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Topic 3: "The beginning of philosophy in Ancient Greece»

1. origins ancient Greek philosophy. Greek thinkers in search of the "original principle" of all things: the Milesian school, the Pythagorean union, the Eleatic school.

2.

3. The humanistic orientation of the philosophy of the sophists.

4.

1. The origins of ancient Greek philosophy. Greek thinkers in search of the "original principle" of all things: the Milesian school, the Pythagorean union, the Eleatic school.

Philosophy originated in ancient Greece in the VI-V centuries. BC. As in other countries, it arose on the basis of mythology and preserved for a long time; her connection (Table 17).

Table 17Origin ancient philosophy

In the history of ancient philosophy, it is customary to distinguish the following periods (Table 18).

Table 18The main periods in the development of ancient philosophy

Ancient Greek philosophy, having originated on the basis of mythology, for a long time kept in touch with it. In particular, throughout the history of ancient philosophy, the terminology that came from mythology has largely been preserved. Thus, the names of the gods were used to designate various natural and social forces: love was called Eros or Aphrodite (earthly or heavenly), wisdom - Athena, maintaining cosmic order was associated with Erinyes - goddesses of vengeance, etc.

Naturally, a particularly close connection between mythology and philosophy took place in the early period of the development of philosophy. From mythology, the idea of ​​the four main elements that make up everything that exists (Water, Air, Fire, Earth), the idea of ​​organizing the Cosmos (Order) from Chaos (Mixing), the structure of the Cosmos and a number of others were inherited.

Most philosophers of the early period considered one or more elements to be the origin of being, but at the same time, the element-origin was often considered animated (for example, Water by Thales), and sometimes even rational (for example, Heraclitus considers Fire-Logos to be such). But other, very different entities were proposed as the first principles besides the elements (see diagram 29).

Most of the Greek sages can be called "natural, or naive materialists, since the essence chosen by them as the beginning (elements, atoms, homeomers, etc.) had a material nature. But at the same time, there were also philosophers to whom the term "naive idealists": they have some ideal entities or forces as the beginning of being (numbers for Pythagoras, the World Mind (Nus) for Anaxagoras, Love and Enmity for Empedocles, etc.).

The early period is generally characterized natural philosophy(philosophy of nature) and cosmocentrism, those. the central problem of philosophy was the question of the Cosmos: its structure (cosmology) and origin (cosmogony). The question of the origin of the Cosmos was directly related to the ideas about the original principle (or principles) of being.

Of all the works of philosophers of the early period, not a single whole work has come down to us. Only separate fragments have survived - in the form of quotations from later ancient authors.

The origin and first stages of development in ancient Greek philosophy took place in Ionia, a region in Asia Minor where there were many Greek colonies. Ionia was on the way of crossing the trade "tey" between the West and the East, which contributed to the acquaintance of the Ionian Greeks with various Eastern teachings. After the conquest of Ionia by the Persians, the development of philosophy here ceased, and many Greeks, including outstanding minds, were forced to move to the western regions of the Mediterranean.

The second geographical center for the development of philosophy was the so-called Great Greece - the regions of southern Italy and about. Sicily, where there were also many Greek city-states.

At present, all philosophers of the early period are often called pre-Socratics, i.e. predecessors of Socrates - the first major philosopher of the next, classical, period. But in a stricter sense, only philosophers of the 6th-5th centuries were called pre-Socratics. BC, related to Ionian and Italic philosophy, as well as their closest successors of the 4th century. BC, not affected by the influence of the "Socratic tradition" (Scheme 15).

Milesian school (Miletusphilosophy)

First philosophical school Ancient Greece became the Miletus school (Table 19). Mileet is a city in Ionia (the western region of Asia Minor), located at the crossroads between West and East.

Table 19 Milesian school

Thales (Thales) Biographical information. Thales (c. 625-547 BC) is an ancient Greek sage, whom many authors call the first philosopher of ancient Greece. Most likely, he was a merchant, traveled a lot in his youth, was in Egypt, Babylon, Phoenicia, where he acquired knowledge in many areas.

He was the first in Greece to predict the complete solar eclipse(for Ionia), introduced a calendar of 365 days divided into 12 thirty-day months, the remaining 5 days were placed at the end of the year (the same calendar was in Egypt). He was a mathematician (proved the Thales theorem), a physicist, an engineer; participated in political life Miletus. It is Thales who owns the famous saying: "Know thyself."

Aristotle told interesting legend about how Thales got rich. Traveling, Thales squandered his fortune, and fellow citizens, reproaching him with poverty, said that philosophy did not bring profit. Then Thales decided to prove that a wise man can always get rich. According to the astronomical data known to him, he determined that a large harvest of olives was expected this year and rented in advance all the oil mills in the vicinity of the city of Miletus, giving the owners a small deposit. When the crop was harvested and taken to the oil mills, Thales, being a "monopolist", raised the prices for his work and immediately became rich.

Main works. “On the Beginnings”, “On the Solstice”, “On the Equivalence”, “Marine Astrology” - none of the works has survived.

Philosophical views. Initial. Thales was a spontaneous materialist, considered the origin of being water. Water is intelligent and "divine". The world is full of gods, everything that exists is animated (hylozoism); it is the gods and souls that are the sources of movement And self-movement of bodies, for example, a magnet has a soul because it attracts iron.

Cosmology and cosmogony. Everything originated from water, everything begins from it, and everything returns to it. The earth is flat and floats on water. The sun and other celestial bodies feed on water vapor.

The deity of the cosmos is the mind (logos) - the son of Zeus.

Anaximander Biographical information. Anaximander (c. 610- (Anaximander) ( 46 years BC) - an ancient Greek sage, a student of Fa-les. Some authors called Anaximander, and not Thales, the first philosopher of Ancient Greece. Anaximander invented the sundial (gnomon), was the first in Greece to draw up a geographical map and built a model of the celestial sphere (globe), he studied mathematics and gave a general outline of geometry.

Main works. "On Nature", "Map of the Earth", "Globe" - none of the works have survived.

Philosophical views. Initial. Anaximander considered the fundamental principle of the world apeiron- eternal ("not knowing old age"), indefinite and boundless material principle.

Cosmogony and cosmology. Two pairs of opposites stand out from apeiron: hot and cold, wet and dry; their combinations give rise to the four basic elements that make up everything V world: Air, Water, Fire, Earth (diagram 17).

The heaviest element - Earth - is concentrated in the center, forming a cylinder, the height of which is equal to a third of the base. On its surface is a lighter element - Water, then - Air. The earth is at the center of the world and floats in the air. The fire formed three spheres separated by air bridges. The continuous movement and action of the centrifugal force tore apart the fiery spheres, its parts took the form of wheels or rings. This is how the Sun, Moon, stars were formed (Scheme 18). Closest to the Earth are the stars, then the Moon, and then the Sun.

Thus, everything that exists in the world comes from a single (apeiron). With what inevitability the world came into existence, so will its death. Anaximander calls the selection of opposites from the apeiron untrue, injustice; return to the one - truth, justice. After returning to Apeiron, a new process of cosmogenesis begins, and the number of emerging and dying worlds is infinite. Living things originated under the influence of heavenly fire from silt - on the border of the sea and land. The first living creatures lived in the water, then some of them went to land, throwing off their scales. Man originated and developed to an adult state inside huge fish, then the first man came to land.

Anaximenes Biographical information. Anaximenes (c. 588- (Anaximenes) 525 BC.) - ancient Greek philosopher student of Anaximander. He studied physics, astronomy, meteorology.

Main works. "On Nature" - the work has not been preserved.

Philosophical views. Initial. Anaximenes, like Thales and Anaximander, was an elemental materialist. He could not accept such an abstract entity as Anaximander's apeiron, and chose air- the most unqualified and indefinite of the four elements.

Cosmogony and cosmology. According to Anaximenes, everything arises from the air: “it is the source of the emergence of (everything) that exists, existed and will exist, (including) gods and deities, while the rest (things) (arise according to his teaching) from what came from the air." In its usual state, being evenly distributed, the air is not noticeable, but it becomes noticeable under the influence of heat, cold, humidity and movement. It is the movement of air that is the source of all the changes that take place, the main thing being its condensation and rarefaction. When air is rarefied, fire is formed, and then - ether; when thickening - wind, clouds, water, earth, stones (Scheme 19).

AIR ^ FIRE ^ AIR^ WINDS £ CLOUDS ^ WATER ^

^ EARTH £ STONES

Condensation (cold) -> Rarefaction (heat)<-

Scheme 19.Anaximenes: cosmogony

Anaximenes believed that the Sun, Moon and stars are the luminaries formed from fire, and this fire is from moisture that rose from the Earth. According to other sources, he claimed that the Sun, Moon and stars are stones heated from rapid movement.

The earth and all celestial bodies are flat and float in the air. The earth is motionless, and the luminaries move in air whirlwinds. Anaximenes corrected Anaximander's erroneous ideas about the location of celestial bodies: the Moon is closest to the Earth, then the Sun, and the farthest are the stars. Teaching about the soul. Boundless air is the beginning not only of the body, but also of the soul. Thus, the soul is airy, and therefore material.

The doctrine of the gods. Anaximenes believed that it was not the gods who created the air, but the gods themselves arose from the air.

Anaxagoras (Anaxagoras)

Biographical information. Anaxagoras (c. 500-428 BC - an ancient Greek philosopher originally from the city of Clazomene (Ionia), at the invitation of Pericles, came to Athens, where he lived and worked for a long time. Enemies accused Anaxagoras of godlessness; Pericles saved him 1, but Anaxagoras had to return to Ionia.

Main works. "On Nature" - fragments have been preserved.

Philosophical views. Initial. The origin of life is homeomeria,"seeds of all things"; they are the smallest invisible particles, each of which is a carrier of a certain quality. Homeomers are eternal and unchanging. The initial principle of Anaxagoras is "everything is in everything." This means that any thing contains homeomers of all kinds. The property of a thing consisting of homeomerism is determined by the number of homeomerities in it. Thus, in fire, the homeomerisms of fire are most numerous, in iron, the homeomerisms of iron, although in both fire and iron there are homeomerisms of all other types. The change, the transformation of a thing is due to the fact that in it one homeomerism is replaced by another.

But this principle also applies to the homeomeries themselves. Each homeomerism is a set of smaller homeomerisms and contains homeomerisms of all qualities, i.e. the homeomerism of gold contains the homeomeria of iron, copper, whiteness, liquid, etc. But this homeomerism is the homeomerism of gold, because the majority of the smaller homeomerities included in its composition are the homeomerities of gold. Homeomeria are infinitely divisible, any, arbitrarily small homeomerism consists of even smaller ones.

The homeomers themselves are passive. As a driving force, Anaxagoras introduces the concept Nus(World mind), which not only moves the world, but also knows it.

Cosmology and cosmogony. Nus sets the initial mixture of homeomerism in a circular motion, separating warm from cold, light from dark, and so on. Dense, wet, heavy, etc. gather in the center. This is how the earth is formed. Warm, light, light, etc. rushes up - this is how the sky is formed. The rotation of the ether surrounding the Earth tears off pieces from it - this is how the Sun, Moon, stars (which are hot stones) are formed. Epistemology. Everything is known to be opposite to itself: cold - warm, sweet - bitter, etc. Feelings do not give truth, homeomers are known only by the mind.

Fate teachings. Anaxagoras had a direct influence on Democritus and Socrates. The doctrine of Anaxagoras about the Mind was developed in the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. The doctrine of homeomerism remained “unclaimed” until the 20th century, when a number of physicists involved in quantum mechanics came to the conclusion that elementary particles are more like the homeomerism of Anaxagoras than the atoms of Democritus.

Pythagorean Union

The Pythagorean Union (Table 20), created by Pythagoras, was a scientific and philosophical school and a political association. It was a closed organization, and his teachings were secret.

Table 20

Pythagorean Union: periods of development

It accepted only free people, both men and women, but only those who had passed many years of testing and training (including the test of long silence). The property of the Pythagoreans was common. There were numerous lifestyle requirements, food restrictions, and so on. The Pythagoreans strove for victory over base passions and highly valued friendship.

The Pythagoreans devoted a lot of time to psycho-training, the development of memory and mental abilities. The most important place in their lives was occupied by science. The political views of the Pythagoreans are not entirely clear; most likely, they were supporters of aristocratic forms of government. According to some reports, the Pythagoreans of the early period managed to come to power in some cities of Magna Graecia. But when they gathered in the city of Croton for their congress, the enemies surrounded them and burned them.

The philosophical views of the Pythagoreans are very diverse. Common to most of them is the understanding of number as the fundamental principle of the world. For many Pythagoreans, the mysticism of numbers is characteristic.

The Pythagoreanism of the middle and later periods was greatly influenced by the philosophy of Plato. In turn, Neo-Pythagoreanism had a significant influence on Neo-Platonism.

The fate of teaching Through Neoplatonism, Pythagoreanism had a definite influence on all subsequent European philosophy based on Platonism. In addition, the Pythagorean mysticism of numbers influenced the Kabbalah, natural philosophy and various mystical currents.

Elean school (Eleaticphilosophy)

The school got its name from the city of Elea, where its largest representatives mainly lived and worked: Xenophanes, Parmenides, Zenon (Table 21).

Table 21eleian school

The Eleatics were the first to try to rationally explain the world, using philosophical concepts of ultimate generality, such as "being", "non-being", "movement". If all previous philosophers only declared their views on the world, then the Eleatics (especially Parmenides and Zeno) were the first to try to rationally substantiate and even prove their ideas. The Eleatics were the first to appraise the sensual corporeal world as "untrue" and "illusory" - it was opposed to the "true", intelligible world. The fate of teaching The teachings of the Eleatics had a significant influence on Plato, Aristotle and all subsequent European philosophy, and the aporias of Zeno still arouse considerable interest and numerous attempts to resolve them.

Xenophanes Biographical information. Xenophanes (c. 565-473 BC) - ancient Greek philosopher. He was originally from the city of Colophon in Ionia, after the capture of his homeland by the Persians, he wandered for a long time, then settled in the city of Elea in Great Greece, where he became the founder of the Elea school.

Main works. "Sills" ("Satires") - only a few poems have survived.

Philosophical views. Initial. Xenophanes can be called an elemental materialist. The fundamental principle of all things is with him - Earth. It has its roots in infinity. Water is an accomplice of the Earth in the generation of life, even souls consist of Earth and Water.

Cosmology and cosmogony. From the water clouds arise, from the clouds - heavenly bodies. The moon is a fallen cloud. The sun is new every day, it is an accumulation of sparks, which are ignited vapors of water.

The doctrine of the gods. Xenophanes was the first to express the idea that it is not the gods who create people, but people create gods, moreover, in their own image and likeness (the Ethiopians have black gods, and the Thracians have blue-eyed and reddish ones). The gods of Homer and Hesiod are immoral and immoral.

The true god "is not like mortals either in body or in thought." He is all-seeing, all-hearing, all-thinking. This god is a pure mind, he rules the world only by the power of his thought. According to some sources, this god is the sky in its entirety, according to others, it is like a ball and identical to the cosmos: it is one, eternal, homogeneous and unchanging. The identification of the true god with the cosmos (being) allows us to call Xenophanes the forerunner pantheism. The statement about the immutability of the world makes Xenophanes the founder metaphysics in the modern sense of the term.

Epistemology. Feelings are false, feelings often deceive us. To comprehend the essence of the world is possible only with the help of the mind. True, the mind also deceives us at times, but gradually people can come closer to comprehending the truth.

But only God possesses the highest and absolutely correct knowledge. Human knowledge is limited, it is only a subjective opinion. These statements allow us to call Xenophanes the forerunner skepticism.

ParmenidesBiographical information. Parmenides (born approximately 504-501 BC, date of death unknown) was an ancient Greek philosopher. Born and lived in the city of Elea (Greater Greece), studied with Xenophanes and the Pythagorean Aminius.

Main works. The poem "On Nature" - a significant part of this work has been preserved.

Philosophical views. Existence and non-existence. Parmenides presents his teaching as a revelation given to him by the goddess of Truth (Dike), but, in fact, the poem attempts to rationally comprehend the world. The central problems of Parmenides' philosophy are the correlation of being and non-being, being and thinking. Truth can only be known through reason. Unlike previous philosophers, who most often only declared their ideas, he sought to prove his theses, and above all, that being (existing) exists, and non-being (carrier, emptiness) does not exist. Really existing Parmenides considers only that which is intelligible, can be conceived. He proclaims identity of being and thinking:"one and the same - the thought of the subject and the subject of thought." Non-being does not exist because it is impossible "neither to know nor to express in a word." It is impossible to think about it, because if we begin to do this, then (due to the identity of thought and its object) non-existence, the carrier gets existence, becomes being, existing.

Being for Parmenides is a solid motionless ball (the One), which does not have any voids and parts, in which there is no movement and change. After all, only non-existence could divide being into parts, but it does not exist. Likewise, all change involves the appearance and disappearance of something. But something can appear only from non-existence and disappear only into non-existence, which does not exist. Thus, Parmenides acts as the first theoretician of metaphysics, opposing the dialectic of Heraclitus.

Variability, movement, multiplicity are in Parmenides the characteristics of the untrue, sensual world. But the second part of the poem by Parmenides, which spoke of the sensual, illusory world, has practically not been preserved. It remains unclear how Parmenides solved the question of the relationship between the true, intelligible world and the illusory sensory world.

Zeno of Elea Biographical information. Zeno of Elea (ca. (ZenoofElea) 490-430 AD BC) is an ancient Greek philosopher. Lived in the city of Elea, was a student of Parmenides; it is known that he died heroically in the struggle against tyranny.

Main works. "Disputes", "Against the Philosophers", "On Nature" - several fragments have been preserved.

Philosophical views. He defended and defended the teaching of Parmenides about the One, rejected the reality of sensual being and the plurality of things. Developed aporia(difficulties) proving the impossibility of movement.

