraclitus, Parmenides and Phythagoras of Samos.

Classical philosophy begins with the questions of Socrates, and continues with the major figures of Plato and Aristotle. It also includes a number of minor thinkers who lived at the same time. Plato and Aristotle are the major figures of this time period. Socrates is only known by the writings of his students. Antisthenes was a student of Socrates, and Aristotle had a number of his own students as well. Since Aristotle was Plato’s student, and Plato was Socrates’ student they belong to a single project in philosophy. Their philosophy sought to create a complete philosophical system that would answer all of the questions of the presocratics while including all of their actual insights.

Hellenistic philosophy began after Aristotle and continued until the rise of the Roman empire. The two dominant philosophies of the time were Stoicism and Epicureanism. The philosophy of Skepticism had a strong influence in various academies. Other philosophies of the time included Platonism, Peripateticism (the philosophy of Aristotle), Cynicism and individual philosophers that do not fit into any particular school of the time. This time period focused on physics, logic and ethics. Most philosophers also included their religious beliefs as an integral part of their philosophy.

Roman (or Imperial) philosophy

Roman (or Imperial) philosophy begins at about 31BC and continues until pagan philosophy is outlawed by the emperor in the east in 529AD. In the West, we like to include Augustine in the medieval period, but strictly speaking he belongs to the Roman period of Ancient philosophy. This period is noted for producing commentaries on previous philosophers so that their writings could be understood in the current period. It also has much in common with Hellenistic philosophy.

2. Classical antiquity (also the classical era, classical period or classical age) is a broad term for a long period of cultural historycentered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, collectively known as the Greco-Roman world. It is the period in which Greek and Roman society flourished and wielded great influence throughoutEurope, North Africa and the Middle East.

Conventionally, it is taken to begin with the earliest-recorded Greek poetry of Homer (8th–7th century BC), and continues through the emergence of Christianity and the decline of the Roman Empire (5th century AD). It ends with the dissolution of classical culture at the close of Late Antiquity (AD 300–600), blending into the Early Middle Ages (AD 600–1000). Such a wide sampling of history and territory covers many disparate cultures and periods. "Classical antiquity" may refer also to an idealised vision among later people of what was, in Edgar Allan Poe's words, "the glory that was Greece, the grandeur that was Rome!"^[1]

The culture of the ancient Greeks, together with some influences from the ancient Orient, prevailed throughout classical antiquity as the basis of art, ^[2] philosophy, society, and educational ideals. ^[3] These ideals were preserved and imitated by the Romans. ^[4] This Greco-Roman cultural foundation has been immensely influential on the language, politics, educational systems, philosophy, science, art, and architecture of the modern world: From the surviving fragments of classical antiquity, a revival movement was gradually formed from the 14th century onwards which came to be known later in Europe as the Renaissance, and again resurgent during various neo-classical revivals in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Pre-Socratic philosophy is Greek philosophy before Socrates (and includes schools contemporary with Socrates that were not influenced by him^[1]). In Classical antiquity, the Presocratic philosophers were called physiologoi (Greek: φυσιόλογοι; in English, physical or natural philosophers).^[2] Aristotle called them physikoi ("physicists", after physis, "nature") because they sought natural explanations for phenomena, as opposed to the earlier theologoi (theologians), whose philosophical basis was supernatural.^[3]Diogenes Laërtius divides the physiologoi into two groups, Ionian and Italiote, led by Anaximander and Pythagoras, respectively.^[4]

Hermann Diels popularized the term pre-socratic in Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (The Fragments of the Pre-Socratics) in 1903. However, the term pre-Sokratic was in use as early as George Grote's Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates in 1865. Major analyses of pre-Socratic thought have been made by Gregory Vlastos, Jonathan Barnes, and Friedrich Nietzsche in his Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks.

It may sometimes be difficult to determine the actual line of argument some Presocratics used in supporting their particular views. While most of them produced significant texts, none of the texts has survived in complete form. All that is available are quotations by later philosophers (often biased) and historians, and the occasional textual fragment.

The Presocratic philosophers rejected traditional mythological explanations of the phenomena they saw around them in favor of more rational explanations. These philosophers asked questions about "the essence of things":^[5]

• From where does everything come?

• From what is everything created?

• How do we explain the plurality of things found in nature?

• How might we describe nature mathematically?

Others concentrated on defining problems and paradoxes that became the basis for later mathematical, scientific and philosophic study.

Later philosophers rejected many of the answers the early Greek philosophers provided, but continued to place importance on their questions. Furthermore, the cosmologiesproposed by them have been updated by later developments in science.

Kazakh Abylai Khan university of International Relations

and World Languages

ISSW 3

Theme: The Medieval Philosophy

Done by : Nugiman Kundiz

Checked by : Kalieva A. A