The Setting Scene of Western Philosophy
The Environment
The development of philosophies is intrinsically linked to the environment, as its purpose is to solve issues besieging the residents. In particular, a philosophy’s focus is on confronting geographical, historical, national, linguistic, religious, and societal challenges. These factors intimately embed a characteristic that permeates those who adopt its teaching. Therefore, understanding the scene during which a philosophy is developed is crucial for comprehending its ideologies.
Ancient Greece was situated around the Aegean Sea and occupied a much larger region than modern Greece does today. Ancient Greece stretched across the Mediterranean to include regions such as Sicily and meandered eastward as West Asians migrated to the region. Its centrality meant it connected a diverse range of cultures. Its accessibility from land and air facilitated the exchange of ideas across borders. The culmination of this diversity enlightened inhabitants and motivated individual contemplation. Inevitably a unifying philosophy was necessary to facilitate the exploration and transmission of ideas.
In the eighth century before Christ, the unification began with the Homer era. With his epics, Homer introduced a formal language for written communication. The Greek used by Homer allowed individuals to speak and write, providing a common language for the communication of ideas. Eventually, the Greek used by Homer would evolve into Classical Greek, the language used by Plato to introduce the idea of rational thinking. This language would extend across the region, and be adopted by many including the Roman Empire. Classical Greek would later be used to write the Bible.
Christianity as a religion was not present in the early period of the Ancient Greek civilisation. Instead early Ancient Greek society preached to religions founded on mythology rather than scriptures. Just as any religion attempts to answer fundamental questions regarding the universe, Ancient Greek religions provided explanations as to where the universe and mankind came from. Its answers took the form of myths portrayed through romantic language. For instance, the Dionysus religion worships Dionysus the God of wine, who is regarded as the manifestation of the spirit. Other Ancient Greek religions diverge from many modern religions as they are polytheistic rather than monotheistic. For instance, the Olympus religion worships twelve Gods headed by Zeus.
Without the anchoring of Ancient Greek religions to a single scripture or a single God, the resulting philosophy is less restrictive. It is not required to conform to the specific portal of humanity provided by a person or book. Thus it can be dynamic and adapt. It can combine different components of the religion to form perspectives that are most applicable to certain situations. A cornerstone feature of Ancient Greek philosophy is its capacity to evolve and be applicable at different points in history.
After the era of Homer, Ancient Greek society accelerated as iron catalysed its productivity and manufacturing. The society entered into a more technologically advanced phase, which ultimately led to the division into slave owners and slaves. In particular, thinking philosophically was only available to the slave owners since it required intellectual freedom to explore one's curiosity. As a slave, one is restricted and exhausted to the point where cognition is preoccupied with survival. This potentially casts a limitation on Western philosophy, which often overlooks concepts such as suffering.
However, the main triumph of Ancient Greek philosophy was its capacity to organise large collections of individuals. Just as slave owners wanted to control, and optimise their population of slaves, groups of settlers were interested in building houses and forming city-states, or polis. Throughout Ancient Greece there were collections of poleis, and the challenge of coherently organising them was tackled by the philosophers. Eventually, Ancient Greece would be united with over two hundred poleis. With Athens being the acropolis, the central region that each polis saw was worthy of defence.
It seems as though the geographic component is the most influential in the construction of a philosophy. For it dictates the organisation of individuals, who in turn contribute to the nation, language, society and religion.
# Birth, Development and Decline
Philosophies have a birth, a development and then an eventual decline. The identification of these phases is associated with the ideological development of the philosophy. Understanding the core components of each phase elucidates the fundamental nature of the philosophy and its applications.