Aporia of Zeno. The space in its structure can be either divisible to infinity (continuous), or divisible only up to some limit (discrete), and then there are the smallest, further indivisible intervals of space.

Let us assume that space is divisible only up to a certain limit, then the following aporia takes place.

flying arrow

Consider the movement of an arrow in flight.

Let the arrow occupy certain intervals of space at time t, for example, from 3 to 8.

Movement is a movement in space, therefore, if the arrow moves, then at the next moment in time V it occupies a different interval of space - from 4 to 9.

12 3 4 5 6 7 8 9….

Each interval of space is indivisible, hence the arrow can either completely occupy it, or not occupy it, but cannot occupy it partially. Therefore, the arrow cannot first pass through some part of the interval 8-9, since this interval is not divisible. Then it turns out that at time t the arrow remains motionless in the interval 3-8, and at time t it remains motionless in the interval 4-9.

Conclusion. There is no movement, but only immobility in various intervals of space.

Let us now assume that space is divisible to infinity, then the following aporia takes place.

Achilles and the Turtle

Preconditions. Achilles and the tortoise stand on the road at a distance L from each other. They simultaneously begin to move in the same direction (Achilles runs with all his might, and the tortoise crawls at its snail's speed).

Thesis. Achilles will never catch up with the Turtle.

Proof. To catch up with the Turtle, Achilles must first run the distance L that separated him from the Turtle before starting to move. But during this time, the Turtle will have time to cover some distance L'. Therefore, in order to now catch up with the Turtle, Achilles must first run the distance L', etc. But since space is divisible to infinity, between Achilles and the Tortoise there will always be an infinitely small, but still distance that Achilles still needs to run.

Thus, whether we admit the infinite divisibility of space or the existence of indivisible intervals of space, we can conclude that motion is impossible.

Zeno's aporias serve to prove the impossibility of movement in the true, intelligible world, so the fact that our sense organs tell us about the presence of movement, or rather its "appearance" in the sensual, illusory world, does not refute the aporias.

2. Heraclitus as the founder of dialectics. Atomism of Democritus.

Heraclitus (belongs to the Ephesian school)Biographic information. Heraclitus (c. 544-480 BC) ( BC) - an ancient Greek sage. He was born and lived in the city of Ephesus, so he is often called Heraclitus of Ephesus. Despite the fact that he belonged to the royal-priestly family, he lived poor and lonely. Heraclitus had the nicknames Dark (since his statements were obscure) and Weeping (since he often lamented because of human imperfection). Heraclitus - elemental materialist and founder dialectics 1 .

Main works. "On Nature" - about 130 fragments have been preserved.

Philosophical views. Initial. Heraclitus believed that the beginning of all things fire. Fire is material, eternal and living (hylozoism), moreover, it is reasonable, it has a Logos. Fire is not created by anyone, but it obeys the world law, "flaring up in measure and fading out in measure."

Dialectics. The fundamental feature of the world is its constant variability: “everything flows”, “you cannot step into the same river twice”. In this, Heraclitus opposes the majority of ancient philosophers who believed that "true being" is eternal and unchanging (Pythagoreans, Eleatics, etc.). A significant change according to Heraclitus is a change in its opposite (cold heats up, hot cools down). Opposites exist in unity and in eternal struggle (“struggle is the father of everything and the king over everything”).

Cosmology and cosmogony. Everything in the world arises from fire, and this is the “way down” and the “lack” of fire (Scheme 20). According to Heraclitus, the cosmos is not eternal, the “way down” is replaced by the “way up”, and then the whole world burns in a world fire, which is also a world court (since the fire is alive and intelligent).

Three versions of the description of cosmogenesis (the process of formation of the cosmos) by Heraclitus are known.

Teaching about the soul. The human soul is a combination of fire and moisture. Souls arise, "evaporating from moisture", and, conversely, "for souls, death is water birth." The more fire in the soul, the better it is; the human mind is Fire (Logos).

Epistemology. The senses, especially sight and hearing, are useful in the process of knowledge, but the highest goal is the knowledge of the logos. It is not available to everyone, although all people are reasonable. The majority of people, being “satiated like a beast”, do not try to comprehend the Logos. Many knowledge, trust in such teachers as Homer and Hesiod hinder the comprehension of the Logos. Only a few people have comprehended the logos and live in accordance with it.

Fate teachings. The ideas of Heraclitus about the Fire-Logos in many ways served as the basis for the teachings of the Stoics. The ideas of dialectics began to attract serious attention only from the Renaissance, they found consistent application and development in the philosophy of Hegel and Marxism.

Atomism of Democritus

Leucippus is considered the founder of atomism, but almost nothing is known about him. Therefore, under ancient Greek atomism, first of all, we mean the teachings of Democritus.

DemocritusBiographical information. Approximate life time - approx. 460-370 AD BC. Democritus was born in the city of Abdera (Hellas). He traveled a lot, was in Egypt, Babylon, possibly India and Ethiopia. For a long time he lived in Athens. Since Democritus constantly laughed at the imperfection of man, he bore the nickname Laughing.

Main works. It is known that Democritus wrote about 70 works on various fields of knowledge, but none of them have come down to us. The problems of atomism were set forth in the works "Big Domostroy", "Small Domostroy" and others.

Philosophical views. Initial. The origins of life are atoms And emptiness, in which atoms reside and move. Atoms (literally, "indivisible") are the smallest, indivisible particles of matter. Each atom is eternal and unchanging; atoms do not come into being and do not disappear. The number of atoms is infinite. They differ in size, shape (spherical, pyramidal, hook-shaped, etc.) and position in space. Atoms are mobile, soar and "dance" in the void, like dust particles visible in a sunbeam.

All things in the world are made up of atoms and emptiness. The emergence and destruction of things is the result of the adhesion and separation of atoms. All things eventually perish, but the atoms that compose them continue to exist. Democritus considered the four traditional elements to be the "middle steps" from which everything else is composed. Air, water and earth are made up of atoms of various shapes, while fire is made up of only spherical ones.

The doctrine of primary and secondary qualities. By themselves, atoms are devoid of such qualities as color, smell, warmth, and so on. All these qualities are the result of the perception of atoms by our senses. After all, says Democritus, what one person perceives as sweet, another may perceive as bitter. Hence it is necessary to distinguish between primary, i.e. objectively existing properties of atoms (shape, size, position in space) and secondary - our subjective perception of these primary properties.

Cosmology and cosmogony. The world as a whole is an infinite void, in which there is an infinite number of worlds consisting of atoms. Where there are many atoms in the void, they often collide with each other, which creates a cosmic vortex. Heavier atoms are concentrated in its center, lighter ones are forced out to the edges. This is how earth and sky come into existence. The worlds are spherical, closed and surrounded by a shell ("skin"). The center of our world is the Earth; The sun, moon, stars refer to the sky. The number of worlds is infinite; some of them are just emerging, others have flourished, others are dying; our world is in a state of flux. Some worlds are similar to each other, others are different.

Determinism. Democritus was the founder of the mechanistic determinism 1 . Nothing that happens in the world arises for no reason, everything appears due to necessity (after all, everything that happens in the world is the result of movement, collision, adhesion, etc. of atoms). Randomness was invented by people to justify their own ignorance.

Origin of life and man. The living arises from the inanimate without the intervention of the gods and without any purpose. From the earth and moisture, first amphibious animals were born, and then land animals. Non-viable creatures (blind and deaf, legless and armless) perished, only viable ones survived; they gave offspring; among these last beings there were also people.

The source of movement for people and animals is the soul; it, like everything else, consists of atoms (spherical, as having the greatest mobility). With the death of the body, the soul disintegrates and perishes. Epistemology. There is a distinction between sensory ("dark") and rational knowledge (through logical reasoning). When comprehending the world, our senses (sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch) act first. Their images are constantly separated (expiring) from things - they are, as it were, shells consisting of rarefied atoms. When these images enter the human senses, he perceives them. At the same time, similar is perceived as similar.

But sensory knowledge is suitable only up to a certain limit, since the senses are not capable of comprehending too subtle and small entities (such as atoms). Then the mind begins to act, giving us true knowledge.

The origin of religion and atheism. The source of faith in the gods is the fear of the forces of nature, which man cannot explain. Everything that happens in the world is the result of the movement of atoms.

The fate of atomism. The teachings of Democritus had a significant impact on Epicurus (although Epicurus himself denied this), and through him on the Roman philosopher Lucretius Cara. However, in general, atomism was not very popular in antiquity (for example, Stoicism took over Epicureanism in the first centuries AD).

In the Middle Ages, he was practically unknown in the Christian world, but some of his ideas received a peculiar use in Muslim philosophy (kalam and Sufism).

In modern times, atomism turned out to be the philosophical basis of Newton's physics, deism and materialism of subsequent eras - up to our time.

Thanks to the development of the physics of the microcosm (quantum mechanics) in the XX century. serious doubts arose that further indivisible particles (elementary particles or quarks that make up elementary particles) lie at the basis of matter. But this problem has not been finally solved to date.

3. Humanistic orientation of the philosophy of the sophists.

In the second half of the 5th c. BC. Sophists appear in Greece. In the conditions of ancient slave-owning democracy, rhetoric, logic and philosophy push gymnastics and music aside in the education system. Rhetoric - the art of eloquence - becomes the queen of all arts. In courts and in popular assemblies, the ability to speak, persuade and persuade is vital. Therefore, there are paid teachers "to think, speak and do" - sophists.

The ancient Greek word "sophistes" meant: expert, master, artist, sage. But the sophists were sages of a special kind. The truth didn't interest them. They taught the art of defeating the enemy in disputes and litigation. There were no lawyers then. And “in the courts,” Plato will later say, “absolutely no one cares about the truth, only persuasiveness is important” (272 E). Therefore, the word "sophist" acquired a reprehensible meaning. Sophistry began to be understood as the ability to represent black as white, and white as black. The Sophists were philosophers to the extent that this practice received a worldview justification from them.

At the same time, the sophists played a positive role in the spiritual development of Hellas. They are theoreticians of rhetoric, eloquence. Their focus is on the word. Many of the sophists had an amazing gift for words. The Sophists created the science of the word. In philosophy, the sophists drew attention to the problem of man, society, and knowledge. In epistemology, the sophists deliberately raised the question of how thoughts about it relate to the world around us? Is our thinking able to cognize the real world?

The sophists answered the last question in the negative. The Sophists taught that the objective world is unknowable, that is, they were the first agnostics. However, the agnosticism of the Sophists is limited by their relativism. The Sophists taught that everyone has their own truth. As anyone thinks, so it is. Therefore, the sophists denied not truth, but objective truth. They recognized only subjective truth, more precisely, truths. These truths are related not so much to the object as to the subject. That is why we say that the agnosticism of the Sophists was limited by their relativism. The epistemological relativism of the sophists was supplemented by moral relativism. There is no objective criterion of good and evil.

What is beneficial to someone, then good, then good. In the field of ethics, the agnosticism of the sophists grew into immoralism.

Sophists did little in physics. They were the first to clearly separate what exists by nature and what exists by establishment, according to law, they separated the laws of nature and social laws. In the person of the sophists, the philosophical worldview thought of Ancient Greece put man in the focus of worldview research. The sophists extended their relativism to religious dogma as well. On the whole, untenable relativism has one positive feature: it is anti-dogmatic. In this sense, the sophists played a particularly large role in Hellas. They led a wandering life. And where they appeared, the dogmatism of tradition was shaken. Dogmatism rests on authority. The Sophists demanded proof. They themselves could prove the thesis today, and tomorrow the antithesis. This shocked the layman and awakened his thoughts from dogmatic slumber. Everyone involuntarily asked the question: where is the truth?

Sophists are usually divided into senior and junior. Protagoras, Gorgias, Hippias, Prodicus, Antiphon, Xeniades stood out among the elders. All of them are contemporaries of the Pythagorean Philolaus, the Eleatics Zeno and Melissa, the physicists Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Leucippus. Of the many works of the Sophists, little has survived.

Senior Sophists

Protagoras

Life and writings. Akme Protagora falls on the 84th Olympiad (444-441). This means that Protagoras was born in the 80s of the 5th century. BC.

Protagoras owned more than a dozen works. Among them are "On Being", "On the Sciences", "On the State", "On the Gods", "Debate, or the Art of Arguing", "Truth, or Controversial Speeches". None of them has come down to us except for small fragments. The most important sources of our knowledge about Protagoras and his teachings are Plato's dialogues "Protagoras" and "Theaetetus" and the treatises of Sextus Empiricus "Against the Scholars" and "Three Books of Pyrrhonic Propositions". In these treatises, a brief, but at the same time completely indispensable description of the most important moments of Protagoras' worldview slips through.

Ontology. Protagoras' relativism and his doctrine of the relativity of knowledge are based on certain ideas about the world. Protagoras is a materialist. According to Sextus Empiricus, Protagoras thought that "the fundamental causes of all phenomena are in matter" (Sext Empiric. Op. In 2 vols. T.2. M., 1976. S. 252. Further - SE. 2. S. 252). But the main property of matter, according to Protagoras, is not its objectivity and not the presence of some kind of regular principle in matter, but its variability, fluidity. In this, Protagoras apparently relied on Cratylus, who interpreted the Heraclitean dialectic in an extremely one-sided way, seeing in it only one extreme relativism. If Heraclitus argued that one and the same river cannot be entered twice, because all new waters flow on the incoming one, that one cannot touch the same mortal essence twice, then Cratylus argued that one and the same river cannot be entered once . Protagoras extended this principle of the absolute variability of matter to the cognizing subject: not only the world is constantly changing, but also the animate body that perceives it. Thus, both the subject and the object are constantly changing. This thesis contains the first ontological substantiation of the relativism of the sophists by Protagoras.

The second justification consists in the thesis that nothing exists by itself, but everything exists and arises only in relation to another. Protagora Plato expressed this shade of relativism as follows: “Nothing is in itself, but everything always arises in connection with something” (157 V).

The third substantiation of relativism is the thesis according to which everything changes not at random, but in such a way that everything that exists in the world constantly comes into its opposite. Therefore, every thing contains opposites. Clarifying this conclusion, Aristotle would say that one opposite is actually in a thing, and the other is potential. But at the time of Protagoras, philosophers had not yet understood the existence of two types of beings - actual and potential, and therefore the thesis of Protagoras, which goes back to the dialectic of Heraclitus, could seem plausible.

epistemological conclusions. From all these ontological principles of relativism, Protagoras drew a bold epistemological conclusion. If everything changes and turns into its opposite, then two opposite opinions are possible about each thing. Diogenes Laertes reports that Protagoras “was the first to say that about every thing there are two opinions opposing each other” [DK 80 (84) A 1], which, according to Clement, had a great influence on the development of the Hellenic worldview: “Following in the footsteps of Protagoras Greeks often say that about every thing there are two opinions that are opposite to each other” (A 20).

To a large extent this is still true. In everyday speech, we say: "on the one hand" and "on the other hand." But still, it is necessary to decide which of the parties is leading, main, determining. Otherwise, we will slide into positions of relativism and agnosticism. Protagoras went exactly in this direction. Having absolutized the presence in any thing and in any process of two opposite sides and tendencies, and having come to the conclusion about the possibility of two opposite opinions about a thing or process, Protagoras made an excessive conclusion that “everything is true.”

This statement of Protagoras was criticized by Democritus, Plato and Aristotle. Democritus and Plato objected to Protagoras, emphasizing that the statement "every product of the imagination is true" turns against itself. For “if every imagining is true, then the opinion that not every imagining is true, inasmuch as it is accepted by the imagination, will be true, and thus the proposition that every imagining is true will become a lie” (A 15). Aristotle in "Rhetoric" wrote: "[The case of Protagoras] is a lie and untruth, but an apparent plausibility, and [it has no place] in any art except in rhetoric and eristic." Protagoras teaches "to make the weakest speech the strongest" (II 24).

However, these objections would not embarrass Protagoras. He is, so to speak, a relativist squared. Seneca reports that Protagoras went so far in his teaching that he himself claimed that it is equally possible to speak "for" and "against" not only about any thing, but also that about any thing one can equally speak "for" and "against". “against”, i.e. Protagoras admitted that his thesis that two opposite opinions are possible about the same thing is no more true than the opposite thesis that there cannot be two opposite opinions about the same thing opposing opinions. But this is nonsense, because the latter crosses out the former. To say that the propositions "this wall is white" and "this wall is black or non-white" are equally true, because this white wall gradually becomes dirty, is still possible. But to call equally true judgments: "it is true that one can say that "this wall is white" and "this wall is black or non-white" and "it is true that this cannot be said, because the wall is either white or black, not white" is a completely different matter. Here we have already entered the sphere of the laws of thought, and not the laws of being. Being can be both this and that, but thinking about being can only be definite and unambiguous, even if only conditionally. We cannot think of movement without stopping it.

The main thesis of Protagoras. However, the main thing for Protagoras is not the assertion that everything is true, since opposite, mutually exclusive opinions are possible about each thing due to the transformation of everything into its opposite. In such a situation, a person cannot navigate the universe. You have to choose between two opposing views. This choice a person makes by accepting one opinion and discarding the opposite. The man is free. It seems from these considerations that the famous thesis of Protagoras, which is contained in his "Subversive speeches", follows. In Sextus Empiricus we read: "At the beginning of his "Subversive speeches" he (Progagoras) proclaimed: "Man is the measure of all things that exist, that they exist, and non-existent, that they do not exist." Six or seven centuries earlier, Plato conveyed the same words of Protagoras in the following context: “The essence of things is special for each person,” according to Protagoras, who claims that “the measure of all things is man,” and, therefore, how things seem to me, such they will be for me, and as you, they will be for you. (Plato. Op. In 3 vols. T.I. M., 1968. S. 418. Further - Plato. 1. S. 418). In another of his works, Plato, again citing the words of Protagoras: “The measure of all things is man, existing, that they exist, and non-existent, that they do not exist,” explains: such is it for me and is, and what is for you, such is it, in turn, for you ”(152 A). This is followed by an example: “Does it not happen sometimes that the same wind blows, and someone freezes at the same time, someone does not? And someone not too much, but someone strongly? (152 V). The wind “seems” to one person, continues Plato, as cold, but not to another. But "seem" means "feel" (Plato. 2. S. 238). The question arises: is it possible to say that the wind is cold in itself or only cold relative to someone?