Greek philosophy saw its birth around the sixth century before Christ, with the construction of schools by individuals such as Heraclitus and Pythagoras. Each of these schools proposed a rather independent philosophy and there was little cohesion between their ideas and practices. Due to the infancy of the subject, the preserved work from this era is limited. There is little evidence from which to reconstruct the ideas contemplated by these schools. Moreover, at this stage philosophical language was under-development, and so it seems unlikely that many manuscripts were developed in the first place. The scholars of this time had fragmentary ideas and their explorations were not systematic. They lacked rational arguments, and due to their geographical separation, they were heavily influenced by local characteristics. Despite this, we can obtain a vague sense of what each of these schools promoted. For instance, Thales indulged in scientific activities. He travelled across the region to places such as Egypt and Babylon and eventually concluded that the source of all things was water. On the other hand, Miletus, a student of Thales, concluded that the source of all things is unbounded. Therefore, we notice that in these primitive stages, there are large disparities of thought. Thales attributes the source of all things to something physical, whereas Miletus appeals to something more abstract. Pythagoras meanwhile pioneered mathematical thinking.
The early stages of Greek philosophy started to mature during the fifth and fourth centuries before Christ, in what is known as the classical period. Prominent figures of this period include Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. This period was ignited by the sophistic movement, which saw intellectuals from the Greek polis congregate in the Athens polis. On the one hand, this congregation of intellectuals facilitated the exchange and development of ideas. On the other hand, it acted as a mechanism to recruit students and enabled scholars to pass their knowledge on to future generations through teaching. It is from here that the educational process became more active. Students could learn and form their ideas by listening to different scholars. It provided avenues for individuals to pursue their intellectual curiosity. Having the majority of philosophical enquiry conducted within a geographical constraint meant ideas could evolve rapidly. A particularly important evolution of ideas came from the sequence of teacher-student relationships involving Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Socrates is renowned for his emphasis on the virtue of knowledge, and that individuals should know themselves. Plato established the first comprehensive schools on the subject. Then Aristotle advanced work on metaphysics and logic.
The turmoil inflicted by Alexander the Great's invasion of the East marked the end of the Classical Greek polis and initiated the Hellenistic age. During this age, notable schools of philosophy included the Epicurean, Stoicism and Scepticism. The Epicurean school was concerned with the teachings of Epicurus which included atomic philosophy theory. Moreover, it was one of the first schools that allowed children and women to participate, which broke the perception that philosophical endeavours could only be conducted by slave owners. The school of Stoicism was notable for its involvement in the philosophy of the Roman Empire. The school of Scepticism required one to think deeply about the world and be a suspect of everything it offers.
The culmination of the development of Greek philosophy was that of the logos. Logos is a rational form of thinking that is grounded on theoretical arguments. It grounds the logical methods established by the philosophers at a societal level.
It is important to note that despite much of the teachings of Greek philosophy can be traced back to its birth in the sixth century before Christ, the scholars of this time were influenced by barbarians who made the pilgrimage to Greece. For instance, barbarians from Persia and India eventually resided in the Greek polis. A lot of the early work of Greek philosophy was speared headed by scholars from Ionia in southern Italy. Consequently, we notice that the birth of Greek philosophy and its subsequent Classical period were ignited by the spatial collapse of individuals. As people aggregate, the local characteristics in their ideas merge. As this congregation becomes more pronounced the exchange of ideas is more fluid and scholars can start developing from the ideas of those before them, rather than starting from scratch. The decline of Greek philosophy can then be measured by the gradual evaporation of local characteristics in its theory. With this evaporation, the philosophy becomes applicable internationally. The local characteristics of Greek philosophy were originally those of Ionia Italy, and then those of Athens. With Alexander the Great's invasion the characteristic became diffuse as the theory spread across the Mediterranean with the expansion of the Roman Empire and then into the Islamic states during the fall of the Roman Empire. Despite this, the spirit of Greek philosophy remained, that is of rational and theoretical thinking, even though it started to lose its name.
Greek philosophy globalised the world by fruitfully merging local and world characteristics. It is important to note however that the Chinese culture continued to develop rather independently of the spread of Greek philosophy. It is only recently that Greek philosophy has acted as a source of wisdom that has renewed Chinese culture.