The second substantiation of relativism by Protagoras says that nothing exists and does not arise by itself, but only in relation to another. Therefore, the question of whether the wind itself is cold or not is meaningless, as is the question of whether the wind exists in itself, for what for one wind may not be so for another, it knocks one down. and the other does not notice. Plato concludes that Protagoras is right in his assertion of the subjectivity of sensations, but he is wrong in his assertion that they are all true. In reality, there is no truth in sensations; the subjectivity of sensations indicates that sensation is not knowledge. Neither Protagoras nor Plato are right here. Of course, the sensual picture of the world is anthropomorphic. It is no coincidence that a socioanthropomorphic worldview arises on its basis. But it must be analyzed, and not declared as a whole true or false. Here a criterion of practice is needed. But Protagoras has no such criterion.

Criterion. But does Protagoras have any criterion of truth? What still allows a person to express certain judgments about the world? Here the position of Protagoras is not entirely clear. Sextus Empiricus claims that Protagoras had no criterion at all: “So if nothing can be taken outside the [subjective] state, then everything that is perceived according to the corresponding state must be trusted. In this regard, some have come to the conclusion that Protagoras rejects the criterion, because this latter wants to be a connoisseur of what exists in itself and a discerner of truth and falsehood, and the aforementioned man did not leave anything in itself (second justification), nor lies” (SE. 1. p. 73). However, there is other information, according to which Protagoras taught that no one has a false opinion, but one opinion can be, if not truer, then better than another. (Plato 167 B). The opinions of a wise man are better than the opinions of ordinary people. Here Protagoras moves to the position of Democritus, who made the measure of all things not just anyone, but the sage, declaring that the sage is the measure of all things.

But the main thing is still not in this. The main criterion, according to Protagoras, is profit. Here we are already moving from his epistemological relativism to his ethical relativism.

ethical relativism. Of course, the criterion of benefit is limited, because it operates only in the case when we determine what is good and what is bad. Just as there is no objective heat and cold, so there is no objective good and evil. Of course, they may say that what is good for your country is good, and what is bad for it is bad, but the state consists of individuals and what is useful to one of them is harmful to another. Good and evil are relative. When determining what is good and what is bad, one must proceed from one's own benefit and benefit, both personal and (at best) state. So, Protagoras justified the activities of the sophists, who did not strive for truth, but for victory over their opponents in a dispute or litigation. Nature cannot be deceived, but man can. Domination over nature cannot be built on deceit; the domination of one class of society over another is possible. Sophistry in its extreme manifestation serves this purpose.

Philosophy of history. Plato's dialogue "Protagoras" describes a conversation between Socrates and Protagoras on the question of what virtue is and whether it can be taught (Protagoras taught virtue for a lot of money). In this regard, Plato ascribes a historical myth to Protagoras. Its purpose is to prove that virtue can be taught. When the gods created all kinds of living things from a mixture of earth and fire, they instructed the titan brothers Prometheus and Epimetheus to distribute the abilities between these types. Taking on this alone, the simple-hearted and improvident Epimetheus left nothing to people. The man turned out to be naked and unshod, deprived of natural weapons - fangs, horns, etc. Saving the situation, Prometheus stole fire and knowledge of crafts and arts for people from the workshop of Hephaestus and Athena, for which he then suffered a certain punishment, but he did not dare to steal from Zeus the ability to live in society, which is why the first people, although they could speak, worship the gods, build houses, sew clothes and shoes, cultivate the land, were not able to live together and died in droves from predatory animals. Then Zeus instructed Hermes to instill shame and truth in people, and to the question of the latter whether he, Hermes, should give this gift to all people or only to some, Zeus answered: “Let everyone be involved in them; there will be no states, if only a few will master it, as art usually masters. And lay down a law from me,” continued Zeus, “so that anyone who cannot be involved in shame and truth should be killed as an ulcer of society” (322 D). However, Protagoras continues, this participation is given to people only as an ability that needs to be developed, which is why virtue is not given to anyone from birth and must be acquired through diligence and training. Socrates, with his disbelief in the possibility of teaching virtue, is wrong. The ability for virtue is given to everyone, but virtue itself at birth is given to no one.

Moving from myth to rational grounds, Protagoras points out: the punishment of criminals makes sense only on the condition that virtue can be brought up - after all, they punish for the sake of preventing evil. This is the position of Protagoras.

Interestingly, in the ensuing dispute between Socrates and Protagoras about the essence of virtue, the parties switched places. Socrates, who reduced all types of virtue (justice, prudence, piety, courage) to knowledge, had to admit that virtue, like any knowledge, can be taught. Protagoras, who rejected this information, came to the involuntary conclusion that virtue cannot be taught. Here it is appropriate to note that, apparently, both are false and that Aristotle is more right, who believed that the virtues can be taught, but not as knowledge alone, but as the result of education that makes knowledge a habit. Virtues - knowledge of the good, which has become a habit of behavior. Getting used to being brave, a person becomes brave.

Religion. Protagoras directs his relativism and skepticism against any dogmatism, including against religious. That book “On the Gods”, for which Protagoras suffered so much in Athens, began with the words: “About the gods, I cannot know either that they exist, or that they do not exist, or what they look like. For many things hinder to know (this): both the ambiguity [of the question], and the brevity of human life ”(AMF. Vol. 1. Ch. 1. S. 318). However, Protagoras believed that it was better to believe in the gods than not to believe in them.

Gorgias

Unlike Protagoras, who, adjoining the Ionian tradition, developed the relativistic doctrine of the relativity of knowledge on the example of a mainly sensory level of cognition, Gorgias, adjoining the Italian tradition, based his relativism not so much on the subjectivity of the testimony of the sense organs, but on those difficulties in which falls into the mind, trying to build a consistent worldview at the level of philosophical categories and concepts (being and non-being, being and thinking, one and many, thinking and word, etc.). If Protagoras taught that everything is true (because it seems to be so), then Gorgias taught that everything is false.

Life and writings. Gorgias came from "Great Hellas", from the Sicilian city of Leontina. His immediate teacher is Empedocles. Gorgias was born in the 80s of the 5th century. BC. In 427, he arrived in Athens as the head of the Leontian embassy, ​​asking Athens for protection from Syracuse (there was a Peloponnesian war). Gorgias spent most of his life in Thessaly. Gorgias lived for more than a hundred years, to which, as he himself thought, he owed his abstinence from pleasures. His student, the Athenian orator Isocrates (4th century BC), explains the longevity of Gorgias by the fact that he, not being a citizen of any city, did not pay taxes, did not engage in public affairs, and also, having no family, was free from this burdensome public service (Isocrates 15:156). Gorgias was an outstanding speaker, able to speak impromptu on any topic, finding both praise and blame for everything. He knew how to beat the seriousness of the enemy with a joke, and a joke with a seriousness. He knew how to convince. In the conditions of the Peloponnesian War, when Sparta opposed Athens in alliance with Persia, Gorgias delivered the “Olympic Speech”, where he called on the Hellenes to stop internal civil strife, adhere to unanimity and unite against the “barbarians” (as the Greeks called all non-Greeks). But this time he failed to convince anyone. The war continued. Its outcome was disastrous not only for Athens, but for all of Greece.

Highly appreciating philosophy, Gorgias put it above the specific sciences, which at that time were already beginning to gradually stand out from philosophy. The Vatican collection of maxims contains the following words of a sophist: “The orator Gorgias said that those who neglect philosophy, engaging in private sciences, are like Penelope’s suitors, who, seeking her, copulate with her maids” [DK 82 (76); At 23]. Gorgias owns such works as “Praise to Helen”, “Polomed”, “On Nature, or On the Non-Existent”, which we know about by transcribing it by Sextus Empiricus in his work “Against the Scientists” (VII, 5).

Being, thinking, speech. The very title of the main work of Gorgias - "On Nature, or On the Non-Existent" - emphasized the difference between the position of Gorgias and the position of his contemporary: Eleatus Melissa, expressed in his work "On Nature, or On the Existing". Unlike the Eleatics, who identified speech, thinking, and being and denied non-being, Gorgias (continuing, however, their rationalistic line) tore speech from thinking, and thinking from being. He taught that nothing exists, and if it exists, then it is incomprehensible, and if it is comprehensible, then it is inexpressible and inexplicable (for another person).

Existence. Speaking about the fact that nothing exists, Gorgias did not mean by this to say that there is non-existence. “Nothing exists” meant for him the assertion that it is impossible to prove either that non-being exists, or that being does not exist, or that being and non-being exist together.

In proving that non-being does not exist, Gorgias goes further than Parmenides, who limited himself to pointing out that non-being does not exist because it is unthinkable and inexpressible, and as soon as it is conceivable and expressible in words, it becomes being as a fact of thinking and as word fact. For Gorgias, since he separated thinking, speech and being from each other, this train of thought was closed. He went the other way, drawing attention to the internal inconsistency of the judgment that non-existence (non-existent) exists. Hidden in it is the assertion that something must both exist and not exist. Non-being should not exist, since it is thought to be non-existent, but it must exist, since it There is non-existent, that is, insofar as it There is. Here Gorgias, however, repeats the mistake of Parmenides, identifying the connective "is" with the predicate "is", which is incorrect. But this was established later by Aristotle, while in the time of Gorgias this error was natural. True, it is not known whether Gorgias had it involuntarily or, like a sophist, intentional, but one way or another, Gorgias concludes, it is completely absurd for something to be and not to be at the same time. Therefore, the thesis that non-being exists is false. (It would be more correct to say that the proposition "non-being exists" is false, since it affirms in the predicate what it denies in the subject.)

But it is also impossible to prove that "being exists." Here, however, the matter is more complicated. This judgment is inconsistent. Therefore, Gorgias proved the falsity of this thesis indirectly, showing the insolubility of those problems that are associated with the fact of recognizing being (existing) as being. These are the problems of one and many, eternity and temporality, etc. At the same time, Gorgias did not shy away from direct sophisms. For example, if the existent is eternal, it has no beginning, and therefore it is infinite, and if it is infinite, then it is nowhere, and if it is nowhere, then it does not exist at all. Here time is replaced by place and the wrong conclusion is drawn from the absence of place to the absence of existence. In fact, the infinite does not exist anywhere, because there is nothing beyond the bounds of the infinite, since the infinite, according to the concept, has no limits, but this does not mean that it does not exist. Further, the temporality of beings presupposes that they have arisen. But it could arise either from the existent, or from the non-existent. But the non-existent supposedly cannot generate anything out of itself. The origin of beings from beings is not a coming into being; in such an origin, beings are eternal.

The problem of one and many is also unsolvable.

From all this follows the conclusion that it is impossible to say that "the existent exists."

But then it cannot be said that existent and non-existent exist: for that which does not exist separately does not exist together either.

From this follows the general conclusion - "there is nothing."

Thinking and speech. Gorgias separates the object of thought and the existence of the object of thought. If someone thinks that a person flies or chariots compete on the sea, this does not mean at all that a person actually flies and chariots actually compete on the sea, because something can also be thought that does not really exist. Here Gorgias corrects Parmenides, who, as we have already said more than once, apparently did not distinguish between an object as an object of thought and an object as it exists objectively. According to Gorgias, it is possible to think that which does not exist. But from this correct premise, Gorgias draws a sophistical conclusion that if the non-existent can be thought, then the existing cannot be thought: “If the objects of thought are not the being, then the being is not thought.”

Finally, “even if the existent is comprehended, it is inexplicable to another,” because words are different from bodies (bodies are perceived by sight, and words by hearing).

Ethics and law. In these matters Gorgias is a relativist. Like all sophists, Gorgias taught that moral values ​​and legal norms are conditional, that they are artificial constructions of people who do not always take into account human nature.

Prodic

Little is known about the sophist Prodicus. In the same Protagoras, Socrates ironically compares Prodicus with Tantalum, calling his wisdom from ancient times divine, and himself wise. In another dialogue of Plato “Cratylus”, Socrates ridicules the greed of this sophist, who taught differently for 50 drachmas than for one (for this price the poor Socrates listened to Prodicus). In Theaetetus (another dialogue of Plato) Socrates refers his not-so-serious students to Prodicus.

Prodik dealt with problems of language. Before philosophizing, one must learn to use words correctly. Therefore, developing synonymy, he clarified the meaning of words, distinguished shades in synonyms (distinguished, for example, "courage" and "courage"). In the Protagoras dialogue, Prodicus, when discussing the meaning of some lines from Simonides' poem, says that in them Simonides scolds Pittacus for not being able to distinguish words correctly. In Plato's dialogue Phaedrus, Prodicus takes credit for the fact that "only he found what the art of speeches consists in: they should be neither long nor short, but in moderation" (267 V). In this Prodik differed from another sophist - Gorgias, who had both short and lengthy speeches ready for each subject.

Prodik, like Protagoras, dealt with the problem of the origin and essence of religion, for which he received the nickname "godless". In fact, “Prodicus ... puts all sacred action in a person and mysteries, and sacraments in connection with the benefits of agriculture, believing that from here appeared in people both the (most) idea of ​​the gods, and all kinds of piety” [DK 84 (77) V 6 ]. Sextus Empiricus quotes the words of Prodicus: "The ancients called the sun, the moon, rivers, springs, and in general everything useful for our life gods for the benefits received from them, as, for example, the Egyptians called the Nile." Further, Sextus Empiricus continues: "And therefore bread was called Demeter, wine - Dionysus, water - Poseidon, fire - Hephaestus, and so on all that is beneficial." Thus, Prodicus, trying to scientifically explain the origin of belief in the gods, thought that religion arises from the fact that people worshiped natural phenomena that were useful to them.

Although Prodicus, as Philostratus states in his Biographies of the Sophists, "was a slave to money and was devoted to pleasures" (A 1a), he liked to engage in moralizing. Xenophon talks about Prodic's allegory of Hercules at the crossroads between virtue and vice, personified by two women (there is a corresponding painting). Prodik said that passions are in the middle between desire and madness, for passion is a double desire, and madness is a double passion.

Junior Sophists

Of the younger sophists, who were already active at the end of the 5th - beginning of the 4th century. BC, the most interesting are Alcides, Trasimachus, Critias and Callicles.

Alkidam. One of the students of Gorgias, the younger sophist Alcides, further developed Antiphon's teaching on the equality of people and the unnaturalness of slavery. If Antiphon spoke of the equality of Hellenes and barbarians by nature, then Alcides - that there are no slaves at all. At the same time, Alcidamus refers not only to nature, but also to the authority of God: "God created everyone free, nature did not create anyone a slave." These wonderful words of Alcidamus are contained in the scholia (commentary) on Aristotle's Rhetoric.

Trasimachus (Thrasimachus). Trasimachus came from Bithynia, from the city of Chalcedon. According to Cicero, Trasimachus was the first to invent the correct warehouse of prose speech. He possessed an amazing gift for words and went down in the history of ancient rhetoric as a speaker, “clear, subtle, resourceful, able to say what he wants, both briefly and very extensively” [DK 85 (78) A 12, 13].

In his Republic, Plato portrays Thrasymachus satirically. However, participating in a conversation about what justice is, Trasimachus expresses and substantiates a deep thought about political justice as the benefit of the strongest. If Socrates, arguing with him, proceeds from the concept of abstract justice, then Trasimachus comes close to conjecture about the class nature of law and morality in a class society. In a sharp dispute with Socrates, Trasimachus declares: “So I say, most venerable Socrates: in all states, the same thing is considered justice, namely, what is suitable for the existing government. But she is strength, and so it turns out, if someone correctly argues that justice is the same everywhere: what is suitable for the strongest ”(339 A). Trasimachus, however, is not talking about classes - after all, ancient political thought did not discover the class character of society, and could not discover it. He speaks only of the people, which he compares with a flock, and of those in power, whom Thrasimachus compares with shepherds. However, it can also be understood that in Trasimachus, those in power mean not only the state apparatus, but also a whole class of people who exploit the people, the working people. All laws issued in the states, says Trasimachus, are aimed at the benefit and benefit of this ruling class of those in power. Trasimachus looks at social justice pessimistically: society is such that the just always loses there, and the unjust always wins. And this is especially true in tyranny. The tyrannical form of government makes a highly unjust person, that is, a tyrant, the happiest, and the people the most unhappy. The gods do not pay any attention to human affairs. Otherwise, they would not have neglected justice. There is nothing to be surprised after that, that people neglect it.

Critias. Critias lived around 460-403 BC. BC. He was the chief of the thirty tyrants. After the defeat of Athens in the Peloponnesian War, the Spartans demanded the abolition of democracy in Athens. A thirty-member commission was set up to draw up a new, anti-democratic constitution. At its head was Critias, a student of the senior sophists Protagoras and Gorgias, and also, to some extent, Socrates. This commission usurped power and went down in history as the reign of "thirty tyrants". The short reign of this oligarchy cost the lives of several thousand Athenian citizens. But the Athenians finally rebelled - and the tyrants were defeated at the Battle of Munichia. Democracy was restored in Athens. However, the anti-democrats built a tomb for Critias and another tyrant, Hippomachus, on which they placed the figure of the Oligarchy, holding a torch and setting fire to Democracy. It was written on the tomb: “This is a monument to valiant men who for a short time humbled the willfulness of the damned Athenian people” [DK 88 (81) A 13]. We read about this in the scholia to the Athenian politician and orator Aeschines.

It was said of Kritia that he "studied with the philosophers and was considered an ignoramus among philosophers and a philosopher among the ignorant." A relative of Critias, Plato, brought him out in the dialogues Timaeus and Critias. Unlike other sophists, over whom Plato usually sneered, Critias is portrayed by him with respect.

Critias was the author of a number of works that have not come down to us. He can be considered an atheist, since he denied the real existence of gods. Sextus Empiricus reports: “Many say that gods exist; others, like the followers of Diagoras of Melius, Theodore, and Critias of Athens, say that they do not exist” (S E. 2, p. 336). But, on the other hand, as a politician, Critias considered religion a socially useful invention. Sextus Empiricus writes about it this way: “Even Critias ... belonged to the number of atheists, since he said that the ancient legislators composed God as a kind of overseer for good deeds and for the sins of people, so that no one secretly offended his neighbor, beingware of punishment from the gods” ( With E. 1. S. 253). This is followed by a long excerpt from the tragedy of Critias "Sisyphus". It says that when there were no laws, people openly raped. Therefore, laws were created that established retribution for their violation. But after that, people began to commit atrocities in secret. And in such a situation, “a certain reasonable, wise man ... invented gods to curb mortals, so that the evil ones, fearing them, would secretly dare not do evil, neither speak nor think. For this purpose, he invented a deity - it is like a god who lives eternal life, hears everything, sees everything, thinks everything, cares, with a divine nature. He will hear everything said by mortals, he will see everything done by mortals. And if you think evil in silence, then you cannot hide from the gods: after all, all thoughts are known to them ”(Ibid.). It also says here that “someone first persuaded people to recognize the existence of the gods” (Ibid., p. 254).

Critias saw the main tool for improving people in education, arguing that most good people owe this quality not to nature, but to education. He viewed the state and religion as a means of making people who are bad by nature good, and terror as a means of control, without which no government can do.

In one of his Elegies, Critias spoke out against drunkenness. It loosens the tongue for vile speeches, weakens the body, softens the mind, obscures the eyes with a cloudy fog and knocks out the memory. Slaves get used to drinking with their master. Waste destroys the house. This is drunkenness in the Lydian manner. It was borrowed from the Lydians by the Athenians. The Spartans drink in moderation so that a joyful mood, cheerful conversation and moderate laughter arise in their hearts, which is good for the body, soul and property and which gets along well with the work of Aphrodite. So, one must “eat and drink according to the requirements of the mind so as to be able to work. Let not a single day be given over to immoderate drunkenness” (B 6).

Callicles. The sophist Callicles was introduced by Plato in the Gorgias dialogue (we have no other sources). Some believe that Plato's Callicles is a purely literary character. He invites Socrates to his home, where Gorgias has already stopped with his student Paul. The purpose of the meeting is to talk about the subject of rhetoric. Callicles is characterized by Socrates as a democrat. Socrates, in a dispute with the sophist Paul, proves that doing injustice is worse than enduring it, which Paul makes fun of. Callicles, intervening in the conversation, draws Socrates' attention to the fact that one should distinguish between nature and custom. By nature, to endure injustice is worse than to do it, but according to established custom, on the contrary, it is better. However, to endure injustice is the lot of a slave. “But in my opinion,” Callicles continues, “it is the weak who establish the laws, and they are in the majority ... Trying to intimidate the stronger, those who are able to rise above them, fearing this elevation, they argue that it is shameful and unfair to be above the rest, that this is precisely the injustice - in the desire to rise above the rest ... But nature itself ... proclaims that it is fair - when the best is higher than the worst and the strong is higher than the weak ... if a person appears gifted enough by nature to break and shake off all the shackles , I am sure: he will be freed, he will trample into the mud ... all the laws that are contrary to nature and, having risen, our former slave will appear before us as the lord, - then the justice of nature will shine ”(483 B-484 A). As for philosophy, the object of love of Socrates, it is pleasant for those who moderately get acquainted with it in their youth, but disastrous for people who indulge in it more than they should: the old philosopher is worthy of corporal punishment.

Criticism of sophistry by Plato and Aristotle. In his works, Plato deduces various sophists as liars and deceivers, for the sake of profit trampling the truth and teaching others to do so. So, in the dialogue "Euthydemus" he brings out two brothers: the cunning and evasive Euthydemus and the shameless and impudent Dionysidore. These former swordsman-turned-sophists cleverly confuse the innocent. They ask him: “Tell me, do you have a dog? - And very angry. - Does she have puppies? Yes, they are also evil. “And their father, of course, is a dog?” the sophists ask. Confirmation follows. Further, it turns out that the father of the puppies also belongs to the simpleton Ktisippus, interrogated by the sophists. An unexpected conclusion follows: “So this father is yours, therefore, your father is a dog, and you are the brother of puppies” (298 E). This example shows the reception of bad sophists. They arbitrarily transferred the signs and relations of one object to another. The father of puppies in relation to his puppies is the father, and in relation to the owner - his property. But the sophists do not say: "This father of your puppies"; they say: “This is your father,” after which it is not difficult to rearrange the words and say: “This is your father.”

Socrates constantly argued with the sophists. He defends objective truth and the objectivity of good and evil and proves that being virtuous is better than vicious, that vice, with its momentary benefit, eventually punishes itself. In the Gorgias dialogue, the mentioned sophist Paul laughs at the moralization of Socrates, who claims that it is better to endure injustice than to do it. In the dialogue "Sophist" Plato ironically ironizes about the sophists. He points out here that the sophist plays with shadows, binds the unrelated, elevates the accidental, transient, inessential into law - everything that is on the verge of being and non-being (Plato says that the sophist gives life to the non-existent). The sophist deliberately, for the sake of self-interest, deceives people. Plato identifies the sophist with a rhetorician, orator. There is no difference at all between an orator and a sophist, says Plato (Gorgias, 520 A). Plato interprets rhetoric sharply negatively. Rhetoric, Plato says through Socrates, does not need to know the essence of the matter, it is only interested in convincing that those who do not know know more than those who know. Plato condemned the sophists and for the fact that they took money for education. It was Plato who was the first to give the word "sophist", i.e. originally "sage", a negative meaning: "In the beginning, the word" sophist "was a name that had a very general meaning ... It seems that Plato ... gave this name a reprehensible meaning" [ DK 79(73) V1].

Aristotle agrees with Plato that the subject of sophistry is non-existence. He writes in the Metaphysics that "Plato was right to a certain extent when he pointed out that the non-existent is the realm of sophistry. In fact, the reasoning of the sophists, one might say, more than anything else, deals with the incidental, i.e. random (VI, 2). Aristotle speaks of sophistry as imaginary wisdom: "Sophistry is an imaginary philosophy, not a real one" (IV, 2).

Aristotle wrote a special logical essay “On Sophistic Refutations”, which contains the following definition of sophistry: “Sophistry is imaginary wisdom, and invalid, and a sophist is one who seeks self-interest from imaginary, and not from real wisdom” (I). Aristotle reveals here the tricks of the sophists. For example, a sophist speaks too fast for his opponent to understand the meaning of his speech. The sophist deliberately draws out his speech, so that it would be difficult for his opponent to cover the entire course of his reasoning. The sophist seeks to piss off the opponent, because in anger it is already difficult to follow the logic of reasoning. The sophist destroys the seriousness of the opponent with laughter, and then leads to embarrassment, suddenly turning into a serious tone. This is the external tricks of sophistry.

But sophistry is also characterized by special logical devices. These are, first of all, deliberate paralogisms, that is, imaginary syllogisms - inferences. Sophism - this is deliberate, and not involuntary paralogism. Aristotle establishes two sources of paralogisms:

1) ambiguity and polysemy of verbal expressions and

2) incorrect logical connection of thoughts. Aristotle lists six linguistic paralogisms and seven extralinguistic paralogisms. For example, amphibolia- ambiguity of the verbal construction (“fear of fathers” - is it the fear of the fathers themselves, or is it the fear of the fathers), homonymy- ambiguity of words (dog - animal and constellation; not mine and dumb), etc. It is impossible to answer affirmatively or negatively to the questions: “Have you stopped beating your father?”, “Are Socrates and Caius at home?” (if only one of them is at home). Aristophanes also ridicules the sophists in his comedy "Clouds", however, turning Socrates into a sophist - an example of historical injustice. The same historical injustice cost Socrates his life.

5. Anthropocentrism and ethical rationalism of Socrates.

The first Athenian philosopher Socrates is a younger contemporary of Democritus. Socrates is interesting not only for his teaching, but also for his life, since his life was the embodiment of his teaching. Socrates had a great influence on ancient and world philosophy.

Sources. Our information about the teachings of Socrates is sparse and not entirely reliable. Socrates himself, who actively participated in various interviews, did not write anything. In Plato's dialogue Phaedrus, Socrates opposes the Egyptian god Teutus (Thoth), to whom the Egyptians attributed the invention of writing. Socrates speaks out against writing: writing makes knowledge external, interferes with its deep internal assimilation; letters are dead, no matter how much you ask them, they repeat the same thing; thanks to writing, knowledge is available to everyone and everyone; writing instills forgetfulness in our souls. Socrates preferred live conversational dialogue to a recorded monologue. Therefore, everything that we know about Socrates, we know by hearsay, mainly from his students and interlocutors - from the historian Xenophon and the philosopher Plato. Xenophon dedicated to Socrates and his teachings such works as "The Apology of Socrates" and "Memoirs of Socrates". Plato attributed almost all of his teaching to Socrates, so it is sometimes difficult to tell where Socrates ends and where Plato begins (especially in his early dialogues). The lack of direct information directly coming from Socrates leads to the fact that some historians of ancient philosophy in recent decades have repeatedly made attempts to prove that Socrates is just a literary character. However, many ancient authors talk about Socrates. As mentioned above, the caricatured image of Socrates as an imaginary sophist is drawn by Aristophanes in the comedy Clouds.

Life of Socrates. Socrates is the first Athenian (by birth and citizenship) philosopher. He came from the deme Alopeka, which was part of the Athenian policy and located at a distance of half an hour's walk from the capital of Attica. Socrates' father Sophroniscus is a stonemason, and his mother Filareta is a midwife. During the war between Athens and Sparta, Socrates valiantly performed his military duty. He participated in battles three times, the last time in the battle of Amphipolis in 422 BC, when the Spartans defeated the Athenians (this battle ended the first period of the war, which ended with the Peace of Niki in 421). Socrates no longer participated in the second period of this ill-fated war for the whole of Hellas. But she touched him with one of her tragic events. In 406, after a series of defeats, the Athenians suddenly won a victory at the Arginus Islands in a naval battle, but the Athenian strategists, due to a storm, could not bury the dead. Contrary to the saying “the winners are not judged,” the strategists were tried in the council of five hundred. Being at that time a pritan bule (assessor on the council), Socrates opposed the hasty trial of all the strategists at once. Socrates was not obeyed, and all eight strategists were executed. The defeat of Athens in the Peloponnesian War and the subsequent tyranny of the thirty did not pass Socrates by either. Once, being again a prytan, Socrates refused to participate in the massacre of tyrants over an honest Athenian citizen.

So Socrates fulfilled his public duties, which in the conditions of ancient democracy had to be performed by all free Athenians. However, Socrates did not strive for active social activity. He led the life of a philosopher: he lived unpretentiously, but had leisure. He was a bad family man, cared little about his wife and his three sons, who were born to him late, and who did not inherit his intellectual abilities, but borrowed limitations from his mother, the wife of Socrates Xanthippe, who went down in history as an example of an evil, absurd and stupid wife.

Socrates devoted all his time to philosophical conversations and disputes. He had many students. Unlike the sophists, the poor Socrates did not take money for education.

Death of Socrates. After the overthrow of the tyranny of the thirty and the restoration of democracy in Athens, Socrates was accused of godlessness. The accusation came from the tragic poet Meletus, the wealthy tanner Anita, and the orator Lycon. In the Meno dialogue, Plato reports that Anitas, a democrat who was expelled from Athens during the reign of the thirty tyrants and a participant in their overthrow, shows extreme dislike for the sophists, saying that "the sophists are an obvious death and corruption for those who associate with them "(91 C). When Socrates, citing the example of ordinary children of prominent Athenians, expresses confidence that “virtue cannot be taught” (94 E), Anita rudely cuts him off, after which Socrates bitterly remarks that Anita thinks that he, Socrates, like the sophists, destroys people. In the Euthyphro dialogue, Socrates tells Euthyphro, whom he accidentally met in court, that a certain Meletus, a man, apparently young and insignificant, wrote a denunciation against him, Socrates, where he accuses him of corrupting youth by inventing new gods. and overthrowing the old. Euthyphro reassures Socrates. However, in the spring of 399 BC. the philosopher appeared before helium- trial by jury. Meletus acted as an accuser, stating that he accuses Socrates with an oath that “he does not honor the gods that the city honors, but introduces new deities, and is guilty of corrupting youth; and the punishment for that is death” (DLS 116). For the success of his accusation, Meletus had to gain at least a fifth of the votes of those who sat in the helium. In response to the accusation, Socrates delivered his defense speech, in which he refuted the accusations made against him, after which he was found guilty by a majority of votes. Now Socrates had to punish himself. He offered to award him a lifetime free lunch in Prytaneum along with the Olympic champions, and in extreme cases, a one-minute fine, after which the jury condemned Socrates to death by even more votes. Then Socrates delivered his third speech, saying that he was already old (he was then 70 years old) and was not afraid of death, which is either a transition into non-existence, or a continuation of life in Hades, where he will meet Homer and other prominent people. In the memory of posterity, he, Socrates, will forever remain a wise man, while his accusers will suffer (and in fact, according to Plutarch, they all soon hanged themselves). All three of Socrates' speeches are contained in Plato's Apology of Socrates.

Socrates was to be executed immediately, but on the eve of the trial, a ship with an annual religious mission left Athens for the island of Delos. Until the return of the ship, executions were prohibited by custom. While awaiting execution, Socrates had to spend thirty days in prison. On the eve of it, early in the morning, to Socrates, having bribed the jailer, his friend Criton makes his way, saying that the guards have been bribed and Socrates can flee. However, Socrates refuses, believing that the established laws must be obeyed, otherwise he would have already emigrated from Athens. And although now he was condemned unjustly, the law must be respected. We learn about this from Plato's dialogue Crito. In the dialogue "Phaedo" Plato tells about the last day of Socrates' life. Socrates spent this day with his disciples. He tells them that he is not afraid of death, because he was prepared for it with all his philosophy and way of life. After all, philosophizing itself, in his opinion, is nothing but dying for earthly life, preparation for the liberation of the immortal soul from its mortal bodily shell. In the evening Xanthippe's wife came, Socrates' relatives came and brought his three sons. He said goodbye to them and let them go. Then, in the presence of his disciples, Socrates drank a cup of vegetable poison. According to Plato, Socrates died quietly. His last words were a request to sacrifice a rooster to Asclepius. Such a sacrifice was usually made to the god of medicine by those who had recovered. Socrates wanted to emphasize by this that the death of the body is the recovery of the soul. It is easy to see that the “Phaedonian” Socrates imagines death differently than Socrates from the “Apology”. No wonder. The Socrates of the Apologia is closer to the historical Socrates. In the Phaedo, Plato attributed his idealistic views to Socrates, putting into his mouth his four proofs of the immortality of the soul. This is the outer side of the life and death of Socrates.

The inner life of Socrates. Socrates loved thoughtful contemplation. Often he was so withdrawn into himself that he became motionless and disconnected from the outside world. In the Platonic dialogue "Feast", Alcibiades tells that once during the siege of Potidea, Socrates, thinking, stood for a day without leaving his place. Socrates experienced a spiritual evolution. It never occurred to him himself that he was wise, until the question of one of his admirers, addressed to the Delphic oracle, was there anyone wiser than Socrates, the Delphic oracle replied that no, which Socrates was very puzzled by. Wanting to refute the Pythia, Socrates began to communicate with those whom he considered smarter than himself, but was surprised to see that the wisdom of these people is apparent. But even then Socrates was not proud. He decided that Apollo, through the mouth of the Pythia, wanted to say that Socrates is wiser than others, not because he is really wise, but because he knows that his wisdom is worth nothing before the wisdom of God. Others are not wise because they think they know something. Socrates formulates his superiority over other people in this way: "I know that I know nothing."

Call of Socrates. At the same time, Socrates was convinced that he was chosen by God and assigned to the Athenian people, like a gadfly to a horse, in order not to let his fellow citizens fall into spiritual hibernation and take care of their affairs more than themselves. By “deeds” Socrates understands here the desire for enrichment, a military career, household chores, speeches in a national assembly, conspiracies, uprisings, participation in government, etc., and by “care for oneself” - moral and intellectual self-improvement. For the sake of his calling, Socrates gave up work. He, Socrates, "God himself put into operation, obliging ... to live, doing philosophy." Therefore, Socrates proudly says in court, "as long as I breathe and remain strong, I will not stop philosophizing."

"Demon" of Socrates. This is a kind of inner voice, through which God inclines Socrates to philosophize, always forbidding something. Socrates heard such a voice from childhood, he rejected him from certain actions. The "demon", the inner voice, was thus related to the practical activity of Socrates, without playing a role in Socratic philosophizing itself.

The subject of philosophy according to Socrates. Socrates, like some sophists, focuses on man. But man is considered by Socrates only as a moral being. Therefore, the philosophy of Socrates is an ethical anthropologism. Both mythology and physics were alien to the interests of Socrates. He believed that the interpreters of mythology work inefficiently. At the same time, Socrates was not interested in nature either. Drawing an analogy with the contemporary Chinese, it can be argued that Socrates is closer to the Confucians than to the Taoists. He said: "the terrain and the trees do not want to teach me anything, not like the people in the city" (Plato. T.2.S.163). However, ironically, Socrates had to pay the price for the physics of Anaxagoras. Indeed, it was precisely because of his views that a law was passed in Athens declaring “criminals of the state those who do not honor the gods according to the established custom or explain the celestial phenomena in a scientific way.” Socrates was accused of allegedly teaching that the Sun is a stone and the Moon is an earth. And no matter how Socrates argued that it was not he who taught this, but Anaxagoras, they did not listen to him. Socrates once expressed the essence of his philosophical concerns to Phaedrus with some annoyance: “I still cannot, according to the Delphic inscription, know myself” (Ibid., p. 362). The fact is that over the entrance to the temple of Apollo in Delphi it was inscribed: “Gnothi seaton” - “know thyself!”. The call "Know thyself!" became for Socrates the next motto after the statement: "I know that I know nothing." Both of them determined the essence of his philosophy.

Self-knowledge had quite a definite meaning for Socrates. To know oneself meant knowing oneself as a social and moral being, and not only and not so much as a unique personality, but as a person in general. The main content, the goal of the philosophy of Socrates - general ethical issues. Later, Aristotle will say about Socrates: "Socrates dealt with questions of morality, but he did not study nature as a whole" (Metaph. I, 6).

Socrates method. Philosophically, the method of Socrates, which he uses in the study of ethical questions, is extremely important. In general, it can be called the method of subjective dialectics. Being a lover of self-contemplation, Socrates at the same time loved to communicate with people. In addition, he was a master of dialogue, oral interviews. It is no coincidence that the accusers of Socrates were afraid that he would be able to convince the court. He avoided external methods, he was primarily interested in content, not form. At the trial, Socrates said that he would speak simply, without choosing words, for he would speak the truth in the way he used to speak from childhood and as he later spoke in the square near the money changers. Alcibiades noted that the speeches of Socrates at first glance seem ridiculous, as if he speaks the same words about the same thing, and he speaks of some kind of pack donkeys, blacksmiths and shoemakers. But if you think about the speeches of Socrates, then only they will turn out to be meaningful. In addition, Socrates was a skillful interlocutor, a master of dialogue, with which his subjective dialectics as a method of cognition is connected.

Irony. Socrates was an interlocutor of his own mind. He is ironic and sly. Not suffering from false shame, pretending to be a simpleton and an ignoramus, he modestly asked his interlocutor to explain to him what, by the nature of his occupation, this interlocutor should, it would seem, know well. Not yet suspecting with whom he was dealing, the interlocutor began to lecture Socrates. He asked several premeditated questions, and the interlocutor of Socrates was lost. Socrates, however, continued to calmly and methodically raise questions, still ironically over him. Finally, one of these interlocutors, Menon, bitterly declared: “I, Socrates, even before meeting you heard that you only do what you yourself are confused and confusing people. And now, in my opinion, you have bewitched and enchanted me and spoke so much that I have complete confusion in my head ... After all, I have spoken about virtue a thousand times in every way to different people, and very well, as it seemed to me, and now I even I can’t say what it is at all” (80 AB). So the soil is plowed. The interlocutor of Socrates was freed from self-confidence. Now he is ready to search for the truth together with Socrates.

Sophistry of Socrates. Socratic irony is not the irony of a skeptic and not the irony of a sophist. The skeptic here would say that there is no truth. The sophist would add that since there is no truth, consider as truth what is to your advantage. Socrates, being an enemy of the sophists, believed that each person can have his own opinion, but the truth should be the same for everyone. The positive part of the Socratic method is aimed at achieving such a truth.

Mayeutics. The soil is prepared, but Socrates himself did not want to sow it. After all, he emphasized that he knew nothing. Nevertheless, he talks with the tamed "expert", questions him, receives answers, weighs them and asks new questions. “When I ask you,” Socrates says to his interlocutor, “I only research the subject together, because I myself do not know it” (165 V). Considering that he himself did not possess the truth, Socrates helped her to be born in the soul of his interlocutor. He likened his method to midwifery, his mother's profession. Just as she helped children be born, Socrates himself helped the truth be born. Therefore, Socrates called his method May-Eutics - the art of midwifery.

What does it mean to know? To know is to know what it is. Menon, speaking eloquently about virtue, cannot define it, and it turns out that he does not know what virtue is. Therefore, the goal of maieutics, the goal of a comprehensive discussion of any subject, is its definition, the achievement of a concept about it. Socrates was the first to raise knowledge to the level of a concept. If before him philosophers used concepts, they did it spontaneously. Only Socrates drew attention to the fact that if there is no concept, then there is no knowledge.

Induction. The acquisition of conceptual knowledge was achieved through induction (induction), i.e. climbing from the particular to the general, which should have happened in the interview process. For example, in the dialogue Laches, Socrates asks two Athenian generals what courage is. To the question of Socrates, one of the commanders named Laches answers without thinking: “This, by Zeus, is not difficult [to say]. Whoever decides to hold his place in the ranks, repel the enemy and not run away, he is certainly courageous ”(190 E). However, it immediately turns out that such a definition does not fit the whole subject, but only some of its aspects. Socrates gives an example that contradicts Laches's definition of courage. Didn't the Scythians in the wars, the Spartans in the battle of Plataea not show courage? But the Scythians rush into a feigned flight to destroy the pursuing system, and then stop and hit the enemies. The Spartans did the same. Then Socrates clarifies the formulation of the question. “I had an idea,” he said, “to ask about the courageous not only in the infantry, but also in the cavalry, and in general in every kind of war, and I’m not only talking about warriors, but also about those who courageously face dangers on sea, courageous against disease, poverty" (191 D). So, “what is courage, as it is the same in everything?” (191 E). In other words, Socrates posed the question: what is courage as such, what is the concept of courage that would express the essential features of all kinds of courage? This should be the subject of dialectical reasoning. Gnoseologically, the pathos of the entire philosophy of Socrates is to find an appropriate concept for everything. Since no one yet understood this, except for Socrates, he turned out to be the wisest of all. But since Socrates himself had not yet reached such concepts and knew about it, he claimed that he knew nothing.

To know oneself means to find the concepts of moral qualities that are common to all people. Aristotle will say later in the Metaphysics that "two things can rightly be attributed to Socrates - proof by induction and general definitions" (XIII, 4). True, it would be naive to look for such definitions in Plato's dialogues. In the early, Socratic dialogues of Plato, there are no definitions yet, because the dialogues break off at the most interesting place. The main thing for Socrates is the process, even if it does not end with anything.

The Anti-Amoralism of Socrates. The belief in the existence of objective truth means for Socrates that there are objective moral norms, that the difference between good and evil is not relative, but absolute. Like some sophists, Socrates did not equate happiness with profit. He identified happiness with virtue. But you need to do good only knowing what it consists of. Only that person is courageous who knows what courage is. Knowing what courage is makes a person courageous. In general, the knowledge of what is good and what is evil makes people virtuous. Knowing what is good and what is bad, no one can do bad things. Evil is the result of ignorance of the good. Morality, according to Socrates, is a consequence of knowledge. This shows that the moral theory of Socrates is purely rationalistic. Aristotle will later object to Socrates: having knowledge of good and evil and being able to use this knowledge are not the same thing. Evil people, having such knowledge, ignore it. Intemperate people do it involuntarily. In addition, knowledge must be able to apply to specific situations. Ethical virtues are achieved through education, it is a matter of habit. You have to get used to being brave.

Idealism and Socrates. The question of Socrates' idealism is not simple. The striving for conceptual knowledge, for thinking in concepts, is not in itself idealism. However, the possibility of idealism was embedded in Socrates' method. If “there is no knowledge about the fluid”, and the subject of the concept should be something eternal and unchanging, if at all “there is knowledge and understanding of something, then in addition to the sensually perceived, there must be other entities that are constantly abiding” ( Aristotle. Metaphysics XIII, 4).

In addition, the possibility of idealism was present in Socrates due to the fact that his activity meant a change in the subject of philosophy. Before Socrates (and partly before the Sophists), the main subject of philosophy was nature, the world external to man. Socrates, on the other hand, argued that he is unknowable, and only the soul of a person and his deeds can be known, which is the task of philosophy.

Socratic schools

At the beginning of the 4th c. BC e. some students of Socrates founded new philosophical schools, which received the name Socratic, or Socratic. These are the schools: 1) Megarian; 2) Elido-Eretrian; 3) Cyrenian; 4) cynic. The first three were named after the cities where their leaders lived, the last - by the derisive nickname "dog" given to its representative - Diogenes from Sinope (not to be confused with Diogenes from Apollonia). Each of these schools in its own way solved the questions posed by Socrates about the highest good, about the possibility of knowledge, about the subject of general concepts, about their reliability and about the goals of practical activity leading to the good.

1. Mega school. Founded by a native of Mogara, a student and zealous admirer of Socrates, Euclid (not to be confused with the mathematician Euclid), the Megagra school existed until the middle of the 3rd century. BC e. and had, besides Euclid, a number of followers: Eubulides, Diodorus and Stilpon. At the heart of the teachings of the Megarian school was the idea that only “incorporeal species” or the general, comprehended through concepts, could be the subject of knowledge. The common coincides with the one good and is immutable by nature. Neither the sensible world, nor the emergence, death, movement and change confirmed by sensations are impossible, and any attempt to think them leads to contradictions. To substantiate these positions, the Megarians invented many arguments in which they metaphysically opposed the general to the individual and as a result came (Stilpon) to a sophistic denial of the possibility of referring the general concept to individual objects [for more details, see 22a, ch. II].

2. Elido-Eretrian school. The Elido-Eretrian school was founded by Phaedo of Elis; one of the leaders of this school, Menedemos, subsequently laid the foundation for the Eretrian school. Phaedo and Menedemos were skillful debaters and teachers of eloquence, but their school did not add original ideas to the teachings of the Megarians, with whom its representatives shared the view of the unity of valor and good.

3. Cynic school. The founder of the Cynic school was Antisthenes (second half of the 5th - first half of the 4th century BC), who listened to the sophists and then joined Socrates. Antisthenes sharply opposed Plato's teachings about incorporeal "views" or "ideas" comprehended by the mind. Diogenes of Sinope (died 323 BC) stood out from Antisthenes' disciples and became famous for the imperturbable consistency with which he carried out the ideal of ethical behavior he developed. Crates of Thebes and his wife Hipparchia were captured by the teaching and example of Diogenes. The ideas of Cynic ethics reveal their strength as early as the 3rd century BC. BC e., but later the Cynic school merges with Stoicism, however, putting forward several prominent representatives in the first two centuries of our era.

What did Antisthenes teach? The main theoretical position of Antisthenes is the denial of the reality of the general. There are only single things. A concept is only a word that explains what a thing is or what it is. Therefore, the application of general concepts to separate objects is impossible: neither the combination of various concepts in the unity of judgment, nor the definition of concepts, nor even contradiction is possible, since only a judgment of identity can be expressed about any thing, like: a horse is a horse, a table is a table. Plato's doctrine of intelligible "kinds" is untenable, since a single, sensually perceived instance of a species is available to perception, but not the "kind" or "idea" itself.

According to the ethics of the Cynics, wisdom does not consist in theoretical knowledge inaccessible to humans, but only in the knowledge of the good. The true good can only be the property of each individual, and the goal of a virtuous life can be not wealth, not health, and not even life itself (all these are goods that are beyond our control), but only calmness based on renunciation of everything that makes a person dependent: from property, from pleasures, from artificial and conventional concepts accepted among people. Hence the morality of asceticism, the ideal of extreme simplicity, bordering on a “pre-cultural” state, contempt for most needs and needs, except for the basic ones, without which life itself would be impossible, a mockery of all conventions, of religious prejudices, the preaching of unconditional naturalness and unconditional personal freedom.

4. Cyrene school. The Cyrene school was founded by Aristippus, a native of African Cyrene, and continued by Aretas, Antipater, and then Theodore, Hegesius and Annikerides (about 320 - 280 BC). Together with the Cynics, Aristippus proceeds from the conviction that the object of knowledge can only be a practically achievable good. Since, according to Aristippus, only our sensations can be an instrument of knowledge, and since it is not the properties of things themselves that are perceived in sensations, but only our own, completely individual states, then only the pleasure or pain experienced by us during sensation can be considered a criterion of goodness. Pleasure cannot be a state of indifferent peace, but only a positive pleasure, extending neither to the past nor to the future, but only to the present. Only a separate, moment-filling pleasure has a price and should be the subject of aspirations. Since neither the past nor the future belongs to us, neither remorse, nor hope for the future, nor fear of the future have any meaning. The purpose of life is to enjoy the present. Of all possible pleasures, sensual pleasures are the most desirable, because they are the strongest. However, the means to achieve happiness must be freedom, which would give us the strength to give up an unattainable pleasure or pleasure, a satisfaction that threatens to cause us suffering. Therefore, the philosopher must be equally prepared both to use them, if circumstances permit, and to abandon them with a light and carefree heart. From the teachings of Aristippus, Theodore deduced the denial of the existence of gods and the non-obligation of ethical standards for a sage. Unlike Aristippus, Theodore considered the goal of activity not the enjoyment of individual pleasures, but joy, which stands above individual goods and implies reasonableness in those who strive for it.

Greek philosophy in the 7th - 6th centuries BC and was essentially its first attempt at a rational comprehension of the surrounding world.

There are four main stages in the development of the philosophy of ancient Greece: I, VII-V centuries BC. - pre-Socratic philosophy II V-IV centuries BC. - classical stage Outstanding philosophers of the classical stage: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle. In public life, this stage is characterized as the highest rise of Athenian democracy in the 3rd-4th-2nd centuries BC. - Hellenistic stage.

(The decline of the Greek cities and the establishment of the rule of Macedonia) IV I century BC. - V, VI centuries AD - Roman philosophy.

Greek culture VII - V centuries. BC. - this is the culture of a society in which the leading role belongs to slave labor, although free labor was widely used in certain industries that required high qualifications of producers, such as arts and crafts.

outlook

The worldview of the broad masses of the Greek society of the period under review basically retained those ideas that took place as early as the second millennium BC. Nature still seemed to the Greek inhabited and ruled by various creatures, about which folk fantasy composed colorful poetic myths. These creatures can basically be combined into three cycles: the supreme Olympian celestial gods with Zeus at the head, numerous minor deities of mountains, forests, streams, etc. and, finally, the heroes-ancestors, patrons of the community.

According to Hellenic ideas, the power of the Olympian gods was neither primordial nor unlimited. The predecessors of the Olympians were considered to be the older generations of the gods, overthrown by their descendants. The Greeks thought that Chaos and the Earth (Gaia), the underworld Tartarus and Eros, the life principle, love, originally existed. Gaia-Earth gave birth to the starry sky Uranus, which became the original ruler of the world and the spouse of the Earth goddess Gaia. Uranus and Gaia gave birth to the second generation of the Titan gods.

The Olympic gods who seized power over the world divided the universe among themselves as follows. Zeus became the supreme god, the ruler of the sky, celestial phenomena and especially thunder and lightning. Poseidon was the ruler of moisture that irrigates the earth, the ruler of the sea, winds and earthquakes. Hades, or Pluto, was the lord of the underworld, the underworld, where the shadows of the dead eked out a miserable existence.

Zeus' wife Hera was considered the patroness of marriage. Hestia was the goddess of the hearth, the name of which she bore (Hestia in Greek - hearth).

With the emergence of a new class society and the establishment of policies, a number of gods, especially Apollo, become patrons of states. The significance of Apollo grew even more in connection with the founding of a large number of new cities. As a result, the cult of Apollo began to push the cult of Zeus into the background; he was especially popular among the Greek aristocrats.

In addition to the main gods, who personified the most significant natural phenomena, as well as human life and social relations, the whole world surrounding the Greek seemed to him abundantly populated by numerous divine beings.

There was a myth about the origin of people among the Hellenes, according to which one of the titans, Prometheus, molded the first man from clay, and Athena endowed him with life. Prometheus was the patron and mentor of the human race in the early days of its existence. Benefiting people, Prometheus stole from the sky and brought them fire. For this, he was severely punished by Zeus, who ordered Prometheus to be nailed to a rock, where an eagle tormented his liver every day until Heracles (son of Zeus and an earthly woman) freed him.

Temples, altars, sacred groves, streams, and rivers were places of worship for the Hellenic gods. Cult rites among the Greeks were associated with public and private life. The veneration of the gods was accompanied by the sacrifice of animals on the altars in front of the temples and prayer appeals to the gods. Birth of a child, wedding and funeral were accompanied by special ceremonies.

Ancient philosophy (first Greek and then Roman) covers the period from the 8th-7th centuries. BC e. 5th-6th centuries n. e. It originated in the ancient Greek policies (city-states) of democratic orientation and the orientation of its content, the method of philosophizing differed both from the ancient Eastern methods of philosophizing, and from the mythological explanation of the world, characteristic of the works of Homer and the writings of Hesiod. Of course, early Greek philosophy is still closely connected with mythology, with sensual images and metaphorical language. However, she immediately rushed to consider the question of the relationship between the sensual images of the world and itself as an infinite cosmos. For a myth as a non-reflexive form of consciousness, the image of the world and the real world are indistinguishable and, accordingly, incompatible.

Before the gaze of the ancient Greeks, who lived during the childhood of civilization, the world appeared as a huge accumulation of various natural and social processes. Being was associated with many elements that are in continuous change, and consciousness with a limited number of concepts that denied these elements in a fixed, constant form. The search for a stable source in the changing cycle of the phenomena of the vast cosmos was the main goal of the first philosophers. The philosophy of Greece, therefore, appears in its subject matter as the doctrine of "first principles and causes" (Aristotle).

In the development of ancient philosophy, with some degree of conventionality, four main stages can be distinguished.

First- covers the period from 7 to 5 c. BC e. - pre-Socratic. This stage includes the philosophers of the Miletus school, Heraclitus of Ephesus, the Eleatic school, Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, the ancient Greek atomists (Leukipus and Democritus).

Second stage - from about half of the 5th c. and until the end of the 4th c. BC e. It is usually characterized as classic. This period is associated with the activities of the prominent Greek philosophers Protogoras, Socrates, Plato, and especially Aristotle.

Third the stage (the end of the 4th century - the 2nd century BC) is usually designated as Hellenistic. At this time, a number of philosophical schools appeared: peripatetics, academic philosophy (Platonic Academy), Stoic and Epicurean schools, skepticism. Prominent philosophers of this period were Theophrastus, Carneades and Epicurus. However, all these schools were characterized by a transition to the problems of ethics, moralistic revelations in the era of decline and decline of Hellenic culture.

Fourth stage (1st century BC - 5th-6th centuries AD) falls on the period when Rome began to play a decisive role in the ancient world, under the influence of which Greece also falls. Roman philosophy is formed under the influence of Greek philosophy, especially the Hellenistic period. Accordingly, three directions can be distinguished in Roman philosophy: stoicism (Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius), epicureanism (Titus Lucretius Carus), skepticism (Sextus Empiricus). In 3-4 centuries. n. e. in Roman philosophy, Neoplatonism arises and develops, the founder was Plotinus. Neoplatonism had a huge impact not only on early Christian philosophy, but on all medieval philosophy.

First- covers the period from 7 to 5 c. BC e. - pre-Socratic.

Miletus school (6th century BC, Miletus)- its founder Thales. These philosophers interpreted substance as the primary material from which everything arose. At first, some known substance, considered abstractly and idealized, was taken as a substance. According to Thales, the substance is water; according to Anaximenes, it is air; according to Anaximander, the indefinite substance "apeiron". "Apeiros" - in Greek means "limitless, limitless, endless." Apeiron Anaximander is material, "does not know old age", "immortal and indestructible" and is in perpetual motion. The infinity of the apeiron allows it "not to dry out, that is, to be the eternal genetic beginning of the Cosmos, and also allows it to underlie the mutual transformations of the four elements. Anaximander argued that the apeiron is the only cause of the birth and death of all that exists; the apeiron produces everything from itself: being in a rotational movement, apeiron "highlights opposites - wet and dry, cold and warm; their pair combinations form earth (dry and cold), water (wet and cold), air (wet and hot), fire (dry and hot). Thus, in this picture of the world, which is actually a cosmogony, gods and divine forces are completely absent, that is, Anaximander tried to explain the origin and structure of the world from its internal causes and from one material and material principle. Anaximander also speaks of the origin of man: the living thing itself was born on the border of the sea and land from silt under the influence of heavenly fire. The first living beings lived in the sea. Then some threw off their scales and became "land". But Anaximander's man descended from a marine animal; he was born and developed to adulthood inside some huge fish. Having been born as an adult child, he could not survive alone, without parents - a person went to land.

Similar ideas were also expressed by philosophers who did not belong to the Milesian school. For example, Heraclitus of Ephesus called fire substance. Heraclitus says that "fire will embrace everything and judge everyone", his fire is not only "arche" as an element, but also a living and intelligent force. That fire, which for the senses appears precisely as fire, for the mind is the logos - the principle of order and measure both in the Cosmos and in the Microcosm (being fiery, the human soul has a self-growing logos), that is, it is an objective law of the universe. Fire, according to Heraclitus, is intelligent and divine. The philosophy of Heraclitus, of course, dialectical: the world, "controlled" by the logos, is one and changeable, nothing in the world is repeated, everything is transient and disposable, and the main law of the universe is struggle ("strife") - "the father of everything and the king over everything", "the struggle is universal and everything is born through struggle and out of necessity," says Heraclitus as the first dialectician.

Elea school (6th-5th century BC, city of Elea). Its representatives: Parmenides, Zeno of Elea, Xenophanes, Melis. It is among the Elats that the category of being first appears, and the question of the relationship between being and thinking is first raised. Parmenides with his famous dictum "Being exists, but there is no non-existence" actually laid the foundations of the ontologism paradigm as a conscious, distinct model of philosophical thinking. What is being for Parmenides? The most important definition of being is its comprehensibility by the mind: that which can be known only by the mind6 is being, while being is inaccessible to the senses. Therefore, "one and the same is thought and that about which thought exists." - This position of Parmenides affirms the identity of being and thinking. Being is that which always exists, which is one and indivisible, which is motionless and consistent, "like the thought of it." Thinking is the ability to comprehend unity in non-contradictory forms, the result of thinking is knowledge (episteme). Zeno's aporias - arguments that lead to a dead end - "Arrow" (movement cannot begin, because a moving object must first reach half of the path before it reaches the end, but in order to reach half, it must reach half of the half ( "dichotomy" - literally "halving"), and so on - to infinity; that is, to get from one point to another, you need to go through an infinite number of points, and this is absurd), “Stages”, “Dichotomy”, “Achilles and the tortoise ” (the movement can never end: Achilles will never catch up with the tortoise, because when he comes to the point, the tortoise will move away from its “start” to such a part of the initial distance between Achilles and itself, so much its speed is less than the speed of Achilles, and so on until infinity). It follows from the last aporia that an attempt to think of movement leads to contradiction, therefore, movement is only an appearance. The substance is immovable. That is why the Eleatics were called "the ascetics." They laid the foundation for a cognitive approach based on the principle of the immutability of the world. This approach is called metaphysical. In ancient Greece, everyone wanted to refute the ideas of the Eleatics, but no one could.

Pythagorean school (512 BC, city of Croton)– The Pythagorean Union as a scientific-philosophical and ethical-political society of like-minded people is a closed organization of a paramilitary type, it was admitted after some tests. Pythagoras considered a number as a substance. "Everything is a number." Number is an independent entity, a special reality. Numerical ratios underlie all properties of things.

The Pythagorean Union was a closed organization, and its teachings were secret. Pythagorean Lifestyle relied on a hierarchy of values: in the first place - beautiful and decent (which included science), in the second - profitable and useful, in the third - pleasant. The Pythagoreans got up before sunrise, did mnemonic (related to the development and strengthening of memory) exercises, then went to the seashore to meet the sunrise. Then they thought about the upcoming business, did gymnastics, and worked. At the end, they bathed, they all had supper together and made a "libation to the gods", after which there was a general reading. Before going to bed, every Pythagorean gave himself an account of the past day. Based on the Pythagorean ethics there was a doctrine of "proper" as a victory over passions, as the subordination of the younger to the elders, as a cult of friendship and comradeship, as the veneration of Pythagoras. Such a way of life had ideological grounds - it stemmed from ideas about the cosmos as an ordered and symmetrical whole: but it was believed that the beauty of the cosmos is not revealed to everyone, but only to those who lead the right way of life. About the views of Pythagoras himself, only the following can be reliably said: firstly, "a number owns things", including moral ones: "Justice is a number multiplied by itself"; secondly, "the soul is harmony," and harmony is that numerical ratio; the soul, according to Pythagoras, is immortal and can migrate, that is, Pythagoras had the idea of ​​the dualism of the soul and body; thirdly, having put the number at the basis of the cosmos, Pythagoras endowed this old number with a new meaning - the Number correlates with the one, the one serves as the beginning of certainty, which is only cognizable - thus, the Number is the universe ordered by the number.

By the middle of the 5th c. BC. The Pythagorean Union collapsed.

atomic school. ancient atomism Democritus(460-370 BC): "Atoms are eternal, unchanging, there is no emptiness inside them, but emptiness separates them." The main properties of atoms are size and shape. Between the atoms of the human body are the "balls" of the soul. An atom is indivisible, the smallest particle of matter. Atoms differ in order and position (rotation). The number of atoms and their diversity is infinite. The eternal property of atoms is motion. Atoms hover in the void, colliding, they change direction, connecting, form bodies. The properties of bodies depend on the type and combination of atoms. Because the movement of atoms occurs according to strict laws, everything in the world is predetermined by necessity, there are no accidents. The gods do not interfere in the specific course of events. All the diversity of events is reduced to a single process - the movement of atoms in the void.

Second stage - from about half of the 5th c. and until the end of the 4th c. BC e. It is usually characterized as classic.

Sophists and Socrates.

Appearance in ancient Greece in the middle of the 5th century. BC. sophists is a natural phenomenon, because the sophists taught (for a fee) eloquence (rhetoric) and the ability to argue (eristics), and the demand for people in the cities of the Athenian Union, which was formed after the victory of the Athenians in the Greco-Persian wars, was great: in the courts and people's meetings, the ability to speak, persuade, and persuade was vital. And the sophists taught this, the art, without wondering what the truth is. Therefore, the word "sophist" from the very beginning acquired a reprehensible connotation, because the sophists knew how - and taught today to prove the thesis, and tomorrow the antithesis. But this is precisely what played the main role in the final destruction of the dogmatism of tradition in the worldview of the ancient Greeks.

The positive role of the sophists is that they created the science of the word and laid the foundations of logic.

Socrates had a great influence on ancient and world philosophy, he is interesting not only for his teaching, but also for his life itself, since his life was the embodiment of his teaching.

Socrates studied the problem of man, considering man as a moral being. Therefore, the philosophy of Socrates can be characterized as ethical anthropology. Socrates once expressed the essence of his philosophical concerns as follows: “I still cannot, according to the Delphic inscription, know myself,” and in conjunction with the certainty that he is wiser than others only because he knows that he knows nothing, that his wisdom is nothing compared to the wisdom of the gods - this motto was also included in the "program" of Socrates' philosophical searches.

Being a critic of the sophists, Socrates believed that each person can have his own opinion, but this is also not identical with "truths that everyone has their own"; the truth for all should be one, and the method of Socrates is aimed at achieving such truth, which he himself called "maieutics" (literally, "midwife") and which is a subjective dialectic - the ability to conduct a dialogue in such a way that as a result of the movement of thought through contradictory statements of position arguing are smoothed out, the one-sidedness of the points of view of each is overcome, true knowledge is obtained. Considering that he himself does not possess the truth, Socrates in the process of conversation, dialogue helped the truth "be born in the soul of the interlocutor." But what does it mean to know? To speak eloquently of virtue and not to define it is not to know what virtue is; therefore, the goal of maieutics, the goal of a comprehensive discussion of any subject, is a definition expressed in a concept. Thus, Socrates was the first to bring knowledge to the level of the concept before, his thinkers did it spontaneously, that is, the method of Socrates also pursued the achievement of conceptual knowledge - and this indicates the rationalistic orientation of Socrates. Socrates argued that the world external to a person is unknowable, and only the soul of a person and his deeds can be known, which, according to Socrates, is the task of philosophy. To know oneself means to find the concepts of moral qualities common to people; Socrates' belief in the existence of objective truth, that there are objective moral norms, that the difference between good and evil is not relative, but absolute. Socrates identified happiness not with profit, but with virtue. But you can do good only if you know what it is: only that person is brave who knows what courage is. That is, it is precisely the knowledge of what is good and what is evil that makes a person virtuous, and knowing what is good and what is bad, a person will not be able to act badly: morality is a consequence of knowledge, just as immorality is a consequence of ignorance of the good. This is a brief description of the "Socratic philosophical revolution" that changed the understanding and tasks of philosophy and its subject matter.

From ancient, so-called "Socratic schools" perhaps the school of cynics ("dog philosophy") gained the greatest popularity - thanks to Diogenes of Sinop, who with his life gave a model of the cynic sage, and whom Plato called "the mad Socrates." Diogenes "moderated" his needs so much that he lived in an earthen barrel, did not use dishes, subjected his body to trials; he brought contempt for pleasure to its apogee, finding pleasure in the very contempt for pleasure. The Cynics philosophized with their way of life, which they considered the best, freeing a person from all the conventions of life, attachments, and even from almost all needs.

Ontology of Plato(427-437 BC). The philosophical school of Plato in Athens was called the "Academy", because. was located near the Akadema temple. His concept: there are two worlds - the sensual world of things and the intelligible world of ideas - eidos - which is located in the heavenly realm. In earthly reality, we see eidos only embodied in things. In an ideal world, they exist in their pure form. The highest idea is the idea of ​​the good. The existence of things is secondary to the eidos. A thing is formed by the combination of eidos with a certain amount of matter. Plato called the material principle "hora" - matter. It is a passive dead substance that has no internal organization. Thus, the theoretical discrepancy is determined materialism (Democritus) And idealism (Plato). Materialism considers substance as a material principle, and idealism as a spiritual principle.

Plato in ontology is an idealist, he is considered the founder of the idealistic tradition (the so-called "Plato's line"). Like the Elates, Plato characterizes being as eternal and unchanging, cognizable only by the mind and inaccessible to sensory perception.

Plato taught that in order to explain this or that phenomenon, it is necessary to find its idea - that is, the concept: that constant and stable that is not given to sensory perception. The world of sensually perceived things for Plato is by no means "non-existence", but becoming - everything temporal, moving, mortal, always different, divisible; to these characteristics, given by Plato as opposed to those of being, must be added; bodily, material - as opposed to the ideal world of eidos.

The soul, according to Plato, is like an idea - one and indivisible, but parts can be distinguished in it:

a) reasonable;

b) affective (emotional);

c) lustful (sensual).

If a reasonable part of it prevails in a person's soul, a person strives for the highest good, for justice and truth; these are philosophers. If the affective part of the soul is more developed, then courage, courage, the ability to subordinate lust to duty are inherent in a person; these are guards, and there are far more of them than philosophers. If the “lower”, lustful part of the soul prevails, then a person should be engaged in physical labor - to be craftsman or farmer and most of those people. Based on this logic of reasoning, Plato built a project of an ideal state similar to a pyramid: philosophers rule in it (and they must study until the age of 30), guards protect order, and working people work ... Plato spoke about common property, about that the upbringing of children should be done by the state, and not by the family, that the individual due will obey the universal: "A person lives for the soul of the state" ...

Souls, according to Plato, can migrate and can be in a supersensible ideal being; therefore, people have "innate ideas" - memories of being in the world of eidos, and philosophy classes are "memories of the soul about conversations with God."

Doctrine about the state (social ontology) Plato: the state is a settlement. The real state is preceded by an ideal state in which everyone is equal. Conflicts in human society are caused by inequality. Plato was one of the first philosophers who connected human evil, social conflicts with private property. And therefore, striving for an ideal state, Plato taught about the need for state measures to curb the expansion of property and the growth of private property. In solving this problem, Plato suggested two ways: 1. Raising children apart from the family, because. at the same time, they develop the same consciousness. He also intended to destroy the family, as a form of long-term residence of people. 2. Limitation of luxury and expansion

personal economy.

Aristotle(384 - 322 BC). He entered Plato's "Academy" and stayed in it for 20 years. Aristotle is the most famous and profound nature. He created and formulated classical European philosophy.

Aristotle first identified philosophy as metaphysics. He singled out a special role for her: questions of the origins of being, movement, time and space, questions related to man and his goals, the problem

knowledge and distinction between true and false knowledge.

Aristotle divided the sciences into theoretical, practical and creative.

Theoretical sciences - philosophy, mathematics, physics. It is they, and above all philosophy, that discover the unchanging principles of being.

All interpretations of the real world can be covered with the help of 10 concepts - categories- essence, quality, quantity, relation, place, time, position, action, suffering, possession. They act as characteristics describing real bodies.

Aristotle divided first and second entities. The first essence is what underlies all things, it is an individual, single, indivisible being. The second essence is expressed not by individual being, but by genera and species.

Aristotle believed that change can be found in the categories

time and movement. Time, according to Aristotle, is a movement in change, but at the same time time is uniform everywhere and in everything. Change can speed up and slow down, and time is even. Time is not related to a person, it is a characteristic of movement. But time is not movement itself, although it cannot exist without it. There is always a previous and a following in time, and we recognize time when we distinguish between movement, defining the previous and the next. And it is possible to do this, because. movement involves number, and the category "now" is an important factor in this. Time is the number of movement, and "now", like movement, is, as it were, a unit of number.

Aristotle's materialism is manifested in the fact that for him there is no

movement, apart from things, and it has always been and will always be.

What is the source of movement? Aristotle did not deny that

there are sources, like action, of one body upon another, but all bodies

possess spontaneity, including many inanimate objects.

Spontaneity was defined by Aristotle, through the existence of the first movement, which was carried out by the "immovable engine" - God. For a person, the source of his movement is his needs and interests, as the need for an external object.

The principal place of Aristotle's philosophy lies in the doctrine of matter and form. “I call matter that from which some thing arises, i.e. matter is the material of a thing. Matter is indestructible and does not disappear, but it is only material. Before taking a certain form, it is in a state of non-existence; without a form, it is devoid of life, integrity, energy. Without form, matter is a possibility; with form, it becomes reality. Aristotle taught that the reverse is also possible.

the transition of form into matter. Aristotle came to the conclusion that there is also the first form - the form of forms - God.

The soul cannot be without a body, but it is not a body. The soul is something that belongs to the body. Aristotle believed that it is in the heart. Exists three types of soul: vegetable, sensual and reasonable. The first is the cause of growth and nourishment, the second feels, and the third knows and thinks. Animals and man have perception, but man perceives things, bodies, movement, and so on. through concepts and categories, this is the essence of the rational soul.

Doctrine about the state of Aristotle: the state is the final form of organization of people. It was preceded by family and settlement. Aristotle agreed that private property is the basis of economic inequality and socio-political conflicts. But unlike Plato, he believed that private property is eternal and unshakable. Aristotle believed that friends should have everything in common. His position: property should be private and distribution should be public. Therefore, Aristotle justified slavery, believing that the state should have bosses and subordinates. He called monarchy and aristocracy the best form of government and was an opponent of democracy, because. it easily developed into "ohpocracy" (ohpo - crowd). Aristotle divided the state into three estates: the aristocracy, warriors and small farmers, artisans. Horsemen will be able to manage the state best of all, because. they are not burdened with concerns about wealth.

Aristotle's doctrine was formed as a result of his criticism of Plato's doctrine of ideas. Aristotle proves the inconsistency of the Platonic hypothesis of "ideas" on the basis of the following:

1. "Ideas" of Plato are simple copies (twins) of sensible things and do not differ from them in their content. - A very materialistic thought!

2. The "view" (eidos) or "idea" of a person is essentially no different from the general features that belong to an individual person.

3. Since Plato separated the world of ideas from the world of things, ideas cannot give anything to the existence of things.

4. The relationship of ideas to each other is similar to the relationship of the general to the particular, and considering the “idea” as the essence of the being of a thing, Plato (according to Aristotle) ​​fell into contradiction: with this understanding, each “idea” is at the same time an essence, since, being general, it is present in a less general, and at the same time not essence, since it, in turn, participates in a more general “idea” standing above it, which will be its essence.

5. Plato's doctrine of the sensory perception of the world of the "world of ideas" independent of things leads to the "absurd conclusion": since there is a similarity between ideas and sensually perceived things, and since, according to Plato, for everything similar there must also be an "idea" (" similarity"), then in addition to the idea, for example, "man" and in addition to the things (people) corresponding to it, there must also be an idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe similar that exists between them. Further - for this new idea and the first "idea" under it and its things, there must be another idea - and so on - ad infinitum.

6. By isolating the "idea" into the world of eternal essences, different from the changing world of things, Plato deprived himself of the opportunity to explain the facts of birth, death and movement.

7. Plato brings his theory of ideas closer to the assumption of the causes of everything that arises and teaches that all such assumptions go back to a single, but no longer assumed basis - to the idea of ​​the Good. However, this contradicts the existence of such concepts that cannot be elevated to a single higher concept .

According to Aristotle, each single thought is the unity of matter and form, but the form, in contrast to the "idea" of Plato, despite its non-materiality, is not some otherworldly entity that comes into matter from the outside. "Form" is the reality of that, the possibility of which is " matter", and, conversely, "matter" is the possibility of that, the reality of which will be "form". - So Aristotle tried to overcome the gap between the world of things and the world of eidos: according to Aristotle, within the limits of the sensual perceived world, a consistent transition from "matter" to its relative "form" is possible, and from "form" to its relative "matter". There are only single things - individuals, this is being according to Aristotle.

Aristotle's doctrine of being is based on his doctrine of categories, set forth in a special small work "Categories" and in the famous "Metaphysics". Here Aristotle tried to answer the question of what should be the initial approach to the problem of essence that introduces science: the most complete knowledge about a thing is achieved then, Aristotle believed, and he was obviously right when the essence of a thing becomes known to us. But Aristotle's categories are, first of all, not concepts, but the main "kinds" or categories of being and, accordingly, the main kinds of concepts about being as being. Aristotle offers ten such categories (if we also count the category "personality": quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, possession, action, suffering. But Aristotle's category of "Essence" is sharply separated from other categories, since when we say about essence, - explains Aristotle, - then we answer the question "what is the thing", and not the question "what is this thing" (quality), "how great is it" (quantity), etc. Aristotle has 2 criteria of essence "

1) conceivability (knowability in the concept)

2) "capacity for separate existence";

But these two criteria turn out to be incompatible, because "only the individual has an independent existence unconditionally" but the individual does not satisfy the first criterion - it is not comprehended by the mind, it is not expressed by the concept, it cannot be defined. Aristotle therefore has to find a compromise between the two criteria, and such a compromise consists in the fact that Aristotle takes as essence not an individual thing, not a kind of thing, and not a quantity, etc., but what is already defined and is so close to the individual, which almost merges with it. that will be the desired "essence", called in "Metaphysics" the "essence of a thing", or "the essence of the being of things." The "essence of being" is the form of a thing, or its "first essence". Therefore, any single thing is a unity of matter and form.

In addition to the "material" cause of a thing and its "formal" cause, Aristotle spoke of two more principles (masks) of everything that exists. This is the goal cause: "Destiny conditioning occurs not only among 'thought-determined actions', but also among 'things that occur naturally'" (#5).

Aristotle means the implementation of a certain purposeful process and call it "entelechy", striving for one's own good as the implementation of a specific potency (opportunity). "things that occur naturally."

All 4 reasons, according to Aristotle, are eternal, the material reason is not reducible to others, but formally, the driving and target reasons are actually reduced to one and such a triune reason for Aristotle is God. But the god of Aristotle is an exclusively philosophical god, this is divine thinking, active mind, self-sufficing, self-closed thinking, this is a kind of spiritual Absolute - "a mind that thinks itself, and its thought is thinking about thinking."

Aristotle paid much attention to the problems of thinking in general, leaving the fundamental developments in logic, by which he understood the science of proof, as well as the forms of thinking necessary for cognition: logic, according to Aristotle, explores the methods by which a known given can be reduced to elements capable of becoming a source of his explanation. Three issues have received special attention:

1) The question of the method of probable knowledge; this department of logical research Aristotle calls "dialectics" and considers in the treatise "Topeka".

2) The question of the two main methods of elucidating reliable knowledge, which are both definition and proof.

3) The question of the method of finding the premises of knowledge, that is, induction ("induction"). A few words about dialectics according to Aristotle. Believing that on a number of issues knowledge can only be probable, and not indisputably true, Aristotle argued that such knowledge implies its own, special method - not the method of science in the exact sense, but a method approaching scientific. then the method was called by Aristotle "dialectic", thereby deviating from the traditions of Socrates and Plato. In "dialectics", firstly, conclusions are developed which could lead to a probable answer to the question posed and which would be free from contradictions; secondly, ways of investigating that the answer to the question may turn out to be false are given.

Aristotle taught that what a person strives for is good. And the good is the goal that people desire not for themselves, but for the sake of the goal itself, and, therefore, the highest good is bliss. Bliss is the good life and right action. It cannot consist of a material good, but in its essence is determined by the peculiarity and purpose of a person. The main purpose of a person is activity and its excellent performance. According to Aristotle, life striving for the highest good can only be active. Good qualities that remain undetected do not give bliss.

Human virtue is the ability to navigate, to choose the proper action, to determine the location of the good. To do this, Aristotle spoke about the general principle of human activity, which he defined as the middle. There are many ways to make a mistake, but there is only one way to do the right thing.

For the ethics of Aristotle, the principle of justice is important, this is the principle

economic activity, the exchange of economic goods. Therefore, justice is an equal attitude towards material goods. Aristotle considered two forms of justice: distributive and equalizing. The first criterion is the dignity of the persons between whom the distribution takes place. Aristotle proceeds from the fact that people are not equal by nature, and distributive justice takes into account the social status of the individual. In the second case, the transfer of objects from one hand to another is determined not by dignity, but by economic foundations. Arithmetic proportionality operates here: society is held together by the fact that everyone is rewarded depending on his activity.

Aristotle thus first spoke of value as

economic properties of the objects of exchange. He believed that all objects should be measured by one thing. This is the need that connects everything. The measure of evaluation arises by common consent, and it is money. Good, virtue is not bodily properties, but the disclosure of the human. For Aristotle, leisure is a necessary condition for the good and contemplation.

The philosophy of Aristotle completes that period of ancient philosophy, which is often called the "philosophy of classical Greece" and which is the basis of all European philosophy.

Third the stage (the end of the 4th century - the 2nd century BC) is usually designated as Hellenistic.

Philosophers and philosophical schools of the Hellenistic period of ancient history are characterized not so much by putting forward new ideas as by comprehending, clarifying, commenting on the ideas and teachings created by the thinkers of the previous period.

Interest in the theoretical elucidation of the picture of the world, the physics of cosmology, and astronomy is declining everywhere. Philosophers are now interested in the question of how one should live in this world in order to avoid disasters and dangers threatening from all sides. The philosopher, who in the era of the "great classics" was a scientist, researcher, contemplator, intelligible Micro- and Macrocosm, is now becoming a "craftsman of life", an earner not so much of knowledge as of happiness. In philosophy, he sees the activity and structure of thought that frees a person from unreliability, deceit, from fear and unrest, with which life is so full and spoiled. Interest is revived and attitudes toward cynicism are changing, in which an internal torn society “fills up” social lack of freedom with asocial freedom. There are also original, non-commentary philosophical and ethical concepts generated by the cultural state of the Hellenic era - first of all, this skepticism, stoicism and the ethical doctrine of the atomistic materialist Epicurus.

The ancestor of the ancient skepticism Pyrrho (365-275 BC) regarded as a philosopher one who strives for happiness. But happiness consists only in equanimity and in the absence of suffering, and whoever desires to achieve this understandable happiness must answer three questions:

1) What are things made of?

2) how should we relate to these things?

3) what result, what benefit will we get from such an attitude towards them?

1. no answer can be obtained: nothing should be called either beautiful or ugly, neither just nor unjust;

2. since no true statements are possible about any objects, then Pyrrho calls the only way of relating to things appropriate for a philosopher to abstain ("eroche") from any judgment about them. But such abstention from judgment is not perfect agnosticism: certainly, according to Pyrrho, our sensory perceptions, or impressions, are certain, and judgments like "It seems to me bitter or sweet" will be true;

3. The result, or benefit, of the obligatory abstinence for the skeptic from any judgments about the true nature of things will be that same equanimity, serenity, in which skepticism sees the highest goal available to the philosopher of happiness.

The skeptic philosopher differs from all other people in that he does not attach to his way of thinking and actions the meaning of unconditionally true.

Epicurus, who created the materialistic doctrine named after him ( epicureanism), also understood by philosophy an activity that gives people, through reflection and research, a serene, free from suffering, life: "Let no one in his youth put off studying philosophy, and in old age do not get tired of doing philosophy ... Who says that it has not yet come or passed time to study philosophy, he is like the one who says that there is either no time for happiness, or there is no time anymore. The main section of philosophy is ethics, which is preceded by physics (according to Epicurus, it reveals its natural beginnings and connections in the world, freeing the soul from faith in divine forces, in fate or destiny gravitating over humanity), which, in turn, is preceded by the third "part Philosophy is a canon (knowledge of the criterion of truth and the rules for its cognition). Ultimately, Epicurus used sensory perceptions as a criterion of knowledge and general ideas based on them and general ideas based on them - in epistemology this orientation was called sensationalism (from Latin "sensus" feelings). The physical picture of the world, according to Epicurus, is as follows: the Universe consists of bodies and space, "that is, emptiness." Bodies are either compounds of bodies, or that from which their compounds are formed, and these are indivisible, inseparable "dense bodies - atoms - which differ not only, as in Democritus, in shape and size, but also in weight. Atoms are constantly moving through void with a constant speed for all and - unlike the views of Democritus - they can spontaneously deviate from the trajectory of what is happening due to the need for rectilinear motion - that is, Epicurus introduces the hypothesis of self-deflection of atoms to explain collisions between atoms and interprets this as a minimum of freedom, which it is necessary to assume in the elements of the microworld - in atoms, in order to explain the possibility of freedom in man.

The ethics of Epicurus proceeds from the position that for a person the first and inborn good is pleasure, understood as the absence of suffering, and not a predominant state of pleasure. It is through liberation from suffering that, according to Epicureanism, the goal of a happy life is achieved - the health of the body and the absence of unrest, complete serenity of the spirit - ataraxia. Epicurus considered the suffering of the soul to be much worse in comparison with the suffering of the body. In general, the ethics of Epicurus are individualistic and utilitarian: even friendship is no longer valued for its own sake, but for the sake of the security it brings and for the serenity of the soul.

A different mood in ethics stoics: the world as a whole is a single body, living and dissected, thoroughly permeated by the bodily breath that animates it ("pneuma"). They created the doctrine of the strictest unity of being. If epicureanism is permeated with the pathos of freedom and seeks to wrest a person from the "iron shackles of necessity", then for stoicism necessity ("rock", "fate") is immutable, and getting rid of necessity (freedom in the sense of epicureanism) is impossible. The actions of people differ not in the way in which, voluntarily or under duress, a necessity that is inevitable in all cases and intended for everyone is realized and fulfilled. Fate "leads" the one who unreasonably and recklessly opposes it. The sage strives to lead a life in harmony with nature, and for this he is guided by reason. The mood in which he lives is humility, submission to the inevitable. A life that is rational and consistent with nature is a virtuous life, and its result is "apathy" - the absence of suffering, dispassion, indifference to everything external. It is with Stoicism that the aphorism "Philosophy eats the science of dying" is associated. But, despite such obvious pessimism, the ethics of the Stoics is oriented towards the altruistic principle of duty and fearlessness before the blows of fate, while the ideal of Epicureanism is selfish, despite its refinement and "enlightenment".

Features of ancient Greek philosophy:

1. Cosmocentrism- understanding of the world as a cosmos, an ordered and expedient whole (as opposed to chaos). Man was considered as a Microcosm in relation to the Macrocosm, as a part and a kind of repetition, a reflection of the Macrocosm. Orientation to revealing harmony in human existence - after all, if the world is harmoniously ordered, if the world is the Cosmos, and a person is its reflection and the laws of human life are similar to the laws of the Macrocosm, then such harmony is contained (hidden) in a person.

2.ontologism(moreover, explicit, expressed in the fact that the first sages-physicists were looking for "causes and beginnings of being") - orientation towards the study of being, i.e. of all that exists in unity, in an elemental-materialistic and naive-dialectical incarnation: "arche" was conceived as something material, and, as soon as the entire Cosmos was "derived" (precisely in the ontological, and not in the logical plan) from the material source, then it was conceived some connected by means of this first principle - a unity that is in change, movement. And the principle of connection and development (movement) are the main characteristics (features) of the dialectical style of philosophical thinking.

3. Physicalism (naturalism)- the idea of ​​nature as the main object of philosophy.

conclusions

In India, China, Greece, approximately in the 8th-6th centuries. BC e. a pre-philosophy is formed, i.e. a complex of ideas, not yet philosophical, of which in the 5-3 centuries. BC e. philosophy emerges. Philosophy includes:

1. Developed mythology and developing religion. For example, in India this

the complex is formed by the Vedas, the Upanishads. The Vedas are the oldest religious

texts. Upanishads - commentary on them. They address questions

about the birth of the world, about the basis of the world and the threads connecting it, about its

structure, about the origin of the essence of man and his posthumous fate. IN

Greek religious and mythological ideas were systematized

in the epic of Homer, in Hesiod's poem "Theogony" and in the teachings of the Orphics.

2. Pre-sciences - stable complexes of practical knowledge in certain subjects. For example, pre-astronomy is the knowledge of the starry sky and the ability to calculate the most important moments of the annual cycle. Premathematics is the art of counting, measuring, calculating area and volume. Pre-chemistry - the technology of making paints, soaps, wines. Pre-medicine is the ability to cure diseases. Prebiology - the effect of plants on the body. This knowledge is not yet scientific, because. is not systematized, not proved, does not contain theoretical generalizations. But this is already rational knowledge.

3. Worldly wisdom. Its bearers stand out: sages, mentors, teachers. For example, in China - Confucius (551-479 BC) He created the doctrine of a noble husband, a worthy lifestyle, an ideal government, the doctrine of the "golden mean". In Greece, these are the seven wise men. Their activity dates back to the end of the 7th - the beginning of the 6th centuries. BC. Different texts mention different personalities, but, of course, these are Thales, Byant, Pittacus, Solon of Athens. The general form of their reasoning is that of a gnome. Gnoma is a short general statement. Most gnomes are moral. Biant: "Don't talk, you miss, you lose", "Take it by persuasion, not by force." Pittak: "Rely on friends", "Know the measure." Solon: "Nothing too much", "Do not rush to make friends, and do not rush to reject those already acquired." Some gnomes contain broader generalizations.

The emerging philosophy can be represented as an attempt to respond in a rational way to the questions posed in mythology, religion, everyday

thinking questions about the world and human life.

The central idea of ​​the emerging philosophy was the idea of ​​internal interconnection, the unity of all that exists, based on the unity of the sources of all existence. The world is one, because it all comes from a single beginning. In India, the beginning of everything is brahman - the highest essence underlying the universe. In Chinese philosophy, the concept of Tao is what the world is created by and what it obeys.

In Eastern cultures, there was no clear separation of philosophy from pre-philosophy. For a long time, knowledge develops in a single complex. Philosophy remains merged with mythology and religion representations. Only in Ancient Greece relatively early (in the 6th century BC) was knowledge distinctly divided into rational and religious-mythological. Knowledge based on abstract thinking and proof has received special development. This was facilitated by the historical features of ancient society.

Greek philosophy created to express the principle of universal unity

the first wholly rational concept. Substance (arche - beginning) -

a stable principle, which underlies everything that exists, thereby sets its unity and ensures order.

The philosophical schools of ancient Greece became the basis for modern civilization. There were about three hundred of them in all.

It is assumed that Pythagoras was the first to use the word "philosophy" in his writings. Although the year of the appearance of philosophy can be considered 582 BC. It was then, during the Pythian Games, that a competition in wisdom was held for the first time. Then the seven wise men are mentioned for the first time. Their names were: Thales, Solon, Cleobulus, Byant, Periander, Chilo and Pittacus. These thinkers were revered by the Greeks for their intelligence and practical wisdom, and their catchphrases went to the people. “Know thyself” - this aphorism is still heard and is quite relevant for us. But who guesses that the author of this statement, Chilo, lived in the 6th century BC so far from us?

Of all the sages, Thales of Miletus is considered the founder of ancient Greek and, in fact, all European philosophy.

Milesian School of Philosophy

Miletus was a large city-state located in Asia Minor. A resident of Miletus named Thales is recognized by many sources as the founder of the world's first philosophical school. It is usually called Milesian or Ionian.

Thales laid the foundation for natural philosophy. He identified the main questions that underlie this science: what was the first element from which the world arose? And what are the laws of the Universal (Cosmos)? The philosophers of the Milesian school did not have a single opinion about the origin of the world. Thales believed that water started the world. Another pundit, Heraclitus, believed that the world is based on fire, everything that exists is born from it and after a while it dies in it. Anaximenes did not agree with them, whom he called air the first element of the Cosmos. In his opinion, rarefied or thickened, the air turned into other elements such as fire, earth or water.

The followers of the Ionian school not only introduced such a concept as the Cosmos, which they called the “Universal”. Their work is also associated with the birth of such sciences as mathematics, astronomy, physics, biology and geography.

Pythagoras and his followers

Pythagoras is from the city of Regia. He was on the island of Samos near the policy of Miletus, where the first philosophical schools appeared. They developed not only in ancient Greece, but also in its colonies.

Pythagoras was a student of Anaximander, one of the philosophers of the Milesian school. Later, Pythagoras himself became the founder of his school, and his followers began to be called Pythagoreans.

The very creation of the term "philosophy" is usually attributed to Pythagoras. Translated from Greek, it means "love of wisdom."

In our time, Pythagoras is known as a great mathematician, but his knowledge was not limited to this. In his scientific research, he developed such sciences as astronomy and philosophy.

The native of Regia put the quantitative concept at the basis of his philosophical idea. The world is based on mathematics, everything in the world is determined by quality and quantity. This thesis of Pythagoras passed through thousands of years and in our time among scientists is the basis for experiments and observations. The elevation of mathematics to the Absolute also created negative consequences, the teachings of Pythagoras gave rise to the mysticism of numbers based on superstition.

Pythagoras opened his school in the city of Croton, which was located in southern Italy. The Pythagoreans, following their teacher, believed that everything that happens in the universe can be reduced to a number. But their interest was not limited to mathematics. The followers of Pythagoras are considered the founder of the exact, natural and human sciences.

Sophists

Sophists were called teachers of wisdom and eloquence. The most famous of them were Protagoras and Gorgias. Protagoras brought out the cornerstone principle of all sophists: "Man is the measure of all things." It is the man himself who is at the center of the attention of the sophists. They diligently studied psychology in order to learn the principles of the work of consciousness and learn how to influence it using beliefs.

The Sophists recognized that any perception of the world is subjective, because it occurs through the senses. It follows from this that our consciousness is relative and a person cannot cognize the truth. This led to the fact that sophistry began to consider the laws of the state, legal norms or morality as conditional.

The followers of this school were the first to charge tuition fees. In return, they offered their services to politicians: they taught them grammar and style, helped them gain eloquence with the help of rhetoric and the ability to debate. The Sophists roamed Greece and its colonies and taught the art of eloquence to anyone who could pay. Their goal was to attract young people to active participation in political life.

His students also became opponents of this school.

Plato and his Academy

Plato founded his Academy in the vicinity of Athens around 385 BC. It got its name because the gardens where the classes were held were visited by a hero from myths named Academ. In addition to philosophy, Plato's students studied mathematics, astronomy, natural science and other sciences.

In his writings, Plato tried to combine philosophy and politics. His school trained wise rulers who were to govern their people fairly and rely on the principle of the common good.

Plato's dialogues with his disciples have come down to our time. In them, the philosopher teaches to reflect on human problems that have not changed in more than two and a half millennia. They are based on the idea of ​​what is the Idea, Justice and the State. According to Plato, the world is based on ideas, when they are embodied, they become things. The material, the world of things, changes and is able to disappear. It is less essential, it is not true, unlike the world of ideas. That is the world that is true. That's what Plato said.

Aristotle was Plato's student and later critic.

Peripatetic doctrine

In 335 BC Aristotle, formerly a member of the Platonic Academy, did not see eye to eye with the teacher and founded his own school. It comprehended only one science - philosophy. The school got its name from the Greek phrase "walk around". Aristotle liked to take walks with his students during his lectures. Another name for this school - Lyceum (distorted - Lyceum) appeared because the students comprehended wisdom in the neighborhood of the temple of Apollo Lyceum.

Plato and Aristotle did not agree on what the ideal state would look like. Aristotle supported the right of private property, as opposed to the idea of ​​the community of property, which was put forward by his teacher.

Aristotle considered man to be a social animal that has reason. Only being in society, people are able to cultivate morality in themselves. The main virtue for Aristotle was justice.

Aristotle's student was Alexander the Great. He relied on the ideas of his mentor and in less than 10 years he was able to become the ruler of an entire empire.

After Aristotle, the main, classical philosophical schools of ancient Greece gave way to a new philosophy.

epicureans

The Epicurean school was founded in Athens in 306 BC. The purpose of human life, according to Epicurus, is pleasure. But not just endless sensual pleasure. A - the pleasure of peace, the absence of suffering.

All concepts accepted in philosophy were considered by Epicurus and his disciples from the point of view of spiritual enjoyment. At the heart of this philosophical school of sensation, connection with the outside world. The Epicureans were engaged in the study of the sensory world. Their goal was to comprehend a balanced pleasure that would not slide into a simplistic or even vulgar pleasure.

The world of feelings, sensations was considered truly real among them. Therefore, for Epicurus and his followers, reality is something changeable, multiple. According to them, the highest pleasure is peace of mind and serenity. To achieve this, a person needs to subordinate his passions and carnal urges to reason.

This historical period for Greece was not easy. And philosophy responded to topical issues through the prism of eternity. The Epicureans thought about the comfort of the individual in terms of the late era of the slave system.

Stoic School

The philosophical doctrine of the Stoics proved to be more popular in Rome than in their homeland, in Greece. Its representatives were Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, Plutarch and Cicero.

The purpose of this teaching was liberation from passions and obedience to fate, its fatalism.

Indeed, according to the teachings of the Stoics, the whole world, the Cosmos, is one organism, composed of different elements, the main of which is fire. The main question of the philosophy of the Stoics: what is the place of man in the cosmos? According to their teaching, man and the cosmos are inseparable. The cosmos is both a god and a world state. And each person is also a part of this organism. Cosmic laws also affect a person, so the fate of each of us is inevitable and predetermined from the very beginning. And the inevitability of fate should cause a state of impassivity, which was achieved by the followers of this school.

Cynics

The followers of the teachings of the Cynics did not support the norms and customs accepted in society and called for them to be discarded. At the basis of the existence of society, the Cynics wanted to lay virtue, and not conditional laws. And virtue, in their opinion, is nature, the natural state of a person, which has been distorted by imposed rules.

Cynics opposed themselves to society, and rejected the decency accepted in it. Schools of this direction have never been opened in any city. Her followers did not write philosophical treatises. The most famous representative of the Cynics was Diogenes.

ancient philosophy

Ancient philosophy is the philosophy of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome (VII century BC - III century AD), cultural achievements, which are rightfully considered the basis of European civilization.

Ancient Greek is the philosophy developed by Greek philosophers who lived on the territory of modern Greece, as well as in Greek policies, in the Hellenistic states of Asia and Africa, in the Roman Empire. The founder of Greek (European) philosophy is one of the seven wise men - Thales, originally from Miletus.

Philosophical schools of ancient Greece

Milesian school

Thales (640-560 BC) - the origin of the universe thought water, but this water is deified, animated. He represented the Earth in the form of a disk on water, believed that inanimate nature, all things have a soul, admitted the existence of many gods, considered the Earth to be the center of the universe.

Anaximander (610-540 BC), student of Thales.

He considered the origin of all things "apeiron"- eternal, immeasurable, infinite substance, from which all

arose, everything consists and into which everything will turn when destroyed. Apeiron

combines opposites: hot - cold, dry - wet. As a result of various combinations of opposites, things are formed.

Anaximenes (585-525 BC) - disciple of Anaximander. He considered the beginning of all things air. Put forward the idea of the fact that all substances on Earth are the result of different concentrations of air (compressing, it turns into water, then into silt, then into soil, stone. All the diversity of the elements explains the degree of air condensation (when when rarefied, fire is born; when condensed, wind is born, then fog, water, etc.).

eleian school

Parmenides (540-480 BC) - the most striking figure among the Eleatics. He argued: "there is no movement, there is no non-existence, only being exists." Destruction, movement, change - not in truth, but only in opinion. Being is one, not many. Parmenides imagined it as a ball in which everything is the same essence. He drew a clear line between thinking and sensory experience, cognition and evaluation (the famous opposition of "in truth" and "in opinion").

Zeno . (480 -430 BC), an Elean, known for his aporias (translated as aporia - difficulty, difficulty) “Achilles and the tortoise”, “Arrow”, “Stages”. If Parmenides proved the existence of the one, then Zeno tried to refute the existence of the many. He argued against the movement, pointing out that it was contradictory and therefore non-existent. The Eleatics are the authors of the first logical problems and thought experiments. In many ways they anticipated the Aristotelian exercises in logic.

Pythagoras (about 580-500 BC) and Pythagoreans - creators of the quantitative concept of being. “Everything is a number,” Pythagoras (circa 580-500 BC) claimed. Everything is quantitatively determined, that is, any object is not only qualitatively, but also quantitatively determined (or otherwise: each quality has its own quantity). This was the greatest discovery. All experimental and observing science rests on this proposition. It is impossible not to note the negative side of the Pythagorean teaching, expressed in the absolutization of quantity, number. On the basis of this absolutization grew Pythagorean mathematical symbolism and mysticism of numbers, full of superstitions, which was combined with the belief in the transmigration of souls.

Pythagoras is considered the inventor of the term "philosophy". We can only be lovers of wisdom, not sages (only gods can be). With such an attitude towards wisdom, philosophers, as it were, left an “open door” for the creation of the new (for knowledge and invention).

Heraclitus of Ephesus (c. 520-460 BC) - philosopher - materialist, dialectician, believed that "everything flows, everything changes"; “one and the same river cannot be entered twice”; "Nothing is immovable in the world." All world processes, he taught, arise from the struggle of opposites, which he called the eternal "universal logos" (one law, World Mind). He taught that the world was not created by either gods or people, but was, is and will be eternally living fire. Cosmos is a product of fire.

Some consider Heraclitus the founder of the doctrine of knowledge - epistemology. He became the first distinguish sensory and rational cognition: cognition begins with feelings, giving a superficial characterization, then knowledge must be processed with the help of the mind. It is known that Heraclitus respected the law and encouraged everyone to do so. He was a supporter of the circulation of substances in nature and the cyclical nature of history. He recognized the relativity of the surrounding world: what is bad for some is good for others; in different situations, the same act of a person can be bad and good.

Democritus (460-371 BC) - the greatest materialist, the first encyclopedic mind of Ancient Greece. He believed that everything is made up of atoms (indivisible particles). He even represented thought as a collection of especially thin invisible atoms. Thought, according to Democritus, cannot exist without a material carrier, the spirit cannot exist independently of matter.

Sophists (teachers of wisdom) The most famous among them were Protagoras (c. 485 - c. 410 BC) and Gorgias (c. 480 - c. 380 BC).

The Sophists were the first among philosophers to receive tuition fees. The Sophists offered their services to those who sought to participate in the political life of their city: they taught grammar, style, rhetoric, the ability to debate, and also gave a general education. The basic principle formulated by Protagoras is as follows: "Man is the measure of all things: those that exist, that they exist, and those that do not exist, that they do not exist." The sophists focused on man and his psychology: the art of persuasion required knowledge of the mechanisms that govern the life of consciousness. At the same time, the problems of cognition came to the fore among the sophists.

In the theory of knowledge, the sophists are guided by the individual, declaring him, with all his features, the subject of knowledge. Everything we know about objects, they argue, we receive through the senses; yet sensory perceptions are subjective: what seems sweet to a healthy person will seem bitter to a sick person. Hence, all human knowledge is only relative. Objective, true knowledge, from the point of view of the sophists, is unattainable.

Relativism in the theory of knowledge served as a justification for moral relativism: the sophists showed the relativity, conventionality of legal norms, state laws and moral assessments.

Socrates (c. 470 - 399 BC), a student of the sophists, and then their critic. The main philosophical interest of Socrates focuses on the question of what is a person, what is human consciousness. "Know thyself" is Socrates' favorite saying. Hence the desire of Socrates to seek the truth together, in the course of conversations (dialogues), when the interlocutors, critically analyzing those opinions that are considered generally accepted, discard them one by one until they come to such knowledge that everyone recognizes as true. Socrates possessed a special art - the famous irony, with the help of which he gradually aroused among his interlocutors doubts about the truth of traditional ideas, trying to lead them to such knowledge, the reliability of which they themselves would be convinced. Philosophy was understood by Socrates as the knowledge of what is good and evil. The search for knowledge about the good and the just together, in a dialogue with one or more interlocutors, in itself created, as it were, special ethical relations between people who gathered together not for the sake of entertainment and not for the sake of practical deeds, but for the sake of gaining the truth. Socrates considers an immoral act to be the fruit of ignorance of the truth: if a person knows what is good, then he will never act badly. A bad deed is identified here with delusion, with a mistake, and no one makes mistakes voluntarily, Socrates believes. And since moral evil comes from ignorance, it means that knowledge is the source of moral perfection. Socrates put forward a peculiar principle of cognitive modesty: "I know that I know nothing."

Plato (427-347 BC) - one of the most famous philosophers of antiquity. In this, only Aristotle, his own student, competed with him. The latter owed much to Plato, although he criticized him. From Aristotle came the expression: "Plato is my friend, but the truth is dearer." IN doctrine of ideas Plato proceeded from the fact that a person in his creative activity goes from ideas to things (first ideas as samples, then things that embody them), that many ideas arise in a person’s head that do not have a material embodiment, and it is not known whether they will receive it ever incarnation. These facts were interpreted by him as follows: ideas as such exist independently of matter in some special world and are models for things. Things arise on the basis of these ideas. The real, real is the world of ideas, and the world of things is a shadow, something less existing (that is, ideas have the maximum being, and the world of things is something that does not exist, that is, changing, disappearing).

According to ideal state theory human society represented by the state dominates the individual. The individual is considered something insignificant in relation to the society-state. A thread stretches from Plato to totalitarian ideologies, Nazi and communist, in which a person is considered only as a particle of the whole, as something that must be entirely subordinate to the whole. Wise men (philosophers) should govern the state. Warriors or "guards" must take care of the security of the state. Finally, peasants and artisans must ensure the material side of the life of the state.

There is, however, a virtue common to all classes, which Plato values ​​​​very highly: this is the measure. “Nothing beyond measure” is the principle that Plato shares with most Greek philosophers. According to Plato, a just and perfect state is the highest of all that can exist on Earth. Therefore, a person lives for the sake of the state, and not the state - for the sake of the person. The danger of absolutization of such an approach was already seen by Aristotle. Being a greater realist than his teacher, he was well aware that an ideal state in earthly conditions could hardly be created due to the weakness and imperfection of the human race. And therefore, in real life, the principle of strict subordination of the individual to the universal often results in the most terrible tyranny, which, by the way, the Greeks themselves could see in numerous examples from their own history.

Aristotle (384-322 BC) - a student of Plato, later founded his own school, which was called Likey(in Latin transcription - Lyceum). Aristotle was systematic. Almost every of his works laid the foundation for new sciences (op. "On Animals" - zoology, op. "On the Soul" - psychology, etc.).

Aristotle is the father of logic (and now it is sometimes called Aristotelian). He identified the basic rules of logical thinking, formulating them in the form of laws of logic, explored the forms of logical thinking (reasoning): concept, judgment, conclusion, proof, refutation.

If we recall the division of all philosophers into materialists and idealists, then we can say that Aristotle actually expressed the main idea of ​​materialism, that is, that the spirit cannot exist outside of matter, in contrast to Plato, who argued the opposite. ("Plato is my friend but the truth is dearer!")

Aristotle criticized the Platonic theory of the ideal state, advocated private property against the Platonic idea of ​​the community of property. In fact, he was the first anti-communist. In his opinion, common ownership would cause a negligent attitude towards work and great difficulties in distributing its fruits; each would strive to get a better and larger share of the products, but to apply a smaller share of labor, which would lead to quarrels and deceit in exchange for friendship and cooperation.

Aristotle defined man as a social animal endowed with reason. Man, by his very nature, is destined to live together; only in a hostel can people be formed, brought up as moral beings. Justice crowns all the virtues, to which Aristotle also included prudence, generosity, self-restraint, courage, generosity, truthfulness, benevolence.

People are by nature unequal, Aristotle believes: those who are not able to answer for their own actions, are not able to become the master of themselves, cannot cultivate moderation, self-restraint, justice and other virtues, that slave by nature and can only exercise will another.

Aristotle ends the classical period in the development of Greek philosophy. The ideological orientation of philosophy is changing: its interest is increasingly focused on the life of an individual. Ethical teachings are especially characteristic in this respect. stoics And epicureans. Great popularity stoic school received in Ancient Rome, where its most prominent representatives were Seneca (c. 4 BC - 65 AD), his student Epictetus (c. 50 - c. 140) and the emperor Marcus Aurelius (121-180) .

Philosophy for the Stoics is not just a science, but above all a life path, life wisdom. Only philosophy is able to teach a person to maintain self-control and dignity in a difficult situation. The Stoics consider freedom from the power of the outside world over a person to be the dignity of a sage; his strength lies in the fact that he is not a slave to his own passions. A sage cannot aspire to sense gratification. Dispassion is the ethical ideal of the Stoics.

A complete rejection of social activism in ethics we meet with a materialist Epicurus (341-270 BC), whose teachings gained wide popularity in the Roman Empire. Epicurus revises Aristotle's definition of man. The individual is primary; all social ties, all human relations depend on individuals, on their subjective desires and rational considerations of utility and pleasure. Social union, according to Epicurus, is not the highest goal, but only a means for the personal well-being of individuals.

In contrast to the Stoic, Epicurean ethics is hedonistic (from the Greek hedone - pleasure): Epicurus considers pleasure to be the goal of human life. Epicurus, like the Stoics, considered equanimity of spirit (ataraxia), peace of mind and serenity to be the highest pleasure, and such a state can be achieved only if a person learns to moderate his passions and carnal desires, to subordinate them to reason.

Despite the well-known similarity between Stoic and Epicurean ethics, the difference between them is very significant: the ideal of the Stoics is more severe, they adhere to the altruistic principle of duty and fearlessness before the blows of fate; the ideal of the epicurean sage is not so much moral as aesthetic, it is based on the enjoyment of oneself. Epicureanism is enlightened, refined and enlightened, but still selfish.

Questions for self-control:

1. Try to formulate the basic theories about the origins of the world.

2. What are the similarities and differences between the teachings of the Sophists and Socrates?

3. What is the main thing in the teachings of Plato?

4. Explain Aristotle's expression: "Plato is my friend, but the truth is dearer" ...

5. What is the difference between the positions of the Stoics and the Epicureans?

6. Find out what the terms mean:

Altruism -

Relativism -

Antique -

Hellenistic -

Concept -

Rational -

materialism -

Idealism -

Subjective -

Objective -